Doctor Who - Normal Service Resumed?

Doctor Who meets the Ghost, Ghost Stories # 1 (2016)

Did you see Doctor Who on Boxing Day?

I did - and it was the first time I've seen Doctor Who since 2013. Don't get me wrong, the show going out under that banner with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman was high-quality stuff but felt like Doctor Who as much as the Stranger and Miss Brown or Professor Dominie and Alice piss-farting about in generic Whovian adventures but never quite convincing. There's as much continuity and imagination on display as there was in Death Comes To Time, but that still feels less "real" than that adventure on the back of a cigarette packet where the Daleks and the Voord went to war...

"OK, we're all agreed? When I pull this lever, one of you becomes my arch-enemy..."

One can only conclude that the unearthly parallel between Doctor Who of 1984-86 and 2014-16 has reached its zenith. No one can deny the uncanny similarities. We have an established popular producer deciding to change his leading man for the second time, choosing an actor who's already been in the show to play an older and utterly unpleasant new Doctor in a more gritty, darker version of the series to appeal to fans and critics alike. Alas, by the time it's realized the show's new edginess is making itself indigestible to the public the BBC are screwing it over like some inexperienced and overly-priced sex worker. The second series lightens up the Doctor but kills off his companion, then un-kills her off, maybe, turns the Doctor into an evil villain before having him run off into the sunset with a companion who defies continuity altogether.

So we've hit the equivalent of Season 24. The showrunner's dragged back to do yet another season with no ideas, no scripts and only one regular and decides to go for broke by starting everything from scratch. A brand new beginning - "seeing the universe anew" to use the next season's slogan - to get people watching again. No more trying to psychologically torment cast, crew and audience or setting up intricate ontological paradoxes or Bad Wolf story arcs that inevitably invite disappointment.

And, most fundamentally of all, Moffat has written Doctor Who with optimism for a change.

Since the dour Scot took over - if not sooner with Silence in the Library - the future has been something to dread, fear and waste time avoiding. As spelled out very blatantly in the latest installment of Sherlock, the Grim Reaper is coming and you're all fucked. You can make the remaining moments count, but it won't do you any good in cheating fate. And fate is always bad.

Silence in the Library ends with Donna facing a horrible destiny and the Doctor doomed to know River Song's death from the very beginning. The Eleventh Hour concludes with the Doctor responsible for silence falling over the universe and Amy's so desperate to avoid getting married she'll flee Earth 2010 altogether, and of course the data of the season's final episode (where the season will be judged a success or failure) is the moment the entire universe ends. The next season kills the Doctor in the second scene and then is a remorseless-if-not-entirely-logical countdown to it, and when he cheats death the series ends saying that now something even worse will happen. The first half of season seven is all about how the Ponds are dead meat, while the second half does the same for the Doctor. Season eight was repeatedly meant to end with the Doctor and Clara parting forever on bad terms, and the happy ending to The Husbands of River Song is the pair of them declaring their time together is at an end.

But then... what's this? The Return of Doctor Mysterio ends with the suggestion that - brace yourself - things are going to get better. The Doctor is going to start having fun again and put his heartbreak behind him, while Grant and Lucy are going to happy together now they know the truth. OK, one alien bad guy is on the loose but we're told UNIT and Osgood are on its tail. The story may not be over, but there isn't a shadow hanging over them. This time, there's nothing to run away from or bury your head in the sand to escape. The future is bright. You don't need to be scared for once.

Look at the Doctor and Nardole - effectively a TV version of Sixie and Frobisher, with Peter Capaldi playing the Doctor so kind and silly and morally righteous you'd be forgiven for thinking he's got the wrong script and Matt Lucas' gnomish sidekick puncturing the Doctor's pomposity and making it clear he's much smarter, wiser and braver than he shows his friend. The first time we see the Doctor he's managed to fall into his own booby trap and ending up dangling off an apartment building. The first time we see Nardole he's interrupting a press conference to ask for a toilet. These are not the emotionally-damaged, unpredictable vigilantes who might just destroy lives and planets as they deal with their issues, who are canonically shown to be a bigger threat to normal folk than Daleks and Cybermen.

They're likable losers. They've got the depth of the Second Doctor and Jamie (and a lot of the same success rate) and the Game of Thrones angst and torment has been forgotten. As someone once said, even James Bond does emo trauma nowadays. It's gotten old. Lighten up. There is a good reason why City of Death was considered the ur-text for NuWho and not, as has been since Capaldi took over, Horror of Fang Rock. You have to be in the right mood to appreciate the nihilistic horror death-fetishistic lighthouse story, as well as the ability to admit you watch for enjoyment as much as artistic credibility and human introspection.

And it's rare for xmas specials to go for enjoyment, particularly in the English culture where apparently celebrating the birth of a semi-divine pacifist requires ghost stories, misery and emotional breakdowns in the media. Under RTD we've had shlocky Dickensian horror (The Unquiet Dead) alien invasion movies (The Christmas Invasion), romcoms (The Runaway Bride), disaster flicks (Voyage of the Damned) and buddy cop films (The Next Doctor). Under Moff we've had more specific takes on A Christmas Carol, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, Mary Poppins, Inception and now a Superman movie.

The crucial different between The Return of Doctor Mysterio and The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe is that the former isn't crap and doesn't revolve around a truly-terrible performance from a badly-written character. For example, it takes some serious after-the-fact thought to conclude that the hero Grant has technically been stalking Lucy by becoming the nanny for the illegitimate daughter of the girl he's loved since high school but never been brave enough to admit it.

Even so, that feels a rather uncharitable way of looking at their demented two-person love triangle which is of course a play on the classic Clark-Kent-loves-Lois-Lane-loves-Superman problem. You're not supposed to look upon that farce as anything sinister, any more than you're supposed to be screaming at horror at the ten-minute pre-credit sequence where a small and defenseless child allows a creepy old man into his house unsupervised. As with Amelia in The Eleventh Hour, any such cynical thoughts are tossed away as we accept the Doctor gets a free pass on behavior others might class as dodgy. And considering in this adventure he, as always, alters the entire course of a child's life, not telling your boss you fancy her is put in perspective as rather small fry, really.

Yet, in comparison, I defy anyone watching TDTWATW (and pity upon you for doing so) not to be slightly creeped out to learn Madge married Alex Armstrong because he kept following her and she didn't want to make a fuss. Yes, values differences and all that, but it casts a strangely sinister hue over events - particularly given Madge seems at times to be either completely psychopathic or a non-functional moron, in either case requiring a good slap to make her take life seriously.

Despite the gaudy comic book origins, no characters in this episode are so poorly-thought-out gag fodder. Lucy's unusual interrogation techniques and obsession for the truth make it very believable that she would effectively ditch her unwanted baby daughter on her unlucky best friend while she continues her journalistic career. Grant likewise is very human in his denial for how his double life as superhero and babysitter is totally untenable, and how he has clearly very much avoided thinking about the brutal truth the Doctor sums up:

"A couple of years after high school, I ran into her again. And I was with my best friend at the time, and she couldn't take her eyes off him. Love at first sight. Then marriage, then a baby, and then he ran off with someone else..."

"Leaving, I suppose, the field open for you to move in and care for the child she'd had by another man so she could keep working and possibly date other friends of yours?"

Some have complained that what is basically Doctor Who Meets Superman should miss the dramatic potential of him encountering and critiquing a character defined - as Tom Baker so memorably said - solving problems by hitting them harder than normal people. The whole Batman-vs-Superman franchise is based on the fact that giving godlike powers to a screwed up Kansas farmboy could prove a bad thing and ultimately cause more harm than good to the people he is supposedly trying to protect.

Presumably people would much rather a story where the Ghost was actively destroying New York in some deranged black-and-white conflict only for the Doctor to save the day using his more rational and logical approach to problem solving (which they've spent the last two series showing is arguably worse than any villain he has faced because he is a soul-destroying cancer who never gets anything right).

Well, fuck the lot of you.

The Twelfth Doctor ain't a DC fan.

Instead we have a scene-by-scene remake of Aliens of London (now so long ago that there isn't a self-aware comment when the bad guys turn out to be alien bodysnatchers with zips in their foreheads trying to terrify mankind using 9/11 tactics of crashing spaceships into public landmarks) where the Doctor's ire for our expy of Krypton's last son is to complain how utterly complicated he's making his life. Yeah, fighting aliens and defeating bad guys is easy with super-powers but all he's doing is ensuring he and his love are kept in miserable secrecy. The Doctor outright cuts down Grant's "I'm a superhero, I can sort out anything" philosophy with one moment of righteous indignation:

"With great power comes great responsibility. No man worthy of the title leaves a baby alone."

Grant's justifications of his super-speed and genuine dedication to the baby girl are left sounding forced because they are. I can only assume a cut scene explains why Grant's suddenly decided to become a crime-fighting vigilante when he already has a paying job - perhaps his super-powers are getting out of control in some symbiotic sexual frustration and fighting bad-guys is the only way to keep himself on the straight and narrow around his employer/lust object.

Ultimately we are left with an unexpected and frankly more interesting plot than the Doctor tapping Superman on the shoulder and telling him to be more careful around innocent bystanders (which, surely, has been the fuel for every alternate issue of every superhero comic since the dawn of time) but rather the Doctor deciding that Superman should show more respect to his girlfriend (something no one's really gone for, to my knowledge) as a human being. In short, being a better person is more important than defeating Lex Luthor's latest scheme to wipe out Metropolis.

Meh. Attend to the pennies and the pounds look after themselves and all that.

The point is, people are complaining this story was completely different to what they were expecting.

Re above: fornicate among yourselves, you sheep!

