Doctor Who

[kensei]

It was originally a story in the 7th Doctor novels and fit him perfectly. Because the 7th doctor in the Virgin New Adventures was a proper cunt.

Aside from that I thought it fit because it highlighted how much the Doctor was affected it by it, and what happens when you really, really piss him off. Moffatt made a big play of "This is what happens if you do that" around the time of A Good Man Goes To War and did little with it but its handled effectively here.

[Space Gibbon]

Maybe his response is tinged with his anger with himself for not dealing with them sooner. Still, the whole premise that he choose to hide rather than confront them felt a bit flimsy, especially since they did find him pretty quickly.

[Sprite Machine]

Blink

(Blog has pictures)

Blink is a "Doctor-lite" episode, a recurring event once per season that gives the main cast some down time and gives the writers the chance to do something a bit different, the chance to show what the Doctor is all about from an outsider's perspective. 'Love & Monsters' was pretty naff, although it showed promise. With Steven Moffat writing this one, Blink is, shall we say, a considerable improvement. In fact, it's not only my favourite episode of Doctor Who, it's one of the finest 45 minutes of British television I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

[Picture: Should-have-been-companion Sally Sparrow explores the spooky house like a member of the Scooby Gang.]

It's remarkable to think what this episode achieves within such a short space of time. It introduces us to the life of Sally Sparrow and her friends, while creating an incredibly clever story around a predestination paradox. It's the first mention of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, and, of course, it's the first appearance of the Weeping Angels, a brand new scary monster, the first new baddies that are good enough to stand toe-to-toe with Daleks and Cybermen. Monsters so good that they have been gradually ruined through overuse and degraded into shadows of their former selves.

[Picture: This is, of course, the cleverest way to defeat the Weeping Angels. See, even the resolution makes sense! This episode does nothing wrong!]

But all of that is still to come. For now, these 'quantum-locked' creatures are terrifying, preying on our deep-rooted childhood fears, the monsters that exist when we close our eyes. Not only is the idea of creatures that turn to statues when you look at them a wonderful piece of science-fiction, it plays into the real world, making any children watching at home suddenly fearful of the statues they see around them in a brilliantly cruel way. "Don't blink, little Timmy, or they'll get you!" That's so much worse than the clockwork clowns, Moffat, you ingenious bastard.

[Picture: Larry resists the urge to blink. I would have tried alternating each eye, but there you go.]

Blink manages to tell this terrific and complicated story without falling over itself. Here we have a story whereby the Doctor and Martha have been zapped back through time by the Weeping Angels and have to use a specially-prepared set of documents to communicate by forty year delay with the person who gave them said documents, before she gave them to them, in an effort to get her to activate the Tardis and send it back to get them. The scenes with the DVD recording are particularly well done, and what's great is that it handles all of this with good humour and wit and doesn't dwell too much on the technicalities. It's both clever and excellently structured.

[Picture: Somehow there's even time for tender moments like this, as old Billy dies in the presence of the girl he met for two minutes a lifetime ago.]

Blink is one of those rare episodes that you could equally turn to as a great introduction to newcomers and as something for long-time fans to enjoy. It's not often that Doctor Who deals with the perils of time travel in such a thoughtful way as this, and to create the best new monster the series has had in forty years as well is an amazing achievement.

[Davros sock drawer]

Hear, hear Sprite! I watched it again recently, and it really is one of the very best stories.

[Hexx]

:wub: :lol:

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Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords

On Saturday the 16th of June, 2007, I was over at some friends’ house. They were Doctor Who fans, in a stronger sense than I. I had only been watching the last couple of seasons, casually but with growing interest. As I recall, there were rumours at the time of a particular character returning to the show, so as we sat down to watch Doctor Who that evening, there was an air of anticipation. I’d never watched the programme in a group before then, nor, sadly, since; but there was something special about that night, an excitement in the air that hasn’t been repeated. As Professor Yana looked up from that old pocket watch, into the eyes of his former assistant, and mouthed those four immortal words, a great cheer erupted from the room. It led into the best twist this show has ever thrown out, something it had been saving up for the right moment to have the biggest possible impact. That moment was now, and whether it was the atmosphere of that room or simply a work of great suspense, it left with me an affection for this thing called Doctor Who that I have not felt since. Those four simple words, as delivered superbly by the great Derek Jacobi, were: “I… am… the Master.”

I couldn’t help cheer myself as those last two words left Derek Jacobi’s lips after a suspenseful pause. It was a memorable evening. Subsequent viewings have lacked the same impact, sadly.

Things have changed since that night; I’m not the “n00b” I once was. I’ve now seen all of the old serials and know who this Master character actually is and why he’s so important. I know that he was last seen in the 1996 TV movie, falling into a time/space vortexy thing at the heart of the Tardis. I’ve also started watching Torchwood in parallel, so Jack Harkness’s sudden arrival at the start of Utopia now makes a bit more sense. Jack’s character has taken a turn for the dour throughout the first season of Torchwood, not unsurprisingly so, having been brought back to life, travelled back through time and forced to live on Earth for over a century. But as soon as he’s back with the Doctor, that brooding character evaporates and the Captain Jack from Doctor Who is back, full of life and energy again.

