Doctor Who--Five CAPALDI older reviews

 

 

DEEP BREATH

 

Okay, I've been very hard on the Moffat era of DW and for good reason: it mostly sucked. We've had maybe 15 good episodes since 2010 and that's rounding up. I hated Matt Smith's Doctor, his companions, and the illogical arcs and unfunny dialog and slapstick. Most of the episodes feature long winded speeches that are just...wrong. Also wrong is much of the philosophy Moffat compounds on us about ...well, things, life, the universe, etc. In addition, he gets continuity wrong as well as plain old story telling. Just wrong.

 

In any case, aside from hating and still hating the Paternoster gang or whatever those three idiots are called, here, they're somewhat tolerable. I still feel they are out of place in NEW DW and no one around them seemed particularly bothered that two of them are aliens and two of them are lesbians...and it's hardly concealed. Then, there's the fact that reality is sort of thrown out the window by a large dino walking around the past...for a long time. It's rather a sad story, too. In any case again, another bad story point is: the droids just stop when you hold your breath? What kind of droids are these? Stupid ones? Brains need replacing? Dumb.

 

That said, this is probably Moffat's best opening story to a season although Asylum of the Daleks might be better. 11th Hour is fantastically poor and all the xmas specials bar Christmas Carol are awful and boring. Despite some unfunny jokes and some unrealistic companion development---uhm, Clara's seen ALL the past Doctors but cannot get used to a new Doctor? What? It's things like this that make Moffat so poor and unlikable. That and all his chatter about DW in general and classic DW specifically are just wrong, even if he has some good ideas (usually poorly executed). Despite all of this and again, some unfunny jokes, Capaldi holds this together.

 

Yes, the story is a bit suckish but this new Doctor is already FAR better than Matt Smith's 11th idiot. I love Capaldi as the Doctor. He IS dark, he IS scary, and he is unpredictable. He has total elements of Tom and William Hartnell and while we say this all the time, this actor really is doing more than just mimicking them with tricks. Capaldi GETS DW in a way that I’m sure Matt Smith AND Moffat do not.

 

It is Capaldi that makes this work. I can't say I'm happy they are using the old "there is no heaven" and the older "Paradise is evil" trick and another over the top female villain (Crimson Horror just makes me shudder and not in a good way...it's probably the worst DW story ever in any medium). I'm also not happy with another incomprehensible arc that probably won't be resolved in any satisfactory way although maybe Moffat's learned his lesson after five years and only three seasons?

 

In any case, I'm being negative about this story when really I was much happier watching it than most of the last five years of DW, six if you count the semi wilderness year of 2009 and the poor RTD end to David's time (most stuff after Midnight is awful). I did like this and watching it was fun. It's not a bad story and had some very good moments including the Doctor and Clara trapped in the upper diner and Clara being left by the Doctor. And while I’m still not convinced you can fool droid/hybrids by just holding your breath (don't they have detectors?), the scene where Clara tries to escape is well done. Clara, aside from being yes, impossible, does a good job of being companion here in a way that she didn't in say Nightmare In Silver (a HORRIBLE story) and did in Cold War.

 

INTO THE DALEK

 

