TWELFTH DOCTOR
Deep Breath
“Hello, hello, rubbish robots from the dawn of time!” – The Doctor
Likes: The plot made a lot more sense on second watch (I guess without the distraction of trying to adjust to a new Doctor) and now that I know the secret of what is going on with Missy and Paradise the ending is a lot less confusing. Peter Capaldi’s first foray into being the Doctor is nice once he stabilizes and we leave behind some of the manic silliness of the previous Doctor and he becomes more acerbic and confrontational but also therefore more dramatic. His final confrontation with the automaton (and the ambiguity of what happens) is well done. There’s a thankfully good explanation for his sudden disappearance from Clara (to secretly gather information) and his sudden re-appearance disguised is clever. The Pater Noster gang come across more strongly as well. I’d forgotten what an emotional shock it is to see the dinosaur suddenly die and it’s a good reason for the Doctor to be outraged and find himself.
Dislikes: The opening is still a bit of purposeful silliness which I was hoping the new era would move away from. (How does the TARDIS accidently bring along the dinosaur when it’s established in other instances that it escapes things around it and that anything not inside it would be killed in the time void anyway.) Why was Clara so scared as if alone if she could have called the Pater Noster gang at any time? And how did they know exactly where she was? I’m not sure that I like how much they joke they are ripping off an idea from a previous episode (though people would have been pointing it out if they hadn’t).
Into the Dalek
“I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see hatred.” – Rusty the Dalek
Likes: Another that I liked better the second time having had chance to get used to the new Doctor, this one has some of the fantastical science of the old series with the group being shrunk down (I appreciate the Fantastic Voyage joke) and the inner workings of a Dalek (surprisingly not much explored before). There’s also a nice emphasis on the Doctor being a bit harder edged (e.g., his unapologetic manipulation of the man he knows will die anyway to help save the rest or his lack of empathy for Blue’s loss) which I appreciate much more as a characterization for the Doctor.
Dislikes: I don’t find it so much of a failing that the Doctor hates the Daleks so much (especially since his suspicions were justified) nor do I think Clara’s moral high ground is justified. On the other hand, I find the Doctor’s hard dismissal of Blue because of her being a soldier as not in character—it would make you think that he never had affection for the Brigadier and UNIT that we’ve known him to have. Meanwhile, the Doctor picking up Clara for coffee and the introduction of Danny Pink were troubling signs that we were going to be leaning heavily on Clara’s story rather than the adventure with the Doctor.
Robots of Sherwood
“History is a burden. Stories can make us fly.” – Robin Hood
Likes: For once a clever twist that feels more of a nice surprise than a manipulation when the Doctor’s certainty that Robin Hood can’t be real turns out to be wrong. Surprisingly, the heavy comedic bent of the story doesn’t undercut the story or the characters either; seeing Clara rolling her eyes at the excessively macho dueling egos of the Doctor and Robin is actually quite funny. It has to be purposeful that the aesthetic (and several plot points) of this episode lean so heavily on the Pertwee-era Time Warrior but it still feels like a fresh episode none the less. And I can’t watch Ben Miller made up as the Sherriff of Nottingham without feeling like I’m watching the twin of Anthony Ainley in The King’s Demons.
Dislikes: You could argue that the petulant jealousy of the Doctor does go a bit too far but my main complaint is that the reveal of Marian feels a little bit off: her seeming peasant background doesn’t fit (a cheap trick to surprise us) and the Doctor doesn’t say a word about bringing her there so why does Robin thank him for the ‘gift’?
Re-introduced: The Doctor refers to being in a Miniscope.
Listen
“Question: Why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? Answer: How would you know?” – The Doctor
Likes: I guess there are some surprisingly scary moments (the thing under the sheet and do we really see it in the background or not?) and Clara closing the loop by being the cause of the Doctor’s fear is at least an interesting surprise but…
Dislikes: …for the most part I can’t stand this episode. It seems to be a lot of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’ ideas strung together into a story that is not Doctor Who in format and yet could not be done by any other program. I do not like how many stories of this era get started with the Doctor suddenly having a notion to explore something random out of the blue (actually, this was a common device in classic Who but rarely led to the plot and was instead just an introduction to stumbling upon something else). And why would the Doctor seem surprised at the idea of beings hiding invisibly amongst us as he has had direct interaction with that kind of thing multiple times (the Silence, the Vashta Narada, and more). I also don’t like them showing his childhood like he was just some normal school kid and it’s frankly just irritating that they try to retrofit it in with events in the movie. The episode gives Clara way too much power and knowledge over the Doctor as well. Even worse, all the rigamarole with Clara on a date is just far too much focus on a companion and her day-to-day life. Not only that, but the one part about it that seems clever (Clara meets Danny as a boy and then their great-grandchild in the future) is totally undercut by later story lines making this one either a gaping plot hole, something that has to be explained in a convoluted work around, or ignored as another irritating ‘time can be re-written’ copout. Finally,
Time Heist
“This wasn’t a bank heist. It never was. It was rescue mission for a whole species.” – The Doctor
Likes: The convoluted romp is a little fun even though it one of many episodes this season that ignores the normal Doctor Who format and tries to feel like another genre. You do genuinely feel sad for Psi and Saibra when we think they’ve died.
