New Companion Musings

(Can't really include a picture of a character who doesn't exist yet, so let's just have a lovely photo of Twelve beckoning the soon-to-be newcomer aboard.)

So, Doctor Who is in the market for a new companion.  Smart money is, of course, on a young, attractive woman from the U.K. in the 21^st century.  I’m hopeful that whoever we get will be wonderful, as so many companions are, and I’m excited to see Twelve’s dynamic with someone new.  Here are some general thoughts on what I would and wouldn’t hope to see.

At this point, it’s likely a pipe dream, but I’d lovesomeone non-contemporary and/or non-local.  Two of my favorites are 18^th-century Scotsman Jamie and descendant-of-off-world-colonists-from-the-future Leela.  You hear various arguments on why the companion should be a contemporary human.  “They’re the audience surrogate” – I can relate to people from different times/places.  “We need a connection to present-day U.K. so we can set stories there” – trouble’s going to find its way to Earth no matter what, and then we get the fun of a companion who doesn’t understand our society.  On that note, “You get bogged down having to explain everything” – first, anyone of good companion stock is a quick study, and second, so what?  Who doesn’t like seeing Leela fixated by a yoyo or Jamie calling an airplane a “flying beastie?”  And then, there’s, “A full-time alien companion would spend too much time in makeup every week” – leaving aside the fact that tons of other sci-fi actors have done it, there are enough humanoid aliens in the Whoniverse that a drastically-different appearance isn’t a must.  There you go, no more excuses!  Bring on the non-contemporary companion!  But seriously, folks…

I get the complaints about the lack of male solo companions, but personally, I’m not into it.  Not because I think that sort of Doctor-companion duo wouldn’t work, but because I wouldn’t want the show to have zero women in the regular cast (I’d be more open to it with a hypothetical female Doctor.)  Really, though, I love a good team TARDIS, and I’m all about mixed companion company.  I really like it when companion teams are picked up in different places/times – even just companions who don’t already know each other.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Amy and Rory, and Ian and Barbara are my jam, but I love the raggedy-little-surrogate-family feel of companions from different backgrounds joining the Doctor and becoming delightful friends together.  There’s a nice mix of personalities, experiences, and skill sets, and it opens up the range of possible interactions.  The new series has played with this (the Nine-Rose-Jack episodes, the Paternoster gang,) but always in the short-term or as recurring flavor.

Also, while I understand the calls for someone like Osgood or Ashildr (both of whom are pretty great,) I’d prefer someone (someones?) new.  I’d like a companion that I haven’t met before, bringing the usual companion tropes to the table but having a distinct personality for me to fall in love with, like I have so many times before.  In addition to the usual qualities – clever, brave, compassionate, good-humored – let’s find someone who really gets Twelve, likes him, and rolls with his Twelve-ishness.  I want to see the Doctor and his new companion having so much fun.

Note:  not that it will ever happen, but I’d gladly put aside my non-contemporary-human, companions-who-don’t-already-know-each-other, and someone-we-haven’t-seen-before wishes for a young-adult Clyde and Rani companion team.  The Sarah Jane Adventures was so lovely, and I’ve liked the idea of these two as companions forever.  I would be all over that.

Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 0 – “Last Christmas” (2014)

Here comes your Sunday Who review two days early, and color me quite satisfied.  Not only is this one of the better Christmas specials Who has ever had and one of my favorite Twelfth Doctor stories so far (“Mummy on the Orient Express” and “Flatline” are still on top,) but it’s also probably the best Moffat-penned episode I’ve seen literally in years.

Santa is the second most-surprising figure to turn up on Clara’s roof late at night on Christmas Eve – the Doctor is back, and there’s an alien threat he’s anxious to protect her from/enlist her help to stop.  Soon, the pair are at the North Pole, where a scientific expedition has been set upon by dream crabs, creepy/gross alien parasites that look like the facehuggers from Alien and bore holes in your skull to eat your brain.  Yep, merry Christmas, everybody!  The dream crabs are so named because they induce a dream state in their victims while they’re busy digesting, and much of the episode is spent trying to determine what’s real and what isn’t.

