Review of The Bells of Saint John
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
I really want to give Clara’s “no, this time we mean it!” introduction story an enthusiastic thumbs-up, but I can’t quite.
Like most Moffat-penned scripts, it zips along at such a fast pace that it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and come out saying, “Wow! That was great!” But Bells (and what the hell sort of irrelevant title was that, anyway, based on an utterly toss-off portion of the story from 1207?) also suffers from the common problems that plague Moffat’s stories.
To begin, we’ve got the usual casual misogyny, like when the young monk asks if the Doctor is speaking with an evil spirit and when he’s told “it’s a woman,” he crosses himself. This one I’m willing to let slide because, OK, it’s 1207 and the dude’s a monk who’s probably not supposed to have any contact with women. But it’s still in rather poor taste.
More irritating to my mind is the way the Doctor insists that Clara repeat The Question to him three times. I never used to think of the Doctor as a pure narcissist – a bit overly proud of his intellect, perhaps, but not full of himself – but that’s how that scene presented him. The Doctor seems to be exhibiting an ever-increasing number of troubling character traits these days (and I’m not just talking about some “fall into darkness” he might be experiencing), and I find myself watching with more trepidation all the time.
You may think after all this that I didn’t really care for the episode, but that’s not true. Both times I watched before sitting down to write this review, I came away with an upbeat, “that was fun” feeling. But by the very nature of blogging, I’ve learned to sit down and analyze the good and the bad, and I’m afraid there’s always both in Doctor Who.
Some of it even happens at the same time. For instance, I love that Clara is talking to her young charge about the book he’s reading. (Appropriately for the timing of the broadcast, there’s an “Easter egg” here: note the author.) However, with very little inference, the conversation is really just Moffat being RTD-level self-congratulatory:
“What chapter are you on?” she asks.
“Ten.”
“Eleven is the best. You’ll cry your eyes out.”
Other times, I couldn’t tell if Moffat was giving nods to long-term continuity or just repeating himself. The TARDIS phone isn’t supposed to work, but since it added to the ambience in (Moffat script) The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, why not use it again here? (Though it’s fun to compare and contrast the reactions Ecclestion and Smith bring to their respective scenes.) Later, it’s possible he’s riffing The Movie by bringing in a motorbike, but it must have been subconscious, as – much to my dismay – there nary a peep about San Francisco. And of course there’s the monks (who “aren’t cool”); surely, we’ve never seen monks in a Moffat episode before. Oh wait…
Which actually brings us to the biggest redundancy of the story, which should have been its strength: the wifi. It’s a fabulous idea about how to make the everyday frightening – something Moffat’s done really well many times in the past. It falls short here, though, because (a) right off the bat, there’s an easy way to avoid the threat, and (b) the way it manifests is far too reminiscent of the faceless victims of the Wire from The Idiot’s Lantern caught inside television sets. When it’s not a rehash of Idiot’s Lantern, it’s aping the episodes with the Flesh – though I’ll admit that the robo-Doctor got me, both times there was a reveal.
They say there’s nothing new under the sun, and that mature artists steal, so I suppose to a certain extent all this redundancy is inevitable. It probably says something about either Moffat’s storytelling power or my love of Doctor Who (or some combination thereof) that I didn’t find it off-putting while I watched. Instead, I enjoyed the ride.
And there was plenty to enjoy. The chemistry between Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman is great (though I’m over this sexualized version of the Doctor; he shouldn’t be blushing at her “down boy” comments). I had to laugh at Clara’s spill-free tea mug that she hauled with her through several panicked moments on a crashing airplane and back onto the TARDIS before drinking from it again.
To top it off, the supporting cast were superb. I was especially impressed by the actress who played the waitress; her mercurial changes between cold, calculating mouthpiece and somewhat weirded out server who had a patron in her personal space were brilliant.
