Twice Upon a Time.

"Oh brilliant!"

TV Hey Jodie. There was a brief discussion between our brethren and sistren in our online parish the other day about the point at which a Doctor becomes the "current" incarnation.  Is it when they've begun their first full season or as soon as they step out of the wavy, ship destroying fires?  For me, it's as soon as they open their new eyes and run their tongue across their new teeth searching for cavities and any spin-off adventures which turn up between that moment and when the new version of the character is established should be considered as happening chronologically in the past, essentially missing adventures.  Capaldi will still be the face of the DWM comic until September but the current incarnation, the 13th (fifteenth) is Jodie Whittaker (even if when you ask Amazon's Alexa for an identification she's tell you everyone from Tim Roth to Joseph Gordon Levitt).

If any post regenerative moments exemplify this it's in this when Peter's tall, wirely frame is replaced by Jodie's shorter silhouette, emphasised by the fact that she's wearing a specially created version of the former incarnations "costume" rather than being stuffed into his old clothes (the ordering of which was one of the tip-offs that Capaldi was being replaced by somebody female).  But her attitude is immediately brighter, less weary, gleeful.  That expression, so excited, with its Tomalike boggly eyes and toothy grin as she cottons on to her reflection and change of gender is magic (assuming she's not just pleased that she's young again) and quite rightly become a viral .gif that'll soon replace the Capaldi dance from Flatline as the go-to expression of anticipation and glee.  She's my Doctor already in a way that Capaldi has never quite been - so much so I already have her poster on the wall above my desk.  Hey Jodie.  Wave.

Happy Christmas!  Sorry that this has taken a few days; my original plan was to postpone these opinions until the new year, but unlike last Christmas when I spent the entire week in bed and didn't end up writing about whatever was going on in The Return of Doctor Mysterio until the 7th January, a couple of people have given me a nudge and damn it I've kept thinking about the helpfully acronymed TUAT and decided that the last thing I wanted was to be spending New Year's Eve trying to reconcile my opinion of Moffat's treatment of the First Doctor and so just had to get this out of my system.  Not that I'll otherwise be doing something that exciting anyway.  It'll be the usual mix of a film and coverage of Hogmanay on BBC Alba,into midnight with some slowly sozzling villagers somewhere in the highlands.

Your opinion of Capaldi's closing installment will probably depend how you've felt about his entire era, if you've enjoyed every minute of it or like me felt it to be a wasted opportunity.  Numerous creative decisions have kept me at paws length so now it comes time for the twelfth Doctor to go its with the regret that we got to see so little of him in his purest form, without the agendas and bolted on mysteries of recent years.  Kevin Kline has talked about experiencing the irony of Hamlet's death when he played it because it's only in his dying moments that he realises that he would actually be a good king.  In TUAT, Capaldi's Doctor finally coalesces into the man who usually emerges from the post regenerative stupor at the start of the adventures and he's already in the process of deciding if he wants to regenerate again anyway.

Like much of his era, as a piece of television, not mention Doctor Who, it's just plain weird.  Moffat, having decided that one of the problems with the Doctor's regeneration episodes is that we know how it ends, decides to make the whole episode about that in a way which hasn't really been the case since the Watcher stalked the TARDIS crew in Logopolis.  Will he, won't he choose death?  We know he won't so in effect it becomes a narratively weaponised iteration of Tennant's farewell tour at the end of The End of Time with the slight modification that whereas that sullen unit didn't want to go, Capaldi's Doctor doesn't want to go on.  Like Tenth, he's able to visit a few old friends, salve his emotional conscience but all without actually having to fight a proper antagonist, gifted instead with a thematic device.

What is Moffat's obsession with the afterlife and the ability to make the population of the universe exist beyond?  In TUAT we're offered the benevolent antonym to Nethersphere in which the memories of the dead are stored elsewhere for the benefit of an alien race of the future which resemble the future evolutions of humanity which appear in AI and Interstellar.  When the Doctor discovers that there's nothing especially wrong in what they're doing, that they're effectively saving humanity albeit in the form of ghosts and memories he says he doesn't know what to do about that.  He's so used to being threatened by the aliens that he assumes, as do we thanks to the sinister what the glass Bill is shot, that they must be doing that too even though at no point do they exhibit that behavior.

Which is fine.  Moffat understands that Doctor Who is about doing something different with the format and formats within formats, and that having had three regenerations amid giant planetary battles designed to finish up long running story arcs, that having the character wander across a few sets chatting about the nature of being before deciding to proceed with the inevitable is a change of place and quiet fitting for an incarnation who's tended to rely on speechifying over action anyway.  It's just impossible not to see it for the production aberration it is, when a television network requires a Christmas episode but the actual story of the programme doesn't.  Jodie should naturally have emerged at the close of business on The Doctor Falls but Chibbers wasn't going to begin his tenure with a seasonal installment so here's Moffat marking time.

Perhaps it's fortunate the Capaldi was available to film this, otherwise we could have had the fiery headed version which almost appeared in the DWM comic strip.  In the run up to revival in 2005, Russell T Davies suggested the Eighth Doctor's regeneration into Ninth could appear in their pages.  The problem was due to publication issues it would have meant Ninth would have to have appeared in print before television, which wouldn't do, and also Destrii and various other story baggage would have to be resolved at a time when the magazine should quite rightly be in reboot mode and looking to the future.  Briefly the plan was to have a regenerative incarnation running around for a few issues, dropping of the companion and clearing the decks ready for Eccleston to emerge.  Fortunately cooler heads prevailed on and off the page.

You could argue that TUAT is  providing a bookend to the malevolent nutter who originally emerged in Deep Breath, suggesting that what we've been watching is the story of the Doctor entity relearning what it is to be have that title after being gifted a new regenerative cycle, his final, Bertrand Russell inspired speech, a feedback report on what he's learned.  Except it's never quite felt like that.  In this podcast interview with Toby Hadoke, Moffat admits that after the eighth year, Capaldi asked that he be allowed to play the Doctor rather than the Twelfth Doctor, the implication being that the variance from Matt Smith's interpretation had been too extreme, which accounts for why his performance and the writing in Last Christmas is much lighter on the needless sarcasm and heavier on the defence of humanity, and the Tennant-lite mode of more recent years.

Roping the First Doctor into all of this is, again weird.  For the first time in the show's history, the current incarnation of the Doctor has to share his regeneration with an earlier version.  The writer's motivation must be to show how far the Doctor's developed and especially this version.  Pretty much everything he criticises this interpretation of First for could be leveled at his season Eight self as though he's not only looking into his own deep past but also the relatively recent (depending on how many extra years you agree he's lived between The Caretaker and this episode whose acronym could accurately describe his behavior back then.  The Twelfth Doctor is finally a social justice warrior!   Well good, but he's been SJW for decades.  SJW is at the core of his being.  Thank goodness he's finally remembered that!

Except in order to create that contrast, Moffat seems to have decided that the First Doctor isn't an SJW at all, despite already being a somewhat ancient, time travelling magician in a box.  On the one hand, it's a similar approach Terry took in The Five Doctors, painting the earlier incarnations in broader strokes, emphasising their core attributes and letting the performance fill in the blanks.  Except that was before earlier episodes where readily available so when Hurndall rocked up suggesting Tegan make the tea, everyone was perfectly happy with it even though it also began with a clip of Hartnell.  Now we're in an age when entirely accurate new recreations are appearing across media consumed by all ages it's a shame to have this version which so right in some ways and wrong in others.

On first viewing, this First Doctor made me feel like a woke millennial watching a Carry On film.  Did he really just say that?  Hartnell's version would never say that.  On returning to it, those moments still feel bolted on amid sections which get the character quite correct, mainly due to David Bradley's well observed performance.  To an extent the variance is because the writer is forcing the character to have the kinds of self-reflexive conversations he simply didn't have in his own era, at least with someone else.  Sometimes he'd let the mask slip when he was alone in the TARDIS, notably at the end of The Massacre, but we certainly wouldn't have seen the existential chatter he has with glass Bill when he discovers the truth or with Twelfth in No Man's Land at the close of the episode.

But the chortling along with the Brigadier's ancestor and moaning about the cleanliness of the TARDIS is just wrong, I'm sorry, and does a disservice to the memory of the First Doctor, Hartnell and doesn't fit at all with who the man was in the final moments of The Tenth Planet.  What's the point in brilliantly dragging in clips and remounting lost scenes from the story not to mention recreating shots which now only exist in amateur telecine recorded by fans from the screen during broadcast if you're then going to bring in all of that petty business about the alcohol?  Admittedly, a potential justification is introduced in relation to him being in the process of regenerating which also explains the unusual shape of his face but yes, not pleased.

If all of these random comments suggest I'm pretty agnostic about the episode, you'd be right.  Like most of Moffat's festive specials since A Christmas Carol, it's fine and for the most part more enjoyable when watched after the day they're supposed to be designed for.  As ever he's more interested in exemplifying the melancholy aspect of the season, introducing the Christmas element here through the armistice and Mark Gattis's World War One Captain who partially exists to give the actor and writer a reason to participate in this final hoorah for the era and given his contribution to the franchise across the years from the early spin-off videos onward well earned.  You could probably swap him and the war out for another character without changing the story much, but we're also heading into the year of the hundredth centenary of the end of that war, so its probably as good a time as any to remind everyone of just how horrific it was.  Mark's performance is superb incidentally, one of his best ever.

Perhaps bringing back the one Good Dalek (apart from the good Daleks in the Justin Richards graphic novel and the first Eighth Doctor Time War boxed set) was about giving Nicholas Briggs a callback too (except it's unlikely that Chibbers won't be employing him in the future).  It is another look how far we've come moment but not an especially resonant one perhaps because Into The Dalek was the beginning of the rot in that season.  That the godawful line, "She's my carer - she cares so I don't have to ..." actually came from the Doctor's mouth and made it into a trailer was appalling so a reminder of that nonsense isn't especially welcome here.  Perhaps Me would have been a more logical return but Maisie Williams is probably off murdering Lannisters in Dubrovnik so unavailable for this.

