Posts Tagged ‘steven moffat’

The new Doctor Who episode, The Day of the Moon, is Doctor Who thinking and writ LARGE.

Part of the scale comes from the great use of locations.  The wide open spaces of Utah.  Iconic locations like: Apollo 11.  The Oval office.  Area 51.  The dark and spooky orphanage is a beautiful contrast with the peculiarly shaped corridor, air of decay and nest of sleeping Silence hanging upside down like bats. Doctor Renfrew a truly creepy character to show the danger of long-term exposure to The Silence.

The opening sequence (three months on from The Impossible Astronaut) was excellent with the apparent death of all three companions.  The Doctor locked in an inescapable, impenetrable, sensor proof room.  Escape proof unless you have an invisible TARDIS stashed away.  Rescuing River using the TARDIS’s swimming pool was both a really great idea and a nice nod to old Who Lore.  Bad Canton was a nice bit of icing on the cake.

I do hope Canton has been set up to be a recurring character as was hinted at by the Doctor’s farewell.

Steven Moffat made great use of the TARDIS too often in the past I’ve bemoaned how stories have been written around separating The Doctor and the TARDIS so that the story can happen without The Doctor simply hopping in and going somewhere else.   Moffat uses it in an almost casual way but always inventive.  River diving into the pool.  Bouncing Nixon from the White House to where they needed him to solve problems – I really like the way he seemed a bit confused after each trip.

There were other great touches like:

• Neil Armstrong’s foot
• Turning The Silence’s power of suggestion back on them
• The Doctor setting up Nixon to record everything was a nice touch
• Using the inescapable and impenetrable room to trap the wounded member of the Silence

I really like the move to use a structure in series six where the series sets out some mysteries at the start rather than dropping little seeds along the way to be pulled together in the last couple of episodes.  Playing along here are the mysteries we’ve had so far…

From The Impossible Astronaut:

• Can the Silence read thoughts? – Presumably not or the gloating one wouldn’t have handed Canton the recording he needed
• Are The Silence bad? –Now I’d say Most Definitely Bad
• What hit Canton on the head? – Not cleared up probably never will be
• How does this episode’s space ship control room tie in with the one in The Lodger? – Not cleared up although it may just belong to some of The Silence who have had an unfortunate encounter with humans
• Rory apparently zapped by The Silence and Rory and River’s escape – Not exactly explained but I’d assume The Silence removed themselves from their memory and opened the door as they did for Amy in the children’s home later
• The girl in the space suit shot by Amy – The suit healed her or Amy missed
• Why Canton was fired by the FBI and can’t get married – Explained

New mysteries from Day of the Moon:

• How does Rory sometimes remember being the last centurion since that was the Auton copy in The Big Bang?
• How did the girl get out of the space suit?
• To quote the Doctor “Canton Everet Delaware the Third who’s he?”

Which just leaves the three big mysteries:  The dead Doctor, Amy and the Girl in the Space Suit.  I’ll skip the first because if there were new clues they were too subtle for me.

Amy:

• Her Schrödinger’s pregnancy
• Amy in the Silence’s time machine for many days – long enough to have a child?
• The picture of Amy holding a baby in children’s home
• The disappearing hatch in the door?  The woman “No I think she’s just dreaming”?

Why did the girl need a space suit and all that alien tech – was there more to it than a plot device to save the girl when Amy shoots her?  Why did she regenerate?  Presumably she is a Timelord so given all the fuss about destroying the Doctor after his death in The Impossible Astronaut potential sources for genetic material I can think of include:

• Some of The Doctor’s stolen when under the influence of The Silence
• The Master, The Ranni or another unrevealed Timelord
• The Doctor’s daughter
• The DNA stolen by the escaped Krillitane in School Reunion

So I think you can guess I fall into the really enjoyed the Doctor Who The Day of the Moon camp.

The first, new episode of the 2011 run of Dr Who The Impossible Astronaut is a joy.

