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Same Old Tricks

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Review of The Magician’s Apprentice
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I think most fans can agree by now that, like him or not, Moffat has a pretty distinctive style. When you go into a Moffat episode, you have certain expectations. No one should be surprised, then, to discover that in the Series Nine opener, he’s up to his same old tricks.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

The first, and perhaps most notable, of these tricks is giving us an (at least mostly) enjoyable Part One in a two-part story. Moffat excels at set-up, giving rich scenes and hints at things to come that get our fannish hearts pumping with that lifeblood of our breed, speculation. Time will tell how it all pans out, but experience suggests that the conclusion of the tale is unlikely to live up to the promise of its beginnings.

One thing we know Moffat can do well, though, is creating creepy “monsters” (at least the first time he uses them). The opening scene on the unknown battlefield provides that in spades with the “hand mines,” even though I’m still trying to decide whether I think they’re more or less frightening after finally seeing one tripped. The mix of this advanced weaponry with more archaic kinds (biplanes, bow and arrow) gives us—in retrospect—visual clues to go with the spoken ones about which war it is (especially for those viewers familiar with Tom Baker’s run). Yet, it’s still a bombshell when the boy’s identity is revealed and the opening credits roll.

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Confession #96: I’m Not Listening

With a brand new series nearly upon us, teaser trailers, images, and episode titles for Series Nine are everywhere. If one spends any time at all online, they’re easy to find, and difficult-to-impossible to avoid. I’m not a complete spoiler-phobe (which is good, because I wouldn’t be able to use the Internet if I were), but I do like to maintain a certain level of surprise going into a new season. It makes me feel like a stick in the mud, but with all the publicity on social media (which is where most of my Internet experience happens), I’ve gotten to the stage where I pretty much stick my fingers in my ears and shout, “LA LA LA!” to keep from learning things ahead of time.

I do watch trailers put out by the production team—that’s part of the show, in my opinion—and there is some news that I could only miss if I were oblivious to other fans online (e.g., return or casting of certain characters/actors). For the most part, though, I ignore the hype: I don’t go look at the behind-the-scenes, on-set photos that the BBC spams out; I’ve only watched two trailers once each (I don’t even know if that’s all of them or if there are more); and I have not read the titles of any of the episodes beyond the first two (which were plastered all over the prologue video), though I mistakenly glanced at a couple that I didn’t scroll past fast enough in my Twitter feed. (By the way, I’d like to offer hearty thanks to the others in the FB groups of which I am a member for only linking to the list, rather than posting it outright.)

Although I recognize that there are those out there who like to skip to the last page first to find out whodunnit when they’re reading a mystery, or who need to read the ending of their book after the first chapter or two to learn whether or not their favorite character survived the slaughter, I do not actually understand such people—not at a gut level. I’ll to do the whole “live and let live” schtick with someone who wants to know everything possible ahead of time, but the idea that it’s fun to learn every twist before even knowing the story just baffles me.

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Confession #95: I Like Odd Correlations

A couple of years ago, when the fiftieth anniversary rolled around, we were marveling at the fact that Remembrance of the Daleks was as far behind us as An Unearthly Child was behind Remembrance. Now Survival, which marked the end of the original run of the series, is as separated from the present as it was from the show’s beginnings (give or take a couple months). Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey indeed.

This kind of temporal comparison fascinates me (something I realized when a different pop cultural correlation occurred to me the other day: Star Wars (the third top-grossing film of all time) came out thirty-eight years ago; Gone With the Wind (all-time top-grossing film) came out thirty-eight years before Star Wars). One can come up with all sorts of interesting pairings—whatever time frame you can think of can yield a new perspective.

For example, nearly fifty-two years down the line from An Unearthly Child, the effects and staging of the episode look positively archaic. At the time, though, it was stretching the medium in new ways. And, after all, it was technological leaps and bounds beyond the cinema of fifty-two years before. In that year (1911), feature films were still a brand new phenomenon. The Italian silent film L’Inferno (The Inferno, from Dante), released in 1911, was perhaps the third or fourth feature film worldwide, and became (Wikipedia tells me) what some consider the first blockbuster.

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Confession #94: I Won’t Evangelize

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I’m going a bit off the beaten path from my usual approach with my confession this week. What I have to say probably counts as an Unpopular Opinion, and it may shock some of you, so ready your burning brands and pitchforks. Despite what I’ve implied plenty of times before, Doctor Who isn’t for everyone.

You heard me. Some people simply shouldn’t be brought into the fold—shouldn’t even try. “What?” I hear you say. “That’s ridiculous! Our Show has something for everyone!” Well, yes; there’s an awful lot of variety in the ~250 televised stories, never mind the vast additional oeuvre of books, audios, comics, and so on. But I argue that there are still some people for whom even this extensive selection is not enough in which to find a truly enjoyable story.

Heresy, I know.

Yet Doctor Who works best for those of us willing to overlook—or better yet, embrace—the silly or way-out-there-unbelievable to find something deeper inside. It may be a personal lesson we embrace, teaching us about tolerance or personal responsibility or the value of vulnerability. Perhaps it’s a vision of how life on Earth could be, good or bad (usually, but not always, based on how some alien culture works). Or maybe it’s just a thrilling adventure that lights a spark of joy and wonder.

