Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E01 The Eleventh Hour



"Amy: Twelve years! And four psychiatrists! Eleventh Doctor: Four? Amy: I kept biting them. They said you weren't real."

Last time, David Tennant exploded into a new regeneration and set the TARDIS on fire in the process. It's rapidly crashing into London with Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor, hanging off of it. He scrambles back in and manages to crash-land the TARDIS in a sleepy England village.

A little Scottish girl is praying to Santa that he will send someone to just fix that creepy crack in the wall. She's interrupted by the sound of a police telephone box parking inself in her backyard... on its side.

The little girl (Caitlin Blackwood) runs to the window and peers out. Surprisingly, she isn't shocked to see a TARDIS has crashed sideways into her Auntie's garden shed. Like any good protagonist, she runs outside and witnesses the newly-regenerated Doctor climbing out, sopping wet (he got stuck in the library, and so did the swimming pool). Totally normal, he insists. The little girl, named Amelia Pond, is charmed, and lets the Doctor in because she hopes he'll fix the scary wall crack.

He's still in the middle of regeneration trauma, but it doesn't involve comas this time around. He does have serious food cravings. Amelia obligingly fills the Doctor's increasingly gross requests, only to have him reject all the offerings in favour of... fish fingers with custard.

The Doctor remarks how normal the kid is acting, given how scary most other kids would find this situation. Must be one hell of a scary crack in her wall, he opines. The pair trek upstairs (notice that creepy door), where the Doctor investigates the wall and decides eventually to sonic it open, so as to figure out what's behind it.

So he opens it, and they stare into an alien prison cell. A booming voice repeats "PRISONER ZERO HAS ESCAPED." A giant eyeball—the Atraxi—eyeballs them and the crack closes and heals completely. Well, not quite. See, Prisoner Zero has escaped through the crack, and is around here... somewhere.

But before the Doctor can work on that, he hears the Cloister Bell, the TARDIS' Oh Crap signal. That means the TARDIS is in trouble, so the Doctor rushes out and determines that he needs to take the TARDIS on a quick trip to stabilise her, but don't worry, "I'll be back in five minutes." Amelia has totally heard it all before (her parents are dead and she's got quite a few trust issues as a result), and demands a proper promise. After a quick talk, the Doc Indianas down into the control—oh wait, back into the library/swimming pool. The doors shut and the TARDIS vworps away. Amelia runs back inside (notice the creepy door is ajar) and starts packing.

She finally finishes, glad to escape and runs (notice the creepy door is wide open) back into the garden. She waits. And waits.

It's morning when the Doctor vworps back into her garden, in a dead rush: he's figured out where Prisoner Zero is. "Amelia!" He sonics his way into her house, and sprints upstairs. "Amelia!" And that's when he meets a cricket bat.

Meanwhile, in a hospital, a nervous nurse named Rory is insistent that his comatose patients are walking and talking. He's brought his supervisor along, saying that they were asking for her, but what they're really saying, all of them, is "Doctor." Rory asks his supervisor to just take a look at his camera phone evidence, but she instead tells him to take a few days off.

Back at the country house, the Doctor wakes up, cuffed to a radiator. A woman in a rather risque policewoman's uniform is standing over him, calling for backup, or at least pretending to. Amelia hasn't lived here in a long time, she says. The Doctor piques her interest in... a creepy door she's never noticed before.

"Don't go in there!" the Doctor protests. He gets ignored. She goes in—it's totally ordinary. Run down and filthy, but... ordinary all the same. Until she sees... the sonic screwdriver, which had been mysteriously missing when the Doctor woke up from his meeting with Mr. Cricket-Bat. It's in the secret room, lying in a puddle of goo. Which could totally be explained. If it wasn't on the table.

