Who Reviews A Town Called Mercy by Matt Rabjohns

 

I have long shied away from reviewing any of the Eleventh Doctor's era. Not because Matt Smith is a bad Doctor, in fact nothing could be further from the truth. But I just find the story writing and scripting of most of his era a real muddle and sometimes totally incomprehensible. The Matt Smith era could have been so much better for me. But I will re-iterate it is not Matt that is the problem in any way shape or form. 

Matt is an absolutely sublime Doctor. Let's state it from the start. I think he is a wonderous mix of Patrick Troughton and yet also he seems eternally old, despite Matt's being the youngest ever actor to take on the role of the Doctor. He also is rather like Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout in that he never ever is still. Especially his hands are usually a blur and hard to keep up with. But it is in his Doctor's nature where we see his age. He can be very calculating and highly devious, whilst those who mistake his youthful looks mistake that for immaturity soon find out to their cost that he is anything but childish. The Eleventh Doctor in many ways also has some traits of the Seventh Doctor, in that he is sometimes unknowable. Matt manages to make this blend of old and young seem easy and he certainly shows there is no need to fear such a young actor taking on the role of the Doctor. It's just quite a shame that his era suffers from a lamentable amount of storytelling that I fail to conceive or comprehend. 

But just every now and then we thankfully do get a merciful reprieve (forgive the pun!) in the form of an excellent story. And in almost every respect A Town Called Mercy is a superb story. It is coherently written for a start so I have no problems in figuring what the story is all about. It has some superb characterisation and direction and the setting is authentic wild west style country and the perfect backdrop for a bit of sci fi tinged western. It's of note that the TV show has seldom ever approached the wild west setting for a story backdrop, only once in the classic era with William Hartnell did we have The Gunfighters, and that was it until this story. The Gunfighters succeeded as a western for me, and so does A Town Called Mercy. 

Perhaps the only niggle with this story is the age-old theme of the companions being all but forgotten in the scripting. Karen Gillan's Amy does get one golden moment when she reproaches the angered Doctor for the way he is treating Kahler Jex. In this scene she palpably reminds him that he is no good alone, as his actions when he has been alone for a while show the darker and more callous edge of his character. But aside from this excellent scene, Karen Gillan and particularly the criminally wasted Arthur Darvill are just not present in the story at all, which is a real shame as I love Arthur Darvill's Rory. The companions frequently suffer from shortage of decent storyline because the story sometimes tends to focus more on the Doctor. This is a niggle that permeates plenty of classic and modern era stories. But with the little they do get given Karen and Arthur cope well and are no less than engaging all the way through this story. 

Adrian Scarborough as Kahler Jex: he is the character. The man is absolutely stunning as the alien Doctor with a dark secret that the Doctor soon brings to light. That he so doggedly loathes his past and seeks to atone for it in many ways highlights exactly the same aspect of the Doctor. Sometimes he does things he lives to regret. Maybe in Kahler Jex we see a mirror to the Doctor and this is what he does not like. Matt and Adrian's scenes together are all electric and brilliantly charged. These two men know how to deliver palpable and memorable scenes. This is the spice of the whole story. How we deal with our pasts and our mistakes and how we learn from them and make good. 

Ben Browder's Sheriff Isaac is extremely sympathetic. One is really saddened when he chooses to give his life to save the Doctor and the townsfolk. He is likeable, and thankfully not portrayed as an idiot like so many western police folk often are, or at least it seems so much to me. The Sheriff is a decent and law-abiding man, and this is excellent to see. It leaves a lump in the throat when he throws himself in front of the Gunslinger's weapon and dies a hero. 

Andrew Brooke as the Gunslinger looks formidable: a superb piece of art in his look and his apparel. You respect the Gunslinger as a palpable threat. He reminds one a bit of the Terminators from the film series of the same name. But The Gunslinger has a merciful side which slowly the Doctor is able to utilize when he brings about the final peace between him and Kahler Jex. That the script takes the delightful notion of turning the threat into a defender is a spark of genius to finish the episode.  with. The final shots of the Gunslinger guarding the townsfolk of Mercy is a brilliant and effective climax to a highly enjoyable story indeed. 

There are also several moments of good humour throughout the episode too.  The Doctor's talking to the horse being particularly funny. But the humour doesn't override the darker elements of the story. But in the end, this is basically a sci fi tinged classic western with all the tropes that work so well with that genre. A Town Called Mercy is a rare jewel of the Matt Smith era. It's plot isn't overburdened with subplots. The action is slick and believable. The scripting is very strong and I do believe it is Toby Whithouse's finest story for the show. And Saul Metzstein is the perfect director, he gets the most out of all the cast to add to the success of the episode. I would rank this story in my top five Matt Smith episodes of all time. 

The only other slight annoyance is the shortness of the single 45-minute episode format. The story is great, but over far too soon. I seem to think this of quite a lot of the modern era. 45 minutes really isn't ample enough time to make the most of a story. It's like you take a few breaths and the story is over already. But for the time it lasts at least I can say this story is far more enjoyable than most stories around it. 

So, with the Gunslinger now protecting the future of the town, I think we can safely assume the town will hopefully no longer be threatened by cyborgs with secrets. Will we ever hear from Mercy again? Let's just wait and see.... 

Who Reviews Bad Wolf/ Parting of the Ways by Matt Rabjohns

 

When it comes to reviewing the Christopher Eccleston era of the show, and era that was sadly all too brief on screen, I find myself in something of a quandary.  Now I will stress that I think Chris was the absolute perfect choice of talented and brilliant actor to bring back the show to a modern audience in 2005. Honestly Chris was absolutely incredible in the role right from the first minute of Rose. I loved his wounded soldier Doctor, the broken man in recovery after the time war. He perfectly gave the performance of a shattered man, seeking for hope. But what I sadly never took to was Billie Piper as Rose. To me she was far too common, antagonistic and just not my cup of tea as a character. Therefore, the entirety of Chris's era for me is seldom a place I return to, to watch because I just have no time for Rose at all. 

But I don't want to spend an entire review being negative. I will just also add that I am not the world's biggest fan of Captain Jack as played by John Barrowman either. I could do without his character easily too. 

But let’s move onto the story itself. Bad Wolf begins with a flourish. As the Doctor finds he's been separated from his companions and he stirs to find he is in the Big Brother House of the future. There he meets Lynda Moss, Lynda with a Y. Played absolutely brilliantly by Jo Joyner. Honestly, I would love to have seen far more from Jo Joyner. For me as a one-time companion for Chris's Doctor she succeeds in all the ways that Billie fails for me. I love her character, she is kind, decent, asks relevant questions and for a while is totally loyal to the Doctor, which for me is so wonderful to see. Jo and Chris share some beautiful scenes together that when it came to her extermination by the Daleks I was totally gutted. Lynda with a Y could have done with a lot more time to get to know her. But instead, she joins the pantheon of "could have been a companion" actors and actresses, and I for one am chagrined by that no end. 

Martha Cope is also an absolute revelation as the poor wired up Controller of Satellite 5. She is absolutely superb in her channelling of an enslaved human being on the edge of insanity. You instantly feel sorry for her and her performance is riveting in the extreme. I absolutely love how she gives her life in betrayal of the Daleks and dies a hero. Her death scene marks one of the highlights of the Eccleston era. But even saying my love for this character again, I still have some annoyance that again she meets with death when we could have seen so much more from her. Mind you I should be glad that in a series that would go on to be obsessed with characters never truly dying then a few characters actually properly dying is a breath of fresh air. 

