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 - 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: The Time Of The Doctor

Capaldi Other One, 
It’s Got Jingle Bells On...

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor
UK Airdate: 25th December 2013
BBC 2

Warning: Yes, more spoilerage I’m afraid.

Well that was a bit better.

In fact, it was a lot better. This time around Steven Moffat went back to getting almost everything right about giving us an entertaining Christmas special where everything actually made a bit of sense.  “Almost everything right” did I say? Well, yeah, come on... if you’ve been reading my reviews of the show ever since I started this blog you’ll know I usually have at least a couple of gripes with an episode (at best) and, at worst, a whole load of them.

Fortunately for me, this is definitely an “at best” situation, which means, well you know, like I said... I have a couple of gripes. I’ll save those for a little way down the page though as I’m going to focus on some of the positive stuff here first and, as a “for instance”...

The tone was perfect and just the right mixture of joy tinged with deep and bitter sadness which is the thing you always need to travel through and get a really good Christmas special... Doctor Who or otherwise. The performances of Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman were, as was expected, absolutely brilliant and, as another expected bonus, but a bonus nonetheless... so were the performances of everybody else. Especially that of Orla Brady as Tasha Lem, who is a character who you cotton onto as being kind of interesting and just what the show needed right from the start. Unfortunately she’s dead and dalek channeling before the end of the episode but, hey ho, you can’t have everything.

The story was great and, in addition to having just the right blend of fairytale and tragedy that was required, it actually tied up (hopefully for good) a whole lot of loose ends which had been occurring since Matt Smith first made an appearance. Some things I knew were going to be back... Amy’s crack in the wall, if you didn’t see that one coming then... seriously? And some things I didn’t... but that’s only because the various people in question had been lying to us all on behalf of the BBC and saying they would never ever return to the show... yeah, I’m looking at you Amy Pond/Karen Gillan. Nice to see you but, if I’d have been less trusting, I would have put money on an appearance from you in the last of the Matt Smith episodes.

More importantly though... the Moffster put right something that the fans had been waiting to be addressed for quite a while now... and I’m going to ignore continuity with The Brain Of Morbius for now because, seriously, cut the guy some slack. Hopefully he’ll get to it.

But anyway, what I mean is, he’s addressed the issue of The Doctor only having 12 regenerations. He explains how he’s actually the 13th version of The Doctor (12 regenerations means 13 bodies... makes sense, right?) and the Time Lords (presumably benevolent to him after hiding their planet away in the last episode) have given him a reset with a whole new set of twelve regenerations to get through. So that’s good... let the writers in 50 or so years have another crack at solving that problem again with their own deus ex machina to thrown into that mess.

For now though... he’s throughly reset.

The special effects were okay again on this one... or at least they certainly weren’t terrible and Murray Gold’s score, whilst seeming to have a lot of tracked cues again (been a while since we heard the tenth Doctor action theme All The Strange, Strange Creatures isn’t it... and completely out of context, all leitmotif aside), was serviceable and, mostly, appropriate to what was going on... if not all that memorable compared to some of the episodes he’s scored.

And so I come to my gripes... you knew they were coming so fair warning to you. Don’t read on if they’re going ot upset you.

Number one gripe is I found the last ten minutes or so a bit, well as I said above, deus ex machiney wheeney... but, a far greater crime than that, I thought that last fifth was... well... kinda dull. But that’s okay... I loved the rest of the episode and often, as in some really good sex, getting there was as rewarding as the actual orgasm itself (although those are always fun too, obviously) and so it’s just a minor gripe, honest guv. I can live with that.

Gripe number two is a minor disappointment too and it concerns the new incarnation of The Doctor, Peter Capaldi, who I have to confess is not and actor I am all that familiar with... since I’ve only seen him in Doctor Who and Torchwood before now. So was it a good performance or was it a bad first impression? Well I’m afraid I’ve got only one answer to that... I have no idea, the sound mix was so bad I couldn’t understand a word he was saying!

Seriously, I couldn’t hear him through all the hullabaloo on the sound mix and that was quite sad. Now it may have been a ploy by the production team because they don’t want to give you too much of a decent impression of him yet before they’re all properly ready... or it might just have been either bad mixing or something which went wrong with the broadcast... who can say? All I know is that I have no idea what Capaldi’s Doctor is like as yet... but at least that gives me something to look forward to in the new year, at least as far as this show is concerned.

