Via SpinOff:
BBC and BBC America have debuted the first two installments of “Pond Life,” a serialized prequel that leads into Saturday’s Season 7 premiere of Doctor Who. You can watch them below.Written by Chris Chibnall (“42,” “The Hungry Earth”/”Cold Blood”) and directed by Saul Metzstein (“Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”/”A Town Called Mercy”), the mini-adventure picks up the lives of the Ponds (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill) at home, where their routine is regularly interrupted by the comings and goings of the Doctor (Matt Smith).
‘It opens with the Ponds at home and gives us an insight in to just what happens when the Doctor drops in and out of their lives,” Chibnall said.
A new mini-episode arrives each day through Friday, ending in a cliffhanger that leads right into the season premiere “Asylum of the Daleks.” The new season of Doctor Who debuts Saturday, Sept. 1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC America.
Part 1
Part 2
Been watching the surprisingly entertaining Planet of Giants DVD (with reconstructed episodes 3 and 4) and… I have nothing new to say about the BBC Wales Doctor Who program. Whimsical one-note wacky humor with stock aliens and random moments, silly time travel and all encompassing doom for the married couple who seem to do nothing but drink wine.
Series 7 opens this Saturday with a story chock full of more Daleks than ever before yet I wager it is really about Amy Pond or some convoluted hyper-time story that only pans out in the 13th episode in which the Doctor is Father Christmas and he dates Lady Gaga… man, I am getting grouchy.
Even the special edition Vengeance on Varos DVD trailer looks more interesting (and the picture is so damned clear!!).
The Daily P.O.P. 
I have figured out the master plan…
Amy Pond = Mad Pony
Rory Williams = I Silly Or Warm
Think about it… and if you can’t understand it, then Moffat and I think that is your problem 🙂
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It’s amazing! Brilliant! Oh you beautiful thing! I like you and think good things about you! How random and strange am I?
Don’t worry, I’ll just tell you.
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Jameson, that read like Moffat’s *actual* dialogue for the Doctor (y’know – gibberish)! Well done, sir. Over here the New Doctor Who is plastered all over the premier listings magazine. Ack. Inside Unca Stevie gives a rundown of the upcoming episodes (including the return of River Song in Episode Five – quelle frickin’ surprise!), they uhrm don’t sound so good, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (Worst.Title. Ever.) in particular sounds *appalling*!
Let your bile concerning Modern Doctor Who out Young Jedi :). Hey, we could be mistaken. Incidentally, have you noticed that the shot of a Dalek’s eyestalk protruding from snow looks “suspiciously similar” to the Imperial Probe emerging early in The Empire Strikes Back? Maybe Davros will prove to be the Doctor’s father, and Amy his sister?!
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Just think… a little over 24 hours from now and we all will be able to heap high praise and make sacrifices at the altar of the Moffat again!
Or maybe it will actually be good?
🙂
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No man can say, SJV No man can say! *I* will say it’s pretty unlikely though… 😉
If Jameson likes it then we’ll know he’s been taken over – ah no that’s really me I’m talking about! Jameson’s much more lenient than I am but Welsh Who’s even getting to our good-natured friend. Poor Guy.
Jameson, if you really don’t like the it, I look forward to you going into Meltdown mode on Dailypop and eviscerating the episode! Seriously, Asylum looks to be only semi-bad; we may yet be surprised (or, as SJV says, maybe not). Not long to go now. Da-da-daaah!
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Under an hour and ten minutes to go…
I wonder if the episode entitled the Power of Three will feature the Halliwell (sp.?) sisters from Charmed?!
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Oh. Dear. Not good. Not good.
SPOILER
An episode that wastes some pretty nice ideas and functions as a lead-up to a predictable twist and a *terrible* ending featuring certain creatures chanting “Doctor? WHO?!”, smug, unfunny, and illogical (the Moffat trifecta!). However, at least a certain cute surprise guest puts in a good show although the treatment of Amy and Rory leaves something to be desired.
