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.

Book Review: A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

Review by Tom Newsom

I’d first heard about this book on Radio 2’s Book Club - they were full of warm praise for it - in early 2015. And although by the time I came across it in my local library, it meant that I knew the shape of the plot and what to expect, it did not disappoint. It’s the sort of book where that doesn’t weaken it, where the journey is more important than the twists, although there are some big ones.

It’s all about a man, Harry Cane. The book’s early chapters trace his cosy life in Edwardian England, from his early age to marriage and family responsibilities, before everything changes. We’re under his skin for most of this book, for he’s a character who never quite fits in anywhere, even though he tries - not in formal society, nor in the vast prairies of Canada, where he is forced to escape to. Even though the landscape changes vastly, the book doesn’t lose its footing - now he’s got even more to learn to become a farmer and landowner, to fit in with the tiny rural communities he finds there, and importantly to discover himself.

One of the quotes on the back of my copy says it “manages to be both tender and epic”, which is a perfect description. It covers a lot of ground but we never lose sight of the main character and what it all means for him.

Whilst reading it I was wondering if I’d recommend it to anyone unreservedly. And whilst it’s a cracking, solid book, there are a few scenes of violence that means it’s not a comfortable read at times. But then it’s not a comfortable adventure - and whilst there are terrible events, the tone always allows an everyday humanity and a feeling of hope afterwards. If anything it’s a book about survivors.

You can sort of tell it’s based on a true story, very loosely: the main character’s background came from one of the author’s mysterious relatives, which he then breathed new life into their actions by creating a character. He’ll never know what they were really like, or why they relocated to Canada, but the motives here feel real. The whole book has the ring of truth; I think that’s down to the research, plus the level of detail that’s then put in the writing. It doesn’t proclaim its historical accuracy on every page, but due to the compressed, fast paced plot (some big time jumps), there’s a lot of scene setting, well told. It also makes it a great read, one of those books you can really lose yourself in.

The historical detail doesn’t stop at the world the author has created either - it’s present in the character’s heads and how they see themselves. As the writer has said - “The challenge was to inhabit a homosexual life in a time when there are no words to describe any of the things the character feels or does.” It’s no spoiler to say that you honestly don’t notice this linguistic, mental gap when you’re reading it, although it is very much there. This book feels like a story very much of its time, even if any story like it wouldn’t be told for over half a century later. And I think the secret strength to this book is the characters: if the world around them felt real, then they feel doubly so, rounded and authentic - they make the most realistic of mistakes.

It’s an exquisite book, full of foreboding, adventure and human truths. Well worth reading, and it will stay with you for some time after.

TV Review: Unforgotten - Series 1

On paper, ITV's new crime drama should be a total disappointment, writes Tom Newsom, yet it's surprisingly engrossing and gets better as it goes along.

A new ITV crime drama - no wait, come back!

On the face of it, Unforgotten doesn’t have a lot to offer viewers. Yet another drama where police detectives investigate old crimes (there’s literally a new one every week), only this time there’s no twist with the main characters, nor is it set in a particular, photogenic location. To make things worse, ITV were hailing it as the next Broadchurch, and then Nicola Walker, the main star, pops up in BBC One’s much more experimental drama River in the same week.

Every sign pointed to this being a disappointment - that is, except the cast list, packed full of fine actors, almost laughably so given their individual screen time in the first episode. The list goes on and on, but the ensemble cast includes Trevor Eve, Bernard Hill, Sir Tom Courtenay, Ruth Sheen, Gemma Jones, Cherie Lunghi, David Troughton, Hannah Gordon, Peter Egan... it’s an impressive roll call to fit into 45 minutes and lends the show some serious star quality. All this is fine, but often it’s no indicator as to whether the show is any good; even the best actors suffer with bad material.

So it’s a great relief that Unforgotten - forgettable title - is one of the best dramas ITV have put out this year. Sure, it isn’t original, not on the face of it, not as a genre. But its strength is in its writing: it manages to pull off having a ‘realistic’ tone but also with big themes, solid drama and twists, with relying on a flashy style or narrative tricks.
If the large cast list doesn’t give it away, the production is big. There’s a real drive to make this a diverse series that captures life in the country today - it’s great to watch a show that has a disabled character, black and Asian characters, gay characters, and all kinds of older people - from lotharios to liars to people with dementia. There’s even, by the end of it, a birth, a wedding and a funeral. It doesn’t feel like box-ticking, nor as if ITV is trying to appeal to all. It’s more like a state-of-the-nation drama.

