Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who 2010:
The Critical Fan’s Guide to Matt Smith’s First Series (Unauthorized)
Steven Cooper & Kevin Mahoney
Punked Books
Published in 2011 by Punked Books
An Authortrek imprint
Punked Books
C/O Authortrek
PO Box 54168
London
W5 9EE
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Steven Cooper & Kevin Mahoney on Smashwords
Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who, the Critical Fan’s Guide to Matt Smith’s First Series (Unauthorized)
Copyright © 2011 by Steven Cooper & Kevin Mahoney
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Steven Cooper’s reviews (Copyright © Steven Cooper 2010) were originally published on Slant Magazine’s House Next Door blog, whose editors have kindly granted permission for them to be reprinted within this book.
Cover image © Rolffimages/Dreamstime.com
First Edition
The authors assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Appendix: The Sarah Jane Adventures - Death of the Doctor
I first conceived this book in late 2010, as I had an inkling that Steven Moffat’s first series of Doctor Who was complex enough to warrant an entire book devoted to it, and this has indeed proved to be the case. Since Doctor Who was revived in 2005, a lot of BBC books have been published about the series, which are very much derived from the production team’s perspective. The advent of the internet during the long hiatus of the series has meant that you no longer see such a great abundance of printed fanzines, as most such commentary is now published online. Indeed, Steven Cooper’s excellent reviews of the 5th series, which form an integral part of this book, were originally published online. So, I thought it would be a good idea to publish a book on the series from the fans’ perspective.
Our aim in this book, as the title suggests, has been to provide constructive criticism of Matt Smith’s first series. However, fear not: this does not mean that we endlessly complain, for we have not come to bury Caesar. No, we point out where we feel that there are inconsistencies in this series, and which aspects didn’t work so well, but we also highlight the parts that we feel have been superbly executed.
Steven Cooper’s reviews were written straight after the broadcast of each episode. I have decided to retain, rather than remove, any speculation on his part as to future events within this series, as I think it’s valuable to have a record of what his initial impressions were as each individual episode was broadcast. Indeed, I indulge in quite a lot of speculation myself, because, at the time of writing, the whole story arc has not been completed, as it very much runs into series 6.
For my part, I must say that I have found this to be a very valuable exercise. For instance, on first viewing, there were a few episodes that I didn’t really like. However, having watched them again, I began to appreciate them a lot more, especially within the context of the series of the whole. Your perspective of series 5 will change somewhat if you watch all the episodes back to back within a few days, as Steven Moffat no doubt intended when he crafted such an intricate story line. I must admit that I rather fell out of the habit of repeatedly watching each episode of Doctor Who during the series’ hiatus, but I’m happy now that Moffat’s inspiring work has very much got me back into this habit.
Kevin Mahoney
February 2011
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Adam Smith
Originally broadcast: 3 April 2010
Cast
The Doctor: Matt Smith
Amy Pond: Karen Gillan
Rory Williams: Arthur Darvill
Amelia: Caitlin Blackwood
Dr. Ramsden: Nina Wadia
Barney Collins: Marcello Magni
Ice Cream Man: Perry Benson
Mrs. Angelo: Annette Crosbie
Jeff: Tom Hopper
Mr. Henderson: Arthur Cox
Mother: Olivia Colman
Child 1: Eden Monteath
Child 2: Merin Monteath
Atraxi Voice: David de Keyser
Prisoner Zero Voice: William Wilde
Patrick Moore: Himself
Steven’s review: This opening episode lives up to its title by being an hour long rather than the standard 45 minutes, and introduces our all-new regular cast line-up of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and Karen Gillan as his new companion Amy Pond.
This is the first episode to be overseen by new showrunner Steven Moffat, taking over from Russell T Davies, the man behind Doctor Who’s incredibly successful resurrection over the last five years. Moffat contributed one story to each of the last four seasons, to great acclaim each time. He was the natural and popular choice to take over the top job, and this year he is writing seven episodes (including the Christmas special), overseeing the other seven, and devising the season arc into which they all fit. Naturally, the change of showrunner brings with it one of Doctor Who’s periodic shifts in style and emphasis, which is apparent even in this first episode. The Davies era was concerned (particularly at the start) with embedding the essential strangeness of the Doctor within the context of normal urban life that the non-fan audience could relate to - as exemplified by the central character of Rose Tyler. Moffat seems more willing to embrace strangeness for its own sake; his episodes often seemed to stand apart from the overall narrative lines of Davies’ seasons (I’m thinking particularly of The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink). In terms of its basic plot, The Eleventh Hour parallels the 2007 season opener Smith and Jones - an escaped alien prisoner is hiding on Earth, other aliens pursuing it arrive trying to track it down, and the situation escalates into a threat to the entire planet - but the differences in tone are striking. Instead of taking place in London, the whole story is contained within a quiet English village, with almost no reference to the wider world at all.
