Ashildr 

Ashildr joins the show as an ordinary Viking girl: plucky, outspoken, foolish and stubburn. Again, the Moffat theme of power in story also re-surfaced, with Ashildr using her puppets to save her Viking town from alien annihilation.

Ashildr: I’ve always been different. All my life I’ve known that. The girls all thought I was a boy. The boys all said I was just a girl. My head is always full of stories. I know I’m strange. Everyone knows I’m strange. But here I’m loved. You tell me to run, to save my life. I tell you that leaving this place would be death itself.

But Ashildr is more than a repeat of the Amelia Pond prototype. The girl who died became the woman who lived forever and forgot how to feel (just as The Doctor does without a human companion to remind him why emotions matter). Maisie Williams is a brilliant young actress and I enjoyed seeing her have to stretch herself by playing a character who has seen thousands of years pass filled with pain, death and sadness, even if the audience only got the benefit of seven days passing between episodes. Though Maisie didn’t always manage to convince, I think this was mainly down to the script jumping so far ahead and telling us about Ashildr’s immortal life rather than showing it to us across multiple episodes (which wouldn’t have worked as Doctor Who anyway). This was an ambitious two-parter and Ashildr’s gradual loss of humanity could have merited an entire spin-off all on its own.

Where Clara performs The Doctor role, Ashildr is a mirror to The Doctor. They both live untold years and leave too many people behind. Ashildr has lived long enough to know that The Doctor runs away from responsibility (“You left me.” “You seemed fine”) and has casualties he can’t escape the memory of no matter how hard he tries to forget (“How many people have you lost? How many Clara’s?”) Ashildr knows that The Doctor doesn’t like endings, that he leaves people like open pages in books (I wish River could have met Ashildr. Maybe she has?) And The Doctor knows why he can’t travel with Ashildr, despite their similarities in experience.

The Doctor: People like us, we go on too long, we forget what matters… the last thing we need is each other.

It is humanity, those like Sam Swift who faced the hangman’s noose with bad puns and a ready smile, who remind people like Ashildr and The Doctor to care.

The Doctor: People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other. We need the mayflies. You see the mayflies, they know more than we do. They know how beautiful and precious life is because it’s fleeting.

Both The Doctor and Ashildr need to be reminded how to feel, how to let the heart bleed, and it is humanity in its messiness which does this. Finally, Ashildr after thinking she doesn’t care, falls off the wagon and wants earth saved, but that doesn’t mean Ashildr is suddenly pro-Doctor. I quite liked this end of episode impasse:

Me: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I’ll be the patron saint of the Doctor’s leftovers. While you’re busy protecting this world, I’ll get busy protecting it from you.
The Doctor: So are we enemies now?
Me: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It’s your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I’ll be watching out for you.

(This line reminded me of Ros Myers in Spooks actually, and to be honest, Ashildr has pale shadows of Ros.

Ros: Lovers leave, friends annoy and family mess with your head, colleagues are OK.

Damn I miss Ros on my TV. She was fucking bad ass.)

Anyway, small Ashildr questions remain, who told her that The Doctor comes for a battle and runs from the fall-out? Missy or someone else altogether? Will she meet Captain Jack? Will she return to the show as friend or foe?

The Doctor

Aside from The Doctor being reflected in Ashildr, there were a lot of Doctor character moments this two-parter. The first might seem a minor thing, but I enjoyed the little touch. All of The Doctor’s hate violence on principle (except for when it is them using it). Twelve goes a step further by selectively ignoring it. People try to use violence to get him to do something and he simply doesn’t respond. At the start of The Woman Who Lived, he’s more interested in his own theories than he is in the heist. His brain simply doesn’t process words accompanied by violence in this episode.

In more meatier meta, I liked the reminder that The Doctor doesn’t interfere with people or planets unless there are children crying (say what you like about The Beast Below, that was a lovely Amy/Eleven moment). Twelve tells Clara he can’t interfere, can’t make ripples.

The Doctor: I applaud your courage but I deplore your stupidity. And I will mourn your deaths. Which will be terrifying, painful and… without honor.
Ashildr: Stay. You could help us, I know you could.
The Doctor: I told you to run. That’s all the help you’ll need. That’s all the help you’re getting.

And later…

The Doctor: Suppose I saved it—by some miracle. No TARDIS, no sonic. Just one village defeats the Mire. What then? Word gets around. Earth becomes a target of strategic value and the Mire come back. And god knows what else. Ripples into tidal waves until everybody dies.

But then in a nice throwback to Stormageddon, Twelve can understand baby talk and knows that the baby is deathly afraid. He can’t help himself, he has to stay behind and help the Viking village.

Clara: What’s it saying?
The Doctor: She. She’s afraid. Babies sense danger, they have to.
Clara: Tell me.
The Doctor: “Mother, I hear thunder. Mother, I hear shouting. You’re my world but I hear other worlds now. Beyond the unfolding of your smile, is there other kindness? I’m afraid. Will they be kind? The sky is crying now, the fire in the water.” Fire in the water…
Clara: You just decided to stay. The baby stopped crying.

The Doctor refuses to interfere at first because he knows he will make mistakes, cause discrepancies which will cause further misery and land back at his door. The irony is that when The Doctor chooses to ‘save’ Ashildr by granting her immortality, he creates a tidal wave which he cannot control and he runs away, rather than facing his actions (a theme that has surfaced again and again in Moffat Who).

Immortality

By granting Ashildr immortality, The Doctor does more than create a tidal ripple, he also creates a woman in his own image without initially thinking things through. There are some great scenes and lines in The Woman Who Lived which remind us why no man lives forever/why dead men rise up never/why even the weariest river/winds somewhere close to sea. Ashildr’s diaries parallel River’s in the library, but are made sadder by the deaths Ashildr has witnessed and the tears she has shed (the ghost lover got me). The saddest part of all was the plague when Ashildr lost her babies and vowed she would have no more (I cannot suffer the heartache).

The consequence of The Doctor’s interference is immortality, but the cause begins with him. If he had not interfered in people or planets Ashildr would have died peacefully, and not had the pain of living forever. The problem with The Doctor has always been that he doesn’t think.

Me: Do you ever think or care what happens after you’ve flown away? I live in the world you leave behind. Because you abandoned me to it.
The Doctor: Why should I be responsible for you?
Me: You made me immortal.
The Doctor: I saved your life. I didn’t know that your heart would rust because I kept it beating. I didn’t think that your conscience would need renewing, that the well of human kindness would run dry. I just wanted to save a terrified young woman’s life.
Me: You didn’t save my life, Doctor. You trapped me inside it.

Amy and Rory showed us the way it was impossible to adjust to ordinary life after running with The Doctor, River showed us that The Doctor doesn’t do endings, even when he loves someone deeply and Ashildr shows us that The Doctor doesn’t put much thought until it is too late into the people he touches and leaves behind. He is focused on the future. The next horizon and sight to see. The next adventure. Because the past is too painful.

