I figured I might as well do something related to Saturday's episode of Doctor Who, so here we go. If you've not watched the episode, then go do that BEFORE you read this article: I'm going to be discussing a few things which are very important to the plot of the episode and giving my take on them, so this is not going to be a review so much as examining some of the more important (and, arguably, controversial) points that the episode brought up and saying whether I feel they were good or bad.
Before I start, let me be completely honest about my thoughts on the season so far. While I do think there have been some good episodes, my overall opinion leans towards the only really good part being Peter Capaldi. Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor was the first person I saw in the role and, I have to be honest, if you'd asked me before this season which was my favourite incarnation of the character since the revival of the show, I'd have probably said it was his version. This was a version of the character which had anger and intensity to him and I just think Eccleston captured it perfectly. He really made the character into a figure that you could imagine as having gone through a lot and being tormented by his past, which isn't something that I feel David Tennant, Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi have done QUITE as well as he has. However, Capaldi has done a brilliant job of capturing The Doctor and, overall, I feel that he's managed to be the kind of Doctor that you could imagine from the classic series, which is not something that I feel Eccleston, Tennant or Smith managed. Tennant was an undeniably good Doctor, but his incarnation felt a bit too romantically driven for me to accept him as the alien he was (let's be honest, if you KNEW you were going to outlive someone and had to watch them grow old while you remained young, you'd find that heartbreaking!) and Smith's version of the character felt a bit too much like he was playing the role of a clown instead of an incarnation of The Doctor, although I do not think he did the role badly overall. That's really the big problem: Eccleston managed to capture the character at his most pained and tortured, but the other incarnations between him and Capaldi didn't quite have any special thing to make them really click with me. I guess the best way of summing it up is that Eccleston was the best example of The Doctor of today for me while Capaldi is a channelling of The Doctor of days long gone, and that makes him closer to being the definitive Doctor in possibly more ways than he really should be!
However, Capaldi has been the only really strong thing in the show for me this season, and I feel that this has been probably the least enjoyable season of the show for me overall. Clara and Danny's relationship has overtaken the show a bit too much for my liking, the stories have (mostly) been watchable, though not exceptional, and I'm really getting sick of Moffat building up each season on one overarching thing which only comes into play in the finale of the episode and nearly always has a twist to it that, when really stopped and thought about, makes no fucking sense. Now, that's not to say that Russell T Davis did not do this in his time as the guy in charge of the show, but at least you didn't need to practically have your own office and giant sized whiteboard just to keep track of everything that could make a reappearance later in the show! I joked with a friend that every Doctor Who fan becomes a conspiracy theorist when every new season of Doctor Who starts due to Moffat doing that and, while I imagine I'm exaggerating more than a bit, the basic point still stands: it's almost become a cliché of Moffat's writing for this to happen every season, and I really wish he'd stop leaning on it and just do good stories of Doctor Who without HAVING to have everything be connected together. There comes a point when it stops feeling like you're watching the show because you want to, and I feel like I've hit that point with this season in particular. In fact, even when I'm in the house when it's on, I usually am not excited checking when it's on and sitting down while enthusiastically going "DOCTOR WHO'S ON!!! IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME!": I'm going "Oh look, new episode of Doctor Who. Well, I've got nothing else to do, so might as well watch it...". I've become apathetic to the whole series now, and I just want someone to politely inform Moffat that dangling important plot threads at the start of every season like a bunch of keys does not make you look clever (or that you have some grand plan for the season) and stops being interesting (and starts being very annoying) when you do it EVERY. FUCKING. SEASON.
So yeah...I'm not exactly coming to this season with the most upbeat and optimistic viewpoint. I'll be fair, the show has still be watchable, but here's the thing: Doctor Who never got by just through being watchable. It was the success it was through being creative, well written, enjoyable and exciting (not to mention more than a bit scary!). This season has felt like it's had none of those things in it to me: it feels like the whole season has got by just on the fact that it's Doctor Who. Honestly, if this season was of a completely show debuting now and WASN'T Doctor Who, I think I'd have stopped watching after "Time Heist"...and I'd have DEFINITELY stopped after "Kill The Moon", which is hands down my least favourite episode of revival Who...and yes, I'm including "Love And Monsters"! I could at least give that one credit for trying something new that was at least an interesting experiment, if not one that was executed very well, but "Kill The Moon" has no such excuse!
But you're not here to read me ranting about my thoughts on the declining state of Doctor Who. You guys want the article that I said I was going to do. Very well, now we all know what playing field I'm on, let us get started...and grab yourself a large amount of salt, you might need it!
First up, the decision to have Danny Pink be killed at the start of the episode by a car due to not looking both ways. For me, this is a pretty poor decision: if you liked Danny and have knowledge of how the army works, him dying like that seems a bit out of character (ex-soldiers do still have their training in their memory and one of the things soldiers are VERY good at is observation skills: after all, what good would a soldier be if he wasn't able to tell the difference between a tree and an enemy in poor light?), but, if you didn't, his death not meaning that he IS actually dead (as in, no longer in the show from that point on) will have you going "What was the point of killing him if he wasn't going to stay dead?" Yes, one could make that case that, had he not been killed, there would be no episode of the show, but, even as someone who felt Danny was being pushed too far towards the centre of attention in a show that's MEANT to be about a time travelling alien, his death felt a bit like a cheap attempt at drama for me. Something like this SHOULD have been at the end of an episode, where his death would have carried some real weight and really should have been done in the same episode as The Doctor finally admitting that Danny was a good man who he approved of, as it'd ultimately give The Doctor a reason to care about Danny beyond "Clara is telling me to". I'll admit, I didn't finish watching "In The Forest Of The Night", so I could have missed The Doctor having that moment in the episode, but still, Danny's death should have been more than just being hit by a car at the start of the episode.
The second important thing is Clara's scene where she is trying to force The Doctor to take her back in time to rescue Danny. I have to be honest...I actually rather liked this scene! It was tense, it showed just how important Danny was to Clara (as if we didn't know that already...), it gave us more than enough reasons to want The Doctor to finally agree to do something...it was great!
...Then it turns out to have been all just a dream state and there were actually no stakes to it.
I...I just...WHAT?! You have possibly one of the best scenes this season of Doctor Who has had to date and it's a fucking DREAM?! What the actual hell?!
OK, in fairness, maybe I'm overreacting a bit, but this trope in writing just ticks me off every time I see it. If you're going to do something that would have a lasting effect, having it turn out just to be a dream and, as such, completely pointless just rubs me up the wrong way. It's not necessarily lazy writing, as some brilliant twists can be done via this when handled well and I respect that it gives writers a chance to try out things which they wouldn't be allowed to do normally in the show, but it feels like a cop out here. If there had been elements to the scene which gave the idea that, when you looked at them carefully, it might actually be a dream (or it involved nightmarish imagery of some sort to give it an unsettling feel to it), I might have been able to go "OK, that was a clever way to do that", but, in this case, I'm just sitting in my chair and asking what the point of getting invested in the scene was if the writers weren't going to go through with what they were showing us. Protip for aspiring writers reading this blog: if you DO have to use this trope, you really need to be clever with it and plan the use of it out, as just using it without considering how it looks to the audience has a very high chance of annoying your audience. I've never used this trope in my own writings, but I can appreciate it when it's done very well and doesn't have the reveal come out of left field, so a good way to do it (assuming you're not working with a visual medium: if you are, then careful use of lighting can do the trick very well by having it be off by just enough during the dream sequence for the audience to recognise that something's not quite right, but not so far that you run the risk of overdoing it! I would still recommend that you consider what I'm about to say, though!) is to be subtle with it before the reveal: if the audience thinks something is a bit off about the sequence in advance of the reveal, but can't quite place what it is, the reveal that it was a dream sequence can be a very good twist that will make the observant members of the audience go "I KNEW something was off" and the less observant, on a second watch, will go "Wait...that's not quite right! That explains how this was a dream sequence!".
