The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone

Chapter The 146th, which is a cracking story, with a great big crack in it.

Plot:

The Doctor and Amy, after receiving a ridiculous and over-complicated message from River Song, save the archaeologist as she escapes from a doomed spacecraft, the Byzantium.  The ship crashes on the planet Alfava Metraxis and a Weeping Angel escapes into catacombs of that planet - the so called maze of the dead. A group of religious soldiers arrive lead by Father Octavian, who River Song is working with on day release from the Stormcage prison in order to earn herself a pardon for killing a good man (Who could that possibly be?). They all venture into the maze to track down the angel, but realise the statues all around them are not in fact statues at all, but hundreds and hundreds of nearly dead angels. The radiation from the crashed ship is bringing them to life, the crash having been engineered to bring this about. The party start to get picked off, one by one. Finally surrounded, they are saved by the Doctor, who does something very clever with some gravity-related equipment, allowing them to float back up to the crashed ship, and climb inside. Here is a greater source of energy that the angels are seeking to feed off, and the Doctor soon discovers what it is - a crack, like the one in Amy's bedroom wall when he first met her, a crack in space-time itself, bleeding out energy. The Doctor examines the crack and discovers it was created on the 26th June 2010 - Amy's time. To escape the ever stronger angels, they escape into an onboard forest (used as an oxygen factory).

After an earlier altercation with some video footage of an angel ("That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel") Amy is being taken over by an angel inside her mind. To stop it, she must close her eyes completely. The Doctor, River and Octavian leave her stuck in the forest with the remaining cleric soldiers as guards, and make for the spaceship's control room. The encroaching angels suddenly run off, scared of the glowing crack which has appeared in the forest. One by one, each of the soldier guards go to investigate the crack, and disappear, with those remaining, except Amy, unaware that their colleagues had ever existed. The crack is devouring things, and wiping them out of existence. Octavian gets caught by an angel, but just before he dies tells the Doctor not to trust River. With all the soldiers gone, and the wave of time energy from the crack advancing, Amy has to escape through a group of angels with her eyes closed; luckily, River manages to fix the teleport and bring her to the control room. The angels advance on them, but the Doctor does something else very clever with gravity-related equipment, and the angels all fall into the crack. the ingestion of such a complicated space-time event as the angels causes the crack to close. The Doctor says goodbye to River, who tells him they'll meet again when the Pandorica opens. Back at Amy's home, she reveals that she's been running away from her wedding the next day; the Doctor realises that Amy's wedding day is the 26th June 2010.

Context:

Watched the episodes from the Blu-ray, one episode per week as it was originally broadcast. For the first episode, I was joined by all the kids (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7), who all liked it enough to come back a week later. This time they were also joined by the Better Half (woman, perpetually 21). The youngest was very excited that it was a Matt Smith episode, as she thinks of him as her Doctor, despite the fact that he bowed out before she was even old enough to watch the show. It's great that she's formed an attachment, just a shame that it couldn't be for the first female Doctor (who up until recently she would shy away from, but that situation is improving - she's watched all the episodes of the latest series live so far). She was also very impressed by River Song, saying "I like her" often during flashy shenanigans in the first episode.

First time round:

Having only two very young children in 2010, the Better Half and I were still watching Doctor Who just as a couple, generally live as it was broadcast on BBC1 or slightly time-shifted if we needed to put the kids to bed during the transmission slot. It was an exciting new phase of the show, but by the time of this fourth episode I was already hoping for a return to form. The Eleventh Hour had been good, The Beast Below a bit ho-hum. But - with the caveat that I have not yet watched it for the blog, so may reappraise when that happens - Victory of the Daleks was crushingly disappointing, squandering all its promising set-up on a wonky story to launch a Dalek re-design that was truly frightful. I'd seen parts of the Angels 2-parter in the trailer aired before the series started, particularly the big speech at the end of The Time of Angels "There's one thing you never, ever, put in a trap - me", and so had a feeling that it was going to restore my faith. It came to pass that the episode did indeed deliver the goods, and I was thoroughly enjoying myself by the time the end of the episode and that speech came around. Just as it was getting very rousing, a yellow banner appeared on the screen, with a dancing animated Graham Norton, plugging the next show to air. Before. Matt. Smith. Had. Finished. Speaking. It completely ruined the moment, and slightly soured the experience of the whole episode. Fearful that this was going to be the norm from then on, I was one of the approximately 5000 people to complain, and thankfully the Beeb stopped the practice.

Reaction:

2010's new lead writer and exec Steven Moffat appears to play things safe with his first set of episodes. Taking over from Russell T. Davies at the height of popularity, he reuses the basic structure that Davies set up for his seasons. There are three relatively lightweight stories to kick off, one contemporary invasion story, one set in the future, one in the past. There's a running reference in every episode that allows the audience to play a 'Where's Wally / Waldo?' type game. Davies smuggled in references to Bad Wolf, Torchwood or Harold Saxon, Moffat has the mysterious crack following our heroes around the universe, which cameoed in each of those first three episodes. Then - again following the Davies pattern - there's this big two-parter with a returning monster. As Davies did it, there would then be further single part stories and another 2-parter, before everything was rounded off in a two-part finale, but nothing more than the odd mention of the series' mysterious theme would appear in any of them. This is where Moffat breaks away from tradition and wrongfoots the long-term audience. They would undoubtedly have been expecting many more stand-alone stories, with a crack appearing now and then just out of view of the Doctor and Amy, right up until the end of the season, when suddenly the mystery would be revealed. But, not long into the second episode of this 2-parter, the crack is suddenly there, front and centre of the story - it's almost as if the finale has come in episodes 4 and 5, making it very exciting to see what can possibly happen next.

The trouble with the overarching plot becoming the focus rather than telling stand-alone stories is that each individual story is less satisfying on its own merits. Moffat loves intricate plotting - and to be fair to him, a lot of the audience does seem to respond to his puzzle-box narratives - but the law of diminishing returns is inevitably going to come into play. In The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, we don't really find out anything about the mysteries of River Song or what caused these cracks in time, we just get a tiny bit more information. The overall story suffers a bit by having to cram in this stuff - the angels are relegated to a secondary threat in the Flesh and Stone episode, as they run away from the big bad crack. What you're left with ultimately is set pieces and exposition. But such set pieces and such exposition! There's something wonderful, something that never gets old, about scenes of Weeping Angels advancing in stuttering freeze frames as the lights blink on and off. There are also a couple of sequences that are the best of any in this period of the show, and perhaps of all time: Amy watching a repeating video clip of an angel gradually change, and emerge from the screen to become corporeal; plus, the long tense walk, where Amy has her eyes closed and has to stumble through a group of angels, pretending that she can see (which culminates in the magic, creepy moment where we see an angel moving in real time).