If you’re going to do a Doctor Who in America why not go for it. Using the vast scale of the wide open spaces and light gives grandeur to the scene that chalk pits never could. Later the TARDIS appearing in the beautifully realised Oval Office. The villain in a NASA space suit.

The dialogue was snappy with great one liners, jokes, catch phrases and playing with in show jokes for regular viewers.

I’ve read some complaints that Steven Moffat is using time travel within episodes too much. Frankly that almost points up that writers in the past haven’t used it enough. The old formula used the TARDIS to drop the Doctor and friends into an interesting situation and then let them leave at the end.

The incidental music I am the Doctor and its variations are now as inextricably linked musically to the show for me as the theme. I keep catching myself tapping the rhythm.

River Song as always a joy from the Mrs Robinson gag. She continues the complication of someone who can travel in time in a non linear way independently of The Doctor that Captain Jack began. In some ways she is exploring companions in a way they’ve not been looked at before. We got a hint of this with Sarah Jane in School Reunion. Here we are seeing the slightly obsessive side of the jilted companion replaced by younger companions. Then there her prophetic, metaphorical sense that the day she meets The Doctor for his first time and he doesn’t know who she is may kill her foreshadowing Forest of the Dead.

Having Rory aboard the TARDIS for a whole season will change the shows dynamic. We get away from the RTD model of the companion. The adult side is still there thanks to River and Doctor flirting but now we have Doctor with companions that doesn’t apply to. Now she has Rory to share screen time with Amy seemed a bit more toned down.

It was a really nice touch having William Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard playing Canton Everett Delaware III at different ages rather than resorting to dodgy makeup. Really hope we’ll see more of Canton in Day of the Moon as he quickly established an interesting character. Will we get an explanation of why Canton getting married was a crime?

The first of the stories two monsters in the story is scary. Creepy 1960s suited MIB / Grey hybrids who make people forget. Is the one there just before the Doctor killed significant? Is it there to observe the death? Are these monsters just a bit Oodish. We only see its mouth when it kills but not when it speaks.

The other apparent bad guy is the space suited killer. Is the girl in the Space Suit the same one as at the lake? Steven Moffat seems to like space suit as monster motifs – The Vashta Nerada infected skull faced spacesuits in Silence in the Library had the space suit motif. These new monsters are being called The Silence which is odd since they cause people to forget them. It’s probably all just be a coincidence or playing with fans heads. If nothing else Moffat likes monsters with scary heads we can add his gas masked villains of The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.

Then we have the mysteries: River in Flesh and Stone says she killed the best man she’d ever known. There is a girl in the space suit when we see it in 1969. Someone in a space suit kills the Doctor. Could it be that River is the girl in the space suit?

We get little time travel games – Rory the Roman used and then invented later by the earlier Doctor is a nice touch.

Amy is the first character to experience nausea after seeing The Silence. Then River is later and blames it on prison food. Is Amy really pregnant or is there more to it? Is it natural or is it related to The Silence or is there something else going on?

Rather than following more recent series where a series of episodic stories build up to reveal a mystery we’ve had a series of big mysteries dropped in out lap. Will the next episode clear them all up or have we been shown the shape of some or all of this series?

• The Silence can at least know names. Can it read thoughts?
• The Silence killed Joy in the bathroom but other than that do we see them do anything bad?
• There are Tunnels under the entire planet for centuries or something added by the Tardis rebuilding the planet?
• What hit Canton on the head?
• How does this tie to the control room in The Lodger?
• Why has the Doctor been practicing escapes? Is this more significant than an opening joke?

I know in the past I’ve complained about there not being enough cliff hangers. I can hardly complain about that this week with not one, not two but three cliff hangers…

• Rory apparently zapped by The Silence
• The girl in the space suit shot by Amy
• The dead Doctor

I’m really looking forward to the next part and the rest of the season. Fingers crossed it lives up to this cracking series opener.

