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Wacky Reviews: Doctor Who

The Caretaker - Remember those two episodes with James Corden? This episode was written by the same guy and has a similar feeling. Once again the Doctor is undercover as a human and once again there's many comical misunderstandings! This episode does have the advantage of not having James Corden in it. I'm sure some people loved it and found it hilarious. The problem for me is that I guess it just isn't my type of humour? It feels really sitcommy. Take the fact that the Doctor keeps calling Danny a "PE teacher" even after he knows he isn't. This is just run into the ground and becomes really annoying. Clara's really over the top "we're rehearsing a play!" type stuff does nothing for me either. I actually found the scene with the Doctor talking to Courtney to be lot funnier than the rest. Should have had more Peter Capaldi insulting children. (The guy the Doctor thinks is Clara's boyfriend looking like Matt Smith is a reasonable joke too.)

It doesn't help that Murray Gold, who has been pretty subdued lately, goes absolutely nuts with the comedy music in the first half (and some of it sounds an awful lot like Sherlock music.)

I don't really like the rubbish robot villain either. It feels like the writer doesn't want to write a proper Doctor Who episode so he just thinks "oh I'll throw a stupid robot in there to please the nerds." It's so half-assed that it feels like they're making fun of the show? Or maybe it's just supposed to be silly and funny because it's a silly and funny episode. I don't like it anyway!

The meat of the episode is the Danny/Clara stuff. This is better but not enough to base a whole episode about. It develops the ongoing story about the Doctor not liking soldiers too (though it's a bit much that Danny can accurately sum up the Doctor's character after one minute of listening to him.) Danny being concerned about the Doctor pushing Clara too far is good too, but Danny at the end of the episode feels a bit...boring? Like because he's opposing the Doctor (who is exciting!) he now has to just lie about on the couch with a blank look on his face.

So yeah this is an episode some people will like a lot more than I did, but I can't help that!

SCORE: 6.5/10
 
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Kill The Moon - This episode starts with Clara saying that the Doctor is gone and she needs planet Earth to help her decide beteen the life of an innocent being and all life on Earth. Wow! That's a great teaser! Can the episode deliever on that promise? Well, no, because the dilemma is set up in such a poor way and it all makes no sense! Okay, first there's a lot of science problems. I KNOW it's Doctor Who and they don't care much about science, but because the episode is set on the moon it feels, well, closer to home. They even have a science book in it as they're talking nonsense about how gravity works. I feel like even if a show isn't good on science they should still understand how mass and gravity work on a basic level. And at one point Clara says the moon breaking up wouldn't damage the Earth because "it's eggshell." I mean what the fuck is that.

But leaving the science aside it's still a poorly set-up dilemma with a poorly executed resolution! From everything Clara knows they should kill the creature. The Earth is going to be fucked up, probably destroyed, if the creature was allowed to live. She even asks Earth to vote (well, the half of Earth she can see at the time) and when they do she just ignores them and does what she wants anyway! Through sheer dumb luck she's makes the right choice, but she had no one of knowing that the space dragon would instantly lay another egg(!?) that would somehow instantly grow to the same size and mass of the original moon(!?!?)

It's all an excuse for Clara to get angry at the Doctor for leaving her to make this decision on her own (even though I THINK the episode is saying that the Doctor knew everything that was going to happen anyway so he just left Clara behind to teach her a lesson or something.) This IS good because Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are great and both do great acting in the showdown scene. It's just a shame we have to watch the rest of the episode to get there!

There's space bacteria spiders on the moon which the Doctor says are single-celled organisms which makes no sense. They're just there to add some action.

Courtney from the previous episode comes along...for some reason? The actress is fine (a bad kid actor can ruin an episode) but she doesn't really do much except kill the space spiders with anti-bacterial spray that she'd been carrying outside of her spacesuit for some reason. She just seems to be there so they can make a joke about her being the first female president of the USA (even though she's English.)

There's a Mexican moonbase with a poncho and cacti inside of it so you know it's a Mexican space station. Seriously. Did Jeremy Clarkson write this?

SCORE: 5/10
 
Mummy on the Orient Express - Following on from last week (wisely they don't mention anything about the "moon egg" here), Clara is on one last trip with the Doctor. The fact that she wanted one last trip suggests that she didn't really want to leave him at all! The Orient Express in space is a nice setting, but halfway through there's a twist where it turns out they're actually on a SCIENCE TRAIN and half the people were holograms. It's a nice and unexpected way to keep things interesting and it lets Gus (a talking computer...maybe?) reveal himself. The mummy is just a non-speaking killer, Gus the ruthless scientist is the real villain...and one who can become constrasted against the Doctor! Because the Doctor can be a ruthless scientist too and he uses the 66 seconds the guest characters can see the mummy before dying to learn more about the threat. He even appears to be willing to let Clara's friend die but it's a ploy so he can take her place and defeat the mummy, now that he's learned enough data. It's an excellent example of how the Doctor can be heartless but still work towards a goal for the greater good!

