It's the Macra incident all over again

10 June 2017

After the fairly ho-hum Monk trilogy, I had high hopes for Empress of Mars. Mark Gatiss is at his best when writing Victorians, and this was a typical Boys Own adventure tale of derring-do and serving the British Empire .... only on Mars, in a Tomb of the Cybermen sort of setting.

Of course in every regiment there is a bad apple or two. In this case there was the pilfering soldier (helpfully called 'Jackdaw') and a Captain who was a really nasty piece of work, probably because he rejoiced under the name of Neville Catchlove.

It was Catchlove, rather than the reanimated Ice Warriors, who was the real villain of the piece, though the Ice Warriors had a particularly unpleasant way of killing people.  The hero was a cowardly Colonel, brilliantly played by Anthony Calf, who redeemed himself with an act of selfless heroism that saved the day.  The Doctor didn't actually seem to do all that much, apart from attempting to negotiate between the species.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS, with Nardole on board, had decided to return to Earth. I'm not entirely sure whether this was simply a 'separate the Doctor from the TARDIS to stop it being too easy' device, or whether the point was to engineer a situation in which Missy would be released from the vault. 

However, the highlight of the episode was not Missy in the TARDIS, but the sound of the first friendly alien race with whom the 'e-mail' rigged up by the Doctor for the Empress made contact.  As soon as I heard it, I shrieked 'Alpha Centauri' before the interference on the viewscreen cleared to show everyone's favourite hermaphrodite alien, and definitely ahead of my husband (the 'proper' fan.) Just like in Gridlock where I identified Macra from a single waving claw.

It's all thanks to the Monks

Saturday 3 June 2017

*Spoilers*

I didn't write much about last week's episode because I really didn't like it that much.  I've mentioned before that I prefer self-contained smaller scale stories to big story arcs and the whole planet mobilising against a threat.  I particularly don't like the idea of the Doctor being made President of Earth.

Anyway, tonight's episode picked up events six months later, and our hero has apparently turned into a sort of modern day Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting about how the wonderful Monks have always been there, shaping humanity's progress.  I wonder how they got on with the Fendahl, Fenric, Scaroth and all the other aliens who have been guiding humanity over the millennia?

Ha! Trick question!  Because of course they didn't get on with them at all, as they weren't really there. It is all a lie. Martha still knows this, but struggles to keep her grip on reality.  Of course the Doctor must be a prisoner, and being forced to help the Monks, mustn't he?

Until the end of the scene on the prison ship, the episode promises much. But having thrown everything at what turns out to be a gigantic fan wind-up, it rather runs out of steam after that.  There are some obvious parallels between this episode and Last of the Time Lords. Both start from a point where the earth had been taken over by aliens at the end of the previous episode, and the action starts some months later with the companion, the  being in the aliens' power. The ultimate resolution, using the alien's telepathic gizmo against them, is also the same.  And they both feature the Master (or Mistress.) The one significant difference here is that Missy is not responsible, and having (almost) turned over a new leaf, she provides the Doctor with the clue to the Monks' weakness.

All in all, despite great performances from Pearl Mackie, Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez, I found this rather dull.

Faith and the Doctor

Saturday 27 May 2017

"When I'm on a date, don't under any circumstances put the Pope in my bedroom!" Martha's ruined date was a moment of humour in an otherwise disturbing episode.  But what other programme would use the pontiff for a throwaway line like that?

This got me thinking about religion and faith in Doctor Who. Before I start, I should make plain that I am an agnostic whose  only real belief is in what Jerome K Jerome called 'the cussedness of things in general' and is otherwise known as Sod's Law.  (Yes, I did put the garden furniture out on the hottest day of the year to date and the weather changed.)

Faith and belief is not always positive in Doctor Who.  For a start, there is the faith/belief versus science and reason theme which appears in many stories (Meglos, The Face of Evil and The Mutants) to name but three. More recently, the whole tenure of the Eleventh Doctor was defined by a story arc in which events are manipulated by a religious order whose primary belief is that the Doctor must be prevented from answering the oldest question on the fields of Trenzalore.  On a smaller scale, faith (in anything) proves lethal in The God Complex.

In contrast, faith proves helpful in holding back Haemovores in The Curse of Fenric, and in Last of the Time Lords the Master is ultimately defeated by a form of faith in the Doctor, magnified by the Master's own Archangel network.

