An Hour of Who a Day

June 11: "Closing Time"

Maybe I'm wrong, but the general impression I've gotten from fandom is that "Closing Time" isn't a terribly well-loved story. It didn't rate highly on Doctor Who Magazine's recent 50 Years Poll (165 out of 241, with an average score of 65.59% -- although three other stories from series 6 are even lower on the list), and much of the fan commentary I've seen online has been dismissive. That's a shame, because I think "Closing Time" is a really sweet and funny piece.

Craig and the Doctor examine a Cybermat. ("Closing Time") ©BBC

I might be biased, since I thoroughly enjoyed last series' "The Lodger" and so I'm very welcoming of a sequel, but even so, "Closing Time" is fun and enjoyable. Certainly the chemistry is still there between Matt Smith and James Corden -- in fact, it might even be stronger than last time -- and the addition of Alfie/Stormageddon, Craig and Sophie's baby that the Doctor can talk to, makes for some lovely moments as well. "No, he's your dad," the Doctor tells Stormageddon, referring to Craig. "You can't just call him 'Not Mum.' ... 'Also Not Mum', that's me. And everybody else is... 'peasants'. That's a bit unfortunate." There are lines like this scattered throughout the piece, as the Doctor goes about trying to thwart a Cyberman invasion in Colchester from inside a department store. This seriously leads to all sorts of fun, as Craig tries to help him out and finds that he can't really be as charming as the Doctor -- when he tries it almost gets him thrown out of the store. "How do you do that?" Craig demands afterwards. "It's a power, isn't it? Some sort of weird alien hypnotic power. I bet you excrete some sort of gas that makes people love you." There's also the stuff with the Cybermat (a Cybermat! How cool is that? And looking a lot better since their last appearance in Revenge of the Cybermen), with its genuinely worrying teeth and its later efforts to attack the Doctor and Craig, having apparently been playing dormant and waiting for the right moment to strike. All this matched with more moments, as in "The Lodger", of the Doctor temporarily taking on menial jobs and being surprisingly good at them -- here as a sales clerk for the toy department, beloved by all the staff (including Val, as played by Lynda Baron -- last seen on the show as Captain Wrack in Enlightenment).

But one of the best things about "Closing Time" is by virtue of its placement in this run of episodes. First, it's not another "trapped in a structure and on the run" story, so that's welcome. But more importantly... Throughout this series we've been getting little digs at the Doctor, suggestions that he's not as good and morally upright as we like to think. That he'll lie to people, or get them killed, or both, and that he's "drenched in the blood of the innocent" (as the previous episode implied). Which I'm not saying isn't an interesting conversation to have (and Toby Whithouse in particular seems quite intrigued by this), but it does come as something of a relief to have Craig in this definitively say that the Doctor is amazing and wonderful and generally gets it right, and the Doctor shouldn't worry about it so much:

CRAIG: The Cybermat came after us?
DOCTOR: No, after me.
CRAIG: They sent it after us.
DOCTOR: After me. Because of me, you and Alfie nearly died. Do you still feel safe with me, Craig?
CRAIG: You can't help who your mates are.
DOCTOR: No. I am a stupid, selfish man. Always have been. I should have made you go. I should never have come here.
CRAIG: What would have happened if you hadn't come? Who else knows about the Cybermen and teleports?
DOCTOR: I put people in danger.
CRAIG: Stop beating yourself up. If it weren't for you, this whole planet would be an absolute ruin.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Closing Time)

"Closing Time" is a story that loves the Doctor, that shows that he is in fact a good and decent man. And yes, the resolution is a bit rubbish (Craig stops the Cybermen with the power of love -- yeeaahhhhh... Although, to be fair, it does make thematic sense in the context of the episode), but this isn't really about the Cybermen; it's about relationships and friendships and how sometimes your friends know you better than you know yourself. Yes, that means it's not a "heavy" story, but it's definitely a charming one, with some genuinely funny moments. (The last one, that Alfie's first word is "Doctor" (after Craig's been denying to Sophie that anything exciting happened while she was away), is particularly glorious.)

