Review Category: Doctor Who TV

In possibly the most old-school Doctor Who episode in many a long year, we this week saw the two main themes of Series 9 emerge blinking into a murky underwater base that would happily have graced 1967 by way of 1984 – although the Peter Davison story this most resembled wasn’t Warriors of the Deep so much as it was The Awakening, complete with apparently crashed alien technology and potentially a prisoner of some kind causing chaos in a besieged location. Meanwhile, Peter Capaldi was channelling Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor on the cusp of his descent into self-awareness hell, midway through his tenure. Under the Lake was scintillating, terrifying and hilarious, far more so than any of the stories it purported to imitate. It was also possibly the most straightforward episode of Doctor Who we’ve had at least since Russell T Davies left the building.

The MacGuffin this week is an ostensibly abandoned alien space ship, discovered during a mining operation at the bottom of a Scottish loch. The crew of the facility are soon in peril, and when The Doctor arrives there are ghostly goings-on to be deciphered. The episode therefore takes the form of a mystery in need of solving, and the underlying success of stories like this – a success that it is, of course, impossible to judge on only the first half of the story – is generally dependent upon the question of which came first, the idea or the solution. Did writer Toby Whithouse start with the concept of ghosts in an underwater complex, and then set out to devise a story around that conceit, or did he begin with the reason for them being there and work backwards, creating his ghosts in service to the solution rather than the other way around? Oftentimes, the former can lead to inconsistent storytelling, as the marriage between the idea and the realisation of it is never quite as satisfying as in the latter – and that’s not an accusation you can level at Under the Lake, which is at this halfway stage as consistent and immersively accomplished a story as we’re likely to get.

The ghosts themselves, as scary and as well achieved as they are – there’s a vague hint of the Boneless from last year’s Flatline in the effects work, by way of the Empty Child – are possibly actually the dullest part of Under the Lake, which sings in its character interplay and works by involving the audience in the figuring out of its central puzzle. At every beat, Whithouse emulates his showrunner’s prior successes and matches his themes to those of the ongoing season, while at once writing something distinctive enough to entertain in its own right, and clear-cut enough to work on both levels. There is a huge amount of imagery conveying the twin themes of communication through the visual spectrum – an aspect of Moffat’s work that has been present throughout his Doctor Who career – with an ever-present but never intrusive focus on eyes and reflections; the very lack of opaqueness in the ghosts themselves a consolidation of this. But there are two much more direct themes which were a part of the opening story, and whose presence here indicates they’re going to be crucial to Series 9 as a whole.

The first is the unveiling of this year’s arc story. Steven Moffat, like Russell T Davies before him, likes his arcs to work on two levels, firstly for the characters (and more conspicuously for the companion), and secondly – and perhaps less importantly – in terms of the actual plot; no doubt we’ll see Missy, maybe the Daleks and possibly even Davros again in Hell Bent, the Series 9 finale, but more significant is what Steven Moffat’s doing with Clara. Just as the Twelfth Doctor’s lack of empathy with the human beings surrounding him is this year taking as much mellower form – reflecting the Doctor’s newfound self-assurance in light of his ‘idiot with a box’ revelation – and the scene involving the prompt cards already rivals ‘the only other chair on Skaro’ for Doctor Who’s funniest ever moment, so his companion’s trajectory is taking her in the opposite direction. We saw this spelled out in the TARDIS scene in which The Doctor questions her taking charge, but there are examples littered throughout the episode of Clara exhibiting this inclination, having in the previous story had this proclivity first legitimised in the UNIT scenes before being undermined when she was abandoned to Missy’s care on Skaro. This week, there is an apparently newfound determination on the character’s behalf to live up to what she sees as her just purpose; it’s a classic tragedy that – as with Donna Noble before her – can only end in tragedy should Clara attempt to fully emerge out of the Doctor’s shadow and become his equal. The delicious irony for fans of the original series – fans who in other areas should have been completely satisfied with this week’s episode – is that what Moffat’s doing is inverting the storyline that Ace would have been given in the unproduced Season 27; Clara isn’t being bequeathed Time Lord status, rather she’s subconsciously assuming it, and that’s undoubtedly going to be her downfall.

Even more interesting, and certainly more modern and unique to Moffat’s vision of the series, Under the Lake also reveals a less-obvious theme of Series 9, and that is the way in which these largely two-part (or connected) stories are working – by revealing a conundrum or plot point in the first episode, that the second thereafter illuminates by going back to before those events in order to explain how they came to happen. There was a heavily-disguised version of this in the opening two-parter, in which the young Davros plotline helped to illustrate the character of the dying Davros that the story was really all about. This week, the format is being made much more obvious by the Doctor actually travelling back in time to Before the Flood in order to try and resolve the ghostly issue that’s plaguing the underwater facility – and the two episodes that follow look to work in a similar fashion. It’s a conceit that a time-travelling series like Doctor Who should have at its very core – not every week, but occasionally enough to be a developing theme – yet like many of the fundamentally more obvious and relevant ideas, it takes someone to actually think of it and put it into practice.

What this two-part story will ultimately turn out to be is presumably a temporal paradox sci-fi horror wrapped around the format of an Agatha Christie whodunit, with the drawing board scene becoming a literal rather than metaphorical recap of the pieces falling into place.

How successful – and how relevant, at a fundamental level – it is, we will only discover once we’ve seen how it resolves next week. But Toby Whithouse has a facility for a deeper, more three-dimensional understanding of his ostensible villains, and hopefully the two-part nature of this story will iron out the occasional ‘sci-fi’ wrinkles that have been known to creep into his shorter Doctor Who stories in the past, where he’s been known to give the mechanical explanations a back-seat in favour of character material. Under the Lake hasn’t really introduced us – yet – to the occupant of the abandoned craft, so while as a first episode it was in the end too basic to completely fulfil, it was nevertheless a dazzling piece of Doctor Who, invoking memories of the series’ most glorious past while entertaining in a thoroughly modern manner.

Such a shame the Daily Who-Cares? had to spoil that pre-titles sequence, because I swear the hairs on the backs of any unspoiled viewers’ necks must have been running for cover the moment the small child in the minefield revealed his name. But of course, we knew the instant he said it what it was going to be anyway; Steven Moffat is in the habit of answering questions before they’re even asked, and the biplanes and bows and arrows told us exactly where we were. Oh and the hand mines, what a gloriously creepy concept; both silly and yet realised in a brilliantly sphincter-tightening fashion. Not to be outdone, Colony Sarff unravels into his native form for no other reason than because it’s Doctor Who.

