Doctor Who series 5 episodes 12-13

In his final review, Tom Steward dons a fez and faces his greatest enemies…

The Pandorica Opens

I’d grown weary of the ongoing storyline about a crack in time and space and was hardly looking forward to this arc-heavy two-part finale. As far as I was concerned, the serial storyline was an unwelcome afterthought to the best and tightest one-off episodes (Vampires of Venice, The Lodger).

Inevitably, I found the plot developments fairly uninteresting in this opener. The viewer was bombarded with story information designed to assert a coherent narrative behind the season. In fact, it was increasingly obvious that Moffat was clutching at straws narratively, dazzling the viewer with plot points to disguise gaping holes in plausibility and logic. In particular, the intergalactic rogue’s gallery of villains and re-imagining of the living plastic Autons as intelligent androids raised more questions than answers.

What alleviated this unbalanced storytelling in The Pandorica Opens was the sheer sense of adventure. Bare-back horse riding, archaeological excavations of Stonehenge, torch-lit underground labyrinths – it was like a much improved Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In particular, Amy’s tussle with the various body parts of a Cyberman was breathlessly exciting and frightening. Light costume drama moments concerning the Romans and River Song’s alliance helped a lot.

It was pleasing to see that Moffat had avoided many of the pitfalls of the Davies-era season finales. There were no Doctor-companion reunions or looming threats to the Earth. The danger was far more conceptual and universal and the episode only went as far as stockpiling former Dr. Who adversaries. Moffat also managed to rectify the off-key writing of River Song in the Weeping Angels two-parter, turning her into a more straightforwardly compelling action heroine, a shift in persona that Alex Kingston clearly relished.

Karen Gillan showed herself to be the equal of Smith’s melodrama with her extraordinary facial performance during the Cyberman fight, the programme clearly now trusting in the actors much more to carry action sequences, rather than special effects. Smith’s performance, despite another unnecessary speech utterly unsuited to his vocal style, was magnificent – statuesque and operatically tragic in his futile struggles against his inevitable fate and the concomitant end of time and space.

The Big Bang

The real pleasures of this final episode lay in its time-hopping first half-hour. The breathless opening section of The Big Bang in which the Doctor and his companions jumped around time and space creating a number of mini-paradoxes was warm, witty, brainteasing and done with a refreshing lightness of touch.

These vignettes nicely undercut the portentousness that was a hangover from the tragic ending of the opener, drawing a line under the solemnity and self-pity introduced into the finales of Davies’ seasons. Moving from elegiac tour-de-force to adorable slapstick, Smith’s performance catalysed this tonal shift, recalling the way that Patrick Troughton’s tomfoolery would temper some of his darkest serials (e.g. The Invasion).

This was followed by an equally wonderful mid-section in which the Doctor and his companions were chased around the National Museum by a Dalek. Thrilling yet understated, the sequence introduced peril into stark yet familiar locations, just as the programme used to draw maximum excitement out of its mundane settings. My first memory of Dr. Who was of Daleks pursuing Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred through a secondary school (Remembrance of the Daleks), and it is burned into my brain to this day. Were I a young viewer now, I think the museum sequences would have the same effect on me.

For my money, the episode started to fall apart in the denouement, as major plot developments and resolutions started to take place in characters’ imaginations. This made for an insubstantial end to the season, Moffat using memory and subjectivity to give him carte blanche to do what he wanted with characters and solutions to narrative dilemmas. Despite these reservations about Moffat’s storytelling abilities, what makes him superior to Davies as a writer is his comprehension of how to do long-form narrative arcs. Rather than building and building to an explosive season climax and then resetting the clock the following year as before, Moffat kept back a number of key story points (the origins of the crack, the identity of River Song) for future episodes, suggesting that his tenure may have a single story arc running through it.

Thanks to Tom for his brilliant blog posts! For those coming late to the party, here is his series rundown, and parts one, two, three and four of his episode reviews!

