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.

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 - Doomsday

It's double the classic foes as Daleks and Cybermen clash with humanity trapped in the middle in Doomsday.

Season 2, Episode 13 - Doomsday

This episode picks up where Army of Ghosts left off, just as the Daleks escape the Void Ship. Rose and Micky stare them down as Rose postpones their inevitable slaughter by showing she has a strategic use. Meanwhile, the Cybermen begin their conquest of Earth as The Doctor stands by helpless. Of course our old friend Angry Doctor shows up again briefly as he explains why humanity is resisting.

I'm a bit cross!

As the Daleks extract Raj's brainwaves for intel, desiccating him in the process for some reason, the Cybermen move in to investigate. The resulting confrontation is one of the funniest moments in New Who. Two supremely confident murderous races in a stand off refusing to back down. Some of the lines delivered by the Daleks in this verbal fracas are a little off base. A little too blusterous and even witty. This is a bit off-putting until later when we learn from The Doctor that these Daleks are special.

The Cult of Skaro is an interesting concept, and works quite well despite being very un-Dalek. Most large militaries have similar units for, well, I suppose it's R&D. Whilst the Daleks are supremely confident of their might, it makes sense even they would want to work out better ways to EXTERMINATE! It also makes sense that such deviant behaviour be kept secret, regardless (or even because) of the benefits it offers.

After discovering The Doctor is on the scene, the Daleks begin powering up this episode's MacGuffin of choice, the Genesis Ark, as Rose and Mickey try to work out both how to get out of their predicament and why they aren't yet dead. Turns out the Daleks need a time traveller to activate the Ark because it it Timelord tech. Here's the major flaw in the Dalek plot. If Rose and Mickey weren't there, how were they planning on doing this? Fly around the Universe hoping to find a time traveller?

I was sure there was one here last time we visited.

The Doctor is held for questioning as Jackie and Yvonne Hartman are marched off for Upgrading. The Doctor is freed by a squad of dimension-jumping commandos led by some old friends from Rise of the Cybermen / Age of Steel, and gives a bit more plot exposition about the Void and how all this dimension jumping is irreparably damaging both universes. Hartman marches bravely to her doom, claiming she "did her duty for Queen and Country", before the death of the Cyber Commander allows Jackie to slip away.

Just as Rose is about to capitulate and touch the Genesis Ark, The Doctor rolls up, but not before Rose has a chance to drop some proper bad-assery on the Daleks, referencing the Bad Wolf arc and revealing she killed the Emperor Dalek. The Doctor rescues Rose and Mickey, managing to get a little joke about the Sonic in while he's at it.

Doesn't Kill, doesn't wound, doesn't maim. But I'll tell you what it does do.It is very good at opening doors.

But Mickey messes up and accidentally starts the Genesis Ark opening. This leads to a significant battle between the Daleks and the remaining Humans and Cybermen as the Daleks attempt to exit the building. Long story short, an entire Time Lord prison ship's worth of Daleks spew forth from the Ark and begin to EXTERMINATE!

After a rather uncomfortable reunion between Jackie and Dave, The Doctor reveals his plan to suck everything back into The Void. This relies on the fact that everything that's been through The Void is covered in "void stuff." This is particularly grating, because The Doctor has already gone to great pains to describe how The Void has nothing in it, not even time. So what is the "Void Stuff" then? Also, why do Cybermen who have been upgraded in this universe also have it?

Quite apart from that, the plan works, and all of the invaders are forcefully ejected from the universe. However Rose almost gets sucked out too, only to be saved last minute by a dimension-jumping Dave, leaving The Doctor alone on this side. This leads to the scene voted the greatest moment in Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy. The emotion is turned up to 11 as The Doctor says farewell to Rose via a projected image. Despite being slightly over the top, it's a brilliant close to Rose's time with The Doctor.

This one's not exactly a favourite, but pretty re-watchable.

8/10

Can we fix it?

