Review - Flatline

Clara takes a turn at being The Doctor, investigating some extra-dimensional creatures in Flatline.

Season 8, Episode 9 - Flatline

In the cold open we see a terrified man trying to report to the police some knowledge of who is behind some unspoken plot. He claims whomever "did it" is everywhere, before promptly vanishing. As the person on the other end of the phone line keeps trying to talk to him, we see he appears to have been sucked into the wall and stretched out of all proportion.

We join the TARDIS crew just after another jaunt through time and space, as Clara is set to be dropped off in London in time to meet a still unsuspecting Danny Pink. Unfortunately due to some external force, the TARDIS gets stuck in Bristol. Quite apart from that, it begins to shrink as the unknown force begins leeching dimensional energy from it.

BBC budget cuts take a disturbing turn.

Naturally The Doctor gets stuck inside, leaving Clara to investigate what's going on. This leads her to a community service maintenance team who are painting over graffiti. Local graffiti artist Rigsy fills Clara in on a recent spate of disappearances, including that of his aunt. All of the vanished people have been painted on the walls of a pedestrian underpass by an unknown artist.

Clara has fun teasing The Doctor by pretending to be him, but pretty soon things take a serious turn when a Police Officer vanishes from the next room by being sucked into the floor. All that is left when Clara and Rigsy arrive is a tree-like pattern on the wall. The Doctor quickly identifies it as a human nervous system, and the creatures attack again.

Clara and Rigsy manage to escape as Clara takes a call from Danny. A call that sounded highly suspect from his end. Not sure if I'm being a bit sensitive to In-Who-Endos here, but that seemed crafted to sound sexual. Danny was pretty cool about it though, almost as if he already suspects Clara is still hanging out with The Doctor.

Eventually we end up back at the underpass where the mural of the victims comes to life and menaces the community service work crew, sending them fleeing into the rail tunnels. Working through Clara, The Doctor tries to communicate with the entities, believing (or maybe hoping) that they aren't malicious, but jut misguided. It was nice to see him take this angle, as it shows he is still compassionate and understanding, even if he is curmudgeonly.

Obviously he is wrong, because the creatures continue to attack, and eventually take on Three-Dimensional human forms. That's where this episode loses it a bit. In their Two-Dimensional form, they are much scarier and far more threatening than when they take on human form and become yet another lot of shambling zombies. If it wasn't for the fact that their victims had already managed to get trapped down a network of tunnels with one exit, they would be easily escapable, despite their ability to remove the third dimension from things.

"Advance slowly and act menacing."

They do continue to leech power from the TARDIS though, which eventually takes The Doctor out of the equation altogether. This leaves Clara to come up with a plan to help get The Doctor back all on her own. Naturally this involves using the special skills of Rigsy to help turn the monsters' power against them. The Doctor is then able to banish what he suddenly decides to call the Boneless to their own dimension, warning them not to return.

After everything wraps up, we are subjected to yet another clumsily added season arc teaser with Missy. At least this one was appended rather than breaking the action to cram it in.

The pacing of this episode is good, managing to hit all of the major stages I outlined in Go, go, go, Geronimo! without feeling rushed. Keeping The Doctor trapped in the TARDIS was an interesting way to do a Doctor-Light episode. Shrinking the exterior of the TARDIS also allowed us this little moment:

Creepy and kooky. Mysterious and spooky.

I liked the evolution we see in Clara here. With The Doctor absent, Clara became him in many ways. All Companions are changed during their time with The Doctor, but to see one start to so closely resemble The Doctor without somehow absorbing part of him like Donna did, is a fun experience. Is Clara becoming more selfish, arrogant and cocky because of her time with The Doctor, or was she always like that, and being around someone who is the same way has simply allowed those traits to flourish?

Anyway, overall this was a fun episode only slightly hampered by what I see as a lessening of the monster when they became 3D.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not really much needs doing here, so I'll concentrate on trying to fix the shambling zombie version of the 3D Boneless without a total re-write of the final act. I think the best way to achieve this is maybe just alter the way they behave, which will not only make it seem a bit more realistic, but also provide a gradual ramp-up of their threat level.

So when the Boneless are 2D, they move around freely as indistinct blobs slithering over surfaces and flattening out objects. Their first attempt to take human form is when the mural comes to life. Here we see fairly smooth movement along the 2D plane. As they become 3D though, they need to act more like babies learning to walk, stumbling and moving clumsily, rather than shambling like zombies. They dip into 3D and jerk about trying to work out how to get around in this new dimension before falling back to what they know and sliding along surfaces again.

In the early stages, this will allow the group to escape them by, for example, swinging across a gap on a chain or even just jumping over, much like Clara and Rigsy escaped on the convenient suspended chair. This forces the Boneless to take a long way around, because being unable to move through the third dimension, even a tiny crack is a huge obstacle.

This trick could ultimately be what forces them to move fully into the third dimension. The group think they're safe on the other side of a gap, when one of the Boneless pulls itself out of the floor or wall and unsteadily steps across. The Boneless' proficiency in the third dimension increases as the chase continues, and they spend less time stumbling back into 2D, and move more smoothly. They eventually start exhibiting the ability to project their dimensional power, rather than needing to touch or crawl over something to flatten it. This shows them rapidly learning how this new dimension works, and stops them from being just another shambling monster.

Everything else in this episode is okay, although I probably would have made sure it didn't sound like Clara was having some bedroom fun when Danny called her during the attack scene.

Season 9 wrap-up

As Season 9 comes to a close, let's have a little look back.

