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 - The Witch's Familiar

Davros shows a softer side as we wrap up the season 9 opener with part 2, The Witch's Familiar.

Season 9, Episode 2 - The Witch's Familiar

Last week I suggested it was maybe a little lazy to not explain how Missy managed to survive. Okay. I admit it I was wrong to even mention it. The cold open of this episode was such a stark contrast to last week's which was tight and left me excited about the rest of the episode. This week's was laborious. I felt every one of the four minutes and thirty seconds that ticked by as Missy elaborately described her ploy to Clara. I'm always happy to see call-backs to classic Who, and Missy's words about it not mattering which face The Doctor was using was a nice way of explaining why Capaldi was doing the scene, but part of me would have preferred they stuck with one of the older ones. 

Once we get into the episode proper, The Doctor has a bit of a meltdown, steals a crippled man's wheelchair and begins threatening violence on anyone who tells him the truth. Admittedly the scene with The Doctor tooling around in Davros' chair was pretty funny. And the cup of tea line was brilliant, coming as it did literal seconds after I asked that very question.  

Does funny excuse nonsensical? Yes, it probably does.

Missy and Clara go for a wander through Skaro's sewers, where Missy takes the opportunity to do a bit of exposition around a vital plot device. Missy continues to be hit and miss for me, acting a good mix of nutty and self-centred in this part, but with some cringe-worthy moments too. Using Clara as bait, and tricking her into the Dalek shell was perfect, but her silly American accent thing whilst the decaying Daleks destroyed the live one was so annoying, and it just kept going. I'm also not sure how I feel about the revelation The Master had a daughter. I think I'm okay with it, as it makes him a bit more analogous to The Doctor, who we all know was a dad once.

The reappearance of Colony Sarff worked well here, showing a The Doctor as fallible, although how you could miss that many snakes in the chair, I'll never know. As The Doctor and Davros interacted, my ire began to rise significantly. What were they doing to Davros? He was the ultimate bad guy, and they were turning him into a big softy. I resigned myself to the fact that most people would have a bit of a change of heart when facing down the Reaper, so I just went with it, not once suspecting it was a ploy. My relief at that revelation was palpable. That didn't excuse having Davros suddenly able to open his eyes, nor the accompanying Star Wars line though.

I can't believe I already made that joke last week.

Davros' plot was a good one, but I'm interested to know how he knew the resultant Hybrid Warrior would truly be superior to the current Daleks, and not in some way infected with the weaknesses of the Time Lords. The process wasn't exactly scientific, was it. Just shoot regeneration energy into all the Daleks and see what comes out. Perhaps if he'd been a bit more scientific about the whole thing he wouldn't have ended up with the mother of all plumbing problems.

I was in no way a fan of The Doctor's whole "I knew what you were doing and I let you," thing. It reminded me a bit of The Curse of the Fatal Death. The interesting thing is, that despite not taking up Davros' offer to commit genocide on the Dalek race, The Doctor still seems pretty happy to cause them to be wiped out in another, far more complicated way, which also carried the risk of not working. What if the rotting Daleks had fully regenerated into living beings, rather than the Ghostbusters 2 style anger slime? What if the new Hybrids caught a case of forgiveness from him, and decided to work together despite being shoved into a sewer and all that?

Pictured: Everything going as planned.

Either way, the resolution is a bit of fun, and Missy's attempts to get The Doctor to kill Clara on the way out were delightfully mischievous. The Doctor, naturally lets Missy escape, and despite being surrounded by Daleks in the middle of a crumbling city, her statement that she had "a very clever idea" clearly implies we'll be seeing her again at some point.

Last week I talked about the loss of the Sonic, and questioned whether they'd abandon it for good, thereby voiding the issue of Deus Ex Screwdriver, finally concluding that The Doctor would most likely make a new one after all this was over. Little did I know it would be worse than I thought. Sonic Sunglasses? Groan!

Overall, this one fell a bit flat after the solid set-up in The Magician's Apprentice. In some ways it was good to get more insight into The Master's relationship with The Doctor, but the cold open did drag a lot. There were a couple of places that don't really stand up to close scrutiny, and if the rest of the story was going better, I wouldn't have time to scratch the surface of those and realise that was the case. So not an ideal episode, but buoyed somewhat by the first part.

7/10

Can we fix it?

A couple of quick, easy tweaks to start with here. Stop Missy from doing that stupid voice in the sewer. Also, choreograph or shoot the bit where Clara is threatening her with the stick so that when she snatches it back, it doesn't look quite so clumsy. Seriously, there is no reason Clara couldn't have avoided that lunge. Closer and faster is what that scene needs.

