Quick review Doctor Who The Impossible Astronaut Pt 1

*no spoilers* I watched the Impossible Astronaut Part 1, the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, last night. Also watched the Confidential that went along with the episode.
Honestly, this is an episode that is hard to review. It felt choppy. It is also one of those episodes that you really need to see the entire season first to correctly judge.

And that is the rub. In the first ten minutes of the episode, basically the various elements of the entire season were introduced. The sinister aliens, the master mind guiding the characters actions, the baseline of the Doctor and companions personalities (for those viewers new to this group of characters), the opening puzzle, the local who is going to be a major player in the action, and the event that is going to drive the entire plot. All that was introduced in the first ten minutes.

Ironically, the first ten minutes---much like the rest of the episode---seemed to move slowly. This may not be the episode's fault. Over the last couple of days, I have re-watched both parts of The End of Time, The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. Given at what is hinted about in this episode, it may have been moving fast without me being aware of the speed.

(The Confidential seemed to move quicker. Loved the parts where they talked about building the Oval Office set and the look at what a director's day is like.)

What gives me hope about this season, given this slow first episode, is that the alien menace is really scary, especially if you stop and think about the possibility that they might actually exist without your conscious awareness of them, and the fact that the Doctor and his companions are being manipulated.

So this is one of those episodes, much like some from classical Doctor Who, that one needs to look at again after the dust clears to decide whether it was worth the film that was used. Here is to the new season of Doctor Who---it can only speed up from this point.