Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 9: Squeaky Bum Time.

DOCTOR WHO

"Cold Blood”

29/05/2010

BBC One

Whilst previous Who two-parters tended to start out well, or at least not totally crap (or in "The Time of Angels'" case just plain crap), they tend to then flop badly in the next episode. (Or get really crap in "Flesh & Stone".)

"Cold Blood", the second episode in Series 5's re-launch of the Silurians, bucks this trend by following a shit episode with an average episode. Yes, it's that impressive.

The good parts are, your intrepid (Wh)Ovine can report, surprisingly many. The character interactions are well written and performed, and the 'are we any better?' debate (wherein the viewer is asked to ponder whether humans are the worst monsters) is effectively handled too. Here both sides of the argument are put across, but the final word, care of the Doctor, leaves no doubt on the real message. Humanity has to learn to be a better species. Throw in some subtle digs at Malthusianism and racism and you have a surprisingly moral episode, for even if the present sees an opportunity wasted, a better future is predicted in a blatant no-tension-really sort of way.

Of course, there's a lot here that is a wasted opportunity. Silurian Elder Eldane (as played by Stephen 'Marvin The Android' Moore) is brought in clumsily and not enough is made of him. Likewise with last episode's vivisector Malokeh (Richard Hope), whose Miyazaki-style change of heart is a bit disjointed and his character wasted. Celeb guest star Meera Syal has very little to do that Amy Pond couldn't have done on her own, and while Neve McIntosh's warrior Silurian Alaya affects a Iago-worthy forked tongue and a rather scary death wish, her sister (also played by McIntosh) is simply a vengeance-crazed cardboard cut-out.

And no, it isn't a patch on 'Doctor Who & The Silurians'. Overall, it lacks consistency and is badly paced, even rushed. The subtleties of the original are 40 years' away from the sledgehammer approach of today and the introduction of Amy's Crack (fnarr!) is equally as heavy handed and blatant. It took six 30-minute episodes to tell a story that unfolded organically in 1970. 40 years later, it takes two hyperactive toddler episodes at 45 minutes each to just churn out a slapdash narrative. Let's hear it for progress.

Matt Smith does of course make some progress of his own in this one, beginning to ease into the role, even though he's still talking like Who X, and doesn't actually do very much again. Arthur Darvill's Rory remains hapless yet also displays a dignified and heroic side that's well performed. And while he snuffs it and then gets erased from history (as usual with Nu Who, it's the Doc's fault), you just know he's not gone for good - the character just works so well and has certainly earned his place on the TARDIS. Amy Pond/Karen Gillan? Eek. But she does show some depth FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER when her character loses Rory, then forgets him with equal poignance after he's been rubbed out. (It's that naughty Crack of hers again, I tell you.)

It could have been better, but avoided being worse. That's pretty good going by this series' standards.

WHOPOINTS 6

Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 8: Hungry A**e.

DOCTOR WHO
‘The Hungry Earth”
22/05/2010
BBC One

"Doctor Who & The Silurians" is one of the classics of the old series, an epic Shakespearean tragedy where the real monster is not in the form of the Silurians themselves - ancient subterranean reptile men from Earth's past - but hubris, pride, stupidity, fear and bigotry, of which all sides, the Doctor and the Brigadier included, are guilty.

Forty years later, and the Silurian comeback "The Hungry Earth", part one of a two part serial, has quite a task on its hands to follow up on that one. So it doesn't bother. Instead it just reuses plot ideas from "...Silurians" and loads of other Old Who stories. Drilling into something awful? Inferno. A church and a forcefield? The Daemons. Welsh setting with loveable boyos in peril? The Green Death. The only way they could have made it any more derivative was if they caught Liz Shaw in the Tardis reversing the polarity with a giant maggot.

The ethical dilemma at the heart of "...Silurians", as to whether we are any better than them or perhaps worse, has meanwhile been buggered up. This time, to spare you the tedious details, it is hamfistedly executed, with the inevitable fuck-up that makes us all ashamed to be human slotted in for next week but telegraphed so loudly you can pretty much guess how it will turn out.

The characters are pretty cardboard too, with the Doctor and Rory scripted to operate as if on autopilot, right down to the already overused 'HOW COULD YOU NOT SAVE HIM/HER?' routine. Speaking of clichés, the episode also maintains the 'Doctor Is Christ/Doctor Is A Wanker' binary opposition, with no nuance or subtlety in-between. The Doctor we saw in "...Silurians" was a much more well realised Time Lord.

