Smile

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I might struggle to say much about Smile. That’s not because I didn’t enjoy it. I did. It just felt a little lacking in something. But I am a man who likes to look for the positive in all Doctor Who. If you want to find people who dislike Doctor Who episodes with a passion that I admire in a strange self-harming way, then the internet is your oyster. Here at Patient Centurion Towers, we like to enjoy the things we enjoy.

Let’s begin with the most obvious thing: Bill Potts is a wonderful addition to Doctor Who. She’s quick-witted, funny and good-hearted and she’s an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation. She isn’t a mystery to be solved. There’s a lot of Bill Potts’s out there but alas not many Doctors to help them see the universe.

And isn’t that part of the appeal of Doctor Who? The thought that one day someone will appear and take us out of our mundane lives and take us out there to see the universe in all its glory. Except, as this episode demonstrates, the universe is a dangerous place and there’s an awful lot of running. I’d be dead in a week, especially as one of the first places I’d want the Doctor to take me would be Berlin in the 20s/30s. I’d love a trip to Weimar Germany. I’d be happy with exploring the nightlife and getting my hands on some fantastic art to take home with me. Or late 19^th century/early 20^th century Vienna where I could hang about in the cafés and get myself some Schiele paintings. Or Mexico and meet Freida Kahlo in person. I suspect I’d be an art junkie or an event junkie. Persuading the Doctor to let me see Shakespeare plays or those opera first night’s where audiences booed and rioted. All that would be great. It would be the monsters that would be the problem.

But that was a whacking great digression. There is something wonderfully creepy about how this episode starts and that the villains aren’t really villains but nanobots taking their programming far too literally. In this story, the nanobots are called Vardy, which kept making me think of Jamie Vardy, which I suspect wasn’t the intention of Frank Cotterall-Boyce (or perhaps it was.)

How the Doctor sorts out of the problem, which involves making landlord-capitalism an actual victor, is fine. It’s just not the most exciting of adventures. That’s not quite what he did. He freed a set of slaves by re-booting them and effectively got their former slave masters to pay them reparations in the form of rent. Then he leaves. This is one of those Doctor Who stories where I wonder what the hell happens a couple of years after he’s gone and the rent increases start coming in. There is an interesting philosophical question here, which is how do you free someone who doesn’t know they’re a slave because they don’t have free will?

It’s nice to see The Doctor almost making a terrible mistake too. Occasionally The Doctor’s decisiveness is a problem and this was one of those situations. He rushes in where angels fear to tread. And then has to sort out his own mess before it is too late.

Once again Capaldi and Mackie (or the Doctor and Bill if you prefer) bounce off each other beautifully. Even after only two stories, I’m starting to think that Bill was the companion the Twelfth Doctor was waiting for.

This is also, another of those new Doctor Who stories that has well-known performers in tiny parts and that makes you think…oh, can’t we have a bit more of this person/these people? In this case Mina Anwar and Ralf Little.

‘New’ Doctor Who flirts occasionally – see ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ and ‘Sleep’ – with a future in which India (or Indo-Japan) has a large part to play in the space travelling future. I’d like to see more of this. It would be interesting to see that future. I was listening to David Tennant’s podcast interview with Whoopi Goldberg and there’s a discussion there about Uhuru in Star Trek. And Goldberg points out that Uhuru was the first time she’d seen a black person in the future. Until then the future was all white. And I’d never considered that. After all, I’m a white man. I’m always there in the future. Doing pretty much whatever it was white men were doing in the present. Imagine not being represented by a whole genre. Imagine not being expected to exist in the future. And not necessarily because the writers or creators of science-fiction were racists – even though some of them were* - but because they never gave it any thought. Because it didn’t matter.

I’m ranting away again and that’s because I don’t have much to say about this episode as an episode. It looks amazing though. Lawrence Gough directs well enough. The trip to Spain to film in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia pays off because it looks pretty ‘of the future.’

