The Zero Room #8- Trouble and Strife

This time, we've got two episodes juggled out of their original place in the Series 6 running order, and yet still perfectly suitable for the third/fourth episode region of the series. It'll get moodier later on, but for now we have the historical rompage of The Curse of the Black Spot and the gorgeously challenging romance of The Doctor's Wife.

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.

Seemingly timed to coincide with the new release of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Curse of the Black Spot begins with the TARDIS picking up a distress call from a troubled ship. As it turns out, it's an actual sea-faring boaty kind of ship towards the end of the 17th century. Captain Avery has just taken the biggest pirate haul in history and now his ship is stranded in the middle of a still ocean, beset by an enchanting and deadly siren.

Occasionally, Doctor Who does a "just for fun" kind of episode. Last year, it was The Vampires of Venice, which also seemed to be timed around the release of Eclipse, sort of. Having rewatched the fifth series recently, I found Toby Whithouse's episode to be much better than I had remembered. Perhaps The Curse of the Black Spot will similarly appreciate in value, but as of right now, I can't imagine revisiting the episode unless it's part of a marathon viewing.

It comes down to the fact that it all feels a little rush-released. In 77 episodes of "New Who" up to this point, there hasn't been so glaring a narrative omission as the one that takes place here. Lee Ross is a relatively minor character, as the Boatswain, but he literally disappears. We see him wounded, and the black spot swells on his palm, but we cut away before he's taken. The Doctor and Avery don't ask where he went, Amy and Rory don't tell them what happened- he just drops out of the plot and reappears at the happy ending.

It shouldn't bother me, but it kind of ruins the whole episode for me. I can take as read that he was snaffled by the Siren for healing purposes off-screen, but that none of the characters ever acknowledge it just feels out of character. Not only for the Doctor, Amy and Rory, but for the programme, which is usually on the ball with even the most fantastical stories. Throw in the fact that it's probably one of the slower episodes of Doctor Who since the series returned, and the joins are all too clear in the process between bumping this one up from ninth to third in the running order and getting it to the screen.

It's not all bad news- it never is in Doctor Who. Hugh Bonneville is happy to be here, even if he seems a little bit harmless for an apparently bloodthirsty pirate. The idea of the Siren is a sound one, and Lily Cole is threatening and bewitching enough that it's convincing to see the Doctor having to second-guess his theories about what she's up to. But when she eventually turns out to be benevolent, the twist doesn't have enough momentum to land with more than a thud. Merlin director Jeremy Webb will be coming back to helm the final episode of Series 6 in the Autumn, and I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

The Curse of the Black Spot brings too little to the table for it to properly stand out. It's by far the most forgettable episode of Matt Smith's run so far, but it's no fault of the actors. In particular, Arthur Darvill does well despite Rory getting yet another death scene. He's dying every single week now- there's just no impact anymore. It's not a poorly conceived episode, but it seems to be have been turned around too quickly. It's textbook MOR Who, but it strives to be a proper swashbuckling adventure. In that much, it goes the way of the first two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels- it's disappointing, but not a total loss. 

The Doctor's Wife was bumped from the episode 3 slot and, before that, from the back end of last year's series. So Neil Gaiman's long-awaited script for the series has the Doctor receive a message that suggests there might be Time Lords, and friendly ones at that, hiding out in a bubble universe. The moment the TARDIS touches down in an impossible scrapyard, it's enfolded in a trap that brings the Doctor face to face with his oldest travelling companion, while Amy and Rory are imperilled in her corridors.

I think it's fair to say that most Doctor Who fans are unabashedly conservative in their outlook on the series, especially those fans who've been watching it since the original run. Those fans waited 16 long years, wanting a new TV series, but more importantly, most of them wanted the series to be the same as it always was. Doctor Who occasionally has to make change, especially in the new era. And Gaiman has given us an episode that could change the way you look at the last 40+ years of adventures in time and space.

Of course, the title is about as apt as The Doctor's Daughter was, being an inventive episode that was hamstrung by its high concept. Figuratively speaking, Matt Smith's Doctor and Suranne Jones, as the human manifestation of his TARDIS, are like an old married couple, hence the TARDIS being The Doctor's Wife. Some will argue that the relationship between the pilot and the motor has always been more complex than we see here, but with such grand performances and writing, I'm finding it hard to complain.