Not necessarily just a state of the nation today, either. In the series, the police uncover a body from 1976 - so each of the main suspects is now in their 60s. Cleverly the series doesn’t dwell on the specifics, nor overly rely on flashbacks, leaving the events shrouded in mystery until the final episode (after all, the characters can’t remember everything from 40 years ago!). At first it can feel annoying, later you realise it’s the way to make you keep watching. That, and how it doesn’t need to - the drama here is watching to see how these suspects cope when their pasts are looked into, and secrets uncovered.

What secrets! What storylines! One of the strongest, I thought, is what Ruth Sheen’s character goes through. Once the police come sniffing round, it all comes out: she used to be a racist, she tells her - black - husband of twenty-odd years. She was egged on by her former boyfriend, she wasn’t really like that. We rarely see a story like that on TV, I think. Not just attacks by faceless youths but the insidious hints and rumours - with the focus solely on the characters in the modern day, the shoe is on the other foot once her community finds out. In the end, she’s merely looking for trust and love, rather than full forgiveness.

Obviously there’s a theme of history repeating itself, that the truth will out. It’s also incredibly easy to see this as a reaction to the modern day’s judging of the 1970s - with some people picking it as a decade where what passed for everyday life are now serious crimes  (as opposed to every other decade before then, and since). It doesn’t feel like a coincidence, but it’s not entirely unsubtle. Nonetheless the crimes that the suspects are guilty of are well chosen - the full gamut of hate crime to underage affairs. But there’s always an element of doubt, as in the real world. Every criminal has a defence.

It’s this realistic tone, combined with a steady, balanced plot, which makes this drama so engrossing and deep. It gets richer as it goes along, right up to the ending, which did not disappoint. The dramatic storyline and twists only go some of the way - it’s what sticks in the mind later. This is the sort of drama where the characters - especially the police detectives - stop for a few minutes and discuss the nature of guilt, innocence and historical crimes. And this is in ITV. My kind of show.

Thankfully they’ve announced a second series - and unlike Broadchurch, it might actually deliver. The only things that need to carry over is the format and the detectives. I’ve barely said a word about Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar - always likeable actors, both of them - and that’s probably because they’re not at the centre of this. I could barely tell you anything about their characters, nor do they go through much development by the end of it. Almost as if it’s real life. These are people you’d happily watch another series with, solving further long-buried crimes, which makes it good casting. That, and the top names, make this sound more like Midsomer Murders. But this has real teeth.

Oh and the theme's tune also pretty good.

Love in the TARDIS

1980s Doctor Who producer John Nathan Turner once famously said that there would be “No hanky panky in the TARDIS.” Back then it was a reaction to cynical newshounds that couldn’t see an heroic mysterious man whisk an adventurous, beautiful woman into time and space without instantly thinking sex.

Skip forward to the show’s twenty-first century revival and while actual sex is still taboo (it is still a pre-watershed family series after all) the notion of Time And Relationship Dimensions In Space is more accepted. Starting with Rose Tyler, love and affection are front and centre. And what’s more, the Doctor feels it too.

There were plenty of old school fans that have hated this “soap” aspect. But then there are plenty of fans for whom a disengaged ‘higher being’ hero is a welcome aspirational character. These are probably the same kinds of people who saw Sheldon Cooper as a kindred spirit until he took up with Amy Farah Fowler. At least our Doctor never meddled in anything as mundane and petty as human emotions.

Did he?

To fellow children of the '80s that balked when the McGann kissed Grace (without tongues note) or reached for a bucket with one hand and tapped a stiff tweet to Points of View with the other whenever Eccleston or Tennant found an excuse to snog his leading lady, (just sucking out the time vortex? Oh ok…) I’d say get take an objective look at the classic series. Affection in the TARDIS has been there for decades. But like many deep, happy and long lasting relationships, it doesn’t always have to end up in the sack.

When JNT made his statement, the Doctor was about to be the youngest he’d ever been. A virile, youthful Peter Davison would be surrounded by the equally young and gorgeous Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, with Matthew Waterhouse’s Adric skulking about at the back.

But like the '80s themselves, the show was quite arguably superficial. Back then our focus was much more on the stories themselves, the monsters rather than the intimate feelings of the TARDIS team which was often reduced to folks just being argumentative.

I sometimes wonder if the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa would have developed a closer relationship if they hadn’t been dogged by moany third wheel Tegan. Their ‘old married couple’ act at the start of season twenty, with Nyssa finding little jobs round the house could have been nicked from TV perennials at the time Terry & June. And it’s clear that the Doctor’s not happy about the return of the Australian gooseberry by his grudging welcome at the end of Arc of Infinity. “Damn. There go our romantic fireside nights talking about sonic boosters.”

The Sixth Doctor of course didn’t really have room in his hearts for anyone but himself and the Seventh Doctor and Ace with their teacher/pupil relationship completely redefined the TARDIS team. And it was in this emotional wilderness that fandom seems to have retro-actively decreed that the Doctor was above petty things like human emotion. How very wrong we were.

