In Which I Review Doctor Who (11x1)

"Change, my dear. And, it seems, not a moment too soon." Thus utters the Sixth Doctor moments after the Fifth Doctor regenerated. Change as a driving force in television can be tricky; change too much and you risk losing the audience. Change too little and your show will become stagnant and stale, as if you have nothing more to say. But sometimes change is necessary because the outside world demands it. Perhaps demands isn't the right word--change occurs because the outside world needs it. We are in the midst of a watershed moment here in America and abroad with a heady mix of a new feminist and gender equality movement coupled with a particularly nasty strain of sexist conservatism and, while television will never have the answers to those complex issues, it can not sit idly by and not try to unpack them. And Doctor Who knows this. It has always known this. There has never been a better time to introduce the series's first ever female Doctor. "The Woman Who Fell To Earth" is a celebration of everything we've loved about Doctor Who for 50 plus while gently telling us that a change is a'comin'. The future is female; don't let it scare you. Embrace it. Or get off this planet. 

Introduction episodes in Doctor Who are never the best but at least there's usually a template to follow. The Doctor acts slightly more maniacal than usual as the regeneration levels out while brand new companions look on in bewilderment. It all leads up to a grand moment when the Doctor names his/herself, dresses in their new official clothing and defeats the baddie of the week. The companions stand in awe of this truly bizarre alien before them before agreeing to travel the stars and see all of time and space. It's a formula that works; I would never say otherwise and I have fifty years worth of evidence to back that up. The issue is that while, yes, the formula works--so well, in fact, that had the show not cast Jodi Whittaker as the new Doctor and instead cast another white English male, this episode still would have worked because that formula is so rote--the outside world is clamoring for a new sort of hero. We're not living in a world where we can watch another middle aged white man preach the lessons of the universe to a group of young (usually female) ingenues. The formula may work but that doesn't make it easier to swallow in this day and age. Enter, then, a fresh female face who's here to remind audiences--whether they want to hear it or not--that heroes come in all colors, genders, sizes, shapes, and more. I've been blogging Doctor Who a long time now and have been watching for far longer. I've talked about archetypes and how the Doctor seamlessly moves between different ones with ease which makes her the perfect hero, but at the end of the day an archetype is one thing: a blank slate that we fill in with details as we see fit based on our own culture and society; just because the archetype is different from one group to the next doesn't make the archetype any less powerful or meaningful or true. The Doctor's chief characteristics are as follows--maniacal, weird, intelligent, exasperating, and above all caring. There is no hard and fast rule saying that those traits belong to men alone and that to place those details on to a female body is to betray the role of the hero. The Doctor is a Hero, full stop. Sometimes that hero is an old man wearing a suit and sometimes it's a woman in a lavender coat (which is gorgeous) and yellow suspenders.

The episode is a success, then. It follows the same path that other introduction episodes do. The companions are fun and easily likable, especially Yazmin, and there were several proper scares and science fiction goodies to feel right at home with any episode from Doctors One through Twelve. There are flaws and things to iron out and we still really need to see what kind of Doctor our new leading lady will be once the kinks of regeneration have worked themselves out and she's herself once more, but to expect all of that in the first episode of a new Doctor (and showrunner!) is to put too much pressure on a singular experience. The main takeaway from this week's episode is put rather perfectly by the Doctor (of course): "We're all capable of the most incredible change. We can evolve while still being true to who we are. We can honor who we've been and choose who to be next." The showrunners chose what they want this show to be now, how they want it to look and feel and act. We can make choices to: we can whine and pitch fits about tradition and what constitutes both "The Doctor" and this magnificent show, or we can choose to accept changes, to embrace the new, and to sit back and enjoy the ride because, by God, didn't The Doctor look like she was having the time of her life?

Miscellaneous Notes on The Woman Who Fell To Earth

--Big round of applause to Jodi Whittaker. She nailed the role; she's the Doctor through and through.

--"I hate empty pockets."

--The companions are all enjoyable for this first outing but obviously we need to see much more of them. I am worried about there being so many; it might mean that someone gets the short end of the stick in terms of development.

--"Half an hour ago I was a white-haired Scotsman!"

--The Doctor built herself a Sonic Screwdriver out of a lot of spoons.

--"I'm just a traveler. Sometimes I see things need fixing. I do what I can." Yeah, she's gonna do just fine.

In Which I Review The Doctor Who Christmas Special (2017)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and Whomas! It's time, once more, for that most special of Yuletide traditions: the Doctor Who Christmas special. It's been an age since the show aired regularly and, as usual, it's more than a little bit nice to step inside the mad world of the TARDIS and our beloved everlasting Time Lord. But this year, as has happened before and shall happen again, we say goodbye to the current face of the Doctor and welcome a new--more feminine--face into this bonkers fairy tale world. This year's Christmas special, "Twice Upon a Time," isn't only the goodbye to Peter Capaldi as the titular Time Lord but also to Steven Moffat, a man who's steered the real life TARDIS through six seasons; a man who's tenure as said showrunner has been punctuated by brilliance but too often hallmarked by frustration. This is an episode less defined by the sugary sweet sentiments of Christmas specials past and more a writer trying to hang his hat up and finalize his message to a world of fans. Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat, we bid you farewell. 

Steven Moffat's episodes of Doctor Who are usually made up of a few key things: big, bombastic storylines with lots of flare, drama, and explosions; head scratching timey-wimey twists and turns and, fairly often, snappy dialogue and humor. This Christmas special had all of those; to wit, the First Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor accidentally run into each other at the South Pole where their personalities, mannerisms, and experiences clash; time freezes and almost inexplicably we end up on a hostile red planet with an angry Dalek. And that's all before the Doctor--portrayed by a man for fifty years--regenerates into a woman, an event that--when announced some months ago--sent shock waves of both anger and joy throughout the fan base, causing several internet explosions. But more than being a typical Moffat episode (which this episode absolutely is), the writer is attempting to lampshade, quite loudly to mix up some metaphors, the fact that this is his farewell episode and without being subtle (something Doctor Who almost never is anyway) explain to the audience how he wants his tenure to be remembered. For the sake of ease, forget the plot. The plot is a headscratcher at best that can only be rationally explained by scientific mumbo jumbo from a two thousand year old Time Lord. Instead, let's focus on what the plot is trying to say when we remember it in within the context of Steven Moffat's departure. The idea of Testimony--as presented by glass aliens who seemingly abduct the Doctor and his companions--is presented as evil; all plans the Doctor stumbles across are usually ill intended and in true Doctor fashion, he gives a marvelous speech about stopping Testimony and saving the Universe. The about face that comes toward the end of the episode is that, lo and behold, Testimony isn't an evil plot that the Doctor needs to stop by swishing his white cape and waving his magical sword. No, Testimony is Steven Moffat's way of saying that he, as showrunner, will live on in memory. That's perhaps a bit egotistical but Moffat's tenure is egotistical, which isn't always a bad thing; it means that his plot and often times coherence get lost because of the influx of ideas and themes. And nothing reads Theme-with-a-capital-T more than having an entire episode devoid of plot to focus on something as lofty as memory. Second, for a show that changes actors every few years and expects the audience to form the same attachment to the newbie, memory is vital. In fact, the word memory is dropped several times throughout key moments of the episode. Testimony's purpose is to lift people from the moment of their death, duplicate their memories and then put those memories in a glass figure so that the dead can live on amongst the living even while their physical selves die. Bill Potts, upon revealing that she too is part of Testimony reminds the Doctor, "what is anyone supposed to be except a bunch of memories?" Steven Moffat is a series of memories, not just his own that inform his own personal life--like being a long time Doctor Who fan--but the collective memories of TV watchers who now readily identify him through his works, both good and bad--Weeping Angels, the biggest library in the Universe and River Song, the Pandorica, Amy and Rory Pond, the 50th anniversary, Clara Oswald and Bill Potts. These memories, as treacly as it might sound, have been downloaded into us and we carry them forward, ensuring that Steven Moffat himself lives forever through these memories and works. And perhaps it might be overreaching but I also think that Moffat is asking that we remember him kindly; even as a showrunner who caused more than his share of controversy (to be fair, other showrunners of Doctor Who did not have Twitter and Tumblr to contend with, which isn't to say that some of the criticisms pushed on Moffat are not fair and accurate).

