(813) Last Christmas

Now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. Well that’s enough Frank Sinatra lyrics for now but it is the end and the moment has been prepared for. After 812 days, I get ready to watch the most recent episode of Doctor Who to air on British TV. Episode 813 is another Christmas episode and it’s the 10th Christmas Special. This is the 34th episode to be credited to Steven Moffat, taking him above Russell T Davies and ties him with David Whittaker and Dave Martin. He is at the moment the fourth most prolific writer in the shows history. Also this is the 57th episode for Steven Moffat as Executive Producer and he is three behind Russell T Davies. The episode starts with Nick Frost’s Santa encountering Clara and there is no explanation as to what happened at the end of the previous episode. This episode sees Michael Troughton appear. Michael is the other son of former Doctor Patrick Troughton and its nice to his other son in the show. He plays Albert Smithe who does come across as a bit of a dirty old man. In a way its not the greatest role for Troughton to play as all he does really is eat a chicken leg and gets sucked into a TV screen. That is quite a good way to die and effects wise its well done but I think that the character could have been better served with some better stuff to do. During the scene with Doctor Who’s answer to the facehuggers, the Doctor learns that Danny Pink is dead and that Clara was lying. Clara lied so that the Doctor would leave her and the Doctor lied about finding Gallifrey so that Clara would stay with Danny. They both deserve each other. The facehuggers are called Dreamcrabs which is a cool name for a cool looking monster. Even Smithe calls them facehuggers and references Alien and I like how the Doctor gets annoyed with this. When Clara gets covered with a Dreamcrab, the Doctor decides to be attached to a Dreamcrab to convince Clara that she is in a dream and that Danny is the antidote to stop Clara from screaming. When the Doctor and Clara think they have woken up it was quite obvious that they were all still asleep. There is a line that Clara gives when she says that you cant believe what you see which means that this is an episode where things will happen and there is always going to be a question and to whether they are really awake or still asleep. It does get a bit tiresome after a while as all it seems to do is fill a bit of time. This was due to be Jenna Coleman’s last episode and most people think that she is one of the longest serving companions but in reality she the fourth longest serving companion in terms of episodes. She is two behind Arthur Darvill, seven behind Billie Piper and 10 behind Karen Gillan. This wasn’t the greatest episode for Clara and had it been the last one for her then it would have been a disappointing end for the character. As it isn’t then its possible to be kinder to her and I hope that when she does leave that her departure is better thought out. Her best scene comes at the end when she has aged about sixty years and the prosthetics used to make her look old doesn’t work as well as it could have done. Her performance was good though and it was a nice scene between her and Capaldi. I like how it looks like its real and then Santa comes in a shows that they were dreaming and when the Doctor sees Clara again she is young. I suspect this is the part that got re-written when Coleman decided to stay. Speaking of Peter Capaldi, he was on fine form in this episode despite the story not being as good as it could have been. It’s nice that the Doctor is allowed to smile and be positive and I did smile when the Doctor took control of Santa’s sledge and hopefully the future will see a lighter side to Capaldi’s Doctor. I don’t want a Matt Smith version of the twelfth Doctor but something in between. The problem with this episode is that the show spends an hour saying that nothing is what it seems and whilst I like the idea of doing a Christmas Special with a very dark tone to it, I would rather have a Christmassy plot rather than a nice tone to it. Also I really don’t know what to make of Santa because I can’t quite make my mind up whether Santa was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy. This might be down to Nick Frost but the confusion is something that did bother me a bit. Well that is the marathon over which ends at 8:48pm on Thursday August 6th. The marathon which started on May 16th 2013 is now over and I am tempted at the moment to regenerate this marathon into a Torchwood marathon. I don’t know at the moment but I am happy now to have completed the marathon and to have watched and listened to every single episode of Doctor Who that has been transmitted. I will post a ending statement tomorrow but at the moment I will say that this wasn’t the best episode to end the marathon but I am convinced that Capaldi is a very good Doctor and the new series starts in just over a month so there is something to look forward to.

(808) Mummy on the Orient Express

Like Kill The Moon, todays episode has a rather interesting title. Any title that has the orient express in it is likely to make people think that Agatha Christie isn’t too far away and that would be the wrong because it’s the train orient express and its in space. The pre-title scene is quite good cause it pretty much sums the story up in 66 seconds and has a mummy in it. The friction between the Doctor and Clara does seem to have disappeared a bit because the first time they appear in the episode they act like things are normal. Although there is a line that seems to suggest this might be Clara’s final adventure. I think that it was obvious that she wouldn’t be leaving because some announcement would have been made or an announcement made about her successor so it seems a bit silly to act like she is leaving. There is a moment when Clara lies to Maisie and it seems like she the Doctor.  

