Doctor Who Story 243: The Day of The Doctor

STORY 243: THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR

EDITOR'S NOTE:  In conjunction with my sister site Gallifrey Exile I've opted to publish The Day of The Doctor review here as well.

Impossible Things Are Happening Every Day...

This is the Second in a Trilogy regarding The Day of The Doctor.  Last time it was on the NuWho fans celebrating a 50th Anniversary while being continuously and almost stubbornly unaware of the first 40 years.  This entry is a formal review.  The third...well, Spoilers...

Let's start right off the bat by saying The Day of the Doctor is a remarkably stupid title for any Doctor Who episode, let alone what has been touted as the 50th Anniversary Special.  The title is so damn bloody close to the last Doctor Who story (The Name of the Doctor) that I constantly kept calling The Day of the Doctor The Name of the Doctor.   Someone MUST have thought that the titles were simply too similar to not make people wonder, right?  Of course, this was before I learned that the Christmas Special is to be called...The TIME of The Doctor.

Name, Day, and Time.  All that's missing is Rank.

In any case, The Day of The Doctor purports to be the 50th Anniversary Special to one of the most wildly-successful science-fiction shows on today, which has gone from cult to mainstream to almost mania.  I have wondered whether Doctor Who's massive popularity has damned the show to being mere spectacle, all bright lights and rapid pacing to cover plot holes and continuity errors to please a group of rabid fans who know little to nothing about what came before the show's revival in 2005.  I'd argue that most fans celebrating The Day of The Doctor know only or almost exclusively nothing but Doctor Who episodes from Rose onwards, the Ninth through Eleventh Doctors being their primary points of reference.  I've already talked about that, but now in the second part of our trilogy, let us go over the actual episode itself.

The Day of The Doctor cannot be called a 50th Anniversary Special because there is so little within it to actually suggest that much came before it.  There are nods to the Original Series (starting from the opening credits, which are the original opening credits seen in 1963 sans the 3-D effects), but apart from a few (which I'll mention here and in the future) so much of The Day of The Doctor revolves around 2005 onwards: the Doctors in the special, the Time War that has been dominant in NuWho, Companions and characters that came after Rose.  Leaving aside the dearth of acknowledgements of anything Who-related pre-2005 The Day of The Doctor is a big, lavish, loud spectacle that does the unthinkable: celebrate not the show itself but the revived series' ability to basically 'hit the reset' and erase so much that came before that it would be more intellectually honest to have Tom Baker onwards just open his eyes and say, "It was all a dream..."

Clara (Jenna Coleman), now a teacher at Coal Hill School, receives a message that 'her doctor' has called.  She jumps on her motorbike and speeds towards a desolate place, where the TARDIS and The Doctor (Matt Smith) await.  No time to go gallivanting as the TARDIS is picked up by helicopter and transported to The National Gallery in London, where Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), UNIT's Head of Scientific Research (perhaps the 'scientific advisor'?) and her aide Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) inform the Doctor that he was appointed the Curator of the Undergallery by Queen Elizabeth...the First.

In the Undergallery the Doctor is presented a Gallifreyan painting (bigger on the inside than the outside), with two titles: Gallifrey Falls or No More.  This painting is of the fall of Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city during the Last Day of the Time War.

We now inside the painting to The Last Day of The Time War.  The War Council knows things are going badly, and a strange figure identified by the Daleks as The Doctor (John Hurt) blasts into the walls "No More".  The War Council discovers that there is one weapon of last resort missing: The Moment, a weapon so powerful that not only can swallow galaxies but has grown a conscience.

The Doctor (or War Doctor if you like) goes into the desert to set the Moment, but he not only cannot open it (bemoaning the lack of a big red button) but the conscience of The Moment takes shape in the form of Rose (Billie Piper), or more specifically Bad Wolf Rose.  She urges him to think of The Children before using The Moment, and she opens a time fissure to show him his future.  Through this fissure drops in...a fez.

After examining more of the Undergallery (including picking up a fez), the mystery of the paintings grow.  The glass has been broken from the inside of the paintings.  As part of the examination of the Undergallery, we see a portrait of Good Queen Bess with her husband, The Tenth Doctor. 

Now it's off to Merry Olde England 1562, where The Doctor (David Tennant) is courting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I (Joanne Page) in a lovely picnic.  Things are going well, even to Her Majesty accepting the Doctor's marriage proposal.  The Doctor, however, knows that The Queen is NOT The Queen, but a Zygon.  Only, one small error...the Zygon is NOT the Monarch, but instead the horse he rode in on.

In the chaos and confusion of having Queen Elizabeth I and her Zygon double with him unable to fully find the fake from the real, a time fissure appears and in drops...a fez.  Now from the portal the Eleventh Doctor drops in the Tenth.

There's some banter, when from this comes The War Doctor, seeking the Doctor.  Now the three are arrested by Queen Elizabeth I and thrown into the Tower of London, thrilling Eleven but not pleasing either Ten or War.

Meanwhile, Clara is taken by Kate to the Black Archive, where the memory of every worker is wiped out at the end of their shift.  This explains why the TARDIS-proof Archive has photographs of all the Doctor's past Companions, including Clara.  Within the Archive is the Time Vortex Manipulator bequeathed to them by Captain Jack Harkness on his death (or at least one of them).  There's a dark twist for Clara, however, as Kate and Osgood are really Zygons about to take over the Earth.  Clara, however, gets the access code to the Manipulator (cleverly scratched on the walls of the Tower by the Eleventh Doctor all those centuries ago) and speeds to Elizabethan England.

The Doctors all attempt to a.) escape the Tower and b.) think of how the actions of the unacknowledged Doctor affects them.  In order for them to find a way out the War Doctor starts calculations on his sonic screwdriver, and the three discover that these calculations, which would take hundreds of years to complete, have been going on through all the other Doctor's sonics, completing at the time of the Eleventh.  However, all that for naught, as Clara comes in and informs them that the door had been open all that time.

Elizabeth, who we eventually discover is pretending to be a Zygon, tells them of the paintings, which is how the Zygons are freezing themselves until the appropriate time...2013 London.  Of course, we have to pause for Ten to marry Her Majesty, then off in the TARDIS to save the world.  In the Archive, the Zygons and the Humans are about to play chicken, Kate determined to blow up the city to save the world.  Fortunately, Eleven had called from the future to the present to get the Gallifrey Falls/No More painting into the Black Archive, and then the Doctors all burst through it and force the warring sides to peace.  The War Doctor, however, knows he must use The Moment.

He is joined, however, by Ten and Eleven, who decide they will share the burden of using The Moment to destroy the Daleks AND the Time Lords.  Clara is heartbroken that it's HER Doctor who kills The Children, but now he and the other two have decided to do the unthinkable: they will rewrite history and SAVE Gallifrey.

They race their TARDISes (TARDI?) to the besieged Gallifrey and when the War Council is told of their plans (to freeze Gallifrey and lock it in a statis cube to make it appear that the Daleks, who would be destroying themselves in the confusion and make the universe think Gallifrey was destroyed too), they tell the Doctors the calculations would take centuries.  However, not to fear, as all the incarnations of the Doctor appear to the Council to space their own TARDI and join forces.  All twelve, the Council thinks, until one of the Council says, "No.  All THIRTEEN" (and we get a quick glimpse of the upcoming Doctor). 

Plan successful the War/Tenth/Eleventh Doctors make their farewells.  The time streams are too confused to allow them to remember all of this, so the Ninth and Tenth Doctors won't remember saving Gallifrey and think instead they destroyed it.  (I digress to say that when the War Doctor says, "but at worse, we failed doing the right thing as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong", the only thing that came to mind was OneRepublic's Counting Stars: "I feel something so right doing the wrong thing/I feel something so wrong doing the right thing".)  Tenth also will not know his future death on Trenzalore, but for now things are good.  However, the Curator (Tom Baker) tells Eleven that people always get the title of the painting wrong.  The painting has two titles: No More or Gallifrey Falls, but he tells the Doctor that it's not two titles but one: Gallifrey Falls No More.   Gallifrey survives, and now the Doctor can search for it.

