Monthly Archives: September 2014

I’m Still Listening

next-time-on-doctor-whoBy no means redeeming Moffat for the first three episodes of the new Doctor, Listen, in my honest opinion, has been the best of the series so far and shows that despite evidence Clara and The Doctor can work together.

I did have some sneaky sense that something was just terribly wrong and that they simply didn’t work as Time Lord and companion. I can now see they still have a fighting chance – and I almost warmed to Danny Pink as well. Almost. It still might take another story or three to get me really bedded into seeing him as a viable character.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, you would be unwise to read any further.

On the other hand, if you’re still reading – it was interesting to watch an episode that really didn’t have a villain. The Doctor has fear as a companion and that fear gives him his strength. Without that fear, that voice that keeps talking even when no one else is around, when silence hangs heavy – without that, the War Doctor could not have stood the test and did what he did. Without that ever present companion, the Doctor would not continue to soldier on.

What was under the blanket? Was that Clara? If she’s under the bed, then was she under the blanket as well? I guess, in some ways, it’s interesting to leave that one unanswered. When you lie awake at night and you hear something in the house. When you settle yourself and the pipes creaks, or you can just catch something scuttling across the roof tiles. That isn’t Clara… What it is, well – like I say, best not to consider it.

That was an interesting character piece, grappling with the past and the future. The Doctor ended up at the end of the Universe again. This time, he seems to have gone even further than the last, when he disturbed The Master and the Toclafane. At the end of time, something lurked outside the door. Clara again, perhaps? Or, just the threat of something, the fear of something made real. A manifestation of that dependable companion?

Yes, Listen might have been a turning point for me. I saw a Doctor before me. I didn’t see Peter Capaldi. I felt I was watching the same old Time Lord I have followed so avidly before and he had a new face. This was not simply another actor playing a role in a way that left me feeling slightly uncomfortable. Here, Capaldi did his bit and he stepped into those big Gallifreyan shoes. I saw The Doctor and I found myself comfortable with it for a moment. I saw a little of the darkness, and I saw the touch of age making him something different. The Doctor that shies away from hugs, who questions existence, who struggles to accept that he doesn’t know everything.

And then the episode ended. I found myself watching the clock, wondering what might happen next. In the end, we discovered another facet of Clara, the Impossible Girl. Clara, who would be at the side of The Doctor from the start to the finish, watching over him. Even before he became The Doctor we know, blankets pulled tightly over his head in the dead of night. Sleeping out in a barn – a barn that would one day be a ramshackle place to think over the future of his homeworld and his greatest enemy.

In those wee hours when the monsters lurk everywhere and we’re certain, if only for just a moment, that we might not make it through the night.

I liked that rather a lot.

Almost as much as I liked the trailer for the next episode. That made me squeal.

Midway through the trailer, we catch a glimpse of a Police database with several brief mugshots.

We see:

Brilliant. Daak made me squee. I squee’d out loud in front of my whole family.

Missy – Facts or Fiction?

Missy-Doctor-WhoI have mentioned it before – Moffat has piqued my interest with the introduction of the character Missy (played by Michelle Gomez). She appeared at the end of the first episode and close to the end of the second, her appearances fleeting and curious as with Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber) in Series 6.

For my part, I appreciate these glimpse – I have a soft spot for Michelle Gomez as an actress. Not sure why. I was never a big fan of The Green Wing, but when I did watch it was probably to see her, Tamsin Greig, and the talented Mark Heap.

Anyway. I have seen various theories about Missy. Is she a renegade time lord? Would Moffat regenerate The Rani, as RTD regenerated The Master? Or, might she be River Song, who also has the regeneration-thing going on and the rightful inclination to refer to The Doctor as her ‘boyfriend’ (though, that might be a hint it isn’t River, as surely she’d refer to him as her husband, or more probably just ‘Sweetie’).

When we first saw her, I was taken by an overwhelming sense of familiarity with the setting for her ‘afterlife’, which seemed very much akin to the virtual afterlife River appeared in at the end of ‘Forest of the Dead‘. It could easily be they simply just used the same location or similar lighting – but, that familiarity and the reference to ‘boyfriend’ did scream River.

Thoughts of the planet-sized Library also slammed home with the last episode, ‘Robot of Sherwood‘. While The Independent seemed to be unimpressed with the story – which catered towards kids and caricature more than darkness and plot thrusts – I think I saw something different. Rather than an episode focussed too much on some inane quest by The Doctor to prove the fictional nature of Hood, why not consider this as more a matter of fictional leakage. Think Library, with a capital ‘L’, here.

