The Girl Who Died was the sort of Doctor Who story I like. We were presented with a series of scenes in which the Doctor and Clara were introduced to a world and got some amusing lines to deliver, things got fleshed out, and there was a closing sequence that made sense both on the episode's own terms and in terms of the mechanics of the show at large. When done right that's always a great approach for Doctor Who (though obviously it can work with any companion and not Clara specifically).
It was the series of twists towards the start that really
stood out to me. The Doctor pretended to be Odin. A nice little thing in itself
because it's the sort of thing many other incarnations of the character may
have tried. Then a giant faced appeared in the clouds and claimed to be the real Odin. An amusing, well-placed
conceit within the episode which instantly raised questions for the audience. From
there the fittest, strongest people in the village (including Clara and Ashildr,
played by biggest name guest actor Maisie Williams, because of course) were
beamed onto a space ship by some giant alien robots and slaughtered for
boring-but-sensible-within-the-confines-of-the-show reasons. Clara and Ashildr
escaped because they were always going to and then the second phase of the
episode began: the Doctor helping the remaining villagers to prepare for a
battle Clara had stupidly (but handily for a TV show that has to feature
#conflict) provoked the alien into a battle.
After that it settled down into a well written episode .
We got some scenes that were determined to make us care about the guest cast
and for the most part they did. Far more impressive was the material given to
Capaldi. He got to play everything from courage to angst and was given
excellent dialogue to do so, a refreshing change from the by-the-numbers
material he's mostly gotten in the part (I think I remember this being a
strength in last year's Flatline, also by Jamie Mathieson). Clara being split
off for the brief sojourn to the ship made sense too, and gave her something to
do after weeks of her being sidelined.
It was also nice to see the design work back on track
after a severe wobble with the Fisher King in Before the Flood. Fake Odin was
pretty much written and performed as a generic baddie but he was made to look
enough like a futuristic Viking that it didn't matter. He looked like what he
was meant to be, an alien (or possibly an alien AI, I didn't follow that bit
closely enough) trying to pass themselves (or itself) off as a god using a
basic understanding of human mythology. I wouldn't be surprised to find out
that someone took inspiration from Lost Vikings 2 for that (and I'd be more
surprised still if more than one person reading this understood that reference
without the assistance of Google). The robot henchmen were better still. They
were big and bulky and intimidating with rivets and bolts that you don't see in
Doctor Who designs often. They looked convincingly alien and warrant a return.
I could have done without the removal of their headpieces to reveal squealing
flesh heads though. They were more appealing when they appeared to be some sort
of enchanted clay-metal robot warriors.
In fact the episode's only weakness was something that
was likely intended to be one of its highlights. The topic of where the
Doctor's face came from was tackled more substantially than it has been since
Capaldi's debut episode Deep Breath. This is something aimed at people like me,
people who know and rewatch and study the show. But I didn't care. I didn't
care because it's been handled poorly within the show. I could have been
convinced that it mattered pretty easily. It is, after all, famously a theory
that Russell T Davies cooked up as his own private fan theory then passed on to
Moffat, who decided it was so good he'd include it in the show. That's my kind
of thing! But it was so bland, not to mention wholly unnecessary, that I couldn't
bring myself care. The Doctor chose the face of Caecilius, the man he saved
from a burning Pompeii, to remind himself that he saves people. So what?
It raises more questions than it answers. How did he do
this when he's seemingly had no control over his appearance before? How does
John Frobisher, also played by Capaldi, factor into this? Why didn't the Doctor
do it when he changed from the Tenth Doctor, who saved Caecilius, into the
Eleventh? If the Eleventh chose the face to remind himself that he's a good man
who saves people because he'd just run into the War Doctor and been reminded of
some apparently horrible things he did and was having a crisis of confidence or
something then why didn't he make a more
recent or relevant selection? Does Moffat really expect anyone who's not
invested in this show more than the average viewer to understand the sudden
appearance of David Tennant and Catherine Tate in scenes from an episode that
first aired seven years ago? Maybe there's more to come on this. If so, good.
Right now it looks like another example of Moffat building something up in
interviews that turns out to be wholly underwhelming once it appears in the
show.
After the predictable struggle against the bad guy worked
out in favour of the overmatched villagers (funny that) we got the episode's
final twist, the Doctor saving Ashildr with technomagic and making her
immortal. This was a nice final flourish and kept the revelation of how two
episodes (this and next week's The Woman Who Lived) written by two different
people and not appearing to be a two part tale fit together.
This was easily the best episode since The Magician's
Apprentice and possibly the best of the series so far (I'd need rewatches to
decide for sure). It featured enough surprises, dealt out its revelations well,
and contained enough strong design work that it was a joy to watch. If this was
the average level of quality I think the show would be all the better for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment