Friday, 30 September 2016

Moffat Era Rewatch": Notes on "The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood" and "Vincent and the Doctor"

The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood
• This story is actually rather nice, in spite of not having the best reputation.
• One of the things I appreciated about it was its solid cast of female characters. Although Amy is overly sidelined in part one, she gets a strong role in part two, Nasreen is a great fun pseudo-companion, and Ambrose’s moral conflict and desperation to save her family is handled very well, so that we can understand when she attacks and kills Alaya in spite of the Doctor’s orders. Alaya and Reztek are less well served, and are a little too simplistically evil, with only gestures towards moral ambiguity, like the lovely moment where Reztek sees Alaya’s body, and is genuinely grieved, but there are not enough moments like this, when they are the characters that need the complexity most of all.
• Overall, the way the story handles its characters gives me a lot of hope for the Chibnall era: he handles the regulars particularly well, and will do even better work with this TARDIS team in Series Seven.
• I also appreciate the way Elliot’s Dyslexia is handled: it’s very brief, but gives a nice, positive, message for dyslexic kids watching.
• It’s also worth talking about the way the Silurians are depicted with more “human” faces: it’s a controversial decision, at least among some classic fans, but I think it works. The actors are given more range to perform in the Silurian prosethics, and this helps us distinguish between individual Silurians better than in Classic series stories, and is a demonstration of this story’s strength: it is able to display the complexity of The Silurians as a species in a way “The Silurians” simply couldn’t due to limitations of its effects and budget.
• That said, the “moral ambiguity” has limitations here: while the episode can do the concept behind “The Silurians” better than that story could, “sympathetic monsters” is less of an original idea for Doctor Who now, and that fact is to the story’s detriment: the fact that the status quo will inevitably be restored at the episode’s end makes it feel predictable, instead of fresh and original, and makes its attempt to portray the Silurians as a complex species feel pat and tokenistic, even though this story can and does depict them with more complexity than “The Silurians” did.
• And here, the season arc is actively detrimental to the story in a way it wasn’t in “Flesh and Stone” as there is no attempt to integrate the arc scenes into the story. Rory’s apparent death here will ultimately pay off well, as do the other revelations from the crack’s appearance, but the arc material still makes this story worse, not better.
Vincent and the Doctor
• This episode marks the start of a very strong run of episodes: for my money, there’s a case to be made that the next seven episodes (and five stories) are all classics, and make up a mini “golden run” for the Eleventh Doctor’s era.
• Again, as with “The Vampires of Venice”, this is a gorgeous episode, helped by the decision to film in Croatia
• Also important: they got Richard Curtis! Getting that well known a writer is a big coup for the show – and very much a good choice – his dialogue has a lovely poetry to it, that stands out from Moffat’s also excellent, but more banter heavy, approach to dialogue, and so sets this apart from the stories around it.
• While I’m very much a fan of this story, it’s worth acknowledging El Sandifer’s critique of this episode (http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-pleasure-of-smelling-a-flower-vincent-and-the-doctor/) Sandifer makes a strong counter argument to the overwhelmingly positive fan response, arguing that the story’s embrace of “tortured genius” tropes and Great Man theory undermines its positive messages about the complexities of depression and mental illness. It’s a pretty solid critique of the story, and one worth checking out when thinking about the ethical side to Doctor Who’s storytelling.
• For all that, the episode is, for my money, a great piece of television. It’s beautifully filmed and acted, and structured in a way that makes it stand out: wrapping up the “Doctor Who” adventure thirty minutes in to make space for an extended epilogue about the Doctor and Amy giving hope to Vincent Van Gogh. And the weight given to the epilogue works because the material for it, the Starry Starry Night sequence, Doctor Black’s speech, and the “Pile of good things and bad things” speech, is so very good.
• And if we’re going to do an ahistorical “Celebrity Historical” that celebrates a historical figure in an uncritical way, then Van Gogh, a misunderstood outsider, is a better choice than Winston Churchill. It has a mainstream approach to its subject matter that can make some damaging assumptions, but it’s also a beautiful and moving episode that, at its best approaches mental health issues with sensitivity and care. It’s not unproblematic, but no media is. We just have to choose what stories we find productive and helpful, in spite of their problems. In the case of “Vincent and the Doctor”, I think the pile of good things outweighs the pile of bad things.