It is also highly amusing to have both Davina McCall and Anne Robinson, contributing voices to the Davina droid and Anne Droid. Anne particularly is still the same old battle-axe made to be rude character she always was on the Weakest Link. Although to be true they could have done with making her a bit ruder. She does seem a bit tame in terms of her insults in this two-part epic. But the murderous way it appears she kills contestants is stark and well directed. And as the realisation of the deadly edge to the game dawns on Rose, then these scenes are superb and very tension packed. Rose must play for her life and I will admit Billie gives some good fearful acting when she realises, she is the weakest link in the final round. That she must have a showdown with Paterson Joseph's character of Rodrick is a good point to mention too in that Rodrick is a totally self-centred and loathsome human being. The way he dismisses Rose as a non-contender and delights in his win marks him as a nasty little piece of work. That he doesn't get his prize is amusing! 

I can't really say much about the involvement of Trinee and Suzannah bots too as I don't know a great deal about the pair or their own programme. but just in Doctor Who story terms they are characterised with a good dose of macabre humour. But I am sure the scene of John Barrowman nude before a defabricater is totally unnecessary and not needed. I don't get anything from it except I don't like this tasteless scene at all. 

The Daleks of this story are totally ruthless and black hearted though. This is one thing I will give this story credit for. The Daleks here are not to be trifled with at all. There is no comedy as the Dalek army boards the satellite. These daleks are truly a force to be reckoned with. However, I am not sure if the realisation of the Emperor Dalek here works. Nick Brigg's voice is superb for the master of all Dalek Mutants. But the prop itself looks more cute than ugly and thus really doesn't engender much fear in me at all. But the bloodthirsty way the Daleks kill in The Parting of the Ways has an epic feel of dread and doom that the new era has actually seldom ever done before or since. There is a total atmosphere of oppressive claustrophobia that makes the story far more interesting than it otherwise would have been. The faction of gameplayers stranded in outer space in the satellite is incredibly done. You truly feel so very stressed with them. The CGI in this story for once also is not too bad. The scenes of thousands of daleks spilling from their war ships is a scene we could never have had in the classic era. 

There is also a bucketload of emotion in store as Rose is sent back to earth to save her from the Doctor's final showdown with the Daleks. That she tries so doggedly to re-join him must be counted in her characters credit here. Though I still find it hard to like her, here she does act more like a decent person and not just a common idiot so I would say this is one of her best moments because just for a few minutes she is not annoying and even I hope she does get back to the Doctor. Although the final climax of her ripping open the TARDIS console and the vortex energy filling her is a bit akin to waving a magic wand. How easily then the Emperor and his minions are dealt with by dispersal feels like a damp squib ending to what was before then a gripping yarn indeed. 

Chris is also at his absolute apex in this story. Particular the scene of when he informs the Daleks that he has no plan, but simply states "Yeah, and doesn't that just scare you to death!?" is an absolute die-hard classic Doctor Who moment. I was absolutely sold on his Doctor already, but here was the scene when I said oh I wish this man would stay for far longer than the time he did. Then there is a second superb scene, where the Doctor before the Emperor states he'd rather be a coward any day than a butcher. These are absolutely defining moments of his Doctor's moral strength. It is so brilliant to see the war wounded time lord show he is sick of killing and this gives Chris one heck of a swansong all in all. 

And then we come to the moment. The devastatingly short era of the Ninth Doctor is so bittersweet and Chris felt he could only commit to one season on screen. This for me was so sad because, excuse the pun, I thought his portrayal of the Doctor was fantastic. He brought back the Time Lord with such style and elan. He ensured the show could live in the modern era. And so, to see him depart from the role after just one season is so disheartening. Whilst I am delighted to see David Tennant come aboard for a new era, the shock at the too brief stint the Ninth Doctor had was memorable for his sublime display of acting. I was absolutely overjoyed when I heard Big Finish had finally persuaded Chris to come back to the role for their Ninth Doctor adventures. It rather begs that old time but assuredly true remark: He's back and it's about ruddy time! 

Bad Wolf/ Parting of the Ways is overall a very fitting tribute to Christopher Eccleston. Doctor Who was resurrected by Russell T Davies, but they had to get the right man for the role. Fortunately, they truly did. Chris was amazing, and he deserves to be remembered for the excellent new Doctor he brought to our screens so very well back in the mists of time in 2005. We fans should never do anything but offer him heartfelt gratitude and thanks. 

Who Reviews Rise of the Cybermen and the Age of Steel by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony’s getting the upgrade. 

When Doctor Who came back in 2005, it was keen to redevelop what had long been the show’s #1 monster in the public imagination – the Dalek – and make it a genuinely scary threat for the 21^st century. 

When the show got its second series confirmed, and with a brand new Doctor in David Tennant, it couldn’t really avoid bringing back the Cybermen (often thought of as the show’s #2 monster), and re-imagining them for the 21^st century too. 

But there was a line to be walked. With the Daleks, they were so very vivid in the general public consciousness that what you needed to do was address their perceived weaknesses – the inability to deal with stairs, their sink-plunger arm, etc – and turn them into strengths, to make the Skarosian tank-mutants into unstoppable killing machines again, and elevate them to such a position that they and the Time Lords had essentially wiped each other out, leaving only the Doctor in the universe who could stand up to them when they returned. 

With the Cybermen, there was a different problem. It wasn’t that the public was mostly aware of their weaknesses, but that they weren’t particularly aware of what made the Cybermen tick, where they were from, what made them want to convert or conquer the universe. 

So what you needed for the first Cyber-story of the 21^st century, was essentially an origin story that people could get hold of. 

Hardcore fans of course, knew the origin story. The people of Mondas, Earth’s original twin planet, had perfected cyber-surgery, replacing the organic parts of themselves over time, and eventually removing their capacity for emotions, leaving them entirely logical and bent on spreading the gift of Cyberization to the rest of the universe. 

That’s where the second balancing act came in. Without essentially re-telling The Tenth Planet with the Tenth Doctor, how did you give the Cybermen a backstory that new viewers could connect to, without ruining the ‘canon’ for the established fans by essentially retconning The Tenth Planet? 

The solution from writer Tom MacRae was more than a touch ingenious. In ‘our’ universe, Mondas was a twin planet of Earth. But perhaps in a parallel universe, it was right here on Earth that the Cybermen developed. A twin dimension, rather than a twin planet. And Rise of the Cybermen and The Age Of Steel was off to the races. 

There’s always talk of the similarities between Rise of the Cybermen and Spare Parts, the Big Finish story by Marc Platt which takes the Fifth Doctor to Mondas as the Cybermen are actually beginning to emerge as an entity, rather than a collection of upgrades. But MacRae rightly draws lines of separation between Platt’s masterpiece (Seriously, if you’ve never heard it, go now and listen, it’s absurdly good) and his own. Yes, technically, they document the same point in the evolution of the Cybermen – but that’s about all they have in common. 

For a large part of Rise of the Cybermen, in fact, we’re distracted by the potential of a parallel universe when the Doctor, Rose and Mickey more or less fall into one. While the only energy source that can recharge the Tardis is growing and getting power, the potential of that other universe is too strong for the two companions – Mickey goes to see if his nan, who raised him, is still alive there, given she had died in ‘our’ world, and Rose is brought up short by a billboard that shows her dad, dead in our universe, is not only alive in the parallel, but successful. 

In the parallel world, Jackie and Pete Tyler are still married, but they never had Rose. And Pete is connected to the activities of a mega-businessman called John Lumic. 