The Doctor: Oh, I like a nice view as much as anyone.
Ashildr: But?
The Doctor: Can’t wait for the next one.
Ashildr: I pity you.
The Doctor: I will mourn for you. I know which one I prefer.

By the end of this rich two-parter, so do we.

The Girl Who Died/The Woman Who Lived: 8/10 inky stars

Anyway, Doctor Who. My favourite review of this episode was actually from livejournal meta queen, Elisi. ‘Well. There wasn’t any mirroring’ was essentially her response to both parts. And probably mine too. I am so used to Moffat Who mirroring characters against each other and requiring viewers to dig deep into metaphor and theme to get the full mileage out of an episode. Not so this Whitehouse two-parter, which saw the return of old fashioned hide-behind-the-sofa Who and the locked-in-a-confined-space-getting-bumped-off-one-by-one trope. Similar in many ways to The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, this was proper scary Who.

Clara Who?

Regular readers of this blog know that I am not a big Clara fan, largely because though Jenna Coleman is a good actress, the show doesn’t know what to do with her. Not only has she gone all through The Doctor’s timeline, she’s also taken on the role of Doctor in various Series 8 episodes. Much like the Series 9 two-parter where Clara did little but get locked inside a Dalek by the deranged Missy, Clara has little purpose in this story. I don’t think the show can get much more mileage out of the character.

This two parter brought up the theme of death in relation to both The Doctor and Clara, and I think it is fairly safe to say that there is about to be death for Clara on the horizon, either metaphorical (ala Donna) or physical (ala Jamie).

The Doctor: Listen to me. We all have to face death eventually, be it ours or someone else’s.
Clara: I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to think about that, not yet.
The Doctor: I can’t change what’s already happened. There are rules.
Clara: So break them. And anyway, you owe me. You’ve made yourself essential to me, you’ve given me something else to… to be.  And you can’t do that and then die. It’s not fair.
The Doctor: Clara…
Clara: No. Doctor, I don’t care about your rules or your bloody survivor’s guilt. If you love me in any way, you’ll come back.

Surely this is telegraphing a mile off that Clara is on the out? I liked the little throw back to Dark Water here by the way, with Clara saying chillingly in that episode that she was owed.

We saw in this two parter, too, that Clara is learning some of Twelve’s detached coldness in the face of strategy and split second decisions, especially in the second part of the episode.

Lunn: She said to ask you whether traveling with the Doctor has changed you, and why you always have to put other people’s lives at risk.
Clara: He taught me to do what has to be done.

Did The Doctor teach you that, or did Missy? (Thinks back to the title, The Witch’s Familiar and Missy’s Death in Heaven, ‘I chose her’ and shudder).

Twelve

Not much new to say on Twelve here, other than to say it is clear that in Series 9 Capaldi is much more comfortable in the role and nails the range of emotions his character has to display. There was this nifty little tid bit on Time Lords though:

Fisher King: Time Lords. Cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most war-like race in the galaxy. But you—you! You are curious. You’ve seen the words too and can hear them tick inside you. But you are still locked in your history. Still slavishly protecting time. Willing to die rather than change a word of the future.

But seriously, I liked the meta start and end cap to Before The Flood, with The Doctor coming over musical with his electric guitar (and apparently that was actually Capaldi playing over the weekly theme tune) in a repeat of his Medieval band strum in The Magician’s Apprentice. In other news, I also quite enjoyed The Doctor’s social cue cards given to him by Clara (even if this does mean that half the internet is probably now diagnosing The Doctor with an ASD).

Diversity on Who

Diversity in anything is so rare that it is always super exciting when it happens in the mainstream (it shouldn’t be in the 21st century, but here we are) and especially in popular culture. I really enjoyed deaf female leader, Cass, and I thought she was a good actress. I liked that one of her colleagues signed and spoke at the same time, acting as translator and communicator. For some young people especially, it is a reminder that just because you have a disability, it doesn’t mean you are invisible, that you should be invisible, or that you can’t achieve things.

Tell her that you’re always gonna love her

This was an ending of pairings. Lunn and Cass declare their love for each other at episode’s end, Bennett and O’Donnell are out of time and never really admit their love, though deep down they knew it before O’Donnell faced death. It was a little bit too neat, but I did grin when Cass kissed Lunn.

The Fisher King?

For once I agree with Mary Ann Johanson, (I haven’t since circa Series 6 when her hatred of Moffat Who reached such a degree of insanity I gave up on reading her Who write-ups) who asked why The Fisher King was the name given to the alien behind the events of this two parter. A good question. The Fisher King is a reference to Arthurian legend. From Wikipedia:

In Arthurian legend the Fisher King, or the Wounded King, is the last in a long line charged with keeping the Holy Grail. Versions of his story vary widely, but he is always wounded in the legs or groin and incapable of moving on his own. In the Fisher King legends, he becomes impotent and unable to perform his task himself, and he also becomes unable to father or support a next generation to carry on after his death. His kingdom suffers as he does, his impotence affecting the fertility of the land and reducing it to a barren wasteland. All he is able to do is fish in the river near his castle, Corbenic, and wait for someone who might be able to heal him. Healing involves the expectation of the use of magic. Knights travel from many lands to heal the Fisher King, but only the chosen can accomplish the feat.

I am not clear on how The Fisher King’s motive of summoning an armada relates to this legend, and though of course, Whithouse could have just wanted to shout out to legend with a tribute name, it was distracting for me, so used to looking for Moffat Who mirrors.

Ultimately, this two-parter proved to have a great set-up with a less interesting follow-up. It is also one of the more straightforward Who episodes we’ve had in recent years, and that’s fine, but I prefer my stories with layers of meta which take at least three re-watches to dissect. Oh well. I can’t win all of the time.

Under the Lake/Before The Flood: 6/10 inky stars

Missy and Clara

I cannot emphasise enough how much I enjoy Michelle Gomez as Missy and would pay good money to see her in her own spin-off show. I quite liked seeing how Missy interacted with Clara as a ‘makeshift’ companion: from ‘make your own pointy stick’ to a lecture of respect, to making Clara climb into a Dalek, what a firecracker this character is.

I couldn’t help but wonder if The Doctor had signed Clara’s almost death warrant when he demanded that the Daleks produce Clara alive and never mentioned Missy once. The Master is jealous and cruel and doesn’t like to share. Moffat also did some nice foreshadowing by having Clara climb inside a Dalek early on necessary for both Clara and Missy to rescue The Doctor from Davros. It is horrifying when Clara tries to parrot Missy’s phrases (I love you, You are different to me, exterminate), yet Missy’s plan to infiltrate Davros ship makes sense.

