DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of episode 9.12: Hell Bent;

Oh, it’s all been leading to this. Not just Series Nine - though obviously we’re building on everything we’ve been through this season - or the Doctor’s time with Clara Oswald by his side, but his entire life, since he ran away. No, actually, before that.

When Steven Moffat writes a finale, he packs them full to bursting. Monsters and time paradoxes and tweaks to Doctor Who’s wider mythos. It’s fair to say that Hell Bent has all of those in spades, and that it’s a real treat for the fans. As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, Gallifrey is back from the pocket dimension it was sealed in during the 50th anniversary (How doesn’t matter, the fact is it’s here), and it’s facing a new threat. Prophecies predict the coming of the Hybrid - an entity formed from two great warrior races; and not the ones you might expect. It must be ‘well hard’, though…

There’s only one man in the universe who can tell the Time Lords about the Hybrid, and he’s just been through four-and-a-half billion hears of solitary hell to get here. It’s safe to say that The Doctor isn’t in the best of moods for a large portion of this episode. Peter Capaldi continues to give a top-drawer performance, managing to hold your attention for a long stretch without ever saying a word. This finale has been crafted as a real tour-de-force for the actor, and he’s more than risen to the challenge.

Also rising to the challenge, of course, is director Rachel Talalay, who continues to make the world of Doctor Who look beautiful. Working alongside - frankly - the best team in the world, Talalay gives us everything we could want from our first in-depth look at Gallifrey in the modern era. From the tip of the tallest towers to the pits of the Matrix and out into the Dry Lands, we get to explore the Doctor’s homeward like never before, and it’s never looked better.

There’s far - far - more to praise when it comes to the direction (and the script, and the action), but we can only say so much about Hell Bent without giving too much away (and we’d be thrown in the Timelash if we did), but that’s okay - it’s another one of those episodes which is only improved by having each surprise come as fresh, building on the last and sweeping away what came before. It ties up the last few years of adventures, dusts the Doctor down, and sends him off towards the future. And who knows, with Gallifrey back and reeling from the events of this episode, the Doctor might have some powerful enemies keeping tabs on him…

SIX things to look out for;

1) “Are all the bells ringing?”
2) A hint of the Doctor’s extended family.
3)“Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.”
4)“The Doctor does not blame Gallifrey for the horrors of the Time War. He just blames you.”
5) “Could I have a lemonade?”
6) “You’re a Time Lord. A High-Born Gallifreyan… Why is it you spend so much time on Earth?"

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of episode 9.11: Heaven Sent;

Doctor Who has never been afraid to try out something new from time to time. We’ve had episodes that range from high comedy to full-on drama. We’ve had episodes told in real time, and just a few weeks ago the programme gave us its own unique take on the ‘found footage’ genre. It’s often quite special when Doctor Who tries to do something different with a format, and it’s fair to say that Heaven Sent ranks rather highly on the ‘different’ stakes.

For the most part, it’s 53 minutes of Peter Capaldi… and only Peter Capaldi. Oh, sure he’s being stalked by a rather nightmarish vision from the pits of his memory, but it’s not a particularly talkative nightmare, meaning that it’s up to Peter alone to carry the weight of the episode, and it’s to his great credit that you never once find yourself longing for someone else to show up and take some of the burden.

Steven Moffat’s script is filled with things to keep Capaldi chewing over - from the moments of darkness that he does so well, to showing off and having a ball. The Doctor is really put through the wringer in this one - repeatedly - and by the time the episode is finished, you’ll feel that you’ve been on a fairly similar journey yourself.

It’s the closest that Doctor Who has ever come to producing its own art house movie, and while it may risk feeling out of place on BBC One on a Saturday night, it’s a refreshing change of pace, and one which allows us to get a handle on the Doctor as a character - and this incarnation in particular - more than ever before.

The whole episode is really lifted by the return of Rachel Talalay to the director’s chair (having also helmed last year’s finale, Dark Water / Death in Heaven). In the hands of a less competent director, the story could run the risk of becoming formulaic and dull, but Talalay injects every shot with something of interest. Particularly of note is the way in which the TARDIS is shot here - the current console room has never looked better, and never looked bigger.

And at the end of it all, finally overcoming all the turmoil and the pain, the stage is truly set for an explosive finale.

Five things to look out for;

1) “As you come in to this world… something else is also born….”
2) The Brother’s Grimm.
3) “Don’t you want to know how I survived? Go on, ask me!”
4) Just how old is the Doctor, these days?
5) “Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

  

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of Episode 9.10: Face the Raven:

It’s all been building to this. In many ways, Face the Raven is the first third of a three-part finale, and the events of this week’s episode really do serve as a kick-start to one of the Doctor’s most important journeys. But forget about all that! Forget where the Doctor might be headed in the weeks to come, and who might be standing alongside him, first we need to head to a hidden part of London that you’ve never noticed before, and share in an adventure with some unexpected friends.

Before being elevated to part of this season’s epic finale, new-to-Who writer Sarah Dollard pitched this episode as a standalone adventure, and it’s certainly not hard to see how it would have held up on its own as a great episode. The basic tale itself - imagine a part of the city you know that’s so ordinary that your eyes skirt right over it, missing the fact that there’s a whole unseen world inside it - fit’s so perfectly into the Doctor’s world that you almost wonder how it’s never come up before over the last 50 years.

And that’s certainly not the only great concept Dollard has brought to the table. There’s returns for old friends and enemies (you may think you know all of them, via trailers and preview clips but believe us when we say you don’t), including Joivan Wade (Rigsy, from last year’s acclaimed Flatline) and Maisie Williams, who returns for her third episode this season, and allows us a glimpse into how another half-millennium has evolved her immortal character. That is, perhaps, one of the most interesting parts of the tale - Doctor Who has given us immortal characters before, but we’ve never been able to check in on them quite the way we have with Williams, and her story isn’t done yet…

Perhaps the real heart of the episode, though, is the interactions between Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. They’ve grown to be one of those Doctor/Companion pairings which will be remembered as among the greats, and watching them here, when they’re both aware that one or both of them won’t be leaving this street ever again is absolutely heartbreaking.

Have the tissues ready, you need to be brave.

5 things to look out for:

1) “You think a Cyberman fears a merciful death?”
2) Some Torchwood tech has made it out of the Hub and into the hands of the Doctor’s greatest enemies…
3)“Name, species, and case for asylum quick as you like.”
4) “He’s got this whole secret room in the TARDIS.” 
5) “Who said you could give someone my number?”
 
[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

 

DWO’s Spoiler-Free preview of episode 9.9: Sleep No More:

When you’re whizzing up and down the time vortex fighting Daleks, and Ghosts, Fisher Kings and Zygons, you must get pretty worn out. Frankly, here at DWO we’re shattered after a walk to the shops, so Clara and the Doctor must be full-on exhausted. It’s all right, though, because we can always settle down and catch up on some sleep. Rest and refuel our bodies.

Oh, but what if you didn’t have to sleep? What if you could pop into a pod once a month, and come out fully rested for the next thirty days. Think of all the adventures you could have then, without having to collapse into a pesky old bed at the end of each day! Great, lovely! Now think of what an adventure sleep could actually be. Not just the dreams you’re off having in your head, but the very real battle against the monsters your sleeping body is fighting while you’re off in dreamland.

The big thing that everyone is going to be discussing when it comes to Sleep No More is the format. Doctor Who is no stranger to playing with different ideas (In the last decade, 42 gave us a real-time story, and in just a few weeks time we’ll be seeing an episode starring just the one character), and Sleep No More continues the trend by giving us a Doctor Who take on the ‘found footage’ genre that’s been popping up in movies for some time now.

Of course, though, it’s not just any old found footage story - and the ‘footage’ may not be ‘found’ quite where you expect it to. In proper Doctor Who tradition, there’s a lovely little subversion of the genre, putting a different spin on the expected tropes. Count the eyes.

With a small guest cast headed by the great Reece Shearsmith, there’s a danger of the episode feeling a tad lightweight after four linked stories on the trot, but Sleep No More serves as a decent slice of Doctor Who before we plunge head-first into an extended finale.

Five things to look out for:

1) “Pay close attention, your lives might depend on this…”
2) Terms and Conditions apply.
3) “Not just Space Pirates!”
4) Sleep is more than just a function.
5) “It’s like the Silurians all over again…”

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free preview of episode 9.8: The Zygon Inversion:

There’s always a worry in the back of your mind with a two-part story; will the second half live up to the promise of the first? It’s fair to say that last week’s The Zygon Invasion was met with near universal praise, and we’re glad to say that The Zygon Inversion doesn’t… um… invert that.

If last week’s episode was all about showing us the action of the Zygon revolution, with lots of death and destruction, this week focuses more on the individuals caught in the crossfire. We get to see some very real arguments both for an against the Zygon cause, and they come from a range of sources. People complaining that the Doctor keeps bringing up the ‘good’ Zygons without presenting any as evidence should be pleased to find that we get to check in with some of the less extreme viewpoints of our alien neighbours.

Peter Harness has crafted a story in these two episodes that follows in the footsteps of a great Doctor Who tradition; shining a light on current political issues, and refracting them through the eyes of the Doctor and those who travel with them. Many recent events are touched upon in this week’s episode, and it’s fair to say that it’s presented as a balanced view, giving us one of the finest scripts to come out of the programme for a very long time. In many ways, this feels like a throwback to the Russell T. Davies era of the programme, with a large-scale alien threat to modern-day Earth, yet with characters put front and centre against that backdrop of the end of the world.

It’s held up by some fantastic central performances at the heart of the story. Peter Capaldi gets what many seem to be describing as his ‘Doctor moment’, in a scene that really opens up the part for him, and allows him the chance to show us what he’s made of. It’s perhaps the most emotion that this incarnation has been allowed to show to date, and it’s because of that the the entire sequence is very moving and very raw. Praise should also be given to Jenna Coleman, who manages to make her Zygon duplicate a distinct enough character in their own right, to the point that on a second watch, I completely forgot she was even a regular - it’s one of the finest guest turns we’ve seen in a while!

And then, of course, you’ve got the fate of the Osgoods, but did you ever really think it was going to be that simple?