Tonight’s Doctor Who, The Big Bang, was farce.  Not quite pure farce.  More like 90% farce.  Not bad farce.  Proper farce.  Farce in a good way.  In a The Importance of Being Earnest or Noises Off kind of way. It could take its spiritual importance from the second half of The Importance of Being Earnest’s full title: Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

Steven Moffat had real fun playing with the timelines this week.  Each of the characters in the story has a timeline that we dip in and out of.  The Big Bang shows the power of the point of view in a story.  We have the camera’s time line which starts out following Amelia Pond.  The Doctor keeps steering her to be in the right place at the right time for the Pandorica’s opening.   When did he put the postit on the Pandorica and when did he write it?

Then it swaps to Rory in 102AD (1894 years ago) anchoring us to the love story and to the Previously.  Then we get the first view of the farce.  One of the Noises Off sections where the Doctor gives Rory his instructions so he can escape from the Pandorica.  I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a paradox there.  Given the Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica with the sonic screw driver how did he escape the first time?  That’s really going to play with the heads of anyone who takes Who too seriously.  However he did it it was soon enough that he could still get River Song’s time travel doodad.

Then we get the Doctor’s alternative way of looking at life.  He can put Amy in the Pandorica for 1894 years to get healed.   Rory guarding Amy for 2000 years sets up his love and allows his dramatic entry to save the day.

Once the Doctor hops forward using the doodad we begin to follow him almost immediately.  We get a brief moment of Amy to set up her knowing of Rory’s 2000 year vigil that sets up their reunion and his coming to the rescue.  That lets us tie up the earlier action with Rory and Amelia.  We follow him up to the point where he is shot by the Dalek then it switches to Amy except for an excursion to River Song in the exploding TARDIS.

River Song’s time line trapped in a loop but unlike Groundhog Day or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect this is an unvarying time loop of just a few seconds that she has been trapped in for an eternity.  2 billion to 10 billion times.  No wonder she says “And what sort of time do you call this?”

Amy then has to sell the sadness of the Doctor’s sacrifice.  That no one will remember him.

Then its back to the Doctor as he rewinds back through his timeline.  The moment he checks himself echos a post regeneration.  He knows he’s escaped but isn’t 100% sure he hasn’t been regenerated.  He discovers Amy can hear him and before sacrificing himself to close the crack he plants a thought in her head and reinforces it before he does.  The line in Flesh and Stone which didn’t make perfect sense at the time is explained now we see it wasn’t the Doctor from that episode but the Doctor from this episode who spoke it.  Then he sacrifices himself into the crack.

So finally to Amy again on her wedding day.   Slightly confused.  Trying to work it out.  Glad they avoided the wedding and skipped to the reception.  TV weddings have a way of feeling artificial.  The River Song, the blank diary, the bow tie and the man wearing braces.  The embarrassed guests at the reception.   All of that to set up the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Love the way the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Karen Gillan really sells her delivery of a cliché that takes on a whole new meaning.  The dramatic incidental music becomes more and more powerful each time its used.  Its almost more powerful than the main theme now.  In combination the two of them can be played as a double emotional whammy as they use it at the end.

All of this took a lot of plotting, writing and planning to make it make sense.  The camera is clever and it helps us follow the story and play some tricks on us but we’ll forgive it for that.

There are just some really fun things in the episode…

A Dalek in a Museum

Someone had fun dressing the set putting the time anomalies together leading up to the Pandorica.  Plus a certain someone as the leader of a star cult.

The Pandorica looks so cool.  It opens and closes in such a fun way.  Need Pandorica dice.  And again – one broken down DALEK scarier and cooler than an army of DALEKs.

“I dated a Nestine duplicate once swappable head, did keep things fresh.” River gets such good lines.  Then the moment, just a glance, between Amy and River when they destroy the Fez.

The writing has a wonderful knowingness without being smug.  A universe reboot not just a figurative or cynical, marketing ploy.  A character plotting one.  A literal one.  To save the universe.  It adds onto River’s work to avoid spoilers.

The Doctor dancing like a drunk giraffe.  Fun and reminding us he doesn’t entirely fit in.

