Whowatch Part 9
Watched Shin Ultraman! Utterly charming and one truly perfect kick, but I fear it was a little overhyped for me personally if any of you need to unfollow me over that.
The Ribos Operation
The Eleventh Hour
The Beast Below
Victory of the Daleks
The Time of Angels
Flesh and Stone
David: As we kick off this time I have to admit, silly as it may be, it never really occurred to me that there’d be a seasonal arcs in the original Who.
Sean: That’s because, with two (possibly three) exceptions, there weren’t. By and large, Classic Who avoided seasonal arcs in the traditional sense due to the serialized nature of the show already allowing for multi-episode stories. There were exceptions, most notably the Key to Time arc, which this story opens up.
Yes reader, I do plan to have David watch a story from the other major season long arc. And I think you might know exactly which story I’m picking.
Anyways, The Ribos Operation. This is the one that I picked not because there’s some seasonal influence or the like, but because I find it to be quite underrated. I just rewatched it for the first time in a while for this, and was charmed by the story. What sets itself up as an epic tale of time and space where God orders Doctor Who to find the Key to Time like he’s the Eternal Champion or something turns into a small scale con job where a wide boy tries to sell a planet to a genocidal maniac.
David: I was gonna ask if that was some kind of time lord thing - since you said they used to be framed more mysteriously - or if that was in fact supposed to be regular ‘ol God popping into Doctor Who apropos of nothing.
Sean: Nope. That’s God. And the Black Guardian is Satan. Though it’s perhaps more apt to look at them through the lens of Michael Moorcock’s work considering the heavy and blatant influence of the Eternal Champion on the arc. (Though, it’s slightly muted since only Graham Williams, who was running the show at the time, seems to have read Jerry Cornelius. Which is doubly amusing since the very next story was written by Douglas Adams.)
David: Another thing I somehow missed, or maybe forgot since it feels more familiar as I write it out: that Douglas Adams wrote some Doctor Who.
Sean: We’ll be watching the best one at some point. Probably to give you something to relax you while we sit through the hell that is the Triangle Era of Doctor Who.
David: Anyway, this one I enjoyed pretty well! I don’t think as much as you did, but everybody here - Garron chortling with Tom Baker, Binro breaking down in tears at the words of that Domnhall Gleeson-looking fella, the weirdly real-feeling comradery between The Graff and Sholakh, all playing their own at-odds little games for The Doctor to stumble through.
Sean: The thing about writer Robert Holmes is that he has a love of double acts. Almost all of his scripts feature a duo bouncing off of one another. This is especially evident in the relationship between Doctor Who and Fred. Fred is one of the more underrated companions (especially in this incarnation) who I’ve always found to be quite charming (though, if I’m being honest, I prefer her next incarnation). There’s a sense of someone who has been cooped up in a library for years with her as well as a mercurial potential just waiting to burst out and overwhelm Doctor Who.
But the stand out is Binro. There are minor characters with impact in Doctor Who, and then there’s Binro. One of the best. He never gets a scene with Doctor Who, only with the younger conman. But you can feel his tragedy, his sorrow. Everything you need to know about what Doctor Who ought to believe in can be found in how it treats Binro.
But more than that, there are so many brilliant ideas from the Seeker to the Jethrik to Ribos itself. One can’t help but be awed by the sheer scope of such a small story.
David: Absolutely! I hadn’t thought of this as one of my favorites of the classic Who you’ve shown me thus far, but you’re making a good case for it. I also really enjoyed the contrast with Romana - I imagine the main intent was simply ‘brilliant young gun vs. old kook’, but the sense I got was that as ‘merely’ a hundredish years old she was a wise elder, whereas The Doctor has been around so long they transcend that function into something more nebulously timeless. An old soul bickering with someone with so much road behind and ahead that ‘young’ and ‘old’ are no longer quite the terms for what’s going on.
My main criticism of the episode: even for Doctor Who, the hats were quite distractingly silly here.
