The Name of the Doctor

Starring: Richard E Grant, Neve Mcintosh, Catrin Stewart, Alex Kingston

Written by: Steven Moffat

Directed by: Saul Metzstein

The Doctor’s friends are being kidnapped, and all signs point towards the fields of Trenzalore as their location…but more than friends can be found there. The Doctor’s greatest secret has been uncovered, and the question in plain sight will be asked. Doctor Who?

WARNING: SPOILERS

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Doctor Who?

There seems to be a trend within some areas of the fandom to say that this is the defining element of the show; who is the Doctor? I’m not certain it’s a point of view I agree with, at least in the sense it has often been presented. Who cares what his name is? He’s the madman with a box, the funny alien chap who flits around time and space getting into trouble and sorting it out. Yes, not knowing his actual proper name does wonders for his mystique, but it’s entirely irrelevant to his character. It isn’t a question that needs answering.

Fortunately, Steven Moffat seems to realise that, because actually, the Doctor’s name turns out not to matter squat in this episode, and may never be important at all. What’s important is that he is the Doctor.

It’s been a patchy series at best, even if you factor in the first half pre-Christmas. While I maintain my position that since Moffat took the helm, there has been a much more consistent level of quality on the show than there was under Davies’ direction, it must be admitted that equally, there haven’t been quite as many classic episodes. This series has barely managed one classic, truth be told. Much as I loved ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’, it was an almost entirely throwaway romp, and even ‘The Angels Take Manhatten’ didn’t live up to Moffat’s usual standards; post-Christmas, the best episode, ‘Hide’ was still an over-packed piece, and isn’t going to be mentioned in the same breath as say, ‘Midnight’ (series 4).

We really needed a good showing from Moffat to restore faith in the show. Did he deliver? Well…while I’ve ummed and aahed about whether it was a good episode, it was certainly a thrilling one. And I am far, far more excited about the fiftieth anniversary special than I was a week ago.

It’s hard to judge ‘The Name of the Doctor’ in truth, because it’s so clearly part one of a longer story, and so much of it is set up for the second part. Come November, I might look back and be thinking that actually, it was rubbish. I hope I won’t be, and I don’t think I will be, but it’s always possible. But while there were without question flaws in the episode, I think most of them will be redeemed in the next one. Here’s hoping, anyway.

It was certainly an episode that grabbed you from the very start, with a brief glimpse of Gallifrey – stunning as ever, at least on the external shot – and then Clara telling William Hartnell he was about to make a terrible mistake. And then you saw her with every Doctor. The sound you heard was the sound of a million fans’ heads exploding in confusion. Quite apart from the shock and thrill of this sequence, it was a delight, and a relief, to finally get some closure on Clara. She’s been a strange companion; on the one hand, the driving force of her entire time on the show has been that she’s the Impossible Girl, but on the other there’s been precious little time devoted to what her mystery actually is. Equally, while Coleman is always a pleasure to watch, there hasn’t actually been that much for her to work with. Aside from the mystery surrounding her, there isn’t actually that much to Clara; she’s perky, witty, likes travelling and making soufflés. In the end, that turns out to be rather the point. The mystery of Clara is timey-wimey, brought about by her stepping up and doing something extraordinary to help the Doctor. That’s it; in every other respect, she’s a perfectly normal, dare I say average young woman. And that’s fine, in some ways it’s a good thing, given the fears many had that she was going to be another River, but while normal is good, characterless is not. Hopefully the next series will give her some depth to go with Coleman’s acting.

Elsewhere, the Paternoster Row Gang are good value as always, which is a good thing, given that we spend a fair chunk of the episode with them. The time-travel in dreams is a neat if not terribly convincing idea – and I say not convincing not because it’s unrealistic, because it’s Doctor Who for God’s sake, but because it seems like the kind of thing that might have been really useful in other or later episodes, and you just know it’s never going to crop up again. Hey ho. Neve Mcintosh gets one of the episode’s best moments as she grieves then rejoices over Jenny’s death – on which note, Catrin Stewart sells Jenny’s murder perfectly, and it is without doubt the creepiest, most disturbing moment of the episode. Once the cast are back together though, they do rather fade into the background; fair enough, given that they are side characters and the episode is even more about the Doctor than normal, but disappointing nonetheless, particularly because they just stand around looking blank for the most part.

