Twice Upon A Time

Generally speaking plot isn't the most important thing to a Doctor's final story. Nor is it the most important thing to a Christmas episode. There's usually a hint of it though, something simple to keep the Big Important Moments (such as  a showdown with the chief baddie or the introduction of the new lead actor) hanging together. Twice Upon A Time is unusual in that it foregoes plot entirely.

What we get instead of a plot is a disjointed mix of obscure Moffat era references¹ and one final attempt by a departing showrunner to exert his will and vision over earlier eras of the programme. There was no reason for the First Doctor to be in the episode beyond a very tenuous crisis of conscious over regenerating idea that was never fully explained. It's the sort of thing that could work nicely as an eight minute TARDIS set scene for Children in Need². More is needed for an hour in prime time however, even on Christmas Day.

The captain was a more excruciating addition. He was there so Moffat could give his pal Mark Gatiss one final role, cramming in the name Lethbridge-Stewart as he did it.

These have been recurring complaints throughout Moffat's time running the show. It's fitting that they're present in the episode that closes his era. As is the case with that other Moffat staple of recycled ideas. Specifically The Testimony being a time travelling organisation that pulls people out of their timelines at the moment of death, an exact copy of the Teselecta in Let's Kill Hitler.

Meanwhile another classic Moffat trope (perhaps the classic) of technology not fully understanding the people it's interacting with and that causing problems could be seen to be inverted here, with the Doctors not understanding the way the Testimony shipped worked until the final fifteen minutes, and this lack of understanding giving reason for the running about that was going on. It would be nice to think this was a deliberate inclusion by Moffat, closing off the idea by reversing it, but it was almost certainly just a coincidence. 

It's a shame for Capaldi to go out on such a weak episode. The ingredients were there for something interesting. The idea of the First and Twelfth Doctors meeting moments before they both regenerate could have been interesting. The Testimony, a time travelling church that interviews people before they die, could have been interesting. A database at the centre of the universe is a bit bland, a bit Hitchhikers, and has been done before, but still could have been interesting. You really don't have to look that hard to see a version of this episode, ideas reconfigured and the lead character given something to do, that's interesting and contributes something to the legacy and canon of the show. That it falls so short is deeply frustrating.

Twice Upon a Time is the perfect exit for Moffat, a man who's spent the majority of his time in the producer's chair disappointing and underwhelming. It's a poor exit for Peter Capaldi. His acting capability could have made his one of the all time great eras of the show. He just needed someone willing to write to his strengths and he wound up with Steven Moffat. Capaldi's Doctor was the biggest waste of the Moffat era.

That era is, thankfully, behind us now. At this point it's impossible to know whether the Chris Chibnall will turn out to be good or bad, but we do know it will be different. Right now that's what the show needs.

Just ignore the fact that his first scene as showrunner³ sets the stage for either a return to a UNIT family-esque setup, an introductory episode that's similar in premise to The Eleventh Hour, or calls on the amnesiac-Doctor-trapped-on-Earth stories the EDAs did...

***

¹ Why was Rusty in this? Just why?

² ... or maybe a Big Finish audio.

³ Jodie Whittaker's first moments as the Thirteenth Doctor were pretty much what you'd expect. She got to say something brief and positive about having regenerated into a woman before demonstrating that she doesn't have full control of her faculties (by this point a trope in new Doctors that people fully expect to see), gently tapping what turned out to be the flush-everything-out-into-space button to give us a tensionless cliffhanger. It told us precisely nothing about how she'll play the part.

The Doctor Falls

Last week's episode, World Enough and Time, was one of Moffat's best scripts in years. This episode was the closing half of the story. Moffat has previously bungled a number of second episodes. I didn't feel he would this time though, perhaps because there was so much good work done in WEaT that he would have had to make a concerted effort to do so. Also because his four central characters (the Doctor, Bill, the Master, and Missy) were being played by such a talented bunch that it didn't seem feasible. Pleasantly, I was right.

This is not to say this was a faultless piece of TV. It was slow in places. Much of what was wrong with the episode can be attributed to Steven Moffat's propensity to become overly dramatic. I mean, the episode climaxed with the Doctor running through woodland gunning down an army of robots¹. That's a level of mindless, empty-headed action heroics not even Colin Baker sunk to. His fetishisation of the Doctor was as prevalent as ever. His fascination with writing companions who are borderline obsessed with the Doctor threatened to be a problem but just avoided becoming one thanks to the trope playing out differently to usual and a final excellent performance from Pearl Mackie.

But really, everything else was great. I've already mentioned Pearl Mackie and she seems like the obvious place to start with praise because this is the last time we're going to get to see her (at least until she gets a Sarah Jane-esque return in 2047). Despite having slightly leaden dialogue in places(due to her spending the majority of the episode as a Cyberman) she gave what is amongst her best performances on the show, getting past the by this point tedious obsessing over the Doctor to focus on the more interesting material given to her. The anger at him having taken ten years to save her, the brave acceptance her inevitable death, and her understanding of the simple farmer stereotypes being fearful of her and allowing herself to be further ostracized to make them more comfortable.

Bill's ultimate fate could be seen as a cop out. I mean, a character from twelve episodes ago appearing out of nowhere, with no hint that this would happen, to inexplicably bring Bill back to life runs the risk of undercutting everything she'd gone through across the previous couple of hours of television. I think it did undercut things to an extent but not enough to be ruinous. Bill dying would have been sad and moving but it would probably have been too much given the fate of Missy and the Doctor's death coming in the next episode. Better to give her a happy ending in which she finally got together with the-one-that-got-away(-to-become-a-time-travelling-space-puddle) from The Pilot and triggered the Doctor's regeneration with a tear, which, y'know, she cried because she was sad her friend had died. It's trite and schmaltzy but it worked as a believable reason for Bill to abandon the Doctor. And this isn't a show that should shy away from leaving its characters happy the majority of the time². 

