Doctor Who Review: Timeheist

Time Heist is fast and furious and fun, but there is still a strange sense that this should have been a Matt Smith episode rather than a Peter Capaldi one. This has running through corridors in spades (some very good running through corridors) and  plenty of manically paced escapes and sudden revelations – all more Matt Smith style escapades rather than the slower pace of Capaldi.

However, Capaldi slots in just fine – in particular his abrasive relationship with his two new partners in crime (Pippa Bennett-Warner as Saibra the shape-shifting mutant, and Jonathan Bailey as Psi, the electronically implanted hacker) – dragging them along (because the eyebrows put him in charge) at first, but winning their respect and friendship as they go along. Like in “Into the Dalek”, the Doctor is accused of callous disregard when he helps Saibra apparently kill herself rather than be captured by the Teller; but these are really acts of mercy and compassion from someone who is still trying to understand the concepts.

The Doctor, Clara and his new friends have been brought together to break into the impenetrable Bank of Karabraxos, for reasons that are not immediately clear because they’ve all voluntarily wiped their memories. They’ve been brought together by a shadowy figure who calls himself The Architect and from the moment they meet, they are up against time, constantly having to figure out and escape from their situation.

The villain of the piece is the nasty Ms Delphox, Head of Security, played with style, wit and supremely snooty sauciness by Keeley Hawes (who might just tip Lena Heady out of the way as my choice for a female Doctor Who). She takes charge of “the Teller”, being the monster that can sense the guilt of any potential bank robbers and then suck their minds out.

Eventually, the gang (after supposed deaths and resurrections) make it to the private vault of Madame Karabraxos herself, who turns out to be the original that Ms Delphox (and all previous Heads of Security) had been cloned from.

It all turns out to be a bit timey-wimey paradox-y stuff as the Architect is actually the Doctor in the future, getting his past self to break into the bank in order to give Madame Karabraxos a piece of paper that will provoke her, in her old age, to call on the Doctor to get his past self to break into the bank…  which was all about realising that the Teller was not a monster, but a prisoner, pining for his locked-up mate. Teller and Mate are released and all is sorted – just like last season’s “Hide”.

 
It’s all fine enough, but I can’t help but feel the concept of the heist and Madame Karabraxos is not allowed to take flight. Keeley Hawes is superb but she really just gets to chew the scenery here – how about making her a serious villain? What if the Doctor and co were having to steal something with much greater consequences, beyond this episode? What if Madame Karabraxos had to go after them? What if the future Doctor carried on manipulating events – no wonder this Doctor seems a bit paranoid and with a sense of self-loathing? But no, it’s just about freeing some poor love-struck beastie – noble enough in itself, but I just think things could have been a little more epic.

And on with episode 5 of the flash-fic-fan fic (remember, each episode is exactly 100 words, and made up as we go along – no planning allowed..)

HungerTime – Part Five

The Dalek Scientist scanned for life forms and found none. It spotted the Tardis; , scanned as a source of time energy. The Dalek reached further, through the disruption caused by the Tardis’s vortex energy.

Behind a wall there were one life form, two beings shrouded in temporal charge and one being that defied all analysis.

One of the temporally charged beings jumped up with a weapon. The sonic screwdriver buzzed, reality shimmered around the Dalek and it found itself firing at a white-haired, older man accompanied by a human male with dark hair. The old man crumpled and fell.

If you want more Doctor Who reviews, go to http://reviewthewho.wordpress.com/ - my reviews of the Matt Smith/ 11th Doctor stories are under Series 5,6 and 7 - and a whole load of reviews covering all 50 years of the show are elsewhere. Go on, you know you want to.

Now go and buy my ebook The Royal Wedding from Hell
   

Doctor Who Review: Listen

“Listen” is one of the best Nu-Who episodes of all – up there with Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Vincent and the Doctor and A Christmas Carol. It’s really the first proper Capaldi Doctor story – there’s a nagging feeling that the previous 3 were written without being sure about what the 12^th Doctor would be like – so his character was worked into the story. With “Listen”, the story is all about his character. The whole premise, about whether there could be a silent, untraceable being shadowing your every move and being the basis of a recurring mass nightmare, comes from the idle and slightly tortured mind of the 12^th Doctor. Leave the 11^th Doctor on his own and he’ll invent a new recipe for fish fingers and custard, or go off and get engaged to Marilyn Monroe – leave the 12^th Doctor alone and he’ll delve all the way into the long, dark teatime of the soul.

This episode is so many things – it is a dark character study of the 12^th Doctor, it is a straight horror story, it is a romantic comedy and a romantic drama, it’s a far future time travel piece of sci-fi. Most of all, it’s simply a great piece of TV drama, written with all of the skills that we know the Moff possesses, directed to full on spooky effect and with three principal performances that hit all the right buttons.

Jenna Coleman continues to impress in Series 9, now that she has real material to work with and a better defined relationship with the Doctor. Clara hung out with the 11^th Doc because she fancied him and was swept up in the excitement of it all. Clara allows herself to accompany the 12^th Doctor because she feels a duty to him. She knows he’s a good man, she knows he is a remarkable man, but the Doctor is still struggling to realise it himself. Bringing a romantic element to her life is a masterstroke. How much longer will she tolerate the fantasy life over real life? Samuel Anderson as, first of all, Danny and then later Orson Pink is very good, stepping easily into the main supporting character . As Danny, his sensitive portrayal of a man haunted by his past and trying to make a normal life for himself is a contrast to the Doctor’s own struggle, and maybe Clara’s dilemas too. This slowing of the pace, that we saw so effectively in the restaurant conversation in Deep Breath, is carried on here. Clara and Danny’s date cuts between cute comedy and abrasive conflict, but both actors keep their mutual attraction bubbling along. It’s an adult relationship – two people working through the surface stuff because they know there’s a deeper connection; it’s no rush of flowery romance and it’s better because of it.

