Matt Smith--The Biography

by Emily Herbert

  Another blogger, Patrick Mulkern, on the Radio Times website, felt the same – and was very amused by the amorous note at the end. ‘All in all, two episodes of Who that deserve 10 out of 10 in anybody’s scorebook,’ he wrote. ‘For me, “The Time of Angels” was marginally more dazzling. Am I alone in finding the decaying Angels in the Maze of the Dead more macabre than their chiselled chums aboard the Byzantium? But “Flesh and Stone” bombards us with shudders and tension – especially Amy stumbling through the forest with her eyes closed. I was also much amused by Amy’s amorous antics at the end. None of the protracted, doe-eyed mooning of Rose and Martha, or even Donna’s classic: “You’re not mating with me, sunshine!” Pinging aside the Doctor’s braces, Amy isn’t “suggesting anything quite so long-term”. It seems she’s just up for a quickie on the eve of her wedding – or is she actually falling in love with this dorky/dishy Doctor as much as we are now?’

  That pretty much summed it up. The hand-wringing continued in some quarters about Amy’s immodest behaviour, but the fact was that the Doctor, Amy and Steven Moffat were powering ahead. Or to put it another way: David Who?

  CHAPTER 5

  WATCH OUT – THESE GIRLS HAVE TEETH

  One of the man ways in which the Doctor was thriving in his new incarnation was because of the quality of the monsters. Always crucial in any really good Doctor Who, this new lot were as terrifying and mesmerising as anything that had gone before – especially the Weeping Angels, of whom it was safe to say the viewers had not seen the last. Whatever a few naysayers might say about it being too frightening for small children – Doctor Who had always been too frightening for small children – the public were loving it. And they were about to get more monsters still.

  Doctor Who had always featured monsters that would turn up time and again – the Daleks and the Cybermen being the most obvious examples – but there were also many one-offs, and that was what was to be on offer in the next episode of the series, ‘The Vampires of Venice’. There was to be an extra companion in this trip, too.

  The Doctor, a little alarmed at Amy’s evident interest in him, collects her fiancé Rory, and the three of them set off for Venice in 1580. A plague is running through Italy, so Venice (actually Croatia, but it looked pretty good) has been quarantined by order of Signora Rosanna Calvierri, the city’s patron, who runs a school for young women. The fearless trio bump into Guido, a boat builder, whose daughter Isabella attends the school, and who is desperate to know what is happening to her.

  That there is something a little odd about the school is not in doubt. Signora Calvierri, her son Francesco and the female students all suffer from some curious traits: they cannot be seen in mirrors, they fear sunlight, and they drink blood by biting necks with their long and very unpleasant teeth – clearly, then, they are vampires. Or so everyone thinks. Amy smuggles herself into the school so that she can let the others in after her; she is caught, however, and taken to a room, there to prepare for vampiredom, before her struggling shows that the Signora is wearing something which allows her to conceal an alien form. The Doctor and Rory arrive and, helped by Isabella, arrange for Amy’s escape; Isabella herself, however, still weak in the glare of sunlight, is unable to go with them. She is thrown into the canal, there to be eaten by an unseen creature or creatures that lurks beneath.

  At this point, of course, everyone realises that they are not dealing with vampires at all. The Doctor confronts Signora Calvierri and discovers that she and her cohorts are from the planet Saturnyne, alien aquatic beings wearing perception filters, which stop observers from seeing who they really are. That is the reason they can’t be seen in mirrors. They fell through a crack in time, of which there were an increasing number on their own planet, and landed in Venice – a good location for an aquatic race – where they wanted to convert human beings into being ‘Sisters of Water’. The Doctor goes to Guido to give him the news; a number of the female fishes in human form come to attack them, and Guido blows himself up to save the others.

  Signora Calvierri, meanwhile, is set on destroying her new home. She climbs to the top of a tower, and activates something that will start creating earthquakes and tsunamis; the Doctor manages to stop her, while Amy and Rory successfully take on Francesco. Signora Calvierri prepares to sacrifice herself by throwing herself into the canal, there to be consumed by her little ones, but can’t resist one last taunt at the Doctor’s expense before she goes: he is now responsible for the extinction of two species, she tells him. The Time Lords and her own. And with that the trio repair to the Tardis, there to ponder on what they have just seen.

