The Girl Who Waited

 

The Girl Who Waited is one of Doctor Who's shining gems, a masterful blend of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and drama.  In a season that didn't have Impossible Astronaut and The Doctor's Wife, this would easily be the highlight.

Night Terrors

Night Terrors is a breath of fresh air.  Not because it's a classic or anything.  It's a good, solid, well-made episode that wouldn't particularly stand out in any era of Who.

But it's a relief to have an episode this season for which I actually feel certain of my feelings.  I've had to watch the last four episodes three times each before even deciding whether or not I liked them, and then rewrote my Good Man review after seeing Let's Kill Hitler.  Even The Doctor's Wife had me torn a little between its shining brilliance and its unsatisfyingly jammed running length.  So a story I can watch once and know exactly how I feel about it is just wonderful.

Much of the praise goes to director Richard Clark, of Gridlock and The Doctor's Wife.  Clark's framing and pacing are superb; he creates a creepy yet whimsical atmosphere out of some pretty simple settings.  His visual sense adds a lot to the story; the TARDIS appearing reflected in puddle is a particularly nice touch.  The long shadows and sharp lighting reminiscent of German Expressionism give Night Terrors a uniquely eerie atmosphere that elevates the story.

Clark's mastery overcomes the shortcomings of Mark Gatiss' script, which is fine but entirely unspectacular.  It seems to come from the concept that Doctor Who's one and only subject is Monsters and the funny British guy who fights them.  Which is an important part of Doctor Who, but a very narrow view of the show. (I'm not saying Gatiss views it that way, but he sure doesn't give any hint here or in his other three Who scripts that there's much more to the show.  I haven't read any of his Who novels, to be fair) It's pretty straightforward: the Doctor lands somewhere, finds monsters, talks his way out of it, everything's happy again.

But the execution, on the whole, is really good.  Much of the story focuses on the Doctor trying to help out a worried father, nicely played by Daniel Mays.  He also gets some time with the kid, and Smith always amazes working with kids.  Amy and Rory mostly run through creepy hallways and such, but they do it very well.  Arthur Darvill has a particularly marvelous scene where he almost sighs when he comes to believe that the two of them are dead.  Again.

The monsters, when they do show up, are creepy enough; the transformations are very unsettling, utilizing terrific effects.  The choppiness of the transformations in particular sells the effect to the point that it's hard to be certain how much is CGI and how much is practical.  Nicely done.

This is, unfortnately, yet another case of Murray Gold blaring music over scenes that clearly need no music at all.  And again, it's not bad music, but it takes from the scenes' effectiveness.  And very often, his music really is effective; he (or the director, or producers, or someone) won't turn it off when it isn't needed.

The story, ultimately, ends up going exactly where you expect it, without ever quite managing to raise the stakes or the intensity high enough to really score.  But it's watchable, entertaining, and solid, thanks largely to a director who knows how to squeeze all the atmosphere and drama out of a simple yarn and small setting.

RATING:

* * *

Let's Kill Hitler

HITLER: He was going to kill me...
RORY: Shut up, Hitler!
DOCTOR: Rory, take Hitler and put him in that cupboard over there.

Spoilers.

Like, seriously, spoilers.  Let's Kill Hitler directly continues a story seeded in 2008 and threaded through three seasons.  Every River Song episode leads to this one.  And it's impossible to talk about this episode without referring to its many, many revelations.

But it's a good one.  Not perfect, and yet another episode that should have been doubled in length, but fast, funny, clever, compelling, and, for the most part, satisfying.

SPOILERS!

The Green Death

Jo Grant is one of the great empowered women in Doctor Who.

From The Time Monster

Seriously.  It's totally true.

Planet of the Daleks



Seven thousand one, seven thousand two, seven thousand three...



Generally, when Whovians complain about Planet of the Daleks, it revolves around Terry Nation's liberal plundering of his first Dalek story, The Dead Planet.  It's certainly structured similarly, with one episode mostly of the heroes wandering alone through a strange planet, after which our heroes are trapped deep underground by the Daleks until about halfway through the story, when they escape and prepare their daring final assault, which takes place in the final episode.  Additionally, the Thals turn up again and explicitely reference the events of Dead Planet.  The Daleks plan to release a virus, just as they planned to release radiation in the original.  Our heroes hide inside a Dalek casing to infiltrate the base.  And so forth.

And while we're at it, the invisible creatures in the dangerous jungle are a direct lift from The Daleks' Master Plan.

There are a couple of notes to this problem.  The first is that, when this was first broadcast, there hadn't been a traditional Dalek story since 1967; their brief appearances tacked onto Day of the Daleks certainly weren't a satisfying return for them.  So for viewers of the time, it was the first real Dalek story in six years, and returning to the familiar elements would be refreshing.  It's only now, when you can chose to watch them side-by-side that it's really an issue.

The second is that even with his self-plundering, Nation still creates a highly entertaining, action-packed yarn.  It's not perfect, and doesn't hold up to his '60s Dalek scripts, but that doesn't mean it isn't a lot of fun.

Frontier In Space

SPACE!

Carnival of Monsters

Robert Holmes is generally considered Doctor Who's greatest writer for good reason: he was able to write stories that stayed entertaining through their entire length through great characterization, dialogue, and world-building.  But look close enough at many of his stories, and you also find something highly subversive.  In fact, if he's not the writer in charge of things, he's very often biting the very hand feeding him (and a hand for which he has obvious affection).  Under the many layers of Caves of Androzani resides a subtle critique of the entire Fifth Doctor era and a sense that Holmes is saying, "This is how you should have been doing things the last three years."  The Krotons seems a deliberate attempt to re-align the Second Doctor's stories with his characterization, something that rarely happened outside of David Whitaker's scripts.  The Two Doctors barely even hides its contempt, instead reveling in its mockery of the era's over reliance on continuity references and ugly violence.

Carnival of Monsters has self-satirical ideas of its own, albeit of a different sort from those above.  But like Caves, on the surface of its subversion is a terrific adventure yarn, and is a blast to watch without seeing a hint of what's going on underneath.