From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 7: Kill The Moon)

(Again and again I say it, but I do so like the buffer before the past posts. These were old writeups done last year as Series 8 of Doctor Who aired, for the website Boss Dungeon. They're being archived here with new commentary as I rewatch, in anticipation of Series 9. So, this is a fun one. To the past.)

Well. Where do we begin here? There's been a definite trend of the episodes being more than they appear to be from the trailers. Deep Breath was a dichotomy of an opener, with one half being about the Doctor and the other being about Clara. Listen went for existential horror before pulling its little trick near the end. Time Heist wasn't really a heist at all, when you look at it. From the trailers to Kill The Moon, one expected a spooky story on the moon with corridors, the blackness of space, and things lurking in the dark. We got that. For about 15 minutes. Then it became something else entirely, and ended with perhaps the best scene this series. Scratch that perhaps. I'll make the bold claim: it is the best scene of this series. We're getting ahead of ourselves.

Courtney Woods is back. She's not as good as she was in The Caretaker. She is, however, the impetus for the episode. Clara complains that the Doctor said Courtney wasn't "special", so he decides to let her be the first woman on the moon and goes to 2049. A bit of a heavy-handed and child-friendly reason for an adventure, but it gets us to the moon in 2049 so there's that. Once we're there, the story goes into what most expected from the trailer; another Hinchcliffe-era style journey into horror. There's an abandoned Mexican moonbase with dead bodies, cobwebs, and something hissing in the void. It's reminiscent of Hinchcliffe's The Ark In Space (there are even a few callbacks to that story in this one!) and expectations continue as the show goes on. Expendable members of the shuttle crew get picked off by the creeping moon terrors, and it all feels very Ridley Scott's Alien. Except... there's something more going on here. The shuttle crew were sent up with a hundred nuclear weapons, and the Earth of 2049 is in dire need of help. The moon has increased in mass somehow, having normal Earth gravity. This has screwed up the tides on Earth, and if that wasn't enough of a problem... the moon is starting to crack.

Still, the expectations of horror are there. It is October now, after all. The nights are short, the air is cold, and the season of fear is upon us. Our first weird revelation; the monsters aren't scary space spiders. They're scary space bacteria. Doesn't explain why they spin cobwebs, but we're still in familiar territory here. This is just Doctor Who does Apollo 18. One must be careful, however. Doctor Who is not a constant, a solid planetoid that one can safely rest against. It's mercury, always changing and shifting on its own whims. Everything changes once we learn that there's amniotic fluid on the moon. The Doctor dives in, comes back out, and then he says it. The moon is an egg, and whatever's inside is hatching. The episode can still go to horror territory here. I was fully expecting something Lovecraftian, a cosmic incomprehensible horror bursting out of the moon and laying waste to the tiny small humans like a Thing That Should Not Be. Once the shuttle captain asks the question, though, we shift again.

"How do we kill it?"

A morality play. We've seen this before. The Beast Below comes to mind. Of course, we know this ground. The Doctor won't let them nuke the moon baby. He's the Man Who'd Rather Not, he's got this and Clara will back him up after a fight with the captain. Courtney might get her defining moment and be central to it all too. Yeah, we're still in familiar territory here. Everything will be okay.

And then the Doctor shrugs his shoulders, says it's humanity's decision, and leaves. He just leaves Clara, the captain, and Courtney on the moon to make their choice. Kill the innocent unique moon creature and "save" the world? Let it live and risk the destruction of Earth? It's not his choice to make. It's not his planet and not his Moon. He swans off and leaves this one up to the three people on the moon base. It's a moral dilemma, and the choice needs to be made. We've gone from visceral horror to existential horror to moral quandry, and it's all been compounded by the Doctor completely abandoning the narrative. Still, Clara steps up to the plate. Though the Earth votes to kill the moon baby, she presses the cancel button at the last second. She makes her choice, and the Doctor comes back and shows them the consequence of that choice. Everything, of course, turns out fine. The moon baby hatches and promptly lays another moon egg. This has caused complaint, but that can be brushed aside. It doesn't matter how neat the resolution here is. It doesn't matter than a creature laying an egg as big as the one it just hatched out of is a logical wrangle. What matters is what happens next.

I've usually avoided talking about the episode's endings in these impression writeups. Here it's unavoidable, because the ending is the best part of this episode. The best part of this series of Doctor Who so far. Clara sends Courtney off and then just explodes into a tearful tirade against the Doctor. For abandoning her, for forcing her to make that choice. His reasoning was letting humanity make its own decision, but she takes it as a patronizing gesture. As if he sees humanity beneath him. He's a Time Lord, yes, but he has a fondness for Earth. He's lived on it, he's saved it countless times. To detach himself from it now is hypocritical. Jenna Coleman sells it so damn well. This is some of the best acting the show has seen. This is Clara, finally taking a stand against the Doctor and his callousness. Yes, he might be an alien, but he's interacted with humans for centuries. The "oh, I'm an alien, I don't know how to deal with humans" thing is wearing a bit thin. He should know by now. He should know, and he should care, and that is what makes Clara leave the TARDIS and tell the Doctor to go away. It's game-changing. It cements Clara as one of the best companions this show has seen. It elevates this entire episode to be one of the best so far.

Well. Where do we go from here?


Next week: Mummy On The Orient Express. I suspect that this time we'll get exactly what it says on the tin, but I've been wrong before.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoilers below for stuff. You know, to cover my ass. I know one guy's reading this who hasn't seen Series 8 yet. Maybe two. Be wary, yo.)

Oh fuck. Kill The Moon, man. If there ever was a case of Doctor Who being pure unfettered Marmite, it's this goddamned episode. There's very little in-between here; either you adore this one to bits and consider it one of the best of Series 8, or you hate the shit out of it and only put it as the second worst episode of Series 8 because you hate that other one more. I mean, for God's sakes, Phil Sandifer stuck his flagpole down right after transmission and said it was the best episode of Doctor Who. Ever. I can only applaud the gusto that takes. I've been on a review show with two people who hated this episode, I've read shit hating on it, I've watched Diamanda Hagan. This one gets a bad rap, but is it a deserved rap? Well, to echo the Doctor in this one, that's not my call to make. At the end of the day, I'm an asshole with an opinion about British sci-fi shows. I sort of fall on the neutral spectrum of opinion on Kill The Moon. Yes, I know I just said it's either a love it or hate it affair, but let me go on. There are two things I really really love about Kill The Moon, one a lot more than the other. Both of them I praised in the old writeup. The first being the so-called "Hinchcliffing the shit out of it" that goes on in the first half. The justification for space spiders is a bit much, and we're going to cover that... but it's notable that the trailer for the episode played them up as the threat. We (or I, I guess) went into this one expecting space spiders and spooky business. They absolutely Hinchcliffed the shit out of us, only to pull the rug out from under us 20 minutes or so in. The other part I went over the roof for was Clara's passionate speech at the end. Like, wow. Absolutely didn't see that coming, but Jenna Coleman knocked that one outta the goddamned park. We weren't even sure if she would be back after that. I'm underselling just how good that scene is. I do stand by it being one of the best moments in all of Doctor Who, and I've seen a shitload of this show. Anything with something that good in it can't possibly be shit to me.