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Confession #93: I Don’t Believe in “Good Old Days”

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In a recent online discussion about whether “Moffat detractors” are numerous or just loud, I saw someone posit that those fans “usually want RTD and Tennant back.” After countering that assertion—and another that fans familiar with pre-Hiatus Who are more likely to like Moffat (what?)—with both my own experiences and the opinions of several of my friends (none of whom have ever suggested anything so absurd as to bring back a previous Doctor for regular episodes), I got to thinking about the human tendency to wax nostalgic about “the good old days.”

Are the Good Old Days ever really as good as we remember?

I think fandom is much like parenthood (or any number of other experiences), in that once an era is well and truly in the rear-view mirror of our lives, it is far easier to remember the good parts than the bad (barring any truly traumatic moments). We look back on the episodes that made us fans and think, “nothing will ever be quite as good as it was when X was the Doctor,” or “when Y was in charge,” and pine for a time when everything was “as it should be.”

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Miracle in the Desert

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Review of The Eye of the Scorpion (#24)
Big Finish Release Date: Sep 2001
Doctor/Companion: Five and Peri
Stars: Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Project: Twilight (Six, Evelyn)
Succeeding Story: Colditz (Seven, Ace)

Big Finish has achieved something I didn’t think was possible: they made an entire story in which I didn’t cringe at/actively dislike Peri. In fact, I was into Part Three before I realized that’s what was happening. I guess y’all can officially add me to the list of folks who (at this moment) think she was better paired with the Fifth Doctor than the Sixth.

Aside from that amazing feat, The Eye of the Scorpion is in itself an enjoyable adventure. While in flight, the TARDIS inexplicably changes course. Upon review, it appears the Doctor is responsible, but he has no idea when or how he might have done so.

Soon they land in Egypt, circa 1400 BCE. In typical Doctor form, they accidentally ingratiate themselves with the yet-to-be-crowned Pharaoh, a young woman named Erimem (Caroline Morris). But the Doctor knows the names of all the Pharaohs—especially the female ones, who were few and far between—and hers is not a one he recognizes.

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Five Point Countdown Plan

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Next month will bring a new series of Doctor Who to our screens, but what are we supposed to do with ourselves during the five intervening Saturdays between now and then? Watching more Doctor Who always seems like a good plan, so I propose a five-week regimen of episodes from each of the extant eight series of modern/post-Hiatus Who to tide you over.

I’ve put together a curated list of episodes that I recommend for this exercise. When I outline the plan below, I’ll also explain why I’ve made these particular selections. As always, take my list with a grain of salt, as YMMV regarding what is representative of any given Doctor/Companion/series, and what is worth repeated viewings.

As I put together my list, I went through several iterations of how to structure the schedule, and eventually settled on two episodes per session: one story from each of the eight series (including a single two-parter) and a special. Some that I’ve chosen are longer than the standard 45-minute run time, but each weekly installment still clocks in at between an hour and a half and two hours.

So without further ado, I present to you my five-part plan for ramping back up to Series Nine.

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Confession #92: I Like Change

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Someone asked me recently whether or not I thought Jenna Coleman would stay through the end of Series Nine. The question surprised me, since I’m doing my damnedest to avoid any hints, clues, or photos-from-the-set that might tell me anything about upcoming episodes, but some of that is unavoidable (like the return of certain characters), and I hadn’t heard any rumors that suggested Clara might leave.

If recent years have taught us anything, it’s that keeping a secret from Doctor Who fans is nigh impossible these days. Whether it’s a BBC insider accidentally leaving a file server open to the public or someone inside the production team letting something slip at an inappropriate time or place, nothing big has managed to stay under wraps lately. I would thus be super surprised if we’re getting a Companion switch this series, as that’s the kind of news that even I wouldn’t be able to avoid.

Having said that, I think it would be cool to be proven wrong.

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Confession #91: I Believe in Canon

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I don’t understand other people’s brains.

For the most part, I think I do pretty well; after all, as a fiction writer I regularly practice putting myself in different characters’ headspaces, actively working to expand my empathy. But I’ll admit that I still fall prey to the human tendency to believe everyone else basically thinks like I do at the core, just with different likes, dislikes and preferences. Then every once in a while, I get a sharp reminder that it’s not true.

Take the case of the social media comment called to my attention this week. I won’t go into great detail, but the thrust of the point (aside from some juvenile name-calling and derailment) was that in this fan’s opinion, Capaldi wasn’t worthy of the mantle of Doctor, and therefore didn’t “count” in their mind.

Usually I’m glad to agree that there’s no such thing as canon in the Whoniverse. Even within the thirty-four televised seasons, there are so many self-contradictory ideas that each fan pretty much has to decide for themselves what they want to believe when an inconsistency crops up.

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Confession #90: I’ve Underrated Martha

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Martha Jones came on the scene at an awkward time—awkward for me, that is. The way I was introduced to the show, I had zero time to process the loss of my first Companion before another was thrust upon me, and I was not ready to move on. Sort of like the Doctor, then, I didn’t really give her a fair shake. She didn’t get the affection and respect from me that the character really deserved.

As I look back on her time in the TARDIS, though, I realize that I really have given Martha short shrift. Just by being there, by taking up space on screen and refusing to be shoved aside, she did more for representation of diversity than anyone else in the show’s history.

It’s not just her existence as a black Companion that makes her significant (and a better character than I’ve been able to internalize before); she has some brilliant moments that turn the old, comfortable “standard operating procedure” on its ear.

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