Tuesday 4 September 2012

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship - the spoiler free round-up


As with a previous post regarding episode 7.1, this is a round-up of bits and pieces I've garnered about Dinosaurs on a Spaceship - from a variety of sources - which I believe don't constitute spoilers. Once again, I'll leave it to you whether or not to read on...


The "Gang":
The Doctor starts off the story already sorting out a problem for Queen Nefertiti in Egypt, 1334 BC. He gets a message about a vast unmanned spaceship heading on a collision course for Earth (2367 AD). The spaceship is going to be blown up in a missile strike.


This spaceship belongs to a race we are familiar with from the series, and the cargo is dinosaurs. After being handed the title by Moffat, Chris Chibnall does provide a logical reason for the creatures to be onboard. The craft is more than 65 million years old.
(As for the race there is an obvious one - but surely they weren't space-faring...).


The fact dinosaurs are involved prompts the Doctor to pick up a big-game hunter named John Riddell, from the African plains of 1902. He knows Riddell, who last saw him months ago when he went to fetch some milk... (Update - a clip now confirms it was liquorice, not milk).
The Doctor also collects the Ponds - inadvertently picking up Rory's dad, Brian, at the same time. He is a retired school teacher - who just happens to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.


Solomon:
The villain of the piece. A pirate figure who wants the dinosaurs. He's nicely underplayed - and very nasty. He has two huge robots - voiced by comic actors David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Their humorous dialogue does starts to wear thin, apparently.

The "gang" gets split up - Amy with Nefertiti & Riddell, and the Doctor with Williams pere et fils.
Amy fulfils the "Doctor" role with her group - showing she's been watching and learning. Riddell is a product of the Edwardian era, so there is a bit of sexual tension / flirtation between him and the Egyptian monarch.


Rory doesn't get to do much in this story - apart from a humorous sequence with the robots. This is mainly to do with the new additional characters the story has to try to accommodate. (Shame, as it is one of his final stories and his dad gets introduced in it).


There is an exchange between Amy and the Doctor which foreshadows things to come.
The first two-thirds are a bit of a romp, but things darken in the latter third.


There's a particular joke which should get the grown-ups sniggering, but should blissfully pass over the heads of the young 'uns. "Balls" is all I'll say on the matter...

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