Caves and Twins: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
It's Christmas, it's BBC1, it's that time between the afternoon snooze and the turkey sandwich. It can only be another Doctor Who special.
Not one of the Christmas specials has been much good by my reckoning, the first one and the one with Gambon in were OK; most have been utterly awful.
I did not really look forward to the Doctor Who Christmas special this year; mainly because I never think they're up to much but partly because I found myself tiring of Who over the year. All of a sudden fatigue set in and I wasn't really bothered any more. But, because it's Doctor Who and I'll never truly dislike it, I tuned it.
So did I find a succulent turkey - or was it overcooked sprouts all the way.
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It was nice to see Matt Smith again
The reproducing, sentient trees were a nice idea.
The sets and all the period detail were impeccable.
Like most fans I appreciate the nods to the past – something that seems increasingly nice when faced with the possibility of a reboot film series.
Nice to see Amy and Rory again.
Like the tree monsters.
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I know it's Christmas and I know expectations are low and I know these specials are kind of duty bound to be stupidly Christmassy, but for fuck's sake.
I just didn't care and I didn't believe it and I didn't like it. About half an hour before it actually happened I'd guessed, no, feared, that the Power of Motherhood was going to save the day. Just like a kiss saved the day and love saved day and hope saved the day again and again and again over the last couple of years.
RTD shrugged, made Tennant cry and just fell back on some MacGuffin when he'd written himself into a corner; Moffat just relies on schmaltz. It's usually done in a clever way – and in a way that's possible to overlook for a while.
But it happens so frequently that it's impossible to ignore - and deeply tiresome. And predictable. And rather cheap and cynical.
Because at Christmas Moffat gets a bit of a bye. Perhaps he should be allowed his indulgence once a year, like we are when we stuff our face for a day. God knows the man is busy enough, what with his 15 series that he showruns.
But what I'm left with is a story that almost feels like a waste of my time. I'm sure lots of people enjoy it and would shout humbug at me. But judging these Xmas specials on the same basis we judge the usual episodes show them up badly.
Something else that creeps into these recent Xmas episodes is a Moffat-patented wackiness; last year a shark-drawn sleigh, this year a forest-possesed Edwardian mother piloting a golf ball through the time vortex.
What can we expect next year, I wonder? A TARDIS disguised as a polar bear running trough Albert Square? A Timelord that's regenerated into a reindeer with a nose made of strange matter? A flying penguin powered by faith and ridden by John Masefield?
I suppose I should mention Bill Bailey and Claire Skinner and Alexander Armstrong and Arabella Weir. I didn't care. Neither did I care for the emotional manipulation that struck a rather dubious tone, in my opinion. Once again, death has no sting. What does this say to kids about their nature of life and death? Either way it's damn lazy and cynical.
It's incredible how quickly Moffat's take on Doctor Who seems staid, overfamiliar and out of ideas. And I don't take ay pleasure from saying it. Just as I don't take any pleasure from watching it, much as it pains me to admit.
Caves and Twins: The Almost People
The Almost People - the second part to Doctor Who's take on The Thing, or Battlestar Galactica - or whatever.
Last week had some strong elements and a good cliffhanger, but it was all a little bit messy and confusing, like much of this series.
There were hints that something big was going to happen in this episode to set up next week's mid-season finale, so are we going to start getting some answers?
Would we get Battlestar Galactica or, er, Battlestar Galactica?
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I though the performances were generally up on last week, with some of the humans/gangers becoming recognisable characters.
Smith Docs - I enjoyed the interplay between the two and Smith's performances - as well as the Doctor being at the centre of the story.
Climax - Obviously something involving Amy - and perhaps Rory too was coming - but this was a great shock pulled off with style by Moffatt.
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CGI - CGI is always bloody awful. The scene with the discarded flesh - a scenes that should have been a powerful moment - was just embarrassing in how poor the effects were and the Jenny Monster was another tiresome revisitation of the Utterly Terrible New Series CGI Monster.
Jenny - An annoying and not believable character not portrayed especially well.
Characters acting out of character - In stories where plotting struggles characters begin to act out of a necessity to drive the plot along rather than believable motives. Rory's behaviour was pretty unfathomable in this one - as was some of the Doctors'. Which leads us to...
Noble self-sacrifices - see above. Another familiar Nu series meme.
Smiths - While Smith did well in both parts it was horribly confusing to try and follow who was who (ahem). THis seemed to pay off in the climax, but if the two Doctors had swapped immediately then why was the real Doctor trying to strangle Amy?
