July 30, 2017: "For Tonight We Might Die" (Class)

Oh, hello again! Now where were we?  Ah, that's right, Class.

As noted last time, Doctor Who took a year off.  But it wasn't a completely Who-free time: in October 2016, Class, a brand new original spin-off, premiered on the online-only channel BBC Three, as well as in Australia.²⁷⁰  Class was the brainchild of author Patrick Ness (perhaps best known as the author of A Monster Calls), who expanded a Doctor Who pitch into a full-blown series, all about life at Coal Hill (the school seen all the way back in the first episode, and most recently as the school that Clara taught at).  Over the season's eight episodes, students would have to balance their personal lives with alien threats, much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  This was meant to be a show that spun off from Doctor Who but wasn't really tied to it, the way the previous spin-offs were.  Other than the setting (and the reappearance of Nigel Betts, from series 8, as the headmaster Mr Armitage), Class features a new cast of characters.

This first episode, "For Tonight We Might Die", is very much an establishing episode, as it takes the time to introduce all our main characters, but in a natural way.  So we get April, who seems to be the nice girl; Tanya, who's actually been moved up a couple years; Ram, who's a star athlete but needs tutoring help from Tanya; Charlie, a strange new kid from Sheffield; Matteusz, an immigrant from Poland who's Charlie's love interest; and Miss Quill, a fairly mean and sarcastic teacher who is connected to Charlie in some way.  The episode immediately sets out the series' stall in terms of diversity, if nothing else; Tanya's black, Ram is Sikh (or at least his father is, which therefore suggests Ram is too), Matteusz is an immigrant, and Charlie's gay.  But other than a brief mention from Matteusz, which is played for laughs rather than commentary ("Everything all right?" Charlie asks.  "Oh, yeah," Matteusz replies.  "My deeply religious parents are very happy I'm going to dance with a boy.  This has been an evening of love and warmth."  "Great!" Charlie replies brightly, missing the sarcasm), this is all treated just as a matter of course.  As it should be.

But yes, this episode is full of set-up.  We discover that Charlie is the last member of an alien race called the Rhodia, while Miss Quill is the last member of her species, the Quill.  The Rhodia and the Quill were involved in a war on their planet that the Rhodia won, and Miss Quill was sentenced to become the slave/servant (depending on who's speaking) of Charlie, who was the prince of the Rhodia.  But both races were wiped out by a third race, the Shadow Kin, who wiped out both races in a single day.  Charlie and Miss Quill only survived because they were rescued "by a figure of legend out of space and time itself" (aka the Doctor).  But because there's a rip in the fabric of time at Coal Hill (now an Academy instead of the School it used to be), the Shadow Kin are able to come to Earth to finish the job -- and because they want something Charlie has called the Cabinet of Souls, which they believe is a powerful weapon.  They can't just take over the planet, though, because the leader of the Shadow Kin has gotten his heart linked with April's; they both need to be alive in order to survive.  As I said, lots of set-up.

It's to the episode's credit, though, that all this set-up is handled fairly well.  Other than one big infodump speech to April about Charlie and Miss Quill's real origins, everything else comes up organically.  All the relationships are sketched out by showing rather than telling, which is really nice, and the threat of the Shadow Kin (who literally travel in shadows -- a bit like the Vashta Nerada from "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead") is clear without being oversold.  The way they come in and casually kill Ram's girlfriend Rachel just as a matter of course is horrifying but isn't fetishized.  It is surprisingly bloody though, as Ram is liberally splashed with Rachel's blood and subsequently loses half a leg attacking the Shadow Kin.

Tanya, April, Matteusz, Charlie, and Ram look as the Doctor tells them
they'll be protecting Coal Hill from the tear. ("For Tonight We Might Die")
©BBC

Really, somewhat surprisingly the downside of "For Tonight We Might Die" is that the shadow of the Doctor hangs over the whole episode.  Usually the presence of the Doctor enhances things (as in the two SJA stories he shows up in), but here he's a distraction.  Peter Capaldi's name is right there in the opening credits, and you just keep waiting for him to show up.  The Doctor does show up, of course, but not until the climax of the episode.  This unfairly shifts the focus off the main characters as a result.  It also means that the resolution of this episode feels off, somehow; the Doctor knows there's a tear in time here and that all sorts of potentially dangerous aliens are going to be attracted to it, and more importantly in a way much of what happens here is his fault.  The tear in time is because there's so much artron energy around Coal Hill (in other words, the Doctor keeps visiting) that time has worn thin.  And yet he decides to leave it in the hands of these teenagers, with a rather lame excuse that even he can't fix everything.  It's the sort of situation that the Doctor would fix as a matter of course in his own show (especially since it's his fault), but because this is a spin-off he has to hand it over to someone else.  This wasn't a problem in something like Torchwood (which this episode frequently looks like it wants to emulate, with the tear being a lot like the Rift) because the Doctor didn't really know about it.  But here he does, and he chooses to leave it.  It's weird.

