TV REVIEW: Doctor Who - The Husbands of River Song

So, it's the year 5000 and something, it's snowing, River is back and Greg Davies is giving it his all as a disembodied head. It can only be the Doctor Who Christmas special!

Set on an Earth colony three thousand years into the future on which, naturally, it’s Christmas Day, a case of mistaken identity leads The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) to the bed-side of robot King Hydroflax (Greg Davies), who, rather unfortunately for him, has a priceless diamond lodged in his brain. Giving a whole new meaning to the term gold-digger, the King’s wife, half archaeologist half burglar, turns out to be none other than River Song (Alex Kingston). Believing her real husband to be out of regeneration cycles, (reasonably enough given that the last time she saw him, he had indeed run out) she fails to recognise the man behind the new face for the majority of the episode. Cue hilarity and high-jinks.

Definitely a much lighter episode of Who than we’ve seen all series, 'The Husbands of River Song' is never going to be lauded as one of the better episodes of this year, but there’s certainly a case for it being one of the better Christmas specials. It gave Capaldi the chance to flex his comedy muscles once again after the tragic loss of Clara (Jenna Coleman) at the end of Series 9, sharing the screen with The Doctor’s most accomplished verbal sparring partner. Steven Moffat’s dialogue, was positively fizzing, with a particular highlight being the moment The Doctor got to have a turn at the whole ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ gig. 

Despite never being the biggest fan of River Song, even I enjoyed seeing her in a welcome return to form as a self-proclaimed ‘archaeologist from the future.’ Whether this really is the last we’ll see of her remains to be seen, although given the obvious on-screen chemistry between her and Capaldi, I’d be very surprised if that really was her final bow.

The two had decent support from Greg Davies and Matt Lucas, although it was a shame the latter wasn’t given more to do, so well did he slot into the Whoniverse. Visually, there was plenty to look at as we went from a festive human colony, to a luxury cruise ship for war criminals, to the famed Singing Towers of Darillium, meeting a host of new and intriguing life forms en route. The whole diamond heist plot wasn’t particularly inspiring, but in the Christmas context that hardly seemed to matter. 

The narrative kept things simple yet entertaining, exactly what you need when you’re approximately seven eighths full of turkey and roast potatoes.

On the whole, it doesn’t seem these days that Doctor Who can go far wrong. Bring on Series 10, we say.

Jen

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TV Review: Doctor Who - Heaven Sent

The penultimate episode of Doctor Who this week wasn’t so much a television programme as a barn-storming showcase of BBC talent. Picking up where last week’s episode left off, after the tragic death of companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), Heaven Sent saw Peter Capaldi’s Doctor tele-ported to a mysterious prison castle.

Pursued by a terrifying yet slow-moving cloaked monster, known as The Veil, The Doctor’s only escape is to confess truths to the beast just before it kills him, although this only really serves to buy him more time to try to solve the mystery of his surroundings. Heartbreakingly, in between run-ins with the creature and the discovery of clues, he imagines himself back in the TARDIS, telling Clara about his adventures whilst she kept her back to him, writing questions on the blackboard, in a fitting tribute to what had been her day job. Despite the fact that this was a solo Capaldi episode, Heaven Sent was as much about Clara as it was about The Doctor. 

As a companion, her character came across as quite two dimensional at the start, but her final series with the show has been no less than a tour de force. Coleman and Capaldi created something very special together, in a welcome move from the slightly-almost-romantic-but-not-quite relationship of previous Doctors and travelling partners. This episode allowed us to see The Doctor grieve – something we’re not always privy to as an audience, as companions have often departed in the final episode, with The Doctor returning a series later damaged, but very much on the mend. Heaven Sent showed us the anguish and mental torment usually glossed over.

Steven Moffat always writes his best work in single setting, claustrophobic environments, and this fantastically imaginative personalised hell allowed him to fully explore The Doctor’s emotional instability, as well as being one of the most inventive plotlines I think we’ve seen a while. As it slowly dawned on us as an audience that The Doctor has been stuck in this loop for a very long time, and the skulls at the bottom of the sea took on an eerie new significance, watching the Time Lord forced to take ‘the long way round’ to such an extreme gave the show a scale and emotional depth beyond compare.

If Peter Capaldi doesn’t win some sort of award for his performance in this episode, let alone this series as a whole, we’ll eat our collective hat. Equal parts angry, resigned, guilt-ridden and defiant, Capaldi’s performance here was an intense emotional journey, carried off with trademark ease. Between his extraordinary talent, Rachel Talalay’s able direction and Moffat’s stunning concept, all supported by a gorgeous score and fantastic set design, this episode could happily have been feature length.