Dislikes: The banker Karabraxos’s change of heart is not only a bit out of the blue but there doesn’t seem to be anything that would lead the Doctor to assume that she’ll have regrets. That whole section leading up to him becoming the Architect feels rushed; there’s definitely not enough interaction to make me believe he’s somehow changed her whole philosophy on life that she will call him later which undercuts the loop feel of the episode. And instead of coincidence I’d assumed that the Architect had callously arranged for the other thief to be there so his guilt would be bigger and distract from theirs even though it means he is killed—but surely the Doctor didn’t?
The Caretaker
“It’s funny, you only really know what someone thinks of you when you know what lies they’ve told you.” – Danny Pink
Likes: It’s ridiculous but Danny’s leap over the robot both showing his brave soldier skills and care for Clara is pretty cool. Actually some of the Doctor’s wry comments while supposedly a janitor are kind of entertaining.
Dislikes: Instead of moving away from the ridiculousness of Clara running off with the Doctor like a friend taking her on a day-trip, they double-down and make this the focus much of the episode. The robot looks like a cheap 90s effect, especially in the school setting. And they keep trying to add kids in the mix for some reason. And does the Doctor’s keeping thinking Danny is a PE teacher come off a little bit racist? While it again doesn’t fit, at least they keep the foreshadowing arrival to ‘Heaven’ of the policeman for the end instead of sticking it in the middle of the episode.
Kills the Moon
“You walk our Earth, Doctor, you breathe our air… And you can damn well help us when we need it.” – Clara
Likes: There’s some interesting tension and it does feel a bit scary when Courtney is in danger or at least I like Clara’s steely insistence to the Doctor that she (and therefore he) is responsible to take care of her and I’m glad she’s justifiably mad at the Doctor by the end.
Dislikes: I really didn’t like this episode for the whole ‘the Doctor leaves them to their own choice’ bit even though it’s supposed to be clear later that he was wrong to do that. It just doesn’t feel like a thing the Doctor would even do. I also really hated the idea that the Doctor somehow didn’t know the world changing event of the moon having cracked open on first watch, but I noticed this time they made it very ambiguous that perhaps he was lying the whole time about not being aware? I do feel like the episode would have been better if Clara’s words had convinced Lundvik to push the stop button at the last minute instead of Clara or even better if she had convinced the world to light up and choose for themselves. Anyway, I still say no to having children gallivanting on the TARDIS! I don’t know why this era of Doctor Who keeps trying to make that happen. (And what’s all this rigamarole about Courtney as president?)
Re-introduced: Is this the same era of Earth that lost interest in space exploration because of the T-Mat that we see in Seeds of Death?
Mummy on the Orient Express
MOORHOUSE: “Well, you certainly know a little mythology.”
DOCTOR: “I know a lot. Because, from time to time, it turns out to be true.”
Likes: Another episode built around a clever idea but at least this one doesn’t feel quite as forced. The overall design is nice and the look of the mummy is in fact very good. There is some nice banter even as Clara tries to address her serious feelings with the Doctor. (I can’t help but laugh at the ‘Are you my mummy?’ reference.) Though his rough edges may be a bit much, this episode does showcase this ‘grumpy old Doctor’ very well. The ambiguity of whether he feels bad still having been lying to Clara because he had reason and whether she accepts that or not is interesting.
Dislikes: When it comes down to it, this feels more like a five minute episode with the Doctor figuring out everything within the minute the creature is attacking. It’s not entirely a bad thing but it definitely makes this feel like a very thin and inconsequential episode. More of the awful ‘going on a day-trip’ feel of the Clara episodes as highlighted by her being in her bunk bed chatting with her boyfriend.
Flatline
“It’s long been theorised, of course, but no one could go there and prove its existence without a heck of a diet.” – The Doctor speaking of a two-dimensional universe
Likes: This episode seems entirely centered around the chance to do some cool things with graphics—the renderings of the 2D versions of people and the 3D versions of the creatures, odd perspectives, the Doctor’s hand coming out of the miniaturized TARDIS. If that’s the point of the story, then I would say they are fairly successful. The realization that the pattern on the wall is a dissected nervous system is horrific and some of the visuals are almost mind-bending (he construction worker snatched in half).
Dislikes: On the other hand, the story is a bit weak in terms of explaining how and what the creatures are. The Doctor’s being stuck out of the action feels a bit wrong and having him run around like Thing is just too much. And they make Clara so clever that you wonder where it’s coming from—she understands things about the working of the TARDIS that she never should and pretty much shows up the Doctor.
In the Forest of the Night
“Stars implode. Planets grow cold. Catastrophe is the metabolism of the universe. I can fight monsters. I can’t fight physics.” – The Doctor
Likes: I like that they try to bring in a motif of fairy-tales with the red jacketed girl running through a forest of wolves and such. There are some ideas that I like such as introducing a mystery of what the tree rings tell us, seeing familiar objects with a forest grown over them, or having the traumatized girl batting away the unseen entities she hears but…
Dislikes: Ugh, kids-focused Doctor Who yet again. I’m glad this is pretty much the last one for a while. So the trees have suddenly taken over the world many times in the past and we forgot? There’ve been way too many of these ‘everything we know about the natural world is wrong’ and ‘it all just takes care of itself’ stories. Everybody just goes on with life as normal with all of this happening? What about all the planes in the sky that can’t land? Lots of nitpicky problems in these world-enveloping episodes set in the present day. But the tacked on happy ending with the returning sister is just awful and unexplained.