Still, it's the first episode, and there's time to adjust the balance of things, particularly once Class can get a chance to stand on its own, away from the Doctor.  Its influences are clear (and overt, as the characters mention Buffy, Once Upon a Time, and The Vampire Diaries at the end as parallels to their own situation), as is its goal to be a somewhat dark, supernatural show aimed at teenagers and young adults.  They have a strong cast and some sparkling writing, and while it's not 100% successful in the first episode, there's enough here to be encouraging.







²⁷⁰ But not in the United States, despite the show being a BBC America co-production.  BBC America chose to hold the show back to air directly after new episodes of series 10 of Doctor Who.  In October, US viewers were instead provided with a new adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency -- a show that somehow manages to take a Dirk Gently-esque plot and put a title character who bears only the most fleeting resemblance to Douglas Adams' original conception inside it, with very mixed results.

July 29: "The Husbands of River Song"

Stuart Manning's poster for "The Husbands of
River Song" (from Design by Stuart Manning)

For the first time since, ooh, "The Runaway Bride", we get a Christmas special that's designed to be a comedy.  There's a sense that, after saying goodbye to Clara, the show wants to shift gears and do a nice, fun romp this time around.  And, on the whole, it largely works.  That's not to say it's perfect, mind, and parts of this are in fact deeply silly.  But what makes this work is the underlying tone of, "Let's just have a laugh", which means that this might be one of the funnier stories Steven Moffat has written for the show.

The opening stuff, with the TARDIS in a redressed Trap Street set, might actually be the weakest moments, but this is quickly addressed with the introduction of River Song.  I know some people aren't fond of her character, but I don't mind, and this story makes a virtue of her, showing us how she behaves when the Doctor isn't around.  And the answer isn't as virtuous as the Doctor might expect -- we get lots of back and forth between River and the guy she doesn't realize is the Doctor (since she doesn't know he got a new set of regenerations) as she tells him to kill King Hydroflax: "Is this what you're like when I'm not [around]?  ...  You're talking about murdering someone," the Doctor protests.  "No, I'm not," River replies cheerily, "I'm actually murdering someone.  Cheer up!  Get a saw, I'll kill the lights, you kill the patient."  The chemistry between Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston is really quite good, and even while it's perhaps slightly uncomfortable to see River so morally ambiguous (she must put up more of a front while the Doctor's around), it's still great fun.  And interestingly, the Doctor largely just rolls with this, even if he disapproves -- it's like he just wants to see where this goes.

The rest of the guest cast aren't exactly slouching; Greg Davies seems like he's having a good time ranting as King Hydroflax, even though he was probably rather uncomfortable with his head stuck through tables and such (and apparently his head is so heavy it's distorting the TARDIS telepathic circuits -- aka the foam rubber is rather obvious here), while Matt Lucas does a cheery job as Nardole, who always seems to realize what's going on just a bit too late.  (His best moment is probably with the Doctor, starting to wail like a modern-day Stan Laurel in Hydroflax's chamber after the Doctor says to him, "This might be an alarming question in the circumstance, but you really do think I'm a surgeon, don't you?")  And Phillip Rhys walks just the right side of the slightly dim pretty boy line as Ramone, another of River's husbands.  Really, it's only the subplot of the robot who keeps cutting people's heads off to upload them that threatens to tip this over into pure silliness, but even that is handled fairly well -- although the bits with Nardole in the robot (like "It's really very whiffy down there") are the moments that threaten to unbalance everything.  Still, this is a cast clearly enjoying themselves.

Flemming takes the Doctor and River to the onboard restaurant.
("The Husbands of River Song") ©BBC

But no, it's Capaldi and Kingston who steal the show -- from Kingston's revelation that she's frequently borrowed "Damsel"'s TARDIS without his knowing to Capaldi's deliberately overacted reaction to entering the TARDIS for the "first" time to the two of them trying desperately how to figure out how to explain to the buyers of the Helassi Androvar diamond that said diamond is lodged inside the disembodied head of the king they worship, they're having so much fun that we do too.  And even when things get a bit more serious (as when River explains that the Doctor doesn't love her and isn't around to save her), they quickly shift back into a lighter tone:

DOCTOR: Hello, sweetie.
RIVER: (after a moment) You are so doing those roots.
DOCTOR: What, the roots of the sunset?
RIVER: Don't you dare.
DOCTOR: I'll have to check with the stars themselves.
RIVER: Oh, shut up. I was just keeping them talking till it kicks off.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Husbands of River Song)

