The Night of the Doctor

I squeed. I did. Unashamedly. Paul McGann, back on screen as the Eighth Doctor? For nearly seven whole minutes? Now, that's an anniversary special right there. I don't care if it's 'just' a webisode, or an online exclusive. It's Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat, starring Paul McGann, and it has a flaming regeneration in it. There's no way this doesn't properly, absolutely, definitively count.

And, luckily, it's really good. McGann's Doctor, in stasis for seventeen years (sort of), bounces back on to the screen just the same as he ever was. A little more weathered perhaps, but still the witty, compassionate, charismatic man we met in San Francisco all those years ago. I don't think Moffat writes the Doctor differently for McGann than he would for more recent incarnations. When Cass asks why they are heading to the back of the ship, the Doctor replies with that wonderful line "Because the front crashes first. Think it through." That's a line that Tennant or Smith would have had too; the Tenth Doctor might have said it breathlessly, the Eleventh absently, both of them stating the obvious. McGann delivers it patiently, with a suspicion of dry humour. His is the warmest of the Doctor's many personalities and that shows here, even in the darkest of contexts.

It's lovely to see him again. When the TV movie came out I was so excited that I got myself into a bit of a state and blinded myself to its considerable flaws. But McGann was always perfect for the part and for many years afterwards he remained the incumbent Doctor. No television episodes were made, of course, between 1996 and 2005, but the Eighth Doctor appeared in hundreds of stories during that time - in audio adventures produced by Big Finish, in a range of monthly novels published by BBC Books, and in Doctor Who Magazine's regular comic strip - and some of them, particularly Scott Gray's comics, are genuinely outstanding.

Troughton's the best Doctor. Tom Baker's the one I saw first; Davison is the one I grew up with. Hartnell is the original, Tennant the most popular and Smith is, blimey, you have to say he's right up there with Troughton, and sometimes even better.

But Paul McGann is my Doctor; from beginning to end, and through everything we imagined in between.


NEXT TIME...

The Name of the Doctor

Immediately this feels like something very special indeed. Still months (or hours) away from the 50th Anniversary, we are unexpectedly treated to a montage of previous Doctors, the highlight of which is seeing the First Doctor in the process of stealing himself a TARDIS. The significance couldn't be clearer: this is a story that started, as the caption reminds us, a very long time ago.

When we started re-watching these new episodes with Rose, the re-launched programme seemed to be almost in denial that it had a past. The premise, the core of the show may have been intact, but it can't be denied that there was something zealous about that first episode and something almost iconoclastic about the pairing of the Ninth Doctor and Rose compared with what had gone before. It was the right thing to do at the time - the audience need to know that they were getting something new, something revamped - but look where we are today.

At some point the Doctor regained his posh accent and his frock-coat; words like Gallifrey and Valeyard have crept back into the scripts; now the original black and white First Doctor, is stood there talking, on a Saturday night in 2013: a fifty year old continuity reference for a programme that is continually changing and yet always the same.

Once this particular episode gets underway it is chock-full of delights: Strax in Glasgow; Jenny and Vastra's trippy conference call; River' appearing in a puff of smoke and her disgraceful glass of champagne. But that's just for starters.

"I think I've been murdered!" Jenny's fearful cry is macabre and chilling - a heart-stilling moment, as a single tear flows down her cheek. Later on she'll be fine and I felt, originally, that this undermined the impact of her implied death. Watching it again, knowing that she isn't ever supposed to die, softens that blow, but this line is still an absolute killer.

The Doctor is Informed. Smith is running out of chances to dazzle us with his Doctor, but this is an opportunity seized. On hearing the mysterious prophecy for himself, the Doctor is devastated, utterly crushed in a way we have never seen before. It's a quiet moment, a private grief. Smith is extraordinary.

That Landing. The Doctor can't go to Trenzalore; the TARDIS won't. The closest it will go is to materialise in orbit above the planet, but the Doctor has no choice. He switches off whatever is keeping it up in the sky and the TARDIS plummets, smashing into the surface like a hammer blow. It appears to be undamaged, except for a single cracked pane of glass in one of the front windows - an ominous sign of vulnerability.

The Tomb of the Doctor. The dead TARDIS shell looms like a mountain over the countless graves, relics of a final battle. There's something irresistibly Arthurian about this set-up, with Trenzalore as a latter day Camlann. As with Arthur, it's only death that can allow us to look backwards at the Doctor and his significance. Like Arthur, something of the Doctor can and must survive, sleeping away within his tomb.

"The dimensional forces this deep in the TARDIS, they can make you a bit giddy!" It's absurdly easy to please a Doctor Who fan. Just recycle a line of dialogue from an episode they watched when they were five years old and wait for them to notice. About three-quarters of a second should do it.

The Doctor's Remains. Or the tracks of his tears as he calls it. Whatever it actually is, instead of a body or a catafalque, Moffat has come up with something else, something that can double as a visual metaphor for the Doctor's life, and therefore for the history of the programme itself. That's ingenious, but it is also beautiful and, perhaps most importantly, allows for vague character actions depending on the needs of the script.

Hang on... So the Great Intelligence's plan is to visit (or, in some cases, revisit) every moment of the Doctor's existence and change it for the worse. That's spiteful to say the least. Also, it's not clear how he is going to pull this off. For example, the last time he tried to kill the Doctor, he failed. Why is he going to succeed if he has another go at that point in time? The implication is that occupying the shiny-timey-life-lightning somehow grants him admin privileges over the Doctor's life, but it's by no means clear. Also, wouldn't this be one of the moments he visited?

Um... So then Clara jumps inside too, in order to try and prevent (or undo, again it's not clear) the damage that the Great Intelligence has wrought. I can't help but think this would cause both her and G.I. to appear simultaneously at every point in the Doctor's timeline. What do they do then? Rock/Paper/Scissor? How does Clara's desired outcome trump that of the Great Intelligence, and does she have any effect at all (other than in the Dalek asylum and in Victorian London) when all she seems to do is shout 'Doctor!'. Either she can be heard, in which case she is responsible for saving him somehow (but he has never spotted her?) or he can't hear her, in which case what is she doing?

But! Sorry, I'm not so much nitpicking as trying to get my head around it, but what can't be denied is that this is glorious. Clara is fantastic here, sacrificing herself for the Doctor even though it feels like they've only really just met, and if her insertion into all the important moments of his life is difficult to swallow, at least we can see that initial meeting on Gallifrey played out in full. That one definitely makes sense and marvellously ties this newest episode to the very beginning of the programme in 1963.

The Doctor and River. Wow, where did this come from? The Doctor grabs River's invisible, insubstantial hand...

RIVER: How are you even doing that? I'm not really here.
THE DOCTOR: You are always here to me. And I always listen, and I can always see you.

...and they talk. Finally, after years of dancing around the subject, the Doctor is allowed to be unambiguously romantic, even passionate. And it is fantastic. Despite idle chatter that we might not have seen the last of Professor Song, this is surely a perfect place to stop following their relationship. This conversation is a coda to Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead but the two stories bookend this romance with satisfying symmetry. Except... that last "Spoilers!" from River... If that's hinting at anything new...

That Caption. Where the hell does Clara end up? The Doctor says they are still inside his timestream, but that's no answer. Where is this space that has all the different Doctors running hither and yon? Maybe we'll find out tomorrow, you never know. Wherever we are, we are here for one reason. The Doctor's secret is revealed: a previously unknown incarnation, albeit one that doesn't appear to 'count' as a Doctor. At last, we understand the last of Moffat's many red herrings and the title of this episode: this was never about revealing the Doctor's name. What would be the point? Were we ever to discover that his name was Kevin, or Ulysses or Whovoratrelundar, what would we do with that information except go "Huh, so now we know."? It would add nothing, and take so much away. The title refers to the name of 'The Doctor' and the significance that this adopted moniker has accumulated over the years. For both the character and the show, it means something different now than it did in 1963. Whoever this other guy is, his behaviour isn't worthy of the name of the Doctor.

So it's a little bit confusing when five seconds later words are smashed against the inside of our televisions: INTRODUCING-boom. JOHN HURT-boom. AS-boom. THE DOCTOR-boom. It's certainly attention grabbing, but it's not any less intrusive than Graham Norton's cartoon face turning up over the end The Time of Angels is it? Also, is he called the Doctor or not? I'm guessing he is, on the basis that Moffat writes the captions and there's no rule that says the Doctor has to agree with them.

Ah well, that's presumably something else that'll get sorted out tomorrow. November 23rd, 2013: the fiftieth anniversary of Totters Lane, "this doesn't roll along on wheels you know", and a strangely elongated silhouette. The Day of the Doctor.

I am quite excited.


NEXT TIME...

