Day 804: Listen

I wish that I had Listen when I was a kid. You see, when I was a kid, I was pretty much petrified of everything. Not only was I afraid of normal things like the dark, and heights, and water, but I was also afraid of more peculiar things like cinemas, or moral espousing vegetables, or fruit based episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine. And my reaction to all of that fear was to avoid it wherever possible, to the point of avoiding all contact with it whatsoever because I simply didn't want to have that feeling of dread again. That moment when fear takes over your entire body, and you feel blood rushing through your heart, and all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry. And Listen is all about that.

Listen is a story about fear. It doesn't appear that way, on first glance, instead it looks like a curious story all about monsters that can hide perfectly - an evolution of the paranoia that was first seen in Moffat's two part story The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon. But Listen decides to go down a slightly different path, by looking instead at the characters' emotional responses to the situation. In particular, we notice their reaction to fear, and how they cope with it. The young Danny Pink just lets it fester within his mind, preventing him from being able to do anything, as seen in his petrified state through most of his scenes. Clara works with fear by building around it, putting herself into a situation where she has at least some control over the situation, like when she helps young Danny overcome his fears through giving him an army of toy soldiers. Orson Pink, on the other hand, hides from his fear, trying desperately to ignore it but always knowing that it's there.

And then there's the Doctor. Over the course of the episode, we learn that he uses fear to his advantage, in part due to an encounter that he had with Clara when he was just a child on Gallifrey. Fear is the thing that can inspire him, to make him into such a brave person. For him, fear is a superpower, allowing you to do fantastic things instead of curling up in a ball and hoping that it can all be over. And that's the sort of message that I needed when I was a kid.

I never realised the potential of fear when I was a kid, I never realised that I could use it to my advantage. I just let it control me, instead of that symbiotic relationship that Listen advocates for. And I can't help but wish that my younger self know about all of that, that fear doesn't have to be an adversary, it can instead be a companion; helping out and driving that scared little kid to do something instead of hide in his room all day. Because, really, fear makes companions of us all.

Day 803: Robot of Sherwood

Robot of Sherwood is not a brilliant episode. But, to be fair, it never set out to be a brilliant episode. A concept along the lines of 'The Doctor meets Robin Hood' is clearly opting for more of a rompy, throw-away episode than the two previous episodes in Capaldi's first series. And, looking at it through that lens, it's a very fun and happy episode. The Doctor gets interesting things to do whilst still being a hero, the villain (the Sheriff of Nottingham as played by Ben Miller) isn't bothering with such concepts as subtlety, which ends up giving us one of the best moments in the entire series ("First Derby, then Lincoln, then THE WORLD!"). In general, it's all just a generic episode of Doctor Who.

But there's clearly something that makes it a Capaldi era story. That something is Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald, whose character has gone down a very interesting direction that we're beginning to see built upon here. As I mentioned in The Bells of Saint John, Clara is set up to be the Doctor's equal. Whilst this isn't so much focussed upon in the rest of Matt Smith's time as the Doctor, which focuses more on the Doctor puzzling over Clara as the perceived 'Impossible Girl', in Capaldi's time it certainly comes more to the forefront. Take, for instance, in Robot of Sherwood, where it's Clara that gets to have the more interesting conversations with the villain than the Doctor. Whilst he's locked up in a cell in the basement of a castle. Clara sits at a dinner table with the Sheriff of Nottingham and they discuss his evil plan. So, in terms of the overall structure of the story, we see Clara as the main driving force instead of the Doctor, which is a reasonably interesting thing to see.

What's also interesting to see is that Clara's actually acting like the Doctor. The Sheriff isn't eager to reveal his plans to her so she tricks him by using a mixture of psychology and guesswork to figure out what's happening. It's a far cry from the Clara that we saw in Deep Breath, where she faced down the villain and was able to take control whilst clearly being very afraid at the same time. In Robot of Sherwood, she shows a mixture of confidence and arrogance, noted at the point where she explains what she's done to the Sheriff at the conclusion of the scene, showing off how clever she is. And these things feel very Doctor-ish, which shows just how much she's been absorbing from the Doctor in their travels together.

So it's a hint towards a very interesting story arc for Clara's character, one that shall continue all the way up to her departure. But we'll have to wait and see how that all pans out, for tomorrow we've got far more of a Doctor heavy episode than is first apparent...

Day 802: Into the Dalek

I mentioned yesterday about how the Capaldi era focuses more on the prospect of character interaction and character study. Whilst this impression is certainly formed after watching Deep Breath, it's with Into the Dalek that the concept really cements itself with an episode that is strikingly good, because of the way in which it deals with character.

The story is really all about the Doctor facing the prospect of a good Dalek. We go from him being sceptical about the prospect to a quiet joy as he learns more about the Dalek, and discovers that it has discovered beauty in a world of hatred. And that's quite a good concept, because the Daleks are set up to be one-dimensional villains with no care for anything that isn't Dalek. It's part of their appeal as villains; that there is absolutely no reasoning with them, they are just a destructive force of nature. It's all very interesting, but it's fairly expected that the Dalek being revealed as good would just be a defect in the Dalek's programming and it really is bad after all. In effect, then, it renders the first half hour or so of the episode a missed opportunity, presenting us with an interesting concept and then cruelly snatching it away from us before we got to know it.

But then writers Phil Ford and Steven Moffat elect to do something more interesting with it, and have the Doctor try to convince the Dalek to be good. The Doctor does this by hooking his brain up to the Dalek's, reminding him of all the beauty that the Dalek saw, everything which drives the Doctor to go forth and be a good man in the Universe. But the Dalek doesn't just see that, it also sees hatred and anger within the Doctor's mind. There's so much hatred of the Daleks impressed within the Doctor's mind that it inspires the Dalek to go forth and kill all other Daleks in the nearby vicinity, which it does in a very impressive action sequence. But beyond that, we also see heartbreak on the Doctor's face. Because he was presented with this concept of a good Dalek, and he tried to bring it back, but he got it slightly wrong. And he got it slightly wrong because of his own faults as a person, because he has so much anger and hatred within him that he tries to ignore, but he's forced to by the end of the episode.

It's an argument that's summed up by the top and tail of the episode. At the start, the Doctor asks Clara whether he's a good man. At the end, the allied Dalek tells the Doctor that he is a good Dalek. It's a subtle moment, but one that sums up much of the episode in my view. Certainly another good start to this strong series.

Day 801: Deep Breath

When Peter Capaldi was announced as the Doctor, you could feel a wave of excitement dash through the Doctor Who fan community. Everyone looked at him as someone new and exciting, an older Doctor to complement the two younger Doctors that had most recently taken on the role. And I was initially excited to see him as the Doctor. But then, as I got more and more used to the idea of him playing the role, I got a bit worried about whether I would even like him; whether I would come to accept his face as the Doctor. Whilst everyone else jumped up in the air at the idea of the Doctor as a serious figure, one who wasn't sure whether he was even a good man or not, I quietly sat back and waited to see what would happen with this new man in the role.

At least I'd still have Steven Moffat's writing to look forward to, which has been rejuvenated by the prospect of a new Doctor. We've now entered the next, and probably final phase, of the Moffat era of Doctor Who, which I'd call the Capaldi era. It's not quite as focussed on the magic of the concept of Doctor Who, nor on the idea of showing the spectacle of travelling through time and space. Instead, we get a story that's more focussed on character interaction and character study. Indeed, one of the most exciting scenes in the episode isn't the final battle between the Paternoster Gang and the clockwork droids, it's a conversation between Clara and Madame Vastra. In it, Vastra helps Clara come to terms with the Doctor's regeneration by deliberately riling her up, taking Clara's insecurities about this new Doctor and supposing that it might be because he isn't a pretty young man. It sends Clara into a rage that helps her come to terms with the regeneration and realise that she's being unfair to the new Doctor. And it's all symbolised by Vastra's veil, which she uses to hide her lizard visage from those that only want to see a mask and not her own true self. While at the start of the scene, Vastra wears it, it is gone by the end, signifying that Clara is ready to see the Doctor for what he is, which is reflected in her further conversations with him which are far more focussed on how to solve the ongoing problem, as well as how to react with this new Doctor.

And as Clara has to get used to this new Doctor, I've got to get used to him as well. I will admit, I warmed to him over the course of the episode. I wasn't too sure about the new found anger for the twelfth Doctor, but I loved that he kept his keen mind, most obviously seen in the restaurant scene as he deduces that they are surrounded by robots. And so, at around two-thirds of the way through the episode, I was ready to accept him as the Doctor. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, he abandoned Clara to a collection of robots in favour of his own safety. My belief in the Doctor was ruined, I was utterly distraught. How could this man do this? He's been my hero for around ten years, and here he is, doing such a callous act. And as Clara was interrogated by the Half-Face Man who led the robots, I was utterly convinced that the Doctor wouldn't be there to save her, and that it would all end badly.

