From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 12: Death In Heaven)

(Hello from the past! As always, these are writeups of Series 8 done last year for the website Boss Dungeon. They're being rehosted with added commentary as I do a rewatch in anticipation of Series 9... which is tomorrow as you're reading this! Oh boy! These words are being written on Thursday, though. I'm not here right now. Probably sitting on a boat, at least at the moment this is supposed to go live. Where I am when you're reading it, I'm not sure. But enough of that. Death In Heaven.)

Previously on Doctor Who: Danny Pink, ordinary maths teacher and boyfriend to Clara Oswald, dies a mundane and tragic death in a car accident. The Doctor, in a display of affection for his grieving best friend, takes Clara with him to search for Danny in the "afterlife". They find the 3W Institute, and also find the mysterious Missy and her boss, Doctor Chang. All of this turns out to be a misdirect, as Missy is the one in total control; not just of 3W, but of a growing army of Cybermen. With countless dead human minds, including Danny's, uploaded into a mass virtual storage drive, Missy intends to use the minds to power her Cyberman army. Oh, and she's a Time Lady. Not just any Time Lady, but the newest incarnation of the Doctor's childhood friend turned archnemesis, The Master. With her Cybermen stomping through London and Clara in danger inside 3W, things look grim... but they are about to get worse before they get better.

Welcome to the end of series 8. Welcome to Death In Heaven.

So. Finales in new Doctor Who. They're usually a big event with some universe-ending threat or an army of a million billion of a famous alien monster from series history. When it comes to Steven Moffat-penned finales, you also get the resolution to a dozen or more episodes of teased plot threads. The big reveal, granted, was Missy's identity as a regenerated Master. We had words to say about the validity of that reveal last week, sure, but like it or not we have Michelle Gomez as an incarnation of the Master. Without getting into it in-depth yet, this is a good thing... but Death In Heaven has so much more going on. It's about 60 minutes long, giving Moffat enough time to cram most of what he wants to happen in while still missing a few things that have people riled up. Let's get into the good before the bad.

UNIT is back! Led by Kate Stewart, daughter of longtime ally to the Doctor, the late Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, they fight off aliens who try and invade planet Earth and work with the Doctor on occasion. The Cybermen are no exception, having tried this more than once. UNIT is ready for them, and they cart off the Doctor and Missy to a private jet to try and deal with the Cyberman menace. Visually, Peter Capaldi's Doctor calls back memories of Jon Pertwee's Doctor from the early 70's, and that era of the show had the Doctor working with UNIT while dealing with the machinations of the Master. Having that same dynamic back after 40 years is interesting to see, as a fan of the classic series. Even though UNIT doesn't accomplish much to resolve the conflict of the episode, they have enough impact to move the story along and create some interesting plot beats and setpieces.

Clara gets a cute fakeout at the beginning of the episode. The trailer for the finale had her declare to a Cyberman that "Clara Oswald never existed". This raised all sorts of questions and speculations, but it's a red herring. It's Clara bluffing the Cybermen by pretending to be the Doctor, and even the opening titles of the show play with her bluff by putting her at top billing and showing her eyes during the opening sequence. It's a lovely trick, and one could see it as a reaction to the detractors claiming that this series has been "Clara Who". The titles shift to reflect that, but this isn't Flatline. This is all a bluff to save herself. It works for a time, until a mysterious Cyberman saves her from the laser beams of the others. We'll get to him, don't worry.

The highlight of the episode, by far, was Michelle Gomez as Missy. She really hasn't done much of anything in the series besides be cryptic and look menacing to tease the audience and make them wonder what the mystery is. Now the cat's out of the bag, and Michelle Gomez can turn in an A+ performance. The thing about the Master is that, like the Doctor, there have been many incarnations, each with their own tics and traits. Roger Delgado was a suave unethical plotter. Anthony Ainley was somewhat camp. Eric Roberts was a ham. John Simm was a manic dark mirror of David Tennant. Michelle Gomez adds a playful insanity to it, sort of a cross between Delgado and Simm. She's a maniac who isn't afraid to murder to get what she wants, and that leads into one of the more divisive scenes of the episode; the death of Osgood. Osgood was a supporting character and UNIT member who made her debut last year in the 50th anniversary special. In her second appearance she gets tricked by Missy and vaporized. This has upset a lot of people who liked the character and wanted to see more of her doing things. I liked Osgood and was sad that she died, but I suppose that's the point. This episode is draped in the grimness of death, after all, considering the Cybermen.

Ah yes, let's talk about them for a bit. As one of the longest-running alien antagonists of the show, they've been through a lot of changes. In their 1966 debut they came from another planet, looked and talked ridiculous, and were a sort of body horror; what happens when you replace more and more of yourself with machinery until there's nothing remotely human left. Over the years they shifted from that into evil robots who shouted DESTROY or DELETE, and sometimes turned people into evil robots. Death In Heaven takes it back to the body horror in a big way. Every Cyberman in the episode is a dead body revitalized into a robot body by "Cyber-pollen". It's Cybermen as zombies; hell, there's even a scene where they dig themselves out of their graves and rise up en masse. It may very well be the most horrific use of them since 1966. It also follows the "high stakes" trend of a new Who finale; every dead body on Earth is a Cyberman. Sure, we only see a large squad of them centralized in London, but it's that zombie mentality again; the idea of them rising from the grave everywhere on Earth is terrifying and sticks in the viewer's head if they think about it.

And then there's Danny. Dead and gone in Dark Water, but now back as a zombie Cyberman with a faulty emotion inhibitor. Danny's the toughest part of this episode to critique for me. He's back and it's horrific because being a zombie Cyberman who can still feel is a living hell few of us can quite comprehend. He asks Clara to fix the emotion inhibitor so he can stop feeling the pain, and ends up getting more jabs at the Doctor and his whole soldier thing. Still, the power of love prevails over emotional inhibitors, and it ends up being Danny Pink who saves the day and leads the Cybermen to self-destruct and stop Missy's plan. I'm going to miss him. There's a chance for him to come back, but he gives it up to save a small child he accidentally killed during his soldier days. One last chance to undo his guilt and move on in peace. You were an alright guy, Danny Pink.