Jack Harkness, intergalactic flirt, comes back to life in more ways than one.

Utopia is ostensibly a standalone episode, before the significance of its plot becomes apparent towards the end of ‘part 3’. On its own, it’s an uplifting tale of human perseverance and longevity, of hope amidst despair, as the last ever human beings at the very end of a dying universe, jet off in a last ditch effort to find a new home. But at the time, this plot fell by the wayside next to the more exciting revelation of the Master, disguised as the human Professor Yana, using the same metamorphosis technique that the Doctor only recently used to become human himself (how convenient!). The whole history of Doctor Who is recited in an info-dump that would have been excessive were it not intercut with Yana dramatically hearing the words in his mind that he should not understand: Vortex, Time War, Daleks, Regeneration. The build up of the music, the professor’s expression, the flashbacks of the Face of Boe reciting those words, “you… are… not… alone”, as the B plot suddenly becomes the A plot, the rocket full of humans now insignificant next to this, it is one of the best dramatic sequences they’ve ever done. It’s also the end of this particular run of high quality episodes, which has, in my opinion, yet to be bettered.

The perception field overcome, Professor Yana finally opens the pocket watch and the Time Lord essence hidden within comes flowing out.

Everything after this can only fail to live up to expectations. It’s not that The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords are necessarily bad, in fact this is probably my favourite of the three ‘finales’ so far, but it’s as totally overblown as finales always are. More so, frankly; the stakes are so ridiculously high this time that the planet Earth couldn’t possibly recover from everything that happens to it, so the big reset button has to be pushed, rewinding time to its previous state before the invasion of the spheres can even happen. That’s what you get when your plan to rule the world relies on a fragile paradox machine to keep everything held together, and then you let an immortal with a machine gun inside of it. John Simm is fine in his own (perhaps overly comedic) way, playing a version of the Master for the modern age, his exuberant personality and dramatic flair a mirror for the type of Doctor that David Tennant plays now… and yet, every time he’s on screen, I wish the role was still played by Derek Jacobi, who not only does a superbly menacing Master, but skillfully portrays the kindly human professor too. Still, had he stayed, the following episodes would have turned out quite differently.

Saxon says “yes” to gassing.

Harold Saxon, of course, was the Master all along. Russell T. Davies must have been planning this as far back as The Runaway Bride when the name Saxon is first dropped. We never see him, of course, but everyone on Earth knows him, due to the telepathic field that the Master has managed to bounce off of satellites around the planet. For me, this is the best series arc yet. Better than clumsily name-dropping Torchwood everywhere they go; a better resolution than the Bad Wolf wizard turning up to wave its magic wand and save the day. This is the Doctor staring the Master in the face for more than a year without him even knowing it, finding him in the far future, and then being responsible for sending him back to the past to become the person that has been cropping up all throughout the season. It’s inspired, it’s superb, and it’s a shame that it has to have such a blow-out ending.

Swarms/fleets attack the Earth again. Yawn.

A giant rift, presumably unrelated to the Cardiff rift, and indeed the visually similar ‘crack in the universe’, opens in the sky above the implausibly high-tech aircraft carrier, Valiant.

It’s great that Martha gets to save the world, seeing as this is her final regular appearance, but “the power of love” saving the day is such a lame and overdone thing now, and would Martha really be able to traipse across the whole planet in just a year? And still look so clean and pretty at the end of it? The Doctor temporarily gaining invincibility is too similar to the end of The Parting of the Ways. Yes, it is sort of set up in advance by the whole psychic satellite thing, but the details don’t have enough time to sink in, so the resolution feels very much like “winning with technobabble”. Just once, I’d like to have a low-key finale, a plot that doesn’t involve “huge swarms of invading things”, big CGI set-pieces and ridiculous levels of peril. I will give it bonus points, however, for the correct use of the word “decimate”.

Why does the Doctor turn into Dobby from Harry Potter when he’s super-aged? This is very silly.

There were some nicely “big” moments that did work for me. All of the flashbacks to Gallifrey, complete with colourful costumes and big collars, were nicely done. We hardly ever learn anything about Time Lord society, but here we get a short history lesson about 8-year-old Gallifreyans looking into the Time Vortex as part of their initiation into the ‘Academy’ (whatever that is). It’s suggested that the Master has been hearing the drums in his head all of his life, but this is the only time it’s ever been mentioned. It’s worth noting, however, that the drum rhythm (da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum) is the same as the baseline in the Doctor Who theme, a rhythm directly associated with the Time Vortex at the start of every single episode. I’d never noticed before now, but that’s clever. There’s also an in-joke where the Doctor scoffs at Martha’s suggestion that he and the Master are brothers (this almost happened for the third Doctor’s finale, but the death of Roger Delgado meant it was written out). The story ends with another jokey suggestion that the almost immortal Captain Jack is in fact the Face of Boe himself – however, whether this should be taken at ‘face’ value (har!) is open to debate. It’s certainly a fun theory, but it could equally be Jack’s idea of a joke.

