Heaven Sent

The most obvious thing to note about Heaven Sent is that it's the first time ever the lead actor has had the entire show to themselves (minus a brief appearance from Jenna Coleman and a child actor at the end). It's the sort of thing that can be done every so often, a tweak to the format to keep things interesting. It doesn't hurt to alter the audience's expectations either¹.

It worked largely because of Peter Capaldi. Chris Eccleston could have done this but there was no way the programme could have been so experimental in its first series. David Tennant could have done this too, although his Doctor was written more to bounce off of other people and to enjoy showing off. And even his time on the show may have felt a little early to try it. Matt Smith could not have handled this, which makes me think that Moffat's had this story in his head for a while but waited until he had a lead actor who could do it justice². I'm finding myself thinking that more the more I watch Capaldi and see the things he's given to do.

The episode ended up as a fifty-five minute example of why Peter Capaldi was cast as the Twelfth Doctor. He showed his impressive range. He showed his instinct for making interesting choices for how to play things. He showed his expressive body language and facial movements. Whether he was stepping out of the teleporter at the start (and the end) of the episode and placing his feet to suggest frailty and innocence or giving a knowing glance to the camera as he delivered the line "I'm nothing without an audience" he was pitching things perfectly. He gave a performance that was so nuanced and focused that he pretty much made it so that he has to be considered the best actor to have taken the lead role of New Who. Because nobody else has had the chance to show their ability in this way before.

Steven Moffat deserves credit too. Because he provided Capaldi with a script that let him be intelligent, funny, scared, angry and a bunch of other things. He also gave us his best new monster for a while, the originally-unnamed shuffling presence (later disappointingly named as the Veil) that hounded the Doctor through an otherwise empty castle. A faceless, unstoppable horror that can only be stopped with fresh truths is a very clever, very Doctor Who, very Steven Moffat idea. The same goes for the setting of a castle which can rearrange itself. That's not a new idea, of course, but it's something that's a good fit for this show and feels like it should have been seen more. It was the setting and the constant threat of the Veil that gave the episode a sense of urgency, something for Capaldi to react against in the absence of a proper supporting cast.

Moffat's other triumph was explaining how the Doctor copes with dangerous situations. He stays calm and imagines himself in the safety of the TARDIS, slowing things down and letting himself concentrate and think. It gave us a glimpse inside the Doctor's head but in a way that didn't reveal too much of the character and retained some of his much-needed mystery. It also made good use of the TARDIS set, an enormous expense that hasn't had much screen time this series.

Speaking of which, the production team deserve a mention at this point. They found a great location for the castle, created some good props to make it seem appropriately unknowable³,  and put together an effective costume for the Veil. Interesting things were done with the lighting as the TARDIS "came back online" too. Everyone seemed to be working towards making this a memorable episode and they accomplished that goal.

The episode wasn't without its faults though. At the same time as he was doing his best writing yet for Capaldi's Doctor Moffat was also pumping out another looped timeline plot. These and the not dissimilar time paradoxes are amongst his most overused tropes. He's been using them since Blink and hasn't been sparing about it. Series six was bookended by this approach for example. It's reached the point now where it's to be expected. The moment I saw a gnarled, bloody hand pulling a lever at the beginning of the episode I knew it would turn out to be Capaldi because that's precisely the sort of thing Moffat does.

The other failure⁴ was that it was the Time Lords behind it all. On one hand, that's okay. The Time Lords have been built up since the reboot as an unknowable, god-like race whom the Doctor both misses and never wants to see return. They're an interesting concept to introduce to New Who⁵ for these reasons and it feels appropriate for them to return ten years on from the revival. And the reveal that the castle was inside the confession dial was a very nice touch, being unexpected and a nod towards the race's knack for bigger-on-the-inside technology.

On the other hand it was always going to be the Time Lords and Moffat didn't even try to hide it. A token attempt at not making it obvious would have been nice. Their return has been inevitable since they were brought back in The Day of the Doctor and it's an ill-fated decision. The Time Lords have always worked best when presented as a corrupt society of paranoid schemers desperate to cling to life and left mostly off-screen. The majority of JNT's term as producer bears me out on this.  The trailer shows that we're going to see guns and armour. Lots of guns and armour. Using the Time Lords as Imperial storm trooper surrogates does them no favours but it's not a part of this episode, so it's not the problem that another time loop plot is.

This isn't the sort of episode that could be done every series, or even with every Doctor, but as a one off it absolutely works. The right actor got to do it.

***

¹ By "the audience" I mean the portion of people who watch Doctor Who without gorging themselves on previews and spoilers first, because they're the ones who (probably) didn't' know this single-hander was coming, and I imagine it would have worked better without that foreknowledge.

² Although I may be giving Moffles too much credit. Maybe Smith's era was shaped the way it was because he simply couldn't wait to write all those "clever" time travel plots and explain The Mystery of River Song™.

³ Yeah it was mostly big clockwork cogs, but what big clockwork cogs!

⁴ Aside from the script raising questions like "Why did the Veil touching the Doctor's face burn one side of the face but not the other, and why did it scorch the Doctor's clothes?"

⁵ Well, reintroduce, technically. RTD beat Moffat to it by several years, although it feels like Moffat intends to have the Time Lords return on a more permanent basis where Davies was happy to use them as a one-off, the ultimate threat in his Buffy-inspired Ever Bigger and Badder Big Bads approach to series finales.

Sleep No More

In promotional material for Sleep No More writer Mark Gatiss talked about how he'd had the idea for years and felt it was one of the better things he'd ever written. Steven Moffat opted for his typical approach of understatement and merely opined that it was Gatiss's Best Episode of Anything Ever. This meant that expectations were pretty high. In an unusual twist they were met. Well, mostly.

Gatiss's usual method is to ape the Pertwee era. It's easy to see the stylistic influence in all of his previous Doctor Who scripts. A fair number of them, more than is comfortable really, are all too easy to imagine with Jon Pertwee in the starring role. The only change you'd really need to make for that would be more mentions of polarity and greater frequency of the phrase "my dear."

Sleep No More broke from this tradition, with Gatiss tackling a future setting for the first time (worth mentioning this was relatively uncommon for Pertwee), aiming for the Creepy, Scary Episode, and writing a script that was far from the technical norm for the show. It was a welcome and successful change and shows that Gatiss can write interesting scripts when he's given the chance. And when he has an idea that lends itself to it.

The episode was very, very good for the first half an hour or so. Gatiss presented us with a varied cast and dropped in plenty of hints about the wider world they inhabited (something I always appreciate in Doctor Who). The central conceit of the Morpehus pods, machines which allow you sleep for just a few seconds and exit feeling completely refreshed, were introduced naturally and explained well. What easily have been a boring scene was kept lively and engaging, not something we should necessarily have expected from Gatiss given his track record.

His greatest achievement was writing the entire episode to be filmed from POV and security footage. The real work here would have been done by the crew actually making the episode of course, but it all started with Gatiss getting it right with his writing. It was something that could have gone very wrong. He writes a mean bit of Victoriana and can drop a Silurians reference like nobody's business but this script was more adventurous than anything else he's contributed to the programme before, or anything else I've seen him credited with. Overall it was probably his best script for Doctor Who.

