Agency in Fiction

I listen to several Doctor Who podcasts, including Verity! and Lazy Doctor Who. In recent episodes of both podcasts, I heard discussion of how different female characters lacked “agency” and that this created anger among, inter alia, female fans of the feminist persuasion. Female characters who lack “agency” are evidence of bad male writers, or something like that. Let me present their case and my rebuttal.

Example one was from Verity!, on the topic of Donna Noble’s departure from the TARDIS in “Journey’s End.” In brief, Donna gets zapped with Time Lord knowledge, which allows her to help defeat the Daleks, but her mind can’t cope. To save her life, the Doctor wipes from her mind all knowledge of the Doctor or her time with him. Apparently this is a Bad Thing because the Doctor takes choice away from Donna, denying her “agency.” The Verity! ladies contrast the Doctor’s treatment of Donna with his treatment of Clara in “Hell Bent."

Example two was from Lazy Doctor Who, in a discussion of Susan’s departure from the TARDIS in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” (Yes, fine, these are spoilers, but come on, the first example is from 2008 and the second is from 1964. Live with it.) Susan falls in love with a human, David Campbell, and is torn between staying on Earth with him and continuing to travel with the Doctor. Knowing that she would never leave the TARDIS and the Doctor despite the desire of her heart to stay with David, the Doctor locks her out of the TARDIS and dematerializes, making the decision for her. Bad Doctor.
One writer describes agency as

Character agency is, to me, a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.

At the two points in the stories described above, Donna and Susan both lack agency. Is that a bad thing from either the point of view of the story or on the part of the author? In the example of Donna, it’s hard to see how the Doctor’s actions were in any way unjustified. His friend was in trouble, and his choices were (a) let her die or (b) save her by wiping certain memories. Suppose he had given her the opportunity to choose. If she said, “No, let me die, I’d rather die now with the memories of our travels together intact than live without them,” would he have agreed? Really? How about someone who sees a friend about to jump off a ledge to her death? Would that be a good time to inquire how sincere was her desire to commit suicide, or would a responsible friend take the opportunity to save a life? In short, denying a fellow character agency may well be the best course of action.

In the example of Susan, one could certainly argue that the Doctor was being unfair/irresponsible/just plain not nice in taking the decision out of her hands. On the other hand, he seemed to be acting out of a sincere and selfless desire to ensure that she got what she wanted, rather than staying with him out of a sense of duty. I’d argue that the character was right to deny her agency.

More to the point, however, in both cases the authors of those episodes made a reasonable artistic choice. Not everyone has agency in all circumstances. Prisoners in jail cells, victims of crimes, passengers on doomed airliners - all have limited or no ability to "make decisions and affect” outcomes at those moments. Perhaps a prisoner has agency to the extent of making an escape attempt, fighting with a fellow prisoner or a guard, or even choosing to serve his time with a minimum of fuss. Similarly, a crime victim can, after the fact, call the police, ignore the whole thing, or turn into a Death Wish-style vigilante, but at the moment of the crime she is more reactive than active. When an author creates characters and places those characters into a situation - the plot - those characters often choose actions that propel the plot. At other times, however, one or more characters may find themselves passive players in the unfolding drama. To suggest that it’s somehow sexist to have this happen to female characters is absurd.

I’ve spent over 700 words venting on a subject that deserves far fewer words, but the mere word “agency” in this context, on these podcasts, hits me like nails on a chalkboard. Life provides many opportunities to be offended. Feminists, such as those on Verity! and Lazy Doctor Who,* might pick their targets with a little more care.

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* In fairness, I might not have two independent observations, as Erika Ensign participates in both podcasts. Discussion in one podcast might spill over into thoughts on another.

Doctor Who, "Last Christmas"

Santa Claus, sassy elves, dream crabs that suck out your brain, the Doctor and Clara together again, and Christmas - how could it miss?

I wasn’t a huge fan of “Last Christmas” my first time through, even though the episode had a great many things I liked, including a sarcastically funny Santa (played by the wonderfully-named Nick Frost) with his aforementioned sassy elves, some great dialogue, one last hurrah from Danny Pink (of sorts), and not one but two touching endings.

First things first: a brief recap. Clara wakes to a noise on her rooftop, only to find that Santa and two elves have crashed the sleigh. The TARDIS arrives (after Clara tells Santa no longer believes in mythical creatures) and the Doctor insists Clara get in. The two arrive at the North Pole, where a four scientists are studying four alien life forms in the infirmary - dream crabs that have landed on the faces of the base’s crew, putting them in a dream state and coming active whenever someone thinks of the creatures. As the crabs wake, Santa arrives to save them. Clara falls under the influence of a crab and dreams that she’s having Christmas with Danny. When the Doctor fails to wake her, he goes into her dream (with another crab now attached to his face) to induce her to wake. The Doctor slowly realizes that they are all in a dream state, and Clara’s was only a dream-within-a dream. He convinces them of this by having each read the first word on a random page of their base manuals - each one is different. They all “wake,” and the Doctor prepares to leave with Clara before he understands that they’re still in the dream. Santa again saves the day, taking the crew away on his sleigh while each wakes. When the Doctor wakes, he uses the TARDIS to travel to Clara’s house, where she is still under the influence of a crab. He removes the crab, only to find that over sixty years have passed. He and the elderly Clara talk, before the Doctor realizes it is he who is still dreaming. Waking once again, he takes the TARDIS to Clara’s house, wakes her, and the two leave in the TARDIS.

The basic plot - the collective dreams, the dreams-within-dreams and the impossibility of knowing when one is actually awake - was good, and the monsters were downright scary. Others have compared this to “Inception,” but I haven’t seen the movie. I was uneasy about the plot the first time through, and I think the reason came down to: how do we know that any of those endings were real? I’d hate to sit through Season 9 and find out that it was all an extended dream of the Doctor’s. The second time through, this bothered me less, and I was able to enjoy the adventure. I suspect that knowing from the start that this was a collective dream state allowed me to ignore any strange logic, as dreams seem to have a logic of their own. The episode never explained how the Doctor was caught by the crabs on whatever alien planet he was visiting, which is fine. More perplexing is how the crabs also got to Earth to infect Clara and the four unfortunate members of the “North Pole expedition.” That part isn’t dream logic; it’s just a plot hole.

I did like a great deal of the episode. Santa and his elves were terrific, as were the toys that made periodic appearances - the balloon toy one elf used as a gun, and the army of toys, led by a whole bunch of Slinkeys, that arrived as Santa came to save the day. When Clara says she stopped believing in Santa when she was old enough to understand that her parents were the ones who left gifts, the elves sneer, “Sure, parents. Because they pick one day a year to just give you a pile of presents. Just because they looooove you." When the Doctor asks Santa how he manages to get all the presents on the sleight, Santa replies, straight-faced, “Bigger on the inside.” The scene with dream-Danny, Clara, and the Doctor was terrific, especially when the Doctor reminds Clara that this can’t be Danny because “he died saving the world.” Danny responds, “I did die, but not saving the world. I died saving Clara. The rest of you just got lucky.” The line that the North Pole crew all use when the Doctor asks a question - “It’s a long story” - let the Doctor realize they were in a collective dream, and the payoff came later in the episode, when Clara used it as well. When the Doctor visits Old Clara, there is a touching reversal of the scene in “Time of the Doctor,” in which Clara has to help the aged Doctor pull his part of the Christmas cracker. Here, Old Clara can’t manage the cracker, and the Doctor gently helps her. (He presents to her two paper hats that come in crackers and gives one to her, saying, “Everything seems funny” when people wear them.)

Listening to the Verity! podcast discussing the episode, Tansy Roberts said she was apprehensive watching the episode with her young children because she was afraid the episode would blow the cover on Santa’s existence. In the end, she thought they danced around the topic enough to preserve the holiday for the kids for a few more years. I re-watched the episode after listening to the podcast, and I thought the episode came awfully close to saying flat out that Santa was a fiction, appearing only in the dreams to give aid and comfort to the dreamers. Certainly no child who was on the fence about Santa’s existence would see the episode and come away with renewed faith in his existence.

Although the scene with Old Clara would have been an amazing exit for the character, I was glad to see Jenna Coleman signed on for more episodes and that we’ll see her in Season 9. Now to wait out the long time until then...

Doctor Who, "Death in Heaven"

I hope everyone has awakened from their post-Thanksgiving stupors, as this turned out to be a long one.

Picking up from the previous week's cliffhanger - Missy is the Master! The dead are being resurrected as Cybermen! Clara is about to be "deleted" by a trio of Cybermen! - Season 8 wraps up not only the story line started in "Dark Water" but also puts the finishing touches on several season-long themes. Well, mostly. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've watched the episode twice now, and I still am not sure how much I like it. Some parts are very good indeed, some parts wrap up story lines in a satisfying way, while other parts are... not my cup of tea.

Long Spoiler-Filled Plot Recap Section

Picking up where "Dark Water" left off, Clara is menaced by several Cybermen. She tries to convince them that she should be spared, claiming that she is the Doctor, regenerated into perky Jenna Coleman's body. From there we cut to the title, which, befitting her claimed identity, lists Coleman's name above Peter Capaldi's and shows her eyebrows instead of his. Subtle but effective.

