DOCTOR WHO 6.09 - Night Terrors

Scanners indicate an absence of spoilers

Now Mr Mark Gatiss surely need no introduction to followers of the TARDIS, as he wrote The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot's Lantern and last year's Victory of the Daleks, was the eponymous star of The Lazarus Experiment, and author is the author of several Doctor Who novels and audio plays. And indeed, he's no stranger to fans of cult television in general, as one quarter of the League of Gentlemen, co-star and co-creator of Sherlock, and numerous roles in the likes of Spaced, The Quatermass Experiment and Nighty Night.

And after the Daleks meet war movie homage of the last series, he's back on spooky ground! And Mr Gatiss does scary rather well, as he demonstrated with the eerie mini series Crooked House, which pleasingly continued the BBC tradition of televising ghost stories at Christmas. And I am sure I am not alone in being a bit creeped out by the pictures of the strange doll-like figures before the episode had even aired.

Now ultimately, how effective this episode will be for you, depends on how you feel about creepy old dolls.
Personally I'm not a fan after being traumatised at a young age on hearing a version of this old chiller. Hence I found there were eerie moments aplenty in this episode. Plus the haunting sound of old fashioned songs sung by child voices also never fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.

However the actual story is fairly simple and straight-forward, looking almost basic after last week's plot explosions. However this is a story all about the atmosphere and emotions, and an uncluttered narrative full of spookiness and dark ambiance was a refreshing change of pace after the high octane madness of Let's Kill Hitler. Indeed, even if the dolls and decaying Victoriana don't push your fear buttons, you may well still be pleased with this little tale for it has a traditional beginning, middle and end format with none of that  time-wimey mucking about.

Also it was also refreshing to see a story set on present day Earth, as this is the first time we've been back since The Lodger last series! And the fact that it seemed a novel location only goes to show how well the Moffat tenure has moved the Doctor back to exploring space and time after the earthbound feel of the Davies years. Additionally however, what Night Terrors does rather well is to make the familiar unsettling. It's full of well observed little touches that may well transport you back to the days when bed time was an unwelcome prospect as you knew that as soon as the light went out, the toys in your bedroom would cast bogeyman-shaped shadows on the walls...

And it's good to see the Doctor tackling a relatively small scale local threat for a change. We don't need mind bending paradoxes and the universe blowing up every week. Indeed for those types of tales to work, we need the smaller scale stories in between. Hence with regards the scope of the tale and traditional storytelling, Night Terrors felt like a classic series tale in many respects, and that's not a bad thing at all.

 However it's not totally old school though as it does have the emotional warmth that the show again when it returned in 2005 too. However it's prime focus is still the story rather than tugging at the audience's heart-strings in a contrived fashion as the new version of the series has been wont to overdo at times. Also Night Terrors felt like it fitted it's running time perfectly - I didn't feel like this was a story that would benefit from being a two parter or felt overly rushed.

So all in all, quite a successful blend of the new and old, which is just as it should be...  Indeed, to invoke a shared childhood memory, this episode was like the perfect bowl of porridge. Not the stuff of banquets or haute cuisine, but at the same time, sometimes you know there's nothing more satisfying than porridge - when it's not too hot and not too cold, it's just right...

DOCTOR WHO 6.08 - Let's Kill Hitler Spoiler Zone

So then somewhat belatedly - it's been one of those weeks folks! - here's the Spoilers Zone for Let's Kill  Hitler! The spoiler free review can be found here

Shh! Spoilers sweetie!

Well, the first thing to address is probably that title Let's Kill Hitler... Now contrary to expectations, this wasn't an episode exploring the age old time travel questions as the moral implications of killing a young Adolf before his rise to power or the consequences of messing about with historical time lines. Indeed, this story is actually rather Fuhrer-lite, and on reflection this is probably a good thing. 

For while there's acres of decent potential material for stories here, Doctor Who perhaps isn't the right arena for them. Certainly it would be ideal for a Big Finish audio or the old Virgin/BBC novels, but on the box on a Saturday tea-time not so much. Being a family orientated show and having an eccentric and often funny lead character, it would be difficult to explore the material properly, doing justice to the moral complexities and the horrors of the Third Reich without either appearing to make light of the very serious historical events or being accused of getting too dark and intricate for the younger viewers. 