On the exposition side, there is some clever and fun use of the crack to clean up past continuity problems and justify rebooting things: the Cyber-King from The Next Doctor can tower all over Victorian London and stomp on buildings but not be recorded in any history books because a crack ate it. The crack has eaten the Daleks that stole the Earth, which means Amy doesn't have to remember that, and be laden down with all that baggage. Does this hang together, though? The crack in Amy's bedroom wasn't spilling out dangerous time energy like the one here: Amy slept next to it for years, and Prisoner Zero was able to walk through from the other side, and neither of them got wiped from existence. Why the difference? It also is hinted that Amy's crack has eaten the ducks from the Leadworth duck pond, and in later stories it is confirmed that it's wiped out Amy's Mum and Dad. Why is that crack able to discriminate and erase things that are not in physical proximity, when the one on board the Byzantium behaves so differently? Fixing one continuity issue has simply created another inconsistency. It seems churlish, though, to criticise a minor issue with Moffat's plotting, when he's putting such serious hard work into making his season (seasons!) fully integrated. Flesh and Stone, for example, contains a scene with the Doctor talking to Amy in the forest that's not really from this episode at all - it's the Doctor from the future, dropping into his own past story. Eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted that he is wearing a jacket, after just having lost his in the Weeping Angels narrative.

More intricate plotting, and seeding of ideas that will pay off later, is seen in the character of River Song. Did Moffat plan to make her a recurring character when he included her in Silence in the Library? Did he even know he was going to be taking over as lead writer at that point? i can't remember the order of events. Whether it was planned or just capitalised on later, it is magnificently seamless. In that first appearance, River asks the Doctor whether they have had "the crash of the Byzantium" yet, and now we get to see it in all it's glory. Here we find out that River can pilot the TARDIS after having "lessons from the very best", and that will then pay off in a year or so. The whole River arc hangs together very well for something written and produced piecemeal over 7 years or so. More than just a big bag of continuity references, though, River is an amazing presence: kick-ass, twinkly, sly, and deploying hallucinogenic lipstick to good effect (the lipstick is introduced for the first time here, with a trippy scene featuring Mike Skinner in a cameo as a guard).  Matt Smith more than matches Alex Kingston, getting some great dialogue and grandstanding moments to show off his new Doctor chops (this was the first story filmed, and he is confident and sure-footed from the off). Iain Glen as Father Octavian gives a solid performance too - his pre-death scene, where he is caught by an angel, and as soon as the Doctor looks away he'll have had it, is particularly good: "I wish I'd known you better", "I think, sir, you know me at my best."

It's all good, it's just a bit thin. There's an attempt at having a dramatic dilemma - should the Doctor sacrifice himself to close the crack, or should the angels? But the answer to that question is fairly obvious if one thinks about it for a second. Once the angels are dispatched all is well, and if the story ended there it would be fine. The story would no doubt be overrated by a lot of fanboys, but it would be very enjoyable for all nonetheless. But the final moments are a very awkward misstep. There's no delicate way to say it: Amy tries to jump the Doctor. It's not necessarily misjudged per se - anyone who's seen Fleabag knows a female character can be believably vulnerable and sexually assertive at the same time, but it has to be written and performed by someone as talented as Phoebe Wally-Whatsit; this was written by a middle-aged man,and performed by Karen Gillan, who is not up to the job of salvaging an un-actable scenario. She has a very good quality of being beautiful but sexually non-threatening, which has served her well in Hollywood, but makes her performance in this scene seem false. Matt Smith, meanwhile, although young and handsome enough, plays the Doctor as a child trapped in an old man trapped in a younger man. It's not a sexually charismatic performance at all, and so also does not work in that moment. Result: cringe.

Connectivity: 

Both Spyfall and The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone are big two-part stories with the return of an old adversary, and both have major revelations linked into ongoing plot arcs (or at least I assume that's the case for Spyfall, they might never mention the Timeless Child again for all I know, but I doubt it).

Deeper Thoughts:

The Counterfactual Extrapolation. At some point during the conception of the 2010 storylines, Steven Moffat made a serious entreaty to David Tennant about staying on as the Doctor for the new series 5, and Tennant reported later that he was very tempted. It's interesting to muse on what might have been had he agreed. The grandstanding moments of The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone would have been well within Tennant's wheelhouse - it's how Moffat tended to write the Tennant Doctor, particularly in the aforementioned library story. We also know from there that the chemistry between him and Alex Kingston would have worked. The scene with Amy coming on to the Doctor in her bedroom at the end would have been better with Tennant too; unlike Matt Smith, Tennant plays the Doctor with a certain amount of sexuality, and one can better imagine someone being attracted to his Doctor than the asexual persona of Smith - this isn't so surprising given that Tennant is playing the Doctor as Russell T Davies was writing him, as a remixed version of Casanova (which they had both collaborated on just prior to Tennant taking over as the titular Time Lord). In the rest of the 2010 series, most moments would likely have been much the same. The very first scenes between the Doctor and young Amelia Pond would likely not have worked as well - Matt Smith is particularly good working with kids - and the finale would likely have seen the Doctor dying and regenerating as part of his courageous rebooting of the universe with Big Bang 2, as I don't suppose Tennant would have wanted to stay on for yet another year. That would have been pretty cool.

It's just one of the curious roads not travelled, the almost-weres, of Doctor Who's long history. Other examples occur to me, having been linked to stories recently covered for the blog. What if Clara had been written out in Last Christmas? Would the 2015 series have been lifted by the presecne of a new companion? i can't see how it could not, to be honest. It might have made a difference to the stories told, too. Introducing a new character would have almost certainly have meant more single-part stories, so they could experience different types of adventures and different facets of their character could be revealed. Lots of 2-part stories, as we eventually got, wouldn't have fit. With a new companion, there wouldn't have been such a focus on the Lady Me character either, for fear of overshadowing the newbie co-lead. It definitely sounds better to me. Alas, a new character would almost certainly not have been killed off two episodes before the end, which means no Heaven Sent. That would be a shame. Elsewhere, I've seen rumours - not sure it's ever been officially corroborated - that The Doctor Falls was intended to be Peter Capaldi's last ever episode, but because Chris Chibnall didn't want his new Doctor's first full episode to be at Christmas, Steven Moffat and Capaldi stayed on to do Twice Upon a Time. This certainly fits the stories as presented: The Doctor Falls is a fitting send-off, a big explosive finale tying up the themes of the season, and finishing the Missy arc that's run throughout Capaldi's tenure; Twice Upon a Time is just treading water. I'd be very happy if it had happened as (allegedly) originally planned.

Almost always, more than one actor is in contention for the role of the Doctor - I have it in my head that Colin Baker is the only exception in the Classic series era. Hartnell was something like fourth choice for the role originally. There are parallel universes out there where Geoffrey Bayldon, Michael Bentine, Dermot Crowley and Chiwetel Ejiofor (to name but a few) are enjoying weekly Saturday teatime TARDIS adventures. Now, if you're not up to date with the current series of Doctor Who, stop reading now, but talk of parallel universes where someone else is playing the Doctor leads me inevitably to the most recent (at the time of writing) episode of Doctor Who, Fugitive of the Judoon. They played a blinder, didn't they? Clever misdirection, a returning alien, a lovely cameo from a significant character (who I can't believe isn't coming back very soon) and a new incarnation of our hero. Lovely. It's good that the show still can surprise us, and can dip into these (potentially - Chibnall's not giving anything away) counterfactual narratives from time to time in the main show. And I assume Big Finish will one day make a long-running audio series of the 'Ruth' Doctor, and every other one of those I listed above - I'm sure they can get someone who can impersonate Michael Bentine...

In Summary:

This blog post is - presumably, and hopefully - the last time I'll have to type out the word 'crack' quite so many times (unless I get some sort of admin job for a chain of waxing salons, perhaps). 

Spyfall

Chapter The 145th, is the Story of O (but not the naughty Story of O, obviously).

Plot:

[A brand new pair of episodes with big plot reveals, so beware spoilers, sweeties! I even left a respectful couple of weeks - and the broadcast of another story - as a gap to let things settle, so no excuses - be warned!]

The Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz are called in by MI6 to investigate a spate of attacks on spies around the globe, where the victim's body has been altered, infiltrated by alien DNA. They meet 'C' - a code name for the head of the secret service, to protect his identity, even though he's clearly Stephen Fry - who gives them a lead just before he's assassinated. A British social media CEO billionaire, Daniel Barton, who once was an MI6 agent but who may now have been turned, is involved. Ryan and Yaz investigate him under the cover of being journalist and photographer. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Graham track down an ex-operative who had a special interest in extra-terrestrial activity, 'O', and talk with him at his hideout in the Australian outback. Glowing pan-dimensional aliens attack Yaz and transport her to the Upside Down (or its slightly cheaper equivalent); they also attack O's hideout. O and the Doctor manage to capture one, but it swaps places with Yaz. The Doctor picks up Ryan in the TARDIS, and they're all together again. During the interview with Barton, he'd mentioned his imminent birthday celebrations, so the TARDIS team and O gatecrash. The Doctor confronts Barton, but he makes a break for it and they pursue in a big James Bond-esque chase sequence. They all end up hiding in the back of Barton's private jet as it takes off. But O reveals himself to be the Master before transporting himself away; Barton has already left the plane, and there's instead a bomb on the pilot's seat. The glowy aliens (the Kasaavin - double-A actually!) attack the Doctor, who vanishes into the knock-off Upside Down.

The bomb blows up and the jet descends, but the Doctor's three friends find clues that she has somehow left inside the plane to help them land it safely. In the Upside Down, the Doctor meets Ada Lovelace who has been brought here many times through her life for the Kasaavin to study her. When Ada is returned to her own time, the Doctor catches a lift, but the Master follows them to that time and starts attacking people. With Ada's help the Doctor escapes. At Babbage's place, the Doctor finds a moving sculpture, the Silver Lady, which Babbage was given years before, which seems to be a device for helping the Kasaavin project themselves into our universe. The Doctor uses it as a way to time travel back to the present, but Ada tags along, knocking them off course to Paris 1943, where they meet Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator working undercover for the SOE. The Master follows, now posing as a Nazi officer. The Doctor manages to get him to monologue his plan. The Kasaavin are alien spies from another dimension, and the Master's provided them and Barton a new scheme - turn the human race into database servers, using the storage capacity of human DNA. The Kasaavin have been using the knowledge of technology experts like Ada through history to help in this aim. Meanwhile, following instructions from the Doctor, Noor sends a false message to the Allies that the Master has been passing on secrets, dropping him in it. While he's being arrested, the Doctor steals his TARDIS and makes off with Ada and Noor.

in the present day, Barton instigates the plan - the Silver Lady activates, and the Kasaavin appear en masse. Yaz and Ryan have tracked the device down, and the Master (who's had to live through the years 1943 to 2020) catches up with them too. But the Doctor has altered the Silver Lady in the past, and it stops working. Barton escapes, but not the Master - the Kasaavin surround him, and spirit him away. The Doctor returns Ada and Noor - taking a detour first to set up Barton's plane with the clues the others will need to land it - and wipes their memories of her. Following hints that the Master had dropped, the Doctor then travels to Gallifrey to find it has been destroyed. A recorded holographic message of the Master plays in the TARDIS, where he explains that it was he who did this, as retribution for a mysterious lie that the Time Lords have told relating to the Timeless Child...

Context:

This story marks the start of the fourth new series to be broadcast while I've been doing the blog. Given the random order concept to which I try to adhere, this always begs the question of whether the show being back on TV is sufficient reason to override the randomiser and blog a story from the new set, and - if so - which one. If something is significant enough, such as the very first story for a new Doctor, then it's a no-brainer; but otherwise, one needs a system. I'd a while back settled on the idea of choosing one story from the upcoming series at random in advance, rather than always blogging the first story of the new series. It seemed like a good balance: mark the occasion, but still keep a chance factor involved. The trouble is that this approach only works if one knows the number of stories to be broadcast in advance, and this information hasn't really been released.

Ten episodes have been filmed (even that might be a supposition, and not technically on record), but a number of them have been reported to be two-parters, with no official confirmation as yet as to which. The current production team are so tight-lipped about any plot details that most of the series' story titles hadn't been released when Spyfall was broadcast. The series in 2018 was the same, with a few titles being released at a time gradually as the series progressed. It's great for avoiding leaks (the major plot points within Spyfall took pretty much everyone by surprise, I think), but left me with the only real option being to blog a story of my choice, and it might as well be the opening story. It was fairly significant, I suppose, being the festive offering, and the first show broadcast for a year. Anyway, a couple of days after the broadcast of the second part, I watched the two episodes again back to back from the PVR recording (as I'm old school, I'm still recording new episodes even though they are available, and will be seemingly forever, on iplayer).

First time round:

Watched the first part on New Year's Day 2020 live on its BBC1 broadcast, and then the second when it was broadcast a few day's later in the usual series Sunday night slot. I was accompanied by the whole family (Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7). Youngest child, who has avoided most Jodie Whittaker episodes up to now thinking they're too frightening, sat down and watched both episodes without any worries (alas, Orphan 55 a week later gave both the younger two nightmares). The Better Half was happily watching the first episode, but not engaged enough that she didn't take a phone call during the show, and missed the big plot reveals towards the end! Luckily clips of the significant moment were all over social media afterwards for her to view. Sweetly, the youngest watched the moment of the Doctor sitting forlorn in the console room after witnessing the ruins of Gallifrey, and seeing the usually orange crystal buttresses had turned blue said "The TARDIS is sad!".

Reaction:

Spyfall is two parts, each an hour long, making it one of the longest duration stories in the whole of post-2005 Doctor Who. Only The End of Time and (if you count them as one three part story like I do) Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords rack up more minutes of entertainment. In terms of season openers, it is shorter only than one story from the 1960s in the whole history of the series since it began. It is big, and in more than one sense: the action begins with brief scenes across the globe, with large point font captions on screen to tell us where in the world we are, giving an instant sense of scale (a similar trick to that which was pulled off in Resolution a year before), the music is suitably espionage-esque, and everything looks widescreen and million dollar budget. For the next hour, we get the full throttle Bond pastiche, with far flung exotic locales, gadgets, men in black, chases, explosions, tense pauses as USB sticks take ages to gradually download data - that sort of thing. There's also the wonderful sequence at Barton's casino-themed birthday party with everyone in a tux, which includes perhaps the most 13th Doctor-ish joke so far, where she thinks she's playing Snap while everyone else is playing Blackjack. Jodie Whittaker is amazing in the role, and must surely be hero to all the new generation of youngsters tuning in for the first time these last couple of years.

