Live Review: S8.E9 - Flatline

After 50 years and more than 250 adventures, coming up with new ideas can be a little tricky and while there is something appealing and satisfying in reusing favourites, creating new monsters with similar appeal can be hit and miss. However, every now and then something truly original and creative graces out screens. The early days had plenty of these of course because everything was new - the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, the Daleks, telepathic communication, an insect filled planet, the travellers being scaled to half an inch tall, all within the first 13 stories - but the striking innovations tend to thin out after that and truly innovative ideas become somewhat scarce. Every now and then though, a story idea crops ups that makes you sit up and take notice and Flatline is one of them. In fact, there are three elements at play within the narrative that all have merits in their own right. Subtly woven through it all is the continuing drama with regards to Danny and Clara as well as the more obvious quest for Clara to identify with the more complex depths of the Doctor.

The episode opens with an establishing scene of course, and this time it's a man talking on his phone reporting that "they are everywhere... all around", the atmosphere is that of something very creepy and sinister which results in the man falling out of shot and appearing shortly afterwards as a stretched image on the wallpaper border strip - stretched to such an extent that it takes a very sharp angle from the camera to reveal it. Element one in place, roll titles...

Live Review: S8.E8 - Mummy On The Orient Expres

A long time ago, way back at the end of Steven Moffat's first series, an idea was created. Amy and Rory had just got married, the Doctor had returned from the depths of their memories, danced the Drunken Giraffe at the reception and it was time to say goodbye... The episode (Big Bang ended wit the Doctor receiving a phone call in the TARDIS from an unknown caller that causes concern... There is an Egyptian Goddess on the Orient Express, in space! The Doctor is confused because, as he put it "I was there when she was sealed into the seventh obelisk. I was at the prayer meeting... Don't worry about a thing your Majesty, we're on our way"... It was assumed, by me at least, that this was a tease into the Christmas episode, much like the Titanic crashing through the TARDIS a few years earlier, but no. The Christmas episode took place during Amy and Rory's honeymoon and the Doctor was on his own dealing with flying sharks in A Christmas Carol and then time passed before the start of the next series and the Egyptian Goddess was forgotten about.

But not by Moffat. He gave the title to writer Jamie Mathieson and let him do the rest. Not surprisingly, the details of the Doctor's telephone conversation were a little overlooked after four years and a change of both companion and Doctor so the resulting episode doesn't mention it specifically. What is important to remember is that the last episode ended with Clara angry at the Doctor telling him she has had enough...

Live Review: S8.E7 - Kill The Moon

Moffat has done it again. He's given us an episode title that filled me with dread, and not in a good way. Let's Kill Hitler was bad enough, though the episode turned out alright, but Kill The Moon must surely be worse and it's followed by Mummy On The Orient Express which isn't much better - just like Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, though again that one turned out reasonably well... So here it is, the pre-title sequence tells us it is 2049 and Clara is on the moon with Courtney Woods, the school girl from the previous episode, the Doctor isn't around and Clara's making a plea straight to the camera "An innocent life versus the future of all mankind" and there are only 45 minutes to decide... so the length of an episode then! Roll titles!

We're then taken back to the beginning of the story as Clara tries to convince the Doctor to reassure Courtney, who has gone off the rails since he told her she wasn't anything special and she threw up in the TARDIS. They find her back on board with cleaning materials and travel sickness bracelets, ready to go off again and prove herself to the Doctor. Clara tells her she's not going anywhere but the Doctor offers her the honour of being the first woman on the moon and away they go...

First Doctor Reviews Completed

As the current series passes its half way point, I am happy to announce that I have finally reached the end of William Hartnell's episodes. Writing reviews for the new series along with the classics has proved a little troublesome so I have fallen further behind, currently five weeks. Hopefully, with the next three classics being missing stories followed by one on DVD and another three missing after that, I should be able to claw my way back on track since there will be no extras or commentaries to watch. That said, there are another five new episodes to work around so it won't be plain sailing just yet...

Meanwhile, I thought I would post a list of Hartnell's stories and order it according to how they scored. You may be surprised at some of the positions, I know I was, but I've tried to stay consistent with my scoring and just because I like something on the surface doesn't mean it's actually good. Ordering by Production and Content scores produce interestingly different lists.