So then, I think Moffat chose wisely to keep Hitler in the cupboard, and instead delivering a tale which nicely touches on the concepts of using time travel to right historical wrongs but mainly is about a very different time criminal, River Song. It's very much her origin story and surprisingly Moffat actually gives us a ton of answers. In the course of the episode we learn who the Silence actually are, why River doesn't regenerate when she died in Forest of the Dead, who taught her to fly the TARDIS and what may be truth about a very old fan bugbear temporal grace. And there's more tidbits revealed too but we'll get to them later.

So then alot of reveals here, tying up a great many dangling threads, which should please all those fretting that Series  6 has been getting rather continuity heavy. Now the second half looks to be clear to build up to concluding the question of what really happens with the Doctor's apparent death at Lake Silencio. 

Of course, this being Doctor Who, a show whose format allows it tell many different sorts of stories in diverse tones, as always you're not going to please all of the people all of the time. For while some will applaud the batty cocktail of thrills, drama and comedy packed into Let's Kill Hitler, others will be left cold by the romping nature of the story. 

Now personally, I tend to think that new Who has tended to over-egg the comedy pudding, something that Moffat has largely reined in a bit. However, not always and this episode is one of those occasions, hence some will love it as a return to the over the top shennigans of the RTD era, and other loathe it for precisely the same reasons. 

And I must to confess to being slight conflicted on the matter myself. On one hand, if you're going to be a romp, you might as well really let rip and be outrageously daft as Let's Kill Hitler. For example, I loved the Teselecta which managed to be both a sly dig at the pompous moralising of some incarnations of Star Trek and also a homage to  The Numbskulls a comedy comic strip about a man who was piloted by the titular little fellas living in his head, appearing first in The Beezer and later The Beano. And quick-fire quippage from all the regular cast was comedy gold. All in all, if you're going over the top, do it in style!

Now largely Moffat managed to keeps the balance pitched so that the fun didn't detract from the drama and keep the plotting tight. However on the downside, there was a few instances where I felt the writing was so hurried that key plot points weren't explained enough. Now after a second watch, I'm convinced this isn't a case of Moffat taking a soiled leaf out of RTD's books and papering over plot holes and logical gaps with some big shiny spectacle. I think it's more a case of shoving so much into the episode, a couple of issues didn't quite get enough dialogue or screen-time to give them the correct dramatic weight. 

Firstly, I'm thinking specifically of the climax, where River decides to switch sides and/or break her Silence conditioning and the business of how she saves the Doctor. For although her change of heart was seeded, I don't think there was enough on screen for her change of heart to be properly convincing. Or alternatively, there was enough there but it was smothering by everything else the plot was doing. 

As for her giving up her remaining regenerations to save our hero, I can buy that in her post regenerative state she could channel the energy into the Doctor to heal him. However I honestly think we needed a line or two more to make this seem at little less than a deus ex machina. Just having River say 'I'm still regenerating you know' after she says 'I'm trying to help' would have made everything clearer and more credible.

Now all of this did have me wondering whether it was wise to try and cram so much into the episode. However I can forgive these missteps as on the whole the story was just so much fun and so bold in it's storytelling. Highly enjoyable but the niggles do mean it misses the classic adventure mark. 

But while we're on the subject of regeneration, there's been much speculation that just as River could shrug off the Nazi bullets, this is how Moffat will get the Doctor out of his death by Astronaut. Well, this theory doesn't actually work as this super healing only occurs AFTER a physical regeneration - it's a feature of the post regenerative cycle as The Christmas Invasion makes clear. Hence the Doctor would have had to transformed into his 12th body and the new incarnation be 'still cooking'  to be able to negate damage in this way.

Furthermore, the crew of the Teselecta state that the Doctor's death at Lake Silencio is a fixed point in time - it cannot be changed and hence would suggest that there can be no contradiction of the death as we've seen it. In last week's Radio Times feature, Mr Moffat himself writes in the introduction to the coming batch of adventures -

We all saw it happen - his final moments, the failed regeneration, the body in the burning boat. No hope, no escape, no excuses: we have seen the future and the Doctor is not going to survive it.

 And you what, I think he means it!

Now obviously the Doctor is going to survive by some means... but how? Is that chap we saw die the Ganger Doctor? Unlikely as he didn't dissolve to white fleshy goo. Is it the Teselecta? Also unlikely as despite its powers of mimicry, this time traversing Numbskull vechicle wasn't exactly adept at acting naturally - this robot had trouble not moving in a jerky mechanical fashion, so it's hard to believe it could replace the Doctor convincingly enough to fool Amy, Rory and River... Hang on, could it be the Teselecta piloted by the Ganger Doctor?!?