Sean: David, my friend, if silly hats are going to be a problem, then maybe you should quit while you’re ahead.
David: Too late, as unless you have more to say here, we careen decades and regenerations ahead to the proper debut of Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor!
And The Eleventh Hour certainly makes a fine case for him: while cast in the post-Tennant mold he reminds me in some ways of Eccleston, a ‘rawer’ Doctor who’s blunt and rude and instinctive where 10 was teasing and apologetic and performative. He feels the most of any Doctor I’ve seen thus far like a genuine alien while remaining charming enough to believably talk people into the awful decision of loving him.
Sean: The thing with watching The Eleventh Hour from my perspective is just how much has changed. There are certainly parts in there that will be carried on throughout the Moffat era, but what comes out to me now are what don’t. I’m thinking about the scene where Doctor Who scans the area around the pond and pings into other phones until he finds Rory not looking at the GIANT FUCKING EYEBALL IN THE SKY!
David: Ah yes, the bit where I went ‘right right right right right, this WAS by the guy who’d go on to be the Sherlock guy, wasn’t it’.
Sean: At the same time, the Smith era is probably the hardest for me to judge because this is where I enter the story. Not here, mind you (we’ve got two more of these before we get there), but it’s nevertheless my first Doctor Who.
Matt Smith is a delight in the role, being able to juggle all the various modes needed to be Doctor Who. What’s often noted about his incarnation is the way, despite being so young (the then youngest actor to play the part) he can convey the age of the character. He feels like an old man in one shot, then significantly younger in another.
But perhaps the star making turn here is Amy Pond, played brilliantly by Kieron Gillen.
David: Amy Pond’s so great, I thought Rose was delightfully messy but Amy is a mess, in a way that so perfectly squares ‘Doctor Who is a magical show about the companion’s dreams coming true’ and ‘Doctor Who is a show about people being ruined by being stupid enough to have ever trusted this mercurial little godling so clearly suffocating under the weight of their bullshit’. She gives this sense of almost being emotionally inoculated against the dangers of the series by way of childhood exposure, such that she does not have the basic degree of fight-or-flight people are supposed to in these situations, nevermind the LOADS of resentment and curdled longings she’s been carrying around for 12 - and then 14 - years. Amy’s awful and she rules.
Sean: She’s the sort of awful that makes for interesting, sympathetic protagonists rather than the kind where one watches them succeed and wants nothing more than to die. Karren Gillan, while we’ll see some stories where she goes on autopilot like she would in films like Gunpowder Milkshake or Avengers: Not Another Avengers Movie, enters the show with gusto and confidence. She’s someone who knows what she’s doing with the role and does it spectacularly. The way she delivers Amy’s objectification of Doctor Who is just absolutely delightful. Plus, she’s a kissogram, one of the rare positive portrayals of sex work in Doctor Who up to that point (or, as close to sex work as can be portrayed on a show like Doctor Who).
David: Wait Karren Gillan was - checks - Nebula? Well that’s a touch disheartening, though I suppose she hardly came out worst of the Who alumni in the MCU.
Sean: She also appeared previously in Doctor Who alongside future Doctor Who Peter Capaldi in The Fires of Pompeii!
David: Wild! Anyway, I don’t have a ton to say about the episode itself beyond that it’s a typical functionally-perfect Moffat episode with a bunch of excellent little bits; it’s a new Doctor and new showrunner showcase episode, it’s comfy keeping things relatively simple and archetypal and I don’t think that’s to its detriment. Gotta say though: not a big fan of the new opening credits. It feels like it’s reaching for something more ‘journey into mystery and danger!’-ey than the RTD era opening but ends up visually undercooked.
Sean: It’s not my favorite opening credits, no. In many regards, this opening batch of episodes attempts to put the viewer at ease as we enter a new era of the show. It takes the structure of the opening set of episodes of the classic RTD era with ‘Modern Day Hijinks,’ ‘Future Story,’ and ‘Historical Adventure.’ On that note, it’s perhaps worth considering what many people – including Moffat himself for a time – considered to be an early blunder in the Matt Smith era, The Beast Below.
