Doctor Who - Pilot Error?

It used to be traditional that the new series of Doctor Who would kick off at Easter, having been killed off at Christmas four months earlier in a typical subversion of Christian values and getting birthdays and funerals totally mixed up. Through no fault of my own, it's also the most-viewed-in-one-day episode since Rose which is appropriate enough in many ways as this is the near-total relaunch promised by Moffat and the outgoing production team. I say near-total - while we might forgive the return of Capaldi's Doctor and Nardole in a "clean break" episode we still get to see Susan, River Song, multiple sonic screwdrivers, a Dalek-Movellan war, and even a now-saddening attempt to cross-promote the now long-dead Class.

"What a load of sub-Joss-Whedon shite! I thought Torchwood was lame, but this lot? ...they're standing right behind me, aren't they?"

Still, it's all easily acceptable Easter Eggs (ooh, see what I did there?) in the finished product which both fans and critics alike have found a vast improvement on the last two seasons of Doctor Who - there was more compassion, humanity, fun and actual daylight. The main characters were likeable, the happy ending undisputed, there were no ontological paradoxes (bar a very simple sight gag to clue in viewers our hero is a time traveller). There are no prophecies hanging over our heroes, no inevitable nervous breakdowns imminent due to deep psychological scarring, and even the token moment of Doctor Darkness is portrayed as a man in a desperate position who decides to screw the rules and ultimately do what's right.

I of course am in full accord with this. I have bitched mightily and the fact my beloved show is one again my beloved show is not something I will take issue with.

And yet...

While The Pilot as an episode is impossible to hate, it certainly isn't the easiest to love - unlike say Rose or The Eleventh Hour. Unlike those episodes with their "all are welcome" mindsets, this time the production team are biting their thumbs and tongues deliberately. Moffat is basically being forced to not write Doctor Who the way he wants to, so there's something of smiling through gritted teeth as we get a sanitized, child-friendly series rather than the viciously sci-fi Sherlock he was clearly more happier writing.

It's enough to make a Dalek cry... Again.

There is an argument that we should forgive rubbish stories if the author enjoys writing them: Rob Shearman has often said that The Two Doctors is totally vindicated by the fact Rob Holmes is deliberately ignoring his own tropes and doing horrible things to characters he should be treating better. I'm not sure about that, any more than I believe David Whitaker's making a metatextual criticism on base-under-siege stories by deliberately making The Wheel in Space a tedious mess of boring clichés. So what if the writer feels good - what about us, the poor schmucks who have to endure their extroverted narcissism? Find someone who enjoyed Season Six of Buffy BECAUSE it was totally dominated by a writing team dealing with bereavement. You get paid to write this, we do not get paid to watch it.

So, in short, I sympathize with Moffat's straightjacketed script even as I say he's had five seasons and two shows to unload his genius on.

And perhaps its that lack of Moffaty chaos that makes The Pilot feel more mechanical and functional than it should. There's something artificial about it all as we find the Doctor undercover as a university lecturer with the TARDIS in his office and a wide-eyed pupil learns the truth about him. Give the Doctor post-regenerative amnesia and you have a dozen Nth Doctor reboot pitches from the early-to-mid 90s from Bullseye Books to Amblin Entertainment. Then add the awkward "OK, bring on the Daleks" sequence to wrap around a year-old cutaway skit (which is inexplicably not actually shown, probably because it's totally unable to fit with the narrative) rather than anything to work out the plot. Moff also achieves the final indignity to Davros' creations; he inherited them as unstoppable harbingers of the apocalypse fit only for season finales and massive cast changes, and now they're rolled out for trailers if the Doctor needs a distraction. The Movellans were a last-second change to some other random space soldiers, but probably had more time and effort put into them than Skaro's finest. Oh well.

"Didn't you used to be a respected TV icon?" "I-DON'T-KNOW. WEREN'T-YOU?"

The insistence on everything being brand new means that it's hard not to notice some of the "hey, you've done that already!" moments that might otherwise pass unmentioned. The Doctor in hiding at a school, pretending to be human, a teacher fearing a sinister puddle? The enemy being another hashtag malfunctioning tech than outright evil, living technology needing a pilot that is scrambled by that pilot's frustrated love life? An alien liquid that turns people into dripping water zombies that scream unnervingly? A sinister presence that turns up wherever the TARDIS goes? An enemy that mimics and impersonates people, mindlessly repeating everything they say? Someone rifling through photographs to find new memories of a life with the Doctor involved in their childhood?

Is it the return of the Flood? The Spoonheads? The thing from Midnight? At least it's not the Rani!

It's basically the New Series put into a blender of pure nostalgia, the sort of thing you'd expect from some remake film ten years from now evoking the best of classic Who.

...too soon?

Still, since the show has been off-air since 2015 and arguably since 2013, I suppose enough time has passed. Ultimately, this episode is The One Where Bill Joins, no more or less.