But then, as Clara was questioned, she put her hand out behind her so that the Doctor could grab it and she would know that he would be there. And an unfamiliar hand belonging to an unfamiliar face grabbed it, sending me into a wave of shock - a further example of how I may never be able to trust this Doctor. And what felt like an eternity later, but in reality only half a second, that unfamiliar man pulled off the disguise that he was using, revealing the Doctor. Not Peter Capaldi playing the Doctor, this man was the Doctor. A hero that's always there, protecting you, even when you're afraid and at your most vulnerable. Sure, he might go about it in an interesting way, and he might not be the most polite to you in doing so, but he will always be there for you when you most need it.

And, from that moment on, I always accepted Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. Even when he possibly killed the Half-Face Man, and throughout the rest of the series as he contemplated whether he was a good man, I always knew that he was. Because he is the Doctor, and I'm sorry that I ever doubted him.

Day 800: The Time of the Doctor

When I started Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor, I kept on saying that Series 5 was my favourite series of all of Doctor Who. It's a beautiful fairy tale, where we see a daft old madman who stole a magic box go through the Universe and be wonderfully impossible. And I suppose that one of my great disappointments about the rest of Smith's tenure as the Doctor is that Moffat decided to move on from Series 5 and go into different territories; first making the series BIG and epic, and then going through a period of simple variety as it tried to figure out what it really wanted to do. And that's okay, that's good, it's got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the things that it used to be. And The Time of the Doctor does exactly that.

The Time of the Doctor is a return to the Series 5 model of Doctor Who - a fairy tale writ large. The concept is quietly beautiful, telling the story of a man who spent 900 years protecting one little village from all the forces of the Universe combined. It's not a big story, even with all the flashy special effects and the fact that every single villain that the Doctor has had is attacking all at once, because it focuses on the smallness of the occasion - everything is centred around the village, which is just a simple little town with nothing much to distinguish it as anything special. It draws the mind to Leadworth, that other little town that this Doctor protected, right at the start of his incarnation. And that's not the only comparison that you can make about that fresh faced Doctor compared with his far more ragged ending come his final death. The children's pictures of the Doctor bring to mind young Amelia in The Eleventh Hour, whilst the dancing scene is reminiscent of the Doctor at Amy and Rory's wedding in The Big Bang. Even the crack makes a return appearance, this time signalling the return of the Time Lords as Gallifrey tries to find a safe passage back to its home universe. But there's a little bit more to the story than just that, something which makes it special in my opinion.

The Time of the Doctor feels like one of the few regeneration stories to regard regeneration as something joyous. The End of Time saw it as another word for death, The War Games read it as punishment, and the less said about Time and the Rani, the better. But The Time of the Doctor says that regeneration should be seen as something truly beautiful, proudly proclaiming that it's the perfect way to cheat death. It feels absolutely magical to see the Doctor begin to regenerate as Murray Gold's music swells to a heroic climax, because we can recognise that regeneration isn't the Doctor dying, it's the Doctor living. It feels like it's one last magic trick from the raggedy Doctor, before he goes off into his TARDIS and takes on a new life.

And so we say farewell to Matt Smith as the Doctor. I'm not going to lie, Smith is one of my absolute favourite Doctors. He brings so much magic to the role, turning the Doctor into a weird and bizarre, but ultimately clever hero. And there are so many stories of his that rank amongst my personal favourites, like The Eleventh Hour, Vincent and the Doctor, The Doctor's Wife, The Girl Who Waited, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The Snowmen, or even The Time of the Doctor, to but name a few. And, even though we're about to go to someone who might trump Smith as the best Doctor ever, Smith still remains my Doctor. And I will always remember when the Doctor was him.

Day 799: The Day of the Doctor

The Day of the Doctor is, unsurprisingly, perfect. It's a massive celebration, not so much of the programme itself, but of the philosophy behind the programme. And there's honestly so much happening in this episode that I'll have to skim over an awful lot, and I'll just look at a few highlights that I feel are what makes this episode special.

For a start, there's the very concept of the episode itself, and how it plays out. One of the biggest changes that Russell T Davies made to the character of the Doctor when he brought the series back in 2005 was to have the Doctor destroy Gallifrey and kill all of the Time Lords. And that's good for the programme, as it introduces a new facet to the Doctor's character; something which leads him to have a new found sense of regret and guilt about what he's done. But the problem with this is that this doesn't seem like something that the Doctor would do. The Day of the Doctor keeps coming back to that question as John Hurt's War Doctor, who is about to commit that act, continually questions himself about what is his best option. So that gives the story an opening to consider what the character of the Doctor really should be, what connects each of the twelve actors who have so far played him into doing what the Doctor does.

And we see that through the sub-plot of the episode, where the Doctors have to not only prevent a Zygon invasion of Earth, they also have to prevent UNIT from blowing up the Earth as well. So they do this by forcing them into a situation where they have to negotiate a peace, by wiping everyone's memory of whether they are Zygon or human and then forcing them to sit down and talk. It's put down in the episode as penance for the Time War, where the Doctor feels so guilty about what he has done to Gallifrey and how he was forced to take the violent solution that he opts to always seek for the peace in the universe. It's what drives the New Series Doctors in a nutshell, that they remember what happened on that fateful day on Gallifrey and that they swear never to do it again, they will be the Doctor forever-more.

But the problem with that reading, as the story points out, is that it still doesn't excuse the War Doctor from destroying Gallifrey. Because that title that the Doctor has taken on extends far back to before the series even started, all the way back to before the TARDIS landed in a junkyard in 1963. It's a decision that he made to never be cruel or cowardly, always to help people in their time of need. And with all of that in mind, it's still impossible to imagine the Doctor destroying Gallifrey like that. As Clara says when the Eleventh Doctor joins the Tenth and War Doctors in support to use the Moment to destroy Gallifrey "I never pictured you doing it". As written, it's an easy decision to make for the character, but when you start to picture it in your mind, you can't see any of the Doctors doing it - actually killing so many innocent lives.

So, naturally, the Doctor decides to rewrite history, bringing together all of his past, and one of his future, selves so that they can save Gallifrey by sending it away somewhere safe from Daleks. And it's one of the most beautiful moments in the history of the programme because it's all about saving lives on a massive scale - taking the peaceful solution en masse. And throughout that sequence, there's one moment that stands out for me as a single segment of joy that's never fully explored in the episode. Of all the Doctors there, only a handful get put on the screen by themselves. And chief among them is not the eyebrows of the Twelfth Doctor, instead it's the face of the Ninth. This man, who has been so tortured by this decision that he believes that he has made, is here saving Gallifrey and doing the thing that he constantly wished that he was able to do throughout his all too brief time aboard the TARDIS. And that's kind of perfect.

So that's The Day of the Doctor in a nutshell. It takes the concept of what the series is all about and plays around with it, before finally settling on this idea of the Doctor as the man of peace in a Universe at war. And it's that concept that's made Doctor Who one of the greatest television programmes ever, in my opinion, and it's what made the last 2 and a bit years such a joy to do. But that time must come to an end, as all things do, and the end is rapidly approaching for We've Got Work to Do...

Day 798: The Name of the Doctor

The Name of the Doctor is actually really good. I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was; I think it left me feeling a bit cold on first viewing and so I was fully expecting to be disappointed by it on a re-watch. But, as I say, I was rather pleased with it, and it's mainly because of the new context that I watched it in.

The Name of the Doctor is unlike every other series finale that we've had so far in the new series. It's not a big celebration where we get to see the Doctor triumph over evil, but at some sort of cost, instead it's a quiet, dark tale where we see the Doctor come face to face with his final days. There's so much finality and grimness surrounding the episode, from the fact that essentially every one of the main parts except for Madame Vastra gets killed off at some point in the episode to the darker shadows and tones that director Saul Metzstein paints the episode with, giving the impression that this is not the usual end of series romp that we've come to expect. And that's good, because it fits with what the story is aiming to be about: the Doctor coming face to face with his own mortality as the vast majority of the action is set around his grave. You wouldn't expect it to be a particularly rompy episode; it should be relatively serious and dark. But that's really just half the story of what this episode truly represents.

Although this was not known at the time, The Name of the Doctor was Matt Smith's last regular episode of Doctor Who. He's got two more episodes, both of which are 'special' episodes that stand relatively separate from the rest of the series. And over the course of those specials, we learn that Matt Smith's incarnation of the Doctor is technically the final incarnation of the Doctor, having used up all 12 of his regenerations. So read in all of that context, The Name of the Doctor feels like a farewell to Doctor Who itself, a quiet moment when we face the inevitable end of the programme and reflect on its power. When we dash through the Doctor's past in the time stream, we can now read this as one last look in the memory box before we put it away in a distant cupboard. Similarly, whilst it's a relatively brief and un-remarked upon scene within the story, the moment when the Paternoster Gang looks out at the night sky turning itself off because the Doctor wasn't there to save them speaks wonders as to the greater impact that the programme has had on the lives of millions, although the moment works far better on the smaller scale as we see the Paternoster Gang torn apart because of the Doctor's interference with them is removed, killing Jenny and making Strax into a monster, instead of the character that we know and love.

