Dinosaurs On A Spaceship

I wanted to love this episode.  I really, seriously did.  Dinosaurs on a spaceship is the most perfect concept you could put in this show.  But the execution is just awful, and I'm finding myself very sadly having a much more Hobbesian view of things when I wanted desperately to be as awed by the ideas as Calvin.

Okay, so here's what happens in this episode: in 1334 BC, the Doctor saves Ancient Egypt from destruction, and then impulsively brings Queen Nefertiti along with him.  Meanwhile, a space ark launched by the Silurians millions of years ago is boarded by a pirate in 2367 AD who ruthlessly murders all the Silurians with his cheap robots, then finds he can't pilot the ship and it's returning to Earth. The ISA, presumably the India Space Agency but in practice the 24th century equivalent to UNIT, calls the Doctor in to solve the problem before they're forced to destroy it with missiles.  After getting instructions from the ISA, he then picks up Edwardian hunter Riddell for some reason.  Then he picks up Amy and Rory... along with Rory's dad by accident.

So, to sum up, this episode includes the following:

• Dinosuars on a spaceship
• A Silurian space ark
• A psychotic space pirate who commits genocide against said Silurians
• A pair of Douglas Adams-ish robots
• A successor to UNIT
• Queen Nefertiti
• A Great White Hunter
• Amy and Rory getting picked up again since they aren't regularly traveling with the Doctor.
• Rory's dad.

That's too many concepts for 90 minutes.  In 45, nothing works properly.

Well, except the dinosaurs on a spaceship.  It would have been nice if more had been done with that, but they work well enough.

Let's start with Nefertiti, since that's the one that really irks me.  She's all flirty, first with the Doctor, then with Riddell.  That, actually, is pretty much her entire characterization.  She's flirty and she's a Queen, so she has a power thing going.  She barely has any lines in the story, and has no function whatsoever until the climax, at which point she is captured by the villain for the final crisis.  She then waits around until the Doctor arrives to save her, then finally decides to save herself.  At the end, she goes off to be with Riddell for some reason.

It's a sloppily-detailed, half-formed characterization for a character who, frankly, could have been cut from the story entirely.  That would be bad enough without the moral problem, but this is a family show.  See, she clearly identifies herself as the wife of Amunhotep.  It's part of how she defines herself.  However, she tries to seduce the Doctor, then goes off to be with another guy at the end.  But that's okay, see, because she thinks her husband is boring.  I know they're much cheekier these days, but playing off infidelity as nothing more than a joke is just offensive.

But then there's the fact that she's Nefertiti.  One of the great historical icons.  And Chibnall gets nothing right.  The few details we do get about her are completely wrong.  This is one of the most fascinating figures of ancient history, and Chibnall can't get the three things he does say about her right.

Nefertiti and her husband, Amunhotep IV, led the Aten cult, a group of Egyptians who believed there was only one god, Aten, the disk of the sun.  In 1348 (give or take a year), Amunhotep changed his named to Akhenaten, still the name he's most commonly known by.  He and Nefertiti reformed the entire Egyptian culture, changing the Pantheon, the Capital city, even the style of art.  And they created the first monotheistic state religion, and were members of one of the first two monotheistic religions to ever exist, alongside Judaism.

Nefertiti had an unprecedented level of power for a queen, being nearly a co-regent with her husband.   She also deeply loved Akhenaten.  Then, in the 12th year of his reign, 1340(ish), she simply disappears.  After this, things get fuzzy, but at about the same time, a mysterious figure named Smenkhare appears and becomes Akhenaten's coregent, then Pharaoh after his death a few years later.  There may also have been a Queen named Neferneferuaten somewhere in there.  Those two may have been Nefertiti herself under different names, or maybe just the second one was.  Or maybe neither, and she died in 1340.  But the idea that she was both is the popular theory amongst amateurs like me.

Changing the state religion, unfortunately, drew the ire of the old priests, who had lost much of their power.  They took advantage of Akhenaten's preoccupation with his religion, and ensured that the Egyptian kingdom fell apart.  There was lots of intrigue and power struggling.

Eventually, the priests quietly managed to get back their power, and once Akhenaten's son (probably his, anyway) Tutankhaten, later Tutankamun, popularly King "Tut", came to power as a kid, they got him to return the throne to the old capital and restore the old gods.  Two pharaohs further down the line, orders were given to have the entire period erased from history so nothing like it could ever happen again.  Bits of the period resurface, but details are sketchy.  What we do have, however, is one of the most dramatic periods of ancient Egyptian history, and at the center, Nefertiti.

