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

Day 835: Nightmare in Silver

Dear diary,

During the promotion for Nightmare in Silver, Neil Gaiman commented;

“I thought, 'Let me see what I can do when I take the 1960s Cybermen and [incorporate] everything that's happened since'. So that's what I'm trying to do. I don't know if it will work.”

Indeed, a lot of the promotion for this episode saw both Gaiman and Steven Moffat talking about the way that this episode starts with the idea of taking the Cybermen right back to their 1960s roots, and trying to recapture some of the terror they embodied during that period. I think that, much as with the ‘Ever Dalek Ever’ claims at the start of the series, it’s simply a good line to feed to the press and get people interested in story, because I don’t think there’s much of a harking back to the 1960s in these new models at all, and even if it was the starting point, the journey has led them quite a way from there.

Where they have succeeded, though, is in making the Cybermen scary again - I think this might be the scariest they’ve ever been in the modern programme. I’ve always said that my favourite Cybermen story is the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip The Flood from 2005. For me it was (and still is, to some extents) the only story that has really captured the sheer terror in what the Cybermen are, and the way they think. Oh, I love that story. This episode, though, comes closest to making me think that there’s a completely different way of looking at these monsters - from a more technological point of view.

I can’t really describe how much I love the idea of Cybermen that can use the ‘upgrade’ catchphrase to mean - literally - upgrading themselves. The Cybermen in this story are very much presented as part of a computer system (again, I love the idea that the weaknesses to gold and cleaning fluids etc were down to flaws in the software, and that there’s still elements of that buried deep within them. It might not make a lot of sense when you really think about it, but in the moment of the story it’s an absolutely brilliant idea), and that’s a way that they’ve never really been seen before. It’s almost a pity that when they come back for the Series Eight finale, they’re not really presented in the same way (in fact, they’re little more than robot drones, there…).

And then there’s the design of the new Cybermen. I can’t deny, they do look rather a lot like Iron Man, but my word aren’t they beautiful? When the 2006 model of Cybermen were revealed, I wrote a letter to DWM being all pretentious and saying ‘I don’t know if I like them or not’. There was none of that with this design - I’ve loved it from the moment I saw it. There’s something so sleek and sexy about this particular look, and it fits so nicely with the idea that these are the most advanced Cybermen we’ve ever seen.

And they’re really unstoppable! That ability to constantly upgrade themselves to adapt to differing forms of attack makes these Cybermen a really powerful threat. I’d like to see this lot go up against the Daleks! The only problem this causes is that I worry their future appearances will see them slowly pared back in the same way the Daleks have been. I’ve already mentioned that they didn’t get a lot to do in Death in Heaven, but when the only way to defeat them in this story is to blow up an entire planet, it does make it a little trickier to actively fight them on a smaller scale…

One last thing I just wanted to mention - the children. I’ve seen so much hate directed at the idea of them being in this story over the last couple of years, but I think it rather works! Matt’s Doctor has always played well against children, and I rather like the idea of Clara getting ‘caught’ and blackmailed into a TARDIS trip (though, equally, I can imagine that if they had told their dad about it, as they threaten, he’d have told them to stop making up nonsense). It also has to be said that this particular pair of kids are written very believably - Angie in particular - which makes it all the more interesting as a sideline to the main Cyberman action.

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

Day 833: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Dear diary,

I try to keep generally pretty positive in these Diary entries, and I like to think that’t by-and-large I’ve managed to do so. As a part of that, I try to be as fair and polite about everything - even when I’m not enjoying a story, I try to find the things that do stand out as being rather good, or at the very least I try to explain why I’ve not enjoyed it in the best way possible. It’s all very much that ‘if you’ve nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all’ mentality. To that end, I’m not going to hark on about it here, and I won’t name names, but this episode for me is home to the worst performance in the entire history of Doctor Who. Yes, even worse than the ‘ha ha ha’ kid from An Unearthly Child. It’s a performance so bad that I actively can’t take the episode seriously while said performer is on the screen, and it genuinely baffles me how the casting was made for such a prominent role in the BBC’s flagship programme.

Right then! Now that’s out of the way, there’s quite a lot to really enjoy about Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, isn’t there? Indeed, were it not for such a poor performance in one quarter, I dare say that it would rate significantly higher with me, because it really does do exactly what it says on the tin. At the time this went out, I can remember Steven Moffat describing a viewing of The Invasion of Time as a child, and deciding that one day he’d like to ‘do that properly’, and that’s very much what he’s commissioned in here.

We get a break-neck-speed tour of some of the TARDIS rooms we’ve only heard mentioned before now (and is that the telescope from Tooth and Claw in the Doctor’s observatory? Did he sneak back to Torchwood House and do it up as a functioning piece of equipment while Queen Vicky was looking the other way?), and they really do look quite exotic. I love the idea of seeing all these little glimpses simply through the open doorways, and it somehow adds to the magic and the scale of the place to be given just little teases as opposed to full explorations.

It’s also a great way for the Doctor and Clara to really reveal themselves to each other - several episodes in this half of the season have felt with the fact that the pair don’t really trust each other (the Doctor’s been sneaking around in Clara’s past, and she’s appeared to die twice in quick succession during his recent adventures), and it’s really rather powerful to watch them snapping at each other as all the pieces fall in to place. ‘I’m more scared of you right now than anything on that TARDIS’ she tells the Doctor, and it’s fitting, because we’re seeing that dangerous version of the Doctor that Smith does so well when required. 

The only thing that doesn’t quite work for me, I’m afraid, is Clara discovering the Doctor’s name. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with her actually finding it out, but I do have a problem with just how easy it was for her to do. Over the last few years especially, lots has been made about the fact that the Doctor’s name is some great big secret, and it’ll go on to hold such mythic status again before Smith’s era is done, and yet all Clara has to do is turn to a random page in a book that’s already laying out for her, and there it is!

I think I’d perhaps have gathered it not be his name that she discovers here (especially since her knowing it doesn’t actually play any part in their relationship hereafter), but the fact that it was the Doctor who ended the Time War. I’d have liked to see her finding out in an episode before this that the Doctor is the last of his kind, and that ‘someone’ ended the war that wiped out his race - and then she looks in this book and discovers that it’s him who pressed the button. It would help to play quite nicely into her fear of him later on in this episode, and then when she starts to remember these events during The Name of the Doctor, it could come back to haunt her, because all the Great Intelligence’s taunting about the Doctor’s blood soaked history would ring especially true for her…

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

Day 832: Hide

Dear diary,

In my preview for Hide, back in 2013, I said ‘For the first half of its running time, Hide is part Ghost Stories for Christmas and part Most Haunted [and] it’s in this part of the story that the episode really sings, building up a nice amount of traditional ghost story terror, and providing plenty of opportunities to make you jump.’ I think, two years on, that I’d have to agree with this assessment of the tale; because my interest really drops once we start to get some proper answers about what’s really causing the ghost of this tale. Right up until about the point that the Doctor heads off for his whistle-stop tour through the history of this particular location, everything seems to change - the shot of Alec and Emma in the window of the house, with the ‘ghost’ stood behind them is one of the final big scares in the episode (in fact, it’s probably the most effective one), and I wish the rest of the story could have continued in that vein.
I’m not sure what it is that doesn’t work for me about the latter half, though. I mean, I like that *Doctor Who always has some kind of ‘scientific’ explanation for things like ghosts, and actually I really like the idea that it’s a time traveller stuck in a different time line - I doubt anyone would have guessed it on first try, but it fits the facts as we’re given them. It’s just that once that has been discovered, the entire atmosphere of the story changes, and instead of moments that actually make you jump, we’re told that things are scary, and that simply doesn’t have the same effect. I vaguely recall people raving about the scenes of the Doctor alone in the woods and in a terrified state, but they simply ring false to me.

The direction seems to change as the story progresses, too. The early half of the story is directed as you’d expect - as a ghost story. Once the scientific explanations creep in it’s like it’s trying to continue the creepy visuals, but just not quite managing to pull it off.

There’s also a lot of back-and-forth between dimensions and monsters that only pop up when the plot requires them for a moment, and everything just sort of falls apart for me at that stage. On first watch, I remember making a note that the sudden realisation at the end that the Doctor’s got it all wrong and then having to run back into the other dimension felt weird, and that’s still true today - it comes across as almost ‘tacked on’ because the episode was running short. In some ways, it feels as though this one could do with an extra polish - maybe another draft or two, just to really focus in on the elements they want to play with, and make them work. The longer the episode goes on, the more it feels like attention is being split, and sight is being lost of the central ideas that work so well.

In the end, I have to appreciate this episode that little bit more simply for the storm it created when Matt Smith chose to pronounce ‘Metebilis’ differently to Jon Pertwee. For what it’s worth, I reckon Pert got it wrong…

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

Day 831: Cold War

Dear diary,

I’m never quite sure about Cold War. There’s so many things that feel like they should be fantastic, but which don’t always sit that well with me. For starters, there;s the return of the Ice Warriors (well, an Ice Warrior) - lovely, and all that, but I don’t know if we were really crying out for them to come back, were we? People insist on describing them as being one of the most well-known of all the Doctor Who villains (after the Daleks and the Cybermen), but I’m not sure that to the general public at large they really mean anything. It’s just a big green lumbering creature.

Or, rather, it isn’t, in this case, because that’s the other thing I’m really not sure about; the Ice Warrior spends a lot of time out of the armour. Now, don’t get me wrong, I rather like the idea of finally getting some idea of just what’s hidden inside that big green shell, but what we get here feels… odd. I mean, I guess you could argue that the armour needs to be so big to contain a load of refrigeration equipment, but I just can’t imagine a creature as agile and powerful as the one we’re given here being content to slow itself down in such a bulky, slow suit.

I simply can’t help but feel that I’d have lapped this episode up were it just some creature they’d found out in the ice, which had managed to get aboard the submarine and was now causing this terror. Knowing that it’s an Ice Warrior just leaves me questioning things far more that I should be if I really want to engage with the story - it feels like it’s an Ice Warrior simply for the sake of having an Ice Warrior, and not because the story needs the appearance of such a creature.

That said, I can’t fault the redesign of the outer Ice Warrior shell. It’s another example of the programme taking a classic design and updating it just enough to be workable for the modern version of the programme, while still retaining everything that stands out as being so iconic about the design. I’m also somewhat impressed this time by the design of the creature’s head - whereas on first watch I wasn’t entirely sure by it.

For all that I’m complaining here, there’s still a certain amount to like about Cold War, and as I’ve said, were it not for the fact that I’m supposed to be watching an Ice Warrior, I think I’d really lap up a lot of the tension and terror we’ve got here. ‘Powerful creature gets loose in confined space’ is a staple of horror and action, and it’s well presented here. you really do feel the claustrophobia of the situation, and in the same way that something like A Town Called Mercy expanded the scope and style of the series out wider than ever before, this does a similar trick - we’ve never had a setting down quite like this before now.

The other thing that I’m rather keen on today is the way that Clara is being written - as someone who’s really not sure about all of this. She wants to impress the Doctor (as Rory points out in Series Five, that’s the most dangerous thing about the man), but isn’t sure she’s up to the job. Clara’s first meeting with the Doctor was quite unlike any of the other new series companions - he specifically sought her out when she’d done nothing to prove herself to him, and that’s weighing especially heavy on her mind today. It’s an interesting new dynamic for the Doctor/Companion relationship, and one that I think gets picked up on again over the next few episodes, and which still resonates through to the programme into the next season.

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

Day 830: The Rings of Akhaten

Dear diary,

In the last few weeks, The Rings of Akhaten has been included in a bundle of episodes designed to represent the ten years that Doctor Who has been back on screens, and everywhere I’ve seen people discussing said bundle, I’ve seem them completely confused as to why this - of all episodes - was deemed suitable to include. Which I don’t quite get, because I’ve always rather liked this one! This was the first episode for which I wrote a brief spoiler-free preview for Doctor Who Online, and I was pretty positive about it there, too.

