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| Something Doctor Who seldom really deals with: what to the companions do with all their stuff when they move into the TARDIS? |
With
Bill introduced, and a somewhat kinder and gentler version of Peter
Capaldi's 12th
Doctor established with her, Doctor Who series
10 is kicking into full swing. The second and third episodes move
past this introductory phase and into the main body of the season in
a quite interesting, if unusual, way: while outwardly pretty
different, both episodes present sci-fi spins on classic Gothic
horror story formulas. Episode three, Thin Ice,
is a Victorian tale of strange disappearances and mysterious lights
under the ice of the frozen Thames, while episode four, Knock
Knock, is a classic Old Dark
Haunted House yarn, both drawing from the genre's oldest literary
traditions. While I am not sure if this stylistic juxtaposition was
deliberate or if the scripts just happened to fall next to each
other, they make an excellent pairing, and really set the tone for
the season – particularly in how playfully they work with the
material. Both episodes feel like a return to different points in the
show's past, and while both are fairly dark in their own ways, they
cultivate a tone which is decidedly less grim and menacing than much
of series 8 and 9 were. The key to this tonal change is the dynamic
between 12 and Bill, which is very different from what he had with
Clara: largely gone is the boundary-pushing, somewhat reckless
adventurer attitude of last season, replaced instead by the dynamic
of Bill as the student and The Doctor as the eccentric, cool
professor. In these two episodes we first see him test his student on
the lessons of time-travel ethics, and then we see what happens when
that “cool” professor party-crashes a gathering of his student's
friends, and seems maybe not so cool after all outside of his
element. Both instances make for fun, if different sides of
this Doctor, and make for a season that is unlike the rest of his era
on the show, but quite like certain chapters of the show's past.
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| "I wear a top-hat now - top-hats are cool." |
Thin Ice,
the Victorian supernatural mystery about human-eating lights beneath
the Thames, feels very much like a flashback to the classic first few
years of the 4th
Doctor Tom Baker era, under showrunners Robert Holmes and Philip
Hinchcliffe. That era was characterized by its love of putting sci-fi
spins on Victorian-Gothic mystery/horror tropes, and by its
juxtaposition of dark horror content with the 4th
Doctor's whimsical eccentricity. That recipe is repeated here, with
great success. The atmosphere is pitch-perfect, with its foggy slums
inhabited by Dickensian orphans, and creepily opulent upper-class
manors inhabited by ruthless, wealthy villains. The mystery unfolds
quite excellently, with supernatural and mythological elements giving
way to sci-fi explanations in a way that flows quite well. The story
gives The Doctor opportunities to show off both sides of his
personality: his more Tom Baker-esque eccentric side, and the dark,
morally-ambiguous intensity that characterizes Peter Capaldi's
portrayal. This is also the episode where Bill really comes into her
own as a companion: by this point she knows the ropes of how
time-travel works, and has started to feel out the ethical dilemmas
and unsettling paradoxes of it. The episode starts with an
effectively grim moment when her initial reaction of excitement to be
traveling in time gives way to a realization that they have traveled
to a time when people who look like her were still kept as slaves. As
the episode goes on, the tone of their trip changes from a lesson on
time-travel to a test: The Doctor, in his role as professor, places
the importance of the decisions they are making on Bill, so she feels
the gravity of exactly what it means to get embroiled in past events.
In this regard, the dynamic between Bill and The Doctor is starting
to feel quite a lot like that between Sylvester McCoy's 7th
Doctor and Ace, who similarly had a mentor-student dynamic (she even
called him Professor as a nickname) which cultivated her development
from a curious teenager to a badass hero in her own right. Hopefully
Bill's arc will be equally strong – it's certainly starting out
that way.