Moffat loves to answer his criticisms by provoking his critics, and The Magician’s Apprentice was no different. Not enough Every Dalek Ever in Asylum of the Daleks? The very first Dalek we see here is the very first Dalek we’ve ever seen, but it’s not long before the Servalan Dalek is ordering “Maximum Exterminations” and it’s pretty incongruous to see all those Daleks rubbing etheric beam locators in the same room. It was fandom’s call for Davros to return that guided the writer’s hand on this occasion; what more provocative way to bring the old devil back than simultaneously on the last night of his (and the Doctor’s, purportedly) life and on the very day he became the man we knew he was going to be. And it was lovely to see Karn again, although no doubt the lack of an eighth Doctor to go with it – as illogical as that might be – will have disappointed some, while others will complain that we always seem to end up in the same places.

There was nothing to disappoint in this episode, though, and perhaps that was the problem – if indeed there was any problem at all. Because as much as the two-part nature of this series opener allowed for considerably more breathing room than we are of late accustomed to, there was very little else that was anything more than superficially surprising; the cliffhanger itself signalled that the author was once again revisiting previous successes, even down to The Curse of Fatal Death and his short story Continuity Errors. So the Doctor is throwing himself a party because he only has one more day to live, so we are introduced into the action by a stranger searching for the missing Time Lord in a series of Star Wars-esque locations, and so the companion is handed a MacGuffin that informs her just how serious things are going to be. So far, so predictable (even the moment the child Davros reveals where he’s seen a hand mine is straight out of The Empty Child, Moffat’s very first ‘proper’ Doctor Who story).

But the success of a familiar story isn’t predicated on its originality, rather in how well it is told – and the most predictable thing of all is how well this is told. Steven Moffat has become a grandmaster at taking the melodies in his song sheet, the ones we are all fully aware reside there, and throwing them together in new and exciting shapes for us to enjoy. And that’s something that will only become tired once Moffat’s imagination runs out of exciting or thought-provoking situations within which to deploy those tunes.

As the curtain-raiser on a new series, it is incumbent upon The Magician’s Apprentice to draw the audience into the story by presenting something familiar enough to engage while novel enough to beguile, and telling the story of an old man who is reflecting back to the moment his life was set upon its overwhelming course, and then making that man Davros, the creator of the Daleks, fulfils that function more spectacularly than any first night story since Doctor Who’s 2005 return (with the possible exception of The Impossible Astronaut). Capaldi’s entrance is grandstandingly inappropriate; having just escaped from one mid-life crisis, to throw him another so quickly is overplaying the solo to a crazy extent, and yet it’s done with such brio and assurance it works magnificently – and after all, the first night of any new series must work to be the most significant and the most sovereign it can be, thereafter to make the audience want to stick around for the rest of the concert.

The one ostensibly incongruous element here is the presence of Missy, an apparent misdirection that – with the second half of this story being The Witch’s Familiar – will no doubt clarify later. But for a seeming loose limb, this latest Master is a commanding presence; Moffat appears to have downsized her ostentatiousness (at least in the earlier scenes; later on she’s as grandstanding as her fellow Time Lord) in response to the accusations that greeted her arrival last year, and there were moments when she was sitting facing Clara that her dialogue could have come straight out of the mouth of Roger Delgado.

That was perhaps the scene that nailed Moffat’s approach this series. Rather than overfilling the dialogue with battling quippery, Missy and Clara seemed whelmed in acceptance, acknowledging developments with unfussy glances as often as they batted one another back with ridicule and ripostes. The acting (from everyone) was superlative; there wasn’t a single dropped note throughout, the three leads – and not forgetting Julian Bleach, the best Davros since Michael Wisher – were each extraordinary, unpredictable and yet assured, surprising and yet authentic. Magnetic, you didn’t want to miss a beat. This was as cogent as Doctor Who gets.

The imagination on display – even now, six years into Steven Moffat’s showrunnership – was immense, even if half the time he’s playing the same chords he always has. The reveal of Skaro, following a moment of breathless wonderment, was flamboyant and stupefying – and yet entirely unsurprising. He knows those notes so well it’s a pleasure to see them played.

Should Steven Moffat be telling the story of how Davros became the man he is? Absolutely he should; you don’t sit in the sandbox and ignore the sand. The question of why is irrevocably tied in with the twelfth Doctor; having found himself thanks to the events of Series 9, Capaldi’s Time Lord is now free to enjoy a life cycle he never expected to get – so what better way to begin this exploration than through a character who is not being afforded the same luxury, and yet whose life mirrors the Doctor’s in many other ways (an “unnaturally” extended lifespan, an escape from the planet of his birth, an inescapable identification with the Daleks) across forty years of the series’ history? Steven Moffat is showing the twelfth Doctor what could have been, mirroring the conclusions of Listen and much of its mechanics too. It is, no doubt in the eyes of many, a potential folly (and doubtless a sacrilegious one too), and we shan’t discover whether that is really the case until next week. But the set-up has been magnificent, Moffat playing to the crowd by bringing out his greatest hits and buffing them till they shine – and there’s nothing wrong with a greatest hits collection when the hits are so spectacular. Whether this will prove to be a worthy prequel and successor to Genesis of the Daleks we’ll find out in due course.

Should Santa Claus exist within the Doctor Who universe? If Eternals and Reality Bombs and Omega can, then there’s no logical reason why not. But should he? Does the idea of Father Christmas strike perhaps just a little too close to home for comfort? Yet in a world where Clara can send herself back to the Doctor’s every past, where the Moon can be an egg, and where the legend of Robin Hood can be inspired by the exploits of a real person, there’s no Earthly reason he shouldn’t turn up in Doctor Who. Moreover, if the Doctor himself is in possession of a machine small enough to travel discreetly and yet big enough to carry presents sufficient for every child on the planet, and that could if required time-travel its way to every home on Earth in a single night, there’s no ‘scientific’ reason for Saint Nick not to turn up in Doctor Who either; in fact, in the Christmas special that follows Series 8 it might’ve felt odder had he not. Indeed, who’s to say he’s not actually the Meddling Monk repentant for past sins and making up for them once a year on Christmas night? It’s not impossible…

Or maybe it was just a tangerine on a window sill after all.

