Looking back at 2014

It's certainly been an eventful year. In the real world we've had the centenary of the beginning of the First World War and the turbulence of the Scottish Referendum. We've also had the Ebola outbreak, Russia's attack on Ukraine, ISIS and the media's bizarre infatuation with UKIP which have made this year miserable for a great many people.

Personally I'm in a better place than I was at the end of last year. Things never stay the same though. So It'll be interesting to see where things go next year.

In pop culture terms there have been things I liked. The new Doctor Who is good. Kate Bush's return to music was also a highlight. Orphan Black has survived another year, and amazingly managed to get a third series. The rest of music has been a disappointment this year though.

It's difficult to tell what 2015 will be like. This time next year there'll have been a general election, the return of Star Wars and the third series of Orphan Black.

Doctor Who: Last Christmas

It's incredible to think that Last Christmas is the tenth Doctor Who Christmas special. The Tenth! I remember back in 2005 when we thought it was lucky to be getting only one. Not many shows get that luxury, and it's not guaranteed to continue in the future. Perhaps its because he's used to it that Steven Moffat has written a story that has quite a different tone from previous specials.Having drawn inspiration from the likes of Charles Dickens and C.S Lewis for previous specials, this year, Steven has borrowed from a whole variety of sources. We start off with a scientific arctic base form The Thing under siege from monsters that look like the facehuggers from Alien. The Doctor and Clara arrive and it turns out that everyone is trapped in a dream, like in Inception. It's true to the spirit of original series writer Robert Holmes. Unlike the former, Steven has actually written a justification in that the crew have imagined this scenario based on the films.

Fortunately, the Doctor, Clara and the base crew have assistance in the dream in the form of  Santa Claus. Before watching this story I was a bit unsure about the idea of Santa Claus appearing in Doctor Who. The character is often associated with a warm cosiness that I'm not a big fan of in fiction. Fortunately there was a good justification for him being there, in the form of a helpful dream. Some members of the audience have been moaning that Santa referring to himself as a dream will make the character seem less real to children. I would say those people need a reality check. Those kids are going to find out the harsh truth soon enough, and no one above the age of 6 should really be believing in Santa. Nick Frost did pretty good job in the role and I enjoyed his 'tough guy' persona as an alternative to the traditional kindly old man. The elves were also pretty funny too.

The introspective nature of dreams allowed the Doctor and Clara to address the lies that they told each other at the end of Series 8. It was especially nice to have Danny Pink return briefly. Allowing Clara to say goodbye to Danny and having the Doctor admit he was wrong means they can both start
the next series free of baggage. Peter Capaldi's Doctor was less abrasive this time around. He is almost apologetic when Clara berates him for insulting Danny Pink. His glee at piloting Santa's sleigh is another sign that he is a good man deep down.

The base crew were fairly uninteresting in themselves. Shona was funny when she was dancing to Slade but I don't particularly care whether or not I ever see her in the show again. It was nice to see Michael Troughton, son of Patrick, in the role of the Professor, although it has to be said that it wasn't much of a character to work with. The other crewmembers, Bellows, didn't do very much at all. These characters provided exposition and functioned as victims for the Doctor to save, but weren't that interesting in and of themselves. The monsters of the show, the Dream Crabs, were effective, in spite of having a naff name. The Sleepers were more creepy. The twist that they were actually the sleeping crew themselves as a good one.

The very best scene in this story occur towards its end with the Doctor rescuing the older Clara, It was a nice mirroring of Clara comforting the ageing Eleventh Doctor in The Time of the Doctor, especially when they both try and pull the cracker and the Doctor has to help the older Clara.
There were rumours that this would be Clara's last appearance and in a way it was slightly disappointing that this wasn't Clara's proper ending. At the same time, I like it when companions stick around for the long run. Clara's dynamic with the Twelfth Doctor has been more interesting than with the Eleventh and I want her to stay around for a while, becoming the Sarah Jane Smith to Twelve's fourth Doctor.

To sum it all up I would say this was a fairly middling episode. Not quite up to the standards of The Christmas Invasion or The Snowmen, but not as dull as Voyage of the Damned or The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe.

7/10

Next: The Doctor and Clara will return in The Magician's Apprentice. More importantly, how will Missy return from the dead? Will the Doctor find any more clues about Gallifrey? And will the show be celebrating ten years since its return? Series 9 should be interesting, indeed.

Gotham: The Series so far...

The Batman prequel series has had its winter break. So what is this show like so far?

Let's start with the good things. Robin Lord Taylor is brilliant as the Penguin.Sean Pertwee makes a good interpretation of Alfred. David Masouz is a good, distant Bruce Wayne. He had to spend most of the series in Wayne Manor, but by the end he has started getting outside. A good Cat-Woman. Even though they insist on calling her 'Cat'. Harvey Bullock. Fish Mooney is fun to watch.

I like the interpretation of Gotham City. It is somewhere between the archaic look of the 1989 film, and the more modern Nolan films. The city here looks modern, but there's the anachronistic typewriter.

Sadly it's not all success. There are some areas where this show has not done so well. Jim Gordon well played, but a bit bland as a character. Barbara Kean is bland.

The problem with prequels. We know that Jim Gordon is going to fail to save Gotham. That's probably why the Penguin's story is more compelling. In the long run he'll become an important figure in Gotham's underworld, essentially winning where Gordon will not.

There's a few episodes left. So we'll see what happens.

Bond 24

Earlier today it was revealed that Bond 24 would be titled ‘Spectre’, a name which refers to the organisation that Sean Connery’s Bond fought against in the 60s.

I can’t say I’m particularly enthused about the title. The whole one word title beginning with ‘s’ is too similar to Skyfall. The return of the Spectre organisation doesn’t fill me with much excitement either. I can see that they might have been brought back because of the extra publicity, and because it fits in with the last film’s reinvention of Moneypenny and Q, but Daniel Craig’s Bond already dealt with as secret organisation called Quantum. What will this organisation do that’s really any different?

 It’s not entirely clear yet whether Blofeld will appear or not, although it would seem odd to bring back the organisation and not the man behind it. Some people are saying that Christopher Waltz' character, 'Oberhauser', will actually be Blofeld. If this is the case then it'll be interesting to see if they keep the 60s iconography that’s been parodied for years. The Max Von Sydow version in Never Say Never Again wasn’t bald, but he kept the white cat at least

If they make him completely different then he might as well be a different character. There have been plenty of good, memorable Bond villains since the 60s, from Scaramanga to Raoul Da Silva, so what difference will having the name ‘Blofeld’ have?

On the bright side, Ralph Fiennes will be returning to play M, as will Naomie Harris as Moneypenny and Ben Wishaw as Q. It’ll be interesting to see what Malorie’s relationship with Bond will be like now that he is properly a superior. Hopefully Moneypenny will get some development and not stuck in the traditional secretary role. And at least Bond’s car is a new model. The Aston Martin DB10. Apparently it’s exclusive to James Bond. I’m not a car expert but it looks pretty nice.

The Daniel Craig Bond films have been the most consistently successful run since the Connery years. Even Quantum of Solace, which was wobbly in places, had good plot ideas in it. Here’s hoping that my reservations about this film are proved wrong, and that it will give Craig another winning outing.

The New Star Wars Trailer

When I was growing up, Star Wars was in the background with the Hasbro toy releases and occasional TV repeats or VHS re-releases. Then the media started hyping the release of the Special Editions in 1997. Shortly after that I saw the Special Edition of A New Hope in the cinema and became a fan. Some fans tend to get annoyed at the changes made in the Special Editions, but these releases got a whole new generation, including myself, hooked on the franchise. It got quiet after that, but then the trailer for The Phantom Menace arrived, drawing lots of attention. Now, Star Wars is getting ready to make another comeback with a whole new film and we've finally got a trailer to see what it's like.

Anyway, enough of that. It's time to do the over analysis of the trailer that every fan and every website is probably doing right now.

It opens in a desert while a portentious voice informs us that there has been an awakening in the force. Then we see John Boyega in a storm trooper suit. But is he a good guy or a bad guy? The Stormtroopers are supposed to be clones. Either they've augmented their troops with ordinary citizens or he is actually a rebel disguising himself in the uniform. Could the awakening of the Force be to do with him, or is it simply a voice over? Is he an Imperial Officer who becomes a good guy?