It makes the final stages of the episode all the more powerful when Clara is trying to tell The Doctor that she is Clara Oswald and alive. if people thought that Moffat was allowing The Master to become too likable, this moment should have re-assured. For one frightening moment, I thought that the show was actually going to have The Doctor kill Clara thinking she was a Dalek and manipulated by Missy. Of course, the show could never really have gone there. Murder of his own companion is something that I don’t think The Doctor would ever recover from, but for one powerful moment, it seemed possible…

What’s In A Name?

The Doctor Who Watchalong group I frequent got caught up on the episode titles. I see them as allegory. The Magician’s Apprentice referred to The Doctor as magician teacher of Davros. In the first part, we thought he made Davros the villain he becomes in adulthood. The Witch’s Familiar flips that concept on its head. Instead, The Doctor teaches Davros compassion. The Witch’s Familar then, refers to Missy as The Witch and Clara as The Familiar, which makes me wonder very much how Clara will exit the show and whether she will leave it enemy or friend.

Gallifrey, Missy and The Doctor

This plot twist on why The Doctor left Gallifrey from the beginning seems to have split the fandom. I’m withholding judgement until more unfolds, but like The Wedding of River Song, there is scope for Moffat to get it very wrong. Still, I quite enjoyed Missy accusing The Doctor of being the one who had always run away before she ran off down a corridor and her un-nerving declaration that she had chosen Clara for The Doctor to show “In a way, this is why I gave her to you in the first place; to make you see. A friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend. Everyone’s a bit of both. Everyone’s a hybrid.” was quite brilliant. Part Dalek, park Time Lord, though? And what exactly is The Doctor’s confession? Not sure if this is a terrible idea or genius?

Redemption or deception?

The quiet heart of this episode was definitely The Doctor’s dialogue with a dying Davros. Davros in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End lacked conviction or power for me. This episode, he raises the ‘am I good man?’ theme which The Doctor faced from series 8;

Davros: Did I do right Doctor? Tell me, was I right? I need to know before the end. Am I a good man?

Davros even appears happy when The Doctor reveals that Gallifrey has been saved from the Time War.

Davros: If you have redeemed the Time Lords from the fire, do not lose them again. Take the darkest path into the deepest hell, but protect your own … as I have sought to protect mine.

Bizarrely, The Doctor and Davros even share a laugh together over Davros’ death bed:

Doctor: You really are dying, aren’t you?
Davros: Look at me. Did you doubt it?
Doctor: Yes.
Davros: Then we have established one thing only.
Doctor: What?
Davros: You are not a good doctor.

Such banter couldn’t help but feel tinged with unreality. The Doctor/Davros truce couldn’t last. I doubt many were all that surprised when Davros back-stabbed The Doctor, trying to use The Doctor’s regenerative energy to trap him. More surprising was The Doctor’s second guessing of Davros’ plan and his use of regeneration energy to contaminate the Dalek’s, causing ‘the sewers to revolt.’

Compassion, Doctor

We all knew that The Doctor wouldn’t really harm a small boy, regardless of who he grew up to hurt and what he later created. Does this mean the look on The Doctor’s face which Clara interpreted as shame, wasn’t shame after all?

The Doctor: I didn’t come here because I’m ashamed – a bit of shame never hurt anyone. I came because you’re sick, and you asked.

The lines in this section of the episode are simple and beautiful. At a Doctor Who panel at Conflux on the weekend, myself and other panelists discussed the fundamentals of the show and all of us agreed that the fundamentals of the show are what fellow pannelist John Blum termed ‘the adjectives’ – things like ‘never cowardly, never unkind, never give up and never give in,’ and now ‘compassion.’

Davros: It is so good of you to help me.
Doctor: I’m not helping you. I’m helping a little boy I abandoned on a battlefield. I think I owe him a sunrise.

The ending of this two parter was so simple and yet so beautiful. The Doctor destroys the hand mines and rescues a young Davros, contaminating him, and through him, his Daleks’ by showing young Davros compassion.

Doctor: I’m not sure any of that matters. Friends, enemies. So long as there’s mercy. Always mercy.

A strong episode because of its willingness to focus on character moments, quiet drama and relationships and made more interesting than its first part because of a clever spin on the true morality of The Doctor, The Witch’s Apprentice is a classic.

The Witch’s Apprentice: 11/10 inky stars

The Magician’s Apprentice was glorious: unexpected, thought provoking and sparkling with fun, energy and great dialogue tempering the darkness which has characterized Capaldi’s Doctor. I felt that Capaldi worked for me as The Doctor from midway through Series 8 on, though the whole series last year felt more grown-up somehow, with the show unafraid to explore characters, allowing for moments of quite intense darkness and tackling some serious moral questions. For a show that’s now nine series in (and that’s just the new stuff), Doctor Who is certainly an example of a show that constantly re-invents. Some of this is the nature of the show itself (a show that has a time machine that can go anywhere in time and space offers a lot of scope to explore), but I also firmly believe that the current international success of the show is down to the work of Moffat. Say what you like about his ability to execute his big ideas, it is irrefutable that the ideas are there. Without his commitment to re-inventing the show, pushing viewers in unexpected ways and going against expectation as well as his audacious daring in messing with long-standing classic Who canon, I don’t think this opener would have happened at all.

Rug-Pulling

Moffat rug-pulling isn’t new and the last time we saw it was with the Missy reveal at the end of the excellent Dark Water. Moffat doesn’t waste time in pulling the rug out from under the viewer in the opening five minutes of The Magician’s Apprentice. There is a return of the war and soldier motif with a soldier trying to help a small boy surrounded by hand mines to escape an unnamed war zone. The soldier is exited. The audience pities the poor boy, feels his terror and prays The Doctor will come and avert the boy’s imminent death. The Doctor obliges.

The Doctor: Your chances of survival are one in a thousand… so here’s what you do… concentrate on the one… survival is just a choice.

So far, so good. The Doctor as a bringer of hope and of survival continues to go to form when he asks:

The Doctor: What’s your name? Tell me the name of the boy who isn’t going to die today.

The boy’s answer is a ‘jaw hit the ground’ moment, chilling and compelling.

“Davros.”

Not since The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon has an introduction episode felt so much like a finale.

Universe Continuity

One of the things RTD did well was making his series tie into each other so that the world felt connected and real. Moffat has done less of this, focusing more on concept story-telling and links to classic era Who, rather than emphasizing links to New Who. The Magician’s Apprentice feels richer for moving forward by looking back with a number of familiar places and people returning (The Maldovarium bar from Series 5 and 6), The Ood from Series 2, 4 and the Ten Christmas specials, The Shadow Proclamation and Davros from Series 4 and going back further, the sisterhood of Karn and the Dalek planet, Skaro, from classic Who). I, for one, would love to hear more from Karn and The Shadow Proclamation.

Clara Who?

I have never been keen on Clara. Governess Clara and Dalek Clara were just so much more interesting than modern day Clara. However, I did enjoy the show’s push in Series 8 to show a slow morph of Clara’s role in the show from mere companion to surrogate Doctor, culminating in her ability to perform The Doctor part in Death in Heaven pre-credits. However, in The Magician’s Apprentice I felt like Clara has finally come full circle as a companion and no longer has any place left to grow or go.