Best of all, I’m psyched that Richard E. Grant has more to do in the series, and won’t have been wasted after all. I actually did a little dance in my seat when I realized it was he. Of course seeing UNIT again always gives my fangirl heart a bit of a flutter (I’ve been a UNIT convert since I first set eyes on the Brigadier), and the tiny little girl voice coming out of Miss Kizlet at the end was über-creepy perfection.
In essence, Clara’s call from 2013 London to 1207 Cumbria, marks the beginning of an entire new story arc. We are, thus, given plenty of little things to chew on. What’s the “first page” maple leaf all about? Who was “the woman in the shop” who gave Clara the Doctor’s number? (Sorry, Rose fans – just because Rose used to work in a shop, it doesn’t mean it’s her. Don’t you think the Doctor would’ve noticed the whole ripping-a-hole-between-universes thing? My money’s on River. Not that I’m particularly happy about it.) And, of course, who’s Clara? (Speaking of rehashed themes: Who’s River? Who’s Clara? Who’s the Doctor?)
I’m sure all will be revealed in good time – maybe even that stupid title. Until then, I’m not going to waste too much of my time speculating. After all, even the Doctor “can’t tell the future; [he] just work[s] there.”
Bells
Bells may, in fact, become the new “Bad Wolf.” It’s been pointed out to me that there may have been other bell sounds in the episode (I’ll have to listen for that on next viewing) and that the Doctor said that the Great Intelligence “rings a bell…” at the end of The Snowmen. We shall see.
I hope you’re joking
When I saw this on facebook, you said you weren’t fooling but the first few lines have me wondering if you are.
The casual misogyny you are referring to is in fact fairly justified considering the Doctor is at heart a fairly cold and ruthless individual. He’s always been able to kill and commit genocide when he needs to and if you look at the first episodes it was his companions that made him become a hero. Susan needed to go to school and Susan led Barbara and Ian to him and it was his lying and stupidity that meant they couldn’t just leave in the tardis when they first met the daleks. Over the years he has had many companions, frequently female and often dragging him into trouble.
Alright to begin with this was because of arguably misogynistic cliches in story telling but the fact remains that the Doctor thinking a woman trouble is justified in-universe. Even in more recent times Five died to save Peri, Six was killed by the Rani. Seven was killed by Grace. Nine died to save Rose and Eleven was nearly killed twice by River, with her dooming the entire universe at one point because of her best intentions.
Also with regards to stealing ideas, you have heard of postmodernism haven’t you? The idea of an original work created from a bricolage of other references? I’m studying it at university right now and it’s a justified way to tell stories. More than that though it’s the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who, if Moffat’s work can’t contain little nods to other episodes now, when can it? Again have you missed every other episode of Doctor Who since at least the tenth anniversary? There’s a lot of similarities that can be found between any given set of stories, some deliberate, some accidental. Plus I think ripping off the Idiot’s Lantern was the director’s fault, not the writer’s and besides that episode was written by Moffat’s cohort on Sherlock, Mark Gatiss so I’m sure there’s no real legal issue there.
Otherwise though I would tend to agree that it’s a fun fluffy story that isn’t meant to be taken too seriously.
Missed my point
It doesn’t sound like you understood what I was saying. First, I’m not talking about the “casual misogyny” of the character of the Doctor. I’m talking about Moffat’s writing overall, in episode after episode when he thinks he’s being witty but is actually perpetuating negative stereotypes against women.
And yes, I’m familiar with post-modernism. I had considered the fact that Moffat was trying to give nods to the rest of the post-Hiatus series, but decided that even if that were the case, he’s not done it very effectively. As storytelling goes, it’s a poor choice simply because there are so many “little nods” that it becomes distracting. Nor did I ever have any qualms about legalities.
I’ve seen another review that does an even better job of pointing out all the places Bells borrowed from elsewhere, and why it isn’t as good here as it was in those other instances. Check it out and see what you think of that blogger’s point of view: Doc Oho Reviews, Series Seven.
that rings a bell
The old Doctor Who novel “Business Unusual” had the Doctor meeting a brand new companion that he’s already met before, only she doesn’t know that, and together they investigate a sinister internet provider company, which turns out to be run by one of the Doctor’s old enemies, a disembodied intelligence. Now why does that sound familiar…?