Clara actually sits quite a bit of the episode out (I suspect to give Jenna Coleman a break, just like next week's will give Capaldi one) but everything she gets to do is very good. Even after the Doctor admits he knew they were likey going to face danger on the train (Gus has been trying to lure him there for years) she's still quick to lie to him about Danny and continue to travel with him.

Frank Skinner guest stars and while he doensn't really do much acting he's very good playing a character who is obviously written for Frank Skinner. He has a "likable bloke talking sense" quality.

I like that the Captain thinks the Doctor is a mystery shopper who's going to give him a bad review because of all the killing.

Good "are you my mummy?" reference.

The way they Doctor figures out that the mummy is a soldier because he has a scroll (really a flag) is a bit of a huge leap and I'm not sure why the mummy salutes him after the Doctor surrenders but whatever it's a good ending.

This is a great episode with really tight writing from newcomer Jamie Mathieson and many quotable lines. I really liked it!

SCORE: 9/10
 
Flatline - Remember Fear Her? I think someone watched it and thought "let's make a good episode with living drawings!" And they did! Because this is very good. The monsters here are creepy in a way that the evil drawings in Fear Her weren't, especially when they get into three dimensions by hijacking dead bodies. Sure, they don't have much depth (no punt intended!) and we never really find out what they're up to (the Doctor gives them a chance to explain themselves but in the end concludes they're monsters and kills) but they're good one off villains. But that's not all! The episode has a fun gimmick where the TARDIS is shrunk down with the Doctor trapped inside. This means this is technically a Doctor lite episode (until the ending all of Capaldi's scenes are filmed on the TARDIS set while Jenna Coleman does all the running about) but it never feels like one because the Doctor is a constant presence in the episode talking to Clara. And the moment where he walks the little TARDIS with his fingers is adorable!

Having the Doctor out of action lets Clara be the Doctor for a week (with friendly graffiti artist Rigsy as her companion) and she's very good at it. TOO GOOD in the end as the Doctor is disturbed by just how much she's like him. That's a story that will continue into the next season and Missy watches the whole episode on an iPad and is pleased by her evil plan.

The guest characters are a bit stoch (Rigsy is fine but not someone who makes you think "future comanion!") but the evil old man actor elevates his character with a strong performance as a really evil old man.

I like that the part where Clara is turning 2D objects into 3D with the 2DIS device is like something out of a Paper Mario game!

So yeah, while not quite up to the level of the previous one, this is another great episode by Jamie Mathieson.

SCORE: 8.5/10
 
In the Forest of the Night - 'Kill The Moon' had a really stupid premise but it at least tried to be about something and could have been good with a few more drafts of the script, maybe. This one though...it's not about anything. There's the Doctor, Clara, Danny and some "gifted" kids walking around London that's been overgrown by trees Trees! There's loads of trees all over the world! Trees! How did these trees get here? Trees! Lots of talking about trees. Lots of walking around. A ginger kid moaning. Why am I watching this.

Why is literally no one else outside in London? You'd think other people would want to have a look around now that their city has turned into a forest.

I mean at first you think maybe there's some interesting explanation for it and the Doctor mentions fairy tales. Maybe fairy tales have come to life or something? No, turns out it's just trees. There's nothing to it but trees. Fucking trees.

In an effort to inject some excitement there's a part where some zoo wolves chase the Doctor, Clara and a girl. Then a tiger shows up. Then Danny beats the tiger by shining a flashlight at it. So that's the end of the excitement!

If you think about it logically, this forest popping up everywhere in the world simultaneously would have killed millions of people with all the accidents it caused and escaped zoo animals and stuff. But just don't think about that I guess!

The "plot" finally kicks in with a girl called Maeve (who looks way too young to be in secondary school?) who hears voices whens he doesn't take her medication. The Doctor makes her stop taking her medication so she can hear the alien fireflies, so the only message the episode really has it "don't take your medication, kids!" Earth is going to be wiped out by a solar flare. Clara tells the Doctor not to save the kids because they'd be better off dead than as orphans. Seriously, that's what she says.

Finally the Doctor actually does something when he realises that the trees are there to protect them from the solar flare so the kids have to call all the world's leaders (I guess) and tell them not to burn the trees down. Even though as far as we know it's just England that's going to burn the trees down. But whatever it's all a load of bollocks.

Danny finds out about Clara lying to him but I guess he's fine with it. He seems pretty dull in this episode. He doesn't want to ever travel in the TARDIS becaue he was a solider so he just wants a quiet life. The spark him and Clara had in episodes like 'Listen' doesn't seem to be there any more.

Missy makes an appearance sounding really bored. I don't think it's supposed to be a meta commentary on the episode but it works as one!

By the way, Maeve had a lost sister and at the end she comes out of a bush. No, it makes no sense.