My scores

Episode 1 - The Magician's Apprentice 9/10
Episode 2 - The Witch's Familiar          7/10
Episode 3 - Under the Lake                   8/10
Episode 4 - Before the Flood                 6/10
Episode 5 - The Girl Who Died             9/10
Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived     10/10
Episode 7 - The Zygon Invasion            9/10
Episode 8 - The Zygon Inversion         10/10
Episode 9 - Sleep No More                    9/10
Episode 10 - Face the Raven                 8/10
Episode 11 - Heaven Sent                    10/10
Episode 12 - Hell Bent                           8/10

                              Season Average =  8/10

This season started off quite strongly with The Magician's Apprentice, but then again, I'm a sucker for Davros. Sadly this story fell short in the conclusion, as dos the next one. After this little false start, the season was very solid. The introduction of Ashieldr was a breath of fresh air. It's always fun when someone can challenge The Doctor, and Maisie Williams was superb in the role.

The loss of Clara was probably about due. As I've said before though, its impact was considerably lessened by the addition of two more episodes with her appearing, and the knowledge that she had what was likely a considerable life after that. Her death went from a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris to essentially showing her being rewarded for her arrogant behaviour with effective immortality.

For all that though, I know I would love to watch at least a little bit of the Clara and Ashieldr show. The things those girls could get up to.

Have fun, you crazy kids!

Ongoing problems

Thinking about my pet peeves, Season 9 had:

• A whopping 6 episodes with In-Who-Endos
• 3 episodes that resorted to Deus Ex Screwdriver
• 2 episode with problems associated with Needlessly Recurring Monsters
• 1 instance of there being Too Many Monsters
• 1 episode that got a little bit Go, go, go, Geronimo!

I'm not sure, but this could be a record with regards to In-Who-Endos. Most of them added nothing as well, like Clara's couple of references to a lesbian fling with Jane Austin. It's so frustratingly unnecessary.

I thought with the early loss of the Sonic that we'd get less Deus Ex Screwdriver this season, but the immediate introduction of the seemingly even more powerful Sonic Sunglasses kept it relatively alive. Still not as bad as some seasons for actual usage, but as a concept, the sunglasses annoyed me no end. I'm glad to see them go, even if the new design of the sonic is a bit... elaborate.

Add more glowing bits!

The large number of two-parters has all but eliminated Go, go, go Geronimo! as an issue. That said, a couple of those two-parters were probably more like loosely related standalone episodes. The Girl Who Died / The Woman Who Lived could easily have been split up with no loss of coherency. Similarly, Face The Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent were only technically the same story because each picked up immediately after the last and were steps in getting The Doctor to Gallifrey. The stories themselves were reasonably separate.

I'll also point out that most of the stories showed The Doctor in his new Rock and Roll guise, playing the electric guitar for no real reason. I'm categorising this as his Annoying Catch Phrase, and very much got to the More of the Same stage.

Season Arc

The Hybrid arc was one of the most blatant since the reboot. Davros fully explained the prophecy in the second part of the first story, so it was out there early. This meant we had to have several stories that attempted to pile confusion onto the situation by adding a bunch of things that could be referred to as Hybrids like Ashieldr and Osgood.

In some ways, I felt this arc didn't have enough time to play out. Perhaps this is the one drawback of having so many two-parters. It would have been nice to see this arc play out over a longer period. There are a bunch of other things that could possibly be considered Hybrids that could also have been referenced here. River Song is basically a Hybrid. Rose Tyler absorbed the Time Vortex, so maybe that counts. Then there's the Doctor Donna and even Cyber-Danny. References to these as possibilities of being the prophesied Hybrid would have allowed a greater tease and more confusion.

Another way to fix this would be to reorder the episodes. Having Davros' story coming after initial teases of the Hybrid would allow more subtle references to possibly go over audiences heads, only to have Davros reveal the truth around mid-season. A good reordering of the season would be:

Episode 1 - The Zygon Invasion
Episode 2 - The Zygon Inversion
Episode 3 - The Girl Who Died
Episode 4 - Under the Lake
Episode 5 - Before the Flood
Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived
Episode 7 - The Magician's Apprentice
Episode 8 - The Witch's Familiar
Episode 9 - Sleep No More
Episode 10 - Face the Raven
Episode 11 - Heaven Sent
Episode 12 - Hell Bent

There would of course need to be a couple of minor re-writes, but I feel like this would work quite well. We'd start with the very strong Zygon story which ends with The Doctor looking all shifty when Osgood refers to herself as a Hybrid (rather than him using the term). This wouldn't mean anything to audiences yet, but The Doctor's reaction would show it's important. I'd then downplay the reference to Ashieldr as a Hybrid at the end of The Girl Who Died by not actually using the term. Saying she is part Human, part Mire would be enough. By splitting up the Ashieldr stories, you give audiences time to forget about the Hybrid. Sticking the Fisher King story in there would add confusion by referencing the Minister of War, which I originally took as the season arc, coming as it did straight after the Hybrid thing seemed to be resolved.

After the events of The Woman Who Lived, The Doctor gets depressed about the Hybrid, because he has realised (wrongly) that Ashieldr is it, so he goes on his bender, and we get the Davros story. A quick break from that whole thing with Sleep No More, then into the three-part finale to wrap the season up.

Another small benefit of putting the Davros story mid-season is that The Doctor doesn't lose his sonic, and therefore the Glasses don't need to exist for most of the episodes!

Review - Hell Bent

After forcing his way out of his Confession Dial, The Doctor takes on Gallifrey, Hell Bent on saving Clara.

Season 9, Episode 12 - Hell Bent

We start this episode with The Doctor entering the diner from The Impossible Astronaut. There he meets a waitress who looks like Clara, and begins telling her a story.

The story follows directly on from the events of Heaven Sent, with The Doctor finding his way back to the barn of his childhood first seen in Day of the Doctor and revisited again in Listen. Here he is treated as a returning hero, a fact that only makes the Timelord High Council even more nervous. After refusing several personal visits of increasing importance, he eventually receives Rassilon himself. 

