Reaction: DAY OF THE MOON, THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT, and THE DOCTOR’S WIFE

DAY OF THE MOON

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes, 2011

I feel I may have been overly harsh with The Impossible Astronaut. It’s just that, while I applaud increased complexity in the series, I feel it could/should be better handled than as simply a plate-spinning exercise – yet, Day of the Moon worked for me in almost all the ways the previous instalment didn’t. Whereas that was forty-five minutes of frustrating and seemingly directionless foreplay, this flows and starts to makes sense, rather than being too busy delivering a zinging high-concept opener to bother with such trivialities as even a suggestion of where the plot was going to go.

The three-months-later opening is a typical Moffat curveball, and gives a welcome sense of scope (as it’s rare for a story to take place over more than a few days), which is also matched by the story’s geographical shifts. If you’re going to bother setting a story in America, I suppose it’d be a mistake to overlook the country’s ridiculous scale.

The more outré elements of Moffat’s approach to storytelling deliver some surprising and arresting moments (the Silence-flanked child-astronaut; Nixon appearing from a sealed prison cell), and generally gel better than in the jumpy first part. His continued (and impossible to ignore) reliance on familiar tropes – recordings/transmissions; a sinister child; writing on walls; monsters based round childhood fears; even down to specific elements like River’s freefall into the TARDIS – would be getting absurd if they weren’t coupled with an actual plot this time round.

Speaking of which, though grateful for it showing its face, I’m not sure this plot holds up to scrutiny that well; in fact, a lot of it doesn’t make a great deal of sense (as pointed out on Tachyon TV) - but, crucially, Moffat has a knack for circumnavigating these criticisms with events that seem absolutely, intuitively right, so you forgot they're not necessarily logical. So, on the surface at least we have a coherent story – which almost made me forget til the end that a) the Doctor’s willing self-sacrifice, b) the Silence/the Silents’ part in last season’s TARDIS explosion, c) Amy’s pregnancy, d) Frances Barber in a futuristic eyepatch, e) the identity of the Child, and f) holy shit, that cliffhanger… are all utterly unaddressed – and on top of the promised reveal re River.

I really, really hope none of the answers to these questions fall by the wayside. Perhaps it’s more frustrating though that the entire explanation for this plot is left hanging – what are the Silents trying to achieve with their occupation? And what do they need the child for – why the life-support? (Tying into the space race simply because they needed the suit seems a tad tenuous.) Also, why does the child only bust out of the spacesuit after her encounter with Amy? And is she no longer important once the Silents have Mrs Pond? And is the Aickman Road pseudo-TARDIS the Silents’, or something they’ve nicked? Can it time-travel?

And as for the Silents themselves: they're relatively freaky, in a Munch-does-the-Grim-Reaper double-whammy of tick-box creepiness, although not really outdoing the Weeping Angels as Best Moffat Monsters. I mean, why has no-one pointed out that a monster you can’t look away from is basically THE SAME PREMISE as the Weeping Angels? Or at least, leads to the same ‘don’t take your eyes off them’ scenarios. But, at least the inversion of the expected invader status is original, as is their having been on earth indefinitely. (Although this does smack slightly of the disclosure of Torchwood 1’s hitherto-unsuspected century-long presence – though at least this is kind of self-retconning concept.) The idea that every time the Doctor has or will land on pre-late-sixties earth they’re there is quite odd, and gives a sense of weight to the episode – but without necessitating Davies-style suspension-of-disbelief-busting and conspicuous worldwide incursions. The brilliantly satisfying conclusion wherein the human race fights off its oppressors… without knowing about it, is quite delicious.

What else? A less jokey, more emotionally convincing take on Amy and particularly Rory’s relationship works well. While I commend the twenty-first century version of the series’ insistence on being all things at once – funny, moving, scary, etc – the gap between the Chris Cunningham-lite of hordes of Silents clustering on the ceiling and the ever-present fanfare of The Star-Spangled Banner heralding Nixon’s various arrivals (which I though was very funny) nevertheless gives rises to some massive tonal lurches. Unless I was just feeling particularly uncharitable for part one, Day of the Moon seems more convincingly creepy, with its forays into (southern) gothic territory, but this did make me wonder whether it would have been more compelling without the underlying jokiness, for once?

Moffat’s tortuous approach to the series makes it increasingly difficult to make informed judgements, at least about an ‘event’ story such as this. I’m torn between being impressed by his audaciousness and also wishing that he’d still write – at least occasionally – with the self-contained coherence of something like Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.

Also, how many people (like me) assumed from the trailers that the imprisoned Doctor prisoner was a secondary/future version, Jubilee-style?

THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SPOT

Written by Stephen Thompson, directed by Jeremy Webb

Stories aping the titles of pop-cultural bilge like The Da Vinci Code or Pirates of the Caribbean are always going to approached (by me) with caution. I didn’t expect massive amounts of originality, and The Curse of the Black Spot spectacularly failed to subvert those expectations. An arbitrary pseudo-historical setting with an arbitrary ‘supernatural’ villain, couched in slightly naff sci-fi terms, cf Tooth and Claw, Vampires of Venice, et al. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The lazy historical shorthand of this story led me to spend most of the time watching it thinking how I’d inestimably prefer a see the show take the plunge and deliver a genuinely dramatic take on historical settings. Even – the very idea! – a pure historical. Having people say ‘blaggard’ doesn’t a convincing sense of time or place make.