Bill's back too, albeit as a sentient glass storage unit.  Perhaps her appearance is most troubling of all.  Is Bill is definitely dead now?  If she remembers being saved by Heather but nothing afterwards doesn't that mean that, since the memories are duplicated when people die, her resurrection ended prematurely pretty soon after the scene in The Doctor Falls?  Plus if she's died twice are there now two versions of her running around in the Testamony or was the later memory engram copied over the earlier one so Bill, if she's still Bill even if its just the memories of her, has effectively died three times now.  Plus like River Song, the essence of Bill Potts now exists in a massive database somewhere.  As I suggested earlier, what is it with Moffat (a) killing his companions but then (b) having them continue living anyway in some kind of altered state?

What about Clara?  Her appearance suggests she was plucked from the time stream at the moment of her death first by the Testamony then the Doctor and then the Testamony again presumably when it came time for her traveling with Me to end.  Of all the moments in the episode which nearly had me in tears it was the sound of Clara's theme and the Doctor's reaction to being given his memories of her back.  I liked Clara both as a concept and a character.  She was the one bearable element of year 8 and part of me wishes she'd stuck around until now.  I really do have to get around to watching Victoria even if to fantasize that we're watching the person who'll grow up to found the Torchwood Institute.

But the stand out elements of the episode is Murray Gold's final score in which he lets rip with a greatest hits compilation of re-interpretations of his music from across the entire past twelve years including all of the Doctor's themes with "Doomsday" making an appearance during the muti-Time Lord sit down on Villinguard (Moffat calling back to his first story writing for the series) and Flavia's chorus underscoring Jodie's first few moments taking us a deep dive right back into the RTD era.  Gold's creative contribution to the series has been incalculable and it just shows his ability that he's able to fuse his melodic legacy with the more percussive material of the late era to create something which commemorates and looks forward.  He'll be missed.

As will Moffat.  It seems important at the close of his era to indicate that for all the kinds of disputes only a fan could have with the franchise he's supposed to love, when Moffat hasn't become bogged down with the grind of putting out thirteen weeks of television a year, he's been one of the greatest Doctor Who writers of all time.  All of his contributions to the RTD era were classics.  Some of the material while he's been show runner has been more variable (as he's admitted himself), but the Matt Smith era broke internationally in a way the show hadn't before and it's to his credit that's continued through the Twelfth Doctor era and affirmed the future of the show in a way which we have to be grateful for.  Happy New Year!

The Lost Magic (Twelfth Doctor Audio Original).

Audio Being an Eighth Doctor completist does take you to some strange places. The Lost Magic is the third installment of a four part arc across four audiobook cds featuring Twelfth and a couple of teenage companions from the United States co-written by George Mann and the author of this installment Cavin Scott. It's a quasi-historical set on the eve of the Spanish Armada in which the Doctor investigates why the astrologist John Dee knows High Gallifreyan and is "inventing" anachronistic technology years before it should exist.  Given everything, I think you can probably guess what kind of entity it might be.  The area around Plymouth is wracked by time winds and Eighth cameo happens when the Doctor finds himself at the epicenter of a storm which forces him to degenerate backwards through his incarnations.  Here's a transcript of Eighth's entire cameo:  "Another flash and he was young, long hair flowing freely in the wind: "Need to win back control."  Back in the day, there was a (probably) made-up rumour that one of the Christmas specials would feature just such a storyline with Tennant and McGann playing through large portions of the action.  If only.  Clearly this doesn't really count as an Eighth Doctor adventure.  He still has all the Time Lord's experiences and memories through to Twelfth, so although he looks like him and talks like him (I suppose), it's not really him.  But like I said, being an Eighth Doctor completist does take you to some strange places.  The real star of the cd is Dan Starkey, an expert and exciting reader who's rendering of some of the Doctors is extraordinary.  But much like Fraser and Pat, Dan's imitation of Peter is eerie in places, exactly the right area of whichever planet his Scottish accent is from.  If only he'd managed to sneak in a "Don’t forget to click below to subscribe to the Official Doctor Who YouTube channel."
Placement:  New category!  "Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Eighth Doctor".

The Doctor Falls.

TV First of all, squee. Squee, squee, squee, squee, squee, squee, squee. Squee. Squee. Next of all, an even briefer discussion of canonicity in Doctor Who and the (ho, ho) genesis of the Cybermen. It's true. All of it.  When the Doctor says, "They always get started. They happen everywhere there's people. Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus. Like sewage and smartphones and Donald Trump - some things are just inevitable,"  In a single line of dialogue, Steven Moffat simplifies the next edition of Lance and Lars's AHistory (apart from having to explain Trump in the US presidents entry) by making every origin of the Cyberman canonical across all media including the DWM comic strip, by suggesting that every society has the potential for biomechanics which you could infer on Skaro led to a pepperpot shape but on the planets the Doctor lists and countless others a humanoid shape, with or without the capacity to clench their fist and say "Excellent."

Like Asylum of the Dalek, The Doctor Falls allows the costume department to amortise  their stock with the return of the most recent thinner models alongside the more robust Cybus Industries models of Cybermen alongside.  One could theorise from this based on the Doctor's speech that not all of the appearances of these versions were necessarily sourced from Pete's World, but developed independently somehow.  I wonder if any consideration was made to bring in versions from other eras, The Invasion model or whatever was happening in Silver Nemesis.  What makes the Mondasians so chilling is that like the Borg you can still see elements of their human in the costume just as you did throughout the classic era.  The nuWho versions have always been too much like b-movie robots.  We only know their used to be a human inside because we're constantly told.  With the classic era models we can see it.

Much like last week's episode, this episode is pretty unreviewable in the normal way.  Somehow managing to cram all three of the franchise's key tropes, an alien invasion within a base under siege rolled around a pre-destination paradox, plus body horror and a whole lot of regeneration, you could take the view that there's nothing especially new here, that we might as well have read a Michelin iSPY Book of the Documents on Steven Moffat's Hard Disk.  But repetition is a key feature of Doctor Who and as fans we only really complain when we're not entertained, when we feel like there's a point to choosing some of these old favourites other than desperation.  I can think of a host of reasons why I might have taken against the episode in another mood, but was instead enthralled, excited, shocked and boggle eyed throughout.

The underlying story is extremely simple.  House full of kids need protecting from the hoards, a miniature Helms Deep with sandbags instead of elves.  Even this has echoes in other Cybermen stories like Nightmare in Silver (rarely has an episode title reviewed its contents so well).  Samantha Spiro finally appears in Who as the head of the household and even if, in keeping with supporting characters in the rest of the series, her character is pretty barebones, her presence creates some much needed layers even to the point of making me smile when she takes a liking to Nardole.  Turns out Nardole really has only existed to give Matt Lucas something to do because the production team  like him. I'll admit to him being less objectionable here than usual and it is poignant that he's stranded in a BDO waiting for his certain doom once the Cybermen have evolved again.

This impossibly huge colony ship will remain one of Moffat's most evocative ideas, large in scope and fiendish in the jeopardy it generates.  There's a brilliant episode of Star Trek's Voyager, Shattered, in which various aspects of the ship's history exist simultaneously so version of characters from different eras can interact but everything is reset by minute 40 via some spoiler juice.  Not here.  The Doctor et al could theoretically get on the lift up to the TARDIS but due to the time dilation even if they get there the Cybermen could have evolved in such a way as to have beaten them to it and they can't take the chance.  Which means that he also can't use the TARDIS to simply pull the colony ship out of the path of the Black Hole which it presumably would have been capable of considering it pulled the Earth back into orbit in a previous final episode.

Until the final deus ex machina, or rather apud amicam conlectus, Bill's fate is gruesome, just as gruesome as Oswin Oswald's in Asylum, but with the extra horror that she experiences the magnitude of the change for much longer, the distrust and fear of others for someone who otherwise views themselves as kind and benevolent.  Pearl really sells the duel physicality of her status, stiff and artificial in battle, crumpled  and emotional otherwise and there wasn't any other choice that could be made other than to present Bill as human for much of the episode, the on-set camera allowing us access to her thought patterns.  Given that the Doctor had Kroton as his companion for quite some time, not to mention Handles, there was always a chance their travels could have continued.  But having to explain her status every time they landed might have become increasingly limiting.

So she had to go.  In her exit, like her predecessor Bill finds herself in a new state of being and being whisked across the universe (albeit on a less platonic basis) with the Doctor unaware of her fate, in this case, perhaps, assuming she's dead.  Heather's return was a good surprise fully in keeping with Who's approach of bringing back something entirely unlikely which we've probably forgotten about to save the day.  Including the potential for Bill to return to Earth should she want to is a nice touch too.  Up until the Moffat era, tv companions from a contemporaneous to broadcast time period have tended to find themselves back there (Ian, Barbara, Dodo, Polly, Ben, Jo, Sarah Jane, Tegan, Martha and Donna all ended up where they started give or take a year) so it's nice to think once she's finished jaunting about the nebulas she might decide to try and finish university.

Having brought John Simm's Master back we discover much of his villainy happened off screen years before even meeting Bill and he's not really given an awful lot to do other than die amusingly.  But he exists as a counterpoint to Missy, to keep us guessing as to whether she would indeed help the Doctor, in the end, or simply follow the path of most villainy.  And indeed, as expected, he inevitably ends up breaking the promise that's usually fundamental to the Doctor's being.  The Master is always cruel and cowardly, laughing at Bill the cruelty he's wrought on the human and cowardly in once again saying SOD U LOTT when trouble descends.  Notice that we don't actually see him regenerate into her.  As ever Moffat doesn't want to give us any absolutes, wants to leave the door open for future creators.  Plus there probably wasn't the budget to show him fighting to get back into his TARDIS.