Amy Pond remains fucking annoying, as per usual, and the episode seems to toy with the viewer when it seems she's going to get dissected next week. (She won't of course.) But her growing lack of interest in what the Doctor does suggest some character development, if not all that much.

The worst character is the boy, whose Dad gets suctioned down into the bowels of the earth at the start of the episode. Now, please do not see that as a slur on the young actor playing him. It's just that there's something incredibly depressing about the underlying notion of a character whose only real purpose is to be precocious, then run off and get in trouble and, to top it all off, suffer from a disability-du-jour, which in this case is dyslexia. Britain, if you really want to help dyslexics, don't patronise them with token sufferers being bullshitted by Matt Smith. Actually invest in their education, stop discriminating against them and actually put some effort in assisting them in their day to day lives. But of course, this is a mainstream TV show made in Britain c. 2010 we're talking about here, so the feel-bad-but-in-reality-do-fuck-all consensus rules supreme.

Did I mention that the New Model Silurians are shite? They don't look like the old Silurians, and instead go for a generic reptilian humanoid look of the sort that Star Trek at its least imaginative might use. The makeup didn't look like a reptilian humanoid so much as an actress in reptilian makeup, which might sound obvious, but there is a clear difference between the two, in the same way that a bloke in a cheap made-in-China gorilla suit doesn't look like Chewbacca.

Throw in a plot full of holes and inconsistencies, and which often just marks time until the second episode's preamble is set up, and then mix firmly with infantile, flat characterisation. Voila! You have this episode. Fittingly, it was written by Christopher Chibnall, responsible for some of the worst Torchwood episodes ever (and that's saying something). Perhaps he took Stephen Moffat at his word and wrote the script for 11-year-olds, but that rather insults 11-year-olds, doesn't it? Last week's episode, 'Amy's Choice', was indeed a fluke, because we are back to Business As Usual: Poor scripts and shallow narratives, produced and performed in a slapdash and inconsequential way.

WHOPOINTS 4

Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 7: Dreaming of the Valeyard.

DOCTOR WHO
‘Amy's Choice’
15/05/2010
BBC One

In the words of the Doctor's future wife, SPOILERS!!!

Now, with that formality out of the way, let's dwell on the first truly great episode of this series. 'Amy's Choice' is simply far more mature, believable and nuanced than any of the episodes that have gone before it, and probably every episode that will follow. The dialogue is excellent and the script is competent and well thought out. The story line is compelling and the pacing is wonderful. What more could you ask for? Well, maybe a plot that’s not akin to The Mind Robber, but you can’t have it all one supposes – nigh-on fifty-years worth of Who will led to some repetition after all.

The plot, for those who want it over and done with, is this: Via some psychic contamination, the Doctor's hate, guilt, self-loathing and sadism manifests itself as the 'Dream Lord' who puts the Doc, Rory and Amy through a literal nightmare (or three), forcing them to make some serious choices...

...This is ingenious simply because it allows the characters to either develop or reveal hitherto hidden depths. Amy learns she really loves Rory, while Rory proves how much he loves the deranged ginger tart in turn. The Doctor meanwhile is revealed as both solution, villain and matchmaker, using the experience to lead Amy away from him and choose Rory. In fact, it could be read as the Doctor using the experience all along to teach Amy that lesson, that one day the Doctor will have to leave her, and Rory is what she really wants. Rory meanwhile leaves behind his ideal, sterile 'reality' for the imperfect but more human and genuine reality that awaits him. He learns that having a house, a child on the way and a job as a country doctor isn't enough - he needs the truth more, his self-indulgent ponytail cut off as a gesture of adulthood.

This is of course probably the most brutal episode in years. There's at least two suicides, killer aliens hiding in the bodies of old people murdering children and postmen in equal measure, betrayal and barely repressed bitterness, a pregnancy that never comes to be, bereavement, major existential crises and the Doctor finally becoming what the new series has always seemed to want him to be: a villain, a monster and a dire foe.

This does of course fit in with one of Nu Who's worst traits, its deranged obsession with diminishing the Doctor and making him look like a total wanker. (Sort of a Reverse Spike, for all the Buffy fans that Nu Who in part is rather keen to woo.) This is so 1980s, when you think about it, but 'somewho' it all seems rather lame, an adolescent iconoclasm in an age where po-mo is dead and we really do need to pick sides again.

