Thin Ice

Chapter the 281st, has all the frost of the fair.

Plot:
London, 1814. The Doctor and Bill visit the final great Frost Fair, a festival of amusements held on the icy surface of the frozen Thames. They investigate strange lights that can be seen moving under the ice, and bump into a gang of street urchins who have been paid by a dock worker to drum up interest in the fair. The TARDIS travellers witness one of the gang, Spider, surrounded by the lights, then sucked under the ice to his death. Investigating, including using some ancient underwater suits that the Doctor has in the TARDIS, the two of them find that a massive creature is chained up under the Thames, being fed people like Spider - the lights were pilot fish living in symbiosis with the larger creature, bringing it food. The creature then excretes a substance that can be used as a powerful fuel. This is being collected by wealthy industrialist Lord Sutcliffe. When Sutcliffe is racist towards Bill, the Doctor punches him out, but the two TARDIS travellers don't have the upper hand for long - the dock worker and other Sutcliffe goons tie them up in a tent on the ice next to barrels of explosive. They are set to explode at noon, breaking the ice and plunging all the revellers into the water to feed the creature. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to free them both; Bill and the gang members get people off the ice, and the Doctor moves the explosives below the water, so when Sutcliffe detonates it breaks the creature's bonds and frees it. It swims off, breaking the ice and Sutcliffe falls to his death; everyone else gets to safety. The Doctor forges a will, leaving Sutcliffe's house and fortune to the street gang.

  

Context:

Watched unaccompanied, from the BBC iplayer. I didn't get the Blu-ray disc down from the shelf as I am still working my way through the season 20 Blu-ray box set, and wanted to leave the Terminus (I'm up to Terminus now!) disc in the slot to better pick up from when I left off later. Is it just me? There are so many extras on these sets, I can't keep up with them unless I work my way through them linearly. Anyway, this was on a day in late October 2023, and it gave me an opportunity to remind myself about using iplayer in preparation for November 1st 2023 when a lot of Doctor Who content is landing on the platform. From the way it was trailed, I'm thinking there will be some interesting material on there that even a completist fan like me won't have seen. Aren't we fans lucky to be getting all this stuff in the anniversary year?!

Milestone watch: This completes another season of Doctor Who for the blog, the first Peter Capaldi series I've managed to complete, and the fifth new series run altogether (after David Tennant's series 2, Matt Smith's series 6 and Jodie Whittaker's series 11 and 13). It is 16th done out of a current, at the time of writing, total of 39 (the classic seasons 3, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 23 and 25 also having been completed). As I also have covered the festive special Twice Upon a Time featuring Bill, this means I have completed all her stories now.

First Time Round:

The whole family (me, the Better Half and our three children) watched this go out live on BBC1 on the 29th April 2017, the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend. The BH had became tired of Doctor Who the previous year and hadn't watched all the stories, but showrunner Steven Moffat's soft reboot with the introduction of the character of Bill tempted her back. To me, the stories of 2017 do seem fresher and more engaging than the stories of 2015 and the story of 2016, and a lot of that is to do with Pearl Mackie's inclusion as Bill Potts shaking up the dynamic. It somewhat mirrors the situation approaching November 2023. The BH is pretty cold on the Doctor Who stories of recent years (she still hasn't seen any of Flux, for example), but I have a feeling that Tennant and Tate being in the 60th anniversary specials might just bring her back.  

Reaction:

Watching the stories of collected Who in random order occasionally throws up something surprising. It's often that a story one looked forward to turns out to be disappointing on this current watch. How gratifying it is, then, when it's the other way round. I can't remember the last time I watched Thin Ice, but it was certainly at least a couple of years ago, and it is fantastic. It's tucked away at the beginning of the season, but not quite the very beginning, in its unassuming way, perhaps overshadowed by the opening and closing episodes and the trilogy of linked stories in the middle; having just watched it, though, I think it's one of the best stories of the year. A lot of this comes down to the chemistry between the two leads, who are both working hard but making it look effortless. Peter Capaldi as the Doctor is leaning into the slightly tweaked role in this season as a teacher, with Pearl Mackie as his student. This gives her character free reign to fulfill the brief of someone to ask the awkward and interesting questions; Mackie gives the character such charm, warmth and vulnerability that this never becomes irritating. Even if it was ever going to edge towards that, Capaldi's gentle sarcasm (toned down from previous years, but still a part of the character) would cut through that. There's a great sequence early on where Bill, on her first trip back in time, is wondering about how to avoid changing history, and the Doctor winds her - and the audience? - up that they've been accompanied up until that point by someone called Pete, a friend of Bill's that must have stepped on a butterfly or similar and wiped himself out.

The dialogue from writer Sarah Dollard positively sings throughout the running time, but it's particularly good at the start when the two leads are just hanging out together having fun and exchanging lines like the following - Bill: "So the Tardis has dresses and likes a bit of trouble? Yeah, I think I'm low-key in love with her"; Doctor: "Me too". The two characters were allowed a bit more time to interact in the last story Smile too, all part of Steven Moffat's 'repiloting' to introduce the show fresh to the newbies tuning in for the first time. Unlike in that story, though, there's a greater sense of urgency here because a loose plot thread from the story proper is made visible, with Bill seeing mysterious lights below the ice. There's also a nice touch that the Doctor, who she's tried to alert to what she's seen several times, is way ahead of her and lets her know this in an offhand way with an "I assumed we'd get to work eventually". The rest of the plot is straightforward but carefully constructed. Thin Ice, unlike Smile and the story before that The Pilot where the menace was from forces that were misunderstood or misunderstanding, has an honest-to-badness villain in the contemptible Lord Sutclifffe. Playing him, Nicholas Burns has very little screen-time, but it's not a character anyone who's seen the story is likely to forget. Obviously, the series normally treats the mores of the past and the morality of navigating them carefully, and it usually promotes non-violent solutions. There's nonetheless something satisfying about watching the Doctor punch a racist.

There's a good marriage of plot to place and time - Sutcliffe's plan involves more people being on the Thames than usual, hence the fair, and it allows him the rationalisation that people are aware of the dangers of walking on the ice, but take the risk anyway. The creature under the water affects the temperature, meaning that when it is free the Thames will no longer ice over, so this is destined to be the last ever fair. The baddie being the owner of a dark, satanic mill is on point for 1814 too. The inclusion of a gang of ragamuffin street kids feels a bit more Dickensian than Regency (you do expect them to burst into Food Glorious Food at points), but I've no doubt its historically accurate that there were such kids out there at that point. Their inclusion gives the Doctor and Bill people who are vulnerable to protect, and also gives rise to a great scene. Bill sees Spider go under the ice, the first person she's ever seen die, and argues with the Doctor about his lack of emotion over such things. In a few minutes, Mackie gets to run the gamut of emotions, and it's great to watch. The ending is a dilemma similar to scenarios seen before in Doctor Who stories with giant creatures (Kill The Moon, say, or The Beast Below): risk freeing the creature which might put more people in danger or leave things as they are. It's handled with economy compared to those other stories that tended to take too long over explaining things. Thin Ice is more effective for keeping things brisk. This story has it all: thrills and jokes, an elephant and a wresting match - what more do you want?!

