Doctor Who Review: Episode 7.8 "The Rings of Akhaten"

Spoiler free to start, spoilers after the poster.

Throughout Season Seven, Doctor Who has been trying to be explicitly "cinematic."  You can see it in "A Town Called Mercy" where Doctor Who does a Western, or "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" where it's Who does Jurassic Park.

"The Rings of Akhaten" is Doctor Who does Indiana Jones.

No snickering, please.

As is pretty typical for the new series, whenever there's a new companion on the stage one almost always gets a companion-heavy episode either right out of the gate or as the second episode.  This time it's the second episode, as we start to get to know Clara as a character in of herself rather than just as the object of the Doctor's obsession.  How well does that work?  Not bad, even if the story itself is a little over the top for my tastes.  Details and spoilers after the poster.

Spoilers in Space!

Sing a Song of Spoilers!

Right, so we've got Clara now.  There's something funny going on here, because while Amy was an actual mother who we even got to see give birth, Amy never had a chance to be particularly maternal since her child was stolen within hours of her giving birth.  On the other hand, Clara, while not technically a mother in that she's never given birth to anyone, has had three out of her four stories so far emphasize how good she is taking care of kids.  In "The Snowmen" and "The Bells of St. John" she's a professional nanny, and here in "The Rings of Akhaten" she spends much of the episode as a surrogate mother for Merry.  

So we have a companion whose motherly aspects are being highlighted and then, all of a sudden, the Doctor explicitly mentions his granddaughter for the first time in decades?  I'm beginning to suspect at the Doctor may actually try to fulfill his vow (see below) in the 50th anniversary special.

Wouldn't that be something to see?  Personally, I can't think of a better way to commemorate 50 years than with a resolution to one of the longest running unresolved plotlines in the show's history.  It took them twenty years to give Sarah Jane Smith the resolution she deserved, while Susan's been waiting for nigh on half a century!

Going back to this week's episode, I enjoyed it.  There was some derring-do mixed in with Clara taking care of Merry, the bit with the door being particularly funny.  The visuals were glorious, especially of the various planetoids in the rings.  We got to know more about Clara, fulfilling the episode's brief, and got some alien world fun.  So why do I find myself somewhat lacking in enthusiasm for this episode?

Well for one thing, watching the show live on BBC America kind of sucks.  The commercials break the flow of the show, especially since I'm used to seeing commercial free versions on Netflix or on DVD.  I also can't get over the fear that scenes may be getting cut short or eliminated entirely on the BBCA version, since I've seen re-runs there that are definitely missing scenes I remember from DVD versions I own.

Beyond that, though, is the fact that I didn't buy the ending.  A leaf with the power of the infinite?  Even with the setup of "things we value become valuable" from the rent the skybike scene, I still wasn't getting it.  It felt hokey to me, too much like all those "the power of love conquers all" stories where you can literally turn love into a demon destroying energy beam or fire ball.  I'm just not buying it.

Nevertheless, the episode served its purpose and rolled the plot forward a bit.  It was fun, if not especially deep.  Good enough for now, but I'll want something with more meat on the bone before this season is through.

Doctor Who Review: Episode 7.7 "The Bells of St. John"

As is customary for my reviews, there will be SPOILERS after the image.  My reviews will almost always appear after the show has been released to the general public, so I assume that you are, like myself, one of those fans who likes to read reviews only after seeing something for himself (or herself) to find out what everyone else thinks about it.  As a mere blogger and not an official member of the press, I have no early access to shows like Doctor Who, and couldn't do a day and date review even if I was so inclined.  

For the spoiler-free section, I'll summarize my feelings by saying that I liked but didn't love "The Bells of St. John."  It was a pleasant enough episode, and officially introduced the new companion to the show as well as what appears to be a recurring villain.  So it is, by pretty much any standard, an important episode.  And yet it didn't grab me the way the very best episodes of Who can.  I was never thrilled, amazed, terrified, or moved.  Instead, I would say I was curious, interested, and ultimately, amused.

Find out more after the poster in the SPOILER section.

Check your wifi for danger, there's SPOILERS here!

