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With the mini-arc of Amy and Rory’s relationship raised in the previous episodes, this episode brings it square into focus.

The TARDIS crew are presented with two scenarios.  In the first, its five years later.  Rory and Amy have left the TARDIS and settled down to start a family when the Doctor drops back in for a visit.  In the other, they’re still onboard the TARDIS, but its hurtling towards a cold star, threatening to kill them all.    And a mysterious stranger called the Dream Lord says they must correctly figure out which is reality.

Episodes like this always have one major falling down point.  When faced with the two realities, of course the one in the TARDIS leaps out as the more likely to be real.  It seems unlikely that the writers would leave the companion pregnant for the rest of the series after all.   So straight away I was wondering about a twist.  Surely Doctor Who won’t leave it that straight forward?

And so I was immediately put in mind of an Outer Limits episode that stuck in my mind. The episode was Tempests and featured an astronaut jumping between two realities.  One in which the mission of mercy they were on was a success, and another in which while on that mission they’d crashed and he and the crew were trying to survive.  Eventually its revealed both are fake, the astronauts all having been captured by spiders which inject their victims which a hallucinogenic venom.

So oops, a pity that stuck in my head, since that was actually the twist here as well.  But anyway

This episode worked for me as I enjoyed how it helped resolve the Amy/Rory relationship (for now anyway).  By having Amy face Rory’s death (albeit only in one of the dream realities) it gave her the jolt she needed to realise how much she actually cares for him.  I mentioned before that I was glad to see this relationship being tackled head on, and so for me, this was very satisfying.  For now, the couple seem content to continue their TARDIS adventures before returning for their wedding, however I can’t help but feel that there’s a more permanent resolution looming in the future.  After all, Rory actor Arthur Darville isn’t in the opening credits, whereas Karen Gillan is.  So I assume the question of their relationship and the wedding is not quite finished yet.  However for now, this has formed a nice little mini-arc to help boost the mid-season of the show.

The other nice thing in this episode was the Dream Lord.  The Doctor recognises him for who he is straight away although isn’t in a hurry to share the information.  Its a nice touch that the Doctor puts it together so quickly, playing to both his intelligence, but also his experience.  The Dream Lord is revealed as a projection of the Doctor’s darker side, and this is something the Doctor knows only to well, whether it was recently terrifying himself when he went over the line during The Waters of Mars, or more interestingly, his dealings with the Valeyard during Trial of a Time Lord.  Like the Dream Lord, the Valeyard was a projection of the Doctor’s dark side.  However back then the Doctor didn’t recognise him for what he was.  Here he’s perhaps been able to recognise himself in the Dream Lord that much more quickly as a result.  The Dream Lord forms one of those nice characters that can be treated as a standalone villain, but also gives the fans a lot to discuss.

This was definitely a nice, and important episode.  It sees the relationship between the three TARDIS companions develop as Amy realises she doesn’t want to lose Rory, and allows Matt Smith’s Doctor to shine, showing off his intelligence, and drawing on the character’s darkness as well.

Following on from events in the last episode (how did I manage to not mention that hysterical and important scene when talking about that two-parter?), the action picks up at Rory’s stag do, where a giant cake is wheeled in, and out pops…the Doctor.

Its a great scene.  Well played for laughs, as the Doctor, bumbling through social interaction in a way his 10th incarnation never would have, decides that he’s going to try and fix Amy and Rory’s relationship, following her pouncing on him.  The Doctor’s confused reactions after telling Rory that she’d kissed him and that he should be happy because she’s a good kisser were brilliant, and helped underline that this incarnation seems more of a return to the “classic” Doctors.  I certainly could not have seen Tennant’s Doctor doing this.

And so they’re whisked off to Venice, where they quickly find the city in lockdown, and under the thumb of the House of Calvierri which holds an academy full of beautiful girls who have an aversion to sunlight and long pointy teeth.

But there’s a twist here.  Of course, long-term fans will know that vampires are longtime enemies of the Time Lords, with the Doctor himself killing the last great Vampire back in State of Decay.  However these aren’t actual Vampires.  Instead they’re a race of fish, hiding in human form thanks to perception filters, having had to escape their homeworld as the crack appeared on it, bringing the Silence.

