Tag Archives: Doctor Who

Last year, when the Disney + Doctor Who revived Sutekh, I went back and rewatched Pyramids of Mars to compare the original and the Russell Davies version.

The climax to the second season was the resurrection of Omega so once again I looked back at the classic series (I suppose I could have done the same for the Rani but that would require rewatching Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor) for The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity.

The first serial takes place while the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) is still stranded on Earth, the Time Lords’ punishment for violating their creed of non-interference. Weird, shimmering energy bubbles start appearing in the Doctor’s vicinity, disappearing anyone they engulf; up on Gallifrey, the Time Lords know something very, very bad is going on. The “bad” is Omega (Stephen Thorne), a genius Gallifreyan engineer who created the black hole that powers Gallifreyan time-travel tech. Doing so apparently destroyed him; in reality he’s been trapped on the far side, in an anti-matter universe, for millennia. Out of sheer will he’s built himself a small kingdom but now he’s done being alone: he’s reaching back into our universe for revenge and to find a way to return.

His attacks force the Doctor and Jo to take refuge in the TARDIS, eventually joined by the Brigadier and Sgt. Benton who gets a great exchange with the Doctor (“Sergeant, aren’t you going to say it’s bigger on the inside?” “I thought that was obvious.”). As the Doctor is clearly outgunned, the Time Lords violate the rules of time to have the Second and First Doctor join him, though William Hartnell’s ill health meant the First Doctor only appears on-screen.

While the special effects budget is too low, Omega is a formidable foe, even more tragic than he appears: it turns out his own body has been eaten away by antimatter to the point it’s only his will that gives him corporeal form; there’s no way to leave his dimension. It’s vastly more interesting than the big, CGI kaiju we got at the end of The Reality War.

Arc of Infinity aired a decade later, with Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) as his only companion, Tegan (Janet Fielding) have stayed on Earth at the end of the previous season. As the Doctor grudgingly complies with Nyssa’s insistence they tune up some of the TARDIS console controls, they’re suddenly yanked across the space zone known as the Arc of Infinity. Meanwhile, on Gallifrey, someone’s scheming against the Doctor; the Time Lords believe he’s gone renegade; and in Amsterdam, Tegan winds up looking for her mysteriously vanished brother.

Spoiler: everything fits together. Behind it is Omega scheming once again to return to reality, with the help of a Time Lord who figures killing a few people here and there is a fair price to pay for what Gallifrey owes Omega. The ancient Time Lord actually gets his wish in the last episode, materializing in a clone of the Doctor’s body. In a nice moment, we see Peter Davison walking around, enjoying life — sound, smell, laughter, people. But alas, it doesn’t last.

All of this could have played into the latest season. Instead of declaring Omega a God of Death, point out that it took three Doctors to defeat him. Tie the Rani’s reality bending into Omega’s own powers along those lines. While I’m not fans of Davies’ Harbingers, they do at least have some personality — but rather than focus on Omega, we got the dreadful finish in which the Doctor and Bel have to save their non-existent baby.

I’m a Doctor Who lifer so whenever a new season launches — Disney +, BBC, wherever — I’ll be watching. But the best of the older stuff is outshining the best efforts of the newer stuff by far.

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Last year I suffered through the first season of Doctor Who on Disney+. I liked Ncuti Gatwa but Millie Gibson as companion Ruby was “meh” and the Big Reveal of her mysteries exploded like a damp squib. The logic of the episodes is incredibly hand-wavy and the episodes rarely let the Doctor be his awesome self: he runs or does nothing, then by sheer luck things turn around. The second season, which just wrapped up, was better. I don’t think it was good enough. Spoilers ahead

The Robot Revolution introduces us to Belinda Chanda (Varada Sethu), a nurse abducted to an alien planet to become their cyborg queen, which turns out to be the unintended revenge of a rejected boyfriend. Good thing the Doctor’s around, though Bel’s initially unimpressed (“If you’re the Doctor, why not call me the Nurse?”). Unusually for New Who, she’s uninterested in traveling the universe — she wants to go home and she wants it now. She’s both a stronger actor and a better character than her predecessor, which I took as a good sign. “The way for Miss Belinda Chandra must be cleaned and polished!”