So if you're going to put her in your story, you should probably put her in a story that actually has enough time to give her some dues.  But even if you're not, you could at least get something right.  The Doctor picks her up in 1334, at which point Akhenaten was either dead or dying.  If she was alive, she was about to become sole ruler of Egypt (or already was).  Also, she had at least two living daughters (who later became Tutankhamun's wife) and possibly four.  So leaving her to abandon her post and her children with no motivation whatsoever is hard to take.

And she's bored with her husband?  The guy who tried to turn his world upside-down?  The guy she clearly loved deeply from every depiction we have of them?  And above all, she calls him Amunhotep.  13 years after he changed his name.  I mean, that one's just weird.  Anyone who's heard of him knows he's Akhenaten.  Even the 15 seconds of research required to come up with the right century and her husband's name would have turned that up.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti play with their daughters.

This is largely nit-picking, but it's an example of how sloppy the whole thing is.  Nefertiti is jammed into the story, but she's done so utterly wrong she fails as a representation of the real person (actually a bit of an insult, really, to one of the great women of ancient history).  That would be totally forgivable if it was a memorable characterization, but it's a pretty lousy one.  And even then, there might be something to be said for her mere presence and name if she actually accomplished something in the story, but her only actual purpose is to get captured by the villain for the sake of the climax.

This sloppiness pervades the entire script.  Like the way the Doctor mentions that they can't use the transports at one point because they shorted out, but they inexplicably work (multiple times) for the climax.

The sexual politics are just obnoxious.  Look, I have nothing against feminism.  I'm about as feminist as a male American conservative gets.  One of the things I love so much about this show is the presence of characters like Barbara Wright and Sarah Jane Smith being strong, independent, powerful women long before it was popular.  But the presentation here is terrible.  Riddell and Solomon are totally sexist, and Nefertiti and Amy are constantly putting their equality in their faces.  Riddell and Solomon become strawmen sexists, and frankly, Nefertiti and Amy come off like the sorts of characters Kate Beaton was satirizing in her Strong Female Characters comic.  Every time it comes up, it's cringe-inducing.

And there's Rory's dad.  Mark Williams is perfect, and the character gets a couple of nice moments, but when you bring in a previously-unseen relative, you should really make their relationship the emotional center of the story, or at least have a decent emotional arc.  He's a credible depiction of what you'd expect Rory's dad to be like, but he has nothing really to do.  Like Nefertiti, he's just sort of grafted on without any real thought to how he impacts the story (or doesn't).  It's a waste of a nice performance.

Riddell works better than the other two on the sheer fact that the Great White Hunter is such a brilliant trope it's almost impossible to screw up, and such a simple one you can just let it play in the background.  Even in otherwise weak adventures, that character adds tremendous fun to a story.  Think Connery's Allan Quartermain in the otherwise lame League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or (my favorite variation of the trope) Ernie Hudson as "your Great White Hunter... who happens to be black" in the extremely uneven Congo.  And Rupert Graves certainly plays it with all the charisma you'd expect.  He's got a particularly great moment where he calmly insists he can take down an ankylosaur with his pocketknife.  But far too much of his screentime is spent belittling the women long after they've proven their competence - not to mention long after the joke wears thin.

With so many things fighting for screen time (and losing), it's not much surprise that the actual story, which isn't bad (if a bit cliche), doesn't have time to actually develop.  To be honest, it feels like we missed all the good parts and just stumbled into some of the less interesting parts of the ending.

The bit with the guns at the end is particularly poor.  Riddell has the villain dead to rights, but he's stopped because he's using a gun.  A stun gun.  It seems like it's just the usual New Who anti-gun thing, but here's the thing: not only is it non-fatal, but it would solve the problem.  Immediately.  There is literally no reason in the Time-Space continuum not to just shoot him with the tranq gun.  There's nothing stopping him.  He's a Great White Hunter, villain in his sights, at point blank range.  Well, okay, there's the robots.  But so far as I can tell, they won't do anything that the villain doesn't tell them to do.  Once he's dead, do they do anything?  It's just a poorly thought-through showdown.

And it's not like the Doctor has a problem killing the guy.  He's pretty cold-blooded about it, actually.  So what's with the big anti-gun thing?

Speaking of which, though, the robots are great.  In the Douglas Adams tradition, they're the lower-quality models, meaning instead of being great kill bots, they're barely adequate kill bots who spend all their time bickering with each other and their victims.  It's a delightful bit that tragically lacks a punchline, but still represents one of the few things in the story that actually works.