Now for the bigger stuff. I mentioned the opening flashback would have been stronger if they'd used an old Doctor. Having seen how perfectly David Bradley played William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time, getting him in to play the scene as One would have been awesome. That said, Four would have also been a solid choice, because with coat, scarf, hair and hat, you could easily shoot the scene without clearly showing The Doctor's face.

My main alteration here would be to change the whole, "I knew what you were doing" thing. With a slight change of dialogue we could have "I thought that may be what you were trying, but I'm a good bloke, so I did it anyway." It could also be changed so that The Doctor was less concerned with the creation of the Hybrid and more that exactly what happened would happen. This makes him seem less callous about essentially doing the same thing he refused to do earlier. Just because he's not actually doing the killing, doesn't mean he's not responsible.

The Doctor pleads with Davros as he has his energy drained, saying he shouldn't do this, it's dangerous, etc. Davros laughs and gloats until Missy arrives and The Doctor explains sadly and without any smarminess what Davros has missed. Things then play out the same from there on.

Oh, except for the sunglasses. Rather than them being sonic, The Doctor just uses them like a car alarm. They could even make the little bloop-bloop noise.

Man, I hope the sunglasses were a one-off.

Review - The Magician's Apprentice

Season 9 kicks off in spectacular style as The Doctor faces one of his oldest nemeses in The Magician's Apprentice.

Season 9, Episode 1 - The Magician's Apprentice

I sat and watched tentatively as this episode began, the foul taste of Season 8's final episodes still fresh in my mind. "Don't be crap," I thought as a war-torn alien landscape trapped a young boy, and The Doctor showed up to save him. Nothing offensive yet, but nothing particularly reassuring either. Then The Doctor asks who the boy is, and the answer he gets literally made me call out, "Oh-HO!"

"I am your father!"

With that cold open, the bar had been set and the stakes had been raised. Now I was really worried, because if it was crap, it would hurt all the more.

We soon discover The Doctor is being pursued by a robed roller-blader with a severe skin condition, who had tracked him through a handful of locations referencing previous seasons. His a message for The Doctor is that Davros has remembered something, and this revelation clearly sends The Doctor on a bit of a downer.

Then we cut to Clara at Coal Hill, teaching her students all about her apparent lesbian fling with Jane Austin, for some reason. Quite apart from this unnecessary In-Who-Endo, it now seems that everyone is cool with Clara casually receiving calls from secret military organisations at work and running out on her job at a second's notice. Either way we end up at UNIT HQ investigating why every plane on earth has become frozen in time.

Sadly it is nothing but a ruse by Missy, who delightfully doesn't even bother explaining why she isn't dead. In some ways I loved that, but it could also be seen as very lazy. Now I know The Master is pretty crazy now, and I understand we are still meant to see Missy as a bad guy, but randomly disintegrating people seems particularly psychopathic. Her interplay with Clara is nice though. I liked the way she reveals the concept of a Confession Dial, The Doctor's last will and testament. The big let-down that it wasn't for Clara was kind of telegraphed, but still had a nice pay off.

"You ain't no thang."

After some techno-babble, the ladies find The Doctor a few hundred years in the past having an "axe battle." I will admit, it was really fun watching The Doctor rock out, and the dodgy jokes were glorious, but this section chewed up a lot of time, making it feel that not much actually happens this episode. Lumpy-face turns up again, and after a demonstration of his snake powers, we have some kind of Mexican stand-off and The Doctor is coerced into following Snakes McGee to where Davros sits dying.

Then we get treated to another one of those God-awful disguised Daleks. Ugh! I hate, hate, hate them. They look stupid and go against everything the Daleks stand for.

"When they tell you not to run in the toffee apple factory, let me tell you, you don't run."

The stealth planet was an okay device, although the "you can see it once you've been here a while" was a bit of a stretch. Why was Davros' place not stealthed too? How did they get from outer space into atmosphere without feeling it? Not a big deal, but one of those things that can grate if the rest of the episode isn't good enough to help you ignore it. Gladly that isn't the case here.

I liked that they pulled some more archival footage to tie this into the Classic Who stuff. And I absolutely loved showing us Four's line from Genesis of the Daleks which forms the whole premise of this episode. And that leaves us with a delightful cliff-hanger that revisits that very question, asking if The Doctor has changed enough to answer differently this time.

"Sarah Connor?"