Read in all of that context, The Name of the Doctor becomes a sad and beautiful coda to the history of Doctor Who, before it goes forth into the great 50th anniversary celebrations that await us tomorrow. But before we do that, I just want to make a quick wrap up of something else.

The Purple Period of Steven Moffat's time as show-runner kind of ends here, with a bit of a run-on through the rest of Matt Smith's tenure before Capaldi takes the reigns as the Doctor, bringing with him a new approach to the programme. And watching it all again, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. The Purple Period is an era of variety, where each episode is wildly different from the next. Consider that within the 9 episode stretch from The Snowmen to The Name of the Doctor, we have 3 writers who do multiple episodes, each of which is completely and utterly different to their other stories for the same era. It feels good to see so much variety within the programme, an ability to really get a grip on the sheer breadth of travelling in time and space. But, alongside that, there's also a strong lack of consistency throughout the series.

Whilst the variety is good, it also means that there's no sense that each episode works in the same universe as the one before or after it - there's no real sense that Moffat is looking over the programme and keeping control of how everything will look at the end of the day. That's how we end up with relatively weaker stories like Nightmare in Silver or Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS; they could have been good stories had a little bit more attention been paid to them before they went to screen. It means that The Purple Period is unfortunately a bit of a failure, a time when Doctor Who should have been spectacular but it simply wasn't. It doesn't bode well for the final two episodes in this section, but oddly enough, I've got a feeling that everything will turn out just fine.

Day 797: Nightmare in Silver

I don't especially like being negative about Doctor Who episodes. I like to think that every story has potential, everything could theoretically be extraordinary. But sometimes I'll come across episodes that just don't work. And Nightmare in Silver is unfortunately one of those episodes, and it's a little bit sad to see that potential of an episode lost.

The brief of the episode appears relatively simple: make the Cybermen scary again. In the new series the Cybermen have essentially lost their way, going from what was admittedly a good introduction in Rise of the Cybermen to a series of diminishing returns where it felt like they were forced into the background as generic bad guys. They should be seen as scary monsters, the more frightening equivalent to the Daleks, but they just haven't been portrayed in that way. So Nightmare in Silver aims to correct this, by showing the Cybermen as a deadly force that festers away in your nightmares, ready to come out and attack you. However it fails, because the Cybermen are never able to feel particularly scary.

Nightmare in Silver introduces a couple of new additions to the cyber-arsenal to attempt to make them more of a threat. The Cybermen can detach parts of their body, for instance, to attack people from a distance and lure targets into a false sense of security. And I think that this is something that's well implemented by writer Neil Gaiman in terms of story, where he tries to have the Cybermen hiding in the shadows and making them stealthier. But director Stephen Woolfenden doesn't portray it in this way, instead giving the Cybermen a wider space in which to work and removing any sort of tension associated with the scene. It could have been something special but it just wasn't, and so any sense of threat from the Cybermen is dampened.

But, at the very least, the core concept of the Cybermen is good, right? The idea that these creatures used to be humans until they were turned into emotionless, faceless beings. It's frightening, and strong, and completely ignored in Nightmare in Silver. We don't get to see people converted into Cybermen, we don't get to see them stripped of their humanity. Instead we get a half baked idea of conversion, which is based around the idea of Cyber-Mites digging into the flesh and converting living matter as efficiently as it can. But whilst that does come across as a cool concept, the converted people are not remotely like Cybermen. The Doctor, for instance, has almost half his brain controlled by the Cybermen in this episode. But, instead of that half of the brain being represented by something chilling and emotionless, we get Matt Smith running about the room, chewing on every piece of scenery that he can find and calling himself Mr. Clever. As I'm sure you can agree, this is the very height of cold, hard logic and an emotionless exterior. It's a huge misstep for the episode as it betrays the entire core concept of the Cybermen, and makes them into something far more generic.

There are good things in this episode, though. Whilst Smith does chew the scenery in his role as Mr. Clever, it is at least an entertaining performance and improves the story somewhat. Jenna Coleman as Clara has settled into her role well, but she is unfortunately hampered by still being in her first series so most writers are stuck writing for her as a generic companion instead of the stronger character development that we'll see later on in her time. And I should single out Warwick Davies in the guest cast who manages to make his final scenes work really well by just reading the lines without emotion, portraying a tired monarch who's just a little bit depressed about what he's done.

And those good things do mean that, on average, I tended to have a reasonably alright time with this episode. But the fact that the episode could have been something better if it were just directed and written just that little bit more strongly. As it is, it's just an exercise in lost potential - a story that could have earned a gold medal but had to settle for silver.

Day 796: The Crimson Horror

The surprise break-out stars of the second section to Steven Moffat's era of Doctor Who - the BIG section, were the characters of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, all of whom were introduced in A Good Man Goes to War. They worked because they were all based on strong concepts, be they Sontaran nurses or a Victorian Silurian/human couple who solve mysteries which gleefully enticed the viewer to want to see more of these characters at a future point, something that was helped by the strong performances from the actors who play them. So it's no surprise that they were called upon to return to the worlds of Doctor Who, which they first did in 2012's beautiful Christmas special The Snowmen, and then later in the rather more distinct episode that is The Crimson Horror.

The Crimson Horror doesn't necessarily feel like a Doctor Who episode, instead it feels more like a theoretical episode of the spin-off series 'The Paternoster Gang', starring Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, with the Doctor and Clara making a guest appearance. The writing, for instance, feels more overtly comical than what you'd normally expect from a Doctor Who episode, such as one of the greatest exchanges in Doctor Who history:
"In the wrong hands that venom could wipe out all life on this planet"
"You know what these are? The wrong hands!"
It's that comedic approach to this episode, where almost every scene should contain some form of joke that makes this episode feel completely unlike an episode of Doctor Who, where the focus is clearly on story first - jokes to be inserted if and when they are needed.

And you get a certain feeling of oddness from the design as well. Previous historical adventures in the Moffat era have at least made an attempt to give the feeling of living in that era, from the low lighting and uniforms in the Russian submarine in the 1980's that we see in Cold War to the fog and murkiness of a pirate ship on the high seas that we see in The Curse of the Black Spot. The Crimson Horror, on the other hand, doesn't feel like a Victorian story, instead it feels like an artist's impression of a Victorian story - steampunk-esque rocket controls and old fashioned and over-large gramophones. It makes the story feel just that little bit more odd; lending to the impression that it's a Doctor Who story where the Doctor's intruding on another television programme.

And, weirdly, it all works amazingly well. I keep on being drawn to this episode as something truly splendid and odd and I love every moment of it (even the Thomas Thomas joke - any story that has an entire scene devoted to a single bad pun gets a thumbs up in my book). It's one of the great disappointments in Doctor Who that the idea of The Paternoster Gang has seemed to have died out; they've made one more appearance in Capaldi's first story and haven't appeared since. Hopefully we'll get to see them again in the coming series though, they're probably one of the greatest things to come out of Moffat's era of the programme.

Day 795: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

The TARDIS is one of the best science fiction creations ever conceived. It's a time machine disguised as a blue box, that whilst it looks fairly small on the outside, inside it is infinity itself. And stories where we go inside the TARDIS have typically been rather interesting, just for the joy of seeing that infinity after being confined to the console room for so long. In these corridors, you can see all manner of splendid and odd rooms, suggesting that the TARDIS is even stranger and more magical than once thought, creating unforgettable stories.

So, with all of that in mind, I was actually quite looking forward to Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. The chance to see TARDIS corridors and rooms, an ability to get a handle on what is at the very core of the TARDIS itself, all of these things excited me and made me anticipate this episode when it first aired. And, unfortunately, the story ended up being a bit of a disappointment. There are a lot of ways in which this story proves to be a let down, from the acting of Mark Oliver as Bram Van Baalen, who manages to be completely unconvincing, even when he's falling off a ladder. There's the fact that the entire story is literally fixed with a reset button, undoing all of the events of the past half hour or so, including a crucial development in the Clara story arc that, at this point in the series, is beginning to drag a little bit as everyone's come to the conclusion that Clara is in fact a perfectly normal person and not the weird space time event that the Doctor thinks she is (at least, not yet). And there's the scene where a man has to debate cutting either a piece of metal embedded in his brother's arm, or cutting his brother's arm off, which is a debate that really doesn't need to happen (it does happen, though, because of the fact that the man doing the cutting has convinced his brother that he's an android for a variety of reasons, none of which are at all acceptable). It's just not a very good story.

