My weekend and Doctor Who in Rambling sane thoughts of the terminally me

Ok, so let’s get down the stuff I did so I can rant about the Doctor Who bit, ok?

So, friday evening I drove straight from work to the camp site I’d booked in Morpeth. We’d had a couple of drop outs so in the end it was only the five of us but that did include Myles, whose birthday it was, so I was determined to make an excellent evening of it.

I think it’s safe to say I succeeded. We roasted potatoes; toasted marshmallows, drank mead and sang songs. We stayed up till the wee hours talking and I think it was sincerely enjoyed by everyone there. It was nice to get my camping on as it’s not something I get to do a lot of any more.

I say get my camping on, however. The site had a yurt and we were lazy. So we all kipped in the yurt.

I say we all kipped in the yurt. They all snored. Quite badly. I slept in my car.

But other than that it was camping. There was a fire and songs and sausages and marshmallows. That’s camping, right?

Ok, so saturday we drive into Morpeth to get lunch before heading home. It’s safe to say there was the creased foreheads of hangovers on a couple of faces. My own included. Yes, I feel guilty but I ended up drinking that night. Bad Adam. The important thing is to clamber back on the wagon ASAP so this is what I have done. Anyhow. We had full english breakfasts which are pretty much guaranteed to get the old brain working again - especially if they’ve got hash browns in. Yum.

I drive home and, frankly, headed back to bed to sleep off the rest of the hang over. I was up again for 3, ready for friends to start rolling in at 5.

Duly they begin to arrive and we watch the Classic Doctor Who Episode “The Deadly Assassin” which is a Tom Baker episode. A really good one. Seriously, watch it. It’s both awesome and hilariously bad at the same time.

Which led on well to the newest episode featuring our titanic Time Lord. Back with a complete new face. I’ll talk more about this in a second.

So, the rest of the evening after the episode ambled on in a sociable manner with us eventually watching the Dead Gentleman production of “Dark Dungeons”. Another recommendation if you are a D&D geek like me and haven’t seen this yet. Watch it. Also find the original comic that is based on.
Yep, apparently Dungeons and Dragons is an entrance way to occult orgies, drugs and satan worship. The most I ever got off my players was doritos.

Sunday was LARP time. I pulled on my leather pants and this was where I got the pleasant shock of the good work my diet has done so far. I needed a belt to hold them up. I was suitably impressed with myself over this.

Anyhow, the day was spent up at Chopwell woods in an energetic manner with a spear and dreadlocks wig. The spear was fun. More money needs to be spent on a better wig as the phys-rep does not cut it under proper light conditions. Fortunately one of my friends, Hayley, has said that she’s got a real hair one she made for a fest a few years ago that I can buy from her so that will hopefully look a lot better.

Sunday evening was spent playing Guild Wars 2. Thus the weekend was completely in a full and fun manner. I felt very good about the way the whole thing had gone. It was genuine fun from start to finish and I did feel less stressed on sunday evening then I had on friday morning. This is good.

But that’s not why you’ve bothered to read this far, is it? Oh no. Here’s the question? What did I think of the new Doctor Who episode?

I think the best description I can give is to go back to the Deadly Assassin. Both awesome and hilariously bad at the same time. Let’s just bullet point the major issues shall we?

1: Peter Capaldi. I like him as the Doctor. I think he’s going to be good and he gets a few good one-liners in this episode. From his discovery of being scottish to the question as to his possible murder of the cyborg at the end (he totally pushed him), you can see the effort that has been made to distinguishing this regeneration from the one that has gone on before. He’s not quipping or making jokes directly, the humour stems from his confusion. Certainly he steals the show in every scene he is in. However, this brings us on to our first problem as sometimes he’s not on set and this leads on directly to….