Finally, the Doctor himself. Specifically, his relationship with Missy. It's been touched on that the Doctor and the Master were once friends in their youth, but the Master went bad thanks to some time vortex mumbo-jumbo or something of that nature. The point of Missy's grand scheming, a scheme that ended up with her causing Matt Smith's Doctor and Clara to meet each other in the first place... was to bring the Doctor down to her level. To give him an army of Cybermen to right all the wrongs in the universe, as a birthday present, so the good man could become a bad man. So she and him could be friends again. What she missed, what the Doctor missed, what we all missed this series... is that the Doctor isn't a good man or a bad man. He's what he always proclaimed to me; an idiot with a box. He's even ready to finally end Missy once and for all when intervention comes from the other divisive twist of the episode; Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as a Cyberman zombie shoots at her. Now, there've been a few complaints about this. The first being that Missy died and it was a waste of a character. I doubt that very much and hope against hope that Michelle Gomez is back because she's brilliant. The second is that bringing the Brigadier back, three years after the death of the actor who played him, as a Cyberman zombie, is a bit crass. Perhaps it is, but I can't deny I had a bit of a heartwarmed smile when the Doctor saluted him. Still, I think they did a better tribute to the memory of the Brigadier in the series 6 finale.

All that's left to take care of is the ending. Clara and the Doctor, after two series and two incarnations of adventures, appear to part ways, both lying to the other about what they're really feeling. It's sad to see Clara go, and it's even sadder to see her lying about going. She won't be settling down with Danny Pink. She'll be picking up the pieces of her life, moving on and returning to the ordinary. The Doctor won't be retiring to Gallifrey. He'll be zipping about time and space without his best friend by his side. Clara rose up from her puzzlebox of an existance in series 7 to become one of, if not my favorite, companions in the new series. She was hyper-competent and quick to call out the Doctor on his misdeeds, but also had a lot of trouble with being honest to the people that she loved. Despite those mistakes, I still think she was fantastic. Can it really end like this?

Apparantly not, because the end credits get interrupted by, and I'm not kidding, Nick Frost as Santa Claus. Our Christmas special just got a hell of a lot more interesting. Regardless, that was Series 8 of Doctor Who! We've sat through 12 weeks of adventure in time and space, and now we've earned ourselves a little break. What the future will bring, I don't know. Maybe an overview of Series 8 as a whole before the Christmas special. As for 2015, it'll be a long wait for Series 9, so no promises on what happens there.


We'll see you soon, before you know it. Next time, whenever that is: We find out what the Doctor wants for Christmas.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler warning: there are spoilers.)

Haha. Isn't this funny? This is the first time, aside from when I wrote this, that I'm really getting to defend Death In Heaven. Yeah. I had a bit of an anxiety-related episode during the video review thing that I do with friends. Clammed right up. Got all mopey. The thing basically devolved into people shouting about how Steven Moffat was a Bad Writer, and therefore it was a Bad Episode and Fuck Steven Moffat. And y'know, that properly got me down because I loved Death In Heaven. Thought it was a great capstone, and here are my friends, not even really debating it so much as shouting at it. Making me feel like a proper idiot for being suckered into this and actually liking Doctor Who. Well, it's time for me to plant a final flag, and become my very own mirror. One reflected by the Doctor himself.

I'm Frezno, and I am an idiot because I loved Death In Heaven. I still love it, and I don't care if I'm an idiot for doing so. I think it's fantastic. I am easily wowed by the sheer emotional wonders of Moffat-era Doctor Who, and that is just the fool I am. Sorry. Well, not really sorry but y'know what I mean. So! Let's talk about mirrors again because this is the culmination of it all! We have discussed the darkening of Clara, as she becomes a mirror of the Doctor and thus a chronic liar and Not A Good Person. Now we find that the actual dark mirror of the Doctor has been behind everything all along. Yes, Missy, crafted in 1971 as the Moriarity to the Doctor's Holmes, a true intellectual nemesis, every bit as clever but without any morals or ethics or anything. The one true dark mirror of the Doctor... and not just Mistress of the Cybermen, or the 3W Institute. No, she is Mistress of Mirrors, and the world she is creating is a twisted funhouse of dark mirrors. The human race looks inside, and sees mechanical zombies, literally rising from the grave like in a George A. Romero flick to terrorize the living; to make the living Like Them. The Doctor looks inside and sees his old childhood friend, the person he was one step away from becoming. Clara Oswald looks inside and sees Clara Who, master manipulator and fast talker. This mirror's power is such that it even reflects back on the meta-narrative; Jenna Coleman takes top billing and her eyes appear in the opening credits. The transformation is complete. Clara Oswald has become the Doctor, and the show has now become about her (much to the annoyance of those who don't like Clara!). Hell, we spread a wider net now. Missy was the "woman in the shop" who set Matt Smith and Clara up in the first place, a necessity on her part. Without Clara, there can be nobody to stop John Hurt from pushing the Big Red Button. There can be nobody to stop every victory of the Doctor's from being rewritten thanks to some oblique old 60's villain played by Richard E. Grant. There can be nobody to plead to the crack at Trenzalore, to set up the events needed to free Missy from her battle with Rassilon. Missy creates the means of her escape; she is her own mirror.

She wants more, though. The Doctor has rejected being a reflection of Missy, so she concocts the best scheme she can. She creates an army, an army that can be used for any purpose, good or bad... and then hands it to him. Her goal is to darken him, to let him take charge and be the Time Lord Victorious, or Valeyard, or another entity of War. She wants to be his reflection, and she knows that she cannot elevate herself to the "goodness" he exudes, so her plan is to bring him down to her level. She wants her friend back, plain and simple. A far more impassioned scheme than "I disguised myself as a racist cartoon Arabian sorcerer in prehistoria for no reason", to be sure. Still, as Mistress Of Mirrors, she has created a carnival. Watch how she pirouettes, a sadistic Mary Poppins. The whimsical music and movement that comes after she vaporizes that poor Doctor Who fangirl. That upset a lot of people and has been criticized as a bad move, but I think her Zygon double is coming back for Series 9 so let's see how that goes.