Five things to look out for:

1) "We will die in the fire instead of living in chains"
2) We find out the names of two important characters.
3)"Nobody wins for long"
4) Count your Osgoods.
5) This is toothpaste.

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

 

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of Episode 9.7: The Zygon Invasion;

2015 marks the 40th anniversary of the Zygons, who first appeared alongside the Fourth Doctor in 1975’s Terror Of The Zygons, the opener to the programme’s original 13th season. They’ve long been considered one of the best monsters to have appeared in Doctor Who, thanks in no small part to a gorgeous design, and were chosen to make their big return to the Doctor’s world as part of the programme’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013. Now they’re back to celebrate their own anniversary, and they’re going about it in style.

The Zygon Invasion, along with next week’s instalment The Zygon Inversion, is the latest in this year’s abundance of two-part stories, and it amply proves just why it needs the extra running time. The Zygons here aren’t simply confined to Scotland, or London, or Elizabethan England, but are taking up arms on a truly global scale, with our various heroes - among them, the return of the current ‘UNIT family’ of Kate Stewart and Osgood - are scattered from London, to Mexico, and beyond as they try to avert a ‘nightmare scenario’ of humans and Zygons failing to live alongside each other in perfect harmony.

The 50th anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor left us with something of a loose thread - a room full of Humans (who couldn’t remember that they were Humans) and Zygons (who, equally, couldn’t remember they were Zygons) trying to come up with a diplomatic way of sharing the Earth between them. In amongst rewriting the history of the Time War and beetling about between different time zones, three Doctors were able to manoeuvre the pieces into place for this peace treaty to be signed. This episode very much picks up on that thread and shows us where the story goes next.

It’s framed with some truly lovely direction from Daniel Nettheim, giving each location a unique feel, and told through a glorious script by writer Peter Harness. He's cooked up a story which takes this classic monster and reimagines it for the world of four decades later. Everything that was scary about the Zygons in 1975 has been pushed and twisted to make them one of the programmes scariest foes, with abilities that seem impossible to beat. Think about everyone you’ve ever loved, and then ask yourself if they’re really who you think they are?

Five things to look out for;

1) "This is Clara Oswald. I'm probably on the tube, or in outer space. Leave a message!"
2) Pray you never need The Osgood Box.
3)“You operate it by titivating the fronds…”
4) Truth or Consequences.
5) The Zygons have evolved.

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of Episode 9.6: The Woman Who Lived:

When the Doctor tried to wait around on Earth in 2012's The Power of Three, he managed to last about three hours before getting bored and feeling the need to whizz back off into time and space. He's over 2000 years old, but he fills his time with adventures and monsters and being really sort of marvellous. Imagine, though, being immortal and stuck on Earth permanently. Watching the world around you evolve and change, wither and die and flux... While you just stay still at the heart of it all.

That's very much the position in which we find Maisie Williams in The Woman Who Lived. When we left her last Saturday, she'd been an integral part of saving the day - and she'd given her life in the process. Brought back with some handy alien tech and made immortal, she was left behind while the Doctor swanned back off into time and space. A couple of days stuck in one Viking village was more than enough for him.

This week's story throws the Doctor back in to the world of the girl he left behind, and forces him to acknowledge that he doesn't always make the right decisions. Separated from Clara for much of the episode, the Doctor is forced to team up with the immortal girl on the hunt for a dangerous alien artefact, and despite all the running and robbing, the hanging and the fire-breathing cats, there's a very human story here between two people who are so close but so far from being a part of the species.

Perhaps less about action and monsters than last week’s episode (and even there they weren’t particularly at the forefront), The Woman Who Lived manages to walk the line well between some laugh-out-loud humour and some real, serious emotion. There’s a lot of deep ideas buried away in the library here, and finding out first hand what it’s like to live for so long is perhaps one of the saddest things the programme has presented us with for some time. 

If there's a standout in the episode, though, it's not in the emotional exploration of an eternal life - but rather in Rufus Hound's turn as the highwayman Sam Swift. There's often a bit of discussion generated around casting comedians in the series, but this is a character who simply couldn't be brought to life by anyone without the superb comic timing Hound brings to the part. It's safe to say that he's rocketed up the list of people we'd like the Doctor to bump into again!

Five Things to Look Out For:

1) “Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through like fish in the night…”
2) You can’t just rip out the painful memories.
3) “How many Clara's have you lost?”
4) The Doctor has been checking in on Maisie’s character…
5) “This is banter. I’m against banter.”

[Sources: Doctor Who Online, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-Free Preview of Episode 9.5: The Girl Who Died:

For the first time since Doctor Who’s return to TV in 2005, the opening four episodes have given us two consecutive two-parters. But Steven Moffat implied that this year it wouldn’t be entirely clear what constitutes a ‘two part story’, and it seems that in making such a statement, he was talking about this week’s episode The Girl Who Died and next week’s, The Woman Who Lived. The titles seem to link up in the same way that the couple we’ve had so far this year did, and they both share Maisie Williams as a cast member (but not necessarily as the same person), but the similarities stop there. This week’s episode is very much its own self-contained story, pitting the Doctor against vikings again for the first time on television in half a century.

Every week we spend our time in these previews praising the likes of Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, so you can simply take it as read that the pair shine again in this episode. The Doctor and Clara continue to share a relationship matched only by the likes of Baker and Sladen, or McCoy and Aldred. Instead, we want to shine some light on another key component to the programme; series’ composer Murray Gold. Gold has provided the scores for Doctor Who since its revival, and seems to come alive especially in this episode, with a fantastic score that really stands out among his best.

It certainly helps to compliment the work of director Ed Bazzalgette, making his debut on the programme with this episode. As you'd expect by now, the historical locations look beautiful and manage to carry their own distinct flavour within the series - we’re as different in style and tone this week compared to last as you can imagine, and it works in the story’s favour. After a couple of episodes tamely trapped in tight claustrophobic corridors and gloomy overcast Scottish villages, we’re now somewhere bright and colourful and open.

The script helps to ring the changes, too, injecting even more humour into proceedings. The Twelfth Doctor continues to develop a fine streak in comedy, and watching him try to overcome all his hesitations about helping this village in a war against the universe manages to walk the line between the deep-rooted caring that even this coldest of incarnations has while also being laugh-out-loud funny in places.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s even some answers to a question that’s been plaguing fans for a couple of years, now…

Five Things to Look Out For:

1) “I’m not the police. That’s just what it says on the box.”
2) When leaving the Spider Mines, make sure you’ve not picked up any ‘hitch-hikers’…
3) “Pick a direction. Fly like a bird.”
4) The Doctor can still speak ‘Baby’.
5) “I know where I got this ____, and I know what it’s for!”

[Sources: DWO; Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of Episode 9.2: The Witch's Familiar:

The Doctor's trapped - a prisoner of Davros in the city of the Daleks. His two best friends in all time and space - Missy and Clara - have both perished in the cold blast of exterminations, and the TARDIS has been destroyed. As first adventures of a new series go, the Doctor's not having a particularly good day, is he?

If you think that the series is going to go easy on us after that opening, though, you'd be wrong. The Witch's Familiar continues to take the knife and twist it in the Doctor ever further, playing on his grief over abandoning the child Davros out on the battlefields of Skaro, and using his compassion to engineer possibly the biggest mistake the Time Lord has ever made.

As with the first episode of this story, it's tricky to tell you very much without giving the game away. You don't want to know how the Doctor escapes Davros' clutches (though trust us when we say it is brilliant - even if Davros might struggle to see the funny side), or what lurks in the sewers beneath the Dalek City, biding time until revenge can be enacted. It's another episode which works all the better simply if you watch the doors in the city slide slowly open on each revelation.

What we can say is just how brilliant it is to have Julian Bleach back as Davros once again. Whereas The Magician's Apprentice confined him to a deathbed, this episode gives him a chance to really *live* again, and there's some lovely flashes of the mania he displayed back in Journey's End. There's very few privileges in Doctor Who greater than watching Peter Capaldi's Doctor and Davros slowly counter each other, playing a great game of chess with the Daleks, and ancient Time Lord secrets, as the pieces. It's quite easy to believe with this pair that they could have, in another life, been the very best of friends, and it's great to see them given so much screen time.

Also given a turn in the spotlight this week are the classic Daleks. Fans who were disappointed when 2012's Asylum of the Daleks left them as largely background cameos will no doubt be far happier with this - even the Special Weapons Dalek gets a chance to shout a bit! How very Dalek!

Five Things to Look Out For;

1) A character gets to pay homage to a sequence from the very first Dalek story from 1963.

2) Why did the Doctor *really* leave Gallifrey, all those centuries ago?

3) 'Where did he get the tea? I'm the Doctor. Just accept it.'

4) How does the Doctor always manage to win?

5) Mercy.

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of Episode 9.1: The Magician’s Apprentice:

He’s back, and it’s about time (etc…)! 

Doesn’t it seem strange to think that a little over a year ago, we had yet to see Peter Capaldi in a full episode of Doctor Who? He’d taken a dislike to his kidneys, managed to crash the TARDIS, and showed up alongside his other selves as the Time War came to a climax, but he still wasn’t quite the Doctor. Not yet. Fast forward thirteen months and we’re about to dive into another twelve weeks alongside this incarnation of the Time Lord, traversing time and space in his second series in the role.

It’s perhaps the highest compliment that I can give to say that Capaldi isn’t even trying in this episode. He simply walks through every scene as himself… and is so completely the Doctor in doing so. Having spent a bit of time in this new body, the Doctor seems to have relaxed a bit - this is much more the Doctor of Last Christmas than Into the Dalek - but he’s still got a slightly darker side, and isn’t afraid of making decisions that previous incarnations would have balked at. It’s nice to see a character who’s slightly more at ease with himself, but people fearing that the Doctor would simply be softened up this year needn’t worry.

Of course, every great Doctor needs a great arch-enemy, and Michelle Gomez’s incarnation of the Master - Missy - simply goes from strength to strength. She takes a prominent role in this episode alongside Jenna Coleman’s Clara, as they search for the missing Doctor having received his last will and testament in the form of a ‘Confession Dial’ sent to his closest friend on the eve of his final day.

