Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Beast Below"

The Eleventh Hour

• ·      It almost goes without saying, but this is the best start to an Era any Doctor has had. The only surviving new Doctor story that comes close to being this good is Jon Pertwee’s first story, “Spearhead from Space”. You could make a strong case for “Power of the Daleks” being a better story.
• ·      What’s really notable about this is the way it’s structured around showing off it’s leading man. It’s a sensible approach the episode’s following on from David Tennant, still a fan favourite, and the man who’s very much the face of Doctor Who in the public consciousness. Having Matt Smith’s Doctor present in almost every scene really gives him as much of a chance to win the public over to the new Doctor as possible. And the script and actor go on the charm offensive in the biggest way possible, pulling out all the stops to win us over to the new Doctor, culminating in the “Hello, I’m the Doctor” rooftop speech.
• ·      For all that the script, Karen Gillan settles into her role magnificently, selling the fairy tale aspects of Amy’s character, along with the slightly broken side of the girl who has had four psychiatrists because of her belief in her imaginary friend. And, of course, the success of the new companion is helped by the fact that Caitlin Blackwood gives the best child actor performance the show’s ever had as Amelia.
• ·      And while the script is obscuring this on the first watch, a rewatch does a lot to show that Rory won’t just be straightforwardly taking on the “Mickey role” – the boyfriend the companion leaves for adventures with the Doctor. His pictures of Prisoner Zero are key to the resolution of the plot, granting him narrative worth and respect Mickey isn’t given in “Rose”.
• ·      Much like Moffat’s other “Doctor introduction” story, this is a script built heavily around the theme of perception, what we see. It’s an interesting and relevant theme to explore when your main character gets a new face. Unlike “Deep Breath”, which builds this idea around the theme of faces and veils, the Eleventh Hour explores the theme of perception through the act of looking. Eyes are a visual motif throughout the episode (and will continue to be throughout the Moffat era), with the Atraxi’s giant eye looking through the crack in space and time, and a close up on Amy’s eye as she sees the extra door in her house for the first time. And her seeing Prisoner Zero after disobeying the Doctor and going into the extra room is key to capturing prisoner Zero after it exploits its mental link with Amy: “Remember what you saw”. Perhaps most intriguing, and rarely commented on, is the final scene in the TARDIS where both Amy and the Doctor lie to each other, Amy about her reasons for wanting to be back in time for the next morning, and the Doctor about his reasons for taking Amy with him. As they lie, the two characters see each other through the TARDIS’s time rotor, visually obscured as they obscure the truth from one another. It’s a subtle but significant moment that sees the visual storytelling neatly complementing the writing. In this and many ways, “The Eleventh Hour” marks the start of the Moffat era’s push for more complex and layered visual storytelling in Doctor Who.

The Beast Below

• ·      This story doesn’t have the best of reputations, I suspect largely because Moffat himself has said he considers it “a mess”, and the script he’s least proud of writing. Also, there’s the fact that it’s the first Moffat Story that isn’t a classic. Personally, I think it’s rather lovely.
• ·      There is a rawness to this story: the direction’s a little flat, particularly for the Moffat era, where the direction and visual storytelling are so frequently of a very high standard. This and “Victory of the Daleks” are the episodes where it is most obvious this is the first season for a new production team.
• ·      This functions beautifully as a “first companion adventure” story, as we see Amy coming to understand the nature of the Doctor, and the fairy tale aesthetic of her era being stamped all over this episode, distinguishing this from similar adventures for Rose, Martha, and Donna. The way Amy gets to save the day at the end, taking big risk based on her intuition and her understanding of the Doctor, sees the show getting Amy’s character very early on.
• ·      Liz Ten’s also, a brilliant and fun woman of colour who gets a complex and distinct story that gives the episode a great deal of emotional weight. And her story of being stuck in an endless cycle that needs to be broken does loosely prefigure “Heaven Sent” in an interesting way.
• ·      Overall, this story has a wonderful Cartmel era “Bringing down he Government” vibe – the “democracy in action” joke, while not being the most complex political commentary the show has given, does have a nice bite to it, and there’s a political anger underneath this story that Moffat doesn’t explore often enough in his scripts, but always elevates his work when he does unearth it.