Doctor Who

[HarMGM]

I always had a bit of a soft spot for Tooth and Claw. I mean, who can hate an episode that starts with a bunch of boring farmers moping around only to get their arses kicked by surprise Kung Fu Monks?

[Space Gibbon]

I thought the whole twist at the end where Prince George had somehow predicted a series of highly unlikely events in order to defend against a threat that might occur at any time in the future, was faintly ridiculous. If they were worried about the werewolf couldn't they have sent the army in and killed the evil monk cult and maybe the wolf while it was in human form?

Plenty of Doctor Who stories don't stand up to repeated scrutiny, but for me this one didn't make sense on the first viewing.

Also - the method of defeating the werewolf ("Like putting too much air in a balloon!") was very cliche, but I suppose it's good to give the kiddies a taste of the kind of ridiculous sci-fi logic they will encounter again and again.

[Sprite Machine]

School Reunion

(Blog has pictures)

There's a reason I've been taking note of the arrival and departure conditions of every companion over the course of my marathon. Ever since I first saw 'School Reunion' in 2006, I've been fascinated by the history of the Doctor and all of his travelling companions. I had wondered, did he just leave them behind? Did any of them actually die? Did they leave by choice? Were they happy? The return of Sarah Jane Smith, although I was unfamiliar with the character at the time, raised all of these questions. So, before we get into the details of this particular episode, I'm going to remind myself of the situation in which she left.

[Picture: A proper goodbye this time.]

Sarah Jane Smith stowed aboard the Third Doctor's Tardis in 'The Time Warrior', went on many adventures with him, through a new regeneration into the Fourth Doctor, and finally left at the end of 'The Hand of Fear'. She had to leave because the Doctor needed to return to Gallifrey alone. Since both the Doctor and Sarah were so stubborn, they never really said goodbye in a sincere way. Sarah left in a bit of a huff, pretending she didn't care one way or the other. It's only really in the un-picked-up pilot spin-off episode of 'K-9 and Company' that her feelings about being left behind are explored, and where K-9 Mk.III is entrusted to her care.

[Picture: Scrappy-Doo saves the Scooby Gang with his Convenient Laser™.]

So they meet again thirty years later, which is apparently unusual, and we learn a little bit about how the Doctor feels about his mortal human companions. There's a lovely (although slightly sickly) line where he says that Rose can be with him for the rest of her life, but he can never be with her for the rest of his. He must wander alone, latching on to each new person for just a short time only. Of course, the real reason is that actors come and go and new characters have to replace them, but this attempts to put a reason onto it in those cases where the companion doesn't leave entirely by choice. It's worth noting, however, that during the course of the Doctor's travels, plenty of the companions have left by choice, perfectly willingly and without regret.

[Picture: A secret stash of Krillitane oil is being put into the food.]

Rose, of course, sees her "future" in Sarah Jane, and wonders if she too is just the latest in a line of disposable assistants who will be discarded for a younger model. She and Sarah also argue about who has been on the best adventures before laughing and joking about the Doctor's habits. It's a nice moment in an episode filled with nostalgia.

[Picture: Mickey doesn't want to be the new Tin Dog.]

And K-9 is back! Slightly rusty and malfunctioning, but it's the same old K-9 (with the same old voice!) as before, and it's great fun to see him back again, making obvious comments, firing his little laser and spinning around to save the day. But, why did Sarah have him in the back of her car? She didn't know she'd run into the Doctor and she says K-9 doesn't work anymore, so why keep him there as opposed to somewhere more secure? I suppose you could assume she's living out of her car now, but that's a bit sad.

[Picture: Replacement physics teacher Mr. Smith suspects something strange is happening.]

The old crew team up to investigate strange happenings at the local school. Tony Head is fantastic, as he always is, but is underused. He just needed some more delicious dialogue to chew on. The Krillitanes are generic-looking CGI bats, and some of the effects are unfortunately a bit ropey. Perhaps this was an intentional throwback to the iffy effects of the 1970s, but I doubt it. The plot with the school kids cracking codes is a perfectly serviceable little mystery, and the Doctor and Rose are immediately settled into their undercover operation without having to waste time on a build-up.

[Picture: Less screeching and more menace would have been nice.]

The Doctor repeats his "you only get one warning" from 'The Christmas Invasion' to Mr Finch. That's sort of his "thing" now; friendly and jokey on the surface but he will put a stop to you if you cross the line (ooh, scary!). But really, the school mystery and the aliens are underplayed in favour of exploring the drama of the reunion, which is absolutely the right choice. The scenes with the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Rose are really touching and explore the Doctor's character in a way that only a long-running programme like this can do, and the Doctor and Sarah finally get the proper goodbye that they should have had thirty years earlier.