It's nice to see River be the hero of her own story, with the Doctor relegated to companion status for most of this, and even when she learns that this is the Doctor she's still largely the one calling the shots ("I'm an archaeologist from the future.  I dug you up").  But ultimately this is a story designed to be nothing more than a romp (the script even goes to pains to say that literally everyone aboard the ship Harmony and Redemption is a killer of some sort, so that we won't feel bad when they die in the crash), purposefully shallow and something to smile at without too much trouble, and at that it largely succeeds.  Which is why it's a bit odd how the story suddenly takes a hard left in the last 10 minutes or so into a melancholy drama, as we see that the Doctor and River have finally made it to Darillium, where we learned way back in "Forest of the Dead" was the last time River saw the Doctor before she died.  It's a bittersweet moment, and it's handled deftly, but it doesn't really match the previous 45 minutes in content or tone.  But I think that's OK; it's a chance to give River's story some closure (even if it seemed we'd already done that in "The Name of the Doctor"), and the cheeky reveal that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years lessens the sting a bit.

So no, it's not a perfect episode, and depending on how you feel about River Song her inclusion in a pretty shallow story might not make this your cup of tea, but I don't mind it.  It's not the best Christmas special ever, but it might be the jolliest.

And that brings us to the end of series 9, which really has been an impressively strong run for the show; I'd wager this is the best run of stories since Matt Smith's debut in series 5.  I noted at the end of series 8 that, while I generally enjoyed that run, I sometimes felt you had to work a little harder at it, even if there wasn't as heavy a reliance on the overarching plot to deal with.  But series 9 offers no such reservations: the overarching plot is minimal (you could have missed every previous "Hybrid" comment up to "Hell Bent" and have been just fine), the stories are interesting, and the Doctor here seems far more accessible than he did.  In series 8, he was a bit prickly and brusque, but it seems that that epiphany at the end of "Death in Heaven" really did have an effect: he's so much more relaxed and comfortable this series, playing guitar, wearing sunglasses, and dressing in less formal-looking versions of his series 8 outfit.  This is on the whole a good thing, as it makes us that much more happy to be in his presence.  These things, combined with all the other things I've mentioned over the past couple weeks, makes series 9 a really outstanding run.  It makes you look forward to series 10.²⁶⁸

And once again, thanks for joining me on this little trip through space and time.  I'll be back on July 30, 2017, most likely discussing the latest (still upcoming) Doctor Who spinoff, Class.²⁶⁹  See you then, and cheers.







²⁶⁸ Even if they did delay it a year, with some handwavy explanation about there already being enough big events going on in 2016 that they wanted to delay things to 2017 to give Steven Moffat's final series a bigger impact.  My guess is the real reason was scheduling (maybe incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall wasn't going to be free until then) and/or budgeting.
²⁶⁹ OK, yes, technically speaking I haven't discussed "Friend from the Future", the quick 2-minute introduction to brand-new companion Bill, played by Pearl Mackie, but that's because we don't yet know where or how this scene fits into series 10 -- it might be part of an episode for all we know.  Bill looks like she'll be fun, though.

July 28: "Hell Bent"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Hell Bent"
(from Design by Stuart Manning)

It starts in a diner that the Doctor walks into, carrying a guitar and playing Murray Gold's Clara theme on it.  The diner is being run by Clara (although I have to admit, my first reaction upon seeing this was, "I wonder if that's one of Clara's splinter selves from 'The Name of the Doctor'?"), and the Doctor doesn't appear to recognize her, as he tells her the story of his final adventure with Clara Oswald.  That's the framing narrative that "Hell Bent" takes place in, but after the opening credits we pick up where "Heaven Sent" left off, with only an occasional interjection from the diner into events.

It's a great scene, as the Doctor returns to that old barn from "The Day of the Doctor" and "Listen", while Rassilon (played by Donald Sumpter, who takes from Arthur "The Dominators to 'The Eleventh Hour'" Cox the title of longest time between appearances on Doctor Who, as Sumpter's last appearance was 43 years ago, in The Sea Devils) tries to figure out what it is the Doctor wants.  "We could talk to him," says the General (last seen in "The Day of the Doctor").  "Words are his weapons," Rassilon replies, but what's noticeable here is that we don't actually hear the Doctor say a single word until Rassilon appears; this is a Doctor who's so angry that he's gone beyond words, who now wields silence as a weapon.  And when Rassilon does personally appear, the Doctor's first words to him are, "Get off my planet" (even though Rassilon is Lord President of the Time Lords), and the Doctor's able to convince the Time Lord troopers to move to his side and lay down their weapons without saying a single word to them.  It's an impressive moment, and the way director Rachel Talalay frames it like a Western (right down to a whistled version of that Time Lord theme, à la Ennio Morricone), is an inspired move.  This is the Doctor facing off against his opponent and winning without firing a shot or uttering a word.  "There was a saying, sir, in the Time War," the trooper, Gastron, tells Rassilon.  "The first thing you will notice about the Doctor of War is he's unarmed."  And that's proven true here.

