Doctor Who: Under the Lake / Before the Flood

The second of this year's two-part Doctor Who stories is much more of a classic tale than the first, in the traditional "base under siege" mold. After the series' massive and chaotic opener, what did the Hurds make of this change of pace?

Matthew:
Watching this first episode, I realised how much I enjoy the Doctor exploring new locations and slowly discovering what's going on. Seeing him creep around an empty base, just as confused and uncertain as we are, is way more interesting to me than when he already knows the situation, like he did with Davros. Likewise, the slower pace and single location let us get properly invested, rather than jumping from space to school to medieval parties.

And yet, at the risk of seeming like a hypocrite, I did think this episode was maybe a little too slow. It might just be the lack of resolution going into the cliffhanger, but the story seemed very slight to me - like not a great deal actually happened. Did you two feel that, or did this work for you?

Amy:
I really enjoyed Under the Lake. It was more of a monster of the week episode than a huge epic adventure. It reminded me a little of The Impossible Planet in some ways: A base at a difficult to get to location with a small crew of people, which is a format that works well. Especially if the other characters are interesting, which I thought they were. I enjoyed the Doctor's handy flashcards.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and don't really have anything negative to say about it! Apart from I still think the sound is off and I really hope the sonic sunglasses aren't here to stay.

David:
Obviously, I really enjoyed Under the Lake as well. It would be hard not to, with its claustrophobic, tension-dripping atmosphere. The episode was a clever homage to the great sci-fi horrors like The Thing and Alien, and was intelligent and well-crafted enough to never feel like a parody or an imitation.

It's always interesting to see the Doctor come across something he's not encountered before, and his excitement about the possibility of real ghost was palpable (even if the crew didn't share his enthusiasm).

This episode built on the strengths of last week's one, focusing on telling a simple story well, with a healthy focus on characters. After all, a horror movie only works if we care about the people in danger, and they made us care, even before the Doctor showed up. Is that the benefit of having a double episode, or are the writers just more confident with Capaldi now? Time will tell, I'm sure.

So what did everyone think of episode 2?

First just let me back up what you two said!

I'm a big fan of the way Capaldi doesn't fuss about or dwell on death, and I thought the flashcards were a great way for Clara to try and deal with that. Likewise, his excitement about new and unusual things - even dangerous ones that are killing everyone around him - is always a joy. I do think this story went a little too far with it's big "kiss it to death" speech, though. Ghosts with an earworm seem quite tame compared to much of what he's faced before, so I never quite bought it.

As for the second episode, I'll try to stay positive for now, and say that I really enjoy the new fourth-wall-breaking openings that we see here and in Listen. That was really fun, and letting him rock out over the opening credits was just awesome. Other than that, the design of the Fisher King looked amazing, but I thought his great design was wasted in this episode because (positivity ends here) everything else about this episode is rubbish.

I agree that the second episode wasn't as good as the first but I wouldn't say it was rubbish. I didn't like that the Doctor kept going on about "the rules". The rules only ever seem to apply when it's convenient to the plot when in many other episodes there doesn't appear to be any rules! I still enjoyed the characters and the setting and it didn't suffer from an overly complicated and convoluted plot, which has been a problem in other episodes.

I actually wasn't too keen on the design of the Fisher King though!

If last week’s episode was The Thing, then this week’s episode was The Thing (prequel), carefully ticking off all the boxes to make sure past events lined up with what we knew about the future. There was even an axe! But like The Thing and The Thing, the original is always going to be better.

That said, I actually enjoyed Before the Flood. Sure, it wasn’t as good as the first part of the story, but there was plenty about it that I liked. I agree that the opening and the design of the Fisher King (very StarCraft II) were very strong, but I was also a fan of the way it balanced the two timelines and the interactions between the characters in the present and the past. This episode continued the strong character work set up in the first episode and kept you caring about the whole crew. (Side note: What is it with Moffat and killing of Doctor fangirls? First Osgood and now O’Donnell!)

Along with the flashcards last week, this episode was also a good reminder of how callous the Doctor can be when he needs to be, allowing people to die to test a theory and valuing Clara’s life over everyone else. While the Doctor has never been afraid to make difficult decisions, after angsty Tennant and Smith, it’s refreshing that Capaldi is so pragmatic about the whole thing. The solution to the episode was obvious from about half way through (of course it was going to be him in the capsule) and the confrontation with the Fisher King seemed to be over before it began, but I still enjoyed it. The moment with the axe and Cass was really effective (and very reminiscent of Ben Affleck’s Daredevil), the lingering question of the bootstrap paradox was well done and the characters were fully formed and worth investing in. If only there’d been more Fisher King…

One bugbear I did have was that the Doctor’s impending death and his acceptance of his impending death. It seems to have been a really reoccurring theme for the last few seasons. We always get teased that this will be the big one, the proper one, and then, after accepting his fate, he finds some way to wriggle out of it. As a plot device, it’s wearing pretty thin. Although I must admit that faking his own death and putting himself in cryo (while a little Jack Harkness) was a much more satisfying workaround than pulling a handy Life Model Decoy out of nowhere à la The Wedding of River Song.

What's funny is that I don't necessarily disagree with anything either of you have said. The setting and the characters did continue to work for me, the split-timeline was a great approach that I'd love to see the show do more with, and I agree that Cass' Daredevil moment was really well handled (though couldn't she just have, y'know, turned around?).