Lumic, we learn early, is dependent on a wheelchair and life-support systems, making him very much a re-envisaging of Davros, creator of the Daleks. But the interesting thing is that it technically makes more sense in Lumic’s case that a man who feels himself to be an almighty brain and will, almost mocked by a body decaying with age and atrophy, would focus on creating something like the Cybermen. While he wants to wait until the last possible moment, the Cybermen for him are a kind of fantasy wish-fulfilment, an immortal, undecaying body to carry around the human brain. The Cybermen have always been the ultimate fantasy of the old and the fearful – they’re a protection both from the physical decay of ageing and death, and from the mental pain of living a life with a brain that still thinks organic thoughts in a body no longer able to experience mortal pleasures in any meaningful way. 

The Cybermen have always represented this fear, but it has never been centred in a single individual’s drive to survive until the world met John Lumic (Roger Lloyd-Pack) in Rise of the Cybermen. 

At first experimenting with society’s unwanted, the homeless and hungry (literally the spare parts of the social pecking order), the Cybermen grow in number – though it’s worth pointing out that this gradual rise is somewhat counterintuitive at the end of the story, when it turns out Lumic has had hives of Cybermen stashed away for quite some time). Weirdly though, it’s almost coincidence that brings Rose and the Doctor to Pete and Jackie’s house the night they’re hosting the President of the UK. With whom, Lumic’s toy soldiers want a word. 

Graeme Harper was the only Classic Who director to get to direct in the New Who era too at the time, and what he gave us in The Rise of the Cybermen was a masterclass in angles and the delivery of menace through the choice of shots. He made the return of the Cybermen into something that had both power and a sense of size that was frightening as they crashed Jackie Tyler’s birthday party with mayhem on their minds. 

It’s possible to argue though that the new Cybermen lost some of their Classic era menace specifically in Rise of the Cybermen/The Age Of Steel, by virtue of having no weapon except a kind of electro-touch. They also gained an unfortunately undramatic catchphrase to mimic the Daleks – intoning “Delete, delete, delete” like walking incarnations of Grammarly. And for any long-term Cyber-fan, the question of how they would sound was a vexed one – the Cybermen have had a range of vocal tones throughout their on-screen lives, but for many people the best (if least logical) was that of the Eighties Cybermen voiced (and played) by David Banks and Mark Hardy, which had a deep electronic burr to it. Nick Briggs is a master in almost all things, but the monotone he gave the new Cyber-voices, while logically in keeping with the like of Troughton-era Cybermen, felt a bit flat on screen. 

But for most viewers, that didn’t matter. Either the Cybermen were back, and looking bigger and stronger then ever if you were a hardcore Who-fan, or there was a new cool monster in Doctor Who if you weren’t. 

One of the neatest elements about the Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel is how plausible the creep of Cyber-technology is in it – people at first getting ‘earpods’ which feed chosen content directly into their ear canals and brains, and from there, the information-flow going both ways, facilitating mind-reading and mind-control as and when necessary. The Doctor’s lecture about the human race always needing the next upgrade was well observed based on a society in which technology is outdated within two years of its launch. And the universality of Lumic’s ‘earpod’ technology gets lots of people walking into Battersea Power Station early in The Age Of Steel, because if the Cybermen have always been about the fear of ageing and death, they’ve also always been about the body horror or a human brain in a metal body, the flesh having been cut away and discarded. 

The second episode of the Cyber-return to Doctor Who riffed heavily on this body horror and the emotional response to it. Where in Classic Who it was rarely made explicit how the emotions were removed, in The Age Of Steel it was given a conveniently vulnerable explanation. There was no Frankensteinian lobotomy action involved in creating a Cyberman, there was simply an emotional inhibitor, which, if you knew how, could be switched off. That would mean lots of Cybermen suddenly becoming self-aware inside their metal bodies and going stark, raving bonkers. 

The Doctor only discovers this through Mickey and his connection to a gang of anti-Lumic activists, the Preachers, who in this universe have a Ricky Smith among their number. Ricky is sadly killed along the way, giving Mickey an example to look up to (as well as a potential boyfriend in fellow Preacher, Jake). When Mrs Moore, a techie in the gang, teams up with the Doctor, there’s a touching scene where a dying Cyberman regains its humanity, and tells them it was getting married the next day. And while Mrs Moore too immediately pays the price, and the parallel Jackie Tyler is among the first batch of humans to be Cyber-converted at Battersea, the Doctor learns the way to defeat the Cybermen – find the code that controls the emotional inhibitor and broadcast it to all the Cybermen. 

This is both in the long tradition of Cyberman stories and yet somehow disappointing at the same time. While the Daleks have had issues that make them weak – stairs, plungers, etc – the list of things that, for no good reason whatsoever, allow you to destroy a lot of Cybermen in one go had grown ludicrous in Classic Who – from radiation to gravity to nail varnish remover to gold coins lodged in their chest. They have always had to be artificially limited in their power, and the emotional inhibitor, while it was a slightly more technical version of the trope, was the first 21^st century way to kill a lot of Cybermen in a hurry and so resolve a story. It was a trend which would probably reach its nadir in the Eleventh Doctor story Closing Time, when for all intents and purposes, ‘blowing them up with love’ became a thing you could do to Cybermen. 

While the ending is too easy, it leaves a lot of changes in the world of the Tardis crew. Rose reveals her identity to Pete Tyler, and he can’t especially handle it – especially not after losing his wife in the Cyber-factories. 

Mickey, meanwhile, decides to stay behind in the parallel universe and root out all the hives of hidden Cybermen, while also having some extra time with his nan. As he rightly says, in a world with Rose Tyler and the Doctor in it, “It’s never gonna be me, is it?”, so he decides to find his own destiny, free from the endless, hopeless hope of getting back a relationship with Rose. 

Rise of the Cybermen and the Age of Steel together are a fantastic spectacle of Cyber-reinvention, and they repay re-watching even today. The way the Cybermen are defeated may be little more than the 21^st century of the Classic show’s easy solutions to Cybermen, downgrading them as a threat, but the two-part reintroduction of Doctor Who’s silver medal monsters has a high bodycount, Cybermen marching en masse, a joyfully explicit explanation of how they came about (in at least one reality), and plenty of personal, emotional impact, both for the Tardis team and for us as viewers. This is an achievement underlined by quite how difficult it has proved to deliver an effective Cyber-story in the years that have followed. Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel – check them out again. 

They’re probably better than you remember.

Who Reviews The Beast Below by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony gets beastly. 

Of all the stories he ever wrote for Doctor Who, when asked if there was one he was least pleased with, Steven Moffat chose The Beast Below as an example of one that didn’t really work. 

It’s distinctly arguable he was a touch too hard on himself. There’s at least one element that’s patently absurd, certainly, but there’s a great deal to enjoy and admire about the Eleventh Doctor’s second story, and Amy Pond’s first real foray into the universe. 

First of all, like Wendy in Peter Pan, she follows her enigmatic friend into the wider universe dressed in her nightie – a first for Doctor Who companions (assuming Leela’s leather gear wasn’t used night and day), which makes her appeal to us immediately as a trusting ‘fan’ of her ‘Raggedy’ ‘imaginary friend. 

The story itself has some joy in its logic – and some human darkness too, to balance it. The idea that the human race, faced with extinction, got itself into a series of star arks, leaving only the UK (sans Scotland) unprepared, feels oddly resonant, somehow. The idea that decisions would be taken which go against everything in people’s natures, decisions that hurt a harmless, helpful creature, and cause people to regularly self-anaesthetise with forgetfulness – it’s darker than you might remember, The Beast Below. 

