Day 775: The Rebel Flesh

After a sudden realisation of a looming deadline, I have spent the past 36 hours writing about 3 of my favourite Doctor Who stories, one for this blog (The Doctor's Wife) and the other two for something else that I'll link to later. So when the time came for me to have a look at The Rebel Flesh, it honestly came as a bit of an afterthought after a fairly packed weekend.

And I think that's what this two-part story will be forever thought of as: an afterthought. Watching it again tonight, I was struck by two things. One was that it was actually a little bit better than I thought it was going to be, and the other was that it slowly dawned on me the complete fuzziness of my memory of this episode. I think it's because of the setting: the greyness of the monastery-cum-acid factory where the story takes place. Whilst it's atmospheric and adds to the overall tone of the story, it also makes the story feel just a little bit dull; a little bit lacking in colour. And it's that visual tone that makes me kind overlook this story as something that's just grey and a bit boring.

But, as I said, it was better than I thought it was going to be. I liked the fact that it openly states that the Gangers aren't the monsters, and that this is going to be a story all about trying to reconcile the Gangers with their human counterparts. I also like the development of the Ganger Jennifer, who is overwhelmed with what has happened to her and seeks the compassion of Rory in order to keep her safe. It's a poignant moment to see her sitting alone, looking at her unformed face in the mirror, then putting an old photo of herself in the frame to replace it, to pretend that she is that person. The only problem is, as I recall, the story doesn't quite continue in that fashion with Jennifer, and we'll see how that pans out in The Almost People. But, to be honest, my memories a little bit fuzzy with respect to that episode as well, so maybe I've been completely wrong about the whole thing. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow.

Day 774: The Doctor's Wife

The Doctor's Wife is an interesting story to think about. It's pretty much perfect, and one of my favourite episodes ever produced in the history of Doctor Who. But it has the potential to be completely ruined if any writer chooses to come back to it. Because some good things should never be touched, and should just be left alone forever.

It's all because of the concept of The Doctor's Wife: what if the TARDIS came to life. Throughout the history of Doctor Who, the TARDIS has regularly been treated as something that's alive, a living piece of machinery that helps the Doctor when he's in need. Neil Gaiman's concept for the episode was to put the mind of the TARDIS into a human body so that they can actually have a conversation with the Doctor. And what we get is something equal parts heart-warming and heartbreaking. We see the Doctor and the TARDIS arguing with each other, but also loving each other as they try to rescue Amy and Rory from the malevolent force that has taken over the TARDIS shell. It's thrilling to see these characters who have known each other for so long finally being able to sit together and talk, and it's made completely heartbreaking when we see that experience taken away from them so soon into their new relationship together because the TARDIS's human body dies. It's such a sad moment to see the Doctor look up at the TARDIS's dying body and see him lose all of that potential that they had together when it was alive, and one that's extremely well played by Matt Smith.

And that's why this episode can never be re-visited. Because of all the temptation to go back and give the TARDIS life again, it would cheat the ending of that episode because it needs to end with them only having had that short, but perfect, time together. Any more episodes like this and it would destroy that beauty found in the uniqueness of that moment. So The Doctor's Wife has to remain this way, a story that is always going to be remembered but never revisited because it would make the original story something less than it was.

Day 773: The Curse of the Black Spot

The Curse of the Black Spot was a complete disappointment for me. I went into it knowing that it had one big issue about it, which I'll go into later, but otherwise I was expecting a fairly nice romp with pirates in it. Instead, what I got was something that was just boring.

The pacing of this episode is really poor. Every other moment I'd look at the time and be shocked that I was still only a very small portion of the way through the episode. It's partially because the story is written with the intention that it be all about building up tension between scenes, with the constant threat of the Siren ever looming. The problem is that this never comes across on screen, because the Siren never comes across as particularly threatening. It could have perhaps worked if the actors playing the pirates were directed to be more paranoid or worried about the Siren's effects, but they weren't, so we're left with a story that just consists of the characters hiding in rooms aboard a pirate ship.

Meanwhile, there's also the big problem that is the Boatswain. The editor of this story made a huge mistake, because they removed an entire sub-plot from the final episode. Well, that's not strictly true, moreover that they removed half of a sub-plot, which makes the situation even worse. The character of the Boatswain, a secondary character in the story who gets a few scenes with the main cast, disappears halfway through the episode, only to reappear at the end in a completely different setting with no explanation as to how he got there. It's an awful mistake because it shows that the editor doesn't care about the story, instead opting to remove scenes that they feel are superfluous instead of paying attention to the story as a whole and the effect that removing those scenes would have.

And all of that is still only scratching the surface as to how this episode is really bad. It manages to deliver one of the worst renditions of first aid that I have ever seen in any form. The ending of the episode relies on the fact that, provided that you can guess where the wheel is on a spaceship, you're qualified to pilot it. The direction never takes advantage of the fact that they are shooting on a real sailing ship, with it instead looking like a cheap studio set in Cardiff. It all ends up producing one of the worst Doctor Who episodes of the revived series, and a real curse of an episode to watch.

Day 772: Day of the Moon

I think that Day of the Moon is overall better, and easier to love than The Impossible Astronaut. It's not so much a change in the story or the direction, but moreover in how the story is told. The episode is filled with interesting little quirks that show that Doctor Who still has the capacity to be fascinating by just doing cool stuff with the medium of television.

Television tricks are part of the bread and butter of Doctor Who. How else do you think the TARDIS de-materialises if it's not through some clever editing? Moffat has long been a proponent, however, of openly using editing and camera alongside the script to produce strong visual stories. Consider the scene in Graystark Hall. Here, there's a surprisingly creepy scene where Amy discovers that she is surrounded by the Silence, who have the power to remove themselves from people's memories. Now, in prior scenes with the Silence, we've been introduced to them by seeing them, then seeing the characters forget about them with a small audio cue. Later on in the story, we also associate the drawing of tally marks on people's skin as a sign that they have seen the Silence, a helpful visual cue to show what is happening.

The Graystark scene provides something different to what we have seen before by not showing the Silence as Amy sees them. Instead, we see the entire scene from Amy's perspective, as she enters an empty room and, whilst trying to leave, discovers that she has tally marks all over her face. The scene works because it relies on the fact that the audience has become adjusted to how things work in the context of the story. We understand as viewers that we are just observers to this story, and the effect of the Silence will not work on us. But the fact that the Silence's effect does end up working on us through them not being shown by the camera paints the Silence as far more effective villains than once thought, because they have the power to take control of television itself. Of course, it's all done with some simple editing trickery, but the sheer excitement of seeing that for the first time kind of takes your breath away, like all good tricks do.

Of course, there are other things to admire, and even love, about Day of the Moon. A very small thing that I don't know whether anyone else would pick up on is the fact that Murray Gold's music continues from the 'Previously' recap into the pre-titles sequence, lending the story a sense of continuation and continuity between the two halves. Arthur Darvill's performance as Rory Pond is continually heartbreaking and funny, and he's a lot of what makes the BIG section worth watching, in my opinion. And I can't look past the fact that Moffat continually writes Richard Nixon as a figure to be made fun of continually, which is probably far crueller to him than treating him as the credible threat that he is.

Day 771: The Impossible Astronaut

The Steven Moffat era can generally be divided into four distinct sections: The Eleventh Hour - The Big Bang, The Impossible Astronaut - The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen - The Time of the Doctor and Deep Breath onwards. Each of these sections has their own distinct textures that make them what they are, such as the fairy tale feel to Series 5, or the more introspective pieces that we get in Series 8 and 9, looking at the roles of Clara and the Doctor. But those are stories for another time, for now we begin our look at the second Moffat section: what I think of as the BIG section.

