Doctor Who - Heaven Sent

A Gallifrey Your Thoughts

Doctor Who - Heaven Sent
UK Airdate: 28th November 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Yeah, there are some hefty spoilers here, I guess.

Ha. Okay, so judging from my Twitter timeline last night, this episode was fairly divisive in its reception and appreciation. It seemed, by the looks of it, to be a particularly ‘Marmite’ episode, with some people absolutely hating it, giving up on the show and calling for a return to the fun and excitement of former years while others in my timeline seem to be saying it was one of the best pieces of television broadcasting in recent memory.

Okay, all of that is all very nice but I’m afraid I didn’t get such a big hit from it either way, to be honest. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. It was an okayish episode and it wasn’t terrible... certainly not as bad as the last two at any rate. Also, I think I can understand what Steven Moffat, who is the series show runner and who wrote this one, is trying to do with this latest series in general and this episode in particular.

That is to say, the show seems to have become a little less relevant in recent years with the ratings going down slightly and with a lot of people jumping ship towards the end of Matt Smith’s era and into Capaldi’s. The show from two weeks ago, Sleep No More (reviewed here) for instance, had the lowest ‘appreciation index’ score for the programme in quite a number of years. So I’m guessing as a writer/producer you have to stir things up and what better way to do this than make Doctor Who a bit dark and scary again. Now I know Moffat has a very good memory of the history of the show and I would be really surprised if he and his co-conspirators weren’t trying for an episode here which hits exactly the same kind of tone of the old, and very controversial in its day, Tom Baker story The Deadly Assassin. That story got some complaints against it (not least from Mary Whitehouse) and helped seal the reputation of Doctor Who as being... well... too scary for kids. For the record here... there’s not much in fiction that’s too scary for kids, in all honesty. If you can’t be scared of something when you’re a young ‘un then when can you be? It’s the only way to toughen yourself up to life, I believe. Or, at least, one of the easiest... let those nightmares come and then conquer them forever.

So, yeah, I think this episode was a deliberate harkening back to hitting some of the beats of The Deadly Assassin... something which I was pretty sure he was doing on the opening of the first story this season, The Magician’s Apprentice (reviewed here). Interesting, also, that The Doctor lost the company of a companion just before The Deadly Assassin took place too so... yeah, I suspect there’s a lot of thought about how this season sits in terms of the history of the show. I may be wrong but... it’s my theory at the moment and, frankly, it doesn’t matter too much either way, as long as it gets people talking about the show again.

Heaven Sent is a bit of an experiment in terms of its content, for sure, with a very small cast. It’s essentially a one hander but, of course, we also have Jenna Coleman playing a manifestation of The Doctor’s mind as his recently deceased (maybe) companion Clara, and a monster figure and a young Gallifreyan boy. It’s very much a tour de force for Capaldi as an actor... but nothing we don’t already know he’s capable of, to be fair. We already know he’s a brilliant actor and he’s certainly a brilliant Doctor, whether the stories are any good or not. The trouble with this one, though, is that it’s so focussed on solving the ‘mystery’ at the heart of the story without any real distractions from the problem at hand, being as it’s essentially a one man show... no bickering with newcomers, no space battles or much running around in corridors (lots of shambling in corridors but, you know, the pace is down a notch) that the real problem with tackling a story like this reveals itself fairly easily. That is to say, once you’ve figured out how long The Doctor has been there and what the key to the story is... it’s all over and you’re just waiting for the central protagonist to catch up with you. Which, in this case, is maybe 15 minutes into the story tops? Once you’ve seen the skulls in the bottom of the ocean which all look exactly the same, you will have probably figured out that they were all The Doctor and, when you see the spare clothes drying by the lit fire, you can probably figure out who left them there for The Doctor... in fact, you see him do it.

So yeah, it’s an interesting idea and I’m very glad that Moffat tried it but, since we’ve known forever that Gallifrey was gong to return in this series, it’s not too hard to figure out what was going on (and if you cast your mind back to hte late 1970s, parts of The Deadly Assassin were set ‘in The Doctor’s mind’, so to speak, on Gallifrey).  The one thing it did take me a while to see was the gradual chipping down of The Doctor’s escape from his ‘confession disc’. The reason I didn’t quite see that coming until 5 - 10 minutes before it happened, and was still a bit iffy on the premise, is because we were told that all the rooms were resetting themselves to exactly what they were when The Doctor arrived (and keeps arriving) every day... so wouldn’t the wall reset itself too, don’t you think? Just a thought.