As for the Doctor, he's... fine.  Matt Smith is great as ever, but Chibnall seriously overdoes the quirks.  The running joke about the Doctor being parts of music recordings is really tiresome by now.  His interference in creating minor parts of history is charming in small doses, but gets annoying after a while.  Note to Chibnall: quirks are charming.  QUIRKS are incredibly off-putting.

Amy spends too much time bickering with Riddell, but otherwise, she's good.  It's fun to see how well she handles the situations she's handed.  She really is a pro at this stuff.  She also gets a short but effective conversation with the Doctor about the way he picks them up and then disappears for months at a time, and how she can't stand to have to hold down a job in the meantime.  Rory is similarly fine but unspectacular.  All of his lines and scenes are good, but he's not around much.

There are moments where it comes together and works.

Rory: "Where are we?"
The Doctor: [sticks his tongue out] "Well, it's not Earth.  Doesn't taste right.  Too metallic."

 But on the whole, it's a typical Chibnall story: good ideas, not-so-good execution.

RATING:

* * 

SIDENOTES

•  Why didn't Rory's dad meet the Doctor at his son's wedding?  Was he not there?  Shouldn't this have been addressed?
• The implication with the ICS is that India is the dominant world superpower in the 24th century.  Yet another good concept that's completely trampled by its brevity.  I totally missed that until a commenter mentioned the agency's name.
• So, given the presence of the Ankylosaurs, Triceratops, T-Rex, and overgrown Velocoraptors, the Silurians must have launched their ship in the late Cretaceous.  This is extremely strange, as every prior appearance suggested they came from other time periods. 
• In The Silurians, they went in hibernation when they thought the Earth capturing the moon would cause massive geologic upheavals.  We can set aside that the current scientific consensus is that the moon formed from a collision between the earth a Mars-sized object (a theory with massive problems of its own that will probably be replaced by a better one, as such holey theories generally are), which is forgivable since I believe the capture theory was the consensus in 1970.  The point is, if that was the case, they would have existed around 4.5 billion years ago, which is problematic for reasons I probably don't need to mention.

But here's a pretty picture of it by the great Chesley Bonestall.

•  However, the title of the story suggests they existed around 430 million years ago.  This doesn't work since terrestrial life was limited to coastal plant life.  At any rate, the Doctor later claims the name is a misnomer...
• ... in The Sea Devils, where he says they should more rightly be called Eocenes.  This comes much closer to making sense given who the Silurians are, placing them between 56 and 34 million years old.  If they truly ruled the world, that would be about the time period that fits best.
• But dinosaurs had been extinct since 65 million years ago.  It's possible a small number survived the K-T extinction event, but not by that long.  And on the other hand, the Silurians are said to have ruled the Earth, which is unlikely in the Mesozoic because, you know, dinosuars.
• All of which is to say, I dare someone to come up with a coherent, unified theory of the existence of the Silurians.  Give it your best shot!

Torchwood: Countrycide

I don't like tearing into Chris Chibnall like this.  I mean, I enjoy the part where I sit down and write 1500 words about a spinoff of a cult TV show and then publish it where anyone in the world can read it because I can.  I enjoy analyzing a work of art and why it does or does not work, in my opinion.  And when I'm tearing a movie or TV show a new one, I enjoy coming up with the sarcasm and the fake outrage because I didn't enjoy a TV show.  All that stuff is fun.

But the further I go into this - and it's only going to get worse before it gets better - it feels almost like an attack on an incredibly hard-working writer.  Chibnall has been a fan of Doctor Who since he was a kid, and grew up to get a chance to not only write for that show, but be the lead writer for its spinoff.  And he wasn't lazy about that - he wrote almost a third of the episodes produced while he was there.  Nor are all of them awful.  Two of them are excellent, in fact.  And I can't wait for his Who episode on Saturday.  I mean, it's titled Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.  That's pretty much the best title for any work of fiction since that blind guy improvised a pair of 150,000 word poems about dudes killing each other while their gods screw with them.  So I don't want to come across like I'm attacking Chibnall the guy, or that I hold anything against him personally.  If someone creates a beautiful work of art, it only adds to the beauty of the world.  Chibnall has at least one episode of this very show that qualifies.  And if someone creates art that sucks, it doesn't hurt anything in the world, because one day it's forgotten while the beautiful work shines through.

But bless his heart, he created a lot that sucks.

