Episode #228 : Night Terrors

"Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire, through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes... and one thing I can tell you, Alex: monsters are real."

Episode #228:      Night Terrors.
Companions:        The 11th Doctor, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams.
Air Date:              3rd September 2011.

The Eleventh Doctor receives a distress call, bringing him, Amy Pond and Rory Williams to Earth. George is a young boy terrorised by the monsters in his cupboard. Are they imaginary, or are they real?

With Night Terrors the show goes back to the good old horror stories. This one is good but doesn't quite go creepy enough for me. The time travellers get drawn to Earth due by the psychic fears of a little boy to find that all his fears are now "alive" and  hidden in the bedroom cupboard. Most of the story is the set up and it takes too long to get to the scary bits but when it does it's not too bad.

The resolution of the story is a little too much like the Isolus from the episode Fear Her. In fact is almost like the writers couldn't come up with something different. The story worked well enough without needing an alien explanation for the little boy and his fears. The fears themselves would have worked just as well.

It is also another story which just ends. While the story has a resolution it isn't a very satisfying one. Had the set up been swifter and the story given a better ending rather than one which feels rushed I would probably have given it a 4 star rating but as it stands Night Terrors is fairly average.

Episode #227 : Let's Kill Hitler

"Well, I was on my way to this gay gypsy Bar Mitzvah for the disabled when I suddenly thought, "Gosh, the Third Reich's a bit rubbish. I think I'll kill the Führer." Who's with me?"

Episode #227:      Let's Kill Hitler.
Companions:        The 11th Doctor, River Song, Amy Pond, and Rory Williams.
Air Date:              27th August 2011.

In the desperate search for Melody Pond, the TARDIS crash lands in Thirties Berlin. The Doctor comes face to face with the greatest war criminal in the Universe. And Hitler. Old friendships are tested to their limits as the Doctor suffers the ultimate betrayal and learns a harsh lesson in the cruelest warfare of all. As precious time ebbs away, the Doctor must teach his adversaries that time travel has responsibilities. And he must succeed before an almighty price is paid.

After a short hiatus the show comes back with a bit of a corker. In this story the Doctor meets Amy's childhood friend Melody who turns out to be a bit of a bad egg. She hijacks the TARDIS and takes them back to kill Hitler. Melody turns out to be a previous incarnation of River Song, one brainwashed to assassinate the Doctor by the Silence. It isn't a particularly serious episode being very much comedic although it does explain a lot of what happened in the previous half of the season.

Outside of the comedy elements, the point of this story really is to explain the back story to the current series from who River Song is and why she is prison, who are the Silence, to the death of the Doctor in the first episode of the season. It's a clever twist and not one that I would have thought of previously. I really enjoy the back story to River Song in this episode. From killer to the Doctor's future lover in one short story.

The episode title is a bit of a ruse really. Hitler only features in about five minutes and spends the rest of it locked in a cupboard.

I won't spoil anything, so it's going to be a short review really, but this story is well worth watching although it probably won't make much sense if you haven't seen the previous episodes/