Doctor Who - Twice Upon A Time

Jodie Vivre

Doctor Who - Twice Upon A Time
Airdate: 25th December 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Here Be Spoilers... all of them.

Well this one was so much better than I thought it would be and I’m pleased Peter Capaldi’s swan song as The Doctor turned out quite as well as it did (with a few reservations).

Starting up with footage from The Tenth Planet (reviewed here) was something I didn’t expect because, right from the outset, it highlighted to modern audiences of the show just how wrong in design and voice the BBC got the reconstruction of the original cybermen at the end of the last series. So I don’t know why they chose to include specific footage of them along with the shots of Hartnell to contextualise where The First Doctor fits into all this. It does, however, work very well to get contemporary Who watchers up to speed as much as they would need and it had a lovely ‘merge’ moment where William Hartnell morphed, mid sentence, into David Bradley (not to mention The First Doctor’s then companions Ben and Polly transforming into different actors too). Bradley does a good job here and has great chemistry with Capaldi, it has to be said.

We then had him meeting up with Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of The Doctor (I refuse to call him The Twelfth Doctor anymore... War Doctor or not, every Doctor gets a number to help label them, in my book) at the end of the previous episode and we have both Doctor’s gabbling away and both refusing to regenerate. We then have a soldier 'plucked from time' on a battlefield during the First World War and accidentally deposited with both Doctors.

Now, I have to say, the identity of the mystery soldier, played here by Mark Gatiss, is really not that hard to work out once he talks about having a wife and children at home. It points to his relationship with another famous military figure who has been in Doctor Who history since his appearance as a Colonel opposite Patrick Troughton’s incarnation, The Second Doctor and, well, I’m not going to spell it out here but it did become fairly obvious at a certain point in the proceedings.

However, it’s a pretty good story with The Doctors coming face to face with a lady of glass who is part of The Testimony, a group of beings from the far future who record the memories and experiences of people just before their death and can become them. When The Doctor goes to a planet full of Kaleds it was, again, obvious that they were, of course, the Daleks but I have to say the identity of the person he was going to see actually did take me by surprise, for which I’m grateful. I just assumed it would be Davros but, instead, it was a character from very recent Doctor Who continuity from a couple of series ago, who made “its” debut in the episode Into The Dalek (reviewed here).

In Twice Upon A Time we get a nice conundrum about whether people are, in fact, the sum of their memories, the return (sorta) of Bill Potts and Nardole, a very atmospheric (and tear inducing) sequence set on a very specific night in World War One, a brief return by Clara Oswald (played by Jenna Louise Coleman) plus the restoration of The Doctor’s memories of what she looked like... and the whole episode is generally light on action and strong on ideas. Something which impressed me and which has been a key component of the show since it first started being broadcast 54 years ago. And I thought this was the story’s main strength.

There are a few intriguing issues within the episode though. For example, if the encapsulated memories of The Doctor could shatter the glass beings then... how come they already were able to show The First Doctor the memories of all the things he had become up to Capaldi's point in time? My best answer to that is his memories (and not even his ego) could not, or at some future point in time, did not... shatter them. Because they obviously already recorded him at some point in the future of this incarnation’s timeline, just before death. So that's a bit silly, to be honest.

Another intriguing and, potentially, quite annoying thing, is that the BBC look like they’ve destroyed the TARDIS at the end. Blimey... just like a woman driver, not 60 seconds into his first female incarnation and she’s crashed the TARDIS (thanks to my cousin for that comment). Of course, there’s no way they can let this happen, I think, without a) divesting themselves of a lot of fans of the show over the years and b) taking away from the basic essence of the show... being able to visit a different point in time and space every adventure. I’m pretty sure the iconic TARDIS will be back on our screens before long.

The worst thing about the episode was... Peter Capaldi’s protracted ‘death’ scene was a bit long winded, waffly and... I dunno... felt kinda clumsily written, truth be told. Still, his performance was never less than his best and he’s been a great Doctor whose time has, I believe, come too soon.

Two things I really liked about the show were...

The First Doctor’s blatant, inadvertent sexism and the other character’s reactions to it. When Capaldi kept highlighting to him that he couldn’t say things like that in the current PC environment (in not so many words) it was quite funny but when Pearl Mackie’s wonderful performance as Bill Potts kicked in and she took him on regarding that issue... well it made for some nice comedy moments.

The other great thing was.. hooray. We finally have a lady timelord in the shape of a new, female incarnation of The Doctor. It’s way too early to judge how our new favourite time lady Jodie Whittaker is going to do in the role but she was pretty good here and I hope I’m right in having a lot of faith in her from the outset. Of course, when I was 14 years old and the prospect of a lady Doctor was first discussed, around about 1982ish, I was mortified by even the vaguest suggestion of such a thing taking place but... times have changed and hopefully the male youngsters of today are more flexible and evolved in their thinking to be stuck with that kind of attitude in their heads. I think this is a really good move and will hopefully refresh the series a little.

And that’s my take on Capaldi’s last story... not the best he’s done but, certainly, one of the best and more than I had hoped for from writer Steven Moffat’s last crack at writing the character, for sure. Twice Upon A Time was a really "not bad at all" episode of the current version of the show and a nice treat for Christmas Day. Looking forward to seeing what Jodie brings to the table in the Autumn.

Doctor Who -The Doctor Falls

Stuck In The Puddle With You

Doctor Who - The Doctor Falls
Airdate: 1st July 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Series finale spoilers in here… in abundance. 

Well this one was both spectacular and quite disappointing, to be honest. 

As a series finale it’s a bit of a dud because all of those little mysterious questions that the writer asked us to invest in at the start of the series were just thrown away, left unanswered. As this show started and the virtual village which was a part of the starship from last week was attacked by cybermen, I was pretty sure the little girl was going to grow up to be either Bill or Bill’s mother. Alas we never found out and, since The Doctor is obviously now going to conveniently forget about the constant danger to Nardole and the fleeing colony altogether, it seems unlikely that any kind of closure on Bill and her mother is ever going to come to us. Which is absolute rubbish.

So, okay… the good stuff. 

Well, The Master as played by John Simm and Missy as played by Michelle Gomez had some nice scenes together. And the fact that they ended up killing each other… with The Master presumably escaping to regenerate into Missy and with Missy supposedly finally dead… well, it looks like Moffat wasn’t that interested in leaving his successor much in the way of one of The Doctor’s main arch villains to play with. Or maybe it’s an easy fix… a writer writes.

We also have some truly nice work by Pearl Mackie in this one as we get to see her character as she sees herself… as Bill Potts… and also as the very first cyberman, which she really is now. There’s no going back for her from this but to have Mackie play much of the scenes as Bill allowed us some terrific emotional moments opposite Peter Capaldi’s always brilliant performance as The Doctor. And that great moment where she catches her shadow on the wall and it’s the shadow of the headpiece of a cyberman was terrific. Truly nice touch by Moffat and co. 

