A flash-bang handover from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi with loose ends tied up – but can we stomach this much Christmassy Who?
Story 241 Christmas special 2013 “I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me” – the Doctor Storyline A mysterious message echoes out across the stars from the planet Trenzalore. Daleks, Cybermen and the Doctor’s old friend, Tasha Lem, are among those who respond. With the planet under threat of attack, and having discovered the crack in time there too, the Time Lord must protect the inhabitants of a town called Christmas. He remains for many years, until he reaches old age. He tells Clara this is his final incarnation but, as death approaches, she pleads with the Time Lords through the time fissure and they bestow a full new set of regenerations. The old Doctor uses his regenerative energy to wipe out his assailants and is transformed into a new man – seemingly unable to fly the Tardis... First UK broadcast Wednesday 25 December 2013 Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara – Jenna Coleman Tasha Lem – Orla Brady Dad – James Buller Linda – Elizabeth Rider Gran – Sheila Reid Mark Brighton – Colonel Albero Rob Jarvis – Abramal Tessa Peake-Jones – Marta Jack Hollington – Barnable Sonita Henry – Colonel Meme Tom Gibbons – Young Man Ken Bones – Voice Aidan Cook – Cyberman Kayvan Novak – Voice of Handles Nicholas Briggs – Voice of the Cybermen/Daleks Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg – Daleks Ross Mullan – Silent Dan Starkey – Sontaran Sarah Madison – Weeping Angel Karen Gillan – Amy Pond The Doctor – Peter Capaldi Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Jamie Payne Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Brian Minchin RT review by Patrick Mulkern So farewell, fair Doctor! After 44 episodes spread across four years, magnificent Matt Smith discards his bowtie and lets it drop, poignantly, to the floor of the Tardis. And – after a rather protracted regeneration – in pounces Peter Capaldi. Gaunt, lizard-like and with frou-frou hair. Was anyone else put in mind of Doctor Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein? He is adapting to new kidneys – not new teeth (like David Tennant) or hair (Matt Smith). The Capaldi Doctor has senior concerns. If Clara was hoping for another cute, boyish associate, she’s out of luck. She almost recoils. Yet she should have been primed. The vogue for ever-younger Time Lords has elapsed. This year, the series has boldly volleyed Peter Capaldi (55), David Bradley (71), John Hurt (73), arguably even the majestic Tom Baker (79) into primetime TV as viable Doctors. Now, in The Time of the Doctor, Steven Moffat shows us an ancient version of Matt Smith. The lead writer achieves many things in this 2013 Christmas special: tying up straggly ends from Matt’s era – why the Tardis exploded in 2010, why Silence must fall, the big question that must never be answered… Points that most viewers have long since forgotten. The attentive fan is being serviced here. But in ageing Matt’s Doctor to stooped decrepitude, Moffat also ensures that the incarnation he’s nurtured is now the longest lived. In narrative terms, the youthful “11th” had already survived several hundred years longer than most of his predecessors individually managed. In The Time of the Doctor he clocks up many more centuries. The make-up job is effective and Matt becomes fully Dickensian, but there’s no hiding the youthful light in Old Father Time’s eyes. Which is surely the point. As hoped, Moffat clearly explains, in the Doctor’s own words, how he’s unexpectedly run out of regenerations: taking into account John Hurt’s Doctor (“Captain Grumpy”), and David Tennant’s Doctor (“vanity issues”) having expended another life early (in Journey’s End, 2008). And, as I predicted, the Doctor is gifted another full regeneration cycle by the Time Lords. (This is nothing new: they casually offered the Master a new cycle, for slender services and despite his villainy, in The Five Doctors 30 years ago!) So, lots of ticks for advancing the legend of our hero and giving him a new lease of life. You can’t blame Moffat for taking on the responsibility – and allowing himself the honour in this golden anniversary year – of dealing with the “12 regenerations only” issue, which has dogged Doctor Who since it was established in The Deadly Assassin (1977). The future looks assured. The Time of the Doctor is – extraordinarily – the ninth Christmas special since the series returned in 2005. Of course there’s immense kudos in being central to BBC1’s Christmas Day schedule, but with the slow-down in production rate, this works out as the Time Lord’s third Christmassy outing in a run of 17 episodes. I may be in the minority, but Doctor Who doesn’t say “Christmas” to me. Never has. And does each special need to be so blooming Christmassy? Steven Moffat told me in 2013 that as long as he’s in charge and they’re making Christmas specials, they will have a Christmassy tone. Clara’s Christmas emergency is bearable, even amusing – what with the hologram clothes/nudity, baking a turkey in the Tardis and the touching scene with her gran (Benidorm’s Sheila Reid). Although its design is a homage to RT’s classic double issue from 1977, calling the town on Trenzalore “Christmas” is one twee bauble too many for me. Maybe that’s why I don’t give a fig or a brazil nut that the Doctor spends centuries defending the place. Bah! My bells also remain unjingled by the drippy music sloshing about under “talky” scenes. Just let Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman carry the scene. Have faith in the viewer to be absorbed. Otherwise, the production design is dazzling – and looked flawless on the cinema screen where I first saw it. Daleks, Cybermen, Silence, Weeping Angels… There’s a danger when you have a parade of deadliest foes that they’ll lose impact, but Moffat’s script plays to their strengths in short-burst encounters – the Angels half-buried in snow being the real chiller. Santa Steve is being stingy with guest characters, but Orla Brady is striking as Tasha Lem, an ally-turned-opponent-turned-ally we’d never heard of before. Her gigantic face looming in the sky reminds me of the Face of Kronos from Jon Pertwee’s 1972 season finale, The Time Monster. I love Amy Pond/Karen Gillan’s pop-up farewell (“Raggedy Man, goodnight”) and the fleeting glimpse of young Amelia running around the Tardis gantry. (Let’s not forget Gillan’s cousin, Caitlin Blackwood, was a teenager by this stage so couldn’t reprise her role.) It’s fitting that this departing Doctor should think back to the first face he saw, but a moment for Rory (Arthur Darvill) would have pleased no end, too. Two of my chums have grumbled that the Amy moment is a little de trop, but nods back to the past are a tradition in Doctors’ farewell episodes reaching right back to Patrick Troughton (Jamie and Zoe going home) and Jon Pertwee (Jo’s letter and her return of the Metebelis crystal leading to his downfall). Tom Baker and Peter Davison had “companion flashbacks” and David Tennant did the rounds of all his chums in person. I’m really warming to the current companion, especially now she’s free of the “Impossible Girl” baggage. Perky, resourceful, best-friend material, Jenna Coleman’s Clara has a tangible echo of Lis Sladen’s Sarah about her. She would stay by the new Doctor’s side for a few more rides. As for Matt Smith, well, his tenure flew by. He instantly “got” the character and captivated me in 2010. He’ll be sorely missed. He’s up there with the greats of Doctor Who – easily a favourite Doctor alongside Pertwee and Troughton. And so, on with the show. In Peter Capaldi, we have a dream-wish Doctor with a full new regeneration cycle. An older traveller who cannot fly his Tardis and cut off from his own people, just as he was in 1963… An adventure in space and time is starting all over again...
A Day in the Life of Doctor Who: a 50th anniversary review
Who aficionado Patrick Mulkern charts the highs and lows of The Celebration, The Episode, The Afterparty and The Five(ish) Doctors...
The Celebration "I did conventions in the 1980s and generally loathed them," says Patrick Mulkern. "They were often tacky, odorous and nearly all male. But this Celebration was bliss. Organised chaos, yes. But everyone having a wonderful time" “No pressure then,” I said to Steven Moffat, when I was jammed up against him at the bar last weekend at Doctor Who Magazine’s 50th bash – just one week away from The Day of the Doctor, and with what must have felt like, for him, the eyes of the world watching, waiting, hoping desperately to be impressed by whatever his feverish imagination could deliver. The Moff shrugged, gave me that disconcerting saturnine look he has, halfway between a smile and a scowl, and then… well, then we had quite an interesting conversation that I cannot, would not repeat here. We were both off duty. It would be ungentlemanly. But I realised this is a man who loves Doctor Who as passionately as I do, and what has shone through in this anniversary week is how so many people really do adore and care about this daft 50-year-old television programme. Beyond the blanket coverage on the BBC, in the press and online, what has impressed me is the true adoration of the fans who not only watch but who make the show. Mark Gatiss’s fan “love letter” to Doctor Who, An Adventure in Space and Time, was an utter joy and has made me laugh and blub on each viewing. And then this weekend there’s been the live event, the Doctor Who Celebration, BBC Worldwide’s unwieldy beast of a convention (although they’re not calling it a “convention”) at London’s ExceL. I did conventions in the 1980s and generally loathed them. They were often tacky, odorous and nearly all male. But this Celebration was bliss. Organised chaos, yes. Queue central. But everyone having a wonderful time. The main hall was like an airport mall during an air traffic controllers’ strike, except every aisle, every stand, every inch was groaning with Who ephemera: costumes, monsters, props… Merchandise stalls making an outrageous fortune. Stars and makers of the show mingling with gobsmacked fans. But most rewarding was the sight of so many families, hundreds of little kids, the new generation of fans, many dressed up as Matt Smith, David Tennant or Amy Pond. It was actually overwhelming. Overcome by all this adoration for our favourite TV programme, I went to chill out in the green room, over the past two days abuzz with the likes of William Russell, Waris Hussein, Katy Manning, Anneke Wills, June Hudson, Janet Fielding… All familiar names to fans but some of which will have become more widely known since An Adventure in Space and Time. I passed the time with Sylvester McCoy and even met Tom Baker for the first time properly since 1978. He still exudes that barmy, otherworldly charm. But time to hurry home! The Episode "It was patchy. In no way disappointing, but there were peaks and longueurs.... but the scenes between the three Doctors had sparkle" What of the episode? How was The Day of the Doctor? Well, I have to say it was patchy. In no way disappointing, but there were peaks and longueurs. Clearly, the script was written for David Tennant, Matt Smith and Christopher Eccleston. That would have been some union, a reward for the audience who have followed the show since 2005, but as we know (if not why) Eccleston peed over the Moff’s freshly laid-out picnic. At the 11th hour, with Smith, Tennant and Billie Piper diarised and engaged, a quick solution had to be found to make his “Back to the Time War” story work. Enter an old Doctor we had never seen before. John Hurt is the kind of casting I dreamt of post Tom Baker so I have no complaints. I told the Moff – although I’m sure he’d realised – that in the space of one month, Doctor Who, now known for ever younger Doctors, is suddenly serving up three older ones: David Bradley, John Hurt and Peter Capaldi. All top-drawer. Hurt, always magnificent, played his part with unremitting weariness, but the scenes between the three Doctors had sparkle. Matt Smith is always note-perfect and David Tennant didn’t seem a day older, still the romantic, cocky hero. The little dig about his Doctor’s estuary accent being a bit Dick Van Dyke was priceless. Tennant’s Doctor yet again got the lady: the “Virgin” Queen, no less. And, note, he absconded during the wedding. A nice pay-off to The Shakespeare Code (Gareth Roberts’s 2007 episode) when an old Queen Elizabeth showed up and inexplicably wanted the Doctor’s head. Now we know why. The scenes with Billie Piper would have worked so much better (as was surely intended) alongside an Eccleston Doctor who did not yet know her. The lack of a proper Rose may have disappointed those drooling for more Piper/Tennant schmaltz, but the Moff wisely sidestepped that entirely. And by making Piper some weird kind of interface (generated by Gallifrey’s ultimate WMD), she could use her proper voice and not that cod “I’m a chav!” accent that became increasingly less convincing. Certain static, talky scenes ground to a halt. Maybe a bit of downtime was needed and I’ll appreciate these moments better on second viewing. Not really calling John Hurt’s Doctor “the Doctor” but rather “the War Doctor” is an awkward fudge, guaranteeing that Eccleston, Tennant and Smith can keep the numbers we know them by, so that dozens of books don’t have to be rewritten and warehouse loads of BBC merchandise don’t become obsolete overnight. Russell T Davies always said the Time War between the Daleks and Gallifrey was best left unexplored. He established it eight years ago as a past event, and really what we saw in The Day of the Doctor did little to shake that wisdom. The scenes on Gallifrey were, as so often, boring. But disposing with the Time War, unshackling the Doctor from his burden of guilt, is a masterstroke from the Moff, and gives the Time Lord a new goal. He spent his first few years fleeing his own people; now his mission is to find them. I want to concentrate on the positives. The Moff delivered so many pleasing moments. The Hartnell title sequence! A glimpse of Totter’s Lane junkyard and Clara working at Coal Hill School, settings for the first episode in 1963. Clara charging into the police box on a motorbike. The madcap Tardis airlift over London landmarks, and Unit passing off their actions in Trafalgar Square as another Derren Brown stunt. The Unit boffin wearing The Scarf… The Zygons were returning for the first time since 1975. David Tennant once told RT they were the one monster he wanted to work with – a classic design, untampered with; their shape-shifting achieved here via a delicious/revolting transmogrification. I loved the salute to the Brigadier, probably my favourite character in Doctor Who, delightfully played over many decades by Nicholas Courtney, who died in 2011. Well, that was my first blub. There was a gasp at the Time Lords’ mention of 13 Doctors, and that rapid intense close-up of Peter Capaldi! All the Doctors coming to the rescue with their Tardises (blithely overlooking the fact that the first three Docs could rarely, if ever, pilot theirs). And that line-up of them in all their finery was simply majestic. A gasp and blub combined was triggered by Tom Baker, showing up as the enigmatic “Curator” – the elusive elder statesman of Doctor Who sending a 50th birthday kiss to his legions of fans. This was the greatest anniversary present, expertly played by Baker and Smith, and opaquely written by the Moff so that you could take from it whatever you wanted. For me, this elderly man really was a version of the fourth Doctor we adored in the 1970s. I can make that leap of faith. Tom always has been and always will be the Doctor. This was The Day of the Doctor in all his forms, and I can’t wait to watch it again. The Afterparty "It scraped the abyss... the treatment of the former companions was unforgivable" The evening continued with The Afterparty, which it has to be said, in true BBC3 tradition, scraped the abyss. Is the annoying Zoë Ball always going to host these live Doctor Who shows now? Oh dear. I’ve no idea who her male co-host was. The chats on the sofa (Matt/Jenna/Moff/Hurt, then Davison/Baker/McCoy) were fine, and some of the clips packages were lovely, but the treatment of the former companions was unforgivable. Ball claimed they had the largest assembly of companions ever achieved, but so few of them were given airtime. The illustrious Jean Marsh was only given a namecheck. Ball called Matthew Waterhouse only “Adric”. The Troughton companions (Anneke Wills, Frazer Hines, Debbie Watling and Wendy Padbury) were all in sight but ignored. The male co-host nudged the fabulous Katy Manning aside with his backside. I even spotted Maureen O’Brien beside Peter Purves. She never does these things, yet there was time for a short, recorded greeting from Jackie Lane. These BBC3 shows seem unable to function without boyband nonentities spluttering their inanities. Thus a link to One Direction in the US: two blokes who had not even seen the episode being asked to comment on it, with an excruciating 15-second delay. It was timey-wimey all right, but cut back to the BFI and the Moff had his head in hands in horror. The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot "Peter Davison’s lovingly crafted spoof topped the evening" Banishing that embarrassing BBC3 interlude was quite easy with the sublime The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot straight afterwards on the BBC Red Button. Peter Davison’s lovingly crafted spoof (he wrote and directed it) topped the evening. The conceit is that the 1980s Doctors, Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker – older, greyer, tubbier – are desperate to be included in the 50th special, but the Moff won’t take their calls. He’s happier plotting his special with Matt Smith and David Tennant toy figurines. There were so many witty moments in this: Tom Baker literally phoning in a performance; the 80s Docs failing to interest their families in their old episodes; John Barrowman trying to conceal his dark secret (a wife and kids); the Docs jamming into a police box with a torch like the Three Stoo(Who)ges. There was the very cool inclusion of Peter Jackson on the set of The Hobbit (let’s not forget he’s a fan too) and Ian McKellen in full Gandalf garb having no idea who McCoy is. Most sublime, Russell T Davies going all John Nathan-Turner (the 1980s Who producer) and fantasising about casting himself as the Doctor. His 27-minute text message is casually deleted by Davison. Brilliant to find a way to include Davies in the 50th. And what comic timing he has! But now we’re left wondering: were Peter, Colin and Sylv ever really under those museum shrouds in The Day of the Doctor? Come on, Moff, tell us! Follow @RadioTimes
Doctors past, present and future unite to resolve the Time War – in Steven Moffat's superb, game-changing special, dripping with golden moments
Story 240 50th Anniversary Special “No, sir. All 13!” – Time Lord Storyline Clara, now working at Coal Hill School, joins the Doctor just as the Tardis is airlifted by a Unit helicopter to Trafalgar Square. Kate Stewart, the Brigadier’s daughter, wants to show the Doctor a 3D painting in the National Gallery called Gallifrey Falls. And in a secret Under Gallery, there are more 3D landscapes from which figures have escaped… In the English countryside, 1562, the Doctor’s previous incarnation finds himself proposing marriage to Queen Elizabeth I while trying to avert a Zygon menace. The shape-shifting aliens plan to invade the future – 21st-century Earth – after being held in stasis by the 3D images. An even earlier incarnation, having renounced the title of “Doctor”, is present for the last day of the Time War. He’s decided to end the conflict between the Daleks and the Time Lords by activating “The Moment”, a galaxy-eating weapon of mass destruction. But in the Gallifreyan desert, he is plagued by a “conscience” from the Moment’s interface, embodied in the form of Rose Tyler. The conscience generates a time fissure so that the “War Doctor” can join his future selves and reconsider his actions… First UK broadcast Saturday 23 November 2013 Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith, David Tennant, John Hurt (also credited: Christopher Eccleston, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, William Hartnell) Clara – Jenna Coleman Rose Tyler – Billie Piper Kate Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Elizabeth I – Joanna Page Osgood – Ingrid Oliver Tom – Tristan Beint Time Lord soldier – Chris Finch Androgar – Peter De Jersey The General – Ken Bones Arcadia father – Philip Buck Time Lord – Sophie Morgan-Price Lord Bentham – Orlando James McGillop – Jonjo O’Neill Atkins – Tom Keller Zygons – Aidan Cook, Paul Kasey Dalek & Zygon voices – Nicholas Briggs Daleks – Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg Voiceover artist – John Guilor Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Nick Hurran Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Faith Penhale RT review by Patrick Mulkern “No pressure then,” I said to Steven Moffat, when I was jammed up against him at the bar at Doctor Who Magazine’s 50th bash – just one week ahead of The Day of the Doctor, and with what must have felt like, for him, the eyes of the world watching, waiting, hoping desperately to be impressed by whatever his feverish imagination could deliver. The Moff shrugged, gave me that disconcerting saturnine look he has, halfway between smile and scowl, and then… well, then we had an interesting conversation that I cannot, would not repeat here. We were both off duty. It would be ungentlemanly. But I realised this is a man who loves Doctor Who as passionately as I do, and what shone through in the 50th anniversary week is how so many people really do adore and care about this daft old television programme. So how is The Day of the Doctor? Well, clearly it’s brilliant, if uneven in pace and, for some I spoke to, tricky to follow. In no way disappointing, but there are peaks and longueurs. The script was originally structured for David Tennant, Matt Smith and Christopher Eccleston. That would have been some union, a reward for the audience who have followed the show since 2005, but as we know Eccleston peed over the Moff’s freshly laid-out picnic. At the 11th hour – with ultra-busy Smith, Tennant and Billie Piper all diarised and engaged – Moffat had to find a quick solution to let his “Back to the Time War” story work. Enter an old Doctor we had never seen before. John Hurt is the kind of casting I dreamt of post-Tom Baker so I have no complaints. I told Steven – although I’m sure he’d realised – that in the space of one month, Doctor Who, now known for ever-younger Doctors, is suddenly serving up three older ones: David Bradley, John Hurt and Peter Capaldi. All top-drawer. (And not forgetting Tom Baker!) Hurt, always magnificent, plays his part with unremitting weariness, and is an amusing counterpoint to his boyish, hand-flapping successors. The scenes between the three Doctors has more than sparkle: they’re a masterclass in acting styles and sharp writing. Matt Smith is always note-perfect and David Tennant doesn’t seem a day older, still the romantic, cocky hero. The little dig about his Doctor’s estuary accent being a bit Dick Van Dyke is priceless. Tennant’s Doctor yet again gets the lady: the “Virgin” Queen, no less. And, note, he absconds during the wedding. A nice pay-off to The Shakespeare Code (Gareth Roberts’s 2007 episode) when an old Queen Elizabeth showed up and inexplicably wanted the Doctor’s head. Now we know why. Hurt’s scenes with Billie Piper would have worked so much better (as was intended) alongside an Eccleston Doctor, who did not yet know her. The lack of a proper Rose may have disappointed those drooling for more Piper/Tennant schmaltz, but Moffat wisely sidesteps that entirely. And by making her some weird kind of interface (a conscience generated by Gallifrey’s ultimate WMD), Piper could use her proper voice and not that cod “I’m a chav!” accent that became increasingly unconvincing. The action almost grinds to a halt with some surprisingly static, talky scenes but a bit of downtime is needed and I’ll appreciate these contemplative moments better on subsequent viewings. Russell T Davies always said the Time War between the Daleks and Gallifrey was best left unexplored. He established it eight years earlier as a past event, and really what we see in The Day of the Doctor does little to shake that wisdom. The battle scenes on Gallifrey look expensive and explosive and no doubt worked better in 2013 for the 3D cinema audience than they did on my HD TV. But dispensing with the baggage of the Time War, unshackling the Doctor from his burden of guilt, is a masterstroke from the Moff, and gives the Time Lord a new goal. He spent his first few years in exile and eventually fleeing his own people; now his mission is to find them. To find his home. I want to concentrate on the positives. Steven Moffat deliver so many pleasing moments… The Hartnell title sequence! A glimpse of Totter’s Lane and Clara working at Coal Hill School, settings for the first episode in 1963. The school clock set at 5.16pm, the time when An Unearthly Child began on BBC TV. Clara charging into the police box on a motorbike. The madcap Tardis airlift over London landmarks, and Unit passing off their actions in Trafalgar Square as another Derren Brown stunt. The Unit boffin wearing The Scarf. The wall of companion photos… David Tennant once told RT that the Zygons were the one monster he wanted to work with. Many years later, his wish is fulfilled as the one-off favourites from 1975 make their return – the classic design untampered with; their shape-shifting achieved via a delicious/revolting transmogrification. I love the salute to the Brigadier, probably my favourite character in Doctor Who, delightfully played over many decades by Nicholas Courtney, who died in 2011. Well, that’s my first blub. How many people gasped at the Time Lords’ mention of “all 13” Doctors, and that flash close-up of an intense Peter Capaldi!? All the Doctors come to the rescue with their Tardises (blithely overlooking the fact that the first three Docs could rarely, if ever, pilot theirs). And Matt Smith’s Doctor’s dream – him joining a line-up of his 11 predecessors in all their finery, gazing at Gallifrey – is simply majestic. A gasp and blub combined is triggered by Tom Baker – the elusive elder statesman of Doctor Who sending a 50th birthday kiss to his legions of fans. His turn as the enigmatic “Curator” is the greatest anniversary present, a duologue expertly played by Baker and Smith, and opaquely written by the Moff so that you can take from it whatever you want. He could be a far future incarnation reusing an “old favourite” face. For me, this elderly man really is a version of the fourth Doctor we adored in the 1970s. I can make that leap of faith. Tom always has been and always will be the Doctor. This is The Day of the Doctor in all his forms, justly celebrated, and set up for decades of new adventures. Steven Moffat reveals why John Hurt replaced Christopher Eccleston
Doctor Who: The Name of the Doctor ★★★★★
An astonishing finale as Steven Moffat rewrites Doctor Who history, casts John Hurt as a new Doctor and sets the stage for the 50th anniversary...
