Doctor Who Series 8 Retrospective

Doctor Who has now been back on our screens for eight years, and we're now onto our fourth (or fifth/sixth, canonically) new Doctor. The end of the seventh series not only revealed the identity of the 'missing' Doctor, but explained how he could regenerate beyond his originally-allotted twelve times.

I've previously noted that the first episode 'subtly' explained that the concept of 'young, sexy, Doctor-as-Boyfriend' has now - finally, thank God - been ditched in favour of a return to the older, wiser Doctor of old, personified currently by Peter Capaldi. In theory, this should be a good thing... but I have to say I enjoyed this series far less than I'd expected. Some of the stories - not to mention the monsters - seemed like weak rinse-and-repeats of things we've seen before, other stories just didn't seem like Doctor Who and left me wondering what the fuck I'd just been watching. The main problem I had, though, was Peter Capaldi himself.

Don't get me wrong, I still think he's an excellent choice: a great actor, very adaptable... but until the last couple of episodes, he didn't seem to find the character that was his Doctor. He seemed to be acting entirely to the script rather than bringing anything unique to the role. One thing that really didn't help was the way each Doctor has developed a catchphrase in this contemporary reboot. Christopher Ecclestone had "Fantastic!", David Tennant had several repetitive, tedious utterances including, but not limited to, "Allons y" and "I'm sorry... I'm so, so sorry", Matt Smith had "Geronimo!" and "Bow ties are cool"... Thusfar, the closest Peter Capaldi's version has had to a catchphrase is "Shut up!", frequently repeated several times in quick succession.

Then there are the stories themselves, which were almost all based on a good idea, but quite poorly conceived and several were just badly written. Part of me still wants to argue that they'd have been better in the old format of one story spread over three or four episodes, so the subject matter could be properly explored, but some of these stories were so badly done, they just didn't deserve it.

Having already written a little about the first four episodes, I'll plow on with the remainder...

Time Heist could definitely have worked better as a two- or three- episode story. The concept was pretty clever and the execution reasonably good. Having the Doctor break into a bank for reasons unknown, ultimately leading to a subtle twist ending could have used fleshing out, but the recruitment of his partners in crime was reduced to a quick montage towards the end of the episode, when they could have been interesting stories in and of themselves. The identity of the mysterious mastermind behind the heist was played with fairly well - I spent most of the episode thinking (as I was supposed to, I guess) that it was the Doctor himself... so the revelation would have carried a bit more weight if there had been some build-up to it.

Bringing the Doctor into an everyday, mundane setting that turns out to be anything but isn't a new trick, but The Caretaker was certainly not one of the best examples of it. The robot's presence on Earth was never explained, nor how the Doctor knew about it (one could almost get the impression, sometimes, that writers believe he has either a shopping list of monsters to fight or planets to save, or some sort of instrument on the TARDIS that detects anomalous things). Worst of all, there was neither explanation nor reason for the Doctor's plan to involve the school Clara and Danny teach in. The robot started out in some disused building elsewhere and was attracted to the school - a deliberate act - by the Doctor, seemingly because the only place his plan could be put into effect was the school's assembly hall. The temporary displacement could have been more interesting but, despite some acrobatics from Danny, the ending was just plain dull... and, much as I like the practical effects Doctor Who now uses, the robot was a bit rubbish...

Kill the Moon was possible one of the worst episodes I've seen in a long time because literally none of it made sense. From Clara's fixation on the idea of the Doctor validating the schoolgirl she arbitrarily brought along, to the rushed and deeply unsatisfactory explanation of the 'spiders', to the completely ridiculous denouement which revealed that, after all, nothing of any consequence actually happened, despite the implication once the contents of the moon were properly explained. It was another one of those episodes where the Doctor refused to help once he understood the nature of the problem, but it all felt rather forced and unnecessary.