Billy Wilder’s tips for writers

Billy Wilder had a theory about everything and, like so many of the great directors, he was also a great raconteur. Just before he died, a book of his conversations with Cameron Crowe was published.  It’s no accident that so many wonderful film books are structured in this way (I’m thinking of Truffaut’s dialogues with Hitchcock and Bogdanovich’s with Welles). Conversations with Wilder is a book I treasure, full of technical insight and bitchy gossip about old Hollywood. It has personal significance too, since I bought it with a book voucher from my secondary school before I went off to university to study film!

Wilder with his favourite star, Jack Lemmon

Wilder had a long and fascinating career, as both a writer and director. Ninotchka, Ball of Fire, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes… these are all films I’ve returned to with pleasure again and again. In fact, Wilder was so prolific that there’s many more I’ve yet to see. Given my love of Kirk Douglas, I’m especially looking forward to Ace in the Hole!

In the back of the Crowe book of conversations, Wilder lists his advice to budding writers. I’ve had a photocopy blue-tacked next to my desk for years.

WILDER’S TIPS TO WRITERS

1. The audience is fickle.

2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.

3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.

4. Know where you’re going.

5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.

8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they are seeing.

9. The event that occurs at the second-act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then -

11. – that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Still, don’t worry if you have trouble keeping to Wilder’s rules. Nobody’s perfect!

Doctor Who series 5 episodes 10-11

Continuing his series rundown, Tom Steward throws out the sunflowers and climbs the stairs…

Vincent and the Doctor

Some viewers have seen this episode as a genuine attempt to revive the Dr. Who historical. These were stories set in syllabus-friendly periods of human history (The Romans, The Aztecs) without any science fiction elements, except the TARDIS. Historicals were prevalent in the early years of the show when its remit was to educate as well as entertain. Episodes of this kind went into decline after Scottish clan serial The Highlanders in 1967 and haven’t been seen since the twenties-set English country house mystery Black Orchid in 1981.

This episode about final year in the life of Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t exactly free of science-fiction but it was clearly much more interested in art history and biography than the vague ‘invisible monster’ sub-plot. I would like to see the historical make a return. However, I think the claim that the weak monster storyline was a deliberate strategy to enhance the historical credentials of this episode are making excuses for Curtis approaching the script with a dearth of story ideas. I can’t tell whether my antipathy towards this episode is due to my contempt for Richard Curtis’s ineptitude as a screenwriter or because it was so alien to what I think of as good Dr. Who.

The story, such as it was, stopped dead after about thirty minutes, abandoning content in favour of incessant hugging and people saying goodbye. This was disappointing given what a half-decent horror writer could’ve done with the concept of an invisible monster. To give Curtis his due, the first half-hour was decent enough. Though squandering numerous opportunities for scares and intrigue, there were a few good gags of the kind I genuinely didn’t think the writer was capable of any more. Thanks to Smith, Karen Gillan and Tony Curran (as Van Gogh), the schmaltz had a touching resonance to it for the most part.

My major beef was with the final ten minutes. In these latter scenes, I felt both that I could’ve been watching any programme and that it had been completely overtaken by Curtis. The insipid music and Curtis’ emotional manipulation of the audience in the closing moments suggested that the writer cared far more about reaffirming his persona that the programme he was authoring.

The Lodger

Despite having low expectations, I was quite taken with this episode. Notwithstanding a facility for entertaining dialogue and writing highly regarded Dr. Who novels in the hiatus period, Gareth Roberts’ episodes in the Davies era (The Shakespeare Code, The Unicorn and the Wasp) only worked gag-to-gag, and were always dramatically disappointing. We got the best of him in this episode. Roberts based the episode around a solid comic premise, the classic sitcom trope of an odd couple flat share, rather than a set of individual gags. This development in his writing since his collaborations with Davies also demonstrates how much more successful comedy has been in this last season under Moffat.

The script dealt thoughtfully with some important (if resolutely first world) social questions about life in contemporary Britain – should you stay at home and find love or explore the world and follow your dreams? Like the Silurians two parter, this episode recycled imagery from previous eras of the programme, namely the early Pertwee period where the Doctor was trapped on Earth, as he is here. The references, however, were beautifully integrated into a coherent concept rather than randomly juxtaposed.

