The Pilot

I can’t just call you Doctor. Doctor what?

We are now officially back. Its only been four months since The Return of Doctor Mysterio but with the year prior to that, it's been exceptionally slow going with regard to the new series in general. But now we have the final year of the Twelfth Doctor and of Steven Moffat. We continue with Nardole and are introduced to Bill Potts, who may or may not last through the transition to the Chibnall era. But let's introduce her first and get her first adventure going before we dabble in the realm of speculation.

Plot Summary

Bill Potts, a worker in the St. Luke’s University student cafeteria, is called into the office of the Doctor, who is working as a lecturer. He is intrigued by her as she has been sneaking into his lectures, though she is not a student, and has shown an interest in his subjects beyond the regular students. Further intrigued by her answers to his questions, he sets up private tutoring sessions with her.

As their sessions progress, Bill becomes more and more suspicious that the Doctor is not what he seems. He sneaks a shoebox of pictures of her mother into her apartment as a Christmas present after learning she didn’t have any. She discovers it was him by noticing his reflection taking the picture in a mirror.

In Spring Bill notices the Doctor and Nardole heading down a stair and follows them. She observes them checking on an electronic vault but is forced to run back up the stairs after knocking a loose pipe. Outside, she sees Heather, a girl she has had a crush on, moping on a bench. She makes conversation and Heather invites her to see something odd.

The two women walk to an alleyway outside campus where Heather shows her a puddle of water, though it hadn’t rained in a week. She has Bill look into the puddle and try and figure what is wrong with her reflection. Bill feels something is wrong but can’t place what. Heather smirks and walks away.

Several weeks later, Bill walks by the puddle and sees Heather staring at it. Heather asks her if she has figured it out yet. Bill offers to come over and look again if Heather promises not to run off again. She does so, but when Bill comes around the fence, she finds Heather has disappeared. Frustrated, Bill walks off, not noticing Heather disappearing below the surface of the puddle.

Bill heads to the Doctor’s office and vents her frustration with Heather at him. The Doctor however, keys in on a couple of details and runs off. She follows him to the puddle where he notices scorch marks in the pavement around the puddle. He takes a sample of the water and then shoos Bill away, attempting to get her to forget it.

Bill heads back to her apartment and gets a call from her roommate about being out. This unnerves Bill as the shower is running. She walks in to find both the shower and bathtub wet. She looks in to the drain and sees a star-corneaed eye looking back at her, just like Heather’s. She runs out and towards the Doctor’s office where she sees him walking. Before entering though, Heather rises from a puddle of water under a tree and begins to repeat Bill’s words to her. Bill, thinking Heather dead, runs up and barricades herself in the Doctor’s office, much to his surprise. The water seeps under the door and begins to take Heather’s shape again. The Doctor ushers Bill into the TARDIS where he then transports it outside the vault. The water follows and the Doctor then jumps to Sydney, Australia. The water follows again and the Doctor jumps once again to a planet on the far side of the universe and twenty million years in the future.

Bill steadily tries to take it in with both the Doctor and Nardole trying to fill her in. Bill walks away to a puddle nearby where Heather then reaches out and grabs Bill. The Doctor and Nardole pull her back and into the TARDIS once more.

The Doctor decides to pull the alien into a hot zone to try and push it off that way. He lands in the middle of a battle between the Daleks and the Movellans. Nardole, with an old sonic screwdriver of the Doctor’s, runs through and isolates the Daleks from the area of the base they are in. One Daleks pursues them but is distracted by Heather forming out of the water nearby.

The water takes over the Dalek’s form and follows Bill and the Doctor, having just met back up with Nardole. The Doctor recognizes that it is not a Dalek and it returns to the Heather form. He bids it be off but then realizes that it is pursuing Bill. Bill clues in that the water selected Heather as its pilot as she had given a strong desire to leave. Bill also realizes that Heather’s last thought before being taken over was her promise not to leave Bill.

Heather steps forward and touches Bill’s hand, showing her worlds and stars far away, inviting her to come with her. Bill however, encouraged by the Doctor, breaks away and releases Heather from her promise. The water dissipates and disappears, leaving a tear on Bill’s cheek.