The BIG section feels big. The stories all aim to feel epic, leaving the magic of Series 5 behind for the adrenaline rush of excitement associated with travelling with the Doctor. And you can see this in The Impossible Astronaut, with the focus being clearly on spectacle as the dual driving force alongside the substance of Moffat's writing. Unusually for the first half of a two part episode, it's filled with spectacular and iconic images, such as the TARDIS de-cloaking in the Oval Office, or anything involving the Spacesuit that emerges from Lake Silencio to kill the Doctor. It all feels impressive, but I can't help but feel like this episode lacks something.

I mean, I enjoy this episode. It's well written, well directed, well performed, well designed, but in my heart I can't quite find it in my heart to truly love it. It just lacks that magic of Series 5, that spark that gives the story life. I think that that's my major problem with the BIG section: that it can lack that internal magic that's part of what makes Doctor Who so wonderful. But at least I can still watch and enjoy it, and there are definitely stories to love within this section. It's just that there are maybe more stories to admire than there are to love.

Day 770: A Christmas Carol

The Christmas Special has become a bit of a tradition in the worlds of Doctor Who. In the Russell T Davies years, the episodes tended to be reasonably light hearted romps that happened to be set at Christmas. Steven Moffat, on the other hand, opts for the more obvious approach: make these Christmas Specials about Christmas. And nowhere is this more apparent than in A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol is one of the most heart-warming Doctor Who stories ever written. The entire concept - of the Doctor trying to stop a spaceship from crashing by teaching one man, Kazran Sardick, how to be kind - feels a bit twee as described, but it doesn't end up working that way because Moffat decides to keep that method of teaching Kazran interesting, both in terms of how it is actually performed and how it is shown on screen. The Doctor, for instance, travelling back in time to be a strong role model for the younger Kazran when he needed one is a brilliant idea, and it's also well achieved by the decision to allow much of the running time of the story to focus on this plot strand. Thus, we get to spend a lot of time experiencing Kazran's life and so we grow to have sympathy for the character, and his decision to still turn down the darker path is made all the more heartbreaking (on a side note, the acting from Danny Horn in that scene is absolutely incredible, masking his emotion almost but not quite perfectly, letting the audience and the Doctor know exactly what's happened without the dialogue truly giving it away).

And these scenes are made all the more interesting because of the fact that we see them through a mixture of methods, seeing it from the Doctor's point of view and from the point of view of Kazran reminiscing which all lends the story an extra hook to keep things interesting so that it's not just a simple story. The added scenes of older Kazran, as played by Michael Gambon, remembering his time with the Doctor are also incredibly well performed, as he's able to do so much in terms of acting to help us gain an emotional attachment to the character just through him looking at old photos. Again, this all helps to create a story that feels all the more heart-warming and lovely.

And that's perhaps what a Christmas Special should be. Although I do still enjoy the Christmas Specials of the Davies era, I feel that Moffat's are truer to the notion of the Christmas Specials I watched as a kid from a variety of sources. They're stories that are meant to be funny and heart-warming, and maybe a little bit sad. And above all else, they are stories about the power of Christmas, and how it's that one time of the year where everything feels just a little bit nicer. And A Christmas Carol works on those areas for me just a little bit more than the Davies Christmas Specials, giving an overall better feeling for me.

Day 769: The Big Bang

I said that Series 5 is my absolute favourite of all series of Doctor Who at the start of me looking at it, but that statement wasn't exactly true. Well, perhaps I worded that incorrectly. It's a statement that I didn't back up with sufficient evidence. You see, to quote the Doctor in this episode, "I hate repeats". I'd only watched Series 5 in its entirety twice before, once on first transmission, and once when I watched it in a marathon with some of my cousins. It's not that I didn't think it was any good, it's just that I like to leave things fresh - I'll try and leave enough space in between viewings so I can forget things so that my re-watch is essentially a new experience. So when I said that Series 5 was my absolute favourite, it was really more of a hunch - that my feelings about watching it for the first time would re-manifest themselves on another viewing. And I was kind of wrong. Because my love of this series wasn't the same as it was before - it was completely and utterly surpassed by what I think of this series now.

The Big Bang is one of my absolute favourite episodes of Doctor Who ever produced. Everything, from the cinematic direction of Toby Haynes to the incredibly witty script from Steven Moffat works on a fundamental level. It takes the base notion of the Doctor as this magical figure who can fix anything - much like what we saw in The Eleventh Hour, and then extrapolates this to the point where the Doctor has to save the Universe from extinction, when all hope seems lost. It feels completely right for this magical character, as he dashes about the story doing all sorts of tricks to save everything from total non-existence. It's the great moment of this magical Doctor, the dramatic ending to this fairy tale.

But then the story goes somewhere else entirely, that's completely beautiful. It reflects on the notion of who the Doctor is to Amy. He was that impossible man who fell out of the sky when she was a little girl. She was her imaginary friend, who suddenly became real. And the Doctor, through the magic of time travel, speaks with Amy as a little girl once more, he says that he will be remembered as just a story to her. And I kind of teared up at that moment.

In that single moment, the story became about every single little boy and girl who watches Doctor Who: past, present and future. Every single one of them who can choose to believe in the Doctor as a fairy tale figure in their imaginations. The impossible man who can travel any where and any when in his impossible blue box. And in Series 5, we get to see one little girl who went on adventures with that fairy tale figure, just like the rest of us could, if we believed hard enough. But we grow up, we forget these stories and fill our heads with other nonsenses to replace the fairy tale nonsense that we used to believe in. Series 5, then, is about going back to that fairy tale world, and leaving the real world far behind. And that entire ethos is so beautiful and perfect, and is the entire reason why I love Series 5 so much.

Day 768: The Pandorica Opens

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang is another absolutely perfect story in Series 5. And amongst the many interesting things about it, I think that chief among them is that it's an absolutely perfect story as long as it's viewed in context to the rest of Series 5, where it becomes something truly special.

To elaborate, this episode works by riffing on the fairy tale style that the series has been using for the past 12 episodes. We see the Doctor as the good wizard, the man who goes to stop the monsters, not with guns but with the magic of words, giving a speech to keep them pre-occupied whilst he sorts out other problems. But it takes an interesting turn as Amy starts to openly recognise things as being fairy tale-esque, such as the fact that the Pandorica is derived from Pandora's Box. It draws to attention the fact that something is wrong, which is further accentuated by the fact that the TARDIS is malfunctioning significantly worse than usual, as if there's something acting upon the story itself, changing the way in which we view the programme.

And then it all goes fantastically pear shaped. We realise that the Doctor has wandered into a trap, an impossible trap that he's got no escape from. It feels again like it's riffing on the structure of Series 5; a vast quantity of the series has been based around the Doctor remaining perfectly in control of the situation and trapping the villains, not the other way around. So when we see the majestic and magical figure of the Doctor, it feels like a genuine low point because we haven't really seen this Doctor lose to such an extent. And then, to make matters worse, the Universe explodes along with the TARDIS. It gives a certain sense that the stakes are so much higher this time around, because the events have already happened, and it's up to the Doctor to save the Universe once more. But first, he's got to do something completely wonderful.

Day 767: The Lodger

The Lodger's another highlight of Series 5 for me because it acts as the real showcase for the Doctor of Series 5. It's a simple character piece as we see the effect that the Doctor has on ordinary people, exposing what it's like to live with this fantastic magician of a man for better and for worse.