I know that the NuWho fans who were watching The Day of The Doctor in the theater were thrilled with everything about the episode (one of Bryan Majewski's friends who sat next to me used the word, 'brilliant' to describe how Gallifrey survived), but that was just something that felt wrong to me.  I was never a fan of The Time War and thought from the get-go that it was a mistake to erase Gallifrey when Doctor Who was rebooted.  Despite that, what motivated The Doctor was survivor's guilt, the hurt and rage within him to have to exterminate his own people to save the universes.  With this timey-wimey reboot (something writer Steven Moffat is simply too fond of) that is all erased, rendering a lot of post-Rose Doctor Who either nonsense or just a waste of time.  When those episodes are watched, we know that he is going through all this for nothing.

Again, he might just as well wake up and say, "it was all a dream".

However, let's move on from that (more on that another time) and move on to whether The Day of The Doctor worked.  It didn't, again because the stakes are now never going to matter.  If we are always going to resolve things by basically going back and altering history (even if it means contradicting or erasing what came before) what tension exists in any story, let alone this story?

I note that at least twice times things were basically reset to get the Doctor out of his predicament (when the Doctor makes the call to send Gallifrey Falls/No More to the Black Archive and when The Doctors all jump in to save Gallifrey).  This is an easy way to get out of the difficulties Moffat gets into but it diminishes the Doctor's greatest virtue: his ability to think his way out of situations. 

However, there are other things that fell flat.  A big problem is in the performances.  Page was simply unbearable as Elizabeth I, turning the Warrior Queen as nothing more than a breast-heaving fangirl, permanently infatuated with the Tenth Doctor (perhaps she was suppose to represent all those little girls who fantasize about Tennant, Smith, and to a lesser degree Christopher Eccleston sexually?  However, I would have thought the Osgood character, down to wearing a Fourth Doctor-type scarf, was parody enough).  I was also surprised to see Tennant give a bad performance.  There were times when he seemed not so much bored but frustrated, as if he couldn't make himself believe what he was saying. 

Take when he tells Liz that he knows she's a Zygon via a machine.  He presents it to her and says, "Ding."  "What's that?", she screeches (I'm serious, Page was embarrassing throughout The Day of The Doctor).  "A machine that goes 'ding'", he replies.  This is something that I imagine the Eleventh Doctor would say, not the more serious Tenth.  Yes, Tenth could be goofy, but not this goofy.  Similarly, when Tenth revisits his Big Speech about who he is from Voyage of The Damned, he stops his tense tone when he realizes he's talking to a real rabbit and not a Zygon.  It's thrown in there to please the fans, but it takes it all out of context: what was once a statement of courage and defiance now is a chance to either wink to the hard-core NuWho fanbase or just mock the Tenth Doctor.

I actually felt a touch sorry for Tennant, one of the better Doctors, who was veering close to parodying his Doctor to please those passionate for the dim-witted Eleventh.  While watching him, the phrase "Don't you think he looks tired?" popped into my head.

Not as bad as I felt for Billie Piper, whose Bad Wolf Rose is there just to basically be there.  For being a sentient doomsday machine she isn't taking much of this seriously.  Perhaps it is too tempting to ask at this juncture why a figure from his future would appear as opposed to someone from his past (say, Lalla Ward's Romana II or Carol Anne Ford's Susan Forman, the Doctor's granddaughter, both who are very much alive, but since that might confuse NuWho fans...).  Serving as the Clarence to the War Doctor's George Bailey, Piper has not much to do.  Frankly, any old Companion would have done.

Here perhaps is why I find it so hard to call The Day of The Doctor an actual 50th Anniversary Special.  All the Doctors and Companions: NuWho.  All the characters save the monsters: NuWho.  The guest character of Queen Elizabeth I: NuWho.  As I said, there are nods to the Original Series (certain lines and little hints), but on the whole nothing really connected The Day of The Doctor to anything from An Unearthly Child to Survival/Doctor Who: The Movie.

More things that I found generally displeasing were Murray Gold's score (I hated the cutesy and/or serious music blaring at us to virtually no end) and the visual effects.  Yes they were big and bold, but they were too reminiscent of Star Wars, almost as if they were showing off in the Last Day of The Time War just how much money they spent on it.

However, I'm not in the habit of thoroughly damning something if I find something good.  John Hurt was brilliant as The War Doctor, bringing a sense of pain and emotional weight to the role.  He also showed Tennant and Smith that sometimes taking and behaving seriously makes one a more authoritative figure.  Whenever he mocked his successors tendency to whip out their sonic screwdrivers or their silly catchphrases (Timey-Wimey?) Hurt showed not only the presence of intelligence (and how in the past, the Senior Doctor always knew better than those that followed...like a Dandy and a Clown), but in his regret and fear of the course he had to take made the Doctor a deeply wounded and conflicted character.

As much as I detest Smith I found that his scenes on Gallifrey with Coleman, when he isn't flipping his hands, when there is no music, when he is allowed to take things seriously, you actually get a good performance out of him.  When he discusses the pain of his past act with a distressed Clara, it was deeply moving and touching.  In fact, when things get past the whiz-bang of the lights and the loud music, when things are allowed to be taken seriously and settled down, we find that not only are the actors good but the scenario can be emotionally rewarding.  Seeing Tennant, Smith, and Hurt about to blow up Gallifrey, no sounds apart from their voices, makes things feel tense. 

For me, as someone who is more geared towards Classic Who than NuWho, who has become disillusioned with Doctor Who (in particular with the Smith/Moffat Era), The Day of The Doctor didn't celebrate 50 years of a television series.  It didn't even really celebrate the eight years its current regeneration has been on.  The Zygon subplot wasn't all that necessary to the overall story of rebooting the Time War (and I wondered why Elizabeth I didn't just wipe out the Zygons rather than allow them to keep going into the paintings).

I think that if I were fair The Day of The Doctor would really rank at 4/10 because in many ways it's better than some of the awful Classic Who stories (The Ark, The Gunfighters, Timelash).  However, I knock one point down for it failing to be an actual anniversary special.  What The Day of The Doctor was the 'handy-dandy big shiny reset button' writ large. 

3/10

Next Episode: The Time of The Doctor

SERIOUSLY...THE TIME OF THE DOCTOR AFTER THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR AND THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR?  So long as Capaldi's debut story isn't The Tea Time of The Doctor or The Afternoon Nap of The Doctor or even The Doctor of The Doctor...

Doctor Who Series Five: An Overview

DOCTOR WHO: SERIES/SEASON FIVE

AN OVERVIEW

Now that A Christmas Carol is now relegated to the ghosts of Christmases past, I think we can pause for a moment to look back at the first series of the Eleventh Doctor, aka Matt Smith. To his credit as an actor, I think Smith has overcome whatever trepidation there might have been in thinking that no one could possibly follow David Tennant. He stayed on for three years, which is by no means a record but is the longest so far of the revived series. He left his stamp on Doctor Who, and any actor following him would have a daunting task. There was also concern that Smith, at 27, was far too young for such a part.

I think Smith has been generally successful with his interpretation of The Doctor. He is more gleeful, more manic, and certainly less despairing than Tennant in his final adventures. However, it is now time to have our own Season Five review. I present the nominees in various categories with winners in red with an asterisk.

BEST GUEST STAR

Sophie Okonedo (The Beast Below)

Helen McCrory (The Vampires of Venice)*

Toby Jones (Amy's Choice)

Meera Syal (Cold Blood Part 1: The Hungry Earth)

Alex Kingston (The Big Bang Parts 1 & 2)

This was a tough choice. Each of them was wonderful. What got me to select McCrory was the fact that she gave a brilliant performance in a truly awful story. Her Lady Calvierri was frightening throughout The Vampires of Venice, and her delivery of the lines was in turns arrogant, menacing, and even mournful. I was spoiled for choice, but given McCrory was the best thing in something so weak as The Vampires of Venice shouldn't disqualify her from being recognized for her work.

