This is Matt Smith's final happy adventure with Amy and Rory before the end and it is filled with great characters, a lot of fun and the return of one of Doctor Who's biggest allies - UNIT.
Amy and Rory are very strong in this story, we learn a lot about them as characters - fitting since it is the penultimate episode for the companion who has featured in the most episodes. The story highlights how alien The Doctor is and Matt Smith is totally faultless (as usual) here. We have two new characters who have only just been introduced recently and they are amazing. Firstly we have Brian, returning from Dinosaurs on a Space Ship. He is brilliant in this story, who has some very emotional scenes with The Doctor, when he is concerned with the safety of his son and daughter in law. They are so sad when you have the hindsight of the following weeks story. I wish we had more adventures with Brian, Mark Williams is extraordinary in this.
The other new character is Kate Stewart, who I hope will become a recurring character in The Twelfth Doctor's era. She just steals every scene from Matt Smith, which is a huge achievement knowing how great Matt Smith is in this story.
UNIT return in this story under Kate Stewart and I do hope we see a modern day UNIT family develop under Steven Moffat. My main complaint of RTD era UNIT was that there was never a consistent UNIT leadership. UNIT Captains changed every week. I hope when UNIT does return again, this does not happen.
This is a fun story but unfortunately does not end as well as I had hoped. It is very rushed with lots of different ideas unexplored - who were those nurses and why were they taking people to their ship. The problem with the monster is despite the fact the Shakari is very intriguing, this story seems to be a missed opportunity for the return of the Kraals (a scientific experiment to investigate the best way to take over the Earth - the same as The Android Invasion). This story really could have done with being a bit longer, just to have more time to work on the ending.
Enough with complaints a very strong story with just a lackluster ending. It is a shame that Rory is gone as I suspect we will not be seeing anymore of Brian but I do hope that Kate Stewart does continue on through Doctor Who (she has appeared twice now, but I hope for more).
7.5/10