Doctor Who - The Power Of The Doctor

The
Regeneration
Game

Doctor Who
The Power Of The Doctor
Airdate: 23rd October 2022
BBC 1

Warning: All the spoilers.

Well this one was a bit hit and miss.

I’ll start off by saying I quite enjoyed the new Doctor Who special The Power Of The Doctor (more so than anyone else in the house, that’s for sure) and thought it was fast paced and fairly entertaining for a feature length episode of the series. I don’t think it was too hard to understand in terms of story... some people seem a bit stumped by it. I think a lot of the stuff which people are asking questions about at the moment are dead ends rather than loose ends in the plot... they weren’t supposed to be that clever and you should just take things like the ‘significance’ of the missing paintings (there isn’t much, it would seem) at face value.

Now, a friend of mine told me today, an hour or so before I watched it, that none of the dangling plot ends everything has been building up to get resolved or answered in any way. And I found that hard to believe but, it’s true. Following on from the overreaching story arc from a couple of seasons ago... we still don’t know much about the Timeless Child and why The Master went a bit mad and burned down Gallifrey, it seems to me. Hints and clues were pointing to the fact that maybe The Master was just a different life-cycle identity of The Doctor, memory blocked versions of each other but... I guess we’ll never know now. That part of the story seems to have been forgotten and, I suspect, be dropped completely from future stories (as many unanswered plot threads have been over the last ten or more years of the show).

Similarly... the pregnant mother reunited with the father of her child from Flux was somehow highlighted in a way that made me assume we’d find out the child inside her womb was The Doctor (and by extension, The Master, if my theory was correct) but, yeah, even though her other half is present in this adventure, it’s not even mentioned. So... no, none of it really tied up anything, it has to be said and, the emotional sub plot of the ‘burgeoning romance’ of The Doctor (played brilliantly again by Jodie Whittaker) and Yas (played wonderfully by Mandip Gill) wasn’t even tackled at all.

But the story, such as it was, kept moving a pace and never really got boring... so there’s that.

There were some nice, if corny shout back jokes such as the Master/Doctor forced regeneration incarnation wearing Sylvester McCoy’s jumper (still got mine), Peter Davison’s stick of celery, Tom Baker’s scarf and playing Patrick Troughton’s recorder. And... well... The Master Dalek Plan anyone? Long term watchers of the show like myself may have chuckled lightly at that one, I guess (yeah, okay, so maybe I did, briefly).

And there were some nice surprises in it too. I mean, we knew from the trailers that Janet Fielding was back as fourth/fifth Doctor companion Tegan Jovanka and seventh Doctor companion Sophie Aldred was back as Ace and... they did very nicely back in their respective roles, for sure. It was great seeing them again. But there were more surprises too. John Bishop’s companion Dan’s quick exit from the show early on was unexpected, for sure. And... not so much surprises... were the return of David Bradley as the first Doctor (reprising his recreated role of William Hartnell’s original take on the Timelord), Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor, Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor, Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor and Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor. Now, I know why they were all showing their age... but that wouldn’t happen to the Doctor since he doesn’t age, he regenerates. I was surprised they didn’t CGI them as younger versions of themselves, since they were a kind of post-regeneration guardian/illusion (take your pick).

More interesting surprises were Bradley Walsh as Jaz co-companion Graham, Katy Manning as third Doctor companion Jo Grant, Bonnie Langford as sixth/seventh Doctor companion Melanie Bush and William Russell as first Doctor companion Ian Chesterton... although I was disappointed as to how brief those last three companion cameos were.

The one thing which didn’t surprise me, however, was who Jodie Whittaker regenerated into at the end of the episode. We’ve been hearing David Tennant would be returning to the role in some capacity and a few weeks ago I said to at least one friend that I didn’t think Jodie would be regenerating into the new Doctor just yet. Either she would perish off screen or possibly regenerate back into Tennant and, well, at least one of those two theories was proven right I guess. So, yeah, we have a very bemused Doctor at the end of the story, wondering just why she has changed back into the tenth Doctor (or eleventh if you rightly count The War Doctor as number ten). Even so, just because I was expecting it, I wasn’t disappointed by it... it was kind of what I was hoping for, to be honest.

Another big surprise is that the episode didn’t look dirt cheap. The effects work was quite good with some interesting shots and visual compositions. The acting from everyone was superb. Yeah, the script was weak and perhaps Sacha Dhawan’s version of The Master was a little over the top and irritating but, that’s fine, he’s the villain. He’s supposed to be irritating. But Jodie really shone in the role again and I was grateful that she went out in a blaze of glory, so to speak.

That being said, I did find one shot in the thing very strange. When Yas picks up The Doctor’s damaged body, we get a quick shot of the ground where she had fallen. Well... there seems to be nothing extraordinary about the ground and my guess is it was originally supposed to have shown some CGI blood there, to show audiences the seriousness of The Doctor’s wounds. Instead, perhaps it was deemed there would be no pool of blood in a family show and so the blood was either removed or not added. I’m just guessing here but, either way, it seems strange to have a shot covering a small area of ground for a second or two, for sure.

Another thing that niggled was...  if The Master inhabiting the body of The Doctor transplanted his personality and attitude into The Doctor, instead of triggering a new personality, then does that mean that the forced regeneration from the second to the third Doctor at the end of The War Games also meant The Doctor’s personality was erased or sublimated? I wish the writers, especially when they are the show runners, would be more careful when it comes to putting new angles on Timelord history, to be honest.

And that’s me pretty much done with The Power Of The Doctor. It’s not the best swan song for an incarnation of The Doctor but it’s not the worst either. Overall, I really hated the Chibnall era of Doctor Who (but loved Jodie Whittaker in the role) and, although the scripts were better, I didn’t have much love for the Moffat era either. I really enjoyed the Russel T. Davies era on the show but, now that he’s come back and hinted at what the future has in store for the character, I can’t say I’m looking forward to his return either, if I’m being honest. In fact, I suspect that he’s only been brought back to stabilise the show and I reckon if he hadn’t taken the job to come back and rescue it, the show might have been cancelled at the end of Chibnall’s run. Still, as ever, we shall see what we shall see when The Doctor returns for his sixtieth anniversary show in November of 2023. Until then, I shall be slowly working my way through those Blu Ray legacy sets so... plenty more classic Doctor Who reviews will be going up before then.

Doctor Who - Revolution Of The Daleks

Clone and Dusted

Doctor Who
Revolution Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st January 2020 BBC 1

Oh well. I had ridiculously high hopes for this year’s pseudo-Christmas special of Doctor Who but Revolution Of The Daleks (which doesn’t actually have a proper revolution in it anyway, by the way) turned out to be a somewhat uninspired rendition of the show, it seemed to me. It wasn’t, by a long shot, what the people I live with thought of the episode... which was that it was the worst ever episode of Doctor Who. Hey, they’ve obviously forgotten the Colin Baker era and, you know, it’s certainly nowhere near the worst episode we’ve had in even the last two years of the show, even. But I think it’s time the people at the BBC started to realise that if you just throw a load of Daleks at an episode and hope they’ll stick, it just doesn’t cut it anymore. Maybe in the height of Dalekmania in the mid-1960s that might work but, ironically, the 60s stories would stand up with or without the Daleks in them, something which no longer seems to be the case.

I had high hopes for Jodie Whitaker when she started this show. She’s a brilliant actor and actually plays The Doctor really well. Alas, she’s just not getting the scripts to match her wonderful interpretation of the role and I really feel for her. Capaldi had the same problem in his first couple of seasons but I think they started writing more to his character’s strengths and he did some good stuff towards the end. I wish they’d think about writing up to Jodie’s version rather than treat her as a magic wand or accessory half the time, which is what it feels to me like they’re doing now.

Okay, so I thought the first ten minutes of the show, the set up, were actually very good. They didn’t feature The Doctor at all and instead looked to set up the story idea and then follow it up by showing how her companions had coped while she’s been in space jail. Bradley Walsh was brilliant as always, Tosin Cole seemed to be playing a more mature version of his original character and, frankly, Mandip Gill absolutely took her performance to a new level here and was, possibly, the best thing about the episode. And even the way it was presented was good for a while. There was an excellent moment somewhere during the first ten minutes where the entire screen was out of focus apart from a tiny flask taking up a very small portion of the bottom left of the shot. I thought it was a really brave moment and wrongly imagined I was in for a good ride.

