Nightmare In Silver

Nightmare in Silver is rather disappointing. After Neil Gaiman's rather brilliant The Doctor's Wife I had high hopes for this story but in the end, with a couple of exceptions, I didn't enjoy it very much.

Firstly the two children - Angie and Artie - are an annoyance of the highest order. Is there anything more tedious than children complaining about being bored whilst traveling through space and time? Plus neither of the child actors does much to make me like either of them. Thankfully they're side-lined pretty quickly, which saved me from actually turning the blessed thing off.

Secondly the Cybermen. I've said often in this blog that the Cybermen often disappoint in televised adventures, whilst Big Finish seem to do a proper job with them.* This is another example. There's no point throwing in nods to Earthshock or Tomb of the Cybermen if you're going to make another disappointing Cyberman story.

The re-design does look lovely I'll give them that but Gaiman makes the mistake of 'upgrading' them to an almost invincible Borg style creature, which is supposed to make them more terrifying but only ends up making you think that the writer is painting himself into a very difficult corner. The ending isn't a terrible one but there really isn't that much tension to it from the moment The Doctor throws off his Cyber mind sharer. Basically somewhere along the line, despite all the clever new Cyber tricks, Cybermites, and Cyber special effects, the Cybermen are still not scary enough.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I think it might be that the Cybermen are at their best not in huge armies. At least not originally but when they're small in number, lurking in the shadows and when we see the horror of the conversion process. Their vulnerability had become ridiculous in the later years of Classic Who but re-jigging them to these invincible things removes some of their - and yes, this is an odd word to choose - 'humanity'. The horrifying thing about the Cybermen was always the fact that they were 'once like us', which is why despite their old-fashioned look now the original Tenth Planet Cybermen would be the scariest. It's why when Star Trek: The Next Generation created the Borg they kept some of that human flesh in there. They're us as we might be.

I also like the setting. The abandoned Theme Park with its Comedy Castle with its weird hints of Scooby-Doo is rather interesting. It's a twist on a base under siege ending as it does in the last stand at the Comedy Castle.

Also, I quite liked most of Matt Smith's battle with the Cyber Planner. The inside of the Doctor's mind has certainly improved in quality since we last saw it in The Invisible Enemy and not a prawn in view. Matt Smith's performance is mostly excellent but I think I could have done without the Ninth and Tenth Doctor impressions.

Ignoring the children - and I intend to never speak of them again - most of the performances are good. I can't really fault the acting from the rag-tag punishment unit that is basically a selection of cliches, including Tamzin Outhwaite's Captain; Jason Watkins as the poor unfortunate Webley and especially Warwick Davis as Porridge. I like Porridge. I hope we get to see him again, even if his secret is now out.

So it wasn't all bad but it was mainly not that great. Perhaps I was more annoyed at the time because I had high expectations of Neil Gaiman. He's a fantastic writer but I suppose to hit us with two brilliant stories out of two would be too much to ask. It is, for me, the weakest story of the second part of the Seventh Season, which is a shame.


*If you want to see how to do a genuinely creepy surviving Cyberman chess playing robot story then I recommend you listen to Big Finish's The Silver Turk, which I reviewed here, which I'm afraid makes A Nightmare in Silver look very poor indeed.

The Crimson Horror

Ah, The Crimson Horror. I wrote, at the time of broadcast about some of the more troubling aspects of this story in a blog called Doctor Lad so I don't propose to re-visit those issues in detail. Suffice it to say on re-watch I'm still not entirely comfortable with some of what is going on, particularly with the Doctor and Jenny but hey and ho.

The thing is apart from that this is a pretty good story. It's Mark Gatiss's second story of the season, after Cold War, and possibly his best so far. It's got a nice period setting, Victorian Yorkshire with a touch of the gothic. It has a sort of contemporary Talons of Weng-Chiang aspect to it.

It's structured in an interesting fashion with the initial part of the story revolving around Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Strax (Dan Starkey) and Jenny (Catrin Stewart) aka The Paternoster gang investigating the 'Crimson Horror' on behalf of a very fainty gentleman whose name escapes me as I write this. It turns out that the last thing the most recent dead man saw was The Doctor. So off to 'The North' goes The Paternoster gang.