If the importance and immortality of memories is one sticking point of this episode, then surely the other is Moffat reminding us what the heart of Doctor Who is: a fairy tale. The First Doctor, brilliantly played by David Bradley, tries to remind those around him, including the Twelfth Doctor, Captain Lethbridge-Stewart and Bill, that the universe is not a fairy tale; there must be some logical reason why good triumphs over evil even though evil so very clearly has the upper hand. His way of looking at the universe is devoid of magic; the victory of good cannot possibly come down to the works of one bloke who drops down from the sky and fixes problems without ever asking for anything in return. "The real world," he says, "is not a fairy tale." Sometimes, good captains die in war on a cold hard battlefield, never to see their children again. Miracles are rare. And sure, that's certainly reality but it's not what Doctor Who is concerned with. It has never cared much for reality, especially at Christmas. At its heart, Doctor Who is a fairy tale with a hero who slays dragons. Steven Moffat uses the Twelfth Doctor to remind us that "the universe generally fail to be a fairy tale. But that's where we come in." And he's right! That's how to sum up the whole 54 years of this program. Moffat is reaching out across the fourth wall and asking, one final time, for us to understand his version of fairy tales. It might be louder, more explosive, and often a confusing jumble of plot points, but he tried to keep the fairy tale in mind. Think back on the various 12th Doctor finales of Moffat's tenure: he went to Hell and Heaven; he saved the planet; he sacrificed his life. He did what superheroes and fairy tale heroes do. Moffat, more than his predecessor, had the Doctor walking the Heroes Journey. The Doctor never lost sight of that, not for long, but fairy tales evolve and change. Sometimes there are robots as faithful companions. This, in turn, leads us to the next evolution in this fairy tale called Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor. Finally, a woman! If Doctor Who is a fairy tale then the Doctor isn't just the dashing knight, at least not only a male gendered one. The Doctor is an archetype; he is above and beyond gender. The Doctor exists as we want him to exist--male, female, sexless and genderless, black, white, even green if we so chose. The archetype exists as a great series of bullet points, it's up to us (or Chris Chibnall, I suppose) to fill in the details based on what kind of fairy tale is going to be told next. And from this point onward, the fairy tale is mystery waiting to be told--or, perhaps it's better to say, to be retold. After all, it's been told twelve times before. Once upon a time....a hero fell from the sky. The rest? We'll just have to wait and see.

Miscellaneous Notes on Twice Upon a Time

--How about one big final round of applause to Peter Capaldi? While he wasn't often given the best storylines, his performance never suffered. He was truly a great Doctor.

--The other lampshading moment that I didn't touch on too much was the rather backwards attitude of the First Doctor with regards to women and their roles on the TARDIS, a relic of the 1960s much like some fans hangups over the new Doctor. Most of this provided us with some quality chuckles, but when the First Doctor threatened to smack Bill's bottom, that's when it went a titch too far.

--The Dalek was really pretty unnecessary, right?

--"I turn in to you?!" "Well, you have a few false starts but you get there in the end."

--Clara appeared for thirty seconds and because I was never a big fan of hers all I could think about was Queen Victoria and why she wasn't with Albert.

--I couldn't figure out the purpose of the Captain except as a way to make the Twelfth Doctor a Christmas hero until he revealed his last name. Tying the Captain to the Brig was a smart move.

--The Twelfth Doctor's final words read less as final words of a man dying and more like a showrunner exiting the building trying to pass on wisdom to his successor, which isn't to say that Peter Capaldi didn't deliver them beautifully: "never be cruel, never be cowardly. And never eat pears. Hate is always foolish, love is always wise. Try to be nice, never fail to be kind. Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. Doctor, I let you go."

--Welcome Jodie Whittaker. I can't tell you how pleased I am to meet you! Now, kindly get back inside your TARDIS, okay?

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x12)

Early on in his regeneration, the Twelfth Doctor turns to then companion Clara and asks, "Am I a good man?" It's a question Clara doesn't know how to answer and her only response is that she doesn't know, but he tries to be. The Twelfth Doctor has grappled with his goodness--or lack there of--since the beginning, always teetering somewhere between going too far, being a bit too dark, grumpy, utilitarian, and being the hero with the shinning sword we expect when we think of the Doctor. Doctors like Ten and Eleven might have done questionable things and been haunted by them, but to question their own morality was rare. Always, they were on the side of the angels. However, over the past three years we've watched as Twelve moved into the space where he could stop questioning his own goodness and demonstrate to others, and moreover himself, this goodness he sought. The question of the Twelfth Doctor's goodness should be lingering in the back our mind during the season finale, "The Doctor Falls," because this finale serves as a nice way to finally have the Doctor answer his own question. But--and I am just going to get this out of the way--man, did this episode have a lot of weird resolutions or what? A swan song for Peter Capaldi it is not and it complicated my push/pull relationship with season ten overall; grab your exploding apples and let's go!

What makes a person good? Science fiction usually likes to play with a much broader topic, the all too common "what makes a person a person" but Doctor Who knows that its central character isn't human at all so it can safely skirt around that quagmire. The Doctor isn't human and he can be at his terrifying and awe inspiring best when he shows off his godly attributes. But it's those same Time Lord tendencies that often rob him of that spark of humanity that resides in him and that he find so endearing in actual humanity. Take, for instance, the stunning "Waters of Mars" from the 10th Doctor's era; the end of the episode finds the Doctor in all his Time Lord glory: arrogant, self-assured, master of all time and space and subject to no one's laws or rules. And, for the briefest of moments, he becomes a Monster--or perhaps, to bring our starting question back 'round to the two newest companions tagging along with the Twelfth Doctor--he becomes the Master. It's easier to discuss what makes a person good if you look at their opposite. The Master, John Simm's version of him, is a sociopath. He would rather spite the Doctor than see any part of him--present, past, future--standing next to the Doctor in a battle. Missy might think that joining with the Doctor, turning toward the good side, is inevitable, but the Master thinks it's far more likely that he'll shoot himself in the back first. It's a note we've seen this version of the Master hit before; rather than regenerate in "The Last of the Time Lords," the Master chooses burning, destroying, and destruction over the chance of something new. To expect more from the Master is pointless, though it's worth pointing out that a good person would keep hoping and keep trying until finally breaking through. Which brings us to Missy and the back and forth pivots she's been doing all year, or at least once we opened Chekov's Vault Door. Is Missy good? Can Missy be redeemed? It's a central question that has been tossed around all season; we've seen the Mistress hesitate before taking the oft trod "bad" path; we've seen her express empathy, regret, and her own version of kindness like explaining that in order to stop the Monks and save the human race, the Doctor should kill Bill. I don't even think Missy knows if she's good; there's a part of Missy that wants to be good, that longs to take the Doctor's hand and stand with him but her own nature (one that has literally come to life and is dancing circles around her) and her own self preservation stops her. It's a natural feeling, even the Doctor acknowledges in a powerful speech that he doesn't stand against the Cybermen because it's easy or it's fun or he thinks he'll win. But where Missy and the Master truly differ is that while Missy's hesitation stems from wanting to save her own skin, the Master's flat out refusal comes from a sneering spite and vindictive nature to see the Doctor be disappointed and fail. It might be a subtle difference--after all, both Missy and the Master walk off the battlefield together--but it's a difference. This is one of the more frustrating endings for this episode, then. It does a nice job of bringing Missy's redemption--which, as I've said before was given little overall treatment--to a conclusion because, yes, she does choose to go back to the Doctor and help him, but she is stopped from having any kind of grand apotheosis into her best self by the Master. I get why the Master shot her; it's in his nature and we should have seen it coming a mile away; but, from a writing perspective, to deny Missy the moment of triumph and her return to the Doctor's side to fight with him, was an odd move because it cuts her redemption off at the knees. Can Missy be fully redeemed (or even a little bit redeemed) if she doesn't actually get to do anything redemptive? What matters more--the conscious thought of goodness or the act of goodness? I don't want to rob Missy of this nice about face but she essentially died without anyone knowing she made the right and kind choice.

