Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor

 "We could call this the Master's Dalek plan..."(!)

I love the line above. A nice little fourth wall breaking riff on a story that was televised fifty-six years ago and three quarters of which no longer exists.

Anyway, before I proceed to, yes, praise this epic story by Chris Chibnall (yes, I know), let's just briefly acknowledge that it makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, yes, I can dig the Master getting Daleks and Cybermen to join forces against the Doctor a la The Pandorica Opens... but get them to share ownership of Earth as a foundry for their respective races? Nah. Also, the Doctor is about to regenerate so she effectively tells Yaz to naff off?  That's cold, even though the script tries to pretend it isn't. What happened to their romance? Dan's departure seems forced as well.

And yet... it works. It's entertaining, it made me laugh, it made me cry. It contains everything but the kitchen sink, and the TARDIS full of the Doctor's "extended fam" at the end even outdoes Journey's End. Yet it works, all of the characters get room to breathe without outdoing Jodie on her swansong. Even the glimpses of past Doctors- David Bradley, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann- are nice bits of fanwank, but kept in proportion.

And there's a lot of fanwank here. The Companions Anonymous meeting at the end is outrageous. I mean... Mel, Jo, bloody IAN CHESTERTON: William Russell will be ninety-eight next month. Yet, emotionally, it works.

Oh, and who's shipping Ace and Graham? Because Chibbers is.

Ace and Tegan are pitch perfect and absolutely joyful to see. With Tegan, she's the mouth on legs we love so much, brave hearted, wonderful, missing Adric. With Ace we have the jacket, the Nitro 999(!), and even the bloody baseball bat. Ace is absolutely herself, middle aged yet absoklutely the same teenager we know and adore so much. And both of them get to meet their Doctors, courtesy of plot necessity. 

Tegan's line to Yaz- "We used to be you, decades back" is a delight.

And I can't believe the early scene of the Cybermen being demagnetised into space isn't a nice little reference to The Moonbase. I love Ace's shock that Cybermen are now explicitly no longer vulnerable to gold. It's about time that was cleared up.

Sacha Dhawan is superb as the Master. His performance here- ever gaslighting and playing with our heads- makes him a serious contender to be the best Master ever. Yes, possibly better than Roger Delgado, John Simm, Derek Jacobi, even Michelle Gomez. And it cannot be denied that the Master, as Rasputin, in 1916, playing Boneyb M's "Ra Ra Rasputin" is one of the greatest televisual moments ever. The idea of Rasputin's hold over the Tsar and Tsarina being due to the "I am the Master, you will obey me" thing is genius.

But we end with the regeneration. Which, despite the rather forced departure of Yaz, is very well handled indeed. Jodie Whittaker is superb. She and Yaz get one last date and one last ice cream. It's just a shame they didn't kiss.

And then she does indeed, as rumoured, regenerate into David Tennant. Yet it's clear this is not a degeneration but a new incarnation with an old face. Tennant's dialogue is, of course, predictably amusing, but that's what RTD intended.

This was not without its flaws. It's possible that I may revise my opinion downwards in future; that happens with Chibnall scripts. But this episode was a joy.

We end with a preview for next year. Ncuti Gatwa is in it... and he's playing it Scottish?

Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils

 "Good, love it when there's not enough time."

Well, that was... perfectly fine. Yes, I'm damning with faint praise a bit here, but this is a genuinely engaging swashbuckling romp which will hopefully have appealled to the kids, which is no bad thing and indeed rather important. I'm the first to recognise that the sort of Who liked by fortysomething geeks like myself is not necessarily the family-friendly stuff that is necessary for its survival. It's a central paraxox of Doctor Who. Nevertheless, it was ever thus, and the programme has had periods of great success, far more so than now. I ought to not that Little Miss Llamastrangler is seven, perhaps not quite the target age, and Doctor Who just doesn't grab her.

Still, this is a pleasing little romp, although it certainly doesn't aspire to any great degree of depth. The pirate/sci-fi plot is well done, and the humour is relatively good, as are the performances. It's nice to see Doctor Who set in historical China with a largely Chinese cast and a Chinese director. The Sea Devils look cool and work well. There's no real explanation as to why the main Sea Devil baddie is behaving as he is, or what his story is, but that isn't necessarily a major problem, although it's something a better writer would have deftly handles without too much exposition.It's all very high concept, with a Sarlacc-style sea serpent (alas, no Myrka!) and the Sea Devils travelling around in a pimped-up pirate ship because of, er, reasons. The rule of cool tends to trump narrative logic here, but that's generally fine in Doctor Who up to a point, and said point isn't really overstepped here.

What doesn't quite work so well is the character stuff. It's nice and heartwarming to see Dan beginning to reconnect with Di, but the heartfelt romanctic scene between the Doctor and Yas falls flat. Yes, the Doctor can live forever, barring accidents, while Yas has a normal human lifespan. This isn't new or original, and we're even reminded within the dialogue that the Doctor has been married in the past. The actors do their best, but the scene just doesn't have the emotional weight than it should, and that's entirely due to the writing.

I genuinely quite liked it, though. And the trailer looks somewhat exciting.

Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks

 "Daleks do not store stuff?"

What would Moffat do? This is the question that Chris Chibnall will presumably have been asking himself while writing this distinctly Moffat-esque episode. It's extremely timey-wimey. It has a prominent romantic sub-plot which is integrated with the timey-wimeyness. There's even a lot of witty dialogue, something Chibnall has been improving at, but this time really nails. Most of the funniest lines go to either the Dalek or Sarah, in an outstanding guest performance by Aisling Bea.

This is not, of course, as good as a Moffat episode, as Chibnall is not in the same league as a writer. The timey-wimey plot is pretty simple in concept and only complex in terms of the complex amount of stuff that happens. It feels more Sapphire & Steel than Blink, which was simultaneously both more complicated and easier to follow than this. But it reminded me of nothing more than that old Monty Python deja vu sketch, which you need to watch immediately if you've never seen it.

And it's fun. It's good. It's simultaneously amusing and exciting. It's all nicely themed to New Year, with a whopping fireworks display at the end. The two guest characters work well, and the romance is believable. There's nothing much wrong with it. Even the humorous use of the Daleks doesn't cross a line and make the pepperpots lose their menace or sense of evil- and it's nice that they're after the Doctor for her genocidal extrerminaltion of untold Daleks at the end of Flux. It's just that the episode lacks that extra spark of quality that a Moffat would have given it.

There's some interesting arc stuff, too. The TARDIS control room gets a regeneration after its problems during Flux, which are nicely integrated into the plot. And there's some interesting character stuff where Dan gets to explicitly tell both Yaz and the Doctor that he's very much noticing the compelling necessity for them to just get a bloody room. It's an interesting arc, and not a bad idea, It's just that the execution is going to be carried out by Chibnall, not the likes of a Moffat.

Still, a solidly entertaining romp for all the family, with some witty lines to boot. This is one of Chibnall's better episodes. It's just that it doesn't quite reach the level of his predecessor... or, indeed, his successor.

Doctor Who: Flux, Episode 6- The Vanquishers

 “What an awfully big adventure!"

Perhaps this isn't quite the perfect finale, but it's nonetheless a fine culmination to what s easily Chibnall's best series. It's a busy episode and, if the Sontarans' attempt to save and then rule the universe by backstabbing some suspicioiusly gullible Daleks and Cybermen doesn't quite ring true, there''s enough going on to gloss over it. Even if the Sontarans are simutaneously a bigger threat than they've ever been and, er, overly partial to chocolate. I rather wish that hadn't been done. This os a weakness that will probably be repeated again until we eventually reach the equivalent of Ace chucking gold at Cybermen in Silver Nemesis. Still, I liked it on the whole.