And so there was all of that. But...

Okay, so the episode was really not answering any questions pitched earlier in the series, as I mentioned before but, beyond that, there were some really niggly  things too… in addition to completely forgetting about basic Timelord biology, that is.

So, okay, the Mondasian cybermen really are an upgrade too far by the BBC. The more I look at these things, the more I realise that they really are just a caricature of the original 1966 versions. The proportions all look wrong. These are too refined and not nearly as clumsy and clunky as those brilliant originals, it’s sad to say. 

And then we have the upgraded cybermen somehow fighting alongside them and they’re just the same versions of them we last saw on the show. Oh really? None of the other gazillions of cybermen versions over the years? Just the last lot because, what the hell, they had all those costumes left over from last time, right? So, yeah, on the cybermen front I was generally disappointed all around. Not quite sure why composer Murray Gold waited for those versions to appear before he started weaving his cyberman theme into the texture of the score, either.

That being said, there was a genuine surprise near the end of the show that I didn’t see coming… and that’s always a good thing as far as I’m concerned. That being the reappearance of Bill’s alien water spirit, puddle lover from the first episode of this series, The Pilot (reviewed here) who  rescues Bill from her cyber existence to be her water lover from the stars. So that was… unexpected, at least.

And then we have the last scene where Capaldi’s Doctor, keeping his own regeneration at bay, comes face to face with David Bradley playing the William Hartnell first incarnation of the character. Yeah, was pretty sure he’d have to be turning up somewhere in this episode and here he was. Not sure how I quite felt about that, though, because I thought he looked somewhat less like Hartnell than he did when he played him last in An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here). Presumably this part of the story will be picked up later in the year in the 2017 Christmas special. Which, to be entirely honest, I’m really not looking forward to all that much. 

And that really is all I’ve got to say about this one. A short review but, then again, I did feel kinda short changed on all the story threads here. I need a bit of a rest from the current incarnation of the show, truth be told, so I am happy for the big gap. I will miss Pearl Mackie, though, because I think she did some very strong stuff here and I will definitely miss Capaldi when he’s gone. Especially since his previous series on the show was just so good. 

Doctor Who - World Enough And Time

Telos About Mondas

Doctor Who - World Enough And Time
Airdate: 24th June 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Yes, this one’s got big spoilers in it.

This review marks another little 'anniversary' for me. When I first started this blog the first Doctor Who story that aired live and which I wrote about at the time was the first Matt Smith story The Eleventh Hour (reviewed here) and since that first Doctor Who review I did, well... this is my 100th Doctor Who review for this blog (not including the odd book review and episodes of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane adventures, some of which you will also find here). And I'm very pleased to be still reviewing them now after all this time.

So, okay, this was a really great set up episode but, as has been pointed out by various critics over the last few years, Moffat’s really good at openings and really bad at endings... so we shall just have to see how the wind blows when the second episode of this two (maybe three) part story ‘sort of’ concludes next week.

This weeks episode, though, was a real humdinger...

World Enough And Time started off with the lone Doctor, supposedly injured, stumbling out of the TARDIS and beginning his regeneration process. And then the credits play and there’s no more mention of this sequence and we are left to assume that the rest of the story is being told in flashback. I'm still unsure if he’s going to be completing that process at Christmas, as everybody says, or will be regenerating next week... perhaps he’ll do it at the end of next week but still make an appearance in the Christmas special. Who knows? Apparently.

So the next thing we have is Missy being the new ‘Doctor Who’ (in a somewhat distressing shout out for fans who are probably all, like myself, hoping that Moffat hasn’t decided to make that The Doctor’s real name) as a test to see how helpful she is and to decide whether she has turned over a new leaf. So they go to the aid of a real distress call and it’s Missy, Bill and Nardole answering while The Doctor watches their progress from the TARDIS as they try and figure out what’s going on with a starship which is slowly reversing away from a black hole... with the time at one end of the ship going very rapidly as opposed to the relative time at the other end of the ship.

And then we get our next big shock as somebody blows a big hole through Bill’s heart and she falls lifeless to the floor before a bunch of ‘heads covered in rags’ patients take her away to repair her at the other end of the ship... while The Doctor, Missy and Nardole are left to wonder what’s going on... a few minutes passing at what is a rate of months for Bill as she is somehow revived and her heart replaced with a big cyberchest thing. Oh yeah, that’s right... we knew the original, William Hartnell cybermen from The Tenth Planet (reviewed here) were back and, by the end of the episode, Bill is fully converted into... the very first cyberman. Or cyberwoman, I guess.

And there were some nice things about the episode which were really well written.  For instance, as Bill stands there in shock and we see a hole the size of an extra large fist punched through her body where her chest was, we flash back to point where Bill is warning The Doctor about this whole ‘trial run for Missy’ thing being a bad idea and asking The Doctor to keep an eye on her safety... so a nice poignant moment there. Although, I’m still not 100% sure that she’s not talking to a version of The Doctor who has already seen her die... but I’m guessing that this would be too inappropriately ‘timey wimey’ for Moffat in terms of the sense of gravitas purveying the episode... which is really atmospheric and scary, in all honesty.

Bearing in mind the Mondasian* cybermen are held back until the very end of the show as a surprise moment, one has to wonder why the BBC announced they were going to be on these episodes at all... if you’re going to have a surprise then have a surprise, for goodness sake. Although, truth be told, these new costumes, while scary, aren’t a patch on the original costumes from 1966 and have some very marked differences, it has to be said. As it was, though, we were all just sitting around assuming Bill would be ‘converted’ at the end of the episode. I mean, not even Murray Gold’s music gave the game away in that... he didn’t use his cyberman theme once, it seemed to me.  So, it’s like they were playing the episode completely for a big surprise and then just decided to tell everyone a few months before it happened. Bit of a silly thing to do, if you ask me.

And talking of surprises, we have John Simm back as the previous incarnation of Missy... The Master... and I’m assuming well be seeing him regenerating into her before the end of next week’s episode, maybe? Now, again, Moffat plays it really clever here and, aided by John Simm’s quite remarkable acting skills, hides him in plain sight for most of the episode. And that could have worked really well, again, if the BBC hadn’t let the cat out of the bag about him being in this final story. As it was, though, I was still fooled by the tactic up until only five minutes or so before he pulled off the prosthetics and revealed himself. At which point I exclaimed... “You don’t think that’s John Simm in disguise, do you?”... to the rest of the room and was told... of course not. However... it turned out it was.

Never mind though because World Enough And Time was still a smartly executed episode and, as usual, Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Michelle Gomez and John Simm were all doing some marvellous stuff here. There was also a nice little moment where The Doctor performs Venusian Judo (for the first time in decades in the show, I suspect) which ties in nicely, kinda, to the reappearance of the character Alpha Centauri a couple of weeks ago (I think Jon Pertwee first used this fighting style in the story The Monster of Peladon, right?). In fact, coincidentally, I was only talking about The Doctor fighting using Venusian Judo on a train back from a concert the other week so, yeah, it’s nice to have the reference.