The solution to the destruction of time and space has a mad logic that has been set up over thirteen episodes.  It’s crazy but it was set up.

The fez: that is going to really upset the hate the bow tie crowd.  It’s a really clever technique to let us keep track of the timeline.  If there is a Fez craze for kids next Christmas I’ll have a good laugh.

Having the Doctor have to work it out as he is going on.  Setting out each leap, no matter how fantastic, as logical.

Once its all over and we’ve had a moment to enjoy their success we have the set up for the Christmas special.  Alongside that we’ve the next series mystery – why did the TARDIS go then?

Who is River Song.  River casual high noon moment with the DALEK.  Is there a hint there when she tells the Dalek to recheck his records about her being one of the Doctor’s companions?  The Dalek’s fear moments later after, presumably, rechecking and discovering something.  Is it just that she will kill or that it finds something more?  Anyone that can scare a Dalek is emphatically someone to take seriously.  Yet on the flip side she nudges Amy to free the Doctor and her unguarded “I’m sorry my love.”  Whoever she is I don’t think she’ll do a sixth season Buffy Bad Willow on us.

And of course what is The Silence?  Is that a reference to Silence in the Library?  Is that just a red herring.

All in all both an excellent finish to the two part story and an excellent end to the series.  Do you agree?

So here are my random thoughts on tonigh’s Doctor Who episode The Pandorica Opening but first a little sillyness…

This week’s episode could have been titled: How do you solve a problem like the Doctor?  Now I know my theory about Graham Norton as the series bad guy and the crack being the gap under the curtain is rubbish but see it fits.  Really it does

And now with that out of my system let’s get down to The Pandorica Opening…

The opening worked well pulling together the disparate threads from the series through vignettes to pull the Doctor, River Song and Amy together and then make the revelation of Vincent’s painting.  River Song gets a moment to shine showing she is the best female rogue since The Stainless Steel Rat’s Angelina diGriz.

Tonight showed one broken down Cyberman scarier than all the ones in the new series so far.  The arm; the head with tentacles, skull, poison dart and added snappy front action; and then the headless body.  The original series could have gotten an entire episode out of that.  There would have been lots of screaming and running.  It would have been glorious.  Even the potted version was excellent.  Several reports on Twitter suggest it was a proper old fashioned Doctor Who hide behind the sofa scare for the kids.

Then we get the Big BADDS (Bads Amalgamated Doctor Defense Society): an alliance of lots of old enemies who are unfortunately working on a mistaken assumption.  A great excuse to bring all those costumes and prosthetics out of storage.  It would be silly but I’d love a Reservoir Dogs style slow motion shot of one of each of them walking towards camera.  Instead we got a nice panning shot across them.  By avoiding a dodgy CG battle they weren’t made into a disappointment.  They got to be ominous.

The crack in time was always going to be a hard sell as a season bad guy.  It has the same problem as Sauron in Lord of the Rings:  it can’t do a dramatic scene.   The Big BADDS working together is a nice touch as something so awful that it can unite all of them really must be a really Massively Big Bad.

I think I spotted a couple of passing references to the old series (along with a little Star Wars Cantina action)…  a fleeting reference to Ghost Light when the Doctor comments about ghosts?

“I hate good wizards and fairy tales they always turn out to be him”.  In the old series story Battlefield the Doctor is mistaken for Merlin. Now there is a myth started by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae that attributes the construction of Stonehenge to Merlin.  Looks like Geoffrey got it wrong.  Looks like the Big BADS built it to mark the location of their trap. 

The monsters weren’t the only risky moment.  The CG space fleets was also handled well where an overstretched budget could have left it looking ropy.   “If you bury the most dangerous thing in the universe you’d want to remember where you put it”.  The risk with Stonehenge is Spinal Tap; it’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and coconut shells for horseshoe sound effects; I think they got away with it.  Using the real location for establishing shots definitely helps.