The episode does bring back another common element of the modern Doctor Who series though, which was originally perpetrated by Russel T. Davies in David Tennant’s last regular year on the show but which is something which Steven Moffat has run with for a while and, given the nature of the show over it’s 52 years, to date... I’m surprised it’s only in the last few years that this idea has been greatly touched upon. The element I’m talking about is... the long game. The times when we see The Doctor and he’s been in the same incarnation but there’s been a gap of hundreds or more years since we last saw him. Tennant’s incarnation went a bit loopy and ran off for years at one point after he lost Donna and Moffat’s been using that ingredient of ‘the character who takes the long way around’ quite a bit since. It’s almost become a bit of a signature for him on the show. Examples would include Amy Pond, the girl who waited decades for her second meeting with The Doctor in The Eleventh Hour (reviewed here) and even longer than that when she was trapped in that alternate timeline in The Girl Who Waited (reviewed here), Rory in The Big Bang (reviewed here and don’t get me started on that whole Pandorica thing again), River Song as a youngster in the opening scenes of Let’s Kill Hitler (reviewed here), Matt Smith prior to the events of The Snowmen (after losing Amy and Rory, reviewed here) and even Capaldi himself quite recently in Before The Flood (reviewed here). And more times than I can remember, I suspect. So yeah, once again we have The Doctor taking the long way around... this time by way of over a million days in which he dies at the end of each one... and they really padded that repeat montage out just way longer than was necessary for pretty much any audience comprehension, I believe, but who am I to argue.

And there you have it. We’re back on Gallifrey, wherever it was hidden, and I am really expecting to see Clara again at some point during the next episode. Also kinda hoping to see John Simm’s back as The Master so we can finally see him regenerate into Missy as we know him now but... I’m guessing that won’t be happening anytime soon. The other thing is... Moffat’s guilty of a little revisionism on the show here. The Doctor as ‘the hybrid’ is not such a big problem to me as it might be to some long term fans, to be sure, but the fact that this possibly contradicts the knowledge that The Master is The Doctor’s brother does rankle me a little. So we shall see how this is handled... presumably next week. Other than that though, not much to say other than I stand by my judgement that this wasn’t a great episode but neither was it a poor one. I think next week will really either be quite spectacular on it’s follow up or... possibly just go the way of most of the previous Smith and Capaldi season finales and be... well... a bit of a let down. No worries... time will tell. I’m really looking forward to catching up with River Song again in this year’s Christmas special so... not that fussed about the finale at the moment.

Doctor Who - The Zygon Inversion

Inverted Comas

Doctor Who - The Zygon Inversion
UK Airdate: 7th November 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Again, some minor spoilers.

Okay... this is going to be yet another of a series of much shorter reviews of Doctor Who this season, purely because I really don’t have much to say about this one and, certainly, not much bad to say at all. The Zygon Inversion continues where The Zygon Invasion (reviewed here) left off and, rather than doing what I thought it would do by giving us a weak link conclusion to last week’s set up that really wasn’t, in all honesty, the most interesting opening salvo, it surprised me by dumping a lot of the mindless action and exploring the ideas inherent in the basic storyline with a little more detail. This is something Doctor Who has been doing a lot this season and, I have to say, it continues being one of the more riveting series' of the last five years of the show because of it. I’m not saying it’s a great idea to dumb down on the action completely but they are doing less of it, it seems to me, and I think the writers are getting a pretty cool mix of elements so far.

So this week started up exactly where we left off as the writers and Jenna Coleman commenced an exploration of the link of the comatose body of Clara that the Zygon version of her had been using as a master template, so to speak. We are inside ‘comatose Clara’s’ head as she starts to influence the mind-link between her and her Zygon copy, trying to manipulate events from the inside of her mind. Clara’s always been written as a pretty strong character from the outset... starting off when she was the mystery character who kept dying before the revelation of just why that was... and once again we have her full-on in a pitch mental battle with The Doctor’s foes and, at the end of the day, cited by The Doctor as being the one who made him rethink his approach to the options of death and destruction in the first place, by direct reference to the 50th Anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor (reviewed here) once more. A story which, incidentally, was also the first return of the Zygons after their original appearance opposite Tom Baker in the 1970s.