[Sprite Machine]

The Girl in the Fireplace

(Blog has pictures)

It's the 51st century and, for some reason, a seemingly abandoned spaceship is drilling holes through the fabric of time and its robotic occupants are observing the life of Madame de Pompadour in 18th century France. Also Mickey has come with them finally. Yay, Mickey!

[Picture: The ship design may have been based on one of those annoying football clackers.]

Steven Moffat's second Doctor Who story has a lot in common with his first. Certain themes and ideas are carried over, like the AI / robots that serve a purpose without fully understanding it (just like the nanogenes), spooky 'creatures' that are masked by something earthly but uncommon (clown masks / gas masks), and another instance of the Doctor ominously pointing out a noise that you didn't realise you were hearing (the ticking clock, like the typewriter). It also has an intriguing mystery that unravels over the course of the story, some very clever writing, and a touching conclusion.

[Picture: Visited by the Doctor as a girl, awaiting his return as an adult, Reinette is a prototype Amy Pond.]

Looking ahead, some of Moffat's other themes begin here. He has a tendency to write female characters as "special things" first, personalities second - magic artefacts dressed as humans, if you like. Whether that be the "impossible girl", the "girl who waited" or, here, the girl on the other side of the fireplace (who can read minds). Reinette is the mystery, the Doctor's "project", the thing he must protect until it can be solved, and this makes the love story angle a little difficult to swallow. This is a very unconventional love story anyway, but there isn't enough time to earn those emotions. It may be thirty years of Reinette's life, but she meets the Doctor only a handful of times for barely a few minutes. I guess that's why the mind-reading thing was written in, as a way to enforce that connection between them as quickly as possible, something that Doctor hasn't shown to be able to do before.

[Picture: The Doctor does a Vulcan mind-meld... no, hang on, wrong show.]

There's also the first reference to the Doctor's name being some terrible secret that no-one must know, which crops up again and again towards the end of the most recent series, and has yet to resolve itself. I could do without all of this "the Doctor is an angel / nightmare" stuff - it gets ridiculously overdone - but it's a suitable theme for this particular story. You wouldn't want every Doctor Who episode to be like this, but that's what makes it special.

[Picture: Eerie clockwork clowns proving, yet again, that faceless enemies are the best enemies. "Tick-tock" is the new "mummy". I could have done without them speaking at all, but exposition demanded it this time.]

The script is filled with brilliant comic moments just as much as it is with heartstring-tugging emotion, and more quotes than I can even recall now. "I didn't want to call it a Magic Door", a couple involving Mickey and the horse, which were pretty funny, "always take a banana to a party", and the Doctor pretending to be drunk, which turned out to be a ruse. This humour and maverick bravado are contrasted against a story with dark and disturbing concepts - the spaceship that has been repaired with human body parts (ick!), the clockwork robots hiding under the little girl's bed. Some of it doesn't make much sense if you analyse it too closely (how would a heart function in machinery? Why are robots from the 51st century made with clockwork?), but it's a story that wins you over with love and ingenuity, and it reminds me how good Doctor Who can be when it's trying really hard.

[Mogster]

Still right up there among my favourite episodes. I hadn't thought about all those thematic links to Moffat's later stuff though, especially the whole meeting a character at different ages thing!

I would point out that the Time Lords were shown to be telepathic way back in series 1 though, although I'm not sure if the Doctor in particular had ever used it before.

[Iain]

The closest to the Doctor being telepathic I can remember would be in the Three Doctors when Doctors 2 and 3 did some kind of mind contact. But seeing as that is essentially the Doctor reading his own mind I'm not sure that counts.

[mrsnrub]

All timelords have an in built psychic link (there was a tom baker one he went inside his own body and actually pointed out the part of him that caused it to work, then mentioned the timelords had cut him off from the sort of neural network), long established.

[Mogster]

The closest to the Doctor being telepathic I can remember would be in the Three Doctors when Doctors 2 and 3 did some kind of mind contact. But seeing as that is essentially the Doctor reading his own mind I'm not sure that counts.

Of course! The Doctors do it a bunch in The Light At The End too, and it was Susan using telepathy in The Sensorites.

[Sprite Machine]

The Third Doctor literally teleports in Planet of the Spiders; a little inexplicable telepathy is nothing in comparison!

[Mogster]

I just noticed this on YouTube. It's five minutes or so of what looks like the first episode being filmed, and you get to see a little bit of Capaldi kitted out in full twelfth Doctor gear. You don't see anything earth-shattering, and barely hear a single line but spoilers all the same.

[SeanR]

captain jack wants his coat back...

