DOCTOR WHO 5.1 – "The Eleventh Hour"

WRITER: Steven Moffat
DIRECTOR: Adam Smith
GUEST CAST: Arthur Darvill, Caitlin Blackwood, Nina Wadia, Marcello Magni, Annette Crosbie, Arthur Cox, Perry Benson, Olivia Colman, Eden Monteath & Merin Monteath

Steven Moffat steps into Russell T. Davies' shoes as showrunner of the latest series of Doctor Who, with an episode that often followed his predecessor's contentious style (frenzied pace, a planetary threat, a celebrity cameo, giant silly spaceships), while managing to effectively pull it all together thanks to his greater gift for plotting and creativity. Essentially, this was comfortable and familiar, but done better.

"The Eleventh Hour" picked up immediately after "The End Of Time", with the newly-regenerated Doctor (Matt Smith) hurtling to Earth while hanging out the door of his stricken TARDIS, eventually crash-landing in the back garden of a little Scottish girl called Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood). Once there, the befuddled Time Lord had to satiate some bizarre food cravings (fish fingers n' custard), before helping Amelia with a curious crack in her bedroom wall that leads to an intergalactic jail where a "Prisoner Zero" has recently escaped.

After getting the TARDIS patched up and promising Amelia he'd return in five minutes, The Doctor miscalculated and reappeared some 12 years later, to find Amelia had grownup into leggy kiss-o-gram "Amy" (Karen Gillan) and realizing her sleepy town faces danger from "Prisoner Zero", a shape-shifting "multiform" who's started using the bodies of comatose hospital patients to dream up its templates. Can The Doctor recapture this alien fugitive before its prison wardens, the Atraxi, opt to destroy the Earth as part of their search? He only has 20-minutes to save the world, but the TARDIS is inaccessible as it repairs itself, and his trusty sonic screwdriver's malfunctioning...

There'll be a lot of anxious eyes on this premiere -- from newcomers drawn in by assertions it's the ideal place to start afresh, and from long-term fans eager to see how Matt Smith compares to David Tennant, who became a cherished actor in the role and simultaneously brought a lot more attention to the franchise. The good news is there was nothing in "Eleventh Hour" to leave you worried there's been a terrible miscalculation when it comes to the primary casting; Smith was lively, eccentric and captivating -- coming across as a shambolic, nuttier version of Tennant's Doctor. I like to think this was an intentional similarity, as his regeneration was ongoing and two personalities were blurred? The Doctor even quoted his previous incarnation a few times, with the "you've had some cowboys in here" and "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey" lines. I'm sure we'll begin to see the Eleventh Doctor take on more distinct facets of his own in the coming weeks, anyway, although it's perhaps wise if they're sticking to the general flair of Tennant's era. A 180-degree change in approach might have been too much, as that temperament seems to work best for the modern-day Doctor. You don't want to risk a Peter Davison to Colin Baker debacle, do you?

Karen Gillan's performance was unusual, in a good way. Amy's very forthright and appears to be rather obsessed with the "raggedy Doctor" she met as a child. Her family, including her nurse boyfriend Rory (Arthur Darvill), have always believed she's suffered from delusions all these years, although her childhood imaginary friend has turned out to be very real. This was a very interesting way for The Doctor to get a new companion, as Amy's essentially been waiting for him to return for over a decade to whisk her away for adventures, and the manner of their meeting echoed The Time Traveler's Wife's non-linear structure -- which, intentionally or not, seems to be a book many of Moffat's plots have borrowed from.

The deservedly slim story factored in plenty of imaginative moments and idea; from the creepy notion that a simple crack in your bedroom wall could be a gateway to an alien prison (how many kids were checking their walls before bedtime?), to an extra room in your own home being kept hidden from you thanks to a "perception filter". The villainous Prisoner Zero, a snake-piranha creature that could assume various shapes, also made for an effective villain, particularly when one of its guises was that of a burly man with a dog held on a leash, both growling ferociously, or a hospital patient (Olivia Colman) holding the hands of two innocent-looking children that each sprouted rows of dagger-like teeth.

"The Eleventh Hour" was comfortably familiar to RTD's era, mostly through the use of similar musical cues from Murray Gold and its crazy pace, but Moffat appears to have refined the formula somewhat. It didn't leave you feeling giddy and unfulfilled, because the story actually came to a conclusion that felt more satisfying – if threatening to derail at various points. The direction from Adam Smith (Little Dorrit, Skins) felt much slicker than recent Who adventures, with some excellent screen compositions and more interesting lighting. It avoided the sometimes cheap, "staged" and perfunctory drama feel that plagued RTD's era, and HD lent everything a level of detail and texture I haven't seen in the show – even during 2009's specials, which were the first to be filmed in high definition.

Overall, I don't think we have anything to worry about, not that I ever was worried about Who's best writer taking the reigns of his favourite show. While not a radical departure from RTD's established template, it feels to me that Moffat's creative eye will ensure series 5's stories have more weight, logic and panache to them. Smith himself may not be the handsome poster boy the show can exploit to its marketing advantage (as it did the lovable, good-looking, nerd-bait Tennant), but Doctor Who was never about pretty boys. The show didn't cast an attractive Doctor until, arguably, Peter Davison. You just need a good actor who can grab the material by the scruff of the neck, while exuding a barmy, super-intelligent aura of confidence and fun. Matt Smith certainly appears to have that all-important disposition, so I'm ready to take new adventures with him every Saturday night.

Asides

• I never did like the TARDIS interior we were presented with back in "Rose", although I got used to it and it wasn't terrible enough to regularly complain about. Still, I'm overjoyed we've finally been given an interior set that does justice to the concept of a giant space within a tiny police box. The new copper-coloured TARDIS insides -- with its stairways, gantries and different levels -- is everything you could hope for. The console felt alive with sound and meticulous design, and the camera can even film across it at the actors now. Angles were always very restricted to one side in the RTD years.


• I don't like the new opening credits and theme tune. Maybe they'll grow on me (these things tend to), but why add unnecessary lightning bolts inside the "time vortex", instead of giving us something totally new? A missed opportunity. The CGI TARDIS just looked like it was dangling out of control on a piece of fishing line. And why bother to change the theme tune again, so soon? It all felt like pointless tinkering.


• Some of the CGI was a disappointment; mainly some shots of the opening TARDIS freefall over London (like the terrible near-miss with Big Ben), some of the alien-snake's scenes, and the bug-eyed Atraxi ships hovering over the planet. Considering the FX must be more expensive and time-consuming to do for HD broadcast now, The Mill need to up their game.


• Loved The Atraxi ship's scan of Earth's history showing a selection of Whoniverse villains (Daleks, Cybermen, Reapers, the Sea Devils, etc), together with all of The Doctor's previous ten incarnations, topped off with the symbolic sight of Smith stepping through David Tennant's hologram in his new attire.


• This is the third time The Doctor's taken his new outfit from a hospital, after Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor and Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor did so after their own regenerations in "Spearhead From Space" and the 1996 TV Movie, respectively.


• I'm so glad The Doctor's snapping his fingers to open the TARDIS doors now; a really cool development Steven Moffat thought up for the "Silence In The Library" two-parter, but which RTD didn't continue with.


• Did you know that Amelia was played by Karen Gillan's cousin Caitlin Blackwood? Hence their facial similarity. Strangely, they'd apparently never even met until the episode's table read-through!

3 APRIL 2010: BBC1/HD, 6.20PM