SCORE: 1.5/10
 
Dark Water - Danny dies. Not in any way connected to the Doctor or aliens, he just gets run over by a car. As Clara says it's an ordinary and boring death and she hasn't been living an ordinary and boring life she can't accept it. The first half of this episode is excellent and Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman giving great performances in the scenes where Clara is ruthlessly trying to get the Doctor to save Danny. It all makes sense with what we know about Clara's character and hey for once we're actually seeing her act like a control freak (a control freak having a breakdown, granted) rather than just being told she's one! It's some of the best Doctor Who stuff in a long time.

The parts with Danny in the Nethersphere start off very good too. It's a really cool sci-fi concept and Chris Addison is great as the creepy afterlife administrator guy. The final part where Danny's about to erase his emotions because Clara hung up on him doesn't work as well for me.

The Doctor meets Missy for the first time and she pretends to be a robot to fuck with him. Michelle Gomez is very good at this type of comedy. The stuff in the 3W facility starts out very creepy with the bones in the tanks and I enjoy the Doctor calling the other doctor and idiot for believing in the afterlife. Then it turns out they're Cybermen...and I really wish they were something else because Cybermen episodes are always bad (since 2005) and the episode has felt really unique up until this point so maybe they could have been a new enemy? The ending with Cybermen marching on London is supposed to be scary but there's only about ten Cybermen there so it's not exactly terryifying.

The Doctor not being able to figure out Missy is the Master is drawn out a bit (so it can be the cliffhnager) but maybe the Doctor didn't want to admit it to himself at first.

Anyway, this is a very good episode on the whole, very creepy, very mature, some great horror stuff. But it is part one of a two part story and part two is going to have be as good for it to be a success...

SCORE: 8.5/10
 
(NOTE: I wrote far too much about the following episode, don't read it all!)

Death In Heaven - Okay right away, right from the teaser, this episode is fucking weird. It has a weird tone and weird things happen. The teaser has Clara saying "Clara Oswald doesn't exist! I am the Doctor!" to a Cyberman to save her life. I remember they put this in the trailer for the episode so that everyone would think it was a real thing, but when you're watching it in context it's clear Clara is lying. And yet they go to all the effort of changeing the opening titles so that Jenna Coleman's name is first and her eyes appear instead of Capaldi's. But...why? If the plot of the episode was "Clara pretends to be the Doctor!" then I could understand but it's just a lie she tells that is quickly forgotten and has no impact on the rest of the plot AND they just did a "Clara pretends to be the Doctor" episode a few weeks ago with Flatline (where it actually was relevant to the plot.) So why is it treated like such a big deal? It's baffling AND THIS IS JUST THE OPENING TEASER.

The episode doesn't feel like part of the same story as the previous part. That one felt almost like serioius science fiction, this one goes all wacky bombastic typical season finale mode. It reminds me a bit of the jarring change of tone between 'A Good Man Goes To War' and 'Let's Kill Hitler' and while it's not QUITE as bad as that it's still really noticable so I thin I have to mention some more of the weirdness!

There's a wacky opening scene where people are posing for selfies with Cybermen (don't they remember that time the Cybermen invaded Earth?) and then it turns out they're just UNIT soliders in disguise and Kate Stewart shows up with a Cyberman head even though she didn't actually know she was going to find Cybermen there. So I guess she just carries a Cyberman head around with her at all times. Oswood is cosplaying as Matt Smith. The Cybermen fly away. This isn't bad, really.

Then the Doctor is made the PRESIDENT OF EARTH in an idea which is inroduced the INSTANTLY FORGOTTEN. Seriously it has no bearing on the rest of the episode. It's only there to get him in an airplane (because the president of the USA has Air Force One!) YOU COULD SAY, if you were being generous, that it's a parralel with how Missy wants to give him an army. How both Missy and UNIT want to give him military power but he doesn't want it. But the episode doesn't draw any attention to this parralel or do anything with it.

Cyberman Danny saves Clara because they put him in his Cyberman body without rewriting his personality for some reason. He takes her to a graveyard and we see flashes of silver as Clara looks around wondering what's happening but we already know the episode is about Cybermen so I don't know why the episode is suddenly hiding them in quick flashes of silver? I don't know but it is a well shot scene. The shots of Cybermen rising from graves are very eerie. It's a good looking episode! It's the script I have a problem with!

Osgood is killed because Moffat hates cosplayers (PROBABLY) in a scene that's really well acted by Michelle Gomez and Ingrid Oliver but is really stupid and makes no sense. Missy has been left (unsedated) in the SAME ROOM that Osgood is working in (and also the room the TARDIS is in.) There's two guards behind her who stand there completely still while Missy escapes then kills them (because UNIT left her deathray on her...for some reason?) I know nerds on the internet will say "WELL THE MASTER IS A MASTER OF HYPNOSIS" but that isn't mentioned in the episode and there's nothing to suggest she'd hypnotised anyone.

