Reviewed by Damian Christie

Written by Mark Wright & Cavan Scott
Directed by Nick Briggs
Big Finish Productions, 2014
Reviewed by Damian Christie

“But it doesn’t happen that way ... The Daleks don’t get wiped out – not yet anyway! I was there when their schemes unravelled, when the people of Earth walked free ...”

The Doctor, Masters of Earth

Much like the previous release of The Widow’s Assassin – which carried a lot of baggage from the TV series about the eventual fate of Peri Brown – Masters of Earth is heavily influenced by a vintage Doctor Who serial that recently celebrated its 50th anniversary – The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

The 1964 serial marked a seminal moment in the series’ then short history – it not only resurrected a menace that had captured the imagination of a generation of young children only a year earlier but it was also the first time Doctor Who brought an alien threat close to home. The sight of the Daleks in the deserted streets of London and trundling around famous landmarks like Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament undoubtedly left a haunting mark on the collective memory – and would create a template for later production teams to bring more alien threats to modern day locations. Many people over the years when they fondly talk about The Dalek Invasion of Earth have unconsciously channelled Jon Pertwee’s later remark that it is far more frightening to confront a Yeti on the loo in Tooting Bec than on a far flung planet.

However, barring the many iconic moments that the serial evoked in the viewers of the time and long-term fans of the TV series, The Dalek Invasion of Earth isn’t an especially great story. In fact, by modern day standards, the serial suffers from sluggish storytelling and padding (it could have been told in four episodes, not six), extremely clunky production values (not least the Daleks themselves, their pet Slyther and some of the unconvincing miniatures!) and some cringe-worthy acting from the wooden Robomen. Yet, in spite of all these shortcomings, the serial has had an enduring legacy. In addition to inspiring the second colour Peter Cushing film in 1966, The Dalek Invasion of Earth over the years has been revisited in plenty of Doctor Who spin-off fiction, some average, some awful and some jaw-droppingly extraordinary, notably  Nick Briggs’ two-part Lucie Miller/To the Death in 2011 for Big Finish. But I’ll come back to that one later ...

Masters of Earth therefore can’t really stake any claim to being a wholly original spin-off/prequel to The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But then again, the production doesn’t strive to be original – it’s plainly an unashamed love letter not only to the original 1964 serial but indeed to a majority of the 1960s Dalek tales (even the title is inspired by the famous boast a Dalek made in the TV serial). Much effort is made within the production to emphasise that the Daleks of Masters are the same models featured in the original serial (both evident on the sleeve artwork and Peri’s own description of the metal meanies in dialogue when she notices the satellite dish arrays mounted to their backs). The extermination soundbite also mimics their 1960s guns, not the more familiar sound effect of the modern TV series. Throw in the Slyther (the 1960s equivalent of the Silurians’ Myrka!), Varga plants (from The Dalek Masterplan) and elite squads of Robomen, plus a cross-country scenario that channels Terry Nation’s later apocalyptic drama Survivors, and you have the perfect makings of a staple Dalek serial that Nation could easily have cooked up in five minutes (Nation was notorious for rehashing a lot of his scripts in the 1960s and ‘70s).

For the most part, Mark Wright and Cavan Scott’s script is a rather dull Dalek story told with some atmosphere, in a similar vein to the source material that inspired it. It’s an odd mesh of 1960s Doctor Who capped off with a 1980s flavour that is embodied by Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri Brown. The serial is for the most part sluggish and very much a run-around story until the episode three cliffhanger. Only in the final episode does the dramatic tension go up several Dalek rels – listeners are presented with an innovative, exciting variation on an old theme that takes cues not just from the original 1964 serial but from modern Who’s Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel two-parter and even James Cameron’s original Terminator film. The Daleks even perish in a fashion that is more 1980s Who than 1960s – the death toll would make ‘80s script editor Eric Saward proud!

The problem is this surprise plotline almost feels tacked on – like an afterthought (although there are hints about some characters and their motives throughout the broader serial, it is not evident on a first listening). It also leaves more questions than answers for the listener (to elaborate in this review would unfortunately mean lots of spoilers!). Wright and Scott have a brilliant idea but don’t afford themselves enough time to wrap up the serial satisfactorily and convincingly.

The production itself makes up for some of the script’s shortcomings; Big Finish as usual excels itself in the sound design department. Nick Briggs – the Dalek Prime himself – not only lends his voice talents to the creatures for the umpteenth time but also directs the story and composes the music while sound designer Martin Montague does an exceptional job with natural, everyday sounds (eg seaside birdsong, wind, motorcycle engines, other motors) and manufactured fantasy noise (eg the whirring of a Dalek as it travels through a corridor, the traditional “heartbeat” of Dalek machinery, the rustling of the Varga plants and the elephantine roars of the Slyther). As a result, there is plenty of atmosphere at various points of the story, especially when the Doctor, Peri and the supporting cast are treading through what turns out to be a Varga plantation and later on a trawler on the North Sea when they are attacked Kraken-style by the Slyther (plural).

The cast is also impressive, given most of the characters are underdeveloped and quite two-dimensional (although this is deliberate for some characters in the first three episodes). Given the story is set in Scotland, the supporting cast are, of course, Scottish. However, while there has been a strong effort on the parts of the writers and the performers not to resort to stereotypes, inevitably some of the characterisation and dialogue does border on type, eg Brian McCardie’s portrayal of Alan Weir. Tracy Wiles, on the other hand, brings attitude and spirit to the story as Moira Brody, a hero of the human resistance whose exploits will inspire other rebels to eventually overthrow the Daleks. The character with the most promise that is the most horribly underused is Kyle Inskip, played by Hugh Ross. Given how outstanding Ross has been as civil servant Sir Toby Kinsella in the Doctor Who audio spin-off series Counter-Measures, it’s almost criminal how small his role is in the narrative. If the writers had been more imaginative, Inskip could have provided a great foil for Colin Baker’s Doctor.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are, of course, on-song as the Doctor and Peri. In their one and only Dalek story on television (Revelation of the Daleks, 1985), they were bit players in the overall narrative. In Masters of Earth, while the Doctor and Peri cannot interfere in what is essentially a fixed point in time, they are very much part of the action and more often than not at the forefront of events. To again emphasise what an almost traditional 1960s-style tale this is, the duo in many ways fulfil the roles of the First Doctor and his companions in many purely historical tales of the same period – arriving at points in time that they know they cannot alter but inevitably getting caught up in those events, no matter how hard they try to avoid them.

The portrayal of the Doctor and Peri in this tale – occurring shortly after Peri rejoins the Doctor in his travels – is much warmer and affectionate than it was on TV in 1985. Bryant delivers a confident, mature and courageous performance as Peri who isn’t afraid to stand up to the Doctor when she has to, but she still displays her vulnerable side. No sooner is the young woman coming to terms with her sense of self after five years in the thrall of an alien mind parasite than she finds her will again put to the test when she is stung by a Varga plant. Baker clearly also enjoys the opportunity to work with Bryant again, particularly in scenes when they spar over some of the Doctor’s more questionable actions. 

Baker’s Doctor maintains much of the warmth and good humour that the character has developed over the last 15 years of Big Finish but he is never lacking in moments when he has to express steel in his voice or disgust and horror at the Daleks’ and other antagonists’ actions. Perhaps a little too much, Baker also lets his enthusiasm for teasing the Daleks show through. “Oh dear, it’s all going a bit Dalek-shaped, isn’t it?” is definitely one of his funnier quips!

Masters of Earth is entertaining in parts and compelling in others but mostly for three quarters of the story it’s just plain dull. While a tale that honoured the golden anniversary of The Dalek Invasion of Earth may have seemed a good idea in script meetings at Big Finish, Masters of Earth is almost a dull retread of the original story. Even when the tale finally starts to get interesting, the listener’s enthusiasm is cut short simply because the narrative runs out of time. While Doctor Who fans are likely to persevere through it, it’s hard to imagine a casual listener would dedicate that much effort and would probably run out of patience before the critical turning point in episode three.

Indeed, for a more profound and action-packed spin-off to The Dalek Invasion of Earth, then fans should instead listen to the aforementioned two-part Lucie Miller/To the Death. That audio tale is a more dramatic take on the original 1964 serial and shows that the Doctor and his companions are not invulnerable and that there are real consequences to fighting the Daleks, something that Masters of Earth barely touches on. Masters is a footnote by comparison, a Dalek “greatest hits” album that doesn’t quite pay off for the listener.

 

 

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Series openers have always got a lot to contend with; they have to balance between welcoming back older viewers who are expecting more of what they watched the show previously for, and also welcoming new viewers to the fold who may not know what the show is about. With Doctor Who that can be even harder, with nigh on ten years of new adventures continuing a show now literally in its golden years, under unabated media scrutiny and audience expectation. Then, throw a new Doctor into the mix ...

Unlike the arrival of Christopher Eccleston's version, which the production team took great care to identify as a continuation of the 20th Century series in naming him the - ahem - ninth incarnation, at Christmas The Time of the Doctor actually pulled the reset switch in 'killing' off the Doctor as he reached the end of his final regeneration ... and then like a phoenix rising from the ashes brought forth a renewed Doctor as he is granted a whole new life cycle by the Time Lords. In doing so, it also gave the production team carte-blanche to radically change the Doctor's personality, unburdened by his previous forms, and take the show in a new direction. But would they take that chance to potentially alienate an audience?