That is, in fact, my biggest criticism of the episode. It starts with a flashback montage of Clara with previous Doctors, which is repeated at least three times. Vastra gets some information from a random madman, and then the side characters/companions sit around talking about it. There’s a dramatic sequence as the Doctor and Clara head to Trenzalore, then a longer sequence while all the characters in the episode stand around talking. Then more talking, before Clara does her thing, then more talking before the Doctor heads off to save her. For all the drama and suspense, not an awful lot actually happens. As I say above, this is clearly because it’s a story in two parts, of which we’ve only seen one part. That said, it’s the last episode we’re going to see for six months, and while there’s plenty for people to talk about, it isn’t a particularly spectacular finale.

But…those last few minutes. It’s where it all comes together, where you remember that while it might not be obvious every minute of the show, Moffat is a bloody good writer. For nearly two years now, fans have been going back and forth over the Doctor’s name and whether it’s right or sensible to reveal it, and then we find out that he’s been trolling us all along. It’s not about his name, it’s about his character; he calls himself the Doctor for a reason, after all. The idea that there’s a regeneration of him running around that ‘broke the promise’ is just all kinds of interesting and wonderful, and I for one can’t wait to find out the truth. Is he the Valeyard? Or maybe the one that ended the Time War? Those seem to be the most likely conclusions at present, but both have arguments against them; he seems to be an earlier regeneration to Matt Smith, which rules out the Valeyard (assuming they stick to the canon about him, at any rate), but all three post-Time War Doctors have been willing to admit their role in the end of the Time War, which doesn’t fit with breaking the promise. Knowing Moffat, it won’t be either of those conclusions.

It’s been a patchy series, yes. And in all honesty, a somewhat patchy finale, which probably wasn’t anywhere near as good if you’re not totally invested in the show. But Moffat has restored my faith with it, and I can’t wait for November.

Doctor Who: Nightmare in Silver

Starring: Warwick Davis, Jason Watkins, Tamzin Outhwaite

 Written by: Neil Gaiman

Directed by: Stephen Woolfenden

Arriving at the greatest theme park in the galaxy, complete with golden ticket, the Doctor and his companions are disappointed to find the place closed and run down, inhabited only by a platoon of enthusiastic but inexperienced soldiers and two showmen with an intriguing line in chess opponents. Soon, not only is the future of the galaxy at stake, but the Doctor’s mind as well…

I’ll own up right now. I love Neil Gaiman. He is one of the finest fantasists of the last fifty years, and his previous episode for the show, ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ is by far and away my favourite episode certainly of the Moffat/Smith era, and I could probably be pressed into agreeing that it’s the best episode since the revival. It would be far to say that my expectations for ‘Nightmare in Silver’ were high.

Too high? Perhaps.

I’m well aware that I tend to give more credit – or blame, as it may be – to the writer of each episode or film that I review here, probably because I’m a wannabe writer myself. Gaiman has tweeted about a few things that changed between filming and broadcast, due to editing and the like, so maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I owe Neil Cross a grovelling apology for heaping the criticism of ‘Rings of Akhaten’ at his feet over anyone else. Whatever the case, and it may just be that I’m expecting too much because of my Gaiman fanboy status, this episode severely disappointed me.

It gets off to a decent start, and, to be fair, does have a lot of great moments. The dilapidated theme park looks brilliant – tacky, sure, but it’s Who, after all, and it’s a theme park, what do you expect – and Jason Watkins is a charismatic guest star. The two kids are rather irritating, but you can’t have everything. Warwick Davis, when he appears, gives a brilliant showcase of dry yet humorous acting, and steals the show from everyone else, no mean feat when the script calls for Matt Smith to ham it up even more than he normally does.