Michelle Gomez also gave a good final performance. Hers was all about keeping us guessing as to Missy's true intentions. Which she handled well, playing a suitable level of detachment from the Doctor and coyness with the Master. It could be seen as disappointing that she didn't get to give us one final rendition of the utterly crackers character she initially played but, really, we've had that enough to satisfy. It was far more interesting to see her as a Master finally ready to repent and work with the Doctor.

Her death scene was one of the best things she's gotten to do on the show. She made the sacrifice of leaving with her previous self even though she knew (because she'd lived it before) that it would mean her death. That the Doctor was kept in the dark about this gives it that extra bit of tragedy: he'll always think Missy escaping with the Master was an act of selfishness instead of the sacrifice it was. It was also a good use of established character traits and continuity (something that Moffat's era has been light on), pivoting on what was seemingly the core motivation of John Simm's Master: his need to win a victory over the Doctor,. This may have been something introduced by RTD but it was paid off here. This was the way Simm's Master always should have gone down, not stepping in to save Tennant's Doctor at the last moment but trying to one-up his archenemy and get the last laugh.

Speaking of Simm, his was probably my favourite performance in this episode. I mean, there was the humour of him knowingly stroking his goatee as he talked about nostalgia and casually reapplying his guyliner as a siege was about to kick off. That was great. But he was also wonderfully, unrelentingly callous from start to finish, killing his own future self just to deny the Doctor the satisfaction of having saved her. Taking his three performances together I think his is probably the most fleshed out take on the character since Delgado. That final shot of him, slumped on the floor of a lift knowing he's about to die but cackling his head off anyway because he's convinced he's denied the Doctor something, is a perfect send off for that Master.

The supporting cast were... fine, I suppose. There were no standout roles for anyone except the regulars. Even Nardole was clearly an afterthought, understandable with so much continuity kicking about and far more significant characters to write for (and out). I shan't miss Matt Lucas. I still don't really understand, having seen the entire series, why his character was brought back. He seemed superfluous most of the time. The handful of contributions he made to the series' arc could have been handled in a couple of guest appearances. Still, at least he wasn't Matthew Waterhouse.

The Cybermen were... also fine, I suppose. After the effort that was put into reinventing them as exploited, eternally tortured humans in World Enough and Time it was a bit of a shame that they reverted to far more generic Stompy Killer Robots™ this week. It's understandable though. There simply wasn't space in this episode for them to be more. Their starring role was last week and I'm perfectly happy with that. I do find it a bit odd that a species so keenly obsessed with constant upgrading would assemble an invasion force that prominently included old models though.

Which leaves me only Capaldi's Doctor to discuss. This episode very much like a payoff for his time on the show. He got to be clever and brave, choosing to stand and save innocents knowing he couldn't possibly survive himself, which is obviously the endpoint this incarnation of the character was always headed for after his 'Am I a good man?' beginnings. His 'Stand with me!' speech to the Master and Missy, while well-delivered, ultimately felt it was trying a little too hard. I've not doubt it will go down as one of the Twelth Doctor's most remembered moments though, because it was so clearly designed for modern "fandom." If this were his final episode he'd be going out on a high.

But it's not, is it? He's got a Christmas collaboration with the First Doctor to get through first. Which is something that could either work quite well as a study on how the character has felt about regeneration all this time or fall apart spectacularly in a blaze of continuity porn and audience apathy. Which somehow feels like the perfect setup for Moffat's final episode.

***

¹ Look, I know Cybermen technically aren't robots. "Robots" was just a better word for that sentence than "androids."

² I could have done without her getting the exact same fate as Clara though. Especially after she'd just been saved from the exact same fate as Danny Pink. And the Brigadier.

World Enough and Time

In some ways World Enough and Time was a collection of Steven Moffat's greatest hits. The toying with time travel¹, the two drastically different settings that turn out to be linked², the friendship of the Doctor and the Master-slash-Missy³, a series regular transformed into something less (or more, depending on your point of view) than human⁴, and the twist in the closing moments that turns everything we've just seen on its head⁵. It was all familiar to anyone who's been watching the show for a while and could have been boring or uninteresting. It wasn't. In fact it was the sort of script I was hoping would be the standard under a Moffat showrunnership when it was first announced he was replacing RTD way back in 2008. 

Moffat's strength as a Doctor Who writer has always been thinking of an interesting central idea and working out how to showcase it to its fullest within the show's time and budgetary constraints. Writing one story a year under RTD allowed Moffat to stand out and ensured he didn't get burnt out by producing too much. He was obviously never going to be able to keep the same degree of inventiveness going across outside of a single story a year but the hope I had (that I suspect a lot f others shared) was that he'd find a way to make his approach work on a series level, using individual stories to contribute to a larger whole that would become clear in the season finale. He groped towards it with series five and the opening sequence of the finale that saw callbacks to a number of events that had happened in earlier episodes. But he dropped it after that and shifted his focus to the infinitely more tedious idea that was the River Song plot and such plays for attention as "starting with the finale."

His time in charge has always felt like it's fallen short of what it could be, like Moffat doesn't quite have the tools or ability needed to make his approach to writing the show work outside of a single story a year. That changed with this episode, as though he'd finally understood how to make all his favourite subjects work on the season scale instead of the episode scale⁶, just as he's leaving. It's a pity.

While I'm talking about Moffat as showrunner I'll make an additional (infuriatingly) vague comment. Before he took over he was asked in Doctor Who Magazine if there were any stories he planned to write that Davies had never allowed him to. His answer was that he had an ambitious idea for the Cybermen that would alter the way we'd see them forever. I know, typical Moffat hyperbole. Except that WEAT certainly seems like an ambitious Cybermen story that has the potential to alter the way we see them forever. I'll tentatively say this was worth waiting for and hope it's as good next week as it was this week.

