(806) The Caretaker

If you use the numbering system that I have used in this marathon, then this story is the 250^th story of Doctor Who. The Caretaker is the midway point of the series and one that takes place at Coal Hill School. It’s nice having Coal Hill School feature in the show because after only having two appearances in the first 50 years, it seems to be featuring in the show more and more. Despite the positives of this story being co-written by Steven Moffat and Gareth Roberts there are things that I don’t like about this story. Sadly the biggest problem is that Danny Pink makes a return and I say sadly because this is where he well and truly becomes Mr Grump. He seems to develop a jealousy of the Doctor. There is a bit where he pulls one of the mine things that the Doctor has placed around the school and I think that anyone in their right mind wouldn’t touch them. When the Doctor gives him a ticking off I wanted the Doctor give him more than that. Pink has just turned into a whiney git all of a sudden.

The pre-title scene ends with the Doctor introducing himself as a caretaker so this is another. Most of the pre-title scene is filled with the Doctor and Clara going on many adventures and then Clara having to pick up her normal life with Danny. To be honest if I were Clara and I had the choice of travelling with the Doctor or spending time watching Coronation Street with Private Grumpy then it’s a no brainer really.  

This being a Gareth Roberts story there is more than an average amount of humour and one of the running gags is that the Doctor thinks that Danny Pink is a PE teacher and can’t retain the information in his head that he is in fact a maths teacher. There are plenty of good lines for the Doctor and like the previous story I cant figure out which lines are from Moffat and which ones are from Roberts. Also like the previous story I cant quite understand why it took two people to write this story.

Danny isn’t the only annoying person in this episode. The other is Courtney who is an annoying kid. She hangs around and is just an annoying person to have around. Maybe she is a relative of Danny’s. Speaking of Danny he really becomes an annoying arsehole because he gets really snotty when he is in the TARDIS thinking the Doctor is really pompous. Whenever the Doctor gets to be horrible to Danny I become a happy man. What can’t Danny be like Rory? Just a little bit. The worse crime that Danny commits in this story is by trying to turn Clara against the Doctor just because the Doctor seems like people Danny encountered in the army.

The monster threat of the story is in the form of the Skovox Blitzer which has become stranded on Earth and views everyone as a threat. The Doctor just wants to get it on Earth but he keeps getting distracted and stopped by humans. I could feel and understand the Doctor’s frustration because it just seemed to be either Danny or Courtney.

The final scene sees the police officer from earlier in the episode talking to Chris Addison (someone else from The Thick of It) who plays a character called Seb. He is someone who is working for Missy. Michelle Gomez makes a great cameo appearance in the episode. All she does is walk one way, look at Seb and then walk another way. This is something that exists purely to remind us about the story arc and also introduce Chris Addison into the arc. Seb uses several names to describe to the police officer where they are he uses names like the Promised Land, Nether sphere and Heaven.

When you take Danny and Courtney out of this story then I quite enjoyed this story. I thought that the monster threat was quite good and there was some good dialogue from whoever wrote the story. This time next week I will have finished this marathon and the ending is getting closer and closer which means I need to start think about what I am going to do with my evenings and days off.

(782) Closing Time

The penultimate episode of the series sees the return of James Corden as Craig. After the success of The Lodger it didn’t seem too much of a shock that he would be returning. The Cybermen make a return but it isn’t just a cameo appearance like in A Good Man Goes to War. The comedy between Smith and Corden which I liked in The Lodger is on show in this story and they both are having fun with it. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are reduced to cameo status with Amy now a model. I guess that whilst Smith was filming this, Darvill and Gillan were filming The Girl Who Waited.

The Doctor gets a job in a toy shop and presumably they had to either remove or clever shooting means that we don’t see all the Doctor Who merchandise. I did like the stuff in the shop because it meant that we got to see Lynda Baron. Baron makes her third appearance in Doctor Who after appearing in The Gunfighters (1966) and Enlightenment (1983). This performance is nice and warm and quite funny.

Matt Smith has some good scenes in this episode. First comes when the Doctor is talking to Stormageddon. Another comes at the end when his time has run out and he gets set to embark on his journey to go to where we joined the Doctor in The Impossible Astronaut. There was a nice balance between happy and sad for Smith and he (yet again) deals with both things well. James Corden is yet again entertaining and any hatred that had built up since his last story seeing him on other stuff went away again. Damn Doctor Who for this.

If there is a problem with the story then it’s the use of the Cybermen. They have lost some of their menace in this episode and in fact the Cybermat (which makes a overdue return) is actually more sinister. I like how the Cybermat now has teeth. It looks scarier than it has ever done. I think that the Cybermat has been an under-utilised weapon for the Cybermen and it felt like it got more story time than the Cybermen. The Cybermen are a little bit underused in my opinion because there is a nice idea in there but it doesn’t really get time to breathe. It seems like the story was just going to be the Craig and Doctor show and then they realised that they needed to introduce a monster and the Cybermen but it does feel like a bit of a bolted on part of the story.