BEST VILLAIN

The Weeping Angels (The Time of Angels Parts 1 & 2)

Lady Calvierri (The Vampires of Venice)

The Dream Lord (Amy's Choice)*

Restac (Cold Blood Part 2: Cold Blood)

Kazran Sardick (A Christmas Carol)

The Dream Lord was a perfectly menacing being, always keeping us guessing as to his true identity. It could have degenerated to camp, but Jones kept it perfectly straight--even when dressed as a butcher.

BEST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT

The montage of previous Doctors (The Eleventh Hour)*

Amy floating above the universe (The Beast Below)

Rory's First Death (Amy's Choice)

Dr. Chaudry electing to stay behind (Cold Blood Part 2)

The Doctor challenging all aliens at Stonehenge (The Big Bang Part 1)

Each of these moments are what make Doctor Who so special. I thought about which one was the one that stuck within my memory the most, which had the biggest visual impact, and which had the most emotional impact. Each has an element of one or the other, but seeing all the Doctors and so many of his enemies flash before my eyes fit into all three categories.

MOST FRIGHTENING MOMENT

Winston Churchill being menaced by a Dalek's shadow (The Beast Below)

Cleric Bob speaking from beyond the grave (The Time of Angels Part 1)*

Elliot held captive (Cold Blood Part 2)

The Doctor gets boxed in (The Big Bang Part 1)

Rory dumping Amy in the worst way (The Big Bang Part 1)

What pushed the fear factor in The Time of Angels Part 1 was the fact that Cleric Bob spoke so gently while speaking words of terror. It sent chills to hear such a gentle, soothing, almost innocent voice tell the Doctor and those with him they were basically going to die. Even more effective, it was only Cleric Bob's voice. The lack of visuals made it more intense in terror.

BEST ART DIRECTION

The Vampires of Venice

Amy's Choice*

Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2

The Big Bang Parts 1 & 2 

A Christmas Carol

While The Vampires of Venice would appear to have a lock on this category, the frozen TARDIS sets of Amy's Choice were to my mind the most impressive all season. Given that they were only one set and that they still had a powerful impact, it makes it even more impressive.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The Beast Below

The Vampires of Venice*

Amy's Choice

The Big Bang Part 1

A Christmas Carol

This was a no-brainer. The Vampires of Venice clearly is a costume-driven episode, but we had a wide variety: not just the lavish Venetian wardrobe of the Lady Calvierri and her Court, but the shrouds of her minions and the stag shirts for Rory and Company. In other words, there had to be a wide variety of clothes, and each worked (although when the Venetian had to wear Rory's t-shirt, it didn't work).

BEST DIRECTING

Adam Smith (The Time of Angels Part 1)

Catherine Morshead (Amy's Choice)

Ashley Way (Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2)*

Jonny Campbell (Vincent & The Doctor)

Toby Haynes (The Big Bang Part 1)

It might not be fair to say Way had his way in this category because he was considered for Parts 1 & 2 while everyone else was considered for only one part or one story. However, unlike Smith or Haynes, he managed to avoid having the Part 2 Slump (where the story either loses steam or interest or even logic). He kept things going so well through two parts that he earned his win.

BEST SCREENPLAY

Stephen Moffat (The Eleventh Hour)

Stephen Moffat (The Time of Angels Part 1)

Simon Nye (Amy's Choice)*

Chris Chibnall (Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2)

Stephen Moffat (The Big Bang Part 1)

Nye kept us perpetually guessing throughout Amy's Choice as to the true nature of The Dream Lord and while it was at least clear to me which was the Real World and which the Dream World, there was always a hint that we could be wrong.

BEST STORY

The Eleventh Hour*

Victory of The Daleks

Amy's Choice

Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2

Vincent & The Doctor

The Eleventh Hour had the unenviable task of establishing a new Doctor and Companion while having to be another Doctor Who story. It did it so well, matched with great performances, beautiful moments, and an interesting premise. Granted, I wasn't overwhelmed with the monster in this one, but there was enough good to overcome whatever bad there was in it.

However, none of this is to indicate everything within Series/Season Five of Doctor Who 2.0 was perfect. I think it will be instructive to go over some really awful moments.

WORST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT

Overweight & Multicolored Daleks (Victory of the Daleks)

The "true" reason for the 'whoosing' of the TARDIS (The Time of Angels Part 1)

The Doctor pulling out a lightsaber from the front of his pants (The Vampires of Venice)

Amy's attempted rape of The Doctor (The Time of Angels Part 2)*

The Doctor fighting an alien with an electric toothbrush while wearing only a towel (The Lodger)

I flipped long and hard between a bad moment in The Time of Angels Part 1 and a bad moment in The Time of Angels Part 2. Each is particularly atrocious because it is so unnecessary. After a lot of thought, I opted that having one of the leads attempt to force sexual intercourse on the other lead trumped one of the worst jokes to make it onto the screen (which was soon forgotten since the 'whooshing' of the TARDIS will always remain).

WORST MONSTER

The Smilers (The Beast Below)

The Saturnyians (The Vampires of Venice)*

The Krafayis (Vincent & The Doctor)

The Beast Above (The Lodger)

Kazran Sardick (A Christmas Carol)

It might come off as inconsistent that I nominated Kazran as both Best Monster and Worst Monster. How can that be? Quite simple: Gambon's performance made him a great villain, but Stephen Moffat's script made him almost a silly one (I can still hear Gambon growling 'Why are they singing?' a la Grinch). Fortunately for us, he wasn't either the best OR the worst. That dishonor goes to whatever the hell the creatures in The Vampires of Venice were. Officially listed as Saturnyians, they were at various times vampires or fish or spiders. One never really knew what exactly they were, but whatever they were, I hated them.

WORST STORY

The Beast Below

Victory of The Daleks

The Vampires of Venice*

The Lodger

A Christmas Carol

Again, how could I have Victory of the Daleks as Best AND Worst? Here's a few clues: fat Daleks! The RAF In Space! Did I mention Fat Daleks--and multi-colored at that! Even then, there were good things within it. Indeed, there were good things in every one of the Worst Story nominees, but for sheer awfullness, nothing beats The Vampires of Venice. Yes, it's won two awards, but nothing blinds me to just how dumb the whole thing was.

Well, there it is: Series/Season Five of Doctor Who covered. I have Series/Season Six on my mind, eagerly waiting to be thrilled by new adventures, and hoping to avoid more cracks.

Next Story: Day of the Moon Parts 1 & 2 (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

Early Thoughts on Matt Smith as The Tenth Doctor

THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR: MATT SMITH

Now we are at last able to get a better idea of who and how Matt Smith has shaped the character of The Doctor to suit his own talents and/or persona. For better or worse, he will be identified by people as "their Doctor" in the same way some look back to say Tom Baker or Peter Davison or even Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant.  With one season under his belt (and at least two more in the wings) how does Mr. Smith match up to the role of Doctor Smith?

From Season/Series Five, Matt Smith's Doctor is far lighter than his predecessor. Near the end of Tennant's era, the Doctor was quite dark, almost miserable in his loneliness and nihilism. Smith has made his Doctor more light-hearted, a bit more manic too. To his credit, Smith draws from the fact that The Doctor is closing in on being a thousand years old, so seeing his rather youthful face against the physicality he gives the Eleventh Doctor (hunching over, constantly rubbing his fingers) is a good take on the Doctor. He also has adopted his own catchphrase of sorts, declaring anything he likes (bow ties, fezzes, Stetsons) to be "cool". One wonders how The First Doctor could refer to anything as "cool".

