Twice Upon A Time

 

We reach the end of the Peter Capaldi era. But in our end is our beginning and so we start with William Hartnell in the Tenth Planet before he morphs into David Bradley. Bradley, of course, had played William Hartnell in ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’ so casting him as the actual First Doctor is clearly a sensible choice. I’d not been that impressed with the bits of Bradley doing the First Doctor even though I though he was an excellent Hartnell so I was a little worried but I think he’s pretty good in this story. He’s not doing William Hartnell doing the Doctor now. He giving us his own First Doctor.

 I do have some quibbles with some of the dialogue he’s given though. The First Doctor is made out to be a sexist twat, which I know is kind of a joke to acknowledge that the times they have a-changed but they just land badly for me. However, I like that they top and tail the first Doctor’s story with footage of William Hartnell himself. Plus there’s something very Doctor Who about starting a story with a caption ‘709 episodes ago.’ 

Both Doctors are refusing to regenerate. Each has their own reasons. But something goes wrong with time and a World War One officer turns up in the Arctic too. An officer who is being chased by something. This officer is played by Mark Gatiss and I enjoy his performance in this. There something rather true in the soft spoken, frightened but accepting Officer. 

They escape in the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS, which is parked 70 yards from the First Doctor’s TARDIS. This allows us a bit of comic breathing space as the Officer enters the TARDIS and the First Doctor gets to be unhappy with the new TARDIS interior. The banter between incarnations of the Doctor is always one of the joys of multi-Doctor stories and mostly it is enjoyable here. Mostly. 

They are captured and pulled into a spaceship that belongs to Testimony. About which we know nothing and who will matter very little. They demand The Officer’s return. The interactions here are great and Bill Potts returns. Sort of. It’s again filled with fantastic clashes of style between the First and Twelfth Doctors. We also get to see The Doctor described as ‘The Doctor of War’, which means one thing here but we will come to see means something different later in the story. 

The thing about Twice Upon a Time is that the story isn’t grand scale. There’s no end of the world/universe style shenanigans it is just a story about memories and friendship. Or not giving up and carrying on. 

The Doctors eventually get to the bottom of what is happening and return our Officer to his soon to be death. But The Doctor has tweaked things a little and time doesn’t quite happen as it was supposed to. We find out the Officer’s identity at this point, which wasn’t a huge surprise but I won’t spoil here. Even though I’ve spoiled loads of stuff throughout this blog.

The last chunk of the story is endings. First the First Doctor’s departure and regeneration. He’s off to find out whether the Twelfth Doctor will regenerate. The long way round, of course. 

Then we get the farewell to the Twelfth Doctor. Bill Potts appears again. Sort of. So does Nardole. And so does Clara. Returning the Doctor’s full memories to him before the end of his life. Capaldi plays all this rather wonderfully. 

We always knew he was going to regenerate in the end, but the begrudging way he excuses it to himself is nicely done. He gets a final monologue before his final line. I have never felt more that a Doctor’s final line is both a fictional final line and a real life final line. Peter Capaldi was a Doctor Who fan and playing the Doctor meant a lot to him, but I think once he was done, he was done. And ‘Doctor, I let you go’ was both for us and for him. 

I have loved Peter Capaldi’s era. My Doctor – as I have said many, many times – will always be Tom Baker but if anyone has ever come closer to stealing my affections it would be Peter Capaldi. Indeed, if it was possible to strip the comfort of nostalgia from Tom Baker it might be that Capaldi would take his place. But I can’t do that. Tom is too wrapped up in my childhood and my life to ever really be superseded. 

So, Doctor I let you go. 

But here comes a new era and in some ways a revolution. Because here comes Jodie Whittaker. The first female Doctor. 

Change my dear…

World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

 

I tediously repeat my belief that television Doctor Who has never got the Cybermen right. It has never made the horror of what they are feel real. This two part story gets it right. The Cybermen are terrifying and the process of their creation is revealed in all its horror.

We understand that process through what happens to Bill Potts. She’s a victim of the process and the audience's eyes. 

