Doctor Who is home to many speeches alot of which are done by The Doctor him / herself and alot of which are really good. However there is one speech that alot of fans think of as being one of the best of the best with that very speech being in the very episode that i'm about to review for you all today with this one also being an episode that i've been trying to review for sometime now but for one reason or another I just couldn't do that at that exact point in time and so then join me as I review the episode that has a very well known Doctor Who speech in it with the episode in question being called simply just "The Rings Of Akhaten" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is when The Doctor takes Clara on her very first trip into outer space they visit planet were a religious festival to help to keep a huge creator that orbits the planet asleep and have to defeat it when it finally wakes up. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us n this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual plot that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty not that bad as it was a very serviceable plot but at the same time tho the plot to this episode wasn't all that good either with the plot being at best very thin and at worst just not that interesting or not to the high standard of this episodes writer other show Luther but I will admit that this episodes plot is also really rather entertaining and as well as being also really rather engaging as well in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Starring in this episode House Of The Dragon star Matt Smith as The Doctor and Victoria and Captain America: The First Avenger star Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara Oswald. Also starring in this episode is Utopia and Locke & Key star Emilia Jones as Merry Gejelh , Michael Dixon as Dave Oswald , Nicola Sian as Ellie Oswald , Chris Anderson as The Chorister , Aidan Cook as The Mummy and Karl Greenwood as Dor'een.
Now then interms if what I personally thought / felt about the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual acting that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty really good. Which for this show is really nothing that's all that new as this show especially the Matt Smith era of the show has always had some really good acting in them with this episode not being an exception to this rule with Matt Smith being the true standout performer in this episode as he does deliver a truly wonderful performance as The Doctor with the acting in this episode really being helped by the fact that the episodes script is just so good that all the episodes cast have to do is just say the lines as they are written and a good performance will come out of them naturally.
Doing the CGI for this episode is the legends and the greats that are currently over at The Mill and Real SFX. Now then interms of what I personally thought / felt about the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual CGI that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty for the most part really good altho there was some painfully bad green screen which just looks awful as it stands out a mile when compared to all of this episodes really good looking CGI which even when this episode aired looked good and they still look good to this very day but the green screening looked good back when this first episode aired but it now looks bad and that is something that really does bring down the overall quality of the CGI in this episode.
It's in this episode that we get to see Clara's backstory with her origin being both beautiful and also tragic as well at the exact same time. As it doesn't appear to be that she was close to her father and yet she was incredibly close with her mother with her mother pretty much being her hero and yet we also see how she already met The Doctor prior to the events of The Bells Of St. John which does go to show you just how obsessed that The Doctor is becoming over trying to really figure out how she can die in both the future and the past and yet still be alive and well in the present even going as far as to lie to her when he says that he will treat her as her own person which is something that The Doctor has never done before with this even playing out in the episodes opening flashback which was a really nice touch as it also sets up something that really pays of later on in the episode as well as telling this really beautiful love story with these really likable characters that you really do want to see alot more off in the future episodes of this show.
As was stated at the start of this review this episode is home to quite possibly the greatest in modern Doctor Who history. Not only due to what's said but also because of the fact that it allows The Doctor to stop being the childlike kid that we see all throughout the episode but also all throughout Matt Smith's tenure of the show as well as it's this very speech that allows him to unearth generations worth of pain and agony that he's built up and it allows to him to in a way recover from all the loss that he's suffered be it from loosing Susan by forcing her to stay with the one that she loves or by loosing a companion due to death like Amy and Rory or even Adric for example all of which are things that he's never really let go of and yet it's during this speech where he willingly really gives us up alot of the memories that he's got that he then becomes really free of those burdens and can then start to heel from all of that pain and all of that loss with the speech itself also being really beautiful and is really epic in every single sense and meaning of the word.
There are a few downsides to this episode tho the first of which is the episodes main villain Akhaten himself who is just a bland villain who isn't really fully developed and isn't that scary or even that memorable to begin with. The second issue is the fact that the episode just feels like it's a Christmas special as apart from advancing the storyline involving Clara and that's really it as a result there's no reason as to hwy this episode aired as a regular episode when everything about this episode including it's wafer thin plotline just scream Doctor Who Christmas Special and while this episode does get credit for setting up the plotline of the TARDIS not really liking Clara it's something that doesn't make sense when you take into account that The Doctor and Clara had to use in the TARDIS to get to this planet in the first place as if it really didn't like Clara in the first place then it wouldn't have taken off from Earth at the start of the episode when Clara was inside the TARDIS with The Doctor.
Noe then while I cannot for the absolutely life of me remember whatever this episodes grand total running time even was I do know that for a fact that this episode has / had an exact grand total running time of roughly forty three minuets. Which really does feel like a lot shorter of a running time then what this episode really does deserve as this episode whilst it doesn't have alot of plot there to cover that large amount of running time in this first place the episode still could have done with having a longer running time as then the episode could flesh out both the episodes main villain to make him a more memorable villain and the episode also could have done with fleshing out the character out Merry Gejelh as the character as she is in the current cut f the episode is just a cardboard cut out of a stereotypical kid character only she's lacking anything that makes her alot more three dimensional but I will admit this episode really does have some really good pacing to it tho.
So now then as this is an action show that means that I have to actually talk about the actual action that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode well then in all honesty I in all honesty personally thought / felt that the actual action that's actually featured / presented to us in this very episode was in all honesty fairly decent. However at the same time there really isn't alot of action of this episode when there really should have been just by having members of the people who are there to force Merry to sing her song and yet while we do get a decent action scene in the episode it's not as good as it really could have been as it's really just The Doctor pointing his Sonic Screwdriver which is fine for a few seconds but when that's the whole action scene then there's something wrong with the scene in question in my freaking opinions anyways / at least.
Overall it's very easy to see why this episode got a mixed response from the die hard Doctor Who fanbase as the episode does have some good things but at the same time tho the episode doesn't really take alot of the episodes running time in order to really fully develop either it's characters or it's ideas either in my freaking opinions anyways / at least. Now then i've talked about all of the good and as well as all of the bad things that are in this very episode in this very review and as such that means that this very episode really does earn itself a grand old score of exactly a 6.5 out of 10 from me.
Now then as for where I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review well then boys and girls and as well as ladies and gentlemen I personally got all of the images that I personally used in this very review from the official Doctor Who fandom wiki page , IMP Awards . Com and Google Images. With my personally preferred website to use to get the images from these very episode that I used in this very review being the really great and really legendary the official Doctor Who fandom wiki page simply just due to the fact that really alot of if not really all of the images that are all really from this episode and are really of course on the official Doctor Who fandom wiki page are all really all fairly high in quality and as well as them all being really fairly freaking high in definition.