It’s also something of a triumph for Matt Smith’s new incarnation. Fresh from his regeneration story, he owns The Beast Below, from his bandy-legged Chaplin walk to his mysterious ‘Doing Of The Thing’ with the water glasses to discover a lack of engine vibration, his aching understanding of a child crying silently because no-one listens, his sliiiightly cringy self-definition as one who resists every chance they get, to his absolutely blow-the-doors-off sudden rage, declaring “Nobody HUMAN has anything to say to me today!” 

If you didn’t quite get the chills of New Doctor love from The Eleventh Hour – we’re not sure why you wouldn’t, but just say you didn’t – there is plenty in The Beast Below to make you love this quirky, funny, compassionate, old man, young body incarnation. The moment when he lets everyone hear the screaming of the star whale has resonances of the Tenth Doctor in Planet of the Ood, but it’s handled in a way that makes you somehow certain this is a very different Time Lord. It’s more an accusation here than it is an act of compassion or sharing, and you get a sense that while the Tenth Doctor was always giving people or menaces the option to turn away from their intent, this Doctor, when angered, might very well bring the roof crashing down on your head, and warnings be damned. 

Now, is it true that ultimately, it takes Amy pond’s faith in him to sway him from a ghastly course of non-Doctor action? Absolutely, but back then, they were both new and it felt like a pleasing balancing act – the new young companion challenging the old new Doctor into thinking bigger, and better, and more Doctor than the horrible options in front of him. 

Ironically of course, this is exactly the idea that Steven Moffatt would recycle in The Day of the Doctor, with Clara Oswald making three Doctors better than the options available. Here it feels smaller and sweeter, and somehow more resonant because it feels more every day. Amy Pond saving the Doctor from the box in which he’s thinking? Oh yes, we’ll have some of that, the companion showing her worth and her mettle early in her travelling time – great. 

There are other elements that work well, too – the idea of a Queen going under cover in her own realm is elegant, the heartbreaking pathos that it’s a scenario that’s been played out time and time and time again, her mask never changing because her lifespan has been artificially expanded and slowed. It all makes a kind of horrible, beautiful science-fiction fairytale sense, like Sleeping Beauty who every now and then re-sentences herself to ignorance and sleep, because knowledge while awake is too hard to bear. 

Creepy-seeming tentancles breaking through into the streets, undignified Geronimo-ing into the mouth of a giant star whale, and a subsequent hurl escape are all great fun, but fun with a dark tinge, revealing as they do another layer of the lies on which Starship UK is built. 

Sophie Okonedo as Liz 10 adds power and pathos in just the right amount to a story that needs them to bring the science-fiction elements and the human elements together, focusing the degree to which people will forget the suffering of their fellow creatures as the price of their own life. She also brings a glorious swish of style to the role, with her delivery of lines like “I’m the bloody Queen, mate.” Terence ‘Demon Headmaster’ Hardiman is a quiet, enigmatic force as Hawthorne too, never overshadowing the drama or its more dynamic players, but exemplifying the kind of public servant who would, for instance, efficiently feed people to the lions if their emperor commanded it. It all works extremely well to create a world weighed down with secrets and sadness, that needs a release no-one’s strong enough to give it. 

So, what doesn’t work? 

Annoyingly, it’s the Smilers and the Winders. A neat idea in themselves, creatures with revolving heads that change their face from benign to horrifying when they turn, there’s almost literally no purpose for them in the script except to force a couple of chase sequences and scare the toddlers. 

When we find out the truth about the Winders – the humans with Smiler faces on the back of their heads – the sense of the thing goes completely out of the window, forcing the conclusion that really, to make The Beast Below work as well as it could, you either need to pull out the Smilers altogether and replace them with a more mundane but more explicable threat, of you need more time than The Beast Below has in which to explain what the hell they actually are, and what they’re doing on Starship UK. Are they invented? Imported? Alien? Are they somehow channels for the pain and anger and grief of the star whale, or are they, as seems most likely, just a cool-ish idea with nowhere else to live, shoved into the story as the spur to those chase scenes? 

It’s the Smilers and the Winders that give any re-watch of The Beast Below that momentary pause for breath and brace-for-impact feel of slight disappointment. While they’re an interesting idea in their own right, and realised pretty well in terms of their physical impact, there’s zero logic behind their inclusion in the story, and they act more or less as a distraction from all the incredibly cool stuff going on in whenever they’re not pulling focus. 

Take another look at The Beast Below today. Focus on the ethics, the performances, and in particular the dynamics of a newly regenerated Doctor and a companion that proves beyond any doubt here why she’s better than many humans, and why she deserves her shot at the wider universe. For both Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond, this is at least as fundamental to their figuring out their way of being, and being in the universe together, as The Eleventh Hour with its moment of trust was. This is Amy Pond saving the Doctor from the limitations he’s imposed on a situation – the three appalling options he sets out before himself. The point being, in setting out those options, he’s Doctoring on auto-pilot. By opening up the options in front of him, and making him see the universe through the lens of how others might see him, Amy gifts the Eleventh Doctor the lack of limitations – and that in itself is enough to infuse both his journey and his nature with a brand new enthusiasm. And with it, we as fans get that same new enthusiasm, flying back into the universe with a brand new brilliant Doctor.

Who Reviews Victory of the Daleks by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony claims victory with a Jammie Dodger. 

There’s an old saw in Doctor Who fandom that says that a Doctor isn’t really a Doctor, or that they don’t really reveal what kind of Doctor they are, until they come up against the Daleks. It’s by no means consistently true, of course – the Fifth Doctor didn’t face them properly until his final season, and both the Sixth and Seventh Doctors were firmly into their on-screen time before they encountered the pepperpots of doom. 

The Eleventh Doctor had no such wait for his first encounter with the Daleks. Three stories into his first series, the Tweed-suited Time Lord came across the sons of Skaro in one of their most insidious stories since Power of the Daleks, with which the parallels are both obvious and intentional. 

Winston Churchill (Ian McNiece, giving us a believable performance that has seen him anchor box sets of Churchill adventures in audio) is in his bunker during the early years of World War II when he calls for the Doctor’s opinion and assistance with an ethical dilemma over a magical new techno-weapon that could win him the war. 

The Doctor, naturally – new body, new Tardis interior, both taking a while to wear in – is a little late, so in the meantime, Churchill acts as he sees fit. A new robotic sentinel called an Ironside, built by a Scottish professor named Bracewell, is able to shoot Nazi planes out of the sky, and also serve tea to the victors once their offensive duty is done. 

The Eleventh Doctor’s reaction to the Ironsides is especially extreme when he finds out they’re actually Daleks. Yelling, demanding they admit who and what they are, and even attacking them with giant spanners, seeing the Daleks in this scenario, hiding in plain sight, shooting down Nazis and pretending to be willing ‘soldiers’ of the Allies offends everything in his hearts. Even Amy Pond seems worried about the extreme reaction he has to them, which in itself is odd – in the history of which the Doctor is aware, Amy comes from an Earth that has seen the Daleks attack, experienced the Earth hijacked across space by them, seen people exterminated by the tank-dwelling Nazi-blobs. But she has no memory of any of that – a factor in the ongoing story of the cracks in time that are the arc of Series 5. 

