The Husbands of River Song

“Why is everything sexy now?” - the Doctor

I don't like River Song. Let's do that first, before getting into the episode as a whole.

A lot of the problem is never really believing in the relationship. River's a cool character, but the Doctor's wife? I'm really not sure.

I'm not inherently averse to the idea of a married Doctor; I really like Patience, for example.

I also don't mind romantic relationships period – Jo, Rose, Romana, the Master – makes sense. Even love more broadly with somebody like Ace. But River is a flighty, amoral murdererous show-off - I'm not sure she's his type. I don't buy it. I think you can have that character, but not really as a romance. She'd be brilliant as the Doctor's tearaway daughter. I would watch that!

(in before "...but those are all characteristics describing the Master", hush my kitten, hush.).

Another part of the problem, probably the biggest part: the story is all out of order, so the viewer never has any context for what they are seeing. How can I even *begin* to understand the relationship if I don't know where it came from?

Especially because we've never seen what, surely, is the most important times in their relationship - the heart of it – the bit where they are together. Dating. Romancing. So far, we've only ever seen them out of sync, with the Doctor evidently always before they were together, and lukewarmedly fond of her.

Finally, I was always frustrated by River's soppiness. She's a time-travelling, sharp-shooting, quick-witted archeologist, and I want more for her than abandonment issues and intergalactic clinginess. We see it again here: under pressure, cool-customer River is being threatened, and decides to spill out her feelings about how she can never hope for the Doctor to love her, because he's like a star and she is but a lowly mortal. Jesus, woman, get a grip!

It occurs to me that this episode really goes to the heart of what's wrong with the whole River storyline. The problem isn't, as I always suspected, that I'm defensive of a huge canon-defining figure like the woman the Doctor is in love with. The problem is that he isn't and it makes for truly horrible viewing.

Moffat has never fully committed to his own storyline. God, give me that intergalactic romance. Wouldn't it be wonderful? I would watch that. Dazzling each other around the stars, laughing a lot, going for chips, listening to jazz on a hillside, risking time itself to get each other back.

Instead we get...he likes her enough to get jealous of people she's dating, but not enough to reassure her when she says she feels unloved? Classic noncommittal behavior. When we see her first, in Silence in the Library, that heartbreaking sorrow makes sense. She loves him, and he does not – he's never met her and is somewhat bemused by the whole thing. But that's always the tone of the relationship, every time. I guess I assumed at some point they had a relationship, and that's what gave Silence its poignancy. Apparently not. That's awful. He's cold, and she's a drip. God, this is horrible.

OK, so I understand the relationship now. Now, I want to know why this is a story or a character we should care about. We've spent a lot of time on this plot since 2008: is this it? Is this all? 

For a moment, I thought that this would be the episode where the Doctor finally said - “no River, River Song I adore you”, and maybe she'd be the new companion. All it did was confirm that there would be no development, again. The Doctor's still unwilling to be there, and River is still weepy, and I don't know what I'm supposed to think about any of this.

If this is the plot we're going with, it plays back into Moff's weird gender essentialism very badly indeed. I don't understand, and I really don't like straight-person relationship humour. “ho ho ho, isn't the wife a drag!” “ha ha ha, isn't the old man a nuisance!” ha ha ha. “marriage: can't live with em, can't live without em.” Funny jokes for people who can legally marry one another! The core of all these jokes about “the wife” or “the old man” is that all straight couples, at heart, hate one another, and I find it profoundly depressing.

Here we go: The Doctor getting all straight-man possessive of her other beaux, but then all flighty when she wants commitment. River is the Wife, incarnate: all these inconvenient, uncomfortable feelings, wanting to drag the Doctor down and trap him into marriage, quite literally in that episode where she blackmails him into marriage. River's like the cool, sexy, independent girlfriend who turns into an awful nag as soon as she gets a wedding band and you can't get away from her.

I'm just gonna leavethis clip from Doomsday here.

Back to the key question: why this is a story or a character we should care about? Where do you see this relationship going next? I can't see Twelve “No-Hugs” as the Doctor who finally makes it happen for her, do you? Which means it's going nowhere.

I also don't like the idea that the Doctor is such a monolith, such a sunset, that he doesn't feel something as “small and ordinary” as love. The Doctor's defining characteristic, the thing that set him apart from his people, is that he does.

Apart from that, I liked it. Time heists are fun. Lots of good lines (“I'm going to take your organs out in alphabetical order” “Which alphabet?”; “Archaeology is just theft with patience”; “I've got a bad back. It's aching under the weight of carrying a whole stratum of society”)

And the Doc is doing his professorial thing again – expressing his delight in the TARDIS in terms of its technical perfection (“euclidean geometry has been destroyed!”), and his delight in the singing stones in terms of unusual crystals.

But overall, this episode is about that relationship. I certainly understand it now, but I'm demoralised that's what they've gone with. As they both say throughout this episode: “it's really sad”.

Other Thoughts

You could more charitably rewrite this review to say that the Doctor/River's relationship is more mature and unusual than a straightforward sweethearts romance. This would be true -if there had ever been any love or enthusiasm there on the Doctor's part. But if this is truly River towards the end of her timeline saying "he's never loved me", then...this isn't a mature relationship which has stabilised into fondness over time. It's a depressing mess. 

I'm thinking, uncharitably, of Bagpuss. 

I like the idea that future-earth colonies also have crappy Christmas lights.

I like the idea of a cruise liner specifically for the genocidal rich.

Practically perfect in every way.

What an admirably low-key choice for a penultimate episode. This is true Peak Moff - clever, intricate, logical, with a clever time-travel concept and the best ideas this show ever had.

Here, it's one idea, done really well. 
  
I like how this Doctor's despair was so specific. He's the Discovery Doc, so of course his hell is a puzzle to be solved, and his cry for release "do I have to know everything?". This is not the first time we have seen him explain survival through logic, and it works for him. Intriguingly, this is also not the first time Eleven has taken on nightmares - it was there in Listen too. I loved the visuals of his memory palace - the lights of the TARDIS flickering on and off as he comes in and out of consciousness, and the sound of chalkstick as the sound of thinking. And the sound of the flies too (someone buy the sound mixing team a beer, it was a beautiful episode)

I also liked how the confession dial itself looked like a TARDIS - cloisters, and corridors, very like Eight's TARDIS; and how the castle rotated, one of those throwaway bits of brilliance Moff can just dash away over his morning toast.

TANGENT TIME:

It would be egotistic to assume that Doctor Who's showrunner has been reading my criticisms, but somehow he has taken them on board. This has been a great season.

First: he's calmed it down a bit, or maybe he is running out of ideas, and creating better episodes because he is rationing them more thoughtfully - allowing us non-Timelords to focus on merely one or two at a time, and allowing him to explore them more fully.

Second: Both Clara and the Doctor have had one single character note to explore, and far richer characters have come of it. The Clara we see this season has been shaped by her experiences in the previous one, and it seems genuine and organic - the sort of development I always wanted Amy to have.

More than that: Clara had the sort of small-scale drama that RTD excelled at, putting the universe and chips side by side. It was small and understated, and not...your boyfriend dies then comes back then becomes an immortal Roman auton and your imaginary friend is real and married in the future to your daughter who was also your childhood friend but you never knew you were pregnant so you're not really fussed that she was geo-engineered as a weapon also she's a timelord, and you never get a scene in which you emotionally process any of that. 

Clara's first problem was living in London and being too busy to fit everything in - we've all been there - and her second problem was that her boyfriend was dead, and she was struggling to deal with it. We've all been there too. It was nice, and so quiet. Clara's increasing recklessness has been handled so delicately throughout this series. This is solid and subtle character writing, very wonderful indeed. 

Third: no sex comedy and weird obsession with gender-essentialism. I don't know where that went this series, but I'm glad it's gone. I'm a six year old boy and I'm here for SPACESHIPS and DINOSAURS, and not bizzare heterosexual jokes about how much men and women hate each other. Maybe this is a function of the acting rather than the writing: I hear that Peter Capaldi was firm about not having romances with his co-star on account of his age; in any case, he does not play those opportunities for laughs.

All the same, the usual criticisms I have about his female characters (only existing in lady-centric plots about marriage and children/repeated scraping-the-barrel 50th Birthday card jokes about the "difference" between men and women.../bawd)...just didn't show up this year. I don't have words for how relieved I am. That kind of comedy makes me uncomfortable. 

Additionally, this series had two women writing, and two directing making it the best female representation to date in the new series. (There were no women creatives in series 1, 2, 6, 7 or the specials; only one in S3, 5 and 8; and two in S3. This is an embarrassment.). Also, this series had the best female representation of any season of Doctor Who since 1963.