We then cut to a funny looking droid. It's good that there will be some comic elements to the film. Jar Jar Binks may have been annoying but you still need some humour in the film, otherwise you end up stuck with the solemn and dull Jedi of the prequels.

Then we see more Storm Troopers. Presumably the Empire has survived after the fall of Palpatine, which makes more sense.  But who is in charge of the Empire now?

The woman in the picture above rides off into the desert on an unusual looking speeder. She is probably helping the rebels.

X-Wing fighters skim across the surface of some water, piloted by the guy pictured above.

Then we see a Sith clambers through the snow and activates his lightsabre. A voice over says 'The dark side and the light'. Doesn't really mean anything but sounds effective.

Then the classic theme starts and the the Millenium Falcon flies across the desert, shooting at Tie-Fighters with that memorable blaster sound.

There's not much to analyse here. But it's exciting to type it out. To think that Star Wars is coming back. With the appearance of storm Troopers, Falcon and the Tie-Fighters, the trailer seems to have been catered for fans.

51 Years in the Tardis

A year has passed since the 50th anniversary special and Doctor Who is 51 years old today, This time last year  The Day of the Doctor, was simulcast to several countries across the globe, winning great acclaim.  So how has the show been faring in the wake of its anniversary celebrations? On this day in 1974, audiences would have already seen Jon Pertwee regenerate and Tom Baker's debut was only a month away. In 1984, the fresh new start promised at the end of The Five Doctors was somewhat diminished by the premiere of Warriors of the Deep. By this time, in November, The Twin Dilemma had aired, and fans were probably hoping that the next series was going to be much better (though at least the comic strips with Frobisher were decent) In 2004 there was a mixture of anticipation and fear as the New series with Christopher Eccleston was being filmed. So what has changed between 2013 and 2014?

Two days after the 50th anniversary, Doctor Who Legacy launched. It is probably the best videogame to come out for Doctor Who.

The first piece of Doctor Who to air after the anniversary was, of course, Matt Smith’s departure story, The Time of the Doctor. It was a story with a good idea behind it but not enough time to get it across and a general feeling that Moffat was having to cram everything in to tie everything up. It was a slightly disappointing end to the otherwise excellent 50th anniversary year, although it did at least leave us with the promise of a new and exciting Doctor in Peter Capaldi.

                                     

There was never any real question that Peter Capaldi would fit the role of the Doctor like a glove, but we had to put up with press and some internet users making a big deal about how old he was. Some think he's an improvement over Matt Smith, who gets criticized with the same repetitive complains that he was "wacky" and "zany". Words which fail to do Matt's performance justice. Personally, I loved Matt Smith's Doctor and now I'm love Peter Capaldi as well. That’s two Doctors I’ve liked in a row. Of course that probably means I'll hate the next one.

                                                        
Another older incarnation of the Doctor got a bit of promotional boost this year as well. The War Doctor, played by John Hurt, was one of the more controversial aspects of the 50th anniversary special. This year saw the character getting two new outings. One in the official BBC book Engines of War written by George Mann, as well as the charity anthology Seasons of War. Whether you like this interim Doctor or not, the fact that it led to  Jim Mortimore and Kate Orman writing for Doctor Who meant that it was worth it.

In the wider world we had the World Tour as Steven Moffat and his team continued to publicize Doctor Who overseas. Heading through London, South Korea, Sydney, New York, Mexico City and Rio De Janeiro, this was one of the more interesting stunts of the year. There were a couple of hilarious results of this, such as the picture seen above, which was presented to Peter and Jenna in South Korea. Still, for all its cheesiness, it’s good that fans in other countries can feel like they matter. I used to be a big fan of Japanese video games and it was always annoying that they'd be released in Europe last. Giving these fans an opportunity to meet their heroes means that they can feel included and overall it proves that the production team aren’t getting complacent about sticking with the same old audience.

The fictional world of Doctor Who has also had some pretty interesting developments. A year ago,the Time Lords could only regenerate into the same gender. The Corsair may have been mentioned, but had never seen on screen. This year Moffat has added to his list of changes to the Doctor Who world with the revelation that the Master has regenerated into a woman. The first on screen proof that Time Lords can change gender when regenerating. This has oddly enough become one of my favourite moments in the latest series. Michelle Gomez was brilliant and she has said recently she will be coming back next series. That is definitely going to be something to look forward to.

The Doctor and the Master weren't the only old character to get a new body this year this year. Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart being reborn as a Cyberman is a development that I was personally not so keen on.  I felt his exit in The Wedding of River Song was perfect and this resurrection was unnecessary Still, it can’t be changed now, and the Brigadier had a similar death and rebirth plot in the New Adventures, so there is a precedent for it. Will we ever see the Cyber Brig again? It's possible. Maybe there'll be some sort of time paradox in which his head comes off and he becomes Handles? Time will tell.

Beyond that we’ve still got The Doctor Who exhibition is about to reopen Currently still undergoing refurbishment but is rumored to show the scene of the  Doctor saving Gallifrey from Day of the Doctor. I enjoyed the original exhibition, which I saw in Olympia, but, annoyingly I am too busy to attend this one at the moment. Other fans are likely to report back on this experience and hopefully it will be an enjoyable one.

Overall the shows' creators have not been idle since the 50th. There have been many changes in front of, and behind, the scenes. In an interview last year, Moffat said that he didn't want the 50th anniversary to feel like an epitaph. In this he has succeeded admirably. The show is continuing to change and expand its audience. Who knows what will change in Series 9?

Next year it will be the 10th anniversary of the show coming back so it’ll be interesting to see if Moff addresses that. Good things don’t last forever but the show is doing okay so far.

Doctor Who: Series 8 Overview

 

So, Peter Capaldi’s first series has been and gone. To be honest, I approached Series 8 with a mixture of anticipation and dread. While I was excited by that Peter Capaldi was going to be playing the Doctor, Series 7 had been fairly bland and I was worried that Steven Moffat had run out of ideas. Things looked positive at the start of the year, when Peter Capaldi got a decent costume, and the production seemed to be moving on with very little problems, but then the first five episodes leaked, making the build up to Deep Breath seem less exciting. Finally, the first episode arrived and I was relieved when not only did Series 8 turn out to be not bad, it's one of the best series we've had a in a while.

When Matt Smith became the Doctor we had no idea what he would bring to the role whereas when Peter Capaldi was cast, we all knew he could be a good Doctor and all this series really did was to confirm those expectations. The trailers suggested that he would be darker Doctor, but it turned out that he’s not so much “dark” as pragmatic. He does what is necessary to save people, regardless of sentiment. Moments of emotion do get through, such as his genuine surprise that Clara is walking out on him in Kill the Moon and the moment he tells Clara that her betrayal would not end their friendship. There are moments where he’s as gawky as Matt Smith, but with less frills it feels different. He may have had a costume similar to Pertwee's, but he’s not copying that performance. His little victory dance in Flatline was hilarious, but it’s not the primary feature of the Doctor. In some ways he reminds me of the Timothy Dalton version of James Bond. A little less audience friendly, but nonetheless extremely compelling to watch.

The Doctor's not the only character to have had an overhaul this series. Now that she’s free from the impossible girl story, Clara has been given far more depth than she was in Series 7. We actually got to see her being a control freak rather than just having her tell us she is. It's also been good to see her in a proper workplace, with fellow teachers and students. It makes her feel like she's got a real life and job in a way that her role as an au pair didn't. The biggest problem with the impossible girl story was always that Clara could never react to it. This time we get to see her losing her temper at the Doctor's actions in Kill the Moon as well as her stunned response to the death of Danny in a car crash. This has allowed us to see lots of different facets to Jenna's character It’s up in the air at the moment whether Jenna is actually staying beyond the Christmas Special, but I hope she does.

By coincidence or design, Moffat’s episodes have often matched events happening in the real world. Matt Smith was playing football in the Lodger while World Cup 2010 was airing. Voting and elections were mentioned in the Beast Below before the General election. This particular series tackled the theme of soldiery, which was fitting for the anniversary year of the First world War. Moffat handled the issues tastefully, dealing with the good and bad involved in armed conflict through Danny Pink. Danny is a good man who helped to dig wells, but was also responsible for the death of a child civilian. The whole of the human race is converted into an army of Cybermen, but this army is turned to good purposes to protect the human race rather than to attack. 
 