Dark Water
“Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?” – The Doctor to Clara
Likes: After a row of mediocre stories, this one roars out of nowhere as quite strong, surprising, and controversial. Angry, steely aggrieved Clara is almost scary and it really feels like she has the upper hand over the Doctor. Even when we see she doesn’t, the Doctor’s words show a depth of emotion that his actions and casual comments often don’t is almost just as shocking. The skeletons in the tanks are eerie enough and even moreso when they start moving. So many surprising reveals—the Cybermen (did I miss the trick with the door design the first time? I didn’t remember it at all) and the jaw-dropping surprise of who Missy is. (Though to be honest, I was a initially a little disappointed they went that route instead of delving back into DW history by re-introducing the Rani or god-forbid Susan or Romana.)
Dislikes: I was kind of put off by the episode the first time as it seemed to play around cavalierly with death and the afterlife, but by the end things settle down into a proper sci-fi framing that doesn’t undercut religion as much as it seemed if you really listen to all the dialogue. Missy’s wacko vibes and the assistant’s smarminess are still a bit jarring even in hindsight but I appreciate them more the second time. And despite how much I didn’t like the introduction of Clara and Danny’s romance, I was also rather angry that they undercut it by having him killed off. Any cool stuff about their possible future we’ve see is suddenly meaningless.
Death in Heaven
“We are the Fallen. But today, we shall rise. The army of the dead will save the land of the living.” – Cyberized Danny Pink
Likes: What great character moments–I could watch Kate Stewart striding up casually and confidently with the Cyberman’s head in tow all day. Fun to see a more confident Osgood. We even get a hugely respectful nod to the Brigadier. They certainly don’t hold back on letting Missy be just flat out cruel either. (Oh no, Osgood! And seeming to have lost Kate was just horrible). Though I’m less of a fan, Danny Pink and Clara’s arc are quite prominent and fairly well played out.
Dislikes: The story is a bit heavy-handed on the purposeful heartstring tugs and it does get a bit murky as to why Danny and the Brigadier can overcome the programming other than ‘the power of love’. Not to mention how the child Danny saves gets his physical body back? It’s also a bit too much for them have implied that every person in human history is a part of this Cyberman renewal—I wish they’d set their sights a bit lower. And are we to believe that every person we’ve ever known and every companion that has been is stuck up there and returned as a Cyberman but only these two resisted? Some of the scientific explanations also don’t make sense—if they truly need organic matter then unless unusually preserved there can be nothing left of people that have been dead those thousands of years. Finally, I think this would have been a great good-bye for Clara for a while (even if they brought her back later) but they undercut that with the tag introducing the next story.
Re-introduced: I thought the story of the Cybermen ‘seeding’ was ridiculous the first time but then I thought about previous old Cyberman stories from the Troughton era which used the same idea—most notably The Moonbase in which the imagery with the growing cocoonlike pods mirrors what is shown in the computer scan—so there seemed some continuity after all. And they do make it clear a lot of the changes have to do with the tinkering of the Master Missy.
Last Christmas
“You know what the big problem is in telling fantasy and reality apart?”…”They’re both ridiculous.” – The Doctor
Likes: Steven Moffat takes a cue from Inception to write a layered dream-within-a-dream story that pretty much works over all, definitely lots of twists and turns even though you might can see some of them coming. (Actually, he does play fair lacing clues around throughout which is a good thing.) The crabs are a weird but cool design—especially how they sit on the face and open, that just looks creepy. Though I don’t necessarily look for humor in Doctor Who, the comedy pacing of Santa and the elves is undeniably well done.
Dislikes: It’s a sad testimony to previous episodes that Santa’s appearance didn’t make me think ‘oh this is strange but there’s going to be some interesting explanation’ as much as thinking ‘here they go again messing up the show by throwing in silliness’. I would have liked a bit more explanation of the connections Clara possibly had to the others in the dream, a connection of chance encounters as the dream crabs followed the psychic line from the Doctor to her to people she met in the shop perhaps. Like all Christmas specials, it’s shmaltzy and sentimental (Capaldi’s Doctor yelling wheee as he drives a sleigh?) and it’s of course just a vehicle to get the Doctor and Clara on the same emotional page and back together.
The Magician’s Apprentice
“Davros knows. Davros remembers.” – Colony Sarff
Likes: I said at the time this came out that it finally felt like proper Doctor Who because it had time to breathe. Though a lot does go on, they take their time during events to let us hear and react and think. Padding is not so bad if it keeps things from feeling so rushed, that’s why I liked scenes like the Doctor reiterating the history of the Daleks to Clara on the spaceship. But beyond that, the episode just has a certain weight to it. Missy sparkles here—her repartee and witty viciousness almost make you forget who she is and they are clever to have her heartlessly kill to remind us. As I noted on a forum at the time: I saw more of the Master in it, including a vulnerability when caught off guard (her face at realizing they were on Skaro was great) and the desperation to command her way out (kind of an Anthony Ainley boasting). Anyway, the cold open with its mix of technologies is quite a well-done start that leaves you wondering. The hands reaching up out of the mud and then having eyes of all things—so creepy! The sudden reveal that the child is Davros, the re-introduction of the Sisterhood of Karn, even the seeming hopeless situation of the Doctor are wonderful.
Dislikes: I wasn’t too happy with how silly medieval crowd scene (though it was still less manic then much of the Smith era). And is no one Earth now in absolute panic that planes can just stop in the sky? It’s amazing how by the next episode each time the world seems to have just moved on from devastating events and revelations of alien life!