Nightmare in Silver

I seem to remember being rather ambivalent about this one when I saw it back in May, although I certainly wasn't annoyed by the children. Some grown up fans seem to be incensed by the presence of Angie and Artie, as if they were Scrappy Doo or something. It's a nice twist to involve some children once in a while, and to let them see a bit of the Universe - just was it was nice to have Rory's dad meet the dinosaurs on that spaceship.

One of Doctor Who's key strengths is its intergenerational audience: today's grandparents were the kids who watched Hartnell and Troughton, and today's kids are the grandparents of the future who will sit down with their grandchildren and watch the adventures of the Twenty-Second Doctor. The whole thing knits together, forwards and backwards, and yes, teenagers can seem a bit stroppy, but that's just how they communicate! Angie, forced to spend her formative years in the period that future generations will refer to as the Great Snark, is doing pretty well I think.

And come on, we have Cybermen to obsess about! Gaiman's brief was, apparently, to make them scary again and I think we have to call this a partial success. The Cybermen are redefined and redesigned and there are some nice touches - but do we end up with a coherent idea of what the Cybermen are these days? Their reputation seems to have undergone the most radical adjustment. The Cybermen are now an unstoppable force - whole galaxies have been destroyed just to contain their menace. Their most recent catchphrase "Upgrade!" has become a battlefield mantra, and individual units can now download physical improvements in seconds in response to perceived deficiencies on the ground (we see them develop resistance to high electrical voltages and to anti-Cybermen guns), although the inference is that this can only happen when a Cyber-Planner is active and networked.

Other new features include heads that can twist backwards, or be removed entirely in order to be used as lures or distractions. Then there detachable hands that can operate independently, and a super-speed mode. In other words, these guys have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves for stealth, sneaking and infiltration. Which is good. I like that. Let's have more sneaking, creeping, and hiding in shadows from the Cybermen. But does it make sense? These new models are relentless, practically invulnerable, and there are millions of them - why would they ever need to sneak around? That's a tactic employed by fragile units, ones that are outnumbered or who lack armour and need to manufacture an advantage through mobility or cunning. These Cybermen are anthropomorphic tanks, they have no anxiety about casualties, and they can eliminate any weakness from their bodies instantly. They could just walk forwards, five abreast (and at normal speed), and never be defeated.

I think the Cybermen can either be invulnerable or spooky. They can't be both, and I think one is much more interesting than the other.

The Cybermites are good, and certainly an excellent upgrade to the clunky old Cybermats. The defunct Cyberman converted into a Silver Turk and playing chess is a wonderful image, but the key thing here, as with the reinvention in Dalek, is to humiliate the Cybermen before they can impress. Some aspects of this new paradigm are just plain bad though: what is that ridiculous shrug-of-the-shoulders walk they have? They look like they're playing at choo-choo trains!

So these Cybermen look great, but they've been rendered a bit dull; not only do we hardly get a whiff of their trademark body horror (their esprit de corps you might say), but they don't really say anything either. They maintain an imposing physical threat, but they've lost their psychological menace. Possibly because their brains are being used by the Cyber-Planner, and he doesn't shut up at all.

This is a really strong element in this episode, mainly thanks to the incredible effort Matt Smith has put into delivering both sides of a ginormous battle of wits. The duel between the Doctor and the Cyber-Planner is very satisfying, full of subterfuge, feints and clever touches: the Golden Ticket, the Doctor's voices, writing a note for Clara while the other half of the brain has control of the mouth, and more besides. Presumably, the reason why the Cyber-Planner exhibits all sorts of emotions is something to do with the Doctor's brain being involved?

Elsewhere Clara turns out, rather surprisingly, to be an extremely effective commanding officer, Jason Watkin's Webley is another of those nicely grubby characters ("Uniforms give me the heebie-jeebies."), and Warwick Davies prevents Emperor Porridge from turning into a spoiled dilettante. It's a lovely performance: a ruler, supposedly distant and aloof, who can't stop himself worrying about the consequences of his decisions. He could come across as irresponsible, but he's actually all heart. Thanks to these characters and odd little side-references they make, we get a real sense from this episode of a wider universe and a future human empire.

I enjoyed it a lot, particularly Smith's dual role, and it's certainly a good episode. But, for whatever reason, we still haven't worked out what to do with the Cybermen...


NEXT TIME...

The Crimson Horror

The Crimson Horror offers up a different vision of Victorian life to the one we've seen in recently in Doctor Who. This is the world of industry, all belching chimneys and humming factories. A dirtier world, where dead bodies turn up in the canal as often as they do in the pages of the penny dreadfuls, and where good upstanding women can try and build a new Jerusalem, and decided who will and won't be allowed inside. A world, much like our own, full of the grotesque, and of hypocrisy. 

Unusually (unless you count most of Season 22, anyway), the Doctor doesn't show up for nearly twenty minutes and when he does, he's been Ronsealed to within an inch of his life. That shot of him in the cell, painted red and gasping, is a memorable one and certainly provides a shock on the first viewing. (The hints were there, not least of which was Ada addressing the cell's occupant as "monster" - we should know by now, somewhere in between the 'goblin' of The Pandorica Opens and John Hurt's appearance at the end of The Name of the Doctor, as we are, that the Doctor is the biggest monster of them all.)

Before the Doctor is released, it falls to the Paternoster Gang to kick things off and this is no bad thing at all. Strax is beginning to get a little wearisome now (what the hell is that satnav joke doing on screen?) but Vastra and Jenny are good fun and I don't mind at all if the show is going to maintain an occasional presence in the nineteenth century. Between the three of them they contrive some lovely moments, but it is Jenny who offers the most value as she infiltrates Sweetville (lovely arresting image of the empty factory with the phonographs faking the industry) and rescues the Doctor (I like Vastra's explanation to Strax of Jenny's methodology "she need only ignore all keep-out signs, go through every locked door, and run towards any form of danger that presents itself").

The stars of the show though are Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, and Rachael Stirling as the blinded Ada. Gatiss wrote the episode specifically for the real life mother and daughter and it is surely a huge coup to have them aboard. Mrs Gillyflower is a tremendously horrible old woman, assured of her own sanctity even as she callously wreaks death on those around her. She saves her most disgraceful behaviour for Ada, her own daughter - having blinded her in a series of self-serving experiments, she then discards her as unworthy of salvation. For all that Rigg seems to be having a lot of fun, and Mrs Gillyflower can't help but be one of the more watchable, and deliciously bonkers, villains we've seen. Stirling is brilliant as poor Ada. A damaged woman, still capable of hope and compassion, who is then completely broken by her mother's harshness. She presents a striking visual too: a Victorian grotesque, pushing her way about with her cane, her white eyes staring blankly from her scarred face, her neck taught as she strains her head to listen. It's an excellent performance.

At some point I realised I had only the vaguest idea of what the actual point of Mrs Gillyflower's plan was - but I think it is sort of Moonraker isn't? She's so disgusted by the degenerate world (this from a woman with a leech suckling at her décolletage) that she plans to kill everybody and then repopulate the Earth with her perfect specimens? Whom she is protecting from the murderous rain by the simple and efficacious method of dipping them in red stuff and installing them in giant glass chambers, right? Really?

Oh well, it's still a lot of fun, and that image of Clara and her faux beaux, all plasticised and stuck inside a bell jar, is rather wonderful. Poor Clara. She doesn't get to do very much today at all seeing as even when she does wake up she has to share the screen with Vastra et al. However she does get to throw a chair into a control panel, she's the one that spots that the chimney doesn't smoke, clever clog, and she is the one under investigation.

Yes, despite what he said in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, it transpires that the Doctor is still trying to work out Clara's non-existent secret. He obviously feels slightly guilty about it, because when Vastra and Jenny realise what he's up to he cringes like a naughty schoolboy caught red handed, but he doesn't feel so guilty that he is prepared to stop digging. I have to say, the first time through I was still convinced that something was up with her too at this point - that had after all been the established pattern with previous companions. It's a slight shame, what with her only being in half of this story, because it feels like this 'mystery' is stopping the audience from fully engaging with Clara now, after a very strong first few of episodes. Perhaps if this sequence was spread out over a full season we would be able to balance our mild suspicions against her consistently faithful behaviour - but there just hasn't been enough time and the Day of the Doctor is almost here.

NEXT TIME...

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

This episode is growing on me, although it does seem to go out of its way to make that a slow process. Four elements to be discussed - three of them have made me scratch my head at some time or another since this was first broadcast; the last is something I'm only beginning to understand now, having watched it again.

That Title. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS? Oh, that's a bold claim to make, one that raises almost impossible expectations in the minds of most casual viewers, let alone hardcore fans. But, on the second or third viewing, I think I decided that what we ended up with was fine.

