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 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...