But that's all surface stuff, and I felt like the episode was using it as a crutch - if you go any deeper it all starts to fall apart. Like you said, the totally-for-realsies fakeout death is played out by now, and the nebulous Rules of Time are even moreso. But then there's also the super-disappointing use of the Fisher King, the totally unfunny stuff with the undertaker, the complete waste of the new environment (imagine if that town hadn't been deserted), and that weird Father's Day loop that didn't achieve anything.

Even Capaldi's matter-of-fact attitude to death - which is usually my favourite thing about him - seemed almost callous and unfeeling here, which is not the same thing. He's used death to test theories before, of course (see Mummy on the Orient Express), but only when he can't do anything to prevent them. Here he puts up a token "stay in the TARDIS" objection but, beyond that, doesn't even try to stop O'Donnell running off alone to what he knows is probably her death. In fact, if we accept that he only let her run off to test his theory, then the Doctor directly causes her death by putting her name next on the list. He did that after she'd already died, of course, but also after he decided to break the Rules - paradoxes be damned!

And yet, the entire Bootstrap Paradox only seemed to be there to explain why nothing the Doctor Ghost did made any sense. It was a really stupid, nonsensical way to send a message to the future (and a dangerous one too, since it both unlocked the saferoom and got O'Donnell killed) but we're supposed to let it slide because the Doctor was just acting out the stupid plan he'd already seen, not making up the stupid plan himself. Then the epilogue goes out of its way to smugly point out the paradox, despite how stupid it is, and despite that fact that we never needed it explained any of the times the show has used it before. It's the entire plot of Blink, for goodness sake!

But the worst thing, for me, was when the Doctor started casually throwing around the word "souls" - and going on about how mystic and sacred and pure they are. In other words, Doctor Who suddenly got all religious on us which (as well as just generally bothering me as an atheist) flies directly in the face of the whole last series, where the myth of life-after-death was revealed to be nothing more than a Cyberman trap. Just like in Army of Ghosts, come to think of it.

Basically, I hated Before the Flood. I thought it was a mess of a story that misused its characters, insulted its audience, wasted its villain, and never actually paid off any of its main ideas - yet it seemed convinced that it was being really clever. I did enjoy Under the Lake, and I can see what you two enjoyed in the second part too, even if I didn't. I think that this probably would have worked a lot better as a regular one-part episode but, as it stands, this one simply wasn't for me.

Doctor Who: The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

It's that time of year again, folks! The UK's best TV programme is back on our screens! But enough about The Great British Bake Off - we're here to talk about Doctor Who.

Series 9 promises to be an interesting and unusual experience, as two-parters not only return for the first time in three years, but actually make up every single episode. It's more in keeping with the original series' classic multi-part stories, but will it work for our more modern sensibilities?

To find out, we've gathered a small herd of Hurds - David, Amy, and me, Matthew - to go over the episodes each week and share our thoughts. Join us below, as we take a look at the first two-parter of the series.

Matthew:
I was planning to start by asking what we thought of the last series and of Capaldi so far, but I feel that will almost certainly come up anyway. But where to start instead? There's just so much going on in these episodes - tanks and planes and invisible planets - that it's hard to pick one.

So let's just start at the beginning, with what I thought was easily the best scene in either episode: a strange warzone with spaceships fighting bows and arrows, super-creepy mines, and one hell of a reveal at the end. I loved this opening - what about you two?

Amy:
I really loved the opening too! There were so many interesting ideas with the hand mines and the spaceships and the wooden bows. I thought it was great! I was disappointed when that isn't what the episode was about though. The interesting warzone was forgotten about and not really explored, sadly.

David:
I thought the opening was great as well - really creepy, really atmospheric and grabbed you straight away. All things that Moffat excels at. And then the Doctor turned up in the nick of time, just like he always does, offering wise words, rambling speeches and a tiny glimmer of hope, just like he always does. It was classic Who.

And then came the reveal. Davros hasn't been seen since 2008, yet the mere mention of his name is enough to send shivers down your spine. That right there is the sign of a great villain. And here he is as a child. A genius twist and a brilliant pay-off for the standout scene in the episode. It's just a shame it peaked so early.

It was a truly amazing setup - to the point that I assumed it was setting up the whole arc of the season, rather than just these first two episodes. I was actually a little disappointed that we reached adult Davros so soon - although I did appreciate seeing the contrast between the two versions. I also think I like this old and tired rendition of the character much more than the crazy, ranting, over-the-top "Daleks' pet" that we saw in 2008 (although that guy does make a brief comeback in the second part). I just sort of wish he had more to do, or more impact on the story. Like Amy said, the first episode sort of forgets what it's supposed to be about.

It doesn't just forget about the warzone though. There were loads of really good, interesting ideas that weren't explored and weren't really explained and didn't really hold that much relevance to the plot; the planes stopping, the planet being invisible, the medieval guitar. It just seemed to have too many ideas all shoved together. As for the plot, I'm not really sure I could tell you what it was. It's almost as if it's trying too hard to be epic and galactic that it forgets the storyline.

Another thing, and I don't quite know if it's the fault of Doctor Who or the BBC or someone else, is that the sound was really strange. The music was really loud and often a lot louder than the dialogue. There were quite a few times when I found myself desperately straining to hear. At the risk of sounding like a moaner watching Jamaica Inn, Davros mumbled a lot and I couldn't really hear a word he was saying!

The first episode was good, don't get me wrong, but it just never seemed to gel. It suffered from what I think is Moffat's biggest weakest - throwing a load of great ideas at the wall and not bothering to see what sticks.

Man made of snakes? Great. Missy back? Great. Planes freezing? Great. Invisible Skaaro? Great. The Doctor throwing an epic party? Great.