Alas, this didn’t prove to be the case and the last good thing in the show, John Barrowman returning as Captain Jack Harkness to break The Doctor out of space jail, came way to early in the episode to have any real impact (although it was a nice scene taken out of context) and that kind of set the pace from thereon in, as the show just kept going downhill from there.

It was nice seeing Chris Noth back as the slimy, evil politician type from the spider story from last year but... yeah, well, I guess he’ll be back in a future episode, for sure. Mostly though it felt like the episode was needlessly padded and downright ham-fisted in some areas. For example, we already know that a Kaled grown from the tissue of the one from last year’s New Year’s Day special has taken over various high tech systems, acquired humans to build a clone army of Kaleds and then melted the humans down to use for food. We were then presented with a shot of them all in their little jars in a big warehouse so the full impact can be taken in. Why then, in the scene not ten minutes later, when Captain Jack and Yaz discover this fact, is the whole thing treated like another reveal with a big, pull back of the same Kaleds and a big musical flourish to hammer things home? Old information. We already knew that from a previous scene, thank you and, frankly, it didn’t seem all that worrying then. So, yeah, the whole thing just seemed like a big bag of air being puffed up while we watched it for what was, these days, quite a lengthy episode.

Also... it’s quite established in current continuity that the Daleks have invaded and conquered the Earth in recent history in the show. Indeed, I believe they were even sending humans to concentration camps at some point? Why then, does nobody, including the Prime Minister, recognise them or have even heard of a Dalek? I’m sorry, this just makes no sense now.

And even the good-bye scene, where the much loved Bradley Walsh and the ‘just getting to be an interesting character’ Tosin Cole leave the TARDIS for good didn’t actually trigger any emotion, I felt. And it really should have when we’ve come this far with the characters. So, yeah, sorry, I was just underwhelmed. And then to follow it up with the news, after the end credits, that some stand up comic I’d never even heard of until this moment would be joining the TARDIS crew this year seemed, well, pretty underwhelming to be honest.

So there you have it. Sorry to be so negative about Revolution Of The Daleks but... yeah... they can’t go on like this. I think this show needs a long rest now. Not a cancellation... just a rest and then to have someone comparable to Russel T. Davies to take it into a more dynamic direction. This just isn’t doing it for me at all. Jodie Whittaker is cool though so... yeah, the level of the show needs to rise to meet her, I think.

Doctor Who - The Timeless Children

Without Time Or Treason

Doctor Who - The Timeless Children
UK BBC1 Airdate: 1st March 2020

Warning: Spoilers I guess

Well this was just a bit rubbish.

I had my fingers crossed this would be a good series finale but, alas, it really didn’t live up to the teasers laid out earlier in the year.

Okay, so I’ll do my usual shout out to the four really good things in the show at the moment... Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole. They were all really great in this, as per usual although, it has to be said, they had some terrible lines to get through at certain points in the episode.

That’s it... that’s the good stuff.

Following on from last week’s episode, it’s kinda revealed that Brendan, who I’d assumed was The Lone Cyberman, was actually probably The Doctor or, rather, a false memory of The Doctor implanted when her mind was wiped by her fellow Timelords because, unbeknownst to her (and to the loyal audience of the past 50 plus years) she was actually part of a secret team of special agents sent to wander around the galaxy giving help to those in need. Oh... and she’s also not a Timelord at all now but a mysterious alien from another dimension who taught a scientist from Gallifrey who took it in, how to regenerate... so yeah, that’s a lot.

I don’t mind them updating the origins of The Doctor a little bit, to be honest and that’s not my biggest problem with this episode. I’ll get onto that in a little while. And, also, it does help certain glaring continuity errors over the years such as the ‘Fourth Doctor’ having had so many previous lives shown to us in the 1970s story The Brain Of Morbius. Although, it also kinda screws that continuity too because, with this retro-fitted back story, he surely shouldn’t have been able to remember them in the first place.

Of course, none of this explains how, in the past, lady Timelords can try on new regenerations like changing clothes in a high street store or the fact that a future incarnation of The Doctor is the Valyard but, well, I guess at least they’re trying, right?

One of the issues I have with this episode is that certain things were just unbelievably obvious. For instance, the humans including two of The Doctor’s companions trapped on the Cybership get the bright idea to wear Cyberman armour to get off the ship. So immediately the first thing the mind jumps to is... well then please don’t let them have a terribly clichéd bit of Deus Ex Machina when someone is about to die at the hands of the Cybermen but then their friends are also around in Cyber armour to save the day. But, yeah... of course that happened. This is so jaded by now... would have worked much better in the sixties, methinks (and probably did). But this wasn’t my main problem with it.

Another problem was that all that stuff about not giving The Lone Cyberman what it wants, as per Captain Jack’s warning in the one outstanding episode of the series, was a bit if a red herring. In fact, The Doctor was able to use The Lone Cyberman to save the day, kinda, at the end of the story. Also, since that was therefore redundant and there was no Captain Jack in sight... well, bit of a nonsense then really, wasn’t it? That wasn’t my main problem with the episode though.

Also, was anyone listening when it was revealed that the death particle housed in The Lone Cyberman’s armour would destroy all organic life in the universe? Because, you know, a character cracked that particle at the end and it meant the destruction of Gallifrey, certainly but... yeah... not actually the universe now, was it? That wasn’t my main problem with the story though.

Oh, and did anyone notice that the Judoon who came to sling The Doctor into pokey at the end of the episode just materialised into her TARDIS with complete ease? Because... that’s not an easy thing to do, is it? Sneak onto the TARDIS undetected. There’s force fields and the like. That wasn’t my main grumble with this week’s show though.

But while I’m at it... did anyone notice the episode was called The Timeless Children? Not, The Timeless Child, who was revealed as an alien organism who became The Doctor. So I assume the other timeless child is perhaps The Master? I dunno because, nobody even thought to write in a sentence or two explaining why it was called The Timeless Children now, did they? Unless it was also referring to the new Cybermen/Time Lord hybrids. Who knows? But even that wasn’t my biggest problem with this one.

You want to know what my biggest issue with this week’s episode was? Stop reading now if you don’t because it’s not mandatory that, just because you got through the rest of this whiny review you don’t have to bother with the last bit...

Okay, if you’re still with me... my biggest problem was this...

It was so dull.

Doctor Who used to be a fun show... even when it was getting very dark. This was not really all that entertaining... it was kinda of like a soporific actually. Even with nobody mentioning Omega or Rassilon (which is fine, they kinda brushed through their invention with one sentence), it was still spectacularly yawn inducing. I mean Whitaker was absolutely brilliant but she had some really stupid stuff to try and sell here. The fact is she did it pretty well but... did this feel like quality writing?

I dunno. Maybe I’ve just outgrown the show in some way... although I still enjoy a lot of the older ones up until the start of Matt Smith so, maybe not. I’m kinda glad that I don’t have to review anymore of these new Doctor Who stories until either Christmas or the New Year, in the upcoming Revolution Of The Daleks special, that's for sure. There will still be plenty of old school Doctor Who reviews coming to the blog over the next 9 months though... starting with a forthcoming look at the classic story The Ark In Space.

As for The Timeless Children though.. I wouldn’t recommend it, to be honest. Especially if you’re a Doctor Who fan.

Doctor Who - Ascension Of The Cybermen

Ascend Of Space

Doctor Who
Ascension Of The Cybermen
UK BBC1 Airdate: 23rd February 2020

Warning: Here be spoilers.  

Okay, first things first. Let me once again apologise that this is probably going to be yet another short review. If a work of art is either really great or really terrible, then it makes it much easier to identify just why that is and you have something you can write about. If it’s got strong elements of both in it then there’s usually something to be said. This series of Doctor Who, though, has been more bland or wishy washy, with the odd exception so... not a huge amount to say about last night’s episode but, again, I’ll try to publish an extra review this week to make up for it. Okay?

One person in my Twitter timeline (thanks Mr. Craig), tweeting about Ascension Of The Cybermen said it best last night... and I’m paraphrasing here... this is the kind of episode that lives or dies by the next part and, yeah, as was pointed out, this seems to be like more of a chess game, where key players are moved into position so all the puzzle bits can come in at a later date. And it’s also got a lot of padding in it, some good things, some bad things but... nothing which is really going to blow anyone away too much.