Unfortunately for Kill The Moon, not everyone shares that opinion. The big complaint I remember is that the physics/biology/chemistry/lord knows what else science in this episode doesn't make a single bit of logical sense. You know what? I'm gonna concede that. There isn't enough pavement for me to reliably fill in the hole of the giant space dragon laying an egg as big as the one it hatched from, save for my eyes thinking the new moon was smaller than the old one. Other than that, I've got nothing here. I concede that the science in this episode makes little to no sense, but I also... don't care? No disrespect meant to people who do care, mind, but Doctor Who to me is about seeing wild and weird things, having adventures, and seeing emotional moments. This episode had enough emotional moments and spooky space spiders for me to be satisfied. As for the moral quandry? I'm Switzerland here. It's been observed that there's a certain ambiguity to the whole "turn off your lights to kill the moon" vote. Not only is the vote null for anyone living in a time zone currently not visible from the moon, but they don't know for sure if people are actually voting or not. It could be 3 billion people unanimously agreeing to kill the moon, or it could be the power companies shutting off the lights on government orders, and making the choice for them. Perhaps Clara realized that, and that's why she ignored their vote and saved the space dragon. Perhaps she just didn't want to die, and was scared. I still think this is a good episode, mostly for all the shit I praised it for. There are worse episodes of Doctor Who, believe me. Still, I'm not out to change anyone's mind. I'm just explaining what I think. That Clara scene is really really good, yo. Either way...

...next time is a really really good episode. So either you're getting two good ones in a row, or washing the taste of that bad one out with a good one! We all win! In 66 seconds or less!

Wait. There's no mirror/reflection symbolism in Kill The Moon, BOOOOOO.

UPDATE: I got a response on Tumblr that says there is!

"Actually, yes there is mirror symbolism. The episode opens with the moon reflected in Clara's eye and closes with Clara being reflected in the window while looking at the moon."

So everything is okay again.

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.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 5: Time Heist)

(As always, these old Series 8 reviews were written last year for the website Boss Dungeon, and are being rehosted here along with new commentary I'm coming up with on a rewatch in anticipation for Series 9. On to the Time Heist, to steal my opinions from last year. Take that, you sucker!)

The beauty of Doctor Who, the thing that's kept it going for half a century in one form or another, is that it goes with just about anything. Doctor Who is a genre in and of itself, and the really creative writers know how to mash it up well with other genres and tropes. Doctor Who meets Robin Hood? We did it two weeks ago. Doctor Who meets a Western? We did that. Twice, in fact. This week's high concept pitch is "Doctor Who does a bank heist". On paper, it's exciting. The fun part of seeing Doctor Who interact with these established scenarios is to see how the usual tropes play out with the Doctor, and eventually get subverted by his usual cleverness. Bank heists in film and television always require lots of plotting and co-ordination between the involved parties in order to outwit the people in charge, and who doesn't want to see the Doctor do that? Canonically he's a bit of a thief and an anarchist, running off with his own time and space machine all those years ago. As for being willing to pull off a bank heist, well... It's still too early to tell if the 12th Doctor is an appropriate incarnation for that. I could see the 2nd or 7th Doctors in a bank heist scenario, easily; the 2nd being a symbol of the 60's counter-culture and rising up against authority, and the 7th being a master plotter who's always one step ahead of everyone (sometimes even himself). Of course, this is hardly an ordinary bank heist.

This is a time heist.

The motive for the Doctor going off to casually commit crime is an interesting one, in that neither he nor the audience know it until the climax of the episode. See, the bank of Karabraxos is the supposed "greatest bank in the galaxy" with numerous security defenses that do horrible things to intruders... one of them being a "guilt detector" (more on that in a bit). In order to break into the bank, they can't know too much about what they're doing. Therefore, we open the episode with the Doctor and Clara, along with their two accomplices, having their memories wiped and receiving a video message from the mysterious "Architect" telling them to go rob the bank. They have no idea what they need to steal, but they have no real choice but to go through with the plan. The Doctor has to pull double duty here; not only does he have to rob the most secure bank in the galaxy, but he has to actually figure out how to do it on the fly... as well as try to figure out why in the hell he agreed to rob the bank in the first place. We keep up the trend of "the Doctor doesn't know everything" and amplify it even more in this episode; he's just as lost and confused as his three co-conspirators, but he has enough skill to take charge of the situation and lead them deep into the bank. And eyebrows. Attack eyebrows.

As for his criminal buddies, we've got two new faces; an augmented human named Psi and a mutant named Saibra. Again, they're interesting concepts on paper; Psi has computer chips attached to his head, can delete his own memories as he sees fit, and download information from terminals in the bank. Saibra is sort of a fusion of Rogue and Mystique from the X-Men; whoever she comes into physical contact with, she transforms herself into for as long as she likes... but the transformation is involuntary so it's a burden on her. With the many DNA scanners in the bank, Saibra and her unique ability allow the group access to begin with. Psi's mechanical mind allows him to do useful things like tap into the bank's security system and try to open up the vault. That leaves Clara, who... doesn't do much of anything in this episode. It's a damn shame, considering how essential she's been to resolving the plots of the previous four. She bought time with the half-faced man and got him to reveal his plot, plugged in the proper nodes inside Rusty the Dalek to reawaken his memories, got information out of the Sheriff of Nottingham, and calmed scared children down after nightmares. Here? The best she manages to do is apologize for the Doctor and chat with Psi. It's unfortunate. At least the whole dress jacket and white shirt with loose tie thing she's got going make her look like a stylish bank robber.

The Bank of Karabraxos's staff are some big rich future jerks. We have the brains behind security at the bank, Miss Delphox. Your standard amoral businesswoman who gets the job done... but what an enforcer she has. The bank isn't just the most secure because of its DNA scanners and alarm systems. It's got the perfect "guilt detector"; a creature known only as The Teller that Miss Delphox keeps in her employ. The design of the thing is really damn cool, and it's another Doctor Who monster that follows rules. It detects guilty thoughts in your head and feeds on them. You can delay it by trying not to think, but you can't not think forever, and that's when it gets you. And by "gets you" I mean it liquifies your brain and leaves you as a walking husk with half your head caved in like a spoon. We see this happen to an unfortunate would-be crook early on, and it's not a pretty sight. Worse yet, the bank keeps the brain-dead people locked up and on constant camera display as a reminder to the employees or something. Make no mistake, these people aren't nice at all. Especially the Director. It's difficult to talk much about the Director as that deals with the final act. I don't like spoiling the outcome of the episodes right away, so for now let's just say that the Director is part of the reason why the heist happens in the first place.

