Doctor Who: Oxygen

"Do people ever hit you?"

"Well, only when I'm talking."

In some ways this is very much a story of the week- a tale of outer space capitalist exploitation as a corporation jealously controls oxygen for profit, even for its own employees and (as the Doctor discovers) is prepared to extinguish its own employees if they cease to be profitable. A bit of a hint that Jamie Mathieson may be no Tory, then, in another excellent script from him which, while not up to his best, is nevertheless impressive, keeping up the quality in this excellent season.

There's more development of the wonderful rapport between the Doctor and Bill, and for once Nardole joins them on their travels, attempting to keep them on Terra Firms; apparently it was the Doctor himself who told Nardole to prevent him leaving earth for fear of leaving the mysterious Vault unguarded. It can't be long until we find out more about this because, simply, this episode turns out not to be a story of the week- the Doctor ends the episode, it seems, permanently blind.

It's a splendid episode yet again, though, and again old-fashioned in its style, with some leisurely exploration of the space station and things feeling very Troughtonesque and, indeed, recalling The Wheel in Space for obvious reasons and even mentioning (and undercutting as a MacGuffin) the fluid link. There's a nice riff on racism ("Some of my best friends are bluish"), great dialogue and some nice directorial touches from the returning Charles Palmer as Bill loses consciousness. It may not stand out in what is shaping up to be a great season, but here's a fifth top notch episode in a row.

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died

"I'm not in the mood for Vikings!"

I already liked this episode a lot when it still seemed to be a fairly low-key tale about a small CGI Viking village against metal aliens with a bit of Doctorish cleverness thrown in. The small stories are often much better than the big epics: give me The Rescue over The Dalek Invasion of Earth any day.

But then there's the twist: the Doctor has saved the day, but poor Ashildr has been killed. She would have died anyway, the whole village would. But the Doctor is consumed with guilt and a sickness of losing too many people, the curse of near-immortality. So he breaks the rules of time travel, just as he did last episode. And Ashildr is immortal which, as The Five Doctors taught us, is a curse. The Doctor instantly regrets what he has done to her; he knows what it's like to bury your loved ones again and again. Has he gone and made a big, terrible mistake?

And so we have an interesting twist on the two-parter: this episode is self-contained, but next week we will be meeting Ashildr again, a thousand years older.

It's a masterfully constructed script, with Jamie Mathieson again excelling; this is possibly the best of the season so far. Maisie Williams (I don't know her; as yet I've only seen one episode of Game of Thrones) is also superb. I can't wait until next week.

So what else? Well, the Doctor's sonic shades are unceremoniously smashed before the pre-titles sequence has even ended. Is this permanent? Clara is again magnificent, almost persuading the baddies to aid off and giving the Doctor a much-needed pep talk. And we actually get a "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow" as Jon Pertwee, er, didn't particularly used to say.

Most interestingly, though, we get an explanation as to why the Doctor now looks like Caecilius from The Fires of Pompeii, and it's actually a satisfying one: the Doctor's subconscious wanted to remind him that, fixed points on time or not, you can still go back and save one person. Nothing bad will happen. Right?

Next week will be interesting. It's starting to be clear what Steven Moffat meant when he said that this season will see a little playing around with what a two-parter is supposed to be.

Doctor Who: Flatline

"Could you not just let me enjoy the moment of not knowing something? I mean it happens so rarely."

Hmm. This episode wasn't bad. It was really quite good, in fact. So please don't take this the wrong way, but... wasn't there a touch of Fear Her about this? The setting, the two dimensional baddie, the fact that its a season cheapie- there are s lot of similarities. Still, Fear Her was cack, and this was bog standard. 

Yes, the conceit is great: two dimensional baddies. And it's fun to see the TARDIS shrunk, and all the cool things they do with it. More fundamentally it's good to see things being done with its dimensions for the first time since, really, Planet of Giants. 

Still, I like Rigsy, and I like the fact that we're rooting for the kid on community service and left in no doubt that his supervisor, definitely the UKIP voting type, is an arse. 

The character star stuff is good, too; Clara hasn't told Danny that she's still travelling with the Doctor! And, with the Doctor stuck in the shrunken TARDIS, she gets to spend an episode being the Doctor, and doing it well. More interestingly, as explicitly acknowledged in the dialogue, she gets to see things from his point of view, an interesting counterpoint to their big row in Kill the Moon.

Still, not an awful lot to say about this one. It was quite good, but you can tell the crew are thinking about the big stuff at the end of the season. What's this about Missy "choosing" Clara...?

Doctor Who: Mummy on the Orient Express

"Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose."

What a brilliant episode. This script from newcomer Jamie Mathieson has everything: a brilliant scary premise; a solid plot with a satisfying resolution; and some satisfying character development for both the Doctor and Clara.

The whole thing looks good, too. The Mummy looks amazing, by far the scariest monster we've seen for ages, and it looks as though this was done by good use of prosthetics, rather than the recent overuse of CGI. Good. The 1920s sets and costumes are fantastic, of course, but you expect that with the BBC. The cast is, again, superb, with Frank Skinner standing out (and I noticed, as Mrs Pitt in the pre-credits sequence, Janet Halfrey from The Curse of Fenric). And the nice metatextual touch of having the 66 seconds countdown appear stylishly onscreen as the Foretold bears down upon its victim is not only brilliant but enhances the fear factor hugely.

Every beat of the plot is perfect, with revelation after revelation. The overall shape of the plot is satisfying and, for me, far from predictable. Even the fact that the premise of the story was mentioned by Matt Smith at the end of The Big Bang is satisfactorily explained, and simultaneously fulfils a nice little character point between the Doctor and Clara.

I noticed, though, that the ultimate identity of "Gus" is left as a mystery...

Clara is still upset with the Doctor, and intends this to be her last trip with him. The first scene between them has them speaking to each other but, McLuhan-like, not communicating, and this is reflected in their phone conversation later in the episode.

The Doctor's cleverness is well and truly highlighted here, but insensitive bedside manner, his alien Aspergers tendencies meaning he just doesn't "get" feelings or small talk, is foregrounded here as never before. Several times this season we've seen him calmly telling people that he can't save them but he wants them to do something for him while they're dying so he can save others later. Here we have a premise where he does that again and again and again.

And yet...just when he's about to do the same to Maisie he does something different, behaving like a true hero and taking her place, defeating the monster in 66 seconds ("Are you my mummy?") while being incredibly Doctorish. Clara warms to this, and chooses to believe that the Doctor was only choosing to seem heartless for Gus' sake. And she sees, interestingly, that he's probably addicted to peril. 

For the moment, Clara is mollified enough (and Danny understanding enough) for her to keep travelling with the Doctor. I don't think the rift is even close to permanently healed, though. And I'm sure that the Doctor's insensitivity is something set up to be slowly developed in the way Colin Baker's Doctor was originally supposed to.

The future looks interesting. But, here and now, this is an outstanding piece of television.