Why are they doing a spy pastiche, fun as it is? Because the Kasaavin are alien spies. Why are they spies? Well, who cares? It's fine and it's fun. Fry is great at having a slightly more serious jab at the Special Intelligence 'Control' character that he used to play for laughs in his A Bit of Fry and Laurie days. It's obvious casting, but not unwelcome for that. Lenny Henry is also great at playing the smarmy social media CEO villain, tying the espionage theme in to the nefarious treatment of our data by these huge companies over recent years. It's a shame that the full-on spy film ambience stops at the mid-point, The second episode goes off at what at first appears to be a tangent, arriving at the 19th century, and then WW2. The theme of modern smartphone / social media technology being a spy in our pocket brings all the separate threads about technology and espionage together at the end, just about, but I have to admit - though I loved the second episode - it would have been fun to have a whole second episode of knockabout Bond, blasts and banter. Occasional inter-cutting of Graham, Yaz and Ryan's antics on the run, using silly gadgets and outwitting Barton, was some consolation.

The change of speed, look and feel of the second half was deliberate - they hired a different director for part 2, after all. The rompy runaround develops into something a bit deeper as we focus on a pair of pioneering women. I knew a lot about Ada Lovelace (and Babbage), but nothing about Noor. It prompted me to look her up, as I hope it did for lots of others watching - it's a brave and sad story, and the Doctor's parting line to her, "Bonne chance", is all the more poignant when one finds out that a year on from the events we've seen, she will die in Dachau. Aside from the Silver Lady statue being a bit of a clumsy device, my only other criticism of this story is that Ada and Noor could both have been centre of an individual story on their own. It's a bit of a waste that it's all so whistle-stop, and they have to share the limelight with the Master and all the spy shenanigans. It is great, though, that the world is saved by a trio of intelligent women. This team-up also means there's room elsewhere to focus on the Doctor's three friends, once they are separated from her. In their stories thus far, Thirteen and 'fam' have worked together, remaining close even when splitting up temporarily into smaller groups. Here, the three companions are apart from the Doctor for a whole episode, not only giving us a chance to see how they've grown into the adventuring life so that they can operate without her, but also giving space for them to question the mystery of the Doctor, and how much they really know. Also, having myself wondered this last January, it was nice to have the early scenes explain how Graham, Ryan and Yaz's ordinary lives are continuing, with Ryan persevering with battling his dyspraxia, and Yaz still retaining her police job.

There are lots of wonderful touches throughout the two hour running time. Stakes are raised early on when the Kasaavin are shown to be able to walk through the TARDIS door. Stephen Fry's character dies saying "Oh!" giving us a huge clue as to the identity of his assassin. The Master's "Did I ever apologise for that?" line about Jodrell Bank (a reference back to the Master and Doctor's tussle on top of the radio telescope in Logopolis). The Doctor at the beginning with the TARDIS in a garage elevated, so she can work on the underside as if its a car. This last moment I enjoyed, but it annoyed people online, who muttered about how it's impossible as the box is in a different dimension to the TARDIS interior works, blah, blah, blah. I think this is a silly thing to get worked up about. Some other online criticisms were more fair, though. There was some disquiet about the Doctor taking a certain amount of pleasure at leaving the non-white Master to the mercy of the Nazis, but this is I think supposed to balanced against the moral outrage she'd earlier displayed for him working with them in the first place, and we pretty soon see that he has come out of it unscathed. The memory wipes too gave rise to some comments online. The morality of this approach was discussed in stories during Steven Moffat's tenure (in the Russell T Davies era, no one thought twice - Torchwood were ret-conning people every week). Does the Doctor have the right to take people's memories away, even if it's for their own good? Here, though, it was only about allowing Ada to keep her historical agency - her achievements remain her own, and not down to her experiencing alien influences.

A lot is packed in to these episodes; as well as everything else, a major part of this story is the introduction of a new incarnation of the Master, which again in the past could have taken up a whole story on its own. Sacha Dhawan is an inspired choice, and works very well against Whittaker's Doctor. He will undoubtedly return, possibly before the series is finished, and I'm looking forward to it. It's got to be a compliment to an actor that a performance leaves you wanting more, and Dhawan manages it twice, for both the performances he gives in this story. Not only is the big revelation at the end of part 1 a major plot twist, it's a great shame too, as O was such a nice character. I almost wanted it not to be true as I was up to that point very keen for O to be a future returning ally. I'll hold on to judgement about the other big revelations about Gallifrey and the Time Lords, as they haven't fully played out yet. But, if Gallifrey is finally gone (again), I'm not too bothered - it is a very dull place whenever we end up back there. Though, given it took every Dalek in existence to fail to destroy it last time, it does stretch credibility a bit to imagine the Master managing it on his own. Or perhaps he wasn't on his own. Unless this is all part of the arc, we'll probably only find out when the next showrunner revisits the moment in a few years' time to undo it! 

Connectivity: 

Both Spyfall and The Time Warrior were the first stories broadcast of a new series of Doctor Who; in both stories, scientists are plucked out of their correct time zone and transplanted to another, where they end up helping a single member of a more advanced race (the Doctor is more benign than Linx, though).

Deeper Thoughts:

The Unreal McCoy? Seriously, what is up with the secrecy of this current Doctor Who production team? It used to be that the cast of Doctor Who stories were revealed as they were being made. Like everyone else, I only found out that Sacha Dhawan was in Spyfall when he appeared midway through episode 1 on January 1st. They cut every frame of him from the scenes he appeared in that were featured in the trailer! Now, you might think that this was additional secrecy because he was playing a significant character, but other actors who didn't turn out to be old enemies were treated the same. Only in the trail at the end of Spyfall part 2 did it get revealed that James Buckley was appearing in Doctor Who the following week. And did any audience member know Laura Fraser was in Orphan 55 until she actually appeared in Orphan 55? Laura flippin' Fraser - she's been in Breaking Bad! As I mentioned above, it's not just casting decisions where the chance of publicity is being passed up in favour of surprise - it's story titles too. Up to two days before the broadcast of the latest episode, nothing had been revealed of the titles of any stories following it. It used to be a traditional ritual that the Radio Times in the week of any new series starting would include a full run-down of the titles up to the finale. This ritual is sadly no more.

If the show is getting less advance publicity in the Radio Times, though, it means there is another thing in common between Jodie Whittaker's run and the tenure of another Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. I have been musing on this for a while now, like a typical human seeing patterns in things that possibly aren't there. I have a slightly sketchy theory that the post 2005 eras are following a superficially similar pattern to those of the 1963 to 1989 period, but at a faster rate. Refer to the Deeper Thoughts section of The Mysterious Planet for more details, but to my mind new Doctor Who has now reached the equivalent of the late 1980s, and Jodie is running in parallel with Sylvester. Look at the (circumstantial) evidence: both Doctors started with big changes to the 'front of house', new title sequence, new arrangement of the theme music. Behind the scenes, a new person took charge of the writing making a big effort to use new writers, and break with the long history of the show, with the first year of both Jodie and Sylv being free of too much in the way of returning elements (unlike McCoy's script editor Andrew Cartmel, current showrunner Chris Chibnall didn't have someone more senior like John-Nathan Turner insisting on giving roles to a couple of previous guest turns, so 2018 was even more pure and unsullied than 1987). More 'right on' political subtexts were introduced by both compared to their recent predecessors too. The show in both cases went through scheduling changes, no longer being broadcast on Saturdays; both runs were on air for fewer weeks of the year than in the recent past.

Now that a few more episodes and a trailer have been shown since that first Jodie series, there are even more echoes. The very next story after that first run, was - as it was for Sylv - a Dalek story. The second year for both Doctors includes much more continuity and fan service; this year, the Cybermen are going to return just as they did in 1988. The biggest emerging similarity, though, is that - just as Cartmel did in his second year - Chibnall is bringing back some mystery about the origins of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Even though the show (new or old epoch) has been going many, many years, we don't know the whole story. The Master's line in Spyfall "Everything that you think you know is a lie" and the mentions of the mysterious Timeless Child are both very reminiscent of the hints dropped in the McCoy stories of his second and third years. The backstory sketched out to explain all that, which might never have been fully spelled out on screen, became known later - when the series was off the air for many years, and it was being used as a touchstone for the stories being continued in other media - as the Cartmell Masterplan. It looks very much like Chibnall might be attempting to pull off the same trick.

Now, this could prove to be dangerous; it was certainly a bold move in the late 1980s, when Doctor Who had been on air for 25 years, for a young script editor to try and bring back the mystery again, and it does beg the obvious question "Why have you never mentioned any of this stuff before?!" But in a series where the lead character's home planet and people has been destroyed, then turned out not have been destroyed after all, and now have been destroyed again, anything is possible. The other significant factors mitigating against any risk are the resources and support available to the current series to make it work - the major difference between the Whittaker and McCoy eras, and something of which those striving to keep Doctor Who interesting thirty-odd years ago, could only dream.

In Summary:

The satisfying start of the Chibnall Masterplan!

The Time Warrior

Chapter The 144th, where the Doctor is back in time for a new companion.

Plot:

UNIT bring the Doctor in to investigate as scientists from a top secret research establishment keep going missing. Also investigating is a young reporter Sarah Jane Smith, who has blagged her way in by pretending to be her Aunt Lavinia, an esteemed virologist. The Doctor rigs up a gizmo which shows that someone is travelling through time to kidnap the scientists and steal equipment, dragging them back to the middle ages. He follows their time signal in the TARDIS, unaware that Sarah has stowed away aboard. A Sontaran, Linx, has crash landed and done a deal with a local robber baron, Irongron. In exchange for anachronistic weapons, Irongron gives Linx shelter, and Linx repairs his spaceship with help from the kidnapped scientists.

Sarah gets the wrong end of the stick and thinks the Doctor is the one helping Irongron. With soldiers from the nearby castle of a local nobleman, who fears attack by Irongron, they kidnap the Doctor. After the Doctor explains, they join forces to repel Irongron's attack, then sneak into Irongron's castle, drugging his men's food with a sleeping potion. They send all the scientists back to their proper time, but cannot stop the launch sequence of Linx's mended spaceship. Linx kills Irongron, and a stray arrow kills Linx in the ship, when it goes into the probic vent on the back of his neck - a Sontaran's only weakness. Linx collapses onto the lift-off button, meaning the ship's engines will fire and destroy the castle. Everyone else escapes, and the weapons Linx built get destroyed in the blast. Sarah Jane joins the Doctor in the TARDIS to travel back to her own time and place.

Context:

Back to random selection from the whole of the Doctor Who TV oeuvre, after a slightly more guided trip to the North Pole for Last Christmas. I watched this stripped an episode a day over four days in the Chrimbo Limbo, the days between Christmas and New Year's Day. All the family (the Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) were up for it, and watched along with me. Everyone was on hols from school or work, and we took a break for 25 minutes every day from indulging in the usual preoccupations of the period: pondering over whether it's still acceptable to have the Christmas lights on (yes), to have the seasonal playlist still in rotation (that's a no apparently - I was outvoted), not knowing what day it is, and having the usual panic waking up every morning that one has probably missed a bin day and might have to wait two  weeks to have the mounds of wrapping paper, wine bottles and uneaten sprouts taken away. The Time Warrior is an apt story to watch at this time, as it was originally broadcast starting just before Christmas 1973, crossing into the New Year period of 1974 by its final episode. It was viewed from the DVD but with the - frankly unnecessary - updated CGI effects switched off, as nature intended. 

First time round:

Having been far too young to watch The Time Warrior on its BBC1 debut broadcast in 1973 / 74, this was one of very many 'classic series' stories that I caught for the first time on VHS. This release was more notable than a lot of those other tapes, though. It was one of the earliest, before distribution was reliable, before future releases were even advertised (or at least they weren't advertised anywhere the young me would ever have seen them). As such, back then, one stumbled across them - they were always a find. This particular find (on a Saturday in 1989 in the Bognor Regis WHSmiths) was particularly special, as a head-spinning three new titles hit the shelves at once. I've written about this moment in the First Time Round sections of the blog posts on the other two stories that became available that day, The Ark in Space, and The Daleks. The Time Warrior, like most of the stories released at that time, had its episodes stitched together into one feature-length omnibus. Most of those stories, though, were later re-released on VHS during the 1990s unedited; for some reason, The Time Warrior never was, so it was only when the DVD came out eighteen years later that I first got to enjoy the full Time Warrior experience.

Reaction:

Every story of Jon Pertwee's five year tenure in the title role of Doctor Who was deliberately planned to have a hook, a big audience-grabbing unique selling point. Each of these bagged the series opener the cover of that week's Radio Times. In the first year, it was a new Doctor, and the show being on TV in colour for the first time. In the following years, there was the launch of a new Master villain, the return of the Daleks after many years, and the first ever story to bring back old Doctors alongside the current model. For the eleventh season, which started late in 1973, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks must have felt hard-pressed to come up with another new idea. In the end, they went with the Doctor travelling back in time. Now, or in the early years, this wouldn't be seen as remarkable at all, but in 1973 time travel backwards hadn't been done for a while: a couple of brief interludes only in the previous seven years, no whole stories. Doctor Who was by then a show about space monsters - either the Doctor went to them, or they came to him - not meeting Kings and Queens and other historical personages. Whether reintroducing this was a sufficient hook for the new series is debatable (the Radio Times cover completely ignored this aspect of the story, for example), but it worked as a way to expand the canvas and allow different types of stories to be told.