The Witch’s Familiar
“Imagine, to hold in your hand the heartbeat of every Dalek on Skaro. They send me life. Is it beyond the wit of a Time Lord to send them death?” – Davros
Likes: The episode continues to be a strong one overall. Missy’s tale about the Doctor is an odd story device to start but works in this context. We continue to get a lot of humorous mixed signals from her throughout the episode which heightens our confusion about the character but the acting is off the wall and top notch. The interactions between the Doctor and Davros are amazing, full of pathos and—before the reveal—quite heartbreaking as Davros begs to see the sunset. The idea of the slimy, putrefying remains of Daleks in the sewers rising up is definitely memorably grotesque.
Dislikes: The implication that the Doctor knew Davros’s scheme “all along” undercuts some great emotional scenes, both of the Doctor’s empathy for Davros as well as his later suffering. I have to imagine that statement is a bit of an exaggeration. After all, he can’t have known about the ruse before coming to Skaro surely? Perhaps he started to guess upon seeing the machine and working out (I also don’t like the obvious hidden snakes in it—the hiding eyes that the audience is shown is kind of hokey) but I would like to think the rest is real. I also am not a huge fan that they continue to retcon the workings of a Dalek (in this case the interface, vocal ability, and drive mechanism).
Under the Lake
“You live and you die. That’s it. The ghosts are aberrations. A splinter of time in the skin.” – The Doctor
Likes: Even better the second time, this episode is quite engaging from the start (and perhaps my favorite of the Capaldi era). The graphics of the ghosts are wonderfully done and framed beautifully in some iconic shots such as their march down the hallway. We get clues to what is happening but also so much mystery that it is hard to understand what is going on (in a good way). The set depicting the base is nice and yet again this is an episode that lets the tension build in some great ways.
Dislikes: I originally wasn’t very happy with the Doctor being a ghost at the end. It seemed less like a surprise and more like it was going to be a cheat.
After the Flood
“You have seen the words, too. I can hear them tick inside you.” – The Fisher King.
Likes: A good continuation with a satisfying conclusion. Other than the noted paradox, the plot holds up well. Clara gets a good emotional scene and the Fisher King is so well done—both his appearance and even more so the care they took to give weight to his footsteps and voice. The scene of the cracking dam and flood is pretty amazing. Also a very cool inclusion is the brief scene in the hallway with the deaf crewmember sensing the vibrations of the axes with it depicted of how she ‘sees’ with this heightened perception.
Dislikes: The brief interruption with the Doctor talking to the camera really, really put be off this episode the first time. I would have loved for them to have left that off and incorporate it in an explanation to Clara instead. There is a bit of a cheat with how much the ‘sonic’ glasses get used.
The Girl Who Died
“What is a god but the cattle’s name for farmer? What is heaven but the gilded door of the abattoir?” – Mire leader
Likes: Though it comes out of nowhere a bit with the electric eels, all of the Doctor’s clever practical gadgets to defeat the Mire warriors are pretty cool.
Dislikes: There’s a bit of silliness to this one with the obvious Monty Pythonesque god in the sky and the Doctor “speaking baby” that undercuts what could have been a rugged Viking episode instead. (I’d really hoped for something akin to their portrayal in ‘The Time Meddler’.) I also didn’t really like the idea that the Doctor could somehow magically reverse death with a bit of alien machinery (and worse yet knows he’s cursing the person with immortality rather than just saving her). It would have been better for it to have been some kind of accident where the alien machinery reacted in some unforeseen way with Ashildr’s psychic abilities to render her that way.
The Woman Who Lived
“That’s the trouble with an infinite life and a normal sized memory.” – Me
Likes: Nice to jump into to an elegant historic setting that contrasts spectacularly with the one before. There are a few nice ideas exploring the effects of Me’s long life and limited memory especially in terms of grief and regret.
Dislikes: So the Doctor now travels sometimes with Clara or sometimes just calls her up or what? I really don’t like that. Anyway, there was tons of speculation that the ‘mystery woman’ in the trailer for this was going to be Romana or Susan or someone exciting like that so it’s a bit of letdown that it’s just the character we saw one episode ago. I don’t find the storyline nor the characters (villains and allies) very engaging so it all seems a bit of a waste.
The Zygon Invasion
“It’s not paranoia when it’s real.” – Colonel Walsh
Likes: A wonderful allegorical script where the Zygon’s stand as Muslim refugees and all the subsequent worries of discrimination and radicalization and such play out against a familiar Doctor Who invasion plot. I love that they give a nod to Harry Sullivan and the original Zygon episode and even the obscurity of UNIT dates. The overall design of the creatures is very good and the use of the slack-faced little girls as the aliens adds to the oddness of the situation. Meanwhile, Kate wandering around New Mexico with her gun poised for action is absolutely awesome. The ending with the missile is pretty dramatic as well.
Dislikes: The Osgood ‘sisterhood’ is a bit strange to have become such as bond that it drives the one mad. I also am not a big fan of the ‘hairball’ effect for the Zygon death rays. I was particularly disturbed by the death of the scientific advisor—I found her super sympathetic and really wanted her to be an ongoing character.
