Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Mysterious Planet

Drathro and the Twins

Doctor Who, Season 23, Story One - The Mysterious Planet

Michael Grade didn't like Doctor Who. He really, really didnt like it. After several complaints about Colin Baker's tenure on the show in 1985, Grade put the show on an 18 month hiatus and the production team had to come up with something to keep the show alive. In keeping with the public mood surrounding the show at the time, JNT decided to have an entire season of interlinked stories where The Doctor would be put on trial for the crimes that he had committed. Composed of four single stories with the plotline running through them, the 14-part Trial of a Timelord arc is a strange period in the show's history.
     The first story, written by verteran writer Robert Holmes, introduces the main Trial storyline. The Doctor, taken away from Peri, has been called here to face trial by a mysterious figure called the Valeyard, who acts as the prosecution and uses video evidence from The Matrix (from the previous Gallifrey stories) to claim that The Doctor is guilty of various crimes ranging from interferance to Genocide. He's played interestingly by the former Emmerdale actor, Michael Jayston, and for this serial at least the Trial aren't annoying yet.
     The "video evidence" in this serial is taken from The Doctor's past - an adventure from after Revelation of the Daleks but before Season 23. Peri and The Doctor arrive on the planet Ravalox, which the Doctor is visiting because it's eerily similar to Earth and, despite the Gallifreyan database's claims, is teeming with life. The Doctor and Peri are notably more friendly to one another here, another part of the show's attempt to regain viewers. Watching them are two weapons traders, Glitz and Dibber. I love Glitz; he's easily one of the best supporting characters in the Eighties. They're here to scavenge a robot called the L3, which has taken control of an underground city run by human slaves. They need to take down a Light Converter, which is being used by a local tribe (led by Joan Sims) as a totem pole. The Doctor and Peri discover the underground tunnels - the entrance appears to be the entrance to the London Underground. This disturbs The Doctor, and he intends to find out why Earth has been so changed.

The Valeyard (Michael Jayston)

     He heads underground while Peri is intercepted by the tribespeople. Joan Sims locks up Glitz and Dibber together with her. The Doctor is arrested as a "water theif" but is eventually saved and goes to see the L3, who calls himself "The Immortal". Glitz reveals that he's here for Time Lord knowledge being kept here. The L3, called Drathro, forces The Doctor to work on his power system. He manages to escape and is followed by Drathro's L1 robot. Along the way he finds the leader of the L3's guards, Merdeen, who has been secretly escorting people to the surface. He meets up with Glitz and Dibber, but they find themselves trapped by tribesmen on one side and the L1 on the other. The L1 is disabled temporarily but they're taken to the tribe and locked up. The L1 breaks in, disabling The Doctor and allowing the others to escape. The tribe luckily destroys the L1, but they believe that this is the Immortal and thus go storming into the underground. The Doctor and Peri follow, but are collared by Merdeen who shoots them into a cliffhanger. Turns out he was shooting another guy, who had tried to rat him out to The Immortal. The tribe discover the L3 and he kills Joan Sims.
     The Doctor goes in and faces the L3. They have an interesting conversation about what makes organic life more important than mechanical life. Glitz and Dibber accompany Peri through a hatch into the chamber, but they're trapped there by the L3. As Peri and The Doctor are tied up, Glitz bluffs his way into getting the information by claiming that they can save him; they kill him and The Doctor finally stops his machine from exploding. Everyone lives happily ever after, and The Valeyard moves onto the next stage of the trial.
     I like The Mysterious Planet more than common sense says I should. It's shoddy, the villain's design is ridiculous and the acting is melodramatic and over the top. But because of Joan Sims and the way that Glitz' joke-a-sec personality takes over, it has a feeling very similar to a Carry-On film. Robert Holmes, as we'll see when I look at The Caves of Androzani, is excellent at characterisation and satire, and that's why these two side-characters are in ways better than the main characters. Colin's wit and exuberance comes off much better here than in other areas and thus the character is more empathizable; Peri too, although she's a little absent in what would become her penultimate story. I'll comment more upon the Valeyard at the end of the Trial, but I will admit that the strong performance soon does become tedious by the third episode of the story. However, it does produce some of the season's best lines and monologues, and the best one in this serial is the one in Episode Four in which The Doctor claims that The Valeyard should, based on the tired decadence of his arguments, change his name to The Knackers' Yard.