I'm not sure there's a lot to do here. As I said previously, making Yvonne Hartman a bit more officious would have improved her final redemption. If it was made clearer early on that duty is her main drive, her ability to retain that after upgrading would work a little better. I'd also like to have seen her more deflated when she realised there was no winning against the Cybermen.

I'm not sure if a bit of pleading would have been too much before the final acceptance, but I think a little exchange with the Cybers on doing her duty could fit nicely.

Y: I did my duty for Queen and Country. I always did my duty.
C: And that will not change.

And a slight tweak to her repeated phrase from "I did my duty" to "I will do my duty" reinforces this. It gives us a little bit of doubt on why she retained control. Was it pure willpower, or some kind of programming loophole. The tears would just add to the fuzziness.

The only other thing that needs clearing up is the Cybers created in this Earth. I think a quick line during The Doctor's epilogue in Bad Wolf Bay could tie up that loose plot thread. Something along the lines of "There were a lot of humans who had been upgraded using components from the alternate universe. It was... messy."

A good season ending and a great way to send off a companion.

And introduce a new one.

Review - Army of Ghosts

The season finale stakes are raised as not one, but two old enemies return to plague The Doctor and Rose, starting with the first instalment, Army of Ghosts.

Season 2, Episode 12 - Army of Ghosts

Right from the cold open we see this is the end of Rose. Not only does she lets us know we are about to see how she died, this is rammed home with a rather blatant shot of The Doctor asking how long Rose will be staying and her answering, "For ever." Having Rose narrate this opening gives it a touch of The Companion Show, featuring The Doctor. Of course, the reboot started very much from Rose's perspective, so her departure using that perspective is fairly natural.

The Doctor and Rose arrive back in London in time to witness an appearance of the now commonplace Ghosts. Jackie believes one of the Ghosts to be her long dead father, but The Doctor immediately brings her back to reality, theorising that something is pressing itself into our world. The Ghost's origins are rather quickly spoiled for us viewers with some cutaways of Torchwood doing their thing, complete with a familiar face

Hello, I'm Totally-Not-Martha

Of course, they could still be actual ghosts, even if Torchwood are responsible for it, right? Well, no. We get a pretty clear shot of a Cyberman early on as they attack Totally-Not-Martha. I feel it could have been better if this was left a bit more mysterious, keeping the blurry silhouette behind the plastic. Of course the ear buds could be a bit of a give away, but all the workers are wearing them, and if subtly shot, it would work quite well as a tease for the quicker viewers.

Add to that another of Torchwood's toys, The Sphere. It has a nice chunk of exposition which was delivered reasonably well and is set up as nicely menacing. The science doesn't really work, but that actually works to its advantage.

"As a scientist, nothing scares me more than poor science."

The Doctor manages to use some doohickeys (again, not the sonic) to follow the ghost energy back to Torchwood. Having him take Jackie and pass her off as Rose was quite funny but did highlight the Hot Young Things Only Policy he seems to have. 

Their introduction to Torchwood plays out well and all of the "showing off" manages to introduce some key elements for the resolution of the story in a relatively natural way. The Doctor's reaction to the sphere, now identified as a Void Ship, shows us this is something to fear perhaps more so than the ghosts themselves. And I actually love Yvonne Hartman's reaction to The Doctor here.

Oh, exactly as the legends would have it. The Doctor, lording it over us. Assuming alien authority over the rights of Man.

And that's it, isn't it? It's fine when The Doctor messes about with something just because it's there, even if he doesn't know what he's doing. Nobody else is allowed to though. They are all too stupid.

Rose manages to sneak off to do some investigating on her own, psychic paper in hand. Apparently that stuff seems to work on ID card readers now. That was a bit annoying, but easily explained away, I suppose.

There's a brain in every door. 

And although things don't go exactly as planned for Rose, we get a nice little surprise with the return of Mickey, now with even more badass skills. God I love Mickey. The poor bloke had is so hard for so long. It was good to see him develop far beyond the joke he was at the start.

Anyway, as things start to predictably go wrong, we see the ghosts are in fact an army of Cybermen invading from the alternate universe seen in Rise of the Cybermen / Age of Steel. Mickey assumes the occupant of the Void Ship is some kind of Cyberman Leader, but in the closing moments we find out it is in fact...

