Review: Doctor Who 6.9: Night Terrors

A good excuse for wooden acting....

Having just reviewed an episode by Gatiss, I was looking forward to this episode. I've been getting tired by the arc episodes and I was hoping for a change to preceedings. While the episode is certainly the best Gatiss has done since The Unquiet Dead, its initially creepy exterior collapsed into a bit of a disappointment. The episode promised so much in its initial premise that I can't help but feel a little put-out by the results.
     For a reason that's not explained, The Doctor's psychic paper alerts him the cries of a small child in contempory Bristol. Amy and Rory acted rather blasé about going to find their child, surprising after the ordeal with Melody. This is because this episode was written for before the break but got moved back for one reason or another. Interesting. The boy, George, is frightened of everything and his father Alex (Daniel Mays, last seen in Outcasts and Ashes To Ashes} and he doesn't know what to do. Amy and Rory are somehow transported into a doll's house as The Doctor arrives at the house and identifies something very powerful inside his wardrobe.
     Inside the Doll's House, empty-eyed dolls stalk the halls and transform anyone sucked in into another doll. It's quite a creepy transformation scene, especially when Amy's plan to surprise the dolls ends up with her being made into wood. The Doctor persuades Alex that the monsters in his cupboard are real, but when he looks there's nothing but the toys that George is afraid of. When The Doctor realises (and reveals} that George can't be Alex's son because his wife is infertile. He surmises that George is in fact an alien called a Tenza that was attracted to his "parents" need for a child, but is so powerful that he makes real his fears. They get sucked in, but the day is saved when Alex finally accepts George as his son and everyone is returned to normal.
      The dolls, so heavily featured in this episodes' publicity, are incredibly creepy - their wooden hands and charicaturish heads, as well as their echoing childish giggling meant that they were the first genuinely scary monsters in quite a while - for me, anyway. My only problem with them was the fact that they didn't actually make sense - they were the personifications of George's fears but were stunningly specific. It was as if Gatiss was trying to write a Moffat-esque horror story and went wrong along the way.

"Claire CAN'T HAVE kids!"

     Episode placement really buggered this episode up in far too many ways. As it was written, Amy is still a Ganger here, and she also doesn't give a damn about her child. I gave it some leeway when I was watching the episode because stylistically the tone was so very different to Let's Kill Hitler, but if I view it in context (which, with Moffat's arcing, I have to}then they seem incredibly cold and out-of-character. When I watch this, Amy is still a Ganger and The Doctor's oblivious to his fate. And to top it all off, this episode is paradoxically family oriented. Jamie Oram, who plays George, portrays a vision of a really messed-up kid, but it's not unreal. The story's ultimate solution is The Power of Love and acceptance of Family, and because of the fact that this episode wasn't written with the events of AGMGTW/LKH in mind, it lost all of its potential gravitas.
      Gatiss' Night Terrors was tense and its villains creepy, but it failed in the one key area where this current series has a specialisation. The main characters were sidelined in an episode that was well out of its time and a pale impression of what it was aiming for. I still enjoyed the first half, with the tension and the mystery surrounding it still intact, but once we learnt what the secrets behind the episode's yarn it soon became tiresome. If anything, Night Terrors was a sorely missed oppourtunity to do something really interesting and potent, but was let down by its scheduling on a massive scale.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.3: The Unquiet Dead

"Pity the Gelth."

Mark Gattis has been a life-long fan of Doctor Who. Mainly a comedy writer in the League of Gentlemen Quartet, he often used his love for the program to influence his comedy during the Cancellation Era. His scripts for NuWho haven't always been up to scratch; his disastrous Victory of the Daleks is a good example. But he was chosen as the first writer of the series other than Russell T Davies, so this should be a marked difference from the first two episodes.
     The Doctor and Rose, heading for 1860 Naples instead end up in 1869 Cardiff, where corpses are coming alive sporadically, much to the chagrin of the Undertaker and his psychic maid (Gwenyth, played by Eve Myles of Torchwood fame}. By coincidence, the great Charles Dickens (Simon Callow} is in town, and one of the corpses interrupts a reading of A Christmas Carol. While the Undertaker has chloroformed Rose, The Doctor and Dickens {after a little flattery} head off in chase. Rose awakens to find herself in a room, where a mysterious blue gas animates another corpse. The Doctor figures out the nature of the creatures and manages to get her out of there. The corpses tell him to open the Rift, as they're dying.
     Charles denies the existence of these creatures. The Doctor explains the Rift for the first time (this episode is the base for Torchwood's entire mythos} explaining that there's something trying to come through. Charles listens to the gas and inspects the corpses, but The Doctor challenges his skepticism. Gwenyth and Rose talk, with Gwenyth talking about "big metal birds" and mentioning the Bad Wolf (this series' arc words}. The Doctor appears and reveals that because she grew up on the Rift, she's keyed into it.