The scene where she walks into the room with partly processed people and one of them is saying ‘pain’ over and over again is one of the darkest and bleakest scenes in all of Doctor Who and the realisation that all of the people in that room are probably the same but have had their volume turned down is a punch in the gut. 

The story begins with the Doctor ‘testing’ Missy’s new found goodness by sending her on a mission with Bill and Nardole as her assistants. Missy will play ‘Doctor Who’. They answer a distress signal from a gigantic colony craft that is trying to escape from a black hole. 

When a blue skinned crew member appears terrified and demands to know who is human things start to go wrong. Badly wrong. Bill is shot. Dead. Or nearly dead. Because before we know it some very creepy things turn up to take her away. 

The story then splits into two. Bill’s story down in the lower part of the ship. The Doctor, Nardole, and Missy in the upper. But things are complicated. Due to the effect of the black hole time is passing faster in the lower decks than on the upper. 

Bill meets Razor who will help her understand what is happening. Ten years pass for Bill before the Doctor manages to get down to the lower levels. 

The cliffhanger at the end of the World Enough and Time comes together beautifully. Razor reveals who he is to Missy and Bill reveals what she has become. The Doctor is in trouble and Nardole does a runner. 

The following episode starts with the Doctor trapped on a roof with two incarnations of the Master, CyberBill, and a bad headache. All the Doctor’s work with Missy seems to have been undone by her earlier John Simm incarnation. I like Simm’s Master in this story. He’s less big and more like a Classic Doctor Who Master than in his original run. Capaldi, Simm and Gomez play off each other magnificently and there’s some joy in having a multi-Master story. Simm maintains the Masters cruelty, but you can see that Missy isn't quite the same as she once was. Michelle Gomez is possibly my favourite take on the Master partly because she isn't a two-dimensional moustache-twirling villain. There's more to her than that. 

Thanks to Nardole and the Doctor’s trickery they all – including the Master and Missy – escape to a higher level. A level which appears to be farmland and where children are protected from the occasional incursion of creepy pre-full conversion Cybermen. The way these things are used like scarecrows is another dark and enduring image. There was something World War One about it. Those bodies hanging on the wire in the aftermath of another failed attack.

Bill doesn’t initially know she’s been converted. Her self-image is still of her as her human body. And the second episode really explores the impact of that. Pearl Mackie and Peter Capaldi do a stonking work throughout. I enjoy The Master’s joy in rubbing The Doctor and Bill’s faces in the horror of her situation. Missy seems less joyful about it. 

We build up to a final battle, where it becomes clear that the Doctor will die trying to save as many children as possible. The Master and Missy leave but not before the Doctor gives one of my favourite Doctor monologues in the series, which The Master squashes immediately. Again we’re not sure if it has had an impact on Missy.

The Master and Missy are about to depart. But Missy stabs The Master saying it The Doctor is right and it is time for her and the Doctor to stand together at last. Simm though kills Missy laughing madly as he goes down to his TARDIS to regenerate into Missy. Missy can’t regenerate, according to The Master, so she dies. And the Doctor will never know Missy was prepared to stand with him again, which might be as sad as anything else that happens in this story. Or in any Doctor Who story.

There’s part of me that wishes that Missy had been the end for The Master. I think Missy's arc was perfect to change the character into something more like The Meddling Monk and less like the insane mass murdering old school Master. But - as we shall see - this wasn't the choice made by the production team. 

I sometimes think that perhaps post-2005 Doctor Who needs to rely less on The Master and The Daleks. The old series has a lot of monsters you could re-boot for a story or two. They’re not as iconic at The Master, The Daleks or the Cybermen but they aren’t as tired. You have to bring them back occasionally, but it is hard for them to be anything new. 

The story ends with explosions, the return of the Pilot from The Pilot who restores Bill to something that isn’t a Cyberman but isn’t quite human. The Doctor, who is refusing to regenerate is placed in the TARDIS apparently dead. 