Connectivity:

Both Thin Ice and The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit feature the Doctor accompanied by one other person travelling down below a planet's surface while wearing a special suit, then discovering an over-sized creature there.

Deeper Thoughts:

Never cruel or cowardly or carnivorous?! Should the Doctor be a vegetarian? Thin Ice's plot touching on ideas about the exploitation of animals and the value placed on all life suggests this question, which comes up periodically in fan analyses over the years. It's difficult to track with accuracy the Doctor's relationship to food; we're talking about a science fantasy adventure show, so scenes of people eating are few and far between and don't normally have too much of a fuss made of them relative to the rest of the narrative. Right at the beginning, though, we can be reasonably sure that - in his own gaff at least - the Doctor has a meat-free diet. The TARDIS food machine is introduced in the second ever story The Daleks and according to the Doctor synthesises food in blocks blending flavours "like primary colours... you blend two to achieve a third". We don't see the raw materials the machine has fed into it, mind; it could be forming the dispensed food bars out of mashed up guinea pigs for all we know. Assuming that they're either vegetable or mineral, though, we can see - at least when he's in his mobile home - the Doctor isn't eating animals. At this stage, though, he's an explorer who visits various different times, without being able to fully control his ship. He also often spends extended periods separated from the TARDIS in historical periods, and has to go native. As such, logistics probably precluded any strictness about dietary requirements. If he had to eat meat in the Cave of Skulls in his first televised adventure, or when travelling with Marco Polo's caravan for many months, or when staying at a villa in The Romans, then it was not entirely through choice.

The second Doctor enthusiastically tucks into plates of seafood in The Underwater Menace with no qualms, but for later Doctors there isn't as much on screen confirmation one way or another. None of them are vegans, seemingly. The third Doctor's happy to tuck into cheese when guarding Sir Reginald Styles's mansion from ghosts, and the fourth definitely consumed a lot of gelatin in the form of jelly babies over the years. The events at the end of The Two Doctors would tend to suggest that he hasn't been a vegetarian before his sixth incarnation, as he makes something of a big deal about changing his ways at that point. At the start of the story, he's fishing and waxing lyrical about recipes for preparing his anticipated catch. After having to deal with the machinations of a race of aliens that treated humans as food animals, though, he gets some perspective and tells companion Peri that "From now on it's a healthy vegetarian diet for both of us". There's a reference a couple of stories later to the Doctor making nut roast (the quintessential 1980s vegetarian dish, at least in the popular imagination of the time) so he clearly stuck to it for a while. He's seen during the second segment of the Trial of a Timelord to eat fish, but that could be falsified evidence, or it could just be that the Doctor was acting out of character after being 'mindwarped'. For the rest of the classic series, there's again nothing depicted that would confirm things either way. Extended universe texts in the 'wilderness years', though, suggested the Doctor had remained a vegetarian (and confirmed a lot of other characters seen in the classic series were veggie too, like Jo Grant and Mel Bush).

The situation had definitely changed for Christopher Eccleston's Doctor, as in Boom Town he ebulliently orders steak and chips. I haven't heard the interview, but Russell T Davies reportedly said in a podcast that this was a deliberate choice to make the Doctor more relatable to an audience. I'm not sure I agree that vegetarians aren't relatable (I'm married to one, after all), but he was the boss; so, those who were following the bigger story had to accept that the Doctor had lapsed. A possible reason came in Matt Smith's first story The Eleventh Hour. The newly regenerated Doctor - while trying lots of different foods in little Amelia's kitchen, including bacon and fish fingers - explains that every time he changes, his tastebuds do too. Most who hoped for a plant-diet Doctor, though, thought he should take the decision because of morality rather than taste. The twelfth Doctor talked a good game, admonishing Clara in Deep Breath when she mentally separated slaughterhouse from restaurant: "You weren't vegetarian the last time I checked". He was pointing out that the actions of the Half-faced man killing creatures for survival wasn't so different from eating animals. In World Enough and Time, he tells Bill that her bacon sandwich "had a mummy and a daddy". Yet, he appears to be enthusiastic about eating meat in Thin Ice earlier in the season. Is it enough to be aware of morality but not change one's actions? Something to chew over there. Doctor Who stories by Russell T Davies are just about to return to TV at the time of writing. Will the Doctor be on the steak and chips again, or has what is relatable to an audience changed in the two decades, give or take, since the Doctor was eating out in Cardiff? Will food just not be mentioned at all? We'll find out soon.

In Summary:

Cracking!

The Lie of the Land

Chapter the 262nd, where the people in charge are monsters who are lying to us (just an ordinary day in the UK).

Plot:

The Monk creatures have been humanity's benefactors since the first fish crawled out of the sea, helping us to evolve and develop, protecting us right up to the present day. At least, that's what the regular propaganda broadcasts by the Doctor say. Bill knows that it's all a lie, despite the Monks' transmission of some kind of mind control. She keeps alive her memories of Earth before their invasion by imagining a confidant in her mother, who died when she was young, and regularly having conversations with her. Nardole finds Bill and brings her with him on a mission to free to the Doctor, who is held on a prison hulk at sea. The Doctor, though, appears to have gone over to the Monks' side for the sake of peace and stability; an upset Bill shoots him and he starts to regenerate. This is all faked, though - a way to ensure that Bill was not a spy under the Monks' control. The Doctor has gradually broken the conditioning of his guards, and now has a team ready. He consults with Missy in the vault, who tells him the only way to stop the Monks' telepathic control is to kill the person who originally made the agreement with them to invade, i.e. Bill. The three TARDIS travellers and the guard team break into the Monks' pyramidical base in London where the controlling signals are being broadcast, amplified by the many statues of Monks around the world (really disguised transmitters). The Doctor cannot break the signal, and is knocked out. Bill ties him up to stop him interfering and plugs herself into the circuit, expecting to be killed. Instead, her strong memories of her Mum stop the Monks' control; without this, they rapidly leave the planet, and are quickly forgotten.

Context:

Watched from the box-set Blu-ray disc one Sunday evening with all the children (boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10). The youngest thought the Doctor's wide-eyed look into camera as he finishes his pre-credits pro-Monk propaganda speech was the most frightening thing about the story: "Why did the Doctor do that? I thought he was a nice guy." This was all about the sinister face-pulling rather than the propaganda, though; nobody believed for even an instant that the Doctor had really gone bad. The collective opinion from all three afterwards was that the story had been "pretty good".

First Time Round:

I watched this, with the whole family though none of the kids remembered having seen it before this latest watch, on the evening of its BBC1 broadcast on 3rd June 2017. I was very much enjoying the series at the time; the dynamic between the three regular characters was good, and the actors worked together with good chemistry. I was less enamoured of the linking of three stories including The Lie of the Land into a loose trilogy. I preferred the stories that were left standalone (more on that in the Reaction section below).