Story 239 Series 7 – Episode 13 “I don’t know where I am. It’s like I’m breaking into a million pieces and there’s only one thing I remember. I have to save the Doctor” – Clara Storyline Clara has a dream-like realisation that she is “the Impossible Girl” and that she was born to save the Doctor. She has brief encounters with all his incarnations, right back to the first when he was originally leaving Gallifrey. Madame Vastra learns that the Doctor is in dire danger, so has a trance-induced “conference call” across time with Clara and River Song. They are interrupted by Dr Simeon (the Great Intelligence) and his undertaker-like Whisper Men. The Doctor must head to Trenzalore to save his friends, Vastra, Jenny and Strax – in the knowledge that this world will be his final resting place. His grave is within the ruins of the giant police box. The Intelligence intends to rewrite the Doctor’s history, undo all his successes, by stepping into his exposed timeline. Clara follows and is splintered across time. The Doctor goes to save her and in a dark cavern they uncover the Time Lord’s dark secret – an earlier, unknown incarnation whose actions were not carried out in the name of the Doctor… First UK transmission Saturday 18 May 2013 Production November to December 2012, March, April 2013. At Coal Exchange, Cardiff Bay; Beatty Avenue, Roath, Cardiff; Merthyr Mawr House, Bridgend; BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman River Song – Alex Kingston Dr Simeon – Richard E Grant Madame Vastra – Neve McIntosh Jenny – Catrin Stewart Strax – Dan Starkey Angie – Eve De Leon Allen Artie – Kassius Carey Johnson Andro – Nasi Voutsas Fabian – David Avery Clarence – Michael Jenn Archie – Rab Affleck Messenger boy – Samuel Irvine Young Clara – Sophie Downham Whisper Man – Paul Kasey Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Saul Metzstein Producer – Denise Paul Series producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern “I’m the Impossible Girl. I was born to save the Doctor” Usually, when previewing a new episode, I feel safe in describing the action in the first few minutes before the title sequence, but few devotees would have thanked me for disclosing the start of this season finale – a boggling montage in which Clara realises her destiny, tumbles through time and crosses paths with many earlier Doctors. For die-hard fans, it’s like the anniversary special has arrived six months early! It cleverly combines newly filmed shots and, ahem!, doctored archive footage. Experts will easily identify which old stories the clips are lifted from but, for me, the most riveting part is Clara’s encounter with the first Doctor. “What kind of idiot would steal a faulty Tardis?” The general viewer won’t realise, but this is the very first time the programme has depicted the first Doctor’s departure from Gallifrey “a very long time ago” with his granddaughter Susan. In story terms, when the series began in London 1963, they had fled their home world long before. In a wonderful 50th birthday pay-off, Steven Moffat fulfils his own fan dream, and that of many others, by showing this key moment. It is fleeting, yes – and I never visualised the Doctor starting his travels dressed as an Edwardian gentleman – but it’s deftly crafted, showing the Tardis in its natural state as a Type 40 capsule, and blending in gently colourised footage of William Hartnell himself. (The actor died in 1975.) So where do those clips of the first Doctor come from? Skip this paragraph if you’d like to work it out for yourselves. The view of Hartnell pausing in a Tardis doorway is from episode two of The Aztecs (1964) and reworks a shot of him cautiously entering a temple. The close-up of the Doctor pondering Clara’s words is lifted from episode four (with his Aztec amour Cameca carefully removed from the background). What’s noteworthy here is that when Clara calls out, “Doctor, sorry, but you’re about to make a big mistake,” he immediately stops and responds, “Yes, what is it? What do you want?” (A line taken from, I think, episode five of The Web Planet.) So is she the first person ever to call him “Doctor”? Or is that already his assumed name? Note, too, that when the scene is repeated and extended towards the end, Clara is doing the Doctor one of the biggest favours of his life: “Steal this one,” she urges. “The navigation system’s knackered but you’ll have much more fun.” This conflicts with The Doctor’s Wife, when the spirit of the Tardis (Suranne Jones) claimed to have chosen the Doctor. Time has been rewritten. Sorry to get bogged down in all this detail but I admire Moffat’s confidence in blithely thrusting the history of Doctor Who under our gaze while at the same time rewriting it. And this, of course, isn’t the only instance in this episode. “Time travel has always been possible in dreams” I adore that line: it’s one of the best Steven Moffat has written. Maybe it is just a daft idea to facilitate the narrative but it is uttered with such earnestness by Vastra that we accept it. And in a way we know it to be true. Who doesn’t have vivid dreams of forgotten times and places where long-dead friends and family live again? It’s the closest we get to time travel and it’s beautiful. Here a dream state allows for a “conference call” across time and space between Vastra and Jenny (in London 1893), Strax (knocked out by a shovel in Glasgow), Clara (floored by a soporific letter in 2013) and River Song (in the far future). This is the postmortem River, after she was “saved” as a data ghost by David Tennant’s Doctor in Forest of the Dead (2008). Only Moffat can sell such nonsense and, within this sequence alone, with such brilliance. It delivers information as well as mystery and a range of emotions: laughs, chills and tears. We have Strax complaining hilariously about River, “Oh no, not the one with the gigantic head”; River’s dismay that Clara doesn’t know much about her – “Sorry, I never realised you were a woman.” Levity turns to terror as the Great Intelligence and his Whisper Men intrude upon the meeting of minds and we cut to Jenny: “So sorry, ma’am. I think I’ve been murdered.” A touching performance from Catrin Stewart, and a gorgeous profile close-up of a tear falling – just one example of Saul Metzstein’s skill in this finale. “And it was definitely Trenzalore?” Metzstein is one of the series’ most gifted directors – every note rings true. You laugh, tense, gulp, gape and blub exactly when you’re supposed to. Or at least I did. There’s real emotional wallop, in moments that are too fleeting to become mawkish: Vastra’s grief for Jenny (twice), the Doctor succumbing to tears at the mention of Trenzalore (Matt Smith’s performance floored me here). In a moment of pressure, he doesn’t hesitate to identify River as “an ex” and, later, she and we realise the depth of his feelings for her, the pain he suffers. “You’re always here to me,” he tells River. “And I always listen and I can always see you.” He opens his heart and for once seizes the chance to kiss her, even though she is now only “an echo”. Alex Kingston and Matt Smith play these scenes with convincing tenderness. In fact, the whole cast are astonishing, responding to jewels of dialogue from Moffat. “I am information” Another killer line, which sums up the Great Intelligence. Who’d have imagined that this malign force from 1960s Who could be revived so classily in the form of Richard E Grant? He’s walking-dead chilly – adding to the funereal air with his undertaker henchman, eager to extinguish himself in the “tear in the fabric of reality” in the Doctor’s tomb, while undoing all the Time Lord’s good deeds. He tells the Doctor it will provide “for me, peace at last – for you, pain everlasting”. I do hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Intelligence and that he’ll get a rematch with the Yeti. (I’m sure you all spotted a Yeti in one of the clip montages.) “I’ve always been there, right from the very beginning” Clara suddenly transforms herself from the Impossible Girl into the most important companion ever. Her mystery is neatly explained: 21st-century Clara is the original Clara from which all the others have splintered, after she plunges into the Doctor’s fractured timeline to save him. She works it all out for herself and takes her destiny into her own hands. I’ve always been a sucker for self-sacrificing companions – it harks back to Jo Grant (Katy Manning) who was sacrificing herself almost every other week in the 70s. Clara displays the qualities of all the best companions – intuition, pluck, empathy, selflessness, unthreatening good looks – and Jenna-Louise Coleman is a natural. I’m glad she’s signed up for another term. “The Doctor has a secret…” The Doctor’s name was obviously going to be a red herring. Did anyone really imagine that it would be revealed? Me neither. It is key to the story, however, as well as a key River uses to unlock the Tardis-tomb. So – phew! – the Doctor can safely remain Doctor Who into his golden anniversary. But his darkest secret tumbles out… An unknown Doctor. An incarnation he’d like to forget. Christopher Eccleston did the show a huge favour by turning down the anniversary gig. Frankly, I’d have been more surprised if he had agreed to return. Moffat’s solution, in lieu of the “ninth” Doctor, is to present a Doctor we’ve never seen before, one who’s never been included in the umpteen clips packages. And – staggeringly – he’s played by John Hurt. I admire Eccles, but c’mon! John Hurt. He’s a legend – the most talented actor ever cast as a Doctor. Roll on, November!
Even Matt Smith cannot sell Neil Gaiman’s almighty Cyber flop
Story 238 Series 7 – Episode 12 “You brought us children. Hail to you, the Doctor, saviour of the Cybermen!” – Webley Storyline The Doctor takes Clara and her young charges, Angie and Artie, to Hedgewick’s World of Wonders. Once billed as the biggest amusement park in the universe, it’s now in ruins and under military occupation. In a waxworks, they befriend impresario Mr Webley and his henchman Porridge. Insect-like Cybermites reactivate some defunct Cybermen so that they can move and upgrade very fast. The Doctor develops a split personality when his enemies try to upgrade and incorporate him into the Cyberiad as a Cyber Planner. First UK transmission Saturday 11 May 2013 Production November to December 2012. At Castell Coch, Tongwynlais, Cardiff; Newbridge Memorial Hall, Newbridge; Caerphilly Castle; MOD St Athan, Barry; Uskmouth Power Station, Newport; BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Angie – Eve De Leon Allen Artie – Kassius Carey Johnson Webley – Jason Watkins Porridge – Warwick Davis Captain – Tamzin Outhwaite Beauty – Eloise Joseph Brains – Will Merrick Ha-Ha – Calvin Dean Missy – Zahra Ahmadi Cyberman – Aidan Cook Crew Writer – Neil Gaiman Director – Stephen Woolfenden Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern There’s duff and then there’s Cyberduff. Oh dear. I really had high hopes for Nightmare in Silver – especially as I’d sat opposite Neil Gaiman, the high-profile fantasy author, at BBC Broadcasting House a few months ago, listening while he set up the story, professed his intention to make the Cybermen scary again and claimed to have given Matt Smith some juicy material. All very persuasive. Gaiman was generous with his time and the full interview on RadioTimes.com makes for interesting reading. So I feel more than a little ungracious in having to say that Nightmare in Silver is an almighty Cyber flop, more wretched, perhaps, than Revenge of the Cybermen (an unloved early Tom Baker serial), Silver Nemesis, the execrable 25th anniversary story with Sylvester McCoy and The Next Doctor, that Christmas 2008 claptrap with David Tennant. Gaiman’s previous effort, The Doctor’s Wife in 2011, began worryingly before building towards brilliance, but I’ve often wondered how much massage the script enjoyed from Steven Moffat before it reached the screen. With Nightmare in Silver, Gaiman admits he performed several rewrites, but this time it looks like the deadline arrived and someone at BBC Wales was obliged to say, “Time’s up! We’ve got to set this turkey free.” The blame can’t be laid squarely at Neil Gaiman’s door, of course. Doctor Who is a team effort and thus a team success or team failure. This is a waste of everybody’s time. The weird thing is that it almost works. The story is certainly inventive. It’s hard to keep refreshing and developing the Cybermen after 47 years, but here they function as we’ve never seen before. They’re faster – engaging a zoom mode. They can upgrade almost instantly to face new obstacles – although surely electrocution by water must have been deployed against them before. The voice is an improvement on the 2006 version, but the much-vaunted design tweaks, including soppy-looking spoon-faces, are minimal and not worth dwelling on. The Cybermites – wriggly earwigs capable of reviving defunct Cybermen and getting humans onto the first rung of conversion – are also a neat idea, but where have they sprung from on this desolate world? And why now? There’s no explanation. The Cyber Planner – a sort of higher brain, a disembodied controlling force – isn’t a new idea. It was established in 1968 and back then looked like an assemblage of junk that had been found lying around the visual effects workshop. It was also marginally more effective, and certainly more sinister, than its representation here: dodgy swirling backgrounds for the meeting of Time Lord and Cyber minds and prosthetics glued to Matt Smith’s face. And here we reach the principal failing of the drama: the many scenes where the Cyber Planner-possessed Doctor flips between personas. Despite Matt Smith’s gallant efforts, they’re a mess. The dialogue should have been tightened. Less frenetic camerawork might have given the scenes focus, elicited a concentrated performance. Instead, the star of the show is left to flounder, to look like a big kid play-acting at being goody then baddy. It’s exposing – and uncomfortable to watch, for the wrong reason. But nobody fares well. I’ve liked Jenna-Louise Coleman since the Christmas special, but here Clara seems closer to the cocky Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks. Her delivery is snappy and rarely sounds like natural speech. The two kids – sullen Angie and frightfully well-spoken Artie – are annoying. When they’re placed in danger, I don’t give tuppence what happens to them. Worst affected is Tamzin Outhwaite as Alice Ferren, captain of the wishy-washy punishment platoon. After a lot of posturing and blather about duty, she is shot dead on the castle ramparts, but this potentially dramatic moment is so limply directed, you’re not even sure that it has happened. Her character is of such little consequence that her full name doesn’t appear in the credits (she’s billed as “Captain”). What a waste of a good actress. Warwick Davis is the only person teetering towards a decent characterisation, although he gets off to a bad start. Are we seriously supposed to swallow the conceit that Porridge has been sitting inside a defunct Cyberman, under a cloth, in a darkened alcove in Webley’s waxworks, just on the rare off-chance a visitor might drop by? Davis gives the likeable Porridge moments of charm, but when he’s revealed as an emperor in hiding, then starts flirting with the ladies, I want to hide under a cloth. Am I missing important points here but why is Porridge in hiding? Why do the platoon have a glove, weapons and bomb suitable for tackling Cybermen if the war took place a thousand years ago. This is like expecting today’s British Army to be primed to fend off the Normans. Rubbish! And why, when we’ve been warned several times to expect an implosion, do we witness an explosion? The episode presents a procession of quirky but underfed characters engaged in un-dramatic incidents, underpinned by incessant burbling music that fails to lift one duff scene after another. The settings are especially tacky, from the lunar landscape to the waxworks to the garishly illuminated Natty Longshoe’s Comical Castle. The whole enterprise starts to recall wackier episodes of 1960s US show Lost in Space. This is not a compliment. Porridge’s imperial spaceship looks like yet another meagrely tarted-up municipal hall in Cardiff. Among 21st-century episodes, Nightmare in Silver now joins Fear Her, The Doctor’s Daughter, The Beast Below and The Curse of the Black Spot in the mercifully small gallery of duds that I would never willingly sit through again. Neil Gaiman RT interview from 2013
Mark Gatiss pipes Victorian literature, horror movies and black comedy into Who, adding a dash of The Avengers. Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling guest-star
Story 237 Series 7 – Episode 11 “Now, Mister Sweet, now the whole world will taste your lethal kiss!” – Mrs Gillyflower Storyline In 1893, Vastra, Jenny and Strax go to Yorkshire to investigate “the crimson horror” in which corpses are turning up bright red. The focus is on the mill town Sweetville, a utopian community ruled with an iron fist by a tyrannical harridan, Mrs Gillyflower. Jenny infiltrates the compound and discovers the Doctor already on the scene, imprisoned, crimson and rigid, his life saved by Gillyflower’s blind daughter Ada. Having formed a symbiotic link with Mr Sweet, a red leech from prehistoric times, Mrs Gillyflower has built a rocket to spread her red toxin. It will obliterate all those who don’t share her extreme attitudes. First UK transmission Saturday 4 May 2013 Production July to November 2012. At Rhymney, Tredegar; Holy Trinity Church, Barry; Bullring, Llantrisant, Rhondda; Tonyrefail School, Rhondda; Llandough Castle, Vale of Glamorgan; Treowen Manor, Dingestow, Monmouth; Beatty Avenue, Roath, Cardiff; BBC Roath Lock Studios, Cardiff. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Mrs Winifred Gillyflower – Diana Rigg Ada Gillyflower – Rachael Stirling Madame Vastra – Neve McIntosh Jenny – Catrin Stewart Strax – Dan Starkey Angie – Eve De Leon Allen Artie – Kassius Carey Johnson Edmund & Mr Thursday – Brendan Patricks Amos – Graham Turner Effie – Olivia Vinall Abigail – Michelle Tate Urchin – Jack Oliver Hudson Crew Writer – Mark Gatiss Director – Saul Metzstein Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern “A dark and queer business” is the key line at the top of The Crimson Horror – a perfect summation of what is to follow. And last week Mark Gatiss described his latest episode for RadioTimes.com thus: “A lurid, Victorian penny-dreadful with Vastra, Jenny and Strax and ’orrible murder. It’s very me!” Perhaps more than any other episode he’s written, this is the most full-on Gatissian. (Have I just coined a new term?) This is a man steeped in Victorian literature, horror movies, black comedy… and here he’s piped it into Doctor Who, adding more than a dash of The Avengers. Obviously, former Avengers icon Diana Rigg is the guest star. But The Crimson Horror also captures the lurid tone of those mid-60s episodes, where Steed and Mrs Peel (Rigg) would take on a camp and dastardly baddy, played by a well-known actor (Peter Cushing, Ronnie Barker, Peter Wyngarde), who’d often have a peculiar pet and a ludicrous scheme for world domination/destruction. What strikes me as unusual, for today’s Doctor Who, is how thoroughly vile a villainess Winifred Gillyflower is allowed to be. She has no redeeming qualities, no vestige of human kindness; she’s wicked to the core. She may sound a little like Mary Whitehouse, hectoring the gullible from her pulpit on “the moral decay and the coming apocalypse”, but in planning Sweetville, her “shining city on the hill” which will save only the finest human specimens for her “Golden Dawn”, Gillyflower is a proto-Nazi in charge of a full-scale eugenics programme. It’s a massive transformation for Diana Rigg. Mention that name and you first picture a 1960s icon; but here, in her own words, she’s “a horrendous old bag”. We’re so used to hearing her clipped RP delivery, but in The Crimson Horror, as Gatiss says, “Diana used her native Doncaster accent for the first time.” It’s a coup to have Rigg on screen with her own daughter, Rachael Stirling; they’ve never acted together before and only took this gig because they’re chums with Gatiss, who’d worked with them both, separately, on the London stage. In the episode itself, Winifred may show little but spite for her daughter Ada, but there’s chemistry between the actresses and, in a rare bonus for TV drama, a familial resemblance. If Rigg’s days as the haughty but sexy action woman Mrs Peel are now little more than a race memory, in a lovely touch Gatiss revives that image in the person of Jenny, who discards her Victorian clobber, flaunts some leather combat gear and floors the opposition with martial arts moves. There’s much fun to be had with the peculiar threesome of Jenny, Vastra and Strax. Steven Moffat may have monopolised them in the past, but they’re right up Gatiss’s Victorian back alley. Jenny (who looks like she’s just stepped out of Tipping the Velvet) gets far more to do than usual, sent on an intrepid solo mission inside the factory; finding, saving and slapping the Doctor. Strax gets the funniest lines (“Just remember, we are going to the North”) and stops Gillyflower dead in her tracks with a laser bolt. The narrative structure is unusual, too. It’s a helluva while before the Doctor appears, and then there’s a sort of flickery, faded-film montage bringing us up to speed on how the Time Lord and Clara came to Sweetville. It’s a clever device and works like the tale within the tale so favoured by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes mysteries. This is also the section where we get the (by now) weekly nod to the past. Recent episodes have ticked off each 20th-century Doctor and here we have a reference back to the fifth (Peter Davison). The current Doctor tells Clara: “I once spent a long time trying to get a gobby Australian to Heathrow Airport.” It’s lovely to learn that, so many years later, the Time Lord still bristles at the memory of his bolshy 1980s companion Tegan (Janet Fielding), and it spurs him to revive his semi-catchphrase “Brave heart, Tegan” as “Brave heart, Clara”. The Crimson Horror is hugely entertaining – a decent mystery, a logical plot, a dollop of camp but perhaps most rewarding of all it’s a danse macabre. Mark Gatiss is steeped in horror movies and wrote a splendid biography of director James Whale. The sight of the Doctor chained in a dungeon, struck dumb and then staggering like a brute is very Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, while Mrs Gillyflower’s human specimens in jars immediately made me think of Dr Pretorius’s miniatures in The Bride of Frankenstein. The coup de grace is the moment when blind Ada lifts her walking stick and skewers and splatters the revolting critter that is Mr Sweet. It’s gratuitous, sickening and oh so satisfying. It says, yes, we are going to do this. There! Mark Gatiss sets the scene for The Crimson Horror
Doctor Who: Journey to the Centre of the Tardis ★★
A disappointing runaround revealing a little more about the Time Lord's space/time ship
Story 236 Series 7 – Episode 10 “The Tardis is snarling at us, trying to frighten us off” – the Doctor Storyline The Tardis is badly damaged when it’s seized by a spaceship salvage team. With Clara trapped aboard, the Doctor forces the scavenging van Baalen brothers to accompany him deep into the Tardis to rescue her and prevent his ship from exploding. Their mission is compromised when they are assailed by lava-like zombies – future versions of themselves. First UK transmission Saturday 27 April 2013 Production September to November 2012. At Warehouse, CUB Site, Newport; Cardiff Castle; Argoed Isha quarry, near Llansannor; BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Gregor van Baalen – Ashley Walters Bram van Baalen – Mark Oliver Tricky – Jahvel Hall Crew Writer – Steve Thompson Director – Mat King Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern For Doctor Who fans, it’s an indulgent treat to have a story set almost entirely inside the Tardis. But once you’ve decided on this course, you need to find a way to include all the right doses of action and peril and spectacle and monsters – and, to a large extent, writer Steve Thompson achieves this. But which aspects of the Tardis do you show? The 1960s and 80s episodes often revealed bedrooms; we once saw Leela (Louise Jameson) using the “bathroom” (a pool) and fourth Doctor Tom Baker was at his most monkish pacing about the Cloister Room. Fifth Doctor Peter Davison got off to a flying start by levitating in a pink, vaulted Zero Room. But since the 2005 reboot, we’ve seen very little of the Tardis’s inner recesses (bar a tunnel runaround in The Doctor’s Wife in 2011). This latest episode shows us a storeroom with the Doctor’s crib; a cathedral-like library (actually Cardiff Castle’s library, augmented by CGI); and glimpses of an observatory and another swimming pool. There’s an architectural reconfiguration system, explained in the story as “a machine that makes machines”, and which designer Michael Pickwoad describes as “like a banyan tree growing ‘eggs’ with Gallifreyan symbols on them”. Eventually, the action reaches the heart of the Tardis, the power source that is the Eye of Harmony, “an exploding star in the act of becoming a black hole”. In The Deadly Assassin (1977), the Eye was identified as the source of power for all Gallifrey, but by the time of the 1996 TV Movie with Paul McGann, it had – inexplicably – become intrinsic to the Doctor’s Tardis. I’m not sure of the wisdom of maintaining any continuity with that 1996 misfire. Generally, Michael Pickwoad’s design is superb, following through the palette and motifs of the control room, which debuted at Christmas. His Tardis looks a bit Jules Verne, and he told me he wanted to convey the feeling that it operates on “a mixture of steam, electronics and atomic power”. In a way, though, I do miss the white/beige corridors and circular indentations favoured in 20th-century Who. They gave the Tardis a motif and peculiarity all its own. In 1963, original designer Peter Brachacki opted for hexagonal elements (notably the console), but endless, labyrinthine, hexagonal tunnels don’t suggest Tardis to me – they scream Liberator. That was the ultra-modern ship piloted in Blake’s 7, and much of this latest episode, with a marauding salvage team dashing about, reminds me of that undernourished BBC1 sci-fi series (1978–81). The van Baalen brothers (Gregor, Bram and Tricky) are a singularly inept bunch of clods, who have managed to convince one of their number that he is an android, as “a stupid joke to relieve the boredom”. OK, Tricky has amnesia and bionic eyes and voicebox, but surely he still has bodily functions? “I won’t be needing you in my quiz team,” the Doctor informs Gregor, the dimbo played by Ashley Walters. The lava-like monsters, formed by prolonged contact with the Eye of Harmony, are really nasty and especially disturbing when it’s revealed that they were formerly the van Baalen brothers and Clara (“That’s me. I burn in here”). I’m not quite sure how Clara knows to call them “zombie creatures” long before she’s found out what they really are, but we won’t dwell on that. This is a good episode for Jenna-Louise Coleman, looking fetching in her skimpy frock, hair tied up, a companion in peril for the first time in ages. She gets to deliver some wonderful “companion screams”. In the pages of The History of the Time War, she even discovers the Doctor’s real name (an honour previously bestowed upon River Song alone). “You call yourself ‘Doctor’,” says Clara. “Why do you do that? You have a name. I’ve seen it.” Happily for him, perhaps, it’s a discovery that is wiped from her memory when time reverts and the Tardis is saved from the edge of destruction. But we know it’ll be picked up again in the season finale: The Name of the Doctor. Journey to the Centre of the Tardis is a reasonably entertaining, playfully timey-wimey adventure, with lots of nice touches – such as voices from the past when the console is dismantled. I detected granddaughter/companion Susan and the fourth Doctor, among others. But now I’m sorely tempted to reach for the DVD of The Invasion of Time, the 1978 serial that so disappointed a young Steven Moffat (and me!) and for which Journey to the Centre of the Tardis is meant to atone. That featured Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, K•9, duplicitous Time Lords and cockney Sontarans fannying about in a brick-walled, disused hospital in Redhill, which, thanks to a BBC technicians’ strike, had to stand in for the Tardis interior. Now doesn’t that sound fun..?
A ghost story set in the 1970s – about as creepy as modern Doctor Who can be
Story 235 Series 7 – Episode 9 “To you, I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you” – Clara Storyline It’s 1974 and at Caliburn House, an abandoned mansion on a desolate moor, an uptight professor, Major Alec Palmer, and “empathic psychic” Emma Grayling are investigating a spectre known as the Witch of the Well. The Doctor and Clara turn up just as things begin to go bump in the night, but are they there to help or does the Time Lord have another purpose? A wooden horror is glimpsed in the passageways and the Doctor realises that the ghostly woman is a time traveller lost in a pocket universe. First UK transmission Saturday 20 April 2013 Production May to June 2012. At Plas Llanmihangel near Cowbridge; Tyntesfield House, Wraxall, Bristol; Gethin woodland area, Merthyr Tydfil; Margam Country Park, Port Talbot; Hensol Castle; BBC Roath Lock Studios. Pick-up shots in Sept, Oct, Nov 2012 at BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Alec Palmer – Dougray Scott Emma Grayling – Jessica Raine Hila – Kemi-Bo Jacobs The crooked man – Aidan Cook Crew Writer – Neil Cross Director – Jamie Payne Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern After a minor wobble with Matt Smith a couple of weeks ago, I’m back to raving about the man. He’s simply the best thing to happen to Doctor Who in a very long time. He’s quite wonderful in Hide, virtually dancing through the action as if suddenly inhabited by the spirit of Fred Astaire. And with this being a ghost story, he gives us several levels of fear – from cartoonish tomfoolery (bolting down a staircase like a gibbering Stan Laurel) to a tangible sense of terror when marooned in a misty wood stalked by an unknown horror. His Doctor is so lovable that it’s hard to accept Emma’s warning to Clara not to trust him: “There’s a sliver of ice in his heart.” Before long Clara gets a taste of this. After their dash through eternity in the Tardis, she is in tears. “Have we just watched the entire lifecycle of Earth – birth to death? … To you, I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you.” He’s been insensitive, callous, even. The only crumb of comfort he can offer is that, for him, she’s the only mystery worth saving. Towards the end, the viewer learns that the Doctor’s main purpose in coming to Caliburn House is so that Emma Grayling, the famous empath, can check out the “Impossible Girl”. Her verdict is that Clara is “perfectly ordinary”. So the Time Lord remains perplexed. Can he trust Clara? Significantly, he still hasn’t given her a key to the Tardis. Meanwhile, she has “a weird feeling it’s looking at me. It doesn’t like me.” This matter would be developed in the next episode, Journey to the Centre of the Tardis. Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman are a perfect pairing, perhaps the breeziest Doctor/companion partnership since Doctor Who came back in 2005. Providing a subtle contrast is the relationship between uptight Professor Alec Palmer and Emma, which recalls the Doctor/assistant dynamic of the 1970s. Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine are fairly big-name but unshowy guest stars. The minuscule cast allows us to focus on the characters, who are well drawn, even if the compressed format of modern Who means the Doctor has to gabble out their resumés as soon as he arrives. Despite the hectic pace, there’s room for a still moment at the halfway point when the Doctor bonds with the professor in his photo-developing room (they discuss the weight of war and the guilt for sending people to their deaths), while Emma and Clara open up about their feelings. The only person who is short-changed is Hila. After she’s finally materialised in 1974, she stands around like a lemon, united with her ancestors (Emma and Alec) but given nothing of import to say about her time period or mission. The notion of a ghost actually being a traveller from the future is tried and tested, and has been pursued at least once in Doctor Who. The first episode of Day of the Daleks (1972) is more or less a haunted house story, with guerrillas from the 22nd century. Hide harks back to those supernatural tales the BBC made for Christmas in the 1970s (Nigel Kneale’s The Ghost Tape in particular). But from Doctor Who’s own back catalogue, the serial that Hide most closely resembles is Image of the Fendahl (1977), a Tom Baker tale with an ancient, largely unseen horror stalking a mansion’s corridors and surrounding woodland. Other fourth Doctor country-house serials come to mind too. In The Stones of Blood (1978) we learn of Vivien Fey who has had multiple identities over thousands of years. Sightings of Hila, the female spectre in Hide, pre-date the existence of Caliburn House: she’s mentioned in Saxon poetry and parish folk tales, variously named as the Wraith of the Mayday, the Maiden in the Dark, the Witch of the Well… But the Doctor whom Hide is most careful to evoke is the third: Jon Pertwee. The main action is set in 1974 after all, the year he hung up his cloak. The tape spools, oscilloscopes, the prof with an assistant are very third Doctor. But the sweetest kiss to that time is the reuse of the mind-enhancing blue crystals from Metebelis Three. Forever known as “the famous blue planet of the Acteon galaxy”, Metebelis Three is part of the folklore of 70s Who. Pertwee’s Doctor visited in The Green Death (1973) and it was the setting, one year later, for his swansong, Planet of the Spiders. It was most recently mentioned in 2010 by companion Jo (Katy Manning) in The Sarah Jane Adventures (Death of the Doctor). So it’s a shame that the 11th Doctor has forgotten how to pronounce it – “metter-BEE-lis” suddenly becomes “meh-TEB-elis”. It’s a small detail but infuriating. No reason why Matt Smith should know how to say it, but the many fans working on the show should have spotted the mistake. Why bother to reference the past if you don’t do it correctly? Hide is probably about as creepy as modern Doctor Who can get in its teatime slot – even I was a bit freaked by the subliminal glimpses of the “Hider” monster – carefully lit and shot throughout by new-to-Who director Jamie Payne. If I have any major gripe, it’s that I could have done without the dollop of gloop at the end when the Hiders turn out to be lovelorn and looking for their mate. “It’s not a ghost story, it’s a love story,” explains the Doctor, for the benefit of any class clods. Focussed and properly spooky, Hide would have been a far more impressive calling card for writer Neil Cross. Unluckily, his second script The Rings of Akhaten ended up being shown first. If he can deliver more Hide and less Akhaten, I’ll be delighted. Jessica Raine talks about her guest role in the spooky episode
Mark Gatiss’s Ice Warrior revival has a taut script, strong cast and tender moments among the Alien-influenced claustrophobia
Story 234 Series 7 – Episode 8 “My world is dead but now there will be a second red planet. Red with the blood of humanity!” – Skaldak Storyline The Doctor and Clara land aboard a Russian submarine, stranded in the ocean deep at the North Pole. It is 1983 and fingers are poised over nuclear buttons at the height of the Cold War. Professor Grisenko has recovered a creature frozen in a block of ice for five millennia. It’s a dormant Ice Warrior, Grand Marshal Skaldak. Once defrosted, Skaldak sees the Russians’ aggression as an act of war. He plans to launch the submarine’s missiles and trigger a nuclear war. The Doctor and Clara must persuade the warrior to show mercy. First UK transmission Saturday 13 April 2013 Production June 2012. At BBC Roath Lock Studios; Llanwern Works, Newport. September 2012: models shots at Halliford Film Studios, Shepperton. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Captain Zhukov – Liam Cunningham Professor Grisenko – David Warner Lieutenant Stepashin – Tobias Menzies Piotr – Josh O’Connor Onegin – James Norton Belevich – Charlie Anson Grand Marshal Skaldak – Spencer Wilding Voice of Skaldak – Nicholas Briggs Crew Writer – Mark Gatiss Director – Douglas Mackinnon Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern Mark Gatiss is an amiable chap. I got to know him a little in 2013 as I went on set several times for An Adventure in Space and Time, his drama about the origins of Doctor Who. He indulged me, walking me round the fabulously faithful re-creation of the 1963 Tardis control room, and I picked up on his glee and felt a kindred spirit. “We’re both Pertwee boys,” he sighed, as we realised we’re almost the same age. A few months later his new episode, Cold War, proved his deep love and understanding of Doctor Who and adeptness at creating the kind of Doctor Who I adore – adventures with a clear sense of time, place, isolation and claustrophobia; vivid characters and witty lines; creeping tension and an alarming monster. And at least one minor point I can quibble over. So let’s get that out of the way. The language barrier! Of course, spoken English is the convention, a must for mainstream drama. I’m not saying I’d prefer subtitles on Doctor Who or would go to see The Cherry Orchard if it were all in the original Russian. And it’s reasonable for Clara to wonder how she's communicating with Soviet submariners (even if last episode she didn’t question how she could speak to some Akhaten aliens and not others). The familiar explanation of the “Tardis translation matrix” is trotted out. But once attention is drawn to this, viewers should wonder why Russians were heard speaking English before the Tardis arrived, how the Soviets can speak to a Martian, and why Professor Grisenko says, “He wants to speak to the organ grinder not to the monkey,” an expression that surely doesn’t work in Russian. Maybe the Ultravox-obsessed Prof is actually speaking English here. OK, I’ll stop now. My own translation matrix is faltering. Mark Gatiss’s script is taut, with detail where it’s needed, but otherwise allowing no flab across its shortish 41min running time. It’s well matched by director Douglas Mackinnon’s tight shots, askew angles, vivid palette and often gloomy lighting. The sequence where Clara tumbles under water, loses and regains consciousness is breathtakingly composed. The nods to Alien and the sense of dread as the crew are picked off one by one are brave for the timeslot. Surely everyone watching has fears for Professor Grisenko as he sits pontificating in that hatchway – an obvious target. But no. The Martian goes for Clara first, then the Prof. And what a great cast. David Warner has been around so long it’s amazing he’s never acted in Doctor Who before (although he has recorded Who audioplays and voiced the 2009 animation Dreamland); he downplays everything but is completely wonderful. He’d be a good recurring character. Liam Cunningham is a strong lead as the submarine captain (grizzled like Bernard Hill in Titanic), and Tobias Menzies (Rome, The Shadow Line) is unpleasant as the lieutenant. Matt Smith is back on form after a slight dip last week (wholly down to terrible material). And you have to take your hat off to the entire cast for staying wet for days on end. The FX shots among the icebergs, diving deep into the Arctic and of the sub poised on a crumbling ledge are stunning. As for the soundtrack, well, some of the dialogue is inaudible (a regular complaint) but I particularly like Murray Gold’s reverberating track after the sub surfaces, and the effect of the Martian’s gurgling respiration. Perhaps people will be disappointed that only one Ice Warrior features, but this limitation echoes Dalek (the 2005 episode), a solo spot that allows us to focus on the strengths of the old foe being revived. Mark Gatiss gives them back their “ice” status, having one thawed from a glacial block, to match their 1967 debut, The Ice Warriors. He also reworks the tense duologue between companion Victoria and Varga from that serial with Clara’s courageous solo encounter with Skaldak. The Grand Marshal is fearsome, noble and surprisingly tender, almost poetic when lamenting his long-dead daughter. And Mark promised “something new” from the Ice Warriors. Since boyhood, I’ve longed to see the creature behind the mask. The “Ice Lord” Martians who featured in some stories were visibly more humanoid reptiles, wearing robes and helmets, whereas in the case of the warriors – perhaps as a failing of the design and make-up – it was difficult to spot where the armour ended and the reptile began. They were like tortoises bonded into their carapace. Sadly we don’t get to see a wholly unclothed Martian, although monster-maker Neill Gorton assured me an entire animatronic body was created. Maybe it is best left in the dark and to the imagination. The flip-back reveal of the head under the helmet isn’t entirely convincing despite elaborate CGI and “motion capture” to sync with Nicholas Briggs’s voice (another ssssucccesssss). Mark has deliberately re-created the base-under-siege format prevalent during second Doctor Patrick Troughton’s era – and in a delicious chunk of arcane continuity he reinstates the HADS, the Hostile Action Displacement System, by which the Tardis relocates. As every die-hard knows, this has only featured once before, in The Krotons, an iffy Troughton serial from 1969. Well done, Mark. Lovely touch. But each episode is now touching on a different Doctor’s era for this 50th anniversary mini-season. The Rings of Akhaten had a shade of the first Doctor when the 11th said he’d visited with his (rarely mentioned) granddaughter, and later faced a foe called “Grandfather”. Cold War honours Troughton, as discussed. And the next episode, Hide, ventures into third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s territory. It’s even set in 1974…
Grandiose spectacle and an array of monsters cannot mitigate this feeble effort
Story 233 Series 7 – Episode 7 “They’re singing to the mummy in the Temple. They call it the Old God. Sometimes Grandfather” – the Doctor Storyline To impress Clara on her first trip into space, the Doctor takes her to the asteroid rings of Akhaten, home to a panoply of weird creatures. They attend the Festival of Offerings, a handover ceremony between choristers whose perpetual lullaby has kept “Grandfather”, a mummified Old God, asleep inside a pyramid for millions of years. They befriend a young chorister called Merry, the Queen of Years, who is to be the latest sacrificial offering. As the mummy stirs, the Time Lord realises he must take on the parasitic sun at the heart of the Akhaten system. First UK transmission Saturday 6 April 2013 Production October to November 2012. In Newport at Rupert Brooke Drive, Goldsmith Close playground and St Woolos Cemetery. BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Dave – Michael Dixon Ellie – Nicola Sian Merry – Emilia Jones The Chorister – Chris Anderson The Mummy – Aidan Cook Dor’een – Karl Greenwood Crew Writer – Neil Cross Director – Farren Blackburn Producer – Denise Paul Series producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Something awesome” is what Clara requests of the Doctor for her first trip into space, but sadly that isn’t quite what we, the viewers, receive. The Time Lord certainly delivers spectacle: the Rings and Pyramid of Akhaten (“seven worlds orbiting the same star, all sharing the belief that life in the universe originated here”) are excellent visuals from The Mill (the Soho effects house). He shows her a marketplace teeming with weird and wonderful alien life – 30-odd new monsters fashioned by Neill Gorton and his team at Millennium FX, as well as a few dopey-looking extras in terrible wigs. So, The Rings of Akhaten offers a sense of place and a lot of local colour – but there isn’t much of a story. If you want to see the Doctor introducing his companion to an array of aliens in an adventure suffused with intrigue, tension and wit, bung on the DVD of The End of the World (2005) or even The Curse of Peladon (1972). If you want to be spooked by an evil Ancient-Egyptian-style god who’s kept inert inside a pyramid, may I refer you to the infinitely superior Pyramids of Mars (1975)? These all had gripping, coherent stories. The Rings of Akhaten amounts to little more than series of events and has a more preposterous premise than usual. The physics alone are a challenge. How do the inhabitants of Akhaten survive in such proximity to their sun? What about the heat and radiation? And what constitutes the atmosphere among this cluster of asteroids? There seems to be breathable air wherever the Doctor and Clara go. What’s even sillier is the notion that this fearsome Old God is being successfully kept dormant by a lullaby and has been for millions of years. Not only that, the lullaby is the responsibility of a succession of choristers. Don’t they ever eat, drink, sleep or pop to the loo? Hasn’t one of them sneezed in millions of years? The lullaby itself, “The Long Song”, and the other dirges we’re treated to are remarkably weedy compositions that even the combined forces of the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales cannot mitigate. Playing Merry, Queen of Years, is young Emilia Jones (ten when this was filmed, and real-life daughter of former boy chorister Aled Jones). She overcomes the thin material, carries off her scenes with aplomb and really sells Merry’s mixture of naivety and knowledge, her natural childlike fear. She brings out the empathic side of Clara, who is clearly drawn to children – both in this life (as a childminder back on Earth) and as her other self (in Victorian times). While Jenna-Louise Coleman continues to impress, Matt Smith is, for once, underwhelming. I usually extol him to the stratosphere, but the director lets through a tad too much mugging and the Doctor’s giving-it-large, get-a-load-of-me grandstanding in front of “Grandfather”, the Halloween pumpkin star, is uncomfortable to watch. I don’t believe any of it. The events on Akhaten don’t even have a proper ending. The “Grandfather” star appears to have been extinguished, and of course we’re left wondering what happens to Merry and all the other poor souls after it’s gone. The Doctor later tells Clara she saved everyone, but how are they existing? Wouldn’t the asteroid rings have dispersed without their centre of gravity? Arguably the more persuasive section is the prologue, before we reach Akhaten, in which the Doctor checks out Clara’s background. He observes her parents Ellie and Dave’s first meeting in 1981, a love-at-first-sight/saved-from-death incident that reveals the significance of Clara’s maple leaf (seen last week pressed inside her 101 Places to Visit book). It’s a flurry of poignant moments in three and a half minutes, flicking through to Ellie Oswald’s death in 2005, with Jenna-Louise Coleman convincingly “teenaged” at the graveside. This isn’t by any stretch the feeblest 21st-century episode, but when the supply of Doctor Who is on a drip-feed – series seven split over two years – I hope for better than this nonsense in the 50th anniversary year.
