Series 8
Kill The Moon
Urgh.
It plays off like a Tom Baker episode, and not one of the good ones. Kill The Moon starts off with some promise, but surely and slowly it begins to deteriorate into an exercise of patience and a test of ones sanity. The monsters are sometimes scary, but mostly dull. The acting is fair-enough, but never standout. The sets very much resemble a soundstage, and the plot is so farfetched that I purposely haven't revealed anything about it simply because the only real draw is watching this clustercrap unfold before your eyes.
Kill The Moon is mediocre in it's best times, and a huge letdown as a follow up to the previous, and most spectacular episode of Series 8 last time; The Caretaker.
Heck, I even liked Listen more than this.
Mummy on the Orient Express
Are you my mummy?
If Kill The Moon felt like a modern day version of a Baker episode (the better Baker), thenMummy on the Orient Express is something of a patchwork Davison episode meets something that might've shown up mid-Tennant era. That, however, is certainly not a bad thing.
The plot is bonkers, but straight-forward enough to understand. There's a train in outer-space that's flying around as a tour or something, and there is a killer on the loose. A monster mummy, to be precise, and when it's victims witness it, they all have precisely 66 seconds to live.
What follows from that set-up is a surprisingly fun episode with lots of spectacular moments from Capaldi's Doctor and a great supporting cast, Frank Skinner as Perkins in particular is so good that he manages to make you wish he would be the next companion for our hero before the episode is even over.
The main weakness is the villain, and not the mummy, I mean the one near the end when the twist happens. It's not that it's a bad revelation or that it doesn't work for the story, it just feels relatively underwhelming and so predictable you assumed they wouldn't go for that angle.
Overall, Mummy on the Orient Express is a fun ride with a good mystery and an effectively chilling monster. It's not perfect and sometimes it's clunky, but it works very well for what it is.
Flatline
The Doctor and the TARDIS get shrunk and he pokes his hand out and crawls around with it. Also, the monsters look very good and there's a cool speech at the end.
I actually cannot remember much else about this episode, I may have to rewatch it again but let that statement stand as my justification for this one and why it's 'just okay'.
I think I liked Flatline, though. I think.
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Oxfords not brogues.
Oxfords not brogues.