I'm the clever one; you're the potato one.
The Snowmen was the third Christmas special of the Moffat era and was the bridging episode between the two halves of Series Seven. Like The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, there was a lead-in short where the Doctor is shown to have retired to late Victorian London in a fit of melancholy. Because of the bridging nature of this episode, the usual stand alone romp was not permitted and a more in-depth story was required. That suited fans and this episode was received much better than it's predecessor. It also added to the mystery of Clara, who made her return here following her introduction in Asylum of the Daleks.
Plot Summary
In 1842, a young boy is building a snowman, refusing to play with the other children as he views them as "too silly". The snowman begins to echo the boy's thoughts and offers to help him if it helps it. Fifty years later, the boy has grown to become the cold Dr. Simeon. He hires workers to collect the snow and bring it to a workshop where he collects it in an electrified glass globe. When the workers come to his house to be paid, snowmen manifest out of the ground and tear the workers apart.
Outside a pub in London, a new version of Clara emerges and spies a snowman in the alley. She asks the Doctor, who is passing by, morose after losing Amy and Rory, if he built it. He says no but takes a look at it. He tamps down his curiosity and walks away. Clara, unable to contain her own, follows him as he is taken away in a hansom driven by Strax. She is discovered and they are forced to stop to examine the snow while locking her in the cab.
Elsewhere, Dr. Simeon leaves a local residence, warning the owner, Captain Latimer, that within the pond where the prior governess drowned, is something that belongs to his institute and that they will be coming to collect it soon. As he walks away, he is confronted by Jenny and Madame Vastra. Simeon is unperturbed by their suspicions into his activities and the snow that seems to have been infected with an alien, low level telepathic field. They warn him to stop or he will be stopped by another. Simeon walks away.
After taking a closer look at the snow with Strax, the Doctor decides to wipe Clara's memory with a memory worm. Strax however bobbles the job and wipes his own memory. Before the Doctor can apply the worm to Clara, several snowmen manifest and attack Clara and the Doctor. The Doctor realizes that Clara is visualizing them, causing them to appear and orders her to imagine them melted. They do so. She then uses this information to convince the Doctor that if he wipes her memory, she'll be in danger again. He agrees, puts her back in the hansom and orders Strax to take her back to the pub.
Clara slips out of the hansom and follows the Doctor at a distance. She sees him head to a park where he plucks a ladder out of the air and climbs up, disappearing as he does so. Clara walks over and plucks the same ladder out of the air. At the top she finds that while she can see people, they cannot see her. She climbs a spiral staircase to a cloud above London where she finds the TARDIS. She knocks at the door but hides when the Doctor opens the door. She heads back down the staircase though the Doctor spies a scarf she dropped on her way down.
Clara wakes the next morning and leaves the pub job, with the owner begging her to stay. Clara changes clothes in the cab and is dropped off the house Dr. Simeon visited the night before where she returns to her job as a governess of the owner's two children, though under the fake name of Ms. Montague. Captain Latimer is relieved at her return and asks that she talk to his daughter, Alice, as she has been having nightmares lately. Clara speaks to her and Alice tells her of their old governess emerging from the pond as woman made of ice and terrifying them once again. Clara notes that while it has warmed up enough to melt most of the snow, the pond is still iced over.
Recalling her encounter with the snowmen, Clara returns to the park and tries to call out to the Doctor or even grab the ladder but is unable to. She is spotted by Jenny who takes her back to Paternoster Road where Vastra quizzes Clara but forces her to only answer in single words. After finishing, Vastra calls the Doctor and fills him in, triggering his interest by noting that Clara used the word "pond" to emphasize her problem.
The Doctor heads to Dr. Simeon's house where he sees the sphere of the Great Intelligence. He deduces that the snow is a crystalline life form that expresses itself through a telepathic field. He also realizes that it plans to transfer it's consciousness into a blend of ice and human DNA, animated in the form of the governess who drowned in the pond outside the Latimer home. He then dashes off before Simeon's servants can restrain him.
He investigates the pond and heads inside the home when Clara spies him outside. While Clara is putting the children to bed, the ice figure of the governess bursts and attacks them. They run and the Doctor emerges and shatters the figure with his sonic screwdriver. The Doctor starts to realize how much he has missed this life but before he can reminisce, Dr. Simeon begins to pump snow and cold air towards the house from a machine he has parked nearby and the governess begins to reform.
Immune to the screwdriver now, the group dashes downstairs where they find Vastra, Jenny and Strax entering the home along with Captain Latimer and the housemaid Francesca. Jenny lobs a field grenade and traps the ice governess in a force field. The trio then usher the house residents into the study to defend them, although Clara slips out to stay by the Doctor's side. Dr. Simeon knocks at the door and warns them to turn over the governess in five minutes or he and the snowmen who have formed outside will attack the house.
The Doctor and Clara create a small hole in the force field and slip through, causing the governess to chase them upstairs to the roof of the house. They then climb up the ladder and staircase to the TARDIS, the Doctor having moved it over the house. The governess pursues but the Doctor slows her down by thickening the water vapor of the cloud the TARDIS is resting on. He takes Clara into the TARDIS and gives her a key, wanting her to become his new companion. While distracted, neither of them see the governess pass through the TARDIS door where she grabs Clara. She pulls her away but doesn't know where the stairs are and instead pulls her back to the edge of the cloud where they both fall off.
The governess shatters while Clara is killed on impact. The Doctor materializes the TARDIS around them and then moves them into the house. Strax is able to revive Clara and continues to work on her while the Doctor isolates the pieces of the shattered ice governess. He teases Simeon with a piece of the ice and orders him to meet him back at the Institute.
When Simeon arrives at the Institute, he finds the Doctor and Vastra waiting for him. The Doctor then confronts Simeon, forcing him to realize that the snow was actually just a parasite and that it has merely been reflecting his own thoughts back on to him. Initially shocked, Simeon regains his composure and rips open the box the Doctor claims to have the ice crystal in. Instead, it is the memory worm, which latches on to his hand and begins to drain the memories from him. Simeon collapses and the Great Intelligence is also weakened by it's host's loss of mind.
However, the Great Intelligence has grown in strength and as Simeon becomes and empty shell, the Great Intelligence is able to transfer it's own mind into his body. The reanimated body knocks Vastra down and attacks the Doctor. The Doctor tries to fight him off but he is too strong. But just as suddenly as he attacked, he stops. The crystalline form of the Great Intelligence collapses into water and Simeon loses all strength and falls to the ground. The Doctor and Vastra check the rain but discover that it is salty, like tears.
The majority of the crystalline form of the parasite was around the house where Clara is dying. Her impending death and the sorrow felt by the family has overcome it's own telepathic field and replaced it, causing it all to collapse in tears. The Doctor and Vastra return to the house to see Clara just before she dies where she whispers to the Doctor, "Run you clever boy and remember."
After she is buried, the Doctor confides to Vastra and Jenny that he never saw the girl from Asylum of the Daleks' face but he did recognize parts of her voice and her words. He now realizes they were the same girl but in two different places and times. Invigorated with the mystery, the Doctor takes off to search for her. Over a hundred years later, Clara walks past the gravestone as a shortcut to meet a friend of hers across the field.
Analysis
Because of its bridging nature, The Snowmen could not be a stand alone romp as had been the tradition of most Christmas specials. I think this made it much better as it gave Steven Moffat something to focus on. There are small flaws but on the whole, this is an excellent story and a good fun ride.
We get two different phases of the Doctor in this story. In the second half, we get the traditional zany Eleventh Doctor that we all know and love. But in the first half we get a morose Doctor who is determined to wallow in melancholy. That would probably be a bit boring if that was it, but most of the Doctor's scenes in the first half deal with him being morose and yet slowly becoming interested in Clara and the events regarding the snow. It helps that he has both Clara and Strax to play off of but it's just interesting to see the Doctor trying to resist investigating and stay miserable when he is clearly being tempted to return to his old ways. "I don't do that anymore" is more the Doctor reinforcing himself rather than an actual tell off of the people trying to persuade him.
I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out why I like this version of Clara so much more than Clara prime. I mean, I don't hate Clara but I always found her a bit annoying, especially in her arrogance. This Clara has arrogance as well but I think it's a touch more tempered. She is bold but you see a bit restrained, like she is giving in to fear a bit more. She has wit and can argue but she also has restraint. I go back to the "one word" scene with Vastra and this Clara understands the rules immediately. I think Clara prime would have resisted and given into exasperation first before manipulating it to her advantage.