But when the Doctor goes spanner-nuts, demanding that the Daleks acknowledge him, and stop pretending to be subservient to the humans around them, one of the weirdest things in almost 50 years of Dalek history happens. 

His words are recorded, transmitted through space, and apparently ‘accepted as testimony.’

Almost immediately, the Daleks drop their pretence, go on a brief killing spree they’ve evidently been itching for, and, when Bracewell pleads with them, demanding that they are his creation, they shoot off his hand, and reveal that in fact, they created him as a way of getting close to Churchill – and the Doctor. And then, in the most unDalek-like move of all, they naff comprehensively off. 

The next phase of the story stretches credulity out niiiiice and thin. The last of the Daleks, it seems, have found an ancient Dalek MacGuffin – a Genesis Ark (full points to writer Mark Gatiss there for coming up with a suitably impressive Doohicky name). In the Ark there’s some primal, perfect Dalek DNA, enough to reboot the species from a fundamental template. There’s just one problem: the modern, bronze Daleks are so far from the fundamental Dalek that the Ark refuses to acknowledge them as Daleks. 

O…K. 

Instead of acknowledging their Dalekness though, the Ark will recognise the testimony of the Daleks’ arch-enemy – the Doctor. So, all the sophisticated analytical equipment you imagine would be in a Dalek Doohickey says they’re not Daleks. But the word of the species’ most eternal enemy is good enough for the Ark to open up. 

It’s really best to stop thinking too hard at this point. When you also understand that in an effort to get the Doctor to acknowledge them, the best plan they could come up was to a) create an android professor, and b) to go and hang around with Winston Churchill for a bit, serving tea in the hopes that the Doctor might just… pop along though, you ssssort of get the Genesis Ark’s point. Conquerors of time and space, they may be. Great thinkers? Nnnno. 

Where Victory of the Daleks also seems to go astray is that having established that the Ark contains primal Dalek, pure Dalek, fundamental Dalek, what emerges from it looks significantly less like a Dalek than any Dalek we’ve ever seen on screen. Big, bulky, with skirts the size of Skaro and in colour schemes not even the Peter Cushing movie dreamed of, the New Paradigm Daleks look OK in their initial emergence scene, backed by some superbly strong Murray Gold music. And there’s no doubting the fact that they sound the part, Nick Briggs making the voice of most of them deeper and more gravelly than the bronze Daleks. 

But ultimately, they look like a marketing strategy first and a universal despot second, which is one of the reasons they never especially caught on with fans. If the plan had been to replace the bronze Daleks – themselves an extremely elegant upgrading of what it meant to be a Dalek – with a new paradigm to be used in future stories, audience reaction appeared to take the wind out of the production team’s sails, and they were only included among other varieties of Dalek in future stories, before being more or less dropped altogether in the Chibnall era. 

The point about all of which is that their look makes no sense within the context of the story.

But then, in fairness, nothing much after the Doctor hits the Dalek with the spanner makes sense within the context of the story. Once the New Paradigm Daleks have emerged, the rest of the story is simply a matter of competing stakes. 

The Doctor threatens to blow up the Daleks with a Jammie Dodger… as you do if you’re the Eleventh Doctor and all you happen to have about your person is a Jammie Dodger. The Daleks, crippled though their ship might be, threaten to destroy London simply by shining a giant spotlight on it, so the Luftwaffe can do its thing. 

Bracewell, inspired by fellow Scot Amy Pond, takes some ideas he’s had for gravity bubbles and turns them from designs to fully working versions fitted to a bunch of Spitfires in what is practically no time at all – and with one working hand, no less. Spitfire pilots, used to flying sorties from England to Germany and back, have abbbbsolutely no problem flying into space to attack the Dalek ship. And in a move to get the Doctor to call off the attack, the new Supreme Dalek – presumably plugging itself rapidly into the data banks of the former Daleks it has systematically exterminated – reveals that as well as a passport into Churchill’s inner circle, the android Bracewell is an oblivion cascade (again, full marks on doohickey-naming for Gatiss). A walking, talking, thinking bomb that will take most of the earth with it into a screaming void pretty shortly as a way to give the new Daleks cover to get the hell out of Dodge and begin being simply awful to other people in other times and places. 

The Doctor, faced with his second impossible conundrum in two weeks – the week before, he’d been on the brink of killing the last of the star whales till Amy Pond talked him round – lets them go, and returns to Earth to persuade the android Bracewell that he’s a real boy after all, on the wiiiildly spurious grounds that provoking the implanted memories of a human life within him will stop him acting like a bomb and taking the Earth with him. Because… reasons. 

But of course, it’s not the Doctor who can provoke the right memories in Edwin Bracewell to cool him down and stop him exploding. The Doctor, like Bracewell, is fundamentally not human, and his efforts to get Bracewell to believe in his own humanity are doomed to fail. 

As with the star whale conundrum in The Beast Below, it’s actually Amy Pond who brings the goods, provoking memories of Bracewell’s “lost love,” Dorabella, and the ‘good hurt’ of loving someone. When Edwin stands down from his explosive countdown, all’s well that ends well, the light over London is extinguished, and Britain lives to suffer another few years of wartime uncertainty and hardship under Winston Churchill’s government. The Daleks naff comprehensively off for a second time, claiming victory. Bracewell, we learn, will probably go looking for Dorabella – and what we wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall for that meeting. “Hi honey, I’m home, and now I’m an emotionally unstable hyper-bomb!” 

The point about Victory of the Daleks, ultimately, is that it had a lot to do. It was determined to be a riff on Power of the Daleks, with sneaky Daleks seeming to serve humans. It had to act as a celebrity historical, bringing Churchill into the fold of the Doctor’s on-screen friends, though the idea that they’ve met before had long been established. It had to pitch a brand new design of Dalek to the audience, in such a way as to erase the previous iteration and if possible spark a new wave of retail Dalekmania. And, while it was at it, it was determined to get as many war movie references in as possible, more or less for the joy of it. 

It succeeds in doing a lot of that – the subservient Daleks are effectively creepy, especially when, unwatched, they turn and observe the humans. Churchill emerges as a person the Doctor can support (albeit there’s a good deal of printing the legend there). And the war movie elements are fun, if in no sense logical. 

Where it falls down is in the very thin strands of logic that hold the thing together – the Genesis Ark believing the Doctor but not the Daleks, the likelihood of Churchill as a good locus-point by which to wait for the Doctor to show up, the logistics of preparing the Spitfires for their space dogfight, etc. 

And most of all, it falls down in that the New Paradigm Daleks look, all the way through, like a desperate plea by the production team to get people to buy new Dalek models and products, rather than as anything that was fundamentally necessary to the Daleks’ ongoing story. 

So you can still get a whole lot of fun out of Victory of the Daleks, 11 years on – but the New Paradigm Daleks, in retrospect, look like an idea forced into being for the wrong reasons, and so act as the cherry on a highly illogical, if always fun, cake.

Who Reviews Frontios by Matt Rabjohns

 

Peter Davison’s final season as the Doctor on screens was a far stronger affair than the season before. Indeed, I believe I have seen it recorded that Peter himself has said if his final season had been his second, he would have stayed in the role longer. So, what is it about the stories of his final season that is of far higher quality than the one before? Well, there are a lot more originally themed stories for a start. The season before had focused on bringing back some famous old foes, like the Mara, The Black Guardian and Omega. This season, apart from the one single appearance of the Daleks, was a completely innovative one for new alien creatures for the Doctor to face off against. 