It’s an OK story that doesn’t necessarily have time to explore all the ideas that are bubbling away underneath it. I’d watch it again now though just for Bill and the Doctor though. I’m loving those two.

*I’m looking at you H.P. Lovecraft

The Pilot

So, we begin Series 10 of ‘new’ Doctor Who with ‘The Pilot’ and Steven Moffat takes the opportunity to re-launch the Capaldi era. With Clara gone and forgotten the Doctor seems to have settled down at a University teaching. What he’s teaching isn’t quite clear, but it gets the students to turn up to his lectures so it must be good.

He’s also, we discover, guarding a vault. What’s in the vault we have yet to discover, but it is an important enough ‘thing’ to have the Doctor effectively exiled to the Earth once again. I’m assuming we’ll find out who or what it is at some suitable future date? *

The Doctor is also joined by Nardole (Matt Lucas). How the Doctor has restored Nardole’s head to his body – or a body. How this has been achieved we don’t know. There’s a hint of robot about it, but also a hint – or should that be a smell – of the organic. Whether we will find out exactly what has happened I’m not sure. I don’t think it really matters. Nardole’s role seems to be part Jiminy Cricket, part Greek chorus, and part just plain snark. Matt Lucas does a good job of seemingly making a slightly awkward toddler feel like it is a little alien. **

Most importantly though we get to meet Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie). Bill Potts is the sort of character that brings people who think representation is just ‘political correctness gone mad’ out in a rash. Because Doctor Who can only be Doctor Who when everyone in it is white and straight. This isn’t the time and a place for a political rant but what’s brilliant about Bill Potts (and Pearl Mackie’s performance) is that she feels like the most ‘real’ companion in New Doctor Who since Donna. The fact that she’s a lesbian doesn’t matter. The Doctor doesn’t care – or even know or notice. It’s a part of the story but no one makes a ridiculously big deal out of it. Bill is like a breath of fresh air. I liked her from the off.

Pearl Mackie brings her to life without doing too much in the way of acting. This is a compliment, not an insult. Acting is a difficult thing to do because as soon as you look like your doing it then it seems false. Especially on television or film. Theatre is a slightly different thing, but I’m not Stanislavsky so a long digression on acting technique we can save for another day. But Mackie is natural. It doesn’t feel like a performance. I’m looking forward to seeing how she develops.

There’s definite chemistry between her a Capaldi. Like good double-acts everywhere they seem to complement each other and raise their game a little when together. This gives me a chance to say – once again – how bloody brilliant Peter Capaldi is as Doctor Who. I’d say this was the part he was born to play, but that equally applies to Malcolm Tucker. I get the impression from interviews though that in real life he’s more the Doctor than he is Malcolm Tucker. But I could watch him as the Doctor forever. He’s displaced Tom Baker as my favourite Doctor for quite a long time now, even though Tom Baker will always be THE Doctor to me.

I’ve seen a theory expressed on the internet that Capaldi’s chosen to play his first season (broadly) as Hartnell, his second as Troughton and this one as Pertwee and I can see how that might feel like a sensible suggestion. Whether it is deliberate or whether we’re doing that human thing of seeing patterns when there aren’t any again only a long discussion with Peter Capaldi himself will reveal. His Doctor certainly seems to change over time. I’m interested to see how it all ends.

I’ve not said much about ‘The Pilot’ itself because I don’t think there’s a lot to say. The main purpose of this story is to introduce us to Bill and the Doctor’s new circumstances, which it does rather nicely. The fact that there’s intelligent alien super-petrol copying (and killing?) a beautiful but miserable student with a starry, starry eye is just background. Bill’s feelings for Heather though seem real enough and whatever ‘Heather’ now is she seems to replicate those feelings to some degree. We never find out anything about the origins of this super-petrol, but it doesn’t matter. There’s never a huge feeling of danger, but there is a certain degree of creepiness about her behavior. There’s also a question about how powerful she is. Perhaps one day we will find out. Or perhaps not.

