The Eleventh Hour (Doctor Who)

203 – "The Eleventh Hour"
Doctor Who episode
The newly regenerated Doctor confronts one of the Atraxi.
Cast
Doctor Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)
Companion Karen Gillan (Amy Pond)
Others Arthur Darvill – Rory Williams Caitlin Blackwood – Amelia Nina Wadia – Dr Ramsden Marcello Magni – Barney Collins Perry Benson – Ice Cream Man Annette Crosbie – Mrs Angelo Tom Hopper – Jeff Arthur Cox – Mr Henderson Olivia Colman – Mother Eden Monteath – Child 1 Merin Monteath – Child 2 David de Keyser – Atraxi Voice William Wilde – Prisoner Zero Voice Patrick Moore – Himself
Production
Writer	Steven Moffat
Director	Adam Smith
Script editor	Lindsey Alford
Producer	Tracie Simpson
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Piers Wenger Beth Willis
Production code	1.1
Series	Series 5
Length	65 minutes
Originally broadcast	3 April 2010
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → The End of Time "The Beast Below"

"The Eleventh Hour" is the first episode of the fifth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 3 April 2010.

The first episode under Steven Moffat's tenure as head writer and executive producer, "The Eleventh Hour" is also the first full episode to star Matt Smith as the Doctor, and introduces Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. Amateur astronomer and The Sky at Night presenter Patrick Moore makes a guest appearance as himself.

Plot

Synopsis

The newly regenerated Doctor (Matt Smith) crash-lands his damaged TARDIS in Leadworth, in 1996. He meets seven-year-old Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood), who shows him a scary crack in her bedroom wall. The Doctor discovers it is a crack in time and space itself, briefly opening it to discover an Atraxi prison. The Atraxi send a psychic message to the Doctor that "Prisoner Zero has escaped". Then the TARDIS's cloister bell is heard; the Doctor races back to his machine, promising Amelia that he will be back in five minutes.

The Doctor returns, unaware that he's 12 years late. On searching the house, he is knocked out and wakes up handcuffed. He discovers his assailant is a much older Amelia, now going by the name Amy (Karen Gillan). Amy, having believed in the Doctor's return and created toys and stories about him, has been ridiculed by others in the village. She finds the Doctor's damaged sonic screwdriver, dodging Prisoner Zero, and they flee the house.

Shortly afterwards, the Atraxi arrive in orbit, alerted by the Doctor's arrival, and issue an ultimatum: if Prisoner Zero is not found, the Earth will be destroyed. Meeting Amy's boyfriend Rory (Arthur Darvill), the Doctor realizes that Prisoner Zero, a multiform (shapeshifter) that can take the form of any unconscious being it has come in contact with, is borrowing the forms of a nearby hospital's coma patients. The Doctor uses a laptop to gatecrash an online meeting of scientific experts and relay specific instructions to them.

The Doctor races to the hospital, and arrives in time to save Amy and Rory from Prisoner Zero. The Doctor reveals his plan: he has created a computer virus that will broadcast the number "zero" across the world. It is tied to Rory's phone, which contains images of the coma patients, identifying Prisoner Zero in whatever form it may take. Prisoner Zero reveals it has one more form that is not on Rory's phone. Prisoner Zero knocks out Amy and transforms into the Doctor and young Amelia, whom it was able to bond with during the Doctor's absence. The Doctor realizes that Amy can hear him speaking and manipulates her subconscious to remember the form of Zero she saw in the house, which forces Zero to reveal its true form; it is identified by the Atraxi and transported away. Zero again warns the Doctor that "the Pandorica will open... silence will fall." The Atraxi fleet leaves the Earth, but the Doctor calls them back and he tells them he is the Earth's protector.

As the Atraxi leave, the Doctor finds the TARDIS, and departs before Amy or Rory can catch up. The Doctor returns back to Amy's house, finding that another two years have passed. Though Amy is still upset with the Doctor, she readily accepts his offer to travel with him, as long as he can return her the next day. As the TARDIS dematerializes, the viewer is shown Amy's bedroom, where, alongside her toys and drawings of the "raggedy Doctor," is her wedding dress.

Continuity

• In the closing scene of this episode, The Doctor snaps his fingers to open the doors of the TARDIS and reveal to the interior to Amy. This is a special trick that his previous incarnation learned from River Song in "Silence in the Library" / "Forest of the Dead".
• When the Doctor scans the crack in Amelia's wall with his sonic screwdriver, he says 'Wibbley wobbley, timey wimey', a statement used by the Tenth Doctor in Moffat's previous episode "Blink"
• While inspecting the crack in Amy's wall early in the episode, he mentions that she's "had some cowboys in here", repeating a line from the Moffat-written "The Girl in the Fireplace".
• When the Doctor calls back the Atraxi, he refers to their threat to incinerate the Earth as illegal under the Shadow Proclamation, a space government organisation first mentioned in "Rose" and seen in "The Stolen Earth". He states that Earth is a fully established Level Five planet by the Proclamation's standards.
• When the Atraxi are then bidden to check Earth media records and so confirm the Doctor's threat that the planet is protected, flashbacks from both the revived and classic series are shown. These include previous Doctors and various monsters, including the Sea Devils, Sontarans, Cybermen, Hath, Ood and Daleks.
• At the end of the episode, the Doctor and Amy talk in front of the TARDIS's monitor, showing a waveform with the same shape as the crack in time and space shown earlier in the episode, and which is also seen in later episodes. The Doctor, noticing this, turns off the monitor before Amy sees the crack.
• The series finale, "The Big Bang", revisits two scenes from this episode. The opening scene of young Amelia praying (to Santa) for help with the crack on her wall is reproduced, though in "The Big Bang" the TARDIS does not arrive. In "The Eleventh Hour", after the Doctor leaves Amelia, she packs a suitcase and waits outside for his return; in "The Big Bang", Amelia has fallen asleep waiting, but the Doctor does return and tucks her in bed, telling a tale to her subconscious to assure her help in the future.