Doctor Who has always been a beast of varying quality, of course – that’s all part of the appeal – perhaps most obviously illustrated by the yawning chasm of quality between The Caves of Androzani and the hot-on-its-heals Twin Dilemma. However, whereas that is at least impressive in its inexplicability, this unsteady volte-face from The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon is perhaps even more dispiriting, as it marks an example of Doctor Who at its most production-line banal. That this story could be entirely transplanted from the second half of this season to the second story in the running order speaks volumes about its inherent pointlessness and paucity of anything approaching originality or character development. A cutesy, precocious, kickable child (actor)? An eye-stabbingly inept father-son relationship, written with no feeling or insight whatsoever? A flippant guest-character-in-the-TARDIS scene? Really?

I might’ve moaned that Moffat took too long to let us in on the plot of his season opener, but at least there were still enough memorable things happening for it to never be less than watchable. This, on the other hand, is less a story, more a collection of contrived injuries, the repeated identical deaths of non-characters, and a criteria for ‘monstrous’ appearances almost more contrived than The Vampires of Venice’s. What a waste of the quite lovely Lily Cole, too, especially considering how good she is in Gilliam’s (overambitious but surprisingly effective) Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

I’ll concede that at least the final third stuff is a little unexpected, even if the solution to the situation does lift from Steven Moffat’s Girl in the Fireplace and The Doctor Dances – was Stephen Thompson (who?!) looking to pick up some brownie points with this blatant brownnosing? It does however suffer from the same damaging tonal shift as The Stones of Blood.

How can forty-five minutes of filler be so stretched? Talk about a first draft script; this doesn’t even warrant hating. Listen to The Smugglers instead.

THE DOCTOR'S WIFE

Written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Richard Clark

Well, this is certainly the one I've been looking forward to – if only for that ming-mong-baiting former JN-T decoy title seeing the light of day.

I can take or leave Gaiman – generally there’s rather too much just-because macguffin-based plotting in his writing; nevertheless, the prestigiousness of having him write for the show doesn’t escape me. Yet, my apathy aside, this quickly announces itself as without doubt the work of an original – especially in contrast to the generica of the preceding episode.

Gaiman brings a definite, richly detailed but off-kilter sensibility to the series, which rubs off even on the production design – the eroded formations of the crashed ‘spaceships’, the dresses and the hotchpotch costumes – and there’s a similar richness and depth to the concept at large: a sentient, TARDIS-eating asteroid outside of the universe, and the TARDIS herself being given human form. The latter of which could have been so awful, worthy of all those dreadful post-Survival movie concepts where David Hasselhoff and Eric Idle and god knows who else were mooted as Doctors. I had no idea what was coming so it’s a huge complement that the way it’s handled felt entirely natural, with Idris’ glitchy and non-chronological speech. A lesser writer would’ve just made a human TARDIS a sexy sidekick in a policewoman’s uniform, rather than a Helena Bonham-Carter-style “bitey mad lady,” so I can only be grateful that we dodged that bullet.

Perhaps the most notably thing about this story is how unapologetically fannish it is: from the title down to the throwaway inclusion of an Ood – which shows how misleading trailering can be; this is no recurring monster per se, rather the big-picture perspective of a fan to whom elements from throughout the series’ history are fair game to explore.

In terms of specifics, the Eye of Orion, the Matrix (kind of), and the High Council are namechecked, while ‘House’ and ‘Auntie’ and ‘Uncle’ suggest the Gallifrey of Marc Platt’s Lungbarrow novel; there are hints of Morbius’ Karn (crashed spaceships and stitched-together bodies); then there’s The War Games hypercube things; even corridors! Only an unashamedly slavering fan would give us our only glimpse of new series TARDIS interior space (aside from The Christmas Invasion), or have the Doctor build a console out of the remains of a hundred different crashed TARDISes. Then there’s the archived spare console rooms (that’s so fannish – the idea that any of the previous console rooms could be revisited), Rory’s brief query about the Doctor’s room, and the concept of the TARDIS’ consciousness residing beyond human comprehension or language and across all of space and time, which is straight from the novels.

Even the idea that exploring the Time Lords in post-Time War Doctor Who is entirely viable shows pretty definitively what a ming-mong perspective Gaiman’s coming from: exploring the Doctor’s initial theft (and the neat inversion of it/her being the one doing the choosing); the shaving mirror on the souped-up console… That a story containing all these elements isn’t a massive gushing fanwank of Gary Russell proportions – that’s impressive. It feels like fan fiction with a budget – and, in case you’re not sure, I mean that entirely in a good way, in the sense of the best New or Eighth Doctor Adventures, which drew on a fannish perspective to continuity, but made something new and original out of the ideas they tackled. Also, these things aside, that The Doctor’s Wife is dramatically successful despite consisting of a junkyard, some corridors, and a disembodied voice as an enemy – well, I take my hat off to Gaiman.

Though I really like his American Gods novel and have a soft spot for the Neverwhere series, Gaiman’s not an author I’d expect to praise. I think it just shows though that authors coming out of leftfield (despite being a long-term fan) and bringing a new sensibility to the series can be so much more rewarding than those who evidently feel they know what format is expected (The Curse of the Black Spot) and are afraid – or it doesn’t even occur – to subvert established boundaries. By way of example, the grotesque, Beckett-like Auntie and Uncle are far more interesting than you’d ordinarily expect from such short-lived characters, while ‘House’ - something innocuous made sinister - is so much better a name than some made-up SF bollocks (‘Zolfar,’ or whatever); in these elements, Gaiman unarguably distinguishes himself from the second tier of Doctor Who writers, who’d never inject this much interest into such tiny elements of their scripts.

