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.