What Have the Romans done for Who

Saturday 17 June 2017

Bill is an expert on  the Ninth Legion. 

Of course she is.  New Who companions have a thing about the Romans. Amy's obsession with Romans became part of a trap for the Eleventh Doctor, and the Tenth Doctor took Donna to see the Colosseum, or would have done if the TARDIS hadn't gone slightly off course and landed them in Pompeii on volcano day.   

Bill is also an excellent student.  She is prepared to argue the point with her tutor, and to undertaken her own first-hand research - even if she has make use of a handy time machine to do it. But her hypothesis about the fate of the missing legion turns out to be slightly off target. She didn't allow for the effects of a dimensional gateway and some light-eating locusts. Must try harder.

Rona Munro's long-awaited return to the series was an enjoyable and largely traditional story.  The Doctor and his companion split up and gain the trust of opposing groups who eventually join together to defeat the larger threat.  There's nothing wrong with that.  To my mind, Doctor Who is at is best when dealing with relatively small scale stories such as this.  Whilst there is a threat that could consume the whole planet, confining the action to a single isolated location makes it easier to suspend disbelief than an epic with updates from all over the world.

Meanwhile, a reformed Missy is back in the TARDIS.  I have a bad feeling about next week....

Before the Flood

10 October 2015

We were actually at home to watch Before the Flood -  a very timey-wimey episode, where the Doctor goes back in time to try to prevent the events of last week's episode from happening.  Sometimes the Doctor can change history, sometimes he can't. (See Father's Day, The Waters of Mars, Fires of Pompeii, The Wedding of River Song etc.) This time the TARDIS did her best to stop him.

Fortunately the Doctor came up with a way of faking it, through a very Blink-like paradox.

Good things about this episode were:

• The sheer creepiness (the bit where Cass is being stalked by the ghost would definitely have given my 10 year old self nightmares - no wonder it is on at such a late time).
• O'Donnell's 'bigger on the inside' excitement
• The Doctor playing Beethoven's Fifth on an electric guitar and segueing into a rock version of the theme tune. (Can we keep that for a while, please?)

Less good things were:

• The Fisher King, who was essentially a (big) man in a rubber suit. 
• The co-ordinates, which are still rubbish.

On the whole, though, a pretty good effort.

Death in Heaven: Initial thoughts (spoilers)

So what did I do?  I turned off everything connected to the internet and sat down to enjoy Partners in Crime and Fires of Pompeii, of course, and to be honest, I enjoyed them both rather more than some of the more recent series.

When the husband finally reappeared, he announced that we would watch Death in Heaven  straight away. This may have affected my appreciation of it, as I was half asleep by then.  I'll need to watch again to confirm my impression of it.

First impressions though:

As with many season finales, there was too much going on. The action was rushed in places, whilst there were also pauses for emotional scenes that didn't always work, and the plot was somewhat hard to follow in places.

Positives:

• I like the Missy incarnation of the Master. She's totally bonkers, but also recognisably the same person as the John Simm version.

• Osgood was excellent, and her death was shocking, although it was clear that the writing was on the wall when the Doctor appeared to offer her a trip in the TARDIS. 

• The Cyber-Danny also worked well, and was a logical continuation from Doomsday where the converted Yvonne still performs her 'duty to Queen and Country.'

• The pre-credit wind-up with Clara pretending to be the Doctor (which carried over into the opening credits).  It was obviously done so that they could have a clip in the trailer of her saying that Clara Oswald never existed, so full marks for an excellent fan teaser.

Negatives:

•  Earth Force One and the Doctor-President. (I never cared much for the Valiant, either). The whole idea of a planet-wide response to anything is implausible, and UNIT really ought to know by now that the Doctor doesn't do positions of responsibility.

• I didn't really get the point of the cyber-pollen turning the dead into Cybermen.  The original point of Cybermen was that they had replaced parts of their bodies with cybernetics, so why would they need real skeletons, when they could easily use artificial ones? And why harvest human minds to populate the bodies, when they have to delete the emotions that make them human?

• The magic bracelet or whatever it was that allowed one person to 'cross back over' with a living body didn't make sense.  Yes, it worked as an emotional climax to the episode, but how was it possible, given that the bodies had been cyber-converted?

• The Cyber-Brig: I suppose it was a nice idea, but I find it somehow disrespectful.  And if any of UNIT had to survive, I would have preferred Osgood to the annoying Kate.

In retrospect, I suspect that the theme was designed to fit in with the broadcast on the weekend of Remembrance Day, but at the moment, I think Family of Blood addressed this far more effectively.

So what should 'A'do?

I have a problem. The husband,  the one who is responsible for my Doctor Who obsession, has managed to arrange a night out tomorrow.

Without me. Which is fine, obviously, but as tomorrow night is the season finale, Death in Heaven, I'm left with a problem.

Should I:

a) Nobly stay away from the TV and the Internet until Sunday when we can watch it together;

b) Watch it anyway, but pretend I haven't?

c) Watch it anyway and tease him with spoilers?

I haven't decided yet, so watch this space.

***
Update:

Husband is confident that I will go for option A.

Meanwhile, I have thought of option D: watch something else but tweet random comments about Doctor Who  and Peter Capaldi to wind him up.  The Fires of Pompeii  should do nicely.

***

Further update:

He's gone. It's making my mind up time.