Looking back at that preview now, I’m pleased to see that I was already commenting on something which I’ve been noticing again in the programme over the last week-or-so of the Diary;

There’s something of a vibe of the Russell T. Davies era present here, with our brand new companion out on her first adventure. The story serves the same purpose as The End of the World or The Fires of Pompeii, and there are elements of both those stories echoed here, opening Clara’s eyes to the wonder of the TARDIS.

This latter half of Series Seven really does feel like it’s reverting to the RTD staple for introducing a new companion. They get the modern-day story which opens their eyes to the wider world that’s all around them. We then take a trip forward in time to explore lots of the weird and wonderful aliens that are out there, and in tomorrow’s episode we’ll venture back into history, and see how that works, too. There’s certainly a reason for doing this - it works (and they did the same thing with Amy’s introduction, too, but it’s been so long that it feels like an absolute lifetime since we last had this set-up).

This really is perhaps most like The End of the World, because we’ve got a real parade of weird and wonderful aliens, which the Doctor is fairly clued in about, while the companion is less sure. There’s some great designs in here, too, and I’m somewhat surprised that none of them have since cropped up for return appearances. It does feel like a bit of a shame that we don’t have any of the old favourites, though. Would be nice to have an Ood wandering the streets, or maybe a Slitheen. I still hold out hope they’ll turn up again one day.

Where this differs from The End of the World is that Clara doesn’t really find herself overwhelmed by the prospect of all this. Instead, the Doctor actively vanishes from the story for a little while, and we get to watch through Clara’s eyes, as she introduces herself to all of this. She makes the decision to get involved - not because the Doctor guides her to, but because it’s naturally her.

But the real highlight of this story has to be those final speeches when the Doctor and Clara put an end to the ‘God’ at the heart of the Akhaten system. Matt Smith has continued to grow and develop in this role (in my preview for this episode, I commented ‘Matt Smith continues to - impossibly - keep getting better at simply being the Doctor’), and his monologue here must surely rank as one of his finest moments. As if that wasn’t enough, Jenna Coleman then shows up and continues that skill into her own performance. She really shows you why she won the role during these moments.

I also feel the need to make a rare point of praising the soundtrack here - an area which I sadly tend to overlook when writing this Diary. The music to this episode, and again especially during those final scenes, is so beautiful and well done - it’s no wonder that they reused several cues from this one to underscore the Doctor’s regeneration several months later; there’s a really hauntingly beautiful quality to it all, and it really does pull at your emotions in just the right way…

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

Day 829: The Bells of Saint John

Dear diary,

I mused the other day that the arrival of Kate Stewart in the programme was sort of the first ring of the Cloister Bell as far as The 50 Year Diary was concerned - a character being introduced to the programme who is still an active part of it now. Today’s episode brings that realisation even closer to home, because not only do we have the first appearance of the ‘prime’ Clara - who’s still the main companion in the programme at the time of writing - but The Bells of Saint John was the first ‘new’ episode of Doctor Who to air once I’d embarked on this project.

Specifically, it was broadcast on March 30th 2013, making that the first day that I watched more than one episode of the programme on the same day during the course of this marathon - watching The Bells of Saint John simply because it was brand new Doctor Who on the telly, having already watched Trap of Steel, the second episode of Galaxy 4. I gave it a 5/10. Trap of Steel, that is, not this one. (Actually, I watched three episodes that day, because I followed the broadcast of Bells with the preview tape for The Rings of Akhaten, making something of a ‘new Doctor Who double bill’ that evening). It meant it was also the first time that I realised this marathon could and would be affected by what was happening in the continuing world of the programme, and it meant a few weeks later that I spent much of my write up for The War Machines comparing that story to this one.

Why do I bring it up again here? Well, because, while I was watching this one I made a note that the story bore several similarities to The War Machines, and it was only when I mentioned that to a friend that he pointed out to me that I’d already made that connection, two years ago. To be fair, that was around Day 130, so I’ve been through a fair bit of Doctor Who since then…

Specifically, I noted that The War Machines felt like a real breath of fresh air to a programme that had started feeling increasingly stale, despite one or two recent gems, and that the fresh air is provided by new companions (Ben and Polly / Clara) being introduced in a story that’s set firmly in ‘present day’ London, utilising ‘modern’ technology that’s being controlled from the city’s newest landmark (The Post Office Tower / The Shard).

After all this time, I’m somewhat pleased to see that The Bells of Saint John can still feel like such a fresh start for the programme. As I seem to have said a lot over the last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying this era far more than I did first time around, but several of the faults that irked me in the past are still present - and this story really does feel like it’s casting off the shadow of the last few years and striding towards the anniversary with a renewed spring in its step.

I don’t know if I really appreciated before just how much the Doctor’s new purple costume helps to define the change - it’s such a different look to the tweed that matt Smith has sported up until now, and really does carve his era into two distinct phases - the ‘Pond’ Era, and the ‘Clara’ era. Everything feels new and exciting again, and that’s always the best thing that Doctor Who can be.

(I should note, I’ve not touched in the last couple of days on the return of the Great Intelligence and how it impacts the timeline for the character that I’ve been drawing up in the Diary since The Abominable Snowmen - I’m saving that for The Name of the Doctor next week…)

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

Day 828: The Snowmen

Dear diary,

What a difference a year makes! Sitting down to watch this one, Christmas day 2012, was akin to some kind of religious experience. The Ponds were gone, the Doctor was about to get a whole new costume (it wouldn’t debut until the next episode, but the tweed was gone, and with it the weight of the entire era up to this point), there was a new companion about to debut, along with a new TARDIS, the return of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, who’d been rather fun during their brief appearance eighteen months earlier… 

And as if all that excitement wasn’t enough, the episode was bloody brilliant! Haha! Oh, I mean, come on, watching this less than a week after the last Christmas special really does serve to highlight how much better this one is. Watching it today has been one of my absolute favourite parts of this entire marathon, and it easily slides into the ’10/10’ bracket.

I’ve got simply loads of notes for today’s episode, but I’m going to try and refrain from turning this entry into some kind of gushing list of everything I like about this one. Instead, I’m going to try and focus in on a few things that stand out as particularly brilliant.

First of all - the pacing of the episode. It’s another one of those stories that plays out with no real desire to rush. The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe crashes onto Christmas Day screens with an exploding spaceship and the Doctor plummeting to Earth, whereas this is an altogether more measured affair. It’s very talky, as episodes go, and despite the odd menacing snowman popping up from time-to-time to give us a bit of action, not a lot really happens in that regard until the Ice Nanny arrives on the scene. It’s never boring though. There’s no danger of my attention wandering off this Christmas, because every scene is so perfectly crafted, and it all sweeps you along with the story.

That’s likely my second point, actually - how well crafted the whole piece is. Take a scene like Clara’s first meeting with Vastra, for example, and just watch how it’s constructed. The one word test is so clever, and the exchange of information handled so well between the pair. We could have done with something like this when Dodo was introduced. That careful back-and-forth of information between characters allows the story to play out in its own way, allowing the audience to work it out as we go, as opposed to trying to shove it down our throats and explain everything as it drudges along.

All of that makes it sound a little bit dry - especially for post-Christmas Dinner - but that’s not the case at all, because Strax has been turned up to eleven, and works as simply brilliant comic relief throughout the story. Oh, I hooted along as I quoted all his lines back at the screen today. Frankly, it was all a bit pants in here at some points, but I don’t care because it was brilliant.

And then there’s the reveal of the big bad villain behind it all - and it’s only the Great bloody Intelligence! Haha! Oh, that shocked me first time around. I worked it out fairly early on while watching first time around, but then decided that I was probably wrong, and it was only there to wrong-foot us fanboys who’d be giddy at the thought of the Intelligence making a return. But then it is him! Oh, I should have guessed with a title like this, frankly, but it’s such a brilliant reveal. And voiced by Sir Ian McKellen of all people! I can bang on about the scope of the programme increasing in terms of its visuals, but when you can lure stars like this for what’s seemingly quite a small part, that’s when you know how big Doctor Who has gotten…

In case you can’t tell, I’m just rambling now. This always happens when an episode comes along that I don’t just enjoy but actively love, and The Snowmen is certainly in that top tier. I’ll stop now otherwise today’s entry will just become unbearable, but I think this has to be by far my favourite of the Christmas specials, and the perfect way to begin a big new chapter in the programme’s life.

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

Day 827: The Angels Take Manhattan

Dear Diary,

I mentioned a few days ago that one of the most exciting aspects of moving to Cardiff was getting the chance to see bits of Doctor Who 'live' as filming went on. This episode was the first time I encountered the 'dark' side of all that. I'd been invited along to a local pub to meet with other fans who enjoyed seeing the filming in action. Upon arrival, I was handed a bundle of papers - about half the script for this episode. Upon wondering where they'd managed to get a hold of such a thing (several months before it was due to air), I was told that a member of the crew had left it on the seat of a car and 'not locked the door'. Suffice to say I didn't bother going back to that particular grouping again and the idea of watching filming suddenly lost its appeal pretty sharpish. I've seen a fair bit since then, but usually only when I happen to be walking past as it's happening.

Even standing there with part of the script in my hand, I can't say I was particularly enthused about this episode. I'd worried that the Weeping Angels making a return in Series Five would only serve to lessen their previous impact and had been thrilled to see how well they were handled upon their return. A third outing was simply another chance for them to lose their appeal. I wasn't even that bothered by finding out how Amy and Rory were going to be departing the TARDIS - as far as I was concerned, they were somewhere well past their optimum 'use by' date, and I was more excited to see how the new companion was going to arrive in the Doctor's life. This episode was simply the final hurdle in moving on to the new era. Watching through the Eleventh Doctor's life again for this marathon, I have to admit that I've actually enjoyed the presence of Amy and Rory far more than I have done in the past, but I still can't help but feel that the time really is right for them to go - having been teetering so closely on a great goodbye towards the end of Series Six, it doesn't matter how much I've enjoyed these final few adventures with them - they feel a bit out of place.

So how does this episode stack up? Well, on the whole I think I like it. Far from reducing the stature of the Angels, it manages to take their original concept from Blink and expand greatly upon it, really using the ideas to their full extent and making something truly creepy with it. The idea of the Angels 'setting up shop' and creating some kind of battery farm for time energy is wonderful, and it's nicely explored here (even if poor Rory has to die a few more times before he's allowed to say goodbye to the programme…)

But I really can only say that I think I like it, because I'm really not sure. For all that it's a creepy and effective use of the modern programme's most famous villains, it also doesn't feel like an awful lot actually happens. They chase after Rory for a bit, and then the Ponds are gone. Game over. That's probably me being a bit disingenuous (I'm sure you could wittle most Doctor Who stories down to make them sound that simple - 'The Doctor opens the Cybermen's tomb, and they attack…', 'The Doctor gets sent back to the creation of the Daleks. He doesn't stop them…', etc), but it really does seem to stand out with this episode for me. Perhaps because it's such a big event in this Doctor's life, and it means he can never go back and see the Ponds again, it feels as though it should somehow be more?

One last thing I wanted to touch on, because it always seems to come up in discussions of this story - the Weeping Statue of Liberty. When it first happened, I thought it was an awful idea. Largely because it was the first joke everyone made when they announced a New York-set story that featured the Angels and that seemed too obvious to actually make it into the episode. Oh, I had so many issues with it, though. The statue isn't made of stone, for a start, and there's no way that it could actually make it across the city without being seen by someone. If the Angels freeze the second living eyes fall on them, then this one wouldn't make it two feet from its plinth! Watching it back today, though, none of that actually bothers me. It's a great visual image, and I think if you're a kid then it's just the image you want to see from this story. The most famous statue in the world is actually a Weeping Angel! There's plenty of ways to justify all my concerns from before, but I'm glad to see that I don't even need them - it just goes along with the story being told.