As always, he starts somewhere interesting.  The idea for Countrycide is to violently yank the Torchwood team out of their comfort zone by having them confront villainy that's neither supernatural nor extraterrestrial.  It's a cool sort of experimental episode to break the mold.  Episode six of the first season is the wrong place for it - the show really hasn't settled down into an actual mold the break.  I mean, despite the opening title being about fighting aliens, so far they've mostly just fumbled around, creating problems by messing with alien tech they should be treating less stupidly.  But still, conceptually, it's a nice idea.

Unfortunately, Chibnall hinges the entire thing on ruining his characters, starting by lobomizing Owen.  Early in the episode, Owen causes the team tremendous grief because he leaves the car keys in the ignition.  Of the high-tech vehicle of a top secret organization.  And Chibnall seems to revel in his stupidity, giving him cartoonish dialogue.

OWEN: What is that smell?
GWEN: That's grass.
OWEN: It's disgusting.

Up until now, Owen was incredibly unsympathetic but seemed mostly competent.  This is now the second time in six episodes the various events of the episode are at least partly his fault.  (and for the record, that's 4/6 where the Torchwood team is partly responsible for the mess they get in)  And he's not the only one.

Ianto is now for some inexplicable reason part of the team out in the field. I mean, it’s not like he was a field guy before, but after Cyberwoman, he shouldn’t even be on this show. But despite the fact that every single thing in Cyberwoman was entirely his fault in every conceivable way, he still tries to guilt-trip the others about it (and succeeds!).

Tosh isn’t much better. Out of nowhere, the episode tries to graft action hero onto her, (which is pretty much the first thing they've tried to graft on her) then throws it right back out the window when, after kicking the villain in the balls, she waits for him to recover rather than, you know, running or capitalizing on it in any way. Then, when she finally does find a moment to run, she trips on a pile of leaves – you read that right – and gets caught again.  Tripping on a pile of leaves is, at this point, far and away her most memorable moment in the series.

But worst of all is Gwen. For most of the episode, she’s sort of okay. It’s not entirely clear why she’s attracted to douchey Owen and his constant sexual harassment that's bordering on assault at this point, but that could be set aside because, hey, sometimes people are just attracted to strange things. But then, there’s the final scene, and in just a single shot, the show kills every likable thing about her. She was one of the only two characters in this whole show I cared for, and now she’s just a whiny little girl who cheats on her perfectly nice, supportive boyfriend just because.

With Owen.

That leaves Jack, and he escapes with his dignity mostly intact. I don’t care for the climax where he rescues the team by kneecapping all the bad guys (with a shotgun, no less) instead of just, you know, killing them. In a gunfight. When they’re shooting at him, too. I mean, this isn’t a guy who has a problem with killing when necessary. It's one thing to put little references to whatever film or show inspired you; it's quite another to just straight rip off one of the most iconic scenes from the most iconic action movie of all time without even making sure it makes sense in context.  And even the Terminator didn't kneecap that room with a frickin' shotgun. (like the occasional shots of the actors having conversations on top of buildings for no reason, it seems to exist to make the characters ultra-cool, and failing because trying to be cool is the one sure-fire way to not be cool)

This is at least partly balanced out by the great revelation about his past when he was well known as someone particularly talented at torture; it adds nicely to his dark, mysterious background.

But all that aside, what is the Torchwood team doing on this mission anyway? The entire purpose of Torchwood’s existence is to fight alien threats. It’s one thing to stretch to the supernatural, but this is just regular serial killer stuff. There’s nothing at the start to indicate this is anything less than human, and it’s then revealed that it is, of course, just humans.

And finally, there's the actual plot.  Basically, the Torchwood team stumbles into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Which, as movies to rip off your plot go, it's an incredibly bad choice.  Not because putting a spin on an old horror movie plot is a bad thing - Brain of Morbius basically approches the plot of Frankenstein with the serio-comic-horror tone of Bride of Frankenstein, and that's one of the greatest Who serials ever.

But Chainsaw is not a great horror movie because of its plot, or its themes, or its characters.  It barely has those.  No, Chainsaw is a great horror movie because after a few subtle but well executed shocks in the first half, the second half is one of the most harrowing, nightmarish cinematic hell rides ever created.  The horrifically discreet violence of the earlier scenes gives way to an endless night of pure terror as the heroine desperately runs, getting steadily more exhausted while a man wearing a human mask chases her through unfamiliar woods and houses with a running chainsaw.  And by filtering the film through a docu-drama aesthetic, Tobe Hooper makes it feel absolutely real.