Well, of course not. After the disaster that was the sixth Doctor's introduction back in 1984, such a radical alteration was never going to be on the cards. However, as demonstrated in last night's Deep Breath, the character can certainly be massaged into a much more ambigious personality who the audience themselves are unsure of, let alone those on screen. We have the moment where the Doctor apparently abandons Clara to the "Half Face Man" ("no point in catching us both"), and then later his look from the restaurant-turned-balloon after the aforementioned robot falls to its (his?) impalation on the top of St Stephens Tower (this is a Victorian story, pedants (grin)) leaves us in total doubt as to whether he pushed or not. However, considering the way the (original) first Doctor behaved over his first adventures we aren't exactly in virgin territory, and he is essentially still the same being that we've known over the last 2000+ years - as hammered home rather unsubtly during the course of the story by Vastra and the Doctor himself.

Pulling it off is a skill, both in performance and direction, and as the new Doctor Peter Capaldi easily succeeds, ably introduced by Ben Wheatley, whose horror credentials certainly are in play in a number of scenes in the latter half of the story. However, it is the latter half where things properly kick off, with the earlier scenes are perhaps being a little too lengthy and slowing the story down somewhat. This is of course one of the problems with exposition, and as I mentioned when starting this review, there's a fair bit to expose! Writer Steven Moffat allowing some 80 minutes for the plot threads to 'breathe' (sorry!) was a good move, but perhaps it could have been shaved down a little just to make it a little pacier.

Anyway, to the story itself!

Prehistoric creatures have come a long way with Walking with Dinosaurs, and our inadvertent visitor to Victorian London was a remarkable creation (please give Invasion of the Dinosaurs a special edition...). Of course real science might not be in play here (see the New Scientist review) but it is catered for in the story universe (thanks, Vastra). It's a shame that it was a macguffin rather than anything more important in the story, but strangely you do feel empathy for it, courtesy of the Doctor (amazing how the TARDIS selectively translates language for its prefered inhabitants) and its sad demise does contribute to moving the story along - though the indication that the robots have been around since the creature's own era in time is an area of plot that, like the ship's location underground, shouldn't be dug into too deeply! Come to think of it, why bring back clockwork droids at all, their inclusion felt a bit like the Autons back in Rose, feeling more of a "historical" enemy's return for its own sake rather than serving the narrative. Mind you, Wheatley skillfully creates some genuinely disturbing moments that eclipse their previous appearance in The Girl in the Fireplace, so I'm not going to worry about that so much!

Jenna Coleman, Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey continue to perform strongly, with the latter's portrayal one of the highlights of the episode. The fan in me frowns a bit at how Moffat has seemingly turned the Sontarans into the Ferengi of Doctor Who, but he does get some of the best lines and Starkey never quites takes his performance into farce, so I end up looking forward to his scenes. ("The Doctor is still missing, but he will always come looking for his box. By bringing it here, he will be lured from the dangers of London into this place of safety and we will melt him with acid ... We will not melt him with acid.", followed by his 'special' delivery of the Times to Clara win the prize!). Peter Ferdinando was especially chilling with his portrayal of the "Half Face Man", and again the effects did not let down in animating his clockwork half. Whether we've actually seen the last of him remains to be seen after that ending, and like with Rose in Partners in Crime, the appearance of Michelle Gomez's Missy was delightfully unexpected - I really hope the Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere isn't going to turn out to be the Rani or a female Master as quite a few have speculated and that she is a new original character for us to enjoy in the same way as Madame Kovarian in the 2011 series.

As for that other cameo, I did know it was coming from filming reports but fortunately had forgotten about it until the phone rang. Watching it live evoked the same kind of nostalgic emotion that the final scenes of The End of Time did, though in hindsight I'm not so sure it really served the story so well - it might have been nicer as one of those online/red button extras to enjoy separately rather than in the story proper. Still, its purpose was to remind us (again) that we are watching a continuation of a fifty year tradition!

I can't finish without mentioning the new titles of course. The graphics looked great, and the reflection of the 'clock' theme within the opening bars of the theme was a nice touch (presumably weekly and not just for this clockwork-themed episode), but the main theme sounded very tinny, at least in a non-5.1 environment - I almost had a "Delaware" moment listening to it again! It doesn't seem to quite provide the majesty that I've come to expect from the series theme tune, but I suppose it'll grow on me in time!

All-in-all, Capaldi's debut story was enjoyable, if perhaps a little longer than it needed to be (though it certainly wasn't a clock-watching episode). There was nothing that made me tut at the screen either, so that is always a good sign. It will be interesting to see if this Doctor continues to be 'alien' or becomes more 'human' as with the first Doctor over the next eleven weeks.

Finally, Capaldi himself delivered all my expectations of him as the Doctor, so I'm looking forward to the next 7+ years of him in the role (grin).

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Reviewed by Nick Joy

Deep Breath red carpet world première
Cardiff
7th August 2014
Pictures by Nick Joy and Andy Smith

Cardiff has been the production base for Doctor Who since 2004 and perhaps in recognition of this its residents were treated to the red carpet treatment for Series 8's world première 16 days before its TV screening.

As part of the wider world tour to promote the new season and Peter Capaldi's arrival as the new Doctor, the Cardiff première was held at St David's Hall, a concert venue in the heart of the city's shopping precinct and ideally located for a West End-style première event.

Tickets for the screening and Q&A sold out pretty much instantly amongst scenes of the website crashing and demand far exceeding supply. To help manage the disappointment, a free fan meet was arranged for the morning of the première, with Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Steven Moffat and new guy Samuel Anderson traversing the 1/4 mile from Cardiff Central Library to the front of St David's Hall.

Having such a long "catwalk" was a double-edged sword. It meant that more people had the chance to see the stars up close and personal (at no point was it more than two or three deep), but it also meant they had further to walk in a short period of time. And while free publicity cards of Capaldi, Coleman and Anderson were given out to all, the chances of getting an autograph or two were really down to pot luck. Capaldi was particularly attentive - chatting, personalising autographs, posing for "selfies" and generally soaking up the rock star attention he was receiving.

All the while, Daleks patrolled the runway, stopping to terrorise the occasional delighted child, and Cybermen stomped up and down. BBC execs with clipboards scurried the barrier's length, prepping Capaldi for his next interview or soundbite, while presenters Lizo Mzimba and Jason Mohammad earnestly interviewed another group of delirious cosplayers. Even the TARDIS was in attendance, sitting outside the department stores.

After the screening, the cast set off for the London leg of the tour, hosted at the BFI. But back in Cardiff, as the carpet was rolled up, the railings stacked back on to the trucks and the visitors trooped off to the Doctor Who Experience in the Bay, the magic still hung in the air.

This was the same street that featured in the very same season opener being promoted that day (though it pretends to be elsewhere) and it's the same street that doubles as St Paul's district in the season finale. Two roads over and it's where Rose witnessed Autons smashing out of a shop window, and isn't that where Kylie and Doctor Tennant wandered around one Christmas?

And that's why Doctor Who premières happen here - they're a fixed point in time and space.

• To see more photos of the event, go to Nick's Photobucket album.

Related Articles: Doctor Who World Tour Begins (7 Aug 2014)

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Reviewed by Damian Christie

Doctor Who - The Day of The Doctor
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Nick Hurran
Broadcast on BBC One - 23 November 2013

“Am I having a mid-life crisis?”

The War Doctor upon meeting his Tenth and Eleventh incarnations, The Day of the Doctor.

As fans, we can be our own worst enemies – we’re possessive and high maintenance about our favourite TV program. We can get into such frenzied speculation about new Doctor Who episodes – long before they’re even broadcast. By the time they arrive we leave ourselves exhausted and mildly depressed, bemoaning that it was never as good as it should have been. We set the bar so high that we inevitably set ourselves up for a fall.

As Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor approached, the anticipation seemed to reach almost pressure cooker proportions. We all seemed so disenchanted with the varying quality of the episodes in the second half of Series 7 and the way the Clara/Impossible Girl plotline had just fizzled out that we wanted – in fact desperately needed – the 50th anniversary special to meet, if not exceed, our wildest expectations. Now, with the special behind us, I’d have to argue we can breathe a huge sigh of relief, assured that the series has a great future ahead of it.

Impressive ratings and box office receipts aside, the surest sign of the success of The Day of the Doctor has been the positive feedback from critics, casual observers and even some fans who have been modern Doctor Who’s biggest detractors. Of course, there will always be fans that have to rain down on the victory parade, with whines most notably about the serial’s climax but then I figure those individuals were never going to be satisfied anyway. The Day of the Doctor works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously (even though the theme at its heart is very earnest) and it is accessible to even the most casual viewers. It also manages to carry enough Easter eggs to please die hard Whovians without bashing casual viewers senseless around the head with 50 years of history and continuity.