The Time Lord is on Trial.

    The Trial dynamic is interesting in this serial, despite how tiring it gets later on. Unlike previous arcs, where it was either a string of serials following on from one another or completely different serials connected by a common theme, this instead tries to do both. Here, at least, it's successful - the trial scenes enhance the story rather than slow it down. Some scenes are in fact censored the Valeyard, and this makes the core concepts that bit more intriguing.
     The Mysterious Planet is a great start for the Trial of a Timelord Arc, with satirical side-characters and a comedy aesthetic that I love. The villain is a little shoddy, perhaps, and overall the ideas are not that innovative or interesting, but the key arc behind it all more than makes up for it. I love the core story and I love the rambles on Ravalox, where character is king.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Brian Blessed, A character I've met but you haven't and another craaazy scientist.

Review: Merlin 4.1: The Darkest Hour (Part One)

The Knights of the Round Table

Merlin's third series was an incredibly mixed bag, with the series' formulaic nature often hampering the progress of both the characters and the mytharc. I had hoped at the end of the last series that the status quo would finally be shattered, and that finally this series (which has now had its fifth series comissioned) would become a lot more dynamic. Perhaps I was hoping for too much from this already tired concept, but mostly it didn't stray too far from the slightly-altered norm.
      With Uther a broken man, Arthur is in charge of the kingdom. Morgana sacrifices , at her request, her sister Morgause to summon the demon Callieach and open the veil between worlds, releasing creatures known as the Voices of the Dead, or the Dhuroka. These creatures soon attack Camelot, bringing it to its knees. Arthur decides that if another sacrifice must be made then he should be the one to give his life. Merlin goes with the Knights of the Round table and the episode ends on the cliffhanger of death.
     There were some wonderfully tense moments in The Darkest Hour, particularly during the scenes in which the Knights and Merlin visited a village completely massacred by the Dhuroka. Stylistically the episode was much darker than it had been before, mainly to encourage fear of this forthnight's villains. The Dhuroka, straight out of a Moffatian fantasy, are a clever decision when creating fear and suspense - or they would be, if we didn't know how the story of Merlin will inevitably end.

Morgana (the stunning Katie McGrath)

      Katie McGrath seems to have learnt her lesson, and so far her villainy is less Disney villain more realistic sadism. This week she was accompanies by the King's brother, Elgaban (I'll never get any of these names right) played by Nathaniel Parker. I wish this revelation of his treachery could have been kept until a later episode; I suspected it from the moment he appeared (he was colour coded black, of course) and confirming it ten minutes later just ruined any suspense that that situation could create. In a similar vein, Morgana was told to beware of someone called "Emris" - Merlin, as we know -, puzzled on his identity for a bit and then had a vision showing that it was Merlin. What a waste.
     Other characters were also badly treated. A few of the knights didn't have speaking parts, while others served only to annoy. Angel Coulby, argueably the most important female character in the story, had only a few lines soley regarding Arthur. Two knights that we don't know the names of did get some character development, but I had no idea who they were and thus couldn't really judge.
     Merlin's return wasn't as catestrophically bad as last year's, but the episode didn't really improve upon any of Series Three's problems. Notably, it neglects advancements in the plot for atmospheric aesthetic, which may be fine for the casual viewer but isn't very fulfilling for someone watching for the Arthurian legend. It was, however, a step in the right direction; characterisations are falling into place despite unfair emphasis and it looks as though we're moving towards something brilliant.