The Doctor tells the woman to get out of there. But she, displaying fine companion reflexes, ignores him, and dawdles enough to catch a glimpse of a scary blue snake-piranha. Then she flees. Doctor gets his screwdriver back, but the system is messed up from that goo. And to make things better, a creepy figure inexplicably bursts out of the room. It's a bloke with a dog. But the creature is still just one being, and it's getting its mouths mixed up. The man is barking at them.

The Doctor technobabbles and bluffs, until he manages to get his sonic screwdriver working again, at which point he and his erstwhile captor bust a move. But the TARDIS won't let him because it's repairing itself, and... that's when he notices that the wooden shed he destroyed the night he met Amelia has been rebuilt. About twelve years ago. Incredulous, he turns to the young woman beside him... and realizes that she is Amelia, all grown up. And not a police woman at all, but a professional kissogram. And very cross at him for making her wait for two thirds of her life.

They walk over to the village center, and all the speakers in the area are spawning the same message in every language -- "PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED." But if all they want is for Prisoner Zero to come out of the house, why is the message broadcasting in the village, and around the world? Unless... by "residence", they mean "planet". Amelia (now going by Amy) takes the Doctor to a neighbour's home, where the Doctor gets recognised by a guy named Jeff as Amy's infamous imaginary friend. The Doctor decides to get back into the open, trying to figure something out. At which point the aliens block out the sun, and then turn the block transparent to make a force field. People take pictures and Facebook their mates without realising they're going to die in... twenty minutes and counting.

The Doctor gets his memory working overtime: he saw something weird a second ago. When the sun went out, everyone was photographing the sky... everyone except Rory, who was photographing Barking Man With Dog. It turns out that the man looks exactly like one of his coma patients, and this isn't the first time this has happened. He's gathering photographic evidence to prove he's not insane. He's also Amy's boyfriend, and absolutely speechless at suddenly seeing her imaginary friend come to life. She always made him dress up as the Doctor when they played as kids, and she went through four psychiatrists trying to get over her childhood experience, and now he's here and a bit too busy to have a chat and explain everything.

The Atraxi scope the area, but blowing stuff up just won't grab their attention, and the Doctor accidentally melts his sonic screwdriver in the process. So, the guard wanders off and Barking Man With Dog decides to melt and travel via drains, heading to the hospital in its true form of snake-piranha, where Rory's supervisor is still checking on the creepy patients.

Amy and Rory have to hurry to the hospital. Rory explains that the monster has taken the shape of his coma patient, and apparently shapeshifting abominations need psychic links to living beings. Therefore, it will go to the hospital for more prey and more disguises. The Doctor steals Rory's cool touch phone and Jeff's laptop. Which contains lots of implied porn. "Blimey! Get a girlfriend!"

The Doctor quickly writes a harmless virus designed to grab the aliens' attention, hacks into the international red alert conference call with the phone, quickly proves how genius he is and makes Jeff convince the world's nations to implement the virus while he runs off with the cell phone again.

Amy and Rory arrive at the hospital to find chaos. They phone the Doctor to tell him, then run upstairs, as Amy still looks like a police woman (admittedly slightly Stripperific), which gets them in. Once in the ICU, we learn that the Doctor has nicked a fire truck and that a woman and her daughters have escaped from the creature unscathed. One problem—the wrong mouths are spouting the wrong voices again. Amy and Rory back away slowly, and the alien realises its mistake. Rory and Amy run to the actual ward, and the Doctor arrives with barely a second to spare, crashing in through the window with the fire truck's ladder.

That computer virus has infected everything in the world. Every screen shows "0". Now the Atraxi know that Prisoner Zero is here. And now they're tracking the signal to Rory's phone. The Doctor promptly thwarts the prisoner by SMSing all the photos Rory has taken of the coma patient disguises of the alien.

Prisoner Zero switches to a different disguise. Since it needs years of proximity to build up a connection to a physical memory, it's able to disguise itself as... the memory of little Amy and her "Raggedy Doctor". The Doctor sees his new face for the first time. Amy faints and the Doctor rushes to her side as Rory tries to stop her falling too hard and coming to harm. The Doctor convinces comatose Amy to fight the monster's mental link by imagining its true form, which she saw behind the scary door. It works.