Parallel to Missy in this episode is Bill who, as it turns out, is not going to be saved by the Doctor from being a Cyberman. The Master follows his nature, Missy rebels against it but without anyone knowing, and then there's darling, wonderful Bill Potts who refuses to be the monster she was made into. I'll give credit where it's due, tying Bill's resistance back to the Monks and that particular hostile takeover was a nice through line. Everyone sees Bill as a monster and runs from her, but she won't let it stop her from making the right and kind choices. When Bill looks in the mirror, she still sees herself whereas Missy is more likely to see the monster because she's come at least far enough to recognize that she is one. Perhaps this comparison isn't really fair, though, because Bill was never a monster to begin with. She never burned worlds or turned against her people; it's easier for her to stay moral and kind because it's all she's ever been. So if she's following her already established patterns, does that make her a good person? Does resisting something--her Cyberman programming--make her a better person than Missy? Than the Doctor? And this is where we need to discuss the incredibly weird end to Bill Pott's twelve episode long story. Denying Missy her chance at heroism is one thing, but bringing back a character from the opening episode and having Bill die (is she dead?) and then join this character as water molecules (I guess) in a new way of living, abandoning the Doctor in his time of need because she wants to see more of the universe--where did that even come from? Does this make any sense with how Bill has been characterized thus far? How her relationship with the Doctor has been characterized? I'll even eschew the criticism it would be all too easy to hurl at writer Steven Moffat over his constant--ye gods, constant--need to undo character deaths and trauma with a handwave or that he once again fell into his often used trope of true love saving the day. How does Bill deliver the Doctor to the TARDIS and then decide to turn and leave him in order to show her new girlfriend the stars? Bill and the Doctor aren't just companions; they are that all too unique combination of Doctor/partner on the show--friend, daughter/granddaughter, student, mentor. These two have been built in such a way that they are sort of the perfect example of Doctor/companion relationships. Is this because Bill had to wait ten years for the Doctor to come find her--which seems decidedly un-Bill given that she's been constructed as someone with compassion and heart. I can see how some people might see this as a satisfying conclusion because it's a happy ending and it fits (awkwardly) into the student becoming the teacher trope but it short changes Bill and the Doctor's amazing relationship, the true selling point of this season.

And this, then, brings us back around to the question the Twelfth Doctor asked three years ago: is he a good man. Yes, a thousand times over, yes. What makes him a good man? It's not just his actions, though he certainly performs the right ones. The Twelfth Doctor is a good man because he's kind. Because when someone needs help, he stops his little blue police box that's bigger on the inside and he helps in whatever way he can. Sure, the Doctor might die, but if he can help even just a little, then why not. In recent politics there's been a nifty little analogy floating around certain circles about Skittles and questioning if you would eat a bowl of Skittles if you knew there were at least one or two in the bowl that were poisonous and would kill you. The Doctor, if he were to hear this, would demand the whole bowl of Skittles, downing every single one and asking for more and that, I believe, is the message we are meant to take away from the past three years of the Twelfth Doctor. It's better to be kind. It's not safe, it's not easy, and you may end up losing something dear to you, but it's kind. Just kind. This is why, at the end of all things, this Doctor doesn't want to regenerate. Would you want to give up the type of clarity you just achieved after searching for it for so long? I wouldn't. And so he'll rage, rage against the dying of the light to maintain this perfect little piece of hope and tranquility he's gotten. But, we know how this story ends, do we not? All things end; and like the Fourth Doctor so wisely intoned, "it's the end...but the moment has been prepared for."  One more time then, Twelfth Doctor, if you please. We've crash landed on a snowy bank and the First Doctor has come to call. See you at Christmas.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Doctor Falls

--"It's hard to say; I'm of two minds but fortunately the other one is unconscious." Michelle Gomez and John Simm have fabulous chemistry and it was a real treat to see these two play off each other.

--However, for the last time Moffat, dick jokes are not funny and are beneath this show.

--"Nothing wrong with being kind. Jelly baby?" Yes, 12. Get your 4 on!

--Is anyone going to go back for Nardole or the ship that is currently teetering on the edge of a black hole? That's a rather big plot thread to leave hanging, no?

--I had thought, some 6 seasons ago now, that the Master was dead and then we have been led to believe that Missy was dead twice over, so I won't say that we won't be seeing Missy again but it sure did look like this was her final hurrah.

--"Is the future going to be all girl?" "We can only hope."

--"I'm not a doctor. I'm The Doctor. The original you might say."

--"I'm not trying to win...I do what I do because it's right, it's decent, and it's kind. Just kind."

--Overall thoughts on season 10? This one is a bit tougher to wrap my mind around. It had its highs, to be sure, but it also had an awful lot of lows. It worked best when the focus was on Bill and the Doctor's relationship and anytime it veered off course, like trying to mix things up tonally with the Monks, it fell flat on its face. Bill is quite clearly the best part of this season, followed by anytime Peter Capaldi was given a long speech and it was nice to get back to some simpler story lines like space romps or haunted houses. Because this is Moffat's final season it behooves us to consider what he was trying to say in his last few moments and, again, it's hard to say. He course corrected a lot of the faults he's been hammering over and over (again, the writing of Bill comes to mind) and the show slowed down from the full throttle blockbuster feel of seasons 6-8 but there are still too many times when he relies of multiple time jumps or time streams to solve his problem of the week. The season also had a problem with balance, albeit a new sort of problem; it used to be that Moffat wrote too much for the companion and turned the show into something Doctor-lite, now that particular balance has returned, but like we see in this finale, the villains have become bland. However, if the ultimate message of season 10 is to be kind that's about as straight forward and simple as Moffat is likely to get.