There's a delicate balancing act to be performed: we need to see the things we have decided will be there, like the swimming pool, the library and the, er, Cloisters, but different groups of fans will be fervently expecting the show to adjudicate on previous controversies: will there be a food machine? What about the Eye of Harmony, will the TV Movie be upheld or struck down? WILL THERE BE ROUNDELS?

On top of all that frothing and wailing, we want there to be surprises too, of course, and, to be fair, we get them. The liquid Encyclopædia Gallifreya is one such nice touch; another is the Tree of Architectural Reconfiguration. Then there's the great tome that Clara stumbles across, provocatively entitled The History of the Time War. It rather does beg the question, who wrote it? But perhaps the TARDIS spontaneously (and objectively, of course) writes up everything that happens as it whizzes past?

The Van Baalen Brothers. The idea of the Doctor having to employ the help of unscrupulous salvage merchants to rescue Clara is a good one, but these guys are too stupid to pose any real threat to the TARDIS and not nasty enough to worry us too much either. To be honest, it's a relief when the story ditches them so what are they doing here? And then there's that whole bizarre subplot where one of the brothers has been convinced b the other two that he is a robot. That's just ridiculous. Does he sleep? Do they feed him croquette potatoes and tell him they're batteries? It's a horrible and callous thing to have done (no wonder Clara doesn't know where to look when it is revealed), but also it is so very petty. At the end, they all seem to be back on their ship, and apparently their lives are somehow going to better now because of the events aboard the TARDIS that never happened. But really, who cares?

The Reset Button. Okay, first time through this makes no sense whatsoever and is pretty infuriating. On subsequent viewings it becomes clearer what actually happens and it turns out that the main structure of the time loop (eddy, whatever you want to call it) hangs together quite well, sort of. Here's the sequence: as we see it:

1. The salvage ship fires a magnetic beam at the TARDIS.
2. A remote control device for a magnetic beam appears inside the TARDIS.
3. Clara picks it up and burns her hand. Over the course of the episode it becomes increasingly clear that the device had writing on it that has been burnt onto Clara's hand. Eventually it can be read. It says: "Big friendly button."
4. The Doctor takes the remote control he stole from the Van Baalen brothers and writes these words on it using the sonic.
5. He finds a time fissure on the wall of the TARDIS and this time pokes his head through and catches the attention of his earlier self. He throws the device through the fissure.
6. The earlier Doctor now understands the arrival of the device and hits the button, therefore preventing the magnetic beam from grabbing the TARDIS, and causing a paradox. Which resolves itself, by and large.

It's more confusing when everything is shaking and booming and the Doctor is shouting, but there isn't just one iteration of the remote control device being handed around in an endless loop. I think. But it's not a great way to end a story, and there's no way the Van Balen brothers are somehow improved by events they can't remember.

Clara. Last week the Doctor, determined to discover her secret, was told that she was just an ordinary woman. He's even more determined this week. He confronts her on a cliff top and demands to know the truth. It's the same sort of behaviour he exhibited with the Flesh version of Amy: suspicious, not wanting to be taken in, slightly scary. He asks the same questions as before, and he gets the same answers as before. But this time he appears to believe them.

Of course, while he and we are focussed on the mystery of an ordinary girl, Clara is doing her own detective work. We don't care about the Doctor's mysteries. They're in front of us all the time, for fifty years, and we no better than to think that any of them are going to get revealed any time soon. But in Hide, Emma Grayling warned Clara that the Doctor had "a sliver of ice in his heart"; here Clara discovers his name, learns about the Time War. There is a mystery waiting to be solved this year, but it's not Clara's.


NEXT TIME...

Hide

Ooh this is a good one. Writer Neil Cross seems to be on a mission to make new Who more like the original series. The Rings of Akhaten (commissioned on the back of Hide but transmitted first) felt like it needed the space of four (or more) parts to unpack its compressed tale, harking back to expansive stories like The Keys of Marinus. But this script, although clearly inspired by Seventies Who (the Doctor visiting a country house to poke his nose into a scientist's supernatural experiments sounds like a Third Doctor version of Image of the Fendahl; even the 1974 setting splits the difference between Pertwee and Baker), is perfectly adapted to the slicker modern format.

It helps that this very pared down. It starts off with just two other cast members, the excellent Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine, and, apart from two excursions, the story is contained within the house. Atmosphere is everything. The quiet of the empty rooms; the unspoken, almost despairing tension between Grayling and Palmer (who is haunted himself of course); the legend of the ghost, told in clippings and notes and hand-developed photographs; the restless twitching of the needles on Palmer's equipment. The Doctor does his best to puncture all this - shouting "Boo!", taking selfies, prattling like a jackanapes ("Toggle. Nice noun. Excellent verb.") - but even his manic excitement becomes tempered when he starts to explore the house and encounters unexpected chills, odd sounds and ominous shadows.

The diversions, when they come, advance the story without ruining the atmosphere. The trip in the TARDIS is excellent but it also exposes Clara to a new unsettling perspective, one in which she has already lived and died (and not in the way that concerns the Doctor either). The reveal that the ghost is in fact a time traveller, stranded between moments and stretched out through the aeons, is an excellent 'scientific' rationalisation, but it also fuels the rescue effort, pushing the story forwards into the final third. When the Doctor ventures into the pocket universe it is a strange and disturbing place: only pale grey trees in the mist of twilight, and a twisted thing... It's very nicely realised. The location is not over-complicated; it is eerie and subtly disquieting. The thing itself, the Crooked Man as it is listed in the credits, is brilliantly done: we are given just glimpses, recorded backwards, so that it lurches unexpectedly, an unrecognisable shape, entirely unnatural. The effect is very good indeed.

At the end of all this we find out the real reason the Doctor came here in the first place. He wanted to meet Emma, and to ask her to use her powers to tell him about Clara. It's an important exchange.

THE DOCTOR: What is she?
EMMA: She's a girl.
THE DOCTOR: Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?
EMMA: She's a perfectly ordinary girl. Very pretty, very clever, more scared than she lets on.
THE DOCTOR: And that's it, is it?
EMMA: Why? Is that not enough?

It may only be a seven episode season, but we have been conditioned to expect an arc, a mystery. As far as the Doctor's concerned, as far as the TARDIS is concerned, there is something odd about Clara, and therefore that's what we think too. We are wrong.

Cold War

A return for Mark Gatiss, a return for the Ice Warriors and a return to the Eighties for Doctor Who. When I heard the premise for this story it all seemed so obvious, as if there had previously been a hole in the Universe that Cold War had been designed to plug. A Martian warrior, hauled out of the ice by Soviet sailors, runs amok inside a submarine during a potential USA/USSR nuclear flashpoint? Absolutely! And in a sense, Gatiss is plugging a gap.

Fans have been regularly and incorrectly anticipating the imminent return of the Ice Warriors since about, ooh, 1983, when Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary prompted the show to revivify long lost villains from its past. For example, there was Warriors of the Deep (January '84), which saw the return of the Silurians and, er, the Sea Devils, and, set in a deep-sea military base, agonised about a cold war between two nuclear powers turning hot. Despite some strong moments, the story was plagued by production issues and, well, not very good. The reptilian Earthlings suffered from some dodgy revamping and the whole thing was lit with a one billion watt bulb. You'd be forgiven for thinking there should have been another way.

Cold War is it. The best form of revisionist history, it takes the real-world nuclear tension of 1983, brings back the Ice Warriors with a subtle and excellent redesign, and, with modern Who production values, makes the whole thing look bloody good. And it doesn't need to twist itself in knots to explain its oh-so-neat title (I'm looking at you The Power of Three). What's not to like.

Time to rattle through some things.

The Submarine. Moody, atmospheric, claustrophobic? Tick, tick, tick, all present and correct, along with gallons of water, red lighting and torpedo tubes. Was there a periscope? I don't remember now, but if there wasn't, I didn't miss it at the time. I've seen this described as a classic Sixties 'base under siege' environment, but really it's even more confined than that and, of course, the sub is not under siege (unless you count the bottom of the sea): the Ice Warrior is already in here with them. It's a fantastic bit of set design even though it is just a little bit on the roomy side - but then imagine how terrible and improbable it would have looked if they had stuck to the compressed dimensions of a real sub.

Skaldak. Excellent redesign of the Ice Warrior. Gone are the child-bearing hips and the Lego hands, but the classic look remains intact. Nicholas Briggs works his magic on another voice (exotic, sibilant but still blissfully audible) and Spencer Wilding provides the looming presence. Gatiss writes beautifully for the Martian, capturing that signature wistfulness and poetically evoking the culture of an alien world ("The songs of the Red Snow"). And then the surprises - Skaldak escaping from his suit, the spindly hands descending from the shadows, the final reveal of the native Martian physiognomy... I liked all of that, it felt like progress. One day, when we win the CGI lottery, I'd love the TARDIS to visit Mars in its pomp.