Add another to the list of supremely Moffat monsters – the dream crabs fit right in with the Silence, the Weeping Angels, and their ilk, especially thanks to an odd and frightening trait of theirs:  they feed off the image of themselves in your mind, so the more you think about them, the stronger they grow.  There’s still more attention paid to cool moments and Shocking! Twists! than consistency and internal logic, and there’s one particular thread that gets completely dropped in favor of bigger fake-outs, but they’re still pretty decent monsters.  The story keeps you guessing in that old Inception way, and it plays nicely with classic dream tropes.  Plus, it’s really and truly scary in place, which is always a good thing for Doctor Who.

I was dubious about honest-to-goodness Santa, but he’s done pretty well.  There’s just enough irony, bite, and unpredictability to keep him from being too silly, and Nick Frost does a great job in the role (that makes three Spaced regulars who’ve guest-starred on Who, along with several of their recurring cast – gotta love that!)  I like his interactions with the Doctor, and I love the scenes where one of the expedition crew interrogates him about the plausibility of his existence.

Best of all, I’m feeling optimistic about the future of Twelve and Clara.  Granted, Clara has made breakthroughs before and fallen back into old patterns, but even apart from the big moments, their interactions are so much better here than in most of series 8.  You can see how they care about each other, and for the most part, you can see Clara really looking at him as the Doctor – the real Doctor, not just a consolation prize after Eleven.  They bicker a little, but that’s fine.  It feels fitting for both of them, but the affection is there as well, on both sides.  Can we keep them like this?  I want to love Clara, and I think I could with this version.  The Doctor himself is probing, clever, ornery, caring, funny (everything he ought to be,) no one goes on about what a terrible person he is, and he never slides into unlikeable dick Doctor.  (He’s still his usual not-a-ball-of-sunshine self, though; I love that about him.  One of my favorite moments is when Santa’s trying to rally the troops in a rather touchy-feely way, and the Doctor isn’t down with the hand-holding.  He agrees a bit begrudgingly to hold Clara’s, but no one else’s!  Too fun.)

Warnings

Some super-gross alien monstery-ness.

Parsing Out the Twelfth Doctor

Now that we’ve had our first full season of Twelve (even though the show sometimes seemed to do its best to be stingy with him,) I thought I’d take some time to explore our new Doctor.  As with most Doctors, you can catch glimpses of others within him, but in the end, the pieces and composites that come together make up something that’s only him. 

Since much has been made of Twelve’s less-than-cuddly personality, we’ll start there.  Some of his detachment is reminiscent of early One, but it manifests itself differently.  With One, it’s largely about remnants of Time Lord imperiousness; he considers himself above humans, and it’s only by getting to know people like Ian and Barbara that he starts to realize how wonderful they can be.  Not that Twelve never acts superior (pudding brains, anyone?); however, his coldness is often more utilitarian.  As he tries to make Clara see throughout the season, he can’t let himself regret lives endangered or lost because he’s so often the only one standing in the way of much greater loss, and he can’t afford to get distracted. 

I see how his bluntness could be considered Six-like.  Most of the time, he’s just brusque, unfiltered, and can’t-be-bothered, but sometimes his rudeness grates on me – as I’ve harped on before, his insults about Clara’s looks and ratcheted-up hatred for soldiers are downright distasteful (along with his irritating insistence that Danny must teach PE rather than math.)  I’m sure it’s no accident that the times he reminds me the most of Six are the times I like him least. 