Other than that, though... well I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that Moffat doesn’t screw up the season finale next week. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the conclusion of the story and I really hope he doesn’t forget to tie up all the loose story threads which he dangled in the first episode of this season. Especially since Bill deserves a lot better than the fate she has been given, to be sure. So, yeah, a nice episode, well put together and hope they don’t all screw it up next weekend. Fingers crossed for that, then.

* From the planet Mondas, one of the two worlds of cyberman legend, along with Telos.

Doctor Who - The Eaters Of Light

Rift Raff

Doctor Who - The Eaters Of Light
Airdate: 17th June 2017
BBC 1

Well this was... hmmm... well, I’m sorry but it really did seem kinda bland to me.

It wasn’t terrible, for sure but... it wasn’t that engaging either.

The Eaters Of Light uses a hook of music being heard in the Scottish hills and a crow apparently cawing “Doc-tor!” near a centuries old depiction of the TARDIS engraved in a rock. It also fashions its quite simplistic story under the guise of The Doctor and Bill trying to settle an argument about the fate of the real life ‘mystery’ of the Roman Ninth Legion... accompanied by Nardole, of course. Various books have been written and, of course, films made about this particular mystery... such as Centurion (reviewed by me here).

Here, we are asked to believe that the majority of the legion were literally filleted by a monster who has come through an inter-dimensional rift and, although that’s good Doctor Who, it all feels like it's a bit thrown away here and I think that’s due to the shorter running time of modern Doctor Who stories than anything else. I mean, this has all the makings of a classic episode and feels very much like an old Tom Baker episode from the late 1970s. Indeed, there are moments when the always excellent Peter Capaldi delivers some of his line readings just as the Fourth Doctor would have done... close your eyes at certain points and just listen... it’s almost like he’s deliberately trying to evoke him.

The problem is, though, that in a story which has such a simplistic, one track story line as this week's episode, then you maybe need a bit more time to set up the various characters and turn them into something more complex than just the bare sketches we have here, to maintain a certain level of interest and sympathy with them. Alas, single 45 minute stories of Doctor Who are much shorter than the multi-part affairs of the old days, when an average story would last between four and six 25 minute episodes per story. And it feels like the ideas presented here suffered because of it.

There was also some stuff that didn’t quite make sense.

For instance... Bill is rendered unconscious and when we see her come around, everyone is reacting like she’s only been unconscious for an hour or so... however, we also know that in the same time, The Doctor has been absent in the rift for over two days. So how the hell does that work out? Another thing that didn’t quite work for me is that a creature who feeds off sunlight (and presumably bones) is frightened of small shafts of light trained on it to keep it at bay. I’m sorry, what? I maybe missed something there but it did seem more than just a little incongruous, if truth be told.

The main trouble for me, with this story, is that there was no really great, stand out sequences that made you sit up and think... yeah... this is what Doctor Who does well. Instead we had quite a few missed opportunities, it felt like.

For example, when The Doctor explains to Nardole that crows do talk and they’re not in any way significant, you think he’s fobbing him off (and the audience) to accomodate a brilliant story twist later in the episode. Alas, it turns out The Doctor’s explanation is actually correct and that the crows have just been single minded in what they are saying over the years... which really is a rubbish explanation and does nothing but let down the opening hook, as far as I'm concerned.

Then we have... and I don’t know how many times we are going to have to go through this again and again in this show... Bill talking about being a lesbian. Seriously people, we’d got it the first time. Okay? We don’t need to be beaten over the head with it every other week as though it’s some kind of special thing we are supposed to be in awe of. We don’t need this stuff continually.

Another thing which really does highlight what I was saying about this resembling an old Tom Baker episode is the design of the creature itself. Now I’m not the biggest fan of CGI and I personally prefer practical effects where possible but, the ‘man in suit’ style creature running around on all fours looked preposterously bad here. Just like an old, cheap episode of Doctor Who from the late 1970s or 1980s, to be honest. It wasn’t as bad as the Myrka from the Peter Davison story Warriors Of The Deep (reviewed here) to be sure but... it wasn’t that far removed from those days either, in all honesty.

And, of course, we have the drama of the stuff with Missy crying as though she’s not a bad person and The Doctor’s true nemesis anymore. Seriously, are people buying this? Well, we’ve got an older incarnation of her dropping by next week so I guess that can’t go too well. In fact next week see the story I’ve been looking forward too since finding out about it, with the return of the original Cybermen whose only other appearance was in William Hartnell’s last story, The Tenth Planet (reviewed here). So I’ve got my fingers crossed that’s going to go well. It also, as it happens, marks the 100th TV Doctor Who story which I will have reviewed for this blog to date so, you know, let’s hope it’s a good one.

Doctor Who - The Lie Of The Land

Monk Yard

Doctor Who - The Lie Of The Land
Airdate: 3rd June 2017
BBC 1

Warning: More spoilers, I suppose.

Well that was a bit rubbish.

Once again you have my apologies but this week’s review will quite possibly read more like a short rant than anything else. You have been warned.

So The Lie Of the Land is the final (and hopefully concluding) part of the trilogy of Monk episodes which, to quote somebody on Twitter last night, have wasted a quarter of this year’s series. Following on from the two previous episodes, this had neither the creepy atmosphere of Extremis (reviewed here) nor the slight mystery aspect of The Pyramid At The End Of The World (reviewed here).

Instead we have a hastily cobbled together conclusion vaguely reminiscent of the climax of the finale of David Tennant’s second series, The Last Of The Timelords. Except it’s nowhere near as cool as that and ends up with a very contradictory (to common sense) solution and which ultimately involves Bill sending out thoughts about her dead mother to combat the Monks quite safely, contrary to any previous pseudo-scientific sermonising that this will erase her brain and also ignores that, if she could do something like that then, probably, so could The Doctor.

As it happens, we are left with an unbelievably unsatisfying conclusion which is one of the least interesting in the last ten years of Doctor Who. And putting in little fan references to Magpie Electronics in the background isn’t going to disguise that drop in quality. And it’s a shame because the performances from all the actors are, as usual, sterling.

The Monks, themselves, seem to be set up as an enemy which might even rival The Silence except... they’re just useless. They don’t seem to be doing very much at all and just seem content to stand around and try to look vaguely menacing. And, of course, as soon as Martha starts transmitting her signals... they just run away and take their flying space pyramid with them. Um... so much for the mystery of the space pyramid. Has anyone who watched this show over the last few weeks got any idea why we were presented with an alien race who are using a starship in the shape of a gazillion year old Egyptian pyramid? Anyone at all? You know... usually when you set up a mystery element, it’s so that a solution to that mystery can be revealed. I understand that some people just like mystery for its own sake but in a show like Doctor Who where that is set down as a key riddle which brings everyone into the story... you really should remember to try and at least explain the purpose of it once.