Reaction:

Often fans will embark on a viewing of all the older Doctor Who stories in order from the beginning; seeing the stories in this context can lead to insights that aren't obvious when watching single stories in a random order (as they appeared as repeats or came out on VHS and DVD). Could there be different insights doing things the other way round, though, as I'm doing for this blog? I thought when I first watched them that the individual Monk stories (Extemis, The Pyramid at the End of the World, and - particularly - The Lie of the Land) were hurt by being part of a trilogy, more than they were being helped by it. I was eager to see the final story of the three as a standalone adventure, and after this watch I do believe it works better that way. Imagine a cold open with a mysterious monstrous force never seen before (if The Lie of the Land had followed Knock Knock, say) suddenly in charge of Earth and claiming to always have been there. The audience would have been disorientated in exactly the same way as their identification figure Bill, wondering what they could rely on as real, particularly as the Doctor seems to be siding with the bad guys. I got a flavour of how that would have hit home this time watching a long time after I saw the preceding story (and just over six months since I last watched Extremis).

The ending is improved too. Once their mind control is switched off, the Monks nick off without a battle or even much fuss; as the end of a trilogy, this was an anticlimax. In the previous stories, the Monks have invested a lot, running simulations of every possible scenario of Earth's defiance, and working out a way that they could take control by fooling the Doctor and his friends. Would they really give up so easily? Without any of that stuff, the ending's still a bit abrupt but it works okay as the finish of just one 45-minute story. Standing alone, The Lie of the Land still has structural issues. The showdown between Bill and the Doctor doesn't convince, because it happens too early at around the 15-minute mark. A big climactic scene with heroes turning on another, and one of them appearing to be killed by the other, happens with 30 minutes to go. The action in that last 30 minutes is therefore a bit flaccid: how could anything else be as exciting as a fake regeneration? I wonder what the scene is doing there at all, really. There must have been a less explosive way to prove that the Doctor and Bill are still on the same side. Maybe it's to introduce the concept of regeneration for newer viewers, as the Capaldi Doctor is headed for his real one within a few episodes. Maybe it's to show that the Doctor's just as good at false narratives as the Monks are, but if so it's not capitalised on. More could have been made of that to build up the denouement and to make it clearer: the Doctor and the Monks' narratives fight against each other, before Bill's 'pure' narrative of her mother proves to be powerful enough to win out.

The imaginary Mum providing the method for the Monks' defeat is a nice note, and ties in to the memories the Doctor gave back to Bill in the first episode of the season by time-travelling back to get Bill the photos of her Mum that she never had. It doesn't quite come off, though - it's just a bit of technobabble and a separate emotional moment, rather than the two being well integrated. Between the climactic sequences at 15 and 45 minutes, there isn't much of note. For a supposedly global story, it is quite small and intimate. Apart from the three regulars and a cameo from Missy, there are no other real characters, just bit parts and background artists. Director Wayne Yip captures a couple of good action sequences. There's a nice darkly comic moment at the resolution when the people of Earth have already forgotten the Monks, believing that events were connected to someone filming some movie or something, constructing their own false narrative as a coping mechanism. The potential of such a strong idea feels a bit wasted, though. I think it would be better as a two-parter, starting with the Monks in control as it currently does, then telling the story of how this came to be in flashbacks as Bill searches for the Doctor and finds Nardole (I'd do it that way round, so Bill drives the plot more). The Doctor confrontation would be the part one cliffhanger, and the second part would be a much harder quest to infiltrate the Monks' base and defeat them. This would also mean throwing out Extremis and creating something completely new. This would have been too much rework for anyone to have considered it when on a tight schedule to complete the series, no doubt. But I can keep this imaginary better version of the story alive in my head nonetheless.

Connectivity:

The Lie of the Land, like The Mutants, is a tale of a colonising force oppressing the local populace of a planet. This time, though, human beings are the oppressed rather than the oppressors.

Deeper Thoughts:

A Theory on Conspiracies. Political leaders in our 'post-truth' era don't have the brainwashing tech of the Monks in The Lie of the Land, but that doesn't mean they aren't projecting false narratives. There was a time about 25 - 30 years ago of much optimism that the age of the World Wide Web would usher in honesty in all dealings, as it would allow access to information such that any fact could be looked up and checked with rapidity. It didn't work out like that, though. It's not explicitly mentioned in the story whether the Monks blocked or changed web pages to fit their big lie, there's just a couple of mentions of physical publications (a character who stashed their old comic books, another arrested for the manufacture of propaganda). It's not exactly clear, but I think the idea is that the Monks haven't made wholesale changes to the available information, they are just suppressing it to avoid it conflicting with what they're broadcasting into people's heads. Did they need to bother though? In our real world, there's no hypno-ray involved, but groups of people will still believe questionable narratives, disregarding any information that doesn't fit. It's the nature of an online echo chamber not that it has to be restricted only to believers, but rather that any non-believers are ignored, their counter-opinions already assumed to be false. Certain political leaders just lie and refuse to engage with the truth; they dare the sceptics to try and convince their followers with facts, knowing that facts don't usually win over beliefs.

I haven't got to it for the blog yet, but I recall that the Harold Saxon as Prime Minister plotline in The Sound of Drums is similar to the Monks' one in The Lie of the Land. The Master uses a hypnotic network of satellites instead of a hypnotic network of statues, but the result is similarly his being put into a position of power over humans. It would have been more interesting, and possibly more true to life, if John Simm's Master had been elected without such interference. People in the UK have had ample proof recently that it requires no techno-mesmerism to get unsuitable people elected to high office, and John Simm looks good in a suit. He'd probably have still been elected if he'd openly run on a platform of allowing an invasion from outer space and reducing the world's population by 10 percent. This is a logical flaw of conspiracy theories: terrible stuff happens out in the open, often without sanction, so why would anyone go to the bother of organising something more covert? In the words of Oscar Wilde, the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. This hasn't stopped Doctor Who from sampling the conspiracy thriller genre often, of course. A couple of notable examples from Jon Pertwee's era are The Ambassadors of Death and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. There was clearly something in the air in the early 1970s, as there were real conspiracies (Watergate) and fictional ones in movies like The Parallax View around then. That film, and one from a decade earlier The Manchurian Candidate, influenced The Deadly Assassin in Tom Baker's era, where the Doctor investigates a conspiracy related to a political assassination on his home planet.