As for his manipulative tendencies – the moments when he’s holding a lot more cards than he lets on to Clara and leaves her in the lurch without filling her in on the plan – I’m reminded of Seven.  Seven doesn’t have the market cornered on manipulative Doctors, of course (though the ADHD puppy routine distracts you from it, Eleven actually plays a lot of mind games,) but he’s the one that most comes to mind.  With Twelve, I’m not entirely sure why he does stuff like this.  In a way, it seems like he’s testing Clara – not her aptitude, but her faith in him.  If he appears to have abandoned her, will she believe the worst, or will she be like Leela in “The Invasion of Time” and trust it’s part of the plan?  The whole season focuses so much on the fractured relationship between Twelve and Clara that I could buy him trying to suss out what she thinks of him now.  If that’s the case, though, it’s an unfortunate cycle where she resents being kept out of the loop and views his machinations as proof that he’s a shiftier Doctor than his predecessor.

At his heart, I think he seems the most like Nine, albeit again in a different way.  They have the same lost quality masked by a façade that’s by turns angry and falsely cheerful.  Both have been shaken and don’t know what to make of themselves; Nine is still reeling from the end of the Time War, and Twelve, the first in a new and unanticipated regeneration cycle, spends most of the season trying to work out who he is now.  There’s a vulnerability there, but while Nine is often so raw about it, Twelve seems much more determined to hide it.  He speaks volumes with his insecure, almost rueful smiles, and it kills me that Clara only seems to see the bluster that hides the worries, fears, and needs.  To me, she takes his brusque, uncaring act at face value and doesn’t recognize how badly he needs support and reassurance.  When he makes remarks about how unspotless his hands are, I want to shout, “Okay, fine, so he doesn’t want you to hug him, but will someone please tell the Doctor he’s good man?!” at my TV.  Series 9, please?

Doctor Who: Overall Series 8 Musings

I feel like every season of Who under Moffat has gotten progressively Moffatier, with the latest practically an Ouroboros eating its own tail.  It pains me, because Moffat writes some good stuff, but I think he needs someone to reign him in or it just gets to be too much Moffat; his better writing qualities start to feel recycled, and his less attractive ones start to overwhelm the work.  That’s been this season in a nutshell for me, but I think there’s also a fair amount of good parts that could be salvaged with a more careful hand.

I’ve already written about my issues with the Doctor and Clara’s strained relationship, how the part-time companion thing doesn’t work for me, and the weird obsession with the Doctor criticizing Clara’s looks, so I won’t get into all that again.  Unfortunately, I don’t know if this dynamic can be fixed.  I hate to say it, because Jenna Coleman’s a fine actress if given half a chance, but I’m ready for a companion change.  The relationship that’s been established here doesn’t seem good for either party, and it’s not fun for me to watch.  Maybe if they added a second companion to shake up the current situation?  That might be able to temper the dysfunction.

Another of the season’s problems is the general inattention to detail.  This is a beloved, long-running sci-fi show:  that means a number of its fans spend colossal amounts of time thinking about and discussing the episodes, and it’s rough when they don’t stand up to the barest whisper of scrutiny.  There’s been far too much nonsensical science-magic (“Kill the Moon,” “In the Forest of the Night,” and “Death in Heaven” being the worst offenders,) the feel-good endings seem too unearned and deus-ex-machina-ish (ditto the above,) and important things just get dropped (“Listen” really goes off the rails, and how exactly did Clara and Danny go from a disastrous first date to true love in three episodes?)  It’s sloppy, too focused on Twists! And Big!  Ideas! with no patience for fleshing them out or dealing with them in a meaningful way.

Most egregiously, this season completely squanders the Doctor.  When you ask yourself on three separate weeks if this is the “Doctor-lite” episode, you’re not getting enough Doctor.  Seriously.  “The Caretaker” barely bothers to play on the wonderful potential of the Doctor working at Coal Hill and he twicedisappears for a long stretch in “Kill the Moon” (the first time is especially annoying – it’d be like if we never saw what Ten gets up to after taking the plunge in “The Satan Pit” and stayed entirely with Rose until he comes back up.)  The actual Doctor-lite episode, “Flatline,” actually incorporates him better than the other two.  Not only does it have a lot of fun with the tiny TARDIS concept, but it also, gasp!, shows us a decent amount of the Doctor’s perspective and inner life. 

