Doctor Who Reviews – Page 11 – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 11–Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

“Don’t get into a spaceship with a madman. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

This week’s hotly anticipated episode of Doctor Who was always going to divide its ever-fractious fandom. Any episode that explores the mythos of the show always does, and especially when it’s one dealing with the show’s one constant (other than the Doctor himself) – the TARDIS. Neil Gaiman managed the virtually impossible last year, pleasing virtually all of fandom with his ‘character dissection’ of the Ship, The Doctor’s Wife.

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Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 10–Hide

“I’m talking to the lost soul that abides in this place. Come to me. Speak to me. Let me show you the way home.”

I like haunted house thrillers. So much so, in fact, that my final piece for the TV production module of my drama degree was one (one day I’ll get round to posting that on YouTube to embarrass myself). My DVD collection is crammed with the likes of The Haunting, Legend of Hell House (music by Delia Derbyshire), Poltergeist, The Shining, Stephen King’s Rose Red and so on and so on. Naturally, then, I was pleased to see Doctor Who delving into this most traditional of genres, and keen to see if they’d pull it off.

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Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 9 – Cold War

“My people are dead, they are dust. There is nothing left for me except my revenge.”

A very nostalgic episode of Doctor Who this week, as we saw the return of a classic 60s ‘monster’ beloved by the fans but in no way as embedded in popular culture as the Daleks or the Cybermen. The Ice Warriors were back, in a genuinely interesting period piece that revisited one of the most defining aspects of the 80s without miring itself in big shoulder pads or terrible hairstyles.

For those of us who grew up in the 80s, the looming threat of nuclear armageddon was probably a more all-encompassing menace than Thatcher and a bigger cultural phenomenon than New Romance. It was, as we all knew, the ‘Cold War’. What better war to reintroduce the cyber-augmented reptiles from the freezing planet Mars – the so-called ‘Ice Warriors’?

The Ice Warriors (name coined by a minor human character in their first story, which uncannily turned out to be what they were always known as) are one of Doctor Who’s more inventive aliens; inventive in the sense that, unlike the Daleks or the Cybermen, they had individuality, depth, and a proper culture.

We saw, in their first few stories, that they could be bad guys. Then, along with the Doctor, we had to face up the idea that as individuals, they might be capable of good as well as bad. 1972’s The Curse of Peladon is a groundbreaking story, the first demonstration that ‘monsters’ were actually people, and that it might not be the case that an entire race were ‘bad’ even if the ones we’d seen up to that point were.

As a result, the Ice Warriors have become something of a fan favourite, their ‘honourable warrior’ culture much explored in the Virgin New Adventures and other such fan fiction. But this is their first appearance on your actual television since 1974’s The Monster of Peladon, where they were back to being the baddies. So how did they fare?

Well, it was a script by Mark Gatiss, whose work has been somewhat variable on the show. A huge fan, whose Virgin novel Nightshade was genuinely superb, as a TV writer he’s rocketed from the excellent The Unquiet Dead to the fun but inconsequential The Idiot’s Lantern and then the pretty awful toy relaunch Victory of the Daleks. His work has been so variable, I’ve come to think of it as rating on a ‘Gatiss scale’. Cold War, on that scale, is better than Victory of the Daleks, on a par with The Idiot’s Lantern, but not quite up there with The Unquiet Dead.

On top of being an Ice Warrior re-introduction and a period piece, Cold War also took on the tall order of being a genre piece too – a submarine movie, like Das Boot, Crimson Tide or my all-time favourite, 1957’s The Enemy Below. On that score, it didn’t work out too well. Those movies depend on actual conflict, while this utilised the claustrophobic submarine setting but little else.

Nevertheless, it (perhaps intentionally) reminded me of another aquatic Who story – the less than classic Warriors of the Deep, itself a re-introduction of sorts for classic monsters the Silurians and the Sea Devils. Warriors of the Deep was actually made at the height of the real Cold War, and reimagined it in a future setting. It was still an obvious allegory for the situation that was, at that point, current.

Mark Gatiss, a child of the 80s every bit as much as me, obviously had his own adolescence as sullied as mine by the threat of nuclear holocaust. With that in mind, it was refreshing that he chose to set his story on a sub belonging to the ‘enemy’ – the Soviet Union. The sub (not, as far as I noticed, named) was populated by the usual Gatiss cast of varying depth (pun intended).

Commander Zhukov (presumably named after WW2 Marshal Georgi Zhukov) was played with some dignity by the excellent Liam Cunningham, Game of Thrones’ similarly seaborne Ser Davos Seaworth, but not really given any more depth than the standard ‘base commanders’ of the Troughton episodes this was reminiscent of. Less, really; he was more like the forgettable Commander Vorshak from Warriors of the Deep.

His (I assume) political officer Lieutenant Stepashin was a good enough performance from Tobias Menzies (especially his doomed attempt to ally himself with the Ice Warrior), but an obvious lift of Tomas Arana’s rather more threatening equivalent in The Hunt for Red October. The rest of the crew, sad to say (even the pretty James Norton as Onegin) were given little more depth than the average Star Trek redshirt.

With the exception of David Warner as the New Romantic-obsessed Professor Grisenko. Warner, a firm genre favourite and veteran of more Star Trek roles than is reasonable, is one of the greatest Doctors we never had, having given us a glimpse of how good he could have been in two ‘alternate Doctor’ Big Finish audio stories. Here, he was as charismatic as ever – I never expected to hear him sing Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’ – but while the part was good, and he was good in it, I couldn’t help feeling that his long-awaited appearance in Doctor Who should have been something more significant than, essentially, a comedy bit part.

But what of the Ice Warrior, thawed out in minutes under very similar circumstances to the creatures’ original appearance? On that, Gatiss did really well, exploring aspects of Brian Hayles’ creations we’d always theorised about but never actually had spelled out. It was a given from their very first story that they had some kind of cybernetic augmentation, and certainly their built-in sonic weapons (little used here) were not the product of natural evolution.

Gatiss here did what we’d always wanted – demonstrated that the big green carapace was a removable suit of cybernetic armour. And also that, out of his armour, Grand Marshal Skaldak was at least as much of a threat as he was in it. Douglas Mackinnon’s clever, old-style direction steered clear of showing us the unmasked Warrior until the very last minute – a good strategy, as it turned out, as I wasn’t entirely convinced by the CG facial expressions. Nonetheless, as it stalked the sub picking off unwary crew members, the creature was (again presumably intentionally) a credible threat reminiscent of the original Alien.

And to add menace, we discovered that the armour could be used as a weapon in itself, as Skaldak summoned the empty suit to gun its way tot the command deck. We also learned more of the (somewhat Klingon-inspired) Martian code of honour; Skaldak’s hostility was basically a reaction to the Russians having started the fight, and he was honour-bound to meet them in combat. Discovering (he thought) that his people had died off during his 5000-year slumber, his bitterness against a race whose nations he didn’t distinguish between was understandable. And more than a little affecting, with his stories of his past, and the combat alongside his daughter in “the red snow”.

Matt Smith was (as usual) on good form as the Doctor, though he seemed to slip into Tennant’s ‘Estuary English’ accent at one point. The aspect of the Third Doctor overcoming his (understandable) prejudice against the Ice Warriors, and realising their race could be good as well as bad, was a central plot point of The Curse of Peladon. Here, it seemed like a lesson learned, but the point was well-made that, whatever the Doctor thought of himself, Skaldak would see him as a ‘soldier’ every bit as much as the Russians.

So, as is often the case since 2005, it was his companion who saved the day. There wasn’t much of the self-conscious ‘arc’ stuff about Clara this week, which thankfully gave Jenna-Louise Coleman a chance to showcase her character on its own terms. She is, as we know, the standard Moffat self-reliant spunky young woman; I still find her a little identikit in that regard. But that’s no disrespect to the actress, and Coleman was enjoyable here. Her belated acceptance of Grisenko’s invitation to sing ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ was the tipping point that stayed Skaldak’s hand in mercy, reminding him of his daughter singing. It was both amusing and touching.