Clara. It used to be that companions just jumped aboard and found their feet. Or didn't and just stood about faffing for two years. But these days, joining the TARDIS is a bit like becoming a Blue Peter presenter, constantly having to prove their worth through tests and extreme situations. Having lived like a Dalek for a year and nailed the skydiving, Clara's next challenge is to interrogate an Ice Warrior! Let's see how she got on. Needless to say, she's no Adam and passes with flying colours. But her key moment comes when she does suddenly have a wobble. Having held it together through the conversation with Skaldak, the deaths of the sailors and the alien hunt, she cracks at the point of greatest tension as the inscrutable Martian ship hovers and the world teeters on the edge of nuclear war. And thank goodness she does, because I would have started screaming about forty minutes earlier and this recognisable moment of real fear ensures that Clara remains ordinary and likeable.

The Russians. Liam Cunningham, having escaped the utter dross that was Outcasts, resurfaces here as very likeable Captain Zhukov. Definitely the safe pair of hands one would want in charge of an enemy nuclear sub, especially if there are dangerous lunatics like Stepashin aboard. Although the lieutenant's bellicosity looks like it's heading somewhere when he offers to make a deal with Skaldak, he doesn't make it to the final scene. Those final moments are fairly tense as they are, sure, but I can't help but think they could have been more dramatic if Stepashin had been there trying to press the button himself. Then there's David Warner, playing the eccentric scientist Grisenko. Warner is a legend (if only for his work with Gatiss on the wonderful radio sci-fi comedy Nebulous), and surely deserves a meatier role than this. Because it's Warner, I was initially suspicious of Grisenko's amiable nature - but he does just turn out to be nice. It feels like a bit of waste, but then it's still good to see him in Doctor Who. And lastly, William on the anonymous crew member who decides to take a blowtorch to Skaldak's ice block in the first place: "Oh, he's an idiot. That is clearly not a mammoth."



NEXT TIME...

The Rings of Akhaten

Okay, when I first saw this I was convinced this was the worst new episode since New Earth. On reflection, I think that's probably still true from a cold, objective point of view - but that would be to wilfully ignore that The Rings of Akhaten is bold and exciting attempt at something more exotic.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. It's looks weird: there's something claustrophobic about it on-screen and it's difficult not to notice that it's filmed on just two or three studio sets. The space bike effect is very static and flat. The story is difficult to follow, and stops being at all interesting quite early on. Who are the Vigil? Why are they chasing Merry? Why do they appear in the tomb? Why don't they try and stop the Doctor when he's haranguing that planet? Is the planet alive? Or is it infested? How will destroying the creature affect the planetoids in orbit around it? How come everyone's forgotten that it's there? What effect is singing supposed to have on it? Is it Merry who sticks Clara to the mummy's case? Why? Who's the mummy and what's it for? The planet is poisoned by the "infinite potential" caused by the fact that Clara's mum died prematurely, but not by the Doctor's interminable experiences of alternate timelines, other universes, hypothetical futures and so forth? Um, okay!

So it looks a bit ropey and the story's half-baked. So far, so 1987. But there is a lot of good stuff that should be counted in defence of The Rings of Akhaten.

Much of the design work is excellent, especially the Vigil (which makes it all the more annoying that they don't do more in the story). The market scenes, the crowds and the effect shots of the system make this the most exotic and interesting alien world we have seen in years - certainly since A Christmas Carol, probably since The Doctor's Daughter, and possibly even further back than that. Furthermore, these people have a proper culture, a social hierarchy, myths and legends, an economy, a religion - it's all fascinating, and a hell of a lot more than we usually get for non-human societies. (Although, if their monetary system is based on paying for things with items of personal, sentimental value, how does that work? The ring, for example, that Clara gives to Doreen, is invaluable to the human, but worth nothing to the alien, for whom it has no history. If she asked for a refund, what would she get back? Presumably something that meant a lot to Doreen, but nothing to Clara...)

Sorry, got distracted. The nub of it is that while this is quite a bad story, it is also a beautiful and exciting breath of fresh air. It's right that Doctor Who takes risks, experiments and tries to show us the more exotic corners of the Universe. It would be much less fun to play it safe.


NEXT TIME...

The Bells of Saint John

Rather an odd beginning to the Doctor's search for the real Clara Oswald - having just chatted to her as a child in the mini-prequel, he then retreats to a thirteenth century Cumbrian monastery to "divine her message". Well, why not I suppose. Presumably he didn't realise he had been speaking to Clara herself and besides, the episode proper can't rely on ten million people all dutifully clicking on an optional webisode for plot developments (or can it?). In any case, it creates the perfect opportunity to justify the story's title with a satisfyingly incongruous telephone call.

And with that all out of the way Doctor Who screeches up to the very edge of ultra-modernity, almost, but not quite teetering and falling into the future. In many ways it is to 2013 what The War Machines was to 1966: swap those eponymous tanks for the Spoonheads, the Post Office Tower for the Shard, WOTAN for the Great Intelligence... Except of course that any similarity is utterly obscured by the astonishing changes that those forty-seven years have wrought.

This episode is thoroughly au fait with the pervasive and inter-connected nature of modern technology. The lights in your street can bring down a plane; human behaviour can be adjusted with an app; people's most private data (their, er, souls?) can be uploaded to the cloud, or rewritten. Kizlet traces the Doctor not with CCTV, but by flicking in real time through the location-pinned photos that are being uploaded to the web. Clara discovers the enemy HQ by hacking their webcams and cross-referencing the data against social media profiles. There are no ponderous explanations, it all just flashes across our eyes, the screen filling with code and data; none of this seems outlandish, or incredible to us sat at home - we get it, we are already part of the technosphere.

This is why it's not facile or cliched to turn wi-fi into a threat. This isn't the plastic attacking in Terror of the Autons, or the Christmas tree turning on Rose and Jackie. We're being shown the world we live in, and good thing too.

There are some superb moments in The Bells of Saint John. The creepy sweet way the Doctor tends to the fallen Clara. The breath-taking scene that rushes us into the TARDIS and back out through the doors onto a crashing passenger jet, Clara still clutching a cup of tea. The scene in the cafe where Kizlet hijacks passers-by to intimidate the Doctor. The way the Doctor outwits Kizlet (classic Moffat: it's so obvious, but only after he's shown us how the trick was done). The way the Great Intelligence's employees collapse and revert back to their original personalities (although, if they were just glorified automata, why did they all have Facebook accounts?). Celia Imrie in particular is fabulous throughout, but when she turns into that small child... brrr! Scary stuff, for adults and children alike, and a cracking start to this half of Series Seven.  


NEXT TIME...

The Snowmen

The Doctor Who Wheel of Festive Settings is given its annual spin and - bing! - comes up Victorian once again. But unlike the two most recent Yuletide specials, The Snowmen is not just doing Christmas for Christmas' sake. This story has an important job to do: the show has to pivot, here, from Amy to Clara, from 7a to 7b, and the Doctor has to make the transition, just like everybody else.

He has succumbed to the most extraordinary sulk in the wake of Amy's departure (you can't convince me he's depressed about poor Rory). I let this slide when I first watched this, but now it seems bewildering. Having said that, the surly, shabby Doctor is rather fun, lurking in the shadows in his wonderful hat (Smith at his most Troughtonesque), and parking his TARDIS up on a cloud, like something out of a George Méliès film. But, again, compared with the departures of Rose or Donna, his depression is excessive and rather disturbing. Whatever his obsession has been with Amy (and I don't fully buy all that "first face I saw" stuff in The Power of Three), both he, and the show, need to get over it, pronto.

This is why we are here, of course, and so, thankfully, Clara turns up almost immediately. Jenna Coleman, with her engaging and clever performance, her enormous and expressive eyes, and an arsenal of weapons-grade smirks, has definitely got the measure of things and makes this version of Ms Oswald a little less flirty than Oswin was, but no less forward thinking. Within a few seconds Clara has amply demonstrated her credentials - an inquiring and intelligent mind, a tendency to curiosity over fear, a stubborn tenacity, and the ability to run like the wind in a dress and heels. Neither we nor the Doctor are given any choice but to take to her straight away.

After that strong start, she just gets more interesting and more likeable. The barmaid/governess duality is a bit odd, but provides her with an effective monopoly on female Victorian life - common and street-smart on the one hand, refined, learned and eloquent on the other. She deals effortlessly with the clumsy advances of Captain Latimer Von Trapp and chases the Doctor down twice, the second time navigating a fearsomely contrived interview with Madame Vastra that is nonetheless immensely satisfying thanks to the momentary frisson of her final fluked answer: "Pond."