Still, there were several problems with the episode. The direction (variable in quality throughout the season) by Catherine Morshead was dodgy, underestimating the scare potential of the mysterious upstairs room premise. She also screwed up the football match sequence, which should have used former professional Smith’s ball skills to demonstrate the Doctor’s superhuman tendencies (as with the cricket match in Black Orchid) but was cluttered with cutting and montage. The denouement was disappointing in terms of story – why does every story’s resolution seem to hinge on ‘the love of a good man for a good woman’?

But this all pales into insignificance given the sublime performance by Smith. He managed to despatch an ostensibly comic performance without altering the Doctor’s characterisation, persona or his acting style one iota. This is something I genuinely think Tennant (and Eccleston, actually) would be incapable of doing. This is also the episode where Smith consolidated his interpretation of the role. His impeccably choreographed awkward social fumblings and misunderstandings brought out the idea of the Doctor as a misfit outsider stronger than ever before.

Read Tom’s previous reviews here, here and here!

Dressed to Kill (1946)

Read my previous Rathbone reviews here and here!

The last Universal Sherlock Holmes film is something of a mixed bag. As usual there’s plenty to enjoy but, thirteen films on, there are real signs of strain and repetition here. Basil Rathbone, worried about typecasting, had elected not to renew his contract before shooting began. There’s a flatness to the film that may have resulted from a general winding down and, unfortunately, this isn’t quite the last hurrah that the series deserved.

• Dressed to Kill might seem like a strange title for a Holmes movie. While Basil and Nigel are impeccably turned out as usual, it’s the female villain Hilda Courtney (Patricia Morison) that’s the subject here! The working title had been Prelude to Murder, somewhat more atmospheric and appropriate given that the plot concerns a musical cipher.
• A lot of plot elements are reproduced from previous films. There’s the multi-part cipher from Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, the tracking down of antiques from The Pearl of Death, and the formidable female villain from The Spider Woman and The Woman in Green. As in The Pearl of Death, there’s a hint of perversity in the obsession of henchman Hamid (Harry Cording) with Hilda Courtney.

Patricia Morison steps out with her co-stars

• Being an old schoolfriend of Dr. Watson is, once again, shown to be a perilous occupation. Here, poor old Julian ‘Stinky’ Emery (Edmund Breon) soon gets a knife in the back.
• We begin as Watson proudly looks over his latest publication in The Strand magazine – A Scandal in Bohemia. He mentions that the case occurred two years ago (in 1944?) and goes on to talk about Irene Adler, the woman who bested Holmes. Clearly, we are supposed to see Hilda Courtney as a new Irene Adler.
• Later in the film, Hilda will fool Watson by using a smoke bomb, as in A Scandal in Bohemia. She goes on to prove her mettle by trapping Holmes, cleverly baiting him through his knowledge of tobacco ash. In a very thrilling sequence, Holmes is handcuffed and hung from a girder as poisonous Nazi gas pumps out of a car engine. Not just poisonous gas, folks. Poisonous NAZI gas. Needless to say, Holmes escapes!
• Watson attempts to cheer up a frightened child by quacking like a duck. Unfortunately, this brings her to the verge of tears.
• The film ends at Samuel Johnson’s house with a nice example of Rathbone being a badass. Having shot Hamid, he deadpans, “I believe this fellow on the floor could use some medical attention. We must see that he looks his best, you know, when he’s hanged.” The emphasis that Rathbone places on that final word is just beautiful.
• Holmes gives Watson all the credit for solving the case; Watson chuckles, puffs out his chest and says, “I don’t think I could have done it entirely without Mr. Holmes’ help!” It’s a charming note on which to end the film, and the series.

Doctor Who series 5 episodes 7-9

Tom Steward has happy dreams but finds something unpleasant underground…

Amy’s Choice

A fantastic episode in every sense of the word. Stories set predominantly in fantasy spaces have a long history in the show. The third Dr. Who serial, a two parter called Edge of Destruction, had the Doctor and his companions psychically induced by the TARDIS into paranoid fantasies. Over the decades we’ve had The Mind Robber set in a parallel universe of fiction and several stories which explore the Freudian dream world of ‘The Matrix’ on the Doctor’s home planet Gallifrey such as The Deadly Assassin or The Ultimate Foe.