This is not okay, because the Doctor’s been my main saving grace of the season.  When the show deigns to let him be the Doctor (and remembers that “prickly and cantankerous” doesn’t have to mean “callous a-hole,”) I adore him and want him on my screen all the time.  At his best, he’s a stellar blend of One and Nine, along with a dose of Scrubs’s Dr. Cox and plenty that’s all his own.  Another win of the season is new writer Jamie Mathieson.  “Mummy on the Orient Express” and “Flatline” are hands-down my favorites of the season; they’re tight and entertaining, they have real emotion, and best of all, they get the Doctor and allow him to shine.  Yep, he’s a keeper.  Let’s see more episodes like his, Who – I want to love you so badly.

Doctor Who: “Dark Water” & “Death in Heaven” Revisited – Now with Spoilers!

 

Ah, that’s better – or at least easier.  How do you talk about a two-part Moffat finale when you don’t want give away any twists?  The answer is, “Vaguely.”  So, let’s give these episodes another look.  Full-octane nerdage and spoilers included.

 

Let’s start with the Nethersphere.  Although the concept is great and freaky, I’m really glad that it all turns out to be a ploy by Missy/the Master and the Cybermen.  The idea – that the dead remain conscious and feel everything that happens to their bodies – is a classic Moffat scenario, and I love Seb’s analogy about how, if babies in the womb could talk to one another, they’d assume life was only nine months long, since no one comes back once they “step into the light,” so to speak.  Still, it’s good that it’s just a fear-mongering tactic to convince people to preserve dead bodies (ripe for Cyber-exploitation;) you could’ve wound up with some seriously traumatized kids, especially with the whole “Don’t cremate me!” mantra.

 

It makes sense that the Cybermen would want to experiment with converting dead bodies, and in theory, it’s probably easier to manipulate uploaded consciousnesses before putting them into Cyber units – goodness knows that emotional inhibitor has caused them enough trouble in the past, and you’d think this setup would let them subvert that process.  So, it’s unfortunately nonsensical that they give a consciousness the option of deletion (presumably of feelings/emotions.)  Why not just do it as a matter of course?  Why go through all that rigmarole?  And I’m sorry, but magic Cyber-rain that apparently growsCybersuits out of a single particle of Cyber material is patently ridiculous.  I mean, what is that?  The show could’ve at least tried to explain it away, saying the metal becomes self-replicating when bonded to organic matter or something.  But nope – it’s just, “BTW, an exploded Cyberman basically turns into a cloud of instantly growing Cyber-spores.  Could they always do that?  Who cares?”  No thanks.

 

The whole “Doctor’s choice” moment falls flat for me as well.  First, since the Doctor tells Clara that switching on Danny’s inhibitor will turn him into an unfeeling monster that will kill her in an instant, why does he assume that Danny will still cooperate and give him intel if he turns it on?  Second, Danny wants the inhibitor turned on, so why does he give the Doctor attitude about being a “general” who blithely sacrifices the foot soldiers to further his aims?  I would’ve liked a hint that Danny knew the Master’s plan but refused to reveal it in the hope of forcing the Doctor to switch on the inhibitor.  On the other hand, I’m mostly happy with the Doctor’s epiphany – not so much the “idiot” part (the show throws around “idiot” and “shut up” way too much lately,) but the idea that the Doctor isn’t a good man or a bad man, a hero or a monster.  He’s simply a traveler who tries his best to help those who need it.  I also like that he doesn’t condemn Clara for attempting to make him rewrite time and bring Danny back.  Once you ignore the fact that the Doctor can open the TARDIS by snapping his fingers, what Clara does – coolly, calmly plotting to force his hand by drugging him and then destroying the TARDIS keys when he comes to – is horrible, but he’s beautifully gentle with her.  “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” is a gorgeous line, and the entire situation is really indicative of their relationship.  Despite his gruffness, he forgives even her worst violations, while she goes straight to lying and blackmail when she wants his help.  What’s up with that?

