For Jodi Whittaker’s maiden voyage as the Doctor’s thirteenth incarnation I reviewed each episode of season eleven, only to find that this time around I simply didn’t have time for that kind of commitment. But I certainly want to keep appreciating the work she’s doing (I’m the proud owner of a Thirteenth Doctor Rock Candy figurine) and so am continuing my ten-point template for Doctor Who related reviews – though in this case, it’s for the entire season and not per episode.
So, here are ten observations about season twelve of Doctor Who…
1. The drawcard of the show at the moment is Jodie herself as the Doctor. I stayed well away from whatever on-line dramas may or may not have occurred when she was cast, but I think she’s doing fantastically, performing with passion and intellect and playfulness and a real sense that she’s enjoying herself.
What’s come as a profound relief is that the Doctor hasn’t been overtly gendered in any way – yes, she’s played by a woman now, but the characterization hasn’t changed at all (not that I really expected it to, but either little things could have slipped in without the writers realizing it OR they could have made the profound mistake of having a Very Special Episode in which the Doctor deals with sexism). But this Doctor is still who she always was, and she gets on with things in the way she always has.
There is one slight problem, and it’s that she doesn’t have a particularly warm or meaningful connection with any of her Companions…
There is one slight problem, and it’s that she doesn’t have a particularly warm or meaningful connection with any of her Companions…
2. As I was throughout season eleven, I remain a little cool on Graham, Ryan and Yaz. None of them seem to have a special bond with the Doctor, there’s no genuine sense of friendship or affection there, and I’m really not sure why they’re travelling with her or what they bring to the table. On paper, it would appear that Yaz is meant to be the smart one and Graham is meant to be the nurturing one, but that rarely manifests in any of the plots, and leaves nothing significant for poor Ryan to do.
I just want to know what exactly they’re getting out of their travels with the Doctor. They’re not running away from anything, they’re not in search of anything, and they have no character arcs to speak of. To me, a perfect Companion arc would involve a purposeless and under-confident young man or woman who is swept up by the Doctor, learns a range of social and practical skills, and then returns to normal life strengthened by their experiences, ready to face the world on their own terms.
I just want to know what exactly they’re getting out of their travels with the Doctor. They’re not running away from anything, they’re not in search of anything, and they have no character arcs to speak of. To me, a perfect Companion arc would involve a purposeless and under-confident young man or woman who is swept up by the Doctor, learns a range of social and practical skills, and then returns to normal life strengthened by their experiences, ready to face the world on their own terms.
In this case, I still feel that three Companions is two too many, and yet I don’t want any of them to retire before they’ve had the chance to actually do anything!
3. In the two-part season premiere we’re treated to espionage-themed episodes that put the Doctor in the role (and suit) of James Bond. But you can’t have Bond without Blofeld, and this opener reintroduces us to the Master, now played by Sacha Dhawan. I’ll admit, the reveal caught me off-guard, though all the clues were there, from him suggesting they find the “spyMASTER” to his codename “O” referencing the “oh crap,” expression when people realize who they’re truly dealing with.
That’s a reasonably clever bit of wordplay, and his threat his magnified by the Doctor’s fearful reaction to his reappearance and Dhawan’s genuinely unsettling ability to move between energetic charm and barely controlled madness. He and Jodie have great tension and chemistry, to an extent not seen in this particular love/hate relationship since David Tennant and John Simm.
(There is one slightly dodgy moment though: at one point the Master is working alongside the Nazis, using an appearance modifier to hide his non-Aryan looks. In order to make her escape, the Doctor deactivates it, leaving him to the mercy of his racist cohorts. Um… look, if you ever find yourself in a situation in which a madman is threatening to kill you and destroy the planet, then yes – by all means use whatever tactic comes to hand. But within the context of a BBC family show, it’s a little unpleasant to watch our hero weaponize racism to defeat an enemy. Just saying).