Final Episode Ranking for Season 10 (lowest to highest)

12. "Empress of Mars" (10x9)
11. "Smile" (10x2)
10. "The Pyramid At The End Of The World" (10x7)
9. "Extremis" (10x6)
8. "Knock Knock" (10x4)
7. "The Lie of the Land" (10x8)
6. "Oxygen" (10x5)
5. "The Doctor Falls" (10x12)
4. "The Eaters Of Light" (10x10)
3. "The Pilot" (10x1)
2. "Thin Ice" (10x3)
1. "World Enough And Time" (10x11)

Final Grade for Season 10: B

--Well, that's it! Barring any fly-by movie reviews, I'm done for the summer. See everyone in the fall when our TV shows return.

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x11)

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 
We would sit down, and think which way 
To walk, and pass our long love’s day. 
--Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress."

The relationship between the Master/Mistress and the Doctor has always occupied a rather complicated sphere. They are antagonists, to be sure; the megalomania of the Master matching the Doctor's heroic streak point by point. Over the course of this very long series, they've engaged in more fights and battles than I could possibly detail here, but what makes the Master/Doctor relationship so meaty is that it does not just occupy the enemies space. There is a delicate push and pull of regret and longing that we don't find in, say, the Doctor's relationship with the Daleks or, as is more appropriate for this week's episode "World Enough and Time," the Cybermen. Behind the Doctor's unrelenting need to stop whatever plans the Master has concocted this time around to burn planets and destroy anything and anyone the Doctor loves, is a hope that our hero in a blue box can save his oldest friend. Nostalgia; it gets us all in the end. Trusting Missy, believing that she can be redeemed and be good, is possibly a very stupid move on the Doctor's part, especially by episode's end when we--and our Time Lord--are confronted by one of the most dangerous versions of his foe to date--but he wouldn't be the Doctor if he wasn't constantly trying to save everyone. It's a heartbreaking episode that also ramps up the stakes for the finale next week. Grab your ever present IV and let's go!

In a segment at the top of the hour, during a rib tickling hilarious bit where Missy pretends to be the Doctor (sorry, pretends to be Doctor Who), the devious Time Lord tells Bill Potts that the Doctor doesn't have friends. Only another Time Lord can serve as a friend to a Time Lord; everything else is just "cradle robbing." This point is emphasized over and over as Missy finds new and laugh out loud ways to characterize Bill and Nardole as anything but friends to the Doctor. This upsets Bill and with good reason; the Doctor is many things to our girl, friend being among them. This season has had a lot of nice focus on the various facets of relationship the Doctor can have with one human; he's served as a professor and mentor, a father and grandfather, a god and savior, and--for Bill who has enjoyed all of these different variations on a theme--a friend, as well. Moments like the Doctor chatting to Bill while she works in the cafeteria or the two of them enjoying fish and chips on the rooftop show how the Doctor has become the perfect companion for Bill. He doesn't put pressure on her to be something she's not, like her foster mother who doesn't grasp Bill's sexuality, but he is also there to bolster her, encourage her, and help her transcend whatever mundane and normal human life she was living before she met him. But for Missy, this lovely human/Time Lord relationship is a farce because it cannot possibly be real. As close as Bill and the Doctor might be, our plucky assistant (or pet or snack) isn't a Time Lord and therefore cannot possibly be as close to the Doctor as someone like Missy could. It's a point that the Doctor actually emphasizes as well, revealing to Bill that Missy is the only other person who's like him and his first memories of him/her are as a child at the academy; they aren't terrifying memories of a lad who wanted to watch worlds burn, but of a clever, smart, funny kid who made a pact with his dearest friend to go and see all the stars someday. Two drifters off to see the stars. Is it any wonder the Doctor has been trying to fill that void ever since the Master turned? When the Master went mad and began plotting to burn worlds instead of visiting them, the Doctor didn't just gain an enemy, he lost a friend and it's this quiet but hopeful desperation that the Doctor can get that friend back that causes him to lose his other companion. Poor Bill. Poor, poor, poor Bill.

It's hard to watch a companion go out in this manner, if indeed this is Bill's end. After almost an 11 full episodes, Bill has become the surprise all-star of the season. Her quick wit, her compassion, and her wonder at the universe have made her (and yes, I'm about to use certain words again) a refreshing delight to a series that can often fall into the formulaic. Bill has an interesting relationship with the Doctor because of all those aforementioned layers that ultimately comes down to a deep level of trust between the two; so when the Doctor plants an order in her subconscious of "wait for me," Bill has no problem believing that the Doctor will come for her and, in turn, I have no problem believing that Bill would make the best of being tied to one location for years on end, with only a fairly crazy janitor for company, waiting for the Doctor's time stream to catch up. In a lot of ways, the ending for this episode would have been pretty easy to write if there weren't so many twists and turns. The Doctor arrives on site, manages to get the metal heart out of Bill, realizes he's about to encounter the Mondasian Cybermen, reveal the Master as behind the whole plot (complete with the Scooby Doo face mask peel off--damn those meddling kids!) and then find a way to save the day with Bill and Nardole as he has done before. Where the episode becomes one of the best of the season, is in the way it upends your expectations. Suddenly, it's to the Mistress that the Master is revealed, with Missy perhaps taking his side. It's not Bill the Doctor runs into but a Bill-turned-Cyberman, the Doctor appearing to be too late to save her; in a lot of ways this brings us back around to the point I, Missy, and the Doctor, were making in the above paragraph. Can the Doctor have friends who are not Time Lords or are Time Lords his true friends? For the former, the answer has always been yes, be it Classic or New Who. We've never doubted that the Doctor doesn't just look at those who live in the TARDIS with him as pets or lesser creatures upon whom he can bestow his godlike wisdom and grace; they are his companions in the truest sense of the world. Allies, partners, friends. The stumbling block comes where it always comes: in the Master/Mistress. The writers this year have been pushing the narrative that Missy is changing but it's hard to accept that as true when she is standing next to the Master, with a Cyberman Bill in between them, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Missy is great at playing long games but would the Doctor's true friend play such a game when the Doctor is in anguish over the loss of someone, especially when it's her former self who is responsible for said loss? The question circling the end of this season is can Missy be good? Or have the Doctor's hopes once again been misplaced.

 Miscellaneous Notes on World Enough and Time

--If the flashforward at the top of the episode is any indication, the Doctor will regenerate alone, in the cold snow, in anguish. I'm not ready for this.

--The music this episode--particularly the motif where we are examining the space ship and the Black Hole--were stunning.

--I wish I could quote the whole Missy speech in the beginning but a smattering of funny lines will have to suffice: "Hello, I'm Doctor Who. These are my plucky assistants, Thing One and the Other One."

--"What does he call you? Companions? Pets? ....Snacks?"

--"These are my disposables...exposition and comic relief."

--"Are you human?" "Oh, don't be a bitch."

--Missy (and the writers) casually trolling the fandom by insisting that the Doctor's name is really Doctor Who was possibly the most meta piece of exposition this show has ever done. I was laughing a bit too hard at "I've known him since a child and his real name is Doctor Who! He dropped the 'Who' later because it was a bit too on the nose"

--The Doctor addresses one of the peskier elephants in the room for the show as a whole when he insists that the Time Lords are the most advanced civilization in the universe and are beyond human obsession with gender and stereotypes...only to be called out by Bill that they still call themselves "Time Lords." Well done, show. Well done.

--I am troubled by the image that the show's first full time LGBT companion is killed off by a character we've never met before and to serve as a narrative point for a white man but there is something deeply political about that same LGBT character's story being a horrifying look at "conversion" to become "just like everyone else."