This series she is still teaching, this time Jane Austen, with a throw-away line about Austen being a great kisser (What adventure was this? Someone write the fan fic) and a command to the class to use the hashtag #planeshavestopped on Twitter. Clara is a confident and hip teacher, the cool English teacher we’ve all had at one point who nonetheless never made a lick of sense. Not only that, she’s the person UNIT calls when something’s gone wrong. She makes logical deductions rather than calling on The Doctor to make them for her (texting definitely isn’t The Doctor’s MO, planes frozen in time doesn’t equal an invasion, so logically it’s a call for attention). Alas, after she pairs with UNIT and Missy, her role becomes redundant.

The Twelfth Doctor

The Doctor is more fun this episode. Capaldi’s Twelve is still full of sadness and darkness, but there is a sense of Eleven underneath it all, made explicit when Twelve plays guitar on a tank Mad Max: Fury Road style and plays his audience with Missy like some kind of rock star. That doesn’t mean this Doctor doesn’t have gravitas. He’s just loosened up a bit since Series 8.  He teaches Medieval England the word ‘dude’ a few centuries early for heaven’s sake!

Best of Frenemies?

Oh, how glad I am to see an earlier than expected return of Missy. Michelle Gomez is an enormous asset to the series, able to play comedy, deranged mad woman, little girl lost and cold Time Lord within seconds of each other. Her pathetic explanation of how she survived Death in Heaven was suitable Delgado (“cutting to the chase… back again, big surprise), her tea session with UNIT and Clara awful yet entertaining (“NO, OF COURSE I’VE NAE TURNED GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD” followed by disintegration of some of UNIT’S lackeys), her deranged singing and dancing whilst held captive odd, but fun and her barbed comments entertainingly Master. There are too many great moments to recap, but the below was pretty great:

Missy: How’s your boyfriend? Still tremendously dead, I expect?

Clara: Still dead, yep. How come you’re still alive?

Missy: Death is for other people, dear.

One of the most interesting aspects of The Master as The Doctor’s distorted mirror has been the element of loving to hate each other, especially in New Who with both seeing themselves as the last of their kind. Though I enjoyed Simm’s Master initially, it felt like there was more to explore. Enter Missy and Moffat. Clara thinks The Doctor has sent his will to her and is mockingly rebuked by Missy (an echo of Madame Vastra in The Name of the Doctor. “The Doctor does not share his secrets with anyone. What makes you an exception?”) I loved Missy’s explanation of the long-standing friendship:

Missy: See that couple over there? You’re the puppy.

Clara: Since when do you care about the Doctor?
Missy: Since always. Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President’s wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie, can you guess which one?

Missy: Try, nano-brain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain and contemplate friendship. A friendship older than your civilization, and infinitely more complex.

When The Doctor plays to his Medieval audience, including Missy in his ‘performance,’ the two are performing parts that Clara has no part in, regardless of her deep knowledge of The Doctor and his history. Still, the script reminds us why The Doctor needs his human companions when Davros’ messenger tells The Doctor that Davros knows and remembers. Missy asks what the look on The Doctor’s face means. Clara already knows.

Clara: Shame. Doctor, what have you done?

The difference between Missy as The Doctor’s friend and a human companion is that whilst The Master can match The Doctor for intellect, shared history and culture and sheer bloody mindedness and audaciousness, humanity reminds The Doctor about the importance of emotions and why having heart matters. When The Doctor forgets his hearts, he is capable of horrendous things.

The Doctor’s Moral Choice

The Doctor: Davros made The Daleks, but who made Davros?

Who indeed? The heart of the darkness in this episode sits with Davros and his relationship with The Doctor. Davros is a real threat this time, less cartoonish as he was in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, scarier, more grounded and graver.

Davros: I approve of your new face Doctor… so much more like mine.

Like Missy, Davros becomes a mirror reflecting the possible inhumanity of The Doctor (we’re not so different, you and I. The Doctor goes to be with his human children to die, Davros to Skaro with his Daleks). What a conceit it was on Moffat’s part to riff off an old classic like Genesis of the Daleks, but it is a conceit that pays off. The lines, “If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you, and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?” are infused with a new horror. Could The Doctor, the hero of our show, really have created a monster, and knowing that he had, would he go back and change his past, murder a child, to prevent a more horrific future, and if he did this terrible thing, would he still be The Doctor?

Watching Clara get played with by Davros’ children is equally chilling.

Davros: See how they play with her. See how they toy. They want her to run. They need her to run. Do you feel their need, Doctor? Their blood is screaming kill, kill, kill! Hunter and prey, held in the ecstasy of crisis. Is this not life at its purest?

It is that moment that pushes The Doctor to the brink.

The Doctor: Why have I ever let you live?
Davros: Compassion, Doctor. It has always been your greatest indulgence. Let this be my final victory. Let me hear you say it, just once. Compassion is wrong.

Davros doesn’t hear The Doctor say it, but in this cliffhanger, actions speak louder than words with The Doctor going back along his time line to kill the boy who grew up to create The Daleks and cause The Time War. Will The Doctor follow through, and if he does next week, will he still be The Doctor as we know him? I don’t know. But I’ll be glued to the screen next week to find out.

The Magician’s Apprentice: 10/10 inky stars

To be honest, I’m actually not all that clear on what this episode was about. The first half follows Clara and Danny doing the obligatory zoo sleepover with their students, but with a twist. A giant forest comes to London and the children and teachers wander around aimlessly. Meanwhile, one student, Maeve, gets separated from the others and finds The Doctor (aside: strangely though the giant forest takes over London, there are surprisingly few people about for students to bump into). Then there’s something about people destroying trees and something about earth getting destroyed and something about the trees loving earth and saving it and pretty gold dust stuff and the power of the mentally ill to find lost things and… yeah… I don’t know… as I said… a big mess.

Companions who never were?

Child actors generally don’t bode well for companions of the week (see Nightmare in Silver and Courtney) but Maebh was quite good even if her storyline was rubbish. Her plaintive ‘everyone knew everything but me’ felt quite honest and I liked the way she thought differently to not just her teachers and fellow class mates, but also The Doctor. The most interesting scene for me in the whole episode was the one where Maebh told The Doctor that the trees were communicating silently and he didn’t believe her because he couldn’t hear them speak. I can’t find the exact quote online, but she basically pointed out to him that people communicate non-verbally all of the time and it was a pretty neat put down.

Clara and Danny

Urgh, these two are just no Amy/Rory no matter how hard this show tries to sell them to me as such. I genuinely don’t give a damn about Danny until Dark Water (which is pretty ironic as you’ll see in my write-up next week) and imo Clara is too good for him for the most part. The decision to have Danny constantly question Clara’s choice to travel with The Doctor, essentially forcing her to lie to him about still travelling in the TARDIS drives me insane every episode.