Even negotiations

The Doctor is in no mood to parley though, and he immediately orders Rassilon off "his planet." Rassilon responds by ordering his soldiers to fire on The Doctor. The do, but every one of them elects to miss. This is shortly followed by a mass desertion. Rassilon makes to finish the job with his gauntlet, but is stopped by The General. Cut to a shuttle leaving the planet. 

The Timelords still want to know about the Hybrid though, and The Doctor convinces them they need to speak to Clara about it. Using some Timelord jiggery-pokery, they extract Clara from her final moments in order to find out what she knows, her body time looped in its final heartbeat. 

Of course it's all a ruse so that The Doctor can save Clara. They run. The Doctor is manic, and you can see he doesn't fully believe what he's attempting will work. But being The Doctor, he tries it anyway. Eventually stealing another TARDIS, he pushes to the end of the universe, trying to break Clara out of the time loop. When they arrive, he finds Ashieldr waiting. She's managed to out live the universe. 

She doesn't look a day over a billion

We get treated to some banter about the nature of the Hybrid, with theories flung back and forth. Whilst Ashieldr's theory is supposed to be the one we believe, there is still enough wiggle room to bring something else into play. Perhaps for Christmas. We know River will make an appearance, and she's pretty much a Human/Timelord hybrid. It'd be fun if my bit about Missy came to pass though. Half Timelord, half Cyberman fits the prophesy too.

The Doctor also reveals he plans to use a neuro blocker to erase Clara's memories of him, in much the same way hid did with Donna Noble. After finding this out, Clara forbids it, saying her past is hers, and he has no right to rob her of it. With Clara having supposedly sabotaged the neuro blocker, they both decide to use it, with one of them sure to forget the other.

For a change it is The Doctor who is left abandoned, waking up in the Nevada desert. Eventually it is revealed that the Diner itself is the TARDIS they just stole from Gallifrey, and Clara and Ashieldr set off to return Clara to Gallifrey so that she can die as destined. Of course, Clara notes that because she is not aging at all, they can go "the long way round".

The Doctor returns to his TARDIS, where he receives one final message from Clara, along with his new Sonic Screwdriver. Thank the Gods, we have seen the last of those bloody sunglasses.

Victory!

All up this was a solid episode that tied everything together without trying too hard. My major issue was that nothing much actually seemed to happen. Much of the episode consisted of The Doctor telling Clara stuff. Or more accurately, The Doctor telling Clara about telling Clara stuff. It was a shame Timothy Dalton couldn't reprise the role of Rassilon. It took me a bit to realise he actually was Rassilon, and not some other Lord President. And now we've had an actual on-screen gender-swapping regeneration. I hope this keeps people satisfied for a while and they stop demanding it of The Doctor.

The whole bit in the Cloisters with random Daleks, Cybermen, and freaking Weeping Angels was a bit ripe. Had the whiff of Too many monsters, that did, especially as they'd just introduced a fairly interesting new Monster in the Sliders, which got rather overshadowed by these cameos. The Matrix is an interesting thing though, an it is clear that this was the technology Missy was using to create the Nethersphere in the Season 8 finale, and that would tie in nicely with my little idea for the Rani too.

Having Clara effectively still "at large" did, as I predicted, somewhat diminish her departure in Face the Raven. That said, how could you not get caught up in thinking about what her and Ashieldr could get up to in a TARDIS?

Not exactly perfection, but not a weak way to go out either.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not a huge amount to do here, but first up, I'd dump all the additional monsters from the Cloisters. They added nothing but a few poor jump scares. The Sliders themselves are creepy enough, and could provide enough tension as the pair traversed the Cloisters.

I'm really not sure what to do about the big background dumps The Doctor has in this episode though. They are undoubtedly important, but just hearing The Doctor tell Clara stuff isn't exactly story telling at its best.

Review - Heaven Sent

The Doctor deals with his grief at the loss of Clara by working his way through a labyrinthine castle, whilst avoiding the embodiment of one of his earliest nightmares in Heaven Sent.

Season 9, Episode 11 - Heaven Sent

After a mysterious hand throws a switch and crumbles to dust, The Doctor arrives, having been teleported away from Earth at the end of Face the Raven. He lets us know that despite his promise to Clara not so seek revenge, he will likely be doing just that.

Before long we see the castle he is in has video screens scattered around it. These screens show monster vision from a creature which is slowly lumbering its way closer to The Doctor. Backed into a dead end, The Doctor reveals that he is afraid to die. Surprisingly, following this revelation, the creature freezes, and the castle begins to rearrange itself, allowing him to escape. As the creature returns, The Doctor realises that it resembles a dead body covered in veils and flies that gave him nightmares as a child.

Understandable.

As The Doctor devises an escape plan, we are introduced to the little gimmick of the episode that allows The Doctor to explain stuff to someone even though he is alone. He goes to his happy place. As he continues to explore the castle, and prompted by questions from his own sub-conscious masquerading as Clara, he works out that the castle is a torture chamber designed to get truths out of him.

There are quite a few clues that kinda telegraph the ending a bit. The Doctor seems to determinately fail to address them though. Perhaps that's the point. He knows what is going on deep down, but is still fooling himself. That said, there are a couple of inconsistencies, like the clothes. I suppose it probably works out somehow. 

At least one naked Doctor.

I don't want to spoil the ending of this one just in case, but it was awe-inspiring. It really was a perfect episode, with a complex mystery, a creepy monster (even if it is another zombie-like one) with a few jump scares too. They managed to make Clara present, but at the same time remain absent. I do feel that her protracted goodbye last week was lessened slightly by showing her again. Her appearance towards the end probably would have had more impact had she either been absent for an episode or two first, or if her demise had been more sudden. 

None if that detracts from this episode in itself though I simply cannot fault it. It is blessedly free of any of the issues that usually irk me, wonderfully paced, and a top-notch ending. Definitely the best episode in at least three seasons. 

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not at all. Perfection. 

Review - Face The Raven

An old psudo-companion returns with some deadly new ink, and Clara's devil-may-care attitude finally catches up with her as she has to Face The Raven.

