Moffat designed these episodes to be stand-alone, and I do get that having less of an over-arching plot helps new watchers ease in to how complex Doctor Who can be. While I'm sure that the 50th will be full of "never apply logic to Who" moments, I really miss the clever callbacks to previous episodes.
Here's what I've thought of the past two episodes:
Rings of Akhaten
I was certainly skeptic of the episode being billed as having the most aliens we've ever seen, but I was proven wrong. The one thing I have to ask: what was with that one who barked? is the translation matrix on the fritz?
The episode definitely filled my desire for those moments when we remind ourselves that the Doctor is going to be okay because we know that there's another episode on next week, a desire which was still left longing after "The Bells of Saint John".
The story and symbolism of the leaf was beautiful I think that's almost a fact rather than an opinion I wonder if Akhaten really sucked anything out of the Doctor-perhaps his memories of Rose? Why not go for the best (and worst) first?
I thought Emillia Jones was magnificent as Merry Gejelh. I hope that maybe we will see her again at some point. I always like seeing plots revolve around a child. It adds a new layer to the emotion behind things.
Cold War
Talk about a stand-alone episode! It may have been a returning monster, but everything got explained perfectly.
I'm a bit suspicious of the Ice Warrior out of it's armour. Was I the only one who thought it sounded like a Silent? I liked it a lot from an artistic perspective.
It seems that the translation matrix is still broken-even though it translated the spoken Russian, I saw some Cyrillic writing!
I don't really have anything overwhelmingly bad to say about it, but there also wasn't anything very good, either.
Aside from the wet Matt Smith. And even that-Matt, please stop trying to fix your hair: it is very distracting!