Yep. Those guys again.

Overall, this has some good pacing. As I've said before, pacing is usually less of an issue in two-parters though. Apart from going a bit too early on the full Cyberman reveal we are brought through what is essentially a whole bunch of plot exposition and set-up for part two with no real padding or boring bits.

It was fun to see The Doctor put in his place a bit. He's always interesting when he's on the back foot. Yvonne was a bit weak as a pseudo villain though. Seems they tried to make her more of an officious manager than the domineering head of a secret alien-hunting task force. There were glimpses of that character there, but not really enough.

A good beginning of the end for Rose, and definitely worth subsequent viewings.

9/10

Can we fix it?

Only a few tweaks needed here. Simplest change is to lessen the initial Cyberman reveal to keep them secret a bit longer. A bit of classic monster-vision could have worked, or just the close up scream shot. The first time we should see any bit of an actual Cyberman is when they burst through the plastic sheeting in classic Tomb of the Cybermen style. This means watchers who haven't guessed from the earbuds or the sounds of upgrades are still reeling from this reveal as the invasion happens only to have that compounded by the emergence of the Daleks from the Void Ship.

Mostly I'd like to see a bit of a change in Yvonne Hartman. I feel she would have been better played as a bit of a cold-hearted bitch who slaps on the friendly façade as a "management tool". I reckon she may have been written like that but it didn't come through in the performance.

The dual personalities could easily work with little to no change in script. When Yvonne asks for hospitality to send Raj something she sounds friendly, but when she specifies "not alcohol" it's delivered as a bit of a joke. I think changing the delivery of this line to be more mean spirited would change the time of the character entirely. It goes from "get him something to cheer him up, but no booze because that could make him worse LOL!" to "get him something to distract him from the tedium of his task because that's bad for productivity, but not booze because we can't have too much fun."

There are points where Yvonne seems to drop the friendly exterior, such as when Jackie talks about using the gravity clamps to carry shopping, and when The Doctor demands they return the sphere to the void. Sadly she only gets a little condescending or snappish. It would be good to see this happen with the staff too. Maybe being a little more catty when Adeola and Gareth go off for their little liaison.

It would be nice to see that friendly mask slip more and more as the episode progresses. Eventually she is left ineffectually fuming at her loss of control, showing her as one of those bi-polar office tyrants that are your best mate when things are going well but go insane when things don't go their way.

Imagine someone like that in charge of a secret paramilitary alien hunting organisation.

Terrifying.

Needlessly Recurring Monsters

Doctor Who is no stranger to the return of existing monsters. There have been quite a few monsters and enemies that have appeared multiple times, but when you've been running for as long as Doctor Who has, you need to expect to re-tread old ground at some point. How it is done, however, is a fine art. Sadly, to me it seems many recurrences of monsters are rather ham-fisted, ranging from simple fan service to forced inclusion that requires changes to established canon.

If a particular monster resonates with the fandom, there's a very good chance it will return, even if that means changing the background of the monster. The big danger here is diluting what was a great one-off monster by making it essentially over stay its welcome.

The prime example of this is the Weeping Angels. They were great in Blink, but continual appearances made them boring. Their nature also needed to be expanded, because we already knew how to counter the threat, meaning some of what made them scary was diminished. So the Angels get new and increasingly silly powers in each appearance until they are every statue on earth and can throw people back in time, as well as be colossal, hollow, and made of copper rather than stone.

No. Just no.

Asylum of the Daleks is another example of this one. Daleks were changed from hugely xenophobic creatures so certain of their genetic superiority that they simply exterminate anything non-Dalek, to suddenly being cool with using alien corpses to make pseudo Daleks. This simultaneously flies in the face of established Dalek background and steals one of the scariest aspects of the Cybermen, all for some new monster type that is essentially a person with a Dalek eyestalk.

Seriously now?

