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The Empire on Mars

Review of Empress of Mars
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I heard a lot of positive chatter about The Empress of Mars online even before I had the chance to watch it myself. “Gatiss’s best episode ever!” “Another great episode—S10’s going to be hard to beat!” “The writing has been so good this year!” That always makes me nervous, because then there are certain expectations going in that can be difficult for an episode to live up to.

As someone who’s not a big fan of either Gatiss or the Ice Warriors, I didn’t have very high hopes to begin with. I was therefore not so much disappointed as resigned. The more I watched, though, the angrier I got.

Now I want to be clear that I don’t dislike either creatures or writer. I liked Cold War well enough, and I loved the Easter egg references to The Curse of Peladon here. But setting a story on Mars and then adding in some Victorian soldiers ended up muddying things so much that I was constantly cringing.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Doctor Who is the way that—when it’s at its best—it challenges us to stretch outside our usual point of view and consider other ways of looking at even mundane situations. That is, in fact, one of the things I like best about The Unquiet Dead. Unfortunately, although it’s clear Gatiss is trying to do more of that here, he falls horribly short.

In particular, I’m talking about how once the Empress has awoken and the stakes have ramped up, the Doctor tries to talk peace. “The last thing I’m going to do is takes sides,” he says, and then promptly proceeds to do so.

Even the Kitchen Sink

Review of The Lie of the Land
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

For an episode that wrapped up a three-part arc, The Lie of the Land was awfully short on denouement. In fact, the first time I watched I was shocked by the “resolution.” In barely longer than two minutes, the Monks bailed, we cut to the Doctor and Bill on campus cheerfully slipping in back into their tutor/student roles, then to a weeping Missy, and BAM!—it’s the “Next Time” trailer. My head spun.

It’s not just that it was quick, either. While my internal narrative timer was sent waaaay off kilter by the wrap-up pacing, I also got startled by its onset. I suppose we can put a tick in the positive column as I was clearly involved enough to have lost track of time, such that the conclusion seemed to arrive all of a sudden. However, the fact that I didn’t feel like I’d been led to a natural endpoint and was instead quite confused that there wasn’t any more to it doesn’t strike me as a win for either the writing or the execution.

In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the rushed ending really put me off an episode that already had me giving it a bit of side-eye. It’s kind of a shame, really, as there were some really nice elements, too—but they suffer by association.

As usual, I have nothing but praise for Pearl Mackie’s Bill. Her expressions and reactions to the various extremes of emotion throughout were perfection. My only complaint—which was actually a problem with the writing/editing rather than with either the actor or character—was that after threatening to “beat the sh—” out of Nardole, she let go of that well-deserved anger and sense of betrayal too readily.

The Story at the Beginning of the Arc

Review of The Pyramid at the End of the World
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I would be really interested in knowing how the writing work was split between Peter Harness and Stephen Moffat on The Pyramid at the End of the World (TPatEotW), because while it didn’t feel completely Moffat-y, there were some distinctly Moffat qualities to the episode. Specifically, on first viewing, we get to the end and feel like we’ve been on a heckuva ride, but it’s not until we step back and reflect that we realize there were things that didn’t make sense along the way.

This is one of the features of Moffat’s writing that has consistently frustrated me. It’s wonderful on an immediate, gut level; the audience is easily swept up in the breadth of emotion as the story barrels along. Yet it is only that rapid-fire inevitability of plot development that keeps us from saying, “Hang on—that makes no sense.” We have no time to process the bits that don’t quite jibe, and thus they get swept away in the current of the story and we forget about them until we have clambered back out of the river and notice them swirling in an eddy downstream. Then they keep bobbing around, catching our eyes in a way we simply can’t ignore them any longer.

There were two issues that I specifically felt detracted from the episode in that I-can-ignore-the-niggling-feeling-until-after-the-fact manner. The first was the safety protocols at Agrofuel Research Operations. While I loved watching events at the lab unfold, knowing as I watched that they were what was going to “end” the world (even if I didn’t know for much of the episode precisely how), there were also several moments that left me shaking my head in disbelief.

In Veritas, Cavum

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

When Extremis came on my screen, I had no way to know what kind of a roller coaster ride I was in for—though probably not in the way you would assume upon reading that sentence.

Both on the micro and macro scales, my experience of the episode was full of shifting reactions. Outside of the content, I came in with a high level of excitement because for the first time ever, I was watching new Doctor Who fresh out of the box *with my daughters*.

It’s only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve convinced them to give the show a try. They’ve seen it on the screen as I watched, alone or with the Ladies, in years past, but with the exception of a few minutes of (I believe) a Tom Baker serial, neither of them has ever sat down to watch with me. It had been summarily dismissed as “too scary.”

