“Brains
with minds of their own. No one will
believe that. This is America.”
Written by Steven Moffat
The
Doctor is dangling from the roof in front of a window that is the bedroom of a
child named Grant. Grant loves comic
books and with his moms permission lets The Doctor into his room. They soon make it back to the roof where the
Doctor explains to Grant that he has built a machine to reverse paradoxes. All this time Grant is coughing and the
Doctor hands him a glass of water and gem.
The gem is pretty powerful and is one of only four in existence. What is
magnificent anout the gem is that it grants your wishes and unfortunately for
The Doctor Grant swallows it thinking it was medicine for his cough. Since Grant is a lover of comic books his
wish is to be a super hero and in fact that is what he becomes.
Present
day sees The Doctor and Nardole investigating the company Harmony Shoals and
they are not the only one as an investigative reporter, Lucy Fletcher, is there
also. What they discover is that an
alien race of sentient brains is looking to invade Earth by being placed in a
human body most importantly world leaders bodies. The three snopes are soon discovered by Dr.
Sims who is very willing to shoot them so they do not expose his plans when
suddenly there is a knock on the window.
This shouldn’t be possible because they are on the 100th
floor but to their amazement there is a man is a superhero costume that breaks
the window and saves them. The Doctor
realizes that this is the child Grant all grown up and now is in the middle of
an alien invasion which The Doctor must somehow stop.
It’s
been a year since we have had a brand new episode of Doctor. A whole year since “The Husbands of River
Song” graced our screen and now we have another Christmas Special in “The
Return of Doctor Mysterio” which yet again stars Peter Capaldi and Matt
Lucas. Needless to say there has been
some excitement stirring in the Doctor Who fandom and I was also a bit anxious
to see it. But after seeing the trailer
I was more than a tad hesitant over “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” as my first
impression was that it did not look good at all. My initial thought was this
looks bad. After watching it on
Christmas Day I felt a little bit better about it and it wasn’t as bad as I had
feared it would be.
Now
I’m not saying this is the greatest Christmas Special of all time nor am I
saying it is the worst in fact for the most part it was pretty entertaining but
it did not really grab me. There were
parts of it that I liked and those outnumbered the parts I did not so on a
whole I did enjoy it. The problem is
that there have been better Christmas Specials and this one will sit in the
middle of the pack. I felt that the story was pretty weak and the ending wasn’t
all that clever. In fact the worst part
of “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” was the story. It did not have a Doctor Who feel to it all
that much as it felt more like a romance story.
Not that that is a bad thing except it just took away from what Doctor
Who should be. I wasn’t that thrilled
with the solution to the problem of the alien invasion but with the whole
superhero theme going on it did work for this story.
I
did like that for the most part it was a homage to superhero movies and in
particular Superman. I liked that there
were some nods to the Christopher Reeve Superman movie from 1978. In
fact it had that feel to it from that movie to the interview and flying Lucy
home right down to the romance part of it.
That was pretty cool and I’m sure a few of the older fans will pick up
on that. Plus there were a lot of superhero Easter Eggs in this story from
Spider – Man to vintage comics which I thought was pretty neat. Also how many noticed the movie that was
playing was The Mind of Evil which is a nod to the Jon Pertwee era.
It
looks like the aliens Harmony Shoal will be making another appearance as it
appears Dr. Sim escaped at the end. This
is the seond appearance of the aliens from Harmony Shoal as they were in last
year’s Christmas Special also. It
appears Steven Moffat wants to create one more reoccurring monster before he
goes and hopefully he makes them a lot more menacing the next time we see them. In all they are not that bad of a baddie except
they stick out like a sore thumb with that big scar on their face.
While
“The Return of Doctor Mysterio” wasn’t a great Doctor Who Christmas Special it
was entertaining and if you love superhero movies and comic books you’ll really
enjoy it. But it wasn’t the worst thing
they have ever done on Doctor Who even though the jury is still out on Matt
Lucas’ s character Nardole but I’m sure we’ll get to see more of him in Series
10. “The Return of Doctor Mysterio”
didn’t get me all jazzed up for it I did find it enjoyable for the most part
and made me looking forward to more Peter Capaldi in Series 10.
Grade
C+
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