So, the second half of Season Seven is upon us.  Which is bullshit right there.  There's a new companion, a new opening credit sequence, and a new TARDIS interior.  Most of the old storylines have been closed off, and everything is shiny and new again.  Which means that this really should be Season Eight, right?  Nope, the BBC in their infinite wisdom have decided that rather than have Season Seven in 2012 and Season Eight in 2013, they were instead going to split Season Seven into the second half of 2012 and the first half of 2013.

"But wait," you might say, "isn't 2013 the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who?"  Why yes, yes it is.  And to celebrate half a century, we're going to get half a season, a fiftieth anniversary special, and a Christmas special in December.  I'd go into why, but John Seavy already did it better than I could over at his blog, Fraggmented.  Go check it out over there if you want the depressing breakdown.  

With that little bit of angry bile out of the way, I suppose it isn't kosher to penalize this episode for the folly of its institutional masters.  So how was "The Bells of St. John", anyway?  Well as indicated above, I liked this episode.  It was almost a regeneration episode without an actual regeneration, as the Doctor learns how to be the Doctor again.  Throw in a new companion with a mystery behind her, corporate evil British Style, and an old enemy who dates back to 1967 and isn't the Daleks or Cybermen, and you have the makings of a great episode.

But somehow "The Bells of St. John" never makes it to great.  Having given the episode some thought, I've come to the conclusion that for all the potentially great elements included in this episode, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  The reason, alas, is pacing.  There's too much going on in this episode, and nothing has time to breathe.  The scenes with the Doctor meeting this era's Clara are fun, but there's not enough time for it to be really satisfying, because the main plot of the Evil Corporation intrudes almost immediately.  But the resolution to that plot line is rushed and anticlimactic because they've got to have the Doctor recruiting Clara scene at the very end.  And so on, and so forth.  "The Bells of St. John" could have been a masterful two parter.  Instead, its a rushed single episode.

Which brings us back to the BBC complaints I made above.  You see, Stephen Moffat only has eight episodes in this truncated mini-season to do what normally he'd have fourteen to work with in a rational universe.  No wonder the man says that (beware long term spoilers on the following link) "I'm nearer to the end than the beginning" of his time as showrunner for Doctor Who.  Who wouldn't be frustrated when your bosses don't appreciate the value of what you're bringing them?

Even with all that, there was a lot to like.  The Great Intelligence is a much better villain in the Internet Age than he ever was controlling Yeti robots in the 1930s.  Playing on the fears we have of a powerful technology like wifi that has gone from non-existent to ubiquitous in only a handful of years is a smart move.  I also doubt that this is the last we've seen of the GI this season.

The mystery of Clara deepens, as we see that modern Clara has inherited the governess role of her deceased predecessor from "The Snowmen" and acquires the computer skills that are the hallmark of her equally deceased future descendant from "The Asylum of the Daleks".  It's too early to make much in the way of useful speculation, but so far she seems to be some kind of Eternal Woman, reborn over and over again, but keeping the skills and personalities of her earlier incarnations.  Either that, or maybe she's a trap placed by the Silence to snare the Doctor.  After all, Clara got the number for the TARDIS from some woman she met in a cafe.  The obvious person for that to be is River Song, of course, but it could equally have been Madame Kovarion.  After all, since nothing in the composite timeline of "The Wedding of River Song" stuck, Madame Kovarion's death at the hands of Amy was written out as well.

Speaking of Clara, she's cute.  Spunky, even.  She stands up to the Doctor and refuses to be swept off her feet the way Amy was.  She doesn't hold him in awe, and seems more likely to be a real partner the way Romana used to be, rather than a helper or student the way most companions end up.  And hell, if she really is some kind of long form time traveler herself, she has a right to be the Doctor's equal.  This is a take on the Doctor-Companion relationship that hasn't been around in decades, and if that's where they're going with it, I'll be well pleased.

For all that it didn't resolve as well as I would have preferred, I still enjoyed aspects of the Evil Corporation plot.  The line about "Wait, he's going on holiday soon.  Kill him when he gets back.  No reason to be unreasonable about it." was pretty funny, and using computers to "hack" people and adjust their personalities was well handled.  

