11.9: Cold Blood
In which Stephen Moore cannot save things, and – I don’t know how to tell you this, but – Rory dies.
Broadcast: May 2010
Watched: November 2021
Once again, no quotable lines. The Chibnall voice is strikingly harsher and flatter than the other showrunners, he just doesn’t instinctively bother with jokes or wacky bits. (I think this might be one reason I forgive Arachnids in the UK, actually: because he actually puts those in, and that’s the absence that bothers me?)
It’s definitely worse than part 1, but again, not as bad as I expected. As with Victory, its main crime is throwing away a brilliant idea – but at least this time we already had the good version. And even if there are almost no jokes in it and it’s kind of bleak, the idea of the two-way hostage situation spiralling out of control actually done quite well: I quite like that the Silurian literally goads Ambrose into killing her (not very subtly, but people like that aren’t subtle). Ditto the build up of tensions in the Silurian camp, leading to a coup.
This time we start with a voiceover, which is weird because a) the last episode didn’t have that and b) the character speaking hasn’t been introduced yet (also, what a waste of Stephen Moore, who plays a thankless part well and covered in latex). I assume it’s only there to cover for the fact it’s otherwise a fairly boring opening?
There are other problems. The Silurian city looks weirdly cheap now. The Doctor is an utter moron for telling the Silurians that humans already killed their cousins (nice way of retconning the changing appearance, though). Choosing two randoms, one from a different time, to negotiate on behalf of humanity, suggests that Chris Chibnall has an understanding of geopolitics roughly on a par with RTD’s. And it is *hilariously* Chibnall to give us twins and make them both the evil one.
The big problem, though, I think is an accidental fuck up. Because it’s Ambrose on one side, and the female Silurian warriors on the other, that blow up the chances of peaceful co-existence, this has a “Tch, women eh? So irrational” reading, which I’m assuming isn’t deliberate (even if it does fit with Ambrose being the embodiment of the FeMail). I suspect this is like RTD’s dead Asians policy – an accidental side effect of progressive casting – but who knows.
The other weird thing about this episode is the “Rory dies at the end without it in any way being a special episode” thing: bit TNG: Skin of Evil. He does get some stuff to do, at least – he’s sort of chosen as the “ape leader”, and he’s determined to hand the Silurian’s body back, which suggests a fundamental decency (although he makes poor dying Tony Mac carry the thing when he’s literally dying, the lazy shit). And he dies saving the Doctor.
But still, it’s a sort of anti-dramatic structure. Amy calls him an idiot 30 seconds before it happens, which sort of fits with the sudden shock death thing... but given she had a dream of him dying the previous episode, and this is literally a nightmare coming true, and no attention is drawn to this fact, it just feels inept. I’d say it was because we know it’s undone in three episodes time, but it felt inept at the time, too.
The thing that *is* unsettling is Amy forgetting him completely, and seeing herself alone on the hill. The very end, with the Doctor clearly mourning but unable to say anything, and also worrying about the TARDIS, works.
Near the bottom of the pile this season, but as with many bad episodes from the golden age, that says as much about how good the rest of it is as it does about how bad this one is.
Other observations:
During the “who will betray the humans sequences” Ambrose and her dad often look over exposed, bright white at times. I wondered if this was a clever directorial trick to comment on the story’s racial themes... but then I watched something else and it looked the same and I realised it’s just that the settings were wrong on the hotel TV I was watching on.
The “this is not a fixed point in time” speech is a bit weird. Presumably it’s there to up the stakes, or maybe to explain why Rory can die when we’d literally seen future Rory already... but it makes no actual sense, since surely an alien race on Earth in 2020 would screw up all the fixed points in the future? (Amy and Rory living on Earth in 2020 isn’t a problem, I’ve decided, because season 7 strongly implies they’re with the Doctor for years – Rory says he’s 31 in one story, they’re meant to be 21-2 in Eleventh Hour I think?)
The army of frozen Silurian warriors is an odd choice.
So is making Kermit Mengele a peace loving sort of sadist, who loves children but will happily dissect adults but also wakes the boss because he doesn’t want a war. (Moffat being soppy about kids again though; he does a lot of that this season.)
The guest stars vanishing into the TARDIS so that the Doctor and Amy can have their big “Rory’s dead” scene alone is also quite inept.
Oh look, it’s the Temple of Peace again – how often does this appear? Someone should do a box set.
Another thing about that voiceover: it means all that stuff about giving it another go in a thousand years works (and fits with NA continuity, weirdly). It’s basically the same trick as the historic records of Newspeak in 1984 or the academic lecture at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, highlighting that there will be a future beyond this. I bet that wasn’t deliberate though, because Chibnall.