Doctor Who: Knock Knock

"Landline??? What is this- Scotland?"

So that's four good episodes in a row for this quietly impressive season; we get a solid bit of teatime horror from Mike Bartlett, a writer new to Who but not to telly, more top chemistry from Bill and a bizarrely Tom-like Doctor, Hercule Poirot being splendidly sinister, and a satisfying and emotional conclusion. It's a story-of-the-week, yes, but that's what Doctor Who should be.

As with Clara, Bill maintains her life when not travelling in the TARDIS- a bit of a Moffat-era trope- and we're introduced to her uni housemates; it's interesting to ponder whether we'll be seeing any of them. It's too soon to get to know any of them yet, though, even if one of them is supposed to be Harry Sullivan's grandson. We know, of course, that this spacious luxury house offered as a student house at a knock-down price is going to come with a catch, but the fun is in the finding out, and fun it is. We get a kind of slasher narrative with the big alien woodlice (Are they alien or not? For the second episode in a row it's left deliberately ambiguous whether or not the monster is in fact just an undiscovered terrestrial beast. Is this an arc thing?) picking off flatmates one by one, but the fact they are all restored keeps things nicely kid-friendly. And the resolution is genuinely excellent. The episode as a whole is a subtle masterclass in how to write and structure an episode of television.

I like the obvious throwback to Susan early on, with Bill pretending the Doctor is her "grandfather", and her embarrassment at his hanging around in her fourth-wall breaking way ("Basically this is the bit of my life that you're not in"), and I love Bill's characteristic skewering of Time Lord pomposity as soon as she hears them mentioned. It's a good opportunity to seed the idea of regeneration early in the season though.

The end contains a half-revelation: the Vault appears to contain a person, or at any rate something both able to play Beethoven on the piano and with an interest in gory stories. I think I may have an idea of who it might be...

Doctor Who: Thin Ice

"Bit more black than they show in the movies!"

"So was Jesus. History is a whitewash."

In a sense this episode hearkens back to RTD; we have an episode in the present day, an episode set in the future and then, as here, an episode set in the past, namely the very last Thames frost fair of the Little Ice Age in 1814. The actual plot, with the splendidly dastardly cartoon baddie Lord Sutcliffe using sea monster poo as a source of energy and cynically allowing countless people to die for profit- oh, and he's racist too- is actually very much secondary to what's really important; this is Bill's first trip into the past so there's a lot of focus on her wonderful reactions and, again, lots of fun with the fact that we have a sci-fi literate companion, hence the stuff about stepping on butterflies. It's great fun to watch.

And yet, in a sense, this episode (and season so far) has harked back just as much to the early Hartnells, not just in the sense of the nice mini-cliffhanger between episodes as in how the episodes are structured, with the leisurely exploration of the fun little environment in which Bill and the Doctor find themselves this week, allowing the mystery to build and finally letting the threat present itself. It's a simple idea that's worked since 1963; adventure. That's all it is. It works. And so we get well-written episodes (Sarah Dollard impresses again) which follow a simple structure to spin an entertaining tale. Timeless stuff in a very modern style, and, my God, the dialogue sings. Again.

(Oh, and the TARDIS scanner signalling danger after Bill and the Doctor have already sallied forth is also very Hartnell, specifically very The Fire Maker, or An Unearthly 100,000 BC of Gum, whichever brew you happen to prefer.)

Nice touches; I'm glad the possibility is left open that the massive beast and its fish buddies may not be alien life but simply unknown species native to Earth. That would make it Doctor Who's first real sea monster. Either way, it certainly looks a lot more convincing than either the Skarasen or the Borad. Nardole (naughty Nardole actually disparages tea, the blasphemer!!!) drops heavy hints about the Doctor's "vow" to remain on Earth and guard the Vault. But what's that knocking...?

Oh, and the Doctor's speech? Wow. A quietly impressive episode from a quietly impressive season that succeeds by not trying to be big and epic or, indeed, structurally clever, but just doing the basics well. Showrunner, who are you and what have you done with Steven Moffat?