(It's been a while since we did one of these, but now it's time to do it once more and it's also time for your spoiler warning: there are spoilers for this new episode of Doctor Who coming right up. So, watch it before you go reading, huh? Do I need to tell you this? I'm not sure. Anyway.)
Patience is a virtue, ain't it? I didn't remember what I said this time last year during the Husbands Of River Song writeup, so I had to go back and check. Doctor Who in 2016 was up in the air and we didn't know what was going on. As it turns out, there was only one piece of new televised Doctor Who in 2016 and it's the one we're looking at right now. Well, shit. I didn't even get any official Clara Who fanfiction... but I did get some unofficial Clara Who fanfiction so I'm pleased. Anyway, this one looked weird in the trailers. There's a goddamn superhero in my Doctor Who! What the shit is this? Who's Doctor Mysterio in the first place? These questions plagued me as I spent the weeks performing a Classic Who authentic viewing experiment of watching the first two years of the Jon Pertwee era, one episode a week, this year. It's a good experiment. Try it. So now we come to it, full of Christmas chocolate and with some chips, ready to watch the new Doctor Who late at night. Not like they do in England because it's on at like, quarter past five. 10:30 Newfoundland time is late, friends. Let's not drag our feet, was The Return Of Doctor Mysterio worth the wait of a Doctor Who-less year that made me pine for 2012 when we got The Amy And Rory Farewell Tour crammed into one month?
Yeah, I think it was.
You don't need me to tell you this, but Doctor Who works best when you mash it right up with other concepts and make those other concepts all... Doctor Who-ey. To use examples from the classic era, you've got Season 7 as Doctor Who mashed up with Quatermass, or the Hinchcliffe era as Doctor Who mashed up with Hammer Horror. Ooh, I thought of a modern one! Time Heist is Doctor Who mashed up with a crime film. To that effect, Doctor Mysterio is Doctor Who mashed all up with the mythos of Superman. I mean, you've got Superman comics right there in the opening (and that lovely gag with the Doctor just now realizing that Superman is Clark Kent, which is a secret double gag when he mentions Lois Lane not knowing that's a hint for later) and The Ghost is... look, he's just Superman. His origin isn't Superman's and neither is his job but he wears his brainy specs even though he obviously doesn't need them and he wants to make out with a no-nonsense reporter who's not into him but is into his alter ego and oh my god it's just Superman. It's interesting how he gets his power, though; some alien gem that responds to the wishes and wants of a child and gives him this unlimited power. Oh my god wait is it supposed to be like an Infinity Stone? We're going way deep here. Let's get back on track. You've got a kid who gets superpowers, and then you cut to a building in New York with a big rotating globe on it, and some smartass rich person is giving a conference and there's a no-nonsense reporter Asking The Hard Questions. And... Nardole, the bald dude from last year's Christmas special. He's back. Huh. Anyway we get it by now. It's just Superman, and that lady's Not-Lois Lane and the rich black guy is Not-Lex Luthor. We think we've got it, but then the Doctor Who gets all up in it and Not-Lex Luthor gets his brain shucked out and replaced with an alien brain while the Doctor eats sushi. Whoops. It's a whole tug of war here, as the Superman story gets replaced with a Doctor Who one about aliens... but then the resolution of the Doctor, Nardole, and Lucy in danger is that Not-Superman comes in and saves the day and flies off with the girl and no really this is just Richard Donner's Superman oh my god
The casting is cute, though. Poor Justin Chatwin got to play another superhero once upon a time, and that was Goku in the live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball. That movie was notably garbo so thank goodness he gets to portray an actually neat superhero. He puts on this silly Christian Bale gruff voice as The Ghost but he's really not hard-edged at all. He's Superman! He's a boy scout who saves kids from burning buildings and tells you to get a smoke detector on the news! He takes care of his friend's kid because his other friend ran out on her and he... feels bad? I mean, this could have gone really bad but there's no gross "friendzone" mentality on the go. He legitimately likes taking care of this kid and helping out, it seems. This is the world in which the Doctor is dropped into; the world the Doctor created, mind, by a series of mishaps. Doctor Who made this Superman story, and it's still a Doctor Who story. You still have evil brain aliens who are actually evil brain aliens from the last Christmas special one year ago! This is kind of strange. In the classic era they kept using certain aliens because they paid a shitload to make the costumes and needed to get the use out of them. The Shoal Of The Winter Harmony's main gimmick is that effect where someone's head splits open halfway and you see gooey blue shit inside. It's that same classic mentality but used for a CGI effect which is odd. Even odder is that their plan to take over the minds of Earth's leaders and fake an alien invasion to gain access is basically Stage 1 of the Slitheen's plan from way the hell back in 2005! Even more wild is that this is the stuff the Slitheen succeeded at! The Shoal isn't all that credible of a threat, and the Doctor taunts them with burgers, for god's sakes!
Oh yeah, the Doctor and Nardole. I didn't think I'd like it, but I actually kind of like it! Nardole was a little too much of a whimpering scaredy cat last year, but we'll forgive him because having your head cut off and mounted to a death robot is a bad day for anyone. Here he's a little more of a sidekick but not really, and he's toned down enough to be asking the right questions and interacting with the Doctor but still losing his shit in terror when the Doctor does stupid dangerous stuff on a whim. I'm okay with this! It's a good thing as well, because Nardole is sticking around for Series 10. Time will tell if he remains this tolerable and somewhat entertaining, it's a shtick that could get old quick. There's a lot of other stuff I liked in this one, mostly Doctor lines like the one about the cross dogs, or flooding the basement of Harmony Shoal Tokyo with Pokemon. Does he mean Pokemon Go data, or...? Capaldi is on point as always here, even though the episode is supposed to be implying he's really sad after his last date with River. I mean, when Smith lost Amy and Rory he sulked up on a cloud for months. Tennant had his own comedy sidekick immediately after losing Rose so that's... something, but he was still all broody about it. I liked the Doctor's "no you don't" of just sonic-ing Not-Lex Luthor's gun at the end. So, in the end, this was fine for me! A nice bit of Christmas entertainment. I don't know if it's my favorite Christmas special, but it was worth both times I watched it. We're seeding another goddamn takeover of UNIT by aliens, though. Dear god. The Shoal vs. the Zygons, though? Interesting. SPEAKING OF INTERESTING, WOW A SERIES 10 TRAILER! It's Bill! And Daleks! And emoji robots! And possibly maybe a Movellan which... okay? Alright, Series 10. Show me what you got. There's aliens all over, history's in peril, and there's a cool new lady who needs to be impressed on adventures through time and space and/or win all of our hearts.
This looks like a job for Doctor Who.
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