Whowatch Part 15
Not a ton to say upfront this time. I'll happily get Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor but changing the title from Superman: Testament to that is no way for Mark Waid to beat the Silver Age dork allegations. Everybody get Children of the Vault by Deniz Camp and Luca Maresca whether you care about the X-Men or not, I'm even gonna go back and check out Supernovas for this.
The Edge of Destruction
Deep Breath
Into the Dalek
Robot of Sherwood
Listen
Time Heist
The Caretaker
Kill the Moon
Sean: Hello everyone and welcome to the start of the Capaldi era of the WhoWatch! Tonight, we are joined by a lovely guest, Missy!
Missy: Why, hello! I’m Missy. Welcome to Heaven, I say, making the obligatory reference. It’s wonderful to be here!
Sean: Now Missy, tell us how you got into Doctor Who.
Missy: I’ve been into the franchise since I was just a wee lass! My parents and their friends needed some time to go play Dungeons And Dragons and smoke a comical amount of weed, and to make sure I’d stay out of their hair, my aunt stuck me with their New Who DVD collection. After the first incredibly sticky dumpster, I was hooked! And I stayed with the franchise for years, through thick and thin- the thin was all the Torchwood I watched- until this season. Truth be told, the season we’ll be watching today is the final bit of Doctor Who I ever watched!
Sean: It’s always lovely to meet people who got into Who through Eccleston rather than the majority who got in via Smith or Tennant. But before we get into that, we have to talk about William Hartnell and THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION! David, you previously liked what was done in the very first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child. What did you make of this longer tale of the first Doctor Who? (The original, you might say.)
David: There was a bit of The Big Sleep vibes for me - near-indecipherable what was going on on a moment-to-moment basis (if nowhere near that level), but functioning on sheer ‘surely nothing good’s gonna come of this’ spooky black-and-white-mystery vibes.
Sean: [Note to self: Show David The Web Planet.]
David: Though here not only working out, but basically being the transition point from the pilot to Hartnell becoming recognizable as loveable old Doctor Who, our asshole best friend. I liked it pretty well! It’s a fascinating historical artifact simply for seeing it step off one tentative might’ve-been path onto the road we’ve come to know. To use the parlance at hand, this feels like something that could’ve gone another way as opposed to a fixed point, where Doctor Who might’ve been something way more fucked up.
Missy: This episode was selected long before I tossed my hat in the ring, but to be perfectly honest, this feels like it was custom made for me. As a horror fan, watching a Doctor Who version of a paranoid horror film a la John Carpenter’s The Thing made for a delightful romp, like watching the ancient ancestor to a million movies I adore. Which is frankly perfect, because a few of the episodes this season push the horror farther than Who has ever done before.
Sean: I would actually liken it to the older horrors of Nosferatu wherein things are scary not because they are grotesque, as Carpenter and Hawks did in their versions of Who Goes There, but because they are wrong. We’ve seen Doctor Who as this mighty asshole who will deliberately mess with the ship because he wants to experience this alien world called Skaro or smash a caveman’s head in. But Susan isn’t the sort to pull scissors and stab people for no reason. Something has gone dreadfully wrong. And I love it.
In some regards, the move back to Capaldi feels–
>>KRSCH!!<<
Justin Martin: So: I think a good touchpoint in my little nerd-brain for the Capaldi era in general is Waid/Samnee/Rodriguez etc on Daredevil, after years of Miller and Miller-isotopes. Big Two Comics have twin urges re: how they treat the previous run relative to the next, right? The one temptation is 'clear the deck, we're above or ashamed of the stuff that's come before and we're going to tell you that -- we're going to wink about the stupidity of the Flame On catchphrase -- so that you, the reader, can feel cool. And then the other impulse, rather than shame, is just total veneration of what came before. You liked fish-fingers and custard? Here's fish-fingers and custard but now his jacket's a different color and the baddies are Bigger and Badder. And I don't think either of those approaches can get deployed without taking more than a little air out of the story. But what the transition from Smith to Capaldi does -- I think far more successfully than 9 to 10 or 10 to 11 -- is that the former two regenerations feel to me like Actor Decisions that then got a Story Decision attached to them in retrospect. Like, the previous two regenerations were sad, but felt to me more like 'this actor wants to leave, so The Doctor will incur horrible physical damage and have to regenerate'
Definitely, not knocking him, but it feels like a real-world thing that becomes a plot thing.
This is the first -- and so far only -- regeneration that feels intentional and psychological on the part of not Doctor Who the show, but The Doctor, the character. It feels like he's playing a chess game with himself. There's a need for honesty and vulnerability and reliance-on-others he has, and as long as he looks like the Brilliant Dreamy Young Hero, they're always going to lean on him, not vice-versa. If he looks a little frailer, a little visibly angrier, people are going to ask why, and some part of that man -- of that scared little boy we see in Listen -- wants them to ask. It's also a way for Moffat to self-critique some of the excesses of the Smith era without -- crucially -- making you feel like a chump for caring about them or making himself feel like a chump for writing and living those years. The show is able to evolve without making the previous three eras feel more simplistic or redundant in retrospect. All of it still counts emotionally -- in the same way that all those Miller Daredevil comics we love still count -- but there's this implicit critique of 'can't we make this a little more more electric? Can't we brush off the dust a little and put a new engine at the core of the show.
