Review - Flatline

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

Season 8, Episode 9 - Flatline

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

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

BBC budget cuts take a disturbing turn.

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

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

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

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

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

"Advance slowly and act menacing."

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

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

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

Creepy and kooky. Mysterious and spooky.

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

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

8/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

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

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

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

Season 9 wrap-up

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

My scores

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

                              Season Average =  8/10

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

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

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

Have fun, you crazy kids!

Ongoing problems

Thinking about my pet peeves, Season 9 had:

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

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

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

Add more glowing bits!

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

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

Season Arc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review - Hell Bent

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

Season 9, Episode 12 - Hell Bent

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

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

Even negotiations

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

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

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

She doesn't look a day over a billion

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

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

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

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

Victory!

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

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

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

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

8/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

Review - Heaven Sent

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

Season 9, Episode 11 - Heaven Sent

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

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

Understandable.

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

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

At least one naked Doctor.

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

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

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not at all. Perfection. 

Review - 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 - Before The Flood

We travel back to 1980 to figure out what happened Before The Flood to create the homicidal ghosts from Under The Lake in what turns out to be a rather bland conclusion to this two-parter.

Season 9, Episode 4 - Before The Flood

After a cold open in which The Doctor explains the bootstrap paradox (he tells us to Google it), we pick up where last episode left off, with The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett appearing in the soon to be submerged town in 1980. The town has been done up to look like a part of the soviet republic, which, The Doctor explains, is because it's a training facility for the army at the height of the Cold War.

They soon discover the alien craft they had salvaged in the future, and The Doctor quickly identifies it as a kind of space hearse. Our top hatted Tivolian turns out to be the undertaker charged with burying a creature called The Fisher King in the traditional manner of taking him to a remote backwater (i.e. Earth). After a couple of truly cringeworthy S&M In-Who-Endos, the team figure out Prentis the undertaker knows nothing about the killer message, and The Doctor returns to the TARDIS to call Clara.

"I like being enslaved. Get it?"

After learning about the new ghost that's appeared outside the Drum, The Doctor admits that his fate is already sealed, but sets about trying to solve the problem before his time runs out. He tries to talk to his ghost, but it just accesses a control panel and lets the other ghosts out of the Faraday Cage. In the face of this, The Doctor instructs Clara and the others to hide in the cage but leave her phone outside so that the cage doesn't cut off contact.  

While The Doctor it trying to puzzle everything out, we discover The Fisher King has risen from the slab and has carved the message in the side of the hearse. He then kills Prentis, thereby starting the chain of events already witnessed in Under The Lake.

The Fisher King chases The Doctor and his group, and manages to kill O'Donnell. Bennett chastises The Doctor for not saving her, pointing out the coldness that has become characteristic of Twelve. They try to return to the future, but the TARDIS simply loops back half an hour. The Doctor has to physically restrain Bennett from interfering in past events and altering the future.

Meanwhile, in the future (does that make sense?) the newly arrived ghost of O'Donnell steals Clara's phone, forcing her to figure out how to safely leave the Faraday Cage. She realises that Lunn was spared by the ghosts once before, and that is most likely because he hadn't seen the message in the ship. Class isn't happy about it, but he leaves to retrieve the phone. When he fails to return, Clara agrees to go with Cass to find him, despite the danger. 

What danger?

The Doctor confronts The Fisher King, getting a bit of banter back and forth, before tricking it into thinking he'd erased its message. It rushes outside to check, only for The Doctor's ploy to be revealed when the overloading power core taken from the ship detonates, bringing the dam wall down and flooding the town. Presumably the Fisher King is killed in the flood.

As the ghosts close in on the survivors back in the future, the stasis pod opens, revealing it was The Doctor inside the whole time (which I had guessed would be the case last episode). The Doctor uses his ghost, which is actually a hologram, to trick the ghosts back into the Faraday Cage, and things wrap up nicely after that. The Doctor is even able to use his fantasmagorical new Sonic Sunglasses to erase the memory of the message from the minds of the survivors, in a delightful bit of Deus Ex Screwdriver. Or should that be Deus Ex Sunglasses?

