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| "Pond flirting with herself - True love at last!" |
2 episodes. Approx. 7 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by: Richard Senior. Produced by: Annabella Hurst-Brown.
THE PLOT
The Doctor and Rory are working on the TARDIS when there is a small accident. Rory, distracted by Amy's short skirt, drops a thermo coupling. No big deal, the Doctor tells them. "The TARDIS will lock onto the safest space available." But the safest space available is... inside the TARDIS!
The ship has materialized inside itself. Going out the external door causes the person to emerge from the TARDIS... into the TARDIS. Going through the TARDIS inside causes you to come through the external doors - back into the TARDIS. Unless the Doctor can unravel this spatial paradox, the three of them will be trapped for all eternity!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Matt Smith gives a typically energetic performance. This is a Comic Relief special, and as such is all in fun. Even so, Smith brings a hint of gravity to the Part One cliffhanger. To the Doctor, at least, this is a serious situation, which has the effect of making the entire situation much funnier.
Amy/Rory: Amy passed her driving test the first time - by cheating, according to Rory. "She wore a skirt," he observes. "Have you ever seen Amy drive? Neither did her examiner." When a second Amy appears, from slightly in the future, Amy finds herself rather fetching - something Rory doesn't object to at all. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are in good, spirited form, and their chemistry is if anything even more natural than it was in Series Five.
THOUGHTS
One can only do so much to review a 7 minute Comic Relief sketch, but I have to applaud the slickness of this little production. This is every bit as polished as a proper episode. No one is winking at the camera, and tech credits are on par with the regular series.
As was the case in Time Crash, Steven Moffat shows that he can craft a clever and engaging script that actually works within a tiny running time. The situation is a simple one, almost certainly cribbed from the TARDIS-within-a-TARDIS sequence in Logopolis, only given a comedic spin. As such, the plot fits just fine into the brief running time. It's fast paced, but it isn't rushed.
As expected from Moffat, the two episodes feature a flood of clever lines and a fair amount of sexual innuendo. There's also the expected playing with time, with the characters interacting with, then becoming, their future selves. There's no real meat to it, just the writer having fun playing with his toys. But Moffat and his actors clearly are having fun, which makes the whole thing quite a lot of fun to watch.
And really, given the brevity of the whole thing, what more could you ask than that?
Rating: 8/10.
Previous Story: A Christmas Carol
Next Story: The Impossible Astronaut
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Matt Smith gives a typically energetic performance. This is a Comic Relief special, and as such is all in fun. Even so, Smith brings a hint of gravity to the Part One cliffhanger. To the Doctor, at least, this is a serious situation, which has the effect of making the entire situation much funnier.
Amy/Rory: Amy passed her driving test the first time - by cheating, according to Rory. "She wore a skirt," he observes. "Have you ever seen Amy drive? Neither did her examiner." When a second Amy appears, from slightly in the future, Amy finds herself rather fetching - something Rory doesn't object to at all. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are in good, spirited form, and their chemistry is if anything even more natural than it was in Series Five.
THOUGHTS
One can only do so much to review a 7 minute Comic Relief sketch, but I have to applaud the slickness of this little production. This is every bit as polished as a proper episode. No one is winking at the camera, and tech credits are on par with the regular series.
As was the case in Time Crash, Steven Moffat shows that he can craft a clever and engaging script that actually works within a tiny running time. The situation is a simple one, almost certainly cribbed from the TARDIS-within-a-TARDIS sequence in Logopolis, only given a comedic spin. As such, the plot fits just fine into the brief running time. It's fast paced, but it isn't rushed.
As expected from Moffat, the two episodes feature a flood of clever lines and a fair amount of sexual innuendo. There's also the expected playing with time, with the characters interacting with, then becoming, their future selves. There's no real meat to it, just the writer having fun playing with his toys. But Moffat and his actors clearly are having fun, which makes the whole thing quite a lot of fun to watch.
And really, given the brevity of the whole thing, what more could you ask than that?
Rating: 8/10.
Previous Story: A Christmas Carol
Next Story: The Impossible Astronaut
11th Doctor Review Index
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