Pushing the storyline along, and dragging Clara along with it, is Capaldi’s 12^th Doctor. Matt Smith’s 11^th Doctor was the young man, with an almost childlike demeanour, who bore the weight of ages. Capaldi is the opposite – physically and in much of his temperament, he’s an old man – wrinkled, grey, thin and cantankerous. But his personality is so much less mature. He’s a boy, trying to find his place in the Universe, although aware that his place is so much more than most people’s places. “Listen” takes us back to the physical boy, with a neat link to the Day of the Doctor, and reveals a wee slice of what made the Doctor what he became. According to the “Time of the Doctor”, Capaldi is sort of a brand new Doctor – the beginning of a whole new cycle of regenerations. This story backs that up – he’s still new, still coming to terms with himself. Peter Capaldi, with those eyes, that furrowed brow, those spindly limbs and hissing teeth, is unlikely to become a cuddly Doctor. Caring squeezes out when it absolutely has to, when he meets and empathises with the young Danny – the 12^th Doctor is on your side, but it’s not always easy to see it. It will take growth and emotional maturity to really empathise with real people and situations. He knows he has to be outraged by injustice and evil, but he doesn’t necessarily feel it.

The 12^th Doctor and Clara have one of the most intriguing relationships that the show has ever produced – unlike last series, Clara is not a mystery to solve – she’s the Doctor’s friend, here to help him. He needs her. His abrasive, blunt and merciless character is covering up his fears. And Clara knows it; she can see the child within and it’s her responsibility to help him find the man, the Timelord, that she knows that the Doctor can be. In “Listen” she actually meets that child, but she’s also starting a relationship where she, once again, will be the one helping someone find their way out of the dark.

And amid all this deep character stuff is a monster to be avoided, people to be rescued, mysteries to solve, paradoxes to be confused by – this is Who at its best; pulp horrors and romance and action, all mixed in with something far weightier about who we are and where we come from and how we come together; we have nightmares, but we ALL have nightmares – and we can all help each other face the fears and come out of the dark.

And now, Flash-fic-Fan-fic:

HungerTime – Part Four

The Tardis landed. The Doctor leapt out brandishing his spoon. “Where is she?” he bellowed at the empty, snow-filled street.

There was a thumping of feet from behind him. He turned in time to be floored by three Claras.
 “Doctor!” said Clara.
“You’re not the Doctor,” said Oswin.
“I need a Doctor,” said Victorian Clara.
“This can’t happen,” said the Doctor, “Three of you. All at once.”
“Rich coming from you,” said Clara.
Snow swirled, sparks flew. The Doctor raised the sonic. It screamed and exploded. A terribly familiar pepperpot shaped formed in the snow.
“Running time,” said the Doctor.

If you want more Doctor Who reviews, go to http://reviewthewho.wordpress.com/ - my reviews of the Matt Smith/ 11th Doctor stories are under Series 5,6 and 7 - and a whole load of reviews covering all 50 years of the show are elsewhere. Go on, you know you want to.

Now go and buy my ebook The Royal Wedding from Hell

Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood Review

Clara wants to meet Robin Hood and the Doctor, grudgingly obliges, although he insists that no such person existed. However, on arrival in Sherwood Forest an arrow twangs into the Tardis, and the Doctor takes on Hood’s blade with his spoon. This very much sets the tone for the whole episode.

It’s all a bit daft but still jolly good fun – we get a far more settled Doctor from Capaldi – he is arrogant and ratty and vain, and some of the best moments deal with his rivalry with Hood, both men of giant egos unable to let the other take the lead. There’s snappy dialogue between the pair and Clara gets a few good lines too.

When it comes to the sci-fi, it’s pretty weak. We’re stuck with a bunch of generic robot types who are in cahoots with the Sheriff of Nottingham so that they can gather up enough gold to launch their crashed spaceship again. The Doctor, who has continually insisted that Hood, the Merry men and the Sheriff are all robots created by the spaceship to fool and enslave the local population, turns out to have been wrong. Which scuppers a neat idea that could have provided a bit of emotional resonance – what if Robin Hood the robot believed he was real? But no, Mark Gatiss decides that the legend of Robin Hood is faithfully true and that there really was a man capable of splitting an arrow.

The ship finally takes off but hasn’t got enough gold to make it to orbit so will explode and take most of England with it…EXCEPT, our heroes are able to ping a gold arrow at it, which tips it over the critical level and off the robots go – and then blow up in orbit. This is just kind of stupid, but I suppose, if you’ve been enjoying the ho ho ho’s of Robin Hood and chums for the last 40 minute then you can let this go.

This is not actually bad, just somewhat ridiculous. Capaldi and Hood trade funnies, the Sheriff chews up the scenery, Clara is wonderful and there’s a sort of bit of subtext about how we all want a hero to be real. It strays into the same territory as the Time Warrior and The Curse of the Black Spot – it’s panto Who as opposed to true pseudo-historical. Matt Smith may have twirled his merry way through this but I’m not sure if this is a 12^th Doctor Adventure at all.

And now, Flash-fic-Fan-fic:

HungerTime – Part Three

Alarms screamed throughout the Dalek saucer. The rebel ship had been destroyed but the time anomaly remained.

“What is happening?” demanded the Supreme Dalek.

The Orange Scientist acted fast. The saucer could not be saved. The time rupture was reverberating back through Dalek history.

“Answer, answer,” shrieked the Supreme.

The Scientist blasted the Supreme. Now it was the commanding Dalek and could command the saucer’s full systems.

It reversed the polarity of the quantum drives, sending the saucer into a fatal plunge.

The saucer dissolved into space-time. The Scientist channelled quantum energy to itself, dematerialised and went after the anomaly.

Doctor Who: Into the Dalek review

Doctor: “This is Clara. Not my assistant, she’s ah, some other word.”

Clara: “I’m his carer.”
Doctor: “Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don’t have to.”

 And there we have it – three simple lines of dialogue which sum up the relationship between the 12^th Doctor and Clara. My English teacher taught me that the essence of great art is much in little and this is a great example. It’s funny, sharp and brutal all at the same time.