--John Simm, it has been too long. Welcome back to your classic role. I really look forward to seeing what goes down between the Doctor, CyberBill, Nardole, Missy and the Master next week! One to go....

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x10)

It's hard to praise this week's episode, "The Eaters of Light," and not sound just a wee bit like a hypocrite. Why? Because the broad pitch of this week's episode is almost identical to last week's episode. The Doctor, Bill, and Nardole find themselves in the middle of a skirmish between an invading force and the natives; the travelers try to negotiate peace and understanding between the two cultures so that the blows do not claim more lives. I had a lot of issues with last week's Mars centric episode because I felt it did not push any sort of boundaries and stayed too safe in the blandness in regards to both sides of warriors nor did it give any of our major characters a chance to shine. This week's episode did the opposite, dispensing with carbon copy tropes of hardened and dogmatic soldiers versus bitter and resentful natives, and instead couched the entire sequence of events in something more human and real. In other words, everything that was missing from last week's Ice Warriors episode is found here in the second century Scottish countryside. Grab some weaponized popcorn and let's go!

It might be helpful, when discussing this week's episode, to think about it terms of contrast to last week's. There was so much done right in comparison to last week's wrong--or if not outright wrong, than at least underwhelming and rote. Like last week, the mission to parts unknown is spurred on by a mystery, though this one is (literally) grounded to Earth and comes from Bill's insatiable curiosity for the unknown and nothing stumbled upon on a way to a different mission. Pausing quickly, but this is one of the better through-lines of this season; Bill's entrance into the TARDIS and into the Doctor's life is not one of mystery. She isn't a puzzle to figure out, clues carefully hidden throughout the text, her every word and mannerism supposed to telegraph something unknowable. Bill is simply....Bill and much like Rose or Donna before her, her adventures with the Doctor come from her desire to learn and to know. The universe, all of time and space, is the mystery for Bill to puzzle out and it's to the show's credit that they let her reason things out on her own, not needing the Doctor's (glaringly male) hand to guide her into realizations big and small. For example, past companions have needed the Doctor to explain why everyone in space speaks English (they aren't, of course, but the TARDIS and the Doctor are able to auto-translate what babble the aliens or peoples of the past/future are saying); but Bill didn't get the same explanation. She figured it out on her own in a particularly funny Latin/English exchange with a Roman soldier. Since this review is all about the contrast from last week's episode, Bill's active role is a good one to focus on for the moment. Last week, Bill didn't have much to do and, in fact, my most major complaint about the episode was how it missed the mark on letting Bill and the Empress of Mars present a unique version of feminism on and off world. This week, while femininity isn't exactly on display in an obvious way, Bill's active role is. Bill sets off on her own, wanting to solve the mystery of the Roman legion before the Doctor can; when she stumbles (er, falls down a hole) into the remaining bits of the legion she does not simply wait for rescue but uses her time with the lads to tell them about the Doctor and his way of seeing the universe. When Bill realizes that her long sought after Romans are really just boys with swords, she takes charge, she tells them how they are going to get away from the monster. Bill has been one of the season's best surprises, turning Moffat's typical (and often maligned) female companion on its head. I've used the word refreshing on Bill more times than I can count but it bears repeating: she is a breath of fresh air in a show that can often get bogged down in formula.

And while we're speaking of breaking the formula, there's another really well sold contrast in this episode when compared to last week's: the soldiers. In the Mars episode of last week, the soldiers were mostly devoid of personality, totally flat archetypes of battled hardened men (and Ice Warriors) who showed little fear in the face of actual battle. Men (and women) all around, they faced battle with grim determination, faltering neither in resolve nor courage nor dogmatic approach to ridding the planet of those they considered enemies. It's not that these types of soldiers don't exist in the real world but they are rather hard to connect to. This week our soldiers weren't battle tested; they were children. This is a point that is driven home time and time again by both the Doctor and by Bill; making the soldiers young does one vital thing that the Mars episode failed to do--a sympathetic link to them as characters is almost instantaneous. The episode would likely have been less successful if one side was demonstrably older than the other but in keeping both the Picts and the Romans as young children, the writers were able to show a commonality between the two parties which went from subtext to text when Bill and the Doctor got involved, imploring them to drop their weapons and work together to fend off the monster who eats light. Going along with that, we have a different version of the Doctor, one we haven't seen much in the past but one that keeps making an appearance this year: the father (or, if you like, grandfather). The Doctor has always fit into several different molds of archetype; clearly the mythic hero or the angry god is obvious, but it's easy to forget that, when this show began, he was a grouchy old grandfather trying to curtail his granddaughter and newly minted companions in one breath. It's a role that Peter Capaldi does as well as William Hartnell did in the 1960s largely because Capaldi has already made his version of the Time Lord a bit of a grouch who is ever so slightly exasperated with the "young kids" under his watch. The Doctor-as-Father, though, doesn't just mean a grouchy exterior. It means a fearless and unyielding protection for those he has sworn to take care of. Sacrifice comes easy for the Doctor; as he said, he doesn't die he just regenerates. But this sacrifice comes not just from his mythic hero status but from his role as a parent/grandparent. These Roman and Pictish soldiers are, after all, just kids. Asking them to leap into a never ending battle inside a time rift with a dragon-monster-thing isn't something any parent worth their salt would ask a child to do; the parent would always take that role on themselves. In the best line of the night, the Doctor reminds Bill that he's been guarding Earth's creatures since they were all children: "I've been standing at the gate of your world keeping you all safe since you crawled out of the slime." It's a pleasant contrast to last week's episode where the Doctor was a weary soldier and negotiator, a role we've seen him take up several times not only this year but in Capaldi's entire run. All of this is to say that if Doctor Who took several missteps with the Monk trilogy and with the excursion to Mars, this has certainly gotten the show back on track as we head into the final two episodes of the season.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Eaters of Light

--Just in case anyone thinks it's all sunshine and roses from me this week, the titular monster is one of the blandest and least developed of the era.

--As poignant and sweet as the episode was, the crow “Kar/Caw” thing was eye roll inducing. There’s a line, Doctor Who, between heartfelt and sickly sweet.

--Remind me to use popcorn as an escape mechanism if ever I’m in trouble.

--The Doctor not only lived in Roman times but he also juggled and was a Vestal Virgin, second class.

--“It’s called charm.” “I’m against that.”

--The final thread of this week's episode is the continuing Missy saga. I've already expressed misgivings about this plot because the moments of redemption or reflection on Missy's part are like this one here: kept and confined to the final few moments of the episode. Redeeming the Master/Mistress isn't something that should be left until the the end of an arc; this is a villain almost as old as the Doctor himself and there's a lot of ground to cover.

--However, there is a really nice push/pull between the Doctor and Missy; the former wants to hope that he might get his old friend back but the idea that she is pulling a long con on him fits with Missy's modus operandi more.

--Going along with that, though, it does look like Missy will be a focal point of the show for these last few episodes. Can the writers sell it? We shall see.