Even now, she faces one final test: a cynical challenge set before her by the Doctor that she overcomes with an umbrella and no shortage of Poppins-like élan. Finally she can ascend to the TARDIS, and to the full companion status. At which point clever, mean old Mr Moffat pulls the rug from under us all, and dashes poor Clara upon the cobblestones. Deeply unfortunate for her, of course, but a wonderful, if dastardly, shot in the arm for this story: a dark twist that propels the Doctor through the final act and on into the rest of Series Seven.

Plenty of other stuff to like here too, and none more impressive than the CGI-assisted shot that finally manages to place the interior of the TARDIS inside the outside. Blimey, we've waited a long time to see that. The Paternoster Gang (great name, much better than The Silver Cloak) are a real treat. It's great to see Vastra in her adopted (if not native) environment, and Jenny (her relative ordinariness is crucial to this triumvirate and holds the gang together) continues to charm and delight, part 'umble servant, part samurai dominatrix. And it's fantastic to see cross-species lesbian relationships normalised on prime-time family Christmas television - surely to goodness that's the point of Doctor Who, even if Sydney Newman forgot to jot it down at the time. Strax may be a shadow of his former self, he may have ruined the Sontarans forever, but he is undeniably hilarious - for now at least. The business with the memory worm is exquisite (all the more so thanks to the eventual pay-off) and about a squizillion times funnier than when Del Boy fell through that gap in the bar. Oh yes it is.

Speaking of funny, all that Sherlock zaniness just isn't. Yes, it's a bit meta, and almost justified by Vastra's crypto-Holmesian set-up, but do we really need jokes based on the fact that Moffat is involved with other programmes?

Richard E Grant is also not funny, but then this is a good thing. His Doctor Simeon is appropriately chilly and played ramrod straight - exactly what this needed. Sir Ian McKellen (I know!) gives the Great Intelligence some vocal heft, but Grant supplies the stiff exterior it will be using from now on and it's an excellent fit. Also, how wonderful to bring back such a strong and flexible villain from the Sixties. Obviously I hadn't ever seen The Abominable Snowmen, or The Web of Fear (now gloriously returned to us) but I had adored the Target novelisations as a child. I'm extremely happy that The Snowmen connects so gracefully with those old stories.

So, all in all, pretty satisfying. Like any good Christmas, the really important things have been excellent, and it's only the odd decorative frippery that has disapointed. Goodness knows what next Christmas has in store, but for now I'm excited that the rest of Season Seven has hoved into view.

The end is in sight, and about time, probably.


NEXT TIME...

The Angels Take Manhattan

Amy and Rory could have stayed at home. We could have happily left them in their little house at the end of The God Complex, or The Power of Three, or at any point in between. But that's not how it turned out. Moffat has the right to finish off the Ponds' story, and that is why this episode exists, why the Angels turn up in New York - but why does the Doctor insist on sticking with the Ponds? Why can't he let them get on with their lives?

He pays the price here. When Amy leaves it seems to hurt him more than anything has before. The few tears he shed over Rose looks like sang-froid in comparison and that's before he goes off on his massive sulk to Victorian London. What's the matter with him? He doesn't seem to think about Rory for a second. It doesn't even occur to him until later that River has just watched her own parents disappear. He seems obsessed with Amy in that moment. "I'll never be able to see you again!" he wails. Is it just that Amy is leaving? Or is it that she has chosen to leave that bothers him - that she has finally and irrevocably chosen a life with Rory over one aboard the TARDIS with the Doctor?

Well, it is own fault quite frankly. This is the man who deliberately locked his own granddaughter out of the TARDIS, who abandoned Sarah Jane in Aberdeen without a by-your-leave, who let Romana walk off with his dog and simply shrugged. You'd think he'd know: better to be the dumper than the dumpee. You'd think he would have hardened his hearts.

All that's at the end of course, and there's a lot to enjoy before we get there. Firstly, proper New York! Those scenes in Central Park - and the frenzy of interest they generated in onlookers - show again how confident this show is and how massive it has become. But they also make the whole episode reek of authenticity. Apart from that bit in the park and a few skyline shots, everything else we see is Cardiff, Swansea or CGI and it never looks anything less than utterly convincing. Even the graveyard, at the end, which is obviously fake (Manhattan isn't surrounded by hills with graveyards on them), looks magnificent. It's Merthyr or somewhere, shot against green screen with skyscrapers pasted into the gap, but I still can't see the join and, more impressively, the realisation that there isn't such a wonderful graveyard, grey and windswept, overlooking New York, is tremendously disappointing.

But, oh look, I've jumped to the end again, and this episode is all about the dangers of getting ahead of yourself. Once again Moffat comes up with an excellent variation on the perils of time travel: pushing into the Doctor's hands a novelisation of the adventure he is currently having, complete with teasing chapter titles. It's a tremendously clever idea, and one that offers so much to this story - we get the thrill of witnessing Rory fall out of the world into the supposed fictional narrative, and of realising that an inert book contains ongoing events; but it also offers the Doctor an advantage, offering clues like the ancient Chinese vase, and provides the episode itself shape and structure: foreknowledge becomes a trap, ratcheting different times together, binding our heroes to their respective dooms.

The Doctor's horrified, almost physically repulsed by this - presumably supremely offended by the indignity of being controlled, of having his options curtailed - and like many a husband cross with his mother-in-law, he takes it out on his wife. He's really quite unpleasant to River in Grayle's house (even allowing for the stress of the situation) and she goes to extraordinary lengths to dispel his black mood. When the Doctor discovers she has broken her own wrist, and hidden her pain, he tries to make it up to her with a bit of macho grandstanding, giving her a quick blast of his Time Lord magic to fix her injury. Quite rightly, she calls him out on this, but the disturbing thing about this scene is what tipped the Doctor over the edge in the first place: it was seeing the chapter title Amelia's Last Farewell that caused him to rage at River. It's an unsettling idea, reinforced by his reaction in the graveyard, but it seems that he might care more about Amy than he does about his wife. Sort it out, Doctor.

This story sees the best use of the Weeping Angels. They finally realise their full potential, revealed as arch manipulators who have contrived to turn Winter Quay into an invisible and (almost) inescapable trap. The use of the Statue of Liberty is irresistible, surely, even if it is ever so slightly silly ("That's cool," said William. "But what about the empty plinth?"), and the very idea of the Angels, silently stationed around New York, or bound in Grayle's alcove, is terrifying. With the ambient fear-factor already much higher than usual, an individual moment must be absolutely horrific to stand out - but I've never seen the boys more frightened watching the show than when Rory is in the cellar with the baby angels. Chris in particular was transfixed, slowly edging a cushion across his face, like an eclipse.

Amy and Rory's scene on the roof of Winter Quay is quite amazing. For those few minutes, with the Doctor and the ever-charismatic River pushed to the margins, Doctor Who belongs to them completely. It's their final big moment together (the graveyard coda is Amy's alone) and they do not waste it. The tension, already high, is made utterly unbearable by every wobble and shiver of their bodies on that ledge, and by the inevitable decision we know is coming.


NEXT TIME...

The Power of Three

It's slightly harder to imagine this one as a full-blown movie, but the penultimate Pond does do a good job of exploring the tension between Rory and Amy's need for domestic security and the lure of the inter-galactic thrill-ride offered by the Doctor. There's more than a dash of Peter Pan about this too. Amy and Rory find themselves excited by the notion of sleeping in their own bed, connecting with friends, being good at their jobs. The Doctor refuses to grow up and settle down; in fact, he can't even sit still for ten minutes without experiencing a manic episode and creosoting the fence. Is he drawn back to the Ponds because they are maturing and he's desperate to get the most out of them before they become intolerably dull? "I'm running to you," he tells Amy, "before you fade from me." He is, however, conflicted, it seems, and leaves longer and longer gaps between his visits - deep down he knows the end of the Ponds is coming. But he still can't leave them alone.

It's curiously selfish behaviour from the Doctor. When in the past he has seemed to indulge himself, he has been scheming, or satisfying a private agenda: taking Ace to Gabriel Chase, for example, or Amy to see the Flesh - but his ulterior motive has always been to try and help somebody other than himself. Here that's not the case, but it does mean that he ends up being around for the slow invasion.

The Cubes are a great plot device. They look great (strangely cute for inanimate boxes) and they offer lots of opportunities for gags, moments of mystery and twists. The world's initial collective head-scratch is nice, and Mark Williams is again smashing as Brian, sat there staring at the cubes, dogged and diligent - until he dozes off. The boys laughed a lot during this one: at the Doctor playing keepy-uppy and Wii, at Rory in his pants, and the various idiosyncratic tricks the cubes get up to later on.

