Review Category: Doctor Who TV

As talking points go, a speaking frog is probably going to end up making the Kandy Man look like Davros in the pantheon of unexpected antagonists. And in the middle of this back-to-basics version of Doctor Who, the Solitract’s chosen form was such an incongruous visual, it will have had viewers frozen mid-sip wondering if their television was playing tricks on them – and perhaps not especially well-conceived tricks either, as the physical frog was somewhat less articulate than its master. For the longer term fan, this was a jump-the-pond moment that can be pointed at with loud cries of ‘I told you so!’ directed at the basement ceiling. But for those of us who are prepared to let the programme turn its attention occasionally to places like the Land of Fiction or the inside of the Confessional Dial, this was simply evidence that Doctor Who – even in its current Sunday evening iteration – hasn’t lost its sense of wonder and imagination, and is still prepared to give them an occasional free rein.

But oh boy, that frog came mighty close to taking us right out of It Takes You Away.

If you’re looking for a location in which to set a mythology-deconstructing narrative, a remote wooden cabin as close to the top of the world as you can reasonably get was as appropriate as any other. Only time will tell quite how successful Hime has been at blending his influences, but what threatened to be 2018’s Fear Her might have turned out to be Series Eleven’s Kinda instead; or rather, and especially being in the penultimate slot of the run, this was The Metaphysical Mirror, or What Graham Did.

There were two stories taking place here, and whatever you might think of the current production’s Sunday evening execution – in which Jodie Whittaker instantly removed most of the mysteries by immediately telling us what was going on every time anything strange happened – you can’t fault Hime for stacking up his building blocks with careful attention to what each of them was saying, and it was nice to see some disguise about the theme and destination too. So what this was really about was the relationship between Ryan and Graham, given a classic ‘Is this really your dead wife/grandmother returned to life?’ spin.

We began with an abandoned blind child, whose mother had died and whose father had disappeared, and as this plot unfolded it became clear that abdication of duty – whether voluntary or not – was part of the issue. Cue Ryan instantly spotting the similarities between this situation and his own parental circumstance, and if the rest of the regulars were having none of it then Ryan was ultimately proved correct – allowing him to recognise the man who’d stepped into Ryan’s family and was still holding what remains of it together, for what he is. The ‘grandad’ moment therefore was both earned and by this point predictable, but no less satisfying for happening.

Graham, meanwhile, was being put through the emotional ringer, and maybe this subplot didn’t work quite as well, because although Bradley Walsh’s performance was just as assured and authentic as it has been all year, here his story existed more to facilitate Ryan’s development than perhaps as some kind of closure for Graham in its own right. Still, it was lovely to see them finally recognising the bond they’ve formed in words, as while this has been the main character development this series, a lot of the actual progress they’ve made has gone unspoken.

It was also nice to see Yaz commenting on her police training rather than simply using it unremarked upon in understated ways that have made her appear less developed and less useful than she’s really been. She’s an integral member of this TARDIS team, a quiet supporting character – in the best sense of the expression – and if she hadn’t been there we’d miss her much more than we might expect. This group will probably break up after Series Eleven is over, and while they’ve not been as involved or as ostentatious as many of the other modern companions, what they have been is an engaging and integrated bunch who have lightly exhibited a lot more chemistry than they might have appeared to.

But inescapably, we have to come back to the frog.

Chris Chibnall promised that Series Eleven would give old and new viewers alike a sense of the variety that Doctor Who can produce, and It Takes You Away was the series ‘doing David Lynch’ in a stripped back Scandi setting and with all the science-as-magic rationale you’d expect from the programme. If it would have been more satisfying not to get such comprehensive explanations for the anti-zone and the Solitract as we did (and Hime – or Chibnall – threw in a little brand new Doctor mythology for good measure, which no doubt will have offended fans who hold The Deadly Assassin up as one of the series’ high water marks), then at least the troll went unclarified and we could bring our own interpretation to his existence.

Not that he needed a lot. The anti-zone was pure mythological limbo, its realisation somewhat less than convincing but its status quite ameliorating in that respect – and both  Ribbons of the Seven Stomachs and the Pitch Black-style flesh moths felt an organic part of its existence, each revised according to Doctor Who’s ‘homely oddness’ methodology.

