It was an
important series, whatever its number, not only coming after all the hoo-ha of
last year's anniversary, but also introducing us to a new Doctor, always a
crucial time. So how did the series — and the Doctor — shape up?
As far as the
series is concerned, I'd say it was variable, with both successes and failures,
although there were no episodes I couldn't at least moderately enjoy
rewatching. As for Peter Capaldi's Doctor, I think he's fantastic. Although I
enjoyed Tennant and particularly Smith, I'm not sorry to say goodbye to the
young, chummy Doctors we've had lately and go back to an older and utterly
alien character.
In contrast to
the Eleventh Doctor's extremely selective habit of occasionally forgetting all
the human social customs he knows perfectly well the rest of the time, the Twelfth
Doctor comes over as genuinely baffled by humans, and particularly by Clara.
Superficially, their relationship is a little reminiscent of the Sixth Doctor's
with Peri, or even the Fourth Doctor's with Sarah Jane (all three having first
got to know a gentler, more considerate Doctor) but this character's arrogance seems
to come less from over-confidence than from insecurity.
At the same
time, he develops further the Eleventh Doctor's ambivalent moral stance. A
couple of series back, in response to the comment that good men have too many
rules, the Doctor pointed out, "Good men don't need rules. Today is not
the day to find out why I have so many."
Capaldi's
Doctor goes further into trying to answer the question Am I a good man? In the second episode, trying to explain his
relationship with Clara, he comes up with my
carer, adding, "She cares so I don't have to." And that seems
important to the Doctor, yet one of the overarching threads of the series is
that he's gradually destroying what he values in her, making her more like him.
Clara has had perhaps
the strangest arc of any Doctor Who companion. It isn't entirely clear how much
of her fragmented existence she actually remembers now, but she appears to
settle into the same precarious juggling act as Amy and Rory did, trying to
balance her normal life and her Doctor life. It isn't made easier by her now
having a boyfriend (Danny) who she first has to lie to because he knows nothing
of the Doctor; then, when he finds out, she has to lie to both him and the
Doctor because they disapprove of one another.
"Rule One:
the Doctor lies," River once said, and lying seems to be at the heart of
this series, as the Doctor, Clara and Danny skirt around one another,
withholding information, right to the final scene where the Doctor and Clara
are each lying to make the other feel better. Clara, in fact, grows more and
more like the Doctor as the series goes on, up to the point where, in the final
episode, she's claiming to be the Doctor. Lying, of course.
Danny has an
interesting back-story and is a good character, but much of the time he seems
to be consigned to the "useless boyfriend" role pioneered by Mickey
Smith. It isn't really until the two-part finale (in which he dies) that he
becomes a seriously interesting character. Pity they left it so long.
The ongoing
"tease" through the series is the enigmatic character Missy, who
seems to live in some kind of afterlife and is gathering people who've died
close to the Doctor. I admit I never saw the reveal about her coming. My
original theory was that she was the TARDIS, for some reason uploading the
consciousnesses of the dead to her matrix. Well, the second part was more or
less right, but it was revealed as the cliff-hanger in the two-part finale that
she's actually the Master, regenerated into a female form. Considering the
rumours that have been floating around for thirty-five years or so about the
Doctor becoming female, I loved that twist.
So what of the
individual episodes?
Deep Breath — A long, somewhat sprawling
introduction to the new Doctor, featuring the Paternoster gang (Vastra, Jenny
and Strax) who seem to have replaced River as the standard occasional extra
companions. As with most "new Doctor" stories, we see him acting
bizarrely and out of character, but gradually finding his new identity. At
least he doesn't try to strangle his companion. For the plot, there were some
good things, but other elements (like the dinosaur in the Thames) that just
seemed to have been slung in because they seemed like a good idea. An
interesting episode, but I wouldn't put it with Spearhead From Space or The
Eleventh Hour as a great new Doctor story.
Into the Dalek — A little reminiscent of the 2005
story Dalek, this delved into Dalek
psychology, asking if Daleks are fundamentally evil, as well as giving us a Fantastic Voyage style journey inside a
Dalek (a trope used before by Doctor Who in 1977, though not with a Dalek). I
thought it was well done. It also introduced us to Danny, and returned to
Clara's briefly-glimpsed new life as a teacher at Coal Hill School, the place
where Doctor Who started back in 1963.