Granted, the sixties Doctors were short on romance. Troughton was more of a fun uncle and if there was any hint of flirtation it fell to Jamie. But while Hartnell’s role was as a grandfather figure – so no ‘hanky panky’ as such - he wasn’t beyond emotion. Witness in The Aztecs right there in season one, he connects emotionally with kindred spirit Cameca. See his regret at betraying her and his reluctance to part with a keepsake.

However it’s in the '70s that the direct relationship between the Doctor and his companions deepens.

When School Reunion blasted onto our screens in 2006 it was trailed as ‘the Mrs meets the ex’.

What?

Suddenly we’re supposed to treat the relationship between the Doctor and Sarah Jane as a love affair? The modern eye looking back at this innocent '70s friendship sees sex? No, not sex. But a kind of love, definitely. A deep affection between the two of them. And it’s more than just modern sensibilities colouring what went before, it’s a spotlight illuminating what was always there, just under the surface of running down corridors and fighting rubber aliens.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane do everything with a passion. Lis Sladen in an interview for ‘Thirty Years In The TARDIS’ cited her ‘motivation’ as having the best friend and being compelled to do anything to save that best friend. Sarah and the Doctor throw themselves into situations without a second thought. I’m often reminded of the scene in The Seeds of Doom where the Doctor jumps through a skylight and decks a thug to save Sarah whereas with Romana or Leela, while no less heroic, he’d be more likely to hold of the enemy with a quip or a clever rouse, acting from the head rather than from the hearts.

There is an argument to say that it all comes from Sarah Jane, that she’s the one that seems to do all the running. We see how miserable and betrayed she is in ‘K-9 & Company’. We hear her explanation in Invasion of the Bane and School Reunion about how she met someone so incredible she could never fall for anyone else.

But the Doctor for all his alien reactions to things is just as much affected. The way he talks to Sarah is different to any other of his companions. For all his otherworldliness, there is a warmth of delivery that he just doesn’t give to Leela or Romana. It’s significant that like with Rose later on, this is a pairing that has to be forced apart. And I’m sure it’s no coincidence that following the irreplaceable Sarah Jane, the fourth Doctor never takes another contemporary human companion. (Not counting Tegan who stowed away and was more a companion-in-waiting for Davison).

But this affection isn’t limited to dear old Sarah Jane. Remember her predecessor, the charmingly clumsy but gutsy wannabe spy Jo Grant?

Everyone remembers that final scene of The Green Death. The Doctor leaves Jo to her engagement party without a goodbye and drives off alone into the night. It’s a great and heart wrenching finale for their relationship. What’s that? Yes, I said relationship. Oh you didn’t know that the Doctor and Jo were in love? You didn’t see the clues? Let me point some out.

With Pertwee’s Doctor and suddenly in glorious colour, the show finds a more adult tone, usually attributed to the level of 007-like action and slightly more cerebral stories, but I think the human interactions among the team are just as much responsible and could explain why the Pertwee era is so well loved. Here, the Doctor isn’t the grandfather or the uncle. He’s the hero, slap bang in the middle. And like James Bond, to whom he’s often compared, that means getting the girl. He’s charismatic, clever and protective. Even the ready-made love interest of Captain Yates can’t turn Jo’s head for very long.

As it’s her swansong, The Green Death is inevitably the most obvious and up front about their relationship. “All of time and space. I’m offering them to you.” The Doctor literally proposes. They’ve been on day trips to Inter Minor and Spiridon but this is it. Come with me for real. And clock the Doctor's regret and sense of loss when Jo gives up on that long promised trip to Metebelis III in favour of Wales. Worse than that, she ditches him for “a younger” version. An attainable human version of the Doctor himself. Seem familiar?

But there are earlier clues.

As a threat to the Doctor, the Axons age Jo. This isn’t an exercise in vanity, taking away her youthful looks. The Doctor as a Time Lord has a demonstrable fear of seeing those he loves growing old, withering away while he goes on alone. It’s spelled out eloquently in School Reunion and The Girl In The Fireplace but here it is in action.

With this Doctor exiled to Earth it’s inevitable that he’d start behaving like a human and form bonds with those around him. But it’s in Colony In Space, his freedom seemingly temporarily restored, that he’s able to show Jo what he’s really about. It’s a beautiful, tender scene in the TARDIS where the Doctor takes a hesitant, tentative young woman and shows her a larger universe, albeit in the form of a quarry.

And armed with these moments, look at any episode between them, the joy they have just being in each other’s company, the lengths Jo goes to to rescue the Doctor from prison in The Sea Devils, the ultimate sacrifice she’s prepared to make to save him in The Daemons. And look at how the Doctor crosses time to get Jo back in Day of the Daleks or space in Frontier In Space. Compare it to his friendly but efficient relationship with Liz Shaw.