We pick up just after The End of Time left off, with the wrecked, burning TARDIS tumbling down to Earth. What will be our last sight of the familiar control room has the Doctor dangling from the open doorway and hanging on for dear life, as the console succumbs to gigantic explosions in a “we’re never going to be needing this set again” manner. This sequence segues into what turned out to be my least favourite thing in the whole episode - the revamped title sequence. The visuals are mostly fine, with the TARDIS now being tossed around through a much stormier vortex than before, although the big metallic blue font in which our stars’ names zap into view (complete with lightning bolts) makes the Superman-style zooming in the previous title sequence look like a model of restraint. No, the real problem is the music. I’ve enjoyed the various orchestral arrangements of the Doctor Who theme used over the past five years, but I was hoping for a turn back towards the spooky original Delia Derbyshire version - still the best after nearly fifty years. Instead, Murray Gold has come up with a Hooked on Classics rendition that buries the actual theme under a pile of extraneous noise. Particularly unwelcome are the brass fanfares blaring over the opening bars, and the drum machine obscuring the melody line. It gets a little better towards the end, with an interesting choral bit, but it’s still one of the weakest versions of the theme I’ve heard. A pity, because I thought Gold’s incidental music for this episode was generally excellent.
Of course, the most important facet of this new-look Doctor Who is the new Doctor himself. Everyone was waiting to see how relative unknown Matt Smith would cope with the task of taking over the role from the incredibly popular David Tennant. Most of the misgivings were over his age - at 27, he is the most youthful Doctor ever. For all Moffat’s statements about how Smith had blown them away in his audition, instantly getting the character of the Doctor, the concerns remained - just how believable could this guy be playing a 900-and-something-year-old alien?
Well, after just this one episode, I’m prepared to deliver a verdict - Moffat and co. have got it spectacularly right. Matt Smith has absolutely grabbed the role of the Doctor and made it his own, with an assurance and confidence rivalling that in Tom Baker’s arrival 35 years ago. He certainly doesn’t play it as young in any way. In fact, he seems to me a quieter, more cerebral Doctor than either Eccleston or Tennant, with his mind constantly whirring away observing and making connections, staying one step ahead of everyone else; I had no trouble believing he could be the smartest guy in any room. Combined with this is an amusing eccentricity in his movements - an “elegant shambles,” to use Moffat’s own excellent description - that makes him continually watchable. It’s a truly impressive performance, and I’m genuinely looking forward now to seeing where he takes the Doctor over the course of this season.
One thing the producers did to help him was to employ the strategy also used back in 1982 when Peter Davison (at that time, the youngest Doctor ever) had the same challenge, following on from the iconic Tom Baker. Davison filmed three later stories, allowing him to fine-tune his characterisation and performance, before going back to tackle his debut adventure. In the same way, episodes 2 through 5 of this season were in the can before The Eleventh Hour started filming. It’ll be interesting to see over the next few weeks whether there’s any sign of tentativeness or indecision in Smith’s earlier episodes, because he seemed totally in command of his performance through every moment of this one.
He’s also helped by the structure of the script, which gives him the space to show off what he can do by starting with an uninterrupted fifteen-minute section where we see only his Doctor, interacting with one other character. The TARDIS ends up crashed on its side in the garden of a home-alone seven-year-old Scottish girl, Amelia Pond, who has been praying for someone to come and fix an odd crack in her bedroom wall. She’s initially wary of the strange man who climbs out of the box demanding apples and falls to the ground (“Who are you?” “I don’t know yet. I’m still cooking”), but his manner is so direct and child-like that they immediately connect, and he sets off to investigate the crack - though not before walking straight into a tree. (“Early days… steering’s a bit off.”)
In the kitchen, the physical comedy continues as the girl tries to keep up with his cravings for various foods - apples, yoghurt, bacon (“You’re Scottish, fry something”), baked beans, bread and butter - with him deciding he hates each one and spitting them out or making disgusted faces. My favourite part was the flinging of the plate of bread and butter out into the night (“And stay out!”) - followed, naturally, by off-screen crash and yowling cat noises. He finally settles on a couple of quintessential childhood foods, fish fingers and custard - together. They sit down companionably to eat at the kitchen table, where we learn that Amelia is an orphan, living with her aunt. So far this scene might seem like a prolonged comic diversion, but now comes a great payoff:
The Doctor: “You’re not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of a box, man eats fish custard… and look at you. Just sitting there. So you know what I think?”