Aside form the obvious nostalgia value of the Ice Warriors returning, we also got the fanboy-pleasing reference to the HADS – Hostile Action Displacement System – not used or even referred to since 1969’s The Krotons. It was more than a fan-pleasing gesture though, effectively answering the obvious question I asked early on – “why doesn’t the Doctor get everyone out of there in the TARDIS?” Still, alongside last week’s oblique reference to Susan, it’s plain we’re getting 60s references to celebrate the 50th anniversary year. No bad thing, in my opinion; the references aren’t so central as to alienate new fans who won’t get them, and give a little thrill to those of us who do.

All told, while I thought the story wasn’t that inventive, this was an excellent re-introduction of a classic alien – probably the best since 2005’s Dalek. I hope they’ll be back. I also hope that, if they are, the nuances of their culture seen here are retained, and they don’t just become another Big Bad.

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 8–The Rings of Akhaten

“Can you feel the light on your eyelids? That is the light of an alien sun.”

I was a bit tipsy yesterday afternoon.

As a result, I struggled to stay fully awake during Doctor Who, and rewatched it today to properly follow it. In the interim, unusually, I was able to digest what many of my online friends thought.

The reaction from many people I knew was pretty negative. “Slow, predictable, cheap tacky sets, no larger plot arc, no character developing, cheesy maudlin flashback (wtf??), and dull as fuck” opined one friend. “They’ve given Matt Smith his very own Fear Her,” said another (damning indeed!). “Utter pigshit,” was one more blunt opinion. The only voice I heard raised in its favour was my boyfriend Barry, who rather enjoyed it, comparing it to surreal 1965 serial The Web Planet, which similarly is not well-regarded.

Well, I actually love The Web Planet. And I may be tacking into the wind of disapproval here, but I rather enjoyed The Rings of Akhaten as well. True, it was unabashedly sentimental, which I can see would put some people off. It was also heavily dependent on Murray Gold’s admittedly OTT emotion-tugging music, which as usual frequently swamped the dialogue. And yes, the show might have bitten off more than it could chew with such an effects-heavy story (though I didn’t have any complaints on that score).

But it was also, more than ever, a sign that this era of Doctor Who is very much science fantasy rather than science fiction. I’ve heard some fans carping about the scientific impossibility of the Seven Worlds of Akhaten (from the perspective of gravity, atmosphere etc), or the ‘space moped’ which our heroes rode without the benefit of spacesuits or a roof.

Well, you could have dealt with that in the dialogue with some Star Trek-style technobabble. But why bother? Technology, in recent Who, is often a shorthand for ‘magic’ – it does whatever the plot demands. Sometimes that’s irritating, when it’s used to short circuit a proper conclusion by way of a deus ex machina. But when it’s just covering minor details, I don’t have a problem with that.

Speaking of deus ex machina, this was another story that, like a few recently, seemed to heark back to the style of Russell T Davies. It followed the established Nu-Who template for the introduction of a new companion – start with a story on contemporary Earth (where they’re always – disappointingly – from), then whisk them off to a weird future location full of a Star Wars-style menagerie of odd-looking aliens.

Kudos to the production team for not taking the ‘cheap’ option of reusing the many existing alien costumes – all the creatures on display here seemed entirely new. Indeed, the visuals seemed fairly sumptuous, from the costumes to the effects, evoking – for me – early efforts by French fantasists Jeunet and Caro, like City of Lost Children. True, the set design for the dusty streets was functional rather than inspired, but it seems harsh to criticise that when there was so much invention on display elsewhere.

And the concepts were, for me, as inventive as the look of the thing. True, Doctor Who has done ‘false gods’ any number of times before; they almost always turn out to be power-mad computers, or, as here, parasitic aliens. We even got one last year in Toby Whithouse’s enjoyable The God Complex.

But the god here, with its domination of an entire solar system who lived in fear of it and routinely sang it lullabies to keep it asleep, seemed genuinely terrifying – signposted by even the Doctor being terrified of it. Writer Neil Cross (creator of Luther and, less favourably, recent adapter of Day of the Triffids) came up with the fascinating concept of it feeding on treasured memories and stories, to the extent that they even formed the currency of its worshippers. That’s reminiscent of a recurring theme of the other Neil – Mr Gaiman himself.

Like Neil Gaiman’s similarly inventive script for The Doctor’s Wife, this gifted Matt Smith with some cracking dialogue to get his teeth into. “We don’t walk away”, summed up the show’s philosophy nicely, as well as providing a riposte to anyone wondering why they didn’t just get in the TARDIS and leg it. But the Doctor’s final speech to the ‘Grandfather’ was obviously a showcase moment, and Smith seized it with both hands to chew the scenery (but in a good way):

“I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment until nothing remained, no time, no space, just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man.I watched universes freeze and creations burn,I have seen things you wouldn’t believe, I have lost things you will never understand – and I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken…”

Hints of things to come, I wonder? Speaking of which, the ep also gave us more of an insight into Clara, with that prologue in which the Doctor, basically, stalked her parents through from their meeting to her mother’s death. That actually could seem more than a bit creepy, and Clara was probably right to be slightly weirded out when she ‘remembered’ it – the implication being that the memories were fresh, since the Doctor had only just taken that trip.

Clara’s apparent impossibility was the only ongoing plotline here, though. That may annoy those who are fans of the ‘arc’ episodes above the others, but I’ve personally found Steven Moffat’s arc-heavy approach hard going these last couple of years, and am glad that it’s taking the more background approach of the early RTD seasons.

Clara did get to show some real mettle here, as we continue to get to know her. I still bemoan the fact that she seems like ‘Moffat spunky young woman type #23’, but her morale-bolstering heart to heart with little Merry (Emilia Jones, excellent) was a magical moment that could only be resisted by the most hard-hearted and cynical. And her ultimate rescue of the Doctor, speeding to the Pyramid on the space moped then giving up her most treasured memory, was lovely; especially the Doctor’s remark about the monumental difference between “what was and what should have been”. Could Clara’s mum, and her apparently premature death, figure in why she’s such an impossibility?

There was some creepy stuff too, which was still in keeping with the imaginative visuals here. The Mummy in the Pyramid was pretty standard Who-fare, but the creepy looking Vigils will probably have given many a young child a few bad dreams. With their blank faces and Graf Orlok costumes, they were again reminiscent of the creations of Jeunet and Caro, not to mention David Lynch. Indeed, their apparently sound-based weaponry called to mind nothing so much as Dune.

I found The Rings of Akhaten to be a visually sumptuous, life-affirming piece of fantasy, very much in the style of the work of Neil Gaiman. I wouldn’t want Who to be like this every week, lest it turn into Farscape or Lexx, but that’s the beauty of the show – its flexibility. Next week, it looks like we’ve got a trad submarine thriller (albeit with aliens). That’s good too; but I’ve always got time for some out and out fantasy, if it’s done well, and I thought this was. Still, what do I know? I like The Web Planet Smile

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 7–The Bells of Saint John

“Human souls, trapped like flies in the World Wide Web.”

So which is it – series 7 episode 6, or the opener of a whole new series? Steven Moffat’s experiments with the scheduling of Doctor Who mean that it’s hard to know, with lots of people referring to new ep The Bells of Saint John as a ‘season opener’.

Whether it is or not, it certainly had the hallmarks of one – a bit spectacular, with some awesome London locations (rather than Cardiff pretending to be the capital) and some super set pieces (which actually fitted into the story context rather than being shoehorned in because they looked good). Most importantly, it was a bit of a mini-reboot for the show, with the Doctor reinventing himself in the wake of losing Amy and Rory; that process feels ongoing, having begun in the Christmas special and carrying on here. Along with the new console room revealed at Christmas, the Doctor now got to pick out a new outfit, something traditionally reserved for an incoming new Time Lord.