All in all, this episode gets a pass. It's not an outright classic, but it's a servicable bit of fun. The concept is entertaining and its memory wipe twist leaves the audience guessing along with the characters. Capaldi gets off some great dialogue; I'm thinking of the bit near the end where he works out who the Architect is and keeps telling everyone to shut up. Very Malcolm Tucker. Cinematography wise, the corridors of the bank are lit in different colors as we go deeper into the bank, and it sets a mood... along with some odd scene transitions and "mental" scenes when the Teller is scanning people's minds for guilt. There are a few "plot hole" questions that a dedicated nitpicker could ask (like how the Architect got those briefcases full of things into the bank for the Doctor and friends in the first place), but with a show like this one needs to follow the MST3K treatment, turn off their brain, and try to relax.


Next week: Looks to be an episode focusing on Clara's double life of running around in the TARDIS and dating Danny Pink. Also the Doctor becomes a caretaker at their school and there's a monster. It could be good. I hope it's good.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(As always, spoilers are below. Beware!)

I don't think I have very much to add this time. Time Heist is an episode that improves on exactly one rewatch, and that's because on a second viewing you know that the Doctor is the Architect and he's been playing himself the entire time. That's a very McCoy-era twist; the only one smart enough to outplot the Doctor is his own future self. I think that actually happened at some point in the McCoy era. There's almost an "everybody lives" moment in here until you realize that A) a bunch of people got their brains fucking liquified by the Teller and B) the brain-dead prisoners probably then all burned to death when the solar storm destroyed the bank. What a fun show this is! I guess while I'm here I could echo Phil Sandifer about the leaked version of Time Heist. Supposedly it's better in black and white because for the second half of the episode all they did was shoot the same hallway with different lighting. I haven't seen the Marcelo Carmago leaked episode, but now I kind of want to in order to see how it holds up to the color version. Then again, I'm a sucker for mood lighting and I did kind of dig the mood lighting here in Time Heist. Boy, it really is disappointing that Clara is a fourth wheel in this episode, huh? The Doctor is a clever man in charge, Psi has hacking, Saibra gets them in there in the first place... and all Clara does is ask questions and talk to side characters. It's a real drag, but she is dressed in absolute style. One last thing, though. The mirror/reflection theme sort of came back! Saibra mentions how her shapeshifting curse makes anyone she touches have to look back into their own eyes... like a mirror! Director Karabraxos employs her own clones because she only trusts herself. Mirror images! Even the Doctor is revealed to be the Architect, and after 35 minutes of throwing shade at the asshole who set him up with this bank heist, he realizes that the Architect is him. Like looking into a goddamn mirror! Holy shit, I really hope this theme keeps coming back because it gives me more stuff to talk about. That's Time Heist. It's a fun way to spend 45 minutes, but it doesn't set the Doctor Who world on fire. The show is full of okay episodes like this. Hey, at least it isn't a stinker.

Next time: Gareth Roberts! Woooooo!

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 4: Listen)

(By now I think you all know the drill, but I'm absolutely still going to keep doing this so I have something beyond just launching into the old writeup. These first impression writeups of Doctor Who Series 8 were originally posted last year on a website called Boss Dungeon, and I am now rehosting them here as I rewatch S8 in anticipation for Series 9. The old writeups are accompanied by shorter hindsight talks about what I think now, but here is what I thought then.)

That sure was different. Well then. Let's talk about fear, and Doctor Who. Let's talk about Listen.

Fear has been a part of Doctor Who ever since December 1963, when a woman screamed at an incoming plunger. Ever since, it's become ingrained within the show's history. All sorts of men in rubber suits masquerading as monsters have terrorized the Doctor and his companions over 51 years, as well as us. Hell, England even has a pop culture term based on the fear of Doctor Who monsters: "behind the sofa". Young children freaked out at a Dalek or a Cyberman... or, hell, an Axon, darting behind a garish-looking couch from the '70s. Because the monster can't get you if you're not looking. One could argue that the master of horror when it comes to Doctor Who was Phillip Hinchcliffe, the producer of the show in the mid-70's. Under his tenure we had several classic episodes of the show that scared the pants off of kids. The Ark In Space, Pyramids Of Mars, The Brain Of Morbius... real classics. Steven Moffat, to his credit, has taken up the torch of keeping England's children awake at night. This is the man who created the Weeping Angels. This is the man who wrote the episode we're looking at today; Listen. At its core, Listen is a study of the Doctor and fear. There are lots of things going on here, so let's dive in.

The opening is just a thing of beauty. We have the TARDIS suspended in space, and the Doctor sitting atop it in a meditative pose before going into a monologue about evolution. The shot of the TARDIS underwater, with the door open and the Doctor looking out? Incredible. The Doctor theorizes that some creatures evolve to be good at hunting, and others evolve to be good at defending themselves from predators. What, then, of a creature that evolves to be good at hiding? Would we even know such a thing exists? Right out of the gate, the episode becomes its own predator, preying upon the paranoia of both the characters and the audience. The idea that we're never truly alone, that something is always stalking you, hiding, watching, waiting... that's unsettling stuff. It's the seed of an idea, and Moffat knows that the audience will water it and grow their own trees of fear and paranoia. This is the kind of horror Moffat deals with; the existential. Whereas Hinchcliffe and his Gothic era of Doctor Who were content with showing alien bugs taking over people, or alien gods who burn people with a touch, Moffat's Doctor Who is more of a Lovecraftian thing, with cosmic horrors teeming just at the corner of your eye. I love it.

The only sour notes for me personally in the episode come early on; the date scenes between Clara and Danny Pink. It's light romantic comedy, with two people being really awkward on their first date and saying inappropriate things to each other before one storms off in a huff. This happens twice in the episode, and while it does have its place, I didn't care for it that much. To the show's credit, it does do some interesting things with Danny Pink. In between the date scenes, Clara and the Doctor accidentally travel back in time and meet Danny as a child. This gives us perhaps the best scene in the episode, where someone (or something) under a bedsheet terrorizes Clara, the Doctor, and the young Danny. Everything about this scene just sings. Clara's maternal instincts, perhaps stemming from her being good with kids due to being a teacher. The Doctor flipping on the light in the middle of a scary scene to complain about not being able to find Waldo in a book about trains. That wonderful speech Capaldi gives about fear being a superpower. Then you've got the three turning their backs on the thing under the bedsheet, and telling it to go away. That they won't compromise the perfect evolutionary camouflage or whatever. Whatever's under there takes off the sheet, and we see a blur of something. It's ambiguous, and we never actually see what it is, though we know it's something. Some may say that showing even that much ruins the ambiguity, but I don't think so.