What the Shakespere?

    They hold a "seance" and the aliens use her to communicate. They're called the Gelth, and claim that they've been removed from their own bodies by the Time War. They want to occupy the bodies of the dead. Rose is passionately against the idea but The Doctor wants to let them through. Gwenyth gets power of veto, and they head down to the Morgue to let them through. It turns out the Gelth actually want to take over the Earth, and so Charles escapes while Rose and The Doctor get trapped.
     As The Doctor apologises to Rose and informs her that she can in fact die before she was ever born, Charles works out how to defeat them, and turns all of the gas taps up in the house, which forces the Gelth to evacuate their bodies. Gwenyth, unable to send them back and already dead because of what's happened to her, she sacrifices herself by blowing up the house and trapping the Gelth. They mourn her, and then allow Charles his last Christmas present by letting him watch the Tardis materialise.
     This episode's guest cast are superb and provide some of the episode's best moments. Notable Literature-lover Simon Callow performs the role of Dickens perfectly, and his character undergoes a rather appropriately Scrooge-esque transformation over the course of the story. The moment at the end where The Doctor says that Dickens' work will live on forever is moving and well directed. Eve Myles, meanwhile, doesn't give us the over-the-top stereotype that the "psychic" archetype demands, and instead portrays a realistic 19th Century servant girl cursed with unusual circumstance.
       The Rift element within the Historical is not very well utlized here, but I don't hold that against the story as does introduce the device for later stories in this series and in Torchwood to do more with. The Gelth are an incredibly interesting species, their nature not only tieing into the ongoing idea of The Time War but also perfectly fitting the story's Dickensian Ghost motif.

The Doctor gets a stiff reception.

     Mark Gattis' first script for the series doesn't disappoint, with a clever and touching script that pays homage to one of the greatest writers of the 19th Century. For some, this is where Doctor Who "came back," and I understand why. The Unquiet Dead is a brilliant episode and surely heralds great things to come. What's that? The next episode is Aliens of London? Oh dear. Til next time.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.2: The End of the World

Welcome to The End of the World.

"At the time of broadcast, it featured the most extensive use of CGI yet seen on Doctor Who." So says my main Doctor Who reference guide, The TARDIS Index File, on today's episode, The End of the World. After the opener, the best way for the makers of any series to cement a show's good image is to produce a good Second Episode. In the minds of RTD's production team, this amounted to splashing out on the special effects budget and creating lots of aliens and special effects. While the episode certainly does not lead up to it's title's expectations of quality, it does have a few issues that stop from doing its job properly.
     The episode opens with a continuation of Rose. The Doctor, trying to impress her, takes her five billion years to the future. They land on a space-ship, Platform One, designed to witness the destruction of the Earth by an expanding sun. Using The Doctor's psychic paper they're brought in as guests, and we get a strangely theatrical showcase of a wide variety of aliens, like The Moxx of Balhoon and the Tree People. Most interesting to Rose, however, is Lady Cassandra O'Brien (voiced by Zoe Wannamaker} who is the last human - a sheet of skin stretched out over a frame. The female tree person, Jabe, flirts with The Doctor, while mysterious men in cloaks hand out spheres. These spheres open out into spider-like robots that sabotague the ship and kill the ship's steward (an excellent performance by Simon Day, who we'll see more of in Being Human}.
     Rose is a little put out by the ordeal, and in another room she argues with the Doctor, who refuses to reveal his home planet. They reconcile and The Doctor alters her phone so that it can make phone calls throughout time and space. The ship shakes and while The Doctor and Jabe go into the Maintenance ducts to find out what's happening, Rose is knocked out and shoved into the room. Jabe reveals that she knows about The Doctor and is amazed that he even exists - and that she is very sorry. The Doctor manages to save Rose by the skin of his teeth.

"Sun Filters. Rising"

     In a poirot-esque scene, The Doctor uses the robot to identify the culprits - the shady guys, who it turns out are androids. They in turn are controlled by Lady Cassandra. She'd hoped to use the droids to create a false hostage situation and claim millions in compensation so as to further fund her operations. She teleports away, planning to kill them all. In true sci-fi style, The Doctor tracks the system restore switch to a big lever at the end of a corridor bolstered by three giant fans. The Doctor attempts to get across, with Jabe assisting by holding a switch to slow the fans down. Soon she becomes too hot and spontaneously combusts, leaving The Doctor to Matrix-style phase through the final fan and save the day - minus Jabe and the Moxx of Balhoon. Cassandra is brought back via some jiggery-pokery, and an angry Doctor watches as she dies without moisterisation by her assistance. The Doctor takes Rose home, reassuring her about the fate of humanity and revealing that his planet, Gallifrey, was destroyed in a war leaving him the only Time Lord left.
     The episode, despite how much it suffers from being a demonstration of the New Series' budget, does actually have some interesting ideas. The majority of the weird and wonderful things we're shown at the beginning of the episode get expanded upon, and while the aesthetic of the aliens is a little childish, the villain's motivation is straight out of political satire. It doesn't get the balance of ideas right, but that in mind it is an episode that I enjoy. It has a camp demeanor to it that I love, no doubt helped by Simon Day's Steward.
     One problem I certainly do have with it is the near-theatrical direction. The opening showcase of the various aliens felt very forced and trailer-like, and there's a scene later on where to show his angst The Doctor simply looks away from Rose in the manner of a small child. It's scenes like these that make some fans accuse Nine of being emo, and while it's important to show that the genocide of his people actually has an effect on him I do see their point. While Ecclestone's acting is usually superb this is one moment that really stands out and really it's more the fault of the director, Euros Llyn.

Moisturise me!

     Zoe Wannamaker really chews the scenery with Cassandra. The execution seems a little fake because of the 2005 CGI, but the core ideas behind her are sound - the human quest for immortality, the nature of purity and eugenics etc.. It's just that... well... she's a piece of skin over a frame with a face that hangs there without any real means of doing so. It stretches not only belief but my tolerance. Cassandra was a stupid character idea when I was a nine-year-old and it's still as stupid now.
     Yeah, the thing feels like a school-play and the alien designs comply with nothing Darwin ever thought of, but there is a charm to be found within The End of the World. Its writing is excellent, portraying a future which, despite being strangely focused on the 21st Century, still holds some of the constants we've come to know. There are "lower classes" of blue people, rival companies fighting each other and one big compensation scam to fund plastic surgery. The End of the World is a study of humanity's flaws, but it takes a strange method to do it with.

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P.S. This is the last of my daily reviews. I'm going back into school on Monday, and thus the only reviews I'll be posting are of Torchwood 4, Doctor Who and Merlin and Misfits when they return. I will try to keep reviewing Series One, but don't be disappointed if I can't.

Review: Torchwood 4.8: End of the Road

Shapiro looks over operations.

I certainly enjoyed this week's episode of Torchwood more than previously, although I could sense from my family that they were incredibly bored by the affair. End of the Road (a title that's been exploited by a lot of the series' cynical reviewers} was more about ideas than anything else, and it soon became incredibly convoluted as several weeks' worth of exposition was shoved into an hour-long period. There was a lot more to chew on, but on a base level it wasn't very entertaining.
     Taken to the house of Jack's former lover Angelo, his granddaughter Olivia revealed that her grandfather remained alive via normal means, and also exposits that the series' villains are three families who all have "The Blessing", providing them with immortality. Soon rogue-CIA agent Friedkin arrives to sort them out, being the Families' representative, but through some trickery that didn't make much sense, Rex managed to get Friedkin to confess his crimes in front of proper CIA agent Shapiro (Star Trek's John de Lancie}. After that little sojurn is taken care of, Jack says goodbye to the older Angelo who then dies without warning - the only corpse in the world. Jack finds the solution to be a panel under his bed that nulls the morphic field sustaining the human race. Jack decides that he needs to escape for some reason and so attempts to get away from the house, but he's shot in the process and Esther is left to drive him away.
     Oswald and Jilly, meanwhile, returned on the scene but were in fact less interesting than before. Oswald, keen to further confuse his character, ordered Jilly to get him a whore. When she arrives he unintentionally reveals that he wants her to be his first date, and she then laughs at him because he's going to become a Category Zero - people previously sentenced to death get put into the Modules. Oswald is pissed, and after fighting with Jilly he runs off, and she is invited by her contact to be granted "the Blessing."

Esther makes a personal call.

