Who you said…? S08E12 “Death in heaven”

So hot on the heels of last episode the season finale charges in trying to herd the flock of cats that this season have been. This is also the second of a two part episode so the story ties very closely to the previous on with Missy the Master and the Doctor standing outside of St Paul´s with a lot of Cybermen. So let us get on with the story.

Things look kind of bleak when things take a turn for the better, in a way. U.N.I.T show up on the scene and take Missy in to custody. But he plan is still in action and the Cybermen head out to raise all the dead on the planet by the way of black clouds that rain nano particles. U.N.I.T also kidnap the Doctor. It turns out that he has been elected the president and commander in chief of earth. So with Missy downloading the dead in to the newly hatched cybermen Danny Pink finds himself back in the land of the living… Sort of… Remember how he never pushed the emotion kill-switch, turns out he now is in control of the Cyberman body he inhabits and he use it to save Clara from a group of Cybermen . Then the bio-waste hit the rotary air dispersion unit.

 

Soon to be dust

The Missy gets free and kill the adorable Dr Who fan / U.N.I.T scientist, the U.N.I.T flying HQ get swarmed by Cybermen, Clara has found out that Danny is a Cyberman and he is asking her to kill him and several people including the Doctor get sucked out in to the air as the plane get broken down. Missy is rather brilliant in these scene, a sort of crazy that reminds me on Ledgers Joker. So fortunately for the Doctor he get his TARDIS key out and by using his coat as  makeshift glider wings he steer himself in to the  TARDIS. 

He lands next to Clara and Danny and our love triangle comes to an end as Danny again accuse the Doctor for being a military officer above all, taunting the Doctor to kill him, Danny need to fully turn in to a Cyberman in order to get access to the hive-mind that all Cybermen share. Clara use the Doctors screwdriver to flip the switch in Danny´s chest as they both ensure their love for each other one last time. Then Missy, who teleported out of the plane before shows up with an armband that works like a remote for the Cybermen. After making the Cybermen do a little dance for her she hands it over to the Doctor and tell him that she has given him what he always needed, an army to fight his crusade. The Doctor rejects the gift but thanks Missy for finally solving the puzzle that have plagued the Doctor this entire season. Having finally figured out that he is neither a good nor a bad man... But just rather a man. He toss the control to Danny who is still in control over his new body. He holds a rousing speech… to a bunch of emotionless zombies…

I am.. War Machine..?

Then he go Iron Man and fly off with his new silver centurions and blow the living shit out of the black cloud. This just leaves the Doctor and Clara with Missy. Clara is set upon killing Missy to prevent her from harming others ever again. This of course is the classic problem that heroes in the comics face. Kill the villain and break your own moral code, lower yourself to their level so to speak. Or refrain and carry the knowledge that you are indirectly responsible for all evil they will do again. The Doctor takes the weapon from Clara and as Missy ask him 

to say something nice to her before she dies he only says “you win” to which she replies “I know”. 

Then she get shot by another independent Cyberman that turns out to be the brigadier, the former head of U.N.I.T and aid to the doctor. The Doctor honor his old friend with a salute. Now not one to end on a high note this season closes on the Doctor and Clara meet in a café. Both lying to not let the other down as they think that the other is living happy. Especially the Doctor who knew that Danny’s control bracelet would let him pass back in to the world of the living. But he failed to take Danny´s sense of duty in to account as Danny chose to let the boy he killed as a solider to live instead… .. . Yeah. The Doctor on the other hand found that his home was in fact not where the Master said it would be, thwarted again his heart breaks and we see him taking out his rage at the TARDIS. Having each gone their separate ways the season closes on the Doctor sitting in the TARDIS as old Saint Nick… Literally… shows up telling him that he is a fool and that he has done something wrong.

The season final was a fairly messy thing, doing its best to tie together not only the overarching storyline, a fairly coherent and well-crafted story but with a in my mind boring setup. But it also try to tie in the other stories and characters. It also give us a nice hi and bye to some old –ish faces with unit. The problem is that the season have had way too many episodes that was just filler and that had in reality no impact on the bigger story.  But the episodes themselves did have some really nice moments like with Danny in afterlife and pretty much any scene with Missy. Now I had pretty much written off Missy as some kind of pre-school Moriarty, and I was not wrong per se but once they gave her actress the freedom to really play the character out she had the right touch of unhinged crzy that I really appreciate. 