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

Day 826: The Power of Three

Dear diary,

For all that I’d been enjoying this new series, I have to admit that I didn’t really pay much attention to this episode. I was visiting family back home when it aired, and know I watched it with my grandmother, who isn’t a big fan of Doctor Who, and spent must of the episode asking me what I could possibly find to enjoy about it (after this, the next episode she watched was Deep Breath, after which she proceeded to tell me that she wasn’t overly keen on the ‘fat one’ - Strax, as best I can tell - or the ‘green one’ - Vastra, I presume - because ‘they’re a funny looking lot’). What I did see of the episode, though, I didn’t really enjoy, so once I was back home to Cardiff I didn’t have any pressing desire to catch up and see what I’d missed.

It’s meant that ever since, there’s been quite a few question marks about this one in my mind. I knew that it was about a load of little black boxes which suddenly appear one day and take a year to activate, with disastrous consequences… and that’s about it. Couldn’t tell you what the little girl in the hospital was all about, or who the cracked-face-man at the end was. Having now actually watched the episode properly… nope, still couldn’t tell you what the little girl was about (or, for that matter, why the spaceship opened up into the hospital?), but I do quite like the idea of a race from another dimension seeing humans as some great virus that spreads out across the universe. I can’t help but think that there’s more to that idea which means it’s a bit wasted on this episode.

The highlights of The Power of Three are, I think, in the guest cast. Obviously, we’ve got the return of Brian again (and once more I can’t help but wish we’d had a bit more of him. I’ll never forgive the BBC for not making ‘Brian’s Log’ a daily web series on YouTube. I’m calculating how to hire Mark Williams myself as I type), but we’ve also got the first appearance in actual, real, official Doctor Who of Kate Stewart! I’ve been trying to think all day, but I’m fairly sure it’s safe to say that this is the only example of a character first appearing in a fan-made spin off production making the leap to actual Doctor Who on the telly?

There’s something a little bit wonderful about that, and I can’t help but love Jemma Redgrave in the role. I’m so pleased that she’s gone on to become a recurring part of the programme, because I’ve really missed having some kind of consistent UNIT presence, and the character is just right for heading up this new ‘science leads’ version of the organisation. The only thing that troubles me slightly is that this is entirely not the character we had in Downtime. In fairness, I’ve not watched the follow up video (Dæmos Rising?) in which she makes her second appearance, but something does feel a bit off about suddenly picking up with her here not only a part of UNIT, but actually in charge of the UK version! Oh, I can’t complain, because I do love her, but her arrival on the scene marks the first piece being put in place for the end of this marathon for me! All the threads are drawing together now, and I’m closing in on the finishing line. Now that’s been a ‘slow invasion’ (I’m sorry. No, really, I am sorry).

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

Day 825: A Town Called Mercy

Dear diary,

I seem to be saying it over and over again (which, really, translates to ‘I seem to be rediscovering over and over again’) just how much the 21st century series expands in size as the years go on. It’s been particularly noticeable of late, what with all the attention being turned over to Rose in the wake of the 10th anniversary week, but when you look at an episode like this one next to an episode like that, it’s amazing to think that such little time passed between them. The 2005 series looked massive in scale compared to the stuff that had come before it (the ‘classic’ series evolved massively over time, but it largely shared a very similar overall look, give or take the few seismic shifts you experience when moving from 1969/70 or 1979/80), but this episode, for example, is in a whole new league. Quite simply by this point in time the series really is producing a Hollywood film every week and on a budget which was - I think - actually down from 2005!

The split in Series Seven hugely benefits these opening five episodes, which feature the snowcapped mountains of the Dalek Asylum, the Wild West as depicted here, and scenes filmed in New York for the Pond’s farewell adventure. Quite simply, the programme has never had a visual style as broad as this, and I don’t think it’s really managed to achieve it again since, even though it’s continued to alter and expand its scope in different areas. It means that these Series Seven-A episodes really highlight that wonderful ability of Doctor Who to be different every week. The tone of the programme shifts hugely across this batch of episodes, and it’s almost as though the programme is returning from that big nine-month break in transmission by reminding you just how wild, and brilliant, and - frankly - sexy it can be.

For me, the location filming (actually, the overall design of this entire serial, if I’m honest - it’s telling that I often can’t tell here where location ends and studio begins) has to be the real highlight of this one. The story itself is alright, I suppose, but I can’t really claim that it’s grabbed my attention in the same way that the headline Dinosaurs on a Spaceship did. Once again, this is an excursus in creating a bit of a blockbuster, and it’s got everything I’d expect to have in a Western. I’m not by any stretch of the imagination an expert in the genre, but I’m versed enough in simple popular culture to know some of the key features (and of course the Doctor was going to end up Sheriff). Frankly, the only thing missing is a homage to The Ballard of the Last Chance Saloon…

A few days before reaching this block of stories, I was pointed towards a theory online that the episodes from The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe to The Angels Take Manhattan are happening in reverse order for the Doctor, compared to the Ponds. The idea - in a nutshell - is that Amy’s letter in the Angels story, telling him to go back to her as a little girl, gives him the idea to work his way back through their time stream, and enjoy as many adventures with them as he can, knowing that he’ll not be able to see them again once they’ve reached New York. I’ve been watching with this in mind up until now, but I think I’m actually just finding it more distracting than anything. The idea sounded quite good on paper, but I’m finding lots f little things which seem to contradict it while I’m going through. Today’s episode is the only time that something seemingly more concrete crops up - there’s reference to an adventure with Henry the Eighth which won’t take place until the next episode, but I think that’s easily chalked up to them visiting that time period twice…

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

Day 824: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Dear diary,

When this episode first aired, I recall simply thinking how much it reminded me of the Doctor Who we used to have in the Russell T Davies era. Watching again today, I’m struck by that same thought. And yet, even having just seen that era again in the last few months, I couldn’t actually put my finger on why it reminds me so much of that phase of the programme’s history. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that lots of episodes from across Series Seven remind me of those first few seasons, and I’m wondering if I’m alone in that? Is it the colour palette? I’d say it’s the sense of fun in the adventure, but the same could be said of episodes like The Curse of the Black Spot, and that one didn’t feel like a Davies story…

I should clarify that I think this is a good thing! As much as I’ve grown to really appreciate Steven Moffat’s take on the Doctor’s adventures throughout the course of this marathon, I can’t help but innately love the RTD-era. I think it’s because I’d only dabbled with the programme before then, those Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant episodes are what turned me into a full-on, card-carrying fan. When this one went out, fresh on the back of Asylum of the Daleks being rather good, it really felt like Doctor Who had slipped back into my groove again, and this was the series for me once more.

So what’s to like? Well, it would be easier to list the things that I’m not keen on, but let’s stick with the far more positive view of events; first and foremost it has to be the Michell and Webb robots. Oh, I love them for so many reasons. Partly because they’re great-big-live-action-men-in-costumes. When they first turned up in a shot of the trailer, I assumed that they’d have to be some kind of CGI creation simply because of the scale and the practicalities of them… but they’re not! There’s something extra special about that (and the same goes for the front half of the Triceratops being a live-action creation, too). Secondly there’s the personalities of them. Yeah, they might be great big towering-way-over-your-head robots, but they spend much of the episode throwing tantrums, and there’s something inherently funny about that. Thirdly is the fact that those personalities wind up those fans who insist on taking Doctor Who far too seriously! Oh, reading the internet posts complaining about this pair made them all the funnier.

Then you’ve got Brian. Brian may be one of my favourite things to come out of the entire tenure of the Ponds in the programme. He’s a fantastic character, and he’s so perfectly cast, too. I did wonder initially if I’d be able to get Mr Weasly out of my head while watching (as Mark Williams has become so embedded in that role in my mind), but he completely inhabits Brian in these two appearances, and I really wish we could have seen a bit more of him - it’s such a shame that he only crops up during the Pond’s final days in the series.

And then there’s the story itself. I know they were aiming for big blockbuster episodes with ‘slutty’ titles for this half of the series, but Dinosaurs on a Spaceship has to be my favourite of them - it does exactly what it says on the tin and I just know that were I eight years old and watching this, I’d be even more enthralled.

One thing I really can’t forgive, though… that awful postcard from Brian at the end. I love the idea that he sets of travelling, and I like that he seems to have adapted shop-bought postcards for use by simply taping holiday snaps of himself to them, but that one sticks out like a real sore thumb - not just because it’s not particularly well put together, but because the TARDIS is the old David Tennant model, and I simply can’t stop looking at it!

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

Day 823: Asylum of the Daleks

Dear diary,

This episode seems to be at the eye of two storms that continue to rage within fandom. Firstly was the fact that Series Seven didn’t actually start until September, which means that all the talk about ‘never being more than three months away from new Doctor Who went right out the window, and we were actually treated to the longest gap between new episodes since the programme returned in 2005! Oh, the rage that caused at the time. Three years on, and I still see people complaining on the internet (just imagine) that we’re now effectively a series behind, and all because Asylum of the Daleks had the audacity to start late! From my point of view, I rather welcomed the fact that we had such a long break from the programme - If Series Six hadn’t exactly set my world alight, The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe put the nail in the coffin for my interest in ‘current’ Doctor Who. A nine-month gap was long enough for me to forget my apathy and find my love for the programme again, something which was largely helped by…

The second storm that this episode kicks up. It’s something that I suppose I can understand a little easier. It all started when Steven Moffat commented that “every version of the Daleks” would be appearing in Series Seven, and then Doctor Who Magazine did that wonderful wrap-around cover featuring all the different Dalek models. Now, as it happens, the episode does contain a fair few older versions of the Daleks, but they’re buried away in the back of shot somewhere. For a lot of the time it’s a bit of a fun ‘spot the Dalek’ game. The only time it actively bothers me is when the Doctor encounters the Daleks who’ve faced him in a series of name-checks to old Dalek serials… and all the Daleks in that area are the new ones. Surely if there’s any moment to bring in the older props, it would have been there? Even if they were consigned to the background, it was the one glaring omission that took me out of the drama.

That didn’t really matter, though, because it had done the trick. As soon as you drop the hint that there’s going to be some of the older Daleks popping up alongside the new ones, my interest is piqued. It instantly sounds interesting. And then they went and released a photo of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan with an Evil of the Daleks Emperor Guard Dalek (on April Fools Day, of all times!) and my interest in the programme is instantly rekindled. There’s just something so appealing about the idea!

Right from the off, this episode feels so much better than Series Six did to me first time round. It’s fresh, and new. It’s as visually different to Series Six as that one was to Series Five. There’s a shot of adrenalin. The Daleks are opening a series for the first time in almost a quarter of a century. There’s lots of them, and there’s plenty of other stuff to like, too, because…

People who were viewers in the old days, when the ‘classic’ series was first broadcast, often bang on about how great the surprise at the end of Earthshock Part One was, when we find out that the controllers of the androids are none other than the Cybermen. It’s largely impossible to get that kind of shock and awe these days because things get leaked out in advance (intentionally or otherwise), and the whole medium of television operates differently. I’ve spoken before about how great it was to see the return of the Master in Series Three because although there’d been hints and rumours, I wasn’t ever certain that it was going to happen until just before it did. Well, Asylum of the Daleks is my Earthshock Part One. Jenna Coleman had been announced as the new companion months ago. I think by this point there’d even been plenty of pictures flying around of her filming her episodes. And yet here she is! Months before I was expecting her, and without the tiniest hint (that reached me, anyway) that she might be appearing. Oh it was exciting. This episode gains a whole point extra simply because that’s still one of the best moments I’ve ever had watching Doctor Who. The sheer surprise, and bafflement. Oh, Moffat, you’re a clever one.