The final scene of the episode is where the eye patch lady and River Song meet and it’s where River Song is put in the Astronaut suit and at the bottom of the lake. She is the one that shoots the Doctor in that opening episode.  As an ending it’s rather good and sets the finale up rather well. I can’t say that this was as bad as I thought that it was going to be but I think that the inclusion of the Cybermen seemed to tip it towards not being as good.

(767) The Lodger

The Lodger is the cheap episode of the series. Now by being cheap it doesn’t mean that the creepiness or scariness isn’t there. Gareth Roberts returns after writing The Unicorn and the Wasp and I will say now that this is a lot better than Unicorn and the Wasp. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate that story but this story makes it look a bit below par.The episode starts with the Doctor leaving the TARDIS and saying he can see a Ryman’s. I like this because I work for Ryman and for my place of work to be mentioned in my favourite TV show. Amy and the Doctor are separated as Amy is in the TARDIS and the Doctor is Craig Owens’ (James Corden) new lodger.

James Corden is the guest star of the episode and at the moment he is hosting a late night talk show on CBS having replaced Craig Ferguson who was quite the Doctor Who fan. Before this (and after) I couldn’t stand Corden. I just found him to be an annoying fool. There was nothing that would make me watch Gavin and Stacey (BBC3) or A League of their Own (Sky1) so for the second episode in a row, I find myself surprised. I thought that Corden’s performance in this was likeable and the interaction between Smith and Corden was nice.

The most interesting aspect of the episode comes when the Doctor plays football. We have never seen the Doctor play football in eleven incarnations but here we a scene where he is indeed playing football and it reminds of that time in Black Orchid where the fifth Doctor is playing cricket so its not that strange to have the Doctor playing sport. The Doctor does a good job of integrating himself into Craig’s world including going to his work and sitting in a planning meeting and becoming Mr Popular.

The threat of this starts off innocently enough with people walking past Craig’s flat and are called in by a weird voice and lured up the stairs. Things carry on like this until Amy reveals that there is no upstairs and we get to see the spaceship that has crashed on top of Craig’s flat. This is dealt with in quite a quick amount of time but it is good and the question remains is whether it was a house and CGI used to make it look like a flat or vice versa. The ship needed pilots and was using humans to do it but they aren’t compatible and 17 people had died and like the Krafayis in the previous story, this aspect of the story kind of gets in the way of everything else.

For the third episode in a row there is a nod back to previous Doctors and it comes when Craig sees the previous incarnations and it seems to be that the floodgates have opened in this regard and by that I mean that the show is starting to submerge itself in its history that isn’t a problem at the moment because its not at the expense of the story. This was never going to be as good as Vincent and the Doctor but this is still an enjoyable episode and now the fun stuff is over and the series finale is here and this is where as far as I remember things start to get overly complicated.

(753) Planet of the Dead

Officially this is the 200^th story in Doctor Who but due to the way that I have worked things out this is in fact the 202^nd. This is the first of three episodes to be broadcast in 2009 due to Tennant wanting to do other stuff and the BBC desperate to keep him happy. This is what I class as the first of the specials because The Next Doctor is more attached to the 30^th series. The buzz around this episode was that the show filmed in the United Arab Emirates and a double-decker bus that was used for this story was damaged quite badly. Cleverly though RTD used this to his advantaged and worked it into the story. This is the first story that lays the groundwork to the departure of David Tennant’s Doctor. Having become use to Christmas Specials, it was somewhat of a treat to have a special that aired over the Easter weekend.

This special sees Michelle Ryan play Lady Christina de Souza who is the guest companion and starts the episode by pulling off quite the heist. She’s not a very good robber cause the police have pretty much caught her before she boards the 200 bus. To be honest I don’t think that she is that good really. I thought that she was cast purely cause of her looks and sadly I think that her past as a soap star might be something that works against her. When her character is sort of seen as a good character I still don’t care.

UAE doubles for San Helios and filming it here helps make it feel like an alien world instead of loads of sand being dumped in a Welsh studio. In one sense, this is the only thing that makes this story memorable. The interior of the bus scenes are filmed in a studio but it still looks good enough.

The Bus Driver who allowed Christina to board the bus by paying with her diamond earrings was the first to die by walking through the barrier. To be honest he would have become an annoyance had he lasted much longer. The rest of the bus passengers aren’t that good because they are all quite unlikely or believable. When they are back home I still found myself not being that bothered with them. Carmen (Ellen Thomas) is the only interesting character of the supporting characters. She is the one that can hear voices and guess how many fingers the Doctor has behind his back. Her most significant moment comes when she tells the Doctor that he will knock four times.

