Matt Smith as The Doctor in Order: S5 EP:1 The Eleventh Hour

With Matt Smith’s announce­ment that he will be leav­ing the role of the Doc­tor over the next sev­eral months as we wait for the new doctor.

I wrote some quick reviews of his first Sea­son a few years back and I don’t feel obliged to main­tain the same rank­ing of every episode.

All my rank­ings will be based on the full episodes, not the cut BBC Amer­ica reruns of par­tic­u­lar episodes. So lets start at the Beginning

The Eleventh Hour: (Ini­tial review here)

My ini­tial review of the 11^th Hour pretty much holds up You have an excel­lent story spun by Steven Mof­fett, a story that plays to all of Matt Smith many strengths

Sum­mary: The Newly regen­er­ated Doc­tor has 20 min­utes to save the earth from incin­er­a­tion, but is he up to it?

Plot: The basic plot of the story is strong, the doc­tor in the midst of a regen­er­a­tion cri­sis, Amy Pond the younger and older and an Alien on the run all hap­pen­ing in a small Eng­lish town.

Writ­ing: The story details work very well, the Doc­tor unable to get the right time in the TARDIS, Amy Pond deal­ing with a strange man in a blue box, it all flows effort­lessly to two dif­fer­ent cli­maxes both of them well done and the sec­ond a great homage to the time Lords Pre­vi­ous prob­lems. A per­fect mix of com­edy and drama and unlike many of the sto­ries that are to come, the end­ing isn’t a cop-​out

Act­ing: Of of the strengths of the series has been strong per­for­mances and they exist all around. Matt Smith and Karen Gilliam shine. Arthur Darvill. as Rory and Caitlin black­wood as young Amy more than pass muster in roles that we have no idea will be repeated.

Mem­o­rable moments: Lots of them as to be expected in the first full episode of a new Doc­tor. If at all pos­si­ble watch the full busi­ness with Young Amelia try­ing to feed the Doc­tor which is often cut on TV and the whole Backup/​No Backup busi­ness, The sequence with Jeff is great, as is the “believe me for 20 min­utes” sequence but the sin­gle biggest moment is the con­fronta­tion with the Atraxi, THE clas­sic moment of the episode

Odd­i­ties: When Mrs. Angelo says she’s seen the Doc­tor before that’s actu­ally plau­si­ble as she could have seen or noticed him any time in the pre­vi­ous 60 years. Given what was to come in the next four years it’s actu­ally rather amaz­ing noth­ing gets done with this.

Pet Peeves: The whole “Pray­ing to Santa” sequence not only makes no sense but is wildly offen­sive to any­one even remotely Chris­t­ian if you think about it. There is no rea­son why she couldn’t be just pray­ing as nor­mal or writ­ing a let­ter to Santa.

Great Quote: “Blimey! Get a Girl­friend Jeff.”

Five Stars

Rank­ing in Series 5 to date 1^st out of 1

1. The Eleventh Hour

Rank­ing in Matt Smith Era (out of 1)

1. The Eleventh Hour

Rank­ing in Regen­er­a­tion episodes (1^st appear­ances of a doctor)

1^st (out of 11 note I’ve only heard the audio of Power of the Daleks)
2^nd The Christ­mas Inva­sion (10^th)
3^rd Rose (9^th)
4^th Cas­trovalva (5^th)
5^th Doc­tor who (8^th)

Next Sat­ur­day (or before if I feel like it) The Beast Below