Cybermen attack the plane and it's funny because UNIT saw that the Cybermen could fly and still put the Doctor in a plane! The guy from the Kumars guest starred as a UNIT general by the way but has about two lines before he dies.

We find out that Missy was the woman who gave Clara the Doctor's number...and it's really anti-climactic because all series long it's been treated like a big deal and the Doctor reacts like it's a big deal but the only reason Missy gives is because Clara is (urgh) a control freak. And kind of implies the whole going to Hell things was part of her plan even though it couldn't possibly have been. I know all the "Hybrid" stuff is coming next year but it hasn't been thought up yet so I can only judge by what happens in this episode!

Chris Addison goes "squeee" and is shot and dies I guess (even though he's an AI) and that's that loose end tied up.

Then there's the whole thing where it turns out Missy created the Cyberman army to give to the Doctor. This is good, it's a good idea and I don't think anyone saw it coming. It kind of ties together the "am I a good man?" and the "Doctor doesn't like soldiers!" stories. Kind of. I mean I feel like 'Mummy On The Orient Express' already did a great job of answering the "Am I a good man?" question but Capaldis is great in his big speech here as he always is. The problem is...we know the Doctor isn't going to accept an army of Cybermen. He doesn't even seem tempted, despite Missy pointing out he could do a lot of good with them. And I don't get at all why he has to throw the wristband thingy to Danny after Missy has just handed it over to the Doctor and given the Doctor control of the Cybermen. The episode acts like Danny beating cyber-conditioning (LOVE DEFEATS CYBERMEN EVERY TIME) is important in stopping the clouds bursting and turning everyone on Earth into Cybermen...but the Doctor already has control of them. He could just order them blow up the clouds, surely? (And I've typed far too much so I won't bother asking why Missy needed the consciousnesses of the recently deceased to turn them into Cybermen but she can now just turn any old bones into a cyberman without putting them in the Nethersphree, or what was the point of people being able to feel themselves being cremated in part one or why there were two episodes with robots trying to fly to the promised land/nethersphere okay.) ALSO: If Danny managed to break his cyber-conditioning surely other people all over the world did too? Did all those cybermen just kill themselves when ordered? Or is Danny's love for Clara the greatest love in the world?

I also find the Brigadier's appearance pretty weird? I get that he was a much loved character in the original series. I do. He got a nice tribute in 'The Wedding of River Song' that was probably the best thing in that episode. But...he's never appeared in the 2005 series (I know he was in Sarah Jane Adventures once.) It seems pretty random to include him in this episode with no build up (maybe if the Doctor had been talking about him earlier in the series or something it would have helped.) I guess the Doctor saluting him is supposed to show that he's gotten over his dislike of soldiers.

Then Clara talks to a glowing door and it's not some of Jenna's finest acting but she is talking to a glowing door so I can't blame her. Danny sends the dead Iraqi boy back from the "afterlife" even though it's just a digital recreation of him really and I don't know how he has a flesh body now. And why wasn't his consciosness downloaded into his Cyberman body, actually? It's all really rushed and he's gone by the next scene so we're left to assume that Clara found his parents (and that they were still alive) and managed to explain to them how he's still alive but didn't age at all.

The scene with the Doctor and Clara lying to each other is pretty good and sad, even though I'm not sure why the Doctor would think Clara could have worked things out with Danny when he's a zombie in a Cyberman suit. Capaldi does good acting when he's angry about Gallifrey.

Then Santa shows up.

Before I finish there's one more thing. Think about what actually happens in this episode. EVERY person who has EVER DIED crawls out of their grave again and comes back as a Cyberman. Then flies into a cloud and explodes. It's no exaggeration to say that an event like that would change the world. Think about the implications for religion at least! Think about the fact that after this episode it's canon that every graveyard in Doctor Who is now empty (wonder what the Amy Pond and Rory cybermen were like!) I KNOW this is a family show. It's not The Leftovers. I'm expecting a serious look at how the world has changed...but some acknowledgement in the episode would have been nice? It's treated like a throwaway detail. It's far too heavy a subject for that. I think maybe it would have been better to not to do something this heavy at all in an episode that ends with Santa Claus appearing.

When I don't like an episode (spoiler: I didn't like this episode) I feel like I have to write a lot to justify why I didn't like it, especially in a big important episode like this. So hopefully I did that! Again the episode has good stuff, Capaldi is great, Michelle Gomez is mostly great (not really a fan of her comedy accents) and it looks nice and it's never boring...I just thought the script was a bit of a mess.

