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Tag: Clara

Flood of Expectations

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

I don’t think I like it when the Doctor breaks the fourth wall.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

Perhaps that’s what got me off on the wrong foot such that I didn’t enjoy this episode as much as I’d hoped. It was better for me the second time through (as is often the case when I don’t immediately take to an episode), but after the strength of my positive reaction to the first half of the story, I guess I was just underwhelmed.

The fact that the tone of the second half of the story was—save for the scene when Moran was after Cass (brilliantly executed, by the way)—was completely different from that of the first certainly didn’t help in terms of expectations. Even knowing going in, though, that it would not—could not—be another Base Under Siege episode, I just couldn’t get a grip on this one at first.

By my second viewing, I approached it with a sense of reservation. With this dampened enthusiasm, I was able to see Before the Flood more favorably. Although the question of how the Doctor will cheat death and save Clara is clearly the main focus of the storyline, I found the “B story” centered on O’Donnell and Bennett more engaging. (Maybe once I knew the “trick” it wasn’t as fun watching the illusionist’s act?)

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Base Under Water

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

Sometimes there’s a really good reason that something becomes a trope. Take, for example, Doctor Who‘s well-known “base under siege” story archetype (seen most commonly in the Troughton era). While its frequent use tends to make certain elements easy for the audience to predict (unless actively subverted), the inherent tension of a situation in which a pre-determined, non-expandable set of individuals have to defend themselves against an unknown, mysterious, or seemingly unbeatable enemy can make for a gripping narrative.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

Such is the case with Under the Lake. Writer Toby Whithouse (whose previous Who credits include School Reunion and three other episodes) uses the tried-and-true setup to great effect, keeping the crew both separated from outside help and in valid fear for their lives.

Upon first watch, I was so taken with the story, in fact, that I couldn’t think of anything I didn’t like about it. Further thought and a second viewing highlighted a few, but none were enough to dampen my general delight. I can’t even express how refreshing it is to feel so unreservedly pleased with an episode.

The first of the relatively small down sides happened even before the opening credits rolled. While the Drum’s crew was relatively diverse (two white women, three men of color, and one white man (who isn’t technically even part of the crew)), it was still the black guy who was first to die. As a white woman myself, it took me a while to realize that sad truth, and I can’t decide how much it ought to bother me.

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Something Familiar

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

Well, it wasn’t godawful.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

In fact, it may well be the best second half of a Moffat two-parter I’ve yet seen (though the bar isn’t set very high, in my opinion). That’s not to say it was anywhere near flawless, but I did find plenty to enjoy.

The episode begins by resolving the we-didn’t-believe-it-anyway deaths of Missy and Clara and giving an actual explanation for the method of their escape (and Missy’s in Death in Heaven). It struck me as odd that Missy would need Clara to suss out why the Doctor always survives. Does Missy already know the answer or not? If she does, why walk Clara through it just to ask the follow-up question (“What happens if the Doctor assumes he’s going to die?”)? The only reason to do so is to bring the audience along (which is not good storytelling).

If Missy doesn’t know why the Doctor survives, then she was dead wrong when she told Clara “you’re the dog” in the relationship. Despite knowing him for millennia, Missy still needs a human who’s only traveled with him recently, on and off for a couple of years, to figure out the Doctor for her? Neither of those interpretations makes much sense, and the scene thus left me vaguely dissatisfied.

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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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Can Every Christmas Be “Last Christmas”?

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

Santa Claus has absolutely no place in Doctor Who. Except when he does.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

I will freely admit that I was among those fans who cringed and gnashed teeth when Santa showed up in the TARDIS at the end of Death in Heaven. The whole idea that this mythical (if well-beloved) person should exist as an entity as real as the Doctor himself within the Whoniverse just gave me hives.

The comedy-rich pre-credits sequence was, thus, painful to watch (though I do love to see Dan Starkey wearing his own face for a change). And on first viewing, Clara’s declaration that she does indeed believe in Santa Claus just adds the cherry to the top of the whole saccharine mess.

After one knows how it all pans out, though… Well, it all fits together nicely.

Note, for starters, that the Doctor never gives Clara an answer when she asks with breathless wonder if being back in the TARDIS with him is real. Combine that with his face-off with Santa before joining her there (“I know what this is. I know what’s happening. And I know what’s at stake.”), and I think it’s hard to argue that he’s not completely aware for the entire episode that they’re all dreaming.

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Fandom in Purgatory

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

I’m always wary going into a Moffat finale. His tendency toward emotional manipulation and complex story arcs concluded without full closure generally grate on me. Death in Heaven delivered as expected, with plot holes and saccharine scenes galore, and though it had enough enjoyable content to keep me from hating it entirely, I’m not in a rush to watch it again.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

Having resolved one of the major questions of the series at the end of last week’s episode (“who is Missy?”), the story’s focus shifted to ferreting out her Master plan (sorry; couldn’t help myself). I have to admit, it turns out less rubbish than her track record would suggest, but I have problems with the whole “Cyber-pollen” thing on several levels.

To begin, since when has “every tiny particle of a Cyberman contain[ed] the plans to make another Cyberman”? (I believe, Mr. Moffat, you’re thinking of Borg nanoprobes…) Now granted, the idea that they can now assimilate convert dead bodies into new Cybermen is super creepy—kudos on that one—but I’m still scratching my head over some of the logistics.