More notably, there are some very successful updates to the Cybermen. Building on the sequence in ‘The Pandorica Opens’ a few years ago, they have been given a huge shot in the arm, and while they might not be as terrifying as, say, the Silence, they are clearly a force to be reckoned with now. The idea that humanity had to destroy an entire galaxy to stop them coming back is horrifying, and their numerous tweaks and upgrades render them incredibly dangerous. It’s basically their ‘Cold War’, or ‘Dalek’ from Ecclestone’s run.

However, it never really feels wholly satisfying.

In part, I think it’s because there’s a lot going on. You’ve got the battle for the Doctor’s mind, the reawakening Cybermen, the intrigue of Porridge, which does make sense in context, Clara’s concern for the children she’s supposed to be looking after…it isn’t quite as crowded as Neil Cross’ episodes have been, but it is another compelling argument in favour of two-part stories. Forty five minutes are all very well for a romp through time and space, but there have been too many episodes this series which have fallen flat where another half hour or so would have produced classics.

That aside though, there are definite problems with the script. As stated, the two kids, Angie and Artie, are infuriating. Angie is a generic stroppy teenager, while Artie is a suspiciously polite and formal teenager; given the sorts of shenanigans the Doctor regularly finds himself in the middle of, I was surprised to find that he wasn’t inspecting the poor boy for some sort of alien possession. Mr Clever, or the Cyber-Doctor if you prefer, is a cool idea, and I’m always up for a bit of prime Smith ham, but I couldn’t help but feel that a bit more could have been done with it, or at least something a little different. Writing or acting choice? Who knows, but at the end of the day it’s largely irrelevant. More importantly, there’s just nothing special about the story, the upgrades to the Cybermen aside. It’s a generic siege episode, and while you could argue the same about, say, ‘Cold War’, that episode had a sheen of class and all-round competence that this episode sadly lacks.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad episode. There’s just nothing to make you remember it particularly, and while you can say the same about most of the episodes – most of the episodes of any show, for that matter – not every episode is written by one of the greatest living fantasy writers. I think we were entitled to expect a little more.

In conclusion, I’d like to share a story.

I have a friend who had rather gone off the show after ‘The End of Time’. True, much of this was because she wasn’t getting her weekly dose of David Tennant, but she also had issues with Moffat’s scripts, Smith’s performances, etc etc. However, she kept watching on and off, hoping she’d start to enjoy it again.

As the credits rolled on ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, my phone went off. She had sent me a text, basically saying “I love it. I get it now. I get why you still watch it.”

With ‘The Doctor’s Wife’, Gaiman reignited a fan’s interest in the show, reminded her what was special about it, why she’d loved it in the first place. With ‘Nightmare in Silver’, he’s delivered an episode with some neat ideas, that entertains, but is thoroughly average in almost every respect.

Doctor Who: The Crimson Horror

Starring: Diana Rigg, Rachel Stirling

Written by: Mark Gatiss

Directed by: Saul Metzstein

In a town near the mysterious Sweetville, people are falling victim to a deadly plague known as the Crimson Horror. Intrigued, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and their butler, Strax, travel to Yorkshire to investigate. But where is the Doctor?

After Mark Gatiss’ ‘Cold War’, expectations were high for this Victorian tale, particularly after the disappointing ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’. Quite apart from living up to his superlative earlier episode, he also had to deliver a script worthy of Diana Rigg and her equally talented if less well-known daughter, Rachel Stirling, and do justice to the warmly regarded trio of Vastra, Jenny and Strax.

It is a curious success, but a success nonetheless. For much of the episode, you could be forgiven for seeing it as a backdoor attempt at a spinoff pilot; the Doctor and Clara are absent for much of the episode, with his old friends driving the plot forward at first. As always, and for the first time out of Moffat’s hands, they are a joy to behold, especially the borderline psychotic Sontaran butler, Strax – much as I like Clara, I would love to see Strax as a permanent companion, although I suspect the joke would wear thin after too much exposure. If such a spinoff were to materialise, I for one would be a regular viewer.

