Doctor Who Unbound - Sympathy for the Devil - Review

David Warner as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as the Brig, Sam Kisgart as the sinister Ke Le and David Tennant cursing himself blind. What more could you ask for?

After kicking off the series with a big thematic story and a grand premise of immediately obvious implication, the second tale in the fascinating Unbound range steps things down to a much subtler tone. It takes a far less grandiose question - What if the Doctor had never joined UNIT?

Doctor Who Unbound - Auld Mortality - Review

The Unbound series is one of Big Finish's most creative ideas, definitely a worthwhile experiment. It's to their credit they didn't just produce Doctor Who with new actors, and really dug into the 'What if' possibility vibe. So this is really as apt a first episode as could possibly have been produced - Taking a really big, immediately grasped 'What If' - What if the Doctor had never left Gallifrey - and spinning a tale about stories, possibilities, imagination and adventure.

Doctor Who - Survival of the Fittest & Klein's Story - Review

Big Finish's Three-and-One style stories are an interesting idea, and I'm rather fond of them, but they do tend to use the one-parter as a coda to the main story, rather than a wholly standalone piece. Klein's Story, however, is entirely its own thing. Well, sort of.

Doctor Who - A Thousand Tiny Wings - Review

It's surprising just how entertaining this play is, given how little there is to the story. A group of women stuck in a Kenyan farmhouse in the middle of the Mau Mau uprising discover an excessively jointed ape dying a death of a thousand cuts and are beset by a number of tribulations. Oh, and Colditz baddie Klein is among them.

Doctor Who - S05E04, The Time of Angels - Review

So to the long awaited return of the Weeping Angels of old...

I think this episode finally felt like it had the character of the Doctor settled. In all the previous three I've felt he hasn't quite been cemented in yet, but in this one he feels fully solid. Smith has returned to form this week, and puts in a really good show. His portrayal in the earlier part of being pissy because River is taking advantage of him is very good. Suggestion that he's irritated, but also a more deep seated anger stemming from some concern that this state of affairs could develop into something unhealthy. There's also more general 'Doctorishness' about him. We can start to see his mannerisms and character traits coming through. The way he refers to Amy as 'Pond' is fantastic. Recalls his disappointment with the choice of 'Amy' over 'Amelia' and also has a touch of arrogance and detachment. The 'Environment Check' is an old old scene, but it still works well, and I love his way of enjoying museums. Also, Smith making the TARDIS noise is utterly hilarious. (And River gets the 'ping' of materialisation from the classic series. I hope they keep that.) And possibly my favourite little bit of Doctorishness from the whole thing: 'I'll never get done saving you.' This line, and the way he delivers it, with a little joyous grin, is absolutely lovely.

Gillan is better this week as well. Amy feels a bit more like a character and less like a skirt with red hair and long legs, perhaps because she was actually given things to do. She does less of the 'Cool and Sexy' posturing and winking and smouldering that Amy has seemed to consist of for the last three weeks and which really doesn't work for me. Meanwhile, Alex Kingston is pretty good for the first half, and pretty awful for the second. Not sure what's going on there. Perhaps she wasn't able to play off Gillan as well as the others, but I do find their scenes in the maze to be pretty poor, with River exhibiting the exact same 'cool and sexy' insubstance I just noted Gillan as shaking off. Still, like I said, earlier on she was better. I found myself rather enjoying her pre-credits heist, despite expecting myself to find it silly and annoying. Also, some of the earlier interaction of Amy, Doctor and River, as well as her significant comments to the Bishop, have regained some of the initial mystery we found in the character following Silence in the Library. Is she a con artist? A Time Lord? A good guy?