If you have to change or add to the established rules for a monster to make it fit or make it threatening, why are you using that monster? Could you not create some new monster that has the powers or motivation you require? On the other side of the coin, if you've been asked to do a story featuring a specific monster, can you not (aside from asking why) stick to the established canon for that monster?

This is also a rather selfish act, as it often strikes me that an attempt is being made to build a pantheon of New Who monsters over the old classics like Cybermen and Daleks. It's clear from the marketing materials that the focus is on these new monsters that often appear more than they should. Angels, Ood, Silence, all could have been left at a single appearance without subsequent outings.

I include the Ood tentatively, as out of all the returned monsters their subsequent appearances were best integrated without feeling too forced or piling on additional powers. What is helpful in that case is that the Ood in their natural state aren't threatening. They are just a fairly normal alien race that requires external forces to make them malicious.

Luckily they're easy to spot

Sometimes monsters reappear as nothing more than a self-referential nod to previous episodes. This can work well, such as some of the brief appearances of Judoon after their introduction in Smith and Jones. If it’s just a subtle “remember these things exist in a wider universe” kind of reference, it works, but it can easily turn into a farce, such as much of The Time of The Doctor.

It's a big universe out there, and unless a monster is part of some kind of galaxy-spanning empire out for conquest such as the Daleks, Sontarans or Cybermen, bringing them back every season limits the scope of the Whoniverse with the only benefit the fleeting feeling of familiarity for fans to find... felicitous.

Review - Age of Steel

Continuing on from Rise of the Cybermen, we wrap up the return of this classic enemy with Age of Steel.

Season 2, Episode 6 - Age of Steel

We rejoin the chaos of the Cybermen uprising as the shiny suited monsters assault the Tyler mansion and humanity is rounded up for the final upgrade. With an army of Cybermen on the loose it is only a matter of time before that giant tree of foreshadowing from last episode bears fruit in the form of a brand new Ricky-shaped hole in the alternate dimension. And who was recently established to have nothing left for him in the regular dimension? A pity really, as I thought Mickey added to the group dynamic really well in the past two outings. He deported himself really well in The Girl in the Fireplace, and I think he could have been very interesting if he stayed for a bit longer.

DELETED!!!

The great factories of Cybus industries begin churning out masses of Cybermen, as the mind-controlled citizens of Earth march themselves to the upgrade chambers. Of course Lumic gets shafted by his henchman and is forced to upgrade into the Cyber Controller. I'm a bit mystified as to why the Cyber Controller sits in a cyber wheelchair. Surely with his weak flesh gone, he can ambulate for himself? Maybe it's just a status thing, like the little brain window.

And with a brain like that, why wouldn't you show it off?

Our intrepid group of freedom fighters plan their assault on the Cybus factory. In the belly of the beast they start to see the full horror of what's going on. We get some nice tension as the Cybermen in the tunnels begin waking up, as well as some emotional kicks to the guts when we have a run in with a converted bride and a newly made over Jackie Tyler.

Pictured: Jackie Tyler (probably)

Mickey ends up being crucial, which I was quite happy about. That guy got the rough end of the stick for a long time. He deserved to have a moment in the sun. Why is it that messing with any kind of robotic humanoid's programming makes their heads explode? A question for the ages, I suppose.

Overall this was a solid conclusion to an entertaining story.

8/10

Can we fix it?

As I've said before, the only real gripe I have with this story is the dual-origins of the Cybermen. With the changes I outlined for part one of this story, we can build a clearer picture on how these Cybers connect with the Mondas ones.

My proposed conversation between Rose and Pete towards the end of part one would have shown us the potential for the Cybus tech to take over the conscious mind. It is because of this potential for the computer to take control that Lumic has always been reluctant to use the technology himself, something we would see during his eventual transformation into the Cyber Controller.

Lumic - I can't be sure I will retain control. 

Cyberman - You will control all.

Once Lumic becomes the Cyber Controller, we can get some hints that he is now channelling some kind of overarching cyber network. His rhetoric swiftly changes from strengthening humanity to galactic conquest, maybe even with some hints at traversing dimensions.