The threads are drawn together well. Vinder and Bel are reunited rather straightforwardly in the end. The Professor, a wonderful character, gets a cool and heroic death. All the characters get something meaningful to do, even if there are a lot of plot threads to tie up. The mystery of the Doctotr's past is dangldd in front of us again, with that nice little metaphor of the Escher-esque rickety house of memory. We learn that Karvanista, perhaps, was a companion, but little else. Indeed, the Doctor ends up with the pocket watch only to deliberately hide it from herself. She fears she would not approve of the person she once was.

The use of the Sontaran plan, and the Passenger, to destroy the flux is clever, although it's not entirely clear how much of the damage can be undone. Azure and Swarm's plan- to sacrifice the Doctor to Time on Atropos and stsrt an endless time loop of the end of the universe- is gloriously bonkers, and I like the hint that it echoes something the Doctor may once have done to them, which makes me think of the fate of the Family in Human Nature.

Oh, and I liked "contact" with the three splinters of the Doctor, deliberately and appropriately echoing The Three Doctors in a tale about anti-matter destroying the universe.

The Doctor and Yaz being reunited is touching, and will do nothing to discourage the shippers, nor will the Doctor's pledge to be more open from now on. And Dan, having just been puzzlingly dumped by the rather resourceful Diane, is now officially a member of the team having well and truly proved himself.

All the more interesting, though, are the hints from Time at the end. The Doctor has little time yet, and will not regenerate. The Master will be involved. It is suddenly starting to feel like the end. And it's all very good. It just doesn't quite feel as epic as it should.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 5- Survivors of the Flux

 "Fetch your dog!"

This is, let us confess with all due squeeing, if that word still exists, that this was a somewhat exciting episode, teasing us almost as much as the Nepalese seer with his Conan Doyle obsession. We had Dan, a rather fetchingly dressed Yaz  and Professor Jericho (yay!) as Edwardian Indiana Joneses. We had Bel and Vinder. We had the Grand Serpent manipulating the history of UNIT, complete with what may have been a bit of Nick Courtney's voice, until Kate Stewart proves to be his match. We get the beginnings of an explanation for the Williamson tunnels. We get, in short, the beginnings of some answers, as befits a fifth episode of our first literal six parter since The Armageddon Factor, another story about time, cosmic balance and war.

Chibnall does well to balance the enormous number of characters here, and gives us feels as well as exposition. There is a lot of character development, from the Doctor's affection (love?) for Yaz to Yaz's resourcefulness as the leader of the intrepid gang stranded in Edwardian times. She's tough, and Dan and the Prof are lucky to have her.  Yet we also feel for poor Mr Williamson (with his anachronistically modern Scouse accent; a Scouser in the 1820s would have sounded more like the rest of Lancashire) as he is at last believed.

It has to  e said, though, that the best bits are the fun, globe-trotting, action set pieces in 1904, as well as the little bits that are bound to pay off later- UNIT, se see, has the TARDIS as it was at the end of last episode.

But the big event is the Division, and the revelation that Barbara Flynn is in fact playing Tecteum,the Doctor's adoptive "mother" (and, by implied retcon, the Claire Bloom character in The End of Time?), as well as that the Division exists outside of time, and has been shaping the history not only of our universe but a whole multiverse (right at the point where I'm reading loads of Michael Moorcock)... to the poinyt of wanting to destroy this universe and move to the next one. Which, incidentally, may be the universe from which the baby Doctor-to-be had just arrived by wormhole when first found by Tecteum, whoincidentally has the Doctor's memories stored in a Chameleon Arch pocket watch.

Deep breath. This is exciting stuff, and if that's not enough the Sontarans are invading, Swarm and Azure have just killed Tecteum and it seems the Doctor is next, amongst some rather exciting silultaneous cliffhangers.

And... breath. Yeah, that was a bit good. And Chibbers wrote it...

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 4- Village of the Angels

 “Mrs Hayward, you appear to be... at night."

Right then. I've been pretty positive about pretty much every episode this season so far, leavened by a little apprehension about exactly what Chibnall is doing with his retconning of the mythology and whether the end result will do the show good or ill. I'm enjoying the ride, but perhaps not unconditionally.

Well, this episode is not one for such equivocation. It's bloody sublime, scary Who at its greatest. Well done Maxine Alderton, who gives us another slice of proper behind the sofa scares. This episode treats the Weeping Angels easily as well as Steven Moffat used to, and is crammed with excellent suspense-filled set pieces of exactlythe sort that Doctor Who should be doing. The Angels are the perfect television baddies, literally dependent on being seen by the camera for the very effective scares. And there is, of course, a television within a television, because we all remember that an image of an Angel becomes an Angel.

Yet the setting- a village cut off from the world and a base under siege along two time zones- is compelling and, moreover, so are the characters. We have Claire, suffering the horror of being stranded decades in the past and the further body horror of being possessed, Exorcist-like, by an Angel. We have the likeable Professor Jericho, whose bravery stems from the fact that the horrors he's witnessing tonight are as nothing to the horrors he witnessed at Bergen-Belsen. There's even a brief exchange of words showing that Gerald (who thankfully dies; apparently a second touch of an Angel simply kills) is the worst kind of authoritarian patriarch. This is good writing, and well shot too.

Yet there's more than scares and characterisation. The story of the week may take centre stage here, as in War of the Sontarans, but the arc plot continues apace. Vinder is still (in a nifty mid-credits sequence at the end) on the trail of a rather heroic Bel, while Azure is luring countless victims into a Passenger. The TARDIS crew all get good stuff to do. And there are revelation- The Weeping Angels are (sometimes) working for the Division, and the whole thing is a trap for the Doctor, suddenly recalled to the Division at the end in an effectively shocking moment. And Yaz and Dan are still trapped in 1901.It's all the more effective for seeming to come from nowhere, yet the whole plan makes perfect sense.

I have no idea where this is going, but perhaps I really ought to put aside my reservations about Chibnall's work and admit I'm just enjoying the ride.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 3- Once, Upon Time

 “Time is playing games with you all."

I have to admit this episode is pretty damn awesome, and has me bloody excited. I have my usual reservations with Chibnall's retconning of the Doctor's past and continuity- has it been thought through? Is it going to benefit the show in the long term rather than buden it with confused and conflicting continuities? There's a reason why the so-called Cartmel Masterplan quite deliberately never amounted to the odd vague hint. However, in the moment, I'm enjoying the ride. A lot.

I've been reading a lot of Michael Moorcock lately, and this feels very much like his work. Concepts like the Passenger, a planet called Time and awar between Time and Space are very Moorcockian, if that's a word. The Flux is decimating space; now the same is happening in time. The narrative is complex, with the Doctor, Yaz, Dan and Vinder jumping between different times and places simultaneously, some real and some relived memories- but memories with details changed. Nothing is stable. I have reservat ions about how the general public will take to this, but this middle aged geek loves it.

We get nice little glimpses into the pasts of both Yaz and Dan, good character moments for the pair of them Dan and Diane are sweet together and she's clearly besotted, and Dan is horrified to discover she's trapped within the Passenger. We also learn Vinder's past- and he's a whistleblower in a corrupt society who was punished for doing the right thing, a difficult concept to grasp in the "in no way corrupt" Britaoin of 2021 (Ooh, bit of politics there...). We also see the mysterious Bel, on a quest (with her unborm Tamagochi child or summat) for love that encompasses hordes of Daleks, Cybermen and others.... only to discover at the end that she and Vinder are a couple on mutual quests for each other.