Steven Moffat has miraculously pulled off the great escape. In just 75 minutes, he delivers an epic story that is part space opera (the Time War), part farce (the Zygon plot to oust Queen Elizabeth I), part comedy (the three Doctors meeting), part contemporary thriller (the mystery in the National Gallery and the Zygon takeover of UNIT’s Black Archive) and part morality tale (the War Doctor’s terrible decision and the effect it has on the Doctor’s subsequent incarnations). Moffat melds an unlikely mesh of genres into a compelling, exciting and enjoyable whole – and to boot manages to shoehorn in not just three but 13 Doctors and set the series up for some very exciting years to come.

So why, against all the odds, does The Day of the Doctor work so well? As I’ve said above, the episode isn’t a tortured, navel-gazing, self-obsessed and dark morass. It celebrates the Doctor with a sense of fun and optimism, despite the grim back story at its heart, and that helps to engage its audience – both fan and non-fan – from the get-go.

Whether consciously or not, Moffat employs a tested storytelling technique that was first pioneered by Charles Dickens in arguably one of literature’s first “time travel” tales – A Christmas Carol. Like that classic text (and indeed Moffat’s own Doctor Who Christmas special of the same name three years ago), The Day of the Doctor is the story of a man (the War Doctor), who with the counsel of a ghostly apparition (the Moment), visits his future in a bid for redemption. He doesn’t like what he sees (he is appalled by the immaturity and denial of his future selves) but it inspires him to change and alter course in the present. As a result, he rediscovers hope – and in the bargain restores optimism to the men that he will become. What better story could one have asked for in Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary year? This is a vastly more enjoyable, preferable tale to some angst-ridden, dark and humdrum narrative with a monstrous, sinister Doctor at its heart – something I think we all suspected the War Doctor might be when he was first introduced in The Name of the Doctor.

The standout performer of the episode is undoubtedly John Hurt, eclipsing the incumbent in Matt Smith and the returning David Tennant as the titular character. For someone in a guest star capacity, Hurt is utterly convincing from the outset as the War Doctor. There is no doubt he is a grizzled veteran who has been scarred by centuries of war and is haunted by the terrible choice on his plate - even before he has pressed the big red button. Yet Hurt also plays the role with grace, compassion, humility and dignity – there is no sense that he is a vengeful, embittered, ruthless character at all, as we’ve occasionally seen in the modern Doctors (Eccleston, Tennant, Smith) and even some of the classic Doctors (McCoy, Tom Baker and Colin Baker). He is indeed shunned and repressed by his other incarnations for doing the right thing for the common good.

Hurt’s no-nonsense Doctor is the perfect foil to Smith’s and Tennant’s more eccentric Doctors and enables Moffat to send up many of the series’ in-jokes (many of which he invented). The War Doctor’s expressions of disbelief at the inappropriate use of the sonic screwdriver – “They’re screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?” – and his horror at the other Doctors’ expressions – “Timey ... what? Timey wimey?” – are priceless and make for some fantastic comedy moments in the episode, lightening the tension and bleakness that could have overwhelmed this tale.

In fact, the banter and comedy between the three Doctors is successful precisely because Moffat doesn’t shy away from bringing the Doctors together. One of the problems with other multi-Doctor reunions in the past – notably in The Five Doctors – is that efforts were made to keep the Doctors separate for the bulk of the narrative (often on the misapprehension that the actors themselves would simply not get along). Moffat avoids that trap in The Day of the Doctor and happily displays all the Doctors in their true light – warts and all!

Yet as great as the comic moments are, Moffat knows how to deliver scenes and dialogue with the three Doctors that have great pathos. One of the most powerful moments between the Doctors comes in the dungeon when they discuss the ramifications of the Time War. There are terrific performances from Smith, Tennant and Hurt as the War Doctor is appalled by the indifference of his future selves – “the one who regrets and the one who forgets” – and the Tenth Doctor is horrified that the Eleventh Doctor could almost forget the high cost of his actions.

Tennant and Smith have both said they were in awe of working with a “living legend” like Hurt but neither of them show it in their performances. They both demonstrate the vast acting range that their characters demand, with both of their Doctors slipping between moments of humour, earnestness, sadness and anger. Tennant steps almost effortlessly back into the part, as if four years had not elapsed at all, and he and Smith are both at their most imposing when their Doctors are actually staring each other down and not clowning around (eg “For once, I’d like to know where I’m going.” “No, you really wouldn’t!”).

Understandably, with such an ambitious storyline and a stellar cast, you’d be forgiven for forgetting this story features companions. It seems on a first viewing that Jenna Coleman doesn’t get an awful lot to do – but in fact Clara is possibly the most important character in the story. It is quick thinking on Clara’s part to steal the vortex manipulator from the Black Archive and travel back to rescue the Doctors (and subsequently embarrass them by revealing they’ve been in an unlocked cell!). That’s always an impressive trait in a companion but it is also Clara who proves to be the catalyst for change – it is her compassion and emotion (which Coleman conveys so well) that finally persuades the Eleventh Doctor to look for a different way to end the Time War.

It has been said numerous times through the life of the modern program that the companion is the Doctor’s conscience, that she can show him another way. This was Billie Piper’s function back in Series 1 as Rose Tyler and that sentiment was repeated by Donna Noble in The Runaway Bride when she told the Doctor he needs a companion to rein him in (something he lacks as the War Doctor). Clara proves integral in that respect. In this story, more than any other, we are again reminded that the Doctor’s conscience is not just dictated by his own morals but by his companions’ humanity. Without a conscience, the Doctor could be elevated to making god-like decisions with the most terrible consequences (as we saw with his “Time Lord Victorious” stance in The Waters of Mars).

Even the Moment – in the unexpected form of Rose Tyler – fulfils a similar role to Clara, showing the War Doctor that there is an alternative. It is to Moffat’s credit that he devises a unique way to bring Billie Piper back to the series without contradicting or undermining the events of Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. Casting Piper as Rose’s Bad Wolf persona borrowed by the Moment is a stroke of genius – and tests Piper’s own acting calibre. She meets that challenge, delivering a performance which, like the three Doctors, exudes sadness and subtlety one moment and then a cheeky, naughty and suggestive disposition the next (“Look at you, stuck between a girl and a box. The story of your life, eh, Doctor?”). This is definitely not the type of acting Piper could have delivered if she’d simply returned as Rose. Some fans may reasonably argue that the Moment could have been any of the Doctor’s companions from the modern series (eg Amy Pond or Donna) but Piper’s performance vindicates the decision to cast her – to have gone with a high profile comedienne like Catherine Tate, for example, would have actually detracted from the Moment’s characterisation and importance in the narrative.

Similarly Tom Baker’s surprise cameo as the enigmatic curator would also have not worked as effectively if it had been one of the other classic Doctors – Davison, Colin Baker or McCoy. Baker instils enough mystery and charm into his dialogue, all while reminding us of his “Doctorish” charisma, to keep us guessing about his identity (is he a future Doctor? An older, alternative version of the Fourth Doctor? A Watcher-like entity? The Moment in another guise?). Indeed, the curator’s ambiguity makes Baker’s appearance all the more memorable – and I doubt his performance could have been matched if one of his successors had taken the same part.

With the gallery of multiple Doctors and companions, and the broader implications their presence has on the broader Whoniverse, it’s all too easy to forget about the UNIT and Zygon sub-plot. The Zygons, making a comeback after almost 40 years, are sadly peripheral to the story and could just as easily have been any other shapeshifting monster, eg the Slitheen, the Krillitanes or (perish the thought) the Abzorbaloff. Nevertheless, the costumes are beautifully recreated and menacing and the transformation of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart into the Zygon leader is downright creepy. Credit goes to the supporting cast who play both humans and Zygons interchangeably, especially Joanna Page as the Queen. In the scenes where she plays both the real Elizabeth I and the Zygon duplicate, Page’s performance is so flawless that even on repeated viewings it is difficult to fathom who is the Queen and who is the impostor! The Zygons are recreated well enough to warrant a return appearance in the near future.

Aside from the impressive scope of the story, the episode is a visual tour de force. Growing up as I did in the last years of the classic series, Doctor Who was often ridiculed for its phoney monsters and cheap production values. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that one day I would sit in a cinema and not only watch an episode in 3D but an episode that is almost a feature film in its own right. Nor could I ever have imagined, given the contempt the brass had for the program in the late 1980s, that the BBC would finally realise that Doctor Who was a program worth spending money on.

In just the opening minutes alone, we see impressive aerial shots of the London cityscape as the TARDIS is hoisted to the National Gallery, followed by the CGI flashbacks to the Dalek attack on Arcadia. Nick Hurran’s direction also features some lovely visuals such as the imposition of the War Doctor’s eyeline on the Eleventh Doctor’s face as he recalls the final day of the Time War. The 3D elements also impress, notably with the Gallifrey Falls oil painting (although 3D tends to get lost on yours truly as I become engrossed in a story!). It’s taken 50 years but finally with The Day of the Doctor, Doctor Who has peaked – it has gone from being a shoestring program in the dingiest studio on the BBC’s backlot (the infamous Lime Grove Studio D in the 1960s) to occupying its own backlot in Cardiff and being made with the money, care and love that it truly deserves.