Jenny gets sent inside the rather mysterious 'Sweetville', a model village project of the kind so favored of the forward-thinking Victorian philanthropist. In this case the mysterious Mr. Sweet* and Mrs. Gillyflower (Diana Rigg) who is both villain and archetypal blunt-talking Yorkshirewoman. Mrs. Gillyflower has a blind daughter that she rolls out to convince potential settlers in Sweetville of the horrors of the demon drink. This is Ada (Rachael Stirling, who is Diana Rigg's actual daughter.**)

Diana Rigg is brilliant. Mrs. Gillyflower is sharp, cold and focused on creating a perfect world for her people to settle down in. To achieve this she's prepared to sacrifice everyone else, including her daughter. The relationship between Ada and Mrs. Gillyflower is probably the darkest part of this story, which is helped by Rachael Stirling's sterling - sorry - performance as Ada. Who it turns out saved the Doctor. The actual main villainous plan is a bit bog-standard Doctor Who. It could even be a steam-punk James Bond story if it wasn't for the identity of Mr. Sweet.

Mr. Sweet, it turns out is a surviving member of a parasitical leech-like creature that Madame Vastra's Silurian kinsfolk had issues with back in the day. He's become 'close' to Mrs. Gillyflower, who has been milking his venom for her plans. It is highly likely, of course, that Mr. Sweet will come to a sticky end but I'll let you see that for yourselves.

The Paternoster gang is as much fun as usual and this story gives Jenny a real chance to shine. First undercover and then when - in a Victorian Emma Peel cat-suit - she dispatches a number of Mrs. Gillyflower's servants. Strax is still the comedy Sontaran: a toddler with laser weapons and grenades. I like Strax. I just wish he hadn't become the pattern for all Sontarans. It's a waste of a good race of baddies. Although you could argue Classic Who got there first with their portrayal in The Two Doctors but that would mildly undermine my sniffy little point so I shall pretend I haven't mentioned it and move on.

The Paternoster Gang are, of course, a bit surprised to see Clara but the Doctor never gets around to answering their questions about who she might actually be. As the season approaches its end I'm beginning to suspect we're getting close to an answer. There's a nice moment in the end scene with the annoying children*** where she sees a picture of herself that is supposed to be Victorian London but it isn't her. It's the other Clara.

Oh and before I forget I love the way they do the Doctor bringing Jenny up to date on how he ended up dipped in red gunk. It's all sepia, snaps and short scenes. It's rather cleverly done. And there's even a Tegan reference for the Dads and Mums, which is nice. It certainly helps make the story more structurally interesting than the plot probably deserves.

Which makes me sound like I didn't enjoy it but I did. I enjoyed it because it was although the plot wasn't radical it was a solid story well-told and it was fun (with my Doctor Lad issues put aside). I enjoyed it because of Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling. I enjoyed it because of the creepy cuteness of Mr. Sweet. I enjoyed it because it did interesting things structurally. And I enjoyed it because the Paternoster Gang were in it.

I would happily re-watch this one.

Next up...Nightmare in Silver


*I swear for a moment I thought they were going to sneak the Kandyman back in to Doctor Who when I heard about this story and saw the red gunk that was going to appear, which I thought was a bizarrely radical decision from Mr. Moffat. Alas I was wrong.)
**I'm sure you all know that but I'm putting it in as one of those pieces of standard trivia so as to earn myself some obvious trivia points. As you do.
***I'm sorry but they manage to be annoying in the short scene at the end of this episode and it doesn't bode well for the next story that they're in it for much more. I mean what does the threat to tell your Dad that Clara is a time traveller actually mean? Dad's going to go..."Oh really. Well you're fired." And not go 'O don't be silly. Time travel.' Even the pictures could be explained away if you wanted. Plus who took the picture in the submarine...and...oh don't get me started. I'm beginning to dislike Nightmare in Silver already and I've not even seen it. Again. Talk about pre-judging a story. But really Mr. Moffat what were you thinking.

Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS

Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS (hereafter JCT for the benefit of my fingers) is an odd little story. It's not particularly a story with much of a story. Indeed it almost feels like a story that has only two objectives: firstly to show off the inside of the TARDIS properly and secondly as a shaggy dog story leading up to a joke about Big Friendly Buttons (BFB). Oh and sorry to come over all Monty Python Spanish Inquisition it has a couple of little 'Clara-Doctor Arc' bits to get across.

There's a lot of whinging by Doctor Who fans - myself included - about 'cheating' endings in New Who (as if Classic Who didn't have its fair share of Deus ex cop outs). The main complaint, of course, is the constant re-booting of the Universe to save everyone, which sometimes feels like cheating and sometimes seems like an unwillingness to confront the full horror of what has been created. The desire to make sure that everybody lives. JCT has the mother of all these kinds of 'cheats', except it isn't cheating. The Big Friendly Cop Out is sign-posted right from the start and additional signposts pop up throughout the story: the Doctor stealing the 'BFB', Clara's burnt hand, etc. So yes, it might be a bit of a sneaky but it isn't an unfair re-set. We've been told it is coming. So when it arrives we shouldn't really complain. And I suspect the production team will have loved it knowing how much fan rage it would generate, although I could be wrong.*

Anyway mainly though it is a lovely opportunity to banish memories of The Invasion of Time and explore the inside of the TARDIS. Now, of course, budgets and technology allow us a proper taste of the infinite size of the TARDIS with its swimming pools, observatory and an immense library filled with books from all over the Universe, including a rather interesting liquid talking Encyclopedia Gallifrey and a big chunky impressive History of the Time War. Not sure who the author of that book would be. Perhaps the Doctor himself. It certainly contains the Doctor's real name because Clara - for a while - knows what it is. Anyway, I digress. I love all that stuff, even if I miss the roundels. The corridors look a little dull without them I feel. It just reminds you how far Doctor Who has come in terms of technology and budget. Now the producers of Doctor Who can do all those things that in the past either couldn't be done or were done badly.

After Hide this is another small cast. There are the Doctor and Clara plus Gregor Van Baalen (Ashley Walters), his brother Bram (Mark Oliver) and Tricky (Jahvel Hall). These are the crew of the salvage ship whose attempts to nick the TARDIS kick-starts the whole mess. Gregor and Bram are human, Tricky is an android. A very human-looking android. Unusually for Doctor Who Gregor, Bram and Tricky are black, which must make the only Doctor Who story where white actors are in a minority. All three put in solid performances but I think Jahvel Hall gets much more to do with his character and therefore is much more interesting. They have a story of their own but I won't reveal too much of it here to avoid spoilers. However, the story's ending has a nice moment in it, which echoes a scene that happened earlier.

There are also some rather unpleasant creatures lurking aboard the TARDIS, which seem intent on killing everyone aboard. Clara wants to know what they are but the Doctor is unwilling to tell her. The Doctor knows what they are but, as he tells Clara, sometimes there are things you don't need to know. What they are is rather horrible. However, they're really just there to push people in the direction that the story wants them to go in. They look rather good, especially in the longer shots, in the dark or through the heat haze. Again, like Hide, there's a couple of shots that are too close up and the costumes look a little costumey but I'm being harsh indeed. Mat King, the director, mainly does a fine job with this whole episode. Lots of interesting shots and cuts to make being trapped inside a box, even if it is an impressive and infinite box, rather interesting.

There's not much else I can say about this story. Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman are brilliant as usual. There's a couple of good scenes between them. Where we see how much the mystery of Clara has got under the Doctor's skin and also how scary the Doctor can be. Clara's line about the Doctor being the thing in the TARDIS she is most scared of reminded me of Rose's line in Dalek about the Doctor pointing a gun. It is nice to be reminded that there is something dangerous about the Doctor, especially to a new companion. The sliver of ice in his heart, as Emma Grayling says in Hide. But in general Matt Smith & Jenna Coleman makes a rather brilliant team. There's good solid chemistry between them. Their timing and delivery are as finely tuned as a couple dancing together.