For all my raving here, I can’t say that Asylum of the Daleks is perfect, and there’s one thing at the heart of it which really lets the episode down - the relationship between the Ponds. They’re getting a divorce, we’re told. It transpires that it’s because Amy is no longer able to have a child, and while neither of them wants to split up, they both think that the other would. In all honesty, it’s a great bit of drama, and it’s packed with a lot of the stuff I wanted to see in the latter half of Series Six - the aftermath of the events at Demon’s Run, and the way that it affects these two normal people in their day-to-day lives. But the whole thing rings extremely hollow - it seems to come from nowhere (The 5-mini-episode Pond Life in theory sets it up, but even there it comes from absolutely nowhere in the final minute or so without the tiniest hint of build up), and it’s resolved pretty easily as soon as its served its purpose in the plot. It feels like an incredible waste of what should be some great drama for the characters, and it’s a pity - by far the weakest part of the story.

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

Day 822: The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe

Dear Diary,

Although I’ve never been one for actively seeking out spoilers, there always used to be a little pang of excitement when a photo from filming crossed my path. Oh, it opened up a whole world of possibilities! What was that? And who was she? And why did they have that prop, or that bit of costume? I used to enjoy musing on all the different explanations, and then discovering that I was completely wrong by the time the episode actually made it to the screen. I think the fun in that has been entirely sucked out of the filming, these days, by a number of people who seem to think it’s their mission to gather as much information as possible, and share it far and wide for some kind of status, but that’s a gripe for another time and another place.

But that excitement meant that when I moved to Wales, one of the first things I was desperate to do was to go and see Doctor Who being made. How brilliant must that be? Only problem was that they weren’t filming at that point, because it was between seasons, and the schedule being shifted around meant that they wouldn’t be out and about for a while yet. I carried on, took a job designing people’s kitchens, and put Doctor Who on the back burner. And then the call came. one day, just as I was leaving off work, I had a message to say that Who was setting up for filming just round the corner, and that Matt Smith was due to be there. Oh, I ran to the location, and watched for a few hours as a seemingly drunk Doctor was helped back towards a police box which wasn’t his TARDIS. I’ve seen a few more bits of filming since then (though, it has to be said that the novelty has largely worn off now I’ve been here a few years. I wandered past filming for Deep Breath twice on my walk to Tesco last spring and didn’t pause for more than a cursory glance on either occasion), but this particular night was special, because I’d never been so close to the people making actual brand new episodes of Doctor Who.

Oh, it was a long few months to Christmas, but we settled down to watch this episode (my first Christmas away from home and my own family, spending it instead with my then-partner’s parents), filled with a huge sense of excitement… and was instead presented with this episode. Dear lord, it was just a horrible, horrible hour. I’ve barely cast this one a second thought since transmission (indeed, when I saw a clip of it recently as part of a montage, I couldn’t place what on Earth it was from until it was pointed out to me), and so I’ve not exactly been relishing the thought of watching it for this marathon. As I seem to have said a lot during Series Six, though, I’ve been re-evaluating my previous opinions on lots of stories, and this one perhaps isn’t immune to a bit of a change…

…On the other hand, perhaps it is. Oh, I tried, readers! I promise you I did. I went for my usual trick, there, of writing the opening to this entry while the blu-ray loaded up, and had it safe in my head that I’d be able to come back to this one and say how I’d been filled with festive spirit by how marvellous the episode was, and how I’d been a fool all those years ago to not enjoy such a masterpiece of Doctor Who. But no, sorry. For a pretty large chunk, I completely zoned out and wasn’t even paying attention. I could see the episode playing out on the screen, and I could even sort of hear it, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. When I came round, the mum was flying the Crystal Maze through the Time Vortex. Or something.

For the first time in almost two-and-a-half years of writing The 50 Year Diary, I turned off after the episode, and thought clearly ‘that’s a 1/10’. I’ve had emails complaining about the fact that I’ve never given a 1/10! I sat down, prepared for it and… well, I simply couldn’t do it! Yes, I’ve disliked this one. No, I doubt I’ll be attempting to watch it again at any point in the next decade. And yet… it’s still Doctor Who, and is Doctor Who ever a 1/10 programme? Really?

For all that I’ve not enjoyed the story on the whole, and actively stopped bothering to watch for a while, there’s still things in my nots that I have enjoyed! Some great lines for the Doctor about the door developing faults, and the Doctor not being who they were expecting. Some amusing asides from the crew harvesting the trees. The frankly gorgeous shot of the TARDIS stood in the attic, which might be one of the nicest frames of Doctor Who ever…

So there we have it. I’d quite happily continue to say that The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe is my least favourite episode of Doctor Who. I don’t plan to give it a whirl again if I can avoid it. And yet, still, Doctor Who always has something to redeem it. With that in mind…

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Jonathan Morris

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“A Great Darkness is spreading over E-Space. Entropy increases. In search of a last exit to anywhere, the TARDIS arrives on the power-less planet of Apollyon, where the scientist Pallister guards the only way out – a mysterious portal. But the portal needs power to open, and the only power Pallister can draw on is the energy contained within the molecular bonds of all living tissue...

The Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough soon learn that neither Pallister nor his ally, the space pirate Captain Branarack, will stop at murder to ensure their escape. But they're not the only menace on Apollyon. The Sandmen are coming – creatures that live on the life force; that live on death.

Death is the only way out into N-Space. Death, or sacrifice.

But whose death?

Whose sacrifice?”

***

All good things must come to an end (sometimes; if your name is Hex then god only knows) and so the stories featuring Older/Young/Old-ish Again Nyssa come to an end in this, The Entropy Plague by Jonathan Morris.  In many ways, this feels like not so much a conclusion to the E-Space trilogy which we’ve been experiencing across these past few plays, but a sequel and finale to everything post-Morris’s own Prisoners of Fate.  Nyssa has a family to get back to, and being stuck in E-Space is only hastening the inevitable, despite how much the Doctor would like her to stay.

In keeping with the rest of this trilogy, the story has strong nods to its positional equivalent in Season 18’s original foray into E-Space: Mistfall shared its writer, Marshmen and, erm, Mistfall with Full Circle; Equilibrium and State of Decay have their castles and regal cast; and here in The Entropy Plague, we have Warriors’ Gate’s thresholds and setting as well, this one being set on the other side of the world to Steve Gallagher’s original concept-heavy tale.

Whilst Equilibrium managed to feel very Bidmeadian in its concepts, music and execution, this time we are firmly in Eric Saward’s home ground.  You know how Ressurection of the Daleks has the ethos of ‘Life is Crap and then you Die’? This play makes that look positively life-affirming and comedic.

We start with the Doctor telling Nyssa’s son, Adric, that he will never, ever see his mother ever again, and then we flashback to a point where Tegan is still kidnapped by space pirates (clearly everyone on board forgot how successful space pirates had been on the last attempt) and the TARDIS is crashing (what else?) down on the planet Apollyon.  Devoid of power and borrowing liberally from the sound effects bank (Cloister Bell? Check.  Dwindly-light sound from Death to the Daleks? Present), things are looking dark and bleak for our heroes, which only sets the tone for what is to come across the next 100-odd minutes.

Apollyon is a dying world, the people are celebrating the end of all things, and the only way out— a CVE leading to N-Space— is probably what’s going to kill everyone else, unless entropy does first.  Morris decides to make entropy more of a tangible threat than a few starts being blotted out ala Logopolis though, and so we get the Sandmen, the nipple-tastic monsters which grace the CD cover, who rather nightmarishly are the living embodiment of an old folk tale… or would be if they were nightmarish.  Instead, they mostly growl about dust a lot.  It’s a rare dropping of the ball by Morris, who usually milks his good ideas for all they’re worth, but this monster-of-the-week feels increasingly functional and not much beyond tokenistic.

In fact, The Entropy Plague is a rare case of Morris dropping the ball altogether, and giving us something that is just unremittingly bleak across its duration.  I understand that the collapse of an entire universe is no laughing matter, but there is no glimmer of happiness across the play.  We get pointless sacrifice, torture, threatened executions, families torn apart, separation and selfishness instead, and that’s nearly all in the opening episode.  By the time I reached the point where one of the guest cast is mercilessly put to death only to get a slight reprieve before killing themselves horribly and pointlessly, I found myself having to Google images of kittens to fully recall that not everything in this world is utterly horrendous.

No-one seems happy here.  The Doctor seems quite happy to let a universe die to escape, channelling Hartnell’s incarnation in many ways; Turlough sounds pained as situations confer to make him have to act selfishly; Tegan is placed in danger of death more often than one can count; and Nyssa seems to know that she is never going to see her family again even before the title music has properly faded and the first scene kicked in.

The story is at least open about Nyssa’s fate from the very off (until Big Finish perform a massive u-turn on it in a couple of years’ time, one suspects) and such a scenario warrants a certain gravity, but this goes beyond that, to the point where her departure feels almost by-the-bye in this world of utterly nasty things and occurrences and, despite an attempt at sweetening things with a monologue at the end, you’re left in no doubt that nobody is happy, no-one at all.  And why would they be in a world where everything is bloody awful?

Doctor Who is many things and has many faces, but it has rarely if ever been as grim and so utterly devoid of pleasure as this.  For me, Doctor Who is and always will be a children’s show.  I think there is room for more adult pursuits in these plays and comics and books and suchlike, but if the goalposts are shifted so far as to become unrecognizable as is the case here, and you lose any appeal to children whatsoever, then you can count me out.

There will be many, no doubt, who warm to this nihilistic take on the show and its truly adult no-kids-allowed vision, but I am not among them; it left me thoroughly cold and just wanting it to end from around three episodes in.  It takes more than just a TARDIS to make Doctor Who the show it is; I only hope that’s remembered in the future. 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: John Dorney

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: March 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The Asteroid - notorious hideaway of the piratical Rocket Men. Hewn out of rock, surrounded by force-fields and hidden in the depths of the Fairhead Cluster, their base is undetectable, unescapable and impregnable.

In need of allies, the Master has arranged to meet with Shandar, King of the Rocket Men. But the mercenaries have captured themselves a very special prisoner - his oldest enemy, the Doctor.

What cunning scheme is the Doctor planning? How does it connect with Shandar's new robotic pet? And just what has happened to Leela? The Master will have to work the answers out if he wants to leave the asteroid... alive…"

***

The Rocket Men were arguably one of the greatest successes to come from The Companion Chronicles.  Nasty, beautifully 1960s-ish in their style and approach, and the central antagonists in two of the range’s best and best-loved releases, it was perhaps only a matter of time before they made the transition to another range and another Doctor.  Whether this needed to happen is another question altogether, but happen it has and John Dorney’s Requiem for the Rocket Men is the result.

The third story in this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, it carries on the tradition set down so far this year by being perfect for the two-episode format and the regular cast.  Leela, K-9 and the Doctor alike are all served well by Dorney’s script and scenarios, and the addition of the Master turns out to be a really smart move, showing the Rocket Men to be smaller players than they perceive themselves to be and remnants of an era that has past them by.  Indeed, one of the cleverest things about this play is how they reflect the change in Doctor, and era they’re aiming for, by making the titular Rocket Men feel very… retro now; outdated and outpaced in this new world of robot dogs and rival Time Lords and female savages.  It’s no wonder they need the Master to give them a hand, and no wonder he treats them with such patronizing contempt.

Just as Dorney subverts his own creations, so he also plays with the traditional Master/Doctor set up by having the Master stumble into one of the Doctor’s plans and adventures rather than the other way around which is the norm.  It could be a gimmick in the wrong hands or so post-modern it hurts, but here in Dorney’s capable hands it’s a lot of fun and never once feels out of place in the story being told.