The real world of Doctor Who has its conspiracy theories too, often about the missing 1960s episodes. At one point around 2013, the so-called 'omnirumour' suggested that almost every episode had been rediscovered but they were being held in secret. It was many years before people stopped believing that; maybe some still do and are hoping any day now all those episodes will be returned to the BBC. A flaw of the conspiracy story is that it ends, unlike in the real world. In Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a cult of people have been brainwashed into thinking they are travelling to a new planet to colonise, a space Eden. When it's revealed to them that it's a trick, they seem far too grateful and accepting. Real world interactions with people who, for example, believe without any evidence that 5G masts or Covid vaccinations are being used to control people demonstrate that the people on that fake spaceship would have been much more stubborn and hard to persuade. There may be one or two still aboard today thinking that any day now they will arrive at paradise. It does feel that social media particularly enables people who are so inclined to believe any old nonsense, and facilitates their finding others that believe the same, or can be persuaded to do so, the exact opposite impact from what those Web optimists envisaged all those years ago. The truth can speed round the world as fast as a lie now, but the tools exist to help anyone who so desires to filter it out.

I'm constantly vigilant about this, as I know I'm not immune. I still think it's probable that the president assassinated the day before Doctor Who first started in November 1963 wasn't killed by a lone gunman. I don't think that the conspiracy necessarily went all the way to Lyndon Johnson or many other of the wild claims made over the years. It does though seem plausible that the damage done might not have been from just two shots; it also seems if not impossible then highly challenging for Lee Harvey Oswald to fire three shots in such a short space of time and have two hit target from his vantage point; it also seems quite compelling that many witness statements stated that they saw or heard shots coming from another position (the grassy knoll). I've put this out there on the internet now, so I'm no better than any other conspiracy freak. There's something about the Kennedy conspiracy that compels people; it keeps turning up in films and TV, often as a time travel narrative where people go back to check up on what really happened and end up part of the unfolding events. Perhaps it's more acceptable as it's a somewhat nostalgic conspiracy theory from long before the mess of the social media age. On TV, Doctor Who has only made brief mentions, but there is the 1990s Virgin novel Who Killed Kennedy by David Bishop, which I think is one of the best Doctor Who books from that period. Maybe in a few years time, when there's an even worse form of online social interaction, we'll look back more fondly on paranoid tweets about chemtrails, say, and someone will write a fun Doctor Who story about it. There's that optimism again, but I'd rather that than the alternative.

 

In Summary:

Some good ideas and moments, but the structure (of this story and of the trilogy of which it is part) means it doesn't quite ring true.

Extremis

Chapter The 244th, features the Pope and some Monks inside a life-size Grand Theft Auto.

Plot:

After his final (ish) parting with River Song on the planet Darillium, the Doctor is called to a planet of executioners. The people of the planet take their responsibility seriously and have protocols for every race of the condemned. A Time Lord must be executed by a fellow Time Lord, so they want the Doctor to execute the captive Missy. Nardole arrives, sent by River to remind the Doctor to be kind or something. Taking an oath to watch over Missy for a thousand years, insisted upon by the executioners in case of later regeneration, the Doctor pulls the big kill lever... but he's sabotaged things so Missy survives. (This is told in flashbacks intercut with the main Extremis story.) Many years later, the Doctor now works as a lecturer at a Bristol university, with Nardole as his assistant and Missy locked in an underground vault. The Doctor is still blinded after an unprotected space walk in a previous adventure, but hiding this with his special techno-sunglasses. He receives an email from an unlikely source...

The pope and entourage visit to ask for help with the 'Veritas', an ancient text fabled as one that whenever it is read in translation, the reader commits suicide. They want the Doctor to read it. He agrees, and with Bill and Nardole is taken to a secret Vatican library of forbidden works. Bill and Nardole are separated from the Doctor and find a portal that can lead them to many different locations including the Pentagon and CERN, where the scientists have all read the Veritas emailed to them by one of the Vatican translators. They are about to commit a mass suicide by blowing up the building, and Bill and Nardole only just escape in time. Investigating, Nardole sees that the different locations are being projected, and when he steps out of the projection field, he disappears. The Doctor is attacked by Monk-like creatures and flees. Bill catches up with him in a projection of the Oval office. The Doctor has worked out that they only think they are real, but are in fact characters in a computer simulation that the Monks are using to trial different scenarios in advance of an invasion. The Veritas revealed the nature of the fake world, and the suicides were just people exiting the game. A monk kills Bill, but before he is killed too, the Doctor subroutine manages to email out the details to the real world Doctor.

Context:

Watched from the Blu-ray on my own one evening with a glass of wine. Perhaps I am the only member of the household (which comprises as well as me the Better Half and three children, boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10) who hasn't grown out of Doctor Who yet. None of them have watched any stories with me for some time. I think the children will come back for Jodie Whittaker's swan song The Power of the Doctor (a few days away at time of writing), but not sure about the BH, who hasn't watched any new Who since before Flux. Time will tell, it usually does, &c. 

First Time Round:

Watched this story live with the whole fam when it first went out in the UK on BBC1, Saturday 20th May 2017. It's only just over five years ago, but I can't remember any detail. It was in the middle of a general election campaign, but the UK in those times and since always seems to be having an election campaign, or referendum, or the threat of one or the other, happening, so that doesn't narrow things down. I remember being generally happy with this latest series - the dynamic between the three regular characters was good, and I'd enjoyed the first five stories of the year before Extremis. Looking back at posts on this blog from the period, I see that I was struggling to get through The Time Monster around the time of the broadcast of Extremis, and I would publish my thoughts on it in another week's time. The Time Monster and the empty, repetitive sloganeering of Theresa May; no wonder I don't want to remember! 

Reaction:

In the UK at the time of writing, Extremis writer and exec producer Steven Moffat's latest drama Inside Man just completed its first series. I started watching with much enthusiasm as the pre-publicity had indicated an intriguing premise and it had a strong cast. I did not get much past the halfway point before I bailed on it. The plot could only develop because of a series of coincidences and increasingly silly decisions by characters, to the point where it became a bit wearing to watch. The character being put under most pressure, played by David Tennant, was a vicar, and so I wonder whether this was somehow intended to be an updated version of the story of Job. A common theme with people I saw online discussing the show was that, though most were quick to say that it was far fetched and silly, they felt that it was nonetheless compulsive: they had to keep watching to see what lurid and ridiculous scenario would occur next, and what indignities Tennant's character would bring upon himself or others. Moffat is clearly someone who can plot a piece of drama tightly if he so desires, without relying on coincidence or insane character decisions. I'm convinced therefore that he deliberately structured his drama this way, for better or worse. Those online comments reminded me of something else, but it wasn't until I watched Extremis with it's big borrowings from the novel Angels & Demons (secret clues in old writings and buildings, the Pope, Cardinals, the Vatican, CERN) that I realised what it was. Operatically - even, stratospherically - silly plotting, but compulsive for the viewer / reader's curiosity at a base level. With Inside Man, Moffat was just possibly trying to write like Dan Brown.