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From hereon in, Merlin will be reviewed in Doctor Who's stead on Saturdays. Next week our story concludes, and the week after that we get an early treat from Misfits writer Howard Overman.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 6.13: The Wedding of River Song

Doctor Who?

Series Six will be remembered, in my mind, as the series of Moffat's Arc. Tacked onto the end of single episodes, this is an example of an arc that manages to be both intrusive and too light. It's as if Moffat only envisaged his episodes and unlike RTD didn't really touch upon the other scripts, which means that this series - already fragmented by a six-month long split - was incredibly inconsistent in quality. Now, after two years' worth of build up, is our climax.
     In many ways it was very similar to the finale preceeding it - a period of distortion where time and space were collapsing. But unlike The Big Bang, The Wedding of River Song answered questions, and in a way tht made them compelling rather than tedious. There were no big surprises, not really - everything panned out pretty much as most fans had expected it to, but the way it was handled felt fresh and so incredibly watchable.
     All of time is happening at once - pterodacyls fly over London as Emperor Winston Churchill sits inside Buckingham Palace surrounded by his Roman guard. The Doctor, kept as "the seer", recants to Chruchill how time froze in place when River emptied the cells on the spacesuit instead of killing The Doctor. The Silence infest the Palace but The Doctor is evacuated by a swat team led by Amy Pond, who in this reality is the head of a society fighting The Silence. At their base in one ofthe Cairo pyramids, River Song greets The Doctor with joy. He insists that he has to die or time will disintegrate, and the base is attacked by The Silents. River takes The Doctor up to the roof and reveals that she called upon everyone who ever loved The Doctor, and that there were so many they appeared to block out the sun. Eventually she gives in and The Doctor dies at Lake Silencio as in The Impossible Astronaught.

     However, as seen earlier in the episode, an older River reveals to Amy that the Doctor who died at Lake Silencio was in fact the Tesselecta from Let's Kill Hitler. This had always been a common fan theory ever since the device was introduced, and the fact that the device was given a lot of study in the "previously" intro made the solution rather obvious. However, I didn't feel let down by it. I've been very critical of this series, and for once this episode moved me. I was excited to learn the solution, no matter what it was, and that's either a testament to Moffat's writing or a critism of how intrusive the arc has really been that I can't wait for it to be over.
     And thus, like The Big Bang - the comparison is very worthy of thought, both set in a crumbling reality with River Song facing people who want the Doctor dead because he might destroy the Universe, with The Doctor appearing to sacrifice himself before being miraculously brought back - there isn't much more to say. Unlike Moffat's other efforts, his finales are so far have been rather simple tales and I've enjoyed them. For me, this climax wasn't truely mindbending or confusing, and the characters that I'd been getting tired of bowed out (hopefully) in a way which made me intrigued for next year. Thank you, and goodnight.

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Merlin 4.1 is coming tomorrow, and from then on will take Doctor Who's place on Saturday nights. Mondays will feature the Classic Doctor Whos that I mentioned in "High Turnover," as will Being Human Series Two on Tuesdays and Fades on Wednesdays. Thank you if you've read all of my Series Six reviews, and if you haven't then why not click on the "DW32" tag at the top of this post? Anyway.

Thanks.

Review: Being Human 2.2

Hell tries to trap Annie.

Like Fades, the second series of Being Human doesn't have any real change in quality between the first two episodes. In a way the two are connected, and the tyle of the episode feels very much like this is a direct continuation from last week. It isn't particularly centric in any direction, but the main focuses are on Mitchell and Annie, which is a good note in my book. As the conclusion to the opener it ramped up the tension and introduced the series' themes in a way that made the previous episode feel rather more transitionary.
     In Annie's storyline, Saul begins to experience what he thinks are hallucinations; Terry Wogan talks to him on the television and tells him to tell Annie about his near-death experience. He does so and the two bond over the "corridor" after death, but Saul becomes violent and Annie is forced to teleport away from him. The hallucinations tell him that Annie refused death and persuade him to drink-drive. Later, at the hospital, Annie tries to guide Saul's spirit to the afterlife. It turns out that this situations has been a manipulation by the people from Hell to try and forced Annie through the door, but Saul regains his humanity and sacrifices himself for her. At the end of the day she returns to Hugh, who she realises loves her, and finds that she is now once again invisible to mortals. I thought this short-lived love triangle got a tad cheesy at times, but the idea of a autocratic manipulation of events to persuade a ghost to pass on is an intriguing one in concept at least, and provides Annie with character aims for the first half of this series.
     Mitchell was more preoccupied with the appearance of an old friend, Carl, who was the vampire that trained him to stay off blood. Carl is in hiding after bowing to his urges and drinking from his human lover, and the coroner who used to cover the vampire cases during Herrick's time is refusing to help. Against Nina's best wishes, George helps Mitchell to smuggle Carl off on a Merchant ship to South America (a theme in Being Human is to make the comparison between vampires and Nazis, escaping crimes by going to South America). That night Nina leaves, unable to cope with their lifestyle, and is taken in by Kemp. This storyline was trying to make us empathise with Nina, but because Carl was a genuinely good man who had made a mistake because of his biology, it felt like she was overreacting. Admittedly the fact she moved in at all after only a few months seems a tad silly, so her leaving didn't have that much effect either.

Carl and George talk ethics.

      Perhaps I'm just jarred by the change of pace. These first two episodes have been heavy on the religious themes and deep contemplations of the nature of humanity, and that really doesn't feel right for what was previously a lighthearted comedy series with a few more serious undertones. Like the child entering its teens the show has thrown out the comedic lavour and instead fallen into full drama, which while not necessarily a bad thing is a tad off here.
     The second episode of this darker series feels like a conclusion to the premiere, and sets in stone the series' new approach to the subject matter at hand. It's tense and powerful but to regular viewers of the first series the change is very jarring and stands to the show's detriment in places. That isn't to say that I'm not enjoying it, but I'm doing so for very different reasons that as before.

Thanks.

Review: Fades 1.2

Neil preaches to Paul.

Fades' second episode didn't do anything to really change my opinion of it, and instead delivered much of the same thing. Still holding its balance of gothic horror and quirky comedy (almost what Being Human was aiming for), the show continues to be engaging and entertaining. 
     Paul has a frightening dream showing the corpses of his loved ones as Neil destroys the bodies of his fallen comrades and takes Paul to look for someone to explain his visions. There he meets a little girl from Neil's past called Natalie, who tries to kill him. They meet Eric, one of the earliest Angelics, who's the oldest Fade he knows. Eric recognises Paul as "important", and Neil takes this, coupled with Natalie being able to touch, as a bad omen.
     After they get involved in some school stuff, Neil saves Paul from some Fades and tells him that he has to go underground, abandoning everyone he knows. The Fades are eating humans to convert them into more of themselves. Paul goes home but can't face his family, and so he stays at Mac's house, where his drunken father beats him. To his surprise, Paul is able to heal Mac's injuries.
     The episode climaxes with a party where Neil is attacked by the Fades (but not killed/eated for some reason) and Paul works out after snogging Jay that he can live a double life. In Mark's storyline, he's watched over by Sarah as his grief leads him to attack pupils and sleep with the girl from the first episode.
     Of all the things I admire about Fades, the most important is the show's focus on all of its characterisations. Everyone is fundamentally real and realistically flawed in a way that makes the show more compelling than it would otherwise be. This helps to makes the show stand out against the fantasy-horror predecessors it's trying to emulate and certainly makes me more concerned about what's happening. This of course meant that we didn't learn much more about the mythos of the show, but the character development, mixed in with plenty of humour, is entertaining enough in itself to sustain the series. I really enjoyed the development of Mac's character a lot, and it's a testament to this series that someone who could only serve as comic relief has such a detailed personality. Even the named Fades are somewhat human, despite never even talking, and the least likeable character in the series - Paul's sister who controls the school's cliques - has a few touches of humanity. This approach is generally favourable to Centric stories, I find, because they can often lead to characters being badly written along the sides.