I also think that having a more overt attempt at romance between them played better. Unlike the Tenth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor would not have responded to it in any fashion other than his awkward manner so it's safe to say that the Doctor and Victorian Clara would not have become a Ten/Rose type thing. But in the Victorian attitudes, it makes sense that the Doctor's reactions and attitudes would be confused for romantic intentions and they would have been in line with her own sense of adventure. Had she not died, he would have rebuffed her affections and a more traditional friendship would have developed. Modern Clara by contrast was much more wary and held the Doctor at arm's length which made for some funny scenes but did not seem to enhance the friendship that well. It's hard to put into words but there was just something more natural and perhaps traditional in Victorian Clara's interaction with the Doctor than modern Clara and that just put be off.
The Paternoster Gang was fun as always. Strax is the major comic relief in this one but it was nice to see Vastra get a little more prominent role. I also liked the fact that they had a significant role in this story in terms of getting the Doctor back involved. There are a couple of stories where their involvement seems to be only because the story is set in late Victorian London. Here though, they are going about their way but trying to get the Doctor back involved. They supply backstory to him, provide a means of getting him back with Clara as well as their usual armed back up. I do wish Vastra had put up a better fight with the possessed Simeon because she is somewhat useless other than a person to talk to when they return to the Great Intelligence globe.
Speaking of the Great Intelligence, that is probably the weakest point of the story in two ways. The more direct problem is that its plan and even its nature is passed off with only a rushed line or two. A bit more development would have been nice, especially with Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen playing off each other. I also think their plan is somewhat dumb in the fact that they could have recreated a person being frozen in a pond without involving outsiders. There had to have been room on the Institute grounds to make a pool of water and freeze it with a person inside. That would have allowed everything to happen without outside interference. We certainly had already seen that Simeon had no qualms about murder so killing someone else to create an ice creature should have been easy. It's just another aspect of the villain's plan being overly complicated for the sake of the hero.
The less direct problem with the villain as portrayed is its effect on other stories. Mr. Moffat clearly had a plan in how he wanted to use the Great Intelligence as the overarching enemy in Series 7B and he also clearly wanted a tie in to The Web of Fear. That's all fine but it neglects the first Great Intelligence story: The Abominable Snowmen. The Snowmen has the Great Intelligence created as a mirror of the antisocial thoughts of Simeon in 1842. However, the Great Intelligence is noted to have taken possession of Padmasambhava not long after the Doctor was given a bell by him, which would have occurred in the first half of the 17th century. I very much doubt that without the influence of the Great Intelligence, Padmasambhava would have lived even 100 years beyond that time, much less the nearly 300 he needed to match the 1892 time frame where the Great Intelligence is freed as its own consciousness. This point has no bearing on the enjoyment of The Snowmen, but it is unfortunate that Mr. Moffat was so attuned to The Web of Fear that he forgot The Abominable Snowmen.
The direction and graphics were fairly nice. The ice governess is obviously the weak link in the chain but it was pretty good for 2012 and still holds up if given some leeway. It's not so janky as to cause any problems and everyone's reaction to it sells it a great deal more than any kind of perfection within the computer. The pacing of the story was also nice with a good balance between humor and tension. Again, I think the only real flaw is the development of the villain and the nature of their plan.
Overall this is a good story. It's fun with a good mix of comedy and drama. It's a good intro into Clara as a companion as well as a transition to the slightly less manic Eleventh Doctor that had dominated the prior two and a half series. With the exception of the Doctor's reference to the Clara that was in Asylum of the Daleks, it can also be watched as a completely stand alone story, which is also good for a Christmas special, even if it is a bridge. I think this would be an excellent story to pop in any time you had the itch for a bit of Victorian adventure.
Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5
Showing posts with label Paternoster Gang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paternoster Gang. Show all posts
Friday, December 15, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
The Crimson Horror
I'm going to go play with my grenades.
There was a great deal of talk in Series Six and Seven about a possible Paternoster Gang spin-off show. The Crimson Horror was in many ways, a closet pilot for this thought. I don't know how serious the idea was but the format of this particular episode is so markedly different than others in the series that I can't imagine that Mark Gatiss didn't write this up with an eye towards how the public would react to a story that featured the gang more front and center than had ever been seen before.
Plot Summary
A man named Edmund is fished out of a river in Yorkshire, his skin stained red. His brother collects his body and takes photographs of it to Madame Vastra, whom he hires to investigate his brother's death. Madame Vastra is especially intrigued when photographs of the eye of the dead man show an image of the Doctor.
The Paternoster Gang travel north and have Jenny slip enter a meeting hosted by a Mrs. Gillyflower. Mrs. Gillyflower rails against the evils of modern society and predicts its collapse. She offers sanctuary to the best people at a factory commune called Sweetwater, near where Edmund's body was fished out. Jenny travels with a group of new recruits to Sweetwater while Vastra examines a sample of the red coating recovered from the bodies fished out of the river. She recognizes it from something from the prehistoric era.
Once in the commune, Jenny slips away and discovers that the factory is an illusion. People are collected and dipped in vats of a red fluid which puts them in stasis. Any that don't adapt are killed by the fluid. Jenny further investigates and discovers the Doctor, having survived a dip into fluid, kept locked in a room by Mrs. Gillyflower's blind daughter Ada. The Doctor guides Jenny to a steam vent and puts himself inside. This washes the poison out of him and he returns to his normal self.
The Doctor and Clara had landed outside Sweetwater when another body was fished out. They met Edmund who was trying to investigate the factory and decided to help him. Posing as a married couple, they were accepted by Mrs. Gillyflower into the commune. They observed preserved people in giant bell jars, are grabbed and dipped into the same red liquid. Clara was put in stasis but the Doctor, not being human, rejected it and survived. Ada, recognizing that the Doctor was different, spirited him to a cell rather than throwing him in the river and kept him. Edmund eventually broke in to look for the Doctor when he failed to return and fell or was pushed into a concentrated form of the poison. He crawled out and made to the Doctor's cell before dying, hence the image of the Doctor on his eye.
Meanwhile, Ada discovers the Doctor's escape. While she is crying over his disappearance, Mrs. Gillyflower finds her and learns of what she has done. Fearful, she orders the acceleration of the plan. Ada appeals to her to let her come as well but Mrs. Gillyflower kicks her away, noting that only the perfect specimens will be taken.
The Doctor and Jenny discover Clara in a bell jar and break her out. They take her to the same steam vent as the Doctor for detox. While they are waiting, they are discovered by a group of Mrs. Gillyflower's attendants who are preparing the final plan. Jenny attacks them and knocks several of them out. They are joined by Vastra and Strax who disable or drive off the others. Clara comes to and is introduced to the group, much to their curiosity as the last time they had seen Clara (The Snowmen) she had died.
The group discovers that Mrs. Gillyflower is loading a rocket in the smokestack with a pure form of the venom. Vastra informs the Doctor that the venom comes from a creature called a red leech that was a plague to the Silurians back in the Mesozoic era. The Doctor leaves Jenny and Vastra to deal with the rocket while he and Clara go to take care of Mrs. Gillyflower. On their way, they discover Ada weeping in the hallway. The Doctor reveals himself to her and encourages her to come with them.
Mrs. Gillyflower uncovers a secret control panel and prepares to launch the rocket. The Doctor and Clara confront her and discover the red leech (Mr. Sweet) attached to her chest. She feeds him and he secrets the poison for her. The Doctor accuses her of blinding Ada with the leech's venom and she acknowledges that as true. She has preserved perfect specimens of humanity and will launch the rocket with the pure form of the venom. The explosion will spray it over the whole area, killing the townsfolk and letting her create a new "golden age" for her purified humans. Ada overhears all of this and attacks her mother in a rage. Clara, taking advantage of the opening, picks up a chair and smashes the rocket launch controls.
Mrs. Gillyflower grabs Ada, holds her hostage with a gun and slips through a door. They run back to the silo and find the two climbing the stairs. Mrs. Gillyflower shoves Ada down the stairs at the Doctor and launches the rocket with a secondary control panel. After it passes, Jenny and Vastra reveal themselves having removed the jug of venom from the rocket. Mrs. Gillyflower tuns the gun on them but Strax fires at her from the top of the silo, knocking her off the stairs to the floor below.