Likewise, it speaks volumes that the idea of the tattooed Corsair will undoubtedly inspire countless flights of fan-fiction fancy. I love how buccaneering the name is, and, from only the couple of details we're privy to, he/she sounds far more interesting than the numerous other renegade Time Lords the spin-off media in particular has always been littered with.

It’s seldom that I fall a bit in love with every element of a story, but in this case the location, the characters – Idris/the TARDIS especially – House, etc, all did it for me. (And I think while its engagement with fannish preoccupations helped, it certainly wasn’t the be-all of the story, and references to the High Council or whatever wouldn’t have meant diddley had it not brought anything new to the table.) This “plughole of the universe” is one of those situations that could sustain so many more stories (which is surprisingly not that common in Doctor Who), and this magical and strangely moving story makes me very, very keen for Mr Gaiman to become a regularly contributor to the Doctor Who world. (Perhaps a novel...?)

The status of the titular wife could seem a cop-out of Doctor’s Daughter proportions if the story at large weren’t up there with The Girl in the Fireplace or Human Nature; those occasional new series stories where everything is above reproach. In fact, this really does feel like a perfect example of a Doctor Who nailing absolutely every element: it’s mysterious and intriguing, creepy, exciting, funny, moving – yet without the lurches of Moffat’s opener.

Reaction: THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT

Directed by Toby Haynes, written by Steven Moffat, 2011

Talk about tardy to the party. However, I did write this immediately after the episode aired – only circumstances have prevented me posting it till now – so it’s written without any foreknowledge of the subsequent five episodes.

I’ve tried more successfully than normal to avoid all spoilers for this season. Ood… Cybermen… yeah, yeah. But we know this isn’t the real meat. There’s been a real emphasis in interviews and publicity on this season’s game-changing nature, its re-engagement with the mystery of the Doctor, the way it will push the series in whole new, internet-melting directions… All par for the course, you might think, with new series publicity. But the specificity of this hyperbole, the idea that this new run will indeed do some unprecedented things, seems tangible enough that I haven’t been able to stop wondering maybe they do have something definite up their sleeves. It’s all dreadfully, dreadfully exciting anyway.

There’s undoubtedly a danger that this level of massively-inflated hype might derail the series if it’s perceived to have been out of all proportion, but then, it does seem quite apparent that the post-Davies honeymoon period is over, and that’s exciting in itself. Whereas Moffat’s first series mainly adhered to the format laid down by his predecessor, here we appear to be dealing with something entirely different: a two-part opener? And a big, dark, ‘important’ two-parter to boot, the sort of thing previously saved for the last part of the season. Filmed in the US, for the first time. Oh, and a season split in two?

These might not seem like revolutionary changes to a casual audience, so it’s easy to be blasé – but they’re pretty audacious after five years of a quite definitive format. Add to that Moffat’s assertion that where last year was designed to assure those suffering Tennant-withdrawal that the show could continue as successfully, here he’s kicking into gear and willing to challenge the audience in unforeseen ways.

I don’t really watch other genre shows – well, sci-fi – which are the area in which season-long (or longer) story arcs have gained prevalence, so I can’t really comment on the oversaturation that some people seem to feel has hindered their efficacy. (Obviously dramas can have numerous long-running plot strands which may twist and turn and surprise the audience, but this strikes me as being more a reflection of life, whereas plots and schemes and misdirection in something like Doctor Who are a much more contrived form of narrative (not using ‘contrived’ in a necessarily negative way).) I’m quite excited by their potential, especially as it’s a potential I don’t think twenty-first century Doctor Who has yet realised (the ‘memes’ of Davies’ series do not a story arc make). It is in Moffat’s first series that the most fully-formed through-story has been realised, so I’m fascinated to see where he goes with an arc that not only binds a season together but continues directly from the previous one, and, in turns of River Song, from even further back.

While I agree that there may be some concern about story arcs hinging on a level of engagement with the series which might alienate a broader audience (not unlike the early-eighties continuity deluge), I can’t find myself worrying too much. I’m really not going to complain about a surfeit of intelligence or complexity in Doctor Who, and in fact find it massively exciting that Steven Moffat is allowed to go in a direction that demands so much from his audience.

But, on to specifics…

That was a difficult one. Obviously, as a ming-mong, it’s safe to assume that I’m on the series’ side; however, though the audaciousness of a dark, complex, American-set two-part opener isn’t lost on me I am still able to look beyond those elements, and, unfortunately, beyond those elements this episode didn’t satisfy me.

Maybe I’m just too impatient – having grown up with a complete 1963-89 run on tap where I never had to wait for anything to unspool at its own speed – but the twists and questions The Impossible Astronaut raised seemed contrived in a way Moffat’s generally managed to sidestep previously.

Naturally I appreciate that it’s hard to judge a two-parter on its opener alone, but, especially given this is a season opener, surely this is an episode that demands to feel coherent on its own terms, in the sense that The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, though dependent on each other, also felt satisfactory independently. Similarly, the humour, scares, and complexity don’t hang together as effortlessly as in, say, the similarly wide-ranging Big Bang (which I’ve recently re-evaluated as being the more effective episode of last year’s finale) – here, regrettably, those elements feel just a tad forced. I sort of wish Moffat’d just try to write a solid story with mystery and twists and clues naturally arising from the plot, rather than contriving an all-over-the-place narrative (such as it is) around those things. I have no doubt Moffat can make the next episode pay off, but does that excuse the first episode of the season feeling quite so exclusively expository?

