Doctor Who – Season 7, Pt.1 | Visible Procrastinations

Description:Join the Doctor, the Ponds and numerous friends on their latest escapades through space and time where they puzzle an unexpected invasion of Earth, save a spaceship full of dinosaurs, don Stetsons in a Wild Wild West adventure, and are even kidnapped by the Doctor’s oldest foe. The explosive series concludes with Amy and Rory’s heart-breaking farewell – a race against time through the streets of Manhattan. Will the Doctor really lose the Ponds forever – there’s only one way to find out…

The upcoming seventh series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who will be broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom, and on BBC America in North America, from 1 September 2012 into early 2013, following the 2011 Christmas Special “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”, which was broadcast on 25 December 2011. There will be six episodes broadcast in 2012, including the 2012 Christmas Special; the remaining eight episodes will air in 2013. [wikipedia]

The ABC is fast-tracking the seventh season of Doctor Who to Australia, outing plans to air the show a week behind UK counterparts. [Gizmodo]

ABC TV is thrilled to announce that in true time-lord style, the first episode of Season 7 of Doctor Who, “Asylum of the Daleks”, will now premiere on iview Sunday, 2 September from 5.10am EST immediately after its UK launch on 1 September. [ABC TV Blog]

As River Song would say – Spoilers!

Doctor Who – 7×1 – Asylum of the Daleks
The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are kidnapped by the Daleks, who explain that a planet they use as an asylum for mad Daleks must be destroyed, but to do that its force-field must be disabled. The field has already been ruptured due to the crash-landing of a precocious young woman, Oswin Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman) one year previously. The Daleks provide the three with bracelets to protect them against the planet’s defense system, which will convert any visitors into Dalek puppets, and then teleport them to the planet. Although they are guided by Oswin, who has hacked into the planet’s systems, the converted remains of Oswin’s crew steal Amy’s bracelet and she begins converting, though the Doctor gives her his bracelet which stops the process. He goes to find Oswin, as she claims to be able to disable the planet’s force-field, and Oswin hacks into the Dalek psychic link and erases all memory of the Doctor from the Daleks to save him from advancing Daleks. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory, who had recently divorced due to Amy’s hidden guilt of not being able to bear children, reconcile. The Doctor discovers that Oswin has herself been fully converted into a Dalek, yet she still believes herself to be human. She ultimately realises the truth of her situation, but lowers the force-field and the Doctor, Amy, and Rory escape via teleporter before the planet is destroyed by the waiting Dalek fleet. The Doctor returns to the Dalek Parliament to find they have no memory of him due to Oswin’s interference. He drops Amy and Rory off at their house and sets off again, gleefully repeating the question the Daleks asked him: “Doctor Who?”

The Doctor: What have you been doing on your own against the Daleks for a year?
Oswin: Making soufflés?
The Doctor: Soufflés. Against the Daleks. [He's amused; then:] Where’d you get the milk?

☞ Doctor Who Recap: “Asylum of the Daleks” [Wired: GeekDad]

Doctor Who – 7×2 – Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
The Doctor attempts to prevent the destruction of an unmanned spaceship with a cargo of dinosaurs alongside Rory’s father, Brian (Mark Williams), Queen Nefertiti (Riann Steele), and big-game hunter John Riddell (Rupert Graves). The Doctor and his companions discover that the ship is a Silurian ark designed to carry the reptilian humanoids to a new planet along with flora and fauna from their time period. The Doctor, Rory, and Brian are escorted by two robots to a human called Solomon who was injured in a raptor attack. Solomon, who had boarded the spaceship and killed its Silurian inhabitants in order to sell the dinosaurs on board, threatens the Doctor into repairing his legs and into giving him Queen Nefertiti after seeing her value. Missiles are fired from Earth to stop the ship from crashing into it. The Doctor disables Solomon’s robots and rescues Nefertiti before he tricks the missiles into targeting Solomon’s ship and detaching it from the Silurian ark, whereupon the missiles destroy his ship, taking Solomon with it. Meanwhile, Rory and Brian pilot the ark away from the Earth.

Brian: Not possible.
The Doctor: Run.
Amy: Doctor!
The Doctor: I know. Dinosaurs. On a spaceship!

☞ Doctor Who Recap: “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” [Wired: GeekDad]

Doctor Who – 7×3 – A Town Called Mercy
The TARDIS accidentally lands in a town in the American West c. 1870 where the TARDIS crew discovers an alien, Jex, acting as the town’s doctor, who is being sought by the Gunslinger, a cyborg. The Doctor discovers Jex was a scientist who experimented on volunteers to create cyborgs to fight in a war on his home planet; the Gunslinger is seeking revenge for what was done to him. To prevent the deaths of the townsfolk, he then offers Jex to the Gunslinger, but Amy talks him out of this. However, while the Doctor still believes Jex must answer for his crimes, when the town marshal sacrifices himself to protect Jex from a blast fired by the Gunslinger, he has a change of heart. Seeing that the Gunslinger can track Jex by his facial mark, the Doctor creates a distraction by having the townsfolk paint the mark on their faces and run about; Jex can reach his spaceship and escape with this occurring. However, when it would appear the Gunslinger would follow Jex and involve others in his vendetta again, Jex commits suicide by blowing up this spaceship. Without a purpose now that his vendetta has been completed and because he is nothing more than a weapon of war, the Gunslinger prepares to self-destruct. However, the Doctor talks him out of it and makes him the new marshal of Mercy.