So to cut a long blog mercifully short this ain't bad this. But not special.


*And if I am right this shouldn't be the reason for the production team to do stuff in the future because that way lies the Whizzkid.

Hide

Hide has some rather good bits, a bit of average and a bit of hmmm about it. In fact, for about thirty minutes it is spectacularly good: atmospheric, well-acted and occasionally terrifying. Then we discover what the 'ghost' is, which is clever but a little dull. Then we get a bit tacked on at the end that is nice in its sentiment but rather silly.

Other good bits. A fine pair of performances from Dougray Scott as Professor Alex Palmer - a relation of Harry Palmer's perhaps - and Jessica Raine as Emma Grayling. Both characters have a little more depth than is sometimes the case in Doctor Who. Professor Palmer is a button-up and closed down incredibly modest war hero. The sort of man that might keep a Victoria Cross in his attic.

Actually, before I go on brief moment of quibbling here. The Doctor's a bit glib at dropping in information about people in this story. He does it with Professor Palmer - and reveals to Emma that the Professor has been lying about his war service - and he does it later when he spits out a lot of information about Hila Turkurian (Kemi-Bo Jacobs). The Doctor gabbles a lot in this story. Perhaps it is because he's been more scared than usual. He's certainly less good at hiding it than usual here.

Anyway back to Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine. Whilst Professor Palmer is emotionally buttoned-up Emma Grayling is a psychic empath, which means she's able to read people's feelings, which brings its own difficulties as the Doctor explains without realizing the impact his little information dump is going to have on Emma. It takes Clara to stop him. So as well as gabbling in this story the Doctor does his fair share of babbling too.

Both Scott and Raine give excellent performances and their strength helps pull the story through its less impressive final fifteen minutes.

At points during the first half-an-hour, this story is genuinely quite scary and atmospheric. It seems to have picked up hints from both The Stone Tapes and The Omega Factor in terms of how to do haunted house stories. I love the hints of things in the dark.

I should also point out that once again I like the fact that Clara is actually genuinely quite scared at points throughout this story. Barry Letts once said that key to Elizabeth Sladen's performance was her ability to act scared and brave at the same time and Jenna Coleman has this knack too, which makes her a highly likable companion.

Part of this story's purpose is to remind us of the mystery of Clara's situation. The TARDIS doesn't seem to like her very much for mysterious reasons, although the TARDIS does do the right thing in the end. The Doctor also had his own hidden reasons for bringing Clara here. He wanted to run her past Emma Grayling. However, that doesn't reveal anything much to us. She is, Emma insists, an ordinary woman. To the Doctor though she's the great mystery to be solved. Anyway, whatever she is Jenna Coleman is pretty good.

Matt Smith's good in this even allowing for the excess babbling. There's a couple of lovely scenes: one with Dougray Scott in the darkroom where Professor Palmer's reasons for wanting to go ghost hunting are explained and one in the TARDIS with Clara when they're talking about how the Doctor sees people.

The problem is it all becomes a bit dull once the ghost is explained. Then there are the secondary monsters. These are brilliant handled and their movements are creepy and strange. The only mistake is to show it close up when its more obvious costume nature is a tad obvious. It doesn't happen often in New Doctor Who so it is more noticeable when it does.

So it isn't a bad story this but the final few minutes don't quite live up to the brilliantly atmospheric first half an hour.

Cold War

Cold War is a lovely new Doctor Who tribute to Patrick Troughton's era of Doctor Who. It's got a 'base under siege', it's got an Ice Warrior and it's got HADS (last seen in The Krotons is my battered memory serves.)

We find ourselves on board a Russian submarine. It's in 1983. The Cold War is on. [D'oh] Mankind edges close to its own mutually assured destruction. It's a tense time. And as Stepashin demonstrates this is a Cold War with hotheads on both sides.