In the middle of the 1980s, Doctor Who rather ran itself into trouble when it began to revel in its past just a little too much for contemporary audiences (or contemporary television executives, at any rate) to follow. There are two ways in which a series can become overtly self-referential and there are two distinct consequences that will result. The Doctor Who of 1985 and 1986 told stories which required viewers of the time to care about what had happened in the series twenty years previously; that way disaster lies. The Doctor Who of the 2010s, on the other hand, tells stories which examine how the series itself functions, and requires modern viewers to care only about the characters and the situations in which they find themselves. Last Christmas is Steven Moffat’s latest instalment in an irregular string of episodes – which includes Listen and The Day of the Doctor – that are very much Doctor Who stories that are about being Doctor Who stories. Where Moffat succeeds is by layering his episodes so carefully and so thoroughly that the text can be read on one of any number of levels, allowing less focussed viewers to enjoy the spectacle just as much as more attentive viewers can enjoy the meaning. And Last Christmas, like those other two aforementioned stories, is so very, very layered.

In the middle of the 1970s, Doctor Who enjoyed a period of almost unprecedented popularity when it cut loose from all of its 1960s pseudo-educational and early 1970s proto-analogous roots, and started telling stories just for fun. Other people’s stories, chiefly. A tone meeting that in any other period of the series’ history might have included a reference to “X meets Y by way of Z” would, between 1975 and 1977 or beyond, have involved the writer then going home and ostentatiously replicating those stories in his own script. The allusion was obvious for the parents watching serials like The Brain of Morbius and The Seeds of Doom; not so much for the children, who simply lapped up the imagery and the ideas. Last Christmas uses several familiar stories as a stage upon which to tell its own story, and makes no qualms about where it ostensibly came from. “No wonder you’re always being invaded,” was probably the best line of the night. It’s not like it didn’t have some proper competition either.

In the middle of the 1960s, Doctor Who survived a potentially life-threatening turn of events by – presumably quite accidentally – reinventing itself almost entirely; when William Hartnell left and Patrick Troughton took over, the days of aimlessly fetching up anywhere in the universe pretty much came to an end. Jon Pertwee might have been the first Doctor ‘officially’ exiled to Earth, but his predecessor landed there almost every week, generally at an isolated installation that had just made its first contact with a hostile alien life form. The randomness and estrangement that had informed the first Doctor’s travelling was gone, and the second Doctor became synonymous with cosier yet scarier storytelling. Peter Capaldi is the reverse Patrick Troughton of the modern era. The “cosy” Doctors have gone, and now we are back to randomness and estrangement. Yet Peter Capaldi manages to make that seem by far the more attractive option, and Last Christmas is an evocation of everything he achieved in his first series. It’s as much a part of Series 8 – more so, perhaps – as Deep Breath was. It’s a distillation of, expansion upon and resolution to the themes of the Clara/Danny/Doctor dynamic that informed 2014 Doctor Who.

And what of Last Christmas itself? In an episode in which a modest shop girl can end up among the stars fighting aliens just by dreaming of it, Last Christmas is a story which deals on almost every level with what happens when the lying comes to an end and the truth is faced, when the dreaming ends and the reality is all that’s left. It’s the episode in which the new Doctor’s realisation that he’s still the same man as he was before – the idiot with the box – can lead to him literally and metaphorically putting the pieces back together in order to go out and just be himself. It’s the hinterland between a run of stories in which the series stopped and asked itself “Is this what I do?” and the run of stories coming next year, presumably, in which the series goes out and does it. Nine years into the modern show and 51 years into Doctor Who, it’s okay for the series to ask itself this question – as long as the answer is “Yes”, of course. And as long as it does indeed know where it’s going. Last Christmas wraps up the questions and then unwraps the series’ future, in much the same way as The Day of the Doctor did. It’s a full stop on a moment of circumspection, and – even more so than that speech at the end of Death in Heaven – a statement of intent.

And it did it brilliantly.

Mostly brilliantly. The only thing I could have done without was the gloopy moment during the sleigh ride when the quoting of Christmases past arrived at Die Hard. Other than that, everybody and every thing was judged beautifully.

Steven Moffat did what he does best; he took some of his already familiar ingredients (the “saving” of Donna in Forest of the Dead, the conference call from The Name of the Doctor, and the memory patch in Dark Water in particular) and concocted a meal with a flavour all of its own. The Dream Crabs are another disconcerting creation along similarly lateral lines to Moffat’s best previous adversaries, although these are probably the darkest yet; certainly they’re one of if not the most disturbing thing that’s ever been in Doctor Who. Even after Dark Water, Moffat wasn’t afraid to go further.

And it is hugely pleasing to be wrong about Clara. Jenna Coleman will, after Series 9, be a serious contender for longest-lasting regular companion ever, and that feels totally justified. Clara is the twelfth Doctor’s companion every bit as much as Tegan was the fifth Doctor’s and Peri the sixth’s, and Coleman continues to be utterly beguiling and believable in the part. There will be some who will complain that once again she was too much the focus of Last Christmas, upstaging the Doctor in his own show, but it is by having a companion who is rendered well enough to warrant such attention that you can truly get under the skin of the Doctor. This year we have seen her take him on quite a journey, and if it was his self-discovery (or self-reassurance) that marked the end of Series 8, this is the hinge that allows that journey to strike out in a new direction.

In the middle of the 2000s, Doctor Who returned to our screens with a guarded Doctor who wasn’t certain of who he was, and who needed a shop girl with dreams to join him among the stars fighting aliens and allow him to embrace being Doctor Who once again. Steven Moffat has told that story once over, coming at it from a new angle that amply demonstrates how a 51-year-old series that shouldn’t have new stories to tell can keep finding them. Last Christmas felt like no Doctor Who we’ve ever seen before, and yet it consolidated everything that’s been good about the show while at the same time just being a version of Doctor Who that all kinds of audiences can thoroughly enjoy. If for once Steven Moffat has made the clues just that little bit easier to follow, then that’s more than appropriate for an episode that has gone out on Christmas Day evening. It’s essentially Moffat’s first and hitherto best Christmas special, A Christmas Carol, revisited, with a mythical presence arriving to take care of not just the peril but the main characters’ emotional well-being in the wake of a death. We see the past, present and future wrapped up in something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, and it’s a glorious celebration of both the series itself and the festive season the episode is scheduled to reflect. If Christmas stories are stories of characters embarking upon emotional journeys into self-fulfilment, then Moffat’s Christmas specials are his most fulfilling episodes of all.