Considering how many ace pre-titles sequences series five provided, The Impossible Astronaut’s opening is slightly baffling – not in terms of understanding it, but simply in appreciating quite why he did it the way he did. Surely something as simple as Amy and Rory’s relationship to the Doctor is unnecessarily complicated by having them suddenly separated from him for two months, rather than have him pick them up from their extended honeymoon (as I’d presumed was the case from the trailers). Also, why did the Doctor even need to attract Amy and Rory’s attention by gallivanting through history – especially when these scenes led to unpleasant echoes of the Tenth Doctor’s pre-End of Time shenanigans.

Perhaps I’m less well disposed to this story because of the aforementioned massive hyperbole that’s preceded it; I’d be very surprised if The Curse of the Black Spot and even The Doctor’s Wife don’t benefit from not having so many elements trumpeted months in advance. The slight sense of anticlimax ranges from the Silents not being any scarier than Doctor Who monsters have ever been, to the sense of underuse of the US locations. Hmm… America. Yes, it’s unusual to see the Doctor there, but I can’t help feel, ‘Ehh. Seen it’. The Silents/Silence are also too obvious an attempt to best the Weeping Angels, and that kind of inorganic approach (‘They’ve got to be THE SCARIEST MONSTERS EVER!!!’) never works. You can’t force these things, and they’re too similar anyway, with their comparable psychological gimmick.

Even in terms of its ‘darkness’, while, yes, unusual for an opener, this story has little more than a veneer of ‘adult’-leaning atmospherics - but no more so than the previous few late-season two-parters. Certainly, tonally, this is far less adult (ie, serious, uncompromising, harrowing) than, say, 100,000 BC or The Daleks (alright, I admit, not up-to-date points of reference…).

To be honest, I’m slightly at a loss as to how to respond to this episode – partly, it seems too much is shoved in, but conversely it felt like nothing actually happened, or, at least structurally, it’d all just been vommed out… Again, yes, it’s the first of a two-parter. But does that excuse how unsatisfying this episode was? The Doctor orchestrating his own death is the only brilliantly Moffat-worthy conceit here, and I’m not sure that warrants the entry fee.

There are also a couple of what, to my mind, seem rare Moffat missteps – which is all the more unfortunate when relating to things that didn’t need tweaking anyway. Namely, River and the Doctor’s lives explicitly going in different directions seems a mistake; I can buy random interactions, but pinning their encounters down to a structure doesn’t really make sense, and takes the fun out of that. (Isn’t very timey-wimey, is it?) Also, my worry with River, since Silence in the Library, has always been: when is there going to be time for the full scope of their relationship to realistically play out? Surely it must be more expansive than just fleeting meetings for occasional adventures? And does her apparent youth in their initial encounters (from her perspective) preclude us getting to see those meetings - or will Alex Kingston be recast?

And, the pregnancy revelation – well… so what? Okay, maybe this will simply be something which drives the Doctor to decide he should no longer be endangering Amy and Rory, but it would at least seem fresher if we hadn’t already seen Mrs Pond great with child (after a manner) in Amy’s Choice. Last year’s cracks through time look increasingly pedestrian in light of Moffat’s escalating tortuousness, but at least it’s a – superficially, at least – easy-to-grasp concept to string through the season. It’s probably pre-emptive, but I’m puzzled that no more definate new-season strands have emerged, despite the Doctor’s death seeming to be being discussed in these terms… Which might just prove a case of overegging the pudding. Could this not be tied up next week…?

Hmm. Definitely one that will stand or fall on its resolution. Can’t help feel I may have been a bit harsh – would I prefer the return of the Adipose? 

...Well, no. Obviously.

"Marilyn! Get your coat"

Reaction: A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes, 2010

So, yeah, yeah, it’s the ‘best’ Christmas special to date… But that isn’t saying very much.

Steven Moffat in crap story shock? Unfortunately, I think so. Of his output to date, people have seemed particularly unconvinced by The Beast Below, but I feel hard-pressed to write off a story dealing so confidently with (to use fan-parlance) such ‘oddball’ concepts. This, alternatively, doesn’t amount to much more than seasonal fluff, despite evidently trying to eschew Russell T Davies’ festive blockbuster template.

This year is the first time I haven’t been apprehensive about the Christmas special, because I thought we were in safe hands and assumed that, given Moffat’s take on the (for me, ordinarily equally painful) season finale, A Christmas Carol would be an atypically successful take on an element of the revived series that I've never enjoyed. Despite the line I opened with, The Christmas Invasion is to me still the only tolerable Christmas special, mainly because its seasonal setting is used as a trapping to the plot and is broadly irrelevant, whereas this story is entirely predicated around its own Christmasiness.

Given that the idea of a Christmas special being somehow necessary or appropriate to Doctor Who is fairly repellent to me, I’m probably not best disposed to enjoy this offering, even if it’s by a writer whose work I much prefer to his predecessor. I take issue with the idea of a Christmas special because it’s so staggeringly lazy, the thinking that jamming two things together that’re big with kids will somehow yield magical results.

Take this from Kasterborous’ ‘10 Reasons to Love Christmas Who!’ (all of which I pretty much disagree with): “The Christmas Season and Doctor Who are possibly the two greatest things to ever come together.” That sort of wildly spurious opinion typifies everything loathsome about the ‘special’ approach. There’s a case to be made for the merits of, say, chocolate and dildos, but that doesn’t mean a chocolate dildo is a good idea.

The only Christmas special I can recall ever actually being satisfied by was the League of Gentlemen’s effort, exactly because it played against its festiveness by being more grotesque than usual. So maybe I’m just too much of a miseryguts to appreciate the snow-drenched festivities Moffat and co delivered… but, yet, I was – and remain – willing to be proved wrong. It just hasn’t happened yet.