Given that a number of years has passed since then, and that they have both read and watched plenty of scary content in the meantime, they finally agreed to give it a go with me. After The Pilot, they were champing at the proverbial bit for more. (We’ve also watched some of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and there are summer plans for further consumption of both pre- and post-Hiatus episodes.) So when they’d caught up and had the chance to watch the story unfold in “real time” with me, all three of us were excited.

By the time the episode ended, though, we all sat on the couch bemused.

Zombies on a Spaceship

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

You can’t get much better for an American fan of my ilk than starting a Doctor Who episode with Star Trek‘s opening words. Unless, of course, you follow up with a clarification that space is “final” because it wants to kill us.

Oxygen combines some classic body horror with a commentary on the dangers of capitalism in an episode that looks like its sole story note from Moffat was “zombies in space,” much like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship or Mummy on the Orient Express. Despite that dubious origin, in writer Jamie Mathieson’s capable hands, we end up with a relatively strong story.

Among the facets that made this episode notable is the first full inclusion of Nardole as part of the TARDIS team. I’ve previously been less than complimentary to the Doctor’s latest robot Companion (see also: K-9, Kamelion), but taking a reader’s comments to heart, I’ve tried to set aside my pre-conceived notions about him (something in Husbands really set my teeth on edge) and look at him afresh. Judging purely on his appearances in Series Ten, then, I have to say I almost like him.

As a matter of fact, seeing Nardole in action for real—and most especially at the end of the episode when he confronts the Doctor with some actual fire in him—I’ve come around to what might even be considered fondness for the character. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that he got to be the bearer of an Easter egg for fans of the pre-Hiatus era or that he got to deliver the “as you know, Bob” dialog explaining to the audience why our heroes couldn’t reach the TARDIS anymore.

This Old House

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

One of the hallmarks of the Moffat era is Companions who (try to) live their own lives outside the TARDIS, traveling with the Doctor at their pleasure. Having fully engaged in travel through time and space, Bill is now attempting to slip back into a sense of normalcy at home. Needless to say, she gets no relief from her new life, and nor do her five new roommates.

To be fair, they’re not exactly careful about what they’re getting into, so desperate are they for an affordable place to live. Even Bill only briefly questions the low price of the expansive building that almost literally finds them rather than the other way around. Still, it’s something of a harsh lesson for Bill that there really is no “part of [her] life [the Doctor’s] not in.”

And while it’s clear that the Doctor has mellowed since this regeneration began, and he “gets” humans much more readily than he did during his time with Clara, he still has serious trouble respecting others’ boundaries. Sometimes it’s merely idiosyncratic (like inviting himself to share the housemates’ Chinese food), but at other times he still really oversteps (as with his co-option of Bill’s phone to share her Spotify playlist with everyone without asking).

It is, however, early days yet for them, and Bill is still learning about the Doctor. He tells her his species is called the Time Lords, and drops the word “regenerated” with an expression (hidden from her) that makes me wonder what’s going through his mind. Does he sense he is nearing the end of this incarnation, or is there something else troubling him?

Solid Footing

Review of Thin Ice
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

While Bill thinks she may be “low-key in love with [the TARDIS]” (which I thought was both a beautifully subtle nod to Bill’s sexual orientation and a lovely statement of sentiment), I’m definitely low-key in love with writer Sarah Dollard’s work.

Dollard, who penned last series’s Face the Raven, hit another one out of the park with Thin Ice, keeping Series Ten on solid footing. Bill is fast becoming my favorite post-Hiatus Companion, and the developments in her relationship with the Doctor under Dollard’s guidance are my favorite yet.

Following the Series One formula of modern-day introduction followed by a future adventure and then a past one, the Doctor (or, more accurately, the TARDIS) takes Bill to Regency-era London. I knew I’d love this episode the instant I saw Bill’s initial reaction to the time: reminding the Doctor that as a person with melanin-rich skin, she’s likely to have a different experience out there than he is. Better yet, Twelve actually considers her words before acknowledging the (general) danger and sending her off to choose a frock (in stark contrast to Ten’s complete dismissal of Martha’s similar anxiety at the beginning of The Shakespeare Code).

Throughout the episode, the chemistry between these two continued to fill me with joy. (I’m so crushed at the thought that we’ll have no more of Capaldi after this series, and likely no more of Mackie, either—which is nigh criminal, as she’s so bloody brilliant.) The Doctor yanks Bill’s chain at least twice about her interaction with time travel—the imaginary disappearance of “Pete” and seeing the lights under the ice—and proves himself both particularly admirable and particularly problematic in her eyes.

