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Tag: Clara

Confession #132: I Don’t Think Capaldi’s Series Are Bad

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As part of a conversation with some friends online the other day, someone mentioned the upcoming series (only three more weeks to wait!) and that they needed to catch up on last series before the new one began. Then the conversation turned to Capaldi and his episodes.

Now regular readers will probably know that I adore Capaldi’s Doctor. So when folks wished for a list of the standalone Capaldi episodes worth watching, I was filled with excitement. Who better than me, I wondered, to provide such a list? But at the same time, it made me sad to think that so many people think his series aren’t worth watching. Sure, every Doctor has to slog through some stinkers, but I just don’t get why so many people think these episodes are that much worse than those of other Doctors.

The biggest issue, of course, is Moffat’s problematic showrunning. Some of Moffat’s ideas (like how his Companions kept being puzzles rather than people) really made my skin crawl. But by that same metric, Matt Smith’s Doctor shouldn’t be considered worth watching. I think the important thing to remember is that every era, every Doctor, has suffered from bad writing—some more so than others, I’ll admit—and that all judgements about quality are down to personal preferences.

That being said, I have compiled my own list of a few episodes from each of Capaldi’s three seasons that I think are worth a watch. I’ve included some notes on each one to give an idea of what it’s about and provide my own heads-up about the biggest pros and cons I remember. (If I’ve missed something major, please leave a comment so I can make the change. It has been a while since I’ve watched any of these…)

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Waiting to Exhale

Deep Breath (Series Eight, Ep. 1; 2014)
Viewed 25 Apr 2018

Doctor/Companion: Twelve, Clara Oswald
Stars: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman
Preceding Story: The Time of the Doctor (Eleven, Clara)
Succeeding Story: Into the Dalek (Twelve, Clara)

The end of the school year and start of our summer break has taken us down several different binge-watching paths. As I mentioned last time, for a while it was the MCU. More recently it’s been other programs. And I’ll be honest—with “Kill the Moon” next up in our Who marathon, I’ve not pushed them too hard to get back to it.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Before everything went sideways, though, I did manage to get them through the early part of Series Eight. New regenerations always make for interesting viewing, so I thought I’d record their reactions to this “new” Doctor to share here.

Of course he wasn’t new to them, which makes this an odd sort of not-quite-full-circle episode. The Twelve my girls know is actually rather different than the Twelve that first appeared on screen. Not only is his hair far too short here (I love that you can gauge where both Three and Twelve are in their regeneration based on how bouffant their hair is), but he’s still über antisocial (“I don’t think that I’m a hugging person now”). That persona put off a lot of fans at the time, and some of them never warmed to Twelve.

However, I’ve always held that early Twelve is a big hedgehog (prickly on the outside, but soft and tender on the inside). Perhaps having known his later, mellower self made it easier for my girls to agree with my assessment—or devise their own—and accept this awkward, uncomfortable goober as the Doctor. Whatever the case, they took him in stride and most of their comments and reactions were aimed at other characters.

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Nu-View #23: Time Marches On

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The Time of the Doctor (Christmas Special; 2013)
Viewed 24 Apr 2018

Doctor/Companion: Eleven, Clara Oswald
Stars: Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman
Preceding Story: The Day of the Doctor (Eleven, Ten, War, Clara, Kate Stewart)
Succeeding Story: Deep Breath (Twelve, Clara)

I don’t know what others’ families are like, but in ours obsessions come and go in waves. We’ll get all excited about something and dive in head-first, only to get derailed somewhere along the way for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s a scheduling issue that throws us off our groove, or sometimes something else piques our interest and supersedes the current passion-of-the-moment.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

Such is the way of the girls’ run through modern Doctor Who. Once we got on a roll, we were powering through episodes at an incredible rate. With only twenty-one left to get them up-to-date on the entirety of the modern era, we hit one of those bumps in the road. It’s now been more than a month since we last watched Who, having for the time being move on to the MCU.

All this is by way of explanation that my recollections of the girls reactions to this (and the following) episode have already been blurred by time. I have my notes, but they’re spare, and lack of temporal proximity makes them more difficult than usual to interpret. Besides, the girls did more watching than openly reacting. But there are a few key moments in the Eleventh Doctor’s last story that made an impression on them, and therefore on me.