Oddly enough, Bruce Wayne has a soft-spot for the Time Lord.

Another notable bit is the sequence where Lucy interrogates the Doctor with the novel approach of squeezing a toy whenever she thinks the Time Lord is lying. Not only does this show just how much the Doctor lies every time he draws breath, it serves to highlight his own hypocrisy. After all, it was Moffat that introduced the whole "Doctor lies" shtick along with "Amy lies" and "River lies" and "Clara lies" and "Missy lies" and "Ashildr lies". Finally someone tells the Doctor to stop pissing about and actually talk straight for once.

The implication that life is too short for pointless deception, and that the future is not frightening enough to merit lies in the first place, is probably the most optimistic conclusion since The Next Doctor showed Jackson Lake's life could continue past his nervous breakdown and the loss of his wife.

So in the spirit of merciless honesty, there are things I didn't like - the Doctor munching on sushi while Brock is murdered and lobotomized in the next corridor with our hero doing absolutely bugger all to save him, or even say something like "We can't save him now." Which is what he said about a tortured Dalek two episodes ago. Brock was just a corrupt jerk, he wasn't even a villain but the Doctor won't lift chopsticks to save him and it clashes incredibly with his behavior in the rest of the episode, like when he plots a suicide fait d'accompli to force Grant to save the world.

The return of Nardole and Harmony Shoal (the split-head zombies) from the immediately previous Christmas special isn't really that impressive, as neither of them made a big impact at the time. Handles and the flying shark linger more in the memory, and neither new companion or villain are really explained. Nardole was apparently rescued off-screen post-beheading so the Doctor could have a companion to keep him on the straight and narrow. Fair enough, but Nardole? Not Shona or maybe even Strax? Anyone could do that.

And how come HS goes from sentient brain beasts to blue liquid-filling corpses with runny sores and noses? And their vivid scars? How the hell have they become a super-power when they need to perform surgical operations to snatch bodies? And why do they keep their guns inside their slime-filled skulls instead of, I dunno, in their holsters? It takes longer for them to crack open their heads and pull out the slime-encrusted gun and aim it than it takes for the average 2016 celebrity to die!

How come Brock sees an annoying journalist clearly bribing a cleaner to swap uniform so she can infiltrate his base, then makes ominous arrangements to set up something for midnight while staring directly at her... and then totally do nothing about it over the next eight hours?! And what does the Harmony Shoal company do, anyway? It says its at the forefront of technology but the only mystery mentioned is who's funding them when it's entirely unexplained what they're supposed to be doing!

There's also the abandoned idea in the opening scene of the Doctor fixing the time eddies in New York - presumably so he can reunite with Amy and Rory following River's final death - which is never mentioned again, despite numerous hints from Nardole that being deprived of this closure is what has led to the Doctor's manic nay suicidal actions throughout. Or why UNIT had to be called in to investigate New York by the Doctor when the inexplicable appearance of a superhero surely counts as worthy of their attention?

Plus the now inevitable Big Finish box-set Nardole, King of Constantinople release...

Even so, for all it's admittedly-minor faults, The Return of Doctor Mysterio - not a reference to Charles Daniels, alas - is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, by which I mean out of the "darkness" the show's been belly-flopping within ever since Matt Smith left, gaining critical acclaim at the cost of the popular appeal the show needs.

To misquote Gareth Roberts, fans are proud of the bits of Doctor Who normal people hate. Only fans would worship Heaven Sent, a nightmarish one-hander where the Doctor suffers Dante-esque hell-like torture both physically and mentally for 4.5 billion years until he's rendered a psychopathic mass-murderer. To normal people it's Peter Capaldi talking to himself as he walks in circles for a week, with any deeper meanings left utterly depressing and disturbing - any family show that ends with the children's hero declaring he is the Antichrist and about to wipe out all in his path as a happy ending needs a top-to-bottom rethink and irony of ironies, Moffat's been left to tidy up his own mess.

From the trailer alone Series Ten (it should be Series Thirteen, you notice all the gap years are because of Moffat??) has a happy, silly, likeable trio exploring new worlds and times rather than previous years which have promised dark places, misery, introspection and prophecies of death. When Capaldi was announced, there was that awesome "Rain" trailer where a CGI Doctor and Clara emerged from the TARDIS onto an alien mountainside in a crystalline downpour. The TV series offered instead a shot of a skeleton being electrocuted in the explosion-filled TARDIS console and told not to trust the main character.

So thank Christ that's all over and Doctor Who can be itself once again...

Frobisher is sent to record the live-stream of the Series 10 premiere

Mind you, I'm not taken will Bill Potts who seems to be even stupider than Nardole pretends to be and has the vocabulary of a five-year-old and the mindset of a concussed stoat. Let's hope that this is another crappy trailer, like that one with Eleven and Amy mumbling on a fake-hillside which promptly explodes. Somehow.

Only a couple of months left to find out...

4.5/5