Stories such as these have been thin on the ground for a long time now, but Amy’s Choice made a case for commissioning more in the future. Sitcom writer Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) seemed an unusual choice for this episode but his ornate and surreal dialogue enlivened the ponderous aspects of the episode: ‘If you had any more tawdry quirks, you’d have to open a tawdry quirk shop’.

Smith reached a new level of brilliance with his facility for absurd comedy and sublime moments of acting weirdness. Toby Jones is one of Britain’s finest screen actors and as the Dream Lord he provided one of the most compelling, entertaining and exquisitely devised villains in the show’s history. This was also an extremely challenging episode that showed violence towards old people as part of its fantasy plotting, something I found very brave and consonant with the new series’ proclivities towards adult horror fiction.

The Hungry Earth

This was a promising start to a much-anticipated two-parter heralding the return of some long-neglected Dr. Who monsters: underground-dwelling, prehistoric reptiles The Silurians. The Silurians appeared twice during the Pertwee/Letts era in Doctor Who and The Silurians and The Sea Devils, which raised moral quandaries about genocide and colonialism. A hotchpotch of references to the Pertwee serials of the early 1970s (the drill from Inferno, the rural Welsh factory town of The Green Death), this was entertaining enough for one episode, however gratuitous and jumbled the homage often seemed.

The tendency towards smaller casts and settings (another village community) seen throughout the season made this serial a lot more enjoyable and dramatically successful than Russell T. Davies’ many attempts to create the TV equivalents of bloated Hollywood blockbuster disaster movies, like the 2009 Christmas Special Voyage of the Damned. This trip down seventies lane whet the appetite for the comeback of the Silurians but it was clear from the little we saw of them in this opener that they were to be a let-down. They were visually unexciting, confusingly written, and far too humanised even in this instalment. This was, however, a prime example of the show addressing the nation’s children and their issues by making good use of Smith’s chemistry with younger actors. The scenes involving the Doctor and his burgeoning friendship with the dyslexic son of the man kidnapped by the Silurians are amongst the best in this season.

Cold Blood

Cold bloody awful! This was a shocking conclusion to the two parter. The Silurians made an ill-advised return in the Peter Davison serial Warriors of the Deep in 1984 and had become dull and repetitive. Here they were even worse.

Ensnared by stodgy, dialogue-heavy scenes, the actors playing the Silurians – resembling characters from early 90s anthromorphic cartoons such as Dinosaurs or Fraggle Rock - never had a chance. No story of any interest emerged once the characters had entered the Silurians’ underground society. Moreover, the opportunity to discuss moral dilemmas surrounding indigenous populations, arguably the original motive behind these monsters, was completely missed. Environmentalism and coalition governments were on the agenda, but completely scuffed by pretensions of epic science-fiction and abrupt shifts between political debate and action.

Other causes for concern were the deeply misogynistic subplots suggesting women’s inability to make clear moral choices and their inferiority to benevolent patriarchs. The use of voiceover, which leadened many of the stories in the Davies/Tennant years, especially finale The End of Time, was similarly pointless here. Cold Blood was partially redeemed by a final ten minutes which gave an emotional clout to the ongoing ‘crack in time’ arc. Smith also deserves credit for still being able to provide several moments of classic Dr. Who overacting. His hammy writhing on the Silurians’ medical examination board was worthy of the finest pantomime of Pertwee and Troughton while his look of horror at the close of the episode fondly recalled Hartnell’s spine-tingling stares into the distance.

Alan Moore remembers Harvey Pekar

Dodgem Logic have posted a lovely Pekar tribute by Alan Moore. Heaven only knows why, but The Washington Post commissioned the piece from Moore and then never used it. Do go and read it here.

Art by Alan Moore

Gumshoe trails #4

“Darling, you don’t need mystery. You’ve got something much better, something more alluring.” “What?” “Me!”

