*****Doctor Who Season Five

This is another wild ride, and the shows seem to keep getting better. This season introduces Matt Smith as the Doctor who loves his bow tie, and Karen Gillam as Amy Pond.  It starts with the Doctor, newly incarnated, coming to help a girl with a crack in her wall.  The crack follows just about every episode this season.  The Doctor says he will be right back, but actually comes back a dozen years later and Amy is now a woman.
My favorite episode included Vincent van Gogh.  I admire his work, and we get to see smatterings of it in the museum, and in Vincent's flat.  Vincent can see a monster others, including the Doctor, cannot see.  The monster has been killing innocents.  In looks like a big chicken.  In the end it is defeated, and they show Vincent his legacy.  However it does not prevent his suicide. 
The weeping angels are back in a two part episode.  Only this time there are hundreds of them, and they are out to get them.  However they are scared of the crack through which if anything passes they are forgotten and never existed.
Rory, played by Arthur Darvill, Amy's fiance, joins her on the Tardis.  They face off against vampires, an evil dream keeper and they have to choose between two dream sets and pick the real one so as to not die. There is a less serious one where The Doctor takes on as a human and rents a room.  He plays soccer and eats biscuits and tries to be human to fool the entity upstairs, where there really is not an upstairs, but through the powers of a space vehicle one was been created in everyone's mind. 
The show then turns serious as the Tardis blows up, and it is actually this event seeping through time and universes, which has caused the crack. The Doctor has to close the crack, leaving himself on the other side, and can only be brought back if someone remembers him.  This happens at Rory's and Amy's wedding when remembers something blue.

Doctor Who: ****season Three

The first episode has the Doctor (David Tennant) kidnapping, by accident, a bride, Donna Noble portrayed by Catherine Tate.  She ends up on an adventure with The Doctor, as her fiance turns out to be a heal and just using her.  However she does not stay with The Doctor, and the next episode we are introduced to Martha Jones, a medical intern.  Her hospital is taken to the moon, as the intergalactic police are looking for an alien.  Just as everyone is running out of air, they are returned.  However there has been an adventure in the mean time.  There is an episode about Shakespeare, which is fun, but I didn't care for the witches.  William is great however.

There are a couple of great two-part episodes.  The first presents the Daleks in New York.  There is a cute bit of a relationship between a dancer and her boyfriend who is turned into a pig-man.  They genetically engineer Dalek and human combinations.  However this  doesn't work for the Daleks. 

Another is about the Doctor turning himself human in pre WWI England.  He is hiding from a family who want to use he and the Tardis to rule the universe.  This is very similar to "Goodbye Mr Chips" as The Doctor is a school teacher at a boarding school.  The Doctor falls in love in his alternate life, and has to decide if he wants to give up this life to be The Doctor.  He becomes The Doctor and is able to defeat his pursuers.

The season ends with a reintroduction of The Master, who also had hidden himself away, taking human form.  With the arrival of The Doctor, he remembers who he is, and steals The Tardis.  The Doctor pusues him, but not before he has become prime minister, and opens the way for an alien species to help him take over the world.  In this one Martha Jones saves the day.

Doctor Who ****^Season Two

Doctor Who Season Two:

I am still going through the Doctor Who Series on Netflix. David Tennant stars as The Doctor and Billie Pyper as Rose Tyler.  I have recently finished season Two.  The episodes are varied, but I think the “Girl in the fireplace” is classic.  This presents The Doctor forming a relationship with Madame Pompadour from France.  She was a real life character who was actually mistress to the King of France.   The Doctor, however, only sees her sporadically in her life, as they are on different time lines.  It is sad, but the Doctor will say, “I’ll be right back,” and it turns to be years in her time line.  However the Doctor is willing to sacrifice all to save her, but it turns out well, relatively so, in the end.  In one of those I’ll be right back, she passes away, and the Doctor arrives to see her driven away in the funeral carriage.  The king presents him a letter, and uses this remark he is said to have said in real life. “The marquise won't have good weather for her journey.”  It was a stormy day, and the roads were mud.  They carriage was taking her to her traditional home for burial.

Another interesting item in this season is the parallel universe, in which Rose’s father is alive.  However, in that world, her mother (the parallel mother not her real mother) is turned into a Cyberman.  In another story the Cybermen gain entrance into our world, and begin to raise havoc, taking over the world.  The Daleks (the four remaining) also show up and are fighting the Cybermen.  However the Doctor sends them all back into “the void.”   However in doing so, Rose and her family end up in the parallel world with no way back.

There are fourteen episodes in all.  This was a very fun ride.  My least favorite were “The Idiot’s Lantern” and the two-part about a Satanic being being freed.  They wove several events into the show including the 2012 Olympics and the coronation of the queen.

Doctor Who: ****^Season One

Doctor Who: ****^Season One

About every year or so I go thought the Doctor Who series on Netflix.  I have started with season one this week.  There are six seasons available on Netflix; however they lack some of the Christmas specials and episodes outside of the regular season.

Season One introduces us first to Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and then to Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston.)  In the first episode they take on a plastic monster, determined to make plastic come alive and take over the world.  After giving the monster a chance to leave people alone and the monster goes ahead with his plans and activates plastic monsters everywhere, the anti plastic is delivered and the monster destroyed.  Rose’s boyfriend is drawn into the plat, and her mother is a victim of the plastic men.

The Season continues through several other romps:  We see the explosion of our sun and the end of Earth.  The family who takes over British government determined to create nuclear holocaust so they can sale the remaining slag heap that was Earth.  We meet Charles Dickens, as he gets inspiration for his ghost stories. 

My favorite is a two part episode on the bombing of London during WWII.  A rocket has landed on earth, with medical nanobots escaping.  They do not know of human DNA and repair a child incorrectly, which causes a disease of their making others in the image of the repaired child, with a gas mask as part of his anatomy.  The child, as well as the other people infected, if they touch you will give you the same result.  They go around looking for “my mummy.”  It isn’t until he finds his mummy that the nanobots realize their mistake, and are able to correct it. 

This run goes through two future Earth worlds, where things have gotten out of where they actually should have been, because of third-party manipulation.  We are introduced to “Bad Wolf” and the evil the Doctor must confront.

I enjoyed this romp, and come back to it on a somewhat regular basis.