9.4: Before the Flood

What a bunch of noisy garbage. The episode begins with "The Bootstrap Paradox" (we're told to Google it) and presented with the conundrum of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go back in time to meet Beethoven and discover that Beethoven doesn't exist, yet you've brought back the knowledge of the music of Beethoven from the present to the past, you're in a causal loop. It's potentially interesting stuff if the show has any interest in actually doing something with the idea, but more on that later.

After a promising first part, I find this episode to revert back to bright, flashing lights and loud noises, sound and fury signifying nothing. The characters that I was interested in last episode are barely avatars in this episode, and when they face death, I can't work up enough emotion to care about their fate because the story has given me no reason to do so. Then we've got a bad guy (The Fisher King, who might as well be a cameo) with motivations that I also don't care about. The Fisher King has been creating ghosts who repeat the same phrases to send a signal out that will bring more of his people down so that they can conquer Earth. BORING. Also, we've got threads of The Doctor appearing to face his own mortality again (which I guess is a running theme for the season?), and The Doctor repeatedly saving Clara and willing to alter entire timelines to do so (definitely another running theme for the season, apparently, and one for which I can already predict the outcome, so I hope there are a few surprises in store).

Maybe if the stakes weren't always so high, I could actually get invested in them. We're four weeks into this season, and so far each episode has appeared to place The Doctor and Clara in mortal danger with the possibility that they might not escape. And another Earth invasion story? Yawn. We're talking about a guy who can travel through all of time and space, but what we get is the same old same old. Give me Silence in the Libary! Give me The Satan Pit. The God Complex. Even give me Love and Monsters! Explore the universe and the myriad creatures who inhabit it; don't use the same tired Earth invasion story without bringing something special to the table.

And yes, I hate the Sonic Sunglasses. Back in the 1980s, Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor lost his Sonic Screwdriver in the episode The Visitation, and it didn't make an appearance again until the 1996 television movie, fourteen years later. The reason for this was because the producer of the show, John Nathan-Turner, believed it had become a crutch for the writers to allow The Doctor to escape from any situation. It's worth noting that The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors fared just fine without their sonic device and it allowed for higher stakes and a greater sense of danger. I can't help but feel like the current show-runners have missed a great opportunity to raise the stakes by ditching their crutch. It's possible that Sonic Sunglasses aren't going to be around for the long haul, but they've already proven to be more of a crutch than the Sonic Screwdriver ever was. What can't they do? They can project holograms to places that they don't even physically inhabit. In a lot of ways, I feel like these Sonic devices are a metaphor for the whole "Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey" way of telling stories that New Who has come to depend on. They seem to be telling us not to think too much, just go with it. That doesn't work for me.

Back to the Bootstrap Paradox and the start of the episode, which presents the conundrum, then gives us The Doctor playing Beethoven on his electric guitar. Rant: why is he playing electric guitar all of the sudden? Does he need another "thing" to set him aside from his predecessors? We started with Nine's leather jacket, kicked things up a notch with Ten's trench coat, Converse shoes, and 3D glasses, continued the trend with Eleven's bow tie and came dangerously close to jumping the shark with the fez and the cowboy hat. Now Twelve plays electric guitar? That's not organic at all. Nor are his Sonic Sunglasses. They feel artificial and detrimental, and don't seem to stem from his personality as much as a producer-mandated prop designed to sell toys and signature shades. BUT I DIGRESS. The episode ends with the Bootstrap Paradox being put into practice when we discover that the Doctor's ghost, as presented in the final moments of the previous episode, wasn't a ghost at all, but a holographic projection from The Doctor's crutch Sonic Sunglasses created by The Doctor to give himself the necessary clues to solve the mystery. We're then asked how he knew to project the exact clues signals to himself. Where did they originate? We then cut to that freaking electric guitar, and The Doctor SHRUGS. CREDITS.