Okay, I was set to hate this story and find Capaldi at fault as well but…that didn’t happen. I don’t know if it is a case of Capaldi making nothing out of something or Capaldi bringing up Moffat and Ford or what but it wasn’t that bad. For one thing, it told an adventure story without the arc overtaking it. I even smiled when the brief arc bit showed up and the strange mad woman (she cannot be the Rani since the Rani didn’t seem a bit in love with the Doctor or think the Doctor loved her at all unless she’s a bit mad but maybe a crazy Romana? Or a female Master or someone else?) said her crazy lines. Some felt the back and forth of Coal Hill School and the Doctor was too much---I didn’t. I found it a bit of well needed character interplay although Danny seems…a bit crazy in that Amy/Rory way that I hope does not continue….who really bangs their head on a desk like that? On the other hand, I’m sure we all talk to ourselves in one way or another. Now for the bad: I’m sure there are those who will nitpick away at the plot and the randomness of the answers found including Clara’s guess work in the inner workings of the Dalek…it seems odd that the Doc just interrupts his adventure to go get Clara and that has to stop. Imagine the Doctor telling Solon, “Wait, I have to go get Sarah Jane, put her in jeopardy with me because she’ll help me in this adventure?”  It doesn’t really jive as most of the 11^th Doctor’s leaving of Amy and Rory at home didn’t. The rest was a bit Fantastic Voyage but in a good way and in which Journey to the Center of the Tardis wasn’t. I find a lot of Hartnell and Tom Baker in Capaldi but there’s something more that he adds to it…a sternness or a softness or both at the same time. It’s hard to define but he’s a lot better than Matt Smith IMO and that coldness when he gives the soldier the pill…did that help him die or stop his pain? I don’t know but that reminded me of how Tom’s Doctor felt when Scarman’s brother killed him and he just rolled the body over and Sarah berated him for not being human…AND when the First Doctor wanted to kill the cave man (and I’m sure that planet was not Earth in AN UNEARTHLY CHILD). The other thing that bothers me is that I still find some of the dialog TOO fast paced and think I need sub titles to find out what they’re actually saying…but I find it less with Capaldi than I did with Matt Smith…and it’s not just the Doctor’s that talk too fast…almost everyone does. I missed a lot of the explanations but here it didn’t overpower the entire story and I was able to hear most of it unlike the entire Amy/Matt Smith “era”. To me, this is the first time that the Daleks have been used well since PARTING OF THE WAYS and DALEK…here they seemed dangerous again. One thing: why didn’t they just blast the entire station from the outside? One line of: they needed info from the station or they needed one prisoner or something would have worked. AND certainly there has to be more than just hatred in the Doctor’s mind and for more than just Daleks. But it makes the whole character intriguing again. I’m NOT sure that the whole “You would make a good Dalek” and “You are a good Dalek” thing needs to be brought up yet again but it’s not a bad avenue to make this Doctor change his ways and mend his ways so that he finally gets some wisdom…which, even now, he doesn’t seem to have. Although some of this sounds negative, I did enjoy this episode. Moffat and I will never see eye to eye on the Doctor’s character or how to run this series but at least, he’s provided two good ones in a row…a feat after the messes since 2010.     

 

ROBOTS OF SHERWOOD

 

So there are these robots, see, that can shoot you with lasers from their forehead, see. And…well, they do kill some people but they don’t shoot Robin Hood, The Doctor, or Clara with any clarity and then the Sheriff (a Master lookalike if there was one) shuts them down to take on Robin Hood himself! Still, it was somewhat entertaining and I’ll take this over anything in the Matt Smith era any day. Again, though, there were no surprises, no real mysteries to be honest. It was DW by the numbers really. The first 12 minutes were really nice and the rest until the ill-conceived climax went south was okay. It doesn’t really work as a buddy movie because the Doctor and Robin hardly knew each other and their bickering, while not bringing the ruination of the episode, does annoy as much as it did Clara. It doesn’t work as a historical because there’s very little history and well, as Doctor Who by the numbers…or I should say DW post 1966…there always has to be an alien/science future element to it and here, it’s…wait for it…robots! Oh my! I think it was Mark Gatiss, who wrote this, who said he never cared for any TV Robin Hood and it’s easy to see how wrong he is by what he wrote in this: all cliché and no real depth or character. Again, though, I did like this somewhat. It’s just nowhere near anything that DW can really be.  Capaldi continues to be a good Doctor and in one scene he was rather Patrick Troughton-ish, puttering about as he tries to get samples the Merry Men. I kept hoping for a twist…like if Marion were revealed a man or something but nothing. This was just kind of there. It didn’t really amuse but didn’t bemuse. It didn’t seem illogical…until they use an arrow to press a button that will cause the spaceship to explode? From the outside? What? I must have missed some mumbled dialog or something. All in all I’d give it a 7/10 but maybe that’s too generous. I didn’t dislike it and darn, at least it told a story of some kind. Worrisome is that if the public liked the last three seasons (I didn’t really for the most part), will this keep them interested? DW has been so eroded by Moffat in the past that it’s sort of past it already…nothing made sense in the last three seasons and now that it seems to be back on track, it’s the same old same old…alien lands in the past and takes over something it wants. No twists, no turns, no real depth or emotion again…oh, this time they tried with some of the mushy dialog but again, they’re trying to make Clara hero worship the Doctor…and don’t tell me he doesn’t fancy her or him her. And what is with the trying to show off constantly and in such an overt manner? It doesn’t become the Doctor. Or Robin Hood. Still, it doesn’t sound like I liked this episode. I did. I didn’t feel the large amount of frustration I felt in viewing some junk like A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR, CLOSING TIME, THE SNOWMEN, NIGHT TERRORS or heaven help us, CRIMSON HORROR. I felt as if I were watching a good DW adventure that was flawed but fun. Just like old times then.

