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Tag: Twelve

In Veritas, Cavum

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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.

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Zombies on a Spaceship

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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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

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.

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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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Confession #109: I’m Bummed Capaldi’s Leaving

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About a week ago, the news officially broke that Series Ten will be Peter Capaldi’s last as the Doctor. Although I’m terribly disappointed, I cannot honestly say that the news surprises me. After all, three seasons is pretty much the standard tenure for a Doctor, and there will often be a casting change with the changing of the production team guard.

While I have enjoyed the vast majority of Capaldi’s adventures—almost entirely due to the man himself, in some cases—I must also admit that there were scripts that left him high and dry. I suspect much of what I didn’t care for boiled down to having Moffat’s hand on the tiller (except for that one episode that was just plain dreadful IMO—now let us never speak of it again). After all, the things that troubled me most about Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor were certain characterizations from Moffat’s pen; I’d really hoped that Capaldi would escape his influence for at least a single series. Alas.

In contrast, some will be happy to see him go. Many of the objections to Capaldi’s Doctor that I’ve seen over the last couple of years have centered on his prickly personality. I suppose I can see why some fans would find that archetype alienating. Perhaps that reaction to Capaldi is as natural for those who most adored Smith’s Eleventh Doctor as the immediate, opposing reaction was for me. As my fandom was formed upon the fairly dour Ninth Doctor, I have found a somewhat more staid (though never completely sane) incarnation comfortable and refreshing.

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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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