And here's my hot take: that new engine -- that brings the at-this-point-decade-plus-old reboot to stratospheric heights it hasn't reached before or since -- that new engine is actually very old. In the same way that modern comics are more than a little ashamed of their Silver Age roots, nuWho's always taken pains to hide that Doctor Who started as...an educational show. Capaldi and Moffat's big innovation is that Doctor Who becomes educational again. And to be clear: by educational, I don't mean 'oh look, it's Rosa Parks! Shakespeare! The Partition of India!'
People before and after Moffat have tried to make educational episodes with varying degrees of success; I kind of love Demons of the Punjab, which we'll get to. By an educational SHOW, however, I mean that Coleman and Capaldi Who is mostly about whether and how we let other people in on our understandings of the world. Being a student is a very vulnerable thing. If you're letting your brain be changed, even in a small way, you're letting yourself be changed. Being a teacher is doubly vulnerable: accepting that same risk of self-change, while also trying to give as much knowledge as you can, while also--how do I put this? Teaching is in large part about acknowledging that you'll die soon, and so trying to spread yourself in as many corners as you can before you die.
It's kind of miraculous that, at least in NuWho, we've never had a Doctor who spends so much time scribbling on a chalkboard nor a companion who regularly wrangles kids: teaching's about welcoming death and change while also holding onto the idea that -- in some small way -- you can sneak around death, if you play your cards right.
And that's also, undeniably, the main thrust of being a Time Lord. Changing, while also in some way seeing yourself as a little exempt from the changes everyone else goes through. Also, to get unpretentious and brass-tacks: with all due respect to RTD, who I think is going to give the franchise a second golden era, and to early Moffat -- the greatest innovation of Capaldi Moffat Who is that episodes just don't suck anymore. Maybe they have awful politics, maybe they have a little bloat in the midpoint, but for a few blissful years, C and D-tier Who largely disappeared.
Robot of Sherwood, for instance, didn't hold up nearly as well on a rewatch as when I saw it the first time -- but I can't point to an episode from this era that doesn't have a pivotal scene that sets my brain on fire. but getting into it -- I think Deep Breath might be the strongest New Doctor episode the show's ever had? I wasn't here for Smith's entrance, which I also love, but this one is similar in that it has this deceptively simple premise -- Victorian cyborg time -- while tying it into both an emotional core and Moffat's favorite trick of fairytale rules based on absurdly common human traits. Don't blink. Don't breathe. These guys are terrifying as fuck, unforgettably visually distinctive, and -- once you know their backstory -- act as a critique of the Doctor's endless self-tinkering while also being a perfect signal that, in this era, the day's rarely saved by a Smith-style grand plan, and more often saved by a philosophical argument. Keep searching for utopia, for a way forward -- while knowing it's probably not out there, and not worth exchanging your sense of self for even when it does exist.
I've also got to give it to Jenna Coleman here -- when she was a mystery to solve, her character bored me to death and dragged down the considerable charm of Smith and (who knew) Jenna Coleman. But now that that's behind us and she doesn't have to sustain an arc by existing -- now that she can feel -- I absolutely adore the Anansi-esque way she'll squirm out of trouble by empathizing with an enemy, then questioning them -- again, this is a season and an era about teaching as a lever. Tying those two points together -- Coleman's coming out as a powerhouse, Capaldi as the first psychological regeneration -- can we talk about the brilliance of that final phone call scene? I'd forgotten about that one til I rewatched and Jesus CHRIST it's phenomenal. You've got this ageless demigod who can whirl through spacetime, and he's using that incredible physiology to do what kids do -- saying 'my teddy feels lonely' to a family member or friend when it's too hard to say 'I'm lonely'. Crying loud enough to be heard through a door you closed on purpose, but knowing someone's on the other end, listening. Knowing the door isn't preventing them from hearing you -- and not actually wanting them not to hear you -- but still wanting a door there so that both of you can pretend you don't want to be overheard.
>>KRSCH!!<<
But anyways, let’s move on to the Capaldi era itself!
David: First up, like the new intro pretty well, pleasingly old-fashioned, but if anything I feel places TOO much emphasis on the time travel of it all over the more sprawling ‘anything’ feel of the cosmic vistas and wormholes of the prior openings.
As for Capaldi: it’s funny, I’ve heard for so long about him as the cranky Doctor, that’s certainly why my mom didn’t much care for him (which every single friend of mine has been horrified to hear). And that’s not…wrong? But if anything Deep Breath itself pushes so hard to make him recognizable from moment one - way before you get the ‘proper’ handover via the Smith cameo, as soon as he starts complaining about the concept of bedrooms for me - that while Clara’s reaction is totally reasonable contextually, there was an emotional disconnect for me as a viewer from her inability to emotionally connect A to B. Of course that’s The Doctor, he’s acting like a dramatic self-righteous little dork the way he always has, there’s just less of a patina of swashbuckling quirky evasiveness to distract you from the reality of his shitty behaviors. Him letting Clara get captured is a horrifying moment, but Eccleston or Tennant or Smith easily could’ve too. They just would’ve been charming about it.