Danny: You said you haven’t seen him in months

Clara: Something like that

Clara, the fact you have to keep lying should be telling you something!

Danny brings out the worst in The Doctor too. When Maebh first meets The Doctor and tells her story he pettishly replies with, ‘Mr Pink was looking after you… that explains why you’re lost.’

Finally, Danny gets extra irritating this episode when he tells Clara why the TARDIS isn’t for him.

Danny: I don’t want to see more things. I want to see the things in front of me.

Yes, I get that Danny was a soldier and saw and did awful things. The problem is, we’ve been told about it, not shown it and I simply don’t buy his comments. Who wouldn’t want to travel the TARDIS? Really? (Ok, so I know Rory didn’t want to, but he loved Amy so much he did it anyway and found hidden reserves inside himself he didn’t even know existed. I love Rory. Danny just stagnates)

The Doctor

Harsh Doctor is back in full force this week. Take when Maebh first turns up. His response to her unexpected appearance on his TARDIS doorstep is, ‘You need an appointment to see The Doctor.’ Callous, much? Though this Doctor does seem to have travel differentiating between adults and children and tends to lump all humans in terms of functionality in the same basket.

Capaldi is also given the opportunity this week to dig into his softer side in time for the finale and the Christmas special. He tells Clara he can use his TARDIS to save Clara from the destruction of earth.

Clara: I don’t want to be the last of my kind.

The Doctor: This is my world too.

The conviction and quiet delivery of the lines is quite beautiful. I think Capaldi is also very good when he says that the human super power is forgetting, sounding sad, thoughtful and relieved all at once.

Mental illness, fairy stories and un-earnt denouements

In general, the main problem for me with this episode is the lack of real conflict. However, where everything really started to go pear-shaped was when the script writer thought it would be a good idea to imply that mental illness equated to some kind of magical ability that could inexplicably bring back lost things. Wow, way to perpetrate stereotypes much! The fairy story tone didn’t actually give the writer a get out of jail free card as some episodes got in series 5 because tonally it didn’t match the rest of Capaldi’s run. I simply felt cheated when Annabelle turned up in a bush by Maebh’s house. Furthermore, Maebh’s imagination (depicted through her coloured drawings) felt too Fear Her for my liking and the reveal that she’d created the tree plague felt pretty random. When The Doctor says that the forest is mankind’s nightmare (hello Into The Woods), it’s actually Maebh’s nightmare (or deep desire), but none of these reveals really gel or feel earned. Look, maybe I’m just sensitive, but this whole concept felt like a hot mess.

Missy

Missy turning up, even if for a minute, is always welcome. This episode I just felt confused. Why was Missy surprised that the trees saved earth? Or was she actually implying that she was surprised at The Doctor’s choice to remain on an earth about to be destroyed? Why? Does anyone know what this scene was about? Please help.

On the plus side, next week is Missy in crystal clear abundance and one of the best episode’s of the season.

In The Forest of the Night: 2/10 inky stars

Alien of the week presence

This is one of the few Series 8 episodes which deals with a proper alien invasion. The episode opens in creepy classic Who style with a man sucked into a house wall. It is also very Eleventh Hour with the cracks in the wall. I liked the clever touch of the people on The Estate disappearing and re-appearing as wall mural art. I also liked that the episode entertained the notion of friendly or naïve aliens for all of five seconds with The Doctor saying, “Maybe the aliens don’t know we need to live in 3D… innocent aliens a first?” Later he amends his wishful thinking. “I tried to reach out… to understand you… but you don’t want to understand, you don’t care.”

The Doctor

The Doctor takes a back seat this episode, though he has a few good moments, from his Addam’s Family spoof moment as his hand made like Thing to get The TARDIS off the rail line, (“I’m on a train line and there’s a train coming, of course”) to his mean comments about the episode’s companion who never was, ‘pudding face’ Brigsy.

I also enjoyed his comment to Clara early on as she muses about the shrunk TARDIS:

The Doctor: Could you not just let me enjoy this moment of not knowing something? It happens so rarely.

Twelve fights back with a vengeance at episode’s end when he tells the aliens that “this planet is protected” (Hello Matt Smith reference) and he introduces himself as “the man who stops the monsters.” His sombre statement that, “a lot of people died and maybe the wrong people survived,” (like Ashes to Ashes guest star douche bag) is poignant and sad and reminds the audience that this is a much darker Doctor.

Danny and Clara

It doesn’t matter how many times I re-watch Series 8, I don’t care about Danny until Dark Water, especially in the middle of the series when he acts like he owns Clara. Why is Danny so insecure that he can’t have Clara leave her personal things on the TARDIS? Why does Clara feel that she has to lie to Danny about having adventures with The Doctor? (though the contrast between Clara’s phone conversation and the events unfolding around her was quite entertaining). I just find Danny/Clara a little uncomfortable, especially when compared to Rory/Amy.

Clara Who?

This episode is perhaps most important for its exploration of Clara Who? This series has been all about companions becoming The Doctor and the human cost that entails. With The Doctor out of action in Flatline, it falls to Clara to ‘act’ the role which makes for interesting viewing.

“I’m The Doctor. Doctor Oswald. You can call me Clara… I think I call myself The Doctor because it makes me sound important.”

Not only does Clara perform The Doctor role, she also questions it and his relationship to companions. I liked the implication that companions were either people in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time and how that linked to Clara’s lies to Danny.

The Doctor: Excellent lying, Doctor Oswald… lying is a vital survival skill and a terrible habit.

Clara: Does it count as lying if it’s for someone’s own good?

The Doctor: What’s next, Doctor Clara?

Clara: Lie to them… give them hope.

Lying is depicted as a key part of The Doctor’s role to people, as is wild, last minute ideas. When Clara uses a hair band to keep the train gear on it was both as mad and as clever and as simple as the best laid Doctor plans.

This episode, too, Clara is truly alone in her decision-making.

Clara: Doctor, what would you do now? No, what would I do now?

Clara has never been my favourite companion, but in series 8 her level of agency has increased threefold and her place of power in the story could become very interesting.

Missy

Who doesn’t love Missy? Who? I actually got shivers down my spine at the denouement to this episode when this exchange happened:

Clara: Just say it. Why can’t you just say it? Why can’t you just say I did good?
The Doctor: Talk to soldier-boy.
Clara: It’s not him. Come on, why can’t you say it? I was the Doctor and I was good.
The Doctor: You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara…
Clara: Thank you!
The Doctor:  ..goodness had nothing to do with it.

That exchange of dialogue followed by Missy’s, “Clara, my Clara, I’ve chosen you well” is chilling and horrifying. The Twelfth Doctor is darker and more cynical. He reminds us that there is a dangerous side to The Doctor, the one that is good at making split second decisions to save the majority, even as he buries his guilt over the fallen minority. This is much more Le Carre territory than fairy story, even if Eleven did have similar ‘darker’ moments, they never felt this brutal. As a continuation of Rory’s comment about fearing what The Doctor does to people, how he changes them, this is a very interesting place to go. More next series thanks!

