The Cutprice Guignol
The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
Tag: doctor who
April 22, 2017
Doctor Who: Tenaciously Average, Relentlessly Dull, Irritatingly Standard
You know, I didn’t think a lot about last week’s season premiere, The Pilot, in the time between that episode and this one. I mean, that probably is a good sign – with episodes I hate, I find myself washing dishes three days later and quietly fuming over some tiny plot-hole that I’ve just realized exists. But I ended up half-forgetting that the show had even come back, with the episode’s inconsequential plot and relative alrightness being neatly filed away in my head, not to be thought of again. Coming into Smile, the second episode of the season, I couldn’t help but hope for something a little more memorable, even if it was more flawed; something I could actually get my teeth into and enjoy reviewing.
April 24, 2016
A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: The New Doctor Who Companion
Bitch, please, did you really think I was going to let the announcement of a new Doctor Who companion pass by without comment? I would have had this blog post up last night, but I was too busy drinking rum and being an indefensible bastard- and occasionally breaking to scroll through the Twitter reaction to this new casting. Opinion seems divided, so the best way to figure out precisely what I make of the new Tardis inhabitant is to take this teaser beat by beat. With me?
0:01: Daleks. Great. Can we get an original monster along with the new companion? No? Right, sorry, moving on.
0:04: RUNNING! Looks like she’s dressed sensibly for it- a mark in her favour. Ever since Black Canary was fighting crime in a leather corset and heels (HEELS), I’ve had a weird thing about outfits being fit for purpose.
0:10: In fact, can I just have her whole outfit? I assumed the wardrobe department for the Moffat era only had bottoms that ended about six inches above the knee, but apparently that’s not the case any more.
0:21: I’ve seen a lot of people throwing shade about Pearl Mackie’s eyebrows in this clip. I mean, they’re…there, on her face, I guess?
0:30: Now we’re actually getting some dialogue from her, I like her. I’m a big fan of the borderline-annoying, motormouth assistants (I miss you Catherine Tate), and she seems….(adjusts tie, sits up straight, makes sure everyone is listening)….to fit the BILL.
0:43: It’s pretty cool to see Peter Capaldi not trapped in the Saint Clara plotline any more, even if he is just breathing heavily and talking quickly here. He’s still an awesome Doctor, and it’s going to be fun to see him not bogged down by Clara’s physically painful arc in the next season.
0:55: I’ve seen a few people getting furious about the fact that the new companion keeps talking even as the Daleks bear down on the two of them, and to them, I say: fuck off. This is a two-minute teaser, and it’s aim is to introduce Pearl Mackie as Bill. Anyway, isn’t it kind of cool to see someone who laughs (or just talks super-fast) in the face of danger?
1:04: I liked that line. I will say that the dialogue for this segment isn’t great, but that Capaldi and Pearl Mackie are both pretty fun and they have an easy, chill chemistry which I could get behind. As opposed to having her be THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE EVER.
1:10: “I’ve always been too busy running away.” I mean, anyone who’s watched even, like, three of the six-hundred and forty-eight Dalek episodes knows that’s mostly a lie.
1:31: This is goofy as hell, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. But considering the whole of last season was far, far, far too serious for it’s own good, maybe this is an improvement.
1:41: WHOOOOOO HE MADE A BACK TO THE FUTURE REFERENCE WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE
1:49: Could only afford the one Dalek for this, could they? Got a lot of saving to do for the actual season?
1:59: Overall? I like her. Sure, she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but as an overly talkative, 25% irritating sidekick myself, I’m feeling her.
October 26, 2015
Doctor Who: Tenuous Alliance Reduces Domesticated Interstellar Scoundrels
So, yeah, this review is up a couple of days late. Not because I was dreading the episode or anything (if the current run of one part of every two-hander being great is to be considered a pattern, I actually had something to look forward to), but because I kept finding better things to do like watching The Clone Wars (DID YOU SEE THE NEW STAR WARS TRAILER? HNNNNG) and drinking beer and browsing through another host of adulatory new reviews. But I finally dragged myself on to iPlayer today, and got around to watching The Woman Who Lived, the second part of the story started in last week’s The Girl Who Died.
