Eyes On The Box//Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 8: The Rings of Akhaten
Warning:
Contains spoilers
Cast:
Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Emilia Jones
Written by Neil Cross,
Directed by Farren Blackburn
The
story: The Doctor takes Clara to the world of Akhaten,
where they meet a child called Merry, the Queen of Years, and a mummified alien
god.
In a wonderful
pre-credits sequence, we see the story of how Clara’s (Jenna-Louise Coleman) parents
met and fell in love, and the importance of the leaf in Clara’s book, 101 Places to See. With the kind of
beautifully succinct and moving story-telling seen in the first ten minutes of
Pixar’s Up, this sequence sets the
scene for the episode that follows and most likely for the rest of the series.
The
Rings of Akhaten sees the Doctor (Matt Smith) taking
his new companion to the alien world of Akhaten where its inhabitants believe
the whole of the universe was born. As he arrives on the alien planet, which is
filled with a Star Wars cantina-style
array of alien creatures, the Doctor is at his child-like best as he quite
literally loses himself in a gorgeously designed steam punk set.
Clara, left alone,
discovers a scared, lost child called Merry, the Queen of Years, who holds in
her mind all the songs and all the stories of her world and she convinces Merry
to overcome her fears and sing for the old god, entombed within the Pyramid of
the Rings of Akhaten.
What follows is a
tale of religion and belief and what happens when these things are built on a
falsity. The old god is nothing of the sort; it is in fact “a parasite” that
lives on souls, and souls are made of memories. Even the currency on this alien
world is that of treasured items, such as the ring Clara’s mum gave to her.
There are themes that
are familiar to Doctor Who fandom. One is the choral singing we’ve seen before
in A Christmas Carol and from the
song of the Ood from David Tennant’s final episode, The End Of Time, Part 2. Huge credit here goes to Murray Gold for
the wonderful music that accompanies the waking of a god that has slept for
millions of years. There is also a now
familiar scene of the Doctor giving it some “Come and get me, son” postulating
to a threatening alien.
This episode,
directed by The Fades helmer, Farren
Blackburn, is probably the most beautifully realised that we’ve seen in quite
some time. The costumes and set design are simply breathtaking. Neil Cross, the creator of Luther, gives us a script that’s loaded
with thought-provoking stuff on religion and belief and contains a wonderful
piece delivered by the Doctor to Merry about creation and the uniqueness of
every single one of us that lifts wholesale from Lewis Carrol, “shoes and ships
and ceiling wax....cabbages and kings.”
The
Rings of Akhaten is ultimately a tale of children and
childhood and the telling of tales. As
Clara uses “the most important leaf in human history” to see off an alien
threat that never feels quite as threatening as it could be, we’re left in no
doubt whatsoever that Coleman is a worthy and wonderful new companion.
Raising more
questions about Clara than it answers, this episode further sets up the mystery
of the impossible girl for the Doctor to solve.
I
didn’t know that: Emilia Jones, who plays Merry, is the
daughter of real life warbler Aled Jones.
Nods
to fans: The Doctor has been to Akhaten before with his
grand-daughter, a nod to Hartnell’s first Doctor.
Reviewed by Andrea McGuire.