That's enough talking about the lead writer for now. Him finally realising his potential as  showrunner after a years-long wait isn't why I liked this episode. It was the ideas. A spaceship reversing out of a black hole, creating different time zones moving at vastly different paces is the sort of thing that could support an entire series. The way it was realised on-screen was very good, making it clear what was going on but keeping things light with gags and character moments (the latter mostly for Bill). Doing a Cybermen origin story is a little cheeky but it made more sense than any other retroactive origin story in Doctor Who that I can think of⁷. Casting them as damaged humans just looking for a way out of a savage, broken society they were accidentally trapped in is a suitably tragic starting point for them.

The idea of the Simm version of the Master winding up on a stranded spaceship is an interesting one too. There's a strong chance we'll find out how he escaped his duel with Rassilon in The End of Time but I really wouldn't mind if we never did. It's not like it would be out of character for the Master to escape absolute certain death and return to antagonise his bestie, is it? The dystopia of the ship's bottom is a perfect fit for that incarnation of the character.

Which brings me smoothly to Simm's performance. It was very good, although that he spent most of the episode playing a different character and doing a funny accent meant we didn't get as much of his Master as had been implied. The minute or two he spent as the Master at the close of the episode were mostly entertaining because of the writing and the sense of confusion that had been built up over the previous forty-five minutes but Simm put the work in too. His glee at outwitting the Doctor was obvious, a nice reference back to one of his centra motivations opposite the Tenth. 

The other Master got most of her good material towards the beginning of the episode. The bulk of it was humorous and centred on Moffat playing around with Missy knowingly tinkering with the tropes of Doctor Who. There was weightier stuff but not much. I suspect most of her more serious material is being saved for next week as Missy and the Master seemed primed to have a discussion both about their nature, whether or not they can help being "evil", and their friendship with the Doctor, if it's ultimately worth it and if he's been a good friend to them. As things stand now Simm's Master seems to be fully prepared to embrace stark-staring madness and villainy for its own sake while Gomez's Missy, having been mentored and tutored in the ways of hashtag heroics by the Doctor, is our view into the character's more relatable, human side. Gomez deserves some more substantial material as Missy before she leaves, and Simm's Master works best when he's encouraged to chew the scenery. In hindsight Moffat's been setting up the Master's nature as one of his pet projects for a while, at least in part since Missy's introduction. That, along with Simm and Gomez, should hopefully make the Master element of the story's closing half compelling. 

Both Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie were excellent. I mean, that shouldn't be a surprise at this point. Despite having some duff scripts on this show over the last few years Capaldi has never been less than totally watchable. Meanwhile Pearl Mackie has turned Bill into one of the show's all-time great companions and done such good work that she should be in high demand whenever she leaves the show. 

Yes there were things I could have done without in this episode. This is the second time this season the Doctor's been shown regenerating. It's not the ludicrous excess of season six, where just shy of half of the episodes featured some element of the regeneration effect, but it's still too much. It's possible, perhaps even likely, this is all going to tie into Capaldi's exit. The Mondasian Cybermen being introduced in the First Doctor's final story and Capaldi being so close to leaving, along with this episode starting with him seemingly regenerating, invites comparisons and the drawing of parallels⁸. If this is all tied into Capaldi's exit the regeneration becomes easier to overlook. 

Essentially what I'm saying is that this episode was very good. The best we've had in series ten. Possibly the best we've had since Moffat took over, though that's a bigger claim and one I'd need to rewatch for things before stating absolutely. But it's clearly up there amongst the best work Moffat's done for Doctor Who. If he's driven you away with his nonsense since 2010 come back for this.

***

¹ He's been doing this since The Girl in the Fireplace in 2006 and it was particularly prominent during the Matt Smith series.

² The Girl in the Fireplace again. See also  the Library two-parter where a little girl who appeared to be living in suburban England had an alien planet, and the Doctor, inside her head.

³ This has been a recent development. It's a rarity amongst Moffat tropes in that it's not designed to show how clever he is and is more about exploring the backstory and nature of a supporting character.

⁴ The most obvious example is Rory becoming a plastic centurion. It's worth mentioning Danny Pink though, because he got turned into a Cyberman too. Redoing exactly the same thing with Bill (albeit in a far more effective manner) has to qualify as a new low even for Moffat, right? He's not even tried to hide the fact that it's the same thing done again.

⁵ Basically any of his two part stories. It's not a criticism of his work. It's actually a good trick to be able to pull off with modern Who cliffhangers. But that doesn't change the fact that it's something associated with Moffles more than any other writer on the show.

⁶ The key, unsurprisingly, was making better use of characters. A big part of what made this episode work was the reveal of the Master in a story alongside Missy. It works well because it's a returning character interacting with a recurring character from the last few years. Another element of this episode's success was the fate of Bill, who spent years waiting for the Doctor at his request, only to die just before he arrived. That's not something that would work without Bill having been such an engaging character over the last couple of months.

⁷ Yes, that includes Genesis of the Daleks. It's good but not as good as its reputation makes out. I'm also including Listen, Moffat's "secret origin" of the Doctor. But that was awful so it's not really much of an accomplishment.

⁸ Never even mind those David Bradley rumours.

The Eaters of Light

So here we are. Another mystery of the world solved by Doctor Who. Turns out the Roman Empire's Ninth Legion didn't simply disappear from records. No, they teamed up with a Pict warrior and walked into a blue portal buried in a hill to fight light-scoffing inter-dimensional tentacled dinosaurs. Obviously.