The trailer for Mummy on the Orient Express immediately reminded me of the episode - the end of one of Matt Smith's series - where the Doctor received a phone call on pretty much that exact subject. I recall hoping it would be a Christmas special, where the extended running time would allow for something interesting. What we actually got was a rushed, fairly jumbled tale that was part murder mystery, part horror story with a rather sad ending. And, unfortunately, that's sad in the sense of "not very good", with the 'monster' turning out to be almost sympathetic. The background characters were straight out of Agatha Christie, and the fact that most of them weren't even real seemed to contradict at least one of the deaths... but perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention. Frank Skinner was something of an elephant in the room, being all too recognisable for his stand-up comedy and game show appearances, but I almost wished he'd accepted the Doctor's offer at the end... the 'train' engineer could have been a pretty cool companion...

Flatline seemed daft from the trailer - a rather desperate attempt at horror - but was actually one of the better episodes of the series, dealing with the invasion of Earth by a two-dimensional form of life, which was killing people to study our third dimension. It could have been better, but could have been a heck of a lot worse... The group of people who ended up tagging along with Clara (and slowly getting whittled away) were a fine collection of stereotypes with utterly predictable 'conflict' dialogue, and came away from their experiences utterly unchanged. The most disappointing thing was that the creatures became the same sort of Silent Hill-esque twisted humanoids as have appeared in far too many episodes already. Seeing the TARDIS in its emergency configuration was interesting, but immediately made me think of the AllSpark cube from the first TransFormers movie... or perhaps the Lament Configuration...

I honestly don't know what to make of In the Forest of the Night. On the one hand, there may have been the seed (pun intended) of a good story in there, but it ended up being a different take on the idea posited by M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. Seeing more of Danny Pink in action with his pupils was good fun (even if the kids didn't agree), but the end was implausible... and just a little bit 'hippy tree hugger'... It may have been trying to be a faerie tale - which I would normally like - but that element of the story really didn't seem to fit with the rest.

Throughout the series, we had been teased with brief appearances by a character identifying herself as "Missy", and who claimed, variously, to be in 'paradise', 'heaven' or somesuch. Dark Water saw the beginning of her true introduction (or reintroduction), as well as an insight into her terrible plan, and her involvement with Clara. Naturally, it contradicted the events of the earlier RTD series to some extent but, as Moffat has pointed out since, certain characters have a knack for self-preservation. Sadly, the big reveal for this episode was somewhat spoilt by the production photos which turned up online, so I'd put two and two together the moment the 'dark water' was demonstrated to Clara and the Doctor.

The series concluded in suitably epic fashion with Death in Heaven, though I'm not certain the connection between Missy and Clara was explained sufficiently - it was all rather perfunctory, and everyone just kind of accepted it, amongst the myriad other wacky things that were going on. Cybermen 'invading' London (only not), Missy gleefully killing people (including, sadly, the UNIT scientist played by Ingrid Oliver) and chucking the current head of UNIT out of a plane, generally acting as one would expect that particular character to behave. The very end of the show, with Danny Pink sacrificing his opportunity to return to the land of the living to send back someone he felt was more deserving (and thereby absolving himself of some of his guilt) was a decent end for the character, and very in keeping with the way he was presented throughout.

By and large, the main problem with this series, for me, was that most of it was eminently forgettable. I've had to remind myself what each episode was about before being able to write anything about them, and still found myself struggling. Granted, I've left it rather too long when, previously, I might have been writing up each episode every week, after it aired, but the stories were all pretty weak. I was disappointed, but not at all surprised, by Danny Pink's fate - he was one of the few characters I actually liked during the series - all credit to Samuel Anderson - because of his no-nonsense approach to everything, and the way he stood up to the Doctor. Much of their dialogue could have ended up the same as that between previous Doctors and Mickey Smith, but Danny was far more self-assured.

While it seems that Missy was disintegrated, I certainly hope she returns in future... Just not too soon, and not as an end-of-series villain or as the mastermind behind another series-long arc.

On another note, the point that we'd all seen Peter Capaldi's face before was very well made in the first episode, but the Doctor's own question "why this face?" was never touched upon again, let alone answered. This is fairly typical of Moffat's planning: it will come up again, and it'll either be the most important thing in the series (that is, exactly the way the Doctor's name was the most important thing in a previous series) or it'll be utterly irrelevant and dealt with in a completely offhand way.

