Hell Bent

I'm not going to say this was the worst season finale Steven Moffat's ever written but that's mostly because The Name of the Doctor exists. This was not a suitable end for what's been a pretty good season overall. It wasn't that it was badly made or acted, or badly written for that matter. It's that it was trying too hard to hard to be a big, epic story and in doing so it got too wrapped up in its own self-importance.

This was Big Steve's first proper go at tinkering with Gallifrey, something that was always going to end badly. Because Gallifrey stories can't be done without heavy use of continuity and Moffat doesn't really do well with that. He makes continuity the focus instead of using it sparingly to embellish his stories. The answer, generally speaking, is not to do Gallifrey stories in the first place unless under very specific circumstances. The lone Gallifrey story of the Davies era (The End of Time) worked because we'd have five years to build up to it and it was used as the backdrop for the exit of arguably the most popular lead actor in the show's history in David Tennant¹.

Moffat played all the expected cards: Rassilon, the Matrix, Ohila, Ashildr, Clara not being dead, soldiers siding with the Doctor, lines of dialogue echoing the show's past. The only real surprise was the omission of Missy. He threw in everything he could to make this a "classic" story. In doing so he made it too busy and ensured that it could only ever be seen in the light he wanted by people who adore continuity references above anything else (and it's worth pointing out he frequently makes out in interviews that those are the kinds of people the show should not be aimed at). He also made a hash of explaining what the plot was. Even if you got all of the references to the programme's past such a bad job was done of explaining what exactly was going on that I'm convinced nobody could have watched this and understood it on a single viewing. The Time Lords wanted information on the hybrid, but we didn't learn why it had suddenly become important. We didn't really get a satisfactory answer on why Clara had to die as scheduled, which hasn't exactly been an issue at any other time during the Moffat era.

Maybe the intention is for this to work with repeated viewings. Maybe this is designed as something that's watched over and over again, likely in conjunction with Face the Raven and Heaven Sent. To an extent that's okay. That's how a lot of people watch television now. On Demand services and DVD boxed sets being what they are it's actually sensible to take this approach on occasion. But it shouldn't be done at the expense of people who are going to watch once on a Saturday evening. Doing so is alienating. It's that approach that saw the show falter under JNT in the 80's.

Hell Bent was intended as Moffat's Deadly Assassin. His definitive take on the grandest aspects of the show's continuity and mythology, Gallifrey and the Time Lords. He's entirely missed that the reason The Deadly Assassin works as well as it does is because Robert Holmes was trying to avoid playing on mythology and continuity, playing against what they'd been up until that point and using them as the basis for something completely new. The lone new bit of lore we got here, the Cloister Wraiths (dead Time Lords used as anti-virus technology to protect the Matrix against people poking around inside it), were a nice idea and worthy of being the focus of their own story as opposed to a throwaway aspect of something larger. They weren't enough to justify the episode as a whole though.

I know what the argument will be in favour of Moffat using Gallifrey here: it was the backdrop for the exit of Clara. But the thing with Clara is, no matter how much you may like her and feel that she's a great character and that Jenna Coleman is very good, she isn't the Doctor. Gallifrey being brought back to bring about the exit of any character except the Doctor will always feel too much, because the Doctor, as the one constant throughout the show's ongoing narrative, is the show's most important character and as such the only one who truly warrants such high stakes for an exit. And even then it should be a rarity.

This isn't to knock Coleman, Clara or the exit. I liked all three. Coleman left showing what a versatile performance she can give, with only Peter Capaldi matching her (obviously). Clara got to leave to a greatest hits performance, grounding the Doctor, being noble, and demonstrating her yearning for adventure. She's never felt especially developed as a character but everything we've learn about her was used and tied up nicely here.

The nature of her exit was an example of Moffat's keenness to evoke the shows early years (something we've seen many times, from the understandable inclusion of the Hartnell Doctor in The Day of the Doctor to his less understandable inclusion on a library card in Vampires of Venice). Clara left her home planet in a TARDIS (which was for some reason trapped in the shape of an American diner), in the company of an immortal, and ostensibly on the run from the Time Lords. The mirroring with An Unearthly Child is infuriating in its obviousness but it carries its own kind of charm. I'm sure there are kids who would have watched this and enjoyed that farewell for Clara and (presumably) Ashildr). The real strength was her finally getting a successful Doctor-ish moment, surviving a memory wipe where the Doctor didn't and having one final conversation in which she knew more than him before leaving. It worked all the better for the initial framing of her being the one who couldn't remember, a rare example of Moffat's tricksiness being a worthwhile endeavour.

There were other performances worth mentioning. Donald Sumpter was perfectly cast as Rassilon, power mad and desperate to retain control. If you can't get a "big" name like Timothy Dalton casting a man in his seventies is the next best thing. The silent woman who attended to the Doctor while he stayed at the barn was good too, showing good comedy  timing and giving character to an otherwise forgettable part. But it was the Female General who I liked the most. She seemed like a promising new character in her post-regeneration scene but was presented as glorified muscle for Ohila for the rest of her time on screen. It's a shame she wasn't given more to do. She'd make a good semi-regular villain based on what we saw here.

Speaking of Ohila, Clare Higgins gave one of the worst performances in New Who's ten year history. It's easy to see why she's previously been relegated to pre-credits sequences, webisodes and YouTube uploads. She is not good at acting. Had she not happened to be cast in The Brain of Morbius she would not be lucky enough to be in this position now. She's getting work because of the showrunner's love of pointless continuity references. Although, to be fair, she was playing a character who became a villain for absolutely no discernible reason halfway through the episode.

