Tagged: Doctor Who

New Who Review: “Kill the Moon”

It’s the classic time travel question – would you kill a dangerous killer in their crib, before they’ve actually done anything?  Well, what is you weren’t sure the baby was going to do anything?  What if you were asked to…

KILL THE MOON
By  Peter Harness
Directed by Paul Whilmshurst

Clara speaks to the entire Earth – they run the risk of the Earth being destroyed if they don’t kill an innocent being.  “The man who normally helps” is nowhere to be found, and a decision must be made.  Flashing backwards, we learn that Coal Hill student Courtney Woods has not reacted well to her brief run on the TARDIS.  The Doctor told her she “wasn’t special”, a comment she’s taken to heart.  Clara asks him to apologize; he instead offers her a chance to be the first woman on the Moon.

Alas, all is not well there.  In 2049, the moon has mysteriously gained 1.3 billion tons of extra mass, causing staggering tides on Earth.  It turns out the moon is something altogether new to The Doctor’s eyes, and rather than help…he walks away.

This was a very dark episode with a bright ending, only to reveal that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.  I expect we’ll see this story used in argument for certain social issue quite soon now.  Fabulous performances all round.

GUEST STAR REPORT – Hermione Norris (Lundvik) is well known to British audiences for many regular TV appearances in series like Spooks and Cold Feet.

Tony Osoba (Duke) – is one of a smallish group of actors who’s appeared in both the new and original run of the series.  He had roles in both Destiny of the Daleks and some years later in Dragonfire.

Paul Whilmshurst (director) will be back next week, and will be directing the Christmas episode.  He has a long resume of TV directing, both drama and reality/documentary.

Peter Harness (writer) has been writing for British television for nearly a decade now.  He wrote and appeared in a TV movie about British comedy legend Frankie Howerd, who was played by Who-lumnus David Walliams.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Moon has been the setting of many Who adventures over the decades. It first threatened the Earth millions of years ago, where the dominant life form of the Earth, who would come to be known as Silurians, feared a monstrous asteroid would crash into the planet.  They set themselves up in massive hibernation cities to sleep through the disaster, only for the heavenly body to be trapped by the Earth’s gravity and become the Moon.  That change to the delicate balance of the orbital mechanics of the solar system was enough to allow the planet Mondas to break free of its orbit, returning millennia later as The Tenth Planet.  There have been many bases on the Moon, built and manned by both human and alien forces.  The Cybermen tried to attack one in an appropriately titled episode.  It would be used as a penal colony, house River Song’s alma mater, and eventually, we’d haul in four more for additional real estate.  Needless to say, there’s never been any mention of it hatching a titanic alien and leaving another one in its place, but that’s the sort of thing that gets forgotten when you’re trying to fight off Draconians.

Doctor Who has had its share of spiders as well, even if in this case they’re just bacteria that resemble spiders, by some mad coincidence.  Brought with human explorers in the future, spiders would evolve to control the world of Metebelis III, eventually known as the Planet of the Spiders.  The Racnoss were a semi-arachnid race who planned an overthrow of the world, stopped by the able assistance of The Runaway Bride.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS –

SET PIECES – Rather than go for the old reliable stone quarry, the production team traveled to Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands off Africa, to duplicate the surface of the Moon.  It was last used in the Davison adventure Planet of Fire.

I WEAR THE CLOTHES OF THE REGENERATED – Capaldi is wearing David Tennant’s spacesuit from The Satan Pit, a suit which is rapidly becoming the most recycled prop on the show, gaining on that rock used on almost every alien planet in the classic series.

“No being sick and no hanky-panky” – Considering the last time there was…you know, what-not… on the TARDIS, it resulted in River Song, a clear example of a result which caused both happiness and hardship.

“You’ll have to spend a lot of time, shooting me, because I will keep on regenerating” – The Doctor may be bluffing when says he might keep on regenerating forever – he made a similar comment on The Sarah Jane Adventures when he was asked how many times he could do it.  But the new energy infusion given him by the Time Lords is something new – it’s not known if it was enough for one, a whole new cycle of twelve, or a potentially infinite number.

“What is wrong with my yo-yo?” – The Doctor used a yo-yo to test gravity force during the Baker years, with the same color yo-yo, yet.  I’ve mentioned before that this Doctor is using more gadgets, large and small, to get things done, not just relying on the Sonic Screwdriver, a change I love campaigned for.

“That’s what you do with aliens, isn’t it? Blow them up?” It’s not The Doctor’s primary method, but it’s come up a couple times.  Prime Minister Harriet Jones, (Yes, we know who you are) contacted Torchwood to destroy the retreating Sycorax spaceship at the end of The Christmas Invasion.  And after Leela recommended it the whole time, The Doctor suddenly “came up with the idea” of blowing up The Invisible Enemy.

“High tide everywhere at once” – Well, no. It’d be tides far higher than normal for parts of the Earth both facing and pointed away from the moon, and calamitous low tides at the sides.

“When I say run…run” – So much fun to see bits of the old Doctors pop up again. That was one of the second Doctor’s catch phrases, like in <a href=”

target=”_blank”>this clip from Tomb of the Cybermen.

“There are some moments in time that I simply can’t see” This is a new take on the old reliable “Fixed Point”, where crucial points in history exist, chronal tipping points that cannot be changed.  But here, rather than just walking away, here he forces three humans to make a choice that will damn the world, either physically, or by making them party to genocide.