Doctor Who: The Bells of Saint John ★★★★
Beware the wi-fi – in a breezy thrill-ride across London and a hugely entertaining introduction to the Impossible Girl, Clara
Story 232 Series 7 – Episode 6 “We’re living in a wi-fi soup. Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the wi-fi, harvesting human minds” – the Doctor Storyline The Doctor is in retreat at a monastery in Cumbria 1207, contemplating “the woman twice dead”, when his police box receives a call. In present-day London, Clara thinks she’s on a helpline to sort out her wi-fi problems. Still dressed as a monk, the Doctor turns up to help Clara, who works as a childminder for two kids, Angie and Artie. A sinister organisation run by Miss Kizlet is deploying robotic servers, swivelling Spoonheads, to upload people’s souls to the internet. After Clara is drawn into the data cloud, the Doctor storms Kizlet’s office – sending a Spoonhead version of himself on a motorbike up the side of the Shard. The Great Intelligence has returned and is feasting on the uploaded minds. The Doctor saves the day and asks Clara to join his travels but she’s reluctant to go off in his “snog box”. First UK transmission Saturday 30 March 2013 Production September to December 2012. At Beatty Avenue, Roath, Cardiff; MOD St Athan, Barry; Southerndown Beach, Dunraven Park; Welsh National Assembly Building, Cardiff; BBC Roath Lock Studios. In London at Grange St Paul’s Hotel, Westminster Bridge, Horse Guards Parade, Waterloo Bridge, Queen’s Walk and the Shard. February 2013 at BBC TV Centre in London. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Miss Kizlet – Celia Imrie Mahler – Robert Whitelock Alexei – Dan Li Nabile – Manpreet Bachu Paul – Sean Knopp The Abbott – James Greene George – Geff Francis Angie – Eve De Leon Allen Artie – Kassius Carey Johnson Barista – Fred Pearson Little girl – Danielle Eames Waitress – Jade Anouka Newsreader – Olivia Hill Child reading comic – Isabella Blake-Thomas Man with chips – Matthew Earley Pilot – Antony Edridge The Great Intelligence – Richard E Grant Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Colm McCarthy Producer – Denise Paul Series producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern So what is Clara’s big secret? With Steven Moffat at the helm, Doctor Who has become just as much Companion Who. He seems compelled to bamboozle us with enigmatic women: River, Amy, Clara... Just a straightforward modern companion with no baggage would satisfy me and, happily, that’s how Jenna-Louise Coleman is playing it – for now. I couldn’t give a monkey’s what her secret is but it’s certainly vexing the Doctor. At the start of the story, we find him living as a “mad monk” in Cumbria, 1207, with a painting of the Impossible Girl, supposedly hoping to “divine her meaning”. His contemplation is interrupted by the bells of Saint John. Cleverly, this turns out to be the telephone ringing inside the hatch on his police box, which of course has a St John’s Ambulance emblem beside it. I believe the only other time that phone rang was in Moffat’s first episode, The Empty Child in 2005. But how does Clara have his number? Who was “the woman in the shop” that said it was “the best helpline in the universe”? Anyone else instantly picture River Song? Also, why does Clara possess Summer Falls, a faded children’s book written by Amelia Williams (ie Amy Pond)? Is this just a sweet, incidental detail or some heavier hint? With all this bamboozling going on, there’s little time to consider why the Time Lord is fannying about in a 13th-century monastery – except that this interlude provides an atmospheric opening, some contrast to all the hi-tech snappiness that follows, and it allows him to be clothed in something muted before the reveal of his new outfit. Which I have to say I like very much: it’s dapper, quasi-Edwardian, reminiscent of earlier Doctors. Expect a run on purple tweed! The Bells of Saint John shows Steven Moffat at his confident, playful best – a hugely entertaining episode that revels in its modern London setting. He’s turned wi-fi and the worldwide web into targets of fear – tapping into contemporary anxieties and following in the Doctor Who tradition of mining menace from the mundane (shop-window dummies, gas masks, statues, our own body fat…). The fast-paced action and quieter interludes are nicely judged by Colm McCarthy, directing his first Who. Murray Gold’s score is palpitating but unobtrusive. Moffat’s flights of fantasy (a diving airplane, the swivelling Spoonheads, the Doctor zooming up the Shard) are spotlessly realised by The Mill. But most important is the chemistry between Jenna-Louise Coleman and Matt Smith. They look good together, they spark off each other, and let’s not forget this isn’t the first episode they filmed. Coleman is a natural: warm, sympathetic, gutsy, and destined to become one of the most popular companions. And Smith remains a joy to watch – note-perfect, nailing every scene, every moment. Celia Imrie is amusingly frosty as the ruthless Miss Kizlet. And how soon did you twig that her mysterious “Client” would be the Great Intelligence? After Moffat re-established the 1960s adversary so carefully at Christmas in The Snowmen, I was expecting a rematch at some stage but not in the very next adventure. I’m glad I watched this episode before the BBC sent their publicity material to Radio Times. “The Great Intelligence – Richard E Grant” was typed at the end of the cast-list, but RT decided to withhold the information and preserve the surprise for our readers. He’s supplanted Ian McKellen (the voice of the Intelligence in The Snowmen) and would return for a further chilling encounter later in this season.
Christmas 2012 brings deadly Snowmen, Clara’s skyfall, a dazzling new Tardis, and the welcome return of 1960s foe, the Great Intelligence...
Story 231 Christmas special 2012 “Snow that can remember? That’s silly” – Clara Storyline Still grieving the loss of Amy and Rory, the Doctor is living a reclusive life in Victorian England, watched over by his old allies Vastra, Jenny and Strax, and with the Tardis suspended on a cloud. At Christmas time in 1892 deadly Snowmen swirl into being on the streets. They’re the product of sinister Dr Simeon, whose institute is under the control of an ethereal Intelligence. The Doctor befriends a barmaid, Clara, who also works as a governess. She and her young charges are attacked by an Ice Governess, created by the Intelligence. Clara dies in a fall from the Tardis but not before the Doctor realises she has a connection to Oswin from the Dalek Asylum. First UK transmission Christmas Day 2012 Production August to November 2012. At The Coal Exchange, Cardiff Bay; Fields Park House, Newport; Cathays Cemetery, Cardiff; Treberfydd, Bwlch, Brecon; Insole Court, Cardiff; St Nicholas Market and Portland Square, Bristol; Llandough Castle; Treowen, Monmouth; Cardiff University; Merthyr Moor House, Bridgend; BBC Roath Lock Studios Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Clara – Jenna-Louise Coleman Dr Walter Simeon – Richard E Grant Madame Vastra – Neve McIntosh Captain Latimer – Tom Ward Jenny – Catrin Stewart Strax – Dan Starkey Alice – Liz White Digby – Joseph Darcey-Alden Francesca – Ellie Darcey-Alden Bob Chilcott – Ben Addis Uncle Josh – Jim Conway Young Walter – Cameron Strefford Walter’s mother – Annabelle Dowler Voice of the Great Intelligence – Ian McKellen Voice of the Ice Governess – Juliet Cadzow Lead workman – Daniel Hyde Clara’s friend – Sophie Miller-Sheen Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Saul Metzstein Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern The Snowmen? Baubles to that! Or at least that’s what I thought when I first heard that title. “Why can’t we have Abominable Snowmen?” I moaned. You know, the Yeti, those cuddly but ferocious beasties from 1960s Doctor Who – or as Patrick Troughton’s Doctor once described them: “Robot killers, instruments of an alien intelligence trying to take over the planet Earth.” I’d have done a little snow dance had the Yeti themselves made a long overdue return. As followers of RadioTimes.com’s Doctor Who Story Guide may recall, The Web of Fear (1968) is my all-time favourite serial. Perhaps mindful of copyright issues surrounding the Yeti (and ancient wrangles the programme had with their creators), for Christmas 2012 Steven Moffat presented us with alternative abominable snowmen. He did, however, reintroduce the Great Intelligence, the malignant, disembodied force that controlled the Yeti, and established how it came into being. Most viewers won’t grasp the significance of the Great Intelligence in Who mythology. Even for the Doctor the name only “rings a bell” because, oddly, he fails to recall clearly his second incarnation’s two encounters with it. But Moffat has not forgotten. And he’s brought the Intelligence back – for a greater purpose that will feed into episodes in 2013. Fans who weren’t spoilered via Twitter or internet forums were no doubt whooping at this foe from the 60s. Sadly, I was spoilered in November 2012 as soon as I sat down in BBC TV Centre’s preview theatre. Point two on a list of embargoes we signed before the screening began was to avoid “any reference to the Great Intelligence”. To have its wizardly voice provided by Gandalf himself – Ian McKellen – is a coup, and Richard E Grant is splendidly chilly as its human minion, Dr Simeon. But, fan that I am, I did spot one continuity glitch. The Intelligence comes fully into being in The Snowmen: “Something terrible is born”; “Now the dream outlives the dreamer and can never die.” The year is 1892. However, when Troughton’s Doctor first thwarted the Intelligence in The Abominable Snowmen, a serial set in a Tibetan monastery, it had been controlling the high lama Padmasambhava for “nearly 200 years”. The date was 1935. Mmmm... something does add up there. And the idea that the Intelligence exists on an astral plane doesn’t answer it. Anyway, enough already with Great blooming Intelligence, I hear you cry. What about all the sexy new stuff – such as the title sequence, the new Tardis and, vitally, the new companion? In Asylum of the Daleks, I found Oswin’s perkiness a tad wearing – but then she was a woman in denial that she was actually the maddest Dalek in the asylum. However, I’m won over by Jenna-Louise Coleman in The Snowmen as she switches with apparent ease between Clara, the perky Nancy-like barmaid, and Miss Montague, the hoity governess with her secret, common voice. And what’s important is she has an instant rapport with Matt Smith’s Doctor. If I was unmoved by her death (another top secret of course), it’s because Clara still looks so decorous after falling hundreds of feet through the sky. I know this is family viewing, but it’s plainly silly that she isn’t the slightest bit crumpled. More effective are Clara’s final words – “Run, you clever boy. And remember” – exactly the same as Oswin’s in Asylum. Didn’t you just know they’d come back to bite the Doctor? Moffat is deft at these clever touches. There are lots of lovely images (the Jack and the Beanstalk-like spiral staircase leading to the clouds), and my favourite moment being the truly wonderful effect of the camera (and hence the viewer) following the Doctor and Clara directly through the police box doors into the huge Tardis interior. Has this effect ever been achieved before..? I may have forgotten. And how was it done? Where’s BBC3’s Doctor Who Confidential when you need it! The new control room, designed by Michael Pickwoad, is a thing of beauty – superior to the domed Eccleston/Tennant Tardis with its coral columns and clattering floor; less fussy and ornate than the interior that debuted with Matt Smith. At first the control room looks like a mausoleum, reflecting the Doctor’s grief. It’s solemn but conveys latent energy, has subtle detail, a carousel ceiling and a hexagonal central console that looks like it might actually control something. The new title sequence is… well… busy. An amalgam of earlier versions (Sylvester McCoy’s space debris, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker’s time tunnels etc), it has quickly grown on me. The tweaked theme music has urgency and pizzazz, but still lacks the menace of the Radiophonic Workshop versions. The Doctor’s three chums lend good value: “psychotic potato dwarf” Strax fumbling with his Memory Worm, and “green lady” Vastra now married to sidekick Jenny. That’s all deliciously Sarah Waters. In another neat touch, it’s implied that their investigations are inspiring “Dr Doyle”. Moffat, also behind BBC1’s Sherlock, is clued up and – unlike so many others – knows that “Conan” is a middle name, not part of the surname of Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I love Matt Smith’s comedy turn as Doyle’s detective, launching himself into the villain’s HQ with jokey élan, just as Troughton and Tom Baker’s Doctors would have done. Smith is such a terrific Time Lord – I enjoy seeing him steadily maturing in the role. Here he convincingly puts the Pond into despondency, still mourning the loss of Amy and Rory. We buy his gradual thaw thanks to Clara (“I never know why – I only know who,” he says) and his delight when he spots in a mirror that he’s inadvertently donned his bow tie again. He gives the most endearing delivery yet of his catchphrase “Bow ties are cool”. We’re fully engaged with him in the final moments as his spirit of adventure flushes back and he eagerly activates the Tardis for a new mission – “to find her, to find Clara... Watch me run!” With a bewildering Coming Soon trailer (lots of new monsters) and the enigma of Clara unsolved, we were primed for 2013 and the 50th anniversary…
Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan ★★★★★
Steven Moffat pulls a blinder with the Weeping Angels at their creepiest and the Ponds’ distressing farewell. We review the thrill ride with Doctor Who legend Katy Manning
Story 230 Series 7 – Episode 5 “Afterword, by Amelia Williams. Hello, old friend. And here we are, you and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone” – Amy Storyline It’s the end of days for the Doctor, Amy and Rory. They are relaxing in New York’s Central Park, when Rory is sent back in time to 1938 by a Weeping Angel. He meets River Song who is posing as a detective, Melody Malone. The Angels are deadlier than ever – one is the Statue of Liberty – and they’re using an apartment block as a battery farm to feed off humans. Rory and Amy bravely jump off a roof, which creates a temporal paradox that collapses the timeline. But the Angels catch up with them in a modern cemetery, and send Rory and Amy into the past beyond the Time Lord’s reach. He reads of their fate in Melody/River’s novel, but the fact that they lived happily in days gone by is of little consolation. First UK transmission Saturday 29 September 2012 Production March to April, and June 2012. At Cardiff University; Bute Street, Cardiff Bay; Bristol University. In New York at Central Park, Times Square, Grand Central Station, Manhattan Bridge and Main Street, Brooklyn Heights; St Nicholas near Cardiff; Llanelli Cemetery; Upper Boat Studios and BBC Roath Lock Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill River Song – Alex Kingston Julius Grayle – Mike McShane Sam Garner – Rob David Foreman – Ozzie Yue Hood – Bentley Kalu Old Garner – Burnell Tucker Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Nick Hurran Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern and Katy Manning “I’m a mess!” gasps Katy, dabbing her eyes, as The Angels Take Manhattan draws to a close. She’s been silently sobbing from the moment the Doctor cured River Song with his regeneration energy. “Urgh, that was the first tear, goddammit! When he fixed her wrist.” And while we watched an ancient Rory dying in bed, his younger self jumping off a roof with Amy, and then the two of them being dissolved into the past for good, “I had tears flowing down right under my scarf,” says Katy. Forty years earlier, Katy Manning was the quintessential Doctor Who girl. Her character Jo Grant – a sort of intrepid, accident-prone, self-sacrificing sexpot – was the Amy Pond of her day. For three years, she too shared an inseparable bond with the Time Lord, then played by Jon Pertwee. And millions of young fans (myself included) were inconsolable when Katy/Jo left the series in 1973. How would children in 2012 react to the tearjerking, irrevocable departure of Amy and Rory after their three series in the Tardis? And, I wondered, how would Katy react to the episode herself? Two weeks before transmission I invited her round to my house for a preview and to deliver her verdict for Radio Times. Already a fiend for twitter (@manningofficial), she was fast becoming an RT blogger! She’d reviewed Asylum of the Daleks for us. Of course, there’s journalism in her genes: her father, JL Manning, was a respected campaigning journalist. You name it: Katy’s up for it. The game sexagenarian had her first adventure of the day clinging on to the back of my Vespa for a bumpy ride across London – yes, for a moment I am definitely channelling my inner Jon Pertwee. Then, as Katy primed her Skycig substitute cigarettes, we settled down to watch one of the most ambitious, enthralling and eeriest Doctor Whos from the mind of Steven Moffat… We’re impressed by the moody prologue as Mr Grayle, a crime boss with a collecting fetish, sends private eye Garner across Manhattan to Winter Quay. “It’s got this lovely Mickey Spillane vibe,” says Katy. “It’s like Dragnet, with the typing going across the screen. It feels like all those film noir gumshoe movies. I’m loving it.” She quivers at the sight of the snarling face of the Statue of Liberty – “Oh yes!” – and then we’re into the title sequence. There’d been weird colour variations across all five episodes in 2012, but this latest stony-grey wash is the most effective. The action resumes with establishing shots of Manhattan; Sting’s An Englishman in New York provides an obvious but irresistible backing track; and we’re shown an alarming number of statues looking a little too innocent. The first glimpse of our heroes is an extreme close-up of Amy’s eye. She blinks… The Doctor, Amy and Rory’s jolly banter in Central Park has Katy hooting, but from the moment Rory is zapped back in time by a Weeping Angel, she is quietly gripped. She uh-ohs at the revelation of Rory’s tombstone. Wows when the Tardis appears spinning in Grayle’s hallway. Is choked when the Doctor heals River’s wrist. Cackles when River clouts him. Lets out a massive “Phew!” when they find Rory in Winter Quay. But from then on, Katy is doing more weeping than the Angels. Moffat ratchets up the tension, delivering twists, temporal paradoxes and tears. Only when the credits roll do we sit back, exhausted. Katy gasps: “Well, how old am I and I’m sitting here sobbing like an absolute twit!” (She actually uses a stronger word.) “That was so damned good. I laughed. I cried. I was on the edge of my seat. I jumped out of my skin. That to me is perfect entertainment. Every piece of my emotional machinery was fully engaged. I’m now going to have to have a lie down and take a valium because I don’t think I can actually get through the rest of the day!” Sorry for putting you through all that, I say. “No, I love going through all that!” she laughs. “It’s so beautifully written by Steven Moffat. An absolutely slick, schmick piece of television. The music worked really well and didn’t overpower me. And the way it was shot – every choice was on the money for me.” I point out the director is Nick Hurran, who also did Asylum of the Daleks. “Well, he’s bloody brilliant, isn’t he?” She thinks Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston have surpassed themselves. “Arthur Darvill as Rory! He’s been such an extraordinary character. I was crying over him even before I was thinking about Amy leaving.” It’s hard to write out companions for good, and avert questions like: why can’t the Doctor use the Tardis to rescue them? Or, in this case, go back to 1930s Manhattan and get Amy and Rory? But Moffat makes clear that their fate is written in stone (literally, on a gravestone). It’s a fixed event in time and even the Time Lord cannot create another temporal paradox without ripping New York apart. Evidently, River Song is luckier and will see her parents again. At some point she’ll get Amy to publish Melody’s book and write the Doctor a comforting afterword. Katy was critical of River’s confusing timeline in our last review, but says, “I liked her position in this. I knew that final page of River’s book was coming back somewhere, going to be vital. All through, you’re taking pictures in your head of these little details, but then you stop thinking about them. I told you last time I get really upset if I don’t get my dramatic pay-offs, but the pay-offs were all there for me.” We were both chilled by the Weeping Angels – as eerie and implacable as ever. But Katy reminds me that the Angels have a forebear in Doctor Who. In the 1971 classic, The Dæmons, a hideous gargoyle called Bok came to life and zapped people out of existence. He’s usually remembered for the Brigadier’s immortal line: “Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid!” But Bok gave me nightmares for years as a child. “I felt terrified acting in it. A piece of stone coming to life was very frightening back then,” she says, then hoots: “And yet now when we watch it, we all laugh because Bok is wearing these little baggy tights.” Katy has followed Doctor Who since it came back with Christopher Eccleston in 2005. “It’s been consistently good,” she reckons. “OK, you’re gonna like some more than others, but what a remarkable piece of television this has been over the years. What keeps it going is the passion of the writers, the commitment of the actor to playing that character. I was listening to Jon Pertwee on Radio 4 Extra the other morning and I was thinking how he’d have loved what Doctor Who has become.” She can usually watch modern Doctor Who and forget her own involvement long ago. Today is different. “That ending really did touch a raw little nerve in my heart. It brought it all back. My big, emotional leaving. God yes!” In The Green Death (1973) – aka The One with the Giant Maggots – the third Doctor was devastated when Jo left him to marry a hippyish professor and search for a special fungus up the Amazon. It was one of Doctor Who’s most heartbreaking partings. “That’s why there was almost no dialogue – none of us could speak. And people said it was the first time you saw a major emotion in the Doctor. Jon and I really did feel that loss.” She’s a great believer in underplaying emotion and cites her eventual return in The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2010. “Playing that scene with Matt Smith, when Jo realized he was the Doctor… it doesn’t need to be over-the-top hysteria if you really feel something deeply.” “It’s absolutely right to me that they do change the companion,” she asserts. But imagine if you had stayed in it, I tease. Imagine what your wage would be now. “Yes, and how many facelifts I would have to have had!” Well, the BBC would have had to pay for them. Viewers have seen Amy and Rory develop over the years, in the same way that many people watched Jo growing up. “She was this little kiddie going into the series and a young woman coming out. The moment Jo reached that woman stage, it was time for somebody else.” That person being the similarly adored Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen). “I don’t think any actress who’s ever been in it can say – and it doesn’t matter what they’ve gone on to or done with their life – they can’t say they haven’t been kissed by the Doctor Who kiss.” Of course, Gillan and Darvill had had a couple of years to adjust to their new-found fame – and they were besieged like rock stars while filming this episode in New York. Doctor Who would never leave them. Decades later, Katy is constantly being recognised. She regales me with a tale of being interrupted by a fan while she was trying to liberate a bumblebee from a double-decker bus. “And, you know, I might be dropkicking a toilet roll in a supermarket to amuse a girlfriend and someone will come over and say, ‘Excuse me, are you Katy Manning?’ No wonder I have this reputation for being odd.” She’s boundlessly positive about the Tardis tag. “I don’t think about it often, because I’m so busy taking on life and its vicissitudes, but watching Doctor Who reminds me how absolutely joyous I am that I’ve been involved in that programme. What a treat! To watch this wonderful piece of modern television and be so proud that I was a part of it, all those years ago.” I wonder if Gillan and Darvill’s young fans will be pursuing them in 40 years’ time. “You bet they will!” says Katy. "I've been a naughty girl" Katy Manning RT interview (April 2012)
Jemma Redgrave heads Unit when strange black cubes infest the Earth. Plus writer Chris Chibnall talks to RT