And when Shona enters the infirmary, who didn’t expect the music they play in to be Wham!’s Last Christmas rather than Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade? Mind you, Faye Marsay’s dance moves wouldn’t have looked out of place elsewhere in the evening’s entertainment.

So, Santa Claus then. Nick Frost was wonderful as Father Christmas, and I for one am happy to believe in him.
 

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:

Just over a year ago, Steven Moffat assured us that with Series 8, he and the Doctor Who production team were “going to get a bit raw at it, and do it in a different direction.” Because as much fun as the Matt Smith era was for some of us (those of us under ten, that is), it was very definitely a self-contained period in the show’s history – and once Malcolm Tucker was announced as the joint oldest ever successor to the youngest ever incumbent’s tenure, it was obvious that a new angle was going to have to be explored. But could Moffat jettison the magic, the make-believe, the folk story aspect he’d been infusing the show with ever since his fairy dust had cured an old lady of only having one leg back in 2005?

The answer, of course, was no. Steven Moffat can’t do Doctor Who “straight”, no matter how hard he might try. And with Death in Heaven, he was definitely having a go at it. As Dark Water ended on the promise that the Nethersphere might somehow be yet another means for Moffat to end a series with a parallel consciousness storyline, so the series finale began with the Nethersphere banished to the sidelines and the Cybermen brought front and centre. For once, Moffat was writing an old school end to the series in which one of the Big Three (Daleks, Cybermen, Master; okay, two of them) would face down the Doctor the conventional way, in a good old-fashioned invasion storyline. At times it felt almost as if Russell T Davies was still haunting the building.

But ordinary isn’t good enough for Mr Moffat. For the past three months, he’s been setting the scene for the finale. Once upon a time, this might involve little more than dropping a repeated meme inconspicuously into the preceding episodes (”Bad Wolf”, say), although when practised with more conviction it might involve positioning your pieces carefully around the board in order to facilitate a move like the one that brought Rose’s family back together at the end of Doomsday. Piquing people’s curiosity only to break their hearts with the solution. Moffat himself has preferred using the ultimate resolution as a Chekhov’s gun, scattering the answer to his puzzle hither and thither until the audience are either perceptive enough to dismiss its simplicity as a solution, or so damned confused as to be clueless to what’s going on. Series 8 hasn’t done any of these things.

It’s done all of them. And it’s been astonishing.

We’ve seen enough of Missy and of the dead this year to know they’d live large in the final two-parter, and last week Moffat gave us an episode that was essentially all about a single creepy idea: the dead connecting with the world from beyond the grave (an idea that united the corpses, the companion’s boyfriend, the Cybermen themselves and even the Doctor’s ex-deceased one time best friend). This week, in that surprising us by giving us the answers in the early fashion he loves to employ, he kept everything and turned the whole thing on its head. He also kept the promises he’d been making, although oftentimes we didn’t even realise that’s what he was doing. He even smuggled out some gifts for his critics.

Danny Pink. Who finally earned the Doctor’s respect (a respect that was not reciprocated) in one of the most breathtaking scenes ever committed to Doctor Who. Just as last week the Cybermen were deployed to distract from the Missy reveal, so that worked as a microcosm of the series as a whole; the vignettes of the erstwhile Master collecting the dead were really just a misdirection, diverting our attention from the real story of the series and the importance of Danny Pink. Faced with the challenge of not being able to kill off a companion (something that’s not truly possible in the modern series, much as it’s been hinted at and even partially experimented with), and confronted with the criticism that Moffat’s previously departed characters don’t know how to stay dead, the showrunner had one option this year and almost everyone assumed he was going to wimp out. He did not.

Moreover, he even used the death of Danny Pink – the biggest red herring he’s ever exercised, given how we all anticipated it to be a red herring (an assumption exacerbated by the short scene the BBC put out as a preview) – to address something he signalled as far back as The Wedding of River Song. Death in Heaven, and in fact Series 8 as a whole, is a living dedication to Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. From the very first, when the newly up-cycled twelfth Doctor expressed an aversion to soldiers, we became aware that the military would somehow figure large by the end of this last episode. And with his companion falling for an ex-soldier, and that relationship proving the mechanism by which we have experienced her journey this year, so we might have predicted that in some manner the military would prove either the Doctor’s downfall or his salvation by the end of this instalment. Enter Missy.

We’ve seen that the Master has sanity issues before. John Simm’s last appearance in the role was as a lunatic superhuman, dribbling his way to a redemption of his own at the end of The End of Time. Everything reverses. Now, it is Gallifrey that is at risk, and Missy has a new plan; it’s either a masterstroke or the most misjudged plot point ever, but the Doctor’s best friend and greatest nemesis wants to destroy his favourite planet as a birthday present. Nobody saw that coming. More pertinently, however, what Missy is really doing is providing the Doctor with an army of his own, and the chance to win every battle he could ever want to fight. It’s a choice reflecting that which he backed out of when faced with saving Danny or saving the world a few minutes earlier, and one which we know he must take the opposite course with. We finally see the Doctor returned to what he has always truly been, the maverick outsider who saves the day not by conventional means of force but by outthinking his opponents, by deceiving them into defeating themselves, or by simply being the lone voice of sanity in a world gone mad. It’s his entire relationship with the Brigadier symbolised as a single choice. And when the Doctor chooses to be the Doctor, to carry on with his crazy-paving existence the way he’s always done it, there is both a price and a reward. Fortunately, Missy’s device also operates as a teleport, and hopefully this isn’t the last we see of her in the form of the dazzling Michelle Gomez. And just as fortunately, the collateral damage which extended as far as Osgood – Moffat for once showing just how far his antagonist will go by killing off a likeable and sustainable character – doesn’t stretch to Kate Stewart.

The sight of Peter Capaldi, dressed in an approximation of the third Doctor’s outfit, saluting a Cyberman is as incongruous as it might have been bittersweet. If the Brigadier is to be acknowledged, then I guess he’d have been chuffed at being recognised in so idiosyncratic a fashion; the old stiff upper lip would hardly have called for tears, after all.

