Tom McRae hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, worked on the show since Season 2. And since Season 2 was the bad season, I was a little bit skeptical...
Silly me.
Okay, so they go to a planet, and once again the Doctor doesn't bother to check the news or anything because they land in the middle of a plague. A quarantine facility shifts time in order to save people. The Doctor and Rory get stuck in one time-stream, while Amy gets stuck in another.
There are two fantastic concepts here. First, the whole idea of splitting time-streams so that some people move faster than others is utterly brilliant, and I hope the idea is revisited. Then there's the notion that the plague could kill the Doctor (but not Rory or Amy, who are immune), so he has to stay in the TARDIS and be Mission Control for the entire episode. I would not mind seeing more episodes like this. Not because Matt Smith is annoying; far from it, but it was nice to actually go all the way with what's been a common theme since 2005 and actually force the Doctor to act entirely through other people.
Amy gets chased around not-Aperture-Science-honest by faceless medic-droids that want to give her medicine that will kill her (Moffat Cliche Number 3: Literal-Minded Medical Robots Gone Amok). Way back in "Gridlock," when those two clowns drugged Martha, I first wondered about the way future medicine would affect our heroes, and it's nice to see that someone is finally taking this issue seriously. Which is another great plus in this episode's favor.
Rory gets equipped with a pair of glasses that let him hear the Doctor, while the Doctor can see whatever the glasses see. Then he goes in search of wifey. Small problem: it's been 36 years for Amy, and those 36 years have not been kind to Amy, Amy's psyche, and the makeup and wardrobe departments.
Which brings us to utterly stupid thing number one: Old-Amy's costume looks like the sort of thing I could bash together without any budget whatsoever. Maybe that's the point, but I can't help but think of Old-Amy as a sort of Joan of Arc with Nerf armor. So for the rest of this review, I'm going to call her Joan of Nerf.
Anyway, Joan of Nerf isn't big on the whole "rescue Amy before she becomes me" thing, since she is Amy (since she has all her memories) and she doesn't want to die. But other-Amy is still out there, somehow, and they eventually strike a bargain to rescue both versions after loads and loads of heartstring-tugging.
But then the Doctor reneges on the deal and only saves the younger, hotter, less angsty version, justifying himself because "I said I'd save her, and I did." Except Joan of Nerf has all of Amy's memories, and per YOUR VERY ARGUMENT in "The Almost People," that makes her just as much a person as Amy.
That's less a Stupid Thing than it is a Continuity Problem, but Moffat can duck around that by claiming that Big Bang 2 yargle arb fargle.
Stupid Thing Number Two is the fight scene at the end, which demonstrates the clear advantage of having a trained ballerina in your cast. What, did you think a stunt double wouldn't work? Joan of Nerf is already wearing (awful) make-up.
And now I have to do the thing I hate doing, which is critique acting. I'm not an actor, I don't know subpar acting when I see it, so I really only ever do this when there's a noticeable problem, and there is one here. See, Joan of Nerf is supposed to hate the Doctor. She's been spending the last 36 years doing two things; hiding from medic-droids that will kill her, and nursing a festering hatred of the Doctor. But Joan of Nerf also still loves Rory, and because of that, and the fact that she's Amy, who is apparently Time Santa as far as sorting out paradoxes goes, so she's got to end up being a hero. While there's no doubt that Karen Gillan can act off of herself, she doesn't really pull off the emotional weight that Joan of Nerf is supposed to be carrying. Again, that's less a Stupid Thing and more an inconvenience. She's delivered really great performances on other occasions (two words: "save him" in "Amy's Choice"), but it just felt a tad flat here.
I guess I have to mention how, just as in "The Almost People," we knew the extra person wasn't going to come back, but it was nice to see everyone acknowledge that. I would have liked a little bit more from the Doctor about how necessary it is to leave her behind - and frankly, I'm surprised Joan of Nerf got totally offed, unlike Jenny in "The Doctor's Daughter" or even River in "Forest of the Dead." (Moffat is going out of his way to tie up loose ends. I don't know whether that's a good thing or not.) I'm also surprised she didn't go down fighting, but, as you'll see when I get around to reviewing BSG's "Maelstrom," I tend to misjudge how characters are going to die. (Agh! I came this close to finishing a Who Review without mentioning Galactica.)
So now all we have to do is age the Doctor, and clone Rory, and we'll have gone full circle on everything.
7 out of 10. A number of great ideas. Better follow-through would have been nice.
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