Doctor Who's back on and seems to be dividing the fans more than ever, but there's still plenty to enjoy.
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| Best publicity shot EVER. (Image copyright: BBC) |
THE
STORY – WITH SPOILERS: Davros, creator of the Daleks, is dying and looking for
the Doctor via his mysterious emissary, Colony Sarff. Missy has been given the
Doctor’s Time Lord ‘will’ and, through the ruse of freezing airliners in time,
finds Clara and uses her to locate the Doctor. The trio are taken by Sarff to a
reconstituted Skaro, the Daleks’ home planet, where Clara, Missy and the TARDIS
are apparently exterminated. Back in time in the war between the Kaleds and the
Thals, the Doctor prepares to execute Davros as a boy…
So, after blanket trailers that
seemed to start in the middle of last year, Doctor
Who is back. Predictably, the press are making a fuss that ‘millions’ have
deserted the show and that it was ‘slaughtered’ in the ratings by The X Factor. Get past the hysteria and
hyperbole, however, and you find that it was still the most watched programme of
the day on BBC1. What intrigued me most over the weekend, and has done since
Peter Capaldi materialised, is the reaction of the committed, i.e. other long-term
fans like myself.
Look at Facebook or some of the
online forums and you’ll find people saying that ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’
was the last straw and it’s where they and Doctor
Who part company, or that it was ‘terrible’ – one of the more printable descriptions.
At the other extreme, one friend of mine thought it was the best episode since
the show was revived in 2005. Last year, some fans I know, and have generally
shared the same opinions with, thought that Capaldi’s debut series as the
Doctor was the worst season of Doctor Who
they’d ever seen. I couldn’t understand it: their views were so
diametrically opposed to mine – I loved it, generally speaking – that it was
like they’d been watching a different programme.
Each
to their own
Because the series has been going so long and has varied
so much in style and content, perhaps certain fans have their own ideas – usually
dictated by the era they grew up with, I’d say – of what Doctor Who should be like. By any stretch of the imagination, what
was shown on Saturday wasn’t ‘terrible’. Looked at objectively, it’s a more
than competent piece of modern television, with pace, jeopardy, wit, exemplary
special effects and good acting (OK, Jami Reid-Quarrell’s Colony Sarff was a
bit one-note, but that character was dependent for its impact on visual effects,
and it really was stunning when he disintegrated into a pile of writhing snakes). The
friend I watched it with third time around over the weekend – I told you I was
a fan – isn’t a Doctor Who enthusiast
and she thought it was great.
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| 2nd best publicity shot EVER. (Image copyright: BBC) |
So what did I think, as the kind of
fan who’s a long-term watcher but who tries to keep an open mind? Hmm. The
first time I didn’t really know what to think. With modern Who, I’ve never been a fan of the frenetic comic-strip type of story
that hops around multiple locations. That’s why I preferred the more sedate
pace of episodes last year, which I felt suited a more austere, older Doctor
better. In fact, ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ felt very much like a Matt Smith
story, particularly all that larking around with the electric guitar and the
tank. That scene in particular seems to have got people’s goat. If it was
designed to make the Doctor look cool I thought it fell flat. To my mind,
having an angular, sharp-tongued Doctor the age of Methuselah dressed in severe
threads achieved hipness last year. The gimmick of having him play the Doctor Who theme in the style of Slash
from Guns N’ Roses felt like the nerdy kid at school trying to make you believe
he’s ‘cool really’. Perhaps that’s why some people have gone postal on that
sequence, as fans of my generation tended to be seen as nerdy at school if they
liked Doctor Who.
The
rough with the smooth
What else did we have? Daleks, Daleks
and more Daleks. The Missy Master. Davros (young and old). UNIT. Skaro… you
could be forgiven for thinking there was a Gallifreyan kitchen sink in there
somewhere, too. Again, it’s a personal thing: with a few exceptions, I’m not big
on stories that riff on Doctor Who’s
heritage. (Mind you, as someone who sat open-mouthed in front of ‘Genesis of
the Daleks’ in 1975, I did get a kick out of seeing the conflict between the
Thals and the Kaleds again, particularly as it looked like the production team
had gone back to the same quarry). I prefer the episodes – like last year’s
‘Mummy on the Orient Express’ and ‘Flatline’ – which break new ground and/or
take a good central idea and explore every angle of it. There were so many good
ones scattered around ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’: you could have made a whole
story out of Missy freezing the world’s passenger jets in time, as well as those
macabre ‘Handmines’, the sort of surreal Gothic concept that Steven Moffat
effortlessly comes up with on a regular basis. In fact, the more you think
about it – dead bodies being cannibalised, presumably, and turned into weapons
– the more disturbing it becomes.
Despite being rammed to the gills
with continuity, the story clearly wasn’t a mess as my female chum, who’s only
got a passing understanding of Who lore,
was able to follow it. So if you like that sort of thing ‘The Magician’s
Apprentice’ worked, and as it’s only the first half of the story, we’ll really
have to see next week’s episode to form a complete opinion of it.
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| (Image copyright: BBC) |
What I liked the most were the
performances. The rough edges of Capaldi’s Doctor appeared to have initially
been smoothed down, but the same dangerous man who (might?) have pushed the
Half-Face Man out of a flesh balloon was back in the cliffhanger – the first of
many this year, hopefully. Jenna Coleman as Clara was as self-assured and feisty
as ever; Missy (Michelle Gomez) had the funniest lines, to the extent that she
nearly walked away with the episode, but was matched by the weary gravitas of
Julian Bleach’s Davros. Thinking about it, I’d happily watch 50 minutes of the
Doctor debating morality and ethics with the Dalek’s creator, and the scenes of
that we did have were the story’s high points for me.
****
I’ve just written over a 1,000 words
on the first part of a new series of Doctor
Who. There can’t be many other TV series that are analysed in such detail
episode by episode, and the passionate response of fans, positive or not, feeds
that intense scrutiny. Even if I’m not 100% into ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’, I
know that there’ll be more stories down the line that I’ll prefer, and that something
mind-blowing will come along that you won’t see in any other TV show.
That’s why I’m still a Doctor Who fan.
Bit to rewind: Missy
(Michelle Gomez) doing That Thing With Her Head.
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