I think that, in order to best sum up how the story shows off the Doctor of Series 5, we should have a look at the simple scene where he convinces Sophie to follow her dream and work with monkeys. He deliberately antagonises Sophie into saying her feelings about working with animals, and how much she cares about them. Then, just as things start to get a little bit too unfriendly, the Doctor reveals the magic trick to Sophie and how he's helped her realise her inner feelings. This scene shows off the Doctor well by playing him as someone that can easily take control of the situation when he nees to, even if this is not obvious at first. The magic of the scene is thus created by the moment when we realise that the Doctor has been secretly taking control without us realising it, and so we get a small sense of wonder as we see how he did it. But not only that, there's also the magic of how he did it. Instead of using a simple method, he opted for a more complex but effective method that would change Sophie's mind. The fact that the Doctor is able to pull off such a complex trick from underneath our noses shows the degree of magic that is present within the character.

And this magic applies throughout Series 5. We saw it in the capture of Prisoner Zero in The Eleventh Hour, as well as the defeat of the Angels in Flesh and Stone and the ending of Amy's Choice. It's also inverted very well in the next episode, but that's another time. And speaking of the future, we begin to get a sense in this episode that the Doctor may not be as nice as he seems. Because even though he helped Craig and Sophie in the end, he still put Craig through a small amount of emotional trauma in order to reach his end goal. And that's just the start of the slippery slope that will lead to the darker Doctor that we'll meet in the next series. But, for now, we've got work to do as the Pandorica is due to open.

Day 766: Vincent and the Doctor

Vincent and the Doctor is a rare episode, and one that could have only been done in Series 5. It's not a story that's overtly concerned with action, or suspense, instead focussing on this simple and magical story of one man, and his adventure with the Doctor.

It's a story all about a man, Vincent Van Gogh, with depression, unappreciated and on the verge of collapse. And we see this man at some of his highest and lowest points, as he fights the invisible monster of depression that has accompanied him for all his life. Tony Curran's performance as Vincent Van Gogh is extraordinary, capturing the nature of Van Gogh excellently such as in the bedroom scene where he is at one of his lowest points, unable to face not only the oncoming day but his life, as he refuses to listen to the Doctor. This is handled intelligently by the script as well, as it has been previously lax on showing Vincent's 'low' moments, instead portraying him as someone who is obviously depressed and unhappy, but warming to the prospect of working with the Doctor and Amy. By showing Vincent in this vulnerable state, we get a sense of how deeply and darkly the depression does affect him.

Of course, we also see the higher points of Vincent's life, such as him seeing his works being displayed in the Musée D'Orsay, as he is driven to tears at realising that he is appreciated for what he does. And it's beautiful because we're allowed to take part in this emotional overload with Vincent as he realises the effect that he will have on people. The trick of having the room spin with Vincent's face in the fore-ground as Dr. Black's monologue runs in the background is almost too much for the audience to take in, leading to us entirely empathising with Vincent as he struggles to cope with what he's been told. It's a beautiful moment in a beautiful episode.

But as with Van Gogh's paintings, this episode is best viewed with one's own eyes, to appreciate the subtelties and to see the texture of how it all plays out. And whilst it's not my absolute favourite of Series 5, I would probably recommend watching Vincent and the Doctor above the rest of the series, if only to truly appreciate the art of this adventure.

Day 765: Cold Blood

Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, this will end up having to be a short entry for the blog. It's a shame, because Cold Blood is actually an interesting conglomeration of ideas that, whilst not ending up absolutely brilliant on screen, is still very interesting to think about. We've got the idea of peaceful negotiations, a sinister scientist who ends up becoming an ally, Marvin the Paranoid Android, a semi-sequel to Midnight and the general overhaul of the Silurians to talk about. Oh, and Rory's death, how could I forget that? (Well, Amy did...). With all of these things to talk about, what should I focus on in this entry?

What I'm going to talk about is the interesting knock-on effect that this episode ends up having on the rest of the Moffat era. The Silurians, as originally developed by Malcolm Hulke, were seen as a race of creatures that were not of singular mind. By that, I mean that they weren't all obsessed with conquering the Earth, each of them had their own distinct wants and goals for the future, and how these goals should be achieved. It made the race feel more real, as opposed to just being another set of generic aliens for the Doctor to fight off. This follows through to the Silurians in the new series, where in this episode we meet some Silurians who are more interested in fighting than making peace, while others are hopeful for a peaceful solution. And whilst we don't get to fully know these characters, we still get the impression that this is a more complex race than we've previously encountered in Doctor Who. It's what makes the Moffat era of the series relatively interesting, in my opinion, because it seeks overtly to overcome the notion that alien characters are all going to be evil. (I should note though that the Davies era also did this to an extent, such as what is seen with the Ood or the cat people)

And, of course, the Moffat era would go on to use the Silurians regularly, in the form of the Paternoster Gang, which allowed for a further development of the race and how they are perfectly normal lifeforms, just like humans are, with their own abilities to be good or evil. And that makes for a far more interesting view on storytelling, in my opinion.

Oh, and one other quick thing. I'm going away for the weekend, so I actually have no idea whether I'll be able to update this blog over the course of the next three days. Hopefully everything will be as normal, but we'll see how things develop.

Day 764: The Hungry Earth

The Hungry Earth is not a particularly notable episode. To be fair, it's not really meant to be, instead being a source of build-up for the storm that is to come ahead with Cold Blood. But that's oddly what ends up making the whole thing rather interesting.

The Hungry Earth doesn't feel like it could have been done in the Russell T Davies era. It's just a little bit too slow paced, a little bit too light on action. Instead of spending time getting into the story, we have an episode where the Doctor is allowed to explore his surroundings, both in terms of character and plot. We're allowed to meet the characters at the drilling site, as well as get to grips with the mystery at the heart of the episode and figure out why it's happening. It feels refreshing, as if Chris Chibnall decided to take advantage of the increased running time of the two part story that he had to really allow the story to breathe, and feel more real.

And, as I say, it feels unique to Series 5 as an episode. Series 5, whilst covering such things as bringing back the magic present within the original concept of Doctor Who, also feels like a soft reboot for the series, as if Moffat decided to start from scratch with respect to this era of the series, trying out new forms of storytelling in order to create something different. And what that means is that we're allowed to try having stories with slower pace, which even though it doesn't quite translate to an exciting episode, still feels new and different. And that ability to feel new and different is part of the reason why I love Series 5 so much.

Day 763: Amy's Choice

When looking back at episodes, I'm sometimes hit with a wave of nostalgia for a time when I first watched it. Some are attached to where I first watched it, other times it's the time that I watched it (I'll never forget my sister getting up in the middle of the afternoon when we were watching Time and the Rani to say that she just couldn't stand to watch it any more). Amy's Choice is not an episode that I remember watching for the first time, rather it's an episode that I remember watching again.

It was a Sunday, and I was playing handball with some friends. I lost my footing, and fell over, in the process slightly injuring my knee and putting me into a state of shock - I was just recovering from a far worse knee injury that I'd had a couple of months ago. When we got home, I was heavily doped up on painkillers and decided that I would watch some random Doctor Who story to keep me calm. I ended up choosing Amy's Choice, either because I remembered it as a rather nice story that I'd watched the previous night, or because I was increasingly woozy and the picture on front of the recording I'd made of the episode was a rather pleasant country lane that looked fairly calming. For whatever reason, I chose it, and I rather enjoyed it.

It's not an episode that's particularly exciting. It's not an episode that's particularly scary either. Instead, it feels relatively relaxing with just enough action happening in it to keep the audience's attention. Take, for instance, the scenes in Upper Leadworth. Filmed with visible rain in a picturesque country village, it all feels perfectly nice and calm. Whilst there is a strong amount of danger present in these scenes, director Catherine Morshead keeps the scenes feeling nice and relaxed, filming occasionally in a soft focus and always keeping the greenery of the village in shot. It makes the scenes feel lighter, and helps contribute to the overall comfortable mood of the story.

