Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls

"Is it wrong that I..."

"Yes, very!"

Wow. That was an emotional rollercoaster and no mistake, and probably the best Doctor Who season finale since the institution started back in 2005. It's also an episode chick full of fan lore, Moffatisms and, well, stuff. There's a lot to talk about.

We begin with a typically Moffat pre-titles with fields, skies, farmhouses and horse-driven carts all inside the same spaceship (a Moffat trope right from The Time of Angels), and the terrifying spectacle of partly cybernised people being used as scarecrows. The Doctor, Nardole the Master and Missy share a few witticisms before they, and Cyberman Bill, end up together in the farmhouse where the two Masters exchange some glorious dialogue in some truly joyous scenes while Bill (shown as she sees herself) comes to terms with the awful body horror of what she has become. These two sequences showcase two separate types of superlative writing prowess from the Moff.

There's a superb reason why they can't all return to the TARDIS- time dilation; if they travel the full 4,000 miles then the Cybermen will have had millennia to prepare, so there's nothing for it but to sit and wait for the inevitable assault, and for the Doctor to be heroic for the sake of it- "without hope, without witness, without reward." The Doctor gets another one of those magnificent soliloquies that Peter Capaldi first showed himself to be so good at with The Zygon Inversion, and it's interesting to see that the Master doesn't care but Missy is, at least, equivocal.

So the Doctor and Bill, who knows her humanity is slowly being eroded and doesn't want to live without being her (there's a thought, and a horribly modern one- Cybermen as a metaphor for dementia), agree to the suicide mission of staying behind to blow up with the Cybermen while Nardole gets everyone away to survive for a while until the next attack.

The Masters get a delightfully mad ending as Missy fatally stabs the Master with a hug and he shoots her after she reveals she's off to join the Doctor. The Master is off to his TARDIS to regenerate; she is apparently too dead to regenerate, as some ways of being killed, apparently, just arbitrarily do that. This is fooling no one, of course; the Master's been deader than this. (S)he'll be back.

So we come to the Doctor- also fatally wounded, although we saw a flicker of regeneration energy even earlier- and Bill in their last stand against the Cybermen, some of whom, disappointingly, have "evolved" to be more modern like and use the existing costumes. But we get a moment of pure fanwank as the Doctor names "Telos, Voga, Planet 14". There's also an earlier bit of retcon that makes me uncomfortable while we're on the subject of fanwank; the Doctor seems to say that the Cybermen arose independently on "Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14" and, yes, Marinus, in a bizarre and gloriously fanwanky reference to the DWM comic strip The World Shapers, penned by Grant Morrison, no less. Not sure I like this suggestion that not all Cybermen are fundamentally Mondasian, and the idea seems to contradict dialogue in Tomb of the Cybermen anyway.

Still, Cyberman Bill dies and... Bill still exists, because of some clever and retrospectively well-seeded long term plot cleverness from way back in The Pilot meaning Bill gets to be herself again and travel the universe in a puddle with the girl she loves. It's clever, it's superbly written, it made Mrs Llamastrangler and me cry and it's essentially brilliant. But, well, it feels like a cop out. After Clara this is twice in a row that Moffat has stepped back from properly killing off a companion at the last minute and it feels like a lack of bravery. Perhaps I'm being unfair; it's still rather brilliant, and would probably feel different if it wasn't for Clara, not to mention that a companion dying would have overshadowed a busy episode. Nonetheless, there's a slight feeling of cop out.

And so we come to what all the signs are telling us is a regeneration; the Doctor recites his predecessors' last lines, he's lying in the TARDIS as he was at the end of The Tenth Planet, the Cloister Bell is sounding. And yet the Doctor is resisting regeneration through sheer willpower and has, I suspect, been doing so for quite some time. And then Moffat throws a curveball as (in the Doctor's head?) the bloody first Doctor appears, played by David Bradley. This is, to put it mildly, hugely exciting, and may indicate that the Christmas Special may be a leisurely examination of the concept of regeneration, i.e. mortality, casting the Doctor as a kind of Scrooge figure? Whatever, I can't wait.

And yes, I know I have a couple of little criticisms, but they in no way detract from the sheer brilliance and genius of one of Moffat's finest pieces of writing. Yes, like all prolific writers he has his tropes, but that's a strength, not a weakness. Steven Moffat is right up there with Whittaker, Holmes and Davies as one of the finest writers ever to grace this programme.