It's an interesting choice to make it a Russian submarine and not a US or UK submarine. It adds a certain amount of tension that might not have been there in those circumstances. It also makes us - and how intentional this is I don't know - that we are all humans. We've all got families. We're all afraid. It asks us to be sympathetic to a group of poor Russian submariners who get bumped off rather unpleasantly, particularly the poor two crew members who get diced and sliced to help Skaldak 'understand' humans. It's a nice touch by Mark Gattis. This is a far better attempt at showing the horror of battle and war than Victory of the Daleks because it is far more subtle.

It also rattles along at a hell of a pace, even with a few slower scenes in there to allow us to take a breath. The action starts with post-credits and doesn't really stop. There are however a couple of fine slow moments. All of which involve Clara.

One of which is unusual in Doctor Who. It starts when they find the - off-screen mutilated bodies - of the two Russian crewmen. Clara's reaction is genuine shock and then afterward she has a conversation with Professor Grisenko - played by the legend that is David Warner - about how what she's just seen makes her realize that this just got 'real'. It's very rare for Doctor Who to acknowledge the horror of what a companion sees and how it might affect them. It's not dwelt on for long obviously because we can't have Doctor Who getting 'too real'. Let's face it lots of people die in the Doctor Who universe. In a myriad of different horrible ways. They die individually. They die in millions. They die on screen. They die off-screen. The good guys die. The bad guys die. Death is ever-present in Doctor Who but rarely do we actually dwell on it because lets face it if we did then the whole Doctor thing would be a lot less fun and the series incredibly bleak. [This subject has been on my mind today as I'm listening to the audiobook of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and am reminded of how utterly bleak Bellboy's death is in that story. Possibly the bleakest moment in the whole history of Doctor Who]

Anyway enough about death.

The Ice Warrior looks fab. They've tweaked the design a bit but it is pretty faithful to the original design. And it looks massive and genuinely rather terrifying and unstoppable. I do have a quibble with the creature inside it. It just lacks the same kind of imaginative oomph that the external design does. It's a sort of Pensioner Ninja Turtle merged with the fingers and hands of a Martian from the 50s film version of War of the Worlds, which may or may not be deliberate. They're both Martians after all.

The Ice Warrior's are one of those old-school Doctor Who monsters that have a culture. It's more hinted at in the television series than explored but both Big Finish and The New Adventures Novels explored things in more detail. They've been under-used throughout really and Steven Moffat wasn't a big fan because he saw their slow, heavy breathing lumbering ways as the perfect bad monster to translate into the modern era. Mark Gatiss apparently sold him on them with this story. It should be noticed that Skaldak's voice was far less hissy, which helped with clarity. It is, of course, provided by Nicholas Briggs.

Skaldak's given a bit of character beyond just the big bad guy. He's woken up having slept for 5000 years. He thinks his race is gone. He misses his warrior daughter and their Songs of the Red Snow - if I've remembered that right - which gives Clara a chance to reach him by singing. Quietly. In fact, with the exception of Clara's singing moment, the final confrontation between Skaldak and the Doctor reminded me of the final confrontation between The Seventh Doctor and Morgaine in Battlefield as the Doctor tries to convince an alien menace of the dangers of releasing a single nuclear weapon. Whisper it but I think the Battlefield scene is done better.

Matt Smith's good in this but Jenna Coleman really shines. It's nice to see a companion who is genuinely scared and worried about what she is caught up in. The rest of the cast are also excellent Liam Cunningham does stolid bearded work well. David Warner plays the eccentric Professor Grisenko with style and his scene where he tries to distract Clara from everything that is going on around her is lovely.

So whilst it isn't the best Doctor Who story ever made it does a fine job of being both entertaining and a rather wonderful throwback to the Troughton era. A Classic Doctor Who story in New Who clothing. Even down to the return to (sometimes obvious) model work whenever we see the outside of the submarine sitting on the rocky sea bed. I like it.

The Rings of Akhatan

Ah, The Rings of Akhatan. I really should dislike this story intensely. It's packed full of sentiment, it has a child actor at its centre and it features singing. A lot of singing. That sort of thing normally annoys me intensely. Especially in Doctor Who.

