Life and the Who Review in Rambling sane thoughts of the terminally me

So, we’ve now had Halloween and Bonfire night. Hope yours went well.

For me, I was up in Edinburgh seeing one of my closest friends Becky. She has played the Calliach at the Samhain festival in Edinburgh this year. Given that she’s off to Canada for a year on the 25th it was pretty much my last chance to see the girl I have given more nick names to then any of my other friends ever.

It was great fun but I will admit to it exhausting me. I set off at 8am to get to Edinburgh and I didn’t get to sleep until 8am the next morning. I walked up Arthurs seat and back again; ambled around the city centre and then went to watch Beckys procession. There was a lot of drums and fire. These are two things I like.

After the show (which was fantastic, if you want to see photos I recommend checking out the Beltane page on facebook. Look, a link! ) I got taken to an After-party in the worlds smallest Nightclub.

Now, I know hippies have slightly more lax rules on the showing of flesh but I must I saw more tits that evening than an entire years worth of the internet. Don’t get me wrong, the club was very hot and cramped but still… It was like “Well, I’m in the door, time to get my breasts out”. The guys were no less inhibited. There was one chap there who was wearing a cod piece. That’s it.

Fortunately, I’m not the sort of person to get upset when a semi naked woman covered in body paint rubs up against me so it was a pretty fun night. I do feel sorry that I managed to interrupt two people having sex in the bathroom. I hope I didn’t spoil their fun too much.

We got kicked out of the club at 3:30 am and then invited back to an After-After-Party at a guy called “Spike”s house. Whiskey was consumed and after watching the sun rise we tottered off back to Beckys.

I slept through till mid day and then bought bacon sarnies for everyone and then Beck’s and I went out to feed the ducks in her local park. This complete, I bid one of my two closest friends a fond “adieu” and then drove back home just in time to catch Doctor Who.

So that was fun.

What did I think of Doctor Who, you ask?

I really enjoyed the episode. As a stand alone episode I’d say it was one of the best so far. Was it enough to save the season? No. It did, however give me hopes for where they’re going next.

I’m not actually going to go into the plot of this episode because it really is worth watching for some of the best acting of the season and because of the plot development. I will say that some of the theories I’ve posited throughout the season were proved right and others were proved wrong. Was I correct about someone being in the Doctors head and mucking it around? No. However, they do finally get it right with this episode and whilst I’m not going to forgive some of the rubbish they’ve thrown out this season it does lend context to some of it and I shall make concessions for that.

Regular readers will know that I have one major problem with this season above all others and that is that the Doctor is portrayed as a dick. Not a difficult person; not someone who has to make tough choices but an actually nasty piece of work. Moreso the fact that they reset this attitude every episode annoys me immensely.

This episode is the first time in the season where I feel they’ve pitched his attitude perfectly and, even better, he explains that attitude. I just feel if he’d explained it back in episode two we would have forgiven a lot more of his attitude.

Basically, the rationale is that the Doctor does care about humanity and about Clara. There’s actually a very touching scene where Clara fails the Doctor, utterly, and you get to see him forgive her. This act of forgiveness is really the starting point for him for the episode.

He follows up by telling her the he basically needs her to be on her A-game. That she needs to be able to think, clearly and analytically and that’s what he keeps doing. Applying this retroactively you can actually see several instances where the Doctor represses a more caring element of himself because he believes he needs to keep himself on his A-game. Fair enough. Why reveal this now?

I think if this episode had been the second or third of the season it would have set up alot of stuff that we could have then read into about the Doctor and it would have made it feel less like a “reset” at the start of each episode and more like he was almost repressing that part of himself. Suffering through being cold and aloof because pretending not to care is the only way he can cope with living on the hard edge of the universe and often being alone in being the only man who can save it. As it was we only see this element of the Doctor portrayed now.

The Doctors issue with physical intimacy continues. There’s a kissing scene and it is genuinely amusing watching the Doctor go almost catatonic when his physical space in invaded in this way. The line “Is it over?” delivered to Clara is wonderful and emphasises what the Doctor has established previously about not being a huggy person any more.

The reversion to grumpy old man in this episode is tempered throughout by excellent delivery of some well written lines and it’s this that really saves the character of the Doctor. You feel like you understand him more at the end of the episode than you do at the beginning. I like that. That’s what character development is meant to be like and it’s the character development we’ve being crying out for all season.

I will say that the plot twist reveals are pretty obvious. No-one will be surprised at who Missi turns out to be. The bad guys were pretty obvious though the reveal for them is handled nicely. The most elusive reveal is what “The Promised Land” turns out to be and I’m very glad they handled it in the way they did. It ties into technology we already know exists in the Whoniverse and builds on that in a believable way without making it simply into a plot machina.

Overall, a good episode and I am looking forward to the second part which, if rumours are to be believed, is going to be even better.