WHO REVIEW: 2015 Christmas Special - The Husbands of River Song

We sorely needed a light-hearted runaround after the heavy drama of the recent series of Doctor Who, and this certainly delivered that. It's hard to call this anything particularly remarkable for Doctor Who. It's hard to make a Christmas special feel special when it's only been about three weeks since the last series finished; Doctor Who is very concentrated into the last few weeks of the year now, which does suit the spooky direction we've gone in lately, but does reduce its overall impact on the screens.

In any case, this was good fun, if nothing spectacular. A ludicrously over-the-top sci-fi story with more than a hint of Hitchhikers to it, with the broad comedy set-up used as a background for River and the Doctor to play together. The conceit of bringing River back, yet again, but pitting against a Doctor without the boyish looks of her previous Time Lord boyfriends is a good one, and having River unaware that this is the Doctor at all is a great idea. As the Doctor says, it's a chance to see what River is like the rest of the time, having her own adventures, playing up how flirtatious, amoral and downright dangerous she is. The script flirts with the idea that River is just using the Doctor as a handy ride in times of trouble, but swivels and has her declare her love for him in an astounding speech. Either way, she is revealed to be enormously dependent on him, even as she lives a long and elaborate life of her own.

It has to be said, Greg Davies and Matt Lucas, although both pretty funny here, are wasted in the roles of Hydroflax and Nardole (a particularly unfortunate little character, he really gets put through the ringer). As is Game of Thrones's Nonso Anozie, who provides the booming voice of the robotic body that carts the various characters' heads around. It's really a showcase for Capaldi and Kingston, who play things mostly straight while the farce carries on around them, displaying admirable comedic skills and great chemistry with one another.

Both of the main settings for the episode have potential, but neither is explored in any kind of detail. This is a pity; the horrific reign of King Hydroflax could have been a mine of material, but perhaps Hydroflax is just too straightforward a villain for modern Doctor Who, suitable only as a vague threat and comic relief. Another potential source of villainy and adventure is the starship Harmony and Redemption, the misnomered cruise liner for the worst scoundrels and despots in the Galaxy (having committed genocide in the past, the Doctor would have no trouble booking a cabin). A shipful of supervillains could provide a series' worth of material, but it's little more than a throwaway gag here. There's a lot more that could have been done with this setting.

What made the episode for me was the ending, beginning with River's impassioned speech (and the Doctor's merciless teasing of her for it), and moving into their, we presume, final adventure together. Bringing back material Moffat wrote for River when he first created the character, it puts a different perspective on the Doctor. The man who doesn't like endings - who refused to even countenance the idea of Clara dying - finally has the courage to accept this is the beginning of the end for them. Having put off the fateful trip to Darillium for so long, he and River share what seemed to be their final moments together in front of the Singing Towers. It's utterly beautiful, shows Capaldi and Kingston at their absolute best, and ends with a doozy: they've actually got twenty-four years to spend together in their one, final night. Although the comedy nonsense was fun, this is where the strengths of both performers and the writer lie.

WHO REVIEW: 9-12) HELL BENT

You know what? I really enjoyed that. This hasn't been the most consistent of series, and there are problems with the finale that reflect this. It's certainly not what I expected to see, following on from the remarkable Heaven Sent, but that's not a bad thing. This was a perfect end to the season, and to Clara's story. Clara's character has suffered particularly from the inconsistency this year, and she's never been the most consistent character in any case. As a farewell, though, this worked beautifully. As many have pointed out, this was essentially an inversion of Donna's fate at the end of season four, with Clara taking retaining her own agency and the Doctor being punished for his own arrogance and hubris. "Never be cruel, and never be cowardly; and if you are, always make amends." For once, the Doctor was both cruel and cowardly, and he payed for it.

So they're out of the way, complaints (ish):

• Clara didn't die after all. Are we surprised? Even if the cast of the episode hadn't been released ages ago, this wouldn't have been unexpected. Nobody stays dead in this series. It's just part of the way the show works these days.
• Gallifrey's back then? Sat at the end of the Universe, not up to much. The Doctor finally arrives there and takes the place over in a bloodless coup (which is just perfect), exiles the President, takes his place and promptly runs off again. All great, but still, it was a bit anticlimactic.
• Rassilon was a disappointment, and a bit of a waste of the great Donald Sumpter. It's a shame we didn't get Timothy Dalton back, but perhaps, actually, it was for the best. This was the real Rassilon; the scared, desperate old man behind the blustering warlord, who simply isn't relevant now the Time War is finally over. The Doctor finally kicked him out by simply refusing to take him seriously.
• Why were Ohila and the Sisterhood there? And how? They seemed rather surplus.
• The Doctor really put himself through billions of successive iterations in a cyclic hell just so he'd have a bargaining tool when he finally got to Gallifey? He really is a stubborn old bastard.
• All that Hybrid stuff really didn't work as a mystery. We'd never heard anything of it before Davros randomly mentioned it in The Magician's Apprentice, and since then it's been dropped in rather awkwardly more or less every episode in an attempt to make us think it's been haunting the Doctor and the Time Lords since the series' inception. It really didn't work. Applause for the fan-baiting tease of the half-human Doctor though (which he notably doesn't actually deny).

With that out of the way, though... this was rather joyful, when it wasn't milking tears. The Doctor goes home - and he really goes home, not to the President's office but to the place he hid out as a child. I was very pleased to see the General again (I'll have to stop calling him General Bones now). A shame to lose Ken Bones, who I rather adore, but that regeneration was just fabulous. T'nia Miller is actually rather excellent as the new General, with a real authority that makes it believable she's the same character. And the gall of it... the old white guy regenerates into a young black woman, right in front of us, a full-blooded Time Lord, damned right it's canon, deal with it. And basically says, "ah, back to normal at last." Just perfect.

Even before that though, the moment between the Doctor and the General, the former acting appallingly, blinded by love, the latter standing his ground, unwilling to waver. Two characters with utter respect for each other, at odds. It's a beautiful scene. But for the Doctor to gun someone down, a friend, even though he knew he'd probably regenerate; I don't think we've ever seen him go so far.

Good to see Maisie Williams used well again. She gave an astonishingly controlled and confident performance as the last woman in the Universe. By then, after trillions of years of life, she'd either be completely insane or, well, god. Also, that classic, white TARDIS interior, with the Doctor in a severe black coat. I had nostalgia for the sixties, and I wasn't even there. 

So, very Moffat, and the Moffat haters will, of course, hate it. And fair enough; if it's not your cup of tea, that's understandable. It was somehow overblown and undercooked at once, it made no sense whatsoever, but it was quite simply a wonderful experience and I imagine it'll be an episode I go back to again and again (unlike, say, Zygon ISIS, which although the best story of the year, isn't one I'll get a lot of rewatch value from). It ends with the Doctor picking up the pieces while Clara and Me/Ashildr travel the Universe together. Spot on.

WHO REVIEW: 9-11: Heaven Sent

After an exceedingly hectic week, one in which I didn't even find time to review Face the Raven, but did find time to watch The Day of the Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks and An Unearthly Child in a pub's basement bar, Saturday was pleasantly relaxed. Although not for the Doctor. He had an absolute shitter of a Saturday, and it lasted several billion years.


Essentially a single-hander for Peter Capaldi (barring a couple of cameo moments), it's very hard to see how this episode would have worked as well under any of the previous Doctors. John Hurt could've pulled it off, because he's John Hurt, but Smith, Tennant and even Eccleston would have struggled to maintain sufficient gravitas, vulnerability and believability throughout the fifty-five minutes of the episode. Doctor Who has experimented with new approaches and storytelling devices quite frequently over the last few years, from the dream logic of Last Christmas to the flawed found footage style of the recent Sleep No More. It's with Heaven Sent, though, that it really manages to create a unique episode of the series, one which feels genuinely different to anything that has come before it.


Which is quite an achievement, considering that so much of Heaven Sent is Moffat taking his now overused tropes and stretching them to their endpoint. Though it's not a “timey-wimey” story as such, the cyclical storytelling brings those stories to mind. Creepy imagery and scares aren't new for the series, although they've rarely been as effective as the veiled ghost, dredged from the Doctor's nightmares and sent to slowly track him down. The Doctor's hypertime mental state is exactly the same as Sherlock's mind palace, down to the sleuth's ingenious last second before the bullet hits in His Last Vow. The time-stretched nature of the story is really a better realised version of the Doctor's long last stand in The Time of the Doctor. The shifting castle brings to mind Harry Potter, Dark City, The Cube... it's not original. Nothing is really new here. It's the way it's being deployed that's makes it so brilliantly effective.


It's an episode which relies on the skill of its central player and his support. Without wanting to overlook the many people who work on a production like this, whose skills go into making every episode, the success of Heaven Sent is down to Capaldi, Moffat and director Rachel Talalay, the latter in particular really making this something of a masterpiece, maximising the tension and managing to create a feeling of aeons passing as the story progresses. Also worth mentioning is Murray Gold, whose excellent music is sometimes overlooked when discussing the success of an episode. That said, it's still too high in the mix. If we're going to have emotive scenes of Peter Capaldi talking to himself, I'd like to be able to hear what he's saying.


Although this is a pure character piece for the most part, it manages to also be an intriguing example of science fiction. Sci-fi rarely takes the idea of how a teleporter actually would have to work and runs with it (there are some excellent stories that do, the best on screen being the adaptation of Christopher Priest's The Prestige). The dawning realisation of the Doctor's situation, the movement of the stars tipping him off that a vast amount of time has passed, and his sheer, bloody-minded refusal to lose to whatever has him trapped, makes for an incredible combination of high-concept and emotive storytelling. Again, it's Capaldi that makes it work, expressing the Doctor's fear, rage, and finally triumph against this haunting trap. It would be the best regeneration story ever, if he changed his form instead of iterating as an endless run of Capaldis.


That's not to say it's flawless. I'm finding it hard to invest in Clara's death, since I don't believe for a second she's not coming back. Even if we didn't already know she was set to appear in the finale in some fashion, nobody ever stays dead in this show (q.v. River returning once again for Christmas). There's also the question of whether any of this actually happened at all. If the castle really did exist inside the confession dial, it was surely some virtual environment, presumably in some region of the Gallifreyan Matrix (as with the Nethersphere in last year's similarly Hell-themed finale). The Doctor would still have suffered in his own personal Hell, but it still reduces the impact. On the subject of impact, his arrival on Gallifrey would have ahd more clout if it hadn't been revealed in the press release weeks ago, although I guess it was no big surprise anyway. However, the main problem with Heaven Sent is precisely what's so wonderful about it. The production team have had the guts to do an experimental, intense one man show, that repeatedly shows the Doctor blackened, burnt and on the edge of death, but how many children could have sat through this? This is genuinely adult Doctor Who, but it's worth remembering the series' target audience is meant to include the whole family.


Still. It was bloody good.




Continuity Corner: The Doctor has generally suggested that he left Gallifrey because he was bored and wanted to see the universe, although there have been suggestions there was more to it. He, he confirms that he fled because he was scared.


So, is he really the Hybrid, or is he just really cross and spitting blood? This could be a resurrection of the idea that the Doctor is half-human from the TV movie, something that most fans prefer to ignore. Personally, I assume it only applied to the eighth Doctor (due to an anomaly in his regeneration), and that he was put back to pure Gallifreyan biology when he regenerated into the War Doctor.


Alternatively, what the Doctor actually says is, “the Hybrid destined to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins is me.” Maybe he actually means Me, aka Ashildr. She is in the next episode, after all.


Maketh the Man: As I didn't review last week's episode, I missed the chance to comment on the Doctor's new Pertwee-esque look, with a frankly gorgeous burgundy velvet jacket.


Questions: I may have missed an explanation for this, so forgive me, but why didn't the wall of diamond-like material reset like the rest of the castle?


Also, the Doctor, after diving into the sea, swaps his sopping wet clothes for his previous iteration's nice dry ones, leaving his wet ones to dry out for the next one. Does this mean the first iteration of the Doctor spent most of his time in the castle naked?


And Another Thing:



Neil Perryman of Adventures with the Wife in Space points out that “Heaven sent and Hell bent” are lyrics from “Sweet Bird of Truth” by The The. This might be a clever reference, or it might be Neil getting carried away.

WHO REVIEW: 9-9: Sleep No More

It's not fashionable to like Mark Gatiss's Who scripts, but I'm keen on most of his episodes, the exception being series six's Night Terrors. Like that episode, though, Sleep No More is a case of style over substance, blessed with strong visuals but without the heft of a decent story to back them up. There are some excellent ideas here, but very little exploration of any of them. The compression and elimination of sleep, the distressing notion of genetically engineered "grunts" for combat, the potential of a video to infect its viewers with a malevolent force; all of these could form the basis of an intriguing, potent science fiction story, but none of them are used to any real effect here. There are hints at an interesting future world, where there's idealogical conflict between "Wideawakes" and "Rip van Winkles"," and where civilians are conscripted into the military to serve alongside both career soldiers and indentured servants. So little of this explored at all. Who holds the power here? Who is this army fighting? Why do people willingly give up their sleep to get ahead, and who are they working for? Nothing is elaborated upon beyond soundbites.

I'm not generally a huge fan of the found footage school of film. I struggle to see past the artificiality of it all. One of the more effective elements of the script is that it embraces this artificiality, not simply using the cobbled together footage as a visual conceit, but as a storytelling one. The drawbacks of the approach, however, are the same as they ever have been, from Blair Witch to Cloverfield. The storytelling lacks coherence. We need to be told what has happened to characters who die offscreen, and have incidences explained to us because we can't fully make them out. It's goes to far into a "tell, not show" method of storytelling.

The characters fall foul of the sketched-in nature of the story. Capaldi is as watchable as ever as the Doctor, even he seems to be lacking interest in proceedings. Jenna Coleman might as well not be present, so minimal is Clara's contribution to the story. This episode has received some coverage for its casting of Bethany Black, the first openly transgender actor in the series, and this is rightly praised. However, her character, the aforementioned grunt designated 474, gives her virtually nothing to work with. Is she a good actress? I honestly couldn't say, based on what she has to do here. None of the other guest actors, bar Reece Shearsmith, gets much better. I can only praise the episode for continuing this series' trend for diverse casting, but only the white cis guy actually get anything decent to work with. Although presumably that's more because he's old mates with the author.

In fairness, though, Shearsmith is great here, doing what he does best: a shifty, slightly unsettling character. Rasmussen's villainy is blatant from the start, and it's not intended otherwise. He stands by in his Dastari specs and a monochrome suit straight out of a Pertwee serial, every inch the Doctor Who villain. The monstrous Sandmen are also very effective, a revolting concept well rendered, their ill-defined formes well suited to the found footage format. However, they make no sense at all, either scientifically (we're used to that, of course), or narratively. There's so much that could be done with the concept of removing sleep from human life, but all we get is eye-gunk monsters with dubious and poorly explained origins. The final scene, with Rasmussen (or is it a copy of Rasmussen? I was left confused), crumbling away as he speaks to the audience is creepy as hell, but it's lost in a script that has no real impact overall. When the story makes absolutely no sense, it's probably not a good idea to have the Doctor point it out.

Sleep No More boasts arresting visuals and a potentially interesting central idea, and has the guts to leave things open-ended, with the Doctor escaping but crucially not stopping the villain's plans. However, this is lost in the general confusion of the finished product. An interesting experiment, but one that was scuppered by poor handling.

Continuity Corner: 

This episode is set in the 38th century, during which time the Indo-Japanese nation is a major force in the Solar System. According to the Doctor, a tectonic realignment occurred merging India and Japan, which was part of the Great Catastrophe. He says to Clara that she has this to look forward to, which suggests it might be something in her personal future, although he could just be speaking figuratively. If he does mean it's shortly to come, it's tempting to suggest that the Great Catastrophe is the same as the Great Cataclysm, an event that saw a huge rise in sea levels and major environmental change, and formed the backstory of the Australian K-9 TV series, which was set around 2050. However, it's quite likely it's an event further into the future and closer to the time of the episode. Interview's with Mark Gatiss in the latest DWM have him make the link with the event that led to the evacuation of the Earth mentioned in the serial Frontios, something normally cited as being much, much further in the future, while Bethany Black thinks it might be linked to The Sun Makers, in which humanity relocates to Pluto, and is apparently also set in the 38th century (but I've no idea where she got that date from). So make up your own head canon on that one, I guess.

We've not seen the 38th century before (barring possibly Sun Makers), but the Peladon/Galactic Federation serials featuring the third Doctor are generally accepted to take place in the 39th century, although there's absolutely nothing in the episodes themselves to suggest that. According to The Daleks' Masterplan, in the year 4000, Uranus is a planet of some importance in the Solar System, but Neptune is hardly mentioned. Here, though, it's a hub for the Indo-Japanese culture, with a major population living on its satellite, Triton.

The Doctor says people don't put "space" in front of things, like "space restaurant." I'd suggest the takes a look back at some of his old serials.

"When I say run, run!" is, of course, a bit of a second Doctor catchphrase.

Most pertinent line: "It doesn't make sense! None of this makes any sense!"

WHO REVIEW: 9-6) The Woman Who Lived

It's been a funny week for Doctor Who. Big Finish have announced that, in what's surely the culmination of their gaining the rights to the new series, that David Tennant and Catherine Tate are returning as the Doctor and Donna for a special set of Tenth Doctor audio adventures next year. Meanwhile, in less expected news, Bob Baker is bringing back the Doctor's robot dog in a movie called K-9: Timequake, set for release in 2017. It's set to pit K-9 against the legendary Gallifreyan villain Omega, another character created by Bob Baker and his co-writer Dave Martin. To be honest, I'll be pleasantly surprised if this actually materialises, but it could be wonderfully batty if it does. Before all this, the BBC interrupted its succession of spooky and exciting stories for this idiosyncratic, philosophical and talky episode.

"The Woman Who Lived" is the second half of a sort-of-kinda-two-parter, but is so tonally different to its predecessor "The Girl Who Died" that it's hard to consider it as anything other than a separate story. Not to mention that it takes place eight hundred years later, is written by a different author and one of the previous episode's main characters is almost entirely missing. Catherine Tregenna, having written some of the more emotionally mature and interesting episodes of Torchwood (plus "Meat," but never mind that), is a good choice for this episode, and she excels at giving interesting dialogue to the Doctor and Ashildr - now referred to, and even credited, as "Me." The character's complete inability to remember her original name and barely having any recollection of her life is entirely believable, and equally heartbreaking. There's some fine characterisation here, with Ashildr presented as naive, forthright yet unsure of herself, and immensely likeable, while the centuries older Me is both utterly beaten down and supremely self-confident, yet, at least initially, not very pleasant at all. The parallels with the Doctor are, of course, obvious. That the Doctor refuses to take her with him precisely because they are so similar works perfectly, furthering the notion that he needs a human companion, not a godlike immortal, to keep him focused on the little picture. It's also quite right that he feels guilty for not being there for Ashildr/Me, but never once expresses regret at saving her life, in spite of the consequences.

The first half of the episode is almost a two-hander between Capaldi and Williams, and even with the best writing, couldn't work without their acting talents. As good as Capaldi is, it's Williams who makes this episode, managing the very difficult task of making Me both extremely removed from, and recognisably the same person as, Ashildr. As much as I'm a Clara defender, I didn't miss her in the slightest in this episode. Clara's presence would have overloaded it, when it needed to focus on the relationship, or lack thereof, between Me and the Doctor. (Not me and the Doctor. Me and the Doctor, if you follow.) That said, it's another episode that justifies its later timeslot by being unsuitable for younger children, this time by virtue of being extremely talky and largely uneventful. I like slow-paced television, but it's hard to see many children getting a lot of entertainment from this episode.

Where it falls down is in the material that doesn't focus solely on the Doctor and Me. In spite of being played by the reliably funny comedy actor (and huge Doctor Who fan) Rufus Hound, Sam Swift is a dull and ineffective character. Speaking as a man who adores terrible puns, I can appreciate the joy of ending an episode with a pundown, but the hangman scene fell flat. The jokes needed to be worse! The old ones are the best, as H.P. Lovecraft used to say, but god, that scene needed some original material. The comedy guards and deaf manservant were even less effective, but at least they didn't outstay their welcome. The opening scene was pretty good, but even then, the prevailing thought was "Blackadder did it better." On the adventure side of things, we had some unusually inept action scenes, including a poorly choreographed fight between Me/the Knightmare, and Sam. I realise that bout of fisticuffs was supposed to be inept, but surely it should be watchable. Leandro the lion man was also unispiring, a terribly generic villain who brought little to the story bar an obvious last-minute threat.

Some people have called this episode boring, disliking it for its verbosity and slow-pace. Too much talking, not enough action. For me, though (not Me, but me), it's the opposite. Where "The Woman Who Lived" worked best was in its quiet, dialogue-heavy scenes. I'm looking forward to seeing Maisie Williams's character again, but I'm not too enthused about Sam Swift joining her.


Continuity Corner: The Doctor claims the Great Fire of London was caused by the Terileptils, a reference to the 1982 serial The Visitation, in which the fifth Doctor teamed up with another highwayman, Mr. Richard Mace. He's fibbing a bit, though: it was actually he himself who dropped the torch that started the fire.

He also talks about travelling with another immortal, Captain Jack Harkness, although this is a bit of a stretch. His travels with Jack took place before the Time Agent became immortal, and he promptly dumped him when it happened. This left Jack as a "fixed point in time," a phrase which has since recurred in all manner of scenarios and doesn't seem to mean anything anymore, so it's no surprise we don't hear it applied to Ashildr.

Stargazing: Leandro is from Delta Leonis. Also known as Zosma and Duhr (not the best name, that last one), it represents the hip of the constellation of the lion, and lies around 58 light years away. It's not too different from our Sun, a little bigger and older.

Best line: "What could be worse than losing your children?"
"I keep that entry to remind me not to have any more."

Worst line: "T'is black as night." Hun, it is night.

How d'you like them apples?

WHO REVIEW: 9-5) The Girl Who Died

While I'm pleased to have longer, more languidly paced stories back this season, it's a pleasure to have a brisk, comical romp like this to break things up. After the grim pair of stories that made up the year's first four episodes, the delightful and often silly The Girl Who Died is, in spite of its title, the most light-hearted episode so far this year. It's also refreshingly small scale, for while the Doctor frets about the potential affect to history should he interfere too much, the stakes here amount to no more than the population of a very small village. This is just how it should be; not every episode should have the Earth or the entire universe hanging in the balance. It's good to have an episode which reminds the Doctor just how important a single human life is.

The script is accredited to both Jamie Mathieson and Stephen Moffat, and while it's impossible to say how much of each writer's work makes up the finished product, it feels more like Mathieson's previous episodes, particularly Mummy on the Orient Express. It's a fine balance between the silly and the soulful. None of it is particularly plausible, either historically or scientifically. These are storybook Vikings fishing for storybook electric eels. The comedy is broad, but effective, and with Capaldi showing a lighter side as the Doctor this year, works perfectly. Everything's pitched dead on.  It's a little hard to credit the terrifying reputation of the Mire to a group of spacemen who can be defeated by being threatened with an embarrassing video on YouTube (or it's 11th century intergalactic equivalent). However, it's such a joyfully funny and triumphant scene that it really doesn't matter. Yet there are some real moments of pathos here. When it was introduced in the equally comical Closing Time, the Doctor's ability to "speak baby" felt trite and overindulgent. Here, though, it's used for a moment of genuinely affecting emotion, making the Doctor appear more alien and poetic than he has been in years.

It all looks wonderful as well, from the implausible Viking costumes to the blocky spacesuits of the Mire. The alien creatures are a pretty flimsy set of villains, including the false Odin who leads them, but they look good and serve their purpose in the story, so it seems churlish to complain. Having them so completely obscured by their technology works well, setting up both their power and their weakness. It's unusual to have an episode of Doctor Who which is so anti-technology, and to have the Doctor reduced to the most basic of technology (aside from a handy mobile phone) before calling him to task makes a big difference. Capaldi is, of course, excellent here, swinging between sardonic humour and worldweary sorrow with ease. It's a characterisation of the Doctor that works so well; someone who has simply lived too long and lost too much. Jenna Coleman also gets some good material after being poorly used last week. Although she is quite minor to the actual plot here, her increasingly Doctorish behaviour against threats, and her spurring him to action in defense of the villagers, plays to the strengths of both the actress and character.

In the end, though, this episode belongs to Maisie Williams. It was perhaps inevitable that she'd be typecast to a certain extent, but Ashildr is quite different to Arya Stark. An astonishingly confident young woman who's unique ability is her skill as a storyteller, she's a wonderful match for the Doctor, and it's easy to see why he is so powerfully affected by her death. She'll be back next week, of course, playing what looks to be a very different take on the same character. It'll be interesting to see how she handles such a role. I'd be very surprised if that is the last we see of her; her importance to the arc plot (presumably much of Moffat's contribution, along with the flashback to The Fires of Pompeii) is hinted at heavily. That's the strength of this episode: a silly, low stakes romp that is simultaneously a moving and vitally important story.




Continuity Corner: The most obvious thing to point out is that the Doctor finally recognises where he got his face from, with flashbacks to 2008's The Fires of Pompeii. It's not just a callback, though; there's a genuinely clever reason given, with the Doctor subconsciously choosing a face that will remind him of a time when he chose to flout history and save lives. A nice way of making use of a bit of recasting.

The Doctor previously tangled with Vikings in his first life, in the serial The Time Meddler. We saw him engage in swordplay in, off the top of my head, The Crusade, The Sea Devils, The Androids of Tara, The King's Demons and The Christmas Invasion.

The first Doctor previously impersonated a deity in The Myth Makers, in which case he was mistaken for Zeus. Before this, his companion Barbara was mistaken by The Aztecs for the deified reincarnation of their high priest Yetaxa.

The Doctor describes Ashildr as "Immortal, barring accidents," how he described his own people in 1969's The War Games. This is the second time we've seen an associate of the Doctor receive immortality, of course. Maybe she'll bump into Jack in a few hundred years. A more similar situation arose in the excellent DWM comic stories The Road to Hell and The Glorious Dead, in which the eighth Doctor saved the life of the Japanese warrior Katsura Sato, with the result of making him immortal.

Hanky Panky in the TARDIS: So, it seems that they've quietly settled that Clara is bi. That's nice.

Best line: "Mother, I hear thunder. Mother, I hear shouting. You are my world, but I hear other worlds now. Beyond the unfolding of your smile, is there other kindness? I'm afraid."

WHO REVIEW: 9-3 & 9-4: Under the Lake/Before the Flood

With Being Human, Toby Whithouse brought together vampires, werewolves and ghosts, along with such elements as time travel, to remarkable effect. In Doctor Who, he's already had a stab at vampires, and now he's utilised both time travel and ghosts in a story with a fascinating set-up. It's a very clever idea, splitting the story across two time zones, so that characters can, in theory, meet their own ghosts in the future. It never quite runs with this idea, though. The concept of being able to not only see but actually speak with your ghost is compelling, but beyond a brief interaction between the Doctor and his ghost (revealed to be nothing of the sort in any case), the idea isn't explored. The fact that the ghosts are essentially incapable of communication rather ruins it anyway; they're not characters but sinister set dressing and hazards. It's undeniably effective, but it's the less interesting option. Equally, the Fisher King, is well designed and realised - at least in the underlit interior scenes, not looking quite so creepy stomping about in daylight. However, since he does little more than rant and murder people off screen, he's a very hollow and uninspiring villain. 

Huge respect for the inclusion of the talented Sophie Stone as Cass, a deaf actress playing a deaf character, unapologetically included not as a token to disabled sensibilities but simply as a strong, interesting character who brings a somewhat different perspective to adventure. Around the country, deaf children will be watching Doctor Who and seeing a deaf person in a heroic role, not only leading the guest characters but enthusiastically told by the Doctor that she is the smartest person in the room (barring himself, of course). It's a wonderfully positive move on the part of the series' creators. Oddly enough, the Doctor doesn't know sign language; a strange omission for the man who knows fifty million languages, even if the script did make a joke about it being deleted to make room for semaphore. It's understandable in real life terms, of course; very likely, Peter Capaldi doesn't know sign, and in any case, having Cass's signs translated makes it possible for the bulk of the audience to understand her lines. However, I watched Before the Flood in the company of a fluent signer who was translating along with the episode, and I can therefore say that any viewer who can sign will get more out of the it than one relying on the interpreter. 

The remaining guest cast are all very good indeed, although in many cases rather wasted in the parts they have. Zaqi Ismail is perfectly good as Lunn but lacks a great deal in character as written; Arsher Ali seemed at risk of the same during the first episode, but he, as Bennett, came into his own in the second part once he had something to play other than spooked. Paul Kaye, rightfully recognised now as a highly talented actor, is amusing as the snivelling Prentis, but is so quickly killed off that there was never really any chance to appreciate him. The same goes for Steven Robertson and, most of all, Colin MacFarlane; talented actors whose characters are given virtually no screen time before being bumped. Yes, they then get to do their best as hollow-eyed phantoms, but that's still a waste of genuinely fine acting talent. Most galling is the killing of O'Donnell, who, particularly in the second episode, develops into an infectiously likeable and entertainingly bloody-minded character before being killed off to give the male characters the necessary angst. I'm not making a vehement feminist point here; the best character in the story was female (Cass, of course), and since much of my upset at O'Donnell's death is that I fancy the pants off Morven Christie, I'd be pretty hypocritical. Nonetheless, it grates.

Capaldi shines, as always, even though, to be honest, he didn't have very strong material to work with this time, Nonetheless, he's an interesting enough actor to make any of his scenes compelling. Clara, though, is rather uninteresting in this story, and Jenna Coleman makes less of an impression than usual. Perhaps it's a good thing she's leaving this year; there doesn't seem to be much left to do with her character. 

Ultimately, the script is packed with potentially great ideas and characters that, for the most part, it fails to explore to full effect. For all its atmosphere - and I think we need more slow-paced, unsettling stories - it's a disappointing tale, relying on rather a dissatisfying interpretation of time travel that lacks real drama.

Casting Call: Sophie Stone is the first deaf actress in the series, but not the first deaf actor. That was Tim Barlow, who played Tyssan in 1979's Destiny of the Daleks. Barlow lost his hearing in a military incident, although has since recovered much of it through the use of a cochlear implant.

Nitpick: Why didn't the base crew try switching the lights to permanent day mode, so that the ghosts wouldn't be able to materialise? I realise that the ghosts took control of the day/night systems during the episode, but you'd have thought they'd at least try this rather obvious idea.

Continuity Corner: The future parts of the story are set in 2119, and it seems that not only are UNIT still operating, but the Doctor is still well known - enough that O'Donnell knows of him and his exploits, at least. We haven't really seen much of this period in the series; The Rebel Flesh/The Also People was set in the 22nd century, presumably the earlier part, since The Dalek Invasion of Earth essentially ruined human society from the 2150s onwards. Other stories set around this time include Nightmare of Eden and possibly some other outer space stories (Doctor Who tends to go for a generic spacey future in the classic series), but we see very little of Earth in this time. The ninth Doctor considered the year 2105 "a bit boring" in The End of the World. The existence of an alien ship doesn't seem to be a huge surprise to the base crew.

The Doctor's cheat cards include one that says "I should've known you didn't live in Aberdeen," a reference back to where he left Sarah Jane Smith, according to Whithouse's first Who episode, 2006's School Reunion.

Prentis is a Tivolian, a species introduced in the form of Gibbis in another Whithouse script, 2011's The God Complex. He notes that they were conquered by the Arcateenians, another species created by Whithouse, for the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts." They're one of the very few species to turn up in both that series and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The Doctor ponders whether the ghosts are Flesh avatars (right period, as noted above), Autons (Spearhead from Space, et al) or digital copies in the Nethersphere (Dark Water/Death in Heaven).

Doctor fanatic O'Donnell references Rose, Martha and Amy, and refers to the 1980s being pre-Harold Saxon (The Sound of Drums) and "pre-the Moon exploding and a bat coming out" (Kill the Moon). She also mentions a Minister of War, but what this means is as yet unknown.

The Doctor once met Shirley Bassey. At least, he thinks he did; it might have been Iris Wildthyme in her Bassey-like second incarnation. 

WHO REVIEW: 9-1 & 9-2: The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar

Now that was quite something. Intriguing, exciting, emotionally powerful, but also densely packed and demanding close attention. Two episodes that cut to the very heart of the Doctor's character.


This was a bold choice to start the season with, a story which is so steeped in the series' history as to risk putting off more casual viewers. Judging by the reactions of friends who are less steeped in the series' history, this had gone well, but there were confusing elements. I'm not talking about cute little references to past stories put in for uber-geeks like me; for most people, there's no difference between a kiss to the past and any other bit of world-building. The story as a whole is quite unforgiving to new viewers. Aside from being a sequel to a forty-year-old serial, it more-or-less carries on from where the previous season left off. Someone who hadn't seen any of Capaldi's episodes before, let alone any Doctor Who before, would find it a challenge to take in everything presented in the opening episode – UNIT, Missy, Karn, all chucked in with little in the way of explanation. That said, the dialogue does a lot of the work. You don't need to know that Missy is the latest version of the Master, she confidently explains that she's the Doctor's closest friend and Clara's reaction to this sets out that she's a villain, and in case there was any confusion on that last point, she casually murders a few people for larks. Still, even in a story that's slower paced than many, there's little room early on for scene setting or easing in new viewers.


Clara's role as all things to all storytellers might also make her difficult to get a handle on. She's introduced as a schoolteacher, before suddenly walking into a military installation as if she's a secret agent/interplanetary warfare specialist. Although she's been more consistently and clearly written over the last series, here she's once again taking on whatever traits she needs for any particular moment in the narrative. Jenna Coleman makes it work, charismatically papering over the cracks, but there's not always a clear line from the remarkable woman who acts as deputy Doctor and the panicking young girl who's repeatedly duped by Missy. Nonetheless, the interplay between the two women provides some of the best moments I the story. I wasn't quite sold on Missy in series eight, but here, the writing improves a notch and meets Michelle Gomez's captivating performance. Weird, funny, sexy and frightening, she's everything an evil Time Lord – sorry, Time Lady – should be. Her best moments, though, are where she is essentially playing the part of the Doctor, Clara acting as her assistant in the wilds of Skaro, making clear the similarities between the two Gallifreyans. Brilliant though she is as the Master, I'd have loved to see Gomez as the Doctor.


All this said, the story belongs to Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach, the latter of whom, particularly, is astonishingly good. Of all the past elements brought back for this story, Davros is perhaps the safest. Excepting the Daleks, as a consistent and everpresent part of the series, Davros is probably the most iconic villain in the programme's long history, and the most recognisable. While I wonder how much of the set-up was otherwise picked up, Davros is easy. Even people who barely know about Doctor Who have heard of Davros, such is the notoriety of the character. Missy may jealously sneer when the Doctor refers to the creator of the Daleks as his archenemy, but he's right. For all that the Master and the Doctor go back further, and have fought more frequently, it's Davros that has caught the public imagination. A truly repellent villain, physically unpleasant, emotionally damaged, as capable of cold evil and ferocious mania. And so it's a tremendously brave move to bring him back, seven years after his last appearance, in a story that skilfully makes him a sympathetic character.


Precisely how much one is affected by the scenes between the Doctor and Davros will depend on how much they believe his spiel. The entire encounter is signposted as a trap, by the Doctor's dialogue, Davros's interaction with his henchman, Sarff, and by the whole set-up and direction of that final scene between them. Nonetheless, it's impossible not to feel some sympathy for the scientist, and so much of this is due to Bleach's performance. His previous turn at the role was dominated by the screaming, maniacal side of Davros's character, but here he has the opportunity to be more subtle, creating a weakened, desperate Davros. Although the villain is manipulating the Doctor throughout, there's truth to his claims. He is dying, and so much of what he says has the ring of truth. A final gambit, yes, but also, if that failed, a chance to make peace with someone who, as much as they may not wish to admit it, shares many similarities. Davros's seemingly genuine delight at the news of the Doctor's rescue of his people makes sense, because it's truly in character for him, albeit showing an emotional side we've not seen before. His statement that a man needs a people, or a nation, someone to hold allegiance to, is exactly the sort of rhetoric that Davros would ascribe to, even as someone who murdered his own people further his aims. He wiped out his race to create them anew, in his own twisted image.


Imagery here is everything. For all the power of the quiet moments, there's some real spectacle here, from the slow revelation of Skaro as it fades into view to the bombastic entrance by the Doctor, brandishing his guitar for the “axe fight.” Skaro, in particular, looks incredible, a wonderful recreation of the metal city of the original Dalek serial from 1963-4. Also a treat is the squadron of Daleks from various points in the series' history; as a fan, the appearance of an original '64 Dalek made me cheer. No sign of the more recent, chunky Daleks of the New Paradigm, who have seemingly been quietly retired. Either that, or they couldn't fit through the doors on Skaro.


There are also many elements that send a shiver down the spine. The hand mines on ancient Skaro are horrifying, not something I'd ever have imagined for the Thousand Year War, but acceptable, really, given the later use of biologically-engineered weaponry. The concept of Daleks' still-living remains, left to rot in the sewers beneath the Dalek city, is utterly repellent, as is the revolting climax in which the Daleks are, for all intents, choked to death in their own shit. Other elements that work well in the horror stakes include Colony Sarff, a colony organism as his name suggests, sure to horrify ophidophobes everywhere. The image that will stick with me the most, though, is Davros, helpless and desperate on the floor, his spinal column twitching in open air. Quite horrible.


Thankfully, though, there's plenty of humour to offset the serious elements and the horror. Not everyone was impressed with the Doctor's partyboy moment, but I feel it worked. As Clara said, this isn't like him, at least in this incarnation. This is the twelfth Doctor in extremis; it's when he's cornered and frightened that he makes a noise. It's when he's quiet and contemplative that he's more himself. And anyway, everyone needs a bit of fun now and then, and if Matt Smith can bring his footballing skills to the character of the Doctor, then a former member of the Bastards From Hell can pick up a guitar and switch on the cool. If only they'd had Craig Ferguson there to back him up. There are other moments that lighten the mood when it threatens to become too grim. The Doctor pinching Davros's chair is both amusing and threatening, but it's the line that follows - “The only other chair on Skaro” - that made it. That one was a tea-spitter.


There are other issues, mostly just niggles. Sometimes the logic of the story went a little awry. Colony Sarff tracks the Doctor across time and space, all the way to Karn, becoming perhaps the only person to land a spaceship there without crashing, and is fooled by the Doctor hiding behind a rock. He finally finds him in 12^th century Essex by following Missy and Clara, but the Daleks have had an agent there for three weeks. The cliffhanger was never meant to be anything more than “I wonder how they got out of that?” moment, but still, the monochrome flashback to the Doctor's teleporter antics wasted time. Beautifully filmed and great fun, but utterly inessential. The other cliffhanger, the Doctor holding a gun to young Davros, was also a bit of a cheat, but overall, the revelation of the true nature of the scene worked within the context of the story.


So, coming back to the core of the story. Young Davros, skillfully portrayed by Joey Price, is just the right combination of childlike uncertainty and fear, and confident perseverance. He demands the Doctor rescue him, as he promised. Yep, you can see this kid growing up to be the Davros we know. I've seen it argued that this is a false dilemma, as is the moment the Doctor potentially has the chance to kill all the Daleks from the safety of Davros's infirmary, because we know he can never go through with it. The Doctor will never irrevocably wipe out the Daleks, nor will he kill their creator to prevent their existence, because that would deprive the series of its main monster and invalidate the Doctor's character. That's irrelevant, though. All dilemmas in the series are false, constructed to further an adventure. However, they're true for the characters, within the fiction, and that's what counts. We could as easily point out that the Doctor just stumbled upon another kid called Davros, but that's not how the narrative works.


I had wondered how it would play out. Presumably the Doctor knew kid Davros would survive, since he'd met him in later life, but he didn't want to be the one who saved him. I wondered if maybe leaving him to the hand mines was what led to his being so horribly injured. I wondered if in the future, Davros was actually going to regenerate, becoming healthy again, rather than just saved from death (a good thing he didn't, since this would have rather ruined the appeal of the character). There were, potentially, other ways for it to go, without ever destroying the Doctor's character. I, for one, was really hoping, at the very end, that Davros would be taken off in the TARDIS and shown a better life by the Doctor. An interesting “What if?” for the series, perhaps.


Going forward, we're sure to see more of the Doctor's past, his mysterious confession coming to the fore, even though it may not actually be revealed, just like his name wasn't in 2013. Missy will be back, of course, as will Davros, eventually. I'm not sure I'm keen on this “hybrid” idea, but we'll see where it goes, and nor am I clear on just what was supposed to be different about the Daleks after their regeneration. Given that the Doctor gave up a big chunk of his regeneration energy, and may some day miss an arm or a leg, or “just be really litte,” I'm hoping that they use that as reasoning to maybe cast a disabled actor in the role. Or get Peter Dinklage as the thirteenth Doctor. As Clara... well, we know now that Coleman is leaving by the time the season is out. Her time as a Dalek in this episode – heartbreakingly unable to articulate herself from within the shell – strongly echoes her first appearance as Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks. I wonder if she'll make it out of the season alive.


Extra bits after the break