But while that's impressive, what's more fascinating is the lengths he will go to to save his best friend Clara.  All that time spent in his own confession dial ("We think [he was in there] four-and-a-half billion years," Ohila states), trying to convince the Time Lords he knew all about the Hybrid (whether he actually did or not), was just so he had a bargaining chip that he could use to rescue her.  He's willing to get rid of Rassilon and the High Council (although, admittedly, the Time War stuff is also part of the reason -- "The Doctor does not blame Gallifrey for the horrors of the Time War. ... He just blames you," Ohila tells Rassilon), to break the rules and bring Clara back through the use of an extraction chamber (a Time Lord thingy that pulls you out of time right before the moment of your death) just to save her.  That's his entire goal.

Gorgeous TARDIS, by the way, with the new stolen TARDIS having the classic Hartnell theme, right down to the plate under the console and the sound effects of the door opening and such.  (Although I wonder why they made the walls and doors so much smaller in scale than the original.)  And it's a great backdrop for those climactic moments, after the Doctor goes to have a chat with Me, who's apparently the last person in the universe, sitting in the ruins of Gallifrey and watching the universe die.  Here Me seems far more accepting of things, and while there's a core of steel present she no longer seems cold or bitter -- indeed, she seems to enjoy challenging the Doctor as to the identity of the Hybrid.  "That's very very easy," he tells her, "the Hybrid is you," but Me is having none of it.  "By your own reasoning, why couldn't the Hybrid be half-Time Lord, half-human?" she wonders.  "Tell me, Doctor, I've always wondered.  You're a Time Lord; you're a high-born Gallifreyan.  Why is it you spend so much time on Earth?" (One can imagine Steven Moffat giggling to himself, slipping in that reference to the controversial half-human thing introduced in the McGann TVM.)  The Doctor pooh-poohs that though: "That's your best theory?  I'm the Hybrid?  I ran away from Gallifrey because I was afraid of myself?  That doesn't make any sense."  Ah, but Me has a better theory.  "What if the Hybrid wasn't one person, but two?" she says.  "... A dangerous combination of a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him.  Companions who are willing to push each other to extremes."  After all, they were brought together by the Master, "the lover of chaos."  "Clara's my friend," the Doctor protests.  "I know," Me replies.  "And you're willing to risk all of time and space because you miss her.  One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next."  It's an interesting conversation, even if it ultimately doesn't tell us anything at all about the Hybrid or why we were supposed to care this series.

The Doctor begins to feel the effects of the neural block.
("Hell Bent") ©BBC

But you know what?  That doesn't really matter.  Because the best thing about "Hell Bent" is the resolution of Clara's storyline with the Doctor.  The BBC Wales version of Doctor Who has had a tendency of making its companions more and more like him and then not knowing how to say goodbye to them, and so Rose gets shunted off to another universe, while Donna gets her mind wiped, denied all the growth she'd experienced.  But when the Doctor tries the same mind-wipe trick with Clara, she's having none of it: "These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine," she tells him.  "Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past.  I am entitled to that.  It's mine."  And so it's the Doctor who forgets, while Clara gets to essentially graduate.  (And although the neural block thing is treated as a toss-up, one does wonder if the Doctor knew that it would wipe his memory, if he decided to sacrifice himself to allow Clara to continue.  The dialogue certainly points in that direction, as the Doctor starts talking about the neural block maybe not being reversible after he admits to Clara that she's right, that she does have the right to her past.)  Clara gets a TARDIS and a companion and is allowed to go off and have adventures, and while she'll have to go to Gallifrey at some point, to make sure she dies at the right moment, she doesn't have to do that right away.  She gets to be the hero of her own story.  I have to say, I haven't been the biggest fan of Clara's "increasingly reckless" storyline this past series -- it's sometimes felt like they didn't quite know what to do with her character after the Danny Pink storyline last series -- but this was absolutely the best way to resolve it.  There's something wonderful about the idea of another TARDIS out there, exploring the universe and doing the right thing.  Fantastic.

So "Hell Bent" provides the cap on a story that's been affecting and astonishing, and even the bittersweetness of the diner scenes, where the Doctor doesn't know he's talking to Clara (although, after the diner dematerializes around him and he (presumably) sees Rigsy's portrait of Clara painted on his TARDIS, he surely must know that was Clara, right?), is tempered by the knowledge that everything worked out in the end.  (Well, except for the Rassilon bit -- I wonder if that'll come back to haunt the Doctor...)  "Hell Bent" is an excellent end to an excellent story.

And while that's technically the end of series 9 proper as it was broadcast, we still have a Christmas special left -- one that's coming up so soon that there's even a "Next Time" trailer at the end of this episode...

July 27: "Heaven Sent"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Heaven Sent"
(from Incredible set of retro Doctor Who
series 9 posters)

The clues are there fairly early on.  "When I was a very little boy, there was an old lady who died," the Doctor says.  "They covered her in veils, but it was a hot, sunny day, and the flies came.  It gave me nightmares for years.  So, who's been stealing my nightmares?"

Of course, if you've seen the episode then you know the answer (and if you haven't, you should go do that now), but "Heaven Sent" gives us a Doctor trapped in his own personal hell.  (Incidentally, am I the only person who thinks it would have been better if they'd swapped the titles of this episode and the next one?  What exactly does "Heaven Sent" mean in the context of this particular episode anyway, other than as a cute parallel with "Hell Bent"?)  He can't really rest, he has no one to interact with (and therefore no one to persuade or impress), and there doesn't seem to be a way out -- just a series of odd puzzles instead.

And so we're treated to something unique in (televised) Doctor Who.  We've had episodes without the Doctor (such as the various ones in the '60s where Hartnell or Troughton were away that week -- or "Mission to the Unknown", if you want one without any of the TARDIS crew), but this is the first time we've gotten an episode that only has the Doctor.  (Well, all right, there's that quick cameo from Clara, but as that's in his head anyway that's still technically the Doctor.)  Just the Doctor and the Veil, a silent, slow-moving, implacable force, trying to get the Doctor to confess something or die.  And what this means is we get an astonishing and incredible performance from Peter Capaldi.

I mean, to be fair, it's not necessarily that Capaldi is doing anything that different from other episodes, but he definitely has to do a lot more than normal.  "Heaven Sent" is focused solely on the Doctor; there are no cutaway scenes to other locations, no sinister figures outside monitoring his progress.  Every scene involves the Doctor; there are no moments (save the opening ones, which bear witness to the aftermath of the last go-round) that don't include him.  That's a hell of a burden to place on an actor, but Capaldi is magnificent.  He makes a 45-minute monologue as compelling as anything else, and it's a tribute to his skill that the audience is never bored by this.  And the range of emotion on display (such as anger, puzzlement, and fear) give us a fascinating insight into the mind of the Doctor.  We see him use the TARDIS as his own mental palace²⁶⁷, where he shows off in front of an imaginary Clara as a way of figuring out how he's going to get out of his current predicament.  We see him confess things to the Veil ("I didn't leave Gallifrey because I was bored!  That was a lie!  It's always been a lie!  ...  I was scared!  I ran because I was scared!"), but only as a way to make the puzzle-box castle move.  We see him try to figure out the prison he's inside, with copious notes in his notebook.  And that's how he slowly works out what winning actually means, and what he's endured: going through this whole process for 7000 years, just to punch at a wall 400 times harder than diamond a few times, and then doing the whole thing again.

The Veil kills the Doctor once more. ("Heaven Sent") ©BBC

That of course leads to the completion of the circuit as the Doctor burns himself up to provide the energy to bring himself back, his pattern still in the "hard drive".  And that leads to the montage as the Doctor gets further and further through the azbantium wall, in a process that takes over two billion years.  It's an impressive, affecting montage, seeing how long it takes.  It also makes you wonder what the first few (thousand?) times were like, before he left himself clues like "BIRD" in the dust, or "I AM IN 12" in the grave -- indeed, how long did it take him to discover that the way out was in room 12 in the first place?  When did he paint the picture of Clara?  What was it like, those first moments of the first second of eternity?

And that, I think, is the true brilliance of "Heaven Sent".  It's not just Peter Capaldi's performance, or Rachel Talalay's direction, or even Steven Moffat's script.  It's the fact that, despite the fact that Moffat has provided us with another puzzle box storyline, where all the pieces have been aligned to fit just so in order to make everything make sense (such as "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Blink", or "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang"), he's provided us with so much canvas to fill in the details around this particular cycle for the Doctor that you can't help but be impressed by the sense of scale and scope.  And so taking a script like that and then putting Peter Capaldi in the middle of it, with Rachel Talalay supervising the look?  That's brilliant.