Doctor Who: World Enough and Time

"Hello. I'm Doctor Who."

Wow. Not sure what the Andrew Marvell quote has with anything, and I did English at uni, but this episode is extraordinary from the initial teasing (apparent) regeneration sequence, with us knowing full well that Peter Capaldi is around until Christmas, to the final, utterly wrenching body horror of our discovery that Bill has been turned fully into a Tenth Planet Cyberman.

The episode starts, though, with a few minutes of fantastic dialogue between a TARDIS crew that has never had such chemistry, and the addition of a seemingly reformed but utterly magnificent Missy is the icing on the cake. Her dialogue is witty, metatextual and glorious. But then the storytelling is equally and non-linearly magnificent as the Doctor tests out Missy's Doctoring skills with a distress call from a 400 mile long ship falling into a black hole, where time passes more slowly at one end of the ship than the other. We get alot of necessary exposition, Bill fulfilling the companion's narrative role here, as the Doctor explains his history with Missy in flashback, Bill gets shot, and... for those of us who've listened to some Big Finish, it all goes very Spare Parts, in the best way possible.

This is, of course, revealed to be a Mondasian ship, and the (ahem) genesis of the Cybermen, as it's very nicely put by John Simm's Master, superbly revealed after having played a friendly character in prosthetics all episode long without fooling me. It's all done quite brilliantly, and John Simm's Master looks positively Delgado for the first multi-Master story. The implausibility of Mondas being Earth's twin planet is nicely glossed over too. Thi is an episode to truly remind us of Steven Moffat's considerable talents.

All this and we get Venusian Aikido too. We're being spoiled. This is, and I know I keep saying it, extraordinary even by the very high standards of what we can surely start calling the best season since Season 27.

Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light

"Death by Scotland!"

Usually my Doctor Who blog posts are fairly long ones as there's always something fannish for me to carp on at length about, but for once this time there isn't: we have a proper story of the week with very few returning elements, which is nice. It's often, as here, the stories that aren't trying to be "big" or "epic" that are, quietly, often the best ones. Instead we just get some bloody good writing from the only real returning element, Rona Munro.

Munro is, of course, the only writer to have written for Doctor Who, on proper telly, in both this century and the last, and after the 28 years(!) since Survival she again delivers a mystical, feminist, magnificent piece of writing exploring the themes of colonialism, gender, and sexuality in the rich historical setting of first century Pictland, where there's the mystery of the 9th legion and the temptation to quote Tacitus' famous "They make a desert and call it peace" is simply impossible to resist. We are shown proud, thoughtful and very young warriors on both sides and given a beautiful fairytale touch as we learn why crows make the sound they do. This is, quietly, one of the best episodes of the season. Even the CGI monster is brilliant.

Once more the chemistry between Bill and the Doctor is wonderful- I love Bill's explanation that the Doctor "always ends up being the boss of the locals"- and Nardole is as entertainingly sardonic as ever. But most intriguing is the sexual tension between the Doctor and a Missy who may actually be a reformed character, something which desperately needs to be explored in depth.

Doctor Who: The Lie of the Land

"Worse than that, you had history. History was saying to you, 'Look I've got some examples of fascism here for you to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Oh, OK, you carry on."

So at last this three or four-part mid-season arc comes to an end and it's a perfectly well-structured and composed piece of narratively interesting dystopian drama. I like it. It's good. It certainly continues this season's run of form. And yet... Toby Whithouse's script, while good, lacks a certain extra sparkle.

Not that it isn't a compelling scenario, and one with real power in our current era of "fake news"; the monks, after last week's dramatic denouement, have ruled the world utterly for six months, and have falsified all of history to force people, chillingly, to believe that things were always this way. We see first hand how those who question this new narrative are arrested and disappeared.

One of those who still remembers, much as she thinks she's going mad, is Bill. Yet the Doctor, it seems, is the Monks' propaganda mouthpiece and there's a wonderful scene where he goes full force propaganda to Bill and Nardole, convincing them, but not we of the audience who know the Doctor much better, that he really believes all that stuff. The dialogue, and Peter Capaldi, are superb here, much as the reveal that the Doctor is (duh) obviously anti-monk comes as no surprise whatsoever and is played for laughs. 