The Guards arrest Zero via white light beams, but not before it leaves the Doctor with a cryptic warning: The Pandorica will open, and silence will fall. As the aliens leave, the Doctor gets quite angry with them and demands that they come back, to discuss why they just seriously violated the Shadow Proclamation's ethics codes and threatened to blow up a class 5 civilization. Rory has some issues with that. While it heads back to the hospital, the Doctor raids the hospital locker room for a new wardrobe. Again.

After stripping and changing in front of his new companions (which Amy doesn't exactly mind), he makes it onto the roof and starts Talking the Monster to Death while trying to decide on a new tie.

He questions the Atraxi—is Earth a threat? Is it a criminal planet? Does it violate the Guard planet's own laws? And finally: is it defended? And who is it defended by? The eyeball visualises images of various Who monsters and all ten preceding incarnations of the Doctor. The Doctor steps through the projections shown (more precisely, he symbolically steps through David Tennant's face), his new outfit now complete with a bow tie, and kindly tells the Atraxi to run.

The TARDIS is working again, with a brand new interior.

At night, Amy Pond wakes up, having heard the unmistakable sound of the TARDIS. She runs downstairs to meet the Doctor. He decided to keep the stolen clothes, figuring it's a nice reward for having saved the Earth a billion times over by now. Also, it's been two years since he last saw Amy. He thought it was five minutes. Again. She's appropriately pissed off at him for that. Regardless, he invites her to be his next companion. Amy agrees to come with him, so long as he can have her back by tomorrow morning. For an unspecified appointment. And eventually, they leave.

We're left in Amy's room, now quiet, and linger over all her childhood drawings and handmade dolls of Amy and the Doctor and the TARDIS. And then we see the wedding dress, and we begin to have an idea what Amy's appointment might be.

Meanwhile In The TARDIS: First Episode

A DVD-only extra scene. Amy questions the Doctor on police boxes, his outfit and his hair. He shuts her up by showing her space, then merrily pushing her out of the TARDIS.

Tropes
"The Doctor: Cartoons?"
 * Alien Lunch: Upon receiving new taste buds, the Doctor goes through several things in Amelia's fridge before settling on fish fingers and custard (together) as a first meal after regenerating.
 * All There in the Manual: Steven Moffat has said in the commentary for this episode that Prisoner Zero was arrested for impersonating an army. Although, as the next thing he says is that this is ridiculous, it's debatable how canon it is.
 * Arc Words: "Silence Will Fall" and "The Pandorica Will Open".
 * Awesome Music: The music that plays over the Doctor's Badass Boast is simply EPIC.
 * And it's actually called "I am the Doctor." too
 * The Backwards R: The MΨTH logo on Jeff's laptop and some of the hospital equipment.
 * Badass Boast: Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically... run.
 * Batter Up: Amy with a cricket bat..
 * Big Damn Heroes: DUCK.
 * Big "What?"
 * Brick Joke: The Doctor's first visit to Amelia leaves behind an unmistakable impression, leading to an obsession with her "imaginary friend" for quite some time, long enough that seemingly everyone in town, from the local hunk and his aged granny to her (sort-of) boyfriend has a reaction to seeing "The Raggedy Doctor" in the flesh. Cue Amy's exasperated looks and quietly asking people to please shut up about it.