The exploration of soldiery ties in with the fact that this series has dealt with darker themes than Doctor Who has for a while. We’ve had the idea of corpses being cremated alive, an ex-soldier meeting the child he killed and a man being shot with his arm falling off. After the "everybody lives" Matt Smith fairy tale years, this change of tone is more than welcome. We seem to be pushing into the same edgy territory that was there in the Hinchcliffe era and I love it. This has inevitably led to complaints by some viewers, but I've always felt that drama should push you emotionally. Even the central characters are more morally ambiguous. Clara lies to her boyfriend, Danny occasionally becomes a bit controlling and the Doctor wants everyone to love him. This change of tone might have come about simply to emphasise the difference between Doctors but I wonder if it’s partly to do with the different point that Moffat is in his life now. Steven Moffat always used to let his kids read the scripts but now that they are teenagers themselves. This might be silly psychoanalysis. Either way, it’s resulted in a brilliant series, so I’m not complaining.

The story arc of Missy and the Nethersphere wasn’t quite as well handled. It was great to finally have a female incarnation of the Master, and Michelle Gomez gave a brilliant performance. Nevertheless, her plan to give the Doctor an army didn’t really make sense, nor did her reason for keeping Clara and the Doctor together. At least we got some progress on the Gallifrey situation as we now know that at least one Time Lord has managed to get back into this universe. It will be interesting to see whether Gallifrey will return during Steven Moffat’s tensure or whether that will be left to some hypothetical future show runner.

There are still some plot threads that have been left dangling that may or may not get answered in the future. We were never given the reason why Peter Capaldi's Doctor like Caecilius or John Frobisher, despite the hints of one in Deep Breath. There's also the question of who was behind Gus in Mummy on the Orient Express, and if Danny is really dead what will happen to Orson Pink? Has he been erased from history? Sometimes Moffat deals with these things, sometimes he doesn’t, and in the case of who blew up the Tardis in Series Five, he left it until Matt Smith's last adventure. So who knows if or when we’ll get answers to these things.


The production has appeared to progress smoothly with everyone confident in what they're doing. The standard of direction has been consistent, with the odd exception of the Bus with the Doctor Who poster appearing in In the Forest of the Night . The most likely reason for this improvement is having old hands like Brian Minchin and Peter Bennett around. Steven Moffat has never had the chance to build a consistent production team, with other producers coming or going regularly. Having the old guard back is helpful and hopefully they will stay on for next year.

A lot of little touches have helped. The decision to remake the fan-made title sequence was a good one, and the new theme music is not popular with everyone but I personally quite like it. Murray Gold has continued to produce excellent music this series. Even the Tardis interior has been improved this year with warmer lighting and more props to make it feel like a lived in space.

Overall, the best episode of this year was Listen. It was a very small scale story that managed to say something about the human response to fear. My least favourite story was Robots of Sherwood, which felt less ambitious than the stories around it.

Next up, we've got the Doctor and Clara meeting Santa Claus, so where will Series 9 take us after that? Things will inevitably be changed around as the producers decide what worked and what didn't. Given that Steven Moffat got rid of the Paradigm Daleks in light of the viewer responses, I can imagine that he might also try and lighten the tone of the next series. Peter Capaldi’s Doctor may also mellow in response to some of the reception. Personally, I think it would be a shame if this happened as I enjoyed those elements. Still, things move around.

Anyway, what we have here is a series that has been bolder and more interesting than Series 7. It seems that the arrival of a great new Doctor has galvanised the production team. Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has been given a great start. It was definitely worth the wait and we've got a run in with Santa Claus to look forward to in a months time. Let's hope it's just as good as the rest of this years run.



Interstellar (2014)

I got the chance to see Christopher Nolan's new film, Interstellar at the Cinema last Friday so here are a few rambling thoughts on it. If you haven't already seen this movie then look away now as there will be spoilers.

It's always nice to see a piece of fiction promoting the idea of space exploration in age where we seem to be becoming more and more insular. Doctor Who did something similar recently with Kill the Moon, but where that story used the fantasy concept of a moon dragon, this story used concepts rooted in hard science fiction. We have time paradoxes, black holes, gravity and concept of a tesseract. Apparently the filmmakers had a scientific advisor to help, but you don't need to be a science expert to understand this. As with Inception, Nolan has a knack for making complex ideas appear simple enough for the mainstream audience. Besides, most of the concepts are familiar to science fiction terms. I guessed early on the true identity of the "ghost" that was haunting the protagonist because I've been watching Steven Moffat's Doctor Who long enough to be primed to recognise a time paradox.

The special effects used to portray outer space and travel were very well done. The effect of the spinning Endurance spacecraft and seeing space moving were good as well as the ship moving in a different direction. The watery emptiness of Miller's planet. The scenes of Cooper going through the wormhole and ending up in the fifth dimension were very trippy.

The characters were fairly straightforward archetypes, which is the case with characters in a Nolan film. The protagonist, Cooper is the standard adventurer who ends up leaving his two children and father-in-law, behind to go into space, and later comes to regret it. It's very familiar territory.The other main character is Cooper's daughter, Murphy. She gets to grow up and be a scientist. The fact that these two characters reconcile at the end is no surprise. The young father seeing the last moments of his older, dying daughter is visually interesting.

The other cast are fairly decent. We have the obligatory appearance of Michael Caine in a Christopher Nolan film, this time as Dr Brand. But it's always good to see Michael Caine so this isn't really a complaint. Matt Damon made a fairly good cowardly villain as Dr Mann. Not a nasty character as such, but a weak man whittled down until he cracked.  The weakest character was Amelia Brand played by Anne Hathaway, the daughter of Dr Brand and potential love interest for Cooper. Despite being a scientist she is made to look irrational to her male crewmembers because she loves Edmund and wants to land on Edmund's world despite the better result from Mann's. The robot TARS was fun though. Good to have a bit of comic relief in a fairly serious film.

The only rough bits to the film. The fight sequence between Cooper and Dr Mann oddly enough felt more comical than serious because of all the messing around in space suits. The other rough bit was the cheesy ending
when Murphy cracks the code to Plan B and starts throwing around the papers and kissing her lab assistant was a bit clichéd. Other funny seen was son coming back after his crop had been burned and just listening to Murphy's gleefulness rather than getting angry.

Overall a fairly decent sci-fi film. Perhaps a bit too long, but another decent film from Christopher Nolan.

8/10

Doctor Who 8x12: Death in Heaven

Oh dear. Up to this point, Series 8 has consistently maintained a high quality, so it's a shame that it fell slightly at the last hurdle. What we have with Death in Heaven is an episode where the individual moments were more enjoyable than the piece as a whole.

The revelation that Missy created an army of Cybermen for the purpose of handing control to the Doctor didn't really work. This Doctor has been so strongly opposed to soldiers that it's hard to believe he'll ever do anything with the army. It also makes the plot feel small in scale. Davros tried to reveal the Doctor's soul in The Stolen Earth, but that was just one part of a much larger plan to destroy reality. It wasn't the whole point of the exercise. Likewise, the reveal that Missy was the woman in the shop and that she manoeuvred Clara into the Doctor's life so that she could lead the Doctor to the point of taking the army was unconvincing as well. How many variables did Missy have to think through to imagine them reaching this point?

It was good to see UNIT again, but they were somewhat wasted. They may well link into the central theme of soldiers, but they didn't accomplish anything other than to nearly get killed. Kate Lethbridge Stewart appears for the sole purpose of introducing her father. Osgood is here to die so that we can tell how evil Missy. And what is the point of hiring Sanjeev Bhaskar for such a minor role as Colonel Ahmed? They might as well have hired a lesser known actor.

The story did manage present the Cybermen in a far more effective way. The idea of them as the living dead was used in Tomb of the Cybermen and here we get them rising from the grave. The notion that they were literally pollinating from the ground might seem a bit ridiculous, but then again this is the same race that hatched from eggs in The Wheel in Space. The only trouble is that once they've risen from the graves, they just stand around doing nothing.

Danny's story arc concluded reasonably well. The realisation of his Cyber Converson looked good. All palid skin. There were still some problems though. We never knew if Danny had made the decision to wipe his memories. It's also unclear why he decided to take Clara to the graveyard. Did the Cyberman programming override his will at that point? His final decision to lead the Cybermen to the destruction was good. What happens to Orson Pink?

The scene of the Doctor having to kill Missy was good. Her apparent death at the end of this story is fooling no-one. She's probably as dead as Ainley's Master was after being burned to a crisp in Planet of Fire.