Mr. Sweet detaches himself from Mrs. Gillyflower and begins to crawl away. Ada approaches her mother and refuses to forgive her mother, much to Mrs. Gillyflower's amusement. She then dies and Ada uses her stick to smash the leech, killing it. Afterwards, Clara and the Doctor depart, the Doctor refusing to reveal the mystery of Clara to the Paternoster Gang. He drops her off at the house where she is confronted by Angie and Artie, who have discovered her time travelling antics, wanting to tag along on her next adventure.
Analysis
This is a story that benefits highly of either watching it a second time or going into it with the foreknowledge that it is meant to be an action-comedy in the vein of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Knowing that greatly increases the enjoyment of the episode rather than leaving folks annoyed as was the general case the first time around. In fact, isolating it and treating it like the pilot for a spin-off series does put it in a rather unique category for viewing and the viewer in a different mindset about it.
Because of the nature of the story and it's focus on the Paternoster Gang, the story is something of a Doctor-lite story. It's certainly a Clara-lite story. But even in that limited capacity, the Doctor is still very entertaining. He is manic and energetic but also still takes those moments of tenderness with Ada. He also has the good grace and sense to stand aside and let others take point, even if it means open killing. He does not reprimand Strax at any point, it is Vastra that calls him off from killing the people who attacked the Doctor and Jenny. Similarly, the Doctor offers no objection or remorse when both Mrs. Gillyflower and Mr. Sweet are killed. It's just something that happened and will stop things from continuing.
All the gang is enjoyable in this story with an interesting balance between Jenny and Strax. Strax gets all the full blown jokes, even the groaners like the bit with Thomas Thomas, while Jenny takes point in all the proper investigating and most of the action. Vastra only has a couple of scenes where she is figuring things out but most of her work is done off-screen. I don't have a problem with this, although I would have liked Jenny to have a bit more personality. Whenever she was on-screen, it was too easy for another character to steal the scene. Even the scene where she was in line and talking with the woman with the bad teeth, Jenny is the straight woman while the other infuses all the comedy.
I liked Ada a great deal with her blend of loyalty, desperation for love and eventual anger at those who wronged her. Mrs. Gillyflower on the other hand, I thought was a bit overplayed. I enjoy Diana Rigg as an actress but she works best in a more subdued manner. The manic and hammy villain she played here got a bit grating in large doses. She worked best as more of a background presence of evil but when in the foreground, the role got a bit mustache twirl-y. That might have been somewhat unavoidable as she was clearly supposed to be insane, but I still found her grating and a little too cartoonish for my taste. I also think the Mr. Sweet puppet was a bit silly, but again, closet pilot for a younger audience show.
One small thing that I wish they had found a way to do away with was the launching of the rocket from inside the silo. The simple fact of the matter is that there is no way that everything inside that silo would not have been instantly incinerated when that rocket was launched. The story was written with Mrs. Gillyflower on the tower so that the heroes could avoid the liability of actually killing her (Disney style) but it should have been done on a platform outside the silo because it's just dumb to have them all watch as a plume of rocket exhaust goes by.
I did enjoy the very stylized set, direction and camera work used here. There was a near constant state of mist that lended to the heavy Victorian vibe of the story. I know some fans didn't care for the old film style of the Doctor's flashback but I thought it worked within the playful context of the story. The whole thing just had a playful tone, even while being set in a Victorian thriller novel with a heavy dose of comedy.
Overall, I liked this story. You do have to go into it with a certain mindset, much as you do with something like The Chase. If you can start with that and let it play out as the comedy it was meant to be, it is a fun ride. There are some bumps within that fun ride that would probably be overlooked by the true target demographic of the story but take an older person like myself out of the story just a bit. Still, it's an easy one to go back to just to have some fun.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
There was a great deal of talk in Series Six and Seven about a possible Paternoster Gang spin-off show. The Crimson Horror was in many ways, a closet pilot for this thought. I don't know how serious the idea was but the format of this particular episode is so markedly different than others in the series that I can't imagine that Mark Gatiss didn't write this up with an eye towards how the public would react to a story that featured the gang more front and center than had ever been seen before.
Plot Summary
A man named Edmund is fished out of a river in Yorkshire, his skin stained red. His brother collects his body and takes photographs of it to Madame Vastra, whom he hires to investigate his brother's death. Madame Vastra is especially intrigued when photographs of the eye of the dead man show an image of the Doctor.
The Paternoster Gang travel north and have Jenny slip enter a meeting hosted by a Mrs. Gillyflower. Mrs. Gillyflower rails against the evils of modern society and predicts its collapse. She offers sanctuary to the best people at a factory commune called Sweetwater, near where Edmund's body was fished out. Jenny travels with a group of new recruits to Sweetwater while Vastra examines a sample of the red coating recovered from the bodies fished out of the river. She recognizes it from something from the prehistoric era.
Once in the commune, Jenny slips away and discovers that the factory is an illusion. People are collected and dipped in vats of a red fluid which puts them in stasis. Any that don't adapt are killed by the fluid. Jenny further investigates and discovers the Doctor, having survived a dip into fluid, kept locked in a room by Mrs. Gillyflower's blind daughter Ada. The Doctor guides Jenny to a steam vent and puts himself inside. This washes the poison out of him and he returns to his normal self.
The Doctor and Clara had landed outside Sweetwater when another body was fished out. They met Edmund who was trying to investigate the factory and decided to help him. Posing as a married couple, they were accepted by Mrs. Gillyflower into the commune. They observed preserved people in giant bell jars, are grabbed and dipped into the same red liquid. Clara was put in stasis but the Doctor, not being human, rejected it and survived. Ada, recognizing that the Doctor was different, spirited him to a cell rather than throwing him in the river and kept him. Edmund eventually broke in to look for the Doctor when he failed to return and fell or was pushed into a concentrated form of the poison. He crawled out and made to the Doctor's cell before dying, hence the image of the Doctor on his eye.
Meanwhile, Ada discovers the Doctor's escape. While she is crying over his disappearance, Mrs. Gillyflower finds her and learns of what she has done. Fearful, she orders the acceleration of the plan. Ada appeals to her to let her come as well but Mrs. Gillyflower kicks her away, noting that only the perfect specimens will be taken.
The Doctor and Jenny discover Clara in a bell jar and break her out. They take her to the same steam vent as the Doctor for detox. While they are waiting, they are discovered by a group of Mrs. Gillyflower's attendants who are preparing the final plan. Jenny attacks them and knocks several of them out. They are joined by Vastra and Strax who disable or drive off the others. Clara comes to and is introduced to the group, much to their curiosity as the last time they had seen Clara (The Snowmen) she had died.
The group discovers that Mrs. Gillyflower is loading a rocket in the smokestack with a pure form of the venom. Vastra informs the Doctor that the venom comes from a creature called a red leech that was a plague to the Silurians back in the Mesozoic era. The Doctor leaves Jenny and Vastra to deal with the rocket while he and Clara go to take care of Mrs. Gillyflower. On their way, they discover Ada weeping in the hallway. The Doctor reveals himself to her and encourages her to come with them.
Mrs. Gillyflower uncovers a secret control panel and prepares to launch the rocket. The Doctor and Clara confront her and discover the red leech (Mr. Sweet) attached to her chest. She feeds him and he secrets the poison for her. The Doctor accuses her of blinding Ada with the leech's venom and she acknowledges that as true. She has preserved perfect specimens of humanity and will launch the rocket with the pure form of the venom. The explosion will spray it over the whole area, killing the townsfolk and letting her create a new "golden age" for her purified humans. Ada overhears all of this and attacks her mother in a rage. Clara, taking advantage of the opening, picks up a chair and smashes the rocket launch controls.
Mrs. Gillyflower grabs Ada, holds her hostage with a gun and slips through a door. They run back to the silo and find the two climbing the stairs. Mrs. Gillyflower shoves Ada down the stairs at the Doctor and launches the rocket with a secondary control panel. After it passes, Jenny and Vastra reveal themselves having removed the jug of venom from the rocket. Mrs. Gillyflower tuns the gun on them but Strax fires at her from the top of the silo, knocking her off the stairs to the floor below.