And then there's Missy, finally shown in the vault and allowed to say cool stuff while utterly stealing the episode and, interestingly, seeming to have a genuine crisis of conscience in spite of her lingering villainous habits. Is it me, or did she also remind you of the evil simprisobed sister from the last episode of Sherlock?


Yes, the whole episode inevitably feels rushed given the scale of what it's depicting, but the episode ends up working, despite the somewhat forced denouement with Bill being all heroic and cool, being a bit forced. It's a good episode. The fact that an episode like this should be my least favourite of the season so far just goes to show what a bloody good season it is.

Doctor Who: Extremis

"Do not, under ANY circumstances, put the Pope in my bedroom!"

This is something of a gear-changing episode, obviously. shifting suddenly from story-of-the-week mode into a much bigger foregrounding of the season arc in ways we both did and didn't expect. It's also perhaps our last chance to get one of Moffat's "clever" episodes while he's still showrunner and without a season finale looming. The result is a triumph on those terms, yes, but also in terms of both character and spectacle.

The episode concerns a text, the Veritas, within the Vatican's secret library of forbidden texts (yes, that old stand-by), the Haereticum, which causes everybody who reads it to kill themselves. This is, as you might imagine, rather concerning to our red-hatted friends, so much so that the Pope himself personally arrives to ask for the Doctor's help, leading both to the unfolding of the plot and comments from the Doctor about his old 11th century friend Pope Benedict IX (a real person, incidentally) being a "lovely girl". And it's also an irresistible chance to have Bill's date with a lady she rather fancies being rudely interrupted by said Pontiff emerging from the TARDIS. It's a great start.

But all this is juxtaposed throughout by scenes of the Doctor setting out to execute none other than Missy by Max from Humans, ending with his sabotaging the execution to be non-fatal. (We can't have the Doctor endorsing something as barbaric as capital punishment, and nor can River Song, who conveniently sens Nardole with a message to that effect which also happens to explain how Nardole happened to be travelling with the Doctor- but didn't the Doctor resurrect him?) The result of all this is that Missy's 1,000 year sentence takes place not, as originally intended, with her being dead, but with her being the mysterious figure the Doctor's been guarding in the Vault and, yes, as fans we were sort of expecting this, but we should remember that the general viewer probably hasn't.

Oh, and the Doctor begins and ends the episode still blind. It seems that they're running with this.

The big reveal is, I think, not supposed to dwell on the metatextual angle which is, if anything, downplayed, but the horrible truth is that the world is literally not real, just a very good simulation created by a badass-looking race of alien monks who are practising their invasion of the real Earth- they are literally all just characters in a video game. It's a glorious and very Moffat idea, good enough to mean that we necessarily have a great big reset button being pressed as the simulation Doctor warns the real Doctor that the monks are coming next episode. This already impressive season has, if anything, just got even better.

Doctor Who: The Witch's Familiar

"So... anyone for dodgems?"

Wow. That was unbelievably good, and indisputably the first truly epic Dalek story of the twenty-first century. I suppose I still have concerns about how the general viewer is going to react to a direct sequel to a story from 1975 but, dammit, this is one exquisitely written, made and acted work of art. The Moff has done it again, and as for Julian Bleach's extraordinary performance... there are no words.

We begin with a delightfully metatextual sequence. We all know (er, in spite of what I said last week) that Missy and Clara are not really dead, so we begin with them, after a nifty bit of upside down camerawork from Clara's POV. Missy has control of the tied-up Clara, which symbolises the fact (see the title) that she has control of the narrative, particularly here but also throughout: Missy is a character not limited by the rules of the text, and delights in finding holes in Moffat's plot. She is also, of course, a delightful unreliable narrator. Oh, and Michelle Gomez? Best. Master. Ever.

The Doctor, by contrast, doesn't have control of the narrative, as Missy does: the scene at the end where Missy almost tricks him into killing Clara is mostly there to emphasise that. He doesn't know, as we, the audience, know, that Clara is alive, and duly pulls a gun on the Daleks in a clear shout-out to Resurrection of the Daleks. He still gets to be cool, though. That's what all the fun with Davros' chair is there for. Personally, I love the cup of tea.

Oh, and I love the questioning of whether or not the Doctor ever uses weapons. I know I always bang on about it, but this whole thing with his never using them as a matter of principle is quite recent. Pertwee used to shoot Ogrons all the time. Go back and look. It's simply that he refuses to carry one himself. All the cool people do.