Of course, this does mean that the last few minutes (starting with the Doctor walking back to the TARDIS) feel somewhat divorced from the previous 41. Now we're actively setting up the series 6 finale next week, as River Song (now a doctor herself) is recaptured by Madame Kovarian and the Silence and stuck inside an astronaut's suit. So she was indeed the person inside the suit, albeit older than we may have been initially led to believe. Still, it's a much more serious tone than what came before, so it does jar ever so slightly, even though Gareth Roberts spent time setting up the Doctor's impending death throughout the episode. But maybe that's because the moment has finally arrived...

June 10: "The God Complex"

Oh look, another episode with our heroes trapped in a structure while something malevolent stalks them. After things like "The Curse of the Black Spot", "The Rebel Flesh" / "The Almost People", and everything after "Let's Kill Hitler" this is turning into quite the theme. Was there something in the air in 2011 Cardiff?

"The God Complex" is more of the same, but this time we're stuck in a generic hotel that has no exits, while a giant nameless minotaur stalks the halls, looking for people to psychically feast upon. Where this episode stands out is in its guest cast. Everyone is perfectly chosen to provide a realistic (albeit slightly generic) cast of characters. There's Daniel Pirrie as Joe in the room of ventriloquist dummies, Dimitri Leonidas as the somewhat nerdy Howie, David Walliams as the cowardly Gibbis, and Amara Karan as the self-assured Rita, who does seem to have a particular chemistry with Matt Smith. She's clearly being set up as prime companion material, handling everything that's been going on reasonably well -- down to making tea. "All hotels should have a well stocked kitchen, even alien fake ones," Rita says in response to the Doctor's question. "I heard you talking when you arrived. Look, it's no more ridiculous than Howie's CIA theory, or mine." "Which is?" the Doctor asks. "This is Jahannam," she replies. "You're a Muslim," the Doctor notes. "Don't be frightened," Rita responds, with the air of someone who's had to deflect that fact more than once. "Ha! You think this is Hell," the Doctor says. "The whole '80s hotel thing took me by surprise, though," Rita replies dryly. And of course, the regulars are in fine form -- Arthur Darvill continues to shine as the slightly sardonic Rory ("Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone, I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin"), while Karen Gillan is as strong as ever as Amy. And Matt Smith continues to make the Doctor completely his own, offbeat and awkward and confident and generally amazing; watch his reaction to the minotaur and his efforts to talk to it, or to what he sees in his room ("Of course. Who else?"²³⁵), if you don't believe me.

Rory recoils as the minotaur breaks free of the salon. ("The God
Complex") ©BBC

It's a good thing the cast is strong, because while the situation is suitably bizarre (and is aided by lots of lovely direction from Nick Hurran), and the idea of rooms that contain everyone's fears is an intriguing one, it's not quite engaging enough to sustain interest. That means that "The God Complex" has to rely quite heavily on its players to make things work, rather than their simply adding to a strong script. It's like Toby Whithouse decided he wanted something off-beat, but he couldn't quite get it to cohere the way he wanted it to. Why else does the resolution steal so shamelessly from The Curse of Fenric's resolution? (Albeit by pulling the punch such that the Doctor doesn't call Amy an "emotional cripple".) The realization that the minotaur feeds off faith, rather than fear, is presumably meant to be clever, but it never quite feels justified in story terms. (And what's with the idea that Rory is safe because he doesn't believe strongly in anything? What, nothing? Not even Amy?)

The fear idea is nice, and the direction really is lovely, but this story just never quite clicks. There's another dig at the idea of the Doctor as hero, which would be OK if we hadn't just had the previous episode demonstrating that point rather more effectively. And I'm still not quite sure what the actual message is meant to be. Fear and faith are closely intertwined? Not all monsters want to be evil? Even things as dull as '80s hotels can be terrifying? It's not clear. The final scene almost makes up for all this (and if this had been Amy and Rory's final story, it would have been a fitting departure -- but alas, they don't get that neat an ending), but even that feels occasionally at a disconnect. It's a good effort, and there's certainly a lot here that can entertain you, but "The God Complex" simply doesn't gel as well as it should have.