Also... what the heck is going on with the continuity of this show? Was there a crucial scene cut out somewhere in the series (or has the order of the episodes been changed)? It’s stated quite categorically here that The Doctor gave Bill the photos of her dead mother (the ones with the mystery reflection of him taking one of the photos which no other episode has remembered to address so far). That’s not what happened though, right? They were found and given to her by someone who dug them out of storage. If they were somehow provided specifically by The Doctor then this is the first I remember hearing about it. There’s either something missing or... this is just not good writing folks.

And as for The Master... or Missy... or whatever you want to call him/her at the moment... well. All I can say is if you really believe that stuff about her/him learning to become a good person during her exile in The Vault and turning over a new leaf then you must be completely nuts. The BBC aren’t going to throw away the useful issue of a long standing, permanent nemesis for The Doctor. Frankly, for the writers to even attempt to convince us of this here insults The Doctor’s intelligence and, I might add, the intelligence of the audience watching this.

I am starting to go into mourning for this series again. The previous series was a really solid show and had only one dud episode in it. Admittedly, it was a spectacularly bad dud episode in that season but it was the only bad one. This series, we open with three pretty strong episodes before it all goes to hell. I am so worried this show is going to get cancelled in the wake of this series. I hope not but I really wouldn’t be surprised if these are the warnings that signal the end of an era.

Again.

Oh well, the new pseudo Ice Warriors are back next week. It looks kinda interesting but, well, we’ll see. Not particularly looking forward to it, to be honest.

Doctor Who - The Pyramid At The End Of The World

Uniformed Consent

Doctor Who - The Pyramid At The End Of The World
Airdate: 27th May 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Some spoilers, I guess.

My apologies in advance but this is bound to be a fairly short review because, quite frankly, I have nothing much to say about this one. The story follows on from last week’s ‘virtual reality’ episode with what is being presented to us as... well... the ‘real invasion’ this time. Whether it is or it isn’t... and there’s certainly evidence to suggest the latter but with absolutely no conviction on my part to believe that the writers would use the same, hackneyed old cop out two weeks running... I’ve kind of given up caring, to be honest.

This one is a much better episode than last week’s tale but doesn’t really give us anything new. We have a parallel scene of Bill’s first date with Bill telling her potential new girlfriend about the alternate reality version where they were interrupted by ‘the pope in the lounge’ in the previous installment. This time, they’re interrupted by UNIT and a high government official coming for Bill to get them to The Doctor.

And so the still blind Doctor, Bill and Nardole go to investigate a gazillions old pyramid which has appeared overnight in another country. And we have the alien race from last week promise to save the earth from destruction if we consent to let them rule the planet from now on... giving the Earth a doomsday clock countdown as we simultaneously, cross-cut with our hero's shenanigans, witness the events in a scientific laboratory leading up to the destruction of all life on Earth. Another catch is that, if you represent your species and give your consent and it’s not pure consent and love for the aliens, you get crumbled to dust.

The Doctor warns against humanity giving consent, locates the problem and leaves Bill with the various high up representatives in the pyramid while he goes to sort out the problem. However, with all the representatives giving consent and dying one by one, it comes down to just Bill and the aliens while The Doctor fixes things but, he is about to die in the process because of his blindness in a certain situation. So Bill gives her consent, The Doctor’s eyesight is ‘magically restored’ and Earth is 'given' the aliens...

And it all just feels like Doctor Who procedural filler to leave us waiting for the next part of the story, next week. Whether it’s a three or four parter is anybody’s guess. The episode wasn’t terrible though and it had some nice scenes in it but, at the same time, it’s not what I’d want from a quality show like Doctor Who and, after the previous brilliant series and a good, strong, opening three episodes, these last four have really brought the quality of the brilliant Capaldi’s last season down.

A couple of observations... if you’ve got some kind of spaceship and it looks and scans like a gazillions of years old pyramid, is it not reasonable to assume that it might be another TARDIS? And who else has a TARDIS? Well, The Master is in the vault but, you know, there are other incarnations of her/him out there. Like the John Simm one who we know will be returning at some point. Is John Simm going to regenerate into somebody else before he becomes Missy? And get trapped in the vault with his other incarnation? And then maybe escape from the vault 'as Bill' back before the first episode of this series and then we have Bill regenerating into Missy and not into The Doctor’s grand-daughter as I first suspected.

I don’t know and I don’t really care anymore when the writing gets this mediocre, to be honest. It seems like The Doctor’s moment of self sacrifice which could only be reversed with the consent to conquer, was all a set up by the aliens anyway so... I don’t want to second guess anything at this stage. As usual for this series, the chemistry between The Doctor and Bill is good, even when they’re not on screen together... such as when they are talking by phone and Bill comes to realise that The Doctor’s sacrifice to save her a couple of episodes prior to this resulted in his permanent (ish) blindness. A moving moment and the spring board Bill needs to hand over the Earth to save The Doctor. Except... yeah... not sure she’s had that long of a relationship with our titular timelord yet to actually make that call but, there you have it. After all, it’s clear that The Doctor has already saved the Earth... he’s just ‘accidentally’ (maybe... we don’t know what his end game is yet) put himself in a place where he will die unless ‘pure consent’ is given. Perhaps he knows that the only way pure consent could be given is to put himself in that very situation... who knows? However, I suspect I’m over-thinking things here and overcompensating for the fact that the story seems fairly dull and simple for the series.

Well, like I said, a short review with nothing much to add. Hopefully I’ll be a little more appreciative of this week’s episode when I look back on it in context of next week’s, hopefully conclusive, installment. Or maybe not. Time, as people who believe in the concept of such a fragile construct might say... will tell.

Doctor Who - Extremis

Exreme Missy

Doctor Who - Extremis
Airdate: 20th May 2017
BBC 1

Warning: This one’s going to have to have spoilers in it right from the outset, I’m afraid. Apologies.

Well this doesn’t seem to have been a very well liked episode if my Twitter timeline is anything to go by. People are afraid the series will get cancelled if episodes like this are what they have to look forward to. I can understand that the casual watchers well might drift away with less than excellent episodes like this but, honestly, I think they already lost the most people they could lose two series' ago so I don’t think the odd poorly received episode like this is going to make that much difference. As I remarked recently to someone on an entirely different subject... you need to see the bad ones to appreciate the good ones. So there’s that.

As for myself... I didn’t see this episode as a disaster at all. Far from it. Although I do admit to being disappointed in the actual content and end games of the story.

Let me cover the good stuff first.

The story deals with an email to The Doctor from, it turns out by the end of the story, The Doctor. But not as we know him. The Doctor is still blind and he, Bill and Nardole are summoned by The Pope to enter the secret library in the Vatican and read from the forbidden text Veritas. Anyone who reads it will die by their own hand... and have been, frequently.