What writer Robert Holmes makes of the brief is deceptively simple. It is probably the epitome of what fans refer to as a 'romp'. It's a slightly nebulous label, so there's room for differences of opinion, but to my mind a Doctor Who romp is one where the tone is quite light-hearted but energetic, the stakes aren't that high, and the main aim is fun rather than scares, action or drama. As such, it's a very difficult style to do well. Make it too low stakes and light-hearted, and it doesn't look like it's being taken seriously enough, which means people watching don't care, which means they don't have fun, defeating the point. Holmes was a craftsman, and well versed in writing Doctor Who by this point, having written one a year on average since Patrick Troughton was the Doctor, so finds the right balance. He creates an interesting enough premise: the present is being invaded by the past, because a futuristic space villain has crash-landed in Earth history. He thereby distills everything about Doctor Who into these four episodes, and introduces a new sub-genre. The pseudo historical, as it is called in old school Who fan circles, features an alien menace terrorising a historical setting. Like most story styles it was tried as a one-off experiment in an early William Hartnell outing (The similarly named The Time Meddler in Doctor Who's second ever season), but from this point on it gets used regularly, particularly by Holmes himself in such stories as Pyramids of Mars and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Not content with sub-genre innovation, Holmes also creates an enduring new alien race, perhaps the last great returning monster of the classic series, the Sontarans. A jingoistic species with an overriding passion for war is another deceptively simple premise, but Holmes makes it work because he writes it (and Kevin Lindsay as Linx plays it) straight as an arrow. The (excellent) design of the creature belies its nature, being squat and potato-headed, but not a figure of fun despite some taunts from the medieval bandit characters; the sense in the script is that Linx knows he may appear ridiculous to these primitives, and uses it to his advantage, taking Irongron by surprise, for example, and besting him in one scuffle. The subplot of Linx perverting the course of history by providing weapons to Irongron that are too advanced for the current undeveloped society is nice enough in itself, but is also interesting for how it illuminates the Sontaran's character. Even past the point where he no longer needs to bother, he still follows through on his side of the bargain - he has a sense of honour and integrity. Even though Irongron isn't particularly interested, Linx continues working on a fighting robot for him too, and it's clear that he's doing this because he loves it! He loves making weapons and stirring up conflict. It's an honesty of purpose that's never quite recaptured in the future Sontaran stories, until maybe the new series appearances.

As well as expertly treading the fine line regarding the tone of the story, and creating a new story type, and a new monster, Holmes has to introduce a new companion. And what a companion it is: Sarah Jane Smith. She doesn't quite arrive fully-formed, it's a slightly embryonic version of the character that will endure for almost forty more years, but it's still a very impressive debut. Sarah is self-possessed, clever, resourceful, indefatigable, and won't let anyone push her around. Elizabeth Sladen performs the role with gusto, managing to make every line seem lovable, even when the - middle-aged male - production team give Sarah material that's veering towards shrill and hectoring. Pertwee has an instant rapport with his new co-star; his performance here is charming and unforced, with all the irritating, patronising bits from previous years gone, either because they weren't relevant to this new relationship (unlike the more 'mother hen' role he took up with regard to previous companion Jo Grant) or perhaps because he was getting better at it after four years. The guest characters are all written and played perfectly for the romp style too; larger than life, yes, but still expertly calibrated. David Daker as Irongron, particularly, is having enormous fun, but so is the audience watching him. It's a shame he gets killed at the end. But everyone is great: Jeremy Bulloch as Hal the Archer, Alan Rowe as the pallid, worried Edward, and pre-Eastenders June Brown as his wife. My favourite is Donald Pelmear as Professor Rubeish, a wonderful comic performance.

Connectivity: 

Both stories were first broadcast starting in December. Both feature actors (Kevin Lindsay, Dan Starkey) who have appeared multiple times in the show as Sontarans, as well as occasionally in other roles.

Deeper Thoughts:

The end of 'The Tens'. The end of this decade, like the last one, has caught me by surprise. It's only very recently that I realised that the end of a ten year block - what to call it, the Teens, the Tens? - was fast approaching, and I remember the end of 2009 taking me similarly unawares. The end of the 1970s or 1980s seemed much more apparent, and much more celebrated, by comparison. I don't know if it's my getting older, or because we're still early in the century (making the naming convention a little tricky) that's the reason for this. As with everything we pattern-seeking humans consider, twentieth-century Doctor Who can get lumped together, and appraised in ten-year chunks; indeed, a very good trio of reference books were released in the 1990s that did exactly this for the previous three decades (The Sixties, The Seventies and The Eighties, each by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker; hard to come by now, but thoroughly recommended). Until now, twenty-first century Doctor Who hadn't been going long enough to be similarly treated. Now, it has reached the end of its first full decade, which can be compared to the stories broadcast between 2005 and 2009. You never know, similar books might start being published soon.

The decade started with new Who firmly established after its re-launch five years earlier. The years from 2010 to 2019 would then be about it enduring as that established show once its first major phase came to an end on the very first day of the decade, January 1st 2010, which saw the final David Tennant / Russell T Davies episode, part 2 of The End of Time, broadcast. The departure of such big hitters both in front of and behind the cameras could easily have been the end of the show altogether. But the show carried on to the end of the decade, with the final two years seeing another new phase, with eleven stories broadcast starring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, under the showrunner-ship of Chris Chibnall. These were bookends, though: the responsibility for the lion's share of the 2010s fell on one man: Steven Moffat. He was the main reason that the show was still on air ten years later. He cast two new actors to the starring role, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, and produced three successful seasons of stories for each. He wrote an astonishing eight Christmas specials, every year from 2010 to 2017.

In this time, the show built on the reach it had had in the previous decade to become a truly global phenomenon; this maybe came at the cost of the size of the UK TV audience - Doctor Who rarely made the ratings top ten as it had the previous decade. TV was increasingly consumed in new ways in the last decade, though, and Doctor Who embraced this, becoming a huge streaming hit (all of the twenty-first century episodes are still available on BBC iplayer). Another new way in which Doctor Who could be consumed during this decade was on the silver screen, with cinema releases for a couple of big episodes. This was all kicked off by the 50th anniversary in 2013, one of the most significant and successful times for Doctor Who in the decade, and a triumph for Moffat on every level.

Doctor Who on home media also evolved over the course of ten years. The regular classic series releases from the previous decade (like The Time Warrior) were coming to an end by the early years of the 2010s. By the end of 2013, all complete stories had come out, the range only running until then because of multiple re-releases. Three more semi-missing stories - two in 2014, and the final ever unreleased scrap in 2015 - stretched things further, but it looked like the days of the shiny disc as distribution method were over. A new all-animated version of The Power of the Daleks was released a year later, but the physical format version seemed secondary to its launch on the BBC Store, an archive streaming service. As it turned out, though, that streaming service was pretty short-lived, whereas the idea of animating stories for physical release looks set to run and run. This, together with the Blu-ray box set range (a well-planned and budgeted attempt to produce the definitive collection of classic Doctor Who) means a shiny disc renaissance, and opens up the possibility of releases for many years to come until - by the end of the next decade, perhaps - every single classic Doctor story might be available for the home shelf, with visuals for all the missing stories. This, of course, can feed in to other platforms too: the recently launched Britbox subscription streaming service put up hundreds of Doctor Who episodes, including some animated ones, on Boxing day, and they are already proving very popular.