Look I know I've been throwing shit at Mr Moffat's writing for over 5 years now, but if he keeps writing like this he can stay as long as he likes. This was a wonderful season in every way, and I really feel like he found...almost a courage in his own voice. His early seasons were overachiever seasons - they had so many good ideas that they were an utter mess, and which for me at least, were too busy being clever to connect emotionally. This season felt confident by comparison. He's found a way of translating his skill at the small episode across the whole season, and I'd happily watch three or four more of them.

Back to the article. I'm delighted that someone had the courage to dedicate Saturday night kids television to pared-back existentialism. From the start, I was totally revved to see a solo Doctor adventure, but you know not many actors could have pulled it off. One of my frustrations with the series so far has been - you've got Peter Capaldi, use him. I first became a fan in Children of Earth, where he knocks it out of the park in a two-hander against an empty fishtank filled with smoke. I cannot picture any other Doctor so brilliant, left alone in a room with skulls and intimations of mortality.

Now. About the next episode. Please don't have traded-in all the noise from this episode to have extra noise in the next one. The smartest thing Lawrence Miles ever said was in his uncharitable review of The Ancestor Cell:

It's a novel which seriously believes itself to be a world-shaking, cataclysmic epic, but which in its "middle act" largely consists of drab Time Lord supporting characters running up and down corridors being chased by spiders, combined with exposition scenes so massively over-inflated that they make Julia Sawalha's arse look small. What we've basically got is THE INFINITY DOCTORS  with all the good bits missing, a desperate attempt to do something big and important which can't tell the difference between "epic" and "just happens to be set on Gallifrey".

I feel like 100% of episodes set on Gallifrey have this problem. Gallifrey's a boring place (even if the Doc now insists he didn't leave because he was bored...)

I've got that quote all prepped for next week's review. Pray Rassilon I do not need it...

Other thoughts

"My day can't get any worse, so let's see what I can do about yours"
"Rule one of dying: don't. Rule two: slow down"
"I finally ran out of corridor."


Can we talk about how Who always hires women to direct the surrealist-lyrical episodes? This is a tradition spanning back to Fiona Cumming.

Face the Raven

Four word review: contrived and emotionally false.

It's amazing how an episode like Under the Lake can fit in so much, then there's an episode of the same length where nothing happened at all.

The single goal of fiction is to convince you that characters are real, and then make you care about them. I didn't care about Riggsy. I don't care about Me. I didn't even care about Clara, because I could feel the author manouvering them into place. Example: The shadow lock can be moved from person to person! But only once! And there was a deal with the shadows which means Riggsy would have been fine but Clara can't be, because we can't make a new deal. For reasons.

I can feel the author making it up as they go along. It's lazy plotting, and I don't accept it. The Doctor can say "There's something very wrong here...!" but I don't care unless I can feel it.

So many good ideas in here. The tattoo was creepy and cool. The street which looks like you expect it to, and of course a London hidden street would appear Victorian to people - even if the set was lousy. I liked mentioning Jane Austen again. I loved the scene of glasses over London.

But the whole thing lacked momentum, weight, depth.

Just go shuffle those pieces around so they're in the right place for the finale.

Other thoughts
"Infinite life, finite memory" - that's a lovely line of dialogue. That whole conversation where Clara is trying to grapple with a person who has entirely forgot their meeting, but knows they had one, was charming. The bit where Me pointedly assures Clara she is under her personal protection is less good. Oooooh! Foreshadowing!!!

"The Doctor is no longer here and you are stuck with me" - the one part of this whole episode which I believed. #valeyard

Also, the first time any Doctor has ever attempted to threaten someone with his huge reputation and I've believed it.

I think Masie Williams has been very cleverly cast in this role. We all know her as Arya, who is a little girl, even as we know that the actress is much older. That strangeness and double-seeing over her age works really well to suggest an ageless creature.

The Zygon Invasion(s) Review!

That feel when you are watching media from the 50s/60s/70s/80s, and its a heavy-handed Cold War allegory.

I sometimes wonder at what point we will begin to eyeroll over media from the 90s/00s/10s and the War on Terror. Fascinatingly, I don't think Who has done it before.

I'm not entirely sure what the point of allegories are - to teach? for catharsis? just because it's in the zeitgeist, and the author was inspired? In any case, I can think of no nobler cause than shoving one in a kids TV show. Children are smart and brave, but often scared by the news, and I hope if nothing else this started some conversations with parents or each other, and got them thinking and asking questions.  

Also, nice timing there by the BBC, to get this out there before big terrorism news stories; later in the season and it would likely have been cancelled out of respect, which would have been sad indeed as these are stories we sorely need. Unfortunately for myself, I am several weeks behind, and upset.

*********************

It is at times like these that I love Doctor Who very much. It's all about being better than you are now. What a lovely message too. Just like last week, Zygon Invasion Part 2 starts with a thesis: the Osgoods, proposing the ideas which this episode will explore. They say that all races, and all people, are capable of the best and worst.



I liked that this episode had so many competent women. I *love* that they reimagined the Zygons as psychological horror. Doctor Who has enough Invadey Alien Races to last for the rest of time; they are scary and they shoot people and they're strong, or whatever. This is a smart, forward-looking choice, differentiating them from other Invadey Alien Races and opening up great new story ideas for future.


But there's quite a lot of poor plotting here:

Like, why when Sandeep said he didn't know where his parents were, did Clara just look straight in their flat? Surely Sandeep is smart enough to have done that already. Surely you start by asking "when did you last see them?"

Like when the army commander insists that they don't know the Zygon's movements or numbers, while standing in their headquarters which is stuffed with intel, and a map of their movements, which she is proposing to blow up without taking so much as a selfie.

And too many scenes with a bunch of soldiers standing around! Like when the cute captain is talking with his mother, and decides to go inside. No response from the other soldiers? No questions? Or when evil-Clara kills those UNIT people. Again - the soldiers are just standing there, not responding until it is their time to die.

And generally the pace was lumpy. I think I would have liked it less if not for the sense of occasion; those are not small complaints, I hate when I feel an author is railroading characters towards the next set piece. You can thank the international terrorist fraternity that this episode is 8/10 rather than 7/10, and I anticipate being less forgiving in future.

But it also had so many cool ideas. I liked the two Osgoods and their insistence that no one tell them apart; the terrified Zygon in the mart; I always love a good spooky dreamspace. Lots of good dialogue. As for the end - I have been waiting for this. You've had Peter bloody Capaldi for two whole seasons. Use him! 

It all comes back to the cold war. UNIT fought the cold-war every week. Week after week of alien invasions on earth, half of them explicitly about Russians, and the other half at the very least about loss of Empire, about England's colonial history coming to get it, about the machinations of a swarthy Oriental gent being foiled by men called Lethbridge, Benton, Sullivan and Yates. It's truly fitting, and rather cool, that the UNIT-Invasion story is reimagined in this way for the next generation.


**********

OTHER THOUGHTS

Doctor Disco is a Latin pun, I presume. Disco, discere - to learn; doceo, docere, doctum - to teach; doctor - teacher.

"In the 70s, 80s..." woo hoo UNIT dating controversy

Bit intense for a Saturday. Note that the Zygon commanders turn back from little girls to monster form before they are killed on screen.

"This is your fault"
"No it's not."

I love how the British Zygons then become an allegory for Mexican immigrants in the American border town.

"You said that the last 15 times."

NEVER USE THE GAS - PSA FROM SEABASE 6.

Before the Flood

Quite masterly.

That beginning: the Doctor, unexpectedly addressing the camera, with his ferocious intelligence - teaching, because Twelve is the discovery Doctor. He wants to know, and today he wants you to know too. More than that: this episode is structured like an essay, and this is its thesis.


Before the Flood doesn't *quite* manage to keep up with its predecessor, Under the Lake. But that's OK. I can't remember the last time I was quite as excited by any Doctor Who, or indeed any television, as I was about Under the Lake. Before the Flood doesn't hit all the beats, but it hits enough to be a satisfying sequel.

One of the biggest problems is that the pace drops - immediately. Under the Lake was so freakin exciting - thrilling both to the pulse and the brain. Before the Flood is slow to get going, and that's a shame. The Doctor says "quick, back to the TARDIS" at least three times, like it's still the 1980s and they have two hours of story to pad out.

The cold war village is a cool concept. So is a space hearse (one wonders if they have seen Blake's 7: Sarcophagus, another cool episode about a hearse in space; it also reminds me of Mawdryn Undead). I was less excited by the Tivolians and the Fisher King.



Clara/Doctor now reminds me of Ace and Seven in many ways. But I like that Clara is smart enough to call him on his bollocks; the Doctor always needs that, and Twelve more than anyone. He trusts her, like he trusted Ace - competent, equal, life partner, whatever. I love the way she switches between referring to the ghost as "him" and "you", depending on whether she perceives it as the Doctor or not.

Here, he is more invigorated than scared by the idea of investigating his own murder; doesn't understand that it's creepy; and especially, that it's creepy to let other people die to test a theory. "You didn't try very hard," as Bennett points out.

