The Final Day

So, there we are. It's all done and dusted. Just whilst I'm still typing away, though, I want to make a few quick mentions of some people that I really want to thank over the course of the years with this blog.

First of all, I'd like to thank my friends and family for providing moral support through these past few years. In particular, I want to thank Katherine Bowyer and Kerrie Duffy, who have 'liked' and commented on virtually every post that I've put up on Facebook. Without you two, I would have given this up a long time ago, so thank you for that.

Thanks are also due to Mitchell McLeod and Elizabeth Bowyer, the two people who have written guest entries whilst I've been otherwise indisposed. If there's one thing that this blog has taught me, it's that there are far better writers out there than me, and none more so than these two splendid human beings. And whilst I remember, thanks also to anyone who's said anything or helped me think of something for any entry in the blog. You've helped me when I've needed it, and that help is much appreciated.

Thank you to the person who put up reconstructions of all the missing episodes up on daily motion, it really helped me out in the early days of the blog, and it was a sad day when I saw that they'd all been taken down overnight. On a similar note, thank you to the old CRT TV on which I have watched most episodes of Doctor Who and has thankfully never broken throughout the years. And a special thank you to The University of Newcastle, for not judging me when I watched The Caves of Androzani Part 4 on one of your projector screens.

And finally, I want to thank you for reading this blog and making it all worthwhile. If we've never met before, I hope that we do some day, and if we have, then you have made my life all the better for it. This blog has given me some truly treasured memories, and my most treasured memories of all are when I've been interacting with you, the readers. So thank you. And goodnight.

Day 826: The Husbands of River Song

I started this blog, not only to document my viewing of every episode of Doctor Who in order, but also as a reminder; something to keep me active in pursuing this foolish endeavour. And I did the very sensible thing of ensuring that I told a lot of people about the blog as I was planning to start it, so that whenever I would be tempted to stop it, I would think about letting them down and those thoughts would be gone from my mind. And whilst that was a very sensible decision at the time, I couldn't help but regard it as a mistake for roughly 75% of the time that I've been doing this blog.

This has not been an easy ride, and I would never recommend anyone to copy me in doing this. Even one a day was not slow enough for me, and I would occasionally be driven to madness in trying to balance my studies with the blog (fortunately everything turned out alright in the end, particularly after a well deserved study break late in 2015 which really helped relieve my mental health). I also don't have particularly fond memories of watching certain episodes, with Timelash Part 2 almost driving me insane with boredom and certain lengthy Patrick Troughton episodes leaving me fond of them out of a weird sense of Stockholm Syndrome. And whilst I won't say that Time-Flight was the cause of my minor breakdown, I will say that it did happen to be on in the room whilst the breakdown was happening. So I'm not going to do the blog again, and if I do do something like this, I'll make some serious changes to it.

But, for all that I've regarded this blog as a mistake, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it was the best mistake I've ever made. I have had amazing fun with this blog. Thanks to it, I've been able to re-evaluate so many episodes in their proper time and I've been able to rekindle my passion for this fantastic television series. I've been able to grow to love and care for every single companion and every single Doctor. I've been able to redeem The Armageddon Factor, previously my least favourite story of all time and now one of my secret pleasures. Similarly, I've found that The TV Movie, despite every fibre of my being wanting to dislike it for effectively killing the franchise, is still absolutely marvellous and I love watching it every time. Some stories, like The Sensorites or The Greatest Show in the Galaxy have become new favourites of mine, joining the ranks of others that I've been anticipating since the day I started the blog, like Kinda or Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. I've laughed at Carnival of Monsters, and cried at The War Games. And, really, anything that gives me an excuse to watch Series 5 again gets a thumbs up from me.

And there's one story that sums up the entire experience for me. Silence in the Library got a fairly mixed reception from me when I saw it in the blog. I liked it, but I didn't love it and I was a little disappointed about that. But then, I watched Forest of the Dead. Forest of the Dead is a story that improves massively after watching The Husbands of River Song - it feeds into it beautifully providing the kindling for the fire that will later develop. Seeing River's final speech to the Doctor is something that's so much more heartbreaking when you know everything that's come before, and the beautiful tones of their relationship. And seeing the Doctor save her drove me to tears, becoming, for one brief moment, recognisably the future Doctors that I would love as some of the outright best in the entire series. And I can't help but thank this blog for giving me that opportunity of re-evaluation.

And that's where this story ends. With the happiest regret that I've ever had.

Day 825: Hell Bent

If Heaven Sent is all about a Doctor Who story that's completely unique but still acts like a Doctor Who story, then Hell Bent is about a Doctor Who story that retreads a lot of ground and is very much not a Doctor Who story. I don't mean that in a bad way, because it's clearly what the episode is aiming for. The Doctor behaves ridiculously un-Doctorish throughout the episode, shooting people, and ignoring all advice because he's being so driven to save Clara's life, even when it's occasionally clear that she doesn't particularly want to be saved. It's an effective counterpart to the ending of Capaldi's first series, which based itself around Clara trying to save Danny Pink's life, and how the Doctor was forced to act as the Clara's moral compass in these dark times, whereas here Clara acts as the Doctor's compass (that observation comes courtesy of my mother, whose attitude to Doctor Who criticism involves her saying "Can I just say" at some volume, before continuing to re-affirm her misguided belief that the best Doctor Who story of all time is The Lazarus Experiment).

But, of course, where the story really picks up is towards the end, where the Doctor attempts to wipe Clara's memory so that the two of them will no longer be able to be such a dangerous force throughout the Universe - after all, we're now seeing the lengths that the Doctor will go to to save Clara, even when she's dead. And this memory wipe is an unquestionably awful thing, and I would be more than willing to declare this episode awful because of it. But Moffat does something truly good. He makes Clara say no, and he makes the Doctor listen to her. By allowing the companion to have voice, to be able to take their own death on their own terms and not just allow for the Doctor to do everything, it means that the story openly advocates for a position of equality within the TARDIS.

