Doctor Who: The Well

 "It's not appropriate to call me 'Babes'!"

This episode was, of course, absolutely brilliant, if not quite up there with its prequel, and I suspect that it will be rather well-received by fandom. I should emphasise that I thought it was brilliant. yet, despite that, it also felt like a variation on things we've seen before, and I mean that in more than the sense that this is a follow-on from Midnight- although, yes, there certainly are an awful lot of references to stuff that happened many years ago in the current era. Fine for people like me but might this put off newer viewers? Every now and then, yes, but this often? This is something that RTD used to carefully avoid explicitly doing the first time around, after all. 

This in many ways feels like an old-fashioned Troughton base under siege, albeit with it being the deputy and not the base commander who takes a dislike to the Doctor. The antagonist- something that hides behind you and can only be seen out of the corner of your eye, that kills anyone behind it, and will go behind your back if you kill its host- is sublimely creepy and clever. Yet the combination of the concept and the episode's look gives off vibes that are more The Satan Pit than Midnight. And, while a bloody good bit of telly, it falls into a pre-existing story type, it feels to me. Are we, er... going back to the well a bit too often...?

Ahem. Sorry...

There's so much to like, though, right from the start with Belinda's fear that something has happened to earth, and her parents. And here we have the Doctor, again, making rash promises about things being fine that he may not be able to keep- perhaps setting up a future clash? And I love the pre-titles bit: the two of them land, are given helmets, and... out of the airlock and into space.

I also like Rose Ayling-Ellis as Alice and, while some of the social commentary this season has been a bit too unsubtle and ineffective here, I think the emphasis here on how "Signing still makes some people paranoid" is justified. Interesting, too, how these people have never heard of Earth, or of humans- we're clearly meant to wonder if this means that Earth ceased to exist in May 2025. But surely, 500,000 years from now, if humanity has colonised the Galaxy, would Earth be seen as any more than one of many, many inhabited worlds, its place as the cradle of humanity forgotten?

It's interesting how the Doctor perhaps learns what the entity is, but we don't. But the ending is clever, satisfying and nicely tragic. Although that Mrs Flood... blimey, she gets everywhere. But, well, I liked this episode a lot. But I liked it for reasons that perhaps feel a bit too familiar?

Doctor Who: Lux

 "You're Scooby Doo!"

"Honey, I'm Velma..."

I suppose you could, at points, criticise this episode for bits of plot sleight of hand- for example, why does Lux manifest himself in that particular time and place? What's the cause? Is Lux's defeat perhaps a little too neat. Also, there will be those who say that the whole Pantheon thing is tired and, although they can only do episodes with a new "god" so many times before coming to the big conclusion, at this point I think it's basically fine. I like the Pantheon. It's fun.

And yes, there will be those who criticise the meta stuff, the most violence done to the fourth wall in Doctor Who since The Mind Robber. But let us not jump ahead. 

The opening sequence is of course superb, quickly giving us impressions of time and place: what could be more early '50s America than a monochrome cinema newsreel about the atom bomb followed by a cartoon? It's the atomic age, it's Miami... and suddenly Mr Ring-a-Ding starts addressing the audience and comes out of the screen. Brilliant.

The relationship between the Doctor and Belinda develops nicely, too. She's still very firm about getting home but much more open to being "one of his adventures" after her experiences here. And RTD squares this plot circle rather well here, with a machine that needs them to visit several places so the Doctor can "triangulate" in order to get to May 2025.

This is Miami, Florida, in 1952: the story has to address the appalling reality of segregation, but this is well handled, with a subtlety much more effective and hard hitting than would have been the case otherwise. And this is also used as a character moment. So, indeed, is the deliciously fourth-wall breaking moment where the increasingly sinister Mr Ring-a-Ding turns the Doctor and Belinda into cartoons... and they manage to become live action again by acquiring character "depth" so as not to be two-dimensional. Clever.

Of course, the fact that they still find themselves within a frame of film is a whole other level of metatextual because, of course, this is television. if we handwave away the fact that everything is digital nowadays, then... well, non-diegetically the characters always have been trapped in a frame of film and always will be.

And then... Doctor Who fans, who've been following the season and insist that the Doctor and Belinda are TV characters. I love this, and no only for the cheerful acknowledgement that fandom will never, ever rate any other story above Blink. Because this is actually quite philosophical, and evokes an ancient Chinese point about dreams- "Was I Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I now really a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?"

The decision that, actually, the Doctor and Belinda are real and the fans are not certainly seems arbitrary, but I'm assuming that all this metatextual stuff is going somewhere. After all, we've seen it before, both with Mrs Flood, whose comments here are certainly interesting, and in The Devil's Chord ("There's always a twist at the end") which is, of course, another Pantheon episode. All very interesting Is Mrs Flood also of the pantheon, "goddess" of reality, or stories?  But I also like the human touch shown here, the real yet humble pathos as the fans imagine they're about to vanish out of existence. It's nice to see them again at the end... although no, RTD, this does not make up for the cat last week.

Overall, then, this episode is crazy and brilliant and right up my street with all the meta stuff, with great production values and superb characterisation. But there's a caveat, of course: this needs to be going somewhere and the payoff has to be worthwhile. I suspect the finale will be more meta still...