“My Gran used to put things on tumblr” There actually is a girl named Courtney Woods with an account on tumblr, and I expect she’s getting an amazing increase in traffic right now.  The Doctor Who tumblr community is amazingly vast and creative, featuring animation, art and filk music.  It’s neat we’re finally getting a shout out.

“The last time you said that, she turned up on the wrong side of the planet!” – Clara is referring to the events of Cold War, where the TARDIS popped off to the south pole because The Doctor turned on the HADS, or Hostile Action Displacement System.

“There’s some DVDs in the blue bookshelf – just stinck on in the TARDIS console, it’ll bring you to me” There are exactly seventeen DVD titles containing the program that will automatically return the TARDIS to The Doctor’s location.  They are the seventeen DVDs owned by Sally Sparrow, as revealed in the classic Blink.

“We didn’t nip out after pudding and kill Hitler” River Song, or rather Mels certainly tried that one time.

“Turn your lights off” – Real world physics get in the way here. Luckily, when they see the moon from Earth at the end of the episode, it’s full, which means it’d be behind the Earth. That’s backed up by the fact that the Moon is fully lit throughout the episode. This means when they were looking at the Earth, they’d be looking at the side in night   If they were on the other side, they’d never be able to see the lights. But unless my math is wrong, 45 minutes is not close to enough time for the light-up votes of the entire Earth to be seen – only an additional sliver of the Earth’s circumference would com around.

“Mind your language, please – there are children present” I count one child. Whoever could The Doctor be referring to in the plural? Patronizing, indeed.

“You made your decision…humanity made its choice” Assuming the vote is the same on the bright side, the Earth chose to kill a beautiful and innocent creature to save themselves.  That’s more than a bit similar to the choice the denizens of Britain made when they built the Starship UK in The Beast Below. Considering they made themselves all forget they did it then, maybe that’s a viable explanation why it’s so rarely mentioned in future history.

“Not bad for a girl from Coal Hill School” I for one am perfectly ready for Courtney Woods to come on full time as a companion.  We’re seeing her make a massive change in just these two episodes.  She’s not well educated, she’s an average kid.  And as such is a more perfect avatar for the viewer than any of the adult companions we’ve seen in the entire new series.  Companions are often younger in the comics for that reason. It’s likely the extra issues of a minor working on a TV show, especially one as intensive as Doctor Who that precludes such a casting choice, but for a girl for this this is her first professional acting job, Ellis George is more than up for it.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Clara’s arc is once again the only one furthered this week.  The blowout argument with The Doctor, combined with the heart-to-heart with Danny, certainly points towards a change of affiliation in the future.

“It’s time to take the stabilizers off your bike” there may be two levels of action happening here.  The Doctor is forcing Clara to make a staggering decision.  He is also causing a rift in their relationship.  What are the odds that this is another attempt to push Clara to safety?  It’s plainly obvious that Clara will do everything in her power to help The Doctor – she hung onto the outside of the TARDIS for an eyes-open trip through the time vortex in The Time of the Doctor. She’s already spent an unknown amount of time racing through his timeline, fixing what The Great Intelligence set wrong.  Perhaps he knows she deserves a rest, and knows the only way she’d leave is if he all but pushes her away.  As here, The Doctor is forcing Clara to make a massive choice.

“You wanna have babies?” Courtney’s teasing mention of Danny is spot on.  Assuming he’s not something Clever and surprising from Moffat’s dark evil heart, the budding relationship between Danny and Clara is almost a certainty.  There’s not much that could stop it – death, perhaps, or as mentioned, an inability to leave The Doctor.

“I’ve got Grey areas” “Yeah, I noticed” It sure sounds like a hair joke, but on further rumination, it’s pretty clear Clara is talking about the grey areas in The Doctor’s personality.  This is an extension of that first question – “Am I a good man?”

clara-9050084 doctor-3856537 copperfield-2574326
That’s the quote from David Copperfield on Clara’s board. Once again, the choices of quotes Clara selects are amazingly prescient.

“I had a really bad day” – Yes, there’s absolutely a very big story to be told here, and there’s still a chance it may not be a good one for Clara and their relationship.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – The Doctor tests the little grey cells.  Mummy on the Orient Express, coming this Saturday.

New Who Review – “Time Heist”

“Are you in or out?”

The Doctor and Clara wake in the company of two strangers and are quickly told they are to rob a bank.  Everything is planned so well, almost as if the planner knows what’s going to happen, that The Doctor quickly realizes that this isn’t a mere bank heist, but a…

TIME HEIST
By Steve Thompson and Steven Moffat
Directed by Douglas MacKinnon

The Bank of Karabraxos is the single most secure bank in human history.  A loyal staff, redundant security systems, and a guard dog that literally smells guilt in the customers.  When The Doctor picks up the phone of the TARDIS and suddenly recovers from a blackout in a strange room with two criminals, it’s too tantalizing not to move ahead with.  Being chased by the bank’s security at all times, the quartet must breach unbreachable security, all the while not actually know what they’re supposed to steal.

A solid thriller with questions and puzzles all the way through.  Once again, the idea of breaking into the perfect bank is not new, but with the right character work and a delightful twist at the end, it works wonderfully.