The best scenes involving her are the ones which feed this mystery whilst doing the work of reestablishing that the Doctor and her have some kind of relationship. It's interesting that River can fly the TARDIS but wasn't taught by the Doctor, and the 'blue boringers' rant is funny, but Smith actually seems quite peeved, and we get a sense of how he feels about River showing up again. The 'can you sonic me' moment is the best bit of 'They have a relationship' expositing. It feels very natural and realistic. Some of the other bits felt more hit-you-over-the-head. I wonder if their next encounter will be the 'Byrn Meadows', in the same way that 'Crash of the Byzantium' got referenced last time. (Though it seems they have met in between their two on screen rendezvous.)
As for the supporting cast, Iain Glen is rather good as the Bishop. He gives a feeling of respecting and trusting the Doctor, whilst not *actually* liking him very much. He also sold me on the holy man/soldier crossbreed far moreso than his clerics. He's a bit reminiscent of Colonel Mace, particularly with his 'Quite a lot taken' line. David Atkins is also quite good as Bob, and does a lot to make the walkie-talkie stuff remain hair-prickling in spite of a somewhat 'old-hat' feel that I'll cover below.

The plot is a bit of a pic-n-mix of concepts new and old, some good, some not-so-good. The 'home box' is a nice little bit of speculative sci-fi that makes perfect sense. I'm not sure about this 'church' thing. So far it's irrelevant, but no doubt Moffat has plans for it. If it doesn't figure into the plot then I dislike it, but I will reserve judgement to see if and how it does. I am sensing a connection between the church, the prison they have escaped from, the thing the Doctor will refuse help over if he learns of it and whatever it is they are here to do - note we never find out what their goal actually is. Also, with the crack figuring so prominently next week, I am wondering if they're not escapees from the Atraxi.

It's with the new look at the Angels that I'm really torn. They had such purity of concept in Blink that it feels a shame to embellish it. I'm not sure what I think about this new stuff regarding the image of an angel. Unavoidably, it's quite apparent that this stuff wasn't true during Blink, and has been thought of later. And it doesn't feel like a natural progression of the Angels' aspects. When the Doctor wonders why there are no pictures of Angels in the book, we don't get the thigh slapping 'Oh, of course!' moment Moffat usually delivers with the reveal. Instead, the development seems to come from nowhere. On the other hand, there is, evidently, a lot of story potential in this 'power of the image' idea. I just feel as though it would have been better explored with a new race. Still, I see what Moffat is going for. Once again, he is taking the familiar and twisting it ninety degrees - the image of the angels used to be their weakness, now it is their strength. Particularly evident in next week's trailer when the Doctor tells Amy 'Open your eyes for just a second and you'll die'.

The taped angel is pretty effectively creepy. Even when there's no reason to expect it can get out and hurt 'us', it inherently feels like it can. The sound design in this scene complements it beautifully with a weird-creepy rasping noise as the tape flashes off and on. Regarding that, I thought there was maybe a missed trick, and that the angel could have advanced a little each time the video flashed off, therefore putting a little extra conflict on Amy - her attempts to shut off the video are bringing the angel even closer. When it finally escapes the video, the static angel is another good effect that has quite a 'magical realism' feel to it. It's almost a ghost, and spooky in a different way to the ordinary angels. Unfortunately, the lines of prophecy from the ersatz-Lovecraftian madman book sound really, really hackneyed, and undermined the atmosphere somewhat.

The angels killing people seemed a bit odd. Another bit of plot that erodes the incredible elegance and purity of their original design. The fact that the angels didn't actually kill you, they let you 'live yourself to death,' was a magical touch. Now it's undermined. Also, there seemed to be no reason at all for them to kill three people, when they only needed one for the voice. Of course this may be expanded upon next week. On the same topic, the ability of the angels to possess people for speech really does stretch the original concept thin. I'm left wondering if this was added to make the angels feel more threatening, because ultimately, however creepy they are, what they do to you is arguably much preferable to just being shot at. (And I sort of have to wonder what would stop the Doctor simply going and picking up the timeshifted victims in the TARDIS - there's no casuality issue involved. I'll begrudgingly put it down to some timeline restriction beyond human grasp.)

We're told that the cave Angels are weak and depowered by losing their image, and this is why they haven't lynched the party already, but it's not thoroughly satisfying. The party doesn't really make any effort to keep their eyes in all directions, and the statues show no sign of taking advantage. If we're to believe they're so weak they can barely move at all, they stop being any kind of threat. If we're to believe they're a threat, it's hard to accept that they haven't had the opportunity to attack in all the time they've been surrounding the group. This was one of the larger issues for me, and I suspect one a lot of people will have picked up on.