David: I’m surprised to hear that! It’s by no means top-tier for me, but I thought this was a fun little ‘okay the companion’s aboard, here’s the first ADVENTURE-adventure’ story with an enjoyably tidy setup, a bunch of fun characterization pieces for the Doctor (the immediate lie and going back on it with the whole ‘non-intervention’ schtick) and Amy (where we really start to see in earnest the lack of self-preservation instinct I was talking about before), and a lovely conclusion. Also a bunch of pronounced Moffat-isms like the real tactile grounding in what’s going on with the gears and glasses and such, and this one also gave me a further sense with 11 that his regeneration almost feels like one of denial; things got too real at the end with Tennant as the facade was shattered, and this wipes some of his emotional slate clean. I’m not so in love with it though that I’m unwilling to hear the case against it.
Sean: Oh, it’s quite simple, actually: Doctor Who fans are wrong and have bad taste.
David: Y’know, friend? You make an excellent point.
Sean: The Beast Below is a delight. One of those stories that just goes out of the gate and makes a case for itself without any fuss. A charming story about the silence of a society towards a known cruelty. One that hurts people with its unnecessariness. About rejecting the banality of evil because you can imagine a better way of doing things than just following the rules. Because Doctor Who isn’t a rule follower. The game can change in an instant, the bastards can win. But we can do better.
Vitally, there’s the climax where Doctor Who finds himself trapped in a stalemate of ethical cruelty. One that would require him to stop being Doctor Who (an idea that will get fleshed out throughout the Moffat era). But it’s Amy, with a vantage point outside the epic highs and lows of Time Lords, who recognizes the alternative. Who decides to be kind. Not in the sense of not saying anything, but in the sense of forcing change to create a better world.
David: Amy, who’s willing to believe in the kindness of alien strangers towards children. Okay now that I no longer have to be diplomatic, while this one still wasn’t top of the pile for me its nuts that this is one with a backlash. I guess my closest thing to a ‘gripe’ with it, which is in no way its own fault, is that this is where it really started to settle in for me what a shift the new era will be; it feels a lot slicker and more propulsive than the kind of charmingly old-school adventure vibe of a lot of Tennant by comparison, or maybe that’s not even the right way of putting it? I don’t know if it’s something tonal or visual or just an internal perceptual thing since I know there were big behind-the-scenes shifts, but something about it FEELS just a bit different now and this is where it started to become palpable, which was I suppose a bit of a distraction.
Anyway you know how I stick up for maligned episodes like Daleks in Manhattan and The Next Doctor?
Sean: Yes. And I was charmed by The Next Doctor when I rewatched it, though I don’t think it holds up as well as you do.
David: Which I was glad to hear and will take! Anyway, Victory of the Daleks sure ain’t one of those.
Sean: Oh thank god. 
David: Hahaha, I was hoping I’d put the fear of the White Guardian in you for a second there.
Sean: Look, I like Mark Gatiss a bit. Not one of my favorite writers for Doctor Who, but one who has some interesting aesthetics. But man, what a crapfest Victory of the Daleks is. Putting aside the whole ‘Doctor Who is mates with Churchill’ thing it has going for it, the episode just doesn’t work. The best ideas were nicked from better stories you can’t actually watch because someone lit them on fire. The emotional climax falls flat. And the Power Ranger Daleks… just… no.
David: I often find myself leading with counterpoints before getting to my real statement, and look: it’s not like there’s NOTHING good here. “It’s…history.” is a fine moment. I was personally fine with the Power Ranger Daleks as fitting the current vibe, and the outmoded ones eagerly accepting death in the face of a superior lifeform was great. The robo-doctor’s big moment was solidly played by all involved. “Please desist from striking me. I am your soldier.” got a little :( oh nooooo out of me.
