Sherlock: The Lying Detective

"I'm the widow of a drug dealer, I own property in central London, and for the last bloody time, John, I'm not your housekeeper!"

The character of Culverton Smith is, at one level, the embodiment of an idea explicitly referred to in the script: what if all the serial killers we know about- mentally subnormal, odd and marginalised- are just those who get caught? What if, every so often, there is a rich and powerful serial killer who simply kills with impunity? There's a blatant subtext here: Smith stands for Jimmy Savile, and that obviously informs Toby Jones' (excellent) performance; he even has his "own" hospital. There's a reason why Sherlock Holmes declares Culverton Smith to be the very worst and most despicable adversary he's ever met.

This is a plot by Steven Moffat which is surprisingly straightforward and relatively free of his usual narrative tricks, although the camerawork remains as clever as is usual for Sherlock. It isn't really a whodunit, either; like Columbo, the tension lies in whether or not Sherlock can prove the guilt of the obvious killer.

No; the narrative tricks lie elsewhere, in the interplay between Sherlock and John, and in their interactions and slow reconciliation. And yes, Sherlock is almost... nice, at times here. He certainly reacts sensitively, for him, when John confesses that he is not the man Mary thought he was, and had been flirting by text with another woman. It is here, with the character stuff, where we see the more traditional Sherlock narrative cleverness. And it's good telly. And yet- it's about time we had a proper, clever whodunit, don't you think?

Nice cliffhanger, though,,with Sherlock's sister, whom I assume to be a baddie...

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

"He went to get coffee, and turned up in a book. How does that work?"

"I don't know. We're in New York."

Damn you, Moffat. You sadistic evil genius, you. You distract us with scares, timey-wimey cleverness and a story title that makes us think of Muppets, and then you go and make us have all these damn feelings, damn you. Even those of us who like to think we have hearts of stone. The Angels Take Manhattan is twisted, evil, and possibly the best thing in Doctor Who since, well, the last story you wrote with the Weeping Angels. Once again: DAMN YOU!!!

Let's leave Amy and Rory until we've talked about the other stuff, because I won't be able to talk about the other stuff otherwise. Bloody feelings…

This is a much, much better use of New York than the last time. We get iconic locations, including the Statue of Liberty being used as a Weeping Angel (!). Everything looks great. There's a definite Raymond Chandler / Dashiell Hammett influence, what with the private eye in the opening teaser and, ahem, "Melody Malone", whose identity, I'm sure, was never intended to surprise anyone.

Speaking of River, she and the Doctor are, of course, married, meaning that the heroes of the episode are two married couples. And it's fun to see River and the Doctor acting just like a married couple. There are the witty lines alluding to this, of course ("Sorry I'm late, honey. Traffic was Hell"), but there are also fault lines in this very strange marriage. River loves the Doctor, which is why she slaps him for using his regenerative energy to heal her broken wrist. But she's terrified of his seeing her aging and becoming aware of her mortality. The Doctor hates endings, and is therefore unlikely to be keen on commitment, hardly a deep observation given his lifestyle.

Oh, and River alludes to the long-running season thread, namely that the Doctor has been deleting all records of himself. It means that the man she's supposed to have murdered no longer exists, so she's been freed and made a professor. There's one ripple from the Doctor's "absence": what about the others, I wonder?

The Angels are horribly scary, too. The baby Angels, with their terrible giggling, are well scary, especially when Rory is trapped alone with them in a darkened cellar with a match. And all throughout the story the set pieces, and the excellent direction, keep making you jump. Scares along with heartbreak- damn you once again, Moffat!

The typically Moffat-esque timey-wimeyness is gobsmackingly clever here, probably the cleverest we've seen since Blink. The concept of the Doctor and Amy possessing a book, from their personal future, recounting the adventure they're having now, is devilishly clever. And the fact that they can't read ahead without fixing their futures is even more so. It's hard to talk about the way this is used without getting all emotional about Amy and Rory, but the bit where the Doctor accidentally sees the last two chapter titles ("Death at Winter's Quay" and "Amy's Last Farewell") is a hugely clever moment, as well as being pure evil.

But let's get back to the elephant in the room, shall we? There are all sorts of ominous signs. It's constantly reiterated that the Doctor doesn't like endings, hence the fact that Amy and Rory are still around even after being officially dumped in The God Complex. This is where he has to face up to what he doesn't like.

