Kroagnon Awards 2016: Day Four - Doctor Who

Welcome to the Kroagnon Awards 2016! All this week, we're announcing all our favourite things of 2015, ranging from the broad to the niche. As well as being voted on by editors Dave, Matt and Tom, several categories have been decided by you, our readers, and industry experts.

The third episode of 2015's Doctor Who series was our favourite. Under the Lake was written by Toby Whithouse, directed by Daniel O'Hara and saw the Doctor and Clara arrive in a base haunted by ghosts at the bottom of a lake. This was a perfect synergy of the talents of contributors in front and behind the camera, creating an atmospheric and involving tale. Next on our list was Heaven Sent. Read our review of Under the Lake here.

It's hard to believe 2015 was only Peter Capaldi's second year leading the series, such is the assured professionalism he brings to the role. This last year saw his Doctor mellow from the more antisocial incarnation of 2014 to a much more amiable figure. It's without a second thought that he is named our Best Actor of 2015, and we hope he remains in the role for many years yet.

Starring in Toby Whithouse's Under the Lake and Before the Flood, Sophie Stone's portrayal of Cass was extraordinary. Even leaving aside the fact that this was (somehow) the first time a deaf actor had played a deaf character in Doctor Who, Stone's performance was memorable and engaging and as such, Cass emerged as one of the most popular guest characters of 2015. 

Doctor Who in 2015 brought with it a host of exciting new and familiar villains but our favourite was the head of the Zygon revolution, Bonnie, as featured in The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion. Jenna Coleman gave a markedly different performance to her usual portrayal of Clara, showing the range of her abilities, getting to be much colder and steely than normal. It was an extremely strong performance that just managed to edge out Julian Bleach's return as Davros at the top of the season.

Toby Whithouse has been a regular contributor to Doctor Who in the Steven Moffat era, having written his first episode for the 2006 series. His two 2015 episodes - Under the Lake and Before the Flood - were another show of his innovative and exciting writing style, and it's for this two-parter that he is named our Best Writer of last year. We hope Whithouse continues to contribute to the series as he is one of its most reliably entertaining writers.

As in 2014, Rachel Talalay helmed the two closing episodes of Doctor Who's main run last year. Once again she did so in great style, bringing us the series' first single-hander and the return of Gallifrey in two feature-length episodes - Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. These were among the most cinematically-staged stories of 2015, and were even more popular than her début. Also nominated in this category was Hettie Macdonald, director of The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar. 

As well as being a highly accomplished camera operator (including on productions such as Peter Harness' Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) Richard Stoddard is a rising star in the world of cinematography. This year he served as Director of Photography on four episodes of Doctor Who - Under the Lake, Before the Flood, The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived. His work here speaks for itself and it's a credit to Stoddard that he win this award against the stiff competition of Suzie Lavelle and Mark Waters. More please.

Serving as Executive Producer on the 2015 episodes of Doctor Who, Brian Minchin is perhaps the least celebrated of the core production team, but deserves equal credit for what many are calling the best era the programme has ever enjoyed. It's certainly true that the series would be poorer without his influence and one of the most interesting things that hasn't been discussed in the wake of Chris Chibnall's appointment as Doctor Who's showrunner from 2018 is whether Minchin will be there alongside him. We can but hope.

You probably don't know Will Oswald's name but he has edited more episodes of Doctor Who since 2005 than anyone else. In fact, his closest rival, Mike Jones, has under half the number of episodes to his name that Oswald does. It's thanks to him that episodes such as last year's Under the Lake, Before the Flood, Zygon story and two-part series finale emerge so polished, exciting and professional. Being an editor is a thankless task to the wider viewing public, so we felt it only right that the accolade for Unsung Hero this year went to Will Oswald.

2015 was not short of Doctor Who merchandise, but our favourite was The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, written by Dr Marek Kukula and Simon Guerrier. This blended fact and fiction to create an interesting look at how the science of Doctor Who compares to what we know as fact. There's a few highly entertaining short stories in here from respected authors such as Una McCormack, David Llewellyn and Jonathan Morris. Read our original review here.