It's tough to rate this one, because it's only part one of a two-parter, but on the face of it, I liked it. Missy continues to irk me, but I must admit that this episode had her growing on me. I also note with interest the apparently abandonment of the Sonic Screwdriver. Could it be this spells the end of Deus Ex Screwdriver? It would be an interesting path to take, especially as it gives up a solid merchandising stream. Most likely The Doctor will just build another one when all this is over, but I'm interested to see where they take it. Part two may see me want to retroactively reassess my opinion of this story, but now I'm going to call it a winner. 

9/10

Can we fix it?

Not much to do here, especially in the second half, but the opening could use a couple of tweaks.

Firstly, Clara's call-up to UNIT, needs a review. I wasn't a fan of her commanding her students to whip out their phones and start searching for news on the planes. I'd prefer to have that scene cut down to just have her circle the plane on the window. Sure, the Headmaster can come in at that point and say she has a call, but rather than Clara jump in with, "that'll be UNIT," we instead hear that her mother has been taken ill. Clara would looked perplexed for a second before the Headmaster tells her, "they're trying to get in contact with her doctor," at which point Clara twigs, makes her apologies, and bolts. Things play out the same from there.

The way I see it, The Master / Missy may be insane, but randomly killing people and bragging about windowing his wife is a bit OTT. The Master was originally Doctor Who's version of Loki. Power-hungry and convinced of his superiority to other life forms. The crazy should be manifesting as unpredictability and mood swings rather than malicious murder. 

With that in mind a slight tweak to Clara and Missy's interaction. We should be treated to a glimpse at Missy's point of view here. When Clara talks of Missy going good, Missy looks confused. "I've always been good," she says, "just not your good." Missy could still kill those guys, but rather than brag about how mean she is being to show how she is totally a bad guy still, I swear, she talks about how it's not evil because humans are primitive. A parallel of Loki's ant/boot metaphor would be nice. A particularly cheeky thing would be for her to use it verbatim, prefacing it by saying "A great man once said..."

These are minor quibbles though. Overall it was top notch.

Review - Into the Dalek

Capaldi settles into his version of The Doctor and Clara sets her sights elsewhere as an old enemy returns in Into the Dalek.

Season 8, Episode 2, Into the Dalek.

Things start with a bang, as we see yet another large scale cold open which shows off the special effects budget. This one worked considerably better than the dinosaur at the start of Deep Breath though, in that it was better integrated into the overall story. We pick up where we left off (sort of) as The Doctor has picked up the coffee Clara demanded at the end of Deep Breath.

From there things are set up solidly as we are introduced to a magic shrink ray and The Doctor gives a nod to the obvious inspiration for this episode, the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage (or was it 1987's Inner Space?). Of course I'm seeing a few things in this episode that I've seen before. The Doctor's initial encounter with the titular creature is very reminiscent of Nine's meeting in the Season 1 episode Dalek. Once we get inside the Dalek, we see robotic antibodies again, much like in Season 7's Let's Kill Hitler. The sets were nice though. They seemed somehow realistic and delightfully cheap at the same time.

Things play out as you would expect with miniature people running around inside a cybernetic alien killing machine, culminating in a fairly predictable result once their goal is achieved. The Doctor's little mind-meld took a wonderful turn, playing nicely into the "am I a good man?" theme they seem to be setting up for this season, and was hammered home with one line from Rusty.

You are a good Dalek.

Ouch! You need some aloe for that burn, Doctor?

One thing I didn't really appreciate was being taken out of the story so abruptly just to wave the whole Missy season arc in my face again. It seems they are going to handle it in a similar way to the Madame Kovarian tease from Season 6. I don't recall the Kovarian tease being quite so jarring though. Generally she peered through the hatch during slower parts of the story. Throwing from a tense climax to the "heaven" bit just felt wrong. Perhaps that was the point. Either way, I think I like my season arc hints a bit more subtle than this.

Please stop.

We see more of a shift in dynamic between The Doctor and Clara this episode too, which is summed up neatly when she refers to herself as his "carer". That was actually pretty funny, but very telling at the same time. Is she bitter about his apparent aging? Now that The Doctor is off the table, they are setting up some kind of clumsy relationship with Clara's co-worker Danny Pink. And what was with all the sexual innuendo around Danny? It made no sense to me.

But why does The Doctor have a hatred of soldiers now? The Brigadier was a soldier, and The Doctor was all set to call on him in A Good Man Goes to War. I sincerely hope they are not setting up some reason why The Doctor can dislike Danny just so he can appear jealous of Clara. If it plays out more paternally, it would be okay, but even paternal feelings for Clara would feel a bit out of place in the face of the detached alien coldness we've had the past two episodes.