The implementation of all this was occasionally patchy, and still rent through with this sense of not being willing to confuse the Antiques Roadshow crowd. But although It Takes You Away has its antecedents in the recent universe – The Doctor’s Wife and the aforementioned episode of Class, for instance – it’s also in theme and tenor unique to this iteration of Doctor Who just as much as Rosa and Demons of the Punjab were before it. Say what you like about that frog, but It Takes You Away had the courage of its convictions and looked caution in the eye without blinking, and for that it deserves the benefit of any doubt.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11, EPISODE 9: IT TAKES YOU AWAY / WRITER: ED HIME / DIRECTOR: JAMIE CHILDS / STARRING: JODIE WHITTAKER, BRADLEY WALSH, TOSIN COLE, MANDIP GILL, SHARON D CLARKE, ELEANOR WALLWORK, KEVIN ELDON, CHRISTIAN RUBECK, LISA STOKKE / RELEASE DATE: AVAILABLE NOW ON I-PLAYER (AIRED DECEMBER 2ND)

For the third time this series we’re back in a period of history where a particular group of people are being persecuted for no very good reason – this time women, pertinently to the Doctor’s new identity – although there is a first here in that this time, there’s some nasty aliens up to no good. Which is not to say that Wilkinson skips over the running theme of misjudged antagonists behaving without deliberately malicious intent entirely; our chief opponent turns out to have been at least partially possessed by something approaching the Devil and by the episode’s end almost everyone has been partially either exonerated or at least justified in something of their beliefs. Even Willa (‘valiant protector’, etymology fans) goes off to practice her alternative therapies medicine at the end of the instalment, placing her somewhere between witch and doctor. Joy Wilkinson’s script, whether by accident or by design – and presumably by design – might be the most satisfying of the series so far.

It might be the new cameras, although it’s happened often enough before, but Series Eleven can’t rid Doctor Who of the minor niggle of people standing around waiting for their cue during its action sequences. And oh boy, there was an awful lot of music this week; if people thought the arrival of Segun Akinola was going to save them from having to complain about the score being mixed so loudly as to drown out the dialogue then they’ll be scratching their heads about how wrong they were. But those two production grumbles aside, this was a story that achieved what it set out to, and with a modicum more wit than has been apparent in other recent instalments.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we’re here to consider Alan Cumming though, aren’t we. Has there ever been an actor who has enjoyed his appearance in Doctor Who quite as much? The miracle of Alan Cumming, is that he doesn’t rein himself in one iota, and yet while he comes perilously close to tipping the tonal balance completely out of its equilibrium, he manages to instil King James with just enough sympathy to make the portrait a lovingly embellished one, rather than being wilfully and unnecessarily show-stealing. This reviewer actually held his breath just for a moment at the end of the episode, not quite entirely certain that Ryan wouldn’t take the monarch up on his offer; with Cumming in situ it was always a given that James’ early preference for the company of boys be presented in one way or another, and his taking to Ryan was both amusingly awkward and awkwardly amusing – in quite the most entertaining way. And what a lovely parting moment between the two.

As a plot, The Witchfinders was as predictable as anything else this year, which is not meant disparagingly. If Series Eleven has been as consciously set up so as to fit right into Sunday evenings after Countryfile and in the Antiques Roadshow’s slot as it seems, then it’s been a roaring success – and Wilkinson’s script was filled with easily fathomed, but equally rewarding, reason and resolution, from the mystery surrounding the village’s disappearance from historical records, to the explanation for the mystery of the Morax’ key. Despite a fair amount of hopping around – never anything to complain about in Doctor Who – it even retained that composed pace we’re taking so long to get used to. If the narrative alluded back towards The Visitation, the tenor of the story was very much more akin to The Woman Who Lived, complete with a stranded extra-terrestrial menace with vaguely leonine features, and a plot revolving around ritual execution. This was probably also the most graphically frightening episode since The Woman Who Fell to Earth, but in that slightly rustic manner that made it just a bit more palatable – or disorientating, depending upon your sensibilities – for those Sunday evening viewers.