2: The plot. Oh fucking god, the plot. It’s like Moffat had three great ideas and smushed them together into one fucking mess. Let’s just work out what actually happened in chronological order shall we.
Some time in the future, a space ship called the Marie Antoinette developed a fault. It is sent back in time to the pre-historic era and crashes in what will eventually be victorian London. The robots start cannibalising the local animal life to maintain their parts as and when they break down. They then keep doing that. Until Victorian London. When they suddenly decide to tan a lot of the people and build a hot air balloon out of their skin just in time for the Doctor to stop them. The Doctor turns up in a Dinosaur which has swallowed the TARDIS, goes to bed, gets up, talks to the dinosaur which then gets vaporised. The Doctor gives chase to the person who did it by jumping in the Thames but loses the trail and gains a coat. He reads a newspaper which leads him to lunch with Clara where the robots spring their evil trap of turning restaurant patrons into parts for their cyborg ship crew. Several “almost escape” scenes later and the Doctor confronts the main unit of the robots and persuades him to leave the human skin blimp by the door. Robot dies. Other robots shut down. Clara and Doctor Leave. Robot wakes up in heaven with woman who claims to be the Doctors girlfriend. Probably the same woman who introduced the Doctor to Clara in the first place.

Now, when Capaldi is in front of the camera it’s very easy to ignore these things. When he isn’t your mind comes down of it’s geek cocaine and you do feel the mental gears crunching as you try and process the insanity of the story arc.

3: What is it with that Dinosaur? It’s completely unnecessary except for the Doctor to have something to get angry about. Once again, I think Moffat had a great idea for a plot where a dinosaur is rampaging in london and bailed on it but kept the dinosaur as they’d already written it into the budget.

4: Space Amnesia. Now some of you will write this off as nit-picking but I just want to put it in case it’s Moffat pulling a trick so I can say I spotted this. In this episode there’s a lot of examples of the Doctor having forgotten things. He doesn’t know where he’s seen the face he’s wearing before (reference back to the fact Capaldi was in Doctor Who in the episode “The Fires of Pompei”. He also doesn’t remember where he’s seen the robots stealing body parts before (reference to another Tennant Episode “The Girl in the Fireplace”. Now, these could just be throw away lines designed for us to have a little geek out over but this isn’t the first time Moffat has done this. In fact, the Doctor has been forgetting stuff since Moffat took over the job of head writer. Little things normally that make him look quirky and eccentric but just think about it. In the Christmas episode, “A Christmas Carol” Kasran Sardick tells the Doctor that the controls to his weather machine are isomorphic, to the which the Doctor replies “There’s no such thing”. The Doctor should know about isomorphic controls. The Masters screwdriver had them, even the TARDIS at one point.
The Doctor also has forgotten how to fly the TARDIS properly. He can’t remember how to turn on the cloaking technology, needing River to do it for him. It’s possible he did know and was just testing her but it seems a little odd.
Towards the end of his life in the Time of the Doctor, he forgets who Barnable is.
The Moment in “Day of the Doctor” refers to him as “the man who forgets”.
Just after his regeneration Peter Capaldi asks Clara “Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?” implying he has forgotten.

Now, I’m just saying that this might be a build up to something or it might be just some little moments. I quite like them. It’s an interesting touch. But if it turns out to be plot-centric, I fucking called it.

This brings us on to the big one though.

5: The relationship between Clara and the Doctor post regeneration.

I’m not going to lie. This, to me, was just awful. The problem is that the entire episode felt like Moffat was using Clara as a method to talk to us, the viewer directly. The message was the same one you heard over and over again in that episode. The Doctor was already old. Don’t hate the Doctor because he looks old. He’s still the same Doctor. Again and again. Hell, they even have Matt Smith come back in a cameo to physically say it!
Now, it’s obvious who the target is for this message. Since Doctor Who became popular again in 2005 the Doctors have been getting younger and more suave and the show has attracted a certain female following who have romanticised it a little. Not saying that’s wrong, if that’s the joy they get from the show then fine. They are, however, almost universally the group of people who said “Capaldi is too old to play the Doctor”. They’re who Moffat is speaking to.
Problem is he’s using Clara to do this and it doesn’t work for several reasons.
Reason one. Why would Clara have a problem with the Doctor changing? She’s seen all of his regenerations as aspects of herself and she’s personally met Tennant and Hurt in Day of the Doctor. In addition to the she’s seen Matt Smith become old and frail in Time of the Doctor. To go from being such a supportive character to such a contrary one is grating.
Reason two. It’s referenced that the problem is that she fancied Matt Smith in this episode. That’s only ever been referred to once before in the Time of the Doctor episode when she’s in the truth field and said “I ran away with a man from outer space because I really fancy him”.
Reason three. They resolve this about four times. Clara is upset the Doctor has changed. Clara confronts Vashta and it’s resolved. Clara is upset the Doctor has changed. Clara confides in Jenny and it’s resolved. Clara is upset the Doctor has changed. Clara confronts the Doctor and it’s resolved. Clara is upset the Doctor has changed. The Doctor asks her to stay with him and she says no and walks out only to get the phone call from Matt Smith and change her mind. HOW FRAKKING FICKLE IS THIS GIRL!