Now how about Danny Pink? He's been outside the funhouse of mirrors for most of the series, but now that he's dead, he's been sucked in. Dark Water ended with him and the child he killed reflected off of an Ipad screen. Death In Heaven has him come back to his new Cyberman body and look into a mirror, horrified at what he has become. Missy's Magical Mirrors have shown his reflection, and what he finds is regression. Since killing that innocent child in a war zone, he has rejected the life of a soldier. He quit the army, became a maths teacher, fell in love. Then he got hit by a car and died. (Something I forgot to mention in Kill The Moon; there's an offhand line from the Doctor about how everything's dangerous; eating chips, crossing the road. Mother of god.) Now he wakes up from his afterlife adventure to discover his regression; he is a soldier again, a walking automoton made to follow orders, and it hurts. His rejection of this new life is dark and severe; he begs for emotional death. If he is to be a soldier, he doesn't want to have to feel it. After much bantering, it is Clara who pulls the switch and ends it all, because though she wasn't that good at it, she loved him. Despite the lying, despite her own fall to darkness, that never stopped. She never stopped loving Danny Pink, and she swears she never will. She stops the Doctor from having to pull the switch, and the Doctor in turn stops her from having to pull the switch to kill Missy. Missy taunts this, mentioning the saving of souls, knowing full well that her scheme has already darkened both Clara and the Doctor; and the Doctor acknowledges this. Missy wins. She vanishes in a puff of blue, and did you really expect that to be the end of her? I mean, come on, guys. Really? That leads us into a misstep. Cyber-Brig. I understand how this happened, in a sense. Danny and the Brigadier are the only dead people we see who manage to resist the control of the Cybermen, because they are soldiers protecting the people they love. That's fine enough, but really... it is in poor taste. Sure, it warmed my heart to see the Doctor salute him, but I stand by what I said last year; he had his sendoff at the end of Series 6 when the actor died. That was the last we should have seen of him on screen.

Missy's plan is stopped and Danny has sacrificed his own chance at happiness to redeem himself for shooting an unarmed kid. All's well that ends well. Now the Doctor and Clara meet, and they are perfect mirrors for each other. Each can successfully lie to the other about settling down and not wanting to travel any more, and they'll buy it. Congratulations. Well done. The friends hug, and hide their faces from each other, and this is where the song of Clara Oswald should end. Could end. It's up there, but it could be another Amy and Rory style ending where they could have had a happy end, but instead it was full of tragedy because we kept them on too long. I hope that doesn't happen to Clara, but we'll see. First though, there's only one person who can sort out this infinite mirror lying business. Who's that?

Next time: MOTHER. FUCKING. SANTA!

(I'm sorry Kat. Don't kill me.)

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 11: Dark Water)

(As always, these are old Series 8 writeups from last year, done for the website Boss Dungeon. I'm rehosting them here with new commentary as I rewatch, in anticipation for Series 9. Isn't this exciting? While I'm here, I should mention that I'm probably going away tomorrow for the weekend. Never fear, because this is the future and all I have to do is actually watch Death In Heaven and Last Christmas today as well, write that stuff up, and then use the magic of Blogger scheduling so they actually post on Friday and Saturday. Then when we get back, we can talk about The Magician's Apprentice! Hooray! Okay, now here's Dark Water.)

This one's tricky. Yes, it's part of the finale. Yes, it does some amazing things and has more than its share of jaw-dropping and mind-blowing moments. It's also a puzzle with half its pieces missing. We haven't had an Doctor Who episode in two parts since The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, all the way back in May 2011. In hindsight, critical attention will look at this as a 105-minute piece that closed out Series 8. For the next few days as of writing, though, we exist in... hell, let's play with what it is, considering. We exist in a state of temporal grace. Serious questions have been raised, and serious revelations and shocking things have popped up to send every Doctor Who fan into a frenzy of speculation... but there are also many things left to be unanswered, and a world in crisis. Until the puzzle is solved, let's take stock of what we know so far. This is Dark Water.

We begin with Danny and Clara, talking on the phone. Clara's got her post-it notes out, ready to tell Danny everything about her secret travels with the Doctor as he's out for a walk. Then he gets hit by a car and dies. That's it. Danny Pink. Soldier, maths teacher, love of Clara's life. Dead in a random accident. Oof. Steven Moffat just punched us all in the gut with a mortality boxing glove. For my part, I really liked Danny. He was a great supporting character in his own right, and his relationship with Clara gave both of them more depth. To see him just die is tragic. To see how Clara deals with it gives us even more insight.

Clara in these opening scenes is taking things surprisingly well. She remains calm and bubbly as she asks the Doctor to take her somewhere cool, like a volcano... but this is all ulterior motive. One of those scenes from the trailer, given context to reveal its red herring status. Clara, menacing the Doctor with all of his TARDIS keys, demanding he go back in time and save Danny. The Doctor refusing on the grounds that if Danny hadn't died, Clara would never threaten the Doctor and go back to fix it, thus creating a paradox. One by one, Clara throws the keys into the boiling lava, and when none are left she finally breaks down. Of course, the Doctor is in control. The whole thing was a dream sequence, brought on by his curiosity. What now, Clara asks? They go to hell. Even though Clara betrayed his trust and let the Doctor down, he's still willing to help his friend. As Capaldi puts it; "Do you think I care so little for you that betraying me would make a difference?". Beautiful. Hard to believe that 10 weeks ago I wasn't sure if this man was the Doctor. He is. He is, and he's here to help heal his friend's pain by finding the dead Danny Pink, wherever he moved on to.

That "wherever" turns out to be the Nethersphere, the place we've seen in those little teases and sneak peeks over the past 10 weeks. Chris Addison even comes back, playing his Nethersphere office worker character who showed up at the end of The Caretaker. This time, he's assigned to Danny's case, explaining the nature of his death and the new afterlife of the Nethersphere, which is a rather visually stunning place. Not what I expected it to look like at all, but it's cool to see. While this is happening, the Doctor and Clara arrive at the 3W Institute, in search of a lead on Danny. What they do find are skeletons in submerged tanks. Hundreds of them. The dead on full display for the living. They also find Missy, who calls herself an android working for the institute and sends them off to have things explained by an institute doctor.