(And this doesn't even address the final moments, as the Doctor steps out on Gallifrey and announces that "The Hybrid is me."  Or possibly, "The Hybrid is Me [aka Ashildr]."  That's another hell of a cliffhanger.)







²⁶⁷ A technique that also shows up in Moffat's other big series, Sherlock, which was written not terribly long before this series of Doctor Who.

July 26: "Face the Raven"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Face the Raven"
(from Incredible set of retro Doctor Who
series 9 posters)

Our second female writer for the series -- this time it's newcomer Sarah Dollard, who's provided a really well-scripted story about hidden streets and refugee camps, in what sort of appears to be the first part of a three-part finale.  ("Sort of" because this installment is written and directed by people different from the last two parts, but the story really does seem to carry on directly into the next part (which is itself very distinct from the final part, and those two are generally accepted as being the same story), and with repercussions that will be addressed in the final part.  And even Steven Moffat notes that this feels like part 1 of 3 in the Doctor Who Extra accompanying "Face the Raven".)  And while we're here, can we just take a moment to acknowledge how gorgeous that dark red jacket the Doctor is wearing is?  That color fits him to a T, with a slight Pertwee vibe to it.  It may be my favorite look so far for the twelfth Doctor.

We also get to say hello again to Rigsy from last series' "Flatline" -- and now we see he has a wife and a baby that the Doctor seems completely enamoured with.  But it's not a social visit; no, Rigsy needs help with a mysterious tattoo on the back of his neck that's slowly counting down.

I have to say, the idea that a trap street is real is quite clever, and the efforts to find such a street in London are nicely entertaining.  And we get some more evidence that Clara's starting to be a bit too cavalier about what she and the Doctor do, as she enjoys herself despite nearly falling out of the TARDIS as it hovers above London.  "She enjoyed that way too much," Rigsy remarks.  "Tell me about it," the Doctor replies; "it's an ongoing problem."

But once the trap street is located the emphasis shifts to the alien refugee camp inside, hiding from the humans and being governed/ruled over by their mayor, Ashildr/Me.  (She keeps calling herself Me, the Doctor keeps going with Ashildr -- and this time around the credits agree with the Doctor.)  What's notable here is that, 365 years after the last time we got to chat with her, Ashildr seems less bitter but still just as cold.  Now, part of this might be an effort to seem like a proper mayor, above it all and such, but she still comes across as uncaring and still blaming the Doctor for several of the world's woes.  So while she's not exactly the Doctor's enemy, she's hardly his friend either.

What's clever about this part of the episode isn't just the way the tension mounts as time begins to run out, as the three of them begin to unravel the mystery of what Mayor Me is really up to.  It's the way Clara's actions, the way she believes she's acting just like the Doctor would when she takes Rigsy's chronolock tattoo, ultimately lead to her downfall.  But we don't know that until it's too late; here it's just another matter-of-fact move, a way for Clara to laugh in the face of danger.  Only this time it backfires.

The Doctor realizes Clara is going to die while Me and Rigsy
look on. ("Face the Raven") ©BBC

It's a hell of an affecting eight minutes at the end, as the Doctor realizes that Clara has signed her own death warrant ("Clara, you didn't!") and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.  Ashildr was trying to hand the Doctor over to some unseen party (ostensibly in order to protect the trap street), but Clara's actions mean that the mayor can't remove the chronolock, like she would have done with Rigsy.  "You cut me out of the deal," Me tells her; Clara is going to have to deal with the Quantum Shade, to face the raven.  ('Cos the Shade takes the form of a raven, remember.)  "This is my fault," the Doctor says.  "...I let you get reckless."  "Why?  Why shouldn't I be so reckless?" Clara demands.  "You're reckless all the bloody time.  Why can't I be like you?"  "Clara, there's nothing special about me," the Doctor replies.  "I am nothing, but I'm less breakable than you."  (And more knowledgeable too, although he doesn't say that.)  And so the Doctor can do nothing but watch as Clara decides to face her death with bravery ("Well, if Danny Pink can do it, so can I") and tells the Doctor not to be a warrior.  And so she dies, facing the raven.

And it's a very strong ending moment from the Doctor right after.  "What Clara said about not taking revenge," he says to Ashildr, visibly furious.  "Do you know why she said that?"  "She was saving you," Ashildr says.  "I was lost a long time ago," the Doctor replies.  "She was saving you.  I'll do my best, but I strongly advise you to keep out of my way.  You'll find that it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you."

"Face the Raven" is an impressive début for a writer who clearly understands Doctor Who and can easily write for these characters.  It's smart and sad and affecting and brilliant; thank goodness Sarah Dollard is writing for series 10, because if it's anything like this it'll be a knockout.  This definitely makes you want more -- not just from Dollard, but from the next episode as well.