Season 9, episode 10 - Face The Raven

We jump into this episode at the end of an adventure, with Clara clearly having saved The Doctor in some kind of risky manner. The Doctor appears reluctantly impressed. This little moment is shattered as the TARDIS phone rings. Clara answers to hear Rigsy, last seen in Flatline, who claims to have woken up with a strange tattoo. A tattoo which is counting down.

The Doctor and Clara arrive to check things out, learning that not only does Rigsy have a baby, but he has lost the last 24 hours. His phone has been wiped, but it's screen has been cracked. The Doctor tries his best to be nice about it, but Rigsy is going to die. 

But at least he'll look fly doing it.

Despite initially seeming defeated, The Doctor does love a challenge, and the group set off to find a hidden street harbouring aliens. This naturally involves Clara leaning out of the TARDIS as it flies over London, scanning things with the Sonic Sunglasses. Before this turns into another case of Deus Ex Screwdriver, the team then have to wander around the target area counting and looking for areas where their concentration wavers. This is said to indicate the entrance to Diagon Alley. I mean the "trap street". 

After a bit of this wandering, Rigsy has a flashback to dropping his phone after seeing a body on the ground. This flashback has somehow broken the misdirection system that was disguising the entrance, and he is able to guide Clara and The Doctor in as well. 

Once inside, they discover the area is a refugee camp for asylum seeking aliens. The mayor of the camp is none other than Ashieldr, who has once again forgotten her name. It turns out she is responsible for marking Rigsy for death using a Chronolock which guides a Quantum Shade to the victim. When asked why, she reveals he killed one of the aliens sheltering in the street. 

After witnessing another alien killed by the Shade, which looks like the titular raven, Clara learns that the Chronolock can be passed on if willingly accepted by another. She convinces Rigsy to give the Chronolock to her in a bid to buy more time. Meanwhile, The Doctor discovers Rigsy had asked to call him when he was caught. Knowing Ashieldr must have ignored this plea, The Doctor becomes suspicious that she was using Rigsy to deliberately lure him there. Clara then realises that the only denizen of the street who isn't treating Rigsy as guilty is the child of the murdered Janus.

Clara's kid-wrangling comes into play again as she determines the Janus child isn't a male, but is in fact a female, and therefore has the power to see into past and future. Despite this she is unable to determine all of Ashieldr's motivation, because it involves The Doctor, who's own timeline is convoluted, to say the least. 

All this leads the team back to the murdered Janus' body, which is being kept in stasis. The Doctor realises she is alive, but the machine can only be switched off using his TARDIS key. With time running out, The Doctor does what is needed. The Janus is released, but not only does the machine take his key, it also locks a teleport bracelet on The Doctor's wrist. Ashieldr explains that in true Lando Calrissian fashion, she has brokered a deal to keep the street safe in exchange for The Doctor. Taking the key was simply a way of keeping him wherever he is to be sent. 

Ashieldr moves to remove the Chronolock from Rigsy, but is horrified to learn he has given it to Clara. On her recklessness, Clara failed to realise that transfer was one way, and removed any right of revocation Ashieldr had.

Not sure if dying, or curing the Warden's wife.

The episode them runs through an extended farewell ending in Clara's inevitable death. Ashieldr is genuinely remorseful that things turned out this way, but The Doctor is pissed, and throws out a pretty heavy threat before being teleported away to who knows where. 

In a nice little postscript, we see Rigsy finishing up a mural to Clara on the abandoned TARDIS.

This was quite a tidy little mystery episode. The investigation period was maybe a little rushed, but that's because they had two mysteries to solve. A lot of time was taken up with Clara's farewell, so both finding the street and clearing Rigsy needed to be quick processes. Of course the whole point is they are operating to a literal deadline, so although it was a little bit go, go, go, Geronimo, it didn't feel out of place. 

Clara managed to again hit that pet peeve of mine by dropping another reference to an ongoing lesbian relationship with Jane Austin. When will the In-Who-Endos stop? While we're on pet peeves, the denizens of the street were mostly generic aliens, but some were a bit out of place. I mean, how was there a Cyberman living there peacefully? That makes no sense, and has the whiff of Needlessly recurring monsters about it.

Ultimately, this is a solid companion farewell episode, with all the usual tearful goodbyes. If it somehow remains Clara's farewell and for the rest of the season she only appears in flashbacks or as a Zygon double or even more of her time-stream duplicates, that would be a great way of surprising us. We kind of expect companions to go in finales, and although Amy and Rory technically went mid-season, it was a split season, so it equates to the same thing, so doing something different would be great. 

That said, I have no doubt that Clara will somehow survive or be brought back. Either way, having this farewell only to have her appear in subsequent episodes in any capacity significantly lessens the impact of her farewell. 

But, putting aside the potential impact of future episodes, this one is quite enjoyable. 

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not too much wrong here. The pacing could do with a bit of a tweak though. The bit of investigation where they were trying to solve the actual mystery and clear Rigsy seemed a good length, but finding the street itself did feel a bit rushed, and Clara's farewell seemed overly drawn out. I'm not sure if it would ultimately be the right thing, but trimming her farewell scene in order to make the finding of the street itself less hectic would be an interesting experiment at least.

Extending this period a bit runs the risk of going through a bit of a boring patch, but as long as we spice it up with some tense or funny moments, it should tick along nicely. I'd like to see a bit of Monster Vision from the Quantum Shade here. If it kinda stalked the victim waiting for the time to run out, it'd be creepier than just chilling in it's cage. We could also get full shots of it in the background etc, and it could go relatively unnoticed.

Some comedy could break it up too. For example, Rigsy could get increasingly frustrated, loses count due to his frustration, and then run into a wall thinking he's found the entrance. Hilarity ensues.