Amelia: “What?”
The Doctor: “Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall.”
The last line, suddenly pulling us back to the plot with a suitably ominous musical cue, is perfectly played by Smith. It was not long after this point that I realized any worries I’d had about whether he was up to the role had completely disappeared.
Steven Moffat is a master of using fears children can relate to to fuel his stories - in The Girl in the Fireplace it was monsters under the bed; here it’s a weird crack in a bedroom wall through which strange noises can be heard. The Doctor discovers that it’s a “crack in the skin of the universe” leading to another place entirely, and they hear an alien voice saying, “Prisoner Zero has escaped.” This leads to another creepy idea, of some presence lurking in your house unseen, never able to be glimpsed except out of the corner of your eye.
But before the Doctor can investigate further, the TARDIS cloister bell sounds, warning that the machine faces imminent destruction. The Doctor rushes back inside; Amelia asks to come with him, but he says it’s not safe yet, making a fateful promise to her that he’ll be back in five minutes. The TARDIS vanishes; Amelia rushes to pack a little suitcase, takes it down to the garden, and sits on it, waiting for her friend to return…
Doctor Who hasn’t always had the best fortune with child actors, but they really lucked out with Caitlin Blackwood as young Amelia. She gives a perfect natural, open performance - especially impressive considering she had no prior acting experience. (She’s also, incidentally, a cousin of Karen Gillan, and the family resemblance really helps to sell the idea that they’re the same person.) I particularly loved her deadpan delivery of “What…a real one?” when the Doctor told her his box was actually a time machine.
The TARDIS returns, belching smoke and needing to shut down and rebuild itself. The Doctor manages to not notice that it’s now daylight outside as he runs into the house yelling for Amelia, having realized that this “Prisoner Zero” must have been hiding in there. Someone knocks him out from behind, and he wakes up to find himself handcuffed to a radiator by an attractive policewoman wearing a very non-regulation short skirt. She is, of course, the now grown-up Amy Pond. Most of the Doctor’s female companions tend to get tagged with the description “feisty” (actually, is there any young female lead character who isn’t described as “feisty” these days?) but rather than just present that as a given, the story shows us how she got that way. This time, the Doctor has managed to change the course of his companion’s life even before she joins him.
She eventually has to abandon the pretence of being a policewoman, crying “I’m a kissogram!” before pulling off her hat and letting loose a mass of ginger hair with a swish worthy of a shampoo advert. Karen Gillan and Matt Smith have a tremendous chemistry together, batting Moffat’s comic dialogue back and forth (“Why a policewoman?” “You broke into my house - it was this or a French maid!”) while showing how the initial spikiness between them slowly eases as the Doctor wins Amy’s trust. This culminates in a hilarious scene where Amy, still not quite believing that this man is her childhood friend come back, traps the Doctor’s tie in a car door in order to get him to talk sense. In a typical piece of Moffat cleverness, he wins her over by producing an apple that Amelia gave him earlier. It’s a lovely bonding moment between them, which works even in spite of the director resorting to slow motion and lens flares in a misguided attempt to make it “magical”.
Apart from the sheer enjoyability of Moffat’s dialogue (I’ve had to severely resist the temptation to quote more of my favourite moments, or this recap would end up twice as long), there are any number of places where lines will link up with or reflect others elsewhere - this script has clearly been polished to within an inch of its life. For example:
The Doctor: “Who’s Amy? You were Amelia.”
Amy: “Yeah, and now I’m Amy.”
The Doctor: “Amelia Pond. That was a great name!”
Amy: “Bit fairytale.”
This is an ironic reference back to the kitchen table scene, where the Doctor delightedly told young Amelia Pond her name was “like a name in a fairytale.” What an efficient way of showing how the disappointment of the Doctor’s failure to return for her would lead Amy to grow up burying her dreams beneath a brittle, somewhat cynical personality. Or there’s this, which will come back at the end:
Amy: “You told me you had a time machine.”
The Doctor: “And you believed me.”
Amy: “Then I grew up.”
The Doctor: “Oh, you never want to do that.”