At the end of all this, Moffat has one more trick to play, one more criticism to address, and one more junction to navigate. All storytelling is founded upon coincidence and conceit, and so it comes as no surprise that for Danny’s death there is a get-out clause. But Moffat chooses to pull the rug one more time, and as is his wont he does so in a manner that has entirely been prefigured throughout the series. By giving up the child he killed, Danny saves not only his own soul but also Doctor Who – Series 8 has travelled to some dark corners but the perpetuated death of a minor would have been a murky location indeed. And for once, returning a character to life is neither a fudge nor is it mawkish – and not just because it means Danny must stay dead. It also represents the end of the journey for the Impossible Girl.

There have been two other themes riding under the coat-tails of Series 8, each of which has been somewhat contentious. The repetition of the phrase “shut up”, and the amount of lying that the characters, particularly Clara, have been doing to one another. Both are addressed in Death in Heaven’s final scene, possibly the most grown-up that Doctor Who has ever been.

In a reflection of Danny’s “I love you” moment from the conclusion of the previous episode, Clara uses a happy thing, a happy lie – the idea that she and Danny can have a happily ever after – to part on good terms, rather than using Danny’s death in a game of blame and shame with the Doctor. What is particularly gratifying about this sequence is that, for once, the Doctor is doing exactly the same thing; his face when confronted by the empty space that should have been occupied by Gallifrey is a picture of loss, a loss compounded when he uses that happy lie of his own to allow Clara an escape back to what ought to be the best kind of normality. Doctor Who has never been so bittersweet, and it is the underplaying that gives this scene the edge over Doomsday. Either of the characters has every opportunity to speak up and continue as before; but they shut up, and by each of them allowing the other a happy ending, they neither of them end up with one.

Death in Heaven contains some of the spookiest images in a particularly spooky series of Doctor Who – the Cybermen emerging from the homes of the dead – it has a new interpretation of a familiar character that is charming, volatile and unhinged – and a great deal of fun – and it has enough guts and gusto to keep the members of any generation of the family occupied throughout. But it is also perhaps the most emotionally rewarding episode of Doctor Who in its entire 51 years. Steven Moffat was right, it was raw, an unfamiliar journey through familiar territory to a destination we’ve seen many times before, and yet that still felt untested. Only Sarah Jane Smith has ever parted company with the series on such poignant terms; Clara Oswald has been her match throughout Series 8, and Death in Heaven is as devastating as it is beautiful.
 

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:

That Steven Moffat, loves to tease, doesn’t he? Loves to acquaint you with the rug, loves to let you feel its warmth, how plush it is, how soft and safe and comforting – before he pulls it out from under you, revealing that it was never really a rug at all. As you knew all along, of course.

So hands up who didn’t make the connection? Missy being Mistress being… well, she couldn’t really keep calling herself “Master”, now could she?

As fans, we can be expected to guess these things, or even if we don’t guess them, at least know that what we didn’t guess was coming. And we’ve all been tossing our guesses around on Facebook and Twitter and all over the Nethernet (that special place where Doctor Who fans go when they … become Doctor Who fans). So for most if not all of us, the reveal of Missy’s real identity wasn’t exactly a shock. But it was a lovely moment, and even when you think you know what’s coming, there’s still a keen sense of anticipation as you wonder whether you’re really right. As for the rest of the world, those who aren’t even aware of the Nethernet’s existence, I’m sure the last five minutes of Dark Water were a real treat. It wasn’t quite Utopia, but then it would have been difficult to pull that trick for a second time. Instead Steven Moffat attempted to trick us into mislaying our guesses in the recesses of gender identity – more on that anon, needless to say – and treated us to one of the most moving and surprising episodes of Doctor Who since … well, since Listen, at least.

For a pre-finale episode it was all remarkably slow moving. Rather than dazzling us with data and disguising his sleight of hand beneath an excess of imagery, as he had done in The Pandorica Opens and The Wedding of River Song, Moffat took the much more measured approach of The Name of the Doctor and allowed the horror of what was unfolding to tear our attention away from what was happening elsewhere. He also made benefit of one of his biggest nuisances; for once, spoilers fair saved the day.

For years, fan-posted location photos have been giving away some of the programme’s big secrets, often far further and wider afield than just the Nethernet, and for the last couple of years the current production regime have been sidestepping the problem by getting the information out there first, in a more controlled manner. About to take a Zygon out in public? Simply tell the internet that that’s what you’re about to do, and the spoiler hounds’ thunder is stolen. For Dark Water and next week’s Death in Heaven, there was no way to avoid the internet finding out about Cybermen descending the steps outside St Paul’s, so Moffat has taken advantage of this by creating a buzz around the episode suggesting the Cybermen as its main focus. So although much attention has been gathering around the question of Missy’s identity, even the episode itself misdirects and throws red herrings about in all directions, as we struggle to work out which revelations relate to Missy and which to the Cybermen. By making us think the Cybermen are more important, and by initially making us think that Missy might perhaps not even be in charge of what’s going on, many of the clues that are staring us in the face go unnoticed, or at the very least unrecognised as such.

Because it’s not really a Cyberman story at all. Missy has been harvesting the dead in order to create a new army of the creatures that are no more authentic Cybermen than iron pyrite is really gold. Indeed, she has taken the Cyber production process and twisted it so much, it would be like driving a brand new BMW but with the engine of a Ford Capri tucked away inside. They have become in essence nothing more than a tool, in the same way the Sea Devils once did, losing all the realism that their cousins the Silurians had previously had. Which is not a criticism; I’ve always found the Cybermen somewhat less than the sum of their parts, so finding a purpose for them that doesn’t involve them having to own the story is far from a bad thing.

It’s worth noting also that Moffat turned what he must have guessed would be production shortcomings on the volcano sequence to his advantage, by having that be something that took place only in Clara’s mind. On every level, it feels like more thought – more aforethought, even – has been put into this story than might previously have been the case. And the scene that follows, in which Clara misreads the Doctor’s “Go to Hell” in an entirely understandable way, might just be one of the most moving things that Moffat has ever written. And that’s because it’s not overplayed by the two actors, but presented as real. The performances in Dark Water are amongst the best (and in Michelle Gomez’s case, the most exciting) that Doctor Who has had in a long while – and given what we’ve seen in Series 8 so far, that’s saying something.

