Thoughts on: The Tsuranga Conundrum

I haven’t seen Alien. I don’t know what happens in it, either. But lots of people are comparing The Tsuranga Conundrum to Alien, and because I haven’t seen it I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a good thing. From the fact that the comparison is being made, though, I can gather that Alien is probably about an alien that boards a human spacecraft in the 67^th or maybe the 42^nd or the 93^rd Century and wreaks havoc, probably dramatically killing numerous people, while the human crew and passengers frantically try to steer the ship to safety. How did I go? I just looked up the plot on Wikipedia and I’m delighted to report that I’ve got it right – although it was the 22^nd Century, not the 93^rd.

I could guess the plot of the film everyone is comparing this episode to because it’s not exactly the most complex of storylines – nor particularly the most original. The base-under-siege-by-a-berserk-killer-alien-that’s-going-to-eat-us-all is a staple of the sci-fi genre. Doctor Who has done it a number of times before, in one form or another: there was 42 and The Impossible Planet and Flesh and Stone and Under the Lake and even Midnight. This is nothing new. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. There’s a Doctor Who reviewer I like reading whose benchmark for a good Doctor Who story is basically “something I’ve never seen before”. I’m with this reviewer insofar as I’d prefer to see Doctor Who do new, original things rather than persistently rehashing old ideas, but originality doth not by itself a good Doctor Who make (as Love and Monsters is testament), and unoriginality doth not by itself make bad Doctor Who.

And that’s more or less how I feel about The Tsuranga Conundrum. Not great, but not bad, either. It’s fun. It holds the attention for its 50 minutes’ running time. It’s another worthy addition to the Doctor Who canon. But, no, it doesn’t do anything especially interesting or important. No one’s going to remember The Tsuranga Conundrum or put it in a Top 10 list of anything (or Bottom 10, for that matter). And that’s okay. Not every Doctor Who story has to be Heaven Sent. It’s okay to be The Tsuranga Conundrum. There’s a place for the Tsuranga Conundrums and the Dinosaurs on a Spaceships and the Gridlocks of the Doctor Who canon. I love Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, by the way – I think it’s the best episode of Series 7 (which, to be fair, isn’t really saying much).

As the latest iteration on the base-under-siege genre, it was fine. It wasn’t a stellar exemplar of the genre, but it wasn’t a poor effort, either. I thought the episode was about to dip into an unrelenting downward trajectory when I saw that the alien from which the base was under siege was not the great, carnivorous, many-toothed beastie I thought we were about to see, but a rather cute, squeezable beastlet measuring about 1 foot high called a Pting. He reminded me of a mix between a toad and a Niffler from Harry Potter. Not particularly intimidating, and the sight of the Doctor edging cautiously towards what looked like a cute Japanese plush toy come alive was a bit comical, a bit killer rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“That’s no ordinary rabbit, that’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!”). Maybe the intern was given the task of designing this one.

But no matter — it did its job. It caused enough havoc and drama (mostly off-screen, it must be said) to make the characters’ impending doom pretty convincing. The best moments of this episode, though, weren’t the mayhem and the action, but the quieter character moments: there was Ryan reflecting, glassy-eyed, about his parents and his childhood to a captivated Yas. There was the Doctor fawning reverently over the antimatter generator, in the most Doctorish little passage I’ve seen from Whittaker yet. There was the Doctor suddenly being hit by Astos’s rebuke that she was being selfish and belligerent and not like the Doctor at all. There was Durkas and Ronan touchingly making up after losing the woman they both loved (insofar as a robot can love…) The character writing has consistently been the best aspect of this series, which should come as no surprise given that Chris Chibnall has already proven his chops as a master character writer (for a citation on this, I will never stop recommending Born and Bred – watch it!). Even the supporting characters have been consistently good, which is still the case this week – even the “synth robot” Ronan, General Eve Cicero’s partner (I guess, kind of like a 67^th Century sexbot).

All I’ll say about Jodie Whittaker this week is that she’s getting better and better. She had more good moments in this episode than any yet – it’s just a shame the scripts are getting more and more ordinary. What I’m enjoying seeing from Whittaker, even if her Doctor isn’t dazzling me yet, is that she’s clearly having fun. The first few sequences of the Doctor staggering around on the ship after awakening from being blown to smithereens were great because Whittaker was clearly enjoying herself. It still feels strange to hear other characters address Whittaker as “Doctor”, but there’s no doubt she’s having fun, and when Whittaker is having fun, we’re having fun. And if Whittaker is having fun being the Doctor, she can only get better as time goes on.