And, of course, that's the way that it's always been aboard the TARDIS with Clara; ever since her first story she's been seen as more or less an equal to the Doctor, which is what makes her a fundamentally interesting character. And seeing her reaffirm that equality by mutually deciding with the Doctor that one of them must lose their memory and the process should be done through some Russian Roulette style gambit where both are on the same footing. It's effectively covering the same ground as Journey's End, but in such a different and more powerful way that creates overall better drama for the characters and doesn't leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

And thus ends the era where Capaldi spends his time with Clara. Not with an explosive bang, but with something all the more powerful - a conversation. There's still one more thing left to cover though, so for one last time, We've Got Work To Do!

Day 824: Heaven Sent

It's hard to believe it, but after producing at least one Doctor Who story a year since 2005 (save for 2009), Steven Moffat still has the capacity to provide something completely unique and unlike anything else that's been seen in Doctor Who before. Because that's what Heaven Sent is. It's a beautifully unique story that somehow manages to still be a recognisable Doctor Who story. And it is, in my personal opinion, one of the most powerful episodes of Doctor Who ever produced.

Heaven Sent works as a story because it never loses sight of its goal. This goal being that we have to follow the Doctor as he figures out what is happening in his impossible situation and then watch as he figures out a solution to the impossible problem or, as is put in the episode, is able to win. And this goal is a fairly basic goal, one that's behind most, if not all, Doctor Who stories. So Moffat, in order to make things interesting, adds enough dressing to keep the situation unwinnable, such as through making Capaldi's Doctor the only character, which keeps him from making allies or having an extra voice to discuss the problem with. Also, Moffat's decision to make the entire setting a literal puzzle box, with the rooms in the castle resetting and the layout changing when the Doctor figures out the ideal solution to the puzzle adds a further layer of mystery to the impossible goal, and continues to drive the Doctor to need to solve it, and by extension, we as the audience need to see him solve it.

And what ends up making the story interesting, above all else, is that it puts serious doubt on the Doctor's ability to 'win' the situation. This has happened before, it's a staple of a good many Doctor Who stories that we have to have some doubt about whether the Doctor can survive or not. But what makes Heaven Sent so different is that the doubt is coming from the Doctor. We see him go through the entire story becoming less and less confident in his own abilities as he begins to crave what he perceives to be the sweet release of eternal sleep. And when he realises that his method of winning has caused him thousands upon millions of years of sorrow, anguish and torment, he goes through so much mental pain and suffering, only to be spurred on by an image of Clara to go forth and win. And so, he does.

The final sequence in the castle is a masterpiece of editing and direction. Despite being constrained to showing the same sequence over and over again, through careful choice of shots and a nice decision to compress the sequence more and more as the years pass, it becomes a triumphant and powerful scene, something that reinforces this idea of the Doctor overcoming obstacles to win. And, notably, he does this on his own terms, deciding to brute force his way out of the castle rather than reveal the true identity of the Hybrid to the Veil. It's all something that proves to be absolutely fantastic, and leads into the finale - which quite notably, has something that has been in Doctor Who before and that really means a lot.

Day 823: Face the Raven

This was a hell of a lot tougher to watch than I was expecting it to be. On first viewing, it's a fairly nice and unassuming episode, up until Clara's death, of course. It's an episode with an interesting premise, a fairly non-threatening plot (sure, one character's life is constantly in danger, but the danger is a known quantity that can be prevented - contrast this with Sleep No More where the danger is ever -present and could take out any of the characters at any time). But then Clara makes a mistake which costs her her life, leading us into a very emotionally charged finale as the Doctor seeks to get his vengeance. So it's a fairly nice and interesting episode to watch for the first tine, and certainly one of my series highlights.

On repeated viewing, however, it becomes so much more difficult to look at. Every time Clara smiles, or does some dangerous activity just for that rush of adrenaline or because she knows that it's what the Doctor would do, your heart sinks ever-further into that state of dread as you know that we are rapidly approaching her end. The scene that I found particularly hard to watch was that when she took the burden of the death sentence away from Rigsy, cementing her death in the story out of some desire to do what the Doctor does, but a lack of understanding as to how the Doctor operates. It's an uncomfortable scene, and hangs over the rest of the story like an unwelcome shadow.

And when Clara's death does come around, it has the potential to be awful. A cheap death would undermine the character, and make the story seriously not worth watching. But, instead, what Sarah Dollard does is write a death that feels perfectly real for Clara. It's a death that is based entirely on a decision that she made, and one that she's made whilst trying to emulate the Doctor (as she's done previously in stories like Flatline or Under the Lake/Before the Flood). Doing this also means that her death doesn't feel cheap, it's perfectly integral to the story and the way in which Clara's character has been developing, meaning that it works better than, say, a scene right at the end where Clara is shot, out of nowhere, by some leader out of spite for the Doctor.

And more than allowing for the death to feel real for Clara in terms of where it fits in the story and her character arc, it also allows for her to accept the death with dignity. We get her saying goodbye to the Doctor and telling him not to get angry (which is, of course, an instruction that he'll follow to the letter) and then she goes off and faces the titular raven. There's no crying from Clara about her dying in her prime, she doesn't desperately run away from her death, she just accepts it with a quiet dignity. It makes the death feel more powerful and real, and adds to the weight of the story. It means that it's a difficult episode to watch, but is ultimately very satisfying because of it.

Day 822: Sleep No More

OK, I've got to be honest: Sleep No More does nothing for me. The gimmick of the episode, i.e. that it's all based around found footage, isn't something that particularly excites me; I'm not a big fan of horror, and I'm even less of a fan of found footage movies. I'm also not that interested in the setting either; the low lights and minimalistic design just makes me feel a little bit bored rather than allowing me to get excited in the plot. And the story's not something that I'm a fan of either, it just doesn't gel for me. So, weirdly, when I saw that this episode was getting a bit of a beating from the fan community, I was incredibly angry. Because even if I don't like Sleep No More, I am very willing to defend it for what it is.