I'm sorry? You don't introduce the idea of a Bootstrap Paradox and then raise the questions about how it works without attempting to provide an explanation. Yet that's exactly what Toby Whithouse does in his script. We are explained the paradox, see the paradox in action, and then are asked to ponder how the paradox can exist. Then told "ah, who knows?" This on a show designed to explore time and space. SHRUG. Maybe they're setting up for the end of the season in which this will be revisited. At least, I hope that's what they're doing, because if it's not what they're leading up to then I find the whole exercise of this episode to be tedious and absolutely empty of any significant ideas. Conundrums and causal loops can be done effectively. See Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was children's entertainment and still smart and thought-provoking.

I read somewhere (I've long forgotten exactly where) that Steven Moffat liked to write himself into corners and then try to punch his way out of them, and that's proven to be true time after time. He does it not only on this show but on Sherlock as well. I can't say for sure that he writes stories without knowing the conclusion to them, but it sure seems like it because the endings to these things are frequently tedious and lackluster. I thought we had moved away from those types of stories in Series 8. Series 9, however, has found us right back in the same territory for four episodes straight. Situations that COULD be interesting simply aren't, mysteries don't play fair and don't have satisfying conclusions that stem from established clues, and there are a ton of deus ex machina solutions to problems that didn't have to exist in the first place if they writers would have tried a little harder. All four of the episodes we've seen so far this season appear to have things on their mind and questions about the world The Doctor inhabits, but when you start picking at them to try to unravel and explore them, you discover that there's nothing there. It's the equivalent of the Doctor's blase shrug. Doctor Who is capable of much better. I expect better. The classic series was far from perfect, and there are plenty of mediocre stories, but they always had some serious food for thought behind them and rarely--if ever--answered things with a shrug. They respected their audience too much for that (okay, Sylvester McCoy's era excluded).

I can point to precisely one thing that I liked in this episode, and that was the notion presented by one of the crew on the station when he points out that The Doctor doesn't alter the course of time to save the incidental people he encounters, but he'll alter it at a moment's notice for himself or for Clara. He's something of a hypocrite, and self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner, deciding who gets to be saved and who doesn't. And most people don't. It's a marvelous idea that rings true not just for this Doctor but for all of them,and it comes up now and again, so it would be lovely if future episodes explored this duality and hypocrisy of a character who opts to save only those closest to him while callously leaving countless others to their fate. He doesn't follow the rules he claims to espouse, and it's a perfect subject to tackle and have running in the background with some eventual consequence. That means they'll probably never touch it again.

As I'm sure is very clear by reading this, I'm very frustrated by this episode and by this season. So far it's been big, loud, and lazy. It has continued to present gigantic ideas about humanity, morality, and the nature of reality without adequately exploring them at all. A premise is not a story, it's the start of one, and an idea is not the end of the creative process. I'm sick of solutions that don't play fair and The Doctor whipping out some ridiculous, God-like solution (which the audience can't see coming) to a problem that could have been better tackled with logic. This show has always at least TRIED to play by a series of rules, but those rules seem to be out the window.

I loved Series 8. Unfortunately, Series 9 is really a bummer so far, and it's a third over already. I seem to be in the huge minority, because critical acclaim for this episode is off the charts, which completely befuddles me. Apparently, the Doctor Who that I want is not the Doctor Who that other people want. What happened to the search for Gallifrey? The promise of other Time Lords? Further exploration of Peter Capaldi's character and what drives him? What is unsaid? What secrets does he hold? We've practically just met him and now we're being threatened with his death every week. In order for there to be stakes and for things to ramp up to an epic finale, we have to have a status quo so that we have something to build from. Each week can't be epic in scope because then we have no perspective. I will keep watching because I love the show (and the show's POTENTIAL), but the enthusiasm I once had for tuning in on Saturday evening is pretty much dead at this point. The most frustrating part of all is that I KNOW it's capable of being so much better. I've been there for the highs and I've been there for the lows. This is pretty close to the lows.