Story 229 Series 7 – Episode 4 “So that was the year of the slow invasion, when the Earth got cubed, and the Doctor came to stay” – Amy Storyline The whole world is surprised when millions of little black cubes appear out of nowhere. They’re inert, impenetrable and indestructible. But what are they? Where are they from? Who created them? This is what the Doctor and his friends must find out. Their surveillance of the cubes takes almost a year so the restless Time Lord has to move in with the Ponds. He hooks up with Kate Stewart, the head of scientific research at Unit. The cubes eventually activate and begin electrocuting humans, and the Doctor finds himself aboard the spaceship of the Shakri, the alien in control. First UK transmission Saturday 22 September 2012 Production April to July 2012. At Villa Napoli restaurant, Penarth; Church Road, Penarth; Caerphilly Castle; St Nicholas, near Cardiff; Bute Esplanade, Cardiff Bay; St Cadoc’s Hospital, Caerleon; Neath Abbey; Upper Boat Studios; BBC Roath Lock Studios; The Apprentice studio; King Street, Hammersmith. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Brian Williams – Mark Williams Kate Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Shakri – Steven Berkoff Ranjit – Selva Rasalingam Laura – Alice O’Connell Arnold Underwood – Peter Cartwright Orderlies – David Beck, Daniel Beck Unit researcher – David Hartley As themselves: Brian Cox, Alan Sugar, Nick Hewer, Karren Brady, Emily Maitlis, Sophie Raworth, Matthew Amroliwala Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Douglas Mackinnon Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern “It’s Doctor Who from Amy and Rory’s point of view,” writer Chris Chibnall told me in 2012, priming RT readers for his second episode of the season (following the riotous Dinosaurs on a Spaceship). “It’s really what life is like to travel with the Doctor if you’re Amy and Rory.” Our conversation took place a few months before Chibnall’s success with ITV’s Broadchurch and long before it was imagined he’d take over as showrunner after Steven Moffat. He structured The Power of Three differently from most episodes. Unfolding over almost a year, it reads like a John Wyndham sci-fi page-turner, constantly keeping you guessing as the Earth deals with an invasion by stealth. Those small black cubes that appear out of nowhere and seem innocuous. A simple, fun little object. A memento I’d love to have had from the set. The mystery/crisis calls for amusing cameos by some famous TV faces including Lord Sugar. And there are splendid star turns, too. Mark Williams is back as Rory’s dad, Brian, and really earns his companion/assistant badge. Steven Berkoff – surely always destined to be a Doctor Who villain – appears all too briefly and is subdued but weirdly effective. Much of his material was cut in the final edit, which renders the resolution abrupt and confusing. The standout performance is from Jemma Redgrave – sheer class as Kate, the sympathetic new leader of Unit. Yes, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce returns once more. This semi-top-secret, military/scientific outfit has featured in the Doctor’s life since the 1960s, and Chris admits that The Power of Three was “a really great chance to use Unit. There’s a strange invasion going on, so Unit is the best thing to deal with that. As a writer you’re eternally grateful to everyone back in 1968 who came up with that idea because it’s a brilliant storytelling mechanism. Unit is embedded into the family history of the show. And it’s nice because Matt’s Doctor hasn’t had a Unit episode until now.” And then he whispered to me: “Promise you won’t use this in advance…? Kate Stewart is the Brigadier’s daughter.” Her surname wouldn’t be published before transmission, but you didn’t need to be the most clued-up fan to twig that she was related to Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (former Unit CO and friend to many previous Doctors). “I thought it would be a nice way to honour the Brigadier and [the actor] Nicholas Courtney’s contribution to the show by anchoring Unit to his family,” said Chris. “It was a way to keep that family line going, after we’d heard last year on screen that the Brigadier had died [in The Wedding of River Song].” (Courtney died in 2011.) Chris believes that one of the most enjoyable aspects of Doctor Who is its sense of continuity, which even younger viewers pick up on. “My kids who are nine and six absolutely understand who the Brig was and why he’s important. They’ve seen him in The Sarah Jane Adventures and some classic Doctor Whos.” I’m still annoyed that the Brig – one of my favourite characters – wasn’t brought back to 21st-century Who while Nick Courtney was well and able and very keen. His inclusion in The Sarah Jane Adventures was welcome but a last-minute decision after several other previous cast regulars proved unavailable. But let’s not moan. Kate is a wonderful addition and, curiously, isn’t a brand-new invention of mainstream Who. The character was established in a 1995 fan-produced drama, Downtime, which did star Courtney. What’s even more wonderful is that the scientific arm of Unit is now superior to the military side. Kate is head of scientific research. “Unit’s been adapting,” she tells the Doctor. “I’ve been dragging them along, kicking and screaming.” And Kate was inspired by her dad: “He guided me to the end. Science leads, he always told me. Said he learnt that from an old friend.” Aww! Jon Pertwee’s Doctor would be so chuffed. As a side note, while watching the BBC’s preview DVD, I spotted that Jemma Redgrave had been accidentally omitted from the closing credits. I alerted Doctor Who brand manager Edward Russell at once, who was very grateful for my intervention, and at some cost her name was added before transmission 11 days later. (This wasn’t the first time I’d spotted something that needed changing before transmission and wouldn’t be the last.) The core value – the cube root, if you will – of The Power of Three is the perfect triangle of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. We’re nearing the end of their time together and it’s a chance to savour the chemistry between these three talented young actors. Overlooking the feeble denouement (where the Doctor reverses coronary failure around the world), I’d say the strongest scene is the heart to heart between the Doctor and Amy beside the Thames. The Time Lord tries to explain his frenetic lifestyle: “There is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I’m not running away from things; I am running to them before they flare and fade for ever.” When she asks, “Why do you keep coming back for us?”, he replies, “Because you were the first. The first face this face saw. And you’re seared onto my hearts, Amelia Pond. You always will be. I’m running to you, and Rory, before you fade from me.” So touching.
For all its good points, Toby Whithouse 's Wild West yarn misses the bullseye
Story 228 Series 7 – Episode 3 “We all carry our prisons with us” – Kahler-Jex Storyline Mercy, a small town in America’s Old West, is threatened by a relentless cybernetic Gunslinger, who is on a mission to kill an alien doctor. The fugitive Kahler-Jex is hiding in Mercy, when the Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive. They discover that the innocent-seeming Jex is actually a killer and creator of cyborgs. The Time Lord must brave a high noon showdown with the Gunslinger to protect the townsfolk. First UK transmission Saturday 15 September 2012 Production March 2012. At Fort Apache, Fort Bravo and ravine, Mini Hollywood, Desierto de Tabernas, Almería, Spain; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill The Gunslinger – Andrew Brooke Kahler-Jex – Adrian Scarborough Isaac – Ben Browder Kahler-Mas – Dominic Kemp The Preacher – Byrd Wilkins Dockery – Sean Benedict Abraham – Garrick Hagon Sadie – Joanne McQuinn Walter – Rob Cavazos Narrator – Lorelei King Crew Writer – Toby Whithouse Director – Saul Metzstein Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern For all its good points – which I will get to – A Town Called Mercy doesn’t quite hit the bullseye for me. It lacks authenticity. I don’t believe in it. I don’t feel it. The town looks like a set plonked in the middle of a desert. Mercy is literally a one-horse town; they could only afford the one nag. I don’t believe the Doctor’s moral stance, either his wavering or sudden certitude in dealing with Kahler-Jex. I don’t feel anything when the marshal dies or when Jex eventually takes his own life. I adore westerns and I love Doctor Who, but the two worlds have never quite gelled. Obviously, A Town Called Mercy looks infinitely better than The Gunfighters, the desperate studio-bound William Hartnell comedy-western from 1966, but it has a similarly uneasy mix of English and American actors. (And in 1966, they could afford four horses!) This 21st-century production probably had to tick all sorts of compliance boxes; it looks like a spaghetti western but must remain peculiarly bloodless in tone. It proceeds at a languorous pace, which is a pleasant contrast to some of the flash-bang-wallop, did-I-miss-something? episodes, but leaves me stifling a yawn. My other beef is that, while Amy gets a fair slice of the action, Rory is almost redundant; Arthur Darvill has just a handful of lines. Was he only on set in Spain for a few days? OK, whinge over! It looks gorgeous, doesn’t it? Especially the footage out in the desert. I love the sight of Doctor galloping on his horse (not Joshua, mind, “He’s called Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices”) and the ground-level shot of him inspecting the dusty soil with Susan behind and the sun setting over the sierra. Never mind that the next sequence shows the sun high in the sky again. Director Saul Metzstein has done another superb job (after the dinosaurs episode), with dozens of thoughtful compositions, overhead crane shots and well-lit interiors. “We all carry our prisons with us,” Jex tells the Doctor. “Yours is your morality.” Toby Whithouse’s script contains many such gems, but this one line is the key to the story. He’s cleverly constructed a morality play showing the Time Lord, the fugitive alien Kahler-Jex and the avenging cyborg Gunslinger all as complex people capable of monstrous acts, self-justifying but ultimately worthy of redemption. I almost puked at the Doctor’s interplay with the trigger-happy teenage lad, especially their final, good-natured parting shots. But, surprising myself, I enjoyed the top-and-tail storytelling from the little girl and/or her great-granddaughter, which could have been hideously Little House on the Prairie, but somehow rose above that, and ended elegiacally with the forlorn image of the Gunslinger-turned-guardian-angel on the rocky outcrop overlooking Mercy.
Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship ★★★★
Mark Williams plays Rory’s dad and David Bradley is a great villain in this fun-packed romp with dinosaurs and Nefertiti
Story 227 Series 7 – Episode 2 “This is the gang. I’ve got a gang. Yes!” – the Doctor Storyline In 2367, a vast spaceship is hurtling towards Earth, and the Indian Space Agency is preparing to target it with missiles. The Doctor assembles a motley crew – Queen Nefertiti from Ancient Egypt, Edwardian big-game hunter Riddell, Amy, Rory and his dad Brian – to investigate. They’re amazed to find dinosaurs roaming the vessel. This is an ancient ark built by the Silurians, and at its centre is the small spacecraft of a wicked old man, Solomon, who’s in need of a doctor… First UK transmission Saturday 8 September 2012 Production February to March 2012. Church Road, Penarth; Southerndown beach, Dunraven Park; Upper Boat Studios, Pontypridd Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Queen Nefertiti – Riann Steele Indira – Sunetra Sarker Riddell – Rupert Graves Brian Williams – Mark Williams Solomon – David Bradley Robot voices – David Mitchell, Robert Webb Robots – Noel Byrne, Richard Garaghty Bleytal – Richard Hope ISA worker – Rudi Dharmalingam Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Saul Metzstein Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern As a long-termer who bitterly remembers from 1974 the cringe factor of crummy puppets featured in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (an otherwise well-scripted Jon Pertwee/Elisabeth Sladen serial), it’s a delight and relief to see Doctor Who achieving them so brilliantly on screen. Of course, convincing dinosaurs are de rigueur now (after Jurassic Park, Walking with Dinosaurs, Primeval, endless docs on National Geographic…) and if this latest episode isn’t exactly wall-to-wall with prehistoric creatures, the ones we do see are flawlessly realised, via a mixture of CGI and practical effects. I needed a little help in identifying them all and have it on authority from Doctor Who producer Marcus Wilson that the pair at the start, bashing around with big tails, are ankylosaurus. The pterodactyls are immediately obvious – except, amusingly, to the Doctor: “What do we do about the things that aren’t kestrels?” Then there’s the sleeping baby T rex… Marcus Wilson reveals that this scene was nearly dropped because it was initially conceived to feature CGI raptors, which the budget couldn’t afford. But “then Millennium FX realised they’d still got a baby tyrannosaur from a sort of Walking with Dinosaurs exhibition they’d worked on, so how about if we used that?” I assumed the critters fended off by Amy and Riddell were also junior T rex, but Marcus and writer Chris Chibnall assure me that those ones are velociraptors. Tricey the triceratops (Tracey on set) is a lovable creation, rescuing the Doctor’s party and nuzzling Brian’s nether regions – or at least his pockets like a hound scenting a biscuit. But then she’s zapped to extinction by robots, which might set some younger viewers blubbing. Marcus admits: “Mmm, we debated long and hard over that, yeah.” We’ve seen space arks in Who before (The Ark 1966, The Ark in Space 1975 and The Beast Below 2010). In a fresh slant, it’s not humans escaping cataclysm on Earth, but the previous “owners” of the planet, the Silurians. (This was the one detail I was asked to withhold before transmission.) Chris Chibnall is steeped in Silurian lore, having reintroduced them in The Hungry Earth in 2010. And here they pop up again “as a little treat”. He says the idea came up in a discussion with Steven Moffat. “I think he said maybe it’s a Silurian spaceship. And it’s a nice reveal and shows you more about them, even in a story that isn’t really about them.” They’ve always enjoyed advanced sciences: hibernation machines, a molecular disperser, rock-melting eyes, force fields... Last year, in A Good Man Goes to War, they added teleportation, and now a gigantic space vessel. Of course, we’ve always known they keep dinosaurs. Watching their 1970 debut, Doctor Who and the Silurians, I was petrified when Jon Pertwee’s Doctor stumbled across a T rex in a cave, actually quite a good monster for the time (a full body suit). But I’m still trying to forget the Myrka, an appalling panto-lizard from Warriors of the Deep (1984). “Did you hear what he called him? Doctor! After all this time,” says Solomon. A clever touch from Chibnall makes us think that Solomon is an old adversary – but no, he actually wants “a” doctor. And, unusually, the Doctor shows he’s learnt a few things about surgery. Long gone are the days when he would rebut inquiries with a testy, “I’m not a doctor of medicine!” Indeed, here he makes a lame old man walk again. There’s been a dearth of decent villains in 21st-century Who, but Solomon is magnificent, nicely judged by David Bradley. Since playing Rogue Riderhood in Our Mutual Friend (BBC 1998), he’s become the go-to man for seedy miscreants. Bradley is a class act with such striking features and would go on to play William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time (2013) and then the first Doctor in Peter Capaldi’s swansong in 2017. Companion chronicles are always being hastily rewritten. Once again the Time Lord has gathered a whole gang of allies. They instantly add colour to the deserted spacecraft and the line-up recalls his posse in A Good Man Goes to War (Strax, Dorium, Vastra and Jenny). Here, Queen Nefertiti thrusts herself breathily upon the Time Lord; he then seeks out Edwardian big-game hunter, John Riddell, and inadvertently materialises the Tardis around Rory’s dad, Brian and his stepladder. Perhaps, we can dismiss Neffy and Riddell as one-offs, but what of Brian? He has clearly just had many travels in the Tardis, off screen yes, but evidenced by Rory and Amy’s postcard collection. And he returns in episode four. So Brian Williams, played winningly by Mark Williams, must qualify as a companion, mustn’t he..? Chris Chibnall and Marcus Wilson speaking to Radio Times in 2012
An exciting launch to series seven and the surprise debut of Jenna Coleman – RT asks 1970s Dalek fighter Katy Manning (aka Jo Grant) for her verdict
Story 226 Series 7 – Episode 1 “Run, you clever boy. And remember…” – Oswin Storyline The Doctor, Amy and Rory are summoned before the Parliament of the Daleks – and the Time Lord is aghast when his old foes beg him to save them. They are terrified by a threat emerging from a planetary prison for the most insane Daleks in history. The trio descend to the Asylum, where the Doctor is aided by the voice of a mysterious, cocky young woman called Oswin. With deranged Daleks slowly reviving, and Amy and Rory’s marriage in meltdown, the Doctor discovers that Oswin was long ago converted into a Dalek. She is only dreaming that she’s human. She also has the face of his future companion, Clara. First UK transmission Saturday 1 September 2012 Production March to May 2012. At Sierra Nevada National Park, Spain; Bute Esplanade and Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff Bay; Bristol University; Upper Boat Studios, Pontypridd; BBC Roath Lock Studios, Cardiff Bay. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Oswin Oswald – Jenna-Louise Coleman Darla von Karlsen – Anamaria Marinca Cassandra – Naomi Ryan Harvey – David Gyasi Photoshoot PA – Zac Fox Voice of the Daleks – Nicholas Briggs Daleks – Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Nick Hurran Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern and Katy Manning So is this fabulous episode destined to be an all-time classic? It’s clever, fast, funny, eerie, surprising and tearjerking – all in one spectacularly polished package. And Steven Moffat steps over 49 years of Dalek baggage to make them fresh and menacing again. Asylum of the Daleks ticks all my boxes as a Doctor Who fan of more than 40 years standing. I have crystal-clear memories of Day of the Daleks – the most enthralling thing on television in 1972 – as Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and his companion Jo Grant became immersed in a spooky, timey-wimey Dalek mystery. And with my fan-boy hat firmly jammed on, I thought what a spooky, timey-wimey delight it would be to watch this latest episode at my house with Katy Manning, who played my childhood heroine Jo all those years ago. I’m pressing her to play critic for RT, even though she warns, “I just get into the story. I’m not one of those who sits and analyses it. I’m right there in the moment and where it goes, I go.” The episode begins and she’s gripped from the off, leaning avidly towards the screen. First up, the Big Secret. At the BFI premiere in August 2012, it took me a moment to realise I was staring at the new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman. Five episodes early! As Moffat put it after the screening: “This room froze in a strange way when Jenna – who isn’t supposed to turn up till Christmas – turned up right in front of you.” Katy identifies her at once. “She’s the girl that’s taking over, isn’t she? Is that the big surprise!?” she explodes. “I’ve got far better secrets than that, mate. Trust me.” She also ribs me for my slowness at the premiere. “It’s pretty fricking obvious it’s her. You don’t have to be a fan to know who that is. I got it straightaway. No problem at all. I’m on the money here!” she laughs. Little else is said as Asylum of the Daleks rumbles on. Katy coos over the Dalek prime minister (a mutant in a jar): she loves all God’s creatures, the uglier, the better. When the Doctor, Amy and Rory tumble down a beam to the asylum, she says, “I’ve done a lot of that as Jo! Although I haven’t been fired at a planet, I probably fired at a planet.” As the zombies come to life, Katy is thrilled: “Urgghh! Oohh! – loving it!” We both enjoy the “Eggs-ter-min-ate” business, first with Rory, then with soufflé girl Oswin. “Eggs. Oh God, that’s divine. I love pay-off. If anything that’s introduced isn’t paid off, I get minty. That’s why I love these new scripts.” Towards the end we chuckle at the Daleks and the Doctor repeating “Doc-tor who..? Doc-tor who..?” as Moffat continues his mission to reinforce the mystery at the heart of the programme – “putting the ‘who’ back into Doctor Who” as he promised last year. Katy emits a throaty cackle as Amy catches Rory doing his little “Yes!” on their doorstep. And then with the final shot of the Doctor inside the Tardis, she’s delighted to recall, “I did go in there...” (in 2010, alongside Elisabeth Sladen and Matt Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures). The episode ends and Katy sits back, composing her thoughts. “That was absolutely stunning. I’ve got to tell you this: when I’m watching Doctor Who, I forget I’ve ever been in it. It doesn’t even cross my mind. Because it’s a very different show, so grown-up now. I think Steven Moffat is exactly right with what he’s done. It’s progressed exactly the way it should.” She made two Dalek serials in the 1970s and appreciates how they’ve developed. First with the 2005 episode simply titled Dalek, written by her friend Robert Shearman: “He’s my hero. And what Steven’s done is taken the Daleks further without falling into the trap of using Davros. The moment I saw Davros in the 70s, looking like everybody on the Tube round about six o’clock at night with their headphones on, it took away the menace of something that isn’t human. Because suddenly it’s half a bloke in there. There’s nothing human about a Dalek.” But, I argue, Moffat has blended the human and the Dalek so cleverly here, reusing his idea of nanogene transformation from his 2005 two-parter, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (“Are you my mummy?”). He’s even made the new companion a Dalek! What does Katy make of Oswin? “I’m going to like her.” But Oswin Oswald… Didn’t everyone predict her name would be Clara? And how come she’s a bloomin’ Dalek!? “I don’t know about the full Dalek conversion. Look, this is sci-fi. We can de-convert!” Yet surely this is where Oswin/Clara’s story will end, Dalek-ised and memory-wiped...? I like her final, telling line: “Run, you clever boy. And remember.” Or perhaps it'll transpire she's a looky-likey, cousins like Freema Agyeman played when she started... “I don’t know where it’s going and don’t want to guess,” says Katy, “but obviously if she’s going to be the new girl, we’re going to have x number of stories with her. Maybe they don’t know where it’s going to go. How often do you start a story like that?” That mirrors River Song, I point out, another woman of mystery killed off in her debut story whose earlier life is coloured in later. “Yes, I was confused with River Song,” admits Katy. “I don’t think I was alone there. Truthfully, that character slightly jarred for me. I don’t know why, because I think Alex Kingston’s a fabulous actress.” She’s effusive about the three leads. “Matt’s one of my most favourite young actors. Without a shadow of doubt, I love what he does. Amy has been a wonderful companion. I love the way Karen Gillan performs the character. She gives me all the levels I actually want. She can scream, she can be tough, she can be brave, cynical… She’s all those things that work beautifully with this younger Doctor.” Katy’s also met Arthur Darvill, “briefly at a signing – rolling a cigarette somewhere. It’s how you meet in my business. He’s a cool dude. A smashing actor.” As for the episode: “It has a quirky Alice in Wonderland quality – going from the Daleks up there in this huge sort of Albert Hall of Daleks, spiralling down, down into the hole where Rory sees all the old Daleks… What’s glorious for me is to see so many Daleks that aren’t tiny little cardboard things superimposed on the screen.” Final word of praise for director Nick Hurran. “He should be congratulated,” she says. “It was beautifully directed, beautifully lit. It was shot every bit as well as an action movie – you can well-quote me on that! It was as good as anything I see that people spend zillions of dollars on. “D’you know what? I would love to have been in it now,” she confides. “Not as an old person, not an old Katy...” the husky voice breaks “…but as a young Katy. I would love to have been a young person in Doctor Who now.”
Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe ★★★
Steven Moffat, Matt Smith and co pull a cracker for this Narnia-mining 2011 Christmas special
Story 225 Christmas Special 2011 First UK transmission Christmas Day 2011 Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Madge Arwell – Claire Skinner Reg Arwell – Alexander Armstrong Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Cyril Arwell – Maurice Cole Lily Arwell – Holly Earl Co-pilot – Sam Stockman Droxil – Bill Bailey Ven-Garr – Paul Bazely Billis – Arabella Weir Wooden King – Spencer Wilding Wooden Queen – Paul Kasey Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Farren Blackburn Producer – Marcus Wilson Music – Murray Gold Designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Caroline Skinner RT review by Patrick Mulkern When I heard Marge Arwell (Claire Skinner) saying, “This Christmas is going to be the best Christmas ever,” I got a sinking sensation. Not just because by nature I’m a bit of a Scrooge, but because I’ve had enough of being promised “the most Christmassy Doctor Who ever”. As if that were a good thing and something I’d want once in every 14 episodes. Bah! Well, I should have had more faith in Steven Moffat, Matt Smith and co, who have pulled a cracker, and almost - almost, I say - given this Ebenezer a Christmassy glow. How can anyone resist The Doctor, the Witch and the Wardrobe? People moaned about Moffat ripping off CS Lewis, but Doctor Who has always borrowed from other sources. The vast spaceship looming over Earth recalls Hitchhikers, and all the stuff with fighter pilot Reg (Alexander Armstrong) immediately made me think of David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death (1946). Actually very little is mined from Narnia. There are two “wardrobe/portals”: the Doctor’s police box safely stored in the attic, but more importantly - and irresistible to the Arwell children - a large blue gift glowing beside the Christmas tree, which leads to an enchanted, snow-settled forest. That this forest is composed of “naturally occurring Christmas trees”, which extrude their own baubles and can grow wooden people as well as a tower, is a hard swallow - like that final dollop of Christmas pud. But it’s worth gulping down. These alien conifers are about to be laid waste by acid rain released by harvesters from Androzani Major (a fan-pleasing reference to fifth Doctor Peter Davison’s final adventure in 1984). When the eleventh Doctor tells young Cyril, “Let’s save a forest”, tree-huggers everywhere rejoice. There’s a touch of Wizard of Oz too, as Madge has to fly everyone back through the vortex, imagining home sweet home “till it hurts,” as she says. I’ve loved Claire Skinner ever since she played Alison Steadman’s butch plumber daughter in Life Is Sweet (1990) and fragile Rebecca in Perfect Strangers (2001). As the presumed “widow” protecting her children, she surpasses herself, and is profoundly moving by being strong, maternal and not for a moment soppy. “Your mother is flying a forest through the time vortex! Be a little impressed,” cries the Doctor. Matt Smith - young/old, freaky/cool, joli laid - pushes all my buttons and is, as I’ve said before, the best Doctor since mid-term Tom Baker. He can do earnest and urgent, but is masterly at the comical stuff - as the man who fell to Earth with a back-to-front helmet, and as the caretaker showing off a lemonade tap and “the ultimate bedroom” with a hammock that’s “developed a fault”. He also sells the “happy tears” reunion with Amy and Rory. Of course their return was the one big secret RT was sworn to keep. You’ll find no mention of them in our Christmas issue. The last season concluded with the Ponds/Williamses apparently written out and with “Doctor Who?” determined to travel alone. Much as I like Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, I feel it is time for a companions shake-up (and Moffat has promised just this at some point during the next series). In the meantime, it’s undeniably heart-warming to find the lonely old Time Lord among friends at Christmas.
Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song ★★★★
Is the hectic conclusion to the Doctor/ River/Silence saga truly satisfying or just cleverly behaving as though it is?
Story 224 Series 6 – Episode 13 “I just told you my name. Now, there you go, River Song, Melody Pond. You’re the woman who married me – and wife, I have a request” – the Doctor First UK transmission Saturday 1 October 2011 Storyline The Doctor’s appointment with death at Lake Silencio is looming, but within the astronaut suit River Song now discharges her weaponry, causing a maelstrom in time. It’s as if all of history is happening at once. The Time Lord’s friends have captured Madame Kovarian and many of the Silence and sealed them inside a pyramid at Giza. The Doctor and River seem to have a wedding, but the Time Lord has replaced himself with a Teselecta. He intends to pretend to the universe that he is indeed dead and lead a quieter life. But Dorium Maldovar warns that an even greater threat lies ahead, when the question will be asked that he’s been running from his entire life: “Doctor…who?” Production November 2010 at Lake Powell, Arizona, USA. April 2011 at Hensol Castle; Mir Steel, Newport; Cardiff City Hall; Dyffryn Garden, St Nicholas; Bute Park, Cardiff; Archer Road, Penarth; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill River Song – Alex Kingston Madame Kovarian – Frances Barber Dorium Maldovar – Simon Fisher-Becker Emperor Winston Churchill – Ian McNeice Dr Malohkeh – Richard Hope The Silent – Marnix van den Broeke Voice of the Dalek – Nicholas Briggs Charles Dickens – Simon Callow As herself – Sian Williams As himself – Bill Turnbull Newsreader – Meredith Vieira Gideon Vandaleur – Niall Greig Fulton Barman – Sean Buckley Gantok – Rondo Haxton (Mark Gatiss) Dr Kent – Emma Campbell-Jones Nurse – Katharine Burford Carter – Richard Dillane Canton Delaware – William Morgan Sheppard Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Jeremy Webb Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern Just as this sixth series began with a dedication to Elisabeth Sladen, so it concludes with a homage to that other giant of Doctor Who, Nicholas Courtney, who’d died two months before her in 2011. A long way into the story, and completely out of the blue, the Doctor gets a phone call informing him that “Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart has passed away”. The reference will be lost on many viewers – the Brig having been shamefully neglected by 21st-century Who – but it’s piercingly moving for long-term fans who, like me, have adored that character since the 1960s. As CO of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, he became the Time Lord’s staunchest ally, and the 11th Doctor absorbs the news of his death in glum silence, just as he’s preparing for his own demise. It’s a beautifully judged moment from Steven Moffat – and it’s no coincidence either that almost everyone in this finale ends up wearing an eye-patch (or “eye-drive”, which enables humans to remember any contact with the Silence). One of Courtney’s well-worn anecdotes from his time on Doctor Who was all about eye-patches! You might feel you need two eye-drives while watching The Wedding of River Song. Are you swept along by the dizzying pace and storytelling gall or left behind, frustrated, gasping for logical explanations? The notion of “all of history happening at once” sets up a lot of fun: pterodactyls attacking swotty kids, Dickens on BBC Breakfast… But why then, you may wonder, isn’t Winston Churchill competing for power alongside William the Conqueror, Elizabeth I and, erm, David Cameron? More importantly, is the conclusion to the Doctor/River/Silence saga truly satisfying or just rather cleverly behaving as though it is? Any rational mind must question why the Silence hatched such a preposterous scheme to dispose of the Time Lord – grooming Amy’s child…bunging her in an astronaut suit…in a lake in the middle of nowhere… Although I enjoyed Frances Barber’s juicy performance – almost as much as she did – I’m none the wiser as to who Madame Kovarian was. And how did she, the Silence and River flit so freely between 1969, 2011 and the 52nd century, where River attained her doctorate? At last we’ve witnessed River becoming the Doctor’s wife – or, at least, a Doctor’s wife – but when does she find out his real name (as suggested in her 2008 debut story)? Of course, no one really believed that the Doctor was going to die. In a season packed with duplicates, many viewers might have guessed that a Flesh Doctor or the Teselecta (from Let’s Kill Hitler) could come into play. But if you go back and study The Impossible Astronaut, the impostor we’re now told was at Lake Silencio was far too convincingly in character as the 11th Doctor. After being zapped, he even started to exude that familiar regenerative aura. How the hell could a robotic Teselecta accomplish that? In truth, it’s a bit of a con. It also seems an act of immense cruelty that the Doctor invited his friends to witness his “death”, but then he does want the world, the universe, to believe that he has been eliminated: “I got too big, too noisy.” And the finale’s punchline is spine-tingling. Blue-faced Dorium Maldovar reveals that “the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight” is all about our hero. It’s “the question you’ve been running from all your life” – a mystery as old as the series itself. “Doctor who?” booms Dorium at the very end, as the Time Lord vanishes into obscurity. “DOCTOR WHO!?” And thus Steven Moffat is once more pressing a reset button. He said in April 2011, “We’re putting the Who? back into the Doctor.” I’m pleased at the notion of less Last Gallifreyan grandstanding, and the Doctor playing on a smaller stage like it was in the old days.
James Corden returns as new dad Craig to help the Doctor tackle Cybermen in this department-store comedy
Story 223 Series 6 – Episode 12 First UK transmission Saturday 24 September 2011 Storyline The Doctor catches up with his old flatmate Craig in Colchester. With Sophie away for the weekend, Craig is struggling to cope with their new baby, Alfie (who prefers the name Stormageddon). Investigating a spate of mysterious disappearances in the area, the Doctor takes a job in the toy section of a department store. He soon uncovers an infestation of rodent-like Cybermats, and finds the store was built upon the crash site of a Cyber-ship. The awakening Cybermen aim to convert Craig into their new leader. Production March to April 2011. At House of Frazer, Cardiff; Church Road, Penarth; Hensol Castle; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Craig Owens – James Corden Sophie – Daisy Haggard River Song – Alex Kingston Madame Kovarian – Frances Barber Shona – Seroca Davis Kelly – Holli Dempsey George – Chris Obi Val – Lynda Baron Cyberman – Paul Kasey Voice of the Cybermen – Nicholas Briggs Crew Writer – Gareth Roberts Director – Steve Hughes Producer – Denise Paul Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Something for the dads.” That used to mean Wendy Padbury in a catsuit, Katy Manning in mini-skirts, Louise Jameson in skimpy leathers, even Janet Fielding in a camisole. Leggy clotheshorse Karen Gillan is their modern-day successor. But now the “something for the dads” angle instigated by producer Innes Lloyd in 1960s Doctor Who has gained an entirely new meaning. I moaned about it in recent episodes – the pervading father/son dynamic that has become a sine qua non of Steven Moffat’s Who. Now Closing Time indulges it to the hilt as fumbling new dad Craig learns to connect with baby Alfie during the course of the drama. And, this time, it works just fine. There’s much comedy value in Craig tagging along with the Doctor, with Alfie in pushchair or papoose, being mistaken for the Doctor’s civil partner, the Time Lord translating Alfie’s goo-goo language (he calls Craig “not Mum”). And how brilliant that the baby’s first word is “Doctor”. Only the explosive resolution – “I blew them up with love,” says Craig – is emotional overload, but what better way to deal with the emotionally deprived Cybermen? And writer Gareth Roberts has the wit and nerve to let the Doctor admit that Craig’s claim is “grossly sentimental and over-simplistic”. Craig has earned his stripes as a semi-companion (factoring in last year’s The Lodger) and I’ve warmed to James Corden. It’s been a slow thaw. Needy Smithy was the only aspect I didn’t like about Gavin & Stacey, and Corden’s excessive braggadocio during the 2010 World Cup was less than endearing. But I was won over in 2011 by his spontaneity and impeccable timing in One Man, Two Guvnors, the National Theatre’s sell-out comedy. I chuckled a lot during Closing Time, but there are moments of tension, too: a Cyberman lurking in a shadowy changing room, the fanged Cybermat… Almost every Doctor Who monster bears the scent of a shameless marketing opportunity; at least the revamped Cybermats (robo-rodents who last appeared in 1975’s Revenge of the Cybermen) have the grace to scuttle across the floor of a toy department. They’re even eyed up as a must-buy prezzie by store employee Val. Good to see Lynda Baron still getting work. She exudes warmth and good humour from behind her shop counter without veering into Mollie Sugden territory. Terrific as Violet Carson in The Road to Coronation Street (2010) and forever identified with Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in Open All Hours, Baron also has a notable Doctor Who pedigree. She sang the charmless Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon that underscored The Gunfighters (a 1966 William Hartnell story) and in Enlightenment (1983) was operatic as pirate captain Wrack, opposite Peter Davison’s Doctor. It’s incredible to think that, since he said goodbye to Amy and Rory in the previous episode, the 11th Doctor has been travelling some 200 years without a companion. Think back to the frenzied antics we glimpsed right at the start of the season (hiding under a 17th-century lady’s skirts; escaping Nazis in a Colditz-like tunnel) – they fill in some of the gaps. This already makes him one of the longest-living incarnations. The thrust of the episode sees him preparing – and prepares us – for his imminent demise in episode 13. I’m glad when I previewed Closing Time I hadn’t seen the printed cast list, so the sweet cameo for Amy and Rory came as a surprise and I certainly wasn’t expecting the tense coda with River Song and Madame Kovarian. Roll on the finale! We are all invited to The Wedding of River Song.
Toby Whithouse creepy-hotel episode offers a Minotaur and touches of 1984 and The Shining
Story 222 Series 6 – Episode 11 “They certainly didn’t mention that in the brochure” – the Doctor First UK transmission Saturday 18 September 2011 Storyline The Doctor, Amy and Rory are trapped in labyrinthine domain that looks like a down-at-heel 1980s hotel. They befriend a small group of humans and a timid mole-like alien, Gibbis, and try to prevent them from being killed one by one. A Minotaur roams the corridors and behind each door is a room that contains the residents’ greatest fears: a gorilla, a morose clown, Weeping Angels...Failing to save the humans, the Time Lord reveals the hotel is actually an automated prison ship and that the beast is feeding off the faith of its victims. Fearing for Amy and Rory’s future, the Doctor drops them in London, where he’s bought them a new house. He travels on alone. Production February to March 2011. At Seabank Hotel, Porthcawl; Manor Park Hotel, Cardiff; Bute Esplanade, Cardiff Bay; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Lucy Hayward – Sarah Quintrell Rita – Amara Karan Howie Spragg – Dimitri Leonidas Joe Buchanan – Daniel Pirrie Gibbis – David Walliams PE teacher – Dafydd Emyr The Creature – Spencer Wilding Rita’s father – Rashid Karapiet Amelia Pond – Caitlin Blackwood Gorilla – Roger Ennals Crew Writer – Toby Whithouse Director – Nick Hurran Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern “How scary is this week’s Doctor Who?” asked my younger sister on behalf of her kids – aged seven and ten in autumn 2011. They’d given Mark Gatiss’s Night Terrors a wide berth after its overt scare-the-kiddies stance and “Save me from the monsters!” trailers. The ads for The God Complex were similarly unnerving, and I forewarned my sis: It’s got a stalking Minotaur, a creepy clown, rooms full of ventriloquist dummies and Weeping Angels… It taps into our deepest fears with hotel corridors lined with bad dreams… It toys with the concept of faith, and the dependable Doctor is obliged to shed his mantle as a reassuring hero. Plus, there’s a poignant ending… So yes, the kids must watch it! I’m a cruel uncle. Besides, I must say, my other sister’s two, even younger (then four and nearly six), would sit through all these terrors and psychodramas impervious and enthralled. This is a third stab at Who for Toby Whithouse, the mastermind behind Being Human. He also penned 2010’s enjoyable romp The Vampires of Venice and 2006’s School Reunion with Sarah Jane Smith, which I adored. “Of the episodes I’ve written,” he told me, “this is my favourite by a mile. The cast are wonderful and isn’t the direction stunning?” I’d agree with that, and believe Whithouse’s script is clever and original, although of course you don’t have to be particularly alert to spot allusions to Greek mythology (the Minotaur in a labyrinth), George Orwell’s 1984 (Room 101 containing Winston Smith’s worst fear) and to the eerie hotel in The Shining. Even that movie’s carpet-level tracking shots are re-created here. Fans will know that the Minotaur has shown up in Doctor Who before, fleetingly – and in hilariously duff costumes – in The Mind Robber (1968) and The Time Monster (1972). Bull-headed aliens also appeared in 1979’s The Horns of Nimon. That was the nadir for fourth Doctor Tom Baker, yet it’s pleasing to hear the 11th Doctor refer back 32 years when mentioning this Minotaur is “a distant cousin of the Nimon”. David Walliams is endearing as Gibbis, a craven-hearted critter from Tivoli, “the most invaded planet in the galaxy”. Though larded with latex, he’s still very David Walliams and reminds me of Jonathan Harris as the lily-livered, screamingly camp Dr Smith from Lost in Space. The God Complex is a clever title. It sums up the story’s milieu and pinpoints the Doctor’s Achilles heel. His need to impress and fashion new acolytes (including Rita) is thrown into sharp relief when he has to demolish Amy’s faith, and it feeds neatly into the sorrowful severance from Amy and Rory. “Amy Williams. It’s time to stop waiting,” he tells her, as he sets the couple on a new life. I must say I was thrown by their departure, but knew they’d be back for the season finale. We’re on a roll here. As well as the impressively intricate season arc, these fabulous standalone episodes make the series feel more and more like a high-class sci-fi anthology.
