The Zero Room #7- Blimey Wimey

It's been a while since we've been here, but I've since found that Steven Moffat's timey-wimey storytelling is slightly less impressive to me than it used to be. Here's a belated review of the festive special A Christmas Carol and a more current review of the opening two-parter, The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, (to be referred to henceforth by the latter name, to save time.)

Reviews will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the episode yet, toddle over to the iPlayer, or watch BBC Three at some point in the next century's worth of repeats.

A Christmas Carol is sort of what it says on the tin, really. Naturally, there's a Doctor Who twist on it all, so we find the Doctor as he takes on the challenge of saving an old miser's soul on Christmas Eve. Kazran Sardick is a grumpy old bastard who holds the lives of over 4000 people, including Amy and Rory, in his hands as they crash towards the ground in a doomed space liner. Not bothering to wait for ghosts, the Doctor visits Kazran at different points in his own life to try and nurture him into a better person.

Going into this one, I actually had low expectations. Even with the standard brilliance of Doctor Who on its side, I was continuously concerned that this was going to be another retread of Charles Dickens' story, as already told by the Muppets, Blackadder, Catherine Tate, Scrooged, etc. etc. etc. Luckily, Moffat manages to find mileage in the timeless concept by injecting a big chunk of wibbly wobbly timey wimey formula.

Once again, it's a companion-lite episode, which leads me to think that Matt Smith is, in fact, tireless. The guy hasn't had a break since taking on the role, even without mentioning all of the spin-off media to which he's lent his talents. He's still on top form here, ticking all the boxes that epitomise the Doctor, and his Doctor in particular. He's righteously angry with Michael Gambon's Kazran, but like a bonkers older relative with his younger incarnations.

Kazran, who's now one of the most travelled of the Doctor's companions, despite having only appeared in this story, makes for an interesting Scrooge-like character. You can argue that the Doctor merely changes the facts to suit himself, and Gambon irately does just that in the later parts of the episode, but it's still an interesting and romantic look into human nature. There's only so much the Doctor can fix, and he arguably makes things worse at first, but you'll allow this episode an awful lot of licence because it's so accomplished in its festivity.

For one thing, there aren't many other TV shows in which an opera singer serenading a flying shark would so easily pass by. Even in Doctor Who, it would be a stretch if you weren't swept up in the romance of it all. In its own ways, it supersedes the two immediately previous Christmas specials by being neither disposable (The Next Doctor) or high drama (The End of Time). Like the best of Doctor Who, this one finds drama in... well, weird places.

A more dynamic and original title could have helped, but like I said, A Christmas Carol does what it says on the tin. It joins the ranks of Voyage of the Damned as an infinitely rewatchable bit of festive Doctor Who, and deploys the timey wimey stuff to create humour as much as pathos. It's the perfect underline for a great first year from Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, who continues to cement his position as one of the best Doctors we've ever had while constantly building on his portrayal.

After an absence in the previous episode, Amy and Rory have taken a leave of absence from the TARDIS at the beginning of Day of the Moon's first part. But then they're summoned to America, where they see an older version of the Doctor murdered by an astronaut. When a more contemporaneous version of the Doctor turns up, Amy, Rory and River Song keep his demise as a secret from him as they're dragged into another adventure in 1969. President Richard Nixon has been getting regular phone calls from a scared little girl...

Hm. This one's going to be a case of picking apart the good stuff from the ongoing arc. As a much more blunt counterpoint to last year's prelude, with the Doctor and young Amelia inspecting the crack in her wall in The Eleventh Hour, the opening of this one sets up a death fakeout. Yeah, I said "fakeout". Even the target audience must now be unconvinced by all of the deaths that happen and then don't happen under Moffat's run. There's some enjoyment to be got out of wondering how he'll get out of it, but it can't be said that part one of this story was much fun with all of the foreboding and enigma building going on.

Without any exaggeration, this series is starting to remind me of Lost. That random woman with the eye-patch who Amy sees was where the comparison occurred to me, but it's all over this opening two-parter like a rash. It's the first time a new series has opened on a two-parter, and it would have been preferable to be thrown into the action right away. If Moffat has answers to all of the questions raised here, I'm hoping he gets to some of them at the mid-series finale rather than dragging them out to episode 13 in the autumn.