But that's the only quibble. This same conceit is inspired in many other ways - the 'Dream Lord', played with tangible malice and cruelty by Toby Jones, is both the conscience and the Greek chorus of the story, haunting the Doctor up to and including the last frame. You may care to watch the episode twice to see all the clues that reveal who he really is. It also puts the Doctor in a new light, no longer falling in love with his assistant but trying to save her from that fate and do the 'right thing'. (Everyone chooses to in this one, which may or may not be redemption, or simply a delay of the inevitable.) And yet, it is probably not the last time we will see the Dream Lord: He echoes the Doctor's future evil regeneration, the Valeyard (from the Colin Baker era, for all the completists out there), and may be seen as his warm-up. It isn't too much like Fight Club - just in case you're wondering.

So maybe they should just give in, stop trying to make the Doctor a hero and just make him a monster for a series or two, or at least make him amoral again, like William Hartnell's Doctor. But that might blow the gaff - after all, he's still meant to be at least officially a 'hero', albeit one that has shit hurled at him non-stop, and yet this episode suggests there's much to be explored if they actually had the balls to take it as far as it can go. They won't of course, but 'Amy's Choice' shows how it could be.

Matt Smith is also getting better, slowly but surely moulding his Doctor into something that's not entirely Tennant, but with much work left to do. Arthur Darvill's slightly beleaguered Rory really shines this time, his journey every bit as taught and troubled as the Doctor, whilst the non-stop low-level love/hate between the two is wonderful. Shockingly, Amy Pond (or Karen Gillan as her parents call her) is bearable here too, mainly because the script reins in her worst traits and forces her to evolve as a character too. 'So what is the point of you then?' she spits, as the Doctor reveals to her what we all know but which she was too immature to accept: the Doctor can't always save the day, and only a child can't agree with that fact. A child like Amy.

And yet the story is ultimately about love. Rory and Amy realise how much they love each other, and the Doctor reveals how much he loves them both too. But it's not a romantic love, but the kinf that is necessary if sometimes monstrous, leering back at the Doctor on the reflective surface of his Tardis console, not gone but simply waiting.

WHOPOINTS 8.5

Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 6: Venetian Vampires Without Bite.

DOCTOR WHO
‘Vampires In Venice’
08/05/2010
BBC One

One truth often overlooked about Doctor Who is that the men are better than the women. No, that's not sexism. What I mean is that the male companions always seem more interesting and fleshed out than most of the female companions as a rule, the only exceptions being Liz (Who III), Leela & Romana (Who IV) and Ace (Who VII) who instead were women who were trying or were able to be part of what was still a men's world, and so had much more going on under the surface.

But the male companions still stand out, because the dynamic was different. With female companions, it was often a fatherly relationship with the Doctor, as opposed to today's non-stop Electra Complex love affairs. But with the men, it was often more complicated and dynamic, the glorious spectacle of two or more difficult blokes travelling through time and space and getting on each other's tits.

Top of the pile has to be Jamie, whose relationship with Who II swung from father-and-son to pissed off married couple to squabbling children, often all in the same scene. Or the Brigadier, whose relationship with the Doc was that of a brother who'd lay his life down for the other and vice versa. Of course it was also the sort of brotherly relationship where they just couldn't fucking stand each other, the frustrated spite of the Doctor and the barely suppressed hurt of the Brig masterfully played out by Pertwee, Baker and Courtney. Or poor put-upon Sergeant Benton, who took all the flak from those angry posh gits with a very British stoicism. The star turn that was Harry Reid. Or the looming Shakespearean Tragedy that was Adric. Going back to the Hartnell days, there was Ian, serving as the angry conscience for what was then an essentially amoral Doctor, and Steven, through which the show began to properly explore the implications and ironies of the Doctor in a way today's angstfests can't even begin to ape.

Even latter day male Who companions are more interesting than the Roses and the Amys. Poor old Mickey, shafted by his woman and overshadowed by a transdimensional prima donna, his reconciliation with the latter coming at the cost of the former who had long since cast him aside. Or Captain Jack, who might have been a poster boy for shagging everything that moves and which can consent, but was still told off and bossed around by the Doctor like a father, for all Jack's romantic overtures. Or Who X's last companion, Wilf, who had the deepest and most intense bonds with the Doc, despite the brief time they spent together.