Wouldn’t you know, some mysterious force keeps them from returning to when she was abducted (lots of fans have pointed out ways to get around that); instead the TARDIS bounces off that date and lands them in segregated 1950s Miami. Here one of the Harbingers, Lux, has become incarnated as a cartoon character trapped in a movie theater — but he has a plan to break out and the Doctor and Bel are caught up in it … This was entertaining even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense (and Lux’s defeat has nothing to do with the Doctor). I particularly liked a fourth-wall break in which the Doctor and Bel wind up talking to some Doctor Who fans who inform him Blink is way better than any of the current episodes. “I’m all flat and this waistline is impossible.”

The Well is a sequel to a David Tennant episode, Midnight, which I don’t remember (but looking up my past reviews, I liked it). The Doctor and Bel arrive on an alien planet where a human expedition has just been slaughtered by something unseen. The only survivor is a deaf woman (well used) who’s convinced something behind her is responsible … despite some plot-holes, this was quite effective. At this point we have Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) appearing mysteriously in every episode, clearly setting something up, but what? And why is it that everyone in the future insists Earth no longer exists? “Your Mum can whistle at my behind and I will sing.”

For some reason Lucky Day is a no-Doctor episode spotlighting Ruby. She’s working with UNIT, still unattached, then she has a promising date with Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King). When she slips him inside UNIT HQ (easy to do, apparently), it turns out he’s a UNIT truther, out to expose the sham that they’re fighting alien invasions and monsters, none of which really happened. I love that idea, even though Who Killed Kennedy did something similar better; however using Ruby adds nothing compared to using any of the other UNIT women. “If you scroll down, he’s got his shirt off — don’t pretend you haven’t looked.”

The Story and the Engine could have been great if they’d made it a two-parter (axing Lucky Day wouldn’t have hurt anything). The Doctor and Bel visit Lagos, Nigeria, where the Doctor has the rare pleasure of being around other black people so nobody’s judging him by race. There’s a barbershop he patronizes, but when he goes in, it turns out the new owner has made it an eternal prison and wants to hear all the Doctor’s amazing stories … the ideas are great but too much is squeezed in, like one character being Anansi’s daughter and having issues with the Doctor for not saving her from her creepy father — that’s a little too much to drop in as backstory. “I am the voice of the empty void.”

The Interstellar Song Contest was one lots of people loved and no question, the Doctor gets to take action and kick butt in a way he really does on Disney. I did not love it — the serious elements were overpowered by the whimsy and the Eurovision Song Contest references (I’ve never caught it so they didn’t do much for me). However it did reveal who the big bad for the ending would be: Mrs. Flood bi-generates into the Rani (Archie Punjabi)! “I will cast your body out into the void and I will stand and watch you freeze.”

Whatever good will this season earned, it lost it with the finish. In Wish World the Doctor and Bel are happily married model citizens with an adorable little girl, Poppy, and they live in the best of all possible worlds — Conrad, now some kind of Internet influencer, assures them of that and he’s never wrong (one of my complaints is that he’s not a compelling enough actor to justify his return and his character could have been anyone). The Rani has created a Wandavision type fantasy world supported by people believing in it. That belief, however, is starting to crack .. and when reality finally falls apart, this will somehow free Omega, the renegade Time Lord from The Three Doctors, for his part in the Rani’s plan.

This spends too much time dwelling on the fantasy world, plus the Doctor never figures out what’s going on — it’s Rogue from the previous season and the Rani who explain things. A number of fans I know liked it; I couldn’t get into it. “Tables don’t do that.”

In the big finish, The Reality War, the Doctor snaps his allies out of their delusions, rallies them against the Rani (having Mel and the Rani confront each other again was a lot of fun) and drive Omega back into the netherworld after he’s eaten the Rani (Mrs. Flood remains to take over the Rani franchise though). As Marvel’s Tom Brevoort points out, this is entirely due to her own poor judgment, not to the Doctor’s doing. And Omega, who could have been a great villain here, is just a generic Dark God, because that’s what showrunner Russell Davies seems into.

