Doctor Who - The Name of the Doctor Review

This review can also be found on Media Gateway.

On the channel of BBC One at the hour of Seven, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered... In Steven Moffat’s phenomenal finale, The Name of the Doctor, the enigmatic Time Lord is forced to travel to the one place that he must never go, and his greatest secret is revealed...

Ever since The Wedding of River Song back in 2011, we’ve known that the Doctor’s path will eventually lead him to Trenzalore, where he will be asked his name at the ambiguous yet foreboding Fall of the Eleventh. It’s been the topic of intrigue for some time, but now here we are, the Doctor inextricably summoned to Trenzalore at the behest of the Great Intelligence in order to save the lives of those he cares about. However, in doing so the Doctor not only puts himself in jeopardy, but his actions could have major implications for the rest of the Universe and time itself...

The Name of the Doctor has to be, in my opinion, the finest series finale we’ve had in a very long time! From start to finish, this episode delivered on all fronts, providing us with a superb story and answers to some of this series’ lingering questions, as well as an homage to the past with a look to the future. The whole thing really was bloody brilliant!

The revelation of Clara takes place early in the episode, revealing that she was born to save the Doctor (although quite why or how is not explained until much later) through a montage of Jenna-Louise Coleman being inserted into old footage of almost every pre-2005 generation of Doctor Who, seeing Clara as a constant throughout the Doctor’s life, even being the one who helped Hartnell’s Doctor choose the right TARDIS (although I was under the impression that it was the TARDIS who chose him). Not unlike my crack in the mirror theory (detailed in my review of Hide), Clara is fractured into a million pieces, a million echoes of herself spread across time, living and dying over and over to save the Doctor. We now know the mystery of the Impossible Girl, and it’s actually quite a satisfying answer to the question, neatly wrapping up the enigma and tying it up with a bow.

However, it’s the truth of Trenzalore that provides the most intrigue in this episode; it’s the site of the Doctor’s final battle, and his final resting place. Here, on the Fields of Trenzalore, is the Doctor’s tomb, and quite a familiar old thing it is too. Trenzalore is as much a graveyard for the TARDIS as it is for the Doctor; a fitting end for them both, intrinsically linked even in death. And at the heart of the dying TARDIS, a tear in time; scar tissue from the Doctor’s journeys throughout time and space. This tear represents the Doctor, his own personal timeline, things that have been and things that will be - something no time traveller should ever come across. There’s something remarkably mystifying about this idea and it’s used to great effect in this story, especially towards the end.

It was a welcome return for Richard E Grant as the Great Intelligence, with a cohort of the fantastically creepy, Slenderman-esque Whispermen, as the villain of the piece. Gaining access to the Doctor’s tomb, the Great Intelligence’s master plan was to intercept the Time Lord’s timeline, destroying himself in order to turn all of the Doctor’s victories in to defeats, essentially rewriting the past, present and future. Despite his menacing presence, and the build up he received in The Snowmen and The Bells of Saint John, it’s surprising to see the Great Intelligence just go like that. Admittedly, it’s a fine act of villainous vengeance, but for something so steeped in Who lore and portrayed by the eminent Richard E Grant, Mr G. Intelligence felt sorely underused and had the potential to be a superb recurring foe for the Doctor. That being so, it’s entirely possible that as he was disseminated throughout the Doctor’s timeline he could pop up again sometime in the future (although that may just be wishful thinking on my behalf).

In addition, The Name of the Doctor sees the return of the Paternoster Gang (Vastra, Jenny and Strax), and the Doctor’s non-TARDIS wife, River Song. Although it felt as if River’s storyline had come to an end in The Angels Take Manhattan, Alex Kingston reprises the role in this episode to provide something she never truly got; a wonderfully understated and tender farewell. It’s difficult to give a natural end to a character whose story has essentially been upside-down and backwards since inception (a veritable Schrödinger’s Cat, both dead and alive depending on which way you look at the timeline), and although I wasn’t sure whether she needed to reappear, I’m incredibly pleased she did. It’s a genuinely touching moment between herself and the Doctor, and something that both Kingston and Matt Smith portrayed superbly.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey as Vastra, Jenny and Strax (a trio I am still trying to conjure up a fitting alliterative title for) as they continue to prove that a Victorian era crime drama spin-off series featuring these three would be bloody fantastic! Jenny's death during their 'conference call' (a sort of psychic Skype, which personally I reckon would be infinitely better than actual Skype) was a fantastically sinister moment with Catrin Stewart's chilling line, “I'm so sorry Ma'am, so sorry, so sorry, I think I've been murdered.” Thankfully, she was bought back to life later on; the loss of Jenny would be a terrible thing to happen to the trio. These are three great characters, brilliantly brought to life by three fantastic actors, and I certainly hope to see more of them in the coming series (maybe even an appearance in the 50th Anniversary?!).