The other side of this is a reduced farewell from Clara, which could be seen as a bit of a rip off for her character. That said, Amy and Rory didn't get farewells. Their sudden absence is part of what gave their departure so much impact. Of course, as I'm like 99% sure Clara will return somehow, I don't think we'd be robbing her of anything to trim that scene a smidge.

Also, nix the Jane Austin gag. It was barely funny the first time, so dragging it out is just poor.

Fixing Missy

I've been thinking about Missy for a little while now. The big reveal that she was The Master was all well and good, and I'm happy to roll with it now that it's happened. However, it's not exactly an ideal situation from my point of view. I will probably get jumped on for this, but I'm still not fully on board for gender-swapping regenerations. For good or ill, they have been part of the canon since Neil Gaiman's otherwise great The Doctor's Wife. But it's not just the gender swap that disappoints me about the Missy reveal. It is the missed opportunity that came with it.

Yes, I'm talking about The Rani. Radio Times reported on how Steven Moffat tried to trick people into thinking Missy was actually The Rani, and I must admit, she was actually my first thought when we met Missy. Moffat clearly had Rani front of mind at the time, so why default to The Master? He had already featured prominently in a season arc in season 3, and as the main protagonist in the Christmas / New Year special The End of Time in 2009-10.

The casting would have been perfect too.
(image from Following the Nerd)

With such a huge existing Rogue's Gallery and nearly infinite possibilities for new villains, there really is no need to recycle enemies at this rate. Also, it's rather questionable as to why you would gender swap a male villain when there is already a perfectly serviceable female one ready to use. Rani would arguable have fit in with the Death In Heaven season arc better than The Master does too. Her cold, calculating nature would easily see her team up with the Cybermen if it meant she could somehow further her research. The Master's motivation seems to be purely to taunt The Doctor and prove him to be a bad man.

That said, it's actually not too late to turn this whole thing around. Allow me to explain:

The last time we saw The Master he was burning up his life force to attack Rassilon and company at the climax of The End of Time. We all assume he is then either time-locked with the rest of Gallifrey, or his unstable body disintegrates. Either way, he is never to be seen again. But The Master has survived without a body before. He's also a big fan of possessing other people's bodies. It's not unreasonable for his disembodied essence to somehow escape the time-lock and wander the galaxy stealing bodies.

Those bodies, however, aren't good enough. Much like the 1996 Movie, they quickly degrade. He needs a Time Lord body. He searches the galaxy for The Doctor, but is always a step behind. He eventually decides to lie in wait on Earth, The Doctor's favourite backwater. He just misses The Doctor on several occasions, such as turning up at Craig and Sophie's place just after their Lodger left, or the time all those cubes showed up.

By chance The Master stumbles across The Rani, who has also somehow managed to escape the time locked Gallifrey, and is working to perfect a way of storing the essence of sentient creatures indefinitely, using the same basic technology as the Chameleon Arch. Perhaps she plans to use this technology to transfer the Time Lords minds off of Gallifrey, if not their bodies. Perhaps she has other plans for it. Either way, she is now using the resources of the Cybermen to further this research.

The Cybermen have had issues with strong personalities overriding the emotional suppression of the upgrade process. This is their attempt to make a better Cyberman by testing the personalities within the Nethersphere and placing only the most desirable ones into the strongest bodies. While the personalities can survive in an artificial neural network, which is essentially what The Nethersphere is, they can't bond with a purely robotic vessel, and require a bio-organic link.

The Rani is able to develop the basis for an upgraded Cyber chassis that can use a relatively small amount of organic material from the same species to create the required neural link, but her plan is always to dump the entire contents of the Nethersphere into these new bodies, even those strong enough to overcome the emotional suppression. She wants to use the tech for her own ends, not create an unstoppable Cyber Army. Just let them fight amongst themselves while she makes good her escape.

Unfortunately for Rani, The Master manages to use her own tech against her, pushing her out of her body and storing her in her own personal version of The Nethersphere. The Master is then able to possess her body, again getting the Time Lord (or Lady) form he desired. Naturally The Master (now Missy) uses the existing partnership and technology to her own ends, but being unaware that Rani had bypassed the selection protocols in the Nethersphere, she dumps the strong personalities as well. These include Danny and The Brigadier, and things play out as we have already seen.

Now that was a lot of back-story to get through, but it tidies up a couple of issues I have with that story, namely the fact that Cybermen can suddenly use corpses to create new Cybermen. Previously they have always been upgraded living beings, so justifying this new evolution would be nice. From here, you can see it sets up a situation where The Doctor can find out about this, and be forced to choose between leaving Rani in a lonely limbo state, or essentially killing his friend. Obviously we'd find a way to save both, but then we've got two antagonists out in the field ready to clash with The Doctor again in the future.

Oh, man! Can you imagine The Master in a Cyberman body?

Review - Sleep No More

Giant blobs of eye-crusties terrorise an orbital base in the very interestingly shot Sleep No More.

Season 9, Episode 9 - Sleep No More

The episode opens with Professor Rassmussen telling us not to watch the following video, which he has pieced together from CCTV footage and the helmet cams of the soldiers. I'm not sure why they elected to eschew the standard opening credits in favour of the matrix-style green code with the words "Doctor Who" highlighted. The episode only ran 45 minutes, so it certainly wasn't a time issue. I really did miss them though. Anyway...

Rassmussen introduces the rescue team that have been sent to investigate why the base has fallen silent. They hit the usual tropes; the leader, the hot-head, the clown and the muscle. The team explore the seemingly deserted base, eventually running across The Doctor and Clara. Before long the group is attacked by monsters composed entirely of sand. 

The team gets separated from one of their members and takes shelter in a room filled with Morpheus sleep pods. After Clara is dragged into one of the pods and needs to be freed by The Doctor, The team tells them all about the pods and how they replace the need for sleep. 