But I love The Rings of Akhatan and I'm not entirely sure why. Which I suppose makes this a pointless blog in many respects.

Let's start with the easy stuff: Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman. I love Matt Smith's Doctor. The way he manages to be both childish and grown-up at the same time is utterly magnificent. Then there's the way he can jump from frivolity to seriousness in the blink of an eye. He's funny peculiar and funny haha. It's rather brilliant. People talk a lot about the brilliance of the speech to the big starry parasite thing aka Grandfather and I do like that. It's nicely delivered. (And there's a nice version of Colin Baker doing the Sixth Doctor doing the same speech, which you can find here) But I also like the moments before that when Clara and he are discussing what to do. The 'I've seen bigger' bit. F'narr, F'narr.*

So Matt Smith brilliance. Tick.

Then there's Jenna Coleman. She's hit the ground running. To me there's real chemistry between her and Matt Smith - or should that be Clara and the Doctor. Whatever. In this story, she gets to be brave, kind and slightly magnificent. Her moment in the sun follows Matt Smith's speech. I'm going to call it the 'leaf speech'. It's that bit I like the most. After Matt's Doctor moment comes something even better. And nice moving speech about the infinite possibilities of those lost days and lost opportunities. The things we might have been and could have been but never got the chance to be.

To me, this story, written by Neil Cross (No relation), has lots of nice moments in it like that. The Doctor's speech to Merry (Emilia Jones) about her uniqueness - "All the elements in your body were forged many, many millions of years ago, in the heart of a faraway star that exploded and died...Until, eventually they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe." - and how our soul is the stories we are made up of. A line that echoes something the Doctor says to Amy in The Big Bang: "We're all just stories in the end." This is no fairy tale. Part of me feels this story is about what makes us who we are. Our souls. Our memories. Our potential. Our responsibilities. Because in the end, this story is also about doing the right thing, even if we are afraid. It's about standing up to be counted, even when the odds are against us. It's a very Doctor Whoey Doctor Who story.

Also, that line about "You are unique in the universe" is a nice little juxtaposition with Clara's story. Because as far as we can tell she isn't unique in the universe and neither we nor the Doctor know why. As far as he can tell, from his pre-credit, stalking Clara is just a normal woman but something isn't quite right. Obviously, that means another function of this story is for us to get to know a little more about Clara and for her to get to see what traveling with the Doctor is actually like. It's just possible the real Universe is as strange of course but I'm unlikely to find out.

So there are lots of reasons to like this story.

The singing doesn't bother me. It's part of the plot for heaven's sake. It's not the gratuitous and random singing of chart singles for the sake of it. There's a reason for it. And when Merry starts singing again towards the end it is her attempt to help the Doctor. If you want to be pretentious - and I do quite like a bit of pretension here and there - you can call it a metaphor for our profound interconnection in a complex universe. I wouldn't try and get away with that too often though. People may laugh.

Emilia Jones is also a child actress who isn't incredibly irritating. Unlike say that small child in Dragonfire or the children...ah...I'm getting ahead of myself. She's got a lot to do in this story does Emilia and I think she does it well.

Now talking of Dragonfire, if you want to see how much Doctor Who has changed then compare the under-budgeted, over-lit, under-populated cafe/bar scene where Ace gets introduced with the alien marketplace that we see here. Imagine what Dragonfire would look like now. We forget sometimes quite how far we've come as watchers of Doctor Who. It's nice to be reminded occasionally.

So there you have it. Hopefully, I've explained a little why I like this story, which seems - from the DWM poll recently published - to be slightly unloved.

Give it another go. I hope you'll enjoy it a little more.





*For my foreign/younger readers 'F'narr, F'narr' is a sound made by Finbarr Saunders in Viz's fantastic comic strip: Finbar Saunders and His Double Entendres. I recommend its use whenever you hear a double entendre being used. At least until people start begging you to stop.

The Bells of Saint John

Clara 'Oswin' Oswald must be the most introduced companion in Doctor Who history. First, she pops up in Asylum of the Daleks then in The Snowmen and once more here, in The Bells of Saint John. The Doctor doesn't seem to be having a problem with goodbyes at the moment but he is struggling a bit with hello.