It's a shame that I've begun to feel this way about all of the temporal gubbins, because here in particular, it distracts from the really good stuff. Moffat partially answers one of the previous series' going concerns by introducing the Silence, the race responsible for blowing up the TARDIS in the finale. If Moffat's first series was lacking in something, it was new monsters, so it's brilliant to see these creepy monsters so well conceived and realised by the production team.

There's also some gorgeous work by Toby Haynes, the best director on the previous series, whose work looks even more cinematic for the location shoots carried out in America than they did on sets somewhere in Cardiff in his previous episodes. Mark Sheppard, as Canton, proves to be one of those companion-who-never-was types with a pitch perfect performance. And after six episodes, River Song finally becomes more likable- Alex Kingston and Matt Smith really sell it this time, and their flirting shows the blossoming of some actual affection between them rather than some vague and non-committal prophecies.

Day of the Moon ultimately falters because of the expectation of episodes to come. While the good stuff here is really good, from the Nixon-related comedy to the very creepy central conceit, it's constantly obscured by scattershot enigmas. Hopefully it's all going to make sense in the end, because it sure as hell doesn't right now. This is a potentially great story that's running on about two-thirds capacity because of the timey-wimey stuff, so there's plenty of scope for rewatchability once the series is over. The trouble is, I'd preferred to have enjoyed it as much the first time around.

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We'll return to The Zero Room in two weeks' time with reviews of episodes three and four. Until then, why not share your comments below? Yes, I did see that little girl regenerating. No, it didn't shock me. That should tell you something, I think.

The next episode of Doctor Who, The Curse of the Black Spot, airs on BBC One and BBC HD on Saturday 7th May at 6.15pm.

The Zero Room #5- What's The Crack?

Matt Smith's first series drew to a close on Saturday night on BBC One, and the last thirteen weeks have been a hell of a ride. This penultimate Series 5 post reviews the romantic comedy episode The Lodger and the epic, balls-to-the-wall final two-fer, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang (to be referred to henceforth by the former name to save time)

Reviews will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the episode yet, toddle over to the iPlayer, or watch BBC Three at some point in the next century's worth of repeats.

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The Lodger opens on an unexpected incident with the TARDIS, which strands the Doctor on contemporary Earth. He's forced to move into a house on Aickman Road, sharing with a laddish flatmate called Craig. Craig pines after his best friend Sophie, likes playing football, and is suitably charmed by the new lodger because he's weird and can cook well. Just as the Doctor is oblivious to how he's usurping the things that are important to him, Craig is oblivious to whatever is living on the top floor of his house. People go up, but never come down...

The episode 11 slot has been put to various uses since the series returned. It's the slot that gave us fluffy episodes like Boomtown and Fear Her, but was later used for ominous stage-setting episodes like Utopia and Turn Left. What's special about The Lodger is that Gareth Roberts' script seems to somehow traverse both, while still spending more time in the former camp than the latter. It's adapted from a pretty good comic strip that Roberts wrote for Doctor Who Magazine back in 2006, in which the Tenth Doctor lodged with his companion's put-upon boyfriend Mickey for a week or so. The screen translation is even better- Matt Smith's Doctor basically is a fish-out-of-water, most of all in this scenario.

Where David Tennant's portrayal had a reasonably easy grace, Smith plays the oddball well enough to pull this plot off fantastically. He eclipses James Corden's Craig in the acting stakes, and that would usually be a good thing. I really don't like James Corden, see. Here, he's close to being endearing, which makes me realise I simply don't like his overexposure in the media. He's an actor, not a stand-up comic, so I suspect his ubiquity elsewhere makes him seem more annoying than he really is. It is great to finally see the radiant Daisy Haggard in the show as Sophie too.

Karen Gillan takes the backseat for this one, and it's curious to see that we get a "companion-lite" episode in this series while the "Doctor-lite" counterpart is conspicuous by its absence. Maybe Matt Smith really does have the energy to keep bounding around for nine months without an episode to sit back and put his feet up, but it'll be interesting to see where Steven Moffat goes if he does a Doctor-lite episode next year, with a 14-episode filming run to do instead of this year's 13. Moffat previously gave us Blink, so we know how good he can write this show even without the Doctor, but you'll never hear me outright ask for an episode with less Matt Smith.

