Who Review: The Time of Angels

Aliens is my favorite science-fiction movie on days when it's not Serenity, so I'm rather amazed at myself that I needed an internet review to point out that "The Time of Angels" is to "Blink" (3.10) as Aliens is to Alien.

Now the reviews that I've seen are sharply divided as to whether the "what you never ever ever put in a trap" speech at the end was brilliant or horrible, and perhaps because I saw no trailers for this episode and also because it reminded me about the best part of "The Eleventh Hour," I very much thought "Welcome, Mr. Smith. Welcome back, Mr. Moffat, we missed you."

(Completely tangential, but I wonder how long it's going to be before the Matt Smith Doctor introduces himself as "Dr. John Smith" as so many others have done.)

But that's not to say that the rest of the episode felt stilted at all. We actually have some honest-to-God characterization of this new Doctor - he likes to go to museums and keep score, somehow. I'm really not clear on that, but it was funny when both River Song and Amy Pond (theme naming by Mr. Moffat, perhaps?) came to the same conclusions.

I have not seen The Ring, but I know enough to know it was referenced in the episode, and while that's certainly a terrifying concept... didn't Sally Sparrow take a picture of an Angel back in "Blink?" I'm not sure the Angel-coming-out-of-the-television was particularly well-realized either, because with the grain and flickering, I almost expected it to start saying "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope..."

I knew it when Mr. Moffat was announced as the new showrunner that his scripts weren't going to all be of the same caliber as his efforts in the first four seasons. But comparing this to "The Beast Below," it almost seems like he let someone else ghost-write the latter story. This is easily the best episode of New Who since, oh, er... "Blink," also by Stephen Moffat. But since "Blink" is one of the five best Doctor Who stories ever, let's instead say that, not counting "Blink," "The Time of Angels" is the best episode since "The Empty Child," which was also written by...

PS: KAREN GILLAN'S LEGS