That’s the plot and there are some lovely bits in it. The atmosphere of the dark, musty, labyrinth of library corridors is good stuff and there’s also a load of humour in it. Meanwhile, we also have the startling ‘revelation’ that the Doctor has The Master, I mean Missy, in the Vault. Which is a real let down and it’s implied that’s where she is because The Doctor rescues her from execution but is duty bound to guard her body for a thousand years in said vault. The fact that she is still alive is neither her nor there to The Doctor. And then we have some scenes in The Pentagon and CERN which are... what they are... but the really nice stuff was in the library and, also, a scene where Bill currently lives at the start of the episode...

Bill has a hot date and the lady in question is back with Bill in the lounge area for a cup of tea and something more hotter later when the sound of the TARDIS can be heard coming from Bill’s bedroom, which she explains away as pipes. Then The Pope rushes into the lounge and starts talking excitedly in Italian and... the reaction from Bill and her date is priceless. This is a nice comedy moment and it’s probably the highlight of the episode... for me at any rate. Such a shame it’s not really Bill then...

Which of course leads me into the bad stuff.

Don’t worry, it was all a dream. Or rather, don’t worry, the whole episode was a computer simulation of our regular characters because a weird alien race build a shadow, virtual reality programme to run, unaware it’s not the real thing. to figure out how to defeat The Doctor and invade the planet. Which is a really old idea and, though it manifests itself in some, really not bad moments... like the way in which computers (at least old computers) can only generate pseudo-random strings of numbers... it really is “a load of old pants”. Which, I’m told, means something a bit less than good to the young audience out there. Or has that phrase been superseded already?

Another big problem of going down that route, of course, is that a) it made no sense and b) we absolutely didn’t need to have dodgy aliens stealing cardinals in the library because, really, what for? Also, there’s no way, surely, The Doctor can send an email from his sonic sunglasses to the real version of himself when it’s all just a simulation being run for the benefit of the aliens. And furthermore... how come computer glasses can allow a blind character to see where walls and people are but can’t actually display text in a book? That really makes no sense at all and these things - the email, the glasses, the fact that The Doctor can’t regenerate his eyes but he can grow new limbs at will - just seemed to me like lazy writing. I mean, when the technology and physics of the Whoniverse are being rewritten because they get in the way of story ideas... then it’s time to rewrite the situations which call for such preposterous decisions, not just say the technology or people can’t do that particular thing so the story can function sensibly. This was bad writing, I feel.

And then there’s the whole thing with it being Missy in the vault.

Really? What an anti-climax. I know a lot of people are disappointed in the so called ‘revelation’ of something they’ve made so obvious that there had to be more to it than that. Myself included.

However, a little part of me is saying, hold up. You don’t usually reveal what’s happening with something from the reverse end of the situation. We assume Missy is in there and, to be fair The Doctor is talking to Missy openly through the Vault doors. However, we haven’t actually seen the reveal from this end, have we? Is it really just Missy in there or is there going to be something far more spectacular and Moffat is just throwing us that bone, halfway through the series, to throw us off the trail. Or is it the case, as I mentioned in my first review of this series, that the whole vault thing is just a giant red herring to distract us from the real revelation coming later in the series. Let’s hope so, eh? Otherwise this is not exactly one of the the most clever seasons of Doctor Who written, that’s for sure.

There you go then. That’s all I’ve got on Extremis. It’s not the mess that everyone seems to think it is, I reckon but, as I think I’ve demonstrated, it’s not an episode that’s without its disappointments. Next week’s episode looks like it will be dealing with the real life fall out from this one so I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to it but... hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised and the series will begin to perk back up again. Who knows? Apparently.

Doctor Who - Oxygen

whO2

Doctor Who - Oxygen
Airdate: 13th May 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Slight spoilers.

I remember very well a Judge Dredd story I read in ‘the galaxy’s greatest comic’ 2000AD when I was a young ‘un. It was fairly early on in the comic’s long history, say around 1978 or possibly 1979. Judge Dredd was relocated off of Earth for a while for a series of stories I really liked where he was the new Judge of Lunar City One on the Moon. This particular story dealt with a bank robbery and in it, the three robbers managed to get away with their loot scot free... however, there was a great little punchline scene at the end of the story which, I would guess, was already a much used idea by the time the writers of 2000AD got around to recycling it. Days or weeks later, I forget which, the criminals were all found dead with their money. It seems, in their haste, one of them had forgotten to pay the Oxygen bill for the supply to their apartment and so their flat was ‘cut off’ by the Oxygen Board until paid. The robbers had quickly suffocated with their ill gotten gains.

It was a nice story and one which stayed with me over the years as something in which a science fiction comic parodied the times we live in and showed how evil corporate greed is when caring nothing about the people who get in the way of not paying up money. After all, we are already paying for stuff like water (something which our planet seems to have in abundance) so how long before we, like the characters in this story, are paying some kind of air tax. You may laugh at that but, honestly, some of the taxes they’ve made up in the UK in the last few decades have been even sillier and less justifiable than an air tax so, you know, when a government needs money... they will make up anything to get it out of the hard working person on the street.

Now this episode of Doctor Who, entitled Oxygen, deals with exactly the same issue. I don’t usually, to be honest, like the spaceship confined episodes of modern Doctor Who... when it’s just a few characters wandering around plastic interiors for the whole episode wearing cumbersome space suits. I usually find it quite dull. This weeks episode of ‘more of the same’ was quite inventive, though. We had spacesuits that walked around by themselves after killing their inhabitants and so unwittingly creating an army of, quite literally, walking dead... zombies in space suits for all intents and purposes. We also had the trio of The Doctor, Bill and Nardole coming to the aid of the four remaining survivors of a space station and, frankly, the episode was not without its sacrifices, both in terms of human lives and something very important for a few future episodes, which I’ll get to in a minute. And all of it was relating back to the same idea of oxygen being sold for corporate greed that made that old Judge Dredd story so memorable.

The episode was pretty well paced and, of course, well acted. The faceless corporate menace with its army of undead was not without its interesting moments and the running around corridors really didn’t get too old, too quickly, truth be told. Which was a relief.

Now Bill came out of this the worst, I think, in being someone who didn’t actually have a lot to do in the episode. However, what she did do was sparkle quite brightly when she had to die... twice. The first time she had to suck on vacuum and passed out, pretty much to death, before The Doctor sacrificed his space helmet to let her live... ending up much worse for wear in the long run, as I’ll discuss in a minute. The second time, The Doctor played a hunch, it seemed to me, and had to watch (well listen at any rate) as she was seemingly killed by her suit and turned into a walking dead girl before it was revealed that the suit didn’t have enough juice in it, seeing as it was in bad repair, to finish the job it started. So although she was painfully underused in the episode... she did have some pretty shiny moments in this one... although I’m now not sure if she is really as innocent and naive  as she seems to be. At least under the surface.