 When I say it sums up their relationship, it sums it up as it is at this moment – 2 episodes into Series 8. Since the 12^th Doctor is a work in progress right now, so is their relationship. How much you like his series (so far) is going to depend on how much uncertainty you can put up with. Or maybe we’ll be on edge with the 12^th Doctor all the time – when he asks Clara if he’s a good person, we may never get a straight answer.

This has some similarities to Season 5’s “The Beast Below” – which had Amy stepping up to take the role as the Doctor’s Assistant – helping him to see more than just what’s in front of him. Except “The Beast Below” was somewhat heavy-handed in the way it shoved the Doctor/ Assistant relationship in our faces at the expense of the story. “Into the Dalek” is better made.

First and foremost it’s a rip-roaring adventure. The Daleks are presented in grand style – a Dalek Saucer chasing a spaceship through an asteroid field, the Doctor saving one of its occupants and landing on a ship hiding behind one of the asteroids. The Daleks are closing in but the soldiers on the ship have a captive, “good” Dalek aboard. Can the Doc lead a shrunken team inside the Dalek to fix it and turn it against his own kind? Excellent pulp stuff with lots of thrills and spills and action. Inside the Dalek, the team are chased by anti-bodies, fall into slime, race around its insides, turn it bad again and then try to make literal contact with its mind. Outside the Dalek, the ship is breached and a Dalek assault team charges in with the soldiers fighting a desperate rear-guard action.

Yet with all this ferocious charging about, there is time for some well-worked character scenes – when the Doctor is first aboard the ship and his abrasive reaction to anyone with guns, Clara’s sweet burgeoning romance with Danny Pink, the Doctor’s struggle with his morality towards the Daleks.

Capaldi’s Doctor continues to evolve – he’s blunt but not uncaring, but a lot of that attitude is fear about himself – he still can’t work out who he is. Jenna Coleman continues to impress – Clara as the Doctor’s Carer is far better than Clara as lovestruck fangirl of DESTINY.

All in all a stronger episode than the debut; I suspect there is still more settling down to come, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

AND – on to our Flash-fic-fan-fic

HungerTime – part two

 “Run, you clever boy. And remember,” said Oswin. She could feel the Dalek consciousness closing in, just as weaponry rained down upon the Asylum.

The barriers she’d erected in her escape pod burst open. The planet roared as it exploded around her.

“Come on then,” shouted a familiar voice, “run.”

Oswin jumped up. Smoke billowed through the door. A short, dark-haired girl stepped through, coughing. “We need to get out of here,” said Clara.

They ran, stumbling from the capsule and into a snow-filled street, bumping into another short, young lady with dark hair.

“This is strange,” said all three.

Doctor Who - Deep Breath Review

Okay – 12 episodes of Doctor Who Series 8, 12 quick and dirty reviews and 12 episodes of flash-fic fan-fic featuring the all-new 12th Doctor. Away we go…

 Deep Breath

We start with a giant T-Rex stomping up Victorian London. It’s a great special effect shot, looks superb in the trailers and is frankly just gratuitous in the episode. Either way, the T-Rex spews up the Tardis and its occupants, the lovely Clara and the newly regenerated Doctor. The Paternoster Gang (Lady Vastra, Jenny and Strax the Comedy Sontaran) are on hand to ease the regeneration along, but I really hope this is the last we see of this lot. There’s a good fifteen minutes or more of the Doctor struggling with who he is; fifteen minutes too much in my opinion – it’s a cliché that was done to death back in Classic Who, and when you consider how the 11^th Doctor was thrown into action almost fully formed, it just grates a bit now. On the plus side, Jenna Coleman is given some decent material – Clara’s struggles with the new Doctor make far more sense and, for a large part of the feature-length episode, it’s Clara that carries the story.

A story turns up soon enough though; there’s a nasty cyborg thing going round snatching bits of people. There’s an excellent scene when the Doctor and Clara are lured to a restaurant (by whom? That’s another issue..) – where the new Doctor starts to settle down and take charge and Clara starts coming to terms with him. There’s a tricky moment when the Doctor leaves Clara to the mercy of that very nasty cyborg with half a face – is the Doctor a coward, is he just being pragmatic or is he so cunning that he knows Clara will be OK (if somewhat shaken) and his “escape” provides him with the cover to come back and sort it all out? Sorting it out comes down to the Paternoster gang whirling into action against the patch-work cyborgs and the Doctor having an angry face-off (ahem) with the half-faced cyborg in a big balloon. But did the cyborg jump, or was he pushed?

Overall, it’s solid enough stuff – but it certainly doesn’t match the Eleventh Hour as a new Doctor’s debut. Capaldi is good but, since his character is kept deliberately on edge, he isn’t able to own the role and the show like his predecessor did. Hopefully things will settle down as we go along. As mentioned before, Coleman gets to bring some real character to Clara – being made to question her attitude to the Doctor and some form of development from pretty sidekick to someone who really is going to help. The pace of the episode seemed uneven; this comes across as a transition piece, moving away from the fast, furious and fun running around of the 11^th Doctor to something slower and more considered. The episode definitely strays into Hinchcliffe horror territory.

It’s not great, but it is very good, at least until Matt Smith’s cameo. This is just awful – surely a huge insult to Peter Capaldi? Does Capaldi not become the Doctor until Smith formally hands the role over via the call to Clara? Is Clara so weak and superficial (and we’ve just spent half the episode proving she isn’t) that she needs the previous Doctor, HER Doctor to persuade her to stick with the new Doctor? It’s an insulting and totally unnecessary scene that, for me, sours a perfectly acceptable start for the 12^th Doctor.

AND NOW, the flash fic. The rules are – each episode is exactly 100 words, I don’t do any real planning – we’re making it up as we go along -  a bit like Capaldi’s new Doctor…

HungerTime – part one

The latest version of the console room was still not right. It had far more round things but still missed something. He found the intercom switch.

“Clara,” shouted the Doctor, “can you come to the test console room. I need your input.”

No answer. He checked the Tardis interior display. Rooms, corridors, whole sectors shifted in and out of being but there was no way a part could vanish if Clara was in it.

She wasn’t anywhere.

They’d been drifting through the vortex – it was impossible for Clara to leave the Tardis.

But, he thought, Clara is the impossible girl.