     The return of Oswald and Jilly only served to highlight their inconsistancies. Now Oswald is somehow a shy and lonely individual frightened for his life, and then moments later he's beating Jilly like there's no tomorrow. I don't really see why they were here, as apart from a bit of exposition to do with a new category, not much happened. The episode's other guests were a lot better. John de Lancie is an excellent character actor, and his appearance in the main story improved things immedately - his fast-paced snark and wit meant that he had a lot more life than the rest of the characters. Nana Visitor's Olivia Colasanto was also interesting to watch, despite the fact that she was burdoned by most of the exposition before being offed quite nastily.
     And finally we got something close to Torchwood's premise. The panel under the bed is the first plot-relevant piece of alien tech in Miracle Day, and the fact that it's taken eight hours to get here is irritating. Some people are calling Miracle Day a "mystery" series and that like a good mystery novel it should hold its cards to its chest for the viewer to work out the answers. The problem with that theory is twofold; A.} There haven't been any "clues" to pin together, and B.} I don't watch Torchwood for mystery. I watch Torchwood for well-made sci-fi.
     It's obvious that Torchwood is gearing up for it's big finale, but at this rate it's more likely to go out with a whimper than a bang. Despite some good guest characters, it's a little belated and the episode was still bogged down with everything that afflicts Miracle Day - inconsistant character motivations, misplaced political commentary and a pace so slow as to put the majority of viewers off.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.1: Rose

The Doctor explodes into Rose's life.

When Doctor Who ended in 1989, it was the end of an era. The sci-fi phenomenon that had so affected British Culture for over 25 years was cancelled at the request of television executive Michael Grade, who hated the program. Aside from a few disasterous attempts like Dimensions in Time, the next Who wouldn't appear for seven years, when the Movie was released in 1996. That flopped, but it did inspire a producer by the name of Russell T Davies to revive the show and, 16 years after its cancellation, the revived show aired in 2005. The Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, was joined by former 90's pop star Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.
     The weight upon this story's shoulders is understandably immense. Rose was faced with the task of not only proving that the show could be revived, but introducing the show and its mythos to a brand new generation while reinventing it to meet modern standards. The careers of everyone involved were on the line. Suffice to say that my reviews of Matt Smith's series are proof of how it fared. Rose has its issues, but before I go on about the specifics it is important to recognise its role in Who history.
     We're introduced to our companion for this season, Rose Tyler, almost immediately. She's a normal girl living a normal life; a blond shop assistant living with Mum Jackie (Camille Coduri} and happy with loser boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke, whom I mentioned in TW:Combat}. Then one day she's attacked by show-window dummies in the back of her shop and meets an eccentric stranger known only as The Doctor. He helps Rose escape before he blows up the building; he's getting rid of the transmitter that's making the plastic beings (Classic Series monsters known as Autons} work. In the process she's given an Auton arm, which her boyfriend Mickey disposes of.

100% Polypropelene!

     The arm crawls back up to try and kill her, however, but The Doctor picks it up. Rose brings him into the house and questions him, but he walks out and tells her to forget him. Researching, Rose (with Mickey} goes to see a Doctor enthusiast named Clive {the creepy Mark Benton} who gives some backstory. Meanwhile, Mickey is... eaten by a wheely bin. That burps afterwards. Dear oh dear. Mickey is replaced by an obvious-looking Auton duplicate. The Doctor arrives and beheads the duplicate, taking Rose with him to the TARDIS.
     They trace the origin signal from the head but they can't get too close. After Rose gets over the shock of The Doctor being a space-travelling alien, they banter about Mickey and where the signal is coming from, which turns out to be the London Eye. Climbing down into the base of the Autons' leader, the Nestene Consciousness, The Doctor's calls for negotion fall on blind ears as they know that his Tardis was involved in the war that destroyed their home planet. While an invasion rages in London, Rose manages to save the day by pouring The Doctor's pre-prepared Antiplastic into the Consciousness. They all escape in the Tardis, and the two are dropped off at home. Rose initially rejects The Doctor's invitation, but when he says that the Tardis also travels in Time she agrees. In slow motion.
     The Autons are a risky move on the part of RTD, despite their use twice in 1971-2 to open a series. Their execution here is mostly brilliant - the alien invasion scenes are perfect but the scenes with burping bins and the like are incredibly silly even for the intended audience. These scenes tended to lean towards a more physical comedy strand, frighteningly close to later Red Dwarf. Despite this, their inclusion does act as a symbol, passing the torch from the original series to the new, and their storyline neatly introduces one of NuWho's main background events - the War that The Doctor talks about briefly in front of the Nestene.