Finally, while this episode was by no means bad, something I will take issue with is that we’re now halfway through Series 11 and we’re still being served up average to good-but-not-great scripts. My attitude towards The Tsuranga Conundrum is a good metaphor for the quality of the series so far: not great, but not bad; just fine. We’ve seen nothing so far that has made Series 11 worthwhile or that would make me look back on Series 11 with anything other than indifference. The Ghost Monument looked promising, but it did nothing more than whet the appetite. Series 11 so far hasn’t delivered the promised main course. If anything, it’s actually gone backwards – the last two episodes have been fine in themselves, but have felt the most like the Doctor Who this series is supposed to be getting away from so far. It’s not a great start to what was supposed to be a brave, exciting new era. This series isn’t generating excitement or reeling in couchloads of new viewers. And it matters because we’ve now reached the halfway point for this series. From next week we’re on the home stretch – Series 11 has five more episodes to get its act together.

Rating: 7/10.

Thoughts on: Arachnids in the UK

Who remembers Kill the Moon? Cast your minds back to the heady days of Series 8, when much of the Doctor Who fanbase was still in shock from Peter Capaldi thundering down the camera as a raw, roughly-hewn Twelfth Doctor. The most memorable thing about that highly polarising episode, plonked right in the middle of Series 8, was that it was billed as an arachnid-riddled tribute to Philip Hinchcliffe, but ended up being more a live-action abortion debate in space which culminated in the Doctor and Clara dramatically breaking up. Although it was hated by many, I actually didn’t mind Kill the Moon, but what I was disappointed about was being cheated out of the nightmarish, Hinchcliffe-esque horror story we were promised. The spiders weren’t even that good.

That’s not something that can be said about Arachnids in the UK, although this one, too, indulges in what now appears to be the obligatory share of political commentary. These spiders were horrifying, a fitting tribute to the legacy of Philip Hinchcliffe. I don’t have insider knowledge about how the BBC spends its money, but it’s increasingly clear that the Beeb has flicked a bit more dosh Doctor Who’s way this year, because Series 11 has looked visibly more stunning than the Who we’re used to. Testament to this is how much more realistic and skin-crawlingly horrifying the CGI spiders in this episode were than the last time Doctor Who tried to scare us with eight-legged beasties. Frankly, it says something that the thing I found more unconvincing wasn’t gigantic spiders but the fact that the Doctor, Yasmin and the rest of them didn’t spend the entire episode alternately rooted, petrified, to the spot or running in the opposite direction screaming their heads off.

It does seem like Chibnall has taken a conscious decision to dial up the creepiness this year. Even more gruesome than the spiders, actually, I thought, was Yas’s neighbour cocooned like an Egyptian mummy in cobwebs in her bed. Super freaky, and straight out of the horror writer’s playbook. In The Woman Who Fell to Earth we had a villain, looking like one of those disgusting characters out the front of ghost rides at funfairs, who plucked teeth from his victims and stuck them into his face as trophies.

This is something I’m totally on board with. Delighting in being scared and horrified is something that unites all ages of Doctor Who viewers, children and grown-ups alike. Adults really just want to be scared like children are. And Mary Whitehouse may have complained sanctimoniously in the seventies that Doctor Who’s monsters would traumatise children, but children love nothing more than being traumatised, as I learned from my encounters with several of them on Hallowe’en this year. I’m still traumatised by The Empty Child, and to this day I can’t look a gas mask in the face without coming over with a bad case of goose bumps, but watching The Empty Child as a frightened 10-year old started off in me an enduring love of Doctor Who and its scary monsters.

Donald Trump was there, too, in the form of an obnoxious business magnate with high political ambitions called Robertson. Well, he wasn’t really a Donald Trump analogue, even though he was clearly supposed to be. At least, he wasn’t an analogue of the version of Trump we’re told to hate by the people on the telly. Trump is dim, blustering, erratic and bravado-driven, while Robertson was cunning, calculating, cold and ambitious. In other words, Trump is a Gryffindor while Robertson was a Slytherin. I actually think that Donald Trump is much shrewder than people give him credit for, but that’s a discussion for another day. Robertson, played by Chris Noth, was an entertaining presence in the episode nonetheless, even if his role in the episode as a stick to jab at stupid Americans with their guns and their capitalism and their misogyny and their Donald Trump was a bit – and this is the second week in a row I’m using this word – preachy.

By the way, what exactly was the point of the standoff between the Doctor and the American over shooting the spiders? I’m just a little confused about where the Doctor is at now with her opposition to using guns, because in this episode she wouldn’t countenance using guns to kill gigantic spiders that were about to go on a murderous rampage around Sheffield, and in The Ghost Monument she refused to use guns against killer robots. Robots. Has the Doctor’s opposition to using guns turned from something moral to something theological? Are guns now unclean to the Doctor, like pigs are to Jews and Muslims? Because that’s what it looks like.

And it was never really explained to us when, and why, the Doctor added spiders, and presumably cockroaches and vermin, too, to her list of Living Creatures With Dignity Whose Lives Must Be Protected At All Costs. When it came to the Doctor staring down Robertson over shooting all the spiders, I was kind of on Robertson’s side. So, I suspect, was much of the audience. They’re spiders. I hate them. When I see them in my house I stamp on them – or, rather, spray them with bug spray because I’m too scared to go near them. But, really, I want an answer to this: how far does the Doctor’s principle of protecting life extend, and why?

