Devious Davros, tricksy Missy and Dalek Clara delight in The Witch's Familiar Readers please note: THIS IS A POST-UK BROADCAST REVIEW – THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Kelly says: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it turns out Clara and Missy escape from the death-by-Dalek shocker in the first episode of this two-parter for the opening of Doctor Who, Season 9. Vortex manipulator For The Win. And the TARDIS is also intact …
The emotional energy being captured and used to power the weaponry is a neat touch. Kind of fits in with the Exillon episode sort of and explains why the SWD is bred to be a totally psychotic being of utter self-loathing, hated by all other Daleks, to generate so much more energy for the weapon.
One thing about that always struck me about the "classic" series is that it had a sense of "timelessness" about it - few (if any) mentions of contemporary technology, and few attempts to set things in specific years.
With previous mentions of wi-fi and bluetooth - and now wearables - this is going to seriously date the show in a few years time, even more than low-budget wobbly sets and rubber monsters will ever do.
In The Time of the Doctor he said he had a whole new regeneration cycle, so that's another 13 incarnations.
I'll be more worried if he starts quoting David Cameron - and sounding more convincing with it. Come on, you can imagine Julian Bleach saying “for too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone..."
In the classic Beatles photo, the Beatle on the left is parked illegally on top of the sidewalk and is in front of where the lamppost is nowdays:
http://www.pocketfullofliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/beatles-abbey-road.jpg
The one in the Dr Who shot is parked 15m down the street, still illegally too. In fact, even more illegal - it is on top of a double yellow line bang in the middle of the bus stop. I guess there may be something in the VW genes about breaking rules...
I shoot you with my laser gun! - No, I have an anti-laser-shield! - Ah, but these are anti-laser-shield-rays, yeah - Uh, I went back in time to replace your laser with plain LEDs, HAHA.
It goes on and on... like damn five year olds playing space-cowboys.
At least Missy is deviously delightful. And the snake thing was clever, and those creepy hands. Compassion with the doctor, in contrast with Missy - who steals the ca... you know what...
Can I please have a Missy show? I rather watch that lunatic go through time and do evil than watch Goody Twoshoes Oswald do her... goody twoshoe things and speeches. I know that we should relate to her, because everyone else is larger or dumber than life, so we have relatable characters like pre-horse-chompers Rose, Asthma UNIT Girl, or The Rory. It's just not working with Clara.
So what happened to Danny, then? Weren't we supposed to get yummy Danny at the cost of Souffle Girl? A male companion for a change? Instead we stay with never-changing Clara, who keeps upbeat and naive, largely unphased by her boyfriend sacrificing himself. Amy was a strong, independent character - with Oswald, we get the dumbass in distress.
I am under no circumstances arguing the damn sunglasses. It's just hate-bait, move along now, nothing to see here... it'll be a screwdriver soon enough. Not like you could reshoot the next episodes anyway.
Moffat is the man who eats your dreams and craps nightmares in your head... he is so good with scares like that. I hope that will show this season.
I liked this week in comparison with last week's. Last week just random stuff happened, this week at least it was coherent and the Doctor/Davros part was well written.
I did however hold the faint hope for a moment that when the Doctor said, "I'm so sorry" after opening the Dalek to find Clara inside, he would have to break the news to her there's no getting those nano-tech wires out of her head and Clara would be stuck in there and via the magic timey-wimey would eventually wind up in the Asylum of the Daleks. No such luck.
And Moffat probably did that to us on purpose, just because he could.
Or maybe the nano-tech is still there and slowly changes Clara over the course of the series...?
We certainly got answers and a Abrams/Lindelof mystery-box fail was averted. They could have given more of a headnod to Daleclara - had that actually happened, which we can argue until the cows come home. A Lovecraftian storyline in Doctor Who, and it was a mere cameo, sigh.
A major letdown with the Trenzalor event, and wasting episodes on whimsey and nonsense (snakes on a plane!!!) at the expense of properly closing a storyarc.
It's still a good show, but I have no hopes of Moffat pushing it beyond the boundaries of eye-candy, cheap mindf's, and cringeworthy puns.
I was really hoping this was the episode where Clara becomes trapped in the dalek suit, and becomes the Oswin Oswald hybrid dalek in which she first apppeared.......maybe that will happen in a later episode, thus bringing her plot line full circle and killing her off.
I would make her the hybrid that this series seems to be desiring - and the other daleks hatred of impurity would explain her exiling to the dalek lunatic asylum planet. However....I've a feeling the last episode is going to need a revisit from Matt Smith
The asylum Oswin/Dalek is a different one. For those who watched Asylum, the Clara/Dalek in this one is an interesting parallel; trapped but denying it versus trapped and aware, forced Dalekisation versus (duped) volunteer. questions around what makes a Dalek, a Dalek etc.
You've also got the possible juxtaposition that the Doctor might shoot a child deliberately (though at some level we know that wouldn't happen) against possibility of shooting a companion by accident.
And people say Moffat doesn't think through what he writes.
...reading the reviews here and most of the other reviews that I've seen in the press or online, did the reviewers actually watch the same episodes as I did?
They were very, very poor indeed. OK, so Dr Who isn't (and has never been and is unlikely ever to be) high art, but it has on occasion been interesting and entertaining. For all their occasional failings, the Eccleston/Tennant seasons did have some nice moments, the odd interesting story or plotline and the introduction of some rather fine new "baddies". As a reboot of the tired old original series, it was quite welcome and showed a fair bit of promise. Almost as though the Beeb were taking it slightly more seriously this time around.
But then Matt Smith happened. Not that he was particularly bad, but as his time in the Tardis continued, the whole thing started to come apart as far as story lines, characters and general quality of the overall narrative were concerned. By the time he regenerated, a new Doctor was already long overdue and I had some high(ish) hopes for Peter Capaldi, so long as he got decent scripts.
Oh well, so much for that then. Decent scripts? Chance would be a fine thing. If anything, they've gone even further down the pan than they already were. I wouldn't even mind if they had come up with something where I could actively dislike it (perhaps taking it in a determinedly different direction altogether) but no, it's just a whole heap of "meh". The bits that weren't eminently predictable were simply boring - characters that were even more cardboard cut-out than usual (if possible), plot devices that were either glaringly transparent or supremely ad hoc and an overall feel of mediocrity. I watched the second episode just to see if it picked up any after a pretty abysmal first one. Being fair, the second episode was probably better than the first, but not enough to warrant making any special effort to watch a third.
Perhaps it's time for this McTedium Sandwich with Extra Cheese to be put back on the shelf for another couple of decades until someone can come up with another interesting reboot...
Fortunately, nobody. I watched it because - in general - I have always had a soft spot for Dr Who, harmless and fun hokum that it is. I enjoyed it as a kid and I have enjoyed it a fair bit during the last few years. However, as I said, I think that during Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor the general standard of the writing and development of the series deteriorated. And, if anything, it seems to be getting worse. Or, at least, getting no better.
Once upon a time, I would make an effort to see each episode in a series. During the last couple of series, I missed the odd episode here and there and found that it had reached the point where I wasn't that bothered about catching up with the ones I'd missed (even though that's easy enough to do nowadays what with iPlayer, etc.) I watched the first episode of this series in the hope that they had given it a bit of a refresh and were going to give Peter Capaldi better scripts to work with. I then watched the second episode to see how they wrapped up the story (and whether the first episode was just an unfortunate aberration). Sadly, while the second episode was somewhat better than the first, it certainly doesn't give me hope for the future.
So...as I said, fortunately no-one is holding a gun to my head and forcing me to watch and, short of having absolutely nothing else to occupy my time of a Saturday evening (which is unlikely to be the case most of the time) I don't expect to be watching any more. And I'm still baffled by all the fairly glowing reviews I've seen around the place. I can only assume that they have been written by inveterate Dr Who fans who would give a sound thumbs-up to any old drivel so long as it had two hearts and a Tardis.
It seems possible(to me anyway) that Clara is going to be the Dalek Timelord hybrid. Clara's "impossible girl" history plus the dalek nanotech = possible timelord dalek??
I hoped assist hope that there would be no sonic escape. It's got to the point where you expect the sonic as much as you expect the end credits.
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