Doctor Who Review: The Doctor's Going to Some Dark Places

[elvor0]

Also, and I hope I'm not the only one who picked up on this: What the hell was with that phonecall from Matt Smith? The phone call was good as a "goodbye" considering he'd not had a chance to say goodbye to Clara in his personal timeline as of that phonecall, but he has ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of knowing or to think that he'd be regenerated.

Yeah he did that was after he got given the new cycles, he zipped into the Tardis and saw Clara again before he regenerated, they even talked a little.

I mean, it's a little dumb he somehow f*cking called her when he could have done it WHEN he regenerated.

Which was much later in Smiths personal timeline than the one that called her.

/Eventually/ Smith got to say good bye. The version that called Clara hadn't yet done so though, so it makes sense that he'd want to so on the basis that he was going to die. The Smith that called her was a much earlier one, one that had only been on Trenzalore for a while (though still quite a long time clearly), one that hadn't seen Clara in however many decades after sending her back home so he could protect the Town of Christmas, and as far as he was concerned, that was his final regeneration, he'd have no reason to think that Clara would still be with The Doctor, because he intended to die of old age or in battle in Trenzalore.

EDIT: Actually scrap that, my mistake, sorry ><. As per this guy and just checking the episode
It would appear that I got the timelines mixed up. Blame the wibbly wobbly. Still don't really buy that The Doctor would actually /need/ to make the call though, Claras already seen three incarnations of the doctor in person and travelled though his timeline, she doesn't need regeneration explaining to her. This was just audience meta quibble.

Am I misremembering Time of the Doctor? I thought there was a pretty clear space in that episode for the phone call:

Old Doctor gets infused with time energy, blows up Daleks -> Old Doctor goes to the TARDIS -> Clara goes to the TARDIS -> Clara finds young-again Doctor -> Doctor regenerates.

Watching the episode Saturday, I thought it was pretty clear that the phone call was supposed to be taking place on 11's side after he had already reverted to his "starting" age, and so knew he was going to regenerate, but before Clara found him in the TARDIS. It still doesn't explain why he made the call - maybe he thought Clara wouldn't find him in the TARDIS until after he had finished regenerating? - but the "when" fits in pretty clearly. Again, unless I'm remembering incorrectly from Time.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I actually think Missie might be evil future Clara, because she referred to the Doctor as "boyfriend".

This.. This is extremely credible.

On the episode, it's hugely better than almost everything I've seen recently, but my fingers are so crossed for a return to some self-contained "monster of the week" episodes. I agree with the article that there is simply too much metaplot in Doctor Who nowadays.

 

[elvor0]

-snip-

Well, the Matt Smith Phone Call is like Day of the Doctor, or the whole business with Clara being scattered across the Doctor's timeline, or the watering down/inbreeding going on with the Daleks and Cybermen - Moffat gives not one fuck about previously established continuity. Despite the fact that the whole Trenzalore thing now possibly can't happen (at least with Matt Smith - causality would demand that Peter Capeldi and other future Doctors be erased from time too, or at the very least summon a horde of Reapers for interfering with the timeline). So yes, moreso than Missy, that Phone Call was weird, out of place and quite possibly bad writing.

Also - don't give Moffat ideas! Missy might well turn out to be evil River Song! X3

OT: This episode was...forgettable mostly. It was alright, but asides the Robots who harvest organs and the rather unsubtle callbacks to "The Girl in the Fireplace" (which Moffat also penned) it is one we're going to be forgetting about quickly.

Incidentally, next episode might be another turn to adapt a Big Finish story.

I still kinda find it quite sad and dumbfounding that Moffat is so poor at running the show. The Doctor Dances, Blink(though only for the Weeping Angels), Silence in the Library and The Girl in the Fireplace are some really great stories that he wrote, I was really excited to have him take over, Fireplace in particular is one of my favourites. But they don't seem like they're written by the same man who's been running the show for the last few years(Angels take Manhatten was pretty great though).