But you can’t keep the Doctor down. Even when he wants to stay down. The TARDIS lands and the Doctor steps out into snow and ice where he encounters…well…a Doctor.

The Eaters of Light

 

The Eaters of Light

There is a point in a Doctor Who season - a post-2005 Doctor Who season – whereas the season finale yaws into view that you feel like the couple of stories beforehand might be marking time a little. The Empress of Mars was one of those. The Eaters of Light is another. 

I enjoyed this more though. I think partly because it comes with historical elements: Picts and Romans. Partly because it talks about the mystery of the 9^th Legion, which might not be much of a mystery after all but let’s not let that get in the way of a good story. And partly because again we see the Doctor’s desire to be the hero usurped by human beings. It happened at the end of The Lie of the Land. It happens in Empress of Mars too.

The story starts with the Doctor, Nardole and Bill arriving in Pict Scotland to sort out an argument about what happened to the 9^th Legion. They separate to test their various theories and it turns out that something bigger and more dangerous than a Roman Legion is loose and out there killing everything and everyone. 

We meet a Pict girl Kar (Rebecca Benson) who let the creature loose hoping it would kill the Romans but the creature would die in that battle. She was wrong. Benson is great throughout and especially at the end. 

Bill meets a handful of survivors of the 9^th Legion skulking in a cave. They’re terrified of the creature and had fled the battlefield. Both are Kar and the Romans feel guilty for their actions. 

It's quite a dark story, although there’s a lot of humour scattered throughout. Nardole in particular gets most of the jokes. Although there’s a nice scene where Bill tells the Romans that she’s a lesbian – in so many words – and expects them to be judgemental and discovers they just don’t care. That’s a nice way of sewing the seeds of historical differences in cultural rules. 

There’s also some nice stuff as Bill works out that the TARDIS translates – and lip syncs – all languages. 

And there’s crows. Love a crow. I like that they come with the weight of myth and folklore. I like that they’re much more intelligent than people might know. And they look cool. 

This story was written by Rona Munroe who wrote Survival, the last story broadcast in Doctor Who’s original 1963-1989. I think this is a fun story. There’s some relatively subtle stuff about Romans as colonisers. The Romans get let off of a lot of savagery in the popular culture version of their story. Often we’ll see the horror – to us – of a Roman Circus but we rarely get to see the mass horror that came with conquest and slavery. 

This story flew by. It ends, again, with some Missy and Doctor scenes and we’re left to wonder if Missy is changing and if she and the Doctor can be friends again. Hope, is the most dangerous of things.

The Empress of Mars

 

This is a bog standard Doctor Who adventure lacking a little in subtlety. Written by Mark Gatiss it rushes by in the blink of an eye. 

We begin with a NASA probe discovering a message on Mars that shouldn’t be there: ‘God Save The Queen’. The Doctor, Bill, and Nardole set off for Mars, 1881, which is when the TARDIS thinks the message was put in place. 

It turns out that there is an Ice Warrior and a gaggle of British Red Coats there who are led by Colonel Godsacre (Anthony Calf) and Captain Catchlove (Ferdinand Kingsley). The men have been serving in South Africa where Godsacre found a crashed Martian ship with a single surviving Ice Warrior aboard who the British have called ‘Friday'. 

There is a thread about Imperialism and Colonialism running through this story in the most unsubtle of fashions. Catchlove is a ridiculous moustache twirling British imperialist. He is so two dimensional he might as well be cut out of cardboard. Kingsley plays that to the hilt. 

What’s interesting is that Colonel Godsacre is an altogether more three dimensional figure and Calf’s performance reflects that. It’s a clash of acting that reminds me a little of Brian Blessed’s clash with Patrick Ryecart in ‘Mindwarp’, although perhaps a bit less jarring. 

The rest of the Red Coats are, basically, Star Trek Red Shirts. Theirs is not to question why, theirs is but to do or die. There’s a couple of soldiers who get some lines and Vincey (Bayo Gbadamosi) gets to be the guy who shows us a picture of his waiting girlfriend thus marking him for death.  