Jemma Redgrave is a nice addition as Kate (Lethbridge-)Stewart; it's lovely to have her around, both to provide an ongoing connection to the show's past and to give a (hopefully) long-term face to UNIT. But her scenes are just a tiny wee bit over-sentimental - there should be poignancy, absolutely, but it would be nice for there to be a bit of a spark as well, some light sparring perhaps. Lovely, and increasingly mellow, as the Brigadier was, I enjoyed his avuncular gruffness more because he and the Doctor would disagree, and because the Doctor would bamboozle and frustrate him. In contrast, his daughter seems to be in total sympathy with UNIT's erstwhile Scientific Advisor, and the Brig himself, we are told, had seemingly rolled-over, telling her repeatedly "science leads". I'd like Stewart to show a bit more steel in future appearances.

The story only really begins to gain traction when the cubes wake up. The countdown is a nice touch and looks good, the numbers seemingly suspended inside, but the final scenes are odd. The look of the alien ship is very effective - there's a real sense of the stillness of space pressing in through the windows, and there's more than a dash of the Emperor's Death Star throne room about the set. And, unsurprisingly perhaps, Steven Berkoff gives a suitably bonkers and chilling performance as the Shakri. It's just a shame that this all turns up right at the end, without any preceding glimpses or hints (no, the box-mouthed nurse twins and the spooky droid girl do not count), and then vanishes - literally in the case of the Shakri who, it turns out, wasn't even there, but just a hologram or something. The actual story (stopping/re-starting hearts) makes some sense, but it is all happening way in the background on grainy monitors and doesn't have the impact it should have had. And, sorry to be dull, but what about all the people who were driving, swimming, mountain-climbing, massively old and so forth when their hearts were stopped, eh?

All in all, a pleasant but ultimately frustrating episode. It's initially fun in an absent, meandering way, then it looks like it is going to be terribly exciting - and then it just sort of flops to the ground. And then it has the nerve to finish on an utterly irrelevant - and therefore nonsensical - pun; why not just have called the episode something else?


NEXT TIME...

A Town Called Mercy

Having swapped Cardiff for Houston, it was weird enough when the TARDIS started turning up in America without it then following me all the way to Texas itself. But look here it is, settled conspicuously on the outskirts of Mercy, TX, in the year 1870. Okay, so this was filmed in Spain, but it really does look like some parts of Texas - dry, dusty and flat - and this episode looks thoroughly marvellous as a result.

And Doctor Who gets to do a proper western. This is a good traditional one, albeit with aliens and cyborgs thrown in. There's moral conflict, shady histories, and a continuous debate about what civilisation means out west. Like the TARDIS, America is bigger on the inside, and just driving along modern highways through the interior is to experience a vast and empty landscape. I can't imagine what happened to the minds of people that crossed this continent on foot, or by horse and wagon, in the nineteenth century - but the remoteness of towns like Mercy must have made it all too easy to question the moral conventions and social accords of the big cities of the East. What does justice mean out in the wilderness? What does mercy mean? Arguably, these ideas are more important out in the wilderness, and we see in this episode that the role of the lawman is to hold the town together. Initially this responsibility belongs to the marshal, Isaac, but soon enough the Doctor has to take up that burden himself.

I like this episode. It doesn't really make the heart sing, but it asks difficult questions and it manages to end on the right emotional beat. There is flaw with A Town Called Mercy though, and I'll leave it up to you to decide whether it matters or not: this town should be called something else.

Mercy does feature in the story, but not as much as one might think. The Doctor refuses to show mercy to Kahler-Jex, and Amy confronts him about this in a heated exchange that forms the key moment of the first half. The Doctor later asks the Gunslinger to drop his quest for vengeance and, by extension, to be merciful, but the cyborg refuses. And that's it. Mercy is not really what this town is about.

The townsfolk didn't show mercy when they took in Jex, because he hadn't wronged them and they knew nothing of his past. But Jex did set about trying to do good - curing the cholera, setting up street lights - in order to try and atone for his crimes. As Isaac says: "America is the land of second chances"; the idea of atonement is everywhere.

Later, Jex paints a haunting image of his own afterlife, hauling the souls of his victims up an endless mountain. His final act of self-sacrifice, the most important event in the story, is an attempt to do the right thing at last. Before that, the Doctor hauled Jex out of town in order to try and make up for what he saw as his own past failures. His outburst inadvertently leads to the death of Isaac, and the Doctor is handed the marshal's badge as a result: forced to redeem himself by taking Isaac's place. When he talks Walter out of lynching Jex, he does so partly because it's what Isaac would have wanted, but also because he sees Walter's potential.

Finally, the Gunslinger, a creature of violence and bitterness, is himself offered a chance to make up for the wrong he has done, and again, mercy is absolutely not the issue. The Doctor can't show mercy because he has no power over him - the cyborg's plan is to walk off into the desert and die alone. But the Doctor can show him how he can make things right, by swapping his black hat for white, and pinning the marshal's badge on his chest. Being merciful is not the same thing as believing in second chances, and that's why this should be a town called Redemption.



NEXT TIME...

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Of all these 'movie' episodes, this is the one that seems to be most stridently demanding our attention. "Dinosaurs!" cries the Doctor. "On a spaceship!" And to be fair, it's an arresting and effective bit of marketing, especially given the show's demographic. When were dinosaurs ever not cool? Well, the churlish answer would be January-February 1974, but we don't need to talk about that. The boys (who got to see Jurassic Park on the big screen earlier this year and were appropriately freaked out, just as I had hoped) had been looking forward to this one for weeks, and all their memories of and predictions for this half-season have revolved around it. What I'm saying is that I have listened to lots of conversations in the last few weeks that went like this:

"There's a Dalek one, isn't there?"

"Yes, that's before Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. It must be the first one. And then is it the cube one?"

"I think the cube one is after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. And the cowboy one is after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship too."

"Yes. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is definitely before the cowboy one. And the Weeping Angels are last."

"So it goes, Daleks, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, the cowboy one, funny cubes, Weeping Angels?"

"Yes. I can't wait for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship."

"Me too. When does Clara turn up?"

So despite my haughtiness, I have to admit that just the title alone is a slick and irresistible bit of promotion that gets kids watching the show, and this is obviously brilliant and a far cry from the days when trying to make people tune in meant producers shoving Ken Dodd in front of camera. The kids love the dinosaurs, the kids love the robots, the kids love Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

I like it too. I didn't think I did, but that's because the boys had persuaded me that Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was about dinosaurs on a spaceship - and it's not really, not in the same way that Tomb of the Cybermen is about a tomb full of Cybermen, for example. The dinosaurs are a hook, part of the setting, and they don't influence the plot. In fact they don't really do anything except occasionally harass the Doctor and his friends and try to look as convincing as possible while they're at it. 

No, this episode is an odd little melange of ingredients that surprisingly mix together very nicely. Presumably 'Rory's dad, an Edwardian big game hunter, Queen Nefertiti, Solomon, a dash of Silurians, the Indian Space Agency, robots and dinosaurs on a spaceship' wouldn't fit on the poster.

Mark Williams' Brian is a joy: cup of tea in hand and a trowel in his pocket, it's great to have him aboard. It's good for the show to have parental characters join in the adventure from time to time. The kids love seeing 'boring grown-ups', people who look and sound like their parents or grandparents, getting whisked away in the TARDIS. Brian is lovely, copes wonderfully, and has his mind expanded as a result. The shot of him sat in the TARDIS doorway, watching the Earth with his thermos, is every bit as lovely as when Wilf spied Donna through his telescope. 

The addition of a pair of historical characters, Riddell and Nefertiti, also shake things up nicely. Riddell, played charismatically by Rupert Graves, offers the chance to roll our eyes at some old fashioned opinions and see how far we've come. Nefertiti, queen of ancient Egypt, hints at achievements long since lost. It's fun to include them, and play them off against each other, but Nefertiti - a real and incredibly famous person - is especially welcome. Having her tag along for outer space hijinks is a refreshing change on the modern Who tradition of encountering the great and the good in their own setting. And, in a nice twist, it is her celebrity that provokes the showdown with Solomon. 

David Bradley makes a real meal of the slaver Solomon, turning a so-so villain into a horribly memorable bastard. There's something truly foul and unpleasant about the man and it is his presence on the spaceship that stops this episode from stagnating into a cutesy-pie runaround. His treatment of Nefertiti - actual and threatened - takes Doctor Who (at least in the minds of any adults watching) towards notions it hasn't dared hint at since poor Barbara's time. But for me his most chilling line is the one he uses on the Doctor: "I feel like you're judging me." There's so much in there, thanks to a wonderful delivery, that upsets, but for me it boils down to the idea of a very dangerous man who thinks he can do what he likes. Some have criticised the unusually merciless way in which the Doctor deals with him, but in this case I really don't mind at all. 

