Review: Doctor Who 5.7: Amy's Choice

The Doctor is distinctly unimpressed by Upper Leadworth life.

Doctor Who - Season 31, Story Seven - Amy's Choice
Written 17/11/12


And so my Moffat catch-up ends here, a week before I began reviewing Doctor Who on this blog. Ooh. That's weird. It's clear that I was pretty happy with the series up to this point, seeing as it was The Hungry Earth's sheer mediocrity that led me to get writing about it. I don't plan on doing any Revisitations for those rather crappy reviews of the end of Series Five, simply for posterity's sake, but I will say that Amy's Choice was a damn good episode for the simple reason that it combined really good characters with a funky sci-fi idea that calls back all the way to the good bits of Trial of a Timelord.
     Our intrpid heroes Amy and Rory appear to be much older; living in another part of Leadworth in a cosy little house. Amy is preggers and Rory has a ponytail. The Doctor arrives to check up on them, surprised by Amy's desire to settle down. The three then awaken inside the TARDIS, convinced that it's all a dream, before falling sleep again and awakening in Leadworth. They discover that their reality is being influenced by a being known as the Dream Lord (Toby Jones, Captain America) who proposes that one world has the real threat and one is simply a dream, and that they have to choose. After the Doctor and Rory fight as to which scenario is real, each one respectively being their preferred reality, Rory gets "killed", leading Amy to realise the extent of her love for him and kill her and Doctor in the belief that the village is the dreamworld. In the end, it turns out that both scenarios were dreams and they were under the effects of a powerful hallucinogen, with the Dream Lord being a manifestation of the part of The Doctor's psyche that hates himself.
     Toby Jones' Dreamlord is basically a more explicit Valeyard, and Jones revels in the part. The Dream Lord doesn't just highlight all of The Doctor's negative traits, but rather those that Eleven perceives of himself, and the difference between the two is expressed really well by writer Simon Nye. There's something rather telling in The Doctor's near-immediate recognition of who and what the Dream Lord is, and while I'm not a fan of the overall "lets make The Doctor hate himself" brigade that began back in The End of the World, this is a hell of a lot more subtle than "Last of the Timelords" guilt.

The calculating Dream Lord.

     As a fellow sitcom writer, Nye is able to take Moffat's obsession with relationships and pregnancy and turn it into something fun - we wouldn't really start to get tired of Amy and Rory's marriage, pregnancy, not-pregnancy, kid issues and not-kid issues until the dire straits of Series Six. As it stands, it's a foundation for their characterisations in that next series - The Doctor wants to continue travelling until he feels its unsafe for them to continue doing so, wheras Rory wants to settle down with Amy and have a quiet life with her. This kind of inner-TARDIS battle that focuses on love-triangles is not one that I'm really a fan of, and seems like a continuation of the problematic Rose arc that so blighted Season 28, but at least here it's supposedly hit on the head and sorted out, never to be spoken of again. (If that it were.)
     Amy's Choice, on its own, would have been absolutely smashing and if you view it in a singular context it's one of the best episodes in Season 31. It handles its characters in really interesting ways and introduces us to companion dynamics unheard of in Doctor Who. But if you look at it in the context of Moffat's era, it becomes something of a blue-print for Amy and Rory's relationship that instead of being built-upon simply got repeated over and over again. I still love the Dream Lord and all of the advancement of The Doctor's characterisation, but there's something that Moffat's later works have done to its other two characters that makes it feel that little bit more hollow.

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Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Creature From The Pit

Doctor Who - Too Hot For TV!

Warning, NSFW...  