Gatiss wrote ‘Victory of the Daleks’, which I have issues with because it treats World War Two with a degree of glibness that on first watch made me genuinely quite angry. This does the same with Victorian Imperial Britain and affirms that it is hard for Doctor Who to deal directly with the complexity of real history. 

For reasons Nardole goes back to the TARDIS and then the TARDIS has a hissy fit and sends him back to Earth where he has to get Missy to help him. Again the episode ends with a nice little coda played beautifully by both Capaldi and Gomez.

Bill’s beats in this story are a bit too similar to the previous three part story, but Pearl Mackie does excellent work with what she’s given to do. I really like Pearl Mackie's performance. She's one of my favourite companions.  

The Ice Warriors look great and I like the fact that their voices are more clearer. The comparison between Ice Warrior honour codes and the perceived honour codes of the British Army are interesting. And Colonel Godsacre’s arc is redemptive and interesting. It would be fascinating to find him in a future story older and battle weary. 

The Ice Warriors have overslept, which seems to be the common fate of many a Doctor Who monster, and must face a dead Mars, which Queen Iraxxa (Adele Lynch) eventually comes to terms with. 

I’ve always thought that the Ice Warriors, like the Draconians, were an interesting foe for the Doctor because they’re nuanced. They’re not implacable killers like the Daleks or The Cybermen. They can be reasoned with. I’d like to see more of them. 

So, it’s an OK story with one or two classic moments and a lovely little piece of fan service for fans of Classic Who tucked in at the end. But again Mark Gatiss dips into a historical period and skims off the cliches. There is, I think, potentially a much better and more complex story here that doesn't get told.

Extremis – The Pyramid at the End of the World – The Lie of the Land

This is an interesting three part story, which I think should have been cut down to two. 

There are, effectively, two set-up episodes before the wrap up episode. The first episode is The Android Invasion, but without an eye patch. Just The Pope, some Cardinals, a book that drives people to suicide, and some ‘Zombie Monks’. The ‘Zombie Monks’ are the villains of the piece. And we discover that they’ve built some epic holographic simulation of the Earth in order to work out how to invade. As I said it is The Android Invasion with a bigger budget.

The book, ‘Veritas’, explains the Holographic Simulation and the rebellion is suicide. Getting people out of the programme. It is pretty dark.

The Doctor is still blind. And he isn’t telling anyone. Theoretically because he doesn’t want his enemies to know but why he still can’t bring himself to tell Bill is beyond me. But then we wouldn’t need Bill to do something drastic at the end of The Pyramid at the End of the World because the Doctor’s blindness puts his life at risk. 

Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas keep up their stonkingly excellent jobs throughout. Pearl Mackie in particular gets to do some solid work. The scene where she confronts the Doctor is really strong. 

Capaldi continues to be his excellent self. At this point he’s my favourite Doctor Who from the post-2005 era. He’s not quite Tom Baker, but he’s not far off. 

We don’t know much about the Zombie Monks. They’re just invaders. I like the fact that they need consent to invade. That someone with power must give pure consent. I’m not sure how pure any consent would be in a situation like that. You’re always going to be polluted by hope of eventually ridding yourself on the Zombie Monks. 

I like though that there’s a double thread of risk in The Pyramid at the End of the World. The Zombie Monks want us to consent to their invasion and they know we’ll have to be in a terrible place to do so. Everyone thinks it is World War Three, which is why the Pyramid has dropped in at a place where the three largest militaries in the world are having a stand-off. But actually somewhere else a man with a hangover is about to create a biological catastrophe that will end everything. 

It is by trying to solve that problem when blind that the Doctor forces Bill to give her consent. 

By this point several people have been dusted and it is clear that the Monks are up to no good. It is the Lie of the Land that shows us the aftermath of the invasion. 

The Monks have interfered with everyone’s memories. They have now always been here. Our historical memories have been interfered with. And The Doctor is working for the Monks. Broadcasting happy messages on their behalf like a Scottish Big Brother. Six months have passed since Bill gave her consent to the Monks and there are now statues to the Monks everywhere and Memory Police tracking down those who don’t believe the new history. 