Ok, some of this is filling in the gaps and reading between the lines. I am taking our modern sensibilities and storytelling, our need for an emotional resonance and applying it to our beloved classic series. But you can’t do it to every era. No one would believe that the 6th Doctor and Peri’s arguments were really a cover for a secret unspoken passion. Or that the 1st Doctor and Barbara exchanged meaningful looks over the console when Ian’s back was turned. All the more significant then that there are certain Doctor/Companion pairings you can apply it to without contradicting what’s shown on screen.

It’s a fine line. No one really wants ‘The Doctor and Mrs Who’ (Sorry River, you were far more interesting when we just thought you were his wife) and any TARDIS love affair, whether it’s unrequited or not, should underpin the adventure rather than be the main narrative thrust. It’s still an adventure series about fighting monsters.

But if you’re willing to believe a Time Lord can love, it does add depth not just to the companions but to the Doctor himself. It shouldn’t diminish our hero to admit that he, like ourselves, is sometimes prey to stupid emotions.

Thanks to Philip Lawrence.

The Other Woman (starring Katy Manning and written by Phil) is out this month from Big Finish and you can pre-order it here. 
Visit Phil's website here.

Doctor Who: Sleep No More

Sleep No More isn't trying to say or do anything in particular, it's just an experiment into uncharted territory for Doctor Who - but it doesn't work, writes Tom Newsom.

I’m sure some people must love it, but I never hear anyone admit that in public. The ‘found footage’ genre, normally for low-budget horror, has been ubiquitous in the last five (ten? fifteen?) years. I’m not an expert in it by any means, but it offers a very different form of drama to the one we’re used to in Doctor Who - something more distant. However given its widespread use, doesn’t it feel like a great fit for a scary episode? In theory, perhaps - but here it just left me cold.

You can’t call this episode conventional, in any sense. But I’ve surprised myself, thinking back, how many things it gets spot on: the monsters especially. Sleep, the sandman, it’s an irresistible connection, played to its full here. But the camera moving means that we barely glimpse them at first - a plus for anything trying to scare us. And then when we see more, it’s just a deformed blob with legs and a gaping mouth - eurgh. They’ve got one of the sketchiest backstories and behaviour - “sleep dust” is all there is to them - but they don’t half scare.

It’s a great production, especially when you consider it was filmed with the normal HD cameras, as opposed to smaller models attached to the actors. The camerawork can really make you feel the action even when people are standing still, and the editing is faster. Parts of this episode are INTENSE, the scary parts, which you don’t normally get with Doctor Who.

It’s definitely an episode that will be rated a ‘12’, in a series that’s had at least four of them so far - so god knows what young children thought of it. I remember being scared watching Jeopardy, a CBBC Blair Witch Project-style series, when I was younger - and that was just kids in a field with cameras, rather than full-blown Aliens.

But there’s only that intensity to parts of it. For the rest of it, normally the talky scenes such as at the start or with the supporting characters, it starts to grate. Yes, really - Doctor Who is a programme that actively tries to not be boring, always. But when it’s a group of guest characters who you barely even recognise (let alone care for), who are muttering in wide-shots with shaking cameras - well, you pray for a good closeup. Thankfully we get a few, of the Doctor especially (him and Clara are a welcome presence this week), because otherwise you’d struggle to feel a part of the action, even with the point-of-view business. At some moments it didn’t feel like television to me at all, more like a first-person shooter - really, for Doctor Who?

The helmet cameras, or lack of, was a good twist though, in an episode that had more standout moments than it deserved. The plot is involved just enough, building up and teasing out a few mysteries. Okay, I felt good about wondering to myself why we were seeing things from Clara’s point of view (or whether there was another soldier character I’d missed). The story about the Morpheus process was well told too, with its slightly creepy set-up involving “that song”. Less so about the hunt for the villain behind the piece - by then I was confused what the overall monster plan was, though so was the Doctor.

It would be cruel to sign off a review with the Doctor’s closing comment - “none of this makes any sense!” - so I won’t. Instead, I’ll highlight the cool and utterly terrifying closing shot of Reece Shearsmith. Good to have him in Doctor Who, and a perfect fit for this particular part. This episode feels like an Inside No 9 on BBC Two, if its budget was tripled overnight.

Really though, this is Doctor Who (and writer/horror fan Mark Gatiss) having fun with a particular genre. You can tell that through the ways they’ve tied it into the story - the ‘found footage’ of the “cameras”, and the message that frames the story. It’s not like a film, in that the director is using it to make a statement or a higher art-form. This is purely them trying new things, an experiment of an episode for this week’s audience.

I’m just not quite sure it works.