All of which is to say, Chainsaw is a classic horror movie because of its style, not its substance. (or, more accurately, the style is the substance.  I'm of the opinion that great style can, in itself, be great substance, though, admittedly, that may just be me trying to excuse what a huge De Palma fan I am.)  So ripping it off gives you nothing to work with, leaving the audience with nothing but a reminder of how much better that thing you're referencing was.

It doesn't help, though, when the plotting is so poorly thought through.  Why does Torchwood stop at the side of the road to go camping? Why do the villains just tie up their victims by the hands, leaving them free to easily escape?  And so forth.

What’s really frustrating is that right in the middle is one superb scene where Gwen is blasted with a shotgun and Owen has to field dress her then and there. It would work even better if Owen wasn’t such a prick, but still, it's tense, dramatic, and crisply written.  And given how good the actors are with bad material, it's no surprise they shine with a genuinely good scene. It’s not really clear why Gwen is so energetic and all running around and such after taking a shotgun blast, even to a less-than-vital area, so the effect of the scene doesn’t last. But still, for one brief, shining moment, it’s great.

It's really not like Chris Chibnall is incapable of writing good stuff. His “Pond Life” shorts last week were delightful, and Saturday brings "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", which the trailers assure me does, in fact, includes dinosaurs on a spaceship.  How could that possibly be anything less than the coolest thing ever?

RATING:

*

• Without Owen leaving the keys in the car because he was too busy sexually assaulting seducing Gwen apparently, the list continues.
• Number of plots largely caused by the incompetence of the Torchwood team: 4/6. 
• Number of Torchwood Incompetence Plots caused by Owen's douchbaggery: 2/4.

Torchwood: Cyberwoman

Excuse me a moment.

Torchwood: Day One

Jack: "We all make mistakes.  Get over it."

If the first episode of a show is about introducing what the show is and who the characters are, the second episode is about showing off what this shiny new show can really do.  We know the characters, we get the premise, we slogged through the exposition.  Now we can really get down to business.  So what sort of program do we have?

The Torchwood team investigates a meteorite strike that releases a gaseous creature who feeds on orgasmic energy.  So, naturally, the gas inhabits a young woman and starts sexing men to death.

Which is the sort of thing you'd expect from a Cinemax sci-fi show, but Chris Chibnall approaches it from the right directions: he focuses on the emotions of the possessed girl, Carys.  Her confusion and loneliness after her boyfriend leaves her drives her under the power of the alien being to embrace its power and later to use it against her ex.  It's an intelligent way to make it an actual story.

Except Carys, for all Sara Lloyd-Gregory's impassioned acting, never becomes a character defined beyond "girl who just got dumped."  She gets in a nice line about that - "I wish I was dead.  No, I wish you were dead.  Call me back."  But there's nothing else to her, keeping us from actually feeling the emotional roller-coaster she goes through.

The episode would still basically work, though, as long as the stuff with the Torchwood team itself was solid.  Again, Chibnall's underlying idea is an old but solid-enough concept: Gwen saves Carys by understanding who she is as a person instead of treating her as just another case, like the others do.  But his writing is completely ham-fisted, as though he doesn't trust us to understand what's going on.  He shows how Gwen is still connected to humanity by basically just giving Gwen and Jack a couple of speeches saying exactly that, and then having her tape up a bunch of baby pictures of Carys to remind everyone that she's a person. 

Which might be somewhat forgivable if Chibnall got it all basically right, but other than fitting Gwen into the team because she's the only one still connected to humanity, he pretty much fails to make the team compelling even on a basic level.  Gwen comes off as a pretty ordinary heroine.  Owen continues to be an incompetent ass.  Toshiko and Ianto can't have a dozen lines between them, none of which are remotely interesting.

But it's Jack who suffers most from Chibnoll's pen.  One of the things that made Jack interesting in the first place was his completely uninhibited pansexual promiscuity - he was even a little shocking to Rose, who comes off as pretty sexually liberated herself.  But if every character is a promiscuous pansexual, it kinda takes away the entire point.  And Owen showed himself to be far more so than Jack in the previous episode; while Gwen's makeout session with Carys is apparently motivated by pheromones, she seems pretty comfortable with what almost happened.  When the show finally gets around to remembering that Tosh and Ianto exist, the same goes for them.   Torchwood is so bent on being a sexually liberated show that it fails to show any actual range or depth in its sexuality, making it in a way just as close-minded as the cultural norms it tries so hard to upend.