I think he’d have to have a lot more work done to end up looking like a giant head in a jar. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Martha leaves us as a regular now, returning to the family that needs her, the only people on Earth who will remember the events of the ‘missing year’. Martha makes the decision to move on from the Doctor for the sake of her own feelings. I don’t like the fact that Tennant’s version of the Doctor has to be this heart-throb angsty wanderer that everyone keeps falling for, however I absolutely prefer this way of companions leaving of their own accord, and not through contrived set-ups, magic gateways and overblown emotional music.

But where would a finale be without some twist of an ending, whether it be a mysterious hand finding a ring at the Master’s burning remains or… the Titanic breaching the wall of the Tardis? What?

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Voyage of the Damned

(Blog has pictures, not hotlinking this one.)

Voyage of the Damned follows on immediately after the events of 'Time Crash', a brief but charming interlude that takes place just after Martha leaves the Doctor in the Tardis but just before the Titanic smashes into it, in which the fifth Doctor (played by Peter Davison) appears aboard the Tenth's Tardis due to some timey-wimey mishap. It's also the only good thing I'm going to mention in this particular article because, by and large, 'Voyage of the Damned' is a load of rubbish.

[Picture: The spaceship Titanic orbits the Earth. It's a lovely-looking ship, I'll give it that at least.]

Quite honestly, I don't even remember much about it from the first time I watched it. It's not that there's anything insultingly bad about it (like, say, a robotic Anne Robinson zapping contestants with a deadly laser), it's just so mind-numbingly bland and by-the-numbers. I think this is true of most Christmas specials. They can't dare to be interesting or different because the audience is likely to be stuffed full of turkey and alcohol and unable to parse a challenging plot. So everything happens in a boring and routine way. The Doctor arrives, someone is plotting something, there are some baddies to beat, there's a crisis to avert, and would-you-believe-it, it's averted in the nick of time by some babbling reason explained in passing. And now it's snowing. The end.

[Picture: Kylie Minogue as Astro... Asterix... Astra... Aspirin... Astrid!]

Kylie Minogue plays the hastily-introduced and killed-off sort of maybe love interest for this episode. Apparently Russell T. Davies really wanted to cast her and wrote the part of Astrid specifically for her, but I can't tell why. She's a perfectly fine actress and I can't blame the shortcomings of the character on her so much as the writing, which is just so bland and forgettable that it's a waste of her talent and (presumably) high salary. Her death scenes (yes, plural) are supposed to be tear-jerkingly sweet but I found it all sickly and horrible. Wikipedia insists Astrid is an official Doctor Who Companion, but I'm hesitant to count her as such because she never travels in the Tardis or survives past one episode or is ever mentioned again. She's no more a companion than Bernard Cribbins' character is.

[Picture: IT'S WILF!! London maybe deserted, but Wilf's going nowhere, sunshine.]

Voyage of the Damned certainly doesn't help itself by reminding me of one of my all-time favourite serials, 'The Robots of Death'. In that, robot slaves kill off wealthy travellers, but that had a cracking story, well-written and believable characters and robots that were actually quite frightening. These robo-angels are not scary, the cast of characters are more like caricatures and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. It's very one-dimensional, the villain plotting from below deck (why?), the insurance scam, the bribed captain, no-one has any substance to them. Everyone has one or two personality features and then just runs around for an hour getting killed. Weapons conveniently present themselves and the ship is saved in a way unrelated to anything that they've been trying to do for the past hour (something-something atmosphere, something-something-reignition). Pure fluff.

[Picture: Bannakaffalatta, the smartbomb cyborg, dies heroically.]

But hey, you know, it's Christmas. It's a time to be silly and not worry so much about things like plot and character and drama. We want to slouch in front of the telly on Christmas evening and watch the Doctor doing cool stuff, like walking away from explosions in slow motion (this actually happens) and flying through the air carried by angels like a Jesus figure (this also actually happens). We want to see the Queen waving to him as the Titanic flies over Buckingham Palace (this, inexplicably, also happens). We want "funny" jokes about the UK going to war with Turkey and eating them at Christmas. We want cackling evil villains with stupid plans and no morals. We want to the message of Christmas to be "money solves everything; here's a credit card, go away and don't bother me anymore". That's what we want at Christmas, apparently.

[Picture: "Information: this episode sucks."]