Production

Writing

This is the first Doctor Who episode written by Steven Moffat as lead writer and executive producer of the show. The title of the episode is both a reference to the introduction of the Eleventh Doctor and his being there nearly too late, the meaning of the phrase. Moffat was inspired by a crack in his son's bedroom wall and developed the idea into the main story arc of the series. He also drew inspiration from A.A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, specifically the scene where Tigger claims to like everything, but then proceeds to reject all food offered to him until he finally finds that he likes extract of malt, to create a similar scenario with the newly regenerated Doctor and young Amy.

Filming

Karen Gillan and Matt Smith on set of "The Eleventh Hour"

Scenes with Amy Pond in her police kissogram outfit and the Eleventh Doctor still in the Tenth Doctor's outfit were shot in Cardiff in October 2009. Some scenes based in the fictional village of Leadworth were filmed on the Cathedral Green, Llandaff, Cardiff, on 7 October.

Casting

The young Amy, known as Amelia, is played by Karen Gillan's real-life cousin Caitlin Blackwood. Though Gillan recommended Blackwood for the role, Blackwood had to undergo rigorous auditions first. EastEnders star Nina Wadia was chosen for the part of the doctor at the Leadworth Hospital. Wadia assumed she was chosen for the part as she had worked with director Adam Smith before. Patrick Moore appears as himself in the video conference with a brief speaking part.

Broadcast

"The Eleventh Hour" was first brodcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 3 April 2010. Overnight figures reported that 8 million watched the episode on BBC One and the simulcast on BBC HD. Final consolidated figures rose to 9.59 million on BBC One and 494,000 on BBC HD, making the final rating for the episode 10.08 million viewers, the most-watched premiere since "Rose" and the eigth highest rated episode since Doctor Who's return to television in 2005. The final BBC1 rating was 9.59 million viewers. This placed the episode at number two for the entire week on BBC1 and number four for the entire week across all channels. The episode earned an Appreciation Index of 86, considered "excellent".

The episode was also popular on BBC's online iPlayer. Within one week of broadcast, "The Eleventh Hour" received 1.27 million hits on BBC's online iPlayer service, the record for most requests in a week. It went on to become the most requested epsiode of 2010 with 2.2 million views; Doctor Who was also named the most watched programme of the year on the service.

International broadcast

This episode was first broadcast in the US on BBC America on 17 April 2010 and in Canada on the same date on Space. The episode was viewed by almost 1.2 million on BBC America, making it their highest rated telecast at the time.

The episode aired in Australia on 18 April on ABC1. It could also be viewed on ABC's website iView two days prior to the television air date, on 16 April. The show was broadcast two weeks after airing in Britain, as the BBC required a fortnight to edit down the Doctor Who Confidential: Cut Down. There was no room for the equivalent Doctor Who Confidential "Call Me the Doctor" due to the hour running time, but ABC holds the rights and has made it available on iView.

The episode aired in New Zealand on 2 May on Prime. This episode was broadcast in South Africa on 15 November 2010 on BBC Entertainment and in France on 12 February 2011 on France 4.

Teasers

Two teasers were shown on BBC Television for this episode prior to broadcast. One shows the opening scene, which features the Doctor hanging from the TARDIS doorway as it flies out of control over London with the sonic screwdriver between his teeth. A second shows the Doctor and a young Amy Pond with the TARDIS, explaining it is a time machine and telling her that he will be back in five minutes.

DVD release

A Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray, containing this episode together with "The Beast Below", "Victory of the Daleks" and special features was released on 7 June 2010.

Reception

The Mail on Sunday reviewer Sinclair McKay called "The Eleventh Hour" a "deft first epsiode" that was "packed with one-liners and an even more fantastical feel than of late. But it had that old reassuring combination of intense Britishness, quirkiness and a sense of the macabre". He also praised Gillan's "winning" performance and Smith's adaption to the role, concluding, "Smith might turn out to be one of the best Time Lords of the lot". Benji Wilson, for The Daily Telegraph, wrote "It was ridiculous but it felt right: mad, alien, brand-new but very old. A+ to the casting director. A+ to Smith". He also said that Gillan "110 per cent nailed it". Though he compared Prisoner Zero's low-budget CGI makeup to a "draught excluder", he said that Moffat "turned a weakness into a strength" by having Prisoner Zero take the form of humans. Roland White for The Times wrote, "The previous doctor, David Tennant, smouldered his way across the space-time continuum. Smith is more of a geek-chic Time Lord...Smith is a much more quixotic, light-hearted Doctor than Tennant, who seemed to carry the cares of the universe on his shoulders".

IGN's Matt Wales rated the episode 8 out of 10, praising it for easily fitting into the show's continuity, especially with Smith's portrayal of the Doctor. However, he thought the "calamity plot" was the "weakest link in an otherwise superb opening episode" and the "whole bunch of disparate elements...never [gelled] into a satisfying whole". Though it said it wasn't perfect with "a saggy midsection and slightly naff CGI effects", he thought it was still "wonderous in so many ways". Dave Golder of SFX magazine gave "The Eleventh Hour" five out of five stars, thinking that Moffat captured "the way children perceive the Doctor" and praising the debuts of Smith and Gillan. Den of Geek selected the episode as Doctor Who's highlight in their "Best TV Episodes of 2010" article.

External links

• The Eleventh Hour on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "The Eleventh Hour" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "The Eleventh Hour (Doctor Who)" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Eleventh Hour" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "The Eleventh Hour" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• "The Eleventh Hour" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide