Doctor Who 'Revolution Of The Daleks' TV Review

Chris Chibnall's tenure as Doctor Who showrunner has been a mixed bag at best, reaching its nadir when last season's finale saw fit to saddle the series' history and main character with entirely detrimental 'Chosen One' clichés. Mercifully, Chibnall's last new year's special was one of his better efforts and this year's, 'Revolution Of The Daleks', looked set to be a standalone free from the canon-defiling nonsense which tanked last season. The return of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, absent for all but a short cameo since Russell T. Davies was at the helm, heightened expectations further.

On the plus side, 'Revolution Of The Daleks' was indeed largely standalone, despite featuring a large number of oddly specific callbacks: did anyone remember the second TARDIS stuck on Earth in the shape of a house? On the downside, while the canon revisionism from 'The Timeless Children' was for the most part eschewed, all Chibnall's worst writing habits were present in their most frustrating form.

Television - Doctor Who 'The Angels Take Manhattan' review

'The Eleventh Hour' represents the pinnacle of Steven Moffat's work on Doctor Who to date, in my opinion. There was so much potential to Amy and her relationship with the raggedy man who grew up with her as she grew up dreaming of him, both trying to make sense of each other and find their place in the world. Looking back, the real sadness of Amy Pond is how she lived a life full of incident, but relatively little substance. Moffat has made her the Doctor's mother-in-law, the centre of a plot to tear apart the universe and more besides, yet despite her charmingly multifaceted introduction, she has been almost entirely defined as a character by Karen Gillan' performances.

What is there to say about her as a person? She's Scottish, she loves her husband, is vivacious, occasionally impulse and... ginger? For the many flaws in Russell T. Davies' writing, his lead characters always had purpose and enough depth to justify their place at the Doctor's side. Amy still feels like a sketch, filled in by Gillan's charisma.

 

Television - Doctor Who 'The Power Of Three' review

'The Power Of Three' was shaping up to be my favourite of Doctor Who's truncated fifth season before being stopped in its tracks by a rushed, meaningless ending which wasted all the good ideas so carefully built up by the preceding forty minutes. After deranged Daleks, Dinosaurs on a spaceship and a cyborg assassin in the old West, 'Power' reigned in the spectacle for a wonderfully creepy, low-key vibe, playing on our vulnerability to things we have become used to. The premise was superb, and the simplicity of the inactive black cubes supremely unsettling.

The episode also made brilliant use of the Doctor, who seemed a bit out of sorts last week. Matt Smith may not be good at being intimidating, but is an expert at vulnerability. His chat with Amy about why she and Rory mean so much to him was a sweet moment and perfect homage to the Ponds' contribution to the series, set to end next week in spectacular fashion.

  

Television - Doctor Who 'A Town Called Mercy' review

The problem with emulating Westerns is that the genre has such a distinct visual style and rhythm, extending deeper than stetsons and shoot-outs, that accommodating such peculiarities into the established aesthetic of a television programme or movie (I'm thinking Back To The Future Part III here) comes off as hollow. It won't have made a blind bit of difference for any of the children watching, but for any Western fans watching, 'A Town Called Mercy' shot well wide of its mark.

Another problem to which 'Mercy' fell victim is the temptation to deploy all the Western clichés without giving them a fresh spin or purpose. The Doctor enters a bar which immediately falls silent; a man is protected in the local gaol; a go-for-your-guns standoff occurs between hero and black hat. All de rigeur for the genre, and imitations of it even moreso, but none were given the required twist to make them any more fresh than the countless times they've graced our screens before.

  

Television - Doctor Who 'Dinosaurs On A Spaceship' review

'Dinosaurs On A Spaceship' sounded like the sort of episode which would have one good joke and nothing else, much as how Snakes On A Plane dragged once it actually had to take itself seriously enough to build some kind of story. 'Dinosaurs' didn't bother much with plot, but overflowed with bonkers ideas, escalating into a madcap forward momentum which was far too much fun to give any serious thought to. Every scene seemed built to make viewers think: 'Where else but Doctor Who could I see this?'

The new format, encompassing a shortened season with seemingly higher budgets for each episode, is paying dividends if this and 'Asylum Of The Daleks' are anything to go by: minimising season-long story arcs in favour of  'a Hollywood blockbuster each week' has given this year's Who the most outright entertaining start to a season the series has ever had.

   

Television - Doctor Who 'Asylum Of The Daleks' review

UPDATE: Now with an extra serving of Jenna Louise Coleman after the jump!

The sixth season of new Who steadily fell apart under the weight of showrunner Steven Moffat's convoluted plotting. For its seventh year, the season is being divided - five episodes in 2012, a Christmas special, then the last eight in 2013 - and the promise is for a greater number of spectacular stand-alones. Judging by 'Asylum Of The Daleks', the strategy already seems to be paying dividends: Moffat's work during Russell T. Davies' tenure, and his ongoing success with Sherlock, shows his expert ability at handling complicated short-term narratives, where over full seasons he tends to tie himself up in the myriad loose plot strands.

'Asylum', though, was a return to the effortlessly confident Moffat of old, deftly spinning an engaging yarn with plenty of ideas to hold the attention, but never losing track of them. Two climactic twists showed a writer having as much fun offering tantalising hints for the future - and they don't get much more tantalising than Jenna Louise Coleman - as rewriting the past of television's longest running science-fiction series.

  

Blueprints For Brilliance: The Doctor Who movie

['Blueprints For Brilliance' is a non-regular feature focusing on how best to adapt challenging or interesting properties to a certain medium. It's a bit like Flixist's How To Do It, but with added alliteration.]

It was announced this week that Harry Potter director David Yates is lining up a movie version of Doctor Who, the longest running science fiction programme in television history which found a new lease of life since being revived in 2005 by Russell T. Davies, and subsequently taken over by Steven Moffat. Unsurprisingly, the news has not gone down particularly well with fans.

The major point of contention is that the movie's story is set to exist outside the canon of the television programme, in a similar fashion to the Peter Cushing movies from the '60s (Doctor Who And The Daleks; Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 AD), which adapted serials from the series with new actors - Cushing taking over from the canonical First Doctor, William Hartnell - and vastly improved production values. Yates hasn't done himself any favours by saying he would also consider American writers, despite the series being renowned and beloved for its British sensibilities.

Is there any way for Who to take the journey to the big screen without being a complete debacle?

 

In Another Reality: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Wedding Of River Song'

In last week's review, I mentioned my hope that this episode would make sense of an increasingly convoluted plot arc and bring everything together in a manner justifying Steven Moffat's assertions that he has known what he has been doing all along. Unfortunately, the opposite proved to be true: 'The Wedding Of River Song' was an aimless and misjudged ending to a season unique in new Who for having standalone episodes provide all the most satisfying moments. Many will argue that there is still a chance that Moffat will explain away the countless plot holes in later episodes, as he did with the superb twist involving the Doctor's on again/off again jacket in 'Flesh And Stone', yet even on the off chance he does so - and given how much 'Wedding' seemed to gloss over, I'm doubtful - it won't rectify what was a deeply unsatisfying season finale to sit through at the first time of watching.

Of course, this is Doctor Who, so there's an extent to which glossing over inconsistencies is par for course. It's a programme first and foremost about being on a bonkers adventure through time and space with an eccentric professor man-child for company. That's why, when we're told early on that all of history is happening at once, the images are sufficiently entertaining that logistics are not really an issue. Unfortunately, 'The Wedding Of River Song' failed for much the same reason as many of Russell T. Davies' Who finales: enjoyable imagery is in the end just window dressing, which doesn't count for much if the foundations of the house around that window are on the verge of collapse. The pictures may have been big, but the story behind this episode and the season arc turned out to be small, meaningless and incoherent.

 

So Old: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'Closing Time'

Last season's 'The Lodger' was one of New Who's more successful stand-alones, a charming little knockabout comedy which found an unexpectedly sympathetic guest star in Gavin & Stacey's James Corden, playing landlord Craig Owens. Sidelining the usual companions for an hour, 'Lodger' stumbled upon a winning formula by forcing The Doctor to live briefly under (relatively) everyday rules, rather than being able to impose his extraordinary powers over normality.

'Closing Time', written once again by Gareth Roberts, attempted to pull the same trick over again, but struggled to achieve any of its goals, whether as a sequel to 'Lodger', a double-header between Craig and The Doctor, a story in its own right, or the final step before next week's season finale.

 

You're Fired: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The God Complex'

Faith is a big and deep thing, beyond love or belief. It is an absolute, unshakeable conviction that whatever it is you have faith in will always be there, ready to do the right thing. From a different perspective, it is also imprisonment. Faith can become overwhelming, trapping the adherent into an endless cycle of dependence. For all the strength it can give in moments of doubt or need, it can also reduce a person to nothing but an instrument. Whether it is a God or science or something else entirely, the concept of faith has been one of the driving forces of human history, often for good, sometimes for bad.

'The God Complex' had a few neat metaphors for portraying that duality on-screen, but didn't have sufficient faith in its own idea to follow it through as well as it needed to. It felt overfamiliar, with this being the third episode in a row where the Doctor and friends had to run away down corridors from a threat which could defeat with little more than a touch (okay, so the design of the corridors has been mixed and the minotaur dragged people away before killing them, but the similarities were still far too strong), only this time with a rather pedestrian monster and uninspired interpretations of fear.