"Rory: You just summoned aliens back to earth. Actual aliens. Deadly aliens. Aliens. Of death."
 * Britain Is Only London - Deliberately averted. Amy lives in a rural part of England. Moffat has said that something of a pet peeve of his during the first season was that, while they had all of time and space to play around in, they seemed to spend an awful lot of time in London.
 * Book Ends- Subverted, it's more like chapter ends, when we first meet Amy and she first meets the Doctor she is in her nighty, 14 years later and having her first trip in the TARDIS she is wearing a very similar nighty.
 * After A Good Man Goes To War, it is apparent that Amy hitting the Doctor with a cricket bat and handcuffing him to the radiator is
 * Bow Ties Are Cool: Trope Namer
 * Broken Bird: Amy Pond... as young Amelia she clearly has abandonment issues brewing. When the Doctor leaves her for, in his words "Five minutes", she grows up with a lingering resentment and a rather short temper. We finally see her shell start to crack when The Doctor invites her into the TARDIS for the first time, confirming that everything he told her as a child was really true.
 * Buffy-Speak -

"The Doctor: I'll save this for later."
 * Call Back - The Doctor opens the door to the TARDIS by clicking his fingers.
 * Also the appearance of the hatstand in the console room.
 * And the Saint John's Ambulance badge is back, as it once was during the early years of the show.
 * A written message from the Doctor saying to "DUCK!" right before something comes at its receiver through a window.
 * The montage of previous monsters and all 10 previous Doctors before telling the latest alien, "Run!"
 * His use of the word "Run!" is probably a reference to "Rose", where it is the first line uttered by the Doctor in the new incarnation of the series. Here, of course, it is turned on its head; instead of warning a companion, he is threatening an enemy.
 * The Doctor congratulates Prisoner Zero on creating "a perfect impression of yourself."
 * Also, the TARDIS landing on its side right after a big regeneration.
 * 11th Doctor exclaims 'What?!' three times after realising Amy is the little girl he left behind in the beginning. The 10th had made this expression a couple of times during his run.
 * The Doc promising a little girl he'd be right back, and shows up years later. Not the first time this has happened...
 * Also not the first time he's stolen his outfit from a hospital locker.
 * The cracks in time? Totally new, right?
 * A swimming pool inside the TARDIS?
 * As the out-of-control TARDIS is flying across the city, the London Eye swivels to follow it.
 * The Fifth Doctor's love for cricket is inverted here (a cricket bat hitting the Doctor).
 * Eleven's apparent revulsion to carrots echoes the Sixth Doctor's last words: "Carrot juice?!" (Offered to him by a redhead companion—Melanie, in this case.)
 * And the fact that the Doctor is repulsed by bacon may be because he has been a vegetarian since The Two Doctors. Yes, there was the steak and chips in Boom Town and the buffalo wing in Voyage of the Damned... and the fish in Mindwarp, and the Doctor's comment on giving up on vegetarianism in The City of the Dead, which takes place before Boom Town and Voyage of the Damned, and the fish fingers a second later... but bear in mind that the Doctor changes his preferences with every incarnation.
 * The Cameo - The Patrick Moore. Who is apparently a Dirty Old Man.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The smiley face apple Amelia gives The Doctor later gets used to convince Amy to help The Doctor out.

"Rory: You just summoned aliens back to earth. Actual aliens. Deadly aliens. Aliens. Of death."
 * Chekhov's Skill: As much as being a kissogram can be considered a skill. Everybody assumes that Amy spending a large chunk of the episode in her police uniform was merely to give the audience some Fair Cop fanservice; in a blink and you'll miss it line, the costume is actually useful when she needs to gain entry to an otherwise-inaccessible wing of the hospital.
 * Chekhov's Gunman - Both the man with the dog, and  are shown as coma patients early in the episode.
 * Cool Starship - Giant flying crystal snowflake starships? Hell yeah.
 * Don't forget the giant eyeball
 * Cordon Bleugh Chef - The Doctor rejects the perfectly good food little Amy offers up, and opts for custard and fish fingers instead.
 * Rapidly undergoing a Memetic Mutation with many anecdotes online of what this actually tastes like. Ironic since the fish fingers used in the scene were not fish fingers.
 * Creepy Child - Zero as little Amelia is surprisingly effective.
 * Dare to Be Badass - Jeff (OBTAE) gets a speech from the Doctor exhorting him to "be magnificent".
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * "Oh yeah, yeah of course! It's an interdimensional multi-form from outer space, they're all terrified of wood."
 * "Oh that's good, fantastic that is. Twenty minutes to save the world and I have a post office. [looks at it] AND IT'S SHUT!"
 * Did Not Do the Research: How does Wi-Fi affect an analogue clock?
 * You can get analogue clocks with built in radio receivers that can receive the time signal and automatically set themselves. Presumably the virus reset the time signal causing all clocks that use it to reset themselves too.
 * IT'S SPACEY-WACEY!
 * Doomy Dooms of Doom: Rory, apropos the Atraxi.

