Maureen Flynn - Author
Ah Mark Gatiss. What a love/hate relationship I have with your Who episodes. Still, I think this is one of your best. Gatiss is always at his best in a period piece story imo, and this one has a lot of fun with The Doctor…
Wow. That was something. Plain, good old fashioned Who fun penned by Sarah Dollard who wrote Face The Raven last season (which was pretty damn good in its own right). I’m also a sucker for Regency era settings, Dickensian working and living conditions and The…
And so it begins! A new season of Doctor Who after a year’s hiatus and two measly Christmas specials. And boy is it good to be back. It might not be the best drama on television, or the best comedy either, but for sheer reliable outrageous fun, a new episode of Doctor Who beats everything else out there hands down…
I went into this episode with no real expectations. I’ve tried to avoid the promotional hype around New Who as much as possible as I like to be surprised. I had seen images of Pearl Mackie, but had no real opinion of her appearance or acting ability. I like the Twelfth Doctor, I generally like Moffat Who and Series 9 was an especially strong season of the show in my humble opinion(the strongest since Series 5 by my book), but I was bored to tears by The Return of Doctor Mysterio. So what did I think?
I agree with many other pro reviewers who saw this as a soft series reboot, right down to the knowing episode title. We got a new companion who has no prior knowledge of The Doctor and his TARDIS, meaning we as viewers saw the show fresh through her eyes. We got an episode which doesn’t rely on past knowledge of the show (it’s arguable that the photos of Susan and River Song on The Doctor’s desk are merely fan service), and we got an alien lite episode ala Rose to get new viewers used to our favorite time travelling gang. Moffat still proves in this episode that he has a way of pinning down the human condition and relationships and how we understand the world the same way that our greatest fantasy writers do. Quotes like this one:
Hunger looks very much like evil from the other end of the cutlery. Do you think your bacon sandwich loves you back?
And this one:
Time. Time doesn’t pass. Time is an illusion. And Life is the magician. Because Life only lets you see one day at a time. You remember being alive yesterday, you hope you’re going to be alive tomorrow, so it feels like you are traveling one to the other, but nobody’s moving anywhere! Movies don’t really move. They’re just pictures, just lots and lots of pictures, all of them still. None of them moving, just frozen moments!
Simply reaffirm for me that beneath the story writing pressures and mistakes and clever gimmicks Moffat falls back on in his TV storytelling, there is a great fantasy novelist waiting for the perfect opportunity to come out hidden there somewhere. Anyhow, The Pilot is fun, if slight, with some great character moments for new companion, Bill.
New Companion Bill
I loved the concept of The Doctor as a university lecturer and I loved why Bill was in his office (because she smiled when confronted with questions she didn’t know the answer to). I wasn’t a huge fan of Clara or of her story trajectory and felt that she only really worked as a plot device until the Series 8 finale and all of Series 9 when she morphed into a Doctor-like role. With Bill, for the first time in a while, there is a companion in the TARDIS who meets The Doctor by chance and bonds with The Doctor through common quirks of personality, rather than because they are a mystery to be solved. I like mysteries as much as the next person, but am ready for a companion who is exactly who she says she is.
Having said that, a friend’s partner did point out the way the camera panned on the Doctor’s photographs of River Song and his granddaughter Susan coupled with the way The Doctor went out of his way to take photographs of Bill’s Mum to surmise that Bill could somehow be related to Susan through her Mum. Though I’m always happy for some in show Susan loving, and it’s not a shabby theory, I’m not sure I’m ready for another companion mystery. Rather, I assumed that The Doctor went back in time to take photograph’s of Bill’s Mum because Bill had been sad when she mentioned she didn’t have any photos of her Mum to The Doctor (and we all know The Doctor doesn’t interfere in people or planets unless there’s children crying).
Bill and her character was a key part of The Pilot in other ways too. This week’s horror film inspired big bad puddle needed a host to move around through and landed on Bill’s crush, Heather, as the perfect host. Bill’s story about selling chips to Heather was a nice way of establishing Bill’s sexuality and the mundane boredom of her life in comparison to the one we know she will soon gain through travelling with The Doctor. It also meant we felt sad when Heather had to let Bill go and Bill had to let Heather go, beyond saving. The obligatory companion ‘bigger on the inside’ was excellent as was the toilet gag and I loved the brief view of Australia before The Doctor whisked Bill to The Daleks and another nod to yesteryear (this time through Destiny of the Daleks and the Movellans). By episode’s end, I was grinning as much as Bill was at joining The Doctor and Nardole in The TARDIS.
Nardole: The Second Companion
I always like it when there’s more than one companion in The TARDIS. There’s more scope for actor’s to bounce off each other. Look no further than The Pond years where The Doctor vs River vs Amy vs Rory banter was enormously fun. I’m not always keen on Matt Lucas, but his Nardole is growing on me. I feel that with time and the right script, Nardole could really come into his own beyond the mere comedic.
