From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jphalt@aol.com
Subject: Re: jphalt's Doctor Who reviews

SPACE/TIME

2 episodes. Approx. 7 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by:
Richard Senior. Produced by: Annabella Hurst-Brown.


THE PLOT

The Doctor and Rory are working on the TARDIS when there is a small
accident. Rory, distracted by Amy's short skirt, drops a thermo
coupling. No big deal, the Doctor tells them. "The TARDIS will lock
onto the safest space available." But the safest space available is...
inside the TARDIS! The ship has materialized inside itself. Going out
the external door causes the person to emerge from the TARDIS inside
the TARDIS. Going through the TARDIS inside causes you to come through
the external doors - back into the TARDIS. Unless the Doctor can
unravel this spatial paradox, the three of them will be trapped for
all eternity!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Matt Smith gives a typically energetic performance. This
is a Comic Relief special, and as such is all in fun. Even so, Smith
brings a hint of gravity to the Part One cliffhanger, making us
believe that to the Doctor, at least, this is a serious situation.

Amy/Rory: Amy passed her driving test the first time - by cheating,
according to Rory. "She wore a skirt," he observes. "Have you ever
seen Amy drive? Neither did her examiner." When a second Amy appears,
from slightly in the future, Amy finds herself rather fetching -
something Rory doesn't object to at all. Karen Gillan and Arthur
Darvill are in good, spirited form, and their chemistry is if anything
even more natural than it was in Series Five.


THOUGHTS

One can only do so much to review a 7 minute Comic Relief sketch, but
I do have to applaud the slickness of this little production. This is
every bit as polished as a proper episode. No one is winking at the
camera, and tech credits are on par with the regular series.

As was the case in Time Crash, Steven Moffat shows that he can craft a
clever and engaging script that actually works within a tiny running
time. The situation is a simple one, almost certainly cribbed from the
TARDIS-within-a-TARDIS sequence in Logopolis, only given a comedic
spin. As such, the plot fits just fine into the brief running time.
It's fast paced, but it isn't rushed.

As expected from Moffat, the two episodes feature a flood of clever
lines and a fair amount of sexual innuendo. There's also the expected
playing with time, with the characters interacting with, then
becoming, their future selves. There's no real meat to it, just the
writer having fun playing with his toys. But Moffat and his actors
clearly are having fun, which makes the whole thing quite a lot of fun
to watch.

And really, given the brevity of the whole thing, what more could you
ask than that?


Rating: 7/10.

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