Review - Heaven Sent

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

Season 9, Episode 11 - Heaven Sent

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

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

Understandable.

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

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

At least one naked Doctor.

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

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

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not at all. Perfection. 

Review - Face The Raven

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

Season 9, episode 10 - Face The Raven

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

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

But at least he'll look fly doing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

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

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

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

Review - Sleep No More

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

Season 9, Episode 9 - Sleep No More

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor got sick of this quicker than I did

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

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

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

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

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

A season highlight

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

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

9/10

Can we fix it?

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

Other than that, top notch. 

Review - The Zygon Inversion

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

Season 9, Episode 8 - The Zygon Inversion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All whilst rocking some epic cosplay.

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

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

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

10/10

Can we fix it?

Nope. Nothing to fix here.

Review - The Zygon Invasion

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

Season 9, Episode 7 - The Zygon Invasion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not just a bureaucrat.

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

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

"Say hello to my little cliff-hanger!"

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

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

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

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

9/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

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

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

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

Anything is possible.

Review - The Girl Who Died

The Doctor and Clara set out to save a village of historically inaccurate Vikings in the first instalment of yet another Season 9 two-parter, The Girl Who Died.

Season 9, Episode 5 - The Girl Who Died

We open with The Doctor and Clara mid adventure TARDIS materialising in some kind of wooded grove, with The Doctor and Clara milling about outside. Soon they are surprised and captured by a band of Vikings. You can tell they are Vikings because of their ridiculous horned helmets. Making up for this little historical faux pas, however, is a glorious scene wherein The Doctor tries to threaten a Viking warrior with his Sonic Sunglasses, only to have them removed from his face and snapped in half.

Yesssssssssss!

I honestly couldn't have been happier with how that played out. I've been saying for a while now that these things needed smashing, and here it was happening before my very eyes. Wonderful.

After what we learn is a two-day longboat ride, The Doctor and Clara are brought in chains to the Viking village. The Doctor does his best to trick the Vikings into letting them go by pretending to be Odin, only to be slightly upstaged by what appears to be the real thing. The face of Odin appears in the sky looking for all the world like God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and sets about taking the most powerful warriors to Valhalla.

Clara harnesses her oft-used kid charming skills to get young Viking girl Ashildr to use the apparently still functional remaining half of the Sonic Sunglasses to remove her chains. Unfortunately the resulting display of high technology marks them as powerful enough to warrant being transported along with the warriors.

Clara and Ashieldr barely escape as the warriors are harvested for their adrenalin and testosterone, which the fake Odin drinks as he explains his evil plan. Clara again does her Doctor impression, attempting to talk their way out of the situation and force the aliens into retreat. It all seems to be going well until Ashieldr eggs Odin on and declares war on him. He vows to return the next day with ten of his best Mire warriors and raze the town.

Upon their return, The Doctor tries to convince the Vikings to run, but for some reason they claim they can't do that. I think this was all about honour and dying well or something, but it all seemed a bit weak to me. The Doctor makes to leave, but Clara encourages him to stay and help the villagers train for the battle.

Pictured: Training

After a brief comedy training montage, The Doctor figures out a plan to take Odin and his warriors out without simultaneously making Earth a target for the rest of the Mire. Using materials from around the village, along with parts from Clara's space suit and the a recent catch of electric eels, The Doctor steals one of the warrior's helmets and reprograms it to allow Ashieldr to project an altered reality into the video feeds of the remaining Mire warriors. Seeing a giant dragon attack is enough force a retreat, leaving Odin standing alone.

The Doctor explains the dragon was merely an altered video feed, and they now have video of Odin's men running in fear from a bundle of garbage, and unless he wants the humiliation of that video appearing on space YouTube, he will leave and never return. The joy of victory is short lived as we learn Ashieldr has died providing the illusion of the dragon. The Doctor is upset and stalks off, but soon has a revelation that encourages him to find a way to save the girl.

By hijacking a piece of Mire tech, The Doctor jump-starts Ashieldr's body into repairing itself. He also leaves her with another chip to give to whomever she chooses. We find out this is because The Doctor suspects his actions have made her functionally immortal. The episode ends with a quite beautiful shot of Ashielder smiling as time wheels past, but as it goes on, she clearly becomes bitter and disillusioned.