Well, it's not what I want. Christmas is not an excuse for sticking any old rubbish on the telly. These should be stand-out episodes, the best of the best, but I am annually dismayed by how poor they are, and this is something that continues to happen even on Steven Moffat's watch. Maybe they should stop making these so-called "specials" if they're going to be anything but. 'Voyage of the Damned Poor', more like. Thank you, I'm here all week, try the veal.

[Garwoofoo]

I thought Voyage of the Damned was probably the lowest point of the whole of Tennant's run, which is really saying something considering you've got a whole season of Catherine Tate coming up. It's the weakest Christmas special by far and I really hated the soap opera rejects that passed for most of the characters: you're quite right to call these out as caricatures.

RTD could be a fine writer at times but this lazy ensemble cast writing was one of his worst traits (a far better season 4 episode, Midnight, also suffered from the same thing). A significant part of his book The Writer's Tale dealt with the writing process behind this very episode and he's disgustingly pleased with himself for making it all up on the fly. This episode was the beginning of the end for the RTD era, I think, it perhaps marked the point where he thought he had it all sussed and didn't need to try so hard.

[kensei]

I thought Tate was one of the strongest companions. Most of the christmas specials are awful though, only the Christmas Carol one was any cop.

[davidcotton]

Today only BF are offering 51-100 of the monthly range on special price reduction!

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Partners in Crime

(Blog has pictures)

Partners in Crime sees the Doctor returning to Earth to investigate a suspicious weight-loss company, while former 'runaway bride' Donna Noble does the same thing, hoping to run into the Doctor, be whisked away on more adventures in the Tardis and escape her boring life. Yes, Catherine Tate is back, like it or not, but thankfully she's toned down her character's obnoxious attitude since last time so she's a lot more bearable now.

[Picture: The Doctor and Donna use a precarious lift to escape.]

As for the plot, it's certainly brisk. Season openers (those with new companions, anyway) always take place on Earth and have to cram in both character introduction and a standalone plot, but whether that be Nestene, Judoon or Adipose, it's always rushed and resolved too quickly. It would be nice to have a new companion just hop aboard the Tardis and have the first episode set on an alien world for a change, without all of this "saving the Earth in 45 minutes" stuff we keep getting.

[Picture: Ms. Foster has a "sonic pen". It could be worse, it could have been sonic lipstick. Cringe!]

I've said it before, but it's particularly egregious here: there is too much sonic-screwdrivering. Far, far, far too much. The Doctor does little more than run back and forth pressing his little magic button. Not even for purely electronic uses; he opens normal doors and windows, shoots another sonic device from Ms. Foster's hand and even unties ropes with it. Ropes! Since when did sonic vibrations (or whatever it uses) untie ropes? When did the Doctor stop getting his hands dirty? The sonic screwdriver has become such a lazy way to push the plot along that they've had to introduce 'deadlock seals', but now these are breakable with two sonic devices so then we get double deadlocks and triple deadlocks. Everything is sonic this and deadlock that, and it's spread into Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures too, where everything from doors to handcuffs are 'deadlocked', just so we're absolutely sure they're unbreakable, until they're not.

[Picture: The cute little Adipose babies emerge from the bodies of their hosts. No broken skin, no blood, all smiles. Can you imagine if this was a Torchwood episode? Shudder.]

The Adipose aren't your normal invading aliens, despite their presence on Earth being technically illegal. Interestingly, it's the Doctor and Donna's meddling that puts the human race in danger, as a million people are almost converted when production has to be sped up. If they'd not stuck their noses in, the Adipose would have just been converted from fat, the pills would have done what they were supposed to do, the Adipose ship would have left harmlessly and everyone would be a winner. Whoops!

[Picture: Donna's very own sign language. Inspired.]

Well, despite its faults, there are a few good things about Partners in Crime. For starters, it's pretty funny. There's some great performance comedy, particularly the bit where the Doctor and Donna are miming to each other through the windows and popping their heads up and down in the office cubicles. It's also a relief that they're not doing the 'romance' thing again, as Donna makes it quite clear that is off the table (the Doctor is a little presumptuous, frankly). Another plus is that Wilf is back, rewritten as Donna's granddad, and he's a lovely enthusiastic character with lots of charm. Then there's the Adipose, whose primary function is to sell toys, but I have to admit, they are pretty cute. Finally, even though I'd already seen this episode once before, the surprise appearance from Rose at the end was a startling moment that I'd forgotten all about.

In the end, though, this is a fairly silly episode that does little more than set us up for the rest of the series. Appropriately, then, it could do with trimming the fat.

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The Fires of Pompeii

(Blog has pictures)

It's the one with Peter Capaldi! Years before being cast as the twelfth Doctor, here he plays the father of a doomed Pompeii family the day before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. This episode is also the first appearance of Karen Gillan as one of the soothsayers of the Sibylline Sisterhood, but nobody notices (I had to look it up). More to the point, this is an episode dealing with hard choices and the unbreakable rules of time travel, which weaves an emotional thread through the story. It's pretty good.