Even though there are plenty of things that I don't like about this story, there's quite a bit that I do appreciate as something really fantastic. For instance, I love that the viewer can deduce the story from the camera alone, because of the shifts in POV to Clara (and to a lesser extent Professor Rassmussen). When I first watched it, I put it down to directorial incompetence on behalf of director Justin Molitnikov, and decided that I would try to ignore it. But then, as the story progressed, I began to question whether Molitnikov could really be that incompetent, and it dawned on me that it was done on purpose, due to Clara being infected by the Morpheus machine. And that's kind of a fun thing to experience as a viewer, the ability to figure something out before any of the characters can, just because you've received vital information that they don't have yet.

But, beyond that, I think the reason why I'm so keen to defend Sleep No More is that every criticism that I have about it boils down to "It's not my cup of tea". I may not be a big fan of this episode, but I don't think it's particularly bad. And beyond that, I'm very sure that there are plenty of people who watch this episode and think that it's fantastic, and all power to them, they're allowed to think these things. And I guess what this comes down to is to ignore 'received fan wisdom' and to just go out and experience Doctor Who for yourself and try to love as much of it as possible. That attitude has certainly made the last 800-odd days all the more bearable.

Day 821: The Zygon Inversion

The Zygon Inversion will be remembered for one thing and one thing alone: the speech. Found in the video above, it is perhaps the most powerful moment ever broadcast in the history of Doctor Who. It's a man shouting and begging at two sides of a warring conflict to stop fighting, and seek the peaceful alternative. It's about always recognising that something like a genocidal war is always the worst case scenario and you should avoid it at all costs.

It's a speech that proved to be surprisingly topical - even as the story was being filmed it was generally known that it was going to reflect what was happening with the Islamic State situation, what was not known was that a short while after this story was broadcast, an attack was launched in Paris that captured the world with both solidarity with the Parisian people and fear that this would prove to be a catalyst to instigate another war. And the speech proved to be a weird cultural touchstone, something that people turned to and considered as a rousing voice in the overall fight between sensible diplomacy and hate filled fighting. Even today, a few months after broadcast, particularly considering that certain politicians are making their mark on the world through hateful, vile, warmongering statements, and watching this speech brings up a horrible image of what could happen if any of these people could be put in charge, their fingers hovering over buttons which could destroy the world.

And of course, the other big reason why this speech will be remembered is Peter Capaldi. Because no matter how good Peter Harness and Steven Moffat's writing is, as well as Daniel Nettheim's direction, Peter Capaldi surpasses all of that with the performance of a lifetime. It's such a passionate and powerful performance that I have no qualms about saying that it brought me to tears, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not alone in that regard. So, honestly, sit down and watch this speech. It's pretty much perfect.

Day 820: The Zygon Invasion

So, there's not going to be a blog entry today. You see, I actually wrote about this episode quite a bit in advance, as a review for the upcoming issue of The Terrible Zodin. And I think that that review pretty much sums up everything that I want to say about this episode. So when the next issue comes out, I'll link to it here, and then everything will be tickety-boo. So, sorry, but you'll just have to go without my opinions on The Zygon Invasion for a week or so.

Although, just to pretend that I've written something to talk about it today, I will just leave this point of discussion. Doesn't it make a great deal of sense that the Doctor's greatest achievement in terms of peace is completely destroyed by Missy?

Addendum (11/4/2016): And said issue of The Terrible Zodin can be found here:

http://doctorwhottz.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/the-terrible-zodin-18-spring-2016.html

Day 819: The Woman Who Lived

If Deep Breath promised us that the Capaldi era would bring with it a renewed focus on longer conversations and letting the characters breathe, then The Woman Who Lived turns that promise up to 11 (or rather, 12). It's a fascinating story to consider because it only really has enough plot to sustain itself for around 20 minutes, and so the rest of the time is just spent sitting and talking with the characters, as we consider the ramifications of the previous episode for the woman currently known as Me.

So Me is the woman who used to call herself Ashildr, the girl who the Doctor made immortal in The Girl Who Died. And, as the Doctor hinted at in that story, it's not a decision that she's entirely happy with in the long term. You see, for all that we might see immortality as a blessing, you have to realise that there are so may downsides to it that you never consider beyond that beautiful upside that is 'not dying'. It's all about seeing everyone else die around you, and you can do nothing to stop them from dying, so you're forced to mourn their deaths and move on. And one of the interesting things about the character of Me is that she's effectively immunised herself to this notion of mourning and caring for other people's lives. There's plenty of moments in the episode where she's presented with the prospect of killing someone and you know that she's only not going to do it to ensure that the Doctor remains onside. It's this lack of care that inherently disgusts him, as seen in the Doctor's underplayed reaction to Me's outburst about being left in a leper colony - a colony that she herself set up because she used to have some care for other people.

And there's a lot more besides this to talk about, like the juxtaposition of the Doctor travelling in his effective immortality alongside Me's forced slow path approach, or the beautiful use of books as memories - a simple physical representation of Me's life and the way in which she approaches it. But those are for another time - I've got an assignment that I need to finish off and that must take precedence. Anyway, it's not as if we're not going to be seeing more of Me soon...

Day 818: The Girl Who Died

One of the things that's interesting about Series 9 is what it does with the character of the Doctor. After the previous series decided to investigate the possibility of a darker Doctor, with many of the stories being structured around this question of whether the Doctor is a good man or not, Series 9 seems to be reasonably content with saying that he is a good man, and allows Capaldi to play the Doctor as a lighter, friendlier figure (this is, of course, not constant throughout the series, but we'll deal with that in a couple of days). And as a consequence of this, we get The Girl Who Died.