Elsewhere, Rigg and Stirling deliver a couple of excellent performances, although Stirling is the only person in the episode doing anything even remotely subtle. Granted, when you’re surrounded by the Doctor, a lizard-woman from the dawn of time (who, lest we forget, ate Jack the Ripper), a gay Victorian ninja maid, and the aforementioned Strax, and your mother, sporting a Yorkshire accent and a pre-historic slug, it’s easy to appear subtle. As this may suggest, Rigg, while excellent, is firmly in the John Simm school of Who villainy here, chewing the scenery for all it’s worth and having an absolute ball.

In fact, quite apart from the pilot-esque elements of the episode, it is the closest the show has come to outright parody since Moffat’s ‘Curse of the Fatal Death’. It’s a fine line to tread, but Gatiss pulls it off. The plot itself is fairly thin, and rather ridiculous, but the nod and wink approach, and a scattering of truly disturbing details really sell it as a slice of high-camp Gothic adventure. Yes, it’s over the top, but that’s perfectly in keeping with the genre.

This is not to say that the episode is perfect. There’s at least one section that has absolutely no business being in a finished draft – Thomas Thomas, step forward – and for all that it’s deliberately OTT, the high-camp approach does steal most of the tension and fear factor. Furthermore, while the more disturbing moments do lend more heft to the episode, it’s undeniable that some of them need more context to be truly effective. Diana Rigg ripping open her dress to display a temporally displaced, poisonous slug? Extremely unsettling. Diana Rigg opening a door to show off the people she’s placed inside bell jars? Creepy, yes, but more likely to have you thinking about the logic and mechanics of it than anything else.

Nonetheless, there is plenty to enjoy here, and it sits comfortably in amongst the ranks of best episodes of the series.

Doctor Who: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Starring: Ashley Walters, Mark Oliver, Jahvel Hall

Written by: Stephen Thompson

Directed by: Mat King

As the Doctor attempts to soothe the tension between Clara and the TARDIS, a nearby salvage ship takes an interest in the ancient vessel. A freak set of circumstances lead to the TARDIS being left on the brink of destruction, and Clara trapped somewhere or somewhen within the twisting, mysterious corridors. The Doctor has just half an hour to save her and repair the TARDIS…

This really was full of promise. An episode entirely set within the walls of the TARDIS? There could be literally anything in there!

Ok, yes. When you think about it rationally, you have to accept that the TARDIS we saw on screen could never live up to the potential. There just isn’t enough money in the world to bring it to life properly, and no two viewers are going to agree on what should be there and what it should look like. In some respects then, you could argue that this was an episode that should never have been made. It was never going to be universally loved, at the very least.

However, while that is certainly true, it is also true that there is precious little imagination in this episode.

The plot, for a start, is pretty thin. An incredibly contrived co-incidence to kick things off, a subplot about the guest stars that wouldn’t fit on the back of a postage stamp, and a conclusion that skirts dangerously close to deus ex machina territory, and is certainly an outrageously blatant retcon, which renders the episode almost entirely pointless – although in fairness, there are a lot of points which will presumably be brought up again later in the series, most likely in the finale.

More importantly, arguably, is the fairly unsurprising nature of the TARDIS’ interior. The library, for instance. Ok, there are a few nice touches – the liquid encyclopaedia is interesting, especially when it leaks and starts to talk, and it is certainly a grand room, but it isn’t any grander than the library in any standard issue National Trust property. Sure, it’s on a space/time ship, but we’ve seen stranger things in the show. That’s before you even start to consider the sheer number of corridors that we see. Again, this goes back to my earlier point. Of course there are more corridors than anything else in the TARDIS, you’ve got to get from one room to the other after all. It just seems a bit of a waste to feature them so prominently in an episode with such potential.

And then there’s the guest stars. In fairness, they aren’t given a lot to work with – as a friend of mine has memorably put it, “There are two character traits between three people!” Nevertheless, I can’t remember the last time the show had such bland performances. Restrained performances can be a rare blessing, given the OTT nature of the show, but bland – or just plain bad – is even rarer, and far less welcome.

Equally though, there’s not an awful lot for the regulars to work with. Clara in particular is reduced to a generic companion in peril, and while the Doctor fares better than the rest, there’s barely a single memorable moment for him in the entire episode.