Another good thing is the fact it isn’t slavishly trying to recreate the Fourth Doctor’s era, something else in common with the plays so far this series. (Speaking of changes, the pedants in us will probably be interested to note that the font on the back of the CD has changed for this release, the sort of heinous crime that usually generates half a dozen protests on the forums and threat of a boycott or alternative cover. Let’s hope they didn’t look at the spines for the first series of Early Adventures, eh?)

I’ve noted before that I have found this quest for authenticity to be a foolish one; one which has stunted the growth of the series or stories, so I am glad to see it gone at last.  It also makes the ability to mix ‘traditional’ stories with character development less of a messy fit.  We get more depth of character for the Master in this story than we ever had on screen during Doctor Who’s original run, and Leela gets to grow stronger and braver here than she was ever allowed to.  One of The Fourth Doctor Adventures’s strengths is the interplay between the Doctor and Leela, far wittier and cosier than we ever saw on screen, and the final scenes of this play give us a warmth and pleasure and— dare I say it? — closure we were robbed of in Invasion of Time.  It’s nice to see that addressed here.

It’s hard to fully judge the story in its own right as it leads directly and explicitly onto Death Match, next month’s release in this series (which isn’t a spoiler as such as it was advertised by Big Finish themselves in publicity for the series, though I will admit that I missed it somehow, which made the ending far more surprising than it perhaps should have been!) but in its own right it’s another damn good play from John Dorney and another good release for this series.  I hope next month proves to be every bit as strong.

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

Day 821: The Wedding of River Song

Dear diary,

The Wedding of River Song is quite a bit like Let’s Kill Hitler, in that you sort of get to the end and wonder what you’ve just been watching. As episodes go, this one has something of a difficult job, really, trying to tie up strands of story that have been running for the whole season (and one or two that have been dangling a little longer than that), and to do so in 45 minutes, as opposed to the usual 90-minutes that finales have had since 2005. Does it manage it? Um…

Well, let’s start with the positives. Even if I did come away from this one with a bit of a sense of not knowing what was really happening, I can’t say that I’ve not actually enjoyed it. There’s an awful lot of great imagery in this one, from the way that the ‘all of time happening at once’ scenes are presented (I’d forgotten about the return of Simon Callow as Charles Dickens - there’s something especially magical about that!), to the Silence breaking down the doors of a pyramid and launching an attack. There’s a lot of great lines in here, too, and more than many episodes of late, I found myself quoting along as I watched, which is usually a good sign.

As for wrapping everything up, though… I’m on record a few times over the last fortnight as not really caring for the Series Six arcs. They simply don’t work for me as well as I’d like them to, and while I can bleat on about the split in the series causing problems, or the way that characters react from story to story, or the format of a one-part closing episode, the simple fact is that everything has fallen apart a bit this year. The show looks beautiful - perhaps more so than at any point before now - but the substance is lacking something. At the time I recall wondering if Steven Moffat was struggling with the workload and musing that it could be part of the reason for splitting the run, and watching it again now it’s hard to wonder all that again; there’s certainly something not working.

On the upside, though, I’ve enjoyed this run of episodes far more than I was expecting to, and a whole lot more than I did at the time. Again, I’ve said a lot of late about how much I didn’t enjoy the programme in 2011, but there’s been a lot of merit in this series, and I’m glad to have taken the time to re-evaluate it. Perfect? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than expected. If we don’t count A Christmas Carol (as it was made separately and isn’t really a part of this run, then Series Six has averaged 6.38/10 across the run - and that’s way more than I’d have guessed a month back! It does make this my lowest-rated season of the ‘revived’ Doctor Who yet, but only by a whisker - Series Two skirts ahead with 6.76/10 - but it’s not a million miles behind the front-runner which is (much to my own surprise, if I’m honest) Series Three with 7.53/10!

Next question, though… will this general feeling of goodwill be enough to save me from an episode that I’d risk calling my least favourite ever, and which I’ll be reaching tomorrow?

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

Day 820: Closing Time

Dear diary,

When this episode first aired, my general ‘meh’-ness about Series Six had reached fever pitch, and I was thoroughly bored by the whole thing. More Cybermen? Yawn. The return of Craig? Unnecessary. The Setting? Rubbish. The Story itself? Didn’t go anywhere. On the whole, I think it’s fair to say that I was a trifle grumpy.

It’s rather nice, therefore, that watching it today, with a wholly more positive outlook on this run of stories has almost been like presenting me with an entirely different story to the one I remember from a few years ago. More Cybermen? Good! They’re my favourite monsters, after all, and they’re really only used as window dressing here, because… The Return of Craig is the big selling point. We’ll come back to this in a moment because for now I need to touch on… The Setting. It’s not ‘rubbish’ at all - it’s just normal, which again, is the whole bloody point. You can tell how much of a funk I must have been in first time around, because there’s lots in here that I simply failed to engage with on any level before.

As I’ve said, the real point of this episode is the return of Craig from the previous year’s The Lodger. When this return was first announced, I don’t think I had any particular reaction beyond a simple ‘oh, right’. By the time the episode aired, though, it almost annoyed me that they’d brought him back. Why? What’s the point? He was a one story character who had no right or need to make a return appearance and certainly not this soon. What I think I totally failed to grasp before now is that Craig is back because of just how brilliant he is. Also, how well James Corden pairs up with Matt Smith. Oh, they went together brilliantly in The Lodger, but that’s notched right up to eleven this time around, and the highlights of this episode - for me - are every moment the two share the screen. They’re a hoot! There’s times where you sort of forget that it’s the Doctor and a human hanging out, and just feel like you’re enjoying Matt and James having a laugh - and you’re actually laughing along with them.

It’s telling that is in total contrast to the thing I enjoyed the least about this one - the cameo appearance of Amy and Rory. I think I knew that The God Complex wasn’t to be their last appearance because they were destined to be in the finale, but it felt like a pointless exercise to have them show up here. I realise that it’s a character moment for the Doctor, but even this time around, having been carried to this point of the episode throughly enjoying it, I suddenly found myself taken right out of the narrative, and making notes about how rubbish the moment is… and it’s all then highlighted by the fact that we’re thrown immediately back into the Doctor and Craig teaming up, and it’s back to being rather fun and enjoyable again!

If anything, it makes me rather sad that we didn’t get to have one final outing for the pair of them before the Eleventh Doctor’s time came to a close. I’m not quite sure where their story needs (or indeed can) go from here, but it seems like a shame to think that there’s a whole further season-and-a-bit of adventures for the Doctor, and that Craig will be absent from them. If nothing else, can we start working out how to get Smith and Corden their own show?

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

Day 819: The God Complex

Der diary,

When Lynda-with-a-‘y’ (I know it’s pointless to type out the full name, because you can see it’s ‘with-a-‘y’’, but somehow it feels wrong not to) turned up in the Series One finale, it seemed so clear to me that she was being introduced as a replacement to Rose, or at least an additional travelling companion, and I wasn’t all that keen on the thought, because she rubbed me up the wrong way, somehow. Then, of course, it turned out that she wasn’t to be the next companion at all, and that we were supposed to fall into the trap of thinking that, because we feel it all them ore keenly when she dies. That’s the kind of trick you can only pull the once, though, so when Astrid asks to go with the Doctor while the Titanic falls from orbit around them, you just know that she;s never making it out of that ship in one piece (and quite besides the face that it’s Kylie-bleedin’-Minogue, and there’s no way they’s get her to Cardiff for a nine month shoot!).

I resolved to never fall for that trap again, and it was working pretty well, on the whole, until this episode came along, and I became convinced that Rita was to be the replacement for Amy and Rory. She had all the hallmarks, and she’s being set up pretty obviously (but not too over-the-top obviously) as perfect companion material, and it seemed to be fairly common knowledge that the Ponds would be departing in this episode (or, at least, I assume it was common knowledge, because I was aware that this was to be their last episode - barring perhaps a cameo in the finale - and I’d not been paying all that much attention). Everything seemed to fit… and then the buggers went and did it again! She loses her faith, and heads off to meet the minotaur. Oh, that stung just as much as Lynda-with-a-‘y’. Perhaps even more so, because for all I said nice things about Amy and Rory yesterday, on first transmission they could have been anyone for all I cared about them, and I rather liked Rita.

If there’s something that bothers me here, then it’s the ending. Not the ending of all the stuff in the ‘hotel', that's all fine, but the actual end of the episode with the Doctor dropping the Ponds off to live a happy life together. In many ways, it’s a great ending for them (and, if I’m honest, i think it might be the best ending for them), being given everything they need to settle down and start living a more ‘normal' life together. You can only run away with your childhood imaginary friend for so long, after all. I think the issue I have is that it’s not quite built up as well as I’d like. We had Rory snapping at the Doctor during the events of The Girl Who Waited, and announcing that he’s had enough, and there's plenty of hints throughout this episode that the time is right for the Ponds to leave, but it feels like it needed a little… more.

The most obvious thing comes from episodes like Night Terrors, where I was very vocal about the irritating way that the episode doesn’t even try to touch on the relationship that Amy and Rory have with parenthood, and so soon after it’s been such a major concern for them. I can’t help but feel that this departure needed to come after a few episodes of the Ponds 'going through the motions’ because the Doctor is there and he’s ready for adventure, but they're ready to move on and grow up. Time to stop running. I’m also slightly unsure about the way that the departure is handled, with it being pitched as though it’s the first time that Amy will have been without the Doctor since he came back for her in Leadworth - although we know they had a break between A Christmas Carol and another one in the gap during Series Six… maybe Amy simply doesn’t think he will come back this time?

That doesn’t stop this from being a rather lovely way for them to say goodbye, and it’s only right that the bulk of the emotion in the scene is pitched over the Doctor and Amy - while Rory has been a vital part of their story together, it started with the scared little girl being rescued by the madman in the box, and it ends with the scared big girl moving on the next stage of her life. First time around, I couldn’t get on board with the idea that they go on to have another half-a-season of travels with the Doctor after such a fitting goodbye, so I’m intrigued now to see how they feel over the next week… 

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

Day 818: The Girl Who Waited

Dear diary,

I try not to quote long passages of dialogue in the Diary if I can avoid it, but I really feel the need to do so today;

AMY

You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful… And then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick? Then there's other people, and you meet them and think, not bad, they're okay. And then you get to know them, and their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality's written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful. Rory's the most beautiful man I've ever met. 

This is just a wonderful moment, and the real highlight of the episode for me. Make no mistake that today’s score is a point higher than it ought to be simply because of how moving this scene was. That quote is possibly the most accurate description of love, as I’ve experienced it, ever. Oh, it’s perfect, and it’s just the absolute best way to describe Amy and Rory’s relationship.

Which is good, because make no bones about it - this is their episode. Every season tends to have a ‘Doctor-lite’ story somewhere among its ranks, and this one takes the same approach as Turn Left, in using the opportunity to focus purely on the Doctor’s current travelling companions, and to really explore who they are.

If I’m entirely honest, I never really understood the love for Amy and Rory. I think a lot of that came down to the fact that I’d largely been indifferent to Series Six, and that seemed to coincide with the programme suddenly becoming huge in America, and what seemed to be endless floods of American fans proclaiming that this duo were simply the best companions ever. ‘Sure,’ I thought, assuming that it was simply people who’d not seen any other companions. Actually, though, that wasn’t really fair of me. We’re almost three whole years on, now, from their departure and yet the legacy lives on - somehow, this pair struck a chord.

