Doctor Who: Kill the Moon

"That's what you do with aliens, isn't it? Blow them up?"

Hmm. I didn't much like this one, and yet it got all the big things right. I loved the plot, I loved the beats of the story- and yet it didn't quite come off. The problem, I think, is that both the setting and central conceit with the fixed point in time just feel like a retread of The Waters of Mars. It must be said, too, that, yes, I quite like the more slowly paced style of this season, but this episode dragged.

It's the Moon (played by Lanzarote) in 2049 and not, as some reading pre-publicity would have up believe, Sarn (played by Lanzarote). People have stopped going into space because they can't be arsed, a bit like The Seeds of Death. Things have been getting desperate, the moon had been getting heavier and disrupting gravity, and all humanity has to play with is one antique space shuttle, the last few nukes and some piss-or astronauts. It's a very unglamorous future. 

Meanwhile, at Coal Hill School, the Doctor decides to take young Courtney Woods to the Moon to cheer her up, as you do. Clara is not entirely sure this is wise. The Doctor advises Courtney that there's to be "no hanky-panky", as JN-T once famously declared. Oh, and later on the Doctor gives us a Troughtonesque "When I say run, run." And Courtney became President of the USA and "met this bloke called Blonovitch". Lots of references to old stories, and the reason I mention them is to point out that they are not particularly from missing episodes, contrary to many current online theorists who suppose that this season is full of clues to a forthcoming announcement of missing episodes by Philip Morris later this year. That may or may not happen, but im very sceptical about any clues being inserted into the season's scripts. It just ain't happening, folks.

On a more contemporary note, Capafdi's Doctor is forever being asked "Who made you the boss?". And the bacteria-spiders look good, although in close-up it's a shame they used CGI instead of a model. 

The central moral dilemma- the moon is an egg, and humanity has the moral dilemma of actually killing the innocent baby or risking extinction, is not one I can identify with, though. What parallel with any real world dilemma is there here, exactly? And arguably Clara is wrong: surely the extinction of billions of humans and an entire planet justifies the unfortunate sacrifice of one life. 

I don't blame Clara for lashing out at the Doctor and storming out of the TARDIS. She confides in Danny Pink, with his warning from last episode about the Doctor being a dangerously charismatic officer coming home to roost much sooner than expected. But, as Danny points out, she's angry now. How will she feel when she calms down? I don't think this is the end of her arc. This feels like unfinished business. And the scene also hints at unexplained depths to Danny Pink- again.

Jenna Coleman, incidentally, is amazing here.

This is probably my least favourite episode of the season so far, then- derivative, and based on a moral dilemma too far removed from anything that could possibly happen to possibly bear the dramatic weight that's been placed upon it. That's a problem.

Doctor Who: Dragonfire

Part One



“Nonsense, Glitz! A quick adventure and then back for tea!”

It’s an interesting setting for a story- Svartos, a planet with one pole, apparently the only habitable part, which is permanently cold, and another which is permanently cold. And on this world lurks the sinister Kane, who kills with the cold of his touch, and is named after a famous movie. We’ll be seeing a lot of this sort of thing.

On the cold part, Iceworld, is a shopping mall, where the Doctor and Mel sit down in a café. Amusingly, the Doctor starts to read a crumpled classic Penguin paperback of Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma. I think I’m going to enjoy this story.

Up pops our old mate Sabalom Glitz, and it appears he’s in a spot of bother. The authorities on this planet are going to seize his ship, the Nosferatu (oh look, another movie reference…) unless he coughs up a bit of cash. Fortunately there are rumours of a dragon, and treasure. This provides a chance of finding the money he needs for Glitz, and a bit of adventure for the Doctor and Mel. We also meet Ace for the first time, as the soon-to-be-sacked waitress, for the moment providing little but the exposition.

Incidentally, one refreshing thing about Glitz’s reappearance is that the Doctor’s regeneration is quickly glossed over. Unlike his predecessor, this Doctor isn’t going to be undermined by constant references to earlier incarnations while he’s trying to establish himself in the role.

Ace gets sacked, goes back to her room with Mel, and generally seems to be a fairly realistic and well-written teenager. Sophie Aldred is good too, although she sounds perhaps a bit too RP for dialogue like “I ain’t got no mum and dad” to come across right. I like the surreal simplicity of how she got here- a timestorm in her room in Perivale! It gradually becomes apparent that she kicks arse somewhat, what with her Nitro Nine and blowing up the art room at school. I like her. We even get our first “Gordon Bennett” very early on. Ace!

I was amazed to see the scene where Kane offers Ace the chance to become a mercenary- shades of the New Adventures there! Fortunately, though, she not only turns him down but kicks rather large expanses of arse while she’s doing it.

We get to glimpse the dragon. Now, I know I keep going on about influences from said film every so often in this Marathon, but do you reckon there might, conceivably, be perhaps the very tiniest amount of influence from Alien in the creature’s design? Never mind- I love the way Mel screams at this point and Ace pointedly doesn’t!