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "Vampires of Venice" and "Amy's Choice"

Vampires of Venice
  •         A solid episode, not a memorable one, but with plenty of good stuff going for it, and this is coming from someone who’s not a huge fan of Toby Whithouse’s episodes. 
  •       There's a lovely lush visual texture afforded by the overseas filming, the production for this story is generally very assured: the cast and crew are beginning to consistently hit top form.
  •       The Smith era is starting to emerge fully now: the cake scene is pure Smith’s Doctor in a way that very little, apart from “The Eleventh Hour” (particularly the fish custard scene) has been until this point.
  •       The start of the departures from the Davies era season structure are becoming increasingly evident here. This time, the subversion is explored through the episode’s use of Rory, and the way the episode responds to Amy coming on to the Doctor at the end of “Flesh and Stone”. Ultimately the episode becomes about Amy making things right with Rory, and Rory being accepted as a member of the TARDIS crew – this could seem crass, a story about the Doctor and Rory deciding what’s right for Amy, but the episode and the rest of the season avoid making it that story, and instead find a better one, about Amy finding a way to integrate her Doctor life and her home life, while Doctor Who as a show starts to treat Rory with respect, and starts to value the domesticity he represents, rather than treat it as a trap, or something stifling. 


Amy’s Choice
  •  Let’s start with a quick look at Simon Nye. He’s guest writer of some repute, having created “Men Behaving Badly”, something Moffat brings to the series about once a season throughout his era, getting episodes from Richard Curtis, Neil Gaiman, Neil Cross, and Frank Cottrell Boyce. Moffat has even done the same, to a lesser extent, with directors, bringing Ben Wheatley in to direct Capaldi’s first two episodes, Rachel Talalay in to direct his first two finales, and has been teasing the possibility of an episode directed by Peter Jackson for some time. Yet in this instance, it’s hard to escape the sense that this episode has a heavy Steven Moffat influence, in spite of its writer’s reputation.
  • That’s not to say Simon Nye didn’t write this episode: many of the jokes, such as Rory feeling conflicted about hitting an alien in the body of a sweet old lady, feel like they’ve come from the creator of “Men Behaving Badly”, and this has a different feel to “Forest of the Dead”, and “Last Christmas”, the Moffat episodes that most explicitly explore dream tropes. But the thematic concerns do have an underlying Steven Moffat feel to them.
  • Either way, the mix of Moffat’s themes and Nye’s humour and writing style works nicely, giving us one of the smartest episodes of the season. This episode marks the start of the Moffat era’s critique and subversion of the common Doctor Who trope that suggests marriage and domesticity are antithetical to exciting adventures. The choice between exciting adventures with the Doctor and a peaceful life with Rory is revealed to be a false one: Amy can have both.
  • Just an extra note: Toby Jones is a superb villain, playing the dream Lord with aplomb.


Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "Victory of the Daleks" and "The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone"

Victory of the Daleks
  • Yeah, this one is a bit rubbish, really, and isn’t nearly critical enough of Churchill. There are a couple of moments that hint at a slightly more ambivalent take on the man, such as his grab for the TARDIS keys, and there is the underlying fact that the script has him using the Daleks for the cause of winning the war, but ultimately, the script settles on portraying him as a British icon without probing too deeply.
  •  Bits of Bracewell’s story are quite good, and are rather nicely done: I quite like the way Amy appeals to his humanity with the “good hurt” of a secret crush. It’s an unusual take on the “restore a robot’s humanity” trope, and a very Amy moment, albeit one that’s payoff to a theme the script hasn’t really been exploring.
  • The Paradigm Daleks were a bad idea. Little else that’s interesting to say about this.
  • Let’s end on a nice note. “Alright, it’s a jammy dodger, but I was promised Tea!” is the episode’s one moment of pure genius.


The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone
  • Moffat writes two part stories better than any other new series writer: most of the writers who aren’t Moffat or Davies struggle to make two part stories work. This is something to explore when discussing later episodes, but this is a significant factor in why there are no two part stories between “The Rebel Flesh/ The Almost People” and “Dark Water/ Death in Heaven”.
  • With that said, this is, for my money, the most flawed of Moffat’s two part stories, though it’s still a strong story, and an absolute ball to watch – the decision to make this the “Aliens” to “Blink”’s “Alien” is a smart choice.
  • The story is largely so fun because it’s full of great set pieces – the opening is glorious, the scene where Amy is trapped in the room with the camera-angel is a brilliant extension of the Weeping Angels’ abilities, and a great use of Amy’s brand of intuition. Amy counting down is beautifully woven into the early scenes of “Flesh and Stone”, and is incredibly tense. The cliffhanger is fist pumping, and Father Octavian’s death is really rather moving. The “get a grip” resolution works beautifully, as it pays off River’s “you might want to find something to hang onto taunt at the start of the first episode very neatly.
  • The story works as a two parter by following Moffat’s maxim of starting the second episode in a different place to the first episode – the “Up we fell” resolution to the cliffhanger gives the second episode a distinct setting and visual feel from the first episode – “The Time of Angels” being set mostly in the catacombs, while the second part is set in the wreckage of the Byzantium. As a result, each episode has its own texture and feel, that keeps both parts memorable.
  • The biggest flaw of the story comes in the form of its use of the season arc. The appearance of the crack has its strengths – it’s integrated into “Flesh and Stone” quite neatly, and having the season arc invade and impact a mid season story in this way is a nice change for Doctor Who’s approach to story arcs. But it does leave the story feeling a little overstuffed and slightly unbalanced.
  • Again, then, the rawness of the production is visible. Matt Smith is entertaining, but clearly finding his feet in his first filmed story. But here, unlike in “Victory of the Daleks”, the rawness is made up for by the brilliance of the story’s best ideas and moments, giving us a story that, while not quite a classic, is still very good.