All great ideas, but not a single one given the care and attention it needed. Of all the great ideas, the much discussed opening was the one that was give time to breathe, and as a result, was the only part of the episode that truly worked.

Like I said, still a good episode, with lots of good parts, and plenty of great ideas, but it just didn't seem to work as an episode.

I completely agree. The first episode really summed up my feelings about Capaldi's entire run so far. I enjoyed it at the time but looking back, with the exception of a couple of stellar episodes (namely Listen and Orient Express), what I remember enjoying are individual moments or ideas rather than entire episodes or arcs. The whole run has felt kind of disjointed and unfocused, and The Magician's Apprentice really drove that feeling home and made me fear the worst for the series to come.

The second episode, on the other hand, seemed much more assured and comfortable with what it was doing. There was much more of the things that worked the first time, like regretful old Davros and Missy being delightfully sadistic, and those ideas were actually given enough time to breathe.

I agree that the second episode worked a lot better than the first. There were still a few things left unexplained though I think, like how is Davros alive? Didn't he die in that fire at the Medusa Cascade? And Missy not being dead was very briefly glossed over, which I know is kind of an in-joke, but I still feel like it should have been explained a bit more. I also don't really think the snake man was quite used to his full potential.

Although Clara is growing on me, I still think there are inconsistencies in her character. Sometimes she's really clever and works things out really quickly, things that even experts at UNIT can't work out or how Missy and her transported, and yet she couldn't think of a way to let the Doctor know it was her in the Dalek? She just kept saying "I am Clara Oswald" even though it had been clearly established that it didn't work. We know Clara Oswald is in the Dalek's vocabulary (as is "weird" which I found odd) so why not try "Clara Oswald is alive" or "I travel with you" or "Danny Pink".

I half expected her to say "soufflé" actually - it definitely needed an Asylum callback. And while I agree the drama felt very manufactured, I still loved that moment. After two episodes siding with Missy (even though she vapourised those UNIT guys) it was good to have that final betrayal. I am kinda loving Missy in these episodes.

Incidentally, I think this is the first time that we've seen the Master leave present-day Earth since the programme came back. That's something I've been hoping for and I look forward to more of it in the future. Loved that her first ever meeting with Davros amounted to a (literal) poke in the eye for anyone expecting it to be a big moment.

I really liked this second part - it took what worked the first time, and ditched all the unnecessary stuff. I was worried at first, but Moffat managed to turn it around and deliver what might be his first really solid Dalek episode.

I must admit, though, that the final scene of child Davros didn't hit anywhere near as hard as it needed to, in order to pay off that amazing opening. I wanted to see the Doctor properly change something - something timey-wimey to spin this series off from - but what we got felt like a damp squib.

I have to confess to quite liking the ending. You're right in that it didn't hit as hard as the gut-punch of an opener, but it won me over by simply being another instance of Doctor Who using time travel correctly, and I'm always a sucker for that.

I thought the second episode was a totally different story to the disappointing first, and showed off Moffat's biggest strength - waiting to see which great idea sticks, and then basing an entire episode around it. In this case, a quiet and heart-felt conversation between Davros and the Doctor. Might not sound all that exciting for a two-part series opening (especially not when compared to episodes like The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon), but it worked. It really worked.

Overall, I did enjoy the first episode, but it just feels like it's trying too hard. I definitely think the second episode was much better. The Doctor showing his compassion only for it to be his weakness, as always, and then him outsmarting Davros because he'd worked out the plan all along, was great! I would have liked to have seen more of the battle ground and that war, but overall I hope the the series is on the same level as the second episode and not the first.

The Companion Piece 14: Last Christmas

Christmas is a weird and chaotic time of year. I spent this one juggling two different families, various unexpected houseguests, and a truly terrifying amount of cooking and baking. Thank gods, then, for Doctor Who - the one reliable constant amid all the baubles and madness.

It looked for a while like this latest Companion Piece was going to go horribly wrong. We set a time and a date, and then Christmas got in the way and I ended up stranded in a location with no internet serving food and quite possibly baking again. Big thanks to Emily and Paul B for running the show without me at the last moment - you guys rule!

If you click the link below, you can read all our analysis of Last Christmas. You might be surprised to see that my name and comments are in there too. I'll leave you to figure out exactly how, but suffice it to say the explanation involves timetravel, Santa, and the fact that you're actually still dreaming...

The Companion Piece: 2014 Archive

And one more for luck. The Companion Piece has ended for the series (though it'll hopefully be back for Christmas) but I thought it would be useful to have one final post archiving all the rest, making it possible to access every episode of the series without having to search for them.

Actually that's a lie. The main reason I wanted to do this was to showcase all the header images we created for this series. I put far more effort into them than any sensible person would, and I'm extremely pleased how they all turned out. Flatline's still my favourite, I think, but there's a few contenders.

But the point still stands - it's nice to finally have all the episodes together in one place! So click below to check out all fourteen episodes of our Doctor Who discussions.

The Companion Piece 13: Series Eight

Y'know, I'm going to miss doing The Companion Piece every week. I've never had a project with a consistant weekly deadline before - certainly never one with such a quick turnaround - and trying to keep on top of it was exhilarating, sleep-deprivation and all! Having said that, doing this week's final retrospective episode was something of a relief, because we could transcribe it early instead of waiting for everyone to catch a new episode first.

What's struck me most throughout the last twelve weeks is how everyone on the team approaches these episodes in such different ways. Matt King looks for action and excitement, Paul Blewitt wants logic and scientific accuracy, David responds to emotional content, Paul Everitt just wants good individual stories, and I'm a sucker for themes and arcs. And those different attitudes have never been more apparent than this week, where we talked about what worked for us and what didn't. The answers we all came up with could not be more different, and I think that's wonderful.