The Girl Who Died is the lightest story in Series 9, focussing on a team of terrible Vikings as they come up against a deadly and unstoppable alien force. It's played as a romp, with just about the worst thing happening within the first 35 minutes is a baby crying (that said, the baby crying scene is one of Capaldi's best scenes as the Doctor - he gives the poetic lines that he's translating from the baby so much weight and nuance that you can't help but will him to stay and help the Vikings, just through hearing him speak). And so we get to have fun with the Doctor, relax in the knowledge that we're just going to have a happy story for once.

And then the young Viking girl, Ashildr, dies. Ashildr's death is something that hits the Doctor particularly hard because it's a death that he was entirely responsible for, and it goes against his very belief that the Doctor should save people. So he resolves to save her, giving rise to one of the most horrific scenes in Doctor Who history. The Doctor uses some alien technology to make her body heal, bringing her back to life, but knowing full well that it will keep restoring her, effectively making her immortal. This will end up being a major part of the rest of the series, and will be a constant reminder that sometimes the Doctor makes terrible decisions. But you wouldn't guess it from first viewing, which plays it in such a happy way that it becomes horrific. We see the Doctor smile as he casually hints at the ramifications of what he's done, and how Ashildr may not want to thank him. Director Ed Bazalgette also decides to shoot the scene as if it's some sort of triumphant and miraculous development, with a focus on the Vikings herding around Ashildr in happiness and joy for what's happening, whilst Murray Gold's music quietly plays a beautiful tune in the background. But, of course, this is all done on purpose by everyone involved in the production team, all of whom know that this will end up having terrible ramifications and yet they play it in such a happy way - choosing to ignore what's going to happen.

And, indeed, we'll see what happens to Ashildr tomorrow, in the appropriately titled The Woman Who Lived.

Day 817: Before the Flood

I'm not a big fan of Before the Flood. It's not an awful story, nor is it particularly bad. It's just that it's not Under the Lake. And, for whatever reason, that really annoys me.

Under the Lake isn't an excellent episode of Doctor Who, but it does do a lot of things that I like. I like the scientific bend to the story, where the focus is clearly on figuring out the situation rather than just fighting monsters. I also like the setting, which feels very atmospheric and cinematic (as I mentioned yesterday), and I love the way in which the story develops itself, building up a strong amount of tension as each character is killed, one by one. It reminds me of episodes like The Waters of Mars or The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, where the story is allowed to start calm, but it slowly builds up the tension to a point of chaos and destruction, creating a memorable and thrilling experience. And Before the Flood doesn't really work with that, instead it decides to go off on a different direction.

So, whilst we do still have characters trapped on a sea base, this is inter-cut with other characters working in the past to find out what's happened and hopefully influence the events in the future. And it feels like we've lost that sense of rising tension and horror - instead of getting extended sequences where the ghosts work to reach their goal and the Doctor tries to stop them, we get an episode devoted to discussing a paradox that only plays a minor role in the overall story and just distracts from the main attraction, as well as a sudden love story sub-plot and a lengthy scene where the Doctor chats with the villain, making it seem all the less imposing as they talk.

But those are just minor quibbles compared with my big problem, which is that the story goes out of its way to remove any tension from the episode. Within the first ten minutes, we get a list of people and it's easily implied that said list is the list of people who are going to die, in order. So when we realise that O'Donnell's name is on the list, we realise that she's definitely going to die when she's hiding from the Fisher King. And when we hear that Clara's name is next on the list, we know that either no-one else is going to die, or all the ghosts are going to come back to life because Clara can't die because she's going to be in the next couple of episodes. So scenes like Cass being stalked by a ghost have no meaning, because we know that she will live - the story has dictated it so. It's odd, because I know that Moffat has got a personal vendetta against people who spoil stories and yet here's an episode written that he had a direct hand in crafting where it spoils half of the story halfway through.

Still, I can't hate Before the Flood, because it does give us one of the best renditions of the Doctor Who theme ever:

Day 816: Under the Lake

I can't remember when it was exactly, but I was talking to my Dad a couple of months ago about the blog and how watching it all in order gave me a new appreciation for the developing nature of the series over time. He agreed with me, and then said that what it would also mean is that when I reached Rose, I'd also get to experience the shock of seeing the series jump ahead in terms of production. And he was right. Well, right-ish. You see, that shock ended up happening a lot sooner than I thought, and it was a far larger jump than from Doctor Who: The TV Movie to Rose.

On the 9th of July, the first trailer for Series 9 was launched. As seen above, it promised a series full of excitement and wonder, with a heavy focus on the first two stories in the series: the Dalek/Missy two parter and the underwater base/ghost two parter. Both of them looked and felt visually impressive, in particular the underwater story which was filled with some fascinating sets and beautiful creature design. This is coupled with the moody lighting which helps add to an overall feeling of isolation from the outside world - a base where you're trapped beneath the surface. And this all blew my mind and left me massively looking forward to those two episodes (which would later be known as Under the Lake and Before the Flood).

But the real reason why my mind was blown and I was left thinking that everything looked so amazing is because at the same time, I was watching the Peter Davison era story Terminus. Now, whilst I will be tempted to defend Terminus on any given day of the week, I will admit that it is severely lacking in production values. So to see something as cinematic as Under the Lake and to know that it came from the same programme that could also produce Terminus was one of the most shocking experiences that I've ever had over the course of doing this blog. So the moral of the story is: if you want something to look more impressive, watch Terminus beforehand.

Day 815: The Witch's Familiar

I rate The Witch's Familiar very highly for two scenes in particular. They are quite different scenes in terms of why they exist and what they want to accomplish, but I feel that they are very good indeed and help the story be objectively good.

