Tom Salinsky

Doctor Who - Series 5 - Episode 9 - Cold Blood

Spoilers below, read on with care.

Last week, I said I was going to withhold judgement on this two-parter until I’d seen how (and if) all the set-ups were paid off. I’m pleased to say, in general they paid off handsomely. But this was also an episode of two halves. We’ll get to the last ten minutes in a second, but let’s take the Silurian story first.

It’s Stephen Moore doing a portentous voice over! Fantastic way to get me in a good mood, straight away. Totally unexpectedly, one of my favourite actors – one of those wonderful British character actors who’s been in just about everything but never, until now, Doctor Who – starts intoning gibberish over a picture of planet Earth, and even though the voice over telling us the end of the story at the start of part two is a complete steal from Doomsday, I just loved it.

And, as I predicted, the episode kicks off with all the characters who had been held in stasis, suddenly springing into life. Amy finally escapes from her shackles, Ambrose goes mental with a taser and the Doctor rings the front door bell. From here on, it’s pedal-to-the-metal, will-they-won’t-they stuff all the way to the finish, with some lovely good-news-bad-news sequences and masses and masses of Silurians, swelling further the ranks of twenty-first century Doctor Who monsters represented by two-or-three fully characterised individuals with impressive make-ups and any number of interchangeable troops, their faces covered by helmets, masks or cowls (see also the Sontarans, the Judoon, the Sycorax etc).

Is it perfect? Of course not. The Silurian/Human peace conference is unbelievably shallow and glib, as is the absurd division of Silurians into completely compassionate, open, sensitive and friendly on the one hand (Eldane, Malohkeh), and war-hungry psychopathic ape-haters on the other (Alaya, Restac). But this is Doctor Who – bold, colourful, exciting, fast-moving. Not some turgid political play at the Royal Court. Sure, they are broad brush strokes, but with performers as strong as Stephen Moore and Neve McIntosh, the script can trust them to find the shades of grey. Particularly fine was McIntosh’s little gasp of regret and grief at the sight of her sister’s corpse.

And while I’m griping, the Doctor and Eldane’s solution is also both patronising and a cheat. Patronising because the solution to the problem of sharing the planet with homo reptilia is unlikely to be as simple as pressing the pause button and getting three people to start up a new religion. A cheat because the magic decontamination thing was in no way set-up. But amid the whirl and dash and energy, I still found it hugely enjoyable, even on a second viewing. Mo never grows a character, and Eliot seems to lose his – even his dyslexia’s not mentioned again, but Tony, Nasreen and Ambrose are all vividly written and strongly played. There are also hints that we haven’t seen the last of Tony and Nasreen either.

Then there’s the last ten or so minutes. First of all, after three crackless episodes, the crack is back. Then just as I was wondering how long he’d be around for – boom! – Rory dies. Two death scenes in three episodes is quite a lot, and it’s a pity that as far as we’re concerned, Amy’s already lost him once. But to lose the memory of him too is ghastly and the Doctor’s guilt will be unbearable. One assumes that The Pandorica, when it Opens will have Rory-Restoring powers but, in the third of this episode’s triple whammies, it certainly seems to have TARDIS-fragmenting powers.

Wonderful stuff, and as we race towards the end of Series Five I can’t believe so much has gone so quickly. Cold Blood on its own is easily worth four-and-a-half stars, but I can’t completely forgive the padded-yet-garbled The Hungry Earth, so four stars for the story as a whole.

Next week – Vincent van Gogh as written by Richard Curtis.