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 - Legend Of The Sea Devils

Pirate Ship Devils

Doctor Who -
Legend Of The Sea Devils
Airdate: 17th April 2022
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers looping back into spoilers.

Okay, so, I may have got prematurely excited for a new spurt of good writing on Doctor Who after the brilliant New Years special Eve Of The Daleks (reviewed by me here) as, yeah, this episode wasn’t that great in many ways. But, it has to be said, the return of Sea Devils was not as badly handled as it was in their second appearance against the Fifth Doctor in Warriors Of The Deep (reviewed by me here). Although, yeah, not nearly as iconic an appearance as their first dance with the Third Doctor in the original story The Sea Devils (reviewed here), it might also be noted.

Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils gives us the returning triumvirate of Jodie Whitaker as The 13th Doctor (depending on how you count them, with the added complication of The War Doctor and various other manifestations), Mandip Gill as Yas and John Bishop as Dan. And it’s set in a couple of time zones in a sea faring adventure with a real, historical pirate queen (kind of) and various anachronistic shipboard instruments or overlooked details such as, you know, the fact that a cannon has a bit of recoil when fired.

It also suffers a little in the writing, I thought. The story was the usual, ‘think of a jam and then spout scientifiction gobbledy gook to enable a gadget to save the world’ kind of thing... which is getting a bit tired. And some of the dialogue was bad too. The stuff with Yas and The Doctor trying to come to terms with their recent, much rushed burgeoning romance was okay (but, you know, could have done with a longer playing out of that rather than start it off two episodes before Jodie leaves the show) and those were definitely the best moments in it. However, a load of the rest of the dialogue sounded like characters were trying too hard to say something big, surprising or funny to transition into the next scene with and, yeah, it kinda ended up sounding a little stilted and child-like in its performance (much like the dialogue in Pierce Brosnan’s last James Bond movie Die Another Day). It was a bit much and left me kind of cold, which is a shame.

However, I’m going to temper all that with... the show looked pretty good. Especially when it came to getting the Sea Devils right.  I mean, they’ve streamlined them a bit and they were nowhere near as good at creating a sinister presence in the episode but, they were a darn site better than their truly, comically bad re-designs from the Peter Davison era, at an rate. Yeah, I missed the Pertwee era’s string vests but, at least the costumers added a kind of echo to that in the texture of their new clothing for this one.

The mucic was okay too although, since Silva Screen now seem to have totally stopped releasing proper CDs of the scores, I’ve kind of lost all interest in that aspect of the show. I think they’re alienating a certain section of their audience by cutting off the supply chain there.

Overall, like I said, Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils wasn’t terrible but it could have been a lot better. I didn’t mind it but, unlike the New Years Eve story, it will be forgotten quickly, I suspect. So, we have one more Jodie episode to come this autumn (although I’d be surprised if she didn’t return for a guest spot in the November 2023 episode). And it looks like it’s pitting her against... the Daleks, the Cybermen and The Master again so... yeah, not the most inspiring of challenges, I suspect. 

However, there is one aspect of the Coming Soon trailer at the end of that episode which certainly, already, has fans talking... and that’s a bit of T & A action which everyone seems excited about. By that I mean, the return of Janet Fielding’s Tegan (Fourth & Fifth Doctor companion) and Sophie Aldred’s Ace (companion to the Seventh Doctor). It will be nice to see them in action again, for sure but, I think it kinda says something that we’ve just had an episode featuring the return of the Sea Devils and all people are talking about is the trailer for the next show. Perhaps the reveal on the casting decision was a bit too soon (although, hopefully, there will be some other surprises in store for us in the episode itself). My only other complaint, seeing that they’ve stripped it down again from 13 episodes to two or three specials (again, depending on how you count them) is that the episode was only 50 mins long, like a regular episode. Since when did ‘specials’ stop being feature length?

Anyway, it was entertaining enough and, as always, it’s nice to see Jodie as The Doctor and still, I insist, doing very well in the role despite the scripts she’s working with. So I do hope she returns for the sixty year anniversary episode next year. Also hoping all in our house are safe and well enough to watch that one when it comes on.... but that’s another story.

Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks

Exterminating Eve

Doctor Who
Eve Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st January 2022
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers looping back into spoilers.

