Yeah, this was pretty good. Certainly a leap up from New Earth, anyway. The tone and the pacing and some other ephemera aren’t really to my taste. As with The Chrismas Invasion, I’m not sure how fond I am of this “action movie” route the series has been taking. Not enough character development. Not enough exploration of concepts and themes. Not enough time for anything except Things Happening. Still, it’s all very well-done.

I think they missed an opportunity by making the solution mistletoe instead of frankincense. Torchwood House and all. Imagine if the walls actually had “torchwood” in them instaed of mistletoe oil.

Also, yeah. Billie’s running gag was annoying. I know it was supposed to be, to at least some extent. In context it didn’t come off as a bit clever, though; just flat-out flippant. That was distracting, and didn’t really fit her character. It’s one thing to be rude with some wit. This, though… well.

The actual end, with Vic’s speech, was also a little on the nose. The sub-ending was great, though: fine, here’s your reward — now get off my lawn before I call the cops.

I was far less annoyed by the cartoon wolf than I expected to be! Normally CG irritates me; this was used minimally and with enough taste that it pretty much worked. So good. And all the running plot stuff is kind of neat. Bad Wolf indeed. Was that just an in-joke, or does it mean something? What fun.

All in all, the episode hung together much better than it should have. It’s tied with twine; stll, it holds. Commendable stuff. And as a production, it’s pretty much perfect. Best direction so far, next to The Empty Child. Probably Davies’ cleanest script, one week after his messiest.

* * *

Other people have described the Silent Hill movie better than I could. The best part was the butched-up Cybil. The worst part is… well, everything after the white-out. Just, yikes. It’s too bad this didn’t really work in the end, as there are so many nice little things about it: the way the sirens are attached to the church (much as in a Junji Ito story I just localized), the way the transitions to and from the “dark world” were visualized. Johnny Cash. There was so much potential in the dual story with Rose and her husband. Then the movie never really did anything with any of this; instead it just took that left turn onto gore street. A darned shame.