Okay, so good things... apart from the usual excellent performances by the key cast of Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole... were the flashbacks to what looks like 1930s-1990s Ireland, with the adoption by a family, of a baby boy left in a basket. The boy’s name is Brendan and we keep flashing back to him growing up, joining the police, surviving a miraculous point blank gunshot wound and then retiring as an old man, before being escorted back into the police station by his new father and the guy who took his application... except neither of those has aged a day. This was nicely done and though the show has been pretty blatant in letting us assume the boy is the main cyberman villain in a half mask throughout this and last week’s episode (and presumably next week’s series finale)... there is still some room for surprise here.

Bad thing... the conversation between The Doctor and the Cyberleader through the communicator on the spaceship (again, presumably Brendan but, maybe not) was way too long and basically a lot of posturing waffle. I could have done with that whole, seemingly superfluous sequence gone. It stopped the episode dead for a while there.

Bland thing... the ‘big reveal’ that the sanctuary that the last humans left alive on planet Earth are seeking was a portal to the now dead and burning Gallifrey was hardly a surprise was it? Not like the proper twist with Brendan when he retired. We were all expecting to see both Gallifrey and The Master in this episode and that’s exactly what we got. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this week’s thrizzling installment was the fact that none of the regular characters were killed off... although I wouldn’t be too surprised if that happens next episode. Or, at least, a companion or maybe all of them, might leave. We shall see I guess.

Other than that.... very much Doctor Who business as usual. The show had, very much, a Daleks Invasion Of Earth vibe to it... in either its TV form (reviewed by me here) or the movie version with Peter Cushing (I mention this story because I'm still keen for The Doctor's 'granddaughter, Susan, to make a comeback of some kind). Just the last few humans scrabbling around Earth trying to survive the current occupiers of the planet... we’ve been there before. And, like that earlier tale, The Doctor and her companions were separated into groups to have different adventures cross cutting back and forth to keep things interesting (ish).

Not too much more to say on this one... the cyberman thematic music was okay. I am hoping that the next episode will really knock my socks off... in which case I’ll probably look at this episode in a more favourable light. What I’m half expecting, though, is either the kind of disappointment I’ve been set up to expect in Doctor Who over the last 6 or so years or, possibly, lots of anger if the writers decide to screw with the show's history without thinking it through and have The Timelords descended from either humans or cybermen... which makes no sense and, frankly, if that were to be the case, nobody has even invoked the names of Rassilon or Omega as yet. So, I think that might be somewhat ill advised... if they could pull it off credibly then power to them but... not really holding out any hope from that.

So anyway, that’s me done with Ascension Of The Cybermen. Bit of a bland mish mash and I could do with an upturn in next week’s episode. Glad the show is finishing in a week because I’m tired of writing reviews based on mediocre iterations of what was once a good science fiction show. Fingers crossed though.

Doctor Who - The Haunting of Villa Diodati

Last Night Of The Prometheus

Doctor Who -
The Haunting of Villa Diodati
UK BBC1 Airdate: 16th February 2020

Warning: Minor spoilers right from the start.

As soon as I saw a trailer for The Haunting of Villa Diodati and picked up that it was set in the same night in Geneva that Mary Shelley dreamed up the plot of Frankenstein, I kinda expected the Cybermen to be involved in the story somehow. After all, what better way to inspire the writings of a person into the creation of the Frankenstein legend than a symbiosis of flesh and machine restitched together?

As it happens, though, despite there being no surprises from that quarter, this was a pretty good episode, especially for this ‘seemingly on our last legs to be any good’ series we have here. I was impressed by the writing on this, by someone called Maxine Alderton and the acting was superb. The usual suspects in terms of performance and holding it all together were good too... Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh were all kinds of great but Jodie Whittaker was especially burning bright in this episode... and that’s because she had great dialogue. She really took charge in this one in terms of just where she stood above her three companions and the responsibility resting on her shoulders and it really made for one of her more interesting monologues.

The tale itself was one of ghosts and hauntings with a house which became, from room to room and for each of four sets of people, a giant set of recursive occlusions, trapping them all where they were in much the same way as happened with the fifth Doctor in his debut story Castrovalva back in the early 1980s. Luckily it didn’t, quite, get as old as I thought it was going to in terms of novelty value and it had various ghosts running about in the house too, to spice things up a bit. These were unexplained for the most part and I’d like to think that’s just its own special punchline for Bradley Walsh’s character but I was concerned, in terms of plotting, as to why the skeleton’s hands were running around on their own?

Nevertheless it was a pretty great episode with a lot of dark in it... I mean physically dark (as well as tonally, such as when the Cyberman tells Mary Shelly how he slit the throats of his own children after he’d been converted) and the Cyberman itself seemed like an old design and definitely only half completed... with half the victim’s face still poking out from behind the mask (which helped as a creative echo by way of showing the stitching, especially on his wrist, to lead the way into the imagination for Frankenstein... I would guess that was the point of that anyway).

So, nicely performed and acted... and definitely pretty well written. We didn’t have long to wait until The Doctor and her crew met ‘The Lone Cyberman’ that Captain Jack Harkness had warned about a few episodes ago... and, as I’m sure everyone was expecting, when she met it The Doctor gave it exactly what it wanted, just as she was warned not to (the trade off being that this particular pocket of Earth history wasn’t changed forever).

My only other real complaint was when The Doctor was poking around in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s head. Unlike every other time we’ve seen a Timelord do this in the show (from what I can remember) we’ve had the information come at us as a crash of impressions in an almost surreal collage of mashed together imagery. Instead, this time around, it’s presented as a clear sequence with voice over narrative from Shelley as if he’s recalling it. My guess would be, since this seems to really break with Doctor Who continuity somewhat, that the scene was originally meant to include Shelley recollecting events and they added the ‘Gallfireyan mind meld’, as I would like to refer to it, as an almost afterthought to the scene when they were shooting the interior shots. Which is... a bit meh.

All in all though, this was one of the few really strong entries in this year’s series and it will be interesting to see how this leads into the next two episodes, which will present some kind of two part season finale featuring the Cybermen and, I would guess, also The Master (unless they’re holding him back until next series now to keep that particular story arc going... we shall see). I just hope the end of show spectacular can live up to the few good episodes we’ve already seen and not, like so often back in  the Steven Moffat era of the show, be unable to live up to the tantalising tease of the initial set up.

Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?

Prison Break

Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?
UK BBC1 Airdate: 9th February 2020

Warning: Spoilers but, you’ll get there way before the characters in the episode do anyway.

Okay so... many apologies but once again I suspect this is going to be a very short Doctor Who review. I’ll try and make it up to regular readers by updating the blog twice more this week. Sorry but, I’m afraid this current series isn’t giving me very much to work with and last night’s episode, Can You Hear Me?, was a good indication of why.

The thing is.. there wasn’t much really going on and it was a set of ideas we’ve seen done again and again in many things, including this show. And not all that long ago in slightly different clothing if memory serves. But possibly I think my standards are slipping because I was much more forgiving of this episode compared to what I’ve seen of some other people’s reactions (people I know in real life, not just people on Twitter).

My first reaction, you see, is that it wasn’t terrible. And nor was it very special. You still have some great turns by Jodie Whitaker, Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole and a story that, just about, holds itself together without ripping apart at the seams (okay, so maybe it kinda did but I’m trying to be nice here). The point is, if this thing had been shown as part of one of the David Tennant era stories, for example, I would have singled it out as being one of the worst episodes in a very long time. As it is though, with the era it’s currently in, my initial thoughts are... yeah, that wasn’t too terrible.

We had a good, sinister looking villain in the form of Ian Gelder playing an immortal called Zelin. He even made a few fan pleasing references too, including mentions for the Celestial Toymaker from the 1960s and the Guardians from the 1980s. It’s just that it’s an episode full of old ideas and not a very tight presentation, it seemed to me. And as such, there were absolutely no surprises here...

For instance, it was pretty obvious the monsters at the start were leaking from the head of the character who is alerting everyone that they are coming. And, yeah, there was a genuinely nice monster moment where a big, clawed hand slowly closes around the head of one of the characters but... alas... the director wasn’t smart enough to keep the monsters to the shadows because, when you see the monsters in full CGI mode, they looked a bit shoddy, to be honest. Also, it’s pretty obvious The Doctor has been manipulated/tricked to get open a lock that needs picking so another immortal can escape confinement. I don’t know why she’s supposed to be so smart when she didn’t even see that one coming a mile off. So that was kinda... bleah.