I really enjoyed The Pandorica Opening and it will be a long week waiting for The Big Bang.  That’s where I’d usually leave this except I was thinking how the other episodes this series tie up with the story (and a few from earlier series by Steven Moffat)…

Blink – Introduced the Angels

Silence in the Library – Introduced River Song and her non synchronous timeline with the Doctor.

The Eleventh Hour – Established the crack in time, the new Doctor, Amy and Rory.

The Beast Below – Liz 10 having the picture in the future.

Victory of the Daleks – Churchill’s phone being able to call the TARDIS.

The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone – The crack in time, the Angels and more River Song.

The Vampires of Venice – The crack in time being really scary to Monsters.

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood – Rory vanishing.

Vincent and the Doctor – The Painting to set up the picture being sent along with the impact of Rory being wiped from time.

I’d say it’s a safe bet that time machine causing all the problems in The Lodger is going to turn out to be TARDIS.

That leaves Amy’s Choice as the one episode this season that doesn’t seem to tie in.  So is there something I missed, is it a set up for something past this series or was it just a one off?

So we got jammy dodgers, Where Eagle Dare, Asimov, Troughton and Daleks references for fun.

Nice Dalek model on the plotting table to set them up and I thought the olive drab Daleks looked really good with the little Union Jack.  The new look Daleks don’t look quite so good.  I wonder if the main idea was to make them taller and more threatening. Maybe it means they can fit taller people inside to operate them.  Nice to see the variety of colour as my first memory of Dalek’s has them in a variety of colours from the films.  The best thing about them is the eye in the eye stalk.

Lots of fun Dalek dialogue.  Really fun to see them carrying files and making a cup of tea.

Letting the Dalek’s get away was an excellent choice. We don’t have to yet another Sherlock Holmes coming back after the falls to get them back.  Leaving Bracewell in the wild nice too.   I really didn’t see the Bracewell is a machine coming – nice twist.

The War Rooms nicely put together.  Not authentic but authentic to the story.  Beautiful set design and dressing.

Churchill played nicely.  Plenty of biting one liners from him.  Nice twist by playing with the usual Doctor meeting a historical figure plot. Having them already knowing each other leaving the question of where they met.  An opening for a prequel or sequel perhaps?

This didn’t bother me during the episode but afterwards I’m trying to work out: no one blinked an eye at the length of Amy’s skirt.  It’s a miracle men around the War Room didn’t keep walking into things.

I’m starting to feel like a stuck record: for the third episode we got all the pulp goodness but with the inclusion of logic.  The Spitfires in space could have been played as someone just comes up with the idea and then they appear.  That would have been easy.  All the references needed were dropped in as throw away lines earlier on, then later starts the ball rolling and then they appear.  It makes the whole story hang together so much better.

Next week to look forward to: River Song and the return of the monsters from Blink.  Interesting to see if Steven Moffat’s excellent touch runs to a two parter.  Fingers crossed they can keep up the excellent quality of the series so far.

So one episode and he fixed it.  Fixed the big problem I had with the RTD Doctor Who.  RTD can do fun.  RTD can do pulp.  RTD can do adventure.  RTD’s plots sometimes relied on an unforshadowed solution at the end. Steven Moffat shows you don’t have to throw logic out the window to do it.  The Elevent Hour’s plot held together right up to the end. It did all the other things too.

And did it without the TARDIS or, by the end, a sonic screwdriver.

I enjoyed the twist on the new assistant, playing with the fandom with the Police Woman outfit and all the “she’s too young to be a copper” comments I’ve seen. The guest appearances were fun without getting in the way of a new Doctor and a new assistant. The new look TARDIS interior was also pretty cool.

Of course Doctor Who lives and dies by the actor playing the Doctor. Matt Smith has the role down nicely. He had me 54 minutes in with “Hello; I’m the Doctor.” I have admit my favourite Doctors are Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy. I may not be the best person to ask.

One thing I wasn’t sure about is the new theme and title but they’ll probably grow on me.

Then there was the extended preview for the series. Tasty.