"The Doctor: You're not the first lot to have come here. Oh, there have been so many. And what you have to ask yourself is... what happened to them?
 * Dying as Yourself: An odd forced inversion, in which the Doctor convinces sleeping Amelia Pond to dream of Prisoner Zero's true form so the Atraxi will recognize him.
 * Edited for Syndication - BBC America cut out quite a bit of this episode for re-airings, including most of the Doctor's "cravings" scene, young Amy waiting for the doctor, the Doctor proving who he is to the conference, the woman being attacked, The Doctor's comment about Amy's accent and the "Silence Will Fall" scene with Prisoner Zero. Luckily Space Channel seems to have learned from the mistakes of the CBC and left the episode intact for those watching in Canada.
 * BBC America premiered the episode uncut in a special timeslot (the only changes were commercials inserted here and there, but no actual footage was excluded) and for reruns for the rest of the night. They've continued the practice of "Premiere uncut, then edit later" for all new episodes afterwards.
 * Establishing Character Moment:

(The Atraxi shows pictures of the previous incarnations of the Doctor, finishing with an image of the Tenth Doctor that the Eleventh Doctor then steps through)

The Doctor: Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically... run."

"Amy Pond, there's something you'd better understand about me cause it's important, and one day your life may depend on it: I am definitely a madman with a box!"
 * Mr. Fanservice: Why hello there, hunky Jeff with the porny laptop and big arms. On a less conventionally good-looking note, Matt Smith fangirls are practically an inevitability.
 * Everything Is Online: A computer virus causes a mechanical flip clock to reset.
 * Faceless Eye - The Atraxi, spaceships which are just giant flying eyeballs.
 * Family-Unfriendly Aesop - Hey, kids! It's fun to let strange men into your house in the middle of the night when your parents are away! If your psychiatrist tells you you invented an imaginary friend, bite them! When adults say everything's going to be all right, they're lying!
 * Fan Fic Magnet - Amelia as companion! In fact this episode gave a boost to the idea of a child companion in general.
 * Female Gaze - Amy eyes up the Doctor as he changes clothes. Thank you, Steven Moffat for leveling the playing field.
 * Fiery Redhead - Amy, of course.
 * Flat What - Amy is about as fond of it as the Doctor himself.
 * Food Porn - Doctor, if you're not going to finish that bacon...? Cause it looks delicious.
 * Foreshadowing:
 * The cracks, obviously. By extension,.
 * Special note goes to the one
 * The Doctor says the following; "Listen to me, and believe it, because this may one day save your life; I amdefinitely a madman with a box." In The God Complex
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus:
 * Amy runs outside in her nightie, passing by the stuff  from the slow pan at the end of the episode.
 * There's also someone who runs past the camera around sixteen minutes in, for a fraction of a second, when the camera's looking out the kitchen window at Amelia. Word of God says that that was Eleven during his rewind in The Big Bang and was supposed to be part of the series finale but they couldn't fit it in continuity wise without making it look like Amelia had fallen asleep in seconds.
 * During the montage of zeros around the world, you can see an Angel next to one of the buildings.
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: This quote from the Doctor, when we first hear it, is funny. After the events in The God Complex it becomes heartbreaking.

"Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated. Prisoner Zero will vacate..."
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar - That's very obviously porn on Jeff's laptop.
 * And the Eleventh Doctor takes more than his shirt off in the locker room.
 * Giant Eye of Doom / Oculothorax: The Atraxi.


 * Made even more doomy when you realize that the human residence is not Amy's house, but the Earth.

"Amelia: We've got some carrots.
 * Groin Attack: Eleven, hanging on to the out-of-control TARDIS for dear life, narrowly avoids damaging his meat-and-two-veg on Big Ben's spire. Seriously, the gap is two or three inches at most—ouch!
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Rory says, "We were kids! You made me dress up as him!" In The Girl Who Waited, Future Amy hits on Rory and says "How many times did we play Doctor and Nurse?", suggesting they weren't just kids...
 * Ho Yay: Eleven calls Jeff handsome, can't spend more than fifteen seconds in his presence without invading his personal space, is entirely unembarrassed to break into his bedroom while he's watching porn, and ends up arranging for him to be magnificent. Also the Doctor tugging at and then smoothing down Rory's clothing after taking his phone.
 * Hypocritical Humor: After the Doctor rudely demands Amelia to cook all sorts of food for him, only to claim them disgusting, poisonous or evil once he actually tastes them, Amelia takes one last peek into the refrigerator.

The Doctor: Carrots? Are you insane?"

"The Doctor: Oh, I'm never saying that again, fine."
 * Internal Homage - The opening shot is a recreation of the opening of "Rose". It seems that this sort is done every time there is a new series.
 * Also, more importantly, the hospital that the episode features is remarkably similar to the one that the Third Doctor ended up in following his regeneration (Spearhead From Space). The Third Doctor also ends up stealing his first iconic opera-based outfit from said hospital, just as the Eleventh does (but rather more sneakily).
 * One of the coats Rory is holding is a red velvet jacket similar to one worn by the Third Doctor.
 * The Eighth Doctor does the same thing—only his is a fancy dress costume.
 * There are definite echoes of "Smith and Jones" in that (a hospital/Earth) is harboring a disguised alien fugitive from justice (The Plasmavore/Prisoner Zero), so the alien police (Judoon/Atraxi) threaten to destroy (the hospital/Earth) if the people do not turn in the fugitive.
 * Right after the Doctor's regeneration, the TARDIS lands at its next destination on its side.
 * The Doctor arrives at a girl's home at various points in her life. Only minutes pass for him, but it's years for her. Also written by Steven Moffat.
 * The Doctor says to Amelia 'You've had some cowboys in here' while examining the crack in her wall.
 * The line "I've put a lot of work into it" (re: the earth/universe) is taken from the also-Moffat-penned Doctor Who spoof "The Curse of Fatal Death".
 * The out-of-control TARDIS barely misses the tower that contains Big Ben.
 * The Internet Is for Porn - Strongly implied to be whatever Jeff was looking at on his laptop in his room. The Doctor even tells him to get a girlfriend.
 * Kill It with Fire: How the Atraxi intend to deal with Prisoner Zero. And the human residence.
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall / Incredibly Lame Pun: "WHO da man?!" It (hilariously) falls flat.

"The Doctor: Twenty minutes. Run home to your loved ones and kiss them all goodbye or stay and help me.
 * Male Gaze: The first we see of grown up Amy.
 * Mathematician's Answer: Combined with awesomeness.

Amy: No. [she proceeds to lock him to a car and demand of him an explanation]"

"The Doctor: Don't worry. I'll soon fix that."
 * Meaningful Name: The expression "eleventh hour" means "in the nick of time". It also references the fact it's one hour long exactly, and that it's the first full episode with the eleventh Doctor.
 * Meaningful Rename: Amelia to Amy, very pointedly.
 * National Stereotypes - "You're Scottish, fry something." Ironically, written by a Scottish author.
 * Necktie Leash - Amy not only drags the Doctor by the tie, she locks it in a car door to get information out of him.
 * After that, the Doctor wears a bow tie.
 * Nephewism: Amy has no parents, only an aunt. Maybe.
 * Never Heard That One Before - Variant. The Doctor tells Amy that he has heard every possible reaction to the fact that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. Amy responds "I'm in my nightie." He probably has heard that one before.
 * No Endor Holocaust: Millennium Bug notwithstanding, resetting all the computer clocks in the world to zero would royally mess up all sorts of society's critical systems.
 * Nothing Is Scarier - Amy approaching the extra door in her house. Just Amy, slowly walking down an ordinary hallway towards an ordinary closed door... Hitchcock would've been proud.
 * Not-So-Imaginary Friend: After the Doctor accidentally skips forwards twelve years instead of five minutes, the rest of the village end up believing that "the Raggedy Doctor" is Amelia's imaginary friend, and are weirded out or charmed to actually meet him. Amy is less pleased, in part due to the four psychiatrists she'd been made to visit.
 * Oblivious to His Own Description: When Prisoner Zero takes on the Doctor's form, he hasn't looked in a mirror since his regeneration, so his reaction is, "Well, that's rubbish. Who's that supposed to be?"
 * Oh Crap: Of course the Atraxi don't have any facial features, but they'd certainly get the hell out of Earth when they realize they've been tangling with the Doctor.
 * Kudos to the Mill for somehow managing to give a floating eyeball recognizable body language.
 * The Doctor has his own when he realizes that it's been more than five minutes. Something may have happened to Amelia Pond.
 * Reality Subtext: The interior of the TARDIS is wrecked and the old Sonic Screwdriver is broken, prompting new sets and props to go with the new Doctor.
 * Retroactive Recognition: Jeff is Sir Percival.
 * Room Full Of Slightly Off Kilter: Amy's room full of "Raggedy Doctor" drawings and toys.
 * She's All Grown Up - Amy, who is first seen circa age eight, then in her early twenties.
 * Shirtless Scene - Matt Smith, and it's still just the first episode. And he was more than just shirtless.
 * Shout-Out - The guy who's surfing porn and seriously needs to get a girlfriend's name is Jeff.
 * Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids - Amy is consistently doubting the Doctor and his claims on the justification that she grew up.


 * Staggered Zoom: The episode used this to follow the Doctor's thought process in examining the scene involving Rory photographing Prisoner Zero. Though it's really more of a wandering, meandering series of cuts which focus on different objects and people with varying levels of zoom.
 * Starfish Aliens - The Atraxi, putting the "alien" in "alien police" with their big eyeballs and crystalline web ships.
 * Stock Episode Titles: 7 uses.
 * Talkative Loon: And you thought the Tenth Doctor had this trope bad...
 * That Little Girl Is Dead: "Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a very long time."
 * That Poor Cat - When the Doctor throws out the buttered bread.
 * Timeshifted Actor - Young Amelia and companion Amy, played by cousins.
 * Too Sexy for This Time Slot - Some of the papers felt that Amy's outfit was this.
 * Totally Radical - "WHO DA MAN!?... I'm never saying that again."
 * Tsundere - Amy swings between Oh my God it's my Doctor! and  (and four psychiatrists)!.
 * Twist Ending -
 * Up to Eleven - The big series-long arc that starts here. Plus an Incredibly Lame Pun, given what doctor number we're up to.
 * Vertigo Effect
 * Wham! Line: "Well, why did you say '5 minutes'?!?!"
 * You Need to Get Laid - The Doctor tells Jeff as much. Well, that he needs a girlfriend, anyway; one doesn't necessarily imply the other.
 * Although what was hinted to be on Jeff's computer by the Doctor and Jeff's reactions might.
 * You Look Familiar - One of the villagers is Cully from The Dominators.