 

LISTEN

Listen, this was okay but not very good really, too. First, the premise that fear is good and makes a good companion is asinine. Yes, flight or fight but the truth is fear causes wars, psychotic breaks, religious dogma to the extent of exclusion, causes a wife to hate her husband and a husband to beat his wife. Fear is not good. Period. Second, motivation is sketchy. The Doctor is afraid of the dark? What? Although I didn’t guess she’d end up under the child Doctor’s bed…I DID guess that it was Clara herself under the bed creating the thing under the bed. It doesn’t really work though. How is Clara under everyone’s bed? Did she get trapped in everyone’s time line in every room under every bed? I might have missed something. BBC America: you just don’t realize, even if I just came to realize it, that showing Doctor Who littered among 60 different commercials just doesn’t work. DW is meant to be watched straight through. Perhaps I should wait for the DVDs and watch it first there. Can I wait? Not sure. Why was Clara making jokes at Danny? At first I thought the alien was making them hear things or say things. Why did the Doctor come into the restaurant in a space suit? No one else saw the TARDIS land there? The Doctor’s “parents” or whomever they were: so very cold hearted and seemingly uncaring. It’s hard to think of the “poor” Doctor as the lonely little child. The Doctor’s afraid? That’s why he goes back? What? Maybe he should go back to the monster on the planet from MIDNIGHT and face that, too? Here we are again, at the end of the universe. This is really a series of vignettes, which taken alone, might have made a good short story or might be interesting alone. Put together, very badly (and again it could be the BBC AMERICA cut up version) I might add, they don’t really make a cohesive whole. Still, it’s watchable…just about…and not as bad as other stories. Capaldi and Coleman sell it to us and make it, whatever it was about this story that works, work. Almost. Once again, however, Moffat cannot just give us a story that makes sense, has proper characters with proper motivations, have a beginning, end and middle. There are flashbacks when they need not have been any. Added to that is the old cliché “We’re going to feature the Doctor or his parents from the past but just not show their faces.”    Then why bother? If you’re going to do a story with that in it, then go the whole mile and show them all. I’m sure there will be fans screaming that they saw the War Doctor but in my mind the War Doctor does not exist. I have wiped it from the…no, not the, from my own DW canon. It’s shit. And this story nearly comes close to being that, too. Again, a bunch of good ideas strung together in a nonsensical manner with bad story telling but with the dialog a bit better than Moffat has mustered up and dished up since that awful 11th Hour. Moffat still needs to go, though. He’s done enough to ruin DW already.

 

TIME HEIST

 

Capaldi is a good Doctor, even if I cannot figure out what he’s saying some of the time (but I get him more than Matt Smith). There’s nothing inherently wrong with this story but again, I really should watch it on DVD as I can’t really stick with the thousands commercials on BBC America—it sort of ruins it for me.

 

I didn’t see any real faults but to be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention, and really didn’t understand what was going on. One might have to do with the other. Truth is, the acting is better and the story better than LISTEN and more than the Matt Smith era but honestly, I think, Moffat blame aside (no, wait, he’s responsible)---I find I just don’t care about New DW anymore.

