Doctor Who Death In Heaven Spoiler Free Review

Well, here it is. And, woah. 

Let's start with the headlines, shall we? It's good. Actually, it's very good. In order to say anything else, we have to invoke whats quickly becoming a cliche even in spoiler-free review: if you really don't want to know anything - stop reading now. Seriously. 

In this past week, it's been reported that a total of nine viewers complained to the BBC about the themes raised in Dark Water. Those people will have plenty to complain about in this episode, as well, since the dead - particularly loved ones who are dead - are treated in a reckless manner, with an almost total lack of respect. It's by the far the most upsetting concept the show has dealt with in recent years. When there is no more room in hell (or heaven) the dead really will will walk the earth. 

There are a couple of moments in this finale that you are likely to have a very strong reaction to. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that by the episodes end, you're going to feel fairly angry. Not in a it's-time-for-Moffatt-to-go-he’s-destroying-my-programme kind of way. In fact, this might be the finest season closer he will write for Doctor Who. No, this is the kind of anger expended when you're genuinely invested in the characters and care about what happens to them. The stakes are very high, and it is clear that we cannot put good money on who does - and does not - get their happy ending. 

Moffatt and director Rachel Talalay are at their best here with a very tight script peppered with excellent jokes (like the reaction to The Doctor’s changed appearance, and a eyebrow raising gag about suicide bombers), to genuinely terrifying scenes where the show is channelling anything from Air Force One to George A Romero, to the point that you expect a cyberman to stalk the Doctor’s companion with “They're coming to get you, Clara ..” 

Since they appeared in the trailer, we’re probably safe in telling you that Kate Stewart and Osgood return, and they're every bit as fan-pleasing as you would hope. Stewart, in particular, gets a good few one-liners that deserve to find themselves on Whovian T-Shirts by the end of the year. There's also a great line that appears to gently damn the write-it-large elements of the Russell T Davies era. 

Yes, we’re dancing around the edges. No, we can’t say anything. If this preview was in anyway accurate, it would be a page of thick black lines, with maybe the occasional ’REDACTED’ screaming at you. What we will risk saying is that this story is about souls and promises. A number of characters fight desperately to save souls (crucially, not necessarily their own),and at one point (we can't even risk telling you when) a promise is half-made. And if we are paying attention, we can guess exactly how that promise will turn out. Elsewhere, Clara continues to channel her inner Doctor, at one point even invoking a familiar line from the Tennant era. 

We should say one last thing, and we’ll say it very carefully and slowly, because if you're a real ’traditional’ Who fan, one who doesn't much like change, then we have to say that a) you're really watching the wrong show, and b) you might want to sit down, because what we want to tell you might really annoy you. Michelle Gomez? She’s extraordinary. So extraordinary, in fact, that (you are sitting down, right?) there is an excellent chance she may obliterate the memories you have of any previous actor inhabiting the role of The Doctors’s arch-enemy. Yes, including that guy. Like the best power-mad crazies, there is a magnetic steely dead-eyed attitude to her that for her is clearly very sane indeed (it's not even clear that power really is her objective). She is entirely in command of every scene she’s in. One sequence, which basically consists of her just saying numbers, is a exercise in supremely upsetting tension. Electric eyes, electric performance. Gomez has breathed new life into a show that didn't know it needed it. She has, to coin a phrase, upgraded Doctor Who. 

If you want to see such things, there may be a bit of frisson between The Doctor and The Mistress, but honestly? That's in your perception rather than the performances. Interestingly, it's The Doctor that feels the need to prove his manhood, but it’s good that nobody really cares about about The Master’s sex-change. That's important for the show as a whole, and not just within the remit of sci-fi. Sure, The Mistress is still a white  Cis straight(ish) character, but it’s telling that no-one focuses on the fact she used to be a man, not even stammering over he/she pronouns. And yes, The Doctor appears to tacitly acknowledge that such a possibility is open to him. As you might have guessed, we've spent more time in this paragraph on the subject than all the characters do over the course of two episodes. For everyone else, it's entirely irrelevant. 

In short, this is an excellent episode. Sure, as is traditional around these here parts, there are a couple of moments around the resolution that wobble slightly, that may give you pause and make you look around awkwardly if there are non Doctor Who fans in the room. But otherwise, this is breathless, thrilling drama, and there's the real sense that the show is going up several notches for season 9. In this season, a major theme has been lying. That reaches a high point in this episode, with two very significant lies being told. And for once, we understand precisely why. 