It's here that things take a grim turn. Moffat's great at planting little idea seeds with horrible implications, and letting the imaginations of the audience water them. In this case, the 3W Institute turns out to be founded on the basis that the dead remain conscious after they die. 3W stands for 3 Words, and presumably the three words shouted by the dead people in a panic are "Don't cremate me!". If you think on that in any detail, you're going to give yourself goosebumps. There's some talk about the water in the tanks being "dark water" that works like x-ray vision, and more than a few shots of Missy playing around with the skeletons in the tank... who are now moving. In case you haven't figured it out yet, there's a brilliant shot of a door that creates a connection in the audience's mind.

So yeah. The skeletons in the tank are actually Cybermen, and Missy has some sort of sphere that lets her upload the dead people's minds. First to the sphere, and then into the brains of the Cybermen. One could spout lots of words about the Cybermen, but we'll save that for next week. They don't play much of a role here aside from their menace being the cliffhanger. For now, just know that they're very bad news. The real secret, the one that was clutched close to Moffat's chest, is Missy's true identity. After 10 weeks of speculation and teasing on the part of the show, we at long last know who she is.

And she's The Master.

Capaldi does his part here, of course, looking shocked and horrified at the revelation. The Master should be locked on Gallifrey with the Time Lords, following the climax of The End Of Time Part 2! Yet here she is, having not just changed bodies but gender! So it's now canon that Time Lords can become Time Ladies upon regeneration, I guess. The Master being behind it all should be shocking, and it should be a game-changing reveal that calls to question what she's planning with the Cybermen. For many, I'm sure that's the case. For me? I read Doctor Who discussion threads, I write about the episodes here, I talk about them on video in quasi-podcast form. I'm privy to speculation. Missy being the Master was one of the earliest guesses, simply by leaps of language. Missy, short for Mistress. Mistress, feminine form of Master. It was the obvious horse to bet on for the big reveal, and it's the one Moffat went with. I find myself a bit disappointed that 10 weeks of yet another big mystery plot and teasing the audience just led to the most obvious guess. Then again... it's about the journey, not the destination. We're not even halfway done. Like it or not, Missy was the Master and she's planning something terrible with the Cybermen. Clara's in danger of being attacked, and Danny's mind is inside the Nethersphere, in danger of being wiped by emotion and uploaded into a mindless automaton body. Will the Doctor be able to stop her evil plot and save Earth yet again?


We'll find out next week. Next time: The finale.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler warning; there are spoilers)

Yeah, the finale sticks the landing. No surprise there. Unlike the week when I wrote the above piece, we're in the future now. Dark Water and Death In Heaven are out. You can watch one right after the other, and because of that stuff I said I had to do this weekend, I am going to go and watch Death In Heaven immediately after this goes live. It's here I get to play with mirror symbolism again. The final shot, sure, is that little kid Danny shot being reflected on the Ipad screen. There's also the fact that the titular Dark Water deals with refraction. That's not the same thing as reflection, to be sure, but it deals with light being intercepted from a surface. No, more to the point, this episode has the Cybermen. Having turned Clara into a dark mirror of the Doctor (which she embraces full-on in this episode, but more on that in a second), the show now holds the dark mirror up to humanity. We are the Cybermen, and the Cybermen are us. I'd talk about the Qlippoth or whatever that is, but I ain't Phil Sandifer. What I do know is that the Cybermen are a bunch of emotionless stomping zombies, and we also know that the mirror symbolism is rampant. So the dark mirror of the emotionless Cybermen is reflected, and we get Clara and Danny. The light mirror, the emotional core of the whole thing. Clara's grief over Danny's sudden, ordinary, out of nowhere death causes her to falter, and she darkens. It is she who looms over the blighted volcano, attempting to threaten the very man she reflects into doing as she demands. Clara Oswald, in her anguish, has become her very own Oncoming Storm, and in her grief she exiles them both to a lava landscape, weeping while professing that she would do it again. Of course, a mirror cannot be as powerful as the original. This alchemy is diluted. The Doctor was in charge all along. He wanted to see how far she would go, and he has. Now he's going to help his friend, because that's what you do. That goddamn line about her betraying him not making a difference. That is Doctor Who, and it is wonderful and beautiful and a sweeping statement about the man the Doctor is. Say what you will about Stevie Moffat and his plot holes or slip-ups, but sometimes he just gets it, y'know?

He also gets how to scare people. The entire concept of being sentient when you're dead, and being able to feel what happens to your body? That's absolutely pants-shittingly horrifying. There's enough ambiguity here that you're not sure how much of this entire 3W stuff is all a ruse that Missy just made up. Certainly her magic hard drive is able to pull people's minds from their bodies when they're dead, and there has to be some liminal connection between those minds and their original bodies. Then those bodies get turned into Cybermen, or they like... shove the minds into other spare bodies? Like, if Missy is running around stealing people like the Half-Faced Man or Gretchen, she has to have spares. I went through this song and dance before. The plan is kinda gonzo, but Missy is kinda gonzo too so... there you go.

Let's talk about her and close out for now because you can't talk much about this one without also talking about Death In Heaven. I was upset when the reveal happened. 10 weeks of teasing and poking at us, all but begging us to go onto Something Awful/Twitter/Tumblr/GallifreyBase and theorize left and right, only for it to be the easiest and most obvious answer? Wow. How dare you not surprise me and shock me intellectually, Steven Moff Hat. :V
Of course, as I'll go into later, I ate my goddamn words when it turned out that Michelle Gomez was actually phenomenal and knocked it out the park. Hey, here's something to talk about. The old writeup had mention of being in a state of temporal grace. Here's another briefer one I was in while watching. Between the time Missy admits she's a Time Lady, and her outright saying she couldn't keep calling herself the Master... I thought it was Romana. Maybe shit went wrong in the CVE and she resented him for it. Then again, in the audios Romana did get out and become President of Gallifrey during the 8th Doctor era so... I shoulda realized that. Oops. Still, that woulda been a shocker, huh? Romana gone bad.