Once Amy’s trust is regained, we get into the actual plot part of the story - the Doctor tracking down Prisoner Zero before the pursuing aliens, the Atraxi, lose patience and burn the planet. Although the plotting fizzes along with Moffat’s usual ingenuity, this stuff can’t help but be less interesting, partly because the only real characters in the story are the Doctor, Amy, and Amy’s “kind of” boyfriend, Rory. Everyone else is strictly functional, even when they’re being played by Annette Crosbie, Nina Wadia, or Olivia Colman - and not forgetting a bonkers cameo from the great Patrick Moore. The Doctor quickly hacks into a worldwide videoconference call to release a computer virus that will reset all clocks and displays to zero in order to get the Atraxi’s attention. It’s interesting that neither Torchwood nor UNIT, which loomed so large in the previous era, are so much as mentioned - Moffat seems to be recalibrating the world of the show away from the situation that developed over the last five years, where pretty much everyone in the world was aware of both the existence of aliens and the organizations that deal with them.
Prisoner Zero itself makes for a somewhat underwhelming foe - rather like the skeletons in spacesuits in Silence in the Library, it tends to not actually do anything apart from look menacing. The concept of a shape-changing creature that can look like multiple creatures at once, e.g. a man and a dog, is very good, and it’s nicely unsettling when the man and dog keep moving their heads in sync. Later, it takes the form of a mother and her two girls, and it’s momentarily chilling when the mother’s voice comes out of one of the children’s mouths. And I liked the final twist where it takes the form of the Doctor, thanks to its link with Amy, and young Amelia peeks out from behind him (again, cleverly reflecting a shot from earlier). But the creature’s natural form is a rather unimpressive CGI snake, and the idea of having the human disguises suddenly open their mouths to reveal the alien’s fangs gets way overused. (While I’m on the subject of the CGI, the Atraxi ships themselves are one of the goofiest designs ever seen in Doctor Who - basically a giant eyeball inside a spinning snowflake. It almost works in spite of itself out of sheer oddness.)
The intricate plot mechanism finally works itself out as Prisoner Zero, tracked to a hospital where it has been using coma patients as sources for its disguises, is tricked into reverting to its natural form, when it is detected and recaptured by the Atraxi. Before it disappears, however, it provides some mysterious hints of something big to come. “The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.” What does that mean? At this stage, I’ve no idea…
Up until now, the Doctor has been borne along by the plot, but now, with his regeneration almost complete, he finally takes control. First, he orders the Atraxi to come back and face him because of their threat to burn “a fully established Level Five planet”. Then he casts off the persona of the “Raggedy Doctor” as he finds some new clothes in the hospital lockers (following a precedent set by the Third and Eighth Doctors). Up on the roof of the hospital, he confronts the Atraxi.
Matt Smith is given an iconic moment, as he tells the Atraxi to check whether the Earth is protected, and they project holograms of the ten previous Doctors. He walks through the image of David Tennant to reveal the Eleventh Doctor, complete at last in his professorial costume with tweed jacket, braces and bow tie, ready to see off these aliens with one simple line:
The Doctor: “Hello. I’m the Doctor. Basically... run.”
With the threat over, the Doctor is delighted to discover that the TARDIS has finished repairing itself. Immediately forgetting everything else, he dashes off. Amy runs after him, but to her astonished dismay the box dematerialises in front of her.
In the next scene, Amy is woken in the night by the sound of the TARDIS arriving back in her garden. The Doctor apologizes for rushing off - he was only taking his brand new time machine on a “quick hop” to the moon and back. But - surprise! - erratic navigation has struck again… “That was two years ago!” As the saying goes, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Finally, Amy gets her chance to enter the magic box. But she’s no longer sure she really wants to.
The Doctor: “You wanted to come fourteen years ago.”
Amy: “I grew up.”
The Doctor: “Don’t worry. I’ll soon fix that.”
With a snap of the fingers, the Doctor opens the door (a nice callback to Moffat’s Forest of the Dead). The new interior is a warmer, more magical space than the single echoing chamber of the previous era. There are now multiple levels, stairways leading off to other areas, and a console full of strange objects - levers, gauges, hot and cold taps, a typewriter, even an old gramophone horn.
These last few scenes are played perfectly by Smith and Gillan. They already seem like a great Doctor/companion team, falling into an easy banter, and yet they are both keeping information from each other. Just as the Doctor is promising he had no ulterior motive for asking Amy along, the TARDIS scanner screen beside him is showing an image of a line in the exact same shape as the crack in the bedroom wall. Cue ominous music…
And Amy asks him to agree to get her back tomorrow morning, but won’t say why - “Just…you know, stuff.” After the TARDIS has left, we pan across Amy’s room to reveal… a wedding dress hanging in her wardrobe. She has run away on the night before her wedding…why? For one final childhood adventure before she has to finally grow up? Or for some other reason? I can’t wait to find out.