So one last time, for old times' sake, click the image below...

The Companion Piece 12: Death in Heaven

It's been a few days since Death in Heaven brought an end to this latest series of Doctor Who, and I'm still kinda struggling with it. I can see, on a structural and intellectual level, how things played out the way they did and why that should have worked - and yet it never quite felt like it did.

It's all there, though. Every little setup and repeating motif in this crazy-dense series gets paid off in this one. Some are more successful than others (Courtney Woods and the Gifted and Talented class only seem to exist to set up one line) but they're all there and they all work. It's clever and meticulously constructed, to the point that there are (admittedly unnecessary) flashbacks from basically every single episode tying this one together.

Yet there's just something about the soldier arc that doesn't quite click, even though what happens makes perfect thematic sense. In The Companion Piece below, I had a few thoughts on what the problem might be, but even they don't seem quite right. I feel like I'm missing something fundamental, and it bugged me for days that I couldn't work out what.

But then I took a step back, and looked at the finale as a whole. Dark Water and Death in Heaven are one story, not two, and it's actually a bloody good one. This might be the best use of Cybermen I've ever seen - creepy and chilling and heartfelt and sad - and Missy is a villain for the ages! Taken as a regular Doctor Who story, this is a very strong episode. But, on top of that, it's bookended by two absolutely brilliant sequences with Clara and the Doctor - fulfilling everything their arcs were building to and proving, once again, that Coleman and Capaldi are maybe the strongest actors the show has had. That's the real finale of the series, and it's damn near perfect.

Viewed in that light, how could I possibly be disappointed?

The Companion Piece 11: Dark Water

Doctor Who reached the first part of its climax this week, and I have to admit that it didn't completely work for me. It was good, definitely, but nothing really connected beyond the truly phenomenal opening scenes.

But what fantastic scenes they were! Clara, shockingly enough, steals the show again - turning well and truly to the dark-side but, more importantly, breaking our hearts first so that we'll understand why. And then the Doctor - Capaldi's cold, unsympathetic Doctor - turns the whole thing on its head and meets her betrayal with kindness and empathy. These two are so good together - so it's a shame that there's no more scenes like this after they leave the TARDIS.

There are, in Dark Water's defence, a lot of things it needs to set up. And it does so well, even at the expense of character drama. But add these new setups to the already massive pile of other things this series has set up, and there's a definite question over how (and even if) Moffat can pull all this together. I really hope it works, and I'm dying to find out how.

I've purposefully not said anything about, y'know, that reveal - or that other reveal that they gave away in the trailers - partly because spoilers, but mainly because that's exactly what The Companion Piece is for. Click the link below to head over to Hex Dimension and find out what the team made of all the questions and answers and more questions in this week's episode!

The Companion Piece 10: In the Forest of the Night

Lets break this down.

The world is threatened by a solar flare (like in Time Heist), it's overrun by a real forest that became a myth (like Robot of Sherwood), and the solution to both of these problems is to Listen. The troubled children are back, the noble soldiers are back, and my fixation with the probably-coincidental eye motif is back. All of this takes place in an episode that heavily mirrors Kill the Moon in almost every respect.

I have no idea what any of this means, of course, but it's clear that this is a very dense series with a lot on its mind. That's pretty exciting, and I can't wait to see how it all pays off.

The anchor around which all these themes and their payoffs presumably orbit is Clara. Her arc continues this week as she actually surpasses the Doctor in her Doctor-ness, remaining practical in the face of extinction while he despairs. What's really interesting is that her "save who you can" speech seems remarkably similar to Donna's attitude in The Fires of Pompeii - an episode which also had an eye motif and which ended with the Doctor... saving Peter Capaldi.

Did I mention this series is dense?

As always, these more allegorical episodes are the most contentious and the most fun to talk about, so I think this week's Companion Piece is one of our best discussions! Click the image below to read the team's thoughts - and bonus points to anyone who recognises the font it uses.

The Companion Piece 09: Flatline

Another week where everyone on the team enjoyed the episode! Hooray!

I would never have suspected, this time last year, that Jenna Coleman might be the best actor since 2005 to play a Companion, but I think this episode settles it. Clara is amazing here - exceptional, as the Doctor puts it - and her story continues to be the main draw of this series for me.

It helps that she's surrounded by inventive monsters and a smart plot, of course, and The Companion Piece delves into all that too. To read our usual helping of discussion and crackpot theories, click the mural below (my favourite header-image so far) and don't forget to enter our gore-filled Hallowe'en draw!

The Companion Piece 08: Mummy on the Orient Express

"People with guns to their heads, they cannot mourn. We don't have time to mourn!"

And there it is - the explanation for all Capaldi's seeming callousness this series, and the confirmation of what I've suspected since Into the Dalek. This Doctor still cares about people, but he's almost frighteningly practical about it. Capaldi's attitude to death is actually one of my favourite things about his Doctor so far, and this episode made the absolute most of that.

Something else I love, which got touched on back in our Listen discussion, is how excited he always seems by danger. I thought back then that was just a quirk of his performance, but it turns out this week that it's an intentional and fundamental part of his character. And Clara's too, it seems, as she begins to adopt all of the Doctor's worst qualities - not least of which is the generous application of Rule One.

Hang on. An emotionally detached genius with an adrenaline-junkie sidekick? We've seen this before. But, unlike Sherlock and Watson, the balance between plot and character feels much more comfortable here. Clara's "addiction" is clearly a major piece of the plot - along with soldiers and robots and death - but that plot feels like it's evolving naturally rather than being forced upon us. Series Eight is kicking Seven's arse, in other words.