It's a delight to see the peerless imagination of Steven Moffat let loose on the planet Skaro, so much described in all those weird '70s Dalek books and annuals. His contribution- elderly Daleks that can't die of old age but that simply ooze angrily in the sewers- is über cool. It is also, of course, a nicely placed plot point, like Raymond Chandler's revolver.

That's not the coolest thing he does with Skaro, though. That would be Davros' line about the effort he went to in order to get the Doctor "the only other chair on Skaro". Metatextual, again. I'm loving this.

The best thing about the episode, though, and where it is an exact thematic sequel to Genesis of the Daleks, is the whole extraordinary conversation between Davros and the Doctor, in which each word is loaded with weight and significance. It begins with Davros explaining that the cables are in fact a conduit for the Daleks, motivated by a filial respect which Davros calls a "defect", to nourish Davros with part of their life force. This process could be reversed to drain energy from the Daleks: once again the Doctor is handed the option of genocide: this couldn't be a more blatant reference. Once again, of course, he doesn't directly take it while, quietly, also masterminding their being hoist into extinction by their own metaphorical petard. The ethical distinction is important to him.

(And yes, I know the Daleks will be back, but my point still stands.)

Meanwhile, Missy and Clara are escaping by means of Clara homaging Ian in The Daleks, except here we have 50 years of Dalek behaviour thematically distilled through the device of having the Dalek change the words Clara says. Firstly, having Clara inside a Dalek in this way can only be a deliberate bit of body horror in harking back to Asylum of the Daleks and poor Oswin. Secondly, as explained by Missy (mistress of the narrative, remember?): while Cybermen repress their emotions utterly, the Daleks don't. They are very emotional indeed. And they channel that emotion into hate. And their guns.

But the more interesting stuff is still on that cosy chat between Davros and the Doctor. I'm not sure that stuff about why the Doctor really left Gallifrey really works, especially as there is never any real risk of this Dalek-Gallifreyan hybrid actually amounting to anything, but we can explain that as Davros' hubris. That wasn't why he left Gallifrey at all. Still, Davros is right to say that just being "bored" doesn't cut it. Future story arc once Gallifrey is found, perhaps?

More interesting is that Davros is genuinely pleased for the Doctor that Gallifrey survives: for this old racist, no man should be without his ethnic fellows. It's both perversely touching and a significant yet appropriate deepening of Davros' and the Doctor's relationship. Also, Julian Bleach is amaaaaazing.

Oh, and then Moffat goes and deepens the thematic depth (or "semiotic thickness" as we old fans like to say) by having Davros parallel the current Doctor's own "Am I a good man?". I don't care that this is more artful structure than actual thematic depth. It's awfully clever.

Speaking of clever, Davros cleverly uses the Doctor's compassion against him but, of course, the Doctor is cleverer, by means of Raymond Chandler's pistol, which we discussed earlier. But none of this lessens the pathos of the Doctor's concern that the ostensibly dying Davros should live just long enough to see another sunrise. And, if that's not enough, we learn the true context of last episode's cliffhanger: the Doctor goes back to save the young Davros.

Look; I'm prejudiced against "epic" Doctor Who stories. They promise much, and tend to deliver lots of bangs and very little real content. None of my favourite stories are epics.

Until today.

Doctor Who: The Magician's Apprentice

"Pardon my sci-fi..."

Well, there's me floored. At last Steven Moffat, in what is possibly his last full season as showrunner, writes a proper, epic Dalek story. Awesomely. And... I really wouldn't be surprised if Clara turns out to be actually, irreversibly dead. We know she leaves at some point during the season, and it would be just like Moffat to unexpectedly have her not leave after all in Last Christmas and then just kill her off in the next episode.

Anyway.. we begin on ancient Skaro, in the trenches outside the Kaled citadel, only we have CGI now, unlike in 1975 when they did Genesis of the Daleks, so we can now have biplanes firing laser beams and hand mines with actual hands, with eyes in them. Bit scary for the little ones, that, and part of me worries if all this continuity may perhaps alienate the casual viewer, but let's go with it. How long, I wonder, until someone does a version of Episode One of Genesis where Harry stands on a hand mine?