Killing Amy - Didn't the Doctor creaming Amy (!) negate the moral core of the previous 90 minutes? Arguably the flesh Amy (!) was simply an avatar rather than a sentient ganger, but it was another muddled point that didn't come off well under analysis.
There was a lot wrong with this, but I still quite enjoyed it. It felt rather unlike any previous Doctor Who - and change is generally to be welcomed.
I'm still unsure about the series arc and the wisdom of leaving so many baffling answer hanging in the air and this story itself was quite hard to follow and didn't really add up.
Still, another intriguing twist in what's looking like the strangest series yet of Doctor Who. Let's hope it all adds up in the end.
Caves and Twins: Curse of the black spot
NB. No Caves and Twins for last week's concluding part to the season opener as yet, largely because I still don't know what to make of it
When I saw the trailer for this week's episode, which is called Curse of the Black Pirates of the Caribbean, or something, I hoped that it wasn't going to be an episode I could pretty much envisage in about three seconds with little more than a passing thought.
Doctor Who meets pirates is only a novel and exciting idea if you're about four years old or a 50-year-old show-runner with two spots in the new block to fill.
The whole genre is so familiar and over-ripe that it can't possibly avoid falling into a wretched pastiche, like a join-the-dot 'scripting for dummies' guide connecting cutlasses, planks, sirens, sharks and sirens to one another
Still, this is what we got this week. So was it Captain Pugwash or Captain Jack Sparrow?
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Production values - Costumes, sets, dressing. The BBC doing what it does best (I understand it was filmed on location. Eh?).
Hugh Bonneville - Played it straight, unlike everyone else
The sci-fi bit - Hardly novel, but some nice coma-inspired visuals and the story was dying on its arse by the end of the second act.
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Amy can sword fight better than pirates - and goes to the bother of putting on a stupid costume. Not even RTD would have pulled that nonsense with this beloved Wose.
Murray Gold's terrible music - Any story that relies some of Murray's patented Hollywood chintzgasm saccharine is in trouble from the get-go. Although that idea that it might send people to sleep seems amusing, it seems more likely that it would make them throw up a little in their mouths.
Toby=Adric
Captain banter - Whose is bigger, whose is better? Tedious.
Shover me hearties - Unfunny, self-satisfied, 'look-at-us-aren't-we-clever-doing-these-hoary-old-dialogue-cliches?' dialogue.
Rory dies #533 - Seriously, how many times has Arthur Darvill had to play a death scene now? And why can't The Doctor do CPR? Manipulative, nonsensical tosh.
Story arc stuff - Already irritating
In the latest DWM, Moffat reveals that the author of this episode pestered him for ages to be allowed to write an episode. Why, then, turn in 30 minutes of the most hackneyed drivel seen this side of Vampires of Venice followed by a pot pourri of Moffat greatest hits?
Doctor Who has always done pastiche, but here it just felt lazy. Things got a tad more interesting when the spaceship turned up, but then it turned into a Moffat pastiche. Weird.
This has been an extraordinary start to the series, but I'm afraid I've not been convinced by it at all thus far. And while I hated many of RTD's efforts, and other stories on his watch, I never really felt nonplussed by it - until now.
Is the show-runner doing too much? Is Who fatigue setting in? Has The Moff misjudged his Nu Who a tad? Or am I just being a miserable bugger? Tune in next week...
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Those Doctor Who deaths in full
So, Steven Moffat has been busy teasing the new series of Doctor Who with the claim that someone among the main cast will kark it bigstyle. Ooh! Who will it be?
Well, if the previous six years are anything to go by, it won't be anyone. So often has death been teased, both within the show and by production members, that it's turned into the boy who cried Bad Wolf.
I don't see this is the innocent bit of fun it might otherwise be portrayed as, because every time someone says 'X is definitely going to die' then gets out of it with a silly swerve or bit of magic fairy dust it rather damages the credibility of the show.
Which is why Iraise a bit of an eyebrow at Moffat's claims this time. What's it going to be? River Song regenerates? The Doctor dies but is brought back to life by Amy's lust monster? Rory dies but becomes a Yeti? Amy 'dies' because she's technically listed as 'dead' in some official sodding records?
I suspect this time one of the four main cast is about to shuffle off their mortal coil, with no cheats or comebacks. But even that will be reduced by the many, many 'dies and then comes back to life' or 'doesn't die in first place' tricks the show has pulled on us of late.