I have mixed feelings about the Brigadier living on as a Cyberman. As Danny proved, it was a kind of living hell. This is then followed by another ridiculous moment for Clara. The kid shouldn't have been able to come back as he was just a mind within the Nethersphere, not a person.

In a way this feels like Moffat was trying to recreate the RTD era finales. We have Cybermen invading as per Doomsday, the Master from The Stolen Earth and the morale dilemma from Journey's End. But this didn't work as well.

While the plot felt like it was a bit all over the place, the cast are utterly perfect in what they do. Michelle Gomez has become one of my favourite incarnations of the Master. You laugh at her jokes but then you hate her for killing Osgood.

All of the problems of the above were almost worth it for scene of the Doctor and Clara in the Café, lying to each other about their happiness in the hope of protecting the other. In some ways its a shame that this won't be Clara's genuine departure because it's just so good.

Clara is another highlight of this episode. From the opening moments when she pretends to be the Doctor with a wonderful confident swagger to her sadness at Danny's passing. I don't know if Jenna is staying on for much longer but she's definitely hasn't outstayed her welcome.

And of course, we get to the leading man himself. Peter Capaldi has been a brilliant Doctor. It's funny that when they showed Matt Smith in the flashbacks, he now felt like an old Doctor. Peter no longer feels like "the new guy". He is the Doctor.

This episode might have veered up and down in quality, but it doesn't cancel out all of the great stuff that happened elsewhere. Overall, I'd say that Peter Capaldi's Doctor has got off to a great start and I look forward to seeing how his Doctor develops in the next series.

5/10

Next Time: Nick Frost is Santa Claus, but is Santa as real as Robin Hood or is something else going on?

Doctor Who 8x11: Dark Water

While the journey from the beginning to the end Series 8 has been fun, I wasn't entirely sure I'd like the destination. All of the pre-publicity for Dark Water suggested that this story would be a traditional invasion of Earth by the Cybermen. What we got was something that combined the traditional elements, with some more disturbing ones.

The story opens in the most unusual manner for a Doctor Who story, with Clara about to tell Danny something over the phone when he dies in a car crash. As Clara says afterwards, it's a very mundane way to die, especially in a show with laser guns and science fantasy. After a particularly emotional scene between the Doctor and Clara, the Doctor concedes to take Clara to find Danny in the one place he has never visited. The afterlife.

Moffat’s stories have often explored the theme of death, as well as ways of cheating it. In the past, cheating death has been painless, but this time around the theme was presented in a much darker light in the form of the Nethersphere and the 3W, and had a much grimmer sense. Danny Pink, like Rory before him, dies. But this time he awakens in the 'afterlife' he can still feel linked to his body. The notion suggested by Doctor Chang of 3W, that bodies can feel when they're being cremated, is wonderfully disturbing and edgy for a Saturday night family show. The idea of Danny Pink coming face to face with the boy he killed was just as bleak and interesting. The Nethersphere itself is well presented, a city, bleak place. Some people might have been offended by the idea of cremated people still being alive. Good. This series has pushed at the boundaries of further than others, which is why it’s the best since Series Five. I’m reminded of Russell T Davies’ statement that drama shouldn’t make people feel comfortable. In the end of course, the notion of being scared of cremation is just a fake, designed to force humans to preserve the bodies for cyber conversion.

The Cybermen were one element that everyone was expecting, not only because of the trailers, but also because of the outdoor filming. The show does not even bother to hide it. As soon as The Doctor refers to “Tombs” you know what the skeletons really are. The only trouble is that, as with a lot of other stories, such as The Invasion, Rise of the Cybermen and The Next Doctor, is that the Cybermen are still upstaged by the humanoid villain, in this case, Missy. These particular Cybermen are neither from Mondas or from Pete’s World. These are just Missy’s footsoldiers.

Up until this episode, Missy is the one element of Series 8 that I hadn't really cared for. Fortunately this has now changed. The sense of disorientation that people feel after entering the Nethersphere is probably the same as the way I felt when Missy revealed herself to be the Master. This was followed by a sense of glee. I knew there'd been rumours that Missy was the newest incarnation of the Master, but I'd dismissed it as plain fan theory. The scene where she was pretending to be an android was never really going to fool anyone as she was given far too much importance prior to this episode to turn out to be a minor part. Still, at least it's fun to watch the Doctor's reaction to her charade. I did think she might be Susan Foreman, but the “welcome” she gives the Doctor would have made that plot twist really icky. It could have been Romana, but then that would have turned Romana into a villain who wants to invade Earth, which isn't really like her. Some people will no doubt dislike the revelation. A few years ago I would have been the same, if I hadn't had the chance to see the Barbara Benedetti fan film Doctor which changed my opinion on female Doctors. For those unhappy with Moffat's decision, let’s not forget that the Master has been a decaying corpse (The Deadly Assassin), a morphant snake (The TV Movie) and an x-ray skeleton guy who shoots lasers from his hands and eats tramps (The End of Time).  Some fans think that Steven is paving the way for a female Doctor, but I think if he'd really wanted to cast a woman he would done that last year. If there is another Doctor after Capaldi, I doubt it’s going to be a woman, but this gesture makes the likelihood more possible in the long run. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. This could all be a massive feint, like when Tennant’s Doctor appeared to be regenerating in The Stolen Earth, or when David Morrisey was promoted as 'the next Doctor'. Perhaps Seb is also the Master and they are both just fragments of the same character. Still, I hope that’s not the case because this is the more daring and more interesting idea. My only real issue with the whole reveal is that if the Doctor had felt her hearts, he should have confronted her about it sooner

The regulars are all pretty great this time.  Danny Pink got a lot of material this time around as he comes to terms with the Nethersphere and is forced to confront the child he killed. Samuel Anderson really plays these scenes very well. Danny's decision to lie to Clara about the Nethersphere to protect her was good, but will he truly go through with the decision to delete his emotions?


Clara is particularly interesting this time around. She has something she wants to say to Danny, but what is it? What was her deal with the post-it notes? Was she going to admit to all her journeys in the Tardis, or was there something else? Next week's episode should make that scene a bit clearer. Her attempt to blackmail the by throwing the Tardis keys into the volcano was the probably the most dramatic scene this character has ever got, even though it was undercut by the knowledge that the Doctor could have just clicked the fingers to open the doors.

Peter Capaldi's Doctor was given several great moments this week when he decides to help Clara in spite of her betrayal. This is the same Doctor after all, albeit more pragmatic. He also got his first kiss this week, and it was amusing to see him react in the same nervous way that Matt Smith did. It's not clear yet whether Steven Moffat will stay on Doctor Who for all of Capaldi's run, but if he continues to write the Doctor this well, I hope it's for a while yet.

All in all, this was an enjoyable part one. There's still more to come as Kate Lethbridge Stewart and Osgood have yet to appear. Let's hope Death in Heaven is a good follow up to these threads.

9/10

Doctor Who 8x10: In the Forest of the Night

One of the joys of watching Doctor Who is that the variety of storytelling means you can sometimes get something a little offbeat and strange, like Warriors Gate, Kinda of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. In the Forest of the Night aims for the same kind of thing, although I'd argue it was not quite on the same level as those previous efforts I mentioned.

Danny and Clara have been taking a class to a museum sleepover. When they get outside, they find that trees have grown over the whole world. It turns out that while the human race slept, the trees grew. The immediately problem with this idea is that there would be people awake somewhere in the world to see this. It might have been better for it just being Danny, Clara and the class who woke up to see the trees and have everyone else already know.

One of the children, Maebh, has a strange mental powers and has tracked down the Doctor. She also detected a solar flare above the Earth and can talk to the trees. She is in the role of a shaman character, who needs to lose her medication to see the truth which enables her to speak through the trees.

Fortunately, the trees are growing for a benevolent reason. They deflect the solar flare and the trouble dissolves. The Doctor says that people will forget, but it is genuinely unlikely.

One issue with this episode is that with only the trees as a threat, there is nothing of any danger. We get Nelson's column falling down, a wolf and a tiger, but nothing particularly big. On the one hand, it's great to have a Doctor Who story without a villain, but on the other hand, it derives the story of tension.

The Danny and Clara relationship is on the back burner in this episode. Sparks don't fly. I guess we'll have to wait for the next episode to see about this.

Peter Capaldi is once again brilliant as the Doctor. He's less ethically dubious in this episode, but is still delightfully blunt to the children at times. It looks as if he might be mellowing.