And, by the end of the show, the resolution seemed really rushed and unimportant... just whisking out a bit of machinery and suddenly conjuring immortals to where you want them seems particularly old now and it’s not exactly the first time the writers have done this, is it? So much ‘deux ex machina’ going on in the show these days. Also, when The Doctor is tied up, she manages to somehow magic up her sonic screwdriver from her pocket into her hand above her head as though she’s suddenly got Jedi skills. What the heck? Where did that come from? That was so implausible.

There were a couple of nice things I liked about the character of The Doctor though and one of these things she’s done a few times this series...

The first thing is... she’d not noticed at all when all her companions wander off and got themselves into trouble. Of course, it’s also lazy writing because it means you can put them into any threat situation you like to be the next thing The Doctor has to solve but... I do like this aspect to her character.

Secondly, when Graham (Bradley Walsh) took her aside for a conversation about the fears his cancer will return, she didn’t say anything particularly reassuring (or even bother to check him out with one of the instruments in the TARDIS)... which was a nice reminder that The Doctor isn’t actually human and so doesn’t completely know what to say in candid moments. Which is fine and I’m sure this was introduced as a running sub-plot thing anyway so I’m sure she’ll either come through or fail Graham spectacularly when the time comes. I’m more and more getting the feeling that Graham is not a character who is meant to survive his tenure on the TARDIS. So that’s the first rumblings of that plot thread, I reckon.

Okay so, yeah, that’s it... I said this one would turn out short. Sorry about that but I’m hoping to have two more cinema reviews up by the end of the week so, you know, keep checking back here. The next episode of Doctor Who looks like it will be all based on the events that prompted Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein so, you know, that does have the potential to be fun, at least.

Doctor Who - Praxeus

A Praxeus To Grind

Doctor Who - Praxeus
UK BBC1
Airdate: 2nd February 2020

Okay, so this weeks episode of Doctor Who, Praxeus, didn’t bother picking up any of the threads dangled in last weeks episode (nor from earlier in the series) but this one wasn’t a bad romp. There were good things and bad things. Asides from the usual brilliant performances by Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole, Bradley Walsh and this weeks co-stars, it had a nice structure to it and, even though the plot itself was slow burn, the multiple repeat location hopping (very much in keeping with the style of an old 1930s - 1950s US theatrical serial) made sure that things never got boring and gave the pleasant illusion of an episode being, perhaps, a little pacier than it actually was.

Which is all fine, of course.

I also liked the, admittedly totally illogical but, ultimately, good looking make-up job (some of which was also CGI, I think) of this episodes ‘special guest virus’. Doctor Who is, once again, pulling no punches by being a family show in which, on a number of occasions in this episode, death strikes in a spectacular fashion. In this case, the final stage of the virus when it overwhelms its humanoid host causes said host to explode. Admittedly, it’s a completely bloodless explosion but it still looked suitably ostentatious as a form of death and one of the things I’ve liked about Doctor Who over the years is its willingness to go down this kind of route.

So... good acting, speedy pacing and a nice structure to it, where various companions in different places around the planet Earth were working on different and, at first, seemingly disconnected sides of the same problem. All great fun and certainly a nicely done episode. There were, however, some bad things too.

Bad thing one and, it has to be said, this goes for most episodes in the last two series... it was way too preachy about making its points again. I don’t know what’s going on but previously on Doctor Who the writers were quite able to put in a lot of relevant and topical subtext without dumbing it down so much that it hovers right on the surface and threatens to engulf the story. A big long monologue from The Doctor about the harm humans are doing by poisoning the environment and themselves with plastic was really... well... it was a bit embarrassing actually. Also, these kinds of messages are always better off going into the subconscious so the audience can come to the realisation themselves... it somehow seems more effective when that’s the case. You don’t for example, see someone climbing up onto a balcony in George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead to tell the audience it’s all about the evils of consumerism and retail therapy. There’ a brief mention of it by one of the characters and then, that’s it... you pick it up for yourself later on. So, yeah, I didn’t need all this stuff shoved down my throat, thank you very much.

The other really bad thing in this one, I thought, was the credibility of one of the characters... and this wasn’t the actresses fault, for sure. There are two female bloggers travelling the globe together in this and one of them explodes fairly early on in the show. Her best friend who is desperate to find her, after seeing her death, only reacts a little. Yeah, I know the emotional stuff on these kinds of shows and also in cinema are such that nobody stays upset for very long otherwise you don’t have time to, you know, actually progress the plot but the lack of reaction written into the character throughout the show... for instance as the character goes off smiling about her experiences at the end of the episode, only a few hours after seeing her friend die a very violent death, just felt really wrong here. I understand there’s a fine line but I think the writing could have been a little more solid, perhaps alluding to the process of grief in off screen moments to maintain an illusion of emotional torment. Instead we more or less got an attitude of ‘Oh, she’s dead. Oh dear. Moving along now... next?” Again, I don’t think it was the actress portraying the character who brought this, almost absence of appropriate affect, with her. I think it was the writing not giving her enough time and dialogue to express it. maybe it’s just me but I did get a feeling of the writers painting themselves into a corner and then running through the wet paint quickly in the hopes nobody would notice when it comes to this kind of stuff. And it isn’t the first time I’ve picked up on this over the last couple of years of Doctor Who, for sure.

And that’s me done on that one. Short review again but, ultimately, the bad stuff didn’t really outweigh the good stuff... just popped you out of the experience a few times. Fingers crossed that next week it’s not back to ‘business as usual’ for the show though because, just lately, business hasn’t been booming.

Doctor Who - Fugitive Of The Judoon

Jack And The Box

Doctor Who - Fugitive Of The Judoon
UK BBC1 Airdate: 27th January 2020

Warning: Big spoilers right from the outset. If you don’t want to know, don’t read. You were warned.

Okay... this is what Doctor Who is all about. Or at least, what Doctor Who has become for the last ten or so years... a devious puzzle with a side helping of nostalgia thrown in from a couple of angles. Finally I can report that another new episode of this year’s series seriously knocked it out the park.

For starters, Fugitive Of The Judoon actually had some decent writing from someone who seems to really understand how the chemistry between The Doctor and her new companions works. There is concern and strength in unification of the team at the heart of the latest iteration of the extended ‘TARDIS family’. Also, when the various companions got separated from The Doctor, she continued to pull the threads of her own part in the story without, actually, even knowing something had happened to them. The show didn’t stop to play up the emotions on the bits that didn’t matter... only on the sections that built the character of the team operating as a unit.

So we have the return of the Judoon, who have placed a deadly perimeter around Gloucester while they are looking for a dangerous fugitive... or at least have been hired to find said fugitive. From the start of the episode it’s pretty obvious that the person they’re looking for is going to be one of two people... and as it turns out it was both, technically (or three if you think about the consequences of what happens later in the episode). It’s obvious two of them are disguised as humans and it soon becomes clear that one of them, Ruth, played by Jo Martin, is even disguised from herself. At this point, my ears pricked up and I thought... ‘pocket watch containing a Timelord’s identity?’. Well, no, not a pocket watch this time but a ‘break glass’ sign in the lighthouse this character thought she had lived her early life in. So, basically, a safehouse.

Meanwhile, to set up the first of a couple of important plot points for the overall story arc of this series, we had the very welcome return of Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman (which meant he was on two channels simultaneously, also busy judging the ice show on the other side when this thing was broadcast). He’s here to give a warning to The Doctor... which he has to settle doing through The Doctor’s companions as he is ejected from the ship he used to scoop them all up in by anti-theft nanites... to ‘beware the lone Cyberman’ and don’t give it what it wants. Okay, so I’m sure that advice will certainly both come in handy and be totally ignored by the end of this series, for sure. But it was great seeing him back and I’m sure we’ll see him again at some point very soon.