Smith has given The Doctor a renewed sense of joy and fun, and most of the stories play on what appears to be his lack of understanding of Earth. How else can you rationalize his cluelessness when popping out of a cake and informing the guys at the stag party that a lovely young girl in skimpy outfit was in there before he was? The Eleventh Doctor is also a very fast speaker, much more than those who went before him. Listen to him speak: he's going ninety words a minute at times, making keeping up with him nothing if not fun.

Obviously, a full analysis of his tenure won't be possible until he takes his last bow and regenerates yet again.  I would argue his youthfulness has actually aided his take on a character as old as The Doctor. He does however, run the risk of going too far in the comedic take, so there is always that. On the whole, Matt Smith's first year is a strong sign that he could be one of the better Doctors if he tones down the idiocy.

Series/Season Five Overview

Next Story: Day of the Moon Parts 1 & 2 (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

Doctor Who Story 217: A Christmas Carol

STORY 217: A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Father Time Lord...

Now, it seems that a Doctor Who Christmas special is a given. Before The Christmas Invasion, the only real mention of Christmas in Doctor Who that I am aware of was in the lost episode The Feast of Steven from the incomplete story The Daleks' Master Plan. With the revival, we've had besides the aforementioned Christmas Invasion, one special per series/season with none of them involved what used to be the central story of Christmas: the birth of Christ.

Granted, it wouldn't make sense to have a religious holiday be part of a science-fiction program, and I can live with that. Some of the great Christmas movies (It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street) have nothing to do with Jesus. It's one thing to celebrate the secular aspects of Christmas, it's another to do what The End of Time did: declare Christmas to be merely a festival of the winter solstice rather than a celebration of someone held to be God in human form. This may be what Richard Dawkins and his cohorts may proclaim, but for a vast majority of people, there is still a faith-based aspect to the holiday.

It was this odd dismissal of the Christ in Christ-Mas that troubled me, as if the whole concept of what Christmas was/is was no longer valid. A baby in a manger, it seems, is simply too controversial and too upsetting to tolerate. I can live and embrace a non-religious acknowledgement of December 24-25, but cannot accept a nearly overt hostility to a central tenet of a faith system. Then again, with regards to The End of Time, we may have been looking at it from a Gallyfreyan perspective, so I shouldn't be too harsh.

In any case, it seemed nearly inevitable that Doctor Who would tackle one of the great Christmas stories, right down to using Charles Dickens' title; a side note: perhaps next year, they'll do a riff of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, or maybe Miracle on Regent Street? I confess to a wariness when I heard both the title and the plot of A Christmas Carol, and the trailers didn't ease my fears. However, we have the final product before us. And now, after watching A Christmas Carol, we can see Stephen Moffat drew inspiration not just from the Dickens classic, but apparently, from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Star Trek and even Jaws.

There is a giant spaceship about to crash. Aboard it are Amy Pond-Williams (Karen Gillan, and I added the Williams since she now is married) and her husband Rory (Arthur Darvill). The clouds they are traversing are making it impossible to land safely, and in fact said clouds are what is causing them to descend out of control. The clouds are controlled by one Kazran Sardick (Sir Michael Gambon), a miser of a man who has no interest in the lives about to be lost.

Enter The Doctor (Matt Smith), who at first attempts to persuade Kazran to stop the storm clouds from causing the deaths of 40 thousand people. Kazran is unmoved and tosses the Doctor out. The Doctor is still attempting to come up with a solution when he hears Christmas carols being played over the planet's loudspeakers, and that brings to mind "A Christmas Carol". With that, the Doctor presents himself as The Ghost of Christmas Past, and shows Kazran a film of him going back to the young Kazran. At first Old Kazran has no memory of The Doctor ever coming to him, but as The Doctor starts working with Young Kazran, the memories do flood back.

Those memories involve the beautiful Abigail (opera star Katherine Jenkins). The Young Kazran wants to see the fish that are able to float in the air with the greatest of ease. The Doctor is able to show him this, but he inadvertently attracts a floating shark. They are saved but now the shark can no longer float in the sky. Kazran then remembers Abigail. She is frozen deep within the bowels of Kazran's home (he takes relatives of those with debts as security), and it is her beautiful voice that brings a shark to life.

Kazran is so enraptured that he promises to release her on upcoming Christmases, and in a montage we see the Doctor and Kazran opening up her frozen coffin to spend it with them. Romance develops, but then there is a break when Abigail hints that something will keep them apart. A broken-hearted Kazran seals her in and refuses to release her ever again.

Enter Amy (as a hologram Ghost of Christmas Present). She shows Old Kazran a group of children singing Silent Night, thus showing those who will die if he refuses to soothe the storm clouds he controls. Still, he refuses, for he is angry that his past has been so altered that his memories of Abigail are doomed, for we learn that if he releases her, it will be her last day of life. Some sacrifices are too great to make. The Doctor returns as The Ghost of Christmas Future, but in an unexpected twist it isn't Old Kazran's future we see. Abigail then emerges, and his love for her shows him the error of his ways. It is her voice that saves the day.

I can't fault A Christmas Carol for being incredibly rushed since it only has an hour to pack in a story. I can fault it for being a rather uninteresting, throwing in moments of comedy where they weren't needed.

Take for example when we first see Amy and Rory. For the vaguest of reasons she is wearing her "sexy policewoman" outfit from The Eleventh Hour and he is in his Roman soldier wardrobe from The Big Bang. This is suppose to be their honeymoon and when last we saw them they were in their wedding tuxedo and gown. It's suggested that they wore these outfits as some form of sex game which the storm cloud rudely interrupted, but seeing them in these outfits takes away from what is suppose to be rather serious tones of potential life or death.

This thing with their outfits being comedy relief is enhanced when Amy attempts to be The Ghost of Christmas Present. With all that is going on, with four thousand lives (or perhaps four thousand and two if we count Mr. & Mrs. Williams) hanging in the balance, Rory's biggest concern is that Kazran will get a look up Amy's skirt? Seriously? It would have been better if she had appeared in a nightgown or negligee; it would have kept the honeymoon aspect of the story without having them wear past outfits for little reason other than to remember previous stories.

Another bit of non-comic relief comes courtesy of The Doctor himself, and he does it twice. The first one I recall is when he takes Abigail and Kazran to celebrate Christmas dinner with Abigail's family: the entire routine of 'take a card, any card' to me fell flat. It was neither clever or amusing. The second comes when he takes them to celebrate Christmas in 1962 California. Marilyn Monroe to my mind has suffered quite enough, thank you very much. No, wait, I forgot a third time: when the Doctor chides a child for not believing in Santa Claus/Father Christmas. It so happens the Doctor has met 'Jeff' himself. St. Nick's real name is Jeff. Ha ha.

Even in the moments when it is suppose to be serious, A Christmas Carol can't draw us into the danger. We're told that 4,000 people will die, but in a strange twist we never feel any urgency about it. It may be that it is because we never get to know anyone aboard the ship, or even see the ship apart from the bridge. Somehow, since we get thrown this danger straight from the get-go, we don't get the sense that there is really any danger to begin with; at least I didn't. We just have to accept that people will die, but it all felt rather fake to me.

I put this because the only people we see on the bridge are Amy, Rory, and three crewmembers, and here A Christmas Carol is where it starts echoing other programs. The bridge was far too reminiscent of the Enterprise from Star Trek. There was even a black pilot with a strange eyepiece whom I kept referring to as Geordi LaForge. At least I gave them names (the credits simply read The Pilot, The Captain, The Co-Pilot).

I am willing to wager that director Toby Haynes was not, repeat not trying to spoof Star Trek, but the bridge aboard this crashing ship were so familiar (right down to visualizing on the large screen) that I flat-out wonder how they thought comparisons wouldn't be made.

In short, we really never get a vested interest in saving those aboard the craft because so much of the story is focused on Kazran and Abigail that those up in space are short-shifted. Stephen Moffat to his credit did create a good story where logic is concerned (altering Young Kazran's memories to where Old Kazran would later remember) but again, some things just couldn't be helped. "Back on Earth, we called this Christmas or the Winter Solstice (emphasis mine), Kazran in voice-over tells us.