After the Thin Man (1936)

Doctor Who series 5 episodes 4-6

The second installment of Tom Steward‘s review series. Read the first part here and his series overview here!

The Time of Angels

This two-parter was instantly hailed as a classic Dr. Who story by fans and TV critics. I didn’t care for it much. It was clearly technically brilliant. Powerful location shooting bucked the trend for increasingly alienating CGI in the past few years, and the cinematography was remarkable, especially in the cave sequences which were lit perfectly for maximum eerieness.

Moffat’s breathless pacing provided a thrilling pre-credits teaser but continued unabated into the episode stunting the growth of the characters, especially the Doctor and Amy. It forced the actors into maintaining the pace of the action rather than refining their performances. The re-introduction of mystery scientist River Song (Alex Kingston) seemed lamely underwritten, as the actress struggled to maintain a coherent tone. Even Matt looked nervous.

The main problem was the mishandling of the Weeping Angels, first seen in Moffat’s acclaimed Blink in 2008. The mythology of these monsters had been re-jigged so that they no longer sent people back through time and were now capable of coming to life through images. This jettisoned that which made them genuinely dread-inducing in the first place for the sake of a few gaspworthy set pieces.

And while I like the notion of the Doctor as a man of action (martial arts master Pertwee is my favourite) the episode tried to oversell the idea to the viewer. This resulted in an embarrassingly babbled rabble-rousing monologue in the closing moments, completely undermining the silent mystique of the action hero.

Flesh and Stone

Contrary to popular opinion, as I usually am with Dr. Who, I much preferred the second part of this story. Unlike the opener, which leapt around aimlessly for much of its running time, this concluding episode was intense and exciting throughout. Like The Beast Below, the episode was saved by an extraordinary horror moment: a scene where viewers finally witness the Angels move. It played brilliantly on deep-seated anxieties – like inanimate objects coming to life – and made fine use of the inherently sinister art of mime. This really pushed the boundaries of horror in a way promised but never achieved by The Time of Angels.

I was also pleased that the show used this episode to put to bed (quite literally) the annoying sexual tension between the Doctor and his female companions, introduced by the flawed 1996 movie and institutionalised since Davies took over as producer. While still acknowledging the viewers who, since 2005, tuned into the show as a soap opera, the show finally distanced itself from the romantic undertones of the central double act.

Reducing romance to base comedy and innuendo (‘Amy Pond, I need to sort you out’), Flesh and Stone demonstrated clearly to the viewer that consummation was no longer a possibility in the show’s fictional world. Elsewhere, Moffat’s overly busy plotting reared its head again, unsuccessfully trying to merge a one-off story with an increasingly self-important season arc. The real victims of this were the Angels, surely fascinating enough monsters on their own.

Vampires of Venice

I have nothing but good things to say about this episode. This was simply the best Dr. Who story since the melancholy Survival in 1989, the last serial starring Sylvester McCoy before the 15-year hiatus.

Being Human creator Toby Whithouse’s handling of some fairly clichéd series conventions (gothic horror monsters that turn out to be aliens) was pitch-perfect; wittily crafted, dramatically sturdy, and the perfect mixture of flamboyance and restraint. Whithouse has an amazing talent for intermingling the macabre and the comic. Nowhere better can this be seen than the pre-credits teaser which passed seamlessly from sixteenth century Venice to a stag night in modern day rural England.

The stripper

The emotional impact of the episode, whether in the relationship between Amy and fiancée Rory or the tragic backstory of the ‘fish from space’, was always poignant and sincere. But the expert use of the 45-minute format is what really impressed me. Impeccably paced and minimally written, this episode didn’t lack or condense story and content, as with so many of the others in this season, and across the last five years.

Tonally, Vampires of Venice was flawless. Storylines about genocide and racial exile were given due seriousness whilst the wackier elements, such as swordplay and magic ‘on/off’ switches, were suitably ludicrous. The imminent threat and danger in this episode were underlined by some nicely understated yet charismatic villain performances and unseen budget-saving monsters. Charmingly, the most vicious of the aquatic aliens was signified indirectly by bubbles effervescing on the Venice canals.

