PART 2 of 2
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Adam Smith
In honour of this episode’s score AND a certain key countdown in the opening minutes, here are ten random reactions to Flesh and Stone, easily the best episode in at least two years…and the first bona fide classic of the 11th Doctor era:
(10) COUNTDOWN TO TV ACTION
“Yes, you’re dying. Shut up!”
Amy’s angel-influenced countdown could well be the best ever combination of something creepy AND clever.
It’s done with such subtlety that, at first, I thought it was some sort of Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke, and I had simply missed the punch line (I am, after all, easily fooled). As its importance became obvious — and ominous — I couldn’t decide what impressed me most: the acting/directing combo that makes the audience clue in with the Doctor and River simultaneously, or the astonishing writing behind it all.
(9) ANGELS ON THE MOVE
“We have no need of comfy chairs.”
In the words of Joss Whedon: “Grrr. Argh!”
It’s bad enough that Angel Bob is the most unearthly voice of a dead man ever conceived. But Angels that move…?
Yes…that’s correct. We SEE the Angels MOVE! But…BUT…we NEVER see the Angels MOVE! NEVER…EVER…
…unless you’re Amy, and you CAN’T see ANYTHING…including the ANGELS MOVE!
You can come out from behind the sofa now…blinking won’t save you in any event! And neither will nice consoles & comfy chairs.
(8) THE FOREST OF FEAR
“A forest, in a bottle, in a spaceship, in a maze. Have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?”
Never mind the maze of the dead, this is the night shoot to end all night shoots. An entire forest turned into something so ridiculously creepy that you expect to suddenly find yourself at Isengard Tower, calmly drinking tea with the Addams family, while Dracula paces outside the front door, waiting for you to finish. In fact, it’s the best creepy forest done by anyone, EVER! How do you shoot in the dark AND stay unnaturally green? Ask director Adam Smith, his cameraman, and the art department…they hold the secret.
Best to chain them up now, before they cause any MORE nightmares…
(7) BLESS ME FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED…
“I wish I’d known you better.”
“I think, sir, you knew me at my best.”
File under: “just when you least expect it…”
The death of Father Octavian is a surprising and powerful moment in the episode. It comes when you least expect it, at a moment of apparent revelation & near triumph on the part of the Doctor…who watches it all melt away before his eyes, in part thanks to his arrogance and selfishness. His realization that he can’t save Octavian, combined with the poignant revelation that he wished he had known him better, makes for the most satisfying moment in the episode. The bishop is far more than a caricature, and he seals his final moment with a simple declaration of faith…and a blessing that floors the Time Lord. Faith is a topic Doctor Who has always had an ambiguous relationship with…but moments such as this show that it is not beyond the range of this most empirical of series, and shame to anyone who doubted it.
(6) RED SHIRTS ARE RUNNING AWAY, SCREAMING IN TERROR
“I will die in the knowledge that my courage did not desert me at the end.”
They don’t simply DIE anymore. They walk into the light…and NEVER EXISTED! Wiped from the memory of the universe. Erased from posterity. One by one…willingly…relentlessly.
Star Trek’s infamous disposable characters have NOTHING on this masterpiece of conceptual terror.
(5) SHHSH! SPOILERS…
“You, me, handcuffs…must it always end this way?”
How DARE River Song tease us with the details of the season finale, eight weeks before broadcast! What is she, the internet or something?
Actually, she teases with a lot of cheekiness, eeriness, and hilarity. Now that we’re familiar with the concept of out-of-order meetings, River becomes the most extraordinary of side-kicks…and not surprising, considering that Alex Kingston is an extraordinary actress. She knows TOO much, but the burden of that knowledge is obviously very hard to bear, and she covers it with much the same flippancy as the Doctor uses to cover his own psychological wounds.
As for killing the best man she ever knew…well, let’s just say that Steven Moffat isn’t satisfied until his character covers herself with innumerable folds of mystery and foreboding. Speaking of which…
(4) …HOLY COW THAT’S A BIG CRACK!
“That’s extremely very not good.”
It returns with unexpected power…and throws the entire season for a loop.