Mr. Sweet detaches himself from Mrs. Gillyflower and begins to crawl away. Ada approaches her mother and refuses to forgive her mother, much to Mrs. Gillyflower's amusement. She then dies and Ada uses her stick to smash the leech, killing it. Afterwards, Clara and the Doctor depart, the Doctor refusing to reveal the mystery of Clara to the Paternoster Gang. He drops her off at the house where she is confronted by Angie and Artie, who have discovered her time travelling antics, wanting to tag along on her next adventure.
Analysis
This is a story that benefits highly of either watching it a second time or going into it with the foreknowledge that it is meant to be an action-comedy in the vein of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Knowing that greatly increases the enjoyment of the episode rather than leaving folks annoyed as was the general case the first time around. In fact, isolating it and treating it like the pilot for a spin-off series does put it in a rather unique category for viewing and the viewer in a different mindset about it.
Because of the nature of the story and it's focus on the Paternoster Gang, the story is something of a Doctor-lite story. It's certainly a Clara-lite story. But even in that limited capacity, the Doctor is still very entertaining. He is manic and energetic but also still takes those moments of tenderness with Ada. He also has the good grace and sense to stand aside and let others take point, even if it means open killing. He does not reprimand Strax at any point, it is Vastra that calls him off from killing the people who attacked the Doctor and Jenny. Similarly, the Doctor offers no objection or remorse when both Mrs. Gillyflower and Mr. Sweet are killed. It's just something that happened and will stop things from continuing.
All the gang is enjoyable in this story with an interesting balance between Jenny and Strax. Strax gets all the full blown jokes, even the groaners like the bit with Thomas Thomas, while Jenny takes point in all the proper investigating and most of the action. Vastra only has a couple of scenes where she is figuring things out but most of her work is done off-screen. I don't have a problem with this, although I would have liked Jenny to have a bit more personality. Whenever she was on-screen, it was too easy for another character to steal the scene. Even the scene where she was in line and talking with the woman with the bad teeth, Jenny is the straight woman while the other infuses all the comedy.
I liked Ada a great deal with her blend of loyalty, desperation for love and eventual anger at those who wronged her. Mrs. Gillyflower on the other hand, I thought was a bit overplayed. I enjoy Diana Rigg as an actress but she works best in a more subdued manner. The manic and hammy villain she played here got a bit grating in large doses. She worked best as more of a background presence of evil but when in the foreground, the role got a bit mustache twirl-y. That might have been somewhat unavoidable as she was clearly supposed to be insane, but I still found her grating and a little too cartoonish for my taste. I also think the Mr. Sweet puppet was a bit silly, but again, closet pilot for a younger audience show.
One small thing that I wish they had found a way to do away with was the launching of the rocket from inside the silo. The simple fact of the matter is that there is no way that everything inside that silo would not have been instantly incinerated when that rocket was launched. The story was written with Mrs. Gillyflower on the tower so that the heroes could avoid the liability of actually killing her (Disney style) but it should have been done on a platform outside the silo because it's just dumb to have them all watch as a plume of rocket exhaust goes by.
I did enjoy the very stylized set, direction and camera work used here. There was a near constant state of mist that lended to the heavy Victorian vibe of the story. I know some fans didn't care for the old film style of the Doctor's flashback but I thought it worked within the playful context of the story. The whole thing just had a playful tone, even while being set in a Victorian thriller novel with a heavy dose of comedy.
Overall, I liked this story. You do have to go into it with a certain mindset, much as you do with something like The Chase. If you can start with that and let it play out as the comedy it was meant to be, it is a fun ride. There are some bumps within that fun ride that would probably be overlooked by the true target demographic of the story but take an older person like myself out of the story just a bit. Still, it's an easy one to go back to just to have some fun.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Friday, July 14, 2017
The Name of the Doctor
Doctor, what is your name?
The Name of the Doctor was the big lead in for the 50th anniversary special. It also was looking to reveal the mystery behind Clara as well as start to peel back the onion on a number of mysteries that swirled through the Eleventh Doctor's tenure. This gave the story a fairly tall order to fill and it was debuted with much hype. It also was the first of four straight stories to go with the "... of the Doctor." naming convention. I remembered enjoying this one the first time through but does it stand when the hype has faded?
Plot Summary
Madame Vastra goes to see a condemned murder who offers information about the Doctor in exchange for his life. She evaluates his information and decides to hold a discussion with other parties about it. She puts herself and Jenny to sleep and sends notices to have Strax and Clara put to sleep as well (Clara by means of a sleeping agent in the paper of the letter she sent).
Clara wakes to see the three Paternosters around a table in a dream world where they are joined by the River Song impression from the Library, whom Clara has never met and had only occasional references by the Doctor. Vastra relays the information along with a set of space-time coordinates. River realizes something about the message but before she can relate it, Jenny is attacked in her real body by creatures called the Whisper-Men. River forces everyone to wake up but Jenny, Vastra and Strax are all captured.
Clara wakes to find the Doctor duped by her charges into playing blind-man's bluff while they slipped out to a movie. She tells him what happened and the Doctor rushes off to the TARDIS. He realizes that the message meant that his grave has been found on the planet Trenzalore. He takes the coordinates from Clara's memory and they head off there, though the TARDIS resists them the whole way. The Doctor is forced to forcibly land on the planet and they walk through a graveyard toward the dead Doctor's TARDIS, which has grown to enormous size.
As they walk, Clara sees and hears River, who kept the line open from their earlier chat. Clara and the Doctor find a tomb with River's name on it and she prompts Clara that it might be a passage to the Doctor's tomb. They open it as a group of Whisper-Men appear and rush at them. They are chased through the tunnel until they come to the TARDIS and lock the Whisper-Men out. As they walk through the TARDIS, Clara begins to remember what the Doctor revealed about her during Journey to the Center of the TARDIS.
The Doctor and Clara meet the Paternosters who are being held by the Whisper-Men and the Great Intelligence, taking the form of Dr. Simeon. The Great Intelligence threatens to kill the four friends unless the Doctor opens his tomb by stating his real name. The Doctor begs him not to but River, unseen to all, states his name and opens the doors. The Great Intelligence enters and they find a glowing rip in the fabric of space-time, which gives access to the entirety of the Doctor's timeline.
The Great Intelligence enters the timeline, destroying the Doctor's past and future. As he does, the Doctor loses strength and begins to die. Vastra notes stars going out as the Doctor's victories are reversed. Jenny disappears as she was saved by the Doctor. Strax also becomes hostile and Vastra is forced to kill him. Realizing that the only way to save the Doctor is to restore the Doctor's timeline, and knowing she has already done it before, Clara steps into the Doctor's timeline. Thousands of replicas of her are made across time and space (including those seen in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen) but the prime version of Clara falls into a rocky space surrounded by echos of the Doctor's past.
Clara's entry saves the Doctor and restores his previous victories, including Jenny and Strax. He then elects to go after Clara. River appeals to him not to and he acknowledges that he was able to see her the whole time. They have a last kiss and finally say their goodbyes as he enters his time stream. He finds Clara confused and offers her a copy of her parents' leaf to ground her. He then grabs hold of her. Before they can leave though, a new figure emerges from the shadows. Clara faints from the stress and the Doctor backs out of his time stream as the War Doctor comes into focus.
Analysis
I think we can call this one a fairly good episode, although like a number of the Steven Moffat stories in this era, it loses a little bit when watched out of context of the rest of the series. I had actually forgotten that it makes a heavy reference to the events of Journey to the Center of the TARDIS since that is where the Doctor told Clara about her other iterations. But it still flows fairly well, although I noticed my appreciation of the Paternoster Gang was a bit diminished this time around.
The Doctor was enjoyable as always here but he was not the real driver of the plot. Nearly all the action was centered around the various companions so that the Doctor seemed fairly ineffectual up until the end. He also seemed a bit weak when directly confronting the Great Intelligence, needing River to give the Intelligence what it wanted and then having Clara do the actual saving. Of course, since they'd already run across evidence of what Clara had done, the whole thing was inevitable so his weakness could be somewhat excused. But it was still a little disappointing.
The Doctor's best scenes were actually with River and her performance in general was quite enjoyable. In many ways, her and Strax were the only source of levity and her humor always seems more witty and enjoyable than the slapstick that Strax indulges in. But when she goes for the more serious moment of actually giving him hope that Clara is alive and that he has to say goodbye, it works really well and has a poignancy to it. I also like it that they didn't expand on the cheap gag of showing the view from the Paternoster Gang and showing the Doctor holding air when he is holding River. That would have ruined the mood and I thought that scene in particular was quite well done.
