Still awake, readers? You’ve been quiet lately, and so have we, but we’re still here, and hopefully you still are as well. Review to follow soon – and hopefully we’ll have a bit more in the way of content for you later in the week as well – but for now, let’s see what we all make of Simon Nye’s debut Doctor Who script, Toby Jones’ guest appearance, and Karen Gillan’s prosthetic belly.

Vampires Of Venice was initially greeted with a shrug of the shoulders on announcement, with most fans regarding it as a late bid to jump onto the Twilight bandwagon. Curiosity has risen, however, as more details of the setting emerged, and the final scene of Flesh & Stone gave us possibly the programme’s most unconventional cliffhanger of all time to further pique the interest. In the end, the second view of unfevered anticipation was justified. The story is a strong one, but with a slightly dated aspect which restrains it from quite standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Steven Moffat-scripted entries in the series.

Posting this one early today, rather than scheduling it for the time of transmission – partly as a reminder to people who might have missed it that tonight’s episode starts at the earlier time of 6pm, and partly to try and wake up the site a bit since you buggers have been unnaturally quiet for most of this week. So, what’s doing? Vampires, in Venice and stuff. Rory joins the TARDIS crew. By the writer of the sorely underrated “School Reunion”. It won’t be as good as last week, but it could still be pretty acecore, right?

It’s a little moment in the great scheme of things, but for me, it’s the most telling few seconds of MoffatWho so far. About two minutes and twenty seconds into “Flesh and Stone”, with the assembled cast stood atop a hatch in the crashed Byzantium, the Doctor drops inside. An astounded Amy looks down to see him stood at right angles to her, on what for him is the “floor” – an artificial gravity system having “corrected” him.

It’s a simple trick. It’s not the most original thing in the world (if you want playing with gravity, watch 2001 some time). But by gum it’s inventive – it’s an idea. A small, neat idea for a quick and simple gag, but an idea nevertheless. It plays with expectations, teaches you not to sit back and take what you’re looking at for granted. And this is the sort of thing that already drives this series, and exemplifies its sheer, effortless quality.

Although slightly forgotten amid all the timey-wimey headspinnery of “Flesh & Stone”, the identity of River Song looks set to remain one of the compelling mysteries of the Moffat era. But are we any closer to working out just who she’s meant to be? Let’s run down the possible identities of the new-Who character deemed ‘most likely to appear in handcuffs’…

Wait, that doesn’t work.

Anyway. Hello. We’ve finally got around to spotting the setting on the WordPress dashboard that means we can allow user registration for our readers. So, er, we’ve allowed it. It’s not that big a deal, but should you sign up it’ll save you having to fill your name in each time you comment, and also means you’ll have protected access to your chosen posting name, and so on. And you can probably set an avatar or something, although everyone’s probably already got those spooky Gravatar things that FOLLOW YOU AROUND THE ENTIRE INTERNET no matter where you sign up.

We’re not making registration compulsory in order to comment, or anything, it just makes things a bit easier if you’re here all the bloody time anyway. So if you fancy registering… get to it!

Five episodes in, and a story arc is starting to take shape. And a couple of very interesting, yet-to-be-explained points have made themselves conspicuous. So let’s do some speculating! Obviously, don’t click the jump until you’ve seen “Flesh and Stone”.

It’s the second half of a Moffat story. The second half of a Moffat story of which part one was absolutely corking. There’s no way this won’t be brilliant. Share your thoughts either as, or after, it airs below. And I’m determined to get to the end of this paragraph without making a joke about Graham Norton. Oh, bugger.

The Time of Angels, then. The first two-part blockbuster episode of Moffat’s era, and also Moffat’s take on Red Dwarf’s Emohawk, or The Next Generation’s Manhunt. Which is to say, an episode which is multiple-sequels-in-one – the return of the Weeping Angels, and River Song – rather than The Doctor fighting Polymorphs or fucking around with the wife of Gene Roddenberry. (Although if anyone can figure out Moffat’s change of heart on returning monsters, let me know. He never seemed keen, and yet we’ve already had two so far this series…)