In contrast to most of Moffats attempts at running things the episodes are well paced, have proper foreshadowing, no narrative hammerspace, the stories, characters and characterization are excellent, plot points arn't just glossed over or never explained, nothing feels forced, everything works and he doesn't forget established continuity. Even worse is that now he's in charge he forgets his /own/ fucking continuity, from ONE FUCKING EPISODE AGO.

 

[Silverbane7]

hm... well the woman at the end cant be an evil river song because she has no regenerations left after giving them to the doctor.
the valeyard was at his last regen, as an alternate universe version of the doctor. those alternate universes are closed so they shouldnt realy use than as an excuse to make an alternate 'verse river to be bad with.

(besides, all we realy need from her on the tv side, is to see capaldi take her out for her birthday and give the that special sonic. while the river at trenzalore was supposed to feel like the end of the river song story, that was the mental projection / memory stored version of her, probably accessint the tardis somehow to cary on visiting becasue he never properly said goodbye to that version. we cant realy see the end of the physical rivers story fully untill we see him give her that sonic to complete the circle for his timeline.)

personaly, im hoping that we get more spin offs. i would be happy to see jenny (the doctors daughter) get her own show. this would mean there wasnt any need to change the dr who show much, and give them the female doctor as it were, without having to change / destroy the current show. i mean. why change perfectly good working characters genders just becasue *reasons and feminism*? you want strong female characters? they are all over games shows and stories. take THEM and make them into something wonderfull, as their own fully formed personas. not just clagging on a pair of tits to a male and saying look, i have boobs now.
i would not be averse to a spin off with the paternosta gang...but please give them a full hour too, not some 25min kids show. i allready know what happens to lesbian couples that fall afoul of the usa's ideas of kids show programming *points to mangled sailormoons with haruka and michiru being 'just good friends'*
we realy dont need another save our sailors over them.

as to the woman....you guys do know that the doctor is Times Champion yes? the first thoughts that occured to me are 'is that the tardis?' not meaning are they inside the tardis, but is that woman the personficiation of the tardis?
the seccond being 'i wonder if that is Time Herself?'
after all, he has been Her Champion for most of his life i think lol.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

I still kinda find it quite sad and dumbfounding that Moffat is so poor at running the show. The Doctor Dances, Blink, Silence in the Library and The Girl in the Fireplace are some really great stories that he wrote, I was really excited to have him take over, Fireplace in particular is one of my favourites. But they don't seem like they're written by the same man who's been running the show for the last few years(Angels take Manhatten was pretty great though).

In contrast to most of Moffats attempts at running things the episodes are well paced, have proper foreshadowing, no narrative hammerspace, the stories, characters and characterization are excellent, plot points arn't just glossed over or never explained, nothing feels forced, everything works and he doesn't forget established continuity. Even worse is that now he's in charge he forgets his /own/ fucking continuity, from ONE FUCKING EPISODE AGO.

We'll agree to disagree on Blink, but yes - it's hard to imagine the guy who approved of turning the Cybermen into Borg Knock offs* wrote those episodes. The amount of badness creeping in, well, as I put it in conversation with others -

"The good news - we're getting a new Doctor! Bad news - Moffat is still running the show."

...Wait, it was seriously one episode ago? I think that's a new record.

*While Moffat did not write Nightmare in Steel, he had to approve the script, allocate funds etc etc.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

If I had to pick anything about this episode that makes me slightly wary of the upcoming season it's the reveal of Missy.
Obviously we don't really have any firm grasp on her or her motivations just yet but I sincerely hope that the series villain isn't going to just be an overzealous fan girl.

This. Although to add to that, I'll bet there's fan theories going around right now that she's actually The Rani. Or a future regeneration of the Doctor. One of these theories is currently being passed around right now, I swear.

Back when they were still playing off the mystery of who and what Clara was I made mention a few times that I was hoping for her to be some sort of recurring incarnation of a fragment of the TARDIS still trying to reconnect with the Doctor after it exploded.

Obviously that turned out to be false.