Of course, Moffat being evil, he tortures us with three endings, all of them heart-breaking. First, we're told that Rory is fated to be sent back in time, to spend the rest of his miserable life in a little room, without Amy. Worse, the only way out for him is to destroy the Angel by creating a paradox, and he can only do this by jumping off a building to his death. This sequence just breaks your heart, and then Amy goes and jumps too because she can't bear to be without him. DAMN YOU, MOFFAT.

Except there's one more, equally evil, timey-wimey twist. All of that has been un-happened, everyone's ok, and they will all live happily ever after. Except they won't, because the one remaining Angel sends them back in time, one by one, with lots of tears. The Doctor has to face it: this is an ending. It's also unbelievably good telly. But still evil.

We end with a final message from an unreachable Amy to the Doctor: don't be alone. As Donna once said, he still needs someone to stop him. As for who that someone is, and how we resolve the puzzle that was set by Asylum of the Daleks… we have to wait until Christmas. Damn you, Moffat.

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks

"You're going to fire me at the planet? That's the plan? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"

"To be fair, that is slightly your MO…"

"Don't be fair to the the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!"

Oooh boy. That Steven Moffat is a very clever and naughty man, casting Jenna-Louise Coleman in this, as a character who can't possibly be a companion because she's not from contemporary Earth and, oh yes, she's actually a Dalek. And yet her last word is "Remember". What's going on? How can I possibly wait to find out? Grr. Typical Moffat to smuggle this into precisely the episode no one would expect it. We've come to expect misdirection from Moffat, but this time he's outsmarted us all.

Oswin (a boy's name, surely????) is the emotional heart of this episode. (Actually, this episode rather appropriately has two emotional hearts, the other being Amy and Rory, but we'll come to that.) We spend the whole episode seeing how cool, nice, quirky, pretty and downright amazing she is, only to find out that her life is an elaborate fantasy (an old Moffat trope; I remember Silence in the Library…) and she's been turned into a Dalek. And then, of course, she sacrifices herself to save the Doctor and his friends, proving that she's human after all.

It's unique seeing the Doctor's relationship with Amy and Rory these days. He travels alone these days but, as Steven Moffat has often said in interviews, it's not as though they'll never see the Doctor again, and the stories as transmitted are those particular moments where they do- implying, of course, loads of untransmitted adventures for the Doctor. He could age years between episodes. And so we have a paradox: we only see the Doctor from the Ponds' point of view, but we also see the Ponds from the Doctor's point of view. Years have passed since we last saw them. Amy is a successful model. And, upsettingly, they're divorced. And, of course, Amy explicitly insists that this is the sort of problem that the Doctor can fix. And yet, annoyingly and wonderfully, he can. (It seems the split up was about children- I predict that the episodes to come might see the patter of tiny Ponds…?)

Misdirection aside, of course, there was genuinely stuff here to please those of us who like a bit of fanwank. We had some real Sixties Daleks, one courtesy of RTD, and crowd-pleasing mentions of "Spiridon, Kembel, Aridius, Vulcan, Exxilon". But there was cool new stuff- the epic CGI awesomeness that was the Parliament of Daleks, the Dalekised humans (foreshadowing!) and the Dalek zombies. Especially the Dalek zombies.

The conclusion of the episode, though, courtesy of Oswin's cleverness, has the Daleks forgetting the Doctor, continuing the recent theme whereby traces of the Doctor's existence are currently erased. This is definitely leaving somewhere. Just like the end of The Wedding of River Song, we end with a constantly repeated "Doctor Who?"

Doctor Who: The God Complex

“Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone, I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin.”

On the surface, this episode is a good, if not great, one-off tale with a twist at the end. But I get a strong impression that, far more importantly, it rehearses the main themes and foreshadows the events which will end this season- and I say this as someone who’s spoiler-free. The above quote from Rory is one of many examples in which we explore Amy’s and Rory’s contrasting attitudes to, and confidence in, the Doctor. Their departure is foreshadowed throughout the episode, and yet I think we all suspect that their “departure” is a massive red herring. Anyway…

This series, and the Moffat era in general, is getting quite a reputation for more creative directing, and the pre-titles sequences have shown some fantastic shots of late, with Night Terrors being a particular highlight. This episode does it again; I particularly loved the shot of the stairwell, suggesting a Castrovalva-like shifting geography with great economy and style. There are some nice-looking shots from the POV of the CCTV, too, which give a real feeling of being watched.

There are lots of strange and scary things in the early minutes of this episode: the clown, the photographer, the man in the (deliberately?) unconvincing gorilla suit, but the most eerie of the lot has to be the hall full of ventriloquist’s dummies, all moving their heads in unison.