Paul and Jay

     The balance between the comedy and horror is very well managed, and as I mentioned, it seems like the Being Human team learnt their lesson when it comes to Fades. The tone of the series so far is incredibly dark, no doubt encouraged by the hyperbolic advertising campaign. Perhaps for the better, the humour relies more on the characters and less on the dark nature of the series, which means that it hopefully won't become snuffed out as in Being Human.
      At the end of the day there isn't much more to say about this episode other than it reinforced the thoughts I already had. Fades is an engaging piece of entertainment that juggles a brilliant if cliche gothic horror and a fast-paced wit bolstered by outstanding characterisations. I'm really enjoying it and I can't see, based on this episode, that changing very soon.

Thanks.

P.S. Yes. I know it's called "The Fades". I just think that's an unnecessary definite article, and I'm not gonna change it.

News: High turnover!

In order to make this blog's second anniversary (all the way on February 4th!) special, I've been trying to write more reviews than I normally would. The downside to this is that I'm really getting through my material, and my aim (400 posts) is a little far-fetched. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my increased workrate and that this will encourage more people to read my work.
     Coming up before the Anniversary we'll have Trial of a Time Lord Month in October, where I'll look at Colin Baker's second season as The Doctor. October will also see the return of Merlin, as well as the end of my Doctor Who reviews (for both Seasons 27 and 32). Being Human reviews will continue weekly on Tuesdays, and Fades on Wednesdays.
      In November I'll finally finish Lost with three Finale reviews and we'll also see the return of Misfits for an eight-part series! In Classic Doctor Who I'll examine three of the show's classics - Spearhead from Space, Caves of Androzani and Vengeance on Varos. I'll also be reviewing some films.
      In December I'll exhaust my Doctor Who supply by ending the year with The Beginning, the first three serials from 1963. Merlin and Misfits will finish, and I'll review the Christmas special as Audenshaw Reviews bows out to 2012.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Four To Doomsday

Android Frogs arrive to take over the world!

Doctor Who - Season 19, Story Two - Four To Doomsday

Because they wanted Davison's first story to be at least mildly well-performed, the first one he ever recorded was the second story of the season, Four to Doomsday. Fans don't give it a lot of credit; its shoddy special effects and the fact that it comes between two of the Fifth Doctor's more notable stories certainly doesn't help, but the serial itself is a recent favourite of mine for more reasons than one. It's certainly nowhere near perfect, but no Who story truly is and a lot of the time this story's foibles are what make it so entertaining.     
      The Doctor and his roster of three companions are bickering in the Tardis, Adric showing a bit of a chavanistic side, when The Doctor lands where he thinks is Heathrow Airport 1982 - get used to it, this is a common theme throughout Davison's run and this season in particular. In fact he's landed on a spaceship headed towards Earth, run by the mysterious Monarch (the affably evil Stratford Johns) and his creepy assistants Persuasion and Enlightenment. Carrying what appear to be four groups of Earth based civilisations going back in four-thousand year gaps, Monarch keeps the four Tardis passengers on the ship and they soon discover the truth behind Monarch's plot. He believes himself a God, and through the use of android technology he plans to recreate his entire civilisation as immortal beings, and to do so he's going to invade Earth, kill the inhabitants and then use the planet's crust for his silicon chips. Despite Adric going out of his way to side with the villain, The Doctor wins round the leaders of the android civilisations and defeats Monarch, leaving the androids free to find their own planet and live in peace forever.
     Four To Doomsday's enemies are the frog-like people of Urbanka, and their use is incredibly well-done. Stratford Johns, working under the stresses of a heavy costume, still portrays a likeable but ultimately megolamaniac Monarch, who delivers some of the episode's best lines - "Ah, conformity. Is there any other freedom?" - in a way that, considering the stresses he was under, is admirable. Enlightenment and Persuasion are the first clues to the ship's mechanical nature as they change themselves from the frog-like creatures into two humanoids played by Annie Lambert and Paul Shelly respectively. Shelly is especially good as the sly, manipulative Persuasion, who serves as Monarch's Dragon for the majority of the serial.Lambert has less of a presence, but she doesn't harm the story.