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x9)

Okay, Doctor Who. I think it's time we had a serious chat because this is yet another week where I feel you've dropped the plot ball and are simply spinning your wheels rather aimlessly. It's not that this week's episode "Empress of Mars" is bad but it certainly isn't good either. It's a very standard, by the book, rote episode. Two opposing forces face off, the Doctor and his companion intercede and we get another look at the Twelfth Doctor as a negotiator, something Moffat and company have been hammering home since Capaldi took over the role three years ago. This is an unremarkable episode, with a forgettable plot, that adds almost nothing to the season as a whole. That's harsh, I know, but after a much hyped trilogy that ended abruptly before it was allowed to really be fleshed out, a return to the norm might be expected, but the episode fails to elevate itself above the anticipated and expected. I'm still waiting for this season to recapture the momentum it had for the first few episodes when it not only felt like a new experience but when the show genuinely had something to say. The saddest bit is that the fix for this episode is simple and it would have made for a much more interesting hour: Bill and the Empress discuss feminism, the patriarchy, and colonialism. Come on, tell me that doesn't sound fascinating. Grab your Gargantua and tally ho, let's go! 

There's a pretty consistent through-line in this episode about colonialism and the irreversible effects of the conquering nation on the conquered. This is a more tricky to approach as an American than it would be if I were, say, British. It's not that America didn't get its feet wet in colonialism--our nation was quite literally ripped away from the indigenous peoples living here--but we've never really experienced the kind of dissolution in Empire that our neighbors across the pond did; there's a reason the old saying "the sun rose and set on the British Empire" exists. The British Empire at the time of Queen Victoria, specifically in 1881 when the Doctor and Bill land on the surface of Mars, was immense. It spanned to almost every corner of the globe, across several--if not all--the livable continents (poor Antarctica, always left out!). The psychological, literary, and cultural effects of colonialization are far reaching and require years of study to really parse out; in other words, more time and effort than I admittedly expect Doctor Who to tackle in one hour of TV. The colonialism trope is a staple of science-fiction and it's more than acceptable for Doctor Who to stick to the hallmark traits of an openly hostile conquering race (British humans, in this case) who are pit against a conquered race (the Ice Warriors) in which the conquered culture is seen as foreign, other, and ultimately inferior to the conquering culture. For example, one British soldier remarks, "Don't belong? We're British; Mars is part of the Empire now!" and another red coated officer pays no mind to the sacrality of a tomb and instead proceeds to pry off the coffin's gemstones. I understand that all narratives need a driving force so I'm not asking that the show cut the entirety of the skirmish. To wit, looking at the episode presented before me, it does have a fast pace and lots of explosions, the much lauded chemistry between Bill and the Doctor, and various subplots that quickly endear or deride the one-off characters. As a stand alone episode, it fulfills a lot of Doctor Who requirements. The issue, for me, is that it's just not enough to give the episode a passing grade. This episode could have joined the ranks of "Thin Ice" in terms of unpacking clever political analysis instead of avoiding it. When the Ice Queen arrives on the scene, we get an indomitable, strong, female force, something all too rare in any sort of warrior culture where men get the lion's share of credit. It's a right shame, then, that the episode didn't put a giant pause on the predictable battle of conquering vs conquered and, instead, give viewers a meaty and weighted conversation and think piece between Iraxxa, the Queen, and Bill, our queer, colored, modern working class woman. There was so much to pick up here between what it means to be female between human and Ice Warrior, the relationship between male and female, and even colonialism given not only Bill's skin color, but also the fact that she just saved her planet from being invaded by hostile alien-Monks! We get a small morsel of this when Iraxxa wants Bill's opinion because "we are both surrounded by noisy males" but then the episode drops any further development of this idea and focuses instead on the internal angst of a lot of male figures. I understand that Doctor Who isn't hard science-fiction and likes to stay in the more pulpy, campy, and often fantastical lane but for a season that has been so politically charged, more's the pity that the writers didn't find a way to cut large parts of the male-orientated drama (a coup, a dishonorable officer who gets his honor back, the tiredness of a soldier who returns home at last) and focus on something a bit more relevant and modern.

Miscellaneous Notes on Empress of Mars

--Speaking of shame, the eponymous Empress of Mars was a one-note character until the end. She did little but bark orders at her warriors and hiss at the humans. The only coloring she got was when she spared the officer's life.

--Well hey there Alpha Centauri! That's a blast from the long ago past if ever there was one.

--"Sorry, I never could resist a countdown."

--Why did the TARDIS zip Nardole back to the present day Earth? And why did Missy keep inquiring if the Doctor was okay when the team was all reunited? I have a feeling this dangling thread will come back before the season is over.

--It would have been very meta if the picture of Queen Victoria kept by the army had born a more striking resemblance to Jenna Coleman given her latest TV project.

--I think this is the least amount I’ve laughed during an episode all season. The only chuckle I got was that the Doctor hasn’t seen classic sci-fi movies like the Terminator or The Thing, but he has seen Disney's Frozen. Go figure.

--"You will die with honor, with bravery, and in fighting for those you have sworn to protect." Geez, foreshadowing the regeneration much?

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x8)

In this week's episode, and conclusion to the Monk trilogy, "The Lie of the Land," the Doctor Who writers sought to create a world where authoritarians rulers are in absolute power; where there's a constant flow of misinformation, lies disguised as truths, false slogans and empty promises. It's also a world where any action against this state of lies and decay is swiftly and severely punished by the state under the guise of being "for the good of all." So, in other words, it's 2016/2017 and someone like Bill Potts needs to unplug Donald Trump/Nigel Farage/Boris Johnson from the memory-beacon chair so that we can get back to the business of living. Like many episodes so far this year, this week's escapade wants to sit in a hyper dramatized reality of the current worldly situation and, using science fiction as its lens, figure out how the human race can fight back against tyrants, fascists, and speechless Monks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. All you need is love, apparently. Grab on to your favorite memory of you mother and let's go!

To be perfectly honest, this episode only really works for about the first twenty minutes. Everything that comes after is rushed, overly sentimental, and a bit too easy breezy to be a satisfying narrative and conclusion to a three week story. In reality, banding together to topple a dictator, or any sort of fascist regime, is easier said than done and the characters in Doctor Who are helped not only by a Savior-God with two hearts and massive brain but also by some science mumbo-jumbo. To its credit, Doctor Who knows this and telegraphs as much with the Doctor acknowledging that even with the Monks gone, humans still don't learn from their mistakes while exercising free will. In the series of scenes following Bill's rescue (that is not really a rescue) of the Doctor, everything flows too well for a world that is as complicated as the opening narrative and fly by scenes showed. There are no Monks lurking around corners, they don't have sophisticated enough technology to find the erstwhile Bill and Doctor; the zombie creatures reduced to the all too mundane "looking around" in spite of their awe inspiring computer and whiz-bangs that can brainwash an entire planet into thinking that they've been there since the dawn of time. For an episode that really draws heavily from George Orwell's "1984" the writers of this week's episode missed the mark on really getting into the world they set up and examining just how dangerous it can be. The scenes at the beginning were a great way to at least open that particular door and let us as viewers get a foot inside, but Memory Police, constant broadcasting of telepathy designed to subdue and constant vigilance for any Monk naysayers do not go away simply because the Doctor is out and about, no longer confined in his prison. Empty London streets without the ever present eye are not part of this society but to include them would complicate the narrative real estate Moffat and team are working with at a meager 44 minutes. In other words, what I'm really trying to say, is that this trilogy could have worked better if it were a few more episodes. And I honestly believe I would have enjoyed seeing an episode or two of Bill fighting against the Monks, recruiting strangers to her cause because the first 20 minutes of this week's episode were very strong with a well built world, a certain seat-gripping tension, and a reality that strikes a certain chord in anyone living through 2017. The messages of fighting back against false information (or, you know, alternative facts), toppling the lies those in power create isn't a subtle one, but it's a necessary one.