So maybe it's my own desire to have my dopey fan theory turn out to be correct but I'm kinda hoping that Missy turns out to be some manifestation of the TARDIS. They've always hinted at the fact that it can be fussy, and jealous, and overprotective, and quite possibly a bit damaged.

 

[Tanis]

I hope Missy turns out to be The Rani or a warped Romana.

 

[Suicidal Zebra]

I wasn't a fan of this episode for many of the reasons why I wasn't a fan of much of Matt Smith's tenure - it's become Clara's Story rather than Doctor Who. Clara isn't a particularly interesting character, and quite frankly I found the idea of 11 treating her as if he was her boyfriend more a sop for the shippers than anything borne out of their interactions. I hope that Capaldi can put his own stamp on the character, but I don't hold much hope.

Regarding 'Missy', much as I'd like her to be a representation of The Valeyard or a future Clara she reminds me of nothing so much as a female Master. Hell, even her name sounds like a shortened form of 'Mistress'. Although Michelle Gomez looks like Kate O'Mara I don't see bringing back The Rani as likely, at least in the live action series.

 

[elvor0]

I still kinda find it quite sad and dumbfounding that Moffat is so poor at running the show. The Doctor Dances, Blink, Silence in the Library and The Girl in the Fireplace are some really great stories that he wrote, I was really excited to have him take over, Fireplace in particular is one of my favourites. But they don't seem like they're written by the same man who's been running the show for the last few years(Angels take Manhatten was pretty great though).

In contrast to most of Moffats attempts at running things the episodes are well paced, have proper foreshadowing, no narrative hammerspace, the stories, characters and characterization are excellent, plot points arn't just glossed over or never explained, nothing feels forced, everything works and he doesn't forget established continuity. Even worse is that now he's in charge he forgets his /own/ fucking continuity, from ONE FUCKING EPISODE AGO.

We'll agree to disagree on Blink, but yes - it's hard to imagine the guy who approved of turning the Cybermen into Borg Knock offs* wrote those episodes. The amount of badness creeping in, well, as I put it in conversation with others -

"The good news - we're getting a new Doctor! Bad news - Moffat is still running the show."

...Wait, it was seriously one episode ago? I think that's a new record.

*While Moffat did not write Nightmare in Steel, he had to approve the script, allocate funds etc etc.

Well, agreed that Blink itself isn't /that/ good as an episode, I should clarify and perhaps edit my post: I like it because of the Weeping Angels as a monster.

 

[Silverbane7]

but i have to ask..why would the rani help the doctor?
she should still be pissed at him for leaving her rattling around the vortex, trapped in her own tardis, at the mercy of recently rebelled tetraps?

i also have a feeling, that the woman who voted against the time lords comming out of the space-time lock was romana.
assuming the books are considered somewhat cannon, we know that she becaem president of gallifrey some time befor the time war and that she was (probably peacefully voted off) replaced by a resurected rassilon becasue he was an old school timelord, from an earlier, more warlike time. (the woman timelord who you see covering her face with her hands in the tennant episode where the master and rassilon have a powers fight)

i have a feeling (after reading movie bob's review of the ep as someone who is semi-clueless about dr who lol)that alot of the stuff we saw in this episode is aimed at those who arent happy wbout capaldi beign the doctor...whole teenage girls and 20 somethings that were wailing and gnashing their teeth becasue hes old, hes ugly, hes scottich (so was david tennat XD and you allwanted to take him round the back of the tardis for a snog...)

i dont think hes old. hes mature. the doctor is allways mature, but hes never old. he grows older. but never grows up.
and clara is just having regen-shock. some companions get it when they are so used to the doctor they have allways had, they cant realy see them for the doctor they now have. rose was lucky in that she saw him change first hand. none of the others realy have seen him change. they hear about it but they dont realy *see* it. and we humans tend to only realy belive it when we see or feel it lol.

