Doctor Who - "Midnight"

WHOSCALE: 8 out of 10

Now that we were past Moffat's golden nuggets for this season, it was time to get back on board with Russell T Davies for the final four episodes of the season.

This episode was hands down, no bones about it, the creepiest Russell T Davies had contributed to the series - rivaled only perhaps by "The Waters Of Mars." Although he relied heavily on "cabin fever" to provide unease, panic and despair, "Midnight" truly showed the capabilities of Davies as a worthy writer for Doctor Who.

There were a few of his usual "dummy marks," such as the passengers' clothing being 21st century Earth in design, and modern-day EXIT signs placed aloft the bus. Jethro's family seemed to be too much like a 2010 family, rather than one of the distant future.

Nevertheless, this episode LITERALLY gave me chills on numerous occassions, particularly the look on possessed, wide-eyed Skye. Additionally, the use of pronounced shadows caused by torch light made it even creepier.

The story was very imaginative from the ground up, with an obvious nod to the Fourth Doctor story "The Leisure Hive." The diamond planet Midnight, bombarded by extonic light made it physically, logically and absolutely impossible for life to exist outside the protection of the dome and the bus. A well imagined concept, and the fact that we never actually see "it" certainly keeps audiences behind the sofa.

In addition to the concept of Midnight itself, Davies did a fantastic job of providing the entity with a subtle (if not creepy) method of taking over - by repeating every work spoken by everyone, then synchonizing with them, then moving to the final stage, which then reverses the roles of the Doctor and Skye.

Davies' era was soon coming to an end, so it was great that he was finally able to ignore the fan girls' expectations enough to chase the rest of us behind the sofa once before his departure.

A terrific episode, and I consider it part of the string of favorites I have for this season that started with "The Sontaran Stratagem." It was intended to be a companion-lite episode, which Davies reasonably works into the story by having Donna stay behind sun bathing. Certainly a 180 for Davies since his last attempt at a "lite" episode, "Love And Monsters."

Doctor Who - "Forest Of The Dead"

WHOSCALE: 8.5 out of 10

Keeping up with Doctor Who tradition, this episode picks up where we left off at the close of "Silence In The Library."

With The Doctor & Company now on the run from the Vashta Nerada, the pacing of this episode was stepped up a bit from the previous one, but not so much that anything felt rushed. The story continues to unfold at a steady rate, while the questions we were asking during the last episode w

ere are slowly answered. Well, with the exception of River Song.

As with most of the episodes penned by Steven Moffat, I could find very little I disliked about this one. Perhaps the one thing that troubled me was the emotional rollercoaster we were thrown on at the end. One moment were on the verge of tears because of Song's death and Donna narrowly missing Lee in the Library before he is teleported, and then the next we're overflowing with joy (again on the verge of tears) because The Doctor, due to his experience in The Library, is able to devise a method of saving Song by giving her his sonic screwdriver sometime in his future.

The cyberspace version of Miss Evangelista still chills me to the bone, in solid black dress and a twisted face.

Once the people of the Library were teleported back, I was relieved that they were all dressed in black, and didn't look like readers plucked out of a Books-A-Million store.

Despite the episode's emotional ending, it still proved to be as sweet a sight to Doctor Who fans as a full bag of Jelly Ba

bies.

We are left wondering who River Song could be, and since this episode there has been much speculation and debate among fans concerning her and who she is. Since at the time of writing this article Series 6 has already aired, it pointless to put any speculation here.

Hello, my name is Ethan. I am without a doubt one of the most diehard sci-fi fans you will meet. I have enjoyed anything that has been solid sci-fi, and didn't need a love story or gorgeous actors to prop up the plots.

My experience includes Blake's 7, Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Hidden Frontier, Odyssey, & Helena Chronicles/ all of the films with the exception of the 2009 film by Abrams.) Red Dwarf, StarGate (the film), Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (the original), Star Wars (both trilogies), Indiana Jones, Space: 1999, Buck Rodgers, and ofcourse, Doctor Who.

When I was the age of 7 (in 1989), I often heard my older brother and Dad talk about a show that wasn't on PBS anymore, called Doctor Who. All I knew was that it was science fiction, but I knew if my brother and Dad liked it, it must have been good.

In the early 90s, when satellite TV was becoming all the buzz, we got news of a new channel solely devoted to science fiction - the Sci-Fi Channel. That's not a mispelling by the way, I know its now referred to as SyFy, but in the old days it was OK and a normal part of society be uncool and geeky, and it was "science fiction," not "SyFy" to be cool. When Sci-fi came on the air, their programming was a gift from Heaven - the early morning hours were filled with Gerry Anderson's Stingray, and other sci-fi cartoons like Transformers. Mid day offered Space:1999, Lost In Space, Buck Rodgers, The Prisoner, Amazing Stories, Tales from the Darkside, and others. Commercial breaks were also a minimum. During the weekdays at 1 PM, the Sci-Fi channel hosted "The Doctor Who Hour." I finally got a taste of this priceless nugget of science fiction. At 1 - 1:30 was an episode of Doctor Who, and from 1:30 to 2 PM was a classic cliffhanger, such classics like "Zombies of the Stratosphere," "Flying Disc Man from Mars," and "The Purple Monster Strikes." The Sci-fi channel could only get their hands on a string of Tom Baker episodes, starting with "Robot," and ending with "The Androids of Tara." Nevertheless, it was more than enough for me to get addicted.
Ever since then, I have been following Doctor Who religiously - inspite of NuWho's many shortcomings brought on by Mr. Davies. I refer to them as "shortcomings" because from a pure bred sci-fi fan's perspective, thats what they were, but to the iGens, soccer moms, teenage girlies, Twilight fans, and channel surfers, they were blessings, because for them, DW without those shortcomings would otherwise be a "boring, geeky show only for nerds." Incidentally, that's more or less what the original series was. It's creator, Sidney Newman, even said, "it's a show for smart kids."
Now that you have my background on golden television, let me explain the purpose of this blog. I have loyally followed the new series of Doctor Who, even though there are many things I disliked about it (it was difficult to find dislikes in old Who). Nevertheless, I always try to view episodes from a classic Whovian's perspective, since that is the only way to tell how much an episode is staying true to what the show was intended to be. Mind you, intended by Newman, not Davies. In this blog, I will rank each episode's closeness to that of the original Who, on a scale of 1 - 10. 1 meaning that the episode was a horrible example of Doctor Who, and not in the least bit paralleled the original series. 10 meaning the episode was bloody brilliant, and that it often unfolded, sounded, and felt like something plucked out of the original series. In the event of a just utter dislike for an episode, "0" may be used, in which case, no review would be necessary - there was nothing appealing about that episode at all. That's unlikely, though. RTD has wrote some stinkers, but I don't think any of them were that bad. Just as I do on my YouTube channel, (sixstanger00) I welcome comments, discussions, and thoughts as long as they are contructive and civilized. So that means no ranting "You suck!!! David Tennant is hot!!! Rose was the best!!!" and ending all of your sentences with seven or eight exclamation marks or question marks.

One final thing, I pride myself on appeciating great television, sci-fi or not, so if you would like to know what some of my other favorites are besides sci-fi, just let me know.