I knew the boy was Davros before we were told- what other dramatic purpose to the appearance of a little boy in No Man's Land could there have been? And, of course, I knew that the Doctor wouldn't save him, and would be ashamed. It's awfully clever of Moffat, later in the episode, to have Davros play a clip of the Fourth Doctor's musings to Davros in the ethics of killing a child who would grow up to be a murderer. Nice foreshadowing of the cliffhanger, too.

Colony Sarff is an awfully cool idea: a colony of CGI snakes in, as the Doctor later says, a dress. Sarff is essentially used to drive forward the plot by telling us that a dying Davros is looking for the Doctor, who is missing. We also get nice, nostalgic cameos from the Shadow Proclamation and assorted moderately old monsters. But by the time we get to the Sisterhood of Karn I again wonder how the casual viewer would take all this continuity. Yes, it's done well- this is good writing, not Attack of the Cybermen- but I somehow suspect that the next showrunner may react against all this dense reliance on the show's own mythology.

Anyway, Clara and Missy are on the trail, but not without some fascinating little character moments for them. Clara not only pretty much behaves like the Doctor in her approach to the mystery of the suspended planes, but is actually treated in the same way as the Doctor by UNIT. Here is a companion with nowhere further to grow.

Missy is her delightfully witty, evil old self, of course, casually refusing to explain how she somehow isn't dead, an old Anthony Ainley tradition done in a delightfully metatextual way by Steven Moffat. Fascinatingly, it is her, not Clara, to whom the Doctor has sent his "confession dial", traditionally sent by Time Lords to their closest friends on the eve of their death. Never more has hers and the Doctor's fascinatingly ambiguous relationship been proved and explored in some fascinating dialogue.

The Doctor's eventual entrance is, of course, awesome, but it isn't long until the trio are teleported by the Colony to the hospital on a space station where Davros is spending his final hours. The conversation between the Doctor and his archenemy Davros (Missy's reaction to the Doctor's use of the word is priceless) is electrifying. This story is, in several different ways, a kind of sequel to Genesis of the Daleks.

Moffat, having explored the characterisations of most of the recurring characters in Doctor Who, finally turns to Davros' own psyche. (Although, I fear, the canonicity of the I, Davros audios may be in danger.)

The big reveal, of course, is that they're not on space at all but on a hidden, reconstituted Skaro, with a landscape that recalls Destiny of the Daleks and an awesome modern riff of the Dalek city. I notice, also, that we get Daleks from all eras, which is well cool. It looks as though the cliffhanger is going to be Missy offering to show them how to use the TARDIS but no- they quickly and shockingly just kill her, and then destroy the Ship. I just hope the Doctor remembered to set the HADS.

What happens next is slower, agonisingly so, as Davros verbally teases the Doctor with the inevitability of Clara's death. But, inexorably, killed she most certainly is. And that still isn't even the cliffhanger.

No- the cliffhanger is the Doctor crossing his own time stream (naughty) and seemingly about to kill Davros as a boy...

I can't pass final judgement yet, really: this was an episode of set-up, albeit awesome set-up. But I'm buzzing. Oh yes, I'm buzzing.

Finally... this is my first live episode of Doctor Who since becoming a father. So what did Little Miss Llamastrangler (seven months) think of it? Er, she didn't really notice it was on.

Doctor Who- Death in Heaven

"Typical officer. Got to keep those hands clean."

Wow. That was quite possibly the best season finale ever. Looking over the season, in fact, it's possibly the best treatment of season-long plot threads in Doctor Who, in terms of both plot and themes. And yes, I'm calling it: this is the best season since Philip Hinchcliffe left, a time when Jim Callaghan was prime minister, I was just about to be born and Elvis was alive. Basically, expect a positive review. 

We begin with a clever feint- Clara trying to convince the Cybermen that "Clara Oswald" never existed and she's really the Doctor. This is clever; we've been primed, by a female Master, for a female Doctor, and there's been a season-long theme of Clara being Doctorish; think Flatline. Still... the Doctor is four times married, and has multiple children and grandchildren, all presumed dead. Interesting.

Still, back to the actual plot, UNIT appears, in the form of Kate Stewart, Osgood ("Bow ties are cool!") and a nice reference, via a version of Handles from the late '60s, to The Invasion, later to be echoed with the plane as HQ. It's good to see the Doctor, like Sulla, being appointed dictator of Earth; this is such a great bit of plot economy and is a great way of avoiding so much tiresomeness.

The scene with Clara in a graveyard about to erupt with zombie Cybermen is terrifying, but this is immediately eclipsed with an awesomely scripted and heartbreaking scene between Clara and a Cybernised Danny that brings home the true body horror of Cyber conversion in a way which, for me, eclipses all previous attempts. Wow. Again, wow.

I like the revelations- as expected, it was Missy who rang Clara in The Bells of Saint John and brought her and the Doctor together in Deep Breath. But Michelle Gomez is a brilliantly insane Master, and gets a fantastic showcase scene in which she, sob, kills Osgood! Moffat, YOU BASTARD! Yes, Kate lives, and yes, it's a touching scene with the Brig, but let's be honest, who really likes Kate, and Jemma Redgrave's utter lack of charisma? It's Ingrid Oliver's Osgood who makes UNIT cool, and she's dead!!!

Just as good is the debate between the Doctor and Danny, which pays off another theme of this season- is the Doctor like a military officer, getting others to kill and die for him? Here, he fails to see the humanity present in Danny, seeing him again as a pawn.

Then Missy arrives, all Mary Poppins with her flying umbrella, and reveals a plan which underlines the same theme; the Cyber army is to be put at the Doctor's disposal for him to put to universe-saving purposes. This is for him to realise that the two of them are not so different. And here we get the expected flashbacks to "Am I a good man?" and "You are a good Dalek!" And the Doctor's epiphany; he is not a good man, a bad man, a hero, a president or an officer- just a traveller who helps people out. And, with that, he steps back and let's Danny save the world like the hero he is. And then seems to actually kill Missy. Hmm. Not sure I like that. It's awfully close to endorsing capital punishment.

The story ends with the Doctor and Clara parting, each misunderstanding and lying to each other; she thinks he's found Gallifrey, but he hasn't, and he's devastated, while he thinks that she's found Danny when, in fact, he gave up his one shot at resurrection to the child he killed in Afghanistan, like a true hero. Wow.

And then, tragically, it ends there. The end credits start... and are interrupted. By Father Christmas. Played by Nick Frost.

What? What? WHAT???!!!

Doctor Who: Dark Water

"My heart is maintained by the Doctor!"

Wow. Just wow. This episode has two jaw-dropping moments. One of them (spoiler alert!) is the revelation that Missy is the Master, but my wife worked that out years ago. No, the big reveal is what the Cybermen are up to- the idea of the dark water showing only organic material and so hiding the Cybermen is clever. I only knew for certain when Murray Gold gave us that snippet of the Cyber theme and those doors closed, showing those Cybermen teardrop eyes. It's all cleverly done, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger as The Tomb of the Cybermen becomes The Invasion.

Moffat has a lot of fun with the afterlife as bureaucracy, and the casting of Chris Addison was a masterstroke. I enjoyed the Thick of It in-joke, too, with the line about all the swearing on the Doctor's psychic paper. But the ultimate revelation of the afterlife just being a bit of the Mayrix from Gallifrey is awfully, ingeniously clever. As is the idea of all Earth's dead being turned into Cybermen.

Just as important, though, is Clara's emotional devastation at Danny's death, enough to make her threaten the Doctor into helping her. He helps her, clearly, out of love, although he would never admit that. And the last conversation between Clara and Danny is both devastating and masterfully written.

At the back of my mind is the slight criticism that the Doctor would never have been present for any of this if not for the coincidence of Danny's death, but this is superb. And the parallel cliffhanger, with Danny about to sign away his emotions, is the perfect end to an extraordinary episode.

Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night

"It would be slightly awkward if the world were destroyed at this point..."

I'm glad I delayed blogging this episode (I sprained my ankle rather badly last night in the Pets at Home car park and have spent a surreal couple of hours, in a wheelchair, in A&E- it's a long story), as it only occurred to me this morning that the whole episode, superficially a bit like Kill the Moon in its use of a big natural phenomenon as an apparent but not actual threat, is in fact entirely about William Blake's The Tyger. 

Not only is there the episode title, and the appearance of a single tiger, but we have innocence (the children, sort of, but at least Maebh), and different kinds of life experience (the Doctor, Danny, and Clara in-between. I'm nowhere near enough of a Blake scholar to prove much further; for that, I suspect you may wish to look up the excellent Phlip Sandifer's blog review as he is very well versed in Blake indeed, and there's no way I'm looking at his review until mine is done.