(Speaking of Eccleston, I described him as raw in the past, but he was raw like a darkening bruise. Capaldi is stripped to the bone and the people he loves don’t like what they see. Depending on how much you want to read into it - using the knowledge I have for the time being, anyway - it’s like his self-definition after Gallifrey trying to not be The Oncoming Storm anymore was holding him upright, and without it his strings have been cut.)
Missy: I know part of the fun of this watchalong has been to see David’s perspective of things he’s never seen before, but I think I get to add in my own unique perspective on Deep Breath. Namely, the perspective of someone who DIDN’T just watch the several movie length episodes beforehand. And buds, I’m going to be honest, it is WEIRD. So much of the episode is reliant on previous episodes knowledge that if anyone was looking to jump on, the same way people could for the beginning of 9’s or 11’s run, they’re going to be completely lost. The Doctor is recovering from things that happened to him in Season 7, with allies he acquired in Season 6, against an enemy he met in Season 2, while trying to understand why he has the same face as a man he met in Season 4.
None of this is necessarily an insult, but I think it’s fair to say this is a pretty big shift into the serialization that will continue through the rest of this season. And if I misremembered when any of those seasons were, I’m going to hand in my badge.
Sean: Special props should be given to Ben Wheatley, the director of both this and Into The Dalek. Wheatley, for those of you who don’t know, is one of those weird British directors who largely specializes in the genre of Folk Horror. Prior to this, Wheatley was known for directing the truly sublime and alchemical A Field in England and the genuinely unnerving Kill List. But his stint with Doctor Who was coupled with the direction of what many consider to be his best film, his theatrical length remake of the Doctor Who serial Paradise Towers, renamed High-Rise.
And you can seriously feel Wheatley’s presence as a director here. The most obvious place is the sequence wherein Clara has to hold her breath in and the screen starts flashing red as she’s starting to die. Then, when she’s being carried off by Doctor Who (cleverly disguised with a flesh mask made to look like Matt Smith), we see an overlay of a flashback to when she was dealing with a truly awful class. Just fantastic stuff all around.
Missy: I hadn’t known of the director’s horror pedigree, but it certainly explains the flair and passion of the darker moments here. The comedy throughout the episode ranges from good to slapstick, but the stuff I really remember are the horror showstoppers. The scene of the fake diners, or the flesh balloon? (What a sentence to write.) Breathtaking. Which wasn’t a pun, until I wrote it.
Sean: In the Earth. Highly recommended. He’s also inexplicably directing the next Meg movie, which is due to come out this summer.
David: I have a whole thing about holding my breath during scenes where other people have to without my even meaning it, so this one was tough. It’s a good episode in general - Moffat’s if not at his best distinctly on-point on every front, peak Vastra and Jenny (“I thought you were painting me”), not quite peak Strax but that’s just a different gradation of perfection, Clara’s first really great showcase and I was glad to hear she’s 27 which means I too am still young enough to be Doctor Who’s hot young friend - it’s just that even it being a really great episode falls by the wayside relative to considering where it’s pointing the show as a whole from here.
Sean: As for Peter Capaldi, if I’m being honest, he’s not quite there yet. Or, to be more specific, the 12th Doctor Who isn’t there yet. You can see flashes of where 12 will ultimately go, but we’re not there yet. It’s not a problem as, say, James Gunn making Guardians of the Galaxy while not being there yet is. But having seen where this character will evolve, it’s striking the things that will be cut out.
David: Then there’s Into The Dalek, which is basically an extended excellent misdirect on how this season is going to work. Hot on the heels of Dan Pink’s introduction (With an exchange just going for the throat of Tom King’s whole career “There’s a bit more to modern soldiers than just shooting people, I like to think think there’s a moral dimension.”/“Ah, so you shoot people and then you cry about it afterwards.”) -
Sean: To be fair, that’s basically part of the critique provided by Strange Adventures.
David: - we’ve got a tidy little setup. The Doctor is more overtly a bastard now but not such he can’t be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing, and Clara, representing the best in him, is basically making him HER companion as she as a teacher guides him towards growing the hell up the way The Doctor has so many companions to date. Typically fun and clever Moffat, a great ‘into the eye of darkness’ sequence as they go in through the stalk, harsh moments but you can see something better coming for all involved.
And then the Dalek just becomes a different kind of genocidal monster because deep down, at his very core, no, The Doctor really is a bastard and that’s what shone through when he opened up his soul. He’s trying not to be! He really is! But we’re not getting a crowd pleasing onwards-and-upwards moral trajectory here, for him or as it’ll quickly turn out for Clara.
Missy: Ugh- I’m suddenly reminded of how, when I first watched these episodes, someone I followed on Tumblr INSISTED they heard a leak that Danny was about to become a third companion, and I spent the entire first two episodes irritated it wasn’t happening yet.
Sean: Oh, we’ll be talking about tumblr in due time. If I’m being honest Into the Dalek is kinda mid. I see the bits that work quite well, but it feels like a fantastic execution of an idea that’s not all that great. The Neonomicon of Doctor Who.
Missy: I adore the opener of the Doctor saving a soldier, but in a way that makes it clear that he’s still a bastard. But between too many cutaways to soldiers flying through the air, and the cringe comedy of Danny and Clara’s meet cute that reminds me of the fact that Moffat made Coupling before getting into Who, I have to agree with Mid. Fun, but inessential.