One of the big tragedies of the episode is that because of the Master treachery, the Doctor will never know that he was right about Missy.  In the end she passes his test even if in her own way, the Simmcarnation having missed the Doctor's advice about never trusting hugs.  "Because he’s right. Because it’s time to stand with him, it’s where we’ve always been going, and it’s happening now, today. It’s time to stand with the Doctor."  It's a beautiful line, beautifully played.  But is this supposed to resolve the whole vault business? The physical evidence still exists.  We're left to wonder what the employees of St Luke's University back on Earth are making of two member of their faculty, a lecturer and a student, having gone missing at the same time and the presence of a dimensionally transcendental hole in their basement wall.  Perhaps the next showrunner will sort this out.

Chibnall was about the only reason I didn't quite buy that the Doctor would actually regenerate here, because introducing the new Doctor before Capaldi's official end date would have made the handover process especially weird with Moffat presumably writing the new incarnation's first lines or having to share a writing credit on his final episode.  A Time Lord deciding not to regenerate isn't unheard of - Simm's Master used it has his "final" revenge in The Last of the Time Lords - but it is if they want to keep walking around too.  Giving him all the elements of a regeneration scene even if they were hand me downs, from the montage to quotes from both of of his previous incarnations death sequences along with some visual homages did sell the idea that this could be it, increasing the power of his decision to fight back the energy.  "NO!"  Rest assured I was still clutching myself in anticipation.

Then Moffat commits his final coup in mirroring Matt Smith's own final series episode with a surprise early visit from one of the Doctor's previous selves in this case the original (you might say) (Oh God, that's amazing).  The original first meeting the first in a new regenerative cycle.  David Bradley, is one of countless actors to play the first Doctor (depending on your point of view) and like the other original (you might say) Richard Hurndall, Edmund Warwick (60s stand-in), John Guilor (from Planet of the Giants dvd and Day of the Doctor), Geoffrey Bayldon (alt.1st.Doctor at Big Finish) and William Russell (who covers for actual Bill at Big Finish along with Peter Purves), all Bradley can do is offer a semblance of Hartnell although he's somewhat aided by having had to play the actor himself to marvellous effect in 2013 (which is what led to his welcome return here).  Judging by his attire perhaps we're supposed to be in Antarctica in December 1986 just moments before his regenerations but he seems surprisingly well considering the events of The Tenth Planet.

Despite adoring the episode, I do wonder how much of it was comprehensible to newer viewers.  We probably had the same fear during Journey's End, but here the objections are more nuanced.  As has been noticed elsewhere, some viewers are under the impression Bradley is playing Capaldi's replacement and having been through the Morrissey wars of 2009 when otherwise perfectly intelligent people thought he was going to be the next one after Tennant (not helped by the title of the upcoming episode), I can't judge them too harshly.  Even if you know what the first Doctor looked like, unless you're aware of the metatextuality and had seen Adventures in Time and Space, you might not necessarily know who this new person was.  John Hurt was heralded by a loud non-diegetic caption.  The usual social media channels were quick to provide the necessary explanation, but I wonder, yes, I wonder.  Hmm?  Chesterfield?

Which brings is to the end of another year in the life of Doctor Who.  Looking across the Capaldi era in total, there's probably been the usual balance of brilliant, average and rubbish episodes with this series offering the most highlights.  But like the Doctor being a dick arc in season 8 and the futile Me nonsense in season 9, the Monk trilogy was ultimately compromised by poor narrative definition.  Oh and bloody Nardole never quite gelled (to put it lightly).  Yet it also contained some of its best moments.  The first on-screen LGBT+ companion, scripts which confronted society head-on and Peter Capaldi finally being allowed to be the Peter Capaldi on screen that we know in real life.  If nothing else, in this actor, the show's had one of its greatest ambassadors and for that at least we should be extremely grateful.

World Enough and Time.

TV First of all, squee. Squee, squee, squee, squee, sequee, squee. Squee.  Next of all a brief discussion of canonicity in Doctor Who and the (ho, ho) genesis of the Cybermen. As anyone who's visited the Cyberpages on the TARDIS Datacore will know, the creation and history of the race is a narrative mess. Lance and Lars's AHistory, the chronology of the Who universe helpfully summarises that "DWM has offered two distinct origins, Big Finish, a third" and that co-creator Gerry Davies provided his own origin story which was published in David Banks's Virgin book about Cybermen.  Lance and Lars then decide that although these stories might seem to contradict one another the're going to spend a page reconciling them anyway, explaining, I shit you not, how the Voord from The Keys of Marinus and indeed Marinus itself could be the Cybermen and Mondas at some earlier point in history with Marc Platt's audio Spare Parts, up until this point the accepted origin for the old Who Cybermen set much later.

Assuming that Moffat is deciding to allow television to contradict Big Finish and everything else which has gone before that hasn't appeared on television ala George Lucas and the Clone Troopers, the simplest answer is the one I've always favoured and which in the past few years the showrunner himself indicated.  Time can be rewritten.  Mondas's history has been changed somehow and whereas before they might have been Voord or the Fifth Doctor became mixed up in their origins, now its something all the more complicated involving a colony ship and black holes and numerous Time Lords.  Presumably we'll discover next week what this has to do with The Tenth Planet.   David Bradley appearing as the First Doctor at Christmas can't be a coincidence.  Unless it is.  Either way for pedestrians who hopelessly dragged themselves through the wilderness years, or indeed people like me whose fandom was born in one of its stormy oases and cherish those stories, thanks to this being a time travel franchise and the existence of the Faction Paradox and what have you, all of this is fine.

World Enough and Time is a return to the Steven Moffat whose work is practically unreviewable in any meaningful way.  By which I mean it's so, so good, so unlike anything else which this series has had to offer that to try and talk about it in the usual sense of "is the story interesting?" or "how are the characters?" you're on a hiding to nothing.  Everything is impeccable.  The performance.  The set design.  The music.  The SFX.  The meticulous direction from Rachel Talalay who is really having a bonzer year between this, Sherlock and whatever acronym they're using for the DC TV shows.  But unlike Heaven Sent, which was also the best episode of its series, he's still working within the confines of a recognisable Doctor Who format, albeit poking it in the eye ("exposition and comic relief").  This week instead of Bill becoming separated from the Doctor by falling though a hole, it's because someone made a hole in her.  Sob.  So let's talk around a few things.

Anyone who's seen Interstellar will be aware of time distortions around Black Holes and its a clever way of introducing a similar two track narrative with Bill becoming another girl who's waiting (a deliberate callback?).  As Eddie Robson notices, during her captivity , it's as though she's watching 60s Doctor Who on the monitor ("rapt even though it was very slow") or as Clayton Hickman adds, from her point of view a series of telesnaps.  Bill's observations of the Doctor's behaviour are just the sort of micro-analysis which fans often conduct when they've exhausted all other avenues of discussion or the professionals when they're trying to distinguish each of the incarnations in prose.  They're the writerly equivalent of the fan versions of merchandise covers with Moffat suggesting some of the descriptions Terry Dicks might have used in a Target novelisation.

Speaking of Target novelisations, is this the final word on Doctor Who then?  Given that he once signed his name as such and the whole WOTAN business, it's really just a confirmation, but there'll still be some who'll question if it is needed.  But think of the benefits.  The Cushing films, TV Comic and annual stories now have some added canonicity for one and it does explain why the title of the programme doesn't include an actual question mark.  Like Ally McBeal and Veronica Mars, his full name is in the title.  The previous approach to this, in the Virgin New Adventures, was to create a figure called "Doctor Who" as a comment on those earlier stories in which the Doctor's characterisation was slightly "off".  But given how much the Fourteenth Doctor's changed in the past three years, the television Hartnell and the one in the comics isn't that much of a stretch even if it's nearly impossible to account for when they're set in his timeline unless he nipped off for a bit in the middle of The Romans.

Was John Simm's reveal supposed to be a massive surprise?  Some on the social medias say they clocked him from the publicity photos although I only realised after about his second appearance when I wondered why the actor was wearing make-up then noticed his eyes and how his voice sounded and so the fact he was John Simm.  How many people were genuinely that shocked when he ripped away the mask?  I have no memory of my original viewing of Time-Flight so I don't know how convincing it was to my young mind even with the Ainley version of the Master talking to himself in disguise.  But were many viewers giving it the full Yana when Simm dropped the accent here?  Despite the availability of the RTD era on streaming and shiny-disc, how many of them will remember he was a younger version of the character and his fate in The End of Tennant?  Having him remind us that he was once a PM was a nice touch.  Remember back in 2010 how we chortled that there'd be no way a meglomaniac like him could become leader of the free world?  Hum.

How did the Master survive whatever it was that happened to Galifrey back then?  Has Missy herself even explained?  Isn't it curious that she doesn't remember anything of these events ala Time Crash - a return of the meticulous Moffat who bothers to even mention something like that as part of the "reveal".  Is it something to do with her "death" and the reason she was in the vault?  Expect a "So you escaped from Castrovalva. I should have guessed" type conversation next week.  This an episode designed to generate questions - not for their own sake as happened towards the end of the last series but with all of the potential that there'll be answers.  There's still the nagging query about how much the Doctor remembers of Clara and if he and Missy have had a chat about that (cf, Eighth and Iris in the novels).  Would he be as quick to try and rehabilitate her given the business which happened at the end of season eight?  How much more tragic is it that yet another of his companions/assistants/friends finds herself in a state of between mortality and being part of the mortality rate amongst TARDIS travellers.