Instead, though, the episode pulls out one of the more annoying TV tropes: the ruse to test loyalty. The performance of the ruse itself was the best part of the episode because--and I think I'm going to say this every week until his regeneration--Peter Capaldi is a world class actor. He brings a wonderful anger to the role that his predecessors only got to hint at in previous incarnations. The basic premise of the ruse is great: what happens when the sworn protector of the planet is fed up with fixing humanity's mistakes? It's not something we or the show have dealt with a whole lot in recent memory but after everything this little blue marble has put the Doctor through, one scared human goes and sells the planet, its people, and its history to a bunch of telepathic Trumps? Yeah, I think I'd have a hard time being forgiving too. It's like the Doctor yells at Bill, "you had free will. And look what you did with it." Given all the political undercurrents in this season, it's not hard to imagine any sort of divine figure looking at the current state of the world and saying the same. But the problem comes in the denouement when Bill, sick to her stomach at what the Doctor has become, fires a gun into his heart(s). It turns out this is all a test meant to see if Bill really was on the side of free will and humanity. I won't pause long to consider the mythological significance of the Doctor using up some of his regeneration energy (you're on number twelve, dude! maybe don't waste it) but this is where the episode went from great to just okay and, to be honest, it's a shame because it highlights something that I always think needs remembered: even the Doctor is corruptible if you anger and frustrate him enough. It would have been a nice reminder that the Doctor sits comfortably in every aspect of the Savior archetype with awe inspiring majesty and awe inspiring wrath. I don't want to linger on a missed narrative opportunity too long because while the path not taken would have been more rewarding, there is one aspect of the path taken that hits a lot of right notes: Bill. She is turning out to be one of the best companions the show has had in its regenerated run because she's just so human. She's exactly like us; she's not a mystery first and a person second because Bill is all human, all person. It's true that the hyper sentimentalized ending of Bill thinking about her mother and this being the end of the Monks reign was super treacly, the height of which usually only comes at Christmas, but it does feel emotionally satisfying at least as far as Bill's character journey is concerned. Her mother has been a side character since Bill's introduction; a vital part of Bill is that she lost her mother at a young age and that has always haunted her until the Doctor gave her some peace with a box of photos. Since then, we've seen Bill "talk" to her mom, hang up pictures of her mother in her new house, and think of her before losing all her oxygen in the far reaches of space. Even if I roll my eyes at the idea that memories of a mother would topple "fake news central" it feels right for Bill. And in the end, this is as much her story as it is the Doctor's.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Lie of the Land 

--I talked about the Monks being the Doctor through a mirror, darkly, last week and that idea is carried over in the Monks rewriting human history to include them (and not him) defeating the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Weeping Angels.

--"However bad it is, if people think that's the way it has always been, they put up with it."

--If there's a third thread in this trilogy of episodes, it's Missy's rehabilitation, something that got very little attention thus far but takes a decent sized step forward this week with her 1) explaining how to stop the Monks and 2) thinking about all her past victims. However, we only have four weeks of episodes left and I'm worried that Missy's progress is going to be rushed here at the end.

--Missy wants gifts to aid against the Monks and they include "new boots, a particle accelerator, a 3-D printer, and a pony."

--Missy is "the other last of the Time Lords."

--So how much of Bill's story was inspired by Martha Jones's season three story? It's hard to say because Martha did everything I said I wish the show had Bill do like spending time tracking down sympathizers, converting them, and getting in and out of the most dangerous places in the world. Bill doesn't face that sort of hardship and in the end the Doctor wasn't really held captive by the Monks. But, Martha only plays one part and it's the Doctor who beats back the Master whereas Bill has to offer herself up as a sacrifice to rid the world of the Monks. There's a quasi-positive but also quasi-negative feminist streak in both of these and I'm not sure how to parse it quite yet.

--I'm slightly confused by the ending. Humans don't remember the Monks (either consciously or subconsciously forgetting the past six months) but those six months did happen and we saw that people did die. Either the public executions were fake to curtail rebellion or this is another example of the writers making everything too easy.

--"You're version of good is not absolute. It's vain, arrogant, and sentimental."

--Why does the Doctor put up with humanity? Because in seven billion people, there's at least one person like Bill.

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x7)

One of the my all time favorite shows is "The West Wing" and, in a early season one episode, the Deputy Communications Director Josh Lyman tells us all how the next world war begins: "That's how it's gonna be, a little test tube with a... a rubber cap that's deteriorating... a guy steps out of Times Square station...smashes it on the sidewalk... there is a world war right there." One tiny mistake, one slip. It's not an abundance nuclear bombs and it's not the Cold War; it's infiltration of everything humans need to live: the air, the water, the food. That's how the world ends. Not in an inferno but with small bacterium that infest everything. In this week's episode "The Pyramid at the End of the World" we learn more about the mysterious Monks encountered last week and the Earth shuffles closer to its end all while begging the question if it's better to die free or live a slave. Grab your consent forms and let's go!

I don't believe this one requires too much thought. It's the second installment in our "Monk Trilogy" and if last week was our introduction then this week is setting the stage for the conclusion, whatever that may be, of next week. We learn very little about the Monks except that they operate much like the Muses of Greek (and other) mythology. The simulation we were in last week's episode looks, to these Monk-ish aliens, like thousands of threads woven together and branching off; this is something only they can read and it allows them to scan the history of the Earth, from the past and the present and the future. These corpse-like creatures have the ability to tell when the world will, effectively, end. The idea of the world ending is often played up in science fiction but here it means less the end of the actual planet and more a global disaster that causes all living things to be turned to "gunk" as the Doctor called the pile of green goop that was once a drunk scientist named Douglas. This, then, is where the Monks come in, offering help and safety if only the human race will give up their freedom and consent to being oppressed. Can you actually consent to oppression? After all, how can it be oppression if those in power asked for it? If the consent to remove free choice was given out of love, and neither fear nor strategy, then it's not tyranny or a dictatorship; help was asked for and it was given. The Monks are like looking at the Doctor through a mirror, darkly. The Doctor too comes along and saves the world on a needed basis and when asked, a point he makes quite a bit in this episode when everyone around him wants to consent to the "hostile" takeover and he has to stand firm that there must be another way. But the major difference is that the Doctor never asks for anything in return; he doesn't want the human race to worship him or give up their free will. He might be the President of the World but it's only when the World really needs him. Other times, he's just an idiot, flying around, helping out. The Monks on the other hand demand that the consent come from love, from a deep need to make the world great again despite the overwhelming horror that would come with that. It's hard to say how much of the current political climate is playing into this week's script but given that the President of the United States got a shout out and that the show introduced the Doomsday Clock as part of its play--which famously moved one second closer to midnight after a certain Presidential election--I think the writers are consciously playing with the fallout from November. It might not have been a majority (three million people voted a totally different way!) but our democratic system--and the untold millions who did vote a certain way--consented to our current political, social, economic, and foreign environment. In the end, it's not the U.N. or the armies who hand over the planet to the Monks. It's Bill. It's scared, sad, and extremely human Bill who's worried not for the planet, but for her friend and mentor. To hell with the world, with personal freedoms and with free will, as long as Bill's friend and confidant are saved, then it's worth it. It's not our planet anymore; it's theirs. We've consented to it.