The Zygon Inversion
“You’re not superior to people who were cruel to you. You’re just a whole bunch of new cruel people. A whole bunch of new cruel people being cruel to some other people, who’ll end up being cruel to you.” – The Doctor
Likes: The immediate dreamlike world we find Clara in is very well staged to underscore the inversion limbo—sometimes by unexpected colors, lack of detail (‘This is toothpaste’), backwards visuals. Her figuring out how to manipulate exterior things within the artificial world (and how those are represented) is also pretty cool. Most of this script centers around the Doctor giving agonized speeches and his rant about cruelty is very well done as too is the parallel with the rebel leader as a tantruming child
Dislikes: The actual storyline of bringing the two factions to the Dark Archive and wiping their memories is way too close to a rehash of ‘The Day of the Doctor’ to be enjoyable. Also, having the Doctor suddenly reveal he knew what would happen all along and that they had gone through all this before and he just wiped their memories radically undercuts the urgency we felt throughout the first episode that made it so great. It also doesn’t make sense that ‘Bonnie’ (where does that name come from?) suddenly becomes this sisterly bonded and stalwart Osgood double.
Sleep No More
“Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath. Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life’s great feast.” – The Doctor
Likes: Some of the ideas they are trying (making it a ‘found video’) are an interesting try, I guess?
Dislikes: Overall, this episode is just not good. The format seems to cause a lot of stiff acting and uncomfortable staring into the camera. (It’s like they did it all in one take but I don’t think that was actually the case.) The creatures are not a very appealing design and don’t make logical sense. (They are composed of the sleep in our eyes? Surely the whole crew in a lifetime wouldn’t produce enough to make the creatures we see here?) The writer tries to be too clever by half—seeming to congratulate himself in the dialogue for all the ‘hints’ that he gives based of the video angles. (To a reveal that kind of gets lost in the mix as no big deal. And why does the Doctor suddenly see the video playing?) And in the end did the Doctor defeat it or is this video being shown around creating itself—if that is the purpose, why would the creator explain it at the end. It kind of defeats the purpose since the first person watching would then know to warn others not to watch it?
Face the Raven
“This is as brave as I know how to be. I know it’s going to hurt you, but, please, be a little proud of me.” – Clara
Likes: Some nice visual effects including the tattoo and the unveiled versions of the aliens from the POV of Rigsy. Though I’m not a fan of Me, I have to admit Maisie Williams does a fantastic acting job on going from cocksure and in control to a sudden humble regret at realizing Clara has accidentally condemned herself.
Dislikes: I hate the way in Nu Who that random characters in the companions’ lives often show up as central to the story so this already gets off to a bad start for me. Add to that it being a ‘lesson‘ for the companion at hand and it’s even worse. The Diagon Alley aspect of the secret street makes it seem like a silly episode and the grand trap of all of it gets a bit muddled in the end because it all revolves around attributes of a creature that the story introduces and thus it feels forced. I’d barely remembered about it being a trap for the Doctor. I also don’t believe the Doctor would just accept Clara dying like that either.
Heaven Sent
“As you come into this world, something else is also born. You begin your life, and it begins a journey towards you. It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower, always coming.” – The Doctor
Likes: It’s definitely a complex story with a surprising reveal and it works at building a lot of tension with the ever-continuing monster slowly creeping along. [A personification of death of course as described in the quote above.] Good visuals (and horror element) with the flies and POV screen. There’s some nice direction that reveals clues (the Doctor’s face over the skull for example).
Dislikes: It doesn’t feel much like Doctor Who, more like some artful scifi short story. Some of it also starts to break down if you consider too rationally—if everything else resets why not the wall the Doctor is slowly breaking down? If at 7000 years there are that many skulls then at several billion there should be too many to support (unless they decay?)? If by the end the Doctor understands he’ll be repeating why doesn’t he leave a better message each time? Where is the time dial located all these billions of years? I also think that on the nth to the thousandth time, the Doctor would recognize right away that he’s the predecessor making the tunnel and been able to come up with a better solution. The centrality of ‘the Hybrid’ mystery to the story feels very contrived since it was unconvincingly added as a last minute mystery in previous stories. And why, oh, why was this not the episode called Hell Bent? It would make so much more sense with the storyline.
Hell Bent
“Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.” – The Doctor
Likes: I started to give this episode higher marks on first re-watch. It opens with a lot of menace from an angry Doctor and has a lot of tension as he faces the Time Lords. Bringing in the Sisterhood of Karn raises the stakes, especially because Ohila always seems to understand the Doctor so well. I had also missed on first watch the fact that the Time Lords were hiding Gallifrey at the end of the universe (ie, time shifted there) not that they had simply existed all that time. It makes a lot more sense with earlier narratives that way. Though it doesn’t fit our previous views of the Matrix, the weird cloister with the wraiths running around and especially the pitiful Dalek begging to be exterminated make it very scary. It seems to be building to something amazing…
Dislikes: However, in the end the story goes off the rails by not really delivering. The menace of the Matrix never materializes (no one can escape except for one secret and hidden exit—but there’s an elevator shaft right there so the Council can just come down?). Was all the buildup just pretense for Doctor to escape and take Clara with him? The wholly shoehorned mythology of the ‘the Hybrid’ that they tried and failed to build tension about turns out to be nothing. Even the supposed ‘danger’ of what the Doctor and Clara represent doesn’t really come through. Shouldn’t we have seen time fracturing or something to even think there was a threat? The supposed sacrifice of the Doctor feels rather useless—especially since we see that Clara really can just bang around the universe. (Clara and Me just buzzing about in a big TARDIS diner is honestly rather a cringe sight.)