The ‘Moffatiness’ so common of late was dialed fairly low in the mix. This story was straightforward enough, with no head-scratching time paradoxes, there was fairly little smugly flirtatious witty dialogue, and River Song didn’t even appear (though odds on she was the mysterious ‘lady in the shop’ who gave Clara the TARDIS phone number). Nevertheless, some of the usual Moffat trademarks were in evidence, notably in the ongoing mystery of who exactly Clara is, and the unexpected return of an old villain as the mysterious ‘Client’ – even if that villain turned out to be the same one as in the previous episode.

It did have another Moffat trope at its heart, though it’s one he inherited from 70s script editor Robert Holmes – the central concept took something very ordinary and familiar and turned it into something scary. Here, very much tied up in the zeitgeist, it was Wi Fi networks, and the Cloud. What if, the script asked, the human mind could be linked to a computer, and programmed or downloaded like any other system? If anything, that should have given us a clue as to who the real villain was, but it still came as rather a surprise to me.

We’re all familiar with the list of odd looking Wi Fi networks we see when our mobile devices try to connect, so it seemed not too much of a stretch to assume that one of those weird looking networks might be an alien creature intent on sucking out our brains… well, maybe a bit of a stretch, but not in the world of Doctor Who. As this situation was explained in an X-Files-like precredits teaser, it was reminiscent of nothing so much as the cursed videotape from Ringu; you log on to the network, and 24 hours later, you’re dead. But your mind isn’t – it’s ‘”integrated into the cloud”, for an alien to feast on.

For me at least, this seemed a trifle unclear. The Doctor managed to ‘download’ the prone Clara back into her body – but surely if the body is dead for more than a few minutes, there’s no coming back? When he accomplished having all the minds ‘re-downloaded’, there was some acknowledgement that not all of them would still have a body to return to; I’d say that was probably most of them. Given that Moffat scripts of late have lacked real jeopardy because of his apparent unwillingness to kill characters off for real and permanently, I suppose it’s not too surprising that he left this somewhat unclear.

Still, that was about the only criticism I could find of this rather enjoyable episode (though I’m sure the fan forums will find plenty more). Matt Smith was, as usual, excellent; he’s still plainly loving the role. I liked the return of the fez, and the fact that his bow tie is kept in a little treasure chest. Jenna Louise Coleman, as Clara, has still to truly convince me as a character though. It’s a good, sparky performance. It may not be naturalistic, but Doctor Who acting often isn’t (Smith himself being a good case in point). But, appealing though she may be, Clara still strikes me as almost a stock Moffat leading lady; not a bad thing in itself, but still not vastly different from Amy Pond.

Of course, Clara has an ongoing mystery (thankfully the only convoluted element in this episode). It’s possible that the more of this is revealed, the more interesting I’ll find her as a character. And is it significant that she happened to be the one to ask the question “Doctor Who?” (much to the Doctor’s near-orgasmic delight, it seems)?

I imagine we’ll see more of this kind of thing (and, presumably, the return of River Song) as the series progresses. For now though, the only other element of this story that wasn’t truly standalone was its villain. The script revealed the agency behind the webnapping of human minds fairly early on, with the sinister black office headed by the marvellously frosty Celia Imrie as Miss Kizlett. But from the outset, it was clear that they were acting for somebody else. The mysterious ‘Client’ who knew all about the Doctor and his box – I found myself resorting to that oft-asked question of Sue Perryman, “is it the Master?”

But no (fun though it would be to see John Simm’s barmy renegade again), it turned out to be none other than the Great Intelligence, making this also a sequel to The Snowmen. The plan was very much in keeping with what we’ve seen the Intelligence do before; we know it can possess humans from The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, though on those occasions it could only manage one at a time. Obviously the advancement of technology has helped, and Wi Fi now enables it (and its minions) to hack into any human brain at any time.

This led to a series of Matrix-like moments where various anonymous passersby turned into conduits for threats to our heroes, including the BBC newsreader. Though I did have to wonder how many uncontrolled viewers found the one-sided conversation rather baffling…

The Intelligence is now represented by the face of its one-time puppet Dr Simeon, meaning it’s now played by Richard E Grant. Shame though it is to lose the voice of Ian McKellen, it’s not like Grant’s any less of a star catch. Since he ‘got away’ in the end, I wonder whether he’s shaping up into the next Big Bad of the story arc?

Director Colm McCarthy, plainly with a bigger than usual budget for the show, had a field day with London locations – barely an exterior shot went by without at least one major landmark in the background. It was hard to begrudge though, and amusing to think that for the classic series, leaving London seemed like a Big Occasion; and these days, having the real London and not a dressed-up Cardiff was a cause for visual extravagance!

McCarthy also did well with the various set pieces. Again, these were pretty ambitious. The Doctor materialising the TARDIS inside an about-to-crash plane was audacious (lucky the passengers were asleep, trying to use the toilets could have ended up with several of the roaming the TARDIS corridors). It was a well-directed action set piece, but topped not too long after by the Doctor employing a flying motorbike to roar up the side of the Shard offices.

Yes, that is pretty over the top, even by action movie standards, and I’m betting some fans will think it’s fairly gratuitous. For me though, it fitted in with the tone of the show – and more importantly, made sense within the context of the story, in a way that such set pieces often don’t. I refer you to – the window cleaning lift in Partners in Crime, the lift cable slide in New Earth, Spitfires in Space in Victory of the Daleks… And many, many more.

So – a good story, that made sense on its own terms without requiring in depth knowledge of a convoluted arc. Some thrilling action set pieces. Great performances from, in particular Matt Smith and Celia Imrie. And the usual self-consciously witty dialogue kept to a controlled minimum (probably because River Song didn’t show up). Whether it’s a season opener, a mid-season opener or whatever, The Bells of Saint John was one of the more straightforwardly enjoyable Doctor Who stories in a couple of years. Please keep it up, Mr Moffat.

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 6–The Snowmen

“Over a thousand years saving the universe, I have learned one thing… the universe doesn’t care.”

This blog review is a little later than usual, and there are several reasons for that. I’ve had a terrible cold, I overdid the Christmas festivities, yada, yada, yada. But the main reason is that, contrary to my usual practice of recording my first impressions of a show as soon as I’ve seen it, I wanted to watch this one again. Because the first time I watched it, I found it overcomplex, convoluted and lacking in internal logic, despite its many charms. I came out of it with a lot of questions, but found that my friends on the internet (well, most of them) had a far better impression of it than I did. So I resolved to watch it again, to see if there was something I’d missed.

And do you know what? There was. Most of what I’d seen as plot holes are actually covered in Steven Moffat’s cleverly constructed but busy script; the problem (well, mine anyway) was that the breakneck speed with which they had to be addressed meant I missed more than a few in my post-Christmas dinner torpor. That, of course, is my own fault – but I can hardly have been the only one watching in such a frame of mind, given the time slot. For a Christmas romp, this had a surprisingly complex, layered plot, requiring real attention to be paid. In that, it felt remarkably similar to the also-crowded A Good Man Goes to War – but this at least was somewhat more coherent for all its complexity.

So, it was another trip to Victorian England for this year’s Doctor Who Christmas episode – yes, I know A Christmas Carol was really set on a futuristic planet, but it was a futuristic planet that had for some reason modelled itself on Victorian England. This seems to be a preoccupation for Steven Moffat, that Christmas stories are best set in the past. It’s a preconception we can probably blame on Charles Dickens, and there’d be a good essay to be written on the comprehensive domination of Christmas his classic tale has come to exert – well, if Mark Gatiss hadn’t already written it with The Unquiet Dead.