This episode sees UNIT return but sadly its more of an amusing UNIT. Lee Evans guest stars as Malcolm who has managed to name a measure of time after himself. I don’t really understand why UNIT are even in this story cause they don’t really add anything to the story.

If Jamie were in Doctor Who now then he would describe the monsters as timerous beasties and they are able to create wormholes by flying in formation. I think that this is a really good idea and infact their design is a good idea which bearing in mind that RTD is clearly on the wind down it makes the idea more impressive. The sight of a London Double Decker bus flying is a barmy yet great image to see in Doctor Who.

This has been a bit of a disappointing Doctor Who story. There have been some interesting things that have happened in this story but for some reason I just found myself watching it and not really enjoying it. Since I finished watching Journeys End I have found myself not enjoying the show as much. I wonder whether its because I know that the Tennant era is coming to an end or whether its just that everything was thrown into that two parter that it seems like the show is running on empty and just keeping things ticking over until Steven Moffat and Matt Smith take over.

(745) The Unicorn and the Wasp

Now after the brief distraction of Martha has been dealt with, it feels like the show can get back to being the Doctor Donna Show. The title of this episode is one of the most fun and wacky titles that the show has come up with for quite sometime. This story sees Fenella Woogar appear as Agatha Christie and this story takes place on the day that she disappeared. Like most Agatah Christie books, this is a who-dunnit. Normally on a Agatha Christie drama that appears on ITV, it takes them two hours for this to unravel and yet Doctor Who manages to do a good job in 45 minutes.

For me this episode is memorable for the appearance of Henry Gordon Jago. There seems to be a nod to that character when Hugh Curbishly is recalling where he was and at one point there are some dancers on a stage which seems deliberate. If it weren’t for him then this episode wouldn’t be as exciting.

There are some good jokes which Gareth Roberts has done well sewing them into the episode. His last story was The Shakespeare Code and I think that he is having more fun with this story and it shows as he seems to thrive trying to mix Doctor Who and murder mysteries together. I think that most writers might have struggled so its credit to Roberts that he made it work. Graeme Harper directs this story well and in some instances the episode looks lovely.

The Wasp turns out to be the vicar. I had forgotten who it was so it was a nice surprise. The thing is that it isn’t normal for there to be such a long scene as the big reveal scene was in new who. It was like the show has slowed to mobility scooter speed. There is a running gag of Doctor asking the Doctor if a person did it after some big revelation has come out about them. That was quite funny.

This is a story that is ok but it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I think that on another day I might be more favourable about this episode but today its not an episode that I think is in the top three of this series.

(726) The Shakespeare Code

Martha’s first trip into the past takes her to 1599. I will be honest that I haven’t been the biggest fan of Shakespeare. I did the usual stuff at school but could never really get into it and so the idea of spending 45 minutes in his companion wasn’t something that I was particularly looking forward to. This isn’t the first time that Shakespeare has been in Doctor Who. It was way back in 1965 and it was a blink and you’ll miss it moment but this is the first time that he’s so integral to the plot. The thing about this episode is that they filmed inside the actual Globe Theatre. Not even the Oscar winning film Shakespeare in London was allowed to film in there. I think that the fact they were able to film in there helps create a wonderful atmosphere.

This is the second episode in and Rose is still getting a mention much to the annoyance of Martha. The relationship between the Doctor and Martha is different to what the Doctor had with Rose and it’s refreshing that this is the case. Martha’s reaction to being in that time period is quite amusing and Martha doesn’t make it all about her like Rose did and I am liking Freema Agyeman more and more.

The effects of the surrounding area is truly impressive and looks wonderful. It’s something that they wouldn’t be able to do in a movie so it’s great they are in this episode.  They really have stretched themselves in this series and this is one of the most visually impressive episodes since the show returned in 2005. The effects used when the Carrionites are swirling around the globe is another superb effect and one that I think looks as good as it did in 2007.  If there is one thing that I don’t think works quite well is the masks of Doomfinger, Bloodtide and Lillith. They seem a bit poor but I don’t know if that is just because they haven’t aged as well as most things.

David Lennox Kelly plays William Shakespeare and does a really good job. Bearing in mind that he has free reign to play him as he does, I find that his performance to be truly engaging and it’s a shame that he hasn’t returned. Had he appeared in the Steven Moffat era then he would have been a regular character.

Gareth Roberts has done a great job in making the episode amusing but too much. It still feels like a Doctor Who episode but its having fun in it surroundings and the running gag is that Shakespeare is using lots of words and sayings that the Doctor uses. I have enjoyed this episode a lot and thought that the performances were very good, the writing was sound, the directing was just as good as the previous episode (which makes sense considering it’s the same director) and the whole vibe of the episode was a good one and I am really looking forward to tomorrows episode because its one of my favourites of the series.