I'm expecting a list of names here.

The overall pacing of the episode was good, and although we are left with a "To be continued," this really feels like a standalone episode. The "next time" footage doesn't really seem connected enough for me to consider it a single story, but as as The Doctor himself said, "Time will tell."

I honestly don't have any real issues with this one. It was great to see The Doctor doing some real work to achieve a solution here. The absence of TARDIS and Sonic always makes for a more entertaining episode. Speaking of which, smashing the sunglasses was a joy to behold. I'm hoping they stay smashed.

Maisie Williams was great, and I'd love for her to become a recurring character in some way. We've seen a fairly clumsy connection to the prophesy of the Hybrid that Davros mentioned in the season opener, but could she also be the Minister of War mentioned in Before The Flood? Either way, she's a good contender for the season arc.

This was not quite what I'd call a perfect episode, but it was damn close.

9/10

Can we fix it?

Not a lot to fix here. Some costume changes to the Viking warriors to make them a bit more historically accurate and therefore allow more easy suspension of disbelief would be nice. I also feel like I want to suggest cutting back on some of the comic relief during the training montage, but ultimately I think that helps break the story up a bit.

I'm not sure how the next episode will connect with this one, but it feels complete enough to me for them to not have the "to be continued" at the end. Ashieldr can still turn up in a subsequent episode without it being the same story. Depending on how the rest of the season pans out, they could even be spaced out a little rather than back to back. I'll reserve final judgement on that for later though.

Review - Mummy on the Orient Express

The Doctor and Clara go for their "last hoora" with a relaxing train ride that turns out to be less relaxing than planned in Mummy on the Orient Express.

Season 8, Episode 8 - Mummy on the Orient Express

The cold open shows us everything we need to know for the premise of this episode. A woman is killed by a monster only she can see, and this is happening on a train, which for some reason is in space. The on screen timer is a neat little device and clues us in to the time limit before The Doctor has it explained later on.

After the tense ending to Kill the Moon, Clara has resolved to end her adventuring with one more little jaunt to space. The whole dynamic is that of a couple who know the relationship is dying but are desperately trying to end on good terms. Uncomfortable and slightly melancholy.

The episode plays out at a good pace with hints and clues nicely woven into the dialogue, rather than ham-fistedly slapped in just as they're needed. Moments of character development between The Doctor and Clara are well balanced with the more tense investigation and action during attacks by the Foretold. As the attacks increase in frequency, the tension rises and things come to a head nicely.

The Foretold itself was creepy, even if it was yet another "advance slowly and act menacing" type of monster. At least the 66.6 seconds rule kind of justified that and removed the whole, "why don't you just run away" thing.

"I'm much more spry than I look."

The Doctor maintains the detached alien nature we have seen throughout this season, which is a stress point in his relationship with Clara. He of course gets a chance to kind of explain himself at the end, but whilst he is still the same Doctor in that he wants to solve problems and save people, he seems to now have the ability to switch off. I can't really see Ten or Eleven methodically pumping a doomed person for information with out at least saying, "I'm so, so sorry."

I was disappointed to see yet another thing that can supposedly stop the Sonic Screwdriver. What is it this time? Some kind of "interference field," apparently. This is the main symptom of Deus Ex Screwdriver, and I'm not sure why they couldn't have stuck with one of the established weaknesses instead of making a new one. Hell, they could have said the shoe had cause some kind of issue that meant it would take time to open the lock. Time The Doctor didn't have, because he kinda got arrested.

Ultimately the solution comes about reasonably well, if a bit coincidentally. The fact that Perkins has something to do with it was nice, even if the rest of the scientists in the room seem nothing but window dressing. The Doctor shouldn't always be the only person to have any fun.

Frank Skinner as Perkins is a definite highlight in this episode, and helps to elevate it from merely satisfactory to very enjoyable. Any time The Doctor is challenged by someone is great fun. The offer of Companion status was actually quite exciting, as I could see Perkins' dry wit fitting into the TARDIS crew nicely. I hope to see him return at some point.

"Ooooh, yeah, I see your problem, Guv. Won't be cheap. Can't get the parts, you see."