Meanwhile The Doctor, not knowing that Ruth, who she left alone in the lighthouse, is about to unlock her Timelord cover personality and reveal the true her, starts digging up an important looking unmarked grave outside. Only to discover she’s digging up another version of her own TARDIS. Now this is more like it as it’s soon established that both The Doctor and Ruth are the same person... but neither of them can remember the other from their past although our current version of The Doctor takes the destruction of Gallifrey as proof, for some reason, of the fact that she is a future incarnation of Ruth. There’s also another person who is working for whoever hired the Judoon and she may well be The Doctor as well, for all I know (we’ll see how that plays out but she’s dead for now). So, yeah, lots happening with... possible heavy-ish repercussions for the future fabric of the show’s history... though not ‘so much’ I suspect.

So... big episode with some really nice moments. I knew Graham wasn’t dead when he seemed to disintegrate, especially since the writers went out of their way to show another ruthless disintegration soon after to show just how serious they were being here. Wasn’t expecting to see Captain Jack teleporting him away though. So that’s a good thing.

Also, I love how Ruth, in automatic mode, pulled the horn off the Judoon (who are basically vertically walking rhinoceros people in heavy police uniform) and it was explained that she had dishonoured the Judoon in question. This is great stuff and, I suspect, comes directly from ancient Japan when, in days of old, it was a huge disgrace and dishonour if a samurai’s top knot was cut off. Indeed,  I wonder how many Westerners, when they watch Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent movie Seven Samurai, realise the absolute gravitas and anticipation that is built up in the opening scene for Japanese audiences when Takashi Shimura’s character shaves off his own top knot in order to disguise himself as a priest? It was great to parody this ‘loss of honour’ here with the Judoon and it also gives them a little more substance than they had on their previous appearances throughout the show.

So, yeah, this one was a rollercoaster and with the lone Cyberman and the ‘other Doctor’ out there, this looks like the writers are finally ‘really going for it’ at this point. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they are anyway.

Where could all this lead? Well, there’s always a chance that the Master could be hiding within this other Doctor still, I guess... unless s/he was the one who hired the Judoon in the first place (or heck, maybe it was even Rassilon or Omega from old Timelord lore, who knows?). Or it could be that The Master and The Doctor have always been the same person and the Timelords have split them into different time strands over the years... and this is why The Master chose to destroy Gallifrey just recently. Or something else. Either way this is compelling puzzle setting here and, even if the solution to the puzzle turns out to be a little underwhelming (as it so often did in the Steven Moffat era), it doesn’t take away from the brilliant set up that we got this episode. And I still haven't forgotten that Matt Smith reference to having had his memory tampered with in a previous Cyberman story... could they be finally tugging on that old Moffat thread here? I doubt if next weeks episode will have much, if anything, to do with this weeks story line but I am looking forward to when the writers start yanking on these strings again. This could go either way but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it stays challenging to the viewer. With Fugitive Of The Judoon, my faith is somewhat, partially, restored... or at least distracted for the time being.

Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night Of Terror

Tesla Recoil

Doctor Who -
Nikola Tesla's Night Of Terror
UK BBC1 Airdate: 19th January 2020

Okay... so Nikola Tesla's Night Of Terror wasn’t the best episode of Doctor Who we’ve had this series but it was better than the last two episodes so I’m going to cling to that straw and use it as an excuse to keep up hope for the rest of the series.

As usual, Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole and the incomparable Bradley Walsh were all as watchable as ever. They were also joined by Haley McGee as Dorothy Skerritt, Robert Glenister as Thomas Edison and Goran Višnjić, who did a really outstanding job as Nikola Tesla. Yeah, they were all good and the scripting had its moments too. The episode started off fairly fast paced and, although there seemed to be a few jumps in logic (how the heck did The Doctor suddenly have her TARDIS to jump into at one point?) the script managed to run through its own wet paint quickly so they didn’t really ruin the  story that much.

There were a few bad things mixed in with the good though.

It wasn’t exactly an original story. Okay so they set it in the past and used Tesla and Edison as plot devices but the story was really a reworking of that old Star Trek - The Next Generation episode, where you have the scavenger race asking for everyone’s help to fix the ‘acquired’ equipment in their spaceship. However, whereas in the Star Trek episode the alien race were cleverly and consistently passive in their approach... this lot was a race of giant scorpion people who had tonnes of stolen tech in their ship and who were basically just saying... ‘Tesla comes with us and fixes our stuff or we destroy the planet’.

The biggest problems were not so much with the script this time though... more in the execution.

For instance, a fair few times The Doctor and her companions are being chased by electric death dealing simulacrums and it’s like, if one of those bad guys even slips, it seems The Doctor has time to give a lecture, run a few errands and set a trap before the bad guys catch up with them again. Might as well make a cup of tea and put your feet up on the sofa while you’re at it (incidentally, Star Trek - The Next Generation suffered from exactly the same lack of awareness of time critical danger in many episodes as that displayed here).

Also, you had a nice looking, if annoyingly slow or clumsy (so they wouldn’t ever catch up with the good guys and gals) set of computer generated giant, alien scorpions but then, when the Scorpion Queen was revealed, you had an ex-Sarah Jane Adventures actress in a terrible looking suit trying to look vaguely dangerous. It just really didn’t work here and didn’t impress me in terms of a decent example of villainy incarnate.

However, there was some nice, vivid colour gel lighting throughout the sequences on board the alien ship and the chemistry between the leads and this weeks co-stars was pretty good so I’m reticent to say too much negative stuff here. I’m just glad the episode was halfway decent. And the musical score on this one was quite good too (although I hope they consider releasing Murray Gold’s last Doctor Who series score on CD before wading in on this one).

Oh, by the way BBC people... don’t tell us a ray gun is Silurian in origin and then refer to it as alien technology. Anybody who has watched their fair share of Doctor Who over the years knows that the Silurians aren’t alien... they were here on the planet long before humans arrived, remember? Clumsy scripting there... who does the error checking?

Anyhow, that’s me done with Nikola Tesla’s Night Of Terror and, as I said before, I’m just glad it wasn’t too terrible. Next week we have the return of the Judoon so we’ll see what that one brings. Short review I know but, well, that’s the way it goes for the ‘current’ Doctor Who these days. Nothing terribly exciting to report.

Doctor Who - Orphan 55

The Orphan Age

Doctor Who - Orphan 55
UK BBC1 Airdate: 12th January 2020

Warning: Here be spoilers.

Well this was pretty... to quote a friend... “Meh!”

I was less than excited when I saw the trailer for Orphan 55 because it looked like a standard, stereotypical Doctor Who story from the last few years. You know the kind... Doctor and companions arrive at luxury resort/planet/space station... take ten minutes to establish friends and characters and then hit the audience with the whole ‘actually it’s a bit of a deathtrap here’ spiel. And, guess what? That’s exactly what we got with this thing.

Actually, to be fair, this episode with Bradley Walsh’s Graham character activating some free tokens and teleporting The Doctor and companions out of the TARDIS and into a free two week vacation on a luxury resort wasn’t that terrible a set up, to be honest. Although it was pretty much the exact same set up as Kerblam! from last series. That being said, this one did manage to go down hill rapidly... primarily because a lot of the things which happen in it either didn’t make a whole lot of sense or were somehow contradictory.

So the fact that the luxury resort is held in by holographic walls and is actually built on an
orphaned’ world... so a planet that’s basically wiped itself out and is supposed to be empty and off limits... was all well and good. However, when it turned out to be the Earth in the future... well this was an unnecessary and unwanted plot twist and really doesn’t make sense in terms of series continuity with anything we’ve seen about the future of the planet before. And, frankly, the always good to watch Jodie Whitaker can go on about this being just one future for our planet in a host of possible timelines all she likes but there’s absolutely no evidence of that and... guess what? Our intrepid bunch of heroes don’t refute that timeline in any way, shape or form by the end of the episode so... yeah, I guess that future stands now, does it? As do all the other futures for Earth we’ve seen in the show. What happened to all those ‘fixed points in time’ moments we’ve been hearing about over the last few years? Makes no sense, right?

And the writing just generally seemed to be quite bad but I say seemed because it was, frankly, so sloppy that I suspect there must have been some production troubles with the episode. I really can’t believe this script was shot ‘as is’ because the dire contradictions and inexplicable incidents that made no sense would surely have been caught at the script stage? I’m guessing some scenes had to be improvised, rewritten or ‘written in’ without the time to worry about the consequences. This is all just a guess on my part but... well... watch it and see what you think.