In keeping with most Christmas TV visualisations of Dickens, this was a somewhat sanitised version of the late Victorian period; nary a workhouse, an opium den or a murdered prostitute to be seen. No, this was the Victorian era of classic children’s fantasy, and it was from this that Moffat had clearly drawn most inspiration. The Doctor’s hermitage, his TARDIS parked atop a cloud reached via a magical invisible staircase from a London park, was very much the stuff of John Masefield, E Nesbit or JM Barrie (though the scene of Clara shouting his name at thin air may well have owed a debt to Star Trek IV).

Clara’s position as kindly, wisdom-dispensing governess to an emotionally dysfunctional motherless family meant she might as well have been called Mary Poppins, and the clever inversion of cosy Christmas favourite The Snowman into an army of growling, fanged monsters nonetheless keeps us squarely in the realm of fairytale. Doctor Who has never been exactly what you’d call scientifically accurate, but even under Russell T Davies reign of deus ex machina, it at least tried to maintain that impression; with this more than ever, it’s clear that Moffat thinks of it as fantasy, perhaps even classic myth.

Personally, I don’t have too much of a problem with that (though judging from the internet, there’s plenty that do). But this story had a hell of a lot to pack in while still serving as a jolly Christmas romp. For the first time, it comes in the middle of a series run; and not only does it have to bridge that gap, it also has to introduce a new companion – well, sort of – and set up a new ongoing mystery while dropping hints about the ones already ongoing.

To do all that, while packing in returns from fan favourite characters, setting up an origin story for a classic villain, dealing with the grief-stricken Doctor’s apparent retirement and telling an exciting tale all within the space of an hour was a pretty tall order. No wonder some explanations went by so closely I needed a second viewing to catch them.

It did have all the hallmark Moffat strengths along with the weaknesses – primarily that gift for great characters, witty dialogue and imaginative concepts. Silurian detective Madame Vastra and her human wife Jenny were great creations in their first appearance and their return was most welcome. The obvious inversion to Moffat’s beloved Sherlock Holmes was cleverly lampshaded by villain Dr Simeon sneering that “Dr Doyle” had obviously based his creations on them (far from the only Holmes reference in a script written by the showrunner of Sherlock).

It was good to see comedy Sontaran Strax back for another go too. Played for even broader laughs here than before, Dan Starkey milked every one with perfect comic timing in the surreal juxtaposition of a militaristic clone race playing courteous Victorian manservant, albeit one with an unhealthy obsession for grenades. “Do not try to escape or you will be obliterated! May I take your coat?” It felt like another nod to a classic Who juxtaposition – neanderthal butler Nimrod from Victoriana-obsessed Ghost Light, a show whose themes were also echoed here more than once.

But if those supporting characters were richly drawn, you couldn’t really say the same for the villainous Dr Simeon. Richard E Grant looked marvellously cadaverous in the role, and gave an appropriately cold performance. But there was no real sense of depth or history to Simeon; it was as if he’d grown from a child to an adult without his personality ever changing, which seemed unlikely. Of course that could be down to Dickens again, that same odd lack of development being what blights the character of Ebenezer Scrooge. But Scrooge at least has the possibility of redemption when shown the error of his ways. Simeon, whose fault everything turns out to be, learns no such lesson – a surprisingly cynical outlook for a Christmas story.

In fact, given that his inadvertent mental creation the Great Intelligence outlives him, and continues to mirror his misanthropy for decades, Simeon must have no redeeming features at all. Working in an origin story for a classic series villain from the 60s, though, that was audacious – particularly given the need to make the story accessible to the great majority of viewers whose knowledge of 1967 Doctor Who is rather less than the average fanboy’s.

The script just about pulled it off. Ian McKellen’s brilliantly mellifluous tones lent the Intelligence a suitable air of menace, and the references to the events of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, while fairly glaring to the fan, were unlikely to alienate the casual viewer. By the end, though, it did feel a bit like it was being hammered home somewhat with that graveside exchange: “It’s hard to see much danger from a disembodies Intelligence who wants to invade the world with snowmen.” “Or who thinks the London Underground is a strategic weakness.” Yes, thank you Mr Moffat, the fans have picked up on it now – though they may be less merciful about the implication that The Web of Fear was set in the year it was broadcast, or that the Intelligence has only existed since 1892 when Padhmasambhva claims to have been possessed for centuries in The Abominable Snowmen.

Still, while there’s no pleasing some fans, hopefully plenty more will have been delighted that Moffat resurrected one of Douglas Adams’ ideas from his tenure as script editor in the 70s – the idea that the Doctor, finally having had enough of the whole universe-saving business, has packed it all in in a fit of pique. There was no better place to fit that than here, after the trauma of just losing the show’s longest-running companions since it returned; the Doctor usually seems to get over such shocks fairly quickly, and it felt right that this time he should properly get a chance to mope.

And mope he did, with Matt Smith giving another sensational performance as a closed-off Time Lord gradually being drawn back into the world. The implication was that he might have been sulking on top of his cloud for quite some time, certainly since just after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan.

Again as with A Good Man Goes to War, it took his friends to make him come to his senses; to make him realise that he can’t repress his basic nature of curiosity, fairness, and kindness. The thing he most has in common with Sherlock Holmes is that neither can abide an unsolved mystery, but the Doctor also has a more obviously caring side. Smith’s performance, as he gradually came out of his shell with the realisation that those things are an innate part of him, was excellent – particularly the realisation that he’d unconsciously gone back to wearing his bow tie. It was a complex, affecting performance that still kept hold of the character’s sense of fun.

And there was still plenty of fun – this was a Christmas episode after all. The most obvious laughs came from Strax, though the Doctor’s inept version of Sherlock Holmes was both funny and clever – pretending to be stupid while actually being the cleverest person in the room is very Doctor-ish. The dialogue too was typically Moffat-witty; which is to say, wittier than anyone could ever be in real life, but as witty as we wish we all were. And even the broad comedy sketch involving Strax and the ‘memory worm’ (which had me laughing out loud) served a proper dramatic purpose in setting up the resolution of the plot. This wasn’t gratuitous laughs, but humour that arose from, and served, a cleverly constructed story.

But the most important thing for this story – and a burden a Christmas episode has never previously had to shoulder – was to set up numerous things for the future. Happily, for me anyway, all of them worked rather well. There’s a new title sequence, which looks for all the world like a computer generated version of the chemical splodges that formed the openings of the 60s Dalek films, and best of all it (finally!) has the Doctor’s face in it. Not sure about zooming in to the TARDIS doors opening onto the action, but generally, thumbs up from me.

It’s accompanied by Murray Gold’s umpteenth rearrangement of the theme tune, which I have to say I like better than the last one; though I thought he got it pretty much right back in 2005, and find it annoying that he feels the need to change the arrangement every two years or so. After all, the classic version (from which Gold used to draw a lot the elements) lasted for 17 years with very minimal changes. Still, as I say, I think this is an improvement.

Then there’s that much-publicised revamp of the console room. As with the arrangement of the theme tune, it feels like it’s getting revamped more frequently than is necessary, with the Eccleston/Tennant one having lasted four or five years, and the last one only managing two. But, if it had to be revamped, I do like the design. It feels more reminiscent of the classic 80s one (if it had been more subtly lit), all muted cream colours for the console with pseudo-roundels on the wall. In keeping with the Doctor’s sombre mood, it’s quite darkly lit, though that may change I suppose. And that doobry in the roof that rotates in multiple directions is pretty cool.

The Doctor has a new costume too, which I have less of a problem with; it wasn’t till John Nathan-Turner’s reign in the 80s that the costume became such a uniform, and before that, Pertwee and Tom Baker wore many variations on their basic looks. Matt Smith’s Victorian look here seems to be just for this one story; I’m not sure he could permanently pull off that battered topper. But from the ‘Coming Soon’ trailer, it looks like he’s acquired a waistcoat as part of his ensemble, and to the dismay of cosplayers who thought they’d got the costume finalised, he’s changed his jacket for something darker.