Frontios is at the forefront of this. In his writing of this story Christopher H Bidmead gives us an extremely interesting new set of foes. The huge woodlouse like Tractators. And though they may never be the most awesomely designed and realistic looking creature the show ever had; they are at least highly original in concept. In that they employ gravity as an actual; weapon. And throughout the story the way the Tractators use their gravitational technology to influence the struggling humans above ground on the surface is really something. 

Peter Davison is definitely now showing us just how good his more human edged Fifth Doctor can be. He leads the ensemble very well and I find him a brilliant actor to watch. When we get given a decent story for him to act in, he proves his mettle as the Time Lord. 

And there is far far more to this story than just the interesting conception of the Tractators and Peter’s acting. On the whole scope of the acting front there are some superb performers. One of the finest has to be William Lucas as Mr Range. He plays this character sympathetically, and so it’s very easy to root on his side for proceedings. Lesley Dunlop as his daughter Norna is very special indeed. I’ve always had a soft spot for Lesley, she’s a great actress and it is so brilliant to see her in my favourite show ever. She would go on also to appear in The Happiness Patrol. 

I have seen many people criticize the performance of Peter Gilmore as Brazen. He is not, in my view, remotely off in his performance. Brazen is officious and aloof, but not completely soulless as many other characters have been on the show before. Peter gives a great performance, which comes as no surprise to me. He was always a first class and reliable actor. 

Mark Strickson too as Turlough has a rare shining performance in this story. He has a deep-rooted ancestral memory of the tractators, and his acting fearful and afraid is superb. He is for once given something meaty to do in the story, and this story clearly shows when he is given a meaty script, he’ll show you what he can do with it. I always think he never gets the appreciation he deserves as Turlough. I think he always was never less than brilliant in the role of the slightly opaque and untrustworthy man from Trion. I loved how he got just a tiny little more scrap of back story and this really helps elevate his great character even more. 

Janet Fielding too does her usual effortless performing jewels as Tegan. She is brilliant when she thinks the Doctor is insulting her in one area of the story, her look could melt an iceberg. And though she may be the least well served of the regulars in this story she is never less than brilliant. 

John Gillett as the leader of the Gravis is excellent in his vocal delivery. He really is creepy with a sibilant voice. The procurement of humans to drive the gravity machines of the Tractators too is a gruesome image. The scenes with the grey, ashen form of Captain Revere is very stark and nasty. Lending the cliffhanger to part three a readily unpleasant and gritty feel. The effects of how the earth survivors of the wrecked spaceship are on the whole really well achieved, though in the very first minute of the story we have the lovely goof of a pen or pencil sticking up through the moving ground too! 

Frontios stands as a really original slice of Doctor Who. It’s a shame that the Tractators have never re-appeared in the show since. They have at least had a lost story revived by Big Finish, which was also penned by Christopher H Bidmead. I must just say that that follow on story is also excellent, and should be sought out by anyone who loves Frontios. 

The direction by Ron Jones too is markedly improved from some of earlier Doctor Who efforts, where he seemed to not really be interested in the stories. Here at least he gets some very good and solid performances from the whole cast, and seems to have garnered a bit more ompff in his attack. It’s great to see. This has none of the sometimes-flat scenes of Time Flight. Everyone here gives it their all and this culminates in making the story a standout of Season 21. 

The action resolves with the TARDIS suddenly being gripped by an unknown but powerful force. What could lie in wait for our intrepid TARDIS team? Well, that, of course, is another story!  

Who Reviews The Face of Evil by Matt Rabjohns

 

Sometimes it’s the untold stories that are the most interesting. What immediately grabs one about Chris Boucher’s debut script for Doctor Who is he does something that had seldom happened in the show before. He speaks of an untold adventure within his story itself. The Doctor has once before visited the planet of the Sevateem and the Tesh and had something to do with the great computer Xoanon. It’s interesting when we get snippets of unseen untelevised adventures, as it leaves the mind free to dream up scenarios of what could have happened in these spoken of stories. 

And the great things about the Face of Evil most certainly do not end with just the mentioning of an unseen previous adventure. First and foremost, there is the brilliant introduction of Louise Jameson as Leela. What could I possibly say about Louise that hasn’t been said before? I am a massive fan of female characters in any show who are shown to be tough and able to take care of themselves. And the Sevateem Warrior Leela was and still is one of the most ballsy women I have seen in any TV show. She was not a screamer, she took the fight to the enemy, even if they were far deadlier than she was. Louise always gave her a gritty and real edge that was always superb to watch on screen. Her rather short and shabby leather costume too must have been a reason why the number of Dad’s in Doctor Who’s audience went on the increase Louise still to this day with Big Finish treats Leela with conviction and zeal and right from her first story she grips the attention and is glorious to watch on screen.

And it is not even greatly obvious that when she first joined Tom Baker in the show, they initially did not hit it off well. But now they seem to be the best of friends and this is great to see. It adds to their adventures no end. But as I say on screen one really never gets the feeling that they haven’t as yet hit it off. This to me displays what such quality actors they both were. They are excellent from the get go, already like a well-oiled team. 

Tom is on fine form and leads the story brilliantly from the get go. His Doctor is never less than incredibly diverting and interesting to watch. He’s never predictable. 

One slight oddity of the story though is Leela’s father is seen in the first scene. He then takes the test of the Horda and dies a horrific death in his daughter’s place and after all this she never speaks of her father ever again. I find this very strange indeed. But I am glad Big Finish have addressed this odd issue in their audio range as to me this always rang a bit strange. But for me that is the only strangeness in the script. 

The realisation of the computer Xoanon is excellently done. One really feels this is a psychopathic and deadly computer we are seeing the Doctor face off against. And that he feels partially responsible for how Xoanon has turned out adds a great sense of depth to the storytelling. The multiple screaming voices of Xoanon in the Doctor’s ears in part three make for a cracking good cliffhanger. The eerie girly cries of “Who am I? Who am I?” really disturb and leave one hungry to see how the situation is resolved. 

The Tribe of the Sevateem too are all superbly realised characters. Chris Boucher has a great grasp of character, just as strong as the late Robert Holmes. Victor Lucas as the leader Andor really sounds uncannily similar to Valentine Dyall in his vocal tones, and makes for a great leader of the tribe. Leslie Schofield too is equally excellent as the devious Calib. Brendan Price gives Tomas a human and decent edge that makes him another likeable member of the tribe. But it is definitely David Garfield as Neeva who steals the show as the shaman of the Sevateem. He is a joy to watch on screen, and only he could wear a cricket glove on his head and not look stupid! He gives Neeva his all, and he’s a brilliantly rounded character who dominates every scene he is in. The way he displays his faith in Xoanon being shattered too is excellent. 

The Tesh come across as soulless and unnerving too. Leon eagles as Jabel is particularly nasty and single minded in his portrayal. His smug, self-assured manner makes him a character one loves to loathe. It is very amusing how after Xoanon is finally delivered from his madness that the tribe of Sevateem and the Tesh have to learn to come together and work something out for their future. It is also highly amusing to see how Leela actually basically thrusts herself into the TARDIS and the Doctor’s journey is space and time too. She is so wickedly naughty as Leela, not only fiercely loyal and dependable and lethal with a knife and Janus Thorn. 

The set design of the story is very good too. The forests of the planet are reminiscent of the excellence of the alien jungle in Planet of Evil. And the stone carved face of the Fourth Doctor in the mountain is brilliantly achieved for the time. Perhaps, maybe the only slight problem is the scenes with the Tesh and Xoanon do seem a trifle over lit. But for once this does not impinge too much on how good the story is. 

