Doctor Who review: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

© BBC; Image credit: BBC

"Sorry, sorry, are you saying dinosaurs are flying a spaceship?”

“Brian, please, that would be ridiculous. They’re probably just passengers.”

The Doctor and Brian Williams/Pond: TOTAL BEST FRIENDS 4 LYF!!!

Seriously, though, the combination of the two Williams men and the last living Time Lord is easily the best triple act I've seen all summer. That's right, even better than Clare Balding, Ian Thorpe and Mark Foster poolside at the Olympics.

Writer Chris Chibnall certainly had a lot of fun with the concept of 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship'. Or, rather, he enjoyed the concept a lot but didn't do as much with it in reality as he could have, beyond the Doctor's inevitable excitement, a few good lines and a cool dinosaur ride. There was really too much going on in this episode - Spaceship! Dinosaurs! Depressed robots! Queen Nefertiti of Egypt! Rory's dad! A random hunter dude! - for it all to get enough time, and the titular dinosaurs were a very definite casualty of that.

The other main casualty was lovely Sherlock hunk Rupert Graves. Honestly, I love Benedict Cumberbatch as much as the next girl, but give me a grumpy Inspector Lestrade over the impressively cheekboned hero any day of the week. In fact, with the sheer brilliance of the other trio, Amy, Riddell and Nefertiti really struggled to command as much interest as they may have done at another time (although Amy accidentally calling herself Rory's queen wasfunny). Riddell in particular felt like he was mostly there for the role he would play in the finale - like Chibnall has come up with the climax, decided it would be nice to have Amy shooting dinosaurs with someone and added Riddell in accordingly, forgetting to give him a character beyond "sexist" and "likes to kill stuff". Still, a million bonus points to the Doctor Whoproduction team for casting Rupert Graves.

© BBC; Image credit: BBC

But really, apart from a few problems with overstuffed and slightly contrived plotting ("Oh, bother, it needs people with the same genes to make it work...") 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship' was an enormous amount of fun to watch. David Bradley as a creepy villain is always,always good value, and here was no exception. Pair him with a Mitchell and Webb voiced pair of bickering robots (50% Battlestar Galactica Cylons, 50% Marvin the Paranoid Android) and things were always going to be good.

Of course, the real star of this episode, now always and forever more, was Mark Williams as Brian. From the moment he appeared, fixing a light in the Pond house in his wee body warmer, telling Rory off and treating Amy like a queen, to his final scene, sitting at the door of the TARDIS, looking down on Earth with his legs dangling out and a cup of tea in his hand, he was just an utter joy to behold. And he brought another depth to lovely Rory, as we got a return of Rory the comedy goldmine, bouncing off Brian and reacting to his inherent Dadness, but without any of the "oh, isn't he rubbish" undertones that characterised his initial time on the show. As a nerd, the idea of Rory collecting supplies related to his nursing passion and carrying them around in his pocket really tickled me, and seemed absolutely in character. The whole thing was just perfect casting and writing. Bravo, all concerned.

And to top it all off, we got a rare glimpse at one of my favourite iterations of the Time Lord: the Merciless Doctor. Solomon represented everything the Doctor hated: his mercenary motivation, viewing the whole of time and space not as a giant playground but instead a scrap yard to be picked at and stripped for profit, was a complete antithesis of everything the Doctor represents. Add the massacre of the Silurians, Solomon's casual use of violence and the manipulative kidnapping of Nefertiti, and the Doctor's decision to have him and his grumpy robots blown up by a missile made total sense.

All in all 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship' had a lot more going for it than a fun title; probably toomuch in fact. Thankfully, a couple of the many elements were done to absolute perfection, leaing a fun and interesting episode that was worth seeing for Brian Pond and his pocket trowel alone.