Spoilers! Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Anyone who's read this blog before will already know that I'm about to discuss the latest season of DW without the slightest regard for whether or not I blurt out major plot points, but still, it's as well to make allowances for potential casual passers-by. Those allowances amount to this paragraph warning about spoilers. On we go, then.
I'm not sold on some of this year's paired episode titles, which seem to be veering into 1960s Batman territory. Among these, "Heaven Sent/Hell Bent" and "The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar" commit the further sin of having no obvious relevance to the episodes they're attached to. These episodes are doomed for evermore in our household to be referred to as "That One Where X Happened". "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion" is at least neat, even if my mind insists on replacing "Zygon" with "Penguin's".
There's some heavy hinting at a season arc about "the Hybrid", but this is ultimately puffed away, and fair enough too. The real arc here is the game of consequences that starts with the Doctor's decision to defy death at the end of The Girl Who Died and ends with him betrayed to the Time Lords, following which he nearly breaks reality to save Clara because he still hasn't learned his lesson. (And indeed, is unable to learn his lesson because his memory of it is wiped, which neatly echoes his own handling of Kate Stewart in The Zygon Inversion.)
Against this is a running theme of characters successfully cheating death: not just Ashildr/Me, but Davros, the Daleks never dying but only liquefying in their sewers, the Fisher King being mistakenly pronounced dead, Osgood never dying so long as there are Zygons willing to take on her identity, characters in Sleep No More metamorphosing into sentient dust, Riggsy eluding his death sentence in Face the Raven, and the Doctor himself in Heaven Sent. It's a very coherent season. Granted, characters not staying dead is a perennial trope in Moffat Who (death isn't just the equivalent of "man flu" on Gallifrey!), but there seems to be more of a point to it this year.
There's also the running effort to make the Doctor into a kind of rock star, with the "sonic sunglasses" and Peter Capaldi playing his electric guitar all over the place. I'm hoping this won't stick in the long term, although I expect it'll crop up again in the 2016 season.
All in all, I prefer the variety of the 2014 season, but still, the 2015 season is another good one. The show is feeling fresh and full of potential again.
The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar
Now, this just looks like somebody wasn't satisfied with only having one season finale and decided to write a second finale, then decided to open the season with it.
Missy's reappearance is more than a little reminiscent of the end of the third series of Sherlock. (On that note, the New Year's episode of Sherlock was more than a little reminiscent of Last Christmas. Is Moffat overstretching himself?)
And hey, look, it's Every Dalek Ever on the screen again! Only this time, the giant-sized plastic Daleks introduced five years ago weren't invited! Looks like we're all basically agreed that Victory of the Daleks never happened, then.
The idea of the Dalek machinery suppressing the personality of the creature inside is an interesting one, but it kind of undermines the notion that the Daleks themselves were genetically engineered not to have any personality beyond just being hateful gits. On the other hand, I can see how it follows on from last year's Dalek story, with its suggestion that you'd be able to change a Dalek's mind if you could just switch off certain bits of the machinery inside its helmet. At this point, we're probably within an ace of giving the Doctor a Dalek companion.
The Daleks don't feel very dangerous here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In-story, I think we're meant to infer that the Dalek empire has gone into decline with Davros, and the whole tone of the story supports this. More broadly, I think that making the Daleks look a bit impotent is a valid statement on what they represent - fascism can be dangerous, but it's also pathetic. All of which is capped off by the rich metaphor of the Dalek sewers: at the heart of the Dalek empire is a cesspool of bubbling, hate-filled effluent that the Daleks themselves both devolve into and are ultimately drowned by. Which is nice.
Having Davros open his organic eyes must have seemed like a terrific coup de théâtre to Steven Moffat, but honestly, what the hell?! It's like having him whip his left hand out from underneath his chair's control panel, or climb out of the chair and stretch his legs for a bit.
Michelle Gomez continues to be a complete delight as Missy, and between her performance and Moffat's script I can genuinely buy into this Doctor/Master pairing. The scene where she explains their "friendship" to Clara just shines.
A good couple of episodes, but still only middling by this season's standards. I'd have to rate it behind the Zygon two-parter and the last couple of episodes of the season.
Under the Lake/Before the Flood
Probably the most disposable part of the season, a monster siege story with characters being picked off by rote, same old same old. The script overall didn't feel entirely worked through - that whole "ha ha, fooled you, that 'ghost' was a hologram!" business had more than a touch of scriptwriter desperation about it. And honestly, who didn't guess the twist with the suspension pod? Nice to see a deaf character though (and played by a deaf actor, too) - Jo was impressed with that.
The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived
Really two separate episodes in the unfolding story of Ashildr, aka Me, but presented as a two-parter. They make an uneven pair - the first one is quite lively, spiced with moments like the Monty Python and the Holy Grail visual reference and the replay of the villain's defeat as a Benny Hill Show chase, but the second one is dragged down by a stodgy mulch-plot about leonine aliens trying to invade the Earth and a rotten performance by the guy playing highwayman Sam Swift. And while both episodes are essential to this season overall, neither is what I'd call essential DW.
Interesting to see the Doctor put himself forward as a sort of Regimental Sergeant Major for the Viking farmers after all the business in 2014 of Danny Pink taunting him for his officer-like behaviour.
The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion
Easily the best two-parter this season, although I'd be hard pressed to choose between it and Heaven Sent for the top spot. There's so much going for it: the topicality, simultaneously rendered in broad strokes and yet not softened for the family audience; the massive showboating anti-war speech for Capaldi to get his teeth into; a double role for Jenna Coleman, especially pleasing after she took such a back seat in the previous couple of stories; all the lovely business inside Clara's mind; the proliferation of strong female characters in a UNIT story, that most macho of DW story types. Turning Osgood into the living embodiment of the human-Zygon truce - a job as much as a character - is an interesting move, and refusing to reveal to the viewer or to any of the other characters whether she's the original or the Zygon duplicate - refusing, in effect, to allow greater value to be placed on one over the other - is a nice touch.
One sticking point for me is the suggestion that this is "the sixteenth time" the Doctor has wiped Kate Stewart's memory after having allowed her to choose whether or not to commit genocide. Or more to the point, after she's chosen not to, but without understanding that the Doctor would never really give her that choice in the first place, a test that the Zygon insurgent leader passes without obviously having chosen not to commit genocide herself. I'm not sure that we're meant to infer fifteen previous instances of this exact story, just fifteen previous occasions on which Kate has similarly disappointed the Doctor. The thing is, how can she be condemned for not learning when she's not being allowed to learn?
On the other hand, it amuses me to imagine the Pertwee Doctor wiping the Brigadier's mind after each '70s UNIT adventure, which would also go some way towards explaining the Brigadier's shift in character from competent military leader to complete duffer during that period.
Sleep No More
Nice minimalist score from Murray Gold - lovely atmospheric stuff all over the place. Perversely, I noticed the music more on this episode than on any of the others.
The phrase "experimental Mark Gatiss episode" isn't exactly one that trips off the brain. Gatiss is a relentlessly conventional DW writer, and that sets up an interesting tension with the experimental aspects of this episode. For a start, the script toys in a self-aware way with the question of how DW stories are filmed and to what purpose, but this is overplayed for a couple of minutes and then discarded. This, together with the general conventionality of a Gatiss monster runaround, makes the experimentalism feel more like mere gimmickry. And then we're told that the whole runaround was staged by the monsters for the viewer's benefit in order to distract us from their real plan - a bog standard DW antagonist performing a bog standard DW story because that's simply what the viewer expects. Which is brilliant as the subject for a learned fan-academic essay ("The Use Of Mark Gatiss Scripts As A Transnarrative Weapon"?), but ridiculous in superficial story terms. "None of this makes any sense!" exclaims the Doctor, which looks like a Message From Fred if ever there was one.
It's a baffling blend of high and low DW, which alone makes it worth at least one rewatch.
Face the Raven
An interesting story is set up, full of Gaimanesque Fantasy London touches, only to be dropped abruptly in order to write Clara out and shunt the Doctor off to the next episode. It's a brutal sacrifice of Sarah Dollard's script to the functional requirements of the production office. The whole thing is effectively reduced to Clara's big dramatic send-off (and hang on, how long was that, five minutes? how long did it take that flipping raven to get there?!) and the Doctor's big dramatic monologue to Me. Like Sleep No More, this episode basically boils down to "antagonists set up the entire story as a lure with a one-line pay-off", which is a storytelling device that I'm not finding very satisfying.
Still, it was a very nicely written send-off scene, so there's that.
Heaven Sent
Probably the best episode of the whole season, and a tremendous character piece for Capaldi. It's dark, with the Doctor recycling himself through the same day over and over in order to grind his way out of his prison, but also hopeful in that he does eventually succeed.
The idea of the castle resetting itself behind the Doctor's back doesn't entirely work - the wall he's trying to punch his way through never resets, the octagonal flagstone he's removed from inside the castle is allowed to stay buried in the grounds and the message that (presumably) some earlier version of himself wrote on it is never erased. The phrase "closed energy loop" offers better cover, but then there are all the skulls at the bottom of the lake which suggest an unlimited supply of new matter from outside the loop. Best not to think about the mechanics of it too much, I suppose. It's just a great bit of TV.
Hell Bent
I quite like the fact that Rassilon, last seen in full-on powerful villain mode, is resurrected here as a ranting old man with delusions of messianism ("Rassilon the Redeemer!") who can't even watch the Doctor being shot by a firing squad. As with the season opener, an authoritarian antagonist is undermined and their flaws exposed. Having been exposed, he's quickly sent packing, which I think is the right choice - we've had the macho posturing, now let's cut to the character-driven plot.
Nice to see Television's Donald Sumpter, by the way.
The visual effect used on the scene of Clara's extraction from time is an interesting choice - the kind of red-green-blue split you get (well, I get, anyway) when you catch a flatscreen TV at the wrong angle. Once again DW nods to its own status as a TV programme.
Is the Doctor shooting the Castellan a dodgy moment? Fair enough, death can certainly be readily worked around on Gallifrey even if it's not quite the "man flu" the Doctor casually suggests, but did he really need to shoot anyone to make his escape? It's an awkward way to engineer a situation where you can show a transracial/transgender regeneration just to prove the point. And fine, perhaps for more conservative fans the point still needed to be proven (what price Sophie Okenedo to take over as the Doctor?), but even so.
The presentation of the Capitol Cloisters and mention of a "Cloister War" are highly intriguing. Nice to see Moffat putting the '70s Gothic aesthetic back into the Time Lords.
The weird thing about the story's resolution is that apparently it doesn't need resolving - Clara is clearly at liberty to travel for as long as she likes, so long as she doesn't mind having no pulse (how similar is her predicament to Captain Jack's?) and provided she's returned to the moment of her extraction at some eventual point. The Doctor seems to mind her not having a pulse (how similar is this to his reaction to his first sight of immortal Captain Jack - is Clara now "just wrong" in the same way?), but it's not obvious why this couldn't be worked around. In real world terms, obviously Clara has to be written out somehow, so hey. Pleasingly, Moffat does the opposite of what RTD did with Donna's exit, giving Clara the upper hand and letting her decide her own fate and wiping the Doctor's memory instead. (We'll see how long his amnesia lasts, eh readers?)
The Husbands of River Song
What is up with Alex Kingston's acting in that pre-credit scene?
Like the 2015 season finale, I feel as if Moffat is revisiting some of RTD's later work here - in this case, I'm strongly reminded of Voyage of the Damned, with its cruise ship, its meteor strike and its cyborg villain. Instead of saving the ship and killing off everyone except the bastardous character, Moffat fills the ship with bastardous characters and crashes the whole lot with evident glee.
The focus of the story is apparently on writing out River Song once and for all, and this together with the "happily ever after" ending strongly suggests Moffat was expecting this to be his last year on the show. I've seen it suggested that he'd planned for the possibility but later downplayed it. It wouldn't have been a bad note for him to go out on - a fine, strong season and a fairly solid Christmas episode too - but hey, I'm interested to see where he goes from this point in 2016.
So, goodbye to River Song - she had her good moments, but I'm not entirely sorry to see the back of the character. My main objection to her during Matt Smith's run on the show was that she always seemed to bring the guns, so I'm bemused by the sonic trowel. It's clearly a step back from all the gunfoolery, but she still uses it as if it were a gun. (A bit like Matt Smith with his sonic screwdriver, then.) Beyond that, she's still the morally dubious mercenary character she was in the 2011 season, a character that Moffat clearly revels in - echoes of Eric Saward and his fetishisation of dodgy mercenaries? At least she's good for a laugh - the reveal of the liquor cabinet hidden in the TARDIS was a nice moment, and the suggestion that she follows the "Damsel" Doctor around and borrows his TARDIS when he isn't looking opens the way to all sorts of fun speculation.
But anyway, roll on 2016.
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Thursday, January 07, 2016
Sunday, June 14, 2015
"I Need My Friend Back!" - Doctor Who, Series 8 (2014 season)
And here's step two in my latest attempt to get this blog back up to date in the hope that I might start using it again more regularly. At least I've managed to write up my thoughts on last year's season of DW before this year's has started to air!
A new year, a new tweak to the theme and the titles. I'm quite keen on the new theme arrangement, with its bells and its twiddly theremin noises. Less sold on the new title sequence - and when we'd only just arrived at a title sequence I really liked, too! It does at least have the zooming eyebrows in its favour. Meanwhile, Murray Gold's putting more synth into his music, and it's exactly what I wanted to hear, so yay for that.
As far as the stories are concerned, stripe me pink, but it's another year of improvement. I mean, I'm still waiting for JB Hi-Fi to drop the price below $30 (I'm not proud...), but this is the first year of Moffat Who I absolutely swear shall find its place on my DVD shelves. Peter Capaldi is of course brilliant as the Doctor, but this would mean nothing if the finest scripts weren't there to support him, and some of this year's output is fine indeed.
I think it helps tremendously that Steven Moffat took more of a hand in controlling the tone of the season, co-writing several stories in the first half as well as penning his own episodes. Series 8 had exactly the tonal consistency that I found lacking during Matt Smith's tenure. And when the brief for this season seems to have been "do properly what they tried to do during Colin Baker's tenure" - another era of DW that was tonally all over the place - keeping a firm hold on things is vitally important. Totally paid off, as far as I'm concerned. This season finally gives me hope that Moffat's vision for DW is something that can fit with the broader ethos of the show, and something that I might be able to get behind.
Deep Breath
The new Doctor pretty much had me at the point where he describes the destruction of the T-rex as a murder. This season may play heavily on his less likeable alien qualities, but it's clear in that moment that underneath his harsh pragmatism, the Capaldi Doctor is acting from a deeply rooted sense of morality. See also his speech at the end to Clara in which he suggests it's time he "did something" about the mistakes he's made - this may not chime entirely with his behaviour in later episodes, but on a metatextual level it suggests that Moffat is keeping an eye on the Doctor's morality this year, and plans to actually develop and address it over the course of the season.
On which note, yes, the Doctor leaving Clara on her own while he infiltrates the clockwork crew in his own way. We're obviously expected to ask, with Clara, just how far we can trust him now (and given that he pops up exactly when she invites him to, the answer appears to be that we can trust him just fine), but we may as well ask, how far does he expect to be trusted? Perhaps a little too far? Given the way in which later episodes show the Doctor falling afoul of his own assumptions about how he can or ought to treat Clara, we might expect the season to build to a revelatory moment of self-assessment, with optional apology. (In fact we get that in Flatline - the self-assessment, if not the apology - and he does seem to have figured himself out by the time the finale rolls round.)
Lots of interesting and broadly signposted stuff about the question of where the Doctor gets his faces from - which, surprisingly and a bit disappointingly, hasn't been picked up at all in subsequent episodes. Presumably Moffat is leaving this thread hanging in case he can think of something to do with it in a later season. It did, however, make for some enjoyable thematic/visual business in this episode.
Nice to see Madame Vastra and Jenny being developed a bit more as characters rather than just presented as the comedy action lesbians again. Strax is increasingly being lumbered with the farcical/slapstick business, which may become wearing in due course, but so far I'm OK with it. Fandom wanted more of these characters, and fandom is getting more of these characters, and by and large it's working out peachily. They're starting to take on the cosy feel of the UNIT family, with Vastra's in-context quote of the Brigadier's line "Here we go again" providing a further wink and a nod in that direction.
Overall a very confident season opener. It may echo and reference earlier eras of DW, most obviously the Pertwee (Brigadier quote as mentioned, dinosaur in central London) and Tennant years (rehash of the clockwork droid concept from The Girl in the Fireplace, hot air balloon ride over Victorian London), but it doesn't rely on these moments to cushion the impact of the new Doctor. Peter Capaldi's already quite comfortable in the part he's clearly always wanted to play, aping Tom Baker here and there but finding his own way too. The "veil" scene between Madame Vastra and Clara is a direct challenge to any viewers who might be struggling to adjust - he is the Doctor, whether you like it or not. (And in stark contrast to the end of the 1984 season, after one story with the new Doctor, I do like.)
Into the Dalek
This looks a lot like a "new recipe" version of 2005's Dalek - lone Dalek, moral compare-and-contrast between the Doctor and the Daleks, even down to the almost-quote of calling the Doctor "a good Dalek". But where Dalek simply juxtaposed the actions and behaviour of the Doctor and the lone Dalek, here we take a close look at the inside of the protagonists' heads - not just into the Dalek, but into the Doctor as well.
The picture we get is painted in broad strokes - perhaps necessarily, after all this is only 45 minutes of family entertainment - but it's a bold picture all the same. The idea that it actually would be possible for the Doctor to (literally) change the Daleks' minds is something DW has only ever touched on once (The Evil of the Daleks, 1967); the idea that the one obstacle to this is his own hatred of the Daleks is revolutionary. The Doctor could actually reform his deadliest enemies, if he could only get over his own past experience of them and his preconceived ideas of them. This is a highly provocative statement for the show to make - I would say timely, but it's not as if there's ever been a time when DW couldn't have made this statement and had it appear relevant.
As if to emphasise the Doctor's role as part of the problem, we get some standout moments of callousness from the Doctor, first towards the pilot he saves at the start of the episode, but more memorably in his sacrifice of the trigger-happy soldier and his "Top layer if you want to say a few words" later on. It'll take the Doctor a few more episodes to file off the rough edges of his pragmatism (see also Mummy on the Orient Express); at least in this particular episode, and at this early stage of this particular season, it's not out of place.
There's not a lot more to say about this story. I grant that it's light on plot, but I do like it very much - hot contender for best post-2005 Dalek story, for what the competition's worth - and thematically it's one of the stronger links in this season. And ideologically, it's very much my DW.
Robot of Sherwood
Mark Gatiss, a lightweight historical story - this review could pretty much write itself. And yet it's still a pretty good episode - with about half the season tied for first place, it's still going to rank fairly low in the season for me, but I'd put it ahead of other episodes to be discussed in due course. The Sheriff's amusingly low-stakes villain rant was a high point.
Listen
Not at all suprising to see this episode made it onto the Hugo Award shortlist. I think this is the moment when Moffat's experiments with the fairytale nature of DW finally come together, in a weird examination of the Doctor's relationship with the whole concept of monsters. The creature in little Danny Pink's room and the creatures outside the base at the end of the universe clearly exist, but they're never explained. They may not even be the same creatures, and as it turns out they're certainly not the same creature that the child Doctor feared was hiding under his bed. They're less important than the Doctor's own fear of the unknown, says the episode; if he can overcome that, he may find that what he thought were monsters can in fact be friends. A worthy theme for DW, and one that carries over into the next episode.
(In light of the series finale, it's worth wondering where Orson Pink comes from, assuming he still exists at all. Perhaps events in the finale (and follow-on in the Christmas special) weren't that final after all...)
Time Heist
What appears to be a morally questionable heist story turns out to be a thoroughly compassionate rescue story. It's all a question of what the characters know and what they assume. Another episode that does a great job of overturning some stale story structures and viewer assumptions, while still looking good and providing surface entertainment. DW has definitely found its groove again.
The Caretaker
Strange that the Doctor should take such exception to Danny being an ex-military maths teacher - after all, cut back to Mawdryn Undead and you find his old pal the Brigadier in the exact same position. (What's that you say - a foreshadowing reference to the Brigadier?)
So, a low-key character episode with laughs and a largely incidental generic alien menace. Gareth Roberts is evidently the go-to writer for this variety of story. Underneath the comedy, the character work is surprisingly sharp and fits nicely in retrospect with later developments. Perhaps not one of the keystone episodes of this season, but what it does, it does well.
Kill the Moon
Yes, the science on this one is laughable. It's not as if DW has troubled itself greatly in the past to get science right, but certainly this episode is an extreme example. And yet...
There is an argument, which has spread through fandom like wildfire, that this episode can be read as a commentary on issues relating to abortion; I think this is quite plausible. The argument further runs that this episode is making a pro-life (or, if you prefer, anti-choice) statement, on the grounds that Clara makes a unilateral decision not to abort the moon-dragon, and that she's proven right; I think that that's a misreading of the episode. The real substance of the episode, and of the subtext, is the Doctor's refusal to make the choice for Clara, to the point that he disappears for much of the episode in order to force her to make the choice herself. It has to be, can only be, the woman's decision (and note also the Doctor's lampshady remark about "womankind") - and moreover, the individual woman's decision, hence the business of having Clara ignore what the rest of humanity is telling her to do, which doesn't make a lot of sense in a pro-life interpretation of this subtext. Clara's anger towards the Doctor later on seems to stem not so much from the fact that he presented her with this choice at all as from the fact that he didn't stick around to help; the issue seems to be not that he didn't tell her what to do but that she couldn't use him as a sounding-board while she made her decision. So if we're going to read an abortion subtext into this episode, I think the message we should take away from it is that it has to be the woman's choice, but that she shouldn't be denied moral support in making her choice.
As far as the actual textual decision to have her not kill the moon-dragon is concerned - well, look, it's DW, a show that celebrates diversity and not solving problems by killing. Given a straight choice, there was little chance the scriptwriter would opt to resolve the episode any other way. This is simply in keeping with the Doctor's little pep speech at the end about humanity reaching out to the stars, and with the show's history in general.
So is it a problem that this story presents the familiar old Moon as an eggshell for a growing (presumably transdimensional, how else tofudge away explain the change in mass/gravity) space creature? There are all sorts of real-world science problems in having the moon-dragon lay a replacement Moon of identical size and appearance, or having the tidal waters just in front of where the Doctor and co stand at the episode's end be completely unaffected by it all. It's bollocks, yes. But, eh... I'm inclined to claim that it's magic realism and simply belongs at a strange angle to the normal run of DW. As ridiculous as this episode seems on a surface viewing, thematically it works, somehow, or at least I believe it does. Which is more than can be said for episode 10 of this season.
Mummy on the Orient Express
Back in the groove again, with an episode that plays like something straight out of the Hinchcliffe-era Tom Baker songbook (and note also Capaldi's dead-on Tom voice when he's talking to himself, and some unmistakeable homage to Dudley Simpson's style in Murray Gold's soundtrack). Welcome, welcome, welcome Jamie Mathieson, who turns out two excellent episodes in succession, very different from each other yet both very Whoish, and here's hoping he'll be back next year.
Presumably the whole matter of Call-Me-Gus and his puppetmasters has been left hanging for a reason. Something to look at again after the 2015 season has aired. I thought the scene on the beach at the end of this episode was a tremendous comment on the Capaldi Doctor's morality - possibly a little overdue two thirds of the way through the season. And Jo loved the lounge jazz version of "Don't Stop Me Now". I haven't told her about the Series 8 soundtrack CD yet. Let's see how long it takes her to notice this blog post.
Flatline
This one's my personal favourite of the season - as I may have mentioned before, I'm a sucker for stories that play around with the TARDIS. All the dimensional shenanigans in this episode are brilliantly realised and a great science fictional idea for DW to play with. Also notable for being set in a parallel universe Bristol that has underground trains - eh wot? Best Bristol accent on display, tragically, was the first guy in the community service group to be killed. Still, we don't watch this show for its convincing portrayal of the West Country, and at least it wasn't plain old London.
The one bit of the episode I would have happily left on the cutting room floor was the scene of the Doctor pointlessly giving the 2D creatures a monster name, presumably just so that the merchandisers have got something to work with. Otherwise, perfick.
In the Forest of the Night
DW ventures into the realms of magic realism again, but this time the thematic material is lacking - what, "trees are good"? - and the episode ends up being a dribbling mess. I've tried to compose a more detailed response to this story, but I just can't seem to avoid using the words "or some shit". Probably best to drop it. It's just... gah.
Dark Water
An episode which gets its title from a substance that has been created for the sole purpose of hiding the Cybermen in plain sight of the viewer, and for no other meaningful purpose. I don't have much to add to that. Some very nice work from Michelle Gomez as Missy - let's face it, she's carrying this episode.
Death in Heaven
So let's talk about the transgender Master. This subject could sustain several academic essays, and I look forward to seeing them in fanthologies to come.
My first thought is that this does interesting things to the long-standing slash fiction interpretation of the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. RTD already did interesting things with that in Last of the Time Lords when he pretty much implied that it was the Doctor, not the Master, who was wrestling with an unrequited Time Lord love. Moffat seems to reject that take - the Master can't have failed to notice that the Doctor, particularly the version she last met, is strongly attracted to human women, so having her turn up now in a female body looks like a deliberate ploy for the Doctor's attention and affection. Note also the aggressive kiss in the previous episode.
But that gets in the way of the more simple but equally interesting fact of just having the Master turn up in a female body. Previous throwaway references to the gender fluidity of the Time Lords are finally embodied on screen. And of course, fans who've been asking why the Doctor can't be played by a woman are given a sop, and a strong piece of fresh ammunition. Or are they?
On the one hand, yes, having the Master change gender does look like a dry run for the possibility of casting a woman as the Doctor. On the other hand, Moffat has previously been dismissive - almost to the point of outright insult - of the idea that the Doctor might change gender. And then, note how, through the character of Missy, Moffat symbolically attacks the younger generation of fandom twice in this episode: first when she vaporises Seb for squeeing, casting a pitying look directly at the camera as she does so; then when she kills Osgood, who once again is seen cosplaying as the Doctor. Is Moffat pandering to the fans, or cruelly mocking them?
It's a tough one to call, especially when you have the beloved character of the Brigadier resurrected as a jet-propelled flying version of Kroton the Friendly Cyberman. Is that thumbing the nose at older, more conservative fans and their sacred cows? An invitation to them to dismiss the episode and everything in it? A way for Moffat to show that he's sympathetic to the idea of transgender Time Lords by contrasting it with something really outrageous? A way for him to double down on his previous dismissal of the idea - "well, if you're going to have that, you might as well have this"? Just another zany, punk-rockin', DW-can-do-what-it-likes idea thrown into the mix? Am I reading too much into all of this?
The last scene is a lovely one, with the Doctor and Clara both lying about having got what they wanted. Clara's relationship with the Doctor - in 2014, at least - has practically been defined by lying, usually to Danny. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out in 2015 in Danny's absence.
Overall, a finale that just about sticks the landing, and one of those rare occasions when the second part is at least as good as the first. The unsurprising return of Missy has already been confirmed, hooray; knowing Mr Moffat's general approach to character deaths, I wouldn't be too surprised if we haven't seen the last of Danny Pink or the Cyber-Brigadier either.
Last Christmas
Not much to say about this one. It's a Christmas episode, so my expectations are lowered; it's actually better than many previous Christmas episodes, probably the best Moffat Who has provided thus far. It makes a modest amount of sense, it doesn't rely on "the tears of a family at Christmas", and it actually moves the characters forward. Love the cheeky banter with Santa and his elves at the start. I kind of hoped Moffat might actually stick with the old version of Clara at the end, but hey.
A new year, a new tweak to the theme and the titles. I'm quite keen on the new theme arrangement, with its bells and its twiddly theremin noises. Less sold on the new title sequence - and when we'd only just arrived at a title sequence I really liked, too! It does at least have the zooming eyebrows in its favour. Meanwhile, Murray Gold's putting more synth into his music, and it's exactly what I wanted to hear, so yay for that.
As far as the stories are concerned, stripe me pink, but it's another year of improvement. I mean, I'm still waiting for JB Hi-Fi to drop the price below $30 (I'm not proud...), but this is the first year of Moffat Who I absolutely swear shall find its place on my DVD shelves. Peter Capaldi is of course brilliant as the Doctor, but this would mean nothing if the finest scripts weren't there to support him, and some of this year's output is fine indeed.
I think it helps tremendously that Steven Moffat took more of a hand in controlling the tone of the season, co-writing several stories in the first half as well as penning his own episodes. Series 8 had exactly the tonal consistency that I found lacking during Matt Smith's tenure. And when the brief for this season seems to have been "do properly what they tried to do during Colin Baker's tenure" - another era of DW that was tonally all over the place - keeping a firm hold on things is vitally important. Totally paid off, as far as I'm concerned. This season finally gives me hope that Moffat's vision for DW is something that can fit with the broader ethos of the show, and something that I might be able to get behind.
Deep Breath
The new Doctor pretty much had me at the point where he describes the destruction of the T-rex as a murder. This season may play heavily on his less likeable alien qualities, but it's clear in that moment that underneath his harsh pragmatism, the Capaldi Doctor is acting from a deeply rooted sense of morality. See also his speech at the end to Clara in which he suggests it's time he "did something" about the mistakes he's made - this may not chime entirely with his behaviour in later episodes, but on a metatextual level it suggests that Moffat is keeping an eye on the Doctor's morality this year, and plans to actually develop and address it over the course of the season.
On which note, yes, the Doctor leaving Clara on her own while he infiltrates the clockwork crew in his own way. We're obviously expected to ask, with Clara, just how far we can trust him now (and given that he pops up exactly when she invites him to, the answer appears to be that we can trust him just fine), but we may as well ask, how far does he expect to be trusted? Perhaps a little too far? Given the way in which later episodes show the Doctor falling afoul of his own assumptions about how he can or ought to treat Clara, we might expect the season to build to a revelatory moment of self-assessment, with optional apology. (In fact we get that in Flatline - the self-assessment, if not the apology - and he does seem to have figured himself out by the time the finale rolls round.)
Lots of interesting and broadly signposted stuff about the question of where the Doctor gets his faces from - which, surprisingly and a bit disappointingly, hasn't been picked up at all in subsequent episodes. Presumably Moffat is leaving this thread hanging in case he can think of something to do with it in a later season. It did, however, make for some enjoyable thematic/visual business in this episode.
Nice to see Madame Vastra and Jenny being developed a bit more as characters rather than just presented as the comedy action lesbians again. Strax is increasingly being lumbered with the farcical/slapstick business, which may become wearing in due course, but so far I'm OK with it. Fandom wanted more of these characters, and fandom is getting more of these characters, and by and large it's working out peachily. They're starting to take on the cosy feel of the UNIT family, with Vastra's in-context quote of the Brigadier's line "Here we go again" providing a further wink and a nod in that direction.
Overall a very confident season opener. It may echo and reference earlier eras of DW, most obviously the Pertwee (Brigadier quote as mentioned, dinosaur in central London) and Tennant years (rehash of the clockwork droid concept from The Girl in the Fireplace, hot air balloon ride over Victorian London), but it doesn't rely on these moments to cushion the impact of the new Doctor. Peter Capaldi's already quite comfortable in the part he's clearly always wanted to play, aping Tom Baker here and there but finding his own way too. The "veil" scene between Madame Vastra and Clara is a direct challenge to any viewers who might be struggling to adjust - he is the Doctor, whether you like it or not. (And in stark contrast to the end of the 1984 season, after one story with the new Doctor, I do like.)
Into the Dalek
This looks a lot like a "new recipe" version of 2005's Dalek - lone Dalek, moral compare-and-contrast between the Doctor and the Daleks, even down to the almost-quote of calling the Doctor "a good Dalek". But where Dalek simply juxtaposed the actions and behaviour of the Doctor and the lone Dalek, here we take a close look at the inside of the protagonists' heads - not just into the Dalek, but into the Doctor as well.
The picture we get is painted in broad strokes - perhaps necessarily, after all this is only 45 minutes of family entertainment - but it's a bold picture all the same. The idea that it actually would be possible for the Doctor to (literally) change the Daleks' minds is something DW has only ever touched on once (The Evil of the Daleks, 1967); the idea that the one obstacle to this is his own hatred of the Daleks is revolutionary. The Doctor could actually reform his deadliest enemies, if he could only get over his own past experience of them and his preconceived ideas of them. This is a highly provocative statement for the show to make - I would say timely, but it's not as if there's ever been a time when DW couldn't have made this statement and had it appear relevant.
As if to emphasise the Doctor's role as part of the problem, we get some standout moments of callousness from the Doctor, first towards the pilot he saves at the start of the episode, but more memorably in his sacrifice of the trigger-happy soldier and his "Top layer if you want to say a few words" later on. It'll take the Doctor a few more episodes to file off the rough edges of his pragmatism (see also Mummy on the Orient Express); at least in this particular episode, and at this early stage of this particular season, it's not out of place.
There's not a lot more to say about this story. I grant that it's light on plot, but I do like it very much - hot contender for best post-2005 Dalek story, for what the competition's worth - and thematically it's one of the stronger links in this season. And ideologically, it's very much my DW.
Robot of Sherwood
Mark Gatiss, a lightweight historical story - this review could pretty much write itself. And yet it's still a pretty good episode - with about half the season tied for first place, it's still going to rank fairly low in the season for me, but I'd put it ahead of other episodes to be discussed in due course. The Sheriff's amusingly low-stakes villain rant was a high point.
Listen
Not at all suprising to see this episode made it onto the Hugo Award shortlist. I think this is the moment when Moffat's experiments with the fairytale nature of DW finally come together, in a weird examination of the Doctor's relationship with the whole concept of monsters. The creature in little Danny Pink's room and the creatures outside the base at the end of the universe clearly exist, but they're never explained. They may not even be the same creatures, and as it turns out they're certainly not the same creature that the child Doctor feared was hiding under his bed. They're less important than the Doctor's own fear of the unknown, says the episode; if he can overcome that, he may find that what he thought were monsters can in fact be friends. A worthy theme for DW, and one that carries over into the next episode.
(In light of the series finale, it's worth wondering where Orson Pink comes from, assuming he still exists at all. Perhaps events in the finale (and follow-on in the Christmas special) weren't that final after all...)
Time Heist
What appears to be a morally questionable heist story turns out to be a thoroughly compassionate rescue story. It's all a question of what the characters know and what they assume. Another episode that does a great job of overturning some stale story structures and viewer assumptions, while still looking good and providing surface entertainment. DW has definitely found its groove again.
The Caretaker
Strange that the Doctor should take such exception to Danny being an ex-military maths teacher - after all, cut back to Mawdryn Undead and you find his old pal the Brigadier in the exact same position. (What's that you say - a foreshadowing reference to the Brigadier?)
So, a low-key character episode with laughs and a largely incidental generic alien menace. Gareth Roberts is evidently the go-to writer for this variety of story. Underneath the comedy, the character work is surprisingly sharp and fits nicely in retrospect with later developments. Perhaps not one of the keystone episodes of this season, but what it does, it does well.
Kill the Moon
Yes, the science on this one is laughable. It's not as if DW has troubled itself greatly in the past to get science right, but certainly this episode is an extreme example. And yet...
There is an argument, which has spread through fandom like wildfire, that this episode can be read as a commentary on issues relating to abortion; I think this is quite plausible. The argument further runs that this episode is making a pro-life (or, if you prefer, anti-choice) statement, on the grounds that Clara makes a unilateral decision not to abort the moon-dragon, and that she's proven right; I think that that's a misreading of the episode. The real substance of the episode, and of the subtext, is the Doctor's refusal to make the choice for Clara, to the point that he disappears for much of the episode in order to force her to make the choice herself. It has to be, can only be, the woman's decision (and note also the Doctor's lampshady remark about "womankind") - and moreover, the individual woman's decision, hence the business of having Clara ignore what the rest of humanity is telling her to do, which doesn't make a lot of sense in a pro-life interpretation of this subtext. Clara's anger towards the Doctor later on seems to stem not so much from the fact that he presented her with this choice at all as from the fact that he didn't stick around to help; the issue seems to be not that he didn't tell her what to do but that she couldn't use him as a sounding-board while she made her decision. So if we're going to read an abortion subtext into this episode, I think the message we should take away from it is that it has to be the woman's choice, but that she shouldn't be denied moral support in making her choice.
As far as the actual textual decision to have her not kill the moon-dragon is concerned - well, look, it's DW, a show that celebrates diversity and not solving problems by killing. Given a straight choice, there was little chance the scriptwriter would opt to resolve the episode any other way. This is simply in keeping with the Doctor's little pep speech at the end about humanity reaching out to the stars, and with the show's history in general.
So is it a problem that this story presents the familiar old Moon as an eggshell for a growing (presumably transdimensional, how else to
Mummy on the Orient Express
Back in the groove again, with an episode that plays like something straight out of the Hinchcliffe-era Tom Baker songbook (and note also Capaldi's dead-on Tom voice when he's talking to himself, and some unmistakeable homage to Dudley Simpson's style in Murray Gold's soundtrack). Welcome, welcome, welcome Jamie Mathieson, who turns out two excellent episodes in succession, very different from each other yet both very Whoish, and here's hoping he'll be back next year.
Presumably the whole matter of Call-Me-Gus and his puppetmasters has been left hanging for a reason. Something to look at again after the 2015 season has aired. I thought the scene on the beach at the end of this episode was a tremendous comment on the Capaldi Doctor's morality - possibly a little overdue two thirds of the way through the season. And Jo loved the lounge jazz version of "Don't Stop Me Now". I haven't told her about the Series 8 soundtrack CD yet. Let's see how long it takes her to notice this blog post.
Flatline
This one's my personal favourite of the season - as I may have mentioned before, I'm a sucker for stories that play around with the TARDIS. All the dimensional shenanigans in this episode are brilliantly realised and a great science fictional idea for DW to play with. Also notable for being set in a parallel universe Bristol that has underground trains - eh wot? Best Bristol accent on display, tragically, was the first guy in the community service group to be killed. Still, we don't watch this show for its convincing portrayal of the West Country, and at least it wasn't plain old London.
The one bit of the episode I would have happily left on the cutting room floor was the scene of the Doctor pointlessly giving the 2D creatures a monster name, presumably just so that the merchandisers have got something to work with. Otherwise, perfick.
In the Forest of the Night
DW ventures into the realms of magic realism again, but this time the thematic material is lacking - what, "trees are good"? - and the episode ends up being a dribbling mess. I've tried to compose a more detailed response to this story, but I just can't seem to avoid using the words "or some shit". Probably best to drop it. It's just... gah.
Dark Water
An episode which gets its title from a substance that has been created for the sole purpose of hiding the Cybermen in plain sight of the viewer, and for no other meaningful purpose. I don't have much to add to that. Some very nice work from Michelle Gomez as Missy - let's face it, she's carrying this episode.
Death in Heaven
So let's talk about the transgender Master. This subject could sustain several academic essays, and I look forward to seeing them in fanthologies to come.
My first thought is that this does interesting things to the long-standing slash fiction interpretation of the relationship between the Doctor and the Master. RTD already did interesting things with that in Last of the Time Lords when he pretty much implied that it was the Doctor, not the Master, who was wrestling with an unrequited Time Lord love. Moffat seems to reject that take - the Master can't have failed to notice that the Doctor, particularly the version she last met, is strongly attracted to human women, so having her turn up now in a female body looks like a deliberate ploy for the Doctor's attention and affection. Note also the aggressive kiss in the previous episode.
But that gets in the way of the more simple but equally interesting fact of just having the Master turn up in a female body. Previous throwaway references to the gender fluidity of the Time Lords are finally embodied on screen. And of course, fans who've been asking why the Doctor can't be played by a woman are given a sop, and a strong piece of fresh ammunition. Or are they?
On the one hand, yes, having the Master change gender does look like a dry run for the possibility of casting a woman as the Doctor. On the other hand, Moffat has previously been dismissive - almost to the point of outright insult - of the idea that the Doctor might change gender. And then, note how, through the character of Missy, Moffat symbolically attacks the younger generation of fandom twice in this episode: first when she vaporises Seb for squeeing, casting a pitying look directly at the camera as she does so; then when she kills Osgood, who once again is seen cosplaying as the Doctor. Is Moffat pandering to the fans, or cruelly mocking them?
It's a tough one to call, especially when you have the beloved character of the Brigadier resurrected as a jet-propelled flying version of Kroton the Friendly Cyberman. Is that thumbing the nose at older, more conservative fans and their sacred cows? An invitation to them to dismiss the episode and everything in it? A way for Moffat to show that he's sympathetic to the idea of transgender Time Lords by contrasting it with something really outrageous? A way for him to double down on his previous dismissal of the idea - "well, if you're going to have that, you might as well have this"? Just another zany, punk-rockin', DW-can-do-what-it-likes idea thrown into the mix? Am I reading too much into all of this?
The last scene is a lovely one, with the Doctor and Clara both lying about having got what they wanted. Clara's relationship with the Doctor - in 2014, at least - has practically been defined by lying, usually to Danny. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out in 2015 in Danny's absence.
Overall, a finale that just about sticks the landing, and one of those rare occasions when the second part is at least as good as the first. The unsurprising return of Missy has already been confirmed, hooray; knowing Mr Moffat's general approach to character deaths, I wouldn't be too surprised if we haven't seen the last of Danny Pink or the Cyber-Brigadier either.
Last Christmas
Not much to say about this one. It's a Christmas episode, so my expectations are lowered; it's actually better than many previous Christmas episodes, probably the best Moffat Who has provided thus far. It makes a modest amount of sense, it doesn't rely on "the tears of a family at Christmas", and it actually moves the characters forward. Love the cheeky banter with Santa and his elves at the start. I kind of hoped Moffat might actually stick with the old version of Clara at the end, but hey.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Other viddies viddied in 2013
In a prolonged lull between jobs, I've had plenty of opportunity to watch TV. There's been a mix of DVDs and electronic copies of stuff handed to us by friends, and far be it from me to say which is which on this blog. In between marathon viewings of the old Twilight Zone, the old Outer Limits and the Ray Bradbury Theater, I've taken in these items of note.
Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
Well, let's not get off the subject of DW just yet. The rediscovery of a complete Patrick Troughton story and another almost complete one was pretty exciting news in DW's jubilee year. One episode of each already existed in the BBC archives and had been made available, and I'd seen those, but otherwise I came to these stories completely fresh since I don't have the patience for slideshow reconstructions of otherwise missing stories. We've now seen a friend's copies of these, and bought our own copy of The Enemy of the World.
Enemy has a lot going for it. It doesn't have any "missing episode" gaps, for one thing. It takes the show in an unusual direction at a time when almost every story revolved around monsters laying siege to an isolated human community - there are no monsters here, and the whole world is this story's stage. It makes fuller than normal use of its sensational leading man, with the Mighty Trout gamely mugging and accenting his way through a side role as Mexican villain Salamander. It twists and turns, with a reveal in episode 4 that upends the whole story. A flawless split-screen shot of the two Troughtons facing off in the final episode is the cherry on the cake. It's a lot of fun.
Web has none of these points in its favour. Episode 1 was and is brilliant, but the rest of the story doesn't live up to its promise - most of the middle four episodes is spent running up and down replica London Underground tunnels, with occasional eruptions from the BBC's foam machine. The replica tunnels are, of course, beautiful, but we already knew that from episode 1. Two or three episodes could have been cut from this story at the scripting stage and no one would have lost any sleep over it (apart from the producer, I suppose). The standard critical line on this story is that we cannot appreciate the introduction of Colonel (later Brigadier) Lethbridge-Stewart as viewers at the time were meant to, since we know he's going to be a mainstay of the show in decades to come and they only knew he was a potential Great Intelligence zombie; as far as I can see, though, he's already being played and filmed here as if he were the biggest thing to happen to the show all year. Even with the visuals, the denouement is a bit of a mess. It's nice to have it back and be able to watch it, but I'm not itching to buy a copy.
Takin' Over the Asylum
A blast from the past, this. Ken Stott stars as a failing salesman and wannabe DJ who starts up a life-changing patient-run radio station at his local mental institution. Notable for featuring some young fellow by the name of David Tennant as Stott's number one loony protege - we'll have to watch out for that lad, I'm sure he's destined for great things. Certainly not a comedy, although it has its light-hearted moments. Its downfall is that it tends to treat its characters as puzzles to be solved, which I suppose is true of a lot of shows about the mentally ill; but for all that, it's respectful of its institutionalised characters, and never hesitant to show aberrant behaviour in its supposedly sane characters. Good viewing.
Sherlock, series 3
Great stuff. Seems like Sherlock allows Steven Moffat even more opportunity than Doctor Who to experiment with scenes that exteriorise the characters' thoughts, which have gone from supertitles showing Sherlock's deductions to entire non-literal environments standing in for the inside of a character's head. In Series 3 this is taken to such an extreme that it actually sets up the big denouement of the final episode. Meanwhile "I Married a Psychopath" becomes the theme of yet another Moffat TV show, following in the footsteps of Jekyll ("Love is a psychopath") and DW (River Bloody Song, of course) - I'm not sure what we should all be reading into this, but it looks worrying. Season highlight must be the scene of Sherlock deducing while drunk in episode 2, although the "What to do when you've been shot in the chest" sequence in episode 3 is also pretty spectacular. It's hard to fault this series.
Fringe, series 1
Silly. I already know second hand that later seasons focus largely (perhaps even exclusively) on the parallel universe, but barring some material in the last couple or three episodes that sets that up, the first season is pretty much an X-Files knock-off. And I was prepared to allow the series plenty of latitude on that basis, but what broke my suspended disbelief wasn't any of the weird phenomena but the behaviour of the characters, particularly in the pilot episode. The whole series is being carried by John Noble's performance as Dr Walter Bishop, literally mad scientist, but there's just no believable way the other characters would have brought him in in the first place. I might watch season 2, but it's not a priority.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, series 1
Australian detective series, based on a popular string of books, set in the ever-popular Roaring Twenties. This is moderately entertaining fluff, but Phryne Fisher is such an extreme wish fulfilment figure that it pretty much breaks the show. She's decades ahead of her time, an independently wealthy liberal (and libertine) polyamorous feminist, dead shot with a gun, speaks a dozen more languages than are required in any given episode, shelters and benefacts the worthy poor, has the Detective Inspector eating out of her hand (and his one and only constable - except where the episode requires the inclusion of a second, corrupt copper - eating out of her maid's hand), knits her own Faberge eggs, and you get the general picture. Not enough interest or novelty in the mysteries themselves to distract from the all-consuming Miss Fisher herself. Passes an idle hour, but not what I'd consider a must-see.
Gravity
Oblivion
Elysium
The three Big Serious SF films of last year, as far as I can tell. Gravity is pretty good, very artfully executed but essentially just Sandra Bullock in a room surrounded by visual effects. Oblivion was better than I was expecting given the prominent Tom Cruise content - probably the prettiest Big Serious SF film of 2013. Elysium is a story I feel I probably would have enjoyed reading, but watching it was a bit trying, not least thanks to scenes of Sharlto Copley with the front of his head missing. Notably, Gravity is the only one of these that's made it onto the Hugo Award shortlist alongside several not-so-serious films.
Pacific Rim
Also on the Hugo shortlist, not at all serious. This was a must-see simply because it was very obviously made as a tribute to - and with real knowledge and love of - Japanese monster movies. It thus puts the 1998 Godzilla film firmly in its place. Highly conventional adventure fare, but look, it's got giant mecha and big weird animals all over it. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.
23/04/14: And almost immediately, I was reminded of other things I'd watched that deserve a mention but that completely slipped my mind. Proof again that it's important for me to actually write stuff down. Oz the Great and Powerful can be dealt with quickly enough - it's a lovely film, a nice modern take and yet also a good fit for the old Judy Garland film. Sundry superhero films and the ongoing TV series Agents of SHIELD might be better handled in a separate post.
Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
Well, let's not get off the subject of DW just yet. The rediscovery of a complete Patrick Troughton story and another almost complete one was pretty exciting news in DW's jubilee year. One episode of each already existed in the BBC archives and had been made available, and I'd seen those, but otherwise I came to these stories completely fresh since I don't have the patience for slideshow reconstructions of otherwise missing stories. We've now seen a friend's copies of these, and bought our own copy of The Enemy of the World.
Enemy has a lot going for it. It doesn't have any "missing episode" gaps, for one thing. It takes the show in an unusual direction at a time when almost every story revolved around monsters laying siege to an isolated human community - there are no monsters here, and the whole world is this story's stage. It makes fuller than normal use of its sensational leading man, with the Mighty Trout gamely mugging and accenting his way through a side role as Mexican villain Salamander. It twists and turns, with a reveal in episode 4 that upends the whole story. A flawless split-screen shot of the two Troughtons facing off in the final episode is the cherry on the cake. It's a lot of fun.
Web has none of these points in its favour. Episode 1 was and is brilliant, but the rest of the story doesn't live up to its promise - most of the middle four episodes is spent running up and down replica London Underground tunnels, with occasional eruptions from the BBC's foam machine. The replica tunnels are, of course, beautiful, but we already knew that from episode 1. Two or three episodes could have been cut from this story at the scripting stage and no one would have lost any sleep over it (apart from the producer, I suppose). The standard critical line on this story is that we cannot appreciate the introduction of Colonel (later Brigadier) Lethbridge-Stewart as viewers at the time were meant to, since we know he's going to be a mainstay of the show in decades to come and they only knew he was a potential Great Intelligence zombie; as far as I can see, though, he's already being played and filmed here as if he were the biggest thing to happen to the show all year. Even with the visuals, the denouement is a bit of a mess. It's nice to have it back and be able to watch it, but I'm not itching to buy a copy.
Takin' Over the Asylum
A blast from the past, this. Ken Stott stars as a failing salesman and wannabe DJ who starts up a life-changing patient-run radio station at his local mental institution. Notable for featuring some young fellow by the name of David Tennant as Stott's number one loony protege - we'll have to watch out for that lad, I'm sure he's destined for great things. Certainly not a comedy, although it has its light-hearted moments. Its downfall is that it tends to treat its characters as puzzles to be solved, which I suppose is true of a lot of shows about the mentally ill; but for all that, it's respectful of its institutionalised characters, and never hesitant to show aberrant behaviour in its supposedly sane characters. Good viewing.
Sherlock, series 3
Great stuff. Seems like Sherlock allows Steven Moffat even more opportunity than Doctor Who to experiment with scenes that exteriorise the characters' thoughts, which have gone from supertitles showing Sherlock's deductions to entire non-literal environments standing in for the inside of a character's head. In Series 3 this is taken to such an extreme that it actually sets up the big denouement of the final episode. Meanwhile "I Married a Psychopath" becomes the theme of yet another Moffat TV show, following in the footsteps of Jekyll ("Love is a psychopath") and DW (River Bloody Song, of course) - I'm not sure what we should all be reading into this, but it looks worrying. Season highlight must be the scene of Sherlock deducing while drunk in episode 2, although the "What to do when you've been shot in the chest" sequence in episode 3 is also pretty spectacular. It's hard to fault this series.
Fringe, series 1
Silly. I already know second hand that later seasons focus largely (perhaps even exclusively) on the parallel universe, but barring some material in the last couple or three episodes that sets that up, the first season is pretty much an X-Files knock-off. And I was prepared to allow the series plenty of latitude on that basis, but what broke my suspended disbelief wasn't any of the weird phenomena but the behaviour of the characters, particularly in the pilot episode. The whole series is being carried by John Noble's performance as Dr Walter Bishop, literally mad scientist, but there's just no believable way the other characters would have brought him in in the first place. I might watch season 2, but it's not a priority.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, series 1
Australian detective series, based on a popular string of books, set in the ever-popular Roaring Twenties. This is moderately entertaining fluff, but Phryne Fisher is such an extreme wish fulfilment figure that it pretty much breaks the show. She's decades ahead of her time, an independently wealthy liberal (and libertine) polyamorous feminist, dead shot with a gun, speaks a dozen more languages than are required in any given episode, shelters and benefacts the worthy poor, has the Detective Inspector eating out of her hand (and his one and only constable - except where the episode requires the inclusion of a second, corrupt copper - eating out of her maid's hand), knits her own Faberge eggs, and you get the general picture. Not enough interest or novelty in the mysteries themselves to distract from the all-consuming Miss Fisher herself. Passes an idle hour, but not what I'd consider a must-see.
Gravity
Oblivion
Elysium
The three Big Serious SF films of last year, as far as I can tell. Gravity is pretty good, very artfully executed but essentially just Sandra Bullock in a room surrounded by visual effects. Oblivion was better than I was expecting given the prominent Tom Cruise content - probably the prettiest Big Serious SF film of 2013. Elysium is a story I feel I probably would have enjoyed reading, but watching it was a bit trying, not least thanks to scenes of Sharlto Copley with the front of his head missing. Notably, Gravity is the only one of these that's made it onto the Hugo Award shortlist alongside several not-so-serious films.
Pacific Rim
Also on the Hugo shortlist, not at all serious. This was a must-see simply because it was very obviously made as a tribute to - and with real knowledge and love of - Japanese monster movies. It thus puts the 1998 Godzilla film firmly in its place. Highly conventional adventure fare, but look, it's got giant mecha and big weird animals all over it. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.
23/04/14: And almost immediately, I was reminded of other things I'd watched that deserve a mention but that completely slipped my mind. Proof again that it's important for me to actually write stuff down. Oz the Great and Powerful can be dealt with quickly enough - it's a lovely film, a nice modern take and yet also a good fit for the old Judy Garland film. Sundry superhero films and the ongoing TV series Agents of SHIELD might be better handled in a separate post.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Doctor Who 2013
The worst of it is behind us now. 2011 still beats out 1985 as my least favourite year of Doctor Who, but 2012 saw a definite upturn, and I'm pretty happy with how 2013 turned out. The decision to tone down the multi-episode arcs in favour of single episode stories was entirely the right one as far as I'm concerned - Series 7 had the variety of style and subject and a lot more of the bounce that I associate with DW.
Of course, with each story pressed into 50 minutes, there's been something of a reduction in complexity - apparently Steven Moffat wanted "compressed storytelling", but the only episodes where I think that really came across and worked were Asylum of the Daleks back in the 2012 half of the season and last year's Hide. Some episodes just happened to fit the 50-minute length quite well - A Town Called Mercy, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Bells of Saint John, The Crimson Horror. Some were a little light on content, but carried by strong character material or spectacular visuals - Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Nightmare in Silver. Arguably The Rings of Akhaten, but I'm more inclined to point to that and Cold War as examples of episodes that were just plain flimsy. And the season finale is the only episode I can think of where "compressed storytelling" was clearly intended but doesn't quite work. Of the specials, more anon.
The big benefit of less complexity, as far as I'm concerned, is that there's less to go wrong. The horrifying ethical gaffes of Series 6 seemed to have crept past the production crew because they were trying very hard to do something clever and their attention was distracted by that. (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood just seems to have coiled itself out straight onto the screen without anyone noticing; we may never know quite what happened there.) It's an even bet whether a DW story that tries to do something smart will achieve the giddy heights or plunge into the abyssal depths, and this production team seems to have worse luck than any other on that front. If DW isn't aspiring to be more than entertaining, well, at least it's entertaining. Give it a coherent plot and let Matt Smith and the visuals carry it, and you can't go too far wrong.
There were two notable and pleasing innovations in 2013, and the first of these was the new title sequence. (All right, first seen in the 2012 Christmas special, but that's close enough - it was probably 2013 before we saw it...) The billowing endoscopy-scape is replaced with a title sequence of wonder and beauty, and - hooray! - the Doctor's face briefly glimpsed just to top everything off. And having the TARDIS doors close on the pre-creds and open on the episode is a little touch of genius. This might, just might be the bestest ever title sequence of them all.
The second item of note is the inversion of Moffat's use of significant female characters as plot puzzles rather than as actual characters. Clara is presented as a puzzle, but this turns out to be a sort of semi-bluff - it's all cleared up by the finale, and the important take-home message that Moffat himself seems to be striving to put across in the episodes is that Clara isn't just a plot engine, she's a person in her own right. Having spent 2013 bluffing the matter out, the production team now needs to put in some work backing that up, and the late introduction of some of Clara's family members in the 2013 Christmas special is a step in that direction, but there's more to be done. Still 'n' all, I'm feeling positive about it.
All things considered, then, this is the first entire season of Moffat Who that I could conceivably be persuaded into buying on DVD. I like it, I really do.
Further thoughts on specific episodes:
The Snowmen
So, having laid out my stall of optimism, let's start by striking a downbeat note. It's probably damning enough that I couldn't be arsed to blog about this one even when I was keeping the blog updated during the first half of last year. This one's an improvement on the previous Christmas special (not difficult), but it's not exactly a heart-breaking work of staggering genius. A malignant disembodied intelligence is defeated by the tears of a family at Christmas, you wot? Also, at this early stage I find Clara more than a little annoying. It doesn't help that none of her character background has been provided yet, and at this point it looks as if she's just going to be another whirlwind of quickfire quips and tics. The Great Intelligence is an interesting choice of monster/villain; turning it into a child's imaginary friend is kind-of interesting but also kind-of craps on its earlier appearances. There's a fleeting nod to the chronologically later The Web of Fear (did Moffat know then that the tapes had been rediscovered?), but bugger all effort to tie things back to The Abominable Snowmen in which the Intelligence has supposedly been lurking in Tibet for centuries.
The image of the TARDIS on a cloud at the top of a fog-shrouded spiral staircase is downright peculiar, but possibly the clearest visual statement yet of Moffat's fairytale vision of DW. Best element of the episode must surely be the reappearance of Madame Vastra, the Silurian Victorian detective, and her partner Jenny, and comedy Sontaran Strax in a somewhat surprising (and much more heavily comedic) new role as third member of the Paternoster Gang. Fandom was clearly clamouring for it, and fandom has got it - you can't say Moffat hasn't done us some favours. They may not have their own spin-off series, but they're building up a strong body of work as supporting characters.
5 out of 10?
The Bells of Saint John
Unsurprising returning villain alert! The reveal at the end of the sequence of the Doctor riding a bike up the Shard is a punch-the-air moment (and the sequence itself is pretty good, too). By and large a good episode; certainly one of the strongest to introduce a new companion.
8 out of 10?
The Rings of Akhaten
Very strong visually, but it is just spectacle. Building visual motifs and using imagery to tell the story is undoubtedly Moffat Who's strong suit, but that's not exactly what we've got here. It's just a big weird alien environment. And that's great, there aren't nearly enough of those in DW - DW needs more big weird alien environments. But the story is lacking, and the resolution is on a par with The Snowmen for sheer meaningless schmaltz. Beautiful to look at, but not much more than that.
6 out of 10?
Cold War
Another very thin story - monster appears, bit of a runaround, monster leaves. Some effort made to present Skaldak as a character rather than just a monster, but I don't think it quite succeeds. Also not great to have the Doctor essentially stare down Skaldak with an overt parallel of Mutually Assured Destruction. Still, a competent bit of adventure fluff, and always nice to see genre favourite David Warner. (My own preference would have been to have him confound Skaldak in some way - it's lovable freaks like his character, and certainly not nuclear stalemate, that got us through the real Cold War.)
Another 6 out of 10? Perhaps a 5.
Hide
Notable for having two significant female characters go off and sit down together, only to talk about the men in their lives. But if failing the Bechdel Test is the worst an episode of DW can do, we don't have all that much to worry about. Probably the best example of "compressed storytelling" in action - there's a whole extra act hidden in the last thirty seconds of the episode, but it's crystal clear what's going to happen, so there's no need to do more than nod at it. Sadly the compression means we learn nothing at all about the non-humans (can't really call them non-human "characters"). But for all that, a good episode.
7 out of 10?
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
I'm a sucker for stories that examine the TARDIS interior (provided it's allowed to remain at least a bit enigmatic - Logopolis and Castrovalva welcome here, The Doctor's Wife less so) so this episode's in for an easy ride. Not to mention that Murray Gold's music is suddenly more interesting than it's been for quite some time now (heavy musical element of Akhaten notwithstanding). Notable for having the first all-black guest cast in an episode of DW; regrettable for casting them as dishonest wideboys. Eh, well. There's not a hell of a lot going on here, but what little there is, is going on in an incredibly stylish way.
8 out of 10?
The Crimson Horror
Either I'm going soft or Mark Gatiss is improving. Not without its problems, but a competent trad runaround with a central premise I can actually get behind - Gatiss thinks there's something creepy about those characterless corporate villages that rich benefactors were fond of setting up around the turn of the 20th century, and so do I. Some successful use of "compressed storytelling" at the start, then we're into a story that pretty much runs the length it needs to. Another welcome outing for the Paternoster Gang. The "Thomas Thomas" scene provoked an outbreak of groans and tuts.
8 out of 10?
Nightmare in Silver
Lightweight, but then Cybermen stories often are. This episode is carried entirely on the shoulders of Matt Smith, who delivers a bravura performance as the Doctor and the Cyberplanner trying to take over his mind. Juuuust about gets away with it. Throw in some quirky Gaiman supporting characters and you're doing OK.
6 out of 10?
The Name of the Doctor
A bit of a mess, all told. Then again, its purpose is pretty much a) to set up John Hurt's appearance in the anniversary special, and b) to explain why Clara appeared before her introductory episode. To have a story on top of that would be nice, but alas... Above all, this episode is riding on the opening sequence of Clara interacting with archive footage of the classic series Doctors, which is of course absolutely mind-blowing, but just not enough to carry the episode on its own. I also feel Moffat threw away the idea of the Doctor jumping into his own timestream - surely, something more should have been made of that? And the Intelligence's plan - to disperse himself across the Doctor's timestream for the sake of mere revenge - looks a bit rubbish too.
4 out of 10?
The Day of the Doctor
We went to see this in 3D at the cinema, and I'd say it was money well spent. Couldn't have asked for a better celebration of Doctor Who. (Although The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot runs it a close second...) Something for everyone - Smith and Tennant representing the new series, John Hurt offering snarky comments to satisfy any grumpy old fans like m'self, and just when you think it can't get any better, Tom Bloody Baker shows up. The Time War is finally finessed away - the vagaries of multi-Doctor stories mean that the guilt of the Eccleston and Tennant Doctors isn't cheapened, but the series at last finds the third way that we ought to expect this of all series to find. (Given the ever-present subtext of the Time War as the show's catastrophic hiatus from 1989 to 2005, it's only fitting that on DW's triumphant 50th anniversary we should finally lay it to rest.) All this paralleled by the defused struggle between UNIT and the Zygons - yet more reference candy for old fans, of course, gratuitous in the normal run of things but underplayed by the standards of an anniversary story. They even found a way to work in Billie Piper's obligatory cameo without breaking the show!
One small lingering question - what the hell is that publicity shot of Kamelion doing on UNIT's big wall of Doctor sightings? (There'll be fan fiction, mark my words.)
A perfect 10?
The Time of the Doctor
From the sublime to the ridiculous. This is what happens when you spend three years setting up plot arcs with little promise of resolution - you end up having to burn up an entire episode on answers. And I think the answers we got give the lie to any claim that Moffat had this whole thing mapped out three years ago. The Series 5 Crack of Plot Convenience reappears to do a bunch of stuff that bears no relation to any of the other stuff it's ever done. Madame Eyepatch is sort-of explained, although her actions don't make any more sense in context than they did before. The explanation we get of the Silence - that they're specially engineered confessor-priests - is fascinating, but doesn't tally at all with anything they did in Series 6.
Still, here we are tidying up all of these loose ends, and I like to think that this tidying up constitutes a promise from Mr Moffat that the Peter Capaldi era of the show won't rely on this type of cumbersome arc material. A foolish hope, perhaps. At any rate, at least Capaldi's starting with a clean slate. While he's in the mood for tying up loose ends, Moffat even throws in the question of the Doctor's regeneration limit - his Christmas gift to fandom.
Positive stuff includes the long-awaited scenes of Clara's family, the idea of the Doctor dedicating his twilight centuries to protecting one planet from an apocalyptic new Time War, Matt Smith's "old geezer" acting, and that freaky wooden Cyberman. Not sold on the "air guitar" Regeneration Part One, blowing up yet another Dalek fleet with sparkly pixie dust. Much more sold on Regeneration Part Two, a nice and surprising change from the previous two regenerations. Capaldi's first lines as the Doctor are far too similar to Tennant's and Smith's - ooh, new body part, woops, we're going to crash - but his performance is pure goggle-eyed Tom. We'll see what 2014 brings.
5 out of 10?
As Steven Moffat ushers in an aggressive Scots Doctor, I'm strangely reminded of John Nathan-Turner casting Colin Baker as a Doctor with a bubble perm and crap taste in clothes. (Talk about putting yourself into your work...) It'll certainly be interesting to see what Moffat and Capaldi plan to do with the character, and indeed with the show. This'll be Moffat's fourth season on DW - his fifth year, in fact, thanks to the split of Series 7 across two years - and I'm sure he'll be just as conscious as I am that the time to name his successor is drawing nigh. (Unless he plans to beat JNT's record of nine years - no, let's not even go there.) I think we could have an interesting year ahead.
Of course, with each story pressed into 50 minutes, there's been something of a reduction in complexity - apparently Steven Moffat wanted "compressed storytelling", but the only episodes where I think that really came across and worked were Asylum of the Daleks back in the 2012 half of the season and last year's Hide. Some episodes just happened to fit the 50-minute length quite well - A Town Called Mercy, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Bells of Saint John, The Crimson Horror. Some were a little light on content, but carried by strong character material or spectacular visuals - Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Nightmare in Silver. Arguably The Rings of Akhaten, but I'm more inclined to point to that and Cold War as examples of episodes that were just plain flimsy. And the season finale is the only episode I can think of where "compressed storytelling" was clearly intended but doesn't quite work. Of the specials, more anon.
The big benefit of less complexity, as far as I'm concerned, is that there's less to go wrong. The horrifying ethical gaffes of Series 6 seemed to have crept past the production crew because they were trying very hard to do something clever and their attention was distracted by that. (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood just seems to have coiled itself out straight onto the screen without anyone noticing; we may never know quite what happened there.) It's an even bet whether a DW story that tries to do something smart will achieve the giddy heights or plunge into the abyssal depths, and this production team seems to have worse luck than any other on that front. If DW isn't aspiring to be more than entertaining, well, at least it's entertaining. Give it a coherent plot and let Matt Smith and the visuals carry it, and you can't go too far wrong.
There were two notable and pleasing innovations in 2013, and the first of these was the new title sequence. (All right, first seen in the 2012 Christmas special, but that's close enough - it was probably 2013 before we saw it...) The billowing endoscopy-scape is replaced with a title sequence of wonder and beauty, and - hooray! - the Doctor's face briefly glimpsed just to top everything off. And having the TARDIS doors close on the pre-creds and open on the episode is a little touch of genius. This might, just might be the bestest ever title sequence of them all.
The second item of note is the inversion of Moffat's use of significant female characters as plot puzzles rather than as actual characters. Clara is presented as a puzzle, but this turns out to be a sort of semi-bluff - it's all cleared up by the finale, and the important take-home message that Moffat himself seems to be striving to put across in the episodes is that Clara isn't just a plot engine, she's a person in her own right. Having spent 2013 bluffing the matter out, the production team now needs to put in some work backing that up, and the late introduction of some of Clara's family members in the 2013 Christmas special is a step in that direction, but there's more to be done. Still 'n' all, I'm feeling positive about it.
All things considered, then, this is the first entire season of Moffat Who that I could conceivably be persuaded into buying on DVD. I like it, I really do.
Further thoughts on specific episodes:
The Snowmen
So, having laid out my stall of optimism, let's start by striking a downbeat note. It's probably damning enough that I couldn't be arsed to blog about this one even when I was keeping the blog updated during the first half of last year. This one's an improvement on the previous Christmas special (not difficult), but it's not exactly a heart-breaking work of staggering genius. A malignant disembodied intelligence is defeated by the tears of a family at Christmas, you wot? Also, at this early stage I find Clara more than a little annoying. It doesn't help that none of her character background has been provided yet, and at this point it looks as if she's just going to be another whirlwind of quickfire quips and tics. The Great Intelligence is an interesting choice of monster/villain; turning it into a child's imaginary friend is kind-of interesting but also kind-of craps on its earlier appearances. There's a fleeting nod to the chronologically later The Web of Fear (did Moffat know then that the tapes had been rediscovered?), but bugger all effort to tie things back to The Abominable Snowmen in which the Intelligence has supposedly been lurking in Tibet for centuries.
The image of the TARDIS on a cloud at the top of a fog-shrouded spiral staircase is downright peculiar, but possibly the clearest visual statement yet of Moffat's fairytale vision of DW. Best element of the episode must surely be the reappearance of Madame Vastra, the Silurian Victorian detective, and her partner Jenny, and comedy Sontaran Strax in a somewhat surprising (and much more heavily comedic) new role as third member of the Paternoster Gang. Fandom was clearly clamouring for it, and fandom has got it - you can't say Moffat hasn't done us some favours. They may not have their own spin-off series, but they're building up a strong body of work as supporting characters.
5 out of 10?
The Bells of Saint John
Unsurprising returning villain alert! The reveal at the end of the sequence of the Doctor riding a bike up the Shard is a punch-the-air moment (and the sequence itself is pretty good, too). By and large a good episode; certainly one of the strongest to introduce a new companion.
8 out of 10?
The Rings of Akhaten
Very strong visually, but it is just spectacle. Building visual motifs and using imagery to tell the story is undoubtedly Moffat Who's strong suit, but that's not exactly what we've got here. It's just a big weird alien environment. And that's great, there aren't nearly enough of those in DW - DW needs more big weird alien environments. But the story is lacking, and the resolution is on a par with The Snowmen for sheer meaningless schmaltz. Beautiful to look at, but not much more than that.
6 out of 10?
Cold War
Another very thin story - monster appears, bit of a runaround, monster leaves. Some effort made to present Skaldak as a character rather than just a monster, but I don't think it quite succeeds. Also not great to have the Doctor essentially stare down Skaldak with an overt parallel of Mutually Assured Destruction. Still, a competent bit of adventure fluff, and always nice to see genre favourite David Warner. (My own preference would have been to have him confound Skaldak in some way - it's lovable freaks like his character, and certainly not nuclear stalemate, that got us through the real Cold War.)
Another 6 out of 10? Perhaps a 5.
Hide
Notable for having two significant female characters go off and sit down together, only to talk about the men in their lives. But if failing the Bechdel Test is the worst an episode of DW can do, we don't have all that much to worry about. Probably the best example of "compressed storytelling" in action - there's a whole extra act hidden in the last thirty seconds of the episode, but it's crystal clear what's going to happen, so there's no need to do more than nod at it. Sadly the compression means we learn nothing at all about the non-humans (can't really call them non-human "characters"). But for all that, a good episode.
7 out of 10?
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
I'm a sucker for stories that examine the TARDIS interior (provided it's allowed to remain at least a bit enigmatic - Logopolis and Castrovalva welcome here, The Doctor's Wife less so) so this episode's in for an easy ride. Not to mention that Murray Gold's music is suddenly more interesting than it's been for quite some time now (heavy musical element of Akhaten notwithstanding). Notable for having the first all-black guest cast in an episode of DW; regrettable for casting them as dishonest wideboys. Eh, well. There's not a hell of a lot going on here, but what little there is, is going on in an incredibly stylish way.
8 out of 10?
The Crimson Horror
Either I'm going soft or Mark Gatiss is improving. Not without its problems, but a competent trad runaround with a central premise I can actually get behind - Gatiss thinks there's something creepy about those characterless corporate villages that rich benefactors were fond of setting up around the turn of the 20th century, and so do I. Some successful use of "compressed storytelling" at the start, then we're into a story that pretty much runs the length it needs to. Another welcome outing for the Paternoster Gang. The "Thomas Thomas" scene provoked an outbreak of groans and tuts.
8 out of 10?
Nightmare in Silver
Lightweight, but then Cybermen stories often are. This episode is carried entirely on the shoulders of Matt Smith, who delivers a bravura performance as the Doctor and the Cyberplanner trying to take over his mind. Juuuust about gets away with it. Throw in some quirky Gaiman supporting characters and you're doing OK.
6 out of 10?
The Name of the Doctor
A bit of a mess, all told. Then again, its purpose is pretty much a) to set up John Hurt's appearance in the anniversary special, and b) to explain why Clara appeared before her introductory episode. To have a story on top of that would be nice, but alas... Above all, this episode is riding on the opening sequence of Clara interacting with archive footage of the classic series Doctors, which is of course absolutely mind-blowing, but just not enough to carry the episode on its own. I also feel Moffat threw away the idea of the Doctor jumping into his own timestream - surely, something more should have been made of that? And the Intelligence's plan - to disperse himself across the Doctor's timestream for the sake of mere revenge - looks a bit rubbish too.
4 out of 10?
The Day of the Doctor
We went to see this in 3D at the cinema, and I'd say it was money well spent. Couldn't have asked for a better celebration of Doctor Who. (Although The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot runs it a close second...) Something for everyone - Smith and Tennant representing the new series, John Hurt offering snarky comments to satisfy any grumpy old fans like m'self, and just when you think it can't get any better, Tom Bloody Baker shows up. The Time War is finally finessed away - the vagaries of multi-Doctor stories mean that the guilt of the Eccleston and Tennant Doctors isn't cheapened, but the series at last finds the third way that we ought to expect this of all series to find. (Given the ever-present subtext of the Time War as the show's catastrophic hiatus from 1989 to 2005, it's only fitting that on DW's triumphant 50th anniversary we should finally lay it to rest.) All this paralleled by the defused struggle between UNIT and the Zygons - yet more reference candy for old fans, of course, gratuitous in the normal run of things but underplayed by the standards of an anniversary story. They even found a way to work in Billie Piper's obligatory cameo without breaking the show!
One small lingering question - what the hell is that publicity shot of Kamelion doing on UNIT's big wall of Doctor sightings? (There'll be fan fiction, mark my words.)
A perfect 10?
The Time of the Doctor
From the sublime to the ridiculous. This is what happens when you spend three years setting up plot arcs with little promise of resolution - you end up having to burn up an entire episode on answers. And I think the answers we got give the lie to any claim that Moffat had this whole thing mapped out three years ago. The Series 5 Crack of Plot Convenience reappears to do a bunch of stuff that bears no relation to any of the other stuff it's ever done. Madame Eyepatch is sort-of explained, although her actions don't make any more sense in context than they did before. The explanation we get of the Silence - that they're specially engineered confessor-priests - is fascinating, but doesn't tally at all with anything they did in Series 6.
Still, here we are tidying up all of these loose ends, and I like to think that this tidying up constitutes a promise from Mr Moffat that the Peter Capaldi era of the show won't rely on this type of cumbersome arc material. A foolish hope, perhaps. At any rate, at least Capaldi's starting with a clean slate. While he's in the mood for tying up loose ends, Moffat even throws in the question of the Doctor's regeneration limit - his Christmas gift to fandom.
Positive stuff includes the long-awaited scenes of Clara's family, the idea of the Doctor dedicating his twilight centuries to protecting one planet from an apocalyptic new Time War, Matt Smith's "old geezer" acting, and that freaky wooden Cyberman. Not sold on the "air guitar" Regeneration Part One, blowing up yet another Dalek fleet with sparkly pixie dust. Much more sold on Regeneration Part Two, a nice and surprising change from the previous two regenerations. Capaldi's first lines as the Doctor are far too similar to Tennant's and Smith's - ooh, new body part, woops, we're going to crash - but his performance is pure goggle-eyed Tom. We'll see what 2014 brings.
5 out of 10?
As Steven Moffat ushers in an aggressive Scots Doctor, I'm strangely reminded of John Nathan-Turner casting Colin Baker as a Doctor with a bubble perm and crap taste in clothes. (Talk about putting yourself into your work...) It'll certainly be interesting to see what Moffat and Capaldi plan to do with the character, and indeed with the show. This'll be Moffat's fourth season on DW - his fifth year, in fact, thanks to the split of Series 7 across two years - and I'm sure he'll be just as conscious as I am that the time to name his successor is drawing nigh. (Unless he plans to beat JNT's record of nine years - no, let's not even go there.) I think we could have an interesting year ahead.
Sunday, January 06, 2013
These things happen to other people - they don't happen at all, in fact
When you're following an angel, does it mean you have to throw your body off a building? And so on. They Might Be Giants, meet Doctor Who. Many people over the past seven years have described New Who as "emo", and Amy and Rory defeating the Weeping Angels by jumping hand-in-hand off a tower block must surely be the extreme point (zenith? nadir?) of "emo" in DW. And yet, just get a couple of American loons to play a jolly tune with a guitar and an accordion over it and you're back over the borderline into "whimsical".
There was a bit of a hush in the Toon household after we watched The Angels Take Manhattan (Then They Take Berlin), I don't mind admitting. Yes, Amy Pond has left the series for the foreseeable future, and I won't give a stuff if she never comes back. Rory's gone with her, which is more of a shame since he was more of an interesting (or even watchable) character, but still, change is at the heart of DW's success, and the show must move on. It was quite nicely done, though.
Until you stop to think about it thirty seconds later and realise that, even if 1938 New York is out of bounds for the Doctor, he just has to turn up in 1939 to get the Ponds back. (Best not tell him though, eh?) It wouldn't even mean creating another paradox, just cheating a bit - plant a fake gravestone where Rory will conveniently see it in 2012, and you're away. All the tragedy that's been built up around this departure, and which carries over into the Christmas special, depends on everybody agreeing to overlook some very obvious workarounds. See also the business with River Song's book - reading ahead in it and feeling obliged to do what it says wouldn't be a problem if the Doctor realised he could do something else and then tell River to type up the false details later. Timey-wimey is only binding if we all agree that it is. So there's hope for the series yet.
The Lovely Jo felt that it was a bit unnecessary to have a Weeping Angel pop up at the end just for the purpose of writing the Ponds out, but I dunno. Given the episode's noir detective tendencies, I think it's in keeping to have one of the villain's hitmen escape and turn up in the epilogue to kill off somebody the hero cares about. Or in this case, send them back in time to live long and happy lives - eh, noir ain't what it used to be.
All in all, not without its problems, but a pretty good episode and a fitting farewell to the Ponds. The concept of the Weeping Angels creating a battery farm of looped human lives in an apartment block is a great one, and turning the investigation into a '30s style thriller was a canny choice. I think I'd rate this a 7 out of 10.
There was a bit of a hush in the Toon household after we watched The Angels Take Manhattan (Then They Take Berlin), I don't mind admitting. Yes, Amy Pond has left the series for the foreseeable future, and I won't give a stuff if she never comes back. Rory's gone with her, which is more of a shame since he was more of an interesting (or even watchable) character, but still, change is at the heart of DW's success, and the show must move on. It was quite nicely done, though.
Until you stop to think about it thirty seconds later and realise that, even if 1938 New York is out of bounds for the Doctor, he just has to turn up in 1939 to get the Ponds back. (Best not tell him though, eh?) It wouldn't even mean creating another paradox, just cheating a bit - plant a fake gravestone where Rory will conveniently see it in 2012, and you're away. All the tragedy that's been built up around this departure, and which carries over into the Christmas special, depends on everybody agreeing to overlook some very obvious workarounds. See also the business with River Song's book - reading ahead in it and feeling obliged to do what it says wouldn't be a problem if the Doctor realised he could do something else and then tell River to type up the false details later. Timey-wimey is only binding if we all agree that it is. So there's hope for the series yet.
The Lovely Jo felt that it was a bit unnecessary to have a Weeping Angel pop up at the end just for the purpose of writing the Ponds out, but I dunno. Given the episode's noir detective tendencies, I think it's in keeping to have one of the villain's hitmen escape and turn up in the epilogue to kill off somebody the hero cares about. Or in this case, send them back in time to live long and happy lives - eh, noir ain't what it used to be.
All in all, not without its problems, but a pretty good episode and a fitting farewell to the Ponds. The concept of the Weeping Angels creating a battery farm of looped human lives in an apartment block is a great one, and turning the investigation into a '30s style thriller was a canny choice. I think I'd rate this a 7 out of 10.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Dice Irae
The blog title would have been "Pond Life", except that - startlingly - the DW production office already used that joke for a string of promotional scenes leading into the series. Paging Mr Moffat, message from Fred for a Mr Moffat...
The winning streak couldn't last. We've opened the series with a straight run of three good episodes, which is surprising and pleasing, but here the cheer runs out and we break our shins on a plain old duffer of an episode. It's not that The Power of Three is abhorrent, it's just bland and forgettable. Many a Who fan will tell you that being bland and forgettable is the worst thing DW can do, and while I strongly disagree with that, clearly this episode isn't going to get high marks.
I've seen a lot of critics and commentators say that this episode is really all about the Ponds and their imminent departure, that the issue of their relationship with the Doctor and the conflict between "Doctor life" and "real life" is the main attraction here. Well, great, that's about three minutes of dialogue accounted for. I suspect the real reason people have focused on the Pond Question is just that there's bugger all else to work with here. The idea of an adventure that requires the Doctor to spend a year living the quiet life on Earth is a good one, and sure, it's a natural springboard for a consideration of the place of the Doctor and the Ponds in each others' lives now that the Ponds have a settled home life. Whereas what we get is a few minutes of that playing second fiddle to the sprawling non-story of the cubes. The Pond Question needed either to be the story (or be reflected more clearly in the story), or to have a better story supporting it.
I mean, the episode starts off well enough, building up mystery around what the cubes are and where they've come from, then after rather too much dragging around we find out the villain is Steven Berkoff with a nasty skin condition, and he's planning to kill off humanity because he's a bit of a git, and dull dull dull-diddly-dullsville. It's beyond perfunctory. Ohhhh, I don't know... sinister character actor in a black cape and some make-up, will that do? Why's he doing villainous things? Eh, just is.
Chris Chibnall's taken a very simple approach to both his episodes this series, and that paid off with Dinosaurs on a Spaceship for a variety of reasons: it suited the pulp adventure flavour of the story; the mystery of dinosaurs being on a spaceship, and its explanation, wasn't a significant part of the plot, which was in itself robust enough to carry 45 minutes of TV; the characters' motivations, though simplistic, were sufficiently clear and plausible to support the story. It fails to pay off with The Power of Three for similar reasons: it doesn't suit a mystery-heavy, character-focused story; the mystery is the central pillar of the plot, and a crappy payoff undermines that; the Shakri's motivation is hackneyed but also sufficiently unclear by the end of the episode as to leave the whole shebang floating in the fog.
There's some other stuff drifting around in here, none of which adds up to very much. The girl with the blue-glowing face and the two cube-mouthed hospital orderlies seem to have been thrown in just to meet the weirdness quota for the week - I don't recall there being any explanation of them, and they just seem to vanish from the story once they've had their close-up. The scenes between the Doctor and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and their "absent friends" nod to the late Brigadier, could be considered a foreshadowing of the Ponds' departure, but her inclusion in the story also looks a bit too much like a sop to the kind of continuity-obsessed fans who would want the Brigadier's daughter to take over as UNIT's figurehead. Nice to see Mark Williams making another appearance as Rory's dad, although most of his time seems to be taken up with commenting on the fact that nothing's happening. And sure enough, it is.
So this might be a 4, might be a 5. It's tempting to give it a (Power of) 3 out of 10, but it's not that bad. It's just lacking any kind of flavour or character. And on that note, we prepare to say goodbye to Amy Pond.
* * * * *
The winning streak couldn't last. We've opened the series with a straight run of three good episodes, which is surprising and pleasing, but here the cheer runs out and we break our shins on a plain old duffer of an episode. It's not that The Power of Three is abhorrent, it's just bland and forgettable. Many a Who fan will tell you that being bland and forgettable is the worst thing DW can do, and while I strongly disagree with that, clearly this episode isn't going to get high marks.