The RTD Tardis makes its first appearance.

     Ignoring my fondness for Peter Davison and Colin Baker, Christopher Ecclestone is my favourite Doctor by far. I have the utmost respect for his incredibly prolific career and his portrayal of The Doctor is one of my favourites - the manic, eccentric humour hiding a more serious, cynical interior born of a dark past. His introduction is the monosyllabic summation of the series to date - "Run" - and sets a tone for the series better than any long speeches could possibly do. His best moment in the episode is the monologue that he gives to persuade Rose to forget him, in which he describes how he can feel the Earth turn and spin around the sun. Billie Piper, despite contempory worries, is brilliant as our companion Rose, who more than ever acts as an Audience Identification figure. Never before has the companion been so thoroughly written as to stand for the everyman.
    The TARDIS, after its last incarnation as a grand library in the Movie here scales down a bit into this earthy, coral-themed version. While it feels a little naked compared to the Matt Smith version, the design is very evocative of the machine's tempermental nature, as well as taking the central tenets of the old console room (hexagonal segments, a round console and a central column} and giving the design a new spin.
    Rose does pale when compared to some of the better episodes of NuWho, but as a premier to the new series it did its job spectacularly well. The leads are excellent in all respects and the use of the Autons is inspired. The episode's only low point is a few rare scenes that are too childish for most tastes, and that did lie with the execution of the Auton concept, but it did nothing to harm the story in the long run. Rose is a brilliant start to the revived series and left me desperate for the next Saturday to come.
The Doctor Does Not Save The Day.
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Review: Torchwood 1.12-13: Captain Jack Harkness and End of Days

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Twelve - Captain Jack Harkness

Our long and bountiful quest has brought us to the Series Finale. Like the real-life broadcast, I'm reviewing these two episodes together, begining with the first half, Captain Jack Harkness. It has a few issues with pacing, but the episode pulls out the big guns and is mainly a character piece looking at the history of the show's main character, Jack Harkness. In some ways it was also an Owen vehicle, but all of the characters (bar Gwen, who's been through quite enough alreasy got a splattering of character development as we gear up for the final episode.
     When investigating an old dancehall, Jack and Tosh are swept up by the rift and end up in 1941 at a party to celebrate the soldiers going back to war. The Dancehall is run by a strange-looking man called Billis Manger, who appears to Gwen when she follows up their disappearance in 2006. Jack becomes friends with an American Captain called Captain Jack Harkness. He later reveals to Tosh that when he was in WWII the first time (as a time-travelling conman} he stole WWII Jack's name as an alias,
     Owen, who's still hung up on Dianne, uses their disappearance into the past as an excuse to open the rift, much to Ianto's chagrin. The two argue and fight. As Tosh attempts to send the equations for the Rift Machine through time (being hindered by Billis along the way}, Gwen and Owen search the Dancehall to find them as well as a piece of the rift machine that appears to be missing. Eventually they have a complete Rift Manipulator and nearly all of the equations, minus three important figures.

     In WWII, the two Jacks bond because TW!Jack knows that this is the last day of WWII!Jack's life. Despite all of the encoragement he gives to make sure that WWIIJack enjoys his last night with his girlfriend, it's revealed that she's simply a beard. When the rift opens and Jack and Tosh have to return to the future, they share a passionate kiss.
     Seeing as not much actually happens in CJH, its writing depends more on its ideas and its characters than anything else. Over all other things, the characters are real human beings and unlike in the first half of the series there aren't any particularly huge problems. The original Captain Jack, played by Hollywood bit-actor Matt Rippy, is a great character and is a great example of a gay man in the 1940's. Billis is an intriguing villain almost immediately, his anachronistic nature presented in an incredibly subtle way.
     On its own, CJH is a bit of a non-entity. It falls into that dangerous trap that a lot of penultimate episodes do in that it uses the finale as its climax, and thus the rest of the story suffers as a result. But regardless of that, CJH is an excellent character piece filled with passion and human drama as well as a sci-fi idea that the show doesn't often touch upon.