As for the rest of it, I like the stupid camp robots (although why would Solomon put up with them?), and I love the Indian Space Agency - just a little detail, but it broadens and deepens the Doctor Who universe. Amy has a wonderful few scenes in the middle where she effectively gets to play the Doctor. Gillan is brilliant here and, with a lightness of touch, offers us an Amy who really has outgrown her Time Lord: confident, relaxed, playful, competent and very funny. 

Oh, and the dinosaurs are pretty good really.


NEXT TIME...

Asylum of the Daleks

Doctor Who has never been more popular, or sat so prominently in the national (or global) consciousness as it does now in the run up to The Day of the Doctor. But there's no accounting for fanxiety. There were, surely, very sensible reasons behind the decision to split Series Seven into two halves - but such a shuffle of the schedules as this made me feel a tiny bit insecure, if only because of the problems the show had experienced in the Eighties. It was irrational, even paranoid, of me to worry (I'm usually able to block out such crazy thoughts, promise), but the fact was that the 2012 season was being spread out over two years, and that meant less Doctor Who than had been expected.

It's just a television show, so I coped. But I wanted to know that this was only a temporary rarefaction, to accommodate the anniversary, or to move the show to an Autumn slot, or for any other countless possible sound logistical reasons. I wanted to know that there would be a full season in 2014 and that things would get back to normal for a few more years.

Now, as far as we know, that is what's going to happen, so hooray, and stupid me for entertaining doubts. But then the promotional engines started to fire up for Series Seven and I had another irrational moment. No two-parters? Each episode a movie in its own right, condensed into forty-five minutes, complete with poster art and tag lines? And then, when they appeared, these five stories each had their own weird, personalised titles. What was going on?

All that was going on was that a dedicated team of extremely hard-working people were slaving away to try and make superlative television, and to make it as exciting and as fresh and as desirable as they could for the widest possible audience. Where does the doubt, the madness and insecurity come from? I really don't know, but some of it is entitlement, an erroneous sense of ownership of the programme, and some of it is the ravenous desire for information that exists today. Graham Williams didn't have to put up with Twitter, or online newspapers hungry for clicks, or even silly blogs like mine, all clamouring for content, production plans, casting announcements, spoilers, on-set pics, next years transmission dates, anything, everything, demanding to know how the sausage is being made right now, rather than patiently waiting for the final dish to be served.

The episode itself, when it eventually arrives, is the only content that matters, something I'm sure I mentioned to myself when, after the massive great big gap since Christmas, Asylum of the Daleks rocked up - and was really, really good.

How do you make the Daleks surprising after all this time? How do you keep them scary? How do you use this story to inject new life into the Doctor's number one antagonists, into the show itself? Like this.

Give us Secret Daleks. The human slaves, their eyestalks hidden inside their presumably hollowed out skulls, feature prominently in this story, descendents of the Robomen of the Sixties and of the Duplicates of the Eighties. They carry with them now the threat of conversion, of being taken over, which is sort of stepping on the poor Cybermen's toes (as if they didn't have enough to worry about lately), but which, nonetheless, allows this episode to dwell on ideas of the boundary between human and Dalek: when do we become like them, what do we have to lose to make us like them? What would a Dalek have to have to make it human?

Give the Daleks a Parliament! This is new, and fun, and looks marvellous. But actually is there anything less Dalek-y than a parliament, or a prime minister? I am a keen fan of Daleks conversing in stories, perhaps even arguing with each other - but debate and compromise? Legislation? Elections!? Hmm, I'm not so sure. I think a Dalek Council might work (a small, unaccountable one) but, really, a Politburo is much nearer the mark? Surely the Daleks operate a totalitarian system and brook no dissent. Still, moving on...

Zombie Daleks! Human corpses, infected by the Dalek nanocloud, sprout eyestalks and start lumbering around. All in all, rather more terrifying than poor old Sec.

Make them really slow and rubbish. Yes, it's counter-intuitive, but goodness me is it effective. Rory hasn't really seen a Dalek before, not properly properly, so the scene where he wanders amongst their dusty shells carries a real menace: we're not convinced he knows what danger he's in. Then he clumsily wakes one up. It's an electric moment: an enfeebled, ancient Dalek trying to remember how to kill - and Rory being terribly polite and British at it, trying to understand, trying to help... "I don't, I don't know what you want. Those things? Are those things eggs? This? You want this?" Brilliant. It's terribly rare that we get to anticipate an "Exterminate!"; having this one build slowly from gibberish is wonderful.

Daleks are people too. Ah, Amy's hallucination. Or is it just a change of perspective? Either way it is the spookiest, trippiest, most Twin Peaks-y thing we have seen in the show for many a year. As the nanowhatnots begin to deconstruct Amy's humanity, she sees the roomful of musty old catatonic Daleks as a rather intriguing ensemble of dapper sepia-hued people. It raises the fascinating question, is this an interpretation of how they look to each other? Diverse, cultured individuals?

Blow them up! An old favourite this, but none the worse for that. Having tricked a Dalek into starting up a self-destruct sequence, the Doctor then slips it into reverse, sending it rocketing backwards into a cluster of its fellow inmates. The resulting explosion is very satisfying, as is the slightly bitter exchange between Rory and the Doctor that follows as they meet up through the smoke.

Make them completely insane. We've had insane Daleks before of course - except Caan behaved more like a drunk uncle at Christmas, sat in his corner, chortling nonsense to himself. These Daleks, patients in the Intensive Care wing of an asylum, are properly, terrifyingly psychotic and waste no time in ripping themselves free of their restraints and aiming their murderous plungers at the Doctor's face. It could have been ridiculous but it is a very scary moment, thanks in part to Smith who manages to make the Doctor looks convincingly petrified.

Make one human. Oswin's a Dalek. What a great twist that is, and a truly horrible one too. Lovely, flirty Oswin, with her witty banter and her soufflés, was not barricaded in a little room with one round window, she was a human personality that had somehow survived her body being converted and encased in dalekanium. (And what a brilliant bit of set design is that room?) Where did she get the milk? That stupid irrelevant question of the Doctor's turned out to be the nub of the matter and Oswin's soufflés were nothing less than her suppressing the most poisonous teachings of the Daleks and trying to remember her mum. Nothing demonstrates Oswin's indomitable humanity like her eventual acceptance of her dreadful reality.

Make them all forget. "DOK-TOR WHHOOOOOOO?" cries the Dalek parliament, as the unknown human escapes in his mysterious blue box, thanks to Oswin and her super-duper hacking abilities. It's a big moment, and one that I hope won't be ignored in years to come: following on from Series Six's slip-away-quietly finale, and just in time for the anniversary, the Doctor's relationship with his nemeses has been restored to where it was in 1963 - isn't that liberating? The Doctor himself certainly seems to think so.

Overall, this is a very good story, a wonderful Dalek episode, and definitely a shot in the arm for Doctor Who. I haven't even mentioned my favourite moment of all though: it was the Doctor straightening his tie, having surreptitiously meddled the Ponds back together. That man is impossible and brilliant - and I'm so glad he's on our side.


NEXT TIME...

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

No regeneration, no new companion, no hints or connections (apart from those final few minutes); this Christmas special sits more remotely than ever from the rest of the series. The Doctor wonders further and further from that sci-fi label and the result is the purest fantasy yet. Watched in November, as part of the full run, the difference is noticeable to say the least - but, taken after Christmas dinner, with pudding and many sherries fighting for the last few cubic centimetres of space in one's stomach, this is a completely acceptable way to pass an hour.

The storybook aesthetic of the Moffat-era is turned up to eleven here as Doctor Who engages in a wholesale plunder of C.S.Lewis's Narnia books. War-time children, a mysterious house in the country, a naughty younger brother sneaking off into a strange other world and discovering a snow-covered forest? It's hardly subtle, is it? But then Lewis's works were part of the inspiration for the show itself, and what is the TARDIS if not that magical wardrobe with roaming privileges?

Doctor Who barely intrudes at all. There's an alien ship to destroy before the titles, some tree-harvesters from Androzani Major make a brief appearance, a glimpse of the vortex and then a last minute coda with the Ponds that begins to move us towards Series Seven. But that's it. The rest of it is magic and Christmas and the spirits of the forest. I don't mind at all. This is what the Christmas Specials are for, isn't it? Or at least, it's fine that this is what one in seven of them is like.

The trees are especially festive, with their star-like lights and mystic life-force. They make for some wonderful images and as well as echoing the modern LED-riddled domestic variety, they evoke the ancient pre-Christian forests and their ever-green magic - the sort of thing that used to pass for Christmas in northern Europe before St Boniface set to work.