Steven’s Classic Who DVD Recommendation: Robot, starring Tom Baker in his very first story as the Doctor. As I mentioned above, Baker’s performance in this story, where he just completely inhabits the role of the Doctor from the off, came strongly to mind when I saw Matt Smith’s debut.
Kevin’s review: The Eleventh Hour is a splendid introduction for Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor. “Cometh the Hour, Cometh Who da Man!” one might say in the light of Steven Moffat’s incredibly witty script. So sublime is the dialogue that it comes as a great surprise to read in The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who 2011 that Moffat found The Eleventh Hour to be the most difficult script to write of Matt Smith’s first series, because it had to be written in such a short space of time. However, one suspects that Moffat has had much of this dialogue running around his head for many years, such as when the Doctor exclaims “Who da man!” Hurt by the lack of reaction to this outcry, the Doctor decides that he’s never going to say this again.
Which is probably just as well, because on closer inspection, this exclamation only works if one has heard of a certain TV programme called Doctor Who (which obviously doesn’t exist in the Doctor’s universe), since “Doctor Who” is not the Doctor’s actual name. Although this didn’t stop supercomputer WOTAN calling him “Doctor Who” in the 1966 adventure The War Machines, and author Bill Strutton also mistakenly used this appellation throughout his novelisation of another Sixties adventure, The Web Planet. So, it’s not surprising that there’s no reaction from Amy and Rory to the Doctor’s outcry, as it makes no sense when one dissects it in detail. However, such is the exuberance of Steven Moffat’s dialogue, that we let him get away with it, especially since it very much fits the spirit of the script and the characterisation of the Eleventh Doctor. It goes without saying that Moffat himself, with his great love of Doctor Who, would know that having the Doctor say “Who da man!” is technically an error, but it’s such a great line full of contemporary verve that it would have been a crime not to use it. I didn’t mean to start off this review by examining such a short line in great forensic detail. However, Moffat’s very great attention to detail was one of the main reasons why this book was commissioned, as there is a great deal to be discovered and discussed about even the most minor of features in each episode.
The first adventure of any Doctor can be rather a hit and miss affair. There have been some disasters, such as Colin Baker’s The Twin Dilemma (which suffered from poor production values and script, along with a rather foolhardy decision to deliberately make the new Doctor unlikeable), while both Sylvester McCoy’s Time and the Rani and Tom Baker’s Robot were silliness personified. Tom Baker got over the indignity of having to dress up in a poor Viking costume to hold the record of appearing in the most episodes of the show. Colin Baker never really recovered from that bad start, especially since it portrayed him trying to strangle his assistant Peri in a moment of post-regenerative angst. There was also the fact that the production team decided to have his first adventure broadcast immediately after Peter Davison’s final one, with the result that viewers ultimately had to wait 9 months for Colin Baker’s next adventure to see whether they really liked him or not. Michael Grade, the BBC Controller at the time, didn’t like either Colin Baker or the programme, which led him to put the series on hiatus for 18 months, and to slash the number of episodes for future series by half. It was this that ultimately led to the Classic Series’ demise. So the first adventure of each Doctor can really be life or death affairs.
I think the best first Doctor adventure is probably the original, The Power of the Daleks, in which Patrick Troughton made the role his own, winning over both his suspicious companions and the viewers with his sparklingly impish personality. The device of having the Doctor regenerate was an ingenious one, which, probably more than anything else, enabled the series’ longevity. A lot of Doctor Who fans rate Patrick Troughton’s second Dalek adventure, The Evil of the Daleks more highly, but I’ve always thought that Power portrayed the Daleks at probably their most intelligent and menacing, as they pretend to be servants to human colonists while subtly building up their numbers in secret, a tactic that they later re-adopted in this series’ Victory of the Daleks.
Peter Davison’s debut, Castrovalva, was a subtle and intelligent piece. Since there’d only been 4 previous Doctors, Davison demonstrated his range by adopting the persona of each forebear in this story, which was especially poignant as the programme neared its 20th anniversary. This is obviously something that Matt Smith couldn’t do (although his tone of voice often reminds me of Davison, as well as his youth) as impersonating 10 previous Doctors would have been extremely wearisome, and would have lost the majority of viewers who hadn’t watched it throughout its nearly 50 year history. So, having the Atraxi project an image of Matt Smith’s predecessors was an excellent workaround, especially since it ended with the Eleventh Doctor truly asserting his new persona for the first time.