9.3: Under the Lake

Well, that's more like it. The third episode of the ninth series sees The Doctor returning to what he's best at: gallivanting around the galaxy and investigating the weird and wonderful corners of the universe, walking the razor's edge. This episode delivers what I want from an episode of Doctor Who by including interesting locations (the underwater base), multi-dimensional characters who I can sympathize with (the crew), a diverse cast of actors who are unalike, bad guys that are both repulsive and intriguing at the same time, and a plot that complicated enough that I'll likely miss something if I go into the kitchen to make a sandwich. And not one utterance of the word "dude."

Seeing this episode succeed (for me) makes the flaws of the two previous episodes more apparent to me. I don't like when Doctor Who (or anything else, for that matter) deliberately attempts to be big and epic. "Epic" is not something that can be easily manufactured via a spectacle or with bombastic music, a la Michael Bay. "Epic" is only achieved when an audience has endured extreme highs and extreme lows with a character or a story and things long in play are finally payed off and resolved once and for all. The first two episodes of the season attempted to manufacture an epic by being fast and loud and by visiting places we've been before in attempt to create a grander scope than is actually on screen, and those first two episodes suffered for that, in spite of the good story idea that was at the center of the spectacle. This episode, on the other hand, manages to engage me by sticking to the basics of storytelling and allowing the characters to play out the drama. Doctor Who succeeds when it puts faith in its actors and its scripts instead of the special effects.

I really like the ghosts we see in this episode and their hollow eye cavities, providing a really striking and instantly classic image.  The idea of The Doctor facing off against ghosts, or the undead, or horrific beings that aren't immediately explainable has certainly been done before (and often), not just with David Tennant in stories like Silence in the Library, but going all the way back to producer Philip Hinchcliffe's era featuring Tom Baker, and probably even as far as John Pertwee's tenure as the Third Doctor. OF COURSE it's all been done before, but this is why I'm tuning in. Doctor Who, for me, is at its best when it's exploring some mystery that isn't easily solved and packs the running time with good performances, moments of character development for our heroes, and enough gruesomeness to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. This one delivered on all of those. By the way, I love the inclusion of a hearing-impaired crew member in this episode. It fits into the story, but I also like to see shows that take an optimistic, inclusive look at the future of humanity. I want to believe things are going to get better and we'll eventually all work side by side, regardless of any personal disabilities or challenges, and that discrimination will one day be a thing of the past.

I continue to enjoy Peter Capaldi's Doctor, and found his sympathy flashcards to be hilarious. My complaints about the previous two episodes and the broad comedy seem irrelevant in the face of such clever, character-driven bits of humor. I think Capaldi is absolutely fantastic, and I warmed to him the moment I saw him in action. After David Tennant's boyish charm and Matt Smith's emo coif, it's nice to have an older man back at the controls of the Tardis, with all the wisdom, experience, and the occasional misguided brashnesh that a veteran actor brings to the role. Though we can never truly have total character revelation for The Doctor (at least, I hope we never do), we get little bits and pieces each and every week that inform who this man is. As a long time fan, I appreciate the sense of history that Capaldi brings to the role.

Also, it appears that all, or nearly all, of the episodes for this season are going to be two-parters, which I'm really excited about. It's just one more nod back to classic Doctor Who serials, which routinely ran for four half-hour episodes. Two hour-long episodes just about matches up perfectly with the amount of time given to stories for several decades of Doctor Who, and it just feels right. After years getting the show back on its feet and back into the hearts of an international public with stories that were Earth-bound and led by an increasingly-youthful lead character, Doctor Who finally seems to be getting back to the status quo that it maintained for for 26 years, with a mysterious, mercurial man running down corridors with death in his wake. Since Capaldi has been in the role, I feel like the show can go anywhere and do anything. It feels like the same Doctor Who I discovered in the '90s, when no one else knew what I was talking about. All of time and space is once again open for exploration, and at the center of it is a madman in a box. Like so many of those classic stories, this episode has a stellar cliffhanger, and I can't wait to see how this story concludes next week.

4.5/5