Consider also the fact that it has the clear opportunity to be something terrifying and yet it decides to let that go in favour of something altogether nicer. Dreams are very terrifying things, because they can be completely surreal and yet you have no idea of whether they are real or not. It's a philosophical nightmare, and has led to countless sleepless nights on my behalf. But the story chooses not to dwell on the slightly frightening nature of dreams, instead moving along and telling a story about the darker side of the Doctor in the form of the Dream Lord. And even that is underplayed - the Doctor dismisses the Dream Lord at the end of the story as just another aspect of his personality, and it's only on repeated viewing that the Dream Lord's statements become interesting and occasionally worrying. But the fact that the story chooses to go for a more comforting angle to everything leaves us with a rather nice story. Sure it's not amazing, but I rather like it for what it is - a simple story where not much happens.

Day 762: The Vampires of Venice

The Vampires of Venice, aside from being a very fun story with some excellent location filming, introduces one of my favourite companions in the series in the form of Rory. Rory, Amy's fiancé (and later husband) is a very interesting character to have as a companion because of how he refuses to fit the traditional companion mould.

Normal companions for Doctor Who all generally follow the trend of going off and adventuring with the Doctor, having a lot of fun along the way. Rory bucks this trend by seeing that this entire lifestyle is actually incredibly dangerous. He spends much of this episode running around and being slightly nervous and afraid of what is happening because the entire process of travelling with the Doctor is not a safe experience, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that fact. But more than that, what Rory does with these feelings is channel them at the Doctor. In one of the story's best scenes, he openly says that the Doctor is dangerous because he makes people want to impress him, rather than because they want to go head-first into danger. It's a strong character beat for Rory, and marks the point where he goes from being just a comic relief love interest for Amy to an interesting character in his own right. He sees the Doctor for what he represents, and he's not afraid to tell the Doctor this fact.

And whilst the character obviously moves on in terms of his original characterisation - it would be fairly annoying if we had a companion travelling on the TARDIS who didn't enjoy the process of adventuring at all - Rory still keeps that wariness and that ability to speak his mind to the Doctor. And that forms part of what will be some of the best stories yet to come in the Eleventh Doctor's tenure. But that's all in the future, and we've still got work to do!

Day 761: Flesh and Stone

Flesh and Stone, as a piece of television, does one thing that feels very wrong in the context of Doctor Who and one thing that feels very right in the context of Doctor Who. Overall it's a good episode, if perhaps not quite as strong as The Time of Angels. But when it gets interesting, it tends to deviate from being reasonably poor to actually magnificent.

So, we see the Weeping Angels move in this episode. And whilst in the context of the episode it provides something that's reasonably creepy, it doesn't work in the context of the fuller series. You see, the appeal of the angels is that they are feasible monsters. They are the sorts of monsters that you could encounter in the street, or on TV, because their design is so simple and their methods of operation are such that they can be perfectly hidden from prying eyes - except of course when those eyes turn away. But the problem with this scene is that we can seen the Angels, and yet they are moving. It stops the magic of the creatures as a whole, because it removes the viewer's point of view from the overall story, making the Angels purely and completely fictional. In my opinion, it's the greatest misstep of Series 5, and not the best showing from the production team.

So why can I forgive this episode? Because it does something that the Davies era never really did. With respect to ongoing story arcs, Davies made them be mostly in the background of stories where they weren't really noticed by the main characters until the series finale. The only problem with this is that it begins to stretch the credibility of the story, particularly in Series 4 with Rose popping up on random screens just when the Doctor looks away from them. Moffat changes this, by having the Doctor openly notice the story arc 5 episodes into the 13 episode series. The Doctor sees the crack that has been making random appearances throughout the past couple of stories and acknowledges it, before trying to figure out what it means. We learn that it represents something from the end of the Universe, and that it also has the power to rewrite time. It also forms an integral part of the conclusion of the story, which all goes to show one simple thing: this story arc proves to be more of an arcing story than Davies' arcs.

The arcing story of the crack works by appearing throughout the series, each time giving more information and building upon the overall story of the series. It makes the whole of Series 5 feel connected, as if it's one giant storybook with little adventures dashed away within it. And beyond all of that it makes the story arc feel like a real story. You can believe that when the Doctor sees something wrong that he'd follow it up and not just dismiss it as a coincidence, only for it to come crashing down in a big way come the series finale. It's this attention to the overall narrative of the series that acts as one of the many reasons why Series 5 is my absolute favourite series of Doctor Who, and why it's such a joy for me to watch again.

Day 760: The Time of Angels

When Steven Moffat was first announced as the next show-runner for Doctor Who, the prevailing opinion in the fan community that I had involved myself with was that the show would end up becoming a lot scarier. It was a sensible judgement to make as 3 of his previous stories for the series had based themselves around incredibly scary concepts and monsters, and the other had a jump-scare that makes me yelp every single time. And whilst Moffat's Doctor Who is not as scary on average as some might have hoped, it still manages to provide some truly frightening episodes, such as can be seen in The Time of Angels.

The Time of Angels was the much-anticipated sequel to Blink, and manages to succeed on that front by building on the notion of what a Weeping Angel is. Every moment from when the Angel first appears on a screen to the electrifying final speech consists of Moffat building the Angels up as something more and more frightening than previously thought. He begins by telling the audience that the image of an angel will become a Weeping Angel, and expertly illustrates this by showing one coming out of a television screen. It's a wonderful concept, as it makes the entire notion of watching this episode dangerous, planting the idea that the Angels could jump out from the television screen at any moment. This idea of idea planting is further explored with Amy, where it is established that the Angels can take control of people just through looking at them. It's another example of how Moffat is making them more powerful, both in terms of the strength that they have in the episode, and the strength that they have in terms of the fear that surrounds them.

Furthermore, The Time of Angels does what could be considered unthinkable. It gives the Angels voice. In other scenarios, this would be a major misstep as it would devolve their power - a silent assassin is far more threatening than one that talks to you while they do it. But Moffat again uses this to his advantage, playing the Angels as creatures that exploit fear and will attack people for the sheer sport of it. It makes them more frightening in terms of their entire philosophy, turning them from generic monsters with some frightening twists to something truly worrying for the viewer.

And, on the whole, this story takes all of these things and works. Granted, there is one major misstep that is made in the next episode, but other than that it's still a very powerful episode.

Day 759: Victory of the Daleks

Victory of the Daleks, whilst not a brilliant story, is still one that I admire deeply. Perhaps I don't admire what turned out on screen – a poor design for the rebooted Daleks doesn't quite live up to expectations and is notably discarded as the series progresses – but I do admire what the plot sets out to do in terms of the ongoing story of the Doctor and the Daleks.

The title of the story: Victory of the Daleks, proves to be the most important part of the episode because this is a story where the Daleks unambiguously win. They don't set out to destroy the human race, instead they just want to survive, and the second half of the story is entirely based around this notion. We have the Doctor coming up against Daleks on their last legs, ready for him to take them out once and for all, and yet he still loses to them because they outwit him, running away when the time is right. But how do they manage to win in this story when they are on the verge of loss?

Consider that their attack on London is halfhearted, consisting of them turning all of the lights of London on, and then when that fails, turning an android into a bomb. It's not that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat aren't writing the Daleks to be dangerous, it's instead that they're writing the Daleks to be cunning. They take advantage of the Doctor wishing to save people and so they distract him at every possible opportunity such that they can make him do what they need him to do whether that be leave the Dalek ship so that they can escape, or recognise the Daleks so that they can activate the progenitor. It presents the Daleks as far more interesting villains than the simple forces of destruction that they were in the latter half of the Russell T Davies era, and it's a shame that this wasn't followed up on more in the Moffat era.

