Review - Under The Lake

The Doctor and Clara go ghost hunting Under The Lake in this rather enjoyable first instalment of yet another two-part story.

Season 9, Episode 3, Under The Lake

Deep under a Sottish lake, a research facility has salvaged an alien craft. Scrawled inside is a mysterious message which glints menacingly in the eyes of all who look at it. Soon after, the mission commander is incinerated when one of the crew is startled by a dapper looking ghost and accidentally fires the ship's engines. No need to grieve though, as he's back pretty soon, only with fewer eyes.

I see dead people. But they can't see me.

The Doctor and Clara arrive, and the first thing we learn is that the TARDIS is not happy being there. Despite this, or maybe because of it, they choose to investigate, and it doesn't take them long to run across a pair of ghosts, who are intimidating, but non-violent. The ghosts lead them to the ship, but turn nasty after The Doctor and Clara have seen inside. They eventually run into the crew sheltering in a lead-shielded Faraday cage, and learn the ghosts only come out during the facility's artificial night cycle.

The Doctor spends some time trying to puzzle out what these entities are and how they work, but soon things start escalating and we lose another crew member to the ghosts. Of course, as is traditional, the first victim has been established to be utterly loathsome, so we don't really feel bad about it. 

We are treated to a little explanation about how the ghosts are using the facility to try to kill the remaining people, but the why of it is the pertinent question. There is only one thing for it; catch the ghosts. After a thrilling game of cat and mouse to lure the ghosts into the Faraday cage, our resident deaf character Cass is able to read their lips to decipher what they are saying. Sadly the way she is able to do this is through The Doctor's freaking Sonic Sunglasses.

Why?

I had hoped those things were a once-off. When The Doctor got rid of his sonic in the previous story, I wanted to believe they were going to run without one for a while, thereby eliminating the issue of Deus Ex Screwdriver. Sadly, with the inclusion of these damnable sunglasses, it seems the Sonic will be able to do more things now.

Anyway, The Doctor figures out what the ghosts are up to and what their message means, allowing the crew to salvage a stasis pod that was missing from the alien craft. The Doctor decides to travel to the past to discover what happened to cause this and maybe what is inside the pod, but before he can get everyone to the TARDIS, the ghosts manage to overload the facility's nuclear reactor, causing the automatic safety systems to flood the base in an attempt to cool the reactor.

Despite their best efforts, the crew are split up. With The Doctor unable to pilot the TARDIS to the other side of the flooded hallway due to the presence of the ghosts, Clara and friends settle in to wait for his return. The episode comes to a bit of a killer cliffhanger when another ghost emerges from the murky depths of the lake, resolving into the figure of...

How's that regeneration going for you then?

The pacing of this episode was pretty good, which is no doubt due significantly to the fact that it's a two-parter. It was about as far from Go, go, go, Geronimo! as you can get, if anything feeling a little too slow in parts. It was great to give The Doctor some time to puzzle things out, and as an added bonus, allow the other minor characters to be more than just cannon fodder, or substitute audience members to explain things to. The inclusion of Cass was a nice touch, but it kind of did telegraph that she would end up reading the ghost's lips. Still, great to see minor characters adding their skills to solve the mystery. The ghosts themselves are mildly creepy, and their attempts at physical violence are threatening, but the scarier bit is them using the base itself against their victims. I am genuinely curious as to what's going on here, although I have some theories. Again, my score may want revising after part two, but on the face of it, this one is pretty good.

Apart from those freaking glasses.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not a lot actually needs doing here. Originally I was going to complain about how the base floods itself to cool the reactor, and how little sense this made, but on second thought, Vector Petroleum has already been established as a fairly heartless company (it is an oil company, after all). So with that in mind, I think it's easy to imagine them killing the crew in favour of losing the facility.

The only change then becomes those bloody sunglasses. We clearly need a video link so that Cass can read the ghosts lips, but there is any number of bits of tech that would conceivably be in this facility to establish a video link. The scuba suits could all have GoPros on them, for example. Bing, bam, boom. No need for sunglasses.

Review - The Witch's Familiar

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

Season 9, Episode 2 - The Witch's Familiar

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

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

Does funny excuse nonsensical? Yes, it probably does.

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

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

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

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

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

Pictured: Everything going as planned.

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

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

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

7/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review - The Magician's Apprentice

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

Season 9, Episode 1 - The Magician's Apprentice

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

"I am your father!"

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

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

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

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

"You ain't no thang."

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

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

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

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

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

"Sarah Connor?"

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

9/10

Can we fix it?

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

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

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

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

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

I'm baaaack!

Hi there all. After almost a year of inactivity, I have been spurred back into action by the start of Season 9.

In case anyone was wondering, the reason for my drop off in posting was two-fold.

First up, the arrival of my second son. I had a bunch of time off work to help settle him into life on the old homestead, but even so, I was very distracted with him and all the not sleeping etcetera. Now, as his first birthday approaches, I feel like I have enough of my faculties back to start putting my thoughts down again. 

Secondly, and probably more of a factor, the tail end of Season 8 was, in my opinion, depressingly bad. I'll get around to doing proper reviews for the remaining episodes at some point, but suffice it to say the finale physically hurt me, as the writers figuratively peed on the literal grave of my all-time favourite companion. 

Nick Frost as Father Christmas in the Christmas  Special was somewhat of a soothing balm, but Season 9 will need to do a lot to make up for what happened last year.

Having recently watched the first episode of Season 9, The Magicians' Apprentice, I feel like they could be on track to help me forget. A full review of that episode is coming soon.

Hopefully I can get trough a season with no interruptions for once.

Review - Kill The Moon

The Doctor reaches a pinnacle of patronising crankiness as Clara faces the truth about just how different he's become in Kill The Moon.

Season 8, Episode 8 - Kill The Moon

The cold open drops us right into the action here, building a hook to suck us straight in. Unfortunately Clara's message to Earth just struck me as a bit forced. We're then flung straight back to the real beginning of the story, where Courtney Woods is insinuating herself on The Doctor, aiming to go on further trips through Time and Space.

Here's where we run into the first thing I found odd about this episode. Despite his new crotchety demeanour, I still don't buy The Doctor telling someone they're not special. Despite his regeneration, this is still the same man who once said "You know that in nine hundred years of time and space I've never met anybody who wasn't important before." Of course The Doctor is now claiming over 2,000 years of life, so perhaps he's gotten a bit more jaded since then. Or maybe it was supposed to be another lesson.

Like "don't listen to men in polka-dot shirts."

The overall concept here was fairly sound, I suppose. The Moon being an egg was an interesting idea, but some of the details seemed a little glossed over. Lots of questions remain unanswered, or at least not suitably answered to keep me suspending my disbelief.

The Germs were suitably scary, but why did they look like spiders and spin webs if they were supposed to be single celled organisms? A bit of a redesign would have helped here, making them appear more simple. Another option could be to refer to them as parasites rather than germs. I'm not sure how (if at all) that would affect the scene where Courtney started floating or using the spray to kill them, but neither of those really made much sense either, so maybe the whole lot could just go. Whatever the solution, I can't buy a "unicellular" organism having such an advanced structure.

Even a basic knowledge of biology says this is not a germ.

Why had the creature growing in the Moon only begun to distort gravity relatively recently? The moon has been there for millions of years, presumably with the creature growing inside the whole time. Why then does the weight gain only start causing issues on Earth some time in the next 30 years? Was it dormant until recently? How exactly does the creature fit inside the moon, but have a greater density than it?

How exactly were the astronauts planning on using the nukes to destroy the Moon? They had no idea it was a living thing inside the moon that was causing the trouble, and they have no drilling equipment to get the nukes sufficiently deep in the crust. Hell, they don't even have a lander, so couldn't evenly space the bombs to get maximum effect without manually hauling them across the lunar landscape.

And the biggest question of all, how the hell did the creature manage to lay an egg? First up, how did something that just came from inside the moon manage to lay another egg the same size as the moon? Is the creature growing within the new moon simply non-sexual, or is this some kind of immaculate conception?

Biologically possible, but probably VERY uncomfortable.

Putting all this aside, the episode had good pacing and handled the morality issue reasonably well despite the flaws in the voting system (only half the world could vote and governments could rig it by cutting all power grids). It was entertaining despite the plot holes, and it had a total lack of my usual gripes, with bonus absence of a blatant Season Arc reference. Still, I think a slightly different angle could close those plot holes and make this episode a beauty. 

7/10

Can we fix it?

As I said, yes we can, and all it takes is a rethink of the egg concept. Rather than an egg, I think a better solution would be a nest.

First up though, we need to clear up the whole spider = germ thing. Rather than rebadge what they have as a parasite to make it biologically more accurate, I'd rather go with a redesign of the monster.  Instead of legs, it has flagellum. We can even give it eight of them so that in dim lighting we get the impression of a spider. Instead of a toothy maw, we have a mass of pili which, again, in poor light appear to be teeth. The webs could be explained away as some kind of excretion like a snail trail which aids mobility. All of this allows us to initially play on that all so prevalent arachnaphobia whilst retaining some semblance of biological realism.

With that sorted, we can tidy up the issues surrounding the gravity and the new moon. I reckon I can fix that all up with a couple of tweaks to the creature and how it breeds.

I see this creature as something inter-dimensional. The moon is part egg, part nest. Within the shell of the moon is the opening to a pocket dimension where the foetus grows. As it matures, it begins emerging from the pocket dimension, causing the seismic activity and a huge leakage of amniotic fluid with it's accompanying bacteria. The huge creature begins to cause gravity to increase quickly as it shifts more of itself into this dimension.

Upon emerging fully from its extra-dimensional egg-sac, the creature's first instinct is to build a new nest from the scattered remains of the old one. First it fabricates a new pocket dimension, then covers it with the pieces of the moon, tying it all together with silk-like strands. Then it flies off to find a mate, destined to return who knows when and somehow deposit it's fertilized egg safely in the pocket dimension through the moon.

Who knows how many times this cycle happened before recorded human history. It could even be tied in to the extinction of the dinosaurs.The creature that emerged then didn't manage to catch all of the pieces of the moon when making it's new nest.

Much of the first part could be explained by The Doctor upon his return from his little amniotic swim. The rest would layout to some explanation as they watch from Earth.

An interesting twist would be to have humanity's interest in space exploration kindled by a desire to protect this extremely rare breeding ground.

Closing those couple of plot holes would elevate this episode from an entertaining episode that makes me cringe at the poor science, to a near perfect story.

Review - The Caretaker

Clara's two worlds combine as The Doctor does a bit of moonlighting at the Coal Hill School in The Caretaker.

Season 8, Episode 6 - The Caretaker

This episode begins with a montage showing Clara struggling to live two lives at once, her "normal" life as a teacher with Danny Pink, and her life adventuring in time and space as The Doctor's Companion. This whole montage draws the parallel of a woman cheating on her partner, and in that it succeeds reasonably well. We get the distinct impression that something's going to give pretty soon.

After The Doctor leaves Clara behind to go "Undercover" She appears to have time to focus on Danny, but naturally The Doctor is going undercover at Coal Hill School as John Smith, the temporary replacement Caretaker. Hilarity ensues.

I love a comedy dust-coat

The Threat of the Skovox Blitzer is fairly minor, which is fine, because The Doctor straight up tells us he can handle it easily. There is no discovery of the threat, as The Doctor already knows about it. There is no investigation, as The Doctor already has a plan, and even when that goes wrong he seems to figure out a fall-back plan with minimal fuss. Sadly, if the majority of screen time doesn't even involve the monster of the week in any way, the focus of this episode becomes Danny's discovery of Clara's life with The Doctor.

Pictured: minor sub-plot

This all puts the episode squarely in the category of The Companion Show Featuring The Doctor. In retrospect this has been a bit of a trend throughout the season, particularly in Listen, but so far it's not taken up the majority of an episode. I thought (or hoped) we'd gotten past this issue once Clara stopped being The Most Important Person In The Universe™. Once the mystery of her origin was solved, she could become just another travelling companion for The Doctor. Hopefully the resolution of the Danny situation will reduce the focus on Clara and allow The Doctor more time in the limelight.

The scene with The Doctor mistaking Adrian for Clara's boyfriend was strange and has left me feeling a bit annoyed. There's two ways to take this. One, general arrogance from The Doctor that Clara would want someone who looked like he did, because that means she still wants him; or two, a fairly obscure kind of paternal feeling where The Doctor would only approve of someone who was somehow like him. I'd like to think it was meant to be option two, but something tells me that's not really what they were going for here.

The Doctor's irrational hatred of soldiers outlined in Into The Dalek was clearly designed to work with this episode, but despite this not fitting with established canon (The Doctor has been friends with several soldiers), Danny's response to The Doctor was actually pretty awesome.

Yet again we are treated to a scene in the Nethersphere, but this time Missy seems to have her cranky pants on and is reportedly "too busy" to deal with the poor dead policeman. For the first time since the Promised Land arc began, I am actually intrigued. I still don't really care who Missy is, but my interest is piqued as to why she would be annoyed.

Maybe ask for that raise another time

Overall, this is a pretty nothing episode. It does well enough considering it's entire point is to get The Doctor and Danny introduced to each other, it's just I like my light science fiction show about aliens and time travel to focus a bit less on a single character's love life and more on, you know, the aliens and time travel.

6/10

Can we fix it?

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was impossible to fix this one, but it would take a lot. The threat of the Skovox Blitzer would need to be somewhat enhanced to start with. More needs to be made of The Doctor discovering it and deciding to get the job at Coal Hill. It would also be good to find a way of pushing the Clara / Danny thing to the background a bit.

First up, The Doctor would not refuse Clara's help. She would refuse to help him. The Doctor discovers the Skovox is around, and comes to Clara asking for help. Before he is able to explain the threat or how she is needed, Clara refuses on the grounds she needs to concentrate more on Danny, telling The Doctor she's sure he can handle this one alone.

What we don't learn immediately is that The Doctor wanted Clara's help to place the devices around Coal Hill, which he has determined is the best place to displace the time vortex because of a weakness in the space / time etc. When Clara refuses to even listen, he is forced to assume the position of Caretaker in order to follow through with his plan.

When Clara berates him and he reveals what the threat is, The Doctor can then throw Clara's own words back at her, telling her he can handle it himself. This would also add another dimension to the negativity towards Danny. The Doctor is jealous, but not in a romantic way, just that Clara's attention is elsewhere. Why is spending time with him more important that fighting alien robots? The Doctor could even specifically ask her that, only to be answered with Clara's revelation that she loves Danny. There's really not much you can come back with at that point.

So in true Doctor fashion, he just throws a tantrum at Danny and blames him for the failure of Plan A. The rest would probably have to play out in a similar manner, except have Parent Teacher Night held in the same hall the Time Vortex is set to appear in, increasing the threat to innocent bystanders. They think things will be okay, but when the Vortex begins to appear earlier than The Doctor calculated, they resort to pulling a fire alarm or something to get everyone out.

It wouldn't be great, and would still suffer from being focussed too much on Clara's relationships, but it would have a more solid set-up and make slightly better use of a deadly alien robot.

Review - Robot of Sherwood

Our new Doctor really beings to hit his straps as he takes Clara to meet a legend in Robot of Sherwood.

Season 8, Episode 3 - Robot of Sherwood

This episode gets us back to basics, with The Doctor and Clara resolving to simply do a bit of adventuring in time and space. Clara chooses to go and meet Robin Hood, and despite The Doctor's claims that he is nothing but a myth, meet him they do. After a brief duel and a mild In-Who-Endo (seriously, I don't think they can help themselves), Robin takes The Doctor and Clara to meet his Merry Men.

What follows is a very condensed retelling of the Robin Hood story as we are introduced to the main villain, the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is swiftly shown to be a nasty piece of work. Then we bounce straight to the archery contest for the golden arrow. Things take a sharp turn away from the norm here, as The Sheriff's knights turn out to be robots, and The Doctor and Robin take some time to get really stuck into a phenomenal comedic double act. It really was very entertaining.

Historically accurate

Interestingly it is Clara who gets to take the lead in coaxing out the Villain Monologue and securing a bit of back-story from the Sheriff. It's always good to see the Companion adding practical value rather than just being a warm body to explain things to or as an emotional foil for The Doctor.

The season arc tease was a little less offensive this episode in that Missy herself was blissfully absent, however it still seemed clumsily shoved in. We don't need the arc referenced in every episode. Let's just enjoy a standalone episode for once.

The Doctor works out the Sheriff's plan and why it won't work, revealing a flaw that will prove fatal to half the country. And here's where it all falls apart for me. Somehow, hitting the side of the ship with a golden arrow will give it a surge in lift and get it clear of the atmosphere. If the gold just needed to be in contact with the ship, why were they bothering to melt it down and forge those huge circuit board things? If a bit of extra gold on the outside would have got them clear, why didn't they use the stuff the peasants were escaping with, or the huge vat of Sheriff-infused gold that was still in the dungeon?

Hasta la vista, Sheriff.

Ignoring all of that, I liked that the three of them had to work together to pull it off, and the overall resolution of the episode was nice, especially Robin's words to The Doctor.

And today's team-building exercise is...

Overall, the episode ran a little short, making the whole thing seem a bit rushed. I can forgive The Doctor and Clara happening to materialise right next to Robin, thereby getting things moving quickly, but the Robin Hood legend is so rich that it's always going to be tough to get it into such a short space of time. We move straight from introducing characters to a major point in the legend. Add to this that (amusing as it was) a lot of time was chewed up on the banter between Robin and The Doctor and things just seem a little Go, go, go, Geronimo!

I have to say that I still found this episode to be great fun, and would totally re-watch. I have to give it extra points because my wife actually enjoyed this one, and she's not really a fan at all.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Just a couple of things to fix with this one, all related to the eventual solution. I think we needed a bit more explanation about how the Gold Matrix™ works, which could hopefully make me a bit more comfortable with how shooting a gold arrow into the side of the ship would result in a power surge.

I'm thinking that the Gold Matrix is installed on the exterior of the ship. We specifically see shots of the circuit-like panels as the castle crumbles away when the ship is taking off. The panels would appear to somehow feed energy into node points on the sides of the ship, which in turn power the engines.

The issue then is not that the ship cannot clear the atmosphere, but that it is unstable and will explode, but the robots aren't trying to clear the atmosphere, they are still following through with the Sheriff's plan of attacking London. They are doing this because the Sheriff is still in charge. Even without the beheading, seeing the Sheriff stumble into the control room covered in gold could be a good reveal that he is already mostly robot.

The Doctor would point all this out, indicating a direct infusion of gold into one of the node points would overload the matrix flight controls and cause the engine power to temporarily spike, sending the ship clear of the atmosphere. The rest of the scene would play out the same, only they would be much closer to the ship, because flinging a solid gold arrow that far taxes my suspension of disbelief no end.