Sunday, 25 September 2016

Moffat Era Rewatch: Notes on "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Beast Below"

The Eleventh Hour
  • ·      It almost goes without saying, but this is the best start to an Era any Doctor has had. The only surviving new Doctor story that comes close to being this good is Jon Pertwee’s first story, “Spearhead from Space”. You could make a strong case for “Power of the Daleks” being a better story.
  • ·      What’s really notable about this is the way it’s structured around showing off it’s leading man. It’s a sensible approach the episode’s following on from David Tennant, still a fan favourite, and the man who’s very much the face of Doctor Who in the public consciousness. Having Matt Smith’s Doctor present in almost every scene really gives him as much of a chance to win the public over to the new Doctor as possible. And the script and actor go on the charm offensive in the biggest way possible, pulling out all the stops to win us over to the new Doctor, culminating in the “Hello, I’m the Doctor” rooftop speech.
  • ·      For all that the script, Karen Gillan settles into her role magnificently, selling the fairy tale aspects of Amy’s character, along with the slightly broken side of the girl who has had four psychiatrists because of her belief in her imaginary friend. And, of course, the success of the new companion is helped by the fact that Caitlin Blackwood gives the best child actor performance the show’s ever had as Amelia.
  • ·      And while the script is obscuring this on the first watch, a rewatch does a lot to show that Rory won’t just be straightforwardly taking on the “Mickey role” – the boyfriend the companion leaves for adventures with the Doctor. His pictures of Prisoner Zero are key to the resolution of the plot, granting him narrative worth and respect Mickey isn’t given in “Rose”.
  • ·      Much like Moffat’s other “Doctor introduction” story, this is a script built heavily around the theme of perception, what we see. It’s an interesting and relevant theme to explore when your main character gets a new face. Unlike “Deep Breath”, which builds this idea around the theme of faces and veils, the Eleventh Hour explores the theme of perception through the act of looking. Eyes are a visual motif throughout the episode (and will continue to be throughout the Moffat era), with the Atraxi’s giant eye looking through the crack in space and time, and a close up on Amy’s eye as she sees the extra door in her house for the first time. And her seeing Prisoner Zero after disobeying the Doctor and going into the extra room is key to capturing prisoner Zero after it exploits its mental link with Amy: “Remember what you saw”. Perhaps most intriguing, and rarely commented on, is the final scene in the TARDIS where both Amy and the Doctor lie to each other, Amy about her reasons for wanting to be back in time for the next morning, and the Doctor about his reasons for taking Amy with him. As they lie, the two characters see each other through the TARDIS’s time rotor, visually obscured as they obscure the truth from one another. It’s a subtle but significant moment that sees the visual storytelling neatly complementing the writing. In this and many ways, “The Eleventh Hour” marks the start of the Moffat era’s push for more complex and layered visual storytelling in Doctor Who.



The Beast Below
  • ·      This story doesn’t have the best of reputations, I suspect largely because Moffat himself has said he considers it “a mess”, and the script he’s least proud of writing. Also, there’s the fact that it’s the first Moffat Story that isn’t a classic. Personally, I think it’s rather lovely.
  • ·      There is a rawness to this story: the direction’s a little flat, particularly for the Moffat era, where the direction and visual storytelling are so frequently of a very high standard. This and “Victory of the Daleks” are the episodes where it is most obvious this is the first season for a new production team.
  • ·      This functions beautifully as a “first companion adventure” story, as we see Amy coming to understand the nature of the Doctor, and the fairy tale aesthetic of her era being stamped all over this episode, distinguishing this from similar adventures for Rose, Martha, and Donna. The way Amy gets to save the day at the end, taking big risk based on her intuition and her understanding of the Doctor, sees the show getting Amy’s character very early on.
  • ·      Liz Ten’s also, a brilliant and fun woman of colour who gets a complex and distinct story that gives the episode a great deal of emotional weight. And her story of being stuck in an endless cycle that needs to be broken does loosely prefigure “Heaven Sent” in an interesting way.
  • ·      Overall, this story has a wonderful Cartmel era “Bringing down he Government” vibe – the “democracy in action” joke, while not being the most complex political commentary the show has given, does have a nice bite to it, and there’s a political anger underneath this story that Moffat doesn’t explore often enough in his scripts, but always elevates his work when he does unearth it.