So we have Clara and, presumably, a lot of dead UNIT soldiers, including at least one regular, who seem to have been just swept under the carpet a little since their certain death cliff hanger from the previous week. We also have a great lack of reveal of The Doctor as a Zygon... hooray, the script writers didn’t play that card after all while still managing to make good on the promise of last week’s stonking cliff hanger and, instead, plumping for an answer which is... well it’s maybe less of a Doctor Who solution but it’s a valid ‘adventure story’ kind of moment so, yeah, it kinda works and it’s a lot less deux ex machina than the scenario I just assumed they were going to use... so there’s that.

We also have Jemma Redgrave returning again as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, heading up UNIT and fooling absolutely nobody watching that she wasn’t a Zygon after all but, that’s okay, the punchline to her flash back moment where she shot her would-be Zygon murderer with the words “Five Rounds Rapid” was a fan pleasing moment since it’s what her fictional father, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart, famously said for the first time in the Jon Pertwee era story The Daemons (reviewed by me here). A round of applause to the team behind the show for that one... and for the William Hartnell painting moment which I thought I’d glimpsed the week before (now confirmed) and the references to The Doctor’s old companion Harry Sullivan from that original Tom Baker story of yesteryear, Terror Of The Zygons.

Okay so... all well and good. We have Osgood back now too, as what could either be a human and a Zygon or two Zygons. Something tells me we’ll find out the answer to that conundrum at some point over the next two years... and the show’s writers do keep teasing her as a more regular companion at every chance they get throughout the show so... watch this space. I was also glad she took a verbal swipe at The Doctor’s new ‘sonic sunglasses’, pointing out how ridiculous they are. Hopefully Moffat is just teasing us with the absence of our favourite timelord’s sonic device.

And to top it off we have some pretty cool moments of Murray Gold scoring in a kind of action/horror vein... coming up with some tension building motifs just when they are required. So, yeah... all in all a great episode, well written (better than the set up hook), well performed and with a nice, quite dark heart involving The Doctor in a talking solution. Admittedly, he was doing an impersonation of Hughie Green in Opportunity Knocks for a lot of that but it was all still pretty good. That being said, I don’t know what younger viewers of the show are going to make of Peter Capaldi doing an impersonation of a famous presenter who hasn’t really been seen on British screens since the late 1970s... and  I mean that most sincerely, I really do, viewers! Still, it brought back memories for us ‘oldies’ in the audience and this current series of the show certainly seems to be more adult oriented, it has to be said.

Perhaps that’s on of the reasons I’m happy to continue to report that this year’s episodes have made up a stonking good season so far. Only four episodes proper to go now but, of course, all that good work could change at a moment’s notice if a really bad episode comes to light. I have a suspicion that the next four episodes may be very tightly linked and I’m thinking something pretty big with some serious repercussions for the characters in the show may be just around the corner. Will it be in next week’s episode that the pennies finally start dropping? We shall see I guess. Let ‘em bring it on.

Doctor Who - The Zygon Invasion

Letting Zygons Be Zygons

Doctor Who - The Zygon Invasion
UK Airdate: 31st October 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Some light spoilers here.

Well alright then, this is probably the weakest in terms of ideas and intrigue in the current series of Doctor Who so far this season but, even so, I have to say that this was a pretty fun and highly entertaining romp.

Now, the problem with doing stories of this nature, involving the underused, possibly about to be overused, titular creatures, in only their third appearance since their debut opposite Tom  Baker in the 1970s... is that they’re probably underused for a reason. That reason being that you’re always going to get a version of a story which bares at least some resemblance to the science fiction classic, Jack Finney’s Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, in one form or another.

So, unfortunately, no matter how twisty and turny things get in these kinds of stories, you never really particularly care about what strange antics any of the usual friendly faces are getting up to becaue you know that any moment one of them could turn out to be a Zygon disguising itself as your ally. This makes for dull viewing in terms of getting hooked on the storyline because, frankly, the writers have always got a safety net to revert to if one of your favourite characters get killed... one such character in this instance, of course, being the character of Osgood.