But, I still kind of like it for what it does well. There are time zombies that rampage through the corridors of the TARDIS, that are eventually revealed to be future echoes of the Doctor, Clara and the salvage team helping them, but with destroyed bodies. That's a fantastic idea, using the temporal weirdness of the TARDIS to great effect, and the reveal of this is a surprisingly strong moment. I also love that, as written, if quite achieved on screen, writer Steve Thompson tries to do cool things with the TARDIS interior, showing off weird rooms and playing with the idea of the TARDIS as an ever-shifting labyrinth. But, as much as I like these things, I still can't truly enjoy this episode.

At the heart of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we have an episode that should have shown the TARDIS as something weird and wonderful, but ended up showing the TARDIS as something average, with all sorts of problems that distract from what could have been something interesting.

Day 794: Hide

I should begin this by saying that I also coincidentally covered this episode for an issue of The Terrible Zodin found here, which I did two or three years ago. I'd really recommend having a look at that issue, there's a lot of good stuff in there besides me blathering on about Hide. Consider that a brief recommendation to start this entry off.

But speaking of recommendations, I would recommend Hide as one of the better episodes in the second half of Series 7. Written by Neil Cross, whose work on this episode would lead to the production team inviting him back to write The Rings of Akhaten, it's actually a very well made episode of Doctor Who. The atmosphere provided is excellent, which helps to strengthen the already well conceived concept of the scientific ghost story. The prosthetics also are very strong, the Crooked Man is a masterpiece because it has to look terrifying from a distance but sympathetic when the camera's allowed to focus on it, which is a complex task, but one that ultimately leads to a strong pay off at the end.

Speaking of the ending, I feel that that is one of the real highlights of this story. I'm struggling to think of any Doctor Who episode that has ended in the exact way in which Hide has done and managed to pull it off. To explain, Hide ends with a spectacularly rushed conclusion as the Doctor suddenly realises that he's misunderstood the entire situation. And, whilst as written it looks as if it should not work, on screen it works amazingly well because Cross has already written the conclusion to the story. With the main human characters all settled, and the Doctor and Clara left to simply talk about their time, it lulls the audience into a false sense of security that everything is alright. But then the Doctor realises that the story isn't over yet and rushes to get everything completed, which lends the conclusion an organic feeling, ensuring that it's not tacked on and that it's part and parcel of the story itself. It's actually one of my favourite endings to any Doctor Who story ever, and whilst I wouldn't necessarily rank this episode as one of my absolute favourites, I still love it for what it does.

Day 793: Cold War

Cold War is actually quite an interesting story that I can appreciate very much. Writer Mark Gatiss wished to bring back the Ice Warriors for a new generation, making them genuinely threatening creatures again. The way in which he did this was to riff on 'Dalek', the brilliant 2005 episode, by presenting a scenario with one single Ice Warrior in a confined space, and putting it in the situation where it could destroy the entire planet.

Granted, it doesn't work as well as 'Dalek' because the Ice Warriors are entirely different beasts to Daleks. Unlike the Daleks, the Ice Warriors are not constructed to be purely evil, instead they have their own agenda and their own creed that, whilst different to that of humanity, is still recognisable enough as being able to speak common sense. That leads to the conclusion of Cold War, which isn't able to be as fundamentally powerful as the ending to 'Dalek' because the Ice Warrior is someone that can be talked with and reasoned with, meaning that he chooses not to blow up the world and leave humanity be for the time being, showing mercy on his prey. And whilst this makes for an interesting character decision, and I'm sure that it could have been used as an excellent jumping off point to any future Ice Warrior stories of a similar vein, it just lacks bite, which is what you'd kind of want after what has been a reasonably tense story.

Looking at it positively though, there's some excellent foundation for Clara's character which will become very noteworthy later on in the series. So much of the episode is dedicated to putting her into a situation where she's allowed to be afraid, so we can see how the character copes under that sort of pressure. And whilst that's fairly good in it's own right, I far prefer a brief exchange of dialogue that she has with the Doctor after she gets out of a sticky situation with an Ice Warrior. She asks the Doctor "How did I do. Was I OK?" and the Doctor responds by saying "This wasn't a test, Clara". It hints at this whole idea of Clara, subconsciously or not, attempting to emulate the Doctor, which will become more overt in later episodes. But that's a character arc for another time, for the moment we're just meandering through time and space from one adventure to another, and we'll see that next one tomorrow.

Day 792: The Rings of Akhaten

When I first watched this episode, I turned to my family and said "Well, that was lovely". The Rings of Akhaten, in my opinion, is not a story that's high in terms of quality, and it doesn't necessarily work in the framework of the series, but as a standalone piece of television, it's quite enjoyable to watch. The story, whilst a little bit fragmented, still manages to succeed by giving an episode that's quite heart-warming. Also, the script appears to have been written with the intention of giving Matt Smith plenty of speeches, which plays to Smith's strengths as an actor, giving plenty of moments for his Doctor to excel. Murray Gold's music is excellent, with 'The Long Song' being one of his most beautiful pieces of music that he's produced for the programme. But, all of that said, there's still something that doesn't quite work for me with regards to this episode.

I think that it might begin with the design of the aliens. The background aliens in this episode just don't quite work for me; they look a little bit too normal - like generic alien costumes that you'd find in a low budget rip-off of the cantina scene from A New Hope, not the more bizzare and wonderful alien costumes that I've come to expect from Doctor Who. And I think that that begins to reach towards my bigger problem for the episode, which is that it doesn't quite feel like it's reaching to be big, instead settling at normality. The story doesn't feel like it's changed the character's lives, the action moments don't feel particularly epic, even Matt Smith's brilliant speech ends up feeling like it was added in when writer Neil Cross realised he still had five minutes left to fill in the episode. And so I'm left looking at an episode that just feels average instead of leaving me excited about what I've just seen.

But I still enjoy this episode. It's not brilliant, but it's enjoyable. The only other problem that I can think about this episode is that it doesn't quite match up with the programme that we saw last week in The Bells of Saint John. It's beginning to point me towards this whole idea that maybe The Purple Period should really be called something else. Maybe I was wrong when I said that nothing connected these stories, we'll have to delve a little bit deeper into that as we progress further into the series.

Day 791: The Bells of Saint John

With The Bells of Saint John, we get our new companion in the form of Clara. We've previously seen versions of her in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen, but here we get to meet her as she should be - the clever young woman who represents something new for the programme, and something new for the Doctor. And this is brought forth in the episode, providing something entirely different to what we've seen before.

I think that the best thing about Clara, as she's introduced in this episode, is that she's clearly meant to be the Doctor's equal. Now, it's not exactly spelt out for the audience that this is the way in which Moffat intends for her to be seen - and indeed will be seen in the Capaldi era of the programme - but the foundation is still there for her to be a woman worth noticing. Take, for instance, the scene in the café, where she wins the argument with the Doctor about who should hack into the villain's database. She wins the argument, and later finishes her task, not just because she has the technical skills required, but she also has the creativity and intelligence required to solve the problem - opting to look up the staff members on Facebook in what I think is the episode's best moment. It's this combination of skill and wit that goes towards making the Doctor what he is, or at the very least act as the framework for someone to be considered his equal. And this all feels relatively new and exciting, a new take on the role of the companion that we haven't seen in a while.

And so we get something new for the series, a soft re-boot if you will. It brings The Purple Period off to a good start, providing us with an interesting companion, as well as an exciting Doctor/companion relationship (how many other people get to travel in the TARDIS on their own terms!). But there's a small problem with this episode, one that shall become apparent tomorrow. You see, whilst the episode is enjoyable, and presents a new way to go forward for the series, it doesn't indicate the overall tone of the programme. And that is the flaw of The Purple Period.

Day 790: The Snowmen

Steven Moffat's Purple Period is not named that way to sum up the overall storytelling ethos behind the episodes from The Snowmen to The Time of the Doctor, instead it's named that way because the Eleventh Doctor tends to wear a purple coat in these adventures. I know, it's awfully imaginative of me to call it that. But, to be honest, there's not really that much that connects these stories together. The stories range wildly in terms of theme, as well as quality, creating a feeling of inconsistency that means that this period isn't looked on too fondly. We'll look into more of the reasons why it's difficult to love the Purple Period as it fully progresses, but I will just remark for now that, even though it's difficult to love as a whole, the individual episodes can actually be rather excellent. I would personally say that two of the episodes in the Purple Period are some of the best episodes ever produced in the history of Doctor Who, and there are a few others that I have a bit of a soft spot for. And chief amongst those episodes is The Snowmen.