This is an annoying habit of the Doctor Who has had going back years. Taking some real world unexplained event and attaching some fantastical explanation to it. It's not exactly a problem but it does always leave me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It's a misunderstanding of the Doctor Who formula that works well: normal everyday things given a fantastiscal twist. It doesn't work as well because things like the Roman army, Agatha Christie's brief disappearance, and the great fire of London are not everyday things. They are historical events, and so they hold a different place in viewers' minds. I understand the reasoning behind doing episodes like this: it makes a good subject for a forty-five minute story and the BBC will find it easier to market with a clear hook. Still, it's still an approach I don't much care for.

Which isn't to say that there were no mysteries in this story. The stuff created for the show, such as the inter-dimensional portals, the specifics of the Picts' history defending the hill, and how ravens could talk, were left unexplained. The absence of explanations for every little detail was very nice. It partially, but not completely, made up for the appropriation of a historical mystery for a forty-five minute sci-fi drama¹.

I liked most other things about the episode though. I can mostly sum up what I liked by mentioning Rona Munro. I appreciated her not feeling the need to go into tedious and unnecessary details about the fantasy elements she introduced and she gave the Twelfth Doctor more good lines than he's had outside of a Steven Mofffat script. The general approach to writing him seemed to be more season eight than the lighter approach we've had since. Which, as I said a week or two ago, is an approach that I think plays to the actor's strengths and allows his Doctor to stand apart from his two immediate predecessors. Capaldi responded with a typically excellent performance, one that I think will probably be remembered as amongst his best. It certainly strikes me as one of the best "non-big event"² episodes he's had.

Bill was given material of equal quality. Whether she was awkwardly letting down a (bisexual) Roman, bravely swallowing her fears and rallying a group or soldiers, or displaying a passionate interest in European history she (again) felt more like a real character than Clara or Amy ever did³. Pearl Mackie was as good as she has been all series. I feel like I need to reiterate that it's almost a shame she was cast as a companion character, even one as likeable and important to casting progression in Doctor Who as Bill, because she would have made a tremendous replacement for Peter Capaldi.

The other elements of the show were a mixed bag. The location filming took in some inspired views, which has to be considered a good thing. The set designers had it a little tougher as they were stuck building wooden huts and stone cairns. What they built looked convincing but dark rooms made of wood are never going to impress anyone on this show. The design of the light-eating locusts was good. Murray Gold got a bit carried away at points, particularly when the Doctor was staring into the rift. I half expected the camera to swing round to reveal he was staring at an orchestra the music was so intrusive. It works well, but he needs to calm it down at points. But overall his work was good too. It's never actively bad, just a little overbearing.

Basically, Rona Munro gave us a good episode from what I feel is a flawed premise and everyone else on the team did their bit. I'll refrain from talking about how a McCoy era writer has been invited back to the show while Terrance Dicks, the script editor for the much celebrated Pertwee era and the man who helped cast Tom baker, hasn't written a script for the show in decades. 

All we need now is for Ben Aaronovich to make his triumphant return to the show.

***

¹ I'll just note here that I fully expect for this Real Life Mystery approach to be used in the future in an episode I end up really enjoying. I'll forget my distaste for the approach then because I'm contrary like that.

² The big event approach is one of the main reasons I think I've not enjoyed Moffat's time as showrunner as much as I might have. But that's a thought for another time.

³ Want to leap to the defence of these two companion characters? Name any of their interests outside of their friendships with the Doctor and relationships with Rory and Danny. Go ahead. I'll wait. Answers on a postcard...

The Lie of the Land

The best thing about this week's episode of Doctor Who, The Lie of the Land, was regular cast's performance. The standout among them was Pearl Mackie. Bill was again placed at the centre of the story and she gave another excellent performance. At this point surely she has to be considered the best companion of the Moffat era¹? She feels like a real person where Amy, Rory and Clara did not. Part of this is down to Moffat creating a character that doesn't seem designed to function primarily in a sitcom, but the casing of Pearl Mackie is just as key in it. She makes more of her opportunities to act (as opposed to just delivering funny lines) than Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Jenna Coleman did.

Peter Capaldi had a probably the best material he's had all series, certainly the best since The Pilot. His affection for Bill was highlighted and played perfectly. His friendship with Missy was explored surprisingly efficiently considering she only appeared in two scenes. The closing scene in which the Doctor was shown casually reading with her³ was an insight into their comfort with each other. Meanwhile his description of her as being almost as clever as him was a nice way to bring out a little pomposity in the Doctor while also underlining that Missy is not only intelligent but a potential threat. 

Of course the most interesting thing for the Twelfth Doctor in The Lie of the Land was pretending he'd sided with the enemy. The fairly lengthy scene in which the Doctor and Bill were reunited allowed Capaldi to get back to what his Doctor was known for in his debut season: being unpredictable. As a characteristic it was dropped after that season, probably because it would be hard to sustain that approach indefinitely. Capaldi's Doctor has mellowed across his second and third seasons. But that first season and the scene on the prison ship here demonstrate that Number Twelve works best when his alien nature is emphasised and you can't be sure of how he's going to react to any given situation. It also has the pleasant side effect of contrasting him with the ultimately very reliable Tenth and Eleventh Doctors², who were always very reliable and predictable in terms of the route they'd take to save the day. The detached and aloof aspect to Capaldi's Doctor side is something I wish had been reduced rather than removed completely. 

Maybe the biggest surprise of TLotL was Nardole not being the irritant he has been up to this point. I would still have preferred him not to be involved but Toby Whithouse found a way to make him work, seeming less concerned with giving him things to do so that he was freed up to function as the sidekick he is so clearly intended to be. He also leaned into Nardole's geekish nature more than any other writer has done, keeping him talking for a little longer than is comfortable about tedious matters. In short, Whithouse seemed more at ease with casting Nardole as an full-on nerd than anyone else and it worked well.

