Bowties

With a half-smile of anticipation and a single line ("This is going to be a tricky one"), delivered right at the top of the current season's best episode to date, "Amy's Choice," Matt Smith finally won me over. He seems to have realized at last that not everything has to be done at top speed and top volume, with limbs flopping every which way.

The time-tricky "Amy's Choice" is one kind of DW episode I especially, vaguely in the genre of "Left Turn" and "Blink," though admittedly not in the same league. Quite a few TV creators would have dragged out the choice-making schtick over an entire season, milking it for suspense and heartache. (RTD basically did that twice, two seasons running. Which in retrospect may have been one too many.) But making the choice early, getting it over with, seems to be a deliberate act of self-definition for Stephen Moffett, setting that sort of thing aside as a distraction.

It certainly clears the decks for action in terms of the relationship between this "handsome young hero" and his two companions, who are now definitively a couple. Will they share a cabin on the Tardis, I can't help wondering, salaciously, or is Smith's Doctor-as-favorite-eccentric-uncle a bit of a prude? (Moffett, the creator of "Coupling," presumably isn't.)

What is the "soap opera" being set aside to make room for, though? This is still a source of some anxiety for me. The WW2 adventure was a mish-mosh, the vampires in Venice episode a predictable wheel-spinner. The one upcoming looks like a Quatermass flashback, with monsters digging their way up from the depths to menace a plucky schoolboy. If Moffett succumbs altogether to the Boy's Own spirit, that kid could end up on the Tardis with K-9. Be careful what you wish for.