The first is the solution to the cliffhanger. The Magician's Apprentice ended with the apparent extermination of Clara and Missy, complete with both of them being disintegrated. However, The Witch's Familiar opens with them both alive and well, ready to start their plan to rescue the Doctor. What I love about this scene is the way that the resolution to the cliffhanger is framed: as questions leading to an answer rather than a simple answer. For comparison's sake, I'll pick a random cliffhanger from another story - Remembrance of the Daleks Part 2. Here, Ace is surrounded by Daleks and has a small rocket launcher with her. She could be able to blow them up, but she's clearly going to die in the process. Left with virtually no way to survive, the question at the end of the episode is how she'll get out of it. At the start of part 3, we receive the answer (the Doctor uses an anti-Dalek gun that he'd been developing over the past episode) and we move on. It's a clear set-up for we see the question posed in the cliffhanger solved immediately, and we move on.

Now, as I said, The Witch's Familiar begins with the question posed in the cliffhanger (How did Clara and Missy survive?) already resolved - we see both of them alive and well. But Moffat realises that this is not satisfactory and he wants the audience to realise that simply seeing that it has been resolved is not enough - we need to see how it solved (This is something that he also applied to great effect in Sherlock's The Reichenbach Fall with both he and Gatiss letting Sherlock live, but not telling the audience how, creating a large amount of excitement and discussion about the solution and not the end result). So the sequence of us finding out how Clara and Missy survived is framed as Missy asking Clara a question, and then leaving Clara to figure it out. It allows us to see the working, to see the lead-up to a solution rather than just a solution itself. It makes the resolution to the cliffhanger feel more satisfying, and, in my opinion, works better than just seeing a solution, as discussed earlier with respect to the Remembrance of the Daleks cliffhanger (which has always stuck out to me like a sore thumb in that story. I love Remembrance of the Daleks except for that moment.).

Now, the other scene that I really enjoy in this story comes later on, with the Doctor and Davros. The Doctor/Davros scenes in this episode are always going to be difficult to analyse, because that element of the story is based around Davros forcing the Doctor to give up his regeneration energy for him, which he does by abusing his compassion. So these scenes have the double meaning that Davros doesn't really mean what he's saying, he's just manipulating the Doctor into doing what he wants him to do. And that works, because it both gives us the opportunity to see Davros and the Doctor talk in a way that we've never seen them before, less as enemies and more as old friends who are just on different sides of a brutal war, but it doesn't dilute the original antagonistic relationship that the two have. But there's one Doctor/Davros moment that I feel is a real sense of compassion on Davros' behalf for the Doctor.

It's when the Doctor reveals that Gallifrey has survived and that he now has a home that he can in theory go back to. And Davros comes across as legitimately thrilled for the Doctor, because you get this sense that understands the importance of a home and the importance of belonging to a society. After all, Davros is a creature of war, where his patriotism was so high to his cause that he would consider destroying every other piece of life in the universe just so that his vision of the Kaled way of life would survive. And so he has this twisted attachment to the concept of belonging that he wants to share with the Doctor, and you almost feel disgusted that Davros feels so happy for him because you know that the two of them are sharing in this happy moment for the wrong reasons. And I find that fascinating, and it's part of why I really love those scenes between the Doctor and Davros.

So The Witch's Familiar is able to show a strong ending to the first two part episode of the series. And not only that, but it's also kept what made the Capaldi era so great - this sense of stopping to breathe in the story rather than just keep everything going at a rapid pace. It's a philosophy that gives the series something really strong to be based on.

Day 814: The Magician's Apprentice

One of the things that Steven Moffat decided to do with Series 9 was to experiment with story telling methods. In particular, he experimented with longer stories, with every single episode bar one in Series 9 being, in some shape or form, a multi-part story. It means that we get to spend more time developing the plot and allowing it to be just a little more complex or giving it just a bit more time to breathe and not get caught up in the need for action every fifteen minutes. And in some stories, this approach works really well, producing some of the most compelling and brilliant episodes of Doctor Who ever produced. But, the only problem is, I'm not sure that it works for The Magician's Apprentice.

If I treated 'The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar' as one episode, then I'm fairly sure that I'd have no problems with it. As I'll talk about tomorrow, I actually rather like The Witch's Familiar, and it solves many of my problems with The Magician's Apprentice. But I can't get behind The Magician's Apprentice as an individual episode. It's not the direction, which is really well crafted (the pre-titles sequence in particular strikes me as one of the best in the series' history, primarily due to the way in which it has been shot). The writing, as well, isn't really at fault. It behaves exactly as a 'Part One' of a two part story should, delivering some fine set-up to the story and focussing on the exact situation of the characters, in this case primarily that the Doctor is feeling profound guilt about his actions towards the young Davros. But I can't get beyond the fact that nothing happens in this episode. It feels like there's fifteen minutes of plot in this episode and half an hour of filling time and waiting for Part Two to come along. It means that I'm just left feeling empty from this story, because there's nothing to really bite my teeth into.

And I fully acknowledge that this is my problem, and not anyone else's. As I say, I do enjoy the two part story as a whole, it's just that I can't enjoy The Magician's Apprentice as an individual episode. Fortunately, things do improve from here on, and Moffat's multi-part experiment does end up working a lot better after this point.

Day 813: Last Christmas

Well, tonight ought to be an easy night to get to sleep. It's not as if I foolishly watched an episode of Doctor Who all about dreams an hour before I was due to go to bed, knowing full well that I have regular bursts of hypnophobia (fear of sleep). That would be a very stupid move indeed.

So I'd forgotten that Last Christmas is all about dreams. It's not that I'd forgotten that the episode existed, it's just that there were bigger things that drew my attention away from it, such as the ending which was created specifically in case Jenna Coleman decided to leave at the end of this series (by the way, I think that this ending is far more beautiful than the departure that she ended up getting, but I wouldn't trade away the stories in Series 9 just so that this ending should be kept intact - Clara's story arc is definitely worth her staying). Also worth mentioning is the wonderful re-appearance from Danny Pink which added some much needed emotional closure to his story arc, giving Clara one last moment with him before she can accept the sad truth of his death. It makes the episode serve as an excellent coda to the series finale, and serves as an excellent conclusion to series 8's character based story arc.