²³⁵ All we hear is the TARDIS's Cloister Bell, and we don't actually get to see what's inside. At least not until "The Time of the Doctor", when we learn that what he saw was a Crack in Time. Which seems like a strange thing to refer to as "who", but oh well. (I still think it should have been the War Doctor.)

June 9: "The Blood Line" (TW)

Hmm. Something of a damp squib, this one. "The Gathering" ended with a number of key questions unanswered, and "The Blood Line" generally refuses to answer any of them. What exactly is the Blessing? Dunno. How did the Families find it, or even know it existed? No clue (other than some waffling about average life expectancies in Shanghai). What is the Families' actual plan? Something about tearing down the old society and replacing it with their own, although the details are left vague. (And surely there are easier ways of destroying the world's economy -- but I guess they wanted the immortality as well.)

Jack and Gwen gaze upon the Blessing. ("The Blood Line") ©BBC
Worldwide, Limited

So we've got this deus ex machina running through the planet, without even a fig leaf of an explanation, and when Torchwood finally gets there it takes them forever to do anything about it. Instead we get all sorts of speeches from everybody which go on forever and don't actually tell us anything, and we even get the Families' representatives laughing at Jack's foolishness of thinking his mortal blood in Shanghai could fix things, which leads to even more speeches from Jack and Rex. And while, to be fair, the shooting of Esther is a shocking moment, Torchwood still takes forever to end the Miracle. Seriously, Gwen, just shoot Jack and be done with it.

Look, that's not to say that there aren't good moments in this. The standoff between the Families and Torchwood is still rather entertaining, despite its length, and the scenes inside the CIA are genuinely compelling. (And I'm still mad at Charlotte Wills' duplicitousness, but at least she gets a comeuppance of a sort at the end.) There are also some exciting action moments mixed with quiet, touching scenes (Andy Davison holding the hand of the unidentified Category 1 girl is really sweet) that add to the balance. It's just that this is the finale of the whole story -- they've been building to this for the previous nine weeks, and the final result isn't the impressive climax it should have been. Miracle Day needed this episode to deliver in a big way, and it just doesn't. It's an OK episode, but it falls short of the mark that it really needed to hit.

But that rather sums up Miracle Day as well. It's an interesting concept and a fantastic opener, but the goodwill that "The New World" engendered ends up being squandered as they spend too much time dealing with side issues instead of the main event. Ten episodes was simply too long, and while the slack was often picked up in somewhat interesting ways, it still was evidently slack. All that matched with a finale that fails to truly deliver means that Miracle Day isn't the strong installment of Torchwood that it initially seemed it would be.

Of course, part of the issue might be that "The Blood Line" ends with some unresolved issues. Yes, the Miracle was reversed, but the Families are still out there plotting (with Jilly Kitzinger working for them), while Rex apparently also has the same immortality that Jack has. ("You, World War II, what did you do to me?" Rex demands in the final line of the episode.) However, to date we haven't gotten another series of Torchwood -- apparently Starz was satisfied with ratings and amenable to doing more, but Russell T Davies' return to the UK put Torchwood's future on hold. It's therefore somewhat ironic how definitely Children of Earth ended, and yet we got another series, but Miracle Day's open-ended finale hasn't been followed up on. (Maybe Big Finish will explore it, now that they've announced they'll be doing Torchwood audios, with Davies' blessing.)

So that was Torchwood -- a show that started out very shakily but slowly got better and better, to the point where Children of Earth was must-see television, and while Miracle Day didn't quite reach those heights, they still did a decent job. Torchwood was frequently a difficult show to love, but in their efforts to make a more "adult" companion to Doctor Who they largely succeeded (once they recalibrated their ideas of "adult" to not simply be lots of sex and violence). I can see how it's not to everyone's tastes, but if you can get through that first series (so maybe just skip it altogether) then there's a fair amount to enjoy. Not bad for Doctor Who's first ongoing spinoff.

(Oh, and it should be noted that after "The Blood Line" I watched "Web of Lies", which was a 10-part "motion comic" with puzzles available online to accompany Miracle Day. The DVD presents it minus the puzzles, but unless you're a huge Eliza Dushku fan, don't bother -- it doesn't add anything to the Miracle Day storyline, and it's not interesting enough in its own right to warrant your attention.)