Steven Moffat has an affinity with diversionary tactics and with some especially creepy ideas that we often take for granted, if not are downright dismissive of. And while the disclosure regarding the eponymous Dark Water is something that we can guess ahead of time given our foreknowledge of where the story’s heading, there’s plenty else in this episode to keep us occupied instead. Making a big thing of what 3W would eventually mean might have been a mistake in lesser hands, but when we eventually find out what those three words are, they’re such a logical extension of the conceit behind the new Cybermen, and such a horrifying concept (a little reminiscent of Torchwood: Miracle Day, if truth be told), they are far from a disappointment. There’s a lovely touch for long term viewers as well, when a familiar piece of music accompanies a closing door in a way that sets the pulse rising even in spite of achieving nothing more than signalling what we already know. That’s confident programme-making.

The question regarding Death in Heaven, the second half of this two-part finale, is how much focus will be on the Cybermen and how much on the regulars and their interaction with Missy. Will the Doctor be able to restore Danny to Clara’s side, for example? So far, particularly given Moffat’s reputation for raising the dead, there’s nothing to suggest that the series won’t conclude with the characters geographically in more or less the same places they started it. As to what it will all mean for their relationships, only the next seven days will tell.

But there’s one relationship that’s been irrevocably changed here in Dark Water, and it’s the one that exists between the viewer and the title character. For by having the Master become a Time Lady in a televised story – by showing rather than telling, as happened with the Corsair for instance – things will never be the same again. Every time the Doctor regenerates, there is always the same call from certain quarters for the new Doctor to be a woman. And every time it fails to happen, for the simple reason that such a huge change needs precedence in order to feel justified. Well, Steven Moffat has now given us irrefutable precedence. Should Peter Capaldi’s successor be a woman, eyelids that might once have been raised would now find it difficult even to bat, and while some might balk at Moffat’s progressiveness, ultimately that’s a very good thing. It may be quite a while before we actually get a female Doctor, but should it ever happen, we now know that it won’t be change for change’s sake, rather it will be because the best person for the job got the job.

Steven Moffat has always shied away from writing a “proper” old school monster story. His dialogue and characterisation are far too idiosyncratic to throw away on Daleks or Cybermen (the eponymous pepperpots were really little more than bookends in Asylum of the Daleks), and that doesn’t look to be about to change in Death in Heaven. He does love his artificially-preserved consciousnesses, though, and somehow it feels like next week’s finale will be as much, or more, about what happens to Danny, and what the consequences of this mini Matrix might be, as it will be about the neo Cyber-army. Dark Water is the perfect set-up; thoughtful, layered, and surprising in both typical and unexpected ways, it’s not the action-packed build up we might have expected it to be. It was a lot better than that.
 

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:

When the episode titles and synopses were released at the beginning of Series 8, Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s In the Forest of the Night was the one that stood out, the only one that didn’t seem to fit. The others, Robin Hood and Time Heist and Mummy on the Orient Express, you could imagine how they were going to be Doctor Who. Episode Ten, not so much. And now that it’s here, the answer isn’t really any clearer.

Doctor Who has always been at its heart about premises and solutions, the premise generally being that somebody’s up to no good, and the solution the Doctor stopping them. Under Steven “Everybody lives!” Moffat, the series’ proclivity for disguising its fantasy as science fiction has taken a back seat, and as predicted before he took over, the fairy tale element had come to the fore. Until this year, that is. Series 8, in spite of the glimmer of magic existing just beneath its surface, has on the face of it been a bit of a return to the way things were. And now Frank Cottrell-Boyce has come along and composed an actual fairy tale, going so very much further than Moffat has ever dared; it’s like Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor never existed.

It might have been an epic folly, though. Populating your story with children – as opposed to having just an occasional child guest star – was one risk, populating your city with trees and expecting the production team to make it seem real was quite another. Fortunately director Sheree Folkson is up to the job on both counts, although she only just about gets away with it with regards to the child cast. There are some shall we say eccentric performances tucked away amidst the junior players, but oddly they seem appropriate to the material and it’s the segments set within the TARDIS in which the sense of them is consolidated. There’s a Dahlesque sense of humour at work just beneath the surface of this story, and with the adult cast reengaging in their triangular dynamic on top of trying to save the day, it is the children who carry this sense of the bizarreness through the episode.

It’s an odd tone, drifting somewhere between Tim Burton and John Boorman and leaning one way or the other in a way that doesn’t feel forced. The photography, which emphasises the latter influence, probably won’t agree with those who’ve become tired of J.J. Abrams’ ubiquitous camera flares, but in the context of the episode it would seem churlish to disapprove when the result is so unique and so magical. Only in Doctor Who.

As a follow-up to The Caretaker, in the sense of the Doctor and Danny Pink once again coming to clash, In the Forest of the Night strikes an entirely different note. While Gareth Roberts’ story was ostensibly a comedy which occasionally emphasised the characters’ conflict, here the central trio are playing it entirely straight; there’s a respectful distance between the two men in Clara’s life, with both the Doctor and Danny grudgingly giving ground, and the result is an underlying verisimilitude in Series 8’s ongoing character narrative of the kind that Doctor Who – even under Russell T Davies – has never sought or achieved before. It has of necessity been truncated by being interspersed among the stories of the week, but every time it surfaces it feels entirely real, and a large reason for the success of that is Samuel Anderson’s superlative portrayal of the gentle but determined Danny. Jenna Coleman continues to excel as the woman caught between two such preeminent men, and she manages to play the real emotional beats beneath the comedy of her caught in the headlights character. These three have a lot of plates spinning this year, but they’re managing to keep the balance between them almost invisibly.

What In the Forest of the Night will mostly be judged on, though, is its plot, and there’s no doubt that this is what will irk a lot of fans. There’s no villain, only an act of nature, and in a far more ostentatious manner than the already contentious Kill the Moon undertook to do it, Cottrell-Boyce provides only a symbolic resolution to the dilemma that permeates the entire story, that asks for no forgiveness, and that offers no attempt at plausibility. In the Forest of the Night is perhaps then the least compromising and the most potentially alienating story in the series’ history, and how you react to it depends entirely upon whether you’re willing to accept its concepts at face value. Considering that Cottrell-Boyce throws one impossible thing at the viewer after another – albeit interspersed with some amusing logical extensions – there is only one way to accept the story as presented: it is a fairy tale, pure and simple. It is not a fable, allegory or parable; it is quite brazenly an authentic fairy tale, masquerading as Doctor Who. And it is therefore entirely impractical to try and suspend your disbelief and accept the events as shown; there is nothing “real” about how the episode unfolds and the last few minutes, as the newly-born trees dissolve into fairy dust, are the most striking evidence of this. Doctor Who has never attempted anything quite so mythical before, and this story will no doubt become one of those exceptional and distinct entries in the canon that can’t and should never be repeated.

