August 13: "Extremis"

Interesting; the recap at the start of this episode uses a slightly less hysterical line reading from the Doctor ("I can't look at anything ever again") than at the end of "Oxygen", as if they know that now it's not a cliffhanger any more they can dial it down a bit.  In some ways it's a lot like the classic Who days of providing slightly different reenactments of cliffhangers.

The last couple of series, Steven Moffat has been taking an episode and using it to push the format of the show.  In series 8 it was "Listen" (a bit), last series it was "Heaven Sent" (a lot), and this time it's "Extremis".  The clues are there at the beginning, of course, with the Doctor getting an email called "Extremis", but we don't really remember that as the story progresses.  No, this time around Moffat is going full-blown Dan Brown conspiracy theory thriller, with forbidden texts in the Vatican and suicidal CERN physicists.  (And remember, The Da Vinci Code borrows a lot from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the book that claimed Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had kids who ended up as part of the Merovingian dynasty and which was co-written by Henry Lincoln, who also co-wrote three Troughton stories -- thus bringing the Doctor Who connection around full circle.) Consequently we get lots of clandestine meetings with high-ranking Vatican officials, including the Pope himself (albeit not the real current Pope, Francis, probably because a) it's not great to involve the real Pope in this story, and b) Francis isn't Italian, and they clearly want that European Da Vinci Code vibe) and rumors of a text, the "Veritas", that is so dangerous that everyone who's translated or read it has subsequently committed suicide.  (An idea which unintentionally mirrors Monty Python's "Killer Joke" sketch.)

The Doctor seemingly executes Missy. ("Extremis") ©BBC

Interspersed with the Veritas storyline is the Doctor remembering an encounter with Missy, who'd been captured and was going to be put to death.  It's...actually not quite clear why he's remembering this now.  Certainly the thing River Song said about him that Nardole reads to him ("'Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage.  Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward.  Virtue is only virtue in extremis'") keeps coming to mind, so maybe that's why, but it does feel on some level like Moffat just wanted to get the fact that Missy is the one in the Vault out there now so he didn't have to worry about teasing the viewers the rest of the season -- and, of course, so that he can use Missy later in this three-part story, and it makes more sense to introduce her here than in the next episode.  But it's an interesting storyline, and it makes clear just why Missy is in the Vault (because of that "without witness" stuff), and why Nardole is still around too (because River sent him after the Doctor).  It just doesn't quite gel with the surrounding storyline.

But that's OK.  This is an episode that nevertheless succeeds because it commits to its premise. We get a secret library of heretical books under the Vatican, created by Pope Benedict IX, who was apparently a woman.  (Interesting that Moffat chose a pope considered to be one of the all-time worst to retcon as female.)  There's some creepy decaying monks walking around threatening people, and portals that lead to places all over the world.  Even when things get a bit weird, they still do a great job of having everything slowly unfold, so that by the end, when the Doctor is confronting the Monks in the Oval Office, next to the body of the American president (who isn't orange, interestingly enough -- see next episode for why this matters), it's still a logical progression.  But the best thing is that the only really logical way to end the story Moffat is telling is to basically have the Doctor and his friends lose, and so that's what happens.  There's no deus ex machina here, no Missy swooping in at the last minute (say) to fix things.  Instead we learn this world is a simulation, for the Monks to work out their best plan of invasion, but this doesn't feel like a cheat because the whole episode has been building to that moment.  The Veritas and the Shadow Test wouldn't work in the real world, but because they're in a computer simulation it does.²⁷⁷  And the way the characters also discover this -- Nardole by moving outside the limits of the projectors, Bill by being told the truth, the Doctor by reading the Veritas -- is also well done, with no punches pulled.  And finally, because the episode straight up told us about this Extremis email, there's no sense of letdown that, in some ways, it was all a dream, because we knew that going in, even if we didn't necessarily realize it.

It's the first part of a three-part story, so "Extremis" doesn't wrap things up all nice and neat.  But what it does do is mess with our heads, just a bit, but in a way that feels satisfying.  This is an episode that fully commits to its premise, with hardly a foot misplaced.  This is another success in a series filled with successes, but it does leave you wondering: how can the next two parts of this story match this?  I guess we'll have to watch and see...