GUEST STAR REPORT – Keeley Hawes (Ms. Delphox, Mme. Karabraxos ) is best known to genre fans as the voice of Lara Croft in seven games to date over nearly ten years.  She’s played Lady Agnes Holland on the new version of Upstairs Downstairs, and DI Alex Drake on Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars.

Jonathan Bailey (Pai) appeared with David Tennant in the murder procedural Broadchurch and had the titles role in Leonardo.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Teller is a magnificent beast, both in design and ability.  Unlike a number of creatures in the new series, it was made with practical effects, which meant it was on set with the actors and they didn’t have to imagine what it looked like.  Like the Crooked Man from Hide, the being was driven by the loss of its mate, and once they were reunited, its rage and malice abated.  There have been plenty of telepathic species in the show, though few with such a weaponized form.  The Sensorites could affect the minds of other beings, and their planetary neighbors the Ood could communicate at amazing distances from each other.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS –

THE FACES OF THOSE HE’S WRONGED FLOAT UP AT HIM – In that fast flip of hardened criminals, more than a few recognizable faces can be seen.  There was a Sensorite from the Hartnell adventure, a Tereliptil from the Davison years, an Ice Warrior, a group of Slitheen, and a Weevil and John Hart from Torchwood. But most interesting is a character from the Doctor Who comics – Absalom Daak, Dalek Killer. Created by Steve Moore and Steve Dillon, Daak enjoyed a long run in the Doctor Who Weekly.

BECAUSE IT ORBITS URANUS AND LOOKS FOR KLINGONS – One of the treasures in Madame Karabraxos’ vault is quite valuable to episode director Douglas MacKinnon.  It’s a rocket ship made from a toilet paper tube, made for him by her daughter for Christmas.

ONE CAN DO THE WORK OF TWO – They only made one Teller suit.  Even the last scene as they walk away was a double-exposure, the suit actor playing both the male and female.

“It’s a memory worm” – First seen in The Snowmen, the memory worm is a creature whose slimy coating has the defensive ability to erase the past hour of memory from any being who touches it.  In the aforementioned adventure, Sontaran Strax keeps touching it, as he is a boob.  Here, they’re used to erase the memories of The Doctor’s gang (he has a gang now) before beginning their little expedition.  The effects of the worms seem to have changed a bit, or at least clarified – here it’s shown that the memories are not erased as much as blocked. Not exactly a big change, and effectively no difference when attempting to get away from a predator.

“Why are we not using the TARDIS?” – It’s always fun to get to answer the questions the viewer are already thinking of.  Let’s them know you’re a step ahead.  Solar Storms affected the navigation of the TARDIS in The Rebel Flash, so there’s precedent for keeping away from the interference.  Of course, as we’ll find out later, there’s a more ulterior motive for not using it – to make things more fun.

“He’s gone already, it’s over” – Once again, while the Tennant or Smith incarnations would sweat and suffer over not being able to save someone they’ve not even met, this Doctor is a pragmatist.  Even when it looks like their own compatriots are killed, he moves forward, eyes on the prize. Of course, one could note that Clara seems to have rather quickly gotten over the loss of Psi and Saibra once that big tantalizing vault opens.

“Basically, it’s the eyebrows” – Not to mention the air of knowledge and authority The Doctor gives off.  He uses a trick yr. obt. svt. uses whenever he can – act like you’re supposed to be there.  Nine times out of ten, people take your unspoken word for it, and follow your lead.

“You can delete your memories?” – Psi’s story is somewhat of a mirror to Captain Jack Harkness’ original backstory, which has since been somewhat forgotten.  While a Time Agent, he had a large part of his memories deleted, and was trying to find who did it, and if possible recover them.

“Don’t think” – Once again, a simple act is made scary. From trying not to Blink, to Clara having to hold her breath at the beginning of the season to trying not to think of anything here, they’re all things that the viewer can’t help but trying not to do along with her as they watch. We can only hope that nobody thought of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

“It’s a neophyte circuit – I’ve only ever seen one once before” – And I’ll lay odds this is the same one. The Doctor set this entire adventure up – the request from Madame Karabraxos could have been done any number of ways, but he chose to set it up in a way that would not only be the most interesting for himself and Clara, but to help cure/repair two people who he’d clearly never met before he did his research and found them.

“I hate the Architect!” – The theme of the episode is the idea of not being able to trust, or even stand, someone who looked exactly like you.  It’s why Saibra couldn’t touch anyone (“Could you trust someone who looked like you, out of your own eyes?”), it’s why Madame Karabraxos’ relationship with her cloned employees was to tense, and why The Doctor thought The Architect was such a bossy prat.  At that point he didn’t know he’d planned all this, he only suspected, based on an analysis of the mysterious man’s personality.  It’s not the first time he’s displayed such a low opinion of himself – once he realizes who the Dream Lord was in Amy’s Choice,  he said there was only one person in the universe who could hate him that much.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Not much mention of the plot in this episode, save for a brief appearance by Danny Pink, who is certainly (OK, hopefully) not the Big Bad, but is certainly setting up to be important to Clara.

“I’m giving you my telephone number” – At the beginning of the episode, The Doctor once again mentions that there’s only a handful of people who has the phone number to the TARDIS, including a mysterious lady in a shop who gave it to Clara back in The Bells of St. John.  Madame Karakraxos is now a member of that group, which also includes most of of The Doctor’s recent companions (like Martha Jones who used it to call him to stop The Sontaran Stratagem), Winston Churchill (from well before Victory of the Daleks) and, apparently, Marilyn Monroe, whose marriage to The Doctor did not count.  And apparently, he’s STILL been too busy to re-route the line to the control panel, as he asked Handles to remind him to do.