Now this is more like it. Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks is the best Doctor Who New Years Special ever... with one or two caveats. And also, I mean, yeah there have only been three New Years specials to date, this one being the third but, even so, this was a hugely entertaining one and I loved it. It’s also the first time in a while that Doctor Who has properly aired on a Saturday evening again (which is exactly where it belongs).

Okay, so we have, once again and for the record... Jodie Whitaker, Mandip Gill and John Bishop returning as The Doctor, Yas and Dan. The plot is simple... The Doctor performs a reset on the TARDIS and, while they wander around in a storage facility in Manchester, our heroes get sucked into a time loop, which is presumably caused by the TARDIS, as they try to stop customer Nick (played by Adjani Salmon) and Sarah (played by some woman I’d never heard of called Aisling Bea who, honestly, knocked this out the park and should be in everything from now on) from being killed by rogue Daleks. Trouble is, when they and also The Doctor and her companions get killed each time, it resets the time loop but leaves their memories of their last encounter intact... and they have a slowly diminishing amount of time to try and formulate a plan before the time loop closes at midnight on New Years Eve 2021, defeat the Daleks and remain outside the area of said time loop.

Now, I will be the first to admit many faults with this episode...

Yes, it’s such an old plot it’s unreal that anyone would try and package this idea up yet again. I mean, I don’t remember if they’ve ever bothered doing this one in Doctor Who before but the old ‘attempt to survive each successive time loop’ idea has been done in many sci-fi shows over the years.

Additionally, a lot of it didn’t make sense... such as why the characters assumed the time-loop would be closing at midnight or why their interaction with Sarah’s mum via phone wasn’t affecting the rest of the world and dragging it into a time loop also. And I could probably go on with a whole laundry list of things which shoot holes through this particular plot device.

However, the execution of this... well, asides from the science and technical stuff... was absolutely brilliant. Sarah and Nick were drawn as great characters who managed to shift tone and get together romantically by the end of their time loop experience and the actors had some great lines to deliver. Ditto for The Doctor and her companions. Dan has finally made clear to the characters (if not the audience... I was slowly beginning to suspect, I think) that there’s a probable lesbian romantic entanglement to come between The Doctor and Yas. Which could be interesting but, you know, probably not in any way that the show could get away with and stay a family show (back to the old Dalek porn if you want to go that route, I’m afraid).

And yeah, I was suitably impressed with the whole shenanigans. Also the music was great again too. Segun Akinola provides a score which, amazingly, doesn’t suffer from not including the leitmotif set up for the Daleks by Murray Gold and the driven, bass rhythms used here work really well to help establish them as something of a threat again. That being said, they seem fine at point blank range with their new ‘gatling gun’ style, revolving extermination attachments but... well... just a few metres off with a moving target and, once more, their skills at shooting resemble the stormtroopers in the Star Wars franchise. As in... they can’t hit a thing.

There were some nice references to old Doctor Who history too. For instance, Nick does the old ‘duck down between two shooting Daleks’ trick to take two of them out, which harks back to the William Hartnell and Peter Cushing days if memory serves. And also, at one point in the episode, Sarah exclaims “Oh my giddy Aunt!”... which was, of course, one of Patrick Troughton’s catchphrases as The Doctor at the tail end of the 1960s. That being said, no matter how many times the Daleks have come to Earth now and tried to invade it... how in heck do people still not remember them? It’s a little less than credible that, after everything they’ve put the human race through time and time again, that nobody seems to remember them (unless they work in UNIT, maybe).

And, yeah, that’s that... things are set up for what I think, if I got this right, are Jodie Whittaker’s last three special episodes over the year in the title role. I’m assuming that Yas will also either die or carry on assuming The Doctor has died by the end of Jodie’s last show. I guess we’ll find out by the end of the year. One thing we do have to look forward to though, via the post credits trailer for the next special, is the return of the old Jon Pertwee monster from the 70s (reviewed here and with a brief but memorably bad return in Peter Davison’s reign in the 1980s, reviewed here), the Sea Devils. They always frightened me as a kid and, hopefully, they can be frightening enough again for me to take away the memory of their second appearance in the show. So hopefully... third time’s a charm.

