Magical orb that puts a crime count on everyone's head (while Arthur is king), counting the crimes based on the established laws. (Crime count in brackets)
Gwaine (127): this is an outrage
Arthur(3): I am as distraught as you
Gwaine (127): no, no. You don't get to say that! I've worked my whole life on this crime count and I've got less than THEM?
Merlin (847): *crosses arms* protecting Arthur comes with a cost. What I don't get.... Is THIS!!!!
Oh so spilling tea in the tardis will wake the doctor from their cringe fail post regeneration coma but spilling coffee will explode it?? Truly a british show
Now that I'm not looking through hype anymore (aka now that I'm calmed down from fanboy levels lol), here's my honest opinion of The Star Beast episode.
There's too many damn plot conveniences.
The episode started good (gonna ignore the Series 4 recap as that's for new-comers to the show), loving The Doctor shitting bricks at seeing Donna again and hearing Rose's name.
Then it goes into mid territory with an overpowered Sonic Screwdriver (since when does it have teleport, forcefield, and hard holograms as features?! Thank goodness it's still blocked by deadlock seals...); a UNIT Scientist who really shouldn't have been able to escape the possessed soldiers coming down the stairs she was right next to; and a "whoops we wrote ourselves into the corner" with how Donna & Rose could simply let go of the metacrisis in order to save themselves.
It really feels like they focused too much on adapting The Star Beast's comic and didn't give much thought into how to resolve the DoctorDonna stuff...
The new intro sequence, while audio is good, visually it's too choppy and those transitions reallllly didn't flow organically. (Also I swear it's based off a fan made intro on YouTube, I recall seeing one on YT that uses a similar paint splotches design)
The new TARDIS has to be the biggest they've ever built holy fuck. However, it's too clean, too minimal, too medical looking. Give me more colours in the TARDIS! (Also they better use all that space, otherwise that's a lot of money down the drain!)
So overall, I'd give the episode a 6.5 / 10, removing points for the glaring many plot conveniences...
I have hopes Parts 2 (Wild Blue Yonder) and 3 (The Giggle) will fair better because they aren't tied down by things like Series 4's DoctorDonna stuff.
In any case, I feel like RTD's original plan of having a flashback episode to 10th Doctor & Donna (instead of 10th as 14th) would have worked far better.
Reminder: These are just my own opinions and you are free to have your own opinions, as long as you are not toxic about it. :)
I've been watching "Vincent and the Doctor" recently (brilliant episode btw!!!) and now I find myself thinking... why does Vincent Van Gogh fighting some kind of a giant angry hippogriff seem absolutely normal thing to me?! I mean, WHAT HAS THIS SHOW DONE TO ME?!