The other major thing to talk about, barring the final sequence (which I can't really get into for fear of spoilers) is Orson Pink. Danny Pink's great-grandson from the 22nd century, and Earth's first time traveller who accidentally jumped ahead to the end of the universe. He was stranded there for six months, and paranoid of things trying to get into his time machine. The Doctor tracks him down thanks to timeline shenanigans, and sticks around in further pursuit of his perfect camouflage monster. He goes so far as to open the door, giving us a scene where Clara refuses to abandon him to his own stupid curiosities until the Doctor yells at her to do as she's told. The ambiguity is present here as well, thanks to a well-timed glitch in the TARDIS viewing screens... but it should be noted that something breaks the air shell of Orson's time machine when the Doctor opens the door. It could have just been the Doctor making a mistake, or it could have been... something else.

Right, let's address the ambiguities and then call it a day here. The main takeaway from this episode, after all of its tense scenes and reveals, is a simple question; Was there or wasn't there some sort of monster? The final scene definitely hedges more in one direction, but regardless of that evidence the question can still be raised. If there was a monster, then what the hell is it? Why didn't it just kill Clara/The Doctor/Danny? If there wasn't a monster, then just what the holy hell was under the bedsheets? Who wrote "Listen" on the Doctor's chalkboard when only he was in the TARDIS? Who or what was trying to get into Orson's time machine? There are some who will be upset that these questions aren't answered. I, personally, am not one of them. An unexplained thing out there somewhere in the universe, lurking and hiding and keeping to itself... I'm enamored with that idea. It fits well with the existential horror Moffat is going for, and I don't want this to ever be explained as some alien thing like the Silence, or a Zog from Zarquon IV or whatever. Some things are best left unexplained, and it would resonate with the somewhat running theme of the Doctor not knowing everything in the universe. At the end of the day, he's just like the rest of us; afraid of something under the bed.

God, what a spooky episode. It takes a rewatch to really appreciate what it's doing and think it over with the knowledge of what happens, but it's a great one. It might be the best Capaldi-era Doctor Who episode so far. Well done, Moffat. You scared the pants off of me.


Next week: TIME HEIST. Oh my god, this sounds so high-concept and cheesy and just plain fun that I'm excited for it.

 AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler alert, yo. I mean, anyone who's reading this has probably seen Series 8 by now, but I'm covering my ass here.)

It "might" be the best Capaldi-era episode so far? Past me didn't drive the flag all the way down into the soil, so allow me to do so. This is easily the best Capaldi-era story of S8 out of the four we've done so far. It's in my top three, without question. Holy shit what an amazing episode this is, and I even discovered a new nuance to it. In the old writeup my only hangup was Clara and Danny's awkward date. Watching it again, it absolutely slots into the theme of the episode. This episode is about fear, and Clara and Danny's date goes wrong. Twice. Rupert, Orson, and the Doctor's fears in this one are entirely fears that stem out of childhood; the monster under the bed, or the monster outside the room, in the darkness beyond time. Clara and Danny are experiencing adult fear; the fear of a date gone wrong. An anxiety cloud hanging over you, making you worry that you'll say the wrong thing. They both end up doing it, and they both end up beating themselves up over it. Orson Pink, on the other hand... it's tough to figure out how the hell this works with what we know now. On transmission we can assume Danny and Clara got together, had a happy life, passed down Dan the Soldier Man to their kids until it ended up with Orson. Now we know Danny Pink is dead as all hell, so... huh? I guess the easiest fix is that time can be rewritten, and that Danny and Clara did have a happy life together pre-Dark Water. Then that happens, and time gets changed or something. See? See what I just did there? I used my head and came up with a plausible in-universe explanation for a dreaded plot hole rather than just yelling at Steven Moffat for being a bad writer haha what do you mean I'm bitter, I'm not bitt

Where were we? Oh, right. Two more big points to make, and more flags to plant and divisive Doctor Who opinions to have. The ambiguity is something in this episode, alright. Watching it again, it appears to not make any sense at all. I raised most of these questions in the original writeup, and I had them all over again. Once again, you can play Creative Writing Department Of Highways and fill in all those plot holes with a little bit of brainpower shovelled into your pavement melter. This metaphor is getting away from me. The episode definitely is batting at the assumption that there's jack shit out there and it was just the Doctor trying to figure out what the hell spooked him in that barn two millennia ago. Thing under the bedsheets? Easily could be an orphanage kid playing a prank. The Doctor's chalk thing? Scatterbrain. The thing outside at the end of the universe? Was there a thing? We didn't see one. Something seemed like it was knocking, but it could be anything! That's what fear and paranoia does to you, it gives you the goddamn willies. Back to the thing under the sheets, though, cause now I gotta tread carefully. In the original writeup I did make mention to people who were less than happy with not knowing what's under the sheet. Said people might even have the opinion that Moffat should actually go back and explain what it was in a later episode, and I have to fight my urge to yell at that. Doctor Who opinions flaring strong here, but holy shit does that miss the entire point of the episode. Listen thrives based almost entirely on its sense of atmosphere and ambiguity. The mystery of the thing under the sheet falls into two categories; either it was a kid pranking, or it was some unknown eldritch horror. If we believe option 1, it falls in line with everyone just being paranoid and spooked, which is an amusing little bit of shaggy dog story from Moffat. If we take option 2, however, we fall into a line of thinking that many horror stories and movies thrive on; your imagination, your creativity sparked by the onrushing superpowers granted by your fear, is more powerful than any concept or creature design that some monster maker at the BBC can cook up and stick onto the screen. It's far far far more effective, and preferred in my Doctor Who opinion, if we never come back to this again. I said as much in the writeup, but explaining it away would absolutely cheapen it. It goes from "oh my god, what the hell is that?" to "Oh. That's what it is. Okay then.".

Followed probably by a "Fuck Moffat" for not coming up with something scary enough.