Either way, Doctor Who - Eve Of The Daleks... old plot, technically questionable but, hey, great acting, great music, entertaining presentation... a generally brilliant episode, for sure. This one has, temporarily, restored my faith in the good Doctor, I have to say.

Doctor Who Flux - The Vanquishers

Split Infinity

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter Six - The Vanquishers
Airdate: 5th December 2021
BBC 1

Warning: More spoilers.

Wow... saved the universe again then.

The final part of Doctor Who Flux, The Vanquishers was, well, it was a bit anti-climactic really. Once again Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor, companioned with her regular ‘besties’ Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) defend the Universe from the evil swarm. Teamed up with Professor Jericho, Bel, Vinder, The Dog Man, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Diane from previous episodes. And absolutely nothing is revealed about what the heck any of it is really about by the conclusion of the show.

The novelty aspect this week is The Doctor somehow fragmented and split into three splinters of herself to work with her companions in various time zones simultaneously to defeat the big bad guys The Swarm... and all the other monsters such as Sontarans, Cybermen and Daleks. As usual, the scriptwriters attempt to blind the audience with scientific jargon rather than explain the dynamics of both this transformation and the ultimate defeat of the Flux... and The Swarm. Well, okay, I kind of understood the clichéd old matter VS anti-matter tactic but, yeah, it seemed such a basic idea that one wonders why pretty much anyone in the rest of the universe hadn’t thought of it first.

So... acting was all very good and the old “contact” exclamation to establish a mental link, this time with two Doctors of the same incarnation, was a nice little Easter egg for long term fans who remember stories like The Three Doctors I guess (review coming to this blog in 2022, fingers crossed). They even threw in a character death to try to keep up the audience interest but, nah, it was an okayish episode I guess but that tactic didn’t really do much for me and it was telegraphed so early... and with a character who’s only been in the two previous episodes... that it felt a bit flat, to be honest.

The real kicker on this is the fact that, asides from The Doctor being aggressively warned by the essence of time manifesting as herself towards the end... we get no clue as to what this has all been about in terms of her past and her links to division. Indeed, the dog man even, it turns out, was once her loyal friend in the days she has no memory of... but if he ever talks about it, an implant put in his blood by The Division will let out a poison and he’d be dead within three seconds, so he can’t tell her anything. Vinder and Bel’s baby was an equal wash out... it’s possibly nobody special at all, unless they decide to bring these two characters back in one of the three specials next year.

So all we have left is a tearful Doctor, who is once again travelling the universe, this time with Yaz and Dan as her constant companions... and the Timelord pocket watch which holds all the memories which she’s lost. But, rather than open it and get full disclosure of her past lives, she instead buries it in the heart of the TARDIS with instructions for her to never be allowed to get a hold of it.

It’s interesting because the special effects were all fine (as much as they could be in a show which has a long standing history of having special effects which aren’t always that fine) and the episode was really going for a kind of epic look to it. However, for all the whiz bang glitz and light shows, it felt perhaps the least epic of any of the installments which made up this six part mini series and, certainly, not really something worthy of what some of the more interesting episodes this year have been teasingly building too. At least, that’s what I thought.

And so once again I am left with nothing much more to say about this one. Sorry it’s such a short review, again... but Doctor Who Flux - The Vanquishers really didn’t do much for me and, since the whole serial was so wedded to the underlying story arc, it kinda takes the other episodes down in flames with it too. I mean, it’s kinda okay but, yeah, maybe I’m expecting more from Doctor Who these days. I think we could really do with a return to form, to be honest. Not exactly my favourite episode or season and, well, I still think the writing needs to be less lazy on the science and, just a bit better than this. I love Jodie as The Doctor but, once again, I wouldn’t recommend this year’s series as being in any way special. But, you know, it’s just in a slump. That can change... I’ll be watching on New Year’s Day, for sure.

Doctor Who Flux - Survivors Of The Flux

Eon Flux

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter Five -
Survivors Of The Flux
Airdate: 28th November 2021
BBC 1

Warning: More spoilers.

Okay, so that was a fairly good episode as it happens and I would probably rate it a lot higher if it hadn’t proceeded from one huge... I’m going to call it a mistake or perhaps, more of an ‘error in judgement’ when some important information was perhaps cut for time?