As for Clara - this exchange? This is what I wanted from Rory:

DOCTOR: Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else's.
CLARA: I'm not ready yet. I don't want to think about that, not yet.
DOCTOR: I can't change what's already happened. There are rules.
CLARA: So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You've made yourself essential to me. You've given me something else to, to be. And you can't do that and then die. It's not fair.
DOCTOR: Clara.
CLARA: No. Doctor, I don't care about your rules or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back. Doctor, are you?

When Rory and Amy discover they had a baby, and that baby was stolen from them, this is what I wanted to hear. I wanted the episode where they knock the Doctor out and attempt to go rescue their child, damn time and all else. At the very least, I wanted them to have this conversation. Instead, they shrugged and accepted Eleven's logic, and off they went for more fun.


I'm looking forward to what sort of damage a thrill-seeking, newly bereaved companion and an analytical Doctor who both have a casual relationship with smashing up time can do.


OTHER STUFF

This review written from four-week-old notes, hence the choppiness and lack of detail.

O'DONNELL: So, pre-Harold Saxon. Pre-the Minister of War. Pre-the moon exploding and a big bat coming out.
DOCTOR: The Minister of War?
O'DONNELL: Yeah.
DOCTOR: No, never mind. I expect I'll find out soon enough.

I loved the silent argument.

VALEYARD TIME: My hypothesis for the Valeyard, which exists between the Twelfth and Thirteenth incarnations, is based in the Time War. The Doctor's guilt would eventually weigh him down so far that he longs for Gallifrey, and even comes around to thinking Gallifreyan dispassion is right, and that's how he becomes such a pretentious council toady. And he would become increasingly cold, logical, meddling in time as he chooses, and seeing the big picture over the small - like Seven writ large, or Rassilon. Making unconsciable changes to suit his own cold agenda. Like: "I'm going to save Clara and no-one's going to stop me". Twelve even looks Valeyardy, all drawn and wan.

Under the Lake

Good god damn. That was brilliant. That was everything Doctor Who should be.

45 minutes of sustained tension and mystery. Problem solving. I love problem solving! But especially for this show, especially in a show about a travelling alien supergenius - and more broadly, a show about inquiry, endeavor and discovery.

When I saw the trailer for this, I rolled my eyes because it was clearly the series clunker. A crew picked off one by one by poorly animated villains. On a seabase! How very lazy. This episode excels because "who dies next" is only half of the tension. Most of the suspense came from wanting to know *what* they were. And the brilliant thing about that, is that we're following the Doctor's emotional journey - because nothing gets this Doc excited like knowledge.


I know who he is now. He's the discovery Doc. This episode tied together a lot of things for me, and I know what to look for going forward. The Doctor has always been the same twelve or so qualities mixed in different combinations, and this is his thirst for knowledge come right to the fore. He really means it, about wanting to know what death is - and that is his top priority.

He's otherworldly. He's tuned into the TARDIS when she's unhappy, and more clearly alien - more clearly struggling with passing as a human among humans. "He was our friend", the translator interrupts the Doctor's delight at investigating the ghosts. Clara's cue cards are an obvious plot device, perhaps, but it fits in with the "no hugs!". I loved the scene where the Doctor has identified that Clara maybe is thrill-seeking in an unsafe way, and struggles to put it into words. Beyond that, his bitchy comments are, often as not, his attempt to parse bizzare human foibles - like having a peanut allergy, or communicating via semaphore. (The semaphore gag - that the Doctor has forgotten BSL in favour of semaphore - was this episode's one crushing dud note. A++ for Deaf representation, having a signing character on the show! It's less cool to turn that into a gag about weird communication methods, and were I a Deaf viewer, I would have felt hurt that the Doctor did not know how to communicate with me.)

Despite his rather hamfisted understanding of human nature, manipulation he does know. He knows exactly how to get to his fan O'Donnell and ask her to switch off the lights, by praising her skills. Clara knows that he's guiltripping the crew into staying, but lets it go with a smile. Smiling less, of coure, when the Doctor is separated from them and leaves in the TARDIS. She's thinking exactly what I was thinking last week, which is - I don't trust this Doctor to save me. But all the same - when he talks to the crew about "choosing an anonymous and selfish life", that's real enough.



Clara and the Doc seem sweeter this week. I liked Clara a lot, but in previous episodes I've loved her because she was being the hero and main character in a way the Doctor wasn't. No problem with that this week - he had agency, ideas, drove the plot. Ahhhhhh the problem solving. Little touches like - they kill the money-grabbing moron (rich morons never live long in Who - a perennial baddie), but not the translator or the Doctor; they can't get into the Faraday cage or come out at night; they can interact with objects, but they do struggle to, say, lift the axe so they're not entirely corporeal either; they whisper, but what?

 I immediately liked the crew, which is always a good start - and was already upset when the captain died in the pre-title sequence (partly, I confess, because it left only pretty young things on the crew - what about some representation for the older gent, eh?). Quick sketches of people, people who act like a real crew. All of them, all of them managed to create a real human being from nothing, from a line here or there. I've already mentioned the new captain, but I liked her such a lot. A brilliant woman, accompanied by her translator, obviously reminded me of Joey Lucas in the West Wing, and she was no less excellent. *Her* first priority is saving her crew. The scene where her translator is trapped and in danger was terrifying, not because he was cute but because of her reactions in the control hub - facing so much more than the loss of a friend, but more than that, the loss of agency and control that might follow.

OK, so it lost it in the last ten minutes for me. I didn't quite buy the "dark sword forsaken temple" puzzle, nor the idea that the words somehow memetically rewrite your brain, nor the sudden "There's a flood! On the seabase! With the nuclear reactor!" - BUT, this was somewhat redeemed because it was the cliffhanger, merely setting up for part 2. I didn't know there was a part 2!

BRING ON PART 2.

Also.

Toby Whithouse for showrunner please.

Whithouse has written a number of stunning episodes. School Reunion handled the return of Sarah Jane with heartbreaking delicacy, and was a highlight of S2. The God Complex was a standout, scary, moving thing: there will never be another episode like it. A Town Called Mercy too was the best of its series. He has show-run Being Human, and I think he would be an excellent candidate to take on the top job when Moff leaves.

Other thoughts

• I don't understand the TARDIS logic. If they can't use it to pop over and grab Clara, because they're already involved in events etc, then why are they able to go back in time to when it all began? Surely that's also interference? 
• I love the submarine controler.
• Unusual level of violence for Who! You get to see the floating body, and the methods of murder are all very real - a gun, a knife, an axe and a spanner. We noted that due to Strictly, the last 15 mins of this show was actually post-Watershed.
• Has there been a chat about the women problem at HQ? It's been three episodes so far, and I've yet to feel uncomfortable. Also, there are two women writing and two women directing this season.
• The Portreve, who watched the episode with me, has already worked out why the ghosts didn't kill the translator. Have you? I didn't ^_^

Number of people the Doctor has rescued: 0

The Magician's Apprentice

What a promising mess.

The new series has constantly, constantly suffered from this sort of flabby, indulgent plot. Moff and RTD both. It's contrived, and charcters behave bizzarely just to navigate the plot to the BIG EMOTIONAL MOMENTS which the writer wants to steer to. I'll be happy if there was never a prophecy about the Doctor's death never again. No more "his time has come", no more cryptic "Davros remembers". For what it's worth, I don't buy a Doctor who would go gentle into that good night. Coward - every time.

The Doctor walks into a trap, and is surprised when it's traumatic? He's smarter than that - he ought to have a plan. My favourite Doc-Villain confrontation of all time is in Timelash, that well-known stinker of an episode. In that episode, Six also willingly walks in to appeal to a villain's better nature. But by god he has a plan in case that doesn't work. Believe the best, and plan for the worst - that seems like the only logical course of action for a 900 year old genius to take. Now I liked self-hate as a Nine and Ten thing, but I don't think willingly walking to his death for no good reason bar angst is an innately Doctorish quality. It's not just out of character, though - it's unsatisfying for the audience. So far in this series, our hero has had no agency. I'd really rather watch the Missy-And-Clara show.

Clara continues to be the best damn thing in this show. I loved her last series, and continue to do so. She is the hero I want. I continue to struggle with Capaldi's performance - he's too prickly, too cold. But Clara is smart, compassionate, enthusiastic, bursting with life and generally proactive. I feel safe with her on screen, in a way I don't about the Doctor - and that is a serious flaw.

Last night I caught some Sylvester McCoy, and it just hit home what is missing. Doctor Seven is arguably the most terrifying and chilly of the incarnations. Doctor Seven saw everything on an infinite scale, and was constantly crushing butterflies to prevent them flapping their wings and causing hurricaines down the line. Time's Champion - the Oncoming Storm - the Destroyer of Worlds - the Cosmic Chessmaster. He's small and unassuming, and you underestimate him at your peril because there's a chance he's already defeated you before you start your war. He's also manipulating his companion, Ace, constantly pulling strings behind her back for her own good. Yet Seven and Ace's relationship is one of the warmest, one of the sweetest in the whole series. He loves jazz; he plays the spoons; he whistles like a bird. I feel safe with Doc Seven - even though he does some lousy things, you do like him and you can see why Ace flies with him. Not so Twelve - I wouldn't trust him not to ditch me on a planet on a whim, without looking through all the other options first.

With that in mind, I loved his introduction this series. You have no idea how important seeing this Doctor rescue someone is to me - I have yet to see enough hero. "You have a thousand to one chance of living. So concetrate on the one." is a template for how this Doc ought to be written going forward. He can be pessimistic and blunt, but that must be tempered by hope and heroism somewhere down the line.

Of course - he didn't save the kid. But we live in hope.

Ohhh, and Missy. When UNIT figured out that the schtick with the planes was someone looking for attention - I should have guessed. This episode was such a gift to Master fans. I like her. I think she is potentially the greatest Master ever - or at least, certianly a worthy successor, a clear part of what came before. She's goofy, dangerous, cold, anarchic, and she manages to capture
the kiss-you-or-kill-you relationship with the Doc with perfect ambiguity. When they are plonked on the floor in the Dalek cell, Missy doesn't sit like a woman - or even an adult. And she doesn't move or sit like she knows she's wearing a dress (if you've ever worn a full skirt and a corset, you know it changes your entire posture and bearing - Missy might as well be wearing a hologram). The way she moves is indefinably alien, uncanny valley in a bustle and boots. Like the best Doctors and Masters both, you forget at your peril that they are not human.

I've always liked the idea of the Master travelling with a companion, and Clara is a perfect foil. That scene in the square as the Master takes tea makes canon the things which were long subtextual.

Of course the Doctor let the Master survive and didn't tell anyone; and "of course" the Doctor's will was delivered to her too. "Since always" is probably the best encapsulation of their friendship that could be (childish and insistant, in defiance of all the facts). I have always privately believed that Timelord sexuality is considerably more weird and cerebral than ours, so the Master's comment "don't be disgusting, we're Timelords, not animals" makes perfect sense. Timelords, in the books at least, are birthed in looms - and when you see them, they are cold and staid. You can tell that indulging in emotions and the senses is unbecoming. The Doctor, in contrast, is so passionate - he loves good food, and wine, and humans with all their funny emotions, and probably sex too. One imagines the Timelords are embarassed by how far he's gone native - getting involved when he should merely watch and record, and drinking fine red wines and buying a car and all manner of unmentionable indulgences. With all that already in my mind - I like an onscreen clarification that the Master-Doctor's relationship is canonically important, but also far huger and weirder than Clara can really wrap her head around.

OK, let's talk about the Daleks and Davros now.

Who else guessed that was Skaro? A radioactive wasteland with bows and arrows, bombs and weird mutated things. The hand mines are one of the first Moff gimmick monsters I've loved in ages - very scary, but kinda camp and pun-full at the same time. How brilliantly 80s Who.

Stories about the Doctor wiping out the Daleks - especially ones where he wipes them out before they are created - is an old, familiar tale. Some might say, too iconic to touch again. But you could also say that it is an important part of the Dalek trope, and it's as impossible to do Daleks without that conversation as it is to do it without "exterminate". Moff acknowledges this hallowed ground by incorporating the old Doctor quotes - especially Four in Genesis of the Daleks, which is the touchstone for this plot. I liked Davros' reintroduction - tired and old, almost Vaderlike in his coccoon.

I'm not sure how far the Doctor's choice not to save baby Davros made sense - not least because maybe the name "Davros" is like Smith, Khan or Singh on Skaro. Did he think that Davros would die there...? Seeing as, presumably, the Daleks were always going to be created anyway - wouldn't it be better to do the right thing and save him? Maybe I have such a feeble sense of this doctor's personality because his leading trait is vacillation - neither saving nor killing a child, but opting out of responsibility or interest.

This was a deeply continuity-based episode, and I wonder how that was recieved by the Not-We. Clearly, Davros backstory + Skaro + revisiting Genesis + the relationship counselling with the Master is ortolans and caviar to the We, but for a casual fan those things lack emotional depth and significance. If you haven't seen Genesis of the Daleks, and don't already know who Davros is, and didn't squeal over the old-style Daleks - there's not much for you here. Nevertheless, I loved the ambition - hopping from planet to planet and time to time to knot one huge plot together. Brave and brilliant.

I am looking forward to seeing where this goes, but my expectations are quite low - I expect part 2 will suffer from the same fluffy, angst-driven plotting as part 1 was.

A lot will depend on the Doctor - especially now Missy and Clara are out of action. What I need to see is a sense of person, of an inner man - I still can't do you a thumbnail sketch of either of Moff's Doctors, they seem too diffuse, too much a collection of ideas that never quite come together to form a complete personality. I would also like to see, as I said, some heroism. Doctors have always been dangerous, petulant, abrasive and able to make tough choices. But that's only half of it. Give me the other half.


Great lines
"I spent yesterday in a bow tie. I spent the day before in a long scarf."
"How scared must you be to seal your own kind in tanks"

"Jane Austen - phenomenal kisser"

"tread softly"

Miscellany

• Massive unbelieveable plothole - the moment Clara says "Quick, kids! Turn on your phones!". What sort of secondary school allows students mobile phones?!
• Did you see them include a Sixth Doctor quote? I say this because when they do "old-Doctor-montages", they inevitably cut the Sixth Doctor out.
• Kate! 
• Anyone else spot they are playing Nick Cave in the cantina in the future?
• I loved the idea of a character who is, in fact, a Colony. That's a pleasing bit of future-writing. 
• When i wrote my master spinoff, he liked the song Micky.
• The Master and Clara stepping out into the stars is a 100% Fiona Cummings moment, and no one will tell me otherwise. 
• I love the title. Does anyone know why they chose it? I love it because I've no idea what it means, and that reminds me of the enigmatic Fifth Doctor episode titles. Enlightenment. Four to Doomsday (four what?!). Castrovalva. 

Timanov's Ongoing Count Of Times The Master Mentions Burning: 2
Steve Moffat Tropewatch: important children: 1
Number of people the Doctor has rescued: 0

Kill The Moon

Awesome episode.

HELL YEAH Courtney makes a great companion, not least because she starts the episode by telling him where he can get off for being a dickbag. I honeslty think this alone makes her a brilliant companion for Twelve. He needs Courtney (or Donna, or Martha) - someone who will call him on his bollocks. And I love that through seeing Courtney do this, Clara gets the gumption to do the same at the end: "Respected isn't how I feel!". Clara, meet Tegan, Tegan, Clara. As it should be.

Scenes like this make me feel better about the earlier episodes. There's a big difference between a character being a rotter as part of an arc, and accidentally, where the author is unaware of their character's flaws. Seeing that we're talking about the former makes all the difference. 

Everything about this episode is cool. The spiders are scary, and used sparingly enough that they remain so. They are a red herring threat to keep us entertained, until the story segues effortlessly into its true form. So the feminine Moon is this big, floating, abortion metaphor in space ("Your moon, your choice" says the Doctor, before leaving a room of women to decide). I love that. That's what sci-fi should be - exploring real world issues through a lens of unreality. And what a charming way to pass the Bechdel test too.

Courtney is brilliant, asking all the sensible questions like "did you bring guns". Being in space with Courtney illustrates Clara's double life far more poignantly than the previous episode, as she struggles to be a companion, and a teacher at the same time.

The Doctor has some beautiful lines in this one - the one about the little blinks especially. "Amniotic fluid - I have to go down there!" is brilliant Doctorism, and I love his barely contained glee as he pronounces "the moon is hatching", while the rest of the cast bring their game so the moment can be as serious as it is absurd. 

Fun trivia! I saw in the credits this was filmed at Timanfaya national pakrk. That's in Lanzarotte, last seen in Planet of Fire.

Doctor Who at its very finest. 9/10

(What a title. Kill the Moon.)

The Caretaker

"MOHAMMED PUT THAT DOWN"

I love that Doctor Who is reaching out to every teacher who shouted "Mohammed, put that down!" across a playground this week ^_^ That was the best bit. 


Besides that, though - oh I don't know :/ The whole theme of this one annoyed me. I've had my loved ones have pissing contests like that over me, and I don't like seeing that plot resolved as an expression of how loved Clara is. It's horrible. I'd rather like to see it resolved with someone pointing out how unacceptable and controlling the Doc and Danny are both being in this episode. The Doctor not understanding how humans work can be a funny trope when it's something little like jokes about Clara washing, or thinking that he and Clara are the same age. But when it's about relationship dynamics, it steps into actively upsetting territory. It's not funny when the Doctor demands Clara explain why she is dating Danny because that's not a cute, alien misunderstanding - that's creepass behavior from someone who explicitly said he wasn't her boyfriend. I've had people demand I justify why I am dating the person I am dating more than once in the past, and accepting the premise of the question was a m i s t a k e because those people never say "oh, I see - awesome :D" no matter what you tell them.