Really? I don't think of myself as being sheltered, but I don't know anyone who refers to this time as the Winter Solstice. They just can't help themselves, can they, to downplay the religious aspects of Christmas. Honestly, just who refers to this particular celebration as Winter Solstice? When I heard that line, I couldn't help think it was done to placate those who find Christmas (and by extension, Christianity) odious.

There was one line in A Christmas Carol that had me howling with laughter. It is near the end, when Amy shows Kazran the children (think of The Children, won't someone please THINK OF THE CHILDREN) who will die. Side Note: to Moffat and Haynes' credit, the children were singing Silent Night, which may be the first time in the history of Doctor Who were the role of the Christ Child Jesus played in the Christmas story is suggested. Kazran, growling with fury, asks her, "Why are they singing?".

Maybe it's because I'm an American, and maybe it isn't as prevalent in Britain as it is in America, but this line appears to have been stolen from Dr. Seuss. Isn't that what The Grinch said when hearing the Whos on Christmas Day after having stolen all the presents from Who-ville? Was that suppose to be some odd reference that we were suppose to get? You know, "WHO-ville", "Doctor WHO"? It might not be an unfair comparison between Kazran and The Grinch since both their hearts are two sizes too small. That's all I could think of when I heard Kazran ask this. There is also a quick moment when we see a shark fin float past us in the icy fog that was missing two cello notes playing.

Getting aside from some of the sillier aspects of A Christmas Carol, there are certain things I didn't follow. Why did Abigail not mention that her time was running out much sooner? How did Abigail emerge from her frozen state that last Christmas when no one was seen releasing her? Why do we have to see Amy & Rory in silly costumes to begin with?

Since Gillan and Darvill aren't in A Christmas Carol that much, we can't say much about their performances except that we hope Season/Series Six gives them more to do. However, if anything elevates this story it is Gambon and Jenkins. I understand that this is Jenkins' debut as an actress, and she did a wonderful job. Her Abigail projects a sweetness and innocence that is beautiful and heartbreaking.

Gambon, an experienced an actor as we have, doesn't make Kazran all ranting and raging. He does give him bits of a soul, so we can see that he too has been hurt by the past (both pre and post-Doctor). As for Smith, well, I personally could do with a little less of the lightness he's brought to his Doctor, but he certainly has a way with making comedic lines not sound as if they were trying to be funny, so that's a plus.

I couldn't get into the main story because it wasn't about saving any ship: it was about saving Kazran from being evil. A Christmas Carol has only Gambon and Jenkins (and her beautiful singing voice) to make it even a so-so story in the Doctor Who canon. If it weren't for them, A Christmas Carol would have been remarkably lifeless, dull, devoid of any real action and poorly-timed comedy done at super-speed, almost as if we have to do this story because we have to have that Winter Solstice Special.

5/10

Matt Smith: Some Early Thoughts

Season/Series Five Overview

Next Story: Day of the Moon Parts 1 & 2 (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

Doctor Who Story 216: The Big Bang Parts 1 & 2

STORY 216: THE BIG BANG 

(The Pandorica Open/The Big Bang)

Doc In A Box...

It's all come down to this. For the past eleven stories, we've been treated to a series that involves a gigantic crack in time. How then, do you wrap up the fifth series/season of the revived Doctor Who? Well, by basically throwing everything you can at it: Daleks, Autons, time jumping left/right/center, River Song, and even a wedding (can't end a season without a wedding).

The Big Bang concludes what should be an exciting season for Matt Smith's debut Doctor Who season/seriest, yet I've had a reluctance to write about it. That is a result of when I first saw the two-part The Big Bang (The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang), I frankly didn't understand what was going on. I opted to wait until the Fifth Season/Series was released on DVD to re-view the story, and it did clear up some things. A second viewing did improve my feelings for the story, but there were still things that got on my nerves to no end.

We get a bit of a greatest hits from previous stories with cameos from Vincent Van Gogh (Tony Curran), Sir Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice), River Song (Alex Kingston), and Liz 10 (Sophie Okonedo), who should be correctly referred to as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth X. All of them, connected to The Doctor (Matt Smith), find that they've all been given a message to send to him: a Van Gogh painting discovered by Churchill's men, who calls River and gets her to break into Liz 10's palace to get said painting and show it to the Doctor. The Doctor and Amy Pond (Karen Gilliam), thanks to River's ubiquitous message, "Hello, Sweetie", trace her to Stonehenge when the Romans were in Britannia.

Disguised as Cleopatra (or as I lovingly call her, Cleo the Nympho of the River Song Nile), Song shows them the painting: it is the TARDIS exploding. They discover that beneath Stonehenge there is a chamber, and inside is the fabled Pandorica, a large box containing the most feared thing in all the cosmos. However, a message is emanating from Stonehenge, and a cavalcade of aliens are hovering above them and the Roman garrison, all eager for said box.

Among the Roman soldiers is Rory (Arthur Darvill), who remembers all except how he got to be Roman. He is desperate for Amy to remember him, but she cannot, even after Rory saves her from a Cyberman at Stonehenge (there's a sentence one never thought to write).

We eventually find shocking fact after shocking fact: everything the Doctor and River see is from the memories of Amy (the soldiers, the Pandora's box), that the soldiers (including Rory) are in truth Autons, and that all manner of aliens (Daleks, Cybermen, Autons, Judoon, Sontaran, even Silurians) have formed a Grand Alliance to stop the most dangerous being and imprison it within the Pandorica.

That most dangerous being is The Doctor.

At the end of Part I, Auton Rory has unwillingly killed Amy, River is trapped within the exploding TARDIS, and the Doctor is locked away within the Pandorica.

When we get to Part II, a young Amy (Caitlin Blackwood) is praying to Santa (side note: far be it for anyone to pray to anything resembling God, although in fairness it is suppose to be an alternate world). In this world, there are no stars, yet Amy draws pictures of the sky with them. She then gets a mysterious message telling her to go to the museum, and there she hides past closing time, where The Pandorica, which is an exhibit, opens, to reveal not the Doctor, but Amy fully alive.

We then get treated to the Doctor jumping from Stonehenge, where a devastated Auton Rory (having survived the destruction of all those within the underground chamber by not going when the universe basically collapsed) pledges to protect the Pandorica containing Amy (and which will keep her alive), and the Museum, where he, Auton Rory (having stayed faithfully at Amy's side and now a regular security guard), River (brought out from the exploding TARDIS), and young Amy (up to where the plot required her) attempt to bring about Big Bang 2 (which I loving call the Bigger Bang or Big Bang: The Sequel).

This will require the Pandorica (which contains elements of all life) to collide with the exploding TARDIS. It may also mean the end of the Doctor, but he must work fast, since all existence is quickly collapsing upon itself. Once he does, all those damn cracks in time are finally healed, but it will require the Doctor to be on the other side of it.

Amy is restored to her life, but with the benefit that she is no longer an orphan, but with a mom and dad, and a fully alive and human Rory. The Doctor got her to the church on time, metaphorically. Once she and Rory finally marry, we see a figure very similar to River Song pass by, and Amy is given a mysterious book. She senses that someone should be there, and she remembers from the old adage "Something old, something new, something borrowed...and something blue". Once she (and Rory) recall, the Doctor appears, in full tux and top hat, to join in the festivities, and after the good times are had, Doctor and River say their farewells, Mr. and Mrs. Williams join the Doctor in the TARDIS, to begin new adventures.

Steven Moffat has created some wonderful, even beautiful moments, in The Big Bang. The Doctor's speech challenging the various aliens to descend on Stonehenge is one of the best individual moments in Series/Season Five of Doctor Who. Director Toby Haynes maintains a great tension throughout both parts, and for the most part balances the jumping between the Roman times and the alternate future quite well.