Watching through over the last three-or-so weeks, I can certainly see a lot of merits to the characters (Rory especially makes me laugh), and despite a bit of a wobble with Amy right at the start of Series Five (where it felt as though she was being set up as some kind of ‘super companion’ by being the only one who could save the day on several consecutive occasions and to a greater extent than usual, to the ultimate effect that the programme seem to be over-selling her to us; ‘no, really, she is a great companion’), I’ve grown to really like her, too. It’s an interesting relationship that she shares with this incarnation of the Doctor, and I like that there’s a love between them, but it’s quite different to the love we had with Rose, Martha, or Donna. It’s a unique way of examining the Doctor-Companion relationship, and I’ve appreciated that all the more this time around.

This episode focussing largely on Amy and Rory doesn’t mean that the Doctor gets sidelined, though: we also get to see another glimpse of this incarnation’s ‘dark side’, which I banged on about so much during the Gangers two-parter last week. Oh, there’s something wonderful about the look he gives the older Amy as he shuts her out of the TARDIS and condemns her to death. Much has been written in the last six months about the way that Peter Capaldi’s Doctor can be so much ‘darker’ and ‘colder’ than many of the other Doctors, but frankly that’s rubbish - here’s that exact same ruthlessness, but we’re seeing it though a momentary lapse in the ‘cover’ the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors try to project. When the real Time Lord breaks through in scenes like this, it’s really wonderful to watch.

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

Day 817: Night Terrors

Dear diary,

So. The arrival of the TARDIS is nicely shot, innit?

Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve been sort of dreading this one, because I simply have nothing to say about it. When this episode first went out, I can remember thinking that it was a bit of a rehash of Fear Her (which in my memory had been rubbish in itself), and that I’d not be rushing to revisit it any time soon. In fairness, watching it today I can safely say that it’s not in any way a rehash of Fear Her, but that hasn’t made me love it any more.

This is actually the second entry I’ve written for this episode, because putting together the first version earlier on, I found myself simply typing as I mulled over the episode, and slowly realised exactly what my problem was with it. The closer I came to the conclusion, the more I found myself getting annoyed by it, and consequently the score today is probably lower than it should have been, as marks dropped off it (not many marks, to be fair, but all the same). Does it deserve such a low score? Well, no, probably not. For one thing, the direction really is rather nice in this one, and there’s some especially nice transitions from shot to shot, but even those can’t save it from the big issue at its heart.

Specifically, the last two stories have been about Amy and Rory suddenly discovering that - shock horror - they’ve got a baby. It’s one that they weren’t really expecting, since Amy hadn’t broached the subject with her husband before being kidnapped and replaced with a living Flesh duplicate. As you do. Just when they think that everything is back to normal and that they can actually come to terms with the sudden arrival of a child in their lives, the kid gets snatched away again, and they have to head back home to await news for their baby’s well being.

Mixed in with all this is the discovery that a woman they’ve shared several adventures with and who their time-travelling best friend has a bit of a thing for has actually been their daughter - albeit grown up - all along. As if all that wasn’t enough, it then turns out that the same woman was also their childhood best friend but in a different body, so they’ve actually been growing up alongside their daughter all this time. I’m sure you’ll admit that it’s quite the roller coaster of emotions for a couple to experience, and it’s probably rather clever that the next story to be broadcast after this little mini-arc is one all about how difficult it can be to act as a parent. There’s so much that you can explore here with Amy and Rory coming to terms with everything that’s just happened.

But that’s not really what happens. In fact, the events of the last couple of episodes don’t even warrant a mention, while Amy and Rory only appear in the same scene as the child of the story briefly towards the end (and Amy’s made of wood by that point). It felt like an odd decision on first glance, but is actively annoying me the more I think about it - why waste such an obvious opportunity to explore the depth of the situation they’ve just been through? Over the next couple of stories, we’re going to be building towards Amy and Rory’s first exit from the TARDIS, and it just feels like this should have been an important step on that journey. A real shame.

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

Day 816: Let’s Kill Hitler

Dear diary,

In principle, I think I quite like the idea of splitting a season of Doctor Who into halves. As much as I love having an uninterrupted three month run of the programme (and, it has to be said, returning to that format for Series Eight last year felt wonderful), I can’t help but agree with the argument Steven Moffat made when the split was first announced - that you’re never more than three months away from some new episodes of Doctor Who coming on the telly! Of course, that’s not quite how it worked out in practice (we went on to have a huge break for nine months after the Christmas Special), but in theory, I’m quite keen on the idea.

That said, I still maintain that the first half would have been better had it ended with the reveal that Amy was a Flesh duplicate, and with the Doctor and Rory heading off to find her. Something just doesn’t quite sit right about the fact that A Good Man Goes to War concludes with the Doctor confidently saying that he knows where to find Melody, and then this episode opening with the admission that it’s been several months and he’s still had no luck in tracking her down. Now, I could be generous and say that he’s not actually been trying to find Melody, because he knows that they’ll all bump into her again at some point in the very near future, but that’s not really how it’s presented on screen here.

Oh, but this episode is mental, isn’t it? I mean, there’s so much being thrown at the script that I really don’t quite know where to look. We’ve got a trip to Berlin to meet Hitler, which would be enough for a fair number of stories, but on top of that there’s a shape changing alien justice machine which is operated by the Numbskulls, a half-human-half-Time-Lord hybrid who regenerates into a character we’ve known for several years, the Doctor’s ‘death’, cameos from Rose, Martha, Donna, and Amelia… and all packed into 45 minutes! There were points where I simply didn’t know what was going on, and while it was interesting enough for me to simply go along with, I have to admit that I came out of this episode feeling a little off. I think it was generally a feeling of simply not knowing what I’d just watched…

One thing I can confidently say about it, though, is just how nicely directed it all is. This is the first (and, sadly, only) outing for director Richard Senior on Doctor Who. Even more impressive, it was pointed out to me today that this was the first full television episode of anything that Senior directed! And it’s brilliant! There’s so many really clever transitions (chief among them being the change from a toy TARDIS being thrown onto a bed to the real thing crashing through the skies of Berlin), and some beautiful shots. It’s something of a crime that he’s not come back to the programme, because he’s very quickly notched up towards to top of my ‘favourite Doctor Who directors list…

It’s been a little while since I’ve given you any of my own pet theories, but today’s episode is the perfect opportunity for another one. This one has been superseded by the programme itself (in this very episode, in fact), but it’s something I was quite keen on at the time. River Song. Oh, there were so many theories flying around about her true identity. It always seemed most likely that she was the Doctor’s wife (though, as she herself says in the Angels two-parter, wit the Doctor it’s never that simple), but there were so many other theories floating about. Was she the Doctor’s mum? Susan? Susan’s mum? A future incarnation? A female Master? The Rani?

My own theory was that River Song was simply… well, River Song. Not some old character with a new face, but the Doctor’s biggest fan. She’d dedicated her life to researching the Doctor’s adventures through the history books, and that one day we’d see her younger than ever before, stood in front of a class, giving a lecture about the Doctor and the blue box he travels in. Suddenly, from the back of the room a voice would pipe up; ‘hat’s not quite how it happened…’, and it would be the Doctor himself! Leaning against a pillar, and ready to invite River aboard the TARDIS because he needs her for something.

That wasn’t my favourite bit of the thinking though. I had a theory for how she would go on to become ‘the woman who killed the Doctor’. When Smith’s final episode rolled around, they would be facing down the biggest threat that they’d ever faced. Heck, it could have even been the siege of Trenzalore in retrospect. Either way, they’re there, and the Doctor is woefully out of his depth. He simply doesn’t have what it takes to save the day. ‘I’m sorry,’ River tells him, ‘but you’re not the Doctor I need right now. Your next incarnation would have the strength…’… at which point, she shoots him! A new Doctor born in the terror of the moment, and with the personality to do whatever it was that the Eleventh Doctor couldn’t. She would kill him simply to get to his next incarnation. Okay, it sounds a bit silly when I type it all out on here, but for a few months in my head, I loved that idea. As much as I enjoy now knowing more about River’s story, and being able to piece together her timeline (my own attempt at that can be found HERE, by the way), I do miss the days when it was all still a mystery, and I was able to invent my own River story in my own head…

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

Day 815: A Good Man Goes to War

Dear diary,

First thing’s first: I seem to be bringing it up over and over again at the moment, but the opening hooks to episodes this series are very strong, aren’t they? Today’s might be the crowning glory, though, with Rory turning up to question a fleet of Cybermen, while the Doctor blows them up in the background to underline the point. Brilliant!

This is a brave episode, isn’t it? In terms of being an episode of Doctor Who that’s billed as something of a ‘season finale’, there’s some very brave choices made here. Outside of the ‘previously’ clips, we don't see so much as a silhouette of the Doctor for the first tele minutes, and he doesn’t appear in person for over a quarter of an hour. That’s a third of the entire running time! That entire first act of the story is used to set everything up, move all the characters into the right places, and prepare us for the story to come. And yet, somehow, it never feels like they’ve had to rush everything else to accommodate a fifteen minute set up period - it’s all perfectly natural as a part of the narrative.

However. While I’m on the subject of narrative, this is the perfect time to return to my major bug-bear of Series Six - all the arcs and ‘mythology’ stuff. It simply doesn’t sit right with me, and I think it’s all to do with the format of the season. Having a three month gap between halves of the series was an interesting experiment (and one which I think worked much better with Series Seven), but it forces this episode to be a kind of finale, when things really aren’t ready for such a story. For all I’ve praised the cliffhanger to yesterday’s episode, it does come a little bit out of nowhere. The Doctor realises that there’s something wrong with Amy at the end of Day of the Moon, and we get a few glimpses of him looking at the scanner screen and her alternating pregnancy test, but until we reach the end of the Flesh two-parter, there’s no real indication that the Doctor is pricing things together and starting to track down everything that’s happening.

It feels like this would have been the perfect time for the Doctor to get those cryptic hints that people so love to drop around him, slowly putting together a picture across the entire season that there’s something wrong with Amy, hitting that two-parter right before the big finale at the end of the run. As it is, he seems to drop it for a bit and then announces that he’s worked out what’s going on, and where to find Amy. That was easy! There’s a great concept for an arc in here, but it’s just not been given the right space to develop, because the format of Series Six has forced it into an odd shape. Perhaps it would work better if the first half of the series ended with the reveal that Amy is a Ganger, before the Doctor and Rory go off looking for her during the ‘break’ in between halves?

Overall, though, I think my favourite idea in this episode has to be the way that the Doctor goes around ‘collecting’ people to build an army. It feels like a natural step for the Doctor - after Davros made him so aware of the way he uses people during The Stolen Earth - that he should decide to use these people when he needs to. I think this sequence is also home to my biggest regret from the entire Eleventh Doctor Era: I think I’m right in saying that Captain jack was originally to be among the people the Doctor called upon, but filming on the fourth series of Torchwood prevented John Barrowman from appearing. In some ways it might have felt odd to have Jack hanging around from a previous ‘era’, but equally, I’d have loved to see him with the new Doctor!

It’s also somewhat strange to think that this is the first appearance of the Paternoster Gang, and that actually they’re not even that yet, but just several different characters created for a one-off appearance in this episode. They didn’t make a reappearance in the programme for another 18 months (though it’s going to be little over a week from my point of view in this marathon), but they so quickly established themselves as simply being a part of this era, that it’s odd to see them here so far into Smith’s tenure as still only half-formed! I capped today’s episode off with the Two Days Later mini episode which explains how Strax manages to ‘die’ on Demon’s Run before accompanying Vastra and Jenny back to London, and it has to be said you can really see the difference in the personalities between this episode and the later reappearance… but I can’t help but love them all the same!