²⁷⁷ Personal moment of pride: the minute they started doing the Shadow Test I instantly realized it must mean they were in a computer simulation because of pseudorandomness.  It made me feel clever.

August 12: "Oxygen"

Promo pic for "Oxygen" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Series 10,
Oxygen) ©BBC

It opens, cheekily, by lifting from the famous opening from Star Trek: "Space, the final frontier..."  Except instead of continuing with a stirring, optimistic speech, here the Doctor uses the phrase to illustrate just how deadly space is.  It's a fun little subversion.

"Oxygen" is by Jamie Mathieson, who, after a bit of an uneven entry last series ("The Girl Who Died"), is back on form, with a tense, thrilling affair that's right up there with his series 8 episodes ("Mummy on the Orient Express" and "Flatline").  We get some stuff early on regarding the Vault... oh right!  The Vault!  I haven't even mentioned the Vault yet.  It's the reason the Doctor is staying at the university and lecturing, because it's a safe place to guard this mysterious Vault that Nardole keeps reminding him about.  In some ways the Vault is the overarching plot this series, but as pretty much everyone correctly guessed who was in the Vault, they wisely don't milk it till the end -- in fact, we'll find out who's in it next time around.  But yeah, the Vault comes up basically so that Nardole can chastise the Doctor about it and the Doctor can ignore him, but in a way such that Nardole gets to come along on the adventure this time around, instead of remaining behind like he's done in the last three episodes.

One of the neat things about "Oxygen" is how it takes an argument of free, unfettered capitalism and extends it to a logical conclusion: in space, oxygen is a resource just like any other, and corporations charge money for resources, so therefore corporations would charge its employees for oxygen.  So the number of breaths you have left becomes the measurement for everything, and it creates a tension of a constantly ticking clock in the background that the audience is aware of on some level, even if it's not being brought up all the time.  Then there's the reference to the idea that the Doctor and company are from the union, which the others believe to be a myth.  And of course, there's the fact that the life-preserving spacesuits that everyone is required to wear are programmed to start killing all the employees because it would be cheaper to just bring in a brand-new crew than to either fire this crew (and thus have to transport them back from the mining station) or train them to be more efficient or something, which also reads as a critique of capitalism and the focus solely on the bottom line.  (One is reminded of the infamous memo related to the Ford Pinto, where Ford calculated that it was cheaper to just deal with the cost to society of accidents and deaths than to alter every vehicle to be in accordance with higher safety standards.)  But the cool thing about this critique is that it's there in the background, motivating the plot, but Mathieson isn't beating us over the head with it, shouting "Look how terrible capitalism is!" or anything.  It's just a logical extrapolation, like all good allegorical SF.

Bill's suit malfunctions. ("Oxygen") ©BBC

The cast, of course, is great; Pearl Mackie still excels as Bill, while Matt Lucas gets to slip back into the comic relief role that he had in "The Pilot".  It's a relationship that works really well, and seeing the two of them with the Doctor continues to be a real joy.  (In particular, the bit at the end where Bill hugs the Doctor, and then Nardole hugs them both to be part of the moment, made me laugh out loud.)  There's also the way Bill reacts to being confronted with an alien with bright blue skin, which leads to her being called a racist, which is handled with a nicely light touch.  And it's good that they have these light moments, because the rest of the story is properly scary, with basically zombies trying to kill off the remaining crew.  As I said earlier, the tension doesn't really let up, and the atmosphere (sorry) of the episode is therefore very effective -- certainly, for my money at least, much more effective than last week's episode.  The moment where it looks like Bill might die from vacuum exposure is excellent, and the way that the solution has repercussions for the Doctor, blinding him, is clever.  It makes the Doctor have to rely even more on his wits, now that the TARDIS, his sonic, and even his sight are unavailable to him.  Really, the only thing that doesn't quite work is the idea that Bill is only knocked out by the electrical charge, not killed, and that's probably more an issue with the direction and makeup making her look dead than with the idea itself.

