TV Review: Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time (2017)

Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time (2017) written by Stephen Moffett and directed by Rachel Talaley

The Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) winds up in Earth's arctic at the same time as the First Doctor (here played by David Bradley though in the 1960s by William Hartnell). They both refuse to regenerate and might have gotten into an interesting conversation about it if a British World War I officer hadn't blundered into their meeting. Naturally, that's quite odd for the arctic in 1986. The Doctors begin to investigate and find that some crystalline people have been snatching other people on the brink of death for mysterious purposes. The adventure is afoot!

This Christmas special features several old standbys for Doctor Who--multiple Doctors, the regeneration (which is a farewell for one actor and an introduction of another), and tying off some loose ends. The two Doctors are fun together even though it is a bit odd to have a different actor playing the First Doctor (Bradley had played William Hartnell before in a TV movie about Doctor Who's early years). Bradley does a good job though the script goes out of its way to portray him as sexistly old-fashioned (mostly for comedic effect), something that rings false with what I've seen of the Hartnell episodes. The First Doctor's resistance to regenerating is also something shoehorned into the story (it had little basis in The Tenth Planet, when Hartnell's Doctor regenerated). It makes an interesting parallel to the Twelfth Doctor, so it's less bothersome. The rest of the plot is rather run of the mill for Doctor Who--fun but ridiculous. Some old companions (and one old nemesis) show up so Capaldi can have a farewell and some closure. Capaldi does a good job with his big final speech before regenerating. The one or two really beautiful moments are outweighed by a lot of weaker moments in the story. The whole episode feels a bit perfunctory and follows the recent trend of good actors trying to make the best of mediocre to poor writing in the show.

The new Doctor (Jodie Whittaker, who played the mom in Broadchurch) shows up for two minutes and tries to keep the TARDIS from falling apart. She has hardly any dialogue, just bits of action (though not picking out a new outfit as new Doctors often do). It's hard to make an assessment of her, other than it seems like a desperate ploy to be trendy and relevant by having a female take over a male role (which really isn't an assessment of her as an actress but of the situation in general). It looks like a politically correct choice rather than an artistic choice, which generally means we'll get bad art. I hope I'm wrong but only time will tell.

Overall, this hasn't inspired me to jump back into Doctor Who. I can't quite recommend it.

TV Review: Doctor Who, Series 9, Part 1

Doctor Who, Series 9, Part 1 created by Sydney Newman and produced by Steven Moffat

After a few seasons of declining writing quality, this series opens with a great scene. A small boy is caught in the midst of a battle. He and a comrade wander into a dirt field where a hand pops up out of the ground and drags the friend down. The boy stands still as more and more hands pop out of the ground. Then the TARDIS shows up and the Doctor gives one of his great speeches about how he's going to save the boy. He asks the boy his name. The panic-stricken child looks up and says, "Davros." Yes, the Davros who creates the Daleks--the Doctor's number one enemy. The Doctor is taken aback and the opening credits start. This is the best opening they've had in years.

Sadly, the two-part episode is full of hits and misses. The Doctor winds up on Skaro, the home planet of the Daleks. The old Davros is dying and wants one last tussle with his arch-nemesis before going. Companion Clara and the female incarnation of The Master (known as Missy) are along for the ride, providing some comic relief and dramatic moments. Dealing with death is a major theme in this series and this episode has some interesting ideas in that department. In other departments, the ideas are not good. The depiction of Dalek civilization is not quite convincing and the Doctor's replacement of the sonic screwdriver with sonic sunglasses is really weak (as is his sudden penchant for playing electric guitar). The actors are great, the writing is sub-par.

Episodes three and four (another two-parter) has a ghost story set in an underwater base. The people on the base found a spaceship with some missing bits and strange writing on the interior. An ethereal figure wanders the halls of the base only during their night cycle, leading them to call it a ghost. That one ghost becomes many as cast members die during the episode. The base is in the middle of a town that was flooded when a dam burst. The Doctor goes back to before the town was flooded to find out more about the spaceship, leaving Clara and some of the base staff to hold off the ghosts. The story reflects more about death but has too many bits that are recycled from other stories, even other Doctor Who episodes (how many isolated bases have been stalked by monsters in Doctor Who? They just did the same thing in the 2014 Christmas episode with Nick Frost as Santa Claus--three episodes prior to this story!). Ho-hum.

The final two-part story has the Doctor granting immortality to a young Viking women in the first episode. In the second episode it's 800 years later and she is a very different, very darker person. She's had to deal with the mortality of everyone else around her and can barely remember (or doesn't want to remember) her days with the Vikings. So the dealing with death theme is present again, though they don't say much original. The monsters in the two episodes are generic baddies with zero depth. So the episodes are dramatically average and the new theme, dealing with death, has apparently already played out.

It's a shame that the writing is so lackluster, because Peter Capaldi is fun as the Doctor and would be great if he had better material to work with. Jenna Coleman as Clara does a fine job but her character is becoming more and more just an extension of the Doctor (e.g., she gives big inspiring speeches to characters or she outthinks bad guys) rather than her own person.

I'm going back to getting classic episodes on DVD from the library until I hear that about some new ideas that aren't bad ones (like the sonic sunglasses) in the new shows.

TV Review: Doctor Who Series 8

Doctor Who Series 8

The Doctor regenerates into the form of Peter Capaldi! Companion Clara Oswald has to help him get reoriented while he helps her go on fantastic adventures, not only in space and time but in her personal life as well. She's settled in to a teaching job. The school provides both a place for action and a new boyfriend for Clara in the form of Mr. Pink--ex-military, now maths teacher. The series follows the usual formula of mixing some Earth history, some Earth present day, and some other worlds into the show while giving some hints at the big finale and a romantic interest for the companion (though thankfully the romantic interest is not the Doctor!).

I like Peter Capaldi as the Doctor quite a bit. He has a good mixture of zany franticness with occasional seriousness and grumpiness that makes his Doctor charming. Jenna Coleman as Clara does a good acting job but the writing for her character is all over the place. Sometimes she's sweet and fun, sometimes she's bossy and taciturn, with little narrative to give her character continuity. Her love interest, Mr. Pink, does not have quite enough depth to make him a very interesting character.

Overall, I've found the writing to be substandard this year. In addition to the variable nature of Clara's character, a lot of the stories are either not compelling or so full of plot holes as to be distracting. The overarching theme questioning whether the Doctor is a good man/hero also feels a bit forced and unsatisfying, especially with the "I'm just a guy running around having adventures" conclusion. The theme could have been inspiring and challenging, but it comes off like a rehash of previous series (like those last few David Tennant episodes) with no decisive or compelling ending.

I haven't seen the Christmas episode but am definitely going to wait until it's available from the library or free streaming somewhere. Oh Doctor, what's happened to you?