Jodie Whittaker could still do with adding some quiet self-possession to her repertoire as the Doctor, but the obvious comparisons that were being made between her and David Tennant or Peter Davison were thankfully a little less in evidence this week. But ‘Honestly, if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself,’ was maybe just a bit too on the nose not to cause a bit of a squirm. Likewise some of the comedy, especially that revolving around the hat and the position of Witchfinder General, vacillated between hilarious and honest, and strained to the point of eye-rolling – but that’s an easily accepted compromise, especially in a production that’s taking care not to retread its predecessor’s paths while being mindful not to wander too far away from them either.

Is this the episode everyone’s going to remember from 2018? No. With Rosa and Demons of the Punjab for company, it isn’t even the most striking historical story – and not by some distance. But The Witchfinders set itself certain goals and didn’t miss a one, and managed to achieve them with a touch more subtlety than we might have expected it to. Along with great dollops of obviousness too, of course. Which makes it every bit as successful as each of those two stories, and no less meaningful either, albeit in perhaps more surreptitious ways. This is a series that has in almost every episode focussed in on something that’s worth dealing with, whether that be an obvious ‘issue’ or not, and at the end of fifty minutes it’s abundantly clear that James has learned a lesson, even if the viewer isn’t being struck across the head with what that lesson might necessarily have been.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11, EPISODE 8: “THE WITCHFINDERS” / WRITER: JOY WILKINSON / DIRECTOR: SALLIE APRAHAMIAN / STARRING: JODIE WHITTAKER, BRADLEY WALSH, TOSIN COLE, MANDIP GILL, ALAN CUMMING, SIOBHAN FINNERAN, TILLY STEELE / RELEASE DATE: AVAILABLE NOW ON I-PLAYER (AIRED NOVEMBER 25TH)

‘The systems aren’t the problem. How people use and exploit the system: that’s the problem.’ It’s a simple lesson, that it’s the people who run companies like – well, take your pick, but Amazon would appear to be the obvious analogy in Pete McTighe’s corporate satire – who shoulder the responsibility for their employment and human rights records, but it’s one that needs reinforcing from time to time, as we gaze upon these edifice-like businesses and sometimes forget that it’s not the companies who are running themselves.

It’s kind of a shame we had to pay a visit to the planet Kandoka, or rather its industrialised moon, for the refresher. Because while Kerblam! was as on the nose and as straightforward as all the other Series Eleven episodes so far – the only confusion it might possibly have engendered was during the ‘I’m the good guy!’ ‘No I’m the good guy!’ sequence, which surely took its inspiration from Spartacus – there was plenty of potential in its commentary for something just a little deeper, a little more ambiguous. The final twist revealing the culprit of the enterprise – as satisfying as it was to finally take a lurch into the unexpected this year – did rather leave capitalist exploitation somewhat off the hook. Although we can maybe take some comfort in the implication, given that this particular business really was running itself, that maybe Kerblam is a not-for-profit organisation. Perhaps this is how industrial socialism might look, should we ever achieve it – and possibly there’s an underlying message here that we don’t need the Sugars and the Trumps of this world greasing their palms on the oiled wheels of industry in order for that industry to function; Kandoka would seem to suggest that automated commercialism can run for the benefit of the people it’s supposed to serve, just as well as it currently does for those that take advantage of it. But that’s a bit of a stretch – and one that’s rather undermined by the episode’s conclusion. For Message Television that’s as blatant as this that was a bit of a fudge at the end there.

In terms of its Doctor Who-ness, Kerblam! was about as old school (post-2005 old school, that is) as Series Eleven has managed to get, and it was a more comfortable fit than we might have expected. But for the balance being weighted more heavily towards the Something To Say than the entertaining manner in which it was being said, this could have been Planet of the Ood; instead, and in the absence of a giant brain in a tub and Tim McInnerny’s extraordinary transformation, this was a closer cousin to Steven Moffat’s The Beast Below, even down to the truth being ultimately found at the end of a perilous journey to the basement. And while we were never going to get anything approaching Donna’s impassioned revelations about the nature of the business being conducted, we did get the double whammy of the villain being twice hoist by his own petard; the first time when the system takes his rather sweet potential girlfriend Kira – and it was oddly gratifying to see her offed with a relative minimum of fuss, even if that and the rather superficial nature of their burgeoning relationship in the narrative, made the Doctor’s citing of her feel equally perfunctory – and the second in what might have been an homage to Planet of the Daleks by way of I, Robot.