(And the final tag scene after the credits is sweet.)

July 25: "Sleep No More"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Sleep No More"
(from Incredible set of retro Doctor Who
series 9 posters)

I have a suspicion that this is one of those polarizing stories Doctor Who occasionally puts out, the ones that people either love or hate, with few falling in the middle.  (The stories sometimes referred to as "Marmite" stories.)  I have to confess, I'm not really on the "love" side for this one; I find "Sleep No More" to be pretty frustrating.

I think the problem for me is the basic concept.  Not with the "found footage" aspect of it (although I have some reservations about that, as I'll discuss below), or even the idea of a machine that eliminates sleep -- that's a neat idea.  No, my problem is that we're asked to be afraid of monsters made of sleep dust.  Sleep dust.  The crud that builds up in the corner of your eye.  How on Earth are we meant to take this seriously?  That sounds like something someone would come up with if they were trying to parody Steven Moffat.  "Let's see, we've done ticking clocks, statues, shadows, gaps in your memory, WiFi...what other common everyday things can we make people scared of?  I know!  How about sleepies?"  I mean, yes, the Sandmen are sufficiently creepy and menacing and such, but they're killer eye boogers for heaven's sake.

Rassmussen addresses the camera. ("Sleep No More") ©BBC

Now, if the rest of the episode were more light-hearted, maybe this wouldn't matter.  But other than an odd Hitchhiker's Guide-meets-Portal moment where Deep-Ando has to sing "Mr. Sandman" to the computer to get it to open the door (even though we never see anyone else have to go through this to enter a room), this is an episode that is definitely taking itself seriously.  Part of this is because of the "found footage" approach, which seems to naturally lend itself to scarier narratives, with unfocused or half-in-shot monsters and the "startled" effect of having monsters suddenly appear out of seemingly nowhere.  And I do applaud the use of this technique; it's nice to see them trying something new.  What I don't like is how the script decides to undermine this by making it a plot point that there aren't any cameras to be found and that in fact it's the sleep dust floating in the air and such that's monitoring people; a nice idea from a creepy surveillance point of view, but a terrible one for what they're actually trying to accomplish.  If any dust mote can potentially be a camera, then that means we can suddenly have a camera anywhere -- but then what's the point of doing "found footage", if you can place the camera in the same places you'd put it if you were shooting this as a typical episode?  To his credit, director Justin Molotnikov doesn't take advantage of this until the Doctor mentions it, and even after that he doesn't use it much, but it still takes away from the documentary feel they're going for.

In fact, if this episode succeeds at all it's because of what's happening on camera.  Molotnikov does an excellent job with this style of directing, and all the actors are doing fine (with the possible exception of Reece Shearsmith, who sometimes seems like he's playing things up a bit -- but as that's rather the entire point of his character, it's easy enough to forgive), acting appropriately scared and all that.  And as I said before, the underlying idea of a machine that removes the need for sleep by rewriting your brain chemistry is a neat idea, one that hasn't been done on the show before.  Although I can't decide if the idea that Rassmussen has been arranging everything as a story, with appropriate bursts of excitement here and there, is clever or not.

But still.  Sleep in your eye that wants to consume you.

So if you can get past the sheer ridiculousness of the monsters, I suspect there's quite a bit here for you to enjoy.  But for me, they're so silly that they ruin the episode; worse, this means that I find large stretches of this story fairly boring, as I don't really believe in the monsters or the threat they entail.  "Sleep No More" just isn't my cup of tea.

Although despite that it's kind of a clever ending, I must admit.  If you'll excuse me, I think I've got some sleep in my eye...

July 24: "The Zygon Inversion"

Stuart Manning's poster for "The Zygon
Inversion" (from Incredible set of retro
Doctor Who series 9 posters)

The thriller vibe continues with this second half, although now we're done globe-hopping, in favor of zeroing in on the London area, dealing with the next phase of Bonnie's plan.  And what's immediately clear is just how much we hate Bonnie and loathe her, with her superior, cruel smile and her smug sense of self-righteousness, even as she destroys innocent lives in her plan for conquest.

In other words, holy hell is Jenna Coleman good in this.

The most impressive part is the confrontation between Bonnie and Clara, who's trapped in a dream state inside her Zygon pod but still subconsciously connected to Bonnie.  At no point (even ignoring the different setting each character finds themselves in) is it ever unclear which character is which.  Clara is so much warmer and kinder, even as she fearlessly faces down her doppelgänger, that there's no question that she's not the same person as Bonnie.  Bonnie may control Clara's bodyprint, but she can't control her soul.  It's a fabulous performance, one that Coleman justly deserves heaps of praise for.