So there you have it. A cracking Christmas episode, a bit overdone at the end like a turkey that’s been too long in the oven, and not quite up to the brilliance of the last two Christmas specials... but good enough. Like I said at the start of this review... Moffett got almost everything right, so that was all well and good then.

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan

Melody’s Song

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan
Airdate: 29th September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Absolutely loads of spoilers in this one, sweetie!

Right then. Following on from last week’s sentiments... I’m kinda glad I don’t have to write anymore reviews of new Doctor Who for a while after this week (although, stay tuned to my blog... Silurians and Sea Devils will be coming). It’s getting to feel a little disappointing when every episode seems to be a little less than I was expecting/hoping. It’s like writing up Torchwood 4 all over again.

So, anyway...

The much publicised “departure of The Ponds and return of The Weeping Angels” episode started off really well with some moody, 1930s New York set ups and an appearance from a creature who I knew would have to be in it, but whom I was expecting to be saved until the end as a “big gun”. That is to say, and it’s all pretty obvious even to a child, I’m afraid, that as soon as you hear the episode is going to feature these popular foes and the title is going to be The Angels Take Manhattan, you pretty much have expectations that you’re going to see The Statue Of Liberty running around. They obviously thought it was obvious too, because they stuck it  in right from the start... although you don’t see it running around because, presumably, the budget wasn’t big enough. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to see the angels moving but, let’s face it, they did in the last one (even though it made absolutely no sense and broke all the “rules” that were set up in the excellent episode Blink) and, frankly, it’s not like nobody’s not going to notice The Statue Of Liberty running around anyway. It really wouldn’t have made it off its island without being spotted so, well... it’s not really making a lot of sense is it.

The episode starts off intriguing and quite charming until about half way through when all bets are off and you really find yourself drifting through an episode of... um... not much really. The chemistry between River Song (one of my favourite characters) and The Doctor seemed a little stale this time... some of the lines were good but it really wasn’t done with the same sense of fun coming across I usually get from episodes with this character. Still, The Doctor hasn’t sent her off to her final fate as yet (as seen in the David Tennant episodes) and so there’s plenty of time for her to come back and do good in future installments. Although, if The Doctor is supposed to be whisking her away each night from her prison and she’s been pardoned for murdering someone who doesn’t exist... how does that all work? She’s not in jail now for her adventures and, presumably, she’s served some time already for... um... not killing someone? Hmmm... this was all thought through properly wasn't it, eh? I’m kinda feeling let down like there’s not going to be any magical “fixing” of this storyline in future episodes now.

I think, to date, this has been the worst series of Doctor Who I’ve seen in quite some time... and I seem to be saying that a lot just lately. On the other hand there was some good stuff in this one too.

The production values... despite not having the money for miniatures to show The Statue Of Liberty walking... were pretty cool. The thing looked nice and moved along at a good pace... I really think the main weakness on this one was the writing I’m afraid. Apologies about that but there you have it. It’s how I feel. Although, saying that, the idea of having a recurring and constant “human battery farm” of a meal by recycling would be rescuers of their own future selves was a little touch of genius... just not enough to cut it the kind of slack i would prefer to.

Oh well, time will tell for the programme, I think. New companion this Christmas, although she seems to be a Dalek, so it’ll be interesting how they address that issue... and Asylum Of The Daleks was my favourite story of this series so maybe the new gal will breathe life into the show and give it the impetus it so greatly needs right now.  Hopefully I’ll be able to review that for you all on Boxing Day if nothing drastic happens to me, like death or senility, so I’ll enjoy my welcome break from reviewing these shows for now, methinks. Thank you for reading. More film reviews here very soon (hopefully tomorrow sometime).

While My Angel Gently Weeps

Doctor Who:

Flesh and Stone

Airdate: May 1st 2010. UK. BBC1

Woohoo. Okay, first things first. This was another thoroughly entertaining episode of Doctor Who... that’s two in a row now this season. Perhaps the show is finally getting back on track. I do have a bad thing or two to say about it but ultimately, before I do, I just want to go on record by saying that I really enjoyed it... the pacing was good and, for once in this season, the Doctor’s personality was allowed to come to the fore and he was a timelord to reckon with. Hooray.