But that's all dancing around the main issue here, which is that this story is all about the frankly terrifying notion that you can never realise whether you're in a dream or whether you're awake. It's a thought that I'm surprised more people aren't worried about, because it's completely disconcerting and, much like the Dream Crabs in this episode, once the thought enters your mind, it eats away at you until you're a husk of your former self. I mean, you could be dreaming right now as you read this, but you wouldn't be aware of it. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is one of the best concepts ever used for a Doctor Who story, and I'm truly glad that it was used in such a way where it was one of the clear focuses of the episode as something scary (unlike in Amy's Choice where it was just used as a plot device). So, props to Steven Moffat for doing that, he's certainly ensured that I'm going to be having trouble sleeping tonight.

Day 812: Death in Heaven

When the early reviews for Deep Breath first came in, every single one seemed to focus on the restaurant scene. It's a surprisingly long scene where the two characters are just allowed to talk about their situation and figure out what is happening. It was frequently called out as a representation of how this new Capaldi era of Doctor Who would look like a collection of longer scenes, giving the stories more time to breathe instead of giving them more bells and whistles to gawp at. And whilst these longer scenes may not be seen in every single episode of the Capaldi era, there is one particular one that pops up in Death in Heaven that is definitely worth talking about.

The graveyard scene is absolutely fantastic. It happens towards the end of the episode, after the Doctor has escaped death by falling into the TARDIS and unlocking it, where his first port of call is to find Clara, who's dealing with the fact that Danny Pink has suddenly become a Cyberman, but still has his emotions. And what the scene does is, instead of just allowing the Doctor to fix the situation and be done with it, it gives the characters an ethical dilemma to consider. Because all three characters, at some point in the scene, have some desire to remove Danny's emotions, whether it's to take away his pain, or for a tactical advantage against the Cybermen. But none of them want to be the one to do it, so they spend time standing around and considering their options as they attempt to stall the inevitable. And this is what makes the scene so memorable: it allows the characters to talk and develop over the course of the situation. It also helps that the ending to that particular strand is that Danny loses his emotions and becomes a Cyberman, adding a heartbreaking inevitability to the event.

But that's still only half of the scene. The other half concerns Missy, who enters the scene with a desire to make it go in a completely unexpected direction. She reveals that she created the army of the Cybermen specifically for the Doctor, not as creatures for him to beat, but as creatures for him to use. She wants him to use them to fight evil throughout the Universe, as the world's most good General. And she specifically does this because she wants him to consider that offer, so that he can realise that he is not a particularly good man and that he would clearly use that force for some sort of evil. It's a wonderful road for the story to go along; it reveals that the entire plot has not been conceived out of some simple desire to take over the world, but the far more complex and interesting want to change a character's mind. As Missy says to the Doctor, she just wanted him to realise that they're not so different.

And of course, order is restored by the end of the scene. The Doctor realises that, whilst he isn't a good man, he is happy with being an idiot who just helps out from time to time wherever he is needed. Danny takes control of the Cybermen and uses them to solve the bigger issues that Missy had set up to take over the Earth. And so the story comes to an end, but a bitter-sweet ending as Clara deals with the loss of Danny, but hides it from the Doctor. Perhaps we'll see how all of this plays out tomorrow, as we continue our look at Peter Capaldi's time as the Doctor.

Day 811: Dark Water

Okay, so Dark Water is one of the best individual episodes in all of Doctor Who. I feel like the Capaldi era of the series has given Steven Moffat his second wind, allowing him to come up with genuinely new and fresh ideas that wholeheartedly work for the series. Take, for instance, his handling of the afterlife. You get the real sense that he sat down and thought about what the afterlife actually would be like, and so he fills it with a sort of mundaneness when we get to visit it (note as well that in the scenes on Earth, the afterlife contrastingly is dealt with as some sort of weird concept that could easily have been in a story either set in the future or on another planet - it's also why the sudden reveal that it's present day Earth works so well, despite the massive amount of publicity that this story would be taking place on present day Earth it still comes as an absolute shock that it is). But then, as well, Moffat finds the other hook to it, and makes the idea of an afterlife scary again by proposing that you still remain 'conscious' when you're dead, leading to the horrific off-screen implications of cremation. It's all terrible stuff to think about, but the episode continually draws you back to thinking about it, making it a more cerebral lead-in to the finale than what we might have expected.

And then, just to top everything off, the character formerly known as the Master (now Missy) and the Doctor finally get to relieve their sexual tension. I'm honestly not going to go into any further detail about that scene, other than the fact that it's a scene that gets better and better every single time that you watch it.

Day 810: In the Forest of the Night

I desperately want to love In the Forest of the Night. And indeed, after watching it, I'd say that 90% of the story brings things that I absolutely love, but there's something else that I absolutely hate that I just can't overlook. And it turns what should have been my favourite episode of Doctor Who in Series 8 to something that I'm on the fence about.

So Maebh, the young girl that the story is focussed on, is frequently mentioned to be on medication. It's said she takes it because she hears voices, and that she gets frequent visions, and so she needs it to properly function and not put herself or others at risk. And the story dares to suggest that the medication that she's taking isn't needed and that she should just listen to those voices, because they are spirits of the forest that are using her to communicate. And I can see what the story is trying to do - to tell a story all about how we should listen to children instead of ignore them. But the only problem is that the story treads a dangerous line towards the anti-vaxxer movement, where people will genuinely ignore advice from medical professionals in favour of their own stupid beliefs. And it absolutely infuriates me that Doctor Who, a programme all about science and how wonderful it is, can be interpreted in such a way so easily. Because often-times things like medication and vaccines can be what's best for people, instead of just leaving things to their own devices. It's disappointing to see new writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce leave that plot thread there, because for me it comes to clsoe to ruining the entire story for me.