Oh, and before I forget: I completely forgot Missy was in this season when I asked to join. And I am instantly glad I extricated myself from Doctor Who fandom before I picked up the name, because I would have NEVER heard the end of it.
Sean: Ah yes, Missy. Played by the lovely and maniacal Mme Chloe Zelig. We don’t see a lot of her in this batch of episodes, but she is in many regards one of the three supporting leads of the Capaldi era of Doctor Who. It’s not really a spoiler for why that is.
David: I talked about The Crack really showing Moffat’s weaknesses as a showrunner compared to RTD back in Series 5, and I’m happy to say this is an exponential upgrade on that basic formula. Yes, a regular reminder in the background of events that a season finale is coming, but one with a proper mystery involved, a terrific anchor in Missy, and one in each case defined by the events of the surrounding episode. Into The Dalek as you both said isn’t a showstopper, but it really landed for me in terms of ‘oh my god…has our guy finally figured out how to make season arcs work?’ Stay tuned! Not that we haven’t gotten ‘Hey Doctor, you’re sorta like a Dalek’ plenty of times before, but I got a good feeling here.
Sean: Sorry, my computer appears to have malfunctioned. Her name is actually Michelle Gomez. Will try to fix that one of these –
>>KRSCH!!<<
Justin: Not a ton to say about Robot of Sherwood except -- I usually run cold on Hey, It's Historical Figure! episodes because they rarely have much to say about the figure or the Doctor beyond Family Guy cutaway jokes. But the exceptions -- Sherwood, and also Vincent and the Doctor -- find some sort of angle that brings out a nuance in both. Here, it's something like 'you have to lie -- about your own capabilities and the world's gray areas -- in order to give humankind an unambiguous hero. Is it worth swordfighting if fighting means hoping that no one notices your sword has been a spoon the whole time?' But the episode's twist is close enough to Deep Breath - hey, this group of seeming historical figures is actually a group of robots on a doomed mission of restoration -- that I liked it way less on a binge than I did week-by-week. Curious if y'all felt the same. Robin's description of the Doctor -- a boy from hard times who was unsatisfied with the shape of the world and changed it -- is brilliant and I love it. I'm betting David or Sean found it too obvious, and sure, but...fuck it, when you find a link like that, you hit it hard.
>>KRSCH!!<<
Sean: So Robots of Sherwood. It’s fun. Not much else to add.
Missy: I made a note during the episode that just said “I’ll bet David has thoughts about this one” so I was THRILLED to see you tweet that you do.
David: I did promise on Twitter that I was probably the first person ever to have substantial critical thoughts on Robot of Sherwood, and it’s time I made good.
The entry-level thing as Gatniss is sure to drive home for one and all is connecting Robin Hood and Doctor Who in the tradition of British adventure heroes, in ways highlighted, others obvious enough to need no highlighting (they both got companions), and some relatively subtle (the Sheriff is essentially playing the role of Davros this evening).
Sean: “Shortly, I shall be the most powerful man in the realm. King in all but name, for Nottingham is not enough. After this, Derby. Then Lincoln. And after Lincoln… THE WORLD!”
David: It’s the kind of 'perhaps we’re not so different, you and I' we were always gonna get out of those two meeting, and that’s all well and good. I’m always up for some swashbuckler Who. But whether Gatniss intended it or not, the cumulative effect of those parallels hit me square in the face when you added the layer of the guys also getting on one another's nerves:
This is basically structured as a Doctor/Doctor crossover.
You couldn’t ACTUALLY have Peter Capaldi meet a past Doctor as a throwaway episode only a couple into his tenure, with his first already having a Smith cameo to boot. But functionally speaking, this is 12 at this very early stage in his journey meeting what he just lost, the dashing eternal rogue who laughs at peril to hide a weary heart. When that thematic mirror is also a cultural staple adventurer the episode wants to put over as an estimable equal to our usual lead, and again have these two very similar men hate each other's guts, the comparisons become inescapable to me.
Sean: This is especially funny considering one of the cameo Robin Hoods in this episode is from the 1953 television series Robin Hood wherein the titular hero was played by then future Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton. Sadly, as with much filmed works from early 20th century Britain, the BBC burned it meaning only 38 minutes exist.
David: Which like so much of the rest of this is a thing they were gonna do no matter what but still serves my larger thesis. This even ends with The Doctor giving his partner a happily-ever-after with the woman he loves that he can never have himself the way 10 did in Doomsday! An elegant set of juxtapositions highlighting some obvious emotional baggage in a particular way usually only big Lore episodes can, without dragging everything into its gravitational pull the way those do. One of a million ‘fun, not an all-timer’ Whos, but one of the cleverer ones in my opinion.
Missy: That’s such a great way to look at this, I never thought of that! And it ties this episode even more thoroughly to the season arc- each episode featuring the Doctor meeting a mirror of himself, and over and over again, finding his own reflection wanting.
