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.

Doctor Who: Extremis

So…Agents of Shield already did this and Rick and Morty did it too…

This episode’s purpose is to set up the stakes for the next one and to give the reveal that it’s Missy in the vault. Why is the reveal always Missy?

Ok, it’s possible that this is a red herring and the Doctor let her go and imprisoned something else in there, but it’s pretty annoying to think that the massive reveal we’ve been working up to is the villain who’s been featured in all the trailers.

But anyway the episode. Basically, we get to the end of this episode and see that the whole thing has been the Doctor has been watching a simulation of the Earth that’s so advanced that the subroutines (people) in it have become sentient.

It’s a good idea but like I said, Agents of Shield already did it.

It’s pretty well handled with hints throughout. In the flashback scene it’s mentioned that Time Lords are mysterious and hard to find. Then when the Pope turns up the present, the TARDIS won’t translate Italian into English. This is presumably because aliens responsible for the simulation aren’t familiar with it and don’t know the full extent of it’s abilities.

It plays out quite well, leaving us with a good cliffhanger for the next episode.

The Doctor now seems to admit that he’s probably going to need Missy’s help to stop the invading aliens, which may be Missy’s opportunity to prove what she implied when begging for her life. That whatever else she is; first and foremost she is the Doctor’s friend…or it could be something else.

Perhaps The Master is behind the whole thing, maybe our real series reveal is going to be that Missy is the product of resurrection rather than regeneration and that the Simm master survived The End of Time. This could all be part of their plan; immobilize the Doctor in one location, by making him think he’s already caught the greatest threat the universe and locked in vault. Meanwhile, the Master is free to do whatever he likes unchallenged. Then the Doctor picks up a crippling injury making the planet he’s on a far easier target, so the Master capitilises on the opportunity and puts together an invasion designed to secure the release of the other him (who is a her) to double up on their universe dominating capacity.

Or there is an alternative theory that I quite like:

Simm isn’t playing the Master. Part of Capaldi’s original arc was figuring out why he had the face of a man he had met before. It’s also been mentioned that the Doctor’s death scene will happen before the Christmas special.

So assuming Missy continues her arc of proving to the Doctor that he’s not at all different from her (which has already kind of been proven by the events of Hell Bent) maybe the Doctor will take one of her faces as a reminder. Maybe John Simm is the new Doctor.

Probably not going to happen, but it’d be a nice twist.

Overall this episode is good, it has some pacing issues, but the story is solid and cliffhanger is pretty good.

Doctor Who: The Pilot

So that was pretty good.

Since the Twelfth Doctor took over the main thing holding his run back has been the baggage left over from the Eleventh.

It’s ironic that Capaldi will finally be allowed to have a story arc that’s entirely his own, in his final series.

This opener does what Moffat does best, when he doesn’t have link the previous series into things. It establishes the mystery that will run until the finale (with the difference being that the Doctor already knows the answer to it this time) while running a serviceable stand-alone story and villain.

I say serviceable because the villain is basically the same as the hologram from The Lodger; a left over part of ship trying to find a suitably minded person to pilot it away from Earth. The title of the episode serves as reference to this villain and Moffat’s intention for this series to stand on it’s own.

Capaldi is, as ever, excellent as the Doctor, who seems to be wholly in his element now as University lecturer.

The new companion Bill, who I was quite apprehensive about is actually pretty good. The sequence that was released when she was announced as the companion showed very little chemistry between her and the Doctor. This sequence appears to have been drawn from The Pilot, but then cut out of the final product. I personally suspect there were some re-writes and some harsh editing done after fan and critic response to the Companion teaser.

There are some downsides. Matt Lucas is fantastic comedic actor, but I can see his Nardole getting annoying for the same reason that Donna Noble did. They were both written as one off characters, but then turned out popular. The fact that fans like them doesn’t really change the fact that their personalities weren’t written with longevity in mind. I can see myself really disliking this character within a few episodes.

Overall, though, the story of this episode is pretty good, the villain is serviceable and at least of the companions works well.

Teaser:

Next week, the Doctor will blow something up….err great.