464 the clone discovers another occupied pod, inside of which is Rassmussen. After he explains how Morpheus works, The Doctor guesses that the Sandmen are made up of the "sleep dust" that builds up in the corners of your eyes when you sleep. I'll just keep suspending my disbelief because that's not really making a lot of sense just yet.  

Meanwhile, Deep-Ando, the team-member who got separated from the rest, is running from Sandmen. Suddenly he has some trouble with a door computer which claims to have been reprogrammed so that users have to sing Mr Sandman to operate it. Unfortunately for Deep-Ando, the song seems to attract the Sandmen.

The Doctor got sick of this quicker than I did

After the base's gravity shields go down, the Sandmen attack again killing Rassmussen. The Doctor fixes the shields and takes shelter in a freezer along with Nagata and Clara while Chopra and 474 make a break for the ship. After becoming trapped between Sandmen and a wall of fire, 474 walls them both through the fire, burning himself severely. As Chopra bolts for the ship, 474 makes a classic sacrificial charge to buy him time. Not that it matters, because Chopra is killed as soon as he gets back to the ship.

I'm not sure what the point was of the little attraction thing Gatiss threw in between these two. It doesn't serve the story beyond a bit of cheap humour. Both of them die without either resolving the attraction or growing from it. And beyond all that, it doesn't really make sense to genetically engineer a soldier to be strong, stupid and retain sexual urges. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster. The majority of other fictional military forces that have been engineered to be perfect soldiers, from the Imperial Space Marines of Warhammer 40,000 to the Unsullied from Game of Thrones, are generally asexual. I would slot this in as an In-Who-Endo.

While all this is going on, The Doctor works out that a bunch of video transmissions are floating about which are seemingly from the soldier's helmet cams. Nagata points out that they aren't wearing helmet cams, and The Doctor confirms there's something dodgy happening by finding a live feed from Clara. The Morpheus machines have somehow reprogrammed people and turned them into the Sandmen.

As they return to the rescue team's ship, they find Rassmussen there, unharmed. He reveals he is helping the Sandmen escape the base and spread to Triton where they will be able to feed on the local populace. Rassmussen attempts to lock them in with a Sandman, but they escape, and Nagata does the sensible thing and shoots him, much to the disappointment of Cara and The Doctor. 

As the three of them pile into the TARDIS and escape, The Doctor shuts off the gravity shields, sending the base plummeting towards Neptune, presumable destroying the Sandmen.  However, in a little epilogue we see Rassmussen is not dead, and is finishing off his little video. It turns out the Sandman infection doesn't require physical contact, only an electrical signal. This signal has been woven throughout the video, ensuring all who watch it are now infected. He ends the video by crumbling to dust in a delightfully creepy way.

A season highlight

This was a nice little twist ending and it kind of leaves things open for the Sandmen to reappear at some point. Clearly The Doctor will work out how to remove the infection from Clara and Nagata, but while he's not around, infection could well spread quickly. It's also implied that the Sandmen are still evolving, so any subsequent appearances could see them more human-like. 

This was a solid episode with a fairly interesting if improbable monster. The episode was structured perfectly, going neatly through introduction, investigation, escalation and resolution. Pacing was spot on, which can be tough in a standalone episode, with a solid escalation of threat level and peaks and troughs in tension. I also enjoyed that the solution wasn't really anything The Doctor did. All he was able to do was contain the threat. Or at least he thought he did.

9/10

Can we fix it?

The only thing I'd do here is remove the completely out of place "Chopra pretty," from 474. It added nothing and just seemed forced in. 

Other than that, top notch. 

Review - The Zygon Inversion

The events of The Zygon Invasion come to a head in this story's quite brilliant conclusion, The Zygon Inversion.

Season 9, Episode 8 - The Zygon Inversion

After last week's missile-laden cliff-hanger, we pick up this week with Clara trapped in her own mind watching helplessly through the Zygon mind link as her duplicate, Bonnie, tries to shoot The Doctor's plane down. Of course, Clara is made of stronger stuff, and is able to hijack Bonnie's body through sheer force of will. Not only does this allow her to foil the initial missile attack, giving The Doctor and Osgood time to escape, but eventually she also manages to blind-text The Doctor.

As The Doctor and Osgood determine that Clara is still alive, Bonnie begins fostering conflict between the humans and the Zygons. To this end, she forces a Zygon to revert to his natural state in front of humans and uploads video of the event to the web. She then sets about trying to secure the Osgood Box which as we learned last episode, is the ultimate sanction should the Zygon treaty fail. Having learned from The Doctor that Clara knows where the box is kept, Bonnie uses their mental link to interrogate her. Despite Clara's best efforts at double-talking around the questions, Bonnie learns the box is in the Black Archive.

Bonnie threatens to kill Clara, but is warned that she will soon find out why it's called the Osgood Box, and will then want to talk to her again. Clara's pod is packed up and Bonnie trots off to the archive, but not before telling her freshly returned US counterpart, now disguised as Kate, to deal with The Doctor.

The Doctor and Osgood have meanwhile found the place Bonnie filmed her video. Here they discover the Zygon she reverted who is now terrified he has destroyed all hope of a peaceful life for Zygons on Earth. In a scene that reinforces the opening of the previous episode, we see a good and peaceful Zygon just wanting to live his life in his new home. Unable to live with what he may have done, the poor bloke elects to kill himself.

Kate catches up with The Doctor and Osgood, taking them to the Zygon base. When they get there they realise that Clara's pod has been removed. Kate's UNIT guards transform and advance menacingly only to be cut down by Kate, who turns out not to be a Zygon. She reveals she escaped by the excessively complicated method of blowing the attacking alien away with the gun she was shown to have on her earlier. Crazy, I know. At least she apologised to The Doctor for killing them.

It's not Sonic, but it gets the job done.