Now, by no means am I taking back anything I said in last week’s review, even though apparently the entire critical world disagreed with me (as well as a bunch of people on Twitter). And this week’s episode certainly wasn’t brilliant. But, in comparison, I didn’t mind The Woman Who Lived half as much as it’s predecessor.
The Doctor- sans Clara for all but the last two minutes of the episode- bumps into Ashildr as they’re both tracking an alien artifact. The once-idealistic Ahildr has rechristened herself as the cold, distant Lady Me, and she relates the story of her 800-year life to the Doctor as they blunder through a bunch of silly medieval subplots.
I say this a lot, it seems, but the tone was all over the place in this episode. The difference between this week’s episode and last week’s episode, however, was that some of the scenes actually worked. Some of the emotional notes they hit-such as Ashildr explaining the source of her new name- were strong, and yes, the humour all came off like a sub-par Blackadder episode (You know that joke about the woman highwayman doing a really convincing male voice in third season of Blackadder? I don’t know if this episode was homaging that or straight-up ripping it off, but it was there alright), but the fact that it was loose and didn’t take itself too seriously eked a few laughs out of me.
Eyebrows on fleek. For medieval Britain, that is.
I think Maisie Williams makes a lot more sense in this incarnation, too- I was blown away by her performance or anything, but she had the difficult task of playing a character who was actually meant to be on the Doctor’s level and she pulled it off. The naif of last week is long gone, and I hope they keep it that way. There was also a line in there about her being sick of people assuming she just wanted a husband, which is ironic as Steven Moffat have said that all women want exactly that. I’ll take this as an apology (speaking of Steven Moffat and his questionable ideas about women, I’m writing a four-part mini blog series about feminism in Moffat’s era of Doctor Who. Check it out!).
(and I don’t know where to put this, but I was under the impression that Ashildr, when the Doctor turned her immortal was a child- hence The Girl Who Lived, etc. In this episode she’s shown to have had children and be receptive to the romantic interests of grown men. Now, the episode went to great lengths to show how intellectually evolved Ashildr was and obviously she has actually been around for hundreds of years, so it wasn’t skeevy in that sense, but rather seeing blokes demanding kisses from somebody we were only last week meant to see as an innocent child kind of ooked me out a bit. There’s a reason Edward from Twilight wasn’t twelve, you know?)
And, in another round of Doctor Who Recaps Bingo, the Doctor was without Clara for this episode and man, was he good. Capaldi worked well having a new kind of energy to bounce off of, and sure, I could have done without yet another cringey scene of him playing the guitar, but it was overall a good episode for the Doctor. I think not having to cram in pointless Clara scenes just to give Jenna Coleman something to do really helped them flesh out their world a bit, too, and I liked that.
But this episode was ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the big villains:
The women on the far right and far left sum up my reactions exactly.
It’s fucking ridiculous, and don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise. And their plan? To open a gate to the underworld and unleash it’s minions on Earth. Maybe I’ve been playing too much Age of Mythology recently (NO SUCH THING) but that sounds strangely close to the plot of a shitty video game. Also, the episode seemed to revel in underlining the major beats for each scene- seriously, take a shot for every time Ashildr jauntily declares “This is MY robbery!” in the first scene, or every time she tells the Doctor “You made me!” or every time he explains why she can’t be her companion, or…yeah, you get it. Even the emotional scenes in this episode were big and goofy, but I’m much more willing to give the show a bit of leeway if it’s tongue is clearly in it’s cheek. I want to stress that this episode wasn’t a classic or anything, but it was almost just a relief to see the show steady itself after last week’s sad swanny whistle.
If I can say one good thing about this episode, it’s that it’s warmed me to the idea of Maisie Williams returning, which she almost definitely will in the near future (calling it: Minister of War mentioned in Under the Lake). I didn’t think she was groundbreakingly amazing in this episode, and she’s yet another recurring female character who the Doctor has connected with as a child before leaving her to wait for him the rest of her life (Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, Reinette de Pompadour, River Song, to an extent), but I like the idea of a sort of morally ambiguous character who understands the Doctor’s plight better than most people he spends time with.