So "Oxygen" is a compelling, scary episode that provides a nice set of thrills, but with a point about capitalism lurking in the background, adding another layer to consider and appreciate.  In fact, it's worth taking a moment to ponder just how good this run of episodes has been so far.  It hasn't been a perfect success, of course, but even the weaker episodes have plenty of moments to make them at least somewhat worth your while.  It's a sign of just how confident and experienced the production team has become: this is a team that knows what works and what doesn't, but critically, this doesn't mean that they've gotten complacent.  Doctor Who is still pushing itself, coming up with new ways to thrill and entertain viewers, all while making it look natural.  Some of this is their excellent casting, of course (seriously, you should just accept that I'm going to be raving about Pearl Mackie for the rest of series 10), but some of it is the way they're still taking risks.  Like that cliffhanger at the end, making the Doctor still be blind.  A less adventurous production team would have made the Doctor better at the end of the episode, and in fact we the audience assume that that's what will happen -- but making his choices have long-term repercussions, even if those choices were the correct ones in that moment, is the sign of a show still pushing itself.   Doctor Who isn't resting on its laurels by any means, and having the Doctor's blindness persist makes you want to know what will happen next.  What more could you want?

August 11: "Knock Knock"

Promo pic for "Knock Knock" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Series 10,
Knock Knock) ©BBC

A large, old house, a group of students, a creepy landlord... what could possibly go wrong?

"Knock Knock" is the debut Doctor Who script from noted playwright Mike Bartlett, and it explicitly wants to be a haunted house horror(ish) story.  And so we get many of the clichés present and correct, including a group of young people who can be picked off one by one and a weird old guy (played wonderfully by David Suchet) who knows more than he's letting on.  And, like Doctor Who does, "Knock Knock" puts the Doctor inside the cliché and consequently distorts the story, sending it in a new direction.  That's probably why the story ends the way it does, an example more of "misguided" than "evil" at the heart.

But before we get to that point, the story does need to go through the motions, which is why we get the setup of six young, attractive people, with some romantic possibilities (such as Paul being into Bill (who obviously isn't interested, being into girls and all), while Shireen is into Paul) and a sense of people being happy and having fun -- which obviously won't go well when a haunted, sort of alive house is involved.  (Although while we're here, it's a bit weird how everyone seems to know who the Doctor is, yet Bill has to spend time explaining who he is.²⁷⁶ [Edit: It's because he lectures at their school; it's embarrassing how long it took me to work that out.])  The story doesn't really demand much from the housemates other than to be cheery and then afraid, but to their credit everyone here does really well, even when they don't have a lot to really do -- so, for instance, Felicity is claustrophobic (rather like Charlie from Class) and sells it quite well, even while she demonstrates that it's not any safer outside the house than inside.  But the star of the show is David Suchet, who brings a quiet, matter-of-fact manner to a rather creepy character, which makes him even more creepy as a result.  It's one thing to have a character cackle that you're going to die, and quite another to have a character calmly and cheerfully state it.  I only really know David Suchet as Poirot, and seeing him play such a different character was a bit of a revelation.  The Landlord is quiet, a bit oily, and very self-satisfied, and he's a delight to watch, even as you're rooting against him.  I also really like the way his character almost never tries to hide what's going on, such as when Bill and Shireen find Pavel trapped in the wall.  "Music can be pleasant, but a simple repetition like that [record currently skipping], it's merely a distraction from the inevitable," he comments.  "Hope is its own form of cruelty. ... Oh, look.  He's released.  Mercy at last.  Beautiful, isn't it?  Nature contained.  He's preserved in the walls, in the very fabric of the building forever."  Suchet is so matter-of-fact and pleased as he says this that it's really rather wonderful.

Pavel is trapped in the wall. ("Knock Knock") ©BBC

But here's the thing.  The way the story picks the housemates off one by one is well done.  The discovery that this has been happening for years and years is skillfully done.  The living house thing works well, and the woodlice/Dryad bugs are really creepy -- the initial shot of them pouring out of the doorframe in the kitchen as the Doctor and Harry watch is effectively gross, and the way they can just show up out of nowhere is also suitably unpleasant.  The effects in general, in fact, are really good -- seeing Pavel swallowed up by the wall is nicely nasty, and the makeup on Eliza, as she's essentially made of wood, is top-notch.  This should work.  And yet I just didn't find it that engaging.  Maybe it's because I'm not really into horror movies, so I'm not really the target audience?  I dunno; on paper this sounds great, but while it seems like all the individual parts are good, the sum is somehow less.