Sean: Speaking of reflections…
[Image from WhoGiants, made by Sean Dillon]
Listen is one of those episodes that is quite clever about itself. Tying back to Missy’s comment about Coupling, we see an extremely Coupling scenario where Clara and Danny have their first date and they’re both absolutely rubbish at it. Not only that, but by adding a degree of time travel to the mix, we have a call back to one of Coupling’s more notable aspects: its use of form. Frequently, Moffat would come up with delightful bits of structuralism for his Coupling episodes like having one told completely in split screen to show our two characters split up. Another notable one had the exact same six and a half minutes repeat from different perspectives.
While not as structurally complex as those, we nevertheless see Clara having her absolutely rubbish date interrupted by time travel shenanigans (the bit where Rupert comes out of the kitchen is hysterical).
Missy: So, cards on the table? The ending ruins this for me. I am dangerously close to saying I hate this episode, and considering how much I love 70 percent of this, that’s a really weird way for me to feel.
Sean: Boo! Hiss!
David: So your Waters of Mars!
Missy: Oh, absolutely. I WANT to adore this! The script is clever and well acted! The direction is great, and the scenes in little Danny’s room are genuinely chilling.
David: (Personally I was ambivalent on the Danny stuff; it was “The dark is empty now.”/”No it isn’t.” that really got my motor going horror-wise.)
Missy: But this is a masterfully constructed horror piece that ends by saying “you thought this was a horror piece? You loser”. Like a wonderful magic trick that ends with the magician calling you stupid for falling for it, I can’t help but watch the final scenes with a sense of betrayal and heartbreak.
Sean: I think this is more on the direction of the episode rather than the writing. From what I interpret, the ending is supposed to be the note that Doctor Who was spending far too much time in his own head and got a bit too paranoid about the world, as many of us have done. You know when it’s three at night and you’re lying awake wondering if maybe the air conditioning has something in it that’s making you feel paranoid because why else would you be feeling paranoid. It’s not like you’ve done anything to feel paranoid about, just every single microaggression you have sent to your friends to make them think they’re good friends, when in actuality they all hate you because you’re nothing more than dirt that deserves to be grounded down into paste for being so terrible.
But the direction made it come across as less manic and paranoid and more like business as usual. Imagine if the opening speech was delivered with the energy of this:
(And here I was thinking you were mad about the bed Clara found herself under.)
Missy: Yeah, it’s an entire episode about getting too deep into your own head. Which, frankly, makes me wonder if this was a bit of self-critique on Moffat’s part, given that it is the Doctor getting his wires crossed and basically making up an entire Moffat episode on the spot. Dude spends too long alone and creates the ultimate horror experience.
Speaking of the ultimate horror experience, the fate of Orson Pink immediately reminded me of the classic Shortest Horror Story In The World - “The last man in the world sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door”. Specifically, it reminds me of my favorite little twist on it- “The last man in the world sat alone in a room. There was a Lock on the door”. A delightful peal of horror, for what is potentially revealed to be loud pipes.
Oh, and I hate to even have to bring it up, but man, I’m sure the “Clara is a Mary-Sue” crowd was annoying. She goes back in time, inspires the Doctor to be a hero, then links it to the huge anniversary movie.
Sean: [Through gritted teeth] I WILL BE GETTING TO THAT!
Also David, did you recognize the guy who played the Orphanage caretaker?
David: Nope.
Sean: Well, that was Robert Goodman, a somewhat respected character actor who is perhaps best known in our circles for starring in a series of short films known as Short Pieces, which would lead to the theatrical film The Show, all of which written by the beloved and not at all controversial Alan Moore. Goodman played Moore’s double act partner. He also played Steve Moore in an adaptation of Unearthing.
David: Good on him!
For the relatively minor episodes in this particular Whowatch I have more substantial thoughts on than I feel is usual for me, I haven’t got a ton for Listen or the other…Very Significant episode we’ll be discussing shortly. The Where’s Waldo bit was funny. I like the idea of The Doctor getting up to truly, truly random bullshit like this, especially when left unsupervised. The most specific thought I have is the ending beat with Clara’s demand feels right but also speaks to those control issues that got some lip service before but are really starting to emerge now, in her deep and soon to be horribly ironic condescension to those dearest to her. But for as sweeping and ultimately important as it is (though I appreciate it goes in the Satan Pit bucket as ‘the most important thing that ever happens to Doctor Who, done as just another episode of Doctor Who’, I do like those), I have no strong feelings on it. It was a pretty good one imo, though what Missy said is also fair. That’s about it.
>>KRSCH!!<<
Justin: I remember loving Listen on a first watch, and I didn’t hate it here, but it struck me on rewatch as something inevitably in dialogue with Blink. Can you have an introspective episode where the Doctor doesn’t drive the plot in the traditional ‘speechify and open things with the Sonic’ way? Blink proved you could, to fanfare. But can, Moffat seems to ask in this episode, you do that without a living nightmare for the episode to coalesce around?
In some ways, it’s more impressive that Moffat was able to exist in the Blink zone for forty-plus minutes without the aid of a jump scare. And this episode does, to pick up on our earlier point about Moffat revisiting the excesses of the Smith era, nicely invert the ‘Doctor was present in the childhood of a companion’ mythos from Eleven. I like that The Doctor is the one getting nurtured, guided, and explained to here. For all of the complaints we’ve gotten to and will get to about Doctor-as-mastermind in the Moffat era, here he really was a scared child who benefitted from a moment of empathy that helped make him the adult he is today.