(There is one slightly dodgy moment though: at one point the Master is working alongside the Nazis, using an appearance modifier to hide his non-Aryan looks. In order to make her escape, the Doctor deactivates it, leaving him to the mercy of his racist cohorts. Um… look, if you ever find yourself in a situation in which a madman is threatening to kill you and destroy the planet, then yes – by all means use whatever tactic comes to hand. But within the context of a BBC family show, it’s a little unpleasant to watch our hero weaponize racism to defeat an enemy. Just saying).
4. As usual, this season has some ominous “change your ways before it’s too late” warning episodes, though they’re not any more or less heavy-handed than anything that’s featured in any other season. In Orphan 55 we learn that climate change has done its worst and Earth is a dead planet (though considering previous seasons have depicted Britain floating around in space, the destruction of the sun, and the obliteration of the entire universe, so – whatever) and Praxeus features aliens controlling the birds by hijacking the plastic they’ve ingested to create a literal murder of crows.
Some things work well, like a gay couple that appear without any shocking revelations or self-congratulatory applause (and they don’t die!) while others don’t: a clumsy sci-fi metaphor for depression reveals Yaz once suffered from it – a development that’s never been mentioned before, has had no bearing on her characterization up until this point, and will probably never come up again.
5. I felt that the requisite historical characters worked really well this year, with a special shout-out to Goran Višnjić as Nikola Tesla (which I imagine was a bit of Casting Gag considering his role in Timeless). But there was also a sense that the guest stars were taken from a more limited period of time (for instance, the premiere features Ada Lovelace, the penultimate episode introduces us to her father, Lord Bryon), with an emphasis on inventors, artists and women.
So we have (in rough chronological order) Lord Bryon, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla and Dorothy Skerrit, and Noor Inayat Khan. There’s a great sense of continuity between the work they produced and the way they’re incorporated into the plot (for instance, the implication that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was inspired by the Lone Cyberman, or the Master quoting Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias “look upon my work and despair” in the finale) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this show establish thematic consistency through its historical guest stars before. Nicely done.
So we have (in rough chronological order) Lord Bryon, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla and Dorothy Skerrit, and Noor Inayat Khan. There’s a great sense of continuity between the work they produced and the way they’re incorporated into the plot (for instance, the implication that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was inspired by the Lone Cyberman, or the Master quoting Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias “look upon my work and despair” in the finale) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this show establish thematic consistency through its historical guest stars before. Nicely done.
6. So Gallifrey has been destroyed again? After all that work, including a television special, devoted to the act of resurrecting it? I feel like Steven Moffat ended his tenure by giving Chris Chibnall the gift of plot potential (the Time Lords are still alive!) and now he’s just thrown it away. Plus, it’s silly. All these narrative takebacks are tedious, like how Moffat became addicted to this “everybody lives” motto to the point where nobody ever died and there were no consequences to anything. Yet this is somehow worse.
7. This season was very much structured around the mystery of “the Timeless Child” which was first mentioned last season in The Ghost Monument and then not again until this season’s premiere. And I’m not quite sure what to make of the revelation that the Doctor is said child, and that it means she’s actually from another dimension entirely, found by a Gallifreyan and experimented on, and the source of the Time Lords’ regeneration abilities.
7. This season was very much structured around the mystery of “the Timeless Child” which was first mentioned last season in The Ghost Monument and then not again until this season’s premiere. And I’m not quite sure what to make of the revelation that the Doctor is said child, and that it means she’s actually from another dimension entirely, found by a Gallifreyan and experimented on, and the source of the Time Lords’ regeneration abilities.
I imagine this is a massive retcon of previously established lore from the series, and if I was more invested in this show’s continuity, I suppose I might be annoyed. There’s really nothing wrong with standalone stories about an old curmudgeon who stole a Tardis in order to see the universe, but these recent seasons have piled more and more complications onto that very simple premise.