Last but not least, and right alongside the "Fuck Moffat" Shining Time Station, is the ending, in which Clara, Stevie Moff's Special Little Snowflake, goes back to the Doctor's early childhood while he's having a bad dream and tells him it will all be okay and maybe even inspires him to go off and become a Time Lord. BUT BUT BUT THE TIME LOCK-- all the safeties on the TARDIS were off. BUT GALLIFREY'S COORDINATES-- telepathic malarkey. The potholes have been filled. They're just a little bumpy. Hell, with it possibly maybe being the same goddamn barn where the War Doctor dragged the Moment at, there's no guarantee that the damn planet is even Gallifrey. We know that little about the Doctor's past (as well we should, again, ambiguity!) that you have plenty of wiggle room for things like this. I guess Clara was just thinking about the Doctor 'cause he was knocked out when she stuck her hands in the telepathic thing. As for her being the one who comforts the Doctor's bad dream after she accidentally causes it? I don't mind. She's his carer. She cares. He's her friend so why wouldn't she try and make him feel better? It also parallels with her soothing Rupert. One wonders if Capaldi still has Dan The Soldier Man lying around somewhere. Maybe he gave him to Susan and she's got him in 2140 AD or wherever she ended up.

Either way, that's Listen. I love it, and I planted all these flags around about what Doctor Who is for me; an ambiguous and nebulous thing that often times doesn't make sense unless you wrap your head around the doublethink to make it make sense, but is a fun and scary ride all the same. This third or fourth rewatch has me more on the side of there not being a monster, but I'm fine with that. The other interpretation is just as valid, and if that's the case, I would love if we never had a callback to it again. Leave it alone, Steve. Leave it alone.

Next time is a TIME HEIST. That should be fun.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 3: Robot Of Sherwood)

(Once again, just a sentence of context: these are old writeups I did for Series 8 of Doctor Who as it was airing, on a website called Boss Dungeon. I'm rewatching the series in anticipation of Series 9, and adding new commentary in. Today, Robin Hood. Tomorrow, THE WORLD.)

Doctor Who, since it's come back, has often dabbled with what some have called "the celebrity historical"; an episode set in Earth's past, wherein the Doctor meets some famous historical figure. We've had Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill, and Richard Nixon... among others. These episodes also involve some sort of science-fiction element, be they Daleks or the Silence or who knows what else. This week's celebrity historical has Robin Hood and robot knights in it... and you know what?

This is a really fun one.

After two episodes that show the "darker" side of the Doctor, and question his status as a hero and a good man, we take a bit of a step back into lighter territory for this episode. The Doctor here isn't so much a flawed hero here as he is a comedic grump. While Clara is enamored by Robin Hood and his merry men, and having the time of her life, the Doctor spends most of the episode in disbelief that Robin Hood even exists. He's just a folk legend, and the Doctor is convinced that some sort of outside shenanigans are afoot. Holograms? Robots? A miniscope? He's even more of a smug know-it-all than he was in Into The Dalek, and that doesn't even get into his interactions with Robin Hood. He squabbles and argues with Robin constantly, and the pair don't get along at all. Whereas a previous incarnation of the Doctor might cooperate with Robin, Capaldi doesn't even consider it. For better or worse, we have a more acerbic Doctor this time around. I think it works better in this episode because it creates great comedy.

That's what this episode is; somewhat lighthearted comedy. The actor playing Robin Hood nails it. He's filled with bravado and overconfidence, and a great foil to the Doctor. He's a braggart, but he's also incredibly skilled. There's plenty of swashbuckling and sharp wit in the episode, and it really reminded me of something like The Princess Bride. (Funny, that, considering the dread pirate Roberts would later play Robin Hood in the Mel Brooks parody film.) The Sheriff of Nottingham is also quite marvelous. He's threatening, but also a bit of an incompetent buffoon. Clara is easily able to turn the tables on him when he attempts to interrogate her. This is no half-faced man with a flamethrower for a hand; this guy is just a ham who wants to TAKE OVER ZE WORLD. Speaking of Clara, she's once again a voice of reason. The Doctor and Robin Hood bicker like children when they and Clara are captured, and it's Clara who eventually yells at them to both shut up and try to think of a way out. This is the second episode in a row with Clara challenging the Doctor and calling him out on acting up. Clara-as-schoolteacher again. Boy, I really love this new Clara. She's great.

Of course, this being a celebrity historical, we have the sci-fi element of robotic knights. Visually, they look great. They remind me a lot of Megatron from Transformers, and they have a forehead laser that's used to great effect. That's about all they add to the episode, aside from being the impetus for the plot. They're visually imposing, but nothing all that scary. They're not Daleks or Cybermen or anything with name-brand power like that; they stomp around and do bad things and get blown up. The only other thing to say about them is the mention of the "Promised Land" from Deep Breath. It once again reeks of setting up the big season-long mystery, but here it's less of a pander than Missy's appearance last episode. It actually adds a clue; the Promised Land will be important to the season's end, whatever it is. Missy showing up last week appeared to add very little except re-iterate that she exists.

In the end, Robot Of Sherwood is a fun 45 minutes of Doctor Who. It's lighthearted and filled with plenty of little moments to make you grin like an idiot. It's just plain fun, which is something Doctor Who needs to do every so often. It's easy to lose sight of that with episodes that deal in series-long mysteries or outright horror. The closest analogy would be Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, from Series 7. That wasn't the best episode, but it was much like Robot Of Sherwood in that it was just a bunch of fun to watch. Robot Of Sherwood is better than that episode, thanks to its character interactions and tone. Even the cynical can enjoy something that just revels in being a bit silly and over-the top. For goodness's sakes, it has the Doctor sword-fighting Robin Hood using a spoon! Who can't find joy in that?

Next week: Oh boy, this one looks like it's going to be scary. Don't get spooked.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

I don't think there's too much in-depth commentary to have here, really. This is a Mark Gatiss-penned bit of lighthearted fluff set in the past. Not quite as good or essential as his Series 7 episodes (those would be Cold War and The Crimson Horror [aka DA CRIMSON 'ORRAH]), but still a great way to spend your 45 minutes. Doctor Who is a show for everyone, and that does include the kids. It doesn't all have to be pants-shittingly terrifying concept monsters that can only get you on a set of rules based on autonomous bodily functions. Sometimes you can just let your hair down with this show and watch Doctor Who have a swordfight with Robin Hood, using only a spoon. Then you go from that to a lady getting dragged off to slave labour and the Sheriff of Nottingham running his sword through her father. So yeah, Doctor Who doesn't entirely keep the unpleasantness away, even in their fluff episodes. I mean, watching this again, it is fun. It's just the kind of thing I don't have anything else to really add. The original writeup mentions everything good about it already. The bantering, Capaldi being some sort of grouchy belligerent fusion of William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee, Clara taking charge of her own interrogation like the "bossy control freak" she is. I can tell you right now, I latched onto Clara and her initiative in a lot of these writeups. I love it, and while it doesn't seem to play much into the arc of the Three of this series, look again. Clara is doing what the Doctor would do. She's taking control of things, figuring out the Sheriff's evil plan. She's becoming more like him, and that becomes really problematic right around Mummy On The Orient Express. "Clara Who" is definitely a thing that has started happening. The more angry in the fandom decry this, yelling about how Grand Moff Tarkin's special little Snowflake ended up not only saving every Doctor ever with that timestream jump... thing... but also gave him the idea of retconning the Time War. You may agree, you may disagree. I disagree myself, but I know plenty of people who won't hesitate to call the Moff out on what they see as a slight. We'll get into this tomorrow and I get to try to be as concise as possible in a particular rebuke without going into Outright Callout Mode. Fun! Regardless, Moffat is playing some sort of meta game with Clara here, and he damn well must have heard the complaints because he pulls a real cheeky move in Death In Heaven. Oh yeah! The peasants use shiny plates and stuff to reflect the lasers back at the Megatron Knights! The mirror theme came back! We also got another mention of the Promised Land, and I still don't know why robots from the 29th century have anything to do with Missy's thing, which is quite obviously centered on 2014 Earth. Aside from that, I think that's all I can say about Robot of Sherwood. It's fun, it advances plotlines and symbolism and whatnot, and it's 45 minutes of lighthearted action swashbuckling fluff. Sometimes that's all you need.