But still, it provides the backbone for what is an enjoyable, if a little underwhelming story, but another key part of the fantastic Series 5.

Day 758: The Beast Below

The Beast Below, unlike The Eleventh Hour, is not a perfect story. But that said, I do still love this story greatly because of how different it feels. One of the joys of having a new show-runner for Doctor Who means that the overall tone of the series has changed, moving from the more grounded Russell T Davies years to something more beautiful, more fairy tale-esque.

The best way to show this new approach to the series is to look at the design of the future world in The Beast Below. It's a future that looks slightly odd, and ever so wonderfully mad. We've got a starship that contains the entire population of the UK (less Scotland) that doesn't look like other spaceships, leaving sleek curves and bright white coats of paint behind for an image of tower blocks floating through space on a flying space whale. This goes towards presenting a vision of the future that actually looks rather fun to live in, leaving behind the technological advancements seen in the Russell T Davies era for something altogether more magical and exciting.

This can also be seen in the design of the Smilers, the 'monsters' of this story. Strongly present in the previews for this series, the evoke a certain feeling of fear and fascination from the audience. It's a design that feels slightly removed from the real world, as if it was dreamt up by an illustrator of a children's book and not by a real designer working for the government of Starship UK. And that lends the episode a certain special feeling, showing that Doctor Who is some sort of magical storybook land where all sorts of things can happen.

And it's through these designs that The Beast Below feels special, and helps to ingratiate this feeling of magic into Series 5. And it's all just more and more reasons for me to love this series of Doctor Who.

Day 757: The Eleventh Hour

Of all the 35 series of Doctor Who, Series 5 of the revived series is my absolute favourite. It's not out of an appreciation of the technical ability of the stories, in terms of the writing, directing and acting (although that does play a crucial role in why I love this series), instead it's about the overall tone of the series, making the entire programme into something absolutely magical.

I suppose that my love of this series actually starts with the trailers. The first preview trailer was fun and exciting, promising something different to the previous 5 years that we'd had under Russell T Davies. But that was only 1 minute long with some brief shots to show us how exciting the upcoming series would be. To understand the tone of the series, look no further than the trailer above. Previous trailers that had been specially shot for the series would focus on the fact that the series is new and exciting, perhaps a little bit clever, a little bit dangerous. They were good, but none really match the sheer beauty that is this trailer. It focuses on the magic of Doctor Who, this entire idea that the process of travelling with the Doctor is beautiful and magical. The time vortex isn't presented as some terrifying wasteland in the trailer, instead it's something weird and wonderful, filled with rich purples and dark blues. And through it all we have the Doctor, this mystical figure who can take control of the situation and save the day.

This is further shown in The Eleventh Hour, the Eleventh Doctor's first story. It is, in my opinion, actually perfect, and every single scene conveys the pure magic that the Doctor is. It's an absolute joy to watch, not least because Steven Moffat keeps on introducing little pieces of wonder to keep us occupied until the big reveal of the new Doctor. We have a story that can give us scenes like the Doctor driving a fire engine, before releasing a computer virus that turns every single piece of technology to zero, just so that some alien policemen can track the viruses point of origin to his phone, which is handily in the same room as Prisoner Zero, the villain of the piece. Other stories could botch these moments slightly by shifting the attention to something else, but Moffat never really lets us forget the fact that this man who is the Doctor is actually marvellous and brilliant, and a proper magician.

Take, for instance, my favourite scene in the entire story: the scene where he writes the virus and essentially sets up the entire conclusion to the episode. Beginning with a couple of jokes, it quickly evolves into something greater. We see the Doctor drop forth technobabble to show that he's smart, but Moffat keeps the technobabble relatable. Giving proper proofs to well known scientific problems is enough to show that this man is brilliant in terms of knowledge, but there are other details dropped in there as well. There's the fact that he offhandedly mentions the fact that he was accidentally responsible for Fermat's death, bringing forth the impossible nature of this man. There's the fact that he immediately turns that section of the plot over to Jeff, ensuring that both Jeff can get a job with anywhere that he wants to, as well as keeping the momentum of the plot moving. This moment with Jeff also shows that the Doctor can be magical in other ways, not just in terms of saving the Universe, but that he can help out ordinary people just on a whim, it just so happens that there are often bigger problems to solve at the same time. This presentation of the Doctor as a magical figure in what would otherwise be regarded as a lesser scene in an episode full of big moments, helps cement this idea that this entire series is just going to be absolutely wonderful, exciting, and magical. And beyond all that, the Jeff scene ends on a perfect joke about clearing your internet history.

So that's The Eleventh Hour. A perfect little fairy tale to start the series off. But we've just begun on this fantastic voyage, and I can honestly hardly wait to watch the rest of this beautiful series one more time.

Day 756: The End of Time Part 2

Part 2 of The End of Time is, after watching it again, actually quite good. I think I always picked up an air of negativity about this episode from various fan podcasts and reviews that I engaged with after this episode, which led me to have a reasonably poor image of this story in my head. Combined with the fact that my knee once dislocated whilst talking with friends about this episode (Other great knee dislocation stories include trying to get in a car and falling over, and sitting down on a lounge), and it stands to reason that my memories of this episode may not necessarily be fond. And yet, I still somewhat admire quite a fair bit of this episode for what it is.

To me, there are three parts of The End of Time Part 2 that make it what it is. The first is the sense of fun that permeates through the whole episode. A fair chunk of the first 45 minutes of the episode is content with being light and fun, albeit with slightly greater stakes than usual. A scene where the Doctor is captured by the Master, whilst it could have been written as the Doctor's weakest moment, instead turns into a scene with a little bit of bondage related subtext that just feels right for the tone of the series - a tone that allows for drama to be told but with an underlying knowledge that the audience wants to have fun as they watch it. This carries through much of the episode, such as the "worst rescue ever", or the gleeful scene of seeing the TIE Fighter scene from A New Hope rewritten to feature Bernard Cribbins and one of the cast from Horrible Histories as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. This simple allowance for the story to have fun makes it all the more enjoyable and helps alleviate some of the problems that the first half of The End of Time had.

Of course, one of the other great parts of The End of Time is Bernard Cribbins as Wilf. All of his scenes are perfect, because he brings the viewpoint of a simple normal person. When he's sent into space, whilst everyone else runs through the ship, trying to prevent a further calamity, he just stares wistfully at the Earth, allowing the beauty of the situation to sink in. His scene with the Doctor where he tries to give him the gun is so beautiful because of Cribbin's performance. As he cries over the fact that he's trying to save the Doctor, it's not overplayed, instead feeling absolutely real. Cribbins represents one of the great actors that Doctor Who has had, and his appearance in this story makes every scene he's in all the better.

Except, unfortunately, for one of the last scenes. The Doctor's decision to have a little tantrum over the fact that he's morally bound to rescue Wilf, and in the process of doing so kill himself, just doesn't work in my opinion. It reveals the Tenth Doctor to be quite a selfish person, and damages the overall character of the Doctor in my opinion. The scene is slightly rescued when the Doctor makes the offhand remark that he's lived too long, that helps give the impression that he himself has realised that he's not acting as he should be, and that maybe it's time for the new guy to take over. But even that is slightly ruined by the Tenth Doctor's final words. Approaching his oncoming death with the words "I don't want to go", whilst interesting and quite beautiful for some people, doesn't quite work for the Doctor.

The writer Terrance Dicks once famously described the Doctor as "never cruel nor cowardly" In his final Doctor Who story, Davies has written a Doctor that can be both of those things, cruel to Wilf, a man who would do anything for the Doctor, and cowardly in the face of his oncoming demise. Whilst I'm still able to enjoy this story, I think that it's time for a change, and I openly welcome the era of Matt Smith and Steven Moffat.