Now, we already saw Osgood killed by Missy in the conclusion of last year’s series, Death In Heaven (reviewed by me here) and at the time I said there’s always the chance that the dead Osgood could be a Zygon. That, of course, is because of the absolutely massive plot thread left loose and dangling from the 50th anniversary special from a couple of years ago, The Day Of The Doctor (reviewed by me here), which also included a half heartedly unresolved Zygon story as a sub-plot and which also featured the very first appearance of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, as it happened, in a brief cameo of the future incarnation of the character. Producer Steven Moffatt has obviously decided to go back to the story and resolve one of the two dangling plot threads and, as it happens, I’m pretty sure the other thread from that special episode will also be revisited sometime this series too... although possibly not in this story. We even had a little recap of The Day Of The Doctor at the start of this episode to remind us how things had been left, to an extent.

All that being said, however, the more into this episode I got, the more I believed it was the human version of Osgood who got killed back in Death In Heaven... although I’m not really sure anymore and I’ve kinda stopped caring because the writers can now just play the ‘I’m a Zygon’ card whenever they want. And, I have to say, they do play it quite a lot in this episode.

Doesn’t matter though because there are some nice character moments in here and the episode moves along at quite a pace. There’s some great acting from all involved and the dialogue of the way the characters interact is... yeah, it’s quite impressive. There’s absolutely nothing to tax your brain in this one but the writers still manage to make it interesting, in spite of the tired old doubles plot... done so well in four movie versions of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers and, alas, a little less well but perfectly competently here. There are also some interesting musical moments from composer Murray Gold including an action orchestrated version of The Doctor’s A Good Man sub theme and a strangley poppy version of Clara’s theme which... I’m not sure about, to be honest.

We have a fast paced and, very much, a globe hopping episode here with the story cross-cutting between The Doctor (or possibly his double) in one location, Clara (certainly her double) in London and Kate Stewart, the Brigadier’s daughter, in a third location. And it’s all very exciting and dynamic enough to keep one distracted from the inadequacies of the plot. There’s some bad stuff too, of course...

Three big things for me that let the episode down as much as its reliance on the shape shifting abilities of the Zygons were the reappearance, once again, of The Doctor’s sonic sunglasses, yet another guitar playing scene with The Doctor plucking away at his instrument (not again, kill me now) and, unfortunately, a cliffhanger ending which really doesn’t have much sting or audience investment because... hey... how do we know that the character we’ve been following as The Doctor wasn’t a Zygon for the majority of the episode anyway. They’ve already said there are good Zygons and a splinter group, so how do we know the only people in danger at the end of the story we care about aren’t all just Zygons anyway. It’s an audacious try for a cliffhanger but... it really doesn’t work.

So that’s my review of this episode sorted, I think. The Zygon Invasion is the weakest of the new series so far but still head and shoulders above the majority of the post-Tennant era and it does have its moments. Alas, because I have important things afoot next weekend, I won’t be able to see the concluding part of this story until, quite probably, two days after it is broadcast... so I don’t know where this one is going yet but I suspect it won’t leave everything as cut and dried for the main characters as many might hope. I won’t know if I’m right about that until the Monday though so... yeah, I’ll catch up on the review as soon as I am able to after that. So there will be two more reviews this week and then a gap of a few days before the next post after those. So please, join me here, if you can, for my take on the concluding part of this story. Hopefuly there will be a little more to think about after the next one.

Doctor Who - Before The Flood

Flood Sacrifice

Doctor Who - Before The Flood
UK Airdate: 10th October 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers on this one.

Okay, so this second part to the Doctor Who story started last week (and reviewed here) is perhaps a bit weaker than the initial set up called for because, well, it does seem to telegraph itself quite a bit... almost deliberately so in the opening, pre-credits sequence. That being sad, although it really does feel like The Doctor and his companions for this story are just picking up the threads and solving things in an exercise on how to burn through all the problems and put things right in the allocated time they’ve got, the performances are all pretty strong and the dialogue of the characters is, once again, perfectly done.