There’s very little that we can actually tell you about this episode while still remaining spoiler-free, but perhaps that’s a good thing - this is an episode which really does work best if you’ve no clue what’s about to come. Every time you think you’ve had the final big surprise, or the last big reveal, there’s another one along to keep you glued to the action. Seriously, try to avoid the spoilers, the cryptic hints about what’s to come and what’s going on. What the Doctor’s done and who’s hunting him down as a result of it… they’ll be all the greater coming fresh.

In many ways, The Magician’s Apprentice feels more like a season finale than it does an opener. The stakes are high, there’s cameos for many people and places from across the Doctor's previous adventures in a manner resembling The Pandorica Opens or The Wedding of River Song, and they’re really going for broke in the drama department. As a hook to the new run of adventures, Doctor Who has rarely hit the ground running this hard. 

Five Things to Look Out For;

1) ‘One of those was a lie…’

2) You So Fine.

3) ‘Tell me the name of the boy who isn’t going to die today!’

4) Beware of the Hand Mines.

5) ‘Doctor… what have you done?’

[Source: DWO, Will Brooks]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 851: Last Christmas

Dear diary,

Every Christmas is ‘Last Christmas’, this episode tells us, and it’s certainly the ‘Last Christmas’ for The 50 Year Diary, because after 851 days, I’m finally at the end of my mission to watch Doctor Who one episode a day from the very beginning. I’ll be posting a final entry tomorrow looking back over the entire project and discussing it in a little more detail, but for now, it’s time for one final adventure with the Doctor…

As Christmas specials for the programme go, Last Christmas is one of the better ones, if not one of the best. I’ve noticed a trend when re-watching Series Eight for this marathon, in that on the whole, by opinion of the episodes has gone down. Sometimes it’s gone down by quite a hefty amount. On only a couple of occasions has it gone up. One of the biggest problems that I’ve found on this viewing of the series - which I’ve only really touched on very briefly so far - is that it’s suddenly pitched at a slightly older audience than it has for the last few years. The combination of a later timeslot and a shift in tone through the stories themselves seems far less geared towards the youngsters than I always thing the programme should be (and I’m sorry to say that I know of more kids than I can count on two hands who stopped watching last year because it simply didn’t appeal to them any more. To that end, when Santa Claus was announced as a guest star for the Christmas episode, I did wonder if they might be trying to readdress the balance and win back some of the younger fans, but as I wrote in my preview of the episode last December:

”People have speculated that a special starring Santa and his elves, with reindeer and the North Pole is a sign of the programme becoming more child-friendly than some episodes of the latest run have been, but that’s not necessarily the case. There’s still plenty of humour and fun to be found in the sometimes dark situations that play out in this North Pole base, but the arrival of Father Christmas doesn’t exactly herald songs and lightness.”

That’s something that I’ve been musing on throughout this episode today. I rather like the darker tone of the programme in itself - it’s certainly provided us with some stories like Mummy on the Orient Express which I’ve really enjoyed - but I’m finding my enjoyment of the episode, and the series as a whole, tainted by wondering if perhaps it’s shifted focus that bit too much. Series Nine is, depending who you listen to, either staying in the same vein as the last run was, or changing completely to lighten the mood. I think I’d like a bit of a combination - Doctor Who can do lots of great stories that are scary and - though I’m loathe to say it - ‘dark’, but there’s just something… missing at the moment which has been all too apparent on second viewing.

But, leaving aside my own thoughts on who the programme should be pitching itself to, what did I like about this story, even the second time around? Well, I’m rather keen on the way that everything ties together. The use of Santa is very clever, and I love the idea that you never quite know if he’s real or not, and the use of dreams is done rather brilliantly - on the first viewing, I certainly didn’t guess the various twists and reveals, and I enjoyed trying to work it all out as we went along. There’s several of those great revelations, where you work it out just seconds before the answer is revealed, and that’s always rather engaging viewing.

But the thing I like the most about this one simply has to be Peter Capaldi. Having been through this marathon, I’ve had the spotlight shone on each Doctor in turn for several months at a time over the last few years, and it’s really remarkable how they’ve managed to strike gold every single time. I’ll admit that I was worried when Peter was cast - not because I didn’t think he’d be brilliant or that he’d be wrong for the part, but simply because it was something that everybody seemed to agree upon. Wherever yo turned, people were nodding in agreement and looking forward to the future of Doctor Who. That rarely happens in a fandom, so it was a little unsettling, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was the sign of a mistake! But of course it wasn’t, because over this first series, Capaldi has shown us that he’s just the man Hartnell, or Pertwee, or McCoy, or any of them were - and the future really is bright in his hands.

The rather nice thing about finishing this marathon at this point is that Doctor Who’s future seems to be assured for the next few years at the very least. Even though I’ve now experienced every episode in some form or another, there’s always new Doctor Who on the horizon, and that’s possibly the most exciting thing of all.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow for a final summing up and, for the first time in ages, a day when I won’t have to watch an episode! That doesn’t mean I won’t watch one, mind. I’ll probably cave by around the middle of the afternoon… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 850: Death in Heaven

Dear diary,

Ooft. As finales go, this one really does try to shoot for the stars, doesn’t it? It’s been a while since I’ve said just how much the scale of this programme has developed in the decade since it returned to screens in Rose, and that’s especially noticeable in this story. Visually, the series looks a million miles away, but also… can you imagine the kind of UNIT set up we’ve got here when you look at them in Aliens of London? Heck, even compared to Series Four and the first big return of the Taskforce en masse, this is a whole extra leap forwards. Put simply, all the UNIT scenes of this episode are shot like a proper movie, and they’re all the better for it.

It’s also rather lovely to finally have our own little 21st century version of the UNIT ‘family’ back in action! The first time I discovered that Kate and Osgood would be making a return to the programme for Series Eight was on a trip in to town to do a bit of shopping, when I found the street blocked off because UNIT were confronting an invasion of Cybermen. It really is a hazard of living in Cardiff. Oh, but it’s so brilliant to have this little team that can make return appearances (and it’s even greater that we’re getting a Kate-led UNIT spin off on audio later this year). All of this makes it all the more poignant when they go and kill Osgood! Of all the people! Steven Moffat is right when he says that if you want to show just how evil Missy can be then you have to kill Osgood, because she’s the only target that will wrench at your heart that much. I watched this episode for the first time at the premiere in Cardiff, and the whole room at that moment erupted in a mixture of gasps and cries of ‘no!’. In the question and answer session afterwards, someone asked if Osgood was really dead and it was revealed that yes, she is. But then, there’s still a Zygon version running around possibly, so I live in hope! When only moments later Kate gets whipped out of the aeroplane in mid-flight, it really does do the trick of keeping you glued to the screen - it’s Doctor Who at its most exciting (though I can’t tell you how relieved I am that she’s alive).

Those UNIT parts of the episode are the ones that really work the most for me, though, because I’m simply not as invested in everything else. The emotion is all there, and I can certainly connect to the scenes in the graveyard between Clara and Danny (and they are good), but they simply don’t appeal to me in the same way that the rest of the story does. I might be but a simple mind, but I’d have been keen for some more all-out Cyberman battles. There’s my Camfield-esque attack force on the streets of London?! As the cap to Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Doctor, though? I like it. We started the season with old friends learning to accept who this new Doctor is, and we end the run with old friends who don’t even bat an eyelid at it. This man is the Doctor now, and long may he continue to be so.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 849: Dark Water

Dear diary,

As finales go, this one doesn’t pull any punches, does it? When a semi-regular character, who’s played quite a prominent role over the last three months, is killed off before the opening credits have even rolled, you know that they’re not messing around. Things are about to get very serious, very quickly. When you then move from that to the companion taking the Doctor and threatening to separate him from the TARDIs forever unless he does as she commands… well, it’s the kind of thing that a hundred fan theories talk about every year, but I never thought they’d be bold enough to actually do it on screen. Oh, it’s exciting.

That said, once we’re past all that initial excitement, things do rather slow down a notch. I still can’t help but feel that Dark Water is really a great big 45 minute prequel for the main event in the next episode. This one really is just about moving all the pieces into position, and getting everyone up-to-speed with what’s going on, so that the hour that follows it can simply get on with doing everything that it wants to.

That’s not to say that there’s not things to love about this episode, because there really are plenty. Those aforementioned opening scenes are wonderful (and bringing back Clara’s gran for the beef scene in her kitchen is the thing that suddenly makes Danny’s death hit home - it makes Clara’s world feel that little bit more real), and the payoff to them, with the Doctor and Clara alone in the TARDIS following her betrayal is simply breathtaking. It’s Capaldi and Coleman at their finest, and the same can be said of the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, too. I simply have to quote the scene, because it’s so well done;

DOCTOR

You betrayed me. Betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I've ever stood for. You let me down! 

CLARA

Then why are you helping me?

DOCTOR

Why? Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference? 

Everything they’ve been though this season has been leading up tho this moment, and it’s wonderful. A real highlight.

And then, throughout the rest of the episode, you’ve got Missy! Oh, wasn’t it a great reveal? I was fairly certain that she was going to be revealed as the master, but had to watch on transmission, because the preview copies we were sent at Doctor Who Online were censored! Great big black screens and silence in both the museum scene and the one out on the steps of St Paul’s - both of which then cut back to Peter Capaldi giving a look that’s a mixture of bafflement and horror. Everything around it seemed to so obviously point at Missy being the Master, but then there’s always the possibility that she might not be, and the the wool had been pulled over everyone’s eyes…

But actually discovering that we were right, and that it is the Master? Oh, that doesn’t make it any less brilliant. It helps that Michelle Gomez must be the best Master since the original. She’s so wonderful, and I’m ecstatic that we’re getting her back for another adventure next year. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 848: In the Forest of the Night

Dear diary,

Much like Kill the Moon a few weeks earlier, In the Forest of the Night came under a lot of fire for the science on display. And, once again, I simply wasn’t all that bothered about it! A forest grows overnight to protect us from extinction? Yeah, go on then, why not? However, I did have a few issues with this one, which are only more obvious on a second viewing.