If there's a "proper" way of viewing this episode, I'd say its to view the whole thing as an educational film, with the kids making a "project" to tell the adults not to cut down the trees, like the kind of things I remember my class doing back in the primary school for the rainforest.

7/10

Next Time: A modern remake of The Invasion, which would be more interesting if we didn't already have the original. Clara seems to turn evil, but is it really that straightforward? Missy is finally revealed, which would be nice if I cared about the character. Nice that Kate Stewart and Osgood are returning though.

Doctor Who 8x09: Flatline

This is only the second story that Jamie Matheson has written for Doctor Who and he's already given us another winner. Flatline is a nice contrast to his previous work, as a contemporary Earth story where dimensional troubles cause the Doctor to become trapped in a miniaturised Tardis and two dimensional creatures start to break into our world.

The idea of two dimensional monsters absorbing three dimensional people is nice new idea for Doctor Who, and leads to some pretty creepy imagery such as a human face screaming in the walls and a human nervous system. And you think that's bad, it gets worse when the people emerge from the walls. The aliens or 'Boneless' as the Doctor names them, are delightfully strange and never give away enough information to become too mundane. The gurgling voice when they are reading out a community worker's number is pretty creepy. A successful scary monster then.

People who moan when Clara gets a bit of attention must have been having hissy fit when she got to assume the role of the Doctor in his absence. The scenes where she explores the area with young graffiti artist Riggsy as her companion certainly point towards the fact that that having a woman as the Doctor wouldn't make much difference to the role of the character.

Riggsy was a fairly likeable companion character. He was compassionate enough when he thought that Clara was one of the people grieving and intelligent enough to work out the locked room mystery. I was glad that his supposed self sacrifice didn't happen. I hate when characters get wasted that way.

The Doctor may be on the sidelines in this adventure, but he's still a constant presence throughout as he guides Clara and the other humans to the solution. He gets more humorous moments this time with the "2Dis" and his little victory dance when he thinks he's saved the Tardis. What makes Capaldi's Doctor funny is we're often laughing at him not with him. He also gets the big hero moment at the end as he names the monsters before dispatching them.

The only other significant castmember is Christopher Fairbank as Fenton. He's generally the bad egg of the team, bigoted and annoying. Like Rickson Slade in Voyage of the Damned, he's the survivor you don't want. The others are really just there to get killed.

The story has a very straightforward narrative, with people dodging monsters while the Doctor figures out a solution. It is, nevertheless, extremely well done. The solution that Clara works out to solve the problem of the shrunken Tardis is pretty nifty and the Doctor using the extradimensional nature of the Tardis against the three dimensional nature of the Boneless.


We get another obligatory Missy cameo at the end, but this one is slightly more interesting. What could she be preparing Clara for? I don't think it's too wild a guess to say that she's the woman in the shop, but what is her purpose? We'll find out in two week's time.

There are only two flaw that I can pick at with this episode. One is that the Tardis default setting looks like a Time Lord communication device rather than the model we saw in The Name of the Doctor. The only other flaw, which is nitpicking slightly, is the continuity of Peter Capaldi's hair length. This might have been an issue with filming.

Out of the two stories Mathieson's has written for Doctor Who this year I think I prefer Mummy on the Orient Express. That had a slightly more intense emotional arc for its central characters and a more memorable supporting cast. Having said that,  Flatline is still a very good story and is definately one of my favourite stories of series 8. I would be more than happy for Jamie Matheson to come back to write next year.

9/10

Next: London is overrun with trees, a wolf and a tiger, Danny and children. I really have no idea what to make of this one but it certainly looks interesting.

Doctor Who 8x08: Mummy on the Orient Express

I can't say I came into this story with high expectations, even after last week's dramatic ending. The title of this episode suggested a disposable romp. The Mummy monster and the colonial setting also gave the impression of an old Hinchcliffe era tale. Yet by the time I came away from this tale, It had become a new favourite of mine.

It certainly starts off in a traditional manner, with the Doctor and companion simply materialising on the ship and exploring their new environs. In this case, the space version of the Orient Express.

However, there is a slightly less traditional tone to the relationship between Doctor and companion. Clara is treating this like a last hurrah. It's unusual to have this much tension between Doctor and companion going into the story. It's certainly a change in the Moffat era, where Amy's traumatic experience at Demon's Run was brushed under the carpet.

However, the Doctor and Clara soon find themselves busy with the legend of the Foretold. A mummy appears and kills people in sixty seconds. The Mummy itself is a brilliant looking creation, with rotting flesh, missing teeth, a visible ribcage and ragged bandages.

The curse itself takes the form of a 66 second timer that appears on screen. It is an interesting new narrative device to be employed on Doctor Who, similar to Sherlock's on screen text.

One by one, the crew is being killed off by the Foretold. And one of them is responsible. They're not the deepest of characters, but fairly fun. The Professor is amusing. Captain Quale is alright. Frank Skinner is good as Chief Engineer Perkins. There is also Maisy, whose mother was killed by the mummy. She seems like a fairly distraught woman.

Eventually it is revealed that the whole thing is a ruse to get scientists on board to discover the foretold. The train's Computer, Gus, played in a witty deadpan voice by John Sessions, locks down the train and forces the scientists to work.

The Doctor's investigations soon lead him to discover that it is guilt that draws the foretold. He once again tests Clara by bringing Maisy as a test subject, but this time around, throws it around by solving the mystery of the Mummy.  It is another riff on the malfunctioning machinery of the Moffat era, but I don't mind.

Peter Capaldi has been good since day one, but his Doctor seemed even more engaging this week. As with Deep Breath, this is a story that taunts you with the idea that the Doctor might be willing to allow everyone to die on board. He might be seen as an angry Doctor, yet he still has quirky moments, l like his awkward body language when he is unsure whether to involve Clara in the mystery.

The Doctor's not the only one who is morally ambiguous in this story. Clara admits to finding Tardis travel an addiction and lies to her boyfriend about returning. The characters are not entirely good this season. This is not always the most fun viewing, but it is compelling.

Kill the Moon was the episode that was touted as the big game changer but was this episode that I ended up enjoying more. It may be a romp, but it's a romp that manages to advance the character arc of the season.

10/10

Next: Another new writer and a another interesting looking premise. A shrunken Tardis and creatures that come out of walls.

Doctor Who 8x07: Kill the Moon

We're now over the halfway mark with Series 8, and we finally have the first story to be written by a new writer to the series. So how well did I think Peter Harness fared with his first Who episode? I'd say okay.

I had a hard time deciding how I felt about this story and that's mostly down to the shifts in tone. The story begins with Doctor, Clara and Courtney landing on the moon and where Captain Lundvik, played by Hermoine Norris, and her two crewmembers are trying to destroy the moon.
They soon discover that there are spiders living on the moon and these spiders start killing off Lundvik's crew.  At this point, the story has a hard sci-fi, horror tone to it The Orange Space Suits bring back memories of Waters of Mars. although the supporting space crew were nowhere near as well developed as the crew in that previous tale. Here they're just spider fodder.

As the story progresses we find out that the spiders are simply bacteria. The Doctor goes into the moon and when he emerges, he brings with him the news that the moon itself is an egg housing a living creature about to be born. At this point the story starts to have a more mystical tone. It certainly put this viewer off balance. The story now becomes one of women having to choose the allow a new baby to live or die. If the egg hatches, the creature inside could destroy the world. If it doesn't then the world will be safe. Lundvik gets chooses to be pragmatic where Clara and Courntey choose life. It's an interesting dilemma, and one where themes of abortion can be read into it. The Doctor's decision to leave the three women on the moon to make that decision makes it seem trickier.

In the end, Clara chooses life. The Doctor returns and rescues the three women. The Dragon hatches, and fortunately leaves a new moon behind. The threat was never a threat.

Hermoine Norris was good in the role of Captain Lundvik, playing the role in a very down to Earth way.

Ellis George was good as Courtney Woods. I liked the idea of her taking pictures of the moon and the Doctor and putting them on tumblr. She managed to avoid the trap that the writers fell into with Angie  by not having her complaining all the time.

Clara finally stands up to the Doctor in this episode. Jenna Coleman is getting a lot of good scenes this year.