But are you explaining away Osgood’s return next week with “TWINS”? I’ll have you yet, Moffat.
October 18, 2015
Doctor Who: Turgid, Awful, Rancid, Dreadful, Intolerable Shite
Firstly, in case you missed it, yesterday I shared my newly-started Patreon for this blog-check it out here. But now, on with the episode.
I mean, where to start with this one? I knew when I saw the teaser for this episode that I was probably going to hate it, but I was hoping that I’d have my low expectations subverted by something that was at least….entertaining? Witty? Emotional? And it’s not that The Girl Who Died didn’t try to give me all those things. It just failed dismally on every count.
Just sidling over to the old Robin Hood sets again, I see.
Outside of the sonic sunglasses being broken (OH YES OH YES OH YES), I can’t bring to mind one bit of this episode that worked for me. Let’s take this beat by beat, folks, because that’s the only way I’ll be able to take a look at The Girl Who Died without tearing my eyes out.
Let’s get the obvious fuck-ups out of the way: firstly, the Mire, a fearsome alien warrior race, declare war on a small Viking village (I cannot be remotely fucked explaining why, because every single twist and turn of this episode was so fucking contrived that I could see the veins on the writer’s necks standing out as they strained to be slightly original). I’ll repeat that: a fearsome alien warrior race, described by the Doctor as one of the most efficient and brutal in the Galaxy. And they’re defeated by….electricity? And the threat of an embarrassing video on space Youtube (I almost slit my wrists when Yakety Sax started playing, by the way)? Not to mention the fact that the immortality chip that the Doctor gave to Ashildr came from the Mire so…why aren’t they immortal? Look, I know the Mire were just a poorly-conceived plot point to push the story along, but nothing about them made the remotest bit of sense. They didn’t even have the good manners to look really cool, for fuck’s sake.
Then, there was Ashildr. Look, I have something potentially controversial to admit here: I think Maisie William is a TERRIBLE actress. I’ve never understood why Arya is such a popular character on Game of Thrones (which is where she found her fame), partly because the writers just went “here’s a trope, you fill in the rest”, and partly because Williams absolutely cannot convey any emotion no matter how hard she tries (side note: Emilia Clarke is only good when she’s speaking a made-up language). And I knew that her presence wasn’t going to enhance this episode for me, but I figured I could get past it, hell, maybe even come round on her- do you remember how fantastic the usually nail-chewingly irritating Frank Skinner was last season?
She was fucking atrocious. The script (by James Mathieson and Steven Moffat, both equally responsible for this monstrosity) didn’t give her much to work with, to be fair, but it’s blindingly clear that she had to directly spell out every bit of her own characterisation in a painfully affected speech (“The boys thought I was just a girl, and the girls thought I was a boy”- oh, so you were just Arya, then?) for the audience because she sure as hell couldn’t convey it in her performance. There was a long shot at the end, of her against the apparent desktop screensaver backdrop of changing skies to signify the years she’d lived, and the camera was focused in on her face, and it was almost hilarious what a complete lack of….well, anything there was to her.
See for yourself. Christ, staring at this face is like listening to white noise- it’s so meaningless it starts to drive you a little insane.
When she died, I was fully hoping Peter Dinklage would wander on-screen with a wheelbarrow and cart her back to GoT, but instead she became the Hybrid, referenced by Davros earlier this season, which terrifyingly suggests we’re going to be seeing a lot of her. The words “hoist” and “petard” spring to mind, because-and I don’t say this often- she was unwatchably bad in this episode, and showed no signs of improving. I think she’s a potential disaster for the series, mainly because Moffat cannot let things go and if he’s come up with this idea he’s going to force it down our throats until he’s satisfied we understand the full extent of his genius.