Even with that in mind, Jack should still be a cool antihero for us to follow.  But his actions here don't speak well for him as the Torchwood leader.  He sends brand-new team member Gwen to interrogate a murderous prisoner completely unsupervised or even observed.  Even after the events of Everything Changes, he can't keep Owen's paws off the alien tech, nor does he do anything about his behavior toward Gwen, which is clearly harassment.  Harassment can be difficult to define sometimes, but Owen's clearly way, way over even a somewhat nebulous line.  And Owen's harassing Gwen directly causes the events of this story.  Jack either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

And then there's the whole business with the hand in the jar, which is not only Anthony Perkins-level creepy if you know where the hand came from, but leads to Jack letting the murderous alien get away because it threatens to harm a dismembered hand.  And his strategy for getting her to back down?  "That's valuable to no one except me!"  That's gotta be the single worst negotiation ever.

All in all, Jack is a portrait of an incompetent leader whose team actually makes things worse, then sloppily cleans up their own messes only after several deaths.  It's a waste of a good character and a charismatic actor.  I love Jack on Doctor Who, but here, the only things he's good at are standing in dramatic poses and dying.

Chibnall's plotting is pretty sloppy, too.  After getting captured, possessed Carys secrets insane pheromones that lure Owen in and then doesn't have sex with him or kill him because... he's one of the main characters, I guess?  I know she's desperate to escape, but she's also starving and insane, and it's literally the only way she'll survive.  (also, where did the handcuffs come from?) It just seems like a cheap contrivance to make jokes about a naked dude.  Which might be forgivable if they were really, really clever jokes, but they're incredibly lazy.  ("Are you all right now, or are you still feeling a bit of a cock?" is really the best they could come up with?)

The details, in general, aren't well thought out.  Carys secrets pheromones that attract woman, but her mating doesn't work with them?  Even though she gets her charge from "orgasmic energy"?

Finally, the tone never really clicks.  Parts of it are trying to be a fun romp (and failing, mostly because of the weak characterizations).  Other parts are going for an X-Files-ish serious sci-fi yarn both creepy and sad (and failing for largely the same reason).  In all, it's a mess.  Without particularly competent characters or interesting dialogue, the lazy, cliched plotting thuds along pretty uninterestingly.  It takes a Skinemax premise, approaches it from fundamentally the right angle to make it a compelling story, and still ends up as a dull, self-serious softcore porn without the actual porn.

It does have very strong acting in its favor, both from the regulars and guest star Gregory, but there are good shows with that.  It's obviously a very low-budget show, but it uses what little money it has wisely, focusing on good actors and making the important effects - in this case, the gaseous form of the alien - really good.  But without good storytelling, those are utterly wasted.  If this is the best the showrunner can do to showcase what will make Torchwood cool and interesting and unique, we're in trouble.

RATING:

* *



SIDENOTES:

• Owen complains “The amateurs got here before us.”  Having seen Owen’s contributions to the rest of the season, that’s absolutely hilarious.

• Owen's harassment causes Gwen to release the alien.  After the plot of Everything Changes also came directly out of the actions of the Torchwood team, we might as well start a counter:
• Number of plots directly caused by Torchwood’s incompetence: 2 out of 2.
• Number of Torchwood Incompetence Plots in which Owen’s douchbaggery is at fault: 1 out of 2.

• How does Gwen get cell reception in the Hub's Silence of the Lambs prison?

• Good Jack line: "You know, strictly speaking, throttling the staff is my job."

42

"BURN WITH ME!"

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to review season one of Torchwood.  It’s not gonna be pretty.  It’s not that there aren’t good episodes in there.  There are.

… is.

… one.

… barely.

But still, it does eventually improve in the second season and then goes and makes a pure masterpiece for the third season.  Outside of Children of Earth, I don’t think it ever really lived up to its potential, and in fact usually falls short by a wide margin, and I find it incredibly frustrating for that reason.  But I still kinda like it overall, even though I don’t like the vast majority of individual episodes.  So before I tear it a new one, rest assured, if I survive the experience of re-experiencing the horrors of Cyberwoman, I will one day get around to saying good things about that show.

And that includes Chris Chibnall, who was the lead writer for the first two seasons and was consequently not only responsible for a large portion of what went so wrong (though some of the blame also has to go to Torchwood often bringing out the worst in Russell T. Davies), but wrote some of the worst episodes, including the aforementioned Cyberwoman.  He’s also an intelligent, clever, imaginative writer at his best who, late in the second season, wrote two of the best episodes of that show.  But it’s going to be a long, long, long time before I actually get around to that, so to at least partially balance out the wave of vicious criticism (read: smart-aleck mockery from a so-far failed writer) about to be unleashed, I thought I’d review something he wrote that I actually like.  42 is a good, enjoyable episode of Doctor Who that shows a genuine love for the show and does a few things spectacularly right that Davies’ era doesn’t always pull off.  It does still have its flaws, but even those are vastly overstated.