TV Review: London Spy - Lullaby

The first episode of BBC Two's new drama portrays it as more of a romantic mystery than a traditional spy thriller and is full of clever little touches, writes Tom Newsom.

You have to suspend your disbelief, even in the opening scenes. Ben Whishaw is entering a gay club - we know this because it’s populated by 90% men and 9% Donna Summer - yet none of the crowd recognises him. C’mon guys - this is big name casting! Q, Paddington! Star of the excellent drama The Hour! An exceptionally busy actor at the moment. But we’re not interested about the crowd, just about him, Danny. He leaves, much later, still high, and walks out into the shadow of the MI6 building. If that doesn’t set up the episode perfectly, I don’t know what does.

He meets Joe on the bridge and straight away from their slightly off behaviour we know that these two characters aren’t trying to emulate real people. Danny is awkward and says too much, the mysterious Joe stares, wipes some sweat from his face and gives him his water pack for free. I’m assuming here that encounters in the middle of London at five in the morning aren’t quite so homoerotic - but I don’t know.

If that didn’t feel real enough, then happily the rest of the drama does. They fall in love in a way that is rarely seen on TV - slowly, after they’ve met each other a few times and spent time in each others’ company (long walks, mumbling, endearingly cute groyne walking). The script specifies it’s over the course of weeks and months and actually yes, we feel that too. It’s as slow as relationships in costume dramas, even in an age where romantic opportunities are no longer limited to endless formal dancing.

So, it’s slow - but gripping, always gripping. The writer, Tom Rob Smith, is new to TV at least, and he’s very lucky that he teamed up with this director, Jakob Verbruggen. I honestly don’t think that any other director working in TV could have handled it this smoothly or brilliantly. I really enjoyed his work leading on the Gillian Anderson BBC Two drama The Fall and this is in the same mould, as a first episode at least: following only a few characters before the main conspiracy and drive steps in. It’s mainstream (read: actually watchable) minimalist. Indeed, this episode revolves around just three people, who thankfully are really good actors. Phew. And it earns its length: there’s an electric scene, one of Ben Whishaw’s best ever, in which he opens up and reveals some of his past. The writing is spot on too, but played slowly, in one take, gives it intensity and the extra time makes you read beyond the more subtle words and realise the importance of it.

It’s billed as a “spy thriller”, but it’s neither the high action of SPECTRE or even Spooks, nor the twisted logic of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Instead this episode is more like a “romantic mystery”. But there are spy elements if you’re a fan, in an episode full of small, clever touches - the hidden secrets, shadowy figures bugging and tailing you, hints of a greater force at work. It means that there are rules that we can expect, even though we’re not quite in that genre yet.

Other plot points appear to have been inspired by events in the news... I won’t say which events, however, because I felt that the plot was spoilt after I read a headline in a TV mag explaining it. The less you know the better - especially when there’s so little “action” that the trailers on TV midweek probably show you everything that happens anyway.

The promotion and trailers, Ben Whishaw’s presence, plus coming so soon after his role in the new James Bond film - well, it was going to be a hit, and it is - over three million viewers. For the first episode at least - less people will watch it by the end, as with Wolf Hall and every other drama on the channel. Not because of the central romance between two men (surprisingly rare to make a series around it - I always forget this) - but because this type of TV has a very particular style and pace, which this episode achieves beautifully.

Doctor Who: The Woman Who Lived

Review by Tom Newsom

The second in a two-part story - or is it? Regardless, it’s one of those uncommon episodes of the show - one where characters and themes and messages take over an otherwise standard plot, this time with magical results.

At first you might think you’d skipped an episode, what with the sudden change in setting. But this one complements last week’s “opening” part to the story rather more closely than you’d expect. The action-adventure strand in both is slight, but there are big discussions on life and death. Bravely, this episode is for the first half a lengthy two hander (no Clara!), before the action widens out. It’s great to have a smaller episode that still manages to be very compelling - I was captivated.

Much of it’s down to Maisie Williams’s character - what a part! The range is extraordinary - going from Viking girl last week to seventeenth century woman... probably because it’s basically two separate characters. It’s an inherent weakness that this episode doesn’t naturally follow on, and that’s the point. The character of Ashildr has grown up, hundreds of years older, and can’t even remember when she was born. Her morals have changed beyond recognition - as has her style! - and she’s become an interesting, headstrong figure who has run away from her past.

Oh, but it’s here where the best, deepest part of the episode is. Ashildr’s assumption that the Doctor has come back especially is undercut by the alien artefact plot; she’s just a coincidence, and plenty of adventures have happened since. But the Doctor’s well-meaning gift of an second “immortality charge” incase she meets someone she likes is undercut by the reality- she’s immortal, she doesn’t get close to anyone and she’s only got one patch; as she says, simply, “nobody’s good enough”. There’s plenty of touches here, quickly told to us - her mastering every skill through being alive longer; her disregard for her own species coinciding with becoming a highwayman; seeing her life through history culminating in tragic loss.

