The bit where they finally opened the cupboard was a bit nervy, but again, a bit of a let down.

The exchange between the doctor and the father was pretty funny (“You’re not from social services!”), but contrasted with the moment the dad runs in slow motion to hug his child at the end made the latter seem inauthentic.

As you point out, the Ponds’ missing kid is the elephant in the room. It was a huge cliffhanger for the end of the last series, such that going forwards, every successive problem seems of lesser importance.

The concept of scary monsters in the cupboard is a great one and very fitting for doctor who but it lacked direction in the story telling amd the overal structure.

In my opinion too much time was spent on dialogue between the doctor and the dad character  with nothing progressing any further.

The idea that am and Rory can go on adventures without mentioning their missing baby seems ridiculous.

There were far too many shots of the boy with the torch in his bedroom to portray how terrified he was.bWe got the setting ofthe story early enough without needing this scene repeated over and over.

Somehow i just felt bored. We were almost half way through the episode before the doctor opened the cupboard.

There were some comic moments but doctor who is largely drien by plot and this very much lacked in the first 20 minutes with nothing really happening.

When it comes to doctor who, Mark gatiss doesn’t seem to know how to fill a 45 minute episode without losing the audience.  When he did victory of the daleks, the plot was rather weak and it ended very quickly, with a painfully long ending that dragged  for twn minutes after the main story had been resolved. 

In this episode, The revelation of the boy being an alien added nothing to the story for me and for whatever reason, I didn’t seem to care whether he was an alien or not. The ending was also weak, with the way to stop the monsters being simply  to overcome his fear of rejection. I would have expected better from a professional writer. If rejection was all the boy was afraid of then why was he afraid of monsters? How did the 2 fit together?

There were some good ideas in there but they just didn’t gel for me.

I’ve written a bit about what I see as the central problem with the Ponds this season, and would love your thoughts on the matter.

http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-with-ponds.html