Outside St. Paul's, Osgood (from UNIT) and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart arrive with a number of UNIT soldiers, ready to take on the Cybermen, who evade UNIT by flying away, Iron Man-style. The roof of St. Paul's opens and more Cybermen leave, ready to "pollinate" the world with nano-particles that will create new Cybermen out of dead bodies plus the consciousness, now stored in the Nethersphere, of those bodies. UNIT sedates Missy and, oddly, the Doctor. The two are taken aboard a plane - Missy as a prisoner and the Doctor, now conscious, as President of Earth in order to deal with the Cybermen threat.

In the Nethersphere, with Danny, Seb, and the young Afghan boy Danny killed, Seb explains that they will be returning to their bodies - with a bit of an "upgrade." On Earth, the nanoparticle "rain" falls on a graveyard and in a funeral home, where Danny's body lies. Back in St. Paul's, a rogue Cyberman - Danny - arrives. Clara, not knowing his identity and still trying to save her life, says, "I'm an incredible liar. Ask anyone." Cyber-Danny replies, "Correct," then blasts the other Cybermen and knocks her out.

Missy claims she knows Gallifrey's location. Missy kills Osgood and flying Cybermen bring down the plane. Kate is blown out of the plane's cargo door. As the plane explodes, the Doctor falls, inserting the TARDIS key into the falling TARDIS - cue the James Bond music.

Clara comes to in a cemetery (why?) with Cybermen breaking out of the ground but not attacking anyone. She tells her rescuer that the Doctor is her best friend, the one persokn she'd never lie to - at which point Cyber-Danny removes his faceplate, revealing his identity to her.

Clara calls the Doctor on the TARDIS telephone - Danny wants his emotions removed, but can't activate the emotional inhibitor on his chest by himself. The Doctor implores her not to do it, as Danny will then be a full Cyberman and kill Clara. The Doctor arrives and wants to know Missy's plan, but Cyber-Danny can't tap into the hive mind without activating his emotional inhibitor. Clara zaps it with the sonic screwdriver. As Danny promised, he is able to resist Cyber control and doesn't attack Clara.

Missy arrives a la Mary Poppins, floating from the sky with an opened umbrella. She gives the Doctor her "gift" - control of the Cybermen, "an indestructible army to rage across the universe." She observes, "Give a good man firepower and he'll never run out of people to kill." She tells him, "I need you to know we're not so different. I need my friend back." Although he considers her offer, as he believes he needs the Cybermen to burn away the nanoparticle storm, he ultimately rejects it, telling Missy, "I am not a good man. I am not a bad man... I'm an idiot with a box."

The Doctor gives the control device to Cyber-Danny - who tells the newly-converted Cybermen now under his command that "Today is not a good day," but that as soldiers their promise to civilians is that they will sleep safely tonight. The Cybermen fly to the nanoparticle cloud and self-destruct, destroying the particles.

Missy tells the Doctor the coordinates of Gallifrey, assuring him that she's not lying this time.

Clara tries to kill Missy, but the Doctor, concerned what Clara will become if she resorts to cold-blooded murder, says he'll do it himself if that's what it will take to save Clara. Instead, Missy is zapped by a Cyberman, who then indicates to the Doctor and Clara the still-alive Kate. The Cyberman is clearly the late Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - hey, if you can't save your own kid, what's the point of being a Cyberman? - and acknowledges the Doctor's salute before flying off.

Danny, somehow back in the Nethersphere (we presume - though it's not clear how this happened), has found a way to send one person back to the land of the living. Clara expects him, but instead he sends the Afghan child, telling Clara to find his parents - this was a promise he had to keep.
The Doctor takes the TARDIS to the coordinates Missy gave him, but finds no Gallifrey - she lied again. In a rage, he whomps the TARDIS console.

Clara and the Doctor meet, and the Doctor believes Danny sent himself back to Earth. She lies and agrees with him, saying that the two are together, and he lies that he found Gallifrey, and that this is it for them. She asks him to hug, and he relents. She asks him why he doesn't like hugs, to which he replies, "Never trust a hug. It's just a way to hide your face" - as both look devastated.

The credits roll, but are interrupted by Santa's arrival at the TARDIS. Santa says, "It can't end like this," leading to a guess that clara's story will continue in the Christmas episode.

It's All About Control

If there's one theme threading its way through the entire season, it's about control. At the start of the season, Clara has a neatly compartmentalized life: there's the part where she is a school teacher and lives a normal life, and there's the part where she travels with the Doctor. As she says at one point, he's one of her hobbies. As the season unfolds, that neat compartmentalization unravels, and in an effort to maintain her relationship with Danny separate from her travels with the Doctor, she increasingly lies to him, to the Doctor, and, ultimately, to herself about what she's doing and why. Clara's unwillingness - even inability - to stop her adventures with the Doctor, even when they endanger her relationship with Danny, reflects a loss of her control over her life.

At the same time, the ongoing tug-of-war between Danny and the Doctor also reflects the question of control. Danny, the soldier, views the Doctor as an officer, one of those responsible for getting ordinary soldiers into predicaments without fully understanding the costs of doing so. The Doctor, always one to enjoy being in control of situations, found himself having to or choosing to relinquish control multiple times during the season. In "Flatline," he was unable to leave the TARDIS for most of the episode, and had to rely on Clara, while in "Kill the Moon" he chose to leave at a crucial time, insisting that the three humans had to make the decision whether to kill the creature about to hatch.

Control plays a big role in "Death in Heaven" as well. Missy's scheme involves creating an army of Cybermen capable of dominating any planet, and then gives control over this army to the Doctor in an effort to... well, what, exactly? By taking control of the Cybermen, the Doctor would be acknowledging that he and Missy are not so different. While the Master's schemes involve using power for his own Machavelian ends, the Doctor also uses other people to further his plans. Although those plans involve saving people and generally trying to do right, at some level the difference between the Doctor and Missy is more one of judgment than anything fundamental. When the Doctor gives up the device that controls the Cybermen, he's rejecting Missy's equating the two of them. He even thanks her, saying he's not a good man, not a bad man, just an idiot with a box who tries to do the right thing. (Of course, turning the Cybermen over to Danny, who then uses this force to save the planet only at the cost of destroying all the Cybermen, including himself, might suggest that both Danny and Missy were correct: the "officer" used his soldiers as cannon fodder once again.)

A few other examples: Danny tells Clara he wants to activate his emotional inhibitor, but can't do it himself, giving her control over him. At the very end of the episode, when he can send one person back through the Nethersphere - sadly, with no explanation of why that might be possible, save that earlier we apparently saw Missy travel to and from the Nethersphere - he chooses to send the Afghani boy he killed, rather than resurrecting himself, a last act of self-sacrifice that re-establishes his control over his destiny.

Should We Care More About Zany Plots or Emotional Resonance?

Season finales in Doctor Who seem to suffer more than other episodes in plot logic. The audience is carried along from one whiz-bang moment to the next, and it's not until one stops and thinks about it that one realizes how crazy is the internal logic. Missy seems to go through a lot of effort to make a point. The connection between the Nethersphere and the real world is never clear - why would an uploaded mind feel pain from a physical body, and how is that mind restored to a body that no longer exists as living flesh? Even allowing that Cybermen can create others of their kind, how would they be able to do so via nanoparticles, much less "seed" those particles so that the decayed bodies of humans somehow grow Cyber-armor and pop out of their graves? Et cetera.

But the enjoyment of Doctor Who isn't about rigorous plots any more than it was about special effects back in the days of the classic series. It's about stories, and emotions, and relationships, and the success of an episode, or of a story arc, depends on how deftly writers draw the characters, how the actors bring those characters to life, and how the audience reacts emotionally to the character interplay and development. By those standards, the season finale was a success. I'm not convinced that making Missy the Master was necessary or wise; I think I would have preferred that Missy be a new character, even if her plot was the same. Still, Michelle Gomez made a wonderful and, yes, bananas Master.

One thing I thought worked superbly was the ending. As Erika Ensign of the Verity! podcast remarked, throughout the season Clara lies for her own benefit: to keep Danny from knowing about her adventures with the Doctor, to keep the Doctor from know she's lied to Danny, to keep the Cybermen from killing her, and so on. Yet in the end, in the scene in the restaurant, both Clara and the Doctor lie to one another out of selflessness.

Doctor Who, "Dark Water"

“Dark Water” is the first part of the season-ending two-part story, and, as such, reviewing it without having seen the remainder would be silly. Instead, I’ll put down a few reactions. We’ll see if they need to be revised come this Saturday.

Lengthy Plot Summary, Filled with Spoilers

When the episode opens, Clara is on the phone with Danny, telling him that there are things she needs to say, not all of them good, but that she loves him - all the while looking at a series of Post-It notes affixed to bookshelves in her apartment. (Most of the notes deal with her adventures with the Doctor. Others, such as “Three months,” are more obscure.*) Suddenly, his end goes silent. A woman picks up and tells Clara that Danny has been hit by a car and killed. As openers go, that one was a doozy.

In her grief-stricken state, Clara hatches a plan that we see unfold: she enters the TARDIS, asks the Doctor to take her to see a volcano, steals all his TARDIS keys,** then, when he wakes up outside the TARDIS, she demands he bring Danny back, throwing one key after another into the lava, which apparently destroys TARDIS keys, every time he says no.*** He won’t budge, she goes through with her threat… only to find that the Doctor had outwitted her and the scene is her dream state. What follows is one of my favorite scenes of the season:

Clara: "What now? Doctor, what do we do now, you and me?"
The Doctor: "Go to Hell."
Clara, after a lengthy pause: "Fair enough. Absolutely fair enough.” She turns to leave the TARDIS.
The Doctor: “Clara? You asked me what we’re going to do. We’re going to Hell. Or wherever it is people go when they die…. Wherever it is, we’re going there and find Danny. And, if there’s any way possible, we’re going to bring him home."
Clara: “You’re going to help me?"
The Doctor: “Well, why wouldn’t I help you?"
Clara: “‘Cause of what I just did."
The Doctor: “You betrayed me. Betrayed my trust, betrayed our friendship, betrayed everything I stand for. You let me down!"
Clara: “Then why are you helping me?"
The Doctor: “Why? Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?"

Despite the Doctor’s apparent indifferent to Clara, occasionally bordering on outright cruelty, over the course of the season, this exchange lays bare his true relationship with her.

The Doctor insists Clara use the telepathic circuits in the TARDIS again, as she did in “Listen,” to take the ship wherever the pair is most likely to find Danny. They land in a mausoleum, filled with skeletons sitting in water - the “dark water” of the title, able to show only organic matter. They meet Missy, who tells them that the bodies have “exoskeletons” that are invisible.

Meanwhile, Danny awakes in the Nethersphere, being processed by Seb, who tells him that he’s dead but that he still maintains a connection with his body. He feels cold because his body is being stored in a cold place, but once he’s cremated… Seb asks Danny if he ever killed anyone as a soldier, then tells Danny he has a visitor. We see a flashback in which Danny’s unit is under fire in Afghanistan, and Danny clears a house using his automatic weapon. Danny’s visitor is a young Afghani boy, whom Danny presumably shot, and Danny apologizes to the boy. Seb provides Danny with an iPad (“You have iPads here?” Seb replies, “We have Steve Jobs.”) and they receive a call from Clara. The Doctor insists that Clara be skeptical, “even if it breaks your heart,” and determine whether it’s really Danny to whom she is talking.

Having missed all the signs - the logo for the 3W Corporation bears more than a passing resemblance to the Cyberman eye-with-tear-drop, and the reference to an “exoskeleton” on the corpses in the dark water might have given up the game - the Doctor only belatedly sees the Cybermen for what they are. And despite having had his hand on Missy’s heart - or, in this case, hearts - he apparently doesn’t make the connection that she is a Time Lady (“I’m old-fashioned.”). As he exits the mausoleum, he finds himself on the steps to St. Paul’s church, in the middle of London, as the Cybermen start marching out (hearkening back to the classic Doctor Who story, “The Invasion”). Missy then gives her Big Reveal to the Doctor: Missy is short for Mistress which is the female version of the Master.

Random Thoughts

From our first scene with Missy, in “Deep Breath,” people speculated that she was the Master, regenerated into female form. Others dismissed that as preposterous. Well, we see who’s laughing now.

That said, did we really need to bring back the Master? And the Cybermen? The whole idea of the Nethersphere was intriguing on its own. Surely someone could have stumbled across Gallifreyan technology, the way the Master used the Matrix, to construct the Nethersphere. The concept of an afterlife (of a sort) in which the mind is still connected to what the physical body feels is very creepy. The Master seems unnecessary.

I’ve seen some commentary suggesting difficulty accepting a female Master. The concept of Time Lords switching genders in regeneration doesn’t bother me particularly, though one has to wonder how the Doctor managed thirteen blokes in a row, and the Master even more than that (as he had run through his regenerations back in the classic series) without a single female regeneration. The new series has dropped a few hints that this is possible, but it still seems… unusual.

Because some people can’t be satisfied, though, the ladies on the Verity! podcast took the opportunity of the Master’s new body both to reiterate their belief that a female Doctor is inevitable at some point and to carp that we haven’t seen a “Doctor of color.” Come on, ladies, Gallifrey seems to be a pretty pasty society. What would produce black Time Lords? Fine, be politically correct about it if you wish, it seems to me you’re retconning the whole idea of changing genders and introducing the whole idea of different Gallifreyan races just to fit some modern conception of what a television show should look like.

Changing topics entirely, it was pretty brave to kill off Danny before the credits, and in such a banal way. Of course, Doctor Who being what it is, we’ll have to wait until the end credits roll next week to see if he stays dead. Nonetheless, this season has really been about two people, the Doctor and Clara, both discovering things about themselves, and to me it’s made for a number of top-notch episodes.

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* Someone on Twitter advanced the hypothesis that this means Clara is pregnant. If so, it would be yet another example of how television people apparently have no concept of birth control. They turn up unexpectedly pregnant whenever the plot so demands. Please, TV characters in the 21st century, act as though it is the 21st century and take care of this problem.

** Eagle-eyed Twitter user Sean Blythe (@OmitWords) noted that the book in which the Doctor keeps one of his TARDIS keys is The Time-Traveler’s Wife. Hilarious.

*** We’ve apparently completely forgotten about the Doctor’s ability to open the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. Also, given the powers the TARDIS has an her proprietary interest in the Doctor, do we really think he needs a key? But read on.

Doctor Who, "In the Forest of the Night"

We’re heading into the final stretch of the season, with only the two-part finale to go after this episode. (Very sad.) Then the long, miserable stretch from Nov. 8 to Christmas with no new Doctor Who episode. (Also very sad.) In the meanwhile, however, we have “In the Forest of the Night” to contend with.

Trying to reach London, the Doctor opens the TARDIS doors to find himself in a forest. A young girl, Maebh, in a red coat knocks on the door and asks for help, and the TARDIS assures the Doctor that he has landed in central London. Meanwhile, Clara and Danny are chaperoning young Coal Hill School students - the “gifted and talented” group, though that’s clearly a euphemism - in an overnight stay at the Natural History Museum. The next morning they open the museum doors to find the same forest. When they realize that Maebh is not with them, they set out to search for her. Naturally, they encounter the Doctor.

With the gang all together, the Doctor tries to understand what caused the forest to appear so suddenly. After a few false starts, and a small chat with the forest, he correctly deduces that a huge solar flare is about to occur, which would wipe out life on Earth. The mystical forest, however, which is impervious to fire, has provided a protective cover for the planet, just as it has done on previous occasions. The children join the Doctor in the TARDIS to send a message across the planet not to harm the trees - in London, the authorities are about to use an exfoliant after the controlled burn failed - and the day is saved.

This episode is clearly in the “fairy tale” classification of Doctor Who stories, from the little girl in the red coat, lost in the forest (Little Red Riding Hood), to her later dropping objects in the forest to lay out a trail (Hansel and Gretel), to the use of the forest as a dark, mysterious, mystical place (any number of fairy tales). Sometimes that works - I thought it worked in “Time of the Doctor” - and sometimes it doesn’t. “In the Forest of the Night” was a less-successful example, in part because having small children on screen for most of the episode is a sure-fire way to kill a story (see “Nightmare in Silver,” “Fear Her,” and “Kill the Moon” while Courtney is on screen), in part because of the heavy-handed environmental message (“trees are our friends, so don’t hurt our friends”), and in part because of the absurd sappy ending tacked onto the episode (Maebh’s missing sister turns up out of the blue at the end).

When Danny, Clara, and the children find the Doctor, Clara has an odd trust that the Doctor will simply figure out what’s going on and solve the problem. She seemed out of character in that scene. Later in the episode, Clara seems all too eager to abandon her charges and go with the Doctor, until Danny reminds her that she has a responsibility for the children’s safety. That scene is no doubt meant to illustrate how traveling with the Doctor has changed Clara - she enjoys and even needs the adventure, while Danny is content to be a math teacher - but seemed odd. Even odder was the scene when the Doctor believes he can’t stop the solar flare from destroying life on Earth. He says he can’t save humanity, but he can save the Coal Hill School children, along with Clara and Danny. Clara rejects that idea, saying that the children would be sad if their parents all died and they didn’t, and thus, in her belief at least, she condemns the children to die. Seems like an unusual choice, to say the least.

The episode did have some good moments. Echoing “Kill the Moon,” the Doctor tells Clara, “This is my world too. I walk your earth, I breathe your air,” and, in contrast with the earlier episode, he doesn’t abandon humanity. When Clara rejects leaving in the TARDIS, and the Doctor doesn’t understand why, she says, “Don’t make me say it. I don’t want to be the last of my kind,” having seen what that has done to the Doctor. And in a comical moment, the Doctor and Clara peek out of the door of the TARDIS as the solar flare engulfs the Earth, after the Doctor has worked out that the forest will save the planet. Looking down at Earth, he tells her, “I hope I’m right. Be slightly awkward if the world was destroyed at this point."

The episode is by no means bad, much less unwatchable. Capaldi’s Doctor and Coleman’s Clara Oswald are always a joy to watch, and seeing the Doctor puzzle out the situation was fun. In a weak season, this would have been a better-than-average episode. In what’s been an amazing season so far, however, the episode falls a little short by comparison.

Doctor Who, "Flatline"

We're racing toward the end of Series 8. "Flatline" is a comic gem that is also scary, and it does double-duty by advancing some of the themes we've seen so far this season.