  Again, the critics’ reaction was on the whole favourable. ‘If The Vampires of Venice proved anything, it was that this series has significantly raised standards for Doctor Who,’ blogged Dan Martin on the Guardian website. ‘It was beautifully shot, and there was plenty to pick apart: the way every part of the vampire mythos was explained away by Who pseudo-science was delightful; the stand-off between the Doctor and Rosanna was beautifully played; the dialogue as cracking as you’d expect from [writer Toby] Whithouse; the Doctor and Amy getting overexcited about there being vampires cute; and the climactic shot of the Doctor scaling the tower in the rain was just the correct level of broad brushstroke.’

  Patrick Mulkern on the Radio Times site was also impressed. ‘The vampire girls are a scream with their bonces backcombed like Fenella Fielding in Carry On Screaming,’ he blogged. ‘I must admit I yawn at aliens disguised as humans. We’ve seen it so many times now. And Whithouse has used this device in Torchwood (Toshiko’s lesbian affair with a shapeshifter) and in his nostalgic Who, ‘School Reunion’ (bat-like Krillitanes disguised as teachers). But his script delivers lots of heroics and funny moments for the Doctor, Amy and Rory. A goofy Mr Ordinary, Rory grounds the drama in a way that ethereal Amy can’t and is a welcome addition to the Tardis crew.’

  But not everyone was impressed. Gavin Fuller, on the Telegraph website, blogged, ‘What we were presented with was a highly derivative romp where a humorous lightness of touch made the threat of the vampires far less effective than it could, or indeed should, have been. The girl vampires acting in unison could have been a memorably sinister enemy, but Matt Smith’s Doctor didn’t seem to take them terribly seriously, thus negating their effect.’

  But his was a lone voice in the wilderness. Doctor Who was now dominating the Saturday night schedules: nearly half way through its run, it was as if no one but Matt Smith could ever have been Doctor Who.

  The writers were pretty impressive, too. Steven Moffat was clearly one of the best ever to have worked on the series, but a veritable (Doctor) Who’s Who of the best-known names on British television were now queuing up to give it their all. The next episode, ‘Amy’s Choice’, was written by Simon Nye, best known for sitcom Men Behaving Badly, and he very much showed himself to be up to the role. His was an intriguing little tale, containing not one, but two, mortal dangers – and a brand new set of monsters, which managed to slot into a tradition created by Russell T Davies. Many of Russell’s monsters and aliens had appeared at first glance to be kindly little old ladies or gentle and courteous old men, before they attempted world domination or the destruction of the planet, and so these new monsters were to prove to be.

  ‘Amy’s Choice’ takes place in two locations: the Tardis and Amy’s hometown of Leadworth, five years in the future, where she is heavily pregnant with Rory’s baby. The Doctor, Amy and Rory veer between the two realities by falling asleep in one and waking up in the other: they are unable to establish which is the real reality and which is a dream.

  It is while they’re awake in the Tardis that a mysterious figure called the Dream Lord appears and tells them that they have a choice. They are going to be confronted with two mortal terrors, one real and one not; they must choose which to fight and which to lose. If they choose the real menace, they will be fine. If they choose the false one, however, that will be that.

  The two terrors soon make t
hemselves known. In the Tardis power has gone and they are being sucked into the orbit of a freezing cold star; if they do not manage to escape, they will freeze to death. Back down on earth, meanwhile, the older members of the population are beginning to run amok: far from being 80- and 90-somethings tucked up in a care home, they are actually an evil race called the Eknodine, who can kill people just by breathing on them.

  Amy’s choice is revealed when the Doctor and Rory fall asleep in the Tardis, but she stays awake to be tormented by the Dream Lord. She must choose, he tells her, between a life of peaceful marriage with Rory or excitement with the Doctor; her choice will boil down to which world she wants to live in. She then wakes up in Leadworth, where Rory and the Doctor are being attacked by the Eknodine. Rory dies while trying to save Amy, which makes up her mind for her: Leadworth is false and the Tardis is where reality lies. To this effect she and the Doctor ram a camper van into the cottage killing them both; given that all three wake up in the Tardis shortly afterwards, she appears to have made the right choice.