Oh, and Vinder knows what a TARDIS is, which is interesting...

But we also, of course, learn a lot about scenes from the Doctor's past which she relives alongside people she sees as Yaz, Dan and Vinder. Yet her own reflection shows her as the Jo Martin Doctor, while Dan is really Karvanista, who must be bloody ancient. So who are the other two...?

The Doctor is leading an army for the Division, an agent of law and order against the same two baddies as the present day. But are they baddies? They seem to have an ideology (Time must not be constrained) which is not obviously any more right than that of the Division.But we get very little context... until a mysterious scene with Barbara Flynn as a mysterious woman who explains that the Flux and all this is deliberate, the universe ending is the point, and it's all the Doctor's fault.

Oh, and there are some awesome action sequences with Cybermen and especially Weeping Angels, now right up there as iconic baddies. Yes, I loved this episode, and Chibnall wrote it. But let's hope what he's doing to the mythology of the show doesn't break it, or I may well look back upon this episode less fondly...

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter Two- War of the Sontarans

 “Repair must not be undertaken by idiots!"

Once again, for the second week in succession, I must admit this episode is pretty good. Chibnall's scripts have a certain lack of wit and polish, but he's getting better. And, much as I'm not sure how the general family viewing public will be reacting to this complex, universe-spanning, timey-wimey plot, I'm quite enjoying it.

The main season plot chugs on underneath as our three mysterious baddies from the dawn of time- Azure, Swarm, and the bizarrely named Passenger- attack a planet called Time, which isn't supposed to exist, where mysterious priests called Mouri keep Time itself under control as, apparently, when Time is uncontrolled it is "evil". All this is brand new mythology, unknown either to us or, interestingly, the Doctor. It'll be interesting to see where Chibbers is going with this. So far it seems to be about providing a Perils of Pauline-style cliffhanger for Yaz and Vinder, now integrated into the gag, just to give us a cliffhanger, but the concepts are cool.

Meanwhile, the Sontarans have exploied the Flux to invade Earth and, in a nice touch, are basing their claim on Linx's exploits all that time ago- and they seem to have time technology far more extensive than that of The Time Warrior, invading Earth at all points in its past in a plan which is rathere confusing to think about. But the extended sequence of the Doctor and Mary Seacole in the Crimean War is rather fun as an A plot for the episode, and I must confess that history being changed so that the British, French and Ottomans are fighting the Sontarans, not the Russians, is pretty damn cool. And I like the portrayal of the Sontarans- comedic, yes, as they have been since RTD brought them back, but also brutal.

As is the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker proves to still be on fire here: she's awesome.So, too, is the character of Dan, merrily slaughtering hordes of Sontarans with a wok given to him by his mum in Sontaran-occupied Liverpool, as you do, in scenes which reminded me a bit of Independence Day.

There's also that sceptical bloke ffom 1820 wandering around in the temple on the planet Time, and so many cool concepts and set pieces not least of which is a Sontaran on a horse. I must admit, I'm rather enjoying this.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter One- The Halloween Apocalypse

 “What's the matter with Sheffield?"

"Too near Leeds...

Here we go then: a new season of Doctor Who, after what feels like an eternity and after some rather big revelations in The Timeless Child that the Doctor's past is more complicated than we thought. Those revelations were certainly a bombshell and I was rather impressed. However, those revelations need to work in the long term, not just add shock value to an "event" episode. I suspect we shall see during this interestingly structured six parter how this pans out.

I don't mean to suggest this episode is one of the greatest ever: let's have some perspective. But I enjoyed it. The opening, with the Doctor and Yaz in media res in a Bond villain deathtrap, was the perfect opening, and I'm pleased to see that Chris Chibnall seems to be improving the humour content of his scripts. And there's a suitably epic scale. We have this mysterious "Flux", a kind of storm that is destroying the universe for reasons unknown. We have a baddie, who reminds me of Eldrad, imprisoned since the dawn of time and now free... and this baddie seems to recall the Doctor from her Division days. Meanwhile, we have the concept of the red herring species, the dog-like Lupari, pair-bonded to humans to save them from the Flux. And one of their number, the nicely exasperated Karvanista, seems to have connections to the Division.

There's also a mysterious dig in  Liverpool... and modern day Scouser Dan, played rather well by John Bishop, a new companion who is shown to live in poverty, for such is Britain in 2021. He makes a good impression, likeable and resourceful while acting as the voice of the audience who, now that Yaz is a seasoned adventurer and TARDIS co-pilot, can fulfil the traditional companion role of saying "what's that, Doctor?".

There's also Claire, who has met the Doctor and Yaz although they haven't yet met her, something which really ought to happen more often on a time travel show. I suspect this has something to do with the Weeping Angel she sees, in a truly horrific and effective sequence. And we also have a nicely entertaining scene with two amusing Sontarans looking forward(!) to the Flux. There are a lot of elements and sub-plots in play, which I like, which is a real strength of doing the season as a single six part story.

It must be said, too, that Jodie Whittaker has never been better. She's nearing the end, but her Doctor is charismatic and cool. Let's just hope the script gives the Doctor a little more depth. Last season was an improvement on that store but there's still some way to go.

Still, this is a very promising start. Let's hope the quality stays at this level.

Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks

 "This is why people don't like experts..."

Happy New Year and that. Last night was a bit of a washout for me what with the fireworks terrifying the little one and her not settling until very late indeed. This morning was somewhat unpleasant, too, waking up to the news that a fellow member of Doctor Who fandom, stalwart of the Whoovers, and regular MC of the Whoverville convention, died suddenly during the night at an unacceptable age. This has shaken East Midlands fandom a lot. I didn't know Ian well, far from it, but my few interactions with him were pleasant and enjoyable, his Facebook contributions have always been a pleasure, and this has absolutely no business happening. My sincere condolences to his wife, family and many friends.

Yet it seems somehow appropriate that I should be here, with some rather pleasant Chilean Cabernet, blogging the first new episode of Doctor Who in what feel like much longer than it actually was- March of 2020, just before the current plague hit my native foggy island, feels like another era. And, I'll say this up front, I liked this episode a lot.

And there's a lot to talk about, much of it fannish stuff, such as the cleverness of the title which deliberately evokes Revelation of the Daleks while homaging elements from that story's plot such as the original Daleks arriving at the end to exterminate the "impure" new race, and even a brief nod to cannibalism. But I must, firstly, talk about Chris Chibnall, who is impressing me more and more.

Chibnall had the misfortune of following Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat, both of whom are writers of the very first rank. I'm not sure either is quite up there with the Troy Kennedy Martins or the Dennis Potters, but the comparison isn't absurd. It's no criticism of Chibnall to say that I wouldn't put him in such company. He's certainly an impressive writer, though. Alas, I've still yet to see his much-praised Broadchurch, but I'm currently rewatching and blogging Life on Mars and Chibnall is, for me, the best of its writers by far. It's clear that the man has talent- yet his pre-showrunner episodes of Doctor Who were decidedly mixed- partly, I suspect, that despite being a Doctor Who fanboy of old (though not necessarily of the works of Pip and Jane Baker), his natural talent lies more towards straight drama and crime than to whimsical science fantasy.