I did mention this in another blog post about what makes a good bad guy. In my mind they need to be smart and more than a little crazy. You need that element of chaos and unpredictability to make them a proper threat. There is nothing as boring as a predictable villain. In fact without that aspect to the character the entire last episode would have fallen flat. Capaldi is a good actor but he need someone to bounce off. Here get that one then some. It was also nice to see that the real reason that the Master had set Clara and the Doctor up was not because she was the chosen one or that he was fated to meet her… Nope… It was much simpler than that, the Master figured out that there would be a strong bond between them due to their personalities. This bond could then be used by the Master to really hurt the Doctor, as we saw here when the Master simply put him in the impossible place of having his best friend commit murder and losing her “soul” or to lose his own as he takes her sins as his own. Now the problem here is of course that the Master does hit in order to prove that the Doctor is cut from the same block as the Master.  But the fact that it is a choice at all for the Doctor proves that they are not. Any way… Unless the Christmas special wibbely-wobbely a few things away the next season will be very interesting as we will have a utterly depressed Doctor and hopefully a new companion.

St Nick Frost

Also speaking of the Christmas special… To have Nick Frost as Santa Claus aka Saint Nick… Wonderful pun.

Now if one should talk about themes this one is by all accounts self-discovery. Both our protagonists finds things in them self they did not perhaps knew where there, Clara found a bit of steel in her heart and the Doctor finally found that answer he was looking for.

So… Season eight…

I am split on this season. I think they took the Doctor to far in to the “angry and confused” direction.

Also about to become dust.

He lost any redeeming qualities and became more of an antagonist then a protagonist. Now this would have been ok if Clara would have been able to carry the show. But the character does not have enough substance in her to do that. She feels more like a plot device they did not know how to write out. This was made worse by the fact that she was made the alpha and the omega for several episodes. She was also a grade A arsehole to Danny and did repeatedly cheat on him with the Doctor. To be honest this season have been very slim on genuinely nice people. Now in some way that is refreshing but at the same tie it has made it hard to relate to the cast. But on a positive note the season had a great range of supporting characters and took some rather fresh twists such as the heist episode or the god dammed mummy on the god dammed train… There was also a short glimpse here and there of a Doctor that could be really likeable. But as I said unless the Christmas episode “ret-con” the situation the Doctor is in I think next season will be a very dark and angry one as the Doctor is not in a good place right now. But seeing how someone posing as St Nick my hope is that we see Danny being brought back from the dead and we get to see him and Clara move on towards a life without the Doctor. He need a new companion, someone he has not hurt as bad yet… Heck I would vote for one of the kids from this season. He is after all not bound by time. Not sure what my final verdict would be, this is very much one of those seasons I would not recommend as some ones first but it is not the worst season I have seen either. Very much middle of the road.

12:th Doctor

Now I have ragged a lot on the new Doctor but it its core I like the character. Different enough to be something new but still very much the Doctor. But his lack of understanding and refusal to take others in to consideration became a bit grating as it made him very difficult in my mind to like. Now I appreciate the side of this behavior that let him make some very hard choices and compare to 10 and 11 he had a iron core they did not. You definitely see traces of the War Doctor I him and I guess that is sort of the point but in my opinion that would have been better served by some tempering by either tying in more to previous season or reincarnations. My personal headcanon will be for now that this reincarnation was rougher than any before and he has simply not recovered fully. But for the next season the Doctor need to become a more balanced character or I will have a hard time keeping my interest for him at any proper level. That is not saying that I want them to make him more like 10 or 11 but rather that I want a bit of balance in his personality. Give him some of the curiosity back, some of the desire to rediscover the universe. But I think there will be some very dark episodes in the next season and I think we might end up with a doctor closer to the edge of sanity then we have before and for a longer time too.

Well I guess all we can do now is to strap in and wait for the Christmas special and what it will bring

Who you said…? S08 E11 ”Dark Waters”

This is part one of a two part episode and it heralds the end of this season proper. We still have a Christmas special and any potential other special but the regular show is coming to a close with the next episode. It will of course return next season but that is a story for another time.

So as I mentioned this is a two part story and the conclusion will have to wait for the next time so I will just go over the basics of the story. We begin with Clara talking to Danny and telling him that she really really love him only for him to promptly get killed by a car. This makes Clara very angry and she demands that the Doctor fix it, he says no. She also destroys the keys to the TARDIS. But it turns out it was a dream and the Doctor just wanted to see how far she would go. So by hitching Clara up to the TARDIS they set out to find a way to bring Danny back… .. . They end up in a mausoleum that is overseen by Missy and a very strange doctor. Then things get a bit weird. And you know that things are about to get bad when a mausoleum full of tanks with dead people in them being kept in a liquid that only shows organic materials is not the weird part, but rather where the weird starts.  So… Here… We… Go… Missy is in fact the Master, her doctor is in fact a nobody, the dead in the water are in fact Cybermen and the Master have pokéball for souls that she download in to Cybermen. Also Danny is inside said pokéball…

So… this is pretty much where we sit at the end of the episode… For once, the mystery is not afoot.