Amy is marooned for 36 years in this clinically styled but emotionally challenging triumph
Story 221 Series 6 – Episode 10 “Tell Amy, your Amy, I'm giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come” – Amy First UK transmission Saturday 10 September 2011 Storyline The Doctor takes Rory and Amy to Apalapucia, a top holiday destination, but they arrive in a clinical “kindness facility” maintained by white robots. The planet is beset by a disease deadly to two-hearted races, and while the Doctor must retreat to his Tardis, Amy is caught in a time stream running far faster than that of her friends and is stranded for an agonising 36 years before Rory can reach her. As Rory meets a much older, fiercer Amy, the Ponds’ love is tested to the limit. Production February to April 2011. At the Millennium Centre, Cardiff; Uskmouth Power Station, Newport; Dryffyn Gardens, St Nicholas; Johnsey Estates, Pontypool; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Check-in girl – Josie Taylor Voice of the Interface – Imelda Staunton Crew Writer – Tom MacRae Director – Nick Hurran Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern What a cracking episode! Dazzling, clinical design (including deft use of the Wales Millennium Centre). Natty, surgical “Handbots”. A clever concept – our heroes separated by “time streams running parallel but at different speeds”. And, more importantly, horrible dilemmas for a much older Amy – who understandably doesn’t want to surrender her years of experience, no matter how grim they were – and for Rory: “So I have to choose – which wife do I want?” On the surface, even the casual Who-ologist should instantly draw parallels with the Patrick Troughton classic, The Mind Robber (1968). Set in a white void (or “opaque nothingness”), its first episode also featured solely the Doctor, two companions and a disembodied voice. There were White Robots, too, whose hypnotic chest probes look very similar to the “secondary delivery system” emerging from the heads of the Handbots. The narrative also plays like an episode of one of those ancient American sci-fi anthologies, or even an original Star Trek, where a couple of Enterprise crew would beam down to a strange new world and become ensnared in a role-playing scenario. But Tom MacRae’s script provides so much more emotional depth, as we are presented truly with The Girl Who Waited. Amy: “You told me to wait and I did. A lifetime!” The make-up job on Karen Gillan is brilliant in its subtlety. If only her hair could have been cropped or grey, not just stripped of its usual lustre. The thought of Amy marooned alone for 36 years is appalling, and naturally she’s furious with the Lord of Time. “It got a bit harder to stay charitable once I entered decade four… I hate him more than anyone I’ve hated in my life,” she tells Rory. The story forces us to consider how anyone would feel confronted with a spouse 36 years older or younger. Empathic Rory yearns for his youthful, fitter Amy, but cannot deny puffy, senior Pond her decades of experience. Older Amy is, of course, an even tougher mare than her junior counterpart. “I call my life what it is – hell.” A sword-swishing Ripley type, she’s even worked out how to improvise a sonic screwdriver. Delightfully, she softens when Rory says something funny: “I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in 36 years.” And there’s fleeting humour when Rory asks the Time Lord: “Two Amys together. Can that work?” The Doctor: “I dunno. It’s your marriage.” I’ve quoted much of MacRae’s dialogue because it works so beautifully and is delivered to perfection by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who have never been better. I adore the scene with the two Amys conversing through the looking glass. Old Amy: “All those boys chasing me but it was only ever Rory. Why was that?” They put into words the appeal of Rory, which so many of his fans will already appreciate. When both young and old Amy say together “Rory’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met”, it’s extremely touching. The most moving scene is when Rory and older Amy touch hands either side of the Tardis door and she urges: “If you love me, don’t let me in… Tell Amy, your Amy, I’m giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come. The days I can’t have. Take them, please.” And I love that simple ending, as younger Amy awakes and asks one question: “Where is she?”
A housing-estate lad suffers nightmarish visions of peg-dolls, but Mark Gatiss's tale doesn't add up
Story 220 Series 6 – Episode 9 “Please save me from the monsters” – George First UK transmission Saturday 3 September 2011 Storyline The Doctor responds to a message from eight-year-old George who is terrified at night by monsters. Investigating his housing estate, Amy and Rory are trapped in a doll’s-house-like domain menaced by life-sized peg dolls. The Doctor befriends George and his father, Alex, and deduces that the little boy is not all that he seems… He’s a Tenza, an alien using a perception filter to create the child that his parents longed for – and a nightmarish world now that the boy fears rejection. Production September to October 2010 at St Winefride’s Hospital; Canton, Cardiff; Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire; Waring House, Bristol; Dragon Studios, Pencoed; Upper Boat Studios. April 2011 at Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Alex – Daniel Mays George – Jamie Oram Claire – Emma Cunniffe Purcell – Andy Tiernan Mrs Rossiter – Leila Hoffman Julie – Sophie Cosson Crew Writer – Mark Gatiss Director – Richard Clark Producer – Sanne Wohlenberg Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern I’m going to stick my head above the playpen, release my inner eight-year-old and scream, “Enough kids already!” When I was a child, about the last thing I wanted to see in Doctor Who was my own kind. Child actors were diabolically wooden in 1970s TV drama and, yes, they do seem preternaturally competent these days, but must they feature in almost every Doctor Who story? And I’ve had a bellyful of these mawkish dad’n’lad pay-offs. In series five, there was drill engineer and son in the Silurian two-parter. At Christmas, Michael Gambon and self-as-boy felt pretty similar. Already in series six we’ve had Hugh Bonneville and boy; acid refinery Flesh-man and his lad; and now this tower-block twosome, Alex and George. You can’t fault Daniel Mays and newcomer Jamie Oram, whose performances are outstanding, but the episode’s resolution – “I love you, son, even though you’re weird” (I’m paraphrasing) – makes me want to heave. Is Steven Moffat, father of two boys, insisting on such dynamics week in, week out? That said, the idea of the scared little George (“Please save me from the monsters”) is quite touching. I get it completely. I remember being four or five and having night terrors, dreading a looming wardrobe, seeing disturbing patterns in a curtain, having to go to bed with the light on... Maybe if I were a child watching this now I’d be freaked by the imagery; if I were a parent I might be writing to the BBC to tick them off for traumatising my offspring. Writer Mark Gatiss boldly sets out to give younger viewers the scares they crave. His peg dolls with piggy eyes, straggly hair and spindly limbs are undeniably eerie. And Richard Clark’s direction is exemplary. He chooses unusual angles; he frames many shots through doorways, and finds shadows and patterns, notably in the tower-block façade. Gatiss is an out-and-proud horror-meister steeped in Victoriana, but did no one stop to question why a boy in a 21st-century tower block would possess a doll’s house or know anything about peg dolls? It’s so last century – centuries old, even. Being sucked into a doll’s house and urged to play games that will transform you into a doll too is a nightmarish concept, but it was used before in the William Hartnell classic, The Celestial Toymaker (1966). And surely I’m not alone in sensing the whiff of a more recent episode. A housing estate. A nosy old lady. A child with special powers isolated in their own bedroom, terrified by something nasty in a wardrobe. A seemingly innocuous entity that creates a domain to ensnare intruders… It’s Fear Her, that execrable episode from David Tennant’s first series. Night Terrors is superior to that, but it feels as though Gatiss has braved digging up the skeleton of Fear Her and tried to graft some flesh onto it.
River is gunning for the Doctor as this action-packed romp leads to Nazi Berlin
Story 219 Series 6 – Episode 8 “Shut up, Hitler!” – Rory First UK transmission Saturday 27 August 2011 Storyline Amy and Rory lure the Doctor back to Leadworth by creating a crop circle. Their childhood friend Mels pulls out a gun and insists they go back in time and kill Hitler. They arrive in Berlin 1938 where a Teselecta, a shape-shifting robot manned by a miniaturised crew, is already on the scene with the same intention. In the fray, Hitler shoots Mels, Rory knocks out Hitler, and Mels regenerates into River Song. The Doctor soon learns that she’s been trained by the Silence to kill him. Amy uses the Teselecta to show River the woman she’ll become. Persuaded of the Time Lord’s goodness, she sacrifices her remaining regenerations to save his life. Production March to April 2011 at Temple of Peace, Cardiff; Brangwyn Hall, Swansea; Cyfartha Castle High School, Merthyr Tydfil; Hensol Castle; Upper Boat Studios. July 2011 at Penmark Place near Barry. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill River Song – Alex Kingston Mels – Nina Toussaint-White Amelia Pond – Caitlin Blackwood Young Mels – Maya Glace-Green Young Rory Williams – Ezekiel Wigglesworth Zimmerman – Philip Rham Carter – Richard Dillane Anita – Amy Cudden Jim – Davood Ghadami Harriet – Ella Kenion Adolf Hitler – Albert Welling German officer – Mark Killeen Professor Candy – Paul Bentley Nurse – Eva Alexander Female teacher – Tor Clark Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Richard Senior Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Don’t tell them that Mels is River,” Steven Moffat begged fans and press at the BFI’s preview screening in August 2011. “You all loved it, so don’t give that away. It spoils the whole thing. In fact, if you could bear not to mention her name...” Well, of course, RT duly complied. We even omitted Mels (Nina Toussaint-White) and Young Mels (Maya Glace-Green) from our cast list so that eagle-eyed readers wouldn’t have time to make the connections. Although I cottoned on early to this season’s other big twists (Amy being a duplicate, River Song being her baby), I must admit the Melody = Mels = River development took me completely by surprise. As she says herself: “Penny in the air..? Penny drops.” Melody/Mels? Duhh! How slow was I! So to recap: in this sixth series “River” has been played by six people: twins Madison and Harrison Mortimer as baby Melody; Sydney Wade as the girl in the spacesuit; the two aforementioned actresses as Mels; and, of course, the inestimable Alex Kingston… The regenerated spacesuit girl spends years seeking her parents Amy and Rory, then grows up alongside them as their best mate. They get Mels out of all sorts of jams – thus, unwittingly, bringing up their own daughter. She, in turn, brings them together as an item… Hijacking the Tardis in 2011, Mels takes another pop at the Doctor’s life (as programmed by the Silence) but is shot by Hitler in 1938. As she regenerates again, the Doctor explains to Amy, “You named your daughter… after your daughter.” A familiar middle-aged man-eater surfaces (“I’m all sort of mature. Hello, Benjamin!”) and, paradoxically, she learns of both her name, River Song, and catchphrase “Spoilers” from the Doctor… Eventually seeing the good in the Time Lord, she surrenders her remaining regenerations to save his life. He leaves her at the “greatest hospital in the universe” with a blue diary that will chart all their future encounters. Then, at the Luna University in 5123, River asks to study archaeology because she’s “looking for a good man”… Phew! That’s some biographical info-dump from Moffat – as he promised last year – yet seamlessly woven into 48 minutes of hugely entertaining telly. Did you spot any holes? I did wonder what Melody was doing between regenerating in New York 1969 and joining Amy’s childhood some two decades later. Did she remain a child for a very long time? The episode moves too fast for such quibbles to stick, and it is hilarious – River running riot through Nazi Berlin (“Well, I was on my way to this gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled…”). However, for my money, Arthur Darvill gets the best lines as Rory: “Shut up, Hitler!” “Right, I’m putting Hitler in the cupboard” and “OK, I’m trapped inside a giant robot replica of my wife. I’m really trying not to see this as a metaphor.” Did anyone else spot Matt Smith placing his hands carefully over his groin after the Doctor’s clinch with River? Is this our first hint in 48 years that Time Lords do actually have something going on down there? And what of the eponymous, briefly glimpsed Führer? Asked at the preview how long Adolf remained in that cupboard, Moffat deadpanned: “There’s historical evidence to suggest that he emerged – smelling of wee.”
Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes to War ★★★★★
Steven Moffat weaves magic as the Doctor and Rory assemble a posse to rescue Amy and her baby – and River finally discloses her identity
Story 218 Series 6 – Episode 7 “The Doctor will find your daughter, and he will care for her whatever it takes. And I know that. It’s me. I’m Melody. I’m your daughter” – River Song First UK transmission Saturday 4 June 2011 Storyline The stage is set for the Battle of Demon’s Run. Imprisoned by Madame Kovarian and her Cleric guards, Amy has given birth to a daughter, Melody, who is taken away from her. The Doctor and Rory assemble an army to storm Kovarian’s base: they include the Victorian Silurian Madame Vastra, her maid/lover Jenny, Sontaran commander Strax and fat, blue bar-owner Dorium Maldovar. The Time Lord discovers that Kovarian and the Silence plan to groom the child as a weapon to use against him. As the Doctor sets off to rescue the baby, River arrives and reveals to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter, all grown up. Production January to April 2011. At Lafarge Cement UK, Barry; Penllyn Castle; Uskmouth Power Station, Newport; Super Hangar, MOD St Athan, Barry; in Cardiff at the Park Plaza Hotel, Millennium Stadium car park, Westgate Street and the Maltings; Fillcare, Llantrisant; Upper Boat Studios Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill River Song – Alex Kingston Madame Kovarian – Frances Barber Fat One – Charlie Baker Thin One – Dan Johnston Lorna Bucket – Christina Chong Lucas – Joshua Hayes Dominicus – Damian Kell Madame Vastra – Neve McIntosh Jenny – Catrin Stewart Captain Harcourt – Richard Trinder Eleanor – Annabel Cleare Arthur – Henry Wood Commander Strax – Dan Starkey Dorium Maldovar – Simon Fisher-Becker Colonel Manton – Danny Sapani Henry Avery – Hugh Bonneville Toby Avery – Oscar Lloyd Voice of the Cybermen – Nicholas Briggs Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Peter Hoar Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Daddy! Amy’s baby was Flesh, but it’s all right cos Melody was River Song as a grown-up!” – shrieked Rosie to my brother-in-law. My bright little niece, aged three, was totally clued up on all this episode’s surprises. And ready to explain them to any nonplussed adult. I love watching Doctor Who with little ones: it reminds me of the magnetic hold the programme exerted over me at their age – that irresistible mix of fascination and terror. They may not grasp every nuance on first viewing, but children make the necessary leaps of faith. “This little girl. It’s all about her!” the Doctor reminds us at the top of the episode. It was ever thus with Steven Moffat. As well as the girl in the astronaut suit (Melody/River), he’s given us a girl in the fireplace (Reinette), a girl in the library (Charlotte), the little girl who waited (Amelia Pond)… Even Blink’s Sally Sparrow was a child in Moffat’s original short story. And he kicked off his Doctor Who career memorably with a boy in a gas mask. Now we’re onto babies and Amy’s sprog dissolving into banana blancmange – a horrible image guaranteed to disturb every parent. Although I guessed River would be Rory and Amy’s baby a while before, it’s still a pleasure to watch her divulge the information after three years of secrecy. The four leads must have been cock-a-hoop to turn these script pages for the first time, and their reactions on screen are expertly nuanced. Alex Kingston manages an extraordinary combination of teasing/relieved/happy/sad, while Arthur Darvill does something miraculous with his entire scalp in the final shot. So now we’ve witnessed River’s death and birth, her last and first meetings with the Doctor, and many points between. I defy you to rewatch all her episodes and construct a coherent timeline. Looking back at last year’s Flesh and Stone, we can see River was saving her own mum Amy’s life before “Melody” was even conceived. In The Big Bang, River passed by her parents’ wedding like an apparition; that was the night she was conceived, which adds a double meaning to the episode title. And now perhaps we know why she muttered, “Of course not” when she failed to shoot The Impossible Astronaut. A Good Man Goes to War confounds expectations. You might have supposed from a photo published in RT that the Cybermen would dominate this episode. In fact they appear only in the lustrous pre-titles tease, almost panicking over an intruder at their space station, who turns out to be a mightily emboldened Rory. (Great to see the Cyberfleet retaining designs from The Invasion, 1968.) A Sontaran becomes a nurse, and I love the idea of a lady Silurian leading a covert life as a Victorian avenger, polishing off Jack the Ripper. Vastra and her devoted maid/lover Jenny deserve a spin-off series. This lizard/lesbian undercurrent (homo reptilia, anyone?) proves that the perceived “gay agenda” of the Russell T Davies era is not dead. As do the self-declared “thin/fat gay married Anglican marines” and screamingly camp Dorium Maldovar – “I’m old. I’m fat. I’m blue!” I haven’t done a head count but Moffat must be emulating Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven with this motley crew of ne’er-do-wells turned goodies. Loads of characters turn up for a sort of “Hey presto!” flourish: Avery and son, now free of life-support tubing (RT removed their names from the cast list to preserve the surprise); “Danny Boy” and the Spitfires from Victory of the Daleks now travelling in time; and a Silurian army no longer hibernating on Earth but able to materialise on the spot. No time for explanations. It’s just happened and should be accepted as a bit of cartoonish fun. In all, a rather fabulous episode in which Moffat again gets to pull out the big guns. I envisage the other writers must envy him while they get lumbered with limited casts and budget. They’re like kids of yore making do with hand-me-down Lego while Steven is the little boy with the bulging, flashy toy box.
Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People ★★
Flesh doppelgangers turn on their human masters in an anaemic drama with a shock ending
Story 217 Series 6 – Episodes 5 & 6 “You haven’t been here for a long, long time” – the Doctor First UK transmissions Saturday 21 May 2011 Saturday 28 May 2011 Storyline In the midst of a solar storm, the Tardis arrives on an island in the 22nd century. An old monastery is now the base for a skeleton mining crew who are pumping acid back to the mainland. This dangerous task is largely conducted by doppelgangers, or Gangers, composed from a gloopy liquid, “programmable matter” called Flesh. The Gangers gain a higher consciousness and rebel against their oppressors. A Flesh version of the Doctor is created, as the monstrous Ganger of crew member Jennifer goes on the rampage. The Time Lord tries to establish peace between the humans and Gangers. Back in the Tardis, to Rory’s horror, he reveals that Amy has been a Flesh duplicate for a long time. She dissolves and the real Amy wakes up elsewhere on the point of giving birth – and the wicked eye-patched woman urges her to “Puuush!” Production November 2010 to April 2011 at Cardiff Castle; Caerphilly Castle; Neath Abbey; Chepstow Castle; Atlantic College, Llantwit Major; Welsh National Assembly Building, Cardiff; Fillcare, Llantrisant; Upper Boat Studios Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Jimmy – Mark Bonnar Buzzer – Marshall Lancaster Jennifer – Sarah Smart Cleaves – Raquel Cassidy Dicken – Leon Vickers Eye patch lady – Frances Barber Adam – Edmond Moulton Crew Writer – Matthew Graham Director – Julian Simpson Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern OK, first up: a bonus point for getting Dusty Springfield into Doctor Who. Love it! And so eerie, too, as You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me echoes through that 13th-century monastery cum 22nd-century acid factory. I must admit, though, I approached Matthew Graham’s latest script with trepidation, willing it to improve upon his only other effort for Who – the 2006 stinker, Fear Her. This was the only story I judged dire enough to award just one out of five stars in RT’s Doctor Who 2005–2010 book. It also came eighth from bottom in Doctor Who Magazine’s 2009 poll of every transmitted story. Surely Matthew Graham, the creative force behind the fervently lauded Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes (we’ll skate over his abortive Bonekickers), could come up with something better for Doctor Who..? Well, The Rebel Flesh has got meat on its bones. It presents an intriguing moral dilemma (the Gangers’ right to life) and sparks of originality – to me, at least: I’m not clued up on all things sci-fi. My colleague, Mark Braxton, spotted that the clones and their vat of “living flesh” are reminiscent of the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. The vat reminded me only of Kenneth Williams’s demise in Carry On Screaming: “Frying tonight!” Foreman Cleaves tells us that the Flesh is “fully programmable matter”, which can “replicate a living organism down to the hair on its chinny chin chin – even clothes”. Memories, too. Well, that’s handy, if hard to swallow. But whether they’re real humans or Gangers, none of Graham’s characters are showing many life signs yet. Raquel Cassidy, Mark Bonnar and Marshall Lancaster are scrabbling over the morsels of characterisation on offer. Sarah Smart is marginally sympathetic as Jennifer, or even her Ganger, whose elongated bonce can burst through a bog door – a tame rendition of the body horror in John Carpenter’s The Thing, which should nonetheless freak out tiny viewers. On the plus side, The Rebel Flesh is moodily shot, verging on nightmarish, a sensation enhanced towards the end by Murray Gold’s throbbing score. Yet somehow it fails to enthral. The fault may lie somewhere between the clarity of the editing and the sound mix. I don’t need to be hit over the head with detail but important explanations shouldn’t be gabbled or obfuscated with music and sound fx. The script has several toe-curlers: Jennifer’s “Sorry, Buzz. My bad”; Cleaves’s unsubtle bellyache while ferreting in her locker; and Matt Smith being lumbered with the sort of exuberant tosh David Tennant often had to spout. The second episode, The Almost People, ends on a startling cliffhanger/shock-reveal as doppelganger Amy and the check shirt she’s worn in every episode are finally exposed. Dissolved on the floor of the Tardis. How many viewers saw that one coming? Well, I had my suspicions for some time. In fact, ever since Amy’s fluctuating positive/negative pregnancy scans, our first glimpse of “eye-patch lady” Frances Barber and whatever the Silence were doing with Amy back in Day of the Moon. Those suspicions were confirmed in The Rebel Flesh when, about 25 minutes into the drama, Amy and Jimmy press the Doctor about his foreknowledge of the Flesh. If you missed it, go back and study the sustained, pained look the Time Lord gives his companion. And, then of course c18mins into The Almost People he scans Amy’s backside oh-so-surreptitiously with his sonic screwdriver. Poor Amy, though. And poor Rory – couldn’t the guy tell? They’ve presumably been bunking up in more ways than one in the Tardis sleeping quarters, yet even he hadn’t clocked she wasn’t the full Pond. That’s some artificial technology. Buyers at Ann Summers would surely be clamouring for tips from the company behind the “living flesh”… You may be questioning points of logic in the second episode. The Doctor takes the survivors into the police box and announces, “The energy from the Tardis will stabilise the Gangers for good. They’re people now.” Great, but why doesn’t this benefaction extend to the more advanced duplicate of Amy? Perhaps you’re aghast that, having shown such sympathy with the plight of the Gangers, the Doctor can so callously dissolve the duplicate Amy. She’s displayed no animosity and has been at his side for months. Matt Smith’s gabbled line (I had to replay it five times) is: “Given what we’ve learnt, I’ll be as humane as I can, but I need to do this.” Crucially, he can speak to the real Amy through her double: “You haven’t been here for a long, long time.” This duplicate has a quite different connection to her real self than the Gangers do to theirs. But these are minor points to wrestle with in a largely polished production. Filming the double Doctors must have been a logistical chore, but it’s seamless. And the message “Who are the real monsters?” comes through loud and clear. The Gangers, too rightly, are rebelling against virtual slavery and eventual purgatory. The amorphous mass of whimpering flesh, discarded in a corner of the monastery, has to be one of the most disturbing images ever on teatime telly. As Ganger Jen explains, they’ve been “left to rot, fully conscious. Imagine what kind of hell they’re in.” Similarly nightmarish is our final image of the real Amy – awake at last, locked in a tank, far from friends and told by the midwife from hell (Frances Barber) to “Puuuuuush!” out her baby. No wonder Karen Gillan lets out such a heartrending scream. Classic cliffhanger.
