The Bells of Saint John - Season 7, Episode 6
We start with some "previously, on Doctor Who" dialogue and the (admittedly amusing) joke about the titular bells. This sends The Doctor off to meet Clara again to find out how she got his number. After an attack by one of what is undoubtedly Moffet's worst monsters yet, the Spoonheads, The Doctor seems to immediately forget what brought him there in the first place and reverts to default "coax the young girl into the van" mode. This reeked a bit of TheCompanion Show, featuring The Doctor, but in all fairness, we've had to treat each encounter with Clara as a re-introduction, which puts her character at the forefront.
The Spoonheads themselves are a very poor monster because they are no real threat. They are sort of creepy in that "crazy person standing and staring" way, but The Doctor can just scramble them with the Sonic Screwdriver and they're gone. Boring! I felt the invisible threat of all encompassing WiFi to be much more disturbing that stupid robots with no back of their heads.
As a positive, there isn't all that much Deus Ex Screwdriver in this episode. The Doctor uses the Sonic to disassemble a Spoonhead (a process he is shown taking some time to do), but does the majority of his problem solving through bulk-standard "hacking" with a laptop.
The episode suffers badly from Go, go, go, Geronimo! The Doctor is running around in a manic whirl trying to impress Clara more than solve the problem. In fact, the problem seems to solve itself. The resolution seems rushed, and is pretty much the classic "hit the self destruct and run out the secret tunnel" villain move. Totally unimaginative, and a huge let-down.
3/10
Can we fix it?
I think with a few changes this one could be fairly reasonable. The basic concept of WiFi hacking of people was interesting, but it was diluted by the ridiculous Spoonheads and Clara's re-introduction to The Doctor.
First up, I'd remove the Spoonheads. They are stupid, pose no real threat and exist purely as low level goons for The Doctor to defeat easily. The main threat of this episode it the WiFi itself, and there is no need for robotic mobile WiFi towers because as was pointed out several times in the episode, the majority of London would be covered by some WiFi or other. We would see the Uploaders ijacking routers and mobile phones to act as new nodes for their WiFi network, thereby turning our own tech against us, which is far more insidious in my opinion.
The Never-should-have-beens
The concept of hacking people to change their "stats" was also interesting, but I would prefer to have seen it as a parasitic leeching of those stats from other hacked people, using their "processing power" to perform your own tasks. If one of the agents wanted to buff their creativity or intelligence, they would be drawing it from another person. In this way, people aren't necessarily dying in front of their computers, just becoming increasingly stupid (see the metaphor there?). We hear the old "the farmer loves his flock" metaphor, but I prefer "why eat chicken today when you can have eggs forever?" Eventually they would be totally uploaded to the Cloud and consumed, but not at the rate the episode implied (surely people would have noticed that).
I also feel The Great Intelligence shouldn't have been so explicitly revealed as The Client in this episode. I would have preferred it as just being a voice on the phone, and one we can't hear at that. Most viewers would likely guess The Client is The Great Intelligence, but being less obvious creates that "aren't I smart" reward for those that need that kind of thing.
So, as the episode starts we have The Doctor get his phone call from Clara looking for IT help. This scene could play out almost the same until The Doctor gets to Clara's house. At this point, instead of rescuing Clara from a Spoonhead, The Doctor presses the matter of the person who gave her his number, all the while Clara is being integrated.
The Doctor convinces her to take him to the store where she got the number, and during the walk there we get some introductory small talk showing that she is smart and quick witted. Maybe we even have a guy staring at his phone almost run into them before saying something stupid like, "LOL! Soz mate!"
Here we see more of the Uploaders doing their hacking and stat boosting with exposition of how it works. We see Clara is now fully integrated and they hack her to switch her phone's personal hot-spot on, creating another Wi-Fi node.
Clara comes out of the store and tells The Doctor that the woman who gave her his number wasn't there, and the funny thing is the store owner said he didn't have any female employees. The Doctor asks Clara what the woman looked like, but as Clara begins a vague description, she exhibits signs of a drop in intelligence and focus, umming and aahing and getting distracted before The Doctor can get anything useful out of her. At this point The Doctor becomes concerned about what's going on, perhaps looking around and noticing a lot of people on laptops, tablets and phones all zoned out or acting stupid.
The Agents are seen discovering The Doctor on Clara's WiFi and begin integrating him, only to notice it seems to be taking ages. They get Miss Kizlet and explain that the speeds are fine, he's just a huge file. She goes off to talk to The Client, and tells them to keep integrating. When she returns later she orders all available bandwidth put on downloading The Doctor to the Cloud.
The Doctor makes the connection to the intelligence drop and the WiFi, and takes Clara on board the TARDIS to escape it, at which point we see The Doctor is at 99% downloaded. The Uploaders puzzle over how he disappeared from WiFi range in the middle of London and Miss Kizlet goes to convene with The Client again. When she reappears she tells the other Uploaders to look for a Blue Police Box.
Clara recovers in the TARDIS and The Doctor does some exposition and wondering aloud how he can defeat the Uploaders whilst examining Clara's phone. He eventually gets on to viruses, and this gives him an idea. We see him sit down and begin meditating.
Eventually the Uploaders have scoured London and have found the Doctor's TARDIS and surround it just as he exits. At this point his download resumes, clicks over to 100% and The Doctor falls unconscious to the ground. We see Miss Kizlet observing The Doctor in the Cloud monitors, but unlike the other inhabitants of the Cloud, The Doctor says he knows just where he is. At this point the system goes haywire, Uploaders begin resetting and those with bodies to go to begin to return.
Miss Kizlet runs to her office and calls The Client, whom we gather from her end of the conversation is abandoning her. She gives the "I don't know who I'll be without you" line before The Doctor's brain hacking of the Cloud resets everything and UNIT arrives to find the Woman-child Kizlet on the floor of her office.
Post resolution wrap up would be similar, with the addition of Clara having large gaps in her memory, and not remembering the woman who gave her The Doctor's number at all.
Boom! Job's a good 'un.
I'd love to hear what you guys would have done differently.
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