~arches eyebrow~
Hmmm… That is suspicious, indeed…
Misogyny
This is more of a nitpick of a term, so I apologize in advance.
It annoys me greatly at how the term misogyny is tossed around these days and how so many writers are accused of it when they haven’t written it at all. Moffat gets accused of this all the time. I’ve seen him called a misogynist when nothing could be further from the truth. Misogynists do not write strong female characters who save the day. Period.
A lot of the things people are moaning about and calling misogyny are actually something else. Real life. God forbid a writer write about real life. God forbid a writer write about real life situations instead of a utopia where everything is wonderful and everyone is treated equally.
Doctor Who has ALWAYS fought against these misogynistic approaches. Always. I’ve seen arguments on Tumblr from people who refuse to watch Classic Who because OMG SEXISM. Yep there was some. But, in equal measures, you had exchanges like this:
Doctor: Zoe, you wait here where it’s safe.
Zoe: I’m sorry? Where it’s safe? Why?
Jamie: Well, because you’re a woman!
Zoe: Well that settles it, I’m coming along!
Zoe then proceeds to come up with something brilliant and save the day, getting the Doctor and Jamie out of trouble. And this was in the 60s!
Today, we might have writing where a character says to a female character, “No you can’t.” She then proceeds to prove she can. Is this misogynistic? No, it is not. In a lot of cases in Moffat’s writing, it’s the other way around because the female character goes above and beyond. In The Bells of Saint John, Clara did something the Doctor couldn’t do by hacking into the Great Intelligence’s mainframe. How is that, in any way, misogynistic? I’m not saying you said that, mind you. But you did feel the need to throw that term into your review and you’ve thrown that term into other reviews and I find it unnecessary and misguided.
I lived in the southeast United States for 27 years. So many places in that part of the country are so backwards that your brain could turn to mush if you over-analyzed it. This is a place where a week didn’t go by without hearing a man say to some woman, if not me, “Step back, little lady, this is a man’s work.” I was told women weren’t smart enough to work on computers. I was told I needed to settle down and get married. I was even asked by many women why I wasn’t married yet, so even the women are programmed that way.
If you want to fight the good fight against true misogyny, first, learn what the term actually means. Then look at society around you and make the changes there, instead of trying to apply it to a show where it really doesn’t exist.
Point taken
I totally get where you’re coming from, Shelley. I also want to point out, though, that “misogyny” takes on many different forms, which include not being outright rude/demeaning/dismissive of women. Again, this particular episode was actually pretty good – especially, yes, Clara saving the day. Where I’ve seen problems before are such things as female characters being set up as “strong,” yet then later having their entire personality center on, for example, whether or not they can turn the Doctor’s head.
Honestly, though, I don’t want to argue about it. I will take your comments to heart and think more carefully about how I voice such objections in the future. I see enough angry rants about this stuff elsewhere on the Internet; I’d rather focus as much on the positives here as possible. So thanks for your comments; I’ll try to continue improving my thoughtfulness on these matters. 🙂
It occurs to me….
It occurs to me that that probably came off as overly bitchy and it’s one of the reasons that I started cleaning out some of the blogs I follow on Tumblr. I got tired of the whole thing. I would, however, like to discuss the rest of the review, if you don’t mind.
Some of this comes in no particular order, just as it occurs to me. It’s how my brain works. The first thing is your statement about the wifi. I’m not sure how tech-savvy you are. It seemed that The Great Intelligence, through Ms. Kizlet, was looking for a certain kind of person. Computer geeks. Computer geeks tend to carry their computers around with them. I do. When they get a moment or two, they’re pulling out the laptop, and looking for a wi-fi connection. This is also true of tablet owners and mobile phone users with limited data plans. So, you’re there with your laptop looking for a connection. There might be several in the area, but they all have passwords on them. Then you see one that doesn’t. Boom, they’ve got you. Easy to avoid the threat? Not really in this day and age when so many people are on the internet. And not when you’ve just offered them an open and free internet connection. And I’ve seen the parallels drawn to The Idiot’s Lantern, but really, that wasn’t the best episode. This one was SO much better.
