Endlessly teased since just before the season started, does “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” live up to the hype?
When Steven Moffat stated he wanted to create a movie style theme to every episode of the series, many of us applauded him for his ambition. Last week, we saw sweeping vistas of the Dalek home world and parliament. This week, we see an abandoned ship filled with dinosaurs and danger. Unfortunately, Moffat’s vision is also his greatest weakness. These new Doctor Who episodes all seem terribly too short with far too much content to present.
“Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, like last week, completely skips any type of exposition or introduction to the story or the environment. It moves at a breakneck speed to gather its characters and though the rising action to the final conflict between this week’s antagonist. Even as a long time viewer and fan, I have to say I am not enjoying this new style of Doctor Who that has little regard for the mystery and mystique that a normal episode would contain.
It’s not to say that I don’t still enjoy the show, but I enjoyed it much more in the previous series where it moved a little bit slower even if these same epic stories crossed over two weeks.
Spoilers now…
- Having the Queen Nefertiti around is a bit odd, though it does explain what “happened” to her and why she disappeared from Egypt.
- Why does the ship look so old? How long has Pirate Solomon (played by the brilliant David Bradley, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter) been on that ship? Hasn’t there been a few Silurians maintaining the ship all these centuries?
- Why has this Silurian ship been flying around for thousands of years, yet the Doctor takes them to an appropriate planet right away?
- Strange that the Doctor semi-actively kills the pirate.
- The two robots were very Fifth Element weren’t they?