Overall it was a thoroughly entertaining episode, and I think it tops most of what we've had for the past few seasons. I wouldn't call it exactly perfect, but certainly close.

9/10

Can we fix it?

This one just needs a couple of tweaks, and not even to the main story. Both the Danny Pink set-up and the Missy scene caused pacing issues for me. We were thrown into a pretty hectic start only to be swept off to a hum-drum day at work for Clara and Danny, and I've already mentioned the jarring affect of the Missy scene.

These abrupt gear changes were disconcerting and could have been either removed (the Missy scene) or shortened (Danny's introduction), but I'm not entirely sure what you would fill the time with. There's not much else I can think of that could cause issues for the group inside the Dalek without just rehashing those antibodies again.

Danny's introduction also seemed a bit ham-fisted. They are clearly hinting at a tragic past for him, but the set-up was clumsy. He's obviously supposed to have taken a civilian life at some point, and I'm strongly suspecting all the innuendo about him being a bit of a player was just there to set up the line about him being a "lady killer." In this case, I feel we are going to find out this is quite literally what he is.

Without knowing for sure what the plans are for Danny, I couldn't guess at how to tighten this up, but maybe some more on why people may think he's a ladies man would have given their comments more context and made it all seem less strange and, quite frankly, creepy.

One other small tweak would be to not have Rusty talk about destroying the Daleks until after he gets a does of The Doctor's brain. At the start he should be talking about how the Daleks needed to be stopped, that what they were doing was wrong and futile. This would be enough to stop the resistance killing it, and to get The Doctor interested. In the end, by trying to restore that attitude, he actually pushes Rusty too far back the other way. I think that would have worked well.

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.

Season 8 full length trailer

The BBC have dropped the first full length trailer for Season 8. Check it out below:

First off, YAWN! Leading with a Dalek. I know they have to put them in every year for licensing reasons, but come on. That said, I don't think I recognised any of the other monsters or villains that appeared. Glad to see the Paternoster Gang in there, although they are also verging on overused now. But then there was this:

Someone better be riding this thing

I'm guessing that will be a part of the same episode as the Paternoster Gang, with the Dinosaur rising from the depths of the old Silurian Empire. We also get glimpses of a cybernetic guy, a robot knight and some sort of bug-eyed alien, so the creature diversity seems to have stepped up a bit.

The trailer seems very much focussed on the "what type of Doctor is he now" question. I recall when David Tennant first came on the scene, we had the same quandary, but it was well and truly resolved by the end of The Christmas Invasion. I kind of hope all of that is from the first episode of the new season, because it's not a theme I think has much longevity to it.

Either way, fun times ahead.

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 - 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 - The Parting of the Ways

Season 1 comes to a dramatic conclusion, as does Christopher Eccleston's all too short tenure as The Doctor in The Parting of the Ways.

Season 1, Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways

We pick up this story with The Doctor and Captain Jack flying off to rescue Rose from the recently revealed Dalek armada. Here I get a little confused as to why all of the sudden the TARDIS is apparently defenseless. I thought it always had some kind of shielding, but I could be somewhat confused. After bodging up a shield using the Extrapolator we get treated to a nice long conversation with the Emperor Dalek, wherein we learn it has a God Complex and it loonier than usual.

After The Doctor, Jack and Rose escape, there was an awkward bit of sexual tension back on the Game Station between The Doctor and Lynda. I thought they were hinting at that in Bad Wolf, but wasn't sure until the weird, kiss-no-hug-no-shake moment. Very strange, and possibly one of the few Hunka hunka burning Doc moments with Nine.

As the Doctor begins enacting his plan to foil the Daleks (not really using the Sonic Screwdriver much if at all), he forcibly evacuates Rose back home using Emergency Program 1. Rose then has a significant culture shock freak-out. Her speech about how The Doctor teaches you to lead a good life was inspired, and very well delivered. It really dug its claws into me for some reason. Maybe because I sort of feel that way about The Doctor myself in a way.

The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say, "No." You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away...

I loved the classic flying saucer design of the Dalek ships, and the flood of Daleks pouring out of them was a fantastic sight. We also saw our first specialist Dalek of New Who in the form of a blowtorch wielding one. We also got to hear some classic Dalek lines:

"I cannot see! My vision is impaired!"

Then the big companion tease with Lynda is ended with a silent, "Ex-ter-mi-nate!" You can't hear the Dalek say it, but you know what each flash of those lights means. Little details like that are always appreciated here. When Jack's time came, he copped it sweet, and it would have been a perfect ending for him if things went differently.

