Doctor Who - Dinosaurs On A Spaceship - review.

Rupert Graves, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Matt Smith, Mark Williams and Riann Steele in Dinosaurs On A Spaceship.

An episode that completely revolves around its title, you have to think back to the shambles that was "Let's Kill Hitler", it was a cheery romp with a great script from Steven Moffat but sadly it failed to make any impact. Dinosaurs On A Spaceship is the same except its enjoyable and it isn't written by Moffat. Returning writer Chris Chibnall gives us his first episode of this series and it is pretty chaotic. Before the title sequence we get the Doctor told by the India Space Agency that a spaceship with a prehistoric cargo is set to crash into the Earth. He recruits Queen Nefertiti from Egypt, John Riddell from the African Plains, the good old Ponds and Rory's confused father, Brian. All the above mentioned characters were played brilliantly by their actors, Rupert Graves who played Riddell and Mark Williams as Rory's dad were two exceptions. Soon the TARDIS and its new found crew are on the spaceship with a large amount of... dinosaurs. The Doctor has six hours to save the ship, its cargo, himself and his friends so it looks like its going to be a tricky one. 
The villain of the story is Soloman, played rather menacingly by David Bradley, best known for his role as Filch in the Harry Potter series. Soloman is a space pirate who stumbles upon this wealthy cargo and sets to claim it for his own. Unfortunately he has no idea how to pilot the ship and is therefore stuck. The Doctor jumps in and helps Soloman, physically before doing a very uncharacteristic act towards the end. Soloman's two henchmen are a couple of bumbling robots that sound rather camp and are voiced by British comedy duo, Mitchell and Webb. They have several good lines and their childish attitude doesn't quite reach the annoying stage. 

It won't stay in the memory for long but while your watching it, you are captivated by it and it is genuinely enjoyable.

NEXT TIME:
Doctor Who goes Western with a cyborg, an alien doctor, Amy waving a gun around and the Doctor becoming town sheriff, sounds like my cup of tea!