The tear.  Goddam.  How dead is Bill?  As seen in Torchwood, the survival rate for unconverting human's isn't too high.  Judging by the available technology, a brain transplant doesn't look likely ("Ianto? Ianto, it's me. It's Lisa. I'm human again").  Her reveal recalls the gut wrenching worst of The Age of Steel but with the old style Cybermen this even creepier with their sing song voices and human hands.    Plus that episode set alt.Jackie up to be something of a monster which meant we cared less about her conversation than we do about Bill whose clearly not the person who made that horrible joke in her first moments on the series eleven weeks ago.  Giving her the Danny Pink treatment is bold but she can't possibly stay this way.  Could the Doctorm utilise the properties of the ship somehow to drop in earlier in her timeline and save her, with a localised time distortion being outside the web of time as some kind of justification?  Why is she wearing the exact same clothes as in the minisode, Friend from the Future?

Which returns us to the start of the episode and the Doctor's regeneration.  Apparently, Moffat's original plan for the 2010 season if Tennant had decided to stay on was to have his regeneration in the opening teaser and then spend the rest of the season tracing backwards/forwards to the moment and explaining how he got there.  Is Moffat's resurrecting the idea here?  It doesn't seem like a fake out.  The Doctor looks physically older, broken, his jacket frayed at the edges, his hair even less unkempt than usual.  It's not unusual for the Doctor to enter this moment in defiance ("I don't want to go...") and given the setting, an icy world, it's entirely possible we're seeing the final moments of the Christmas special.  Although, I haven't completely ruled out the idea that in fact Capaldi is going to regenerate at the end of the series, but somehow return as an earlier version to help his new incarnation to find her vortex legs.  Imagine if they could pull off this reveal next week, finally making up for what didn't happen in 2005.

Which brings us to one of the more interesting conversations in the episode about the fluidity of Time Lord genders.  The Doctor jokes about not remembering if they were a woman in the past but unless this is some shocking tease from the writer taking the piss out of a section of the fan base, explaining the old Master to newbies, or the new Rani's a bloke, this has to be foreshadowing for when Romola Garai (or, I'll concede, whoever) emerges next week or at Christmas.  Moffat rarely writes this sort of scene without a reason.  He's apt to do this kind of introduction, to clear the air, to justify some new twist.  Another notable example is Eleventh's phone call in Deep Breath which was a way of reassuring fans who'd joined during his USA breaking tenure that it was OK, that the show would continue without him (even if he failed to mention that some of us would end up hating his successor within a few episodes).  All of which depends on lead times.  Did Chris Chibnall make his choice early enough for Moffat to write the dialogue and someone to film it?  Late pick-ups?  It's going to be Kris Marshall isn't it?  Sigh.

The Eaters of the Light.

TV A few years ago, deep in the thickets of the Matt Smith era, I often noted on here how the only way to experience a more traditional stand alone adventure was to listen to an AudioGo exclusive cd or read one of the novels. Amid the split seasons, story arcs and experiments with the format, those stories in which the Doctor and his companion(s) (depending whether Rory was dead that week) turned up at a place and protected the local population from some monster didn't really exist, at least not without some link to the whatever the central mystery of the season was.  Meanwhile writers like Una McCormick, Oli Smith, James Goss, Gary Russell and friends turned these characters around a more familiar narrative idea albeit experimenting with an epistolary format or some such.

The Capaldi era and more specifically this season has seen a return to these kinds of stories, apart from prologues and epilogues referring to whatever's up with Missy.  Smile, Thin Ice, Knock Knock, Oxygen, Empress of Mars and now Rhona Monro's The Eaters of the Light all fit within that category.  For the most part you could imagine a prose version for each of them recorded by a past season luminary like Dan Starkey or Keeley Hawes to music which sounds almost but not exactly like Murray Gold (to sit alongside the current crop from BBC Worldwide which have pretty much carried on where AudioGo left off).  None of which should be assumed to be a criticism.  The audio reading of one of those spin-off novels, Johnny Morris's Touched by an Angel is my favourite story of that era in any media including television.

It's why this season has felt most "Doctor Who" of the Capaldi era.  Indeed much of what initially happens in Monro's episode is near identical to last week.  The Doctor decides to investigate mystery.  He's quickly separated from Bill who becomes trapped after falling through a hole and they each meet different factions in this particular environment who will ultimately have to unite in order to battle a common foe.  But there's something inherently comforting about that, inherently Saturday night.  Genre is about giving the audience what they expect whilst changing the formula just enough for them to give them some originality.  Last week the Empress of the Ice Warriors emerged, this week an inter-dimensional being that wants to suck the life out of everything.  Insert contemorary political commentary here.

But the key difference is in Monro's ability to utilise the scenario and explore ideas about how young people are thrust into positions of authority and responsibility and then chide themselves for making a mistake or poor decision because of how they've been psychologically crafted by external influences.  This gives the episode a darker tone than usual in which people in their late teens find themselves making supreme sacrifices for the greater good which for all the episode's attempt to make it seems like a positive decision, about enemies working together, creating eternal music together, is nothing but nihilistic.  That's something the AudioGo standalones were often unafraid of too - their textual brevity often gave the writer leave to end with a sombre or ambiguous conclusion.

All of which is helped immeasurably by a strong set of "locals".  The Picts and Romans are both archetypes with the teenage wing of the Ninth Army opposite the cast of Brave but the performances from this young cast really sell the pathetic nature of their predicament.  Cleverly, both sides are simply extrapolations backwards of more familiar figures of recent times, with British Army squaddies underneath the Italian breastplates and millennials with swords on the other side.  Offering a veneer of strong words over an interior riddled with fear makes them perfectly relatable even if their individuality doesn't reach much beyond a few traits.  Though it is good to see the show bother to touch on Rome's more open attitude to gender and sexuality and in a surprisingly nuanced way.

Amongst the current time team, Capaldi has some of his very best scenes and speeches of the era, "Time to grow up.  Time to fight your fight."  This is a Doctor who's entirely in control of how he treats people, with sarcasm when its necessary and compassion when its essential.  Once again I ask - why couldn't we have had this man for the other two seasons, why did we have to sit through that hateful jerk who makes season eight so unwatchable?  Meanwhile Bill reveals her growing authority, stands up to the Doctor as he watches yet more humans sacrifice themselves on his behalf, due to his all too perfect ability to persuade them to do so through his sheer presence.  Mackie's performance has developed ten fold across the season and shows real facility and relish when the material demands it.

Those spin-off stories would also enjoy the opportunity to visit underserved locations while the television series was either off world, Wales or somewhere within the M25.  Here we are in 2nd century Scotland with its epic scenery and unlike Tennant in Tooth & Claw who had to pretend to have an accent that was really his, Capaldi's able to speak as broadly as he wants.  In an interview with this month's association manuscript, Rona Monro indicates that Moffat did a final pass on the script and added some extra jokes -- I wonder how many of these were the digs against his native land.  That's a brilliant interview incidentally, demonstrating how much of a fan of this show Monro is explaining a playwright of this renown would not only return to the show after all these years but do so with such an understanding of how it's constructed.

If there's a particularly weak element it's the adversary, another in a long line of monsters which seem designed to be difficult to merchandise.  Lovecraftian CG creatures are fine and god knows the last thing we need is something like the Mandrills or the Fisher King blundering around.  Plus I used to complain about the armies of identical aliens who populated the Russell T Davies years. But it's another week without a new iconic monster that the Doctor Who Figurine Collection could slap on their cover in between a Monoid and a Machine Gun Dalek.  True, we glimpse something inside the portal but they're barely on screen long enough to make an impression.  What is Neill Gorton doing these days?  Four episodes of Class, a Red Dwarf and Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Nothing on Who since Last Christmas (the episode not the chronological days).  Well.

Let's talk briefly about the Missy business.  What if she's being sincere?  With the John Simm Master making an appearance next week you could foresee a situation in which the Doctor and the former Prime Minister of Great Britain fight to influence her intellectually and emotionally with the latter fearing that she might become his equivalent of the Valeyard or The Eight incarnation of The Eleven, the good one.  The close up at the conclusion of this instalment seemed to be waiting for snidely eyebrow raise but none was forthcoming.  Since Scream of the Shalka, there's seemed to be some merit in having the Doctor's arch enemy as his companion and now we might actually get to see again what that looks like.  There even seemed to be an uncomfortable beat of romance somewhere in here.

Another fine episode then in a series which began lightly and has gained weight.  Not all of the AudioGos were brilliant sometimes hampered either by weak writing or a disappointing reading.  No one seemed to get Amy's accent right, not least Alexander "Xander" Armstrong who didn't even bother when it was his turn, preferring to read all of the dialogue and descriptions in the same way.  But in the final embers of Capaldi's era, there's a genuine sense of the show finding its feet, its purpose and thank goodness.  Even if I still can't see the point of Nardole, who was especially objectionable here, but I was able to tune out for the most part as you can see from this otherwise positive review.  Hopefully during the finale we'll discover what he was actually here for.  It had better be good.

The Empress of Mars.

TV Good evening ladies and other genders, I give you my favourite episode of the series so far. No purportedly clever opening paragraph here, no wandering off into some personal blogging cul-de-sac in an attempt to put off the inevitable shrugs and sighs, The Empress of Mars is a winner, baby, and that's the truth (that's the truth).  Woo-hoo.  If this is Mark Gatiss's last episode for the television series (not that there's any indication of that), it's a pretty good summation of his favourite tropes and ideas, a televisual Last of the Gaderine so authentically Who that it demonstrates once again  that for all Steven Moffat's reliance on showrunners nervously turning out a first Who script which in the end feels like the work of someone who only thinks they know the franchise, it's no replacement for someone who has it running through their creative veins and written more stories about the Doctor than anyone else this series.