Doctor Who series 5 episodes 1-3

Tom Steward continues his look back at this year’s series! Read his overview here.

The Eleventh Hour

This deliberately lightweight introduction to the new series smoothed the transition from the madcap farce of the Davies era. It’s been traditional in Dr. Who for the first episode under a new producer and actor to be a tribute to the departing crew and cast. For example, the debut of fourth Doctor Tom Baker and producer Philip Hinchcliffe – Robot – was a serial set in the familiar world of UNIT, paying tribute to the Pertwee and Letts Earth-bound era of hard action.

For the majority of this episode, Smith’s Doctor was dressed in Tennant’s clothes, his performance still couched in the floaty-eyed wonder of his predecessor. Rather than doing an impression, though, Smith was thoughtful and surprising where Tennant was grating and increasingly predictable.

Successful Who premieres also make significant breaks and their intentions clear straight off. The Eleventh Hour‘s comedy was predominantly verbal not visual. The settings were mundane and classically British (a quiet rural hamlet), and the Doctor came out not entirely sympathetically. As sharp a contrast as Tom Baker failing to karate-chop a brick Pertwee-style in the final scene of Robot!

The Beast Below

Although the challenges of a second episode (maintaining pace and performances) were ably met by Moffat and his brilliant actors, this episode exposed some of the new series’ weaknesses. The shift to Davies-like sentimentality in the latter stages tried too hard to pigeonhole the relationship between the Doctor and Amy as romantic before it had time to develop. This was a shame as the early part of the episode defined the dynamic more plausibly as one of teacher and student.

Moffat’s script was plot-heavy and reduced potentially fascinating characters, in particular Terrence Hardiman (The Demon Headmaster) as a shadowy government official, to mere exposition devices. The episode’s heart-stopping momentum made some plot elements (cryptic rhymes, unknown threats) almost incomprehensible.

However, Moffat’s horror credentials were shown off by one of the most terrifying introductions to a TV programme I can remember. The sequence, involving schoolchildren, subterranean elevators and the ventriloquist dummy-like Smilers, was a buffet of scares. Playing on basic but potent fears (dummies coming to life, slow-turning heads), it was nuts-and-bolts British horror par excellence. I haven’t been this chilled by the series since 1989′s Ghost Light, the underrated Sylvester McCoy’s disquieting and intangible haunted house chamber drama.

Effortlessly dopey and likeable, like his oft-cited favourite Patrick Troughton, Smith also displayed a genuinely awful temper, recalling the more abrasive William Hartnell. It was a magnificent performance, reviving the ambiguity and uneasiness lacking in his predecessor.

Victory of the Daleks

There was great fan animosity towards this episode, as there usually is to more historically-oriented serials. Criticism focused on the re-design of the Doctor’s most popular and established adversaries, the Daleks, as distended New Minis available in all pupil-burning colours.

I was equally nonplussed by the makeover, although it certainly reflects how the Daleks have been pop art design icons since the height of ‘Dalekmania’ in the mid-1960s. It’s a shame that this episode was so easily dismissed, as it’s a ripping yarn reminiscent of post-war comic strips like Eagle’s Dan Dare, with a very British sense of the mundane (the Daleks carrying box files and serving tea).

The writing was sharp, witty and minimalistic, with a historical rigour now sadly all too infrequent in the series. Ian McNiece’s Winston Churchill and the sub-plot of a pilot and servicewoman whose love is torn apart by war have also been subject to criticism. For my money, the portrayal of Churchill as essentially an underworld boss of dubious morality was bold and revisionist, avoiding the jingoistic hagiography usually associated with the historical figure. The restrained and de-personalised treatment of the romantic couple was totally appropriate to a story set during the collective effort of wartime.

It was also an episode that acknowledged the history of the series, with affectionate reprises of Troughton-era Dalek serials, reflections on how the Daleks used to look, how they used to be filmed and even how they found an afterlife as toys.

Sherlock: The Great Game review

Contains spoilers! You can read my reviews of A Study in Pink here and The Blind Banker here.