I’ve two main problems - firstly, I simply don’t buy that this forest is in the middle of the city. There’s some lovely shots of phone boxes and busses stranded in the middle of the undergrowth, but there’s simply too much space for me to believe that we’re walking down streets. Lots of London streets are relatively narrow - certainly enough so that you’d be able to see the buildings through trees as dense as we’ve got here. For all the lovely direction of this one (which I’ll come to), it simply fails to convey the central idea of the script for me.

The second big issue I have is perhaps my main one, and the reason that this episode rates so low for me. I simply don’t buy that the forest is so empty. On the whole, we’ve got the Coal Hill field trip, the Doctor, the teams trying to destroy the trees, and Maebh’s mum and neighbour. That’s yer lot! I get that a great big forest growing in the centre of the city overnight is going to cause some traffic headaches when it comes to your morning commute, but it simply rings completely false to me. Tied in with the fact that there’s so few vehicles dotted around between the trees, and the whole plot seems to work on the assumption that the whole of London empties at night-time, and that hardly anyone was able to get back in the next morning. It just feels so off-base. I’d expect at least a few bemused citizens wandering around the foliage (and, actually, I’d imagine there’s quite a lot of fun to be had with that, too).

I think the reason it bothers me so much is simply because it would be so easy to overcome. All you need to do is insert a couple of brief sentences and I’d completely buy it. The trees are here to save us, right? Okay, so the same power that’s able to make them all grow overnight is also able to transport all the people away somewhere at the same time. Humans removed for safety, trees grow to protect the planet, then the humans are all brought back once the danger has passed. See? It seems so simple that I’m actually almost offended that it’s not done! Hm? What’s that? Why are all the people we do see still here, then? Oh, that’s simple! The Coal Hill group are there because they’re with Maebh at the sleepover when the event occurs. The Doctor is there because he’s an alien, so doesn’t get scooped out when the rest of the planet does (or he simply arrived after the fact. Time machine, and all that), and Maebh’s mum is still around because having lost one child, her fear at losing the other one is strong enough to overpower the removal. As for the teams trying to burn the forest… oh, well, I’m not giving you all the answers. Someone else can work out how they remain behind. Magic, possibly.

It’s really those two issues which simply stop me from being able to engage with this story in the way I’d like, and it’s a real pity because there’s some gorgeous work on display visually, and it’s a shame that it’s marred by the fact that it doesn’t really fit what the script is trying to give us. This is Sheree Folkson’s first stab at directing Doctor Who, and I really hope she gets another chance to bring us one of the Doctor’s adventures, because there’s some real promise on display here, but it feels like the various disparate departments simply haven’t all pulled together in the way they normally do so well.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 847: Flatline

Dear diary,

I’ve said it before, but with less that a week to go until I reach the end of this marathon, I’ll probably not get a chance to say it again; One of my favourite things about Doctor Who is that we’ve all got such wonderfully diverse takes on it. I love, sometimes, being able to say to a friend ‘I really liked [x] story’, only for them to reveal that they can’t bear it, but they’re rather fond of story [z] (that’s just an example, by the way, not necessarily *The Gunfighters*, which I actually *do* rather like), when I may not be. That diversity is what helps to keep discussions about the programme interesting, even after all this time. And it’s also the thing which makes writing the previews of these episodes a little difficult, sometimes. I try to be as objective as I can when putting down the thoughts (while also trying to remain as spoiler-free as possible), but my own likes and dislikes in relation to the series are always going to inform how I rate something. Those opinions are also always going to be informed by outside elements, too, for better or for worse.

Which brings us to Flatline. I can’t remember the specifics, but the day I sat down to watch this one had been pretty hectic. I’d been running from place to place trying to get things done, and was looking forward to getting home to a brand new episode of Doctor Who to brighten the evening. The only downside was that Flatline had been the least-appealing episode to me when I read the brief previews that Steven Moffat had written for the Radio Times right back at the start of the series. I’d already decided - several weeks earlier, that this would be the episode I liked the least from the Series Eight run. Couple that mad day with that lack of enthusiasm, and I was never going to be that enamoured with this one. Still, if doing The 50 Year Diary had taught me anything, it’s that sometimes stories you’re not expecting to find much merit in can be the greatest gems of all.

But not this one. I watched the episode play out and just felt… flat. That’s not me trying to be funny, it’s just genuinely how it left me. I’d liked the concept well enough, I suppose, and there was a lot of nice exploration of the way the Doctor operates, but overall I wasn’t keen. In the end, I summed this one up by saying;

”A vital episode for the narrative of Series 8, a chance for the regulars to shine (as always), a simple concept twisted into interesting new directions… but perhaps an episode which is less than the sum of its parts.”

And thankfully, I didn’t seem to be alone. I messaged another reviewer to say how little I’d cared for Flatline, and they replied to agree that it was by far the weakest of the season for them. Still, having been enjoying the run more than I could remember enjoying a season in ages, it was always going to have one episode that let me down. But then Saturday night rolled around, and I suddenly realised that Twitter was ablaze with posts about how that night’s Doctor Who had been the best episode of the programme in years. I briefly wondered if I’d been sent the wrong tape and had gotten the order of the episodes wrong in my head, but a quick check confirmed that, nope, it was Flatline on telly that night, and that everyone else in the world loved it. Even my friend, who’d written a luke-warm preview on their own site was singing its praises! I was baffled. For a brief half-hour, I even contemplated watching it again just to see if I’d been in a worse mood that day than I’d realised, but simply didn’t want to see it again until I had to for this marathon.

So here we are today. Three friends have text today to say ‘You’ve got Flatline tonight! Great episode!’ (or words to those effects), and i have to admit that I’ve been a little caught up in the hype. I’ve spent the afternoon genuinely looking forward to watching this episode, and reevaluating my earlier thoughts on it. But then I actually say and watched it, and I’m sorry, but it’s rubbish. 

Well, no. Actually, that’s not at all fair. It’s not rubbish, by any stretch of the imagination. I’d happily choose this episode over several of the other stories I’ve encountered over the course of this project, but I simply cannot understand the love for it. It’s merely alright Doctor Who to my mind - not spectacular, but perfectly serviceable.

For me, the highlight is still in the examination of the way the Doctor operates. It’s a thread that’s been tugged at over the last few stories, but Flatline is where it’s moved centre stage - and expertly so, by moving the Doctor off to the sidelines. As ‘Doctor-lite’ stories go, this one is well handled (you certainly never feel like Capaldi is missing from the action, even if his hair does seem to go off on little breaks of its own from time to time), and it really makes the most of not having the Doctor there by placing his actions in the spotlight through Clara. She really does make an excellent Doctor, and I love the suggestion that you don’t have to be a good person to be a good Doctor - it’s very much in keeping with this incarnation’s attitude, and yet there’s something equally interesting about looking back at some of the earlier incarnations and thinking about the way they act, but with a false smile on the top of it all.

The other area that this episode is very strong at is the visuals. I can’t even begin to imagine how you go about planning to make an episode like this one, and it has to be said that the team do a great job of it. The Boneless themselves are especially well realised, and completely unlike any other Doctor Who monster we’ve ever had. 

And yet, for all that, it simply doesn’t work for me, I’m afraid. I’ll admit that I’ve perhaps gotten a little more in to it today that I did on that previous viewing, but not by a massive amount, and I’m afraid that it’s going to be ending up with a score lower than a lot of people would bestow upon it…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 846: Mummy on the Orient Express

Dear diary,

My relationship with Doctor Who has changed over the years. When I first stumbled into it around 2003, it was simply some old television show with a premise that hooked my interest. When it returned to TV screens in a blaze of glory two years later, I made the transition into a fully-fledged, card-carrying fan of the programme. In 2006, I wandered into online fandom and got to know other fans. By 2010 I had the opportunity to read scripts to the episodes before they made their way to TV, and within a few years of that I was actively living in Cardiff, with Doctor Who filming happening all around me. 2014, though, was when things finally tipped over to a whole new level, because someone I’d worked with on a few occasions was actually in Doctor Who. Better than that, they were in Doctor Who as a monster, and one of the scariest creations we’d had in the series for quite some time! It still amuses me when I run into Jamie that I’m actually talking to a fully-fledged Doctor Who monster.

I’m also pleased that knowing who was under all those bandages didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the episode one bit. I’d worried that I’d spend the whole thing watching slightly differently, more distracted by production quibbles than actually getting caught up in the adventure itself, so it’s good that this is one which really caught the imagination. It just combines several elements that I’m a fan of, and does enough with them to keep me interested, without allowing any one of them to get too far. It’s a murder mystery, but not in the traditional sense. It’s filled with 1920s trappings - which the BBC are always going to do well - but even they get stripped away when the time is right, and the whole feel of the episode shifts to something new. You’ve even got a completely different dynamic between the Doctor and the Companion than we’ve had in a long time - these two simply don’t know what to make of each other here, and are busy trying to pussyfoot around each other as well as diving in to the adventure like they usually would.

And it doesn’t hurt that - as I’ve said - the monster at the heart of this story is one of the scariest creations we’ve had in the programme for a long time. I’m struggling to think of any other creature in the 21st century version that has been as effectively terrifying as this… is there one? I’ve seen people single out the likes of the Beast from Series Two, but I don’t think that ever really worked for me in the same way as this one - maybe because it didn’t get to interact in the way the Foretold does? I have one or two issues with the tone the programme took in 2014 (I can’t help feeling that it rather lost sight of the younger end of the audience), but this has to be the crowning glory of the programme heading towards a slightly more grown-up place, because I love that we can have a creation like this one.