As the Doctor attempts to get Clara back home at the same time she started (presumably so Danny won't notice that she's still traveling with the Doctor), the TARDIS winds up over a hundred miles off-target. Worse, the exterior dimensions have shrunk. Clara and the Doctor squeeze out and he squeezes back in to investigate what happened while she looks for clues in the area. When the TARDIS shrinks yet again and the Doctor realizes that he's trapped inside, with only his hand able to reach out of the small doorway, he gives Clara the sonic screwdriver and his psychic paper. "Does this mean I'm you now?" she asks impishly. She places the tiny TARDIS in her handbag, communicating with the Doctor through an earpiece (that also allows him to see through her eyes).

Clara meets Rigsy, a graffiti sprayer on a community service assignment to whitewash his handiwork. Rigsy helps Clara, showing her the house where one of the locals disappeared. The two are menaced by something that comes out of the walls. The two, along with the rest of Rigsy's crew, retreat to the subway tunnels, attempting to stay alive while the Doctor tries to understand the menace. He deduces that these are creatures from a two-dimensional world, trying to infiltrate our three-dimensional one. The timely arrival of a train in the tunnel allows Rigsy and Clara to attempt to ram the creatures. While unsuccessful, this gives the Doctor time to power the TARDIS and devise a plan to send the creatures back to their universe.

The episode is very funny, with both sight gags (the tiny TARDIS; the Doctor's hand emerging from the small doorway to hand Clara various items; the Doctor using his hand to move the TARDIS with his fingers, a la Cousin Itt, in order to get the TARDIS off the railroad tracks) and stinging lines. Early on, as Rigsy asks Clara who she is, she responds: "I'm the Doctor. Doctor Oswald." Rigsy replies, "What are you a doctor of?" The Doctor (in Clara's earpiece): "Of lies." Clara: "I don't know exactly. I think I pick the title just to sound important." The Doctor: "Why, 'Doctor Oswald,' you are hilarious." Later on, as Clara and Rigsy run from the house, the Doctor says to Clara: "You really throw your companions off the deep end, don't you?" At another point, Clara tells Danny "I'm helping him [Rigsy] find his auntie." The Doctor replies in Clara's ear: "Nice. Technically not a lie."

The episode brings together several themes:

* Clara emulates the Doctor. The Doctor sees how he sounds. For example, late in the episode, Clara suggests using a train to ram the monsters. The conductor says there’s a dead-man switch and someone is needed to hold the handle. Rigsy jumps into the cab and starts to move the train forward. He tells Clara he knows he will die in the attempt. Clara responds by placing her hair band on the switch, locking it place. “I really liked that headband,” she tells him, “but I suppose I’ll just take it. And every time I look at it I’ll remember the hero that died to save it.” Although that effort failed, Clara has a flash of inspiration that will restore power to the TARDIS: she has Rigsy spray-paint a door onto a poster, tricking the creatures into using their energy in an effort to open the “door” that doesn’t exist.

* Clara continues to learn how to lie. She talks to Danny on the phone while trying to avoid being killed and makes no mention of being with the Doctor or being in danger. She uses the psychic paper to pretend she's with MI-5 and, of course, pretends to be the Doctor.

* Clara learns what it's like to be the Doctor - in particular, the difficult decisions and tradeoffs that he makes. At the end of the episode, Clara says to the Doctor, "Just say it: I was a good Doctor." The Doctor responds, "You were an exceptional Doctor. Goodness had nothing to do with it."

* Clara learns to embrace her abilities as a leader.
Unlike Clara's reaction to being abandoned by the Doctor and being forced to make an important decision in "Kill the Moon," here she understands and even embraces her role as the one in charge during the Doctor's absence. At one point she muses, "Doctor? What would you do now? No. What will I do now?"

In all, another exceptional episode.

Doctor Who, "Mummy on the Orient Express"

(I was out of town for over a week, missing both “Mummy” and “Flatline,” which is why this is later than usual. I wrote it not having seen “Flatline.”)

It’s “one last trip” for Clara in the TARDIS, and the Doctor takes her to the Orient Express - in space. Unsurprisingly, the trip turns deadly when, one by one, the passengers and crew die at the hand of a mummy only the condemned can see, exactly 66 seconds before his or her death. With Clara trapped in a storeroom, the Doctor tries to rally other passengers to determine what the mummy is and how to defeat it, using each victim as an opportunity to learn more.

The episode provided the chance for the cast to appear in 1920s period costume. Clara is cute in a flapper dress. The Doctor takes a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, opens the case, and slides it to a gentleman… only to reveal Jelly Babies strapped in the case. Very cute. Sure, we’ve seen the “historical model of transportation in space” bit before, with the Titanic in “Voyage of the Damned,” and we’ve seen 1920s costume in “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” and we’ve seen murderous mummies before in “Pyramids of Mars,” but combining these elements with the cranky Twelfth Doctor was a delight. The revelation that the mummy is actually a soldier with defective gear from a long-ended war fits in with the season-long arc of the Doctor’s dislike for soldiers (including Danny Pink).

We also see Clara’s character continue to develop, and in a surprising way. During the episode, the Doctor asks that she lie to Masie, a passenger, to induce her to come to the Doctor’s makeshift lab. While Clara appears very uncomfortable doing so, by the end of the episode she has become far more comfortable lying. After she talks with Danny - who asks her if she’s had her last trip and has left the Doctor for good - she first lies to Danny, saying she has, and then lies to the Doctor, saying that Danny is fine with her continuing to travel in the TARDIS. One suspects those lies will boomerang back to Clara later in the season.

The Doctor also changes a bit, explaining to Clara at the end that he didn’t know if he could save Masie and was unwilling to give her false hope. While we see his practical side - the Doctor would dispassionately use as many deaths as necessary to understand and stop the mummy - we also get a hint that he still cares about saving lives.

Doctor Who, "Kill the Moon"

In this week’s episode, still on Earth, Clara is chiding the Doctor for not telling 15-year-old Courtney - “Disruptive Influence,” who created her own “spillage” in the TARDIS last week - that she’s “special.” Exasperated, the Doctor abruptly takes Clara and Courtney to the moon, circa 2049. The three discover that the moon has much higher gravity than it should, and that three astronauts in a U.S. Space Shuttle have arrived with 100 nuclear bombs to destroy the moon before the higher gravity wreaks havoc on Earth.

After two of the astronauts are killed by spider-like creatures that the Doctor determines are very large bacteria (in a hilarious scene, Courtney uses anti-bacterial spray on one, stopping it in its tracks), and the Doctor uncovers amniotic fluid in a crevasse, he concludes that the moon is actually incubating a huge creature that is about to hatch. If the moon fractures when the creature hatches chunks of the moon could fall on Earth with devastating consequences. If they detonate the bombs, they will kill the creature, which may be the only one of its kind. As the surviving American astronaut and Clara debate what they should do, and ask the Doctor his plan, the Doctor tells them that it’s their planet and their decision to make, then leaves in the TARDIS.

At the last moment, Clara stops the detonation sequence, allowing the creature to hatch. The Doctor returns, takes all three to Earth, where they watch the creature fly off and the shell harmlessly disintegrate into the atmosphere. Later, in the TARDIS, Clara is furious with the Doctor for abandoning them and allowing them to come so close to making the wrong decision. She tells him not to return and storms out, later comforted by Danny.

Where to start in thinking about this one? The science is more of a mess than usual, so one has to simply go with the narrative flow and not consider the details too much. (For example, how much extra mass would be necessary to create an Earth-like gravity on the moon? Wouldn’t someone have noticed this well before 2049? Don’t bacteria need an atmosphere to survive?) I was more bothered by the Doctor once again taking a child into the TARDIS and into danger. Didn’t the Eleventh Doctor learn (in “Nightmare in Silver”) that no good ever comes of this? And as amusing as Courtney has been in small doses, she can’t carry an episode, and merely comes across like an immature brat, unwilling to stay and help, sulking in the TARDIS, and unable to keep from touching things.

When deciding what to do about the creature, Clara finds a way to poll humanity, which firmly wants the crew to detonate the nuclear bombs and save Earth. Instead, Clara, having asked the question in the first place, ignores their desires and stops the detonation. On instinct? Surely she knows better than any human other than the Doctor’s former companions how dangerous the universe can be. But, of course, in the context of the story her decision is the “right” one.

The Doctor surely knew about much of what would transpire - otherwise, his choice of this moment in 2049 to take Courtney is too much of a coincidence. We can infer that his purposes were twofold: first, to not merely tell Courtney that she’s special but to allow her to do something special; and, second, to give to Clara control over the outcome, trusting that Clara would do the right thing and, in so doing, help propel humanity to the stars.

Did this work? In the context of the episode, the first one did - Courtney seems happier with herself - while the second one didn’t - Clara is very angry with the Doctor. But this is backward: Courtney didn’t actually do anything special, she was merely an observer to an historic moment. (And no one will believe her if she tells them.) Conversely, Clara actually did make the decision with the Doctor nowhere around. For better or worse, she chose the outcome. Yet she complained to the Doctor that he was patronizing her. I don’t see that.

In sum, this was a difficult episode, and not an entirely successful one, although I liked the themes contained in it. I look forward to reading/hearing some of the other commentary on the episode. (I try to write these based only on my reactions to the episode.) One point that keeps coming back to me over the course of this season is that this is a very adult season of Doctor Who, in part because the Twelfth Doctor isn’t an easy person to like, in part because Clara has some difficult parts of her personality, but in large part because of the issues and interpersonal conflicts that keep arising. Doctor Who for adults might not always be easy viewing, but it’s proving to be very interesting viewing.

Doctor Who, "The Caretaker"

Series 8 is turning out to be one of the best, if not the best, of the new series of Doctor Who, and “The Caretaker” earned its place in this season’s episodes. I didn’t care for the episode particularly, but only because its predecessors are that good; in contrast, “The Caretaker” seems a little more ordinary, with at least one plot element that doesn’t ring true; I’ll get to that in a bit.

The opening montage is brilliant: Clara and the Doctor are seen in several adventures, and after each she returns to a date with Danny Pink. But Danny isn’t blind to Clara’s condition after each of these adventures: after one she is sunburned, while after another she’s wet and smelling of fish. This sets up the premise of the episode well. Clara’s life with the Doctor can no longer be kept separate from her relationship with Danny.

The Doctor appears at Coal Hill School as the caretaker - a maintenance man - much to Clara’s chagrin. He needs to pass as human for a few days in order to catch a monster. (Shades of “The Lodger”!) The monster in this episode, a battle machine from another time and place that the Doctor must remove before it destroys Earth, is incidental to the plot, merely a MacGuffin here.

When the Doctor finally meets Danny, who is introduced as someone mechanically competent because he is an ex-soldier, the Doctor’s prejudice against the military rears itself, and he immediately takes a dislike to Danny. The Doctor can’t believe that Danny is a math teacher, insisting that he must each Physical Education. Instead, the Doctor believes that the History teacher, who bears a passing resemblance to the Eleventh Doctor (complete with bow tie!), is Clara’s boyfriend, despite obvious clues (including graffiti that reads “Ozzie loves the squaddie”).

When the inevitable happens, and Danny disrupts the Doctor’s efforts to send the monster through time, he realizes that Clara and the Doctor know one another and that Clara has been lying to him about their relationship. In a comical moment, Danny assumes that Clara is an alien, sputtering “I thought you said you were from Blackpool!"

The Doctor’s dislike of soldiers comes to the fore in this episode. He tells Clara, “You’ve explained me to him. You haven’t explained him to me.” But Danny turns it around on him, accusing him off being an “officer,” and goads the Doctor until he orders Danny to leave the TARDIS, barking the command just like an officer. Inevitably, we also see that sometimes a soldier is necessary to save the day, and the Doctor grudgingly accepts Clara’s relationship with Danny.

The episode is filled with clever lines and wonderful moments with Capaldi’s alien Doctor. (At one point he asks a girl if her name really is “disruptive influence.”) Clara is comically caught between her men, trying to maintain her Earth-bound relationship with Danny while trying to help the Doctor and keep her relationship with the Doctor a secret from Danny, and failing with both men. However, the thing that never clicked for me was the Clara/Danny relationship. Several episodes ago, when the two were meeting awkwardly for the first time, or having their disastrous first date, it was easy to believe that the two were starting out as a couple, getting to know one another. In “The Caretaker,” we’re supposed to believe that the two are well into their relationship, time having passed on Earth since they first met, yet the couple still seems very much at the beginning of a relationship. When Clara blurts out “Because I love him” to the Doctor in front of Danny, it seems forced.

Doctor Who, "Time Heist"

After the creepy “Listen,” one might expect lighter fare for this week’s episode, and a title like “Time Heist” doesn’t do anything to dissuade one from that view. A sendup of bank robbery caper films such as The Lavender Hill Mob and Ocean’s Eleven (and the music seemed to have a hint of Mission: Impossible at one point), the Doctor and Clara find themselves inside the most impregnable bank in the universe - think of it as an interstellar Gringott’s - with two strangers. They’re all on a mission for “the Architect,” the mysterious mastermind of the operation. Yet all four have had portions of their memories wiped (by the memory worms we saw in “The Snowmen”) so they can’t remember how they got there, or why they would agree to participate in the mad scheme.

We get just a hint of the Clara/Danny relationship - the Doctor once again lands the TARDIS in Clara’s bedroom, and she’s about to go for dinner with Danny (she’s really wearing that on a date?), but for the most part the episode was firmly focused on the adventure.

I guessed the identity of the Architect fairly early, the monster had an unfortunate resemblance to the Minotaur from “The Horns of Nimon,” and the ending had more than a passing similarity to that of “Hide.” Quibbles aside, though, the episode was quite a romp, with a plot that twists time around until my head hurts (I think the plot created a paradox). I quite liked the fact that the two fellow robbers were bribed to be there with the thing that “mattered most” to each, and Capaldi was once again masterful.

This season is shaping up to be one of the best. Let’s hope that continues next week.

Doctor Who, "Listen"

(Hard to do this one without spoilers, so warning, massive spoilers below.)

The fourth episode of the season, “Listen,” written by showrunner Steven Moffat , is an unusual affair, very creepy, partly slapstick, and assuredly timey-wimey. I’m not yet sure what I think about it. At times, the episode seemed a little disjointed – perhaps intentionally so? At other times, we get more of the Clara-Danny Pink relationship and even some insight into the Doctor’s character, in addition to a plot that feeds off the childhood fear of something under the bed.

The episode starts with the Doctor musing to himself: what if there’s something so good at hiding that it only manifests itself when it wants to, something that is always with you, and that it’s the prickling you feel at the back of your neck, or the sensation that there’s something under the bed, ready to grab you by the ankle when you set your feet on the floor? We then cut to Clara and Danny, out on a date that quickly becomes disastrous. Clara storms out and returns home, only to find her way into her bedroom partially blocked by the TARDIS. The Doctor plugs Clara into the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits to move along Clara’s time line, but Clara is still thinking about her date and they arrive in Danny’s past, where young Mr. Pink encounters something underneath the blankets. From there, the Doctor returns Clara to the restaurant, where she tries to salvage the date, but once again things go wrong, culminating in the entrance of a man in a space suit. He turns out to be Danny’s great-grandson, an errant time traveler stranded at the end of the universe until the TARDIS rescues him. As if that weren’t enough, Clara’s next effort to use the telepathic circuits leads to a barn, presumably on Gallifrey, where Clara comforts a frightened boy – the Doctor as a child? – telling him that his fear isn’t a weakness but a strength.

There was a great deal to like about the episode, from the apparently star-crossed relationship between Clara and Danny – his inadvertent double entendres (“We can move straight to extras”) were particularly funny – to the realization that the barn with the young Doctor is the same barn that the War Doctor used for the Moment, to Clara telling the young Doctor that “fear is a superpower,” which the Doctor then echoes to young Danny. The episode had a number of straight-out funny moments, including the Doctor’s “bedtime story” to young Danny: “Once upon a time…goodnight,” as the Doctor touches Danny on the forehead, causing him to fall asleep instantly. The Doctor explains to Clara that the TARDIS is in the bedroom “In case you came home with your date,” as though the bedroom wouldn’t be in use in such a situation. And I loved the use of the toy soldier: in young Danny’s room, Clara uses toy soldiers to “protect” Danny from any monsters under the bed. When Danny observes that the one Clara designates as the leader is broken, and carries no gun, Clara replies that he’s obviously the leader, as he’s “so brave he doesn’t need a gun,” while later in the episode Clara gives the same toy soldier to the young Doctor.

I’m not a huge fan of the continual insults the Doctor heaps on Clara. (“You’ve taken your makeup off.” “No I haven’t.” “You must have missed a spot.”) I know this Doctor is more alien, less in touch with the social niceties that humans observe, but after a while it just sounds cruel.

My biggest problem with the episode is that there’s no real payoff to the main plot. The monsters under the bed aren’t real and, in fact, the dream that everyone has about monsters under the bed may just have been the result of the Doctor’s experience as a child.

Every piece I’ve read or podcast I’ve listened to about this season has commented on what an outstanding job Peter Capaldi has done in his role, and how, given a meatier role, Jenna Coleman has had a chance to shine, and I agree. Capaldi’s Doctor is curmudgeonly and funny, often simultaneously, and his conflicted nature – “Am I a good man?” – brings a welcome bit of soul-searching to the part. He has a much healthier contempt for humans (to wit: this episode’s line about “puny brains”) than his predecessor.  I thought Coleman, freed from the need to be the Impossible Girl and the endless banter with Eleven, has been outstanding this season.

Doctor Who, "Robot of Sherwood"

(Huh. Looks like I wrote this and forgot to post it. Oops.)

A dazzling but very meta episode, “Robot of Sherwood” turns the usual Doctor Who historical inside-out and meditates on what it means to be a hero.

The Doctor asks Clara where she wants to go, and Clara decides she wants to meet Robin Hood. Although the Doctor is adamant that Robin is a fictional character, he sets the TARDIS for Nottingham in 1190, whereupon they meet… Robin Hood and his band of outlaws. Eventually the group meets the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, whose henchmen turn out to be… well, the title says it, doesn’t it? Robin, Clara, and the Doctor are taken to a dungeon, whereupon the two men engage in a hilarious game of one-upmanship until Clara shushes them both. Naturally, there are escapes, evil plans, aliens, and derring-do, along with a casual insertion of this season’s story arc, the Promised Land.