He hasn't grounded his 4026B...

     Guest stars aside from the villains are ok if not stellar; Bond actor Phillip Locke's role as the Athenian Leader Bigon is fascinating to watch and his delivery of the mid-serial bombshell that everyone on the ship is an Android (carved around the new twice-a-week-scheduling) is mindblowing. Elsewhere, and Burt Kwouk plays the Chinese leader with the charm that he brings to every one of his characters.
     Davison makes a point in the commentary that this episode couldn't have been done as a Baker story, and I agree with him. Davison is a lot more active here than Tom was in his final series, and some of the special effects seem like they might have angered his sense of familiarity with the process (flying through space as performed by riding an office chair over a blue screen, for instance). Maybe Tom would have a bit more fun with the megalomaniac villain angle but over all things this was written specifically for Five and thus he fills the role perfectly.
      Companions, however, are another story entirely. Janet Fielding is funny on the commentary, and that's the only solace I can find that Tegan is even here, her unrealistic characterisation carried over from her first few appearances and not improving here any. With so many companions, they all become incredibly one note and if that note is off-key than it strikes particularly badly - Tegan is gobby and yet absurdly skilled (she's able to draw a still-life drawing of what she considers average dress from memory as well as speak a 40,000 year old Australasian dialect), Adric is annoying, chavanistic and whiney and Nyssa... Nyssa doesn't do much. Of course one could blame this on the fact that she wasn't written into these early stories until the last minute - the next story has her faint unexpectedly for no reason and then get better at the end - but it doesn't exactly add credence to the three-companion drive when one of them, and the least irritating one at that, is constantly sidelined.

Tenko, you say? Never heard of it.

      Another thing mentioned in the commentary that is a lot more sublte than one would expect is the use of lighting. The set they had was on the edge of the studio and was plain white, and so to inject some colour lighting is used incredibly well to provide an atmosphere for the story.  One thing I love, probably influenced by other sci-fi, are the swooshy doors which appear to have come at a great cost to the production team but make the setting seem like less of a set and more like a real space ship. There's also no music at all except for a few rare moments, which is strange considering Eighties Who's habit of having intrusive melodies constant in the background.
      Four To Doomsday makes the best of a bad lot, using lighting and music - the notable lack of - to create an atmospheric and interesting piece of television bolstered and complimented by the brilliant acting on display. There are a lot of problems with it, but the story has an inescapable charm that leads me to chuckle at the absurdity instead of groan. Davison's first outing is an entertaining hundred minutes and sets the tone of his serial perfectly after the rough leftovers from Castrovalva.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 1.8: Father's Day

Pete Tyler

During the era in which Who was off air, the nature of modern sci-fi changed. Notably, time paradoxes and examinations of such became incredibly popular, and to keep up with the times Who was going to have to produce a story that messed with Time. Moffat would later take this and run away with it, but in Series One this task was left for writer Phil Cornell, who was a prolific writer of Doctor Who fiction during the Era. Taking an opportunity to develop the characters as well as present an interesting concept, Father's Day has the right ingredients to make one excellent cake.
     Rose's father Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall) died when she was a baby, and the memories of the aftermath have haunted Rose ever since. On her request The Doctor takes her to the incident in 1987, where Rose wants to make sure that her dad didn't die alone. The first time, however, she fails, and so The Doctor lets her do it again with the warning that they can't cross timelines with their past selves. Rose can't help herself, pushing her dad out of the way of the oncoming car and saving his life. The Doctor is angry at her because the laws of time have been broken and now they'll have to pay the price.
     The Tardis interior disappears and strange creatures (not named, but referred to in publicity as Reapers) arive out of nowhere and start eating people. After barricading everyone inside a church The Doctor explains that these are creatures who live outside Time and who have come to sterilize the wound. The Doctor himself is eaten by a Reaper and the TARDIS is destroyed, but everything is set right when Pete realises that he shouldn't be alive and throws himself in front of the car, which had been driving around the block for the entire episode.