 

[Kuredan]

I like the darker direction this new doctor is taking. I always liked the more serious doctors, like Eccleston, Pertwee, and McCoy While I really enjoyed Tenant, it wasn't until his second series that he had a darker turn and I began to like him more. I really can't say the same for Smith; I felt like they changed the series to appeal to teenyboppers and hyped him up as a love interest with that strange love (quadrilateral? triangle? trapezoid?) garbage. Perhaps he's better for a different demographic, but what I loved about the Doctor(s) was his multi-demographic/ multi-generational appeal, at least among the fans I associate with.

 

[AliasBot]

Am I misremembering Time of the Doctor? I thought there was a pretty clear space in that episode for the phone call:

Old Doctor gets infused with time energy, blows up Daleks -> Old Doctor goes to the TARDIS -> Clara goes to the TARDIS -> Clara finds young-again Doctor -> Doctor regenerates.

Watching the episode Saturday, I thought it was pretty clear that the phone call was supposed to be taking place on 11's side after he had already reverted to his "starting" age, and so knew he was going to regenerate, but before Clara found him in the TARDIS. It still doesn't explain why he made the call - maybe he thought Clara wouldn't find him in the TARDIS until after he had finished regenerating? - but the "when" fits in pretty clearly. Again, unless I'm remembering incorrectly from Time.

Anyway, the episode was fine for me. I've never been super-nitpicky or critical when it comes to fiction, so unless something is glaringly out of place it doesn't faze me. My only big issues were Clara freaking out about the regeneration when she knows all about them - even discounting the whole falling-through-the-time-stream thing that doesn't appear to have had any impact going forward at all, she's still personally met two other regenerations of the Doctor, including one that looked older than Capaldi - and the tying together of a 51st century spaceship named after a long-dead French historical figure with a 19th century spaceship named after a French historical figure that had been dead for under a century, while the familiarity with dinosaurs implied that they had been around for much, much longer than that. What, did they fall through a hole in time from the distant future into the distant past, and we're just meeting them when they're close to getting caught up? Why was there such a massive disparity in time between the two ships? Why link them together at all, and then not explain at all how the link could possibly make sense?

...in short, Clara was the wrong companion to have a post-regeneration crisis and the linking of the Victorian droids to the Girl in the Fireplace droids was unnecessary and nonsensical, but everything else was solid. Once they'd gotten past re-introductions, I enjoyed the Twelve-Clara dynamic (old married couple actually is a pretty good way to describe it), and I'm looking forward to seeing more of that over the course of the season. Some of the hanging plot points felt a little unnecessary - the deal with who put the ad in the paper, who Missy is supposed to be - but some made sense to leave unresolved for now, simply because there's no reason they would know the answers yet, like why the Doctor took Caecilius's face. I'm intrigued to see exactly how they address that.

 

[Sigmar ov The Hammer]

Was I the only one that thought Missy might be The Master (or Mistress in this case, which i would expect from Moffat)?

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

If I had to pick anything about this episode that makes me slightly wary of the upcoming season it's the reveal of Missy.
Obviously we don't really have any firm grasp on her or her motivations just yet but I sincerely hope that the series villain isn't going to just be an overzealous fan girl.

This. Although to add to that, I'll bet there's fan theories going around right now that she's actually The Rani. Or a future regeneration of the Doctor. One of these theories is currently being passed around right now, I swear.

You betted correctly; that she is The Rani was mine and a friend's response. Partly from hoping that there might be a villainous Time Lord appearance that isn't The Master.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

If I had to pick anything about this episode that makes me slightly wary of the upcoming season it's the reveal of Missy.
Obviously we don't really have any firm grasp on her or her motivations just yet but I sincerely hope that the series villain isn't going to just be an overzealous fan girl.

This. Although to add to that, I'll bet there's fan theories going around right now that she's actually The Rani. Or a future regeneration of the Doctor. One of these theories is currently being passed around right now, I swear.

You betted correctly; that she is The Rani was mine and a friend's response. Partly from hoping that there might be a villainous Time Lord appearance that isn't The Master.

If it is, it'll be long overdue. And maybe stop people bemoaning about the lack of a female Doctor X3

 

[Oskuro]

I really loved the 11th Doctor era... And although it's taking some getting used to, I'm warming up to this first episode.