The last new item is the most important – and almost certainly the one that’s going to provoke the most debate. We get to meet the companion – and so does the Doctor. Sort of. Just like Amy, Clara (or Oswin) is plainly more than just an ordinary young lady. Both are impossibly glamorous, witty, and resourceful, things which appeal to this Doctor (and obviously Steven Moffat) a great deal. Clara leads a double life as occasional Cockney barmaid and prim (but kindly) governess, for which little explanation is given (yet), and spends a great deal of the episode being subjected to intelligence tests.

The ‘one word answer’ interrogation by Vastra is cleverly scripted, and reveals more Moffat preoccupations (when asked to give one word to explain the Doctor’s epic sulk, Clara simply replies, “man”). The Doctor’s setup with the umbrella, leading Clara on to his plan to deal with the ice creature, was less subtle; but we’d already seen just how smart Clara was when she figured out immediately how the telepathic snow might link with a child’s dreams of a cruel woman frozen to death in a pond.

But how coincidental was her use of the word ‘pond’ to lure the Doctor into action? Because. quite contrary to set up expectations thorughout, Clara/Oswin died. Again. No wonder the Doctor’s so keen on her, she must remind him of Rory. But he belatedly realised, as she repeated her last words from Asylum of the Daleks, that this was the ‘souffle girl’ he’d already met once, centuries in the future (at least by voice, anyway). As he realises he’s already met two versions of the same girl, he’s straight off to find the next one – “perhaps the universe makes bargains after all.” Though I was a bit disappointed that the next version is another 21st century contemporary girl – I liked the idea of a woman from the past as a companion. Unless we’re going to be meeting a new Clara every week?

So what’s the explanation for Clara/Oswin (and which name will we eventually know her by)? Clearly this is going to be a major plot point for the rest of this series, which will come as something of a relief from various people portentously intoning “Doctor who?” at us. The internet’s already abuzz (as internets are wont to be) with speculation. Is she a Jagaroth, splintered through time like in City of Death (unlikely, as that was caused by a particular event and not a characteristic innate to the species)? Is she a descendant of her own previous/later character, like Gwen out of Torchwood?

For my money, knowing Mr Moffat, the answer to her mystery will be inextricably linked with the one he’s set up for the Doctor – perhaps she’s been fractured through time by something the Doctor’s will do in the future. Or is that too timey-wimey? Whichever, Jenna-Louise Coleman was again winning in the role, even if I’m less susceptible to her glamour than other, more heterosexual men.

On a second viewing then, this was less disappointing than I initially thought. But I stick to my contention that it tried to bite off more than it could chew in cramming in so many disparate complex elements into one hour long fluffy Christmas special. Yes, it was enjoyable; it had great characters, witty dialogue, imaginative concepts, and such quickfire direction that it was difficult to spot the leaps in logic. But it also had the terrifically corny and sentimental line that the only thing that could stop the telepathic snow was “a whole family crying together on Christmas Eve. It was fun but complicated, childish yet sophisticated, tricksy yet somewhat less than the sum of its parts. A Steven Moffat story, in other words…

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 5–The Angels Take Manhattan

“I always tear out the last page of books. That way I don’t have to know the ending. I hate endings.”

New York, New York. So good they named it twice. The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. The city that… well, wasn’t strictly integral to the plot of this emotional farewell to the Ponds (finally given the name of ‘Williams’ as a last courtesy to Rory). Don’t get me wrong, the location work, by the talented Nick Hurran, was exceptional, moody and atmospheric. But really, this story could have played out anywhere. New York was just the icing on the cake. Since I’m on the topic, shame they didn’t consider Los Angeles; given the monsters involved, that might have been somewhat appropriate.

But then, it wouldn’t have had that gimmicky title, reminiscent of countless Hollywood classics (ironically enough), but most of all, for me anyway, the masterpiece Muppets Take Manhattan. Though this did manage to be scarier than that – just. I’m not sure whether I’d rather face a Weeping Angel or an enraged Miss Piggy.

Indeed, gimmicks seemed at play a lot here. As I theorised a while ago (see last week), the temptation to have the Statue of Liberty be a Weeping Angel was just too good to pass up (perhaps Mr Moffat is gambling that nobody remembers Ghostbusters II). It did look great, looming over that rooftop with a snarling mouth full of fangs, but the spectacle did require some equally spectacular leaps in logic. For a start, given its illuminated location in the middle of New York Harbor, it would have to be quite lucky to be unobserved enough to move when it needed to. And when it did, did nobody notice it had gone? It was hanging around that rooftop for quite a while!

There were leaps in logic aplenty here, both within the episode itself and as part of the larger story of Amy and Rory that started back in The Eleventh Hour. When did the future Ponds arrive to wave at themselves during The Hungry Earth? What was the real explanation for Amy’s excessively large house? Why did she not remember big events like Dalek invasions? And if we were never going to get answers to all these things, why have the Doctor continually drop hints about them?

Still, if there’s one hallmark of what I guess we must now call ‘the Moffat era’, it’s temporal paradoxes. Time has been rewritten so much over the last couple of series (not to mention rebooting the entire universe based exclusively on Amy’s memories) that it can be used as a way to paper over such inconsistencies. I don’t much care for that rationalisation though – it smacks of a post facto way to excuse loose plot threads.

Given Moffat’s fondness for rewriting timelines, it seemed a matter of convenience here that suddenly the Doctor was unable (or unwilling?) to change futures he’d seen or knew about. He’s managed to rewrite time plenty before (see Day of the Daleks for an obvious example), to the extent that Russell T Davies had to invent the concept of ‘fixed points in time’ to justify why he sometimes couldn’t. But that principle has always been flexible to fit narrative continuity; that’s why the Fifth Doctor couldn’t just nip back to that freighter and rescue Adric (thankfully).

I can understand why, reading the above, you might think I didn’t enjoy this episode. But actually I did, to the extent that I was prepared to (just about) forgive it those staggering leaps in logic. After all, they’re mostly the ones that only fanboys like me were going to spot. I’d guess that, for most viewers, the biggest concern was the final farewell of Amy and Rory.

In this, the script was clever, playful and tricksy. It had been well-publicised that they were leaving, so I’m guessing it was written with the assumption the viewer would know they were leaving, making the suspense depend on how it was going to happen. Would they decide to stop travelling with the Doctor (after last week’s affirmations)? Would they be killed? Would they simply die of old age?

Moffat’s script cunningly played with all these expectations, ultimately managing to make the Ponds’ fate a combination of all these things with, bizarrely, still managing to live happily ever after. That might seem like trying to have your cake and eat it to some, but actually that element of the script hung together just fine. After wiping out the Angels HQ by dying twice (in one episode – a fitting farewell for Rory), Rory then got zapped back to the past. Amy chose to follow him, to be with the man she truly loved. They both lived happily ever after, in the past, unable to return. Then died of old age, leaving a Manhattan gravestone and a message for the Doctor. And as I said, all that at least made sense, and actually managed to prove just about everyone’s speculations right in one way or another.

The script was actually masterful at misdirection from the very start, introducing a Raymond Chandler-style PI who seemed to be narrating the story, then got zapped back in time by the Angels after witnessing his own death as an old man. It was good to see the Angels back to their original USP of sending people irretrievably to the past and feeding on the time energy thus produced; gripping though their last appearance was, it never seemed consistent with what we knew that they were suddenly dispatching their victims by snapping their necks.

