As expected, this episode picks up exactly where the last left off. Bill and the Doctor are stood outside the TARDIS on a frozen Thames and there's an elephant. Oddly, there are also now other people about, but we'll gloss over that just as we would in the classic years. Back then the absence of people in a teaser ending would have been to avoid having to pay those actors for appearing in an extra episode, but now I think it's more about not giving too much away. Bill thinks they are on a parallel world but the Doctor points out that they are in fact at the last great Frost Fair in 1814 (February 4th, to be precise) Bill is worried about standing out so the Doctor directs her to the wardrobe. There is pause for sullen acknowledgement that slavery was still prevalent at this time so Bill has an extra concern there... and she's not done with the consequential questions...
Continuing the essential-exposition-per-episode trend, Bill asks what the rules are when travelling back in time. She wonders what consequences there might be to their actions, quoting the classic 'tread on a butterfly' theory. The Doctor brushes it aside but then teasers Bill by suggesting that she could end up like Pete (whom he pretends has been travelling with them) who vanished and was forgotten about. She also asks if time travel will have any physical affect on her and again the Doctor teases. She has seen green lights under the ice and thinks the Doctor hasn't notice them until he offers seeing lights under the ice as a side effect of time travel! The relationship between the two is rather lovely here, teacher-pupil in some ways but also harking back to playful grandfather figure of the First Doctor (remember we saw a photo of Susan in the series opener). Bill is still eager and full of wonder, even saying that she wants to try everything... until one of the vendors offers her a sheep's heart to eat!
This is another fairly simple story and didn't really excite me as others have, leaving me without much drive to write this review or inspiration for how to go about it. At the same time though, it's nothing bad. Maybe it's like the old historicals that lacked something but were still enjoyable. There's a history lesson of course, the Great Frost Fairs for one, but also political comment. While the presence of slavery has already been acknowledged, Bill also notes that "There's a bit more black than they show in the movies" to which the Doctor replies "So was Jesus. History is a whitewash." There are also street urchins, stealing food, general pick-pocketing and earning a little cash by handing out fliers for the fair. The reality of course is that while 'street urchins' sounds quite cute and quaint, they are by today's terms homeless children living in extreme poverty (this is one fact that the show shies away from explaining directly). In a dramatic twist, one of these children steals the Doctor's sonic screwdriver with fatal consequences. You see, the lights under the ice are attracted to sound and movement and in a less than realistic way create holes in the ice by swimming in circles around their prey. The boy falls through and the ice, again unrealistically, closes up rapidly as he just manages to hold the screwdriver aloft... no real explanation for him holding it up other than the Doctor calling after him for it. Shockingly, the boy is left in this state, frozen under the ice with his hand sticking up. The Doctor appears to be unbothered by the death and it's not the only one. Bill picks him up on the fact, quite distraught by his apparent lack of concern. When confronted by it, the Doctor does show an emotional connection by tries to avoid the facts. Bill does get him to admit that he has killed in the past but he refuses to say how many or when he 'stopped counting' He explains that he has to move on otherwise more people will die.
As if to balance things and restore Bill's faith in him, the Doctor is really friendly and helpful towards the children, giving them pies (which he stole from a confidence trickster) and reading them a story. Ultimately of course he helps them beyond imagination by doctoring a will (I'll leave the details spoiler-free) and returns with Bill to the present day, arriving in his office just as Nardole brings in the tea (remember the last episode ended with Nardole being sent to make the tea while the Doctor returned the TARDIS to the office, so this is just moments after that for Nardole). The Victorian clothes rather give the game away though, so the Doctor offers Nardole a deal at the flip of a coin "Heads the TARDIS stays here, tails you leave me alone" but of course he has learned a trick from he con-man and wins the toss!
The plot gets a little lost in the middle as it goes from learning about the source of the lights under the ice to addressing the issue with a clumsy lack of exposition but makes sense if you piece it together. I found myself asking "Where have they gone? Why are they here?" a couple of times due to the change in pace but the use of racism to identify the culprit as human rather than alien was an interesting on (as I write this, I've also seen the next two episodes, the latter of which echoes this point gently) and gave the Doctor a chance to flex his muscles in Bill's defence, though the dialogue was subtle enough for it to be almost as much about class as race because the perpetrator was an upper-class tool!
Final mention goes to the creature under the ice. Plot wise it was a bit shabby, quite frankly. A massive fish that has been chained up by the perpetrator's family for a couple of generations, yet was somehow related to the frost and had smaller fish drawing and capturing people to feed it (the source of the lights under the ice - bioluminescent angler fish). Two good things came from this. Firstly, the effects team have done an incredible job, to the point that I had to force myself to think "hang on, this isn't real. How have they done this?!" The same is true of the whole episode really (as has become the norm these days, to be fair) from the underwater shots to the frozen Thames setting. Where dos reality end and sets and props take over and when does it give way to CGI? The second thing is banter from the Doctor as he refers to this massive creature ironically naming it "Tiny" but he goes on to "Lochless Monster" and "Not So Little Mermaid". Oh and on that note, he also identifies himself at one point as "Doctor Disco" in reference to last series in what must have been a very exotic name to Victorian ears!
Oh and before I end, I should mention the vault I suppose. Nardole continues to guard it, grumbling to himself about how the Doctor is treating him "Leave him alone! Chance would be a fine thing. Leave me alone, how about that for a new idea. I never asked to be reassembled did I?" But then the thing in the vault starts knock, banging on the door. Nardole acts all tough but whimpers as he walks away...
No cliffhanger tease into the next episode this time. It looks like that was just a one-off. But the "Next Time" teaser looks good...
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