·
On the whole, this is a lean, efficient series
opener, not excellent, but a solid series opener that knows its job and
accomplishes it without a fuss.
·
It’s something new for Moffat: a technological
thriller, a genre that mostly works well for the show. It provides the
opportunity for Moffat to inject his usual cleverness into multiple moments in
the script: Clara’s method of finding the location of the company, and the
Doctor’s method of defeating Miss Kizlet and saving Clara, are both outright
ingenious. With that said, some moments are obviously the product of a 50 year-old
man trying to write a story about technology the list of social media sites,
some of which were wildly out of date for 2013 (I’m fairly sure Bebo gets a
mention), and the Doctor hacking the spoonhead by typing computer keys really
fast, stand out as particularly awkward attempts to be contemporary, but
they’re charming moments in their own way. And, overall, the choice of genre is
a good thing: the episode feels engaged in the world in a way that is good for
the series. Particularly good is the lovely pointed commentary in the “Nobody
loves cattle more than Burger King” exchange.
·
Miss Kizlet is a fun villain, being the main
figure of critique in the episode’s political commentary, and getting some
great lines to boot: my favourite is “I’m ever so fond of Alexi, but my
conscience says we should probably kill him”. Her ultimate fate is utterly
chilling.
·
As we touched on in the discussion of genre, the
episode marks the full return of the contemporary aesthetic to Doctor Who,
after the roots of this return in series 7A. This is seen in some of the
political commentary observed above, but it’s also strongly tied to Clara,
being the first thing that distinguishes her era from the Pond era. With Clara,
we move away from the fairy tale settings of Leadworth, and the tropes that
surround Amy, although the fairy tale themes and ideas that run through the
Moffat era are still present. But now, they are held in tension with the everyday
aesthetic Clara brings with the Maitlands and her contemporay London home.
·
While she brings more of the everyday than the
ponds, Clara is still surrounded by Images and symbols that hold fairy tale
significance: particularly notable in this episode are the leaf and her 101
places to see book. There’s a sense of negotiation between the everyday and the
fairy tale the leaf is symbolic of the power of Clara’s dreams, and the book
hints at her desire to be a fairy tale heroine, but the leaf also represents
her human tie to her mother, a tie that caused her to stay with the Maitlands
even though she keeps the book as a promise to herself to follow her fairy tale
dreams. In Clara’s world, the fairy tale and everyday are deeply intertwined.
·
Also notable is the way Clara keeps the Doctor
at a distance, shutting the door in the Doctor’s face, and refusing to be
whisked away by him, insisting he travel on a day she’s comfortable with,
providing the earliest hints of the “control freak” aspect of her character, although
here it only manifests as a perfectly sane response to the Doctor’s
ridiculousness. It’s Clara’s way of negotiating the intersections of fairy tale
and everyday in her life: trying to keep them separate, which will work for her
in this season, but be the course of greater problems next season. We also see
the way she is able to think like the Doctor, as is demonstrated in her hacking
into the Shard after gaining hacking skills from the spoonhead, which involves
some Doctorish thinking around the problem at hand.
·
While “The Bells of St John” does a lot of the
ground work for fleshing out Clara as a character, the “impossible girl”
mystery is worth looking at briefly, if only because the clues as to how this
mystery will work are here from the beginning. The Doctor’s obsession with
framed here as the Doctor’s “Madness”, the wrong way of trying to understand a
girl who has a lot more complexities to her. This will be important later.
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