Naturally, the absolute stand-out performance was that of Matt Smith. He never ceases to portray a consistently outstanding Doctor, and this episode was certainly no exception. There are times that a truly great actor can project an emotion and make it genuinely palpable, and that’s something Smith achieved at multiple points throughout this episode (and many, many other episodes!), not least during his deep concern and sorrow upon hearing the name Trenzalore. And of course, the man who doesn’t like goodbyes having to let go of the one he loves and finally bid her farewell was a truly tangible scene.

However, regardless of how outstanding this entire episode proved to be, there is one singular moment that steals the show and overshadows everything else in a revelation . The Name of the Doctor is an apt title, but not for the reasons many were anticipating, and not for the first time is a cunning turn of phrase to intentionally mislead. In the recesses of the Doctor’s timeline lies a truth that the he has tried to bury... One of his incarnations, but one he does not call the Doctor. “The name I chose is the Doctor. The name you choose, it's like a promise you make,” the Doctor explains of this mystery figure, “he's the one who broke the promise.”

"What I did I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity," the figure intones enigmatically. "But not in the name of the Doctor," spits Smith’s Doctor, and the figure turns around to reveal (as if one couldn’t have guessed by the voice) John Hurt, accompanied by the terribly fourth-wall break ‘introducing JOHN HURT as THE DOCTOR.’ And thus, the episode ends.

This is the kind of phenomenal finale we have lacked for quite some time, it’s something that genuinely blows you away, and provides us with possibly one of the greatest cliffhangers in Who history, leading into the 50th Anniversary on 23rd November. And I am excited! Not least because I love John Hurt, he’s a magnificent gentleman and consummate actor, but also because it opens up so much speculation and anticipating for the anniversary special.

So, without further ado, let the theorising commence! My initial thought was that Hurt could be the Valeyard, an amalgamation of the darker sides of the Doctor’s nature from between his twelfth and final incarnations, but that doesn’t seem to fit with what little has been revealed... The Eleventh Doctor - that is to say, Smith’s Doctor - seems to possess knowledge of this other man, “he’s the one who broke the promise.” This also implies that this incarnation was not true to the Doctor’s name. A doctor heals people, and Hurt’s Doctor did something that goes against that name. He did not heal; he killed. Hurt hurt people, if you will.

He did what he did without choice, in the name of peace and sanity... We’ve always assumed that Smith is the Eleventh, because McGann was the Eighth in the 1996 film, and Eccleston came next when the show was revived in 2005 (so it was assumed Tennant was Tenth). What if there was a forgotten incarnation, between McGann and Eccleston, the true ninth incarnation of the man we know as the Doctor? This would be the incarnation who fought in the Time War, sealing his own people - the Time Lords - and the Daleks in a time-lock, and in doing so brought the war to an end. The Doctor would look back on this time with nothing but sorrow and regret, and see the man who had to commit these acts as someone other than himself, a man who did not act in the name of the Doctor. “I said he was me, I never said he was the Doctor.”

It’s going to be a long wait for the 50th Anniversary, but I have a feeling it’s going to be worth it!

I bloody love John Hurt.

If you missed The Name of the Doctor because the Great Intelligence interrupted your timeline (almost did mine, neighbours came and knocked on my door half-way through the episode), you can watch it again on iPlayer here.

Doctor Who - Nightmare in Silver Review

This review can also be found on Media Gateway.

The Doctor takes Clara and the two children in her care to the future for a visit to Hedgewick’s World of Wonders, only to discover that the place has long been abandoned aside from a small military squad. However, in this seemingly dead amusement park, an old enemy is lurking in the shadows and sees the Doctor and his two child companions as the final hope for survival...

The Cybermen are back! In his second story penned for Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman has given the Cybermen an upgrade and made them more formidable than ever before, but will this prove to be a new lease of life for the Doctor’s oldest foes?

As some readers may have picked up on in my reviews for this series, I am hugely enamoured with Gaiman’s first episode of Doctor Who, The Doctor’s Wife. It’s somewhat of a modern classic, and I'm sure it will long remain at the top of my list of favourite episodes. As such, I was greatly anticipating Nightmare in Silver, especially with the promise that the Cybermen would be scary again.