The sets, monsters, score, supporting cast, and so on? All fine (although the lighting seemed a little dim in the Missy scenes), I particularly liked the Doctor's white prison room. But then that's to be expected at this point. The team that makes this show has been doing so long enough that a certain base quality in terms of presentation is all but assured.

Finally, this episode can't really be talked about without mentioning oppressive police states and fake news. Obviously the world presented in the show was an exaggerated take on right wing leanings going too far but it should still be taken as the cautionary tale it was intended to be. It's important that real world concerns get reflected in our escapist media because it's all too easy to forget them, or for younger viewers to simply accept them as "the way things have always been" (a particularly on-the-nose warning this episode gave us numerous times). Doctor Who is a very useful vehicle for exploring things like this and it's nice to see it doing so.

Being the closing part of a loose trilogy meant The Lie of the Land was always going to struggle in some respects. It had to wrap things up started across the previous two weeks by other writers and tell a self-contained story of its own in a satisfying manner, with the additional wrinkle of reintroducing Missy. It also had to tell its own self-contained story in a satisfying manner. It managed these things and balanced them well to boot. It didn't excel at anything in particular but it also didn't fall to pieces fifteen minutes in as it could have. Chalk it up as a win, on average.

***

¹ Not that that's saying a great deal.

² Not that this approach is a problem. It worked very well with Tennant for a couple of reasons: it hadn't been done with a Doctor before and he had his Lonely God and Time Lord Victorious approaches (elements of both being present from his first full episode) approaches that could be implemented for variety. It worked less well for Smith because the approach had become familiar during Tennant's years in the role and Tennant was better at it to boot.  

³ "You read? You read on the show?"

The Pyramid at the End of the World

With The Pyramid at the End of the World the tenth series of Doctor Who finally hit its stride. No qualifiers, no caveats. The series' seventh episode got it right. There was a clear threat. There were interesting ideas and impressive visuals. The Doctor got to be the hero and save the day by being clever while people with guns were shown to be wrong (a bit on the nose but it's what the show's been doing for a while now, and there are far worse messages to send). There were significant roles for supporting characters¹. Really, the only complaint to be made is that this is a story that should have been used for the Silence, who always seemed a bit directionless despite clearly being Steven Moffat's idea of a recurring Ultimate Threat™.

The obvious thing to point to as to why this episode worked is the importance placed on Bill. The enslaving of humanity to the monks was entirely her fault. But it was something she chose, a decision she made for a clear, understandable reason: she didn't want to see her friend die. Despite knowing the consequences she opted to give up Earth and its inhabitants to save the Doctor, having absolute faith in him being able to win them back. We're often told about what a strong friendship  Doctor X and Companion Y have but it's rare to actually see evidence of it on screen outside of hollow, throwaway comments that mean nothing in the grand scheme of the show. It's great to see an episode that makes the friendship between the Doctor and his companion such a significant and crucial aspect.

Peal Mackie is the main reason this worked as well as it did. Not to diminish Peter Capaldi's contribution because he was very good with what he got to do, but what he got to do was the sort of thing his Doctor has been doing since 2013. It was a tweaked take on established material given to him because the writers knew what they'd get from him. The idea was not for him to be the star of this episode, and that's fine. I'll also take a Doctor who solves problems by thinking and acting (albeit in a technobabble way) over one who resorts to the Matt Smith tough guy "look me up" routine.

Bill, for the second week in a row, was given a wide variety of things to do and Pearl Mackie excelled at all of them. She was endearing and a little awkward on her date, a combination of perplexed and naive when confronting the Doctor on his utter refusal to accept the monks' offer, and vulnerable in her final scene, saving her best friend (plus a load of other stuff I'm forgetting - the point is she was really good). She even managed to work in the gags she was given in a natural manner. Her performance over the last two episodes makes me think she'd have been a better choice for Capaldi's replacement than Capaldi's last companion².

I wasn't impressed by Peter Harness's previous Who work (The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion episodes in 2015) but he won me over here. Perhaps Moffat had a greater hand in this script. Or maybe not having two episodes to play with encouraged more focus. Or maybe it's that Pearl Mackie is a more capable actor than Jenna Coleman, who was given a fair bit to do in Invasion and Inversion. Whatever the reason, he's someone who warrants being on Chris Chibnall's "invite back" list³.

I hope series ten can sustain this quality across its final five episodes, and that the Doctor can be given some weightier scenes along the way. Peter Capaldi deserves to have a good run of dramatic episodes to bring his time on the show to a close. 

***

Perhaps best illustrated by humanity nearly being wiped out by Tony Shales off Fresh Meat.  

² Yeah, I know David Bradley's been rumoured as the co-star in Capaldi's swansong but he'd be playing the First Doctor. Thinking of another Doctor as a companion seems utterly facetious. Though not as facetious as casting someone as another Doctor and promoting them as the companion.

³ I wonder if such a list actually exists, and if it does whether Pip Baker is on it.

Oxygen

"I'm still blind!" 

The most melodramatic ending to a Doctor Who episode ever? Possibly. It's certainly a contender. Whether it wins that particular contest or not it renders the episode that led up to the revelation as little more than a footnote: Oxygen will always be, first and foremost, the episode in which the Twelfth Doctor went blind¹. 

This is a bit of a disservice to Oxygen. The thing is, Oxygen deserves it. It was a plodding, moralistic base under siege story. Nothing memorable happened beyond that final, melodramatic line. The plodding nature could have been fixed with another draft or two. Same goes for the sledgehammer subtlety of the anti-capitalist message that cropped up in seemingly every other scene. I mean, literally being charged for air, could it be anymore on the nose? The base under siege approach just wasn't made interesting enough. It can work in Nu Who (see 42, Mummy on the Orient Express(mosty) and, of course, Dalek, for examples of this). It just didn't work here.