June 8: "The Girl Who Waited"

It's a fairly simple idea at the heart of "The Girl Who Waited", that of two different time streams running at the same time, with one person trapped in one stream, away from the others, and yet from this Tom MacRae has created something beautiful and astonishing.

I have to confess, I'm not familiar with Tom MacRae's work beyond the Cybermen two-parter he wrote for David Tennant back in series 2, and that's not exactly a story to sing the praises of. Based on that I wouldn't have thought he had something like "The Girl Who Waited" in him, but this is unabashedly one of the best episodes of this series. As I said, it's a simple idea, but the way it plays out on screen is gorgeous -- touching and tragic and the sort of thing that feels both right at home on Doctor Who and boldly going to places the show only occasionally flirts with.

It certainly helps that everyone's contributing to the finished product. MacRae reportedly specified lots of all-white rooms to save on production costs, but it's still a striking image, nicely antiseptic and perfectly suited for a TV screen -- but the other locations on Apalapucia (the gardens, the "engine room") are also lovely to look at. Meanwhile, director Nick Hurran makes a superb Doctor Who debut, keeping the camera moving but also providing some marvelous superimposed shots as well. The two Amys looking at each other through the time glass is impressive enough, but the scenes of the older Amy and Rory, separated by the TARDIS door but blended together in the same shot, are really something else.

But the best thing about this are the actors. This is essentially a three-hander, as there are no other major guest appearances and the Doctor is restricted to the TARDIS (this being the "Doctor-lite" episode) -- and two of those hands are Karen Gillan. The makeup department has done a fantastic job aging Amy, but what's also impressive is Gillan. She's a marvel in the role, brittle yet strong and full of bitterness for being abandoned. "Why are we still here?" the younger Amy asks the older one through the time glass. "Because they leave you," the older one replies. "Because they get in their TARDIS and they fly away." That's what the older Amy feels: abandoned and angry. And because she doesn't want these past thirty-six years to be meaningless, she doesn't want to help Rory rescue her younger self -- initially at all, and then not without taking her too. Not to travel with the Doctor, as she now says she hates him, but just so that she can continue to live her life without being trapped. "Two Amys together. Can that work?" Rory wonders. "Maybe," the Doctor lies, spewing some technobabble to cover himself.

The two Amys appear in the same time stream. ("The Girl Who
Waited") ©BBC

And that's really the biggest tearjerker moment of the episode. The Doctor deliberately lies to get Amy to help her younger self, knowing that there's no way to sustain the paradox of Amy leaving in the TARDIS and being trapped in Twostreams at the same time. The older Amy helps bring her younger self into this time stream and then helps fight their way to the TARDIS, only for the Doctor to shut the door in her face. "She's not real," the Doctor insists. "Look, we take this Amy, we leave ours. Only one Amy in the TARDIS. Which one do you want? It's your choice." "This isn't fair," Rory says bitterly. "You're turning me into you." "Your choice, Rory," the Doctor repeats. But it's not his choice. Amy and Rory are separated by the TARDIS door, having a wretched conversation that is clearly wrecking both of them, but it's Amy who makes the decision. "If you love me, don't let me in," she tells him. "Open that door, I will, I'll come in. I don't want to die. ... Tell Amy, your Amy, I'm giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come. ... The days I can't have. Take them, please. I'm giving you my days." And so Amy is saved, and thus never spent those 36 years alone, but that seems to be small comfort to Rory. And the Doctor is hardly unaffected, either: the last shot, after "our" Amy wakes up and asks, "Where is she?", is a guilty, uncomfortable look from the Doctor.

"The Girl Who Waited" is a gorgeous tale about love and loss and betrayal, and while it unabashedly goes for the gut it does so with considerable style. I don't know that I'd want many more episodes like this -- I'm not sure I could handle it -- but this is a beautiful tragedy with a melancholy ending that ultimately tells us that the most important thing in the universe can be just two people.