I mean, we’re told every dead person around the world is undergoing Cyber-conversion, but we’ve also heard that cremation is “pretty much the default these days,” at least in the UK. [Content advisory: if you found Cyber-conversion of the dead personally troubling for any reason, you may want to skip the next four paragraphs.] At what point is there not enough identifiably once-sentient organic matter left? If, for example, someone was cremated and then their ashes scattered, would the Cyberpollen still activate any of that material? Would each speck become another Cyberman, or would the pollen somehow “know” only to activate a single Cyberman per former individual?

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Masterpiece

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

I’ll say this much for Dark Water: it’s certainly getting a reaction from fandom.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

Although the story itself had a fair number of twists, I think it’s fair to say that the main thrust of the first part of the Series Eight finale was giving the audience an answer to the most obvious question posed by the series arc: who is Missy?

In addition to the boring way Missy conforms to Moffat’s archetype of one-note “bad gals,” her character has not interested me until now. I’ve become so jaded by Moffat’s convoluted (and often unsatisfactorily resolved) plot arcs, that I’ve stopped even trying to figure out what he’s up to. Missy’s identity was the only puzzle I felt up to taking a stab at, and I have to say I’m pleased that what seemed to me the most likely possibility turned out to be it.

But that reveal… Well, I’ll get to the reveal later. Let’s back up and look at the storyline.

Given the melodramatic feel of the first ten minutes, I can’t help but wonder if poor Danny was added to the cast this year just to provide the setup for this episode. I suppose I should’ve seen it coming, what with all the deaths leading to Missy’s realm all series. Regardless, I have no expectation that he’ll remain completely and irretrievably deceased, given Moffat’s inability to kill anyone, or let anyone suffer real, character-developing consequences.

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Tyger Tyger, Fizzling Out

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Review of In the Forest of the Night
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Based on comments I’ve seen around the Internet and results of this week’s reader poll, In the Forest of the Night is the most universally reviled episode of Series Eight. I’d be lying if I said I thoroughly enjoyed it, but—though I can see a few similarities—I don’t think it comes anywhere close to earning the “Fear Her 2” label some have given it.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

Perhaps it’s the heavy reliance on a fairy tale aesthetic that got in folks’ craws here. While it was well publicized that Moffat’s entire take on the Matt Smith era was based in the idea of Doctor Who as fairy tale, Series Eight has taken a sharp turn away from that conceit (much to its benefit, in my opinion). So a story that doesn’t just hint at the fairy tale style (even so blatantly as A Christmas Carol‘s “Peter Pan” theme or The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe‘s riff on the C.S. Lewis classic did) but outright states the connection to one (“Hansel & Gretel”) and makes only vaguely veiled reference to others (“Sleeping Beauty” and “Red Riding Hood”) may be putting fans of the more recent style of storytelling off their feed.

There’s also a similar problem with the plotting here as in Kill the Moon. Taking liberties with what we know of science is part and parcel of science fiction writing, but when things are set here on Earth, basic laws of physics still need to apply (or have a damn good explanation for why they are plausibly different from our daily experience), or the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief will be broken. A few weeks ago, it was gravity and mass conservation. This time, it’s the overnight appearance (and subsequent disappearance) of billions upon billions of trees across the entire planet (including areas that can’t support such life, like, err… the oceans).

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Lie to Me

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

Long since having tired of Moffat’s “the Companion is the main character” mantra, I was doubly irritated that Clara got to “be the Doctor” in Flatline. But when I started deconstructing the episode a little, I decided there was enough going on beneath the action that my irritation soon turned to fascination.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

Flatline has turned into a very think-y episode for me. So much of the character development is intertwined. Right off the bat, we get clues to resolve the question at the end of last week’s episode about whether Clara’s change of heart about traveling in the TARDIS really did have Danny’s support (spoiler: nope).

The Doctor learns the truth of the matter by the end, and we can see threads of lies and identity woven all through this story. Clara lies to the Doctor. Clara lies to Danny. Clara “becomes” the Doctor. Clara lies to the people she’s with to emulate the Doctor. Clara gets “welcome[d] to [the Doctor’s] world” when she takes responsibility for solving the problem and trying to keep the bystanders alive.

The Doctor watches Clara play his role. The Doctor hears what he sounds like from the outside. The Doctor recognizes that what Clara did to save the day—the same things he would have done had he been able—had nothing to do with goodness.

Is the Doctor a good man?

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Back on Track

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Review of Mummy on the Orient Express
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I feel like I ought to be head-over-heels about this episode, yet I’m not. And I can’t quite put my finger on why.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

It was extremely atmospheric; both sets and costumes were phenomenal. It had an excellent monster; the mummy was hair-raisingly creepy, and made enough sense to remain satisfying once unveiled. The effects were good, the acting was (as always) good, the soundtrack was very good… So why aren’t I simply giddy?

I think it’s the continuing soap opera.

Although it sets the stage and introduces the mystery of the Foretold, the first ten minutes of the episode is spent on showing how the Doctor’s relationship with Clara is suffering. They’re out for their “last hurrah”—Clara’s version of pity sex, in effect. “I was saying goodbye,” she tells Maisie. “You can’t end on a slammed door.” (Of course, if one feels that way, it’s not really over.)

I find it really interesting that the production team did everything in their power to make it seem like Clara had really cut her ties with the Doctor, and that he was on his own in this adventure until the opening scene. Check out the official site’s page for this episode or the Radio Times poster. Neither one has Jenna Coleman listed as part of the cast. Clara isn’t in any of the clips in the episode trailer. Why were they so dead set on keeping her appearance a secret (it seems to be about the only thing that hasn’t leaked—maybe because no one cared)? It’s not like anyone believed she was gone for good.

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