I was surprised to learn that this was actually the first episode of the series that was filmed, because Whittaker looks more comfortable and fluent in the role than I’ve seen her yet – certainly much more so than in the series opener. It could just be that I’ve got used to watching Whittaker as the Doctor – or maybe I’m slowly coming round to this whole female Doctor business. The sequences in Yas’s apartment, with the Doctor acting endearingly awkward and weird in a normal social situation – very Matt Smith, in other words – were very good. I’m also coming round to the Scooby Gang arrangement this year – no doubt it’s hard writing for four main characters along with a handful of supporting characters each week, but, so far, miraculously, they’re pulling it off.

On a final note, something that I will mention, but not necessarily criticise, is that this feels more like the Doctor Who of Steven Moffat than the brave new, mature, grown-up Who it briefly looked like we were getting in The Ghost Monument, which still remains, I think, the best episode of this series so far. The latest two episodes have conspicuously retreated back into familiar, comfortable Moffat territory. I say I’m not going to criticise this because they’ve been good episodes – this is a good episode (well, it was fine) – and comparing something to Steven Moffat’s work is by no means itself a criticism, coming from me (one of the few Moffat partisans who looks upon his era with undiluted approval), but weren’t we supposed to be doing something new from now on? Weren’t we supposed to be moving on from Moffat and radically reimagining Doctor Who? I’ve written at length about this theme so I won’t repeat myself yet again here, but I will simply point out that so far my warnings have been vindicated: from the 10.96 million who watched The Woman Who Fell to Earth, viewing figures have fallen to 6.43 million this week, only about a million or so above the average of Series 10. Changing the Doctor’s gender, by itself, is not enough to win back viewers.

Rating: 7/10.

Thoughts on: Rosa

Last week I criticised The Ghost Monument – otherwise a good episode – for being, at times, patronising. I said, “I’m not opposed to Doctor Who pushing ethical or philosophical lessons, or even trying to appeal to children, but I don’t like feeling like I’m being patronised. Neither, for that matter, do children.” If Doctor Who last week was patronising, this week it was positively unctuous. If last week Doctor Who spoke rather transparently to the kids in the audience, this week it was basically a live-action adaptation of one of those edifying, good-citizen-making children’s storybooks about Inspirational Women Who Changed The World.

And, as they would say in Sheffield, there’s nowt wrong with that. As I said, there’s nothing wrong with Doctor Who pitching itself at children – it is a children’s show, even if I would prefer it to pitch itself at me – but there’s a right and a wrong way of doing it. There’s appealing to children and there’s being patronising. There’s speaking to children in language they understand and that’s meaningful to them, and there’s treating them like idiots. Children aren’t idiots, and they know when they’re being patronised. In entertainment terms, the elementary rule of “show, don’t tell” surely applies even more emphatically when making TV for children.

This episode, thankfully, gets it right. I’ll admit – I think I would only be able to stomach one of these kinds of scripts per series. Because I’m a grown-up with grown-up tastes in television and I already know very well that racism ain’t it chief – I don’t need it to be preached at me every week. But for this series’ sole allowance of preachy, moralistic, right-on, “being-racist-is-bad” stories, it’s not a bad one. It certainly tackled the subject of racism much more powerfully than Doctor Who, or at least the modern series, has before. Taking us back to 1955 Alabama and showing us the full, incensing ugliness of racist attitudes in the era of segregation is a lot more confronting than the show’s previous limp efforts at showing us that racism is bad. Ryan getting biffed across the face by a pink-faced Southerner for having the temerity to speak to a white woman makes the point a great deal more forcefully than pantomime bad-guy Lord Sutcliffe calling Bill “this creature” in Thin Ice.

This and the other overt, confronting displays of racism in this episode will have the intended effect on the children who watched it, the way “you filthy little Mudblood” did on me when I was at that impressionable young age. And it says something that this episode made me genuinely fear for the safety of the diverse members of the Tardis team in a way I didn’t when it was Martha in Elizabethan England or Bill in Georgian London. And it’s worth pointing out that the way the Doctor and Graham seemed reluctant throughout the episode to directly confront the people’s racist attitudes shows how brave it was for Rosa Parks to do what she did. But it was also clever, if cynical writing: if the Doctor had, as the Doctor normally does, put the racists in their place, the power of what Rosa did at the end of the episode would have been diminished.

The bad guy of this episode, too, was a thoughtful addition to the theme. I was a little disappointed when I realised that this wasn’t going to be the first pure historical since the Davison era, but Krasko being a time travelling white supremacist from the distant future who’s trying to avert the historical defeat of white supremacism by stopping Rosa Parks from protesting bus segregation is the only sci-fi intrusion that I will accept into what would otherwise be a long-awaited pure historical. Krasko was creepy for how familiar, how normal he was, how this villainous white supremacist could easily be your mate from work. He was creepy for how, it seems, the kind of skin-crawling racial supremacism we thought we left behind in 1955 is still festering in the minds of some in the distant future – and if it’s alive in the distant future, it’s alive today.