Some fans on social media have complained about the un-heroic nature of the Doctor this series. Speaking for myself, I think this is a good thing. In the early days, William Hartnell was just as grumpy and it was Ian and Barbara who were the audience viewpoint characters. Over the years, the Doctor has become more heroic and that sometimes pushes the companion into the margins, with little for them to do other than scream or say "what is that Doctor?". This less heroic Doctor has given Clara a chance to shine. Besides, this version of the show will not last forever. I can image the writers responding to negative audience feedback and toning down the new Doctor for the next series. That would be a shame. So I'm enjoying this nastier edge while it lasts.

I don't think this was a classic story by any means, but a fairly decent one.

7/10

Next Week: Time to find out where the Doctor, Amy and Rory were going at the end of The Big Bang.

Doctor Who 8x06: The Caretaker

Gareth Roberts returns to writing Doctor Who with an episode that once again draws on the structure of  The Lodger and Closing Time, where the Doctor goes undercover to sort out an alien threat on Earth. This time around, the Doctor is disguised as a Caretaker and laying a trap for a robot killer known as the Scovox Blitzer. I enjoyed Gareth's previous episodes, and assumed that this one would become one of my favourites. Yet despite knowing that this was a good episode, it didn't really do anything for me.

Perhaps this partly because I was expecting more of a comedy. The first act of the story certainly points that way, with the Doctor making jokes about Jane Austen and getting Clara' boyfriend confused with a Matt Smith lookalike. As in Gareth Roberts' previous stories, the Doctor gets easily confused with aspects of normal human behaviour.

When Danny Pink discovers who the Doctor is, and Clara's secret, the story turns a lot more serious. Danny is understandably annoyed at Clara for keeping this secret from him. It is very much a case of characters talking about their feelings.

The Scovox Blitzer returns for the final act, just in time for Parents evening. Fortunately, with the Doctor's technology, and Danny's assistance, the thing is stopped.

Danny Pink continues to be an impressive character. Unlike Rory he is more of a match for the Doctor, and the Doctor in turn, does not like him initially.

Clara spends the episode trying to keep secrets. She really goes on full control freak in this episode when she tries to convince Danny that the explosions and space monsters were part of the play.

Some commentators have complained that the Doctor's dislike of Danny for being a soldier is out of character. These people have clearly forgotten Doctor Who and the Silurians. There's also his participation in the Time War to consider, and, as Into the Dalek earlier demonstrated, The Doctor's hatred of soldiers may also stem from hatred of the soldier in himself. Let's not forget that he nearly joined the army when he was a child. His means of defeating the Scovox Blitzer involve pretending to be an officer.

The Scovox Blitzer looked cool and I liked the charred death effect. It didn't move particularly well, looking as though it was wobbling around. In the end, though it was just a plot device.


The only other thing I can think to mention is, Courtney Woods, the disruptive young girl who joins the Doctor in the Tardis at the end of the episode. She wasn't in it long enough for me to like or dislike her. This will likely pay off in the next episode, so I wll probably focus on her in that.

It's a strange thing to have an episode that you know is good yet you don't personally enjoy. The character related stuff is interesting, though the Scovox movement is not as well executed. Still, Gareth should still be congratulated for this episode.

8/10

Next Week: Spiders on the Moon. Those orange space suits that never bode well.

Doctor Who 8x05: Time Heist

Doctor Who has explored several genres before, but never really done a crime caper. It's good to finally see one come about. We have the usual "nice" criminals in the form of augmented criminal Psi and the meta human Saibra, joining up with the Doctor and Clara to rob the Bank of Karabraxos. We have the evil authority figures in the form of Karabraxos and Miss Delphox. Security takes place in the form of the Teller, the telepathic creature that feeds off greed.

It is disappointing that the bank itself turns out to be quite easy for the heroes to penetrate. There are large air ducts scattered about the place for the Doctor and the team to hide in. Also, the constant monitoring systems that the heroes were briefed on do not appear and the breath test system was not used.

Eventually, our heroes make it to the vault and discover that Karabraxos
looks the same as Miss Delphox. The latter was a clone all along. It's hard to care about this new character.

Nevertheless this episode is quite fun. It's refreshing to have an adventure that draws on Heist films and Cyberpunk rather than the clichéd Victorian horror that the Moffat era seems to have moved towards recently.

When I first saw the Teller, back in the World Cup Trailer, I thought it looked more innocent than malevolent. This was born out in the episode itself.

It feels like stating the obvious when I say that Peter Capaldi was great in this episode. There is less of a controversial streak this week, the closest thing to that being his apparent dismissal of Saibra's death.

As with the Robin Hood episode, this is a fairly lightweight story. However, as a fan of Cyberpunk and weird sci-fi aliens, this episode was more enjoyable for me than the former.

8/10

Next: Peter Capaldi's Doctor gets his own equivalent of "The Lodger".

Doctor Who 8x04: Listen

After the Daleks made their first appearance on Doctor Who, the show evolved into one about fighting monsters. Listen is one of the first stories to have no external monster or villain whatsoever and it's a very refreshing concept for the show. Midnight came close, with its tale of human paranoia, but still relied on an intangible threat from a monster that repeated your every word. This time around, the true "monster" is inside the Doctor. His childhood fears have made him want to investigate the idea of a creature that hides from view and he drags Clara away from a date with Danny Pink to fulfil this objective. Steven Moffat takes his old box of tricks, from skipping through different time periods, to creatures under a bed, and finds a new slant on them.

The story delves deeply into the Doctor's anxieties to the point where it culminated with Clara meeting the young Doctor in the barn. This scene was considered controversial by many fans. But I have to admit, it was nowhere near as controversial as I thought it would be. There is some ambiguity about who the figures are. Are they the Doctor's parents, or simply carers? Are "the boys" his brothers, or just fellow housemates?

The Doctor is not the only character who gets a lot of development in this episode. The other is newcomer, Danny Pink. We get to see him in his childhood, going by the name of Rupert. He is clearly defensive about his former life as a soldier, and we still don't really know what he has done. We also get a glimpse of a descendant of his, called Orson. Could Orson be Danny and Clara's offspring? Knowing Steven Moffat, it could be more complicated than that.

Clara gets less development than her male counterparts this time around. However, she is the one who influences them. She unwittingly creates the Doctor and Danny. Will Danny ever find out about this? And if so, what would he think of her?

Douglas Mackinnon should be congratulated for his direction. There are some beautiful shots of the Doctor standing on the balcony with the Tardis console below in the background.

The sound people should also be congratulated for creating some ambiguity as the sound. The screeching of the spaceships and the knocking on the doors.

I doubt that this episode did well with casual audiences and you wouldn't want the show to do it every week, but the fact that Doctor Who can do something like this every once in a while makes it worth it.  For the first time since The Doctor's Wife, I felt really hooked by an episode.

10/10

Next Week: Doctor Who does a Crime Caper.

Doctor Who 8x03: Robot of Sherwood

The Doctor has met with many genuine historical figures in the past, but he has also encountered several myths and legends.  Battlefield introduced him to King Arthur. The Time Monster saw him encounter the Minotaur of Greek myths. Now, after being persuaded by Clara, the Doctor takes the Tardis back in time to Sherwood Forest and is surprised to come face to face with the legendary Robin Hood, who shouldn't exist.

Normally there is an alien dimension to events, so the Doctor understandably starts picking holes in Robin's story. Robin himself is just like the legends. The Merry Men also make an appearance, though sadly, they do not contribute very much to the plot. Clara loves the whole situation, enjoying the chance to meet Robin Hood.

The science fiction element finally makes itself clear when our heroes encounter the Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Ben Miller. The Sheriff has
teamed up with a group of metallic robots to help collect the gold needed to relaunch the Robots' crashed spaceship and take over the world. The Robots themselves look like impressive creations. The  spaceship apparently crashed while searching for Paradise. Forget Missy though, what I want to know is what is causing all these spaceships to keep crashing. They're as common as modern day earth was to the RTD era.

The Doctor does not deal with this whole situation particularly well. Some have said that it could have been done by Matt Smith. There's certainly some truth to that, in that there is less dark or surprising moments in this episode. But the script still plays to Capaldi's strengths. Had Matt Smith been in this story, it might have been two young men trying to impress Clara. The age of the Doctor helps. He is cynical about the whole thing, though there are moments, such as the brilliant spoon-fight, where you feel he secretly loves it.

Clara is a properly giggly fangirl around Robin Hood. Still, she is able to hold her own when she brandishes a spear to help the Doctor and Robin. She also gets a nice scene with the Sheriff of Nottingham where they try to outdo one another. The writers have done well in giving Clara more variety this year.