“Say something nice”, The Mistress has a habit of saying in a disturbingly menacing manner. Since we've said quite enough nice things about this episode, we’ll say something helpful. If you can't see Death In Heaven as it airs, stay well away from the Internet. Trust us on this. You shouldn't have even read this, and listen: we don't lie. 

5/5

A slightly edited version of this review appears at http://www.cultbox.co.uk/reviews/episodes/doctor-who-s08e12-spoiler-free-review-death-in-heaven 

Doctor Who at 50: The Tribe Of Gum

And so here we are, at the remaining three episodes of the very first Doctor Who adventure, sometimes known as An Unearthly Child, occasionally called 100,000 BC, variously referred to as The Tribe Of Gum, and more commonly thought of as the story that hardly anyone bothers to watch once they’ve got past the iconic first episode.
For a series that returns so often to certain time zones (Victorian London at Christmastime, for instance), it’s perhaps odd that The Doctor and his crew have only really bumped into cavemen just the once, in the very first story. Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor does actually meet another caveman much later, but that doesn’t really count, since the caveman is out of his own time – which just so happens to be Victorian London.

The templates for the early series are formatted right here. It doesn’t matter that the show itself will go through a fair amount of personality changes before the year is out – all out sci-fi, US style Saturday afternoon serial, and at one point, something very close to Argento – the cast already know the parts they’re meant to play: The Doctor is the strange alien, Susan is a slave to her emotions, and Barbara is the one that expels a great deal of energy into keeping everybody sane. In addition, we have Ian as the resourceful hero. It’s a role that doesn’t always do him favours, however: Because he’s so entirely practical, he isn’t quite able to cope when things don’t go his way, or when he doesn’t understand what’s going on (like being transported hundreds of thousands of years before his birth, for instance). Barbara, for all her careful composure, is much more skilled at simply reacting – bending to the will of events that threaten to entirely demolish Ian’s comprehension.

It’s a small thing, but nobody points out that the TARDIS has travelled in space as well as time, (albeit a few thousand miles, rather than several light years) somewhat giving the impression that the Tribe Of Gum’s cave is in the rough location of Coal Hill School as opposed to, say, Africa. The Doctor’s muttering about the chameleon circuit not working – that the spaceship is still in the shape of a London Police Box – actually raises more questions than it answers. You wonder what The Doctor and Susan were doing in 1960’s London for six months. Remembrance Of The Daleks will attempt to suggest that he’s busy burying the Hand of Omega, but this doesn’t really make sense for a being that’s apparently on the run from the Timelords in a spaceship that he has a) stolen, and b) cannot fully control. And, indeed, why is it in the shape of a Police Box? If the whole point of a Chameleon Circuit is to blend the TARDIS into its immediate surroundings, then it has failed on every level: in the previous episode, Ian takes time to remind us that Police Boxes aren’t found in junkyards, that they’re more commonly glimpsed in the streets. Which prompts the reasonable (if Reading-Into-Things-A-Bit-Too-Deeply) question here: why the hell is the TARDIS disguised as a Police Box? It brings to mind the rather odd possibility that the TARDIS initially landed elsewhere, and The Doctor, needing to park it elsewhere but not trusting his own piloting skills enough to keep them on twentieth century Earth, having to resort to some heavy lifting with Susan down a Sixties high street. It’s also fascinating to note that The Doctor keeps all the TARDIS ‘codes’ in a notebook. He’s got one of the most advanced modes of transport in the universe, but he only knows how to use it because of some pencil-scrawled notes.
But meanwhile, the gang are being ganged up on by a tribe of remarkably well-spoken cavemen. (although, it’s equally likely that the TARDIS translation circuits are simply altering the tribe’s grunts into well-mannered English, because that’s the language that Ian and Barbara speak, and will therefore understand more readily. It’s presumably why most of the characters in the seventies adventures talk like energy conscious vegetarians, and a high percentage of the girls since 2009 are very flirty and self assured. While we’re on that, if the TARDIS has immediately begun to translate for Ian and Barbara, it means that either The Doctor or the TARDIS itself has already decided to trust the humans (which makes The Doctor’s line in The Snowmen – ‘I never know why, I just know’ even more poetic). It also suggests that The Doctor himself isn’t actually speaking English – which, in turn, indicates that Susan has to learn English on order to survive a term at Coal Hill.
It could go terribly wrong for the show at this point, to have the main villains a bunch of grunting men in animal skins. But the delay on any kind of futuristic environment will make Skaro even more shocking when it does eventually show up, and this racing around prehistoric caves works much better as a bonding exercise for Team TARDIS than The Daleks would (where, being on a futuristic planet inhabited by aliens would mean that Ian and Barbara would feel the need to defer much more to The Doctor, and if the first story had been Planet Of The Giants - as originally intended - then the humans would have likely spotted a lot more quickly that they had never actually left Earth, meaning that the power balance would have then shifted too far back in their direction.