As it turned out, most of the episode ended up being set in that film noir era of 1938, to which Rory had been zapped while off getting a coffee for Amy and the Doctor. That gave the director, set designers and costume designers the chance to have a field day with noir conventions, into which the Angels fitted surprisingly well. True, the ‘McGuffin’ of having one Angel in the custody of acquisitive crime lord Grayle (nice to see Mike McShane) neither made sense nor was followed up on after the gang escaped; but that’s the sort of window dressing so frequently used by Chandler, who confessed that even he didn’t know who’d committed one of the murders in the 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep.

But really, all the twists, turns, moody lighting and misdirection were all to get Amy and Rory to the roof of that building, and the point of both choice and affirmation that, finally, they were more important to each other than the Doctor was to them. Rory’s plan did (just about) make sense, based on what the Doctor had already told him – avert the death of his elderly self by dying now, and (for wibbly, wobbly reasons) the resultant paradox would cancel out everything the Angels had done, leaving him alive again.

When it comes to standing on a ledge about to jump, though, it’s a leap of faith. It was the first of a number of points in the story where you thought Rory in particular was going for good. The scene was beautifully played by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who by now must feel like they know the characters inside out; and when they both jumped (to the Doctor’s anguish) it felt like that must be the end for them, slo-mo, heartfelt Murray Gold music and all.

But no, they woke up back in that graveyard, sitting bolt upright like Captain Jack returning to life. And all looked rosy until Rory noticed that gravestone – given the themes of the episode, perhaps he’d have been all right if he hadn’t seen it. His sudden instant disappearance at the hands of a lone surviving Angel was the last we’ll ever see of him, and that felt like a bit of a cheat. It did explain why the script had already given him two emotional death scenes this week, but ultimately just disappearing – that didn’t feel right, somehow.

Thankfully, Amy got a truly heartwrenching farewell, as she made the near-impossible choice to leave the Doctor, to leave her daughter, and even to leave the here and now irrevocably behind, to be with the man she loved. That scene, for me, was actually quite difficult to watch – given the genuine offscreen chemistry oft displayed by Karen Gillan and Matt Smith, their emotions seemed to transcend mere acting.

It was the little coda that really got me, though, as the Doctor realised that the handy “River Song, Private Eye” book referred to throughout must have been published by Amy herself, and would have an afterword. So it proved, and as Karen Gillan’s voiceover reminded us of everything Amy’s done and seen over this last three years, it was hard not to tear up.

So, the Doctor’s lost his best friends, for the first time in this regeneration. How will he cope? “Don’t travel alone,” was Amy’s sage advice – we all know what happens when nobody’s there to stop him. It might have been fun if River had accepted his offer to travel with him for a bit – Alex Kingston was on good form this week, balancing the scenery-chewing with moments of genuine pathos and emotion. She also looked surprisingly good in a trenchcoat and fedora, though I would have expected 1938 eyebrows to be raised at a woman dressed like that!

However, I’ve had my complaints over these last few years that River’s ubiquity and dominating presence seemed to be turning the Doctor into a supporting character in his own show, so having her around all the time might not be a good idea. Besides it would be hard to square with what we know of her character’s future. She’s already been paroled from prison and gained her professorship – because the Doctor’s been wiping out everyone’s records of him, not just the Daleks. Lucky for UNIT last week that he left their database alone.

Farewell then, Amy and Rory. I know they’ve not been to everyone’s taste; some friends of mine have been less than keen (putting it mildly) on Amy’s character or Karen Gillan’s realisation of it. But I’ve enjoyed them both. I think Gillan did have to grow into her character more than Arthur Darvill did (he seemed to have it nailed right away), but Amy ended up being far more interesting than she first appeared.

Whatever your opinion of Moffat’s stewardship of the show, you have to concede he’s tried doing something really different with these companions – having them flit in and out of the Doctor’s life but never really leave, while they aged in real life between his visits. And let’s not forget that they ended up being the parents of the Doctor’s wife!

And now they’re gone, after a longer continuous period on the show than any companions since its return. Christmas will explain how the Doctor manages to pick up the girl he’s already seen converted into a Dalek then blown to bits. Well, it might explain; with Moffat, you can never be too sure.

For now, this was an emotional episode that frustrated as well as entertained. Ten out of ten for Amy’s farewell, only five out of ten for Rory’s. Brilliantly atmospheric, but often didn’t make sense if you stopped to think about it. Mind you, doesn’t that just sum up Moffat’s style in one sentence?

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 4–The Power of Three

“Every time we flew away with the Doctor, we became a part of his life. But he never stayed still long enough to become a part of ours. Except once. The year of the slow invasion – the time the Doctor came to stay.”

Bit late reviewing Doctor Who this week – ironically because I was at a Doctor Who convention all weekend, without my laptop. Regenerations in Swansea (for that was its name) was a lot of fun involving far too much drink. At one point I found myself clutching a pint glass of white wine, sitting behind Sir Derek Jacobi while Sylvester McCoy sang Tainted Love.

It also meant that we all sat and watched a Doctor Who episode’s first broadcast with various ex-members of the cast. In front of me was Richard Franklin (Captain Mike Yates) and a couple of seats down was John Levene (Sergeant Benton), both of whom were delighted to hear that UNIT were back this week. At one point I tried to take a picture of my friend Mette sitting next to me, but the camera-hungry Levene instantly photobombed me:

Thankfully, he wasn’t singing songs from his recently released album, which only one of my friends was insane enough to buy!

Lots of fun then, but what of the episode itself? Of all these standalone movie-type eps so far, this was the hardest to categorise in a single sentence. Part domestic comedy, part imaginative alien invasion, it had humour, surrealism, drama and some real character insight mixed in to very good effect. And it was written by Chris Chibnall! After enjoying the light romp that was Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, it was yet another revelation that he could write something with so much empathy and emotion, still humorous but with real pathos and drama too. I think I may have to start re-evaluating him…

The episode’s main USP was to reverse the recent trend of “Ponds hang out with the Doctor” to “the Doctor hangs out with the Ponds”. We’ve been here before of course, with 2010’s The Lodger showing the bizarre consequences of having the Doctor in an everyday domestic setting, but this had the heightened drama/humour that it was with his own companions. Imagine if Pertwee’s Doctor had had to hang around Jo Grant’s flat for a year while she did the washing up.

With the perspective of the story refreshingly told from the Ponds’ point of view, we got a glimpse at what their double life was like, working and doing the housework punctuated by occasional visits from a bizarre alien who would whisk them away at a moment’s notice. So we got to see Amy and Rory’s “real life” established – clearing out the fridge, doing the washing up, emptying the bins – until the sudden appearance of millions of mysterious cubes brought the Doctor back. And when the cubes singularly failed to do anything, he decided to stay.

Unlike Craig in The Lodger, Amy and Rory know full well who/what the Doctor is. With no need for subterfuge, he could be as mad and eccentric as always – and this certainly was a vintage week for Matt Smith, who got to show his versatility far more than in recent episodes, switching from madcap to serious to sad at the drop of a hat. The montage of him trying to ‘keep busy’ was very much in the zany/comic tone of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (capped with the inevitable “How long have I been gone?” “About an hour”). We saw the Doctor playing on the Wii, and practising his football skills (Matt Smith still seems pretty good), and watching The Apprentice while eating fish fingers and custard.

But there were also magical scenes like the one on the roof of the Tower of London, which spelled out explicitly the ongoing theme of his most unconventional relationship with his current companions. It’s been ten years now for Amy and Rory; ten years in which she has (thankfully) gone from being a fashion model to a travel writer, and he has become a respected nurse about to go full time. The Doctor knows it can’t last forever, this double life, and as he and Amy open their hearts to each other, it’s another genuinely tear-jerking scene; “I’m running to you and Rory before you fade from me.”

Hard to believe that Chris Chibnall, previously so enamoured of dialogue that seemed cribbed from cheap porn, could write such a moving exchange. And the earlier one, with incoming UNIT chief Kate Stewart, as he realised who her father must be, was a beautiful tribute to Nick Courtney’s Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Jemma Redgrave as Kate was marvellous, with her brisk, scientific attitude and dry sense of humour (“I’ve got officers trained in beheading. Oh, and ravens of death.”) I really hope we get to see her again in later episodes.