Tonight's episode, in contrast was not about faith, but about love, or at least the Monks' need to be loved.  With the bleak ending, we need hope next week.  Is the Monk trilogy actually based on 1 Corinthians 13?

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13.13 New International Version)

Think of a Number...

20 May 2017

So tonight we found out what, or rather who, is in the vault, and  why the Doctor made a vow to guard it.  To be honest, it was not too much of a surprise. I suspect most people had guessed at the end of last week's episode. 

For now, the vault remains sealed as the story of its occupant was told entirely in flashback. These flashbacks were intercut with the main business of the episode.  How the two actually relate to each other was unclear. Perhaps we will find out next week. Or perhaps not.

Meanwhile, Bill has brought a friend home.  It was all going so well until the TARDIS lands in her bedroom, along with an unexpected passenger. This silliness, and the obvious Dan Brown homage aside, I was enjoying the episode until it weirdly segued into The Matrix. Very odd.

Bit of Politics there...

Saturday 13 May 2017

Eagle-eyed viewers of tonight's episode Oxygen think they may have detected a few political points and are asking on social media when Doctor Who got political.

Well, it has certainly had episodes with political references since the Pertwee era, if not before. These are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many more.

• Environmentalists versus capitalism in The Green Death.
• Joining the Galactic Federation (Common Market) in The Curse of Peladon.
• Decolonisation in The Mutants.
• Margaret Thatcher in The Happiness Patrol.
• Tony Blair's 'dodgy dossier' in World War Three ('massive weapons of destruction', indeed!)

Politics aside, I thought it was a  very good episode.  I hadn't been looking forward to it, space zombies not really being my thing, but there was a very real sense of jeopardy.  This was not the sanitised space of Star Trek,  but a hostile environment, which is trying to kill you.

There were some nice touches,  such as the moment when Bill came face to face with her first blue-skinned alien.  And we didn't have an ending where everybody lived and the TARDIS crew escaped unscathed.

Looking forward to next week.

Knock, Knock

Saturday 6 May

Tonight's episode was apparently named in honour of a joke so old that we were telling it in the playground when I was at primary school. Are 'knock, knock' jokes still a thing in the 21st century, or as they as dated as Angel Delight and blue PE knickers?

Bill is moving into a house share and the Doctor is helping.  Is this the first time  that the TARDIS has been used as a removal van?  But whilst she is happy to have assistance with transporting her things, she really doesn't want the Doctor interfering in the normal part  of her life and embarrassing her in front of her new housemates.  You don't get rid of the Doctor that easily, though, and it turns out the suspiciously cheap house is not at all normal.

It looks nice enough and has large rooms and lots of potential.  It's surprising that it hasn't been snapped up by a property developer - all it needs  is central heating and rewiring. Or does it? Something nasty is lurking in the woodwork, and it isn't just deathwatch beetle.

This was a classic creepy (or creaky) house story.  It reminded me of the X-Files episode War of the Coprophages,  but with added Scooby-Do, even down to the sinister caretaker, sorry, landlord, played brilliantly by David Suchet.  Scooby-Who, perhaps?

Under the Dryer

Saturday 6 May

"You'll never guess what we were talking about at the hairdressers just now!" I exclaimed to my husband Neil as I came through the door.

"Daleks?" He ventured.

"How did you guess?"

Now, although I am a lady of a certain age, I'm really not that interested in the sorts of things women are supposed to obsess about: spas, facials, manicures and all other sorts of female pampering leave me cold.  But even I need to get my hair cut occasionally (three times a year, whether I need it or not.)

So there I was, casually listening to my stylist chatting about what her partner was likely to be making in his shed whilst she was working, when my ears suddenly pricked up as she said: "I've got a life size Dalek in my spare room that he made."

"Me too" I replied, "but mine's inflatable."

So I related the tale of Derek the Departmental Dalek, and she told me about Darren the Dalek, who was back home after being loaned to Aylesbury Museum. Her partner, Neal, had built him after a friend bet him £20 that he wouldn't be able to make one.  It's made of plywood and fibreglass and can even talk, nod and light up.

I now have Dalek envy.  But you have to admit it's a lot more interesting than "where are you going for your holidays?"