Think I'm overdoing it? Well have a butchers at the list below. You'll die laughing. Or not.
Doctor Who undead list
Season 1
Jack
Jack gets exterminated
Result: Didn't die
Season 2
Rose
"This is the story of how I died"
Result: Didn't die
Season 3
Jack
Electrocuted. Dies
Result: Doesn't die
Season 3
Jack
Shot. Dies
Result: Doesn't die
Season 3
The Master
Refuses to regenerate. Dies.
Result: Doesn't die
Xmas special
Astrid
Falls down liftshaft, or something. Dies
Result: Doesn't die
Season 4
The Doctor
Massive regeneration tease: "I'm regenerating!"
Result: Didn't regenerate
Season 4
Donna
"There's something on your back" "I'm sorry, you're going to die"
Result: Didn't die
Season 5
Rory
Zapped by old woman's breath. Dies.
Result: didn't die.
Season 5
Rory
Shot by Silurians, dies
Result: Didn't die
Season 5
Amy
Shot by Auton Rory, dies
Result: Didn't die
Season 5
The Doctor
Gets exterminated. Dies. Dies in some sort of sun + end of universe + beginning of time cataclysm
Result: Didn't die
You can have The Daleks too, since the very last Dalek seems to die every single story they're in, although that always seemed to be true of the Master and the Daleks in the good old days too.
Hat-tip: Hellyer
Caves and Twins: Series Fnarg
So that was Series Five. Or Series 31. Or Series One. Or Series Chin, whatever you want to call it.
The stakes were high, with news that filming was overrunning horribly, Matt Smith was crap and kept forgetting his lines, Karen Gillan was 'wooden' and Phil Collinson had been called back in to sort the whole mess out.
We won't reveal our sources, although it seems entirely likely that pretty much everyone in fandom knows where they came from, but let's just say there was an element of fear going into Series Fnarg.
And how wrong we all were eh? Chief among this wrongness were the rumours that Smith was crap. In fact, it's hard to imagine this being any further off the mark.
Matt Smith is wonderful, and his gentler, more alien, Doctor is perfect for Moffatt's 'fairytale' Doctor Who. The whole tone of this series feels a more comfortable place for Doctor Who, and the Doctor, to be than Russell T Davies' iteration - which was a series of ever-decreasing circles by the time the excellent David Tennant went, though his Doctor was not highly-liked in these parts.
It seemed almost unthinkable that the series, and Smith, could carry on where RTD and Tennant left off, but a fairly hefty shift in tone and pace and lead character has made it all look rather effortless.
For the first time in quite a while, the series felt much more Who than it had in a long time. Smith may just be the best Doctor... ever.
But while all the big things got sorted out, the parts that made up the whole didn't always feel right. Murray Gold's presence dragged the series back to a RTD vibe, and his syrupy/BOMBASTIC! style took away a lot of the nuances of the new series.
More bizarre still were some of the author/story choices. Toby Whithouse and Chris Chibnall delivered exactly what their previous stories suggested they'd deliver - utterly underwhelming stories that felt like a throwback to a couple of years ago.
Against rather lovely oddities like Amy's Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger, they felt jarring in their straight-forward simplicity.
Mark Gatiss' Victory of the Daleks was, by all accounts, rather hacked to death in the editing suites and the end result was, frankly, a mess.
And stepping up to show-runner certainly sapped Moffatt's brilliance, with the slapdash The Beast Below and breakneck incoherence of The Big Bang.
There were no new, interesting monsters. In fact, the closest thing we got were the rubbish new Daleks. We had to put up with CGI thing hiding inside humans on at least three occasions, and the limits of the budget were evident in The Pandorica Opens when it turned out the Fucking Sycorax and the Fucking Weevils were in on the intergalactic plan to put the Doc away for good.
Still, Moffat handled the Autons and the Cybermen ten times better than RTD ever did - another subtle difference to the approach the two brought to the series.
And yet, funnily enough, it didn't really matter to me. The series felt fresh and fun. The Doctor seemed like, well, The Doctor. And Amy was breath of fresh air; a believable, volatile girl who didn't love her favourite Time Lord.
She may have had a slightly less healthy obsession with him, but inter-personal angst was banished from the TARDIS forever - 'I'm not that clingy!' seemed like a great riposte to the years of Marf and Wose.
Arthur Darvill's Rory eventually eclipsed the 'emasculated male' cipher that's been the default setting for most recurring male characters in the new series to become a rounded companion in his own right.