Most importantly, The Day of the Doctor proves to be not just an “eighth anniversary” episode (some devotees of the classic series worried that the episode would only honour the modern series) but a true 50th anniversary instalment that homages the whole series. The recreated Hartnell title sequence and the opening sequence at Coal Hill School (which bleeds from black and white into colour) beautifully recreates the opening moments of An Unearthly Child (even the brief exchange between Clara and Tom in the classroom is reminiscent of one Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton all those decades ago). The various other Easter eggs – encapsulated mostly in dialogue (“I didn’t know when I was well off – all 12 of them!”) echoing famous lines from across the years and some subtle visuals – also show that this is a serial that respects Doctor Who in all its eras, and not just the modern era.

The climax has obviously been controversial with some fans who contend that Moffat has blatantly rewritten history (again the types that would have been dissatisfied no matter how the story ended). Far from contradicting continuity, Gallifrey’s fate offers exciting story possibilities (and in my opinion was inevitable - if the Guardians of the Green Lantern Corps in the DC comic book universe can be similarly destroyed and revived, why not the Time Lords?). It also ties in with the episode’s theme of hope. The Doctor provides the Time Lords with a fighting chance for life, seemingly against all odds, and in turn gives himself hope and a new purpose. The closing moments of the serial are a wonderful visual spectacle – the Doctor is finally at peace and unison with his other selves, looking to the future. Steven Moffat promised to deliver an episode that would set up Doctor Who for the future – and he has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations.

In years to come, The Day of the Doctor will no doubt come under increased scrutiny from fans and its skeletons will be laid bare. But for now, as a tribute to the program’s 50th anniversary, the episode has been an outstanding success. Far from having a mid-life crisis, there is plenty of life in the old Doctor yet and there has never been a more exciting time than now to be a Doctor Who fan. I personally hope that the modern program, as it moves into its eighth full series and into another era with a new Doctor, will use The Day of the Doctor as a platform to go in exciting future directions and scale even loftier heights. Only the sky’s the limit!

Long live the Doctor! Many happy returns!

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Doctor Who - Summer Falls
Written by Amelia Williams
BBC Books
UK release: 4 April 2013

This review is based on the BBC Books' ebook and contains some spoilers  

Summer Falls is a curious novella, more ‘Doctor fic’ than ‘Doctor lite’, since it’s supposedly written by Amelia Williams (formerly Pond) and involves a lightly fictionalized version of her Doctor. The ‘Curator’ has a mysterious “shed” in place of a Police Box, says very Doctorish things like “magic is cool” and “I love a little shoppe”, and is highly knowledgeable about all sorts of unusual entities and events. Oh, and the Curator also has a sort-of companion: one of the most brilliant, amusing companions that we’ll never get to see on-screen. No, it's not a shape-shifting talking penguin, but rather a grey talking cat, which enables real-world writer James Goss to explore all manner of great cat jokes. Essentially, what we learn is that cats do not fit at all well into the template of a Doctor Who companion, particularly given their tendency to get comfy and warm and have a doze mid-adventure, or their need to start cleaning rather than answering a question.

Returning to thoughts of Amy Pond strikes me as a faintly curious thing to do just as a new companion and a new mystery are launched in the TV series. Having Clara Oswald refer to an Amelia Williams’ story could be read as a passing of the baton; a way to honour and remember what’s come before as the franchise moves remorselessly on (and where everyone’s replaceable – not just companions, but even executive producers and showrunners). Perhaps this particular tie-in offers a kind of reassurance to fans of the Ponds. Amy hasn’t been erased from Who, after all, and the show is allowed to remember her in its passing details. Either that, or there’s method to the reminiscence, and Steven Moffat doesn’t want audiences to forget Amelia for a specific, yet-to-be-revealed reason. Given that ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ was so insistently book-ended, circling back to ‘The Eleventh Hour', for this story/character thread to be picked up again so soon feels strange at the very least.

For my money, James Goss has consistently been one of the best recent writers of original, off-screen Doctor Who and Torchwood, and there's a tendency towards playful pastiche evident across his work. He’s a strong choice for this sort of material, given that Summer Falls was supposedly first published in 1954, and so is tailored to resemble a quaint, mildly jolly-hockey-sticks children’s fantasy adventure. Not only does it not feature the Doctor (by name), it’s also strongly fantastical rather than science-fictional, a genre shift which Who itself occasionally indulges in, but which seems to have dismayed some audiences of late with regards to ‘The Rings of Akhaten’. Although Summer Falls has the Doctor-type character muttering about “psycho-temporal” factors, it doesn’t really make very much effort to pin matters down into a science fiction template, instead preferring the broader poetic license of talking cats, frozen seas, and strange, powerful objects which have to be collected.

Goss repeatedly toys with readerly expectations. Summer Falls features the Lord of Winter, which in a novella released shortly before ‘Cold War’, and not long after ‘The Snowmen’, one might guess would implicate either the Ice Warriors or the chilly Great Intelligence. What we get remains tantalizingly vague, and I’m not at all convinced that this tale ties into ongoing series 7 events in any unexpected way. Of course, the big gimmick is that Summer Falls appeared on screen in ‘The Bells of Saint John’, meaning that we’ve already seen its heroine Kate depicted as a Spoonhead, as well as knowing that Chapter 11 is a tear-jerker (something it strives to live up to). This creates a complex layering of fiction-upon-fiction: the real book that you can buy and enjoy is itself part of the Doctor Who universe, as well as featuring a fictionalized version of the Doctor. When will Clara ask the Time Lord if he’s really the Curator? Will this fiction-within-a-fiction be played with in the TV show itself, I wonder, even perhaps in its anniversary special? I’d hazard not, however: the reference-spotting of Summer Falls suits fandom all too well – it’s a sort of roman à clef revolving around a key which has to be found, while readers can use the master key of Doctor Who to interpret what’s going on. But I’m not convinced that such "meta" would necessarily translate well to the broader mass audience of Christmas and Anniverary Specials, so perhaps ‘Doctor fic’ will remain a little-known tie-in subgenre for now.

Having said that, I’d like to see a series of Amelia Williams’ tales, perhaps written at different times across her life, each giving a different refraction and revision of her adventures. Re-fictionalized alt-Daleks or Screaming Cherubs could get an outing. Pursued as a series of reimagined slants on the Moffat era, this sort of playful Who manqué could start to build up into far more than the sum of its parts. But as things stand, and as a one-shot, Summer Falls is a clever, cool experiment in meta that doesn’t always feel like it really matters to ongoing arcs and questions.

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Reviewed by Matthew Kilburn

Doctor Who - The Rings of Akhaten
Written by Neil Cross
Directed by Farren Blackburn
Broadcast on BBC One - 6 April 2013

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK broadcast of the episode. 

Doctor Who isn’t specially made for those of us who go online and watch multiple trailers multiple times or devour previews, but it is concerned with those who catch trailers between other programmes or might occasionally view online previews. The audience for The Rings of Akhaten was carefully primed to expect a story set in space with multiple alien species and a child-threatening monster. This is of course what they received, but to get there they took the public footpath rather than the motorway. There the themes of the season were restated and the moral of the episode prepared for, and the background of our new heroine explored further.

The Rings of Akhaten unexpectedly proved to be the first of this series’ visits to the recent past, with the central narrative being framed by the Doctor’s research expedition to establish Clara’s personal history. That history so far appears unencumbered by otherworldly or extradimensional intervention beyond the Doctor’s periodic sampling of her life, but the episode does raise the puzzle of the TARDIS’s unwillingness to open its doors to her, and provoke expectations surrounding the early death of Clara’s mother. On the one hand the loss of Ellie and the refusal of the TARDIS doors to open are both perfectly regular occurrences. People die, sometimes early; and Clara does not have the TARDIS key. Still, the idea that the TARDIS doesn’t like Clara is expressed in the shadow of the personalisation of the ship in The Doctor’s Wife and the affinity it displays with Melody/River in Let’s Kill Hitler. We are given many reasons to admire Clara in this episode, but there are unsettling notes in the background.

Those unsettling notes are not provided by Murray Gold, whose music moves back into being part of the narrative rather than a commentary upon it. His soundtrack to this story recalls his earlier choral works, especially those in Journey’s End and The End of Time, both in implying doomsday and in offering salvation from it. There were moments where one felt one was listening to a bland contribution to a fashionable modern hymnal, but there had to be contrast with the ritual hymn and subtlety of mood is difficult when a composer has so few minutes to work within, and so many other elements within the episode to underwrite. Overall, Gold continues to recognise and project the tone of the series: peril is interpreted in a less self-indulgently sinister manner than Dudley Simpson might have managed in the mid-1970s, but Gold’s scoring is intelligent and poignant, working with the emotions of the characters rather than trying to impose a mood on the viewer.