I've seen a lot of critics and commentators say that this episode is really all about the Ponds and their imminent departure, that the issue of their relationship with the Doctor and the conflict between "Doctor life" and "real life" is the main attraction here. Well, great, that's about three minutes of dialogue accounted for. I suspect the real reason people have focused on the Pond Question is just that there's bugger all else to work with here. The idea of an adventure that requires the Doctor to spend a year living the quiet life on Earth is a good one, and sure, it's a natural springboard for a consideration of the place of the Doctor and the Ponds in each others' lives now that the Ponds have a settled home life. Whereas what we get is a few minutes of that playing second fiddle to the sprawling non-story of the cubes. The Pond Question needed either to be the story (or be reflected more clearly in the story), or to have a better story supporting it.
I mean, the episode starts off well enough, building up mystery around what the cubes are and where they've come from, then after rather too much dragging around we find out the villain is Steven Berkoff with a nasty skin condition, and he's planning to kill off humanity because he's a bit of a git, and dull dull dull-diddly-dullsville. It's beyond perfunctory. Ohhhh, I don't know... sinister character actor in a black cape and some make-up, will that do? Why's he doing villainous things? Eh, just is.
Chris Chibnall's taken a very simple approach to both his episodes this series, and that paid off with Dinosaurs on a Spaceship for a variety of reasons: it suited the pulp adventure flavour of the story; the mystery of dinosaurs being on a spaceship, and its explanation, wasn't a significant part of the plot, which was in itself robust enough to carry 45 minutes of TV; the characters' motivations, though simplistic, were sufficiently clear and plausible to support the story. It fails to pay off with The Power of Three for similar reasons: it doesn't suit a mystery-heavy, character-focused story; the mystery is the central pillar of the plot, and a crappy payoff undermines that; the Shakri's motivation is hackneyed but also sufficiently unclear by the end of the episode as to leave the whole shebang floating in the fog.
There's some other stuff drifting around in here, none of which adds up to very much. The girl with the blue-glowing face and the two cube-mouthed hospital orderlies seem to have been thrown in just to meet the weirdness quota for the week - I don't recall there being any explanation of them, and they just seem to vanish from the story once they've had their close-up. The scenes between the Doctor and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and their "absent friends" nod to the late Brigadier, could be considered a foreshadowing of the Ponds' departure, but her inclusion in the story also looks a bit too much like a sop to the kind of continuity-obsessed fans who would want the Brigadier's daughter to take over as UNIT's figurehead. Nice to see Mark Williams making another appearance as Rory's dad, although most of his time seems to be taken up with commenting on the fact that nothing's happening. And sure enough, it is.
So this might be a 4, might be a 5. It's tempting to give it a (Power of) 3 out of 10, but it's not that bad. It's just lacking any kind of flavour or character. And on that note, we prepare to say goodbye to Amy Pond.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Happiness is a Warm Pun
And so, after a brief delay, to A Town Called Mercy. Folks, it's going to be another positive review. Here at last is a Moffat-era episode of DW that tackles a difficult ethical question head on and doesn't completely bugger it up. It doesn't completely redeem the sins of earlier episodes, mind you, but at least when it puts the Doctor in a room with a vivisectionist, it doesn't have him bump fists with him. It's a very far cry from the abominable Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. On reflection, this episode doesn't seem to have been part of a developing critique of the Doctor's morality after all, more of an upward blip. It's a welcome blip for all that.
The keystone scene for me is the bit where the Doctor avoids an armed stand-off with that young townsman. Here the Doctor is faced with the reality of people willing to use guns, even good people willing to use guns for arguably good reasons, and he finds another way. This scene is pretty much exactly what I wanted to see from DW, and a triumphantly Whoish moment at a time when the series seems increasingly (and for me, disappointingly) comfortable with gun use, even among the Doctor's coterie. The big showdown at the end, pretty shamelessly borrowing from Three Amigos, also shows the Doctor thinking his way out of a fight. It all adds up to a pleasing rejection of the simple cowboy violence that the setting invites, and that other episodes of New New Who have lapsed into. See also the scene where Amy makes a complete fool of herself with a handgun, which is nothing new, except that here it's actually played as foolish instead of heroic.
Contrast this with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, the previous Pond adventure in America, in which the standard response of every character to every problem is to point a gun at it. Compare it with The Gunfighters, DW's only other excursion to the Wild West, in which the Doctor's response to guns is to refuse them or to engage in hair-raising slapstick buffoonery with them, thus undermining the heroic iconography of the gun with his own frailer but more genuine heroism. A Town Called Mercy is clearly nearer to The Gunfighters than to Astronaut/Moon (so tempting, so tempting... can I argue for a second consecutive episode implicitly taking Steven Moffat to task?). When it does show the Doctor threatening someone with a gun, it's an anomalous moment - it's acknowledged as wrong within the story, it isn't one of those unfortunate eye-off-the-ball moments that sometimes happens in New New Who. We can see that the Doctor's gone past his normal moral boundaries, which in turn helps to define what those boundaries are.
We're invited to think about the Doctor's ethical history as well - is it his anger at Jex's war crimes that has pushed him over the line, or discomfort at his own actions in the Time War? Obviously the two characters aren't quite alike - Jex is shown to have conducted macabre experiments on others of his kind, surgically converting them into weapons in order to end a war quickly in favour of his own people, while the Doctor is known to have wiped out both sides in his people's war in order to protect the rest of the universe from being destroyed collaterally. And while the Doctor has spent much of the past seven seasons dealing with his guilt, and apparently still feels guilty, Jex denies regretting his actions, although this seems to be bravado and he eventually shows remorse. The real similarity between the two is their desire for redemption: do they deserve it? Is their guilt or their attempted atonement equal, or in some way comparable? What real justice can there be for either of them, Jex being hunted down by a vigilante, nobody left to hold the Doctor accountable? There's no easy answer to these questions, and thumbs up to Toby Whithouse for raising them, especially in the traditionally simplistic context of the cowboy film.
And then we have the Gunslinger, who is essentially a great big gun with a personality. Crucially, being armed wasn't his choice and isn't something he's happy about - the fact that he carries (or rather, is) a gun is a reason to pity him. And yet, being given a gun, he's chosen to use it to enact vigilante justice against the people who gave it to him. This clearly isn't a good thing - it's what turns the Gunslinger from victim to villain within the structure of the story - although the alternative is that the war criminal Jex escapes (or rather, conveniently commits suicide). We're left with the awkward question of just how bad vigilantism is in this context. The Gunslinger is still a vigilante at the end of the episode, albeit a "good" one because he wears the sheriff's badge - authority, or the semblance of it, legitimises his behaviour. It's worth remembering too that vigilantism - generally unarmed - is basically what the Doctor does for a living.
I should probably also mention that Amy and Rory are pushed very much into the background and feel somewhat superfluous to the story. Feh.
So this is a mature and thought-provoking slice of DW, and offers a timely reconsideration of the show's ethics. The handling of Jex's fate is questionable - all right, the Doctor's honouring the late sheriff by protecting Jex's life, but letting him escape altogether isn't a great solution, and the fact that he resolves the plot by blowing himself up is just too neat for this story. But still, here comes another 8.5 out of 10. (Previous episode re-evaluated back to a 7.5.)
The keystone scene for me is the bit where the Doctor avoids an armed stand-off with that young townsman. Here the Doctor is faced with the reality of people willing to use guns, even good people willing to use guns for arguably good reasons, and he finds another way. This scene is pretty much exactly what I wanted to see from DW, and a triumphantly Whoish moment at a time when the series seems increasingly (and for me, disappointingly) comfortable with gun use, even among the Doctor's coterie. The big showdown at the end, pretty shamelessly borrowing from Three Amigos, also shows the Doctor thinking his way out of a fight. It all adds up to a pleasing rejection of the simple cowboy violence that the setting invites, and that other episodes of New New Who have lapsed into. See also the scene where Amy makes a complete fool of herself with a handgun, which is nothing new, except that here it's actually played as foolish instead of heroic.
Contrast this with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, the previous Pond adventure in America, in which the standard response of every character to every problem is to point a gun at it. Compare it with The Gunfighters, DW's only other excursion to the Wild West, in which the Doctor's response to guns is to refuse them or to engage in hair-raising slapstick buffoonery with them, thus undermining the heroic iconography of the gun with his own frailer but more genuine heroism. A Town Called Mercy is clearly nearer to The Gunfighters than to Astronaut/Moon (so tempting, so tempting... can I argue for a second consecutive episode implicitly taking Steven Moffat to task?). When it does show the Doctor threatening someone with a gun, it's an anomalous moment - it's acknowledged as wrong within the story, it isn't one of those unfortunate eye-off-the-ball moments that sometimes happens in New New Who. We can see that the Doctor's gone past his normal moral boundaries, which in turn helps to define what those boundaries are.
We're invited to think about the Doctor's ethical history as well - is it his anger at Jex's war crimes that has pushed him over the line, or discomfort at his own actions in the Time War? Obviously the two characters aren't quite alike - Jex is shown to have conducted macabre experiments on others of his kind, surgically converting them into weapons in order to end a war quickly in favour of his own people, while the Doctor is known to have wiped out both sides in his people's war in order to protect the rest of the universe from being destroyed collaterally. And while the Doctor has spent much of the past seven seasons dealing with his guilt, and apparently still feels guilty, Jex denies regretting his actions, although this seems to be bravado and he eventually shows remorse. The real similarity between the two is their desire for redemption: do they deserve it? Is their guilt or their attempted atonement equal, or in some way comparable? What real justice can there be for either of them, Jex being hunted down by a vigilante, nobody left to hold the Doctor accountable? There's no easy answer to these questions, and thumbs up to Toby Whithouse for raising them, especially in the traditionally simplistic context of the cowboy film.
And then we have the Gunslinger, who is essentially a great big gun with a personality. Crucially, being armed wasn't his choice and isn't something he's happy about - the fact that he carries (or rather, is) a gun is a reason to pity him. And yet, being given a gun, he's chosen to use it to enact vigilante justice against the people who gave it to him. This clearly isn't a good thing - it's what turns the Gunslinger from victim to villain within the structure of the story - although the alternative is that the war criminal Jex escapes (or rather, conveniently commits suicide). We're left with the awkward question of just how bad vigilantism is in this context. The Gunslinger is still a vigilante at the end of the episode, albeit a "good" one because he wears the sheriff's badge - authority, or the semblance of it, legitimises his behaviour. It's worth remembering too that vigilantism - generally unarmed - is basically what the Doctor does for a living.
I should probably also mention that Amy and Rory are pushed very much into the background and feel somewhat superfluous to the story. Feh.
So this is a mature and thought-provoking slice of DW, and offers a timely reconsideration of the show's ethics. The handling of Jex's fate is questionable - all right, the Doctor's honouring the late sheriff by protecting Jex's life, but letting him escape altogether isn't a great solution, and the fact that he resolves the plot by blowing himself up is just too neat for this story. But still, here comes another 8.5 out of 10. (Previous episode re-evaluated back to a 7.5.)
Monday, October 22, 2012
KKLAK! to the Future
Edit (Dec 2012): All right, perhaps 7.5 rather than 8.5. It's not substantial enough for the higher score, but it's solid enough to deserve at least 7.5.
Several other people seem to have beaten me to "Jurassic Ark". Bastards. Now I have to resort to a blog post title that requires footnotes.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: a cute title in search of a story. It's surprising that Steven Moffat should have handed this wide-open brief over to the ever-risky Chris Chibnall. It's even more surprising that he should have done so well with it. He keeps the story simple and the brush strokes broad, and this suits the slam-bang title, the old-school adventure style, and the need after last year's series to settle back and take a bit of a breather before the forthcoming Pond departure episode. The characters are also somewhat simplistic, but sufficiently lurid and different from one another to allow for some lively interaction. This is the right episode at the right time, done the right way.
Not to mention: it's taken DW nearly 50 years to combine dinosaurs and spaceships?! Well, all right, Invasion of the Dinosaurs has both, but not on screen at the same time. It's kind of an obvious thing for Who to do, now that Who's actually done it. Hindsight's great, isn't it?
The idea of the Silurians firing off arks to settle new worlds is a nice one, although it may not retcon as easily as one might hope with the backstory to DW and the Silurians. And just how long has Solomon been waiting on the ship if it started to return to Earth when he boarded, and is already nearly there? (A possible answer: were these the Hungry Earth/Cold Blood Silurians a thousand years later? A possibility which leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were not only forced to bugger off for a millennium to spare humanity's blushes, but were pushed off the planet altogether when they re-emerged. Hmm.) Some very nice use of models alongside CGI effects - I was particularly surprised and delighted to learn that the comedy robots and the front part of the stegosaurus were physical props. Speaking of, the comedy robots were a lot of fun.
And so to the vexed question of the Doctor's morality, which is raised once again, dear oh dear. Solomon is such an outright black-hatted bastard that it's hard not to feel that he deserves it, but there's no doubt that the Doctor is responsible for his death. He could have pulled Solomon out of there, sent his empty ship off with the missile beacon on it, and dragged him off to trial if he'd wanted to - what we get instead is vigilante justice, a summary execution. It's awkward. Still, there's some distance between this and such horrors as the Doctor subliminally programming the human race to commit genocide, the vivisectionist fist-bump, and anything involving Melody Bloody Pond. It's actually a pretty close match for the resolution to The Dominators, in which Patrick Troughton's Doctor similarly causes some simplistic villains to be blown up. The show is merely veering a bit too close to James Bond territory, which is uncomfortable but not exactly unfamiliar for DW.
Whether this is something that will be developed and/or addressed head-on this season, or fumbled as in previous seasons, remains to be seen. I understand the very next story plays even more with the Doctor's morality, which suggests some kind of broader plan.
And hey, it's the only really iffy thing I can spot in this episode. In gender politics news, Riddell is a bit of a grotesque, but that suits his Quatermainish adventurer persona, and he seems to be put in his place by Nefertiti. As noted in the previous post, the presence of a strong, capable female character in Nefertiti not only plays well here but also offers an amusing counterpoint to the portrayal elsewhere of Amy Pond. Of course Amy admires her.
In the final analysis this is a very simple adventure yarn, but embellished with enough interesting characters and quirky moments that it doesn't feel stretched out at 45 minutes. It feels more like an Old Who four-parter with Part One intact (ooh, look at the dinosaurs - but what are they doing on that spaceship?) and the rest edited down to the bare essentials. On the whole I'd rate this episode asanother 8.5 7.5 out of 10 - it's not punch-the-air stuff (with the possible exception of the Rory's dad packed lunch scene), but it's good, and if the 2012 season can maintain this standard I'll be a happy bunny.
* * * * *
Several other people seem to have beaten me to "Jurassic Ark". Bastards. Now I have to resort to a blog post title that requires footnotes.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: a cute title in search of a story. It's surprising that Steven Moffat should have handed this wide-open brief over to the ever-risky Chris Chibnall. It's even more surprising that he should have done so well with it. He keeps the story simple and the brush strokes broad, and this suits the slam-bang title, the old-school adventure style, and the need after last year's series to settle back and take a bit of a breather before the forthcoming Pond departure episode. The characters are also somewhat simplistic, but sufficiently lurid and different from one another to allow for some lively interaction. This is the right episode at the right time, done the right way.
Not to mention: it's taken DW nearly 50 years to combine dinosaurs and spaceships?! Well, all right, Invasion of the Dinosaurs has both, but not on screen at the same time. It's kind of an obvious thing for Who to do, now that Who's actually done it. Hindsight's great, isn't it?
The idea of the Silurians firing off arks to settle new worlds is a nice one, although it may not retcon as easily as one might hope with the backstory to DW and the Silurians. And just how long has Solomon been waiting on the ship if it started to return to Earth when he boarded, and is already nearly there? (A possible answer: were these the Hungry Earth/Cold Blood Silurians a thousand years later? A possibility which leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were not only forced to bugger off for a millennium to spare humanity's blushes, but were pushed off the planet altogether when they re-emerged. Hmm.) Some very nice use of models alongside CGI effects - I was particularly surprised and delighted to learn that the comedy robots and the front part of the stegosaurus were physical props. Speaking of, the comedy robots were a lot of fun.
And so to the vexed question of the Doctor's morality, which is raised once again, dear oh dear. Solomon is such an outright black-hatted bastard that it's hard not to feel that he deserves it, but there's no doubt that the Doctor is responsible for his death. He could have pulled Solomon out of there, sent his empty ship off with the missile beacon on it, and dragged him off to trial if he'd wanted to - what we get instead is vigilante justice, a summary execution. It's awkward. Still, there's some distance between this and such horrors as the Doctor subliminally programming the human race to commit genocide, the vivisectionist fist-bump, and anything involving Melody Bloody Pond. It's actually a pretty close match for the resolution to The Dominators, in which Patrick Troughton's Doctor similarly causes some simplistic villains to be blown up. The show is merely veering a bit too close to James Bond territory, which is uncomfortable but not exactly unfamiliar for DW.
Whether this is something that will be developed and/or addressed head-on this season, or fumbled as in previous seasons, remains to be seen. I understand the very next story plays even more with the Doctor's morality, which suggests some kind of broader plan.