So, yeah, this is going to be a short review but, for the most part, Doctor Who Flux - Survivors Of The Flux, was an exciting and thoroughly entertaining installment. So The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) is not an Angel after all, just was shipped between universes in that form to where The Division are polishing off their last universe before travelling into another iteration of the multiverse.

Meanwhile, Yaz (Mandip Gill), Dan (John Bishop) and Professor Jericho (Kevin McNally), who had all been left in a shrinking village in last weeks episode, Village Of The Angels (reviewed here) are off on some kind of quest given to them by a hologram of The Doctor left in Yaz’s care, which activated once she had been separated from The Doctor for more than two weeks. So they are travelling all over the world of the early 1900s (and have been for three years) in search of various non-essential ‘busy work’ clues to give them something to do in the script... and that’s my one big problem with this episode. As entertaining as it was. Um... yeah... so does anyone remember that the village they were trapped in was getting rapidly smaller until they would soon end up as corpses floating in the void of space? Well then how the heck can they be globe hopping when it was made pretty clear that they were currently inhabiting a pretty finite version of what remained of Earth? So unless some pretty necessary information was left out of the story for some inexplicable reason... this makes no sense at all. What the heck?

In other story strands... Bel (Thaddea Graham) and Vinder (Jacob Anderson) are still looking for each other and keep playing with different parts of the story ark. Are they The Doctor’s parent’s who leave their child at the end of a wormhole or is something else less revelatory coming? Remembering we have only one episode left of this series.

And, of course The Doctor’s memories were suppressed in a Time Lord style pocket watch... except, hasn’t The Doctor (in David Tennant form) hidden his memories in a pocket watch before now? So, yeah, how does that work then? That must be traumatic. A kind of memory wipe on top of a memory wipe and, if so, then why weren’t all The Doctor’s memories restored to him in one hit back in the Tennant days? I guess this is why people need... I don’t know... some kind of show bible maybe, to refer to so they don’t get their stories bogged down with such inconsistencies. Yeah, okay, I’m being a touch sarcastic here, I’m sure they must have one but then why do they ignore it constantly? Because if someone like me can remember stuff like this, well I’m sure everyone else does too.

Okay, so... other than all this... yeah, really enjoyed this episode. Mandip Gill and John Bishop seem to have good chemistry together and Kevin McNally makes a nice third. It was nice hearing a sound bite from Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart during the early years of UNIT in 1968, maybe a month or two before he first met The Doctor as seen in the Patrick Troughton era story The Web Of Fear (reviewed here). And it was nice seeing Jemma Redgrave back as his daughter Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in the 2021 section of the story too.

And... yeah, I still don’t like the main villains in this and I still think it’s a deeply flawed series but, okay, this one was one of the more watchable episodes this year. I think how the show finally falls with the long term fans all hinges on next week’s episode which, honestly, will have move fairly rapidly to a quick conclusion to this season, for sure. I wonder if we’ll lose the companions by the end of that episode?

So yeah, short review from me again for Survivors Of The Flux and, I hope I’m still caring about the characters a tiny bit after any revelations visited upon us next week. I guess I’ll report back soon on that one.
 

Doctor Who Flux - Village Of The Angels

Village People

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter Four
Village Of The Angels
Airdate: 21st November 2021
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers sweetie!

Okay, so this week’s episode, the fourth installment of the latest Doctor Who serial Flux, is Village Of The Angels. Set mostly in 1967, it’s kind of got an almost John Wyndham feel to it to start off with... once The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) has saved Yaz (Mandip Gill), Dan (John Bishop) and herself from the Weeping Angels who had invaded the TARDIS at the end of the previous episode (by ejecting them under the blind of more scientific, jargon laden jiggery pokery.

So they all find themselves in a village on the evening of 21st November 1967 (literally 54 years to the day before this episode was broadcast), with a group of villagers trying to find a 10 year old girl who has gone missing. Well... Yaz and Dan find out where she is fairly quickly, as an Angel gets them and whizzes them back to 1901, where they find the girl but in a deserted version of the village which has been ‘quantum extracted’... the borders of this version of the world slowly shrinking to the bleak void of space just outside the borders of the land mass.