Torchwood, Series One, Episode Thirteen - End of Days

The End of Days, and the end of the series. It's been a turbulent ride, but this last half has been really good by my standards and the hopes for the finale are high. A good finale should not only be an imaginative and conclusive adventure, but also should be a summary of the series' themes and should leave us wanting more. Oh dear. Everytime I say things like this I'm horrifically disappointed.
     After Owen fucked up the rift, the world has turned upside down overnight. Aliens are floating over the Taj Mahal, a hospital in Cardiff has The Plague and there are Roman soldiers in London. The team (sans immortal Jack}all receive visions of their loved ones (Toshiko sees her mother; Ianto sees Lisa; Owen sees Dianne and then Gwen sees a vision of a dead Rhys, who then dies}. Eventually the teams' hangups overrule Jack and they open the rift, which sends everyone home and resets time but also releases a 10ft demon named Abbadon that kills everyone in his shadow.
     Taking it remarkably well, Jack goes up to the demon and uses his immortality to over-face him, killing both of them. Jack remains dead for days, but after a kiss from Gwen he returns to life and everyone is forgiven. He then wanders into Season 29 of Doctor Who.

Jack has gone!

     My main problem with End of Days is that it's so uneventful. It's really slow-paced and the time-reset element means that little has changed at the end of it. In fact, upon one's second rewatch Billis is absolutely right - bearing in mind that he knows that Jack is immortal, he's right in saying that opening the rift would solve all of their problems. There's no threat at all, because apart from Abbadon, which is easy to fix in this context, everything that went wrong because of the first opening was fixed. Why this works I don't know, and it'll probably never be explained. Abbadon and Billis Manger's scheme is just silly, and while I thought it was scary on my first viewing (as a ten-year-old}it just looks ridiculous now.
     And so, despite how great the episodes leading up to this were, I'm still disappointed with End of Days. It relied on the character drama that this half of the series had set up, but the follow-through wasn't done well and the whole thing collapsed. The villains, while creepy, are ineffective and the ending teasing the third series of its parent program felt like of a bit of a cop-out. Sorry, Torchwood.

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News: Eccles Cake and Piper Pie

My Birthday was two weeks ago, and my main present has finally arrived - the first series of the revived Doctor Who. Now I can finally review the series that brought the show back to our screens. By the time my bumper Torchwood Series One Finale Review will be finished, I'll be back in school, but I hope to review another episode of the brilliant first series every Sunday here at Audenshaw Reviews.

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Review: Torchwood 1.11: Combat

Janet the Weevil.

The first two series of Doctor Who featured more side-characters than ever before, really examining the companion's home life like the Classic Series never did. One of these side-characters was the companion's hen-pecked boyfriend, Mickey Smith, played by Noel Clarke. Clarke, prior to and the since the role, has always been known better as a writer, his most notable works including the gang-culture film Kidulthood and its sequel Adulthood. Here Clarke gets a go at writing for the Whoniverse, and the results are nothing less than astounding.
    Like the string of brilliant episodes we've had since the series turned over into its second half, the script relies very much on human emotions and beliefs to power the story instead of focussing soley on an alien concept. Combat is about escapism and the consequences of a nihilistic viewpoint - one that Torchwood holds dear to its heart. What makes it so powerful is that the characters, while obviously having an eccentric lifestyle, all have motives firmly identifiable to the average Joe - something that Clarke, having written "real life dramas" is no stranger to.
     Jack interupts one of Gwen's dates with Rhys, prompting an angry reaction from her long-suffering partner. They chase down a Weevil that's running loose on the streets of Cardiff, and are shocked when it's thrown into the back of a van by some masked men. They follow a trail back to a warehouse, where they find the Weevil-bitten body of a young man. Owen, who's been drowning his sorrows after Dianne's departure, reluctantly arrives into work to act undercover as Owen Harper, Jellied Eels Salesman, to find out about the main suspect behind the murder, Mark Lynch. Owen and Lynch discover they've much more in common than the former would like to admit, and Owen is sucked in by his distinctly nihilistic philosophy.

Lynch talks to Owen.