I wouldn't even say Moffat's latest effort was trying to write like Brown again, as beside the superficial trappings Extremis isn't much like a Dan Brown potboiler. It's definitely very watchable, with the central mystery of the Veritas text keeping up interest, but the underlying explanation is sensible (at least compared to secret societies collecting anti-matter to blow up the world, or whatever the plot of A&D was exactly - it's a long time since I read it and I ideally want to put it behind me!). The central conceit that the Doctor and friends we're seeing are self-aware cyberspace versions of themselves allows for some impactful scenes such as the whole of the CERN staff with Bill and Nardole thinking of and chanting the same number over and over again. It is pretty easy to program multiple calls to a random number function that produce different results, but the monks had a lot of coding to do simulating the entire world, so I'll forgive them for cutting corners. More distracting was my wondering throughout why reading the text produces an instant 'suicide' in everyone. Towards the end, Moffat throws in something of an explanation for why the Monks put the Veritas in their simulation - it's to see who's clever enough to work out they're not real. As such, the Monks would presumably want such people to stay alive for study, and therefore it can't be the programming forcing these deaths on people. So, why is it so comprehensive? Perhaps it's just me, but if I found out that I was living in a computer game, I'd want to stay alive as long as possible and have some fun. Though it is effective, the simulation plot is quite slight. Only one real thing happens, the simulated Doctor sends himself an email. It's a nice moment: even a copy of the Doctor can outsmart the bad guys and get a warning out to his real life counterpart. But it does mean that the main story is essentially just treading water, and the fight against the Monks doesn't start properly until the following week's episode.

In order to bulk up Extremis, flashbacks to the origin story of the Missy vault are intercut. It's the right time in the series as a whole for there to be some answers about this, with hints having been dropped in the previous five stories. The trouble is that it has no link at all to the simulation / Veritas plot. It's just for exposition because, in the course of the Monk saga (not even in the next episode, though, but the one after that), Missy will be brought into play, and this gets out of the way the necessary explanation of how she came to be in the vault. Moffat makes an effort to thematically link the memories of Missy's failed execution in to the main plot at the end, but it's a sticking plaster. This is a criticism that would only come up on second watch, though, first time out it gets away with it. Helping things along is good direction and production design throughout. The Monks are an effective new creation, with the sequence of them chasing the partially-sighted Doctor (after he's tried to fix his eyes with a gizmo) being particularly good. The scene where Bill's date with Penny is interrupted by the Pope is one of the funniest of this period, so good they did a callback to it in the next episode. The only other minor issues I have are in the Missy execution sequences, and they're both bad habits of the writer. The first scene is worded ambiguously so the audience might think momentarily that it's the Doctor that's going to be executed; Moffat does this sort of thing a lot (another example would be when Matt Smith's Doctor says "It's mine" in A Good Man Goes to War, and could be talking about the crib or Amy's baby) and I don't know why. It adds nothing except confusion. The other flaw is another recurring one, the Doctor grandstanding in a face off with someone based on his universal reputation. He gets the executioners to back down and leaves with Missy by intimidating them with all the places in their records he's listed as "cause of death". Given that the script has just been making a big deal of his mercy and compassion, it's a bit of a bum note.

Connectivity: 

Both Extremis and Meglos are stories with one word titles that feature a religious order, and both have a character appear throughout the action who looks like the Doctor, but isn't really him.

Deeper Thoughts:

The great uncast. Long-term readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know that I always use an obliquely linked photograph for the banner image at the top of each post. For Extremis, it was obvious to me that this should be Dan Brown related, maybe using a movie poster for the Angels & Demons celluloid adaptation. Then, I heard the news about Robbie Coltrane's death at age 72, and went with the image of him you can see above from film The Pope Must Die(t), as a small tribute. Sometimes celebrity deaths impact me more than I would have anticipated, and Coltrane's was such a surprising reaction. I was a huge fan of his comedy work in the 1980s and his dramatic work in the 1990s. The most surprising thing is that he had nothing at all to do with Doctor Who. I'm usually able to separate the work from the person and not get any unwarranted emotions mixed in, but finding out about the passing of - just to take two examples - Jon Pertwee and Terrance Dicks hit me hard despite this. My affection for Doctor Who lowers my barriers somewhat, but Coltrane had somehow got past them despite never appearing in my favourite show. My next thought was probably obvious: why hadn't Robbie Coltrane ever appeared in Doctor Who? Two guest cast members of Extremis, Jennifer Hennessey and Joseph Long, had appeared in different prominent roles only a few years previously - they were already doubling up, but there wasn't a chance to find a role for Robbie? He might have made a good comic cameo as the Pope in Extremis, though was likely too big a star in the new series era, or maybe just not interested. The nearest he came to appearing was being considered for a role in Revelation of the Daleks in the mid-1980s, probably either as Takis or the DJ (the latter was eventually played by fellow Comic Strip and Young Ones alumni Alexei Sayle).

Who else is surprisingly missing from the cast lists of Doctor Who, new and old? Catching a bit of Strictly Come Dancing in the UK recently, I saw Will Mellor on screen and wondered which was the Doctor Who story he was in. I checked online and was surprised to find that he's never appeared in the show, nor any spin off or tie-in. I think at the back of my mind I had him appearing in maybe 42 (but that was William Ash). That seems odd to me, as he is exactly the sort of person that could have been cast anytime in the last ten years. Just because he was mentioned in a recent Doctor Who Magazine interview, I also thought about Rob Brydon. He too seemed like an obvious guest star for recent years. Just like new Who, he was made in Wales, and seemed happy to act in other BBC productions. Perhaps both Mellor and Brydon have been too busy, or not interested, or both. Of the alternative comedy generation Robbie Coltrane was part of in the early 1980s, a few people have been notable by their absence. Only two of the five main actors in The Young Ones have featured in Doctor Who proper (aside from the previously mentioned Sayle, Christopher Ryan has appeared a few times over the years), plus Nigel Planer was the lead in a touring Doctor Who live production in theatres in 2010. It was a terrible shame Rik Mayall never managed to appear before his tragic early death - he was being considered (also by director Graeme Harper, who had cast Sayle in Revelation of the Daleks) as the villain in The Dark Dimension, a special planned for the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who in 1993 that then fell through. Adrian Edmondson could easily have a guest role still; he's worked as a straight actor on lots of BBC productions, including in recurring roles in long-running series Holby City and Eastenders.

