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 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...