The Doctor was terrible in this episode, as well- I was on the messageboards yesterday (That’s right, I messageboard about Doctor Who, you wanna make something of it?) and there were a lot of people lamenting the fact that one of the best actors we’ve ever had for the role is getting hurled this level of half-baked garbage. Not only is he patronizing Clara in this episode (“I have a duty of care”- funny, because the last time I heard that line it was in reference to a literal child, which Clara most certainly is not), he’s translating baby soliloquys, he’s grunting out terrible nicknames, and he’s generally fucking about like the most irritating of cocks. He’s been boiled down to a handful of pop-culture references, self-referential jabs to the ribs, and a swerving attitude that darts between a complete lack of care for whatever tertiary characters are about this episode and “I’M THE DOCTOR AND I DO DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES ABOUT HOW I SAVE PEOPLE IN THE MOST OVERBLOWN AND UNDERWRITTEN SCENES OF ALL TIME”.
I’ll say it again: Capaldi is not at fault here. He’s doing his best. But the Doctor is irritating and inconsistent and mean. This episode contained the “reveal” about why Capaldi chose the face he did (basically the show retconning the fact that the actor had already appeared in season four episode the Fires of Pompeii), and the revelation fell flat with an audible thud. So, he chose that face because he wants to save people? I mean, I…I know that. That isn’t a revelation. That’s what he does every single week. I’ve seen a lot of people touting this as a defining moment for this Doctor, but is it, really?
The less said about Clara, the better, in an episode where she exuded almost nuclear levels of smug. Again, Jenna Coleman is not at fault here, but Christ, considering that they re-write the character every episode to fill whatever plot-hole they’ve created for themselves, it’s no wonder that I can’t get a hold on who Clara’s character actually is.
Really getting the most out of those spacesuits, aren’t they?
Then, there was the rest of the episode to contend with: the terrible jokes, the baby giving a monologue (was I supposed to be howling with laughter through that entire speech? I assume not, but fuck me, it was HILARIOUS), the scrappy, half-baked story, the thundering lack of emotional stakes…I really didn’t think that the show would ever outdo (under-do?) last season’s Kill the Moon. But this might have done it.
Kill the Moon was at least ostentatiously terrible, in a way that meant I could sort of see what people liked about it. But this…despite reading a bunch of adulatory reviews and scrolling through the worshipful Twitter feed, I still cannot find one thing that didn’t annoy me about this episode. I’d make a case for this being the worst episode of Moffat’s run by quite a stretch, which is a shame because Under the Lake/Before the Flood were actually pretty decent in retrospect and season nine looked to be shaping up as a stronger entry than the last year.
But this is unforgivable-it would be one thing if it were this awful in a sort of low-budget, rollicking fun way, but the thing that really put the nail in coffin of The Girl Who Died (puns are my FAVOURITE) was how fucking self-satisfied it all seemed. Smug, even. And that infuriated me the most. Well, that, and the knowledge that we’ve got a whole other episode to go yet.
And you think you can dangle Tennant and Donna in front of us and expect it not to make the episode worse by comparison? I’ll have you yet, Moffat.
October 4, 2015
Doctor Who: Tardis Afraid as Rising Damp Incurs Spirits
Some episodes of Doctor Who are bad (Deep Breath, Kill the Moon, whatever last week’s fiasco of an episode was called). Some Doctor Who episodes are fiendishly clever (Name of the Doctor, Listen). But some episodes are just good- deliciously, deliriously, simply good, and that’s what this week’s outing, which should so obviously have been called Under the Sea in order for me to hum the best Disney song ever through it’s entire run, staked it’s claim in.
I’m not getting my hopes up too high just yet, because the last couple of two-parters the series has done with Capaldi’s Doctor have had amazing first halves and a funeral dirge of a second half. But right now I can linger in that lovely space between knowing and not knowing, without having to qualify any discussion of Under the Lake (the episode’s actual, less exciting title) with “…but the second half was pish”.
The Doctor’s prompt cards were a joke that was just on the right side of obvious.
So let’s discuss what worked about this episode, shall we? Firstly, it was written by Toby Whithouse, he of the patchy but very creative supernatural dramedy Being Human- his Doctor Who episodes have been equally all over the place. For every School Reunion (brilliantly touching), there’s a Vampires of Venice (trudgingly unfunny), for every God Complex (sublimely excellent), there’s a Town called Mercy (??????). But whatever his episodes have been, they’re usually memorable- maybe for some cool new monster, an interesting concept, or fabulous world-building. I’d wager that this episode had one major advantage over the host of recent DW episodes, and that’s the fact that it got the Doctor pretty much spot-on.