This is not to say Sleep No More is flawless. It isn't. The final fifteen minutes are filled with twists, so much so that it's not entirely clear on a first viewing what lead baddie Rassmussen's motivations are by the end, or how he's set about trying to achieve them. Or, for that matter, what monsters of the week the Sandmen want beyond mindless destruction (and really, if you're going to have your monsters speak and have motivations to begin with more is required than this). The fact that Rassmussen is written as a gloating madman by the end can be overlooked, because it's not like the show has ever shied away from them before and Reece Shearsmith is good (though not mindblowing) with the role, but his devolution into a man who wants to unleash a plague of sentient dust on the world for no reason can't be.

It felt as though Gatiss had worked very hard on that first half an hour and struggled to tie everything together in a satisfying, logical manner. What the episode needed was a final draft to tighten it up and an editor (that would be Steven Moffat) good enough to give Gatiss a bit of help. A proper reason for Rassmussen to behave as he did, a better explanation for the Sandmen (and specifically an explanation for how they were blind when being made out of bits of dust we'd been told could all see), and a cleverer reveal regarding the dust watching and recording everything we were seeing and this could have been in contention for the highly valued title of A Classic Story. But extra drafts and editorial aid are things that just don't happen much in the Moffat era. His bad time management, something the show's erratic schedule and his work on spiritual sister show Sherlock demonstrate to be an issue, is the cause here. Sleep No More is just the latest victim.

All of which means this episode sits somewhere around the middle on the ranking list of this series. It was better than the Flood and Zygon two-parters but not as good as the opening Dalek story or The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived. I suppose it's a good thing we had Capaldi in the lead role. Had Matt Smith gurned his way through this I think I'd feel differently how good it is.

Bubble Wrapped Christmas

Since Steven Moffat dropped into the Doctor Who producer's chair in 2010 the Christmas specials have featured a common theme. Last year's The Time of the Doctor aside they've all been heavily inspired by existing works (and it could be argued that Time of the Doctor was inspired by a certain kind of fanfic). 2010 was inspired by A Christmas Carol (and even nabbed the title). 2011 was The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, an homage to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so logical it's amazing it took 48 years to do. 2012 went for Victoriana in general, even though The Wizard of Oz would have sat nicely with Moff’s established theme with the TARDIS taking the place of the death-dealing falling house.

The approach hasn't had the best results. His first stab at the tricky to nail Crimbo standalone, which is intended to be watched by an audience that's half cut and likely to doze off, was about an old man who kept his girlfriend locked in a freezer and only let her out once a year, with her last hours implied to be spent underneath a groaning Michael Gambon. It’s not what you’d call a heart-warming tale. It also featured Moffat's irritating obsession with writing time travel into his plots, as opposed to using it as the impetus for a story (there's quite a difference).

His second attempt quickly dropped its promising source material and told us a story about a tree king and living baubles. That Bill Bailey's minor cameo was one of the best things about it says all that needs saying. Meanwhile the 2012 melange was more worried about setting Clara up as the impossible girl than striving for the realms of good or even memorable, a poor decision for what should have been a Romp™.

Judging by this year's trailer I think Moffat's changed his sources of inspiration. What's been released shows a bunch of people wandering around a sci-fi base or ship, some aliens hatching, and Father Christmas. There's also a shot of (presumably) people with cloths draped over them sitting up on gurneys. That clip and the alien hatching make me think it's going to be a survival story in which people are picked off and converted one by one. Specifically it looks like it's been influenced pretty strongly by Alien, its sequels, and its rip-offs. Just what you want on Christmas Day.

In fairness if this is what Moffat's written it's not the worst idea in the world. An homage to action films, a genre which doesn't generally require much attention from the audience, is a good approach for a Doctor Who Christmas episode. It allows for a story where there's a threat (something Moffat scripts all too frequently lack) but in a format where people can follow along by knowing the basics of the genre.

The main reason I've written all of this is that I have a prediction on the alien race in the episode. Assuming it is a story about a small group of humans getting picked off or converted by an alien in space there's a natural race to bring back and use in the alien role: the Wirrn.

It could be interesting to see them used again, especially when you take into account the advances prosthetics have made since 1975. But it would also be a risk for Moffat. The Ark in Space is a highly regarded story by a highly regarded writer that kicked off what is probably the most highly regarded era of the show. This newer episode would be open to a host of comparisons and would need to be very well made in order to not come off looking like a nicely made but poor imitation and an ill-advised, unnecessary remake. It's possible the modern production team could better The Ark in Space but doing so would hinge on a top notch Moffat script. And he's not had one of those in a while.

Deep Breath

I think it was generally accepted before Deep Breath aired that Peter Capaldi was a good casting choice for the Twelfth Doctor. So it shouldn’t really be a surprise that he was the best thing about his debut episode. In an hour and fifteen minutes Capaldi gave a varied performance that was evocative of the character’s history without being entirely beholden to it. There was nothing that sounded like a catchphrase, nothing that looked like a stab at vaudevillian physical comedy. In other words, exactly the sort of performance Matt Smith failed to deliver during his entire tenure.

Perhaps the most pleasing thing about Capaldi was that it was clear how differently he was playing the part to Smith. Having watched Smith’s Eleventh Doctor for the last four years it was all too easy to imagine moments which would have featured an arm flail or a spin or a gurning face. It was intentionally, according to writer Steven Moffat, written as a Matt Smith script for the most part, the Twelfth Doctor apparently still believing himself to be the Eleventh. A move presumably designed to allow the differences between the two actors to be clearly highlighted. Pleasingly Capaldi swallowed the silliness in his lines and instead allowed humour to come from understatement.

But in fairness to Moffat he took some chances with the script. The Doctor was written to do things the Smith incarnation wouldn’t have done, most obviously deserting Clara for a while in the underground lair. It was not the pivotal, shocking moment Moff probably thinks it was, but it did do a nice job of showing that the new Doctor is to be written differently to the last two. That’s a welcome change after eight years.

It’s still too early to judge whether Capaldi’s Doctor will be a success. One episode’s been shown in which, at points, he was written like his predecessor. Nowhere near enough to look at the strengths and weaknesses of Capaldi’s take on the role. Still, he was, as already said, the best thing about the episode.

Not that he had much competition, mind you. The most enjoyable performances after Capaldi came from Dan Starkey’s comedy figure Strax and Michelle Gomez’s Missy. Neither was a large role, with Gomez only appearing in a cameo at the very end of the episode. Nobody else stood out. Jenna Coleman did nothing special, and she was given as much of an opportunity to as she’s ever likely to get, dealing as she was with the loss of what was apparently a great love and having to cope with and rely upon an abrasive stranger. Despite her lines there was never a sense that Clara felt she’d lost a friend. There was never any doubt she’d be fine with this new Doctor at the end of the episode, and not just because we know Clara’s confirmed for the rest of the series.

While Coleman wasn’t especially interesting or good at least she wasn’t actively bad. The same can’t be said for Neve McIntosh’s Madam Vastra. Since she first appeared in 2011’s A Good Man Goes to War Vastra’s speech patterns have gradually become overtly Victorian. “He seems remarkably unmoved by the available spectacle,” for example. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that none of the other Victorian characters, most notably Jenny, speak that way. It’s jarring enough to draw my attention whenever she appears. It was particularly bad in this episode because Vastra played a larger role than usual, functioning as the lead character for around the first twenty-five minutes of the episode.