I must also say that I actually like Clara in this story. Overall, I think my enjoyment of Clara is greater in Series 7B when she is still the Impossible Girl. Less of her personality is developed because the quest narrative takes precedence and that makes her more enjoyable overall, at least to me, as I find her regular personality somewhat annoying. But she did well here, being on her heels most of the time and acting as River's puppet for a short while. I can find no fault with her here.
The Paternoster Gang was okay but they were a bit disappointing to me. Strax was his normal self so that was par for the course, but both Jenny and Vastra seemed less than themselves here. That's less of a leap for Jenny given that she is often portrayed as the lesser of the two and it seems she was attacked first so a more diminished presence should be expected. But Vastra seems nearly helpless through most of the story and that just doesn't suit her. A mind as developed as she has should be always in motion and prepared to make plans. Having her stand and fret while waiting for someone else to figure out what to do just doesn't suit her and lessened the overall character. They were still enjoyable, but less than they should have been.
The villains were a bit wasted in this I thought. The Whisper-Men were quite scary in appearance and their existence as manifestations of thought made them particularly creepy. But they don't do much aside from menace and act as the slow-moving soldiers for the Great Intelligence. The Great Intelligence himself is also underutilized as doesn't even appear until nearly the halfway point of the episode and then is torn apart by the time winds after entering the Doctor's time stream. It also seems rather weak that he kills himself to destroy the Doctor and doesn't think of doing anything to the other people who might come in after him and thwart his plans.
To cover a point raised by HISHE, how exactly does Clara's thousands of fragments overcome the fragments of the Great Intelligence? Is she stronger than he and just overwrites him or does she actually have to fight him (and if necessary die) as her two previously shown iterations do? Also, why is the Great Intelligence destroyed but Clara not upon entering the time stream? Is it because he exists as thought while she still has a flesh and blood body that holds up better in the time winds? Of course, she would have died soon enough due to the mental damage done in the time stream, but it's still a bit of an unresolved point that bugs me.
The story also suffers a little bit from aging in the way that it introduces the War Doctor. The Doctor notes that the War persona is his secret and his actions were not in the name of the Doctor. He then leaves and the War Doctor turns around to then have words on the screen saying "Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor." At the time I'm sure this was a huge squee moment but with the 50th anniversary long over, it's a break in the narrative flow and upsets the mood. I think there was enough clarity from Clara and the Doctor's conversation to denote that John Hurt is a previous iteration of the Doctor and having the credits roll after he turns around with nothing more than a steel gaze would have been sufficient. The moment could have been done in the closing credits with a solo credit line saying the same thing on the closing credit background. I'ts a pretty small nit but it does bug me a bit.
The overall direction was pretty good and the effects weren't completely terrible either given how much old footage Clara had to be spliced into. Clearly the worst insert was with the Second Doctor. The green screen was painfully obvious and I can't understand why the Second Doctor was running around in his fur coat in Southern California. If it had been a scene on a mountain and they were clearly attempting to recreate The Abominable Snowmen, I would have understood and the green screen would have been easier to forgive, given the very limited amount of footage there. But the setting made no sense to me and that just stuck out. Clara falling into the time stream also looked pretty fake. Falling just seems to be something that television can't quite get right.
As for the story itself, it works fairly well, even if you need to rewatch other stories in the Series to get all the nuances. That's not abnormal for modern Doctor Who and even the classic series would have stories make notes to past stories so that doesn't bother me. I think the it would have been a little better served to have been longer as some of it seemed a bit rushed and underdeveloped. Yet there was no real point of padding so it's just a case of cramming so much into a show that other details get dropped. That feeds into the rushed feeling in certain scenes but I'd rather have a story where a little bit of trim was made than to have a story that has been padded up.
Overall, this was a pretty good lead in to the anniversary special. Was it perfect; no. But it had a good overall feel and pace and it was engaging the whole way through, even if it went overboard on the melodrama at times. It was a good story and an easy one to rewatch, but also clearly not a story to lead a new fan into. But that's not going to stop me from pulling out now and again to watch on it's own.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The Name of the Doctor was the big lead in for the 50th anniversary special. It also was looking to reveal the mystery behind Clara as well as start to peel back the onion on a number of mysteries that swirled through the Eleventh Doctor's tenure. This gave the story a fairly tall order to fill and it was debuted with much hype. It also was the first of four straight stories to go with the "... of the Doctor." naming convention. I remembered enjoying this one the first time through but does it stand when the hype has faded?
Plot Summary
Madame Vastra goes to see a condemned murder who offers information about the Doctor in exchange for his life. She evaluates his information and decides to hold a discussion with other parties about it. She puts herself and Jenny to sleep and sends notices to have Strax and Clara put to sleep as well (Clara by means of a sleeping agent in the paper of the letter she sent).
Clara wakes to see the three Paternosters around a table in a dream world where they are joined by the River Song impression from the Library, whom Clara has never met and had only occasional references by the Doctor. Vastra relays the information along with a set of space-time coordinates. River realizes something about the message but before she can relate it, Jenny is attacked in her real body by creatures called the Whisper-Men. River forces everyone to wake up but Jenny, Vastra and Strax are all captured.
Clara wakes to find the Doctor duped by her charges into playing blind-man's bluff while they slipped out to a movie. She tells him what happened and the Doctor rushes off to the TARDIS. He realizes that the message meant that his grave has been found on the planet Trenzalore. He takes the coordinates from Clara's memory and they head off there, though the TARDIS resists them the whole way. The Doctor is forced to forcibly land on the planet and they walk through a graveyard toward the dead Doctor's TARDIS, which has grown to enormous size.
As they walk, Clara sees and hears River, who kept the line open from their earlier chat. Clara and the Doctor find a tomb with River's name on it and she prompts Clara that it might be a passage to the Doctor's tomb. They open it as a group of Whisper-Men appear and rush at them. They are chased through the tunnel until they come to the TARDIS and lock the Whisper-Men out. As they walk through the TARDIS, Clara begins to remember what the Doctor revealed about her during Journey to the Center of the TARDIS.
The Doctor and Clara meet the Paternosters who are being held by the Whisper-Men and the Great Intelligence, taking the form of Dr. Simeon. The Great Intelligence threatens to kill the four friends unless the Doctor opens his tomb by stating his real name. The Doctor begs him not to but River, unseen to all, states his name and opens the doors. The Great Intelligence enters and they find a glowing rip in the fabric of space-time, which gives access to the entirety of the Doctor's timeline.
The Great Intelligence enters the timeline, destroying the Doctor's past and future. As he does, the Doctor loses strength and begins to die. Vastra notes stars going out as the Doctor's victories are reversed. Jenny disappears as she was saved by the Doctor. Strax also becomes hostile and Vastra is forced to kill him. Realizing that the only way to save the Doctor is to restore the Doctor's timeline, and knowing she has already done it before, Clara steps into the Doctor's timeline. Thousands of replicas of her are made across time and space (including those seen in Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen) but the prime version of Clara falls into a rocky space surrounded by echos of the Doctor's past.
Clara's entry saves the Doctor and restores his previous victories, including Jenny and Strax. He then elects to go after Clara. River appeals to him not to and he acknowledges that he was able to see her the whole time. They have a last kiss and finally say their goodbyes as he enters his time stream. He finds Clara confused and offers her a copy of her parents' leaf to ground her. He then grabs hold of her. Before they can leave though, a new figure emerges from the shadows. Clara faints from the stress and the Doctor backs out of his time stream as the War Doctor comes into focus.
Analysis
I think we can call this one a fairly good episode, although like a number of the Steven Moffat stories in this era, it loses a little bit when watched out of context of the rest of the series. I had actually forgotten that it makes a heavy reference to the events of Journey to the Center of the TARDIS since that is where the Doctor told Clara about her other iterations. But it still flows fairly well, although I noticed my appreciation of the Paternoster Gang was a bit diminished this time around.
The Doctor was enjoyable as always here but he was not the real driver of the plot. Nearly all the action was centered around the various companions so that the Doctor seemed fairly ineffectual up until the end. He also seemed a bit weak when directly confronting the Great Intelligence, needing River to give the Intelligence what it wanted and then having Clara do the actual saving. Of course, since they'd already run across evidence of what Clara had done, the whole thing was inevitable so his weakness could be somewhat excused. But it was still a little disappointing.