This is us presumably seeing a shift from just the crack having focus, to the idea of a menace beyond it.  The Silence did get name checked in the first episode, but here its given the attention.  Was the Silence what was rewriting time and causing the Angels and Clerics to be erased from history?  I guess the suggestion is that its not the crack itself that was doing that, since various people, Prisoner Zero and the Saturnynians here, have been able to use the crack to move from one space and time to another.  I quite like this shift in focus though, as it progresses the arc along slightly, but its still not a major thing that might confuse casual viewers.  Its a subtle shift, but it prevents the arc plot from getting stale.

The episode itself was a bit of a mixed bag.  Still enjoyable, but it undoubtedly suffered from following on from the awesome Angels 2-parter.  It wasn’t helped by the ropey effects of the Doctor climbing the roof at the end (a resolution that brought to mind Evolution of the Daleks from three years ago), and the strangeness of the perception filter.  If the Countess is hiding her true form with one, how can she take off her clothes at the end?  And would the other Saturnynians in the water really not recognise her and eat her because of it?  Minor nitpicks I grant you, but they did jump out.

Most interestingly, aside from the arc plot, we see a smaller subplot stretching out across several episodes.  Amy’s run off from her wedding day, and jumped the Doctor, and so he’s trying to fix their relationship.  Its a nice little mini-arc, and its good to see their relationship being directly addressed, whereas Rose just took off and dumped Mickey, leaving him to be suspected of killing her for a year, and then leaving him hanging on even after that.  I was never much of a fan of Rose for that reason (although that selfish aspect of her character was obviously deliberate), so its good to see Amy’s relationship being directly addressed early on.

Following on from the Angels episodes was always going to be tricky, and I think this episode did a good job.  While it didn’t feel as solid as the Toby Whithouse’s previous episode (School Reunion) it was still an enjoyable episode with some great gags.  The Hammer Horror nod with the girls at the school was nicely done, and the location was nice and atmospheric.

Oops.  I’ve managed to get quite behind here.  Must catchup before I get any further behind…

Anyway, so a much anticipated double episode, with Steven Moffat bringing back two of his own popular creations, River Song and the Weeping Angels.

Here’s the Doctor and River’s relationship has clearly progressed since Silence in the Library.  It seems to be established now that they’re meeting each other in reverse order, (so River will gradually know the Doctor less and less with each appearance) however most interestingly, from the Doctor’s interactions with River, we can assume that Doctor #10 must’ve had at least one if not several off-screen adventures with River.  This is a neat trick to allow the script to pick up the characters without having to worry about the Doctor dealing with having seen her death the last time they met.

We also see the Doctor’s distinct discomfort with River.  He deeply dislikes meeting someone from his own future and you can’t help but feel its partly down to genuine concern about the time lines, but also a clever play on the Doctor’s arrogance.  He’s used to being the smartest one in the room, and when he’s paired up with River, he’s constantly on the other foot, as she teases him about “spoilers”.  This is summed up with the great scene where she perfectly lands the TARDIS (having been taught how to fly it by someone other than the Doctor, intriguingly – my personal reaction was to wonder if it was maybe Jack), admonishing him for always leaving the brakes on when he complains that it doesn’t make “the noise”.   From a fanboy point of view though, while it didn’t make the signature “wheezing, groaning”, we did get the return of the landing chime commonly used throughout the 80s which was a nice touch.

We also get a couple of hints about River.  That she’s already been there for the Pandoric opening (so we can expect to see her again in the finale), and that she’s in jail for murder.  The hints seem to point to her killing the Doctor, but I wonder how that would play out.  Perhaps in her first adventure she killed the Doctor, providing a nice symmetry to her dying the first time the Doctor meets her.  Of course, I don’t believe that she’s actually killed the Doctor.  I’d expect it to be just her believing that she did.  On the other hand, it does seem pretty obvious that it could be the Doctor, which would make me wonder if that’s what Steven Moffat wants you to think, while he prepares something else entirely.     There’s also the issue that a storyline like that would be so long term, its probably not practical.  So I’m expecting more twists when we next meet River.

The Angels were I suppose an obvious monster for Moffat to bring back.  Easily the most popular of the new monsters since Doctor Who returned, I had worried that bringing them back might detract from the superb Blink.  I’d need not have worried though, as they’re superbly used here.  The new wrinkles Moffat added just added to the terror, with the Angel emerging from the video recording, and culminating in the incredibly tense scene where Amy has to walk, with her eyes closed, through the forest of Angels, as they start to move when they realise she can’t see them.    Creepy, creepy scenes, and you’ve got to admire Moffat for making such a successful monster based around such a huge limitation of them being statues.

I also loved (if that’s the right word) the personality Angel Bob showed.  It was truely nasty and malevolent, getting Amy to count down for example, just for fun.  A monster that straight out nasty is not something we’ve seen a lot of in Doctor Who.

Of course, we were also treated to another surprise in the form of the crack reappearing, but also being explained to some degree.  It had been, up until this point, treated in the same way as the kind of teases we’d had in previous series (like Bad Wolf).  With this episode, Steven Moffat brings the crack front and centre, making it a big part of events going forward.  Its also intriguing to see that its causing time to be rewritten, but also more interestingly, the Doctor’s almost happy realisation of this.

From a plot point of view, Steven Moffat seems to be using the crack to clear the remaining decks, removing public knowledge of the various alien invasions and the like, to allow him to reset the Doctor’s world into something more like our own (albeit with UNIT presumably).   I really hadn’t expected this, but it raises up interesting questions for future episodes.  How much of what we’ve seen previously has been reset for example?  Would this mean that certain elements (such as Harriet Jones, Prime Minister) could make a return?  It certainly allows a degree of flexibility in continuity in the start of this new era.

Easily the strongest story since the Eleventh Hour (and possibly even stronger than that), what makes this story so amazing is that it was the first one filmed, yet you honestly couldn’t tell from watching it, with both Matt Smith’s Doctor and Karen Gillan’s Amy as confidently played as they have been from the start of this series.

As a counterpoint to Green Lantern, this month’s Green Lantern Corps was very much an epilogue to Blackest Night.  And after an event that big, this worked better for me, allowing the characters to process what’s happened, rather than just moving straight onto the next storylines (helped by the fact that the new creative team isn’t taking over until next month, no doubt).

In true Tomasi style, he manages to work in nice moments for most of the incredibly large cast in this book.   The Kyle and Guy scenes make for a nice backbone, with them reflecting on the recent chaos in the DCU after the central power battery is restored, and then picking over the remains of Warriors bar.  I loved Guy’s exposition as to just how crazy a place the DCU has been recently.   Looking at the timeline, Final Crisis, Flash Rebirth and Blackest Night have all happened within an incredibly short time of one another.

The new tribute to the fallen Lanterns on Mogo made for a nice scene, and raised the issue of Sodam Yat’s status nicely, which led to the great scene with Arisia actually punching out one of the Guardians, in possibly the best moment of the comic.  The Guardians have had more than that coming to them, but to have Guy, Kyle, Arisia face down the Guardians in that way was very satisfying.

Likewise, Kilowog stepping down as the main training sergeant was a good moment.  Obviously, it sets up Kilowog as a sector Lantern ready for the new Emerald Warriors book, but it does also give the sense of recent events having real repercussions for the Corps.  Likewise Salaak shouting down the Guardians.  He’s been their chief agent since the series started, so to have him turn on them carries more power than even the Guy, Kyle and Arisia confrontation.  I’ve said this before, but what happens with the Guardians over the next year or so in the wake of Blackest Night should be very interesting.

There wasn’t much tie-in with the events of Green Lantern, other than a reference to Guardian becoming Green Lantern, but presumably the Guy/Ganthet stuff will be followed up later once GLC splits to form the new Emerald Warriors title).

Overall, I really enjoyed this issue.  With how crazy things have been in the book with the War of Light and Blackest Night, to take the time for an issue to let the characters reflect on what’s happened was really needed.  And given we know that the book is about to split into two separate titles, with Peter Tomasi moving to the new book, and a new creative team coming to GLC, this served as a nice epilogue for not just Blackest Night, but also the GLC title in its current form.