As a season opener Deep Breath just needed to be fun and easy to follow, which it was. As Capaldi’s debut episode it needed to allow him to make a good enough impression to show people he’ll be good in the role, which it did. The plot and the enemies were a recycling of The Girl in the Fireplace, not a problem as that episode first aired eight years ago. That said I did find it peculiar that the lead droid was the only one missing half a face. Why, if his subordinates all got complete faces and bodies, did the lead droid not?

It was a decent offering, although one I doubt people will look back on as a classic. My biggest regret is that the dinosaur didn’t get to become a companion. It displayed a far greater range than Jenna Coleman. If that’s the worst that can be said for it something’s probably gone right.

Christmas with an Irrational Producer

Four years into his time as producer of Doctor Who and Steven Moffat has finally had the opportunity to give us a regeneration story (discounting River’s regeneration in Let’s Kill Hitler and the multiple fake regenerations of Smith’s Doctor). In typical fashion he produced something that was startlingly average. It didn’t reach the heady heights of The Caves of Androzani but it also managed to avoid the banal confusion of The Ultimate Foe. Matt Smith was given an episode that allowed him to show all the good points of his Doctor one last time before he left the role (at least in a full time capacity). It’s just a pity that those good points weren’t as notable as they could have been.

I don’t want to be overly negative about Matt Smith. On the whole I’ve found his performance inoffensive and regularly enjoyable. He has proven that he was a good choice for the role (second choice, if Gaiman’s fishwife gossip is to be believed). There have been some questionable moments though. His burnt acting in The Crimson Horror was appalling. The constant movement and gesturing, something that characterised his performance, got out of hand at points, never more obviously than in The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe. Even his outfit was an irritation at times. It seemed to revert to the Hartnell and Troughton model in his last few episodes, something that the show had progressed beyond by 1970. The number of blog posts and articles “proving” that Matt Smith was the best Doctor ever is massively annoying but also to be expected. It’s a reflection of the show’s popularity more than anything else, not something to hold against Smith or to hold as clear evidence that he’s been anything more than an “average” Doctor.

I didn’t dislike Matt Smith in the role. But I’m also not upset he’s left. Three seasons and a couple of specials was as much as I needed from his performance. There aren’t as many great episodes of his to look back on as I’d like, but sticking around wouldn’t have changed that.

But this isn’t about Matt Smith. Not just Matt Smith anyway. It’s about The Time of the Doctor. As it was Smith’s final regular performance it as the episode in which Moffat had to pay off three seasons’ worth of threads and ideas. Among the unresolved issues were the cracks in time, the exploding TARDIS of the series five finale, an explanation for the Silents, and the “Doctor who?” question. Plus Moffat also felt it necessary to address the twelve regenerations limit and continue the Gallifrey storyline he started in previous story The Day of the Doctor (something he’d said he wouldn’t do, claiming instead that it would be left to hang over the series for a while). Never mind that it could have been addressed in a few lines of technobabble after finding some maguffin at a later date: it had to be addressed here because Moffat wanted to be the man to do it. The Tenth Doctor using up a regeneration to stay as he was? Rubbish. That was confirmed only in this story (a mere five years after The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End had aired) to give Moffles the excuse he needed to be the made to “save us” from the horror of a depleted regeneration cycle.

Did he do justice to the strands he’d had running for four years? No. He didn’t. Moffat did what he always does in these situations and took the easiest, most disappointing route possible. The TARDIS exploded because a splinter group from the Church of Silence went back along the Doctor’s time stream and tried to kill him before he could get to Trenzalore. We weren’t shown this, that could have been interesting. Instead we were shown it. Hardly a worthwhile payoff. The cracks were the work of the Time Lords, placed there so they could call through The Question from the pocket universe they’re currently imprisoned in to make sure they’d got the right place (even though they possess mastery over time and space and so should probably know that sort of thing anyway). It didn’t feel like things coming together after years of clever foreshadowing, it felt like a writer who’d introduced random things that he quite liked in isolation but didn’t know how to link up. It was like the River Song reveal all over again. Only less game-changing.

The string of revelations approach has struck again. As always it ensures that the episode is satisfying on some basic level because it provides you with answers (albeit unsatisfying ones) to longstanding questions but leaves you wishing there was more to it on further viewings. As I said in my write-up of The Day of the Doctor, a revelation can only be enjoyed once. It’s plots that are required for something to be enjoyable on a second, twenty-second or ninety-second viewing. And it’s plotting that Moffat seems to think he’s above.

Very little about the string of revelations made much sense but one thing stood out as silly above everything else. That was the depiction of the Time Lords. From the original series run we know they are one of the most powerful races, if not the most powerful, in the universe. Their society has been depicted (since 1976 at least) as staid, corrupt, and distant, and they had, according to The Night of the Doctor, become just as bad as the Daleks once the Time War was underway – and it’s worth noting that the Time War wasn’t even close to over by this point because that mini-episode sees the War Doctor introduced and he spends a significant amount of time fighting in the War. In short the Time Lords are not the sort of people to be won over by sentimentality. And yet in TTOFTD that’s exactly what happens: Clara whispers into the crack that the only name the Time Lords should need to hear is “the Doctor” and then witters on about what a good guy her pal is. Then the crack in time closes and the Time Lords reappear a minute or so later to gift the Doctor with a new regeneration cycle. Perhaps the time locked away from the wider universe has mellowed the Lords. 

Or perhaps Moffat’s just contrary, unimaginative, and unable to keep track of his own plots.

There have been worse offerings during the Moffat regime, and it was far and away his best Christmas episode. But ultimately it was still a confusing disappointment that I suspect would have done more to dissuade new viewers than encourage them. Perhaps having an actor of Peter Capaldi’s calibre to write for will help Moffat get back on track. Although judging by that first scene I may be getting my hopes up there. An exclamation about kidneys is not a good sign.

The Fiftieth

Like most people interested in the show (for some reason I can’t bring myself to write “fans” – I’ve no idea why) I watched the fiftieth anniversary episode of Doctor Who on its original November 23^rd airing. Something that struck me as odd then and still strikes me as odd now is the time at which it aired. Starting at ten to eight meant that the anniversary episode didn’t finish until gone nine o’clock. This has nothing to do with anything, up to and including my thoughts on the episode, but I wanted to make note of it because it felt strange to have an episode of Doctor Who finishing after the watershed. It’s an odd decision given the age group they’re targeting. Then again I’m not a parent so perhaps kids are up until gone nine as a matter of course these days.

I watched the episode from start to finish and, to be honest, didn’t really think much of it. It was okay, certainly a lot better than the average episode that’s been produced under the reign of the Über Moff, but then most of them have been pretty bad so that’s not saying a great deal. I was a little surprised at how light the central plot was, how little the Zygons actually had to do, and how the secondary human-Zygon negotiation plot was completely dropped and not paid off at all. I was downright perplexed that an episode marketed as an anniversary episode was so light on nods to the past. A programme with fifty years of TV episodes, books, comics, audio dramas and various other tie-ins and spin-offs to call on should have had no trouble featuring such touches. The average RTD era episode featured more mentions of the past than The Day of the Doctor. Even if Steven Moffat doesn’t like continuity references surely he should understand that this episode, more than any other previously written demanded them?

