S5(31)E08 – The Hungry Earth – Broadcast Discussion

• 22nd May 2010 • Blog Post by Seb Patrick •

Er, yes. Forgot to do this before the episode. But should you have woken up sufficiently to have anything to say, do so here.

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

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10 Responses

  1. Really? Nobody at all? That dull? I’ll kick off with what I Twittered during/after it, then :

    * This is so RTD era I half expected the old title sequence.

    * Why did Amy dress for Rio but Rory’s wearing a bodywarmer?

    * Better than Chibnall’s previous ep, but in the Moffat era we demand so much more. Like jokes, and spark, and good supporting characters.

    * Also, even in the RTD era (which this felt like a hangover from) we demanded a LOT more quality from late series two-parters.

  2. That was fine. Good for Chibnal, but as you say it’s not up to scratch for a Moffat episode and certainly not a later series two-parter.

  3. I’m with Seb on this, it had a real RTD-era feel. The story wasn’t that interesting, nor were the supporting characters and the whole thing felt a bit “cheap”.

    Not that I disliked it that much: it was better than “Victory of the Daleks” which, for me, is still the only really sub-par episode this season has produced. And Matt Smith and Karen Gillan were as superb as ever: Gillan in particular is terrific at playing frightened, ill or whatever in contrast to previous companions. When she was scared of being sucked into the earth she sounded like she really meant it.

  4. Definitely better than Victory of the Daleks, and in some ways, perhaps Vampires of Venice too.

    Best bit:
    “The only person who’s made any sense of it is the Doctor!”
    “Him?”
    “Me!”

    Which shows that even in a pretty routine episode Matt Smith is consistently a joy to watch.

    The only thing that jarred a bit was the bit where the Doctor was so engrossed in monitoring the equipment they’d set up that he barely seemed to notice that the boy was going to leave the church to get his headphones. Back in The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor was able to notice one person out of many facing the wrong way pointing his camera phone at someone else – if he can take in details like that in the middle of a crisis, I would have thought he’d notice a kid announce they were going to leave the safety of the sanctuary they’d set up. So that moment verged on Plot-Induced Stupidity for me…

  5. Nah. Worst ep of the series so far. ‘Silurians’ look rubbish and boring, just generic human lizard things now. By next week I may even rate ’42’ higher than this because at least that story only wasted one episode. Matt and Karen were brilliant as always though and I’m liking the Doctor/Rory dynamic that’s been evolving too. But yeah. Not exactly a massively interesting episode was it?

  6. One thing, perhaps the only thing of interest in the episode – Rory and Amy’s “future selves” showing up. The Doctor immediately assumed that it was them ten years hence, but… it clearly isn’t is it? It’s “our” Amy and Rory, turning up in the TARDIS for some as yet unknown reason. It’s another instance of what we saw in Flesh & Stone, when “future Doctor” showed up. BANKER, get your money on it now.

  7. An idea that clever in a Chibnall story? I might just take your money. It was all a bit so so. It didn’t feel especially RTD to me, if anything it felt more JNT with production standards to match. Lovely line about Meringue though.

  8. No episode of new Who should be allowed to be anywhere near that boring. Let’s just get next week out of the way ASAP and back to a writer who has the vaguest idea what they’re doing.