The most interesting thing here however is Madge Arwell: an ordinary mum and a kindly woman whose stereotypical inability to do things like drive a car without crashing is a set-up designed to wrong-foot us before she shows us what she's actually made of.

First of all, there's the quiet, invisible strength of a woman holding together a family in the most difficult of times. It's easy, though - too easy - to take such impossible work for granted and her breakdown in front of the tree harvesters is a timely reminder of the burden she carries. Except, ha ha, it is actually a clever trick. Such is her maternal determination to find her children, she is able and willing to threaten them with her gun and even - Bill Bailey's eyes tell the truth of it - use it if necessary. Madge is revealed to us in that moment, if we hadn't understood her already: a formidable woman who will do whatever it takes, like commandeering a space-tank-tripod machine thing and steering it across the surface of an alien world, for example. Once inside the tower and reunited with her children, the alien trees' purpose is made clear. They dismiss the weak male Doctor; they need Madge, need her strength to save them.

There's a very real danger these days of upsetting someone when a man attempts to say something about the female condition, especially Moffat, perhaps, who has been accused of various sexist crimes in his previous Doctor Who stories. There are people who will worry that this is a patronising and limiting view of female power, and that Madge is reduced to a mere vessel for someone else's life force. Well, possibly. Having watched my wife give birth twice and been humbled, astonished and utterly redundant on each occasion, I'm confident that this is a glorification of an awesome power that men can only observe and never achieve themselves. And besides, it harks back to another old Christmas story, doesn't it?


NEXT TIME...

The Wedding of River Song

I suppose it's the presence of A Good Man Goes to War and Let's Kill Hitler in the middle of this series that means we end up with a one episode finale - so much of the story of this arc has already been told. I don't think it does this episode any favours. Like A Good Man Goes to War, The Wedding of River Song has to cram in a lot of spectacle in order to fill up the the running time because the actual story, regardless of it's great importance, doesn't take very long to tell.

Some of the hoopla is a lot of fun, of course. The crazy mixed up world, with its pterodactyls, Cleopatra and balloon cars, is very amusing, as is Churchill with his downloads, or Dickens on TV. But all this - along with, it must be said, much of what happens to Amy and Rory's facsimiles - is bread and circuses, a distraction from what really matters.

The substance of this episode comes in two parts. Firstly, the Doctor's slow acceptance that he must face his own death. Initially he's off on a quest for information, scaring a poor defenceless Dalek witless before trying his hand at some electro-chess. This is a great sequence that, like those at the beginning of The Pandorica Opens and A Good Man Goes to War, firmly depicts a vast and improbable universe, filled with adventure and intrigue. Most importantly it refreshes our memories about the existence of the Teselecta, a necessary reminder the significance of which is essentially smuggled away amongst the crazy mixture of novelty and call-backs. And then the Doctor phones the Brigadier. So many Doctor Who actors have died in the last few years, but Nicholas Courtney, who played the Brigadier since 1968, seemed an especially great loss to the show. His character had become so important, a spine of strength that ran through the history of the Doctor Who almost back to the beginning. He hadn't been seen in the programme itself since the Seventh Doctor adventure Battlefield, but he had continued to appear in books and audios, before wonderfully turning up in The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008. Courtney's death in January 2011 was acknowledged on screen here, with the Doctor being informed of the Brigadier's passing. I can't think of a more appropriate way for the show to mark his death, because it demonstrates very clearly how terribly important both Courtney and the Brigadier were to Doctor Who, those that made it, and those that watched it. Mortality must be a rather nebulous concept to the Doctor, but this sad news provides a measure, an insight, that allows him to accept the idea of his own death.

The other important task of this episode is the resolution of the series' arc, something it applies itself to once the Doctor is finally brought before River Song. It turns out that the answer is quite simple - having previously, and secretly, availed himself of the Teselecta, all the Doctor need do is touch River in order to restore time to normal and fake his own death. (Except he isn't touching her, because he's tiny and inside a robot version of himself, so how does this short out the differential, hmmm?) The complicated bit is that he has resolved to do this without telling anybody his plan, so he has to try and persuade River that she should carry out his execution for the sake of the universe.

RIVER: I can't let you die.
THE DOCTOR: But I have to die.
RIVER: Shut up! I can't let you die without knowing you are loved by so many, and so much, and by no one more than me.
THE DOCTOR: River, you and I, we know what this means. We are ground zero of an explosion that will engulf all reality. Billions on billions will suffer and die.
RIVER: I'll suffer if I have to kill you.
THE DOCTOR: More than every living thing in the universe?
RIVER: Yes.
THE DOCTOR: River, River, why do you have to be this?

He is clearly exasperated with her, frustrated that she is preventing him from doing what is necessary. But he is also obviously affected by her love for him. What happens next is that he launches into a marriage ceremony, but is it an act of love or pragmatism? Well, it could and should be both, but the Doctor is nothing if not a schemer, and if this isn't a ploy, then he was must have been lying downstairs earlier when he told River he didn't want to marry her. What's certain is that the only way to save the world is to let River into his secret, to show her the Teselecta, so that she will be prepared to shoot him on the lakeside. The wedding allows him to do this, and in such a way that Amy and Rory can't also find out, and his new marital status gives them a reason to think he has persuaded her:

THE DOCTOR: Now, there you go, River Song. Melody Pond. You're the woman who married me. And wife, I have a request. This world is dying and it's my fault, and I can't bear it another day. Please, help me. There isn't another way.

At which point she acquiesces. I'm not saying for one second that the Doctor doesn't genuinely love River, but I do think we should consider that he might think that marrying her is the only way to achieve what he wants. It is clear that the Doctor is committed to maintaining the illusion of his own death, no matter what, even if it means keeping Amy and Rory in the dark. Perhaps he is even prepared to get married in order to preserve his new lower profile?

The final seconds of Series Six, with the Doctor slipping away from Dorium's repeated question, raised the hairs on the back of my neck, I must admit. It's a ballsy move for Moffat to move the show's title front and centre, and for some it grated, as if all he were doing was reheating a very tired joke - and, let's be honest, for many years that's all it has been. But he was absolutely right to draw our attention to it, because it was time to see it, hear it afresh. At some point since 1963 we had forgotten that those words have a meaning, an importance; that there is a story behind them, a mystery, one that has been remained for fifty years.

Doctor who?



NEXT TIME...

Closing Time

The Lodger was so good that it makes complete sense to go back for second helpings. Unfortunately, this just doesn't hit the spot. The kids love Craig to bits, love the talking to babies stuff, and laughed like drains throughout. Lynda Baron is great as Val, with her persistent, understandable and kindly gay-dad assumptions; the chemistry between Smith and Corden is still a joy, and there are plenty of jokes to ease us through, but Closing Time just isn't as much fun as its predecessor. What's the matter with me?

In The Lodger, Craig had two problems, his inability to speak to Sophie and the threat of the Doctor taking over his life, and both of these made him rather likeable. Now he only has one problem, which is that he doesn't believe he's cut out to be a father. It makes him seem whiny rather than adorable and, coming hard on the heels of Alex in Night Terrors, creates an uncomfortable echo. Also, great snakes, which parent doesn't feel inadequate? You might as well tell a story about water running downhill.

The other thing that irks is the (under)use of the Cybermen. The Cybermat picks up a lot of the slack and is used effectively, whizzing around the toy department and the lunging at Craig, but the Cybermen feel like an afterthought here, enfeebled and uninspiring, lurking under a department store to steal electricity. They do get a shot at their signature body-horror, human conversion, but the impact is diminished, partly because Craig has to escape, and partly because the dreadful process itself amounts to little more than making Craig dress up as a Cyberman. Not so much conversion, as costumery. They deserve bigger and better than this.

Worst of all, the rushed and improbable ending. The Doctor disputes Craig's claim that he "blew them up with love" as a "grossly sentimental and over-simplistic" explanation - but it's not the explanation that's the problem. The threat of the Cybermen, their strength, should be their emotionless state. Yes, they miss out on enjoying well-prepared meals, but they don't get scared, they don't feel pity, or experience doubt. Our humanity, the thing they want to take away from us, should be something we wish to protect because we value it, not because it gives us an advantage. In The Age of Steel, the Doctor defeated the Cybermen by sabotaging their emotional inhibitors, causing them to feel their own suppressed human angst - and that was fair enough. Here, it seems that the surge of Craig's parental emotions swamps those same Cyber systems, and the upshot of this would appear to be that the Cybermen have inadvertently been given a stupid Achilles' Heel. Sometimes a story needs a villain to have a convenient weakness, and goodness knows this lot have had their fair share. But please, let's not have the Cybermen be allergic to love.


NEXT TIME...