The Time of the Doctor - Review

Was there any way that this story could possibly live up to expectations? THIS story, THE last story of the Eleventh Doctor, THE story when Matt Smith regenerates, , THE follow-up to “The Day of the Doctor” with our first look at Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, THE story screened (within a day or so, probably) simultaneously across the globe. Surely it can’t live up to that kind of hype? Um, no, no it seems it can’t.

On the whole, this is not so much a Doctor Who story, more of a wrapping up of loose ends and an almost episode long drawn-out final scene for Matt Smith. There are various bits of running around but ultimately, not much actually happens apart from the regeneration.

It starts in reasonably promising style – the Doctor’s appearance at Clara’s Xmas dinner, where he appears fully clothed to us watching and to Clara but then reveals that he’s still actually naked and appearing so to Clara’s family made me laugh like a drain.
But when we head off to Trenzalore, we just begin the long slow end of the Doctor. Yes, we know the prophecy said that this is where he dies so it’s all a bit foreboding. And yes, it is a surprise to have it very simply confirmed that Smith is in fact the 13th Doctor (number 9 was actually Hurt’s War Doctor, Eccleston bumped to no 10, and Tennant managing to be both 11 and 12) and therefore the absolute last one. BUT, we also know full well that Peter Capaldi has been cast as the next Doctor (because there was a live TV special) so there is bound to be some timey-wimey-ness to allow the regeneration to take place, so it’s not like the Doctor’s impending “death” is anything to get too stressed about.

Coleman is reduced back to the companion that occasionally hangs out with the Doctor as opposed to actually travelling with him. She calls him up, gets sent away, comes back again, gets sent away again and then comes back again. She lets a big old tear run down her face (again), and gets to do the Impossible Girl bit (again) to save the day. Is it a little insulting to her character that at the very end, the Doc still hallucinates one last goodbye to Amy Pond?
Actually, it’s possibly more insulting that the better companion is an old cyberman head that the Doctor has called Handles. Handles’ final demise as he watches one last Trenzalore sunset is one of the episode’s more touching moments.

Smith, almost needless to say, is superb, playing his usual manic self, then a slightly less sprightly 300 year older self and finally a near to death self. He does manage to bring a slight tear to the eye as his doddery form makes it to the top of the tower for one last rant at the Daleks.
And then he explodes (thanks to Clara’s plea to the timelords) with an all new load of regenerations and obliterates the Daleks.
Back in the Tardis, young again, briefly, he finally regenerates into a boggly-eyed Peter Capaldi with a suitably wacky cliffhanger “would you know how to fly this thing?”

The Time of the Doctor would always struggle to follow The Day of the Doctor, I found myself surprisingly unexcited as this episode came round. Whereas the big anniversary episode managed to avoid being a greatest hits of Who, The Time of the Doctor became just that – menacing Daleks, a few Cybermen, Weeping Angels in the snow, hissing Silences and silly Sontarans.
A few nice moments, but otherwise a disappointing end to a great Doctor’s run.

I’ll get to a more full overview of Matt Smith’s era, but for now, will say that it’s heights were the very best of nu-Who but Season 6, especially its second half, let the whole period down.
Matt Smith, though, was never less than excellent. His final line was beautiful:

“I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.”

So will I, Matt Smith, so will I.

PS - if you want lots more Who reviews, covering all 50 years, then nip over to "Review the Who", where you will find my, more reasoned, reviews of the Matt Smith era along with a boatload of great writing about the greatest show in the Universe.

Doctor Who - The Day of the Doctor Review

Was there any way that this story could possibly live up to expectations? THIS story, THE 50th Anniversary story, THE story with the Tennant/ Smith team-up (with Rose Tyler too), THE follow-up to “The Name of the Doctor” with the scary “new” Doctor played by John Hurt, THE story screened simultaneously across the globe and shown in 3D in cinemas. Surely it can’t live up to that kind of hype? Except it does.

I’ve cheerfully criticised much of what’s gone on in the Name of the Moffat (Series 6, for example) but with these 72 minutes of undiluted Whovian fun, the Moff has nailed it.
Simply watching it in the cinema made it special to start with. First off, we were treated to Strax, the comedy Sontaran, telling us how to behave, then an intro by Smith then Tennant sparring about the wonders of 3D. And then the story began. Moffat started plucking the heartstrings of the fans right from the get go – we open with the original 1963 titles and music and the opening shot is a copy of THE opening shot, before we open out to reveal full colour and find Clara working at Coal Hill School (Chairman of the Board is I. Chesterton – one the Doc’s very first companions). Applause all round.

It’s not all nostalgia; there is an actual story going on. It weaves from the “Fall of Arcadia”, the pivotal event of The Time War, where John Hurt’s “War Doctor” has to commit the act that will destroy Daleks, Time Lords and Gallifrey itself and end the universe-spanning conflict altogether. To do this, he must activate The Moment, a weapon so devastating that it has its own conscience – manifested as a character from the Doctor’s future, being Rose Tyler/ Bad Wolf – a slick way of bringing Billie Piper into the story without the complications of picking up Rose herself. It is Rose that stays the War Doctor’s hand and sparks the “timey-wimey” events that bring three Doctors together.
From here, we catch up with the 10th Doc in Elizabethan England, finding himself involved in a Zygon plot (and getting himself engaged to Queen Elizabeth herself). The 11th Doc dives through time and, at last, the two meet, followed swiftly by the War Doctor (“I’m looking for the Doctor” he says, “You’ve come to the right place,” says No 10).
Fun and jollies with the Zygons (who are on fairly scary form actually) follow, before we get back to the serious business of hitting the Big button that will wipe out the Time Lords and Daleks. At first, Nos 10 and 11 are simply there to be with the War Doctor to press the button and share the burden...BUT, Clara does what Clara does and persuades them to find another way – saving the Doctor(s) yet again.
And it’s a way that brilliantly brings in all of the other Doctors – and we mean ALL of the other Doctors including a brief shot of the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and provoking a fair few shrieks from the cinema audience.
The day is saved and, thanks to a very familiar “curator”, the Doctor is given new purpose – to find the lost planet of Gallifrey.