June 7: "The Gathering" (TW)

It's been two months since the last episode, and the world has gone to hell since then. Which begs a larger question for Doctor Who -- how is it that we never hear about these events outside of Miracle Day itself? Even allowing that there seems to be about a year's gap between "The Big Bang" and "The Impossible Astronaut", the Miracle lasts for something like three months starting in March 2011 (Rex's bank transfer text in "Rendition" is dated 22-MAR-11), with the Western world collapsing and China closing its borders and things generally going to hell -- and yet in the midst of this, on 22 April 2011, Amy and Rory meet the Doctor at Lake Silencio in Utah. And not once do we see them mention this to the Doctor, or wonder how he could be dead in the midst of the Miracle, or anything like this. At least in the past, there were token efforts to keep all the spin-offs more or less lined up (even allowing for things like no one mentioning to the Doctor that a giant devil materialized over Cardiff for an hour or so) -- but now that Torchwood and Doctor Who don't really share a production office (even if much of the UK crew still overlaps), it seems the same efforts aren't being made.

Rex asks Shapiro permission to head to Argentina. ("The
Gathering") ©BBC Worldwide, Limited

And while it's sort of interesting to see how society has begun its slow collapse into a depression, as the Miracle carries on and the overflow camps are reopened ("It's funny, isn't it?" Gwen remarks. "When they first opened the camps, we all protested. Second time we're all too busy looking after ourselves"), it doesn't make for the most thrilling television ever. We see that Rex and Shapiro have spent two months chasing down the Families, only to come up with nothing, while Gwen is trying to keep her father hidden from the authorities -- and Esther and Jack are hiding out in Scotland, doing little better. I suppose we should be thankful they skipped over those two months, but really, other than showing that things have gotten really bad little has changed since last time. Jilly Kitzinger's storyline hasn't even advanced yet.

But the nice thing about "The Gathering" is that we do finally start to get some answers. Torchwood works out where the Blessing is, thanks to a tip-off from Oswald Danes of all people (nice that he's finally being integrated into the story; despite Jack's claims that Oswald needed watching, he hadn't really been relevant to the conspiracy storyline), and we're starting to see people moved into position to deal with it. Plus we finally get to actually see the Blessing, although it's not very clear what it is: some sort of fissure that sucks in stuff and runs all the way through the Earth that makes people feel weird when they look at it, but that's it. We still don't know exactly how it was used to make everyone immortal, or what the hell Phicorp or the Families' endgame actually is, but we're getting closer. Of course there's still Charlotte Wills in the CIA to deal with, along with the fact that it looks like she'll be able to warn the Families that Torchwood has discovered them, in Buenos Aires at least, so we're not out of the woods yet.

I probably could have done without the jump forward in time, but at least "The Gathering" starts to finally bring everything together in a satisfying way. The final episode next time has a lot of questions to answer satisfactorily, but some of those answers start to appear here, rather than simply leaving us hanging until the very end. That said, they still have a long way to go and not much time left...

June 6: "Night Terrors"

We start out in an unpleasant block of flats (where all the color on-screen has been corrected to a dull urine yellow for some reason) as we get a little boy, George, who's terrified of everything -- so terrified, in fact, that his message reaches across the stars to the Doctor's psychic paper somehow.

It seems slightly churlish to criticize "Night Terrors" for not having any sort of follow-up of the events of "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler", as it wasn't initially intended to occupy this slot (although it's not like "The Curse of the Black Spot", the episode that swapped places with this one, is any more cognizant of this), but when you're dealing with a frightened child who turns out to be an adopted one of sorts, it's a difficult problem to just ignore. (And as we'll see, while subsequent episodes deal with some heavy stuff, Amy and Rory losing their infant daughter isn't one of those things.) The problem with the more connected storylines that Moffat wants to introduce is that when the storyline is as deeply personal as the one here, the absence of it in later episodes is noticeable. It might be the intention that, since they know what happened to Melody/River, it's too late to change things -- but this is never stated explicitly, and we never see Amy and Rory ever grieve, so the end result is rather callous.

Sorry, we were discussing "Night Terrors".

This is Mark Gatiss's first script for Doctor Who that doesn't seem to have any overt sources to pastiche. There is a fear of peg dolls that makes its presence felt, but the primary story seems to be about how children can feel afraid and abandoned. It just happens to be the case that George is a much more powerful boy than most, such that he can make his fears a reality. It's certainly not a bad idea, and it's not like anyone's miscast, but there's something lacking in the final result. The fact that so much of the images are tinted a dirty yellow doesn't help, but it's really that the sense of energy that this story needs is missing. It's tempting to blame director Richard Clark, but his previous work on the series (things like "Gridlock" and "The Doctor's Wife") suggest that energy isn't a failing of his.