Certainly, with his first season as the Moff's successor, I felt that he had shown himself to be an impressive showrunner in the decisions he made around where to take the series while not necessarily being that great as a writer. I felt, and still feel to an extent, that his dialogue lacks the sparkle of both of his most recent predecessors. And yet, last season, with his glorious heresy of introducing pre-Hartnell Doctors and cheerfully telling us that everything we knew was wrong, he impressed me hugely and seemed to find his mojo. He seems to have embraced his inner fan in a big way without compromising his professional judgement or knack for what the casual viewer (always the most important consideration) will enjoy.

And, with that preamble out of the way and setting a context, I think I probably ought to talk about the episode.

I like that all the problems in this episode stem from politicking, greedy humans monkeying around with the remaining tiny bits of Dalek DNA left over following the decidedly explosive conclusion of Resolution. I like that Jack Robinson is back as a gloriously hissable baddie, a kind of Donald Trump without the dementia. Even more, though, I like the perfectly judged political subtext. Like the Cyberman (and, indeed, all science fiction), the Daleks at their best when their use is actually about something. I'm sure that those  who like to sneeringly use the word "woke" whenever Doctor Who addresses political matters (often choosing to ignore just how left-wing the stories were in the Pertwee years, and not just those by Malcolm Hulke) will insist that this episode's nod to Black Lives Matter is overly didactic, yet I'd say it's subtle, effective and perfectly judged. We all saw the ridiculous over-policing of the protests after the brutal murder of Mr George Floyd, with tanks and armoured vehicles being deployed by police forces. The use of Dalek casings for the same purposes, with water cannon and CS gas, is both clever and effective. I also like the gentle satire of the corrupt, authoritarian prime minister (blatantly a Tory) through dialogue, in which Chibnall manages to outdo David Hare in Roadkill.

I like also that Robinson is seen to do his Tobias Vaughn thing with the Daleks- with the Tobias Vaughn being a well-honed Doctor Who trope- betraying his species to save his skin- and not only escapes the expected extermination but ends up being hailed as a hero, no doubt to return for more enjoyable Trumpian skulduggery, nicely subverting the Tobias Vaughn trope. And I like the light touch with which Captain Jack's backstory is gently fed to casual viewers who won't necessarily remember back to 2005. It's a joy to see the good Captain, with his good humour and his squareness gun, and John Bannerman is fantastic. He has a lovely character moment with Yas in which he notices her strong emotional connection to the Doctor- could this be a hint at romantic feelings? I think we are, at least, meant to wonder.

Characterisation as a whole is VERY strong here. I've criticised Chibnall in the past for his use of three companions and failing to balance them all, and I feel on the while that my criticisms were valid in terms of story structure. Yet we find ourselves, by this point, with a surprisingly well-characterised TARDIS crew. The nice little heart to heart between Ryan and the Doctor is wonderful, foreshadowing his forthcoming departure and setting the scene for Ryan to leave too, in a perfectly realised double companion departure that works dramatically and feels just right. There's more, though. Although I've always liked Jodie Whittaker's performance- she's the Doctor- I've always felt that Chibnall has written this Doctor as a rather flat character, without any of the character depths of all the Doctors from Eccleston to Capaldi but more like the Doctor as written prior to the show's revival. This episode, with the Doctor articulating her angst at no longer knowing who she is and Ryan urging her to search for answers, goes a a long way to address that. I'm increasingly getting the sense that, although I've had my criticisms of Chibnall's writing in the past, he's been very much aware of his flaws and is addressing them. His writing seems to constantly improve, which is exciting and wonderful.

Finally, I love the treatment of the Daleks here. There's no dwelling on their complex backstory; they're simply doing their traditional thing of emerging from their flying saucers to fly about exterminating people with a CGI version of the traditional special effects. The latest "new paradigm" Daleks (actually a rather good design) are symbolically exterminated by more traditional models. The ethnic conflict between Daleks echoes both Revelation and Remembrance, a subtle reset to the '80s ideas of what Daleks are about. There's some lovely fanwank, too, with the other inmates of the Doctor's Shada-like prison.

Oh, and on the subject of fanwank, this hard of hearing viewer is delighted to see the subtitles render the TARDIS' wheezing, groaning sound yet again as "Vworp, vworp". Long may this continue. And long may Doctor Who continue to be as good as this. Chibnall is really growing as a writer, and it's a joy to see.

Doctor Who: The Timeless Children

“Gird your loins, gentlemen.”

“I don’t... I don’t know how to do that.”

Now that is how you do a season finale. No, none of the “Fam” died, in spite of the many subtle hints. And the explanation of the “Timeless Child” was perhaps the most likely one. But I simply have to admit yet again this season that Chibbers has produced the goods. This is a cracking season finale, and what it does to Doctor Who lore is at once brave, radical and exciting. The whole thing looks amazing too, and there are truly excellent performances from both Sacha Dhawan as a dangerously and compellingly insane Master and Jodie Whittaker as a Doctor forced to confront what she’s never been made to confront before.

Much of the episode has two parallel plots- the Doctor within the Matrix receiving a massively game-changing info-dump from the Matrix while the Fam and their friends dodge peril from Ashad and his Cyber-army. I like this juxtaposition and, much as we fans are fixated on the big revelations, the exciting scenes with the Fam are important. There are some great moments, such as Graham telling Yaz just how awesome he thinks she is, and indeed one of their friends wanting to retrieve the body of his fallen comrade because her greatest fear was always being altered by the Cybermen- it’s this kind of thing that makes the Cybermen so effective in this two parter.

But we can’t help be excited by the scenes on Gallifrey. We begin with the Doctor and Master engaging in some edgily dark repartee mixed with nostalgic references to Borusa and the Panopticon, showing us what fantastic chemistry these two actors have. But when the Doctor is attached forcibly to the Matrix the revelations keep coming.

So once the sentient race of Gallifrey was the Shabogans- nice nostalgic touch- and one of them- Tecteun- was an early space explorer, crudely heroic. But one day she came across the Boundary, and found a child there, apparently abandoned. So she adopted that child and studied it, until one day it died- and became the first person on Gallifrey to regenerate. So she studies the child even further- a creepy, Stranger Things type example of an innocent child being used and experimented on, regenerating again and again. Some childhood.

But Tecteun eventually reached the point where she was able to risk testing her theories on herself- and so she became the first native Gallifreyan to regenerate. Dialogue then tells us vaguely that history passed, that the Citadel was built and that those dwelling in it became a race apart and eventually, presumably after Rassilon and Omega, Time Lords. It’s made explicit that only these elite Gallifreyans are Time Lords and are able to regenerate- an artificial twelve times- and that the rest of the planet’s population are presumably still “Shabogans”.

Meanwhile, Ashad has in his chest a device to destroy all organic life on the planet, a somewhat obvious case of Chekhov’s Gun. And the Master, latest in a long line of Tobias Vaughns, is inviting his Cyber-Army to invade Gallifrey. This is hardly rational of him, to say the least, but then that clearly isn’t the point. And it’s hugely amusing to hear the Master say what we all think about Ashad’s plan to destroy all organic life so that everyone, himself included, can “”ascend” to being purely mechanical creatures- “Oh, you mean robots?” Indeed.

But there’s a big revelation still to come, of course- the Timeless Child is the Doctor. She had many lives before the ones we knew (so The Brain of Morbius doesn’t need retconning after all!), and the Matrix has been redacted to remove all details of those lives- but the sheer size of those redactions imply there were many. And, let’s not forget, we have absolutely no idea where the child came from.