Is it the ending?  There is a sense, a little bit, that the story is pulling its punches by having the Landlord not be evil but just trying to desperately keep his mother alive, to the exclusion of all else.  They're doing it for a reason, of course -- this is part of the subversion that the Doctor's presence has on events, after all -- but it does come at the cost of not being quite as visceral.  And that feeling is only compounded by the semi-happy ending, with all six housemates being "restored" by Eliza as she ends things -- nice, yeah, but it does neuter the horror rather.  But is that enough to retroactively lessen the impact of everything up to that point?  It doesn't seem like it should, but maybe.

So in the end it's a bit difficult to judge.  Maybe if I were a bigger fan of the genre this would work better for me (so obviously your mileage may vary), but as is, while it's easy enough to admire the care and skill that's gone into everything here, it just doesn't quite do it for me.  Its heart and its brain are both there, but it's like they don't quite click together.  "Knock Knock" is entertaining enough, but it's not as outstanding as it seems like it should be.







²⁷⁶ This might be because Harry was, in initial drafts, supposed to be related to one-time companion Harry Sullivan, so it could have been him who told the others about the Doctor, rather than Bill.  But when they cut the reference to Sullivan they didn't adjust the rest of the script to match -- in other words, draft artifact.

August 10: "Thin Ice"

Three episodes in and I haven't even mentioned the slightly different font style for the episode titles that they've been using.  No, it does matter, come back!

Nah, it doesn't actually matter.  Just an observation.

Anyway, "Thin Ice" is by Sarah Dollard, who wrote last series's excellent "Face the Raven" and is back with this outstanding story.  It's not an adaptation of the unmade McCoy-era Ice Warrior story, though (sorry, Big Finish fans), but instead this time around we're back to the time of the last frost fair in London, in 1814.  This is when the Thames used to freeze over and people would hang out on the frozen river and have parties and fun.  And yes, they really did have an elephant out on the ice.  In some ways, despite only being 200 years ago, the idea of the Thames freezing over seems really alien -- Bill even comments on it, wondering if the TARDIS has landed in a parallel dimension.

And once again the Doctor and Bill steal the show, thanks to both their easy relationship and some sparkling dialogue.

BILL: Traveling to the past, there's got to be rules.  If I step on a butterfly, it could send ripples through time that mean I'm not even born in the first place and I could just disappear.
DOCTOR: Definitely.  I mean, that's what happened to Pete.
BILL: Pete?
DOCTOR: Your friend, Pete.  He was standing there a moment ago, but he stepped on a butterfly and now you don't even remember him.
BILL: Shut up!  I'm being serious!
DOCTOR: Yeah, so was Pete.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Thin Ice)

The Doctor slugs Lord Sutcliffe. ("Thin Ice") ©BBC

Seriously, Bill and the Doctor's interactions are so good, and they're so relaxed together, that I wouldn't be surprised if these two end up being considered one of the best Doctor-companion pairings ever.  And here they get to say Dollard's dialogue, which is full of sharp, insightful moments ("Regency England," Bill comments.  "Bit more black than they show in the movies."  "So was Jesus," the Doctor replies.  "History's a whitewash") and quieter, more significant ones.  The scene between the Doctor and Bill, where she asks him if he's ever killed anyone, is well done because you understand both sides, and crucially, both of them choose to underplay it.  We could have gotten Pearl Mackie shouting and raging at the Doctor, but she plays this much quieter, and consequently it's a lot more impactful.  It's also good how the script has her move on, so that we don't have to deal with a lot of outrage, as with Clara and the moon situation in "Kill the Moon" -- Bill focuses on the task at hand, which is good.  And then a later scene, where the Doctor tells Bill to let him do the talking because it's best not to get emotional, before slugging Lord Sutcliffe for being racist to Bill, is fabulous not just because it's great to see the Doctor punching racists in the face (although that's definitely part of it) but because it reveals to Bill the sort of man the Doctor is: it's not that he doesn't have time for outrage, as he claims, but rather that he doesn't have time for anything else.   And of course, that gorgeous speech that sums up the Doctor's philosophy: "Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life.  An unimportant life.  A life without privilege.  The boy who died on the river, that boy's value is your value.  That's what defines an age.  That's what defines a species."