     With the knowledge that they've obtained from the still-undercover Owen, Jack, Tosh and Ianto use their pet Weevil, Janet, as bait to track them down to where they're being kept. At home, Gwen is having real issues with her relationship. She drugs Rhys with Retcon and then reveals all about her affair with Owen, begging for forgiveness in a scene that eerily echoes what Suzie did to Max back in They Keep Killing Suzie. She returns to the Hub after he falls unconscious, and the scene where she cries over her transformation since joining Torchwood is excellently acted by Eve Myles (it had to be, considering it's one of the rare scenes in Torchwood without any dialogue whatsoever}. However, her presence at the Hub allows her to catch a postcode texted to the dead man, allowing the rest of the team (sans Owen, who's already there with Lynch} to find the Weevils.
     Owen discovers that Lynch has been running a sort of fight club - competitors pay £1000 to enter a cage with a Weevil, and the one who can stay in there the longest gets the full share of the cash. Now that Lynch knows that Owen is in Torchwood, he puts him in the cage as a means to get rid of him. To Lynch's surprise, Owen, having more reason to accept his nihilistic philosophies after the only woman he ever loved flew off into oblivion, is unafraid of the Weevil. As Owen is being mauled, the rest of the team (sans Gwen, who's still moping} barge in and stop everything. Now that he's no reason to live, Lynch faces a Weevil himself. Later, once Owen recovers, he hisses at the Weevils in the Hub's cells and they back away in fear.
     I've said before that I like Burn Gorman's portrayal of the very complex Owen Harper, and this episode allows him to show yet another side of the character. Here the emphasis is on the character's underlying rage with the world at large, something that previously has only manifested as a sardonic wit. Like his previous centric-story, Ghost Machine, Combat is also an important point for Gwen Cooper. Her character arc is very well realised, and the comparisons with Suzie as made in her episode come back to haunt us. It feels very much like a Greek tragedy; she has become what she had always opposed. For once, the rest of the cast had something to do as well. Ianto actually left the Hub for once, and Toshiko managed to show a shred of personality.

Gwen regrets her journey.

     When it comes down to it, I love Combat because it got it all right. Apart from one scene at the end that was a little silly in its execution, I can't name any particular faults with this episode that can't be aimed at the series itself. The sets are gorgeous and fit the tone episode perfectly. Most importantly though, the script portrays a human drama that let me empathise with both my favourite character and my least favourite, while extending on and codifying ideas from previous episodes. Combat is the perfect way to lead into the finale and one of the best character pieces in Series One.

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Review: Doctor Who 6.8: Let's Kill Hitler

"Shut up, Hitler!" Rory

Coming off the back of a six month wait, Lets Kill Hitler exploited Steven Moffat's excellent writing to not only develop River Song's character but to take all of my expectations and prove them wrong. Despite what its title may suggest, the episode's focus was less on the murder of Nazi leaders and more on the development of our our main characters, which was good for me as I'd been worrying about how cheesy the episode would get. Spoilers always follow.
     Contacting The Doctor via drawing a crop circle, the three reunite and The Doctor reveals that despite his temporal certainty of being able to find Melody, he's had little success. Then, to all of their surprises, Amy and Rory's childhood friend (who had never been mentioned before} turns up brandishing a gun. In some flashbacks it's explained that Mels was always listening to the stories that Amy and (by extension} Rory told of Amy's childhood encounter. Mels shoots the TARDIS console, forcing The Doctor to crash-land in Nazi Germany, where a miniturised crew were attempting to assassinate Hitler by impersonating a Nazi officer. After saving Hitler's life, they put him in the cupboard and Mels reveals that she's been shot. She talks about how she always wanted to marry The Doctor, and then, in a surprise turn, reveals her true identity by regenerating.
       Appearing as Alex Kingston's portrayl of the character, it's shown that this is still Melody Pond, who wants to kill the Doctor because of the brainwashing she was exposed to by The Silence as a child. The guys in the robot decide that River, as the woman who killed The Doctor, is a much better target than Hitler. The Doctor stops all of her attempts to kill him, apart from the last - poisened lipstick that prevents him regenerating. Melody goes off to cause mayhem in the Reich while The Doctor stumbles off to his TARDIS and Amy and Rory, as friends of The Doctor and relatives of River, are miniturised into the robot.

The penny drops.

     The Doctor arrives just in time to stop the robot from killing Melody, and she's impressed when he still tries to save Amy and Rory (in a fast-collapsing robot}. To her surprise, she can pilot the TARDIS as she was born there. They save Amy and Rory, and then, after The Doctor whispers something into her ear, she uses up her remaining regenerations to save The Doctor and ends up enrolling at a University.
      The reason why Hitler and the Reich were in this episode felt a little thin when it came down to the wire; Had Melody chosen to interupt a different figure in her quest to kill The Doctor, she wouldn't have run into the time-travelling robot and this scenario would have ended very differently. At the end of the day it feels much more like a publicity stunt, which really, really irritates me.
       The entire "Mels" part of the plot was very annoying despite how "clever" it felt afterwards. The character was an obvious retcon and her only saving grace was that she went on to be revealed as River Song. It is nice to see this side of River's character and to really flesh her out in an unexpected way, but this felt really clumsy. Of course, after the reveal of her parentage there were cries of Mum and Dad abound, terminology that felt a little jarring coming from the pointedly older River.
      These reviews are admittedly very difficult for me because I can only talk about the plot; the rest of the episode was spot on, as usual - the acting was great, the set design was inspired and Murray Gold's score hit the spot again. Then again, studying the plot isn't that useful, either, because Moffat is very good at series-long arcs and there's still a lot for us to see before I can truly look at this episode in the correct context.

