(805) Time Heist

After being really let down with Listen, I was hoping that todays episode would be a return to form. My memories of this story is that it would be and it definelty proved to be. It felt more like a Doctor Who story than Listen. One thing that doesn’t quite come out of this story is why it took two people to write this story. Stephen Thompson who had previously written the weak The Curse of the Black Spot and the highly enjoyable Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. He co-wrote this story with Steven Moffat and to be honest its not clear why it took two people or who wrote what. The pre-title scene is where things start to pick up for me. Things look rather normal at first for the Doctor and Clara but by the end of the scene they find themselves with memory worms and two other people.

The set up for the episode is that the Doctor and Clara (along with Psi and Saibra) have to break into a bank. The thing that they are breaking into to get is the thing that they all want. Psi wanted to get his memories back. Saibra came for gene suppressant so she stops morphing into other people. That aspect did seem like it was borrowed from X-Men but it doesn’t bother me too much.

They are left aids by the Architect and it’s someone that the Doctor hates and the revelation that he is the Architect which turns out to be him. There’s nothing like a bit of self-loathing to sooth the soul is there? The teller is a good idea and it works because its an idea that forces people to actually empty their minds. The teller is being mistreated and its not until the end that it finds it’s partner and they are left to roam free. There is something quite obvious about the fact that the Architect but I didn’t mind it.

Keeley Hawes is the big name of the episode as plays Ms Delphox. She runs the bank and she looks very similar in style to Sarah Lancashire in Partners in Crime. Ms Delphox turns out to be a clone of Madame Karabraxos that is there to help with the administrative running of the bank. The bit where an old and dying Madame Karabraxos ringing the Doctor is a bit of an unnecessary part of the story. That was the only thing that really didn’t do the story any benefits. One of the reasons why this story works so well is that the direction is really good. Douglas Mackinnon has done a great job in making it feel at times like an Oceans Eleven movie. The way we learn what happens between being a Clara’s home and finding themselves on with Psi and Saibra seems a bit like the show Hustle.

There was one line that the Doctor said which back in 2014 went unnoticed and was like a beacon today. I went for minimalism but came out with magician is a line which at the time didn’t seem to have much relevance but bearing in mind that the first episode of series 35 is called The Magicians Apprentice, it seems that this line has more relevance now.

This was a much better episode than Listen but that’s not much of a compliment. What is a compliment is that it’s a story that is well written and well directed and also the performances are fun to watch and this episode shows that Listen was just a blip. With there just twelve episodes in the series it means that we are near the half way point of the series and so far it has been a good opening series for Capaldi.

(795) Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

This is a story which tries to make up for the disappointing Invasion of Time which was the last story that took place in the TARDIS. That story suffered partly from the fact that it was hastily put together and so looks nothing like the control room and as a result it looks like it was filmed in an abandoned hospital (which of course it was). The pre-title scene is quite good because it continues to play the TARDIS as a living thing and for some reason she doesn’t like Clara so in an attempt to get them to bond, the Doctor lets Clara fly on basic mode. The Doctor fiddles with the TARDIS which is never a good thing.

The supporting characters are a salvage crew who just happen to scoop it up and are totally unlikeable although the Doctor does his best to bring them down a peg or two. Sadly Gregor Van Baalen (Ashley Walters) needs to be taken down several more pegs. Tricky (Jahvel Hall) is supposed to be a robot but later on in the episode its revealed that he is human and Gregor told him he was a robot to provide entertainment which I thought that was a bit of an odd thing to introduce especially when events are then forgotten about because of timey-wimey stuff.

The Doctor initiates the self destruction option on the TARDIS and that gives the drama a new sense of tension because the story has to feel like its moving at a quick speed. Of course this is a trick that the Doctor uses to get the Brothers Dim to help him find Clara but it was amusing when after he stops the countdown things continue to get worse when he discovers that its about to blow up.

The beauty of this story is that we see inside the TARDIS in ways that haven’t seen for a very long time. We saw corridors and the old console room in The Doctors Wife but we haven’t seen much more than that and the thing about this story is that all the rooms and corridors look like they are part of the same place (something Invasion of Time didn’t achieve).We get to see that there is a book about the Time War in a lovely looking library. Clara discovers the Doctors name which is something that becomes significant later on. I think when this story aired we knew the final episode of the season would be called The Name of the Doctor so this was the build up to that episode. We also get to see the eye of Harmony and it looks very different to how it did in the 1996 TV Movie. Another room looks like its outside and this isn’t anything new because in several Big Finish plays there are stories which features rooms that seem like small counties. This is a room to stop the Doctor and Clara getting into the next room this doesn’t work and after a bit of jumping they get into the next room. This feels like a computer game with the character having to achieve something to advance. There is a great bit where they enter the heart of the TARDIS and it’s a great room with good effects used to create an explosion stopped in time.

The weird looking creatures are called Time Zombies and one is actually Clara. They weren’t the main focus of the story but they were used enough to make them seem entertaining. There is a lovely bit where we hear sound clips from other stories such as An Unearthly Child, Colony in Space, Robots of Death, Rose, Smith and Jones, The Beast Below and The Doctors Wife.

This was a highly enjoyable episode that gave me the type of story that I wish they did more of and that is a story set entirely inside the TARDIS. At this moment, this story is the 31^st best story of Doctor Who but the first is a story that has been there for all but one story of this story and that is Inside the Spaceship which is a story that takes place inside the TARDIS. The NEXT TIME trailer shows that there is a story which may slightly ruin the good form that this half of the series that has created.

(773) The Curse of the Black Spot

Today is quite a special day because it was announced that Big Finish are doing more stories using characters from the new series. The Judoon, the Weeping Angels and River Song are going to be used.

I haven’t mentioned it for a while but I have been watching these episode on Netflix and I have noticed that especially in the previous two episodes there was a little addition before the titles played and it is Amy talking about her story with the Doctor and then the titles play. I’ve checked the DVD just in case it was my poor memory but it’s not on there. Anyway to todays episode and its not one of my favourites. I think that the swing from seriousness of the previous two episodes to the light hearted tone of this episode was too great. The story sees the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive on a ship where the crew are being terrorised by a siren-like creature. To be honest that’s the most that I am prepared to write about the story because to be honest I just haven’t got the enthusiasm to write much about it.

So I am going to write about the performances. The performances from Smith, Gillan and Darvill are all quite good but I thought that Darvill suffered because he was the one the got the black spot and that was about as exciting as his day got. Smith seems to be having fun playing pirates and Gillan is also having fun following him. Hugh Bonneville plays Henry Avery and is perhaps the biggest name in the episode as he has been in stuff like Downton Abbey, Twenty Twelve and W1A. He is a good on screen presence and brings a nice vibe to the story but to be honest even Hugh Bonneville cant rescue this story. Lily Cole is a name that got a lot of attention because she’s a model and apparently that’s a big reason for casting her. Her character is one that starts off as a baddie but is soon revealed to be a nurse helping everyone who is ill on the ship and she makes them better.

I wasn’t a fan of the episode in 2011 and four years later I still haven’t been won over by it. With everything going on it was a shame that I didn’t take much more from it. It’s definelty the weakest story of the Matt Smith era with The Beast Below slightly better but only because the novelty of the new team of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. Here there isn’t anything that I can take from it. Thankfully when the episode ended and I saw the NEXT TIME trailer it reminded me that one of my favourite Matt Smith stories coming up next.