SCORE: 5.5/10
 
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Last Christmas - Christmas episodes are hard. A Christmas Carol was strong but people compained that it was too complicated (it wasn't) and we got the horrible The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe episode the next year as if to say "you want stupid slushy shit on Christmas? HERE YOU GO." This one definitely has sily stuff in it (I mean it literally has Nick Frost playing Santa!) and slushy stuff, but it never goes TOO silly or slushy and it actually has a good plot. Yes "it's all a dream!" has been done many times before, but I like the way it uses layered dreams (and they mention Inception to acnowledge it's a rip off!) Even though the aliens at first seem to act a bit like standard Moffat "don't even blink/breathe/think about them" aliens (and like the aliens from Alien) it makes sense that they'd resemble typical Doctor Who type monsters and popular science fiction monsters becauae they're being taken from the subconscious minds of the Doctor and the humans! (Although it turns out the dream crabs actually do exist in reality but we don't know if they facehug and if you can beat them by not looking at them in reality, so I'm sticking to what I just typed.)

The only real problem with the body of the episode is it does take them quite a while to realise they're all dreaming and the Doctor has to spend quite a lot of time explaining what's going on. It could have been a bit faster placed, and in a normal episode it would have been, but it is a Christmas episode and they always have to last an hour.

I think the first time I watched it I was annoyed by the Danny Pink appearance because I thought "OH HE'S DEAD DO WE HAVE TO SEE HIM AGAIN." And it is where the episodes goes slushy. But it makes sense that Clara would still be grieving for him and her mind would be on him, and he's not the real Danny, just her dream version of Danny.

The part with the Doctor flying Santa's sleigh is the kind of thing that could have been really silly but it makes perfect sense in the rules set up by this episode and is fun.

The guest cast are very good, which always helps. Faye Marsay especially is great and definitely has a "she could be a future copanion!" appeal. It probably won't happen as she's in a lot of things and is probably too busy to be a fulltime companion but I would like to see her again! I like the part where she wants to get everyone's phone number so they can stay in touch. (And she was probably already cast in Game of Thrones when this was filmed so "Thrones Marathon" on her list is likely an inside joke!) Nick Frost is a lot of fun as Santa and even his elves get some good lines!

The old woman Clara bit at the end does feel slightly tacked on. AT THE TIME it was reported that this was going to be Jenna Coleman's last episode but she changed her mind and signed on for another series, so they had to rewrite the ending. This resulted in EVERYONE on the internet assuming that Clara was going to die as a lonely old woman in the Doctor's eyes. I can see why they'd think that, as it would have been a really sad, bittersweet ending...but it's Christmas Day. Would they REALLY have had Clara died as a lonely old woman in the Christmas day episode? That would be really upsetting for children! So I'm pretty happy that she lived. I think it was for the best.

SCORE: 8/10
 
The Magician's Apprentice - The teaser with the Doctor deciding if he'll save child Davros from "hand mines" is good stuff. We then go to a snake man (who works for Davros) asking where the Doctor is in an alien bar, then he asks the Shadow Proclamation, then he ask the witches on Karn, where the Doctor is hiding behind a rock. This is pretty good too. But then Davros tells the snake man to seek the Doctor throught his friends and really a lot of time could have been saved if he'd just looked behind that rock. Because we then get a whole thing with all the planes in the world freezing in mid air and Clara working with UNIT to find the Doctor...then Missy sticks her head through a monitor with a comedy sound effect. It's stupid.

Missy (who froze the plans...for some reason) meets with Clara and Kate Stewart has snipers placed to make sure Missy doesn't kill anyone. Missy has the Doctor's "confession dial" because it's the eve of the Doctor's "final day." Missy starts killing random people but Kate won't shoot her because the snipers were pointless. No one really cares about the people who died anyone because they were just random extras.

It turns out the Doctor is throwing a party in Earth's past because it's his last day and this really doesn't seem like something Capaldi's Doctor would do? I mean he spent most of his first series being grumpy and hating people. He's riding a tank playing an electric guitar and wearing sunglasses. It's really dumb, time-wasting stuff. Snake man shows up and says Davros now remembers the Doctor leaving him to die when he was a child and the Doctor feels ashamed.

Oh, there was this whole thing where Snake Guy only found the Doctor because he followed Clara and Missy, right? But then one of the humans who was partying with the Doctor turns out to have been an undercover Dalek all along so there was no reason at all for Snake Guy. Why put that in? I have no idea! It's the kind of self-defeating twisty thing Moffat does sometimes. I actually liked Snake Guy by the way. He was snakey.

We finally get the Doctor and a depressed old Davros (played by Julian Bleach again, who is excellent) meeting up with ten minutes to go in the episode. We get footage of old Doctors which isn't really unusual anymore but it's still fun. It turns out they're on Skaro, which has been rebuilt and is full of Daleks. Missy and Clara are "killed" by Daleks. They even blow up the TARDIS!!! Obviously all of these things really happened and won't be easily reversed in the first minute of the next episode. The cliffhanger is the Doctor (from the future) about to kil child Davros...