And then there are the parallels between her and the Doctor - it’s not particularly subtle by the end of the episode, but it makes the whole thing sing. The Doctor is advising Ashildr to notice the little people, the “mayflies”, an about turn perhaps from last year into the Doctor we know and love. He admits, though, he hasn’t made Clara immortal in the same way, even though he’s said he won’t bear to lose her. It all adds to the foreboding mood this series.

It’s a very handsome Doctor Who episode, thanks to some great imagery from the script (picking a very fancy period of history, and adding in a big kingly lion too). It looks stylish, with the night-time scenes lit blue with orange candles reminding me of Poldark’s house style, by the same director. But it’s not just the look - combined with the previous episode, Ed Bazalgette has managed to produce the ultimate Who calling card, with two perfectly paced adventures (in my opinion), telling a story on a grand scale.

The plots in both this and last week’s were admittedly slight - or simply a foreground to a wider canvas of the immortal, eponymous Ashildr. Leandro the Lion is both a cool monster and a fearsome foe, though his purpose sticks out more obvious than most this week - to provide a test of Ashildr’s character, as well as the obligatory monster of the week. He keeps to the shadows (unfortunately -the make-up is nice), and gets about as much screen-time in the end as the controversial Sam Swift the highwayman. I like Rufus Hound, and I like a rude joke as much as the next man - but I expect the “gallows humour” scenes will get some stick, in an otherwise grown-up episode. Personally I found it the best kind of silly jokes, even if it all goes on a bit too long, necessary to lighten the mood, with a performance containing all that sadness behind the humour.

If it invites comparison to Doctor Who of old - not that every episode does - then Enlightenment jumped out at me, and not just because it’s one of the increasingly rare examples of a TV episode written by a woman. Both are different from the normal stories the show tells, and curiously they both end up mixing poetic, immortal characters with history and aliens. Not that poetry and big ideas is limited to those two - look at Warriors’ Gate, Kinda, or Survival, or Vincent and the Doctor, Kill the Moon or In the Forest of the Night. The Woman Who Lived is one of those rarefied, unusual slices of Doctor Who that works on both levels - as a family adventure and a sweeping, engaging drama.

At the end, we have Maisie Williams - a very successful, commanding performance, even when it’s hyped beforehand - joining the pantheon of potentially recurring Doctor Who characters, and an immortal one at that. The sorts of people he considers to be his friends, who can pop up whenever and wherever the writer wants - Moffat’s a fan, of course. I didn’t quite buy the rather Torchwood-esque group Ashildr was going to set up, nor do I think it will be returned to any time soon. Because one of the clever things about the show, is that in following episodes, if a writer wants to feature her again, they don’t have to stick to the established events at all. Like the Doctor, the show can write its own history as it goes. Whether this episode sinks or swims in that history remains to be seen.

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died

In terms of eye-catching imagery, this one grabs your attention. “Doctor Who meets Game of Thrones!” says the Radio Times (slightly superficially, given the actual episode). “Vikings Vs Aliens!” cries another. And if you’re thinking that it sounds fairly typical for the series, this story takes a simpler plot, tells it well, and makes good use of the extra room for smaller, snappier scenes. After the spooky but rather scientific investigations of Under the Lake, I liked this one even more. It’s my kind of Doctor Who.

It’s also yet another take on an established genre. No, not Vikings, but the classic, Western movie trope of a village being under siege and having to train up the villagers to beat the invaders. Not that it’s the first time it’s been used in Doctor Who. Having the Doctor gatecrash another type of story is one of the show’s staples, as it allows everyone to have some fun, and it’s the only type of show that can get away with it so often. This episode has some fun with it, with the Doctor training up the villagers and doing his best army general impression. But mostly, it’s played for real. He knows full well that the villagers are going to die (he argues they have to die, using his logic, because otherwise it will cause too many ‘ripples’ in time). The odds are against him more than ever in this impossible situation.

If that sounds less action packed than most stories, you’d be right. The story breezes along rather nicely, with some steady direction. After a fast paced introduction where we’re (very) speedily thrown into the situation this week, the story settles down into... introspection. The Doctor isn’t a fighter - actually, there’s very little fighting in this story at all! - he’s a thinker. And when the enjoyable and especially funny quips die down, there’s a rare chance for the show to delve a bit deeper into the characters than they usually do in recent years. Or have the Doctor and Clara talk about weightier issues.