All this is brilliant. At a stroke the mystery of the Doctor is revealed- what happened in this previous lives? Who even is she? What of the Jo Martin Doctor, who we see in a mental pep talk sequence? And, let’s note, what’s even more brilliant is that the bureaucratic, arrogant, silly old Time Lords are no longer even all that relatively important to the central mystery. I love it.

Cue a final confrontation, the awesome spectacle of regenerating Cyber-Gallifreyans complete with high collared robes, and a magnificent final confrontation between the Master and the Doctor. And a splendid performance by Jodie Whittaker as she and the Master discuss whether she will indeed sacrifice herself to stop him- fortunately, there’s a convenient character on hand to make that sacrifice instead. Meanwhile, the “Fam” and friends are sent back to contemporary Earth in a Hartnell-era TARDIS which, like the Master’s, has disguised itself as a house. Cool.

And then we get a very RTD ending, complete with “What? What? What?” As the Doctor is suddenly kidnapped by a “cold case team” of Judoon and bunged in a prison without trial. Probably for a crime she can’t remember. Wow. At least we presumably have a long time to digest this before Revolution of the Daleks...

Oh, and while we wait, here are all my Doctor Who reviews...  https://llamastranglermarathon.blogspot.com/p/doctor-who-index.htmlhttps://llamastranglermarathon.blogspot.com/p/doctor-who-index.html

Doctor Who: Ascension of the Cybermen

“We're carrying the Cyberman that makes other Cybermen scream..."

Well, yeah. That was very good indeed. Actually, it was sort of excellent. And Chris Chibnall bloody wrote it.

So it's a long time in the future, after the Cyber-Wars, according to the pre-titles CGI with narration which rather niftily takes us into the title sequence through a Cyberman's eye. It's a cool beginning to an episode with not much wrong with it.

One intriguing sub-plot, beginning immediately after the titles, concerns an ordinary couple in mid-twentieth century Ireland who find a baby in a basket, abandoned like Moses, and we see scenes throughout as they raise the lad into a decent, nice young man who decides to join the Garda. But his survival after he's shot and falls from a cliff makes us (and his worried father) worried that things may be going a bit Clark Kent. Only after his retirement, and his forceful accosting by two youthful doppelgangers- itself weird- do we learn that he's been under the influence of a Chameleon Arch for his entire life. A time lord, presumably? Perhaps even yet another unknown incarnation of the Doctor? The one thing I’m certain of is that the explanation is closely liked to what the Master tells the Doctor at the end of the episode. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just say the payoff to this segment is awesome.

But, for the Doctor and her Fam, the world surrounding them is very different from idyllic rural Eire. It’s a period after the Cyber-Wars, where the Cybermen are almost dead but humans are almost as endangered, the Doctor telling Yas, Ryan, Graham and the viewers that the seven people in the precarious settlement before them are the only humans left, at least in this part of the galaxy. It all feels very Frontios. These characters are likeable and well-sketched for an episode with so much else to do, but as the Cyber-drones (robot Cyber-heads) arrive we’re very firmly told that this is a narrative with no time for the Doctor’s usual tricks as a couple of characters are killed, all of the Doctor’s smugly presented gadgets are destroyed and suddenly things are looking very worrying indeed, so much so that the Doctor panics, in what is a rather important scene for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, forcefully telling the “Fam” that they need to do as she says and not question her, and she regrets putting them in such deadly danger. All this is very ominous, especially as a trio of attacking Cybermen force Yas and Graham to flee in a separate ship from the Doctor and Ryan. Oh, and one of those three Cybermen is Ashad from last episode. It’s beginning to look awfully as though his survival, after last week, is going to result in the death of at least one of the Doctor’s friends.

There are some nice touches to these scenes- the Cybermen's legendary weakness to gold is mentioned, but rather forcefully batted away as irrelevant. The Doctor used to hotwire warp drives on weekends as a teenager, "not that we had weekends, or teenagers". And this Doctor, instead of jelly babies, has humbugs. But things look ominous. Ashad seems to imply to the Doctor that he is, to semi-quote the old Cartmel Masterplan,more than just a Cybermen: he eagerly embraced conversion, or "ascension" but was "denied"- because of some kind of apparent destiny. And now, with the Cyberium, he seems to hint at literally precognitive powers, and foresees the end for humanity. Who is he?

We end with Yas, Graham and their friends on a ship full of dormant Cybermen of a quasi-Invasion vintage, and watching in horror as Ashad and his two lieutenants arrive to painfully awaken the Cyber-army. They seem to have no hope... but this is but one cliffhanger.

Elsewhere, the Doctor, Ryan and their friends arrive at the promised land (there's a lot of Biblical allusion in this episode) to find a selfless old man, Ko Sharmus, and a magic portal just into the sea that transports the desperate to a completely random point in the universe- and yet, as the Doctor looks into the portal, the sees the orange skies and the Citadel on Gallifrey. Why there? Why Now? And, no less importantly, why does the Master, still played by the brilliant Sacha Dhawan, choose this moment to jump out of the portal to gleefully tell the Doctor that everything she knows is wrong?

So... yeah. That was amazing. And will take a long time to digest. Next week's finale certainly looks big.

Doctor Who: The Haunting of Villa Diodati

“I must poppeth to the little boys' room."

Now that was unexpected. Also clever. This looks very much, for a large chunk of the episode, to be a very standard celebrity historical. After all, we have Mary Shelley, a superficial but fun version of Lord Byron (with a shout-out to his awesome daughter, who was from Leicestershire, you know), and (eventually) Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ad in the fact that it's the night Mary S wrote Frankenstein in 1816, a haunted house, foreboding visions, ghosts, plus loads and loads of very effectively atmospheric direction from newcomer Emma Sullivan, and this looks to be an example- and a rather bloody good one-of the formulaic pairing of a celebrity historical figure with a science fantasy threat thematically related to their life- as per earlier in this season with Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror.

Except that's not what this ultimately turns out to be. Well, sort of; the episode does sort of have its cake and eat it by playing with the tropes of the celebrity historical for most of the run time. But this turns out in fact to be an arc episode, a harbinger of the final two-parter that reminds me somewhat of Utopia. Because it is here that the Doctor encounters the lone Cyberman as prophesied by Captain Jack- and ends up giving it what it wants in a huge timey-wimey dilemma. And the consequences are nailed on certain to be dire.

But the celebrity historical horror bits of the episode really are bloody good, from the house going all Castrovalva to the moment with Dr Polidori walking through the walls. It's an impressive script from newcomer Maxine Alderton (no writer credit for Chibbers), with some nice touches such as all the exposition early on being imparted via gossip during the dance early on. And there are a lot of characters to keep track of- not only the TARDIS crew but Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, plus John Polidori of The Vampyre fame, and everyone gets some kind of development, even if necessarily superficial.

But the explanation for the, well, recursive occlusion is cool enough- a perception filter- and the nature of the threat is awesome- Nick Briggs playing Ashad, a horrifyingly part-Cybernised Cyberman, with half a human face and emotions still intact, which gives us a very clear pointer that he's insane. This really wrenches true body horror from the concept of the Cybermen. And it's looking for the "Cyberium", an artifact from the Cyber-Wars of the future which seems like the kind of Cyber-Planner Kit Pedler would probably have written for The Invasion if William Gibson had been a thing in 1968.