For such an iconic enemy, the Cybermen have felt a little lackluster in recent years (especially in A Good Man Goes To War, wherein the duty of the Cybermen is to show up for a minute and promptly explode), and they haven’t been truly menacing since their reintroduction in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel in 2006. This is something that Gaiman remedies, introducing a new form of Cyberman with a shiny new design and the ability to charge forward at alarming speeds, they're a vast improvement on previous models. With their capacity to upgrade as they go, adapting to new situations and new challenges, and their methods for assimilating people for cyber-conversion, it’s like this particular variety of Cyberman has been taking lessons from the Borg! Ultimately, Gaiman’s reinvention of the Cybermen does feel like a rebirth for them, and succeeds in portraying them as a far more formidable and unbeatable enemy.

However, the more threatening aspect of the episode isn’t so much the Cybermen themselves, but the conflict between the Doctor and the Cyber Planner. Attacked by a group of Cybermites (a more compact and likely more efficient kind of Cybermat), the Doctor starts to undergo the cyber-conversion process and begins to look a little bit like a male version of 7 of 9 from Star Trek: Voyager. Star Trek references aside, this is the highlight of the episode, as Matt Smith fantastically portrays this inner conflict, flitting between the Doctor and the Cyber Planner as they vie for control of his body and mind, engaged in a battle of wits and a game of chess. When done properly, the Doctor being incapacitated or compromised can be a powerfully threatening thing, and that is something that Nightmare in Silver did exceptionally well.

It’s up to Clara to lead a rag-tag band of incompetent soldiers in defence of Natty Longshoe's Comical Castle against the hordes of unbeatable cybernetic warriors, whilst the Doctor continues to fight for his mind and to free the two children. Clara continues to prove herself as the Doctor’s most startlingly competent companion to date (something that no doubt is connected to her impossible nature), but ultimately she’s fighting a losing battle. It’s Warwick Davis’s Porridge (the character, not his breakfast) who holds the key to defeating the Cybermen. Davis does a wonderfully understated job of portraying a man burdened by the necessities of war, something best conveyed when discussing the Cyber-Wars (“Used to be the Tiberion Spiral Galaxy. A million star systems. A hundred million worlds, a billion trillion people. It’s not there any more. No more Tiberion galaxy. No more Cybermen. It was effective. … I just feel sorry for the poor blighter who had to press the button and blow it all up.”). It’s not long until Porridge has to make a similar choice, and resorts to blowing up the planet in order to defeat the Cybermen...

It’s a drastic move, having to destroy an entire planet, but as Porridge said, “it was effective.” Maybe a little too effective for my taste, as although there was a hint that maybe the Cybermen are not all dead and gone by the end of the episode, I would have liked to see the Doctor et al have to run from their unbeatable foe and flee to the TARDIS. Escaping the army of Cybermen, those who made it out alive would consider themselves lucky, but be left with that looming sense of dread knowing that those Cybermen are still out there... Nevertheless, the ending certainly hints that this won’t be the last we’ll see of these relentless automatons, which I’m rather content with!

My only major issue with the episode would be the children... Their admission to join the Doctor on a trip in the TARDIS was largely unexplained, aside from them being particularly brat-like with their attempts at blackmail at the end of last week’s episode, but that still doesn’t quite explain why the Doctor would be so willing to bring them along... He’s turned better people away from the TARDIS in the past. Presumably the children were introduced to bring a sense of danger to the episode when they’re both taken to be upgraded, but I just felt it was a relief that they were side-lined so early on, and left in a cyber-conversion induced walking coma until towards the final five minutes. The danger element had already been achieved with the Doctor undergoing his own conversion, which was pretty much the driving force for the episode, so the children ultimately just felt superfluous.

That being so, Nightmare in Silver was still an all-round enjoyable episode. Matt Smith’s performance of the inner conflict between Doctor and Cyber Planner was the absolute highlight for me, alongside the now more effective Cybermen. As long as a planet doesn’t get blown up every time one of them shows up, there’s every chance these Cybermen could rise to become quite a prominent threat to the Universe once again!

And now, everything has been leading up to this moment... Next week, in The Name of the Doctor, all of our questions will (hopefully) be answered. Who is Clara? The impossible girl, a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too tight... And on the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature could speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question which must never ever be answered... Doctor Who?

If you press the red button, you can watch the prequel for next week's episode. The red button on your television remote, that is. Not just any red button. There's no telling what might happen. Actually, click here and watch it on YouTube. Probably safer than pressing a load of red buttons.