However, I would contend that A Christmas Carol’s problems run deeper than its festive spirit; for one thing, its standalone status gives the episode a disproportionate sense of significance which makes its failure all the more apparent. What we get is a weird and slightly damp mishmash of elements that somehow doesn’t spark in the way The Beast Below’s England-in-space did (for me). Sci-fi Victoriana… sharks… saccharine sob story… Star Trek parody. (The latter of which is particularly weak; I couldn’t care less about that particular franchise, but even I know taking off its shiny bridge set is breathtakingly old.) None of these things ever quite gel.

Then there’s the abrupt opening, which (excuse me) doesn’t quite fly; Amy and Rory’s marginalisation; the kind-of-crap flying fish; and the lack of antagonist (as Sardick ceases to fulfil this role pretty quickly, or consistently). All this fails to do justice to the neat Doctor-changes-a-life concept, previously explored in Steven Moffat’s Decalog 3 short story, and even the time-roaming Christmas Eve excursions with young Kazran and Abigail. These ideas should have been able to carry a whole episode, but overall the story feels both cluttered and yet still very slight, with only a couple of main sets, and, much as I hate to say it, lacking the grounding in realism of a period or contemporary setting - which might makes us care (the fifties Hollywood party seemed to have much more potential in only a very minor scene). In theory, I’m very much a believer in small-scale but clever, less-is-more scripts, which, on paper, this should be, but… sorry, no.

I certainly don’t think of Moffat as being infallible (even The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone wasn’t up to his very best), but this feels rather too much below par – jumbled and clever-clever (rather than complex and actually clever), with a slightly undeserved saccharine cloyingness (rather than actual emotion). The Doctor stepping from Sardick’s rooms in the present into the recording of his past, and the twist on the Ghost of Christmas Future routine, were both rather glorious moments – yet, what did the grandparents, assorted inebriated relatives, or the very young – ie, the majority of the audience – make of this?

In fairness, casting Michael Gambon, Britain’s favourite monstrous curmudgeon, an actor quite literally IN EVERYTHING, from The Singing Detective to The Life Aquatic, via The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, is quite the coup, and certainly counts for something, as he delivers much as you might expect. It doesn’t help however that Katherine Jenkins, though perfectly tolerable – and better than Kylie (albeit a back-handed compliment) – is saddled with such a non-role, as the insufferably sweet and doe-eyed terminal-case Love Interest.

It upsets me slightly to be so harsh, but almost nothing impressed me about this story. It looks quite good, but what were with all those wipes?! Dispiriting, as (the quite lovely) Toby Haynes brought so much brio to The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. Speaking of which, with that two-parter, Moffat made a format I hate – the finale – work, by both engaging with its customary more-is-more mentality, but also undercutting it. So what went wrong with this soggy cracker of an episode?

Specifically, I don’t like the deification of the Doctor – less in terms of his manipulation of someone’s life to such a (controversial?) extent, or numerous right-on-time appearances, but because of his untouchable, non-realistic portrayal as someone everyone defers to and who is never ignored or dismissed. His ‘importance’ and significance as a character has been inflated so much he is literally akin to fairytale figures like Father Christmas, or a troubleshooting Jesus.

Also, hate to say it, but… things just felt a bit too, um, ridiculous. Or, at least, this story’s ridiculousness felt quite flimsy. Like, the fish thing felt like a perfunctory stab at a trademark ‘big, mad, bonkers’ Doctor Who concept. The very idea of a ‘trademark’ style is fishy (ha, ha) enough as it is, but maybe in this case it’s that it isn’t a mad enough concept. A flying shark; that would have been cringeworthy in even something as wildly apocryphal as a John and Gillian TV Comic strip.

Ehh, I dunno. It wasn’t hateful, just a bit smug and forgettable. Worst Smith story? Victory of the Daleks is, obviously, rubbish and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood is bad, but they were just straight-down-the-line pulp filler; this was a big event episode written by a showrunner whose work and storybook outlook on the show I like – but which never felt special. Multi-script burnout, perhaps? Even Smith, though reliable as ever, wasn't stretched by the material and felt too familiar – like the reappearance of a fez, which is going to get old extremely quickly. I can only hope this is an inter-season lull.

It’s not a direct comparison, but I couldn’t help thinking of Jeunet and Caro’s dark steampunk fairytale, City of Lost Children. It’s not directly comparable, despite sharing some of the same look in its city setting, and even its nautical-themed imagery, though without quite such a straightforwardly Victoriana-with-goggles bent. There are only a couple of nods to a Christmas setting in the film, but it cruises the mysterious, foggy side of Christmas rather more successfully than this outing does, with its uncertain collision of near-monochrome cinematography and soggy love story. There’s also rather more solidity in Jeunet/Caro’s worldbuilding - which takes me back to The Beast Below and its Starship UK. Though the concepts of anglo-Blade Runner and Dickensian dystopia are as broad as each other, Starship UK is more fictively satisfying – if not, obviously, actually feasible – because, by contrast, I can’t imagine 'Sardicktown' functioning outside of A Christmas Carol’s festive setting. It’s so obviously created for a festive story that it doesn’t ring true, in even a fairytale sense.

It’s a dispiriting return to the 2005-2010 years to feel this disparaging, but it’s not all doom and gloom. The child’s-eye-view on the series continues to work, with the Doctor once again paired with a pre-pubescent pseudo-companion in the young Kazran - but there is a danger that this’ll become another in a line of Moffat stock elements that could easily become tiresome (see also the manipulation of voices, which threatens to become stale after The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, and The Time of Angels). Another recurring trick is the leap from grandstanding Davies-like blockbuster-style opening, even down to a reprise of Voyage of the Damned’s (irritating) “Christmas is cancelled” line, before segueing into Moffat’s vision – in the same way his first script at the helm slipped deftly from TARDIS-dangling rollercoaster into the more atmospheric setting of Amy’s Leadbridge garden.