And then we get the literal cliffhanger. I tend to agree with a comment I remember from Gareth Roberts on one of the DVD extras on cliffhangers (I forget the story). Ian Briggs is clearly trying to make an oh-so-clever postmodern comment here on how inconvenient is to him as a writer to have to fit his script to a format which demands cliffhangers. How very self-indulgent. Still, other than this it’s been a good first episode.



Part Two



“Tell me, what do you think of the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?”

The cliffhanger resolution is a total cheat, but I suppose that’s the point. And I’m not sure that assisting Glitz with the hijacking of his ship is quite the sort of thing the character should be doing. Still, good news elsewhere; we seem to be getting decent incidental music for the first time this season.

The Doctor’s distraction of the guard with intellectual conversation on such matters as theology and Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text is utter genius, and easily the best thing in this whole season. Also good, though, is Kane’s killing of the sculptor as soon as he’s finished his statue. And come to think of it, Kane sleeps in a coffin- er, refrigeration unit- to recuperate, he bites people in the neck- er, gets them to take his shilling- so that he can own them, and as for how he’s going to die next episode… he’s a vampire, isn’t he?

The dragon turns out to be friendly, and reveals that this was originally a prison planet where Kane, a notorious criminal, was banished 3,000 years earlier. Oh, and the treasure is in the dragon’s head. Crikey.

Elsewhere, Ace makes the makes the similarly Earth-shattering revelation that her name is actually Dorothy…



Part Three



“This is naff. This is mega-naff.”

That quote isn’t actually what I think of the story, by the way. I just picked it because it’s the most ‘80s sentence ever uttered by anyone ever.

Kane’s minions are on an “ANT hunt” in scenes which most definitely are influenced by Alien, while the poor lost little girl gets looked after by that nice dragon. Aaaah! It’s all good stuff, but the one moment where the tone jars a bit is where the Nosferatu blows up with loads of people on it, an echo of the bus from Delta and the Bannermen.

Ace gets to see the TARDIS, and then the story ends in true The Hand of Fear style, with Kane’s gruesome demise being most fitting, seeing as he’s a vampire and all.

As Iceworld is a spacecraft, Glitz has appointed himself captain, and for some reason Mel’s going with him. In the end she never really worked as a companion, really, being fairly one-dimensional. She was always likeable, and a breath of fresh air after Peri and the darkness of the Dark Ages of Saward. But she never acquired a personality or a hinterland- the lack of an origin story didn’t help- and her bubbly, kid-friendly personality has seemed out of step with the show since Paradise Towers. All the same, she deserved a better leaving scene than this; it’s not really about her at all, just a pointless re-use of McCoy’s original audition speech.

Ace, her replacement, on the other hand, feels a lot more in tune with the way the show’s going at the moment, and has loads of hinterland.



Good, enjoyable stuff. Not quite up there with the best, perhaps, but an impressive debut tale from Ian Briggs. 4/5.



As for Season Twenty-Four- well, it’s fifth from bottom at 3.25/5, but still ranks a lot better than I was expecting it too. And if you take Time and the Rani out of the equation it’s a fairly solid season with lots of promise for the future. At long last we’re out of the Saward doldrums of violence and cynicism, and the show has seemingly found a new style.

Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks

Part One

“Oh, look. Rocks!”

So, K9 has laryngitis (no behind-the-scenes reasons for that, I’m sure…) and has to stay in the TARDIS. That’ll be Terry Nation not wanting a fight between the Daleks and K9 then.

Lalla Ward is here to stay (yay!) although not without a certain amount of faffing about. I refuse to make any great play out of the fact she seems to try out four bodies as the whole thing’s supposed to be a laugh, and the whole thing seems a lot less worrisome continuity-wise since the Doctor grew that hand back in The Christmas Invasion. Which, of course, hasn’t happened yet, so pretend I didn’t say that.

Incidentally, just as significant as the change in lead actor is the fact that Romana’s still hanging around after the quest for the Key to Time is over.

Anti-radiation pills- yep, it’s definitely Terry all right. And as the Doctor and Romana step on to the planet we hear a very familiar background sound instantly telling those in the know that it’s Skaro. It’s all thanks to “special sound” chap Dick Mills, I suspect, that such touches are still there sixteen years after The Daleks. And let’s see… a ruined city; part one spent exploring; slave workers… already this is looking like Terry Nation’s Greatest Hits Part II (Planet of the Daleks being Part I, but you knew that). And then we have a spaceship landing and the line “Well, at least it’s not a flying saucer.” Is Nation mocking himself or is new script editor Douglas Adams doing it for him, I wonder? On the subject of our new script editor, incidentally, I couldn’t help noticing the Doctor saying “bye bye” rather a lot throughout this story.

Terry gives us some more of his standards as Romana is followed by a mysterious figure who, let me try out a wild guess, may well turn out to be a goodie, and access to the TARDIS is blocked by some less than solid-looking rubble. The scenes are familiar, but the dialogue is notably wittier than usual for a Nation script, and the Doctor’s reading a book by Oolon Caluphid. The contrast in style between Adams’ dialogue and Nation’s doing his usual stuff really makes it hit home just how dated and, frankly, tired the usual Nation stuff feels by this late stage.