Only Smith and Jones can properly carry off the flirty dynamic between the Doctor and Idris, who's carrying the TARDIS' matrix, or personality if you will, around in her head. It was enjoyable in Day of the Moon a couple of weeks ago with the Doctor and River Song, and Smith sparks off of Jones nicely too. Jones channels Helena Bonham Carter, on whom your mileage may vary, again, as a TARDIS bamboozled by her suddenly acquired humanity. Ever since Ian Chesterton touched the door in An Unearthly Child, she's always been described as alive, and now she gets a chance to bite back after being blamed for the Doctor's directional difficulties for decades.

Inside the police box, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill get a proper subplot for a change, and it's one that only indulges in the minimal amount of Rory being killed off. There must be some kind of quota. Never mind though, because it gives them room to breathe without being upstaged by the Doctor, and they're terrorised in their expedition through the corridors by House, voiced by an oddly incognito Michael Sheen. The episode strikes a nice balance between the Doctor and his companions, but the emotional core remains apparent throughout.

As a self-contained episode, it's a very welcome reprieve from the narrative building antics of Day of the Moon, with a very small cast and some very memorable performances. Even Adrian Shiller and Elizabeth Berrington are better on-screen than their characters as written. Richard Clarke, who previously directed the sublime Gridlock, delivers another grand-scale episode that isn't a series opener, a ratings-grabber or a finale. And better, the budget put into this long anticipated story is all up there on-screen, even with the presence of an Ood and the RTD-era console room being visible cost-cutting measures.

The Doctor's Wife canonises a fan interpretation of the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS- that the latter chose the former and not the other way around- and it would be a shame if that's not acknowledged after the credits roll. Even if the events of this episode are only mentioned one more time, it would be better than entirely forgetting this episode in the more complicated arcing story of the series. It should please the fans with its copious Who literacy, and intrigue the new audience in equal measure- please, Neil Gaiman, may we have another?

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We'll return to The Zero Room in three weeks' time with reviews of the remaining episodes before the series takes a break for the summer. Until then, why not share your comments below?

The next episode of Doctor Who, The Rebel Flesh, airs on BBC One and BBC HD on Saturday 21st May at 6.45pm.

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 #6- The Many Faces of Matt Smith

Whether you're calling it Series One, Series 5 or Series Fnarg (Steven Moffat's suggestion and my own personal favourite), it's difficult not to applaud Doctor Who for recapturing and developing the formula over the course of the last thirteen weeks or so.

Well I was going to do a big retrospective on the series, but I think it's pretty comprehensively covered in my reviews of the series on this very blog, so I'll settle for filling the requisite Wednesday slot with some funny faces pulled by the Eleventh Doctor.

The obvious indomitable force through Series Fnarg is Matt Smith's Doctor. Week after week I haven't thought of a single bad thing to say about him. With some of the awkwardness that always seemed false when Tennant's Doctor was rattling around the cosmos, Smith is shaping up to be one of the best Doctors ever, if he keeps giving us a different expression every week.

So why make a blog post that is dangerously close to making this place a cheese wheel? Well, the tabloids have ran out of news for the summer again, so they've decided to write about how Smith is being axed due to low ratings. Besides ratings being non-stories in and of themselves, overnights don't even particularly matter anymore.

They love that word, don't they? "Axed." What a pointy and pernicious thing the tabloid press is. No one ever leaves or is fired, they have to be "axed". Presumably in all that coverage of serial killers they occasionally splatter the front pages with, there's someone tutting that axe murdering isn't practical anymore, and that axes instead have to be applied to things like Fred Elliot deciding to take time off from Coronation Street.

The coverage of such obsolete stories on this here blog only brings me closer and closer to writing irrelevant stuff. But hey, you're enjoying the funny faces right? To come clean, my puppet spoof odyssey for Writer's Block North East, Doctor Who and the Inky Doom, still hasn't made it onto YouTube, so the planned entry for today fell through.

If anyone feels short-changed, come back on Friday when I promise there'll be worthwhile content. And sometime thereafter for the planned puppet blog. Otherwise, just be assured that Johnny Depp isn't going to play the Doctor in a film, unless you're watching Sleepy Hollow and decide to think creatively. It's Matt Smith all the way- now, everybody do the dance...

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.