And I genuinely love the rest of this story. It's a call-back to the fairy tale-esque magic of Series 5, with a story that feels like it's jumped straight from a story-book. I love new director Sheree Folkson's direction, which feels completely different to every other Doctor Who story, focussing on sunlight and greenery when outside - further adding to the magic of the overnight forest, and also choosing several moments to shoot things from a lower angle, which helps give a sense of childlike wonder to the whole adventure. I love Peter Capaldi's performance throughout the story, the expression that he gives when he realises that they've lost Maebh is wonderfully vulnerable and so at odds with the rest of his darker characterisation through the rest of the series that it's one of the funniest moments in the series for me. I'm even overlooking the bad science in this episode (that's not how solar flares work guys), at least partially because the story gives a shout-out to one of my absolute favourite scientific events ever (Tunguska meteor, 1908 - I grinned and laughed like a loon once I realised what the story was going to reference). It's a story that's just beautiful and filled with wonder.

But I can't find it in my heart to absolutely love it. One simple mistake turns the entire episode to a masterpiece into a deeply flawed piece of television. It's perhaps been the biggest disappointment in all of my re-watch of Doctor Who, and I'm really sorry about that.

Day 809: Flatline

Flatline is a story all about Clara becoming the Doctor. With the Doctor trapped in the TARDIS for the majority of the story, we're left with Clara to take the driving seat for the adventure. And she settles into the role well, flashing about her psychic paper and the sonic screwdriver without any inhibitions about the responsibility that she now has. She even gets herself a companion, with the new character of Rigsy. As the Doctor says at the conclusion of the story "You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara" further showing Clara's evolution as a character into a secondary Doctor. But then the Doctor goes and follows that up.

"Goodness had nothing to do with it", the Doctor says, right at the conclusion of the story. The concept of being the Doctor is not connected with being good in any way, as the Doctor is realising over the course of this series. Looking at it through what Clara's doing, that become even more clear. Faced with this power of becoming the Doctor, she falls into the same grey areas of morality that the Doctor does, wandering around the adventure without really caring for what happens as a result of it, providing that the ending turns out well.

Note, for instance, that she spends the majority of the episode lying to everyone around her. She lies both to the Doctor and Danny about her situation with them, telling the Doctor that Danny is fine with her travelling in the TARDIS whilst telling Danny that she has given up on TARDIS travelling altogether. She also lies when she introduces herself to people to further her own ends. To be fair to her, these lies can be clearly read in the way that she intends them to be read: harmless words that end up helping the people in question. But that moral grey area is far more visible when we see the fact that she tells the people that she meets that she can save them all, and advises them to help her. She knows that she can't save them all, and indeed half of the supporting cast die as a direct result of meeting her. But she lies to them because she sees them as useful, and she needs to keep them onside even in the worst of times. And the story dares to reward her for it, openly seeing the decision that she makes as a good one and failing to blame her for it, a direct contrast with the way in which the story reacted to the Doctor lying in Into the Dalek as he knowingly sent someone to his death so that he could study the Dalek more closely.

It's all very interesting to see how these things are developing, and of course they will develop further over the rest of Clara's time both with the Doctor and as the Doctor. Because whilst it's all well and good to see Clara take the role of the Doctor in a story that's a relative romp, it's far more interesting to see her as the Doctor in a darker story, which we'll see in a week or so.

Day 808: Mummy on the Orient Express

Of all the episodes of Capaldi's first series, I most looked forward to re-watching this one over the course of the blog. Not because I enjoyed it so much on first viewing that I immediately wanted to see it again, but because I was not impressed by this episode when I last watched it. It's because I went into it expecting something else - I was under the strong impression (and had indeed extensively theorised) that this would be an episode all about the Doctor on an adventure without Clara, and so we'd be dealing with the consequences of Kill the Moon through that lens. But instead we got something slightly different, which put me off-balance with watching it and eventually meant that I wasn't able to appreciate this story for what it was. So, around a year and a half later, I'm finally able to watch it again with relatively fresh eyes, and actually get around to enjoying it.

And it's quite a good story to enjoy anyway. For all that I was disappointed that it didn't appear on face value to be addressing the issues of Kill the Moon, it's far better at examining it than anything that I would have theorised would have happened. It works on the basis that there's been time between the two episodes, allowing Clara to breathe and think about what's happened. So instead of her shouting at the Doctor over what he does and how he treats people, she instead just keeps calm and subdued, considering everything that happens within the story. It's a strong performance from Jenna Coleman who perfectly conveys that slow thought process as she moves from deciding to leave the Doctor once and for all to staying with him for more adventuring.

And Clara's decision to stay with the Doctor is perhaps a bigger moment for her character than anything in Kill the Moon. Up until this point, we could feasibly see Clara as just another companion. She travels with the Doctor, they go on adventures, and then one day they stop because one of them has had enough. But when Clara reaches that point where she wants to stop, she can't. She's too addicted to her life with the Doctor to be able to leave, instead she jumps back onto the TARDIS console and gets ready for another adventure. This is, of course, a fatal flaw for her character - a sense that if she's not going to be going on a character journey that will end with her departing the TARDIS once and for all then something perhaps worse might happen to her. And all of that is confirmed in tomorrow's episode, which openly spells out what I've been saying for the past little while...

Day 807: Kill the Moon

FULL DISCLAIMER: Before I start this entry, I should mention the elephant in the room. Or perhaps a more apt description would be the space dragon in the room. Yes, this story works well as an allegory for a certain subject. Yes, I acknowledge that there are compelling arguments on both sides of the discussion about what this story actually means with regards to that subject. Yes, I have an opinion about what this story means with respect to that subject. No, I will not be discussing it at all in this entry. Yes, this is me running away from an internet shit-storm. And finally, yes, I do think that there's something better to talk about with this story.