Overall, I end this review pretty much where I began it.  This was a good episode of Doctor Who.  I enjoyed it and it's well worth watching.  Indeed, as an introductory episode it's pretty much mandatory since it introduces both the Companion and the Big Bad for the season.  If you haven't seen it yet, get to it.  It'll be easy to find online if you're naughty, or on BBC America if you've got cable and can tolerate the commercials. 

I just wish they'd had the time to make "The Bells of St. John" as great as it deserved to be.

Write Everyday Project #10, "The Wedding of River Song"

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Doctor Who season six finale, "The Wedding of River Song."  To ensure there's no problems, I've included some non-Who commentary first.  Everything past the "*  *  *" is spoiler territory.  You have been warned.

It was a busy weekend, and I ended up only getting one post out.  I'm going to need to make sure to get my writing in early on, since there's no guarantee I'll have time later on once things get busy.  Lesson learned.

There was also a lot to write about this weekend, some of which I' may mine for material in days ahead.  The Bears won ugly, I dabbled in Mage, a role playing game I haven't played in maybe twenty years or so, and the Android board game I played got a little wonky due to the randomness of the cards.  I've already touched on that one in the previous WEP post that I forgot to advertise, and is an example what happens when you try to write something at 4am.

Hint: It's a bad idea.  Coherency suffers.

*  *  *

But rather than talk about any of that, I've decided to go with the finale of season six (or season thirty two if you're a purist) of Doctor Who, which aired Saturday and I managed to catch on Sunday.  I'll want to watch the episode again, but my initial impressions can be summed up as follows: Bait and Switch.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the episode.  There were some great moments, and they did resolve the outstanding Death of the Doctor plot introduced back in episode one, though in retrospect they didn't explain why there's a clear regeneration effect coming out of the robot.  Or how the Tessalector crew got so much better at their jobs that they could skip around and hug people as seen in "Impossible Astronaut" and "The Wedding of River Song" when they could only move mechanically in "Let's Kill Hitler."  Or, for that matter, why shooting the Doctor in the middle of his regeneration is supposed to kill him stone dead, but shooting River in the middle of hers in "Hitler" just makes her bullet proof.  Presumably the energy weapon the Silence developed gets around that, but it shows that while they're better at it than they were under Davies, the Who crew still plays fast and loose with details.

What was eminently predictable was that in resolving this season's mystery, they set up next season's.  Last season they explained the Pandorica Opens mystery but left us with the "What is the Silence?" and "Who blew up the TARDIS?"  This season we get the deal with the Silence, and barring further explanations, can only assume that River's programming kicked in and she blew up the TARDIS while she thought she was trying to save her.  But now we get an even more obscure prophecy from Dorium's head.  "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the Fall of the Eleventh, the question will be asked."  The question being, apparently, "Doctor who?"

I grant you that going into the 50th year of the show that is a great question to ask, and if they're smart they'll have Eleven moving through the years in a kind of greatest hits season.  If they're [i]really[/i] smart, they'll use the occasion to bring back the Time Lords, as I talked about over here after "The Doctor's Wife."  One way or another, we'll definitely see Daleks, and fully functional ones rather than the dying victim we saw in "The Wedding of River Song."

Still, I wanted more and better answers, and I didn't get them, and that leaves me feeling empty rather than anticipating the next season.  I'll watch it, of course, but I was looking for more.

I did call that the Doctor wanted to solve the problem that was introduced in Davies' run of the Doctor playing on his reputation to get things done.  He had, as River said in this episode, become too big.  Moffat had wisely let the Doctor keep doing that in season five, then flipped the script at the end of that season and the halfway point of season six by having people decide to take the Doctor down because he's too threatening.  So it was nice to proven right on that point.  It was also nice to be faked out, because even with evidence right in front of us, none of us called the Tessalector as the way the Doctor cheats death.

In total, though, this is the least excited I've been about a "big" Who episode in the Moffat era.  Maybe I've become used to the big two part season finales, because this one just wasn't as big as I wanted it to be, which is an odd thing to say about a show that had everything from Teradactyls to Churchill in it.