A Good Man Goes To War REVIEWED

Well. That's that, then. I'm still sweating slightly. You didn't want to know that, but oh well. 

There's always something about an episode of Doctor Who being advertised as "epic" that needles me. I get reminded of the worst excesses of the Russell T Davies era when that word turns up. By the worst excesses I mean long opening sequences in which unimportant characters from previous episodes are suddenly incredibly important, I mean overblown speeches that never get anywhere, and I mean flat and badly paced middle segments that don't add anything to the story.

So what happened in A Good Man Goes To War? Well, there was a long opening sequence in which unimportant characters from previous episodes were suddenly incredibly important, including that fat blue guy, that Scottish-sounding Silurian from the Hungry Earth who for some reason was in Victorian London, and an admittedly inspired Sontaran playing against type by being forced to serve as a nurse. Then there were a few overblown speeches that never got anywhere, one about the Doctor's identity, one from Amy about the identity of Melody's father (admittedly beautifully written to make us think it was the Doctor for a moment), and plenty about the child and what evil eyepatch lady wanted her for. There was a flat and badly paced middle segment in which there seemed to be no danger, no sense of what was to happen next, no urgency and no interest. All the very worst elements of bad Doctor Who seemed to be present in this episode.

And yet. And yet, despite the pointless opening sequence, despite the overblown speeches, despite the flat and badly paced middle segment, I BLOODY LOVED IT. It was major cognitive dissonance - every time I thought to myself, "this is bad", I allowed myself to feel it instead, and it was just fantastic. Every witty line made me smile, every expression on an actor's face showed me deep inside their character's heart, every plot twist made me take deeper breaths.

In terms of the content of the episode, I thought the developed idea of militaristic churches was truly inspired, especially the Headless Monks, which are one of those incredibly dark science-fiction constructions that just scream Steven Moffat to you. (Well, not scream. But you know what I mean.) Charlie Baker played a fine part as the fat marine that was offered up to the monks as a "donation", and I particularly loved the line about him and his husband, "We're the thin, fat, gay, married, Anglican marines." A laugh-out-loud moment, complemented throughout the episode with a Stevie Wonder joke, a brief Thunderbirds reference, and some great comic bits with the Doctor speaking baby. The humour offset the tragedy of the storyline beautifully. However, I did feel there was an over-abundance of characters who were nothing more than plot devices and decoration, particularly Jenny and Lorna. I also felt the need to shoehorn in references to past events, particularly the space Spitfires, rather off-putting.

And now, I suppose, inevitably, up comes the subject of the big twist, of which the main twist was... there was no twist. Just as has been set up for so long, River Song is Amy and Rory's daughter. (I must admit, I didn't recognise the Melody/Song connection until well after the fact, but River/Pond has been seeded throughout the whole series, and was entirely obvious.) I don't entirely know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I would have liked some earth-shattering twist that no-one expected, but on the other, this relationship was so well explained by elements throughout the series that it sort of had to be. On the other hand (yes, I have three hands) it does rather seem like this has solved the entire storyline. Melody, when we see her next, is the astronaut child who kills the Doctor, and then she regenerates into River. Is that it? I do hope it isn't this simple. And to be fair there are some other very intriguing questions - whose name is on the Doctor's cot? What happens to the 1107-year old Doctor after the events on the Utah beach? And the small matter of the ultimate confrontations with Kovarian's forces, and the Silence. The more I think about tonight's big reveal, the more I think it's a stroke of genius - we've closed one knot in the rope but there are so many other twists and turns to come.

Final thoughts are a bit hard to come to in this case. Although from a critical point of view I can't like this episode, while I was actually sitting in front of the TV screen I loved every minute. I came away shaking slightly with my head buzzing, and incredibly satisfied with what I'd just witnessed. And as I'm already willing the clock to whizz forwards to the autumn (for the daringly named Let's Kill Hitler, of all episodes!), I can only conclude that this was a brilliant episode.

Verdict: 9/10


Twitter: @antmoorfield

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People REVIEWED

It seems this blog has rather degenerated into merely reviewing this series of Doctor Who. Which is no bad thing, but certainly not what I intended it for. But I have so little time. So I keep telling myself.

Anyway, let's review Doctor Who. SHOOT.

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, set in a characterful island monastery, is a story telling of a group of researchers who make doppelgangers of themselves in order to carry out their "dirty work". A lightning storm gives these so-called Gangers the freedom to act independently of their human counterparts, and the stage is set for a classically Gothic Frankensteinian adventure. This is exactly the kind of story that Who should be telling; a philosophical morality tale as much as an action-adventure, an exciting concept to go along with the explosive storytelling.