Day 755: The End of Time Part 1

There are many problems with The End of Time, in my opinion. Leaving behind the issues with Tennant's death, which we'll deal with in the second half tomorrow (where we'll hopefully get to some of the better parts of this story), the first half has its own myriad of issues.

I think that the largest issue is in the story's treatment of the Master. It decides that, instead of allowing the Master to be as he was before, where he was slightly unhinged but still in control of his situation, the production team decide to make the Master go completely insane. He literally jumps across the screen, turning into a mixture of Skeletor and Iron Man as he flies through wastelands, firing off electric beams as he dances. It looks impressive, but it doesn't quite allow for us to see the character as something that is engages on any sort of intellectual front. There's no equivalent scene of the phone call in The Sound of Drums, instead we're left with the Master eating turkey in less than seven seconds flat.

There's also the issue of the fact that the story is stuck with having to build up to a big finale. Normally, being part one of a two part story has not really been an issue for the Russell T Davies era, with Davies ensuring that enough happens in the first half so as to keep the audience's interest, while at the same time holding enough back for the finale to ensure that it's worth sticking around for. But the problem here is that Davies has held too much back for the finale, so we're stuck with an hour of waiting for the dual revelations that the Master has turned the human race into the Master race (which is too good a pun for me to say is a bad idea) and that the Time Lords are returning. Both of these ideas are strong, and both will be dealt with reasonably well in the second half of the story, the only problem is that the rest of the episode lacks anything meaty, instead leaving us with just the bare bones of a story.

Still, I'm fairly sure that things will improve when the second half of this story come along tomorrow. Then again, I'm also fairly sure that things will end up getting worse...

Day 754: The Waters of Mars

The Waters of Mars is, in my opinion, the best of the specials. It takes the character of Tennant's Doctor and pushes it to new levels, doing new and exciting things with the character that haven't really been seen in Doctor Who before. To put it simply, it takes the Tenth Doctor and turns him into a villain.

What the story does is it pushes the Doctor to the point of madness. It puts him in a scenario, much like that of The Fires of Pompeii, where everyone but him must die by the end of the adventure. And as he walks away, leaving them to their fate, he contemplates why he has to do this, particularly concerning the Laws of Time that must be obeyed at all costs. And as he hears the screaming of the crew members, he turns around and decides that he is going to save people, because the Laws of Time are his playthings to do with what he will. I think that this is perhaps because, once again, he's travelling alone, so he's got nobody looking over his shoulder. Faced with nobody to question whether what he is doing is the right thing or not, he promptly goes with what his twisted mind has decided should happen.

As can be seen in both of the clips above, we see the Doctor in a situation where we'd normally accept him as the hero. He's there, charismatically protecting people from danger and saving the day. But we don't see him as the hero, instead we see him as something that's altogether more dangerous and frightening. Whilst Murray Gold's music soars heroically to signify that the Doctor is ready to rescue people and Graeme Harper's direction continually places the Doctor against shining bright backdrops, signifying his god-like powers and acting as a call-back to The Fires of Pompeii, which featured a similar scene, we have a nice juxtaposition to represent the Doctor's darker side. Tennant's performance is altogether edgier and angrier, as he shouts his way through the dialogue, angrily breaking the very laws of nature itself because he wants to. Similarly Lindsay Duncan, who plays the base captain: Adelaide Brooke, is far more subdued, seeing what the Doctor is doing as wrong, and quietly attempting to defy him as her fellow crew members blindly obey his orders to desperately try to stay alive. Finally, whilst the script for this scene from Russell T Davies and Phil Ford has all of the usual flairs associated with a heroic action from the Doctor such as his charming way of fast talking, or a moment entirely intended to look cool (in this case, Gadget going to the TARDIS), in context it's seen as the slightly worrying thing that it is, giving a slightly worrying scene overall.

It all ends, of course, with tragedy. Adelaide commits suicide rather than allow the Doctor to bend the Laws of Time to his will, in a moment that forcefully shows that the Doctor's arrogance has gone too far this time. Facing what he has become, the Doctor opts to run away from what he knows must happen next. Because the next story is not a story for a Doctor to heroically save others. Instead, it's a story for a Doctor that deserves to die.

Day 753: Planet of the Dead

Planet of the Dead, like The Next Doctor, is another one of the specials that doesn't really feel that huge. Yes, there's been some foreign location filming in Dubai, which does look impressive, and there's also a sense that more money has been spent on this episode than on normal episodes, which makes the episode feel a little bit more special, but other than that it's an average science fiction romp of an episode. Which is what makes the episode rather interesting, in my opinion.

You see, this is a story in the mould of something like Partners in Crime or Smith and Jones. It features the Doctor having fun in a story that simply provides a fun adventure for the Doctor to have with his new companion. But, after the events of Journey's End, the Doctor has been travelling alone and he fully intends to stay that way, which eventuates in him rejecting Lady Christina's request to travel on the TARDIS with him. So what this episode becomes is an example of how the events of Journey's End have affected him. He's made the decision not to travel with anyone, even when he can see their clear potential as a companion. And the story quite obviously looks towards setting this moment of rejection up as quite an important moment.

Lady Christina is set up to be a basic concept for a companion. Not only does she have the physical and mental prowess required to become a companion, she's also a character that has just enough of an edge to make her stand out against the rest of the supporting cast. She's the only one with any sizeable back story, as well as the one that takes charge when events get out of hand. She's also able to build up a good relationship with the Doctor, gleefully disregarding his orders in much the same way that he gleefully disregards hers. She could have clearly been a companion, were it not for the fact that the Doctor was always going to reject her because he doesn't want someone else on the TARDIS. This simple rejection should be seen as important because the story itself is pointing out that she's perfect for the Doctor and yet he still decides to walk the lonely path.

All of this goes as an example to show how the events of Donna's departure affected this Doctor, and marks a nice example of character development for the Doctor, which will be explored tomorrow, with fairly larger consequences...

Day 752: The Next Doctor

At the end of the Russell T Davies era, a decision was made to have a year of specials, with David Tennant as the Doctor and a rotating cast of guest actors. The first of these specials is The Next Doctor and, to be honest, I am completely apathetic to this entire episode.

I don't think it's a problem with the script, from Davies himself, which is perfectly serviceable and has a lot of fun behaving as a simultaneous romp through Victorian London with the Cybermen and a character study for the man who thought he was the Doctor, Jackson Lake. It also has a wonderful villain, in the form of Miss Hartigan, a woman who clearly has some sort of horrible history behind her that has formed her into the woman that can control the Cybermen. It's a character that just works, in much the same way as Tobias Vaughn worked all the way back in The Invasion. But my problem with this is that it just doesn't quite work in terms of getting me involved with the story.

And I don't know why I just can't connect with this episode. Maybe it's the direction from Andy Goddard, which doesn't quite engage my attention in the same way that Graeme Harper or, to pick a future example, Rachel Talalay would. It feels flat, and doesn't really convey the dual beauty and horror of Victorian London. That this world could feel so warm at the beginning and be filled with the hidden horrors of workhouses where children are taken away, or women who are very poorly treated in a variety of horrible ways. Or maybe it's just the fact that I can't quite latch onto the potential of this episode, because once the tension of it being a story with a future Doctor is lost, it ends up just being a normal episode. And when we're dealing with specials, that's something that really needs to be thought about.

Day 751: Journey's End

Provided that you ignore 5 minutes of Journey's End, you're left with what is actually one of Russell T Davies' best finales. It fixes the majority of my problems with The Stolen Earth, and whilst it still has some mild problems, it's fairly easy to overlook them in the grand scheme of things.