What I’m saying is, in short, fuck Moffat’s version of the Doctor, who swerves between calculating self-preservation and grating silliness that’s the equivalent of the show refusing to stop tooting a kazoo right in your ear, and give me this version instead. Capaldi careers around a hilarious script, one that matches decent laughs with pretty impressive horror, and for once he’s not ahead of the game, he’s figuring it out along with everyone else. Something about the slapdash nature of this Doctor is really charming and balances out the ever-present arrogance that oozes off him at every turn.
But ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. What about the story? After the crew of an underwater base haul an alien ship on board, they find themselves infested with ghosts- not the benign, wise-cracking, Hogwarts kind, but the kind that threateningly pick up spanners and brutally drown various crew members to make new ghosts. The Doctor has to try and figure out why they’re collecting the souls of the base’s crew. but as the base starts going a bit haywire he’s forced to leave Clara behind and travel back through time to work out a way to keep everyone alive. As I said earlier, it’s the first part of a two-parter, so I fully expect them to fuck this up royally next episode, but this was a fun, tight, rollicking script that didn’t let the action drop for a moment, and I can respect that. And let’s take no notice of the fact that it seemed to be ripping off previous well-respected Who episodes, with obvious visual nods to The Satan Pit with the corpse floating past the window plus the fact that the Prentis character had very obviously appeared in Silence in the Library. Don’t even think about it. It’s gone.
It was also bloody scary- well, when I say that, I mean that I would have been shit-scared by this episode ten years ago, which is my watermark for how scary a Doctor Who episode is as now I sit around watching House of 1000 Corpses over breakfast so my current scary-radar is kind of skewed. Even the Tardis was too scared to get near the creatures in a cool touch that really spooked me. The ghosts looked legitimately cool-
-and I appreciated the fact that they didn’t go for the traditional bloodless DW deaths (which, when you think about it, only really come in the form of deadly zaps- the Autons, the Cybermen, the Daleks…) and had the ghosts committing straight-up murder. I’ve written before about how keen I am for Doctor Who to terrify kids, partly because it stops them running around with their sticky hands smelling of yoghurt and trying to come near me all the time, but mainly because it gives kids an easy way into good horror, the same way it did for me. Part of Doctor Who’s legacy is sending generations of kids cowering behind the sofa, for Christ’s sake, and it’s about time they upheld that.
A solid supporting cast really helped up the ante and give the episode some stakes, and the addition of a character who communicated through sign-language could have felt tacked-on but just doesn’t. Clara also works best when she’s got some normal people to interact with, and she had a genuinely decent episode for once. I know this show likes to bring the Doctor and his companions together only to brutally rip them apart-
I felt you would appreciate this joke as much as I did, dear reader.
-(ugh, maybe I’m due my period or something, but the memory of David Tennant getting cut off just before he tells Rose that he loves her made me choke up a little) but it’s nice to have them on the same side for once, especially when they seemed to spent so much of last season at odds with each other.
Look, sometimes I just don’t want to criticise Doctor Who because it is, after all, my favourite show, and this episode didn’t make me want to pick it apart at the seams. I’m sure most of the plot would collapse if I took a closer look at it, but I have no intention of doing so because this episode provided everything I wanted-scares, laughs, an interesting story, and apparently next week a monster voiced by Corey Taylor. Because yeah, the big twist set up by this episode is basically resolved by clicking on the Wikipedia page. I’ll have you yet , Moffat.
August 9, 2015
Doctor Who Recaps, Season One, Episode Two: The End of the World
So, hello, and welcome to the second week of our cross-blog Doctor Who extravaganza as we take a look at the second episode of the season, The End of the World. Read a whole different take on the episode-by a strident Tennant fan- over at Red Whine. As before, if you want to join us on this ill-advised adventure through recapping (and also time and space), drop me an email an the Contact Me tab above.