The showrunners of Doctor Who since its return in 2005 do each have something of a repertory of actors that reappear in many of their works. Both Russell T Davies and Chris Chibnall started their period on the show by casting an actor they had worked with in their last production (The Second Coming and Broadchurch respectively) as the Doctor. Davies repeated it the following year by giving David Tennant the main role in Doctor Who after they had worked together on Casanova. A lot of Chibnall's Broadchurch regulars have appeared in Doctor Who, although many - Tennant, Olivia Colman, Arthur Darvill - appeared in Doctor Who first. Still, regulars of the third series of his investigative drama Lenny Henry and Julie Hesmondhalgh were cast in Doctor Who when Chibnall was in charge. Andrew Buchan and Carolyn Pickles, who had large parts throughout Broadchurch, stick out as possible guest stars in Doctor Who in future. Steven Moffat wasn't so much of a drama writer before Who, and worked with mostly different casts through his sitcom writing years, but still managed to cast the lead of his first ever show Julia Sawalha in a Doctor Who skit for comic relief in 1999. I'm surprised he never found a role for Gina Bellman,with whom he'd worked on a couple of show, when he ran the show proper. Russell T Davies seems to have been the most comprehensive at recasting from his previous shows. There are many examples between 2005 and 2009 - Jo Joyner, Mark Benton, Debbie Chazen, Jo-Stone Fewings, Peter O'Brien, Lesley Sharp, Jessica Hynes, and others. For his second showrunner period, there are a lot of people he's worked with since that could easily slot into Who roles, such as Olly Alexander and Lydia West (with whom Moffat has also worked recently). I could probably go on like this for hours. The only way that Doctor Who can cast everyone who'd be a good fit is for it to keep going for ever! Here's hoping... 

In Summary:

It's watchable; not quite extremely good, but extreme-ish.

World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

Chapter The 224th, where a servant is disguised as one of two Masters. 

Plot:

In his ongoing attempt to rehabilitate Missy, the Doctor sets up a test where she, accompanied by Bill and Nardole, answers a distress call in deep space, while the Doctor monitors from the TARDIS. They have materialised on the bridge of a 400-mile long colony ship, so vast that it contains areas within of different landscapes, including solar farms with holographic skies. It was on its maiden voyage to pick up colonists, crewed by a 50-strong skeleton staff, when it came close to a black hole. Two days prior to the TARDIS team's arrival, a team went down - in super fast inertia (magic) lifts - to the other end of the ship to turn the reverse thrusters to full power in an attempt to escape the black hole. Suddenly, there were thousands of life forms showing on the ship's sensors, even though the ship had not been boarded; mysterious cloth-faced figures arrived in the lifts to take the remaining humans from the bridge, leaving only non-human Jorj the janitor. He is so petrified of any human appearing and attracting these figures that he threatens Bill - the only human in this new party - with a gun. The Doctor leaves the TARDIS to defuse the situation, but is too late as Bill is shot, and her severely wounded body taken off in a lift by the cloth-faces. The Doctor explains that time dilation caused by the black hole means time is running much slower on the bridge than at the other end of the ship, and the life forms are descendants of the original crew who went down there.

In the time it takes the Doctor to explain this, and overpower Jorj to get to the lift, ten years have gone by for Bill. She had a new electronic heart fitted, but cannot leave the hospital as it will stop working. She is befriended by a porter / handyman Razor while she waits for the the Doctor. In the hospital are many more patients in the cloth-face masks in lots of pain. Everyone is weak and dying (whether this is due to inbreeding or engine fumes or something else is not spelled out), and the eventual plan is to operate on everyone and then leave for the higher levels, Operation Exodus. The medical procedure, though, is to convert everyone to a cyberman form, and Razor is really the Master in disguise. When the Doctor arrives, he's just too late, and Bill has been fully converted. The Master and Missy (wavering as to which side she's on) capture the Doctor to gloat at him, but he's made a change to the Cyber neural network to make the Cybermen come after Time Lords too, forcing his dual enemies to join forces with him to escape the attacking horde. With Bill in Cyber form, resisting her conditioning, they all escape in a shuttle craft piloted by Nardole, which crashes into a solar farm on level 507 of the ship.

A group of humans, including children, live on this level. The Doctor wants to help them, but the Master just wants to escape - the Master's TARDIS is on the bottom level, and even though broken, can be fixed by a spare component Missy has. The Doctor implores Missy to join him and fight, even though the odds seem stacked against them, but she starts to leave with the Master. Having second thoughts, she fatally stabs her previous self precisely enough that he'll have time to get away (and presumably then regenerate into her). The Master won't let her stand alongside the Doctor, though, and zaps her with his laser screwdriver. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Cyber-Bill fight the attacking Cybermen, leaving Nardole to escape with the others to a higher level, becoming their protector for future Cyber skirmishes. At the end of the battle, all the cybermen are destroyed but both the Doctor and Bill appear to be dying. The watery pilot version of Heather, Bill's crush, appears from the rain, having never stopped tailing Bill. She converts Bill into a similar pilot form, they drop the Doctor off in the TARDIS and go off to explore the universe together. The Doctor looks like he's going to regenerate, but holds it back, landing at the South Pole where he meets his earliest (as known at that time anyway) incarnation, who is also staving off his regeneration. To be continued at Christmas...

Context:

It's ages since I last blogged, apologies. I took a week or more after watching the last Doctor Who story - as well as going to the BFI event related to Season 22 to watch another - to write up my notes and publish the associated post, then another week after that before I had time to watch the next one chosen at random. On a Sunday in March, I sat down to watch World Enough and Time from the new series 10 Blu-ray, with all three children, boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9; I was surprised particularly that the eldest wanted to watch, but he did. They all stayed for the duration, but there wasn't time that day to watch the second half so it was almost another week before completing the story (I watched a whole classic series Doctor Who story in the gap, but that's for next time). Comments from the children included a chorus of views on how the Doctor had "Very long hair" in the pre-credits scene, the younger two laughing a lot at Matt Lucas's lines as Nardole, the eldest saying "Is that Sam Tyler?" at the Master reveal, referencing one of John Simm's most prominent roles, and the middle child wondering "Where did they get the pigs?" to make the bacon for the breakfast Razor makes in the first episode, before the presence of farms made this clear in the second.

First Time Round:

I first saw this story on its debut BBC1 broadcast in the UK on two consecutive Saturdays towards the end of June 2017. I can't remember much detail, but I know that I caught them both accompanied by definitely the Better Half and probably all the family, slightly time-shifted on the evenings of broadcast. I remember being a bit worried ahead of broadcast about the title for the first episode, as it included the word 'Time'; including that word in a title has previously been seen as a curse which will mean the story will turn out not to be much cop (see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Time Monster blog post from May 2017, a month ahead of World Enough and Time's broadcast, for more details). From other blog posts around this time (it's as close as I get to keeping a diary), I see that there was a heatwave going on in the UK around when the episodes were shown, and that - with rather unseasonal festiveness - I continued the Doctor Who fun after The Doctor Falls by watching David Tennant and Catherine Tate Christmas special The Runaway Bride with the Better Half. The 'Time' curse seemed to have lifted, as I liked the story unreservedly on this first watch; but, I have to admit the one key reaction I remember having was thinking that Peter Capaldi in the opening sequence needed a haircut (just as my children did this time round).