The Doctor's best scenes were actually with River and her performance in general was quite enjoyable. In many ways, her and Strax were the only source of levity and her humor always seems more witty and enjoyable than the slapstick that Strax indulges in. But when she goes for the more serious moment of actually giving him hope that Clara is alive and that he has to say goodbye, it works really well and has a poignancy to it. I also like it that they didn't expand on the cheap gag of showing the view from the Paternoster Gang and showing the Doctor holding air when he is holding River. That would have ruined the mood and I thought that scene in particular was quite well done.
I must also say that I actually like Clara in this story. Overall, I think my enjoyment of Clara is greater in Series 7B when she is still the Impossible Girl. Less of her personality is developed because the quest narrative takes precedence and that makes her more enjoyable overall, at least to me, as I find her regular personality somewhat annoying. But she did well here, being on her heels most of the time and acting as River's puppet for a short while. I can find no fault with her here.
The Paternoster Gang was okay but they were a bit disappointing to me. Strax was his normal self so that was par for the course, but both Jenny and Vastra seemed less than themselves here. That's less of a leap for Jenny given that she is often portrayed as the lesser of the two and it seems she was attacked first so a more diminished presence should be expected. But Vastra seems nearly helpless through most of the story and that just doesn't suit her. A mind as developed as she has should be always in motion and prepared to make plans. Having her stand and fret while waiting for someone else to figure out what to do just doesn't suit her and lessened the overall character. They were still enjoyable, but less than they should have been.
The villains were a bit wasted in this I thought. The Whisper-Men were quite scary in appearance and their existence as manifestations of thought made them particularly creepy. But they don't do much aside from menace and act as the slow-moving soldiers for the Great Intelligence. The Great Intelligence himself is also underutilized as doesn't even appear until nearly the halfway point of the episode and then is torn apart by the time winds after entering the Doctor's time stream. It also seems rather weak that he kills himself to destroy the Doctor and doesn't think of doing anything to the other people who might come in after him and thwart his plans.
To cover a point raised by HISHE, how exactly does Clara's thousands of fragments overcome the fragments of the Great Intelligence? Is she stronger than he and just overwrites him or does she actually have to fight him (and if necessary die) as her two previously shown iterations do? Also, why is the Great Intelligence destroyed but Clara not upon entering the time stream? Is it because he exists as thought while she still has a flesh and blood body that holds up better in the time winds? Of course, she would have died soon enough due to the mental damage done in the time stream, but it's still a bit of an unresolved point that bugs me.
The story also suffers a little bit from aging in the way that it introduces the War Doctor. The Doctor notes that the War persona is his secret and his actions were not in the name of the Doctor. He then leaves and the War Doctor turns around to then have words on the screen saying "Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor." At the time I'm sure this was a huge squee moment but with the 50th anniversary long over, it's a break in the narrative flow and upsets the mood. I think there was enough clarity from Clara and the Doctor's conversation to denote that John Hurt is a previous iteration of the Doctor and having the credits roll after he turns around with nothing more than a steel gaze would have been sufficient. The moment could have been done in the closing credits with a solo credit line saying the same thing on the closing credit background. I'ts a pretty small nit but it does bug me a bit.
The overall direction was pretty good and the effects weren't completely terrible either given how much old footage Clara had to be spliced into. Clearly the worst insert was with the Second Doctor. The green screen was painfully obvious and I can't understand why the Second Doctor was running around in his fur coat in Southern California. If it had been a scene on a mountain and they were clearly attempting to recreate The Abominable Snowmen, I would have understood and the green screen would have been easier to forgive, given the very limited amount of footage there. But the setting made no sense to me and that just stuck out. Clara falling into the time stream also looked pretty fake. Falling just seems to be something that television can't quite get right.
As for the story itself, it works fairly well, even if you need to rewatch other stories in the Series to get all the nuances. That's not abnormal for modern Doctor Who and even the classic series would have stories make notes to past stories so that doesn't bother me. I think the it would have been a little better served to have been longer as some of it seemed a bit rushed and underdeveloped. Yet there was no real point of padding so it's just a case of cramming so much into a show that other details get dropped. That feeds into the rushed feeling in certain scenes but I'd rather have a story where a little bit of trim was made than to have a story that has been padded up.
Overall, this was a pretty good lead in to the anniversary special. Was it perfect; no. But it had a good overall feel and pace and it was engaging the whole way through, even if it went overboard on the melodrama at times. It was a good story and an easy one to rewatch, but also clearly not a story to lead a new fan into. But that's not going to stop me from pulling out now and again to watch on it's own.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
A Good Man Goes to War
Do you need me to repeat the question?
A Good Man Goes to War was the big mid-series finale that wrapped up most of the loose ends with Amy and Rory's baby and revealed who River was. It is also one of the few stories to actually show the Doctor actually using the fighting fear that he supposedly commanded.
Plot Summary
Amy has given birth to a girl that she has named Melody in her prison on an asteroid called Demons Run. Melody is going to be taken by a woman with an eye patch named Madame Kovarian. She has assembled an army of church soldiers (The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) and allied them with the headless monks. They are waiting for the Doctor to attack with the intention of destroying him.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is assembling allies. Notable are the members of what will become the Paternoster Gang and Dorium Maldovar. Rory is sent to find out where Amy is being held and to get River. River however refuses to come, knowing that the Doctor must face this event without her.
The Doctor sneaks aboard Demons Run and instigates a fight between the church soldiers and the headless monks. The colonel manages to stop the fight but in doing so, disarms his soldiers who are then surrounded by a combined army of Silurians and Judoon. The Doctor and Rory free Amy and reunite her with Melody and Madame Kovarian is captured. The Judoon escort the surrendered church troops out of the quadrent but the headless monks hide in the station.
The Doctor, Madame Vastra and Dorium hack the computers and discover that Melody's DNA has been altered by exposure to the time vortex which could give her the power to regenerate. The headless monks regroup and prepare to attack while Madame Kovarian escapes. One of the church soldiers (Bucket) who stayed loyal to the Doctor warns the group of Kovarian's trap. The group is attacked by the headless monks and the Doctor is distracted by Madame Kovarian appearing on a screen and mocking the Doctor for being fooled again. Kovarian then awakens the real Melody on her ship and the one Amy is holding melts as it was a flesh avatar.
The Doctor runs down to find that his allies have defeated the headless monks, although soldier Bucket and Dorium are killed and Strax is heavily wounded. Amy is in shock and angry at the Doctor. In midst of this, River arrives. The Doctor angrily confronts her about not being there while she tries to calm him by noting that it couldn't have been stopped. She then subtly reveals who she is to him. Astounded, the Doctor then leaves in the TARDIS, vowing to find Melody. Confused, Amy and Rory ask her what is going on. She gives them the baby leaf that soldier Bucket sewed of Melody's name, noting that her people had no word for pond. The writing translates to River Song and River reveals that she is Melody.
Analysis
Like The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, this episode takes on a totally different tone once you know the big twist regarding Melody and River. That obviously was designed to floor the audience going into the time off before Let's Kill Hitler. For the most part, I think it holds up rather well even when you know what is coming.
It is rather interesting that the Eleventh Doctor is painted as much more of a fighting Doctor, or at least one who cultivates the fighting legend; and yet the Eleventh Doctor never really pulls off the dark Doctor persona that you would expect would be necessary for this like both the Ninth and Tenth Doctor did. The Eleventh Doctor is a master of talking and letting others do the fighting for him. The Tenth Doctor did also but there were moments where you saw him get his hands dirty.
Obviously the avoidance of any real bloodshed is always a plus (especially in a family program) but it is nice to see that accomplished though overwhelming force rather than just "look at me and how scary I am" such as was done in The Pandorica Opens. My own personal favorite scene is the opening where Rory walks on to the Cybermen's ship and demands to know where his wife is. The Cyber leader asks what the message from the Doctor is and half the Cyberfleet explodes. That is a level of bad ass-ery that is lacking sometimes and I genuinely appreciate it when it does show up. Now, it's rarity does also invoke that when it does happen, the Doctor isn't screwing around so I would not advocate seeing it all that much more. But I did appreciate it this time around.
