From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 6: The Caretaker)

(Once again, as always, these are old writeups done last year as Series 8 of Doctor Who aired, for the website Boss Dungeon. They're being rehosted along with updated retrospective opinions as I rewatch in anticipation for Series 9. Just one more week! On to The Caretaker.)

Sometimes, Doctor Who tries to be funny. This has mixed results when it comes to popular opinion, but there are more hits than misses. The Graham Williams era of the late 1970s erred more towards the side of humor, especially when Douglas Adams became script editor in 1979. Under his tenure, we had a few duds but he made up for it with classics like City Of Death. In more recent years, Gareth Roberts penned a duo of comedic Doctor Who episodes for Matt Smith's Doctor: The Lodger and Closing Time. These episodes had the Doctor trying to adjust from wild adventures in time and space to normal everyday life among humans. With Wacky Results. This week's episode has somewhat of the same premise. The thing about the Gareth Roberts episodes is that you either like them or you don't. If you're a fan of that sort of comedy, then The Caretaker will appeal to you.

I happen to be a fan of that style. The Caretaker was pretty good. Minus some reservations.

There are only so many ways you can spin a "The Doctor goes undercover on Earth" story.  You can go all out like Human Nature and have the Doctor literally become a human, or you can take the Roberts approach and just have him masquerade. It would feel like a rehash, but it doesn't fall into the same cliches that the other episodes did. The Lodger was about how utterly alien the Doctor was, and Closing Time had some of that as well. The Caretaker, to its credit, focuses more on Clara's reaction to the whole thing. The Doctor has disguised himself as the caretaker of the school she and Danny Pink work at, and is secretly investigating an alien threat while she panics and runs around in an attempt to stop him from making a fool of himself. There are some genuine funny moments in the first half of the episode, and Capaldi gets to flit about in the background and work on his plan.

It's the second half of the episode that makes things... interesting. After a bit of exciting action involving this week's alien menace, Danny Pink finally learns about the TARDIS and the Doctor. The episode shifts gears here, becoming more of a character drama with Clara, Danny, and the Doctor. Danny is confused by the aliens and time machines at first, but then shifts his concerns to Clara. The Doctor is distrustful of Danny, because he's a former soldier. Clara loves Danny and is upset at the Doctor for his callous dismissal of him. I'm not sure how I feel about this. In Deep Breath, we had the Doctor tell Clara that he wasn't her boyfriend. Now he's acting more like an overprotective dad, forbidding his daughter from dating some street punk soldier. It doesn't work. The Doctor shouldn't be Clara's "space dad". He's her travelling partner. All of the independence from Clara this season has been building her up to be his equal, and now he's taking superiority and disapproving of her relationship choices. Something about it doesn't gel right, and it's the one true sour note of the episode.

There isn't too much else to say about the episode in great detail, so I'll close out with a bunch of bullet point asides. Things I liked, things I didn't like, that sort of thing.

-The alien menace this week, a Skovox Blitzer, looks pretty cool. Like a robot Garrus Vakarian with spider legs. A fairly stock "BEEP BEEP DESTROY DESTROY" robot, but the episode isn't really about him so the lack of uniqueness isn't too bad here.

-It's great to have an episode set in Coal Hill School. It's the origin point of the series, and the setting of Remembrance Of The Daleks (one of the finest hours of the classic series). There's a bit of technobabble to explain the Blitzer's presence as due to the events of those episodes, which is a cute nod for the hardcore fans. Hell, even Danny Pink discovering the TARDIS is a nod to the first episode; a Coal Hill school teacher finding a grumpy old man with a time machine.

-The Doctor's boyfriend misunderstanding was a little cringe-worthy, but less so once I realized that he mistook a skinny white guy wearing a bowtie for Clara's boyfriend. Tee hee hee.

-See also: the Doctor whistling Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" in the middle of a school. I reiterate: Tee hee hee.

-"I'm a disruptive influence." "Good to meet you!". Pure Doctor Who, right there. Courtney Woods is apparently in the next episode as well. There's potential here, if they don't go the route of Nightmare In Silver.