You might remember that last week’s Sherlock left me pretty down in the mouth. In particular, I was concerned that we weren’t getting enough plot to fill the 90-minute format, and that the episode made Sherlock and John into generic 21st century crimefighters. To a large extent, Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game showed a return to form, but it also left me feeling very uncertain about the show’s future.

Unsurprisingly, Gatiss craftily steered his plot around Canonical landmarks – combining material from The Bruce-Partington Plans and The Final Problem, slyly nodding toward The Five Orange Pips, A Scandal In Bohemia, A Study in Scarlet, The Musgrave Ritual and The Empty House. As we’ve come to expect, there were nods to the Rathbone films as well, with The Golem an homage to The Hoxton Creeper from The Pearl of Death and Moriarty’s puzzles for Holmes recalling The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Rondo Hatton as The 'Oxton Creeper

Structured as a series of consecutive cases, these puzzles allowed us to see Sherlock and John at work in number of different environments. This was just what I wanted last week’s episode to do – give us a sense of how the two men work at different cases together, what roles they play, and how this shapes the rhythm of their lives together.

Cumberbatch and Freeman were on typically fine form, and given lots of nice character moments. John’s anger and frequent embarrassment at Sherlock’s dispassionate method were especially well performed. I was pleased to see Rupert Graves return and, given my previous reservations, was surprised at how effective Mark Gatiss was in his scenes as Mycroft. Stripped of the ‘is he Moriarty?’ conceit, Gatiss was suitably condescending. Una Stubbs was given just the right amount of screen time, but I felt sorry for poor Zoe Telford. I hope she’ll be written better in the next series.

I liked that Gatiss gave Sherlock some Victorian dialogue. You’ll remember I wasn’t keen on changing “the game is afoot” to “the game is on”. Cumberbatch is a good enough actor to make antiquated language sound appropriate for his Sherlock. So it was nice to hear him saying things like “ten-a-penny” and “meretricious”! Conversely, there were some updated elements that jarred – was I the only one to cringe at Cadogan West’s translation to ‘Westy’?

Paul McGuigan’s direction had settled down a lot from the first episode. I was especially impressed by the fight in the planetarium, which counterpointed Holst and Peter Davison’s dulcet tones in a blur of light and colour. The shot of West’s body carried away on the train was another nice composition. This episode’s score was excellent as well, with David Arnold and Michael Price’s brooding strings really adding to the menace.

Well, except for at one point. You know, the point where the woman off Peak Practice said “Moriarty” and the music went DOOM-DAH DOOM-DAH DOOM-DAH!!!

Ah, Moriarty. You really messed everything up, didn’t you? Why did the programme makers feel the need to use such an exaggerated effect? Surely Sherlock knew it was Moriarty who was behind all of this? We certainly did.

Andrew Scott as 'Jim' Moriarty.

Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, but I can’t really see any connection between Conan Doyle’s master criminal and the hyperactive psychopath played by Andrew Scott. His flamboyance and aggressive craziness reminded me of John Simm’s Master, another poorly written pantomime villain. I suppose the intention was to contrast Cumberbatch’s measured sociopath with an unpredictable sadist. Unfortunately, Scott’s shouting and gurning made him seem like a kids TV presenter. I think a quieter actor would have been genuinely frightening, as opposed to the strained viciousness that we got. I didn’t believe in Moriarty’s silly childhood murder backstory and I hated his affected way of speaking. “Gotcha!”, “Boring!”, “Teensy!” This was pitifully bad writing.

So I’m left with decidedly mixed feelings about the future of the series. While much of The Great Game was good, I suspect the next series is going in a direction which will severely test my patience. I really do think this could be a classic interpretation of the tales, especially given the two wonderful leads. Moffat and Gatiss would do well to learn from Conan Doyle. His Professor Moriarty never appeared as a character in the Holmes stories. He was only ever talked about, a shadowy presence described in flashback. That’s why he’s been so pervasive as a character, that’s what makes him unique. If Sherlock is to fulfil its potential, it must be clever about what it retains of Conan Doyle, and what it discards. Otherwise, it will end up looking like every other show on television, a victim of its own iconoclasm.