No, it seems to be a scripting issue. The idea of putting people in a dollhouse is a nice one, but it makes things strange rather than scary, and Amy and Rory spend too much time wandering around without anything really chasing them to really build the suspense (the shadows just aren't quite enough). And while the peg dolls are suitably creepy -- and the transformation of people into them is really nicely done -- the second person we see transformed into a doll is Amy, which inadvertently neuters them of any threat; we know Amy will be OK, so therefore it's likely everyone else will be fine too.

The other problem regards the resolution. Jamie Oram as George is really only called upon to be a frightened boy, which is perfectly fine (and shows they've learned their lesson after "Fear Her"), but it does mean that the ending of the story isn't about George finally standing up and facing his fears like you might expect, but rather about his dad Alex fully accepting him and vowing not to ever send him away. Which isn't a terrible ending, but it's also not the one they seemed to building towards (note in particular the way George finally gets off his bed and slowly approaches the cupboard full of his fears).

I dunno; it's not a bad episode, but there's a bit too much time spent in the dollhouse without a genuine threat, and that threat doesn't end up as potent as it should have been. Meanwhile, the scenes with the Doctor are wonderful (Matt Smith really is astonishingly good with children), but the lack of a clear threat does mean that these moments overwhelm the other parts of the story. The whole thing feels a bit lackluster as a result. Maybe "Night Terrors" works better for other people, but it just doesn't do much for me.

June 5: "End of the Road" (TW)

It's odd; on the one hand there's a sense of finally getting somewhere with the storyline, as we learn about the Families and the Blessing, but on the other hand I'm not sure we actually learn much of anything new by the end of the episode. Well, I mean we've learned a lot of things -- Angelo had been watching Jack from afar all this time, those three men forming a partnership for control of Jack maintained their relationship as the Families, Angelo's worked out a way to die, Charlotte Wills is working for the Families -- but there's little here in the way of major revelations. Or, to put it in Doctor Who terms, we're eight episodes in and we're still basically in part two of a four-part story.

There are some nice moments here -- the picture of Jack with a moustache is particularly great, and I like the way CIA official Allen Shapiro (John de Lancie, probably still best known as Q from various Star Trek series -- so yes, another well-known genre actor) immediately takes charge from the second he appears. This is a man who will brook no nonsense and doesn't care who knows it -- the way he has Gwen deported just to get what he wants, without a second thought, is a perfect example of this. And it really is special how Jack slowly comes to the realization that no, Angelo really is dying from old age, in defiance of everything we know about this new death-free world.

Of course, this leads to the big moment at the end. Halfway way through the episode, it finally looked like Torchwood would have to stop running, as Shapiro seemed willing to listen without locking them up or killing them. (Well, except for the "deporting Gwen" thing, but that was to gain leverage against Jack.) But then they discover the null field generator panel thing -- "I knew this stuff the second I saw it," Jack tells Rex and Esther. "Yes, it's alien technology. The only examples of it on Earth were in the Torchwood hub. They were buried in the ruins. ... [Angelo] must have salvaged it, knowing the Miracle was coming" -- and Jack knows he has to head out on the run with the piece that makes the generator work, lest it fall into the wrong hands, as the generator could give people "control over life and death, and we've seen that that doesn't work." So it's back to being a fugitive for Jack and Esther -- although Jack's been shot while trying to escape, so that might go badly in the next episode.

But despite things like this, we don't actually learn much. We confirm that those three men making the agreement are behind the Miracle and that they're known as the Families, and we learn that their last names are Ablemarch, Costerdane, and Frines (and that they've been incredibly good at erasing those names from all records), and that the Miracle is tied to something called the Blessing -- which might be related to Jack but isn't actually his blood. And that's really about it. It's an entertaining episode, and it does feel like they're finally getting this story back on track, but those hoping to learn what's really going on will have to wait.