When reviewing Gatiss stories in the past, it's always been customary for me to stick up for the writer early and so here we are again.  Apart from Sleep No More, which I thought was a misstep but Graham Kibble-White adored enough in the friends publication that I'm looking forward to re-evaluating when I finally get around to a binge through the Capaldi era after Christmas (I've only ever rewatched about the first five episodes of series 8), there are few of the writer's stories I haven't at least admired and have indeed thought better of in retrospect (notably The Idiot's Lantern and Night Terrors) even taking into account how much of them are filtered through a show runner rewrite or whatever an actor decides to improvise on set.  Of everyone I hoped would take over when Moffat leaves, he was at the top of the list, but it's understandable he's reneged on attempting to tame this all consuming monster with so many of other creative vices available.

What makes The Empress of Mars so special?  Simplistically but resolutely because it feels like "real" Doctor Who, which is paradoxical given how much of the past few episodes have attracted my dismay at their derivativeness.  Except there's a big difference between pastiche and appreciating the core elements of a series, and simply lifting wholesale from previous stories.   An unfavourable review might point to how we're watching a group of humans blunder into defrosting another tomb full of monsters having seen that process before with Cybermen and Silurians with the Doctor mediating at the centre, or relying on some less xenophobic element of humanity to do some such.  That Gatiss recycles his notion from Victory of the Daleks of humanity arrogantly putting an alien race into servitude even though in reality they're the ones serving their captive visitor in some other cause.

Yet as the preview in this month's fan circular demonstrates, all of this is a feature rather than a bug, from a writer who had the bug to feature all of his great interests in one script.  He says he wanted to do "Tomb of the Ice Warriors", to finally show the "monsters" on their native planet even if it isn't at the height of their empire (still too expensive) and to have them facing up against a Victorian opposition in a homage to the film adaptations of Wells and Burroughs.  To somewhat repeat the point, it's someone writing from a position of knowledge about what's gone before and doing more of that rather than assuming they're creating something new which has actually been done before but for some reason no one's bothered to tell them because they probably haven't noticed.  Or they have but just don't care, forgetting that viewers can actually watch old episodes again.

But perhaps the biggest difference in The Empress of Mars is that Gatiss isn't trying to put some "modern" spin on all of this; he's gone out of his way to produce a script which would work just as well in any era.  Again from DWM, something which would pass the "Dad" test of being simple enough for anyone to follow.  There's a version of this story which fits just as snugly into an old school four or six episode structure with the Doctor and Bill spending a whole episode in the cell and Friday's reveal as the first episode cliffhanger.  Second episode cliffhanger is the reveal of the Tomb.  Third the Empress.  Fourth the opening of the tomb.  Fifth the Doctor standing between the humans and Ice Warriors guns pointed at one another.  You'd have to have some other story strands but yes, that would work a treat.

Dialogue wise too, with the exception of the film references, the Doctor and Bill are in full on generic Time Lord and companion mode and with a few tweaks, Tenth and Rose or Tom and Sarah could easily be slotted in almost as a homage to Sir Terrance's dictum that the Doctor himself doesn't change, it's about the actor's interpretation.  Capaldi has the opportunity to be the benevolent alien and Pearl an exposition sponge and in a week of uncertainty on both sides of the Atlantic, there's something rather comforting about that.  When the Doctor runs after Bill as she falls down the hole in the ground, I don't remember seeing Twelfth treat the moment with such irrevocable terror.  For some reason, the Doctor's likeability rating always goes up when he seems to care about the well being of his friends and Capaldi's charming here.  Imagine if he'd been like this all along.  Imagine, imagine.

Unlike most episodes this series, we're also greeted by a supporting characters with relatable back stories who we care about when they die.  Deliberately referencing Zulu, Gatiss offers a mix of naive young officers, grizzled old hands, villainous racists and shaky commanding officer.  What I especially enjoyed about these red coats is that that they're actual Victorians on Mars in Victorian times, not the results of a times coop or Autons or some other replica.  If only there'd been the budget for a flashback to their voyage aboard Friday's ship, the juxtaposition of these moustacheode fellows and interstellar technology recalling the crew of the R101 roaring against the Triskele Uncreators in Storm Warning (yes, I know they were Edwardians but go with it).  Look everyone, I'm referencing old Eighth Doctor spin-offs.  That's how energised I am with the episode.

The Ice Warriors too are brilliantly realised, developing what we've seen before rather than wiping away ala the Silurians.  Perhaps noticing that the CGI unsuited version in Cold War wasn't quite as good as it could be, this lot remain in armour and although I miss original destructive imagery and sound from the 60s, the new flesh compactor is just horrible.  The simplistic leadership of Iraxxa the eponymous contrasts well with the simple minded buffoonery on the human side of the argument.  Thank goodness we're witnessing a Moffat loop - without the Doctor, these two would slaughtered one another.  Iraxxa actress Adele Lynch only has to tv credits, this and a couple of episode of The Bill in the 90s.  Her Spotlight entry indicates she's mainly worked on stage and that she's a capable dancer, which is ironic considering the most actors playing Ice Warriors can do is stomp around a lot.  I wonder how she ended up here.

All this and a couple of moments of pure unadulterated squee.  Does the BBC have to get permission for Pauline Collins to reprise her role as Queen Victoria in pictorial form?  On top of that, Alpha Centuri with Ysanne Churchman reprising the role from the Peladon stories she last played forty odd years ago,  having last appeared on television as "Woman in Street" on Alan Bleasdale's Oliver Twist adaptation for ITV in '99 (along with half of Christendom) and better known as ill-fated Grace Archer.  Even Big Finish recast her.  Gatiss almost set this on Peladon itself and this whole business leads naturally to wanting a sequel set there with all the usual attributes of an uncertain ruler, intergalactic saboteurs, human miners and a cameo from Ageddor.  The story's also set in 1881, the year of The Gunfighters and I like to think that the Last Chance Salloon is being hammered out down on Earth while all this going on.

Even the Nardole scenes didn't grate too much this week, even if as usual they only seem to exist so that Matt Lucas can be in ever episode because they like working with with him.  One of these weeks I long for his "and" in the opening titles to be replaced with one of Mark Strong's "but"s.  Perhaps its because it is a classic Who move to have the TARDIS unavailable in a tricky situation and we now have the added mystery of why she decided to fly off without them, refusing to land until Missy became involved.  Incidentally Michelle Gomez's version of the character has quietly passed the Rubicon into absolutely haunting.  There are numerous ways she could have played those final lines and in choosing honest concern, backed up by Murray's glorious Ligeti-tinged vocal cue, we're left in pieces in a way which demonstrates that evil is always more potent when it's entombed, waiting to be uncovered.

The Lie of the Land.

TV Netflix announced the cancellation of Sense8 by Netflix this week, which was disappointing but if it didn't work within their secret metrics of streams plus sign-ups then entirely understandable. Each episode reputedly cost $9m presumably because of the globe spanning storylines, numbers of main and secondary characters and actually looking generally very expensive.  Perhaps if there's enough of a protest, they'll at least allow for a wrap up film of some sort.  The show ended on a stunner of a cliffhanger with all kinds of interesting new pieces of mythology about how the clusters are networked together.

None of which has anything to do specifically with The Lie of the Land, other than that Sense8 provoked in me a similar excitement that the Who revival used to, in which I adored all the characters, enjoyed the innovative execution and applauded the ambition.  Every season and episode felt like it had some import and there was a joy to the whole thing, even in the more nihilistic moments like Turn Left or SOD U LOTT.  Yes, I know, moan, moan, moan, but Moffat's persuaded to stay final goodbye tour doesn't feel like the work of someone who's finally trying out all the ideas he's been saving.  It feels like a managed decline in desperate need of a Hestletine figure.

The Lie of the Land is fine, but it's no more than that and I want it to be more than that.  It's the kind of story we've seen in the past from the various iterations of the franchise when a particular mode of the format has gone on just that little bit too long and it's starting to repeat itself in a rather pronounced way.  Late era VNAs or EDAs or on television deep into the eras of the longevity Doctors (in terms of story number), Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee or Baker #1.  They won't be too objectionable when seen later during an extended rewatch and ... oh I'm starting to repeat myself.  Well, if it's good enough for the show ...

If the episode's at all watchable its because of those central three performances.  Writer Toby Whithouse (and whatever Moffat's interpolations are) and Capaldi trade in our memories of the arsehole who wandered around pretending to be the Doctor in series eight to convincingly suggest the Time Lord really joined the monks in oppressing humanity, because it seems like just the sort of thing that cretin would have done.  The actor plays it up to a tee, especially that horrific toothy grin which makes him look like a toothbrush with a hernia during the addresses to the people of Earth (excellent way of introducing the new world order too in the teaser ala Woody Allen's Zelig).

That smile changes considerably when the Doctor flips back into the more benevolent Tennant-lite figure we've generally enjoyed this season.  In the final moments under the statue he's utterly charming, explaining once again how humanity tends to be oblivious about alien invasion once they're over.  For the most part.  At this point, I don't think it's clear how much of everything which has happened to this version of the Earth has stuck from the past few years.  Did the cracks take care of the whole of the RTD era?  Rebooting the universe?  Or is the influence of the Faction Paradox still around?  Has Miracle Day not happened now?

Michelle Gomez's interpretation of Missy has gained considerable depth and like the suspicious Doctor we're not entirely the sure about the extent to which this new found soul is real or just another plan to gain her best friend and our confidence before unleashing some new mischief on the Whoniverse.  It is odd that she didn't reference her own utilisation of a similar methodology from The Sound of Drums, but perhaps it's best when you are re-iterating some earlier story idea not to actually remind the audience too much (even if most of them can go back and rewatch the thing immediately on their favourite streaming service).