Did I say Moffat doesn’t like continuity references? I did, yes. I think I should clarify that. He’s far more interested in referencing his own stuff than the work of anyone else. Just look at River Song. She’s less a character and more a string of increasingly drab reveals. The Silents received similar, albeit more subdued, treatment. And I think it’s telling that the Weeping Angels notched up more proper adventures and cameos against Matt Smith’s Doctor than the Daleks. It could, if you were generous, be said that it’s his style of writing. To an extent I’d agree, but not enough to excuse the approach completely. Basically Moffat is more interested in playing in his own corner of the Doctor Who Universe than in revelling in it as a whole and that hurt the anniversary episode’s ability to be seen as something celebrating five decades of a varied, imaginative and creative programme. If ever there were a time for a writer to embrace the entirety of the show’s history that episode was it.

But let’s get back to my viewing experience.  When the show first came back I had a habit of watching every episode for a second time immediately after its original airing. That’s a habit I was still in by the time Matt Smith’s first series started. I’d dropped it by the end of that run. There are still a few Matt Smith episodes I’ve only seen once: the gangers two parter, the Narnia one and most of the second half of series seven spring immediately to mind. I’ve watched every episode of the Tennant and Eccleston eras at least twice each, in most cases more. I bring this up to illustrate how Moffat has, fairly speedily, blunted my enthusiasm for the show.

That said I have generally given “important” episodes a second look in the days following their original broadcast. A Good Man Goes To War, for example. That’s “important” not because it’s a good episode (although it’s probably among the best of the Moff era) but because it features so many of Moffat’s tedious revelations that a second look helps to assimilate it all and give you a chance to hunt for a plot, a hunt which usually disappoints. Episode where Moffat is clearly dropping in big bits of continuity to pick up again later are the sorts of things I’m thinking of when I say “important”. Notice that plot doesn’t come into it. I’ll get back to this momentarily.

The Day of the Doctor is the sort of episode (“important”, basically) I would have watched again on the Sunday if I’d had the option. But I didn’t: the DVR had malfunctioned and not recorded. I’d paid enough attention and formed enough of an opinion on the plot to write a blog post about it at the time but I never got around to it. The enthusiasm just wasn’t there and as the weeks went by it became harder and harder to bring myself to write about the episode. Eventually I decided I’d get it on DVD, watch it again to refresh my memory and write about it then. I ended up getting it for Christmas and watching it on Boxing Day.

Watching the episode again for a second time with a not insubstantial gap since my first viewing made something immediately clear, something I wouldn’t have been able to pick up on after just one viewing. Watching TDOTD for a second time knowing what all the twists and revelations were and when they were coming made the episode boring to watch. All the big shocks only contribute anything to the episode on a first watch, the red herrings and false leads mean nothing when you sit through them again. Revelations only work once, a good plot will last forever. Once you get passed the War Doctor’s true identity and nature, Billie Piper’s purpose in the story, why the statues have been smashed, why paintings that are “a slice of time” have been introduced, and, the big one, Gallifrey being brought back, all you’re left with is Tennant and Smith’s bickering, the needless tale of why Elizabeth I considered the Tenth Doctor and enemy, and the Time War (something else that never needed to be shown. Honestly, the thing that impressed me the most is that they made one bloke in a Zygon suit into a convincing squadron. That’s not glowing praise for an episode of this magnitude is it?

Chris Eccleston. It’s a real shame he didn’t want to come back and do the episode. He and his Doctor have a lot of fans (I feel fine using the word here) that would have greatly enjoyed seeing him back. It would have been nice to see the man who made it possible for Tennant, Smith and Capaldi to take on the role involved. It’s obvious to anyone how the plot would have differed had Eccleston said yes, and it clearly would have been preferable to the “secret Doctor” nonsense that was concocted to get around his lack of interest. But as clever (“tricksy” would probably be a better word) as Moff’s solution was, it wasn’t necessary. Nobody had told him he had to have three Doctors involved in the episode. He could just as easily have strung together the same non-plot with just Doctors Ten and Eleven. Why he didn’t I couldn’t even begin to guess. It seemed obvious to me from the start than Eccleston was going to say no to an appearance. He’s that sort of fella.

A final thought: if the Doctor didn’t remember freezing Gallifrey in a slice of pocket universe (or whatever) until towards the end of his life as the Matt Smith Doctor (phrasing chosen to avoid confusion) how and why was it that every previous incarnation turned up to help accomplish the feat? They shouldn’t have known about the Time War, let alone about shunting Gallifrey out of existence.

Thanks, Moff. Another bungled offering!

All Over Your Screen

Last year (year 49 of Doctor Who's existence) Steven Moffat told us that Doctor Who would be "all over" our screens in 2013. It seemed like a believable claim. The show is not only one of the BBC's lead dramas but has half a century of life to draw on. That's plenty of material to sustain various documentaries and spin-off shows. But we've not seen that much of either. The Doctor Who brand (a term I'm not a fan of but that is applicable) had, until last week, been no more visible than it usually is. Releasing a handful of things a couple of weeks before the show’s official fiftieth anniversary is hardly being all over screens throughout the year is it?

So far what we've had are a couple of official trailers featuring footage from the anniversary episode itself, a minute long celebration of Doctor Who featuring stills of past Doctors and enemies, the regeneration of Paul McGann, and half a season of episodes that were, as a whole, arguably some of the worst since the 2005 revival. Announced for the anniversary week are the Adventure in Time and Space drama written by Mark Gatiss, which tells the story of the show's origin, an appearance from Moffat on Desert Island Discs, some vague promises from Moffat about making use of the Doctors of the last century, and the anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor.

An Adventure in Time and Space looks good and has an interesting story to tell. So there’s promise there. The celebratory minute-long trailer was enjoyable and slickly produced, if ultimately fairly pointless. Moffat’s appearance on Desert Island Discs won’t reveal anything at all interesting but may produce some amusing lines (he claims to dislike making such appearances but he always comes across as having no greater interest in life than talking himself and his work up). The Night of the Doctor was enjoyable for what it was, but it only exists to lend weight to Moffat’s “secret incarnation” direction.

The Day of the Doctor itself? It’s unfair to say it will be good or bad based on the pair of trailers and handful of scenes that have been released. From what I’ve seen I will say it doesn’t look like the worst thing put out under the current creative head (although see below for more on this). The success of the episode depends on the central mystery (that’s basically John Hurt’s involvement) being suitably interesting and Tennant and Smith finding moderate success as a double act.

Compare what we’ve seen for the anniversary special to what we got when David Tennant left. He appeared on a “special” episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the Christmas episode of QI, got his own set on Christmas idents, and couldn’t be escaped from when it came to interviews. He's the most popular Doctor ever (or the second most if you're someone unable to let go of Tom Baker's heyday) and it was a shrewd move to secure those appearances but why is nothing similar happening now?