If it’s all just a bit on the preachy side, it’s still a great episode. It’s intriguing, there’s lots happening, lots of good dialogue, and the right characters get respectively blasted back to the distant past or honoured with Congressional Medals. I’m still trying to get used to the slower pace of Doctor Who now. I don’t know if it’s that I’m just used to the quicker pace that both Moffat and Davies liked to take things at, or that “slow-burn Doctor Who” is something that takes more practice to get right than Chibnall and his writers have had. Most likely it’s both. But it does feel like the script is struggling, at times, to fill in its running time, given the amount of calm talking and sneaking around they all do that we don’t usually get to see.

If nothing else, though, the increased running time and the slower pace of episodes gives us more time to spend with the characters, and more time for the characters to spend talking to each other. That’s not a terrible trade-off. I think these companions are already better developed – and better written – than almost any of the modern series companions. Gareth Roberts (who wrote The Lodger, The Shakespeare Code and The Unicorn and the Wasp) tweeted something I thought worth repeating: “Oh, and another thing. They all speak like normal people, not in smart-ass sassy writers room-ese.” It’s so true: I love Amy and Clara and Rose, but they look and sound like comic book characters next to Ryan and Graham. I don’t say next to Yasmin, too, because, even though Yasmin seems like a lovely person and a great addition to the Tardis team, unfortunately she hasn’t had very much to say or do yet. I hope that changes in the next few weeks, because she really does look like a promising character.

So my verdict on this one is basically that it’s a very good episode, but it’s the kind of thing I only want in moderation, by which I mean no more than one of these per series. Any more than that and I think I’d go off the whole thing. Let’s get back to some hard sci-fi adventuring next week, please. Oh, and you’ll notice that I didn’t do my weekly update on how the Female Doctor Project is going – that’s because there wasn’t really much to say this week. Jodie Whittaker continues to perform well, and she did some strong work this week, especially when she was facing off against Krasko, but she’s not dazzling me. I haven’t become enraptured by her yet. We’re still in “watch-this-space” territory.

Oh, and it’s brilliant, isn’t it, that we’re back to a misbehaving, capricious Tardis that spits out the Doctor and her companions at completely random places in space and time. This does actually feel very Hartnell era, and the show is all the better for it. Down with obedient Tardises and part-time companions, I say.

Rating: 8/10.

Class: Nightvisiting

 

Warning: spoilers.

Now this is more like it. This is the kind of intelligent, thematic, high-concept storytelling I was looking forward to from Class. It’s a welcome sign that Class will not feel itself constrained by its YA-ish concept and premise, that it will dare to experiment and test itself and try out interesting ideas. It’s learning from the experiences of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures in this way, both of which played it fairly conventional and safe in their first seasons before becoming more innovative and bold, and therefore interesting, in subsequent seasons. Class looks like it’s skipping the “play-it-safe” part and is eager to try out the interesting ideas of its writers without unnecessary ado. That’s very satisfying.

And the idea behind Nightvisiting really is interesting, and the show ought to be congratulated not only for having the initiative to try it out but also for executing it so successfully. The idea of people’s deceased loved ones coming back and visiting them in the night is on a special level of freaky, a level I’m really pleased that Class is prepared to play on. Not only that, but the way this concept was brought to life was utterly freaky. Jasper, Tanya’s father (or rather, the Lankin imitating Jasper) was a profoundly creepy and unnerving figure. He was positively ghoulish, with his dead gaze and his moaning voice. It’s the kind of thing intended to scare adults as well as children—children are easily scared by ghosts and zombies, but adults will be scared by the idea of their deceased loved ones appearing at their windows as ghouls like Tanya’s father. It’s what makes the idea of the Lankin so wonderfully frightening even after being stripped of its supernatural affectations—no one wants to find their dead father, girlfriend or sister sitting at their window, ghost or not.

Another strength of this episode is the character writing, which is, as I thought, turning out to be this show’s standout feature. Tanya was not reduced to a passive plot device by being tempted by the Lankin’s deception. She was written consistently with her character’s perceptiveness, intuitiveness and emotional strength by remaining aloof and sceptical of her “father’s” overtures, notwithstanding her grief and her obvious desire to connect with her father again, even if her defences did begin to melt eventually. A weaker and less perceptive person would have given in to the Lankin, as we saw. And Vivian Oparah delivers some exceptional, absorbing acting to vindicate her character’s writing, the moment in the denouement where Tanya channels all her resentment and anger at her father into the Lankin especially stirring.