At the same time, the first half of the story is also very funny as well. The introduction of Strax is very funny and Dorium's protests against being selected are also very funny. Even after the surrender, the Doctor has some nice banter both with Amy and Rory and with the others. The Doctor's awkward conversation with Madame Vastra about Amy and Rory's sex life is quite amusing, especially with Dorium giving silent commentary with his eyebrows. Quite funny.
Where I felt the episode dipped a little bit south was after the initial engagement. I didn't really care for soldier Bucket who was just a little too bland and plot convenient for my taste. I'm also not sure I fully understood what the point was of Madame Kovarian's trap. Yes, she managed to get away with Melody, but her forces were defeated and no characters of significance were killed by the headless monks. The Doctor had already discovered the success of Madame Kovarian's scheme and assisted in Melody's escape, although unless the flesh avatar Amy was relaying information, Madame Kovarian would not have known that at this time. But it still seems like an overly complicated plan just to make sure you get away with a baby.
I also didn't really care for the ending scene that much. Soldier Bucket's death scene seemed a little forced. Likewise, I wasn't really buying the interaction between River and the Doctor in the confrontation. It's hard to put my finger on, but I think there is something in Alex Kingston's acting at that time that just didn't seem right. I think it was trying a little too hard to sound poignant and touching and just came across as soppy. I'm not sure of the best way to improve it, but the way that scene flowed just didn't quite work for me.
I liked this one overall but was somewhat surprised to remember during the rewatch of just how down a note it ends on. Again, with the minor plot holes and the somewhat subpar acting near the end, it falls off a little bit but it's still an enjoyable story. I'd happily watch it again, but it's not the best of the series.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
A Good Man Goes to War was the big mid-series finale that wrapped up most of the loose ends with Amy and Rory's baby and revealed who River was. It is also one of the few stories to actually show the Doctor actually using the fighting fear that he supposedly commanded.
Plot Summary
Amy has given birth to a girl that she has named Melody in her prison on an asteroid called Demons Run. Melody is going to be taken by a woman with an eye patch named Madame Kovarian. She has assembled an army of church soldiers (The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) and allied them with the headless monks. They are waiting for the Doctor to attack with the intention of destroying him.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is assembling allies. Notable are the members of what will become the Paternoster Gang and Dorium Maldovar. Rory is sent to find out where Amy is being held and to get River. River however refuses to come, knowing that the Doctor must face this event without her.
The Doctor sneaks aboard Demons Run and instigates a fight between the church soldiers and the headless monks. The colonel manages to stop the fight but in doing so, disarms his soldiers who are then surrounded by a combined army of Silurians and Judoon. The Doctor and Rory free Amy and reunite her with Melody and Madame Kovarian is captured. The Judoon escort the surrendered church troops out of the quadrent but the headless monks hide in the station.
The Doctor, Madame Vastra and Dorium hack the computers and discover that Melody's DNA has been altered by exposure to the time vortex which could give her the power to regenerate. The headless monks regroup and prepare to attack while Madame Kovarian escapes. One of the church soldiers (Bucket) who stayed loyal to the Doctor warns the group of Kovarian's trap. The group is attacked by the headless monks and the Doctor is distracted by Madame Kovarian appearing on a screen and mocking the Doctor for being fooled again. Kovarian then awakens the real Melody on her ship and the one Amy is holding melts as it was a flesh avatar.
The Doctor runs down to find that his allies have defeated the headless monks, although soldier Bucket and Dorium are killed and Strax is heavily wounded. Amy is in shock and angry at the Doctor. In midst of this, River arrives. The Doctor angrily confronts her about not being there while she tries to calm him by noting that it couldn't have been stopped. She then subtly reveals who she is to him. Astounded, the Doctor then leaves in the TARDIS, vowing to find Melody. Confused, Amy and Rory ask her what is going on. She gives them the baby leaf that soldier Bucket sewed of Melody's name, noting that her people had no word for pond. The writing translates to River Song and River reveals that she is Melody.
Analysis
Like The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, this episode takes on a totally different tone once you know the big twist regarding Melody and River. That obviously was designed to floor the audience going into the time off before Let's Kill Hitler. For the most part, I think it holds up rather well even when you know what is coming.
It is rather interesting that the Eleventh Doctor is painted as much more of a fighting Doctor, or at least one who cultivates the fighting legend; and yet the Eleventh Doctor never really pulls off the dark Doctor persona that you would expect would be necessary for this like both the Ninth and Tenth Doctor did. The Eleventh Doctor is a master of talking and letting others do the fighting for him. The Tenth Doctor did also but there were moments where you saw him get his hands dirty.
Obviously the avoidance of any real bloodshed is always a plus (especially in a family program) but it is nice to see that accomplished though overwhelming force rather than just "look at me and how scary I am" such as was done in The Pandorica Opens. My own personal favorite scene is the opening where Rory walks on to the Cybermen's ship and demands to know where his wife is. The Cyber leader asks what the message from the Doctor is and half the Cyberfleet explodes. That is a level of bad ass-ery that is lacking sometimes and I genuinely appreciate it when it does show up. Now, it's rarity does also invoke that when it does happen, the Doctor isn't screwing around so I would not advocate seeing it all that much more. But I did appreciate it this time around.
At the same time, the first half of the story is also very funny as well. The introduction of Strax is very funny and Dorium's protests against being selected are also very funny. Even after the surrender, the Doctor has some nice banter both with Amy and Rory and with the others. The Doctor's awkward conversation with Madame Vastra about Amy and Rory's sex life is quite amusing, especially with Dorium giving silent commentary with his eyebrows. Quite funny.
Where I felt the episode dipped a little bit south was after the initial engagement. I didn't really care for soldier Bucket who was just a little too bland and plot convenient for my taste. I'm also not sure I fully understood what the point was of Madame Kovarian's trap. Yes, she managed to get away with Melody, but her forces were defeated and no characters of significance were killed by the headless monks. The Doctor had already discovered the success of Madame Kovarian's scheme and assisted in Melody's escape, although unless the flesh avatar Amy was relaying information, Madame Kovarian would not have known that at this time. But it still seems like an overly complicated plan just to make sure you get away with a baby.
I also didn't really care for the ending scene that much. Soldier Bucket's death scene seemed a little forced. Likewise, I wasn't really buying the interaction between River and the Doctor in the confrontation. It's hard to put my finger on, but I think there is something in Alex Kingston's acting at that time that just didn't seem right. I think it was trying a little too hard to sound poignant and touching and just came across as soppy. I'm not sure of the best way to improve it, but the way that scene flowed just didn't quite work for me.
I liked this one overall but was somewhat surprised to remember during the rewatch of just how down a note it ends on. Again, with the minor plot holes and the somewhat subpar acting near the end, it falls off a little bit but it's still an enjoyable story. I'd happily watch it again, but it's not the best of the series.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Deep Breath
Planet of the pudding brains.
The introduction of the Twelfth Doctor is a real mixed bag for me with some truly excellent scenes mixed with some less than desirable ones.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is coughed up by a dinosaur that has appeared in late 19th century London. A newly regenerated Doctor appears and collapses. He, the TARDIS and Clara are taken by Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax to their home to recover. While there, the dinosaur is murdered and the Doctor wanders off to investigate. Both the Doctor and Clara see an advertisement in the paper a day later that appears to be coming from the other to meet at a specific restaurant. There they discover the patrons are all robots fitted with human augments and that there is a tunnel leading to the robot headquarters. The robots begin to wake and they discover they can avoid detection by holding their breath and posing as robots. Clara and the Doctor are separated and Clara is captured, however the Doctor emerges and rescues her. Clara and the Paternoster Gang fight off the drone robots while the Doctor pursues the Half-Faced Man leader robot in a balloon. They confront each other while the robots get the upper hand against the Gang but they all deactivate when the Half-Face Man is impaled after falling out of the balloon. The Doctor and Clara leave but Clara is unsure if she will continue to travel with the Doctor until she receives a call from the Eleventh Doctor shortly before he regenerates telling her that he now needs her more than ever. Clara then accepts the Doctor in his new form and agrees to continue adventuring with him.
Analysis
I think it's fairly obvious that the production team was scared of how the audience would react to the Twelfth Doctor. There is a lot of hand holding and exposition that give the impression (unlike other episodes in the new series) that the audience cannot be trusted to either remember information from previous episodes or that they will dislike things because they are less pretty. As someone who doesn't have a problem with either an older Doctor or the darker tone, these hesitations distract from what would have been a very good story.