Missy is still about as interesting as toasted bread, but I have to say that the twist of her being the regenerated Time-Lord previously known as Prin… .. . The Master is kind of interesting. Especially as it does open for a female Doctor down the line. Beyond that everything is still pretty much meh… The Doctor is a grade A arsehole and Clara remains a walking talking plot device… I am at this point not sure even her gender actually matters… She could pretty much be replaced by a Smartphone. Note that this is not me slamming Jenna Coleman whom I think do an admirable job trying to bring life to the character. There is just not enough there to work with. I also really hope that Danny is not permanently dead… He was a really funny character that would make a really good companion, especially with this current Doctor.

Now the episode itself was actually really nice and the pay-off with the Cybermen was really nice even if it was a bit obvious. Now since the story is still not done I will not comment on it but it does have some promise and unless they much it up completely it will be a nice end to this season.

I will make a longer post nest week detailing not only the episode but the giving my thoughts on the season as a whole.

/T

Who you said…? S08E10 In the forest of the night.

Here we are again, ready for a spin through time and space. Turns out we are neither going through time or space this time… Eh well a little space but it is hardly nothing. But that is not to say that this is not an interesting episode. In fact it is a very nicely paced and tense episode that strike a good balance between light-hearted banter and some good old fashion mystery. We also see Danny Pink in action and that is always fun in my mind. Now the story goes as follow.

A small girl dressed in a red overcoat (oh you not so subtle red riding hood reference) knocks on the Doctors door and tell him that she has been sent to find him as it turns out that the entirety of London, and the world have been overgrown by trees. Next we find the dynamic duo of Oswald/Pink as they are having a museum sleepover… Is this I thing… It seems I went to the wrong school when I was young. Any way as the class exit the exhibition they had been straying in they see a big slice of a tree with a strange year ring. Turns out the door is blocked by enough foliage to all but shut them in. It would seem that leaving is not as easy as it seems. As the Doctor and Maven, the girl with the red hood get ahold of Clara and set up a meeting between the two groups with the Doctor and Maven staying at Trafalgar Square and O/P + kids moving from what I assume is the museum of natural history(seeing as they are on Cromwell road) to meet up with them. With the mystery squarely afoot the Doctor take son his oldest nemesis… Wood. 

In the meantime we get to follow the by now rather horrid train wreck of lies and deceit that is Clara’s relationship with Danny as Danny slowly puts together that Clara have been lying right to his face the entire time about her relationship with the Doctor. Things take a turn for the weird when it turns out that Danny is a tiger tamer and that Maven is a conduit for the sentient forest that acts as the guardian of earth. It also turns out that earth is about to be dipped in to the fryer by a solar flare. Hence the mighty morphing power Ents… We get a very nice moment as Clara tell the Doctor that she does not want to be saved because she does not want to be the last of her kind and that this time it is the earth that saves the Doctor. But it turns out that the trees are going to save the earth with oxygen and well everything works out in a way so perfect that even Hallmark would have a hard time writing it.

As I mentioned earlier I really liked the pacing of this episode and while not a massive tension builder it keep a fairly constant level, enough to keep you invested in what was happening. With that said it is a bit sad in my mind when the companion get upstaged twice by a child. First the girl who puked in the TARDIS and now Maven would both make for much more interesting companions then Clara in my mind. But that is just my humble opinion. Beyond that this was a nice little filler episode in which exactly nothing of any real value happened and by the end of it everything was back to normal.

What does Nelson rest his eyes upon..?

But as the teaser for the next episode showed  us.. It is in every way the calm before the storm as we move up on the season finally. I was hoping to see some sort of de-asshattering of the Doctor but he remains the crazy alien. It is like they have to compensate for Tennant and Smiths understanding and well attuned Doctors. Hopefully we will see some change over the final episodes and in to the next season.

The sets in this episode were gorgeous, the organic and lush world mixing with the familiar everyday backdrop made for some very nice sets, even if I am not sure that I have ever seen London that small or empty. Also I have never seen Londoners that passive. But it was a really nice change and whatever you can say about this season it has at least had a very good variation in the sets used.

So if I should say there was a emotional theme in this episode it would be… .. . Caring and open-mindedness. But this was really just a filler.

So let´s get in to a holding pattern on the express elevator to hell as we get ready for next weeks episode.

T.