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 12 – “Death in Heaven” (2014)

 

Once again, it’s hard to talk about the season finale without spoilers.  Maybe next week – there’s plenty of fodder to last the Sunday Who review quite a while.  Overall impressions:  flashes of greatness, some terrific scenes for Peter Capaldi, nice appearances by characters I like, maddening illogical leaps, some blatant emotional manipulation, and serious messiness throughout.  Ultimately, I come out on the side of liking it, but it’s frustrating, because this show is capable of so much better and PC can be incredible when they let him.

 

I’ll start with what little of the plot I can describe.  The major threat presented by Missy and her invading-alien buddies is major enough for UNIT involvement, so yay!  On all sides, the Doctor is offered/forced to accept power and position he doesn’t want, and the episode delves into what the Doctor is made of in a reasonably satisfying way.  There are some fine horror bits, Missy shows how genuinely menacing she can be, and the Doctor once again proves a far better friend to Clara than she is to him.  (more on them another day – I have a lot of Twelve-Clara opinions.)

 

I’m glad that we get some decent focus on the Doctor.  It’s his show and I want to see him explored.  The episode goes about it in a bit of a clunky way, starting with his wildly-over-the-top prejudice against soldiers and a fair amount of contrived plotting, but it makes its way to some good points and the Doctor coming to better conclusions about himself.  It’s something the show has needed for quite a while, and it’s great to finally make some headway on that front.  Other than that, the best parts of the episode are the interactions between the Doctor and Missy.  They’re just about perfect going up against each other, and the more I think about Missy’s end-game plan, involving layers upon layers of twisted mind games designed to mess with the Doctor, the more fitting it seems.  I hope we see more of her in the future; she’s a fine baddie.

 

The plot holes, shoddy logic, and lazy “science” are harder to take.  As the culminating wrap-up to Twelve’s first season, it feels sloppy – a lot of flash and not much thought.  There are tonsof plot elements that come apart like loose threads if you think about them even a little bit, and no sci-fi fan likes to see that.  Granted, Who’s general whimsy and big heart give it more leeway in that area, but there’s only so far you can stretch it, and Moffat comes awfully close to hitting his limit here.  I just like seeing more care paid to the making of one of my favorite shows.

 

Clara is only okay.  She has to rely on some quick thinking to get herself out of a tight spot, but overall, she’s far more focused on her personal drama than the global alien threat.  I knows she’s dealing with some heavy stuff, but come on!  Devastation raining down from the skies and coming up through the ground, the entire planet in gravedanger – big picture, Clara!

 

I’ve of two minds about our sneak peek into the Christmas special.  On the one hand, I was rolling my eyes hard.  On the other, a gigantic grin spread across my face when I saw who was playing him.  Okay, Who, you win – color me excited.

 

I don’t know how I made it through the whole season without mentioning Chris Addison (Ollie from The Thick of It) in his recurring role in the Nethersphere bits.  Love him, but I’m almost glad he and the Doctor never interact; the cognitive dissonance might have been a little much for me to take.

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 11 – “Dark Water” (2014)

 

It’s been a couple years since Who has had a proper two- (or three-) part finale.  I’ve missed that penultimate-episode insanity, those incredibly amped-up stakes.  “The Pandorica Opens” has one of the show’s best cliffhangers, and “Utopia” and “The Sound of Drums” both go out on ridiculously suspenseful notes (too bad those two are followed up by ham-fisted resolutions – series 3 definitely ends with a whimper.)  I was looking forward to that again, but unfortunately, “Dark Water” doesn’t have a big “pow!” ending.  Yes, it gives us some big reveals, some big monsters, and some big world domination-ish plans, but I was hoping for a real “??!?!!” moment.