Tom Riley does a good job playing Robin as an arrogant but loveable rogue. He appears to play the theme park version of the character, which makes it surprising when the Doctor finds out he is actually real.

Sadly, although the early part of the story does well, it proceeds towards a very weak resolution. When the Spaceship takes off, it will explode, but the Doctor, Robin and Clara manage to fire an arrow into the hull of the ship. It doesn't need to go into the engines or anything. Maybe all I needed to fill my car was to throw the petrol over it.

Another weak point is the character of Marion, who only appears briefly in the story as a Ward and prisoner who helps the Doctor start the revolution against the Robots. She has no real personality.

The story ends with parallels drawn between Robin Hood and the Doctor. It's less well done than the "we're all stories in the end" moment in The Big Bang, but at least Gatiss found a way to tie it in with the notion of the Doctor questioning his own heroism.

There isn't much to really say about this episode. It does what it does reasonably well. As a genre pastiche, I found it less funny that Unicorn and the Wasp, but maybe that's because I knew more about Agatha Christie.

7/10

Next Week: The first time since Series Five that Steven Moffat has written a story that is not an opening, a finale or a Special. Should be interesting to see.

Doctor Who 8x02: Into the Dalek

It's unusual for a new Doctor to face the Daleks quite so early in his run. Patrick Troughton faced them in his first story, but that was when nobody was sure whether the audience would accept the idea of a different actor playing the Doctor, so the Daleks helped to smooth over the change. Most other Doctors have been given the chance to have at least one fresh new adventure to find their feet first. Perhaps, as with Troughton, the production team felt that this older, grouchier Doctor, needed more familiar elements to ease the transition. Or perhaps they just wanted to get the obligatory Dalek story over and done with.

Into the Dalek, as its title suggests, finds a new way of exploring what it means to be a Dalek by allowing the Doctor, his companion Clara and a group of soldiers to explore the inner workings of a Dalek that has apparently turned good. This homage to  Fantastic Voyage harkens back to the Series 7 "Movie Poster" idea for stories. Certainly the interior of the Dalek is well portrayed by the sets. A dingy, grungy interior, and a giant blobby mutant.

But this story is more than just a fun romp inside a Dalek. There is an extra psychological layer. The Doctor believes there can be no such thing as a good Dalek, and seems determined to prove it. The Dalek, given the nickname "Rusty", seems to have genuinely changed, apparently motivated by witnessing the birth of a new star. Of course, the Doctor's decision is vindicated, and the goodness turns out to be caused by a radiation leak. Once it is fixed, the Dalek turns evil again and summons reinforcements to attack the base where it is imprisoned. However, the memory is still inside the Dalek's electronic brain and the Doctor and Clara set about trying to reawaken it. I was slightly disappointed at the notion of an electronic brain, since I prefer the idea that the Daleks are genetically evil. Still, the idea of a radiation leak driving a Dalek mad harkens back to the creation of the "abomination Special Weapons Dalek", as described in the novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks.

The Doctor's attempts to fix the Dalek introduce an interesting idea about the Doctor's psyche. Teh Doctor links up with the Dalek and tries to get it to see the good in the universe, but Rusty sees the Doctor's hatred for the Dalek species and becomes a crusader against the Daleks on base. Just as we go into the Dalek, we are made privy to the inner workings of the Doctor. Throughout the episode he has been shown to be more callous. He dislikes soldiers, but is willing to destroy Daleks. Earlier on he allows a soldier to die so that he can save the rest. It’s a decision that harks back to the Fourth Doctor’s callous reaction to Lawrence Scarman’s death in Pyramids of Mars. Peter Capaldi is once again fantastic at bringing this nastier incarnation to life.

So what makes the Doctor better than a Dalek? His companion of course. Clara acts as the Doctor's conscious, how Peri should have been during Season 22. At one point she even slaps the Doctor, an action that is becoming more familiar site these days. But where it had previously been used in moments of comedy, this time the Doctor is acting like a bastard, and deserves it. Jenna Louise Coleman is once again shown to be given meatier roles. We even get to see more of her job which grounds her.

Sadly, where the Doctor, Clara and the Dalek get a lot of interesting moments, the rest of the cast are fairly bland bunch of Galactic Resistance troopers. The closest we get to a character is Journey Blue, the girl with a stupid name who's only memorable trait is that her brother died.  The part where she tries to go on board the Tardis at the end did not ring true at all. It felt like it came out of nowhere . I don't think there was anything interesting about Colonel Blue other than the fact that he was played by Michael Smily.

One major character addition is that of Danny Pink. He has the awkwardness of Rory but his soldiering makes him different. The scene where he assess what he should have said to Clara in their first meeting juxtaposed with what he actually said was pretty funny. He seems okay, but his soldiering background means that sparks may fly when he encounters the Doctor later on in the series.

Missy made her inevitable cameo, although this time it happened in the middle of the episode. It didn't really add anything other than keeping the character fresh in the minds of audience members.  The transition from a heavy action sequence with Gretchen inside the Dalek to her sitting at a table with Missy did feel a bit jarring, but cleverly mirrored an earlier scene where Journey Blue is about to die in her damaged spaceship before waking up in the Tardis having been saved by the Doctor. This time, the soldier Gretchen is the one who wakes up, but she is not alive.

I wasn't really looking forward to this episode. I felt the Daleks had been done to death and was looking more. While this doesn't add anything new, it does old things very well. It's a certainly does a better job of introducing a new Doctor to the Daleks than Victory of the Daleks managed.

8/10

Next week: After two weeks of grimdark episodes, it looks like we may be getting a fun romp with Robin Hood. Although I've enjoyed the darker tone of these two episodes it's good to keep the tone changing every once in a while.

Doctor Who 8x01: Deep Breath

The much anticipated debut episode of Peter Capaldi's Doctor is finally here at long last. Steven Moffat had already crafted the perfect introduction to a new Doctor in The Eleventh Hour so
how would he tackle it this time around? When Russell T Davies had to introduce his second Doctor, David Tennant, he was only on his second series whereas Steven Moffat is now on his fourth. Would he be able to breath new life into the show after being around for so long? In a way he has found the middle ground. There is a lot that is familiar about Deep Breath, but in terms of character, we appear to be going in a new direction once again.

Matt Smith's debut in The Eleventh Hour shared a lot in common with Jon Pertwee’s debut in Spearhead from Space. Both stories had new Doctor and new companion starting at the beginning of the new decade. Deep Breath borrows the structure of Robot in that it eases the transition between Doctors by surrounding him many familiar elements of the past including Clara, Vastra, Jenny and Strax. Even the enemies in this story, the Clockwork Droids, are taken from The Girl in the Fireplace.  One of my only real concerns with this episode is whether it took too much of this old lore for granted. Where UNIT can be summed up as the Doctor's military friends, or Jackie and Mickey are his companion's family, casual viewers who are less aware of the show's history might
have been a bit confused as to what a reptile woman and a Sontaran were doing wandering around Victorian London. Vastra's background is slightly more complex and a lot of the jokes around Strax rely on a knowing how Sontarans are supposed act and how they are subverted.

As is usually the case in new Doctor stories, the first act focuses on the Doctor and the companion adjusting to the regeneration in different ways. In this case Clara is not happy. Some viewers found it strange that Clara would be annoyed at Doctor's change of appearance having already seen the other Doctors in past episodes. The answer is simple: she may have seen different faces but she never gone thriugh the experience of seeing an actual regeneration before. In previous stories, she has always had her Doctor, the Eleventh, by her side. Now that Doctor has gone for good and she is left with this complete stranger. This part of the story is quite slow paced, which some viewers might find off putting. There is a dinosaur rampaging around outside, but it feels like a distraction to keep the kids excited and is not a harmful creature. It is also used to parallel the new Doctor, an ancient beast stuck in the wrong time. The sudden, unexpected spontaneous combustion of the dinosaur is what propels the Doctor into the plot. The apparent monster is a fake to be killed by the real monsters.

The action-adventure side of the plot eventually kicks in at the halfway mark with the Doctor and Clara meeting at Mancini’s Family Restaurant which is being used by the clockwork robots from Girl in the Fireplace, to capture people and harvest body organs. The witty banter between the Doctor and Clara gives a better idea about where these characters may be going in future.