Amy being sidelined once again (so soon after The Lodger and whichever episode of The Silurian Fiasco during which she was imprisoned) may be cause for celebration for her detractors, but seems a slightly dangerous precedent; perhaps her characterisation has been criticised as lacking because she’s not being considered central enough by the show’s writers? It wouldn’t hurt to go back to the mentality of the assertion in 2005 that Rose/Billie Piper was just as much the star of the series as the Doctor/Christopher Eccleston. It’s ironic that as he gets his name in the credits for the first time, Rory is similarly marginalised. I suppose this can be explained by the festive special’s standalone status, but it’s slightly worrying in that I don’t think Amy and Rory’s relationship (to the Doctor, at least) would be that self-explanatory to any members of the audience who hadn’t been paying fan-like attention to the last series.

It’s a shame to feel so critical of a writer whose work I ordinarily enjoy, but I like to try to respond to things intuitively, at least initially, and this just didn’t grab me. In theory, the idea of a twisty, relatively small-scale character-driven timey-wimey excursion should be wildly preferable to Davies’ festive blockbusters, but in practise it feels clumsy and swamped, with none of its even most effective concepts given enough weight to balance out the weaker parts.

It’s a bit grim, but the ‘coming soon’ trailer was the best thing about this hour of viewing, and felt far more exciting than what I’d just sat through, suggesting a freshness I hope the production team can live up to (the impossible-to-fake iconography of Monument Valley looks particularly startling). 

Reaction: THE BIG BANG

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes, 2010

Less a story than a puzzle box, though exhilarating The Big Bang can't help but be ultimately anticlimactic, given that nothing is resolved. I don't know what I was thinking, really, imagining that, say, the Dream Lord, or some similar vengeful supervillain would be responsible for the TARDIS' destruction. Obviously I reckoned without Steven Moffat's wormy brain.

I feel I should be annoyed by the ultimate lack of resolution to these events (and I’m sure lots of people will be), but actually, the delicious tortuousness of this story is perfectly adequate recompense. "Silence will fall," indeed?! I should have known nothing so mundane would be on the cards. The potential for multi-season arcs is quite intriguing, though one wonders what a general audience must have made of this story (if anything), let alone another self-involved conundrum down the line.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Less out-and-out dazzling than the preceding episode - the essentially four-handed structure makes it feel surprisingly small, and though, frankly, I prefer a bit of intimacy, it somewhat undercuts the epic threat - this final episode was nevertheless filled with numerous great moments, not least those when a chunk of the plot fell into place. There was still a touch too much exposition of the 'this is going to happen because I say this is going to happen' variety (for example, flying the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS is in no way self-evident as a solution, rather something we have to take on trust). But, it still widdles over Davies' efforts, given that I don't immediately wish it could be purged from my mind.

I was expecting some sort of progression from the previous episode, akin to the initially baffling dream world with which Moffat's Forest of the Dead begins, so the "1,894 years later…" caption didn’t come as a massive surprise (incidentally, how satisfying must they be to write?!). The revisit of The Eleventh Hour's opening moments - the series coming full circle - was unexpected, but felt absolutely right, especially as it was actually great to see young Amelia again. Given the Doctor’s childlikeness, it seems odd this affinity hasn’t been exploited with child-companions before now (suddenly I have images of TV Comic's John and Gillian appearing on screen in the sixties...).

Similarly, I can't be the only person to have also welcomed the revisits to other previous stories, though it would have been nice if they’d been more integral. Considering how baffling this story could be though (if you didn’t pay attention), that might have been asking for trouble. Having said that, I wasn’t fully convinced that this would actually happen, on the basis of the scene where the Doctor briefly appeared to have regained his jacket in Flesh and Stone, which seemed almost too subtle to be anything besides a continuity error. However, it did appear to me that there actually was a continuity error this time round, as he seemed to have bare arms even when wearing the jacket?!

More than any of his previous series fnarg stories, this finale demonstrated the most outré elements of Moffat's imagination, as well as it arguably being here that he fully justifies his position as showrunner and head writer. Rory as a two thousand year old Auton - who'd ever have seen that coming?! That sort of unrestrained approach to storytelling is something always attributed to Davies, and which never quite worked for me - whereas here I think it does, the difference being that the story doesn’t coast on one or two elements. On the contrary, The Big Bang encompasses Roman Britain, 1996, calcified Daleks, Amy and Rory's long-awaited nuptials, a fez ("Fezzes are cool"), the TARDIS as a sun, and obviously "nonsensical time-travelling farce,” as Moffat puts it (nicely undercut by the future Doctor appearing and tumbling down the stairs).

Speaking of Daleks, it's entirely appropriate that it is one of them which forms the only sentient threat in this half of the story. I certainly can’t say I’m particularly upset that the alien alliance of The Pandorica Opens is pretty much irrelevant, simply serving as a means to put the plot into motion, so we're spared Doomsday-style interminable monster-smackdowns.

Probably unsurprisinglyly, I feel this is an episode which will repay rewatching in a big way, and already very much makes me want to return to the beginning of the season with the benefit of hindsight. I can't believe the Eleventh Doctor's first run is all over, but, gloriously, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang has fully justified the poorer stories of the series (which, in fairness, are relatively few) – though, in light of the season's strong opening and closing, these become little more than forgivable lapses.