The Doctor’s narcissism. I think he’s always been full of himself. He’s always thought himself superior. There was a line Pertwee said in an episode, “I’m really quite spry for my age.” In The God Complex, he tells Amy that he took her because he was vain and I really don’t think that was all to break her faith in him. Tom Baker’s Doctor always made statements belittling Sarah Jane and making her feel silly while making himself appear a god-like genius. And do I even need to pull out Colin Baker’s Doctor examples? No, I didn’t really find the scene out of line or character at all. But that’s just me.
I’ll agree with you on Moffat’s self-congratulatory statements. The lines in particular you mentioned are prime examples. But at least you didn’t say what one person on Twitter said. I felt the need to take her down too. She felt that Moffat was saying, in those lines, that 11th Doctor was better than 10th Doctor and that it was a statement of his hatred towards Davies and Tennant. If he hated Tennant, Tennant wouldn’t be in the 50th, would he? And he’s said on many occasions that Davies is one of his best friends, who he speaks to regularly, and who he BEGS to write for Who again (Davies always turns him down).
Your theory that it was River who gave Clara the Doctor’s number, I think is spot-on. “The best in the universe”? Who else would say that? I actually love River, though. Never gets old for me. 🙂 I’m hoping UNIT gets utilized more since Chibnall, essentially, “brought them back” in The Power of Three. And I definitely want to see Kate Stewart again.
I really enjoyed the episode. It’s not one of Moffat’s best, by far. But it is better than The Beast Below or Let’s Kill Hitler.
WiFi
OK, yes – I’d totally take an open wifi connection when roaming, too. 🙂 What I was trying to get at is that unlike, say, Weeping Angels or the Vashta Nerada, once warmed about the danger, there’s an extremely simple, straightforward way to avoid this particular threat. I guess that didn’t quite come across… :
And, of course, you make another perfectly valid point about the Doctor’s narcissism. Somehow I seem to be failing this week at phrasing things well. All I really meant is that making Clara repeat The Question so many times made it feel … I don’t know, like a CBBC show instead of one nominally for the whole family. It was overly silly and rubbed me the wrong way somehow.
I agree that I don’t think Moffat would ever put down Tennant or RTD. He’s just having some fun tooting his own horn. I go back and forth about River, but it seems the most obvious answer to that particular question. 🙂 And “yes, please!” to more of Kate!
So yeah. Fun, but not the best ever. I voted Four Stars.
Disappointed
I don’t know, I was disappointed in general. It seems like with the post-Hiatus Who we go through the same thing every time the Doctor gets a new female companion. She wows him with her wit and knowlege. He wants her to travel with him – they all have to be young and gorgeous (Donna being the exception; she seemed to break the mold – she was beautiful, I don’t mean it in that way). They can’t be over 25. Moffat, in an interview, admitted he couldn’t imagine a companion that wasn’t from our own time, someone the audience couldn’t identify with – but how does he measure this? Why can’t he have a companion from the past or the future? Why almost always a young girl from our time?
The Doctor, when he was a Wifi robot, was creepy. Liked that part. I guess I just don’t expect much these days. I guess I am arguing the same issue over and over – promise not to do it again! 🙂
Addressing These Points
Are you saying that none of the pre-hiatus companions were young and beautiful? Have you seen pictures of (just grabbing at names for examples) Carol Ann Ford, Anneka Wills, Deborah Watling, Elisabeth Sladen, Janet Fielding, or Sophie Aldred? They were gorgeous!
