By Josh Leonard (digitalBURG) –

The Doctor takes his new companion Clara to a place audiences have never seen – The Rings of Akhaten. This episode was a very sci-fi-based episode. Yes, I know, “Doctor Who” is a science fiction show, but lately the Doctor has just been traveling to different parts of Earth’s time battling out some type of alien. The episode had a huge musical theme to it as well.

At first I was not sure how I felt about the episode. I thought it was cool to see a marketplace full of random new aliens and The Doctor breaking Clara in on the whole traveling anywhere in space-and-time thing. I did not understand why Clara could not understand any of the alien languages (Whovian fact: the TARDIS has a translator for every alien and foreign language to have ever existed.) That part threw me off a little.

Clara then ventures off on her own, well, more like The Doctor leaves Clara on an alien planet in a foreign time by herself. But hey, that is one of the reasons why we love The Doctor so much. Clara meets up with a humanoid little girl who is hiding from her royal guards (the little girl is a queen) and is scared to sing to the High-God character. Singing to the High-God makes the God stay asleep and not wake up to eat everyone’s souls. So, it is kind of a big deal.

I do not want to tell you every detail of the episode, so I am leaving a lot of stuff out. However, I do want to discuss my favorite part. The Doctor shares a monologue with the Rings of Akhaten God and let me tell you, that monologue was one for the ages. Matt Smith (The Doctor) gives, in my opinion, one of his best Doctor speeches of his show-run thus far. Lots of emotion, compassion, and even a tear is shed during his monologue. This was the turning point for me in the episode and made me love it. It helped remind me how good of a Doctor Matt Smith truly is (David Tennant is still my favorite, but still.)

Quickly, in other “Doctor Who” news, the 50^th anniversary special has been confirmed to be a 90-minute episode rather than its normal 60-minute run-time. This is exciting news for us Whovians and I absolutely cannot wait to see Matt Smith, David Tennant, Billie Piper, and Jenna-Louise Coleman all in one episode!