The most action-packed debut for a Doctor was Jon Pertwee’s Spearhead from Space in 1970. In another departure for the series, this was the first adventure broadcast in colour. Thanks to some timely BBC industrial action, this story was shot entirely in film, which gave it even more of a glossier sheen. Robert Holmes, who is widely recognised to be the best writer of the Classic Series, wrote the script. Spearhead from Space is a rollicking adventure that is only let down by the appearance of a extremely rubbery monster at the end, and the expression on Pertwee’s face is perhaps too comedic as this Nestene tries to strangle the Doctor. It could be however, that the single eye of the Nestene peering from out of its tank is what influenced Moffat’s depiction of the Atraxi. Certainly, as Steven has noted in his review above, the trait of the Doctor stealing clothes in a hospital was first seen in Spearhead from Space.
This is something the Eighth Doctor did also, although, like the Third Doctor, this is understandable as both were both were in hospital as a result of their respective regenerations. However, unlike Pertwee, Matt Smith’s Doctor appears to be devoid of a cobra tattoo… (Perhaps one day we can have a mash-up with Stieg Larsson’s fiction entitled The Time Lord with a Cobra Tattoo?) And of course, Spearhead from Space was the first adventure to feature the Autons, who would go on to appear in the Ninth Doctor’s debut adventure, Rose (albeit not a regeneration story), and this series’ The Pandorica Opens. Spearhead from Space, like Rose, also heralded an era in which most of the stories were set on Earth. The Third Doctor was assisted by the ‘UNIT family’, albeit Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Sergeant Benton only really started as foils for the Doctor, rather than fully rounded characters such as Rose, her mother, and Mickey Smith.
One great departure from his predecessor is Moffat’s decision to present Amy as an orphan, so while Rory is there as a ‘sort-of’ boyfriend, Amy doesn’t have a mum or dad to fall back on, unlike Rose (who of course, does eventually run into her missing father). In Amelia’s case, it’s both her parents who are missing (although, in a strange episode that we may return to in the 6th series, Amelia does relate that she remembers her mother giving her apples with strange Halloweenesque faces carved into them).
In the Doctor Who Confidential that accompanied the succeeding episode (The Beast Below), Moffat revealed that the main reason why he had chosen to introduce the Doctor to Amy first as a little girl, and then as an older woman, was due to the fact that the Eleventh was the first Doctor to regenerate without any companions present. Thus, Amy’s reluctance to recognise this man as the “Raggedy Doctor” from her childhood mirrors the viewer’s reluctance to let go of their identification of the Doctor with the previous incumbent (David Tennant). So, in The Eleventh Hour, Matt Smith endeavours to convince both Amy and us that he is indeed the Doctor. On a pedantic note, it must be pointed out that Patrick Troughton’s Doctor regenerated into Jon Pertwee’s with no companions present. In this instance, the Time Lords were kind enough to drop him into the lap of casual acquaintance Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who also took some persuading with regards to the Doctor’s true identity.
When Steven Moffat was first announced as the new showrunner, I was initially concerned that this would lead to an abundance of children appearing in the series, as many of his stories have featured kids. Who can forget the boy with a gas mask seemingly glued to his face asking, “Are you my mummy?” in Moffat’s first episode The Empty Child? As its title would suggest, The Girl in the Fireplace featured a very young Madame de Pompadour in the beginning, while the scenes with the young girl are the only parts of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead that don’t really work.
Very few children appeared in the Classic Series of Doctor Who, despite the fact that the programme’s often regarded as being mainly focused at kids. Admittedly, the Doctor’s first companion, his granddaughter Susan, was presented as a 15-year-old schoolgirl, but the 23-year-old Carole Ann Ford played her. The character of Adric, played by Matthew Waterhouse from 1980-1982, was a teenage prodigy and a kind of prototype for Star Trek: the Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher, who was disliked by some fans for much the same reasons. Although when I was 10, I thought Adric was okay, and even snivelled once or twice following his epic demise in Earthshock. However, I really liked the portrayal of Amelia in The Eleventh Hour, and as Steven writes, the Doctor Who production team were very lucky to discover the best possible actress to play the young Amelia, Karen Gillan’s own cousin, Caitlin Blackwood. Although I did struggle to understand everything that Amelia was praying to get from Santa, possibly due to her Scottish brogue.