The Doctor: We could end this right now. We could save everyone right now!
Amy: This is not how we roll, and you know it. What’s happened to you, Doctor? When did killing someone become an option?
The Doctor: Jex has to answer for his crimes.
Amy: And what then? Are you going to hunt down everyone who’s made a gun or a bullet or a bomb?
The Doctor: But they keep coming back, don’t you see? Every time I negotiate, I try to understand. Well not today. No, today I honor the victims first. His, The Master’s, the Daleks’. All the people that died because of my mercy!
Amy: See, this is what happens when you travel alone for too long. Well, listen to me, Doctor, we can’t be like him. We have to be better than him.

☞ Doctor Who Recap: “A Town Called Mercy” [Wired: GeekDad]

Doctor Who – 7×4 – The Power of Three
Amy and Rory begin to wonder whether they should choose between normal life and “Doctor Life”; when they go away with him they become a part of his life, but the Doctor hasn’t been around long enough to be a part of theirs. This all changes when several black cubes appear around the world. Because they are inactive and pose no threat the Doctor begins going insane with boredom; he goes away for a while leaving UNIT in charge of keeping an eye on the cubes. An entire year goes by and the cubes suddenly begin activating random features before stopping the hearts of one third of humanity. The Doctor eventually tracks the cubes to the Shakri, the self-proclaimed “pest-controllers” of the universe; they are eliminating humanity before they can colonise in space, believing them to be an infestation. The Doctor reverses the electric pulse used to stop people’s hearts and brings back those who were killed by it, blowing up the Shakri ship. At Brian’s urging the Doctor takes Amy and Rory back as full-time companions.

The Doctor: ‘I’m not running away from things, I’m running to them, before they flare and fade for ever’

☞ Doctor Who: The Power of Three – series 33, episode four [The Guardian]

Doctor Who – 7×5 – The Angels Take Manhattan
The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to Central Park. While the Doctor is reading Amy a novel about a character called Melody Malone, Rory is taken by a Weeping Angel on his way back from getting coffee. In 1938 New York City, Rory meets River Song, posing as a private investigator and, as the Doctor discovers, the author of his Melody Malone novel. The Doctor and Amy use the novel to break their way into a time-locked 1938 and find Rory, while he and River investigate the Angels’ takeover of Manhattan. At the Winter Quay hotel, they find an aged Rory on his deathbed, confirming Rory’s fate. The Angels created the hotel in order to keep their victims and maintain a constant source of potential energy on which to feed. To escape his fate, Rory and Amy jump off the top of the building to their deaths, creating a paradox that erases the Angels and their hotel. Waking up in a graveyard with the TARDIS, all seems well until Rory is transported by a surviving Angel. Rescuing him with another paradox would rip New York City apart. As the Doctor begs Amy to come back into the TARDIS, she bids him a tearful farewell and allows the Angel send her back to Rory, creating a fixed point in time. Later, the devastated Doctor reads an afterword by Amy in the novel, telling him all is well and asking him not to be alone, as well as requesting he visit young Amelia Pond as she waits for him in the garden.

River: What matters is this, Doctor. Don’t travel alone.
The Doctor: Travel with me then.
River: Whenever and wherever you want. But not all the time. One psychopath per TARDIS, don’t you think?

☞ Doctor Who, episode 5: The Angels Take Manhattan, review [The Telegraph]

☞ Review: Doctor Who – 7×5 – The Angels Take Manhattan [The Medium is Not Enough TV blog]

Doctor Who – 7×6 – The Snowmen (Christmas special)
This episode will introduce the new companion played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, and guest stars Tom Ward and Richard E. Grant as the villain. It will be set in Victorian times.

Christmas Eve 1892 and the falling snow is the stuff of fairy-tales. When the fairy-tale becomes a nightmare and a chilling menace threatens Earth, an unorthodox young governess, Clara, calls on the Doctor for help. But the Doctor is in mourning, reclusive and determined not to engage in the problems of the universe. As old friends return, will the Doctor really abandon humankind or will he fight to save the world – and Christmas – from the icy clutches of this mysterious menace.

Clara: After you. I’m wearing a dress. Eyes front, soldier.
The Doctor: My eyes are always front.
Clara: [the Doctor clims up the latter] Mine aren’t.
The Doctor: Stop it!
Clara: No.

☞ Review: Doctor Who Christmas Special “The Snowmen” [Wired: GeekDad]

☞ Doctor Who: The Snowmen – Christmas special 2012 [The Guardian]