UNIT and the Brigadier weren’t the only fanboy references here, as we also got a mention of the Zygons and their shapeshifting abilities during the other montage, as the Doctor whisked Amy and Rory off on a time tour for their anniversary. Lovely to see Rory reciprocating the Doctor’s kiss to him a couple of episodes ago, and for those annoyed by Amy’s ever-short skirts, there was a droolworthy shot of him in his pants.(I’m sure there’s plenty of slash fiction already).

They’re available from Topman, should you want them – I’m heading out to buy some in a while…

The tone shifted again from comedy to pathos as they returned to the party seven weeks later (from their perspective), and the Doctor had to tell Brian what happened to all his other companions.

Yes, Brian was back, played again by the marvellous Mark Williams. After, Russell T Davies’ trend of every companion being accompanied by a large brawling family, you can see why Steven Moffat resisted dragging another family member in till now, but Mark is so good in the part that he’s irresistible. The point has been made that he’s basically similar to Bernard Cribbins’ Wilf, but that’s a recommendation in my view. And like Wilf with Donna, he actually wants Amy and Rory to travel with the Doctor – “It’s you they can’t give up, Doctor. And I don’t think they should.” – even after hearing about the fates of some of his previous fellow travellers. After the reactions of Rose’s and Martha’s mothers, that’s a refreshing change.

In previous character-driven stories like this, the ‘standard Doctor Who plot’ is usually grafted on as a McGuffin, and is pretty unimaginative as a result (think School Reunion). But here, the “slow invasion” was a genuinely intriguing and weird premise, laced with humour – I loved the cube that played the Birdie Song on an endless loop. The identical, cube-mouthed orderlies kidnapping patients from Rory’s hospital were spooky in a Sapphire and Steel mould, as was the creepy little girl droid – you can’t go wrong with a creepy little girl. A dimensional portal in a goods lift was a nice touch, as was the casting of the always-intimidating Steven Berkoff as the Shakri’s holographic messenger. I know at least one four-year-old in our audience got the willies scared out of him by that.

Despite taking place over the course of a year, this was another frantically-paced episode. You can see why Moffat wanted to place the slower-paced Town Called Mercy in between this and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, just to give the audience a breather. Unfortunately the breathless pace was probably the reason for the episode’s biggest logical flaw – its resolution.

Even if the Shakri didn’t recognise the Doctor as a Time Lord, he clearly knew all about their technology, so why give him the run of the ship, allowing him to reprogramme the cubes and blow the place up? It seemed a bit of a return to the old deus ex machina endings of the RTD era, a shame for an episode that was so good in so many other regards. That frenetic pace meant a general lack of exposition; I can forgive not being told exactly what the orderlies were for, why they were kidnapping people, or why the cubes clearly displayed a worrying looking countdown in conveniently recognisable numerals. But that resolution (or lack of it) stuck out like a sore thumb. Still, it’s nothing like the logical flaw in Chibnall’s 42, where the button to retrieve the escape pod was on the outside of the spaceship (however good he gets, I’m never going to forgive him for that).

Leaps of logic aside though, this was another enjoyable episode from Chibnall (I previously assumed that typing those words must be a harbinger of the apocalypse), which addressed the ongoing theme of the Ponds and the Doctor ultimately drifting apart directly for the first time. These may be standalone episodes, but there are still clear threads running through them. I wonder if we’ll see any follow up to the Shakri’s talk of “the Tally”, which the Doctor refers to as “Judgement Day, or the Reckoning”?

It’s also been pointed out that there’s a running hint involving flickering lights – in the Dalek asylum, the bulb Brian was changing, the streetlamps in Mercy – perhaps leading in to next week’s Weeping Angel story; you certainly don’t want the lights to flicker when they’re around! I’ve also wondered (on Facebook, some days ago) whether that very large statue in New York Harbor might be something to do with the Angels (even if it is made of copper, not stone). I guess at least some of these answers will be revealed next week, as we say goodbye to the Ponds for the last time…

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 3–A Town Called Mercy

"“We all carry our prisons with us. Mine is my past, yours is your morality.”

As the mini-season of Doctor Who ‘standalone movies’ continues, this week we get the first attempt at an actual genre piece – the genre in question being the Western. The show’s tried doing one before, with questionable results in 1965’s The Gunfighters, which gave us this untrammelled musical classic from an offscreen Linda Baron (and, occasionally, Peter Purves):

The Man Who Never Would. Well, almost never.

This episode, however, directly confronts the issue of the Doctor’s morality, and how far he’s prepared to go. We needn’t be too shocked by the gun, which ultimately he declines to use. As with the best stories, he relies on his ingenuity, sending the gunslinger out after decoys to keep the town safe. And when Jex answers his own moral dilemma by blowing himself and his ship to bits, the Doctor’s prepared to see Kahler Tek as a victim as much as a villain, and entrust him with the town’s safekeeping from now on.

If the episode has a notable failing, it’s that it does seem to move quite slowly as a plot. Perhaps that’s due to the complex moral issues being debated by some well-drawn characters, but equally possibly, it’s that Leone influence again. Let’s not forget, Once Upon a Time in the West opens with a whole 15 minute sequence of gunslingers waiting for Charles Bronson’s arrival at a station in which nothing happens – and yet it’s a masterclass in building tension. A Town Called Mercy may not have time in its 45 minute runtime for that kind of operatic grandeur, but it certainly has a more measured pace than last week’s enjoyably frenetic offering.

A pretty good guest cast breathed life into Whithouse’s characteristically thoughtful dialogue (although some of the townsfolk’s American accents seemed a mite shaky). Aside from Browder’s likeable turn as Isaac, the standout was prolific character actor Adrian Scarborough, who imbued the nuanced character of Kahler Jex with pathos and likeability despite his crimes. His description of his people’s afterlife, climbing a rock carrying the souls of all those you’ve wronged, was beautifully written and delivered, giving his ultimate sacrifice a natural tear jerking quality far removed from the show’s frequent contrivance in this area.

Andrew Brooke as the gunslinger was suitably scary while also being sympathetic, not an easy trick to carry off from under all those prosthetics. Mind you, the design was very reminiscent of Red Dwarf’s simulants:

And the idea of a beloved British sci fi show doing a Western also recalled that show’s classic episode Gunmen of the Apocalypse. Not a bad thing necessarily, but difficult to avoid for viewers of my age!

I thought this was an excellent episode, though my love of Westerns probably makes me less than objective here. It had real depth and complexity, while there was enough classic cowboy action to keep kids entertained. There was also some more hinting about Amy and Rory’s life passing by with occasional Doctor-visits, and what may be a developing theme about the Doctor’s morality, something Steven Moffat seems to keep returning to. Overall, another bullseye at making a movie-style episode in a season which so far has been more consistently enjoyable than last year. Next week it’s back to Chris Chibnall on scripting duties, but his effort last week makes me less trepidatious about that than I might once have been…

Doctor Who: Series 7, Episode 2–Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

“The creatures aboard this ship are not objects to be sold or traded.”

Doctor Who does dinosaurs? Oh dear, I thought, remembering previous excursions into this territory in which the prehistoric beasties were represented by barely mobile bendy toys badly superimposed onto live action footage, surrounded by that distinctive shimmery yellow line produced by CSO. Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) is a good story hamstrung by its appalling effects, which only works because author Malcolm Hulke keeps the dinosaurs mostly to the background of the piece.

And now we get to see them again, in a piece by Chris Chibnall. It’s fair to say that Chibnall is far from my favourite Who writer. I found his early Torchwood scripts to be witless, po-faced and gratuitously laced with the sort of humourless sexual excess that passes for ‘adult content’ if you’re a fifteen-year-old boy, while his Who debut 42 was a disjointed, badly characterised mess so lacking in internal logic as to have a control to retrieve an escape pod located on the outside of the spaceship concerned.