Let me dive right in and start by saying that part of what I dig so much about this episode- aside from the fact it stars the once and future King of Doctors- is that we jump from saving the world in last week’s episode to watching it burn in the background all the way through this week. As a child (and, to an extent, an adult) who was petrified by the thought of the earth being destroyed in some catastrophic event (all those scaremongering Discovery Channel “documentaries” about asteroids and ice ages? Aimed directly at the kind of child I was), this episode scared the fucking bejeesus out of me, and still makes me feel kind of weird to this day. Something about seeing Earth burning out of existence- and having that basically forming the scenery of the episode- is really unsettling, and I can get on board with Rose’s assertion that this might not be the best way to make your second date go with a bang (A big one. PUNS).
“Oh, but he’s not in this episode!” I hear you cry. And I lift a finger to your lips, and shake my head sadly for your lack of pathetic insider DW knowledge.
The plot of this episode revolves around some space dignitaries-in the form of some living trees, the Face of Boe, and Lady Cassandra, the last human alive, who also happens to be, well, a giant piece of skin stretched out between two poles:
Whenever I lose weight, it’s this line that pops into my head and I immediately eat twelve donuts and a croissant because I’m fancy.
Yeah, if you thought “Terry Gilliam’s Brazil” when you saw this, you get twenty points too, because the Doctor Who props department like searing horrifying images into the memories of innocent children. After it’s revealed that a nefarious plot to bump off the guests is afoot, it’s up to Rose and the Doctor (and some living trees, but we’ll get there) to figure out what to do next. I like the simplicity of the plot, mainly because it allows for this episode to become mostly scene-setting, filling out the universe that we’ll be travelling through with this Doctor and providing a good bit of genuinely science-fictiony relief from the Earth-bound episodes on either side of it. One of the best things about this series of Who from a writer’s perspective must have been introducing this universe to whole bunch of new viewers (like me) who had no idea what to expect, and it shows, with real effort put in to making this as casually out-there as possible. Just some sentient trees wandering about, confusing me with how attractive they are. No biggie.
Insert “getting wood” joke here
I tell you what, too- I love this episode for the fact that it sets the vaguely sinister tone for the whole of season one. Now, it might be because I watched them when I was a terminally impressionable child, but I still think the most frightening episodes ever all belong to the first two seasons of New Who, and The End of the World is no exception. As the radiation given off by the dying earth threatens to burn our heroes alive, the whole spaceship set-up moves from dazzlingly inventive and quirky to claustrophobic and deadly, with a handful of guest-stars meeting grisly ends-whether burning alive, exploding in the heat, or being irradiated to death, it’s not just the bad guys who wind up dead.
Not just the bad guys, but the ENTIRE WORLD.
And the Doctor’s callous reaction to the villain of the piece-allowing them to burn in their own trap- marks out Eccleston’s ability to bring something a bit unsettling to his Doctor. From this episode onwards, you don’t want to end up on his bad side, and that’s an important part of the characterisation for the Doctor which is still being explored in Capaldi’s episodes today (by the way, is anyone else feeling less than enthused about the return of the series in just over a month? Until something changes- preferably finding a new showrunner, at fucking last- I’m just expecting a re-run of the off-puttingly patchy season eight, and, terrifyingly, a two-parter written by the creator of the painful Kill the Moon). If the first episode is about filling out Rose’s character, this is about giving us a look into the Doctor. The episode might end with them waltzing off to get chips, but we’ve had a glimpse into the effects of the Time War on our hero (Gallifrey and it’s fate are referenced for the first time in this episode, as is the excellent Bad Wolf season plot, for those keeping score at home).
Unf dat smile tho
The End of the World isn’t the best episode this season had to offer, not by a long shot. But it’s a gratifyingly simple story, filled with plenty of genuinely memorable characters (so good, in fact, that the villain who be brought back for the season two opener) and a pretty dark tone that keeps it from landing in “forgettable” territory. But honestly, who cares, because next week we’ve got the first bonafide New Who classic, in the form of the only episode of TV I was ever outrightly banned from watching, The Unquiet Dead. Stay tuned!
Yeah, insider jokes are the name of the game this week.
The Cutprice Guignol 