Doctor Who - Season 17, Story Three - The Creature From The Pit
Written 29/9/12

The Whoniverse has had its fair share of dodgy looking monsters. The Blood Line taught us that there's a large vagina that runs through the centre of the earth. Terror of the Vervoids showed us that even plants can resemble human sexual organs. But no story has ever been more phallic in nature than the unfortunately remembered Creature From The Pit, a story whose ideas about wealth and powers will forever be overshadowed by its reputation as that one where Tom Baker kissed an alien's penis.But even ignoring any phallic imagery (or scrotal imagery, for that matter,) how does this story stand up on its own.
     The central concept that David Fisher (the writer of Androids of Tara, a story I adored) is trying to show is of two neighbouring planets, Chloris and Tytholus, one of which is scarce in metal and abundant in plant life, and one which is the opposite. The Chlorians live their lives under the tryanny of Lady Adrasta, who holds a monopoly over the planet's only mine and throws any dissidents down a pit, where an evil creature is said to live. When The Doctor and Romana arrive, they discover that the Creature is in fact a sentient blob called Erato, an ambassador from Tytholus who came to the planet to offer a lucrative trading deal. After Adrasta is foiled, The Doctor ties up loose ends by preventing a Neutron star from colliding with the planet.
     Suffice to say that Dave Fisher wasn't the most scientifically literate guy, and while that shouldn't usually affect a story, it certainly does dampen this one. If your planet isn't rich in heavy metals, then you don't tend to end up becoming a rocky planet - that's just how it works, and you certainly would not have a world where life - which requires little stuff like iron, magnesium and other metalic minerals - is as abundant as it is here. Plus, Tythonians are said to be composed of a big brain covered by a thin membrane, and are said to "eat chlorophyll". Chlorophyll is the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and magnesium based green pigment in plants that allows them to undergo photosynthesis to convert CO2, Water and energy from the sun into simple sugars, which the plant can then use for respiration. I don't really see how consuming Chlorophyll can help you get energy, but whatever. It feels like the concepts, if streamlined, could have had so much more potential, but the fact that the only motivations seemed to be control of the "metal" without actually using metal for anything particularly useful took away any tension.

      Thank goodness for the characters, then. Well. One of them. Myra Frances' Lady Adrastra is a stellar villain, and it's good to see a strong female character like that in Who. She drips hatred and greed, and she's smart enough to get what she wants until the very end, where it is her own deception that undoes her. It was a bad way to go - being teabagged by Mr. Greenballs, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Romana was a bit of a shame, in that this was Lalla Ward's first filmed story and so the script rather blatantly gives her Mary Tamm's personality without any of the skill or charm. Everyone else was a cardboard cutout, except of course Baker, whose manic energy is getting me down very quickly in the same way that seeing Matt Smith be "quirky" does.

Which Romana are you trying to be?

     Oh, and K9! What happened to you? John Leeson left the series for one reason or another just for Season 17, and the replacement, David Brierly, is a painful substitiute that, while adequate, can't hope to live up to the original. Whenever Leeson's K9 sounded sarcastic, it was almost by accident, it was hinted at. David Brierley doesn't sound like a robot's voice, it sounds like a man sat in a booth somewhere making sarcastic remarks. He's like someone put Adric in a box.
     Creature From The Pit, penis sucking or no penis sucking (something I've never written on this website before and will probably never write again), was incredibly disappointing on all levels, and that's simply because of how ill-thought-out its concepts end up being. The idea of a society being stifled from technological progress by a higher power is an easy one, but here it just flounders and that's really unfortunate.

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Review: Merlin 5.11: The Drawing of the Dark

Kara forms the catalyst for the episode's atrocities.

It's a weird experience, to be honest. Never before in this series have I so hated its primary protagonists. But this episode, and many others, show us that at least by today's standards, Merlin, Arthur and Gwen are all horrible, horrible people. In fact, most of the characters in this week's episode, bar Mordred, made incredibly dodgy and/or stupid decisions. It's taken longer this series for me to start rooting for the villain (it took three episodes in Series Three, if you remember), but I'm afraid to say that the time has finally come.
     A druid girl called Kara has offed some traders in the woods, and when the knights search for her Mordred lets her go, as she's his childhood sweetheart. Merlin, who's being an ass this week, is unnecessarily confrontational about the whole thing and later pretty much leads Arthur to her out of spite. It turns out that she, quite rightfully, is a bit pissed off at Camelot's long history of murdering magicians. Pointing out that he wouldn't have done anything had she not just committed murder, Arthur sentences her to death. Mordred, having picked up on Merlin's douchebaggery, is distraught and tries to convince Arthur to let her go. When he refuses, he goes to set her free and run away with her. Not content to just fuck up once, Merlin tells Arthur of Mordred's plan and both end up incarcerated. When Arthur offers Kara the chance to repent, she spits it in his face and everyone gathers round for a good old-fashioned decapitation. Sick and tired of the wtfery, Mordred breaks out and heads off to Morgana, revealing to her that Merlin has been Emrys all this damn time.
     At one time in Merlin's history, I could have been forgiven for thinking that Arthur and Gwen were fundamentally good people bound by an unfortunate dogma and that Merlin was hanging around them to try and change that dogma. But this past series has showed, if anything, that Merlin has simply become one of them; he has made little-to-no efforts this series to try and change the fate of magic users and has, on several occasions including in this episode, simply affirmed Arthur's views. Instead of the steady move towards change that should have happened, the writers have for some reason chosen to make it as unrealistic as possible for there to be a powerful magic reveal in these last two episodes.