 

As for the rest of the episode, it has a definite part 1 feel, and while it sets some interesting things in motion, I can’t ultimately judge it until I see how the dust settles next week.  (Also, I’m going to have to do a more spoilery write-up sometime after the finale – it’s hard to talk about revelatory episodes without giving anything away.)  Chiefly, this episode gives us forward momentum on the season arc, which, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned in any of my previous reviews:  the mysterious “Promised Land” we’ve seen cropping up for various deceased one-shot characters and Missy, the demented Mary Poppins type who appears to oversee it.  We get a better look inside this apparent after-life, and the Doctor and Clara meet Missy and see her unorthodox activities and obsession with the Doctor first-hand.

 

A day later, I’m still not sure what I think about all of it.  The foreshadowing for the big alien threat is good, although it would’ve been even better if the show hadn’t featured them in the end-of-episode trailer last week.  I like the Promised Land/Nethersphere stuff – the concept is totally Moffat nightmare fuel, and I like how it ties in with the aforementioned alien threat.  It’s a connection that really makes sense and seems logical.  I’m a little disappointed in the reveal of Missy’s identity, only because it’s been widely speculated since her first appearance so it wasn’t much of a surprise.  Still, she seems fairly well-characterized, and I’m looking forward to where the finale takes her.

 

And as for the Doctor and Clara… The Doctor is pretty good here.  He’s brusque with Clara but sympathetically so – does that make sense?  Probably not.  Though I won’t go into details, Clara goes significantly off the rails here, and the Doctor is fairly understanding, bringing her back from the brink and supporting her without coddling her.  Oh, and he doesn’t grasp the appeal of swimming pools with “X-ray water” that only lets you see organic material (in other words, people, but not their swimsuits) – I love me some asexual Doctorness.  On the other hand, he’s more than a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the central mysteries, and there’s only so much I can chalk up to being thrown off-kilter by Missy.  And Clara is just all over the place.  Although she’s dealing with some seriously heavy stuff in this episode, I still can’t reconcile some of her statements and actions.  Even at the start, before the drama starts going down, she feels off and is behaving in ways that really don’t make sense.  Maybe last week’s at-least-partially-misleading preview is coloring my opinion, but she doesn’t seem natural.  I can’t make heads or tails of her here, and I don’t know where the show is going with it.

 

Lastly, I won’t get into specifics, but Moffat seems to have entirely forgotten that he established that the Doctor can open the TARDIS by snapping his fingers, and it seriously undermines a part of the episode that’s meant to be suspenseful.

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 10 – “In the Forest of the Night” (2014)

 

The prevailing thought that comes to mind with this episode, sadly, is “half-baked.”  It has an intriguing premise and great visuals, but it feels like the story didn’t get more than one or two drafts.  With handwavy fairytale logic, inconsistent characterizations, and a half-hearted resolution, the episode doesn’t really work for me.

 

Clara and Danny have just woken up after a museum sleepover trip with a gaggle of kids (all of whom seem way younger than the students we’ve seen Clara with so far – what’s the grade range at Coal Hill?) to discover a forest has grown overnight through the streets of London.  It doesn’t take long to discover the insta-forest is a global event; any and all roads are now littered with trees, and they seem impervious to attempts to clear them.  One troubled girl runs away from the group and finds the TARDIS, and the Doctor realizes she may be the key to learning the truth about the strange phenomenon.

 

I really like the idea of the forest – it gives new meaning to the phrase “urban jungle” – and the imagery of underground station signs and Trafalgar Square lions standing incongruously amongst the trees is really cool.  (Granted, a real forest springing up in a city center would look less like forest and more like trees growing between buildings.  It wouldn’t have the nature-y feel of this episode, but I appreciate that it was easier to film in a forest and add hints of a city than vice versa, and either way, the effect is neat.)  Also, the Doctor is fairly good here.  He can’t be bothered with all the little moppets traipsing after Clara and Danny, but he attacks the problem with relish and has some nice interactions with Maeve, the central little girl.