The acting is quite good, especially from Peter Capaldi in getting his feet wet as the Doctor. There is a contemptuous and dark edge to his Doctor that hadn't been seen since the Sixth Doctor days, but it makes him more interesting. It made for a major contrast with the effervescent and optimistic Eleventh Doctor but in a good way.
My overwhelmingly favorite scene in the episode emphasized this. The Doctor and the Half-Faced Man are facing off at the entrance to the balloon, knowing that either the Half-Faced Man will have to jump out or the Doctor will have to push him out. We are not shown what happens, only that the robot has been impaled. The camera pans back up to the Doctor where he is looking down and then he looks directly into the camera. In that moment, you see that it doesn't matter whether he pushed him or he didn't. You see that he would have pushed him if required. It's similar to the Tenth Doctor triggering the switch that caused the Sycorax to fall to his death in The Christmas Invasion but with so much more subtlety. That look just gave off one singular thought: Don't f*** with me.
The look of the episode also was very well done. The BBC does period very well anyway, but there was a lot of small touches that made it look better. There was also a lot of good trickery to make it feel like it was very big, when it was really very tightly contained to several rooms. In fact, despite the expansive approach, many scenes were done to emphasize the claustrophobic nature, giving you the adding feeling of tension that might lead you to hold your own breath during the fear of discovery moments.
But then there were the down moments as well. The weakest link in the episode was Clara. As the audience proxy, Clara was shown to be in a confused and weak understanding position and it seemed like a complete 180 from her normal attitude. Clara, probably more than any other companion, should have understood and been okay with the regeneration. Yet she is shown as having the biggest problem with it. It is very jarring to begin with and then when you add the exceptionally condescending scene with Madame Vastra and being able to see or not see the veil, it just puts you off both characters.
Clara rebounded a bit with the nice interplay between her and the Doctor and her speech of dedication to the Doctor right before he rescues her, but it was dissipated a second time by the need for the Eleventh Doctor's reassurances. Why would Clara need such reassurances if the Doctor just proved himself after her speech of dedication? It was another point where the audience was assumed to still not be on board with the new Doctor and they must be granted permission to accept his new iteration. It just felt so forced and again, against the characterization that had been built up for Clara.
A second decision that was made by the production staff that I didn't care for was the assumption that the audience couldn't put two and two together. Allusions to the past can work well and there were moments when the Doctor is staring at his face in the alley that it works well. But then it goes too far. In the confrontation between the Doctor and the Half-Faced Man, the Doctor reads an inscription of the SS Marie Antoinette. That should have been all that was needed. Indeed it would have been all that would have printed on any ship designation. But they added that she was the sister ship to the Madame de Pompadour. It was painful exposition and made the production team look like they thought the audience was incapable of remembering something to which people had been pointing out allusions to ever since the Half-Faced Man was first seen in the Series 8 preview trailer.
I also didn't care for the gratuitous kiss between Madame Vastra and Jenny. It seemed like titillating the slash writers and just rubbed me the wrong way. A more subtle scene of displayed affection would have been much better than this which seemed very forced.
Despite all of this, the good heavily outweighs the bad. It's just frustrating to watch something that had the capability of being a top tier story and just gets dragged down by extras. Especially if those extras feel like they came from a Lindsey Naegle memo. But, I've seen this episode at least three times now and it is a good introduction to the Twelfth Doctor. I'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for a good story to watch.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
The introduction of the Twelfth Doctor is a real mixed bag for me with some truly excellent scenes mixed with some less than desirable ones.
Plot Summary
The TARDIS is coughed up by a dinosaur that has appeared in late 19th century London. A newly regenerated Doctor appears and collapses. He, the TARDIS and Clara are taken by Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax to their home to recover. While there, the dinosaur is murdered and the Doctor wanders off to investigate. Both the Doctor and Clara see an advertisement in the paper a day later that appears to be coming from the other to meet at a specific restaurant. There they discover the patrons are all robots fitted with human augments and that there is a tunnel leading to the robot headquarters. The robots begin to wake and they discover they can avoid detection by holding their breath and posing as robots. Clara and the Doctor are separated and Clara is captured, however the Doctor emerges and rescues her. Clara and the Paternoster Gang fight off the drone robots while the Doctor pursues the Half-Faced Man leader robot in a balloon. They confront each other while the robots get the upper hand against the Gang but they all deactivate when the Half-Face Man is impaled after falling out of the balloon. The Doctor and Clara leave but Clara is unsure if she will continue to travel with the Doctor until she receives a call from the Eleventh Doctor shortly before he regenerates telling her that he now needs her more than ever. Clara then accepts the Doctor in his new form and agrees to continue adventuring with him.
Analysis
I think it's fairly obvious that the production team was scared of how the audience would react to the Twelfth Doctor. There is a lot of hand holding and exposition that give the impression (unlike other episodes in the new series) that the audience cannot be trusted to either remember information from previous episodes or that they will dislike things because they are less pretty. As someone who doesn't have a problem with either an older Doctor or the darker tone, these hesitations distract from what would have been a very good story.
The acting is quite good, especially from Peter Capaldi in getting his feet wet as the Doctor. There is a contemptuous and dark edge to his Doctor that hadn't been seen since the Sixth Doctor days, but it makes him more interesting. It made for a major contrast with the effervescent and optimistic Eleventh Doctor but in a good way.
My overwhelmingly favorite scene in the episode emphasized this. The Doctor and the Half-Faced Man are facing off at the entrance to the balloon, knowing that either the Half-Faced Man will have to jump out or the Doctor will have to push him out. We are not shown what happens, only that the robot has been impaled. The camera pans back up to the Doctor where he is looking down and then he looks directly into the camera. In that moment, you see that it doesn't matter whether he pushed him or he didn't. You see that he would have pushed him if required. It's similar to the Tenth Doctor triggering the switch that caused the Sycorax to fall to his death in The Christmas Invasion but with so much more subtlety. That look just gave off one singular thought: Don't f*** with me.
The look of the episode also was very well done. The BBC does period very well anyway, but there was a lot of small touches that made it look better. There was also a lot of good trickery to make it feel like it was very big, when it was really very tightly contained to several rooms. In fact, despite the expansive approach, many scenes were done to emphasize the claustrophobic nature, giving you the adding feeling of tension that might lead you to hold your own breath during the fear of discovery moments.
But then there were the down moments as well. The weakest link in the episode was Clara. As the audience proxy, Clara was shown to be in a confused and weak understanding position and it seemed like a complete 180 from her normal attitude. Clara, probably more than any other companion, should have understood and been okay with the regeneration. Yet she is shown as having the biggest problem with it. It is very jarring to begin with and then when you add the exceptionally condescending scene with Madame Vastra and being able to see or not see the veil, it just puts you off both characters.
Clara rebounded a bit with the nice interplay between her and the Doctor and her speech of dedication to the Doctor right before he rescues her, but it was dissipated a second time by the need for the Eleventh Doctor's reassurances. Why would Clara need such reassurances if the Doctor just proved himself after her speech of dedication? It was another point where the audience was assumed to still not be on board with the new Doctor and they must be granted permission to accept his new iteration. It just felt so forced and again, against the characterization that had been built up for Clara.
A second decision that was made by the production staff that I didn't care for was the assumption that the audience couldn't put two and two together. Allusions to the past can work well and there were moments when the Doctor is staring at his face in the alley that it works well. But then it goes too far. In the confrontation between the Doctor and the Half-Faced Man, the Doctor reads an inscription of the SS Marie Antoinette. That should have been all that was needed. Indeed it would have been all that would have printed on any ship designation. But they added that she was the sister ship to the Madame de Pompadour. It was painful exposition and made the production team look like they thought the audience was incapable of remembering something to which people had been pointing out allusions to ever since the Half-Faced Man was first seen in the Series 8 preview trailer.
I also didn't care for the gratuitous kiss between Madame Vastra and Jenny. It seemed like titillating the slash writers and just rubbed me the wrong way. A more subtle scene of displayed affection would have been much better than this which seemed very forced.
Despite all of this, the good heavily outweighs the bad. It's just frustrating to watch something that had the capability of being a top tier story and just gets dragged down by extras. Especially if those extras feel like they came from a Lindsey Naegle memo. But, I've seen this episode at least three times now and it is a good introduction to the Twelfth Doctor. I'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for a good story to watch.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
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