TV Reviews pt. 1 - Dr Who, Season 5.

 To my immense surprise, the fifth season of the 21st  century Doctor Who is actually highly enjoyable. Even the one with James Corden in it. To be honest, I'd written the show off almost entirely a while ago as a knee-jerk reaction to how insanely popular the show became. Once again, I'm forced to admit that something I've previously declared rubbish is rather good, and I'm actually a bit of a tosser for opining without enough knowledge of the facts. The first clue that I may have made a boo-boo here was when I learned that the show's new producer/head writer/guru was the same guy who had written season 3's excellent "Blink", and was in fact the creator of  "Press Gang", possibly the only CITV drama from my teens I'm convinced I would still enjoy today. If only they'd told me that at the same time as they were going on about "Coupling" as part of Stephen Moffat's CV, I could have been watching along with everyone else last year. Oh well, at least this way I got to see it all in a short space of time, sans ciffhangers.

 The casting of Matt Smith as The Doctor was once a less than pleasant surprise , but within two episodes the role becomes just as much his as it once was Tom Baker's or David Tennant's. The new companion, Amy Pond(played by the gorgeous Scot, Karen Gillan), is a surprisingly complex and realistic character. She even tries to get off with The Doctor without looking like a total slut, or dying ten minutes later. Other characters and actors are top quality also, Toby Jones, Tony Curran, and Meera Syal all make appearances and Alex Kingston as River Song pops up fairly often, while Mike Skinner (from 'The Streets'), and Bill Nighy have parts so small you could miss them if you went for a cup of tea(sometimes the Beeb's 'no ads' rule ain't all its cracked up to be.)
 A minor quibble is the attempt to turn the Weeping Angels into something more than the admittedly brilliant story gimmick they were in one previous episode. As much as I enjoyed 'Blink', and even the parts of the 'sequel', but I need to say I don't really see much of a future for these characters. Returning to positive spins, another element that appealed to me was true explorations of the nature of time travel, previously only hinted at in episodes like 'The Girl in The Fireplace' and the two/three/five Doctor crossovers(speaking of which, when will we get to see a McCoy/McGann(?)/Eccleston/Tennant/Smith event?) which are far more believable than the usual conveniently timed team ups we see in the series. It is entirely likely that, should time travellers ever run into each other frequently, (as they do in the DC universe all the time, so I should know!)  each incident would occur at different stages in the characters lives; hence the first time the Doctor met River song in season 4 was the last time she would ever see him, having spent a significant, and as yet unspecified, amount of her life with him. For a time traveller, things tended to happen in a very tidy, linear way to, and around, The Doctor. Stephen Moffat is clearly a storyteller who takes great pleasure in screwing with the audiences expectations, and being given the entirety of time and space to play with is a bonus for both him and us. Having said that, I am aware that the linear aspect has been necessary to keep the series coherent, its just nice to see it get messed with for a change.
 Finally, I just want express my delight with the whole 'crack in time' concept, possibly the best long-ranging concept to appear in the show since the mid-noughties revamp, and I say that as someone who nearly flipped with anticipation every time 'Bad Wolf' made its way into the show during season 1. Although the cracks seem slightly similar, the possibilities for the concept seem a lot better and bigger, and so it seems I never fully escaped those cliffhangers after all. Roll on Season 6.