The setting was once more fantastic - while the production team have still not got away from the Earth-centricity of the Russell T Davies era, at least we've moved away from grimy North London housing estates, hopefully for good. A Gothic medieval monastery on a desolate rocky island. The production made full use of the gorgeous Welsh architecture available to create a grandiose but decayed complex suitable for such a story. The strong cast held together the complex narrative well, although I felt there was one too many workers, which made certain scenes a bit full. A problem that occasionally seems to plague Who is stilted dialogue - a sense of unnaturality and over-exposition within character conversations was visible within this story as well. On the other hand, the totally absurd opening sequence of The Rebel Flesh, which sees two of the characters laugh off the accidental killing of the third (a Ganger, of course, we later discover), set the scene beautifully and neatly introduced us to this episode's main theme, the sanctity of life.

How we define someone/something as human, another integral concept, was intelligently explored through the character of Jenny, whose sequences with Rory offered both a gorgeous appraisal of the value of human memories and a way of exploring Amy Pond a little more. The portrayal of Amy as selfish and as taking Rory for granted throughout the series has partly alienated many viewers, me included, so I was very pleased that we were shown through her loneliness and partial helplessness without Rory that their relationship is two-way. This is another interesting angle that I hope will be explored further as the series progresses.

The conclusion of The Rebel Flesh was predictable, but that of The Almost People was certainly not. It sets up the mid-season finale something awesome, and that is some Northern slang I never expected to use in a review. Finally, the best thing about this two-parter was the way it was put together rather like a complex jigsaw. Everything that happened made perfect sense, and nothing felt forced or thrown in. I'd more or less worked out the twists (aside from the very last one!), but they didn't feel in any way obvious. It's a testament to the quality of the writing that the story invited such intelligent viewing. All that remains for me to say is OMG MOFFAT... Roll on next week.

Verdict: 7/10+9/10. Overall: 8/10


twitter: @antmoorfield

The Doctor's Wife REVIEWED

Oh hai there internet. Our conversations have become a lot more unidirectional lately because of my revision and such. But now I finally get the chance to talk to you after all this time.

Much like the Tardis in the latest Doctor Who episode!

(Nice segue.)

So the Doctor's Wife. Well, I loved it. Definitely in my top 20 of all time, and possibly top 10. God, it was so frikkin' good!

I love everything that Neil Gaiman has ever written, so I was expecting to love this episode too. The steampunk setting of the Tardis graveyard and the patchwork people were such intrinsically Gaiman concepts. I thought the whole episode was so beautifully realised by the design team. It's a world away from the bright garish colours of earlier series, and of that I am hugely thankful. (On Confidential, Gaiman read from the stage directions of the script, which even written is a thing of beauty, and I was particularly taken with his description of the asteroid as the "Totter's Lane at the end of the universe". And if you don't understand that reference, go and watch An Unearthly Child now.)

The idea of the Doctor talking to the Tardis could have potentially been a terrible one. I think if another writer had done it, it could have descended into a sentimental, over-reverent pile of slush. But, Gaiman being Gaiman, he gave the Tardis character, Idris, such a mad, sexy, weird and wonderful characterisation that I instantly fell in love with it. Suranne Jones' fantastic portrayal really brought the Tardis to life, and her interactions with Matt Smith were simply joyous to watch. I loved the Pull To Open sequence, which has in an instant solved a debate that's been going on for forty years in the fandom, and there were so many other little references to Who history that it'll take me a number of rewatches to take them all in, I'm sure.

Finally we got to see the inside of the Tardis! Oh man. So good. The last time we really saw any of the other rooms was way back in The Invasion of Time, where it looked, as Neil Gaiman put it on Confidential, like an old-fashioned brick-built Victorian hospital. Probably because it was filmed in an old-fashioned brick-built Victorian hospital. But anyway, the idea of the Tardis being able to move its rooms around and delete them is very cool, and it was great to see the previous control set once more. It did amuse me that the corridors Amy and Rory were lost in had obviously not changed since the early 1970s! Rory's death this week was very unpleasant, and the whole thing about being lost in time in the corridors I thought was handled brilliantly. Though I don't know where the paint to write "Hate Amy, Kill Amy" on the walls came from....