I'm on Mordred's side now, you understand.

6 days ago

6 days ago

      And that fucking pisses me off, man. I want to like this show, I really really do. I've tried. When it's good, it's brilliant, but here we have one of the best episodes in a while and Mordred is so well written, but at the same time the protagonists we're supposed to be rooting for are cosily sitting down to watch an execution. I understand that it's the 12th Century and values are different, but no matter how verbally (and, when given the chance, actively) hostile Kara was, nothing good could ever have come from killing her. Now, as anyone could have predicted, you've not only got yet another magical casualty to add to Camelot's list, but an incredibly pissed off druid on the enemy's side.
      I stopped being objective with Merlin a long time ago, I know that. I don't think I'd have as much fun with Merlin as I do have if I wasn't raging at it every once and a while. But Series Five, after starting off in such a promising way, has been doing its best to frustrate me more and more each week. I don't know what's going to happen in the finale starting next week, but I know that whatever happens, Merlin isn't going to end in a way that will ever really satisfy its fanbase. And that's a sad, sad thing.

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Review: Doctor Who 4.14: The Next Doctor

Ten gets spoken down to. I like it.

Doctor Who - Season 30, Episode Fourteen (Second Christmas Special) - The Next Doctor
Written 29/10/12

Ah, RTD, with your suddenly provocative writing. Around Season 30, RTD started writing Doctor Who very much for the tabloid press, and that resulted in lots of "shocks" and "epic moments" which didn't evolve from the actual stories but seemed to just be plopped there for no good reason. It pretty much started with the ridiculous "The Doctor's Daughter", carried through to a fake regeneration in The Stolen Earth (part of a Two-Parter I consider the NuWho equivalent of Pete) and then here, to the first of the Specials, in which David Tennant's promise to leave was exploited for viewership even when no such thing occurred. Despite that, the disturbing trend of me actually enjoying these Christmas Specials is continuing, and strong.
     The Doctor materialises in Victorian London, and encounters a man claiming to be The Doctor (David Morrisey), albeit with incredible memory loss. He's fighting the Cybermen, whom he thinks caused him to regenerate. While Ten initially thinks that he's meeting a future self, he soon realises over time that this Doctor, with an ordinary screwdriver and a Hot-Air-Balloon for a Tardis, may not be the real thing. Meanwhile, the Cybermen are led by man-hating work-house owner Mercy Hartigan (Dervla Kerwin) who is working for them in order to get back at all of the chauvanists who ruined her life. The Doctor works out that the other man is in fact Jackson Lake, a man who was attacked by the Cybermen and, in defending himself with alien infostamps, accidentally got brainwashed into thinking he was The Doctor. When he helps him to come to this realisation, they work together to attempt to stop the Cybermen's plan - to create a giant mecha - culminating in The Doctor going up in a balloon and disconnecting Mercy from the system, causing her to self-destruct.
     The episode's main charm comes in the characterisation of both Jackson Lake and Mercy Hartigan, both of whom improve what is at its heart quite an odd script. Even though the reveal that of course this "next" Doctor isn't the titular Time-lord comes far too early in the story, its made up for by David Morrisey's ability to make you like him no matter what role he's in. Jackson Lake is someone fundamentally human and the relationship he has with The Doctor is at times quite touching. Mercy Hartigan's character is refreshing in that she recognises the gender inequalities of the age and uses them to her advantage. The bit where she's more powerful than the entire Cyber hive-mind is a bit bollocks, though, and her screaming causing them to explode was a bit silly.