Yet somehow, the mummy doesn’t even get to be the star of the episode - because that accolade surely has to go to Frank Skinner, who simply shines his way through the story. Maybe it’s helped by the fact that I’m well aware of how much he loves the show (he tells a great anecdote on an episode of the Graham Norton show, in which he asks his agent if he can play a rock in some episode somewhere), but he really comes across as such a great character… I rather hope that he becomes the Craig for the Twelfth Doctor - a character who can pop up from time to time and share an adventure with our hero. His dry wit works so well with Peter Capaldi here, and I have to admit that I was a little gutted when he didn’t take up the offer of remming in the TARDIS at the end (I’m betting Skinner was, too)!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 845: Kill the Moon

Dear diary,

When Kill the Moon went out, there was a lot (and I mean a lot) of discussion online about how bad the science was. People happy enough to accept a programme about a 2,000 year old face changing alien who travels through time and space in a phone box bigger on the inside were absolutely up in arms about the idea that the Moon could be an egg. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that the Moon being an egg is an absolutely ridiculous and silly notion… but heck, it makes for a good hook in a Doctor Who episode, doesn’t it? I’m genuinely interested, so please do comment below, what is it about this particular bit of science that pushes it over the mark more than any other absolute nonsense we’ve had from this programme over the years? If nothing else, I’m fairly certain that the science in this one is more accurate than half of what David Whitaker learnt at school. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t have my own problems with this episode, which I’ll come to shortly, but I simply can’t wrap my head around why this particular concept was the one that crossed the line for so many people.

Still, all the ‘Moon is an egg’ stuff is merely window dressing, because this story is really hooked on the idea of what happens when the Doctor isn’t there to save to day. So often, he’s able to just wave the Sonic Screwdriver and send the enemy scrambling, so what happens when there’s a different kind of dilemma - one which isn’t so black and white as ‘Daleks = Evil’ - and the Doctor just swans off in the TARDIS and leaves us humans to get on with it? It’s such a great hook, and one which really works with this new incarnation of the Doctor. I can imagine any of the recent Doctor’s playing the role of the Doctor in this particular story - but I don’t know if I’d believe it from the others the way I do with Capaldi. The thing that sells it to me the most is his complete bafflement at the end as to why Clara is cross with him for the way he’s behaved here - it’s really that ‘alien’ side of the character coming back to the fore, and Capaldi sells it all so well.

Now, I’ve already said that I do have issues with this episode, and it’s largely to do with the way that Clara comes to make the decisions she does. I’m fairly sure that we’re told it’s lucky they can even get a signal from ‘mission control’ because of one lone satellite being in orbit… so how is it that everyone appears to have been tuning in to the broadcast that Clara makes only a fe minutes later? And even then, it’s a decision that can only be made by the bit of the planet that a) Clara can see and b) is shrouded in enough darkness for their votes to register. Call me crazy, but I can’t see them adopting a similar strategy for next week’s election…

I also can’t help but think that perhaps this is where Clara should have parted ways with the Doctor, at least for the time being. I won’t even get started on all the ridiculous complaints of there being ‘too much’ Clara throughout Series Eight, but I can at least understand why people grew tired of her leaving scenes. We get one here, then again in a few stories time, then again at Christmas… it just means that there’s going to need to be a really good reason for her to go when the time finally does come. For what it’s worth, I’m hoping she falls in love with a Gallifreyan guard she’s spent hardly any screen time with. It’s just that this would have been such a powerful way for a companion to leave, and a real moment in the evolution of the Twelfth Doctor’s character. You could have her show up again at the end of the series or some time next year and remark on how much he’s changed since this story… it just feels like it might have been a bit of a wasted opportunity.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 844: The Caretaker

Dear diary,

I’ve not found a chance yet to say how much I love the idea that after a half a century, the Doctor has come full circle to find himself travelling with teachers from Coal Hill school again. I have some issues with the fact that Clara suddenly has a job there in the 50th anniversary having shown no particular desire to teach before that point (there’s some lines about her ‘new job’, but it would have been nice if she’d been studying for her qualifications throughout Series Seven), but that’s not enough to dampen the idea that we’ve found ourselves back here once more. Add to that the Doctor’s comment in this episode that the school has seen enough artron energy over the years… yeah, love it. Here’s hoping that we’ll be headed back again come the 75th anniversary - it’s certainly something that comes along every 25 years, it seems…

There’s also something rather wonderful about throwing the Doctor into this world and watching him try to fit in around the story of Clara and Danny. Their relationship is one of the things I’m enjoying the most about Series Eight: there’s something appealing about watching something so very… normal unfold while Clara tries to balance her two lives. The Caretaker highlights this perhaps more than any other story, and the little vignettes at the start are rather lovely, giving us more glimpses into the adventures the Doctor and Clara share (including a brief cameo appearance for the Doctor Who Experience, and what seems to be a private screening of The Underwater Menace. Nuffink in ze vorld can schtop me nao, etc.

They also get to share quite a fun adventure around the corridors of a school - always a great location for a Doctor Who episode - with a frankly rather brilliant little robot creature. I’ve taken pictures of the Scovox Blitzer for products here in Cardiff, and I have to say that it’s a great design up close - really detailed, and it’s hard to remember that the Moxx of Balloon is tucked away inside there! I’m not quite sure I buy it as being one of the deadliest creatures to have ever existed, but it acts as a nice distraction throughout the story.

For all the running around chasing a speedy little killing machine, there’s something terribly real at the heart of this episode, and that’s where it’s most successful. Watching Clara as she tries to juggle everything and spin her web of lies faster than ever is really rather gripping, and just when you think she might have managed to iron things out with Danny - at least temporarily, while she plans out what to say next - the Doctor steps in to voice his disappointment in her.

That’s the other thing that this episode does particularly well - capturing the new Doctor’s character. I think this episode and Robots of Sherwood are, for me, the two stories that capture this incarnation the way I picture him to be. Vastra said in Deep Breath that this latest regeneration had ‘lifted the veil’ of the Doctor, and brought his true self closer to the fore, and that’s so beautifully demonstrated here when he demands that Clara explain her choice of Danny. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors would have mocked him, I’m sure, but then they would have sulked off and kept a lot of these emotions bottled away 0 whereas the Twelfth is simply blunter about the situation - He’s not impressed, and he wants you to know that.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 843: Time Heist

Dear diary,

Because I tend to watch ‘new’ Doctor Who episodes on preview tape for Doctor Who Online, I don’t usually bother to watch again when the programme airs on a Saturday night. During 2014 especially, it lead to several occasions of texting people only to be greeted with a request to go away because they were trying to watch the show - I dimply forgot when it was on. The week Time Heist aired, though, I was back home visiting friends, and assumed that I’d be sitting through this one again - something I really didn’t mind. I was therefore surprised to find that they weren't’ planning to watch it because they’d really not been enjoying the series so far. Now, in fairness, on this re-watch, Series Eight isn’t scoring anywhere near as highly with me as it did first time around, but I’d been really enjoying it at that point, and insisted that we sit and watch this one as it went out. We did. I still really liked it. They still really didn’t. 

Watching it again today… I’m happy to say that I still rather like it! Time Heist is never going to be considered a classic in the same way that stories like Genesis of the Daleks or The Tomb of the Cybermen are, but it’s a solid episode of Doctor Who that I think I’d be quite happy to watch again as a good example of the programme. It’s the kind of episode that you don’t have to work at watching - you can quite happily stick it on, point your attention towards it, and soak up. There’s enough ‘timey wimey’ to the plot to be interesting, and plenty of humour to be found, along with some really rather good special effects (including a lovely shot of the team approaching the bank of Karabraxos which has been filmed in Cardiff Bay and then digitally altered so much you really wonder if it would’t have been easier (and cheaper) simply to film it against a green screen in the studio.

The absolute start of the show, though, has to be the Teller. We’ve had some great creatures in Doctor Who over the years, but the Teller has to be one of the best examples of every department involved really pulling together to create something really rather special. The design itself, with the eyes out on stalks like that, isn’t especially unique (indeed, I’d say it’s familiar enough to simply suggest ‘alien’ in a science fiction film context), but there’s a reason that it works - because it’s effective. And then there’s the actual construction of the costume… oh, it’s a little bit stunning, isn’t it? I’ve had the privilege of seeing it ‘up close’ and in action with an actor inside, and it really is convincing. Remember that age-old story that Jon pertwee used to tell about chatting to an actor in full Draconian make up and forgetting he wasn’t a real alien? Well, I could totally believe that with this creature. It really is one of the best we’ve ever had, and I feel fairly safe in declaring it one of the greatest creature constructions that the 21st century version of programme has ever given us.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 842: Listen

Dear diary,

When previewing this episode for Doctor Who Online last year, I commented;

”Since 2005, Steven Moffat has been the king of ‘scary’…In many ways, Listen feels like a return to Moffat trying to scare us, and it’s safe to say that he succeeds.”

I was watching it in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon first time around, and found it suitably creepy. This time around, I’ve been watching it after dark, and there was a moment, when pausing it to go and grab a drink, where the empty house really did start to make the hairs on the back of my neck creep up. The atmosphere and tension in Listen is extremely well crafted, and there’s something brilliant about Moffat being able to go back to writing this type of story, after a few seasons where he’s been confined to the great, big, story arc moments.

A lot of the atmosphere is generated simply from Peter Capaldi being, as Clara says, a big grey stick insect. Yesterday I was full of praise for the way that he was able to make me smile and laugh, being the Doctor with a twinkle in his eye and a great line in humour. Today I could rave about the way he can equally do ‘darker’ performances like the ones we get here. I’ve spoken in recent months about both David Tennant and Matt Smith’s ability to do darker sides to their Doctor, and how well they can do that, but there’s something different about Peter Capaldi’s darker side - there’s something genuinely scary about the Doctor himself, and it’s not just the eyebrows. That opening TARDIS scene, in which the Doctor sets out the premise of the adventure really puts you in the right frame of mind to keep on edge for the next 45 minutes.

The episode itself, while creepy, goes to great lengths to make sure that there’s always an alternate explanation for everything we’re seeing. It could be that the Doctor himself wrote ‘listen’ on the board in a moment of absent-mindedness (if this were a William Hartnell story, we’d be able to assume that was exactly the case and the adventure would be over in five minutes). The coffee mug disappears and the telly turns off… because the Doctor stole the mug and the telly has been faulty for ages. No one could have entered the room without Clara and Rupert noticing… but then the Doctor managed it, and maybe it’s just another child hiding under the blanket trying to scare his friend? For me, this is where Listen is most successful - in leaving you to make up your own mind about the events. As far as I’m concerned, I think I’d always go with these alternate explanations. but then… well, you never know.