It has struck me lately that the Cybermen have been very popular in this rebooted Who, turning up in almost every series since their return. I'm sure I've written before about how the first batch reminded me of the original RoboCop, while these new ones seem aesthetically more similar to Iron Man from the Marvel movie franchise. What bugs me is that they still move in exactly the same slow, stiff way (apart from the occasional burst of super-speed). What I'd like to see in future 'upgrades' is swifter, more fluid movement - suits that actually allow the performers to run, for example - because, surely, the Cybermen must realise they're in need of such abilities... In terms of mobility, they cannot consider themselves highly upgraded from an unaltered human.

On another note, it did not escape my attention that the show has been aired far later this time round... and there have been far more complaints about the subject matter (lots of death). Amusingly, it is possible to directly compare 'New Who' with 'Old Who' at the moment, because the Drama channel is showing one story - 2 hour long omnibus episodes - featuring each of the original Doctors. So far, we've had William Hartnell in The Aztecs (dealing with human sacrifice), Patrick Troughton in Tomb of the Cybermen (archeological dig with a hidden agenda), Jon Pertwee in Spearhead from Space (Autons replacing humans with plastic doppelgangers, and a seriously dubious slimy sphincter in a box) and, just this last weekend, Tom Baker in Pyramids of Mars (alien/ancient Egyptian god uses the reanimated corpse of an archaeologist, plus an army of robo-mummies, in an attempt to escape his prison), all of which have proven how much death and horror have been a part of Doctor Who from the very start.

I would argue that the later timeslot means fewer younger viewers will be able to watch it, even though many adult fans - parents now - remember the original series and all that 'hiding behind the sofa' stuff. That was always part of the appeal of the original series, so it seems strange both to deny that pleasure to contemporary youths, and to complain about an aspect of the show that isn't new.

But then, some people love to whine about anything and everything...

Another Wacky Dream Involving My Flat

OK, so my plan to write about my recent holiday over the course of the following week was probably doomed to failure before I even conceived it, but it was worth a try... Part two is in the works but, in the meantime, here's what I remember about a rather strange dream I had last night.

It started with me - and, I believe, my girlfriend - house-sitting in a fairly large, very strangely laid-out house. No idea whose it was or why we were house-sitting, but I remember feeling somewhat grateful about the arrangement... at least until we started exploring.

Most of the house was garishly colourful, massively spacious and opulently furnished. In the lounge, we learned that, due to some unspecified problem with the enormous widescreen television, it was projecting its picture onto the adjoining wall, which was somehow transparent as I could see the picture from another room.

There seemed to be no shortage of bedrooms, though, and while most of them seemed bright, welcoming and comfortable, the first one I happened upon could easily have been a large cupboard. It was furnished as if for a child and, being in the centre of the house (as far I could tell based on my exploration) it had no windows. This, coupled with the soft toys strewn on the floor, made the room feel rather creepy - as if the child was hidden away in this room for some sinister reason - and I was keen to get out of it as quickly as possible.

The house share didn't last long, however, as the dream quickly shifted into a version of my own flat that had fallen into decay. It was like an alternate homecoming after the holiday, where heavy rains had leaked into every room. Some of the furniture was missing and the lounge carpet was covered in blooms of mould where water had dripped down from the ceiling.

It's interesting timing for this sort of thing, considering there has been a small measure of progress on my roof. Well, I say 'progress' but what I actually mean is there's another temporary fix in place, with a 'plan' to renew at least part of the roof in the spring of next year... That's a whole different blog post (which is also in progress but incomplete, and so will probably appear at some ridiculously out-of-context point in the future), but the temporary fix appears to be working - we've had some quite heavy rain, but all three affected areas have thusfar remained dry, and I haven't been disturbed by 3am streams of water in the bedroom or the irregular thud of water dripping onto the ceilings and then into a plastic bowl...

A Short Jaunt to the States, Part I

Just for a change, I have a good excuse for my lack of blogging recently... Well, OK, over the last week.