And hey, it's the only really iffy thing I can spot in this episode. In gender politics news, Riddell is a bit of a grotesque, but that suits his Quatermainish adventurer persona, and he seems to be put in his place by Nefertiti. As noted in the previous post, the presence of a strong, capable female character in Nefertiti not only plays well here but also offers an amusing counterpoint to the portrayal elsewhere of Amy Pond. Of course Amy admires her.
In the final analysis this is a very simple adventure yarn, but embellished with enough interesting characters and quirky moments that it doesn't feel stretched out at 45 minutes. It feels more like an Old Who four-parter with Part One intact (ooh, look at the dinosaurs - but what are they doing on that spaceship?) and the rest edited down to the bare essentials. On the whole I'd rate this episode as
Friday, October 19, 2012
It's a madhouse!
And so to the reviews of the two episodes that we've seen of the newest Who. The first thing to note about this first pair of episodes is that they're a big improvement on last year. By cracky, when I look back at the wasteland of last year... well, all right, the second half wasn't that bad once it got past the bloody wretched arc stuff. But starting the new season off without the wretched arc stuff is a welcome move - I know River Song's back in ep5, but hey, it could even be for the last time. There's a hint of freshness in the air. There's a definite spring in the step of these episodes that was lacking in last year's doomy parade. This is perhaps ironic, given the (small quantity of) doomy foreshadowing of the Ponds' departure, but then their exit is a necessary part of the show's fresh start. It's a positive thing on, ooh, so many levels.
Asylum of the Daleks is a strong opener, from its set-piece opening effect down. Steven Moffat does some interesting new things with the Daleks and - take note, foul Evolution of the Daleks - has the decency to make them stick. The nanobot/drone/reanimated corpse business is a keen updating of the idea of the Robomen from The Dalek Invasion of Earth and the clone troopers from Resurrection, and could comfortably be reused in future Dalek stories. If we're really lucky we may even see more surreal shots of people superimposed over the Daleks they've become (what would those have been, leftover human converts from Revelation?) - it's just a shame little ballerina Dalek won't be making any repeat appearances since the Doctor blew her up. Tsk, tsk.
The basic plot makes the required amount of sense once we factor in the revelations about Oswin - presumably dumped back on the planet once the Daleks' initial efforts with her failed, and it's specifically her hacking into the Dalek Internet that presents enough of a threat for the Daleks to want to blow up the whole planet, rather than just her ship crashing through the one-way barrier. The only big flaw I can see with the story is that the Daleks apparently have the means to infiltrate contemporary Earth with undetectable human-like agents, and they haven't attempted to invade. Perhaps now that they've forgotten about the Doctor they'll have a go - it could even justify a Dalek season finale next spring.
There's also a secondary plot here involving Amy and Rory's relationship, a subject I had hoped had taken its final beating last year. Here we learn that Amy can't have the children she believes Rory wants, and has decided that it's better to divorce him without explanation than to discuss it with him and, y'know, maybe settle on such alternatives as adoption, some form of surrogacy, just not having kids, or getting a cat. The message I'm taking from this is that Amy defines her self-worth in terms of her ability to bear children, which is just tragically Victorian-values-normative. This aspect of the episode takes on added piquancy when we get to the following episode's gender politics banter between Riddell and Nefertiti, and the clearly villainous Solomon treating women as his property, all of which looks temptingly like an in-series critique of Moffat's handling of female characters.
Early signs of what could become season themes: the Doctor saying "That's new!"; casual mentions of having performed in classical music recordings; lightbulbs. Chances are these won't prove to be any more significant than the eyeballs and televisions of previous years. There's also the fallout from the Doctor's faked death, which is a) beefed up into full-blown erasure from Dalekipedia, then b) strangely translated into Solomon not being able to find any information at all on the Doctor in the next episode.
All in all, 8.5 out of 10. It has flaws, but it's a better season opener than the last couple. Some trite stuff with Amy and Rory, but enough pleasing weird stuff to distract from it, and some very welcome good humour in the mix. Top moment: the Dalek, thwarted in its pursuit of Rory, that whines "Exterminaaate!" in a tone that clearly says "Come baaack!"
Asylum of the Daleks is a strong opener, from its set-piece opening effect down. Steven Moffat does some interesting new things with the Daleks and - take note, foul Evolution of the Daleks - has the decency to make them stick. The nanobot/drone/reanimated corpse business is a keen updating of the idea of the Robomen from The Dalek Invasion of Earth and the clone troopers from Resurrection, and could comfortably be reused in future Dalek stories. If we're really lucky we may even see more surreal shots of people superimposed over the Daleks they've become (what would those have been, leftover human converts from Revelation?) - it's just a shame little ballerina Dalek won't be making any repeat appearances since the Doctor blew her up. Tsk, tsk.
The basic plot makes the required amount of sense once we factor in the revelations about Oswin - presumably dumped back on the planet once the Daleks' initial efforts with her failed, and it's specifically her hacking into the Dalek Internet that presents enough of a threat for the Daleks to want to blow up the whole planet, rather than just her ship crashing through the one-way barrier. The only big flaw I can see with the story is that the Daleks apparently have the means to infiltrate contemporary Earth with undetectable human-like agents, and they haven't attempted to invade. Perhaps now that they've forgotten about the Doctor they'll have a go - it could even justify a Dalek season finale next spring.
There's also a secondary plot here involving Amy and Rory's relationship, a subject I had hoped had taken its final beating last year. Here we learn that Amy can't have the children she believes Rory wants, and has decided that it's better to divorce him without explanation than to discuss it with him and, y'know, maybe settle on such alternatives as adoption, some form of surrogacy, just not having kids, or getting a cat. The message I'm taking from this is that Amy defines her self-worth in terms of her ability to bear children, which is just tragically Victorian-values-normative. This aspect of the episode takes on added piquancy when we get to the following episode's gender politics banter between Riddell and Nefertiti, and the clearly villainous Solomon treating women as his property, all of which looks temptingly like an in-series critique of Moffat's handling of female characters.
Early signs of what could become season themes: the Doctor saying "That's new!"; casual mentions of having performed in classical music recordings; lightbulbs. Chances are these won't prove to be any more significant than the eyeballs and televisions of previous years. There's also the fallout from the Doctor's faked death, which is a) beefed up into full-blown erasure from Dalekipedia, then b) strangely translated into Solomon not being able to find any information at all on the Doctor in the next episode.
All in all, 8.5 out of 10. It has flaws, but it's a better season opener than the last couple. Some trite stuff with Amy and Rory, but enough pleasing weird stuff to distract from it, and some very welcome good humour in the mix. Top moment: the Dalek, thwarted in its pursuit of Rory, that whines "Exterminaaate!" in a tone that clearly says "Come baaack!"
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Closing the Wedding of the Widow and the Wardrobe
OK, let's get on with this, I've got two episodes of DW and a Christmas special to write up as well as several months' books. Readers should not take the three-month delay in writing up these episodes as any sort of reflection on my current feelings towards New Who. Well, maybe they should, but let's not get bogged down in that now.
Closing Time
Lightweight but entertaining. Gareth Roberts gets to have his gently mocking self-aware cake and eat it: Craig blows up the Cybermen with love (the only officially endorsed method for defeating the New Cybermen), then points this out in exactly those terms, at which the Doctor claims he's being ridiculous before finally conceding that, fine, whatever, he did indeed blow up the Cybermen with love. And he's being stared down by Lynda Baron as he says it, which adds to the general comedy value.
Having the Doctor working in a superstore toy department is only a diminishing-returns follow-up to having the Doctor working in a call centre (The Lodger). It's tempting to claim that the entire episode is the diminished return of The Lodger, but eh, it's got a charm of its own and (just) enough fresh material to see it through. 7 out of 10, perhaps.
Note the latest awful twist in the Ballad of the Ponds: their daughter was kidnapped by evil cultists, but it's all right because the Doctor gave them a nice house and a sports car, and Amy went on to have her own range of cosmetics. And I have to wonder, is "the smell of rain on dry earth" really going to be a best-selling perfume?
The Complete Final Apocalyptic End of the Entire Universe with Stuff Blowing Up and That
No, wait a minute, that was last year's finale title.
The Wedding of River Song
40 minutes of busking before we finally get to the cop-out for the season arc. I mean, some of it's quite nice busking, and I guess it's a (small) step above the 2008 finale, but nonetheless. We don't know any more than we did before about the Silence's motives, and we still know nothing whatsoever about Blackhat McEyepatch's interest - will we ever? No time for that, we were far too busy playing electric chess with a Viking and trolling about with Winston Churchill and laying out doomy foreshadowing for next year's bloody arc with Mr Blue Severed Head to worry about a trifling thing like the story.
The cop-out was pretty much as telegraphed in Series 6 Part One, with only the small tweak that Steven Moffat walked away from the obvious set-up with the Flesh and replaced it with an equivalent obvious set-up not revealed until the start of Series 6 Part Two - the only way he could possibly salvage any claim to have kept us guessing. River Song monologuing at the Doctor about how he's pissed off the entire Universe in A Good Man Goes to War is balanced here with an opposite but equally trite scene of River Song monologuing at the Doctor about how the entire Universe loves him and wants to have his puppies. Basically, some nice visual moments, but the episode in total doesn't warrant much above a 4 out of 10.
Series 6, Aftermath
And so the Doctor fakes his death, which opens up fresh possibilities for the show. It could be a new age of whimsical weekly adventure, but with the new twist of the shadow of the Doctor's legend hanging over him. Or it could be just like 2011, but with the Doctor being all coy about his name and everybody else pretending they've never heard of him.
I have two predictions for the next series. Number one is that the in-series grapevine will continue to make its annoying presence felt. I'm referring to the unknown means by which people all across time and space in recent series have known all about the Doctor and that year's series arc and god knows what else that they shouldn't rightfully have known about at all. Expect one-off bit-part characters all through the next series to say things like "But I thought you were dead?"
Number two is that the Question That Must Never Be Answered - Doctor Who? - will be answered by the Doctor springing onto the scene and saying "Doctor Me!" Although I'm less certain about that one than about the first prediction.
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
Erk. I'm looking for a place to start on this, but there isn't much for me to latch on to. Bill Bailey, why not. Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir are thrown in for about two minutes of comedy cameo, and yet they serve two key plot functions: they explain the threat that's led the living forest to grow a magic dimension-jumping puffball escape pod or whatever it is, and their walking machine gets Madge from A to B. The only reason function #2 needs to happen is because they've delayed Madge with function #1, and given that they're about to bombard the forest with acid it's not clear why they're hanging about to fulfil function #1 in the first place. Apparently they can teleport from (and presumably to) the forest, but can't take their walking machine with them and thus have to abandon an expensive bit of machinery when the acid bombardment starts, which is convenient for Madge but not readily explicable.
The forest's escape pod thing needs a human pilot - why? Why would the forest trust its survival to something that it can't pilot for itself? I'm also not clear on why the forest suddenly doesn't need the escape pod once it somehow enters the time vortex and vanishes from the episode.
Well, as we know, it's all just a bit of disposable wafer-thin side material to facilitate the real story, or at least the fuzzy, sentimental, vaguely associational story-like thing that fills this hour of telly like narrative candy floss. (Which, as New Who's producers keep telling us, is what drunken bloaters want on Christmas Day when they're semi-comatose and in no fit condition to follow a story anyway, and I'm honestly not sure what to think of that. I can only point to The Christmas Invasion and go "But... but...") The Doctor does something brave on some spaceship or other and falls out of the sky, Madge doesn't tell her kids the bad news about their father, the kids lark about in the house the Doctor has kitted out with magic model planes and dancing chairs and so on, and Reg flies his Lancaster bomber through the gigantic holes in the story (echoes of Planet of the Dead's London bus, there) and lives after all. And spends the holiday season in the country with his family while his flight engineer, navigator, wireless operator, bomb aimer and rear gunner bleed to death in the plane and his superior officers prepare to court martial him for desertion. Something like that, anyway. Happy Bastard Christmas.
Of all the fluffy, passive-viewing Christmas specials, this is the least coherent yet by quite a margin. I guess the fluff is preferable to the nastier undercurrents of 2010's A Christmas Carol, but at least that one had its good points and a few stand-out moments as well. There's nothing really good that I can point to here. It's incoherent and mediocre. I'm leaning towards a 4 out of 10. I'm tempted to rate it lower, but then I'd have to go back through the previous year of DW and re-rate all of the genuinely bad episodes even lower, and that's more effort than I'm willing to spare.
Closing Time
Lightweight but entertaining. Gareth Roberts gets to have his gently mocking self-aware cake and eat it: Craig blows up the Cybermen with love (the only officially endorsed method for defeating the New Cybermen), then points this out in exactly those terms, at which the Doctor claims he's being ridiculous before finally conceding that, fine, whatever, he did indeed blow up the Cybermen with love. And he's being stared down by Lynda Baron as he says it, which adds to the general comedy value.
Having the Doctor working in a superstore toy department is only a diminishing-returns follow-up to having the Doctor working in a call centre (The Lodger). It's tempting to claim that the entire episode is the diminished return of The Lodger, but eh, it's got a charm of its own and (just) enough fresh material to see it through. 7 out of 10, perhaps.
Note the latest awful twist in the Ballad of the Ponds: their daughter was kidnapped by evil cultists, but it's all right because the Doctor gave them a nice house and a sports car, and Amy went on to have her own range of cosmetics. And I have to wonder, is "the smell of rain on dry earth" really going to be a best-selling perfume?
The Complete Final Apocalyptic End of the Entire Universe with Stuff Blowing Up and That
No, wait a minute, that was last year's finale title.
The Wedding of River Song
40 minutes of busking before we finally get to the cop-out for the season arc. I mean, some of it's quite nice busking, and I guess it's a (small) step above the 2008 finale, but nonetheless. We don't know any more than we did before about the Silence's motives, and we still know nothing whatsoever about Blackhat McEyepatch's interest - will we ever? No time for that, we were far too busy playing electric chess with a Viking and trolling about with Winston Churchill and laying out doomy foreshadowing for next year's bloody arc with Mr Blue Severed Head to worry about a trifling thing like the story.
The cop-out was pretty much as telegraphed in Series 6 Part One, with only the small tweak that Steven Moffat walked away from the obvious set-up with the Flesh and replaced it with an equivalent obvious set-up not revealed until the start of Series 6 Part Two - the only way he could possibly salvage any claim to have kept us guessing. River Song monologuing at the Doctor about how he's pissed off the entire Universe in A Good Man Goes to War is balanced here with an opposite but equally trite scene of River Song monologuing at the Doctor about how the entire Universe loves him and wants to have his puppies. Basically, some nice visual moments, but the episode in total doesn't warrant much above a 4 out of 10.
Series 6, Aftermath
And so the Doctor fakes his death, which opens up fresh possibilities for the show. It could be a new age of whimsical weekly adventure, but with the new twist of the shadow of the Doctor's legend hanging over him. Or it could be just like 2011, but with the Doctor being all coy about his name and everybody else pretending they've never heard of him.
I have two predictions for the next series. Number one is that the in-series grapevine will continue to make its annoying presence felt. I'm referring to the unknown means by which people all across time and space in recent series have known all about the Doctor and that year's series arc and god knows what else that they shouldn't rightfully have known about at all. Expect one-off bit-part characters all through the next series to say things like "But I thought you were dead?"
Number two is that the Question That Must Never Be Answered - Doctor Who? - will be answered by the Doctor springing onto the scene and saying "Doctor Me!" Although I'm less certain about that one than about the first prediction.
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
Erk. I'm looking for a place to start on this, but there isn't much for me to latch on to. Bill Bailey, why not. Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir are thrown in for about two minutes of comedy cameo, and yet they serve two key plot functions: they explain the threat that's led the living forest to grow a magic dimension-jumping puffball escape pod or whatever it is, and their walking machine gets Madge from A to B. The only reason function #2 needs to happen is because they've delayed Madge with function #1, and given that they're about to bombard the forest with acid it's not clear why they're hanging about to fulfil function #1 in the first place. Apparently they can teleport from (and presumably to) the forest, but can't take their walking machine with them and thus have to abandon an expensive bit of machinery when the acid bombardment starts, which is convenient for Madge but not readily explicable.
The forest's escape pod thing needs a human pilot - why? Why would the forest trust its survival to something that it can't pilot for itself? I'm also not clear on why the forest suddenly doesn't need the escape pod once it somehow enters the time vortex and vanishes from the episode.
Well, as we know, it's all just a bit of disposable wafer-thin side material to facilitate the real story, or at least the fuzzy, sentimental, vaguely associational story-like thing that fills this hour of telly like narrative candy floss. (Which, as New Who's producers keep telling us, is what drunken bloaters want on Christmas Day when they're semi-comatose and in no fit condition to follow a story anyway, and I'm honestly not sure what to think of that. I can only point to The Christmas Invasion and go "But... but...") The Doctor does something brave on some spaceship or other and falls out of the sky, Madge doesn't tell her kids the bad news about their father, the kids lark about in the house the Doctor has kitted out with magic model planes and dancing chairs and so on, and Reg flies his Lancaster bomber through the gigantic holes in the story (echoes of Planet of the Dead's London bus, there) and lives after all. And spends the holiday season in the country with his family while his flight engineer, navigator, wireless operator, bomb aimer and rear gunner bleed to death in the plane and his superior officers prepare to court martial him for desertion. Something like that, anyway. Happy Bastard Christmas.