It isn’t all bad. There are, as I said, a few intriguing hints about the rest of the series – Clara learns the Doctor’s name, although it’s wiped from her memory by the end of the episode, and the Doctor learns that while Clara may be a mystery, she’s an unwitting part of it at least. Most interesting is the time rift that enables the retcon, as it’s a dead ringer for the crack that populated series five. Only time will tell whether that was just a coincidence, a shout out, or a deliberate hint. I favour deliberate hint, if only in the hope that some of those lingering questions might actually get answered this way. And the moment when the Doctor and Clara walk through the engine room is genuinely stunning, if a touch Tracy Emin for my tastes.

Overall though, this is far and away the most disappointing episode of the run, and probably of the last couple of years.

Doctor Who: Hide

Written by: Neil Cross

Starring: Dougray Scott, Jessica Raine

Director: Jaime Payne

The time: 1974. The place: Caliburn House. The Doctor and Clara encounter a ghost hunting professor and his psychic assistant, and assist them in their search for the truth about the Witch in the Well, a legendary ghost haunting the building. The truth is stranger than any of them could possibly imagine…

In the aftermath of ‘Rings of Akhaten’, I was dubious about this episode. While I liked that episode more than many viewers seemed to, it smacked of rushed writing and shooting, and was one of the few episodes that don’t make sense even after you’ve thought about it for a while. The notion that Neil Cross was writing a second episode hardly filled me with confidence.

‘Hide’ is not perfect. Once again, it is a very tightly packed episode, with several different concepts and plotlines all struggling for room to breathe – after about the halfway point, much of the script raises more questions than are answered, although it is debatable how many of those questions strictly need answering. There is at least one twist too many, although unlike ‘Akhaten’, everything in the episode makes sense (or at least, makes sense within the Doctor Who universe).

Other than that though…it’s pretty damn good. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the best episode of the series so far.

The central attraction is the outstanding pairing of Scott and Raine as Professor Palmer and his assistant Emma Grayling. Both offer restrained yet heartfelt, utterly convincing performances – all the more remarkable in Raine’s case, playing as she is a psychic ghosthunter – and the developing romance between them is easily the most engaging part of the story. That it is wrapped up in an incredibly atmospheric, rather unsettling ghost story is just the icing on the cake.

Elsewhere, there is an absolutely cracking scene showing the Doctor checking the same spatial location across the entirety of Earth’s history, from the formation of the planet to the burning up witnessed way back with Christopher Ecclestone. It is a beautiful, imaginative scene that also highlights the potentially disturbing, alien nature of the Doctor, and Jenna Louise Coleman perfectly delivers Clara’s unease at this side of her travelling companion – another key scene for Coleman is her glorious bitch-fest with the TARDIS. To complete the trio of scares, we have the Crooked Man, the named-only-in-credits monster of the piece. For much of the episode, he/she/it is incredibly unsettling, helped by some excellent editing to make it look even more unnatural (shots of it moving were cut up and bits taken out to provide a truly unsettling, disjointed motion).

Aside from the Crooked Man though, once we find out the truth of the Witch, the episode abruptly changes gear to a more traditional (kind of…) science fiction story, taking in time travel and parallel worlds, and it becomes a more generic ‘Who’ story, although by no stretch a bad one.

It is here that the flaws become more apparent. Much like the Vigil in ‘Akhaten’, there’s actually no real need for the Crooked Man except providing the obligatory monster of the week. While the scenes of the Doctor being chased through a murky, collapsing forest by a truly unnerving monster are undoubtedly good, the episode might have benefited from focusing a little more on the Witch/trapped time-traveller. Apart from her name, occupation, and a little touch of family history, we know absolutely nothing about her. And hey, as monsters go, a collapsing world is surely more than enough for one episode, right? The literally last minute introduction of a second Crooked Man (Crooked Men? Crooked Woman?) to make the Doctor realise that the monster is just in love was entirely unnecessary, and that the TARDIS can make not just one almost impossible jump between dimensions, but two, stretches disbelief perhaps just a tad too far – although equally, it’s Doctor Who. Stretching of disbelief is pretty much part of the show.

Most of these are niggles though, and don’t really detract from what is, on the whole, a thoroughly excellent episode.