But then, after everything is over, comes the horrible shocker: despite the Doctor’s best efforts, Poppy got erased from reality when it reset. OMG no! The Doctor and Bel’s sweet little toddler — gone? He’ll move heaven and earth to fix that, and succeeds (of course) but at the cost of losing up his remaining life energy — enter Billie Piper (formerly the companion Rose) as the Sixteenth Doctor!

This sequence hinges on us caring about Poppy’s fate and no matter how much the Doctor and Bel wring their hands and vow to save her, she’s a character who only appeared the previous episode, we knew from the start she was an illusion and she’s not a particularly memorable toddler. Save her? Sure, a worthy goal? Make it the emotional heart of the episode? Nope.

On the plus side, we do get a time-rift encounter with Jodie Whittaker (“Hugging me? We don’t do that.” “I do.”) that I loved. On the downside, the brief flashes of Susan (Carol Anne Ford, the Doctor’s granddaughter) amount to nothing; presumably Poppy is her Mommy but that’s not a payoff. So ultimately, thumbs down.

Overall not a terrible season but not good enough to suit me. “And Ernest Borgnine is still alive.”

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I was pleased with the run of 60th anniversary specials bringing back David Tenant’s Doctor and Donna Noble and introducing the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Though I said at the time that I found the goblins in the final special silly and Ruby “feels like another iteration of Rose, a pretty blonde who’s more than she seems.” Those reactions are a big part of why I’m dissatisfied with the Doctor’s Season One (yes, they’ve rebooted to that) on Disney +. Caution: spoilers ahead so feel free to bookmark this and come back after you’ve watched the season.

The first episode has the Doctor and Ruby arrive on a station crewed by talking Space Babies and threatened by a mysterious monster. It’s cutesy but it worked for me, though not for others. “Once I landed in 1963, when they actually had police boxes.”

The Devil’s Chord didn’t work at all. The Doctor and Ruby arrive in 1963 to meet the Beatles but the Maestro (Jinx Monsoon), another of the Toymaker’s cosmic clan, has wiped out music — and without it, humanity is headed to the apocalypse. I found the Maestro insufferably over-the-top and the Doctor’s completely ineffective against such a demigod; the ending is very deus ex (the Doctor inspires John Lennon to give music one more try, he taps out four notes which is somehow enough to banish the Maestro). “Doctor I know you’re clever but I’ve got news for you — the world did not end in 1963.”

Boom has the Doctor arrive on an alien world, step out and discover he’s on a landmine. It’ll blow up if he steps off but it’s counting down to an explosion if he doesn’t get off. It’s a nail-biter and gives Ruby a chance to be brave (risking her own neck to help him). Coupled with the references to granddaughter Susan in the previous episodes, the Doctor’s rambling about “dad energy” in this episode made me think she was going to appear this season, though that turns out to be a red herring. “I’m getting my Zen on — my landmine zen.”

The next episode is frustrating because it starts so well. In Wales, the Doctor and Ruby disturb what might be a fairy ring, the Doctor disappears, then a strange woman starts standing 73 Yards away from Ruby. Anyone who goes near her — Ruby’s Mum, the Brig — panics and flees, leaving her increasingly isolated. What’s going on?

We never learn. The whole thing is resolved in a vaguely hand-wavy way that doesn’t explain anything — and things were too strange not to explain. Gibson gives her best performance this season; it doesn’t fix the problems (one of which was Gatwa finishing up his obligations on another show so he wasn’t available). “There’s no home to go to, you idiot, not any more.”

The viewpoint character of Dot and Bubble is a young woman in a society where nobody interacts with reality directly — everything’s through the Dot (friendly AI assistant) and the bubble of media it throws around you. Now, though, something’s killing people and two strangers breaking into her feed are telling her they know how to get her and her friends to safety. This one’s okay but comes off too “kids and their cellphones,” though it turns out the point of the episode (which it makes effectively) is something else entirely. “Don’t be silly — not even I would say something like that.”