My only substantial reservation is probably an unfair one. That is that The Eleventh Hour formed such a perfect pilot that I feel quite cheated that Leadworth and the inhabitants we met in that episode didn't become at least semi-regular. Given the format established prior to this year, it does make Moffat's version of the series lacking in not having a central core in that way (if not in many other ways).

It’s either less… or more… than the sum of its parts – not sure which – but I loved it. A finale that I didn’t simply tolerate at best! Some of it is too easy (the Doctor and River’s escapes), but at least things don’t get overly laboured, and instead we just get on with the story. Pleasingly, both Rory and Amy are brought back without recourse to much-derided deus ex machina reset switches; the situations of their deaths were resolved rather than rescinded. Moffat’s definitely a keeper.

It doesn’t feel like a coherent, fully fleshed-out story in the way The Empty Child or Silence in the Library do – it’s too episodic for that, and maybe a bit too clever-clever for its own good. But, in dramatic terms it’s massively satisfying - even if there’s probably a billion plotholes, should one chose to enumerate them. I don’t, though. Dramatically, it works; the Silence apart, it ties up a season’s worth of adventures and enigmas, and the effortlessness with which Moffat essays the audaciousness of the plot is glorious.

Other observations…

• So was Amy not remembering Daleks (and, presumably, Cybermen) a symptom of the events here? Or something else? It didn’t seem explicitly addressed. (Oh, and the whole thing with the duck-less duck pond - I presume that was an oblique reference to the emptiness of chez Pond?)

• It’s funny how quickly we as the audience – and the Doctor – have come to take River for granted, despite (rather like Captain Jack) not knowing the first thing about her history or background. She also seems to have returned to the somewhat milder, (marginally) less arch figure of Silence in the Library, rather than the brassier portrayal of The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.

Having her make a Dalek beg for mercy is an interesting development – though heavy-handed; yes, we get that she’s not necessarily that ‘nice’ – even if it does smack of yet more fan-teasing. Given that we have Moffat’s assurance that the next series will reveal more about her, I can live with that; I particularly can’t wait to see their first encounter (from her PoV).

• Matt Smith's evening wear is better than David Tennant's Paul Smith tux. Exciting that his costume is apparently being souped-up for future outings, but I’d be happy to see him retain his Edwardian spiv look, for a while at least.

In terms of this series at large, overall, Moffat hasn’t reinvented anything as such – rather added a fairytale/childlike veneer to the format he’s appropriated from Davies. Fortunately the format itself, since the show came back, is a strong one, and given that I prefer the slightly more magical approach Moffat has brought to the series, these are Good Things.

Perhaps my main overall criticism would be that Amy hasn't been given much chance to respond to what she experiences; there's been a slightly disappointing old series-style assumption that her thoughts should be implicit with the audience, whereas Davies brought the wonderment of the situation to the surface. This needn't be a constant, but it would be nice to see some acknowledgment that she has at least some self-awareness. Similarly, I don't really want to see a return to the domestic milieu of the companions' families (somehow I can’t imagine Augustus and her mum becoming major presences?), but at least glimpses of it throughout the next run might make her seem more rounded.

To be frank though, I’ve enjoyed the underlying tenets of this approach to Doctor Who so much more than the Davies era that any criticism is pretty much superfluous. The highest praise I can possibly give is that I am looking forward to Christmas and series six with excitement rather than apprehension.


Next Time: WHO KILLED KENNEDY

Reaction: THE PANDORICA OPENS

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes, 2010

I hate season finales. Tediously overblown, messy, self-indulgent things. But maybe I should put that into the past tense.

Russell T Davies is the only writer to have previously tackled the slot designed to bring a season’s worth of stories to a climax. Therefore, more than any other element of this second era of revived Doctor Who, it’s impossible to discuss this series’ finale without comparing it to those of the previous showrunner.

In my Lodger review, I pondered whether Moffat would take a different route from his predecessor’s overblown approach, or instead try to out-Davies Russell with more of the same. The appearance of multiple alien races would appear to point to the latter – an escalation of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday’s Daleks versus Cybermen more-is-more principle. In practice though, that Moffat undercuts this expectation is representative of the previously un-furrowed direction in which he takes The Pandorica Opens.

Despite the scale deriving from its culmination of various season-long strands, there’s a surprisingly restrained – and in that sense, decidedly un-Davies approach to this story. Which is not to say that it is restrained, but by comparison to the previous new series finales at least there’s time to breathe.

Inevitably, this episode will be described as something of a synthesis of Davies and Moffat’s approaches, with the often ultimately hollow spectacle of the former reinforced by the latter’s more assured way with a complex plot. And it works. For once, I was as excited about a finale as I evidently was always intended to be, a possibility which was always destroyed by the looseness and lazy crowd-pleasing of the previous stories in this slot - to say nothing of the excruciating celebrity cameos.

Most telling, perhaps, is the evident comparison between the mysterious Sphere in Army of Ghosts and the mysterious Pandorica: one is in a deeply dull research facility, and has some Daleks in it. The other is under Stonehenge! In a creepy gothic vault! It might be massively clichéd, but at least it has atmosphere. I know what I prefer. Oh, and, it doesn’t have some Daleks in it.

It’s nigh-on impossible to accurately judge a two-parter on the basis of one episode, and in fact, The Pandorica Opens feels rather more like the pulling together of various strands than a coherent story in its own right. However, it performs its function rather gloriously, and if making the narrative itself rather disjointed is the only end-of-season concession we’re going to get under Moffat, then - ehh, I can live with that.