Which is not to say that there aren’t a couple of duff moments, and the final act of the episode involving Abigail Eames and her screen mother, the usually reliable but in this case wholly culpable Siwan Morris, is embarrassingly badly played. Instances of this are unexpectedly few and far between though, and for the most part, if you’re willing to go on the journey, In the Forest of the Night more than delivers. Series 8 has exhibited an ability to surprise that even the eleventh Doctor’s tenure couldn’t manage, and this week was perhaps the most surprising Doctor Who has ever been. An astonishing, no doubt divisive, and yet completely enchanting episode.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:

Fear Her ranked 240 out of 241 in the last Doctor Who Magazine poll of all the Doctor Who stories, having – in spite of being directed by the otherwise well-regarded Euros Lyn and bring written by Life on Mars co-creator and TV Writer of the then Moment Matthew Graham – become a watchword for poor Doctor Who (in fact, the only story considered by the magazine’s readership to be worse than Fear Her was the Sixth Doctor’s almost universally poorly regarded debut The Twin Dilemma). From the moment the TARDIS turned up in not quite its usual fashion, to the potentially misinterpreted alien presence spiriting the inhabitants of a housing estate away into another dimension, Flatline had the potential to be another Fear Her; a great director, a writer who has proved himself, a story that doesn’t quite click. Fortunately the highs are much loftier than those of that Series 2 story, and the lows nothing like as subterranean. Flatline is, however, perhaps the first episode of Series 8 to underperform on its expectations – and while that’s no mean feat, and while even the least successful episodes under Steven Moffat’s regime have been nothing less than beautiful visually and fascinating in many other respects besides, it does mean that the run of overachieving stories has come to an end. Not living up to those artificially boosted expectations does not make Flatline a failure, however. Fear Her can rest easy in that respect.

Other than the disappointing ‘zap ‘em with the sonic’ solution, there were two main problems with Flatline. The first is something that Euros Lyn would have found familiar from The Idiot’s Lantern; the second is a little more fundamental.

This being the Doctor-lite episode (after last week’s excursion which sidelined Clara), Peter Capaldi was restricted almost to a single set and just the one day’s filming, and while this is very cleverly written into the script not to make it too apparent that the Doctor was absent during most of the shoot, what it does mean is that most of Capaldi’s material was videoed in isolation – and it shows. Just as Maureen Lipman failed to convince when acting basically against herself in The Idiot’s Lantern, so Capaldi’s performance fails to connect with any of the others around it. Given the circumstance, he makes a decent fist of what he’s given to do, but unfortunately it feels like he’s performing in an entirely different production to the rest of the cast.

The other problem with Flatline is an extension of this disconnect, inasmuch as that for all the great ideas presented in the script and for all that Douglas Mackinnon’s direction is once again exemplary, for once the production hasn’t seemed able to keep pace with the story. The Doctor Who team are becoming legendary for making episodes that compete with some of the best that cinema has to offer, and all on a television budget – and in a running time of 45 minutes. But despite some astonishing moments, this week their ambitions were thwarted. The odd thing is, Flatline doesn’t seem, on the face of it, an overly ambitious episode. And the areas in which it disappoints are as often as not the quiet character moments, rather than the expensive effects-heavy ones. None of the characters really ever earn our respect or trust, for example, even the Banksy wannabe, so it’s difficult to care when they find themselves being picked off and difficult to feel any relief for the ones who survive, and in recent weeks Doctor Who has done a very fine job of engaging you with the guest characters. We’re also struggling to be sold on the “Boneless” and their rapid development, which again is something that 45 minutes of television has playing against it but that other episodes this series would have dealt with invisibly. And when Clara seeks confirmation from the Doctor that she’s done a good job at the end of the story, in spite of his having just told her she has, it feels unnecessarily needy from a character we know is capable of better. This might well be an indication that Clara’s downfall is the underlying thrust of the series, but it feels heavy-handed on this occasion.

Having said all that, Flatline absolutely excels in other areas, and if Jenna Coleman hadn’t already proved her worth to the series this year, then she absolutely does so here. Her performance this week is always commanding and on occasion sublime, and the scene in which she introduces herself as “the Doctor” to Rigsy is delightful. Perhaps it’s the screen chemistry she shares with Peter Capaldi that is of necessity missing this week and that has made the episode feel a touch unfulfilling. Capaldi himself, in spite of earlier comments, is never anything less than an electric presence, and the scenes in which he interacts with Clara and others – particularly those in which he performs a “Thing” – are both unnerving and comical to an extraordinary degree.

Probably the greatest test of whether Flatline is ultimately a success is the strength of the central conceit and the ability of director Mackinnon to bring it to the screen without making it seem silly, and on both those counts the episode must be judged a triumph. There aren’t many Doctor Who stories that conceive of finding new ways to deal with the idea of an alien invasion, and yet Jamie Mathieson has found not only that, but has worked through his idea to arrive at some pretty creepy and visually exciting ways to exploit it – aided and abetted by Mackinnon, who has managed (along with a superlative effects team) to turn those ideas into a series of powerful and sinister images. When Matt Burdock’s character Al is taken by a giant hand, a less confident production might have dipped into CBeebies territory; instead the scene is exhilarating, shocking and frightening all at once. The ultimate realisation of the Boneless’ three-dimensional form could again have been ridiculous, and once again Mackinnon and the effects team have created something memorable and unnerving. Indeed in spite of the problems outlined earlier, Flatline has a finely judged tone and pace that for most viewers will elevate it to among the best of Series 8, perfectly in keeping with what has come so far.

Fear Her was a disappointing story that probably wasn’t quite as bad as its reputation suggests, with some interesting ideas and a couple of exceptional ones hidden behind its incoherent and sub-standard exterior. Flatline, by contrast, is an episode with some exceptional ideas and some extraordinary execution, that thanks to a few inconsistencies falls a little short of the excellence that Series 8 has offered thus far. It might be a disappointment, but it’s not much of one, and Fear Her’s reputation as the worst story since Doctor Who’s 2005 return is safe for a while yet.