The obligatory menace of the story sits well with the more comedic elements too, although I think Roberts possibly over-egged the menace upstairs with the number of people we see wander in off the street. What's interesting is that we never get an explanation for just who built the second-storey TARDIS on top of Craig's house. It's a fine twist, and pays off as a conclusion to this particular episode, but it's in this character's retained mystery that you have to wonder if it's going to be important later.

At its heart, The Lodger is a romantic comedy, and a fine one at that. It's actually one of the unexpected pleasures of the series, proving to be warm, funny and the episode that would have sat best in the Davies era. Luckily, it comes with the great comic timing of Matt Smith instead, who gets some great one-liners ("Can I put you on hold? I need to eat a biscuit"), while continuing to develop his incarnation before the big finale.
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After eleven weeks, everything converges as the two-part finale begins with The Pandorica Opens. By way of Liz 10's royal art collection and Churchill's bunker, River Song retrieves one of Vincent Van Gogh's final paintings, for which the episode is named. It depicts the explosion of the Doctor's TARDIS, an event that would be massive enough to crack the skin of the universe itself. In 102AD, the Doctor will find out exactly what the Pandorica is, and Amy Pond's fractured life will finally begin to make sense.

The high watermark of the new series for me was The Parting of the Ways, as far as finales went. I enjoyed Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords and Journey's End too, but they often fell short of their superior openings. The Pandorica Opens bucks the trend in a big way- where Russell T Davies' thirteenth episodes in each series came to give the impression that he'd written himself into a corner each year, Steven Moffat appears to have planned this all along.

With director Toby Haynes on board, the story is certainly the best two-parter since 2007's Human Nature and The Family of Blood, while still being a fundamentally different beast. The stakes have never been more massive, and the universe having been ended at the end of part one trump even RTD's increasingly hyperbolic threats without becoming ridiculous. RTD largely avoided silliness too, but there was still a question of whether or not the Moff would pull it off.

Haynes helps a lot by lending the story the most cinematic direction the series has ever had, moreso than this series' The Time of Angels. His influences are very much worn on his sleeve, encompassing both George Lucas odysseys, Star Wars (see those scene transitions?) and Indiana Jones (everything below Stonehenge) alike. It's his first time on the show, but I actually find it hard to imagine any of the more seasoned directors shooting the monster mash here as well as he does.

To bring in Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and whatever other monster prosthetics were lying around at the studio may well have been an economic move, but it pays off wonderfully. For one thing, the Cybermen haven't been as effective as this in a long long time. And the scale just doesn't get any bigger than the moment when the Doctor is shoved into the Pandorica, as his enemies hope to prevent him from inadvertently destroying the universe. This massive alliance of monsters is almost apologetic for the comparative lack of monsters in the second part, which focuses much more on character and on the resolution of the series arc.

In the way of other two-parters penned by the Moff, it's definitely a story of two very distinctive halves, and the latter is much more cerebral than you'd expect. We've seen wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff before, but it somehow still seems fresh here. At the same time, there's some beautiful character development for Rory, who's been resurrected as a plastic duplicate by the Nestenes. Arthur Darvill is one of the unsung talents working on this series, and it'll be fun to see where the millennia of experience he has on the Doctor takes him next series. Then again, it's always been easy to overlook him with Matt Smith at the helm.

And what a great Doctor he's turned out to be. He has the full gamut of emotion in this story, and the only time it ever seems tired is when the Doctor believes he's going to die, which we already saw David Tennant do on New Year's Day. Smith still combusts with energy every time he's on-screen, and he plays well against everyone who shares it with him, from Caitlin Blackwood, who makes a welcome return as young Amy, to Karen Gillan, whose Elder Pond comes to the fore as her arc is partially resolved.