And the Doctor's dilemma (ahem) is an appalling one- Jack warned her not to give the Cyberman what it wants, on pain of untold death and suffering. But the alternative is the premature death of Percy Bysshe Shelley and, as the Doctor rightly puts it, "words matter". Poets are as important as scientists, and it matters in these Gradgrindian times that this be said. A universe without Shelley hardly bears thinking about, and not only because, as the Doctor says to Ryan, the butterfly effect would mean that he and her other friends would never be born.

As the Doctor points out (rather forcibly), it's in these decisions that she is, and must be alone, a being apart, stil the Lonely God, and there is the question as to how three ordinary humans can really be friends to such a being on the level they believe they are. And yet, even when offered the chance to sit out the upcoming saga of the Cyber-War, all of Graham, Yas and Ryan insist upon coming along. I'm getting the strong stench of imminent tragic death.

And so yes, that was rather good- both as a story in its own right and part of the spine for the season. In mixing up the types of Doctor Who stories it's a Time Meddler for out times. ♥But what is being set up...?

Doctor Who: Can You Hear Me?

“What do you think it feels like to be them, to be such tiny, ephemeral flashes of existence?"

That was an extraordinary piece of television- effective as drama, deeply creepy and scary, developed all of the regular characters significantly and equally. It also had a subtle couple of nods for the old school fans and probably has more significance for the season arc than we think at first.

Best of all, it was actually about something.

It's often a sign of a good script when you have a complex situation- and here we have 14th century Aleppo; Yas, Ryan and Graham all visiting friends or relatives in Sheffield and later move to outer space in the far future. It's complex, but never confusing if you're paying attention, all to the credit of new writer Charlene James, with Chris Chibnall getting a co-credit. It's all wonderfully structured, including a pre-titles teaser for the first time in ages- yay!

The regulars all get meaty stuff. We discover that, three years ago, Yas had a bit of a crisis- bullies, slipping grades, parents not getting it- and was only prevented from running away by a kindly police officer, herself a nicely written character. Ryan has a best friend who has suffered alone with mental health issues lately, and it's clear that Ryan feels he's been neglecting the people at home while he's away travelling in the TARDIS. His conversation in the TARDIS with Yas at the end makes me feel he may not want to keep travelling for much longer.

Then we have Graham's fears and anxieties about his cancer returning- and a nice little character moment for the Doctor of the kind that was missing last season as Graham confides in her and she frankly confesses her social awkwardness. More of this sort of thing please.

At first, in Aleppo, it appears the baddies are going to be the nasty CGI monsters- but it's a whopping great clue when we're told that the monsters don't exist. There's quite a lot of clever misdirection. The first part of the episode is creepy and atmospheric, a wonderful combination the excellent visual style we consistently get with Doctor Who these days (something I don't praise often enough) and equally good writing. It's a great sci-fi concept that we hav two colliding planets with a wondrously engineered artifact between them preventing armageddon, and also that this artifact seems to be a prison containing a woman being fed nightmares- a great concept, and a puzzle. Ian Gelder is superb, too, as the incredibly creepy finger-detaching man.

Yet the revelations pay off superbly- like how, in solving the apparent puzzle of breaking the lock combination the Doctor fails to solve the puzzle of what's going on, and falls into a terrible trap. And I love that the pair of cruelly playful immortals behind it all strongly echo the Eternals from Enlightenment- although, quite rightly, it's left ambiguous that this is what they are. What does seem to be clear is that they're the same as the eponymous villain in The Celestial Toymaker. Whatever the continuity implications, I love the visual style of how we get all the animated exposition. And I suspect their existence points towards something significant, hence the audio flashback to the Master telling us of dark Gallifreyan secrets and the Timeless Child.

But this is, at its root, a story about mental health. These immortal beings feed on our nightmares, our self-doubt, our feelings that we're not good enough. And it's in being strong, in rising above these doubts, that we can triumph. A wonderful subtext to an episode which is exceptional in every way.

Doctor Who: Praxeus

“That’s why you smell of dead bird!”

That was rather good. Not, perhaps, up there with last week or Spyfall, but at last this season has given us a story of the week that is more than “quite good”. This was a solid tale, and not only because it looked amazing- well shot and looking far more e pensive than it actually was.

I’m reminded of The Enemy of the World in how this story flits from location to location- in this case Chile, Hong Kong and Madagascar- in a story that can feel somewhat bewildering. Perhaps the story struggled to squeeze everything into its running time but I’m nevertheless impressed with how the supporting cast were well fleshed out, the Doctor gets to be extremely Doctorish, the regular cast are all given lots to do while being shown to be awesome, and the story is actually about something- the scary amounts of microplastics we are releasing into our world.

The plot is rather daring, beginning with the TARDIS crew split up on various missions and allowing the TARDIS itself to link the various strands. Yet this allows each regular character to have a little development- especially the arguably neglected Yas- and shows how far each of them has come since they started travelling with the Doctor. We get to see an international and pleasingly diverse cast. We even get a sympathetic and three dimensional same sex relationship where, at the last moment, the more three dimensional of the two narrowly escapees a heroic yet cliched death. Phew.

Also, it’s interesting to have the baddie be a deadly alien pathogen for once, and for the sentient alien antagonist to be using humans as lab rats in a desperate attempt to find a cure. As stories of the week go this feels new, experimental, expanding what Doctor Who can do rather than fitting into an established story type like “celebrity historical” or “base under siege”. No, this may not end up as one of my all time favourites, but it’s well conceived, well scripted and well made. At last the stories of the week this season give us something impressive that’s more than “quite good”. And, after last week, it’s good to be reminded that you don’t need loads of continuity to redefine what this programme can be capable of.

Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon

“Consider your rhino backside imperially regulated!"

Er... so this isn't a story of the week, then. Blimey.

I'm still more than a little shellshocked from that. Did they really squeeze all that into forty-nine minutes? Impossible, surely?

So let's take a deep breath. I shall try and be coherent about what I just watched. Firstly, it was very good- I'm not sure how much was Chibbers and how much was Vinay Patel; frankly a big chunk of it was very heavily arc stuff so you can see how Chibbers ended up with a co-writing credit. Nevertheless, between this and Demons of the Punjab I'm impressed with Patel, on present evidence one of the more promising of the new writers.

I'm also extremely impressed with Jodie Whittaker. So far she hasn't been given scripts which allow her to show the kind of range that other recent Doctors have, and the result has been a kind of vague post-2005 generic Tennant-style performance. But here we get to see more of this Doctor's hidden depths, and at last Whittaker is called upon to dig deep- and she really nails it. This, more than anything with current Doctor Who, is what I've been waiting for. We know that this isn't going to be an episode of the week from very early on, in the TARDIS, where the Doctor is uncharacteristically secretive to her friends about what the Master told her at the end of Spyfall.

At first this seems like a fairly normal episode. Yes, we know the Judoon of old but they're portrayed as the same old occasionally murderous comic foils of old, with their silly language and vulnerability to having obscure legislation quoted at them. They're looking all around Gloucester (naturally, the episode gives us a good look at that fair city's main tourist attractions including, KGB assassins please note, the very pretty cathedral) for a fugitive, who seems to be a bloke called Lee, played by Matthew from Game On.

Except all this is just very clever misdirection. Because we begin the episode from the POV of Lee's very ordinary tour guide wife, Ruth, who is likeable, relatable and reacts just as a normal person would to all these alien rhino people. Only after a while, and after the appearance of the Judoons' immediate employer Gat, do we realise that all this is just misdirection and that Ruth- not poor, doomed Lee- is the fugitive.