This is where Missy comes in. Or at least comes in again. Extremis has flashbacks to the Doctor taking Missy from a potential death penalty to imprisonment. She’s going cold turkey on being evil. By the time we get to the final episode of three The Doctor is desperate and will need her help. But only after Bill and Nardole rescue him. 

It is a rescue with complications. In that Bill has to believe the Doctor has genuinely changed sides to the extent that she is angry enough to shoot him. This is apparently a test, but a psychologically damaging one I would imagine. I’m never sure that goading someone into shooting you is the wisest of ideas, but what do I know? 

A plan to break the Monks ‘fake history’ is made which puts first The Doctor’s life and then Bill’s at risk. But it works. Real history – in all its contested glory – is back. The Monks run away. The end. 

Except for a rather beautiful coda between the Doctor and Missy. Michelle Gomez is so good as Missy, especially in that final scene. 

Now I mostly enjoyed this but I have quibbles. At the end the Doctor shows that the exit of the Monks is being forgotten by people. They’ve been erased. But there are vehicles with Memory Police written on them, Memory Police uniforms, people who worked for and were paid by The Memory Police. People have been killed, including three senior officers in the Russian, American, and Chinese armies. People have been sent to camps and there’s a lot of chunky bases of broken statues across the world. I mean how does all that get explained away? 

And I have begun to pull at the threads of the story, which will end up making it more disappointing in the long run. 

I like the ideas in the story that play on the zeitgeist: the holographic simulation, the idea of ‘fake news’ and how history is written – this is the ‘history is written by the victors’ par excellence. There’s elements of 1984 here too: “He who controls the past, controls the future.” 

Not bad. But a tad too long and a tad too easily tied up at the end.

I'm Back! And I'm more powerful than ever before!! (Or not)

 

So, after a long break The Patient Centurion has returned. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago I pitched to Unbound a Doctor Who book based on this blog and we crowd-funded it - to the tune of c.£19k - but then as I was finishing off my edits Unbound went bust. So, no book and everyone who pledged money to this lost their money. This annoys me more than what happened to me. In the end I lost nothing, except a publishing opportunity. People who pledged lost money. Money that I thought was supposed to be ring-fenced for producing the book. But that's that. Unbound is unalive and I have been sitting around wondering what to do next.

Now, my friend Aya, suggested I go back to the blog and I think that might be a damn good idea. I'd only got as far as the Peter Capaldi story Oxygen when I stopped the blog, but also perhaps it might be the time to re-visit the whole Doctor Who journey whilst we wait to discover its fate. I did do a couple of episodes on YouTube but this might be a better place to return to Doctor Who.

I have, in recent months, really felt I'd lost my Doctor Who mojo. I don't know why. Part of it was I was tired of the 'stuff'. I have too many Doctor Who books that I was no longer getting joy from so I've started selling these on eBay, which you can find here - but I have never lost my love of watching Doctor Who. Or listening to it - yes, Big Finish I'm looking at you. Although it has been a while since I bought anything from Big Finish. Money doesn't grow on trees, especially when you're unemployed. Which I am. 

However that is all moot. The reason for posting this is that I am returning to the Doctor Who blogosphere (which isn't really a thing but sounds quite cool.) When I did the original blog I was posting a review every day - almost. Now, I'm not sure if I can keep that up. I have recently watched some of the New Who stories picking up from Oxygen, which I might post. 

But really I'm excited for a revisit to November 23rd 1963 and running all the way through to 31st May 2025 which ended with The Reality War. And a new hiatus whilst the BBC waits to see if it can afford to make any new Doctor Who. 

There is also the forthcoming The War Between the Land and the Sea, which is the UNIT/Sea Devils RTD crafted spin-off series, which might be worth covering here. I've also got both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to potentially blog about. So, lots of exciting things to do. 