Amy's gritty eye moment is great, and the most effective bit of imagery in an episode awash with creepy images and ideas. I do sometimes wonder if Moffat is overegging the pudding - coming up with all the spooky ideas he can and throwing them in. After a while a sort of fatigue sets in, and you find the new bites of spookiness feeling very old hat - exactly the wrong reaction. Case in point, Sacred Bob on the walkie talkie. This idea of speaking or listening to someone, only to find out that it's not a person on the other end has been rehashed by Moffat a hell of a lot by now. Come to that, even the silly nickname (Sacred/Scared/Angel Bob) thing is becoming pretty well worn now. I also had a problem with the earlier 'Come and see' aspect of the walkie-talkie stuff, which was completely non-credible. Nobody acts like that over the age of eight, and I didn't buy into it. Then we got the exact same scene all over again. On the other hand, I did think that it ultimately succeeded, on the strength of David Atkins voice, and because the idea of the Angel taking the voice but retaining his persona was pretty bizarre and did add some genuine interest.

The two-head/one-head statue issues is another example of Moffat falling back on tools we've seen time and time again. It's also pretty much immediately evident. I can't imagine most people didn't notice that the statues weren't two headed. It feels like a bit of a cheat, saying something that is blatantly wrong and expecting the audience to rationalise it ('Perhaps they don't all have two heads'), only to reveal it was wrong all along. This double bluff can work, and Moffat usually makes it do so, but here it felt somewhat cheap. I do really love Moffat's vision for the show's atmosphere, but I'm starting to worry that his actual box of tricks is a little limited, and also that he lacks knowledge of when to hold back. (And this is odd, because I felt that both his one-part stories for RTD showed an elegance and restraint. Mind you, Silence in the Library did seem rather bloated in comparison. In that case it worked because everything fed back into everything else. In this series though, there is a rather strong sense of elements added for their own sake.)

The stone hand section was much stronger, and the rapid double twist of 'Amy's hand is stone!' 'No it isn't!' was unexpected and kept me guessing. The solution was one you could see coming, but it didn't matter because this was, I think, one of the best scenes in the whole episode. Gillan is actually pretty good here (though she seems oddly calm - in fact, she never shows extremes of emotion), and Smith is excellent. Unfortunately the following comic relief scene in which Amy complains about being bitten is entirely miscalculated, and drops the tension like a stone. I'm wondering if this one is down to the director - If the scene had instead been shot with them bickering between breaths whilst running to catch up to River and the clerics, it would probably have been fine. After all, 'space teeth' is quite funny.

The climax is pretty thrilling, and also feels quite fresh for being unusual - we are actually seeing the Doctor's solution before the end of the episode. Even in the face of the climactic line being heavily trailed and the godawful Graham Norton banner advert, it manages to raise quite a few chills. The moment when the camera focusses in on Smith as he intones 'There's always a way out' is another nice little 'Freaky Alien Doctor' moment akin to the Doctor-Vision from episode one. I like these little hints at his otherworldly thinking process. One thing I didn't really understand: Why were the Angels trying to make him angry? Did they hope he'd slip up? Did they just want to give him a chance to make the 'Hello Angels' gag? Oh, and Angel Bob asking the Doctor what their mistake was felt like dialogue that had been rather heftily crowbarred in to fit.

A few production comments: The effects work looked good this week; better than it has. The materialisation of the clerics was a nice effect, and in general everything looked quite polished. I mentioned the sound design aiding the atmosphere in the videotape sequence, but I rather feel the opposite is true in the maze. The swush, swush they added over the top of the torch beams panning around was a stylistic mis-step and rather intrusive. I'll stick in a mention of lighting here, too. I'm sure lighting a cave is a lot of trouble, and that's probably the reason for it, but the lighting in this episode seemed rather poor. I judge it this way on the basis that it was noticeable, rather than fading into the scene. In particular, there is a very obvious fade out when they turn their torches off. Perhaps it is simply the amount of time lights are turned on and off throughout the story which gave more chance to notice slips. Not a big thing, anyway.