Something to Smile About

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

[Note: It should be “Something to smiley About,” but my site doesn’t cope well with emoji. Clearly.]

For Bill’s first “proper” trip in the TARDIS, she chooses to go to the future, “to see if it’s happy.” I would have chosen similarly myself (though my reasoning would’ve been more along the lines of, “to see how long it takes for things to become relatively ‘happy’ again”), and it’s always a pleasure to see another writer’s vision of how human history will progress.

This is one of those visions in which the future is smooth and shiny, things neatly ordered and designed to be aesthetically pleasing. Of course, even when everything is shiny on the surface (as it certainly is in “one of Earth’s [carefully unnamed] first colonies”), nothing is ever completely happy. Similarly, although there is plenty to love about Smile, there are a few problems, too.

At first glance, the episode is full of lovely things. There’s Bill’s refreshing perspective, seeing the Doctor and his way of life through unjaundiced eyes. There’s the Doctor being a bit on the naughty side, shirking a duty of unknown-to-us magnitude. There’s the perfect amount of Nardole (read: hardly any). There’s Bill’s glorious joy in all the weird (“You’re an awesome tutor”). There’s the fact that the advance team appears to have been primarily (if not exclusively) of Asian Indian descent (we don’t see our first white-person-who-isn’t-the-Doctor until more than 2/3 of the way through the episode). There’s Bill calling out the possibility of “food sexism” still existing (“Is this bloke utopia?”), and then immediately wondering—upon learning the Doctor has two hearts (why would they read him as two people but put both portions on one plate?)—if he has really high blood pressure. Then there’s Bill. And more Bill…

Time And Relative Ease Of Entry

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

The opening episode of Series Ten is aptly named. The Pilot nominally takes its name from the role a particular character plays, but it could just as easily refer to the introductory nature of the episode. It is, in effect, a “pilot episode” for a new era (the Twelve/Bill era) of the show.

As such, The Pilot is designed as one of those ideal “jumping on” points. While I firmly believe (as I’ve stated on panels at conventions before) that a good place to start watching Doctor Who is “whichever episode you happen to see,” there are a few spots in the show that are designed as easy entry points for new viewers. This is certainly one of them, and I find that to be a feature rather than a flaw.

In particular, I’ve already seen a few complaints that the episode was boring or simplistic—not at all the whizz-bang kind of opener (or closer) we’re used to seeing, especially from Moffat. Terms like “character heavy” appear in these comments as if it were a Bad Thing™ to have stories driven by who people are instead of by what happens to or because of them. I couldn’t disagree more with those assessments. Writers know that readers/viewers will follow characters they care about (even if they’re antagonists or anti-heroes, as long as we are engaged with them) through hell and back because we want to know what happens to them. All sorts of goofy shit can go on in a plot (even if it makes little/imperfect sense) and retain the audience, as long as the audience cares. (I believe this phenomenon explains both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Moffat era…)

Stomachturn

Review of Mindwarp (#143b)
DVD Release Date: 10 Oct 08
Original Air Date: 04 – 25 Oct 1986
Doctor/Companion: Six, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown
Stars: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: The Mysterious Planet (Six, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Terror of the Vervoids (Six, Mel)

I will admit, dear readers, that I cringed at the thought of needing to rewatch Mindwarp for this review. Parts Five through Eight of The Trial of a Time Lord (TToaTL) have always ranked high in my personal list of regrettable Doctor Who stories, and I’m afraid nothing changed this time around.

There are a few things that stand out in my memory about Mindwarp, no matter how long it’s been since my last viewing: the way Peri gets so thoroughly screwed over; Brian Blessed’s sheer, scenery-chewing volume; and the return of Sil, perhaps my most hated antagonist ever. None of these key traits serve to recommend the adventure, nor are they improved on repeated viewing.

While I’ve never particularly cared for Peri, no one deserves the shitty treatment—especially in a farewell appearance—that she gets here*. Even before the Doctor goes off the deep end (and he does, though neither we nor the Doctor himself, as evidenced by his reactions back in the courtroom on Gallifrey, really know why), he is truly horrible to his Companion. The prime example ties into another of my dislikes about Mindwarp: Sil.

Given the way Sil made my skin crawl (and not in a “love to hate” way) in his first appearance, I—like poor Peri—have no desire to be anywhere near him, even narratively. When she discovers Sil is on Thoros Beta with them, and that it is in fact his home planet (a detail the Doctor neglected to mention), she tells the Doctor outright that she wants to leave. Sil tortured her the last time they met, and she has been understandably traumatized by the experience.