So, all in all, The Face of Evil stands as a great introductory script from Chris Boucher into the worlds of Doctor Who. It’s a very fine story indeed and definitely deserves the mantle of “classic”. And as an introduction to Leela it is almost flawless. I think it’s a crying shame that Chris would only contribute two more stories to the Tom Baker era after this story. He is a very gifted writer indeed who I feel could have given a whole lot more to the show. It is good to see he would contribute greatly to the BBC original novels range when it came about in the 1990s but I still would love to see more from him in the screen way. 

The Face of Evil comes from Season 14. It’s a season rich with Doctor Who classics. Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe as Script Editor and Producer saw the show head in a more meaty, adult and gothic tone. It’s little wonder this era of Doctor Who is called the golden age of the programme. The Face of Evil ably proves why all on its own. 

Who Reviews The Masque of Mandragora by Matt Rabjohns

 

What I most like about the character of the Doctor is that he/she is never one to call themself the perfect hero. They make mistakes, just as human beings do. The Doctor in this story again makes a serious mistake, for which several human lives are lost, however unwittingly and unknowingly the mistake is made. In The Masque of Mandragora we have the Doctor accidentally bring back a hideous alien power with him in the TARDIS back in Earth history at the time of the Italian renaissance. And I truly enjoy this kind of approach to the character of the Doctor. He/she is no hero, he/she just always does his very best to keep loss of life to a minimum. 

Lois Marks writing for starters here is at his strongest. He penned several excellent scripts for the series before. But here is where he seemed to find his true niche that he seems very comfortable with. All the characters in the story too are so brilliantly portrayed and written. There is not a blank mask in the pack for this story. 

Tom Baker really needs no introduction. He is his usual excellent assured self all the way through this tale. Elisabeth Sladen and he are just beautiful to watch together on screen. Their chemistry is so intensely special that all scenes with them are made better just because they are in them. And Elisabeth Sladen again is highly unnerving when she does her possessed acting again in this story. She really wrong foots you as she is just so superb at acting taken over by a malignant will. 

And the other cast members? Let’s begin with the fantastic John Laurimore as Count Frederico. He is the epitome of the nastiest and most unpleasant of villains. You see this right from the offset with his soulless and callous butchering of peasants who he has put to the sword without so much as a thought. He is arrogant and self-assured to the point where you keenly await his inevitable demise. John is faultless in his aggressive portrayal of the power mad Duke. That he comes to his end by looking into a white bright oval of a once human face is a helluva way to go too. Honestly, he joins the pantheon of brilliant Who villains who have graced the show over the years. 

Gareth Armstrong as Prince Giuliano is also extremely well portrayed. Gareth gives Giuliano a rich vein of believability and fallibility. He comes over as very sympathetic and one roots for his character right from the get go. And his friendship with Tim Piggott Smith’s Marco is very very believably performed indeed. They share some excellent scenes together. 

Norman Jones as the seer Hieronymus is absolute stunning in his portrayal. This is no surprise because Norman was an absolutely sublime actor indeed. All three times he graced Doctor Who he was superb. Hieronymus is a really unsettling character too. The costume design really adds a huge amount of menace to him. The golden mask he wears is scary and sends a shudder down the spine. His final climactic sparring's with Tom Baker’s Doctor is brilliantly charged indeed. It makes for a great end to the story. The trickery in the final scene where the Doctor uses the Hieronymus disguise to fool the other cultists is a superb scene and ends the story on a very high note. 

Again, one of the only major problems of the story is that Lis as Sarah is the only decent female part in the whole drama. But these stories were made in a time when women weren’t overtly well served by TV in general, so I suppose I should have a little bit of leniency with it on this respect. But it must have been annoying for Lis being the only woman in frequent stories in her time on the show. But this is still not a major quibble. And she truly does do the ladies proud because Sarah Jane is just a wickedly awesome character. 

The setting of Portmeirion in Wales is an extremely effective double for the villages of San Martino in Italy. This story truly does feel like it is in a foreign locale and this really works to the story’s benefit a lot. The filmed outdoor scenes look sumptuous and really add such a great grand backdrop to the great action of the story. 

I think the Masque of Mandragora rightfully deserves to be labelled a classic. It’s rich in character, rich in costume design, rich in direction from an assured Rodney Bennett, and above all it is a quality segment of Doctor Who storytelling. This is what the best of the show is like. I can think of barely any other stories to display this so well as does The Masque of Mandragora.

Who Reviews The Shadow of Weng-Chiang by DJ Forrest

 

 Djak is avoiding being filleted by Mr Sin

I don’t recall watching the Talons of Weng Chiang, so I have no knowledge of who Magnus Greel was nor his robotic sidekick Mr Sin. All I do have is the knowledge of it happening during the Fourth Doctor era. One of the interesting things being that, for a family show, I don’t suppose much of Mr Sin’s actions were covered in quite as gory technicolour as the books do. So, trekking through this novel was quite an eye opener and I had to remind myself that I was reading a Who novel, and not some sick and twisted horror novel for adults only. 

There have been many robotic characters throughout films where just by a simple tilt of the head, and the darkness behind the eyes, that can completely freak you out. Mr Sin is no different, and for someone who, as I stated earlier, has no prior knowledge of this homunculus creature, then I was about to get a real taster of what happens when a robot goes rogue. 

The story picks up on Earth, and Romana II and the Doctor (4^th) are in search of another segment of the Key to Time and pick up readings on their gizmo that puts them in Shanghai in the 1930s. It’s during the conflict between the Chinese and the Japanese and how much the latter wanted to expand its empire by sending its forces into China, so lots of spies working on both fronts, and double agents working on both and so much going on that you tend to lose what it is you’re searching for. 

Author David A. McIntee, certainly knows his history, and for the first part of the story, fills in the backstory of the Japanese advances into Manchuria, which fills out enough about Hsien-Ko, the lead character, who is building something in the mountains, using Dragon Path compasses, in order to fulfil a promise to her father. 

When the Doctor and Romana II arrive with K-9, they stumble into what looks to be an Arms deal on the docks. Their gizmo for detecting high levels of chronon energy spikes each time they come into contact with certain people, especially those with these little compasses around their necks, and Hsien-Ko. Curious about this woman, they investigate further, but Hsein-Ko is one step ahead of them, as she recognises the Doctor, and assumes that since their last meeting, that Romana is Leela. 

Naturally, I’m going to have to read or watch the Talons of Weng-Chiang to know what that story was. 

Mr Sin appears at Hsein-Ko’s side, and she’s somewhat connected to the robot – she can see where he is at any given time, and can send him to do her bidding. This little Chinese pygmy homunculus comes complete with a sharp knife that he doesn’t mind wielding, and because he has a pig’s brain, weirdly, when his circuits go a little haywire, he becomes a blood sniffing, butcher, for want of a better word, and goes in search of human flesh. It’s a little macabre after that, and I’m pretty certain that this would never become a Who episode – just from the actions of Mr Sin. 

There are interesting characters throughout and I did warm a little to Mr Woo, despite his actions in the club he owns, where he secretly listens in to conversations in each booth. He looks after Romana also, and together they team up with the Doctor and help save the day, eventually, after much toing and froing and avoiding Mr Sin. There are some chapters that keep you on the edge of your seat and there was many a night I’d be reading a couple of chapters before giving in to sleep. 