According to certain quarters it's because The Moff blew the budget he'd been allocated for the anniversary year producing the episodes that already aired and the one we'll see next Saturday. No episode from The Bells of St John to The Name of the Doctor seemed like it had had loads of time and money lavished on it, so the anniversary episode is the last place the cash can have gone to. And let's talk about that episode. From what's been shown it looks like Moffat has plumped to set a story in or around the Time War. He’s had three years to prepare something worthwhile but has instead opted to use something his predecessor introduced and kept off screen as a way of explaining plot holes and keeping some mystery floating around.

... In a way this is terribly apt.

What's noteworthy is that RTD explicitly stated he'd never show the Time War, citing a lack of sufficient budget to do it justice and that, no matter how good it was, it would be an anti-climax. Which seems completely logical. The Time War was not introduced to provide a backdrop to stories, it’s purpose was to remain unseen. How would a war throughout time actually, physically, logistically work. The trailer indicates that it's been realised as a big ol' space war, when the term actually implies rewritten time streams and erasures from history. Conceptual warfare if you like, rather than a simple war in space.

This sums up the difference between Moffat and Davies wonderfully. Davies created something he could use to create a sense of scale and explain away bothersome minutiae, leaving him free to concentrate on character and plot. Moffat hears Time War and thinks it sounds cool.

There’s no clear reason why Moff hasn’t bothered to create his own threads and themes for the fiftieth anniversary. No matter what he had planned and no matter why it had to be cut he's been the man at the top for four years now (longer if you count the various threads and characters introduced before he officially took the reins), more than enough time to decide on what this episode was to be about and drop in hints and teases. I think the fact that he's gone with an RTD idea shows a lack of faith in his own work and concepts. Which is perhaps for the best: a fiftieth anniversary episode focusing on River Song scarcely bears thinking about.

The lack of new episodes isn't what disappoints me. I'd rather have one new, lengthy episode airing on the anniversary itself than a number of lesser ones spread out. What disappoints me is that Moffat seems to have written something very heavily reliant on continuity. An anniversary episode should include more nods to the past than a regular episode but it should still be accessible for first-time viewers. And inaccessibility seems to have been a growing theme throughout Moffat’s tenure.

As I say, it’s unfair to judge The Day of the Doctor until it’s aired, and it will ultimately succeed on fairly basic things. But right now I don’t have the greatest hopes for it.

Good Night

Usually Steven Moffat's obsession with playing the modern day JNT, baiting fans into expecting one thing with what he thinks is wonderfully clever wordplay and then delivering something unexpected, results in disaster and disappointment. Occasionally though it can deliver a worthwhile and pleasant surprise. Such as The Night of the Doctor, for example.

Before that mini episode aired the BBC had released the following statement:

The 50th Anniversary features Matt Smith, David Tennant and a mysterious incarnation played by John Hurt. Only one appears in the mini episode, The Night of the Doctor. But which?

This wasn't a lie. John Hurt’s “mysterious incarnation” did make an appearance of sorts in the closing thirty seconds or so, but he was not the focal point. Instead the seven minute show featured Paul McGann returning to the role of the Eighth Doctor to tell his regeneration story. This is when the deceitful approach pays off: nobody blabbed about McGann's reprisal of the role and so it was a genuine and pleasant surprise. The last time Moffat pulled one of these tricks off was Jenna Coleman's appearance in Asylum of the Daleks.

Given that it's only seven minutes long and had access only to a slender cast and two sets I think TNOTD is very enjoyable. It's the sort of thing Moffat's actually good at writing: frivolous bits of continuity with a smattering of gags and memorable, perhaps even quotable, lines. He deserves credit for cobbling together some nice moments for McGann’s Doctor despite having forty minutes of footage to go on. The line about four minutes being ages helped create the sense that it was the same character we’d seen in the TV Movie. And he came up with a decent final line, not easy when the Eighth Doctor has had, in total, about an hour of screen time.

The real credit for The Night of the Doctor being an enjoyable bit of filler should go to McGann. Even before thinking about his performance he deserves praise for returning to the role. It would have been easy for him to say no. This is the man who kept the easy gig of Big Finish audios at arm’s length for years, it was no guarantee he’d want to be involved in the anniversary celebrations in any capacity. It’s nice that he agreed to come back to give his Doctor the final moments he deserved (and to help set up John Hurt as a continuation of the Doctor line, because if that hadn’t been achieved I get the feeling The Day of the Doctor’s plot would suffer for it).

McGann plays the part well. It’s nothing sensational or mind-blowing. It’s not the greatest Doctor Who performance ever. It’s not going to cause anyone to reconsider their opinion on the show. But it’s not a bad performance, and it may get people to reconsider their views on McGann’s Doctor.

I’m not going to do what many others have done in the hours since the episode was put onto YouTube and witter about how they’d like further adventures from the McGann Doctor. I don’t. What made it work here is a combination of various factors. The element of surprise, the sense of closure, the sense of nostalgia, and the script being pitched just right were chief among them. It worked as a one off. More would suffer from the law of diminishing returns very quickly. But I will say that McGann entered a better performance than I can remember Matt Smith since at least his second series in 2011.

The final thing I’d like to point out is that with this episode I’m pretty sure Moffat has now written for more Doctors than anybody else (Five, Eight, Nine, the other Nine, Ten, and Eleven, plus Twelve when he arrives). This is not a particularly important piece of information but it’s one I’d bet a substantial amount of money Moffat will smugly reference in an interview at some point.

Capaldi for Twelve

So Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth Doctor then. That's a bit of good news isn't it?

Yesterday's announcement was a rare example of Steven Moffat's general ineptitude working in Doctor Who's favour. I'd heard the rumours that Capaldi was going to be the next Doctor but couldn't bring myself to believe them, in large part because it was a good idea and Moffat has a history of letting fans down. Remember when he said season six's mid-season cliffhanger would be game-changing? Or when he teased River Song's identity for three years, assuring us she was the last person we’d expect her to be, only to reveal the truth was what people had been guessing all along? How about his most recent bit of fail, the spectacularly anticlimactic The Name of the Doctor? That revealed the Doctor's latest companion goes through time saving him continuously because she goes through time saving him continuously.

I also had a hard time envisaging an actor of Capaldi's talent watching the show we've been watching since 2010 and saying "Yeah, I'll get in on that." There was the potential issue of the BBC wanting to avoid kids stumbling across footage of Malcolm Tucker too. Thankfully nobody seems overly bothered by that possibility. Which is obviously good, because such things shouldn't stop a good actor being cast.

Mainly I didn't have faith Moffat would do something this right. He's surprised us. And I'm pleased.

I get the feeling that Capaldi may have been cast at least partially to combat the downturn critical acclaim for the show has taken lately. While Moffat blithely disregards reviews in interviews the truth is they matter. They reflect what the general public is likely to feel and so offer an insight into how to make the show better. And that's part of Moffat's job. If people don't remain enthused about the show it no longer makes money. And the BBC cannot afford to produce something that costs as much as Who that doesn't make them some dough in return.

Bringing in Capaldi is a way of encouraging support. It's an assurance that the show is still a priority and can still attract high quality names. It feels it’s being done, in part at least, to placate people who have been overly critical of Moffat scripts. Because if anyone stands a chance of making a bad Moffat script work it’s Peter Capaldi. It’s certinaly not Matt Smith, as we’ve seen.