This is quite difficult to grasp in regards to how it fits with already established plot-points, that apparently stretch back into the original serial (I see something called Morbius being mentioned in discussion threads, but even after Googling the character I’ve no idea how it’s relevant to this story). In other ways, there are some nice little connective touches, such as the life of Brendan being a fabrication (or simulation?) in order to keep the Doctor’s memories at bay (or to recreate them in a different context?) in which this particular incarnation (or projection?) lives out his life as a policeman – which might explain why her Tardis takes the form of a police box.
If anyone wants to shed light on this for me, be my guest!
8. This season also had callbacks galore, from the reappearance of the Judoon, to the Doctor using four blips to get the Master’s attention, to the return of John Barrowman as Jack Harkness (a character not seen since 2011) and Ruth Clayton – another mystery that has yet to be fully explained – presumably using a Chameleon Arch in order to hide her true identity.
It’s a little dangerous to leave so many puzzles left unsolved by the end of a season – let’s not forget the inexplicable resolution to Moffat’s Silence arc, but I’ll tentatively assume that Chibnall has a plan in place. And if not, hey – it’s Doctor Who. It’s build on a timey wimey “just go with it” sensibility, and I’m long past worrying about this stuff.
It’s a little dangerous to leave so many puzzles left unsolved by the end of a season – let’s not forget the inexplicable resolution to Moffat’s Silence arc, but I’ll tentatively assume that Chibnall has a plan in place. And if not, hey – it’s Doctor Who. It’s build on a timey wimey “just go with it” sensibility, and I’m long past worrying about this stuff.
9. Favourite episode would have to be The Haunting of Villa Diodati which has something of nearly everything I love in a Doctor Who episode: a dark and stormy night, a haunted house, period gowns, a twist on an historical event, a sense of long-term importance, the Companions being useful, some funny moments – it’s all good.
10. So we close this season with the Doctor in Judoon prison. Well, that’s fine as far as cliffhangers go, but I definitely have some follow-up questions involving everything else…
An explanation of the Morbius thing: In the 1976 Tom Baker story "The Brain of Morbius", there was a flashback sequence where images of all the previous Doctors appeared in the Doctor's memory.
ReplyDeleteThe production team thought it would be amusing to imply there had been Doctors *before* William Hartnell, and originally planned to get the images of very famous actors to appear after Hartnell's face popped up. However, they couldn't clear the rights for the images in time, and so they used pictures of the production crew instead - the show's producer, script editor, the episode's director and some of the show's regular writers instead.
Fandom has, as you might imagine, spent much of the last 43 years trying to come up with explanations for who these were if not the Doctor... and then Chibnall goes and makes them canon (they actually appear in the sequence where the Doctor is overloading the Matrix with memories - they're all the faces tinted in orange). So what this essentially means is that the current showrunner of Doctor Who made it canon that another showrunner played the Doctor.
(Perhaps coincidentally, "The Brain of Morbius" was also heavily influenced by Frankenstein.)
It is a little odd that after his first series was spent trying to *avoid* references to the past, Chibnall really went to town here - bringing back the Master, destroying Gallifrey again, creating a race of Cybermen/Time Lords, and repeatedly making casual references to obscure stories from the 1960s, some of which don't even exist any more.
I think the moment in Spyfall where the Doctor uses the Master's skin colour against him is sort of emblematic of Chibnall's writing. I think it's horribly misjudged more than anything - I don't think Chibnall properly appreciated the unfortunate implications of it. But deeply, deeply unfortunate they are.
The whole Timeless Child thing is a massive retcon... and yet it feels curiously inconsequential, coming from someone who has seen pretty much all of the 1963-89 run. We'll see how it pans out. I am still not sold on Chibnall as a writer (I think he got very, *very* lucky with the first series of Broadchurch), but it does feel like this year we got a look at his real vision for the show... even if it is, at times, deeply derivative of other peoples' visions for the show.
THANK YOU. That Morbius stuff makes a lot more sense now, though anyone (like me) that has only a passing knowledge of the original serials will be left baffled.
