Doctor Who - The Beast Below, 5.02

Once upon a time...

Amelia Pond is a child with a big imagination and a fairy tale name. Amy Pond is a self-proclaimed grown-up. The Doctor instigated her belief in the impossible, and twelve long years contributed to her subsequent disillusionment. Rose Tyler was the big, bad, wolf, and Amy Pond is Alice down the rabbit hole. A strange man in your house at night who promises you the universe is a fairy tale. A crack in time and space that happens to be in your bedroom wall, of all places (and you, of all people!), is a fairy tale. Monsters, and hidden doors out of sight unless you turn your head just so, are the makings of a fairy tale. And the fairy tale of the Raggedy Doctor with a Box happens to Amy Pond, who is Amelia Pond, who is a Scottish girl in an English village yet never relinquished her accent (and the Doctor knows how that feels).

I started the fifth season of Doctor Who today. Steven Moffat took the reigns from Russell T Davies, and I have high expectations.* Moffat's episodes in the last four seasons of New Who have been my favorites -- he is an incredibly creative writer. I could write tons about what exactly I like about his stories, but I expect I'll be covering a lot of those points as I write about this new season. I will definitely note parallels and common themes introduced in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, that return here. I've already noticed a couple:

• What's not seen is scarier than an in-your-face monster. Blink's Weeping Angels, SitL/FotD's Vashta Nerada, a door in your house you can't see unless you look in the corner of your eye...
• Tons of creepiness. TEC/TDD's gas masks, TGitL's ticking baddies, The Beast Below's Smilers.
• Repeated phrases for maximum creep factor. "Are you my mummy?" "Don't blink." "Count the shadows." -- none yet in s5, but I'm confident!

The Eleventh Hour is directed and acted sharper, crisper than RTD's Who; the better direction is perhaps a testament more to the times than the showrunner (any Old Who serial elicits a giggle -- the times, they are a-changin'), but the acting, I think, is a conscious decision by Moffat to distinguish his characters from Ten's incredibly emotive face and hyperactive personality (not to mention the Rose Tyler's big eyes and Martha Jones's pining after the Doctor and Donna Noble's loud voice and at times abrasive demeanor). Smith and Gillan are Moffat's toys. While RTD made his Doctor shed tears or fall in love, Moffat's Doctor might quip a non-sequitur with a steady expression (so I theorize, from what I've seen so far!).** RTD would up the ante by adding more Daleks; Moffat excels at creating villains out of shadows and silence.*** And to be honest, I don't know which tone I prefer. I like theatrics and big emotion, but I'm also completely enamored of the simple creepiness and organic intrigue that gets under your skin as you watch a Moffat story unfold.

Observations specifically about The Beast Below:

• The Queen is royally dressed in a velvet-like material, but most interestingly, it's a deep red hood and cape. (Rebel/defiant Queen itself an archetype of sorts). She is deceptively old, and has told herself the greatest lie every ten years; she has deceived herself.
• Two choices: Protest vs. Forget -- very red pill/blue pill, very fork-in-the-road, very fairy tale.
• Spaceship UK has the interior of a medieval castle, complete with a dungeon that houses a beast
• I cannot express how much I LOVED Amy's revelation about the parallel between the star whale and the Doctor -- both lonely, the last of their kind, hundreds of years old, can't stand to see children cry, their misery and solitude and age have made them kind
• Astounding episode, already one of my favorites!
• Plus, nursery rhymes! How haunting, and fitting for an episode (and likely, series) set around the innocence of children.

* I am going to analyze the SHIT out of this series. It's Moffat. Nothing is coincidence. It has to be done.

** Smith's Doctor gets angry, but it's focused inward, and released in bursts.

*** Exceptions abound. RTD's Midnight was terrifying without a visible monster. Moffat's clockwork monsters from The Girl in the Fireplace. Etc.