TV: Last Christmas (Newsom)

 

review by Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

There’s some smart lines, a nice tune - not all that Christmassy, but a proper catchy sing along classic from Wham. 9/10

Oh wait, this is a Doctor Who blog. But actually, this is pretty Christmassy - though you’d struggle to have Santa and for it to not be. There’s plenty more stuffed in here too, with traditional sci-fi science bases, icky monsters and clever fantasy trickery. Ho ho ho! This isn’t exactly light Christmas fare - the plot is more important than most for these specials - but it’s deceptively complex, a run-around that has its focus on Clara leaving the Doctor more than anything.

Let’s not forget that Santa is the big selling point here - the real Santa! Santa in Doctor Who - it’s genius! Nick Frost fills out the character in every way, breathing life into the traditional image without sending it up, even when wisecracking. He easily stands up to Peter Capaldi, even if it feels like he should be in far more scenes than he is. The other characters fall into the shade but they seem well cast, with Faye Marsay perhaps unexpectingly standing out the most.

In fact, with Santa appearing (real living Santa!) along with all the trimmings, it’s a surprise that the whole thing isn’t sent up. It’s not that preposterous by Doctor Who standards, but it could easily slip. But this is coming from the director of the foreboding and adult Kill the Moon and it’s a Steven Moffat script, and so is full of Moffat tricks. Would any other show on telly at the moment be up to an episode full of dream sequences and televisual quirks with nobody batting an eye? Perhaps Black Mirror or Sherlock do the same sort of thing too, but that’s about it. For Christmas Day viewing they aren’t going soft: this episode throws in everything - some with complete success (Slade beats monsters!) and some that feel slightly too indulgent (Michael Troughton’s cool death feels like merely that).A special mention has to go to the design and the effects too - we’re in proper movie territory here.

If there’s a downside, it’s that it’s not movie length. The sixty minutes flew by, but here more than ever it feels there’s not enough time to take everything in, especially when you’ve got these sorts of big ideas. The lack of exposition at the start - it skips from Clara meeting the Doctor again to investigating the space base very quickly with little to no reason why it’s all happening - is a clever double bluff, especially clever as it’s the sort of frantic opener we’re used to (or that I’m used to not enjoying!). But even if it’s part of the plot, I think the beginning of the episode suffers because of it.

I did want to see more of Santa being Santa, or even more of Clara and the Doctor being themselves rather than being in mortal danger. This episode has it in spades, managing to keep up a strong pace when the plot itself is literally unravelling as we’re told to forget what previously happened. It’s a puzzle box of an episode that works (and only works really) as a one-off special, and the whole thing feels very solid rather than the writer constantly keeping the plates spinning when the dreams start recurring. It helps of course that the core elements are so joyfully mismatched - yes, some of them come very close to ripping things off (it even mentions most of its film influences in the episode itself), but it’s exactly the sort of thing we want to see. And it’s Christmas. So there.

The most recent series isn’t nearly forgotten about (after all, it’s only been a couple of months since it finished). It’s a proper continuation rather than the tradition in recent years of being standalone in style and tone as well as the characters. This dealt with the same relationships that we saw in Death in Heaven, almost trying to top it. I love that they brought Danny back indulgently as a Christmas present, but sort of gave him a proper goodbye without spoiling the previous one. And that ending that kept you guessing? Like in the Wham song, I think we might all need to be given new hearts after this one.

many thanks to

Tom Newsom (Twitter | Flickr | Blog)

888: Series 8 Round-Up

It wouldn't be the end of a series without an Artron Reviews round-up post. To celebrate the conclusion of Doctor Who Series 8, we've invited some of the best-loved reviewers, writers, artists and all-round good eggs from within the Whoniverse to sum up Peter Capaldi's first twelve episodes in 8 words each. Here's what they came up with.

Lee Binding
(Digital Artist/Graphic Designer | Twitter)
"Alien rediscovers his humanity, friend almost loses hers."

Will Brooks 

(Digital Artist and Reviewer | Twitter, Tumblr)

"Twelve slices of Doctor Who at its best."

Philip Lawrence  
(Writer, Actor, AFT Manager | Twitter, Action Figure Theatre)
"Nice try but Capaldi didn't win me over."


 

Stuart Manning

(Digital Artist | Twitter, Facebook, Flickr)
"Mad minxy Missy Master's mausoleum much mischief makes."

 
Una McCormack 

(Writer and Creative Writing Lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University | Twitter, Website)

"Thoughtful, consistently good and blessedly story arc lite!"

Matt Michael
(DWM Reviewer, Blue Guard | Twitter, Podcast)

"Moffat's largely successful attempt to confound his critics."