Suranne Jones embodies the spirit of the Tardis in Neil Gaiman's elegant romance
Story 216 Series 6 – Episode 4 “Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Yes, that’s it. Names are funny. It’s me. I’m the Tardis” – Idris First UK transmission Saturday 14 May 2011 Storyline A distress call from a Gallifreyan communication cube lures the Doctor, Amy and Rory to an asteroid outside the universe. The Tardis matrix is drained and transferred to the body of a young woman, Idris, allowing the Time Lord to bond even further with his beloved vessel. The asteroid is the domain of a malign force called House, which has drawn many Time Lords to their death and now plans to use the Tardis to escape into the universe. House leaves with the Tardis, threatening to kill Rory and Amy. The Doctor and Idris construct a makeshift Tardis from scraps and set off in pursuit. Production September to October 2010 at Dragon Studios, Pencoed; Cemex, Taff’s Well Quarry; Upper Boat Studios. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Idris – Suranne Jones Voice of House – Michael Sheen Nephew – Paul Kasey Uncle – Adrian Schiller Auntie – Elizabeth Berrington Crew Writer – Neil Gaiman Director – Richard Clark Producer – Sanne Wohlenberg Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern So many theories were bandied about as to the identity of the Doctor’s wife. How wonderful that the answer turns out to be the most elegant and, perhaps, most obvious. The Time Lord has been wedded to his Tardis pretty much from day one. In the earliest days of Doctor Who, the ship was depicted as an almost sentient force that could influence the lives of its occupants. It wasn’t until third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s day that she gained her femininity. In his debut story, Spearhead from Space, he told the Brigadier, “Oh, there she is. How nice of you to look after her for me.” Four years later, in The Time Warrior, he patted the police box and said, “Well done, old girl. Absolutely on target… For once!” From then on, “old girl” would crop up regularly as he fondled and thumped the hexagonal central console. The 11th Doctor even calls her “dear”. For hundreds of years they’ve been inseparable, touring all time and space together. The Tardis is indeed the Doctor’s partner for life. And now, momentarily, “she” has been embodied in a beautiful woman that he can converse with, touch and adore. Move over, Rose Tyler et al. At last – in powerhouse performances from Matt Smith and Suranne Jones – we see the love of the Doctor’s life. For me, that is the magic of this episode. As the story was getting under way, though, I really wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it. The grungy setting, wacko characters and peculiar dialogue were alienating, stylised after those 1990s French fantasies by Jeunet & Caro (Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children). Then, suddenly, I was captivated. Yes, there were fan-pleasing elements: the white cube Time Lord distress signal, seen only once before, way back in The War Games (1969). The spaceship graveyard and mish-mashed bodies were a steal from The Brain of Morbius (1976). The Celestial Toymaker (1966) and The Mind Robber (1968) both showed the Tardis lured beyond the normal universe and the Doctor’s companions tormented by a malign intelligence. How delightful to see so much more of the Tardis interior with its preponderance of roundels and hexagons. Other than a glimpse of wardrobe in The Christmas Invasion, this pleasure has been denied us since Who returned in 2005. Many young fans were surely thrilled to revisit the domed Christopher Eccleston/David Tennant control room, but how many fan-farts like me were holding out for the classic white version, even the wood-panelled study discovered by Sarah Jane Smith in 1976? Despite these nods to the past, I kept thinking, “Doctor Who has never been like this before” and “What the hell is going to happen next?” Prize-winning fantasy writer Neil Gaiman’s first stab at the series (given a major polish by Steven Moffat) delivers an instant oddball classic that is both breathtakingly novel but as old as the programme itself. The secret of The Doctor’s Wife is way out there – and always has been.
Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot ★★
This pirate adventure guest-starring Hugh Bonneville and Lily Cole is all at sea
Story 215 Series 6 – Episode 3 “The legend. The siren. Many a merchant ship laden with treasure has fallen prey to her” – Avery First UK transmission Saturday 7 May 2011 Storyline A 17th-century pirate ship, under the command of Captain Henry Avery, has been becalmed in a fog for eight days. Marked with a black spot, the sea dogs are being picked off one by one by an ethereal Siren and vanishing. The Tardis team struggle to gain the confidence of the anxious pirates. The Doctor realises the Siren is using reflective surfaces to cross from another dimension – and is a virtual doctor from an alien spaceship. Production January to March 2011 at Charlestown Harbour, Cornwall; Fillcare, Llantrisant; Upper Boat Studios Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Henry Avery – Hugh Bonneville Toby Avery – Oscar Lloyd The Boatswain – Lee Ross Mulligan – Michael Begley De Florres – Tony Lucken Dancer – Chris Jarman McGrath – Carl McCrystal The Siren – Lily Cole Crew Writer – Steve Thompson Director – Jeremy Webb Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern This was always going to be a bit of a comedown after those first two dazzlers. Still, Doctor Who has always been a sci-fi pick ’n’ mix. Let’s judge this episode on its own merits – and there are several bobbing among the ankle-deep bilge. Just think of the cast and crew labouring gamely over several chilly February nights in Charlestown. On screen you really do believe that this brigantine, the Phoenix of Dell Quay, is way out on the ocean, not safely moored in a Cornish harbour, overlooked by paparazzi and spoiler-fixated fans. The moonlight and mist – whether faked or real – make for superbly atmospheric cinematography. Playing the alien siren, model-turned-actress Lily Cole may look more stoat than fish, but is magnificent bathed in an ethereal, turquoise shimmer, zooming out of the water and any other available reflective surface. However, like the mermaids of maritime mythology, she makes fools of men – demanding more ardour than these actors can convincingly muster on a shrivellingly cold night shoot. I enjoy Hugh Bonneville in most things. Splendid in Iris and Downton Abbey, he was the best thing about the limping Twenty Twelve and even funnier in woebegone Bonekickers. It’s plain he’s relishing the role of Captain Henry Avery. He’s gone to the effort of growing a beard; alas, his character needed time to grow, too. Reasons for Avery “turning pirate” are left hanging in the night air. He’s an ex-naval officer, so Bonneville remains plummy and far from your typical ooh-aar cap’n. Indeed, Avery steadfastly avoids most of the cod piratical tics, although the narrative ticks off some Treasure Island essentials: scurvy knaves, cabin boy, the black spot… It’s not made abundantly clear in the dialogue, but Avery was a real-life buccaneer, notorious in the 1690s, who was never captured. It was thought he’d retired with his booty, but now we know “the treasure of the Moghul of India” was dumped overboard before Avery sailed off into space with his band of rogues! In a minor way, this story acts as a prequel to a long-ago-wiped 1960s adventure (The Smugglers). A 17th-century romp with William Hartnell’s Doctor, also filmed in Cornwall, it saw Avery’s former shipmates hunting down his hidden stash of gold. I think I know which drama I’d rather be watching. At times Steve Thompson’s episode hobbles along like Blind Pew, bunging in the underfed subplot of Avery and his son, and the Doctor implausibly abandoning the Tardis… Perhaps what irks most is the mystery of the vanishing crew. Fine, the BBC budget can only press-gang six or so sea dogs into service, and a line establishes that the rest have been picked off by the siren. But not all of the men that we do see are properly dispatched. Crucially, what happens to the boatswain (ex-EastEnder Lee Ross), the most vocal and unpleasant of Avery’s sidekicks? One minute he’s holed up with Amy and Rory in the armoury, then he disappears from the narrative entirely until the final reunion. How did he get aboard the siren’s “sickbay”? If you’re looking for a watertight plot, me hearties, that ship has sailed.
Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon ★★★★★
A cracking two-parter set in the USA takes in Nixon, Nasa, the Silence, a mysterious astronaut girl and the death of the Doctor
Story 214 Series 6 – Episodes 1 & 2 “So, this little girl. It’s all about her. Who was she?” – the Doctor First UK transmissions Saturday 23 April 2011 Saturday 30 April 2011 Storyline Tardis-blue envelopes invite Amy, Rory and River to meet the Doctor, now aged 1,103, in the middle of the American West. As they enjoy a picnic at Lake Silencio, an Apollo 11 astronaut emerges from the water and blasts the Time Lord dead. Later, at a diner they meet the 909-year-old Doctor and conceal his fate from him. They travel to the White House in 1969 where President Nixon is haunted by eerie late-night phone calls from a child in trouble. Assisting the investigation of FBI agent Canton Delaware, the Doctor’s team trace her to a warehouse in Florida, five miles from Cape Kennedy Space Center. The Silence have a base here – hideous creatures that our minds forget as soon as we look away – and they’ve encased the little girl in the astronaut suit. Three months later, a bearded Doctor is incarcerated and River, Amy and Rory are on the run from the FBI. This is a smokescreen to fool the Silence. The child is now located in the derelict Graystark Hall orphanage, where the Silence ensnare Amy. As Neil Armstrong sets foot on the Moon, the Doctor cuts into the live TV broadcast and transmits footage of a Silent so that humans will at last register the insidious aliens and turn against them. Amy is rescued, but what of the little girl? In a New York alley, she starts to regenerate… Production October to November 2010. At Tredegar House, Newport; Avondale Crescent, Grangetown; Millennium Stadium, Cardiff; Coal Exchange, Cardiff Bay; Troy House, Monmouth; Johnsey Estates, Pontypool; Cardiff University; and Upper Boat Studios. November 2010 in the USA at the Valley of the Gods and Monument Valley, Utah; and Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona. January 2011 at Fillcare, Llantrisant. Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill River Song – Alex Kingston Canton Delaware – Mark Sheppard Old Canton Delaware – William Morgan Sheppard The Silent – Marnix van den Broeke President Richard Nixon – Stuart Milligan Doctor Renfrew – Kerry Shale Carl – Chuk Iwuji Phil – Mark Griffin Little girl (Melody) – Sydney Wade Joy – Nancy Baldwin Prison guard – Kieran O’Connor Captain Simmons – Adam Napier Matilda – Henrietta Clemett Charles – Paul Critoph Busboy – Emilio Aquino Gardner – Glenn Wrage Grant – Jeff Mash Sergeant – Tommy Campbell Doctor Shepherd – Peter Banks Eye patch lady (Madam Kovarian) – Frances Barber Tramp – Ricky Fearon Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Toby Haynes Producer – Marcus Wilson Designer – Michael Pickwoad Music – Murray Gold Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern Not everyone likes their Doctor Who sliced the same way, but to my taste The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon are two of the most savoury morsels yet made. Top marks to writer Steven Moffat, director Toby Haynes and the cast for 90 minutes of hugely entertaining television. Witty, creepy and bamboozling, this demands the viewers’ close attention to keep up with the plot and catch tiny yet significant details. In 2017, with some trepidation, I went back to watch this season opener for the first time in six years. I found it just as enjoyable – perhaps more so, now knowing how all the head-scratching mysteries would play out, observing how deftly they’re established here… The “killing” of the 1,103-year-old Doctor…The identity of the assassin inside the Apollo spacesuit… Amy’s pregnancy that never was… The sidelong glances of mistrust the Doctor casts her way… The weirdness of the little girl, and why there’s a photo of Amy and a baby in her room… Frances Barber peering through a hatch, saying, “No, I think she’s just dreaming”… The agonising tease of “Who is River Song?” and how much she knows… And then that gob-slackening cliffhanger as the sickly girl, looking like Cosette from Les Misérables, wanders the backstreets of New York and suddenly regenerates. Who the hell is she!? It’s hard to cast back to a point when answers weren’t readily available. But I vividly recall the night when I first saw this story – several weeks before transmission, on 4 April 2011. The BBC staged a screening for cast and crew, industry bigwigs, fans young and old, and eager ladies and gentlemen of the press at the Doctor Who Experience’s first home at Olympia. We piled into the auditorium and sat pinned to our seats for a feature-length edition up on the big screen. “You make Doctor Who to be frightening. That’s how children rank the episodes – in order of frightening-ness,” said Steven Moffat afterwards, on stage with his four lead actors. All were enthused about the coming series. “There are so many cliffhangers and secrets,” said Arthur Darvill, recalling their excitement as each new script arrived. “We’ve been theorising ourselves,” said Matt Smith, sitting alongside Karen Gillan. Alex Kingston promised that River’s secrets would soon be revealed, but she remained sphinx-like that night. All she’d tease was: “Can she be trusted?” Move over, Barbarella, Uhura, Ripley, Rose Tyler… Kingston’s River Song is the number one science-fiction female. She’s got it all: fearlessness, fierce intelligence, sex appeal, an in-built enigma, dazzling gun skills (she’s fabulous when she spins round zapping the Silents), plus she dabbles in archaeology (“Love a tomb!”). With immense serenity she’ll dive backwards off a Manhattan skyscraper, quite confident that the Doctor will save her with his police box – and swimming pool. Just when River and her spoilers edge towards infuriating, Steven Moffat undercuts the swagger and gives her a moment of tenderness. She opens her heart to Rory and reiterates the sorrow of her relationship with the Time Lord: “We’re travelling in opposite directions. Every time we meet, I know him more, he knows me less. I live for the days when I see him, but I know that every time I do, he’ll be one step further away. And the day is coming when I’ll look into that man’s eyes, my Doctor, and he won’t have the faintest idea who I am. And I think it’s going to kill me.” With great skill, he inserts this interlude into the tense sequence when River and Rory are exploring the eerie tunnels leading to the lair of the Silence – or Silents (both spellings apply). The new aliens are simple but effective. Echoing the tormented soul in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, they lurk on the fringes of our perception – like so many of Moffat’s creations. If we look away, the Silence edit themselves from our memory. They lurk in deserts, the White House and ladies’ toilets, haunt an incredibly creepy, derelict orphanage... The scenes here, with Silence dangling from the ceiling, provide some of the eeriest moments ever presented in the programme. And director Toby Haynes is in total command, racking up the suspense and delivering thrills. He’s completing a run of five consecutive episodes, and – as I once told him in 2015 – it’s such a shame he hasn’t come back to direct more. He’s just as assured with the Wild West vistas, the open expanses of Monument Valley and the serene lake where the Doctor is supposedly killed. Even when filming in Wales, Haynes achieves a convincing sense of time and place. “Space, 1969!” the Doctor coos, excitedly – as the action encompasses the Nasa space program and the Moon landing. This is the first time Doctor Who filmed wholeheartedly in the USA. Previous outings, The Chase (1965), the Paul McGann TV movie (1996) and Daleks in Manhattan (2007) were a bit of a cheat. The script celebrates much that is great about America. Hell, even “Tricky Dicky” President Nixon gets a good press here. His reactions to the Tardis and Canton’s request to marry another man are priceless. And thus the chills are leavened with chuckles: at the start the Doctor flits through history, upstaging Laurel and Hardy, and dubs his chums “the Legs, the Nose and Mrs Robinson”. The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon launches series six like a rocket. It marks a return to proper, scary Doctor Who, leaves many tantalising threads dangling and ends on a dazzling cliffhanger. What more could you ask for?
Dickensian fun with Matt Smith, Michael Gambon, Katherine Jenkins – and a flying shark
Story 213 Christmas Special 2010 ‘We’re halfway out of the dark” – Kazran Sardick Storyline Honeymooners Amy and Rory are trapped on a space liner, on a collision course with the planet Ember. Much of the world below is owned by Kazran Sardick, a heartless miser who refuses to help the Doctor. The Time Lord goes back into Kazran’s boyhood to try to make him a better person. As a young man, Kazran falls for Abigail, a woman kept in cryogenic suspension. The Doctor takes him to visit her every Christmas Eve, but they are unaware that she is dying. The older Kazran is unswayed until he meets himself as a boy and is united with Abigail for her last day of life. First UK transmission Christmas Day 2010 Production July to August, October 2010. At Mir Steel, Newport; Coal Exchange, Cardiff Bay; Wrinstone House, Wenvoe; Johnsey Estates, Pontypool; Upper Boat Studios Cast The Doctor – Matt Smith Kazran/Elliot Sardick – Michael Gambon Abigail Pettigrew – Katherine Jenkins Amy Pond – Karen Gillan Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill Young Kazran – Laurence Belcher Adult Kazran – Danny Horn Pilot – Leo Bill Captain – Pooky Quesnel Co-pilot – Micah Balfour Old Benjamin – Steve North Boy & Benjamin – Bailey Pepper Servant – Tim Plester Eric – Nick Malinowski Isabella – Laura Rogers Old Isabella – Meg Wynn-Owen Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Toby Haynes Producer – Sanne Wohlenberg Music – Murray Gold Production designer – Michael Pickwoad Executive producers – Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis RT review by Patrick Mulkern Well, they all stressed that it was going to be a “very Christmassy” Christmas special: Matt Smith in RT… director Toby Haynes at the season finale preview in June 2010… Arthur Darvill when I interviewed him in November 2010… even Katherine Jenkins… I’d met her earlier that summer at the wedding of my friends Richard and Mandy Marson, when she was hot-foot from the Doctor Who set. Perhaps there was still some Sardicktown stardust about her because, miraculously, La Jenkins was the only lady guest whose high heels didn’t sink into the sodden church lawn. And she was besieged by questions. “Who are you playing?” “I can’t say.” “Are you an alien?” “I can’t say.” “Do you have a purple face and yellow spots?” (My question.) “I can’t say!” She’s good at secrets is Katherine. A Christmas Carol is indeed a “very Christmassy” special – the first for Steven Moffat and Matt Smith. An undisguised steal from Dickens, in this time-jumping, occasionally dark tale, the Doctor acts as a ghost of Christmas past to the Great Gambon’s Scrooge-like Kazran Sardick. There is of course snow, a “sleigh ride” and, bizarrely, fish. Cute fog-borne tiddlers and a gigantic gnashing mummy shark. Plus, La Jenkins gets to sing twice: the final soothing, soaring carol penned by Murray Gold is quite beautiful. Moffat’s Christmas Carol is no turkey, that’s for sure, a marked improvement on recent Who specials, but gets a stingy three out of five from me. Why not five? Points docked for a noisy unintelligible start, an awkward co-incidence and a few moments of “Eh? How did they do that?” Also I’m an inveterate miser unswayed by seasonal goodwill. Smith is as ever wonderful, entering the fray à la Santa (descending a chimney). His and Karen Gillan’s names are joined in the title sequence by Arthur Darvill – yay! – cementing his position at the programme’s core. However, Amy and Rory, role-playing again as kissagram cop and centurion, are tangential to the plot, and it’s a surprise not to see Jenkins’s and Michael Gambon’s names up in lights. You’d never guess this is the mezzo’s acting debut, while the latter is probably the best Doctor Who we never had. Imagine, for a moment, if the Great Gambon had taken over from the Great Baker c1979… Honorable mentions for the younger Kazrans: cute kid Laurence Belcher and Danny Horn, a pretty face fresh from drama school. It’s a hard swallow that either might age into hangdog Gambon. For all his gifts, he was never a looker. Steven Moffat tells his first yuletide tale with brio and sprinkles it with stardust. Radio Times interview with Arthur Darvill