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

Day 814: The Almost People

Dear diary,

Yesterday, I praised Matthew Graham’s ability to create a very ‘real’ world, and to populate it with character who felt true to life. We’re given lots of lovely little moments and comments which can feel like nothing, but all add to the overall texture of this story, and make the characters and the situation all the richer. That trend continues through into today’s episode, and you realise just how important all of that is, because it helps to strengthen the battle at the heart of the story - the dislike for the unlike, while also having the trouble of that ‘unlike’ being so incredibly close to home.

Something that I’m finding a bit distracting lately is waiting for moments that I know are coming. Because I’ve not seen any of these episodes since their initial broadcast, I can vaguely recall a few key bits and pieces, but not everything. More and more, I’m finding myself just waiting for these things, and that’s sort of distracting me from enjoying the episodes as much as I should. I spent most of yesterday and much of today, for example, waiting for Jennifer to turn into the giant Flesh monster which only turns up at the climax of today’s episode, and that’s had a detrimental effect on all of her scenes throughout the story - because I keep wondering when she’s going to turn into a monster.

It’s also been the case today with the two Doctors. I knew that they’d swapped shoes, but kept waiting for the moment when they revealed this. In my mind, it was almost as soon as they’d done it, and was presented in the form of ‘how do you know which of us is which? We could have swapped our shoes’ leaving some confusion even to the viewer as to which Doctor was the ‘real’ version and which was his Ganger duplicate? I certainly remember some speculation at the time that the real Doctor is the one who got left behind here (even though we see the Ganger version dissolve), meaning that the Ganger went off to face the death at Lake Silencio… Once again, it just proved a little distracting to me, and I’m hoping I can kick this habit before long and just get back to enjoying the episodes ‘as new’ again - it’s only something that’s started happening in the last week or two.

Still, in spite of that, knowing the ending to this episode doesn’t do anything to weaken its impact. Back in the TARDIS, safe and sound… and then it turns out that Amy is a Ganger, too! Not only that, but she’s been a Ganger for the majority of this season (the Doctor suggests that she was taken just before ‘America’, but it was terribly clear, watching that two-parter back, that she was taken during the three months between episodes). As cliff-hangers go, it’s not bad, is it? I’m not entirely sure it all feels right yet (I’m sure I’ll touch on this more tomorrow, once this line of plot has been resolved), but it certainly made for an interesting and unexpected development!

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

Day 813: The Rebel Flesh

Dear diary,

The other day, I was banging on about the Eleventh Doctor, as I think of him, as finding ‘glee in the threat of the adventure. [Getting] things wrong. He quips. He twirls, and dances, and is generally quite frenetic.’ When I think back on the Eleventh Doctor’s tenure, that’s specifically the image of him I have in mind. From time to time, I find myself moving in ways that tele entirely ‘Eleventh Doctor’, without even really thinking about it. It’s always interesting, then, when we get to see a different side to the man. There’s plenty of the twirling and dancing in this episode, but we really get to see just how much of an act it all is. When the Doctor slips off on his own to investigate the Flesh and to gather the information that he’s after, he’s almost completely different. He’s cool, and collected. He’s on a mission, and he’s simply focussed on getting it done. At times, there’s something almost scary about the Eleventh Doctor we see creeping to the surface here, and it’s all because that facade we’ve been so used to has started to chip away. I’d forgotten that he came to this spot specifically to investigate the Flesh, but it adds another interesting dimension to the proceedings.

First time around, this story made very little impact on me. I can recall both episodes ending, and then wandering off afterwards and more-or-less completely forgetting everything about them (well, mostly. A few months later I attended a wedding held in the main castle location for this story - several of the rooms were used for the reception - and found myself telling anyone who’d listen that the Bride was probably a flesh duplicate. It didn’t go down all that well, if I’m honest.

Actually, though, there’s quite a lot to like about this one. Very quickly, you get a sense of the world this story is set in, and I’m buying into the characters very quickly. Matthew Graham isn’t always considered the strongest Doctor Who writer ever, but he’s done a very good job here of setting up the world and the characters largely via the dialogue and leaving me with a sense that it’s all fully formed.

The real beauty of the situation is that you can see both sides of the argument. I can appreciate why it’s so troubling to the humans to have their Ganger duplicates suddenly up and running around (and trying to kill them), but at the same time I can see how the Gangers are technically just as ‘real’ as the humans that spawned them, and why they have to fight for their lives. It also ties in quite nicely to another aspect of the Eleventh Doctor - he’s the negotiator. A bringer of peace. He set up negotiations between humanity and the Silurians last season, and he’s trying to find inroads to doing a similar thing between humans and Gangers here, too. I’m not sure entirely why, but it suits this Doctor to be the man who’s trying to unite different species… 

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

Day 812: The Doctor’s Wife

Dear diary,

A few years ago, in a Doctor Who Magazine poll, the Fifth Doctor’s swan-song *The Caves of Androzani was voted to be the best Doctor Who story ever made. In that same poll, The Twin Dilemma - the very next story to be broadcast, only a week after Androzani, was voted to be the very worst Doctor Who story ever made. It always fascinated me that Doctor Who was so flexible that stories right next to each other could be considered so far apart in terms of quality. Of course, The Twin Dilemma is far from being the worst Doctor Who story ever, but that’s an argument for another day.

We’re in a similar situation here. Whereas yesterday’s episode, The Curse of the Black Spot is often considered rubbish and rated rather low, The Doctor’s Wife always seems to come out near the top of polls, and often crops up in discussions regarding the best ever episodes. In the most recent poll, this story was placed number 37 - with only three Eleventh Doctor stories above it, which makes it almost the polar opposite to yesterday’s episode. And yet, I’ve never been able to get a handle on why this one is so loved.

It’s one of those occasions where I watch an episode, find that I’ve not particularly enjoyed it, then go online to find that everyone else loves it. Happens from time to time, most recently with Flatline last year, which didn’t grab me in the slightest, and received a rather luke-warm preview from me on this very site. I can’t say it particularly bothered me at the time. As I’ve said recently, at this point, my interest in all things ‘current’ Who was running at an all-time low, and the fact that I’d not enjoyed it was hardly the end of the world. There was plenty else to keep me entertained, after all! In the years that have followed, I’ve not given it a great deal of thought - it’s simply an episode that exists somewhere in the greater Doctor Who world.

But all the same, I sat down today looking quite forward to the story. After all, the first three episodes of Series Six have proved quite strong for me, and that’s always a nice sign. It opens nice enough, with the Doctor getting a message from another Time Lord, and being all excited because there’s another living Time Lord out there somewhere (‘one of the good ones,’ he says, presumably because the Master has been locked away in the final day of the War), which is a lovely contrast to his reaction to similar news in Utopia, where he simply knows who it’s going to be… On the whole, it’s very exciting! I remember the speculation, too, when it had been announced that something would be making a return that hadn’t appeared in the show for a very long time (the ‘mind cube’), and the hints of another Time Lord in a pocket universe… oh, the theories about Romana!. Everything about this hook is simply marvellous.

And then it just gets about as boring as can be. Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve really tried, but I simply cannot see what everyone loves about The Doctor’s Wife. There’s lots of great concepts in here - the TARDIS made ‘human’, the archived console room, the building of a TARDIS from the remains of a hundred others, using the temporal and spacial physics of the TARDIS as a deadly mind game - but none of them really feel like they’ve got the room to be explored properly. I think that’s the problem I’ve got with this one - so many great ideas end up being thrown away just too quickly.

The Doctor hears the other Time Lord voices: there’s lots of Time Lords close by… and oh, no, they’re just more cubes. Righto. That only lasted a few minutes. Amy and Rory are trapped like rats in a maze… but no, there we go, that’s over with, too fairly quickly (and, it has to be said, Rory ‘dying’ is starting to get old now. I remember all the jokes about it at the time, but I don’t think it really bothered me all that much on first watch). The Doctor’s got to build a new TARDIS… and he’s done it. Easy. I think this story, more than any other for me, really warrants being extended. I’m not sure it would stretch to two full episodes, but it simply needs a little bit more room to breathe.

I’m not going to carry on, because I know people won’t be keen on my reaction to this one, and I’ll just continue being a bit grumpy about it. Believe me when I say that I really want to like this one, but it’s simply not working for me.

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

Day 811: The Curse of the Black Spot

Dear diary,

Oh, Curse of the Black Spot. What did you ever do to rankle fandom, so? In that Doctor Who Magazine poll last summer, you were ranked number 227 out of 241 (with only two other Eleventh Doctor tales below you), and when you were first shown on TV, I remember everyone complaining about the massive dip in quality between the opening two-parter and this story.

But you know what, I love you, Curse of the Black Spot. Well, no, perhaps not. ‘Love’ is a very strong word, and it implies certain attachments and commitments that I’m not sure I’m willing to make. But, still, I certainly like you a lot. As much as many other episodes of Doctor Who. You’re certainly stronger than some of the tales I’ve sat through on this marathon, and actually I’ve rather enjoyed you tonight!

What’s not to love! It’s Doctor Who meets the Pirates, and it seems somehow perfectly fitting that the Eleventh Doctor should be the one to engage in such an adventure, as his child-like glee is simply right for turning up on a pirate ship. Actually, it’s the Doctor who really makes this episode for me - I don’t think I’ve ever been more enamoured with Matt Smith’s incarnation than I have been here today. Everything seems to come together to create the perfect example of what i think of as being the Eleventh Doctor: he finds glee in the threat of the adventure. He gets things wrong. He quips. He twirls, and dances, and is generally quite frenetic. It all simply works.

The thing I really enjoy is the fact that he gets things wrong. Three times in this episode, a theory that he’s put forward is shattered, and he’s forced to tell people to ignore everything he’s suggested so far. It helps to enhance the threat of what could otherwise be a rather mundane story, and it means that when you stumble into a new situation (such as arriving on the moored alien spaceship), it genuinely takes you by surprise.

I’m also rather keen on the look of this episode. It’s become almost traditional for me in the last month or so to comment that all historical stories have been ruined for me by how good The Shakespeare Code looked, but this one manages to buck the trend, because it looks just as good as that one did! Has there ever been a Doctor Who story with more night shooting on location (off the top of my head, only perhaps the Empty Child two-parter could tie for it)? The ship looks great, and even though I know they shot it right at the side of the docks, i never for a moment was less than convinced we could be out in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

The only big downside, for me, is the disappearance of one of the pirate crew. He threatens to leave, so the captain’s son cuts him to ensure that he’s just as helpless as the rest of them. Great. Fine. Got all that. But then… he’s gone! Hah! Vanished, and never even mentioned again. I presume that the Siren came and took him at some point, but you’d think that the others might have mentioned that at some point. To be fair, on first broadcast I didn’t notice a thing. Couldn’t have told you that anyone vanished between scenes, and it wasn’t until someone pointed it out online afterwards that I was even vaguely aware. Now I know, though, it sticks out like a sore thumb, and it’s a very big letdown in an episode I’ve otherwise really enjoyed.

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

Day 810: Day of the Moon

Dear diary,

Steven Moffat is very good at opening hooks, isn’t he? We had some absolute stellar ones to round out the season finale at the end of Series Five, and we’re getting them at a great quality here, too. In yesterday’s episode, the Doctor’s friends are gathered together to watch him get killed! In today’s one, we pick up three months on from the last cliffhanger to find someone we thought was an ally chasing down and eliminating our regulars… only to have them wake up in a cell with the Doctor and we discover that it was all a ruse! Say what you want about the man, but you can’t deny that he’s good at grabbing you for a story…

This is perhaps also my favourite example of something Steven Moffat is very keen on - starting the second episode of a two-parter somewhere other than where you left off the previous week. Giving the impression that while we’ve been away for seven days getting on with our lives, the Doctor and his friends have been getting on with the adventure, too. It’s great because it means we can pick up today with the characters far more informed than they were, and we’re given all the information without it feeling too much like a great big info dump.