 

It's Your Wife: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Girl Who Waited'

This review may be arriving a day late, but seems appropriate for an episode whose drama revolved around tardiness. The Doctor and co. arrive at what is supposed to be the second greatest holiday destination in the universe, only to find... a door. The Doctor and Rory open it using a green button and amble through, discovering a looking glass on the other side. Amy, having lost her phone, arrives late and presses a red button, finding herself in a whole other room. Unfortunately, the planet is under quarantine and the room where Amy has found herself is where the infected go to die, stuck in an accelerated time stream so that friends and family in The Doctor's room can watch through the looking glass as their loved ones live out the rest of their lives in what seems to them only twenty-four hours.

The Doctor resolves to save Amy, but - as is not entirely uncommon - gets his timing a little wrong and winds up meeting a version of her who is forty years older. And a samurai. 'The Girl Who Waited' took the recurring Moffat theme (even though the episode was actually written by Tom MacRae) of characters having to wait out long stretches of their lives between the visits from The Doctor and crafted from it an affecting, if far from flawless, tragedy.

  

Monsters Are Real: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'Night Terrors'

The greatest episodes of Steven Moffat's tenure as Who showrunner have been those which sought to capture the essence of the series' appeal in its purest form. 'The Eleventh Hour', in which Matt Smith made his sensational debut as The Doctor's latest incarnation, played on the fairytale nature of a man arriving to whisk a little girl away from her difficult life to a world of wonder and excitement. 'A Christmas Carol' was about the relationship between storytelling and growing up, and the importance of traditions and myths in exciting the imaginations and curiosity of the young - something Who fans understand all too well. Neil Gaiman's 'The Doctor's Wife' focused on how the people and places inhabiting those stories can become lifelong friends, and what you would say if, just for a moment, you had the chance to communicate with those friends. ('I just wanted to say... hello.')

'Night Terrors' is the latest entry in that estimable canon, working around a concept which is pure Who at heart - what if your childhood monsters under the bed, or in your cupboard, were real? - and subtly using it to tell a story about the terrors of loneliness and the need for companionship on the long walk through life. It was also a story about a man with a magic pointy-glowy-screwdrivery thing turning up to defeat a gang of evil wooden dolls in a big scary house. At its best, Who is both terrifying and reassuring, an acknowledgment that while there are many scary things waiting beyond the safety of a warm bed on a dark night, having the bravery to face them - and someone to face them with, real or imaginary - is part of the excitement of growing up.

 

Just Haven't Found You Yet: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

Doctor Who: 'Let's Kill Hitler'

The second half of the new Who's sixth season kicked off to a suitably bombastic start, with showrunner Steven Moffat having the time of his life throwing ideas at the screen and hoping his boundless enthusiasm would translate to entertainment value on-screen. It did, as 'Let's Kill Hitler' was a pacy and often very enjoyable ride, free of the overcomplicated foreshadowing which bogged down his Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon two-parter. 

As much fun as it was, though, it never threatened to break into the pantheon of Who greats for much the same reason: lack of focus. The spectacular title, for one, turned out to be a red herring, quickly disposed of in order to tell the story Moffat was really interested in: discovering what had happened to Melody Pond following the the cliffhanger which ended the mid-season finale back in June. On both counts, 'Hitler' didn't make the most of the potentially thrilling scenarios it set up, but as an assembly of delightfully silly Doctor Who-related sketches, it got the season going again with no shortage of pace. Spoilers follow the jump, sweeties.

 

You Don't Know What's Coming: Doctor Who mid-season finale review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'A Good Man Goes To War'

The last episode before Doctor Who breaks for the summer will only air next week in the US, so as with last week, I'll give a spoiler-free summary of my thoughts above the jump, then go into more detail below.

Needless to say, 'A Good Man Goes To War' was a hell of a lot of fun. Not without its nitpicks for sure, but it seems churlish to complain when there was so much to enjoy. It's important to remember that this is a mid-season finale, so don't expect answers to all your questions. In fact, the ones that do get answered don't amount to a great deal in terms of where the season arc is going, but do clear up some of the more pressing background issues. We finally learn the identity of River Song and get a better idea of why the eyepatch lady (who is named) and her goons went after Amy's baby. The much-mooted cliffhanger didn't turn out to be much - the big reason to look forward to the first episode of the autumn half-season is its name, which is brilliant beyond words - but there was more than enough material to keep fans' tongues wagging over summer. It also featured the series' first funny gay joke, a bit of a landmark in itself.