I didn't get to see The Snowmen when it was first broadcast in Australia. This was because two of the four members of my family are reasonably large Tolkien fans, and instead wanted to go and see 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey', so we went as a family to see that instead. Returning home from that disappointing experience, it was near midnight and everyone else in the house decided to go to bed whilst I watched the recording that I'd made of the episode. The house was dark, and silent, which added to the mood of the story immeasurably.  The Snowmen is a story that feels wintry, particularly in terms of the lighting where it's kept down, allowing that darkness to contribute to the overall feel of the story.

The lighting also allows for contrast to be made when the story requires it, such as the flash-forward to present day Clara at the end of the episode, which feels completely and utterly different to the previous 56 minutes, further creating this mystery of the impossible girl. Similarly, the office of Madame Vastra is also brightly lit, although that is moreover done to establish a feeling of comfort. The outside Victorian streets all look dark and grey, which makes Clara's situation with respect to finding the Doctor feel slightly hopeless. But then, when she enters into the world of the Paternoster Gang, she's greeted with a miniature jungle, portraying a sense of warmth and friendliness that says that Vastra may actually be ready to listen. Then again, the more exotic set dressing, as well as the indication that Vastra is drinking something that looks suspiciously like red wine (my money's on the obscure and beautiful Australian drink: Portello), indicates that Vastra is still a character who is dangerous and that Clara will still have to work to earn her respect.

But of course, the biggest reason why things like lighting and special effects make an impact in this story is because of the magic trick that it pulls two-thirds into the episode. Clearly, Steven Moffat wanted to bring the feeling of a fairy tale back to Doctor Who, at least initially, and so the episode features strong magical imagery as the key memorable points, such as the invisible ladder leading to a spiral staircase, on top of which is a police box on a cloud. It's all rather beautiful, but it's not quite the most magical moment in the entire episode.

In one single shot, we see the Doctor walk into the TARDIS in one take. Then, turning on the lights, he not only reveals the new control room to the audience, but he also reveals to Clara that it's smaller on the outside. And, just for a moment, when I watched this at the dead of night, in a silent house, I believed that it was smaller on the outside as well. It's a beautiful magic trick, presenting an impossible illusion that not only can you not quite figure out how it was done on first glance, you almost don't want to figure out how it was done. It's because the TARDIS being bigger on the inside is such an every day part of Doctor Who that you forget that it's simply extraordinary, particularly as every other TARDIS entrance up until this point is obviously cutting from one scene to the other. But by doing the TARDIS entrance in such a unique way, it genuinely makes The Snowmen feel extraordinary.

And there's so much else to talk about in The Snowmen that just adds to the magic of the story. There's the Doctor's bow tie, the Paternoster Gang as a whole, the entire character of Clara, Murray Gold's beautiful score, and even the title sequence, which, whilst not fantastic, at least has one of the best endings to a title sequence in the history of Doctor Who. But I've unfortunately run out of time to talk about the episode (I've gone around half an hour over my self-imposed deadline for the entry), so maybe I'll get to talk about them some other time. For now, though, I'll leave you with this piece of advice: watch The Snowmen in the dark. Because, at the very least, some magic tricks work better when you can't see all that's happening in the background.

Day 789: The Angels Take Manhattan

The Angels Take Manhattan is all about endings. Not only is it the ending of the first stretch of five episodes that make up Series 7 (which I refer to as 'The Snuggie Season', for personal reasons), but it is also the ending of Amy and Rory's time in the TARDIS and the ending of Moffat's BIG section of episodes. The BIG section, you will recall, took to having massive concepts for episodes that all aimed to stretch what could be possible on television. If the stories of Series 5 could feasibly form an odd fairy tale to read to a child, the stories of the rest of the time with Amy and Rory feel like they wouldn't look out of place in a cinema. From a story that spans the whole of America to the whole of history happening at once, not forgetting the entire concept of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, the BIG section stretched boundaries and provided some amazing moments. But, it must come to an end and The Angels Take Manhattan represents a symbolic winding down of that whole saga.

The ending to The Angels Take Manhattan, quite notably, happens at the twelve minute mark of the episode. It's at that point that we, as the audience, see Rory's grave and so we know that his future is set in stone, if you'll excuse the pun. The rest of the episode, then, is padding until we finally reach that point where Rory dies once and for all, perhaps with Amy in tow as well. But unlike other forms of padding where it stretches out an episode because the writer has more time to fill, this padding is quite cleverly used by Steven Moffat. It's padding because the characters want to avoid the ending; they continually see hints and indications that this is how the story will end and yet they fight to keep it being written, one scene at a time. For instance, they break the rules of the story, bringing in a time paradox to destroy the Angels by preventing the entire adventure from ever happening.

It's all fascinating to look at structurally, because the story constantly reminds you that this is probably the end for Amy and Rory, and seems to rush through all of the plot, leaving Amy and Rory atop Winter Quay at around the 30 minute mark, with the remaining 15 minutes dedicated to the characters saying goodbye. This ensures that the very nature of concluding this era of the programme is intertwined with the episode itself. Compare this to, say, RTD's companion departures, The God Complex or Face the Raven, where the departure of the companion happens suddenly towards the end of the episode, as if there's always the get-out clause that the companion could still be with the Doctor at the end. Here, the ending is always going to happen, so the only thing that can be done is to delay it and hope that something will happen to save the day.

But, of course, everything must come to an end. Amy and Rory go back in time to New York, with their characters leaving the series forever. It's a strong ending for them, allowing them to live that life that they'd begun to settle into without the Doctor without having to worry about him dashing in at inopportune moments and whisk them away with the temptation to travel through time and space. And this whole idea of the companions being tempted by the Doctor, and even getting addicted to this travel, will be explored by Moffat at a later date in what I think is perhaps some of his strongest work as a writer. But, unfortunately, that's at a later date. For now, we have to look at what may be his weakest. Say goodbye to the BIG section, and say hello to what tomorrow will bring, with the purple section.

Day 788: The Power of Three

Chris Chibnall, show-runner designate, has written four stories for Doctor Who. The first, 42, doesn't reach that highly but is still reasonably enjoyable. The second, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, is a bit better but suffers from some slight pacing issues. His third, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, is one of the most beautiful Doctor Who stories ever created and I completely and utterly love it. But despite that, and looking at the other two stories that he'd written up until that point, he doesn't really come across as a person who could feasibly take the reigns from Steven Moffat and start running Doctor Who in one of its most critically acclaimed periods. That is, however, until you consider The Power of Three. I think that this is perhaps where you get the best idea of what a Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who would look like.

I think that The Power of Three is all about taking another look at the Doctor/companion relationship, and examining when it needs to stop. Or perhaps 'stop' wouldn't be the right word and 'wind down' would be more appropriate. We see that Rory and Amy are beginning to enjoy relaxing away from the Doctor, but they still can't quite resist that urge to travel with him again. You can see this both in the ending, where they abandon their happy life eating dinner with Rory's father to go off with the Doctor for more adventuring, as well as the scenes at Amy and Rory's anniversary where they go from being happy with their lives and both of them slightly complaining that the Doctor brought them along to yet more adventures, to them having spent seven weeks with the Doctor, presumably having a good time. It all gives the impression of that struggle with normality, that idea that people should perhaps learn to let go and be happy. It's why the ending feels forced, because Chibnall's written such a strong case as to why the Doctor and companions should let go of each other that you can't help but think that they should. Let them have a happy ending without too much sorrow.

And that's what I think a Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who would be about. Instead of having big moments and letting us see the Doctor as something dark and evil, I think that it's generally going to be happy, allowing us to see the fun of travelling with the Doctor once more. And, when that time needs to come to an end, it should, and both parties leave happily. Consider that, in all of the new series, only two companions have left the series on their own terms: Martha and Mickey. All the rest have been abandoned, or killed, or something worse. There's no room for the happy ending any more. Perhaps that's what Chibnall will bring: a desire for Doctor Who to be fun and happy - something different from what's been seen before, but still worth watching in my opinion.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, but I don't care; the Chibnall era is years away and I'm not going to cover it one bit on this blog. Because everything must end sometimes. This Blog for one, but also something else as we'll see tomorrow.

Day 787: A Town Called Mercy

Part of the joy, if I can use that word, of my final years of high school English was that in certain scenarios we were allowed to choose the texts that we would study for that topic. My text choices had been varied, ranging from an uplifting Robin Williams film to a vaguely depressing and comedic radio play. And when it came to the final chosen text, I suddenly realised that I still hadn't opted for a text to study. So, in a state of resigned panic, I wondered what would be a suitable option, eventually opting for the Doctor Who episode, A Town Called Mercy. My reasoning, as I outlined to my sceptical English teacher, was that I felt that it fitted the theme of 'Differing Perspectives' well, as well as appealing to my distinct advantage of occasionally having a near photographic memory for Doctor Who episodes. Plus, there was the added incentive that being able to study Doctor Who would cheer me up. My English teacher, perhaps wisely, decided that I should probably do something with a bit more bite to it, and instead suggested that I use it as a back-up in case it fitted the question really well. So I never got to write about A Town Called Mercy in my final exam (in the end, I opted for the poetry of Sylvia Plath, because God knows that if you need cheering up you should read some Sylvia Plath), so this blog entry has really been a long time coming.