Our final category for today is the one you voted on. Heaven Sent was an instant hit with viewers, and so it's no surprise to reveal that you voted it your favourite episode of 2015. It was a tour de force for Peter Capaldi, who spend most of this dramatic hour alone, and showcased what the current production team is capable of.

Join us tomorrow for our final round of awards, this time focusing on

the productions of audio company Big Finish!

Doctor Who: Hell Bent

Review by Matt Michael

Has there been a truly successful series finale in the last five years? After the brilliantly twisty Dark Water, Death in Heaven paid respect to the late Nicholas Courtney by turning the Brigadier’s corpse into a Cyberman. The Name of the Doctor was fun, but felt like an extended prologue to the fiftieth anniversary special. Though it’s aged rather well, The Wedding of River Song was profoundly underwhelming at the time, largely because the Doctor’s absolutely-going-to-happen death turned out to be a whopping great lie.

Hell Bent also reminds us that ‘the Doctor lies’. All those dark hints about the Hybrid were a ruse to get access to the awesome technology of the Time Lords to rescue Clara from a fate – well, from a fate precisely the same as death, actually.

I struggled to engage with the first 20 minutes or so of the episode – the scenes where Rassilon and the High Council went traipsing out to the War Doctor’s barn went on forever with no obvious relevance to the story. Donald Sumpter was wasted, as was Clare Higgins. Whole scenes seemed to unfold just because: the General regenerated into a woman to make the point (as if Missy hadn’t already done so) that Time Lords can change sex - just so long as they aren’t the show’s lead. The Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels were in the Matrix crypt because Moffat’s season finales invariably feature them all anyway. Rachel Talalay keeps these scenes moving, but neat direction’s not enough to disguise a script running on the spot. By 8.25pm I was ready to write this off as a let down, and a waste of the Big Return to Gallifrey.

Then, something weird happened, right about the time the Doctor fled the dullest planet in the universe in a stolen TARDIS. Hell Bent switched gears from lackadaisically rehashing clichés to becoming something approaching magnificent. That gloriously retro 1960s control room is just the icing on the cake.

Back in Before the Flood, the Doctor raged at the Fisher King for stealing the deaths of his victims. Of course, this makes the Doctor an enormous hypocrite, and Clara, as she so often has before, calls him out on it. A woman so stubborn she’s willing to die to prove a point to a man who – as we saw in Heaven Sent – is willing to do exactly the same. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Perhaps the last half hour of Hell Bent.

The Doctor and Clara have been dancing round each other for a long time now. But, eyeball-to-eyeball, both of them knew this was their last dance. Seeing the Doctor slowly lose control – and cool – as Clara’s heart resolutely refused to start beating, hearing them have the same conversation they’ve always had with the urgent edge that comes from the knowledge that they’ll never get the chance again, I was reminded of Moffat’s greatest work: Press Gang. This was Lynda Day having it out with Spike. With Capaldi and Coleman at their peak, it was electric.

Reintroducing Me allows Moffat do pull off the necessary exposition without having to resort to a tedious montage. More, it made explicit a point of view that’s been obvious in Moffat’s work for some time: the answers are never as interesting as the question. Does it matter whether the Hybrid is Ashildr, or the half-human Doctor (yes he is, get over it), or the Doctor’s partnership with Clara? Does it matter what’s inside Amy’s crack, or what the deal is with the Fall of the Eleventh? For many of us, yes. But I think the dialogue between Me and the Doctor sets forth the opposite view cogently.

The scene’s also impressive because Maisie Williams, who up until now hasn’t entirely convinced me, was completely compelling, as if she’s finally relaxed into the part. Ask me before today and I would have quite happily waved goodbye to Me with Face the Raven. Now – not so sure.