I will put on the record that I love Kill the Moon. It's not just because I enjoy the story, or the full and frank discussion about the subject matter, or even the amazingly strong performances in the story (there's something so joyous about Capaldi's line delivery of "The moon's an egg" - it's understated and excited at the same time). It's because of that final scene in the TARDIS. The scene that I'm talking about is where Clara finally loses her temper at the Doctor because she can't cope with the way that he treats her any more. It couldn't really work in any other episode, because this is one that's centred around Clara making a certain decision, and although the story later commends her for making that decision, she still doesn't want to let go of the fact that it's been a traumatic moment for her. So she lets it all fly out at the Doctor, blaming him for leaving her when she needed him and daring to pretend that it wasn't worth anything when it would prove to be one of the most important decisions ever to be made in the history of the human race. And that calling out of the Doctor is very important because he has been an absolute jerk in this story and it feels refreshing to hear Clara acknowledge it in such a visceral manner as she does in this particular scene.

And what impresses me about this scene is not just the emotion behind it (Jenna Coleman's performance in this scene is probably her best performance in the entire series, and there's a lot of strong competition in that particular category), it's the fact that it actually means something. In other stories, in virtually every other era of the series, this story would have ended up with everything being tied up with a nice bow, resetting everything to square one for next week's story. Kill the Moon dares to be different, it dares to end the episode on a cliffhanger where no character is in any danger but we're not so sure about their emotional state. I remember when I first watched this a year or so ago, I genuinely didn't know whether Clara was going to be in the next episode or not. Granted, that may have ended up contributing to some, shall we say, interesting feelings about that next story, but that's for tomorrow. For now, I think that we should just bask in the glory of seeing such an emotionally powerful episode that ranks as one of my series highlights.

Oh, and yes, this is the first time in 800-odd entries that I have sworn on this blog. I feel really passionate about avoiding internet shit-storms.

Day 806: The Caretaker

Let's talk about Danny Pink, the new regular for Series 8. He's an interesting character to have as a regular because he's defined as someone who doesn't get on particularly well with the Doctor, mostly due to their difference of opinion about war and soldiering. And this difference of opinion is explored throughout The Caretaker, which proves to be quite an intriguing story.

As a story, The Caretaker sets itself up as the generic romp where Danny, as Clara's boyfriend, discovers that she can travel through time and space. So we get a fairly light hearted opening 20 minutes or so, leading up to the point where Danny discovers the truth. And when he does, he doesn't take it particularly well, in part because the Doctor has left a bad first impression on him due to their aforementioned difference in opinion over soldiers. And from this point onwards, the story changes to an argument between the two characters, with a generic romp happening in the background.

And the argument is great because neither character is put in a winning position by the story; instead on both a writing and directing front the episode is kept totally impartial. We continually see the Doctor put forward his beliefs that Danny is not someone to be particularly liked, because of his military nature and admiration of killing people who attack him, instead of searching for the peaceful solution. It's an opinion that's best read in a post-Day of the Doctor series, where we know that the Doctor had taken up arms and become a soldier, and that he has lived with that regret every day after that point. But the story doesn't dwell on that, preferring instead to dwell on Danny's argument, which it knows is the harder one to sell to the audience. And Danny's argument is that the Doctor is just as bad as he is, even defining him as an Army Officer. It's a cruel thing to do, and it's cruel of Danny to continually refer to the Doctor as 'Sir' throughout their first meeting specifically to irk him but it's entirely justified. And when the Doctor meets with Clara to discuss their plan to take down the Skovox Blitzer, it's done in such a way to emphasise that the Doctor is clearly giving Clara orders to follow, like a Sergeant ordering about his troops. It all makes for a very interesting argument to watch.

And that's what I really like about this episode, and Series 8 as a whole. From this point onwards, it's going to refuse to take sides, preferring instead to tell a story that has conflict and no clear winner. And we will, of course, see more of that in tomorrow's episode.

Day 805: Time Heist

The first half of Peter Capaldi's first series as the Doctor consisted of writers who were all old hands at the series. The aim is clearly to show that Capaldi can handle doing more 'traditional' Doctor Who stories, before moving into the newer voices for the second half of the series, of which a few will become more prevalent through the rest of his time as the Doctor. You've got two episodes from Steven Moffat, as well as one from Mark Gatiss, both of whom have been involved with the series since Eccleston. Of the other writers, one of them hadn't written much for the series before but had been very involved with a variety of spin-offs, another had written several episodes for the series as well as a range of books, audio plays and even a stage production, and the other one was Steve Thompson.

Steve Thompson's not had the best track record in terms of episodes. There was The Curse of the Black Spot, which had some good ideas but was weakened by some poor direction. Then he came back for Journey to the Centre to the TARDIS, which again had some good ideas, it's just that it didn't completely hold together, and there were also severe problems in terms of direction and acting. So now, we get what is possibly his last episode for Doctor Who: Time Heist. And Time Heist, to its credit, does have some good ideas. The Teller as a creature that can suck people's brains out is a nice and creepy concept. The entire idea of a time travelling heist is also strong, if a little bit hampered by the method through which Thompson decides to execute it. It could have been better if the time travel element were introduced sooner, giving the entire procedure a certain air of uniqueness, rather than the generic science fiction that we're left with for the majority of the story.

But the main problem that I have with Time Heist is that it never really wants to do anything. It feels like Thompson's just writing the story to deliver the brief and then leave; there's no sense that he wants to do anything special with the story, to go anywhere new or to make it feel exciting. And so that means that, no matter how good the direction or the acting wants to be, it can't quite rise above the generic nature of the script.

Still, at least Capaldi is good in it. And that's the main bonus of these first six episodes: we get to see what Peter Capaldi's like when he does things that could have conceivably been done by any other Doctor. Tomorrow, we'll get the last of those episodes before we dive head first into something new.