The mild problems generally revolve around the Tenth Doctor clone (henceforth referred to as Handy Doctor) that was created with Donna's input. Coming completely out of nowhere, it doesn't entirely work as a resolution to the cliffhanger, making the audience feel just a little bit cheated as a result. Also, I'm not entirely happy with the fact that the tragic ending of Doomsday is entirely undone thanks to this clone of David Tennant that pops up out of nowhere to go off and have the sexy times with Rose (this also relies on the fact that people have forgotten that it's not an exact clone of David Tennant, it's also got some genetic input from Catherine Tate. Which could be useful, I suppose). But whilst I can nitpick this, it does work in the overall insane atmosphere that permeates through Journey's End. And also, it does give a magnificent Three Doctors joke courtesy of Captain Jack Harkness, which is a personal highlight of mine for this story.

Another highlight is the scenes featuring Davros, as played by Julian Bleach. The character dances as a villain for the Doctor, pointing out all of his failings as a character, such as his arrogance and his double standards of hating the army yet managing to turn all of his companions into his soldiers. The scenes also provide the much needed stillness that I was yearning for in The Stolen Earth. The extended running time of this episode allows for the Doctor and Davros to simply sit down and have a conversation of their various positions, which helps make the story just a little bit more palatable in my opinion.

So, at the end of the day, we're left with a story that, despite its flaws, is still ridiculously fun and one of my favourite finales from the Russell T Davies era. Except, of course, for one small thing.

I mentioned before about how I said to ignore 5 minutes of Journey's End. Those five minutes represent one of the most uncomfortable and frankly sadistic moments in the history of Doctor Who. Donna has partially merged with the Doctor, absorbing his mind. However, the mind of the Doctor is too big for a human and so it is threatening to kill Donna. So the Doctor does what the Doctor does. He wipes away her entire mind and all of her memories of their time together, effectively killing the woman that Donna had become. It doesn't feel like the right thing for the Doctor to do in that situation. Instead of letting her die as the wonderful woman that she became, he instead sentences her to the fate worse than death of making her forget everything that they did together.

And this isn't the only time that this has been brought up in the series, but in each of those times it was dealt with far more intelligently than it was here. In The War Games, for instance, the decision is taken out of the Doctor's hands for Jamie and Zoe's minds to be wiped. It works within the context of the story because it's being given to them as a sort of punishment from the Time Lords for travelling with the Doctor. The Doctor's hands are nowhere near this decision, and he feels just as heartbroken as we do that this injustice has occurred. So that's an argument previously present in the series to say that this sort of thing should be seen as heartbreaking on behalf of the Doctor. But one could argue that the Doctor does feel heartbroken over this action that has been forced upon him. So we need further evidence within the context of the series.

Enter Forest of the Dead. River's death scene is made all the more interesting because she does it willingly on behalf of the time that she spent with the Doctor. Despite the Doctor's protests of how time can be rewritten, she only responds by saying that her time with the Doctor can't be rewritten, and that she wants to die with those happy memories that she shared with him, rather than live and not remember. It presents the argument that the Doctor shouldn't have interfered with the memories of the companion, and that the companion should have really died rather than have someone else meddle with their lives. It also introduces the aspect of choice, that River, and by extension Donna, should be the one to choose their fate, and not the Doctor. It all looks towards putting the ending of Journey's End as something really quite uncomfortable.

Now, there is one last episode that is worth mentioning here, which is of course Hell Bent, the series finale to Capaldi's second series. However, I don't necessarily want to get ahead of myself with respect to the blog, so instead I'll just leave this here, and link forwards to that episode when the time comes. So, I suppose we'll just have to end on a cliffhanger for the moment, and pick up again later...

Behold, a cliffhanger has been resolved!

Day 750: The Stolen Earth

The Stolen Earth is an episode that I've personally got mixed feelings about. On paper, the episode feels remarkably fantastic, but as broadcast the episode doesn't quite work in some areas, while wholeheartedly succeeding in others.

I think that where the episode's key success is is in its scale. The invasion of Earth by the Daleks feels as epic as it ought to, with the Earth being subjugated in a ball of fire and mayhem, all kept to within the time limit of around 10 minutes. It all makes the Daleks feel impressive and as if they're a powerful force that could feasibly destroy the Earth. Also important is the presence of the large supporting cast, with companions from throughout the Russell T Davies era taking part, making the event feel just a little bit larger than normal episodes would.

However, both of these points also work to the story's disadvantage in my opinion. The Daleks, whilst they feel epic, don't have any real menace behind them that would make them truly frightening. Think, for instance of the silent "Exterminate" scene in The Parting of the Ways, where the tension of Lynda's oncoming death continues to rise, and is then subverted, giving the Daleks the sense that they enjoy the sensation of playing with their victims before they kill them. There's no real scene of that nature in The Stolen Earth, instead the Daleks feel like soldiers going out and killing instead of the truly malevolent creatures of hate that they truly are.

Also, whilst having a large supporting cast is fun, it also makes the episode feel just a little bit crowded. For all that I love the conference call scene in this episode, especially the flirting between Captain Jack and Sarah Jane, I can't help but feel that there's just a little bit too much going on in too short a space of time for my liking. The episode needs a point of stillness within it, where the characters can just breathe and talk about what's happened. There are moments that are like that within the episode, such as Martha meeting with her mother but they all are part of some greater scene where action is being taken, which doesn't totally work in my opinion. Although I will say in the story's defence that the scene where the Doctor and Rose meet again is actually fantastic, and was everything that I was looking for within this episode.

There's also the cliffhanger, which is probably one of the best in the series' history. The regeneration works because it not only represents the oncoming death of one of the series' main characters, the Tenth Doctor, but it also shows takes all previous 'certain death' scenarios featured in cliffhangers by providing an easy way to show that this really is the Doctor dying and there is no way out for him. That is, unless something completely ridiculous happens to lend a hand and get him out of that situation...

Day 749: Turn Left

The Doctor-lite episode was a concept developed by Russell T Davies in order to work around the main cast's shooting schedules. A typical Doctor-lite episode will only have the Doctor in it for a fraction of screen time, with most of the focus instead being placed on the supporting characters. What makes these episodes particularly interesting is the way in which they tell a Doctor Who story without the presence of the Doctor. Love and Monsters decided to take the angle of looking at people who were obsessed with the Doctor, taking the hole left by the Doctor's absence and filling it in with the new characters and their impression of the Doctor. Blink, on the other hand, opted for a different approach by instead showing a Doctor Who story that the Doctor doesn't happen to feature in very much, with the lack of the Doctor in the story not as noticeable thanks to Steven Moffat's strong storytelling. Turn Left feels as if it looked at both of those stories and instead chose to tackle the initial problem head on. Whilst the previous adventures tried to dance around the fact that the Doctor wasn't present, Turn Left openly asks the question of what would happen if you tried to tell a Doctor Who story without the Doctor.

The result is, of course, chaos. Every single event that the Doctor should have saved Earth from instead goes horribly wrong, with massive amounts of destruction and death taking place without his valued input into the Earth. It's an episode that's filled with horrific event after horrific event, and it feels absolutely terrible to watch. It's worth noting as well that Davies makes the clever decision to create all of the tragedy out of the lighter episodes of the series such as The Runaway Bride or Partners in Crime. It's a retroactive impact for all of those previous adventures because it suddenly reminds you that all of those stories had the chance to end horribly, for all of their rompy nature. It reinforces the importance of the Doctor to the Universe, creating not only a stronger episode but a stronger series overall.

And there's so much more besides this to create a frightfully good story. The scenes with Mr Colasanto go from being heart-warming to tragic, and Jacqueline King delivers an understated but perfect performance as Donna's mother. It's one of the best episodes that Davies has produced under his tenure and is, in many ways, absolutely perfect.