For the first time in about ten years I've had a proper holiday abroad... It was also my first holiday during that time that did not involve my parents (either in terms of financing the holiday or going along with me)... and my first ever proper holiday with my girlfriend. Since we don't seem to ever do things by halves, we travelled across the Pond to Los Angeles, to visit her best friend.

It had also been quite a few years since my girlfriend flew anywhere, and those flights were comparatively short. To get to LA, we'd be in the air for about eleven hours - slightly longer than I'd anticipated, but still better than the brain-melting eighteen hour flight to New Zealand I took with my parents many years ago. Getting to and through Heathrow was easy enough, but every trip abroad by plane reminds me how clumsy Heathrow's layout is. Getting from the Tube arrival point to the specific terminal is a slog, helped only a little by the use of travelators. Between those two points was the check-in desk, at which we got ourselves flagged for additional security checks later on because my girlfriend didn't have to hand any note of her friend's address in LA. All it really meant was that our carry-on luggage got a slightly more thorough investigation, we both got patted down, and I got scanned. Weirdly, the scanner thought it located something on my shoulder, hip and ankle, though obviously the guy who patted me down to confirm the scanner's findings wasn't able to locate anything untoward.

My girlfriend, having not been on a plane for so long, was nervous about the flight itself but, after a few moments of tense hand-holding, once she realised we were actually already in the air and on our way, she relaxed considerably. It helped, too, that in-flight entertainment has come on in leaps and bounds over the last decade. Last time I flew long-haul, you got maybe two different movies and a couple of terrible meals. Our flight to LA had a whole library of music, movies and TV shows as well as a few fairly basic videogames. I'd brought along two books and bought a third at Heathrow... I barely glanced at any of them over the course of the holiday.

Instead, I allowed myself to be introduced to the likes of Sleepy Hollow and Hannibal, a couple of new TV series that probably won't turn up on UK TV outside of the premium satellite channels for quite some time (OK, we've just got Gotham, which should inspire me with some confidence... but it doesn't) as well as watching a couple of movies. I don't even remember which movie I watched first, but I did get most of the way through Edge of Tomorrow before the PA kept interrupting to inform us of our impending arrival.

The meals on this flight were very impressive, all things considered. For the first meal, I had a roast chicken thing with veg while my girlfriend had the vegetarian option of pasta. The next was a simple selection of snacks, and 'breakfast' (we actually arrived in the evening) was a deep pan pizza.

Arrival in LA was, as has always been the case when I've travelled to the USA, a complete dream - simplicity itself, with very little wandering around. We'd made jokes, on our way through the airport, about how unfortunate an abbreviation LAX is for the airport, since it leads to signs indicating 'LAX SECURITY', which is surely not what one wants in an airport... thankfully, they all seemed on-the-ball, and certainly not as grumpy as those at the airport that kept an old schoolfriend of mine waiting about half an hour while they conducted a detailed search of his luggage simply because he'd made a joke. On our way through, we were photographed and officially fingerprinted, making another first for the both of us. We had to wait a while for our luggage to materialise, and my suitcase was a good few minutes behind my girlfriend's, but the worst thing that happened was that I dragged a second suitcase off the carousel along with mine, and another passenger was kind enough to throw it back on while I wrestled my case out of the way. My girlfriend had to answer a few questions at one point, as she'd indicated on a form that she was bringing in foodstuffs but, once it had been confirmed that none of it posed any threat to US agriculture, she was waved through.

We were expecting to be met at the airport by her friend, but parking outside the airport isn't easy - it's for pickup and dropoff only, so the car - driven by one of the friend's housemates - had to do a circuit of the terminals. I eventually caught sight of the friend outside while my girlfriend was double-checking inside the reception area of the terminal but we were off almost immediately.

Our first port of call was a sushi restaurant at The Americana in Glendale, where we met yet another friend of the friend and had a small dinner - all we could manage - before, almost keeling over from exhaustion, we were driven back to the apartment which was to be our base of operations for the week.

More to come, hopefully during the coming week...