There's a thing with the first half of two-parters where you can tell they've decided on a cliffhanger and they then have to write enough stuff so that episode can end at that point. So we get all the stuff with the snake guy looking for the Doctor, Missy and UNIT, and worst of all the Doctor throwing a party in the past. I can see why people were kind of put off by this stuff! One we get to Skaro it's much better, and there's still good stuff before then as Michelle Gomez is always great and works very well with Jenna Coleman. I liked Davros being all old and bitter rather than being all crazy and stealing planets. He manages to make the Daleks a bit scary again. Capaldi is excellent in the final scenes. So yeah, this is a substandar first part of a two-parters that still has enough good parts to make it worth watching.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
Yeah honestly all the snake guy stuff and finding The Doctor felt like a lot of padding, but boy the Dalek stuff in this episode is super good.
 
The Witch's Familiar - We get the explanation of how Missy survived last series finale, and it's pretty much what you'd expect, but it's entertaing because it's told with a flashbacky story involving the Doctor and vampire monkeys. We get to see Davros out of the chair (he's a bit like the Borg Queen!) as the Doctor rides his chair about being a jerk to Daleks. It's fun. We cut between this and Clara and Missy threatening each other with a pointy stick, which is also fun! They travel through the sewers, whichs are filled with undying but decaying Daleks. It's creepy and bound to be important later!

As fun as Missy and Clara are together (Clara ends up piloting a Dalek suit...again!), the best part of the episode is the big Doctor/Davros showdown in the middle. Davros is dying and leaching life energy off of all his Daleks to stay alive. He tells the Doctor exactly how he could kill all the Daleks. The Doctor won't do it, of course, and they talk about compassion. It's all brilliantly acted! They talk about their history and how they're both tired of fighting. Davros congratulates the Doctor on having Gallifrey back and this is probably where the Doctor realises that Davros is lying his arse off. But the episode tries really hard to convince us Davros is being sincere, as Davros even opens his "Dalek eye" (or whatever it's called) and holds the Doctor's hand. The Doctor decides to let Davros see one last sunset and gives him some regeneration energy (the Doctor predicts it will make him lose an arm or a leg in a future regeneration, BUT MAYBE HE MEANT A PENIS)...

And Davros laughs EVILY because it was all an EVIL plan, of course! Which makes sense (he's Davros) but is kind of a shame because regretful, dying, old man Davros was quite likable for a while there. The Daleks are revived, Davros is healed and everything is going wrong. BUT the Doctor knew Davros was lying all along and also knew that the regeneration energy would revive all the pissed off Daleks in the sewers. "Your sewers are revolting" is a good clever line!

Missy shows she's still a heel by telling the Doctor that the Clara Dalek is the actual Dalek who killed Clara. And Clara can only say "I am a Dalek" and other stock Dalek lines in her Dalek body. But the Dalek filter does let her say "mercy" and that's how the Doctor knows it's Clara, because no Dalek can say that word (except the one who begged River for mercy back in 'The Big Bang' but just pretend you don't remember that.) And the TARDIS wasn't really blown up because...it just wasn't, okay?

Missy ends up surrounded by Daleks and says she's just had a very clever idea. Which seems to be hinting at her teaming up with the Daleks but the next time we see her she's trying to be good so I guess we missed out on a lot of Missy adventures along the way.

The Doctor goes back in time and saves Davros (obviously) and showing him mercy is what mean the word "mercy" ended up in the Dalek vocabulary. It's a bit of a stretch but it makes Doctor Who sense and is a nice ending.

It's a good episode on its own, but as a second part it seems to drop a lot of stuff from the first part. Why did the Doctor think it was his last night alive in part one? That's never brought up again. Why did he send his confession dial to Missy and what did it have to do with all this Davros stuff? We don't find out and while the confession dial does come back later in the series I don't think it ever really makes sense why he sent it to Missy (but I guess we'll find out when we get to that point.) The biggest problem is the "ah-ha, I knew you were lying all along!" moment as it takes away all the emotional investment we had in the Doctor and Davros scenes. They were just scamming each other and there's no hint that Davros really meant any of what he was saying. They're still great scenes though.

SCORE: 8.5/10
 
Under the Lake - The set-up is pretty standard with a secret underground military base where the crew are seeing ghosts of dead crewmates. There's nothing wrong with a standard set-up though! It lets the Doctor and Clara do some solid investigating and quipping. The guest cast are pretty solid too. One of them's deaf!

The Doctor quickly comes to the conclusion that ghosts are real and is very excited about it. There's a funny bit where Clara gives him a card telling him the correct thing to say to people in situations like this.

More people are turned to ghosts and nobody knows what's going on. There's some running about. It's all fairly standard stuff, watchable but nothing amazing. Some ghosts are trapped using a holgram of Clara and that'll probably be important later.

Turns out that ghosts are being used to give coordinates to some alien planet for some reason! There's a pretty good scene where the crew decide to all stay behind to find out what's gong on even though the Doctor tels them they can leave.

The cliffhanger sees the Doctor going back in time to before the alien spaceship landed, but then the Doctor's GHOST(!) shows up under water and scares Clara. He's definitely dead now!

