The Caretaker

You keep saying these things and it's just not staying in.

When I first watched The Caretaker, it struck me in a rather raw way as I think this is the apex of the unlikeable Doctor. I've softened a bit as time as past and I have seen the whole evolution of the Twelfth Doctor, but he is still rather rough here.

Plot Summary

The episode opens with cut scenes of Clara's double life where she travels with the Doctor, but still tries to maintain a relationship with Danny Pink. The Doctor arrives at her flat and tells her that there will be no adventure for a few day as he is going undercover alone. Clara resolves to devote this free time fully to Danny. She is then shocked to see the Doctor show up at the school posing as the substitute caretaker.

Clara harasses the Doctor, annoyed that he won't tell her what is going on and what the danger is. He continues to blow her off and sets up small devices throughout the school. Setting up the devices, he meets Danny Pink and gives him a hard time as an ex-soldier. He also sees Clara interacting with the other English teacher named Adrian, who looks a bit like the Eleventh Doctor, and mistakenly believes that he is Clara's boyfriend. He gives Clara the impression that he approves of her choice.

Nearby, a warrior robot called a Scovox Blitzer is activated by a policeman entering the building. He sees the policeman and immediately kills him. With the knowledge that the robot is active, the Doctor heads out to lure the robot back to the school where he has set a trap. A series of time mines will explode, sending it billions of years into the future where it will be of no harm to anyone. However, Danny, seeing one of the mines the Doctor placed, removes it, deactivating the whole string.

The Doctor arrives back at the school to see the mines in active. Both Danny and Clara arrive as the Scovox Blitzer prepares to attack the Doctor. Danny attacks the machine with a chair, redirecting it's attack focus to him. The Doctor detonates one of the mines and the Scovox Blitzer is pulled into the vortex. Unfortunately because of the change, it only goes forward a few days. Danny confronts Clara and she tells him about the Doctor eventually, going so far to reveal the TARDIS. The Doctor too is made aware that Danny is her boyfriend and his dislike for Danny grows.

The next day, Clara has Danny wear the Doctor's cloaking watch while she tries to smooth things over with him. The Doctor is aware of the ruse and Danny deactivates the cloak when the Doctor calls her bluff. Danny then gets under the Doctor's skin by referring to him as an officer and repeatedly calling him "sir". The Doctor angrily shoos them away. He is observed by the student Courtney Woods who asks if she could take a trip with him. The Doctor notes that he might have a vacancy later.

That evening during the parent-teacher meetings, the Scovox Blitzer reappears. The Doctor, caught off guard by it's early arrival, summons Clara and has her use his sonic to lure the machine to the caretaker's office where he will deal with it. Danny, although told to stay away, follows using the cloaking watch. Clara does as she's told, but because of the machine's speed, she brings it to the office before the Doctor is fully ready. The Doctor has built a device that causes the machine to think that he is it's superior officer. He orders it to deactivate but in doing so, the machine triggers it's self destruct mechanism. The Doctor needs more time and tells Clara to stall it. Danny then deactivates the cloak and gets the Blitzer's attention. It suspends it's self destruct countdown and attacks Danny. Danny however, avoids its attack by leaping over the machine. This buys the Doctor the time he needs and he redeactivates it and suspends the self destruct.

The Doctor gives Danny a grudging respect as he dismisses him and Clara in their actions. Danny notes that the Doctor is so hard because he wants someone to be worthy of Clara. He drives Clara hard to bring out the best in her. Later he warns Clara that if the Doctor ever makes her cross a line she can't handle, he needs her to come to him or he will break up with her. He notes that he can't help her unless she is truly honest with him. The episode ends with the Doctor dropping the inactive Blitzer in deep space having taken Courtney Woods along for the ride. She responds by throwing up in the TARDIS.

Analysis

I don't dislike this episode as much as I initially did, but I'm still not a fan of it. As noted above, this is the Doctor at his high point of grumpiness. In fact, none of the characters are particularly likeable and that exacerbates the Doctor's own grumpiness. Clara dips into her worst trait in refusing to leave the Doctor alone turns her catty. Danny also, while being sympathetic in terms of being the wronged and confused outsider, also comes across as being a bit dumb in not having picked up on some of this before. And while the Doctor's grumpy rudeness is not a fine quality, Danny's needling of the Doctor as an officer gets under my skin as well given the audience's natural tendency to trust the Doctor. It may be deserved, but there is a sense that if they just left the Doctor alone, he would deal with the issue just fine.

The Scovox Blitzer was an ok villain but a bit simple. It was hard to not make it look like a puppet and because of it's limited screen presence, it never carried quite the dire weight that you might have gotten from other villains. It also didn't help that despite having open shots, it never killed anyone other than the police officer. It took multiple shots at Danny and Clara but missed both in the initial attack. Then, Danny was able to leap over it. This made the Blitzer look less effective and also made the whole scenario seem silly. I can buy that Danny was athletic and a good soldier. However, being a good soldier does not automatically make you an Olympic gymnast, which is what Danny was appearing to be there. If he had ducked behind something and constantly given the Blitzer peek views to keep it's attention, that would have been more believable and consistent with combat tactics that Danny should have been familiar with. Running at a machine gun and then vaulting over it to avoid the line of fire does not seem like a good tactic and just makes things look silly.

One other thing that doesn't help this story too much is that there is a distinct lack of humor in it. What humor there is, seems more of the mean-spirited kind, such as always referring to Danny as a PE teacher rather than a Math teacher. The Doctor's only light-hearted moments are his early moments with Clara where he is clearly enjoying getting a rise out of her as he places the time mines and in his banter with Courtney Woods, whose "disruptive influence" streak he clearly enjoys. But other than that, its all yelling and anger with laughing at rather than laughing with and that just doesn't suit me.

I was curious to watch this one again to see if sat better. It flowed quickly and I can't fault it for boring me at any point. But if you don't care about the characters during the story, what good is it if it does move quickly? Having refreshing myself on it, I can't see myself pulling it off to watch again any time soon. The grumpier Twelfth Doctor works better where he is not being openly provoked. Likewise, Clara is better when she is more reigned in by the Doctor. Giving her freedom without a certain level of instruction minimizes her best characteristics and accentuates her worst.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5