Doctor Who makes selective use of popular music, but a willingness to use it at all was one of the refreshing points of the revived series in 2005. ‘Ghost Town’ by the Specials is used to signify 1981, juxtaposed with the Doctor reading The Beano Summer Special of that year, but the use of the song has further implications. It plays over the first meeting of Ellie and Dave, Clara’s parents; does this somehow prefigure apocalypse? More specifically for the episode’s plot, ‘Ghost Town’ concerns collective memory and experience. In terms of The Rings of Akhaten this is the history taught in song to Merry so she can feed her people’s god, and also Clara’s remembrance of her dead mother and the stories she passed on to her. ‘Ghost Town’ also echoes the Doctor’s long life and the memories which he rarely discusses but which he is willing to offer to the god to be devoured. If these ghosts are reflections of the past they can be confronted and digested. It’s the reflections on what might have been which can’t be faced, because they were never realised in the first place. As such, their form is unfixed and insubstantial and it’s appropriate that they give the Old God of Akhaten indigestion.

The Rings of Akhaten has been promoted as another instalment of cinematic Doctor Who, but it seems more at home within the confines of the small screen than many of its predecessors. The bazaar set is crowded and claustrophobic, and while this was set up in Roath Lock, one can imagine something similar being realised in Television Centre or with ingenuity and still narrower camera angles in Lime Grove or Riverside. The CGI is limited and relatively static compared with recent episodes and there is one space exterior very visibly realised using that age-old standby, the black cloth with lights shining through it. The great exception is the sense of distance suggested by the cuts between the Mummy’s temple and the open theatre where Merry sings her lullaby before her audience. Nevertheless, the concentration on a series of undynamic images mostly works to the episode’s advantage. The episode is substantially the story of Clara and Merry and the sets and effects function largely as background to a series of portrait shots rather than as features in their own right. They do register as a series of references to a cinematic heritage. The Rings of Akhaten suggests Ancient Egypt in its title (though misleading some fans, and journalists, to expect a connection to the natives of Phaester Osiris and Pyramids of Mars). The design of the sets is placed in the broad western tradition of Orientalism (and ‘Ghost Town’ too contains musical references to middle-eastern music or at least a twentieth-century Euramerican theatrical idea of what middle-eastern music was). Set designs which recall depictions of Egypt, Arabia or India in film are joined with a script inspired by Chinese or Japanese orthography. The plot, too, has echoes of various generations of The Mummy, and the Indiana Jones series. The episode could be construed as cinematic in its referencing rather than in its execution; though it’s also been seen as a literary episode, one more familiar with literary SF than me having noted links with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books. It’s the influence of cinema, and the depiction of Islamic, south and east Asian societies in adventure films, which lingers the most; perhaps it is appropriate then that the Old God is depicted both as Ancient Egyptian sun god and American Halloween pumpkin.

In performance, the episode demands most of Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman, with special mentions for Michael Dixon and Nicola Sian as Clara’s parents, who had to carry much of the pre-credits sequence, and for Emilia Jones as Merry. The latter’s role at first seems to have clear analogies with a schoolchild wanting to avoid embarrassment before peers and parents when faced with a solo song or reading. Emilia Jones conveys Merry’s predicament as the Queen of Years as if it is nothing extraordinary, the better for Jenna-Louise Coleman to reinforce Clara’s affinity with children, and later displays a fierce determination to fulfil her destiny. In contrast to the Clara of The Snowmen, this Clara seems more like the folk image of a Blue Peter presenter than Mary Poppins; she is compassionate, brave, willing to take risks as extreme as driving a space vehicle she’s only known briefly as a passenger, and able to think laterally at times of crisis. Matt Smith’s Doctor continues to evolve, becoming yet more attached to Amy’s glasses (does looking through them, perhaps, remind him of the human perspective?) and in doing so coming more to resemble Harold Lloyd than Norman Wisdom or Michael Crawford-as-Frank Spencer; this comparison seems also fitting for his Doctor’s greater physical self-control and proactivity.

The Rings of Akhaten furthers Doctor Who’s attitude to religion. The Doctor won’t disassociate himself from the beliefs of the inhabitants of the Akhaten system completely. His description of their faith as a ‘story’ is not a dismissal in a series so self-aware of its own storytelling. He gives a rationalist, empirical, cosmologist’s account of the making of the universe and what individuals are made of in order to convince Merry of her worth in her own right, not as the Queen of Years. Souls, the Doctor says, are stories; the roots and merits of this idea in the context of various religions should be left to those with more skill in comparative theology, but it’s an appropriate foundation for a belief system in Doctor Who. More frivolously, red is still the colour for religious orders in Doctor Who, five years from The Fires of Pompeii, but just over three from The End of Time.

Though the Old God is defeated and extinguished at the end of the episode, the return of the ring which Clara gave to Dor’een indicates that the best of the faith, a respect for lived experience and giving of oneself, survives. The Doctor gives that ring to Clara in a gesture which recalls the way in which he gave her Victorian counterpart the TARDIS key. For Clara this restores what she surrendered to the Old God with the leaf from 101 Places to See and confirms her integrity, which the Doctor’s mention of “someone who died” then seems to undermine. A viewer remembering The Snowmen might see the ring as a provisional commitment, short of the TARDIS key which marks the Doctor’s whole trust and performs a quasi-sacramental role within what The Myth Makers would remind us is the Doctor’s own ‘temple’. The Doctor is still no closer to finding out who or what Clara is at the end of the story; together with his mistaken identification of the Mummy as the Old God, this episode places unusual emphasis on his fallibility.

The Rings of Akhaten is a change in setting and tone from the expansive ebullience of The Bells of Saint John. The jumps in character progression which enable the telling of this story in forty-four minutes place a little strain on credibility but they are sustained by convincing performance and assertive editing. It’s an intimate story which could do with a little more breathing space in order to develop its themes of learning to explore and appreciate lives lived as a basis for future actions and discoveries. The fact that Clara has lived the life which enables her to understand and deploy her own story and the stories of others which influenced her against the Old God becomes not just a character strength and crisis resolution, but for Doctor and viewer, a frustrating and engaging narrative problem.

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Reviewed by Matthew Kilburn

Doctor Who - The Bells of Saint John
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Colm McCarthy
Broadcast on BBC One - 30 March 2013

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK broadcast of the episode. 

‘A new series and a new companion,’ announced BBC One shortly before its stream of consciousness was interrupted by something outside the accepted norms of out-of-vision continuity. Doctor Who has on and off promoted itself as an interruption, an Adventure in Space and Time outside a schedule it implicitly paints as mundane and workaday. Forty-odd years ago, when it was ‘the children’s own programme which adults adore’, tucked away early on a Saturday evening amidst sport, light entertainment and imported series or TV movies, it was perhaps easier to indulge Doctor’s adventures. In the Doctor’s fiftieth year, television programmes compete in a much wider field and Doctor Who has to interrupt the evening of a much wider cross-section of the audience than its ancient niche to justify its continued appearance on our screens. Happily The Bells of Saint John did so with the sort of precision engineering which qualified the Doctor’s bike for the anti-grav Olympics, and which will hopefully have a similar effect in the television ratings.

The Bells of Saint John worked hard. While there was much for the seasoned viewer to recognise and enjoy because their foreknowledge was anticipated, the episode functioned more than perfectly well as an embarkation point for new viewers. Travel in time and space was presented in a series of short settings ranging from the domestic to different blends of action-adventure, with more than a twist of the surreal. The ordinary was turned inside out to become unsettling and events and characters depicted with a lightness which was deceptive. The paranoia of the individual in a connected world was ruthlessly exploited. It’s never been fashionable to embrace the Doctor as fundamentally an Everyman, as Christopher H Bidmead once argued he was, but the Doctor’s experience in the rooftop café by St Paul’s must have disturbed everyone who even for a few seconds has imagined that a roomful of strangers is talking to them. Like much of the best Doctor Who of recent years, such as Blink or Midnight, it develops a threat from memories of the nastier examples of childhood interaction. Even the broad strokes with which the villainy of Miss Kizlet is defined ultimately suggest a childhood interaction which went badly wrong, though this is an area in which her client has previous and (within the ongoing narrative of the programme) recent experience.

Each time Doctor Who has returned to television, the worldwide promotion of the series launch has increased. More than any episode since the 2005 series, The Bells of Saint John seemed self-consciously to advertise Doctor Who’s status as a standard bearer for a particular export variety of Britain. As in Rose eight years ago, London was presented as a series of familiar landmarks juxtaposed with a threat associated with a new addition to the skyline, in this case the Shard. Repetition worked, not just because Doctor Who’s worldwide audience has expanded since 2005, but because it reassures those familiar with the use of major new London buildings as headquarters of sinister forces in the series (a history stretching back to 1966 and The War Machines) while at the same time amplifying their anticipation of developments within the story. The programme’s identity is confirmed to those who know it. London is presented to newcomers as somewhere continually remade: exotic, dangerous, but ultimately made safe for time and space travellers, and inhabited by friendly (if occasionally possessed) folk liable to interpret the arrival of a time and space machine as a remarkable piece of busking.

In contrast, northern England (and by extension all parts of the United Kingdom which are not London) is remote and best experienced as a representation of the past, though the all-male monastic retreat where anachronistic ideas like telephones and communicative women are greeted with alarm is a dysfunctional extreme. For the Doctor, withdrawal into such a place is of limited use. His choice and his natural abode is the new. Both he and Clara are voices on the other end of a phone helpline: Clara has called for help but the Doctor is also seeking answers from her. Both collapse time zones as much as BBC Worldwide’s sales force seek to do with increasing success. For the first time a BBC One broadcast of a new Doctor Who episode ended with the BBC Worldwide animation familiar from DVD releases, confirming the placing of the programme as global BBC brand suggested by the narrative’s flirtation with tourist-video quirkiness.