Next up, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Doctor Who style!

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:

Frank Skinner’s been around for about as long as most of us can remember, first becoming known as the friendly face of Laddishness back in the 1990s. It was a time of football, fannishness and foxy ladies, epitomised by on the one hand Loaded Magazine, and on the other Nick Hornby’s call to arms Fever Pitch. Gladly, Skinner has transcended those tribal times to become a kind of elder statesman of the laid back twinkling variety. A kind of Britpop Terry Wogan. As a Doctor Who fan, he was never quite as much one of the lads as we probably assumed he was anyway, and it’s fortunate for us that when asked, he didn’t mind taking on the role of Kylie Minogue in a remake of Voyage of the Damned. He probably would have found the idea funny, had it been put to him like that.

This is nothing like a Russell T Davies Christmas Special, though, in spite of the cold open reinforcing the B-movie title’s indication that Episode 8 was going to be a mid-series romp. Far from it; as soon as the name Mummy on the Orient Express fades from the screen, we’re in post-breakup territory with the Doctor and Clara, and what follows is painful and sad in all the best ways. Jamie Mathieson’s script, while ostensibly similar in some respects to Time Heist, manages to invert some of what made that so good in a way that improves upon it; the episode also manages to address some of the core concerns of Series 8 without seeming to get remotely bogged down in its ongoing continuity.

We’ve never had an episode that begins with the companion saying goodbye before, a “last hurrah” for her journeys with the Doctor. And anyone who has ever been through a difficult situation like that in real life will recognise the emotions playing out in their opening conversations. Both the actors and the script judge the poignancy required perfectly, and it’s a real shock to realise where the story is going; almost as big a surprise to see Clara in the episode at all, given that we were expecting this to be the Clara-lite episode of the series (in truth, given how she’s removed from the action for a substantial portion of the episode, it probably was; and the Doctor’s presence will presumably be equally as diminished next week – although as both episodes are by Jamie Mathieson, it will doubtless be similarly as well disguised). Rather wonderfully, Capaldi’s Doctor never seems as alien as when he’s being humanised in this way. The bookending scene of the two travelling companions discussing how the Doctor works at the end of the episode are both gorgeously shot (Paul Wilmshurst’s direction is the equal of Douglas Mackinnon’s from earlier in the series), and as much a statement of this new Doctor’s character as similar scenes from The Power of Three were two years ago. At a point two-thirds of the way through the series, it’s a prudently placed re-evaluation of the characters we’re watching, smuggled as it is into the ongoing storyline, and a great reason to keep watching them too.

But we know this isn’t the end for Clara, and throughout Mummy on the Orient Express we’re given – aptly enough – clues and red herrings as to how this particular story will develop and resolve. In spite of seeding Clara’s change of mind throughout the 45 minutes (demonstrating well how difficult it would be for her to leave the Doctor and his adventures behind), Mathieson takes the unfolding themes both of Clara’s lies and of the Doctor’s deceitfulness, and ties them together in a fashion that leaves us with only one conclusion to expect – and then subverts that by having the characters finally be honest with one another. That the balance of Clara’s two lives can be painted so vividly and yet in such shades of grey as they are here is brilliant, and real, television.

As in Time Heist, there are a number of plot mysteries presented in Mummy on the Orient Express, and similarly, how successful the episode is depends upon whether the resolutions meet our expectations. That the Architect was the Doctor three weeks ago was not unexpected, but the question of who was controlling Gus was left unresolved, presumably to be picked up again in the two-part series finale; there are further clues as to what this year’s series arc will concern applied to the rationalisation of the Mummy, and it’s all heading somewhere impossible to predict. Let’s hope Moffat takes it somewhere worthwhile.

In the meantime, the plot of this week’s episode is being driven by the riddle of what the Mummy is and how it functions, and while some of the sci-fi might be gubbins, the explanations given are perfectly in keeping with a Doctor Who universe that includes Deep Breath’s candle-powered robots. The creature itself is quite a creation; swaddled in decaying bandages it is exactly what you’d expect, and yet far more horrific than we might have anticipated in Doctor Who. The mummies in Pyramids of Mars look pretty tame by comparison. But what is perhaps surprising concerning the revealing of the creature’s rationale is the way in which it mirrors Danny Pink’s situation, and more so how this point is left unexpressed. That the Mummy is a soldier, albeit a damaged one, is not a concern for the Doctor in and of itself – and that’s not unreasonable, given how his regard is for its wellbeing or lack thereof. Once again this year, we discover our antagonist is a pawn and an unwilling one, in someone else’s game.

The guest cast, music, cinematography and special effects all combine to provide a rich and entirely agreeable backdrop to the plot, and Mummy on the Orient Express evokes its characters and environment succinctly but effectively. Doctor Who has of late been a striking visual and visceral experience, and the palettes this year are elevating it beyond even recent achievements. This is now the fifth episode in a row to overachieve; it’s possible to have expectations – especially for Doctor Who – that are impossible to meet, but Series 8 has fallen into a groove not just of matching those expectations (often in spite of how high they are) but of exceeding them. Mathieson’s script is streamlined yet character-driven, and full of both scary thrills and indeed genuine pathos, even for characters like David Bamber’s officious but credible Captain Quell.

Steven Moffat has managed to take the unfolding chapter-work that he attempted with the Eleventh Doctor, and enthuse and involve his guest writers and directors to the extent that it’s fitting together and flowing beautifully, and this is another wonderful instalment in the Twelfth Doctor’s ongoing development.

As for Frank Skinner, every story – particularly a story dealing as equally in intellectual concerns as it is in emotional exigencies – needs a solid presence at its core, someone to ground the other characters and to lend a bit of warmth to the screen. He’s no actor, but you know exactly what you’re going to get with Skinner, and he fulfilled the requirements commendably. It was impossible to begrudge him his appearance in the show, and actually, come the end of the episode, it was a real disappointment not to see him take up the Doctor on his offer to stay on. We might have had him pop up once an episode from the bowels of the TARDIS, willing to offer his opinion on whatever plot the Doctor was currently engaged in. He’d have probably found that funny too.