The decision to not reveal the identity of whomever was pulling the strings here was definitely the right one. Knowing wouldn't have offered any additional value to the episode, and it leaves a thread hanging which could be tied into something else later on. I was also glad to see no season arc reference here, even though one could easily have been slotted in as it has in previous episodes this season.

The episode is book-ended by Clara's attempt to resolve her relationships with The Doctor and Danny. Instead of a grown up resolution though, we see a continuation of the "other man" theme which was the main driver of The Caretaker. Much of the final scene could easily be taken out of context and applied to a romantic or sexual situation. This is a great shame, because it seemed a bit of work had gone into sending Clara down the path of breaking up with The Doctor, only to have her ignore that and go on with the deception that caused all the trouble in the first place. Add to that the conversation between Clara and Maisie, where there is uncertainty around the nature of the whole relationship, and we are treading the dark path of Hunka hunka burning Doc again.

Despite all the confused relationship stuff, this is a tight story that plays out well with a believable threat and likeable characters. It's not perfect, but it's a good, solid effort.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Ordinarily I would say we could lose a good chunk of the Doctor / Clara relationship stuff, but honestly, the episode doesn't suffer for it. Instead I'd try to refocus some of it to clarify this isn't a girl trying to work out which man she loves, but is instead about a girl choosing between two lifestyles. She loves one man so much that she is now facing the inevitable putting away of childish things. The love of Danny Pink has given her something to lose should her dangerous lifestyle finally catch up with her. 

This stuff is all there, but it keeps getting clouded with ambiguous romantic implications. I say, get rid of the ambiguity, just as they finally did with Amy Pond when they showed her talking to Baby Melody about Rory. If Maisie must ask if there is a romantic relationship there, Clara should shut it down immediately. 

"No, I have a boyfriend. He's great. I love him. The Doctor is just a friend. Someone to get in trouble with."
"And what does your boyfriend think about that?"
"He doesn't like trouble. He's had enough of that in his life already."
"But you do like it, don't you?"
"Well... I mean, it's not like I need it."

A little exchange like this would make it clear that Clara loves Danny and sees The Doctor as a kind of Partner in Crime type of friend. It would also tie in with the talk of addiction at the end, making the closing scene less like someone plotting continued infidelity and more like a junkie justifying their next binge.

Review - Time Heist

Season 8 continues to showcase the potential for story diversity, as The Doctor and Clara pull a bank job in Time Heist.

Season 8, Episode 5 - Time Heist 

Wow! This episode was just spot on for me. It really highlights the way Doctor Who can remain solidly rooted in science fiction, whilst at the same time playing off other genres and tropes. This episode uses the classic heist movie formula in the tradition of Ocean's 11, Sneakers or the Australian classic Malcolm.

Things start off quickly, with The Doctor and Clara (and us of course) thrown in the deep end along with a pair of specialists. The memory wipe is a great way of bypassing the discovery phase and getting straight into the action. Sadly I think it went some way to telegraphing the identity of The Architect for me. Not that it really mattered all that much.

On that note, I understand they were setting up The Doctor figuring out who The Architect is, but it just seemed out of place to hear him come out with "I hate him," with no real motivation behind it. The Architect hadn't done anything specific to harm The Doctor or anyone else. They all heard themselves willingly submit to the memory wipe. It was just out of place.

The entire caper was very enjoyable, playing out with perfect pacing, and despite the quick start, didn't suffer from Go, go, go, Geronimo!, most likely because it didn't waste time with the set-up. The only element to the plan that seemed a bit strange was the "exit strategy". I'm unclear how Psi and Saibra managed to return to the planet and insinuate themselves into the guard staff when the place was in lockdown. The thing is, the quality of the rest of the episode allowed me to suspend disbelief at that point.

They teleported directly into the guards' locker room

The Teller was a nicely creepy monster, very alien and clearly threatening. The whole "soup" thing was really cool, and looked creepy enough. I'm not sure detecting random guilt is particularly foolproof when the punishment is encephalous liquification. There's no real room for appeal after that. The flaw in that method was already highlighted nicely in the Red Dwarf episode Justice. That said, it's their bank, and they can police it as harshly as they want, I suppose.

The prison orange jumpsuit and restraints really clinch the look

The budding Clara / Danny relationship took up very little of the episode, but disappointingly, despite all his apparent confusion at Clara's primping at the start, The Doctor ends the episode with the very jealous sounding line of, "beat that for a date." We are confusing the situation again here. If the sentiment is "Why would you go on a date when you can do this?" then I get it, but this phrasing makes it sound like, "I'm better than him, so you should love me."