“Beat that for a date” – And right there, all the questions about “Why would The Doctor go through all that rigmarole” are answered.  He set the whole thing up as a game to give himself and Clara something to do that day.  In DC Comics, wealthy socialite Sue Dearborn Dibny would get the ultimate Birthday present for her husband, Ralph Dibny, AKA The Elongated Man.  She would set up an elaborate mystery game for him, usually with the assistance of other members of the Justice League, to give him an adventure he’d not soon forget. It’s entirely likely that’s the motivation for The Doctor here.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Clara tries to give Danny more of her time, but The Doctor finds a problem that needs solving by any means necessary.  The Caretaker starts his new job this Saturday

Nick Frost Tops Doctor Who Christmas Special Guest List

  • News
  • September 19, 2014

Confirming recently circulating rumors, the BBC announced today that Nick Frost will guest-star in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special.

Nick comments: “I’m so thrilled to have been asked to guest in the Doctor Who Christmas special, I’m such a fan of the show. The read-through was very difficult for me; I wanted to keep stuffing my fingers into my ears and scream “No spoilers!” Every day on set I’ve had to silence my internal fan boy squeals!”

Nick’s frequent partner in crime Simon Pegg appeared in the Eccleston adventure The Long Game as the Editor of Satellite Five, and servant of the Mighty Jagrafess of the Editor-in-Chief, the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe (And yes, I used cut and paste, there’s none of us perfect). Other members of the Pegg / Frost / Edgar Wright repertory company who have appeared on the series include Michael Smiley in Into the Dalek and Jessica Hynes as Verity Newman in Human Nature, and again as Verity’s descendant Joan Redfern in The End of Time.

Michael Troughton, son of Patrick (a.k.a. Doctor Two)  will appear in the special as well,  making a return to a long acting career after a break from 2002 to care for his wife, who suffered from MS. During the break he also earned a degree in science.  Michael may be best know in the US for his role in The New Statesman against former Young One Rik Mayall.  This marks his first on-camera appearance on Doctor Who – he drove a Dalek in one of father’s adventures. Michael ‘s brother David has made a number of appearances on the show, most recently as Professor Hobbes in Midnight.

They will be joined by Natalie Gumede (Coronation Street, Ideal, Strictly Come Dancing), Faye Marsay (Pride, The White Queen, Fresh Meat) and Nathan McMullen (Misfits, Casualty).

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer, says: “Frost at Christmas – it just makes sense! I worked with Nick on the Tintin movie many years ago and it’s a real pleasure to lure him back to television for a ride on the TARDIS.”

The Doctor Who Christmas special will air on BBC America. Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Paul Wilmshurst (Strike Back, Combat Kids), it will be shot in Cardiff at BBC Wales Roath Lock Studios.

New Who Review – “Robot of Sherwood”

Robot Hood, Robot Hood, riding through the glen,
Robot Hood, Robot Hood, and his band of men…

Clara wants to meet someone legendary, The Doctor tells her they’re all made up, so when he actually shows up, The Doctor is convinced he’s a…

ROBOT OF SHERWOOD
By Mark Gatiss
Directed by Paul Murphy

Clara admits she’s always wanted to meet Robin Hood, who The Doctor waves off as merely a legend.  But as we’ve learned, one does not simply tell Clara Oswald she can’t have something, so off they go to Sherwood.  The Doctor is shocked to discover Robin Hood show up and attempt to appropriate his conveyance.  The Doctor is naturally convinced this is all a trick or plot of some type.  He is at once right, and wrong.  There is a plot, but it’s on the part of the (also real) Sheriff of Nottingham, who has allied himself with a race of robotic spacefarers whose ship is secreted within his castle.  The district-wide canvassing for gold is to built circuitry for the alien craft, to allow it to generate enough power to take off, from which the Sheriff will (dare I say it) rule the world.

The episode is simply too charming and funny to call it anything from a delight.  The dialogue, especially the pissing contests between The Doctor and Robin are hilarious, and for of his claims that he hates banter, The Doctor is very good at it.

At its core, however, it’s far too similar to the series opener – a spaceship, lost in time, crashing to earth and needing help from the locals to take off again, albeit the stuff it needs to repair itself is a bit different.

THE MONSTER FILES – The Robot Knights are more of a minion than a monster, but they’re far from the first.  From The Robots of Death to the Heavenly Host in Voyage of the Damned, they’re powerful and useful.

GUEST STAR REPORT 

Tom Riley (Robin Hood) is known for playing another historical figure; Leonardo Da Vinci on the show Da Vinci’s Demons,.and Oh My God he was in the second St Trinian’s movie as well, a film whose venn diagram with Doctor Who is rapidly approaching a single circle.

Ben Miller (Sheriff of Nottingham) looked way too much like The Master for it to have been anything but a massive in-joke by the crew.  He was going to be a physicist before he met Alexander Armstrong, with whom he went off to start a very successful career in comedy.  He played Johnny English’s assistant Bough in the first film, and appeared

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

A PICTURE IS WORTH… – That one photograph in the middle of the montage of interpretations of Robin in the alien computer?