This is an excellent script from Frank Cottrell Boyce, whom I mainly know from 24 Hour Party People. The scenario is weird enough to give us a vivid pre-titles spectacle of London landmarks among bagsy a great forest, mysterious, and perfect as a way to bring Clara, the Doctor, and Danny together. The Gaia-like conclusion, that the sudden appearance of trees is nature's way of protecting the planet from asteroid impacts, is ingenious (what about the impact at the end of the Cretaceous, though?), and the way that "Class project- save the Earth" involves the kids is cute but just manages to avoid being too trite. This is a script that manages to be both intelligent and kid-friendly, however, and this is a very good thing. Long live quality children's telly.

I note that, once again, the Doctor explains to Clara that, although they may have seen many parts of the future, they still may never come to pass. This, again, echoes Kill the Moon and, again, uses much more evocative and poetic language than simply referring to "fixed points in time". I'm impressed.

This is also a great episode for the characters, and I don't just mean the Doctor's splendid declaration that "Even my incredibly long life is too short for Les Miserables". Yes, Danny finds out that Clara has been continuing to travel with the Doctor, butchers philosophical about it; all he wants is the truth. And Danny is very heroic here, his first thoughts being for the children even in the face of certain death. And, in declining the chance to see the solar flare, he explains that "I don't want to see more things. I want to see the things in front of me more clearly." He's a wise, damaged man who has seen and done terrible things in war, and who has had enough of excitement. He just wants to cherish the world he knows and to love Clara. It's a touching viewpoint, and a powerful critique to the ideology of the Doctor and, indeed, the programme.

The trailer for next week looks a bit spoilerific but I, for one, can't wait for what looks like a truly epic finale, a two parter as in days of old.

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: The Caretaker

"Human beings have incredibly short lifespans. Frankly, you should all be in a permanent state of panic."

I'm sure this episode is going to divide opinion as much of this season has, being that the (excellent) alien menace is somewhat in the background while the foreground is firmly hogged by the relationship drama between Clara, Danny and the Doctor as disapproving father figure. Well, I loved it, and as far as I'm concerned this continues to be the best season since the days of Christopher Eccleston. All this, and a ridiculous number of tributes to An Unearthly Child too.

We begin with the juxtaposition of Clara's exciting adventures "eloping" with the Doctor and her rather more traditional dates with Danny, setting us up for an episode in which Danny and the Doctor meet- and that, rather than the brilliantly designed and scary-looking Skovox Blitzer, is what the episode is about in a joyous mix of romantic comedy and serious drama as befits the talents of Gareth Roberts although, once more, we get an "and Steven Moffat". 

The long pre-credits sequence is brilliant and ends predictably but perfectly on the revelation of the school's new caretaker in a way which reminds me of the beginning to School Reunion. But this, of course, is Coal Hill, and not only to we have Clara and Danny as the Ian and Barbara of 2014 but also a policeman going into a junkyard for which I'm fairly sure I could guess the postal address. Even the junk inside recalls the scenes inside 76 Totters Lane half a century ago. But this policeman is not so lucky, and ends up in the afterlife/promised land/ Worldsphere. Policing just ain't Dixon of Dock Green any more.

The Doctor's prejudices ("I hate soldiers. Don't you just hate soldiers?") are obvious during his first meeting with Danny, and he never shakes off the idea that an ex-soldier must be thick and therefore a PE teacher. The script deliberately paints him as both unlikeable in the wrong, and takes care to portray Danny as nice, reliable, brave and, well, Ian Chesterton-like. Danny is, of course, right to finger the Doctor as "officer class", someone who can inspire his men to do what needs to be done, and he's also right, after earning the Doctor's grudging respect by saving the world, to warn Clara not to let him push her too far, or they're finished. 

This is both blatantly foreshadowing something for later in the season and a shrewd character analysis of the Doctor. Of course this veteran of the Time War is a soldier, and his prejudice is simply self-loathing. Indeed, we examines these themes with Tennant during Season 30, with his aversion to guns, soldiering and UNIT being foregrounded. And yet he went to his final battle with Rassilon armed with Wilf's gun, symbolising that, much as he may hate it, deep down, this Time War veteran is very much a soldier.

On a lighter note, we also get to meet Courney Woods, the disruptive pupil of whom we have heard before; I'm sure we haven't heard the last of her. The parallels to one Susan Foreman are obvious, and I love the way she immediately vomits after the Doctor shows her the stars.