And yet… I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it today, The only word I can find to describe my experience of watching this one again is ‘slog’. It’s hitting all the right beats, and managing to be creepy and thought provoking, and features some great character moments… but I’m simply not enjoying it as much as I did the first time around, and not as much as I was expecting to this time around. I don’t know if it’s a problem with me, or if the story just doesn’t hold up so well once that initial thrill has been experienced, but I’m afraid today’s score is going to end up being a little lower than it probably deserves to be…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 841: Robot of Sherwood

Dear diary,

It’s strange, watching this one today, because I’ve never seen this episode in its broadcast form. The preview copy that Doctor Who Online received to review last year arrived before the decision to edit events from the end of the episode in which the Sheriff gets beheaded. There was a lot of complaints around when the announcement of the cut was made, but it’s perhaps notable that watching today, I couldn’t even tell you exactly where the minute or so was removed from. I mean, I know generally where it was, but I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, and the loss of it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the story at all. The only slight issue it causes is that there’s later mention of the Sheriff having an engine for a body, which feels somewhat odd now we’ve lost the reveal that he himself is a robot, but even that isn’t the end of the world!

Oh, but I rather love this episode. As much as I’ve enjoyed the Twelfth Doctor being so rude and dismissive (what people on the internet insist on calling ‘dark’) over the last couple of episodes, this is the first story of his era to really capture the right balance of this incarnation’s personality. He is still incredibly rude at times, and arrogant, and short tempered, and stubborn, and all of those things… but he does it with a real twinkle in the eye that can’t help but evoke the Doctor Billy Hartnell was playing before the end of his time. The man Peter Capaldi plays in this episode is far closer to the Doctor that I’ve known and loved from all his previous selves than he’s been allowed to explore so far.

And it means that I’m really enjoying the company of the Doctor in this one, and frequently finding myself laughing at more-or-less everything he says. There was a huge guffaw (and that really is the only word) when he counters Clara’s suggestion that they visit Robin Hood in exactly the way she’d predicted, much smiling as the Doctor and Robin then proceed to bicker and argue their way through the next half an hour, and I couldn’t even help but laugh at how angry the Doctor’s face gets when the button is cut from his coat. Those eyebrows really could cut you in half from twenty paces.

The episode is further strengthened by the simply gorgeous direction. Paul Murphy makes his Doctor Who debut here (though he’ll be back again shortly for The Caretaker), and he chooses to do some really lovely work with the programme, giving us a palette that I don’t think we’ve ever really seen before. The Doctor comments that everything is ‘too green’ and ‘too sunny’ ,and that comes across beautifully on screen - this really is Doctor Who shot as though it were part of the Robin Hood legend, and there’s not a lot else you’d want. I’m also particularly keen on the way that Murphy shoots the TARDIS scenes - finding a new way of approaching a set in danger of becoming familiar. More from this director in the next series, please!

In many ways, this episode reminds me of The Shakespeare Code - probably the historical that has appealed most to me from the 21st century run of Who. It’s got that same vivid sense of colour that presents history as bold and exciting, and a central historical guest star who’s a little bit cocksure, but completely endearing at the same time. I have a feeling that Robot of Sherwood is likely to become the episode I watch when I really want to experience this era at its best… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 840: Into the Dalek

Dear diary,

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with new incarnations of the Doctor facing off against the Daleks too soon. It somehow seems fine to me when they do it with Patrick Troughton (perhaps because it’s simply the first time they do any of that ‘new Doctor’ stuff, or perhaps because at that point in the programme’s history, you really need the Daleks to ensure that the audience can go along with it), but when Matt Smith encountered the pepper pots in his third episode, it just seemed too soon for my liking. I preferred it with David Tennant - for example - where we had almost a whole series before they show up. Or even most of the other Doctors, where there’s a fair chunk of time before the ultimate foes show up. Imagine my displeasure, then, when it was announced that Peter Capaldi would be facing off with the Daleks in his second episode.

It’s entirely a personal issue, so it’s not really fair for me to let this hang-up affect my enjoyment of the stories at all, but even watching Into the Dalek again today, I simply feel odd, almost, watching the Twelfth Doctor, who’s only been in his iconic outfit for about five minutes, coming face-to-face with his mortal enemy. I can’t even explain it - I’m certainly making a bad job of trying to, here - but it just doesn’t sit right with me for some reason.

And it’s not helped that I simply can’t get a handle on this episode in itself. In many ways, the idea of shrinking down the Doctor and his companion and sending them inside a Dalek is so obvious that I’m astounded it took them 51 years to actually do it. We even had the Doctor cloned and put inside his own head after only 14 years! But once they’re actually inside the Dalek… it just doesn’t feel like a lot happens. They encounter a couple of perils, but it doesn’t seem to take them long to get to the problem that’s turning this Dalek ‘good’, and fix it. Or, rather, not fix it, but make the Dalek back into, well, a Dalek again, at least temporarily. We then get lots of action and battles to fill up the remainder of the episode, which leaves all the ‘inside the Dalek’ stuff feeling a bit pointless beyond creating an evocative title.

All those battles and fights that we get, especially towards the end, are for me the very best bits of the episode, and I can’t help but thinking I’d have liked 45 minutes later in the season which would simply have the Doctor and Clara getting caught up in this big asteroid-belt battle with the Daleks, and having to rub up alongside soldiers to fight the mutual threat. It perhaps wouldn’t be as big and brassy as this episode tries to be, but judging by the simply fantastic shots of Daleks exploding left, right, and centre as the episode draws to a close, I think I’d have enjoyed watching more of that than what we’ve actually got here… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 839: Deep Breath

Dear diary,

Oh, the excitement was high for this one. New Doctors are always something to look forward to, but somehow it felt different this time. I think because there was less time before the announcement that Matt Smith would be leaving and him actually vacating the TARDIS (with David Tennant, we had getting on for eighteen months, whereas with Smith we only had around six or so), it was all caught up in a kind of whirlwind of change. And what a busy six months they’d been! We’d seen the Eighth Doctor’s regeneration! And been introduced to a whole incarnation we’d never even known about! We dived into the Time War and came out fighting, with Gallifrey safe and sound, and the Doctor pocketing a whole new run of regenerations. Oh, it was exciting. And then… well, nothing, sort of. Christmas passed us by, the Eleventh Doctor became the Twelfth, and then we were back into one of those long waits for any more adventures.

I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of Deep Breath in Cardiff in early August of last year, and by the time that day rolled around, I don’t think I could have been more excited for the return of the show. Frankly, they could have shown an hour of Peter Capaldi licking the screen and I would have thought it was the best thing ever. The whole atmosphere of the event was electric - I had friends visiting the city for the premiere, so got to catch up with them and show them round, and then soak up all the joy from the red carpet, and the real buzz of the day. There’s also something just so fun about watching an episode in a large hall like that - everyone laughing at the same time and really getting caught up in the narrative. By the time the episode finished, I thought it was probably one of the best we’d had in a long time, and that Capaldi was rather good (if different, we’ll come back to that in a moment), and the Q&A that followed the screening left me certain that the future of Doctor Who was in very safe hands.

When the episode aired on telly a few weeks later, I watched it again. Of course I did, I’d enjoyed it that much! It didn’t quite have the same pull for me second time around, but then it wouldn’t, would it? I wasn't watching it in a big excitable group, and I already knew all of the twists and turns to come. Still lots to enjoy, and I still came away terribly excited for the rest of the run. Watching it back today, a rare third viewing for a Doctor Who story… Well…

It’s not that I don’t like this one. Of course I like it. It’s generally a very good story, which does a good job of introducing the new Doctor alongside familiar elements (but still finding a way to keep those elements fresh), and looks visually stunning. It’s just a bit of a drag, isn’t it? The Day of the Doctor runs to about the same length as this one, give or take a couple of minutes, but whereas that one ran that long because that’s how long the story felt like it needed, Deep Breath feels like the plot of perhaps an hour expanded out to fill the longer time slot. In some cases, having the extended running time gives the story room to breathe, and we get to have lots of nice, still, quiet moments that you wouldn’t otherwise get, but I found myself four or five times looking at the clock and wondering how there was still that much time left to go. I can’t help feeling that the extended running time would have been better spent on The Time of the Doctor, while this would have worked better as a nice, hour-long opener for the new Doctor.

Oh, but that new Doctor is the real joy of this episode. I came away from the premiere screening thinking that Peter Capaldi was absolutely brilliant casting for the Doctor. My friend Nick, who came along with me offered a slightly more cautious view, but one that I can’t help think is absolutely what they’ve aimed for (and gotten) with this incarnation; “I love Peter Capaldi’s Doctor… but I don’t know if I like Peter Capaldi’s Doctor…”. In some ways, the Twelfth Doctor feels entirely familiar - the somewhat brash personality he displays here is reminiscent of several previous incarnations, notably the First, Fourth, and Sixth Doctors. In others, he’s new and unpredictable, and after two incarnations that - as Vastra says - were playing at being the companion’s boyfriend, wearing the faces of young men to fit in, there’s something really exciting about the programme taking this new direction, and it’s not one I thought they’d embrace so whole-heartedly as they have.

So, away from the crows, and the atmosphere, and the red carpet, Deep Breath is perhaps a bit bloated and in need of some trimming down. It feels like a bit of a bulky way to start the bold new era. But equally, it still has all the makings of a grand new step, and once again, I’m excited to dive into the rest of Series Eight… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 786: Journey’s End

Dear diary,

At the start of this year, during my discussions about the Daleks for Dalek, and the Bad Wolf two-parter, I made several references to the fact that the Daleks in ‘new’ Who were never again as ruthless as they are in those stories. Frankly, I was wrong! I was a bit surprised when they turned up again for Doomsday and got to do their fair share of being rather scary and powerful, but here they’re well away! Certainly, they’ve lost a few of the ‘special features’ they had in Series One (the likes of a revolving mid-section, and the whole ‘being able to stop bullets’ thing - which I almost thought they’d brought back today before it turned out to be the result of a time-lock built around the Hub.

But the Daleks here are cold. They shoot Jack without a second thought (and while we know that he’ll be springing back up again in a few minutes, we get to experience the shock of the moment through Rose, who doesn’t know that she’s made that man immortal), and then you’ve got the way that the Supreme Dalek taunts the Doctor while Donna is left to burn in the heart of their Crucible. If I’m honest, the Daleks don’t really do a whole lot else in this one - they mull around and look menacing while really acting as pets to Davros - but those few moments really make them worthwhile, and I’m pleased to see how wrong I was about them losing their touch after that first year.