But this is an episode with one flare in the gun: you see it, it changes you, you see it again, you’ve kind of already been changed. I can put on Blink and, knowing all of the twists, still enjoy the Tom and Jerry aspect of the camera bending around the room to follow the creatures. Here, once you know that the monster’s likely fake and the kid in that barn has two hearts, any kind of rewatch becomes about fast-forwarding to that moment.
Then again, even typing that out feels like complaining about a wine with a 1902 vintage: Moffat’s clearly had this one in the wings for some time, and my first glass was magical – is it any great crime that there’s not enough left in the bottle for a second mind-blowing?
[I will say – and the Capaldi era is my favorite Who – that what we lose with Moffat as showrunner is episodes with an immersive sense of place or world. The plotting becomes so much more intricate and absolutely tears at your heartstrings as it goes on, and I love these little puzzle boxes, but there’s no worlds here I just want to spend time in, a la Empty Child/Doctor Dances or the Ood or Gridlock.)
>>KRSCH!!<<
David: As for Time Heist, very important: Clara in a suit with the tie loosened.
Missy: I literally have a note here that just says “Clara in suit, is it any wonder she’s bi”.
Sean: Just wait until she gets the haircut.
David: Otherwise, epitome of ‘nice one!’ Moffat enjoys playing around with perception and memory and what we’re allowed to see, as applied here to a heist flick with every genre-baked-in layer of bluff and deception and forethought stripped away until the end where they all get retroactively implemented because this is a show with time travel so it can do that. More structurally laudable than emotionally effective, although Jonathan Bailey, Pippa Bennett-Warner, and Keeley Hawes all acquit themselves well in their parts. Some directorial choices felt off-key in this one though. And was that a panel from a Doctor Who comic in the rogues gallery rundown?
Missy: A perfectly serviceable and fun episode and if anyone says it’s their favorite then I think they’re a cop.
Sean: And now, my thoughts on Gareth Roberts.
David: LAST ONE. The TRUE Promised Land.
Sean: Before he went over the deep end from problematic and kind of shit to full on monster, I never cared much for Roberts’ work. I despised The Lodger, couldn’t finish The Shakespeare Code, never even gave the wasp one a shot, and while I liked the Stormageddon bit, Closing Time was mid. The Caretaker, being a salvage job on Moffat’s part because Roberts became such a pain to work with (the couch scene was most definitely Moffat). And while one could be sympathetic and say having to write the same story four times is a shit task to have, it’s not that great of a story and Roberts is a shit person.
Even outside of television, Roberts never appealed to me. I read a few of his comics and always thought his partner and fellow shitbag Clayton Hickman was better. The only audio I’ve listened to was co-written with Hickman and was mainly delightful because I find late stage Deep Space Nine… problematic. And I tried his books, but they never grabbed me. Even before his face-heel turn (which wasn’t so much that as him doing his regular schtick one time too many), he wasn’t my favorite author.
But the main way I engaged with Roberts was through one of his former friends, Elizabeth Sandifer. El talked about the various interesting aspects of Roberts as a figure within Doctor Who fandom, most notably his coining of the Gun/Frock distinction (which placed Doctor Who stories in the camps of “Let’s make this about soldiers” and “Lets make this queer”) as well as his defense of the Graham Williams era. And it is through Sandifer that I understood the horror of Roberts through the lens of someone who actually cared.
Her essay on The Caretaker is one of the most heart wrenching essays I’ve seen from her. A genuine hurt being expressed in a way that highlights what was lost. Of a man who simply couldn’t look past his own bigotry and prejudice to be anything more than a boring hack who, after finally being ousted from Doctor Who, spends his time complaining about SJWs or whatever.
So yeah, that’s all I have to say about Gareth Roberts.
Missy: I can’t wait to go read that essay, that sounds utterly heartbreaking. I haven’t yet, which is where I can say that even without context, this episode is goddamn dreadful. Dude’s a transphobic monster and somehow the worst thing he’s done to me is make me watch the Doctor get all excited that Clara is screwing someone who looks like him. Did y’all notice that every delinquent, bad student, and person being yelled at in this episode is Black? No idea if that’s a Gareth Original too, but yowza, someone should have caught that.
David: No, but the “PE teacher” bits did get me tugging my collar after awhile, and I’ll admit my main response to the Doctor’s EXTREMELY weird ‘pride’ there was being glad I wasn’t imagining that one guy was supposed to vaguely resemble Matt Smith.
Another one that, besides the larger context of being glad to never have to deal with this turd again, I don’t have much to say on. Not surprised it was salvage work (my own theory had been Moffat had a couple character beats he wanted to hit and needed somebody to pad the rest out, this makes just as much sense) as I can only describe Moffat’s elevated character-driven schlock and Roberts’ bog-standard schlock competing for space as disquieting, and it feels like there’s some emotional connective tissue missing in Dan figuring out why The Doctor’s being so hard on him. It serves its larger purpose in the season for Clara as the seams come further undone, some passing pleasant moments sneak their way in, but as an episode it pretty straightforwardly sucks.