The pre-credits sequence where The Doctor is addressing the audience directly, although we might actually be witnessing this from a ‘Claras-eye view’, so to speak, pretty much sets up in the minds of the audience a fairly standard temporal paradox which is actually very common to a lot of time travel stories... be they Doctor Who or something more ‘Hollywood’ such as the ridiculously error ridden Back To The Future Part 2... which suffers from a similar writer's malaise in the logic of its own structure. This basically seems put in here with the assumption that the audience for the show are somehow lacking in either the desire or common sense intelligence to think about certain aspects of the story later and think around the parameters of this kind of paradoxical conundrum in the first place. Frankly, and as entertaining as this opening was, I really don’t like being talked down to in this manner and I felt the explanation, which The Doctor demonstrates by use of the deliberate creation of Beethoven based on the works of his which can’t have existed without Beethoven being there in the first place, was more than a little condescending in the attitude that we probably don’t spend any time thinking of these things once the show is over, let alone pondering this kind of stuff often enough as kids growing up.

So yeah, since we’re on limited time and you know the opening isn’t going to be something which couldn’t be cut, one wonders if the BBC are maybe dumbing things down a bit because they have no confidence in their script to make you think a little, just by the events portrayed once the story has played out. Which is a shame because it’s really not a bad script and it’s still a little better than the majority of the episodes over the last few years in that it’s a solid, reliable story with some nice character moments.

Unfortunately, as I intimated before, that story was pretty much finished last week and this really is just picking up the pieces in terms of the catching up of events and letting the kinds of sequences you are expecting to happen play out so the story can resolve itself. And, of course, the fact that with last weeks episode all hanging on the mystery of “who’s in the box?”... well I was hoping the writer would surprise me this week but, no, they might as well have just hung out a sign on the side of the box last week saying “The Doctor’s in here... so don’t even worry about it”. Now, to be fair, the writing in the second part pretty much shied away from re-emphasising the mystery of the box for the majority of the episode but... yeah, that’s only because they presumably wanted to have their big “The Doctor pops out of the box” moment as some kind of surprise to somebody... some strange and perhaps mythical audience for the current show which doesn’t actually exist in real life to be genuinely astonished by these things. All in all though... okay, yeah, it’s not good enough. This episode is kind of plummeting in my respect for it as I’m writing about it, to be honest.

So let’s get back to some of the good stuff...

Well, the BBC people have said that this season is going to be darker and... yeah, it is. The death of innocent people, casualties of war caught in the crossfire, has never been a thing the programme has swerved away from in the entire history of its show but there's usually some acclimatising to do, especially in the current incarnation of the series, where the deaths are mourned or given a sense of purpose. This series isn’t doing that and... that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Also, the look of it seems a lot darker too. Physically I mean. There’s a certain kind of dread gloom in most of the sets and locations used here and it’s very much the kind of grim setting a horror movie might make use of. So it feels good for the show to be playing with the possibilities that it’s not forgotten how to be a horror story. Not that this episode is particularly scary but at least it feels a bit grim. So that’s kind of nice.

Unfortunately, in the effort to scare you, it also did fall into the cliché trap at one point and, again, it’s something you can see telegraphed from the week before. Now I'm all for having a deaf character who signs and can read lips in Doctor Who. Especially since she was useful as an element to push the plot along rather than just be a token kind of role in the previous episode. However, last week I kept thinking to myself that... yeah... we’re going to have a scene where that character is put in harms way and they will try and ring the suspense out of a scenario where her life is under threat exactly because she can’t hear what’s going on. But, before that, they’ve got to set up a situation where her constant companion, her translator, isn’t there to help her. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they do in this next episode and it seems almost embarrassing but... I can understand why the temptation would be there to do that in this, so I really can’t stand in judgement of it too much.

And whichever way you look at it... they are pulling all this off with a certain amount of style and good taste. It’s beautifully shot and nicely cut together with the added bonus of Murray Gold’s fantastic scoring... including an almost heroic action version of the current Doctor’s 'a good man' sub-theme and a beautifully developed, almost hidden reworking of Clara’s theme at one point where Jenna Coleman’s character has a nice scene.  All in all it’s my least favourite of the season so far but... that’s still head and shoulders above a lot of the post-Tennant episodes of the series so I’m happy with the direction this season is heading in (possibly straight to a character called the Minister Of War in the last two episodes, if my guess is correct) and I am just hoping this good spell on the show continues for a bit. Now all they have to do to keep me really happy is lose those damn shades and bring the sonic screwdriver back. That really needs to happen soon.