Of all the fluffy, passive-viewing Christmas specials, this is the least coherent yet by quite a margin. I guess the fluff is preferable to the nastier undercurrents of 2010's A Christmas Carol, but at least that one had its good points and a few stand-out moments as well. There's nothing really good that I can point to here. It's incoherent and mediocre. I'm leaning towards a 4 out of 10. I'm tempted to rate it lower, but then I'd have to go back through the previous year of DW and re-rate all of the genuinely bad episodes even lower, and that's more effort than I'm willing to spare.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Just Me and the Minibar
Finally! I've found a title that doesn't involve Hotel California!
That's what The God Complex is, though, isn't it? DW's answer to Hotel California. Other thoughts on the episode follow.
Wouldya look at that - just four episodes ago (in the comments) I was saying we needed a scene of the Doctor psychologically breaking his companion (cf The Curse of Fenric) to round out this year's collection of Doctor Who's Greatest Unethical Hits, and pow! here's an episode that pays tribute to that exact scene in Fenric! I'm claiming extra Uncanny Points for this.
This scene's important, though, inasmuch as this episode forms a kind of diptych with The Girl Who Waited. There, too, Amy came to understand that she couldn't rely on the Doctor, but she learned that by being trapped on her own for forty years, and that version of Amy doesn't exist any more. It was more of a lesson for Rory. Now Amy - the "real" one, if you like - has to learn it for herself.
There's a subtle link back to The Horns of Nimon in the title - just as the energy-eating Nimon lived in a Power Complex ("That fits!"), so the faith-eating Minotaur-like creature here lives in his God Complex. The way is open for fannish consideration of the subtextual parallels between the two stories. But overtly relating him to the Nimon - like overtly relating the Ood to the Sensorites - is just a bit of gratuitous wank that forces the point.
At the very end, we're given a horrifying new twist on the Pond family situation: "Rory and Amy's daughter has been kidnapped by evil cultists, but it's all right because the Doctor gave them a nice house and a sports car." I don't think there's much I can add to that, or should need to.
Thing is, that is easily one of the best companion departure scenes ever. It's stone cold brilliant - apart from the unfortunate idea of the Doctor buying off the bereaved parents, I mean. My only worry is that it won't stick and Amy and Rory will be Rosed back into the series (again and again, possibly) with complete disregard for the dramatic worth of this farewell scene. News this week: Karen Gillan tells reporters she thinks Amy should be killed off. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, eh?
I liked this episode a lot, just not quite as much as I'd expected to, given the extreme surreal potential of the trailer images. Perhaps a borderline 8/9 out of 10. The surreal business was certainly there, the acting was all good, the directing was amazing and the Minotaur was indeed beautiful. Just something slightly off somewhere in the execution of the story, and so it's pipped to the post by The Girl Who Waited. We're on the comedown now.
That's what The God Complex is, though, isn't it? DW's answer to Hotel California. Other thoughts on the episode follow.
Wouldya look at that - just four episodes ago (in the comments) I was saying we needed a scene of the Doctor psychologically breaking his companion (cf The Curse of Fenric) to round out this year's collection of Doctor Who's Greatest Unethical Hits, and pow! here's an episode that pays tribute to that exact scene in Fenric! I'm claiming extra Uncanny Points for this.
This scene's important, though, inasmuch as this episode forms a kind of diptych with The Girl Who Waited. There, too, Amy came to understand that she couldn't rely on the Doctor, but she learned that by being trapped on her own for forty years, and that version of Amy doesn't exist any more. It was more of a lesson for Rory. Now Amy - the "real" one, if you like - has to learn it for herself.
There's a subtle link back to The Horns of Nimon in the title - just as the energy-eating Nimon lived in a Power Complex ("That fits!"), so the faith-eating Minotaur-like creature here lives in his God Complex. The way is open for fannish consideration of the subtextual parallels between the two stories. But overtly relating him to the Nimon - like overtly relating the Ood to the Sensorites - is just a bit of gratuitous wank that forces the point.
At the very end, we're given a horrifying new twist on the Pond family situation: "Rory and Amy's daughter has been kidnapped by evil cultists, but it's all right because the Doctor gave them a nice house and a sports car." I don't think there's much I can add to that, or should need to.
Thing is, that is easily one of the best companion departure scenes ever. It's stone cold brilliant - apart from the unfortunate idea of the Doctor buying off the bereaved parents, I mean. My only worry is that it won't stick and Amy and Rory will be Rosed back into the series (again and again, possibly) with complete disregard for the dramatic worth of this farewell scene. News this week: Karen Gillan tells reporters she thinks Amy should be killed off. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, eh?
I liked this episode a lot, just not quite as much as I'd expected to, given the extreme surreal potential of the trailer images. Perhaps a borderline 8/9 out of 10. The surreal business was certainly there, the acting was all good, the directing was amazing and the Minotaur was indeed beautiful. Just something slightly off somewhere in the execution of the story, and so it's pipped to the post by The Girl Who Waited. We're on the comedown now.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Wait Watchers
Thanks, IT helpdesk! By unexpectedly junking my LAN account and taking a week to create a new one for me, you've afforded me some time at home to catch up on my blogging! And so, after the mayhem and shenannigans of the last few weeks, I can at last return my attention to The Blog Readers Who Waited.
As with last year's DW, my favourite episodes of the run seem to be clustered in the final third. The Girl Who Waited is another step up after Night Terrors' improvement on Let's Kill Hitler - I'd say it's a 9 out of 10, a genuine high mark this time that isn't subject to allowances for sheer bloody relief. In hindsight, it's my favourite of the 2011 series (so no, there won't be any 10s this time round). The story is simple at heart, but presented in a way that takes full advantage of DW's format and that I don't think any TV series but DW could do justice to. The premise of the Two Streams Facility is clearly laid out in visuals and dialogue that complement each other nicely. A story calling for a collection of clinical white and generic industrial sets probably didn't do the budget any harm, and in fact the on-screen realisation is striking in a minimalist kind of way. Ditto the medical robots. Effectively minimalist, that'd be one way of summing up this episode. It's a very confident, very competent bit of Who.
Readers may wonder how I plan to finesse this into my opinion of the first half of the 2011 series, given the large moral dilemma at the heart of this story. It's not so difficult. I see a definite difference between the dilemma here - which is deliberately set up, examined and played on - and the moral quirks of the earlier episodes, which just look like fumbled bits of unintended subtext. With the benefit of having seen the whole of the run, I now know that this isn't some kind of risky recurring motif built into the series that gets addressed in episode 13, but merely something that happens in various episodes to varying degrees of competency depending on the degree of author involvement. So here a large part of the Doctor's lifestyle and modus operandi are called into question, but because it's done knowingly, it's done with skill and in a way that doesn't completely drop the bottom out of the narrative. It's pretty much the polar opposite of the end of Day of the Moon.
The flipside of this is that writer Tom MacRae spares (some of) the Doctor's blushes by pushing the decision onto Rory, and then by having 60-year-old Amy take responsibility for it from him anyway. This is kind of a cop-out, and although it doesn't greatly diminish the dramatic power of the story, it does take the edge off it a bit. (Given my reaction to earlier episodes, I'm not likely to complain about it too much in this instance.)
I have two nits to pick - not exactly flaws or even bum notes, just oddities really. Number one is that 60-year-old Amy doesn't look a hell of a lot different from 20-year-old Amy, just a bit more puffy about the face. They might at least have done something with the hair, y'know? Number two is the strangely abrupt ending. The Lovely Jo considers this a good point about the episode, and fair enough, but I did wonder whether there was a second half to that scene that ended up on the cutting room floor.
So there it is, the episode of 2011 Who that I'm most likely to go out of my way to rewatch. Yet more good material for Arthur Darvill, the sleeper star of Moffat Who; another fine performance from Matt Smith, albeit there isn't much of him in this one; even (startlingly, and far too late) some solid character material for Karen Gillan to work with. Did someone mention the Melody Pond arc? Oh, wait, no they didn't, and thank Bod for that. Hurrahs all round.
As with last year's DW, my favourite episodes of the run seem to be clustered in the final third. The Girl Who Waited is another step up after Night Terrors' improvement on Let's Kill Hitler - I'd say it's a 9 out of 10, a genuine high mark this time that isn't subject to allowances for sheer bloody relief. In hindsight, it's my favourite of the 2011 series (so no, there won't be any 10s this time round). The story is simple at heart, but presented in a way that takes full advantage of DW's format and that I don't think any TV series but DW could do justice to. The premise of the Two Streams Facility is clearly laid out in visuals and dialogue that complement each other nicely. A story calling for a collection of clinical white and generic industrial sets probably didn't do the budget any harm, and in fact the on-screen realisation is striking in a minimalist kind of way. Ditto the medical robots. Effectively minimalist, that'd be one way of summing up this episode. It's a very confident, very competent bit of Who.
Readers may wonder how I plan to finesse this into my opinion of the first half of the 2011 series, given the large moral dilemma at the heart of this story. It's not so difficult. I see a definite difference between the dilemma here - which is deliberately set up, examined and played on - and the moral quirks of the earlier episodes, which just look like fumbled bits of unintended subtext. With the benefit of having seen the whole of the run, I now know that this isn't some kind of risky recurring motif built into the series that gets addressed in episode 13, but merely something that happens in various episodes to varying degrees of competency depending on the degree of author involvement. So here a large part of the Doctor's lifestyle and modus operandi are called into question, but because it's done knowingly, it's done with skill and in a way that doesn't completely drop the bottom out of the narrative. It's pretty much the polar opposite of the end of Day of the Moon.
The flipside of this is that writer Tom MacRae spares (some of) the Doctor's blushes by pushing the decision onto Rory, and then by having 60-year-old Amy take responsibility for it from him anyway. This is kind of a cop-out, and although it doesn't greatly diminish the dramatic power of the story, it does take the edge off it a bit. (Given my reaction to earlier episodes, I'm not likely to complain about it too much in this instance.)
I have two nits to pick - not exactly flaws or even bum notes, just oddities really. Number one is that 60-year-old Amy doesn't look a hell of a lot different from 20-year-old Amy, just a bit more puffy about the face. They might at least have done something with the hair, y'know? Number two is the strangely abrupt ending. The Lovely Jo considers this a good point about the episode, and fair enough, but I did wonder whether there was a second half to that scene that ended up on the cutting room floor.
So there it is, the episode of 2011 Who that I'm most likely to go out of my way to rewatch. Yet more good material for Arthur Darvill, the sleeper star of Moffat Who; another fine performance from Matt Smith, albeit there isn't much of him in this one; even (startlingly, and far too late) some solid character material for Karen Gillan to work with. Did someone mention the Melody Pond arc? Oh, wait, no they didn't, and thank Bod for that. Hurrahs all round.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Young Man, There's No Need To Feel Down
A strange and sensitive boy who's scared about what he's keeping in the closet seeks acceptance from his father. No, I can't see any kind of subtext in this episode at all...
To say that Night Terrors is an improvement on Let's Kill Hitler would be a gross understatement. Night Terrors is pretty comfortably the best episode of DW so far this year.
(Pause on that thought. We're nine episodes into the season, and the best episode so far is the Mark Gatiss one. Erk.)
The only one that might give it a run for its money is The Doctor's Wife, but I'd suggest that Gaiman's episode is a story about DW as much as an actual DW story, possibly more so. Whereas this is unquestionably DW, original flavour. That is, after all, what you get when you commission a DW script from Mark Gatiss - a conventional, some might say workmanlike, but undeniably Who-scented adventure story. If New Who were a pub food menu, Gatiss' writing would be the beef and ale pie, and it'd be described as "hearty fare". Cast into sharp relief by the rest of the season to this point, that's unusually welcome.
It helps that this is also Gatiss' best DW story to date. It's his first not to be set in a queasily nostalgic theme park version of Britain's recent past. There's no sign of the reactionary politics that laid a steaming subtext on The Unquiet Dead and neutered Victory of the Daleks. This leaves us free to enjoy the stuff that Gatiss genuinely excels at: witty showcase scenes for the Doctor plus guest actor, character gotchas that are simply conceived and easily realised in an eye-catching way, and of course four-square spooky Who action.
The directing deserves a mention too - I actually noticed the directing this week! It was better than average! The materialising TARDIS' image caught in a puddle and the scene of George's bedroom being sucked into his cupboard were notable moments, I thought. Nice guest turns from the kid playing George and the guy playing his dad. In fact, I wouldn't say anything about this episode was really wrong - again, this is refreshing even as we quietly acknowledge that it really ought to be the baseline for DW. Some more information about the dolls might have been helpful - were they all just bystanders who got sucked into the representation of George's fear, and if so what started them turning into dolls? and if not, where did the first dolls come from? - but this is a great gaping hole in the plot that I somehow find I can forgive. This is Mark Gatiss' hour of glory, bless 'im.
Random observations:
A couple of Moffat-era motifs make their presence felt once more. The giant glass eye in the doll's house, incongruous as it is, harks back to last year's recurring business with eyes. The other revenant device is the use of crap nursery rhyme as a substitute for story-telling, although in this case it's specifically substituting for the equally crap doomy foreshadowing, so I'm less bothered by it than I could have been.
That surely wasn't the estate where they filmed the video for Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy"? (In which a snarling face inside a TV set steals kids' faces and threatens to eat your sooouuuul... sound strangely like The Idiot's Lantern?) Be a bit of a laugh if it was.
People on the Who forums have criticised the fact that this story contains absolutely no follow-on from Let's Kill Hitler in terms of Amy's and Rory's character - as if that weren't a f*cking blessing. I'll actually be able to watch and enjoy this story again in years to come, hurrah. By now it's a given that week-on-week character development in DW is non-existent, so we might at least cherish the episodes that don't stomp all over the characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a niner, but I'd certainly give it a high 8 out of 10.
To say that Night Terrors is an improvement on Let's Kill Hitler would be a gross understatement. Night Terrors is pretty comfortably the best episode of DW so far this year.
(Pause on that thought. We're nine episodes into the season, and the best episode so far is the Mark Gatiss one. Erk.)
The only one that might give it a run for its money is The Doctor's Wife, but I'd suggest that Gaiman's episode is a story about DW as much as an actual DW story, possibly more so. Whereas this is unquestionably DW, original flavour. That is, after all, what you get when you commission a DW script from Mark Gatiss - a conventional, some might say workmanlike, but undeniably Who-scented adventure story. If New Who were a pub food menu, Gatiss' writing would be the beef and ale pie, and it'd be described as "hearty fare". Cast into sharp relief by the rest of the season to this point, that's unusually welcome.
It helps that this is also Gatiss' best DW story to date. It's his first not to be set in a queasily nostalgic theme park version of Britain's recent past. There's no sign of the reactionary politics that laid a steaming subtext on The Unquiet Dead and neutered Victory of the Daleks. This leaves us free to enjoy the stuff that Gatiss genuinely excels at: witty showcase scenes for the Doctor plus guest actor, character gotchas that are simply conceived and easily realised in an eye-catching way, and of course four-square spooky Who action.
The directing deserves a mention too - I actually noticed the directing this week! It was better than average! The materialising TARDIS' image caught in a puddle and the scene of George's bedroom being sucked into his cupboard were notable moments, I thought. Nice guest turns from the kid playing George and the guy playing his dad. In fact, I wouldn't say anything about this episode was really wrong - again, this is refreshing even as we quietly acknowledge that it really ought to be the baseline for DW. Some more information about the dolls might have been helpful - were they all just bystanders who got sucked into the representation of George's fear, and if so what started them turning into dolls? and if not, where did the first dolls come from? - but this is a great gaping hole in the plot that I somehow find I can forgive. This is Mark Gatiss' hour of glory, bless 'im.
Random observations:
A couple of Moffat-era motifs make their presence felt once more. The giant glass eye in the doll's house, incongruous as it is, harks back to last year's recurring business with eyes. The other revenant device is the use of crap nursery rhyme as a substitute for story-telling, although in this case it's specifically substituting for the equally crap doomy foreshadowing, so I'm less bothered by it than I could have been.
That surely wasn't the estate where they filmed the video for Aphex Twin's "Come To Daddy"? (In which a snarling face inside a TV set steals kids' faces and threatens to eat your sooouuuul... sound strangely like The Idiot's Lantern?) Be a bit of a laugh if it was.
People on the Who forums have criticised the fact that this story contains absolutely no follow-on from Let's Kill Hitler in terms of Amy's and Rory's character - as if that weren't a f*cking blessing. I'll actually be able to watch and enjoy this story again in years to come, hurrah. By now it's a given that week-on-week character development in DW is non-existent, so we might at least cherish the episodes that don't stomp all over the characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a niner, but I'd certainly give it a high 8 out of 10.
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