On a personal note, the last ten years has seen one final addition to my family (a girl, currently 7 years old), and seen her and her two brothers grow up. They are all still interested in watching Doctor Who with their Mum and Dad, sometimes reluctantly, but usually with joy. Tomorrow, the first episode of Doctor Who in the Twenties will be broadcast, and I hope they'll all be joining me to watch it. In 2020, new Doctor Who stories will still be showing on TV, and innovations will still continue to be made in presenting the old stories for purchase. That's something to celebrate in dark days. So, to you and yours: Happy New Year, and Happy New Decade! 

In Summary:

Simple (deceptively simple), honest-to-goodness fun, in 25-minute long bursts - what a nice way to end the year!

Last Christmas

Chapter The 143rd, all together now: Last Christmas, I gave you my brain, which you devoured slowly in an Inception pastiche. Doesn't scan.

Plot:

The Doctor is reunited with Clara a while after they parted company, each having lied to each other that they were fine. The Doctor imagined that Clara was happy with Danny Pink, but doesn't know he's dead; Clara thinks the Doctor's happy on Gallifrey, and doesn't know it's still lost. (Had anyone else completely forgotten about all of this stuff, like I had? It seemed more important at the time.) Anyway, they're reunited on Clara's snowy roof when Clara catches Santa and two elves after they crash their sleigh. Later, the TARDIS travellers take a trip to a futuristic North Pole science base. (Why do they do this? Well, it's a long story.) The team based there are having trouble. They discovered something buried in the snow, which turned out to be hostile, and now some of their colleagues have been taken over by Kantrofarri, commonly known as Dream Crabs; these creatures scuttle around, spin down from the ceiling, and when they get you, they hug your face - rather like face-huggers - insert a proboscis through your skull, and drink your brain. In order that you let them do this without fighting, they put you into a dream state. Multiple crabs attack, but the Doctor, Clara and the four remaining members of the base team are rescued by Santa and the elves.

Despite being the subject of much scepticism from everyone, it does seem that this Santa is the real deal. While people are distracted, though, Clara is attacked while on her own in another part of the base, and taken over by a Dream Crab. She dreams that she is enjoying Christmas Day with Danny Pink. The Doctor allows himself to be crabbed so he can enter her dream world and get her back. They escape back to the base, the crabs that were on their faces turning to dust, but they realise that they are still dreaming - the original attack that they thought Santa saved them from must have been successful, and Santa is part of the dream - representing their collective unconscious trying to wake them up to their fate. Working together, they all break free and wake up again.

The Doctor is just leaving when Clara reminds him that they saw Santa, a figment of their imagination, on her roof back home. They are all still dreaming, and the zombified crew members, staggering towards them with crab-heads, are twisted reflections of the parts of their brains already succumbing to the dream. Surrounded, the Doctor urges them to use their imagination to save themselves, and Santa appears with his sleigh. They take an airborne sleigh ride and one by one they vanish, reappearing in the real world - none of them are scientists, they're just living ordinary, marvellous lives. The Doctor wakes up on some planet somewhere, and races to Clara's house. Removing the dead crab from her face, it looks like she had been taken into the dream when a lot older, having spent a life without the Doctor. But Santa arrives again - it's another dream: Clara's her usual self, and can rejoin the Doctor for adventures in time and space...

Context:

It was very nearly Christmas 2019, the tree was up, the lights were on. I popped on the Blu-ray, from the new series 9 box set (despite the story very clearly being the culmination of the series 8 plot lines, it was for some reason held back to be on the series 9 box set). This time, all the family (Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) watched. The youngest found a couple of sections too scary, and ran out of the room for a bit (there's no room to hide behind our sofa as it's hard up against the wall). At least one of children still believes in Father Christmas, so I'm glad the story hedges its bets somewhat, and doesn't destroy all their illusions!

First time round:

It's been five flippin' years since Last Christmas was shown; time has flown by. As it seems only like yesterday, I have no excuse for not remembering any details of watching it for the first time. This was the last regular Doctor Who broadcast before I started this blog, so I can't look back on any posts from the time for clues of what I was up to. I searched the internet for the TV schedules of the day, and nothing leapt out at me, to help me place things in context. I searched my memory, but - as long as they remain blissfully undramatic - one Christmas Day is very like another in our house. I expect I would have been enjoying the company of relatives at 6.15pm, and would have watched Last Christmas time-shifted later in the evening with the Better Half, when people had gone home, and the kids were abed. This era was notable for being a bit scarier than before, so we would have made a decision after that first watch as to whether it was suitable for the younger of the children to see. I can't believe we would have let anyone but the eldest see it back then, as it is jolly frightening in parts; however, all of them claimed to remember it.

Reaction:

Last Christmas was the tenth consecutive Doctor Who Christmas special since the series had returned in 2005. The only comparable festive run on British TV was for the sit-com Only Fools and Horses in the 1980s and 1990s, and the makers of that show dispensed with the straitjacket of having a seasonal theme quite early on. Neither of the showrunners of Doctor Who for those ten specials (first Russell T Davies, then the writer and exec of Last Christmas, Steven Moffat) wanted to give up that easily. Davies had done contemporary Christmas, space Christmas, Victorian Christmas; he had introduced killer Christmas trees, exploding baubles, robot Santas; he had sampled screwball comedies and disaster movies. Moffat sampled even more, riffing on specific texts such as A Christmas Carol and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; he did future Christmas, wartime Christmas, and created killer snowmen, sentient baubles and trees, and a village called Christmas where nobody can lie. What was there left to do? Well, how about Santa - the real Santa, the actual deal? The trouble is, how can that person / concept exist within the "everything must have a scientific explanation" rigour of Doctor Who. A couple of Yuletides later, Moffat got even more desperate for thematic ideas, and faced the similar problem of how to integrate superheroes into Doctor Who. His solution for Santa Claus is a lot neater.

Because it's all just a dream, innit?! Now, normally this would be a cop-out, but luckily the film Inception was relatively fresh in everyone's mind, and dreams nested within dreams as a concept was a reasonably hot property, waiting to be plundered. In the best Doctor Who tradition, Moffat nicks it shamelessly, and makes it his own. As well as giving free rein to embrace the descending level of dreams idea, the humans' subconscious sampling allows riffs on other films like Alien and The Thing. None of this would be up to much if the casting of the big man was anything but perfect, but Nick Frost is a marvel. He wasn't the most obvious choice, but the Claus on the page is a sassy and sarcastic one, and Frost performs this with aplomb, and an added sprig of meta slyness. He doesn't go as far as winking at the camera, but he does seem to be enjoying the danger of dancing up to that line and not quite crossing it. Given the nature of the character, this is apt, and in no way indulgent: Santa is the secular collective idea of a guide through nightmares, as outlined in one of the many excellent dialogue exchanges: "You're a dream who's trying to save us?" "Shona, sweetheart, I'm Santa Claus. I think you just defined me." 