To me, this episode does what all regeneration episodes have done: Ease the audience into the change. With earlier regenerations episodes there was also the task of easing new viewers into the concept, but this one seems aimed directly at long-term viewers.

In my opinion, the reasoning for doing this is twofold: On one hand, Peter Capaldi is a very different Doctor, physically, from the previous "New Who" Doctors (War Doctor nonwithstanding, as we barely got to know him). We hadn't had such a mature looking Doctor since the classic series; On the other hand, we live in a different world now, where audiences have very harsh reactions to that which they dislike, and managing backlash has become a necessary skill in any form of media. Just think back to the transition from the 10th to the 11th Doctor ("Matt Smith is too ugly!" "Matt Smith is too young" "We hate Matt Smith for taking up the role"), or, ironically seeing how she was the audience viewpoint character in this episode that couldn't accept the change, to the backlash to Clara replacing Amy/Rory.


I'm of the opinion that these sort of changes are the lifeblood of the show, and I'm very happy to give them a chance to find a way to make it work.

Besides, I'll never understand why people hate so much on the new actors (Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman) when it was the previous actor who chose to leave! (David Tennant, Karen Gillian).


One thing I can't get over regarding this episode... That Garden at the end, is that the same Garden they used in The Girl Who Waited? You know, the episode Amy is trapped for 36 years in a weird time-travelling hospital.

 

[CosmicCommander]

It feels like he's introducing them for the first time each time they show up. Like, he's got to go over the important character beats every time: Vastra is a Silurian who fights crime in victorian London, Jenny is her maid who is also her wife and she's sassy, Strax is a lovable oaf who wants to kill things. He does this every time, and they show up a lot so it feels grating after a while. I'd hope if they got their own show, Moffat could trust the audience not to immediately forget they exist after each episode.

I think Rory and Amy talked about their marriage enough that it's not him "shoehorning" diversity as much as it is he's not a super great writer and doesn't expect much of his audience.

I actually never saw an episode featuring those three characters before; what I've seen and read kept me away from watching all but the final three Matt Smith episodes/specials. So those characters were unfamiliar to me. I still found them annoying.

I think that this episode could have benefited much more from a tighter script which featured Clara/the Doctor more. Get rid of the dinosaur (that served no purpose), and have the ep about Clara trying to keep the delirious Doctor safe in Victorian London whilst she has to try to escape these robots who want to harvest special Gallifreyan tissue from him. So instead of this weird fantastical and distracting scene, you could have a very interesting chase plot set in Victorian London which also befits the apparently darker tone they want of the character.

Instead they have an inconsistent mess. Moffat's "fairy tale" approach is horrible.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The only thing that saved the episode for me was everyone's favourite inter species lesbian consulting detective couple and their homicidal, gender perception challenged butler.

For me it was trying to hard to be a sitcom of all things

Yeah. There were a lot of jokes in what was an otherwise darker show.
There are two big things I'm hoping from Capaldi's current season run:

1) Going forward: No more forced romance crap from the companions. None.
Either towards the Doctor, or each other.
I'm just sick of it. The Ponds' story wavered between tragic and overbearingly nauseating. I literally started singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" at the end of The Angels Take Manhattan, and I'm pretty sure that was NOT the intended response for the conclusion of their arc.

2) Fewer sitcom moments.
Levity is great. Madame smexxy-Lizard and Capt Whacky Sontaran are great in small doses. And I get that this was a post-regeneration-crazy episode so I won't hold it completely accountable this time as that just comes with the territory.

But if this becomes the normal tone, I don't think I'm going to keep watching. Which is a shame, because Capaldi looks like he has the chops to be a much better Doctor than his previous New Who candidates. (and I liked Smith's Doctor a lot)

 

[gorfias]

You can't over-think this series. You just have to sit back and enjoy it.

Still, many in this thread are pointing out something I'd been feeling: Smith was too cute by 1/2. I appreciate this new, darker doc with angry eye brows.