This brings us neatly onto Rory, whose masculinity is as stiff as lettuce and whose macho credentials are less pronounced than his nursing degree. He's also Amy Pond's great unintended, even forced to dress up as her 'Raggedy Doctor' as the love of his life went ever more loopy. As mentioned in my interview of "The Eleventh Hour", Arthur Darvill brings a real wounded pathos to his poor sod character, right down to the timid, vulnerable body language. And in 'Vampires of Venice', last night's episode, we finally get to see him in action, so to speak.

In this one, the Doc - still reeling after Amy tried to have her wicked way with him on the night before her wedding - decides that only a romantic weekend in 16th Century Venice with Rory will save their marriage before it's even started. Of course, shit magnet that he (or the TARDIS) is, the Doctor beams them in to the middle of an infestation of vampires, or rather, Saturnynians: Blood-drinking fish monsters with mind-camouflage. I'm not making this shit up, you know.

So it's a bit of a shame that this episode was plainly written by Toby 'Being Human' Whithouse for Who X, Rose and Mickey, then dusted off and rewritten for this series. Apart from all the Tennantisms, Amy says and does a lot of Rose Tyler things (i.e., be a brave, gormless arsehole) and Rory is left doing what Mickey would have otherwise done (i.e., mope around a lot and shout at the Doctor.)

Meanwhile, the way Doc XI and Amy Pond jump up and down with joy or look excited whenever something bad happens is actually an old trope from the Doc X/Rose days, where they treated it all like a big laugh despite all the bloodletting. This was how the RTD era tried to justify punishing them for having too good a time (yes, he said this), which is a bit odd when you consider that they came across less as ghouls and more like how the audience itself was feeling. RTD himself seemed to hate the Doctor and delighted in making him miserable, which of course just kept getting in the way of the storytelling.

But when Matt Smith and Karen Gillan do it, the effect is more like two actors trying to play someone else, namely David Tennant and Billy Piper. Or perhaps two happy but delusional mental patients living in a shared dreamworld with Rory the nurse taking them out for a supervised trip to a museum. NOW THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A PLOT TWIST

Poor old Rory, meanwhile, is reduced to saying Mickey's words, right down to the crybaby denunciation of the Doctor being a threat to everyone he knows, which is a bit like accusing the Fire Brigade of endangering lives every time it leaps into a burning building, or a surgeon being accused of being a potential mass-murderer because he works in a Casualty/ER ward. Isn't it the aliens and assorted baddies who were the killers and threats here, or did that get in the way of all the lazy RTD-era revisionism?

Things do get better as the episode develops though, not least because Whithouse's re-jigged script lets the team dynamic evolve away from its roots. Amy morphs from Who groupie to would-be menage a trois participant, the animus between Rory and the Doc giving way to an understated warmth and a very traditional love-hate relationship. Rory could be another classic male companion in the making here, if it wasn’t for the sinking feeling that they’re going to bugger it up like they always do.

Amy remains awful as usual, annoying and stupid in equal measure, and whereas last episode, you were rooting for the angels, now you're rooting for the vamps, who again fail miserably and let her live. On the other hand, it's not hard to cheer when the Doctor finally gives her a patriarchal bitch-slapping and tells her to fuck off back to the TARDIS. Not that she listens, of course. Oh nooooooo...

The story itself is rather bland. 'Venice', or rather Trogir in Croatia where this episode is filmed, is shot in a lifeless and sterile way, more a film set than a convincing setting, whilst the baddies' fortress is far too well-lit and tidy to bestow any real menace. In the end, it's all so clean and barren that you don't actually care what happens. There is no humanity here, beyond the three leads.

The vampire-fish are a wasted opportunity too. Less Lovecraftian Deep Ones and more crap CGI newts, their menace is badly handled and their human forms seem more like really bad Hammer depictions than the Gothic Horrors they should be. The faintly oedipal relationship between the Saturnynian Queen and her son is bodged too, neither character having much depth. And while the Queen's justifications for her plot to sink Venice below the waves are aimed at giving her a motivation, they only really make her sound like a delusional relativist loon.

Throw in a sub-plot with an expendable Venetian father and his equally expendable daughter (both of whom have even less personality than the Saturnynes), even more plot holes and ideas that are shamelessly and hamfistedly reused from other episodes and you have a bit of a disappointment. It's doubly disappointing coming from Toby Whithouse, who I - as a Being Human obsessive - can honestly say knows how to write when he can be arsed to. (Three words: REAL HUSTLE and HERRICK.)