Moreover, it’s a welcoming sign of Ram’s emotional growth and healing that his first reaction to seeing Rachel again, over whom he was grieving intensely in the previous episode, was to go “NOPE NOPE NOPE” and run to find his dad—and, failing that, April. It’s a gratifying development from the “Nobody understands my pain, I’m shutting everyone out, just let me wallow” that we saw from Ram in the previous episode. Ram is quickly becoming the show’s most interesting character, even if he still is a bit of a twat, and I’m very intrigued to see where his character will end up by the end of this season.

And, oh my god, let’s talk about April. There’s an emotional strength and depth of character there we would never have guessed in the first episode, April revealing the hidden emotional turmoil that we now see defines much of her character. It’s an absorbing and touching revelation scene that sees April and Ram bond in, er, more ways than one. Who the hell saw that kiss coming? I’m not criticising—it was unexpected but it does actually make sense. April’s explanation of the way she puts up defences against the inner turmoil surrounding her father in order to stop her father continuing to hold influence over her and control her life speaks to Ram, who’s trying to recover from the trauma and the suffering he’s recently experienced. They bond on a very intimate, emotional level over their shared experiences with trauma and coping, and, in the passion of the moment, kiss. It works. It was a gamble which, although it could have failed badly with worse writing, actually worked out well.

Even Miss Quill is — slowly — becoming more layered, even if she’s still the show’s single-note comic relief at the moment—not that I’m necessarily complaining. I’m thinking particularly of the scene at the end where Miss Quill appears to express her disgust at the kids’ sentimental post-victory bonding session before stalking off, but, was it just me, or did it seem like Miss Quill was just a tiny bit disappointed that she wasn’t included in the kids’ celebrations? I think she does long for real personal connection like Charlie has found with the others, even if on some level she does resent the “arses of smart” she’s been charged with looking after. What else are we to make of Miss Quill’s insistence that she’s “deranged with grief” for her people, and her disbelief in Charlie’s apparent aloofness? If the show continues to write its characters well, we’ll see much more of Miss Quill before the season is over.

Rating: 8/10.

Thoughts on: Human Nature / The Family of Blood

Okay, that was absolutely magnificent. It’s times like these that I’m left in complete awe of the sheer quality of television that Doctor Who is producing. Everything about this story was absolutely perfect. More than that, it was just an astounding work of art: some of the most creative and inspired writing this show has ever seen. It had a positively riveting story, peerless quality of acting, superlative visual production, and I’m just finding it difficult to do justice to this work in my words.

The inspired conceit at the heart of this story was the transformation of the Doctor into a human. Which Doctor better with which to conduct this experiment than the Tenth, the most human of all the Doctors? We gained a privileged glimpse into the Doctor’s nature by way of this experiment. If I’m right in having understood that John Smith was a “persona” of the Doctor, a constellation of aspects of his personality, stripped of his Time Lord consciousness, then this story presented us with a fascinating vision of what the Doctor would be like as a human. John Smith was a sweet, gentle man, thoughtful, and astonishingly brave. John Smith was a romantic, a man of passion, who savoured the keen tease of love. He would, if he could have, contentedly made himself a life with Joan Redfern, a whole new, human life. He would have settled down and lived out the rest of his human days in loving, contented bliss with a woman he loves, so very unlike the Doctor we know. Moreover, he displayed extraordinary bravery when he sacrificed it all, and all he was, to be the Doctor again. This is all the Doctor. It’s a side to the Doctor we never see because it’s buried deep inside him, perhaps as part of his subconscious, but this is who the Doctor would be if he were a human.

The Family of Blood were a suitably chilling adversary. They displayed a frightening villainy that truly disturbed, even more so because of their taking ordinary human forms: the jarring incongruity was disquieting enough on its own. Jeremy Baines, played superlatively by Harry Lloyd, was the most delightfully creepy of the lot, a slimy, unhinged public schoolboy whose discordant speech and his unearthly, ravenous gaze sets the hair on end. Lloyd is to be congratulated for a profoundly unsettling, villainous performance. A word of praise should also be given to Jessica Hynes, whose performance as Joan Redfern was entrancingly delicate and nuanced and perfect. Her portrayal of Joan’s suppressed heartbreak and sorrow at the loss of John Smith was touching, almost tearful. Hynes carried her script more than admirably, and I’m really in awe of her talents here.

Martha was fantastic, and Agyeman carried the all-important lead role exceptionally. Thrust reluctantly into the role of keeping herself and the Doctor safe until the threat of the Family had gone, Martha acquitted herself laudably and bravely. She endured committing herself to particularly undesirable work, racial prejudice, and loneliness, for the Doctor’s sake, and for that deserves high commendation. Martha continues to prove herself a more than capable companion, in this story more so than any yet. She’s particularly to be praised for telling the bigoted attitudes of the time to go f*ck themselves. As an aside, Doctor Who, usually engaging in disingenuous whitewashing of historical race relations (black courtiers at the Palace of Versailles anyone?), was uncharacteristically forthright about the less than commendable historical racial attitudes in this story—and for that is to be commended.