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
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Haven’t seen it yet, will post when I have, but feel free to talk among yourselves…
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Haven’t seen it yet… A little over an hour before BBC America airs here in the US… and I’ll be recording it to watch later while I instead watch football live. The football *might* not be as good, but so far Moffat has nothing to do with the plots of American football so there is a chance 🙂
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I’ll be interested to see if you enjoy it, from what I’ve seen there are plenty of people who thought it excellent (stay away from anyone handing out Kool Aid, kids!). There’s an amusing scene of the Doctor prancing around which I liked (much of the dialogue sucked mightily though, the Doctor should *not* say “You beauty!”. Ugh. :)) but for all the “blockbuster” rhetoric this was really dull in places while unfortunately, a few sequences apart, the Daleks were surprisingly poorly used. As for the ending, in which *something* happens to the Daleks, the rationale behind it was peculiar and didn’t really make sense as the Daleks aren’t robots (Destiny of the Daleks made the same mistake, tho’ one could argue that Nation had decided they’d become so by that point, even if later writers decided that was a bad idea) although Moffat tries to set this up. That particular twist leads to a new (inept) status quo really similar to the end of Wedding of River Song, so isn’t exactly stunning. The earlier twists aren’t unguessable (with Moffat using the nanogenes from The Doctor Dances in a new way that does lead to actors looking silly with “things” protruding from their skulls) though the most prominent twist does present us with a compelling new character. I *hate* what they’ve done with Amy and Rory – and I don’t even really *like* them! – and question having them return, as for the way they are brought into this story: Huh? Are the Daleks aware that Amy and Rory have to be in the story because they read articles on Doctor Who?!
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Don’t you know?
DALEKS = Demonstrate Allegiance and Loyalty to Emperor King Steven
🙂
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Ah, that was my mistake! Actually when you watch it you’ll see how Daleky People could be among we humans without us knowing so that explains it then, Moffat’s Dalek Puppets have entered our “reality”. You have solved the conundrum, SJV but watch out… They’ll be after you now ;).
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Without being spoilery…
As usual, I am left not knowing what to think. I’ve said before that Moffat is good at the setup, but equally bad at the payoff… Both series 5 and series 6 started well, in my opinion, but were big letdowns by the time you finish. He probably likes Stephen King stories… I do, but lots of King stories start well, ask good questions, but have an ending that leaves you thinking “what?!” and “I read 1000 pages to get to that?!”
So… taking this new episode as a standalone… I only have one gripe about it that I can’t mention without spoilering… so I’ll save that for a thread where Jameson reviews the episode. Maybe my low expectations made this seem better? Hard to say… but aside from the for-the-moment-unmentionable gripe… this episode was fine to me… always little nits, but those don’t ruin the whole thing… HOWEVER… the nudge in the back of my brain says, yeah this sets up things to come… but those things will ultimately disappoint… so I reserve the right to go back and critique more IF we find the usual non-payoff later in the series.
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You are *dead* to me now! 😉
Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that if one takes away the major surprise and looks at the *story*, there is not much there, in fact the surprise *is* the story and therefore as you imply it’s all set-up but I, unlike you, didn’t think much of it. There *were* bits I liked but they were just that *bits*…oh, and the Daleks weren’t used well which defeated the point of all that hype. And… “Eggs”, ack, *choking*, must drink water. Can’t wait for Jameson’s review so I can comment more fully.
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go for it, lads.
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Hal, I hope that my review had the appropriate amount of venom in it. It’s also the first review of the new series where I took screengrabs as I was watching it.
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It was magnificently and rightly venomous! One of your best reviews too, and nice job with the screengrabs. I’ve seen at least one prominent magazine’s website give Asylum five out of five, which is, I think, pathetic. Twist or no twist. I *did* want to like it. At least Skaro looked impressive…
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