As far as the second points, if you watch 2nd doctor adventures when he had Jamie and Victoria as his companions, it was really time-consuming when he had to stop to explain to them what something was that they really had no concept of, seeing as how Jamie was from the 1700s and Victoria from the 1800s. They just couldn’t fathom some things. Jamie was far more adaptable, but only because he wasn’t as intelligent. Victoria, ultimately, couldn’t take it and asked to be left behind.
Companions from the future and from other planets. As I understand it, viewers felt threatened by Zoe. She was from the future and very intelligent and the viewers felt her intelligence shouldn’t be on par with the Doctor’s. Oddly, this is the same problem lots of people have with River Song. Romana was a Time Lord as well. Just as smart as the Doctor. She was popular, but only to a certain extent. Nyssa, Adric and Turlough were aliens. The viewers couldn’t identify with them at all. Viewers actively despised Adric and he ended up being the only companion ever killed in an episode. Nyssa was more liked, but really only because viewers disliked Adric, Tegan and Turlough more. The aliens were written like, well, aliens. You weren’t meant to identify them and, thus, nobody really liked them.
Moffat wants to write a companion that viewers like. He wants to write characters that his viewers will love. If you can’t identify with the character, will you love that character? No. You will not. Nobody ever likes a character that they can’t see a bit of themselves in or be able to put themselves in that type of situation. So this is the number one rule of every writer. Create a memorable character. You create one that the viewer/reader either loves or hates. And you want to love the Doctor’s companion. Or that’s the goal, anyway.
Companions Can Be Different
No, I’m not saying that – I’m just addressing the Post-Hiatus companions. I wasn’t analyzing the Pre-Hiatus companions at the moment I wrote the post.
The characters that you wrote about from the past and the future – I know this is personal opinion and preference, and this is the reason fans are so varied. I love that variety when I watch the classic Who episodes, all the characters from the past and the future, and the Time Lords. I liked Zoe, and Nyssa, and Victoria, and Stephen. I especially love Barbara and Ian – two characters from the then present!
I don’t believe people didn’t like characters because they were from different times or because they were alien. Ultimately, the main character, the Doctor we love, is an alien! These characters, the ones that are most alien, have human characteristics, and we do love them.
Why were people so sad and shocked when Adric died if they couldn’t identify with him? Because he was a well written character, human or not. A character does not have to come from our time or be human for us to like or identify with him/her. The biggest proof of that is the Doctor. We feel sad for him, we like him, we get mad at him. Rose and Martha fall in love with him! The show wouldn’t have last for 50 years if this was untrue.
The Doctor “explaining” things is as much for the audience as it is for the characters, alien or not. It’s always that way, to some degree, with all science fiction.
I don’t think the audience is so limited that they won’t “like” a character if they cannot “identify” with them. People have learned to identify with one another in everyday life who come from different circumstances. Just because a companion might be different doesn’t mean we will hate them. The goal of the writer is to make us like the companion, yes, but that does not mean the companion cannot be very different from us. We might even learn something about a different time or culture. I would hope that companions would be different. It would be interesting to see how aliens and people from the past and future would react to situations if thrown in with a companion from the present!
Thanks for your reply, Shelley!
On an unrelated note, I wanted to share a review I found online: http://cultfix.co.uk/doctor-who-706-the-bells-of-saint-john-review-22111.htm
Damn…
I hate it when somebody else says it all so much better. 😉 (Thanks for the link to that other review, though, Tree – a good read!)
And can I just say – it makes me so happy to see readers talking with each other about this stuff on one of my posts! ~wipes away proud tear~
Your Review
Oh Marcia, your review was splendid. I think all the reviews fit together like a puzzle. Each of them are original with their own point of view. I like reviews that make you think, not ones that just gush on and on about how great things are. Having said that, you can love an episode and write a review as to why you like it. That’s why I love your site; your critiques, whether you like the episode or not, are always very well done and make the reader think!
~blush~
Well, thank you; I’m really glad to hear that. You’re right about the puzzle thing – I like to read others’ reviews because everybody sees something a little different. Sometimes I don’t feel up to the task, but I’m pleased to hear that someone’s enjoying what I write anyway. 🙂