Still, the use of bubble wrap didn’t feel quite so much like it was making up for The Ark in Space as it might have.

Much like the ostensibly rather similar The Sun Makers, this was meat-and-potatoes mid-series Doctor Who given a little bit of extra accessibility by the casting of the redoubtable Julie Hesmondhalgh and the surprisingly effective Lee Mack, who downplayed his comedy persona in the service of giving us a sense of the story’s stakes, and was thus the cause for the episode’s one Big Emotional Moment, more than ably performed by Mandip Gill, who in the last two episodes has come much more into the centre of things. Not that either of her co-friends gave up any of the limelight to let her in; Bradley Walsh continues to be the series’ big revelation and Tosin Cole was especially good too, particularly during the return – or the return to the foreground – of his dyspraxia. Although as has been noted almost everywhere, Yaz’ police background does seem to have been almost forgotten and this ought to have bene the perfect place to redress that.

The big improvement this week was in the Doctor, though; after a handful of episodes in which she’s been either at the mercy of the plot or too keen to over-examine it, Kerblam! seemed to strike a nice balance between the know-it-all and the cosmic investigator, and if it’s still hard to tell quite where Jodie Whittaker’s pitching her characterisation, in this episode at least it was harder to tell that it was hard to tell. Or to put it more plainly: here she felt like a defined Doctor coasting rather than one who maybe knew what she wanted to achieve but wasn’t quite sure how that fitted in with everything else. Although there’s still a lot of Tennant by way of Davison going on in there.

It’s odd that such a modest episode as this felt so much more natural than its counterparts, even if the music and photography are still keeping the series from unleashing its inner romp. There were shades of Keff McCulloch in the score, which attempted a lightness on its feet that the McCoy-era orchestral stabs and percussive stylings didn’t help, but the conveyor belt sequence, while impressively ambitious – and thank heavens for some honest to goodness action at last, much as it might have resembled something the Tenth Doctor would have got involved in – was probably the instalment’s weakest moment, the budget plainly not being big enough to quite do it justice.

That’s where we are with Series Eleven, though; there’s a new ‘normality’ at play, one that’s playing well enough with your casual audiences to offset the furrowed brows within certain quarters of fandom, and while there have been references back aplenty, Kerblam! is at the dead centre of the Venn diagram between The Way Things Were and The Way They Are Now. Another production regime might have made something more light-hearted and overtly entertaining than this, but for this production regime, this is probably as light-hearted and entertaining as it gets.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11, EPISODE 7: KERBLAM! / WRITER: PETE McTIGHE / DIRECTOR: JENNIFER PERROTT / STARRING: JODIE WHITTAKER, BRADLEY WALSH, TOSIN COLE, MANDIP GILL, JULIE HESMONDHALGH, LEE MACK, CALLUM DIXON, CLAUDIA JESSIE, LEO FLANAGAN / RELEASE DATE: AVAILABLE NOW ON I-PLAYER (AIRED NOVEMBER 18TH)

It’s funny how the world turns, isn’t it? Back in Doctor Who’s mid-1970s heyday, every episode was like a trip inside a child’s nightmarish perception of some pretty lurid, and in many ways exotic adult fiction. And the larger-than-life dialogue and performances were there to disguise how essentially meaningless – no matter how fun – it all was, with Tom Baker’s fourth Doctor fronting up against some memorable but ludicrous villains. ‘I could play all day in my green cathedral’ has to be one of the ripest and most ridiculous lines ever committed to VT, closely followed by, ‘Oh, what a magnificent head.’

Ten years earlier, the dialogue had been – mostly, the occasionally eloquent historical serial aside – considerably less florid, as this then-new series found its feet and developed an audience. Ten years after Tom Baker’s first flush of success, and the dialogue was now a brutal necessity, simply there to facilitate some equally brutal action. As the series evolves, so does its audience and their expectations, and the various factors which combine to create Doctor Who – the sets, the music, the performances, and the dialogue – similarly evolve to compensate.

What has all this to do with Demons of the Punjab? Simply that here, with the first episode of Series Eleven not to bear Chris Chibnall’s name on the writing credits, we have the best and most lucid example yet of quite what an evolution this latest version of Doctor Who has taken.