There were two little shocks for fans of Doctor Who in this episode. One was the death of his sonic screwdriver (so he couldn’t use it to get everyone out of danger in a twinkling of an eye, no doubt)... that’s okay, the TARDIS can always make another one. Alas, I am really expecting that The Doctor’s sonic sunglasses may be making a return (a much unwelcome one, as far as I’m concerned) appearance now because we come to the other little sacrifice about this episode... The Doctor’s eyesight. After saving Bill and going for so long unprotected in the vacuum of space, The Doctor is blind and although I believed him when he said it could be fixed when he got back to the TARDIS... after all he’s a bloody Timelord and can regenerate, we’ve seen him regrow another arm a decade ago for goodness’ sake... apparently he is now still blind. So that’s going to be interesting and, I’m sure, used as a plot device in some upcoming adventure. I’m sure blindness will be just what is required to save everyone’s lives before too long... I reckon.

Not too much about the secrets of 'the vault' this week but whatever... or more likely whoever... is in there, the dialogue is set up so you think it must be something or someone really not very nice. All roads lead to Missy or quite possibly the John Simm incarnation of The Master but... I hope not because I feel that would be a bit of a cop out, if I’m being honest about things. I guess time will tell and it looks like Missy will be making a return visit next week so... we shall see what we shall see. In the meantime, Oxygen was another cracking episode of the current series and, asides from the Knock Knock episode of last week (reviewed here) this is turning out to be one of the better seasons of recent years. Fingers crossed that it continues as such.

Doctor Who - Knock Knock

Dryad A Bone

Doctor Who - Knock Knock
Airdate: 6th May 2017
BBC 1

One of the problems in reviewing one of your favourite TV shows on an episode by episode basis instead of a Series Overview kind of deal is that, sooner or late, you’re going to have the odd dud episode with nothing much to say about it. Not that this episode is a complete misfire, far from it. It’s totally appropriate for the series as a whole and fits right into things... ticking many Doctor Who check boxes along the way. That being said, this latest episode, Knock Knock, is not a particularly memorable one and, although it takes the old ‘trapped in a haunted house’ premise as a basic starting point, I feel it doesn’t tap into the rich vein of spookiness that usually ensues when you pitch a Doctor Who cast against things which, seemingly, go bump in the night.

In other words... this one really wasn’t scary.

However, I don’t really know why it was that the episode felt like a bit of a damp squib for me. The writing is pretty sound and there are lots of positive things going on in the episode, which is mostly a standalone thing. And, unusually for me with this particular show, I’m going to praise the special effects here and say that the whole thing, which involved a lot  of dryads (as The Doctor called the slightly oversized alien woodlice that are the stand in for an actual villain, in some ways, this week) and also a creature made out of wood, were extremely well put together. I say ‘unusually for me’ not because the visual effects in modern day Doctor Who are usually bad (they are but I’m really not too worried about that... they’re just an impression to serve the story) but more because they looked impressively realistic compared to a lot of what you see on television these days. Mind you, I also say this with a little unease because, really, the story should be sitting up and making me concentrate on it as a whole rather than giving me time to appreciate the effects work, surely?

As usual, the cast were all very good. In addition to Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas as The Doctor, Bill and Nardole, we had a great group of young people playing University Students and also the classic actor David Suchet in the role of the mysterious caretaker of a house which basically absorbs people into the walls. There’s some nice writing between the young people themselves and the way in which they interact with The Doctor although, it has to be said of the writing that, I really don’t need a stupidly eccentric scene put in every other week to remind us all that Bill is gay. We get it already.

Maybe it was just my expectations of an episode about a big old house which seals everybody in for the night before it has mystery shenanigans that spoiled my emotional investment in this one. I was waiting to be scared and, alas, in that respect at least, it was nowhere anywhere near the ball park of various frightening episodes of the show. All in all I was disappointed with the main body of the story but there were a few interesting things referring to the main story arc for the season that were much more compelling...

You remember my theory that Bill might be tied into the original first incarnation of The Doctor’s granddaughter from 1963, Susan Foreman? Possibly even being a previous incarnation of Susan herself. Well due to a mix up with Bill’s new flat mates and her relationship to The Doctor, she did call him grandfather a fair few times in this episode... so I still think show runner Steven Moffat is putting this stuff in to trigger something in our minds for the last episode (or possibly the Christmas special).

Also, it now seems pretty obvious that there’s a person of some sort in the vault. I’m not ruling out The Doctor or The Master still but I think there’s even a chance it could be Bill herself... or something of her in there, at least. Again, we’re only a third of the way through this series now so I’m going to carry on reserving judgement on this issue until we get a little closer to the season finale. If, indeed, it is a finale and they’re not saving it for the Christmas special like they did once before.

And... once again, I’m sorry this one is such a short review but I really have nothing too constructive to say about it, to be honest. I wasn’t bowled over by it or even moved by it, really... but there was nothing glaringly wrong with it either, apart from maybe certain bits of the story continuity which didn’t quite make sense and the lack of certain key elements to the set up not always behaving in the same way twice. This is, so far, the worst episode of this current series but, I would hope, things can only go back up from here.

Doctor Who - Thin Ice

The Dirty Frozen

Doctor Who - Thin Ice
Airdate: 29th April 2017
BBC 1

Thin Ice, the third episode of Series Ten (of the new Doctor Who’s... not counting the many series of serials before the show was resurrected and regenerated) is another corker and, as it’s an almost totally stand alone story, this is probably going to be another fairly short review so... my apologies.

Carrying on from last week’s exciting installment Smile, reviewed here, The Doctor and Bill find themselves, by a strange coincidence, at the last great frost fair in London 1814. Frost fairs were held on the ice when the Thames froze over and I say this is a strange coincidence because, last week, a special friend from foreign shores came to visit me and on one of the days we spent together we pitched up by the side of the Thames for a tour of The Globe Theatre and, while we were in the museum at The Globe, we saw a model of the Frost Fair there.

Anyway, The Doctor and Bill find themselves at the Frost Fair and, in typical Doctor Who fashion, it doesn’t take them very long to discover a death dealing mystery emerging from beneath the ice. What are the strange lights that are targeting and carrying people to their doom and how are some particularly nasty specimens of the human race profiting from this? It’s up to our heroes to find out and they do so with less action and more talking, it has to be said, than usual. But that’s okay.

This one is very much a character piece and the writer uses it to explore the growing relationship between Bill and The Doctor as Bill struggles to come to terms with The Doctor’s seemingly cold, almost indifference to the death of a child and comes to realise that, while The Doctor always cares, moving on quickly and getting on with the job in hand is always the right decision if you want to save more lives. This is where Bill realises that, not only has The Doctor faced death on too many occasions to count, he has also had to kill people... on too many occasions to count. This episode explores how she reacts to that and how she comes to understand the necessity and compassion of The Doctor’s actions.