Perhaps he needs a whole series to play with instead of just one episode? Whithouse does seem to do best when he has lots of episodes to play with, and fittingly it's the ongoing relationship between the Doc, Amy and Rory that's got the most life in it. In that sense it parallels Being Human - both are about two messed up, haunted men and one crazed woman, though Annie the Ghost is more 'needy' and Amy the Scots Racist is more 'hungry', so to speak.

Yet it works for the same reasons, the human drama giving some meaning that the SFX and expensive location doesn't. And who could dare slag off the glorious opening scene, where the Doctor emerges from a cake in place of a diabetic stripper and proceeds to bugger up Rory's stag night beyond all recognition? It's better to think what this episode could have been, then, than what it actually amounted to.

WHOPOINTS 6

Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 5: Stone Angels Come To Bad End.

DOCTOR WHO
'The Time of Angels'
01/05/2010
BBC One

So, the last time we were here, the Doc, his future wife, his awful assistant and a fair few expendable church squaddies were going to get croaked by weeping angels... But then the Doctor did something crap and out of character (as in, use a gun). One Deus et Machina later and we find ourselves at Part Two, "Flesh and Bone"...

But first the opening titles, where - through the miracle of really bad CGI - the TARDIS churns through the time vortex. It really does look like a large blue turd flowing down the alimentary canal of an enormous suck-beast. The music's cack too.

As for the episode itself, it's more filler than thriller. It ties up of loose ends and preludes for the rest of this series' big story arc, with little thought given to the story beyond some new Moffat gimmicks, like pissing about with gravity or cyborg trees or oblivion through time-crack.

As for the cast, it is not a pretty sight. Riversong is less of a character here and more someone for the Doctor to shout at. Though at least Alex Kingston does her best with expressions and gestures where the decent dialogue is not forthcoming. The big revelation about her is - you guessed it - yet more build-up for the 'season finale' (Joss Whedon: you are a cock) and for the most part, she's underused and squandered.

The Doctor, or Matt Smith, is still regenerating, in the sense that he and the audience and indeed the scriptwriter haven't worked out if he's David Tennant, a new Doctor altogether or something that's getting bodged until they finally work out what to do with Who XI. Sometimes he thrashes about and yet shows signs of becoming of his own man or time lord or whatever. Other times, he just looks burdened, though the way he flirts with his future bride in a sort of sleazy but naff fashion suggests a dash of comic ability that echoes Troughton/Who II.

Meanwhile, Amy Pond still needs a slap. She is obnoxious, stupid, argumentative and unsympathetic to the point that you're rooting for Team Angel pretty much from the start. The character is fundamentally unlike-able, which is quite a departure from the traditional DW formula of companions who, you know, the audience is supposed to like. We also discover she's a potential Time Lord rapist who's willing to cheat on her man the night before their wedding. What a shit. But moreover, what an awful supporting character, seeing that she is so utterly unsympathetic.

As for the 'clerics' (which, if you don't remember, are the 51st Century church gone militant), their role is simply to die or otherwise get rubbed out. At least you mourned the marines in Aliens, of which this two-parter is ever so slightly indebted to, because there was something to mourn in the first place. But when the clerics' only differentiating trait is that they have funny ecclesiastical names, it seems shoddy writing is to blame.

The only cleric with a personality is Father Octavian. But it's a sort of passive aggressive sulk concluded with a highly improbable reconciliation between he and the Doctor just before Octavian gets his neck snapped by an angel. No disrespect here for Iain Glen, who does as well as most seasoned actors could with such shit characterisation and script. The blame falls squarely on the Moff's shoulders, an inadvertent tribute to those Old Who episodes where the Brigadier was portrayed as a total wanker and Nicholas Courtney just had to swallow it like his own vomit. In that sense, like the Father, Glen can sleep well in his bed at night: he was only following orders.

The episode overall, then, is a whimper. Even the main 'standout sequence' where a shut-eyed Amy has to navigate a forest full of angels is a wasted opportunity – it ends abruptly and has no real purpose. Perhaps Lawrence Miles is right after all - Nu Who is just a juxtaposition of set piece events linked by a lame script. But still - surely they wouldn't be so cynical about it? Well, actually they would, but at least some of the Old Who magic is there: note how one wall bends as the Doc leans on it? Yes, we're back in the era of wobbly sets! Rejoice!

WHOPOINTS 4