·
Toby Whithouse has written three very good
stories so far: after “The God Complex”, which was a highlight of its season,
he felt like a plausible future showrunner. But this episode marks the point
where his writing starts to lose my interest, as he gets stuck in something of
a creative rut, struggling to do anything new with Doctor Who.
·
Before we get into the meat of the episode,
let’s acknowledge the crassness of the portrayal of Susan the horse. The idea
that having a horse be transgender is in any way enough of a way to engage with
gender identity when trans people are dehumanized in real life on a daily basis
suggests an incredibly thoughtless approach to the issue, which is compounded
by the even worse fact that the Docctor doesn’t use the correct pronouns for
Susan. It’s arguably less explicitly transphobic than what was written in
“Geeks bearing gifts”, where Whithouse has, of all people, Jack Harkness give a
speech that is explicitly suspicious of and dismissive towards transgender
people, but it’s proof that Whithouse hasn’t made a substantial effort to
improve his representation of transgender people.
·
In fairness to the story, it captures the “movie
poster” aspect of series seven’s approach quite nicely: the Western genre is
well used and invoked nicely, with Saul Metzstien’s direction capturing the
tone nicely, and Whithouse putting all the Western tropes (Stranger walking
into a silent bar, the Marshall dying and handing over his badge to the
protagonist, a lynch mob, a gun duel at high noon) at all the appropriate
points in the story.
·
But then we get to the major structural problems
in the story: the first is Kahler Jex, who switches between “straightforward
villain” and “man wracked by guilt trying to atone for his sins” too frequently
and in far too artificial a manner. Part of this is due to Adrian Scarborough’s
performance: when switching between the two extremes of his character, he moves
from speaking in a soft, pleasant manner, to using the “evil voice” David
Mitchell and Robert Webb hilariously lampoon in their own sketch show). But the
writing is also to blame: Scarborough is a good actor, clearly struggling with
a script that does very little to mediate between Jex’s villainous moments and
his penitent ones, and having to play moments where Jex’s darker lines seem
completely out of place. Jex mocking the Doctor for “not having the nerve to do
what needs to be done” feels horribly articficial, and not like something Jex
would say in that moment, he just says it because the Doctor needs to be
motivated to have an angry and dark moment.
·
Which leads to the biggest problem with the
episode: its use of the Doctor's Time War guilt. The mirroring between the
Doctor and Jex is crashingly unsubtle, and comes across feeling cheap, a
problem when the Doctor’s guilt is meant to be driving the story. There’s a
lingering sense throughout the episode that the time to address the spectre of
the Time War head on is due.
·
For all my complaints, this isn’t a bad episode:
it’s well paced, well acted, invokes the Western genre nicely, and has some
lovely sequences (the opening, the conclusion, and the lynch mob scene all work
well). But it feels lacking: the themes and ideas underpinning this story feel
tired and worn out, and result in an episode that feels like less than the sum
of its parts.
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