The cracks, the TARDIS explosion, the Pandorica, Rory’s return (which, miraculously, doesn't actually renege on his death in Cold Blood with a direct reset-switch), Amy’s past – obviously, all these things aren’t fully resolved here, but for once it’s actually exciting seeing them coming together, rather than tiring, and makes the Bad Wolf and Saxon memes seem even more inadequate. Where those seasons literally led toward an answer to ‘What/Who is it?’, there are multiple elements at work here, making both trying to predict what will happen - and enjoying the revelations as they come - far more rewarding.

What’s most satisfying is the dexterity with which Moffat handles these various threats: the Pandorica itself being the ultimate case in point, the revelation of its function seeming immediately obvious, in the most gratifying way; it had to be linked to the Doctor, but…

Similarly, the various races’ relationship to one another, again undercutting the Doomsday-on-acid thing, is a similarly simple but effective bit of sleight of hand. It made me think of Jonathan Morris’ DWM strip Death to the Doctor!. It fact, the monster axis of evil has a very comic book feel, albeit located within a contrastingly complex situation. If the story had been merely what it appeared to be - Monster Smackdown, or even Monsters versus Romans – it would have been severely naff. It’s also a bonus that this isn't 'just' a Dalek story or a cyber-story, cos, really, we don’t need that, and it wouldn’t be anything special for a finale.

That all this is going on alongside Auton Romans (who saw that coming?), the return of Rory (with another major nod to Mickey), and Amy’s apparent death, is fantastic – none of these would have been so thrilling individually (whereas any one of these things might have been a major element of a Davies finale), but have a cumulative power that left me literally jaw-dropped – something I cant say happens very often. And in the best way – thrilled, slightly overwhelmed, and amused at the script’s audacity, and at my own complicity in not seeing any of this coming.

There is also what seems like a very deliberate attempt to do a Stolen Earth early on, and cement this season’s status as a self-contained era in its own right with the appearance of various characters from earlier stories. It’s funny, I’d already found myself musing, earlier in the run, on the idea of situation where characters like Churchill and Liz Ten might return en masse – like the celebratory New Adventure Happy Endings - and it’s brilliant (and unexpected!) to actually see something akin to that. There have been a number of particularly brilliant pre-titles sequences this season, a damn-sight less perfunctory than in previous years, and the appearance of van Gogh, Churchill, and only bloody Liz Ten (meeting River!*) is massively impressive – in delivering a really obvious bit of audience-pleasing, without it seeming offensively unnecessary.

At various points during the writing of these reviews, I’ve wondered how unfairly biased I am toward series fnarg. I really don’t like Davies’ general approach, whereas I really like Moffat’s stories and mentality: I was probably always going to cut him some pretty substantial slack. But this run of recurring characters is the sort of thing I hated The Stolen Earth or The End of Time for, yet here… Perhaps it’s because it’s genuinely woven into the narrative. Not the overall story, perhaps, but part of the set-up, a chain of events, in a way that that Sarah or the Torchwood team’s arbitrary involvement, or the Tenth Doctor’s dying rounds, didn’t.

Quite apart from the characters, in this case I loved seeing such varied settings – Provence, the war rooms, the Stormcage (even if it was another one of those over-used Cardiff locations), the cartoony jungle planet, Liz Ten’s gallery (love that she provides the security herself…) - even the Star Wars-y bar where River does her dirty deal. All those situations add to an impression of the expansiveness of the Doctor’s universe, whereas a role-call of former companions only emphasised the insularity of the Tenth Doctor’s world.

Okay, so, this story wasn’t without its flaws. I think the Pandorica prop wobbled at one point, for example. Ooh, that’s not going to be pretty in HD! And then there’s all the little niggly points – who woke the Silurians up to be part of the alliance when they won’t even meet the Doctor for a couple of thousand years? (That we know of, admittedly – but I’ve got my Outraged Ming-Mong hat on. It has a bobble.) How comes the Cybus Cybermen have a fleet? How does Rory nobble a Cyberman (even a battered one) with a sword? Hmm? More importantly, do we care…? Well, no.

Flagrant disregard for continuity bugs me; what can I say – I’m a fan. But, for once, I really get the immediacy of the big, fast, shocking, involving finale. And I say finale like it’s separate from any other type of story, because I think it is. It’s a different format, where the story is drawing on things that have been established over several weeks, and has to bear the extra weight of those snowballing expectations. And, previously, the series has always flunked for me, and failed totally to deliver on those expectations. The series two and three finales are among the most hateful of new Who stories for me, the moments where phrases like ‘dumbed down’ and ‘lowest common denominator’ really come in handy.

But, I actually – can I say it? – kinda loved this. I’m writing immediately after watching, which I don’t usually do, so it’s probably not the most balanced of reactions - but that’s sort of part of the fun. It was invigorating and actually shocking, mainly because it didn’t entirely jettison the intelligence and little twists of Moffat’s mindset.

There is always that worry of how enjoyable something’ll be when you know all its secrets – how much will be left? – but let’s ignore that for once. What’s perhaps most exciting is not having a clue what to expect from episode thirteen. I imagine it’s unlikely to hang around the under-henge for too long, and hopefully it’ll end with Rory and Amy finally tying the knot. But whose is that voice? Next week I’ll probably sound as stupid as those people who thought Omega might be in the Pandorica, but – the Dream Lord…?

If this series had ended on a damp squib (…and I do realise there is still time for that), I might’ve found it hard to overlook my disappointed with fairly hefty swathes of the year’s stories. But it looks set to go out with a (big) bang, and in that case, I’m happy to overlook the saggy middle.


*Something The Guardian suggested back in week two, although it – and I - hoped for more of a bitch-off.