So much of Moffat’s era seems to be a response to Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who: not surprising, since the show’s mythology was comprehensively reimagined by Davies in a way that genuinely captured the imagination of the audience. Clara’s final end is clearly influenced by Catherine Tate’s departure, and manages to better it because while Donna’s end was tragic and dark, Clara’s manages to be tragic and light. She’s left with her memories of all those amazing adventures, changed by her experiences, and with access to a working TARDIS and the whole of time and space. Since she’s been becoming more and more like the Doctor, this felt like the proper end.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has a Clara-shaped hole in his mind, but remains fundamentally the Doctor in a way that Donna, stripped of her expanded awareness, was not. I’d say this was the best companion departure since Rose’s; certainly stronger than the Eleventh Doctor’s baffling decision to abandon Amy and Rory in the past. Crucially, Clara is not robbed of her death. It’s still waiting for her, but, as in Face the Raven, she will face it on her own terms. For me, this closed down any suspicion that this was another consequence-free resurrection.

As the conclusion to Series Nine, Hell Bent works well at wrapping up the themes of taking responsibility for your decisions, and living (or dying) with the consequences. The repeated emphasis on these ideas; Ashildr’s regular reappearances, and the number of two part stories have helped to give it a distinctive shape and consistency that’s the hallmark of most of Doctor Who’s best seasons. Like the mystery of Clara’s shop lady, it also leaves a couple of plot points open (have we really heard the last of the Hybrid? Who is the Minister of War? Where’s Rassilon going?). I’m betting Moffat will come back to them in the future – whenever that might be.

I’m of the view this is the best series since 2010, and certainly an improvement over Capaldi’s patchy first year. In a way, this episode mirrors this season: a disastrous beginning that settles down into something richer and more thoughtful than expected.

Doctor Who: Heaven Sent

There was a moment about halfway through Heaven Sent, when the Doctor is digging out the grave in the cloisters, when I turned to my partner and explained how I thought the story was going to play out. It turned out I was half right (at that stage, we didn’t know about the diamond wall). But this, I think, is a good thing. Moffat plays scrupulously fair with the clues, taking a structure inspired by the recurring nightmare of Dead of Night, and countless horror films since, and combining it with Grimms’ Shepherd Boy. The result, more so than Face the Raven, is Doctor Who’s best example of a dark fairy tale.

Largely because of its empathy with the Doctor’s situation: the fear and grief and anger that drive him, this is easily Moffat’s best script since the fiftieth anniversary; perhaps even since 2010. And this is despite it including yet more hit-and-run assaults on continuity. This time, the target is the truth behind the Doctor absconding from Gallifrey – surely the most over-exposed “mystery” in the series’ history. Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, Eric Saward, Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt and Russell T Davies have all pecked away at that particular diamond mountain in the last 46 years.

The cliffhanger in particular is a masterpiece of Moffat’s simultaneous fan-baiting, crowd-playing instincts, certain to have some people up in arms and muttering darkly about the 1996 movie, and others excitedly chattering about what it all means. Similarly, bringing back Gallifrey will worry some fans who suspect that if it returns the whole Horde of Travesties will come through as well: the Habitat soft furnishings; the weary Planet Zog politics; Colin Baker in a ridiculous hat. I take hope from the fact that Gallifrey returning does not, at least going by the Next Time trailer, look like a Good Thing, and because Moffat, though willing to play with continuity, has never wrecked it.

In fact, in a curious way, the climax of Heaven Sent reminded me of The War Games: both of them see the Doctor peeling back layers of misdirection to reveal the Time Lords, and the answer to the great mystery, at the heart. In The War Games, Gallifrey is the one place the Doctor’s been running from all his life. Since The Day of the Doctor, it’s been the place he’s heading towards. Both times, it’s positioned as a kind of final destination of his travels, the moment when the series can reach a natural end point. The death of Doctor Who, if you like.

