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Tag: Nu-Who

This Old House

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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?

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Solid Footing

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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.

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Something to Smile About

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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…

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Time And Relative Ease Of Entry

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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…)

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Just a Sprinkle of Humbug

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

Ah, the annual Christmas Special… That sixty-minute episode that tries to be all things to all people, but most especially to those who never watch Doctor Who except this once a year. No wonder Moffat chooses Christmas as the time to trot out his most gimmicky ideas.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2016 BBC

Having already exploited Santa Claus/Father Christmas two years ago (and included a nod to Sherlock Holmes (and thus his own work on Sherlock) in 2012), Moffat needed a new cultural icon to shoehorn into his annual holiday offering. Since there would undoubtedly be copyright issues with something like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, it seems he decided it was instead time to cash in on the recent resurgent popularity of superheroes—thus we end up with “Doctor Who Does Superman” this year.

Not that a fluffy superhero “romp” is entirely unsuited to the situation. The trope is easily relatable to a casual viewer, who thereby doesn’t have to know anything about the show at all to understand the premise of the episode. I’m not a huge fan of this type of genre crossover, but I thought the conceit by which young Grant gained his superpowers was sufficiently Doctor-y and believable in-universe. (“Take this,” the Doctor tells 8-year-old Grant, handing him a gemstone to hold with what, in retrospect, turns out to have been a particularly unfortunate choice of words.)

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A Song of Comfort

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

Christmas episodes are unusual creatures, trying to be all things to all viewers. There is the expectation that a large number of families, including those who don’t regularly watch the show, will be tuning in. Thus, the episode should be easy to follow for those with little or no knowledge of the characters and ongoing storyline(s), and fun and cheerful for those making it part of their holiday celebrations.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

At the same time, it has to be satisfying for those of us who follow the show regularly. If it’s a complete toss-off, the production team risks alienating its core audience, which is also bad. Thus a Christmas special is a weird hybrid (see what I did there?) of fluff and substance that can be very difficult to execute.

As one might expect, then, there were parts of The Husbands of River Song (THORS—Ha! What an acronym!) that made me really happy and others that made me cringe a little. It’s difficult even to generalize which was which. Most of the interpersonal bits were good, though some were not; most of the guest artist bits were pants, though some were not; most of the plot points were eyeroll-y, though some were not. You get the idea: par for the course.

On first viewing, though, I found the good bits outweighed the bad. Moffat’s dialog was mostly rich in quotable one-liners, with the occasional battle-of-the-sexes comments that he seems to think are funny (but as far as I’m concerned almost never are). I took the lighthearted feel of a “romp” at face value that first time through, too, which meant that the guest cast (Greg Davies as King Hydroflax, Matt Lucas as Nardole (whom I kept mentally calling Unstoffe at first), and Phillip Rhys as Ramone) were all played at a just-right-for-the-occasion “panto” level of off-the-wall.

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Series Nine Retrospective

All through Series Nine, it felt like we were missing key elements of the overall story and wouldn’t understand until it all wrapped up in the final episode. That often happens under Moffat’s leadership, but this year—to me, anyway—felt particularly arc-heavy. Now that we’ve got that broader perspective, I wanted to go back and look more carefully at how it might influence our reading of earlier episodes.

The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar

We began on Skaro, bringing Davros, Daleks, and Missy all back on board. As the opening gambit, the first two-parter of the series had to introduce all sorts of ideas without letting on how many of them would come back later. In some cases the recurring elements were glaringly obvious (e.g., the Hybrid); in others it was more subtle (the way the Doctor can come up with a way to “win” and make complex calculations in a tiny fraction of a second). In still others, we got the sense that something might come back, but didn’t get hammered over the head with it (the Confession Dial).

Already, too, we got the sense that Clara was nearly ready to fly solo. She’s truly “taken the stabilizers off her bike” and acts like a Doctor substitute at UNIT. Rather than the beginning, this is the middle of her arc. Though she will continue to get ever more reckless, she’s already short some reck here. Clara is more mature and self-sufficient even than last series, and the fact that her boyfriend is “still dead” (thanks for that, Missy) further reduces her need to give any fucks for her own safety.

Then there’s Missy. We’ve been trained by her previous incarnations to think she would show up again later in any series she crops up in once. Yet after this, she scarpers and only returns in passing mention as the perpetrator of the Doctor/Clara pairing in the first place. (It’s so very the Master/Missy’s style to try to bring about an apocalypse just to get the Doctor to be her bestie again.) I’m counting that as a pleasant trope subversion.

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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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Divine Execution

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

Heaven Sent is what, back in the day, my Star Trek: The Next Generation-watching friends and I would’ve called a Mind F*** Episode. You watch the whole thing thinking you understand the basic problem the crew (or, in this case, the Doctor) is facing until the very end, when one new piece of information changes how you look at everything else.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

It’s a tricky stunt to pull off, especially given the nearly completely solo acting required of Capaldi. In the entire piece, there were only three other characters; only one of those ever spoke, and that was a single line to which the Doctor made no verbal response. In the hands of a lesser actor, it could have been disastrous.

Instead, it was suspenseful and engaging. That first time through, as is often the case with a Moffat script, you can see there are big hints being dropped, but you can’t necessarily put together the puzzle (at least I couldn’t—YMMV). Once you know the scoop, though, every little detail takes on new meaning, both just when thinking back on it and upon repeated viewing.

However, I found I enjoyed this episode more than almost any Moffat-penned script since he took over as showrunner. Usually Moffat’s episodes start to unravel upon closer inspection. That’s not the case for me this time. Only one thing bothers me, and it’s something I can fan-theory away if I try. In my book, that makes this episode a huge win in the Moffat-as-writer category.

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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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