We have a nicely fleshed-out guest cast. Rita- intelligent, resourceful, brave, nice, and liked a lot by the audience and therefore the viewer- is a bit of a Mary Sue character, and therefore doomed, but of course we’re supposed to know that. The Doctor even seems to offer her a trip in the TARDIS at one point, which of course makes her death inevitable, in a Lynda with a “y” sort of way. Howie is a tiresome conspiracy theorist (I really don’t like conspiracy theories, they are not harmless, and anyone reading this who believes in any of that nonsense should read this book), and therefore also doomed. Joe is doomed already before we meet him. This leaves Gibbis, a cowardly alien from Tivoli, most invaded planet in the universe. This is a funny yet sinister performance from David Walliams, and of course he doesn’t die. The cowardly ones never do in Doctor Who.

The first few minutes set up the situation as we understand it- people are drawn to the hotel, given a room with their biggest individual fear, and eventually come to welcome their own inevitable death with religious fervour. No one leaves alive. It all pays off later, except for one bit: what’s the significance of the disappearing fire exit found by Rory? As far as I can see, this is never followed up.

The main flaw in this episode, and by no means a fundamental one, is that the handling of religious themes is a bit clumsy. I don’t think there’s any great message intended here about religion- it’s basically there as a metaphor for Amy’s faith in the Doctor, about which more later- and I say this as an atheist, but it comes across that way without, I think, meaning to. This is awkward, especially given the emphasis on faith, and the foregrounding of Rita’s Islamic beliefs. The implicit assumption that faith is a weakness, and the Doctor’s casual statement at the end that the minotaur “god” was overthrown when its worshippers became more civilised and went “all secular” (that isn’t what the word “secular” means!) is arguably a bit arrogant. I’ve no problem with arguments that there isn’t a God (I myself think this is the most likely probability by far), but there’s no need to be arrogant, or rude, or Richard Dawkinsy about it.

There’s a lot of foreshadowing of the end of the episode; after Howie’s death, the Doctor notices Rory speaking of his time in the TARDIS in the past tense, and he speaks admiringly of Howie’s speech therapy, to get rid of his stutter, as a phenomenal achievement, implying that he sees just as much potential for adventure in his everyday life as a nurse as in his travels with the Doctor. His chat with Rita on the stairs is also full of foreboding; her suggestion that he has a “God complex” (the title of the episode is clever, multi-layered and rather interesting in terms of the Doctor’s development as a character) is more perceptive than is probably intended, and the Doctor seems to accept that his whimsical adventuring is rather frivolous, “which is why grown-ups were invented. Rita, by contrast, has a serious and proper job with responsibilities, as indeed does Rory. I’m also reminded of the home truths spoken by the older Amy in the previous episode.

What does the Doctor see in his room? We hear the cloister bell, but we don’t see anything. Perhaps there is a clue, though? Can we perhaps read something into the “Do Not Disturb” sign?  Perhaps the Doctor is sleeping with someone in that room, perhaps married, perhaps to River Song? Perhaps his fear is of something symbolised by marriage, such as commitment, which would be anathema to his wandering lifestyle? Perhaps it terrified him, because it would make him into a “grown-up”?

His words to Amy at the end show an obvious parallel with his words to Amy in The Curse of Fenric, although this time he doesn’t want Amy to hate him, just to lose her faith in him! I think what he’s telling her is simply the unvarnished truth, although these things are of course subjective: “I took you with me because I was vain. I want to be adored. I’m not a hero; I really am just a madman in a box.”

I was overjoyed at the links to the Nimon (yay!) and intrigued that Amy’s question of what Time Lords pray to is left unanswered. But the most interesting words spoken at the end of the main story, with the hotel dissolved into an empty cyberspace grid, are by the dying minotaur: “An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze…to such a creature, death would be a gift.”

The departure of Amy (especially) and Rory, although effective and touching, is bound to be a red herring; they’ll be back for the series finale, I’m sure, although I have no idea whether they’ll stay after that. The Doctor ends the story alone, so alone, slumped in the TARDIS…

By the way, as someone who’s a little deaf, I have to give a virtual high five to the person (definitely a fan!) who did the subtitles. The TARDIS leaves with a Vworp! Vworp!...

(Probably no blogging until Saturday now, and there might not be anything other than current Doctor Who until the end of September. Real ife intrudes, I;m afraid! Fear not, though- normal service witll be resumed from the start of October!)

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

“You didn’t save me.”

Five years on and we finally get another script from Tom MacRae. Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel was a fine story of a traditional bent, but this time he’s given us an extraordinary piece of conceptual brilliance. This season just won’t stop being great.

