Geek Syndicate Issue 8 | Page 110

Geek Syndicate

UNIT return ... but with less guns and more science

Of course, even the best script
can be unravelled by poor performances, so let’s look at the
people who let the side down.
…

Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013

Moffat also manages to bring
these incarnations of the Time
Lord together in a perfectly
reasonable manner while they
are all going about their separate adventures. Each story
strand comes together perfectly well and each Doctor is
given time to breathe in their
own story before coming together. Heck, it’s nearly twenty minutes before we even see
David Tennant in person.

Image © BBC Worldwide, 2013

like a magic wand rather than
a tool, the continuous snogging… John Hurt’s incarnation of the Doctor stands as
the bridge. He seems like one
of the “old” Doctors and questions the two young men he is
faced with. He calls them out
at every step but he also offers
the reason.

It’s a while before even two Doctors meet

Oddly, it was about twenty minutes in that my wife
stopped her preparations
for an evening out and focussed on the television fully.
The script is clever. It’s funny
and, on top of everything, it
succeeds at everything it attempts to do while giving each
character a chance to participate in the resolution. A brilliant accomplishment.

110

OK, no-one. I was
bowled over by
one
person
in
particular – John
Hurt’s ninth Doctor. John Hurt lit up
the screen in this
show, bringing a
gravitas and grim,
gravel-voiced humour that seemed
perfectly fitting for

a Doctor who had reached his
breaking point. No More. The
Time War WILL end and he will
end it.
Matt Smith and David Tennant were on their usual form.
Smith being wild-armed, gangly brilliance. Tennant slipping easily into his comfy
sand shoes and seeming as if
he’d never been away. There
was an excellent chemistry

between the two and the script
cleverly allowed them to both
get on and disagree during the
course of the story. Once our
third incarnation of the Time
Lord turns up, the differences
between the two really begin
to show through as they react
to the Doctor they tried to forget.
Jenna Coleman also really impressed me this episode. I really grew to love Clara over
the course of the story. In past
adventures, I’ve found the
character to be a bit too perfect (companion-wise) and
I thought her story was a bit
rushed, compressed as it was
into seven episodes. Here, I
really believed in the character. Clearly she’s had more
off-screen time with the Doctor and has also managed to
balance this with a career as
a teacher (presumably taking
time to train). In many ways,
it is Clara who saves the day
and her performance at the
critical moments, her ability
to mock all three of the Doctors when required…Excellent
stuff.