Doctor Who - Under The Lake

Spirit Level

Doctor Who - Under The Lake
UK Airdate: 3rd October 2015
BBC 1

So here we are on episode three of the latest series of Doctor Who and, I have to say I’m quite surprised by this but, once again, it was a pretty good episode. Which means that, as far as I’m concerned, this current series has so far given us three cool episodes in a row... not something I could say about any of the other post-David Tennant series' to date. I really thought, after the strong opening story, we were going to get let down but, no, this is another quite satisfying episode.

Now, one of the reasons for that is because, to my mind, the episode takes us right back to being ‘old school’ Doctor Who. I mean, you have classic elements returning such as an underwater base, alien technology presenting itself as a mystery, ghosts and a medium sized team of base personnel who are there to perform three basic functions... 1) someone to explain things to, so the watching audience will understand what's going on, b) fodder for the monster of the week so we have a few people who can get killed and upscale the dramatic stakes and c) a few people who can assist The Doctor and Clara in a grander problem solving scheme in which they all get to run around a bit and add energy to the episode. Now, granted, a lot of these elements have always existed in the series in whatever incarnation it’s manifested over the years but, for some reason, the way this one’s written makes it feel particularly like a classic episode with a strong mystery/dilemma for The Doctor to find a solution to so... yeah, this is a real good one.

Now, there’s something else that having a separate group of people to explain the mechanics of the plot does to strengthen an episode and it certainly does it here. Which is this. Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald character gets to really shine for her own merits and also gets to explain The Doctor to the people on the base... so not just leaving all the exposition to The Doctor or, indeed, bearing the brunt of it. The writing is all really good here, not to mention the performances of Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and the rest of the cast, which are all as great as you would expect from a BBC production. There’s some brilliant comedy on hand with a particularly nice scene where Clara has a bunch of handwritten cards to give to The Doctor when he needs to say something appropriate sounding to other people. This made me chuckle and this kind of character stuff was the highlight of the episode for me, it has to be said. Quite a lot of the character stuff has been good over the last few years but, unfortunately, it more often just becomes the central purpose of the story rather than help drive the story and that’s where the show has, in my opinion, been getting it a bit wrong over the Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi eras up until now... but when it’s used to support the underlying story arc perfectly, as it is here, then the show really shines.

A case in point is that, to the best of my knowledge, we have the first character in the series to rely on sign language to communicate... however, this is also cleverly worked into the plot as she uses her ability to read lips to help solve an important piece of the puzzle for The Doctor... and it's stuff like this that have made this show so great over the years.

The mystery itself is not exactly a new one in terms of the type of story it is but, that being said, it doesn’t really matter because it still manages to intrigue and, once we have all the elements in place, you might see a lot of what’s going to happen coming way before it happens, like the cliffhanger ending of this episode, for instance, which is telegraphed way too early. However, because the writing and performances, set design and editing is all pretty good here, you really don’t mind that and next week’s episode promises to give us the final solution to the mystery of who is in the suspended animation chamber... of which there are a few obvious possibilities and the least interesting of them would be if the TARDIS has its chameleon circuit fixed sometime in the past. I suspect the punchline to the chamber will be somewhat simpler though and... well, I just hope the writer’s clever enough to not give us the obvious occupant in the second half.

The episode did have one thing I hated though, it has to be said, and thats the continued concept of The Doctor’s ‘wearable tech’ in the form of sonic sunglasses again. Nope. Sorry. Don’t like it. They’ve got to go. Need the screwdriver back please. Don’t get rid of the few fixed icons you can lean on for audience recognition around the world... if you please.

Under The Lake may be obvious in the direction its heading but it is, in fact, pretty strong and it does what all good science fiction does, from classic Doctor Who to Star Trek... set out a problem to solve and then come up with concepts and ideas to try and reach a workable solution in a limited time scale before everybody dies. Always a good, solid approach to take and this is nothing but a good, solid episode so, yeah, there you go.

A very short review from me this week but, honestly, when you get a damn near perfect episode like this it becomes less interesting to write about because there’s nothing much to criticise. All you can do is sing its praises and point out how brilliant the cast and crew and team behind the cameras have been to pull off such an entertaining episode. I also wonder if the reason this season is feeling more like classic old school Doctor Who is because the stories in this season are mostly multi-part like the old 1960s to 1990s stories used to be. The multiple episodes in themselves not being important other than the fact that it gives the writers more time to develop the story and bring all the plot elements in gradually... rather than have to rush them all out for a single shot episode. At least that’s my hope that it’s the reason because I really don’t want to see anymore bad episodes of the series.

