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Month: November 2015

Facing the Consequences

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Review of Face the Raven
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I am so glad Moffat finally got some women to write for Doctor Who. Both of those new writers this series have added strong episodes to the canon (however one defines that), and Face the Raven in particular uses character as its driving force to great effect.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

I just wish I’d been able to experience the episode without expectations of where it was heading.

Over the last couple of years I’ve had bad luck with last-minute spoilers, and not just in Who. For example, in the first season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the mid-series cliffhanger revealed [um, couple-year-old spoiler] that one of the team members was secretly working for Hydra. A couple hours before I had the chance to see it myself (late, yes, but still… ~sigh~), I saw a tweet about it: “I still can’t believe [So-and-so] is Hydra!” So much for that bit of dramatic tension. I spent the whole episode noticing the clues the other characters overlooked rather than overlooking them myself.

Similarly, the day before Face the Raven aired, a friend posted something on social media about how sad she was that this was going to be Jenna’s last episode. Well. Foreknowledge like that certainly changes the way one views a story. I can only imagine now how other fans would have experienced it, because I didn’t have the luxury of surprise.

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Perchance a Dream

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Review of Sleep No More
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Mark Gatiss scripts are always hit or miss for me. I have really enjoyed a couple of them, especially The Unquiet Dead, but others have fallen flat for me. This entire season has been really strong (in my opinion), though, so knowing Gatiss was the writer on this episode, I went in feeling cautiously optimistic.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

I came out the other end of the story rather confused—not by the plot itself so much as by how I felt about it all. After my second viewing, though, I think I finally figured out where I stand: with opposing opinions depending on how I look at it. As a writer, I found the episode to be a fascinating experiment using a worthy storytelling conceit; as a fan, I didn’t particularly like it.

Much of the online reaction I’ve seen centers on the “found footage” style. Some folks are touting it as a bold, new direction, while others feel it was a mistake of epic proportions. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere between the extremes. Given the nature of the story, the found footage format (say that twelve times fast) strikes me as a perfect fit. It adds to the creepiness and makes the camera POVs part of the narrative itself. However, I found it incredibly off-putting. I’ve simply never been a fan of that style of film, and found it difficult to look past.

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Continuity à la Carte

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Review of The Zygon Inversion
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This is the episode that made me look back and admit I hadn’t been entirely fair to Moffat.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

Regular readers will know that I’ve long since tired of Moffat’s regular tricks and quirks. It was easy for me, therefore, to jump to conclusions about previous stories that I now know to have been incomplete. In particular, I was really angry after Death in Heaven when Osgood died. It felt like an attack on the fandom for whom she was a cipher.

Now, though, it’s obvious that Moffat had a larger character (and plot) arc in mind for Petronella Osgood (I kind of wish we still didn’t have a given name for her…). He has even tied up the glaringly loose end of the Zygon peace agreement with humanity, left dangling for nearly two years since The Day of the Doctor. Many of us noted how that particular plot line had been abandoned unceremoniously at the end of the anniversary special; some felt the Zygons had been underutilized as a result. It’s nice to see those threads being tied back into the ongoing narrative.

Speaking of call-backs to previous episodes, Clara’s in-pod experiences during the pre-credits sequence was extremely reminiscent of both Last Christmas (with Clara’s search for dream tells) and Asylum of the Daleks (in that Clara was physically trapped inside an enclosed space, but had made a different space in which to exist in her mind). Long-term continuity was well considered here (more on that later).

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A Zygon Conclusion

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Review of The Zygon Invasion
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This is one of those stories in which misdirection is the order of the day, and which on subsequent viewings doesn’t necessarily become clearer. At least, not without the second half of the story, which is yet to come.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

In other words, this is your fair warning that I have some oddball theories this week, so prepare to be inundated with my evidence. (Next week you can mock me mercilessly when I turn out to be completely wrong, but for now I’m going to pretend I’ve come up with the most brilliant fan theory of the series to date.)

Before I get into my speculative musings, though, let’s start with the more relatable mystery of which Osgood is which. Before the credits even roll, we see the surviving Osgood (who now wears question marks, whether on her lapels like the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Doctors each did, or on her replica of the Seventh Doctor’s vest) scrambling to escape capture. Hiding under the sheriff’s desk, she makes use of her inhaler. “Ah-ha!” we all crowed. “That’s the human Osgood! Zygon Osgood was the one Missy vaporized!”

Even the Doctor backed up our assumption, trying to help this Osgood come to grips with her identity. “Zygons need to keep the human original alive to refresh the body print. If you were a Zygon, you’d have changed back within days of your sister’s death.” But we’ve already seen these Zygons do something others have never done before: they can use mental images to take on a human form. (I’m kind of getting tired of Moffat’s finger in every goddamn pie, rearranging things to suit his own agenda. Yes, change is part of the show, and they have to keep things fresh. Still don’t like it.)

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