  However, there is a twist: this is a dream, too. The Doctor proves as much when he presses the Tardis’s self-destruct button and the three wake up for a second time. However, it ends on a slightly subdued note, for while Amy has made her choice – and it is Rory she chooses, not the Doctor – the Doctor is worried about the Dream Lord. The Dream Lord, it transpires, is actually the physical manifestation of the Doctor’s darker side – and he will be back. (And for diehard fans, this is not the first time the Doctor has been revealed to have a darker side – in ‘The Trial Of A Time Lord’, a character called Valeyard appears, who is supposed to have been distilled between the Doctor’s twelfth and final regeneration.)

  Again, the episode went down very well. ‘The choice of Simon Men Behaving Badly Nye, with his background in sitcoms, to write an episode of Doctor Who might seem at first sight a curious one, but then it’s not as if writers with a comedy background have not written for the series before – take Terry Nation for example and look what happened there! (he created the Daleks),’ blogged Gavin Fuller for the Telegraph. ‘And Nye certainly came up with the goods here, with probably the strongest all-round script we’ve had this year, chock full of good lines, particularly about the Doctor and his attitude to/relationship with his companions, although Amy’s line about the prospect of facing death when dressed as a Peruvian folk band was possibly the highlight.’

  Dan Martin, blogging for the Guardian, called it a ‘cunning little character piece.’ He said, ‘For the most part, it feels like a fun Shaun Of The Dead-style romp, all murderous pensioners and lashings of jolly innuendo. Then you get the sting in the tail – and the more accurate reference is Fight Club – the revelation that the Dream Lord is actually the Doctor’s own self-loathing seems obvious once it’s revealed, but also creates the kind of “whoosh” moment that gives a story new gravitas. And the Dream Lord really is deliciously mean, calling him out on his every character flaw; his love of showing off, his clothes, the way he turns people into weapons (to quote Davros), the way he leaves people behind. It’s pretty heavy stuff and, at the mid-season point, gives us the first instance of the character opening up and beginning to unravel.’

  Over at the Radio Times, Patrick Mulkern was initially cautious, in particular expressing concern at the demonisation of old people (although in truth, they make far scarier villains than the young and fit), but softened after a second viewing. ‘Nye reinforces the idea that the Doctor is an old man who “prefers the company of the young”; his friends are just “people you acquire” never seen again “once they’re grown up”,’ he wrote. ‘Curiously, the Dream Lord and both dream worlds are drawn from the Time Lord’s psyche. The Doctor admits the “psychic pollen” is a mind parasite, which “feeds on everything dark in you. Your inner voice. It turns it against you”. And Toby Jones is perfect as the Rumpelstiltskin nightmare emerging from the Doctor’s paranoia.’

  By this time, however, viewers and critics alike were beginning to spot another problem. The Doctor had not one companion but two, and while that had certainly been done before, in this case the companions in question were a couple. And now Amy had chosen which one she preferred. This set up all sorts of potential problems, not least because it risked the Doctor looking like a gooseberry, not something he had ever been before. And then there was the fact that while Amy had made her choice, the viewer didn’t necessarily agree with her. The Doctor was a pretty fascinating chap with whom to while your time away around the universe, after all, and Rory’s continuing presence was going to highlight the fact that for some people, at least, Amy had made the wrong choice.

  This little problem appeared to have been solved in the next episode, ‘The Hungry Earth’. Written by Chris Chibnall, a long-standing writer on the series Torchwood, it was the first of a two-parter, featuring some monsters last seen way back in 1984, the Silurians, a reptilian race who had been lurking far underground in the barrels of the earth.

  As the episode opens, the Doctor, Amy and Rory set off for Rio de Janeiro (which gives an excuse for Amy to run around in a very short skirt throughout the series), but actually land in the Welsh village of Cwmtaff in 2020, where something very odd is going on. A local mining operation, led by Doctor Nasreen Chaudhry, has uncovered minerals that have not been seen for 20 million years. Also present are Tony Mack, a local, his daughter Ambrose and her son Elliot; they are studying another oddity, namely the disappearance of bodies from nearby graves.