Alright, that's all I got. Next time: Everyone dies but comes back as a Cyberman.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 10: In The Forest Of The Night)

(As always, these are old writeups of Series 8 done as it aired for the website Boss Dungeon. I'm rehosting them here along with new commentary as I rewatch in anticipation of Series 9. Not long now. First let's deal with this thing.)

Alright, let's talk about Doctor Who again. This one was hard to get a proper hold of, and it's been a polarizing one for various reasons. Let's take it one thing at a time. This was episode 10, and it's our last "business as usual" episode. Our series 8 finale is confirmed to be a two-parter, so there's an immense sense of gravity rushing at us next week. For now, we'll take this as our calm before the storm. Instead of massive game-changing business, here's a story about a magical forest. This was In The Forest Of The Night, and it was... okay.

The premise sees massive amounts of trees growing in the middle of London. Not just London, but all over the world. In one night, roads and city streets are overtaken by dense foilage. If you believe the view of the entire planet, there's even trees growing out of the ocean. Imagine a giant tree growing out of the Marianas Trench. That'd be one big tree. We have Clara and Danny discover the forest after a school field trip to a museum in London, and they meet up with the Doctor because one of the kids got separated from the others and ended up in the TARDIS. This little girl, Maebh, will prove important to the resolution of the episode.

I really liked Capaldi in this one. I find myself taking stock of everything that's come before with Capaldi, now that we're on the cusp of the finale. Deep Breath left me with less than good feelings about him, but he's grown on me. The way he interacts with the children in this episode made me smile. Explaining the dimensional transcendence of the TARDIS as "a Coke is this big, but has this much sugar" to Maebh, for instance... or later, panicking right along with the kids when Maebh wanders off. For most of the episode, he spends it pondering the whole tree thing. He comes up with a lot of possible theories, but none of them are really correct. More on that in a bit, but one other thing I liked was near the end, where we had a callback and response to Clara's angry rant from Kill The Moon. The Doctor admits he walks humanity's earth, and breathes their air, and that Earth is his world. What a great thematic tie-in.

Clara and Danny get a lot of time together, and there's more of the lying again. This time, Danny is on the cusp of finding out about Clara's deceit. For the episode, they deal with keeping the kids they're in charge of safe from any dangers that might crop up. Eventually the lie comes out... and Danny doesn't launch into an angry tirade! All he wants to know is the truth. He's supportive and kind of understanding. He just cares about Clara and wants her to be safe. I really like Danny as an "answer" to Clara's wanderlust and need to explore. While she's looking around trying to figure out where the trees came from, all he's concerned with is his job; keeping the kids out of trouble. I have to wonder if Clara's explanation will occur on camera or not; there might not be "time" for it in the finale, but we'll see.

The best aspect of this episode, though, is the forest. There's a definite fairy tale vibe here, as well as reference to famed English poet, William Blake. The title is lifted from his poem The Tyger, and what gets loose from the zoo in the episode but an actual tiger? That and some wolves. Maebh runs from a wolf while wearing a red jacket. She drops her things in the forest to leave a trail for the Doctor and Clara to follow. The mood here reminds me of the Matt Smith era, with childlike wonder. There's implication that these forests have grown out of nowhere before, and these events are the secret history behind our love of fairy tales. We forget the truth behind them, but the ideas they leave behind creates the fiction that sparks our imaginations. Beautiful.

Yet there's something holding it back. There are great character moments and the concept is imaginative, but things don't go anywhere. There are a few unfortunate implications and boneheaded decisions that have other critics condemning this episode. Me, personally? I thought it was okay, but it might be the weakest episode we've had in a while. Despite that, "weakest episode of series 8 of Doctor Who" is still a mighty high bar to set. This has been one of the best seasons of the show yet, looking back on it. One hopes the finale will live up to that. Time to do what we did back at the end of August. Time to take a deep breath and dive into the execution of all things.


Next time: Words can't do it justice. Here's the trailer. This is gonna be so cool.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

Oh good god. What we've got here is a thing. The least liked episode of Series 8. One of the most criticized episodes of the new series. Quite Possibly One Of The Worst Doctor Who Episodes In The Program's 52 Year History. That's fan consensus, mind. I'm kind of indifferent on it. I found things I liked about it in the old writeup, and there was even a line that Danny said at the end that I loved. Embarrassingly I forgot how it exactly goes, so I have to go back to the episode and check. One second. Ah. "Fear a little bit less, trust a bit more." Well, I guess that was Maebh. Or the Forest Fireflies. Or something like that, but holy shit does that resonate with me in regards to some of my less than happy moments. Which is kind of ironic because that sort of thing is the biggest criticism people have with this episode; the mental illness reading of it. Look, I'll level with you all. I get a little anxious sometimes and that gets me down, but as far as I know I do not have any sort of mental illness. I don't take any sort of medication in order to grapple with anything in my brain that would prevent me from being a functional member of society. I didn't take any mental illness reading from the episode on first transmission, but hearing other people talk about how shitty it is... it makes sense, in a fashion. Here we have the show giving us a terrible sort of message about how hearing voices isn't a mental illness symptom, but rather magical fairy tale forest fireflies trying to communicate with us. That's a really shitty message, I'll concede that. If you took that away from the episode, and hate it for it, I can understand it. I'm not about to raise it up on a pillar with Listen and Flatline or nothing, but I don't think it's the worst episode of Doctor Who ever. At the very least it's not one of the ones that outright killed the show for a long period of time, like Warriors Of The Deep or The Twin Dilemma or the TV movie. That's faint praise, I know, but if a possible anxiety-ridden buffoon like myself can take a positive reading from a line at the end about trusting people, then it can't be all bad.

