Right, The Hungry Earth. If you're in the US and you don't want to be spoiled, put your fingers in your ears and start singing to yourself. That way your hands will be well away from the mouse so's you won't be able to scroll down and read the post, plus you get to listen to a funky song courtesy of yourself. It's a win-win scenario. I've put a big chunk of plot-summary in spoiler-small but hey! Just... continue at your own discretion. Don't be a div, is really the moral of this overly long spoiler warning.
The Hungry Earth First time I've been a teeny bit underwhelmed this series. It felt more like a prelude.
I really like all the elements - full of funny bits and interesting bits - but it was quite linear. "Right, here's what he's doing, here's what she's doing" - getting all the basic background stuff out of the way. The calm before the storm. It wasn't jam packed like, say, The Stolen Earth, which I still have trouble beliving is only forty-five minutes long. Plus, the majority of it was covered in the trailer.
I mean, in the Next Time trailer, you could see that
a man would get taken beneath the ground, graves were being consumed from beneath, the ground swallowed up Amy, a Silurian would chase a child through a graveyard, and then the Doctor would remove its mask - which is more or less the entire plot of the episode. Because the episode isn't a full plot, it's just the beginning of a story.
Next episode looks spectacular, on the other hand, so hey! It'll get straight into that.
I don't like being negative about things I love, so I'm going to list the fantastic things now. Including!
- Amy and Rory and Amy and Rory.
- The capture scene.
- The dissections! (!! Oh horrifying. I'm very worried for Amy. Scariest concept yet.)
- The Doctor confronting the Silurian. ("You are
beautiful!")
- The Silurians themselves! I really like them. They're fantastic creations.
- The setting. Gorgeous.
Everything about it was right, there just wasn't enough of it. I just wanted them to reveal the damn Silurians, and that took the best part of half an hour! And while I love-love-
loved seeing it all play out on screen - snippits of the graveyard scene don't even nearly match up to seeing the actual thing, obviously - I never quite submerged myself in the world because I just wanted it to get on with it. But I didn't feel like I'd been on an adventure, afterward.
But again. Everything was beautiful and wonderful and cheeky and quintessential Doctor Who... it was just... slow. I mean, take The Impossible Planet, Silence in the Library, Human Nature - they introduce all these enigmas and problems and you wonder how they can possibly get out of that in the next episode. I feel now like I've just found out how the Doctor in particular is going to get
into it. And then out of it.
Interestingly, watching DWC, apparently they cut a lot of material from this episode. They showed clips from one massive deleted scene in which Amy and the Doctor were approaching the drilling site - it was a lovely scene, brimming with character development. I really wish that was left in. I think, when it's so preludey, you need as many of those warm touches as possible to attach to it.
I have included promo art because, a. I'm pretentious and want to split up the screen, and b. 'cause it's gorgeous. That's just how I'm going to live my life. I'm very sorry.