None of this, at this point, seems to have much wider significance. Much more jaw-dropping is that ship orbiting the Earth that first Graham and then Yas and Ryan are transmatted to. Only gradually do we get the completely out-of-the-blue (at least to those of us who are unspoiled) return of Captain Jack. This is something of a joyous shock- and I love his reaction to the Doctor's current gender. I suppose it makes sense that Chibbers, former showrunner of Torchwood, would bring back a character he knows well. Even more intriguing, for vague reasons of plot convenience he can't hang around, and gets to impart some enjoyably cryptic and fascinating words before sodding suddenly off. The Doctor is to "Beware the lone Cyberman" and "Don't give it what it wants". It seems there's a big alliance against a massive Cyber-empire which can only be "brought down to nothing" if the Doctor does the right thing. Oooh.

All of this is huge, but it's not even close to being the main shock of this not-exactly-anonymous episode.Because Ruth shows some unexpected combat skills while facing the Judoon and the mysterious Gat in Gloucester Cathedral, which a probably going to get a few more tourists than usual. The Doctor accompanies her to her lighthouse childhood home and digs up a strange object while Ruth goes to what turns out to be a trigger for a chameleon arch (remember them?). The object turns out to be a somewhat '60s-ish looking TARDIS and Ruth turns out to be... the Doctor. We can add Jo Martin (who is very good indeed, and whom I remember from Chef) to the list. And she is absolutely Doctorish- right up to giving Gat a chance before letting her trip the fatal booby trap.

This is, I think it's fair t say, a bombshell. Oh, there's a certain amount of plot and peril until the episode finishes, but while all this is going on we, the viewers are trying to digest this information. Because this is clearly a past Doctor and that, as continuity currently stands, is theoretically impossible. There are thirteen incarnations in a regeneration cycle, and although it's slightly complicated by the fact that Jodie is the first of a new cycle of thirteen, we know every past incarnation of the Doctor, right? And Brain of Morbius, you can shut up. Multi-Doctor stories from The Five Doctors to Day of the Doctor have flat out stated that William Hartnell was the first.

But Chibbers, of course, knows this. He's one of us. It's pretty much certain that a) all this is done deliberately and with all due continuity obsessiveness and b) he has a plan. We're going to get yet another layer of retcon. The Doctor's past is looking a bit knocked about, certainly, but I for one am excited. Even more curious is that the employers of the Judoon are the Time Lords- but Time Lords from the past. This is the first time we've seen non-renegade Time Lords from Gallifrey's actual past, which in any other episode would itself be huge. There's clearly some kind of forgotten, buried past.

Then again, the TARDIS is a police box- so post An Unearthly Child? But no sonic screwdriver as yet, so pre-Fury from the Deep? And Chibbers is certainly well aware of these points.

We end with the Doctor and her friends reaffirming their togetherness, the Doctor concluding that "Something's coming for me", and a hook into next week's episode. We have a week to recover. Phew.

I have no idea, excited as I am, where all this is leading. But that's how you masterfully ramp up the revelations, beat by beat. Brilliant.

Doctor Who: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

“I work for the future. And the future is mine."

Well, that was... perfectly decent. Here we have a celebrity historical which hews very close indeed to the now time-honoured blueprint first seen with The Unquiet Dead as the Doctor visits the Gilded Age New York of 1900. We have a celebrity genius in the vein of a Dickens, Shakespeare or Van Gogh in Nikola Tesla- and the fact he's an inventor rather than a genius of the artistic kind makes little difference to how familiar this feels.

And there's nothing wrong with that, of course: Mark Gatiss' original template is one that works, and there's space in each season for an episode or two that's "trad". It's just a shame that we have, in Nina Metivier, a new writer, and certainly a competent one, but we haven't really heard her voice.

It's an entertaining bit of fun nonetheless. Goran Visnjic is splendid as Tesla while Robert Glenister (thirty-six years after playing the young Salateen in The Caves of Androzani) gives quite a nuanced and interesting, although also larger than life, performance as the genius but morally dodgy Thomas Edison.

The plot is clever and entertaining as the parasitic Skithra, a race of hive mind giant scorpions who travel across the galaxy cannibalising other races' tech, want to kidnap Tesla to be their ship's chief engineer, which is splendidly bonkers. Even better is the fact that Rani herself- Anji Mohindra- is clearly having enormous fun behind all that make-up as the Skithra queen. Interestingly, the tech stolen includes stuff from "Venusians" and a Silurian gun- so presumably a group of Silurians awoke before 1900? But then, I suppose there's also the question of where Madame Vastra came from.

One might perhaps point to the lack of obvious racism shown towards Yaz and Ryan but this, I think, would be churlish: the programme can't just not hire regulars of certain ethnic backgrounds, nor can it restrict itself from setting episodes in huge swathes of history. There have been plenty of instances where the programme has referred to the racist attitudes of the past- not least in Rosa last season. I think that earns it the right to downplay the whole thing sometimes too. We still get good character moments- I like how Graham recognises Edison as a certain type of greedy boss.

So we have a very "trad" episode for modern Doctor Who- a textbook "celebrity historical". And, yet again, an episode that's, well, quite good. No more, no less.

Doctor Who: Orphan 55

“That's a funny kind of linen cupboard..."

Not all episodes of Doctor Who have to be classics; they just have to try and be, at least quite good. It's reassuring, then, that last year's slightly disappointing season is followed by an excellent special, a superb opening two parter which seems to change the rules and is then followed by an episode which is, well, quite good. This may be no classic, and may not be as good as Ed Hime's superb It Takes You Away from last season but, if this is the baseline, this season is going to be a considerable improvement.

This is a story of the week- give or take possible romantic implications for Ryan, which I'll come to in a bit. But in one sense this story is important. Last year the Amazon burned. Australia is burning right now. Global heating is no longer a background threat but is reaching a very real crisis point. It would have been unforgivable for Doctor Who to fail to address this, and I'm glad that it has done so with such force and emphasis, even in a story which may be only quite good. Even the Doctor's concluding monologue, fourth wall or no, packs an effective punch. This is, I think, Doctor Who's attempt at a Tharg's Future Shock- a type of story it ought to be able to do.

And let's just agree to ignore the increasingly tiresome crowd who object to Doctor Who getting political- it was ever thus. Environmental issues may have been done better in The Green Death and, indeed, as a subtext through the whole Pertwee era, but they're nothing new for the programme. There is, I think, a more interesting critique in that this feels closer than Doctor Who usually does to being hard science fiction- something which is not all that common in this science fantasy programme, and something which tends to foreground its political subtext.

It doesn't feel like hard science fiction at the start, though- I'm reminded of the junk mail robot at the start of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and, for much of the episode, of the entirety of Paradise Towers. It feels, for a great chunk of the episode, that fandom is going to have to resurrect the old term "oddball story". And the story slowly unfolds through some quickly sketched but quirky characters, none of whom have much depth but all of whom have enough personality traits to entertain. There's even, in Bella, a possible love interest for Ryan, who inevitably ends up occupying the narrative role of baddie but seems quite definitely redeemable- and is last seen snogging Ryan before facing a very uncertain fate. Will we, and Ryan, see her again? Or is this just a one off harbinger of romance for Ryan? Perhaps with Yaz? Time will tell.