Now, of the five episodes that make up the ending to Moffat's BIG section, I think that this one is perhaps the most thoughtful. For an episode that sets itself in a Western setting, with a clear focus on special effects and explosions, writer Toby Whithouse clearly intends for it to be something more. Indeed, it's almost written as if it could be conceived that the Doctor's character is written over the course of the episode. We go from the traditional hero, who goes forth into an adventure with a plan to stop the bad guys and free the imprisoned, to someone who realises why the imprisoned are that way and seeks to bring justice to them. There's no room for middle ground for the Doctor in the first half of the episode, as he seems to be on the verge of killing the imprisoned Kahler-Jex, a few minutes away from being on the verge of fleeing with him in the TARDIS.

It's up to Amy, then, to point out to the Doctor what sort of character he always is in these narratives. He is not seen as the man who seeks for the extreme ends of conflict, instead he wanders through the middle ground and sees both sides of the argument, opting for the peaceful alternative for as long as is possible within the constraints of the dilemma. He is the embodiment of the notion of differing perspectives in this episode, constantly arguing both for and against scenarios within juxtaposed scenes, such as him arguing for Jex to the young man which is immediately followed by him cross-examining Jex that next moment as they both ruminate on their situation. This is further emphasised by the design for Jex, which consists of a marking on the side of his face, such that he appears to be an innocent human on one side but a war-mongering alien on the other, as if to reiterate the duality of the character and the situation.

It's an interesting story, and one that I'm growing increasingly fond of the more that I think about it. But, of course, there's one shadow that hangs over me with regards to this episode, where a mad scientist creates a monster then has to face the consequences of his actions. A text suitable for comparison with the poetry of Ted Hughes? Good God no, it would have been far better suited for one of the other English topics I did: Frankenstein.

Day 786: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

I wasn't a particularly happy person in 2012. It was my final year of high school and I wasn't doing too well in most of my courses, and with my school failing to provide any form of meaningful help to me at this time, I was left desperately seeking for those few and far between moments of pure joy in my life. And that's the probably the reason why I look so fondly on Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, because it's an episode that's completely and utterly joyful.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, from the moment when Matt Smith's Doctor gleefully drops the title of the episode, promises to be an episode that just wants to be fun. I can't stop smiling at the climax of the story, where the Doctor easily enacts a plan to save the day, that also focuses on giving his fellow travellers an experience that they want as well. We get Rory and Brian, flying a spaceship - not in any sort of way that would imply danger or stress, but in such a way that we get to see the joy on Brian's face as the adventure begins to sink in for him. Similarly, there's joy for Riddell and Amy who take down raptors left, right and centre in a splendidly choreographed sequence that gives the impression that they are perfectly in control of the situation and thus are allowed to have fun (and, perhaps most importantly, they're taking down raptors, which is such a joyful thing to this young person who screams regularly at the Jurassic Park films). Even Nefertiti, who in theory should play the role of damsel in distress in this plan, uses the Doctor as a distraction to take control of the ruthlessly evil Solomon and save the day. It's an all-round happy ending, without any real need to go into depth about darker elements of the story and to be at all serious.

That's not to say that there aren't darker elements there. The Doctor quite obviously murders Solomon at the end, as part of revenge for Solomon killing the Silurians because they got in his way. It sits oddly with the rest of the story, a moment that could have been focussed on but is ignored in favour of glee. And I'm not sure how I feel about that, because on the one hand I'd prefer a story that dealt with the ramifications of the Doctor's actions and how he copes with the blood on his hands, but on the other I know that sometimes I just need a story that's purely joyful without any need for darkness. 

But whenever I consider this question, I also consider my mindset when I watched this for the first time. Desperate for something to cheer me up, I looked to this episode for inspiration, and it provided it in spades, becoming at one point my favourite Doctor Who episode of all time. And maybe, in one small section of my heart, it still is, because I couldn't stop smiling whilst watching this fantastic episode.

Day 785: Asylum of the Daleks

Asylum of the Daleks is very much a text in time, to quote the HSC English syllabus that I was furious at for most of that time. It's a visually impressive story that begins the culmination of Moffat's BIG era, with a series of five massive stories that I actually do rate rather highly, on reflection. And to kick things off, we get Asylum of the Daleks, a story which has changed as time marched on. As I say, it's a text in time.

Watching Asylum of the Daleks on first transmission is perhaps one of the most greatest experiences ever to happen to me as a viewer of Doctor Who. Because, after the opening credits, we nonchalantly were greeted with Jenna-Louise Coleman's character talking to herself. Bearing in mind that she had only just been announced as the next companion, and it had not been indicated that she would appear in this episode, I was completely lost for words. This was further compounded by one of the cleverest things that both Steven Moffat and director Nick Hurran do in the episode, which is to not draw attention to the fact that this is the new companion at all. Instead, we get a couple of vague hints towards the end, but she's otherwise treated as an ordinary supporting character. And it's this confusion and excitement at what's happening that makes Asylum of the Daleks such a thrill to watch for the first time.

But after losing that thrill, and watching it again, it becomes a different story. Fortunately Moffat knows better than to waste an entire episode to a cheap thrill that only lasts the first time, and so he packs it full of ideas in an attempt to make the Daleks seem scarier. Hurran also provides something that looks and feels impressive; the texture of the adventure feels more like a film than a television episode. But unlike the best Doctor Who episodes, which are perfectly timeless and work amazingly well every time that they're seen, Asylum of the Daleks reached its peak on first transmission, and dropped down to normality after that.

Day 784: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

After I first watched The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe on Boxing Day 2011, my first thought was to get up from the position where I had been lying in the lounge room, turn to the family members who were watching it with me, and say that words to the effect of "Well, that was rather awful, wasn't it?". My grievances were generally that the harvest rangers were under-used characters, that the section in the forest felt a bit dull, and I disliked the sentimental ending. But, I've got to be honest, maybe I was too harsh on this story on first viewing. Because, even though I'm still not overly fond of the episode, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

A vast portion of this is due to Steven Moffat's script. Whilst his overall story isn't exactly strong (I still can't quite bring myself to like the sentimental ending), the individual scenes within the episode are all constructed strongly. I'd forgotten that he'd written the story as a comedy, with a fair few scenes ending on some form of punchline, such as the splendid police box scene at the beginning or indeed the entire basis of the conclusion being centred around a pun on the word 'mother-ship'. And whilst the other characters in the story are fairly flat, Moffat ensures that the Doctor sparkles, being a glimpse back to the magical figure that we saw in Series 5 before the darkness of Series 6 happened, with the Doctor dashing about the story doing impossible things and, perhaps most importantly of all, having fun.

And I have to admit, I did have a lot of fun watching this story. It's not perfect, but it's not awful. The forest sections take up far less time than I'd remembered and mostly have Smith's acting to compensate for any dullness in plot at that time. The harvest rangers, whilst under-used, at least have Bill Bailey amongst them who plays his character like a parody of a Doctor Who character (there's something so simple yet satisfying in seeing a character place the emphasis on the word 'year' in the phrase "The year is 5345", making the entire line feel as silly as it should - and I unconsciously ended up using that same trick in one of my last Uni assignments, to great effect). And whilst the ending is overly sentimental and a bit rubbish, it's certainly not as bad as sending Kylie Minogue off to live amongst the stars. Overall, it's not that bad, and I wouldn't mind watching it again next Christmas.

Day 783: The Wedding of River Song

Sometimes I'll associate watching Doctor Who with a particular place. I've got a vivid memory of watching The Waters of Mars whilst lying on a small patch of carpet next to a lounge in the house where I spent much of my teenage years, becoming so engrossed in the story that I'm not even noticing the hard surface beneath my head. Other times, I'll remember the time that I watched it, such as watching The Ribos Operation in the dead of night, just before I go to bed in an empty house, just because I wanted to watch it one more time. And for The Wedding of River Song, I couldn't possibly forget the time that I watched it. Which, I suppose, is at least something that I can remember...

You see, I missed both Closing Time and The Wedding of River Song on first transmission. I was in France on a school trip, and thus I was unable to watch Doctor Who at all for those two weeks. When I got home, in the very early hours of the morning, I fired up the set-top box recorder and watched those two episodes. So not only do I associate those two episodes with watching them in quick succession at 2 o'clock in the morning, I also associate them with a general state of haziness as to what actually happened in them.

