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.