Meanwhile, The Doctor finds Claire (Annabel Scholey), the woman from the first episode, The Halloween Apocalypse (reviewed here) in 1967 but it doesn’t quite explain why, when The Doctor first met her, she had somehow taken ‘the long way home’ without ageing... and I don’t think they’re going to explain that now, either. It’s really sloppy writing but I suspect it’s going to remain another of those interminable loose ends. By the finish, the rogue Weeping Angel which, it turns out, has inhabited Claire’s mind to get The Doctor to help it stay safe from its fellow Angels (who work for the mysterious Division, who we saw the other version of The Doctor working for last week)... changes the deal and instead uses Claire to lure The Doctor, her memories of working for The Division still wiped, to a point where she can be ‘recalled’ and then turned into a Weeping Angel herself!

Also meanwhile... Bel (Thaddea Graham) is still looking for Vinder (Jacob Anderson) and the search continues as they manage to miss each other on a planet as Bel works the other, post-Flux end of the story involving the villainous Swarm. I'm now wondering if the baby (or one of the babies plural, possibly) inside her is actually The Doctor, to be honest.

Okay, so the Weeping Angels were absolutely brilliant in their very first Steven Moffat penned story Blink... no question it was one of the best episodes of the show ever. However, since then, Moffat continued to use them in ways which severely compromised or made mistakes about the rules under which the ‘quantum locked if you observe them’ Angels function and, alas, while this particular episode was thoroughly entertaining, it continued the traditions of a) breaking the rules and b) further draining their impact with another new element to their personalities we’ve not seen before.

The first problem is, if there’s someone else observing them at the same time you are then they can’t move in on you, right? You’d think that would be an easy rule not to break but, no, dramatic effect means that this is going to happen even though there are clearly eyes on them a couple of times. And, no, running through the wet paint of your painted in corner by saying ‘oh, don’t get in front of them otherwise we can’t see them’ is a complete cop out and, frankly, a load of rubbish... you’d still be able to see a bit of a shoulder or a foot.

Second problem... yeah, due to holding on to one of their possessed humans they can now communicate by first speaking through her and then speaking through... I dunno. Not sure but giving these previously silent and therefore more disturbing and sinister stone cold killers the power of speech really robs them of that unique quality. They instantly become less scary... especially since you can now at least have a stab at negotiating with them. It robs them of any scariness and softens them up once again.

Also, yeah, totally called it back in episode one that The Doctor and the Angels would be working together in some capacity and, though it was a short alliance, I’m not completely sure we’ve got to the point yet where that particular team-up might not be needed again. It’s a good cliff hanger to leave things on... The Doctor now a stone angel about to be returned to The Division while leaving her companions in an ever decreasing 1901 and, yeah, you have to wonder where they are going with this... particularly since there are only two more episodes left to go. I’m really dreading the ending to be honest but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for it to not just ask another load of uninteresting questions about The Doctor’s origins... which we’ve not needed to hear about for the majority of the show’s 58 year history.

Not much else to say though. There were some nice visual references which recalled Amy Pond’s first encounter with the Weeping Angels from Matt Smith’s first season and Village Of The Angels was certainly better than the other three episodes so far. It is very much becoming a proper serial too, although it does still feel like two stories threaded together after the fact. What this means, though, is you do need to watch these 'in order', to make any sense of them (and even then, you might not have much luck with that as far as episode three is concerned) so, yeah, nice episode, deeply flawed when it comes to the ‘guest antagonists’ and definitely not a jumping on point. As usual, I’ll keep my eye on it and see how this one develops. Oh and by the way... those old 1967 television sets were a lot heavier to carry than that, I believe.

Doctor Who Flux - War Of The Sontarans

 


Wok Around The Clock

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter Two
War Of The Sontarans
Airdate: 7th November 2021
BBC 1

So Jodie Whittaker returns as The Doctor once again in the next installment of the Doctor Who Flux storyline, along with Mandip Gill as regular companion Yaz and John Bishop as new companion Dan. In this episode, the Flux which took a charge at the TARDIS in the previous episode causes said TARDIS to be thrown back to the Crimean War in a story segment called War Of The Sontarans.

And that’s exactly what the three of them find in the Crimean War... that Russia never was and that Sontar exists in its place, with the Sontarans fighting the British. They also meet historical nurse Mary Jane Seacole and, when Yaz and Dan are mysteriously flung out of this time zone and location by forces unknown, The Doctor uses Mary to help defeat the Sontarans, with a little bit of help from Dan, armed with a Wok to bash the Sontarans up on the little weak spot on the back of their heads (their probic vent)... and his designated Dog-man, who have now pitched up back in 21st Century Liverpool, which is also now run by Sontarans.

Meanwhile, Yaz and a guy who was scooped up from his galactic probe in last week’s episode, called Vinder and played by Jacob Anderson (who was apparently a star of Game Of Thrones? I’ll ask my girlfriend.), seem to be caught up in a scheme by the super villains of the piece, who call themselves The Swarm. They have partially destroyed the guardians of a structure which prevents all of time from doing nasty and unexpected things which, frankly, it’s doing a lot of right now... what with the Sontarans launching a kind of time pincer attack at various points in Earth’s history with their collective cry of “Sontar-Ha!”. That’s their basic tenet I guess (I’m here all week folks!).

And... it’s not a great episode by any stretch. And it’s also not a terrible one. I don’t particularly like The Swarm all that much but they are certainly an intimidating and ruthless lot of villains, for sure. I’ve never liked the Sontarans all that much, even when I watched them back in the 1970s when they made their first appearance opposite Jo Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor. The only time I enjoyed their presence was when they introduced Strax into the series.

So I was particularly annoyed at the missed opportunity that one of the Sontarans fighting here didn’t get left behind in Victorian times and turn out to be the very same Strax... and that’s how he ended up on Earth with a Silurian and her human wife as a Victorian detective team, as featured in previous episodes of the show during Matt Smith’s tenure. That being said, I kept thinking that would happen because Dan Starkey, who played Strax the Sontaran, is also in this episode and, well, one Sontaran looks and sounds more or less the same as the next, I guess.

But while I’m talking about Strax... another thing which annoyed me is the fact that we are told the Sontarans need to collectively return to their ships for seven minutes out of every 27 hours to top up their uniforms, which apparently allow them to survive on Earth. First I’ve heard of it, especially since Strax was as likely to be wearing an evening jacket or suit for dinner in previous episodes of the show set in Victorian England... so, yeah, just make those new rules up with no concern for the continuity errors you are causing in the previous stories guys... I’m sure the Doctor Who fan base will thank you for that one.  

Okay, the special effects were okay for a BBC production, the actors all good and the story was, well, it would have made a good Target novelisation back in the 1970s but this felt a little underwhelming as an episode, it has to be said. But, like I also implied, not so terrible that it was as bad as some of the stories we’ve been getting over the last few years. I was a bit upset that, once again, the writers played the old ‘the alien race is fleeing but the somewhat evil human ally is going to take the opportunity, when their back is turned, to slaughter them anyway’ card... we’ve seen this done so many times on the show that it’s become an unloved cliché as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s me done on episode two of Doctor Who Flux: War Of The Sontarans. A very short review and I apologise for that but I’m not going to pass judgement too quickly because I’m aware that we are only seeing one fragment of the overall story here... although it looks like they’re just hitting set pieces and then linking it with an underlying arc to help cement unrelated adventures together, to be honest. Although, there’s more of the underlying arc showing than there usually would be in recent, previous seasons, I’ll give them that. So, yeah, anyway, next week we’re back with the Cybermen making an appearance so... lets see how that one goes. We’ll be halfway through the series already by then.

Doctor Who Flux - The Halloween Apocalypse

Man’s Best Friend

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter One
The Halloween Apocalypse
Airdate: 31st October 2021 BBC 1

Well that was alright.  

 Doctor Who returns to our screens once more after a lengthy absence and, despite my misgivings about the show because, frankly, it’s been hit and miss just lately... mostly miss... it turns out that the first episode of the new mini series episode of Doctor Who Flux,  The Halloween Apocalypse, is quite an exciting and interesting set up for what I hope will be a thrilling story arc binding this exceptionally and inexcusably short season together. Despite all my expectations and after, it has to be said, a fairly shaky opening.