Essentially, we have a world in quarantine. A plague fatal to all two-hearted races infests the planet, and death is inevitable within one day. This means the Doctor has to spend most of the time in the TARDIS in what is a rather effective way of telling a Doctor-lite story; there certainly isn’t any obvious lack of screen time. Still, if the Doctor is vulnerable to this plague, does this mean he was born with two hearts rather than gaining one on his first or second regeneration? Perhaps that’s a can of worms which should be left well alone.

There are 40,000 people on this world, all occupying a different time stream, a device which leaves the cast nice and small. Each individual timeline exists so that the last day of an infected person can be dragged out for a whole lifetime, spent alone but with a magnificent array of entertainments, some of which would presumably not be suitable for broadcast on a family show. It is, indeed, “a kindness”, although it’s perhaps not entirely realistic that a civilisation would expend such a massive amount of resources on doing this.

All this is no good to Amy, though; she’s trapped, in a different and faster timestream to that of Roy and the Doctor, and even an exact replica of Disneyland Clom(!) is not much consolation. Rory’s massive magnifying glass is a nice way of showing this. There’s one problem, aside from the prospect of years passing before she’s rescued; there are loads of white robots which want to give her injections from some nasty-looking syringes. As she’s not a native of this world, these injections would kill her, and the robots are pretty persistent, to the point of shooting needles at her. I don’t think much of their bedside manner.

The big emotional kick of the episode occurs once Rory meets a much older and very bitter Amy, who has spent thirty-six years alone, surviving. (Incidentally, the prosthetics work here is the best I’ve ever seen.) It’s pleasing to see that Amy is resourceful, handling the robots with ease and uber-cool sword-wielding slow-motion martial arts and showing an unexpected technical wizardry. But her bitterness at being so carelessly abandoned (and the Doctor was careless to lose her at the beginning) is shocking. Karen Gillan’s performance is magnificent: completely different from the normal, kooky Amy while still being recognisably the same character. It’s an emotionally devastating performance by an actress too often taken for granted.

The older Amy is at her harshest in the first few moments, with some very harsh words aimed at the Doctor. She even rejects Rory’s attempts to comfort her, and insists that her sonic device is a probe, not a screwdriver. The edges soon soften, though; she’s still Amy. I liked the ‘armless robot with the smiley face, which she has inevitably named after Rory.

Still, Amy refuses point blank to be “saved”.  She has good existential reasons for this; if the Doctor and Rory rescue her earlier self, that means the last thirty-six years of her life will never have happened and she will effectively die. It’s nice to see this acknowledged. This sort of thing is too often brushed under the carpet; here it’s foregrounded.

Instead, the older Amy wants to go with them, in the TARDIS, now. And this means condemning her earlier self to an otherwise avoidable thirty-six years alone. After all, why should she sacrifice her life? This means, as the Doctor says, that Rory has to choose between them. And it’s a horrible choice to have to make. Unsurprisingly, he’s angry at the Doctor, and we’re reminded very much of the less travelled Rory of last season as he firmly tells the Doctor that “…I do not want to travel with you!”

Rory is able to use the magnifying glass and allow the two Amy’s to talk to each other, which sets up a kind of time loop. The older Amy remembers being the younger Amy, hearing her older self refuse to save her. It’s a closed circle and, seemingly, there can be no way out of the paradox.

I love the way MacRae just takes a sword to the Gordian Knot, though! It may be outrageously cheeky to solve the paradox simply by saying that Amy is “bloody minded, contradictory and bloody unpredictable!”, but it works. What I particularly love is that the fact this doesn’t really make sense isn’t just glossed over, but positively revelled in! That’s proper Doctor Who, all right. And it’s perfect that the older Amy would do it out of love for Rory.

Mind you, there’s trouble ahead. The prospect of two Amy Ponds in the TARDIS makes Rory a kind of bigamist. And, let’s face it, if he has two Amy Ponds as sexual partners, one in her early twenties and one in her late fifties, he’s not exactly going to treat them both equally, even with the best will in the world. It’s pretty obvious that the older Amy has to die.

Still, the older Amy gets an uber-cool death scene, with lots of swordy, kicky action, and gets to heroically sacrifice herself in the final moments. And there’s an interesting parallel. “I’m giving you my days” she says to her younger self, paralleling what River did for the Doctor a couple of episodes ago.

I had to raise an eyebrow at the Doctor saying “Calm down, dear” to the TARDIS, incidentally. I hope we don’t get any more of this; Michael Winner and David Cameron are not exactly the two greatest role models out there.