The Library contained an immense amount of knowledge, including fiction, and the Moon set to maintain the integrity and security of the Library used fictionalised environs to contain viruses infecting the planet. Why not have a ‘world’ within the Library where Robin Hood exists?

The Mark Gatiss penned episode also contained a lot of in-references to previous Doctors. The Doctor questioned whether they’d landed in a Miniscope – from the 3rd Doctor episode ‘Carnival of Monsters’, the Sheriff had his chance while King Richard engaged in the Crusades – assisted by the 1st Doctor, and The Doctor battled Robin with a spoon – quite possibly a reference to the 8th Doctor’s fascination with said item of cutlery. Again… might leakage of knowledge from the Library have something to do with this?

(On the other hand, it might all just be fan boy stuff from Gatiss – including the fourth wall busting moment when we see Patrick Troughton in Robin Hood garb for an early BBC adaptation of the legend.)

What of the connection between Missy and The Promised Land? Are the virtual environs of the Library – filled with the knowledge and personalities of myriad people and civilisations – that place? Why would anyone seek to go there, aside from the potential for immortality – or a source of lost souls to facilitate some darker aim?

I suppose only time (pardon the pun) will tell.

Into the Not So Cool Dalek

into-the-dalekI have a real problem with the episode “Dalek“.

RTD made the damned thing so cool, no Dalek before or since can live up to it. Seriously.

The whole sequence where the Dalek assimilates time energy to regenerate, then heads out to exterminate its captors. The solders fall back, firing meagre weaponry that fails even to penetrate the Dalek’s basic shielding. We see bullets fly, only to slow, flatten and fall to the ground. The soldiers spread out, and we discover the Dalek war machine has 360 degree rotation in the upper and mid-section. Killing energies fly – soldiers fall, skeletons momentarily visible.

The Good Dalek did some of that here – and the soldiers tried all they could to stop it… but the Dalek couldn’t do anything really cool. It didn’t do anything new. It blundered along like the Jock sauntering into the party late, unaware that the really Cool Guy arrived an hour earlier in the same clothes and pulling off better tricks.

As a result, “Into The Dalek” didn’t break enough new ground. Doing the “Innerspace” thing, miniaturised to complete repairs, proved interesting enough, but the Dalek failed to stun or amaze. I want to be wowed.

And, I could easily be wowed with just that 360 degree swivel thing and a bit of hovering.

Or, if someone could please serve me up a technicoloured iDalek (per “Victory of the Daleks”), because I didn’t have a problem with that particular makeover. They appeared in “Asylum of the Daleks“, so why not since… and why did they appear on that occasion and not have an issue with the old gold-style kind?

Anyway – I found the threat of the Dalek underwhelming and the human forces uninspiring. For all the tough talk of putting The Doctor to death the moment he arrived, they appeared woefully ill-equipped in the face of a single enemy.

And why did they bring it on to the ship if they didn’t have the guns to handle it? I understand the lure of a partly disabled Dalek and the potential of turning it against your opposition – but, when it bites during the operation to heal it, shouldn’t you have proper gloves and something ready to put it down, just in case?

The Clara/Pink sub-plot didn’t grab me much.  It seemed weakly tagged on and all too obvious where it was going with the anti-militaristic viewed of the Doctor in the aftermath of his last regeneration. A Good Man Went to War – and he didn’t like it much.

I know everyone differs in taste and exposure to TV – and kids watching won’t have this issue at all (but, I’ll be continuing with this in a moment) – but guest starring Tyres (Michael Smiley, ‘Spaced‘) and Vod (Zawe Ashton, ‘Fresh Meat’) in the same episode proved a little too much for me. How can I take this war seriously?

Especially given the continuing adjustment to The Doctor…

I didn’t have trouble with the accent this time, but I did suffer some severe Malcolm Tucker moments. When The Doctor first inspected and talked about the Vault inside the Dalek that inhibited certain emotions – something in his tone and delivery just shouted Malcolm at me. Anyone who never watched “The Thick of It” won’t get what I’m suffering. However, I suspect those people who straddle fandom of Who and Tucker might be having issues differentiating the performance – which ultimately must come back to Capaldi and the writing.

One hopes that he still has time to settle.