The Doctor “deduces” that Robin must also be a robot, part of the Sheriff’s scheme to use the peasant population as slave labor in order to give the captives hope. The Sheriff points out how silly that idea is, so Robin must be real. Or is he? The episode never resolves that with any certainty. But Robin seems content when the Doctor tells him that only the legend, and not the man, is known to the future, and Robin points out how similar he and the Doctor are, both men trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances. This is part of an ongoing theme to the season - this incarnation of the Doctor doubts himself and questions whether he really is a force for good. As Clara did in the previous episode, here Robin says it’s the intent and attempt that makes the hero, not necessarily the outcome.

The episode is very light-hearted, from the bantering between Robin and the Doctor (and their constant efforts to belittle the other) to the archery match between Robin and the Sheriff (and, ultimately, the Doctor) - at one point the Doctor’s arrow caroms off a chest plate and onto the target. Clara has less to do in this episode than in the first two, serving mainly as the damsel in distress for Robin and as potential consort material for the Sheriff. And the resolution of the main plot seemed a little…thin even for the usual Doctor Who hand-waving. Nonetheless, it was a fun episode, and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun, especially for Time Lords who have, in the past, occasionally taken themselves a bit too seriously.

Doctor Who, "Into the Dalek"

The second episode of the season starts with a bang - a fighter spaceship destroyed by Daleks, as the Doctor rescues one of the two occupants a moment beforehand. Before you know it, the Doctor has agreed to be miniaturized and sent inside a damaged Dalek. Shades of “Fantastic Voyage”! Meanwhile, Clara is introduced to and immediately hits on Danny Pink, a new teacher at the Coal Hill school and a former soldier.

There’s a lot going on in the episode, from the Doctor’s question to Clara: “Am I a good man?” to the efforts of the miniaturized crew first to repair the Dalek and then to convince the Dalek that it need not seek only to exterminate life. Add to that the budding romance between Clara and Danny, a brief reappearance of Missy and “heaven” from the previous episode, the Doctor’s unhappiness with soldiers (and, implicitly, how that will affect his reaction to Danny), and what goodness means in a universe filled with morally gray choices, and one can see that no episode can possibly do justice to everything.

What gives way in “Into the Dalek” is the plot. Doctor Who gets away with a great deal of faux science through appeals to jargon and offhanded witty remarks. That works when the rest of the plot is solid, but here the jargon and witty remarks merely underscore the Ghost in the Machine nature of the story: our tiny heroes climb upward through the Dalek casing, to the cerebral cortex, where Clara pushes some buttons that - presto! - reveal suppressed memories and the Doctor talks to the Dalek as though the latter is an errant schoolboy. Things don’t work out as planned, but work out well enough that there will be an episode next week.

That’s not to say there weren’t some excellent moments in the episode. Danny initially rejects Clara’s offer of a date, and we see his after-the-fact response that he realizes he should have made - only to find that Clara has been listening all along. “How much of that have you heard?” he asks. “More than you would like,” she replies, a grin on her face. At the beginning of the episode, the Doctor carries two coffees - which turn out to be the coffees that he went to fetch in Glasgow at the end of “Deep Breath,” only it’s now three weeks later for Clara. He continues to make rude remarks about Clara’s appearance, but cares enough that he returns her to the school only 30 seconds after she left - in time for Danny to wonder how she changed clothes that quickly.

An interesting, if not entirely successful, sophomore outing for the Twelfth Doctor.

Take a "Deep Breath": Reflections on Doctor Who, Series 8

It seems as though it’s been ages since Trenzalore. Decades at the very least, possibly centuries. Of course there were other adventures along the way: televised ones, with older Doctors and 1970s styles and 1980s music; audio ones, with small casts and loud noises; print ones, with sexual escapades, expansive worlds, and levels of violence that could never have made it onto the small screen. Still, we wanted a new adventure, with a new Doctor. As it turned out, we got our wish on Saturday night , a mere eight months after “The Time of the Doctor.” Was it really just last Christmas we said goodbye to Eleven and started to anticipate Twelve?

Previews showed a dinosaur menacing the Houses of Parliament, and “Deep Breath” got that McGuffin out of the way early on. While earlier regenerations showed the new Doctor picking up exactly where the old one left off, here we have a presumably small gap between the end of “Time” (where Twelve asks Clara, “Do you know how to fly this thing?”) and “Deep Breath.” As Victorian London marvels at the dinosaur, the creature coughs up a familiar blue box and a slightly manic Doctor explains he seems to have flown the TARDIS into the mouth of the beast, dragging it with him to the nineteenth century.

But this episode is not about extinct animals. Rather, it’s about meeting the new Doctor and, in particular, about the changed relationship between Clara and the Doctor. The regeneration trauma is mercifully short: unlike Ten, who spent most of his premiere episode lying in bed before some restorative tea perked him up, Twelve starts out unable to remember basic things, including Clara’s name, ends up taking a nap for a short while, then sets out in his night shirt seemingly back to himself. He is more short-tempered than Eleven, less tolerant of the foibles of humans (but, thank goodness, he doesn’t attempt to strangle his companion, like a certain other recently-regenerated Doctor we know!), but ultimately the same man as before. (At one point, he comments that he has “made mistakes” in the past that he intends to put right. How intriguing!)

Clara mopes about, mourning the loss of “her” Doctor, the playful puppy-like Eleven, until Madame Vastra sets her straight. With the help of an old friend in an unexpected cameo later in the episode, Clara realizes that this man *is* the Doctor, strange face and all, and that he needs her help, not her whining, in this unsettled time for him.

Lest I create the impression that the episode was too serious, jokes were plentiful. I particularly liked how the Doctor thought everyone else sounded very strange until he realized that he’s Scottish. An annoyed Doctor complained that he was on the “planet of pudding brains,” and at one point confused Strax with one of the Seven Dwarves. At one point, the Doctor says to Clara that he was “not your boyfriend.” Clara says, “I never said you were,” to which the Doctor replies, “I didn’t say it was your mistake.”

The implication that Time Lords have some control over their appearance – hinted at in “Night of the Doctor,” when the Sisterhood of Karn gives Eight his choice of elixirs, and as far back as “The War Games,” when the Time Lords force Two’s regeneration and offer a choice of faces – becomes more explicit here. He chose a more serious face – an older (and wiser?) face possibly for a more serious time.

The episode even had a plot of sorts, bringing back the clockwork robots from “The Girl in the Fireplace.” The control robot found people from whom to harvest body parts in order to keep the robots going as they searched for “paradise.” I’m not sure how successful that particular plot was, but it clearly sets up a story arc for later in the season. (Who built these robots, anyway? We’ve had two episodes in which they behave in murderous fashion. Would you want to be on a spaceship with these guys?) We also got a hint that we will eventually discover who gave Clara the telephone number of the TARDIS in “The Bells of St. John” last season.

In all, the episode gave viewers a great deal to appreciate and to anticipate – the new Doctor, the changed interplay between the Doctor and Clara. The script gave both Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman much to work with, and they didn’t disappoint. Like Clara, viewers might take some time to adjust to the new face in the TARDIS before coming to the realization that, when it comes right down to it, this is the same Doctor we’ve always known.

More Eighth Doctor and Charley

I’m continuing to work my way through the Eighth Doctor audio stories from Big Finish Productions, and just finished the excellent, if lengthy, and interconnected series of stories, starting with 2002’s “Neverland” through 2004’s “The Next Life.”

“Neverland” introduces the concept of anti-time and people who live beyond time and space. Romana, now President of the High Council of Time Lords, attempts to fix the rip in the universe the Doctor caused by rescuing Charley Pollard from the R-101 in the 1930s (in “Storm Warning”). The sequel, “Zagreus,” continues the story in the TARDIS – and on Gallifrey. By the end of the story, the Doctor is exiled from our universe, unable to return and under penalty of death from the Time Lords if he finds a way to do so. As Zagreus was the 50^th story in the Main Range of Big Finish Doctor Who stories, it is longer than usual, at around three hours, and has a large cast, including actors who played other Doctors (Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy) and companions (Elisabeth Sladen, Nicola Bryant, Sarah Sutton, Nicholas Courtney) in different roles.

From “Zagreus,” the next stories take place in the Divergent Universe, a pocket universe created by Rassilon  to contain the anti-time creatures. In “Scherzo,” “The Creed of the Kromon,” “The Natural History of Fear,” “The Twilight Kingdom,” “Faith Stealer,” “The Last,” and “Caerdroia,” the Doctor and Charley explore the Divergent Universe while simultaneously trying to find the TARDIS and understand the world around them. By “The Next Life,” the Doctor thinks he understands how the pocket universe works, but he discovers yet more secrets before finally making his way back to our universe.  Along the way, the listener understands how all the stories are connected, with events from “Neverland” and “Zagreus” affecting those in “The Next Life.” It’s an ambitious project, and I enjoyed the series as a whole, even if some of the stories were hard to follow in places. (Thank goodness for the Internet and plot synopses!)