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Yeah, that was Patrick Troughton.  before he was the second Doctor, he was the first person to play Robin Hood on television.

 WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO CUT THIS ONE SHORT – This episode originally featured a scene of a beheading, specifically, that of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is as a result revealed as a cyborg (and presumably puts the head right back on).  Due to recent events featuring actual beheadings of two journalists by terrorists in the Middle East, it was decided such a scene might be traumatic to some, and the scene was edited.  However, the episode also featured a robot’s head being severed and falling to the floor, not to mention The Doctor joking about the idea of Robin Hood’s head still laughing after it was removed from his neck, so clearly the desire to avoid triggering was somewhat limited.

“Old fashioned heroes only exist in old fashioned storybooks” – And that right there is the theme of the episode.  What happens to Robert of Loxley – to sink into myth and legend – is exactly what The Doctor tried to do to himself in the previous season.  He attempted to erase himself from history and all the databases in the universe.  He naturally had a harder time of it as while Robin Hood only operated for a few years, tops, in one area of England, The Doctor has been poking it in and shaking it all about all over the universe throughout time.

“What about Mars?  The Ice warrior Hives!” – Clara met the Ice Warriors last season in Cold War, and The Doctor of course met them a few times before.

“…or we might be inside a Miniscope!” – The Miniscope is a device designed to allow appreciative audiences to observe the activities of captive (tho unaware of same) beings in a miniaturized and sealed natural environment. The Doctor and Jo Grant were briefly trapped in one in the adventure Carnival of Monsters.

“And this is my spoon” – The Seventh Doctor played the spoons, though he didn’t use them in the more defensive manner he did here.  This scene is much more a Robin Hood reference than anything else – it’s a tip of the hat to the iconic quarterstaff(*) battle between Robin Hood and Little John, as portrayed in too many iterations of the tale to count.

“I’ve had some experience –Richard the Lionheart” – Indeed he has – back in the first Doctor’s adventure The Crusade.  The story was preceded by The Web Planet, the last episode of which had been recovered from a Middle Eastern broadcaster. As a result, it was edited to not include the “next episode” card for The Crusade, as for obvious reasons, that episode was not sold to the Middle East.

“Hai!” – Another callback to the Pertwee era, The Doctor strikes Robin with a Venusian Akido blow.

“Who will rid me of this turbulent Doctor?” – Henry II, King of England once famously asked “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” in reference to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Further increasing the similarities to this episode and Deep Breath, this alien ship is also heading for “The Promised Land”, just as the main Clockwork Droid said he was aiming to reach in the earlier episode.  While we don’t see Missy back, The Doctor did notice the similarity.  What’s interesting is that The Doctor assumed the Droid was speaking metaphorically, based on the humanity he’d picked up over the years, but this ship had a course set for it, as if it were a physical location.

NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – …and gentle be present…to all you’ve ever close kept in your loving heart.  Listen, coming up this Saturday.

    • “Actually, it’s a buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff, but I’m not teillin’ HIM that…”

New Who Review – “Into the Dalek”

“Demons run when a Good Man goes to war,” went the ancient line.  But the problem is, The Doctor is no longer sure he’s a good man.  Further problem is, neither is Clara.  So The Doctor’s not quite sure what he’s going to do when he’s invited to go…

INTO THE DALEK
By Phil Ford and Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley

Human rebel fighter Journey Blue is about to have her ship destroyed by a Dalek saucer when The Doctor saves her by materializing the ship around her, a move for which he expects and demands a thank you.  Returning her back to her command ship, he’s quickly arrested, until Journey tells them he’s a Doctor…which is lucky because they have a patient.  The patient is a Dalek, who is malfunctioning.  As in, it has become good – it is raving that the Daleks must be defeated.

The Doctor retrieves Clara, who is on Earth, having just met Danny Pink, new teacher at Coal Hill School.  The Doctor and his companion are miniaturized so they can physically enter the wounded Dalek and fix it.  The Dalek is suffering from a radiation leak in its power source that was causing its mind to open to new ideas.  Witnessing the birth of a star, it recognized it as beautiful and had a epiphany.  Life will win – no matter how many stars the Daleks have destroyed, new ones are born, in greater number.  The Doctor has a fleeting hope that if he could heal this Dalek and still keep it “good,” he could turn the tide of the future.

Alas, once the radiation leak is fixed, the Dalek’s systems come back on line and it reverts to form.  But Clara insists there more they can do, and with the help of a couple of clever things, they attempt to awaken the goodness this Dalek experienced for just a moment of its horrific life.

All told, and episode that came close to some great moments, but mostly. only close.  It was a story that served to illuminate the relationship between The Doctor and The Daleks in a new way, a connection that deserved a few more lines than it got.  It opened up a possibility for a couple of returning characters, and showed us more of The Doctor’s new, cold demeanor.  I enjoyed it, but it could have been so much more.

THE MONSTER FILES – It’s the Daleks.  You could walk up to any drunken Sterno bum in the UK and they could tell you who they are.  At this point, a fair amount of American bums could.  Bork on Skaro as the end result of a war of attrition between the Kaleds and the Thals, battle-scarred scientist Davros mutated sample of his people’s DNA into what he declared was their final, perfect form (a tentacled blob of flesh that hates everybody) and put them into wee, almost indestructible tanks.