Closing Time's alright in my brain; a bit fuzzy on certain details, but I was just as fuzzy with The God Complex or The Girl Who Waited. For The Wedding of River Song, on the other hand, I can only remember the hard facts. I remember that the Doctor survived through using the Teselecta. I remember that it takes place in an alternate world where all of history happens at once. I remember that the ending features the Doctor and River getting married. And you might think that that's basically everything about the story. But it isn't - remembering a story is more than just seeing a list of events in the mind's eye. It needs to also be associated with how the story feels; what techniques Steven Moffat and Jeremy Webb use to tell the adventure.

When I watched The Wedding of River Song an hour or so ago, I found myself being quite surprised by it. I wasn't expecting the first third to be told mainly through flashback, for instance, which is an interesting method of using exposition and gives Moffat the chance to open on the BIG nature of all of history happening at once. I'd forgotten that Amy kills Madame Kovarian for stealing her daughter away from her, which feels, whilst not like the closure that I wanted from that particular story line, at least shoved the door a good deal more closed than it was previously. Jokes, like the Doctor telling Rory to ask Amy out, or the reveal of the Doctor's right arm in the scene with Winston Churchill are all things that I'd previously forgotten. And it's these small things that help the story feel right, and make it something that I want to watch, as opposed to watching a man tie up loose ends.

But it still doesn't entirely work. The ending feels rushed - a consequence of Moffat choosing to have the series finale be one episode rather than two. All of history happening at once just feels like a backdrop, not a part of the world in which the characters inhabit, feeling just as forced as the green screen behind River and the Doctor in the Lake Silencio scenes. And the small moments that make the story worth watching aren't presented well enough to really stick in the mind after watching it; I'm still not entirely sure whether it was the time that I watched it, or the supposition that the episode doesn't quite stick in the mind that means that I was hazy about The Wedding of River Song. It all makes for a story that should have been the grand finale to Moffat's first BIG series, but ends on a whimper rather than an explosive bang. Still, at least there's Christmas to look forward to.

Day 782: Closing Time

Over the new series of Doctor Who, there's been a habit of generally having a nice, simple, low key story before the big and amazing series finale. Stories like Boom Town or The Lodger have been like the calm before the storm, one last chance to have fun with the characters before the traumatic events of the next week will take hold. And Closing Time fits squarely into that mould, providing something that's a basic comedy with Cybermen, a baby, and the return of Craig from last series' The Lodger. On the whole, I don't mind it. Gareth Roberts' script, whilst not as amazingly funny and heart-warming as The Lodger, still provides some very nice moments such as the Doctor's monologue to Alfie, or the scene where Craig discovers the Doctor in a toy shop, which is excellently played by both Matt Smith and James Corden.

But there's one moment that sticks out for me in this whole piece. Just after the Doctor explains to Craig that aliens attacking when they met again was a coincidence, out of nowhere we get a cameo from Amy and Rory. Amy and Rory left the TARDIS in The God Complex, and it's pretty much stated in this episode that it's been 200 years since the Doctor last saw them. But he sees them again and sees how their life turned out, before he goes off to face the astronaut at the bottom of Lake Silencio. I actually love this moment because of two very big reasons. One is that Matt Smith chooses to underplay the scene, quietly standing back as we look from afar at his two old friends. It gives the scene a sense of quiet dignity, as if the Doctor is recognising all the time that they spent together and he's recognising that they need to stay apart. Similarly, the story chooses to underplay the moment as well. Aside from the fact that the Doctor doesn't interact with Amy and Rory, he also never refers to the moment throughout the rest of the story. It reinforces the quiet dignity of the moment, representing that the Doctor has recognised that he needed to move on and that he did so, even if for a fleeting moment he was attracted towards them again.

That sense of moving on is also what drives the Doctor to the TARDIS at the end of the episode. He's a man who's ready to face his fate, as we'll find out in The Wedding of River Song.

Day 781: The God Complex - Guest Writer Mitch

Hi all

I'm Mitch. For those of you that don't know me, check out my not so subtle assault on the phantom menace (its not worthy of capital letters) from around 18 months ago. Anyway, tonight I have a post for you on one of my personal favorite episodes. Whilst what I wrote in the end isn't where I was going to go, it's a crucial piece social commentary. Without further ado, I present The God Complex.

Humanity is fundamentally flawed (yes it’s going to be one of those articles) and nothing informs us of this more than science fiction. The God Complex to me is not necessarily my favourite episode, nor the most technically brilliant or interesting. What it is however is the most important episode of Doctor Who as it directly addresses what is the most elementary issue we face both individually and as a species. Weakness at its base. What is this weakness? What is its cause? Let’s investigate.

We begin with the dogmatic undertones in the establishing flashback. Swirling into the prison of a stereotypical 80s hotel which in its ambiguity could easily be conceived to be hell or something very close. Immediately we are positioned in the centre of the salient dichotomy of fear vs. belief and salvation. Fear is positioned front and centre as the power that overcomes us all. When faced with situations that grasp at the fringe of our sanity we will fall back on what makes us strong.

This is where belief and faith enter the picture. When fear is exploited everyone relies on something. Gibbis shows that our entire strength and identity can be drawn from what we are taught as well as what we see. When the only thing you know is that you are going to be invaded and enslaved, you rely on that, it is your salvation. The motif of the spiral staircase serves that in our hour of debilitating need we look up and climb towards that which lies above.

Here we begin to see the beast implanting itself at the top of the stairs and as everyone utters “Praise him” (the verbal equivalent to the searing on a steak) we surrender wholly. And this is the true downfall of man, the surrender and reliance.  When the inhabitants are forced into their faith entirely, they are met with death. This portrays the danger of unlimited reliance and belief that someone/thing will help; which we all experience.

Faith does bolster us, it can pull together the many piece of an otherwise bewildering existence. However when you let it consume you, when you surrender, it will drive you to destruction.

All this is summed up by Eleven with “It’s time to stop waiting”, recognising that it is necessary to stand up on your own legs. Nothing, ultimately is eternal or infallible. Eventually, even gods die.

In writing this I was reminded of many other fascinating talking points and reason I love The God Complex (I think there is a certain serenity in the futility the episode presents) however first and foremost this is the message that needs to be delivered. I say this at time when religious zealotry (in both traditional and contemporary forms) continues to destroy lives and the world in which we live. It’s a simple tenet, that when we use our faith to support and guide and recognise the flaws we move away from such extremes and move away from weakness.

To lighten the mood after tonight’s article I’ll leave you all with a question that I think deserves a little more though than you may have given it. What’s behind door 11?

Day 780: The Girl Who Waited

I mentioned yesterday about how thrilling I found it to be surprised by the plot of a Doctor Who episode. Equally thrilling, in my opinion, is the ability to be surprised by the quality of a Doctor Who episode. When I sat down to watch The Girl Who Waited, for instance, way back on a Sunday morning in 2011, I wasn't expecting too much. It was being billed as just another episode, nothing particularly special. After all, it was being written by Tom MacRae, who had previously delivered the underwhelming Cyberman two part story in Tennant's first series, and it was being directed by Nick Hurran, a newcomer to the worlds of Doctor Who so expectations were not particularly high. What we ended up getting, however, was something very special indeed.

At its heart, The Girl Who Waited has a basic concept. The Doctor makes a small collection of errors in the first half of the story, and tries to rewrite them whilst attempting to overlook the consequences. The error in question is that Amy has been left to age for 36 years on an alien planet where she has nobody else for company and she is being forced to fight for her life every single day of her existence. This ends up leaving her deeply cynical, with a strong hatred for the Doctor as he has managed to completely ruin her life. And the story structures itself around the four main characters, with the older Amy being angry at what has happened and steadfast in how she wants to leave as she is, content with the fact that her past is still intact whilst Rory tries to mediate her reaction to events and search for the solution where everybody can be content. In order to pull the older Amy on side, he shows her a window into the younger Amy's life, still bright and full of hope, with the two Amy Ponds bonding over their mutual love of Rory. It's this desire to see that the younger Amy should be allowed to grow old with Rory that drives the three of them to the decision to opt for the solution where the younger Amy is allowed to be with Rory, whilst the older Amy goes off travelling on her own.



And then it all comes crashing down with the fourth element, hidden away in the background of the story. The Doctor has known all along that the hope of having two Amy's would be impossible and so he lies to the older Amy, before beginning the process of abandoning her once the younger Amy is aboard the TARDIS. It's a dark moment for the Doctor, one of the clearest examples of him sacrificing one life so that someone else might live. There's also hints of his decision being made up because he refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the older Amy, seeing her as just a mistake that he needs to rewrite and not as a human being in her own right. It's perhaps the darkest that this Doctor has ever gone, made only darker by his next moment.

"This isn't fair. You're turning me into you".

