I’m
pretty sure I’ve admitted before that I was prepared to not-love the Eleventh
Doctor. I fell into the group of doubters who saw images of Matt Smith and
thought, Who’s this child??, and I
was sure I needed some convincing before I could believe he had what it took to
be the Doctor (this was before I learned that, like Pixar films, Who casting is basically always to be
trusted.) Then, “The Eleventh Hour” happened (premise spoilers.)
The
newly-regenerated Eleventh Doctor crashes the TARDIS outside the home of Amelia
Pond, a little Scottish girl with a mysterious Crack in her bedroom wall,
through which she can hear voices from another world. The Doctor’s inspection
of the Crack leads to the escape of the shapeshifting Prisoner Zero on the
other side, and while the Doctor is hot on the trail, a malfunction in the
TARDIS causes him to pick it up twelve years later.
We’ll get
the nitpicks out of the way first. I’m not a fan of the adult Amy working as a
“kissogram,” and this episode kicks off the first of Moffat’s “companion
mystery” arcs, which keeps Amy from feeling as fully realized as some of her
predecessors. The creepy repetition from the threat of the week (a la,
“Prisoner Zero has escaped,”) gets annoying long before it’s over. And Olivia
Colman, who’s since become an Oscar winner with The Favourite, is wasted in a one-scene role.
But
there’s so much about it that’s so great. By the time I first saw this episode,
even if I was wary about Matt Smith as Eleven, I felt RTD’s showrunner tricks
were getting played out and I was ready for Moffat’s (though, as I’ve made
clear quite a few places on this blog, his began to grate in time as well.)
Young Amelia is a delight, and while grown-up Amy doesn’t interest me quite as
much here, the idea of a companion who met the Doctor as a child and has been
waiting her whole life to travel with him is a neat concept – I get the notion
that it’s just a rehash of “The Girl in the Fireplace,” but it feels different
enough to me, and I wish the show had done more with this aspect of Amy.
Meanwhile, Rory immediately proves himself clever and observant, although he
gets bowled over easily by stronger personalities (between Amy and the Doctor,
he doesn’t stand a chance.)
But, as
we all know, the big headline here is Eleven. Ten minutes into the episode, I
was in complete platonic love with him. From him rope-climbing out of the
sideways TARDIS, to his slightly-delighted admission that he’s “still cooking,”
to the wonderfully-eccentric way he throws
the water out of a glass before using it as a listening device, he is
immediately, exquisitely, every inch the Doctor. Simultaneously laser-focused
and infuriatingly-distractable, bringing both the excitement of a puppy and the
steadiness of a centuries-old near-immortal, he just lights up the screen. You
feel the adventure and the warmth radiating from him, and he even makes the
doofy outfit weirdly work. I’ll gladly forgive “The Eleventh Hour” for any
faults it may have, simply because it introduces this truly-excellent Doctor to
us.
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