While Oxygen was primarily just a string of disappointments it did achieve at least one thing of interest. It provided a good example of the different approaches Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat take as showrunners². 

A refresher: the pre-credits sequence featured a man and woman³ clambering about on the outside of a space station with the woman telling the man that she wanted to have a baby with him when "all this is over" before a problem with her suit's broadcasting equipment was revealed, meaning he hadn't heard her. She was then murdered by two corpses in space suits while the guy mended a generic prop in silence, turned round to notice, and escaped.

It's a sequence designed to achieve a few things. Firstly, it's there to introduce one of the key plot points of the episode: air being a valuable commodity that is rationed by the company funding things. Second, it's meant to show us that, hey, these are real people leading real lives out in the harshness of space. Finally, it's there to introduce the monsters of the week, the aforementioned corpses in spacesuits.

It accomplishes all of this. But it does so in a hollow, perfunctory manner that is striking. We're told, at several points throughout the episode that the air is valuable on this space station because it has to be paid for. We see the payment interface, we see signs reminding people not to waste oxygen, the pre-credits sequence has the man tell the woman. But none of the characters ever actually act like speaking should be avoided in the name of saving oxygen. All those details are great and good bits of world building, something I'm usually all over, but when the supporting cast witter on like the supporting cast of any other episode it makes immersion difficult. If rationing speech is going to be part of a Doctor Who episode it should to be a central theme⁴, something that dictates how the episode is structured. Television relies on heavily on characters talking to one another. If that ability is going to be taken away from them the reason for it needs to be explored and the opportunity needs to be taken to offer a unique experience in which they rely on other forms of communication.

But what really leapt out as something that warranted comparison to the RTD era was the interaction between the two characters in the pre-credits sequence. Having a child together is one of the most significant things two people can do, and it's use here was clearly intended as a shorthand for Real Living Couple With Functioning Emotions And Plans For The Future™. It was then undercut with a joke from the woman about repeating her heartfelt speech later, which is a very Moffat thing to do and also wonderfully highlights what I was saying in the last paragraph about not being able to take oxygen rationing as a serious thing within the episode. 

There's no way to know for sure how Davies would have handled this scene but it feels like a safe bet he'd have approached it differently. There probably would have been general chitchat about the banalities of life in place of "Hey, we're on the side of a space station, let's have a baby soon!"The whole faulty radio aspect would probably have been dropped or reworked so that there was at least some meaningful interaction between the pair.  The man one likely would have looked more emotionally distraught when he turned around to see the corpse of his loved one staggering towards him. The scene towards the end of the episode where the woman's corpse handed her oxygen supply over to her still-living lover would either not have existed or would have been rejigged so that the man shows some emotion at having his life saved in such a poetic way. Or, possibly, it would have featured a tear rolling down the dead woman's cheek⁵. I admit I would have preferred the former of these two.

The Davies approach was to make supporting characters feel like real people and focus on how things like killer spacesuits affected them. Moffat understands the importance of supporting characters but doesn't go to anywhere near the lengths to get us invested in them, which means we get a watered down approach where small scale human worries and ambitions are fumbled at but don't always feel fully formed. Yeah, Jamie Mathieson (who's been pretty good with previous Who work) wrote this episode but that's neither here nor there: under RTD the sequences in question would have received the rewrites needed to get the tone the episode needed them to have. Oxygen highlighted the difference between the two showrunners in how they go about writing the show. 

I think the fact that the relationship in question and the episode as a whole were so flat shows that Moffat's just not especially good when he's not overseeing "clever puzzle" episodes. He's well-suited to big event episodes, probably better suited than Davies, but they only come along every so often. Moffat's approach doesn't work well with more standard episodes, and that's what he's overseeing the majority of the time.

A less pressing issue: why do space set episodes have to be all grimy metal and shadows these days? The Girl in the Fireplace (to take a random RTD era episode) takes place on a spaceship but never falls into these traps of uninspired set design. Throughout Fireplace things are always tinted blue or red or green, avoiding the bleak visuals of Oxygen. Could it be that the sets were deliberately subdued so as to tie in with the fact that the Doctor goes blind, tacitly linking our visionary experience to the one he has by the end of the episode? It's certainly possible, but nothing in the episode backs that up. It also wouldn't explain why space set capers have gradually shifted to this approach under Moffat⁶.

I'm sure the question we're all meant to be asking coming out of this episode (besides the clearly vital "Who's in The Vault?") is: "How will the Doctor's blindness impact the show?" But I wasn't given a reason to care, so I'm not.

***

¹ Assuming it's something that sticks for a significant amount of time. Judging by the way the revelation was framed I think it will stay at least through the next episode or two.

² Yes, this again.

³ They have names but truth be told every character outside of the regulars was so tedious that I can't be bothered to look them up. Deal with it.

⁴ Buffy managed an extended sequence of absolute silence about fifteen years ago. Surely Doctor Who, a programme that has far more tricks to employ to get to a scenario like that, is up to the task now. Maybe it just needs a better lead writer²...

⁵ I've never said Davies was perfect and a weeping corpse is right up his alley.

⁶ This is something that can be tangibly traced back over the last few years and seems to coincide with Matt Smith leaving. Kill the Moon, Sleep No More and now this story have gotten incrementally more basic in their depiction of space. I understand that it helps to emphasise the stark, unforgiving nature of a space setting but it doesn't half make things boring to look at.

Smile

It struck me the moment Smile ended that it was a strong contender for the least enjoyable episode of Capaldi era Doctor Who. I'd like to definitively state that it's the worst but with things like Robot of Sherwood, Time Heist, and the Zygon two-parter out there it's not a statement you make lightly. It's a shame that an actor of his calibre has been so consistently wasted. But he has been. We just need to accept it and move on, I suppose.