There’s so much to love here – Smith and Tennant are on OTT form, both firing on all cylinders in a display of constant one-upmanship – when the War Doctor arrives we get a wonderful parallel with the original Three Doctors – I was half expecting Hurt to say “so you’re my replacements, a dandy and a clown.” Hurt is more subtle, as expected from the Doctor that’s suffered 400 years of brutal warfare and must bear the heaviest burden of all.
The battles on Gallifrey are suitably epic – scenes that could never be conceived back in the Classic era, but they are kept at an appropriate level – the explosions do not overtake the drama.

This story could have been a weighty, “dark” episode – but instead, Moffat gives us mostly a fun-filled, old fashioned monster (Zygon) romp, fun that is bookended by the darker material.
There’s a lot of humour – No10 and Elizabeth (after Queenie dispatches her Zygon double she notes that “while I may have the weak and feeble body of a woman, so did the Zygon”), the superb and complex way the three Docs work out how to disintegrate a solid wooden door with their sonic screwdrivers (letting the War Doctor’s screwdriver start the calculations that will take 400 years and thus be completed by the 11th Doc’s screwdriver) before Clara opens it and reveals it was unlocked anyway. There’s great supporting characters; Clara and Rose, Kate Stewart and her UNIT team, Queen Elizabeth. There’s a long, long scarf and a Fez (“Can you not walk past one without putting it on?” quips Clara). The aforementioned glimpse of Doctor no 13 (which means Doc’s 10 and 11 should be moved up to Nos 11 and 12). And then there’s Tom Baker – the man who will always be, perhaps, THE Doctor.

The way that the Doctors save Gallifrey is truly inspired – presaged by their attempt at door disintegration, they form a plan to make the planet disappear and let the Daleks destroy themselves – but it will take centuries to make the calculations says the Time Lord General. But that’s OK, because when the First Doctor is the first to start working on it, then they have centuries.

And so, what could have been a very good story of 3 Doctors becomes a truly great story of 13 Doctors.

This special was described by its Producers as a love letter to the fans; and there’s a lot of love on display. From the Tardis swinging across London, and a full on Dalek planetary assault, and horse rides with the Queen, and Timelord paintings, and sonic screwdriver rivalry, acknowledging the UNIT dating conundrum... to the darkest decision of all, the regeneration loop all wrapped up and the impossible girl reminding us all that the Doctor is called The Doctor for a reason. And, a terribly familiar curator launching the show into the future.

The Day of the Doctor is many things – it is a celebration of the show’s rich and wonderful past, it is a celebration of its current and hugely successful present and it is a hint of a thrilling future. Past, present and future – it is a show about time travel after all.

Happy Birthday Doctor Who – it’s been a hell of a ride so far, and who knows what the future holds? Who knows? Who knows.

Doctor Who - Season 7 Review/ rambling....

First things first Season 7 was way better than Season 6. A quick and dirty recap of Season 6:
Impossible Astronaut/ Day of the Moon – a cracking start, nasty aliens, clever resolution with intriguing hints of the larger story to come.
The Curse of the Black Spot – the worst episode since Love and Monsters. Down there with The Twin Dilemma awfulness.
The Doctor’s Wife – sort of interesting, but over-indulgent
The Rebel Flesh/ The Almost People – actually, quite good
A Good Man goes to War – a long way up itself, but with enough thrills and spills to be fun, a good twist but let down by the revelation that River was Amy’s daughter
And then came the second half....

Let’s Kill Hitler – Poor
Night Terrors – seen it all before
The Girl who waited – YES, Amy loves Rory, how many times do we have to be told? And look, a robot thing with a catchphrase.
The God Complex – seen it all before, in fact, two episodes ago.
Closing Time – oh please...
The Wedding of River Song – and reset.
So overall, a decent start which nose-dived in the second half. Which brings us to Season Seven. We’ll ignore the 2011 Xmas special because it was terrible.

Asylum of the Daleks – superb, best NuWho since...possibly since Who returned.
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship – almost daft, but they pull it off. A decent villain for a change.
A Town called Mercy – predictable but good stuff.
The Power of Three – surprisingly good despite being yet another sodding character piece.
The Angels Take Manhattan – Weeping Angels have jumped the shark, although the Statue of Liberty as Angel was impressive. But this was good because we finally saw the back of Amy and Rory who had gone on way too long.
The Snowmen – superb, best Nu Who since...oh, Asylum of the Daleks.
The Bells of St John – watchable but not what you’d call good.
The Rings of Akhatan – oh dear, is it Season 6B revisited?
Cold War – thank God NO – Ice Warriors return in style.
Hide – haunted house stories are getting a bit tired, but solid work.
Journey to the Centre of the Tardis – bleuurgh.
The Crimson Horror – Another good villain – that’s two in one season.
Nightmare in Silver – the best Nu Who since....The Snowmen
The Name of the Doctor – a bit of a reset but a good tease for the 50th Special.

My overall gripes are Amy and Rory dragging on and how the mid-season break distorts the flow of stories – we’re just waiting for the mid-season “event”, the rest is almost filler (if sometimes very good filler). Clara was superb in Asylum and the Snowmen but took a few stories to pick up again. Cold War saved the second half and Nightmare brought it home with gusto.
All in all, a great improvement and a great new companion gee’d things up nicely. Season 6 just bogged itself down in too much Amy/ Rory-ness – Season 7 was a return to plain old villains and monsters (and returning villains and monsters), with Daleks and Cybermen getting their best outings for a long while, the revived (should we say defrosted) Ice Warriors and reintroduced Great Intelligence. Matt Smith continued to rise above some mediocre material, but thankfully, not too much mediocre material – in Nightmare in Silver, I’d argue he hit his highest notes yet. Sadly we’ve only got two more adventures with him – the Big Special and then the Xmas episode.
Coming up, though, is even greater excitement – we hope. Who is this “other” Doctor played by John Hurt? What fun and jollies will go down in the 50th Anniversary Special, with Doc no 10 and Rose Tyler returning? And how will No 11 regenerate into No 12 – in the form of Peter Capaldi?