And, always at the centre of it, was Matt Smith. It's interesting to note that most new Doctors come into the role praising Patrick Troughton, and Smith took it a step further.
Watch him running - it's a straight lift from the Second Doctor. And he's always doing something with his hands - First Doctor? There's a bit of Four, Five and Eight in there too by our reckoning.
Not that The Eleventh Doctor is a pastiche; Smith has brought something new to the role again, and emphatically made it his own. He's a perfect choice.
So, series thingummy. A hearty slap on the back from us, and the best TARDIS crew in ages. No doubt tweaks will be made for next season.
Probic Vent demands Zygons and Yeti and the Dream Lord and a past Doctor and The Brigadier. And a remake of The Horror of Fang Rock. Simple enough eh? Oh yeah, and STOP RUINING OLD MONSTERS!
• Here's an end-of-season C&T for the series.
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The Eleventh Hour - Fresh, fun and firmly established Smith as something new and interesting
Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone - A home run from Moffat, with plenty of twists and turns and great monstering
Amy's Choice - Offbeat and enjoyable - an episode that seems unthinkable under RTD.
Vincent and the Doctor - Intriguing, if cloying
The Lodger - Would have been horrible with Tennant. Good with Smith.
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang - Absolute gibberish, but wins points for not having thousands of cloned Sontarans invading the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower. Magic Light and Power of Love notwithstanding.
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The Beast Below - Too many elements that didn't seem to add up.
Victory of the Daleks - A horrible mess, and shit new Daleks. Almost saved by performances, but not quite.
Vampires of Venice - Dull filler
Hungry Earth/Cold Blood - Dull Chibnall filler that fluffed one of the most interesting premises in Who mythology.
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Caves and Twins: The Big Bang
Confusing, exploding, emoting, deus ex-ing - The Big Bang was a rebooted Doctor Who end-of-series episode alright.
But was it, umm, any good, or was it as ultimately unsatisfying as all of the others?
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Smith - magical and alien and brilliant
Gillen - Sassy and scared and screwed-up. Adorable.
Rory - An excellent male companion, who's more daffy-but-resourceful Harry Sullivan now, rather than a another castrated idiot man.
Smith's bedside soliloquy - Rather sums up the Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith's performance - both note perfect
The wedding - Good entrance
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Love saves the day - As long as you remember someone, they come back to life? Whatever.
Magic light - The light from the Pandorica brings people back to life? And jump starts the second big bang, or something.
Where is thy sting? - The Doctor dies and comes back to life. Amy dies and comes back to life. Over the course of this series Rory has died and come back to life. At least twice.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey - Getting a bit samey wamey now
Murray Gold - Time for a regeneration
Despite all the bollocks about people coming back to life and the big fat reset switch, so beloved of RTD, and now seemingly an inescapable feature of all Doctor Who, it was pretty enjoyable.
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Caves and Twins – The Lodger
Gareth Roberts' latest attempt to write a decent Doctor Who episode after several disappointments was a genuinely off-beat effort. So was this budget-saver a Midnight or a Fear her?
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Matt Smith - Pulls off another great performance, despite characterisation that seemed a little off.
Corden Bleu - James Corden was fairly understated and sympathetic - a well-judged performance from a frequently-annoying character.
Silent Not Golden - Murray Gold seemed either on holiday or extremely understated. I never noticed any intrusive sub-Harry Potter tripe this week, which was nice.
Day-to-day Doctor - The Doctor struggling to come to terms with everyday living was amusing, if a little overstated
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Diminished Doctor- Subverting the Doctor's character in an everyday setting was generally well done, but a little overdone and tiresome in places.
The Power of RTD - The plot was secondary, so it seems churlish to complain about it, but fixing the spaceship via the power of love was rather twee. Reeked of bad Tennant-era Who.
Empty Pond - Amy got rather lost in the mix, both insofar as the plot left her alone in the TARDIS, but poor old Pond seemed returned to a generic companion-in-distress cipher.
Overall it was an enjoyable little episode, and it was good to see Gareth Roberts finally locating his mojo, after previous episodes that ranged from underwhelming to bloody awful.
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Caves and Twins: Cold Blood
The second half of Chibnall's Silurian two-parter, which has referenced half the Pertwee era thus far, had to pull it out of the bag rather to improve on the disappointing The Hungry Earth. So, was it a pretty Okdel, or was the whole thing a pile of Icthar?