Not that I’m complaining about Davros, though! Oh, certainly, he means that the Daleks don’t really get an awful lot to do here because he’s the focal point for much of the episodes’ villainy, but let’s be honest, Julian Bleech is simply perfect in the part, isn’t he? My God he’s good. There’s something so wonderful about the way he slips from being the calm, collected, in control version of the character to the crazed, half-mad, ready-to-end-the-universe version. I think, on reflection, Bleech is my favourite of all the Davros incarnations (Davroses? Davrii?). And if the Daleks’ presence is justified by the few moments in which they’re ruthless and hurtful, then Davros’ presence is brought into the light by the moment he sees Sarah Jane after so long. ‘You were there on Skaro,’ he muses, and suddenly it’s never felt more right that Sarah should have stumbled back into the Doctor’s life. Oh, there’s something just magical about the fact that after all these years, Sarah Jane (and Elisabeth Sladen) is back in the Doctor’s life again, fighting the good fight alongside her best friend.

I can’t discuss Journey’s End without bringing up the… um… well, the ‘journey’s end’. In The Writer’s Tale, Russell T Davies wonders about the departure he’s given Donna here, and wether children will be able to connect with it in the same way they can the other companion departures. Rose gets sealed off in another universe and can’t get back. Fine. Martha chooses to stay behind and care for her family. Also fine. Donna has her world taken away from her, and simply forgets. It’s perhaps not quite as relatable as the other two departures, but it is wonderful.

And I think that it’s the right ending for Donna - it was this or death for her, I think, because not a lot else would have stopped this woman from standing at the Doctor’s side. The sense of loss through the whole situation is easy to feel, if not from Donna, then from the characters all around her. The Doctor is heartbroken, and Wilf, who I’ve said has made me want to cry every time he pops up on screen, is absolutely broken. It’s terrible, and beautiful, and such a moving way for Donna to go.

There’s one thing that’s always bothered me about it, though, and watching through the series again this last couple of weeks has really flared it up as a bugbear in my mind. Once Donna has ‘activated’, the Doctor comments;

THE DOCTOR

The Doctor Donna. Just like the Ood said, remember? They saw it coming. The Doctor Donna. 

But surely, in Planet of the Ood, the Ood call the pair ‘DoctorDonna’ because that’s how the Doctor introduced themselves? Frantically, then they thought they were going to be attacked, repeated over and over again;

THE DOCTOR

Doctor, Donna, friends. 

I always took it to be that the Ood went on to call them ‘Doctor Donna’ because that’s the name they’d been given. Yeah, yeah, I know that you could argue that the Ood were seeing more than that, and that they were seeing the Metacrisis, but it’s always sat ill with me…

We also need to make another stop today on my journey of ‘foreshadowing the regeneration’, because a lot of the dialogue here would go on to have greater significance once The End of Time came along. The Doctor muses that the timelines were all drawing together - getting Donna, then her granddad, then meeting Donna again… - because they were closing in on the moment that Donna and the Doctor became one. But actually, you can take Caan’s comment that ‘one will still die’ to mean not Donna in the sense of losing her memories, but to mean The Doctor, because we know now that the Doctor meeting Donna wasn’t simply fate - he claims that Wilf was ‘always’ going to be the way he dies. I’m really enjoying uncovering these extra little things buried in scripts where they were almost certainly never meant to be signposts of what was to come, but work beautifully as such in retrospect…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 785: The Stolen Earth

Dear diary,

John Barrowman once described The Stolen Earth and Journey's End as being 'The Five Doctors for 21st century Doctor Who', and it's hard to find a more perfect description for these two episodes. At the time, myself and the friends I discussed Doctor Who with were well aware that Rose was coming back for the finale (she'd been teased enough throughout the series even if the publicity and the previous episode hadn't been clue enough), and we were fairly certain that Martha would be putting in an appearance, and possibly Jack… oh, but then there was that 'next time' trailer from the end of Turn Left. Rose! Martha! Jack! Sarah Jane! Gwen! Luke! Ianto! Harriet bleeding Jones, former Prime Minister! Judoon! Daleks! Davros! Oh, it was the most exciting 'next time' trailer the programme had ever done (and, actually, very few have come close to the level of excitement this one generated), and all of us were immediately swapping the same excitable texts the second the credits kicked in.

Oh, and there really is something wonderfully Five Doctors-esque about the setting up in this episode. Today is really about manoeuvring all the characters to the right places ready for the ‘real’ story in the next episode, but that’s all part of the fun! Cutting from the Hub, to Sarah Jane’s attic, to New York (Martha must avoid that place like the plague these days - we’ve seen her visit the city twice, and she’s encountered Daleks on both occasions!)… it’s all very exciting when you’ve been making your way through the series in order (either on broadcast or in the form of a marathon), and getting to watch all these characters from different parts of the Doctor’s life come together is really rather special. That great big video-call is also home to the single best line in Doctor Who history;

WILF

(on the subject of a webcam) She wouldn't let me. She said they're naughty. 

I do have to wonder, though, how does this episode look to people coming to Doctor Who in the years since 2008? At the time, characters like Gwen, Ianto, and Luke made perfect sense to me, because I’d been following along with the spin-off programmes, but these days there’s plenty of people who’ve discovered the show since all those spin-offs ceased, and they don’t necessarily pick them up to watch too. Are any of my readers in that situation? Does it all make sense, simply as ‘well they must be Jack’s Torchwood team, and he must be Sarah Jane’s son?

There’s something rather brilliant, though, simply in the fact that Doctor Who at this point can do a story like this one. They can bring back assorted old companions - including Sarah Jane from the 1970s - and the audience will go along with it! The story is littered with little Easter Eggs for long-term viewers to spot (I didn’t notice the shot of Daleks attacking the Valiant for ages), and you really get the idea that several of them would actually be picked up on by the ‘casual’ viewer. There’s something a little bit special about that.

But then, of course, the big thing to make note of in this one is the regeneration. Or, specifically, the week that followed the regeneration. As soon as it became obvious what was happening, I declared that it was all slight of hand, and that there was no way David Tennant was going to regenerate and it not be announced before hand. But then… oh, it was a funny old week. All the papers were talking about it. People kept coming in the (largely Doctor Who-related) shop where I worked asking about it… and more and more it looked as though the BBC had managed to pull off a massive publicity stunt by having the Doctor regenerate half-way through the story. The more I thought about it, the more it all made sense. Of course, it was quickly brushed off when the next episode came around, but it’s worth it just for the sheer excitement of that week!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 784: Turn Left

Dear diary,

These latter episodes of Series Four are real barnstormers, aren't they? I can almost forgive the slight dip in quality (for me, anyway) in the middle of the series, because you can see perhaps where the entire production team were saving themselves ready to really go for broke with this finale. I mused a few weeks ago, at the end of Series Three, that Turn Left didn't feel like the start of a three-parter in the same way that Utopia did, and made a note to revisit that thought when I reached this point. Watching today, I think I'd stand by that comment… and it's largely because the central story of Turn Left draws to a close before we then get a cliffhanger at the end. That cliffhanger is integral to the story we've just watched (so it's not really 'tacked on' in the same way that the Victory of the Daleks lead-in is at the end of The Beast Below, or the cliffhanger to The Poison Sky is for The Doctor's Daughter, for example), but it comes after the resolution of the immediate plot - whereas the Utopia one is bang in the middle of it! So yes, I'll be standing by that thinking!

But enough about the relationship between this episode and the two that follow it - there's more than enough to keep you going here! People always seem to hail Blink as the best of the 'Doctor-lite' stories from the Russell T Davies era, but surely this one has to take that crown? In some ways, Turn Left plays out a bit like a clip show, going back over events from the last couple of series, and presenting them to us in such a nightmarish way. I'd love to see a whole series set in the world we get in this story - not even necessarily a Doctor Who series, just a programme that follows what would happen in such a situation, where the world is headed to hell in a hand basket. If I'm honest, I still hold out hope that Davies might write such a series one day - I think he'd do such a good job with it. With only a few brief lines and scenes, we get a real feel for the way that this world works, and some of it is simply beautiful in a kind of nightmarish way. A real highlight has to be Rocco being carted off to a 'labour camp', while Wilf tries to hold it together - Bernard Cribbins really sells that moment, and once again, I can't help but feel emotional when the man is on screen.

Cribbins isn't the only one turning in a tour de force of a performance here - Catherine Tate has never been more on top of her game. Tate proved to people how great she could be in Doctor Who right back in her earliest episodes, but Turn Left is the moment where she really silences the naysayers. When she's finally shown the creature on her back, or realises that she's going to die… it's simply stunning. Coming after forty minutes of watching Donna struggle against the tide of hell befalling the world, it's even more emotional. I’ve praised Cribbins and Tate over and over in the last few weeks, so I’d also like to make a point of mentioning Jaqueline King here. She’s been great throughout the series whenever she’s turned up, but this episode really gives her a chance to go for it, and combining these three as the Noble Family… well, it’s no wonder they’re such a great part of the series.

I could ramble on forever about how great the performances and settings of this episode are, but instead I just want to touch on something tiny and insignificant. The matte painting used for the world of Shen Shen at the episode’s beginning is gorgeous! I’ve been meaning to bring this up for ages - having pointed out how nice the Ood Sphere was in long shot (if not in close up), and then making a note to mention it again during The Doctor’s Daughter, for the surface of the planet there. I seem to say it a lot, but you can really see the confidence of the team at this point - creating alien environments so beautifully, even when they’re only used briefly to set up the story, before we’re brought back down to reality.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 783: Midnight

Dear diary,

It's a sign of just how far Doctor Who had come by this point in the revival that they feel confident in producing something as… experimental as Midnight, to air on BBC One prime time on a Saturday evening. It's about as far away from Daleks and Cybermen, or anything else you might expect from the programme at this point, as it's possible to get.