"Who's River Song?"

     So I'll sum up by saying this episode works at its best as the premier to this second semi-series. It was exciting, intrigueing and well-made from the off-set, with excellent character development, sci-fi ideas and humour. As it stands it's an excellent piece of Nu-Who and really the only criticism that I can find is that the episode's namesake was involved at all. Good Job, Moffat. I'm really looking forward to the rest.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.10: Out of Time

Fred, Dianne and Emma-Louise enter a supermarket.

As the finale to our story creeps up on us, Out of Time presents something of an enigma. Instead of one story, it instead splits into three stories looking at one member of the Torchwood team and a guest character (again leaving Tosh and Ianto in the lurch}. While this allows for some nice variation, it also means that some areas of the episodes are very different to the others in quite ominous ways. At times Out of Time is a drama, a tragedy and a comedy, and because the three stories are interspliced it has a jarring feel to it.
     Three people from the 1950s fly through the rift and are intercepted by Torchwood. Pilot Diane Holmes (Louise Delamare}, merchant Fred Ellis (Mark Lewis Jones} and Emma-Louise Cowell (a pre-Candleford Olivia Hallinin} are forced to adjust to the world of 2006 - they look for living relatives (and find none}, live in a hostel and are generally astounded by everyone around them.
       The weakest of the three subplots was the one that I suppose you could call a comedy - Emma Louise, as an 18-year-old used to living in a sexually repressed society, is taken in by Gwen when it transpires that her parents are long since dead. She adapts, talking to girls of her own age. Later, she goes out to night-clubs and Gwen has to give her the "talk" to reassure her about modern attitudes towards sexuality. Eventually she is forced to leave Cardiff for London, not only for a job but to make sure that Rhys doesn't become any more suspicious about Torchwood.

Fred's son has Alzheimers.

       Fred Ellis' storyline should have been the most poignant of the three, but it fell short of the mark because of his unsympathetic 50s steretype character. Desperate to find his son, Fred's repressive attitude singles him out from the other three almost immediately, and Jack was the one whom he felt the most in common. When the team finds his son, he discovers that he has Alzheimers and doesn't remember who Fred is. That night, he steals Ianto's car and, after Jack fails to convince him otherwise, he commits suicide by breathing in carbon monoxide.
       The main subplot was arguably the love affair between pilot Dianne and Owen. They begin flirting almost immediately, and then they have a close, sexual relationship. Owen finds himself buying her a dress and not being able to think of anything else. On their last night together he tells her how scared he is, because just after a week he finds that Dianne is the only woman he has ever loved. She eventually flies away, trying to find the rift once again and either return home or find somewhere new.
       One thing that made Fred and Dianne's stories gel was that Jack and Owen (respecively} have such great chemistry with them. It makes sense for Gwen, the most human of the team, to take in the girl most likely to adapt to the period,but here it really didn't work and for periods her side of the story felt more like Being Human-era cringe comedy. It was trying to be serious, with casual mentions of how her parents are dead and she loved them very much, but there's nothing to empathise with in her character at all. Fred's story is about watching the people you love die, and Dianne's is about not spending your life doing the same thing. Emma's "try new things Aesop" feels more like it should belong in a Sainsburies ad. than an episode of Torchwood.

"I'm scared." "I love you too."

     I have to commend the stunning performances from Delamere and Jones, whose portrayals only strengthened their storylines. I feel sorry and frustrated about Gwen in this episode - after such a great episode previously, this week we head towards the series finale as her relationship with Owen finally ends. She's left with Emma-Louise's storyline to work with, and that really isn't very interesting. At least the development for Owen and Jack was very well executed and actually had a bearing on the plot.
     So while Out Of Time's emotional triptych was a novel idea, it only two-thirds worked, and in a 45 minute episode that's still a lot of wrong. The episode simply tried to do too much with its premise, and instead of giving us a mature examination of life, love and death it fell back on the old comedy, "fish out of water" staples in places where such things weren't required. It's a great watch in the majority of places but it's a shame that the comedy is there in the first place.

Thanks.