The Clockwork monsters themselves are even more gruesome this time around, adding human body parts to their own design as well as to their ship. It's a nice reversal on the basic idea behind the Cybermen. Their leader, the Half-Faced Man, looks particularly good with his odd eyes and the clockwork visible beneath the skin of the face. He is a fairly straightforward character, and an uncomplicated old enemy for the new Doctor to prove himself against.

Peter Capaldi is, unsurprisingly, good as the Doctor. Critics were saying that he would be a dark Doctor but he is actually really funny, especially in the post-regeneration scenes when he is horrified by his face or harassing tramps. When the dinosaur dies we see his more caring side. The "darkness" only really starts to show when he appears to abandon Clara in the clockwork droid ship, only to return later in disguise. This is when he is fully formed, a grumpy force to be reckoned with. The darker edge returns again when he faces down the Half-Face Man. Did he persuade the Half-Face Man to commit suicide by jumping out of the zeppelin, or did he push him out? Overall it feels like this what the Colin Baker Doctor should have been.

Jenna Coleman has always been a good actor, but was poorly served by the "impossible girl" story arc.Without that baggage, we can see the character more clearly, and Jenna Coleman is very good at showing the distress that Clara feels about this new man. It was also nice to get a glimpse of Clara's difficult school days and her vulnerability, which in turn, provides the means for Clara to stand up to the Half-Face Man.

The Paternoster Gang are pretty much the same as ever in this episode. The only real new development is that Vastra and Jenny kissed. Strax is, as ever the weakest link of the team, making the same old violent jokes long after the humour has worn thin. Still, the part where he hit Clara in the head with a newspaper was hilarious.

There are a lot of questions left over. Who left the advert in the newspaper? Who left Clara thwe Doctor’s phone number? And who is the mysterious “Missy”, who appears at the very end of the episode to welcome the Half-Face Man to “Heaven”. She seems a bit familiar to River but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and see where they go with her. Odds are she is the woman who gave Clara the number, but I could yet be wrong.

There are a few minor plot niggles, such as why the droids combusted bodies before they took the body part. I can at least understand that they might need to take down the dinosaur since it is a harder thing to attack but why bother with the other humans? The scene where Strax gave Clara a medical exam felt like the point where I was ready for the plot to move on.

The new title sequence is the best one in ages. Having had a “Space” opening credits in the 80s, it’s nice to have a “time” based opening credits for the 10s. It’s time we had a break from the variations of the time vortex which were becoming a little boring. I also liked the chimes in the titles.

In conclusion, this episode may not have been the bold new beginning that The Eleventh Hour was, but it was an enjoyable 80 minutes of television. Peter Capaldi is a promising new Doctor and seems to have good chemistry with Jenna Coleman. I look forward to seeing the development.

8/10

Next Week: The inevitable Dalek episode. Will Phil Ford find a new angle on a very familiar enemy, or will this just be a rehash of Dalek? Hopefully the former.

Robin Williams RIP

I was definitely not expecting to wake up to the news that Robin Williams passed away. This was way too soon.

Growing up in the nineties, I remember him mostly for his roles in Aladdin, Hook, Jumanji and Mrs Doubtfire. But those were just small parts of a greater career which included adult dramatic roles as a therapist in Good Will Hunting and creepier roles such as Si the Photo Guy in One Hour Photo and a killer who faced off against Al Pacino in Insomnia. He could be funny, melancholy or creepy. A very versatile actor.

I cannot imagine what it is like to suffer genuine depression like Robin Williams did. Perhaps this will force people to look more closely at this condition. People shouldn't die like this.

He may be gone, but he has left behind a generation of people who enjoyed watching his performances and will remember him.

Doctor Who: Life Returns

Forget the World Cup final! The most exciting event of this evening was the release of a third Doctor Who trailer! The BBC certainly one upped ITV with that one. I didn't write about the second one since it was pretty similar to the first. But this one actually contains episode footage.

Of course, some fans are already familiar with scenes from this trailer, thanks to the BBC Worldwide blunder that lead to scripts and actual episodes being leaked online. Nevertheless, there are some people out there, like me, who are trying to keeping away from spoilers as much as possible and are delighted with the new trailer. Back before Series One had aired, Russell T Davies wrote a Production Notes column about the danger of spoilers. He mentioned a friend of his who had avoided pre-publicity about the plane crash in Emmerdale and was surprised and shocked by it when she finally saw it. This is always the best way to watch television. Wasn't it so exciting when Jenna Coleman unexpectedly popped up in Asylum of the Daleks? Or when Professor Yana was revealed to be The Master? Spoilers ruin these moments. If you've read the script then by the time the episode itself airs, you will probably know the dialogue by heart and just be waiting for the actors to speak the lines you know they'll already say. I prefer the excitement of not knowing what is going to happen next, so, for the sake of fans who haven't ready spoilers, I have tried not to add any information I might have accidentally encountered.

....Anyway, rant over. Now for the trailer.

We finally get a proper look at Peter Capaldi's Doctor and he's looking mean. I've always enjoyed the darker Doctors like William Hartnell and Christopher Eccleston so I'm hoping this is what we're going to get. It's also great to finally hear Peter Capaldi saying "I'm the Doctor".

The blue eyed, metal armoured creature. No idea who he is, but he looks cool, though. Probably a villain, judging by the evil eyes, just like...

  

... this creepy Victorian robot man here. Vastra, Jenny and Strax are appearing in the first story, Deep Breath so I have little doubt that this guy is from the same episode.

Another new and seemingly villainous alien. It looks like a robot knight, and the castle-like backdrop behind it suggests that this may be from a historical episode. 

I'm not sure if the particular alien pictured above is a villain. The eyestalks make him look quite funny. I like it when aliens can be allies as well, so I'd be delighted if this was the case. 

Some old monsters will be making a return appearance this year. Yes. The Daleks are back. Again. Inevitable really, since we're getting a new Doctor and Steven Moffat once said that he never felt that the new Doctor was really the Doctor until he met the Daleks. I still hope the Daleks won't appear too often beyond their first encounter with the Doctor.

Another type of creature that the Doctor has met before. We've had dinosaurs on a space ship and now it's time to see them rampaging back on Earth.  Invasion of the Dinosaurs for the 21st century, perhaps?

There appears to be a new library in the Tardis console room. This may be a homage to the William Hartnell version which had an interesting collection of junk in An Unearthly Child. I like it when the Tardis appears t be lived in. I remember hearing rumours that Matt Smith's Series Five Tardis would have a laboratory in it and was disappointing when that turned out not to be true. This makes up for that.

"Where are we going?" "Into Darkness". The dialogue and the overall tone of the trailer seem to support the idea that we're going for a darker tone, hopefully different from the Matt Smith era. This is Steven Moffat's second reinvention of the show.

"Am I good a man?" "...I don't know". The Doctor and Clara definitely seem to have an uneasy relationship, at least in the early episodes.

All in all the trailer hints at good things to come the upcoming series. Peter Capaldi looks great. I'm bored of the Daleks now, but hopefully they will be out of the way as soon as possible so we can get to some of the more interesting new villains seen here.

Now all that's left to do is to try and bottle in my excitement until the new series arrives.

Doctor Who: Not Long Now...

Apart from news of the World Tour, it's been quiet in the Doctor Who world recently. Any scrap of information, however small, was welcome right around now, so I was excited to see the release of a new promo picture above, as well as a new trailer, which can be seen on the BBC Doctor Who page.

The trailer doesn't show very much more than what we've seen before. Capaldi in the shadows, with the Tardis exploding behind him, and Clara worrying about the Doctor's new incarnation. It's not quite up to scratch with the RTD era trailers, or the 3D Series 5 trailer, but it's something, I suppose.

"I feel like I don't know who the Doctor is anymore" says Clara. Could this series be, as some have suggested, a throwback to the Colin Baker era? With a young brunette companion learning to cope with an angrier, more dangerous and unpredictable Doctor? Or could this all just a load of hype for more of the same? At least Steven Moffat would be more likely to pull off the concept of a darker Doctor than JNT and Eric Saward managed in 1984.

Best of all is the confirmation that the first episode will air on 23rd August. The makes the series return feel more certain, more concrete. The episode itself will be called  Deep Breath. An unusual title and more interesting than the predictable "Twelfth Night" stuff that people were expecting.

The only other thing of note is that in the Promo picture, the Tardis appears to have a new lighting scheme. I'm not sure it needed any changing, but I'm hoping it may reflect a more fiery, angry attitude from the Doctor.

Only two months to go now. It's amazing how fast time passes sometimes.