Probably the most common flaw 42 is accused of is that it’s too derivative of the previous season’s The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.  After all, both involve the Doctor and companion separated from the TARDIS, both involving the crew being possessed and then killed off, and both involve not being set on Earth.

Of all the things to accuse 42 of, this is probably the most ridiculous if you watch the classic series.  After all, The Impossible Planet is itself just a variation on the old Hinchcliffe-style “gothic horror story where the Doctor fights a godlike villain” with the added twist of being separated from the TARDIS, which shows up in nearly every Hartnell story of the first two seasons.  The Impossible Planet has many qualities, but it’s every bit as derivative of previous Who stories as 42.

Which really isn’t a major problem – Doctor Who usually relies on standard sci-fi tropes itself.  It’s what you do with those tropes that matters, and while Chibnall uses a few too many standard ideas, he throws them together in a fast-paced, action-packed story with a couple of real dramatic punches.

Most of the reason this feels derivative specifically of Impossible Planet - even though it only uses a couple of the same ordinary tropes - is that Who under RTD is so obsessively Earth-based that this is only the second time in three seasons that the Doctor, an alien with a machine that can take him anywhere in time and space, has actually had an adventure not on or in the immediate vicinity of Earth (or New Earth, which, frankly, is pretty Earthish).  So the fact that it uses some of the same tropes as the only other one like it so far makes it stick out a little more.

The downside of this is an odd lack of imagination in a lot of the stories.  Not that there aren't inspired stories, but there are an awful lot of Evil TV Sets and similarly uninspired ideas.  At this point, in Season 3, the better episodes have been Giant Evil Spider Sits Around and Pretends to be Menacing, Space Rhinos on the Moon, and Traffic Jam in the Future.  And while those are perfectly fine ideas in themselves, they're a little underwhelming in a show that was doing Brains With Eyestalks back in 1964 on an off-day.  Too many RTD-era episodes are oddly forgettable and mediocre despite having good production values, great directors, and a solid group of writers, including at least a couple of geniuses. (to be fair, the back half of Season 3 totally rectifies this)  And a lot of it comes down to a lack of ambition and too few interesting ideas barely filling 45 minutes.

(Moffat's era more often has the opposite problem - too many ideas for 45 minutes, but as much as I've been frustrated with that, I've gotta be honest, I really prefer that between the two.)

Chibnall, however, finds a good balance of ideas for an episode: a setting that's interesting and unusual but not overly complicated; a supporting cast large enough to have a decent body count, but small enough to develop them (which is actually a mixed bag, but it's at least the right number); a couple of terrific set-pieces in the second half of a well-paced story; and one spectacular concept, saved for the last ten minutes.

The set-up is simple - the Doctor and Martha land on a ship that's out of control and hurtling toward a star.  Its shields will give out in 42 minutes.  Which would be enough of a problem if there wasn't a horrific entity possessing the crew and killing them off.

The best thing about Chibnall's script is its ability to raise the stakes.  The central gimmick -the story happens more or less in real time, with the 42 minute time limit for the characters paralleling the length of the episode - forces the story to be efficient and puts the stakes in a solid context.  The supporting characters start dying off pretty quickly, keeping the threat of death near.

But it's the two centerpiece scenes that really drive home the intensity.  The first is a scene where Martha is ejected into space in a tiny escape pod... directly toward the same sun the main ship is hurtling toward.  In the midst of a loud, rousing episode, the sound suddenly cuts to a minimum as Martha suddenly gets a chance to realize that she really is about to die.  She calls her mother and has a deeply emotional conversation while trying desperately not to get emotional.  By dealing with the threat of death so directly and emotionally, the meaning of the episode grows exponentially.

(The entire subplot about Martha's family basically flops around and fails throughout the entirety of Season 3, but for this one scene, it works brilliantly, contrasting her mother's genuine concern with her attempts to get Martha to give real information to the mysterious people she's letting listen in.)

While making the companions actually think about the possibility of dying is probably something that should be done a little more often (not every episode or anything, but occasionally doesn't hurt), Chibnall's most effective trick to raise the tension is something Doctor Who can only do very rarely: he has the Doctor fail to defeat the antagonist and become completely scared... but only after the Doctor confesses that he's terrified.  These two things together are the most frightening trick the show can pull.