The spectre of war was a prominent theme in this story, one explored with sobering effect. There was no particular reason, it seemed, to set the story in 1913, but it created an opportunity to gain insights about England on the eve of war. A nation that had not been involved in major warfare for a century, it romanticised and gloried in war and the warlike ethic. It brought its proudest sons up to exult in the cause of King and Country, in killing and conquering for the military glory of the nation. How naive it all was, and how cruelly those romantic notions were shattered, in the “war to end all wars”. The tears and clenched teeth of the boys as they believed themselves to be mowing down human lives was profoundly disquieting, representing the moment those boys’ romantic ideas about war were horrifically shattered, an exceptionally powerful moment.

While in John Smith we saw one hidden side of the Doctor, in the Doctor’s retribution against the Family we saw another, less endearing side. “The Fury of the Time Lord” is truly a terrible sight to behold—yet another manifestation of the Tenth Doctor’s usually repressed “dark side” that I’ve written about before. Tennant’s acting throughout this story, by the way, was absolutely peerless. He’s gone above and beyond everything he’s done before and delivered a breathtaking, astounding performance, positively ripping into the equally astounding writing. Tennant is well past the shaky start and the nervous inconsistency of Series 2. I’ll give the last word to the talented Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Tim Latimer, who delivered a more than competent performance for his age. It’s easy to see here how he went on to his high-profile role in Game of Thrones…

In sum, a masterpiece. Unarguably one of the best things Doctor Who has ever produced.

Rating: 10/10.

Thoughts on: 42

This episode was… exciting, suspenseful, emotive and delightfully agitated. It had a brilliant concept for a Doctor Who story—a spaceship is going to collide with the sun and the Doctor has 42 minutes to save them all. It’s one of the advantages of the New Who format of single-episode stories that the show can do these fast-paced, exhilarating race-against-the-clock stories. Nevertheless, I felt that, even with a wonderfully hectic “42-minutes-to-save-everyone” premise, this episode involved a lot of padding in the form of repetitive running around. In that respect, it was a fairly standard runaround, albeit an exceptionally well-produced runaround—it was all seized with an urgency and desperation that made it wonderfully exciting to watch. The grungy, steampunk aesthetic was also very effective in this regard. The sun creature thing that infected the crew members was an effective villain and posed a genuinely menacing threat, especially when it infected the Doctor—you know that when the Doctor is threatening to regenerate then the monster is serious business.

Despite the thrilling urgency of this episode, its best moments were the quieter moments, such as that between Martha and Riley in the escape pod drifting into the sun, and between a distressed Martha and her mother on the phone. As we get a glimpse of the mother-daughter dynamic between Martha and her mother, we get an idea of what makes Martha want to be with the Doctor: her mother seems very controlling and their relationship less than perfect. We’ve already seen that her family is not altogether functional. Martha likely wants to escape the frustrations of an unsatisfying personal life just as Rose wanted to escape the tedium and dissatisfaction of her ordinary life. Indeed, Martha as good as admitted it when she was speaking intimately with Riley. I like that. The Doctor’s companions are all extraordinary in some way: they all have some reason to leave their normal life behind and live a romantic, unreal life of danger and adventure with the Doctor; it’s very few people who would leave their life behind like that, but the Doctor’s companions are extraordinary, in more than one way. I think it makes for a more interesting Doctor-Companion dynamic, because both the Doctor and his companion are running in some way, and shunning ordinary life for some reason. It’s one of the reasons why Clara, trying to balance her “real” life and her TARDIS life, hasn’t really worked for me (although the final moments of Last Christmas look promising).

David Tennant and his character were excellent in this episode. Tennant has been far more consistent and robust over the course of Series 3 than last series, and he positively shone in this one, displaying with finesse the breadth and depth of his range: now indignantly demanding the crew’s obedience, now impassionedly pleading with Martha to believe he would save her, now agonisingly trying to resist the sun creature inside him. I was in awe of the Doctor’s bravery and determination in venturing outside the ship to rescue Martha, justifying Martha’s unwavering belief in him. Martha herself was unfailingly amazing in this episode, surpassing herself in justifying the Doctor’s choice of her as companion.

Rating: 8/10.

Thoughts on: The Lazarus Experiment

I thought this was the first misfire of Series 3. Actually, I thought it was an idea with great potential, but was poorly written and executed. The idea, of the dangers of toying with nature—specifically of playing with human genetics in pursuit of otherwise laudable objectives—contained the seed of a great story. I would have lapped up a mature discussion of the desirability of playing with nature in the name of “progress”, and, at certain moments, this episode came close (for example when the Doctor confronted Lazarus in the cathedral), but the absolutely ridiculous mutant beast thing really made a mockery of any serious thematic arguments the writers were trying to convey. It was really so overblown and preposterous that it quite ruined the episode for me. I’ll give the episode points for having a good idea and a few genuinely good moments and instances of dialogue pursuing that idea, but the absurd Lazarus beast is the great, writhing, mutated elephant in the room which I’m finding impossible to ignore.