Note the use of the word "subtle": if you're throwing in nightmarish imagery throughout the dream sequence and all sorts of stuff which any sensible person would recognise as being completely off from the show's usual tone or the character's usual characterisation, you might as well cover the screen with the words "This is a dream sequence", as the audience are very likely to figure it out within the first few seconds (and the people who don't figure it out before the reveal will probably not be amused that you've mistreated characters they really like and may well have stopped watching the episode BEFORE you make the reveal!). Keep it to things that could be ignored by someone who isn't paying attention, such as a sandwich being pushed aside by a character (obviously, not the one having the dream) only to be back in front of them in the next shot without even being commented upon, or, if you do want to have a character act off, try to be subtle about it in a way which matches up with how you'd expect the character having the dream to imagine them: if a character is noted for being grumpy around the character having the dream, don't make them angrily yelling at them, but have the grumpiness dialled up to be about things that the character isn't usually grumpy about, or have them not comment on it at all. For example, to continue this example, let's say one character is always complaining about another character's hairstyle: instead of having the character be complaining about everything connected to the character having the dream, have them either complain about the character's choice of clothes (without discussing the haircut at all, even if it's the same one that they usually cannot resist commenting on) or, when the character having the dream asks why they've not commented on it, have them go something like "Eh, it's not bad, I guess". Both could clue in observant members of the audience that something's not quite right, but they're subtle enough for people to miss the importance of if they're not paying attention to every little thing (...well, the first one is: the second one is a bit more obvious, but is unlikely to make an impression on the first viewing to most people). Most people will say that dreams can be really weird, but most of them don't have a real flow or story to them and, short of having the character having the dream be bemused every time he finds himself in a new location (as if he's just arrived there without any warning to even themselves) or having the tone and setting of stuff change frequently and without warning (representing the chaotic nature of dreams), there's no real way to represent that without throwing subtlety out of the window!
...Wait, I was supposed to be talking about why I don't like Clara destroying the TARDIS keys in the lava being a dream sequence, wasn't I?
Well, anyway, the problem for me is that the stakes were too high for me to accept it as a dream sequence and there was no indication in advance of the reveal that it even WAS a dream sequence. I guess one could say that Clara piloting the TARDIS to a lava planet on her own COULD have been the clue, since she's not been seen piloting the TARDIS on her own before now (although I may have misremembered if she has), but she has been technically able to pilot the TARDIS this season through the use of the TARDIS matrix thing in earlier episodes, so that actually isn't much of a clue if it is meant to be one!
Also, as pointed out by votesaxon07 in his review of the episode (thanks, dude, I forgot about this detail when I was starting to write this!), Clara KNOWS that The Doctor can open the TARDIS doors by clicking his fingers. So destroying the TARDIS keys...not actually a big deal to The Doctor. How Clara and the script writers forgot this, I've no idea...
The third important thing is more an instance of fridge logic than anything else, but how did The Doctor know that the TARDIS could find Danny AFTER his death? And, more importantly, if he knew that option existed, why hadn't be done anything involving it before now? Seriously, he could have got every companion of his who has died to return back to travelling with him if he wanted to, but he hasn't even tried that before now? Now, I guess one could make a case that it was because Clara insisted that he do it and he normally wouldn't do it, but it still doesn't explain why he hasn't tried this before if it was an option! I know, minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it does seem like an obvious question has been ignored!
The fourth thing that I feel is worth pointing out is the whole "afterlife" thing. I'm jumping ahead a bit, but how could the TARDIS not recognise that it was in St Paul's Cathedral? It's been to London so many times now that you'd have thought it'd recognise the location of the place very easily! On top of that, why exactly would the Cybermen be happy to remain seated inside giant tanks of water for what might have ended up being years (if not DECADES)? I know the Cybermen aren't likely to have been there that long, but the ONLY reason that The Doctor found out about them was because he was looking for Danny by Clara's request: if Danny had never died, it's VERY unlikely that The Doctor would have even stumbled upon the plan at all! Were the Cybermen literally just going to sit there until The Doctor FINALLY found out about them? Because, if so, that's a kind of daft plan that relies on a huge amount of luck and The Doctor actually wanting to investigate someone's death via the TARDIS. Even considering the Cybermen (and Missy, AKA The Master) know The Doctor well enough to know that a bunch of strange disappearances is like a giant sign saying "Please come and investigate me" to him, their plan basically seems to have amounted to "Wait until The Doctor arrives". Unless the car which killed Danny was driven by Missy (or one of her accomplices), there's absolutely no way they would have even been sure they could have got The Doctor near them to allow them to pull off their plan!