It’s just painful. It’s obvious that Moffat is trying to get away from the romantic relationship idea and that’s fine but he makes it so painfully obvious that he’s drilling the point home again and again. You don’t need to say these things. You show them across the course of the episode as a developmental change in the relationship between the two not in a series of set piece arguments pointing out the same tag line again and again.

Oh, and as and extension to that, doesn’t it just say everything that Clara says that if anyone could see past the Doctor looking old now it’s her but when Straxx scans her sub-concious it’s full of muscular young men? If Moffat was trying to make us like this character more he has certainly gone the wrong direction for it.

Now I don’t hate Clara. I just always found her a little bland. She was most interesting in Asylum of the Daleks and when she kept dying I kind of hoped it was going to be a reoccurring theme. The Doctor searching through time for one version of her he can save. I wasn’t upset with the eventual resolution but since then she hasn’t really lived up to the title of being the “impossible girl” except when she is impossibly annoying.

So when the blame for all of this gets humped on her it seems wrong. Especially as NO-ONE else in the episode had that problem. Vastra was fine with the Doctors regeneration as was Jenny and Strax and even the Doctor himself. The closest he gets to worrying is to wonder where the frowns come from (incidentally I loved that scene. “like I’m trying to leave myself a message”. Really want to see where they go with that). Clara is the one who arguably knows the Doctor best. Certainly the one who has spent the most time with him. Yet she is the one who acts in this way.

As I say, it seems obvious and forced and it drove me nutty all through the episode.

6: This final one is a bit of a nit-pick but did Doctor Who forget that it’s a kids show? Really? I mean at one point there’s a hot air balloon out of the sewn together skin of all the dismembered people the robots captured. That’s a little dark. There is, however, a far worse one. Is it just me or is the relationship between Vastra and Jenny getting quite weird. Lesbian. Fine. In love with a lizard. Ok. But they’re starting to develop a sub-dom relationship of epic proportions. They make mention that Jenny has to act as Vastras servant in public, which Jenny counters about it being odd that she’s still pouring the tea in private. At which point Vastra pretty much just tells her to shut up. When Jenny applauds Claras speech, Vastra silences her with a glance. Yet Jenny seems grateful to her “mistress”. Now I’m not against the idea of having an alternative relationship couple on the show (defining “alternative” as the sub-dom thing, not the lesbian thing) but once again they seem to be playing this up for laughs on the show. Is this meant to be funny. If Vastra pulls out the riding crop and gives Jenny a quick one across the rump to remind her of her place are we going to have seven year olds rolling in the aisle.
It just seems to have taken an odd turn about a side line story about an alien and a human who are in love to have become this strange romance which is starting to take on tinges of “50 shades of grey”.

Ok, sound it sounds like I’ve been very down on this episode which I’m sorry about. Truthfully it’s not even the worst Doctor Who episode I’ve ever seen. Not by a long shot. It’s certainly no “fear her” or that god damn awful one with the absorbaloff. Here’s the thing though. It’s a Moffat episode. He’s the head writer and we’ve been waiting on this episode for eight months. It should have been perfect and it just wasn’t. This is the guy who’s given us “Don’t Blink”. The writer responsible for “Silence in the Library”; “The Eleventh Hour”; “Asylum of the Daleks”; “Day of the Doctor”; “Time of the Doctor” and countless more. Who also co-wrote Sherlock. It’s safe to say that he’s a remarkably talented man and this is not an example of his best work.

So, yeah. In conclusion I’m glad to have the Doctor back. I’m glad to have Capaldi playing him and I’m looking forward to the series but this episode was not the best launch they could have had for it. Mainly due to a convoluted and ridiculous plot and the repeated hammering home of the message “It’s ok, he’s still the same Doctor”.

Quick news flash for you. We already know that.

till next time gang.
Ramblerambleramble.