Missy: In fairness to this episode, the Doctor admitting he moved in with a bunch of otters after a fight with River is charming, and Danny calling him an Officer is a fairly affecting scene. Which… okay, yeah, I think we hit all the points. Farewell, Gareth, we’re going to the moon!
Sean: Ah yes, Kill the Moon. A charming story that has absolutely no controversial elements in it whatsoever.
David: One more guest appearance of sorts - I was warned by Eliza Edwards prior to watching Kill The Moon that “if there's any episode where your preconceptions can make-or-break it, it's that one…It wasn't written (as an abortion allegory), it doesn't have a clear bent either way, the reading is the product of a couple clumsy pieces of phrasing in the episode and the rabidity of anti-Moffat discourse in 2014.”
Sean: Oh boy, I have to explain this.
[Breathes in…]
THE MOSTLY COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MOFFAT HATE TAG
I should begin by noting that the phrase “mostly complete” refers to the fact that, barring two notable examples, I will not be naming names. The two examples are people who are public figures rather than the majority of players who got involved in this sordid affair, who were mostly teenagers discovering feminism and having an argument about it.
Our story begins in 2012 when a TERF wrote a Guardian article decrying Steven Moffat as an arch misogynist. This being 2012, most people did not give two flying shits about trans rights because, as anyone who has studied the long and ugly history of queer rights will tell you, trans rights were often thrown to the curb as a means of compromising with the more reactionary public to allow other, less 'extreme' queer rights to be permitted. As such, seeing a feminist critique of a creative figure, the leftist side of the internet took it as gospel that Steven Moffat was the most misogynist creator in the history of Doctor Who.
This was allowed to propagate for a couple years without any real challenge. It would curdle into accepted wisdom and, as such, been extremely lazy in its approach. Because if we all agreed Stephen Moffat was the devil who hates women, why bother putting the effort. We can just hate. To give you a taste of what the critiques people would come up with when they weren’t just regurgitating the words of a TERF or actively lying, here’s an extremely popular meme that was commonly thrown around:
Sometimes, they wouldn’t even bother with the text part.
It’s worth noting that tumblr in 2014 was very much akin to a forum without any mods. Where people are allowed to run completely rampant without any consideration. Such was the case in late 2013 when a number of people who wanted to have a more nuanced conversation about the work of Steven Moffat than “Stephen Moffat is the devil who ruined my beloved 10 with sexist evil and I hate him” by challenging their critiques. I was a minor character in this rather crappy affair. Not one of the people writing largely good essays on the subject, but still actively partaking in a flame war.
I did not send any death threats, though I know for a fact many were sent by both sides of the debate.
Things would escalate throughout the year 2014 boiling into something dreadful and horrible. I would spend a lot of my time being a jerk and, basically, playing the game of 'twitter’s main character' on tumblr. I can only provide my perspective on the affair, so my reasoning for playing this part was, essentially, because a lot of the interesting people were playing it. There was a degree of smug satisfaction to 'pwning' people who literally used the phrase “Cakesniffer” even after being informed that it is, in every sense of the word, a phrase only a bully would use.
Things would explode with the release of Kill the Moon. Among the larger figures on the 'People What Would Like the Work of El Sandifer' side was El Sandifer. El Sandifer, writer of TARDIS Eruditorum, watched Kill the Moon and was so moved, she declared it her favorite episode of Doctor Who. As such, she checked tumblr for the response. To say tumblr didn’t much care for the episode would be an understatement. (One person even fed into the 'Clara is a Mary Sue' narrative by claiming it was another example of an episode where the day was saved thanks to Clara’s magic tears.)
Among the Moffat Hate tag’s critiques of the episode was nicked from the Catholic Vote, wherein they argued the story was Anti-Abortion in much the same way they did The Lorax. So extremely bad media criticism all around. (There is a coherent argument to be made about Kill the Moon being about abortion, but it’s a weak one.)
El, who had already been poking the bear of the Moffat Hate tag, poked the bear some more. El wasn’t the only factor in this, of course. A lot of us, myself included, poked the bear. And the nature of tumblr is that of a curated social media platform rather than a private social media platform, something the Moffat Hate tag crowd, as they called themselves, didn’t take kindly to.
The resulting flame war was ugly. For the next three months, a lot of us were basically being rather awful. I would hate binge all the truly awful criticism being written about Steven Moffat’s work that highlighted a degree of not having any idea how media criticism and fiction works. There were a lot of people who, with a straight face, argued that you aren’t a real character if we don’t know what your mom’s name and your work history is and the main characters of the show should always be the moral paragons. Think Comics Fandom, but worse.
Among the people on the “Moffat is Satan, If You Disagree You’re Either a Sexist or Have Internalized Misogyny” was Claudia Boleyn. Claudia was popular for her persona as a feminist what hated the work of Steven Moffat. The problem was that she never had anything else to add to that persona. As such, when the Moffat era came to an end, she lost her job on Doctor Who Magazine because she kept trying to make almost every conversation about how bad Steven Moffat was. Perhaps the nadir of this was when Gareth Roberts was finally ousted from Doctor Who after an attempted FIFTH VERSION OF THE CARETAKER! was rightfully squashed for the basic fact that Roberts is a fucking shit. She compared Gatiss’ transphobic monstrosity to how much of a sexist Moffat was. And, to the best of my knowledge, none of the quotes Moffat said ten years ago that people nicked from a gossip rag were half as bad as the shit Roberts said. And, for good measure, she claimed that hating Steven Moffat was like being in antifa.