So you had a lovely, elderly couple who became separated and when you did ‘hear’ the missing guy towards the end of the adventure... well, it seemed to make no sense. The character was hastily dropped out of the narrative, more or less, once he’d fulfilled his function to draw The Doctor and her companions out onto the surface of the planet. One wonders why they bothered building up these characters in the first place at all, to be honest.

But that was nothing compared to the amount of characters who sacrificed themselves to save the others by somehow offering themselves up to be... what, eaten? In order to slow a horde of creatures down? How was this working? How does one person slow a whole army of creatures down. And why does the young lad in this actually run off at some point? For no good reason other than to give the other characters something else to do, it seemed to me.

And for goodness sake, if you’ve set up the idea that leaving yourselves with a bunch of monsters and one gun which doesn’t really work because they can adapt to it is certain suicide... you don’t then suddenly have someone who was previously wounded and who selected this fate suddenly turn up from out of nowhere at the end, guns blazing, to buy The Doctor and the others more time to get off the planet. That makes no sense whatsoever. And should I mention that The Doctor didn’t bother going back in her TARDIS to save these poor buggers at the end? No, instead she made a really heavy handed speech about climate change which the audience really didn’t need to hear because, you know... we got it... and which went on for way too long. This was way beyond preachy.

Oh... and talking about the TARDIS. Once we’ve established that we're on future Earth in Russia... how the heck do the creatures understand Jodie Whitaker talking in English if they’ve evolved from Russians? The TARDIS is nowhere near them so the Universal translator which is projected in the near vicinity of the ship is not valid here. What’s going on? Have I missed something? Probably but... I’m almost past caring at this stage.

So, yeah, Orphan 55 was problematic at best and I’m going to try and forget this one. I’m also going to try and forget that the pre-order Blu Ray price for this series... for a measly ten episodes... is around £50. Seriously BBC? Do you think that’s anything approaching what this should be?

Anyway... as always I shall try and be a bit optimistic about what we may be getting in the next episode. Time will tell, I guess.

Doctor Who - Spyfall Part 2

Deton-Ada

Doctor Who - Spyfall Part 2
Airdate: 5th January 2020
BBC 1

Warning: Slight spoilers regarding the future of The Doctor’s origins.

Well, that one was certainly... something. I’m not sure what but it was certainly... an episode of the new series of Doctor Who.

Nah... I’d like to just leave it there but I can’t.

There’s something which has kinda been happening a lot recently with the show... ever since Russell T. Davies left and Moffat jumped on board and then, carrying through to the present. And it’s the phenomenon of starting off either stories or, more often than not, arcs with a bang and then not following through on them with anything like a satisfying conclusion. And that seems to be what happened here.

Last episode (reviewed here) we started with a mad rush of humour and spy spoof and I was thoroughly caught up in it. This week... well it’s not completely terrible but it did seem to kind of fizzle out a bit and, while I admire the chaos and friction of jumping through different time periods and picking up strays... such as Ada Lovelace lobbing miniature hand grenades... as The Doctor goes on her merry adventures, well.... I dunno, it just felt a bit dull to me this week.

The cast, as usual, were all excellent. I really like Jodie and her friends as The Doctor and her companions but, honestly, I think the scripts are a bit hit and miss and that’s especially infuriating when you’re halfway through a story and it kinda loses impetus.

Sacha Dhawan was okay as the new version of The Master... although I’m the only one who seems to like him in the house. His performance was a lot less histrionic than last week and I think he’ll hopefully improve as the series progresses... and due to the nature of the underlying story arc I’m sure we’ll be seeing him reprising that role before the series is finished. Having said that, I’ve still no idea how the heck The Master survived after his/her final death in the Peter Capaldi stories so... I hope they don’t just leave that one with a big question mark over it.

There were some nice things with Bradley Walsh hogging a lot of the best lines. I loved his little tap dancing laser shoes and the way he used them. That brought some much needed humour to a mostly dark episode... when you start using Nazi imagery and seasoning it with some heavily noirish atmosphere then, unlike some of the other Doctor Who shows that have used that period, you’re not necessarily going to invoke a miasma of fun. Of course, the argument is that you shouldn’t anyway but it depends on the message you’re pushing and I somehow didn’t think the gravitas of this period really matched what was going on in the rest of the episode so well.

My real big worry is how the show will progress now. As each new show runner has come along, they’ve usually tried to either change or add to the underlying mythos of Doctor Who a bit. Davies did it, Moffat did it and now it looks like Chibnall is also trying to do it. as well. This might mean he’s already on his way out and, if he goes towards the end of the season, he may well take some of the cast with him, is my guess. Is a regeneration on the cards anytime soon? If it comes to it, I’d rather that than a cancellation of the show outright but we shall see.

So, yeah, we have some serious implications here, via a recorded message from The Master, that there is something amiss with the origins of the Timelords on The Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey. So much so that The Master burned the planet to the ground as a result of hearing what that ‘betrayal’ was. Maybe it's a Rassilon or Omega thing... who knows? Of course, this could all blow over but I suspect the show runner wants to put his stamp on the history of the character before his tenure is done and so I suspect this will possibly be leading to a kind of soft reboot of The Doctor in some way, to a lesser extent. For all I know The Master and The Doctor are aspects of the same person but... we shall see.

That being said, it could all just be something which we’ll look back on and point accusatory fingers at the BBC for in the future... after all, is anyone asking about The Valeyard lately? I think there’s definitely some underlying tinkering going on here and while I loved what Davies did with the history of the show... which was kind of retracted in the Moffat era when Gallifrey was alive and well but then hidden away to materialise at a later date... I don’t think all this unnecessary tinkering with the basic plot mechanics is particularly good for the people who have grown up with the show from various decades.

So, yeah, big tonal change on this one. Lots of drama and gravitas but a deadly serious, dark edge which, while not completely unwelcome, doesn’t really sit as well alongside the set up episode, I think. There was a distinct shift in tone which, frankly, could have worked well and been a genius touch but... I don’t think it was here. At least, it didn’t quite do it for me.

Oh well, the next episode looks much less interesting so, with my expectations set relatively low again, I can only hope it will get better again soon. Luckily, there’s a doctor in the house.

Doctor Who - Spyfall

Expect Her

Doctor Who - Spyfall
Airdate: 1st January 2020
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers in this one... you have been warned.

Right then. Here we are for Series 38 of Doctor Who and they’ve managed to slash budgets even more than the last series, it looks like, by not only cheating us out of a Christmas special once again but, also, making the so-called ‘New Years Day special’ part one of a two part story in what is a series consisting of only ten episodes. Good grief, what a comedown. Back in the day you’d get a minimum of six multi-part stories per season with the smallest story usually being no less than four 25 minute episodes. So we’re definitely short an hour or two here at the very least.

Never mind... as it happens, Spyfall wasn’t a bad episode. Well, I liked it anyway... everybody else in the house hated it and I might have trouble getting the television for the next episode but I’ll do my best.

So, we have an espionage themed story and, true to some things I’d read lately, the episode was a little darker in tone and felt a little more dangerous. Also, it was going for a James Bond-esque tone which, at times it did very well. Early on in, I think it was in the third section of the pre-credits sequence, there was some scoring which was definitely trying to sound like John Barry and, later in the episode, there were some definite nods to the David Arnold style Bond scores as well, I think.

The appropriate scoring plus the great chemistry between the usual team of Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor and Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole all lent a certain credibility to the sense of pastiche and assured the whole thing was carried off to a high standard. Stephen Fry as the head of MI5 and Lenny Henry as this story’s villain also did a good job, Henry playing against type pretty well and getting away with it superbly. Not a ‘de condensed milk’ sandwich in sight.

And then there was the surprise villain. Since we already saw The Master kill his future self, Missy, dead 'for good' with the inability to further regenerate, I’m going to assume that the new incarnation of The Master, played by Sacha Dhawan, is an earlier incarnation that we... and somehow, The Doctor... haven’t seen before. I hope so because, frankly, it’s sloppy writing to just having no excuse for bringing The Doctor’s long running arch enemy (first introduced in the Pertwee era) back from the dead again and again. So... yeah, lets leave that on a back burner for now. I wasn’t as impressed with his performance as I was with the others but it’s early days for this version of the character and so I’m hoping some of his more irritating mannerisms will be dropped before long.

And... there’s actually not too much more to say about this one, I think.