DeleteI think the moment in Spyfall where the Doctor uses the Master's skin colour against him is sort of emblematic of Chibnall's writing. I think it's horribly misjudged more than anything - I don't think Chibnall properly appreciated the unfortunate implications of it. But deeply, deeply unfortunate they are.
Yeah, I definitely don't think it came from a malevolent place (in fact, he probably thought he was making a statement on the self-destructive qualities of evil) but what works in theory doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen.
I am still not sold on Chibnall as a writer (I think he got very, *very* lucky with the first series of Broadchurch), but it does feel like this year we got a look at his real vision for the show... even if it is, at times, deeply derivative of other peoples' visions for the show.
I've always been leery about him at the helm; he's still the guy who wrote the worst Torchwood episodes and the terrible 2011 Camelot show. That he's starting to lean on the mythology (or at least play around with it) is a bit telling.
Incidentally, the very same production team who made "The Brain of Morbius" decided, less than a year later, to introduce the idea that Time Lords could only regenerate 12 times (until then it was apparently the intention that they could do it perpetually)... which, coupled with the 'extra' Doctors from "Morbius" would have meant that the Doctor was already on his final life by the time he was played by Tom Baker. So you do have to wonder exactly how serious they were being. Either way, it has to be one of the earliest examples of a show deliberately trolling its own viewers.
Delete> Yeah, I definitely don't think it came from a malevolent place (in fact, he probably thought he was making a statement on the self-destructive qualities of evil) but what works in theory doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen.
Although... did *nobody* working on that scene not at least think "hang on, is this maybe a bit dodgy"?
Although... did *nobody* working on that scene not at least think "hang on, is this maybe a bit dodgy"?
DeleteFrom Maid Marian's death in 2006 to the resurrection of Palpatine without explanation last year, I remain truly amazed at what manages to get past the preliminary stages of script writing in the writer's room.
> From Maid Marian's death in 2006
DeleteDid it ever come to light exactly what happened there? It was the showrunners' own decision apparently, but those last two episodes of the second series feel very much like they've been fudged together at the last minute, almost as if they were a replacement for something else...
Sorry, late reply! To this day I've no idea what was going on, though the fact that the showrunner/writer responsible had no part to play in season three was rather telling (though that was a case of shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped).
DeleteIt's clear from the actors comments afterwards that it was definitely a decision made in the writing room, though the BBC initially tried to blame Lucy Griffiths and her desire to seek opportunities in Hollywood in the wake of the backlash, which was a dick move.
Short of speaking personally to someone BTS, we may never know.
I would be very surprised if Dominic Minghella's departure wasn't more to do with the sudden death of his brother, which happened around the time pre-production should have started on Series 3. Foz Allen seems to have also been involved in the decision to kill Marian and he hung around, although I always got the impression that Minghella handled the creative side of things and Allen was more to do with overseeing the production.
DeleteI regret not asking Gordon Kennedy about the whole affair when I met him a few years ago, but I suspected it might be a sore point...
Oh, I didn't know that about Minghella's brother; now I see it was Anthony Mingella who wrote one of the staples of my childhood: Jim Henson's The Storyteller.
DeleteMaybe one day someone will spill the beans...
My theory, FWIW, is that Minghella left the production so late in the day that there was no time to find a replacement head writer, and the creative side of the show was effectively left rudderless. If that led to production being rather rushed that would explain certain decisions, such as a woman in her late twenties being cast in a role that appears to have been intended for a teenager. It would also explain why Sally Wainwright was hired as showrunner for a prospective fourth series long before the show got cancelled, and full scripts got written, if they wanted to avoid something similar happening if the show came back...
DeleteYes, I remember talk of Sally Wainwright getting brought in, and everyone's baffled reaction that they were going to try and craft a season four out of the mess left behind (though the introduction of Archer certainly demonstrates the veracity of this).
DeleteIf that led to production being rather rushed that would explain certain decisions, such as a woman in her late twenties being cast in a role that appears to have been intended for a teenager.
Poor Jane Froggartt. What a wretched character Kate was.