#	Title	Content	Production	Total
12	The Romans	71%	100%	85.5%
21	The Daleks' Master Plan	81%	86%	83.5%
17	The Time Meddler	74%	90%	82.0%
10	The Dalek Invasion of Earth	77%	82%	79.5%
11	The Rescue	73%	86%	79.3%
7	The Sensorites	69%	88%	78.5%
2	The Daleks	73%	78%	75.5%
3	The Edge of Destruction	73%	76%	74.5%
9	Planet of Giants	68%	80%	74.0%
16	The Chase	71%	74%	72.5%
27	The War Machines	68%	76%	72.0%
13	The Web Planet	65%	78%	71.5%
6	The Aztecs	59%	84%	71.5%
4	Marco Polo	47%	96%	71.5%
8	The Reign of Terror	48%	92%	70.0%
1	100,000 BC (An Unearthly Child)	61%	76%	68.5%
29	The Tenth Planet	60%	74%	67.0%
26	The Savages	68%	64%	66.0%
20	The Myth Makers	47%	82%	64.5%
24	The Celestial Toymaker	53%	74%	63.5%
5	The Keys of Marinus	53%	72%	62.5%
14	The Crusade	44%	80%	62.0%
25	The Gunfighters	43%	78%	60.5%
18	Galaxy 4	36%	80%	58.0%
23	The Ark	51%	50%	50.5%
22	The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve	38%	62%	50.0%
15	The Space Museum	42%	38%	40.0%
28	The Smugglers	27%	52%	39.5%
19	Mission to the Unknown	29%	46%	37.5%

Where episodes have equal scores, preference is given to content.

By way of comparison, when listed by Production scores the top five would be "The Romans", "Marco Polo", "The Reign of Terror", "The Time Meddler" and "The Sensorites" showing that historicals were by far the BBC's strong area. Conversely, when listed by Content scores the top five would be "The Daleks' Master Plan", "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", "The Time Meddler", "The Daleks", and "The Edge of Destruction" which clearly highlights the strength of the Daleks and the value of science fiction in a, well, science fiction series!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the bottom of the list in Production terms are "Galaxy 4", "Mission to the Unknown", and "The Smugglers", while Content puts "The Ark", "Mission to the Unknown" and "The Space Museum" at the bottom.

All this gives William Hartnell's stories a total score of 66.6% (Content 58%, Production 76%), though there is a strong bias towards the 70-75 mark and it's the bottom six that really drag him down so I'd be inclined, pragmatically, to score him 70% (+/- 5)

Live Review: S8.E6 - The Caretaker

The Caretaker is a good demonstration of how important the pre-title sequence is. It's a teaser for the whole episode, it sets up the situation and may introduce key characters, and it can signpost the problems that the Doctor is about to be faced with. It's these first few minutes that can determine a viewer's expectations and colour their judgement of the whole episode. Sadly, on this occasion it was a bad opener for me. Writer Gareth Roberts has now brought us six episodes and they are a slightly mixed bag. More importantly he has been responsible for seventeen episodes of "Sarah Jane Adventures" and four for its replacement "Wizards vs. Aliens" (though they are two part stories) so it is maybe not surprising to see him writing a school oriented episode that feels a bit cut down. With that in mind, it's an OK episode and if it's the season's worst then I'll not be complaining. However, my opinion was led astray by the opening... The first scene sees the Doctor and Clara in some alien desert tied up against a pair of pillars, exchanging desperate banter about their predicament. Cut to a shot of Danny as Clara meets him for another date... this looks like it will be a flashback and the episode will some how play out to reveal how they came to be tied up, but it is in fact the opposite and Danny remarks about the excessive tan that Clara has suddenly gained... we then see her arriving soaking wet, then exhausted after running down corridors (that look too much like TARDIS corridors when they are looking for the TARDIS itself). We are seeing Clara balancing her normal life with unseen adventures with the Doctor - my two pet hates! Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I don't like companions to be tied to a normal life that they can dip in and out of and the Doctor should not be having adventures that we don't see. I was immediately, reminded of The Power Of Three and feeling let down and ready to be disappointed. On second viewing however, knowing what to expect, it wasn't so bad...

Live Review: S8.E5 - Time Heist

I seem to have fallen behind with my reviews again... I have just watched The Caretaker and come to write about it but found that I haven't written up Time Heist yet! Actually, getting ahead of myself like that is a bit like the opening to Time Heist because it starts with a couple of seconds of the title sequence but just as you think there won't be the now standard pre-title scene, the rotating spiral dissolves into a rotating picture of the Doctor and you soon realise the camera is inside a washing machine looking out at him watching the washing! Then it's a round fish bowl... The Doctor is at Clara's flat wanting to play but she's getting ready to go on a date... Until the TARDIS phone rings! The Doctor is naturally curious as to who has the number apart from Clara and the woman who gave it to her in the shop (as stated in Bells Of St John but Clara doesn't want him to answer it because "If you answer it, something will happen... a thing"... and so it does. Jump cut to the Doctor holding a memory worm in place of the receiver with audio playback of him and Clara, along with two strangers agreeing to a memory wipe, though each successive statement sounds a little less convinced. The two strangers are Psi, an augmented human (he's a hacker with computer implants) and Saibra, a mutant human (a gene mutation which makes her appearance change into any living creature that she touches) and they soon learn that they have also agreed to rob one of the most secure banks in the universe and the guards are already at the door saying they don't wish to hurt anyone before incineration!