I really liked this episode, in case you can't tell. It hit all the right notes for me, and I'd have loved to get into all its juicy details with The Companion Piece this week. But, alas, I couldn't make it - there were alpacas to feed and waves to jump in - but the excellent Paul B has stepped up to the (boiler) plate and taken charge on this one. He's done an amazing job, and it was kind of wonderful to experience one of these as a reader for the first time instead of a contributor. The team has some great thoughts on all this so, as always, hit the link below!

The Companion Piece 07: Kill the Moon

The whole idea of The Doctor Who Companion Piece - the reason it's framed as a discussion each week instead of a straight review - is so that we can dig a little deeper into the ideas and themes of the episodes. And this week was a goldmine.

Not that I think Kill the Moon was a particularly good episode or anything. It was not. But it gave us more interesting things to discuss, I think, than any other episode this series - not even Listen.

We got into a bunch of interesting topics, but there's one huge one that overwhelmed all the rest for me. Which is weird, because no-one else seemed to have even noticed it. For me there was such an unsubtle subtext to this episode that it was basically just text. And it was kind of awful.

To find out exactly what it is that I'm skirting around, click the super-nerdy pic below. And click here for the chance to win a free sci-fi novel!

The Companion Piece 06: The Caretaker

This week's episode of the Doctor Who Companion Piece was quite an exciting one, for a couple of reasons.

The first exciting reason is the newly improved visual theme, which you can actually see right here! I'm really pleased with it, and I learnt a bunch of new stuff figuring out how to do it - I've already got a much better grasp of CSS, JavaScript, and even basic HTML than I did last week. I want to learn more, too, so expect this blog to become a playground of graphical nonsense in the coming months.

The second, even more exciting reason is that The Caretaker is the first episode of this series that everyone in the team properly enjoyed. With the exception of a naff baddie, this one delivered on every level - and it actually gave us a lot to talk and think about.

To read all those thoughts (and talks) just click the fancy link below!

The Companion Piece 05: Time Heist

Doctor Who does Ocean's Eleven. It sounds like an amazing premise - so amazing, in fact, that I couldn't believe no-one had thought of it before. I couldn't wait for this episode! Yet Time Heist left me cold somehow.

Heist movies, and series like the BBC's own Hustle, have a very particular structure - the gang plan the job (with a slick montage and great music), then they execute it and it all goes horribly wrong, and they have to improvise their way out of it (which often turns out to have secretly been the plan all along). But Time Heist had none of that - they stumble in without a plan, meaning that there's no plan to go wrong - so it never actually feels like the heist movie it's trying to be.

It felt like a wasted opportunity. But there was still a lot to like, and the rest of the Companion Piece team seemed to love it. To get both sides of that discussion, as well as some deeper insights into the series this week, click the mugshot below.

Also, for a chance to win Jeff VanderMeer’s new novel  Acceptance, click here!

The Companion Piece 04: Listen

Last May - at the lowest arc of my relationship with Doctor Who - I wrote a piece describing the elements that make up the best Doctor Who stories, and lamenting the fact that they seemingly weren't making them like that any more. This week, following the latest episode, it's hard to believe I ever felt that way. Steven Moffat has written an episode that perfectly encapsulates everything I was talking about and more.

Listen is easily my favourite episode since The Girl Who Waited, A Good Man Goes to War, or maybe even Day of the Moon. It's just that good. In fact, it's probably even better.

So, I've kind of spoilt any surprise that will come from reading this week's Companion Piece - but you should still read it anyway, because the team have some really great thoughts on this one. For arguments about whether the monsters exist, and a wonderfully mad theory about the Master, click the image below!

By the way - in the ongoing debacle of the 100th Post, it turns out that my Tic-Tacs were passion-fruit and not mango. I thought you'd want to know...

The Companion Piece 03: Robot of Sherwood (100th post!)

Last week I mistakenly thought this blog had reached its hundredth post. I was dead wrong - it was only the ninety-nineth. But that means that today's post - this post - is the hundredth post instead! Yaay!

To celebrate one-hundred pages of my rambling, I've treated myself to a random box of Tic-Tacs that I found at the back of a cupboard. They're mango-flavoured and everything!

If you fancy celebrating with me, the best present you could give is to pop over to Hex Dimension and give us some traffic. Lots of awesome stuff on the site this week, as always, including an interview with Liz Prince about her new comic, Tomboy, and the latest installment of the dreaded Pile of Shame.

And, of course, we've got Doctor Who coming out of our ears. The latest Robin-Hood-themed episode seems to have been less well recieved than the others this series, but our team had a different reaction. To read the latest Companion Piece, and find out what we thought, click on the birthday cake below!

Here's to the next hundred!

The Companion Piece 02: Into the Dalek

Were back again, with another look at the Doctor's adventures! There's Daleks this week but, more importantly, far more time with our new Doctor and this latest incarnation of Clara.

I feel like The Companion Piece is really starting to find it's footing. It's becoming quicker to actually have the conversations, and it's slowly becoming fun to edit and format, rather than a chore. The new layout works really well and, for the first time, I think we figured out how to include pictures without breaking the flow.

On the whole we liked this episode a little less than the first, though I personally liked the peripheral stuff a lot more this time, and our own Dalek, Emily, actually liked this one a little bit more. Click the rather nifty banner below (biased opinion) to find out what else we thought about this second episode!

The Companion Piece 01: Deep Breath

Last Monday was the first episode of Hex Dimension's weekly feature looking at the latest series of Doctor Who and the adventures of Peter Capaldi's new Doctor. We call it... The Companion Piece.

