WARNING!
This season on "Doctor Who" has been a bit all over the place, in my opinion. It feels like we are lacking elements to tie all of the episodes together and Whovians, in a desperate need to understand The Doctor's storyline are doing their best to find the elements that tie everything up in a neat package. I think that the lack of cohesion is deliberate. This iteration of The Doctor is slowly becoming more and more unstable and it is beginning to show in both his actions and in the adventures himself.
One encouraging thing is that The Doctor appears to be getting a better hang of the TARDIS and when he says, "You'll be back before anyone has even noticed you've left," he actually can deliver on that promise instead of coming back to months old "Missing!" posters. (Writer's note: I should have put that GIF in after I finished writing. River is really distracting...)
In this episode, The Doctor comes to stay in the Williams-Pond household for an extended period of time to observe the "activity" of millions of little black cubes that appeared in plain sight overnight around the world. No one knows where they have come from, no one knows if they do anything, no one knows if they are harmful, they're just... there. So as with all things that are just there in the world of which humans cannot discern the use of, uses were created. The cubes become integrated into regular life and from there, eventually become so routine, they are invisible. Once the cubes are convinced that they fully integrated and considered normal, they all simultaneously activate. All of them, all over the world start doing different things all at the same time. Again, no one knows why or if they're dangerous. And then just as suddenly, they all stop and begin counting down from 6.
While The Doctor and Amy are working to figure out the cubes, Rory is called into work in anticipation for the influx in emergency hospital visits. Rory's dad comes along in hopes of assisting. Once in the hospital, there is a creepy little girl with glowing blue eyes who appears to be a transmitter of some sort. The hospital coincidentally, is also one of the gates between earth and the space ship that controls the cubes. Rory's father discovers this the hard way when he is abducted by a pair of matching dudes with vacuum cleaner-looking muzzles.
Usual plot of aliens wanting to exterminate humans through heart failure caused by proximity to boxes. The Doctor giving his "Humans are important!" and saves the day. Hooray!
What I enjoyed about this episode was that it really emulated the duality of Doctor Who showing the seriousness of keeping the universe safe and all the ridiculous fun that goes along with it. For me, this shows that even if you have a super serious job, you don't have to be super serious about it. I mean, the cube that played "The Chicken Dance," on a loop? That was hilarious! I loved that! Another great thing was watching The Doctor try to survive on "slow time." Watching him try not to go absolutely bonkers while sitting in Amy and Rory's lounge waiting for something he wasn't entirely sure would ever happen. All of his companions always have to drop whatever it is they're doing to run away with him when they are summoned. It was somewhat refreshing to have a companion say, "No, I have something to do here that is important to me. You need to wait. I can't be rushing off all the time." And didn't The Doctor say he's something like 1200 now? He can't keep running forever.
I am very much looking forward to the next episode but at the same time, it makes me very sad. I'm not ready to lose Amy, Rory and now Bryan. they burrowed into my heart I feel like I have some sort of relationship with them. For goodness sake, we have Amy Pond art in our living room! Also, only one episode left of the fall season...