Back in the Doctor’s office, fearing what he has done, tries to wipe Bill’s memory. She initially refuses but then accepts, although appealing to him to imagine what it must be like. Recalling Clara’s mindwipe of him, allows her to keep the memories. He watches her leave and tries to resist the pull, remembering a promise he has made. He abandons that though and materializes the TARDIS in front of Bill as she is walking across the grounds, inviting her to travel with him.

Analysis

This story reminds me a lot of Rose where the main thrust of the plot is told from the companion’s point of view and not a lot of detail given about the Doctor. Of course, we are a lot more familiar at this point with the Twelfth Doctor as opposed to the Ninth Doctor. There is also a lot of bling and recall back to earlier stories, both new and classic, which help disguise the fact that there is not a lot of actual story here.

I think it will be very easy to like Bill. She is peppy, upbeat, intelligent, and with her being gay, will keep the “no hanky-panky in the TARDIS” rule. I personally think the lesbian aspect of Bill’s character was a bit overplayed. Some of this, I think, comes from Steven Moffat’s romantic nature and deciding he can write a gay romance just as well as a straight one. I perhaps might not have thought it so painfully obvious if it hadn’t been for the fact that Bill’s sexuality and her being the first openly gay companion was made such a big deal in the British and fan media. I personally don’t care outside of the fact that an unfulfillable romantic crush is a little weak sauce for a central plot and I think the fact that it was between two women was used to try and paper over the cracks. That aside, I’m looking forward to what Bill might bring to the table.

The Doctor and Nardole will good as usual. I have a feeling that Nardole will eventually get a proper story to feature him as he again is kept largely in the background. He does get a few good one-liners and I enjoy the comic timing between him and the Doctor. I’m just frustrated that I can’t see more of it.

Similarly, the Doctor stays in the shadows a lot in this story. I suspect the vault introduced in this story will be a running theme and will eventually be revealed toward the end. But as for this episode, the Doctor is shadowy and mysterious with strong traces of humor built in. My own favorite moment is when he dismisses Bill and then tells the pictures of Susan and River to shut up, feeling the sting of his own conscious. It, and the others, are enjoyable moments, but again, this is Bill’s story and the Doctor just isn’t given that much to do, lest he outshine her as he probably would.

The Easter eggs were nice touches. Including the Movellans as those warring against the Daleks was an amusing touch. I also wouldn’t have minded seeing the Daleks fighting the Draconians, but this way only the Terry Nation estate had to be paid rather than having to pay the Nation and the Hulke estates for the use of the Draconians. I also liked seeing the coffee cup of old sonic screwdrivers. It was either the Third or the Fourth Doctor’s screwdriver he tossed to Nardole when they landed in the middle of the war. I’m also appreciative of any callback to the Beethoven introduction of Before the Flood and liked that. I actually wish Bill hadn’t interrupted so soon into the rift so he could have gone further.

All that appreciation aside, it cannot disguise what was mentioned earlier and that this is actually a bit of a weak story plot-wise. The crush between Bill and Heather is not particularly well developed before Heather becomes the pilot so it feels like rather a weak out that all they have to do is have Bill break off the promise to get the water to leave her alone. I also didn’t care for the fact that the water can move across time and space with ease. It made the entity a bit too powerful as well as turning the second half of the storyline into a slightly tenser version of The Chase. There is just a lot of build-up and then the payoff feels less than what you were expecting. To be fair, this is a problem I’ve had with Moffat scripts in the past so this is not overly surprising and was somewhat built in for me.

I thought the overall direction and effects were pretty good, although nothing spectacular. No major shots stood out to me as being great, but I also didn’t recoil at any either. For the most part, the Heather and water effects were pretty good, although there was one shot where the CGI was a little too obvious. It wasn’t strong enough to ruin the shot or the mood so it’s easily passed over.

Overall, I’d say this was a good first start, but like Rose, it will never be anyone’s go-to story for something to watch. It serves a purpose which is to introduce Bill and lay out things for Series Ten. Enjoyment beyond that is up to the viewer. I would watch it again and enjoy it, but again in the same way as Rose. It's a good middle of the road story and not much more than that.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5