The rest of the story could play out the same way, but these couple of changes just tidy up the dual origins situation a bit.

Review - Rise of the Cybermen

Another classic Who Monster storms back, albeit with a rather clumsy retcon in Rise of the Cybermen.

Season 2, Episode 5 - Rise of the Cybermen

From the outset we know what the monster of this episode is because, much like Season 1's Dalek, it's in the title of the episode. That said, they do a great job of hiding the Cybers until right near the end of the episode. This is a major benefit of the two-parter. You get that awesome cliffhanger reveal.

Look out! A vaguely man-shaped blob!

We pick up the TARDIS Crew as they get smashed between realities and land in an alternate version of Earth. Of course Rose soon discovers her Dad is alive in this dimension, leading her to immediately run off to find him. Micky takes the opportunity to do the same thing whilst almost petulantly pointing out that The Doctor will always go after Rose. This gives us a chance to get some rather clumsily inserted back-story for Micky which unfortunately telegraphs his eventual fate pretty clearly. Let's be honest, "he doesn't have any family left" is a rather foreboding phrase to hear uttered, on par with "I'm two weeks from retirement," or, "I think I'll wear my red shirt for the trip to the mysterious planet's surface."

Mickey gets a chance to shine in this episode though, even if it is as an alternate version of himself. Ricky is a total bad-ass, a fact that somehow redeems Mickey's portrayal as a bit of a goofy, spineless doormat. He is ripped though, a fact we are made plainly aware of. The split screen with Mickey and Ricky are well done with only a couple of poorly synced lines when they're both on screen together.

Lumic is a nice Big Bad, although he positively reeks of Davros. A crippled genius determined to expunge weakness from his race. I think it's a real shame this reboot or retcon or whatever you want to call it makes the Cybermen a bit too much like the Daleks. I find the idea of a race voluntarily moving towards a new form to be far more compelling than that of one forced or tricked into change by one man. 

He does have better teeth than Davros though.

That said, the way Lumic's plot unfolds through this episode is nice. The small-scale start which ramps up to the roll out of industrial conversion works well. I would have liked to see Cybus cybernetic technology being used in more ways than the Ear Buds. Some cybernetic arms, legs and even eyes would have been not only shown people's willingness to upgrade their weak flesh, but reinforced the differentness of the alternate dimension. You know, beyond all the airships.

Airships are huge in alternate dimensions. Airships and goatees.

Rose's conversation with alternate-Jackie was well done and gave both actors some time to show their chops. I can't help but feel Jackie's outburst at the end was there less to remind us that Rose is not her daughter and more to make her less sympathetic in the lead up to her assimilation.

All up, this is a solid episode with few of the regular issues that really bug me. Rose and The Doctor still have an odd relationship. Is it romantic or paternal? It's not really a focus of the episode though, with the threat of Cybus clear from the off. Definitely up there amongst my favourites.

8/10

Can we fix it?

There's not too much that needs doing the the overall plot here, but I feel the setup and the linking of the classic Mondas Cybermen and the new Cybus ones needs a tweak.

First off, I'd change Lumic a tad. Make him less of a genius himself and more a rich industrialist using his wealth and influence to overcome his own body's weakness. At the same time we see him reluctant (possibly even scared) to actually use these developments himself. This could be shown to raise questions from some people. Why get about in a wheelchair when your company makes cybernetic legs? Why the respirator when you could have robo-lungs? This would raise a little flag early on that there is something dangerous about the upgrades.

Second, a slight tweak to the Cybus technology. With a pinch of Terminator 2 and a dash of Dollhouse, we can flesh out the background of the rise of Cybus Industries and at the same time reinforce those parallels with our own desires to constantly upgrade.

Early on, the TARDIS crew only realise the ear buds were unusual because everyone stops dead in the street to receive an update. Seriously, that's dangerous, and therefore stupid, so let's get rid of it. Instead Rose bumps into a man in the street who turns around to reveal a very Cyberman looking visor. Rose screams, to which the man replies, "I know, right? Brand new model. Camped out all week, but I was first in line to upgrade."