How entirely appropriate for an episode, and a season, that’s steeped in death. It began with Missy brandishing the Doctor’s last will and testament, continued through episodes that have explored mortality and the consequences of immortality; infected all of its viewers with a dusty death, and forced Clara to face the raven. As a literal manifestation of the ‘second shadow’ that haunts everyone from the moment they are born, the Veil is a supremely effective image. It takes the tired old convention joke about trying to make running through corridors away from a shuffling monster look dramatic, and turns it into something truly nightmarish.

What really sells the monster, as it always has, is the Doctor’s reaction to it. Capaldi has already been universally praised for his blistering performance in the otherwise fatuous climax of The Zygon Inversion. I think he betters it in Heaven Sent, and while he’s not uniquely capable of carrying an episode pretty much single handedly (how many classic Doctors had to do that regularly, in one take?), he is absolutely compelling. In years to come, this will be rightly held up as one of the all-time great Doctor Who performances.

Whether Heaven Sent is held up as one of the all-time greats remains to be seen. Since The Sensorites, posterity, and fandom, hasn’t always been kind to outstanding first episodes with lesser second parts, and a huge amount rides on Hell Bent. But right at this moment, I’m willing to bet this season is going to go up and up in people’s estimation.

TV: Death in Heaven

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

Clara is the Doctor! Well, probably. After Dark Water, you get the feeling that anything could happen, and it probably would. This finale was, like that opening sequence, surprising and epic and delivering on the character’s stories that have been building up throughout the series. A mad ending, as well as a fitting one. Like Missy’s plan (happily all that afterlife stuff is definitely an evil ruse), it might be a bit mad if you had to explain it all afterwards, but it delivers emotionally.

From last week’s slow set-up we’ve moved into pure awesome territory, though still with the big Moffaty ideas - he’s thrown a whole series worth into this story. The showrunner has said in interviews that writing the final two episodes this year was the most fun he’s had and you can tell. Huge stakes! Huge deaths! Missy being bananas! It doesn’t need to be said any more that it’s witty, or clever, or surprising, or brilliantly well made. And even with show’s history breathing down its neck, it’s amazing how much new things they can do with the character and the format. Everything in this episode feels like it’s never been done before, as well as being at the top of its game.

Some of that is down to budgets - trying to match the spectacle of a Marvel film at a fraction of the cost. The money clearly has been spent on the UNIT jet scenes, which offer the glorious set pieces of a Cyberman attack and Missy’s escape from captivity. There’s action, excitement and horror, as she shows that she’s the same Time Lord at heart, actually properly killing Osgood (oh no no no). Michelle Gomez is bonkers, relishing every line, stretching out the accents to breaking point, and always acting in impeccable character. She steals these last two episodes, if not the whole series, and as her fate is as clear as mud she WILL be back. The Cybermen also get a look-in whilst staying reassuringly silent with their new flying skills. Whilst it’s not always convincing elsewhere, I’m glad they spent the money on the night-time action sequence as it looks perfect and beautiful.

Then we’re abruptly back down to Earth and into (relatively) low budget territory, with Clara getting stalked around a graveyard in homage to horror, something in ace director Rachel Talalay’s roots. That the end-game is simply our leads standing around in a graveyard feels a bit small scale considering the whole of the human race is about to be killed - and perhaps it needed a few more wide shots - but then the stakes here are simply Danny and Clara. One man, who we feel for, disturbingly dead and Cyberised. It’s a horrible scene made even worse by Jenna and Sam playing it so bare and heartbroken. When the Doctor turns up, it turns into a character study paying off twelve episodes worth of introspection, coupled with an impossible dilemma about love and death and duty. Most dramas would kill for a scene like that even once a year, but it’s just the latest in a series full of them. It’s so much richer this year from the writers upping the drama, that we’ve truly been spoilt.

Danny and Clara are at the heart of the story, leaving the villains surprisingly in the shadows. This suits the Cybermen, who are back to being essentially henchmen, but it fits their faceless, almost communist, roots of an identikit inhuman race. They’re also creepy and horrific. Less well suited is the new Master. Her choice of plan deconstructs the character down to a notion that we’ve never really seen expressed before - evil yes, but only wanting the Doctor’s attention rather than boring old world domination - but doesn’t the character wait until they’ve won before they start bargaining? It feels like Missy hasn’t shown nearly enough bite as her previous incarnations by ceding so quickly.