 

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where the high points end.  It doesn’t make sense that it’s just the Doctor, Clara, Danny, these kids, and a handful of government workers in the woods.  Where’s everybody else?  There’s no one in the streets freaking out, no hippies trying to commune with the new forest, no tone-deaf workaholics screaming about having to get to the office.  Aside from Maeve, the kids are mostly annoying and don’t behave or react in ways that seem even remotely fitting for the situation.  As for the fear factor, there’s a bit of manufactured danger, but overall, I don’t get much fear or urgency from anyone – there’s no sense of menace. 

 

Clara seems really out of character for much of the episode.  Granted, the glimpses we see of her in the classroom show her to be kind of a terrible teacher (why?) but she’s always been a fairly caring person, especially where kids are concerned.  Here, though, she’s all about the mystery, and Danny literally has to keep reminding her that they’re responsible for ensuring the kids’ safety.  It’s just really off, and since her trips with the Doctor often feel like an afterthought to her “real” life this season, it’s even more inconsistent.  Worst of all, everyone’s actions go haywire in the last third of the episode, and I can’t make sense of any of it.  Seriously – I don’t even know what to make of anything the Doctor and Clara say or do.

 

Lastly, if the show isn’t going to do anything with the Coal Hill/One connection, I wish Clara would teach somewhere else.  I remember how excited and interested I was when we first saw her there in the 50^thanniversary special, but the show treats it like any old school.  It feels to me like the show is just trading on our memories of Coal Hill to make the various school plots more special to us, and I don’t appreciate that.

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 9 – “Flatline” (2014)

 

My eagerness for a second Jamie Mathieson episode was well-founded.  This is another great outing with the same strengths as “Mummy on the Orient Express” – a fantastically Doctor-ish Doctor, a nice assortment of distinctive supporting characters, intriguing, creepy aliens of the week, and better interactions between the Doctor and Clara.  At two for two, Jamie Mathieson’s definitely a keeper!

 

The TARDIS lands in Bristol with a major, ridiculous problem:  something is leeching its energy, and its external dimensions are shrinking.  The Doctor’s attempts to solve conundrum lead to his being stuck inside the tiny TARDIS (it’s as big as ever on the inside, but the outside is so small that he can barely get his hand through the door.)  So, armed with the sonic screwdriver, the psychic paper, the Doctor’s voice in an earpiece, and the TARDIS in her purse, it’s up to Clara to investigate the strange goings-on.  In addition to the shrinking TARDIS trouble, people have been disappearing around the estate, and there’s a shadowy, deadly presence lurking in the walls.

 

Even trapped in the TARDIS, the Doctor is very involved in the episode’s proceedings.  He hijacks Clara’s optic nerve, cooks up assorted theories, builds a helpful device which he passes through the miniature doors, and alternately bickers with Clara and gives her vital help and assurance.  (Plus, before he gets stuck, I love his delight at the mystery of the wee TARDIS.  It’s so weird and unexpected, and he’s absolutely giddy about it.)  Clara’s turn playing “the Doctor” isn’t too shabby, either.  She bravely organizes the civilians who get swept up in the alien threat, and while the Doctor feeds her a number of insights, she also has some great ideas on her own.  Jenna Coleman’s performance and Clara’s dialogue here is quite Doctory, especially reminiscent of Eleven.  She captures that mixture of bossiness, encouragement, and flippancy just right.

 

I don’t like it quite as well as “Mummy on the Orient Express” – the way Clara completely ignores the itty-bitty TARDIS issue at the start of the episode and just complains about landing in Bristol instead of back home is annoying, and I’m not a fan of the repeated indications this season that the Doctor isn’t a good person.  It’s been a near-constant theme, and it’s clear that the Doctor himself still doesn’t think he’s a good man.  I hope they’re going somewhere with it, but so far, they have done enough with the idea to warrant being drawn out the whole season; it’s just “there.”  Also, this is at least the third week in a row that Clara has been put to some extent in the Doctor’s role, and her reaction at the end has been different every time.  In “Kill the Moon,” she resents being forced to make the impossible decisions, in “Mummy on the Orient Express,” she needs to promise something she’s not sure she can deliver and realizes how difficult it is being the Doctor, and here, she has a handful of strangers’ lives in her hands and, in the end, is rather cavalier about the whole experience.  I don’t know why they keep repeating this device or why it seems to be skipping around rather than moving forward.