The actual storyline of the episode is a good one: there's a creature living in the Thames that's eating people, except that someone has actually chained it down there.  That someone, it turns out, is one Lord Sutcliffe, who is harvesting the creature's waste as a fuel source which burns a thousand times longer than coal and hotter than they can measure.  We find this out slowly, as the story satisfyingly unpeels thanks to the Doctor and Bill's investigations.  And the villain isn't an alien or anyone deserving of any sympathy, but simply the racist, unfeeling Lord Sutcliffe, who doesn't care who dies (in fact, he encourages it) so long as the creature is kept fed so that it can keep producing fuel.  (Quick aside to note Bill's cheeky almost-swear: "No sh-" *immediate scene change*.)  This leads to another parallel to "Kill the Moon": as in that one, the Doctor declares that the choice of how to deal with the creature, to set it free or to leave it be, is not his to make, but rather Bill's, as a representative of humanity.  But unlike in "Kill the Moon", he doesn't leave Bill alone to make the choice but rather helps her after she decides to set the creature free.  It's a suitably action-packed finale to a story that's been both thoughtful and exciting.

I feel like I've doing a lot of raving about this story, but that's because "Thin Ice" deserves it.  This is a script with dialogue that sparkles and a storyline that unfolds at just the right pace, and everyone in this, on both sides of the camera, do their very best to make this work, and they definitely succeed.  This is easily one of the best stories (if not the best) of series 10, and possibly of Capaldi's whole run.

August 9: "Smile"

Promo pic for "Smile" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Series 10, Smile)
©BBC

"Smile" sees the return of writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who was last responsible for series 8's rather underwhelming "In the Forest of the Night".  I'm happy to report that "Smile" is definitely better than that, although it's not a perfect episode.

For one thing, there's an actual proper threat here, rather than the abstract solar flare one we got in "In the Forest of the Night".  The opening of the story establishes that there are killer robots all over this colony world being set up, as one of the colonists tries to convince another to remain happy or else the flying robot swarms will kill them.  (And yes, it's The Sarah Jane Adventures' own Mina Anwar as one of the colonists -- maybe this means that Rani's descendants survive into the future...)  This is the environment that the Doctor takes Bill to on her first proper TARDIS trip.

The best part of the episode is the first half, with just Bill and the Doctor wandering around the empty city (filmed on location in Valencia, Spain, at the City of Arts and Sciences -- and it looks gorgeous), talking to each other.  If you weren't sure about Pearl Mackie last episode (which I suppose is a remote possibility), then this one cements her as absolutely delightful, as she spends her time being frightened by the killer robots but also delighted by all the futuristic things around her.  Mackie walks the line between the two perfectly, and so Bill's conversations with the Doctor about his two hearts and his Scottish accent, smelling rosemary twenty light years away from Earth, and pointing out that the Doctor is the help line are pitch perfect.  In some ways it's a shame that the actual storyline has to interfere and start introducing additional characters.

The Doctor and Bill sidle past the Emojibots. ("Smile") ©BBC

Not convinced by the idea of the Emojibots, though.  It's admittedly a cute idea, but it seems like the sort of thing that will age rather badly in ten years or so, reduced to cultural debris alongside such things as the misguided Emoji Movie.  Which is a problem not because they shouldn't be making episodes that aren't current (because they should be), but because it's really hard to believe that a human culture in the distant future would still know and care about emojis.  Maybe I'm wrong -- feel free to throw this in my face in 2027 -- but I suspect I'm not.  But emojis aside, making the robots look a bit sad and dumpy (much like Marvin the Paranoid Android in the movie version of Hitchhiker's) but also a threatening presence is the sort of bizarre disconnect that Doctor Who lives for, and on that level they work quite well.

But like I said, the episode sags a bit once it has to introduce the rest of the plot.  I'm not sure if it's because the concept is so abstract or because they just don't pull it off, but the idea of grief-as-plague doesn't really land.  It's certainly a hard idea to get across, and the explanation they give isn't as clear as it should be.  When they see that people are unhappy, the reaction of the Vardy isn't to do things until they're happy again but to kill the unhappy people?  We're supposed to think this Happiness Patrol-esque result is a consequence of poor programming (so kind of like the nanobots in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances"), but it seems like a really weird logical jump to me.  And of course it doesn't help that the first adult awake seems to be a bit of a pig-headed fool, immediately jumping to get the guns to use against a cloud of tiny robots that their entire city is made from.  There's dumb and then there's that guy.  (Also, pro tip: maybe don't your name your colony ship Erehwon, after a Samuel Butler story about a happy colony that is revealed to be not as idyllic as it first appears?  That's just tempting fate right there.)

So yeah, the ending bit is something of a letdown (although it's only annoying rather than terrible), but the first half, with the Doctor and Bill exploring and poking around, more than makes up for it, and the goodwill that engenders is enough to carry it through the weaker second half.  I'm glad we got such a great showcase for the two of them, and I would happily watch loads more of the Doctor and Bill hanging out together.  They, more than anything else, make "Smile" work.

August 8: "The Pilot"

Some big news happened between Christmas 2016 and April 2017.  We lost a Doctor, as Sir John Hurt passed away at the age of 77, and Peter Capaldi announced a few days after that (on 30 January, to be precise) that series 10 of Doctor Who would be his last.  In other words, the twelfth Doctor is now on borrowed time.

Series 10 Parts 1 & 2 (UK edition)

It's also Steven Moffat's final series as showrunner, but he decided that rather than make things seem like they were ending that he was going to act like it was a brand-new beginning, with new companions (including an overt and admirable attempt to address the issue of diversity in the show by making sure they cast a black actress) and an effort to keep things fresh.  Which is partly why he's cheekily chosen to call this episode "The Pilot".  But it's clear from the outset that they intend for this to be a good jumping-on point for any new or casual fans.  This episode is squarely from new companion Bill Potts' point-of-view.  Which isn't to say there aren't little references and in-jokes here and there (pictures of both River and Susan, a pencil holder full of sonic screwdrivers), but they're not the main point.  The point is Bill.  And from the outset, Pearl Mackie knocks it out of the park, from her rambling non-answer to the Doctor's question ("I was hoping something would develop") to the casually awkward-yet-comfortable way she holds herself as she responds to the Doctor's questions.  Bill is a bit quirky and a whole lot of fun, and the episode does a good job of easing her into things, with it initially being simply a student-teacher tutoring relationship between her and the Doctor (for actually quite a very long time, based on the amount of time that passes during this episode) before circumstances require a bit more.

And that slow development is something to admire here.  They haven't really attempted an introduction like this since "Rose" -- even "The Eleventh Hour", Moffat's own soft relaunch, focused on the Doctor over the companion.  But this decision puts Bill front and center and gives us a better understanding of her character, being tutored by the Doctor (mainly in physics, based on the papers we see), dealing with her foster mom Moira (Jennifer Hennessy, who was in "Gridlock"), and being interested in a particular girl named Heather, who has a defect in the iris of her eye that makes it looks like a star (hence the working title for this episode, "A Star in Her Eye").  The first time around, I did wonder if that was going to be significant, if it was going to turn out she was an alien or something, but no, just a girl with an unusual eye.  She does discover the weird alien mimicking puddle and ends up getting pulled into it though, so she's inadvertently the catalyst for this episode's events.

It's also worth noting how relaxed the Doctor is here.  Peter Capaldi's come a long way from the cold and distant Doctor of "Deep Breath" and "Into the Dalek", and his natural chemistry with both Bill and Nardole is really lovely.  He's in one place for a while, guarding some mysterious vault (more on that in future episodes), but he doesn't necessarily seem frustrated and incredibly bored by it, the way (say) the eleventh Doctor would have been.  Indeed, if what Bill says about his having been there for fifty years is true, he seems to have settled in remarkably well.  But the point is that that slightly eccentric professorial thing seems perfectly natural for Capaldi's Doctor at this stage in his life.  It works well for the character.