Rose and Nine try again. No, not that way. Rude.

     I mentioned in previous reviews that this series touched upon the characterisation of the Companion a lot more than the classic series, and this is a big example of the techniques this series uses to do so. On its own, Father's Day would make a decent if slightly convaluted (the laws of time presented here are never visited again) sci-fi time travel story, but it's the underlying plot with Rose's dad that makes it so compelling. Both Rose and then The Doctor are prepared to rip apart space and time for one man, who it turns out is nothing like the rich businessman of Rose's imaginings but more of a Del Boy. Then, of course, we have the lovely touch where it's revealed that Pete instead sacrificed himself to the timeline to save the woman who he now recognises as his daughter. This is great characterisation right here.
     However, this does strike a pretty big contrast when compared to the previous episode. All Adam did was send some info about futuristic computers home and he was kicked out of the TARDIS; here Rose endangers the entirety of time and space and Nine's hunkey dory about the whole thing. And herein lies its main issue; the episode is more skewered towards an emotional reaction rather than an intellectually satisfying one. Instead of learning her lesson here, Rose would go on to make even more time fuck-ups and there really is no excuse after what happened here. I can accept that The Doctor may have felt some empathy with Rose for wanting to return the people she loves, but Rose had to break more laws of time just to fix the mess she made.

Do not fear the Reaper...

     RTD's Who was always about the big emotional punch and this is yet another episode where that focus gets in the way of what could have been a really good sci-fi story. It could have been perfect, but the story was a little too balanced towards the melodrama and often felt ignorant of common sense - a let down for what is otherwise one of this series strongest episodes so far.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 6.12: Closing Time

Gareth Roberts' "The Lodger" began life as a Tenth Doctor comic strip, and was adapted as an Eleventh Doctor companion-lite episode last year. Here, for the first time in NuWho, we forgo the two-parter finale and instead have a penultimate that not only brings back Craig (James Corden) from that episode but gives us the first focus on the Cybermen since the changeover. After the string of confused, arc-enthused episodes that this series has so far produced, will this more light-hearted offering change anything?
     Well, it was certainly more arc-oriented than I expected. The Doctor, two hundred years after dropping Amy and Rory off, pops in to see Craig on a "farewell tour" before he dies. While initially The Doctor insists that he won't save them and that he's only there for a housecall, he feels he has to notice what's going on - strange power fluctuations in the area and a disappearance at a local shop. To the dismay of Craig, home alone looking after his baby (who converses with The Doctor and prefers to be named "Stormaggedon"), The Doctor gets a job in the shop where the woman disappears and finds a teleport link to a Cyberman spaceship. After capturing a Cybermat that was draining the store's power, the two face the Cybermen in person and Craig is nearly converted into a Cyber-Controller . The day is only saved when Craig hears the sound of his baby crying and an emotional loop destroys the Cybermen. The Doctor goes off to the last day of his life and on Luna University, Doctor Song is captured by The Silence and placed, inside a spacesuit, at the bottom of Lake Silencio.
     I was perhaps hoping too much from the episode's villains, the Cybermen. They've consistantly been my favourite Who monster in concept rather than execution, mainly because there hasn't been a really, really good Cyberman story since the 1960s. Here they felt a bit more like the Classic Cybermen - an aspect of the episode that I was looking forward to - but that didn't make up for their shoddy voice-work and lack of motivation beyond the norm. They didn't have any charm, and while they weren't necessarily the most important part of the episode it still stood out. And the solution to the all of their problems was just nonsensical - the Cybermen, whose entire ideology is to eradicate difference and thus Emotion, apparently have no safeguards against it.
     Craig and The Doctor should have worked better than it did, with most of the "bonding" being done through the Baby, who became a character in his own right. It was funny in places, but after a while it became routine and the other underlying theme regarding the Doctor's impending death is not exactly news. James Corden played more of a comedy character here, which is a bad idea - his only saving grace in The Lodger was that he was the straight man in the duo. Oh, and there was a subplot where that women from Come Outside thought they were a gay partnership.

