Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (2012)

With a title like that, there's really no one who could cry spoilers over a vague description of this episode. Its straight forward title perhaps suggested that this was going to be a less complicated episode on the whole, with that kind of fanboy pleasing charm of combining two favourite nerdy interests and seeing what happens. It added a little more to the mix by beginning with the Doctor rounding up a 'gang' of followers to assist, including Rory's dad Brian played by Mark Williams of The Fast Show. Queen Nefertiti and big-game hunter John Riddell also joined the group, adding some welcome variety to his companions origins.

Just why there are dinosaurs on this spaceship is gradually revealed and I found it a rather satisfactorily logical reason, despite the over the top premise. Though while I initially thought that the ships creators would be the 'one species' that was not acclimatising to life aboard, the true reason for their disappearance was a little simpler than that. This was quite shocking in a way and made the focus of the episode sharply clear - a genuinely evil villain in the form of a black market trader named Solomon.

I wasn't exactly expecting it to go this way, with Mitchell and Webb showing up to voice a couple of comedic robots that felt like a mixture of something from the pages of 2000AD and an english version of the squabbling bots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen... okay, not sounding like the best of references but they generally worked for me. What initially appeared to be yet another sinister character aware of the Doctor amusingly turns out to just be someone looking for any doctor - but the tone immediately shifts as he shows his readiness to cause harm to others to get what he wants - which probably seals his fate from the get go.

There was no misunderstood enemy here or someone doing the wrong thing for noble reasons, just someone out to make a living any way they could. In a way this felt quite refreshing and he of course also provided the moment most likely to upset children this episode. That's not to say that the whole thing was very dark, on the whole it was a lot of fun as the title kind of suggests. The Doctor spent most of his time with Rory and his Dad, leaving Amy with Nefertiti and Riddell, who had some great lines together. Amy clearly being a fan of Nefertiti and bluffing "Yeah, I'm a Queen", while dismissing Riddell as someone she'd never heard of because "maybe people who go around killing defenceless animals don't go down in history".

They also all had a part to play at the end of the episode, which isn't always easy. Amy teams up with Riddell to hold off a horde of feathered Raptors, showing no qualms about taking them down once they find some tranquillisers. While Rory and his dad end up piloting the spaceship in tandem as it required two users of the same gene pool. I actually quite enjoyed how it ended, making a clear statement that here was the Doctor on unforgiving form. I wasn't really a fan of David Tennant's extreme pacifism while Russell T Davies was in charge, which lead to so many episodes requiring a peaceful solution, so it was great to see immediate justice dealt to Solomon here.

I've seen people suggesting it wasn't really like the Doctor to leave him to his fate but I think there have been plenty of past examples of him being less merciful. You could even look at how he happily blew up a room full of Daleks in the last episode and you have to ask is there really any difference to the Doctor between a human who destroyed an entire race for profit and a race of beings engineered to destroy every race in the universe? He may look human but I think it's important to remember that he's not and doesn't tend to take sides based on species so why should he care whether someone is human or alien if they are completely unredeemable?

On the whole it was quite a simple episode but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, with the only wider issue being the Doctor's concern over Amy and Rory's future. I'm beginning to wonder why he is so apprehensive about losing Amy and Rory, whether he has some kind of insight as to how they will meet their end or if it's just fear of losing more friends. The episode's temporary companions also got a brief conclusion to their stories, with Riddell and Nefertiti ending up together and Brian starting a tour of the world, which reminded me of Amelie. I was actually slightly disappointed that they couldn't salvage the Mitchell and Webb bots, as it would have been nice to see them re-purposed or re-programmed for future use.