This episode is superb, but I fear there will be many who dislike it's strong focus on the arc plot and the foregrounding of character drama over monsters and danger. I hope I'm wrong. Time to brave the internet...

Doctor Who: Into the Dalek

"Fantastic idea for a movie. Terrible idea for a proctologist."

Peter Capaldi's tenure can now claim two excellent episodes in a row; in hindsight this is both a far better story and a far better study of our new Doctor than was The Beast Below.

The plot is, obviously, Fantastic Voyage, but we also get a bit of Doctor/Dalek moral comparison that both evokes Dalek and gives us an interesting study of our new Doctor, who may not be a good man but is, perhaps, a "good Dalek"; he may be on the side of good, but that doesn't make him nice. Indeed, he says of Clara that "She cares so I don't have to." And yet... this new Doctor is not too alienating; he's witty, and just vulnerable enough. This is  The Twin Dilemma done right, and Capaldi simply shines. So does Moffat. He seems to have a far clearer idea of what he wants to do here than he did during Matt Smith's early stories. 

There's also some nice arc threads being laid down. This Doctor, even more than before, doesn't like soldiers... and Clara, the Doctor's moral compass and the person, clearly, whom he most respects, is obviously set up to begin a relationship with a former soldier, and one with a troubled military past. That'll be interesting.

Also, of course, we see Missy again. She seems to be collecting people in her "Heaven" who have died because of the Doctor. Interesting. She's obviously a big, mysterious part of this season. And Missy... Mistress? A female Master? Or just clever misdirection? We shall see. 

I have to praise the effects here, too, which were outstanding, and the performances in general. This is also the best Dalek story in ages, and the first in ages to actually be about them. They work best when treated as a dark mirror of the Doctor; mirrors of the Doctor seem, so far, to be something of a season motif. 

So, Robin Hood...

Doctor Who: Deep Breath

"I'm not your boyfriend."

Damn you, Moffat. My lovely wife may be pregnant, and somewhat prone to blubbing, but that bit where Matt Smith's Doctor told Clara over the phone that his new self would need looking after made her cry!!!

This is the best regeneration story I've properly seen thus far (although seeing The Power of the Daleks with actual footage would be nice, hint hint, Mr Morris and Auntie Beeb). The Moff is, as usual, both very clever and very meta in having the script address head on all of the audience's concerns and questions about the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi is the Doctor, superb and very Tom thus far) and the show's future. 

Clara's resistance to this older, non-heartthrob Time Lord echoes that of countless fangirls, one of whom I happen to be married to, but Gem, at least, has been won over. It takes time for Clara to be won over too, but this is both realistic and allows her to voice the fears of a portion of the audience, and moreover the clash between her and Vastra over her denial that the Doctor has changed is a real dramatic highlight.

Capaldi is instantly the Doctor, as expected, but the real delight is Clara who, for the first time, is being given actual character traits and a chance for Jenna Coleman to show what a bloody good actress she is when given the material. It's also notable that, given the new friction between the Doctor and Clara, the two leads have real chemistry, more so than there ever was between Coleman and Matt Smith. A lot if this has to do with Clara suddenly being an actual character with a personality, and not just the walking arc plot MacGuffin that was the impossible girl. She's as much of a revelation here as Capaldi.

The plot, while slightly rehashed from Full Circle, is nicely unfurled, with the surprise baddies ("rubbish robots from the dawn of time") being those clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace way back in season twenty-eight. There are some nice moments as the Doctor and Clara investigate,notably as Clara shows what a tough but she is when being interrogated but most shockingly when the Doctor seems to abandon her, a trick which works in a regeneration story as in no other.

There are other little things to love here aside from the plot and characterisation: the little jokes about the Doctor's accent; the hint that the face he now has (that of a Roman whom he met in Pompeii!) is a clue he set for himself(!)( Strax's many splendidly quotable lines, and the slightly kinky nature of Vastra and Jenny's relationship. Oh, and there's that mysterious lady at the end, who apparently both arranged the Doctor and Clara's rendezvous at the restaurant and performed a similar feat in The Bells of Saint John. We will see her again, I'm sure; season big bad, perhaps?

This is an assured and confident beginning (love the new TARDIS interior and new steampunk title sequence!), with a first class script, an exciting new Doctor and a wonderfully nuanced Doctor/companion relationship. Doctor Who is on a real high right now.