Today that feature continues - the difference being that this week we actually had a new episode to talk about! The first episode of Series 8 aired this past Sunday, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's not spectacular, but it's a strong effort, introducing us to this new incarnation of the Doctor with both humour and horror, in true Doctor Who fashion. However, not everyone agrees with me, and we ended up with quite a mixture of feelings about it.

We've also made some aesthetic changes - adding user icons to our discussion and messing with the layout. I'd originally planned to turn everyone into monsters, but we all agreed that was a little too disturbing, as Silence-Matt and Ood-Paul here should probably illustrate.

So please click on, and find out what the team and I thought of Capaldi's introduction, as well as our thoughts on dinosaurs, Romans, lizard lips, and the afterlife.

It's all going on in this week's Companion Piece!

The Companion Piece 00: Who?

If you're at all familiar with this blog, or with me as a person, then you'll know that I love me some Doctor Who. Or rather, you'll know that I love talking about Doctor Who. At horrifying length.

Well, good news for both of us, because me and the rest of the Hex Dimension crew are launching a new weekly Doctor Who feature to coincide with the start of the new series this coming Saturday. It's good news for me because it means I get to talk about Doctor Who every week; and it's good news for you because I won't be the only one talking, and because the others might be able to shut me up.

Tonight, in the run-up to Series 8, we ran the first instalment - an introduction to the team and a look back at the programme so far. We talk about our favourite Doctors, discuss what we are and aren't looking forward to this year, and discover that one of us is even grumpier about this stuff than me!

I really do hope you'll check it out, because a lot of effort, confusion and panic went into making this. No doubt there will be even more effort, confusion and panic as the weeks go on, and I fall back into my familiar pattern of alternately bitching and raving about the show. But, for now at least, I'm immensely proud of how this first one turned out.

So please, head over to Hex Dimension for our pre-series discussion, and don't forget to check back on Monday for the first real episode of...

NerdTech in 2014

Frequent visitors to this blog (all four of you) have probably noticed that there's not been a lot going on since November, and that what little has been happening has been happening late. The reason for this, as I'm sure my friends (all two of you) know, is that I am getting married.

It turns out, shockingly, that weddings are a hell of a lot of work. We've barely had any time for ourselves amid all the paper-folding, food-tasting and horrendous arguments about shoes. Any free time we have had we've mainly spent panicking that we were forgetting to do something else. Blogging, let alone going to the cinema, has been out of the question, if only because we haven't had the energy. Like a black-hole, this event is swallowing up every moment of our lives, and nothing can escape its pull.

However, as we approach the event horizon of that black-hole - the terrifying 22nd of March - time itself is beginning to warp and bend. We keep finding extra hours here and there, and we even rediscovered something called a "weekend". With most of the big stuff either out of the way or yet to begin, I can finally sit down and write some of the things I've wanted to write all year. I still don't have time to really do them justice (I am an incredibly slow writer) but hopefully I can get a few of the main ideas across.
So here, without further ado, is a taste of the blogs I might have written if I wasn't so blissfully in love:


Most Interesting Film of 2013

This is something I started last January as a companion piece to my Film of the Year stuff. I gave the award to Prometheus, an insane contradiction of a movie that I haven't stopped thinking about (or loudly deriding) since.
You might think, based on the number of pieces I've written about it, that Man of Steel would be the equivalent film of 2013. And you'd be dead wrong. Being interesting is the one thing Snyder's punchfest can't be accused of - it's just way too boring.

No, the 2013 award actually goes to Star Trek: Into Darkness. I only wrote about this film once, when I gave it a very positive review, but my feelings since then have become a bit more complicated. Its clear, on reflection and certainly on a second viewing, that this film simply doesn't make sense.
There's a bunch of reasons why - ranging from a dumb character reveal that doesn't actually affect the story, to a violent disregard for Star Trek lore and, indeed, science - but the main problem is that there are people in the torpedoes.

There are people in the torpedoes.

Everything that stems from that is just nonsense. Why Khan puts them there is nonsense. Why Marcus puts them on the Enterprise is nonsense. How the Enterprise is supposed to fire them with no fuel-compartment is nonsense. Why everyone expects them to use all seventy-two is nonsense. Why anyone would want them to use all seventy-two is nonsense. It's all nonsense.

But the interesting thing - the reason it gets this award - is that, somehow, Into Darkness still works. The film thunders along at such a pace that you don't notice this stuff at all, and even if you do notice, it doesn't detract from the enjoyment. It's a film with serious problems - deep, core, fundamental problems - yet it plays perfectly, every time. I have no idea how that dichotomy works, or how it's even possible, and that puzzle is what's so interesting!
What is clear is that, while JJ Abrams may have an unhealthy fascination with unopened boxes and incompetent writers, he's a bloody magician of a director.


The Year of the Doctor

2013 was the year I fell out of love with Doctor Who. But, after the excellent anniversary episode, it won me back. After such a rocky year, though, I was very wary that the Christmas episode - not to mention Matt Smith's final appearance - could easily go in either direction.
Happily, The Time of the Doctor was far more in line with November's offering than with the lacklustre series before it. Like the anniversary, I felt it was a fitting end to a particular era and a respectful nod to the history of the programme.
Also like the anniversary, we finally got a few answers about longstanding questions. Not least of which was the actual Question. The explanations of the Silence, both as a species and as a religion, were also pretty damn clever and never felt like the handwaves they probably were.