 

Still, there’s a fascinating alien concept, the visuals are terrific (besides the fun-sized TARDIS, there’s a lot of street art that’s by turns cool, lovely, and unnerving,) and it all feels like proper Doctor Who.  The Doctor is the Doctor and gets to be the Big Damn Hero that I love, even when he can’t get out of a little blue box.  More please!

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 8 – “Mummy on the Orient Express” (2014)

 

I’m not familiar with Jamie Mathieson, a new writer to Who this season, but I hear he wrote next week’s episode in addition to this one, and I couldn’t be more relieved.  Undisputed best episode of the season so far – it feels like real, proper Doctor Who, something that can’t be said about enough of the episodes this year.  It just works for me on every level, and my overriding thought while watching it was, “Finally!”

 

The Doctor and Clara arrive on the Orient Express (in space,) a luxury rail of the future with a 1920s flair.  Mostly; these future humans aren’t entirely up on their 20^th-century history (keep an eye out for the sultry singer vamping on Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”)  Because this is Doctor Who, the fun romp turns deadly in a matter of seconds – 66 of them, to be precise – as passengers start dropping dead after screaming about an assailant only they can see.  Trapped on a moving train in space with a mythological murderer, the Doctor has to discover his unseen foe’s secrets before it takes every life onboard.

 

Where to start?  There’s the lavish set and costume design (Clara looks darling in a stylish ‘20s dress,) the genuine thrills and taut mystery, the humorous Who-ish touches (in addition to the anachronistic song choices mentioned above, there’s a fantastic gag with the psychic paper, and the Doctor makes unexpectedly whimsical use of a cigarette case,) and the fine well of supporting characters.  The episode touches on themes from elsewhere in the season, but whereas they’ve made me grit my teeth in earlier episodes, they’re explored far more thoughtfully here.

 

I don’t know where the show has been hiding this Doctor, but this is the one I want.  He’s brusque and arrogant, and he keeps people at a distance, but he’s also brilliant, funny, wonderfully competent, and not nearly as detached as he purports to be.  He’s the manin this episode, the Doctor I knew Peter Capaldi could be, and what’s more, we actually get a good chunk of story from his perspective.  This season has spent far too much time looking through Clara’s eyes – not that her viewpoint is a bad thing, but we need both, and it’s been frustrating to feel like the Doctor is the curmudgeonly alien sidekick on his own show.  This episodes lets us see him having fun, working hard, making tough decisions, being a hero, and hinting at the emotions he clearly still has, despite his pricklier new personality.

 

At first, I thought the episode was glossing over the interpersonal stuff from last week, but while it definitely seems we’ve moved from point A to C or D, the issues between Clara and the Doctor are addressed from both sides here.  The crack that’s grown through their friendship gets a lot of focus, there’s some good soul-searching, and the final scenes between them are just what I would’ve liked to see after my jumbled ranting at the end of last week’s review.

 

Really, my only gripe isn’t about the episode itself; it’s the fact that it’s episode 8, and there are only four left this season.  It’s fine to tell a story about the Doctor and his companion having trouble connecting after a regeneration, but it’s not a story you want to spend two-thirds of the season telling.  I should notfeel like I’m finally seeing the Doctor the show wants me to see.  Why wasn’t I getting this weeks ago?  Also, if we go right back to the Doctor insulting Clara’s appearance, being ridiculously, distastefully prejudiced against soldiers, and making hardly any tangible contributions to the adventure, I might have to throw something.