But god, I really enjoyed The Unquiet Dead - if perhaps overly so since it was very early for me - and The Idiot Lantern was a decent adventure even let down as it was with a cop-out ending. But Gatiss, you really turned in the episode of Doctor Who here that a bored dismissive parent who thinks the show is stupid would picture with this one. Not particularly charming, not particularly funny, not particularly clever (the Doctor and Churchill have the same conversation about 3 times in 9 minutes), a bunch of truly dopey TALLY HO FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY nonsense, even Smith craps out a little here as it turns out he’s simply not as naturally gifted a screamer as Tennant without his rubber face. It’s not an episode that’s so bad it makes me angry like Shakespeare Code, but after that? This may well be the worst of the watchthrough. Just nothing.
Sean: The thing about Mark Gatiss is that he often works best when he’s in his wheelhouse. Victorian ghost stories, Sherlock Holmes riffs played straight, Documentaries about British Horror. But this just isn’t one of them. His heart isn’t in it here and you can feel it. In many regards, this also marks the death nail for the celebrity historical as, for the remainder of the Moffat era, this mode of story wouldn’t be played so straightforwardly, with only one more coming up next season. (That is, after the other one this season, which is… I’ll explain later.)
David: I shant weep for that. By the way, I guess this is the first time I’ll ask you for a spoiler, but does the lady who’s sad about her boyfriend dying somehow come back at all? Because that was clearly meant to be a whole important thing, but as-is there doesn’t seem to have been much to it beyond “Dang…war, y’know?”
Sean: As far as I’m aware, the supporting cast only comes back once more and Churchill makes another appearance. Other than that, no. Not coming back at all.
David: Very silly! Quite bad!
Sean: Anywho, Weeping Angels! My turn for the hot take in Doctor Who circles, but The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone might be the most inventive use of the Weeping Angels Doctor Who has ever done. Just a brilliant approach to the monsters that adds to the sheer weight and implication of what they are and how they were introduced.
David: This one is SO damn good and leaving me pained that we’re not getting any more Moffat proper until the finale, even as I recognize that unlike RTD he’s a human being who can only do so many of these within the confines of linear spacetime.
Sean: As someone who just edited a book about Series 7, we’ll see the consequences of a mere mortal attempting to do Davies’ writing schedule.
David: Yikes. But yeah this one’s hard to go way into without picking at every individual thread in the same way as a lot of Moffat’s stuff, because it’s so dense yet so self-evidently perfect. My favorite bit was a beautifully rare occurrence for me personally where instead of me expecting a story - Who or otherwise - to do something high-concept and then it settling for something more banal, I imagined a Big Idea in ‘oh, the Angel is living in its reflection in Amy’s eye’ and then it ONE-UPPED me with ‘the Angel is living in AMY’S DANGEROUSLY PRECISE RECOLLECTION OF IT’. There’s danger, excitement, Angel Bob, realizing in retrospect that The Doctor figured out the angels were sickly from their appearance instantly because otherwise he wouldn’t have risked turning the light off, River dang Song going even harder than before because 11’s way easier to needle than 10…this one, man. This one is most definitely among the best of the best. Only complaint is that The Doctor should’ve seen the Angels off with “Time to fly” if he was gonna do the Bond one-liner.
Sean: Yeah, when I decided to watch all the Weeping Angel stories on a whim a few months back, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this one was. Just brilliant idea after brilliant idea. Perhaps the one that springs out to me is the one developed from the previous Weeping Angels story, Blink. There, we had a visual presentation of the Angels never moving because we, the viewers were watching. But here, with the advent of the secret origin of the Weeping Angels being (in a move that no-doubt got Grant Morrison interested) sentient ideas that exploded into the world. Creatures that exist in art, in images, in stories, that manifest and destroy civilizations from within. And then we get the controversial moment of the angels moving.