[Picture: Caecilius stands and watches with his family as Pompeii burns below them.]

It's long been a matter of contention whether the Doctor can change history or merely be a part of it. Early episodes like 'The Aztecs' all but rule out the possibility of altering the timeline, yet, since then, damaging history has been a regular danger. Finally, then, the Doctor lays down the rules: some things are fixed, some things are in flux. Being a Time Lord, the Doctor knows which is which. That's handy. It's a bit like the Prime Directive in Star Trek, and in a similar fashion, the Doctor is unable to help the thousands of people who are about to be burned alive as their mountain explodes and covers them with burning ash and molten rock.

[Picture: Vesuvius goes KABOOM!]

What could be a relentlessly grim scenario is brightened up by some fun use of names, ongoing jokes that play with the language (TK Maximus!), winks and nods to the series past and the Doctor using a water pistol. But, ultimately, this is a serious drama with emotional weight. Donna's pleading with the Doctor to save these people feels very genuine and, despite some blustering and shouting, she's a really good companion, able to question everything, not take anything at face value, and set the Doctor straight when he needs it.

[Picture: Unlike a similar scene from The Masque of Mandragora, the Doctor doesn't slide Donna out of the way of the falling dagger with comedy timing. Unfortunately.]

Yeah, there are aliens involved - refugees of another missing planet (this season's arc, as I recall), the Pyroviles (seriously?). The visual effects are excellent and the scale of the episode is bigger than any previous attempts at doing this sort of thing, but it does fall back on some lazy clichés too. The chanting cults... anything but chanting cults! I've had it up to here with Doctor Who and chanting flipping cults! Many of the guest characters just sort of fill a void rather than stand out in their own right, although I did quite like the 'villain' Lucius and his creepy premonitions. On the whole, a solid episode with a strong theme.

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Planet of the Ood

(Blog has pictures)

The Ood first appeared in 'The Impossible Planet' a season before last, but their appearance was secondary to all the business with the Devil. This time we get to see where the Ood come from in an episode devoted to learning all about them. It's also the second episode in a row that has a strong moral underpinning, giving Donna another chance to show her compassionate human side. And once again, it works.

[Picture: The Doctor and Donna slip into the buyers' tour of the Ood facility.]

Surely the notion that "slavery is bad, m'kay" should go without saying, but 'Planet of the Ood' serves as a reminder of how far astray from the moral straight line humanity can roam when it's comfortable to do so. In this case, a slave race apparently volunteers its service to anybody who wants it, so why should we ask any questions that might threaten to take that away. The comparison with sweatshop clothing is cutting and its good to see the show tackle some actual issues that aren't just "argh, monsters, run!".

[Picture: The Ood turn red-eyed and attack.]

That said, the Ood do turn into a load of rabid monsters and there's a lot of running and gunning and freaky red eyes before they are freed from slavery. The bit where Halpen transforms into an Ood himself, ripping the flesh of his head apart, is the most fantastically disgusting thing I've ever seen on Doctor Who, although it makes little sense. Nor, particularly, does the idea of a species evolving with external second brains that they have to carry around with them... but life works in mysterious ways.

[Picture: The Ood's collective brain... thing.]

Donna has been pretty great so far. I never disliked her character before, I just don't actually remember a lot of these episodes or how good she was in them - the polar opposite of the materialistic and shallow person she came across as in her first appearance. Catherine Tate tackles the emotional scenes brilliantly.

[Picture: The occasional CGI-expanded wide shot gives the OodSphere a sense of scale and alien majesty. The rest just looks like a quarry - huzzah!]

It's reference time! The OodSphere is near the SenseSphere, where the Doctor met the Sensorites "ages ago". I can see the resemblance, although there needn't be one, biologically speaking. Ood Sigma refers to the Doctor's song coming to an end shortly, the first premonition of David Tennant's run coming to an end. Of course, it's not quite over yet.

[Space Gibbon]

It always frustrated me that no one seemed to make any link between the Ood and the Mind Flayers/Illithid from D&D (particularly Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 2), from their tentacle-faced appearance right down to the giant central brain.

[Sprite Machine]

They remind me more of:

[Flub]

There's a good Humble Bundle at the moment. Doctor Who comics

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Not super easy to get hold of in the UK when they originally came out. IDW only had a license for the US. At first Forbidden Planet International wouldn't get them in at all. Later they started getting them in sporadically but putting them out of the way away from the main comics.

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The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

(Blog has pictures)

The Sontaran Stratagem harkens back to the old 1970s Doctor Who serials, not just because it re-uses the titular villains but because the whole set-up is like something Jon Pertwee would have been involved in, having to begrudgingly get along with the military (UNIT) while temporarily trapped on Earth. It even features human workmen who become possessed and/or cloned, which was a regular staple of the old serials, probably because it was cheap. Thankfully, the Sontarans themselves look a lot better than the old rubbery masks, but they're still very much the same villains.

[Picture: Colonel Mace leads UNIT at this time. He's no Brigadier, that's for sure.]

In later series, the Sontarans will become the comic relief, particularly the Doctor's friend Strax, with his casually violent remarks and failure to understand human ways, but these Sontarans are still the threatening military force that they once were, treating humans as pests to be eradicated. They only know of war and glory, it's all they live for. This should make them boring, but it doesn't; however, it needs a tragic angle to give it depth, and that's where Luke Rattigan comes in. Tricked by the Sontarans, this naive young genius is the equivalent of what would have been some jaded old company director in a Jon Pertwee episode, working with the enemy for his own goals. It does highlight some of the differences between then and now.

[Picture: Luke destroys the Sontaran ship by overheating their Xbox 360.]

For instance, back then, the (third) Doctor wasn't a famous figure revered throughout the galaxy. The aliens or other forces he faced didn't know him, and he often didn't know them either. And although the world was put in danger, whether by volcanic eruption, invasion by dinosaurs, or assault by Autons, the world at large didn't see any of it happen. Conversely, the modern series is absolutely obsessed with the whole wide world being put through horrible things without stopping to think about the impact it ought to have. Every time they do one of those news report montages telling us it's the end of the world, I just cringe. How many times can it really be the end of the world? It's utterly incongruous with other characters' continued insistence that there's no such thing as aliens, but more importantly, it's just boring. There is no impact anymore; there is no greater threat. The Doctor can stand there on a planet that's about to be killed with toxic gas, but I just won't believe it's going to happen. He'll wave his sonic screwdriver around and everything will be fine again.

[Picture: Commander Skorr presumably takes his helmet off so that the other Sontarans know who he is.]

So, this two-parter is a mix of some good old-school set-ups with some bad new-school wrap-ups. It's not as good as it could be, but it's not too bad either. The Sontarans are just about right (war chanting aside), the script is often sharp and funny, Donna continues to impress as a companion, it's nice to see Martha again, although she's so bland that you can't actually tell when it's the clone version on screen (or maybe that's the point), and the throwbacks to the Doctor's past with UNIT are a nice touch (particularly that he can't remember if he worked for them in the 70s or 80s!). But there is just too much screwdriving this and deadlocking that, winning with technobabble yet again, and everyone is fine and happy and going about their normal lives after the ordeal is over. It's grandiose and overblown because it has the technology to do it now, but that doesn't mean it should.

[Picture: That's a great plan, Doctor... unless you're an aeroplane.]

[JohnC]

I really didn't realise he had been in Who.

[Space Gibbon]

Loads of people who have gone on to become much more famous were in Who. There's Carey Mulligan and that other girl at the start of Blink, and the two of them and Andrew Garfield were all in Never Let Me Go. There's one of the soldiers from The Doctor's Daughter who later played Gendry in Game of Thrones, and of course Son of Mine of the Family of Blood was also in Thrones. As was the annoying pointlessly pocket-watch-stealing boy from that episode (but he appeared as young-British-boy in everything around that time, a bit like Freddie Highmore...god I'm glad we didn't have to endure his pug face in Who).

[Eighthours]

Son of Mine of the Family of Blood was also in Thrones.

Ah, how did I not realise immediately that he was Viserys? Awesome stuff, I loved him in Family of Blood and wondered where he'd got to!

[Davros sock drawer]

Oh blimey, I totally missed that it was him as well. Same wonky grin, can't believe I was fooled by the blonde wig!

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The Doctor's Daughter

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It's funny, I seem to recall The Doctor's Daughter being really bad, but I rather liked it this time. I was probably remembering the story's weaker elements, which are, admittedly, still a problem. For instance, instead of bringing the Doctor's fictional daughter back (played by a previous star's actual daughter, ho-ho!), the episode literally invents one, then kills her off, then decides not to kill her off after all so she can come back for more episodes, and then subsequently does nothing with her for the next six years (and counting). We know very little about the Doctor's past (as Donna says, he talks a lot but doesn't say much), but it seems to be outside of the show's scope to actually fill in any details about his life, such as his family (and, lately, his name). Preserving the mystery is more important.

[Picture: Now that she's married to David Tennant, I wonder if she still calls him Daddy. Actually, I don't want to know.]

Anyway, this episode isn't primarily about the Doctor's new daughter, it's about two warring factions on a pre-terraformed colony planet. It's one of those stories that questions what it means to be a soldier, whether there can be peace without victory, and whether the Doctor is really the pacifist he thinks he is. Yeah, it's lightweight and the characters are thin, but it's pretty smart. It also throws a curveball when Donna works out what's really been going on. Wars that have been raging for longer than collective memory are a common sci-fi trope, but this has a terrific twist that I had completely forgotten about, and for once it's the companion that works it out. Another point for Donna.

[Picture: Martha is welcomed by the Hath.]

