Losing it[1]

As Sam[1] wrote about this episode while I was in low-posting mode, I won’t go into the usual level of detail. Rather like last year’s Love and Monsters, this episode was notable for the distinct absence of the Doctor and Martha, and like that episode, it worked remarkably well. It was written by Steven Moffat, who also gave us such bloody scary stuff as The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and The Girl in the Fireplace, and featured some seriously scary statues, as Sam mentioned.

The story is quite unusual for Doctor Who in that it really depends a great deal on time, which the Doctor describes as being

wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff

The Doctor is trapped in 1969, and needs to find a way to get back to the present, where the Tardis is. Or is that when the Tardis is? Being the Doctor, he comes up with a Cunning Plan involving easter eggs on carefully selected DVDs. Or does he? The key to the whole thing is that the messages he records for Sally Sparrow[2] are one side of a conversation. And how does he know what to record? Because Sally gives him a folder containing a transcript of the conversation she has with the DVDs. Which is dangerously close to becoming your own grandmother, or something.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and genuinely scary. Watch out for that Moffat chap - he was responsible for the recent BBC series Jekyll, a singularly creepy modern take on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and he’s writing a two-part story for the 2008 Doctor Who series. He’s also rumoured to be the likely successor to Russell T Davies if and when he steps down from his showrunner position, though that is merely rumour at this stage.

[1] Waves at Sam
[2] See, I’m trying not to repeat what Sam wrote, so you’ll have to go and see Sam’s site