"The Zygon Isolation" gives us the two Osgoods chatting over video, both stuck in their homes without much to do. It feels a bit like the Michael Sheen/David Tennant295 comedy Staged -- except this actually got there first, as Staged didn't premiere until the following month. This is also the first of the Lockdown Season videos to actually be set during lockdown, which makes it more immediately relatable. That said, it feels a touch unfinished; the Osgoods make a couple jokes while the Doctor is apparently listening in, and then it suddenly stops with the two of them deciding to watch Doctor Who on iPlayer -- specifically, "The Zygon Invasion". You kind of wish they'd pushed things a bit further -- but, on the other hand, as this is meant to be an advertisement for the Tweetalong for "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion", it does what it set out to do.
Similarly to the last video, the next one, "The Descendants of Pompeii", features two more people experiencing the lockdown -- except this time it features a mother and daughter wondering if there's a "guardian angel" looking out for their family. As the mother and daughter are played by the same actresses who played the mother and daughter in "The Fires of Pompeii", the clear implication (along with, um, the title) is that these are the descendants of the family the Doctor saved, and that he/she is still watching out for them. It's a nice idea, but again, they don't do much with it other than broach the idea. But that's fine, not everything has to be a thought-provoking drama.
Next up are two related videos, both spinning off from "Listen". The first, also called "Listen" and also written by Steven Moffat, expands the poem the Doctor recites in that episode, revealing that the Doctor himself showed up to talk to the poet, asking him not to write the poem. It's a touch meta, but it's still good fun -- and Jacob Dudman, who's reading the poem, does a reasonably good Capaldi impression. The other short, "Fear is a Superpower", is simply a look at Danny Pink's life through the lens of "Listen", of how that changed his life but how he forgot that fear is a superpower -- until he was converted into a Cyberman and was able to use that fear to overcome his conditioning. It's a nice perspective of Danny Pink that we didn't quite get during his time on the show, aided by some great visuals from frequent Doctor Who Magazine comic strip artist Mike Collins. Short but sweet.
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| The sixth Doctor sends a picture of a cat to the group chat. ("Doctors Assemble!") |
After "Doctors Assemble!" we get "The Secret of Novice Hame"296, a short story from Russell T Davies describing the final days of Novice Hame, the cat nun we saw in "New Earth" and "Gridlock", and how she's waiting for the Doctor while resting in a white pavilion on New Earth, being guarded by hippos while others visit. It's a slightly melancholy but touching story, with Novice Hame ready to disclose a secret about New Earth to the Doctor, who finally arrives (as part of his farewell tour from The End of Time) to say goodbye. It's beautiful and well done, performed well by Novice Hame's actress, Anna Hope, and David Tennant. Really quite lovely.
The final story of this initial Lockdown Season is "The Best of Days", which (kind of) reunites Nardole with Bill Potts. Set after "The Doctor Falls", it gives us Nardole (still defending the Mondasian colonists from the Cybermen) sending Bill Potts a "daily positivity outbreak", discussing how good it is that the Cybermen won't be invading the floor they're currently on for an extra day and how nice it felt to almost not break his left leg after falling down a thirty-foot hole. Nardole's message is silly fun, but Bill's is a bit more serious. On a break from Heather ("How can you have an honest difference of opinion with your girlfriend when one of you can alter the fundamental nature of reality just so she's always right?" Bill asks), she's decided to study at St. Luke's again (the university where the Doctor taught in series 10, if you've forgotten) but finds all the masks and social distancing a bit tricky. She's also participating in a Black Lives Matter protest ("Turns out not all Cybermen have handles on their heads, let's put it that way"), and she thinks maybe this time will turn out better than the other times people have gathered to march and protest and make their voices heard. It's a good way of bringing the events of summer 2020 into Doctor Who without trivializing them, and by presenting it as a "good news" message -- trying to see the positive in things -- it helps us do that as well, even if only a little.
That's basically the end of the Lockdown Season -- there are a couple other short videos still to discuss that were released later on as one-offs, but as a continuing thing that's the end of it. Given the limited resources, people really did something special with this, providing all sorts of fun and touching moments with these videos, and ultimately reminding us that even when we're isolated, we're not alone. That's the spirit of Doctor Who at its best, giving us joy and hope when we might otherwise forget about such things. In that sense at the very least (along with several other senses), the Lockdown Season is a tremendous success.
295 David Tennant/Michael Sheen
296 Doctor Who Magazine includes "The Long Song (Lockdown Cover)" in between these two shorts, but as it's not actually any sort of narrative I won't cover it here, other than to note that they did a great job with it.