A secondary theme this episode dealt with (again, compromised by the Lazarus beast), was reversing ageing and life extension. Lazarus and his experiment reminded me of Aubrey de Grey and his exciting research into “rejuvenation”. Although I don’t agree with them, Doctor Who’s contribution to the debate surrounding this and other anti-ageing scientific research raises valid concerns that humanity might have about the proliferation of medical remedies to “defeat” ageing, by reversing its effects (as de Grey is looking at doing) or otherwise. The Doctor’s monologue on the curse of a long life was particularly good:

I’m old enough to know that a longer life isn’t always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you, tired of watching everything turn to dust. If you live long enough, Lazarus, the only certainty left is that you’ll end up alone.

Again, this could have made for the theme of a really relevant and penetrating story, but it’s hard to take the message seriously when age-reversal technology is depicted as turning a man into a giant, freakish, murderous, stampeding beast.

I’m glad the Doctor finally gave in and took Martha on full time. He knew he wanted to, right from the start, and it was plain that his heart wasn’t really in it when he was going to leave Martha at the beginning. I think, rewatching Series 3 for the first time in a long while, that Martha is cementing her place as my second favourite companion of the revived series (after Amy). She continues to be brilliant—however, I’ve waxed lyrical about Martha in the last four reviews, so I’ll spare you this time. I thought Mark Gatiss was exceptional in this episode. I thought he was the right choice for the part: he’s very good at portraying the old man in a younger man’s body, while the more intense moments, such as that in the cathedral, he delivered impeccably.

Rating: 5/10.

Thoughts on: Gridlock

This episode played well on the very relatable real-world frustration of traffic jams. It took the scourge of commuters everywhere and turned it into a nightmarish satire. Imagine spending 23 years stuck in traffic, never even to arrive at your destination. The undercity traffic jam plot was an intriguing idea realised spectacularly onscreen by wonderful use of CGI and by a fleeting tour through the cramped vehicles of the befuddlingly placid commuters: an inter-species couple, some octogenarian lesbians, a pair of mobile naturalists… The Macra were an interesting addition to the story, and portraying them as having devolved from highly intelligent beings to little more than carnivorous beasts was an interesting twist on the old 1960s monster. They, too, were realised impressively by CGI, and the “car chase” scene involving Martha’s vehicle careering through the festering swarm of Macra was genuinely exhilarating. The plot twist, i.e. that New New York had been brought to its knees by the dissemination of dangerous “moods”, with the commuters in the undercity the only survivors, was ingenious.

Martha continues to endear herself to me. I thought she was excellent in this episode. She proved herself to be more than capable of taking care of herself when she was separated from the Doctor. She particularly shone when she arguably saved herself and Milo and Cheen when she had the ingenuity and the instinct to urge Milo to cut the power, warding the Macra away from them. Damn clever that girl, and damn resourceful. I like that Martha is obviously being more open about her feelings for the Doctor than Rose was, a refreshing change from the unspoken “will-they-won’t-they” of the Ten-Rose relationship. I also like that she’s willing to stand up to the Doctor and make him treat her properly, as she did at the end in making the Doctor stop brushing her off when she asked about him and his people.

The Doctor is obviously on the rebound here with Martha, although he may not admit it to himself. The fact he took Martha to the site of one of his dates with Rose is pretty conclusive. The lingering effects of the Doctor’s agonising separation from Rose is going to hang over his and Martha’s relationship for a while, which is to be expected, but I wouldn’t blame Martha for being resentful, and I would hope the writers have the sense to ensure it doesn’t overshadow the Ten-Martha partnership unduly (I haven’t watched Series 3 in a while so I can’t remember if it does). In any case, I think Martha is exactly what the Doctor needs after the emotional devastation of his separation from Rose, and I really hope he comes to see that and value Martha properly.

The Time War, and its effects on the Doctor, seem to be a theme that’s gathering momentum here. The Doctor’s eulogy to his lost planet at the beginning was touching, filled, as it was, with nostalgic affection and a painful sense of loss. David Tennant portrayed the Doctor’s continued, futilely repressed suffering over the loss of his home and his people at the end of the episode, when Martha forced it out of him, extraordinarily movingly. Furthermore, the Doctor seemed in astonished disbelief when the Face of Boe made his enigmatic revelation, suggesting how much it would mean to the Doctor to be reunited with another of his kind. The Face of Boe’s final scene, by the way, was beautiful—the dialogue just wonderful.

Rating: 8/10.