As he wanders off Rose comments that they look like uncomfortable sunglasses. The Doctor tells her they're not sunglasses. After this they start noticing more cyber technology. Clinics offering cyber upgrades. Workmen with cyber limbs with built-in tools. Maybe even an advert for the upcoming Cyber Games (sponsored by Cybus).

Later when Rose and Pete are talking, we would learn that one of Cybus' early breakthroughs was a neural link that allowed the human brain to interface directly with computers. This technology is at the heart of every Cybus product, and lets the brain control the computer as well as provide additional processing power. This partnership of brain and computer worries Rose and she asks what stops the computer being used to control the brain. Pete simply asks who would want to do that.

This conversation would reinforce earlier scattered hints that this original technology was derived from something alien. Very Terminator 2, I know, but having Lumic discover parts of a ruined Mondas Cyberman avoids the odd dual origin. Weather the original specimen is from an alternate Mondas that didn't thrive, or had washed up as dimensional flotsam in a similar manner to how the TARDIS ended up there, it doesn't matter.

We end this episode on the same note, but with a clearer connection between the original Cybermen and this new breed.

Review - The Time Of The Doctor

Matt Smith bows out as The Doctor in this years much awaited Christmas Special, The Time Of The Doctor.

Christmas Special 2013 - The Time Of The Doctor

First up, a quick apology for the almost one month delay in getting this up, but my original no-fixes review went up a while ago on Geek-O-Rama.net and it really did take a lot of thought to figure out how to fix this one. But on to the review.

Oh my good God. I'm so glad I didn't watch this immediately, it would have spoiled my Christmas buzz. This was not only a total shambles of a story that packed in a whole bunch of unnecessary sexual innuendo, but it revisited almost every reference from Smith's tenure that annoys me. Ordinarily this is where I would say, "but it was all worth it for the twenty seconds of Peter Capaldi at the end", but seriously, it wasn't.

To start with, the relationship between The Doctor and Clara continues to be confused, with her confirmation she "fancied him" whilst bringing The Doctor in as a fake boyfriend despite him originally getting the wrong end of the stick and pretty much saying he'd be up for the real deal. I must say I am hoping for a dramatic reduction in this sort of thing with Capaldi as Twelve. It's just so boring.

The In-Who-Endos fly thick and fast in the opening minutes. I mean, what was the deal with the hologram clothes? The concept of being nude in church is an interesting one, being bare before God and so forth, but with no explanation, and in combination with Tasha Lem's alter-shaped bed, I'm left assuming that it's just there to poke fun at religion by sexualising it.

*Deftly avoids joke abut Holy of Holies*

It's not the first time I've sensed this kind of jab at organised religion in a Moffat story, either. Previous appearances such as The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone and A Good Man Goes To War saw The Church as largely Anglican, and the prominence of openly gay couple The Fat One and The Thin One was either a reference to the already evolving Anglican Church (female ministers etc) or just a cheap gay joke. With Moffat it's hard to tell. Now we see The Church as being somehow related to a very Catholic sounding Papal Mainframe.

We also saw a big slab of Hunka Hunka Burning Doc with The Doctor and Tasha Lem. Their sexual banter was so overt that I found myself waiting for the reveal that she was somehow a regenerated River Song. When did The Doctor have the time to develop this kind of long-term sexual relationship with a woman who wasn't River? It clearly wasn't as Eleven, so was Ten putting it about even more than we realised? It was all so unnecessary though. None of it added to the story one iota, and the flash of naked Matt Smith at the start seemed pure fan-service.

 

It was as if a million fan-girls cried out in pleasure.

Again, we have a case of Too Many Monsters, although it did seem to make some sense as to why they were there. I worried when the teaser came out because it was cut in a way that made it seem the whole thing was a set-up, much like the Pandorica plot-line. The teasers also had me face-palming at the return of the Silence, but again, in context they were relevant. I actually liked the idea that they were professional confessors, but after a second thought, It doesn't make much sense because half the point of confession is the act of confession, so even if you are getting some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion of penance, you're losing all the psychological benefits of confession by forgetting that you've actually done it. I was also quite upset for the Sontarins, who seem to have been relegated to comic relief. Don't get me wrong, Strax is a great character and pulls off comic relief well, but to make all Sontarins appear inept and stupid is a real shame.