Review: Gallifrey, Seasons 1-3

I had earlier thought that Doctor Who audio stories from Big Finish were the end of the rabbit hole of fandom down which I had descended, but I was wrong. Further down, sitting on a metaphorical ledge of their own, is the Gallifrey series of audio stories. Season 1, with four episodes, and Seasons 2 and 3, with five episodes each, each at $8.15, are available on CD only (no downloads), which, with postage to the U.S., makes them a little pricey. Set, of course, in the Doctor Who universe but lacking a Doctor, this series features Lalla Ward’s character Romana, and Louise Jameson’s character, Leela, as unlikely allies in defending Gallifrey from various forms of intrigue. Both are aided by a K-9 unit (Mark I and Mark II, with an amusing rivalry of their own).

As Season 1 opens, Romana has become President of the High Council of Time Lords. Leela, having left the Fourth Doctor’s company on Gallifrey to marry Time Lord Andred, now faces the disappearance of her husband and is disenchanted with the rigidity of Time Lord society. Romana wants to include other species in Gallifrey’s control of time, receiving objections both from those who think the Time Lords should maintain control of timelines and from the “Free Time” movement, those who want time technology available to all. Romana is aided by her mentor Lord Braxiatel, opposed by Inquisitor Darkel, and vexed by Celestial Intervention Agency Coordinator Narvin, among others. As the narrative moves into Seasons 2 and 3, Romana’s rule is threatened and Gallifrey itself comes under attack.

Gallifrey faces various external threats, but the most determined opponents come from within. Time Lord society is filled with opportunists, back-stabbers, power-seekers, and mercenaries. Various characters start aiding one faction, only to switch sides - or appear to switch sides - at an opportune time.

Although some of the plots are interesting and the action is occasionally exciting, the series very much revolves around the political machinations among the Time Lords. It’s House of Cards without a charismatic schemer like Frank Underwood and without the sex scenes (but with lasers and the Matrix). Political junkies might find that more engaging than I did. In my view, a little of that goes a long way.

I was also somewhat put off by the two lead characters. Lalla Ward’s Romana, on television in the 1970s at least, came off as playful and enthusiastic, finding nearly as much delight in her adventures as Tom Baker’s Doctor did in his. Gallifrey’s deeper-voiced Romana exudes world-weariness, impatience with those who disagree with her, and an unseemly desire to maintain power. It’s hard to see the earlier character in the later one. Similarly, Leela - once Eliza Doolittle to the Doctor’s Henry Higgins, enthusiastically soaking up knowledge and culture even as she relies on her “savage” wits to save herself and the Doctor from tight spots - just seems miserable.

The writing occasionally sparkles, with good interchanges among the characters, and K-9’s deadpan delivery and tendency for interpreting statements too literally is as amusing as ever. I only wish that the storyline itself didn’t start sounding so repetitive as the bickering and political maneuvering rolled on.

The series continues with Seasons 4, 5, and 6. I have other audio adventures in my queue, so I don’t have to decide for a while whether to continue on with Gallifrey. The completist in me wants to finish what I started, but another part is indifferent to what comes next.

Review: "The Time of the Doctor"

"Everything ends." So the Doctor says to Clara, and so it does.

I don't follow the logic of having regeneration episodes on Christmas (Easter, sure, if one doesn't mind a little obvious Christian symbolism), which is supposed to be a festive time of year and a program may be watched by family members who don't normally follow the show. Those who watch are left either depressed or bewildered, depending on whether they fall into the camp of regular or casual viewers. Nonetheless, once again we have a Doctor's swan song placed in an episode shown at Christmas.*

Continuing the story line from "The Day of the Doctor," in which Gallifrey was not destroyed but instead placed in a pocket universe, the episode opens with the TARDIS in orbit around a planet - along with Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and more - trying to identify the meaning of a signal sent from the planet. The Doctor's old friend, Tasha Lem, Mother Superioress of the Church of the Papal Mainframe, with its cadre of Silents as confessors, has put a force field around the planet to prevent anyone else from landing there, and she sends the Doctor to find out what is going on.

Once on the planet, which, naturally, turns out to be Trenzalor (in an earlier time than "The Name of the Doctor"), the Doctor and Clara find themselves in a picturesque town called Christmas. The signal is emanating from our old friend, the crack in the universe. Translated, the signal turns out to be from the Time Lords, asking the "one question that may not be answered," the Doctor's true name. (Pause for another "Doctor Who? joke") If he speaks it, the Time Lords will take that a signal that it's safe to return from their pocket universe. If he does so, however, the combined forces in orbit will attack, resuming the Time War. If the Doctor leaves, the forces will also attack the planet to prevent the Time Lords from ever returning. To prevent this, the Doctor stays on Trenzalor, stopping any invaders but unable to leave.

Centuries pass. The Doctor ages. Clara, sent away in the TARDIS for her protection, only to return 300 years later (by the Doctor's timeline; only minutes, one presumes, by Clara's). He tells her he can't regenerate, as this is his 13th and last incarnation; Ten regenerated into the same form and the War Doctor counted as well. The Daleks attack the Papal Mainframe and convert Tasha Lem into a humanoid Dalek (a la Oswin Oswald in "The Dalek Asylum"), then trick the Doctor into leaving the planet to visit Lem. She fights off the Dalek inside her just long enough for the Doctor and Clara to escape and return to Trenzalor. The Daleks remove the force field around the planet and attack. The Doctor appears withered and beaten, ready to accept his death. Clara pleads through the crack for the Time Lords to help the Doctor, and they respond by giving him another set of regenerations. He uses the regeneration energy to destroy the Dalek fleet before retreating into the TARDIS. Clara finds him, he says his farewell to her, then regenerates.

This was no "Day of the Doctor" in terms of plot, either in terms of the big picture (why did the Time Lords appear where they did (or why did the crack appear where it did)? couldn't the Doctor have used the TARDIS to relocate the town of Christmas, leaving the Time Lords where they were until he could find another way to liberate them? and since when did regeneration energy have the ability to destroy a Dalek fleet?) or in terms of the details (the holographic clothing joke had no plot purpose; the brief appearance of the Weeping Angels was pointless; the relationship with Tasha Lem seemed to come out of nowhere; the Cyberman head "Handles" had no purpose other than to provide information at convenient times; and the pacing of the episode seemed off).

Still, there was much in the episode to like. The fable-like narration of the story, set in a fairy-tale-like town called Christmas, set the tone for the Doctor's epic wait. How bored must he have been, waiting for centuries on a primitive planet, the man who couldn't wait around with his friends Amy and Rory for a few days in "The Power of Three"? Clara begging the Doctor to come to Christmas dinner with her family as her boyfriend and the Doctor, naturally, behaving entirely inappropriately was terrific, and I enjoyed the ongoing gag with the Christmas turkey. Seeing Amy in the TARDIS, even as merely a hallucination, was satisfying, and continued the tradition of Doctors seeing visions of old companions (or, in the case of Ten, seeing the companions themselves) before a regeneration. And, in a nod to the classic series, the Doctor helps Handles translate the Time Lords' code by producing the seal of the High Council of Gallifrey, something he "nicked off the Master in the Death Zone" in "The Five Doctors" (and something I hadn't recalled until someone with a sharp memory pointed it out afterward).

Matt Smith, as usual, was amazing, portraying not only a resolute young (-ish) Doctor but also the Doctor as an old man. Foreshadowing his death, he tells Clara sadly that "Everything ends," but at the end he also tells her that he will remember every moment.

Although I'm looking forward to seeing what Peter Capaldi's Doctor will be like, I'm more than a little sad at the end of the tenure of Smith. His portrayal of the Doctor as someone both young and unfathomably old, playful and naive yet a commanding presence, was marvelous in every episode, even ones, like "Time of the Doctor," where the material didn't always measure up to the actor.

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* It's true that the Ninth Doctor regenerated in "The Parting of the Ways" in June 2005, and the Christmas episode was the first to feature the Tenth Doctor, though the show recapped the regeneration at the beginning of "The Christmas Invasion." And the end of the David Tennant era came not in the Christmas episode, "The End of Time, Part 1," but a week later, on New Year's Day 2010. Pish-tosh, I say. Both are associated with Christmas.

Review: "The Day of the Doctor" and "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot"

Spoilers aplenty, so don’t say you weren’t warned. If you haven’t seen the 50th anniversary episode yet, watch it first. No, really, I mean it.

At the risk of adding yet more verbiage to what’s already out there, and repetitive verbiage at that, “The Day of the Doctor” was fantastic. The episode started with the original, black and white opening and theme song. We got an amazing new Doctor in John Hurt - who played the War Doctor as both arrogant and yet desperate to avoid the solution that he sees as the only way to end the Time War -, some explanation for why Queen Elizabeth I doesn’t like the Doctor, more Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in U.N.I.T., some Doctor-on-Doctor banter, a glimpse of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, a sob-inducing resolution to the Time War, and then, just when you think all the twists are don, a scene with TOM BAKER!

In 80 minutes, we had two interwoven stories: the War Doctor on the last day of the Last Great Time War and his decision to end the war; and a Zygon invasion of Earth, starting in the 16th century and culminating in the present day.

I was sure the resolution of the Time War wouldn’t just be the War Doctor pushing the button, as we were told he did prior to this episode. Having brought viewers into the war, the outcome had to be different. I thought the resolution was when Ten and Eleven said to Hurt (shall we call him Eight Point Five?), “You’re not alone this time,” forgiving him/them from pushing the button - three hands resting on the Moment, ready to activate it. But Clara urges them to rethink the solution and find one that the Doctor - all of them - can live with. They devise a plan to use 13 TARDISes to zap Gallifrey into a pocket universe in order to save its inhabitants and let the Daleks kill one another. Perfect. (Except now we have to search for Gallifrey and bring back those insufferable boors, the Time Lords.)