Ultimately this is a rather disappointing end to what started off as a solid story. The pacing was really off, and it feels like a lot of nothing happens. Then just as the big bad shows up, he is completely wasted. Also, why is he called The Fisher King? There was absolutely no attempt at explaining that. Ordinarily I'm all for things being unexplained, but this was such a bizarre reference to leave hanging there that it just annoyed me.

We also see what could be the first obvious reference to a season arc, with mention made of "the Minister of War" as something The Doctor had yet to experience. I'd like to hope there will be other subtle references to the finale in previous episodes, but that they were so subtle I didn't pick up on them yet.

So, yeah. A disappointingly flat ending here. Definitely not a favourite.

6/10

Can we fix it?

I think the biggest fix that needs to be made here is just utilising the Fisher King himself more. A couple of off screen kills and a scene of dialogue with The Doctor just wasn't enough. The conversation between the two was great. I very much liked the King referring to the Timelords as "cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most war-like race in the galaxy." But so much more could have been done with a physically menacing warrior alien.

I'd have liked to see more chases and close calls as he hunted the heroes down. Perhaps some of the banter we have in the one-on-one between The Doctor and the King could be thrown in here as he's trying to hunt them down.

By culling some of the slower scenes and beefing the tension of this bit up, the solution would have been all the more rewarding. It could also have been good to have Bennett be the one to set the charge by the dam wall, making him far less of a passenger in the final act, and perhaps giving him some sense of revenge for the lost O'Donnell.

Also, I would use a different name for The Fisher King. Unless the season arc turns out to have something to do with Arthurian Legend, it is totally out of place.

Review - Tooth And Claw

The Doctor and Rose take yet another jaunt to the Victorian era, this time in Scotland so the new Doctor can take his native accent for a spin in Tooth and Claw.

Season 2, Episode 2 - Tooth And Claw

We open on a precession of sinister looking monks. We know they're shifty because they're all wearing black hooded robes. Well, for a while, anyway. The black is soon shed in one of the most genre-wrenchingly random moves I've ever seen, as the monks bust out some  Shaolin wire-fighting Kung Fu action.

History's coming to life!

The Doctor and Rose appear in Scotland just in time to meet up with Queen Victoria herself. I can see why there is so much crossover between Whovians and Steampunks. The Doctor does seem to spend an awful lot of time in the age of steam. Pauline Collins was far from a dead ringer for Vicky. They could have padded her up a bit or something. Still, she did a top job. 

Not a lot of Maccas on the road to Scotland.

Hong Kong movie tricks aside, this is only a slight twist on a classic monster movie plot. People alone for the night in an isolated manse at the mercy of The Wolfman. Lycanthropy as an alien inteligence was an interesting concept, and was exposed reasonably well over the course of the episode. Sir Robert's story telling was maybe a bit of a clumsy or rushed way of getting the background out there, but within the constraints of the 45 minute format, there's very few ways of doing that.

The werewolf effects were very good though. The change scene was slick and the creature itself was very natural looking, with only the occasional bit of dodgy movement.

Don't mind him. Time of the month, you know?

The idea of a trained allergy to mistletoe as a means of control was inspired. If the monks worship the Werewolf, though, why do they feel they need to control it? If the creature itself is aware of the plot to infect Queen Victoria and is clearly a willing participant, why is it being hauled around in a cage?

I liked the use if the Koh-i-Noor diamond in the solution. I also adored the fact that the solution was not The Doctor's, but had been devised years before by Prince Albert and Sir Robert's dad. The Doctor only had to put the pieces together. 

I believe the term is "Pew! Pew!"

Of course the big reveal of this episode is the creation of Torchwood, which as we know, is the season arc for season two. This one is by far the least subtle season arc hint of them all. The Queen's detailed explanation of her plan to set up an institute to fight aliens was verging on Bond-villain monologue.

More than enough of a hint without a word being spoken.

Despite the unanswered questions about the monks and their relationship with the creature, this is a very watchable episode. The pacing was good and the supporting characters, with the possible exception of Father Angelo, are all strong and well performed. All up, quite re-watchable.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Only a couple of tweaks needed here, really. As we are already taking the time to tell stories around the dinner table, surely Father Angelo could have given us a bit more of an indication of his part in the whole thing. It'd be tough to balance with The Doctor's research in the library scene. A nice subtle hint at the end of Sir Robert's chunk of plot exposition would have been better than having a little sing-song.

Season 1 wrap-up

After working my way through Season 1, I thought I'd do a little wrap-up.

My scores

Episode 1 - Rose                               8/10
Episode 2 - The End of the World        7/10
Episode 3 - The Unquiet Dead             7/10
Episode 4 - Aliens of London               8/10
Episode 5 - World War Three              7/10
Episode 6 - Dalek                             10/10
Episode 7 - The Long Game                8/10
Episode 8 - Father's Day                     7/10
Episode 9 - The Empty Child              10/10
Episode 10 - The Doctor Dances        10/10
Episode 11 - Boom Town                     5/10
Episode 12 - Bad Wolf                         8/10
Episode 13 - The Parting of the Ways   9/10

                              Season Average = 8/10

Three episodes were 10/10 for me, which I suspect will be tough for another season to top. If it wasn't for the Godawful Boom Town, it would have been mostly killer and very little filler.

Winner

Winner

Chicken dinner

Ongoing problems

Let's see how the season fares when it comes to the ongoing issues I always go on about (otherwise known as my pet peeves). Not all of them had a showing in Season 1, but the ones we did see were the ones that annoy me the most.

Season 1 saw:

• 3 episodes featuring instances of Hunka hunka burning Doc
• 4 episodes with In-Who-Endos
• 4 episodes that resorted to Deus Ex Screwdriver

That last one surprised me the most. I honestly thought it took longer for the Sonic Screwdriver to become a crutch for The Doctor, but there it is. Interestingly, all four of those were in the latter half of the season.

I was also a bit surprised to see the Hunka hunka burning Doc start so early too. I would have sworn that didn't happen until David Tennant came in. Still, one of those three was from Jackie "upright with a pulse" Tyler and despite the odd relationship between Doctor and Companion in Season 1, the other instances of this are mostly from other females, not Rose.

Though not all of them

Season Arc

The Bad Wolf arc played our quite subtly on the whole. There were a couple of excellent hints, but there were a couple of horrible ones too. Some, like the landing chopper in Dalek seemed a little forced. To my mind, there is no reason there has to be a season arc reference in each episode, so if it can't appear naturally, why force it?

Ultimately Bad Wolf is little more than a verbal reference to the final episode. It's supposed to be a warning, but how? what did it warn them of? And whilst The Long Game technically ties in, it's not as integrated as they could be. As I said in my review, The Doctor simply neglects to ask any of the questions that he really should have asked. This is where more could have been done to hint at the arc. It's tough to have The Doctor ask questions in case he gets answers, but so long as the answers only lead to more questions, it will work well.

A solid season arc is one that has clearly been planned ahead and worked into multiple story lines, with dialogue and situations clearly (at least with hindsight) having been included to progress the arc story in advance of its dedicated episodes.

Bad Wolf doesn't feel like that, and could easily have been written last and the words retroactively added during filming. The only hints that really feel properly integrated are Gwyneth's scene in The Unquiet Dead and maybe The Doctor's realisation in Boom Town. Gwyneth shows us Bad Wolf is tied to Rose, and The Doctor's soliloquy makes the implication that the words are somehow following them. Later seasons seem to do better at progressing the arc story than this first one though.

All up a very entertaining season with some all-time classics in it.

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!