 

One of the most fearsome military forces in the universe. No, seriously.

The episode just seemed a ham-fisted attempt to tie all of Eleven's season arcs into one grand overarching plot. Unfortunately instead of a mind-blowing climax to everything we've seen the past four years, all we got was a self-referential mish-mash with no real direction beyond tying up all of the loose ends. But you know what? Sometimes loose ends are a good thing. Case in point, the only thing that wasn't resolved was the return of Gallifrey. In a way I am looking forward to that being The Doctor's main objective moving forward. I hope it can be left unresolved for a long time, much like the holy scriptures in Monkey.

The whole thing just seemed to drag, and when I wasn't groaning because of some fresh innuendo or the reappearance of those thrice-damned Weeping Angels, I was checking to see how much longer it had to go. By the time we got to see the regeneration, I was over it. Capaldi's final line was a classic though.

 

Can you fly this thing?

I won't be rushing out to watch this one again.

4/10

Can we fix it?

I'm really struggling to see how we can fix this without a ground-up re-write. The entire episode seemed geared towards cramming in as many references to Eleven's tenure as possible, which sadly left little room for an actual story.

The bare bones of the episode, the Timelords calling through the crack, is a solid premise, but it just wasn't effectively played out. Many elements seem to have been included purely to fit with the existing prophesy, making for a rather jumbled scenario.

My main beef with the basic premise is the concept of the "Truth Field", which seems to me to be something an advanced race like the Timelords would have little trouble bypassing. I mean every man and his dog can recognize psychic paper now, so surely The Doctor wouldn't be susceptible to something like that. It seems to really only be there to fulfil the conditions of the prophesy. If it had to stay for that reason, at least have it that the Timelords knew The Doctor could still lie in a Truth Field but were using it to screen out "lesser" life forms.

And in the end, even though the Truth Field covers the bit of the prophesy that states, "when no living thing can speak falsely" it fails to address the next bit, specifically, "or fail to answer." The Doctor fails to answer for 300 years. Hell, he fails to answer at all, in the end. I really thought the prophesy was referring to the events of The Name of The Doctor where he was being forced to speak his name, and would have considered the matter resolved at that point.

The connection to The Silence could have been better too. Madame Kovarian should have featured, possibly as a subordinate to Tasha Lem who argues with her about how to handle the situation. Kovarian ultimately takes a group of followers and time travels to attempt to kill The Doctor. This removes the need for Lem's Faith Change, which felt really forced in.

The Papal Mainframe could also remain a neutral party maintaining the lockout of the planet, meaning the small incursions faced by The Doctor actually make sense as small groups penetrate the defenses. This also removes the need for the stupid human Daleks, which were an idiotic idea in Asylum of the Daleks, and completely unnecessary here.

With a tighter opening and none of the sexual innuendo, we can move to the actual siege quicker and then spend more time on the individual conflicts rather than an 80s style montage. This would lead up to the final battle after Lem is killed by the Daleks rather than assimilated.

It still wouldn't be great, but most of the major issues would be gone and it'd feel less forced. 

The (Insert Noun) of The Doctor

The BBC have released the full poster for the 2013 Christmas Special, The Time of The Doctor.

More like The Time to Get Some New Title Ideas, am I right?

Quite why we had to have an almost identical name to the 50th Anniversary Special and the Season 7 finale, I'll never know. Besides that bit of old news, it looks like they're slapping a bunch of big enemies together again in a Too Many Monsters extravaganza.

Why Angels? I'm so sick of them. They are totally played out as a monster. I had hoped after The Angels Take Manhattan we'd seen the last of them. That was pretty stupid, I suppose. And trotting The Silence out again? What's the point of that? They should have been done and dusted after The Wedding of River Song. Teasers have shown references to Trenzalor as well, another plot point that should have been left alone after it was resolved in The Name of the Doctor.

