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So it was then time to embark on Series Five, which was first broadcast in 2010. We watched the series (on DVD) in 2013. The only thing I could remember from the first episode, ‘The eleventh hour’, was that the newly regenerated 11th Doctor had some strange food requirements.
I had quite forgotten that the episode begins with a crashed tardis, on fire, followed by the Doctor climbing out looking dirty and tattered, and meeting the young Amelia Pond. Caitlin Blackwood is excellent in this part, though Amelia is evidently not au fait with ‘stranger danger’. She invites the Doctor in to investigate a crack in her wall, from which she has been hearing some strange voices…
It’s an exciting episode, cleverly done, and shows that Matt Smith is well suited to the role of Doctor. Amy Pond (Karen Gillen) is somehow persuaded to travel with him at the end.
Episode two sees the Doctor and Amy travelling to the distant future, to a starship where the whole of the UK was evacuated after the earth became too hot for safe habitation. It’s clear that some suspicious things are happening, as people disappear… and there are some rather creepy guards known as ‘smilers’. It’s a clever story, ending with Amy pointing something out and solving a huge ethical problem.
There’s one ‘extra’ on the first DVD with these two episodes, a ‘Doctor Who confidential’, but we didn’t think it nearly as well done as those with David Tennant. There’s a huge amount of camera shake, and no real structure or purpose to it - we weren’t very impressed, although it wasn’t all that long.
Episode three involves the daleks - or a new era of daleks - although it’s set in the 1940s in London. There’s an excellent Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) who insists that his excellent scientist/engineer has invented what they call ‘ironsides’. The Doctor forces them to acknowledge that they are in fact daleks with a much bigger agenda than just to help defeat the nazis.
One of the extras on the second DVD is about the daleks, giving some history, and how important it was to keep including them - albeit changing and adapting over the years - for each incarnation of the Doctor.
Episode four, ‘The time of the angels’, is one we almost skipped. We’re really not fans of the weeping angels. But it’s a good thing we did decide to watch it, as it seems to be an important part of the ongoing ‘story arc’ that encompasses this whole series. The Doctor and Amy keep noticing a huge ‘arc’ that represents a rift in time and space.
This episode is set long in the future, and involves River Song, who first appeared in the previous series. Since we’re watching for the second time, we know who she is, and something about her time-line (although it’s still very confusing). Alex Kingston is excellent in this role as a feisty, intelligent woman who’s evidently very close to the Doctor. Or will be, in the future of his time-line. It’s an exciting episode, and it’s a good thing we had plenty of time when we watched it, since it turns out to be a two-parter. That surprised us, since it was the second episode on the second DVD. So we watched the fifth episode immediately afterwards, the first one on the third DVD.
The second episode on the third DVD is ‘The vampires of Venice’. The Doctor decides that Rory needs to do some travelling with Amy before they get married, so he takes them for a ‘date’ in 15th century Venice. They discover something rather scary going on… but is it really vampires…? I thought it a very well-done episode, and particularly appreciated the occasional humorous asides or comments involving Rory.
The next episode, ‘Amy’s choice’ is even more confusing than usual for Doctor Who. The Doctor, Rory and Amy find themselves caught between two ‘realities’. One is on the tardis, which has lost power and is moving towards a ‘cold star’. The other is in a small country village, a couple of years in the future, when Amy and Rory are married and she is heavily pregnant. But the residents of the village, mostly very elderly, are aliens…
Whichever reality they find themselves in seems real, and Amy has to make some difficult decisions.
The next episode is another two-parter: ‘The hungry earth’ and ‘Cold blood’. This is quite a tense story, and very well done. There’s an organisation drilling deep into the earth, only to discover that they are apparently attacking the underground Silurians, supposedly reptilian ancestors of humans, who used to live on the surface.
Apparently the Silurians had been introduced in one of the much earlier Doctor Who series, back in the 1960s, and there’s an interesting ‘extra’ about them. The current production team wanted Silurians with personalities and emotions, who could interact with humans as equals. These two episodes raise some thought-provoking questions about the nature of humanity, and whether an alien race can be basically the same, with potential for both good and evil.
For some reason both of us remembered quite a bit of the next episode, which involved the Doctor and Amy travelling back in time to meet Vincent van Gogh. The actor who played him was excellent. We had forgotten why they met him: the Doctor saw something evil in one of his paintings in a gallery, where we were surprised to recognise Bill Nighy, perfect in his role as an expert art critic. It was quite an emotive episode for several reasons. I tend to like the historical stories better than the futuristic ones.
The eleventh episode, ‘The Lodger’ is mostly quite light-hearted, featuring the Doctor as a lodger with a man called Craig (James Corden). The Doctor is trying very hard to appear as if he’s a normal human, but isn’t very good at it, and there’s quite a bit of humour in this. There are also some quite disturbing scenes, as people go upstairs and never come down again.
I was pretty sure that the last two episodes, ‘The pandorica opens’ and ‘The big bang’ were going to be a two-part story. So we allowed plenty of time to see them, and I’m glad we did. River Song manages to call the Doctor and Amy to Stonehenge during the Roman occupation of the UK. Underneath is a large box known as the Pandorica, which supposedly houses, very securely, the most terrifying thing in the universe…
There are a lot of complex time-related sequences in this, which is an epic finale to the fifth season. There are daleks, and cybermen, and sontarans and others, although none take a huge role. The Doctor leaps to and fro in time, and changes the past in order to affect the future. I think I followed most of the story as it was happening, with reality suspended even more than is normal for this series.
The second part of this story is a race against time - literally, as it appears that the whole universe is going to implode, ending everything. Amelia Pond, the young girl from the first episode, comes into this one too, as confident and intelligent as ever. I liked the way that this whole series has its story, with the final story referencing earlier episodes, and uncovering, at last, some of the mysteries that have puzzled the Doctor and Amy.
There’s a very enjoyable, light-hearted ending involving a wedding party - and it made a great end to this series.
After watching the final episode, we discovered another entire DVD of ‘extras’, one for each of the thirteen episodes in the series. We watched a couple of them, and found them very interesting. But it would have been better to see them, one at a time, after each individual episode.
I would definitely recommend this series. It’s rated PG, so suitable for anyone, although there’s a lot of fast action and dramatic tension that won’t appeal to everyone.
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