She would frequently invalidate and belittle people who got genuine joy out of the Moffat era. Who saw themselves in characters like Clara, Amy, and so many others. And she was bad at the media criticism thing. She was, in many regards, the figurehead of the Moffat Hate tag. And she wasn’t the worst.
Again, I’d like to note that this was largely a story of teenagers and early twenty somethings getting into a fight about whether liking a problematic, flawed television show is good feminist praxis. A bunch of nerds having a flame war without any mods stopping them from going as far as they did.
And by that, I mean a trans woman openly claiming the Moffat Hate tag is why she’s about to kill herself.
(She didn’t, thank god.)
Three months after it became monstrous. Three months after we all became bastards. Three months of death threats, cruelty, and stupidity. And then, most people involved started to quiet down. It would flair up eventually, but never to the height of the worst of it. It would finally come to a complete end when the side what generally likes the work of Steven Moffat went “OH SHIT, THE NAZIS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE HUGO AWARDS!” and went to deal with that mess. As El would note years later, a lot of the mindset of the Moffat Hate tag would become the tenderqueer/puriteen crowd like Ana Mardoll.
I look back at my actions with regret. I was awful. I could say more, but that would diminish the awful. That would require me naming more names of people who abandoned tumblr. And there are stories that are simply not mine to tell. History is often incomplete.
So anyways, Kill the Moon is a lot of fun.
David: It’s ok. It’s One Standard Unit of Doctor Who, and it leans towards the better end of that category. Some fun ideas in service of some good character work put over by some good acting, looping back around to what I said about Clara with Listen when it turns out she has some in common with The Doctor’s worst side too, it’s got me excited for where things go from here. The astronaut suit looks like AI-generated Warhammer 40K armor, but that’s not really a problem. My main thought is that there was a Justice League cartoon tie-in comic with an issue that had this premise in 2002. COINCIDENCE? Yes.
Anything I’d have to say after all that would feel trifling, but I really haven’t got much. I completely get why this would be the match to a powderkeg when these are the ingredients it uses for its moral dilemma genre stew, but mostly this episode just reminded me some of why I was so damn gunshy about finally getting around to trying Doctor Who, when I saw the periphery of this vast sea of loathing surrounding it that I’d be invited into by watching and having thoughts on it.
Missy: Yeah, that’s a hell of an act to follow. One of the most impacting pieces I’ve ever read, and then I get to stroll in like “hey, did you know Spiders On The Moon was the basis for a found footage movie called Apollo 18? It sucked”. The science behind the plot makes no sense, but frankly, who the hell comes to Doctor Who for THAT?
Sean: A lot of people, apparently. That, and rules. Science fiction is all about obeying rules. Because the impossible can’t happen in science fiction. You know, like Time Machines, Aliens, or Virtual Reality. You have to obey the rules and never break them. Otherwise, you’re a bad writer. (I did so much research for that tangent, Oh god the takes were worse than I remember!)
Missy: I’d like to pretend all the drama was why I dipped out of the Doctor Who space, but truth be told, I just stopped talking about my opinions when I learned my sisters think Amy Pond is the worst character in fiction. Still don’t get that.
Actually, I DO have one note about Kill The Moon - the addition of the student!
Sean: Courtney is delightful! Feels a lot like my students.
Missy: Between this and Nightmare In Silver, they seem very determined to have 'Clara escorts children' to be a recurring thing. I wonder if that keeps happening, I say, as someone who stopped watching Who after this season. I like Courtney way more than those kids, but I’m a monster freak, and I loved the Cybermen a lot more than these Moon Spiders.
Sean: Don’t forget the girl from The Rings of Akhaten.
Missy: Oh, and the kids from The Snowmen!
Sean: You should watch the rest of the Capladi era. It’s so good!
Missy: I definitely will- if for no other reason then to follow you guys along! Gotta keep an eye out for the next wild take David has. Who’s going to follow up The Next Doctor in terms of out-of-left-field?
Sean: If you end up liking Under the Lake/Before the Flood, I will disown you, David.
Missy: For every bananas take, Sean adds another Torchwood episode to the watchlist.
Sean: Fuck no! David already has to sit through one Chibnall era, I’m not making him watch the marginally better but still shit one.
Missy: WISE. Thanks a bunch for letting me tag along, it’s been a blast! If you ever need a pitch hitter to watch something awful- ever see that K.9. solo show?- you know where to find me!
Sean: We are not watching scams. Otherwise, I’d show David my copy of The Dark Dimension.
Next Time: I'm a sex machine ready to reload. I think I just picked the title because it makes me sound important. When the stars threw down their spears/And water'd heaven with their tears:/Did he smile his work to see? Remember all those years when all you wanted to do was to rule the world? A time-traveling scientist dressed as a magician.
David: (...I also thought while watching Kill the Moon “Wait, wasn’t there a movie called Apollo 18 about moon spiders? Does anyone else remember that? Why do I remember that?”)