Series 9 of Doctor Who has been one of the best in a while, with Capaldi settled into the role, and his companionship with Clara going from strength to strength. The two-parter structure has really helped, and I for one hope that it continues into the next series.

Although past follies remain unforgotten, the show seems to be on a role at the moment.

And frankly, te fact that television of this calibre is available as regular Saturday night entertainment serves as an excellent two fingers up to recent criticism of the BBC licence fee, and is reason enough to keep the Beeb going for many years to come. 

This is me signing off on Series 9, as Becky will be here with you next week for Hell Bent – it looks like it’s going to be a cracker.

Jen

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TV REVIEW: Doctor Who - The Zygon Inversion

As The Zygon Inversion opened on a clone of Clara (Jenna Coleman) firing a missile at the plane holding The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Osgood (Ingrid Oliver), with the real Clara trapped beneath London in a weird pod prison thing, you could be forgiving for thinking this was going to an all-out battle, let’s all shoot at each other and set things on fire sort of an episode. But it really, really wasn’t. Clever, topical and stridently anti-war, this was Who with a message, and it worked.

According to The Doctor, what people should do ‘in the first place’, before they even think of fighting, is talk. And The Zygon Inversion very much practiced what he preached. Apart from a spot of parachuting and a few unfortunate incidents later on, this episode consisted, almost entirely of talking. Not managing to thwart Bonnie/Zygella from firing the missile, despite giving it a damn good try via their psychic link, Clara found herself locked in a battle of wills with her counterpart, whilst The Doctor and Osgood tried to find their way to her. And that was where the battle of wills really started, as The Doctor effectively refereed between leader of the Zygon rebels Bonnie, and UNIT leader Kate (Jemma Redgrave). 

But we’ll come to that.

Meanwhile, the doubling provided a great opportunity for Jenna Coleman to flex her acting muscles. I have a slight theory that she’ll be one of those sort of characters where as soon as she’s gone, we’ll realise how great she was. She’s a grower.

And I know I say it every week but I’m going to do so again. The show continues to be genuinely laugh out loud funny. I’m not sure it’s ever been that until this series, but I like it. A lot. Much of it comes down to the fact that Capaldi’s excellent delivery makes everything feel a little unsteady and unpredictable. In the heavier scenes, this can be electrifying. In the funnier moments, it’s just plain hilarious. ‘Ah London… what a dump!’ being one such example. Both he and the writing work together to take you in directions you never expected to go, all in the space of a line.

There’s a splendid mythology developing around UNIT now, as we re-visited The Black Archives. They always felt a little bit shoe-horned in before, but now they have more of a proper place in the story arc. Speaking of which, is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t completely love Osgood? No, thought not.

We saw more of the same themes throughout the episode as we’ve seen all series, as we met more hybrids and pairings, particularly evident when Bonnie completed the broken Osgood pair, as well as this episode and its predecessor’s titles. Not to mention the ongoing trope of The Doctor solving the problem by talking, at length. We saw it with Davros way back at the start of the series, with The Woman Who Lived and now with Kate and Bonnie, as they both quite literally stand with their fingers on the button, ready to destroy each other.

Whole essays could be written on that scene. I’ll restrain myself, but between the powerful anti-war and pro-immigration messages, the memory wiping, Capaldi’s even-more-excellent-than-usual performance and the striking image of the pair (another one) of the red and blue boxes, we’d have enough to talk about for hours. As it was, it was yet another example of Capaldi’s brand of Doctor. His power is very much in his words – and he intends to use them. The result was seriously powerful stuff.

Others have commented that these last two episodes have been a little boring, perhaps slightly pedestrian, as The Doctor rode in a plane not the TARDIS, and two policeman who weren’t policeman walked slowly down a road and didn’t actually attack anybody…But to do so is to miss the point. They were always supposed to be a little quieter. The Zygons aren’t particularly scary, which is why ‘the enemy within’ angle works so well. And that’s what gave the episode its message – we all just want to get on with life, but disillusionment happens, and we need to talk about it, not just blow each other up like ‘screaming kids.’

And with that much emotional clout, surely the show can only keep getting better and better?

Becky will be here to tell you next week.

P.S I concur. *Applauds for Action Rebecca Front*

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