And then tomorrow, we get to talk about gettin' spooked and ambiguity. Ohhh boy.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 2: Into The Dalek)

(In case you missed it, these are old writeups I did as Series 8 of Doctor Who was airing. Originally hosted on a nice website called Boss Dungeon. I've been rewatching the series as I archive this stuff onto my own blog, and below my original thoughts are new thoughts! Hooray! With that done, let us see what the me of 2014 thought of Daleks.)

Well. That's more like it.

Doctor Who debuted in November of 1963. It wasn't until the end of the year that it introduced an element that would send England into a fever. By January 1964, the Daleks were named, and the whole of Britain was beginning the throes of Dalekmania. Over the next 50 years, they would become the iconic foe of the Doctor across time and space. Multiple Dalek stories have become absolute classics in the annals of fandom, such as Genesis Of The Daleks or Remembrance Of The Daleks (both suggested if you're curious about classic Doctor Who). Into The Dalek isn't quite on par with those stories, but few stories are. What we have here is an above average story that has cleared up any nagging doubts I had about the Capaldi era post-Deep Breath.

The premise is almost like a greatest hits of Doctor Who for any anorak familiar with the program's history. You have a possibly broken Dalek chained up by some people, and the Doctor arrives to check it out and all hell breaks loose from there. It bears some resemblance to the 2005 episode, Dalek... but only some. The main crux of the episode involves the Dalek having "gone good", and the Doctor and friends being miniaturized and injected inside the Dalek to figure out what in the world went wrong with it. There have been stories dealing with a shrunken Doctor before, like Planet Of Giants or The Invisible Enemy, but none have combined that concept with Dalek iconography. The story beats are familiar, yes, but when mixed together they create an interesting brew.

The real highlight of the episode is Peter Capaldi. With no post-regenerative heebie-jeebies to deal with, this is our first extended look at the new Doctor. Confronted with the Daleks and their hatred of everything, we have a Doctor who is somewhat questioning of his own moral standing. This is nothing new for Doctor Who, not really, but the 12th Doctor definitely stands in more of a shadow than previous Doctors. He's less likely to grieve over a bad situation, and more likely to turn a victory from it... or attempt to. The moment that stands out in this episode is the death of a secondary character; the Doctor has him swallow something, and we're meant to think it will save the man from peril. He then dies, and the Doctor declares the man was "dead already" and his actions were done to save everyone else. A few moments later, and he's making offhand remarks about the man's death, and then witty puns. It sounds callous, but here is a Doctor who is committed to getting the job done.


Even better is his dynamic with his companion. There's no abandonment issues here; the Doctor and Clara are in this together. We get something we rarely see from Doctor Who; the Doctor is not a know-it-all. Oh, sure, he may know how the insides of a Dalek work, or how to operate a complex piece of space-time machinery... but he's flawed like the rest of us. His own prejudices against the Daleks leave him declaring the situation hopeless once things take a turn for the worse, and it's Clara who reminds him that there's another way. Clara, the schoolteacher, teaching a centuries-old alien to let go of his own preconceptions and remember what he's learned from his interactions with the "broken" Dalek. The writing for Clara has generally improved with this new series; instead of the blank cipher "mystery girl" to be solved at the end of the series from last year, we have a proper equal to the Doctor. Someone who can learn from him, and help him learn. What a great team.

Those are the main takeaways from Into The Dalek, so let's finish off with a few asides.

-The Danny Pink character seems interesting enough. He may even become a companion, if gut feelings are correct. Not sure how I feel about that, as Clara's growing on me now. Nevertheless, change is a part of the show.

-More mystery and intrigue with "Missy". I'm not fond of having a mystery waved in the audience's face to keep everyone speculating until the big reveal in the finale; it's sort of old hat after having it be a major part of every one of Matt Smith's series. The theories are all over the place, and I'm not sure how I feel about them. I'm pulling for her being an original character, as opposed to some returning foe.

-I had a friend who wasn't happy about the lack of Dalek exterminations in the previous two Dalek stories of Matt Smith's run. Considering Into The Dalek has them by the bucketload, I'd say he's pleased right about now.

-Boy, the Daleks were an effective scary force this episode. A far cry from the "million billion Daleks" model of their previous appearances. Just one saucer and a squad of them are what suffice.

And that is Into The Dalek! It's very very good, and if we get more episodes with this quality of innovation and Doctor/companion interaction, then this series will be a real treat. All of my worries following Deep Breath are cleared. I like this new Doctor. I like his relationship with his companion. I'm excited for what will come next.


...Which is "Doctor Who meets Robin Hood", apparently. Sounds fun!



AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

Wow, that didn't take long, did it? Deep Breath had wobbled its landing for me, but I suppose if we go with the narrative of all those meta references and pleas to the audience, Moffat knew that we'd be on shaky ground. So the second episode is a Dalek episode! Which, there's no guarantee of that being good, but the Doctor and the Daleks are tentpoles of this show so it's a pretty safe bet. Then you've got the moral quandries and ambiguities surrounding Capaldi, which became sort of a running thing in this series. With the show on stable ground again now, at least, Moffat starts throwing in things that will run through the undercurrents of Series 8. Danny Pink is officially introduced, and I thought he would be a companion. Not quite. Really, the hints were right in this episode with the Doctor's dislike of soldiers... which we will get to. It's a strange dissonance. We go from a broken Dalek and a shocked Doctor... to romcom awkward flirting between Danny and Clara. Here's where I'm going to plant another gonzo theory-flag; Danny and Clara are the season arc of Series 8. Not Missy. Missy's the bait, essentially. Something for all us Doctor Who fans online to debate and theorize and ponder for eleven weeks. Except we're way too good at that, and the first answer we came up with was the correct one. Besides, it's not like Moffat gave us much to work with other than the name and that whatever she was doing had to do with dead people. Really, if Missy was supposed to be the season arc, she would have shown up more. Off the top of my head, I think she makes two more little cameo appearances before the finale, and then the next episode makes mention of the "Promised Land". Let's be real, more of her showing up and giggling about while Steven Moffat all but CGIs in neon signs around her head that say THIS IS THE SEASON ARC PLEASE SPECULATE THIS FOR ELEVEN WEEKS ON TWITTER would be bad. I and many others would get sick of it. Unless of course, he revealed a little more about the mystery each time, which is almost what he did.

