For what is generally such a cheery and upbeat show, I think Cold Blood must have to rate as one of the most depressing episodes since Doctor Who returned. Not that it wasn't good in it's own way but I was rather glad to be watching the nonsense that is Eurovision straight afterwards. I also felt that the tone of the show was rather more adult orientated as well. The scenes with the vivisection on the humans were tamed down to family viewing levels but I did think it was scraping it as teatime entertainment.
I have noticed that this series of Doctor Who has been borrowing freely from other Science Fiction genres and Cold Blood had more than a little nod towards the whole Star Trek franchise. Even the remodelled Silurians were obviously humans in prosthetics a la Trek, although the make-up itself was spot on and not merely the "forehead of the week" that Trek gets away with. I also thought that the episode was quite independently framed and didn't really require one to have seen the first part - which is nice for the casual viewer.
I suppose the main feature of the show was the last 10 minutes in which we discover that the human species are really as bad as we suspected we can be and the shock of a lead character dying. I tend to keep away from the spoiler threads of Sci Fi forums so I had no idea that this was going to happen and it had much of the same shock value as when the character of Adric was killed off in the early 1980's (although, in fairness, Adric was a pain in the neck so I was quite glad to see the back of him). It's interesting as I thought that Matt Smith was behaving very Peter Davidson throughout the episode. However, the fact that they then erased Rory from existence really sealed it for me. Death with a vengeance. The only thing I did notice is that after he was wiped from history, the engagement ring he had bought was still there. I can't think that this was an oversight so I can only imagine that we may not have seen and heard the last of Rory yet.
Anyway, it was a rather aptly titled episode - I just hope there is a bit more fun and frolics next week.
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This was indeed a very dark episode. I don't believe we've seen the last of Rory - the dodgy badge in episode 1 and the engagement ring (which I managed to miss) are clues there. Interesting thing about this episode was that the warmongering-killingy people were women and the peaceful talky people were blokes. Nice to see Stephen Moore in sci-fi again - I recognised his voice straight off at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI completely missed Stephen Moore - that make up was better than I thought.
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