I'm trying not to draw too many conclusions from this poster and the few teasers, but I fear we're going to get a bit of a cluster-you-know-what here, and my expectations are currently rather low. The best scenario I can imagine sees most of these monsters appearing in some kind of nightmare dream sequence of The Doctor's.

In the end, I'm just hoping the few seconds of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor make it all worthwhile.

Review - Nightmare in Silver

I had big hopes for Nightmare in Silver. It had Cybermen. It had Warwick Davis. It was written by Neil Gaiman. I had big hopes.

Season 7, Episode 12 - Nightmare in Silver

Sadly those hopes were soundly dashed as I spent most of the episode watching The Doctor cavort around arguing with himself. This is my biggest issue with this episode, so let's start there. What the hell was with the Cyber Planner? From the very start, Cybermen have been all about the removal of weakness. This included emotion and personality. We see this when Webley and the kids are partially upgraded. Why then does the Cyber Planner act the way it does? It was rather jarring.

I liked the idea of the Galactic Empire, although it had a slight whiff of Warhammer 40,000's Imperium, in that they are willing to destroy a whole planet and it's population if a threat is too large. Davis didn't disappoint though. Although he didn't really do much, Porridge was a great character. The punishment platoon was pretty good too, with most of the standard Dirty Dozen tropes present.

It was good to see The Doctor use gold to short circuit the Cyber Planner in a nod to the past, but the Cybermen themselves seem to be going a bit overboard with the upgrades. Apparently they can do it on the fly now. I would have preferred the upgrades to have been long term evolutions rather than instantaneous mutations to solve a problem.

The Cybermites were a good inclusion and a logical step from Cybermats. I liked that they only partially upgraded the creatures they infested, but we should have heard some threat of a future full upgrade. The Cybermen themselves looked awesome. They were the perfect blend of the classic Mondas Cybermen and the Parallel Earth Cybermen.

The episode played out at a good pace. The monster reveal was very early, but we still got some good "Monster Vision" from the Cybermites and another minor reveal for the new-look Cyberman. Things moved along nicely with no real dead time. The Cyber Planner's ruse about The Doctor's feelings for Clara was well played and I would hesitate to classify it Hunka Hunka Burning Doc, because as with the kiss with Jenny in The Crimson Horror,  there was no reciprocity. The Sonic screwdriver was used well, in that it played a part in The Doctor's solution, but was not the entirety of that solution.

Oh! I totally forgot about that stupid line about Clara's tight skirt! I don't think she's ever worn a tight skirt on the show. So unnecessary.

In fact, if it weren't for that damned Cyber Planner I would have scored this one higher.

6/10

Can we fix it?

A couple of little fixes to the way the Cybermen worked would be nice. When they are getting electrocuted in the moat, rather than just instantly upgrading, we see that the dead ones are dead, but Cybermites swarm over the remaining horde performing manual upgrades to get around the issue. This would happen for multiple different traps laid by Clara and the defenders. The traps slow the Cybermen down, but don't stop them. In this way, they become the relentless zombie horde they are supposed to be.

The major changes would be with the Cyber Planner. Most of this is just how it was played by Matt Smith (or possibly the direction). The lines as written by Gaiman were mostly fine, but they needed far less Doctor in the delivery. Dead and monotonous like a proper Cyberman is the way to go. Note, I'm not saying he should have had a heavily altered voice, just that he play it emotionless. This would also make his ruse to Clara more interesting, as we haven't previously seen the Planner use The Doctor's "voice".

Additionally in those scenes where The Doctor is talking to the Cyber Planner in his mind, the Cyber Planner should have been more Cyber. The Planner should also get increasingly Cyber as the episode goes on, including his voice. In this way, we get a visual and audial indication of how close to defeat The Doctor is.

And as one last thing, I'd have liked to see a bit at the start with The Doctor agreeing to take the Kids somewhere. Following on from the weak ending to The Crimson Horror, it just seemed glossed over.