But the linchpin of the episode is Pearl Mackie who like numerous companions before her decides that the only way to save the world is to sacrifice themselves.  On this occasion it's because of Bill's own foolishness, albeit in an attempt to save the Doctor (and the future of the franchise), but watching the actress reveal her character's realisation of such and how to mend the Earth it is utterly compelling, as good a piece of companion performance we've seen in the past few years.  Usually such moments are reserved for final episodes so we'll have to see how her story arc plays out for the remainder of the season.

As for the rest of this instalment?  Well, like I said it's fine.  As of late, it's all too tempting to simply produce paragraphs listing the moments in other episodes which resemble this one.  Someone on Twitter posted a photograph of Clara holding up her parental leaf from The Rings of Arkansas and another noted the similarity of the Monk's logo to Saxons and from there the parallels are so shameless that to actually write up a list would be entirely pointless.  I almost simply reposted my review of LOTT but it could just as easily be The Wedding of River Song or The Impossible Astronaut since its re-imagined universe and alien hand-holding business shares much with them too.

But it also lacks scale in comparison to those stories clearly attempting to portray a global threat on the budget of one of RTD's cheaper episodes with statues photoshopped onto postcards of landmarks and an increasing series of sparsely designed sets where scenes continue slightly longer than you might expect.  I'm not imaging this am I?  Are we watching a show trying to hide a cut in budget or at least a reduction in available resources due to everything otherwise costing more overall?  Surely there has to be some way of telling interesting stories without trying to ape the past whilst simultaneously failing to replicate the grandeur.

The episode also lacks compelling secondary characters within whom we see the effects of the memory changes.  Bill's housemates or dates from previous episodes  would have been perfect for this but for either budgetary reasons or availability we're left with the central characters and a more localised insular view.  We might also wonder how all of this has effected the Doctor's friends in other corners of the planet in the kind of episode which leads to wonder if Captain Jack's off world, Mr Smith has gone dark or Miss Quill is sitting on her hands (or at least what are supposed to be hands in her human form).  Where's bloody UNIT?

So yes, sorry, another week, another shrug.  The teaser for Gattis's piece next week does look exciting and unlike other viewers I've generally enjoyed Mark's previous episodes.  Robots of Sherwood is still my favourite of that year even if Sleep No More was a misstep the next.  The Empress of Mars seems like him trying to get all of his favourite things in one place in case Chibbers decides to hire a whole new set of writers  so I'm actually pretty excited about next week.  I always try to go into each episode with an open mind, and it's true that The Lie of the Land had a few good jokes.  I just wish it was ... I don't know ... you know ... that ... there was more of that ...

The Pyramid at The End of The World.

TV ... this is getting really interesting. Since The Pilot, I've seen reviews indicating this may be the best series since Doctor Who came back (you see that every season but they've been pretty intense this time around) and how from episode to episode it just keeps getting better.  Those of you who've been bothering to read this rubbish will have noticed I've been pretty warm about a few episodes, Thin Ice, Knock Knock and Oxygen particularly, but unimpressed with direction of the show overall.  Straight to social media after tonight's episode (it's the new Gallifrey Base) and the praise for The Pyramid at The End of The World is near universal, with exhalations about how great this new TARDIS team is, how thoughtful the story is and how thrillingly told right through to the cliffhanger ending.

Shrug.  Good for you.  Seriously, I'm pleased.  Because I found it to be a mostly dispiriting, tiresome  forty-five minutes filled with reheated moments of pleasure from previous stories, performances less convincing than Ed Ball's stewardship of Have I Got News For You last night (in which his delivery consisted. Of.  Many.  Pregnant.  Pauses.  Often in.  The Mid.  Le of.  Words), with a few exceptions  another group of under compelling waxworks were the secondary characters should be and a general sense of that'll do in a way which suggests the show is feeling pretty snoozy.  Those sentences may sound harsh, but Doctor Who fails when the viewer is bored and I was so, so bored.  But given your reaction, I wonder.  Am I missing something?  Is this just me?  Am I at that point in this long relationship were everything the show does is annoying and it can't win?

In order to help myself get through this, here are five things which irritated the piss out of me.  There were loads more, but I don't really have a structure for these ramblings and I'm hoping to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  First and perhaps of least importance: why the UN and not the Unified Intelligence Taskforce?  Given the latter had to change their fictional name because the former objected, it's odd seeing their acronym painted everywhere.  UNIT's mentioned within, but the army chaps seemed to be from another agency which for some reason had EU badges on their caps, uncomfortably combined with a gold star affair.  The reasonable explanation is that the production team didn't want overstuff the thing with Kate and Osgood, the actresses weren't available or too expensive for a budget which had already stretched to a foreign trip, but it's a distraction to be wondering who exactly is dealing with alien threats on planet Earth now.

Secondly, those waxworks.  The show used to be good at offering secondary characters with at least some personality or back story even when it wasn't necessarily required even in episodes with largish casts.  Often they'd be become relatable enough in a single scene that their inevitable death would be extremely poignant.  In here, with the absence of Kate or Osgood, no attempt is made to give any of the military figures from the various countries anything other than very basic, placeholder dialogue.  I don't remember the Chinese representative having many lines at all, apart from "Agreed."  The head of the UN is an exposition machine when there's a definitely a version were he has a sneaky interest in extra terrestrials or he's an old friend of the Doctor ala Churchill or worried about being away from his family (assuming he's not having an affair with someone on his staff or some such).

Apart from Bill's date (and a lesbian black couple on prime time BBC One almost forgives the ineptness of the rest of the episode), the exceptions are Erica and Douglas who have the essence of the thing I'm talking about and actually feel like they're being written by someone else (Harness or Moffat?).  About the only sections of the episode which are up to previous standards are these Outbreak-lite cutaways, with their visually interesting intercutting of symbolic flashbacks and implications.  It's great that Joking Apart's Michael, Tony Gardner, finally has a Who credit with both he and Rachel Denning capturing the mundanity of being someone who has an incredibly important but fundamentally tedious job were its easy to allow your concentration to wander.  That said, to suggest Erica as one professional writer has is "a companion who never-was-or-will-be in the grand tradition of Sally Sparrow" is quite some unnecessary hyperbole.  We wish any of these characters were as rich as anyone in Blink.

Thirdly, the monks are another miss.  As a friend suggested to me the other night over dinner, they're another iteration of the Whispermen and the Silents and as we discovered tonight they're all practically utilising the same MO of manipulating history either to control humanity or the Doctor or both.  That's compounded here, as these monastic reiterations have adopted a version of the causality strands last seen at the centre of the Doctor's TARDIS in The Name of the Doctor.  They're also not especially well designed;  even if the notion of dialogue emerging from gaping mouths is supposed to be a reference to the Mondasian Cybermen, it robs them of the potential for much personality.  Outside of the redux of old monsters, I can't remember the last time the show introduced an alien race which offered some personality variations amongst its individuals.

Plus, a protection racket?  Really?  Hand over the planet or we're going to break the causal equivalent of the crockery, or at least allow the display stand to fall over?  Also why are the monks in a pyramid other than Moffat's obsession with pyramids?  There is a Wikipedia category for Egyptian Monks, but nothing to indicate that such figures would have been around at the time these edifices were originally built.  I appreciate there's an element of simply wanting to have some cool things which look cool together ("Dinosaurs on a Spaceship!" "Monks in a Pyramid!") and that if you can have Shaolin Monks in Scotland, why not this, but there seems to be an attempt at some correlation which I find at best culturally suspect and at worst counter to the original educational aims of the series.  Yes, I know, Daleks.  But such things were still important until recently.

Fourthly, although connected, the consent business.  You must willingly give up your planet with a sense of love, a heart as big as the girl in the Roger Sanchez video, or we'll kill you.  Except if it emerges you're giving consent for some other reason, we'll kill you anyway.  In other words, consent given under duress.  Yes, yes, the monks are evil aliens, blah, blah, blah, but just as the same writer's Kill The Moon was an inadvertent addition to the abortion debate, here we are staring something even more complicated in the face.  Again, I don't think that was the intention here, there's an in-exactitude to the elements and no clear lines in either direction but that doesn't stop me from considering the extent to which Bill's dilemma resembles Isabella's in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure from a certain, extremely loose perspective.

Finally fifthly, a more general point, but the episode has an odd lethargy to it, with scenes continuing far longer than you might expect, especially when the Doctor's expostulating and what should be huge action sequences, like the combined attack on the pyramid, never quite making the impression they should as though ambition was overtaken by the possibilities of the SFX budget.  Making the Doomsday Clock the actual ticking clock is a rather novel idea, but because increased threat level only occurs when the monks feel like it, utilising it as a way to put pressure on humanity, the notion of the deadline is fudged which odd when you consider that not knowing the deadline, at what time they'll decide doomsday will descend, should be scarier.  When the clock changed so twenty seconds to midnight, the correlation with the events in the lab are unfocused.

So there are five (ish) reasons why the episode didn't work for me.  Perhaps, as I suggested earlier, my own relationship with the show has matured to the extent that habits which seemed acceptable enough to overlook at the beginning have outstayed their welcome.  Having Douglas not wear his mask so that later he contracts the disease might at one stage have seemed like a shameless and so charming storytelling device.  Now it just seems obvious and makes the character an ideal Darwin Award nominee, nullifying our sympathy for him, the narrative equivalent of leaving the bathroom scales out where someone can easily trip over them.  All of which said, next week's episode does look exciting in a Torchwood mega arc told in forty-five minutes sort of way.  Hopefully it'll be more Children of Earth than Miracle Day.

Extremis.

TV OK, let's get the important business out of the way first. The Pope's emergence during Bill's date is one of the funniest tv moments I've seen in quite some time. I laughed loud, I laughed hard, again in a way which I haven't for a while either, and was just the thing after what has, for various reasons been a really stressful day.  If Steven Moffat's good at anything it's writing broad comedy especially when it's based on socio-political themes requiring the viewer to appreciate a certain level of intertextuality.  It's the kind of unexpected juxtaposition which is Stephen Poliakoff's stock in trade but done for laughs and if Pearl has a better bit of reaction business this year, it'll be quite the year.

