Doctor Who: World Enough and Time.

Well that was pretty damn good.

Steven Moffat gets a lot of flack for his writing, some it deserved, but most of it misplaced. The common complaint I’ve heard is that he’s obsessed with self-aware humour and fan service references.

In terms of the self-aware humour, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t annoy me sometimes. This episode in particular goes overboard on it, with too many winks to the camera to a scene. I’m fine with Missy and the Doctor acknowledging that neither of their back stories make any sense and that throwing out lines like “He’s called Doctor Who; look at all the screens” but it’s just that they all come too close together. It’s difficult to engage in the episode when the self-aware dialogue is removing you from it every few seconds.

As far as the fan service references go, I’ve always seen them as secondary to the stories he’s building. They’ve never really bothered me and I always liked that Moffat is clearly a fan of the show and wants you to know it.

This episode it a showcase of Moffat’s ability as a writer. While it does have a significant development for Bill, the episode is actually about the Doctor and Missy.

This is a fact that you don’t really realise until the end. Bill’s transformation into a Cyberman is ultimately a distraction, from really delving into who Missy (and the Master) really is.

The Master is a dark parody of the Doctor and that’s the point that the story builds up to. The Doctors motivation in trying to help Missy is that she’s the only other Time Lord who’s ever seen the universe as he has.

I especially like the way that this factors in to her not recognizing her predecessor. In the same way as the Doctor appears to disregard memories from his previous incarnations (Twelve only ever feels de-ja-vu when he see’s something that we know Ten or Eleven already dealt with). Where all incarnations of the Doctor will cross their own timeline in order to save just one planet out of billions, the Master will cross his because he’s worried that his future incarnation isn’t killing enough people.

It’s not perfect; John Simm’s make up job isn’t really good enough so you guess it’s him as soon as he turns up and the time difference thing with the ship (while necessary) is really annoying.

But overall, this is a showcase of character driven story and definitely recommended.

Regarding the opening stinger with the Doctor regenerating, I don’t think that they’d do two fake outs in one series.

Moffat has said that this year’s Christmas special is going to be unlike any other in terms of the Doctor. Personally, I think that means the Doctor will be in a pre-regeneration state right up until the climax of the episode, possibly with the new Doctor surfacing in time to beat whoever the villain is.

Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light

Filler.

From the lame duck set up to end twist, this episode is purely something to do before John Simm comes back.

Rona Munro takes over writing duties in this one and while her dialogue isn’t bad there’s just too much of it. This is probably a symptom of a small special effects budget; with the main monster being all CGI it, the action has to be kept to a minimum.

This is no more evident than in the scenes where Bill hangs out with some Romans. Firstly, there’s an extended bit about her figuring out the TARDIS is translating everyone’s speech. I can’t see why this wouldn’t have come up before and why it’s only now that she’s even thinking about it. Secondly, she’s shocked to find that the Romans had a very fluid attitude towards sexuality, with bisexual being the general norm. Except the whole set up for the episode was that the Doctor and Bill had had an argument over who was the better expert on the Romans and the Ninth Legion. If she loves the Romans so much, why does this come as a surprise to her?

With these factors in place, this comes across as an excuse to bring up Bill’s sexuality again. “Look everyone; we’ve got a black, gay woman in our cast; please stop being upset that we didn’t cast Helen Mirren as the Doctor.”

In general, I think that Russell T Davies (for all the flaws with his tenure over Who) handled the issue of sexuality so much better. He had a casual attitude to the issues of who the characters were attracted to and more importantly, was secure enough in it not to contrive ways to bring who had what sexuality every five minutes.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to say about this episode.

It treads water until the anticipated return of two popular villains next week.

Doctor Who: Empress of Mars

A reptilian queen from 1881 tries to impose her will on the masses without mandate…how topical.

This episode is a welcome surprise. It’s far better than it’s trailer made out, largely because it’s trailer neglected the B story (which is incidentally more significant than the a story).

The A story sees the Doctor and Bill stranded on Mars in 1881, with a battalion of British troops, who have declared Mars part of the Empire and an Ice Warrior who claims to be the last of his kind. Right from the off you can pretty much see where it’s going, but it still remains fun to watch.

The B story focuses on Nardole as the TARDIS decides to reverse to the Doctor’s study and park there refusing to move.

Nardole is eventually forced to go to Missy for help in getting it working again. Like I said, the strength of this story is that it was left out of trailer. It works to kill two birds, but removing the Doctor’s easy escape route and building on the suspicion surrounding Missy.  She has the know-how to remotely control the TARDIS, but also pilots it back to save the Doctor and seems concerned about him. The downside to this, is that it’s completely out of character for Nardole to go to Missy for help. He’s berated the Doctor for leaving Missy’s cell unguarded for a matter of hours; it’s difficult to see him releasing her for any reason regardless of the stakes. It would have made more sense for Bill to have been the one to let her out as she’s the least cautious around Missy. On that point, aside from a female empowerment moment, Bill is slightly wasted in the A plot; she really doesn’t have anything to do besides exist.

The titular Empress of Mars is good as both a character and villain. Once again, the writers make it slightly political by having a female ruler who’s (literally) disconnected from the age in which she’s operating and in desperate need of figuring out how to get along with others.

Overall, this is a fun (politically satirical) episode, but the B story comes across as far more significant than the A.

Doctor Who: The Lie of the Land

Well that was the slowest action packed episode ever.

This episode wasn’t bad from story perspective (aside from the end), but the pacing issues from last week come back and destroy it. Everything is so slow.

It starts pretty well showing how the Monks have re-written history, inserting themselves into every major event. Anyone who questions this is removed for questioning the “true history.”

Once again, the series is being pretty political focusing on the theme of people just going along with what they are told has happened/is happening and not investigating it for themselves. It’s not a bad theme to explore, but like I said the episode takes so long to say anything that it’s difficult to stay interested.

Other low points include the Doctor and Bill trying to figure out whether one of the other is turned evil. This ends in Bill shooting the Doctor in order to prevent him from helping the Monks. Then the Doctor fakes a regeneration and reveals that they’re still on the same side. The irritating thing is that this scene was done entirely for the series trailer. There is no reason for the Doctor to fake a regeneration. Everyone else in the room is in on the deception and Bill doesn’t even know what happens when an incarnation of the Doctor is killed.

It’s not all bad. Missy is back and her interactions with the Doctor and Bill are pretty good. However now that we have confirmation that it’s just Missy in the vault, it doesn’t make sense for Nardole and the Doctor to have been enigmatic about the whole thing especially when talking to each other.

And now…the ending.

The Doctor theorizes that he can use his brain power to overpower the illusion that’s being peddled to people by the Monks. When this fails, Bill has to step in with the power of her imaged mother. The idea is that the Monks can only affect real memories and real history. Bill’s mother as she knows her is pure imagination and fantasy so trying to replace her in Bill’s mind doesn’t work and loosens their grip on the world.

First point, the idea of Bill’s mum being her imaginary friend hasn’t been properly addressed until the beginning of this very episode, making her a one episode daus ex machina rather than a part of Bill’s personality. Second point, this is the same ending that The Rings of Akhaten had. In that episode, The Doctor attempted to overpower a telepathic being with the power of his brain and memories only to fail. At this point, Clara used a symbol of her late mother to overpower this being. The reasoning was pretty much the same; this creature could use memories to it’s advantage, but it couldn’t handle the fantasy of what a person could have had with someone they lost.

It’s a good theme to explore, as is the idea of drawing strength from loss, but when the series has already done it (better) in the past it loses it’s meaning.

Overall, not a satisfying ending to the Monk’s trilogy.