[Sprite Machine]

Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

(Blog has pictures)

For much of the first episode, the Cybermen are obscured by lights or focus pulls, as if to mystify the viewer as to what they are. Given the episode is called "Rise of the Cybermen", this seems rather redundant, much like it was for the Dalek episode in the previous season. Still, unlike the Daleks, the return of the Cybermen can only be an improvement over the generic foil-suited evil villains they became towards the end.

[Picture: The Cybermen approach.]

Effectively, this is a Cybermen "reboot", with none of the continuity baggage attached. The Tardis finds itself in a parallel dimension, something that is now supposed to be "impossible" since the Time Lords all died, although to my recollection, it only happened once before, in 'Inferno'. Regardless, it's a Big Deal and it means the Cybermen story can start with a fresh new twist. We never saw the Mondas Cybermen actually change. The angle here is that the metal bodies are the ultimate upgrade, in a society obsessed with upgrading and having the latest gadgets ("earpods" is about as blunt a satire as you can get, but the point is made).

[Picture: We know it's a parallel dimension because it has zeppelins. Seriously, is that a "thing"? Fringe did it too.]

The creator of the Cybermen, at least in this universe, is John Lumic, played by the late Roger Lloyd Pack. The character is very similar to Davros, tragic, disabled, trying to fix his broken body with technology in a world that isn't ready for his genius. The story is, of course, overblown and ridiculous, with thousands of people killed or turned into machines around the country due to almost total coverage of Cybus Industries' mind-controlling earpods (that passed safety inspections to get onto the market... how, exactly?). As it's all happening in parallel Earth, I can sort of forgive it. At least it has no lasting repercussions for our Earth (... or does it?).

[Picture: John Lumic, head of Cybus Industries, and creator of the Cybermen.]

It's clear that this is a Russell T. Davies era Cybermen story because it focuses so much more on the personal dramas of Rose and Mickey. This is not the 1980s anymore. This was a clever way to bring Rose's dad back into the series, although the coincidences surrounding his involvement are a little contrived, but compared to the general contrivance of the Doctor always landing somewhere just as something bad is happening, it's no big deal.

[Picture: The gang plans its attack on the cyber base at Battersea power station.]

Mickey's character is also put to good use for a change, by commenting on how little they need him. He's treated very poorly throughout this series - the Doctor is far too focused on Rose. Mickey finds his true calling (and his gran) and stays behind with the scooby gang resistance group - well, the last surviving member, anyway - in lieu of his doppelganger copping it in part 2. The goodbyes are genuine and sweet, before the tone changes to a weirdly jovial one as they ride off to Paris in a van.

[Picture: "Control, Alt, Delete!!" The Cybermen kill the president of alt-Britain for resisting.]

The cliffhanger ending is classic Doctor Who stuff. Sensibly, there is no "next week" preview to ruin the tension, but unfortunately the resolution is pure magic macguffin territory and deeply unsatisfying for it. Still, for the most part, the Cybermen are threatening villains, evoking Nazi-esque conformity or extermination of those unworthy. These aren't the tottering silver simpletons of the previous eras; they're battle-ready armoured death machines, clanking with every synchronised march of their feet. It isn't superior firepower that beats them, but allowing them to experience the emotional trauma of what they've become. Basically, the power of love wins. How very modern.

[Picture: The cyber transformations evoke the horror of mutilation without actually showing it. It's surprisingly effective.]

There was a kind of tragedy to the original Cybermen, that they'd willingly turned themselves into this, whittling away their emotions in pursuit of perfection. These versions don't have that - they are tricked, controlled, forced to act against their human wishes, guided by a leader rather than a unified ideology. It doesn't quite work so well, and gives them a weakness that the originals never had. Still, it's strange to think how similar the two parallel Cyber-races are, given they popped into existence by totally different means and at different times with different technology, to the extent that the Doctor specifically "knows" them as Cybermen, rather than "generic robotic people". Maybe that's just how fate works or something.

[SeanR]

can I ask about

... general contrivance of the Doctor always landing somewhere just as something bad is happening

isn't it the TARDIS that decides where and when, pretty much? I think they said that one time?

except for those times when it's accidental.

[kensei]

I never really liked Age of Steel at the time. They made a fuss about it being based on "Spare Parts" which was a pretty good audio and did deal with the themes you point out are missing and is generally nothing like it.

That tainted it a bit for me, seen parts of it since andnit seems to have stood up better.

In general though the Cybermen haven't been handled well except in flashes. The originals were really creepy. They need to bring more of that back, and focus on their ruthless to survive anything. Even a dying planet.

[Davros sock drawer]

Yeah, I really hated those two episodes. The new series has got the Cybermen totally wrong so far.