The use of imagery is not alone in recalling Rose. Some of Clara’s exchanges with the Doctor echoed Rose’s initial questions word-for-word, though she has been more successful than Rose at putting an opinionated parent at a distance. There are several retroactive references which are rendered unobtrusive by having other functions in the plot, but which court speculation. Is it accidental that Clara has a book written by Amy? Recent precedent suggests not. Who was the woman in the shop who gave Clara the Doctor’s number? Given the casting announcement for the fiftieth anniversary episode made (by accident) earlier in the day, the comparisons possible between Miss Kizlet in The Bells of Saint John and Miss Foster in Partners in Crime must have led several fan viewers to expect another parallel between the two.

The Clara of The Bells of Saint John is a less preternaturally self-possessed character than either Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks or Clara in The Snowmen. Given that this Clara doesn’t have any computer expertise until she is uploaded to and then downloaded from the Cloud, it’s possible that this is the first Clara, from which the others are in some way spun off; this may be grasping at a straw. Her dialogue may echo Rose but her rapid-fire delivery and some turns of phrase recall the early David Tennant Doctor (‘That’s weird’): but this is another straw, over which half-formed red herrings leap in the fan mind.

The Bells of Saint John furthers the mission statement of series seven to provide a cinematic experience. Several scenes seemed made with HD and a large screen in mind, from the defiantly comedic but enthralling motorbike ride up the Shard, to the detail in the maps, the threading of this particular web of fear across the computer-simulated globe, and the patterns of light which danced and fluttered within the Spoonheads. Cinematic Doctor Who is less afraid of contrast on screen and where a few years ago townscapes were narrowly shot and underlit, the London of The Bells of Saint John rejoices both in the pinhead lights shining from the distant city at night, and the sunshine of early morning. It’s still a series which won’t linger on most effects shots. Doctor Who was never about effects shots, but in an entertainment world where CG is regarded by many as a performer in its own right it is probably the done thing to look bothered about them for a fraction of a second at a time before the episode is furiously driven onwards.

Matt Smith remains in great command of the Doctor, and increasingly so, his physicality seeming less intrusive this year than previously. The Doctor’s enjoyment of his anonymity, overstressed in the first segment of this season, seems to be reined in here, perhaps because of the less exuberant Doctor seen since the loss of the Ponds but also because the point for long-term viewers has been made. As a character, the Doctor is still too complacent about the question ‘Doctor Who?’ UNIT will not have forgotten, and the Great Intelligence certainly has not. If the Doctor is again the principal viewpoint character of Doctor Who, then the programme’s apparently implausible insistence on the effectiveness of the erasure of the Doctor from history might be an expression of the Doctor’s own insouciance. This situation will not last for ever.

The confusion of computer skills with knowledge of internet culture, and of the information transmitted through wi-fi with the technology itself, will have annoyed many fans of a technical bent, and were Sydney Newman here he would probably agree. The idea that human identity and personality can be rendered as easily digitised signals will raise eyebrows among psychologists, physiologists and philosophers to name but three, but it recognises that in the age of Facebook and Twitter more people are representing themselves more frequently and more widely as abbreviated biographical data than was ever possible before. The images of human faces on screens, asking for help, no longer sure of their location, were major narrative devices in The Idiot’s Lantern seven years ago, but they seem more effective in the age of Skype and personal mobile webcams than in the days of Alexandra Palace and 405-line broadcasting. The Bells of Saint John might appear as frothy as the top of Clara’s breakfast smoothie, but it’s a deft blend of bright colours and pan-generational anxieties which proved a seductively sinister reintroduction to Doctor Who.

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Doctor Who - A Big Hand For The Doctor
Written by Eoin Colfer
Puffin Books
UK release: 23 January 2013

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

This title kicks off Puffin’s monthly series of ‘eshorts’ (or short stories available electronically), featuring the first Doctor and his granddaughter Susan. Having recently rewatched An Unearthly Child at the BFI, and also having recently read Phil Sandifer’s sharp analysis of Kim Newman’s Time and Relative novella, the first thing that struck me about Eoin Colfer’s story was how unrecognisable his first Doctor seemed to be. This rendition isn’t loath to intervene, acting like a sort of anti-hero or proto-hero (as in Newman’s pre-Unearthly Child tale). No, this version of the William Hartnell Doctor has been busy pursuing Soul Pirates through space and time in order to combat their evil ways. He’s a swashbuckling action hero trapped in an ageing body. He even sees visions of his later and more physical selves, mainly so that younger readers can be reminded that this figure is the same character played today by Matt Smith. It’s a device, a convenience, that probably wreaks havoc with Doctor Who continuity, but neither Colfer nor whoever signed off on this short story are overly concerned with capturing the spirit of 1960s Who. Instead, the Doctor is a generic do-gooder who refers to things such as Hogwarts, referencing pop culture familiar to 2013 readers.

And as if symbolic of the way that Colfer has grafted his own approach into the world of the first Doctor, the integrity of the Time Lord’s body has also been violated. He’s lost a hand – sliced off by a Soul Pirate Captain – and so has to make do with a two-fingered ceramic model housed inside an ill-gendered spare. Surely Colfer isn’t putting two literary fingers up at fans who might be dismayed by this turn of events? Although the mental image of William Hartnell’s Doctor sporting a woman’s hand, painted fingernails and all, is certainly a striking and incongruous one, it’s not quite how I expected to be thinking of the first Doctor at the beginning of this anniversary year. It’s a good gag, sure. But it's one that isn’t afraid to ride roughshod over the dignity of the Doctor. This is a full-blooded contrast to the first Doctor instalment of Destiny of the Doctor, and each series looks set to work in very different ways for very different audiences. Destiny is era-appropriate fan service, while this eshort strikes a vastly revisionist, irreverent tone. This is Doctor Who’s history rewritten from a present-day perspective, enclosing younger readers in demographic now-ness rather than truly opening a window on mysterious other times.

And Doctor Who of fifty years ago, a strange and wonderful and enigmatic thing, is further reworked here as a burst of auteurist whimsy. Yes, Colfer’s authorial voice shines through – making this part of a marketing strategy where ‘name’ authors take the Doctor in hand – but I still would’ve liked to witness more of a meeting of author and character rather than the scales being tipped very much in the writer’s favour. And some jokes (e.g. a Time Lord known as the Interior Designer) breezily transform Gallifrey into a planet of Time Morons. The Doctor himself is depicted as unsmiling, and chided about his unrelaxed state, as if readers are being warned they need to take what follows in good humour.

Without spoilering the story’s Epilogue, there is a neat twist that frames Colfer’s heightened fantasy version of Who. H.G. Wells and his time machine have made a few appearances across Doctor Who’s lifespan, with ‘scientifiction’ (early science fiction) being positioned as one source for the Doctor’s time-travelling adventures. Colfer takes a rather different intertextual tack, however, in line with his genre-shifting towards children's fantasy adventure, and in the end this conceit works rather beautifully. It’s a handy pay-off which bathes events in a clever, new glow. And it makes excellent use of the short story form; there can be little doubting Colfer’s skill as a writer. Indeed, he retraces Douglas Adams' fingerprints here by adding Who as well as The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy to his CV.

Like The Coming of the Terraphiles before it, though, this title is more concerned with being a publishing industry ‘event’ than with addressing fandom’s notions of authenticity. In short, this simply isn’t speaking to long-term adult fans. The signal it sends, loud and clear, is that the 50th anniversary is for all sorts of audiences, and for varied generations who have become fascinated by the Doctor. It's a post-Potter first Doctor. Bill Hartnell for Generation Z. And perhaps such diversity and plurality can only be a good thing.

That said, this eshort still sticks out like a sore thumb.

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Doctor Who - The Snowmen
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Saul Metzstein
Broadcast on BBC One - 25 December 2012

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK broadcast of the episode. 

There’s nothing abominable about this year’s Christmas Special; it’s full of invention and makes light work of relaunching a post-Ponds Doctor Who. And after an assortment of prequels – let’s pretend that a “foreshadowing” of prequels is the collective noun for CiN, online, and ebook iterations – it comes as something of a surprise to find that the main event is itself another prequel… to several stories from 1960’s Who. This is a big, energetic, sentimental crowd-pleaser which looks all set to play on wintry iconography, and then plays on Doctor Who’s history at the same time. Not just a wonderful Christmas gift, it’s also a prequel of a different kind – to the 50th anniversary. Throw in a title sequence paying homage to various eras, a TARDIS which neatly echoes older designs, Matt Smith’s face in the titles a la Troughton-to-McCoy, not to mention Clara Oswin Oswald’s birthday of November 23rd… and you’ve got a bundle of knowing treats for fandom, all pretty much screaming “this is part of television history”.