The series has also been about the relationship between the Doctor and Clara - though here, they only really talk to each other properly at the ending. If you asked anyone’s for their favourite scenes this series, guaranteed somewhere in their top five would be one between the Doctor and Clara. The often powerful exchanges are the backbone of this series - think back to “I’m not your boyfriend”, “She cares so I don’t have to”, “I’m against the hugging”, “You walk our earth, you breath our air”, “Goodness had nothing to do with it”. And more recently, “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”, followed by “I’m exactly what you deserve.” It’s been the heart of this series and it’s all been leading to this - Clara being equal to the Doctor, and making decisions when he couldn’t go through with them. Even the final scenes show them as equals, yet again hiding their feelings (and their faces) from each other with their lies, the events causing irreversible damage to their relationship. Both of their fates are genuinely horrible, especially with Peter Capaldi’s strong reaction. Raw drama and raw emotion.

I’ve watched a lot of telly series, and I’ve come to a universal truth: final episodes are bloody hard to pull off. For a show like Doctor Who, with months of build-up and millions of fans, they must be even harder. Raising the stakes is far easier than lowering them again -think of all the comments on two-parters where the second half has ‘ruined’ it - especially if you decide to go on a fake-out and not deliver the action you were building up to all series. It’s a recipe for leaving viewers dissatisfied. Fortunately, this episode delivered that, tying up the ‘Good Man’ debate (and the idea of the Doctor being a General from The Caretaker), having a proper confrontation between our hero and new arch enemy (we’ve had too few of those in the last twenty years), and exploring Danny and Clara’s relationship one final heartbreaking time.

It’s on the last front that I think the episode still dissatisfies the viewer. The Doctor hates endings, and so does the show itself. Whilst it might be in keeping with the characters, Danny’s sacrifice and Clara’s last few scenes are realistic and downbeat and brutal compared with our dreams of a happy ending and a perfect romance for them. I wished this one didn’t end on two great big lies from our main characters, or three big lies if you consider that we don’t even know if Clara is going to be leaving here or not, so should we cry over it all or what? It’s the same with Danny - something about the open-ended nature of the programme means that exits no longer have the same impact. And the ambiguity elsewhere turns it into audience dissatisfaction for this show; the next series should be working towards the right balance of dramatic uncertainty and authorial intent that this year has wavered around. In some ways it’s been a year to love for all the wrong reasons: the Doctor is less immediately likeable, the companion doesn’t always get along, the journeys are more dangerous and less fun. But it’s also, on a technical level in every department, probably the best series of Doctor Who ever produced.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

TV: Dark Water (Tom Newsom)

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

If there’s anything you can take from the first part of this series finale, it’s that the series still has guts. From the first scene - did they really go there? - and then an electrifying meeting between our heroes, this starts off big and goes bigger, and madder, and creepier than before.

This week it’s Doctor Who meets Black Mirror, a drama with a scarily adult, ruthlessly modern approach to life and death and love. A bit satirical, a bit disturbing. Whereas The Pandorica Opens was pure fairytale - although Rory comes back as a murderous alien clone, it’s presented as a relief and the heartache doesn’t last - here, it feels like Danny and Clara are finally parted. Everything’s real: not laser guns, but machine guns. Not Weeping Angels and time cracks, but getting knocked down by a ‘boring’ car. It all feels uncomfortably real for Doctor Who, even when there’s science fiction involved behind it.