Anyway, The Bells of Saint John is a reasonable start to the second part of Series 7. It re-introduces Clara and this time she appears to be about to actually come on board the TARDIS in order for the Doctor to solve the problem that she appears to represent; it sets up the return of a returning villain and lets Steven Moffat make jokes about Twitter. It also features one of my all-time favorite creepy moments in Doctor Who, but we'll come on to that.

The only problem is that because its main function is to get the Clara story rolling along - again - the actual adventure itself feels a little inconsequential. The Doctor seems to knock off the enemy in an afternoon. He almost doesn't have to break a sweat, which is slightly annoying because I love the idea of 'something on the internet': a World Wide Web of Fear if you will. And yet it almost seems thrown away here.

Now I often don't like Steven Moffat's ideas about who the Doctor is or how he should behave. Or his ideas about what constitutes a good companion in Doctor Who but I am beginning to admire his craftsmanship. The way he allows us to take a breath in the middle of a manic romp so that we have time to gather our thoughts before the next rush is admirable. Sometimes he gets a bit carried away and the rush overwhelms the story so that you find yourself at the end thinking, "Well, that was good but I'm sure there's something wrong there somewhere." Then you pick holes in the thing until all you have is holes. But when he gets it right, he gets it right.

And The Bells of Saint John gets it mostly right. It just feels a little throwaway.

There's a wonderful performance from Celia Imrie as Miss Kizlet - also a favorite in Patient Centurion Towers anyway since Acorn Antiques. Plus she appears in one of my favorite films of all time Heartlands, which stars Michael Sheen and I heartily recommend - which ends with that creepy moment I mentioned earlier: her reduction to her original factory settings. The realization that she's just a lost little girl is both sad and rather creepy. It's not often you end up feeling sorry for a villain, but then Steven Moffat does like shades of grey.

I'm not going to say too much about Matt Smith. There's only so many times I can say how much I like his performance, although I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with the Doctor being quite so 'touchy-feely' with women he doesn't know. I know the whole 'Clara thang' means that the Doctor feels that he has a mystery to solve but - just occasionally - the Doctor seems to behave like an intergalactic stalker. I mean does the Doctor strike you as the sort of person who would go off to a Medieval monastery to paint pictures of Clara and contemplate what she means by her last words? The Doctor's an 'on his feet' thinker, not the contemplative sort. After all, that's why he left Gallifrey in the first place. This is a point I may come back to. Or not. Let's see how my whimsy takes me.

I do like Jenna Coleman though. Two (and a tad) stories in and her performance has won me over in a way that Karen Gillan's Amy didn't initially. [I grew to really like her and Amy in the end. It just took a bit of time to warm to her.]  She's got energy and a certain sparkiness, which combined with her timing makes her rather interesting to watch. Yes, on the base level she's another pretty female companion that is part of a problem for the Doctor to solve but if you're going to do that as your cliche de jour then best get an actress that's can make that character interesting. Still early days yet. I may change my mind. It happens. More often than you'd think based on my ranting.

The Spoonheads are a nice little thing too, although I'm never quite sure why neither Clara nor Miss Kizlet runs away from the thing when it tries to download them. Perhaps you can't but it does seem a bit odd. The scene in the cafe in particular with Clara just feels wrong. Maybe it is just me but as soon as I realized that the Spoonhead was a Spoonhead I'd be on my feet and away as fast as possible. I know I'm a coward but would you really just sit there and stare?

Love the Motorbike. Especially up the Shard. That's the sort of moment that people always think is rather silly but I always think of as being the sort of thing you can only do in Doctor Who and get away with it. There's not many other series that could - or would - try that sort of thing. Of course, I have a high tolerance for the 'silly' in Doctor Who, which would probably not endear me to Christoper H. Bidmead but you can't have everything.

So that's pretty much it. The Bells of Saint John was a fun piece of Doctor Who fluff. It's entertaining, a little silly and gets the job of re-re-introducing Clara to the audience. Let's see how that goes, shall we?