The Doctor met the Daleks in his second televised adventure, and there’s little argument that Terry nation’s creation was what sent the popularity of the show into orbit.  They’ve been back too many times to try to calculate.  The show tried to stop using them twice, once in a story that somewhat paralleled this one, but the allure of such a perfect enemy (not to mention the requisite ratings) is ever too tempting.

WELL EXCUUUUUSE ME – The Daleks almost didn’t make it into the new series, and it’s all comedian Steve Martin’s fault.  He was to appear in Looney Tunes: Back in Action as the head of the Acme Corporation.  There’s a scene in a secret government base where a bunch of aliens escape and wreak havoc.  Being a big Doctor Who fan, Steve thought it would be funny if one of them was a Dalek.  Warner Bros contacted the BBC for permission, and someone at the BBC gave it.  Problem: the BBC don’t own the Daleks, the Terry Nation estate does (Insert long tirade about how much better creators’ rights are handled in other countries here).

The estate was very put out that this was done, and a couple years later when the new series was in pre-production, they considered refusing permission to use the iconic monsters.  Steve Martin wrote a letter to the executors of the estate, personally apologizing for the mess-up.  The estate relented, and The Doctor got to face his greatest enemy again. And again.

The Dalek antibodies are technically the new monster for the episode, and they serve the same purpose as ones in a human body do – stopping invading organisms from damaging anything.  We saw antibody machines in the Teselecta in Let’s Kill Hitler, serving largely the same purpose they did here – to provide an additional threat.  The City of the Exxilons created antibodies to protect itself in the Pertwee adventure Death to the Daleks.

GUEST STAR REPORT  – Phil Ford (Co-writer) has a long history with the new series. He wrote the animated adventure Dreamland, as well as the Tennant adventure Waters of Mars. When Russell T Davies began The Sarah Jane Adventures, Phil worked with him, moving up to head writer for series 2.  He’s most recently worked with RTD on Wizards vs Aliens.  He was also the main writer for the recent CGI remake of classic Supermarionation series Captain Scarlet.

Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink) like most British actors (remember, there’s only 47 of them) has an interesting Venn diagram with other Doctor Who stars.  He was on Emmerdale which also featured Jenna Coleman, and Gavin and Stacey which starred James Corden, a.k.a. Craig Owens from The Lodger and Closing Time.

Michael Smiley (Colonel Morgan Blue) has appeared in several of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s collaborations, including Spaced and two third of the Cornetto Trilogy.  He was Benny Deadhead on Luther, and was in BBC America’s series Ripper Street.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

“Good idea for a movie” – Hanging a lampshade on a classic trope takes the curse off it.  Aside from the obvious, the Fantastic Voyage (and Innerspace) plot has been done on almost every science fiction show you can think of, not to mention plenty of cartoon series.  Heck, it’s been done on the show already: The Doctor was able to shrink clones of himself and Leela into his own brain to fight The Invisible Enemy, and fellow Time Lord Drax shrinks himself and The Doctor in The Armageddon Factor.  Just a little way back the Teselecta had a crew of shrunken humans  as it caught criminals through time.

“He was dead already” – This is another aspect of the more “alien” feel of the new Doctor. Gone, gone is the “I’m so sorry” mindset of Tennant who would sturm and drang over each being he couldn’t save, this Doctor is pragmatic, to point of being callous.

“I saw beauty” – in the adventure Asylum of the Daleks, we learned that the Daleks see beauty in hatred.  “Perhaps that is why we has always had trouble killing you,” the leader Dalek then theorized.  This Dalek saw what it recognized as true beauty in the birth of a star, but at the end of the episode, it sees the hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks, and his head is turned again to that which he has recognized as beauty for so long.

“The Doctor is not the Daleks” – This moment, and this scene, really needed a bit more emphasis.  As I’ve said before, The Daleks largely defined what kind of show Doctor Who was to be.  Sydney Newman had a “No bug-eyed-monsters” ban on the show, initially seeing the series as educational in nature, visiting historical moments to teach history of a sort to kids.  Once The Daleks hit as big as they did, the focus of the show shifted, away from the pure historical adventures and on to the fantastic.  It’s in this speech that that “definition” of The Doctor is applied to the character as well.  It acknowledges that before meeting the Daleks, The Doctor didn’t know what he wanted to do, or what kind of person he wanted to be.  He realized if there was an evil this great in the world, there had to be a good that great to combat it.

“You are a good Dalek” – The sheer hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks was made clear in the Eccleston episode Dalek.  In it, the lone Dalek in Henry van Statten’s collection listens to The Doctor’s wish that it “just die” and says “You would make a good Dalek.”

The parallels between that episode and this are numerous – a lone Dalek, broken and damaged, repaired by The Doctor (or Rose in the first of the two) and then being forced to combat it.  Both point out exactly how powerful a single Dalek is.

“If I can turn one Dalek, I can turn all of them. I can save the future.” –This is not the first time The Doctor has tried something like this.  In The Evil of the Daleks, The Doctor is pressed into finding the “Human Factor,” the mysterious brew of ingenuity, creativity and will to succeed that if added to the Dalek mind, would render them able to win any fight.  The Doctor, however, injects (infects, if you will) a series of Daleks with the human attributes of freedom, the desire to question authority and a grasp of justice, creating an army of  “Human Daleks” which immediately begin fighting with the “real” Daleks, a battle that The Doctor called “The final end.”  Indeed, it was supposed to be – that was supposed to be the last Dalek story, and it was for about five years, into the Pertwee years.  Genesis of the Daleks was also intended to be a “final” Dalek story, and like Evil, started a multi-year Dalek-free period, ending with Destiny of the Daleks.

“Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.”

DWGretchen2

And henceforth, this Dalek’s name is Gretchen Alison Carlisle.

“I just wish you hadn’t been a soldier” – The Doctor’s disdain for soldiers and the military mindset was set in stone back in the Pertwee years.  He would constantly mock the small-minded literalness of soldiers, most members of UNIT, and The Brigadier in particular.  Tennant got a bunch of good digs in during The Sontaran Stratagem.  Tying into the cold nature of this new Doctor, his disdain is much more absolute.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Missy is back, here meeting brave soldier Gretchen for a splosh of tea.  So the initial thought that she’s collecting The Doctor’s enemies is incorrect.  It now appears she’s collecting people who have died because of The Doctor.  While the jury is still out on whether the clockwork droid died at his own hand in last week’s adventure, Gretchen clearly sacrificed herself to make sure The Doctor’s plan worked.

Near the end of Tennant’s run, The Doctor is thinking about his life while chatting in a cafe with Wilfrid Mott (Bernard Cribbins).  “I’ve killed,” he said “But then I got clever – I convinced people to kill themselves.”  What we are seeing here are people who are the victims of The Doctor’s cleverness.  Depending on which side Missy is on, both of these people so far could be talked into believing they were responsible for saving the lives of countless people by a hero, or that they were callously killed by a madman.

“I thought you might have a rule against soldiers” – Clara clearly doesn’t, but one wonders how much this budding relationship with Danny Pink will be colored and affected by The Doctor and his mindset against soldiers.  Danny will be playing a much more active role in the proceedings in the near future; it’ll be interesting to see if he’ll be more of an Ian Chesterton type of fellow on the TARDIS… or a Turlough.

– NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO Don’t you worry, never fear –  Robot of Sherwood will soon be here, namely this weekend.

Tweeks: Taking a Deep Breath with the New Doctor

ecsp8f8-5266229The Tweeks are big fans of Doctor Who, but they are not fans of change.  It was scary times going into the Season 8 Premiere episode “Deep Breath” because Peter Capaldi looked pretty stern and serious in the promo pictures.  Could The Tweeks possibly love a doctor with those eyebrows when the last one had no eyebrows at all?  Watch this episode and see if the 12th Doctor is indeed Tweeks Approved.

New Who Review – “Deep Breath”

See, I told you he was good.

Peter Capaldi is off and flying in the role he’s been practicing for since he was four years old.  The Paternoster gang is here to cushion the blow of the wild turns in tone and character, there’s a well-hidden piece of chalk, and a dinosaur explodes.

Mind your handles, watch the spoilers and take a…

DEEP BREATH
By Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley (more…)

Mindy Newell: Take A Deep Breath

“Help him. And don’t be afraid.” – The Eleventh Doctor

The best things about the return of Doctor Who this weekend. (Yep – SPOILER ALERT!)

  1. Hello, the Paternoster Gang!
  2. T. Rex in the Thames!
  3. Awesome opening credits! This time around they were created by a fan. Stephen Moffat saw his work on YouTube and said: “I thought it was the only new idea for a Doctor Who title scene since 1963. And we got in touch and we said ‘OK, we’re gonna do that one.’”
  4. “Hold your breath!”
  5. Clara Oswald facing down the droid!
  6. The Eleventh Doctor!
  7. And the Twelfth!

“I don’t think I know who the Doctor is anymore,” said Clara, standing in for the rest of us. Of course the companions have always played the role of the de facto us, but I think this is the first time that an overtly honest reaction to the Doctor’s regeneration has been expressed. Yes, I know, Clara is the Impossible Girl who has been there at every turn of the Doctor’s long, long, long life, and she was witness to the meeting of three separate “faces” of the Doctor in the 50th anniversary special (The Day of the Doctor). So some may argue that she should have not been so questioning, so insecure, so bollixed by her witnessing the transformation of the young, exuberant, and sexy (more on that in a bit) Matt Smith into an old(er), aloof, cranky, and totally out-of-his-mind gentleman.

But remember, Clara did not just stumble into the Doctor’s life and onto the TARDIS, as did Rose, Donna, Martha, Amy and Rory.

The Doctor sought Clara out – intrigued by the mystery of this woman who died again and again and again, and yet lived again and again and again to cross paths with the Gallifreyan. And because of this, the dynamics of their relationship were inherently, from the beginning, different from any other the Doctor had experienced…

For Rose, for Donna, for Martha and Amy and Rory, the Doctor justified their existence.

Clara justified his.

So it isn’t any wonder that Clara so desperately wanted her Doctor back? She knew what she had meant to him, she was important to him, he could not, literally, live without her.

But what does she mean to this man, this alien, who claims to be the Doctor, but… Is he hers?

For the first time, Clara is dreadfully aware that this man, this stranger, is an alien and she cannot help the fear and distrust and dread that rises in her, threatening to choke out of existence her love and her loyalty to the man she knew.

And though Vastra and Jenny and even Strax, in his own potato-head way, try to convince her that the Doctor is the Doctor and will always be the Doctor, now and forever…

It takes a phone call from Trensalore to make her see that the Doctor needs her. He will always need her.