Martha's story is more incidental, having been accidentally dragged through time in the Tardis at the end of the previous episode. As such, she provides the needed exposition for the Hath's side of this conflict (and knowledge of Time Lords for Donna's benefit), but her adventure with her fishy friend just sort of stops when he accidentally dies saving her and nobody else is there to be influenced by it. The ending is also a bit silly, as this advanced terraforming equipment is activated by smashing it on the floor. Yeah, it's symbolic but it makes little sense. And what exactly happened to Jenny's gunshot wound at the end? It's just gone. It smacks of a last minute reshoot.

[Picture: The terraforming machine, the source of the colonists' creation myth.]

Aside from that, I liked the episode. It does feel rushed, like a big story crammed into too short a space, but that's somewhat fitting given what's actually happening. The Doctor's a tad preachy in this, but that's what he does, drop in on people and tell them what they're doing wrong. The Hath look cheap and so do the sets, but this was probably a low-budget episode and, frankly, it makes a change from the overblown global disaster stuff from the previous episodes. This tells a more personal story and is more effective as a result. On reflection, then, surprisingly good.

[Sprite Machine]

The Unicorn and the Wasp

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This is another story written by Gareth Roberts, who wrote the third season episode 'The Shakespeare Code'. It's very similar in how it visits a famous writer from history, litters the script with lots of references to their works and creates a fantastical story out of a real life mystery. It's also quite funny and rather more memorable than the somewhat forgettable Shakespeare Code.

[Picture: The Doctor and Donna meet Agatha Christie for the first time.]

Agatha Christie is the subject of this story, which positions itself as a mystery comedy mash-up set in 1926, just prior to her famous disappearance. It's full of clichéd scenarios, reverends, lead pipes, libraries, lightning flashes in a blackout at dinner, and so on, but it can get away with it because that's the point. The story doesn't take itself too seriously, and neither does the Doctor, which is a bit off for him because, despite this being an exciting time, people are dying around him!

[Picture: It's a good thing two people have died at this point - there wouldn't be enough seats at the dinner table otherwise.]

It's an ensemble piece, like any good mystery, with just enough time to learn about the characters. It's all stiff-upper-lipped Britishness on the outside with scandalous secrets inside, and to the episode's credit, it manages to fit all this in and make the characters enjoyable to watch. Donna, much like the audience, has fun mocking their vocabulary - pip-pip and tally-ho, indeed! Her and the Doctor's "we're not a couple" thing continues with comedic regularity. Meanwhile, Agatha is the most normal of the lot, portrayed as a down-to-Earth woman who lacks faith in her own abilities as a writer while struggling to deal with her failed marriage.

[Picture: It's called a Vespiform, a shape-changing alien. That's about it.]

Unfortunately, there's barely any time left to deal with the whole "giant wasp" issue, so its motivations have to be relegated to an incredibly brief backstory by the Lady Eddison and a contrived psychic jewel. There's also the fact that, well, it's a giant wasp. It's in keeping with the animals-as-aliens theme that the production designers are so fond of, but it's not very imaginative (nor is it likely something that size would be able to fly). Nevertheless, humour can make up for silliness, and this is a funny episode with witty writing and good performances. I must say, I rather enjoyed it, what-what!

PS. The butler didn't do it.

[Space Gibbon]

The whole psychic jewel thing was a ridiculous way to explain why a story featuring Agatha Christie would wind up playing out like an Agatha Christie novel. I think they should've just rolled with it and ignored the implausibility. I mean, it's Doctor Who, not The Wire.

[Hexx]

Teaser

Trailer soon then maybe

[Space Gibbon]

Is it going to be a whole season or are they going to dick around and split it in two?

Also, is it going to be shit like last season, or good like several of the other seasons, discounting 3-5 episodes per season?

I really wish they'd realised Clara is shit, ditched her and started afresh.

[kensei]

Whole season, I think 12 rather than thirteen EPs and may run straight into Christmas special. Clara is arite.

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Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead

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Steven Moffat certainly has a knack for creating frightening creatures out of everyday things. I suspect it's his mission to give nightmares to as many children as possible. In Silence in the Library, we learn that there is a race called the Vashta Nerada, who are microscopic flesh-eating organisms that look like shadows. Oh, and a few of them also live on Earth. Thought statues were scary? "Count the shadows" is the new "don't blink".

[Picture: Spacesuited baddies also worked well in The Ambassadors of Death, and will again in The Impossible Astronaut.]

There's plenty more scary situations and freaky imagery in this two-parter. The contorted face of Miss Evangelista inside the computer simulation even gave me a fright, and I'm a grown adult (usually). But there is more to this story than scares, and this is where it is perhaps a tad overloaded with ideas. They are excellent ideas, but you can't easily sustain that many at once.

[Picture: "Who turned out the lights" is about as frightening as "are you my mummy". Which is to say, not very.]