Interesting: Are the people living out on the fringe so to be the Shobogons that we heard about and see in the Fourth Doctor era?
The Husbands of River Song
“When you love the Doctor, it’s like loving the stars themselves. You don’t expect a sunset to admire you back.” – River
Likes: I’m not a huge fan of broadly comic Doctor Who episodes but I have to admit that some of the timing in the misunderstandings about the Doctor’s identity, his exasperation at River’s seeming endless parade of husbands, and her gob-smacked realization of his identity is all kind of fun. Even some silliness like him relishing ‘being surprised’ by the size of the TARDIS interior or constant misreadings of the situation are rather well written. River’s speech quoted above is rather endearing as well though nicely kept from getting too cloying by her embarrassment at realizing the Doctor is there hearing it.
Dislikes: This is about as close as Doctor Who has come to being a rom-com and there is even the sweetly sentimental ending to go with it. I just don’t know if I can get on board when the episode does rely so much on silliness like Nardole’s head running around on the big robot body and such.
The Return of Doctor Mysterio
“Mrs Lombard, there are some situations which are just too stupid to be allowed to continue.” – The Doctor
Likes: Now we have a Doctor Who buddy comedy—though the Doctor as the straight man shaking his head at his best friend digs himself in deeper into trouble does work very well for Capaldi’s incarnation.
Dislikes: If I thought the unserious comic tone of the last episode was high, it was nothing compared to this. However, this one is a lot less witty in its writing. It’s overly earnest acting—purposeful perhaps to be like a comic hero movie—and there’s some ridiculousness to the aliens. Are these space surfing brains the same that were on the ship that exploded in the previous episode? Their heads open the same but this is not referenced at all I think.
The Pilot
“A whole city built from triumph and heartbreak and boredom and laughter and cutting your toenails.” – The Doctor
Likes: I have to admit that a lot of the direction and styling of this comes across like a very well done and artful film (little unconnected vignette scenes over time that build an impression of mystery). If it was the debut of the show, it definitely would be layering a mystery for us as to what in the world is going on with this strange man. Nardole and the Doctor’s banter here comes across much nice than in the previous episode where Nardole seemed a bit whiny.
Dislike: Even given the above and the fact that this was intended to serve as a ‘reboot’ of the series for new watchers, for those of us that know the show then Billie’s slow discovery just seems to drag on forever. Plus it again just doesn’t feel like a real Doctor Who. I also wasn’t a fan of how it starts in the middle of a circumstance we’re not brought into later which made it hard to settle in and enjoy the show—I kept feeling like I had maybe missed some earlier episodes. I feel like the creature we encounter seems way to powerful to be the ‘waste water’ it’s revealed as by the end and the voice and view perspective from the other side below suddenly doesn’t make sense with that explanation either. Billie doesn’t really feel like a real person for some reason.
Re-introduced: Susan in a photograph (so the Doctor does think of and remember her?) and of all things Movellans(!)
Smile
“Emojis. Wearable communications. We’re in the utopia of vacuous teens.” – The Doctor
Likes: Finally, this episode feels like a proper adventure story for Doctor Who with all the themes and interactions we expect from the show: a new world colony that’s mysteriously going wrong, running down corridors, long dormant sleepers confused at the Doctor’s take charge presence, the companion both discovering the wonder of and danger in travel with the Doctor. I like how the vaguely silly appearance of the service robots becomes menacing as their numbers and persistence grow. Even the explanation for why things went wrong is a fairly satisfying sci-fi premise.
Dislikes: It does seem like if the solution was pretty much just rebooting the entire robot collective then the Doctor would have thought of that way early on, much earlier than jumping to blowing up the whole place.
Interesting: There seems to be a widely obvious parallell to the Vashta Nerada here—do these nanobots eventually ‘evolve’ into it? Why is this not explored or at least hinted at?
Thin Ice
“Human progress isn’t measured by industry; it’s measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege.” – The Doctor
Likes: We haven’t had a years past episode for a while so it’s good to see it here. It’s interesting that they address but then pretty much dismiss racial divisions in those times–until suddenly bringing it back in full swing with a satisfyingly righteously angered Doctor. Like Billie, I have to admit his speech is quite impressive even if ultimately ignored—it stands up there with many good Tom Baker soliloquies. The banter with Billie here is fairly good (and one wonders what happened when the Doctor was so clueless about human interaction around Clara and yet now can tease and make clever jokes and such).
Dislikes: The story doesn’t necessarily feel like anything huge happens and I’m afraid Billie’s range of emotion isn’t quite satisfactory. It’s great that they have her get angry over the Doctor’s seeming callousness but then have to accept the wisdom of it—but her tears just feel a bit cardboard compared to companions of the past that have challenged the Doctor in the same way.
Knock Knock
“Hope is its own form of cruelty.” – The Landlord
Likes: There are a few nice jump scares for a haunted house story and especially in the initial creepiness of the landlord (when he snaps back with “You don’t,” to the question about how to get in the tower it’s a perfect disturbing transition). It’s also slightly fun to see Bill trying to shuffle the Doctor off like an irritating grandad.
Dislikes: There’s too much coincidence in Bill’s group having happened to end up in an alien infested house, too much convenient forgetting by the wooden woman to keep the mystery from her, too much knowledge in a human child to formulate such a complex plan, too much backtracking on reversing the friends’ deaths so easily —too much contrivance for any of this to be enjoyable as a story. And it’s just weird after the reveal to know the son was treating his mother like his daughter all this time (what did he do in his 30s, treat his mother like a wife?)