The standout emotional scene in the middle of the story is the Doctor ‘talking’ baby. It’s taking what was presented as a joke from previous episodes, and perhaps being inspired by Peter Capaldi translating the dinosaur in Deep Breath too. The sound of a baby crying alone didn’t work in sparking the village into action, so the Doctor translates it into language and it becomes sweet and sad and a glimpse into an unknown world. All of this in a few spoken lines - and it’s enough of a moment to hang the rest of the story onto it.

I feel sorry for the new aliens, though. The Mire look and sound pretty cool, and the design does a lot of the work for them. But they don’t get much of an outing in this episode, when most of it is devoted to the Doctor and Clara. Pitching them as Viking-like in morality makes them stand out from the rest of the show’s pantheon straight away, even though we know very little about them otherwise.

The episode strives to be entertaining, with the Doctor on fine form. This week Peter Capaldi is cast as a mad god and a rational thinker rolled into one, and a goofier side to some of his humour. As ever, he feels unpredictable - hell, this Doctor feels like Tom Baker, having that alien aloofness of not caring for human matters, masking the love of the trivial, and deep friendship with his companion. Clara, you could say, occupies some of the more traditional role as she’s becoming more like him - she can stand up to the aliens too. But also she’s definitely got that shared bond with the Doctor as they understand each other much better. (All the more important to keep those talky scenes rather than reduce it all to shorthand)

It’s Doctor Who on strong form - reminiscent in broad terms of last year’s Robot of Sherwood (down to some of the expansive sets and the sunny look), but even more successful, if a more sketchier drawn setting. The Viking setting is a catchy look, but populated with everyday characters, with more detail being sketched in with new girl Ashildr. She’s cleverly played as just a normal, quiet young girl, but cleverly written to make her more Viking and less modern and immediately likeable. Her strengths are slowly revealed, and they are in her character rather than in her funny quips: her heart, her storytelling, her innocence. It’s a good role to build a story around.

For all the build-up to this particular episode, overthinking fans might feel a bit underwhelmed by the result. Sure, Maisie Williams’s casting is exciting, even when you discount the theories as to her character - cue the inevitable list of old friends and foes. But the episode itself (titled The Girl Who Died!) acknowledges that her character will be important right from the start, even if it cheekily puts the Doctor’s interest in her down to a premonition - “remembering in the wrong order”. Looking back, it’s pure mystical foreshadowing, but at least we can be comforted in the knowledge of another 45 minutes continuing the story next week.

Doctor Who: Before the Flood

There’s an argument – probably raging, as we speak, on one of the forums – that time travel has become an over-used plot device in modern Doctor Who. Outraged fans will point to the fact that the TARDIS was barely used as anything but a means of transport in the classic series, whereas nowadays it’s all too often the means to solve the plot.

Up front, I have some sympathy with the argument: if the Doctor can just go back and rewrite history, or worse still, rewrite people to make them his puppets, the show instantly loses a big chunk of drama and instead becomes an exercise in joining the dots. Hence my reservations about ‘going back’ at the end of Under the Lake.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the way Before the Flood directly addresses those reservations – and the audience. Starting off with a brief, Listen-style lesson on the bootstrap paradox (with a grin-inducingly audacious guitar riff into the opening titles), this episode becomes less about how the Doctor saves the survivors of the underwater base, and more about the morality of tinkering with time.

It threatens to be at its least effective when it’s confronting the Doctor, yet again, with his inevitable death. Having seen him wriggle out of it at Lake Silencio and again on Trenzalore, my eyes did start to glaze over. But again, Whithouse was ahead of me: it’s merely a prompt for the Doctor to become genuinely outraged at the Fisher King for bending the rules not of time, but of life, and for robbing his victims of their deaths.

Ultimately, the episode resolves into a quietly furious excoriation of going back to ‘cut tragedy off at the root’, because to do so robs life of meaning. In Before the Flood the dead characters stay dead, and this gives the episode its most emotional beat: ‘There is no point wasting time because things happen and then it's too late.’ Sometimes Doctor Who has forgotten this truth, and become glib about death. Before the Flood is a necessary correction.

It’s also an episode that plays resolutely fair with the audience. Aside from highlighting the bootstrap paradox at the start – and holding its hands up to the same at the end, everything else was set up in Under the Lake, from the idea of the TARDIS hologram projection facility, to the Doctor escaping in the suspended animation cabinet, to the missing power cell that blew up the dam. The Doctor doesn’t even need to rewrite time to win, he just needs to convince the monster that he might.

Understandably, given last week’s cliffhanger, this is Capaldi’s episode, and it’s my favourite of his performances to date: that slight awkwardness of movement and around people, and a strange, spiky run that’s as distinctive as Pertwee’s arms-in-tight dash. This regeneration might be a clerical error, but it’s one that’s working in our favour. Against this, the Doctor’s dedication to Clara is again shown to be not entirely healthy, with Bennett calling him out on caring more about her life than O'Donnell’s, and the Doctor admitting that Clara’s name was the prompt for him to act against the Fisher King. What this devotion might mean in the future – like the dark hint about the ‘Minister of War’ – remains an intriguing mystery.