Miscellaneous Notes on The Pyramid At The End Of The World 

--If the Monks can choose to look like anything (in this case, corpses) then it follows that they can make their ship look like anything. So why a pyramid?

--"I wouldn't have voted for him. He's...orange."

--"The end of your life has already begun."

--There's a nice ticking clock music that plays throughout certain sections of this episode. It's a nice touch given the countdown to midnight.

--"It's not my first dead planet."

--"What do you depend on?" "Air, water, food, beer."

--The sonic glasses can do everything possible except see numbers on an old fashioned combination lock. That's some pretty silly writing, sorry.

--"Hello, I'm the Doctor! Saving the world with my eyes shut."

--"Enjoy your sight, Doctor. Now see our world."

In Which I Review Doctor Who (10x6)

If the season premiere episode was Steven Moffat at his most restrained, stripped down, and quiet then this week's episode "Extremis" is Moffat not quite at his most over the top, heightened, and bombastic but close enough. Both types of Moffat writing are good-Moffat, but there's no denying that one of those types--the latter--has been the predominate feature of Moffat's tenure as show runner on Doctor Who. This isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. After all, Doctor Who is a science-fiction program and that means that you are going to have a your fair share of over the top, loud, theatrical episodes. Probably with lots of lens flairs. So while this week's episode is decent enough and there's certainly nothing wrong with combining loud theatrics with experimental writing--it will likely not feature at the top of my list when we reach the end of this year. It also does quite a bit to remind me why I'm more okay with Moffat exiting the show than I was when former showrunner Russel T. Davies left. Get ready to question your own existence and let's go!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the Doctor watched his own show? That is, basically, the main narrative conceit of this week's escapade into time and space. The Doctor watches an episode of Doctor Who while he's contemplating his life and the choices he's made, including his decision to lock Missy up (yes, it's Missy) in a Vault for 1000 yeas. You take out the part about watching over a Time Lord living deep inside of a Quantum Fold Chamber and it's not like I haven't spent many Saturdays doing the exact same thing. This episode revolves around the idea of meta fiction--that there is a text and then there is a TEXT. The text is what is happening inside the Vatican, inside the simulation in which nothing is real. Bill isn't real; Nardole isn't real; the Doctor isn't even real. They are all a series of zeros and ones programmed to think, act, and respond like the real Bill, Nardole, and Doctor. This fake Doctor has all the hallmarks of our real Doctor; he's perfectly rendered, in other words. It's not until Nardole explains the simulation to Bill that we even put the pieces together that the Doctor--this Vatican based Doctor--doesn't exist. This is the story within the story and because none of it is real the show doesn't bother to linger long on the existential crisis that is cropping up in our three main characters. Doesn't mean we can't give it a go, though! How do you prove your own existence? This idea of real vs not real is becoming a theme throughout several of our TV shows, isn't it? Are robots programmed to mimic human kind down to the smallest detail real (Westworld)? Can simply believing in something strong enough make it literally real, make it manifest in the real world (American Gods)? And can you exist as a person inside a computer simulation when you are a series of inputs designed and uploaded by an outside force that you've never heard of nor encountered (Doctor Who)? It's a fairly common staple of science-fiction, especially post-Matrix trilogy, but I don't believe Doctor Who has ever tackled it this forcefully and twisted, which brings us back to the answer to the question of proving your existence. You have memories but those can be falsified; you have independent thought and agency but that can also be part of the computer program. No, the way to prove your own existence in this simulation is to end said existence. Inside this simulation there are consequences but they are pros over cons. If you kill yourself inside the simulation, then you've proven your own existence because, of course, you were never real to begin with. Even though this is text (as opposed to the TEXT) it's not an elegant solution to the problem and I'm worried about how it might be projected to anyone who's troubled or sees suicide as triggering. It's messy and weird and it takes us down several rabbit holes of what exactly constitutes being real but that's what Doctor Who is going for. It's quintessential Moffat who likes to take big messy complicated themes and ideas, shove them at the audience, and then sit back and watch us scratch our heads trying to figure out what the point of the last hour was. The season has been a fine return to tits more basic form; the episodes are slower, more relaxed which isn't to say boring or without themes and ideas. But contemplating something like institutional racism and white privilege doesn't quite belong in the same category as questioning the entirety of reality and whether or not you actually exist. Often times this heavy handed meta fiction can go terribly awry (look at last season's horrible "Sleep No More" that also had stories within stories). But this week's episode tried to correct some of those blunders by having a clear reveal that allows the audience to understand the meta-ness of this fiction. Could I have written this review as soundly as I am had the Doctor not pulled back the curtain and revealed that the real Doctor was watching his own episode? Probably not. I would have wondered what the point of this entire hour was--is the alien invasion real or just part of the simulatoin?--and probably done a fair bit of Moffat bashing.

Now, unlike past big-Moffat episodes, Extremis does have several salient narrative points. Missy is just the tip of the iceberg (provided that iceberg is real....just kidding; the iceberg is real. Probably). Turns out the Earth is about to be invaded. Cool? This sort of big multi-episode plot twist had to come sooner or later. It's fun to fly around the universe with the Doctor and Bill but at some point we've got to have a seasonal arc. The aliens who set up and run the simulation(s) are coming and they plan on using their collective research of these various simulations to their advantage when they take over Earth in the real. There's not really a whole lot to say about these guys either than I'm sure they'll fall flat on their (already flat?) faces because of course the Doctor will stop them. Keeping the Doctor blind is an interesting choice because it allows him to be metaphorically and literally in the dark, something I touched on last week. He makes that subtext rather textual when he declares that he doesn't know how to fight what's coming because he's in the dark (bit on the nose there, Moffat). But that's the other point of this week's episode--virtue is only virtue in extremis. It's only when it really matters, when the stakes are astronomical, when you're literally and figuratively in the dark that the person you are, at your core, at your center, is revealed. The 12th Doctor's tenure began with him questioning the kind of man he is--a good one or a bad one? The question may never be answered because people are never any one thing and they aren't one thing the whole time; the Doctor says he's an idiot with a box, flying around, helping out and that's about as close to self actualization that he's likely to get. But still that question of what kind of man is the twelfth Doctor has hung around the past three years and now it seems Moffat is going to give the answer another go. We've seen the 12th Doctor angry and disturbed and jovial and grandfatherly but when it matters most, when Earth is depending on the Doctor to really stick his landing, what sort of man is he? Really?

Miscellaneous Notes on Extremis 

--In a move that is shocking to almost no one, Missy is in the Vault. The Doctor has agreed to watch over her for 1000 years instead of taking the easy path out and killing her.

--Bill's face when the Pope entered her kitchen moments after comforting a skittish girl about them being together was hilarious and felt, if this is at all possible, like classic Bill.

--"You're an idiot." "Everyone knows that."

--I always suspected the Pope had a secret tunnel to get to and from the Pentagon. Didn't quite think it'd come out in a broom closet, however.

--"Are you trying to get rid of us?" "What makes you say that?" "Cause you're sending us into the dark after a man with a gun."

--Surely these aliens have an easier way to learn about Earth? This is not the first time it has been invaded.

--I know the aliens are monitoring everything but their attention to detail is almost a bit too much for a computer game. It was Simulation Nardole that spoke truths to a Simulation Doctor about why the latter won’t tell Simulation Bill about the blindness.

--"I am doing what everyone does when the world is in danger...I'm calling the Doctor."