Except, it didn't happen.  The real Bill wasn't on that date.  It wasn't the real Pope.  Her date hasn't really met her yet and so the whole underlying premise of the scene has rather had its fronds knocked  out from under it.  It's a simulation and however much the conclusion, in copying the Doctor into the experience, attempts to give that half of the episode some relevance, unless there's some updated coding in a future episode can't stop me from being really rather disappointed.  Dreams and alternate realities are Moffat's b-plot when he can't work in a paradox and here's another version and by the end of the episode it left me deflated, immediately DMing a friend with "God, that was boring."

Now clearly, that's a slightly unfair assessment.  The execution of Missy scenes are very well executed and it's refreshing to have an episode structured in a similar way to Lost with a flashback sequence threaded through underpinning the action on the island.  Knowing that even the least knowledgeable of viewers would assume that Missy was in the vault, Moffat successfully provides a few twists even if the Doctor is ultimately trapped in just the same position as Rory and the Pandorica, albeit for different reasons.  Some might criticise the Doctor for using his CV as a deterrent again but as I've said previously, there's nothing especially wrong with the Doctor redeploying old tactics if they work, especially a weapon this powerful.

Hopefully this won't be Missy's denouement and we'll have the "surprise" that when the Doctor opens the vault, John Simm'll be in there, the Master revisiting one of his old faces.  It makes sense that she's leaving though; the Master has to be reconfigured to reflect the Doctor and one of the reasons the Ainley model never did quite jibe with either Six or Seven was because he was too much the opposite of the Sixth, right down to the clothes and outlandish personality.  When Romola Garai does take over from Capaldi, she needs someone who'll play against her strengths which will depend on how they pitch her character, if they go period or contemporary.

Plus the metatextual reference to The Da Vinci Code in the Veritas, a book so awful you want to kill yourself.  Or give it to Oxfam.  A lot.   Part of  Dan Brown's modus operandi is to have his readers question the nature of reality and how everything is connected, an experience these whispers and shadows go through when they realise that there's no such thing as a random sequence of numbers (see also Lost again).  But a version of the episode which isn't set in some other reality and have the Missy b-story could have delved deeper into spoofery with a more intricate mcguffin to investigate, which would have felt a bit more "Doctor Who" to be honest (for whatever that's worth).

But none of this can overcome of the shadow of this being an example of just the sort of episode which writer's bibles and creative writing tutors warn us against.  It's is a relatively novel twist to have a character realise they're not real within the dream rather than the character realising the dream isn't real but on rewatching we'll be seeing scenes between characters that aren't actually happening (within fiction framework of the show) and essentially exist to provide the Doctor with an inciting incident for the next episode which previously has just as easily been explained to a companion by the Time Lord in a console scene during the teaser.

That said, there's something about the lavishness of the production design which suggests this won't be the last we'll see of these locales however important it is have them be convincing enough to fool these also not real Bill and Nardole.  Hum.  In the next episode but one, will we see the invasion itself being played out in just these places, these same characters re-appearing on the "real" Earth?  I wish that the show was simply doing stories set in these places; a stand alone episode featuring the Pentagon would be great fun as would a piece at CERN revisiting one of Torchwood's old locales.  Politics and physics have been potent themes in the past.

In this post-broadcast interview for the Radio Times, Moffat says that if you didn't enjoy Extremis, "there’s a space pyramid on the way. And Ice Warriors. And Mondasian Cybermen, and more Missy, and John Simm’s Master. Damn it, we’ve even got Aberdeen."  I don't think he's saying that because he thinks that some viewers won't be sophisticated enough to enjoy this so here's some of the more simpler hokum.  He could be saying that if this is a creative failure, there's another episode along next week.  If I was Patrick Mulkern the interviewer I would have asked for a clarification but he's quickly on to a question about Missy and the vault.

On the upside we do get to see Nardole, a figure who to me is ranking alongside Jar Jar Binks amongst the very worst genre characters, disappear into a puff of logic.  I realised the other day what my uneasiness with him is.  I just simply don't like Matt Lucas.  Little Britain was infused with some horrendous class tourism and Come Fly With Me with its racist black, brown and yellow face and stereotyping does no one involved any favours especially him and Williams.  We look back at the Minstrel shows with embarrassment and yet here's the modern equivalent and I simply can't abide anyone who thinks this is ok.

So yes, Nardole can sod off now as can the other strand in which the Doctor's become a time travelling Mr Magoo.  Because these scenes occurred in a reality conceived by the antagonists there's a deniability available as to the character's reactions, but that can't draw away from the fact that they're effectively playing a person's inability to see, however temporary, however much its because they're foolishly trying to hide their blindness, for laughs.  I wonder how this is going to go down with those who rely on the episode's audio description to enjoy Doctor Who.  Last week, I was applauding the show for making their hero someone they can identify with.  This now?

Best stop then.  Perhaps with just a couple of episodes of the latest season of Sense8 to watch, much of which has been extraordinary, my expectations for something which is truly "out there" have been raised.  But scratch the surface of Extremis and this wasn't anything Moffat hasn't attempted before and produced better and unlike previous instalments, I can't imagine these niggles will go away on rewatching.  Some people seem to be enjoying this series more than me and good for them, but I can't shake the feeling that for the most part, despite a few high points, the Twelfth Doctor's tenure has been a mismanaged, wasted opportunity.  And now this:

Oxygen.

TV It's Sunday night and I've just finished watching Doctoroo, sorry, Doctor Whoer. Another epoch busted, although I have a strange suspicion that due to other commitments I did delay an episode some time in the RTD era. But last night, with Eurovision following quickly on, I decided to save one of the treats from BBC One's viewing feast for this evening and so here you are reading some opinions (which you've probably seen articulated better elsewhere) on a time delay.  There's nothing worse than having a whole day to actual think about what's going to be written here, for me to put some actual thought into it.  That rarely goes well.  Incidentally, the Eurovision result was probably about right, although the performer's sister was the better singer and probably should have entered the song herself.  Oh and O'G3EN from #NED were robbed, as was the UK.  Again.

Through the gimlet prisms of a long term fan, the episodes title has something of a double meaning in that story wise,  Oxygen is as familiar to Doctor Who as human lungs are to breathing.  The set up is a classic base under siege (you can mark your four corners on the Who review bingo card) with the TARDIS inopportunely inaccessible, a small group of humans to save and an implacable enemy hell bent on their destruction.  Even if you've only seen The Sensorites, you pretty much know all the tropes to expect, and if Nicholas Briggs hasn't written one version for Big Finish, he's publicised  several on his Twitter feed.  Depending on your mood, the idea of sitting through all of this stuff again can feel achingly tedious or like a comfortable hug from a big, friendly script editor or show runner (depending on the era) and luckily for us, Oxygen is the latter.

Not that our patience isn't tested.  This series's tendency towards rather bland, single attributed  secondary characters continues.  Back in more recent history, even Chris Chibnall was capable of imbuing the denizens of the S.S. Pentallian with enough character for us to find their death's poignant within a 42 minute time span.  In Jamie Mathieson's Oxygen (his best script to date nonetheless) we meet the shouty one, the beardy one, the blue one and the one who dies early.  There's probably an argument that we're seeing them through the Twelfth Doctor's eyes, or rather lack of them now, in that he doesn't have much interest in them as individuals other than to save them, but it doesn't half lengthen the odds in how sympathetic they're going to be to the viewer which is something which used to be important.  Not sure why it isn't so much now.

Nardole continues to annoy especially due to the way the writers have had to find him something to do, often in scenes were the Doctor orders a piece of investigatory information which the Time Lord himself would more naturally discover and more potently having gone through the motions himself.  In one scene here, the Doctor literally stands around while Nardole goes off and finds a piece of eposition.  The Doctor's Daughter might not be a great story, but at least is justifies Donna's secretarial back story by having her develop a piece of admin which goes overlooked by the big picture Tenth Doctor.  We're once again forced to hope that there's some grand plan in place for Matt Lucas's character which'll cause us to retroactively reconsider his participation in these earlier episodes.  Third wheel companions are always tricky and the otherwise anonymous Nardole's amongst the wheeliest.

But having said all of that the rest of the episode just works.  Much of that has to do with the zombies being genuinely creepy with their cocked heads, grey skin and vacant eyes, organic material serving the suits, their autonomy defiled.  With a full zombie neck or limb mastication out of the question, a death touch, so close to a schoolyard tag or tick, is scary, especially when its inevitable.  Unlike the Borg, whose consciousness is assimilated into the hive mind and contributes towards its journey for perfection, the humans in Oxygen are simply necessary organic matter, existing to give the suits something to hang on to.  Yes, yes, who turned out the lights, but at least when the Vashta Narrada get you, with the exception of the echo, your living embodiment becomes nourishing to them as a chicken wing.  Here, your vacant likeness continues.

The political angle is also immensely impressive, especially for those of us who've been on the sharp end of late capitalism.  I've worked in a bank's call centre were every moment of my day to the nearest second is recorded and available for criticism if "too long" is spent on a toilet break or client queries aren't dealt with below a pre-designated average call time.  The failure to achieve any of this would have resulted in missing out on a bonus and a tetchy meeting with a team leader rather than asphyxiation, but the transformation of a human into the biological conduit for a business process is roughly similar.  Given that pretty much all other necessary human sustenance is now being charged for, the act of inhaling and exhaling N2 and O2 plus trace elements isn't completely unbelievable if some kind of mechanism could be devised.