Day 748: Midnight

Midnight is, quite simply, one of the best episodes of Doctor Who ever produced. It works perfectly on every level, in particular through Russell T Davies' writing and the frightening performances through the members of the cast (Tennant's face once his voice has been stolen is one of the most haunting performances he has ever given and fully sells the notion that the situation has now gotten completely out of control). And amongst the many things that I think about when watching this story, one that often comes to mind is how the story was originally written: as a riff on Voyage of the Damned.

Both Midnight and Voyage of the Damned are stories with similar premises. The Doctor goes on a journey on some vessel when a disaster happens. His role is then to band together a group of people to find safety and get all of them out of that situation alive. Voyage of the Damned looks at the situation when those people can bring out the best of themselves in horrific situations, while Midnight concerns people who bring out the worst of themselves. The people in Midnight are not brave, nor do they care for others. Instead they are ruthlessly paranoid and frequently nasty. There are a few good eggs in the bus where Midnight takes place, but their voices are drowned out by the louder and more judgemental.

I think that the differences between the two episodes are summed up best by their endings, just after the crisis is over. In Voyage, Rickston Slade, the least likeable of the survivors, thanks the Doctor personally for saving his life, before quietly gloating about how he's been made rich because of the event. He's not a particularly nice character, but he goes to the trouble of thanking his saviour. In Midnight, Val, the character who has been voicing all of the paranoia and was one of the main people who took away the Doctor's control and attempted to take away his life, instead attempts to cover her tracks by saying that she said that the monster was Sky. A simple moment of a horrible woman failing to admit her own faults and instead jumping to what she sees as her own moral high ground. But it, of course, is pointless because we all know that she was just as at fault as the rest of them. The differences between the two scenes are stark. One shows a man who isn't a nice man, but still has goodness within him. The other is about a woman who tries to show that she's a nice woman, when really she has truly awful qualities within her.

Of course, what makes this all the more frightening is that, whilst we can watch Voyage of the Damned and think that this is how everyone would behave in a crisis, we can watch Midnight and know that it is how everyone behaves in crises. People jump to conclusions and blame anyone for the events that have taken place, resulting in a heightened state of unrest within the area of the situation. You only have to think of the recent terror attacks that took place last year and the reaction of certain elements of society, be they politicians, the media, or just ordinary people on the street, and you can realise that this simple little story is one of the most accurate representations of the problems with the world today.

Day 747: Forest of the Dead

I have to say, my relationship with Forest of the Dead is one that has evolved over time. On first viewing, I didn't actually care a great deal about it. Yes, I speculated about who River Song was in the lead-up to this episode, but when it first aired on Australian television, I actually found that I wasn't that engaged by it, possibly due to the fact that I was doing my Maths homework at the same time as watching it. But every viewing after that first bad impression has made me re-evaluate it, making it better and better. And the joy is that this is something that's still happening, because even yesterday I stated that I thought that this two-parter was Moffat's weakest for Davies. Now, I'd be inclined to say that it's his best.

There are so many reasons as to why I've come to think this. There's the horror of being in a virtual dream-state of a world, where you believe that everything is real despite the fact that it doesn't make complete logical sense. It's something that taps into my inner hypnophobia, or fear of sleep, where I occasionally have panic attacks about my state of mind when dreaming. The entire idea of a loss of control over such basic mental processes frightens me, and yet it is something that we deal with on a regular basis. It's one of the more overlooked things in Moffat's script - most people focus on the fact that he tried to make shadows scary. I'd argue that he succeeded in making dreaming scary.

There's also, of course, River Song's story. While yesterday I bemoaned the fact that knowing River's backstory with the Doctor takes a whole lot of the fun out of the adventure, in Forest of the Dead it makes it all the better. Given the events of The Husbands of River Song, where we see the Doctor's penultimate encounter with River, and where the groundwork is laid for the ending here, it makes the ending all the more heartbreaking. We see this character that we know so well die such that her future time with the Doctor can be preserved, and her speaking of the Doctor with the suit and new haircut immediately brings to mind Capaldi's beautiful performance in The Husbands of River Song. And of course, it makes it the ending triumphant as well, because when the Doctor realises that how to save River, it doesn't feel like Tennant coming to this realisation, it feels like we're seeing the final leg of a relay race, where Tennant, Capaldi and Smith have been constantly running through time and space to try and rescue River. It's a beautiful moment, and helped me to re-evaluate this story immensely, making it one in a long line of Doctor Who episodes that I'm glad I watched again as part of this blog's voyage through time and space.

Day 746: Silence in the Library

It's become incredibly difficult to experience Silence in the Library, and its follow-up story Forest of the Dead, as they were originally intended. It's not any fault of the story itself, which is otherwise rather fine, if perhaps the weakest of the four stories that Steven Moffat wrote under Russell T Davies. Instead, it's a problem with the way in which the series developed after these episodes aired.

You see, this story features the first appearance of River Song, not just for the Doctor, but for the audience as well. Our reaction to her, as originally written, should be confusion and a sense of unwariness, because we're encountering this person who supposedly knows the Doctor from the future, and yet we've never seen her before in our lives. Moments like her revealing her own sonic screwdriver, or the fact that she's overly familiar with the Doctor are clearly written and directed as if they should be quietly shocking, and yet they aren't.

The reason is, of course, that we've met River Song countless times over the course of the series, it's just that we've met her in episodes after Silence in the Library. And because she's such a prevalent character, all of the mystery that originally surrounded her is now lost. Even the most recently broadcast episode, The Husbands of River Song, explained the presence of her sonic screwdriver in this episode. And whilst this is a necessary thing in terms of the overall structure of the series, I can't help but feel a bit sad that I won't get to experience that original mystery about this character again.

I can't help but miss the joy of fan speculation as to who River Song is, as well as other things like what happened to Donna in the cliffhanger, or the meaning of CAL. I remember going online and delving just a little bit deeper than I normally would into the world of the online Doctor Who fandom, which led to me discovering set reports, and like-minded fans who had their own crazy theories as to what happened. But that time is over now, and we've moved on with a new Doctor, and new stories to speculate about. Funnily enough, whilst writing this blog, I looked up some of those blogs earlier. One has devolved into a shadow of its former self. Another hasn't been updated since 2012. A further one just announced that they're going to be under new management. It's sad to see that they've gone away, it feels like some of that magic of a time gone by has passed on.

But still, time marches on, and other sites popped up to replace the old ones that I moved away from. And I can still speculate on other stuff forthcoming in the next series of Doctor Who. It's just a constant reminder, I suppose, that We've Got Work To Do!

Day 745: The Unicorn and the Wasp

As I approach the end of the blog, I'm looking forward to the luxury of being able to watch episodes of Doctor Who without any sort of structure attached to how I watch them. Indeed, I think that I'll mark my freedom by watching some relaxing and fun episodes, like The Unicorn and the Wasp, one of my favourite episodes in the history of Doctor Who.

The Unicorn and the Wasp doesn't set out to be a particularly deep and meaningful story, instead it just wants to be a lot of fun in 1920's England with Agatha Christie. And it succeeds at that point, with some excellent writing from Gareth Roberts and some very interesting directorial choices from Graeme Harper. Roberts' writing is perfectly light, with any real moments of danger being underpinned with comedy, leading to a lighter story overall. The scene where the Doctor is poisoned, for instance, whilst the music and camera suggests that this is a stressful and dangerous moment, Roberts' script calls for it to descend into a farcical game of charades that is excellently played by the actors. It creates a memorable scene as it brings fun and joy back into the dangerous adventures that normally plague a Doctor Who story.

And it's moments like the scene above that remind me how much I love Doctor Who, because it can be perfectly fun and light whilst still being a remarkably exciting programme.