There are two names in this episode which are well known. Well I say well known because I had never heard of Foxes who sings ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ at the beginning of the episode. Normally this would mean that she would play a bigger part in the story but that isn’t the case.\The other big name is Frank Skinner who has done a lot of things but at the moment is the host of Room 101. I quite Frank Skinner on that show and most of the things that he has done over the years but sadly I think that he wasn’t very convincing in this. It didn’t seem like he was acting but just giving the sort of performance a fan would give thinking it was a Laurence Olivier type performance. Christopher Villiers plays Professor Moorhouse and this is a return for him after appearing in The Kings Demons as Hugh. Janet Henfrey appears as Mrs Pitt and previously appeared in The Curse of Fenric as Miss Hardaker.

Captain Grumpy plays a small part in this episode and whilst he was quite positive I still think that he is Captain Grumpy but even grumpy people can have a bit of cheeriness in them.

The truth about the train is that everyone on the train is either a hologram or a scientist and the train changes to look like a lab. This is when the episode shifts a gear and really find its feet. The Mummy is a great costume design and despite not saying anything it is quite a good monster. It’s purpose is explained and there is a phrase that makes it stop and it is We Surrender and this means that the mummy is a soldier. There is then a quick burst of tension as the Doctor tries to stop everyone from suffocating. There is sadly no answer to who came up with Gus or why the mystery of the mummy needed solving. There is one visual effect shot where its hand goes through the Doctor’s head and I thought that was one of the coolest shots of the story.

The final scene with the Doctor and Clara is a nice one and one which seems to mend their relationship. By the very end of the episode it seems like they are on the same team and they go on more adventures. It might have taken much longer than it needed to but it seems like things are back to normal. I liked this story but I can’t say that it’s the best story of the series. This was the first story for Jamie Mathieson and he has done well with it. The idea in it was well conceived and worked out really well.

(807) Kill the Moon

As titles go, Kill the Moon is certainly the most interesting. In an attempt to show Courtney that she’s special, the Doctor takes her to the Moon to be the first woman to walk there. This episode is where the Doctor and Clara’s relationship goes through a bit of a rough patch. Being set on the moon it means that this cant be filmed in a field in Cardiff. The filming for this episode took place in Lanzarote where the 1984 story Planet of Fire was filmed and I think a title that was suggested for it was Return to Sarn which was clearly a title designed to mislead. The TARDIS arrives on a shuttle which has a lot of nuclear bombs on it and its clear that things don’t go well in this episode. There is a wonderful base under siege vibe to this episode which if you are a regular reader of this blog, will know that this is my favourite type of story. Apart from the darkness and the isolation, the big success of this story are the spiders that scuttle around the place. The sight of one scuttling around in the dark is quite good and also the image of thousands of them scuttling across the moon is one that works and is one of the lasting image from the episode.

At one point the Doctor decides that he is leaving the fate of the moon to Clara and Lundvik (Hermione Norris) which does seem like a bold thing for the Doctor to do. I honestly cant see Matt Smith’s Doctor or David Tenannt’s Doctor doing this so this is another example if more were needed that Capaldi’s Doctor is a grumpier version of his previous incarnations.

When Captain Grumpy turns up at the end I think that he is going to be Sergeant Smug and pretty much tells Clara to calm down and be less angry. I thought that was quite a good move for him and he is still Captain Grumpy but at least there showed a glimmer of happy.

The big revelation is that the moon is an egg and its about to hatch. This has been a great cause of controversy because people think that it’s a stupid idea. I don’t agree with that simply because what Peter Harness has done is come up with a novel idea for something that is so much apart of the Earth. You see various stages of it at night time and ever since the episode aired, I have looked up and jokingly thought that the moon might have put a bit of weight on. It’s such a Doctor Who idea that I cant understand why people have a problem with this aspect of the story. There were bigger problems with this story. Most notably that of Hermione Norris. The problem is that her character isn’t very well served in this. Her character isn’t very imposing and just blends in with the others. Another problem is Courtney because she wants to be called special, then when they are on the moon and things go wrong she decides she wants to go back home and then when it looks like things are getting interesting again she wants to leave the TARDIS. Never has a character changed so much in one short episode. Thankfully she leaves at the end of this episode and is never seen again and good riddance as far as I am concerned. However the biggest concern that comes up in this episode is the relationship between Clara and the Doctor because we are in the seventh episode of the series and yet there is something that doesn’t quite right between them. I would have expected them to have bonded by now.

There comes a decision about whether to blow it up or let the thing hatch. There is this big deal about the Earth deciding what to do. In the end it’s a bit pointless because the Doctor comes and rescues Lundvik, Courtney & Clara and they arrive on earth just to see the moon hatch. Moments later it seems to hatch a new moon and things seem to be back to normal.

I like Kill The Moon, there are problems with it but ultimately the debut story from Peter Harness has written a story that is effectively in two parts because the first half is scary as anything that has been seen in new Who and the sort of thing that would have been seen in the Philip Hinchcliffe era which is always a good thing. He is returning to write for the new series of Doctor Who and hopefully he will improve on some of the flaws that happened in this episode and the good point suggest that he might just be able to do that.