When Capaldi starts is a matter for debate at the moment. It was originally announced that Matt Smith's final appearance would be in the Christmas special. There has since been talk that he'll be off during the anniversary special. It doesn't really make much difference although wanting to include a regeneration in the anniversary episode strikes me as a very Moffat desire. It's the sort of empty gesture he'd think would be incredibly poignant and - yes! - epic. I'm not fussed which episode is Smith's last although I will say that the prospect of Zygons being credited with offing a Doctor doesn't fill me with joy.

There's just enough time to have a thirteen episode stretch ready to begin airing next spring (assuming they keep filming later episodes after the first has aired, which is the norm) but I think an autumn start point is likelier. It's the one Moff has stated he prefers and it plays into his more deliberate (by which I mean slow (by which I mean lazy)) approach to scripts. I'm still hoping for an announcement that Moffat will be off after the next series. That will give Capaldi a good chance of having done good scripts to work with. He's not likely to get any under Moffat.

In Case You Haven't Heard...

If you’ve not been paying attention to the papers, the news, social networking sites and the covers of magazines, you may have missed the news that there’s a new Doctor Who lead actor on the way. The announcement that current Doctor (Number Eleven) Matt Smith was leaving was made on June 1^st (I wrote about that here). Over the two months since the show’s executive producers have held auditions, which I’m sure we’ll be told included a who’s who of top name talent at some point in the future, to find a new star. They have apparently found one and he or she is to be unveiled to the world this evening on a special live BBC One show imaginatively titled Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor. They should have gone with Doctor Who Live: The Name of the Doctor. The Next Doctor is so RTD.

The show will feature Matt Smith and lead writer Steven Moffat, presumably talking up the new actor before they put in an appearance after a video package showing their previous acting work, potentially ending on a fleeting shot of them looking moody while leaning on the TARDIS. It will also feature Tom Baker and Peter Davison, the Fourth and Fifth Doctors respectively. They will be there to give advice to the newcomer, which makes me think Doctor Twelve is going to be younger than 35. If they’re not then bringing in two former Doctors just to give them advice seems a little patronising, especially as Tom Baker qualifies more as a parody of himself than as an actual actor.

Hosting the show will be pig-faced ladette Zoe Ball. She has no qualities that make her particularly suited to the task, she’s just a half-capable presenter conveniently under contract to the BBC. Personally I’d have brought Tennant in to host the thing and omitted Baker and Davison entirely. Tennant’s done a little presenting and would be a more natural choice for the task than Ball. Perhaps they asked him and he was busy, or simply wants to disassociate himself from Moff’s version of the show as much as possible.

Still, at least with the show the BBC have cobbled together there’s a strong chance of comedy. Tom Baker has been very open in talking about his feelings that Matt Smith’s not an especially good choice for the role of the Doctor. Perhaps he’ll mention that on air. Zoe Ball is almost guaranteed to get a very basic fact wrong. Normally there’d be nothing wrong with that (because you can’t expect everyone to be well-versed in the endless minutia of Doctor Who) but this is probably the one show where a knowledgeable presenter is needed. Moffat’s definitely going to slur out a load of hyperbole that his writing will never live up, but that’s nothing new. Maybe he’ll butt heads with Tom. That’d be a laugh, although it’s sadly unlikely.

In fact the only way I think this show could have a greater potential for humour would be if Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy were appearing in place of Tom and Peter.

At one point Peter Capaldi was the favourite for the role. I think he’d be great in the part, but somehow I just don’t think it’s going to be him. That’s partly due to my reasoning above: how do you justify bringing Tom Baker in to advise Peter Capaldi on anything? I also think his role on The Thick Of It could count against him. Kids are going to Google and YouTube search the new Doctor. Does the BBC really want to run the risk of them coming across one of Malcolm Tucker’s foul-mouthed rants? Then again, the casting decision has been made by Steven Moffat…

If it’s not Capaldi (and part of me is going to be disappointed if it’s not him because I think he’d be great) then I’d like to see Chiwetel Ejiofor or Idris Elba in the part. Both men’s names have been linked to the part (and Ejiofor was a rumoured close contender for the Eleventh Doctor role too) and both have the right mix of acting ability, good, marketable looks, and age (36 and 40 respectively) to be excellent in the role.

Also, isn’t it about time that a non-white actor was cast in the part? The longer the show rumbles on without doing this the bigger an issue it’s going to be. I don’t think someone should be cast based on the colour of their skin, but the time feels right for a departure from the middle class white male paradigm that’s been established for the role. It’s something that should certainly have been considered.

Another few hours of waiting and we’ll have a name and a face to start writing about. As a little known producer was fond of saying, stay tuned…

New New New New Doctor

When it was announced in 2008 that David Tennant was leaving Doctor Who I was upset. I didn't sit around moping or claiming I'd never watch the show again but I did think it was the beginning of the end for Doctor Who's mega popularity. I didn't think any other actor would be able to generate the interest and adoration that Tennant had managed with his combination of good looks, good acting and good scripts.

Matt Smith has proven me wrong. He's been mostly as popular despite not seeming to be quite as good an actor or being quite as good looking. The show becoming a larger presence on US television has doubtless helped him. Smith has been the face of the show during a huge push into an incredibly important TV market. Imagine how astronomical Tennant's popularity would have become if he'd stuck around for that. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Where Smith's been let down is in the scripts. He's not been given the broad range of things to do that Tennant was. The reason for that is Steven Moffat. Yes, I'm blaming him again but I'm not doing it for the sake of it. He really has let Smith down. His time as showrunner has been characterised by supposedly clever paradoxical plots, uninteresting personalities and, most recently, the movie poster approach.

All are shallow and fail to give actors, be they regulars or guest stars, anything worthwhile to do. They don't give audiences much to get excited about either. Russell T Davies (mostly) understood what viewers wanted. That was drama featuring likeable characters with some humour and references to the past tossed in for good measure. He gave us something that could be enjoyed in forty-five minutes on a Saturday afternoon and then forgotten about, but with enough depth for obsessive fans (like those who write blogs on the subject for example) to go back and analyse them over and over again.

Moffat doesn't write drama. He seems incapable of it. He writes comedy with Big Epic Moments inserted into them. Because that’s his idea of drama. It's an approach that has meant Matt Smith has had very little chance to showcase what acting talent he has, instead having to trot out wearisome quips and catchphrases, occasionally breaking the monotony with a bit of shouting to show that he's an Angry Doctor.

Which, to get back to the point, is why I'm not terribly fussed that he's going. I've not been given a reason to care about his character. Truth be told I’m more interested in the possibility an incoming Twelfth Doctor presents for a clean start.

It's impossible to predict who'll be cast as the new Doctor. The people that audition don't have their names revealed during the casting process. Which is fair enough really. It only becomes the concern of the viewers once someone's been cast.

It's interesting to note that the BBC has stated that they won't be casting anyone based on race or gender. Once again the tease of a female Doctor rears its head (although in a distinctly more subtle way than JNT could ever have managed). Personally I don't think they'll do it. Jenna Louise Coleman has been confirmed for the 2014 series and I think the BBC will be keen to stick with the established setup of a male and a female lead. It doesn't strike me as a particularly Moffatian move either. He seems to understand the show enough to know his approach to writing women wouldn't lend itself to a female Doctor.