Flatline: 9/10 inky stars

Next week: In the Forest of the Night

The Return of Good Old Fashioned Who Horror…

The episode kicks off with a clock starting a countdown on screen from 66 to 0 before death at the hands of an invisible mummy and the tension doesn’t let up. For a fun episode, there is a lot of dark death, flickering lights and even an empty sarcophagus. Creepy stuff.

Clara’s ‘not’ exit

Last episode, Clara had all but committed to leaving the TARDIS behind forever until push came to shove on the phone with Danny and she opted for one final adventure… as The Doctor says, the Orient Express is, ‘a good one to end on.’ We have the theme of Clara’s innate anger with The Doctor continued. The Doctor is confused by her smile being a sad one and she responds with, ‘I hated you for weeks… hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on someone you don’t like.’ Though I’d warmed to Clara by this series, I wasn’t a fan of this direction – it made Clara seem a bit too bitter and unkind – but she soon bounces back by next week’s Flatline. I also wasn’t a fan of The Doctor’s comment that Clara couldn’t dump him because he wasn’t her boyfriend. Enough with these kinds of comments already show!

Companions Who Never Were

Is that Mary from Sherlock? Either way, who didn’t love Maisie opening a door lock with her stiletto? Perkins was also a wonderful character (What are you a Doctor of? A question The Doctor isn’t asked often enough as the episode points out) and I enjoyed his quiet Doctor rejection, ‘riding the TARDIS could change a man.’ As usual this series, characters inner lives reflect moral dilemmas of The Doctor and his companion. Maisie’s feelings about her mother are a case in point with her feelings mirroring Clara’s feelings about The Doctor.

Maisie: Do you ever wish bad things on people? I just felt really guilty, picturing her dead for years, just picturing it, not really meaning it, and now I feel like I did it.

Clara: People, difficult people, make people feel complicated things.

It is Maisie’s story which helps Clara to understand her relationship with The Doctor. Later, after Clara claims she isn’t friends with The Doctor any more, Maisie responds with, ‘life would be so much easier if you liked the people you were meant to like, but then I guess there’d be no fairy tales.’

By the end of the episode, Clara understands.

Learning About 12

Now that we’re mid way through the series, loads is happening with 12: the man who doesn’t like soldiers yet acts like one, the man who can’t find his way back to Clara, the man who likes to solve puzzles coldly and dispassionately even when human death is involved, yet still does so with a strange innate humanity. I love that The Doctor introduced himself as a ‘nosy parker’ and offered a professor jelly babies. I loved it when he told the train manager, ‘if people did their job descriptions you wouldn’t be drinking into your cup’ and his follow-up of ‘why am I even bothering?’ (to lecture you) before he goes away to start solving The Foretold problem. I also quite like this colder Doctor. He gathers the scientists and professors together and uses the deaths to ‘study our own demise’ to discover that The Foretold picks off those it considers weak through disability, PTSD and illness first. I was reminded of Into the Dalek when The Doctor tells one man, ‘you are probably next… good for us, you’re going to die.’ This colder Doctor is offset by a kinder ending where he offers himself to the mummy with a reference to Moffat’s two parter in Series 1, ‘I will be your victim this evening. Are you my mummy?’ I like that Twelve is a quieter hero than previous incarnations and Capaldi does quiet pain well. I was deeply moved when he admitted to Clara, ‘I didn’t know if I could save her… sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you have to choose.’

Clara’s Addiction

This episode continues the trend of Clara finding The Doctor’s life in the TARDIS a hard addiction to shake. She convinces Maisie to follow her to her potential death and later says, ‘is it like an addiction?’ Her final exchange with The Doctor is the stuff which makes Doctor Who such an alluring concept:

Clara: Have you ever been sure?

The Doctor: No

Clara: Then let’s go.

Unresolved Threads

Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, but this episode has Gus painted as the villain trying to lure The Doctor to the exploding Orient Express at the intervention of another hidden entity. Who made Gus malfunction? Missy or some other hidden hand? Perhaps Series 9 will reveal more.

Mummy on the Orient Express: 10/10 inky stars

The Doctor, Clara and Courtney are taken by the TARDIS to the moon of the future. They find dead astronauts, giant spiders with neon stripes and an alien about to hatch… When I first heard about this episode, I was pretty excited, for the same reason I was excited about Time Heist, namely, yay for that Brit drama actress turning up who I like a lot (one day I will write a TV blog post on why Hermione Norris is the sort of quietly feminist actress everyone should take note of, particularly in Wire in the Blood and Spooks. I actually laughed at The Doctor when he goaded Lundvik because it was Hermione he was speaking to). Unfortunately, the premise, as many will have read about by now, became an unfortunate abortion metaphor (whether intended or otherwise it was kind of hard to read the main theme of the episode as anything else), the return of Courtney irritated and the budget simply didn’t allow for the kind of frightening ecodisaster meets arachnids (Shelob and Aragog style) the story was trying to sell us.

Clara as Teacher

The episode opens with Clara talking to two audiences: the population of earth in the episode and the viewing public outside of the episode. Her speech also marks a return to experimenting with an episode story unfolding for the audience in real time as Clara says, ‘an innocent life vs. all humankind. We have 45 minutes to decide.’ This sort of moral dilemma isn’t new to Doctor Who, but it is normally an interesting premise. Unfortunately, Kill The Moon cops out in the final 15 minutes with the either/or choice never debated philosophically, though Lundvik (Queen H) does her best to bring a dose of reality to proceedings which is hastily ignored by both Clara and The Doctor. Clara’s more nuanced role this series is excellent, but she isn’t used to great effect in this episode, her final choice turning out fine steering her dangerously close to Mary Sue territory.

The Doctor and Courtney

Courtney was still inconsistent this episode. However, she has improved since her last few appearances. I even cracked a smile when Clara claimed that she’d used psychic paper to purchase alchopops. I also laughed at The Doctor’s TARDIS rule for companions and part time travelers (no sickness and no hanky-panky) with the second rule especially amusing in light of how long Amy and Rory Pond traveled in the TARDIS as full time companions. Courtney’s quick thinking in killing a giant spider with germ killer spray was also pretty hard core in an old fashioned companion style action similar to Ace. I also thought that there was real possibility in this (and maybe later?) episodes to contrast Courtney’s reaction to The Doctor against Clara’s, especially given Danny’s comments last week. It would have been potentially interesting to explore Courtney’s disintegration at the introduction of the horrors of travelling with The Doctor, particularly given she is a child, as a counterpoint against Clara feeling fine when she should be feeling terrified or horrified.