Haynes also brought some wonderful performances out of the main cast. I would say the best is Darvill's Rory, who has gone from the being a bit goofy and dumb to a being tormented by having human memories and emotions yet is a being made out of plastic. Never once when he's a Roman/Auton does he play anything for laughs. That mostly comes from Smith, who is in full manic, almost deranged mode when expressing joy or frustration, given he has to be bouncing all over time. Kingston is adventurous and playful and dangerous and serious as River Song. 

Where I had problems with The Big Bang, it dealt with when we got to Part II. If one thinks about it, once we had the thrilling endings of Part I (Amy and River dead and the Doctor imprisoned within the Pandorica) we discover that in reality, the Doctor spent actually very little time inside the box. It made the thrilling and terrifying ending of Part I rather moot to my mind.

It also brought back memories of the little I saw of another two-part story (Journey's End Parts 1 & 2: The Stolen Earth/Journey's End). In that one, the Doctor (David Tennant) looked as if he were about to regenerate, but all he had to do was focus the regeneration energy into his severed hand which he kept in a glass jar and all is well. I stopped watching right after that. For some reason, it seemed all too convenient, too easy. We had an extremely tense, dangerous situation, and then a quick answer resolved all the tension, sucking all the energy out of the situation.

I felt the same thing here: a simple Vortex Manipulator brought along with forethought by River got the Doctor out of the box. If there's one thing I hate, is being teased only to find the end result is less than the sum of its parts.

I also, frankly, hated the wedding, or rather, the dance. I hated Smith's deliberately goofy dancing more than anything else in The Big Bang. It was also as if, after we had gone through all this danger, we were going to plunge into absolute silliness to the point of idiocy. I understand the need to decompress, but this was a bit too much to tolerate.

On a more serious point, I know Moffat thrilled to seeing an Axis of Evil joining together to destroy their nemesis, but wouldn't it have been easier to kill the Doctor than imprison him. Here, mainly the Daleks and Cybermen, who have consistently failed to destroy The Oncoming Storm and have also fought against each other (Doomsday Parts 1 & 2: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday), have finally captured the Doctor. Rather than kill him, their solution is to lock him up. No wonder they keep failing: they can't get rid of their competition once and for all when they have the chance. It might have pleased fans to see cameos from other villains, but I just didn't think it made sense.

I also wondered why the Silurians popped up when in reality, the Doctor has always tried to help them, or at least in two of the three stories they appeared in (Doctor Who and the Silurians and Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. In the third story, Warriors of the Deep, they were the antagonists in league with the Sea Devils, so maybe they only want to kill him when they are allied with other beings. Just a thought).

Overall, The Big Bang kept a strong pace, with great performances out of Darvill and Kingston (Smith at times appeared downright daft, and Gilliam did an awful lot of crying). Sorry, but Smith's dancing gets points knocked down (I just couldn't take it seriously after that, although the top hat started the descent into idiocy).

The Real Stonehenge. Curiously, I found no boxes there (though not for lack of trying).

6/10


Next Story: A Christmas Carol

Doctor Who Story 215: The Lodger

STORY 215: THE LODGER

And When We Get Behind Closed Doors...

There comes a point in life where one has to leave home. The Doctor, for all his wanderings, has never had an actual home of his own (minus Gallifrey, and now that appears to be gone forever...I still have hope). The Lodger, therefore, would be a milestone in that it's the first time he's had to behave like your average, ordinary bloke and tried to pass himself off as 'one of us'. I suppose all this was done for laughs mixed in with some good old fashioned horror courtesy of the Room Upstairs. 

The TARDIS is being prevented from fully materializing, and The Doctor (Matt Smith) jumps out of the ship in time to see it dematerialize with his Companion, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) still aboard. Meanwhile, a man named Craig (James Corden), with his best (girl) friend Sophie (Daisy Haggard) are calling it a day. It's obvious that Craig likes Sophie and Sophie likes Craig but as in all romantic situations they can't quite tell each other how they feel.

As it happens, Craig is in need of a flat-mate (roommate in America), and who should come around looking for a place to live but our dear Doctor? It's all part of a plan, though. The fact that the TARDIS can't fully materialize and is trapped in some sort of Localized Time Loop is related to the goings-on of the flat/apartment above Craig's. While Amy monitors the situation from the TARDIS, the Doctor tries his darnedest to be just one of the lads. Hilarity ensues, right down to a football/soccer match.

However, there is serious business at hand. People have been disappearing, being called up to the second floor by mysterious voices. Craig's own life is in danger when, against Doctor's orders, he touches a mysterious mold that has been growing above his ceiling. When Sophie herself is in danger, the Doctor (along with Amy and Craig) discover the secret of what is upstairs and, in a sense, bring down the house.

The Lodger seems to be going for a lot of comedy, which is fine, but I wonder if Gareth Roberts' script didn't make The Doctor a bit of a bumbling idiot.

My biggest complaint on this point involves when he's been invited to play soccer with Craig and his friends. He asks Amy something along the lines of "Now, that's the one with the sticks, right?" Given how the 5th Doctor was proficient at cricket, it strikes me as just odd that he wouldn't know 6 regenerations later the difference between cricket and soccer/football. You'd think that after having spent so much time with humans he'd know how to behave around them, but no, all these little bits were done to show just what a funny 'fish out of water' the Doctor is.

Side note: I figure the soccer sequence was done to cater to Smith's still-impressive football skills. Landon Donovan, watch out.

We can tell it's suppose to be comedic by the fact that the Doctor gets an electric toothbrush and tries to use it as his sonic screwdriver. I guess I figure I was suppose to laugh at that, at seeing the Doctor in the shower, at seeing the Doctor drop his towel when rushing out to see who was going upstairs, and yet, I didn't.

Neither did I find it funny (or even relevant) when the Doctor goes to work, filling in for an ill Craig. Finally, I didn't think this "Doctor Goes Domestic" bit to be at all funny, and I think the Doctor wearing nothing but a towel menacing an alien with an electric toothbrush may be one of the Worst Moments of Series/Season 5.

I was also confused when The Doctor head-butted Craig to reveal a lot of information. It was nice seeing a montage of Doctors, but at this point I just didn't know what to make of it or where it was going. I'll confess to being confused.

Rush-rush-rush-quick-quick-quick. In short, I cannot get over the idea that The Lodger was trying desperately to make me laugh and not doing it.

I also want to say this: OK, who didn't think the Doctor was going to be at the door when Craig opens it to tell the person there, "I Love You?" It just struck me as so obvious as to be expected, a bit cliché. Add to that this odd bit: in one scene where Sophie and Craig are talking in the hall, there is a painting of a clown between them that I couldn't stop focusing on. It was the creepiest clown portrait in history and the fact that director Catherine Morshead had it so prominently placed between them made me wonder if I should have paid more attention to it than to the conversation.

As for the voices that lure the victims to the Upstairs Room, the last one sounded too much like the child's voice in The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2 (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances) to not have me flash back to that episode. One of the victims appeared to have already been physically abused before being lured upstairs, and it just gave me the creeps.

This isn't to say there aren't good, even great things, about The Lodger. Roberts' script gives Smith an exceptionally beautiful speech about "Trying Better Than Failing", chastising Sophie and Craig for settling when they could go for much more. Smith's delivery of this speech is one of his best pieces of acting in the series (may be one of the Best Moments of Series/Season 5).

Gillan, though not a major part of the story, still brought a sense of anxiety and fear in Amy (and with the comedy about the bow-ties even an attempt at laughter, though I didn't laugh). As for the guest stars, both Corden and Haggard are good not great as the average couple who are in love but who cannot express it to the other. They have a 'regular man and woman' quality to them, and their scenes together, especially in their first, speaks volumes about the subtext between them. It's a scene that is all too familiar to anyone who has fallen in love with their friend.

As for the conclusion of The Lodger, at first I thought I was seeing a glimmer of hope that perhaps my hopes that more Gallifreyans could be kicking about could be true, but I found I might have been mistaken. And of course, we have that crack. By this time, I wasn't surprised, but luckily my mind was occupied by wondering if the Van Gogh magnet on the refrigerator was deliberately suppose to remind me of Vincent & The Doctor to really care.