My personal hopes for Season 8:
No mid-season break – 13 straight episodes, please.
Slow down a bit for longer two-parters. Maybe even try for a meaningful three-parter.
Enough of the mysterious companion nonsense. Clara’s role is to have stuff explained to her (and thus, us), lose the Doc and meet the locals and tell the Doc where he is going wrong. She is along for the ride because it is fun; not because she is in love with the Doc or getting over something, or because the Doc is finding out who she is. Note how I have refrained from saying that her role is to look pretty. This is 2013, you know....
How about a nasty, villainous villain doing something nasty that the Doctor will sort out? No need for paradoxical timey-wimey-ness.
New villains and new monsters – once we’re past the Big 50, let’s put the old stuff on ice for a while, shall we?
An episode (or two) commissioned from a bright new writer based in New Zealand, shot in Wellington and directed by my chum* and almost neighbor, Peter Jackson.

Anyhoo - that's my wrapping up. Now, go and buy my ebook, ideal for Dr Who fans - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/178959

*When I say chum, I have seen him drive past my bus stop several times in his lovely silver Aston Martin DB5. If he stopped and said Hi, I’m sure we’d get on like a house on fire.

Iain M Banks - a wee tribute

Iain Banks, one of our finest sci-fi writers, indeed one of our finest writers, died on June 9^th, 2013. It’s always sad when one of your favourite artists passes – the notion that I won’t get to read another new Culture novel, or enjoy the jet black humour of his, supposedly, mainstream fiction is heartbreaking.

“Excession” was the first of his books that I read – a terrific piece of space opera that, for me, blew the genre apart. At the time, to my shame, my sci-fi reading had largely deteriorated to Star Trek and Star Wars levels, in prose at least. In comics I had soared with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman (among others), but my novel reading remained distinctly pedestrian.

And my rambling attempts at writing had been at wonky, quest based (Tolkien rip-off) sword and sorcery, and a space war-based (Star Wars rip-off) sci-fi.

And then, I picked up “Excession” from the library and realised that imagination could fly so, so much farther.

The Culture (Bank’s super-advanced space-living, egalitarian, super-liberal society) was light years away from the simplistic societies envisaged by the two big sci-fi franchises. Let’s face it, much as I still love Trek and SW, they are really just Earth bound stories and characters thrown into space. They are hardly “real” sci-fi in that they hardly deviate from modern Earth technology. A gun with a laser beam is still just a gun.

Banks took a step back and really thought about where technology could take us.

The stars of the Culture are not boldly going humans – it’s the vast “minds” that are the heart and souls of the city-sized starships. In Excession, the villains of the piece, for want of a better term, are not sinister megalomaniacs intent on conquest and power, it’s a bunch of many legged gas balloons whose whole society revels in cruelty and oppression. And even the “Afront” pale in comparison to the grim society of “the Player of Games”.

The “humans” in the Culture can simply “gland” mood enhancing drugs into their systems, they can transfer their minds into other bodies (alien, human, whatever), they can change gender, they don’t die - unless they choose to, and even then they may be uploaded to a virtual heaven long before they finally decide to switch themselves off.

After reading Excession, my Star Wars rip-off was retired. My Tolkien rip-off is not quite dead, but if it is ever resurrected it will be in a radically different form.

I can’t claim that my writing will ever reach Bank’s giddy heights of imagination, but the lesson learned is that I have to try.

And his so-called mainstream work? Read “The Wasp Factory” and ask yourself how mainstream that is.

When I see yet another sodding vampire/ werewolf/ shadow world beneath our world/ kids of destiny with exceptional powers story on the shelves – I wonder how those writers live with themselves. Of course, my own work is probably a pale rip-off of Iain Bank’s so I can’t get too judgmental.

I have few regrets in life, BUT – on the one time I actually got to meet the great man, I didn’t ask him anything. He was signing copies of “Dead Air” in a bookshop near my work one lunchtime – I bought a copy in a rush and got it signed for my brother as a Xmas prezzie – I was rushing so much I didn’t think to ask him to explain what the hell “Walking on Glass” was about, or just what that thing was in “Excession”, or at what point in writing “Use of Weapons” did the big twist come to him....

I was lucky enough to meet his one-time publishing editor, John Jarrold*, who explained how he handled the big twist in the publicity and just why “Inversions” is actually a Culture novel, NOT sword and sorcery as my non sci-fi reading friend once thought.

For those who have not read Iain Banks, I’d suggest starting with “Consider Phlebas” as a first Iain M Banks – it’s the first Culture novel and a great trip around how it works. As for the equally superb Iain Banks (without the M) work – maybe try “Espedair Street” as it’s not as jarring as “The Wasp Factory”. Frankly, anything with his name, with or without an “M” will take you places that you never thought you’d go.

To those who knew and loved Mr Banks, their loss must be immeasurable and my thoughts are with them. One hopes it is a small comfort that his work will live on, and continue to excite readers forever.

A wee bit of Culture fan-fic/ flash fic.....

“I need to sublime.”

-Ahem, the Culture does NOT sublime.

“Ok, how can I shuffle off this mortal coil?”

-There’s always the after-life. And there’s lots of options.

“No. That’s just a different kind of physical plane. I want out. Altogether.”

-Tricky. No one has died in the Culture for millenia. Ten thousand years ago, some guy managed to get his body dropped into a star from a non-Culture ship a long way from any Culture influence. Even then, we were able to reconstruct him.

“I know. And I wish you’d never bothered.”

-Heh. No one f**ks with the Culture.

And at some point I will do my Doctor Who Season 7 summing up – hell, what about the Doctor meeting the Culture? Now that would be a Who story and a half...

*And if it wasn’t for John Jarrold, I probably wouldn’t still be trying to write to this day – but that’s another story.

DOCTOR WHO REVIEW - The Name of the Doctor

The Name of the Doctor

I feel a little conned. I did NOT learn the Name of the Doctor. River Song knows it, and seems to be the only one that does. When did he actually tell her?