Oxygen
“The universe shows its true face when it asks for help. We show ours by how we respond.” – The Doctor
Likes: This is a very straightforward adventure story for the most part, a creative way to make zombies without actually having to explain zombies. The pacing of the story is very good from the scary and sad opening to the confusion of Bill’s helplessness to our really wondering if the Doctor has actually lost it. The lead-in Doctor discussion actually comes back as useful set up. I was going to complain about the Doctor unnecessarily withholding information at the end but they actually explain and show the reasoning within the context of the story well.
Dislikes: If anything I would have liked to have seen this one fleshed out a bit more.
I finally saw with this episode what the ‘Doctor as university lecturer’ format could have been like had the introduced it differently. (If it had been approached more like the Third Doctor era of the Doctor being stranded on earth and having to operate in a different context. )
Extremis
“They took their own lives in the knowledge that suicide is a mortal sin. They read the Veritas and chose Hell.” – The Pope
Likes: This is definitely a unique episode. I am glad the ridiculousness turns out to be ‘not real’ (it was getting hard to suspend disbelief what with the pope turning up and all) and it’s clever to circle back around to where we started with the arrival of the email. I like all of the tension around the Doctor’s blindness—it’s actually funny having Nardole having to constantly try to creatively cover his lack of vision throughout—and the unseen creatures getting closer and closer. The number counting scene at CERN is kind of disconcertingly cool even though it’s not clear until later what it means.
Dislikes: I don’t mind the Missy as prisoner storyline but not the way it was introduced—it’s actually a little disappointing to haver her turn out to be the mystery ‘thing’ we’d been told to be so worried about. Again, I would have liked it better if this had been used at the beginning to better explain why the Doctor is hanging around the university. Not knowing what it was setting up at first, it was hard to judge if things were moving too slowly or too quickly. Also, if this is where Nardole came in then where do the Doctor Mysterio events fit in the timeline?
The Pyramid at the End of the World
“Enjoy your sight, Doctor. Now see our world.” – The Monks
Likes: I really find myself liking Nardole’s role at this point—he gets to be a true assistant to the Doctor, one who can understand and anticipate his needs without the Doctor having to explain details. The offer of the Monks is definitely intriguing once they say “
Since it’s clear it’s a trap but they are sure people will anyway.
Dislikes: Why does UNIT not know where the Doctor is when pretty much every student knows he’s lecturing? (And it really would have fit the new format better if his discussion had been a pre-episode lecture.) And it seems a bit of a cheat for Bill to suddenly have the authority to make the deal. Surely the three leaders would not think that they would pass the test of giving consent since the Monks had already explained that it had to be through love. They should therefore already know they’d fail since it was obviously out of strategy. Now if in the dialogue it had simply been said that it could not be fear then the military leaders’ ploy would have made more logical sense.
The Lie of the Land
“However bad a situation is, if people think that’s how it’s always been, they’ll put up with it.” – Nardole
Likes: Since I happened to be in the middle of re-reading 1984 when I watched this episode for the second time, the elements lifted directly from the book definitely stood out (thoughtcrime arrests, the distortion of history and memory, the Big Brother like videos) and came across well. The scene of the military team fighting their way through the hallways of the ship is amazing—a tense claustrophobic feeling through creative sound editing in a kind of ‘audio-POV’. Missy’s contribution to the discussion makes sense for her character; I kind of like that they don’t hide the Master’s solution would have been to casually kill the central figure. (And that they point out the Master has had entire adventures that didn’t involve Earth and the Doctor.)
Dislikes: The Doctor’s ‘test’ of Bill goes on way too long to the point of it being cruel once revealed. And why is inducing a coma in Bill not an option to remove her influence? It seems to fit the definition given by Missy. There’s certainly not reason for Bill to think that her doing what the Doctor did would be a solution. While I am not a fan of the ‘everybody’s forgotten it and all is back to normal’ ending, I guess I’m glad that they do at least explain that it’s the alien influence at work sort of.
Empress of Mars
”Fight, yes, but for the future, not a dead past.” – The Doctor
Likes: This story has a lot going for it—other than the slightly off-putting comic start (though the NASA set is impressive), it has a good amount of interpersonal tension, commentary about colonialism, and straightforward adventure. I especially like the introduction of the idea of an Ice Queen (played rather formidably well) and that it tries to undo some of the damage done by the previous re-introduction of the Ice Warriors. (I appreciate for example the line about the reptile warrior being melded with the battle suit so that they appear as one—an attempt no doubt to rectify the horrible thing they did in making it seem no more than clothes that could be taken off back in the earlier episode.)
Dislikes: Unfortunately, at lot of the good in this episode gets undercut by the totally cringeworthy effects used for the Ice Warrior weapons. The ‘bouncy ball’ remains of the victims may have been intended as horrific but they are just silly and distracting. I had a hard time taking this episode seriously the first time because of it.
Re-introduced: Talk about a surprise cameo—it’s Alpha Centauri! Also, the ambivalent nature of the Ice Warriors in the old series is reflected here—sometimes good, sometimes evil
Interesting: They flash a picture of Queen Victoria and sure enough it’s the actress that played her during the Tennant era.
The Eaters of Light
“Their work is robbery, slaughter, plunder. They do this work and they call it empire. They make deserts and they call it peace.” – Kar about the Romans
Likes: There’s some nice landscape shots (the opening with the crow flying across for example) and the Pict costuming is kind of fun.