Now, there was one scene here which rang a little alarmingly wrong with me and it was the punchline, literally, to a joke set up where The Doctor tells Bill to hold her tongue and not react with passion to anything the lead villain says because it will stop the flow of information they need to figure out just what is going on. He then, on encountering the racist overtones of bad guy and the instant hatred of The Doctor’s new companion, straight away punches the guy and knocks him over. Now... good for him but it’s entirely out of character, it seems to me, for The Doctor to go around using physical force on somebody (even if he was the more physical Jon Pertwee incarnation, he wouldn't have thrown a first punch). So I’m really not sure what’s going on here.

Other than this slight mis-step though, the episode is a nice one with some nice scenes involving old time diving equipment, some nice speeches about the value of a life and a number of jokes as The Doctor and Bill get into some banter at various points in the, admittedly, very simple story. There are also some interesting comments about the way in which time can be changed by accident and how, sometimes, it’s best not to worry about such things... which I thought was pretty neat. Although, there’s a sequence where the villain is running along the ice and Murray Gold’s musical sub theme action music for this incarnation of The Doctor is needle dropped into the score... which made no sense to me in terms of leitmotif and I have to wonder what was going on there, to be honest. It seemed to be completely out of place and, also, out of character for Murray because he’s done such deft and magical work on the scoring of other episodes... if, indeed, he was even involved in the decision of tracking that music in there in the first place.

At the end of the episode, which doesn’t seem to go into the next one along as I’d expected it would, we have a little more talk between Matt Lucas’ character Nardole and The Doctor about the contents of the vault The Doctor is supposed to be guarding and, also, some knocking coming from the vault with Nardole talking to what/whoever is behind the door. Could it be The Doctor himself locked within? Well, I’m liking that theory less now since Nardole has a line which almost specifically points the finger at a version of The Doctor being within the vault... so I’m guessing it probably won’t be him then. Perhaps, then, it’s something or someone which is Bill herself, in some other form? I don’t know and, for the moment, I’m not remotely interested until we get to the last few episodes. I am, however, looking forward to next week’s installment because it looks like we are getting into a haunted house story and, as you may or may not know, I love the spooky ones. Hopefully it’s as consistently as good as the first three episodes of this series have been. Time, and space, will tell.

Doctor Who - Smile

Frown Upside Town

Doctor Who - Smile
Airdate: 22nd April 2017
BBC 1

Okay, so episode two of the new series is another pretty good one. Not nearly as strong as last week’s set up, for sure, but as a stand alone story without too much of the series thread going on in it (I’ll get to that in a minute), it made for a pretty satisfying episode... although a familiar enough one in terms of the variety of stories you get on the show. And, look, it would be pretty hard to do a story type which hasn’t been done in the 50 plus year history of the show so, you know, this is not a problem.

So we have an episode which carries on exactly where we left off last week (I’ll get to that in a minute, too) with Bill entering the TARDIS for her first proper expedition, this time to a planet in the far future where a colony has been built for one of the fleeing starships who were evacuated from Earth sometime in our far future. After some slight stuff with Matt Lucas to remind us of ‘The Vault’ that The Doctor is supposed to be guarding, something which is brought up later in the episode too, just so we don’t forget about it for sure, The Doctor and Bill find themselves in an empty colony populated by inadvertently lethal micro-robots, like flying nanites, and their silent, emoji speaking robot interfaces. A, very slight, mystery for The Doctor and Bill to solve as they penetrate to the heart of the robot town/colony to the actual starship it was built out of, the Erewhon (the name of which is apparently a Victorian reference I was completely oblivious to... thanks beckygracelea of twitter... and which also happens to be an anagram of Nowhere... and was also a Star Trek spaceship etc). There, while The Doctor attempts to blow the place up before the emojibots can call their mechanical masters to strip future settlers of their skin, tissue and organs before grinding up their bones for fertiliser, Bill makes a more interesting discovery.

Okay so, it really wasn’t a bad one and I like the way this series is going. It was nicely shot with some very neutral, white corridors offset with some much more colourful lighting schemes when The Doctor and Bill finally reach the actual starship at the heart of the town. It was fairly fast paced although some of the sequences, like The Doctor trying to park Bill back on the TARDIS before they both go back, seemed a little like padding, in some ways. Nice padding, though, so that really doesn’t bother me.

Bill seems to be working out really well as a companion. She has a nice chemistry with Capaldi and so it’s a shame that Capaldi and, I strongly suspect, Bill, will not survive the end of the year in the show.

And about that...

Last week I had some pretty wild theories about Bill, one of which of her actually being a former incarnation of The Doctor’s grandchild Susan Foreman and regenerating at the end of the year to be left with the William Hartnell incarnation of The Doctor. You can read my full blown speculation and possible variants in last week's review here. Now, as it happens, there’s already a scene here which, at least on the surface, confounds that issue. When Bill expresses she is starving, a table is set for them both... one plate has two jellies and one plate just the one. Bill takes the plate with one and The Doctor speculates that two jellies were laid out for him because he has two hearts and she only has the one. So that would rule out timelord then, in her case. Unless, as I originally assumed, the computer set the two for her because she was more hungry. That being said, if 'The Doctor and River’s' daughter, then maybe her mother’s partner was a human in which case... it might explain why she has one heart. Or maybe her mother was the wife of The Doctor and River's son? Although, if that’s the answer then I shall be grumpy because... the first episode of Doctor Who was called An Unearthly Child for a reason.

So that does seem to rule out Bill being The Doctors grandaughter... or does it?

That thing about the jelly really could be a cunning ploy by one of the writers to throw us off the scent, perhaps. After all, I’ve had to grow accustomed to the writing on the show getting very devious over the last 6 or so years for that very purpose, it seems to me. So I’m not completely ruling out that theory yet and, as fuel to my wild eyed fan boy-like fire, the cat was kinda let out the bag earlier in the week that David Bradley is returning to the show for this year’s Christmas special, which is also touted as Capaldi’s swan song. Now Bradley, as you probably know, did a wonderful turn as part of the 50 years celebration of the show in An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here) playing William Hartnell in that drama about the making of the first few years of Doctor Who. Now, although Bradley has already played a totally different role in the show a few years back, I can only assume that he’s coming back at Christmas to play the ‘Bill’ Hartnell incarnation of The First Doctor so... we shall see?

Meanwhile we also have to solve the mystery of what’s in the vault The Doctor is supposed to be guarding. Is it just an empty blind to hide the mystery of Bill, hidden in plain sight, or is it something more tangible like, oh, you know, Gallifrey. Only time will tell, I guess.

The end of this story dovetails straight into the next episode with our weekly time travellers already arrived at their next destination for next week’s shenanigans... which is similar to the way this episode picked up straight from where we were last week. Now this is quite a nice because it's the way the old shows were formatted in the days of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, with the end of the story leading into the next. So the show runner and writers are definitely going for that ‘old school’ feel in this series, which is cool... especially for old timers like myself.