Hi. I'm just here to sprout stereotypes. Good day.

      This in mind, the only thing that this episode really leaves you with is those final few moments that relate to the arc. Yes, the arc this year has been incredibly messy, but this episode is the penultimate piece is a two-series-long jigsaw puzzle, and I can only hope that the final piece gives us a much clearer picture than has be presented. I actually went and watched The Impossible Astronaught after watching this, and I think that despite initial appearances this arc is tighter than I thought. That doesn't make up for lack of good storytelling, but we won't be able to fully judge that until next week.
     Closing Time purported to be a breather episode like its predecessor last year, but in many ways it was still a Penultimate Episode. Aside from the few pivotal points relating to the arc, it made the fatal mistake of being disappointing in some areas and boring everywhere else. Maybe it's the arc overshadowing everything, maybe it's because I'm disappointed by the treatment of the Cybermen, but I really felt let down by this otherwise average episode. Sorry.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Mindfucks galore as we gate-crash The Wedding of River Song.

Review: Fades 1.1

BBC Three is good at things like this. Being Human in itself is proof of that, and Fades' cryptic advertising campaign duals with its relatively all-star cast to create something that could be so much better. My impression of the series by the first episode alone? Well, it's impressive - there's a nice mixture of mythology and character work, and it runs on that to create something both emotionally connective and intriguing.
     The premise revolves around a quasi-religious ideology; the Fades are the remnants of people whose souls haven't ascended. Whether one ascends is random, but the Fades often become spiteful because of their eternal limbo. The series begins as our protagonist, Paul (Iain De Caestecker) with his friend Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) discovers the Fades for the first time via an incident with a Fade that has broken through into the world of the living, killing Sarah (Natalie Dormer) and half-blinding Neil (Johnny Harris) who serves as our series' Obi-wan. Paul is balancing his life by a thread; he has constant bad dreams which cause him to wet the bed, and he's in a loose Will-they-won't-they situation with the girl of his dreams. When he finds out that the visions he sees are caused by his pre-ordained ability rather than personal delusions, he goes with Neil to discover the truth. Elsewhere, Mark (Miranda's Tom Ellis), Sarah's partner, works at the school as a teacher and is devastated by the news of her death.
      I bring up Mark because it would be easy to overlook his character entirely. The majority of the episode was a pair of double acts between Paul and either Neil or Mac. Kaluuya, fresh from a cancelled Psychoville, puts his comedy bones to good use and provides some much needed comic relief in an episode where the mythology is on the gory side. In fact, all of the characters are instantly watchable and fundamentally human. In fact, the only performance I had trouble with was Dormer, whose lines consist of trailer taglines.

      The episode doesn't really pick up until about ten minutes in, after the very mythology-laden beginning falls away for the character development that I so loved in this episode. Paul is the textbook flawed protagonist; and Neil is the textbook "wise old one". But it still feels fresh despite how worn the format is and the while the concept itself is by no means new - and what ideas are nowadays - it's well executed, in a way that has me wanting more next week.
      The first episode of Fades was near-perfect, with well-written characterisations fused perfectly with gory visuals and interesting mythology to back it up. While it had a slow first few mintutes, when it got going it was an incredibly gripping piece of television that I'll definitely return to next week. The perfect premier.

Thanks.