It’s also a clever piece of scripting that, despite what fan memory might suggest, the TARDIS crew don’t actually invent fire for the tribe: brilliantly, the tribe have already created fire, they simply have lost the skill. It’s reasonable to assume that the tribe would have re-discovered fire without Ian’s help: what the ship’s crew actually give to the savages is the concept of liberty and grace. As this story is pretty accurate in terms of the era it is set in - literally, 100,000 years ago - we can be confident that the TARDIS crew are witnessing modern man arrive. And – more importantly than anything to do with fire – may have been responsible nudging modern man into existence.

And it’s worth pointing out again that The Doctor here, calculating, unemotional, panicky, incapable sometimes of furthering the plot and saving everybody, is probably a lot closer to his true character, and not like the one he will constantly strive to be. After all, Tennant’s Doctor will be at pains to remind us that what he has truly done is ‘run away,’ and Eccelston’s Doctor, in one of his first adventures, will simply shut his eyes when faced with danger, and wait to be killed. Here, however, it’s the proximity to two humans that force him to deal with some higher emotions and feelings. We know that Ian and Barbara are not the first humans he’s come into contact with (not if we believe that he’s a regular tea drinker at Mike’s café, anyway), but they are the first that he seems to have the time for. The first story in this series is understandably always sold as a tale of wonder for two disbelieving humans, but viewed within the scope of a fifty year series, it’s as much a tale about The Doctor barely managing to keep up with the surprising and amazing human beings he’s got himself involved with. There’s lots of debate as to whether The Tribe Of Gum really works as the first Doctor Who story, whether or not everybody wouldn’t have been better off if the action had immediately jetted off to Skaro. For my money, it’s actually a great benefit to throw the TARDIS kids off at the deep end in a story that has not much story apart from grim, mud-smeared survival. The very final story of the classic series will take that word as its title, and it’s all the crew will be able to think about for the next couple of weeks. While their attention is diverted elsewhere, they’ll discover that they have – almost accidentally – become friends.

Next time, we’re off to a Dead Planet, to meet some Nazi Dustbins who call themselves The Daleks.

Doctor Who At Fifty: An Unearthly Child

In 2013, Doctor Who will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. That's fifty years of travelling though time and space in a battered old police box, battling all sorts of monsters and aliens. The very first episode went out on November 23rd, 1963. It's a well worn piece of folk lore to note that this was just a day after the assassination of American president John F Kennedy.

That first episode was called An Unearthly Child, and is (mostly) set in what was then contemporary-era London. A pair of school teachers, concerned about a pupil, follow her home and end up in something well beyond their imagining. It's difficult to overstate just how odd this first episode must have appeared to the audiences of 1963. Fantasy and genre TV tended to involve much younger children battling against smugglers or traitors (Pathfinders, Secret Beneath The Sea, etc), or at the very least, lots of strings (Joe 90 and suchlike). Doctor Who, with a teenage girl, a older man well known to fans of The Army Game, and an attractive couple in the later part of their twenties, make up a cast that genuinely seems to have something for all the family.

It's been said time and time again (no pun intended) that this first episode is a genuinely brilliant piece of Sixties television - not just of sci-fi, but of television drama, full stop. You're not going to read anything vastly different from that opinion here. As an episode that's both an opener, and heavy on the exposition, it should collapse under the weight of its own narrative, but it's remarkably clear eyed, fast paced, and hurtles towards its conclusion.