Rory Williams is a character that has always been defined as someone who isn't the Doctor. As far back as The Eleventh Hour, he was the man who was questioning the Doctor's actions whilst everyone blindly went along with his plan. As a companion he's been presented as a man who seeks for a happy and peaceful ending. Whilst Amy goes off and fights her way out of trouble, he'll talk and search for the best possible solution. In The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, he was the one with whom the Ganger Jennifer found an ally in, someone who would advocate for her life and freedom. Rory is, in short, the lightest character aboard the TARDIS. And the Doctor makes him choose between the older Amy and the younger Amy. As Rory says, "You're turning me into you". So Rory does what the Doctor didn't do. He sits down and has a conversation with the older Amy. He shares the weight of the decision between the two of them, so that she has a say in what happens. And they decide to leave the older Amy behind, writing her out of history altogether. A heartbreaking end. An inevitable end, but heartbreaking nonetheless.

And that's what makes me think of this story as something perfect. It's a complex and tragic character drama as we're forced to come face to face with, not so much the dangers of travelling with the Doctor, as the darker and more malevolent side of the Doctor. It's looking at the characters of Amy and Rory as fundamentally good people who are sometimes placed in impossible situations. And there's an argument to be made that this episode lays the foundation for the entirety of the Capaldi era. But that, as they say, is another story.

Oh, and whilst I finish this entry, I should make a quick mention that I'm taking tomorrow off. An old friend requested that I relinquish this blog so that he could cover one of his favourite stories, and I'm more than happy to oblige. So, just for one brief moment, I'm allowed to relax as I eagerly await something wonderful tomorrow with The God Complex.

Day 779: Night Terrors

One Saturday evening in 2011, I decided that I was fed up. After five years of reading spoilers for Doctor Who episodes before I would have a chance to watch them myself; five years of having every little surprise ruined for me before I got a chance to watch it, I decided to take a stand. So instead of reading a synopsis of Night Terrors the next morning, I decided to go with the slightly less than legal method of streaming it. This all meant that Night Terrors was the first Doctor Who episode that I went into relatively unspoiled in a very long time*.

Now, whilst Night Terrors may not be the strongest episode in the world, it'll always be an episode that I'll look upon fondly because I was allowed to be surprised by it. Moments like Purcell and Amy turning into Peg Dolls, as well as the revelation of George as an alien all felt like gob-smacking moments, just because I found them to be genuine surprises. And being able to be surprised for those moments helped the overall tone of the story - taking the peg doll transformation as an example, I was far more struck by the overall creepiness of the stop motion transformation on first viewing than on my most recent viewing a couple of hours ago where I knew that it was just another quirk of the episode.

But that's sometimes the magic of watching a Doctor Who episode for the first time. Unlike almost any other programme on television, you're allowed to try and figure out what sort of story it's going to be. It could be a creepy story about transforming dolls hidden as a simple tale about a young boy afraid of monsters. It could be a beautiful piece about a woman realising who she really is beneath an adventure where you punch Hitler. Or, as we'll look at tomorrow, it could be something truly heartbreaking masquerading as just another story.

*Just putting a small footnote to say that I also watched A Christmas Carol without reading an episode synopsis beforehand, but I'm not going to count it because I seem to recall reading some fairly big spoilers regarding the end of the episode and Abigail's fate a couple of days before I watched it, which slightly damped that supposedly spoiler-free experience for me.

Day 778: Let's Kill Hitler

I think that I like Let's Kill Hitler. It's a very funny episode, filled with fantastic one liners (I'm still giggling at "You will feel a slight tingling sensation, then death") and it provides an excellent continuation to the saga of River Song. There's something incredibly satisfying about seeing the Doctor put in the situation where he is ahead of River, a stark contrast to their earlier adventures (except for the brief moment at the start of The Impossible Astronaut where they compare diaries, which was also similarly satisfying). The direction from first time director Richard Senior (Let's Kill Hitler was the first television episode that Senior had ever directed) is also surprisingly strong for a first time, with some nice touches that stand this episode out (the moment where the Mels throws the TARDIS model in the air, only for it to transition into the real TARDIS is quite visually impressive). The only problem with this episode, though, is that it lacks resolution.

The previous episode, A Good Man Goes to War, ended with the dual revelations that Amy and Rory's baby daughter had been kidnapped by some evil collection of people as well as River Song revealing that she was in fact that baby, i.e. she is Amy and Rory's daughter. And coming into Let's Kill Hitler, we see that the Doctor has made no headway into finding young River, but all of that gets thrown out of the window when it turns out young River was secretly the school friend of Amy and Rory, and the story becomes about the young version of River trying to kill the Doctor. Which, I suppose, acts as a bit of a resolution to those two plot lines. We find out that the young version of River grew up safely and we see that she got to spend some valuable time with her parents throughout her life. The only problem, however, is that we don't really spend enough time on that particular part of the story. It's all there, lurking away in the undercurrents of the adventure, but there's no moment of stillness for the four characters to sit and talk about what's happened to them. It turns what could have been a great series return, into something that's easy to like, but begins to fall apart when you try to examine it more closely.

But still, what other episode of Doctor Who could nonchalantly put Hitler in a cupboard and then forget about him for the rest of the episode?

Day 777: A Good Man Goes to War

A Good Man Goes to War is the epitome of Steven Moffat's experiment for Series 6, which he ended up partially continuing in Series 7, before abandoning altogether after that. His idea was that a way to structure Doctor Who would be to stagger it throughout the year, with the first half of the series being broadcast in the UK Spring, and the second half in the UK Autumn. Amongst the many reasons that he put forward for this being a worthwhile venture, he stated that this would provide the opportunity for Doctor Who to have two big series openers, and two big series finales, all within the one year. Hence why I refer to this section of Moffat's tenure as the BIG section - there's a clear want to make a lot of Doctor Who episodes feel massive.

And this is mainly achieved in A Good Man Goes to War, where the episode feels appropriately epic. I love the notion that the Doctor is able to win a battle with no blood shed at all (not entirely true, of course, as there's a bit of friendly fire between the Church and the Headless Monks). I also think that the final battle, where it's revealed that the Doctor has managed to lead everyone into a trap, is actually quite well directed, with the camera never remaining entirely fixed and always dashing between two or three settings, giving the impression of chaos in clear contrast to the controlled attack from the Doctor earlier in the episode. There is, at the end of the day, a lot to really enjoy in this episode, but the problem is that it doesn't quite work as a series finale; it's just too Big.

I can't help but feel that the story doesn't give appropriate time to the characters, to how they cope with these big moments. There's a few moments at the end of the story where the Doctor goes and wraps everything up whilst still leaving things open to be covered in the Autumn half of the series, but other than that it all feels like the story just lacks enough of those moments to give a well-rounded episode. And that's kind of my problem with A Good Man Goes to War. As a series finale, it succeeds massively, being appropriately epic and exciting. But as episode 7 of Series 6, it doesn't quite work, and just needs a bit more space to breathe.

Day 776: The Almost People

I can't remember whether it was an interview with Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat (I'm slightly inclined towards thinking that it might have been Moffat talking about the work of Davies), but one of the writers was talking about the structure of two part episodes in the news series. The method that they have both come around to using is kind of interesting: to remove any decay in having a two part story drag for so long by making the second episode feel completely different to the first. You can see this in a variety of two part stories throughout the revived series: a story like Army of Ghosts/Doomsday has a quiet opening half where the focus is on learning about the situation with the second half is more focussed on action and character development for the main cast. This approach of having two distinct halves can also be found in The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. The only problem is that they're almost too distinct.

The first half leads to a fairly interesting concept: having duplicates of yourself (Gangers) that aren't evil clones, but are instead exactly like you in every way, shape and form, and it promises to look at the fallout from dealing with this development in the plot. Our point of focus character is Jennifer's Ganger, who is trying to come to terms with her life and advocates for acceptance within society. The only problem is that, after one of the Gangers is killed in the heat of the moment, Jennifer suddenly gains a new found blood-lust and turns into a psychopathic leader with no redeemable traits. In the second half, we see her take advantage of Rory, lead her fellow Gangers into situations that they begin to feel a bit uncomfortable in, and in a moment of hypocrisy, kill a Ganger of herself in order to prove a point. And to be honest, I actually wouldn't mind about this characterisation, it's just that it's so at odds with what we saw in the first half that I can't honestly believe that they are the same character. It makes what could otherwise be an interesting story into something that just leaves the viewer feeling a little bit uneasy about the rapid change in tone.

And, as I say, there are plenty of things that I can like about this episode. I honestly love the fact that the Doctor's Ganger duplicate is never even once thought of as an evil twin, and instead is just used to expose the audience's hypocrisy about whether to trust the Gangers or not. I also like the fact that the director makes the clear decision to tend to shoot the Doctor whilst hiding his lower half, hiding whether he's a Ganger or not and further showing to the audience that it really doesn't make a difference which is which. And, aside from the characterisation of Jennifer, I feel that the rest of the story is still similar enough to The Rebel Flesh that they could conceivably be continuations of each other. It's just that it doesn't end up quite working as a full two part story for me, which is a bit of a shame.