I'd quite like a forty-something black Doctor. It would be something new for the show, and considering the broadly liberal undertone it's had since 2005 I think it's time it happened. I imagine the likelihood of a black Doctor is higher than the likelihood of a female Doctor, mainly because Moffat can cast a black dude while sticking to his confirmed "the Doctor should be an older gentleman" preference. Hard to cast a woman as an older gentleman, isn't it?

A few years ago I liked the idea of Richard Ayoade playing the Doctor. I've gone off that idea over time. I now like the idea of Paterson Joseph playing the part. He’ll turn fifty next year, which places him snugly into Moff’s preferred age range for the part. He's a good actor and comes across as very supportive of the show when quizzed on it. Whoever's cast will need his level of exuberance to put on a brave face with Moffat's writing.

Something tells me Joseph's casting is unlikely though. He was open about the fact that he auditioned to be the Eleventh Doctor, and was a tabloid fave for the part at the time. I think such a high profile loss of the role last time it was up for grabs will make him look like a second choice should he be cast now. Which is a shame, because I think he’d be good in the part.

I expect an announcement sometime this year that the next series will be Moffat’s last. An RTD-style year of specials in 2015 may be a part of his leaving schedule but it’s not something I’d bank on. I've a feeling (based only on the fact that Moffat’s been doing the job for a good few years now) new executive producer Brian Minchin has been brought on board to learn the ropes for a year and then take over as showrunner. Considering Moffat's recent form the sooner he goes the better.

Changing the Game

Remember how Steven Moffat built up the mid-season finale of Doctor Who’s sixth series in 2011 (A Good Man Goes to War)? He claimed it would be “game changing”, altering not just the course of the show but the way we viewed its past. It was a pretty big shout, even on his budget.

It turned out that his idea of the game being changed was revealing the identity and hinting at some of the backstory of a character he’d introduced three years earlier and who few non-fans (and fans for that matter) truly cared about. Suffice it to say that the game remained resolutely unchanged.

The conclusion to that season was less hyped but promotional interviews still featured Moffat talking up how exciting and unpredictable it would be. It wasn’t. Similar talk for Asylum of the Daleks, The Angels Take Manhattan, The Snowmen, and The Bells of St John all failed spectacularly too. Moffat has displayed a spectacular knack for failing to deliver on his promises in these situations.

He's been back at it for this Saturday’s episode. To a certain extent you can't blame him. It is his job after all. But while he’s contractually obligated to talk up any and every episode of Doctor Who as though it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, paying particular care to paint season finales as unmissable televisual events, he's not contractually obligated to come up with ridiculous episode names like The Name of the Doctor.

During his recent media ramblings Moffat has said several things about this episode. He's told us that the Doctor's biggest secret will be revealed, we'll find out the secret of Clara, new villains the Whispermen will be one of his better monsters, and has once again trotted out his rubbish about this episode changing the way we look at the show. That's quite a JNT-style shopping list he's cobbled together for himself, isn't it? It’s tough not to go into the finale expecting anything but an overly busy mess.

Is Moffles going to reveal the Doctor's name? I find it hard to believe he will (although if any executive producer were ever going to do it it would be him). This is a perfect example of him going for big ideas that sound "epic" but actually aren't. It’s something designed to grab headlines in a surprisingly quiet fiftieth anniversary year, not something that hints at a gripping story. What would we gain from finding out the Doctor's name? Nothing. How would it benefit or change the show for the better? It wouldn't. There is no possible name that could do the mystery justice, and even if there were there’s no payoff to finding out.

What I think Moffat will reveal instead is the mystery behind the name, a move that would fail to have the impact of revealing the actual name while at the same time appearing to have meaning. In other words something so daft and pointless it’s right up The Moff’s alley.

We’ll find out that the Doctor gave up his name when he left Gallifrey centuries ago or that he’s had to hide it because it’s so powerful that if spoken by the wrong person it could be used as a weapon. If it’s the former we could see Moffat lift the fan theory that all Time Lords that leave their home planet have to give up their name and have to choose a title instead, for whatever reason. If it’s the latter we could find the Doctor’s hidden his name in a book and stashed it in the TARDIS’s library.

I’m not saying either idea is brilliant, should air, or is what I personally want to see, but they’re the sorts of concept that appear impressive at first glance. Of course on a second or third glance they begin to look pretty ropey, but by that point Moffat’s gotten away with it and he’s off tinkering on his next mediocre idea.

The topic of the name is going to be addressed. Even Moffat wouldn’t be so brazen as to go with that title only to do nothing. Something will happen, even if it’s disappointing or stupid or both.

I suspect it will tie into the First Question thread he introduced at the end of season six. By providing an answer, any answer to the “Doctor who?” question that has been cropping up in the programme since the days of William Hartnell Moffat will be creating something that retroactively affects every episode that’s ever gone before. Once he’s aired his punchline the next time you watch a Jon Pertwee story and the joke gets used you’ll think of The Name of the Doctor.

I’m convinced that’s something Moffat would love. It’s a lazy approach but so what? It’s not like there’s no precedent for Moffatian laziness.

All of that said his job isn’t just to write something good, it’s to get the highest rating possible. It’s likely that the title The Name of the Doctor will get one of the best ratings of the season. While that doesn’t whollyexcuse the move it does make it a little more understandable and bearable. It’ll still come back to bite him though. When viewers realise Moff’s not delivered on his promise they’ll be less inclined to watch the next similarly-titled canon-fest.

The secret of Clara is doomed to be an uninspiring piece of technobabble that has no bearing on how we see her. Moffat's had to resort to scripting a special teaser trailer in which the Doctor and Clara explain to the camera how they both feel about each other because he's not bothered to write anything addressing said feelings into the previous seven episodes. It’s not only typical of him but also shows that there's nothing to go back and re-evaluate.

It’s possible the Whispermen will be better than the Silence or the Weeping Angels but it’s not likely. Both of those races are very good central ideas that are aided by great designs. The Whispermen don’t look bad but there’s something a bit Sarah Jane Adventures about them. I have no idea what Moffat could have cooked up to better instantly forgettable invaders or statues that move when you’re not looking.

As for the vain hope of a surprise regeneration? We should be so lucky. Moffat wouldn’t be satisfied with anything so simple.

Upgrade Incomplete

Last night’s episode of Doctor Who featured the much hyped return of the Cybermen. Saying something was much hyped in relation to Doctor Who used to imply that an aspect of the episode hadn’t been seen for a while (in addition to the more traditional meaning that the production crew were shooting their mouths off, of course). That’s certainly not the case here. The Cybermen have appeared in every one of Matt Smith’s seasons so far, and before he took over they’d been the co-stars of David Tennant’s penultimate Christmas Special.

This was not a big return. It was an annual appearance.

Not that that’s a bad thing necessarily. Russell T Davies had the Daleks appear at least once during all but one of the five years of his producership, and only one of those stories was bad. Doctor Who alien races can keep coming back frequently if there’s something interesting for them to do.

Was there something new for the Cybermen to do in Nightmare in Silver? What do you think?

You’ve probably heard the story of how Neil Gaiman came to write this episode. In case you haven’t it goes something like this: Steven Moffat, delighted with how well The Doctor’s Wife had turned last season (although it feels like it aired a lot longer ago than that), sent Gaiman an email asking him if he’d like to make the Cybermen scary again. Gaiman, presumably feeling that scares were well within his field of expertise, jumped at the chance.