This made it rather hard for me to enjoy the episode as an episode - it brought up far too much personal upset. Who has done this plot before, with Micky-Rose-Doctor, and Sarah-Rose-Doctor, and to a lesser extent Amy-Rory-Doctor, and I'm bored of it. Mostly because of the quasi-controlling relationship dynamics which come up, but which are never properly explored. When Harry Met Sally is 30 years old. You would have thought that nowadays, we understood that men and women can be "just friends" (As a bisexual, this reasoning always strikes me as particularly obtuse - as clearly it would imply I could never have a friend ever again)

I loved when Donna met Martha, and instead of scrapping, they had a good ole chatter - it was lovely. Now, that wouldn't exactly match with Twelve's abrasive style. But his behavior is totally out of line in this episode, in every way - even the idea that Danny has to match his standards of "good enough" for her to be able to date him is utterly out of line. I don't enjoy watching that.

The beginning montage with Clara dashing from space adventure to date is gorgeous - lovely editing, lovely character development. Because also, it's focused around *Clara*. It's about the difficulty *she* is having leading a busy, double life. The pissing contest is about everything but her. It's about how two men, both of whom regard her as partially theirs, feel about her having friendships with other men. No one in this episode asks Clara how she feels, or demonstrates some compassion for her wanting to have a boyfriend as well as travelling in time. I feel like it's pretty obvious why super cutie boyfriend + ability to explore all existence and save the world would both be things which a person would want to do, but there's no leeway from either character.

I am rather bored of the Doctor being unheroic now. I like a good anti-hero as much as the next person, but the key to a good anti-hero is having redeeming features. I can't see any. He won't demonstrate empathy for anyone around him, and he does it in a very explicit way which is pretty offputting. I suppose this is how other people feel about Doctor Six. But for me, Six is redeemed in his utter delight in things, and his driving passion for justice, and the sincerity of his anger when injustice is done. With Twelve, I can't feel a passion for anything. I am only picking up on his "go away humans" vibe, and reacting accordingly - I want to go away, and I'd rather like Clara to too and find someone who values her and is nice sometimes instead. Being mean to his companions, and letting people die, and what are this person's heroic qualities again? I don't even know where his drive to save the planet comes from. Completeness, perhaps. Neatness.

(The only way they can redeem this for me is if this is revealed to be a canonical decision tying Doctor Twelve's development into the Valeyard. They won't do that, so I'm not interested in rewriting the series every episode to suit my requirements - I'd actually rather like a hero I can admire and feel some empathy for. The role of a companion is to be a placeholder for the audience. I'm looking at Clara and thinking r u n girl, so there's clearly a problem with his characterisation.)

Part of the problem is, I really like Danny. I think being upset about being lied to is reasonable. He comes across as a genuinely nice guy. The actor conveys his mistrust of the Doctor's officer-like qualities and his aristocratic status in a way which seems genuine, which seems like it comes from within, rather than a blind prejudice from a guy whose best buddy was a Brigadier for over 300 years. It reveals character, and is a reasonable complaint. His scene with Clara on the sofa at the end is genuinely very beautiful. Here, he does show he understands why Clara stays with the Doc, and that seems so real.


Trying to ignore the central theme of the episode, there were lots of lovely moments. I have warmed to Clara so much, especially when she thinks of the safety of her pupils first when the Doc starts talking about aliens at the school. I thought it was a cute touch for the Doc to think she likes the geeky teacher with the bowtie, and for the Pink Floyd. I think Courtney is a great character. It'd be so easy to do inner-city-London-pupil in a stereotypical fashion, but this episode seems like a really warm, knowing characterisation rather than something cruel or crude. She's adorable, and I love her and the Doctor bonding over being a disruptive influence. The moment when she pointed out the sign said "Keep Out Humans" cracked me up. COURTNEY FOR FULL TIME COMPANION. Absolutely I would watch that series. Oh, and I loved the moment Clara's annoyance at being flicked on the nose turned into delight at the Doctor's invisibility.

Bad moments? Apart from the entire theme of the episode, I think correcting a caretaker who knows about English Literature by saying "you are a caretaker this is not what you do" is ill advised - I know what the joke was meant to be, about the Doctor not understanding what a caretaker is, but it sounded to me like "go back to washing windows, pleb". And while it was a great like for Clara to point out she is the Doctor's conscience, and he'd need to get his own if she left...why is she saying things like that and not hearing alarm bells?


6/10 bored of this plot. Would have been 5/10, but for Courtney and the scene on the sofa.

Time Heist

Also 5. Don't Think

This episode was a real mixed bag for me.

Doctor Who has always operated by genre-snatching. The TARDIS is a plot engine enabling them to do anything - and so they do. The last time they did the heist caper was the Ribos Operation, which is incidentally, my favourite Fourth Doctor episode. Don't think I didn't spot those Inception references! (the Architect + Clara's costume referencing Ariadne's + "old and full of regret") The writers might have considered, given those cinematic touchpoints, that if you you steal from the best you have to be the best.

Look, the writers simply don't understand the heist genre. I spent two years obsessively watching heist movies. Walking in slo-motion to your heist in suits with a briefcase does not a classic make. Neither does drilling through a ceiling - it just reminds me how not post-modern-reinvention-of-a-genre, and also how not Rififi you are. This episode had no tension. It had brief moments of terror interspesed with a criminally slow pace. Unless you're clever enough to be Reservoir Dogs, or inventive enough to be Inception, the key to a great heist movie is constant nerve shredding terror + being one step ahead of your audience.

The monster was scary in conception, but in practice it amounted to two humanoids standing still and gurning at each other. An alarm bell and announcement "intruders on the 7th floor!" isn't tension, cus you know they're gonna get out of it. The idea of a time traveller robbing a bank with future knowledge was cool, but it just felt like they were constantly inventing problems they already knew how to solve. Where was the tension? What's the point of a heist if it's not tense?

I loved the future worldbuilding a lot. The shapeshifter was cool, as was the crook and their backstories. I can only assume they both come from the future, otherwise why wouldn't the best bank in the universe have guards against shapeshifters and also surveillance for people who loudly talk about how they are robbing a bank while they rob a bank. And I was interested in the episode, if always moderately pissed off at it for not being better. I liked the idea of a time heist; I liked the idea of the Doctor preplanning everything, even though that was an obvious twist.


I really want to see the Doc save someone again. I want him to try. I was really rather upset with him sitting back and letting the shapeshifter lady die. The discovery that it was a teleport was not enough - it was the scene where he just sat there and said nothing could be done. Hrm. Similarly, how about saving the rest of the planet? When the bank is totally destroyed by fire, I couldn't help but think...

This is the second episode of the season with "...and Steve Moffat" in the credits, and I find this interesting. Why? Is this a greater creative control thing, or did a lot of people hand in subpar episodes, or...? In any case, the crook with memory deletion is classic Moff.

All in all, it's a 6/10 from me for promising bits, but overall too many problems.

miscellany
My notes included the following phrases I now do not know what they mean: 

solitude is the obly peace

weird hug face

Review: Robot of Sherwood

THIS IS MORE LIKE IT. Who would have thought "The Robin Hood One" would be any good at all?! I daren't look at what the fans thought of this.* I thought it was brilliant. Gatiss is playing to his strengths as a comedy writer. The result is an unashamedly camp and very silly romp, frankly the only way this story could have been done.

Cheekily sneaking the word Gallumafrey in there. Ben Miller channelling Ainley circa '83, and gets the balance of menace and camp absolutely right. Robin Hood quoting anarchists. The Doctor fighting sword vs spoon.

I think, above all, this episode knew what it wanted to be. The problem with wannabie "dark" and "challenging" Who is that it goes out for families on a Saturday night. To explore the politics of intervention, or pacifism, or whichever moral quandry, with any depth or power requires either more than 45 mins or exceptional writing ability. Gatiss just drew from one rich source (Robin Hood), and one writing tradition (panto comedy), then added some aliens - and it worked like a dream.

Last week, I pointed out it was stupid for medical professionals to use shrinking capsules to fix problems. Clearly, that's less stupid than "if we fire the golden arrow at the outside of the spaceship, it will enable the ship to fly". But this episode wasn't trying to be a serious meditation on the nature of idk wtf. It was The Robin Hood One. Did anyone want more from it than this?

9/10, and honestly I'm itching to give it a 10; I just can't face giving Best Episode Ever adulation to the Robin Hood One. 