No mirror symbolism again, not that I saw... apart from an advance with Clara. Here, she turns down the Doctor's offer to save her. He protests by showing what he learned from the Kill The Moon debacle (the other Worst Series 8 Episode Ever) and saying that the Earth is his planet now as well. Clara still refuses. She doesn't want to be the last human being alive. She doesn't want to be like the Doctor. She has courted with darkness, and here and now there is still an attempt to break through that darkness. This is a clear rejection of becoming in full the mirror of the Doctor. Clara Oswald, Last Of The Humans, The Impossible Girl. She refuses. The darkness will creep back next time, out of desperation and grief, as it often does. Clara will darken, and lie about even being good in the first place to survive. The lying will never end, but here and now, she tried to fight it. Good on her.

This whole thing feels like a fairy tale, and that might be key to understanding it. This is Kill The Moon without the space spiders and excellent performances. If the mental illness angle didn't get you, being faithful to science in your Doctor Who probably did. Still, this is a fairy tale through and through. Even the trailers emphasized a girl in red running from wolves. We have a magical forest, a wise old wizard with a magic wand, some Hansel and Gretel-esque tracking, a Blakean Tyger, Forest Fireflies older than man themselves... the magic forest is the Secret History of All Fairy Tales. This is the Genesis Of The Daleks for fairy-stories. Interesting reading, that. Interesting episode, this. Not really my favorite or anything, but trust me when I say I've seen worse Doctor Who. Hell, I love bad Doctor Who in its own special way. Barring The Twin Dilemma, bad Doctor Who is a spectacle, a gawdry exorcism of quality done in an attempt to entertain. Even stuff like Love and Monsters has a redemptive reading for it, and I guess "the secret history of all fairy tales, plus Clara becoming good again, plus a nice message about anxiety and trusting people" is mine. It's not much, but it's what I took from it. What you take from it is your own.

...Shit, I forgot to talk about the ending with Anabelle. It almost doesn't make sense, but I guess the intent is Maebh and her Forest Fireflies brought back the idea of Anabelle and made her real? Like they made the idea of the forest real to protect the Earth? I... guess? Look, I dunno.

Next time: Death is but a doorway. Time is but a window. I'll be back.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 9: Flatline)

(As always, these are old writeups of Series 8 from last year, written for the website Boss Dungeon. I'm rehosting them here and adding new thoughts in as I rewatch in anticipation of Series 9. Okay, this one was good. Let's go see the past.)

Let's talk about "companion-lite" and "Doctor-lite" a little, in the sense of Doctor Who. Throughout multiple series of the new show, we've had this dichotomy of episodes near the tail end of it all. Two back-to-back episodes; one in which the companion takes a backseat role (or hardly appears at all) and one in which the Doctor does the same. Sometimes both companion and Doctor bow out of the narrative, like in Love And Monsters or Blink. Other times, the companion's left behind and the Doctor does his own thing, as seen in episodes such as Midnight. For my money, the most interesting of these are the Doctor-lites. Episodes where the focus is on the companion, without the help of a magic spaceman. You get really interesting stuff, like Turn Left from the fourth season of the new series. Flatline is a Doctor-lite, and it might just be the best of the Doctor-lites.

We're in Bristol this week, and the TARDIS has a problem. Something's sucking dimensional power from it, causing the outside police box portion of the ship to shrink. The show's been no stranger to mucking around with the dimensional transcendence of the TARDIS, and this occurance has the Doctor stumped. He stays behind while Clara goes to investigate the local area to find the disturbance, and while she's gone the TARDIS shrinks even more, becoming handheld. The Doctor can't get out, so he hands Clara his psychic paper and sonic screwdriver and sends her to it. The show has just become Clara Who. Sure, there's still the Doctor in her ear giving her advice and thinking out loud and all that... but Clara is out there, taking charge and being the Doctor. What foul monster from the depths of space will Clara Who face this week? Daleks? Sontarans? Cybermen? No. Something far scarier.

This week's scary monster is damn well one of the scariest we've had on the show, just from the sheer concept and how they play out. Whatever they are, they exist outside our universe somehow in 2 dimensions. What we see are their attempts to get in, via us. They study humanity by pulling them into their world. This kills the people, leaving only crude drawings on the wall of whatever they were examining. A pattern of human skin. The central nervous system. Again, they play by rules that you can't avoid; don't touch the walls or floor, or they get you. What sells them are two important things, though. First and foremost, the imagery is terrifying. People getting sucked down into the floor and becoming drawings, for one... but then the things learn enough to exist in three-dimensional space, leading to some truly effective visual effects. (One of which made my jaw drop from how spooky it was!) The second? We never really learn much about them. Oh, sure, we have the Doctor technobabbling about them learning and how their powers work and all that, but we don't know anything beyond his theorizing. We're in Listen territory again, with intense ambiguity as to what these things want. Good. We need more of that in Doctor Who. These monsters are a cosmic horror, and I like it like that.

The monsters are great, and Clara Who is a wonderful show to be watching for a week. Capaldi is on the sidelines this time, locked inside his own TARDIS and forced to figure out the plot as Clara lives it in real time. He does a good job at it, and even gets a defining moment at the end; one of those moments that screams "I am the Doctor". Oddly enough, the only real objection to this one is Clara. Not the Clara Who stuff, that's brilliant... but the other side of her character. Last week we saw her flip-flop on that whole "one last hurrah" thing and go back to travelling with the Doctor again. Without telling Danny about it, mind. Enough time has passed that she has her old haircut back, and here she is. Lying again. Directly lying to Danny on the phone, lying to the Doctor about lying to Danny. Just straight-up lying. It's unfortunate to see my new favorite companion behaving in such a flawed way. Even the Doctor, the abrasive new Doctor, manages to get in a line or two about how this is Not Good. Adding to that, we've got another Missy appearance in this episode. More cackling about mysteries that will be endlessly speculated about online until the finale in two weeks. Lovely. Well, lying aside this is still a fantastic episode. Definitely in the top three for this season. It's terrifying, gives the companion agency and makes her super-competent, and has some great Doctor moments. Amazing, considering that the writer of this one wrote last week's episode as well... and those scripts were his first two contributions to the show! You get a gold star, Jamie Mathieson. Spot-on.


Next week: Forests! Wolves! Tigers! Danny! Schoolchildren! I don't know what this is but we'll see!

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler warning for the later episodes and whatnot below. You've been warned.)

Oh, Flatline is marvelous. Simply marvelous. Absolutely in my top three of S8 episodes, right there with Listen and Mummy. Wouldn't you know it, we even get a clear shot of Clara looking into a mirror in this one. For longer than half a second! Great, the theme is back for reals! More to it is that Clara transcends here. She becomes the mirror of the Doctor, for all it's worth. She says that Rule One of being the Doctor is using the monsters against themselves, but that's a lie. Just like so many of the other things she says and does in this episode. Rule One has always been "The Doctor lies." Doctor Who lies, and since Clara Who has transcended and become his mirror over 8 episodes, she lies as well. That was my objection in the past writeup, but it was less an objection and more of a lament. I adore Clara, and S8 Clara is a fantastic companion. To see her darkening as a result of her becoming a mirror of the Doctor disheartened me greatly. At least I know that gets resolved sort of when we get to dream crabs and Santa Claus, but right here and now it broke my heart.

Now let's plant another flag and probably make someone very angry. Clara Who is a great thing, and I kinda think people getting mad at it are a little silly? I mean, it's not 1972 anymore, guys. We can have a companion who does things besides ask the Doctor questions so he can exposit the plot, and scream real loud at the monster of the month. Even the classic series had a handful of rad lady companions who kicked ass and took no shit from nobody. (See: Leela, Ace.) There ain't nothin wrong with Clara taking charge and sitting in for the Doctor in this episode, and in three episodes' time Steven Moffat actually trolls these people. No wonder people don't like him. Besides, the whole point of this one is that there's a cost to this, a collapse. Not of narrative, but of character. Clara becoming the mirror of the Doctor is a bad thing because she's becoming a chronic liar to the people she cares about; both Danny and the Doctor. It's a guilty pleasure of an episode; it's great to see a proactive Clara taking charge and figuring out how to save the day, just like the Doctor would, but it comes at the cost of her morality. Note the sly callback at the end to Into The Dalek. Clara was a good Doctor, but she's not a good Doctor. As if we needed it cemented further, we get a Missy teaser that adds nothing other than her cackling about how Clara was a good choice on her part. The villain of the piece is applauding Clara for falling into darkness, as well she should. Well, actually, I pulled a Clara Who and lied as well. It adds something to the series mystery, although I didn't notice it at the time. Check it out.

That door behind her. It's the 3W logo, and shaped like the eyes of a Cyberman. There's an explicit reveal of this in Dark Water that finally clued me in to what was going on, but here we have the exact same thing, not spelled out for us, sitting in the background and I missed it. Not only that, but I was surprised at the Cybermen being involved in the finale, as I recall. (Watch the original Next Time preview prove me wrong with past me going "OOH CYBERMEN".) This would imply that nobody else I know or read about caught this one and yelled about it. Or I didn't see it. 'Cause the Internet had to have twigged on this during the broadcast, or at the worst, on first rewatch. How did this escape me? I don't know, but well done. And well done with this episode, as well. It gives us Clara taking charge and being Doctorlike, with all the downfalls and bad things associated with it. Its monsters are goddamn terrifying, and like I said, it's Listen with less ambiguity about the things being real. They're real, and we don't know what they are but they want us dead. Incredible. As is that shot of the guy being dragged off by the monster hand, which, like the 3W door there, you can see in the background but don't notice until it grabs the guy and jumpscares you. Goddamn. Amazing.

Next time: Oof. This is going to be a rough one.

From The Boss Dungeon Vaults: Doctor Who Series 8 First Impressions (Episode 8: Mummy On The Orient Express)

(As always, these are Series 8 impressions that were written as they aired for the website Boss Dungeon. They're being rehosted as I rewatch Series 8 in anticipation for Series 9. So here's a good one with a mummy in it.)

Mummy On The Orient Express. What a title. It's so succinct in summarizing the episode. There is indeed a mummy. It does indeed attack people on a train called the Orient Express. Of course, this being Doctor Who, this isn't the Orient Express. Just a Orient Express. Which also happens to be in space. Because it's Doctor Who, see. Regardless of playing with tropes, this one is a real winner. You've got one hell of a monster concept, some of the best Doctor moments Peter Capaldi's ever had, and a surprise or two.

The first big surprise being... Clara Oswald! I was wondering who the short-haired lady travelling around with the Doctor at the start was. Clearly it couldn't be Clara. Not after that explosive condemnation at the end of Kill The Moon. No, the Doctor must have picked up some other young lady to ease his mind after Clara left. That wasn't the case. Jenna Coleman got a haircut and Clara is still on the TARDIS. While this is quickly explained as "one last hurrah" and Clara's final trip on the TARDIS, I've got mixed feelings. Mainly because I loved last week's blowup so much. It was a companion depature the likes of which we hadn't seen since Tegan left, and that was 30 years ago. Sure, this is set weeks after Kill The Moon and all... but it feels like the consequences of Clara's anger were sort of glossed over in a few lines. It's not nearly enough to sink the episode, but with how through the roof I've been about Clara this season it leaves a funny taste in my mouth.

The Doctor, on the other hand, is in perfect form. Capaldi plays up the more "alien" aspects of the character, particularly early on when Clara is pouring her heart out about her anger from the last episode... and all he wants to do is tell her about old planets he was on. He talks to himself, and replies in the voices of previous incarnations. Despite all of that, Capaldi defines himself on getting the job done. The events of the episode leave a rather high body count, and with each death the Doctor remains detached and devoted to solving the mystery of the mummy. Whereas David Tennant would trot out the old "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry" (a line that Clara actually takes up near the end), Capaldi's Doctor just sort of shrugs about it and moves on. In his mind, there's nothing he could have done... and every death gives him more clues on stopping the thing threatening to kill them all.