Not so mysterious is the Fisher King itself. It is a charmingly trad Doctor Who monster, by which I mean it’s most effective when glimpsed in the ruins of the Soviet ghost town, or lurking in shadows and close ups than when shuffling, in long shot, across the grass. Also, I guiltily admit to not really noticing the Slipknot ‘roar of the Fisher King’. But since the episode isn’t about the monster, that doesn’t really matter. The really scary thing about those scenes in 1980 is the sense of looming threat, which is doubly reinforced by the dam towering over the village, and the iconography of Cold War Armageddon. Daniel O’Hara’s choice of an icy, washed-out palette is a good one: these scenes are really chilly, and neatly counterpoint the sickly green corpse light of the underwater base.

Together, Under the Lake and Before the Flood comprise my favourite Capaldi story to date. It pulls on some of the style of classic base under siege stories, while drawing on and explicitly critiquing some of the modern show’s clichés. Dramatically satisfying and clever, it’s ideal Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Under the Lake

Review by Matt Michael

What a joy, after Series Nine’s opening two-parter, which took almost as long as Eric Saward to get the Doctor to the plot, to see Under the Lake achieve the same outcome within four minutes. Of course, ten times faster doesn’t automatically equal ten times better, but it’s not far off.

This speed is achieved with some neat shortcuts. For example, there’s a clever economy with the characters - Pritchard is the money-grabbing annoyance, O’Donnell is another UNIT fan in the style of Malcolm and Osgood, Bennett is a bit cowardly, and Moran is the dependable base commander. The only surprise there is that the commander gets killed off first, whereas normally they’re the gruff and suspicious one the Doctor gradually wins over. Instead, the Doctor uses the psychic paper to bypass all that routine stuff, and the commander’s role is given over instead to Cass, whose deafness thankfully hasn’t, so far at least, become the solution to the plot in the way Daphne Ashbrook’s character’s disability was in the ‘worthy’ Deep Space Nine episode Melora.

It seems counter-intuitive to be focusing on the speed of Under the Lake when modern base-under-siege stories such as Cold War and The Waters of Mars have managed the whole deal in a single episode. Again, Daniel O’Hara’s direction emphasises the pace even when the characters are confined to a handful of sets. There’s an outrageous amount of running through corridors, particularly during the central ghost-hunting sequence. But even the exposition scenes move with an unusual energy helped by touches such as the Doctor’s visual representation of the Dark-Sword-Forsaken-Temple coordinates, and the ability to bounce the dialogue around lots of characters.

That pace makes two slower scenes stand out, and both of them have a similar point: Clara’s increasing recklessness. Inside the TARDIS (nice touch up, by the way) the Doctor warns her off becoming too much like him. And then later, Bennett contrasts himself with Clara – more of a ’bleeder than a fighter’. Clara, however, has become a danger junkie, desperate for ‘monsters and blowing things up’ and always wanting to go ‘where the action is’. There’s the implication she’s running from a life without Danny. I’d be surprised if this theme wasn’t leading, in some way, to her departure later in the year

For the time being, though, she’s well paired with Capaldi, whose performance has lightened. Given he’s the oldest of the modern era Doctors, he plays it like he’s the youngest, rushing about like an excited teenager, constantly thrilled by the latest new thing. Watching the two of them, I was reminded of the irrepressible energy of the first Doctor and Vicki in The Romans, which can only be a good thing.

It’s this energy that saves Under the Lake from becoming too dark. Whithouse is an effective horror writer – Being Human, The Vampires of Venice and The God Complex and the traumatising pre-credits sequence of School Reunion are obviously testaments to that. Here we’ve got legitimately creepy ghosts who play on the old myth that the eye retains the last image it saw after death. We’ve also got a fairly graphic drowning and a man being burned alive. Then there’s that cliffhanger, with the Doctor’s spectre, made up to look like Peter Cushing in Tales from the Crypt, floating through the lake.

It’s a good place to end the episode, although five years of timey wimey have conditioned me to expect the very much alive Doctor to turn up inside that deadlocked suspended animation chamber next week. My one big reservation about the story so far (the little reservation: how did the sonic specs transmit from inside the sealed Faraday Cage?) is the time travel at the end. A change of scene for the second episode is probably necessary in the modern two-parter, but I always look askew at using the TARDIS to solve the plot – if he does it this time, why not every time?

That said, Under the Lake definitely whet my appetite for Before the Flood. After the opening diptych felt like a good two-hander for the Doctor and Davros with a lot of flabby padding around it, Whithouse has raised the game with a much more compelling piece of work. All that water, and not a damp squib in sight.