Now if you like the sound of this and would like to support me my Ko-Fi is here. I'm going to create a couple of levels where you'll get some additional material on a monthly basis, which I'll decided anon. But all contributions will be gratefully received.

If things go well I might set up a Discord so we can chat between posts and/or organise watchalongs if we're so minded. That's we as in all of us not the royal we btw. 

So, welcome back. It has been a while. You can also find me on Bluesky as @Lokster71.bluesky.social

Here's the the next journey.

A Doctor Who Frame of Mind

I have been having a hard time loving Doctor Who recently, which for those of you that know me is something of a shock. Not the current era, but the whole damn Doctor Who thing and I was trying to work out why. This is a blog I have written to try and work it out myself. 

I think it is because I've lost sight of the programme itself amongst the fog of fandom. Fandom is a complex thing. A portion of it is irredeemably toxic: racist, sexist, homophobic and, basically, appears to have learned nothing from watching Doctor Who itself. I wouldn't like these people if I met them. I despise everything they stand for and they probably wouldn't like me very much. Which is fine. Saves us all a lot of disappointment. 

The rest of fandom is made up of too many different types of people to pin down but I don't find it as much fun as I used to. Doctor Who, for me, was a point of joy in the world. Yes, I like picking it apart afterwards and coming up with my own head canon, but that was all alongside actually watching, listening and reading Doctor Who. Recently I have been doing less of that. A lot less of that. 

And I blame myself.

I came to fandom late. I was always a Doctor Who fan. My first memories of life include little bits of watching Tom Baker as Doctor Who in stories I was far too young to watch without being terrified. I was though mostly a solo fan. I knew one Doctor Who fan before I was 18. I knew about five before I was 40. I read fanzines and DWM. That was about it. A lot of 1989 to 2005 was me defending Doctor Who from a less impressed group of people. And myself for being a Doctor Who fan. I think that has impacted on my observations and interactions with fandom. I am quite defensive about Doctor Who. I try to be amusingly so, particularly about the more obvious things: "it's a kids series; it's rubbish; it's cheap; it's silly...etc etc." 

I can criticise Doctor Who though. It's not always perfect. I've never found myself disliking an entire Doctor's run. Or an era. As far as I'm concerned every Doctor, every era has its ups and downs and, for me, the ups always outnumber the downs. There are some eras/seasons I love. Tom Baker will always be my favourite Doctor and Season 17 will always be my favourite season of Doctor Who.* So, I find the broad hostility to a whole era, the cynicism about motives and decisions, the desire by one group of fans to stomp all over the joy of other fans all a bit...depressing. 

The reason I love Doctor Who - and I've thought about this a lot - is that it is overwhelming an optimistic and hopeful series. A light in the darkness. Doctor Who says there are monsters out there but there are people out there to fight them and that darkness can and will be defeated. And it will be done with wit and charm. 

Seeing people get so angry about the Chibnall era to the point of monomania has just knocked the positivity out of me. I'm not saying by the way that the Chibnall era is great. I don't think I will ever love it, but I've enjoyed most of it and loved some of it. There are things there to be criticised. But I've found it difficult not to get a bit depressed by the whole thing, which has had a knock on effect on my love of Doctor Who as a whole.

Which is weird. I'm getting old so maybe I am too set in my ways. I know I'm taking it all too seriously. It is, after all, only a television programme. But it is a television programme that has been at the centre - well, centre-ish - of my life for...45 years. It is one of the things my friends know me for, even - especially - the ones who aren't Doctor Who fans. So, the weird feeling that of distance I have from the whole thing at the moment is...strange. 

It doesn't seem to be as much fun as it used to be. 

Perhaps I just need to watch a bunch of my favourite stories and talk about them to friends. It seems weird writing this because this is just a download of my personal feelings. I don't expect anyone to feel the same. 

Anyway there you have it. Writing this might have helped.

Or not.

*Not necessarily the best but my favourite.

*Yes, I still think The Master was playing a game to keep the Third Doctor from getting too bored whilst he was in exile on Earth.