I'll say this about The Lodger: it deserves a second viewing. I think there was far too much focus on how funny, how quirky, how goofy the Doctor could be in a domestic situation which distracted from the danger above them (side note: the danger they faced brought to mind both The Empty Child and The Idiot's Lantern. Don't know why, just did).

It was almost as if there was a mash-up between Doctor Who and Friends. I wasn't overwhelmed with The Lodger. Perhaps a better title could have been The Beast Above?

4/10

Next Story: The Big Bang Parts 1 & 2 (The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang)

Doctor Who Story 214: Vincent and The Doctor

STORY 214: VINCENT & THE DOCTOR

And Away We Van Gogh...

There's something peculiar about the title Vincent & The Doctor. It makes me think of an 80s New Wave band. The 7th Doctor story Delta & The Bannermen is, I understand, a deliberate echo to the band Echo & The Bunnymen. With Vincent & The Doctor, there is no mystery of who it will involve: I doubt we'll have a story featuring Vincent Price (though that would be very cool). Here, we get the genius of Vincent Van Gogh, and apparently an explanation for his mental state.

Visiting the Musee D'Orsay, the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his Companion, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), tour an exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh paintings. While observing The Church at Auvers, the Doctor notices a strange figure, a monster, lurking within the church. With that, they go off to see the Dutch painter to find out what's going on. Vinnie (Tony Curran) is a most unhappy man: poor, unable to pay his bar tab, depressed about where his career is not going. The Doctor, who now is a patron of the arts, attempts to befriend him, but Van Gogh finds common bonds with Amy (beyond the red hair).

There have been a series of killings which the townsfolk blame on the odd painter, making him even more self-loathing. Van Gogh knows he hasn't been successful in terms of selling his work, and constantly puts himself down. However, we soon discover what is behind the killings: it's a monster, the Krafayis, which only Vincent can see. Going to the church at Auvers, the three fight off the Krafayis and defeat it (albeit accidentally) even as we discover it's not as monstrous as we thought.

Van Gogh, sad to see them leave, is taken to the D'Orsay, where the tour guide there, (Bill Nighy in a cameo, and with rather a cool bow-tie himself), tells Amy & The Doctor within Van Gogh's earshot that the Dutchman is the greatest painter of all time (a point of debate I'm sure, but neither here nor there). Tragically, even this good news isn't enough to stop Van Gogh from eventually taking his own life, much to Amy's sadness. However, there is a note of joy: Van Gogh's Sunflowers now bears the inscription "For Amy".

Vincent & The Doctor is pretty light, pretty average, nothing to write home about. This monster, the Krafayis (who looked a bit like a dragon of sorts), is almost secondary. We get a lot of Van Gogh paintings in what I figure is an attempt at comedy...oh look, Van Gogh is painting over another of his masterpieces. Wow, the Doctor & Amy are declining to take a self-portrait he's made.

Side notes: I still am of the old school which pronounces his name as "Van Go". Hearing the updated pronunciation of "Van Go-ff" did throw me a bit. Also, while looking at the self-portrait, I couldn't help but think, 'Van Gogh does looks a lot like Kirk Douglas. I think writer Richard Curtis would have done better to have him paint a portrait of The Doctor & Amy, but perhaps that would have been a touch too much, yet I digress.

Going on about the Krafayis, is it me, or is there some obsession with making the monsters less monstrous? I keep wondering whether there are actually any villains, seeing that the aliens we've encountered, minus the Daleks, are actually more misunderstood than truly evil. (Then again, in Dalek, the lone Dalek was more sympathetic than usual, but again I digress).

The performances, under director Jonny Campbell, were good. Curran, I understand, has gotten criticism for having a Scottish accent in Vincent & The Doctor, but one must have some sense of disbelief. Douglas didn't have a Dutch accent when playing Van Gogh in Lust for Life and I don't hear people going on about how American he sounds. He was thoroughly sympathetic as Van Gogh, and even added touches of humor, especially in his scenes with Gillan's Amy. They made a wonderful couple.

Come to think of it, Vincent & The Doctor was a very contained story, less about monsters and more about people; with three main characters, it might have been better called Vincent, Amy & The Doctor. It was delightful to see Nighy as Dr. Black, which wasn't a showy part but added another layer of lightness to the story.

While much of the story was good, here's where I find fault with Vincent & The Doctor. In real life, Van Gogh had serious mental issues which led to his suicide at 37. Having his hallucinations be explained the way they are (that he was actually sane because the monsters were real) strikes me as a bit dicey. It potentially downplays the fact that those who suffer from mental illness are shown to be accurate in how they see the world when they should be treated with therapy and perhaps medication.

I don't think Curtis, Campbell, or Steve Moffat are trying to minimize the seriousness of mental illness, especially when at the end of Vincent & The Doctor, a telephone number was given in an effort to help those with mental health issues. This (which I don't remember happening in the American broadcast on BBC America), feels almost as if they're trying to be sensitive when for nearly an hour they've used mental illness as a plot device.

It brings to mind Tears & Laughter: The Joan & Melissa Rivers Story, where Joan & Melissa Rivers played themselves in the story of the aftermath of the suicide of the elder Rivers' husband Edgar Rosenberg. There was also a hotline number given then, but the fact that it all appeared so tawdry got them jeers rather than cheers. I get the same feeling here, a sense that something is not right in all this.

That said, I should cut them some slack, given the fact that we've had a "monsters going after a historic figure story" before (The Girl in The Fireplace), it would be difficult to come up with a reason as to why no one save Van Gogh could see the monster. There is one thing in Vincent & The Doctor that I did enjoy tremendously: no crack, at least none that I remembered.

Did I miss the crack? Did I Ever So Not Miss That Damn Crack! I tire of that crack, and given that minus Amy's Choice this is the only story NOT to feature it, I suppose it should get points for that.

Overall, Vincent & The Doctor was a light story, almost unimportant in this grand "THE CRACK IN TIME THAT WILL DESTROY ALL EXISTENCE" that has been plaguing this series since The Eleventh Hour. The performances, especially Curran's was brilliant (his scene where he hears of the impact his work has had on the world postmortem is especially moving), and one can't help enjoy seeing a bit of how a genius like Van Gogh sees the world (the scene where he shows Amy and The Doctor how starry a night can be, beautiful).

I didn't like the monster, I didn't like the more humorous bits, I have concerns about how mental illness is handled, and these things can't be dismissed so easily. Still, it isn't worth cutting off an ear over.

VINCENT VAN GOGH: 1853-1890

Pity I had no time to visit the Musee D'Orsay while I was in Paris. And to think, we looked for Van Goghs at the Louvre only to discover they were only a few miles away. Alas...

6/10

Next Story: The Lodger

Doctor Who Story 213: Cold Blood Parts 1 & 2

STORY 213: COLD BLOOD (THE HUNGRY EARTH/COLD BLOOD)

From The Ground Up...

It's a curious thing about monsters: you never know which ones the public will love. The Daleks are the best-known of Doctor Who monsters/villains. In fact, they were the ones that got the ball rolling to make Doctor Who the longest-running science-fiction program in history. There are other monsters/villains which I would throw in among the Top Fifteen: Cybermen, The Master, Ice Warriors, Sea Devils, Sontarans, Slitheen, Autons even those Weeping Angels everyone seems so crazy about. Tucked in safely among them is another monster, one that had a strong impact on the public.

What makes the popularity of this particular monster more fascinating is that, not counting the two-part Cold Blood (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood), they appeared in only two stories (and one of them is in the running for being among my Top Ten Worst stories). More on them later.