Captain Jack Harkness. Dying, like a BOSS!!!

There's a lot of ethical agonising over killing all life on Earth to destroy the Daleks, and you could see the conflict in Eccleston's face as that scene played out. The Doctor chooses not to be that man again and to face the consequences of that decision. Rose channeling the Time Vortex gives a handy out to that problem, and if she'd showed up a couple of minutes earlier, we could have been in for a repeat of the end of Boom Town. I was glad the Doctor made his choice before Rose's return.

I can't work out if I liked Time Vortex Rose or not. Was she nailing the performance, or failing badly? In the end I just went with it. I'm confused as to why absorbing the power of the Time Vortex was fatal to The Doctor, but not to Rose. She had the power for much longer and suffered no ill effects beyond passing out. I suppose this is likely a symptom of Eccleston suddenly leaving the program though. And quite why The Doctor had to kiss the Time Vortex out of her, I can't begin to imagine.

The Doctor prescribes 200 CCs of Lurve.

So, all told this was a solid episode, and a great way of ending the season despite the quite literal Deus Ex Machina ending. It was also a reasonable send-off for Eccleston, who, as I've said before, was woefully under-rated as The Doctor. If we'd have had another season or two with him, I think more people would appreciate Nine.

9/10

Can we fix it?

Not really, no. I know I haven't given this one a straight 10, but I can't really pick where it could be improved. Perhaps the way it ended makes it feel a bit rushed. Rose is able to deal with the Dalek threat in a literal instant, making The Doctor's 20 minute struggle to get the Delta Wave generated seem a bit of a waste fo time. A bit of explanation on how Rose survived the Time Vortex but it caused The Doctor to regenerate would be nice. All it needed was a throwaway line during the Regeneration sequence.

Minor tweaks, anyway. Still totally re-watchable.

Review - Bad Wolf

Stuff starts getting REAL as the season 1 season arc bears delicious Dalek-fruit in Bad Wolf.

Season 1, Episode 12 - Bad Wolf

Back we go to Platform 5, a century after The Doctor made his gross assumption that everything would go back to normal, only to find that it didn't. That worked well, didn't it Doctor? If only you'd asked where that Jagrafess had come from. Seriously though, I love to see The Doctor as fallible.

This time around the concept of televisual thought control is taken to the next logical step, with reality TV being the focus. As an added bonus of revisiting this episode, I also got to revisit some of the crappiest TV programming of the new millennium.

It really is a wonder this stuff didn't last.

The droids are all delightful representations of their real life inspirations, and the games work well as ways to destroy people. All except the What Not To Wear show, which really forced a way to kill the contestant. Those segments were the most entertaining though. John Barrowman plays it so well, clearly enjoying a chance to really ham it up as Jack. And did I see him grope one of the droids at one point?

Yes. Yes I did.

This episode has also given us our first Deadlock Seal to stop any Deus Ex Screwdriver. We got our first Torchwood reference too, starting that neat tradition of teasing the next season arc.

We get a bit of what I'm going to call Companion Tease, where Lynda shows an interest in traveling with The Doctor, and The Doctor shows an interest in letting her. Or is that just an interest in her. I couldn't really tell from this if there was supposed to be a romantic spark here or just an interest in travelling. Either way, this helps support Rose's "death" by making it feel like they're introducing a replacement.

She certainly seems the type.

The Controller was nice and creepy, and she was offered up as a solid Red Herring villain. Her death gave a good hint at who the Big Bad really was. We got a bit of monster vision when Rose woke up too, which again gave a strong hint. The revelation the enemy are Daleks plays out nicely, and the threat level of one Dalek established in the episode Dalek makes us understand this threat is near unbelievable.

It was interesting that The Doctor defied the Daleks when that were threatening Rose's life. I'm not sure he could have known they wouldn't just exterminate her. He did end it well though, and the closing shot of the interior of the Dalek ship was just ace, and left me hanging for The Parting of the Ways.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Well, my only real bugbear with this episode was the reality shows the crew ended up in at the start. Of all of them, I think Big Brother is the only one left on the air, so it hasn't aged well. The main issue was that the What Not To Wear show didn't have a realistic way of destroying people. This is a tough one, because those sequences were so entertaining, but I think they needed to either figure out another way to get the disintegration ray into that show, or put Jack in a different show altogether. Perhaps some version of The Bachelorette would have allowed Jack to give us some awesome Jack moments but still retain the element of elimination common to the other two shows.

Bring on part two!