Doctor Who: Flatline

Well that was fun.

This episode is a good example of taking something from the shady non-canon who and making bringing it to the TV screen. This was done before in Tennant’s era, with the Family of Blood, an adapted Who novel.

This episode opts to instead explore an interesting concept from the Eight Doctor’s non-television adventures. Specifically, the b-plot involves the TARDIS being shrunk and eventually rendered in a state that turns it into a small cube. Aside from the awesomeness of seeing the TARDIS in it’s true form, we also get more of the Doctor getting over his detachedness and seemingly finding a balance between the sterner aspects of his personality and the more heroic.

This is quite interesting as it’s a very similar journey to that of the First Doctor; starting as an anti-hero and gradually becoming more relatable and kind. It’s a good angle to take, especially as Capaldi is technically the second First Doctor.

The episode is not without fault though. The supporting casts are alright, with the standout being Joivan Wade as Rigsy, but Rigsy’s boss/parole officer seems unnecessarily mean. Jamie Mathieson writes him in very one-dimensional way, as a man who does not like small time offenders. I have no doubt that people like this exist, but why they would be working in a job that involves supervising community remains a mystery.

One nice twist is that the “they’re just trying to communicate” excuses of the Tennant and Smith days gets openly jettisoned, during the Doctor’s get-off-my-planet monologue. Capaldi, as ever, delivers this speech in just the right way; no apologetic, regretful send off, just “you made your choice and now I’m going to kill you.”

It’s a great side to the Doctor and it’s only getting better now that the writers and Capaldi are moving him to a balance between his new grumpy self and the heroicness of the younger version of the character.

Clara and Danny’s relationship continues to go, but to be honest it didn’t need to be in this episode. Unless Danny is actually contributing to the story I don’t see why it’s necessary to have him show up and remind everyone that he exists.

The Boneless are sort of an effective villain; we never find out their motivation, but that’s kind of the point. It comes down to “Are you trying to learn from us? Are you trying to communicate with us? – it doesn’t matter, you’re a threat.”

A good episode, hopefully next week’s trees will be bale to follow it up.

Doctor Who: Mummy on the Orient Express

A lot better than it’s title.

With a title like that, I was half expecting this episode to be this series’ “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship,” ergo it would make me very angry that someone got paid money to write it.

Thankfully Jamie Mathieson appears to know how to write a script that doesn’t rely on using up the special effects budget and being very loud. The result of this is an episode of awesome quality right where you’d expect to find filler.

To summarise, the Doctor, intent on taking Clara on a “last hurrah” after they epically fell out during the last episode, takes her for a ride on the orient express…in space. As an aside, with Jenna Coleman’s new haircut, I wasn’t immediately aware that it was her and wondered if the Doctor had just decided to pick up a randomer to be impressed by him.

But anyway, they quickly find that the passengers of the Orient Express are being killed off by a Mummy, which can only be seen within the 66 seconds that it takes to kill you.

This to what is possibly Capaldi’s most awesome fan moment of the series as he channels Tom Baker in order to have a conversation with himself. That along with a Jelly Babies reference adds a nice bit of nostalgia to the episode.

Moving on, we’re getting closer and closer to a villain with actual motivation. The Mummy in this episode is actually an ancient augmented soldier, who’s biological parts have died. Now he’s just the machine dragging around what’s left of the decomposing humanoid. It kills because that’s what it’s programmed to do. The other villain “Gus” who orchestrated the whole thing as a science experiment has the motivation of trying to reverse engineer the technology that the Mummy uses. Since the Doctor isn’t actually able to track down Gus by the end of the episode we’re no doubt in for a sequel involving him, maybe even next week’s episode.

Difficult to say anymore, going on the title, I wasn’t expecting a very good episode; well written, very well acted and absolutely recommended.

Doctor Who: Kill the Moon

So something that sits around in space just being there is actually a living creature…might have said this before, but yeah Doctor Who has already done this one. We’re moving from familiarity to a solid “meh” reaction.

The main difference that Peter Harness throws is the moral dilemma about whether it’s acceptable to kill such a creature when it’s hatching/migration threatens to kill all of humanity.

The spiders of the trailer make a surprisingly small appearance, which could be the product of a limited special effects budget or that they’re a bit of a red herring. Either way, the lack of meaningful villains in this series is starting to get to me.

The other story running through this episode is that of the Doctor and Clara clashing. It’s unusual, after years of Tennant and Smith (Doctors who had to throw their two cents into everything) to see the new Doctor sitting on the fence and letting humanity decide.

The supporting cast isn’t exactly fleshed out. They seem to be a collection of redshirts and Hermione Norris’s Lundvik who’s an angry woman with a several bombs.

Clara’s anger (a result of having enough of the Doctor’s new detached attitude) seems like a significant development in whether or not she’ll be around next series. Given that she has a heart-to-heart with Danny after, suggests it’s something that’s been bothering her for a while. Like Amy and Rory having marital problems, it would have been better of we’d seen this rather than been told about it after. Danny saying “it happened, didn’t it” seems a bit stupid. As I have always said, I like the character development to happen on screen.

Oh and the alien that was inside Moon/Egg laying another Moon/Egg (thus resolving the problem – and meaning there was never a threat to start with) is really stupid.

Other than that, this episode is serviceable and has a few good scares, especially for sufferers of arachnophobia.

Doctor Who: The Caretaker

So here’s what The Lodger might have looked like if Peter Capaldi was in it.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this one; there were a few things that annoyed me, but other wise another pretty good episode. I’ve noticed that Steven Moffat seems to be credited as an assistant writer on almost every episode this series, which is pretty good. I know some people don’t like his writing, but regardless of that, the series fell apart under Davies because he let so many other writers get involved, meaning that when it came to writing the finales for the series he oversaw, the plots always felt rushed and endings tacked on with poor excuses.

Moffat putting creative influence into every episode is a mark of someone taking care to make sure the show stays on track.

But anyway, this episode opts to go for the big meeting of the Doctor and Danny Pink. The concept is set up pretty well with Clara now in what I believe can be termed a “Facebook official” relationship with Danny, but still secretly running off with the Doctor every few days. Opting for comedy with an opening montage gets the audience ready for the overall tone of the episode. Like I said it’s the same as the Lodger; comedy, with dottings of seriousness.

Capaldi takes to this very well, seeming legitimately surprised that Clara recognizes him in his disguise as John Smith, despite the fact that he’s wearing a completely different coat.

Clara’s is actually a control freak for once  - this is something that’s annoyed me for a while, the writers keep referring to Clara as a control freak, but I don’t really see it most of the time. I mean this episode shows it, with the open hostility she shows to the Doctor for appearing in part of her life where he doesn’t belong. But otherwise she seems fine.

Danny also gets over the Clara’s-best-friend-is-an-alien thing pretty quickly, which he has to for the purpose of the plot, but his whole “he’s an officer” thing seems to come of the blue. It’s one thing for him to be taken aback by an alien, but delving into the more militaristic parts of the Doctor’s personality isn’t something one could reasonably do based on five minutes knowledge of someone.

This week’s villain is also very underused and serves simply as a tool for getting Danny and the Doctor in the same room. It’s a but disappointing that they’ve opted for the Michael Bay approach of focusing on the human characters rather than getting a really good baddie in.

Missy makes another appearance after a three episode absence. Although this absence is neatly folded into the story with her helper (who I’m calling “Space-Ollie-Reeder”) explaining that she’s “busy.”

Conclusion:

Good episode, good acting, keep up the good work!