Again, though, that doesn't matter! Steven Moffat was playing another shell game, and doesn't that just make the blood of the "Fuck Moffat" crowd boil? No, Series 8 is not about Missy and her plan. It's important to the finale, but what Series 8 is about is shown in this episode; it's about Danny and Clara and the Doctor, all trying to find out what kind of people they are. The first one up is the Doctor, and he ponders if he is a good man or not. As I said a year ago, he knew that guy was dead the second he shot those grappling hooks at the Dalek. There was nothing he could have done. David Tennant would have pulled an "I'm so sorry" right out of his head and said that a bunch, as he often did. Capaldi just had a plan and he stuck to it. Clara is his carer here, so he's focused and doesn't need to. Then there is Clara herself, who takes the sensible role as she did way back in Day Of The Doctor. It's her caring that snaps the Doctor out of his funk (or slaps him out of it, tee hee hee) and makes him realize the age old tradition of a Doctor Who story; when you're faced with a choice between a bad thing and another bad thing, an impossible choice... well, you're the Doctor and you say "to hell with it", rewrite the rules of the narrative, and make the third choice that fixes everything. That's what the Doctor tries here... but of course, it goes wrong, and the very prejudices that make the second choice of killing the Dalek bad end up tainting and twisting the mind of poor Rusty. The Doctor is a madman with a box who likes to show twentysomething English girls the wonders of the universe, but he's also the Lonely God, the Oncoming Storm, Centuries of seeing what those Daleks can do in killing everything has him hating them to his core, and just as he's trying to figure out if he's a good man or not, it's all reflected right back at him. Hey, like all those mirror shots in Deep Breath! Symbolism! Then there's the final ambiguity, when Rusty calls the Doctor "a good Dalek". Does he mean it in a moral sense, or a sense of identity. A Dalek who is good, or good at being a Dalek? Killing and hating? I think he meant the second one, but it's up in the air. Things being up in the air will be important soon.

Okay, see y'all tomorrow for Robin Hood shenanigans.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 1: Deep Breath)

(Hello! Long time no see, kids! Sorry, this isn't about Nintendo games. We're shifting gears to talk about old British people in magic space boxes for a bit. With Series 9 of Doctor Who looming over us, it's finally time I got to some archival business. A year ago or so at this time, when Series 8 was airing, I was given the opportunity to post First Impressions articles on a website called Boss Dungeon. Said website eventually went under due to a bunch of reasons, and though that's tragic, I'm still very grateful to its webmistress, Andrea Ritsu, for giving me the chance to talk about new Doctor Who as it was coming out! Though Boss Dungeon is gone, I still have all the writeups right here. What we're doing here is reposting them, mostly as they were... but the really fun part? I'm rewatching Series 8 again, right here and now, in anticipation of the next series. As we go along our archival journey, I'll be posting my current thoughts on these episodes. This is gonna be a thing. Alright, let's start with Deep Breath. A primer for anyone who doesn't know a thing about Doctor Who: this show is about a very old man with a big blue box that's bigger on the inside, and it can travel anywhere in time and space. He goes around time and space with ordinary humans, showing them the wonders of the universe and usually running away from scary monsters in the process. If he is mortally wounded, he can revive himself by changing his face and personality, becoming a totally different actor incarnation. That has just happened in the leadup to the first episode of Series 8, and the Doctor has just become Peter Capaldi. From there, this is what I thought in late August...)

New series. New opening. New Doctor. Once again, Doctor Who has changed everything by recasting its lead actor. After nine months of shivering with anticipation, the world got its first extended glimpse and glimmer of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. How was it?

It was okay.

Deep Breath invokes both the method used to avoid the monster of the week, and the average fan's nervous reaction as they dive in to the unknown depths of a new era of Doctor Who. Over 50 years, the show has done this song and dance several times before. It's a guaranteed part of being a Doctor Who fan; one day the lead actor you've grown to adore will suffer some mortal wound, and in a flash of bright light there will be some other fellow running around acting weird. Such is the concept of regeneration. That's the secret to Doctor Who's success, but with the birth of one era comes the death of another. Since 2010 we've had Matt Smith running around all of time and space as the Doctor, and now he's mostly gone. Let's try to make sense of this confusion, and take things objectively.

We're in Victorian London this week, and immediately we have a touch of the fantastic when we see a T-Rex walk on screen and roar. That's not a thing that belongs in Victorian London! Nor is a blue box, or a deranged alien with a Scottish accent. As far as I can tell, this is the first regeneration story Doctor Who has done that's set in the past. Really, the T-Rex is just a spectacle to raise eyebrows. The real threat of this episode involves scary clockwork robots who steal organs from people. Those of you with a keen memory of past Doctor Who stories will echo the Doctor here; there's something familiar about all of this. Writer Steven Moffat also adds in a "rule" for avoiding the scary robots; they can't see you if you hold your breath and move like a clockwork robot. Writing it out sounds silly, but it does create some tense scenes where characters struggle to hold their breath and walk past stationary clockwork half-people. It bears similarity to the infamous Weeping Angels, where they can't get you if you stare at them and don't blink. Turning automatic bodily responses into the only way to avoid getting killed by a monster makes things somewhat scary, though the clockwork robots have nothing on the Weeping Angels.

The Paternoster gang from the previous series return, giving this new and weird show starring Peter Capaldi a link to the previous show called Doctor Who that most viewers remember. They add a definite element of physical comedy to the episode that's well appreciated, for the most part. (There's one cartoonish sound effect that's a bit TOO silly, but we'll let that slide.) Their other role is, as stated, adding some familiarity to this strange show called Doctor Who. Part of the appeal of Doctor Who is the way it can use its open setting of travelling through time and space to create madcap ideas. Frankly, if you can't get excited about a show that has a scene where a Victorian lady and her lizard-woman-from-the-dawn-of-time wife fighting off clockwork half-people robots with swords, the show might not be your thing.