Moffat threw everything but the kitchen sink at us here. There are Daleks, Cybermen, Silence, and the Crack. In fact, there appears to be a message coming through the Crack that no one can interpret. But the Doctor conveniently has something that can help his new “friend” Handles the Cyber-head decode that message: the Seal of the High Council of Gallifrey. “Nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone,” he explains, and the girls bark a laugh. We’ve only recently watched The Five Doctors, and they understand the reference perfectly.

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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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

Moffat couldn’t kill a character to save his own goddamn life.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

He likes to pretend he’s ruthless. He tugs heartstrings with near misses and kills off minor or supporting characters, but when it comes down to it, he’s simply unable to commit, even when the narrative demands it.

I had to wonder whether he was trolling himself or just trying to cut off naysayers at the pass when he wrote Ashildr’s words pointing out the way that the Doctor’s actions earlier in the episode had completely undermined the emotional impact of the previous two episodes. “She died for who she was and for who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad. And it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was.” And yet that’s exactly what Moffat does.

It has become something of an in-joke in fandom that you don’t have to worry when a character seems to die, because they’ll just come back at some point (I still haven’t ruled out a Danny Pink return). I don’t think anyone was completely destroyed by Clara’s death in Face the Raven because (a) we’ve become inured to Companion death (hers, even! Versions of her have already died in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen!) and (b) we were all waiting for the end of the series for exactly this reason. There’s no “just this once” to Moffat’s “everybody lives!“

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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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It’s a Big Plot Point’s Life

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

Nominally, The Woman Who Lived was the second half of a two-parter that began with The Girl Who Died. In practice, it’s a brand new story featuring the return of a previously seen character, like Craig in Closing Time, the Meddling Monk in The Daleks’ Master Plan, or the Master in anything after Terror of the Autons.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

There was even a completely different writer for this episode than the previous one; last week’s episode was co-written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat, while this was written by Catherine Tregenna (halle-effin-lujah, finally a woman!). It’s hardly surprising, then, that it had a completely different character and feel than its predecessor.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. For me, though, the trappings of the mid-seventeenth century, the highwayman known as the Knightmare, and the fine lady in cahoots with Leandro of Delta Leonis (whom I was very disappointed to learn wasn’t actually a Tharil after all) were of little interest. They were merely the setting in which the real story took place.

Said real story, as I see it, is twofold. First, there is the fact of don’t-call-me-Ashildr’s effective immortality, stuck on “the slow path,” as Reinette put it in The Girl in the Fireplace. This exploration of what it would mean to live for centuries, outliving everyone you got to know along the way—and not being able to fly off in a blue box after—is the human side of the equation, though a modified one. We are not meant to live so long, certainly not alone. The way Ashildr’s perspective has changed, and her attitude toward the lives of others with it, is testament to the psychological effects of that isolation.

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Not Dead Yet

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

One of the advantages of avoiding as much information about upcoming episodes as possible is going in without any particular expectations. All I had this week was the trailer, the title, and knowledge of the big name guest star (which was neutral information, since I don’t watch Game of Thrones). I had no pre-conceived notions about The Girl Who Died, and figured we’d be getting an okay-but-not-fabulous story. I was, thus, not disappointed.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

Conversely, I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. It was, to my mind, merely average. Given how much I (a) love Capaldi and (b) disliked certain episodes in the last series, though, fair-to-middlin’ is still perfectly acceptable. As long as Capaldi’s on screen, it can’t be all bad.

As far as I can tell, though, the main point of this episode was to introduce Ashildr, the eponymous character. Unless there’s actually something subtle going on, rather than the anvil-to-the-head clues dropped here, we’ve just seen the seeds of a major piece of the series arc.

Back when Davros was crowing over the supposed success of his latest mad scheme, he justified it by claiming he was fulfilling a Gallifreyan prophecy. “It spoke of a hybrid creature,” he cackled. “Two great warrior races forced together to create a warrior greater than either.” Now we’re meant to see how that prophecy really gets fulfilled. Take the Mire, “one of the deadliest warrior races in the entire galaxy,” add their technology to a Viking, and voilà! Hybrid ahoy! The Doctor even says so, just in case we’re not clever enough to get it ourselves.

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