Classic references corner: I really do think Kings Demons is a touchstone here. Apart from the Sherrif and the Master's look being identical, we had robots and a LUTE SCENE. How many lute scenes are there in Who, eh? Just two. King's Demons it is.There was also one delirious moment of happiness:

Doctor (casting aside the golden arrow) "I want something else"
Sherrif "Name it"
Doctor "Enlightenment"

ETERNALS someone give me Eternals, it would have made so much gosh-darned sense. Who else would have built a faux-medieval playground filled with thigh-slapping Merrie Men?

*There a post on Outpost Gallifrey entitled "The lack of any socio-cultural depth".

Review: Into the Dalek

A pleasing mess of better things. Into The Dalek has lots of good bits, but we've seen them all done better before.

Capaldi vs Dalek was brilliant. Dalek made that the basis of an entire episode (seriously, how much of a dope do you have to be to go up against Dalek, easily one of the greatest Who episodes of all time?).

The Doctor letting people die while trying to be the better man is always a rewarding plotline, diving into the ethics of intervening (or not) and what pacifism means. But in this episode, it felt rushed, like a shorthand for complexity, compared to the sickening slow pace of Warriors of the Deep to name just one other episode which explores this. WotD's brilliance is in using all 80 horrible minutes to build up to that conclusion. You don't know it's an episode about the moral failure to act until the last five, when the Doctor is standing and looking about at the mounds of corpses, realising he hasn't saved anyone from either side. Into the Dalek tries to tread the same ground, but doesn't have the time - whereas WotD shows a hero making the wrong decisions but trying his damndest, IotD has him pick an appalling time to attempt a moral victory.

Crammed in there is some stuff about the nature of soldiering (the comparison between Blue and Pink) which it never has time to explore, nor to look deeper into why the Doctor objects to them when so much of soldiering overlaps with stuff the Doctor likes (does he seriously believe no planets should have armies? What, then, was his solution for this civilization to get rid of the Daleks? Is it just an anti-authority thing? I would totally watch that episode.)

(presumably-liberal TV writers should not be allowed to write soldier characters; they've clearly never been near an army base all their life. I mean, neither have I, but TV soldiers are always Made Of Feelings and Drama, arguing in combat situations and having a lot of emotions. I don't buy any of these people as professional soldiers.)

Any one of these things would have been a brilliant standalone episode. I imagine Clara's cute teacher friend is the beginning of a new subplot, and I understand they need to introduce that sometime, but this episode desperately needed that extra 10 minutes. I don't even think it had enough worldbuilding time. Why does a civilisation with the technology to shrink humans not also have the technology to analyse/fix a Dalek without going through such a silly process? And what did anyone think was going to happen when they fixed the Dalek - what was the goal?

(no misogyny tho, so that was something)

If you ignore all that, there were plenty of good bits (the only problem with them was they were bits). There was some good dialogue ("She's my carer; she cares so I don't have to". Other Doctors, it would have been a joke; Twelve is more abrasive and far less huggy, and I can easily believe he means it.)

I can already feel there is a Twelth Doctor emerging, even though I can't define it in words. Not not sentimental, but very particular about what he cares about. Six or Seven would have rejoiced in getting a Dalek to blow up its own kind; Five or Ten would have got caught up in the human bloodshed. Twelve's interest here seems far more abstract.  For him, victory would have been a good Dalek and all that represents - he is more interested that than the immediacies of the situation.
He certainly is quite uninvolved in minor things like the deaths of minor characters, stuff which would have tied Ten in knots for the rest of the episode. I'm liking the chilly practicality. 

All in all: a 6/10, with regrets. The good stuff was good, but fell short of all the other brilliant episodes it could have been.

Grab bag of other thoughts:

We loved the bookshelves in the TARDIS console room 


(As far as I can tell, the most common criticism of WotD is the sets are "overlit". This seems an odd complaint in a show which constantly suffered from a small budget; and the WotD seabase seems far more plausible to me as an actual base compared to the shadowy/creepy corridors critics would prefer. Plus, now we live in the future - we can easily imagine the seabase was built by Apple.)

Deep Breath - Review

Overall, I felt really positive about this episode.

(I've not reviewed a Doctor Who episode in over 2 years, so you will have to be gentle with such clunky sentences until I get back into the groove)

But saying that much is still saying quite a lot. I stopped watching for a little bit, because the casual sexism made me feel so cruddy, and the lack of character development was frustrating, and it got to a point where I couldn't ignore it.

All of that was there in this episode. But I feel like Peter Capaldi is going to take the edge off it. I like him a lot, and I look forward in hope to seeing how his character evolves over time.

Twelve

I especially liked the shot where he held up the silver plate, and realised that he too had been changing so many elements of himself that he cannot necessarily be said to be the same man. So too the suggestion that he has taken on this face because it is a lesson he needs to be taught (PC appeared before twice in the Whoniverse, once in Fires of Pompeii as a family the Doctor only saves because his companion reminds him that he can; and once in Torchwood: Children of Earth as a morally compromised civil servant who fucked up very badly before killing himself and his whole family. The Doctor wasn't around in the latter crisis, so there is perhaps a message there instead.) I liked the subtlety with which this was done, and also the reference to Girl in the Fireplace - it doesn't matter if you don't know where the reference is, because the Doctor also can't remember and doesn't much care.

(Colin Baker also appeared in Who before he took on the main role, as imperious Timelord soldier Commander Maxil. Some links:

• Commander Maxil was a defender of Gallifrey. During Trial of a Timelord, Six exposed the corruption at the heart of Gallifrey and
• Commander Maxil shot the Doctor. Six's greatest villain was also a future version of himself.
• Both have the same personality attributes of being a real stick up the arse to anyone who disagreed.) 

The true test of any Doctor is the sitting-down-and-talking-to-the-villain scene. I guess we all knew PC would be capable of it, seeing as his acting opposite an empty fishtank in Children of Earth was so spine-prickling. Talking someone into killing themselves is definitely a Doctorlike attribute - a man who likes to think of himself as a man who doesn't kill. I don't think the robot jumped, I think by and large robots - even ones which use human body parts - don't tend to do things like that.

(I guess it's going to be some time before I use "Twelve" as a name for an individual. Give me time. It'll happen)

Eleven
The phone call from Doctor 11 was a really cool idea. I have some misgivings about it, in that I felt it kinda undermined the new Doctor. Regeneration episodes tend to have the Doctor pass out a lot, so that the danger feels so great that by the time he wakes up, you're just so darn glad to see him that you don't care there's a new face. Reintroducing 11 after that process has happened is therefore cheating, but it's a kinda cool idea.

But what I realised is that I really hate the Eleventh Doctor. That feeling I was getting when I stopped watching the show, and which had been mostly absent during this episode, came hammering back as soon as he picked up the phone. What a horrible, emotionally manipulative thing to do to your companion. I know the Doctor does that stuff all the time, but when I look back Eleven now feels...particularly involved in his companion's hearts and lives to a somewhat unhealthy extent.

The Castelanne, fellow member of Team Traken, suggested that he was an incredibly needy person and ended up doing bad things because he couldn't master his emotions; I rather like that interpretation. I always had trouble figuring out where Eleven came in the Doctor's emotional development, but I would accept that in his desire to regenerate into a more carefree person, he became emotionally irresponsible. I feel like I could rewatch his series interpreting the character as pretty damaged but in a less obvious, more damaging way and enjoy them more for that understanding. "I'm not your boyfriend...I didn't say it was your mistake" is a colossal admission, and I think a large key to 11's character.

And maybe one reason I found the casual sexism less objectionable in this episode is because the Doctor was not involved in it. I don't mind the Doctor having romantic plots in principle, but if "involved in romance" means "involved in the weird sexual/gender politics of the post-RTD series", I'm happy to see it go.

Everything Else

I would watch a whole series of just Jenny and Madam Vastra. I am so glad they've become reoccuring characters.

I've never liked Clara before, and I feel like her relationship together with the Doctor is going to be fun.

The plot was fun tosh. I'm a sucker for all things steampunk. I think the concept of the clockwork robots was cleverer in Girl in The Fireplace, because it was set in a non-traditional steampunk era. Seeing the robots in top hats in the fog is always fun, but translating that meme to 18th century France adds a clever touch.

"Don't breathe" is up there with the other Moffisms ("don't blink" being the most famous; but I know there have been others; but I can't remember them, because the time has passed when this information was on the surface of my brain. "Stay out of the shadows" in Forest of the Dead. Others, I can't remember.) but I liked this one a lot.

"Doctor Who ‘lesbian-lizard’ kiss will not face investigation" is the best headline I've ever seen. There were six complaints; my Companion suggests that he hopes at least one was because it broke class barriers. A lady kissing a maid? Shocking!

Don't talk to me about Missy. I don't want to think about this subplot. Like this show needs another River-Song-template woman person. Could that paradise they were in be the cloisters of a TARDIS, and could she be the Rani? Perhaps, but I already find this character unbearable.