Robot of Sherwood — Nonsensical fun. We're presented with
a thoroughly Hollywood image of Robin Hood, except that the Sheriff's
"men" happen to be robots. It's strongly suggested all the way
through that this scenario has been created by the robots, based on the legend,
but then at the end we're left with the idea that this really is how it was —
raising the question of why the "original" legend is nothing like the
earlier retellings and entirely like the later ones. If you can get past that, though, it's huge fun, especially
the alpha-male sparring between the Doctor and Robin.
Listen — An intriguing and chilling episode, in
which the Doctor becomes obsessed that there are unseen beings shadowing us all
the time. On the trail through time of attempting to prove it, he and Clara
encounter both Danny as a child and what appears to be Danny's grandson, and,
in a first, the Doctor himself as a child. The plot leaves a lot of events
unexplained, but maybe it has to be that way.
Time Heist — A story which should have been great,
but turned out only as quite good. For reasons that aren't explained till the
end, the Doctor, Clara and two random companions have to break into the most
secure vault in the universe, facing a terrible fate if they fail. The
explanation at the end is a typically tortuous "timey-wimey"
solution, and the whole thing just didn't excite me as much as I'd have expected
from the synopsis.
The Caretaker — To counter an alien threat, the Doctor
takes the position of caretaker at Coal Hill School, where Clara and Danny both
teach — a position he declined to apply for in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. Like The
Power of Three from last series, this is really a character/relationship
story with a perfunctory adventure plot bolted on. The interactions between the
three characters are well done, but I could have hoped for a better, more
integrated alien threat.
Kill the Moon — As in last series, we have a story where
the Doctor gives a trip in the TARDIS to a random child in Clara's care, the
rather annoying fifteen-year-old Courtney, who also plays a substantial part in
the previous story. The story, focusing on a future threat from the moon, is
bizarre and suffers from a degree of scientific absurdity far beyond the odd
pass we usually give Doctor Who. The weakest episode in the series, in my
opinion.
Mummy on the Orient Express — A surprisingly effective episode, set
on a replica of the Orient Express* travelling through space (shades of the
spaceship Titanic) whose passengers start dying in mysterious circumstances.
The whole thing turns out to be a gruesome experiment by an unknown enemy, with
the Doctor finally finding the solution in a way that's a little unconvincing,
but doesn't really spoil the fun. I was a little disappointed, in retrospect,
that this wasn't tied in with the Missy arc. Perhaps we still have to discover
someone else trying to manipulate the Doctor.
Flatline — Another great story, with Clara
investigating an invasion of Earth by two-dimensional beings, while the Doctor
is trapped inside a shrunken TARDIS (as in the 1981 story Logopolis). We still actually see a lot of the Doctor, but Clara
takes the lead, gradually adopting his modus
operandi to defeat the menace. The only real negative here is that the 2-D
monsters become a lot less scary when they turn 3-D, but it's still a fine
story.
In the Forest of the Night — Now, this seems to be a real Marmite
episode, with some fans seriously detesting it. I loved it. A party of
schoolchildren, supervised by Clara and Danny, get caught up in trying to find
out why a forest has covered the entire earth overnight. The answer suggests a
sentient-earth ecological message, though without ramming the message home too
hard. The only real negative for me was that the children (who all acted
decently, though not outstandingly) were ridiculously too young for their
supposed age — the lead girl looked as if she should still be at primary school.
Dark Water/Death in Heaven — The finale, and I was glad to finally
get another two-parter, where the story could stretch a little, since one of my
objections to a lot of the more recent stories is that they tend to be rushing
to fit into 45 minutes. The successive reveals at the end of part one (the
Cybermen, and that the mysterious "Missy" is the Master) make it one
of the best cliff-hangers in the revived show, and the return of UNIT in part
two was very welcome, as was the classic image of the Cybermen in front of St
Pauls Cathedral. Michelle Gomez is wonderful as Missy — charming and
psychopathic at the same time, just as the Master should be, not to mention
coming up with a characteristic mind-bogglingly complicated trap for the Doctor
— though one or two aspects of the story were unexplained, such as how people
can physically move between the material world and a virtual reality. A great
finale.
So where now?
The final scene of Death in Heaven suggests
that Clara wouldn't be returning, but she appeared in the Children in Need clip
from the Christmas special. Although I've enjoyed her stint as companion, I
think it's about time we moved on. I've been
saying for some time that I'd like to see a companion who isn't a
twenty-something contemporary woman — someone from history, or from the future,
or even an alien, all three of which we had a number of times in the classic
show — but with Capaldi's Doctor being so alien, perhaps this isn't the best time
for it.
Whoever the new
companion might be, the important thing is that she (or he?) provides a foil
for this intriguing new Doctor to develop his character further. I look forward
to the next few years of Doctor Who.
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