However, apart from a niggling manipulation of our expectations, this episode was almost an epic conclusion to the series and prequel/ lead-in/ cliffhanger for the 50^th Anniversary story.

I say “almost”. This is a story that you don’t want to step back and think about too much. Motivations for the Conference call between Madame Vastra, Jenny, Strax, Clara and River seem somewhat spurious. The whispermen are not really explained. The Great Intelligence’s Great scheme to wipe out the Doctor seems a little simplistic and considering how terrible and dangerous mucking about with time is, the Doc seems to make easy work of doing just that.

On the plus side – there is tremendous pace – the Whispermen can’t be stopped by a wave of the Sonic screwdriver so when they’re after you, you’d really better run. Trenzalore is brilliantly realised and the colossal expanded Tardis is a sight to behold.

The opening is one for old fans (such as myself) to love – the scene where the First Doctor goes to steal a Tardis with Susan (which surely tells us that Susan is a Time Lady – could she regenerate at some point?. One assumes she still lives on future, post Dalek Invasion Earth). And then, fleeting glimpses of the other Doctors and Clara – she is The Impossible Girl, destined to save the Doctor over and over again.

The explanation is a classic bit of Moffat timey-wimey-ness; she has to throw herself into the Doc’s timeline to counter-act the Great Intelligence’s effect after he threw himself into the Doc’s timeline, which is why she can keep on turning up to save the Doctor’s life. Which begs a paradoxical question – so where has she been all this time?

And then, the explanation of the episode title – not the Doctor’s name as in first name and surname, but “IN” the name of the Doctor – all of which sends us charging into the forgotten Doctor, as played by John Hurt (and with a big shiny caption to make sure we understand who he is), which will roll into the BIG 50^th anniversary.

I could criticize this episode – essentially it’s a load of running around heading ever closer to a terrible place with terrible consequences – but when they get to the terrible end, it’s really a chance for a load of exposition and it’s all sorted out by a leaf. But it’s done with a lot of style, so we’ll let it go.

And now that we know who Clara is, hopefully she can stop being a story arc and finally step up to being the sassy and saucy wonder that we loved in Asylum of the Daleks. With the announcement that Matt Smith will be leaving us after the 50^th Anniversary story and then the 2013 Xmas episode, we should get to see Clara usher in a new Doctor. Exciting stuff ahead.

Next week, I’ll chuck together a rambling appraisal of the whole of Season 7. In the meantime, we’ll bring in the last episode of our flash-fic/ fan-fic. I was completely stuck for an ending, having written myself into a total hole. BUT, hey, we have a fresh new slice of Who canon to work with now....

Consequences of Time Episode 8

“What about reversing the polarity flow?” said Clara.

The Doctor paused. Had Clara always been there? Did she get out of the van with Graf? No time to care. Graf didn’t seem fazed.

The Doctor ran to the big box. Graf took a step, Clara caught him.

“STOP NOW!”

“This won’t hurt a bit,” muttered the Doctor. He made an adjustment, fired up his sonic screwdriver.

The thundering soundwave floored them all.

Time flickered. As the Doctor, Graf and Clara stood, a crowd of bewildered people stood around the machine. The wind was rising. No-one was dying. No-one had died.

And there we have it. Once again, the value of pre-planning comes to the fore and would have meant me not having a colossal cop-out, reset button ending. However, if it’s good enough for Steven Moffat, it’s good enough for me.

Tomorrow – a wee tribute to the Great Iain Banks, who has sadly passed away, although one assumes he has been uploaded to the Culture.

DOCTOR WHO REVIEW - Nightmare in Silver

Nightmare in Silver

Now we’re cooking with gas, or to be more accurate, Neil Gaiman is. I said in my review of Cold War that it was nudging The Snowmen and Asylum of the Daleks in quality. Nightmare in Silver is right up alongside those two – rating as one of the best Nu-Who’s of them all, and definitely the best Nu-Who Cyberman story.

This season has been a little uneven, but the consistent note of excellence has been Matt Smith – and in this story he is better than ever. He gets to play the Doc (of course) but is also on fire as the Doctor possessed (implanted?) by the Cyber-planner consciousness. I’ve often found a lack of strong villain characters in Nu-Who, but this season has made amends (Daleks being supremely villainous, that nasty sod with the Dinosaurs, The Great Intelligence, Celia Imrie, the Ice Warrior, Diana Rigg) – and Smith, himself, provides possibly the best.

There is strong support all round – the soldiers are great, Warwick Davis is wonderful and Jenna-Louise Coleman’s Clara is now firing on all cylinders – being put in charge by the Doc, and making sure that no one blows up the planet.

The Cybermen get a thorough upgrade (naturally). Part of me worried that they were turning a bit Borg, especially the implants and ability to upgrade on the fly. However, as we Who fans all know, the Borg were ripped-off Cybermen in the first place (I’m ashamed to say that the Borg were the Cybermen done right) so I see this episode as just the Cybermen retaining their place as THE sci-fi cyborg/ robot men type of villain. Frankly, even The Terminator would have trouble against these Cybermen.

The story has mystery, then pace, then action, then scariness, then a big reveal, and then a big explosion. What more do you want?

Next time – The Name of the Doctor. Which has some of my UK chums in a right tizzy – in a good way....

And now, can I possibly make some sense out of this flash fic story?

Consequences of Time - Episode Seven

“Would you be the Frozen Terror?” asked the Doctor.

“LET THE SACRIFICE PROCEED.”

Graf started walking forwards. The wind began to pick up again.

“Stop,” shouted the Doctor. Graf halted. The wind died.

“IF THE SACRIFICE STOPS, THE WIND STOPS,” said the Black Box.

“So?” shrugged the Doctor. Beside him, Graf gasped.

“THE WIND WILL STOP.”

“All wind stops,” said Graf. “No wind, no power, no people.”

“Wind happens naturally. You don’t need people to fuel it,” said the Doctor.

“THE WIND IS CONTROLLED. THERE IS NO NATURE.”

The Doctor used the Sonic Screwdriver. Not good, not good at all.

