Doctor Who: Dinosaurs On A Spaceship

'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship' is classic Who. It takes two random things that shouldn't go together, 'Dinosaurs' and 'Spaceship' and puts it into a blender. The result? This episode, and it was GLORIOUSLY AWESOME! Perfect Saturday night T.V. The writer of the episode Chris Chibnall (who is also writing episode four 'The Power Of Three') said that he came onto the episode with the pitch (from Moffat) being 'Dinosaurs....but you know....on a Spaceship!' and wrote the story completely around that title. So I suppose it could have been a disaster, on paper it seemed like the most stupid thing ever (and I'm sure some people would say it's still stupid) but Doctor Who is the perfect catalyst for such a brief.

I think we all know where this is heading...

The episode starts with the Doctor recruiting various companions from all over time and space in order to stop a giant spaceship (the size of Canada) from being blown up by the ISA (Indian Space Agency) before it can hit Earth. Their job is essentially to investigate the craft and change it's trajectory, but of course things get in the way, like the aforementioned Dinosaurs of the title and a greedy space pirate played by David Bradely with his two bumbling robot sidekicks. Right off the bat we're treated to an opening montage of several locations, the first being Egypt in 1334 BC where we're first introduced to queen Nefertiti. While her personality is completely historically inaccurate she nonetheless fit's right into this episode's bizarre tone and just adds to the fun of it all. Speaking of fun, the next companion on the list is John Riddell from the African plains in 1902 AD, and boy is his character a treat. Essentially a 'walking innuendo' as stated by Amy, Rupert Graves imbues the character with such charm and wit that you immediately fall in love with him the moment he starts flirting with Nefertiti and expresses interest in having a Dinosaurs tooth. The third and final new companion introduced is Mark William's Brian Williams (that's a lot of Williams!), and is probably one of the best side-character's introduced into the Moffat era so far. Brian is one of those down to earth, typical average bloke characters and his interactions with Rory and the Doctor in this episode are a wonder to behold. They're the straight men to the Doctors wacky ego. And I love how Brian was immediately part of the group, and didn't show much surprise to anything. After one episode, I think he's up there with Wilfred Mott (Donna's granddad) and Doctor Who benefits greatly from fantastic side-characters like the ones in this episode. Sure Nefertiti and Riddell are a bit one dimensional but they're so much fun why wouldn't you include them, especially when DW is the only show that can have all these weird personalities clashing together at once? Speaking of clashing personalities, how about we move onto Solomon and his Douglas Adam's-esque Robot's? As a one-off character, David Bradely is suitably villainous as the space pirate Soloman. He turns what could have been a boring villain into one of the more interesting bad guys to interact with the Doctor. It's a breath of fresh air to finally get a good, honest-to-god cackling villain in Doctor Who for once, all the recent episodes feature monsters with no real 'face' to them. Basically what I'm saying is 'Why can't we have more human bad guys for once?', the Doctor can't really talk to a Silent or a Weeping Angel, and the Dalek's are very to the point. Soloman is about as nasty a bad guy as you can get, insinuating theft, murder, greed, complete disregard for any form of life and in one scene, even implied rape. And at the end he clearly hadn't changed his ways so of course the Doctor blew him up! Who wouldn't? His two Robot apprentices (played by Mitchell and Webb) are basically there to make the episode a lot lighter and to add a bit more comedy to the mix. They're fine, and the awesome sequence where they're firing at the duo...while riding a triceratops had me grinning from ear-to-ear. 

It's powered by an internal beach.

So how did the rest of the episode go? Well the revelation that the giant spaceship was a Silurian arc was a neat reference, the Dinosaurs were in it quite a bit (I thought five minutes best due to budget restrictions), Amy and Rory were actually likeable this time (Amy having improved especially), Matt Smith was delightfully silly, and visually the episode was a treat, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if this episode's budget was bigger than Asylum Of The Daleks, there seemed to be effects shots everywhere! Oh and that scene at the end with Rory's Dad above the earth? F*CKING FANTASTIC. Most beautiful moment I've seen on Doctor Who ever, and so, so British. As far as I'm concerned, Chibnall has wrote a near masterpiece here, with a witty script and excellent pacing throughout: 9/10.

Oh, and who didn't shed a tear when 'Tricey' the Triceratops died?

R.I.P Tricey, we'll miss ya!