The fifth important thing is the reveal of what Danny did which seems to still affect him: that, in a warzone, he killed a child when clearing a building that he thought was inhabited by the enemy. Now, this is actually a breach of military rules, as killing an innocent in war is one of the worst crimes you can commit and can result in a dishonourable discharge from the service if your court marshall finds you guilty of doing so. I'm not sure of the ins and outs of that myself, but, judging from the fact that his method of clearing the building was actually not the way the military are instructed to seize them, I imagine it is not impossible that he would have been guilty of at least improper execution of his orders! However, glossing over my (admittedly, limited) knowledge of military rules and assuming that Danny would not have been dishonourably discharged from the service for what he did, I do have to admit that it is a very powerful scene and the only complaint I have is more an instance of fridge logic than anything else: why would he become a teacher if he has what seems to be post-traumatic stress disorder from killing a child? I'd imagine that being around children would probably be a trigger for reminding him of what he'd done, so I'd have thought that he'd have done his best to avoid being around children to avoid aggravating his condition. Maybe I'm putting too much thought into it, but still, it feels a bit odd that an ex-soldier who has killed a child (even if it was in a warzone and he didn't mean to do it) would have even been allowed to become a teacher, let alone would have applied to become one voluntarily! However, let's ignore those things which make the whole concept of the character fall apart far quicker than you'd think they should and focus purely on the reveal...and I'm not going to lie, it is a scene that is done brilliantly! I'd suspected that Danny had killed someone who he hadn't intended to from the moment he had the reaction to being mentioned of having killed an unarmed person, but I'd never have guessed it was a child before now, which makes the scene surprisingly powerful and seeing Danny trying to apologise to the child for killing him is a scene that is engraved in my memory. No wonder the guy has a sensitive nerve about killing being mentioned, something like that could mess you up for life as you consider the life that never was because of your actions!
The sixth important point is the reveal that the dead are still connected to their bodies. I'll not going onto too much detail about this reveal, as the thought of being stuck in my body post-death and able to feel everything it goes through is absolutely horrifying to me, but I do have to ask whether it applies purely to the people who have been upgraded or EVERY human being, even if they're not connected to the matrix thing. Because, if it's the latter...well, that's my nightmares (and, now I've spelt that out in an unambiguous way, probably yours) for the next few weeks!
The seventh important point is the reveal of the dead in the chairs being Cybermen. I've ranted in some detail about why this isn't as smart a plan as you'd think when you think about it hard enough, but I do have to give credit for this reveal, as it caught me off guard! I'd seen the Cybermen in the trailer and, as such, expected they would be in the episode, but I thought they'd be beaming into heaven (those words are making me think of a song, for some reason...) to convert the dead into them, so them having been there the whole time...that was actually very clever! Granted, it does fall apart a bit when you think about it too much (I'm pretty sure a scan of the skeletons in the chair by the sonic screwdriver would have revealed that they were not actually dead bodies, so I'm a bit bemused that The Doctor didn't check that they were what he thought they were, as it'd be something you'd expect he'd do instinctively whenever he sees something that's out of the ordinary for him!), but it was still a very impressive twist that I didn't see coming at all!
The eighth important point is Missy's identity being revealed. I will say that, like votesaxon07, I'm slightly disappointed that it wasn't The Rani, but the reveal that Missy was The Master...well, my jaw was still on the floor, so let that speak for itself! It's referencing something that could have been missed from the season 6 (of the revival, so that's...season 32, I think?) episode "The Doctor's Wife", when it was off handedly mentioned that The Corsair changed their gender through several regenerations, which was an idea that I found really interesting, so seeing The Master use this ability as well...it kind of makes you wonder whether The Doctor has the same ability and deliberately chooses not to use it or whether (as has been implied in a few classic era episodes, with Romana's regeneration springing to mind at the minute!) it is possible to control regeneration when taught how to do it properly, which is something that The Doctor never bothered learning how to do.
Lastly is everything involving Danny after his encounter with the child he killed up to the end of the episode. Holy crap, Danny was put through the mud in this episode, but, when he was able to speak to Clara and had to try to find a way to make her not go after him in death, it was just gut wrenching to watch. Seeing him holding the iPad (seriously, how the hell (pun not intended) does Apple have a market in the matrix thing? Did they branch out under the belief that even the dead wanted to have a chat with their neighbours or something?) and on the verge of deleting himself from existence...I was actually yelling "NO! DON'T DO IT!" to my TV, and I'm saying this as someone who had more tolerated Danny in the show (due to his relationship with Clara basically pushing The Doctor out of the spotlight of a show which was MEANT to be about him and his companions stopping aliens and stuff like that!) than liked him! Let that speak for itself, dear readers...
So, after all of my complaints, you'd think that I didn't like this episode too much, wouldn't you? Well...not quite. Sure, some of the plot points were points of contention for me (the dream sequence thing being chief among them), but, overall, it was a really good episode of the show that has me looking forward to the next episode of the show already. It doesn't redeem what has felt like a somewhat dull (if still very much watchable) season of the show for me, but it's certainly looks set to end the season on a high note! And I guess that's all that I can ask for, so that's what I'm going to hope for!
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