WOMAN SCREAM!

     A bit silly is unfortunately true of a few things in this episode. The random new type of Cyberman that only appears in this episode and then never again. The intergalactic pen-drives that also double as slide-show projectors and high-calibre energy weapons. After the unholy recesses of Journey's End this is relatively sane, but it does show where RTD was eventually going in the making sense department. So much of this episode was done for sheer monetary value, it's insane - the various new Cybermen, for more types of toys and voice-changer helmets, the hint of "The Next Doctor" to drum up tabloid interest and get new viewers. I'm not saying that a producer should be completely ignorant of the show's viewing figures, but that should be the secondary concern behind actually making good Who.
     But yeah, I enjoyed The Next Doctor, despite all of the inklings within it that RTD was getting a bit tired. I won't have a rant about that until I cover The End of Time and, eventually, Journey's End. All I have to say here is that David Morrisey and Dervla Kerwin carry the script in a really engaging way and, ignoring its fundamental pointlessness, the gimmick central to the premise does deliver a lot of interesting moments for both the audience and for David Tennant's interpretation of The Doctor. A thumbs up from me.

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NEXT THURSDAY: Did someone say The End of Time?

Review: Doctor Who 5.6: The Vampires of Venice

The Calvierris

Doctor Who - Season 31, Episode Six - The Vampires of Venice
Written 16/11/12 

If there's one writer within Moffat's inner circle who's qualified to talk about Vampires it is most definitely Toby Whithouse, who over the past four years has made it his special subject. His four scripts for Doctor Who have all been incredibly interesting, and his last two have been some of my favourites in their respective seasons. It seems to me that Whithouse really manages to balance out all of the Doctor's attributes in this incanation, taking the harsh, noisy analogue of Moffat's writing and filtering it into something clean, digital and much more real. His first go at Eleven, Vampires of Venice isn't perfect, but it certainly embodies a simple sense of fun with the series that Series Five hits on the head.
      After Amy's attempt to bonk him the previous week, The Doctor crashes Rory's stag party to pick him up as a new companion, taking him with Amy off on a romantic trip to Medieval Venice. There, they discover a small segment of the city being controlled by the Countess Calvierri (Helen McCrory, known to the world as Narcissa Malfoy) who takes young girls and keeps them locked in her private boarding school. When rower Guido asks The Doctor for help to save his daughter, the team uses Amy as a mole and investigates the school. They find that the Calvierri family, while appearing to humanity as vicious vampires, are in fact large alien fish who are using the girls as hosts for more of their species and plan to flood Venice to form a new home on Earth.
     Despite the deriviative (marine Vampires, like in The Curse of Fenric) and somewhat plot-holey (have these guys never heard of Oceans?) nature of the main plot, it does provide a good setting for quite a bit of character work as well as the old-style Doctor Who runaround. Whithouse passes up on the opportunity to use Being-Human style villains and instead manages to make Rosanna Calvierri mildly sympathisable as an alien mother only wishing to prevent her species from going extinct. The problem comes with that plot hole; the idea that this species has technology capable of flooding an entire city and yet doesn't realise that if they scooch their fishy asses a few miles down the road they've got more water than you could ever really need.

Vampires. In Venice. Cue obligatory Being Human joke.

     At this stage, the character work is still embryonic and Whithouse, being really good at that sorta thing, doesn't disappoint. Amy and Rory work as a couple, their characterisations, for the moment, being semi-realistic and relatable. As opposed to the character he's arguably emanating at this point, Mickey, Rory is blasé about the actual tech side of things but can't initially keep up with The Doctor's lifestyle. It's nice to see people actually acting like people would, something that a lot of the New Series lacks. But it's balanced nicely by the hammyness given to Calvierri, and it's a really nice balance that allows us the best of both worlds.
     There are quite a few problems with Vampires' core concept that prevent it from being truly brilliant, but its mix of good ideas and well-executed characterisations make it an enjoyable Doctor Who runaround that Whithouse can be proud of. It's nowhere near as simply cerebral as The God Complex or A Town Called Mercy, but it instead fits Series Five like a glove and it's certainly got its fair share of fun moments.

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