Doctor Who series 6 (part two)

Tom Steward blogs at Watching TV with Americans.

The Impossible Astronaut

Anticipation ran high for this opening two-parter following publicity images of Matt Smith in a Stetson on the American frontier and an internet prequel featuring a 1969 Richard Nixon recording strange phone calls from a frightened child. The stage was set for a fun western-themed story along the lines of the William Hartnell serial The Gunfighters, and a return to the historical (which the previous season had veered towards with Vincent and the Doctor) populated by some fascinating figures (Nixon, Armstrong) and culturally cataclysmic events (the Moon landing, Watergate).

To paraphrase an expression popular in America in 1969: ‘they blew it!’
Writer Steven Moffat was completely uninterested in the period he had perfunctorily plonked his story in, giving viewers scant historical context save for a few garbled soundbytes about Nixon’s legacy, and paying only saliva service to the western setting and iconography, with the shot of The Doctor as a cowboy reclining on a Cadillac (somehow) shorter in the final edit than in the 60-second trailer.

So many precious minutes were wasted on a comically lukewarm opening montage of The Doctor getting into various bawdy and slapstick scrapes throughout history. I hope these vignettes will be followed up on in the latter half of the series but suspect they’re frivolous window-dressing for Moffat’s inability to give us a coherent introduction to his stories.

The other major problem was the laboured and smugly self-conscious reference away from the episode’s self-contained storyline towards ongoing story arcs. This demonstrated a detrimental lack of faith in the effectiveness of the plot and seriously delayed its development, meaning that the action had barely got going before this first episode had ended. The murder of The Doctor by a mysterious being in a NASA spacesuit capped off a plethora of false starts, reducing the introduction of villains The Silence to a mere footnote, lacking the suspense or anticipation to help them reach their terrifying potential.

Fighting against the narrative first gear, Smith did a wonderful job conveying the melancholy wisdom of his future self (that boy can do old!) and his and Arthur Darvill’s (unfortunately clipped) character-crystallising exchanges were superbly witty and subtly executed.

Day of the Moon

Part two of this double-header clarified how Moffat’s oblique storytelling had become simply incompetent. Some narrative ellipsis was necessary in a story involving aliens that people forget once out of sight and to delay the resolution of a narrative mystery. However, the time ellipses in this episode spiralled way out of control. A three month gap between this and the previous instalment undermined the impact and purpose of the preceding cliffhanger. Further jumps in narrative continuity acted as smokescreens for the potholes in narrative cause-and-effect and plot development.

The episode’s opening montage was successfully exhilarating, largely down to the commitment of the performers and macabre twists in the telling rather than the tired content, a recycling of the ‘pretend death’ ploy which Moffat favours with incredulous regularity. This was epitomised by Karen Gillan’s near-asthmatic vocal performance following a chase across the desert, a tour-de-force typical of an actress who, like all great Doctor Who protagonists, can make you believe the unbelievable. The marks recording sightings of The Silence that cover the bodies of the protagonists like tattoos of hideous scars made for chilling viewing.

Though massively overdue, after the credits the show finally played its horror card, and very nearly took the haunted house. The visit to the creaky and creepy children’s home complete with abusive graffiti and deranged custodian was graceful in its slow and understated building of disquiet and fear. Again, most plaudits should go to actor Kerry Shale as the syrup-voiced Southern gentleman in mental distress Dr. Renfrew, whose trembling and traumatised appearance propagated the lingering feeling of unease. The episode (not for the last time this series) channelled The X-Files to gain legitimacy as TV science-fiction (particularly for American audiences who are simultaneously addressed here) but recognised only the superficialities (dark-and-smart outfits, magenta blue lighting), and barely qualified as pastiche.

Elsewhere, the history became pure pageantry, full of embarrassingly on-the-nose musical cues and dramatic ironies (‘say Hi to David Frost’) that compounded the thinly realised portrayal of the era. Smith continued to rally pluckily against the characterisation of The Doctor as a lothario, making clear to viewers through precise physical comedy his thoughtful interpretation of the character as sexually naive and alien to romance.

For a discussion of how this series-opener was shown on BBC America and spoke to American audiences, see the post from my blog here.

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!

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!

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.