Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Doctor Who S05E08-The Hungry Earth

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the year 2020 and run into a group of people attempting to drill deeper into the Earth’s crust than any human in history. However, once the drill hits 21km, mysterious holes begin appearing in the drilling facility. Something is drilling upwards and claiming human hostages, including Amy. With only Rory and a small village of scared individuals to help him, The Doctor must race to unravel the mystery of the somewhat familiar creatures causing this havoc before fighting breaks out and all hell breaks loose.

Like “Vampires in Venice” to “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,” “The Hungry Earth” felt like a step back in quality after the amazing “Amy’s Choice”. That’s not to say that this was a bad outing, but this is the first of a two part story and we had to build momentum this week before the fireworks go off next week.

I was a little surprised at how “Amy lite” this episode was. Amy has been such a driving force for many of the episodes thus far, last weeks episode was even an Amy centered story for example. I never thought they’d cut back on her story time or her overall screen time for that matter. Amy is quickly captured and only seen two more brief times before the episode ends. Again, a little shocking but her absence works to build on the other character filtering this story. Nasreen was my favorite character of the bunch. At first she was a little skeptical of The Doctor (honestly, who isn’t really when they first meet him) but then her sense of adventure kicks in and she eventually follows him to the underground to confront The Silurians (more on them in a second). I like her but I can’t help but feel there is some “hidden” quality we haven’t seen yet that will be revealed next week. The other pivotal characters this week were Tony and his daughter Ambrose. Tony was a good sidekick for Nasreen but Ambrose, while understandably concerned for the safety of her son, came of as annoying. If anyone is going to do something stupid next week that ignites a war, she is at the top of my list (again I’ll continue on this point momentarily).

This week saw the return of another old villain of Doctor Who lore. The reptilian Silurians design wise reminded me of the Draqs seen in 1983’s Enemy Mine (starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossitt Jr., great movie btw). We only got to see one of them clearly this week and that one is the strangely attractive warrior Alaya, wow cute with a pretty name to match. Alaya, as aforementioned, is a fighter and I was fully sold on her claims that her people would bring the fire to eliminate mankind no matter what. Her chilling foresight as to how that will come about had me guessing like crazy. Alaya claims someone will kill her and thus ignite the war. At first I was sure it would be Ambrose, but then again Tony has been infected by some sort of Sullarian sting and needs a cure and Rory wants Amy back (that bit with the wedding ring makes me think he might bite it in the end next week), plus Ambrose wants her son back but seems more keen on pulling the trigger now. All have legit reasons for wanting to kill Alaya and next week we will find out who does.

I should also take a quick moment to note that this little two parter is courtesy of Chris Chibnall, head writer for another little series called Torchwood. He is an outstanding writer who has written many of Torchwood’s best episodes so far and I’m really looking forward to how his massive build up this week pays off next week. Again, “The Hungry Earth” wasn’t a lame episode, I really want to see next weeks episode so badly because of the last ten minutes. Plus, you got to see The Doctor fire a slingshot of all things and wear his sunglasses at night, nice. This week was all about the build up and next week is sure to give us all a proper payoff for sitting patiently through it.

Next Week-Stop the Silurians, prevent a war, have a beer (ok maybe that last one is stretching it).

Rating-7/10

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