Hell Bent is a needlessly complicated episode that focuses far too much on continuity and far too little on plot. It ends series nine on a bad note but it gets the departure of Clara right and as that's the central purpose of it it's hard to deem it a complete failure.

***

¹ If you're of a certain age you're going to be thinking that Tom Baker was more popular. I'm not saying he wasn't but Tennant is easily his counterpart in the rebooted series, the guy who helped the show attain the international appeal that's so integral to its continued existence now.

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.

Moffat Stays Hyped

You wait for months and months and then a bunch of Doctor Who news comes along at once. Earlier in the week there were a couple of comments from King Showrunner and Keeper of the Canon Lore Steven Moffat that assuaged fears that he might have stopped overhyping things. Then the week ended with the announcement of series eight’s premiere date, a trailer and a publicity still of Clara and the Capaldi Doctor stood in a new TARDIS.

I’ll get to the series eight stuff in another post. For now I want to look at The Moff’s comments.

As far as I’m aware they stemmed from the page Moffat writes for DWM. The first was a mention of series nine. Yes, that’s the series that will air next year, not the one that will air this year that Moffat should be building interest in (because, y’know, it’s his job). He revealed that he’d just written a “whooper” of a cliffhanger for the series’ penultimate episode.

So we know Moff’s writing the episode, which in turn confirms that he’s intending to stay in charge at least until the end of series nine. While it was the done thing for the lead writer to provide the final two episodes of a series under RTD it’s not always been the case under Moffles. Series six featured a penultimate episode from Gareth Roberts (Closing Time, featuring the return of hilarious scamp Craig Owens) and series seven saw Neil Gaiman in the spot (giving us his take Cybermen and space circuses). It’s incredibly unlikely Moff would entrust another writer with the series finale so it’s looking like he’ll be back to writing the final two episodes himself.

Does this mean a proper two part send off to series nine? Well, it’s possible. But… well, it’s not actually been Moffat’s style since taking over. The Chibnall-penned Silurian two parter and the Ganger debacle in the middle of series six aside Moff has tended towards two parters that have a second half that’s distinct in style, tone, story and (often) setting from the first. It was a trend that developed as early as series two as Russell T and the production team realised that the pacing of two part stories for a modern audience just didn’t work without a significant change coming at the halfway point.

The trait has been accentuated under Moff’s reign. It’s one of the things I think he’s gotten right. It’s not only helped to distinguish his era from RTD’s in a positive way (I tend to find most differences negative, as anyone who’s read this blog before will know) but it’s also made for better two part stories than the Davies era could generally muster.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that series seven featured no two part stories at all. Instead Moffat went with his much ballyhooed movie poster approach, which produced such classics as A Town Called Mercy, Hide, and, of course, The Rings of Akhaten. Moffat made a deliberate move away from two parters, saying he felt the show needed a fresh approach. He was probably right, but that he gave us such an average series without them may have caused someone at the BBC to request they be reinstated. Or perhaps The Moff himself has decided they’ve had enough of a rest. Either way it wouldn’t have done his budgets any good: two parters were introduced by RTD specifically as a money saver.

Of course the real thing we should focus on here isn’t two part stories or that Moffat’s sticking around for at least another year. It’s that overhype’s coming into play again. He’s written a whooper of a cliffhanger has he? Great. It’s not like he’s got a history of letting us down on those sorts of promises…

No, hang on a second. He does. The “game changing” revelation that River was Amy and Rory’s kid is my favourite example but there’s also his promise that we’d find out the Doctor’s name in the series seven finale. I enjoyed his promise that Doctor Who would be all over people's screens in 2013. I could point to more but, well, Moffat’s actually provided some fresh material so let’s focus on that.

His other DWM comment saw him say that it’s never been explicitly stated that the Doctor is not human. Having only sat through a small selection of black and white era stories, possessing only a hazy familiarity with Pertwee era works, and only really enjoying the first half of Tom Baker’s stretch I’m not familiar enough with all of Doctor Who to argue with him. Not that I feel compelled to because to be honest he’s probably right: it probably isn’t ever stated that the Doctor’s not human. But so what? Does that mean Moffat has to write a story (or stories) addressing the issue?

Is it not enough that Time Lords and humans are presented as different species and that the Doctor has always been identified as a Time Lord? Probably not, knowing Moffat. The comment seems to hint (or is at least designed to hint) at Moffat gearing up to present Time Lords as future humans. Which is about the most fanficish story he could go with. I’m reliably informed it was a passé idea in fan circles during the eighties and it’s notable that even when the BBC Books line (which had descended into an awful sort of official fanfic itself by this point) went with the idea they saw the error of their ways pretty sharpish.

The thing is that having Time Lords presented as future humans is something that could be presented as A Big Shock Twist™, quite possibly the Big Shock Twist™ he’s mentioned for series nine’s penultimate cliffhanger. If there’s one thing that can be said for Moffat’s approach to writing and running the series it’s that he has a proclivity towards Big Shock Twists™. I’m not against them in principle. They can work if they’re properly prepared for and people are encouraged to care about the plots and characters involved. But nothing about Moffat’s four years in charge indicates that he understands how to make people care. He just understands how to make people anticipate a revelation, and there’s a massive difference.

Oh, and he also wrote “Fandom, to your work.” Because he’s a twat.