Of course, since the real Clara is out of the way, that leaves Osgood to take the place of the companion surrogate this episode, which she seems to be a natural at -- helping the Doctor work through the clues (such as the fact that Clara is still alive) while providing him with the sounding board he needs to work through things, to figure out what Bonnie's plan is.  There are some lovely moments here, from the early scenes ("Why do you have a Union Jack parachute?" Osgood asks the Doctor, after they land on the beach, walking from the wreckage of the plane Bonnie blew up.  "Camouflage," the Doctor replies.  "Camouflage?" Osgood responds, no less confused.  "Yes, we're in Britain," the Doctor explains) to their exchange about names ("What's your first name?" Osgood counters, after the Doctor asks her the same name.  "Basil," he replies, after a hesitation) all the way to the final scene ("Oh, and you should know, I'm a very big fan," the Doctor tells Osgood before he leaves).  Peter Capaldi and Ingrid Oliver have such good chemistry that it's a bit of a shame she doesn't take him up on his offer of TARDIS travels at the end.

Now the focus of "The Zygon Inversion" is narrower than the first half, but we still get pointed comments about Bonnie's group.  "Don't think of them as rational," the Doctor tells Osgood.  "They're different.  They don't care about human beings, they don't care about their own people.  They think the rest of Zygonkind are traitors."  This is an obvious comment on radicalized groups in our world, but the more telling exchange comes later, between the Doctor, Osgood, and the half-converted Etoine: "I'm not part of your fight," Etoine tells the two of them.  "I never wanted to fight anyone, I just wanted to live here.  Why can't I just live?"  "We're on your side," the Doctor assures him.  "I'm not on anyone's side!" Etoine replies in anguish.  "This is my home."  In other words, the Truth or Consequences group don't care about how anyone else might actually feel about their positions or what they're saying; they know they're right, and that's all that matters.

The Doctor tries to convince Bonnie to stand down. ("The Zygon
Inversion") ©BBC

This of course all leads up to the climactic scene, of Kate Stewart and Bonnie, each at an Osgood Box that could either give them everything they wanted or destroy it -- in Kate's case, one button releases Sullivan's gas, which turns every Zygon inside out,²⁶⁶ while the other sets off a nuclear bomb under the Black Archive; for Bonnie, one button changes every Zygon and starts a war, while the other prevents them from ever changing back.  The confrontation between the two sides, with the Doctor in the middle trying to convince Bonnie (and, to a lesser extent, Kate) that it's better not to press either button than to take a chance, that it's better to talk your way through your problems, is really good.  Peter Capaldi is rarely better than in this scene, as he alternately goads and pleads with them not to press a button.  It's frankly so good that you just want to quote the whole thing, as the Doctor asks Bonnie what the world will be like after her group wins, or explains that the boxes are a scale model of war, ultimately there to show just how futile it is, how much easier it is to talk instead.  It's a tour de force performance, but perhaps the best thing about it is how the direction and the music get out of the way to let these actors perform -- there's almost no incidental music through this entire scene, which is an excellent (and somewhat unexpected) choice.  This is one of the all-time classic scenes of Doctor Who.  Is the underlying argument perhaps a bit simplistic?  Sure.  Does it really matter?  Not at all.  And does Bonnie get off fairly easy and make a sudden change in her thought processes?  Well, yes, but that's the point: as the Doctor says, "Well, here's the unforeseeable.  I forgive you," and later, when Bonnie asks how he can forgive her, he says, "Because I've been where you have.  There was another box.  I was going to press another button.  I was going to wipe out all of my own kind, man, woman and child.  I was so sure I was right."  "What happened?" Bonnie asks.  "The same thing that happened to you," the Doctor replies.  "I let Clara Oswald get inside my head.  Trust me.  She doesn't leave."  And that's the point; that's why Bonnie goes off to become a new Osgood.  Because she stopped to think, and found redemption as a result.  That's not a bad message at all.

So this two-part story has an absolute knockout scene as its resolution, but the preceding 75 minutes or so are no slouch either.  With its willingness to take one of Doctor Who's classic monsters and use them not as standard aliens but as a way into a much more interesting, nuanced story, "The Zygon Invasion/Inversion" is a fabulous tale from start to finish.  Definitely one of the standout tales of not just series 9 but Steven Moffat's entire tenure.







²⁶⁶ This and the mention in the previous episode is a subtle reference to fourth Doctor companion Harry Sullivan (who, as those who remember Terror of the Zygons would know, has a vested interest in stopping the Zygons), as well as explaining an offhand reference in Mawdryn Undead that Harry was "doing something very hush-hush at Porton Down" -- now we know what that something was.