After months of anticipation building up, over eight million viewers tuned in to watch Matt Smith take over as the role of the Doctor. The previous five years had seen an entirely different production team bring ‘Doctor Who’ into the twenty-first century, where it had received countless awards and engaged the brains of a modern audience. But would this continue under the new management of Steven Moffat?
‘The Eleventh Hour’ starts on a positive note, where the Doctor is seen hanging for his life from the burning TARDIS, which had been damaged after the traumatic regeneration of the previous Doctor. After nearly losing his masculinity on the top of Big Ben, the Doctor climbs himself back into the console room, where he zooms off into the distant night sky…
The new opening titles are of a similar nature to the previous style, with the tunnel effect from the Tom Baker era being used once more. The addition of lighting bolts adds a sense of peril to the journey of the TARDIS, and the fiery background that the vortex dissolves into emphasises this. The theme tune uses more synthesised sounds in this variation, as well as the addition of human vocals and a brand new opening section, to add suspense to the overall effect.
The first time we see Amelia Pond, she is a seven year old Scottish girl, without any proper parents to look after her. When the Doctor crashes in her garden, she goes to his rescue and welcomes him into her home. A comical scene between them involving various different foods establishes their new relationship, which is summarised in the heart-warming smile Matt Smith gives her before diving into the burning TARDIS.
When the Doctor returns to her house, over twelve years has passed since their last encounter, and she is going by the name of ‘Amy’. At first she is wary of the Doctor, convinced that he is just a madman with a box, but as the story progresses their trust for each other strengthens, which eventually results in her leaving her new fiancé Rory on the night before their wedding day, in order to travel in time and space.
The main negatives of this story were the special effects, which have to be some of the poorest visuals since the series returned in 2005. While Prisoner Zero worked well in the form of human beings with enormous fangs, the scaly computerised creature felt extremely unrealistic, and often ruined what could have been a tense scene.
It resembled the snakelike spirit of the Master in the Paul McGann TV Movie, although this new effect surprisingly looked worse, despite it being made over a decade later. The other disappointing effect was the Atraxi spaceship, which resembled a giant Christmas decoration with an eye attached below.
Although the actual story is not the finest example of Steven Moffat’s writing skills, with a plot similar to that of ‘Smith and Jones’, his characters of the eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond are well established in this episode, which will allow the rest of the series to flourish in a spectacular way. With many classic foes set to return, and a silent menace following the new team throughout their travels, Doctor Who has never looked so promising.
Rating: 4/5 stars
You can also give your rating in the new poll, ‘And then there were eleven…’
The BBC have announced that Matt Smith’s first full episode as the Eleventh Doctor, ‘The Eleventh Hour’, was the most watched programme on BBC iPlayer this year. Official figures show that the story has been streamed 2.2 million times since it was originally broadcast on 3rd April 2010.