The real masterstroke of that episode, however - certainly to modern eyes, and certainly to Matt Smith fans who might watch this episode for the first time as part of the 50 year celebrations - is that the episode isn't about the mysterious Doctor at all. Sure, he's the engine that drives the plot, but really, he's only so much of a macguffin: the story isn't even about the Unearthly Child of the title. Well trodden fan lore will have it the William Hartnell's Doctor is nothing like the incarnations that will follow him, being irritable, impatient, and distrustful, but if you watch An Unearthly Child in the wider context of the entire series, and make-believe for a moment that they're not simply making this show up as they go along, then Hartnell's characterisation is completely in keeping with what comes up four decades later. At the time of writing, Doctor Who's latest episode was the Christmas 2012 special, The Snowmen, which has Matt Smith's Doctor keeping humans at bay (while choosing to live amongst them) and only coming out to play when won over by an Earthling's insatiable curiosity. And it's this that's the driving force behind the narrative in this episode. Ian (William Russell) says as much himself: the only reason he and work colleague Barbara are getting involved with Susan's secretive private life is not much more than nosiness. It's also worth remembering that ever since the reboot of Doctor Who, the importance of the companion has been continually restated. Whether it be The Doctor sending villains to their death in A Town Called Mercy and Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, being told (and told again) that he needs a traveling companion near him, or the battle scarred Doctor in Rose referring disparagingly to the entire human race as 'stupid apes', The Doctor is not, by instinct, the sort of alien that later fanboys like to think of him as: the peacemaker who will never pick up a gun. He is a genuinely alien creature whose more peaceable and pacifist characteristics are honed by the humans he travels with. This will be underlined in the next couple of episodes, when many of the major decisions are made not by The Doctor, but by Ian Chesterton, a teacher from 1960s England.

In its first episode then, Doctor Who is, as it will be fifty years later with characters like Oswin and Rose, all about the companion. This being 1963, where the sixties have barely begun to twitch, let alone swing, those companions are not exactly young, but there's enough spark and wry humour there to relate to. Jacqueline Hill as Barbara in particular is great: managing about twenty different versions of her character without ever contradicting herself: stiffly formal when in teacher mode, visibly relaxing and playfully sardonic when Ian charms her, and - in a role that she will revisit many times over the next couple of weeks, a mother figure to Susan.

Carole Ann Ford as Susan, The Doctor's granddaughter, does excellently in what she will discover to be a somewhat thankless role in her time as part of the TARDIS crew. She manages to combine the two disparate elements of her character seamlessly: gauche fifteen year old and exotic alien. When she speaks about loving England in the twentieth century, it's with all the passion of a gap year student who's just discovered Paris in the Spring: she would be quite happy to come back to this planet, and this era, again and again, because she genuinely loves it out of all the possible destinations she could choose from. Incidentally, two bits of fan banter can be addressed here, right in the first episode: some have tried to argue that Susan and The Doctor aren't actually related by blood, a theory that seems to be shot out of the water when she addresses him as Grandfather when she isn't aware that anyone else is around, which, unless they're taking their cover story really seriously, seems to be an indication that The Doctor really is Susan's grandfather. Plus, there's a lot of fan theory around the fact that Susan claims to have come up with the name for the TARDIS, some fans thinking that suggests that perhaps she had something to do with creating the spaceship herself. But it seems more likely that she's simply telling the truth, and nothing more: that she came up with the name based on the way that it travels: Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to assume that the Time Lords back home simply adopted their name for all their craft, in much the same way that most stupid apes call their vacuum cleaners Hoovers.

It's also very much worth mentioning the TARDIS itself here. It's a brilliant invention on the part of the production team, and that's even if you ignore the looking-like-a-police-box thing, or the bigger-on-the-inside thing. The TARDIS control room works so well, and looks so modern even fifty years later simply because it makes no sense. With most spaceships in popular culture, there's at least a semblance of a traditional airplane's cockpit, with a pilot seated in front of a screen showing the craft's destination (think Star Trek). There's none of that here: a vast white room with odd, unexplained things suspended from the ceiling, mixed in with incongruous items that The Doctor has presumably nicked from the junkyard. It still looks modern fifty years later, simply because it loos so weird and alien. We'll discuss it a little more next time, as we look at the next few episodes, sometimes called 100,000 BC, and sometimes called The Tribe Of Gum, despite the fact that nobody on screen is referred to as such, but, somehow, the name stuck. As it were.