On the negative end of things, I mentally told Courtney to grow up when Courtney complained that The Doctor didn’t call her special. When I first re-watched this episode, I thought that the point of The Doctor making Clara, Lundvik and Courtney (the astronaut, the teacher and the child) decide earth and the moon’s fate was to make Courtney special (there is actually a poem about this called ‘The Most Important Rap’ and it ended on the stanza ‘I am a child and the future I see and there would be no future if it wasn’t for me). Then I realised that The Doctor hadn’t known there was anything wrong with the moon till he got there and nor did he know what the outcome of the decision would be, not really. He could have been wrong about the alien young not destroying its moon nest and then where would Courtney have been? Courtney also flip flopped between fear, instagramming and wanting to make ‘pro life’ decisions. I get that she’s a teenager, but I just found the character kind of irritating overall.

Great Doctor Moments

I loved the return of The Doctor and his yoyo, the reinforcement of his belief that it is the little human moments which decide the big moments and his Geronimo style leap into a crater of amniotic fluid armed only with germ killer.

A Confused Moral Debate

For the first half hour, this episode isn’t half bad and feels like a classic alien of the week Who story. Unfortunately, once the moral debate set up by Clara at the start of the episode begins in earnest, the story and its themes becomes unstuck. Lundvik believes that humanity should blow up aliens (in the context of this episode, I don’t blame her) whilst The Doctor, Clara and Courtney are pacifist. When The Doctor’s reaction is “something living, something growing…. the moon is hatching,” surely Clara’s reaction of “huh” is most people’s. The plot is already bonkers at this point, but then the story gets awkward with its unfortunate abortion metaphor – kill the creature inside the moon or let the alien hatch, crack the moon open like an egg and have the moon fall to earth and destroy life on earth as we know it?

The Doctor: There’s only one of its kind, utterly beautiful…
Lundvik: How do we kill it?

I can’t have been the only person who thought that Lundvik had the absolute right idea. In the absence of real evidence that the hatching alien wouldn’t destroy the moon and thus earth who wouldn’t destroy the alien? Really now? Lundvik only said it like it is when she said, “some things are just bad… it’s not a chicken, it’s an exo-parasite.” (As an aside, I quite liked the return of snarky, almost Ros Myers like, Hermione when she said things like “I can tell [you are ground control] from your hair cut” and when she calls The Doctor a “prat” with devastating cool.) She cuttingly tells it to Clara and Courtney like is is for a second time when she says bitterly that she is about to witness:

The day life on earth stopped because you couldn’t make an unfair decision… we can’t risk it all just to be nice.

In true democratic fashion, the three women (Note: women making core decisions and a female President) take the vote to earth. Lights off means kill the alien, lights on means take the risk. Unsurprisingly, earth doesn’t want to take the risk. Clara aborts the kill button at the eleventh hour (idiot!). Conveniently, this turns out to be the right decision because the alien hatches without destroying its ‘shell’ aka the moon, but it clearly happens as a convenient plot point, not because there is any real evidence that Clara made a logical or particularly moral decision. I especially hated that Lundvik lost her usual Hermione Norris spine and thanked Clara for stopping her from destroying the alien. When The Doctor claims that he guessed what would happen because young don’t destroy their nests I wanted to punch my TV in. This is so blatantly false from what we know of the animal kingdom that it pulled me completely out of the story. Though the sentiment of humanity changing its own history by letting an alien fly free is a nice one (humanity sees a creature and wants to see it, not destroy it) is a nice one, it doesn’t really feel earnt without the nuanced moral debate to hold up the episode premise.

The Doctor and Clara Show Down

Now this was one of the strongest aspects of the episode. Too bad later episodes never followed through. Clara loses her temper with The Doctor for patronizing humanity and making her make a hard choice which could have been wrong. It almost feels like another Clara companion exit, especially when she tells The Doctor, ‘You go a long way away.” There is a beautiful scene at the end of the episode where Danny speaks to an angry Clara about finishing running with The Doctor. He says of her rage, “you’re never finished with anyone when you’re angry’ which frankly, feels truthful. I hope that they somehow revisit this idea in series 9.

Kill The Moon: 3/10 inky stars

The next two weeks are utterly excellent from newcomer, Jamie Mathieson. I. am. excited.

The Caretaker reminded me an awful lot of Chris Chibnell’s The Power of Three. In many respects it achieves the same thing that that episode did with Amy and Rory’s relationship with Eleven explored in that episode just as Clara and Twelve’s is in The Caretaker. The difference is that Danny is an outsider whereas Rory is a companion at that point in Series 7. The Caretaker also features one of the common threads of Moffat era Who: interesting thematic ideas and character development with a lousy alien of the week. The alien is a vehicle for character exploration. Nothing more.

The Caretaker sees Twelve go undercover at Clara’s school to face down an alien force. Comedy ensues as The Doctor antagonises Danny and his relationship with Clara, trolls Clara trying to teach, is a bad influence on the children and generally makes a fool of himself. There are also some nice shout out moments to previous episodes with The Doctor referencing his relationship with River, a re-visit of the John Smith pseudonym, a police officer death similar to The Eleventh Hour, an Eleventh Doctor reference and the return of unimaginative and irritating children (Clara’s earlier charges in series 7 I’m looking at you).

Companions who Never Were

There’s a pattern here, Series 8. Young Courtney fills the role this week, though her response to the TARDIS (vomiting and running away) leaves a lot to be desired. I can’t help but feel that her staying far away from the TARDIS is a good thing.

Dan the Soldier Man

One of the strongest points of Series 8 has been its willingness to follow a theme through to the end and give character’s space to develop. The Doctor’s hatred of soldiers continues in The Caretaker. This time The Doctor equates sport (PE teachers) with soldiers as he puts Danny down again and again.

Doctor: Some military idiot will attack it… the world is full of PE teachers.

Clara protests: He’s a maths teacher. Not a soldier.
The Doctor: Interesting.

It is implied later in the episode that The Doctor is testing Danny as a person and Clara’s ability to choose a partner well. In one of the more interesting ideas of the episode, Danny tells The Doctor that he is the officer who lights the flame which draws soldiers into conflicts. Death In Heaven follows this through so more on this theme later.

The Danny and Clara Relationship

I didn’t actually like Danny as a character until Dark Water. Samuel Anderson feels a bit too forced to me and his character was no Rory. It didn’t help that he was inconsistently written. One second he was a second Rory, the next he was a controlling tosser. Like Amy, Clara cannot admit to her lover that she leads a double life (despite the lessons of Listen). Unlike Amy, she tries to have her cake and eat it too by living both lives at once. Understandably Danny is upset, but that doesn’t make it OK when he says the below:

Danny: Do you love him?
Clara: No, not in that way.
Danny: What other way is there?

Wow Danny? Have you never heard of a little thing called friendship. Douche. Admittedly The Doctor is no better when he says:

You’ve explained me to him [Danny]. You haven’t explained him to me.