And Chibnall does manage to earn the right to actually pull out that one.  The antagonistic creature possessing the crew is actually the sun itself, which is alive.  It's possessing and killing the crew because their ship was killing it by extracting its fuel.  That's a compelling twist in itself, but Chibnall's approach to the crew, and particularly the captian (played by Michelle Collins) - they're a desperate, working-class group illegally scooping energy from the star simply to survive.  And in their efforts to be undetected, they didn't scan for life because who would scan for life on a star?

This is a brilliant addition of complexity - neither side is really the hero or the villain.  Both sides are simply trying to survive.  And between the complex writing and the sheer stunning idea of a living star, it earns the right to possess the Doctor.  And it's an absolutely brilliant scene, showing what an astounding actor David Tennant is.

Which isn't to say the script is perfect or anywhere near it.  First, the characterization of the Doctor is largely off.  His dialogue sounds more like "generic hero" than the Doctor.  In particular, when he's outside the ship trying to save Martha, he almost gives up and says he can't do it, and has to be encouraged onward by one of the humans inside.  It's jarringly unDoctorish.  And Chibnall gives the Doctor one of his ever more tiresome RTD-era tirades about how humans are alternately the greatest species ever to exist and the lowest form of self-serving idiots.  Yes, Tennant is brilliant and covers it as well as he can, but it's still a problem.

And while Chibnall has enough time to develop the small crew of the ship, he never actually does.  The captain is well-written and has a good last scene, but the rest are generic and interchangeable.  Even in the midst of that wonderful scene in the escape pod with Martha, Riley still isn't actually developed.  At the end, when she says goodbye to him, the only difference between him and the other survivor is that he looks slightly different.

His dialogue is uneven in general.  There are good exchanges here and there, but most of the dialogue is forgettable.  And while it's not necessarily a major problem that he uses the ol' "alien killing off the crew one by one" device, it doesn't smooth things over to have a character actually say, "He's killing us off one by one!"

And yet it pretty much gets away with flaws that should have left it forgotten because it pulls out one of Doctor Who's secret weapons: Graeme Harper.  Harper proves he's still Who's greatest director, giving the episode such intensity, energy, and drama that he actually plows right over the flaws, reducing them to minor quibbles.  He makes the "monster" - just a guy with a welding mask - a genuine force of terror.  He gets Murray Gold to deliver one of his best scores of the season, highlighted by a deeply effective use of synthesizers. (frustratingly, Gold's music for the episode doesn't show up on the CD.) Harper makes the most of every image and idea and gets superb performances from every actor.  And you can feel the heat.  If the next two stories - Human Nature and Blink - weren't so spectacularly brilliant and the three-part finale so memorable (however debatable its actual qualities), 42 would probably be remembered as one of the highlights of the season.

Which isn't to say the flaws aren't there.  And the thing is, those flaws all seem pretty easily fixable.  Give the supporting characters some personality on the page, cut a couple of the weaker lines, and make the Doctor's dialogue more Doctorish.  Really, this is one rewrite away from a terrific script.

And that, actually, is pretty defining for Chibnall.  He's got a lot of good ideas and genuine talent.  But like Terry Nation, he desperately needs two thing: a script editor to get him fixing the flaws and a director who can make the most of his ideas, because his scripts tend to feel like pretty good first drafts, not polished final drafts.  And on Torchwood, he's the lead writer.  So all the things that get smoothed out in rewrites - weak characters, inconsistencies, plot holes - don't get noticed.  And while they get pretty serviceable directors in the first season, they let a lot of major mistakes fly.

On Doctor Who, he's got a fantastic group of collaborators to cover for him.  On Torchwood, he's kinda the whole show.  And it's a mess of a show.

But 42 shows that he can write good TV.  And even on Torchwood, sometimes he does.


RATING:

* * * ½




SIDENOTES:

• One more good thing Chibnall does - he doesn't spend more than minimal time with the crew disbelieving the Doctor.  It's just long enough to be credible, but not enough to slow down the story or make them seem unintelligent.

• His lack of subtlety - the characters actually saying the tropes out loud, for instance - is another major problem. (and again, the sort of thing that gets smoothed out in good rewrites) But there's one awesomely not-subtle moment that's nicely effective - the annoyed crew member grumbling sarcastically, "Please, kill me now," right before actually getting killed.

• The effects are just absolutely awesome in this one.  I mean, the sun actually looks pretty much like what you'd expect a living star to look like.  And this came out right around the same time as Danny Boyle's spectacular Sunshine, and it looks just fine right next to it.