Even River Song is more palatable this time around. Even though she utterly divested this story of jeopardy by glibly recalling the Pandorica at the end of her last appearance, the character plays a more interesting role without shedding any of her secrets just yet. That's promised for next year, along with what actually caused the TARDIS to explode and nearly bring about the end of the universe. It should be a lot more disappointing than it actually is, that these threads are left hanging. Trouble is, this story is just too wonderful.

Emotional, exciting and ultimately very satisfying indeed, The Pandorica Opens is the most fulfilling series finale since Christopher Eccleston's swansong back in 2005. Both episodes are fantastic in distinctive ways, with the constant of the central performances holding up through to the tantalising Christmas teaser. The story does its job as both a shameless bit of fan-service and as a quality bit of family drama. And best of all, it has a happy ending, which we had never seen in the new series, up until Rory became Mr. Pond, anyway. The upbeat conclusion makes you long for Christmas and the next series more than ever before.

Bravo Mr. Moffat.
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I'll be back soon with a quick overview of this series of Doctor Who. Until then, why not share your comments below?

Doctor Who will return to BBC One and BBC HD on Christmas Day.

The Zero Room #2- Angels & Daleks

Yeah, by reviewing two-parters as one story, this feature will seem fairly intermittent, but plunging back into the TARDIS, I've got reviews of Victory of the Daleks and the angelic double whammy The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone (to be referred to by the former from here on, for speed).

Reviews will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the episode yet, toddle over to the iPlayer, or watch BBC Three at some point in the next century's worth of repeats.
Picking up from the tease at the end of the previous episode, Victory of the Daleks finds the Doctor facing the metal meanies during the Blitz, with an excitable Winston Churchill ready to deploy them against the Nazis and win the war. The Daleks are generally keeping their eyestalks down, serving tea and submitting to being fitted out with camo-gear and a Union Flag ID tag, but the Doctor knows better. As usual with the Daleks, there's a much bigger plot at work, and Churchill seems oblivious to their true nature. The problem is, matters only get worse once the Doctor actually reveals the truth...

A better title might have been The Daleks Have Landed, because it's the feel of the similarly titled Michael Caine adventure that writer Mark Gatiss has lovingly recreated. It's an interesting spin on the Doctor's oldest enemies, and one that sees them undergo a new paint job and a design overhaul. Ah yes, that redesign. Decried by many as awful shit, I really can't agree. Although people have called them Power Rangers and the like, they reminded me more of the latter day Minis- they're a meaner and somewhat more hefty spin on a classic design. And come on, they look good, really. Embrace change, when it's this good!

The trouble is that Gatiss is terribly eager to get this new Dalek paradigm, which is in no small part responsible for the uneven pacing. In the first 15 minutes, I was impressed by how it was zipping along, but the plot peters out before the last 10 minutes.
Although I really liked Bill Paterson as Bracewell, and appreciated the way his character developed, he's not my idea of a barnstorming climax in an episode called Victory of the Daleks, even if it does make more sense as an ending than some of Russell T. Davies' Dalek episodes. It's great that the Daleks win for a change, but they win far too early. This feels almost like the preamble to the next Dalek story of the Moffat era, rather than a memorable adventure in its own right.

As a result, Ian McNiece's Churchill is also sadly sidelined. What we do see of him is brilliant though, and I think there's real potential for him to be a recurring historical character- he has the Doctor's phone number after all. Karen Gillan doesn't have much to do either, Matt Smith continues to prove his mettle with his indignant attitude to the Daleks- to him, their survival is obscene, and at one point he loses his temper with them altogether. A Doctor can often be defined by how he interacts with his greatest enemies, and he eschews both Christopher Eccleston's outright rage and David Tennant's righteous and weary approach. It's also fitting that Smith's first Dalek story evokes Patrick Troughton's debut, The Power of the Daleks, in having the Daleks pretend to be benign in order to entirely ruin humanity's shit.