The central problem of this episode was that it was dull. That's a word I used to describe the previous episode. Perhaps there's a theme developing (hopefully not an intentional one). What made Smile dull was that it centred on ideas that have been done on the show before, and often. An empty colony city. Nanotechnology that's become hostile to humanity. A companion finding out that Earth will ultimately be evacuated and destroyed, making them Sad. Slavery being A Very Bad Thing™. It's all well-trod ground for Doctor Who.

Not that that has to be a problem. All of those things are worth repeating, but only there's something new to say or a new idea or concept to link them in with. It's not enough to dash off the same checklist of arbitrary points as has been dashed off every other time the topics have been tackled. Or, if that's not possible¹, then at least avoid piling so many well worn subjects into one episode. Space them out a bit and tackle them across the series. So much familiarity makes for very boring viewing with nothing new being said. Most importantly, don't explore these things in a script that seemingly goes out of its way to keep viewers unengaged.

Nobody mentioned this to Frank Cottrell-Boyce or Steven Moffat, the men responsible for, respectively, writing and polishing² this script. The basic plot was that a ship had been sent to terraform a planet and-or setup a base of operations for a human colony but the robots servants went rogue and started killing the advance crew that had tagged along. We were shown the robots going rogue in the pre-credits sequence so were never in any doubt they were the reason the base was deserted, yet it took a while for the Doctor and Bill to discover this for themselves before sending further time investigating the whys and wherefores of what had happened. Which meant the first forty minutes dragged as the pair ponderously gained all the information they needed, most of which the audience had known all along. Particularly annoying when it was obvious the creepy emoji-faced robots were behind everything, because who else was it going to be?

Mentioning the emoji-faced robots is a nice segue into the broader ways in which this episode felt like a failure. The bright white utopian cityscape looked the part but once inside the Doctor and Bill went from airy, open rooms to green-lit corridors to brown greenhouses seemingly within seconds of one another. It didn't feel like they were walking through one place. The original Earth spacecraft at the centre of the city felt out of place too but that was intentional, and frankly it should have been even more different than it was so it's a location that fails in a different way. The emoji-bots were neither comically non-threatening nor surprisingly sinister and moved with all the grace of oft forgotten 80's companion Kamelion. They were only ever going to work as one of those two extremes, the middle ground approach doomed them from the start. The interplay between the Doctor and Bill had its moments but overall didn't feel as good as it did in The Pilot. And as good as they appeared to be together last week asking them to carry over half an hour of the episode with no supporting cast seemed like a big ask in Bill's second ever story. 

Lastly, there was that problematic resolution. It was technobabble heavy and came down to the Doctor pushing a button. That's never ideal but it doesn't have to be a problem. If the stakes are clear and sufficient tension has been introduced then it's an acceptable way of tying up a filler episode (and this was clearly a filler episode). But the stakes weren't clear here and the only tension came from Murray Gold's blaring soundtrack. On top of that the Doctor knowingly wiped the recent memories of an entire technology-based species and "restored their factory settings." That's a pretty oppressive approach. With more time or emotional engagement it could have been played in an almost Genesis of the Daleks "Do I have the right?" fashion but that would have fallen flat with a species we don't know as vicious killers and with the build-up of the first forty-five minutes. A negotiation sequence, which could have happened mostly off-screen, would have been an improvement³.

Considering the miniscule supporting cast⁴ and reliance on location filming I suspect this was one of the season's cheaper episodes. If it was then this was the wrong slot for it. The Doctor and Bill shouldn't be alone for that long unless they have something substantial to talk about, and getting-to-know-one-another chat doesn't qualify there. Not having the budget on screen to gawp at just one week into a new series isn't a good idea either.

I enjoyed two things in Smile. The reference to the door the Doctor's agreed to stay on Earth to guard and the final moments where they arrived on a frozen Thames and were confronted by an elephant. Those were minor things and not enough to balance out the bulk of the story being boring twaddle that never really got going and featured some of the least ambitious locations, sets, and designs of the past twelve years. It felt rushed, and that's a worry when it's episode two of a twelve episode run.

***

¹ Not that that would ever be the case but whatever.

² At least, Moffat is alleged to do this. There's not much indication that he does, at least not to the extent of his predecessor. You could see this as Moffat giving the writers he commissions more freedom. You could see it as a lack of desire to have an increased sense of unity across any given series. Or maybe just plain laziness.

³ Even if you adhere to the Capaldi's Doctor is a harsher Doctor school of thought wiping memories and setting back the evolution of an entire species seems savage for any Doctor⁵.

⁴ Two speaking parts in the opening scene, two more in the main episode, and a gaggle of extras.

⁵ Except maybe, maybe, season twenty-two Colin Baker.

The Pilot

This new series of Doctor Who, the thirty-sixth overall and the tenth since the 2005 revival, was marketed as a good place for new viewers to start watching. I hope not many people bothered because it was inaccessible, poorly paced  and dull. These are obviously things you'd never want a television programme to be, but it's particularly troublesome for an episode intended to act as a an exciting launching point and reason to tune in again.

An ideal introductory episode of (modern) Doctor Who should be easy to follow, light on continuity, and introduce a relatable viewpoint character meeting the Doctor and falling out of their world into the universe. The Pilot achieved none of this. The story wasn't complex but it did require full attention, not good when you should really just be enjoying watching the two leads (and, in this instance, Matt Lucas for some reason) interacting with one another. Flitting to Australia, a quarry planet in the future, and a Dalek war served to show what the TARDIS does, but it was tied into a tedious chase sequence with a seemingly unstoppable enemy¹. This was far from this episode's worst offence though, so whatevs.