So there you have it... I really don’t have much to say about Smile other than it was a pretty solid installment and definitely worth a revisit when the inevitable end of year Blu Ray set is released. Really enjoying this show again and really liking the way Capaldi’s version of the central character has developed.

Doctor Who - The Pilot

Fore Play

Doctor Who - The Pilot
Airdate: 15th April 2017 BBC 1

Well this was a very strong start to the latest series of Britain’s most popular science fiction export (arguably more popular than Professor Quatermass, although I really don’t think it could exist without the good Professor clearing the path in the first place, so to speak). This episode introduces a new companion or, quite possibly, an old companion (yeah, alright, I’ll get to my silly speculation bits later) in the shape of lesbian character Bill Pott’s, played by the really very good Pearl Mackie, and also brings back the current ‘sort of’ companion Nardole, as played by Matt Lucas (who is also good... which shouldn’t surprise me but it does). This is the episode which had a preview scene released quite a while ago (over a year?) but I noticed there’s a heck of a lot less dialogue coming from Bill in the version of the scene as it was presented here so I can only assume that the character has undergone some ‘tweaks’ since she was first written in... well they’ve had a very long time between series’ to tinker with her, I guess.

So the episode starts off strongly for me, personally, because we have The Doctor, now seen to be a lecturer at Bristol University, explaining to students as to the nature of time. Time, he says, is an illusion created by seeing lots of static bits placed in such a way that the perception of them experienced one slice after another gives us a sense of a journey over ‘time’. This is nicely demonstrated with a moment which seems like it would better fit right in with Moffat’s other hit TV show, Sherlock, in that the film itself (although we’re really watching digital, right?) is sliced up before us as a metaphor for the explanation of the true nature of time. I’ve been telling people they’ve been looking at time all wrong for years... as a fluid rather than a static state accessed in a specific way we are mostly cursed with looking at it... it doesn’t exist. So it’s good that the universe’s premiere timelord has finally gone on record as saying this.

Okay, so we have a really good opener because it does what Doctor Who does best... gives us a mystery to work on. In this case there’s more than one because we have the introduction of Bill and the mysteries surrounding her and The Doctor’s mysterious ‘secret vault’... and we also have the writer running through the wet paint very fast to distract us with the mystery which gives the story its name. That of The Pilot... who appears as a manifestation of a permanent puddle which can chase you through time from one end of the galaxy to another and reflect your image back as a feedback the right way around, rather than a true reflection. This in itself is good stuff and this underlying plot, which I won’t detail here, helps explore the sexual diversity of the new companion and does it in a romantic way, full of wonder. So that’s all good then.

We also have another encounter with the Daleks which, fortunately, is only a minor appearance and doesn’t hook in with the main plot. There’s one of a few nice little nods to the history of the show which are found in this episode here in that the Movellans are seen with them. I couldn’t believe it because the last and, I suspect, only other time we saw them was in the Tom Baker serial Destiny Of The Daleks back in 1979. My joy was slightly tempered by the fact that the Daleks we see with them are a more updated design than they were when the Movellans were around but... oh, well... that BBC budget thing is getting in the way of authenticity, I suspect.

Another nice and, I suspect, ‘more important than they’re letting on’ reference came up in the scene where The Doctor was persuaded not to use a memory wipe on Bill. The implication of him falling victim of the very same thing in the last episode to feature Jenna Coleman as the deal breaker here was beautifully re-enforced by composer Murray Gold using his old companion Clara’s theme to support those moments... lovely stuff.

But there’s more than one mystery her to solve and, as is usual for the rebooted Doctor Who stories since the time of Christopher Eccleston’s reincarnation of the character, there’s an underlying puzzle thread to be solved which will obviously be an arc for the entire series. We know that Peter Capaldi will be leaving soon, allegedly during the Christmas special but, I suspect, the transformation may be a little sooner than that... after all the Mondas cybermen who are returning for the last two episodes of the series and who haven’t been seen in the show since 1966 saw the death of the William Hartnell incarnation of the character (who I suspect Bill is named after by the writer, in an affectionate tribute) and it would be a nice, fearful symmetry if they were to cause the death/regeneration of the latest incarnation too. But this is not the real mystery and nor, I suspect, is the vault which The Doctor is apparently guarding. He would know better than to have something precious locked up, surely? He’d hide it in plain sight I would have thought. It could be a TARDIS or a nursery even but, I suspect, something timelordy (especially if The Master is making a return) and so I think it’s about time I went into the ‘wild speculation’ section of this review. So I apologise if all this turns out to be silly...

We are used, over the last ten years or so, to seeing references to the previous episodes of the show and they are usually very brief, blink and you’ll miss them, shout outs. However, we have here a Doctor who has a picture of his 'late' wife River Song on his desk at the University along with a photo of his Grandaghter Susan Foreman, as seen in the first year or so of the original series. She was played by Carol Ann Ford and she left the show in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, which I reviewed towards the end of last year here. And The Doctor keeps coming back to these photos throughout the episode rather than just have this as a throwaway shout out so... the writer wants us to notice something here.

Now I have several theories on the subject but this is my pet one at the moment. I’m betting on something similar to this but, please remember, I’m only one episode in so the pieces of the puzzle might not all have been revealed as yet...

What’s missing from this set of photos? We have The Doctor’s wife and The Doctor’s granddaughter... no Doctor’s son or daughter... whichever that was. That element is decidedly missing. We also have a new companion called Bill who The Doctor has suddenly taken an interest in and whose mother died when she was born. When she is now given some photos of her mother before she died, she spots the reflection of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor in a mirror taking the photo in one of them. And then she, and we, are all promptly asked to forget about it as the ‘puddle story’ takes up the heat for most of the rest of the episode...

However, if we don’t let ourselves get distracted we have the idea that we have The Doctor who knew Bill’s mum before she died and the idea of memory wipes represented. So my number one theory at the moment is that Bill’s mum was The Doctor’s daughter and, since Pearl Mackie doesn’t seem to be expecting to be staying around past this current series, I’m guessing her mind will be wiped a little and that she is The Doctor’s granddaughter and, when she regenerates into the familiar Susan Foreman incarnation of the character through televisual trickery at the end of the show, she will be left with an earlier incarnation of The Doctor (aka William Hartnell) and he will take her to Coal Hill School, sometime shortly before the very first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, takes place.

Well, that’s my most favourite conclusion at the moment, anyway. Although, if that really does prove to be the case, then the LGBT community will want Moffat’s head on a stick for having a lesbian character who regenerates into a character who runs off with a man at some point. So maybe not. But I like the idea that the new companion ‘may’ be Susan or, at the very least, in some way related to her so... lets see if she’s revealed to be in possession of two hearts anytime soon, eh?

And that’s that for me. Great opener and I can only hope the show continues at this quality. I guess I’ll find out next week.