Why on earth does Clara need to justify herself to either of them? She is a grown woman who can make her own decisions and choices. This is one of the few Moffat era Who episodes which I genuinely feel is sexist. On the plus side, Danny rushes in to protect Clara from evil aliens. Unfortunately, unlike Rory, he doesn’t do it because he genuinely loves Clara and wants to understand her choices. He does it to prove himself worthy to the person he perceives controls Clara ie The Doctor. I genuinely wanted to throw something at the screen when he said the following:

Danny: I was behind you every step of the way… I had to know you were safe. I had to be good enough for you… that’s why he’s angry. Just in case I’m not.

Everything about this plot thread annoyed me and I’m glad they abandoned it down the track.

Understanding Twelve

Twelve continues his trend of failing to differentiate between human faces, getting confused by Clara’s appearance and expressions and assuming that Clara’s lover is an Eleventh Doctor look-a-like teacher down to the bow tie. His habit of putting down others continues to jar. However, this episode reveals more of the true Twelve, the one fully developed by the series finale, the one who is simply an old man with a box travelling and learning.

Though I don’t much enjoy the child actors they get on New Who, I did enjoy Twelve’s exchange with Courtney:

Courtney: I’m a disruptive influence!
The Doctor: Pleased to meet you.

Here, The Doctor’s cluelessness is endearing.

As is his banter with Clara (also Clara the teacher is much more interesting than Clara the walking plot device). I love it when he leans into the classroom and argues about literature, when he winks at her upon being announced as the new caretaker, when he says ‘sing Hosanna’ at Clara doing what she’s told for once and when he equates acting like an idiot with the care-taking job. I also like Clara’s quip to The Doctor and reminder to the audience that she is The Doctor’s teacher as much as her students teacher.

Clara’s Addiction

Like The Power of Three, this episode highlights what happens to companions when they grow addicted to running with The Doctor. The opening of The Caretaker sees Clara exhausting herself managing two lives at once. Something has to give and that thing is her relationship with Danny. She even gives up a night of ‘canoodling’ to run with The Doctor.

She has ‘learnt’ The Doctor’s role, this time telling Danny the TARDIS story herself (as he looks inside to Amy’s Theme). The show continue to show us how she has adopted the role as the series progresses. However,Danny warns her (and us) about the dangers of finding running with people like The Doctor normal.

Danny: They make you stronger, do things you never thought you could do. You weren’t scared. You should have been.

It will be interesting to see how Moffat et.al. develop this in Series 9.

A Glimpse of Heaven

We get another reminder of Missy this week and get our first glimpse of the officious Seb to some great work from Murray Gold as we hear the first proper run of Missy’s Theme. We also get a better look at The Neversphere/Promised Land. When Seb says ‘So… any questions?’ It’s a deliberate meta question to the fans who have so many.

The Caretaker: 6/10 inky stars

I was so excited for this episode the first time round because KEELEY HAWES Y’ALL. Ahem. Anyway, who knew that an episode penned by Stephen Thompson (he who also wrote orientalist Sherlock episode and the abysmal The Curse of the Black Spot) could be such rollicking fun and still smart at the same time? This episode is what happens when Oceans Eleven meets Doctor Who and the story could have worked as part of the Series 7 run, when each week caricatured a new genre. Time Heist sees The Doctor and Clara positioned alongside two other strangers to rob the most secure bank in the galaxy. Only problem is, neither of them can remember why they agreed to rob the bank or who the mysterious Architect is who directs them on their mission.

Companions who never are?

Luckily, beyond the opening credits, this stand alone episode really kicks off as we meet Psy (zomg Ollie from Broadchurch) and Saibra (The Doctor and Clara’s partners in crime) as well as see the impenetrable bank, with a set and costumes reminiscent of The Hunger Games (yay for high production values!) Both Psy and Saibra are interesting would be companions, adding to the long list found in Series 8 as a whole. Psy can delete memories and did so in prison to protect his loved ones. Saibra can shape change. Both die in blazes of glory with Saibra telling The Doctor, ‘You’re a good man. I left it rather late to meet one of those.’ Psy goes out the tragic hero.

But this is a Moffat overseen episode, which means people don’t stay dead and everybody lives if The Doctor comes to call. Though some may have found this a bit of a cop-out, I enjoyed the scene in the TARDIS at the end as Clara, The Doctor, Saibra and Psy enjoyed some TARDIS take-out. One of the (many) things I like better about Moffat’s run, is that we see The TARDIS as both a home and a friend.

The Clara/Danny/Doctor relationship

The second time watching, the episode opener with Clara and Danny tackling their second date moved me much more than it initially did, even if Danny’s acting is still slightly off and The Doctor’s continued criticism of Clara’s appearance continues to irk. More interesting than The Doctor’s insistence on insulting Clara’s appearance, was Psy’s conversation with Clara where he says that The Doctor calls himself The Doctor because he goes in for professional detachment with Clara transparent about travelling with him for so long because she has learnt to keep making excuses.

Revealing Twelve

This episode is predominantly fun filler with a tough edge, but we do learn more about Twelve. We learn that this Doctor sees him being in charge as ‘his special power’ and that his idea of a plan is to say what the heck and hope ‘that a thing happens’ (How very Eleven of you, Twelve). Finally, he reminds Karabraxos and the audience that he has been around a long time and is still wearing in a new face as he says of his regeneration, ‘I was hoping for minimalism, but I think I came out with magician.’

The Villainess

Keeley’s entrance as Ms Delphox didn’t disappoint, even if she did continue the trend of female villains on Doctor Who being tall, angular and wearers of bright red lippie. Ms Delphox is an interesting character: a creepily seductive villainess, who nonetheless becomes sympathetic towards the end of the episode when you realize that she is only doing her job. Though The Teller’s detection of another man’s guilt is horrifying as his brain is turned to soup, we can see both sides to the story. Ms Delphox is cruel to people with criminal intent, but she is protecting the bank’s reputation and security rating at the same time. The message is clear. If you obey the rules at the bank, there will be no moral or physical consequence. Alas for The Doctor and his companions…

Keeley had a challenging part: having to play both the clone, Ms Delphox, as well as the real puppeteer behind the bank, Karabraxos, a bitter, rich woman who doesn’t care about people unless they get her more tangible things to add to her wealthy collection. We see this in her private room, a den of antiquity and collector’s items complete with classical music playing in the background. Keeley is a revelation, playing both parts with ease and still bringing a dash of humor to the role.

Karabraxos doesn’t understand The Doctor and his companions at all. ‘What is this display, as amusing as you are?’ she says in response to The Doctor weaponless. At last he realizes his own clever deception for the woman who called The TARDIS was Karabraxos herself, old and infirm and choked up on regrets. He tells her humorously, ‘I thought we were getting on,’ as he gives the young and surprised Karabraxos his number, followed by ‘You’ll be old and full of regret for the things you can’t change.’ Helping an awful woman undo regrets and rescue an ancient species – is this not the summation and the essence of The Doctor? I like to think so.

Time Heist: 9/10 inky stars