Dislikes: Overall, this story is rather sloppy. No one quite behaves in character—Nardole is rather subdued, Bill suddenly has all this understanding, and the Doctor is incredibly tetchy for no reason and ends with a big, unthought-out self-sacrifice for something rather small scale. Many aspects of the ending don’t make sense—if the question of guarding the gate is about lifespan as the Doctor says, why does having multiple people go in at once make a difference? If a few second equals two days then does that mean the Doctor and grew were in there for years? All that on top of a ‘just so story’ of how crows got their caw. This definitely feels much more like a fanciful little kids’ show at this point. The tacked on ending with Missy is also confusing—she’s already been let out so why are they so surprised at it? When did Bill come to understand how dangerous she is? Why was Nardole cool with wandering in the last story and now is back to worrying about the gate.
World Enough and Time
“I’m rebuilding you to survive in a world not made for flesh.” – The Surgeon
Likes: I must admit this story, comprising this episode and the next one, is much more coherent than I realized the first time. It has a very cool sci-fi concept at its base (the differing time streams at the ends of the spaceship) and of course a huge reveal at the end that in retrospect is signaled throughout—from the slowly creeping addition of pieces to the puzzle that make up the Cybermen (the white face cover, the electronic voice, the metal chest, the skull cap, etc.) to charged words in the history of the program like conversion, upgrade, and more. The call back to the Master doing disguises is appreciated and made more sense the second time when I caught the dialogue reminded that Bill would have known his actual face from Earth history. Even the silly playing around at the beginning is not so bad, kind of harkening back to the Seventh Doctor’s ‘tests’ of Ace. The proto=Cyberman’s electronic cry of pain and begging for death are quite eerie.
Dislikes: It seems a bit far-fetched (and literal overkill) to have Bill standing there with a huge hole through her body and imagine they’d be able to revive her from that. The cartoonishness of it kind of put me on the wrong foot for the episode the first time. I don’t like them messing about with the history of Mondas and the origins of the Cybermen—implying they had multiple starts and perhaps that they didn’t actually begin on Mondas but rather on this station of Mondasians and that the Master was the one that initiated them? It’s a bit too much retconning. I was also kind of angry at the manipulation of us being made to like the Master’s character disguise though it didn’t seem quite as bad this go around. It also didn’t initially make sense to me that Bill would accept and stay where she was for so long–but this was tempered on the second watch when they equated it with her resolve shown in the Monk story and by the Doctor having implanted a subliminal message to keep her going.
Re-introduced: Mondas and the original Cybermen, the Master and disguises
The Doctor Falls
“People plus technology minus humanity.” – The Doctor about the Cybermen
Likes: The pace of the story continues fairly well and makes a clever transition with the Doctor getting out of things. The brief hope that Bill was okay and having that ripped away by the mirror view is quite dark but good. I am not sure I understood the part about the guns and apples until this second watch. The battle and plans and escape are all pretty satisfactory in the end.
Dislikes: I was not happy with the ‘rescue’ of Bill at the end. Not only did it seem a cop-out but I was never a huge fan of the Alien Pilot anyway—how is it this random being is so-powerful that it can traverse time and recreate matter including noting that it can bring Bill back to life (I had not caught that in the dialogue before but they thus left an opening for Bill to come back as a real character—an important thing to think in light of the next story). I was also rather perturbed at how they kept having the Doctor almost die and regenerate, shot and almost regenerate but not quite, literally get blown up and still be whole and not yet regenerated.
Interesting: I had not realized that the Johns Sim’s version of the Master escapes, we don’t really know if he will regenerate into Missy or not. Thus the next versions we see really could be in-between versions before Missy’s death and she really was the last of the Master. Or she didn’t actually die and regenerated. That partially depends on later dialogue I guess. (But the part about the dematerialization circuit doesn’t quite make sense?)
Re-introduced: The design of the dematerialization circuit
Twice Upon a Time
“I regret, Captain, that the universe generally fails to be a fairy tale.” – The Doctor
Likes: They make good use of the 3D frozen in time photography technique as well as a few other nice directorial touches throughout. Even though they kind of mess it up (could they not even try to find close lookalikes for Ben and Polly?), I like that they at least try to incorporate the past of the show into the present by blending footage. Two Doctors arguing with each other is always a bit of fun as well…
Dislikes: …but unlike in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors where the First was wise and guided the others, they turn him here into a silly archaic “oh the 60s were so backwards and we’re so much more progressive and better than them” joke. It kind of makes me angry to think of. Plus they could have just used the footage of the original show with Ben and Polly and then melded the new actor’s face for the First at the end—recasting Ben and Polly’s roles with horrible actors and costumes was just unnecessary and a very big turn off. It really makes it hard to stomach the rest of the story. Overall, the feel of the story is very smaltzy as well. All companions and peoples live on, the Doctor gets to say goodbye to everyone, and then hijacking a very nice true life historical event and shoehorning it into Doctor Who mythology (with a Lethbridge-Stewart to boot) is just too much. The power of this supposed race to be able to download all these memories is just too grand for it to be an unknown to the Doctor. It was obvious from the start that Bill was not going to be the original so it felt a bit hollow as a story line.
Interesting: I had not noticed that the Doctor gets back all his memories of Clara which does mean she could be part of a future story line. Of course, it also undercuts why there was ever a need for it in the first place?