David: ALSO CONTROVERSIAL WITH ME, ACTUALLY FORGOT ABOUT THIS BIT AND DO HATE IT TBH
Sean: While many Doctor Who fans decried this (and the episode as a whole) as a point where Moffat started to lose the plot of the series (when they aren’t acting as if Series 5 is the only good one before Moffat’s egomania ruined everything) because what made the Weeping Angels so scary was their inability to move when the viewers are watching them. But what they miss that’s so brilliant about the moment is the fundamental nature of cinema, of film itself: It’s 24 frames per second. Meaning that the camera is blinking twenty three times a second. As such, the Angels movements are based not on traditional movements of a human being but that of a flip book being moved too slowly for it to function properly.
David: Hmm. I can see what you mean, but think that’s a notion that could’ve been framed to really work in that sense if that’s what Moffat had in mind. One thing I didn’t mention earlier though in terms of what really worked for me with this episode: one of my personal favorite guest-stars with Iain Glen as Father Octavian, soldier of the cloth who you can’t imagine caring about until you reach the end and come to realize you absolutely care about him. And in terms of ‘wait, ____ SHOWED UP IN DOCTOR WHO?!’, this is maybe the biggest thus far for me, because unlike Simon Pegg I didn’t immediately recognize who it was, and when I realized:
(Never tuned in to HBO Max Titans, cannot imagine I ever will, but I’ve watched all his scenes as its beautifully off-kilter take on Bruce Wayne and oh my god he’s incredible and I was so happy to see him here bringing it hard.)
Sean: Your go-to for Iain Glenn is fucking Titans? Titans? And not, you know, the Tits and Dragons show about the necessity of a good king that everyone liked for a couple years?
David: Sean are you honest to god asking me with a straight face how my go-to was the time someone played Batman
Sean: No, I’m asking you with a straight face how your go-to was a fucking Titans story.
David: …put like that, fair. Didn’t watch GoT though, so my association remains the videos I’ve seen of him as ‘what if Frank Miller did an aged-up Adam West Batman, but in a completely different way from how he actually did that’.
Sean: I suppose we should close things out with the crack that’s been haunting the show lately. Any thoughts?
David: Nope! It’s a big ‘ol cosmic thingey they gotta deal with, and I’m sure I’ll care when we get there but we aren’t there yet; if there’s one thing I decisively prefer about how RTD handled things it’s the finales tying things together such that you realize ‘I was such a dunce! Obviously this was building to something all along!’ over ‘Don’t forget, Doctor Who’s gonna have to deal with a thing’.
Sean: Muhahahahahaha!!!
David: Have to mention as we close out, a detail in equal parts minor and overwhelmingly enormous: oh my god watching these episodes, feeling the rhythms and structures of the dialogue, I can now so profoundly understand as I never have before how this was the mold that Tumblr was poured around like concrete.
Sean: And naturally, Tumblr would turn on the show within a few years because of course it would. And it would be extremely Tumblr in its turn against the show. But that’s for the future to deal with.
David: Okay wait speaking of holding things off for the future given the very end of this episode, I suddenly realize we forgot to mention THAT with Amy.
Sean: Ah. Darn, I was hoping we’d be able to avoid THAT.
David: I mean…how can we? It feels ‘right’ in that this is obviously where Amy and so much of the companion stuff in general was always going, but also wow in how it drags the whole fucked dynamic screaming and kicking into the light of day in a way I never would have expected for this show.
Sean: So… look, Steven Moffat, in later interviews would note that he played the scene wrong when writing it. The tone was wrong for this moment, playing the scene like a comedic bit rather than a dramatic one. But at the same time, yeah. Amy has a lot of things to deal with with regards to her relationship with Doctor Who. Of course, we’ll be getting into them next time.
David: Next time! I’ll conclude by saying this is the era that was hitting the screens when everyone was watching it while I was in college and way too much of a stick in the mud at the time to hop on the universally popular thing (hence missing Game of Thrones as mentioned), so truly this leg of the watch is my own little journey through the Tardis back in time.
Next Time: I thought I'd burst out of the wrong cake, again. You die, stupid. The losses he suffered then and the greater losses that were still to come. We didn't make a difference at all. I'm good at football, I think. Well, she is dead, but it's not the end of the world. I'll die cold, alone and afraid.