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| "I know what you're thinkin' - you're thinkin', there's Old Gregg, he's just a scaly man-fish..." |
If
Thin Ice has an
obvious flaw, it's that it clearly should be longer than it is. The
story is strong, and the world that the episode builds is a very
effective one, but the constraints of a single hour-long episode are
so restrictive that it all seems to go by so fast. The stories like
this in the Baker/Hinchcliffe/Holmes era really took their time, and
tended to be atmospheric slow-burns rather than fast-paced and
action-driven as this often is. It all works just fine; it's not that
episode feels too short, but rather that it feels like it could have
been even better with more room to breathe. It has a world that
certainly could have been explored more effectively over a
double-episode, and more of a slow-burn pace would have felt more
appropriate for the nature of the vintage-Victorian-ghost-story vibe.
Still, this is a solid episode, and one that does a very good job of
ushering in the main body of the 12-and-Bill era.
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| "See, I'm totally more cool and with-it than that Matt Smith guy!" |
Knock Knock
offers another sci-fi take on classic Victorian-Gothic horror tropes:
this time the Old Dark House ghost story. This episode once again
recalls Doctor Who's
past with its particular genre blend, although this time it doesn't
reach as far back as the 4th
Doctor era: Knock Knock feels
very much like a revisitation of series 7's Hide,
starring Matt Smith. Placing such a Matt-Smith-feeling episode so
early in this new season seems to further signal Steven Moffat's
intentions to dial back the polarizing darkness of the Capaldi era so
far, and while I am still not sure if I agree with this direction (I
really liked series 8, and series 9 is one of my all-time favorite
seasons), it does work quite well on its own terms. Casting the 12th
Doctor as a fish-out-of-water – the “cool” professor made to
look totally uncool and ridiculous when he tries to hang out with a
bunch of millennials – results in some pretty great comedy that is
rather unlike anything Capaldi has had to do so far. His
characterization in this episode feels much more like Smith's Doctor
than his own – less eye-rolling cynicism, and more wide-eyed
enthusiasm about the possibility of getting to investigate a haunted
house – but Capaldi plays it very well, with highly entertaining
results. I do hope that the show doesn't swing too far back in its
desire to compensate for Capaldi's divisive grumpiness in the past
couple seasons, but at least in the context of this particular
episode, it works.
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| The guy who met Agatha Christie meets the guy who just plays one of her characters on TV... |
However,
Knock Knock has a few
problems, the biggest of which it ironically shares with its obvious
ancestor, Hide. Both
episodes start out very strongly, when the nature of the story
appears to be that of an actual haunted house tale. But both episodes
lose steam when they feel obligated to come up with some sci-fi
explanation of what's actually going
on, since it is pretty well established that there are no actual
ghosts in the universe of Doctor Who.
Hide holds up better
than Knock Knock in
this regard: the sci-fi plot devices of this episode's last act are
rather lacking, and ultimately let down the strong two acts that
precede it. This is somewhat made up for by a strong guest
performance by David Suchet (Hercule Poirot, from the long-running TV
series based on Agatha Christie's detective novels), who brings both
spookiness and emotion to the episode's villain. But even with his
memorable role, this isn't one of the show's best mash-ups of sci-fi
and horror; certainly no Impossible Planet/Satan Pit,
or Under The Lake/Before The Flood.
It is not a bad episode – the atmosphere is great, and it's fun
seeing Capaldi take on a very different style of humor – but it
isn't one of the best either.
These
two episodes do a pretty good job of indicating what could be a new,
less dark direction for the last season of the 12th
Doctor era. It certainly works on its own terms: 12 and Bill have a
great dynamic together, and both the humor and gravitas of their
scenes are very effective. I suspect that those who were put off by
the darkness of the last couple seasons, and by Capaldi's
abrasiveness in series 8, will find this much more to their liking.
However, I find myself hoping that they bring a bit of that dark
abrasiveness back in, to at least split the difference: I thought
that series 9 Peter Capaldi was absolutely perfect, and while I do
quite like this season so far, I don't want to see him lighten up too
much.
Score:
Thin Ice:
Knock Knock:
- Christopher S.
Jordan
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