Ultimately, it's a good exciting episode, and the 'power of the image' concept IS intriguing. But I weigh the dissolution of the elegant Angel concept and the overly-familiar Moffat stylistics a fair bit against it. Also, a lot is going to depend on where the next episode takes things (And it does look they will be exciting places). I'll give it an 8/10, with all the usual provisions for evaluating a first part in isolation.

Postscript: A haylike needle of death in a haystack of statues. Hilarious.

All images property of the BBC.

Doctor Who - Patient Zero - Review

So, the Doctor is finally confronting Charley about her secrets. There's no way out now! Unless, of course, she suddenly collapses from a mysterious virus. Thus begins the end for Charlotte Pollard, as the Doctor heads to the mysterious Amethyst Station to try and find a cure...

And it's really rather exciting! It definitely has a bit of a 'series finale' grandeur feel to it. It's not a wholly self-contained story, either, but part one of a mini season that looks as if it will all be one long story, in essence. Everything's scaled up, the stakes feel really high. There's a lot of edge of your seat moments.

The appearance of the daleks isn't one of them. Why, oh why, must Big Finish put them on the front cover of every release they're in? It utterly undermines the work the writer puts into their reveal if BF are going to broadcast them in advance. OK, so they sell discs. But the stories WITHOUT daleks sell well enough that surely you could avoid slapping one on the cover just for once?
The other problem with the daleks is simply that... Well... They're daleks. Again. It's only two stories since the last lot. And that one wasn't very good. Big Finish are seriously grindind them into the ground... And there's more next season, too. Dalek fatigue is setting in.
Partially because of that, it was surprising just how good the daleks are here. They're well integrated into the plot, and their story ties into Charley's departure arc. Plus they're not the lacklustre cut-out daleks that populated Enemy the other month. These are real daleks. They're ruthless, terrifying characters. A scene in which the dalek commander blackmails the Doctor is devastatingly effective.
As well as this, we have actual characters among the daleks now. The dalek commander is the epitomal dalek. Utterly relentless, single minded and destructive. The Time Controller on the other hand reinforces the idea that the daleks are actually phenomenally intelligent creatures. A calm, intellectual dalek, he monitors the web of time to maximise the daleks' devastating potential across the continuum. The story is very succesful in portraying the Time Controller as conscientious, intelligent, unwilling to kill the Doctor whilst blind to the consequences, without making him any less of a dalek. He is just as threatening, just as malevolent, but in a more sinister, more thoughtful way that contrasts the Commander.

The other hook is those mysterious Viyrans. We've known about them for a while now, and yet we really don't know anything about them at all. And we still don't! This isn't really a Viyran story, their part is fairly small and late in the game (although their presence is felt throughout). One gets the feeling that Blue Forgotten Planet will be their story. This is just a reminder, to reinforce their existence, hanging over proceedings. To remind us that something is up, and they will be along to fix it one day. And it won't be pleasant.
They're not quite so creepy here as they were in Mission of the Viyrans, but then that story was a horror, whereas this is more action orientated. They're still pretty unusual though, and they definitely come off as being intimidating foes. Quite the enigma, and still rather unsettling - The notion of having them speak only with other characters' voices is a coup. I'll be looking forward to hearing more of them.

Moving down the scale of alien-ness we have Fratalin. A memorable and well realised character from BF, he's made up of 800-odd seperate little selves which can fuse into larger ones. All of them share his voice and personality, but they're not a hive mind, so they can talk amongst themselves.
Fratalin himself(s) is on the surface quite a nice fellow. He's very calm, pleasant in demeanour, and very patient with people. He's also utterly, unshakably dedicated to his cause, which leads him to put the Doctor in some rather unpleasant situations.
Maloney plays him well, there's a real sense of rock-and-a-hard place when he's forced to do some difficult things in service to his conviction. He seems genuinely saddened and apologetic when he is forced to place Charley's wellbeing below the sanctity of his duty. He also inflects the generally calm and reserved character with a strong sense of desperation during the growing tension of part two, as the Doctor desperately tries to force him to abandon his calling. His reaction to losing some of his 'familiars' similarly does well at fleshing out another emotional side of him. It's not a masterpiece performance of great range, by any means, but a solid showing that backs up a good character concept.