However... there was some not so good stuff here too. First up... was that really supposed to be a revelation with River Song? I thought we were supposed to know... or at least deduce pretty quickly... that River Song had killed the Doctor off... or at least one of his lives. Thats the only way the narrative structural poetry would best work... surely... if they are both witness to each other’s death. Did they not already say she’d been in prison? And for the Doctor’s death? And here’s one for thought which is probably totally off base but I just want to throw it into the mix and see if it works... assuming that River Song is a time lord (and for the moment I am because, how else are they going to get out of the fact that she needs to get younger every time she meets the Doctor?), then is Amy Pond (which by the way might be a further Duck Pond reference from the first episode of this season) actually a future regeneration of River Song? Just a thought.

Anyway... two big problems I had with this episode and both to do with the way in which the monsters are written and both to do with certain ground rules of physics set up in the David Tennant episode Blink.

1. The human brain contains a memory image of the angels in your head when you look them in the eye... thus turning you, yourself into an angel, right? At least that’s what they’ve implied in this story. Therefore my first question is... how come Sally Sparrow and her friend didn’t turn into angels in the space of time between her meeting the angels and giving the Doctor the transcript of the conversation he needs to have with her in her past in Blink? Don’t be making up new monster rules if you’re going to screw up the past stories!

2. Ok... the angels can’t move when anything sees them because they’re quantum locked to stone when they’re being looked at, right? In fact, that’s how the Doctor defeated the angels in Blink... by dematerialising the Tardis and leaving the four angels that were around it looking at each other and thus trapping themselves, never to move again (without outside interference). Sooo... how can you have a whole army of them moving to grab Amy (moving very slowly considering they’re the fastest things in the universe I might point out) when they can all see each other? That’s rubbish... they would quantum lock each other out.

So those are my two minor gripes... looking forward to next weeks episode a lot but not as much as the one which comes after. Vampires in Venice could be good but Amy’s Choice sounds fabulous.

The Doctor is getting back on course to being essential viewing. Keeping my finger’s crossed that the next two will be really something.

No Turn Unstoned

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels

Airdate: April 24th 2010. UK. BBC1

Well that’s a bit better. Not only do we have the return of those lovable temporal assassins “The Weeping Angels” but also Dr. River Song, the Doctor’s future lover (?) whom I now believe might well be the cause of the Doctor’s death in the future but... well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves... spoilers.

Ok, lets be clear here. This was not a great episode of Doctor Who... but it was certainly on a par with the first 30 minutes or so of The Eleventh Hour so... in my book anyway... that makes this the best episode of the current series so far.

And, yes, there were no bloody twists again. Everything you thought might have been meant to be a reveal seemed to be telegraphed a little beforehand. Oh, right. So the image becomes the angel does it? Yeah, nice of you to tell us but, you know what? It was already bleeding obvious. Oh... the eyes are a doorway to the soul are they. Blimey, we’re pretty stupid if we didn’t already realise that Amy was starting the transformation into an angel even before she left that surveillance room!

But still... I guess it’s a children’s show too so maybe it wasn’t as obvious to their primary target audience. Would have preferred a little more challenge to the story personally.

Still... mustn’t grumble. Just because it wasn’t all twisty, turny, doesn’t make it a bad show. It was quite competent at sustaining the pace and River was a joy to watch. And so was Amy. And once again the Doctor seems to be pushed out of the limelight and ends up playing second, or even third, fiddle to the stronger, dominant personalities of his companions.

Writer Steven Moffet managed to hit the same notes as his Vashta Nerada episodes by having the Weeping Angels “borrow” the vocal chords of their dead victims to communicate after death, as a stand in for the after dead computer loop voices of the space suited victims of the aforementioned “piranhas of the air”.

Probably the first ten minutes of this episode were the best, followed by a switch-your-brain-off, fairly well put together episode. But, you know, did anyone else feel that this episode was just a little bit like the opening episode of Earthshock?

Doesn’t matter. Cliff hanger (ish) ending which kind of gives away the cliffhanger. Stupid BBC ident announcing the next programme over the Doctor’s big soliloquy (stupid BBC idiots - if you want me to continue watching this show live on air - don’t EVER do that again. Anybody reading this should email them to complain RIGHT NOW). If I was Steven Moffett I would be really displeased with this shabby treatment of what is, lets face it, the BBCs flagship show.

Let’s hope the next episode builds on the foundations of this one or at least matches it.

Don’t blink!