All up, this was my favourite episode of the season so far. Solid, entertaining, and oh so cool-looking. I think we have our first perfect score for the new Doctor.

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not much to fix here. Maybe a slight tweak to the way The Doctor gets on to his "hating" The Architect. If we heard more of the reasoning The Doctor comes out with at the end spouted earlier on, his hatred may have seemed more natural.

Other than that, I'd just tweak his wording of the whole Date line to, "Robbing a whole bank! That beats any date," or something along those lines.

Those are just me being picky though. It really is a top episode.

Review - Listen

The Doctor deals with some of his own personal monsters and we learn a bit more about Danny Pink in Listen.

Season 8, Episode 4 - Listen 

We begin with The Doctor proposing a theory that just as nature has produced perfect hunters there may also exist a creature which has evolved to be the perfect hider. He suggests these creatures are the cause of a dream shared by all people where a hand grabs you from under the bed.

Using a telepathic link with Clara to direct the TARDIS, The Doctor hopes to find a point in her life when she had the dream, and therefore discover the creature. Unfortunately, Clara gets distracted by the embarrassing aftermath of her fairly disastrous first date with Danny Pink, and things don't go according to plan.

This was an interesting concept for a story and I think overall it was executed quite well. Initially I felt a bit short-changed after there was no confirmed monster, but it is actually quite a refreshing change. There were several hints that indicate there was no creature at all, with each bit of evidence for it being paired with a rational explanation, but at the same time we just can't be sure.

I think it's a testament to the concept and the writing that there is already heated debated raging online about whether there was or wasn't a creature. I've said it before and I'll likely say it again, Steven Moffat can write. Where he falls down is his insistence on pushing these grand, overarching stories and tying everything together. Which leads into my one real issue with this episode. The connection to Day of the Doctor. It just seemed a bit gratuitous to me.

The only way I could not be excited about seeing The War Doctor again

On a similar note, is Gallifrey not time locked any more? How was the TARDIS able to get to that point in The Doctor's timeline? Perhaps it was just a special quirk of Clara's because she has been spliced throughout The Doctor's timeline, but it feels like they are forgetting some important canon there.

In the end, this whole episode felt like a bit of a nothingness. We got some interesting insights into both The Doctor and Danny Pink, and it was yet again Clara's knack with kids that won the day, but overall it was a much slower pace than we've seen recently with not a great deal of excitement. Not that that's inherently a bad thing, but we maybe need a bit more to hook the audience. And with no definite resolution, we are left without so much a story as a collection of things that happened and some unanswered questions. As I said, not everything needs to be answered, but this kind of felt unfinished.

6/10

Can we fix it?

I'm not really sure we can, at least not without completely altering the whole thing. As I said, there is a good concept here, but I don't think it's actually a story. There's a bit of value around discussing this episode and it's implications on the wider Whoniverse, but it's just not that entertaining in and of itself.

Getting rid of the in-your-face reference to Day of The Doctor could have helped. I'm pretty sure some clever people would have made the connection with the barn at some point. If not, I'm certain that Moffat would have taken the opportunity to tell people that was his intention in some interview or another.

What this episode really needs is a solid ending. A good story needs to be structured in such a way that we have Introduction, Investigation, Escalation and Resolution (More info on what I mean here). This episode shows the first three to varying degrees, but there is no real Resolution phase, at least not from The Doctor's perspective. I can't fathom The Doctor abandoning his theory without knowing for sure.

This episode is blissfully free of my other major issues, but without a definite story, it will always just feel like filler.

Just an afterthought...

I know everyone is debating whether there was a monster or not, but to me there is another more interesting question; was the kid really The Doctor? I like to think it was actually The Master. The boy appears to have similar dark hair and could be crying due to his experience looking into the Untempered Schism. That all depends on at what point in the initiation into the Academy the youngsters are made to face the Schism though.

Crying is the first sign of hyper-insanity

Either way, I hope my theory that Missy is actually The Master regenerated and gender-swapped is true and she whips out Dan The Soldier Man at some point. That'd be ace.

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 - 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.