  At this point the earth opens: Tony is saved, while Amy is dragged underground. But the Doctor has by now worked out that the minerals comprise a bio-reactive defence system that was triggered by the drilling operation; more than that three life forms are making their way to the surface of the earth. (This allows the Doctor one of the best lines in the series: ‘You’re not just drilling down. Something is drilling up.’) Various people barricade themselves in the church and the three retiles appear: in the ensuing fight, one, Alaya, is captured, Tony is struck by a venomous forked tongue, and the other two capture Elliot and disappear. Now both sides have a hostage and negotiations can begin.

  Alaya turns out to be a warrior Silurian, awoken from millions of years of deep slumber by the drilling (it was clear at this point that the episode had strongly environmental overtones) and prepared to fight for the return of earth to her race. Rather unfortunately, she begins to taunt the humans, predicting one of them will be the cause of her death. The Doctor, accompanied by Nasreen, meanwhile, enters the Tardis, there to travel to the bowels of the earth. In the meantime, Amy awakens to find herself strapped to an operating table; beside her is Mo, Ambrose’s husband, who had been swallowed by the earth at the beginning of the episode. They take on board the bad news that the Silurians intend to vivisect them. The Doctor and Nasreen, meanwhile, discover that far from the small community they were expecting to encounter, there is a vast and extensive civilization peopling the bowels of the earth. And there the episode ends on a cliffhanger – for some reason, despite having been very exciting, the lowest rated episode to date.

  The Rory problem, as it were, was solved in the second of the two-parter, ‘Cold Blood’. Deep in the bowels of the earth, the Doctor and Nasreen are apprehended by the Silurian and taken off to be examined by a doctor, Malohkeh. Amy and Mo have already managed to escape and have found Elliot, sedated and under observation. Elsewhere, Nasreen is also sedated, while Malohkeh begins to examine the Doctor, causing him terrible pain until he finally realises the Doctor is not human and desists. Restac, the leader of the Silurians arrives and demands their deaths: they are taken to a Silurian court; Amy and Mo turn up and are captured, too.

  However, the Silurians are not all speaking as one. Eldane, Restac’s superior, arrives, and demands that hostilities cease. The Doctor gets in touch with everyone still above the earth, telling them how important it is that they keep Alaya alive: unfortunately, however, he is too late. Unable to bear being goaded about Tony, who is developing a ve
ry ominous and slightly branch-like green streak where he has been stung, Ambrose has killed her.

  Blithely unaware of this disturbing development, the Doctor ploughs on underground. He gets the Silurians and the humans to start talking to one another, negotiating ways in which they can share the earth. He summons the others to come down, unaware that they will be bringing with them a corpse. Nor is that the half of it. Concerned about what will happen when the Silurians learn about Alaya, Ambrose gets Tony to set the drill to burrow further and self destruct 15 minutes after they depart, destroying the Silurian oxygen supplies once and for all.

  There are tremors down below, as well. Restac has killed Malohkeh and awoken her fellow warriors, in order to take over from Eldane. She gets angrier still when the humans arrive with Alaya’s corpse, but the Doctor manages to disable their weapons temporarily, to give everyone the chance to escape. It is then that he learns the big news about the drill: however, the Doctor and Eldane realise they can disable it using Silurian technology, although that means the only way back to the earth’s surface will be via the Tardis, as the exit route will collapse. Eldane deals with the warriors: he gets a ‘toxic fumigation’ programme to start, forcing them back into hibernation and giving the humans time to escape. Tony decides to stay, as it is the only way his venom wound has a chance of being healed; Nasreen – for the two are in love – decides to stay with him. After all, she can work underground as well as on top of it. Hopes are expressed that, a thousand years hence, humans and the Silurians might actually be able to get on.

  The rest get back to the Tardis, where that crack in the cavern wall has appeared again. The Doctor reaches through it and finds something that clearly frightens him (it appears to be a future and decayed part of the outside of the Tardis) but there is an abrupt interruption from Restac, who is dying and wants to take down the others, too. He fires at the Doctor, but Rory sacrifices himself to save him and dies in Amy’s arms. His body is sucked into the crack, at which point he ceases to ever have existed, and so despite the Doctor’s best efforts to jog her memory, Amy forgets about him. They return to where they had started out to see a vision of Amy walking in the distance. It is the same vision they had had at the beginning – but back then Rory was in it, too.