Other things very quickly: Michael Sheen is a complete dude, I loved Auntie and Uncle and hope similar characters reappear, the built Tardis was brilliant and the little keyboard was such a great touch that only a child could have designed it, and, well, I wouldn't mind being inside Suranne Jones. *clears throat quickly* Er, I mean the Tardis. Yeah. 

Verdict: 10/10

Twitter: antmoorfield. kthxbai


PS. Since I didn't bother to review The Curse of the Black Spot last week, here's a one sentence reaction. Fun, throwaway episode, short on character and with a thin premise that could have been explored further, but still worth watching. Verdict: 6/10.

The Impossible Astronaut (BSDA #16)

Yes, it’s Doctor Who time again. One of sci-fi’s greatest shows smashed back onto our screens tonight with The Impossible Astronaut, the first of a two-part episode, set, for the first time ever, in the United States of America. And now I’m reviewing it. SPOILERS. As River would, and did, say.

The episode begins with the Doctor sending four blue envelopes to certain people, asking them to meet at a particular time and location, which turns out to be the middle of the Utah desert. Amy and Rory, River Song, and an elderly man called Canton Delaware III all turn up to see the Doctor… die. Wow. I mean, wow. What a dramatic opening gambit from Steven Moffat, to kill the central character 10 minutes into the show! The death scene was suffused with a real sense of emotion, helped by some powerful sobbing from Karen Gillan, who’s finally made the role of Amy her own. But what really made it was the utter bathos of having the Doctor spring back into the show two minutes later, bouncy, arrogant and two hundred years younger. He himself was the fourth person invited to his own funeral, and, arriving after the fact, “can’t know” how he dies.

Then it gets even more interesting. The Doctor visits President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office and has to deal with mysterious voice who keeps ringing the President’s direct number. Weird. I can’t write any more about this strand of the plot at this stage, because I know as little as you. So then we meet the aliens, who are creepy. They are a very Moffat creation, scary by concept rather than by physical appearance; their unique twist is that you can only remember them when you are looking at them. (An interesting inversion of the Weeping Angels, really.) I have to say, I like this idea a lot. I hope it’s explored more next time because it is, really, brilliant.

America The Beautiful. This episode didn’t mess about with its presentation of the USA at all. All the classic elements were there – the stetson, the Mustang, the yellow school bus, the diner, the Oval Office; a veritable smorgasbord of Americana. Added to this, the production team managed to find some staggeringly beautiful locations to film in, with a wonderful sunset (or, in fact, sunrise, according to the behind the scenes footage on Doctor Who Confidential!) illuminating the Doctor’s cremation gorgeously. The brightness of the Utah sun really gave this episode something more in visual terms, and the whole thing had a wonderfully filmic quality about it.

It’s now clear to me that Doctor Who has completely left behind the Russell T Davies era. The kitschy set design, bright colour palette, soap opera characters and bombastic plotting all belong to the past. This is now definitely Steven Moffat’s show, and, as such, it’s cleverer, darker, more humorous, more experimental and more cinematic. I personally like this style A LOT more. It feels more like science fiction, and seems both more modern (or even a bit postmodern) and more traditional in terms of the show itself – I was recently watching 1980’s Full Circle, and you can definitely see the similarities with 2011 with regard to the pacing, dialogue, visual style and concepts. In short, this is Doctor Who again. Similarly, Matt Smith, who I confess took a while to get used to, has now leapfrogged David Tennant and Patrick Troughton to move from fourth to second in my list of favourite Doctors. He now sits below only Tom Baker. And, as his Doctor develops, I think he could have a real chance at the top spot.

Overall, this was a wonderful episode, though not without its flaws. It was so very different from any other season openers that it’s difficult to compare it to anything, but nevertheless, I’m going to compare it to something. You have to question how much of the plot would have been understood by younger viewers and the fact that it raised SO MANY questions while providing so few answers must have been disconcerting to people used to watching episodes as discrete stories in their own right. I guess I need to wait until Day of the Moon to see exactly how good The Impossible Astronaut was, but, on the whole, I was thoroughly impressed.

Verdict: 9/10

Other things I didn’t have time to write about: the Doctor and River flirting, the reusing of concepts such as secrets and hidden memories, the awesomeness of Mark Sheppard, the fact that Stephen Milligan looked more like Lyndon Johnson than Richard Nixon, and Amy’s pregnancy.

Your thoughts would be welcome in comments. Follow this blog, tweet me @ antmoorfield, and be back here next week for the Day of the Moon review. In the meantime, politics. Because.