There was a little more action than some of the latest stories but the script isn’t too bad and, unlike many in Whittaker’s first season, it doesn’t waste the actors on a terrible story. Well, part one doesn’t at least. I’m not a hundred percent convinced that the alien beings are enemies we haven’t seen before either... if they turn out to actually be there at all. There is a large element of smoke and mirrors in this one and it wouldn’t surprise me if, by the end of either the second part or the entire series, things are revealed to be an illusion of some sort. Certainly the forest of what looks like a hanging nervous system implies that there could be a whole lot less to things than we might expect. And the reason the sonic screwdriver is being no help is because there’s nothing to register? Just a guess mind you... I’m sure all will be revealed soon.

Now, one of the complaints from the people I watched it with was that the series had lost its sense of fun. Well... I think Id disagree with that one too and I kinda like a darker version of the show, it puts me in mind of some of Tom Baker’s more sinister stories and the old complaints of ‘scaring the kids’ that has never really left the show since it first started in the 1960s. Frankly, if it’s giving the young ‘uns watching this nightmares then its doing it’s job as a good TV programme, arming blossoming viewers with the coping skills they’ll need in later life.

Anyway... Spyfall is a good opener and I’m kind of hoping against hope... although really not expecting... that the rest of this short series continues in this manner. Keeping my fingers crossed for this one.

Doctor Who - Resolution

Super Kaled, Fragile-istic

Doctor Who - Resolution
Airdate: 1st January 2019
BBC 1

You know, let me just say that I think Jodie Whittaker is a good Doctor and her supporting cast of Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill are all pretty spot on for being travelling companions. There’s only been a few stand out episodes in Whittaker’s first season as, frankly, the writing hasn’t been good on a lot of these. I seem to have a large number of people following me on my Twitter timeline who used to regularly watch the show and comment on it after every episode. I’ve heard from hardly any of them this year in relation to this show and I know that some people have either given up on it or... and this seems to be quite common... have it backed up or waiting to watch on iPlayer but just can’t seem to get around to it. Which I think is an indication of what’s been going on with the show this year.

You need to have some truly outstanding, clever episodes to make the show work or at least to keep people coming back for more and... that doesn’t seem to be happening at the moment. And last night’s New Year’s Day Special, which unfortunately took the place of having a 2018 Christmas Special, was another less than outstanding episode, it has to be said. Again, nothing wrong with The Doctor and her companions... and even the supporting cast were pretty amazing on this one... just bad judgement and some not so strong writing on this one, as far as I can see.

Now, most of us had probably all figured out from the trailer at the end of the last episode that the Daleks were going to be involved in this somehow. Good, bring them on is what I say to that. Daleks are the best way to Christen a new Doctor. Alas, they tipped their hat too soon in the episode by showing one crawling up a wall. Seriously, any fan of Doctor Who probably figured out straight away that was just a Kaled out of its Dalek case. So maybe the reveal was a tad early on for that one.

However, not content with having the promise of a Dalek, which stayed in its Kaled form for way too long before building itself a fairly primitive version of its casing (I really wanted to see the Doctor surrounded by proper Daleks at some point), they also gave this Kaled the ability to attach itself to a human host like a bloody Metebelis spider... something we’ve never seen one do before or had any idea that they even could, as far as I can remember, in the entire 50 plus years of the show. It’s like the producers decided to give them new, super powers just for the hell of it. Bad continuity and, while they were rewriting Who lore... I quite liked the government cuts excuse for the demise of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Task Force as it was back in the day... I’m not using their idiotic new acronym from the last ten years of the show) but it’s a really stupid idea. After the planet has been invaded so many times in the past, they get rid of the only Earth run defence against aliens. This is, frankly, implausible.

This episode seemed to me to be a really thinly veiled remake of Christopher Eccleston’s first encounter with the Daleks, except, it also had a Kaled roaming around for a while and a slightly bigger playing field (Sheffield instead of a highly secured building). This wasn’t exciting and didn’t have me on the edge of my seat like that original template did... I just got kinda bored, to be honest. While simultaneously trying to defend the programme from all the negative reactions in the room from the rest of the family, who really do seem to have given up on their ritualistic watching of the programme. If it wasn’t for me, this wouldn’t have been allowed on our telly box anymore.

Also, nobody seems to be addressing the real elephant in the room here. The Earth has been invaded by the Daleks on numerous occasions in the last ten or so years and the people who inhabit the world of the show certainly should remember them. It’s kind of hard to just wipe them out of memory when they even stole the Earth and moved it to another location at one point and enslaved billions of people another time. So tell me... how the heck does none of The Doctor’s new companions, or anybody in the episode, not remember previous invasions all of a sudden? This makes no sense whatsoever. Especially in a seemingly post-UNIT world. I’m sorry but, no, if you want me to invest in your stories emotionally then... you need to make them credible and treat what’s gone before with a little respect it seems to me.

The irony is, there were some great dramatic scenes here between Graham, Ryan and Ryan’s dad... beautifully written and performed. However, like someone in the house shouted, there’s a Dalek on the loose on Earth, why has it just turned into a slow moving soap opera instead. Personally I didn’t mind the juxtaposition of the pacing between the two tones myself but, yeah, other people were less than happy (and one person started falling asleep).

So... nice performances from pretty much everyone in the show, some okay sets and props and a workable premise for a story but, no, this one really didn’t work for me I’m afraid. And I’m getting tired of defending the show to the people who did once like it. This was the only episode we are getting of the show this year (the next series, if it happens, it scheduled to start around about April 2020 I think) and I was pretty angry about that but, honestly, now I’m kinda glad of the break. Hopefully, there will be some changes to the direction of the show (nobody expects people to get everything exactly right on the first series from a new creative group) and it will maybe have the rest it needs so people can really think about getting the show back on track. And I need a break from reviewing new Doctor Who for a while, I think because, frankly, I hate saying negative things about the show. Resolution was not special enough for a special edition of the show and... I’ll just leave it at that, I think.

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Ux Dodgers

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Airdate: 9th December 2018
BBC 1

Hooray... we actually had a finale to the series which wasn’t half bad.

After a prologue where we see an alien race (a race which consists of only two people) called the Ux witness a person transported into their midst, we jump thousands of years in the future to find The Doctor (as played by the excellent Jodie Whittaker) and her three companions Graham, Yas and Ryan (played by Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gil and Tosin Cole) answering a distress signal from the same planet. The planet has unusual properties which attack and break down a person’s grasp of reality so The Doctor fits them all with neural inhibitors and they go to the rescue of the latest in a crew of people who have fallen victim to the floating building at the centre of the planet and its sinister inhabitants.

Now, it has to be said, when we got to the point in this story when the main villain from the first episode was obviously supposed to be someone I should remember... well, I’m sorry but I didn’t. I did figure he would be back at some point but new show runner Chibnall said there would be no multi-part story arcs this series so I kinda assumed they were saving it until next year. So I was a little surprised when the four main protagonist twigged just who the villain was way before I’d cottoned on. When I saw that it was, indeed, the rubbishy looking villain from the first episode... well... my heart sank a little.

However, it turns out it was a nicely staged, compelling episode and somehow the director even, for the most part, managed to successfully distract me from the somewhat cheap looking sets.

There was also a nice dramatic edge to the episode set up where Graham takes The Doctor to one side and makes it clear that when he catches up to this alien who took the life of his wife, he would definitely kill him... despite The Doctor’s warning that if he killed anyone he could no longer travel with her. And, I have to say, Bradley Walsh carried out the various scenes where he really made you think he was going to put down said alien villain with such expertise that it was an absolute pleasure to watch. It gave the episode a certain dramatic weight which would have been sadly lacking, I suspect, if a personal element had not been added into the mix with one of the regular characters.

So, yeah, some of the props and effects did look like they were conjured up from leftover packaging left over from Marks And Spencer but when you have a dramatic tension created by the characters like this... well... appreciation of the quality of the special effects goes out the window, to be honest.

It was also nice, if just a little corny, to have The Doctor give one of those little speeches to the various supporting characters before leaving in the TARDIS which was another of those dialogues towards living in hope. It kind of reminded me of Hartnell’s Doctor leaving Susan Foreman in The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed here) speech a little bit. I don’t know if that was the vibe the writer was going for with this but that was the way it came across to me, at any rate.