Jonathan Morris
(Writer, Father, Hero | Twitter, Blog)
"Fantastic Doctor/companion/scares, but not for kids?"

Tom Newsom  

(Fan Writer, Artist and Reviewer | Twitter, Blog, Flickr)

"The new Doctor's merciless - magnificent. And so's Clara."

Jim Sangster

(DWM Reviewer, Occasional DVD Talking Head | Twitter)

"We're back on track - it's about time! Yaroo!!!"

Review Catch-Up List 

(click image to go to the full review)

Thank you very much to all contributors for their time, and to all associated with Series 8.

A full summary review will be posted in due course.

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)

TV: In the Forest of the Night

 

review by Matt Michael (Twitter | Season to Taste Podcast)

Some Doctor Who stories have the capacity to massively divide opinion. Kinda (another story set partly in the forest and partly in the world inside the characters’ heads) was hailed as a masterpiece at the same time as it plummeted to the bottom of that year’s DWM poll. More recently, Love & Monsters provoked a totally marmite response. In the hours since In the Forest of the Night aired, I’ve had some friends who’ve generally loved this year mail me to say how awful they thought it was, and others not yet sold on the Capaldi era delighted by what they saw.

Let’s be honest: there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t quite work, or feels like the author wasn’t thoroughly briefed on the preceding episodes. So, for example, none of the children recognises the Doctor as the funny caretaker from a few weeks ago. Clara’s eleventh hour decision not to save the children is sort of understandable, but hard to swallow. London’s oddly deserted, except for the one mother searching for her daughter in the forest. The Tinkerbell creatures have such over-processed voices that key bits of dialogue are about as comprehensible as one of McCoy’s monologues. The climactic reappearance of Maebh’s sister was an unnecessary touch, and along with the Doctor urging Maebh not to take her medication, suggests that Frank Cottrell-Boyce has become so caught up in his fairy tale that he’s become irresponsible

However, the impression I got at the end is that this episode largely achieves what The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe was striving for: a child’s fantasy of the forest, of Mother Nature and the mythical history of England, where ancient spirits lurk in forgotten corners, to be summoned in our hour of greatest need. The threat was broadly the same: fire from above that triggers a Gaia-type response from the planet. Even the villains – humans hiding in hazmat suits – looked like the bad guys from Androzani, as out of place in this forest of London as a yeti in the loo.

This wins out over the earlier story partly because the set-up is more gripping: a forest growing overnight across the whole planet, with imagery lifted straight out of JG Ballard – Trafalgar Square wreathed in creeping vines and vast jungle canopies, and escaped zoo animals lurking, menacingly, in the undergrowth. Partly its because the fables invoked are so much more primal than Narnia – Little Red Riding Hood running from the wolves; the trail of breadcrumbs; the brave woodcutter who arrives, with a torch instead of an axe, to save the day. 

But ultimately, I think the episode works because it’s subversive in the same way as the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony was: Clara offers Danny the majesty of travelling the universe, but his retort is that it’s what you make of the world you have that’s important. The Doctor doesn’t need to save the planet from the storm, humanity just needs to save ourselves from our own short-sightedness. The astonishing power of the TARDIS becomes a science museum for kids – kids who aren’t really the most gifted and talented, just ordinary British children doing the best they can. The Olympic Ceremony said, ‘Britain gave the world all these awesome things – but the most important of them is what we made here. We built Jerusalem – or at least the NHS – in England’s green and pleasant land.’ In that respect, Cottrell-Boyce has been channelling the spirit of William Blake for a long time.

I think, like Kill the Moon, this was a story about the choices we make for ourselves. It explicitly positioned the Doctor as a cranky outsider – the mythical Last of the Time Lords – and placed the future of Earth in the hands of its children. Capaldi’s still a spiky, unpredictable presence – he’s not become mellow and cuddly as many predicted he would across the course of the season, but is still half Tom Baker in Horror of Fang Rock and half Sylvester McCoy on steroids. Brilliantly, he makes no allowances for children – but then, I guess to a thousand-year-old alien we must all look like toddlers.

Clara has changed though – preferring death with Danny over a life with the Doctor as the last human. The moment when she decides – without offering them a say – that the children will die with the Earth is a genuinely, and I think deliberately shocking moment: a kind of pay off to Kill the Moon and Flatline. Clara’s been forced to think and choose like the Doctor, on behalf of the whole human race – and what does that make her?  Which leads in to that ridiculously overblown and utterly brilliant “Next Time – The Finale Begins!” I have no idea where this season is heading, but I definitely want to be there.

many thanks to 

Matt Michael (Twitter | Season to Taste Podcast)