Other elements of the production are a tour de force.  The exterior shots all seem to have been shot with the minimum of CGI giving them an old school pliability and the elements featuring astronauts on stanchions bring to mind scenes filmed at Elstree for the classic series, before videotape was adopted and made everything seem cheap now matter how well shot (or lit).  Murray Gold's music is really helping the Doctor and Bill's relationship to gel and it's impossible not to feel Tennant era vibes when she embraces here tutor and their collective themes swell.  Not to mention that it's great to see our characters in space suits other than those first seen in The Impossible Planet, especially these with their beautifully patterned gold fish bowls.  Were they created especially for this story or do we recognise them from somewhere else?

Taking the Doctor's sight is a dramatic twist and finally potentially give Nardole something new to do as a human guide dog.  That even without his eyes, the Time Lord will be capable of much will surely be of comfort to children who've also lost their eyesight, so let's hope the audio description does the episode justice.  Like his constant amnesia in his Eighth incarnation, this blindness surely won't be permanent, which isn't to say it wouldn't be brave to keep him in this condition right through to the regeneration.  But it has to be unlikely given that we finally have a version of this character who isn't a complete bastard and to leave him in this state would be a cruel cut.  If as is rumoured, the Christmas special will help explain the intervention of his attack eyebrows in the Day of the Doctor, he's going to need his cue balls intact.

When articles are written about the Twelfth Doctor era, Oxygen is sure to be included in its highlights.  While in some ways still quite simplistic in its characterisation and depth in comparison to earlier eras, partly due to the need to service the series's arc story at the top and bottom of the action, the decision not to soft focus its political message is welcome in the current political climate.  If the Daily Mail hates you, you're probably doing something right.  The trailer for next week's episode is majestic: is that River's diary?  Does it contain secrets about his future and if so, how did she know before her untimely?  Will we discover what's in the vault and does the fact that we know Missy is back mean that it can't be Missy since putting her in the trailer would rather invalidate the surprise?  Or is it a double bluff?  I won't be iPlayering next week, then.

Knock Knock.

TV Good evening folks. Well, I finally did it. After three weeks of threatening to watch Doctor Who on the iPlayer rather than broadcast, that's exactly how I experienced Knock Knock for the first time, with the annoying DOG in the top left hand corner and the ability to the pause the show if I needed to go to the toilet in the middle (I didn't). This was not, as I'd originally thought it might, because of apathy but due to the online version being released in a binaural version with 3D sound.  After producing Spearhead from Space in colour, pioneering online activity and being one of the first dramas to be broadcast in HD, Doctor Who's innovating again.

When I began writing this paragraph, I was all ready to provide some commentary on what that was like, except as I've just discovered, I haven't actually seen that version.  That version appears separately on the iPlayer under "Doctor Who Enhanced" rather than with the rest of the series,  So I waited an hour and watched it on the iPlayer for no good reason.  Let this be a warning to you.  I wonder how many people will have made the same mistake and not noticed any discernible difference, especially since it's just the standard version, the one I watched, being promoted on the main page.  Expect paragraphs added at the bottom of this when I've had a chance to see it again.

Luckily, even without these enhancements, Knock Knock holds up, an decent example of the period house subgenre of the base under siege (see also Chimes at Midnight, Tooth & Claw and arguably Ghost Light), in which Doctor Who absorbs elements of the haunted house genre but provides an alien rather than spectral antagonist, the Time Lord and his friends running along brick corridors rather than metal.  Mike Bartlett's script also glances towards cabins in woods, with young people as protagonists.  They don't really conform to the expected social stereotypes - purposefully they're pretty blank ciphers (although I liked them more than more of the characters in Class).

Not having seen Doctor Foster (much television drama, not much time)  Even if I can't see the extent to which his particular style is carried over, it is an example of the policy for hiring showrunners to write episodes has paid off.  Judging by his DWM interview he's clearly a fan and even manages to remember Harriet Jones was prime minister in the Whoniverse once.  Apparently the character of Harry is supposed to be the grandson of Doctor Sullivan, a nugget which was cut before it reached the screen.  This doesn't contradict anything in his biography, even taking into account the decade were he went missing ... somewhere ...

The teaser trawl through the dramas of finding a house are pretty accurate, although when I was trawling through the student accommodation office in Leeds, I didn't have an realtor to aid me, instead relying on taking down telephone numbers from cards were the rent seemed reasonable (at that time £35 a week) (I'm that old) and turning up at the given rat hole.  The second year house was a palace even if the people I shared it with were awful and in the third year I ended up in an appalling shed with some lovely people.  Swings and hyperspace bypasses.  You can read more about my university accommodation adventures here.

None of my landlords might have been up to much, none of them were as creepy as David Suchet's brown suited bantay, a brilliant one off creation who's sure to have increased the sales of tuning forks over the coming weeks.  The key to his performance is to pull back, understate everything, his mysterious existence causing us to hang on his every word.  But notice how later, once the identity of his charge is revealed, he remodulates his voice to underscore the change in the dynamic, as poignant and pathetic Michael Sheard in Pyramids of Mars when his childhood friend his killed.  Actually Sheard would also have killed as the landlord, albeit in Bronson mode with a more deathly stare.

Just about my only reservation about the episode has nothing to do with its content.  As has been too often the occasion now, the key reveal, the big revelation, has been ruined during the publicity, with the caretaker's mother appearing in all the publicity, notably the two page spread in the round robin email of our knitting circle (which also, ironically has "spoiler warning" in a giant red circle over it) (no kidding!).  I appreciate the argument for the much maligned Radio Times cover with the Dalek hybrid, but I did feel the integrity of the surprise was somewhat muted, especially since it seemed like it would be the return of the creatures from the The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

Nevertheless, it was nice to see one of my favourite actresses, Mariah Gale, who The Guardian's theatre critic, Michael Billington once said gave the best Juliet he'd ever seen (five stars) and was a brilliant Ophelia opposite David Tennant in the RSC production from 2009.  That she manages to give such a compelling performance despite the restrictions only makes me wish that she was able to combine more screen work with the her stage work, which seems to be her primary focus.  I've just noticed she plays Isabella in the Measure for Measure from Dominic Dromgoole's late era at the Globe.  I'll have to check my finances.  Those dvds are expensive.

After my initial caution, Bill's turning into a perfect fit for this new, friendlier Capaldi and their chemistry, whilst lacking the sexual intrigue of Rose vs. Tenth, certainly has some of their sparks.  She's very much a return to the companions of old, old in this case being the RTD era, without some underlying story arc significance, at least for now.  Well, ok, Donna had something on her back and ended up being essentially the Chiswick equivalent of the Watcher, but like Bill, it was never about her being a mystery to be solved.  It's a shame that a character this rich should appear so late in Moffat's run with only eight episodes remaining (though she's tailor made for Big Finish).

Anyway, Capaldi's in his element, clearly enjoying the chance to play the character how he must have hoped he always would do.  It's still a shock to see just how benevolent, friendly and warm he's become and I can't accept that this man would have insulted Danny Pink as much as he did in those terms.  How long has the Doctor been on Earth looking over the vault.  Has it been the decades he suggested in The Pilot?  Though notice how his attitude changes with Nardole; he's far more authoritarian in his company, pushy.  One might even suspect he doesn't quite trust this assistant, despite everything.  Huh.  Oh and it's either the Master or Missy in the Vault.  Or himself.  I think.

Updated! 09/05/2017.  Does the binaural 3D audio add much to the experience?  Having spent the best part of a decade watching pretty much everything through headphones at home I've become accustomed to how a 5.1 sound mix appears through headphones in various ways, depending on how the sound design is interpreted by the various dvd or streaming services.  In the most impressive of cases, often those films in which sound has been given extra special attention, the likes of Star Wars or the MCU, the results can be extraordinary; the sound design team, already anticipating that headphones will be one of the ultimate venues for their work, seem to know how best to service the ear in close quarters.

Hearing films through the rather basic speakers integrated into flat screen televisions is always shockingly inferior, so if you are watching films by yourself, I'd say headphones are always the way to go.  One of my first stereo audio experiences while watching a film through headphones was during X-Men on the first dvd release, the scene in which Logan';s being coaxed through the corridors of the mansion for his fateful first meeting with Xavier.  The Professor's voice seems to be speaking from inside the walls, apparently inside the Wolverine's head and it's almost as though Patrick Stewart's voice is in the room with you, shifting around the sides of your head.

On those terms, Knock Knock Enhanced is fine, but its not that much more impressive than the average Hollywood sound mix when done properly.  It's certainly a good episode to choose, the creaking wood of the walls, slamming doors and knocking appearing all around the viewer's head.  The repetition from the vinyl remains in place as the shot shifts along the corridor and the Landlord becomes rather more creepy when he intones or shifts the air before appearing on screen.  The philosophy has clearly been to enhance what's on screen rather than work against it, not to be a distraction.

Where this comes unstuck is the implementation for dialogue and music.  The latter for the most part is a distraction.  There doesn't seem to have been an attempt to record the music binaurally so its mostly just the usual stereo sound mix.  But the words are unnatural in places as the sound designer has to compensate for the rapid edits and so voices begin sentences in one place then shift abruptly elsewhere in the ear because the characters have moved in shot which is less noticeable in the standard stereo because the sound is spread across both ears rather than consolidated in the left or right as is often the case here.  It's the audio equivalent of the uncanny valley.

Does binaural audio even work with pictures?  Perhaps it is different to typical film sound mixes but my ears are trained to accept to whatever's poured into them.  The best experiments I've heard so far have been in radio, where the shot restrictions are not in place and it's up to the listener to provide the pictures.  Characters are free to "walk" around our heads or we're able to "sit" in the middle of an auditorium and hear an orchestra, if not sit amongst them depending on the placement of microphones.  In the end, as the episode raced to its conclusion, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be watching an enhanced version anyway.  Which probably misses the point.