He will always need his Impossible Girl.

And don’t tell me that Peter Capaldi isn’t sexy!

 

John Ostrander: Who Are You?

Let’s have our own little adventure in time and space. At the time I’m writing this, the new season of Doctor Who, starring the new guy, Peter Capaldi, has not yet played. By the time you read this, it will have already been on. A bit of the old timey-wimey thing.

If you’re not a viewer of the time traveling import from the BBC (and we Whovians pity your poor benighted souls), Doctor Who is a fifty-year old TV show featuring a madman in a blue box. The madman is also known as The Doctor and the blue box is his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and while he looks human, some bits of him aren’t. Such as the ability to regenerate when his physical body is in close danger of dying. It’s not just a reboot; his entire body changes… and so does his personality. It is this ability to change actors every so often that has helped keep the show on the air for fifty years (give or take a hiatus or two).

That’s one of the exciting mysteries about the new season. We’ve only seen bits and pieces of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor but we already know he’ll be very different from his predecessor. Matt Smith was sort of the Robin Williams of Doctors; anything that came into his head came out his mouth. Capaldi is also older than the three prior Doctors, harking back to the first versions of the Doctor. He also appears to be more serious to the point of being grim. I’m very much looking forward to finding out who and what the new Doctor is.

The challenge for each actor playing the Doctor is to find a way to put their own stamp on the character while, at the same time, finding the core of the character, the part that doesn’t change. It’s a challenge not only for the actor but also the writers of the show and it illustrates an important aspect of writing characters in general.

We are, all of us, like a diamond. Turn the stone and the different facets can reveal different aspects. We have many different sides to us and they come out according to the situation or who we are with. You may be different with your friends than with your parents. Guys are one way with their guy friends but if you introduce a female to the mix, they change. The body posture, the voice, the way a guy expresses himself may be way different with a female (especially a new attractive unknown one) than his buddies. I don’t know but I suspect the same is true for women.

What we find to be true in life should be true in our writing. If you are creating a complex character, you have to find their contradictions. A person can be very brave in some aspects and yet very scared in others. They can go from one thing to the other in a heartbeat. Maybe you’ve noticed that some people are really nice until they get behind the wheel of a car where they can turn into flaming assholes. Maybe you’ve been that person. We have heroes within us; we also have villains. That’s why writing a villain can be a lot of fun; you get to let loose that side of you without any real ill effects.

One of the purposes of a supporting character in a story is to bring out this aspect or that aspect of the protagonist. Have you ever noticed how some people bring out the best of you and others bring out the worst? Back in my college days, there was one person I really didn’t like being around. I finally figured out why; he demonstrated aspects of myself that I didn’t like and seeing those traits made me uncomfortable. As a writer, however, that’s all useful.

The thing to remember is that all those aspects are you just as all the past incarnations of the Doctor are the Doctor. As in life, so in our writing. All our characters are an aspect of us. That’s part of the fun of it.

As for me, I can’t wait to see what the newest incarnation of the Doctor is like. Maybe by figuring out Who the Doctor is this time, I may also learn a bit more about Who I am.

 

Mike Gold: Our Superhero Summer

I’ve decided the summer is over. Yeah, I know. School hasn’t started yet, the dandies can continue to wear white for a few more weeks, and the metaphor-challenged will remind us the Autumnal Equinox doesn’t happen until September 22nd – and quite late in the day at that.

Screw them. I say summer is over because the summer movie season has pretty much ended. Yeah, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For happens next week, but we’ve had Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, and The Guardians Of The Galaxy and, clearly, my definition of “summer” is pretty quirky.

I haven’t mentioned the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie because I haven’t seen it. Or its forbearers. In my world, I guess talking raccoons are good but talking turtles stretch the imagination. Go figure.

The day after the Sin City sequel (say that five times fast) appears, the 2014 – 2015 television season begins. Oh, really?, you might ask. Yes: I define the beginning of this coming season as the debut of the newest round of Doctor Who. So there.

When it comes to superhero-based movies (and I’m putting Dawn of the Apes in with the others because I believe it belongs there) I don’t think the average comics fan has much to bitch about… unless he’s one of those screaming asshole naysayers than mindlessly shits on everything anybody else likes under the protection of the shield of anonymity that the Internet gleefully provides. Of the five released movies I noted above, only one – in my opinion – actually sucked.

That would be Amazing Spider-Man 2, a needless sequel to a useless remake, made by clueless people. It was a waste of a handful of fine actors. I enjoyed all of the others, and really, that’s more than I would have expected. As a group, they’ve raised the bar for heroic fantasy movies.

I’d even toss the quirky Lucy in with the rest. That one was clearly heroic fantasy, and it was damn good. So was the equally-quirky Snowpiercer, based upon the French graphic novel of the same name (but in French). Lucy didn’t have comics cred to fall back on, but Scarlet Johansson most certainly does. That one just might make it easier to get a good superheroine movie made. And wouldn’t that be nice?

So… is this all a fad? Yes, probably, but just in quantity. Quality rules and if “they” continue to make movies that are well-written, well-directed and well-performed, we’ll continue to see more – just as we have ever since the early days of film and vehicles such as Tarzan, Tailspin Tommy, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and Joe Palooka.

When it comes to the movies based upon the comics media, quality rules.

Isn’t that amazing?

 

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