Thoughts on: The Shakespeare Code

The new series is leaving me with the sense that the show is embarking on a brave new era, now that the two original leads, Eccleston and Piper, have departed and the new kids are in charge. Smith and Jones felt like a bold fresh beginning, while The Shakespeare Code, which lets the audience see everything about Doctor Who for the first time again through the eyes of Martha, gives the sense of a new chapter, for the Doctor and for the show itself. The Doctor hasn’t got over Rose, and won’t any time soon, but he’s clearly fond of Martha, and, privately, although he won’t admit it, he knows he’s going to keep her. And quite right—I think they make a good partnership. They don’t have the natural chemistry that the Doctor had with Donna, or the bond he had with Rose, but they make an effective and endearing team that are great fun to watch. Martha’s obvious unrequited attraction to the Doctor sets up a promising and interesting Doctor-Companion dynamic for the series ahead, and, in this episode, gave us an insight into the Doctor’s character: he’s completely oblivious to Martha’s advances, and if he were human, the way he treated her (i.e. mentioning Rose as he’s lying in bed intimately with Martha, *cringe*) would be shocking. It’s times like these that we remember that the Doctor is an alien.

This story was a bit unconventional. To be clear, we were actually dealing with magic here. The Doctor called it a different kind of science, but I don’t know how to interpret the use of words as channels of power other than in the sense of magical incantations. I’m not necessarily bothered by that—for one thing, it facilitated an opportunity to celebrate the lyrical genius of Shakespeare. The whole “power in words” theme was a fitting tribute to Shakespeare, whose words, of anyone’s, still carry profound power and magic, notwithstanding the complaints of ungrateful secondary school students. It’s good that they were able to playfully throw in so many Shakespeare quotations—it wouldn’t be a tribute to Shakespeare without at least a dozen awkwardly-deployed extracts from the corpus. Shakespeare himself was played well by Dean Lennox Kelly, and Doctor Who’s Shakespeare was a cheeky twist on the figure, a womanising rockstar of a bard.

The witches were extremely silly, but yet delightful to watch, in a “we-know-and-you-know-and-we-know-you-know-this-is-ridiculous” sort of way. It was entertaining because it was so self-consciously camp (I know I’m using that word a lot, but Doctor Who is an exceedingly camp show). Christina Cole delivered a luscious performance as the heinous seductress Carrionite, Lilith, making wonderful use of those gorgeous heavily-lidded eyes of hers. This episode featured probably the best special effects we’ve seen yet in the revival: the makeup on those Carrionites was impressive for starters, but the stormy swarm of Carrionites at the end was quite a feat—I mean, for its time (Doctor Who has done much better since).

Rating: 7/10.

Thoughts on: Smith and Jones

I really enjoyed that. It was a fun romp of a series opener, introducing us to a promising new companion, showing us how the Doctor is faring without Rose, portraying an impressive new alien species, at the same time as telling a ripping yarn to usher in the third series of the revival. Martha, I thought, made a very positive start to her time as the Doctor’s companion. I liked her: she was intelligent, intuitive, resourceful and brave, not to mention pretty—all the traits that make for an ideal Doctor Who companion. Like Rose in Rose, she emphatically proved what an extraordinary person she was in her opening episode, particularly in the way she gave her last breaths to save the Doctor’s life, and, indirectly, the lives of everyone in the hospital. I always liked Martha best of the Tenth Doctor’s companions. She seemed to me the most agreeable and the companion I’d most like to be friends with, which is perhaps why I warm to her, even from this one opening episode, more than I do to Rose and Donna. I don’t even mind the family baggage she’s portrayed as carrying—she wants to travel with the Doctor to escape the complications and frustrations of her ordinary life, which is as it should be.

The Doctor put in an entertaining performance. He seemed a lot more manic and, in Martha’s words, “completely mad”, than he was in Series 2, bouncing around the place and generally giving the impression that he’d escaped from a mental institute before he’d completed his treatment. Perhaps being separated from Rose and travelling around on his own has made him a bit stir-crazy? Nevertheless, I’m not criticising—it was an amusing and enjoyable performance by Tennant, who brought out the eccentric side of the Doctor’s character, a trait I feel doesn’t come out enough in the Tenth Doctor. He even seemed to be consciously channelling Tom Baker at times, for example:

Martha: “You’re completely mad.”
Doctor: “You’re right. I look daft with one shoe.”
*The Doctor throws his other shoe away*
Doctor: “Barefoot on the moon!”

The plot was nothing necessarily special, but it was played out onscreen well. Anne Reid made for a menacing, camp villain in the form of a dear old lady who sucked people’s blood out with a plastic straw. I can’t say that was the best villain Doctor Who has ever come up with, and, to be sure, she didn’t seem that intimidating a threat in this episode, but she was enjoyable to watch nonetheless. The Judoon were an interesting new alien species, a rough band of intergalactic police-rhinos who employed questionable methods in carrying out their duties but who insisted on compensating Martha for her full body scan. They’re a lot more like our police than we realise at first.

In sum, a fun, promising start to Series 3, with a great new companion and a Doctor on form.

Rating: 7/10.