So, looking forward to next weeks show, which I won’t actually get to see until the Sunday evening (alas) and, honestly, even if the writer does bring us the obvious solution to the dilemma at the heart (or possibly hearts) of the story... it really doesn’t matter, as longs as everyone manages to bring the kind of flair to the way the process of its unfolding is presented that they did here. Hopefully it’s going to be another good ‘un.

Doctor Who: Flatline

2D, Or Not 2D?

Doctor Who: Flatline
UK Airdate: 18th October 2014
BBC 1

Now this was an interesting episode for Doctor Who although, for me, I have to say it was also a little dull.

With The Doctor trapped in a shrunken TARDIS, it’s up to Clara to save the day in modern day Bristol as she investigates a series of strange disappearances, carrying the TARDIS around in her hand bag and talking to The Doctor through an ear piece with which he’s also hacked her optic nerve, so he can see what’s going on... nice idea that.

Another nice idea is that the “monsters of the week” dissect their victims and leave 2D versions of bits of them around as tell tale scene of the crime stuff. For example, when a police woman is sucked into oblivion through the carpet, a flattened version of her nervous system is placed on the wall. All good stuff and I’ve always had a strange fascination overtake me whenever I look at old illustrations of the human nervous system so... this was all good stuff. And, indeed, so was the old but rarely used idea of beings that exist in only 2 dimensions. Yeah, okay, some of us may find it a little clichéd but it’s not been done that often in Doctor Who and it’s never really been made “a thing” of before, so brownie points to the writer for that.

We also had the wonderful Jenna Louise Coleman taking over as a stand in for The Doctor while the always excellent Peter Capaldi could only give advice from his tiny environment. Although, to be fair, the scale issue had some problems in some of the shots, which seemed to be having some continuity issues and, frankly, issues with what could and couldn’t fit through the doors at various times, to a certain extent, I thought.

So, anyway, Clara takes over and saves the day in the end, kind of, when she does something jolly clever, with the help of a graffiti artist and the almost blind hindrance of one of the guys who was also on the rooftop at the start of Tim Burton’s Batman. So that was all very nice and it was interesting hearing the distinction made by Capaldi’s more grown up incarnation of The Doctor between doing something good and doing something very well... implying that he’s becoming more conscious these days of all the harm he sometimes has to do in the hard choices he makes when vanquishing his foes... so all that was very interesting and clever and I think I should probably have appreciated it more.

One of the things which made me appreciate it less was the execution of some of the special effects. I don't mind stop motion animation at all... I think it’s quaint and charming and it certainly has it’s place, even in todays CGI world... but the use of it here (or something which looked very much like it, no matter how the effects were done), just looked cheap and child like. As did the 3D renditions of the 2D monsters in their final form, to be honest. It just looked a bit rubbish. Not as rubbish as the miniature train speeding through the tunnel model used in a couple of shots, to be sure, but when you combine all these different things the effect seemed to me to be the rare occasion when the lack of good visual effects actually does impact on the telling of the story... not something I’d thought I’d ever hear myself say, to be honest. I usually don’t care about such irrelevant issues as the special effects.

However, to counter that, lots of nice things too... such as the idea that some of the victims have bee placed, backs towards us, in the graffiti in a tunnel... that was cool. And the groovy bit where The Doctor uses his hand to move the TARDIS, almost, out of peril and resembling a snail... highly entertaining stuff. We also have a very sinister and threatening epilogue with the frequently appearing Missy, this week, which reveals that Clara is being used for some kind of sinister plot. That’s worrying... I wonder if Clara will be replaced by “Missy in Clara’s incarnation clothing” at some point. That would be kinda horrible and outrageously cool all at the same time.

All in all this is not my favourite episode of the season although, it has to be said, it was better than the majority of them. Still wondering what’s happened to the music in this series. Seems to be very underpowering, to say the least, although a James Bond like bass line was definitely prominent in a certain scene this episode. It’s all, certainly, still enough to keep me watching the show and I am definitely intrigued as to where this will all be going by Christmas, for sure. So... a short review but not much more to say on this one, to be honest. A solid script, poorly handled in places but not without a lot of charm. Looking forward to next week’s one now.