And you know what? It's great. It feels really nice to dip out of the usual pattern and do something a bit different with the Doctor, and it lets us see this particular incarnation in a new situation - the Doctor who's perhaps most reliant on his words as his only weapon (as recently exemplified by stories like The Doctor's Daughter) having his words removed, and being left defenceless.

It also serves as a nice counter-weight to Voyage of the Damned back at the start of this season. There, a group of 'humans' thrown together by circumstance pull together for the good of all, standing tall in the face of danger (even if they might not always agree), and making sure that as many people as possible can come through. Midnight on the other hand shows a different side to 'human' nature - with the group turning in on itself, and coming desperately close to committing murder. There's some beautifully observed moments in here along the lines of examining human nature, perhaps none more than Val's comment right at the end;

VAL

I said it was her.

I almost wonder if the script is partly so strong because it gives Russell T Davies the change to write about something real again, having spent the last few years having to write about Judoon on the Moon, and the last of the Daleks, and the Cybermen pushing across from a parallel universe. Taking any kind of recognisable creature out of the equation for this episode means that we have to really focus on the very true interaction between the characters, and although that's something that Davies often writes into scripts, here it feels like it's being given a whole host of extra weight.

You can't discuss Midnight without passing some comment about the sheer skill that has gone into producing it. For a story almost all filmed on a single set with a small core cast, I'd not be surprised if this was the most technically challenging episode that the production team had tackled up to this point. About halfway through, I decided to plug in a set of headphones so I could really appreciate the skill that's gone into making this one work, and I don't think I've ever really appreciated before just how good it is. Even when Sky and the creature aren't the absolute centre of attention, you can still hear the repetition going on in the background, and it's somehow eerie and beautiful at the same time… but it must have been a nightmare to get right!

For the first time in absolutely ages, I’ve watched today’s episode twice - not because I wanted to follow the story again as such, but because I wanted to hear the commentary. Almost every episode of the Russell T Davies era has two commentaries for each episode - the one on the DVDs, and the ones still available on the BBC website as ‘clips’ for each episode. The online commentary for Midnight features Julian Howarth (Sound Recordist), Paul McFadden (Supervising Sound Editor) and Bryn Thomas (Boom Operator), and it feels only right that the sound team get to take the spotlight on this episode, and you really get a sense for how much effort everyone put in to make this episode the best it could possibly be. If anything, it makes me respect the episode even more!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 782: Forest of the Dead

Dear diary,

Yesterday felt like a proper turn around for this story. Whereas I’d always thought of it as being terrible, and one of my least favourites, there were lots of elements to the proceedings that I was actually quite enjoying. It was never going to suddenly find itself sitting at the ‘top table’ among other favourite episodes, but equally it had managed to break free of the shadows (pun intended) it had been cast into for years.

But then today… Oh, I’m just a bit bored with things, if I’m honest. I think I’d normally say something about the fact that I’ve spent so many years not being fond of this story meaning that I’m simply failing to engage with it this time around, too, but that’s not really it - because I’d broken that pitfall with the first episode. I think it’s more a case that the things I found to enjoy yesterday had started to wear a bit thin by the time we reached this one.

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing in here for me to enjoy, and it has to be said that in a complete turnaround from my reaction when this episode was first broadcast, my favourite thing about it is the presence of River Song, and watching her story with the Doctor both begin and end simultaneously. I mused yesterday that having now seen the rest of their time together makes the scenes they share here all the more poignant, and that’s certainly true in todays episode, as we hurtle ever closer to her death, and the realisation that the Doctor must have always known that this is how their life together would end. Tennant and Alex Kingston play those moments perfectly, and there’s something about the reproachful look that hangs over Tennant’s face one River is gone which really connects with me. I’m looking increasingly forward to watching their relationship play out now.

For me, the real highlight of this episode has to be the way that it ends - and no, that’s not me trying to be funny. There’s a beautiful kind of melancholy that really envelops everything from the moment we see the Doctor wake up to find himself handcuffed at a safe distance, right through to Lee teleporting away, and not quite being able to call out for Donna before he’s gone. I moaned a bit the other day about Jenny’s sudden ‘back to life’ at the end of The Doctor’s Daughter, when the Doctor and co all thought her gone for good, but this is almost that exact same idea, but done right.

That melancholy is only lifted by the Doctor suddenly realising that there’s a way he can save River. Oh, that’s a gorgeous moment. The episode is clearly over and done with. The Doctor and Donna have summed up, and started making their way off into the sunset… and then he comes charging back onto screen and we get a whole new ending that really sings, and is the perfect way of really establishing that River means the world to the Doctor at some point. Forget all that gibbons about his name (have we actually found out yet when she learns it?), this is the good bit! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 781: Silence in the Library

Dear diary,

It’s strange coming back to this two-parter now that we’ve seen the rest of the River Song story play out. The speculation that abounded at the time - was she his wife? His mum? Romana? The Rani? Susan? I think people settled pretty quickly on to the idea that she was most likely his wife, but I didn’t pay it all that much attention because I couldn’t bare River. Really, really disliked her. The colleague I mentioned yesterday, who didn’t consider The Unicorn and the Wasp to be a proper ‘favourite’ episode, on the other hand loved her, and couldn’t wait to find out more about her. Ironically, those roles reversed once we entered the Moffat era - I absolutely fell in love with River, while he began to declare that she was the worst thing to ever happen to the show, and point out that he’d ‘always’ hated the character. Ho hum.

I can’t claim that it was anything wrong with River that made me take a dislike to her - I think it was just the fact that she was in this story, and for some reason it fell completely flat for me. I know I watched it with my then-girlfriend’s parents, and sort of cringed my way through it, because they’d happened to be watching it the week it was rubbish. I also know that I felt like it was simply a ‘Greatest Hits of Steven Moffat’, with repeated catchphrases, an everyday object being turned into something sinister, and elements of plot that were ‘timey wimey’. The sour taste these two episodes left in my mouth meant that I’ve not wanted to watch them since. It didn’t help that only a week or so before broadcast, Moffat had been announced as the successor to Russell T Davies, and everyone was proclaiming him as the ‘saviour’ of Doctor Who.

Watching tonight, though, I’m not sure what my problem was! Yes, I suppose it can be seen as a bit of a ‘Greatest Hits’ collection, but everything is being used for a reason, and I’m actually getting quite into it. As I’ve said above, knowing the rest of River’s story lends an extra weight to her appearance here (and I know it’s a subject that’s been batted back and forth over the years but the way she’s scripted here leads me to think that she definitely had at least one other meeting with the Tenth Doctor). The moment when River pleads with the Doctor to say he knows who she is actually tugs at my heartstrings a bit after watching all the merry dances she had with the Eleventh Doctor, and it makes me all the more excited to watch her story unfold over the next month or so. I think perhaps it bothered me at the time that it felt like Moffat was setting things up for his own tenure several years before we’d get any kind of pay-off, whereas now that we’ve been through it all, I can view all of this in a different way.

River’s not the only thing that’s faring better this time; the whole idea of keeping out of the shadows isn’t just taking something everyday and twisting it into something scary, it’s playing on children’s playground games, and giving them a Doctor Who connection. The repeated phrases… are still a bit rubbish, actually. Sorry. You can’t win them all. I get that the ending is supposed to feel like a bit of an onslaught with no escape for anyone but it doesn’t half go on a bit. Donna Noble has left The Library. Hey, who turned out the lights? Donna Noble has been saved.

It’s still not perfect - and certainly feels like Moffat’s weakest script for the show yet - but it’s a lot better than I’ve ever given it credit for!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 780: The Unicorn and the Wasp

Dear diary,

For years and years, I always used to say that this was my absolute favourite episode of revived Doctor Who. It even became a long-running argument with a former colleague, who insisted that this ‘couldn’t’ be my favourite episode, because it’s not a ‘proper’ favourite episode. I’m still not entirely sure what they meant by that, but I think the point was that this one doesn’t have any Daleks, or Cybermen, any of The Big Four, and isn’t some big, epic, game changer of an episode. It also wasn’t Blink, which was their favourite, and thus did count as a ‘proper’ favourite episode. For some reason.

Oh, but The Unicorn and the Wasp is everything I love about Doctor Who, and everything I love about Series Four in particular. It’s light and fun, but it can still be light and fun when it’s filled with death, and darkness, and a giant alien wasp. It perfectly encapsulates the Doctor and Donna’s relationship perhaps better than any other episode they share - you’d have no idea that this was the first story Tennant and Tate shot together for this series. Once again, the pair are having exactly the type of adventures that I’d want to have with a TARDIS - inviting yourself to a 1920s party, meeting people like Agatha Christie… effectively everything up until they discover The Body in the Library. Donna of the Chiswick Nobles, and The Man in the Brown Suit, flitting through time and space, Destination Unknown, just having a laugh.

And ‘having a laugh’ really is the right turn of phrase for this one, because there’s so much in this episode that makes me laugh out loud - even now when I’ve watched it perhaps more than any other modern episode. My notes today are filled again with lots of lines of dialogue which really sets me off - but my favourite has to be Donna’s discussion with Agatha about men, when she muses that her husband-to-be went off not with another woman, but with a giant spider instead. Oh, I’d forgotten that bit and it made me hoot.

I’m also always impressed by the way that everything hangs together as an Agatha Christie episode. In ‘The Writer’s Tale’, Russell T Davies points out how tricky it is to find an alien for pairing with Christie, because it’s not as obvious as putting Charles Dickens with ghosts, or Shakespeare with Witches. Somehow, though, the whole Giant Wasp situation really holds up, and I think it’s because it manages to take a murder mystery - the one thing that is a must in the Agatha Christie tale - and mesh it nicely with the format of Doctor Who. I can’t say that I actually worked out who the murderer was first time around, but it’s always nice going back and watching it with that knowledge, because there’s a number of little hints seeded in for us to find - though I’m not sure anyone could have pieced them together properly! Did any of you lot work it out first time? Or was it guesswork, like with me?

I’m possibly biassed because I’ve spent so long thinking of this one as being among my very favourite episodes, but I really can’t fault it, and it’s a massive turn around from yesterday! The latter half of Series Four is generally considered, I think, to be some of the strongest Doctor Who ever produced, and if it can keep appealing to me as this one has, then I’m in for a real treat over the next few days.