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All the regular were excellent
Kiling of Rory - brave and unexpected
The return of the crack - Just when you that particular arc had been magicked away
The shrapnel - An intriguing lead in to the climax of this season
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Most of the guest cast. Pretty poor, in my opinion.
The plot - Earth Reptile Plot Number One gets yet another run out
Silurian redesign - Sorry to be a bore on this, but it was totally uninspired. Straight out of the TNG/DS9/Voyager monster make-up book. Humans with masks on.
Murray Gold's music - Back to intrusive, bombastic and totally lacking in subtlety
Loose ends - I expect things like the wedding ring and the future Rory and Amy will pay off in the future, but what about the little kid's dyslexia? Seemingly deliberately flagged up, only to be abandoned. Or did I miss something?
All in all, Cold Blood was OK, but the two-parter as a whole felt like marking time until the last ten minutes.
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Caves and Twins: The Eleventh Hour
The Eleventh Hour - the first of a brave new era for Moffatt, for Smith, for the Eleventh Doctor, for the show.
So, did Moffatt's new fairytale Doctor Who prove to be a bit Rose, New Earth, Smith and Jones, Partners in Crime... actually all of the first episodes tend to be unremitting shite, so will this be a change?
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The crack in the wall... the edge of the eye - Loved all the stuff about creepy stuff that scares kids. Nicely understated and eerie
Young Amelia - Wonderful performance from the girl who played young Amy - threatened to overshadow Karen Gillan.
Smith - Got there in the end. Despite all the internet rumours, despite being too young, despite the Tennant squeers, despite the weight of a 47-year-old show on his scrawny shoulders, Smith pulled it off.
Amy's story - Heart-breakingly abandoned by the Doctor - or was she? - and resulting in a flighty, slightly unbalanced flame-haired babe with a Raggedy Doctor fetish. Interesting.
Patrick Moore - Recast a rogueish astronomer permanently on the pull. Amusing.
Redesigned TARDIS - Exterior anyway.
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Fishfinger custard - An idea of 'eccentric' so hackneyed even RTD would have thought twice. In fact the whole first 15 minutes, complete with Murray's "I'm writing Harry Potter score" and kerrayzee tone were like a pissed Uncle dancing to Madness at a wedding. Post-regeneration trauma has never been so twatty.
Prisoner Zero - Slightly interesting as barking man or weird housewife and kids, dull-as-dishwater as unconvincing CGI blob.
Plot - Rubbish, but prepared to overlook it cos there was so much to do in the episode.
All in all a top start. Remarkable how fresh it all seemed a matter of months after The End of Time. New Doctor, new companion and the whole new feel of the show come together to make Series Five an intriguing prospect.
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Caves and Twins: Flesh and Stone
So, Moffatt's first two-parter as show-runner, Weeping Angels and all, comes to an end after last week's The Time of Angels.
Was it as satisfying as The Doctor Dances or as incomprehensible as, er, most of the other concluding episodes of two-parters?
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The eeriness of the antagonists and the setting was superb, with Amy's counting down from ten ('for fun'); Octavian's imminent death; the Doctor getting literally collared; and the eventual moving Angels all wonderfully realised Who-ish moments.
The arc. I haven't worked out what the crack is all about, or what River Song has to do with it, or whether there were two separate Doctors roaming about on the Byzantium - but it's already shaping up to be fascinating, and I expect a typically rigourous conclusion by Moffatt.
Acting. All of the cast were superb, particularly the regulars. Gillan's 'countdown' scenes were played well and really gave the story a nasty, frightening edge. And Iain Glen made a role that could have been perfunctory a believable character
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Direction. I'm reaching a bit here, but I found quite a few lines delivered in a really odd way, particularly by Alex Kingston, who is usually fine. And I never thought the threat of the Angels – that they move when not viewed - was communicated that well by the ultra-snappy editing. No howlers though.
Amy gets sexy. While I like the idea of Karen Gillan getting all hot and bothered, it seemed a bit off-kilter with her character and the dynamic between Amy and the Doctor so far. I've seen it argued that this scene was a massive two fingers up to the emo-ness of RTD and Ten and Rose and Martha, but I'd really enjoyed the lack of emotional wankery so far in this season. Their relationship seemed complicated, yet fairly believable - it now risks being reduced to another 'companion hot for the Doctor' thing.
That's about it, a fine two-parter that really stamped Moffatt and the leads and the new direction of the new series on Doctor Who
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