But that's about TV time on a fairly macro scale; what about the micro? Every few moments of The Snowmen there’s another burst of colourful, often comedic entertainment, almost as if Steven Moffat composed the script in bite-size chunks aimed at amusing an audience with virtually no short-term memory. Strax is a major delight throughout, particularly thanks to his memory worm exploits and his Sontaran stratagems. Vastra’s rendering as ‘The Great Detective’ is also neatly developed, along with any Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover being addressed by the Doctor’s impersonation of Holmes (complete with Murray Gold pastiching some rather familiar music). Rarely has the shadow of another popular TV series flitted as visibly across BBC Wales’ Who as Sherlock does here, seemingly all in the service of reminding us – as if we might not remember – that we’re watching a Steven Moffat script.

There are other showy, writerly sequences too, most notably the “one word test” where poor Clara has but a single word to appeal to the Doctor. This succeeds in making what could have been a fairly humdrum, seen-it-all-before scene – Clara soliciting the Doctor’s help – into both a challenge for the new companion figure, and a testament to the Doctor’s withdrawal from humanity. It works very well, and has a great pay-off as the Doctor reacts to a rather unexpected four letter word. And the reveal of the Ship’s interior also 'makes it new' via Saul Metzstein’s direction, with a single camera shot appearing to cross the police box threshold while Moffat craftily throws in “smaller on the outside” as a revamped “bigger on the inside”. It’s a refreshingly simple inversion, and one which manages to put a smart twist on a well-worn concept. As if to prove he’s been pondering how to rework TARDIS lore, Moffat even includes a bonus riff in the form of an exterior staircase that’s “taller on the inside”.

One problem with The Snowmen is that at times it feels more like a series of set-pieces rather than a coherent and logically developed storyline. If the snow isn’t really snow, but a crystal drawing on peoples’ thoughts, then shouldn’t it have been able to adopt other shapes rather than being locked into the thematic, wintry mode of ice statues and snowmen? And its “low-level telepathic field” seems to kick in only at points where Moffat wants to achieve a shock effect, a new threat, or a tidy resolution, otherwise being conveniently set to one side. All the individually Moffaty segments are great fun, but as a narrative The Snowmen drifts ever so slightly. We get little sense of an escalating attack, and the incremental pulse of danger which so pervaded The Christmas Invasion, say, seems less present in this year’s giant snowglobe invasion. The funny business of the memory worm does have a gear-shifting, serious pay off, mind you, and the transformation of snow and ice into salt water feels poetically appropriate, even if the rules of a low-level telepathic field aren’t ever properly put into place for viewers, enabling us to guess at the outcome, or genuinely appreciate its fittingness.

Clara’s life has been dubbed a “soft mystery” in official terms. In old money, this would probably be a story arc, but after negative publicity surrounding “complex” storylines the PR computer says “no” to story arcs this year. I don’t know whether Clara’s origins make The Question (Doctor Who?) a “hard mystery” by comparison, but there’s no denying that Clara Oswin Oswald is an intriguing addition to the spaces and times of Doctor Who. However, the “soft reboot” (of new title sequence, theme arrangement, TARDIS and companion) leaves less room than usual for a villain, with Richard E. Grant not being greatly called upon. There are some potshots taken at “Victorian values”, but ultimately Dr. Simeon is little more than a puppet whose strings are pulled by script requirements and pressures of screen time. Like the Autons in Rose, monstrosity is really a convention rather than a focal point, given what the script has to achieve.

Our attention is elsewhere. To wit, Jenna-Louise Coleman never puts a foot wrong as The Girl Who Died. Whether as cut-glass governess or blimey-guv barmaid, she has great screen presence and chemistry with Matt Smith, and her character’s double life resonates with the episode’s theme of imitation, whether it’s the Great Intelligence repeating young Simeon’s words back to him in Ian McKellen’s resonant tones, the Doctor playing at Sherlock, or snarling snowflakes approximating themselves to earthly weather.

Much here is derivative, based on something previously thought or said, on behaviour performed to suit. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by this: for his third Christmas Special, Moffat must have been aware of not wanting to repeat himself excessively, and not wanting to follow a template too slavishly after the Dickensian Christmas Carol and Narnia-esque The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe. How to make something original out of standard Christmas elements? 2012’s elegant answer is to incorporate imitation as the story’s motor.

When all’s said and done, reviews are words, words, words. So perhaps the one word test should be applied, cutting through blizzards of commentary and opinion. How might The Snowmen best be summed up in a single word? It reminds me of many title sequences, of Patrick Troughton stories, of much-loved TARDIS interiors, companions and introductions, of better and worse Christmas Specials, of a gravestone in the previous story, of Asylum of the Daleks of course, of Murray Gold’s motifs, of November 23rd anniversaries long ago and yet to come, of Cardiff University’s Main Building, of pastiche and parody, and always of the BBC’s period drama brilliance. Or, in one not necessarily Christmassy word:

Remember.

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Doctor Who - Devil in the Smoke
Written by Justin Richards
BBC Books
UK release: 18 December 2012

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

Certain quarters of fandom have been clamouring for a Madame Vastra and Jenny spin-off for a while, and this ebook pretty much fulfills the brief – albeit as a “media tie-in” (in old money) rather than a fully-fledged series all of its own. Following the release of The Angel’s Kiss (which itself linked into The Angels Take Manhattan), I wonder whether every ‘event’ episode – or even just every episode, full-stop – will now arrive complete with its own commercially-available ebook. Personally, though I’m more than happy to buy DVD releases containing the TV series plus additional material, it feels a little odd to pay (seemingly on a per-episode basis) for prequel novellas to what’s still a public service TV series. But muttering about Doctor Who’s ongoing commercialization is a futile act – akin to trying to catch smoke in your hands – especially on the verge of an anniversary year and what will no doubt be a vast new plume of merchandise. Instead, fans and reviewers may as well just let it all swirl around them; like the weather, there’s seemingly nothing that can be done about Who’s corpulent growth as a mega-brand. And here’s something else for completists to enjoy (though Dan Starkey’s audiobook reading may well prove to be the more entertaining version, given the skill and verve with which he tackles character voicing).

Scrooge-like grumblings aside, there are some lovely moments in this tale, such as an observation of snow settling on the cold-blooded Vastra, as well as a mysterious death which sets everything in motion and features rather more “viscous carmine” blood than I’d expect to see in televised Doctor Who (particularly at 5:15pm on Christmas Day). There’s also some clever use of settings. Justin Richards plays with the reader’s expectation of a showdown set amid generic, grimy industrialism – all smoke, soot and merchants of menace – instead opting for a glassy, atmospheric location that greatly boosts his finale. However, the sense of place and time on show throughout is largely sketched in chocolate-box mode, relying on too many stock characters and shorthand sentiments. There are workhouses, and thugs, and baddies with names like Able Hecklington. Given that Justin Richards has to set out his stall pretty sharpish, and then wrap everything up just as quickly, it feels as if there’s little room for character development here, or indeed for very much which transcends the imitation of pastiche. Mocktoriana is drawn from how we remember collections of assorted cliché: the popular image of Dickens adaptations; jumbled TV Christmas Specials from over the years; big-budget advertising and its jacketing of history into seasonal prettiness. Furthermore, Vastra and Jenny are not really developed in any major way, and intimations of their relationship remain largely off-screen, or off the page. Devil in the Smoke, with its workhouse boys providing a point of identification, is self-consciously suitable for readers of most ages.

It may sound as though I’m being overly negative about this release – bah humbug! – but it has one feature that leaps off the screen and brings vitality to a sometimes insubstantial runaround. For me, the true saving grace here is none other than Strax. Justin Richards writes comedy just as fluently as he does action set-pieces, and his Strax one-liners are consistently laugh-out-loud superb. As a result, Strax pretty much gets all the best dialogue and effortlessly steals the show, for example with his Paternoster Row battle cry, not to mention his emphasis on “regrouping”. Richards clearly relishes the opportunity to subvert Sontaran militarism, but Strax’s forward planning is also valued, and he’s shown to be far more than just a comedic figure, but also one who is an important and respected part of the team.

The Snowmen has already provoked multiple prequels, whether for Children in Need, online, or in this guise. Like snowflakes, perhaps no two prequels are identical – some feature the Doctor, some (like this one) don’t really, some focus on Madame Vastra as ‘The Great Detective’, and others (like this one) amount to a colourful, undemanding romp compressed into less than a hundred pages. Can there ever be too much of a good prequel thing? In its favour, Devil in the Smoke ties into the imminent Christmas extravaganza in more ways than one. Not only does it draw on characters who have already become fan favourites, it also deploys its snowy backdrop for ambience, mood, and for the substance of plotting. Richards intelligently offers a different take on snowscapes (and a snowman) to the one we’re about to receive, and his closing line deliciously resonates with all the trailers and promotion for The Snowmen, setting the pulses racing of those of us “impatient for Christmas”.

I hope this ebook trend doesn’t expand to take in every episode next year, but instead remains an occasional and special treat, like all the trimmings that accompany Christmas dinner. With Devil in the Smoke, Justin Richards has served up something combining traditional, seasonal Who flavours with glorious notes of (potato-headed) piquancy.

