On TV: Saturday 10th September 2011
Channel: BBC One 7.15pm
Episode Type: 10/13
In 1 Sentence: Visually stunning, timey-wimey, and heartbreakingly emotional: Doctor Who at its very best.
BBC/My Summary: The Girl Who Waited: a breathless mixture of action and heart-break. The TARDIS brings its crew to a quarantine facility for victims of an alien plague. When Amy is trapped, Rory must rescue her from the facility's doctors but things go wrong when the Doctor and Rory end up in different time streams and meet a version of Amy who had grown old alone... All that plus a deadly plague, the horrifying Handbots and a pair of rather fetching spectacles!
SPOILERS
My Review: This is going to be a hard one to review. The Girl Who Waited was absolutely marvelous, coming closer to perfection than any recent Doctor Who episode has in a long time.
Focused entirely on the companions and the Doctor, this added to the tension, claustrophobia and helplessness of the episode, which meant there was a far stronger emotional tug to the plot. I adored the bright whiteness of the sets, making it look brilliantly crisp and, wow!, the fantastic slow-motion action sequences near the end - they looked even more amazing than many a film I’ve seen.
The timey-wimey, paradox, time streams element to the spot was perfect, and kept me right on the edge of my seat throughout (- hands as eyes... creepy as hell!). I love it when Who does sci-fi like that, because it does it so, so well... Blink anyone? But the reason they do it so perfectly is not just the rawness and Britishness of it but the emotional core that runs throughout. And that is were the star of this episode comes in: Karen Gillan. Her subtle differences between Current Amy and Old Amy meant the performance went far beyond prosthetics. It was just superb: worthy of many a Best Actress nominations, I’m sure. It was definitely her best performance on Doctor Who so far. It was incredibly emotional and the ending with Old Amy and Rory on either sides of the TARDIS door was reminiscent of Doomsday, with the Doctor and Rose either side of the Void. Which is my favourite episode of Doctor Who ever made... in fact, in my opinion it is one of the best pieces of television ever made. But The Girl Who Waited is now rivaling for a spot in my top 10, and has already found a spot in my top 10 of the year.
“The most beautiful man I’ve ever met”, and so the spotlight also turns to Arthur Darvil. Rory is fast becoming one of my favourite companions, and this week he proved to the world how fantastic he really is. “You’re turning me into you.” What a magnificent line that completely changes his relationship with not only the Doctor, but Amy. Having to choose between two, very real, versions of Amy must have been heart-breaking, and will now probably define their relationship. Even more so than having River Song as your daughter. When Rory said that he didn’t want to travel with the Doctor anymore there was a very audible in-take of breath in our household. How is Amy going to choose between Rory and the Doctor? And this the catalyst that will end the Pond-Williams’ time in the TARDIS? Because after this episode I will be sad to see them go...
Score: 9.5/10
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