The Rings of Akhaten Review

I've read a lot of reviews saying that the story here is rather thin. I'm more concerned about the plot-holes. How were those asteroids producing sufficient gravity to keep an atmosphere? How will they survive now that they have nothing to orbit?

We did get a couple of new pieces of info regarding Clara, which is good. We know she has proper parents, which rules out several theories. We also know her mom was killed by Autons and her dad was almost run over by the same car that killed Pete Tyler.

I think the variety of aliens was a bit too high seeing as the Doctor said they mostly all came from that system. No star system is going to have that many different intelligent species. There must have been at least eight or so different species. Some of them did look a bit familiar, apparently the special effects studio had been saving up spare masks from previous TV shows and movies, so not all of these were brand new.

I'm also really getting sick and tired of the fact that this show only has two special effects. They have the blue-white lightening for electricity and artron energy and the glowing orange stuff for everything else. The texture of the glowy orange stuff changes somewhat, sometimes it's closer to a gas, sometimes there's more chunks.

The bit with the Doctor near the end raises a question: is the Doctor now going to be missing some of his memories? I mean, he gave them up to feed this planet, so does he no longer have them? Or did the planet simply not like them and not take them? Or did he keep copies?

When Clara got back home, she said it looked different. I'm guessing this is going to be a major plot point in the next episode or somewhere down the road. Also, is the Doctor going to keep dropping her off at home at the end of every episode? That's what happened with Amy and Rory in Series 7 and look what happened to them.

Overall, I don't like the number of questions this episode raises and the gaping holes in physics it leaves. I'm going to rate it down.