It serves as a good way of introducing the Silence to us, as well. You get a fairly decent idea of the way they operate during The Impossible Astronaut, but everything being confirmed here during scenes set in the TARDIS is rather well done. And actually, they are quite scary, as Doctor Who monsters go, aren’t they? Last year, I did some graphic design on postcards for the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, and part of the project involved dressing an actor up in full Silent costume so we could hold a photoshoot. Once he had the mask on over his head, and was standing there a good seven feet tall in front of you, it’s not hard to find them somewhat unnerving! The same is true of this episode: when Amy’s trapped in the orphanage, and looks up to find the ceiling filled with the creatures… I think I even felt a twinge of fear. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been scared by Doctor Who, but this particular moment, drawing on my own memories of what the costumes are like up close and coupled with the helpless situation that Amy’s found herself trapped in… yeah, it’s probably the closest the programme has come to actively scaring me… and I knew what was coming, too!

The big downside to this story, though, is that it sets up the major points of the Matt Smith era arc - and specifically the elements that are going to keep on recurring through Series Six, and there’s elements here which simply don’t square with the information I can recall from later on. Specifically, it’s said that the Silence here have been on Earth for millennia, and have been nudging the human race in the required direction all this time. Specifically, the Doctor points out that they needed a spacesuit, so they made man go to the moon^*. But then later on we discover that the Silents who’re working with Madame Kovarian (which presumably these ones are, since they’re all tied in with the little girl in the spacesuit and kidnapping Amy) have travelled back in time to carry out the mission (the little girl has been brought to Earth from Demon’s Run, for example, because they want her to grow up in the ‘right’ environment)… so they’re not the ones who’ve been here since the dawn of time… Oh, it’s giving me a headache!

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that there’s bits of this arc which already are sitting ill with me, and I worry that the more I try to make sense of it as I go along, the more the series is going to suffer as a result…

*Actually, no, sorry, I’m going to have to take issue with this while I’m thinking about it. I was always under the impression that the little girl was kept inside a modified Nasa spacesuit because it was the best thing to adapt as a life support suit on 1960s Earth, but why does it have to specifically be a spacesuit if the Silence can nudge humanity into simply creating any old thing to keep the girl safe? Am I missing something?

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

Day 809: The Impossible Astronaut

Dear diary,

This was the last episode of Doctor Who to air before I moved to live in the home of the TARDIS - Cardiff. Specifically, it aired the night before I made the track across the country. The next day, upon arriving in Wales and having - for the first time - no intention to return ‘home’ any time soon, I took the family out to a little diner in the Bay to celebrate and have some food… and then realised that it was the very same diner that had appeared as part of the Doctor’s adventures the night before. That’s the kind of welcome you want when coming to Wales - a bold statement that says ‘you’re in Doctor country, now…’

Before we set out on Series Six, I have to make a confession. This series has long been my real nadir of Doctor Who. For whatever reason, I simply failed to ‘click’ with the programme, to the point that I didn’t see some of these episodes until a little while after they’d debuted on TV. For whatever reason, Series Six simply didn’t connect to me in the same way that the previous five (and a whole slew of the ‘classic’ run) had. That’s not to say that I’d gone off Doctor Who in general - I still dutifully bought and enjoyed the DVD range each month, and spent every spare moment engaged in some TARDIS-based discussion (I even wrote a book with a friend, Nick Mellish, in which we made our way though all the Eighth Doctor’s fantastic adventures. And The Creed of the Kromon) - but certainly 2011-vintage Doctor Who simply wasn’t my cup of tea at all.

That’s fine, in many ways. Part of the beauty of Doctor Who is that it’s always evolving. It completely reinvents itself every few years into something that’s superficially the same programme, but for all intents and purposes might as well be something completely different. Only yesterday I was saying how A Christmas Carol felt a million miles away from The End of Time, and I love that about the show, Crucially, I tried to avoid publicly ‘rubbishing’ the series at this point, because while it wasn’t to my tastes, I knew it appealed very much to people who perhaps hadn’t been enjoying the show for the last few years while I had. The downside to all this, though, was that it coloured my opinion of the Matt Smith years as a whole. Series Six is his middle season, and it’s the one which resonates strongest with his overall arc. Bits of Series Five and Series Seven tie into it, yeah, but the majority of the stuff you need it in here. Because this wasn’t my cup of tea, it put me right off large swathes of the arc. But that’s been the charm of The 50 Year Diary! I can watch these things again and see how my opinions have changed, and in the best of times, they’ve changed for the better. Here’s hoping the same is true of this next couple of weeks…

Certainly, we’re not off to a bad start here. As season openers go, we’re a million miles away from something like New Earth, which feels almost provincial next to this one. Fifteen minutes in, the Doctor has been shot (and we’re repeatedly told that he’s dead, no coming back from this one), and then a younger version of the Doctor arrives on the scene, and the TARDIS has been parked on the rug in the Oval Office. I don’t think any other season opener in modern Doctor Who has hit the ground running in quite the way this one does. We’ve thirteen weeks to tell a story; let’s get on with it!

It’s also the first tine that we’ve had any real filming in America for the programme, and they really make the most of those locales to give us some stunning vistas here. As with Planet of the Dead a few years prior, they’re really making sure that they’re screaming at you about the fact that they’ve actually travelled all that way to tell the story. It’s impressive, and it looks gorgeous on screen. Even when we’re back in Cardiff, they still don’t let up - I’ve been enjoying comparing Doctor Who’s Oval Office set with the one from The West Wing. 

Something else I’m impressed with is the inclusion of Canton as a kind of ‘fourth companion’ for the story, having already established how important he was by inviting him alongside the ‘proper’ companions to witness the Doctor’s death. It’s an interesting approach (as is pushing our resident historical celebrity - Nixon - into the background to largely be set dressing), and one I really enjoy - there’s something quite fun about watching his reactions to things, and pairing him off with Rory for many of the big revelations certainly provides some needed levity to the story.

I’ll not go into any detail about the Silence or the story arc at this point - I’ll reserve judgement on all of that until tomorrow - but for now… it’s a decent start to the series, and that gives me hope for the future…

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

Day 808: A Christmas Carol

Dear diary,

I remember thinking it at the time, and it’s turned out to be true of this viewing, too: it’s hard to believe that this episode came a year after The End of Time. The style of the show has evolved so massively in that time, and I think a blind ‘taste-test’ of the two episodes to an unknowing audience would have them guess that they were much farther apart in broadcast than just a year. For starters, the entire look of the series by this point is far more filmic, and while there were several elements in The End of Time that I had to single out as simply not quite working for me (out of keeping with the majority of the Russell T Davies era, it has to be said), this one fares much better in that regard.

I spent a fair bit of time during The Big Bang calling it some of the best use Steven Moffat ever made of the whole ‘time travel’ element to Doctor Who, but I might be revising that statement already, because he takes a similar concept and does something really rather elegant with it here. I think I’m right in saying that the basic idea at the heart of this episode (the Doctor alters someone’s past to make them a nicer person) was used in an earlier Moffat short story, but it’s very nicely suited to the format of A Christmas Carol. 

There’s something really great about the way that the video of the young Kazran starts to play, and then the Doctor pops up in it! New memories forming as the Doctor changes the time stream. It’s such a simple way of really showing the process of changing history, but really effective. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that they’ve got an actor of the calibre of Sir Michael ‘Dumbledore’ Gambon to come and play the part of the older Kazran, which really means he sells the idea that his history is being rewritten in front of our eyes. When he turns to see the painting has changed, and digs out a box of photographs that didn’t exist until the second he needed them… oh, it’s all really rather lovely, and a lot better than I think I gave it credit for at the time.

Something else I’d not given credit to in this episode before now is the way that the visuals really help to inform the story, and add extra depth to it that might be missed on a simple post-Christmas dinner viewing (and certainly were, by me). Chief among them is the use of bow ties (the icon of choice for the Eleventh Doctor) to symbolise the way characters feel about the Doctor - appearing when they’re enamoured with him, and then being undone and taken away when he’s fallen from favour. It’s something simple - tiny - but my university professors would have spun entire essays on that subject alone.

One thing I do have to gripe about (well, I mean, I don’t have to gripe about it, but the more I dwell on the issue, the more it’s bothering me…): Abigail’s family. We see them at the start of the story (let’s say in ‘2010’, simply for the sake of ease), appealing to Kazran (who is 70-ish at this point - again, for sake of ease, I’m going off Michael Gambon’s age). Later, during the Doctor’s adventures with Abigail and the young Kazran (around, what, 18? 20?), she requests to go and see her family on ‘this’ Christmas Eve. It’s definitely contemporary to the young Kazran’s time, because Abigail’s sister makes reference to him being the son of the chap building the cloud machine… but the family is all exactly the same age that they were a good half century later! Am I missing something? It simply feels like a really big oversight in an otherwise very tightly plotted story, and the more I think about it the more it’s irritating me!

Still, that’s just me being picky, really, and this is certainly the most I’ve enjoyed a Christmas special in a while, now…

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

Day 807: The Death of the Doctor

Dear diary,

Has there ever been more of a love letter to 'classic' Doctor Who in the 21st century programme than The Death of the Doctor. I mean, for starters, it's part of an entire spin off created around 1970s companion Sarah Jane Smith, features the inclusion of the current Doctor, and the return of Jo Grant, and it's filled with references and clips to pretty much every story from Terror of the Autons to The Hand of Fear. As if that wasn’t enough, the final scene gives us a wonderful glimpse into the lives of some other former companions, going right back to Ian and Barbara and thievery beginning. There’s something a little bit magical about that.

The real highlight of this story for me has to be the interaction between Sarah Jane and Jo Grant (now Jones). Oh, they’re a riot from their very first greeting to the moment Jo leaves Bannerman Road. They simply work together, and the vast majority of my notes for these episodes pertain to little moments the two of them share. Both so utterly in character, and both wonderful together. It’s such a shame we didn’t get the chance to see them share the screen again.

I’m not entirely sure, though, that Matt’s Doctor really fits here. Oh, he certainly suits the environment of a show aimed more firmly to children, and his twirly, kinetic Doctor really fits nicely in that respect, but he simply feels a little bit out of place. During the third series, when David Tennant put in an appearance, it simply felt right that the Doctor should rock up and park the TARDIS in Sarah Jane’s attic. This was the Doctor who’d met Sarah Jane during School Reunion, and inspired her to carry on the good fight after all these years. He’d cropped up again when the Earth got moved, and on that occasion he got the chance to interact with Luke, too. In all, Tennant felt like a part of this world very nicely.

Smith, on the other hand, feels out of place. We’ve never seen him interacting with these characters before, so whereas Sarah Jane can be re-introduced to the Doctor’s world by dropping her into one of the Doctor’s adventures, it simply doesn’t quite gel for the Doctor to be reintroduced to her world by dropping in on hers. Smith himself doesn’t seem all that comfortable with the appearance, either, and there are some moments - most noticeably when the other characters piece together who he is - where he simply doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing with his performance, and is left looking a little bit lost.

It also doesn’t help that in many ways, The Sarah Jane Adventures feels like a hangover from a bygone era. It made sense to see into Sarah’s adventures when she was popping up in Doctor Who from time to time, and when this show was running alongside the parent series and Torchwood, it felt like there was one big, shared universe all working together rather nicely. Now, though, with the next series of Torchwood sent off to America and being largely unrecognisable from what had come before, and with only a handful more Sarah Jane Adventures to come because of Lis Sladen’s untimely death, this series no longer feels right within the world of Doctor Who.

This is the last excursion into the world of spin-offery that I’ll be taking as a part of The 50 Year Diary, so it’s somewhat fitting that it’s something which celebrates lots of things I loved so long ago, and a bit of a shame that it also feels a little off-key.