Frost is just one of a great cast. Both actors playing the elves get lots of fun stuff to do, and it's great to see Dan Starkey, who had played Strax the Sontaran regularly for the the last few years, get to do work sans a latex face. It's also good to see Michael Troughton, second Doctor Patrick's other thespian son, finally appear in Doctor Who, after his brother David had landed three speaking parts over the years. The regulars are firing on all cylinders too, particularly Samuel Anderson in his last appearance as Danny Pink, being heroic and self-effacing even as an imaginary version of the character.  Best of all, though, is Faye Marsay as Shona. Sparky, funny ("I will mark you Santa!"), tough, vulnerable, and with all the best bits to do (her dancing to Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody is very special). It's as if she's auditioning to be the new companion. Of course, that's exactly what is happening. Jenna Coleman was all set to depart the show with this Christmas special, and Shona was intended to become the new regular.

I've seen rumours that the decisions - and rewrites - were made very late in the day, but nothing confirming exactly when. It's definitely on record that the original ending would have been pretty much what is presented as a false ending in the final finished piece: Clara aged, having lived a full life of her own before the Doctor arrives back, decades too late. In some ways, it's a shame that this never came to pass: the Clara character felt like she stuck around one series too long, and there was nothing significant plot-wise for Coleman to do in the following run of episodes; the presence of Shona, and presumably Marsay (depending on whether she'd have been cast or accepted it as a regular role) would have breathed life into what were a mostly lacklustre set of stories to come next. The confusing way Coleman was eventually written out (she's both alive and dead, and she's roaming the universe in her own TARDiS with someone else who's both alive and dead) was also nowhere near as dramatic and effective as the Last Christmas ending. But, even though it could have been superior in lots of ways, I'm glad it turned out the way it did. Can you imagine how depressing Last Christmas would be with Clara exiting at the end as an old woman? A hell of a downer, that, and it's already been one of the scariest, grimmest Christmas specials ever; plus, the melancholic "Every Christmas is Last Christmas" theme wasn't exactly light relief to begin with. On Christmas day, there's got to be hope.

And this way, Shona gets a very strong ending for herself too, simple but affecting. We see her wake up on Christmas Day, her handwritten itinerary in her lap, which explains whose imagination has been creating the dreamspace in which the previous hour's action has unfolded; it reads "1. DVD (Alien) 2. DVD (The thing from another world) 3. Dad comes round. 4. DVD (Miracle on 34th Street.) 5. THRONES marathon. 6. Forgive Dave???".  I think we have to assume that Shona never got as far as number 5 (though Marsay would later have a regular role on GoT, which is nice).  Then, she picks up her pen, thinks for a moment, and puts a big tick next to point number 6: lovely.

Connectivity: 

One more story where the alien threat uses subterfuge to get away with their naughtiness undetected, though this time they're operating at a subconscious level. In both Last Christmas and Aliens of London / World War Three, the Doctor uses a fire extinguisher as a weapon against the bad guys.

Deeper Thoughts:

And so this is Christmas, and how much have I done. With 2019 now nearing its end, I have been doing the blog for four and a half years approximately. I have covered 143 stories so far, which - had I been watching in chronological rather than random order, would have taken me up to Timelash, the midpoint of sixth Doctor Colin Baker's run. The end - well, at least an end - would have been in sight, with probably another year's worth of blogging (one more episode plus four more shorter seasons plus a feature length special) to see out the 20th century 'classic era'. Right or wrong, I made a decision to jump about in a random order, and to include the 21st century 'new series' too. This means it's all or nothing: I have no convenient stopping point on the way. In fact, if they keep making new episodes, I'll never ever be done - that finishing line will keep receding into the distance. What a thought! Not a sad one, though, as if I'm honest I never thought I'd keep going this long. I've been a bit busier with other things in 2019 than I have been previously, so the number of blog posts completed (31 including this one, but I might yet squeeze another one in before New Year's Eve) is slightly down on recent years. Even so, as things stand, I'm almost at the halfway point. Of course, from January 1st 2020, more will get piled on the To Do list by dint of a new series starting, but I can't get upset about that; in fact, it's rather exciting. New episodes! Every week! It feels like a long time since that happened last.

The distribution of stories was fairly level this year, without any one Doctor or era dominating. Four stories apiece from David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker. Three for Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi. Two each for William Hartnell (one semi-animated), Patrick Troughton (one wholly animated and jolly good it was too) and Jon Pertwee. Only one each for Sylvester McCoy (The Curse of Fenric, although I did watch it twice, see the Deeper Thoughts section of the New Earth post for more details!) and Christopher Eccleston. This is okay, as both have shorter tenures as measured by number of stories, so would need to be rationed if future selection were going to stay as varied. Alas, I saw another two of a Doctor with very few stories left, Colin Baker. I finished my first season, having blogged all the stories in Colin's Trial of a Time Lord year, and now only have four of his stories remaining to watch (including Timelash!). Still, Mindwarp live at the BFI was a blast, and The Twin Dilemma was probably my favourite story to write about (though not to watch) this year. Finally, the addition of K9 and Company (my first and possibly last spin off episode watched for the blog) makes it up to 31.

High and low points? 2019 only had one new broadcast episode, so Resolution obviously stood out; it was also good to get a veritable dollop of new old Who in the form of the previously referenced Macra Terror animation. Of the remaining stories covered for the blog, probably a couple of Russell T Davies productions - bookends of his era in fact, being the first and last produced during his time as showrunner - worked best for me: David Tennant swansong The End of Time, and early Christopher Eccleston story Aliens of London / World War Three. Both tend to divide audiences, but the family and I enjoyed them very very much. Silliest story award goes to Black Orchid, which - considering K9 & Company was also in the running - says something about the very many different levels upon which Black Orchid is so very wrong. I also am starting to question whether I've just watched all the Tom Baker four-parters too many times now, or whether they are secretly all, well, a bit dull. Sorry for the almost blasphemous pronouncement, but none of his were particularly interesting this year. The three that came up (The Creature from the Pit, The Face of Evil, The Horns of Nimon) are certainly not top drawer, so it might just be that. I hope for some great Tom Baker stories next year to prove my theory wrong. I'm also looking forward to a nice new Jodie Whittaker series, a couple more animations, and some more Blu-ray box sets. On top of all that, it's the long-awaited final season of Brexit - this time next year, it'll all be over, so they tell me. What an eventful finale that will be. 

In Summary:

If every Christmas is Last Christmas (which seems needlessly depressing), then every Christmas is also First Christmas (much better!). So, let's accentuate the positive with a Season's Greetings, and - incidentally - a Happy First Christmas to all of you at home!