For instance, the little girl in the parallel world is actually a computer who used to be a girl and the world isn't real. The doctor (not the Doctor) is a program on the moon. There are creatures that look like shadows and live in forests and eat people. Dead people can be stored in computer chips and still talk for a while, or be brought back as faces on robots. Oh, and the Doctor's future wife has met the Doctor for the first time in his life and the last time in her life, because they're travelling in opposite temporal directions, or something. Bloody hell, Moffat! This is what happens when they only give you one story per season to write!

[Picture: The vast library. simply called The Library, takes up the entire planet. That's a lot of books.]

I suppose this was the start of his big plans for Doctor Who. In a Time Traveller's Wife style, Alex Kingston plays River Song, who knows more about the Doctor than anyone else, including his real name, which will become an annoyingly common tease in later seasons. She's looking a little younger than she does in her future appearances, because unfortunately that's how time works in the real world, but this is actually the character's last appearance from her perspective. There is far more to this enigmatic character than can possibly be written here, and to be fair, we're not meant to know any of it yet. I very much doubt her backstory (or should that be frontstory?) was planned out at this stage.

[Picture: River Song comments on the Doctor's young looking eyes.]

The story is complex and, annoyingly, uses lots of very rapid exposition to explain things as they're happening, because otherwise they wouldn't make sense. It's not as bad as it gets towards the end of the seventh season, say, but it's enough to grate. However, even through the complex plot there weaves an emotional core, little moments that can't help but touch the heart, such as Miss Evangelista's dying words crackling away from her storage device, or Donna's anguish over discovering her children are just a simulation and have disappeared before her eyes.

[Picture: I could do without these over-the-top sequences, to be honest. The Doctor should not be an action hero.]

There's also a few of those little Moffat signature touches, the things he likes to throw in, like when the Doctor points out there are six people in the room rather than five or suddenly notices the extra shadow, very much in the style of noticing the ticking clockwork clown or the typewriter operating itself. The girl trapped in the computer, looking back at the Doctor from the other side, will be re-used for Clara Oswald's first appearance, and it does bear some similarity to the Girl In The Fireplace, also looking through a barrier between worlds. It's this imagination that makes Steven Moffat's episodes some of the best in modern Doctor Who. This Library two-parter is not my favourite of his, but it's very good and a step above everything else in what has been a generally high quality season so far. I will grow tired of River Song and her "hello sweetie"s but that time is not yet.

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Midnight

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Leaving Donna behind to sunbathe at a leisure complex, the Doctor takes a flying tour bus with some strangers to see the beautiful sights of planet Midnight's sapphire waterfalls. This episode is, I suspect, a result of distributing the show's budget elsewhere, but I usually find that this produces some of the most focused and interesting drama, and Midnight is no exception. With the entire story set within the enclosed walls of the airbus, we never see the sights outside (save a brief glance through the cockpit window) and we never see the 'monster', either. What we get instead is character drama, and Russell T Davies knows how to write characters.

[Picture: Among the passengers are Merlin the Wizard and the King of Peladon.]

In this respect, Midnight is like classic Doctor Who serials, just highly condensed, a lot more intense and much better directed. The small cast of characters aren't exactly three-dimensional, but they behave in a believable fashion. Midnight explores humanity at its worst. Presented with an unknown intruder, paranoia sets in and threats begin to fly. Whereas a lot of episodes put faith in the inherent goodness of mankind, Midnight basically says that when our home comforts are taken away and we're presented with danger and uncertainty, we cling to our base desires to distrust outsiders and even to kill. This unsettles the Doctor more than the monster itself and presents an interesting challenge for him, without a companion to back him up. It's a pretty thrilling 45 minutes.

[Picture: On the surface of Midnight, even the sunlight is deadly. Nothing can live out there... or can it?]

The mystery is never solved, either. There's no happy ending, there's no misunderstanding where the Doctor gives the creature a talking to and they have a nice cup of tea together. No, whatever the lifeform is, it's left unknown, and all the better for it. It seemingly has some physical form and is able to damage the bus, get inside and inhabit the body of one of the passengers. It's able to repeat what people say and it knows how to manipulate the other passengers into thinking its mind has moved into the Doctor. It's really creepy, particularly the moment when Sky starts mirroring the others' speech simultaneously. A simple idea, but an effective psychological trick.

[Picture: The Doctor and Sky, locked into their mirrored dialogue.]

Midnight manages to be more intense, scary and exciting than so many big budget episodes. David Tennant shows that he can act incredibly well when he's not having to frantically run back and forth at the whim of the plot, or show off for his companion, like he often does. It's his best performance since 'Family of Blood', if you ask me, and I'd happily take this toned-down flavour of Doctor Who more regularly.

[gospvg]

Interesting article on Digital Spy about the BBC thinking about cancelling the show after Tenant's departure.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s7/doctor-who/news/a573566/steven-moffat-bbc-almost-ended-doctor-who-when-david-tennant-left.html#~oFtonsBZLrKs5F