It’s a good start to Series 10. It’s a gentle-ish introduction to the new team and if you were stepping into Doctor Who for the first time this might not be a bad place to start.

*I’m pretending I’ve not seen what follows. Whether this makes me enough of a performer to get a Lorraine Kelly style tax deal we will see.

**I recommend his biography btw. It’s rather good. It manages to be quite heart-breaking and deep whilst pretending to be something else altogether. I suspect Matt Lucas is a clever man.

The Return of Doctor Mysterio

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Well, The Return of Doctor Mysterio – hereafter just Mysterio to save me from repetitive strain injury – is possibly the least Christmassy Christmas special so far. There is a brief nod to Christmas at the beginning and then we’re straight into the adventure. So, I’d probably have to deduct a mark for that. If I was marking these episodes.

Mysterio introduces a superhero into the Doctor Who universe. A proper sort of Superman. The only superhero we’ve come across previously was fictional – or should that be fictional in a fictional universe – Karkus in The Mind Robber. Are ‘real’ superheroes compatible with the Doctor Who universe? Isn't everything?

The first thing, therefore, Steven Moffat does is to give our superhero, who will be called ‘The Ghost’ a nice Doctor Who universe explanation. Peter Capaldi does fine work here aided by a child actor who is pretty good, Logan Hoffman. It’s funny, which always helps.

I should say – and I like to get this out of the way early – that I mostly enjoyed this. It feels pretty inconsequential, with the exception of the re-introduction of Nardole (Matt Lucas.) There was some snarking when it was announced that Matt Lucas would return in Series Eleven, probably the same kind of snark that greeted the arrival of Catherine Tate. The expectation that someone who is a comedian is not going to be good at acting. And yes, Nardole is a more comic part than Donna, but there is also more to him than that and on this initial sample I think we’re going to be fine. Nardole is a good foil for the Doctor and Matt Lucas plays him well.

The villains in this story, Harmony Shoals are connected to those in The Husbands of River Song. They’re the head peeling – if that is the right word – nasties. They’re suitably creepy, especially Aleksandar Jovanovic as Dr. Sim, but I’m afraid aren’t going to feature in many people’s lists of favorite Doctor Who monsters. Anyway, they have a plan to conquer the world and the Doctor – along with Grant Gordon/The Ghost (Justin Chatwin) and journalist Lucy Fletcher (Charity Wakefield) aka Superman and Lois Lane.

This story wears the influence of Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman movie on its sleeve. Much more so I think than any modern superhero movies, except the costume. The costume is a modern superhero outfit. Perhaps because Donner’s movie – retrospectively at least – is more intimate than most modern superhero movies, with the exception perhaps of Logan. But I’m not here to talk about the superhero genre. I’m here to talk about Doctor Who.

Chatwin and Wakefield are excellent in their roles. Lucy Fletcher’s interrogation of the Doctor using Mr. Huffle as a lie detector of sorts is rather marvelous and Chatwin gets to be nice, which is an unusual trait in a television character these days. My only – slight – quibble is that Grant’s role as Lucy’s nanny, a woman he’s known since high school, does seem a tad stalkerish. However lovely it is in the end. But I may be getting a little weird in my old age. A lot of what used to seem like a romantic story to me these days smacks of stalking to me now. That’s my problem though, not yours.

The Doctor and Nardole attempt to thwart Harmony Shoals’ plan whilst Lucy and The Ghost have a romantic dinner for two. Unfortunately, their dinner gets interrupted by Harmony Shoals’ Mr. Brock who wants The Ghost for his body. And things then happen. But it all turns out alright in the end. I particularly love The Doctor’s totally contemptuous dismissal of Mr. Brock, which I’d like to see more of in Doctor Who.

So, it isn’t the best Doctor Who story ever. Nor is it highly festive, but it is an enjoyable enough story and that is pretty much all I have to say about that.