David McIntee is no stranger to sci fi, having written for Doctor Who, and Star Trek, writing books, comics, audios including for Big Finish. The Shadow of Weng-Chiang is one of the Virgin Missing Adventures stories, of which he has written three. New Adventures he’s written three from ’93 – ’95 and for Past Doctor Adventures covering ’98 – 2004 and an Eighth Doctor Adventure in 1999. I need to look out for more adventures by McIntee, they are extremely interesting, and made up for the novel I struggled with and gave up on. 

Anyone heard of Taint? 

If you get a chance to read this novel, have a squiz at the introduction to the story, as it’s extremely light hearted view of the author, and for this reason alone, I warmed to him straight away.

 

 

Who Reviews The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang by SF Cambridge

 

Starring Matt Smith as The Doctor, Alex Kingston as River Song, Karen Gillan as Amy & Arthur Darvill as Rory 

 

Liz Ten: “This is the royal collection. And I’m the bloody Queen. What are you doing here?” 

River Song: “It’s about the Doctor, ma’am. You met him once, didn’t you? I know he came here” 

Liz Ten: “The Doctor?” 

River Song: “He’s in trouble. I need to find him.” 

Liz Ten: “Then why are you stealing a painting 

The opening scene of The Pandorica opens, is by far one of my favorites as it explodes into a frantic race against time as friends of the Doctor are seen rallying around trying to figure out a way to contact him ending in an art heist conducted by River Song as she attempts to steal one of Van Gogh’s paintings from the queen aka Liz Ten, that Vincent painted entitled, “The Pandorica Opens” and depicts the TARDIS exploding. However, I did think at this point when I first watched it that it was a shame that Lady Christina couldn’t be the one to do the heist as its very much her M.O and would have been a nice way to let us all know that she is still out there fighting on behalf of the Doctor as in the case of Liz Ten, even so it was not meant to be and the intro worked out well. 

Obvious to everyone involved that the painting is a message, the Doctor with Amy eventually follows clues left for him by those trying to contact him to Stonehenge where the action really begins. 

We see Rory back from the dead and resurrected as a Roman Solider, Amy remembering who he is and all the alien forces, the Doctor’s enemies, in the galaxy coming together to set a trap for the Doctor, to finally put an end to him and stop him from stopping them with their plans for world domination. It’s quite funny to think that all of his enemies will work together to get rid of him because they are fed up with him ruining things for them. The end of the episode continues into the next episode The Big Bang and once again the Doctor saves the earth as were transported back in time to when Amy was the little girl, he first met years ago. We find out how Rory got his names Rory the Roman, the lone centurion and the last centurion and why he felt compelled to guard the Pandorica through time with his life. 

“According to legend, wherever the Pandorica was taken, throughout its long history, the Centurion would be there guarding it. He appears as an iconic image in the artwork of many cultures. And there are several documented accounts of his appearances. And his warnings to the many who attempted to open the box before its time. His last recorded appearance was during the London Blitz in 1941. The warehouse where the Pandorica was stored was destroyed by incendiary bombs. But the box itself was found the next morning a safe distance from the blaze. There are eyewitness accounts from the night of the fire of a figure in Roman dress carrying the box from the flames. Since then, there have been no sightings of the Lone Centurion. And many have speculated that if he ever existed, he perished in the fires of that night, performing one last act of devotion to the box he had pledged to protect for nearly two thousand years.” 

The Pandorica itself is a temporal prison and the light within it will keep whatever is imprisoned alive forever, even if it is seconds from death. The plan was to lock the Doctor in there forever to keep him out of the way but it turns out that the light is actually a resurrection field and restores the dead and dying. When the Doctor figures this out and realizes that he can’t stop the explosion from altering time and space and wiping out the universe, he flies the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion and reboots the universe with the resurrection light, restoring everything back to how it was but wiping out the memory of him from everyone’s lives. Just before his final moments happen, he goes back in time to tell young Amy a story as she sleeps. 

The episode ends with Rory and Amy finally getting married with a cleverly written piece of wedding tradition that involved the TARDIS. Something old, yet something new, something borrowed even though it was technically stolen, and something blue! This is the story that the doctor told Amy when she is a little girl and one he hopes will help her to remember him when he is gone. Amy’s memories are the key to bringing those she loves back to life and without them, neither the Doctor nor Rory would have come back from the dead. 

Amy: “When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend, the Raggedy Doctor, my Raggedy Doctor. But he wasn't imaginary, he was real. [shouting] I remember you! I brought the others back; I can bring you home too! Raggedy man, I remember you, & you are late for my wedding! I found you. I found you in words just like you knew I would. That's why you told me the story of the brand new, ancient blue box” 

I don’t think there is a Who episode starring Matt Smith that I don’t like, although I much prefer the dynamic he had with Rory and Amy than I do with Clara. He was part of Amy and Rory’s family having married their daughter and you always got that when watching them all together, even though he was 100’s of years older than them and not even human you still knew that they were a close family and he was their son even if it was completely impossible. 

I liked the edge they gave Rory, the man who keeps on dying and found a plausible way to bring him back to life for good so that he could watch over Amy for 2 thousand years. It was a great romantic gesture and a massive insight into their relationship to tell us all that true love knows no bounds, although I was pleased to see him become human again so that they could grow old together. There are just one too many immortal human companion’s courtesy of the Doctor, (Jack Harkness, Clara Oswald and Me) and I would have hated for Rory to carry on eternally after Amy had gone as his life would have no purpose so it was a welcome storyline for them both. 

I especially liked the fact that looking back on Amy when she was a little girl again that we see a different version of events as to the day she first met the Doctor. In the future time is ending and collapsing in on itself because the TARDIS exploded. The Silence planned to kill the Doctor by blowing up the TARDIS (to prevent him from reaching Trenzalore) but they did not know that River Song could fly the TARDIS. Thus, resulting in the TARDIS blowing up inside the Time Vortex instead 

“The universe is cracked, the Pandorica will open and silence will fall” Prisoner Zero 

The explosion was felt in space and time and changed the events of the past so that the stars went out. (Journey’s end – The stars are going out) and even though we know that the stars went out before for different reasons it’s still a nice way to tie the Doctors together. As the past begins to change to compensate for the explosion, stars become a myth, a story of what used to be that parents told their children, and young Amy had never seen a star before as there wasn’t any but she drew pictures of them from memory so even though she hadn’t met the Doctor in this time line, she still remembered him somehow. Confusing but at the same time, very nostalgic and completely amazing. 

Its these 2 episodes and the who Doctor / Amy / Rory storylines that showed off the brilliance of the writers who literally breathed life into the characters, entwining them throughout the years so that they would always be together, even years after Amy and Rory died in their future lives. It’s a dynamic rarely seen on screen within the Whoniverse now and the heart of the Doctor, or hearts of the Doctor completely solid in his foundations of everything the show inspired to be when it first started years ago. 

Thinking back on the immortal companions, it would be awesome for another DW spin off series starring Captain Jack and Me (Ashilda) if she hadn’t left the show in a diner shaped TARDIS with the undead Clara then I think the two of them would have worked brilliantly together but I guess its not meant to be. 

So, in conclusion, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang are like comfort episodes. Ones you can rewatch 10 times over and not get bored with them as they just seem to pack so much in that it’s a race against time from start to finish, 12 minutes at one point. 

The Doctor: “Right! I’ve got twelve minutes. That’s good” 

Amy: “Twelve minutes to live. How is that good?” 

The Doctor: “Oh, you can do loads in twelve minutes. Suck a mint, buy a sledge, have a fast bath.” 

Or even save the world with the big bang!!!