Reaction:

There are broadly two types of Cyberman story in the history of Doctor Who, the more action-oriented that foreground the silver giants' remorseless invulnerability, and the more horror-inflected stories that concentrate more on their emotionlessness and conversion of others. The former outnumber the latter significantly, and often a Cyber story only touches briefly on the latter themes, while most of its plot is concerned with the former (e.g. the last story covered for the blog, Attack of the Cybermen, which has some body horror moments highlighting cyber conversion, but for the most part is an actioner). The reason for this, I think (and as I outlined in a bit more detail in the Deeper Thoughts section of a Cyber story post many years ago) is that doing justice to the full horror of the Cyberman concept within a Doctor Who TV story is hard. To be truly impactful to the concept as conceived by Cybermen creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, it has to be gradual. These are a group of people who bit by bit replaced every part of themselves with machinery over the years, and in doing so lost their souls. Usually, a Doctor Who story structure can't fit in the sweep of elapsed time required to show this process. It's probably easier to do such stories in other tie-in media (I've not experienced any, but have heard that the Big Finish audio Spare Parts, which also sets out to show a "Genesis of the Cybermen", is very good). Writer Steven Moffat's clever use of the time dilation caused by proximity to a black hole to allow this, makes this story - to my mind at least - the very best Doctor Who Cyberman story of the horror type.

Interestingly, the script gets the best of both worlds / times, as the second episode becomes an all-action shoot out with the Mondas monsters, who niftily - thanks to that time dilation again - change from the creepy cloth-faced versions to the more combat-friendly steel-encased models that better suit the evolving narrative. The two episodes together cover pretty much anything you'd want from a Cyberman story. The change of genre between part 1 and 2 of a series finale is reminiscent of the previous Capaldi season, where the creepy haunted castle vibes of penultimate episode Heaven Sent gave way to the space western of Hell Bent (similarly, The Doctor Falls sees our Time Lord sharp-shooter holed up in an isolated outpost, including a barn, protecting its inhabitants from attacking 'bandits' that massively outnumber the heroes); again, the episodes are directed with flair by Rachel Talalay. The presence of the Cybermen in both halves makes World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls story much more of a whole piece than that previous attempt, as does another strong subplot that runs through both parts. This is the conclusion of a running thread for the season - the rehabilitation of Missy. At the point of her final test, she needs to face up to her evil past and make a choice. It's another great script decision that her evil past is personified in the John Simm version of the Master, who's having a ball and really delivers, though Michelle Gomez matches him. It seemed screamingly obvious to me that Razor was him in disguise, though, despite good make-up and costume, but that just brought back happy memories of watching Anthony Ainley as the (often poorly) disguised Master in the 1980s. I wonder if anyone was truly fooled? This is the first time that Doctor Who on TV has featured two different incarnations of the Master working together in a story, so Moffat is innovating right up to the end...

Well, nearly the end. The biggest beef I have with this story is that it's not the swansong for Peter Capaldi that it looks to be at the outset. The flash forward in the cold open of the first episode teases the Doctor starting to regenerate, and the story involves him tying up the themes of the season, doing a big speech about his personal credo ("Why not, just at the end, just be kind?"), saying emotional goodbyes, and standing up against insurmountable odds, sacrificing himself to help others in an epic war zone. Nardole gets to be heroic, and has a love interest in the character of Hazran (nicely played by Samantha Spiro); Bill gets to go off into eternity with the character of Heather from her very first story. There's even a flashback clip montage of all the other companions and friends saying "Doctor" at the end like in Logopolis. And after that... Capaldi stays alive for another whole episode. I talked in the recent blog post for Time Flight about the delicate balancing act between material that forms the climax of a story or season (or as is the case of this moment, the climax of a Doctor's whole era) versus the material that follows. This is an example of how not to do it, as everything is said and done and wrapped up by the end of The Doctor Falls, so the following story and Capaldi's actual final episode Twice Upon a Time has nothing to do but tread water. This was forced upon Moffat reportedly, as a relatively late decision saw Chris Chibnall preferring not to introduce his new take on the show in a Christmas special, so Moffat had to dig in and create one more story. It's a shame.

The production design is superb throughout. The updated take on the very earliest Cybermen design is a tour de force, combining with script, performance and direction to take what was an imaginative but never wholly satisfactory look from 1966 and make it scary, heartbreaking (Bill as a Cyberman, shedding a single tear) and iconic. The creepy dark corridors of the hospital, populated with grotesques (the surgeon and nurse characterisations are just as 'large' as Simm's Razor), are magnificent and sinister. The second part is not as much of a visual challenge, but the finale battle scenes are suitably epic. Music and effects work also match the overall high standard. There's a couple of questionable moments of the script, but they only show up on a second or third watch. There's a lot of talk about how the patients in semi-Cyber state can't leave the hospital, but lots of them are clearly seen to do just that. Then, there's the lifts - they're a bit of a plot hole. In the first episode, they must somehow operate without being impacted by the time dilation, as otherwise the journeys up and down all the levels of the ship, would take years and either Bill or her Cyber attendants would have carked it before getting to the bottom level and the hospital. (Mind you, Bill does seem to be obeying some kind of Road Runner version of physics where she can have a massive hole blasted out of her, but not fall down until - like Wile E Coyote having rushed off a precipice - she looks down and notices.) In the second part, though, when the lifts are a potential means of escape, suddenly they're slow relative to the bottom decks again. The story also doesn't get fully resolved, with the Cybermen still having the potential to regroup and attack Nardole and his charges sometime in the future, and poor old Jorj the janitor is presumably still on the bridge wondering exactly what's going on. I like this, though; it gives it an edge to show that any victories - as the Doctor admits to Missy in his big speech - are only temporary ones. 

Connectivity: 

A brace of 45 minutes per episode two-parter stories featuring the Cybermen, one after the other. Both this story and Attack of the Cybermen focus on the Cybermen converting people (rarer than you'd think), have links back to the Cybs first appearance in the 1960s, feature time travel shenanigans, and have an actor returning to a role on the show they've played before, in both instances a male with dubious morality (Lytton, The Master).

Deeper Thoughts:

A treatise on morals as seen through the prism of Sci-fi convention appearances; TRIGGER WARNING: contains John Barrowman. One thing that World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls does not get right for me, is the level at which the decision was made to leave behind flesh in favour of metal and plastic, and leave behind emotions for logic. I've always found it most chilling to imagine that the original Mondasians willingly and individually turned themselves into Cybermen, rather than being forced as is usually depicted in the series, as indeed it is in this Capaldi two-parter where some kind of elite group is operating on the innocent populace against their will. I would love one day for this to be explored on TV, but the details established of Cyber lore leave enough wriggle room that it can be seen that Mondas as a whole made the decisions that took them down the path to losing their humanity (or Mondasianity, I suppose), and that some individuals might not have had much choice in the matter. Perhaps it is just as scary, not losing one's own way but being swept up in a collective wave of people who believe they know what's best for one. This certainly has a contemporary resonance, which Moffat spells out in the script having the Doctor say "People plus technology minus humanity: the internet, cyberspace, Cybermen" and "Always read the comments, because one day they'll be an army." The thing about any twitter pile-on is that the majority think what they're doing is right. Can any of us say that we haven't been caught up in a collective reaction against what appears to be some egregious act when we're presented with it, maybe without sufficient context, on social media? Is it best to swim against such a stream? This is a point where I feel I have to reiterate the trigger warning - I'm going to talk about this in relation to John Barrowman.