The Doctor is captured by disco dancers from space (I have to say that cos it’s 1979) and Romana gets the Dalek cliffhanger. There’s one thing I’m not sure of, though- do the Daleks want Romana to move or not?

Of course, the best bit about it is that Romana only falls into the Daleks’ path after our mysterious figure walks towards her menacing and doesn’t say anything to her for some reason.

Part Two

“If you’re supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don’t you try climbing after us?”

The Doctor’s captors are called the Movellans and they’re actually quite nice- or are they? Whatever, I like their hair. And they give the Doctor someone to boast that he knows the Daleks “better than you can possibly imagine” to. Romana’s captors are definitely baddies, though, and their lair still has that cool throbbing sound after all these years. Thank you, Dick Mills!

Romana seems quite frightened during her interrogation, perhaps a little less self-assured at this stage than when she was being played by Mary Tamm? The Daleks, meanwhile, demand to know if she’s in the employ of a “space power”. We’ll be hearing about an awful lot more space thisses and space thats. I suspect they amused Douglas adams as much as they amuse me so he left them in. Good call.

Romana’s sent to work as a slave, but it’s immediately apparent that she doesn’t fit in, as she’s clearly the only person present capable of saying anything that isn’t 100% exposition. So she fakes her death and escapes, hopefully to find a better standard of conversation elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Daleks are burrowing deeper into what we now learn is the same Kaled city from Genesis of the Daleks. Heh. That Dalek just said “penetration”.

The big reveal is Davros, apparently perfectly preserved (we can’t see much of the lower bit of his mask yet) and coming to life…

Part Three

“What were we talking about?”

“Your inevitable destruction.”

“No. no, no. we had that conversation the last time we met.”

Davros opens his mouth. Oh dear. The voice is possibly the most important aspect of the character, and David Gooderson just isn’t any sort of replacement for Michael Wisher’s alternately ranting and silky tones. These scenes are well directed, mind- I particularly like the lighting with all the green, and the fact the Daleks are always shot from slightly below to make them look bigger.

The doctor has a bit of a chat with Davros, and it’s him who has to do all the work to keep the conversation as Davros is a bit of a bore, and the bottom half of his face is all rotten to boot. The Daleks clearly want Davros and approach, but the Doctor has a bomb (well, he’s always using weapons, after all) and so off they all spack. We have a bit of a stand-off, with the Doctor managing to negotiate hard even after the Daleks start killing prisoners- suddenly they’re Nazis again.

The Movellans turn out not to be so nice after all, but as the Doctor and Tyssan (and what a well-rounded character he is) easily defeat one by playing catch they’re obviously not much of a threat.

The moment the story goes very badly wrong is where the Doctor finds a Kaled mutant and comments that the Daleks are just “another” race of “robots”, about which more next episode. But first we get two countdowns (clichés duly counted) and a cliffhanger.

Part Four

“Vision impaired! Vision impaired!”

Interesting to see that Davros seems very much in control. There’s apparently still a Supreme Dalek but “That is a title I shall dispute most vigorously!”

Lan points out that the Movellans need someone to stay behind to guard their bomb and is immediately volunteered for this suicide mission, to his complete equanimity, as he’s a robot. But here’s the problem- this episode reveals the whole crux of the story to hinge around, as the Doctor puts it, “one race of robots fighting another”. No, no, no! The cool thing about the Daleks has always been their personality. They’re not logical creatures- they’re cruel, they’re arrogant, they can be quite anal, they can throw a right mardy every now and again, and most of all they’re sneaky and Machiavellian. Making them just robots takes away all their character, and is a thousand times worse than what was done to the Cybermen in Revenge of the, er, Cybermen. 

So we have a logical deadlock- two battle fleets, two computers calculating the optimum moment to strike, and not a shot fired- as the Doctor puts it, the perfect recipe for eternal peace. This is actually a brilliant idea which would work fantastically if one of the two sides didn’t happen to be the Daleks.

We move to the scissors paper stone scene, which seems to go a bit too neatly- how come the Doctor always beats Commander Sharrel? Then Davros has the Daleks turn suicide bombers while the ex-slaves start doing stuff. Only Tyssan ever says anything, of course. A couple of spots of bother with bombs from Sharrel and our suicide bomber Daleks are dealt with by the Doctor and Romana respectively, and that’s it. It’s a good job the Daleks happened to reveal their plans to an eavesdropping doctor, mind. A rather neatly plotted ending, I admit, but it’s treatment of the Daleks is just wrong wrong wrong.

The way the Daleks have suddenly turned into robots is wrong on all sorts of levels. Having said that, though, they don’t behave particularly more like robots here, and the plot’s sound. But the problem is that the story consists of a load of things we’ve seen before from Terry Nation one after the other, and it all suddenly feels very tired. Perhaps I’m being a little harsh (Planet of the Daleks was very very silly and a load of old tosh but I enjoyed it, and that was comprised of similarly recycled Terry Nationage) but this only gets a 2/5, narrowly avoiding a plasce in my bottom 10. I suspect this story is one of those that lose out from being watched as part of the Marathon.

Still, I suspect I’ll like the next story better!