 

It could be circumstances. It could be there were more entertaining and light things on TV at the time. It could just be that this show has run its course. It’s truly uninvolving and somewhat predicable. And while it makes some kind of sense, and not as illogical and stupid as the Matt Smith stories (again, not all, there were some I truly liked), it doesn’t fully make me sit up and care to take notice. Why didn’t the Doctor know the capsules were teleporters (or were they?) instead of destruction capsules? I also saw the ending---with the things being freed---from a mile away.

 

I do think, having done the great (95 percent of seasons one to four), the truly poor (95 percent of seasons five to seven), and illogical and wasteful (Day of and Time of) and disappointing and boring, the show has honestly run out of things to do or rip off. It can’t even tell historicals any longer because it doesn’t know how to without adding an alien or something futuristic or time travel timey whimey. It has to have gimmicks rather than plot. It has to have boundless “fun” dialog instead of realistic characterization. There’s nothing new here for DW, classic Who did stories better than these and despite what some fans feel, the Rose-Doctor, Martha-Doctor, Donna Doctor relationships were what made New Who so great…the Classic Series dare not go there---but New Who did and with Moffat in charge (from day one he tried to literally castrate the Doctor with that tower spire and he did it metaphorically),  it tossed the sexual possibilities or even true friendship aside after trying desperately to copy it (RTD style) without copying it (Rory for Mickey, Amy for Rose, River for Rose)…and failing miserably.

 

Now, DW just cannot tell stories any more…it’s ceased being relevant, fun, exciting, dangerous, interesting, or even visually stimulating (although a few shots at the end on the planet were BEAUTIFUL). Glad it’s not even bad enough to make me cringe…but is it good enough to make me care or feel for the main characters?

 

All of time and space to explore and we got this. Again, nothing wrong with a bank heist but the plot as such is old hat…in the 1970s it was done on several series including CHARLIE’S ANGELS, WONDER WOMAN, THE BIONIC WOMAN, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, and many others. I think there was even a HART TO HART in the 80s that had that plot. It was so so then and it’s even more old hat now. The Doctor’s call me to Sy was interesting to say the least…what was that about?

 

Whatever DW was…in the past…different (Keys of Marinus), strange (Logopolis, Castrovalva, Turn Left), exciting and promising (Genesis of the Daleks, Dalek, Age of Steel, Rose, The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances), positive (Parting of the Ways, The Doctor Dances again), thought provoking (Kinda, The SunMakers), funny (The Lodger, Shada, City of Death, The Pirate Planet), amusing and clever (the Agatha Christie one, the Pompeii one), mysterious and thrilling at the same time (Christmas Invasion, 42, Fear Her), experimental (Love and  Monsters, Blink), and even scary (Blink, Human Nature), touching and emotional (Doomsday, Father’s Day, Vincent and the Doctor), surreal and sad (Doctor’s Wife) and even horrible (The John Sim Master and that whole two parter, and, again, most of Matt Smith’s stories including 11^th Hour, Beast Below, Day of, Time Of, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Wedding of River Song, The God Complex, The Pandorica Opens, Big Bang, Crimson Horror, Hide, Nightmare in Silver, and almost all of season six especially the pirate one and that awful A Good Man Goes to War, The Doctor-the Widow and the Wardrobe), it made me feel something.

 

Matt Smith’s era and the Matt Doctor made me feel frustrated, annoyed, cringing through his poor dialog and performances, cringing at the direction by the director and show runner, made me amazed that a show with such a great premise could sink so low…but now…NOW? I feel almost nothing.

 

If the show were taken off during or after Chris’s season, I would have been appalled and sad for it and amazed that such a mistake would have happened, it were taken off during David’s time, ditto although after Journey’s End or the abysmal Next Doctor, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

 

If it were taken off during Matt’s time, I would have understood and been sad for such a mess of a showrunner and even very relieved Doctor Who could not be ruined further. If it is taken off the air tomorrow, I think I would feel…nothing. This show makes me feel nothing now.