It's an episode where I struggled to find much to say. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad! There's nothing actually annoying about it. The story is solid, the guest cast are solid, the cliffhanger is good...I wouldn't even say it's boring. There just isn't much that stands out other than the bit with the cards and the bit where the crew stay behind. It's a good enough first part of a two part episode, it just never goes beyond that.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
Before The Flood - The episode adds a bit more depth to the story by having the Doctor explain the concept of the "bootstrap paradox" at the start. We meet one of the ghost aliens back when he was still alive: he's a funeral director from the same species as David Walliams. He's a bit annoying ("My first proper alien and he's an idiot.") He dies pretty quickly anyway! The episode gives a bit more character to the guest cast from part one too (they all fancy each other.) They do the thing with O'Donnell where she's a Doctor fangirl and you think "maybe she'd make a good companion!" which should make it obvious that she's going to die later.

And die she does, and her death comes after the undertaker's in the same order as the list the Doctor's ghost told Clara in the future, so that's what confirms the Doctor's suspicions. So he kind of knew she was going to die and the other guy thinks the Doctor let her die to test his theory and will only change history now because Clara is next on the list. The Doctor did try to get her to wait in the TARDIS, to be fair, but he could have, like, tied her up in there or something. And her ghost only appears in the future after she dies in the past (if you follow me) which suggests her death wasn't fixed. It's a good kind of dark bit but it probably could have been explored more as we don't really know if the Doctor really did let her die on purpose.

It takes a long time before we get to see the villain, the Fisher King, and he does look pretty cool. He doesn't do much beyond evil monologuing though.

There's a good part where the deaf lady can't hear the ghost dragging an axe behind her but does notice the vibrations on the floor.

Anyway yeah it turns out the Doctor's ghost was just a hologram, the Doctor was sleeping in his coffin and the Fisher King is killed by the dam breaking. The holo ghost lures the other ghosts away and captures them. The Doctor wonders when he first got the idea to send the ghost back, since he only did it after he saw his ghost for the first time.

It's better than the first episode because it uses clever time travel concepts and gives the guest characters more importance to the story. It never really reaches the level of a great episode but it's very good!

SCORE: 8/10
 
Yeah both these episodes were 'solid' but nothing more than that... which is fine, really. I wish the Fisher King was better, he looks cool but he doesn't really do much, and the scenes where he walked around in broad daylight made him look a bit ridiculous.

The Tivolians are bad and have always been bad.
 
The Girl Who Died - Jamie Matheson wrote two of the best episodes of series 8, including the genuinely great 'Mummy On The Orient Express', so I was excited to see what he'd do in series 9, with Maisie Williams guest starring and everything! Sadly the result is a bit disappointing...

The Doctor and Clara are captured by vikings (who instantly just grab and snap the sonic sunglasses, which kind of shows the fatal flaw with sonic sunglasses.) They're really generic vikings, but Maisie Williams is one of them and the Doctor gets a weird vibe from her. Odin appears as a big face in the sky and the actor is no Brian Blessed (they wanted Brian Blessed but he wasn't available.) And the fake Odin's warrirors look a bit like Judoon. All the viking men are quickly killed so Odin can drink their testosterone. It's a bit weird but kind of fun. Clara nearly succeeds in scaring them away but Ashildir challenges them to a fight because she's a bit like Arya.

The Doctor encourages the rest of the village to run away, which is the only sensible thing to do and could have ended the episode fifteen minutes in, but they want to fight because they're vikings. The Doctor does his talking to babies thing again which is good continuity at least. The Doctor has reasonable reaons for not helping the villagers, it's not just him being a dick, but he ends up staying because...of electric eels? I think. Actually, no, it later turns out he didn't know what "fire in the water" meant so I guess he stayed because of the baby crying.

We get some scenes of the Doctor training the incompetent villagers, which are passably amusing, I guess!

The Doctor comes up with some plan to defeat the warrior aliens (I don't know if they have a name, they're lame so I don't care) involving electric eels and puppets. I don't think electric eels really work the way this episode thinks they do? Or that vikings had them. Ashildir puts one of their helmets on and that lets her project a hologram of a giant which the aliens thinks is real even though it's using their own hologram technology. It's pretty dumb? Odin even asks "what trickery is this!" when he's been using the same technology the whole fucking episode. Clara filmed the aliens running away from the fake dragon and the Doctor threatens to upload this to the internet (with the Benny Hill music...which they actually play to kill the joke) and humiliate them.

BUT TWIST ASHILDIR RANDOMLY DIED. Apparently there was a risk that using the helmet would kill her and nobody mentioned that before. This would work better as a "the Doctor got someone killed!" moment if the Doctor had actually known there was a risk of her dying. At least we get to the good/important part of the episode as the Doctor decides to save her, even though he knows he isn't supposed to. The Doctor remembers that his face previously belonged to a Roman he wasn't supposed to save, which is pretty clever. Turns out the aliens have a "battlefield med kit" that can cause immortality. Yep, these guys, some of the worst guest aliens ever, have the key to immortality!