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Doctor Who - The Angel's Kiss
Written by Justin Richards
BBC Books
UK release: 4 October 2012
Available to purchase from Amazon UK

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

Tied into The Angels Take Manhattan, this ebook constitutes a prequel of sorts. It's most notable for adopting a cod noir style and presenting events from Melody Malone’s first person POV. The gambit allows author Justin Richards to enjoy himself, and his playful pastiche does a fine job of conveying River Song’s unusual world-view.

The decision to link a novella, or long-ish short story, to TATM fits tidily with that episode’s emphasis on clattering typewriters and storytelling practices, as well as imitating the Melody Malone book that we’re shown on screen. It therefore has a sort of instant authenticity. Yet one might have expected the novel the Doctor reads from to itself become a tie-in, with glimpsed on-screen chapter titles being fleshed out, precisely inter-linking ebook release and televised tale. Instead, The Angel’s Kiss eschews such direct expansion of the story world, and sets its sights on bit-part players such as Julius Grayle and Sam Garner the private eye. More substantial than recent online prequels, but nevertheless far briefer and less narratively developed than an episode, this ebook compresses its storyline into a fairly limited number of settings and incidents.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty with this e-extra is how it uses the Weeping Angels. Of course, Moffat’s own TV scripts have form here, with the Angels’ modus operandi shifting radically from appearance to appearance – sometimes they kill victims, other times they bounce people back in time. Here they don’t really do either of those things, but instead drain life/time energy in a novel manner. In a sense, then, the Weeping Angels can pretty much be used to play whatever temporal tricks their author desires; as long as “timey wimey” shenanigans are involved at some level, and mixed with narrative threat, then the Angels basically remain on-brand. What best characterises them as a monster is that they’ve never been set in stone; each new appearance adds to their powers and purposes. And this is certainly true of The Angel’s Kiss. Angels can be rewritten, especially when they're read. But I still felt that Richards’ storyline reduced its angelic evil to an overly convenient, plastic and malleable plot device at times. Certain other Who villains would have fitted more obviously into events, rather than the Weeping Angels being reworked to carry things.

Ebooks such as this may well offer one future for Doctor Who publishing. Presumably overheads are lower than print editions, something which may enable ebooks to be targeted at a smaller fanbase or readership compared to the relative mass market required for many current Who titles. (I’ve always lamented the fact that there was no further script book published after Series One, something which I’ve heard said was a result of that title’s poor sales; perhaps ebook releases would allow original scripts to once again see the light of day). But ebooks would presumably frustrate the eleventh Doctor himself; it’s difficult to tear out the final page, for example: endings remain obstinately in place. Perhaps ebooks like The Angel’s Kiss might also frustrate sections of fandom; you can’t put this one on the shelf, nor admire its cover art in physical form. At the risk of coming over all old school – as if I’ve been thrown out of time by mysterious forces – The Angel’s Kiss would still have been more compelling for me as a material thing.

Regardless of its format, though, this delivers a pleasurable and well-crafted addition to River Song’s story. The classic noir detective typically has to contend with a mysterious femme fatale, but Melody Malone wraps both roles into one elegant package, her career at the Angel Detective Agency never distracting from her desire to make an impression on the opposite sex. But whereas Alex Kingston’s TV performance leaves some room for ambiguity as to just how knowing River’s sexuality and manipulation of male characters might be, the problem with first person narration is that it converts the character’s allure and mystery into descriptions of pointing the right bits at the right chap in order to get his attention. Unspoken game-playing becomes conscious, in-your-face strategy, curiously making River more one-dimensional rather than more complicated. You’d imagine that getting inside a character’s head would achieve the opposite effect.

By extending The Angels Take Manhattan, as well as giving Melody Malone all the best lines and pushing at least one Weeping Angel in a somewhat unexpected direction, The Angel’s Kiss glosses various character and creature arcs. Knowingly arch in its noir stylings, this arc angel of an ebook is never less than a hell of a lot of fun. In short, no reader will be left stony-faced by its incessant wise-cracking and wordplay.

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Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Nick Hurran
Broadcast on BBC One - 29 September 2012

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK preview of the episode.

The Angels Take Manhattan delivers in a series of ways: New York’s most infamous statue makes an impressive appearance, and location filming in NYC allows for some iconic Central Park sequences, especially Rory’s visit to Bethesda Fountain. It’s often noir-ish in tone, largely as a result of Melody Malone’s pulp pastiche mixed with repeated shots of dark, shadowy hotel corridors. Nick “slow-mo” Hurran does the business again, and there are some interesting ideas that help develop the Weeping Angels, chiefly their use of a “battery farm.” Surely this could’ve been implemented in any city or major population centre, though; in the end, there’s no strong or necessary link between Manhattan and what the Angels are up to. And do the Angels’ victims spend their entire lives in one hotel room? The plotting here produces some striking, uncanny images of people confronting their older selves, but it doesn’t quite seem fully thought through.

As a series finale, this sometimes suffers from an excess of narrative trickery. It constantly plays with audience expectations surrounding the Ponds’ exit, twisting backwards and forwards between a “final farewell”, death, not-death, death, and, well, a final farewell exactly as promised. For me, the frenetic to-ing and fro-ing got in the way of any sustained emotion; for loss to really hit home, I suspect that its mood has to linger with audiences. But all the whizz-bang scripting rather got in the way of building a powerful, consistent emotion. Rather than heart-felt sentiment and sincerity, this felt too much like a storytelling game, even down to a clever final integration with The Eleventh Hour. Or perhaps it's just that I’ve got a heart of stone.

Steven Moffat also repeats his favourite ontological game; the one where a character suddenly appears in what should be an impossible time and space. We’ve previously had the Doctor abruptly appearing on the TARDIS screen (The Beast Below), and strolling into a recording of the past (A Christmas Carol). This time it’s Rory who moves inside the pages of a novel being read aloud. As a device, it’s perhaps beginning to lose its impact through brazen repetition. Yes, Steven Moffat is an award-winning and massively talented writer, but can’t anyone – exec producer, producer, script editor, whoever – push him not to rely so heavily on tried-and-tested motifs? Just for once, it’d be interesting to see him produce a screenplay devoid of self-referencing Moffatisms.

The Angels Take Manhattan plays yet another game; it needs to find a way to make its ending properly final; a conclusion that can’t be rewritten or reversed. But it does this by reverting to Moffat’s fixation with spoilers: if the Doctor and Amy read ahead, and into their own future, then that future supposedly becomes fixed or “written in stone”. However, this gambit assumes that the events of River’s novel are nothing but the stone-cold truth. What if she’s fabricated, embellished, or dramatised events? I suspect that reading Melody Malone’s adventure shouldn’t quite work in the way that’s suggested. Time can be rewritten, although “not once you’ve read it”… but this can only be true if the act of writing is in no way aesthetically transformative, and amounts to a sort of pure, factual documentation. Storytelling – represented through typewriter clatter and words in extreme close-up – is reduced to a record of events; reading therefore means nothing other than discovering what is, was, and will be. And this attitude towards storytelling extends to the very last story that the Doctor is asked to tell: that of Amy's adventures which have finished, and which are simultaneously yet to come. Oddly, there's absolutely no concept of fiction (or art) within Moffat's artful fiction.

Setting this strangeness aside, “I just have to blink” is a smart inversion of the Angel’s first appearance, and the Angels continue to offer an effective, monstrous presence as Moffat returns them to their Blink modus operandi rather than building on the developments of series five. There’s also a bit of resetting for River, whose role as a criminal, and as the woman who killed the Doctor, seems to have been dissolved along with the Doctor’s legend. The irony is that just at the point that this story insists on fixed points and irrevocable endings, it nevertheless busily rewrites and re-orients Doctor Who’s continuity.

And therein lies the problem, because there can’t be any final ending in a programme like Doctor Who; it’s right and fitting that the Doctor should hate endings, never reading a book’s final page, because Who itself will never have the TV equivalent of a closing sentence. And this is why Moffat has to work so hard to trick viewers into believing in a final ending for the Ponds, even down to a collision of “written in stone” dialogue and written in stone visuals. And down to re-using a shot from The Eleventh Hour, to further cement the notion that Amelia's story is now wholly completed, and rigorously book-ended. But this sense of a closed ending pulls, ultimately, against the televisual and storytelling DNA of Doctor Who, where endings – whatever temporal rules you try and set for them – are always temporary. Afterwords are never the end; they’re just the bit before readers start imagining, and writing their own stories. (Or they’re the bit before the next Christmas Special).

Perhaps the most satisfying thing about The Angels Take Manhattan is that it’s a story about telling and reading stories. The angels get meta. But this remains a satisfaction at writerly cleverness in place of heartbreak and emotional devastation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll miss Amy and Rory, and this episode does a good job of showing their love for one another. But in the end, there’s not too much to feel actively sad about; they presumably live out their time together, remembering the Doctor and all their escapades, even reaching perfectly respectable ages. Their tragic fate… is to lead ordinary, loving lives. And it’s hard to feel sorry for the Doctor; he has River to look after him, after all, and we already know that he’ll have a new best friend soon enough, as the pleasures of seriality roll ever onward. The Angels Take Manhattan is, at best, a simulation of high emotion – a copy which shouldn’t be mistaken for the real thing. Statuesque and finely crafted, it may be, but it represents an impossible finality in a serialised world.

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