In 1964, the two travelling schoolteachers were an anchor of normality by which the audience could engage in an increasingly bizarre series of adventures, the programme performing a daring balancing act between the kind of visuals never before seen on British television, and character relationships – and through them a comprehension of the ideas – that were ordinary enough to offset the craziness. When the Daleks invade London, Barbara only manages to escape because she’s wetting her handkerchief in the river.

When Doctor Who returned in 2005, Russell T Davies was well aware of this contradictory relationship, and made a roaring success of throwing first a shop girl and later a temp into the heart of some wild and crazy adventures. And when Steven Moffat took what Davies had achieved and filtered it through his Sorkinese gift for dialogue and his Burtonesque imagination, he had a similar period of roaring success. By then the British public knew what the programme was, and wanted to see what it was capable of – just as they’d lapped up the utter bonkersness of Hinchcliffe and Holmes after the relative familiarity of Dicks and Letts.

But the Moffat era lasted perhaps two years too long, meaning the BBC risked a generation who hadn’t experienced enough of the basic version in order to relish its elaborate child. And when all you know is extravagance, it becomes harder to ground that in something more recognisable.

Demons of the Punjab, then, is 1964’s Marco Polo retold for an audience which cherishes Call the Midwife and Downton Abbey. There’s an apparent peripheral threat – albeit no explanation this time for a modern audience as to where the expression ‘deadliest assassin’ might have come from – and a predestined journey with a bittersweet destination, one which the characters had advance warning about, hailing from its future. And this is the polar opposite of Moffat’s approach, whereby the joy of the destination is in disguising its arrival, such that you only realised you knew what to expect in the moments after its materialisation. Here, Vinay Patel set up a pair of conundra – the fate of Yaz’ prospective step-grandfather-in-law, and the reason for the presence of aliens during the partition of India – and reveals the solutions to both long before either becomes relevant or prompt. Because this is the age of walking the audience through the plot, rather than leading them through it.

And that’s fine. This is a Doctor Who that’s no less the most unusual thing on British TV. It’s just unusual-with-a-map.

The story, then. In the months before Brexit threatens to become a segregating reality, on the day that the world stopped to remember the hundredth anniversary of a global disaster of a war, at a time when civilisation is at its most schismatic for decades, this was the most apposite episode of the series so far. And it did what Doctor Who is most famous for: it boiled all this hysteria, all this history, and all this allusion down to half a dozen people standing around talking in a barn.

It was an episode that asked you to respond to Yaz’ situation, but put that circumstance on too much of a plate for you to have to feel your way into it and thus fully empathise. And while Graham had another of his now-vaunted moments, it didn’t feel as earned as previous ones had, and his relationship with Ryan seemed to take a back seat too. The new Doctor is still too over-excited and too little in command, and with Mandip Gill underplaying – quite handsomely, it has to be said – the regulars did feel as much tourists as they did interested parties; tourists not just in history, but in people’s lives.

Mixed success, then. Segun Akinola’s music continues to confound, sometimes wonderful and understated, sometimes seriously failing to be as agile as this kind of drama demands. But boy, was this possibly the most visually gorgeous episode ever. If it was stodgy, then, like unsweetened porridge – filled with substance and oh so very good for you, but not as easy to digest as it might have been – at least it was beautiful to look at.

It looks like Series Eleven might not get any lighter on its feet than this. What we’re getting is mostly good, often solid, and always straightforward Doctor Who. But after eight years of Steven Moffat, and with Chris Chibnall’s plan to revisit 1964 from a modern political perspective more apparent than ever, this does very much feel like Russell T Davies at 33 1⁄3 rpm.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11, EPISODE 6: ‘DEMONS OF THE PUNJAB’ / WRITER: VINAY PATEL/ DIRECTOR: JAMIE CHILDS / STARRING: JODIE WHITTAKER, BRADLEY WALSH, TOSIN COLE, MANDIP GILL, AMITA SUMAN, SHANE ZAZA, LEENA DHINGRAHAMZA JEETOOA / RELEASE DATE: AVAILABLE NOW ON I-PLAYER (AIRED NOVEMBER 11TH)