The Doctor warns that being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be (IS SHE THE HYBRID?) and there's a great final shot of the years passing and Ashildir looking evil.

Like I said, this is disappointing. Most of it just doens't really work for me. The vikings are too generic to care about, the aliens of the week are silly and dull. Maisie Williams is basically just playing Arya. Her death comes out of nowhere. It does have a good ending which Capaldi really sells and I liked Clara being smart and taking charge a bit (she almost got rid of the aliens herself) and it's never really painful to watch or anything. Just should have been a lot better!

Clara looks hot in a spacesuit.

SCORE: 6/10
 
The Woman Who Lived - A highwayman who is obviously a girl (and obviously Maisie Williams) robs people talking in a male voice. I seriously think they ripped off the Blackadder episode where Miranda Richardson kept shooting squirrels. She calls herself "Me" now and seems to have a friend with glowing eyes.

The episode is a bit weird as it mixes the really campy and the really serious. The serious comes when Me talks about the history of her life and the journals she has to keep because she can't remember everything. It reminds me of the Hob Gadling character from the Sandman comic and is by far the best part of the episode. Maisie Williams is great in these scenes, managing to convince you that she's much older than 18. There's nothing at all of Ashildir left in her performance which makes sense since she's forgotten about that life. Everyone she's ever known has died and she's understandably bitter about it! Capaldi is of course excellent as well as he reads about her dead children (and for the rest of the episode.)

The problem is that the campy stuff is REALLY campy and feels really out of place when a few minute earlier we were talking about the Black Death and dead children. I don't mind the break in scene with the over the top Murray Gold music too much, but that fucking growling cat alien with the glowing eyes...he's terrible. Like a panto villain from a much worse episode. I don't know why he even has to be in the episode, they could have just had Me find a crashed alien ship with the technology she needs on it or something.

There's also Rufus Hound as Sam Swift, but that works surprisingly well! The scene where he's telling jokes so they won't hang him is well played. I guess he didn't turn out to be immortal, even thought he Doctor was just making up the reason why he wouldn't be immortal?

I find Me's face turn a bit random though. She gleefully murders Sam Swift, but as soon as the portal from the Avengers opens and more cat people start killing villagers, she starts crying and realises she cares. So she was fine personally murdering one person she knew but watching aliens kill loads of other people is where she draws the line? I don't know, feels like it would have been better if she'd stopped before killing Sam.

Clara doesn't appear at all until the end which is fine because they did a lot with Me's character here and having to include Clara too would have taken away from that.

So there's some great stuff here, probably the best stuff of the series so far. Maisie Williams is a fantastic guest star and the many conversations between Me and the Doctor are all a pleasure to watch. It really is a shame about the terrible monster and the slightly botched ending!

SCORE: 8/10
 
The Zygon Invasion - It's a follow-up to 'The Day of the Doctor'! It's bound to be good!

So at the start we learn that UNIT has helped twenty million Zygons settle on Earth, disguised as humans. Why? I'm not really sure! Weren't the Zygons an invading army last time? And now they want to live here because...Earth's nice? If there was some backstory given about a war on the Zygon homeworld and Earth having to take in refugess it would make more sense.

I don't mind Doctor Who trying to do stories inspired by contemporary issues. But this story just literally takes everything about terrorism you see on the news ("Radicalisation" is mentioned about five minutes in and that's just the start) and replaces terrorists with Zygons. It just rattles of every reference to terrorism you could possible think of: there's a video message read out by a captive, there's talk of nerve gas, human shields, drone strikes, benefits theifs(!), everyone keeps saying "radicalisation" and the Zygons even have a base in the middle east! It's just all so distracting and takes you out of the story.

Also the drone strike being averted because the person who's supposed to carry it out has a photo of her kids and the Zygons are disguised as a family with kids is really silly. That could have been a big moment of drama but it just made me think "oh fuck off."

Then there's the scene where UNIT are going to kill the terrorist Zygons but they take the form of their parents and the soldiers can't kill them. Look, it's a good idea for a scene on paper and if it had ended with the soldiers unable to shoot because they couldn't be completely sure if they were their parents or not then that ould have been fine. That would have worked! But instead they go all the way to the soldiers meekly walking into the terrorist compound. Every single one of them just goes along with this even though they KNOW they're dealing with shape-changing aliens. It's so bad.

BIG TWIST, Clara was a Zygon all along! I knew that, watching it back this time...and it doesn't really change the episode much. But Zygon Clara is hot. And at least the episode starts to move when she's revealed. Then we get Kate Stewart AND the Doctor both being dead as cliffhangers but who cares by that point.

It's just a badly done episode. Even if you aren't bothered by the constant, unsubtle real world references, none of the drama actually works. It feels weird and doesn't even give Peter Capaldi much good stuff to do (at least part two will be better in that regard.) I did not enjoy watching it again.

SCORE: 3.5/10
 
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