Bill is a vast improvement on her bug-eyed grinning idiot of her "preview scene" and you can understand why they ended up not using it in the finished episode. On paper, her annoying questions about the Dalek and its ridiculousness could work, but the character needs to be afraid and frustrated rather than nearly pissing herself laughing at how dumb this all is; similarly, the Doctor shouldn't be shaking with fear at the Dalek, but eagerly awaiting its approach. Indeed, Bill is actually more complicated than she actually needs to be, given any non-psychopath with wanderlust would do the trick. She's talky and self-deprecating, loathe to admit her secrets or how unhappy she is with life, coping with existence with the silly things and falling in love at the drop of a hat - rather like the Doctor should be, and this time around, is. While Bill's foster mum isn't the walking advert for mandatory euthanasia of Sylvia Noble, she's clearly not on her daughter's wavelength and more interested in her own love life. The fact the last time we saw the actress she was living in a campervan screwing a tom cat somehow fits well.

Is the missing Sydney Harbor Bridge is a goof? Or canonizing that it was blown up by the Daleks in a 1970s comic strip called *Sub Zero featuring the Third Doctor?

The tiny moments where Bill lets her pain show - when her foster mum dismisses her education, sexuality, abandonment issues and even bothering to give her a present for Christmas - add definition to someone who at first glance seems less three-dimensional as Nardole who is reduced to the level of season-one Ianto to the point he's utterly forgettable. Pitching him as a kind of K9/Handles mechanical buddy who irritates the Doctor shows that Matt Lucas is basically a prop, and his best moments are when he's either being quietly serious or channelling Ade Edmonsen as he humours the pretentious looney he lives with. Watching him whining incoherently as he waddles away from a Dalek is probably supposed to cement his status as Penfold to the Doctor's Danger Mouse but is frankly cringe-worthy. Somehow he makes the prospect of diving face-first into a Dalek War seem ridiculously underwhelming, like a kid not wanting to go to the dentist. The increasing hints he's not what he appears to be, with an artificial body and the Doctor not considering Bill safe alone in his presence, are almost out of left-field. It's like hints Alfred Pennyworth worships Satan. Say-what?!

Behold the Big Bad of 2017... or not.

There's also the moment where Moffat's desire to creep the hell out of the audience overrides common sense (as if!) where the liquid monster chasing Bill manages to infiltrate her house and gurgles into the bathroom for a classic "Hey, if you're not here, who's that person in the next room?" horror sting. All well and good but then we are asked to believe this implacable, unstoppable creature determined to get Bill at any cost decided not to all of a sudden and then leave again just to provide a creepy scene with an impossibly-empty shower cubicle. I'd write in to complain, but Moff's answers in DWM usually follow the "ah, they just do that, it's weird" pattern of someone who long ago stopped giving a crap.

But that can be forgiven, with such an episode full of xenophilia in a world increasingly xenophobic. The Doctor makes it clear that very little in creation is truly evil, the sinister star in Heather's eye is harmless and not seen as a deformity by Bill or the Doctor, and even the corrupting influence of the alien liquid is ultimately marked down as benevolent. As I said reviewing the previous episode, Doctor Who now has optimism about it. The universe is a wonderful place, people are kind, and things can get better. Bill looks at this adventure and wants to remember it, begging to be allowed to have "some good dreams for a change" rather than a total psychotic breakdown at the nihilistic pointlessness of it all. The Doctor rightly says "screw it" when an ominous story arc about a monstrous secret vault might prevent fun adventures in time and space. Deep Breath ended with the realization life is pointless and all struggle is futile in the long run, and it would have been better for all concerned if the Doctor died on Trenzalore. The Pilot ends with a promise we've only just scratched the surface of wonder.

Maybe Moff's finally started taking those antidepressants?

All in all, though, The Pilot is a good episode. It's funny, clever, rewarding on a second viewing and so bereft of complicated predestination that Rove McManus was left high and dry with his panel show when they didn't have anything to discuss. Speaking of Rove, props to the bloke as I fully believe the insufferable twat is a total fan - and one possessed with unaccountable luck when he manages to stumble on the bloke who played Ixta in The Aztecs in the middle of doing an unfunny comedy skit. And, though the point of the skit was that it was unfunny, there are far too many moments in Whovians where the silence drags on too long. And there's the clear problem that while the panelists all love Doctor Who, only Adam Richards is an actual fanboy whose wild conspiracy theories should not be allowed off the internet and is wisely sprayed with cold water by the other fans when he starts ranting that Missy was Susan all along. In short, Whovians could have been much, much worse than it actually was and is still probably a career low for Rove (even though he's doing it by choice).

You always turn into the thing you hate most...

Oddly enough, not one of the panellists noticed the sweet naming convention in this story and assumed that Bill was named after Billie Piper to emphasize her Roseness (apparently a few directional touches count for more than the fact she is an unqualified young canteen worker who lives with her mother, pines after a dead parent, has a consistently rubbish love life, a handy gift for emphasizing with alien monsters and helping passers-by). If she's named after anyone, it's surely after William Hartnell given the love of her life is named Heather, after Heather Hartnell. So Bill wants to live happily ever after with Heather but circumstances force them apart and Bill has to travel the universe in a Type 40 TARDIS while Heather stays behind...

It's the sort of thing RTD would have done.

And in making Doctor Who accessible and loveable once again - to the point where Sparacus can see the positives and the DWADs are ranting it's a betrayal of the diamond logo itself - there's no surprise that Moffat is following in his footsteps once more.

This two-second cameo is the best bit of the episode. It's called DRAMA!!!