The crux of this episode, and the most important part, is the interaction between the new Doctor and his companion, Clara. At first, Clara seems incredibly put off by the fact that an old Scottish man is the Doctor now... even though from a series standpoint she should be aware of the concept of regeneration and the Doctor being mostly old people in his incarnations. Over the course of this episode, she's feisty and not afraid to talk back to the Doctor. It gives her a bit more character than she had before, and brings back memories of Donna Noble from just a few years ago. Good memories, too. The Doctor and Clara's new relationship is still up in the air, but as it is now it reminds me of the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown, from way the hell back in 1985. Theirs was far more acerbic, however, so that's welcome.

As for the man himself, Peter Capaldi? Well, we have the old "post-regenerative crisis" malarkey wheeled out again, causing our leading man to act like a madman, babble on about things and misremember people's names, and spend a bunch of time passed out or wandering around London in his dressing gown. He appears to settle down by the midpoint of the episode, but he still has a bit of an angry spark (Scottishness?) to him. The only real sour note is when he appears to abandon Clara, running off and leaving her at threat from clockwork robots. He does return to save her, but dismisses her complaints of abandonment with a "sorry-not-sorry". The other possible odd moment is when it's left ambiguous as to whether or not he kills the villain. This one doesn't ruffle me as much because the whole "man who never would" angle doesn't hold much weight. He might have done it, and he might not have... but I can buy it either way.

All in all, this episode was okay. It wasn't a standout hit like the Eleventh Doctor's debut episode, but barring a few eyebrow-raising moments I can get behind this new Doctor/companion dynamic. There's a cute moment near the end that I won't spoil, and the possible seeding of a new season-long mystery. Now that makes me groan a little, because this is the third season in a row to have a "season-long mystery" that will probably just amount to a cryptic lady or phrase popping up over eleven episodes, and then the reveal near the end. Perhaps this one will actually seed clues as the show goes on instead of just teasing, but we'll see. It's not the best, but one can be excited for what's to come.


Next week: Daleks! How can you not be excited for new angry eyebrows Scottish Doctor vs. the Daleks?

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(I'm gonna be writing these parts with hindsight and knowledge of how the series turns out, so... spoilers for the rest of the Series 8 episodes will probably crop up, as I compare stuff. Be warned.)

Hindsight is a hell of a thing. Now I know how Peter Capaldi turns out. Back when this aired, he was just some angry Scottish asshole and I wasn't sure if I liked him or not. It took a few episodes, but I was sold on him. I remember being bummed out at the time, though. The Eleventh Hour so solidly sold me on Smith, and Deep Breath just didn't do that for me with Capaldi. Doctor Who had changed, and I wasn't sure who the Doctor was any more. Much like Clara Oswald in this episode. Much ink has been spilled on the inconsistency of her being aware of different incarnations of the Doctor in the Series 7 finale... and yet being written here as if all of a sudden the Doctor has "totally changed". I'm gonna stake my territory here and say that nitpicking out inconsistencies and plot holes in Doctor Who is really boring and far too easy to do. I don't do it when I talk about Doctor Who. My friends often do. I guest star in Doctor Who review things a lot, because I'm part of a little group. Some of them are of this school of thought, and again, many deep breaths have been taken before launching into a tiny rant about how this or that don't make no sense and god damn it Moffat et cetera et cetera. So, that's boring to me. It's been done and I don't agree with it, but the Moffat era is basically Marmite at this point. You either love it or you hate it and want him to just move on to Sherlock full time. Or something. Here's what I think Moffat is doing with Deep Breath; he's playing the meta game. Not really tongue-in-cheek, but more self aware. There are little things and hints that suggest to this in the episode. Clara not being sure who the Doctor is any more? That's holding a mirror up to the audience. It's commentary on the assumed reaction of the public when these regenerations happen. Some people... a lot of people, are going to be unsure about it. I was! Rewatching it now, in hindsight, and remembering how I felt... that's the vibe I get. Meta-commentary on the audience not being so hot on Capaldi. Moffat is just the kind of clever TV-savvy fellow to attempt to pull such a trick, too. Then you have things where the Doctor doesn't get his own references. Ranting about his face looking familiar as a callback to Peter Capaldi's past roles in Doctor Who stuff, or the whole thing with the reveal of the villains being related to the villains from Moffat's Tennant-era story, Girl In The Fireplace... and the Doctor not connecting the dots there. The section of fandom who cares about lore consistency and the callbacks will get it and light up, but the 2000 year-old Time Lord doesn't remember.

And then, of course, that final scene. Not the one with the lady, but the one where Matt Smith calls up Clara and asks her really nicely to give this new guy a chance. The cynical among us will call this pandering to the fangirls, pleading and begging them to stay despite the fact that the Doctor isn't a good-looking twentysomething in pinstripes or a bow tie. The Doctor was never anyone's "boyfriend", and now we've gone back to how it was 40 years ago, like when he was your kooky uncle with the ridiculous scarf. Again, this is metacommentary, but it's the only part I have no real defense of. Matt Smith asking me to give the Doctor a chance didn't change my mind any. I was giving him a chance already, and Capaldi eventually proved himself over the series. It was unneeded, I think. Same with a lot of the gags and physical comedy and whatnot. It padded the episode out, and the only real chuckle I got out of it was Clara getting whapped in the face with a newspaper. That's base level humor, though. There's a fellow who goes by the name of Whoflix that does fan edits of the show, both classic and new. He cut Deep Breath down to about a 45 minute episode, and I thought it worked a lot better. Well. Deep Breath. We took the plunge, we kept the air in... and the episode is still okay. There are things that don't work, but on some level I can understand what Moffat was trying to do. As always, he was being clever with his narrative and how he expected the audience to perceive it. On other levels... it doesn't work. It's an okay episode, but that's the thing. A regeneration episode needs to really punch it in order to sell people on your new Doctor. The show, with rare exceptions, has faltered when it comes to this. The Eleventh Hour was a great intro to Matt Smith. Deep Breath left me unsure if I liked Capaldi or not, and it bummed me out. It honestly soured my mood a little. Then there's Missy. In hindsight, I'm not sure how her scheme is supposed to work if she's also nicking people from the future, and people who aren't even people but half-faced robots. Whose goddamn body is she going to put the half-faced man into in 2015? Now I'm getting into lore inconsistency. See? It's easy and kinda boring to do. The Moffat era, especially, doesn't quite stand up to this sort of "Whoniverse" critique. You end up picking at it and picking at it until nothing's left. I don't know how it makes sense, but given time my brain could think up some sort of explanation for how it could make sense. If one were to be optimistic, they'd say that Moffat is challenging you and making you think about the plot rather than just spelling it out... but that's a rabbit hole we won't jump into.

Instead, let's shrink down and go play inside a Dalek.