ROGUE (Jonathan Groff) is a time-traveling bounty hunter who encounters the Doctor and Ruby during a visit to Regency England (or as Ruby puts it, to Bridgerton!). Sparks fly between him and the Doctor but at first he thinks the Doctor’s one of the shapeshifting aliens he’s hunting, then they have to run from the alien Chulder to stay alive. Which is part of my problem with this; as Marvel editor Tom Brevoort says, the Doctor is awfully ineffective this season — he’s running from these B-lister aliens and can’t even save Ruby at the climax (that falls to Rogue). And earlier walks right under Rogue’s Phantom Zone projector (so to speak) before realizing he’s in trouble. It doesn’t help that Groff comes off very stiff here and that there’s little period feel compared with, say, Black Orchid (shown below). “My name is Bond — Molecular Bond!”

Then comes the big finish, the two-part Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death. In Part One, the Doctor reunites with UNIT to find the secret behind Ruby’s mysterious mother and also the mysterious woman who keeps showing up throughout time, They bring him in on the case of Sue Triad (Susan Twist), a techtrepreneur who’s about to launch a Mysterious Exciting Software (UNIT knows better than to ignore such things) and whom the Doctor recognizes from multiple cameos in other worlds and times this season. Hmm, S. Triad is a TARDIS anagram — is it possible she’s Susan, his granddaughter?

Nope, wrong cover name. The key is not “S. Triad” but “Sue Tech” — Sutekh, the genocidal Osirian of Pyramids of Mars. He’s back, he’s got the TARDIS, and now everyone’s going to die! “Why can’t I see that woman’s face?”

In Empire of Death Sutekh wipes out UNIT and much of the rest of the world but the Doctor’s on it. He can rebuild a new TARDIS out of memories because memories are pieces of time, then he ropes Sutekh behind the TARDIS and drags him through time because Sutekh is death so his touch will obviously destroy himself, right? Then all that’s left is the mystery of Ruby’s mum. It turns out she’s quite ordinary, it’s just everyone obsessing over her that warped reality and made things go strange around her. UNIT finds her, she and Ruby get to know each other and the Doctor prepares to head off alone, all mysteries resolved. Somehow he forgets about Ruby making it snow or was the gibberish about her mum meant to explain that away?

I could accept one hand-wave of logic but that’s way too many in one episode. And Sutekh doesn’t work here as well as in his first appearance (I’ll be blogging about that next week). “I’m an extinction event — why didn’t he kill me?”

Overall, I was disappointed. As Brevoort says, the Doctor’s ineffective in most of the episodes — showrunner Russell Davies isn’t letting him be heroic enough. And Gibson is very much a generic companion in the vein of Rose (or Clara, or Bill) — fun-loving, eager to go with the Doctor, possessing a Mysterious Secret (assuming the ending didn’t wrap that up) and not much personality beyond that. She doesn’t snark at the Doctor like Tegan or Donna, doesn’t have Romana’s brains or Leela’s fighting skills or the presence that Elisabeth Sladen gave to Sarah Jane. Adequate, but no more than that.

I’m not sure I’d rate the season as even adequate.

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Yep, I’ve finally completed my rewatch of classic Doctor Who. They finished off with an excellent S26, though the final serial was sub-par.Battlefield brings back the Brigadier out of retirement (and introduces to Doris, his sometimes mentioned but never previously appearing lady friend, now wife) when UNIT’s transport of nuclear weapons runs afoul of armored knights in the service of Morgan leFay (Jean Marsh). The Doctor and Ace’s services are required but things get more complicated when it turns out the Doctor was, or will be, Merlin.

UNIT here are much more of an international operation than they’d been portrayed in the past, something I wish the revival series had kept up. That Morgan’s forces are from another dimension puzzled me — why not use regular historical/mythic Arthurian characters? — but screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch had conceived them as more tech-oriented than the were in the finished version. Still a lot of fun with a great twist on one point of Arthurian legend. “Go, before I bring down … something … upon you!”

Ghost Light has the Doctor and Ace arrive at a strange house in the 19th century that Ace discovers has a strong relevance to her future in Perrivale. All kinds of weirdness are going on, including ape-men serving as butlers, an alien in the cellar and a scheme to assassinate Queen Victoria. It doesn’t entirely hold together but it’s engaging enough even so. “I hate bus stations — all the lost luggage, all the lost souls.”