It’s the culmination of Moffat’s take on Doctor Who that we’ve seen previously in his stories - this year he’s continued to expand on elements like the Doctor’s new persona, the developing companion, relationships, scary monsters - this time it’s about death. In Silence in the Library, dead people were used as computer interfaces and souls were ‘uploaded’ onto a hard-drive. That same plot, or metaphor, or view, comes to the fore here: it might be wrapped up in a shiny Cyberman invasion, but it makes up the majority of this week’s viewing. Whilst it’s deconstructed and explained away in the last minutes of the episode, we are repeatedly told that this is heaven - certainly at the end of it, these are people who have recently died.

I’m comfortable with the idea of skeletons walking and random dead bodies being converted (and the methodology so fits the monsters and the villain, it’s a masterstroke). But the cremation angle is preposterously insensitive, along with the idea of your loved ones objecting to what happens to them, and the Doctor and the show knows it to be so. But it still goes there, just to the point of being upsetting to the audience, which can’t be taken back by a sloppily speedy sci-fi explanation. It’s a consequence of the show trying to explore themes of death from the point of view of the deceased, the grieving and the objective outsider - though does it really need to? - whilst finding out so much more about our characters when they’re pushed. It’s all getting too personal: for the characters, who I’m not sure come out of this story in the best of lights, and especially for us. There will be complaints.

Even so, the central idea is ludicrous, even the idea that the show would ever venture into that territory, or the Doctor would suddenly take want to take a trip to the afterlife to see what’s there. But this is the same Doctor who went on a trip to the end of the universe in Listen to see whether there were any monsters left, and the same Clara who wants to have both Danny and the Doctor in her life and is used to making things happen how she wants them. He takes Clara at her so-human words - and she takes him at his - and ‘goes to hell’ because that’s the only logical way left to try to save Danny. Ruthless logic, leading to some very human consequences. That’s the new show, take it or leave it.

I was surprised how much the character’s relationships were explored inbetween the mountains of set-up - the Nethersphere, Missy, the Cybermen, Danny... It’s a skilled balancing act even for Steven Moffat, one that’s helped by the smooth and surprisingly pacey direction. The ongoing tension as the characters work out what the Nethersphere is all about feels like we’re moving towards something big, and the use of the single Cybermen eye as a logo is magic, in an episode packed with striking visuals. With fast flashes of images and soundbites and injokes (Malcolm Tucker! Time Traveller’s Wife!), often it’s Doctor Who for the tumblr generation, even more so given a few of the jaw dropping events. But playing to the gallery isn’t a bad thing, especially when it’s this good.

Where does it fit in with the bigger picture, the wider show? Is this the modern bold story Doctor Who needs, or a step too far? (note to self: every previous series finale felt like a modern step too far, so it’s probably a good thing.) It’s a reinvention that’s been in place for some time now, a show that’s always looking forward and is firing on all cylinders here: in the level of acting, in the style, and in the irresistible blend of human writing, about pain and laughter but also shocks and spectacle. Whilst not all of the story has been told yet, it’s thrilling and surprising.

Outside of the episode, there’s a question about publicity - does knowing about the Cybermen being in it in advance spoil the mystery being set up here? Some of the bits in last week’s trailer weren’t even in this one. Personally I didn’t mind too much, this episode contained plenty of mysteries that I didn’t know about, or had only half worked out. And there’s an argument to be said that knowing some of the answers in advance didn’t affect things at all, perhaps even helping things. It’s the same thrill that you get when the Doctor works out that the Daleks are behind things in every story with the word ‘Daleks’ in the title. Or maybe it isn’t. I just hope that people won’t have more debates on TV spoilers than wondering about the bigger themes here of death, grief and the afterlife.

And of course, the plans of an evil supervillain wanting to take over the world to impress their, well, boyfriend. The mystery of Missy wasn’t exactly central to this week’s episode, but provided plenty of debate afterwards for viewers and fans that will last the next week. We’ve seen enough of what Moffat plans to do with the character for people to love or hate it - and if it feels like too a bold move for some, well, I’m sure a lot of those same people warmed to Last of the Time Lords in the end.

Or you can just enjoy the ride - there’s plenty here to like. And with this only being the first part of the tale, there’s plenty more to come.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)