The Mystery
For once in Moffat Who the mystery starts light. Just what is The Doctor and Nardole protecting inside the university and why? Is it to protect something or to prevent something getting out? And will the show keep revisiting Twelve as the university lecturer so we can keep revisiting this mysterious box? Does that mean we’ll see more of Bill and her foster Mum as Bill navigates time travel and ordinary life and relationships? Certainly, one of the major criticisms of Moffat Who is the lack of meaningful family life for his companions, so this could be a good way to keep Bill feeling rounded. Finally, will Bill find out what’s in the box, and it it, as my friend’s partner suspects, connected to Bill in some way?
There’s only one way to find out folks, and that’s by tuning in next week…
The Pilot: 8/10 inky stars for a solid and fun start to series 10
PS: Did I seen Simm Master in that series trailer? WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING MOFF????
NB: This discusses the whole series in detail. There are massive spoilers. You have been warned. I’m not an obsessive Marvel fan. I thought Winter Soldier was really, really good. I thought Iron Man 1 and 2 were kind of subversive and really good fun.…
Wow, two episodes into the new series, and I’m already a blog post behind… AGAIN. This is what happens when I go to Conflux. Anyway, the follow up to The Magician’s Apprentice is even better than its first act. Who doesn’t love a Clara/Missy double…
This episode sees the debut of newcomer writer, Jamie Mathieson, who wrote two of the most fun and most original episodes of Series 8. Mummy on the Orient Express sees The Doctor and Clara on board Christie’s famous train in space, even down to the 1920s attire and the gang of suspicious intellectuals. The episode gets bonus points for a zany plot and pace which none the less made perfect sense and the Queen remake, Don’t Stop Me Now.
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
Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was…
Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was…
Title: Suspended in Dusk
Editor: Simon Dewar
Publisher: Books of the Dead Press
Year Published: 2014
RRP: $99c Amazon
I made two resolutions to do with my reading habits at the beginning of this year:
1. To read a wider range of genre fiction, including genres I am not so keen on
2. To review, read and interview a wider range of Australian authors, editors and publishers for this blog
I have pushed myself to read a bigger amount of horror and short story collections, so I jumped at the opportunity to read Simon Dewar’s new anthology Suspended in Dusk: a collection of fresh horror shorts from new and established writers. I am no horror aficionado, but as a layman on the outside looking in, this anthology has much to offer to any eager readers.
From the blurb:
DUSK
A time between times.
A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special.
A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple.
Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places.
Secrets and dreams are kept… forever.
Or was it all just a trick of the light?
Suspended in Dusk brings together 19 stories by some of the finest minds in Dark Fiction:
Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Rayne Hall, Shane McKenzie, Angela Slatter, Alan Baxter, S.G Larner, Wendy Hammer, Sarah Read, Karen Runge, Toby Bennett, Benjamin Knox, Brett Rex Bruton, Icy Sedgwick, Tom Dullemond, Armand Rosamilia, Chris Limb, Anna Reith, J.C. Michael.
Introduction by Bram Stoker Award Winner and World Horror Convention Grand Master, Jack Ketchum.
The collection features a range of horror writers from UK, USA, South Africa and Australia and includes tales of the weird, the zombie apocalypse, unexpected spirits and murder, graveyards, spraying body parts and ghosts of history past. All 19 stories are inspired and linked by the theme of ‘dusk’ – whether the literal definition of the transition from light to dark, or more metaphorical permeations of evil or the in between space between good and evil, moral and immoral, good and bad.
Highlight stories were those by Alan Baxter (on the darkness within), Anna Reith, Arman Rosamilia, J C Michael, Ramsey Campbell (with a clever take on the universal fear of being buried alive), Wendy Hammer (with her tribute to the late Ray Bradbury) and Angela Slatter (with a spin on who’s playing at villain and victim, hunted and hunter). My absolute favorite story, however, came from Brett Rex Bruton with his thoroughly post modern hard boiled crime story told out of order, featuring tongue in cheek cliches left, right and centre, and literary plot devices that were central to the crime taking place (the object of everyone’s desire is a literal maguffin in a box).
The anthology is currently 99c on Amazon, so if you like horror or short stories or just taking punts on emerging writers, this is the anthology to buy!
Suspended in Dusk: 4/5 inky stars
You can buy the anthology here.
Bad Power, Deborah Biancotti Twelfth Planet Press October 2011 RRP: $18 Australian I first heard of Deborah Biancotti two years ago at a Conflux Convention. I encountered her in a crime panel when I decided to break up my steady diet of epic fantasy, doctor…
