The Girl Who Died

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.