Well that's a possibility! However considering this series is the second chapter in a story line that started in Moffat's first season, and what next year's series is going to be is shrouded in mystery but certainly appears that it will be building up to the big 50th anniversary in 2013,  I suspect that there won't be a simple get-out to the Doctor's impending death.

So then we know that the Doctor will die as we've seen. And this episode tell us that River is indeed wanted for his murder. However is that why she's in prison in the Stormcage Facility? And is it her younger self in the space suit that rises from the Lake in Utah?

However as Moffat has shown in this outing, he's not adverse to giving out answers before the very end. And no doubt he's got more surprises still stuck up his capacious sleeves...

TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY - Episode 8 The End of the Road

456 Classification - Sensitive Information Revealed

So The End of the Road eh? An early finish for this fumbling series?... No such luck - we've another 2 hours of this nonsense to go yet! But Sweet Jesus, how I wish it was over, for the only miracle I can discern in this series of Torchwood is how no one turned round to old RTD and said 'Look Russell, this is shit!' 

I would apologise for such a bile-soaked opening but I'm reaching the end of the road too with bloody Torchwood, and no one can say I've not tried to be fair and even handed in my critiques. Indeed some would say, I've been overly generous in giving this series the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I even liked last week's episode, which apparently bored the arse off most of you, who felt it should have been shrunk down to a ten minute flashback! 

And while it is true that the strengths of Immortal Sins, the stronger story telling, decent performances, period detail etc. were pretty much cancelled out by the fact that they only served to highlight firstly what was wrong with the rest of the series and secondly the shoddy story structure, at least I didn't come away bruised from the plot holes I'd fell down and bleeding from where the clumsy dialogue has tripped me up and right out of the show. 

However, this week's dollop - I'm not going to call an episode as that would imply some narrative cohesion - seemed specifically designed to right the karmic balance and be at least as twice as annoying and irritating as usual. So frankly I feel like if there's any apologising to be done, it should be from the production team for putting together this half-baked mess.

Now last week ended with the promise of revelations as the still living Angelo knows how the Miracle started. Except we discover he doesn't really - the team learns that the three mysterious fellows are the Families mentioned earlier and that it's something to do with morphic fields and Jack's blood. All well and good but the audience knew all of this already, so yet again we have pointless info dumps where the characters tell each other what we the viewers are already aware of.

The big reveal for us is that Angelo is behind Jack's new mortality thanks to some Null-field alien tech which he apparently salvaged from the ruins of the Hub but Jack never thought to bother mentioning before. Yeah, great, thanks for that... Mr Logic was off ill again when this was scribbled I presume, for surely you would have thought that Jack would have been digging in those ruins for this handy gizmo as soon as he found he could die and suspect morphic field manipulation was behind it.

Also on the choppy to the point of inducing seasickness plotting was the sudden  reappearance of Friedkin who has played no part in all of this cobblers for the last half dozen episodes. And as quickly as he came back, he was conveniently blown up so the team are back in the CIA's good books.  Also picked up again was the plot-lines about Danes and Ester's sister which have left unceremoniously hanging for several weeks too. I honestly felt in danger of whiplash from the number of plot thread suddenly flapping back into life.

And if dodging blows from the flailing plot wasn't bad enough, you also had to keep constantly ducking cluster bomb attacks of shoddy dialogue and unnecessary, unfunny quippage from all concerned. Yes, the show might be picking up the pace but just running about aimlessly, ironically like a headless chicken that doesn't realise it's dead,  just isn't going to do the trick.

Frankly at this point, I just don't care anymore and evidently the script editor didn't either. What so annoying is that you can see there is a good story in here. But at every turn it's missed the mark, focused on the wrong elements and seemingly done all it possibly could to avoid telling it's story properly.

Now despite all the vitriol above, Torchwood isn't the worst show on TV, however it's one of the most frustrating. Each week it's like watching a band where the singer's off-key, the drummer's off-beat and the guitars are out of tune. The series just hasn't found its own rhythm and there's not enough episodes left to find it.

So sad to say, but a safe bet that it's not going to get any better - I'm totally expecting the grand finale will be horrid - best case scenario at this point looks like more pointless running around, a few bad guys shot, and Captain Jack pulling a big switch marked "Off' and saying "T-t-that's all folks!" And that's the best case scenario! I fully expect the last two parts to deliver some far worse drivel that will have eyes rolling out of sockets up and down the land. I'm stocking up on gaffer tape now and as your  attorney I advise you to do the same...

Further reports to follow... Although I am tempted to hop on a plane to LA instead and go all C Thomas Howell on all concerned....

Reviews of previous episodes can be found here