The only real problem I had (other than Clara continuing to be Clara) was that this episode completely altered a Fixed Point in Time. That's pretty much the cardinal sin of Doctor Who. We'd seen the Doctor's grave on Trenzalore - very very important things had occurred there - and now it never existed. That planet should have been crawling with Time Reapers long before the credits rolled.
But even that, huge bugbear that it is, wasn't enough to bother me when the rest was so good.

As for Matt Smith's big ending, which I've heard quite a few people complain about, I thought it was pretty spot on. I would have loved it even more, though, if they'd been ballsy enough to end it with the explosion. If that shoe had been Capaldi's, as we all thought it was going to be, it could have been almost as perfect as Eccleston's farewell (I don't think they're ever going to top that). But I understand that we needed our last moments to be with Smith as he was during the series, not buried under Prometheus makeup - and at least it wasn't as obnoxious as all the fanservice bollocks we got with Tennant.
Speaking of the makeup, I've heard a lot of complaints that the defeat of the Daleks was anticlimactic - that it was just an old man yelling at the sky. Well, yes, that's exactly what it was. That's exactly what it always is. The Doctor is, and always has been, just an old man shouting defiantly at the stars.
That's exactly what Doctor Who is about; and that's why I love it.


DreamWorks' Daddy-Issues

Over Christmas, I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 for the second time, and came to a shocking revelation about DreamWorks Animation:

Shrek is a film about an ogre breaking free of fairytale convention to rescue a princess and defeat a prince. Shrek 2 is about Fiona's parents.
Madagascar is a film about the institutionalisation of zoo animals, and how unsuited they are to their natural habitat. Madagascar 2 is about Alex's parents.
Kung Fu Panda is a film about a group of lost souls, who all just happen to be kung fu masters, coming to accept themselves in different ways. Kung Fu Panda 2 is about Po's parents.
How to Train your Dragon is a film about one single friendship leading to peace and understanding between two eternally warring races. I'll give you one guess what How to Train your Dragon 2 is about.

Mr Katzenberg, sir? I think you may need help. It's obvious that you have some deep-seated issues regarding your parents, and I worry that this hangup is doing more damage than good; both to you and to your films. With Kung Fu Panda 3 looking like it will also focus on Po's parents, I urge you to speak with somebody. With time and counselling, perhaps you can escape from this repetitive (and frankly lazy) storytelling cul-de-sac.


Sherlock and the Mystery of the Missing Mysteries

Now, this is where things get interesting.
I didn't like series three of Sherlock very much, and I wanted to write a piece explaining why. The thing is that, unlike the other stuff I've mentioned, I actually did write this one. I just didn't write it here.

In a shocking twist of fate, I have been assimilated into the Hex Dimension; the same sinister hivemind that consumed my brother and a bunch of my friends. I put up a fight for a while, but the offer of a larger audience - of more people to shout my grumpy opinions at - eventually won me over and I quietly succumbed to the beast.
So when I finally did write about Sherlock, and what bothered me about this latest series, I did so at Hex Dimension.

Read it here!


Onwards and Upwards

You've probably noticed that my stuff tends to ramble and meander and generally go on for too long. This is a particular problem with the wedding swallowing up all my time, but it's an issue all on its own, too. Hex Dimension has a tight framework of style-guides and word-limits which, frankly, is something I probably need in my writing, and certainly need right now. Not to mention that it just feels great to be part of a bigger, busier, more vibrant site.
As a result, I'm hoping to keep writing for Hex. I'm working on a couple of pieces about gaming (something I've never really written about on this blog) and I'll be reviewing The Lego Movie in a few days (squee!).

That doesn't mean this blog is ending, though. While I'll be posting short opinion pieces and reviews to Hex, anything that's too long or too ranty or simply too personal will still be posted here on NerdTech. On top of that, Mangaphobia will not be going anywhere (I'll be writing about Death Note after the wedding) and I'll endeavour to post a link to anything I write elsewhere.

In the meantime, though, all the action is over at Hex Dimension. The site has a great new look, a great team of writers, and tonnes of stuff on comics, games, TV, books, and any and all things nerdy. I'm enjoying it there and I hope you will too!

Come and join us!

The Birthday of the Doctor

It's weird, but my relationship with Steven Moffat's run on Doctor Who seems to be closely mirroring my real-life relationship. There was the initial giddy joy, where everything was exciting and new; there was the part where we grew closer, but things got tangled up and complicated; then there was the rocky part where we didn't see much of each other, and when we did we just got into fights. In both cases we were on the verge of violently splitting up - and yet, in both cases, we rekindled our passion in the flickering darkness of a cinema.

Too much information? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely.

So, after a dragged-out two-year series that I borderline loathed, Doctor Who has won me back with its excellent 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. It probably helped that my birthday is only two days after the good Doctor's, and that, as a special birthday surprise, I got to see it in 3D on a cinema screen - we even had a Doctor Who cake!
Since I wrote three massive posts about why the last series sucked, I think it's only fair I write one about why the special didn't.

The 3D is actually a good place to start because, knowing they were going to film this in 3D, they seem to have written the plot and shot the episode specifically around that feature. This ends up being both a blessing and a curse.
It's a blessing because they created those cool 3D Timelord paintings to justify using the format and, as well as being a clever and interesting device and just plain looking really cool, travelling through them allowed for some crazy stuff with the camera. The whole thing was shot more cinematically than usual and looked great, but those painting sequences really stood out.
Unfortunately, while the story-centric painting stuff used deep and immersive 3D, the episode sometimes fell into using gimmicky comin'-atcha 3D as well. The many quick shots of Zygons lurching at the screen, and closeups of shattering glass, got annoying very quickly, and the intro of the TARDIS randomly swinging over London was just gratuitous. They actually seem to do that in every other Doctor Who special, for some reason, but this time felt rushed and cluttered and it was obviously only there to flaunt the 3D.