But the big shock is the big shock of the reveal- they're in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, on Earth. It's a definite Ravolox moment, as I'm sure all of fandom has pointed out by now, echoing The Mysterious Planet. The story titl suddenly looks very Christopher H. Bidmead. Those fearsome alien baddies, like the xenomorphs in Alien, are us. And this world is a future Earth, its VIP's long since buggered off, rendered no longer habitable to anyone but monsters- and we, of course, should we allow this to happen, are the real monsters.

In-universe, the interesting thing here is that this fate, one of runaway global heating, mass migration, war and nuclear holocaust, is just "one possible future". It'd never been directly stated that everywhere the TARDIS lands isn't just one big continuity; plenty of stories feed into other stories, but here that supposition is thrown very much into doubt. What, I wonder, would Lance Parkin and Jean-Marc L'Officier say? Personally, yes, I raise an eyebrow. But, as the much-missed Terrance Dicks used to say, continuity should never exist in order to get in the way of a good story. This story may only be quite good, yes. But it's a story that needed to be told.

Oh, and another thing... Mrs Llamastrangler's YouTube channel is here. It's about coins. Be awesome if you could subscribe...

Doctor Who: Spyfall, Part Two

“By the way, I bring news from home...”

Wow. Ok, this blog post is going to be one of the longer ones.

Obviously, that was brilliant, and Chibnall has far outdone anything he did last season- and this two parter is not only superb but a statement of intent, giving us a new big story arc behind the spy stuff and giving us a story that, structurally, feels very much like a Virgin New Adventure novel in not only its use of cyberspace (or social media, as we call it these days) but the sheer number of elements in the story- alien Cold War type spies from another dimension using multiple time zones and figures from the history of computing, anyone? I don’t care if the plot doesn’t make sense; the sleight of hand works and that’s enough. The random timey-wimeyness and use of Ada Lovelace, Noor Inayat Khan and Charles Babbage.

In fact, the sheer number of elements in the plot felt very Steven Moffat. So did the way the second episode of a two-parter veered into very different territory from the first part, very reminiscent of Silence in the Library. All this shows Chibnall learning from his predecessor, and is a good thing. But I especially liked that it was about something- how we are all happily surrendering our privacy and intimate lives to unaccountable and unregulated tycoons very much like Daniel Barton (and Lenny Henry is utterly, utterly superb)- I’m looking at you, Zuckerberg.

But, of course, there’s the interplay between the Doctor and the Master at the heart of everything- and the chemistry between these incarnations is electric. It seems, pleasingly, that Chibnall is trying to recreate the Pertwee/Delgado dynamic where the Master doesn’t so much want to kill the Doctor as play games with her. We get a shoutout to the sound of drums. And Sacha Dhawan is absolutely a worthy Master, getting to do so many of  the Master’s signature tricks here, with a Wizard of Oz TARDIS to boot.

Incidentally, isn’t this the Master’s first explicit TARDIS of his own since Mark of the Rani?

And yet... there’s something behind this. All throughout the Master is dropping hints about both a massive retcon and what’s happened to Gallifrey- and so, once the Master is defeated in a satisfying and credible way- albeit one that owes a LOT to The Curse of the Fatal Death- we get a coda, as the Doctor visits Gallifrey and finds the Citadel empty and devastated. At first it looks as though Chibnall is doing another RTD, another “Last of the Time Lords”, but he quickly undercuts this with something deeper as the Master appears as a hologram in the TARDIS, just as the Doctor did to Rose in The Parting of the Ways, to admit that it was all his doing- and it was all an act of fury after discovering a massive lie in Gallifreyan history: “They lied to us, the founding fathers of Gallifrey”. And this is the “lie of the Timeless Child”, as mentioned in The Ghost Monument.

It’s also a very nice touch that Yasmin, Graham and Ryan get their own cool little James Bond adventure while all this is happening, complete with cool gadgets, but this is also the episode where they finally resolve to get the Doctor to tell them who she is... and she does. Up to a point. She has so much more to tell them and I’m sure we all have so much more to discover about Gallifrey’s last. I love me a good, epic arc.

A magnificent start to the season, then. Let’s hope Chibnall can keep it up.

Doctor Who: Spyfall, Part One

“The name's Doctor.The Doctor."

About bloody time. Another hiatus is over and Chris Chibnall’s second full season begins. I’ll make no secret of the fact I was somewhat underwhelmed by last season, in spite of a strong cast and generally sound show running decisions: Chibnall has shown good judgement while overseeing the show. But that doesn’t make him a particularly great writer, unfortunately. There’s some decent stuff in his track record but his scripts have never stood out, and he’s certainly not remotely comparable to an RTD or a Moff, and last season’s scripts by him tended to be weak points. Still, Resolution last year was much better; let us hope it was a good sign.

I’m also a little disturbed by a lazy narrative that seems to have emerged over the reaction to last season- that those of us with concerns are objecting to Jodie as a female Doctor or the liberal political leanings of stories like Rosa or Demons of the Punjab. This is, of course, nonsense: most of us are sensible types who are well aware that anyone using the word “snowflake” in a non-meteorological context needs to have their adulting licence revoked. The casting of Jodie as a female Doctor was a hugely positive step- but can we please give the character of the Doctor some actual development? And as for Doctor Who being a bit liberal and having a social conscience- that’s an ancient tradition from the anti-racist message of Remembrance of the Daleks to the environmentalist message of The Green Death or even as far back as Planet of Giants. One wonders how those people who apparently think Doctor Who is too left wing would have made of Malcolm Hulme. I’m afraid that’s how the programme has always been.

No; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the programme’s style, direction or broad show running approach. It’s just that the scripts have on average been sub-par. Will Season Thirty-Eight show any improvement?

This is the first two-parter of the Chibnall era and, I believe, the first since 1989 to have an overall story title rather than individual ones. It’s the first time in fifty-six years (The Enemy of the World is tenuous) that Doctor Who has done James Bond. It's got our first pre-titles teaser since Chibnall took over. It's also got a rejigged theme tune and title sequence- I like it.

It's also awesome. I'm not sure Chibnall will be able to keep it up but this is his second very, very good script in a row. The James Bond stuff is fun- the ridiculous number of gadgets, the casino party in tuxedos, the constant spying theme, and a brief but scene-stealing role for the great Stephen Fry as "C". We also get a motorbike chase- Pertwee would have loved this. The perilous sat nav scene was awesome, and far better than the similar scene in The Sontaran Stratagem. But the spies are not only alien but seem to be beings made of energy, wanting to invade our universe... perhaps. And Lenny Henry is excellent as a sinister IT tycoon and Bond villain... or is he? He's dodgy in a Mark Zuckerberg, privacy-invading sort of way, probably giving us the real-world subtext of what the story may end up being about, but could he be a red herring?

It's encouraging, too, that all four regulars get decent amounts of stuff to do, although the globe-trotting premise (South Africa is made to stand in for Ivory Coast and Australia, at least) certainly helps. Yaz, in particular, seems to be receiving some development as a character- we begin to see tensions appear between her travels in the TARDIS and her career as a police officer.

But THAT cliffhanger... I never suspected, being completely unspoiled, that Sacha Dhawan, having previously played Waris Hussein, would be the new Master. I punched the air, and again with the extra reveal of the Tissue Compression Eliminator. Even more intriguingly, before the cliffhanger ending with a bomb, a plane, and the Doctor somehow ending up in some other reality, he tells the Doctor that "Everything you think you know is wrong". Is this heralding a major retcon on the Time Lords this season, or the Doctor's past? What about the "Timeless Child" stuff from last season?

Regardless, I'm well and truly hooked. Best season opener since Deep Breath. Possibly.