Still, I always try to go into his work with an open mind, and sometimes he surprises me by producing work I really enjoy. His scripts for Life on Mars were well-characterised and enthralling, and his opener for season 2 of Torchwood actually redefined the show by giving it a sense of humour and playfulness that was noticeably lacking from its first season. And his Silurian two-parter in Matt Smith’s first year of Who, while no classic like Malcolm Hulke’s original, was a serviceable enough rework of the original 1970 concept.

With Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, it seems Chibnall is being groomed as Hulke’s New Who equivalent. Having done Silurians a couple of years ago, he now gets to include actual dinosaurs. And you know what? It was actually a lot of fun. Not only does Chibnall bring a sense of humour to the concept, but this time he actually plays the whole story very much in a humorous vein (despite its underlying seriousness). I rather like classic Who’s occasional veers into outright comedy, and this felt like the closest the new series has got to that since its return.

It helped that the dinosaurs were rather more convincing than their 70s equivalents. A mix of CG and real props, they were reminiscent of far bigger-budgeted work like the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs or even Jurassic Park. Of course, both of those were made some years ago, and even their pioneering CG now looks occasionally dated and unconvincing, but generally it still holds up. And the same was true here. There were one or two shots of the dinos that looked quite ropey, either as CG or props, but the success rate was far better than any bendy toy from the 70s.

Given that ridiculously hokey, Snakes on a Plane-recalling title, Chibnall seems to have turned to Jurassic Park for a lot of his inspiration. Hence, here we get a Triceratops (also one of the friendlier saurians in the Spielberg movie) playing fetch with a golf ball and licking our heroes, a T-Rex nest like the one in JP sequel The Lost World, a pterodactyl enclosure as in JP3 and an attack by several velociraptors working in threes.

Nothing wrong with that – Who’s roots have often been obvious, and nobody’s going to slag off Brain of Morbius just because it’s obviously Frankenstein. Of course, riffing on Jurassic Park does mean you fall victim to its scientific inaccuracies; it’s now generally accepted that velociraptors were probably feathered, and the species itself is actually less than half the size of the Spielberg movie beasties. But again, Who is hardly full of scientific accuracy at the best of times.

Having established a plausible level of spectacle though, the story’s true strength was in its characters, something Chibnall seems to get better at with each successive script. Matt Smith’s Doctor was at his most exuberant and childlike here with his unalloyed wonder at the prehistoric creatures, and for reasons that seemed initially unclear, had chosen to surround himself with a “gang” rather than the usual Amy/Rory combo.

This gang included characters that ranged from the broadbrush to the complex. Riann Steele gave a spirited performance as Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, the latest River Song substitute in a show that increasingly seems incomplete without at least one dominating female character with a snarky sense of humour. To be fair, her near-arrogance as a major historical figure and prominent monarch made her more distinct from River than Oswin last week though. The real Nefertiti actually did mysteriously vanish from Egyptian history in the 14th year of her husband Akhenaten’s reign, so the idea that she was whisked away to 1902 to spend her life with a Boy’s Own style big game hunter is as plausible a theory as any other (well, a bit of a stretch maybe).

Said big game hunter, the redoubtable Rupert Graves from Sherlock as John Riddell, was a bit of a caricature, part Lord John Roxton, part Allan Quatermain. But of course the visual effect of the costume, combined with his stand against the horde of velociraptors, called to mind Jurassic Park again, and Bob Peck’s cynical hunter from that movie. As the raptors approached, he almost got to mutter, “clever girl…”

And Rory’s dad got roped into the shenanigans too. Brian Williams was incarnated well by comedian-turned-national-treasure Mark Williams. Which was nice. And all-purpose rotter David Bradley (Mr Filch from Harry Potter and Walder Frey from Game of Thrones) made a believable baddie in Solomon, with his timely motivation of seeing everything only in terms of its consumerist value. With his special device that assessed the monetary value of whatever it scanned, I couldn’t help being reminded of the timeless quote about the Conservative Party – “they know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

Which made the Doctor’s apparently callous treatment of him at the end of the story seem somewhat justified. Leaving him to the mercy of the Earth missiles might have felt a bit un-Doctorish, but the Doctor’s got form on this kind of thing. His treatment of the Family of Blood in that episode was arguably even more callous, and a fate worse than death – “we wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we would”. Remember, the Doctor can be pretty nasty sometimes. He never points the gun at the baddie and pulls the trigger, but he’s ensured the destruction of plenty of villains in the past by other means.

Besides, Solomon had admitted to actual genocide, shoving newly awakened Silurians off the ship in the manner of illegal slave traders about to be boarded in the 18th century. The involvement of the Silurians was a nice surprise, and made perfect sense of a situation (dinosaurs on a spaceship) that otherwise would take some justifying. I’m not sure about that postcard at the end though, with its attempt to retcon the historical inaccuracy of the name ‘Silurian’ by asserting that they come from somewhere called Siluria. Bit of a stretch, that one.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the episode was its treatment of the Ponds, and its veiled hints about where their story is going. With the party separated and the Doctor eventually held captive by Solomon, we got to see Amy and Rory stepping up as actual Doctor-substitutes. It made sense of the Doctor’s apparently random gathering of the ‘gang’ – Nefertiti, Riddell, and even Brian were there as Amy and Rory’s companions. Is the Doctor grooming them as his replacements?

Also notable were the hints about the decreasing frequency of the Doctor’s visits to them. Amy complained that it had been ten months since they’d last seen him, and significantly Rory, commenting to his dad about Christmas lists, said, “I’m 31, I don’t have one”. I’m pretty sure that when we first met Rory, he was in his early 20s at most; now he’s 31. That’s a fair bit of time under the bridge – and might account for his new look, complete with greased hipster hairstyle. If the Ponds have been hanging around with the Doctor for, from their perspective, about ten years, how old will they be next time he ‘visits’? It’s a genuinely innovative thing to do with the companion characters, and allows for more actual character development than ever before.

It was one interesting idea in an episode full of them. I’m not sure what future time period this was set in, but it was nice to see the problem of near-Earth collisions being dealt with by the Indian Space Agency, with a woman in charge no less. Then there was the wave-powered Silurian ship – not sure how that would actually work, but again a nice idea (even if it was plainly shot at the same beach location used in Time of Angels). Like Let’s Kill Hitler, if this had a problem it was that there were so many interesting ideas thrown into the mix that few got properly explored. But it’s pretty churlish of me to complain about Chris Chibnall having an excess of imagination after my previous criticisms!

Bringing humour to the fore was a surprising tactic for Chibnall, but for me at least a very successful one. Yes, the gag about “Any vegetable matter in your trousers?” “Only my balls” (complete with ‘comedy’ music from Murray Gold) was difficult to forgive. As was the “you want a man with a big weapon” shot from Riddell, followed up with a face-saving remark from Amy about gender politics that was a bit cheeky from the author who gave us the immortal line “when was the last time you came so hard you forgot where you were?”

But generally, the comic tone was a refreshing change, and well-handled particularly by Matt Smith and Mark Williams. I liked the comedy robots with the completely undisguised voices of David Mitchell and Robert Webb – a little camp, perhaps, but so much more imaginative than a voice-synthesised Nick Briggs intoning that resistance is futile.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is unlikely to go down as a future Who classic, and it’s not free from flaws – at times Chibnall seemed to be struggling with the excess of characters and ideas, to the detriment of the script’s coherence and structure. But still, it felt like what it was – a fun, lightweight romp with just an occasional hint of darker things beneath. I gather from online reaction that opinions are very much divided, but I found it an enjoyable 45 minutes of uncomplicated fun, carried off with some gusto by all concerned.