Sexismwatch

So one thing I want to do in these reviews is be not critical, because complaining all the time ruins the show for people - primarily me. That said, I can't switch my brain off and - indeed - I have no desire to. People shouldn't have to give up dignified representations of themselves in exchange for enjoyable telly, great telly should do both.

Preditory lesbian characters? Check! (Listen up Clara, and also straight ladies of the world. Just because you're talking to a lesbian, it doesn't mean she's secretly attracted to you. What a crass addition to the episode). Dodgy relationship politics? Check! (Listen up, Moff! I feel like 80% of the point of being a lesbian is that your partner doesn't casually objectify you by demanding you stand half-naked and be decorative while she works. And while there clearly are creepass lesbians in the world, this felt more like translating a heterosexual power imbalance straight into a gay relationship, in a way which felt utterly inauthentic.)

A longer post following on this topic. For now, though, let's give this a 7/10 for a promising standard episode.

Night Terrors

"We're dead. Again."

I've heard Mark Gatiss derided as a derivative writer. I always thought this rather unfair - fans are the first to complain when the show changes too much, and Who writers have always drawn from what they are reading, from Holmes' victoriana to Chris Boucher's Asimov retellings. Besides which, there is little evidence of this from his Who work. Unquiet Dead has been described as Hinchcliffey, but mostly because it's gothic horror and the genre has been used rarely since that era. It's also divine, a real favourite of mine. I've never been a fan of The Idiots Lantern, but its Twilight Zone stylings were more affectionate than kleptomaniac. And there was a lot to like in Victory of the Daleks if you ignored the rather limp plot - it borrows wholesale from the traditional war film, but why should it not? Caves of Androzani was only Phantom of the Opera with the bronze replaced with stainless steel.

But I confess, Night Terrors brought this argument rushing back to me. You see, this week, Mark Gatiss isn't doing a long-dead literary genre: he's doing Steve Moffat. Children in danger, the Doctor who values and sorts out things so small as a family, fairytale dolls house, moderately intricate plot, forgetting. Plus the ending of The Doctor Dances, to cap the impression off. It set the teeth on edge at once - because I like Gatiss a lot, and hate finding evidence for a theory I've decided is wrong; because I dislike a lot of what Moff does, on similarly implacable and instinctive grounds. There's also a difference between a reference and a wholesale rewrite - using the baby masks from Brazil, and the shrinking bedroom from Time Bandits, is a reference.

And with that in mind, my brain started nitpicking. All of a sudden, its similarities to Fear Her - another much hated episode - were intolerable; not to mention to Idiot's Lantern. A scared little boy who hides his dolls in the closet? Nope, move along, no agenda to see here...

So let's try and focus on the positive. Night Terrors did better than either of those episodes at creating a world where children transfer their genuine fears to the supernatural. Idiots Lantern did gay kids in the 50s, Fear Her did child abuse (anyone got on the phone to Tennant yet about making sure he gets a run with the Olympic torch...?). Night Terrors was the least plausible - alien child! - but got the best emotional mileage. An alien allegory dealing for the idea of rejection by parents, and indeed, a sort-of queer subtext which is there if you want to see it, and not if you don't (similarly, there's a sort-of autism subtext for those interested). The scene where a scared Alex was being threatened by the landlord, coming through the walls to the ears of scared George, was standout. It might have been more satisfying if George's fears were justified, though. One little hug, and suddenly all his problems are sorted. Kids ain't stupid, and they can tell where they're not wanted. It's abundantly clear that his parents are worried, and it might have made more sense if the source of his fear was something external. Alternately, Alex turning around to say "I can't stand the sight of the little shit, and I definitely want him out now I know he's not human." That wouldn't be very life-affirminly Who, but it would set it apart from a swathe of episodes where simply facing your fears is a psychologically dubious way of solving problems.

I was a bit worried on first seeing the setting: for your average, British middle-class audience member, a council estate is the scariest place on earth. I'm really glad it didn't do anything tacky. Bit annoyed at the landlord, though - poor old Andrew Tiernan, he's got a face for bastards and I've never seen him perform anything remotely sympathetic, except perhaps in that Suede video. He is a middle class cliche of what council estate dwellers are like - complete with the big, ugly dog - and is accordingly vile, and is accordingly fair game to be picked off by Dolls. Disappointing - there's a difference between a character who performs the role of an antagonist to what the protagonists want, and a character who deserves to be turned into wood. Twas a mistake to let Amy get caught though - as soon as a companion is in that sort of peril, it is certain that she will be saved.

Alex is a great character well performed, though. I particularly love that he remains important to the plot - the Doctor needs his insights about George, instead of just dragging him along for someone to talk to. As much as I'm disliking this era, I love that for Eleven, rescuing a single child is as important as all the more glam Times Champion stuff. Just sitting in George's room to play. Trying to behave, by tidying the rubix cube he instinctively drops. Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through empires of glass and civilisations of pure thought and a whole terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. I always want to hate those speeches, they are so contrived, and so authorly, and so beautifully written, and then performed, that I can't help but adore them.

I enjoyed the wonderful sickly yellow direction; wonderful sound effects, with the lift - I clocked the importance of that sound early on, but not what it was, which is the best combination. More than I can say for the plot - it was pretty easy to guess where Rory and Amy were. Or the scares which were, for me at least, more enjoyably hokey than genuinely scary. Still, I loved the surreal addition of huge scissors and eyeballs; the throwaway references to "Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday", or the "Emperor Dalek's New Clothes". Eleven has always reminded me of Chris Morris in Space, and never more than with his absurdist hat on. For all of this, though, the denoument is appallingly lazy - why would nervous George open the wardrobe after what he's just seen? Is the slo-mo only included to get the running time up?


I don't want to press the issue, but this was the second review I wrote for Night Terrors. The first was an embeded video of the McCann family's first press conference; I changed my mind because it seemed inappropriate. Of course, there should be little linking a real-life tragedy with a meaningless romp like Who, but I mean it as illustration for what is so wrong with Amy and Rory right now. It needn't be grim, but it needs to be there. Losing a child is perhaps the most intolerable thing that can happen to a parent, even before you cram in all the sci-fi stuff. When the Doctor asks where they want to go, I'd have admired either of them more if they'd replied: "to find Melody, you incompetant alien!" I want to see them rewriting time so their little girl doesn't grow up to be a psychopath, squabbling with the Doc when he can't work out what's wrong, and even if the dialogue isn't there, I want to see a certain brokenness in their performances, a sense of sorrow even if it's not acknowledged. This week's plot, about a lost and frightened little boy who is terrified of losing his family, should have been intensely triggering to the both of them. Perhaps that, given the bizzare nature of the birth and soforth, their reactions will be very different from yer average parent. Well, say that then - give us scenes to appreciate how Amy and Rory's weird circumstances are making them think of it differently.

The internet tells me this is because Night Terrors was originally early on in Season 6A. You can't shuffle like this with an ongoing arc! It doesn't have to be dwelt on, but it does need to be plausible. And I'm going to say it on their behalf, every week, until they remember.

Ratings out of ten are a blunt instrument. How can you judge an episode which got 10/10 for all the little things, but screwed up on the big ones? 6/10 for being lazy, 7/10 for how much I liked it, 8/10 for the small moments squirreled away. 9/10 for being closer to the series I'd rather be watching. An above average episode I do not feel the need to rewatch any time soon? 6/10

Let's Kill Hitler!

"You've got a time machine, I've got a gun, so what the hell, lets kill Hitler!"

Oh, let this be my year again, let me suddenly get what everyone else can see, and let this be my year. I've been enjoying Matt Smith's series, but only with my mind. Something of the feverish enthusiasm has died for me in the past two seasons, enthusiasm which The Pirate Planet or Mawdryn Undead can still rouse with no effort at all.


Season 6B-B has started promisingly - I'm cautiously pessimistic. What a great line, and what a great title! So great I've started wondering if I'd have loved it half as much under a different title. It's perky, conspiratorial and tickles the imagination alongside the funnybone.

The episode abandoned its cheeky premise fairly quickly - which might be for the best. Knockabout romp is perhaps the wrong medium to tackle the world's worst conflict, especially with Who's sister show doing it with so much subtltey and finesse on channel 2...Who has never touched Hitler, save through allegory, and the manner in which it was done here was divine - befitting the subject's gravity without being mawkish. Whether it's that weird aura, that charisma and the piercing eyes which Hitler (and many Notable Men of History) is said to have had, or the sheer historical momentousness, it seems everyone is a bit freaked out by being in the same room as him. From the director, who nervously characterised him as hands, the back of an ear, the corner of glasses, trying not to meet his gaze, to the cast, all unsure of what to say. Not quite awkwardness, not quite fear - an excellent moment all round.