The other non-regular character is Mila, and she's an odd one. As a character there's a lot of potential here: She's deranged by two very different ordeals. Sociopathic yet seemingly quite innocent. Possessed of quite phenomenal power to exact vengeance, but apparently not particularly vengeful. And later on, she begins to slide into a different personality altogether.
Jess Robinson is far from bad in the role, but I felt there was potential for more. There could have been some real depth to the character, the suggestion of counterpoint emotions underlying her surface facade. Instead we get what I am sort of inclined to call the 'easy' option. The chipper-psychopath angle isn't new, and its effectiveness is not guaranteed. Here it works alright - moreso early on, when we are less certain who Mila is - but it's not spectacular. Ultimately, Robinson overplays the cheerfulness a little too much for my taste. I thought there was some potential there to have a little bit of acid underneath the sweetness, and a coldness behind the fake warmth.

As to the regulars, they're pretty good. Have Colin and India ever been anything other than pretty good together? No, I don't think so. That said, they're not at their absolute top showing. Colin is a bit more shouty and blunt than usual, and he doesn't get any really resoundingly memorable moments. The first-part cliffhanger is great, but I thought it could have been even better if Colin had been at the very top of his game.

India's a bit of a mixed bag here. Her anxiety regarding her secret seems to have tapered off somewhat since Raincloud Man. Given that we have reached crunch time, she seems to have become a little more relaxed since the last outing, which isn't exactly fitting. She's also not so good at portraying someone suffering terribly from an illness. 'I feel terrible' she says, but she doesn't sound like she does. She groans and mumbles a bit, but it's not the voice of someone who feels like death warmed up. She just sounds like she has a headache, not some monstrous space lurgy.
She's better later, though. Given reign to act a sort of alternate take on Charley she really takes off, much as she did in the Doomwood Curse. She's quite convincing as being New-Charley rather than normal old Charley. On the other hand, when she has to flick back to being normal old Charley, she seems lacking once again. The situation she's in is pretty dire, but there's no great urgency in her performance. Certainly she has sounded more worried in other stories.

As for the plot itself, it's certainly not high minded, conceptual stuff. It's big bangs and daleks and explosions in corridors. It is very fun, though. Probably the best thing Briggs has done since Creatures of Beauty (which was high concept). Everything ties up quite nicely, which is maybe the main thing. With Charley's departure, her secret revealing, daleks and viyrans in the pot it could be quite a mess. Thankfully all the elements are very much related to one another, so there's a great feeling of coherency. And for a story which is actually mostly shouting in corridors, as someone else described it, it feels quite pacy and action packed. It certainly kicks off in the latter half, and the Viyran-Dalek battles are quite exciting.

The sound design is effective, making it easy to picture what's going on without ever throwing up the confusing wall of sound that occaisionally plagues the more action packed stories. It is perhaps a little sparse, though. Sometimes that's inkeeping - it works to set the scene of this enormous, sparse, desolate clinical facility - but it could have maybe used a bit more of an interesting soundscape. Thinking back now I can't recall anything of the incidental music work. Now, I'd rather have something unobtrusive than something jarring, of course, but the really good audios usually have a few strong, memorable cues that reinforce the action.

So, that's Patient Zero. It's a very entertaining beginning to a compelling arc, that leaves me excited to hear what's next, and indeed a little intrepid. Whilst I never found myself hugely invested in her with the Eighth Doctor, she's really grown on me with the Sixth, and her departure will probably pull a few strings.
It's also a refreshingly good dalek romp, thankfully after the so-recent Enemy, and with Plague just around the corner. An 8/10. Onwards to Paper Cuts.