-After a few weeks of nothing, the dreaded Missy plotline returns. It's not so bad here since we get more of a sense of what's happening, with someone other than her in charge of talking to the only casualty of the episode. Really, she didn't even need to show up and scowl for us to get it, but ah well. We have more information about "The Promised Land" now, so mission accomplished there.

All in all, a pass. A funny episode with the only real stumbling block being the Doctor's "space dad" act. We've moved Clara and Danny's plotline along as well, and I can only hope that the Doctor and Danny see a little more eye-to-eye in the future.


Next week: The moon! Monsters! Looks like another spooky one!

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoilers below for the rest of the series, just in case you're reading these and have not seen it yet.)

Yeah, I still love Gareth Roberts stuff. This is a fun 45 minutes, and it even advances the main arc of the series! What, do you think I meant that Missy stuff? Well, I didn't... although this is the first appearance of hers that actually makes sense immediately when you know what her scheme is. The cop died in 2014 London, so he actually... Wait, no, he got vaporized so he doesn't have a body to be Cyber-ized! Hang on. I think I've got just the shovelful for this plot hole. Any bodies of really old people from like, the 1800s get uploaded with the minds of other people. Either those without bodies, like the cop, or people from other times like the Half-Faced Man or Gretchen from Into The Dalek. In fact I have it on good authority that the finale leans towards that actually happening, if not outright saying it. See, this is what I mean by engaging critically with the show in a positive way. Life's too short to yell at an old Scottish writer for not spelling out the entire solution to us. Right, enough digs. This is still a fun episode, and it totally does advance the plotlines between the Doctor, Clara, and Danny. They finally meet, and the Doctor and Danny hate each other! The prejudice against soldiers again which sort of came out of nowhere for Capaldi's Doctor. It's still sort of shaky ground for him to be hating soldiers all of a sudden. Even if we accept that each incarnation is different, and that for multiple incarnations the Doctor was buddy-buddy with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (a fact that totally will not become relevant later down the line), there doesn't seem to be much that Capaldi has experienced that would make him hate soldiers. My pile of plot hole filling dirt seems to be running low because I'm having a hard time thinking quite why the Doctor would be anti-soldier all of a sudden. Maybe Trenzalore? 900 years of watching holy soldiers trying to blast a bunch of innocent people living in a winter wonderland to bits because of some outside bullshit? Yeah, you know what, that seems like the most likely culprit. Anyway, this Doctor hates soldiers now but he just wants Clara to be happy. Danny wants the same. The ways in which this echo 1963 are stunning. Two Coal Hill schoolteachers and a crotchety asshole with a TARDIS. I do believe that Gareth Roberts wanted to put a William Russell cameo into The Caretaker, because they'd already set up Ian as the Coal Hill Chairman of the Governors in Day Of The Doctor. That would have been really nice, but also unneeded when you really look at it.

What else? My mirror theme came back! Clara looked in the mirror, sweaty and out of breath, proclaiming she couldn't run around like this any more. Later, when she's talking to Danny in a bit of serious drama, we see her reflection in a window. Hell, the Doctor even sings a little "mirror, mirror" rhyme! Oh my god, was this intentional? While we're at it, I've noticed that a lot of the episodes have a co-writer credit to Steven Moffat. Interesting, that. I guess he was touching up the scripts or supervising or whatever? Oh, and that Pink Floyd joke I liked so much in the old writeup? Even better, because as the Doctor whistles it and walks out of frame... Danny can be seen in the background. Danny Pink. You clever son of a bitch. My brain is farting out and I have nothing else to really add to this one. It's fun! It has drama! It has a robot spider who shoots lasers! Good shit! One other thing I noticed before we go; at the end, Danny asks Clara to promise to tell him if the Doctor goes too far.

Next time: The Doctor goes too far. Hahaha it's that one that everyone hates, and the trailer totally plays it off as a spooky story with space spiders.