Cold Blood is a new marker for the revived Doctor Who; besides the ubiquitous Daleks and Cybermen, the original monsters haven't been a large part of the revived series. Yes, you've had the Sontarans and the Autons, but from my limited viewing (Love & Monsters pushed me to avoid the rest of David Tennant's Era), it appears the new team wanted original creatures as opposed to blasts from the past. I congratulate producer Stephen Moffat in not being as afraid of the classic monsters as Russell T. Davies apparently was.

Davies to my mind appeared extremely reluctant to bring any of them back (minus said Daleks and Cybermen). I don't blame him for wanting to create new monsters for The Doctor to face, but I believe given that Doctor Who has such original creatures they should draw on them. That requires a delicate touch: creating something that will bring in the new fans while not offending the intelligence of those who followed the original series. Cold Blood manages to do both.

We go with The Doctor (Matt Smith), his Companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), and her fiancee Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) ten years in the future (2020) to Cwmtaff, South Wales (no, being an American I won't even try to pronounce it). In this town there is a massive mining operation (side note: mining operations are always dangerous on Doctor Who). Dr. Nasreen Chaudhry, (Meera Syal) head of the drilling, is investigating an anomaly: grass not native to Wales and which has been extinct for millions of years is starting to pop up, especially over new graves. She is assisted by the only family that actually lives in Cwmtaff: her assistant Tony Mack (Robert Pugh), his daughter and son-in-law Ambrose and Mo Northover (Nia Roberts and Alun Raglan), and grandson Elliot (Samuel Davies). As the giant machine plunging into the earth keeps going in, the Earth appears to strike back: creating sinkholes, one having already taken Mo and the other swallowing Amy up.

Now The Doctor realizes something is digging up to the surface and all those on the surface cannot escape Cwmtaff. Taking refuge in a church, they are attacked by a mysterious creature. Deep in the Earth, Amy is in danger of being vivisected by another of these mysterious creatures. Eventually both sides have hostages: those beneath take Mo, Amy, and Elliot, while those above have Alaya (Neve McIntosh). The Doctor recognizes them as an unknown branch of the Silurians, reptilian creatures who lived on the surface before man but who fled underground from what they thought was a planet closing in to collide with Earth but what turned out to be the Moon being pulled into the Earth's orbit. The Silurians take the mining operation as an attack, and decide to strike back. With both sides holding prisoners, the Doctor attempts to negotiate between them two things: a hostage exchange and co-existence. Due to misunderstandings, a thirst for war, xenophobia and general fear this does not work out. At the end, we get more hints about that damn crack that are much more menacing...and we get death and even noble sacrifices for love.

I don't know if this was in the mind of writer Chris Chibnall when he wrote Cold Blood, but I couldn't help think there was an analogy between the Silurians and Earthmen and that between the Arab & Jewish Palestinian. Both claim a certain territory as their own (and their own territory exclusively), both believe the other is the occupier/threat to their existence, both cannot come to a peaceful coexistence, and both hold hostages. My mind kept going back to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit when I thought of both Alaya and Mo/Amy/Elliot as well as the idea of hostage exchanges. Alaya's twin sister, Commander Restac (Neve McIntosh again) the Silurian General, refers to humans as "apes", and it's an unfortunate thing among some Arabs that they use the same terminology on their Hebrew cousins (it should be remembered that they are from different branches of the same Semitic family tree...remember Abraham?).

Chibnall does give extremely clever lines of dialogue in Cold Blood, specifically giving insight into the Doctor's galaxy-view. "No weapons. It's not the way I do things", he tells Ambrose when they capture the Silurian. He shows he's not fond of how humans deal with new threats. Of course, he's equal opportunity: when informed of the arrival of the Silurian military, he remarks, "There's always a military, isn't there?"

I'd like to think that Cold Blood does what great science-fiction does: place modern-day issues in a fantasy world where they can be discussed more openly without being overt. I admit that the Arab/Jewish struggle playing into my thinking of the story may be my own interpretation, but the fact that I can draw analogies without being lectured about what to think of them elevates the episode into a higher level.

That isn't to take away from the adventure of it: there are many moments of thrills and chills. The scenes where Amy is literally swallowed up by the Earth is quite frightening, but not as frightening as when we see Elliot being held. That would be extremely terrifying to a child, bringing the terror to a more personal level.

The performances of the guests are impeccable. Meera Syal is just brilliant as Dr. Choudhry. It's a credit to British multiculturalism to have an Indian-Briton woman lead the investigation. She creates a fully-rounded character: one who is knowledgeable, intelligent, and with emotions like love playing into what she does. Her parting scene is one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful of the series/season. Nia Roberts' Ambrose is a conflicted woman: torn by love and hate, fear and oddly hope. She never loses the balance between the emotions tearing at her: fear for her family's survival vs. her fear of the other.

Samuel Davies' Elliot could have been either a whiny kid or one of those plucky sidekicks, but instead he's a regular boy who is intelligent (any child who quotes Sherlock Holmes is a winner in my book) and frightened. McIntosh has the unenviable duty of playing two characters, and while both are extremely antagonistic and I'd argue the villain you always buy that Alaya and Restac are two different, to use the Doctor's term, Homo Reptilia. (Side note: you could argue that both Silurian AND Homo Reptilia may not be the exact correct term for the creatures, but then that is being FAR too picky).

Curiously, I noticed that Smith was now fully immersed into the character of The Doctor in his physicality. There were certain moments in Cold Blood when this now 27-year-old moved like a 900+ year-old. The way his back is arched while walking, the way he holds his hands, the way his head looks like it's about to tip over, the way he moves--they have an "old-man" quality. I don't know if this is Smith's own idea or that of director Ashley Way, but it isn't too distracting.

In fact, I'd argue it adds to his interpretation: not so comical as Troughton, as daring as Pertwee, as moody as Eccleston or as whimsical as Tennant, but as almost puzzled by everyone's behavior. He constantly tells everyone to do exactly as he says (almost no one ever does) but while he gets upset about that he seems perplexed as to why they never do it.

Gillan goes into a more "damsel in distress" manner in Part 1, but in Part 2 she returns to form, taking more charge of the situations. Her best scenes are when she faces more loss and her efforts to not forget--very deep, intense, and well-played. On a personal note, I'm beginning to feel sorry for Rory: without giving too much away, this is the second time I see him die. It may be because Darvill (and Rory) have grown on me: starting as a bit of a bumbler/wimp in The Eleventh Hour and Vampires of Venice, he grew to be more courageous and more intelligent as he progressed. It's a credit to the writing and Darvill's interpretation that has allowed us to see this growth.

Credit should also be handed out to Make-Up Designer Barbara Southcott for her excellent work on the Silurians. (Side note: Chibnall was wise to add in his script business about this being a 'different form' of Silurian, since they look very different than from the original series). The make-up looks realistic (ie. like reptiles) and never overwhelm the visuals. Edward Thomas, the Production Designer, created wonderful-looking sets for the Silurian underground city. At first, you don't think they are that spectacular, but as the story progresses you see both the beauty and functionality of their world.

If there are things to criticize, it would be that when we get the Silurian P.O.V., it was too reminiscent of the Dalek P.O.V. I also would take it to task in its portrayal of Ambrose's actions: I think it was a little too simplistic to put it all on her, almost to the point where she because almost solely responsible for everything. I think her motivations were more complex than presented. One thing is for certain: Cold Blood is one of the darker stories of the season/series. In fact, I think it might be the darkest story so far.

Perhaps, finally, I should make peace with that damn crack...it's haunted me since The Eleventh Hour and has rarely not appeared, so it's all building up, but I hate seeing it over and over and over and once more.

Still, these are minor points that don't take away from a well-acted, well-written, well-directed, well-created story. Cold Blood is a very rich and deep story which will have you digging further into it (pun intended).

8/10

Next Story: Vincent & The Doctor

This is the original Silurian from the Third Doctor story Doctor Who & The Silurians (oddly, the only Doctor Who story where the words "Doctor Who" formed part of the title). They returned alongside their "cousins" the Sea Devils in the Fifth Doctor story Warriors of the Deep.