Bill and Nardole step out onto an alien world. ("The Pilot")
©BBC

The other cool thing this episode does is, yes, start with a slower build, but the ramp up to the second half of the episode also feels natural, rather than sudden or jerking.  We get one of the greatest TARDIS reveals ever, with the interior in darkness and the Doctor and Bill at the door, and then that pan into the room as the lights start to come on -- it's just so gorgeous.  And Bill's slow reaction as she starts to put the pieces together, along with the sly dig at the TARDIS anagram, is fantastic.  And then we're off to the races, as the TARDIS heads to a different part of the university, and then a different part of the planet (Australia, for I believe the second time ever (after 1967's The Enemy of the World)), and then an alien planet in the future, and then a different alien planet in the past -- in the middle of the Dalek/Movellan War (from Destiny of the Daleks), in fact!  (And they haven't changed the design of the Movellans at all, which is great.²⁷⁵).  The narrative turns into a chase (much like, er, The Chase), allowing us to get a bunch of different locales and for Bill to get all the "oh my, it's a different planet/time" stuff out of the way more or less immediately.  It makes for an exciting viewing experience without necessarily plodding down the same familiar paths.  (Oh, and yes, a little bit of "Friend from the Future", the Bill intro scene, is used here.)

And the final nice thing is that the weird puddle thing taking Heather's form (or is it Heather herself?) isn't pursuing Bill because of evil designs or anything, but because Heather made a promise to Bill before she was sucked into the puddle that she wouldn't go away.  "What, in the end, are any of us looking for?" the Doctor muses.  "We're looking for someone who's looking for us."  It's nice to have a monster that's not actually monstrous, and while Bill lets her go, she admits afterwards that she refused because she was too scared, but you get the sense she was still a bit tempted by the prospect of travelling the universe with her.  And while the Doctor initially tries to wipe Bill's memory, Bill refuses to let him.  "Just imagine how it would feel if someone did this to you," she says, and we get Clara's theme on the soundtrack, reminding us that that's exactly what happened to the Doctor at the end of last series.  It's a nice, understated touch.

So "The Pilot" is a story that's both bold and understated, and it's a smashing season opener.  If you could level any criticisms at it, the main one is that it's not the deepest or most nuanced story.  But that's OK; sometimes a breezy, fun episode is just what you want.  And Pearl Mackie is a sheer joy as Bill, full of energy and fun without being annoying or frustrating, while Matt Lucas is so much fun as Nardole, basically providing the comic relief but without him being annoying either.  And with Peter Capaldi anchoring them both, the TARDIS team is in excellent shape.  It might not end up being regarded as an all-time classic, but it's difficult to imagine how "The Pilot" could be any better.







²⁷⁵ Oh!  But the Daleks are different; these are the bronze versions that we'd previously assumed were only introduced in the Time War, not the grey ones that were standard through most of the original run.  Here's an effort to resolve any possible continuity problems: the bronze versions were initially introduced during the Movellan War to see if they were any more effective against the Movellans.  They weren't, so the Daleks didn't make a huge switch en masse, but they later found the bronze shell was useful against the Time Lords, so that's when they made the switch.  But I'm sure you can come up with a different in-universe explanation if you want.

August 7: "The Return of Doctor Mysterio"

It's been a full year since a new episode of Doctor Who has been on our screens, and while some exciting stuff has happened in the meantime (including currently-missing story The Power of the Daleks getting an animated reconstruction for its 50th anniversary and David Tennant doing a set of tenth Doctor audios for Big Finish), this still feels like something of an event: Doctor Who is finally back, with the punning title "The Return of Doctor Mysterio".  ("Punning" because Doctor Who is frequently called Doctor Misterio in Latin America (dating back to the '60s), and Steven Moffat has recently learned this from his 2015 Doctor Who World Tour.)  And so our very first shot of the episode features...Comic Sans?!  No!  The bane of typeface fans everywhere!  Although it does appear in a comic book, so maybe it's more forgivable.  And that's here because Doctor Who has decided to tackle the current trend of superheroes.

And so we get an affectionate opening, with the Doctor and a young boy named Grant Gordon who, as befits a young boy, is into superhero comics.  (Although the adult Grant doesn't seem to have lost that interest -- note the modern Superman comic on his bedside table -- despite being an actual superhero himself.)  There are some fun little gags with the Doctor, such as him working out that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person ("Everyone knows they're the same person," Grant scoffs²⁷⁴), or inquiring about Spider-Man:

DOCTOR: Why did they call him Spider-Man?  Don't they like him?
YOUNG GRANT: He was bitten by a radioactive spider, and guess what happened?
DOCTOR: Radiation poisoning, I should think.
YOUNG GRANT: No, he got special powers.
DOCTOR: What, vomiting, hair loss, and death?  Fat lot of use.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Return of Doctor Mysterio)

This is all ultimately in aid of two things: having Grant call the Doctor "Doctor Mysterio" (thus justifying the title) and having the Doctor give Grant a special crystal that he inadvertently swallows which grants him superpowers (so that there can actually be a superhero in the Doctor Who universe).  It's all setup -- fun setup, but still setup.

No, what Moffat is interested in is looking at how having superpowers would actually affect a person.  As he kept noting in interviews, he was more interested in Clark Kent than in Superman.  It's not a bad move, but there's frequently the feeling lurking in the background that Moffat thinks he's being very clever by doing this, which rather ignores the fact that he's by no means the first person to consider superheroes in this light.  Consequently, moves that look like they're intended to subvert the superhero genre end up looking like they're aping it instead.

The Ghost in Harmony Shoal. ("The Return of Doctor Mysterio") ©BBC

This leads to a rather curious episode.  One of the strengths of Doctor Who is that it can essentially be any genre, but placing the Doctor in those genres tends to subvert them, to send them off into new and interesting directions.  But since Moffat thinks he's already subverting the genre, he sends the Doctor off to deal with the other side of the plot, leaving the adult Grant to balance his life as both the Ghost and as a nanny for the baby of the girl he's crushing hard on, reporter Lucy Fletcher.  And so what follows basically just is a superhero movie (albeit a condensed one).  We get Grant switching rapidly back and forth between his two roles, trying very hard not to let Lucy figure out that he's the Ghost while rescuing people from fires and such.  He even manages to get pulled into a rooftop interview/date with Lucy (yes, just like the movie Superman) that goes more or less the way you'd expect.  None of this should be construed as being tough criticisms, mind; Justin Chatwin has an easy charm as Grant and does a reasonable job of being the tough guy as the Ghost, and Charity Wakefield does a good job as Lucy, providing the foil to both Grant and the Ghost (and watching her interactions with each, and the differences between the two, is nicely played).  And crucially, there definitely is chemistry between Chatwin and Wakefield that really helps sell the storyline.  It's certainly an enjoyable superhero tale -- it's just not a groundbreaking one.

The Doctor instead is far more concerned with the goings-on at Harmony Shoal.  That name might have rung a bell with some people, as in the previous episode it was the Shoal of the Winter Harmony who were buying the diamond from River Song -- and if it didn't ring a bell, then people peeling their heads open to reveal blue insides should have.  In some ways this plotline resembles another comic book, the seminal Watchmen, with Harmony Shoal planning on faking an alien attack on New York City -- although instead of averting a nuclear war, Harmony Shoal want all the world leaders to take refuge in their buildings and then convert them into vehicles for their brain hosts to use, thus controlling the world.  And Harmony Shoal want to use the Ghost as one of those vehicles (thereby tying the two plots together).  Oh, and look!  Nardole is back!  It seems the Doctor cut him out of the Hydroflax robot body and reassembled him, because, in the wake of River's death (or at least the last time the Doctor saw her), "you were worried you'd be lonely."  Matt Lucas and Peter Capaldi have a fun and easy relationship here, with Nardole being both comic relief and the Doctor's conscience, to a degree.  It works really well.

So this isn't perhaps the deepest episode ever, but it does take a stab at providing a look at the human side behind the superhero, and at that it's largely successful.  You could, after all, imagine a version of this where the Doctor and the Ghost team up to stop Harmony Shoal, with the focus on the superpowers side of things, and that just wouldn't have been as interesting.  I can see how people who are sick of superheroes would find this more of the same, but as long as you're not one of those people you should find plenty to enjoy here.  It's not the most original story ever, but it is well told and acted, and there's the confidence that's typical of the current Doctor Who production team on display to help power through any of the weaker moments (such as the weird bit with Mr. Huffle the squeeze toy).  This in fact may be the smoothest and most confident of certainly the Moffat era Christmas specials, and possibly even of all the Christmas specials.  "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" might be a tad familiar, but it's undeniably fun.







²⁷⁴ Having taught classes where Superman and Clark Kent have come up, I can in fact inform you that no, not everyone knows that they're the same person.  That made for an interesting conversation...