There were other problems too - this episode is far from perfect - but most of them are incredibly minor. The biggest problem for me, though, was that utterly baffling scene with Tom Baker.
Everyone else seems to have loved this (and I swear I saw an article somewhere calling this the "best handled cameo ever") - to which I can only say, what cameo were you watching? It begins really strong, staying gently ambiguous while informing the plot... but then it just turns into nonsense, making it far too overt who Baker is while also somehow making it more confusing and then they congratulate each other about it and then it tries to be sad and weighty even though he's delivering happy news and it makes no sense! There was a way to make Baker's cameo work, but this definitely wasn't it.

Conversely, a problem that a lot of other people had - that we never get to see the outcome of the Zygon situation - I had the opposite reaction to. I loved how open-ended that was, letting us know that they definitely worked something out, but not telling us what. I can see how it seems a little incomplete, but any more time with them would have spoiled that clever, and surprisingly deep, bit with the inhaler.

And that deep, clever writing is the hallmark of this episode. The script is sharp, with the characters bouncing off each other brilliantly, and the story is a strong one. But what really set The Day of the Doctor apart is this one line:

"What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grownup?"

That single sentence from John Hurt, and the look that the other two then give him, completely floored me. It instantly changes so much, adding new context to everything we've seen since the 2005 relaunch and giving meaning to things that were never intended to matter.
The Doctor is a thousand-year-old man in a body that keeps getting younger and younger, acting sillier and sillier. Until now that was just a matter of casting and writing, but now it's a plot-point. Not just a throwaway plot-point to explain something, either, but a meaningful decade-long arc that ends with this special, allowing the Doctor to move on and explaining why his next incarnation is the much older Peter Capaldi. It's fantastically clever and, more importantly, the pain in Tennant and Smith's silent reaction gives it great emotional power, too.

That whole dungeon scene, with Matt Smith's perfect delivery of the word "spoilers", was better written and better acted than the whole of the last two years put together. From that moment on I was back in love with Doctor Who.

The special as a whole actually works the same way, reframing things we thought we knew or just accepted as read. Until now we thought Gallifrey was destroyed but, without actually changing anything that happened, The Day of the Doctor gives new meaning to everything we've ever seen. We can go back and watch the Eccleston series again and, although nothing has changed, it all means something different. Again, where the Time War was previously just an event that happened, there's now an arc, with the Doctor coming to terms with what he's done and eventually owning it and facing it. Twice.

Of course, while this episode heavily influences the whole of the timeline, it's heavily influenced by the timeline in turn. It does what all anniversary episodes should: referencing and commenting on the past, while remaining a self-contained story.
Beyond using an obscure legacy monster, and returning to UNIT, the War Doctor's exasperation at his successors (and, later, Tennant's "I don't want to go") felt like a critique of the show itself, and the changes it's undergone in fifty years. It celebrates but also criticises, and then it goes one further. Where all programmes can reference the past, Doctor Who can actually visit it, filling in gaps and following up eight-years of loose ends. The Time War is the obvious one, but Captain Jack's transporter and the Doctor's marriage to Elizabeth are just as vital and just as welcome. Even the ending's cruel Eccleston cocktease, infuriating though it was, works perfectly in this respect. It's pulling the whole timeline together, giving things new meaning and purpose.

The ultimate example of this is obviously that massive, crowd-pleasing finale - a half-century of television brought together all at once - and it might be the cleverest part of a very clever episode.
It's not that it's particularly ingenious as an idea, but the way it's built up so subtly, without us even noticing, is astounding. Moments we think are throwaway gags or just neat ideas - like the four-hundred-year sonic-screwdriver calculation, or the 3D pictures which could so easily have only been a gimmick - unexpectedly come back in that huge, monumental payoff. Bringing in all thirteen Doctors at the last minute could have felt eye-rollingly silly, but because it's set up earlier, using nothing more than a door and a screwdriver, it becomes an overwhelmingly powerful moment and, in our cinema at least, it made the crowd explode.

This special is full of the stuff Moffat does so well, and it's the same stuff that was missing all series. Wibbly-wobbly stories across multiple timelines that weave tightly together in surprising ways. Like the series it seems to be a jumble of disconnected ideas - Zygons, paintings, queens, sentient superweapons, complex maths and more - but, unlike the floundering series, it all turns out to be important and relevant, and it all slots together to form something great.
It's so cleverly done, in fact, that it's basically showing off. I think the Doctor would approve.

Going forward, the biggest takeaway from The Day of the Doctor is that it gives Who a specific purpose. Over the last two years we've seen what happens when Moffat's Doctor is left drifting aimlessly, and it wasn't pretty. With its clear new goal of finding Gallifrey, the show has found a strong foundation of story to build upon. That, as this episode once again proved, is when Moffat excels as a showrunner, and that fills me with hope.
The other major issue this series was, of course, Clara. She isn't actually in The Day of the Doctor a great deal, but already we're seeing her vague character become a little more settled and defined. She's a teacher now, which is nice, but much nicer is that she seems to be developing actual traits; she's pragmatic and sensible and, while she may well have been those things before, they never really stood out against whatever other random traits she had this week.
She's not there yet, but Clara is beginning to look like a character. If Series 8 can continue to sketch out her edges, and if it ties that process to a more focused story, then maybe our relationship can blossom again. In fact, if it continues to follow real life, I may very well end up proposing.