Better yet, the two key aspects of that solution, the Zygon device to stick people into pictures and the property of the sonic screwdriver to do calculations in the background over a period of centuries, were foreshadowed earlier in the episode in other contexts, so the ending didn’t seem so made up on the spot. Thus, the B plot - the Zygons - was integral to the A plot - the Time War.

My biggest quibble is that we never got a resolution to the Zygon plot. We leave them negotiating something with U.N.I.T., but negotiating what? The Zygons want Earth and the humans aren’t inclined to give it up. Not a lot of room for bargaining in what seems like a zero-sum game. Otherwise, an amazing episode that lived up to all the buildup.

Another superb 50th anniversary show was “The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot,” a half-hour show written and directed by Peter Davison. The title is a takeoff of the 20th anniversary episode, “The Five Doctors” (which itself needed an “-ish” attached to the title, as Tom Baker appeared only through clips from “Shada” and another actor stood in for the late William Hartnell).

The “reboot” is a sweet shout-out to the fans of the classic series, bringing back Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and, briefly, Paul McGann. It’s best to think of them as playing actors who once portrayed the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors. Davison, Baker, and McCoy all want to wrangle roles in the 50th anniversary episode but no one will cast them in the show. (Steven Moffat plays himself, frustrated with their repeated calls, and Russell T. Davies appears later on.) Davison induces the others to picket BBC’s Television Centre, to complete indifference from passers-by. John Barrowman arrives, telling them the show is now made in Cardiff. After an amusing bit playing off his sexual orientation, Barrowman takes them to Wales. They swiped their old costumes from The Doctor Who Experience, sneak onto the set, and… well, you’ll have to watch to see if they’re successful.

The number of in-jokes and cameo appearances by actors who have appeared in Doctor Who - David Tennant, Georgia Moffett, Lisa Bowerman, Nicholas Pegg, and more - along with sons of both Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, were enough to satisfy the nerdiest fan of the classic series. The actors were willing to poke fun at themselves as being obsessed with participating in the show. (One might also think they were poking fun at fans obsessed with seeing older Doctors in the anniversary show.) McCoy has a running gag about appearing in The Hobbit, Davison’s grandkids are unimpressed with his past as the Doctor, and Tennant forgets to ask his wife (Moffett) how it’s going as she is giving birth. Well done, and kudos to those involved for making it.

Add to that the two mini-episodes, “The Night of the Doctor” and “The Last Day,” and it was a great anniversary celebration. I can’t wait for number 100.*

*By then I hope that modern medicine will have found a way to keep me going in my late 90s.

Number Eight and "Night of the Doctor"

Although anyone who really cares has no doubt already seen and analyzed in painstaking detail “The Night of the Doctor,” I’ll add my few cents.

This mini-episode, a prequel to the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who (cleverly entitled “The Day of the Doctor” - the link is to a trailer for the episode), which arrived a week earlier than planned, according to Paul McGann, because it was about to be leaked, provides a little more context for the 50th anniversary episode. More importantly, however, it provides a connection between the series’  past - particularly Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor - and the current incarnation of the series. It also incorporates the Big Finish audio stories into the Doctor Who canon in a dramatic way. As a fan of both McGann and the Big Finish stories, I was grateful for the mini-episode.

To recap: when we last saw Paul McGann on television as the Doctor, in the 1996 movie Doctor Who, he had regenerated from the Seventh Doctor and saved the world from yet another crazy plan by the Master. Along the way, he had a make-out session with Dr. Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook), who turned down his offer to travel with him. Although the movie never developed into a back-door pilot for a new Who series, thanks largely to abysmal ratings in the U.S., and is generally panned because of its lousy plot, starting with the initial voice-over, in which the Doctor explains how he was on his way back to Gallifrey from Skaro - say, wasn’t the planet blown up in “Remembrance of the Daleks”?) with the remains of the Master (the Doctor seemed an unlikely emissary, as enemy of both the Daleks and the Master), whom the Daleks had put on trial and executed (trial? Daleks? Since when have they had a measured judicial system?). Nevertheless, many people, including me, thought McGann made a terrific Doctor, nailing the character from the beginning, and looking the part, wig and Wild Bill Hickok outfit not withstanding. It was a real shame we didn’t see more of him.

Big Finish, however, obliged the fans. In both the Main Range of stories, with companion Charlotte “Charley” Pollard (India Fisher), and in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, with companion Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith), McGann took his Doctor on all manner of adventures.

When the television series resumed in 2005, it started with the Ninth Doctor in mid-adventure. The series never explained what happened to the Eighth. Obsessive fans like closure, and fans of Eight didn’t get it. Until now.

The new series had hints of the Last Great Time War, with the Doctor, especially the Ninth, clearly agonized over his role in ending the war, causing the destruction of both the Daleks and the Time Lords. It seems clear that “The Day of the Doctor” will take us to that moment, when John Hurt’s “War Doctor” makes the decision to use a terrible weapon to end the war. (As an aside, and we’ll see what happens in a few days, my guess is that he won’t destroy both races, and we’ll have undone all of the last seven seasons’ worth of history. Sigh. Sometimes I don’t like the way the series relies on a convenient “Reset” button, in which all is undone.)

Which brings us to “The Night of the Doctor.” I would insert a “spoiler” warning, but the one or two out there who (a) care and (b) haven’t seen the mini-episode already should have clicked on the link above and watched it. We see a spaceship in distress, about to crash on a planet, with one human left aboard. The Doctor arrives, offering to take the survivor, Cass, with him. Upon seeing the TARDIS, she realizes that he is a Time Lord and, so repulsed is she at the damage the Time Lords have done during the war, she refuses to go. He says he won’t go without her (the one false note in the episode), and the ship crashes and explodes. The planet turns out to be Karn, from “The Brain of Morbius,” and the Doctor once again meets the Sisterhood of Karn. One of the Sisters informs him that he is dead, that they have resurrected him briefly, and they can offer him a directed regeneration, so that he can choose what kind of man he will be. The Doctor says he doesn’t want to fight in the Time War, but the Sister points out that he no longer has that option. He tells her that he needs to be “a warrior.” The Sister, having anticipated that answer, has already prepared the appropriate elixir. He drinks it, calling out to his former companions, including Charley and Lucie, and the now-familiar regeneration process starts.

An amazing job done in six-and-a-half minutes. Thank you, Paul McGann, for coming back and playing the role on television for us one more time.

Review: Doctor Who, "Dalek" and "Jubilee"

After watching “Dalek” recently, I listened to “Jubilee,” the Big Audio drama that inspired “Dalek,” the following day. The juxtaposition made for an interesting comparison.

In “Dalek,” the Ninth Doctor and Rose respond to a signal that takes them to the museum of a collector of alien artifacts. The prize of his collection is a damaged Dalek, a survivor of the Time War. The Dalek is kept in chains and tortured to talk, but it remains resolutely mute until it identifies the Doctor, at which point its instinct is to kill the Doctor. When Rose touches the Dalek, it absorbs her DNA, which both restores it to working order and corrupts it. After a rampage through the museum, killing almost everyone there, the Dalek finds that it can’t kill Rose and is ashamed of how it has developed this weakness. Lacking orders from a superior Dalek, it asks Rose to order it to self-destruct. She does so.

In “Jubilee,” the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe land initially in England in 1903, though the TARDIS won’t stay there. Ultimately, the two are left a century later, in an England that has fought the Daleks in 1903 and, with the help of the Doctor and Evelyn, won. (They have no memory of it, however, suggesting the 1903 events may take place in their future.) However, this England is a fascist empire with a cruel President. The President has a damaged Dalek, captured in 1903 by the current President’s great-grandfather. That Dalek, like the one in the TV episode, won’t speak even under torture. Also like the TV episode, the Dalek has had no orders from its superiors for a long time. As it is a soldier Dalek, it can only obey orders, not give them, and the lack of instructions has driven it mad. The President, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the defeat of the Daleks, plans to execute the last one publicly. At the same time, the President’s wife has hatched a plan to kill her husband and, with the help of the Dalek, rule in his place. The events of 1903 begin bleeding into the present day, leading to a full Dalek battle fleet arriving in England. The damaged Dalek, despite new orders from the Dalek Supreme, is unwilling to kill Evelyn, the only human to have shown it mercy. When the other Daleks eventually kill it, the corrupted time line collapses.

While the TV episode focused on how Rose’s DNA caused the Dalek to mutate in a way that it found unacceptable, the audio drama was more interested in the question of free will (as well as showing how the Daleks’ motivation to extinguish all other forms of life was ultimately pointless, as a culture attuned to conquest would always be looking for the next conquest, even if it had to do so among its own people - the English Empire illustrated that).

Filming “Jubilee” with the Ninth Doctor and Rose would have been impossible in a single episode, so I understand why they drastically re-wrote the plot. Yet the extra time available for the audio drama and the freedom from having to appeal to children as well as adults created the freedom to explore issues in a deeper way. Ultimately, the issue of free will among soldiers is the more interesting one.