The real meat of this episode comes in the final act as Bonnie enters the Black Archive and finds not one, but two Osgood Boxes, each with two activation buttons. Turns out this is The Doctor's plan all along. The buttons of one box will either revert all Zygons on Earth to their natural forms, or make their human forms permanent. The other box will either release a Zygon-specific nerve gas, or detonate a nuclear warhead large enough to destroy England.

As both Bonnie and Kate struggle to decide which buttons to push, The Doctor tries to convince them not to push either. Capaldi delivers a fantastically impassioned speech, which could have been made directly to the heads of most terrorist organisations worldwide (and a few governments too) with barely a changed word. 

Of course it all works out in the end, and as a bonus twist, The Doctor reveals this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Bonnie, now reformed of her radical ways, takes the place of the missing Osgood and the pair get on with the business of keeping Earth safe.

All whilst rocking some epic cosplay.

This one was pretty much a near perfect episode. I seem to recall one small In-Who-Endo at one point, but it obviously wasn't bad enough for me to remember what it was (EDIT: Oh that's right, it was the winking thing. Fairly harmless I suppose). The pacing was perfect, the resolution was wonderful, and it really gave Capaldi time to shine with a solid monologue to sink his teeth into. 

The one thing that didn't happen which I hoped would, was some kind of justification for changing the Zygon rules last episode. With a big room full of people in pods, it seems like there is no solid explanation about when they do or do not need to keep the humans alive. I really feel like this change was made so that we could be faked out about characters being dead when they weren't. Previously we would know they were still alive somewhere if there was a Zygon version of them.

Despite that, I'm ranking this one the best of the season, and definitely the best from Capaldi's run.

10/10

Can we fix it?

Nope. Nothing to fix here.

Review - The Zygon Invasion

The Doctor revisits the events of the 50th Anniversary Special as he and Clara team up with UNIT to deal with The Zygon Invasion.

Season 9, Episode 7 - The Zygon Invasion

We begin this episode with a little recap of The Day of the Doctor, confirming there were two Osgoods and showing us that The Doctor had a contingency should the Zygon colonisation ever go bad. It's apparently called the Osgood box. Then we catch up with Osgood desperately fleeing a Zygon and attempting to contact The Doctor. She is caught, but not before getting a message off. The Doctor receives the message in the TARDIS while he is yet again randomly jamming on his guitar. I'm going to go ahead and call that as his version of an annoying catchphrase.

This must be the only thing he does in his down time.

The Doctor goes out to find the Zygon High Command and find out what is going on. I tried to ignore the creepy undertones of an old man hanging out in a playground watching the kids before doggedly pursuing two young girls through the play equipment. Happily for The Doctor, so did every other adult human in sight. I suspect that scene would have ended very differently in real life. Before The Doctor can get any information from the Zygon girls, they are kidnapped by some other Zygons.

Meanwhile, Clara finds her neighbour's kid sitting in the stairs of her building. He says he can't find his parents. When Clara goes into his house to investigate, she is confronted by some creepy people who assure her everything is fine before forcing the struggling child into another room. All of this doesn't appear to phase Clara though, as next thing she is seen exiting the flat and tying her hair back. This struck me as a very deliberate act, and whilst my first thought was that it was a "things are about to get real," move, I now suspect it will become an identifying trait later in the story.

After finally calling The Doctor back, Clara meets him and Kate Stewart at UNIT HQ. There they are filled in with all the details of the Zygon situation. A splinter group of younger Zygons is discontent with remaining in hiding, and is demanding the truth of their nature is revealed. The whole thing plays out as a nice allegory of the whole Islamic State situation we have going on now, where disillusioned young people are being radicalised to the cause. The Doctor even warns that bombing the factional Zygons will only help to radicalise the rest of them.

After visiting the site of the Zygon High Command and some completely unnecessary In-Who-Endos around the way The Doctor operates the Zygon computer, this episode takes on a nice international feel. The Zygon threat is present across the world, with main plot points occurring in the UK (naturally) as well as the US and a fictional Middle Eastern country called Turmezistan. The group divide their efforts amongst these countries, with Kate going to the bizarrely named town of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, The Doctor leading the UNIT strike team in Turmezistan, and Clara staying behind in England.

These multiple fronts allow each character to shine nicely. It was particularly fun to see Kate out in the field. She certainly seemed capable as a field agent, as befits the daughter of the great Brigadier. She meets a beleaguered town Sheriff in the now deserted Truth or Consequences who reveals some info on the Zygon uprising there. 

Not just a bureaucrat.

Meanwhile, The Doctor manages to stop UNIT from bombing the Zygon compound in Turmezistan, but during a ground operation the Zygons manage to fool the UNIT frontal assault team and wipe out the lot. The Doctor finds the captured Osgood at the last minute, and manages to capture a Zygon prisoner to boot.

Everything is looking good until we figure out that Clara is a Zygon, and the British contingent have captured and replaced a large portion of the population. Not only that, but the sheriff that Kate has met in the US is also revealed to be a Zygon double, and attacks. Zygon Clara speaks to The Doctor on the phone and reveals Clara and Kate are supposedly dead. Then she shoots a missile at his plane and we get a face full of "to be continued."

"Say hello to my little cliff-hanger!"

This was a top notch episode, only mildly tarnished by a tasteless joke near the start. Despite my early fears that moving to glasses form seemed to have yet again upped the power lever, they have avoided hitting the Deus Ex Screwdriver thing and only used them for opening locks.

The same can't be said for the Zygons though. They've only appeared once before since the reboot, but somehow they're already suffering from power-creep. Osgood even mentioned their previous restrictions as "the old rules." I've said before, if an established monster needs changing to stay scary or whatever, maybe reconsider using it.

In this case it could just be that this was changed to keep things mysterious around which Osgood still exists, or make it more believable that Kate and Clara could be dead. If so, there are better ways of going about it. More likely it was an excuse to make another Hybrid reference. I kind of respect that they are trying to keep the nature of the Hybrid obscure, but this is starting to look clumsy. 