To fall short in the most anticipated episode since the Daleks' inception, finally placing the Nazi allegories in a WW2 setting, would be unforgivable if it weren't for the witty script and the great performances. It collapses under the weight of tremendous expectation, but it's certainly not bad. It's an action packed episode that doesn't skimp on story and, despite the more obscure ramblings of fans online, it isn't a merchandising ploy to sell more multi-coloured Dalek toys. Victory of the Daleks could have been an all-time classic, but it's perfectly fine as an enjoyable early entry to the series, evocative of those films on Sunday afternoon telly as much as the Daleks' inexorable progress.The following two parter also has a returning monster of course, but The Time of Angels is head, shoulders and everything else above the previous episode. Opening in a particularly bombastic pre-credits sequence in the first part, the Doctor meets his possible future wife River Song again as she jumps out of an airlock. The ship she's just escaped has a deadly cargo- what is reputed to be the last Weeping Angel in existence- and it later crashes on the planet Alfava Metraxis. The tables are turned on the Doctor and a group of soldiers sent into the wreck to recover the Angel, and Amy Pond is pushed to the very limit as she struggles to survive.

Steven Moffat has said that this story's relationship to the Weeping Angels' debut Blink is as Aliens was to Alien. It expands the monsters while bringing in new, seemingly disparate elements to make it into more of an action story than a horror. The horror is still there for the stone gribblies, whose menace is as indelible as ever. A minor criticism is that they no longer "kill you kindly", as the Tenth Doctor put it first time around. Luckily, the far less interesting modus operandi of snapping necks doesn't weaken their fear factor at all- instead the uncomfortable provision of a voice via a murdered soldier just undercuts the fact that you couldn't negotiate with them before.

That said, we learned here that whatever holds the image of an Angel is itself an Angel. Someone finally decided to create a Doctor Who monster that can come out of televisions to kill you if you look at them- why has no-one thought of this before?!
It's not the Angels' show though, and we still get a great deal of interaction between Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. They each remain note-perfect for the entire series thus far, and Gillan in particular shines out here. She really sells the horror of a blind walk through a horde of Angels just as much as the innuendo of the surprisingly risque closing scene, which threatened to put the "Flesh" in the episode's title if Amy got her way with the Doctor. Less endearing is Alex Kingston as River Song, especially in the first part. For instance, note how a lovely trailer-friendly line about the Weeping Angels is delivered as smugly as the rest of Kingston's dialogue. You'd think any normal person would sound a little more apprehensive about "the most malevolent creatures evolution has ever produced". She knows more than the Doctor does, and thus more than the viewer, but I'd like her more if she didn't bloody act like it so much.

Moffat almost seems to have anticipated that neither River Song or the Angels themselves would leave as much of an impression on their second go around, and it's a good thing he never solely relies on them. To wit, we see the series arc begin to pay off at a point in the series earlier than ever before. Rather than continuing to vaguely pan across the crack in time for the rest of the run, it's embedded at the heart of the story here, and the potential ramifications of its presence will surely loom large for the rest of the series. It also provides a satisfying fan moment when one of the more confusing aspects of 2008's The Next Doctor is explained away, albeit with a mechanism that might allow many more stories to be completely retconned.
His writing continues to bewitch though, whether through one-liners or chills or wonderful character interaction. Here it's best typified in a wonderful final scene for the unfortunate Father Octavian. Even in an angelic headlock, the drama is incredibly potent between him and the Doctor as the two exchange warnings and condolences. The Time of Angels is also brilliant for having been helmed by director Adam Smith, who really makes this one look cinematic rather than televisual. He also delights in terrifying the young audience as much as the Moff does, and keeps the adrenaline going for 90 minutes in a way that the Dalek story couldn't manage for 42 minutes.

The Time of Angels excels as an opening two parter, a slot that's traditionally been a weaker point for the show since 2005, the Series 4 Sontaran adventure excepted. It's as witty and scary as we could expect from Moffat's writing, posturing for a broader story through the entirity of Series 5 without ever disrupting the story at hand. There's an energy here that most blockbusters can't even muster. It's mysterious, atmospheric and truly one of the best two parters Doctor Who has ever given us. Don't blink. Or... open your eyes. Or look at their eyes. Or-- (gets sent back in time)
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I'll be back in three weeks' time with reviews of the next two stories. Until then, why not share your comments below?

The next episode of Doctor Who, The Vampires of Venice, airs on BBC One and BBC HD on Saturday 8th May at 6pm.