The Curse of Fenric (as the villain is clearly inspired by the myth of Fenris, I’m baffled why they didn’t use that) has the Doctor and Ace arrive at a British codebreaking station in WW II. There are Russians, hints of an ancient evil, yet another revelation about Ace and Fenric trapped by  the Doctor long ago but ready to break out. There are also the haemovores, vampires from the end of Earth — creatures of a despairing world, they’re repelled by faith in anything.

This was an excellent one though one scientist modeled on Alan Turing comes off too much the disability cliche (being in a wheelchair as a substitute for Turing’s homosexuality). “I hate bus stations — all that lost luggage, all those lost souls.”

The disappointing finish was Survival, in which the Doctor and Ace visit her boring home village of Perrivale. Only it’s not so boring because dimension-hopping Cheetah-people are attacking and kidnapping people for the hunt, the Master is trapped on their world and their world is about to explode … The Cheetah people never looked right to me, nor do I see why one of the fastest land animals would hunt from horseback. A bigger problem is that none this adds up to a coherent episode and it’s not as interesting in its incoherence as Ghost Light. Still, the final monologue adds a lot. “Somewhere the tea is getting cold.”

What next? I’m keen to catch all the “lost” serials now out on DVD or streaming. I’m debating whether I’d sooner rewatch the early years and then include them in sequence or go straight to the lost stuff. I won’t be doing either right away, so no hurry.

For bonus imagery, here’s the shirt my sister got me for my birthday. It’s like she knows me or something.

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Weird to think I’m one season away from finishing the run of the original series. I may just go back and rewatch some of them, though I won’t blog about it.

The first serial of S25, REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS, set in 1963 at Coal Hill School, where the series originally started. The Doctor’s working as a janitor, Ace has a room in a local boarding house and the Daleks are lurking around hunting for a McGuffin the First Doctor buried their years earlier. It’s a deliberate callback to the series’ roots, though with some dark twists, such as British white supremacists — including a nice guy Ace is crushing on — allying with the Daleks as a way to keep the white race on top. It’s a good serial that estabilshes once and for all that Daleks can climb stairs. In some ways it foreshadows more recent seasons of the current series: the Doctor is capable of playing a long game and hiding his real agenda even from his companions. Russell Davies has cited the off-screen destruction of Skaro as the beginning of the Time Wars, though as the Daleks have long spread across space, it doesn’t feel like that big a deal. “Saturday television viewing continues with adventure, in a new science fiction series.”

The second serial, THE HAPPINESS PATROL, is a blatant shot at then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, set on a dystopian Earth colony where the poor are kept down but everyone has to go about smiling … or else. Rather than simple execution by the eponymous enforcers, the worst offenders go to the laboratory of the Candyman.For a Brit of my age, the sweets making up his body are quite recognizable.

The Doctor and Ace, of course, are not down with this arrangement … even though Mrs. Thatcher is decades in history’s rear-view mirror, this one still works. “Ace is as happy as possible, given the distressing nature of universal truth.”

The weak link in an otherwise excellent season is SILVER NEMESIS in which the Doctor, Nazi Anton Differing, a time-traveling British noblewoman and the Cybermen are all caught up in the pursuit of the Nemesis comet, which turns out to be an ancient, intelligent, Gallifreyan superweapon (but from what we see, all it can do is blow shit up, which isn’t much of an accomplishment). Annoyingly rather than gold dust clogging Cybermen’s breathing systems, this assumes gold is kryptonite, killing them at a touch. Once again, I can see foreshadowings of the future series (though obviously that’s not what they were going for) when Lady Peinforte hints cryptically about the things she’s learned from Nemesis about the Doctor’s ancient history, the secrets hasn’t shared. I understand the goal was to restore some mystery to the Doctor’s backstory; if so, they succeeded. ““Doctor … who? Young lady, d0 you really think you know?”

For the final serial the Doctor and Ace visit the Psychic Circus, THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY. Ace, being clown-phobic, isn’t enthused and it turns out the circus is, of course, more than it seems. Why is it performing for an audience of three? What’s the meaning of all the eye symbols? What will happen when the Doctor’s throw into the ring? Why is everyone working at the circus so scared? Weird circuses are no end of fun when they’re done well, and this one was. “Every interesting person is mad in one way or another.”

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