That opening being The Doctor, played by the always wonderful (despite the scripts she gets) Jodie Whittaker and her remaining companion Yaz, played by Mandip Gill, escaping from an elabourate deathtrap in about as dodgy a way as possible. Why is it remote controlled death probes can’t shoot for toffees? However, after this elabourate opening, things immediately get exciting and, as importantly, intriguing as we watch the mystery set up of a new story develop.

First things first, we get a new companion introduced called Dan (played by someone called John Bishop who is apparently famous but, I confess, I’ve not seen him before). We also have his potential love interest introduced but, Dan’s too busy being kidnapped by a dog-man kind of alien and having his house shrunk down to something the size of a fist to be worrying about that too much just yet.

Meanwhile, The Doctor and Yaz are trying to stop the Earth from being destroyed but there’s something The Doctor is not telling her... that she keeps having visions of an ancient enemy who she doesn’t recognise (my money at the moment is on another incarnation of The Master and, I suspect, his similarly ugly alien companion may possibly be a future version of The Doctor herself... but I’m probably wrong about that one... it’s probably a bit too obvious).

Then, when The Doctor and Yaz ‘rescue Dan’, it turns out that the various ships of the particular species aligned with dogs really are man’s best friend. They are each assigned to one human to get the humans off the Earth before the planet is destroyed by... The Flux.

Now the Flux is some kind of energy source which is eating through the entire universe and, so far it seems, The Doctor can do nothing to stop it. Also thrown into the mix is a woman on Earth who isn’t recognised by The Doctor but she definitely knows her. She is taking ‘the long way home’, which I assume means she’s existing on Earth and has somehow been thrown back in time and she’s just waiting to catch up... somewhere in our future. This is confirmed soon after, in a way, when she runs afoul of a Weeping Angel who whisks her back to Liverpool in 1820 by the looks of it. Although how she’s not aged by the time she returns to 2021 if she originally went back in time the same way also throws up questions about her actual species. Also, don't quote me on this but... why am I getting the feeling the angels aren't actually working ‘against’ The Doctor this time around? Hmm... time will tell.

And it’s in Liverpool of 1820 that a man is building a mystery project which, you at first think might be quite sinister but, with the way the episode has gone so far, I suspect is some kind of ark or rescue structure built in our past to rescue humanity in the future. I expect we’ll find out at some point towards the mid-way part of the story arc, is my guess.

Throw into the mix Dan’s love interest, who is kidnapped by the main bad guys (identity unknown but, like I said, I had my suspicions) and a group of rowdy Sontarans... and we have a recipe for success. And if that wasn’t enough, the TARDIS also seems to be in a state of flux, with new doors popping up in the interior... and also a special message for long standing fans of the show. By which I mean, the dreaded cloister bell in the TARDIS is ringing the house down... and as every Doctor Who fan has known since the cloister bell was first introduced in Tom Baker’s final story in 1981, this means bad news is coming. Could it be the bad news that the Flux is now coming for the TARDIS and is about to disintegrate our heroes? Well, not all bad news because, at the very least, Doctor Who has become a serial again like it was in the old days... along with a cliff hanger ending which crosscuts to all of the important characters included in the mix thus far (and I believe a fair few classic monsters will be turning up in the story over the next few weeks... Daleks and Cybermen for sure).

And, yeah, apart from the rough opening to the episode, I had a blast with this one all the way through. My only other problem other than the first five minutes was that, for an episode which is partially set in 2021, why the heck was nobody wearing Covid masks. We already knew Covid 19 exists in the Doctor Who universe because we had a very short clip of Jodie as The Doctor telling kids to wash their hands and mask up, right at the start of the pandemic last year. So is everyone in this episode just being completely irresponsible for not masking up? Not sure what’s going on here but it seems a bit of a strange oversight considering that the earlier short suggested it’s ‘a thing’ in the world of Doctor Who.

But there we are... I liked the set up, liked the new assistant, Jodie and Mandip were pretty cool and the pace was fast and furious, what with the amount of different story elements already thrown at us. I hope show runner Chibnal can land a decent conclusion this time around when we get to episode six is all I’m keeping my fingers crossed for right now. This episode was a blast and... long may it continue. 

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.