The offer of a decent payday probably didn’t hurt either.

At first the episode actually worked. Yeah, the kids were pretty annoying, but they could have been far worse. The old Cyberman that played chess was, while typically Gaiman-esque, a nice visual and sufficiently quirky for the setting of an abandoned funfair. Speaking of which, the funfair backdrop was quite a nice idea. It’s surprising that it took New Who eight years to get round to it. Ditto the fake moon landing set. That was another striking image. Pity nothing really came of it.

The first fifteen minutes or so were fine. There was nothing that made me think that Gaiman had produced the greatest episode ever (or even the greatest Cybermen episode ever) but it was good. He was building up an intriguing world and a satisfying sense of spooky mystery.

It all went wrong the moment Matt Smith got infected with a Cyber-virus (or something) and had to start doing the playground level nonsense of playing a goodie and a baddie sharing a body. If that wasn’t bad enough (and it was) Smith did a really bad job of it. The Crimson Horror gave us his woeful Red Skin Acting. This was worse.

From there the plot lurched from one piece of stupidity to another. The kids were reduced to standing around doing nothing (which made me wonder why they’d been written into proceedings in the first place) alongside Jason Watkins (who’s been rather enjoyable up until then). Clara started getting bolshy with Tamzin Outhwaite about who was in charge. The Cybermen flip-flopped between being a massive CG army and a single extra standing in a bit of water. And the Cybermen’s leader agreed to put his entire scheme on the line in a game of chess. Eventually the chess game turned out not to matter anyway, rendering it an even more silly inclusion.

In hindsight this was the problem with The Doctor’s Wife. Gaiman can build up very intriguing worlds within the Doctor Who bubble and set up a plot that has bags of potential but can’t quite seem to deliver a satisfying second or third act. Things just go limp and drift aimlessly once he has to start revealing things and introducing peril.

What of the episode’s stars, those newly designed Cybermen? Well, they looked good. And they were written to be more intelligent than the Cybermen have been in quite a while. Those were positives. But there were negatives too. The detached hand (unlike the rather enjoyed detached head) came across as ridiculous, as did the teleport-running. The less said about their Robocop walk the better. Although in fairness the stomping of the RTD Era Cybermen wasn’t that good either.

That they can still be defeated by gold made me want to facepalm. I’m sure Moffat and Gaiman were high-fiving each other over such a great reference but to anyone unaware of this particular Cybermen attribute it probably made no sense. Anyone who was aware of the weakness going in probably wished it could be dropped.

Their new big attribute, upgrading themselves on the spot, was a nice idea. It goes a long way to making them a far more imposing but it also led to anti-climactic scenes like them striding into some water only to slur out that they were upgrading as we were treated to shots of Clara and her “army” beaming with pride before looking crestfallen.

Probably best not to ask why they couldn’t just upgrade around their weakness to gold though. The show’s logic is fragile enough as it is.

The real trouble with the episode is that the Cybermen just aren’t a terribly good enemy, especially when used as often as they have been. It goes back to them being designed as the replacements for the Daleks when it looked like Terry Nation was going to crack America (spoiler: it didn’t happen). They aren’t a bad idea (future humans who have become machine-like and removed emotions because they make you “weak”) but the trouble is that people just don’t know how to write them to make them interesting.

Are they to be written as communists, everyone becoming equal? Should they be used to comment on humanity’s current obsession with new technology and a never-ending stream of upgrades? Should they be fetishized and presented as unstoppable killer robots? Are they Doctor Who’s answer to the Borg? That there’s not a coherent vision for them means that we’re doomed to get reinventions like this one every few years, and that newly introduced aspects will obviously be ignored by later writers. Which will only contribute further to their fragmented image, of course.

It could have been worse, of course. We could have had Philip Segal’s Cybs.

I’d like to know why Moffat didn’t keep the reinvention of the Cybermen for himself. Years ago, around the time it was first announced he was taking over and large swathes of fans were treating it as the Second Coming, I remember him being asked in an interview (probably in DWM but frustratingly I can’t find any trace of it there) if he’d had any ideas under RTD that hadn’t worked out. His reply was that he’d had several that had had to go unmade for budgetary reasons or because Big Russ had plans for the same things.

One of the plots Moffat mentioned was a Cybermen story. He said it would have been his definitive take on them and would have cast them in a new light.

Given that he seemed to give Gaiman free rein to do whatever he wanted it would appear that Moff’s own Cybermen story has been dropped. Or postponed. Perhaps he’s holding off on it for his final regular contribution to the series or Matt Smith’s regeneration, assuming that’s not a “surprise” next week (which I doubt it will be).

On a final note regarding Nightmare in Silver I’d like to address the trailer. Given Moffat has stated numerous times over the years that he dislikes the next time trailers giving away plot points I find it odd that Richard E Grant was shown menacing the Doctor ahead of next week’s show. Perhaps a disgruntled former exec producer let that one slip through.

Ten in Fifty

Two hours before Doctor Who returned to TV yesterday the BBC announced that David Tennant and Billie Piper would be guest stars for the official fiftieth anniversary episode. Filming on that starts this week and will air some time towards the end of the year, most likely in the latter half of November. The casting is A Good Thing in that it will see the return of arguably the most popular, and certainly most successful, actor to ever play the part.

The timing seemed off though. When you’re two hours away from launching what is essentially a new series (technically it’s a continuation of the one that started last autumn) the last thing you should be doing is running the risk of upstaging your leading man. Tennant coming back to the part of the Tenth Doctor definitely does that.

I can understand the timing of the decision. Having the announcement of Doctor Ten’s return coincide with the airing of the first new episode of 2013, the fiftieth anniversary year, makes sense. But was there a need to make that announcement before it aired?

I think it would have been better to tack the announcement on to the end of the episode, after or instead of the next time trailer. Filming may not have started but some sort of visual teaser could’ve been cobbled together from the more than ample amount of existing footage of Tennant and Piper in the show. Even a simple announcement would have been fine. That would have insured the news reached more Who viewers, the only people even remotely interested in this news, than something being released at four in the afternoon and would have avoided upstaging Matt Smith’s performance and the (proper) introduction of Jenna-Louise Coleman as the new and instantly generic companion.

Like I say, the move to bring back Tennant is A Good Thing. It’s going to create the feeling of event television that most people seem to think is necessary for the official anniversary episode. That feeling is never going to be adequately met but Tennant’s involvement will get the production team closer than they’d come otherwise. The other option they had, bunging all the major villains into a single hair raising tale, was already frittered away on The Pandorica Opens, Moffat’s first dire attempt at an all-singing, all-dancing season finale.

Realistically it’s hard to imagine what Tennant and Piper are going to be given to do. A few in-jokes from Rose about having witnessed regeneration before and some sniping about “the new model” from the Tenth Doctor seem like a safe bet. But if we want that sort of thing all we have to do is jam The Three Doctors into our DVDs players. Every other multi-Doctor story since has just been a riff on that flimsy theme.

Is there a plot out there that could necessitate a multi-Doctor story, or at least make it funny or give it a fresh spin? Absolutely. But based on his current body of Who work I do not think Steven Moffat, familiar bag of tricks and all, is the man to give it to us.