As it stood, 30's Berlin was just wallpaper to a story in which everything seemed to be happening. Historical, character piece and sci-fi all at once - one of my notes reads "implausible everything". This is Doctor Who at its very best. Douglas Adams has been suggested as a source for the Tesselecta robot, but his most important influence is City of Death, which achieves a similar balance between the show's time and/or space mandate.

And so we have the childlike soft-science idea of a body that's a spaceship filled with tiny men; juxtaposed with the more adult sci-fi idea that time travel could be misused to wreak vengeance on unpunished criminals. We have a beautifully realised, desaturated, snowy Berlin, on the dawn of a great historical moment; and just as beautifully realised, we have the moment Amy discovered Rory was in love with her. Who can do all these things, but rarely tries it all at once. That it succeeds is a credit to Steve Moffat's bravurah skill for juggling ideas, like so many plates and firebrands, without once letting them touch the ground.

One of his notable failures in Series 5 was convincing emotion, those little human moments that could take a scene from the end of the Earth to fish and chips in under a double-beating-heartbeat. Series 6 was a little better, and now the story of Amelia's childhood rebuts my criticism entirely. I hope this continues. Picking on little Rory, playing some of those endless Doctor-centric games, and how very, very sweet that moment of realisation between the two of the was.

Mels, on the other hand, grated from her first instant on screen. Not just for being annoying, but for being the latest in a long line of sassy, self-assured, dull dames, each about as plausible as Monarch's masterplan to prove he is god by going back in time to meet himself. I felt so much better when it turned out she was one I already hated. Freed from being the latest in a downhill trend, I retrospectively rather liked her. And it proved that unexpected little sequence of Amy's childhood was quite deliberately out of place: like Adam in Torchwood, one feels Mels has only ever always existed from the moment you see it happens.

You can see some of River's more insane qualities here at their genesis - later to mature and zen out, but still not entirely grown out of her bonkers teenage phase of 'jacking buses just 'cus. One can only assume that, like Susan, she must have been very bored and lonely at that school. While Susan's school days consisted of blurred close-ups and surreal, radiophonic interludes, Mels default response to historical tragedies is "because the Doctor didn't stop it". The idea was done with more finesse by Lawrence Miles in Interference, with the Eighth Doctor challenged by his companion to intervene in Bosnia, Kosovo or Northen Ireland; here it is effectively played for laughs.


And that relationship finally works for me. In fact, a lot of my previous River-related quibbles are no more. It still stands that she is a poorly concieved idea of what a Strong Female Character should be, and that personally she sets my teeth on edge. But for the first time, I'm responding to her positively - when previously, I'd hardly dignify her with "spack off out of my canon, you make no sense!"

Information is required to contextualise things we see. We are no longer suprised that the TARDIS is bigger inside than out, because we are familiar. When the Doctor says something like "great, more guilt!" we know exactly what he means, because we've been through Rose, Martha and Donna's stories with him; when he is so insistant that his murderer be saved, this makes sense because we've been with him since the 60s and we know he'll give anyone a break. The idea of the Doctor being married to a Time Traveller's Wife is genius, but smug, self-assured River has always seemed so wrong to me. The companions he seems closest to are the Jo Grants, Aces and Roses of this world - the not especially well-learned or inherently competant, but smart and brave, and willing to take chances and learn. What did he see in River, who is not only violent, but unimpressed by his showing off, and cocky about her own perfection? I was seeing her at the wrong time. "River needs me!", the Doctor said, and it suddenly all made sense. The River I'd misunderstood in Silence of the Library was not the River he'd fallen in love with. It's the broken Mels of Lets Kill Hitler, the Mels who needs guidance, the Mels whose screwed-up life is all the Doctor's fault, making it his self-imposed duty to save her.

I imagine, for a bleeding heart like the Doc, that quality is irresisteable in a gal. The learning and guiding and showing off all comes in the bits we haven't seen.

i09 has accurately identified that enjoyment of the series is now directly related to how much one is interested in River Song, which is rather unfortunate for Team Traken - to greater and lesser extents, we've never been able to stand her. I still can't, and I'd be happier if she never showed up again. But she gets a pass into canon now, at least, and makes sense, and I admit to being more interested in her now than I ever before have been. I have a horrible suspicion that when the story is done, and the mind can reassemble it into order, I will at last become most fond. How embarassing.

No comment on the fact she has regenerations. I think the Doctor's reasons that Jenny can not, and never will be a Timelord speak for themselves.


All the other usual comments stand. Mr Smith is perfection. Rory's really good. Amy remains a frustrating character with fine legs. Someone dies again, of course, and it would have been a beautiful regeneration if, of course, that is what it had been. Loving Rory's right hook, and every single time the word "Hitler" was used as a throwaway moment of absurdist comedy - "Shut up, Hitler!"; "Put Hitler in the cupboard!" Eleven's standout moment was proposing marriage to the dying Mels.


The Teselecta was a great new addition to canon - both as a robot concept, and as a mission. Hunting down historical rotters - what a piece of sadistic genius! The Doctor's incredulous sarcasm is just right for expressing what an absurdly wasteful, but kinda enthralling, idea it is. Bridge-based drama is a specialty of mine - so hands up who else wondered how well Blake'n'co would do at piloting a Tesselecta...? The Doctor should definitely count as a bigger war criminal than River, though, as should Hitler - unless there's something we've really not been told about her. Conflating the three characters under the same banner skirts the edge of taste, especially if River's only crime is indeed to kill the Doc. Not sure how I feel about them being put on an explicitly real-life spectrum of morality.

That's more than I can say for the TARDIS interface, though. Bit of a weird scene. It could have ben heartbreaking with someone else - like Sharaz-Jek finding no one but his robots to hold him - but as it stands, its a bloody TARDIS interface, the Doctor knows she's just an interface, and even if he didn't, it tells him. Multiple times. With your future wife being chased by a robot and your best chums trapped in said robot's head, can't you find enough hope on your own?

The Doctor's standards are interesting here. Young Amelia doesn't make him feel bad because he hasn't screwed her up. Is this his alien understanding of time or Moff's alien understanding of character? Because the Doctor is right - Amelia exists, and always will exist at a point where he he "hasn't screwed up yet". There was a point where Rose, Martha and Donna were equally guilt-free. Because Amelia only exists at a point before they know he has. Actually, she's has been screwed from the start - her parents have vanished down a crack the exploding TARDIS created, just as her best friend is actually her daughter in another regeneration. Given how her timey-wimey lifeline is garotted around that of the Doctor and River she is, in a sense, doomed from birth in a way no other companion has been.

So do we blame Moff? Earlier series focused quite heavily on the companion's emotional state, so it is hard to ignore the guilt the Doctor might feel at how Rose, Martha and Donna turned out. I've stopped trying to pretend that Amy is a consistent character who develops from episode to episode - she only makes sense with a crack in her mind which wipes her experience every time the credits roll.

Now we are to believe that Amy and Rory can cope with, not just losing their child or missing her formative years entirely, but knowing she's been engineered as a psychopathic war machine. It's a great way to keep the characters in the TARDIS, instead of changing nappies in Leadworth; it's also totally implausible. They're not devastated, they're not pissed, they're not even overly concerned that their tearaway best friend is their little girl all grown up. They're just Amy and Rory, as usual.

Plus ca change. 8/10 from me!

Some other great lines:
Doctor: Then why don't I know you? I danced with everyone at their wedding... The women were all brilliant. The men... were a bit... shy.

Rory: "Anybody else find this day just a bit difficult?"

Amy: "Can you ride a motorbike?"
Rory: "I expect so, it's that sort of day."

"I was on my way to this gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled, and then I thought ‘Gosh, the Third Reich’s a bit rubbish’”

Other thoughts:

• Some great clothing in this one - not yet sure about the Doc's new coat, but lovin' River's hat and the sonic cane.
  
• that sequence with the banana is straight from Curse of Fatal Death. Who'da thought?
• The episode I watched just before this was Mawdryn Undead. At the time, comparisons between the two episodes were so clear in my mind I merely wrote "Like Mawdryn". I wonder what I meant...?
  

Speculation:

• Who thinks that River's sacrifice of c.10 lives to bring the Doc back to life will come in handy five years down the line? We know Timelords can extend their number of regenerations - the Master made a hobby of it.
  
• At the same time - the Doctor's death at the lake is a fixed point? That is a scary thought. Mind you, Torchwood seems to be cheerily ignoring what the "fixed" in "fixed point" really means. And time can be rewritten. A maxim just like "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey" which simply means: "I can do whatever the spack I want".
• Why does the Doc change clothes? I hardly believe it's because he always dresses for the occasion. Besides, the confrontation in the restaurant at the end hardly lasts for 32 minutes. So where has he been? Fellow comrade Team Traken comrade Koschei noted: "any time the Doctor is off screen nowadays, it is potentially suspect."