Anyway, this was enjoyable, and I really am loving the large crop of double-parters we have this season. It really gives the story room to breathe and helps avoid the issue of Go, go, go, Geronimo! I look forward to the next part.

9/10

Can we fix it?

First and foremost, drop the sex jokes in the Zygon HQ. They were just too much of a jump at that point considering things are quite serious until then. If we absolutely need something light-hearted there, cut the joke in half. 

"Should we give you some privacy?"
"This is a bio-organic interface. This is how it works."

That's it. The follow-up joke about him enjoying it is unnecessary and dragged it out too far. The word "titillating" was chosen for The Doctor's response even though "stimulating" is almost as suggestive with the bonus of being more appropriate. The fact they went with the slightly more obscure term speaks volumes here.

I was going to offer a solution to what I see as an unnecessary change to the Zygon canon by tweaking the "new rules" scene with Osgood. On reflection though, I'd rather wait until part 2 to see where they are taking it before going down that path. 

It could all turn out to be a fake-out and Osgood is another Zygon decoy made from the surviving Osgood who is the human Osgood who is being kept somewhere like Clara is, and she spun all that to The Doctor to lead him astray. 

Anything is possible.

Review - The Woman Who Lived

The Doctor ditches Clara to chase down an alien artefact in 17th century England, only to run into his little hybrid in The Woman Who Lived.

Season 9, Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived

After landing in the TARDIS, The Doctor stumbles upon a highway robbery in progress, the perpetrator of which turns out to be the immortal Ashieldr, now the notorious Highwayman The Knightmare. Having ruined her attempted robbery and also lost the alien artefact he was searching for, The Doctor returns to Ashieldr's house to learn what she's been up to since he made her immortal.

Ashieldr has forgotten many of the events of her long life including her name, but has volumes of diaries that record them all. These act as a convenient way for The Doctor to learn about many of the tragic events of her life without all the hassle of making her open up and tell him. I can't work out if this is lazy writing or sheer brilliance. I think I'll roll with it though. It just works.

You just saved us a full episode of deep character interaction.

She has loved, and even had children, only to lose them. Some events have been torn out of the diaries, and when asked about them, she reveals she does that when she wants to forget. The Doctor can't understand what could be worse than losing her babies, but she explains she keeps that one to remind her not to have any more.

Williams does a great job of the flashbacks here. They nicely bridge the gap between the slightly naive Viking girl we met before and the old woman in a young woman's body we see now. She has been hardened by her long and lonely life, which was alluded to at the end of the previous episode. Now she is determined to shake the bonds of Earth and explore the universe. She asks The Doctor to take her with him, but he refuses. In the face of that refusal, she goes to the gardens and speaks to a shadowy figure with glowing eyes. It's made pretty clear she is going to betray The Doctor. 

They then work together to retrieve the alien artefact, now identified as a jewelled pendant called the Eyes of Hades. During the break-in to steal the pendant, Ashieldr offers The Doctor a face mask. He declines, saying he has his own. Yep, you guessed it. Those bloody sunglasses are back. Thankfully the only thing he uses them for this episode is lighting a candle, which sound waves could at least conceivably achieve.

*Shakes fist in impotent rage*

After recovering the Eyes of Hades, Ashieldr again asks The Doctor to take her with him. When he again refuses she goes through with her original plan to give the artefact to a stranded alien called Leandro from Delta Leonis (that's right, he's a lion man) who needs it to escape Earth. However it turns out the pendant is only activated by a death. The Doctor is outraged at Ashieldr's willingness to kill, but the embittered woman sees mortal people as transient, and she refers to death as an "abundant resource."

As Ashieldr and Leandro leave to attend the hanging of Ashieldr's rival highwayman, Sam Swift, The Doctor talks his way out of custody and follows hot on their heels. Swift is spending his final moments making jokes, some which were rather bordering on In-Who-Endos, but The Doctor soon shows up and uses his psychic paper to grant Sam a pardon. Ashieldr then goes all in and uses the Eyes of Hades to draw the life force from Sam, creating a portal in the sky. 

Not another one.

But as predicted by The Doctor, Leandro double crosses Ashieldr and his story to her is revealed to be a lie. As alien ships begin firing through the portal, preparing to invade, Ashieldr remembers human compassion and uses her remaining Mire chip to restore Sam's life force and repel the invasion, but not before Leandro escapes through the closing portal. Afterwards, The Doctor and Ashieldr celebrate in the pub with Sam Swift and discuss the future. Ashieldr decides to dedicate her life to looking after the people left behind in The Doctor's wake.

As The Doctor sits in the TARDIS thinking and noodling on his guitar as has become standard this season, Clara returns. She shows him a picture of one of her students. Lurking in the background with a fairly sinister smile is Ashieldr, lending further evidence to her being the season arc.

All up this was a pretty damn good episode. It built on the previous episode despite no direct connection between the two threats. The Doctor and Ashieldr worked together reasonably well, and the lack of Clara had zero impact on the episode. I could maybe see her as a permanent Companion, but I do get why she won't really work well as one.

I was a bit put out by the initial interaction with Sam Swift, but it becomes clear they were setting his jocular attitude up as a catalyst to bringing Ashieldr back on track. An example for The Doctor to point to and say, "he gets it."

I am now genuinely interested in the season arc. Is Ashieldr the Minister of War? Is she still on track? What does that smile mean? I am hoping that the references to the arc drop off for a while though. Definitely the best this season, and possibly the best of Capaldi's run so far.

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not much to do here. Shave out some of the sexual innuendos in Sam's gallows humour, or at least make them less overt, and get rid of those freaking sunglasses. They literally added nothing to this episode. Neither, for that matter, did The Doctor playing his guitar again. These things were minor and didn't really affect the quality of the episode, but they are adding to the overall caricature of The Doctor we are seeing this season, and is starting to feel very samey.