Time can be re-written…and has already been re-written, while the Doctor has been occupied with other matters. What are the implications for the rest of the season? For the entire back story of the series to date? Immediate repercussions are evident…but where else is this going to lead us? There is juiciness that is exploited to grand effect here…so much so that the Angels themselves both worship and fear this “fire from the end of the universe”. After a few cameos, the crack is starting to become the best season-spanning arc since the series’ return in 2005…complete with enough doom-laded foreboding to power a dozen seasons of Doctor Who.
(3) TAKING THE MICKEY OUT OF ROSE
Bad joke, but you’ll get over it.
“Aw, you are sweet, Doctor…but I wasn’t looking for anything so long term.”
Is your head still spinning from that final scene?
Are you thinking “dear god, not again”? Then I think you might have missed the point. Amy’s “jumpiness” is not only a brilliant, blessedly HUMAN reaction to an inhuman situation, it’s also a lovely dig by the producer at entire dynamic the Doctor shared with Rose. In fact, it’s Steven Moffat’s Coupling moment in this season. Amy may be randy and promiscuous at heart, but not only does the Doctor not “get” human-style lust, he simply doesn’t see her as anything but the little seven year old girl he first met in that dark, misty backyard. He also doesn’t WANT to see her in any other way. His “I’m going to sort you out once and for all” comment, and his nervous irritation, are all we need to know about how far this is going to go…and judging from the preview with Rory for NEXT week’s episode, there’s going to be some emotional comeuppance for all of them.
While we’re on the subject of…
(2) …KAREN GILLAN…
“If I always told you the truth, I wouldn’t need you to trust me.”
…let me just say that as the first story filmed, it says a great deal for the skill she displays in her total command of Amy’s character. Fallible, frightened, adaptable…all the key human qualities for a successful Doctor Who companion. She also has the best “collapsing in agony” moment since Nicola Bryant’s Peri was infected with spectrox toxaemia in 1984; there is a chilling weariness in her voice, as the Angel threatens to emerge from her mind…and in her reaction to the Doctor’s promise to return for her.
Finally…
(1) …MATT SMITH IS THE DOCTOR
“I’ll do a thing.”
“What thing?”
“I dunno…it’s a thing in progress. Respect the thing.”
After this, there isn’t a single shred of doubt. His anger, his agility, his continued awkward communion with the material universe…his electric, dancing eyes, which contain a universe in themselves…
…good lord, this man RADIATES Doctor-ishness! This is a crash course in what the Doctor can and can’t do: his distress at Amy’s situation, his fatalistic delight in the revelation of the crack’s time-rewriting power, his giddy delight remembering the Cyber King & escaping from the Angels through sheer brass…his quiet, moist-eyed realization at Octavian’s death…and his visceral anger as options are whittled down. He talks fast, and thinks even faster, as if always having to catch up to himself. He’s blunt; the hardest of brick walls…then transforms into the quiet, comforting hero of small children, defending them from the monsters of hell and beyond. He is simply breathtaking here, and commands your attention…hell…DEMANDS your attention…whenever he’s on the screen. In every way, Matt Smith has been a revelation in these first five episodes…but he stamps his character with powerful finality in Flesh and Stone. He IS the Doctor…accept no substitutes.
How do I sum this up? Well, I’ll leave it to Doctor Who writer & novelist Paul Cornell, writing about watching this episode as a long-time fanboy…
I’ve already mentioned how my love for Doctor Who is at some sort of all time high right now, but Moffat’s latest two parter broke the dial, and caused me to exclaim, as I virtually never do, “best… Doctor Who… ever!” It wasn’t just that mixture of the epic and the personal, and the feeling of unrolling myth, and those incredible leads, it was the attention to detail, and how the whole piece never forgot it was a horror story. “For fun, sir.” And I should mention, because we people of the book so rarely do when it’s a positive, the heroic Christian character, who isn’t a hypocrite, and doesn’t come to see the error of his ways, and impresses the Doctor. I was moved by that kindness on the part of an atheist author. I’m now in the midst of a fandom of an intensity I haven’t felt since I was ten, that I’ve recognised in other people since, but haven’t truly shared. This must be what it feels like to follow a football team like they’re your loved ones. It’s great, but kind of scary. All the Doctors were wonderful, of course, and so were all the companions, but the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond… and I’m sure shortly the wonderful Rory… in twenty years time, I think I’m going to be saying “that was my Doctor.”
A complete and total masterpiece.
10+