Yowser: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Almost People'

For the sake of any American readers, who will have to wait another week to see the conclusion of the story set up in The Rebel Flesh, I'll give a spoiler-free outline of my thoughts above the jump, then delve into the intricacies in the body of the post afterwards.

'The Almost People' did much of what its predecessor did but with a greater sense of urgency, even if the story lost track of itself in its second half and resorted to a lot of unsatisfactory shortcuts. While the Doctor Double's actions were mostly what you'd expect from a doppelganger character in this type of episode, the result being one of many twists which anyone with a passing knowledge of television writing will have probably seen coming a week ago, he was more interestingly used to raise themes of identity and how well we can ever really know someone, which paid off in an ending that was as powerful as it was surprising. Much like the season openers, 'Impossible Astronaut' and 'Day of the Moon', this episode did sometimes feel like the main plot was relegated to window dressing for the work lining up the mid-season finale, but still managed to tell a complete story which may turn out to be deceptively important. UK readers, follow the jump for discussion of where we go from here.

  

Welcome To My World: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Rebel Flesh' 

Doctor Who two-parters often struggle to justify their story's extended length, perhaps because the stakes are rarely much higher than in standalone episodes. It's difficult to get excited about seeing the world or a group of people put under threat in a cliffhanger when it can feel like the same thing has been happening since 1963.

The second of last season's two-parters tried to circumvent this problem by shifting the stakes from being about a grand threat to the moral and philosophical implications of failure, adding a splash of ambiguity to the usually black-and-white good guys/monsters division. 'The Rebel Flesh' shared a lot in common with the Silurian serial by Chris Chibnall, both positive and negative, and ended on a cliffhanger that was one of the series' more successful in its modern regeneration. In contrast to Neil Gaiman's 'The Doctor's Wife' last week, which took a lot of things we are familiar with and shone a new light on them, 'The Rebel Flesh' tried to go somewhere a little different but fell back too often on the series' more overused clichés.

A Boy And His Box: Doctor Who review

 

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Doctor's Wife'

After a mixed start to the new season, Neil Gaiman comes along and produces what might have been the best standalone episode of Who to date, classic series included. The chronic lack of ambition in last week's episode now looks more underwhelming than ever. For sure, 'The Doctor's Wife' was pure fanwank, but it was also heartfelt and moving, as such scenarios can be when tackled by writers who know and love the characters so deeply.

Showrunner Steven Moffat managed it with his Children In Need short Time Crash, which brought back Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor for some ontological repartee with Tennant's Tenth, and Gaiman took that same warmth and affection and blew it up to full episode length, featuring the voices and body parts of deceased Time Lords, a return to the old console room, a scrapyard planet that was surely a nod to the series' humble beginnings, and a living, breathing, gobby female TARDIS who liked it when the Doctor called her sexy - a thought which made Moffat unleash a fabulously pervy laugh on the Confidential which followed.

 

Grating Cheese: Doctor Who review

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Curse of the Black Spot'

A filler episode stands and falls on the strength of its concept and the enthusiasm with which it embraces it.  There's little point trying to generate tension, as it's questionable that anyone who has watched television before would believe a main character's death would occur in a story so clearly set apart from the bigger picture unfolding in the background.

'The Curse of the Black Spot' proved both of those points. When it embraced its piratical trappings, there was plenty of fun to be had. When it tried to convince us that Rory really had copped it (again), it turned the the episode's climax into a drab wait for the inevitable splutter back to life. Where Steven Moffat's opening two-parter suffered from being overambitious in the long-term, Stephen Thompson's episode struggled when trying to convince a knowing audience that its story would have any lasting impact.

Always A Bit Left Over: Doctor Who review

  

TELEVISION REVIEW

DOCTOR WHO: 'The Impossible Astronaut'/'Day of the Moon'

Since this blog only came into existence on Tuesday night, the first half of the two-part opening to Steven Moffat's second season in charge of the Doctor Who juggernaut arrived a few days too early for review. Appropriately enough, this review will therefore travel back in time and take in both parts, with a little help from the BBC iPlayer (it's bigger on the inside).

After a touching dedication to the recently departed Elisabeth Sladen, our dear Sarah Jane, Moffat kicked off the new season with the Doctor doing what he does best. Hiding naked under regency ladies' dresses. Erm... I mean, larking about in time and inserting himself into history to get the attention of his newlywed (and housebound) companions. There was no particular reason for Amy and Rory to have suddenly settled into domesticity, especially since they had been travelling in the TARDIS as recently as five days before the new season started in two Children In Need mini-specials on March 18th, except to allow the groundwork to be laid for a mystery involving four TARDIS-blue envelopes. Moffat has always been a writer with an eye on the future, but while these two episodes were had their moments, it seemed that in all his time-bending trickery, the present had been left behind.