The Captain Jack actor is very unpopular with a section of fandom that regularly air their views on social media, because of some silly behaviour he exhibited when making Doctor Who and Torchwood nearly 15 years ago. I will state upfront that I'm not a particular fan of the actor or of the character - they're both perfectly fine, and have had some great moments here and there, but I would never stand in line for a selfie or an autograph. A lot of people would, though, and I think they should be allowed to do so. That's just my opinion, though no doubt some people will judge me for such a stance. The history of this is as follows. John Barrowman, no doubt trying to be more outrageous than anyone else with regard to theatrical backstage pranks, used to get his willy out occasionally and flash people during the making of Doctor Who and Torchwood. It was well known at the time (around 2005 to 2008), and talked about regularly in interviews and convention appearances. There was no attempt to hide that this was going on, and there was no indication that there was any sexual intent to these actions. It was seen by some at least as a bit of fun (in a jokey cast and crew video made towards the end of Russell T Davies's first period as Doctor Who showrunner, it is explicitly referenced, for example). Were they wrong to accept this behaviour at that time? Many now think so. A criticism often levelled is that if someone in an office job did the same thing, they'd be fired. This is an unfair equivalence, to my mind, though, as an office job doesn't routinely involve people changing into and out of costumes. A better comparison would be of a sporting team. I feel sure that even in the current day and age, if someone was playing similar pranks in a locker room, and it was making other people feel uncomfortable, they would not be fired but would be taken aside and given a quiet word re: not doing it anymore.

This is what happened with Barrowman. A complaint was made in 2008 related to Barrowman's behaviour on Torchwood, and executive producer Julie Gardner reprimanded him. It was around this time also that what Barrowman refers to as his "exuberant behaviour" was discussed on a national radio programme for BBC Radio 1, again in a jokey manner. Playing up to this, Barrowman undid his trousers, not realising that there was a webcam streaming the visuals. Nothing was caught by the cameras, and the BBC only received one complaint, but Barrowman nonetheless issued a full apology. There is anecdotal testimony that he might have gone back to his old ways on the set of the Arrow series that he filmed later, but given a reputation that was now established and that he gleefully was playing up to, and given that this was based on things said by people at convention appearances playing to the crowd, those reports might well be exaggerated. Anyway, there's no evidence that any such behaviour has happened in the last decade, and Barrowman has been in a lot of dressing rooms in that time. There's no statute of limitations on moral considerations, though. In the last year, the behaviour from 2008 and thereabouts has become known to a new generation of fans who missed it first time round. Much more controversy arose than ever had in 2008 (even when there was a risk that some could have seen it happen on a webcam stream) just at the idea that it had happened back then. O tempora, o mores!

Ironically, what seemed to bring the subject back to light was a recording shared online of a past convention appearance not including Barrowman, where someone else (who I'm not going to name, but he also played a semi-regular on Doctor Who in those early years after the relaunch) talked about Barrowman's behaviour; this person, though, was someone who'd been accused of a systematic pattern of much more serious offences alleged to happen at around the same time and beyond, and about whom an active criminal investigation was ongoing. This is probably the most important of the levels at which consideration of this behaviour is made, the legal level. I don't think anyone can or should say (without risk of libel) that Barrowman's actions were sexual harassment, as that term has a legal definition. There has never been a criminal investigation into Barrowman's actions, let alone charges brought. The public record does not register anything even being raised with the police. Another level, not really connected to legal or even moral considerations, is commercial or corporate concerns. A planned Big Finish audio starring John Barrowman was shelved in 2021 when the controversy first emerged (not even re-emerged really, as I reiterate it was not - whether one thinks it right or wrong - controversial first time round). That's a commercial decision - Big Finish are a company with a small, loyal and social media-savvy customer base; being associated with something potentially harmful to their brand would cost them disproportionately, so they probably felt they had to take that decision. ITV on the other hand have continued to employ Barrowman because they presumably feel that they can take whatever minor hit it might make to their audience.

I'm not a lawman, and I don't run a company. That leaves only considerations at the moral level for me. And morality is a personal thing, isn't it? I don't think anyone taking a stance against John Barrowman is doing it through a Christian moral lens, which would anyway instruct one to forgive another's trespasses and leave everything else to be decided between them and their maker. Not being a religious type, I only have my personal moral awareness. This leads me to one conclusion - John Barrowman doesn't owe me anything, certainly not an apology. He's never flashed me (I suspect he's never flashed anyone who's complaining about him online either). Though I understand and empathise with someone who may have had an unpleasant personal experience with similar behaviour to Barrowman's, and I appreciate how that might change their judgement, I don't think it should impact my own decision. I also empathise with those frustrated with the law's failings for victims in this area; but I get very nervous at trying to close that gap by desiring a widespread moral standard to be established that aligns with one's own views. This can start off small (like the "If you follow X, then please stop following me" messages that people tweet in the heat of emotion sometimes on social media platforms), but where does it lead? A morality-inspired like-minded group doing work they believe the authorities are neglecting is a definition of the worst kind of vigilantism, and many of the same people taking against Barrowman would no doubt recoil in horror at other groups still out there guided by a moral duty to take the law into their own hands.

When I see a chorus of cloned disapproval online, it seems pious. It reminds me of a caricature of a Victorian gentleman, getting red in the face at the moral taint of some fallen woman. But because we believe we're addressing this ire at aggressors, we think it's okay (and note, I'm including myself, nobody's immune to getting swept up in this). Are we willingly leaving behind our discernment and leaping to judgement too quickly? Barrowman was recently announced as appearing in a ComicCon in Wales (he's since pulled out, anyway, stating reasons not connected to any controversy, who knows whether true or not). My twitter feed lit up on the day of the announcement with a lot of fans expressing their anger at this decision, which is fine - they are free to do so. Some said that they would not go to an event if that person was present, and again they are free to do so. They'd be within their rights to lobby the organisers to reverse the invitation too, and enough of a stink could cause a commercial reaction. This makes me uneasy, though. If it's accepted that not everyone will come to the same moral judgements, and that the one thing John Barrowman as a professional entertainer might be said to owe someone is entertainment, then what about the people who want to see him? Shouldn't they be free to do so? What would one be protecting them from - did anyone realistically think there was a possibility of Barrowman showing anyone his penis in the International Centre in Telford? The Missy / Master subplot of World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls is about the possibility of redemption. Could we not imagine the same possibility for someone in real life as well as in fiction?

In Summary:

It's the one Cyberman story that creates world and time enough to let the concept be properly explored. Plus, there's also the Capaldi's Doctor's last (ish) brave stand, and a subplot about two incarnations of the Master - what more could one want?