 

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

The Crimson Horror

And to think, I wasn’t looking forward to this one. How wrong can you be? This was an absolute corker. Mark Gatiss, who wrote the earlier corker “Cold War” produces the goods again.

I was ready to hate Strax – but he wins me over, he is a comedy character but he is let loose to be a proper warrior as well.

Perhaps the Victorian era is overly used in Nu-Who, but the Doc has a very solid reason to go there as part of the quest to figure out what/ who Clara is.

Our Silurian and her lady-friend are on good form investigating the weird goings-on, and actually rescuing the Doc (to some extent). Smith, as always, is on excellent form, and JLC finally gets a decent outing as Clara – bringing the sauciness and sassiness of her debut stories.

With Diana Rigg, we have a proper villain – a thoroughly nasty piece of work, perfectly willing to do nasty experiments on her own daughter (played by her actual real daughter, Rachael Stirling). Stirling is superb, blind, disfigured, abandoned yet still capable of compassion and fury. And Rigg is a villain to the end – as she dies she asks her daughter “Can you forgive me?” The daughter replies “never”. “That’s my girl,” says Mum with pride before her last gasp.

All that AND a sort of cliff-hanger/ lead-in to next week as the kids that Clara nannies for discover her time-travelling antics (although Clara seems bemused by the pic of her in Victorian London...) and insist she takes them along...

....along to meet the Cybermen in the next episode it seems..

And now, fanfic/ flashfic..

Consequences of Time – Episode 6

The wind stopped. “That’s better,” said the Doctor. He looked up, but didn’t let Graf go.

“What have you done?” grunted Graf, his voice muffled with his face in the snow.

The snow, which had obscured everything, was now settling. A dark shape ahead was materializing as the view became clearer.

“Your frozen terror,” said the Doctor, letting Graf raise his head.

“What is it?” he asked. The Doctor climbed off. Both men stood.

“No idea,” said the Doctor as he walked towards the large, black cube.

“STOP RIGHT THERE, OR DIE!” boomed a huge, electronic voice. The Doctor stopped.

Doctor Who Review - Journey to the Centre of the Tardis

At first glance, there was a lot to like here. Creepy monsters chasing our heroes (and villains) around the surreal depths of the Tardis – all very well realised and managing to overcome a severe case of “running down corridors”. Alternate console rooms, a library with the “History of the Last Great Time War” and the Eye of Harmony itself. Unfortunately, it’s all too obvious for a story set on the Tardis to go nowhere – and that’s precisely where this story goes.

A gormlessly contrived reason for the Tardis “crashing” on a salvage ship (they turn off the security settings so Clara can have a go at flying the Tardis, in an attempt to get the Tardis to like her). Three brothers (or rather two and an android) who come from a long line of grubby workmen in space (Alien, Darkstar, The Impossible Planet, 42 and so on...) decide they will tear the Tardis apart. Oh come on – seriously, a bog-standard salvage crew try to take on the Tardis?

To be fair, I quite liked the brothers – they were interesting enough, enough amorality without being actually evil and even a fair bit of genuine good.

Smith, as always, on excellent form. JLC, on good form, but again given little by the script. There’s a possible revelation in the library, a neat plot twist about the salvage crew, a thundering confrontation between Clara and the Doc, a rip-roaring cliff-hanger as the monsters trap the Doc and Clara on a bridge across a seething fire or vortex or something....

And then, as too often happens with nu-Who, especially the Moffat version, the Doc hits the reset button and everything is sorted out again. Tardis goes merrily on its way and so do the salvage boys with never the twain having met.

I assume this Clara storyline is going somewhere – despite Clara being none the wiser, I guess she has to have some important timey-wimey place in the scheme of things. Maybe she’ll turn out to be Amy’s mother or something.

Next week we have The Crimson Terror – with the ridiculous comedy Sontaran, Strax. I don’t like Steampunk, and I’d rather have my Sontarans being Born to Fight warriors instead of jokes. I am looking forward to it, honest.

However, it’s all very well for me to criticise – can I do any better?

Consequences of Time – Episode Part 5

The people started running, into the storm and where the severed head had come from.

“Stop,” screamed the Doctor but his voice vanished in the howling of the wind. More body parts were flying back, blood sprayed through the swirling snow, red and white stripes flew through the air.

The Doctor ran after them. Graf, the last in the line stumbled and looked back at the Doctor. “I must,” he shouted.

“No, you don’t,” shouted the Doctor. He hit Graf with a rugby tackle and the two slammed into the icy ground. “Now, what happens if we stay here then?”

 

Doctor Who Review - Hide

“Hide” starts off as a ghost story, and a good one too. The ghost is suitably whispy and creepy and even quite scary. The streams of fuzzy photos with the ghost’s face in full Scream mode are very good at making the point.

The Doctor and Clara wander in; Matt Smith is superb as usual, Clara still seems to wonder why she is there (the character, Jenna-Louise Coleman is a great actress but the character seems a bit stuck).

Of course, this is Doctor Who, so the supernatural isn’t supernatural at all. The story flips direction as the Doc reveals what’s really going on – a traveler trapped in time is providing the ghosty-ness.

The monster chasing the time traveler is suitably horrible, although the time-traveler doesn’t get a character at all. The whole story has a final twist when the Doc realizes that the monster isn’t being monstrous at all, it just wants to get back with its mate that has been trapped in “our” universe.

Solid stuff, scary when it needed to be, neat sci-fi twists and a pretty smart resolution. I can’t see this becoming a classic, but it is a decent story that continues to put this season on track after its first couple of stuttering episodes.

And on...

Consequences of Time Part 4

The Doctor stumbled in snow, followed by Graf, the terrified sacrifice. The truck sprayed ice as it sped away. The others staggered in hysterics, all with no place to go.

A howl echoed around them. Ppeople starting walking towards the sound.

“Maybe we should head away from the terror?” shouted the Doc. Graf stopped. He was very conflicted.

“I don’t want to die,” he screamed, “but I must go”.

Another howl came with a ground-shaking thump. A dark flurry swished through and a woman vanished with a scream.

Moments later, the severed head flew back, bouncing at the Doctor’s feet.