If you missed Nightmare in Silver, you are inferior. You will be assimilated. Man will be reborn as Cyberman. Upgrading is compulsory. Watch the episode whilst the upgrade is in progress. If you do not comply, you will be deleted.

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

This review can also be found on Media Gateway.

There’s something not quite right about Mrs Gillyflower’s mill, Sweetville, with it’s clean streets and perfect people, and things take a turn for the sinister when bright red, petrified corpses start turning up in the nearby rivers. Mark Gatiss’s second episode of the year takes us to Yorkshire in 1893, where Madame Vastra, her companion Jenny, and Commander Strax investigate The Crimson Horror...

Composed of equal parts horror, comedy, period detective drama and SciFi, The Crimson Horror has a strong classic Doctor Who vibe about it, coated in a magnificent Victorian aesthetic. In many ways, the episode felt like a melting pot of genres, blending the 19th century crime drama and fun-filled SciFi adventure perfectly and interspersing the script with both the humorous and the macabre; it is the quintessential Gatiss!

From the opening, The Crimson Horror is a fairly Doctor-light episode, with the Doctor and Clara actually part of the mystery rather than the ones trying to get to the bottom of things. Instead, the focus is primarily being driven by the three sleuths: Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Commander Strax. The investigative trio have now kind of grown on me; maybe it’s the fact that as this episode’s leads, their characters felt more developed than before and weren't just secondary characters simply there for a quick gag or two. With the three of them carrying the first half of the episode, sans Doctor, we’re treated to a distinctly period drama-esque crime thriller which expertly manages to weave in a Silurian and a Sontaran as its lead characters without them feeling out of place. They were the perfect characters to drive this episode. And indeed, it’s great credit to Catrin Stewart, Neve McIntosh and Dan Starkey that they can evoke such a captivating tale of horror and intrigue without the show’s titular character being present for most of the story. It’s actually got me on board the bandwagon for a spin-off series starring these three!

It’s good to see their characters getting a bit more exposition, too. It’s a welcome step into the limelight for Catrin Stewart, with Jenny the lock-picking chambermaid leading the investigation, and proving to be quite the sizzling sleuth in the process. Meanwhile, Commander Strax is more than just the comedy Sontaran in this episode, displaying a certain degree of competency, but still walks away with the bespoke award for Most Humorous Dialogue (“Horse! You have failed in your mission. Do you have any final words before your summary execution? ... The fourth one this week, and I'm not even hungry.”).

As for the story itself, The Crimson Horror certainly had a compelling narrative. With the episode’s eponymous macabre mystery (and its even more terrible truth), and the conspicuous absence of the Doctor, the episode had set up a truly intriguing premise. This level of intrigue was carried throughout, with the truth behind Sweetville being slowly revealed piece by piece, and the identity of it’s mastermind, Mister Sweet, an enigma right until the end. Some of the elements of The Crimson Horror were incredibly dark - certainly the kind of thing that would have given the ten-year-old me a good few sleepless nights! - making it one of the more terrifying episodes of the recent series.

Executing Mister Sweet’s plans was the villainously unhinged Winifred Gillyflower, played by the excellent Dame Diana Rigg, who brings a superbly deranged and zealous preacher (and harbinger) of the apocalypse to the story. However, the absolute stand-out performance is Gillyflower’s much-abused daughter Ada, portrayed by Rigg’s real-life daughter Rachael Stirling. The highlights of the episode are certainly the scenes featuring both Rigg and Stirling, as they work fantastically opposite each other throughout, especially in the final scenes (although one hopes their mother-daughter relationship is somewhat better off screen!).

The Crimson Horror was an overall good episode. It’s blending of SciFi with period drama and detective thriller made for an interesting and well executed mix, and its use of the sinister and the macabre with comedic elements felt perfectly balanced. The reintroduction of Vastra, Jenny and Strax was certainly a welcome return, and after their inclusion in this episode, I’d like to see more of their characters in the future.

Next week, the Cybermen return in Neil Gaiman’s Nightmare in Silver. Considering Gaiman’s previous episode of Doctor Who, The Doctor’s Wife, (and his body of work in general!) this is an episode I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time!

If you missed The Crimson Horror because some deranged old woman dipped you in a vat of poison and tried to dispose of your petrified corpse, then I’m deeply sorry for everything you’ve been through, but I’m not entirely sure how you’re reading this. However, if you were were lucky enough to survive the process and are now back in the land of the living, you can watch the episode on iPlayer here.