Continuity was heavy. I'm not talking about little nods for fans to catch here, they're generally alright as long as they're subtle. I'm talking about the bigger problems like infodumping a bunch of stuff about the Doctor's history and reducing the show's most iconic enemies to a non-threat that can be dealt with by Matt Lucas and a sonic screwdriver. For those new viewers that were encouraged to watch it would have just been extraneous information, the sort of off-putting sci-fi nonsense that drives people away instead of enticing them back.

It was new companion Bill's introduction that was main reason this episode felt more miss than hit. Instead of finding the world of Doctor Who seeping into her ordinary, relatable life and leading her to stumble across the Doctor (see Rose and The Eleventh Hour for examples of how to do this right) this episode literally started with Bill being interviewed by the Doctor and then being made his companion in all but name. Not only was it a subdued start² it robbed us of the chance to see Bill's journey into the Doctor's world. Why Moffat would pass up the chance to do this in his last go around in the producer's chair is genuinely baffling. It's a technique that can't really be used effectively on any other major TV show and works perfectly as an introduction device.

But it wasn't all bad. Bill was likeable, Pearl Mackie showing all the range she needed to for her debut performance in the role. The teases for what's to come (why the Doctor was living in a university and that potentially-Time-Lord-made gate in a basement) were fun. The evil puddle's motivation being that its human host was in love was something a little different for Doctor Who (though, sadly, not quite different enough³).  Peter Capaldi was as good as ever at taking borderline cringe-worthy dialogue and pedestrian plotting and giving us something worth watching. And the final shot of the "coming soon" trailer was of John Simm's Master.

There's potential for Bill to be a good companion and Capaldi to go out on a high. You just have to squint to see it.

***

¹ I won't dwell on the fact that the enemy here is the latest in a long line of Steven Moffat creations that fall into the alien-technology-that-thinks-it's-doing-something-right-but-isn't-because-it-doesn't-properly-understand-humans category.

² See the above footnote.

³ Not necessarily a bad thing, admittedly.

The Husbands of River Song

The Husbands of River Song was basically Steven Moffat doing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It certainly makes a nice change of pace from his usual approach to the Christmas specials, where he gives a standard episode plot or idea some generic Christmas lip service. It also makes a nice change of pace from his general approach of either writing about time travel or aping Robert Holmes (or both, of course). It was Moffat's best Christmas special¹. He kept things simple, aimed for fun (he even managed to hit it a few times), and didn't shy away from mentioning Christmas.

Although that's not to say it some sort of flawless masterpiece. It wasn't. This paled in comparison to even the worst RTD era Crimbo spectacular. For my money that's The Next Doctor, though whichever one you pick as least good it's going to be better than this. Even if you're really into Douglas Adams this episode probably wasn't better than Insert-Name-of-Your-Least-Favourite-Davies-Era-Special-Here because it wasn't enough like Hitchhikers Guide to be satisfying.

The other thing that could save this episode for some people is the presence of River Song. The thing is, most people aren't going to be into River Song to that extent. She's a recurring character whose last appearance came two and a half years ago, in The Name of the Doctor. The show should hopefully have attracted a few new viewers by then, but no concessions were made to them. There was no explanation for who River was or why we should care about her. Even people who follow the show enough to remember her could probably have done with a refresher on her history².

The episode's central problem is that it assumes everyone's familiar with River's convoluted character arc and is happy to see her back. Which isn't true. I've nothing against the character or Alex Kingston but I'd be perfectly happy if neither appeared in the show again. Self aware jokes about flow charts are fine and fun. The final scenes all revolving around things not mentioned since Silence in the Library (seven years ago), with no explanations on offer for anyone who didn't follow the references, was too much.

In fact I don't think it would be a stretch to say that anyone who's come to the show since Capaldi joined, and there have to be some people who that's true for, would have been nothing but confused for large chunks of this story. Even when her relationship to the Doctor was revealed there was still a that stuff with the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor's haircut and suit setting up Silence in the Library to contend with. This sort of approach is the reason Moffat needs to leave the show. He's a fine writer when he's producing one story a year but his approach to running the show is close to being actively harmful at this point. Give it to Mark Gatiss or Jamie Mathieson or Chris 'Chibbers' Chibnall or Sarah Dollard. The next series really needs to see Moffat bowing out gracefully.

Dragging things back to The Husbands of River Song... the show's other main guest stars were Greg Davies, best known as angry teacher Mr Gilbert on The Inbetweeners, and Matt Lucas, best known as one of the lads off Little Britain. Greg Davies played a megalomaniac king detached from his body for the first half of the episode and was very good. In fact Hydroflax could have been a really bad character had they not had someone as good at producing the yucks as Davies. Matt Lucas wasn't afforded such a memorable role. He wasn't especially good, but nor was he especially bad. He was simply there. His part could have gone to a compete unknown and no one would have batted an eyelid.

As I said in pretty much every review of series nine, Capaldi and the set design team were very good. Capaldi did a great job, elevating generic lines about River Song continuity into something watchable. Not for the first time I'm pleased we had him in the show over Matt Smith (although this is one of the few examples of an episode of Doctor Who that could not be rework to feature any other Doctor). The design team gave us a nice model shot towards the start (Hydroflax's spaceship), subtly reused Trap Street from Face the Raven as an alien world, and did a pair of nice spaceship interiors (although technically one may well have been a location shoot). They made it easier to gloss over the fact that this was an excuse for Moffat to revisit River Song as a concept again, something he swore he assured us he was going to stop doing after her previous appearance in 2013 (see here for one of many possible examples of that). Didn't stick to that, did he?

***

¹ I'd like to point out it had staggeringly low expectations to meet though, so this shouldn't be taken as any sort of worthwhile achievement.

² Here I'm taking about people who watch every week, or most weeks, but don't obsess every details of the show. Despite Moff's assertions to the contrary they still make up the bulk of the programme's viewership.