Oh, this episode. It was so clearly an Elevator Pitch, just a title that somebody said out loud and somebody else said, "Yeah!" On the whole it comes off better than Snakes on a Plane (how could it not?), so let's talk about it briefly so I can move on.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Does what it says on the tin: there's a spaceship, there are dinosaurs on it. Roll credits.

More detail? Well, ok. There's a spaceship that turns out to be a Silurian Ark sent out before the great cataclysm. All the Silurians are gone, having been chucked out the airlock by William Hartnel The First Doctor a bad guy named Solomon (played by David Bradley). The ship is on a collision course with Earth, which means that the dinosaurs who escaped Earth's mass extinction via asteroid impact are about to cause a new Earth mass extinction via asteroid impact. In order to stop the collision, the Doctor recruits Queen Nefertiti because huh? He also recruits a misogynistic big game hunter, Amy and Rory, and quite by accident Rory's dad.

Aside from the titular dinosaurs and the main bad guy, there are a pair of giant comic relief robots voiced by Mitchell & Webb. They were... ok? I guess? They weren't given much to do. I like them much better when they are Posh Dancing.

Rory's dad Brian is objectively amazing. He's just... dad. Kind of boring, not inclined to travel, but completely unflappable in the face of sudden and unexpected space travel. When ordered by the Doctor to dig up some sand on a beach (the dinosaur spaceship is powered by a giant wave generator that looks surprisingly like an English beach), Brian shrugs and pulls a collapsible trowel out of his pocket. He seems genuinely surprised that anyone would be surprised he carries a pocket trowel just in case. I like Rory's dad a lot. I'd kind of like to be him when I grow up.

So in the end the bad guy gets blown up by a bunch of missiles launched by the Indian Space Agency, the dinosaurs get re-homed on New Siluria, Nefertiti and Big Game Hunter run off on an African Safari to flirt endlessly with each other, Amy and Rory go back home to replace a light bulb, and the Doctor wanders off on his next adventure.

As I say, it's not a bad story. It's just not a story I would ever go out of my way to watch again. It just kind of... is.

Being the second in the block of five episodes in 2012 that were given some extra advertising polish, the title in the opening credits was green with dinosaur scales, and the episode was promoted with this poster:

And on that note, I am going to go watch the SpaceGunslinger episode. Yay.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond, Rory Williams
Episode(s): Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
Steps Walked: 6,387 today, 3,219,944 total
Distance Walked: 3.41 miles today, 1,682.07 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 6,064 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
How Many Times has Rory Died?: 4
How Many Times has Amy Died?: 3
Is Anything Cool?: Amy thinks Queen Nefertiti is cool, and Rory thinks nursing supplies are cool
Weight: 251.10 lbs (five day moving average), net change -56.20 lbs