So, yeah, yet another short review on this one (my apologies) as I don’t really have that much else to say about The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos... but this time because I don’t have any really negative take aways from this specific episode, I'm happy to say. It was nicely paced, brilliantly acted by all who sailed in her and not badly written, either. Some fairly nice music too which I believe is being released on CD by Silva Screen in the new year so... you know... looking forward to that (although, note to Silva Screen... can we please have Murray Gold’s music from Series 10 before you release that one please?). And, you know, there was honestly not a dull moment in this one (which is good because there have been plenty of dull moments in some of the previous episodes this year.

Quietly looking forward to the New Year’s Day special now which, if the teaser is anything to go by, features the most terrifying, evil creature in the universe dormant and buried in the Earth for gazillions of years. If it’s not the Daleks then I may get a little annoyed but we shall see. Expect the review of that one to go up in early January.... in the meantime lots of reviews and the annual Christmas cryptic movie quiz to go up here so, hopefully you’ll give this blog another read before then. All the best.

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away

Norway Out

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away
Airdate: 2nd December 2018
BBC 1

Well this... was better than last week’s show at any rate.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this week’s episode, It Takes You Away, was pretty good, classic Doctor Who storytelling in some ways. Admittedly it looked a little cheap at some points and, excuse me but those flesh eating moths might just as well have been imported from the B-movie Brides Of Blood (review coming very soon) in that they looked completely ludicrous, unthreatening and, basically, couldn’t have looked much worse if you could have seen little threads of cotton holding them up.

So this week’s show had The Doctor, Graham, Yas and Ryan pitching up in a forest region in Norway of 2018. They find an almost deserted cottage with a blind girl barricaded in it, who has lost her father to... ‘a thing’. So it’s up to our regular crew... played as marvellously as ever by Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole... to get a shift on and find out what has taken the girl’s father and why. Of course, since this is one of the better Doctor Who stories this season, at least in terms of plotting, there’s also a little twist involving a copycat world through a portal between a kind of airlock/bubble filled with deadly moths and an alien whose soul purpose, it seems to me, is to fill in bits of the plot to let The Doctor, and the audience, know just what’s going on. Maybe he came from the legendary planet of Exposition.

In terms of pacing it has to be said that, while the episode was interesting in terms of dialogue, it felt a little light on action but it more than made up for it in terms of giving us a kind of enchanted... or maybe I should say disenchanted... frog creature and also yet another appearance from Graham’s dead wife. Yeah, I knew they hadn’t finished yanking on that string just yet and I suspect we’ve not seen the last of her in the shows to come.

So... performances were all good and this included a stand up series of moments of Graham having to come to terms with the fact that his dead wife is not real and having to choose to reject her to keep himself... and everyone else as it happens... safe. Bradley Walsh shows just why he’s the right choice for a show like this here although, honestly, I’d really like to see an episode where it’s just him and The Doctor talking about the things which went down in that first story. It would also make sense for The Doctor to address this elephant in the room much more than she did here... although what she did in this one certainly made for a good start.

There were some nice lighting effects in the protective bubble which manifested as a cave/buffer between the worlds but ultimately, yeah... it just looked like a cheap set so I wasn’t so impressed with the execution this week. However, the revelation of the beast which the blind girl’s daughter is trying to hide from was a nice little reveal I didn’t see coming and it wasn’t an over cooked moment either. A throwaway reveal can sometimes be a lot more powerful than something which is built up constantly throughout a show and I think this one was handled with just the right lack of gravitas, to be honest. That being said... there was absolutely no follow through logic to the reveal which kinda made it completely redundant and questionable, to tell the truth.

There was also a nice, classic moment when Yas came up with the idea of ‘reversing the polarity’, which obvsiously had it’s origins in Jon Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor before being carried through as almost an unofficial, conservatively used catch phrase over the years and The Doctor’s response to Yas 'talking her kind of language' was a special moment.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one and here I am again at the end of another very short Doctor Who review in a year of episodes which has pretty much been inspiring nothing but short reviews. So I’m sorry for not having much else to talk about here but... there’s not a heck of a lot of substance to these latest shows, I guess. I think the problem is possibly we have a very good incarnation of The Doctor, right off the bat, with stories and ideas which aren’t really up to the strength of her personality. I think it might have been a bit of a mistake to not use any of the character's old foes in this series as some of those would have brought some considerably weighty baggage with them which may just up the stakes when the story needs a lift. I’m hoping next year’s series doesn’t take the same path as the current one. So, yeah, short review for, frankly, a very short series. Next week’s show is already the last episode and I feel like things have been deliberately truncated even more so than the previous ten years of shorter seasons. Let’s hope that, next week, they really go out with a bang.

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders

Doctor Which?

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders
Airdate: 25th November 2018
BBC 1

Aaah... well... that one was what it was, I guess.

For me this episode was a bit of a dud again, alas but, to be fair, I’ve never really liked the idea of witchfinders and the persecution of innocents to push through personal agendas. That period of history always rubs me the wrong way and so, to be fair to this episode, this was never really going to be one of my favourites.

That being said, yeah... there was loads of good stuff here and so I’ll flag up some of this and try and suppress my own prejudices on this one.

So a nice thing about this was we had a great Hollywood actor in this episode, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always had a soft spot for Alan Cumming since I saw him as Boris in Goldeneye (reviewed here) back in 1995. I was also impressed with him as Nightcrawler in the second of the X-Men films (before the franchise lost it and ate its own continuity on a film by film basis) and, if you appreciate this actor, then you owe it to yourself to see his absolutely brilliant villain in the astonishing but, alas, under appreciated modern masterpiece Josie And The Pussycats. So I don’t know how they got this guy for Doctor Who but here he is and he’s playing King James.

And it was absolutely brilliant to see the four series regulars... Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole more than holding their own against him in terms of commanding the screen. Not that it’s a competition, of course but... sometimes strong personalities can inadvertently dim the fire of their fellow actors in a scene but, I’m glad to say this wasn’t the case here.

And we had a plot with the background of the Pendle Witches in Lancashire, although it gave us an addition to actual events, I suspect, rather than interpenetrate with the recorded history of those times as they occurred. I can only assume that’s the case because... well, there were no mud filled alien prison cell trees in the records as far as I know but, as I made clear, I’m not likely to be an expert on this period or subject matter.

That being said, though... everything just seemed a bit flat on this one, to me. We had The Doctor highlighting the prevailing attitudes of men and how difficult it is to be a woman in that time period and, frankly, things probably haven’t changed all that much since those days. I just get tired of hearing about that myself and it seemed such an obvious point that pushing it into the audience and highlighting it in this manner just seemed a bit... well... a bit like ‘old news’ I guess. Still, at least the message behind that sentiment is a worthy one for younger audiences to hear so I can’t see that as a hugely bad thing, personally. Just a little dull, in all honesty.

The music was lively in some scenes but I wondered if the composer was trying to be authentic to the time with all that fiddling (I have no idea but it kind of felt out of place to me here). I did get the feeling that the music was being deliberately written up-tempo to try and disguise the fact that, yes, this was a very slow moving episode. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Elmer Bernstein had the same problem with his score for The Magnificent Seven but that was much more suited to picking up the pace of that movie, it seems to me.

The special effects on the alien creatures were quite good in places... at least on the leading alien... but I did wonder if we needed all that CGI’d facial movement (I’m assuming that’s how it was done). Especially since the latest series has been further whittled down to only ten episodes. Personally, I think I’d prefer it if more stories were produced with slightly less than special effects rather than try and lend an air of credibility to some of the writer’s creations. Maybe I’m being a little cynical here but I suspect the effects have had a make over since the last season and this might be where some of that ‘possibly missing’ budget might have been rerouted to.

Okay, so this is once again a very short review for this week’s story but, honestly, this one didn’t inspire me. That being said, I hope people are now beginning to realise that Jodie Whittaker is doing a fantastic job here and I think she deserves a lot of credit for carrying the show in the way she is right now. I have absolutely no problem with her playing The Doctor at all... I just wish they’d get some better stories because there have been a few this season which felt like they didn’t have much of anything interesting to say and, to boot, weren’t all that entertaining. And this one, for me at least, was one of them.

Never mind, despite the protests of others in my near vicinity, I shall still be ready for another tale from the UK’s much loved TV hero next weekend. Let’s hope we get a really great one.