That thing being the mummy, or as the episode calls it, the Foretold. Like so many other Doctor Who monsters (and so many monsters in general), the Foretold runs on a set of rules. Only those unlucky enough to be targeted by the Foretold can see it. Once they do see it, they have 66 seconds before it gets them and kills them. No weapons can stop it, and it can teleport in order to shamble towards you. Already there's a difference between the Foretold and other Doctor Who monsters; there's no way to stop it. Well, there's exactly one way to stop it, but the point of the entire episode is figuring it out. Before that, just about everyone who sees the Foretold ends up getting killed by it. The episode goes the extra mile by adding a timer onscreen every time the Foretold appears, frantically counting down the seconds until the unlucky sap gets it. Really builds the tension and adds some flair to the episode. I love it.

Then we have the whole twist with "Gus", as is customary for this season. We spend half the episode establishing things and then everything is turned around with some sort of twist. The twist in this case being that the entire train is some sort of lab, and the passengers are tasked to figure out how to stop the Foretold. We never find out who is in charge of the train experiment in the episode, but Gus is an amoral villain all his own. Not bad for a computer AI. When the Doctor won't listen to Gus's requests for him to stop talking on the phone with Clara and get back to puzzling out the Foretold, he decompresses the kitchen and vents the cooking staff into space. Despite the fact that Clara was on the phone telling the Doctor things about the Foretold, giving him clues that could help him solve the mystery. One could argue that Gus is the villain of the episode; the Foretold merely kills on instinct. Gus kills to prove points and tidy up loose ends after he gets what he wants. My money's on him being connected to Missy and the Nethersphere, but if this was just a one-off then that is that.

A lot of this one is spent dealing with Clara's emotional state after Kill The Moon. She's calmed down and doesn't outright hate the Doctor, but she's adamant that this be their last trip. There are some great scenes with her and Capaldi, like the one where she realizes that parting ways with the Doctor means he won't pop in for dinner once in a while, and that this really is the last hurrah. Then we've got the ending. Clara, after lying to get a potential Foretold victim into the same car as the Doctor, and hearing his rationalizations and detached nature... decides to not give it up. In a way that makes it seem like she will be lying to Danny about it. Having Clara back is one thing. Having her lie to her boyfriend about it is something else entirely. There's talk about the Doctor's travelling through time and space as an addiction, and maybe Clara's addicted to it now too. Addiction is a terrible thing, and as great as Jenna Coleman is on the show now... I've got a bad feeling about what's to come. Regardless, what a standout episode. It was a bit too grim with its high body count to properly call it a "romp", but it's taking the characters to interesting places and it's been universally praised.

Let's just hope the cost of their choices isn't a heartbreaking one.


Next time: Fear in two dimensions? Graffiti coming to life? I have no idea what's coming next week, but I look forward to it as always.

AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW

(Spoiler warning: there are probably spoilers below.)

This is still fantastic. It's even more fantastic knowing that there's a second fantastic episode coming up from the same writer. Holy shit. I kept an eye out, though, and I totally didn't see any mirror/reflection symbolism this time so boo. Feel free to correct me again, though. I just wanted it to run through every episode... but then again, this is what we were leading up to, wasn't it? Six episodes teasing the reflection angle, then we had Kill The Moon with Clara's impassioned rejection of the Doctor... and now she's back, with a new haircut. Lying her face off. Clara is slowly becoming a flawed reflection of the Doctor, and this is definitely something that gets followed up on in the next episode. And the finale, come to think of it. It doesn't feel like it, but we are only two episodes away from the beginning of the end. Here, then, is what Clara Oswald has become. Her secret was always a subversion; she was no Impossible Girl, but an Ordinary Girl who delved into the Extraordinary, shattering the mirror and fragmenting herself into oh so many shards. Now she has reassembled, and is becoming a mirror of the Doctor. She has adopted Rule One, and the consequences will be dire. So it has been Foretold.

Gee, it's been a while since I went all proto-mythological in one of these things, huh? Feels good. Look, this episode sings. And I don't mean the cool cover of Don't Stop Me Now, either! This is a great episode of the show, and lots of people love it! Which is interesting. I think it's a great episode, yes, but I also love all of the other episodes that have come so far. Even Kill The Moon got a passing grade because it did one or two amazing things. This one, though, is second only to Listen at this point in the series for my favorite. Why's that? This is where Peter Capaldi finally, without question, became The Doctor for me. We had a rocky road over September 2014. Deep Breath didn't sell me, and I spent the rest of the time sort of on the fence. Listen really helped, and the other episodes contributed in their own little way, but this is where the 12th Doctor finally arrived for me. As if to cement this, next episode he will get his own Matt Smith style speech full of bluster to threaten the monsters... but here he is in his default mode. The man who gets the job done. I said it in the writeup, but it's all in how this Doctor plays it. Tennant or Smith would be fiercely apologetic to the victims, and probably enraged at Gus. Capaldi just wants to get the job done, save the people, stop the killing, and do it with efficiency. He hasn't got the time to care, because his carer is locked in a supply room with a sarcophagus. He just works it out, is grouchy and grumpy about it, but gets the job done and saves as many as he can because that's what he does now. All he wants to do is get things done so he can go back to talking about planets. Perhaps he's even extra grumpy because this is supposed to be Clara's last hurrah. I could see that, but he's not really "extra grumpy" in this one.

As for Gus? Good villain. Notably, I was totally wrong about him being connected to Missy and the Nethersphere... but hey, a shambling undead soldier? I wasn't that far off the mark. This is a plot thread that people want a little tugging on for Series 9, and unlike "they should show what was underneath the bedsheet in Listen" which, as I said, completely misses the point of that episode, this is a thread I theoretically don't mind being expanded upon. Popular theory says that Gus is probably an agent of the Rani, an amoral scientist Time Lady from the classic era. Well, I mean, the show did make the other big Time Lord antagonist a Time Lady, so... it could be. I don't know, though. One, it's too obvious and I would rather it be something original and fresh that's a surprise, rather than this speculation game where the answer is the easiest choice. Two, the Rani is fucking rubbish. She hasn't been in a good television story at all. Poor Kate O'Mara, rip in peace. Well, we'll see with Series 9, now won't we? Just know that Mummy On The Orient Express is very good, and many people's pick for Best Episode Of Series 8. It cracks my top three for sure, but Listen and Flatline are awfully competitive for Top Spot.

Next time: It's Flatline and it's very very good.

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.