[Mogster]

Yeah, I saw them recently and couldn't be arsed to watch the second part for a few days. The Cybermen didn't need rebooting, as there's a lot less lore behind them than the Daleks had and the Doctor basically explains what they were anyway. Worse still, the rebooted versions were far less interesting than the originals, and the story just wasn't very good.

[HarMGM]

Amazing to think that Tom MacRea scripted this and The Girl Who Waited.

[Jack]

It was a bit of a letdown how the Age of Steel actually turned out to be Roughly Twenty Minutes of Steel.

[Sprite Machine]

The Cybermen had been crap since 1975 (showing too much emotion, stupidity, plotting like generic villains, taking pleasure in death, and so on), so this was an improvement over that, at least.

[Davros sock drawer]

Yeah, but they should have gone back to the core concept as seen in the 10th Planet.

[Sprite Machine]

The Idiot's Lantern

(Blog has pictures)

It's another Mark Gatiss script and that means we're back in a period setting, uncovering a mysterious alien influence posing as something else. It's 1953, it's the Queen's coronation, and suspiciously cheap television sets are appearing all over London. I suppose it's become a huge cliché by now, but the Doctor and Rose drop in at precisely the right moment to save the viewers of London from having their faces/minds eaten by a banished energy creature calling itself the Wire. How convenient!

[Picture: Poor Mr. Magpie gets his face sucked off. I'm not going to rephrase that.]

The period setting is well-realised with lots of attention to detail in the sets, costumes, props and stock footage used on the old television sets, combining to create a believable sense of place. The direction is interesting in that it's almost entirely 'jaunty' - almost every shot is at an angle. It looks good. It's a shame the music is the usual Murray Gold bombast, as they could have had some fun with that too. The main characters certainly have some fun within the period setting, although they are overly cocky, even before they know what's going on.

[Picture: Detective Inspector Bishop doesn't do much detecting, taking the faceless people away without stopping to investigate. It's all a bit suspicious.]

Before the 'face' reveal, I liked the bits with the gran in the upstairs room banging on the floor and everyone trying to ignore her. I thought that was really freaky. But this is as much a story about people's faces mysteriously disappearing as it is about a prideful father trying to uphold his family's dignity in an era when making a fuss was seen as a sign of weakness. These characters are somewhat two-dimensional, however, almost to the point of parody.

[Picture: The blustering father is the character you love to hate. "I AM TALKING!"]

The Wire is an entity of consciousness or energy not unlike the 'Great Intelligence'. Unfortunately, we don't learn very much about her (it?) before the Doctor reverses the polarity (ho-ho!) and traps her in a betamax cassette, magically restoring everybody's minds and faces somehow. The Idiot's Lantern is more concerned with selling the believability of the era and in creating some scary scenarios (which it does) and less concerned with explaining the hows and whys of the plot. It's not muddled, just underdeveloped. There's also too much sonic screwdrivering, but this is becoming an issue in general.

[Picture: Maureen Lipman plays The Wire, an evil entity with a calm and soothing BBC television voice - aside from the "HUNGRY, FEED ME" stuff.]

But I actually quite enjoyed this on the whole. I can forgive some underdeveloped elements for a good sense of style and effective scares. The Doctor stuck in the cage full of faceless people is brilliant. It's also good to see Rose leading the investigation for a bit, seeing things the Doctor missed, but unfortunately she gets damseled and the Doctor does his "now it's personal" routine where he talks through his teeth and scrunches up his little face. I could take this more seriously if he didn't have his Elvis hair throughout, but there you go.

[Picture: "There is no power on this Earth that can stop me!" Grrr... Elvis SMASH!]

[mrsnrub]

captain jack wants his coat back...

whos is that meant to be?

[Space Gibbon]

New companion, Johnny Potentialloveinterest

[Not Thread Owner]

I hope he's alien. Or from the future. Or the past. But not ANOTHER present-day human companion, please.

[NEG]

He'll be from the Planet Mobius.

[Plissken]

New companion, Johnny Potentialloveinterest

Doesn't seem the Doctors type.

[Professor Puzzles]

Since the reboot one of the Doctor's defining characteristics has been 'insatiable sex pest', he'll do anyone.

[mrsnrub]

Current thinking is that he is

The Master

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

I'd prefer the Master to be roughly the same physical age as The Doctor, TBH.

That said, it would make for an interesting plot arc. And Johnny Potentialloveinterest does have a rubbish beard. Do we know if he's a fan of the Clangers or Teletubbies?

[Nick R]

Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

...

[Picture: We know it's a parallel dimension because it has zeppelins. Seriously, is that a "thing"? Fringe did it too.]

It is a thing.