Doctor Who: Mummy On The Orient Express

Orient Excess

Doctor Who: Mummy On The Orient Express
UK Airdate: 11th October 2014
BBC 1

Oh yes. Much better.

This episode is probably the best one I’ve had the pleasure to watch this season which, given my fairly negative comments on the majority of the current series so far, might not seem like much of a comment but all I can say to that is... when Doctor Who is good, it’s really good... and this was great Doctor Who.

Mummy On The Orient Express jump starts with the Doctor and Clara arriving on a perfect... almost perfect... replica of the Orient Express running through space. It’s their kinda farewell trip after Clare’s revelation of leaving The Doctor last week and I still find it hard that, for someone who has been around for every incarnation of The Doctor (Yeah, remember that stuff? It was only last season.) that she is still in the least surprised by any twist of his character that comes to light. However, this all seems to be frequently forgotten and the dialogue here is based on this being their last hoorah and it works really well as an extended audience tease while giving the interplay between the characters a slightly different tone to riff around.

And then the screaming starts. Well, it started in the pre-credits actually but it starts up again soon enough with a really ingenious nod to the artistry of the old school monster, B-movie style gimmick. There’s a mummy loose on the train at various intervals who can only be seen by his victims before it kills them... and only for exactly 66 seconds. Now here’s the thing... not only is the 66 seconds thing a neat little device to create suspense in the audience but it allows the makers of this episode the chance to indulge in a bit of old William Castle style chicanery. You know those old gimmicks in movies where the film would stop and you’d have “one minute to guess the identity of the werewolf” or “30 seconds to guess the name of the killer” etc... well they’ve done a similar bit of jiggery pokery here by putting up a stop watch countdown every time the mummy appears... so you know when it starts ticking down The Doctor only has that long to beat it each time. It works really well too... lending itself to the style and format of this particular Doctor Who adventure and fitting the spirit of it like a well worn glove.

Now, in among all my negative comments I’ve made over the last few weeks about the general lack of good story writing (as opposed to ideas) there have been a fair few positive comments too, focussing on the fact that I think Peter Capaldi is brilliant as The Doctor, Jenna Coleman’s Clara is as cool n’ groovy as she ever was and, of course, that the dialogue and chemistry between them has been excellent. All that, and it kinda goes without saying, also applies to this weeks episode as well but, here you also have a story that works too... simplistic in some ways but with a tough enough edge that The Doctor has to work stuff out and we get to see him doing it... less quicker than he’d like.

Luckily he has a new friend in the form of an engineer, played by Frank Skinner (no, not the famous soundtrack composer... some kind of modern comedian, apparently) and the scriptwriters have gifted him with enough Shakespearean “lowest character is actually the smartest one in the room” kind of intelligence that he’s able to assist The Doctor very well for most of the episode... which is fine because Clara is trapped in another compartment of the train for the majority of it. Not that she doesn’t do some very capable “assisting” of her own, it has to be said.

All this means that we have a story which is well put together, has fantastic dialogue and also has a genuine problem solving focus as we get to watch The Doctor use each new fact as it is uncovered to finally work things out so that when he finally fixes it so that he’s the one who can see the mummy... he knows just what to do. And, frankly, the little detail which vanquishes the “monster of the week” in this one is a really neat little touch, I have to say. Didn’t quite see it coming but am blaming the unusual grooviness of the episode as a distraction to my own mental cognisance on this occasion. And it was brilliant. If they can keep up the writing on this level for the rest of the season then we’re in for a good second half. I don’t believe that for a minute given the up and downess of the show lately but, hey, what the heck. This episode has certainly reminded me that the ups are often worth putting up with a number of downs for. The only real thing I’m missing now from the show is a strong sub-theme for the Capaldi era from Murray Gold. Tennant and Smith both had a very strong, slightly different, action melody... Capaldi doesn’t really seem to have one yet and that’s something the show is sorely missing at this point I think.

So, anyway... looking forward to the next episode even more now. Mummy On The Orient Express... brilliant Doctor, brilliant Clara, brilliant episode. Definitely, as I said at the start, the best of the Capaldi episodes so far and a real fan pleaser for lovers of the fourth Doctor too, I suspect, who Capaldi seems to be channeling a little in this one.