Straight out of child's book - In the Forest of the Night

There's been a lot of talk this season of Doctor Who maybe starting to not be for kids any more. Mostly because of its later time slot. It's the sort of topic I'd avoid, it not really fitting into the whole narrative approach I'm interested in, except 'In the Forest of the Night' shuts all those critics up.

An episode about a forest springing up over night just to protect us, while also managing to fit in a missing sister and a bunch of escaped animals from the zoo is perfect kid fodder. Not to mention we set the whole thing up as a school trip. If there was ever a more kid-friendly episode of Who, I think we'd all be diabetics after it.

Besides Who’s reputation has always been scaring the bejesus out of kids and them watching behind a sofa.

Clara plays at being the Doctor - Flatline

Again we've got another episode with the focus firmly on Clara. I had a friend moan to me about this recently, feeling that while Coleman is doing an amazing job, the show perhaps needs a bit more focus on the new Doctor. And I can certainly agree with that. Even after last week which was a Doctor heavy episode I don't feel like we've spent quite enough time with Capaldi as Moffat has a very clear idea of his Clara/Danny storyline.

That said, this episode was a great way to focus on the Clara without losing the Doctor. The Doctor stuck in the TARDIS while the companion has to do the work is one of those tropes that seems incredibly obvious but doesn't get trotted that often. The only other example I can think of is 'The Horns of Nimon' and the less we talk about that the better – partly because that review isn't out yet.

I think 'Flatline' is a spectacular concept. The 2D aliens is a great idea, and the visuals to accompany them were fantastic. The shrinking TARDIS was fun, and the Doctor's frustration at not understanding how someone could do that was well played, and his realisation worked brilliantly. I felt there was more talking to himself with impersonations too, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. The community workers being those that needed saving was an interesting twist, and it was brave that one of the survivors was clearly the 'evil' one, and for the Doctor to quietly admit that maybe he shouldn't have.

A Mummy only the victim can see! - Mummy on the Orient Express

A Mummy on the Orient Express. In Space. That's a concept only Doctor Who could get away with. But by embracing the very epitome of an Agatha Christie story (yet again), and having the train and its occupants act like they're in the twenties or thirties, this episode absolutely sings.

The use of a jazz version of Don't Stop Me Now alone is absolutely genius. It's one of those touches that settle it in the future, yet still have it feel like a time past, just like BioShock Infinite did with it's cover of Tears for Fears. But the song choice isn't a throwaway choice either. Don't Stop Me Now could almost be a rallying cry for this episode's endgame.

Clara learns that you can't always trust the Doctor - Kill the Moon

The Doctor's been a bit of a dick to Courtney Woods, a school girl that has appeared multiple times throughout this season of Who, and even got a ride in the TARDIS at the end of 'The Caretaker'. Where she promptly puked because she couldn't handle it, and proved she wasn't special and not companion material in the slightest. The Doctor told her that, and Clara is not impressed, so he decides to take them both to the moon at the time of First Woman to land there. And then they have to decide whether they're going to blow up the moon or not.

I like that in the end it was a story about the Doctor not getting involved and leaving it to Humanity to make the decision, and also his absolute trust in Clara in what she would do. Unfortunately he's a bit of a dick about it.

Taking care of Who? - The Caretaker review

Let's face it, the stop motion model of an alien killer robot is window dressing to what's really going in this episode, as the Danny/Doctor problems for Clara come to a head. Finally the two men in her life come crashing together and she has to deal with how unalike they are.

This is all set up by having a montage of her trying to juggle them, running from one appointment to another like some nineties teenage sitcom. That said I liked the vague hints at various adventures the Doctor and Clara go on that we don't get to see, and what that means for the extended universe. At some point I'll probably do a post about how Moffat has done this, and just why it's so handy for the future of the series.

Doctor's Seven... I mean Four – Time Heist

Doctor Who does Ocean's Eleven. It's one of those concepts that just sounds like it was designed exactly for me. But the execution seemed off. The Doctor allows himself to be mind wiped and is following another person's instructions. It just doesn't work. Especially for this new Doctor.

But things belt along quickly enough that you don't really have to worry too much about it either. Before you question just what someone could offer the Doctor to do this, armed guards are battering on the door all while we're still being introduced to the other two bank robbers, both human, which could seem lazy for Who, but then one's cybernetic and the other is a mutant, which more than makes up for it.

Time Heist review Delayed

Due to two whole days of travelling, and a very drunken wedding of a good friend, my review of Time Heist is delayed till tomorrow. It's half written, but I really don't trust myself to edit properly today.

Listen - A Clever Little Moffat

Since I've mostly covered Classic and Audio Who up till now, something won't be that clear. That I'm not one of the fans that complains about Moffat's tenure as Showrunner. However, I do think he's a brilliant episode writer, but I'm just not sure he should be in the big seat for much longer.

I wasn't a big fan of 'The Pandorica Opens',* but I loved Clara's debut, and the revelations in 'The Name of the Doctor'. But in 'Listen' Stephen Moffat manages to makes us believe he's pulling off another 'Blink'. And he does a brilliant job of it. The monster you can't see. The thing that has you talking out loud despite no one else being there. The reason you never feel alone. It's genius storytelling, and it has all the hallmarks of the man that brought us the Weeping Angels and the Silence. It's possibly the scariest Who Moffat's ever done too. It was so easy to just accept he was doing it again.

Except he wasn't. He wasn't doing anything of the sort.

Who Robs from the Rich to Give to the Poor? - The Doctor meets Robin Hood

A light hearted episode. It shouldn't be that much of a surprise for New Who. A light hearted episode always slides in there early on. Yet I can't help feel it was a mistake. We're going for a darker Doctor, it feels way too soon to be throwing an episode like this around.

Then again it does manage to tell us a bit about our new Doctor. By teaming him up with Robin Hood, a man who as far as history is concerned doesn't exist, and having the Doctor spend most of his time refusing to believe he was real, we get to see a more cynical Doctor. Tennant and Smith would have both gone along with the Robin Hood ruse with smiles on their faces. The reveal that it was a robot would be the twist for their version of this story. That Capaldi refused to admit it, and the twist being Robin is real, sets him very much apart from his two big predecessors.

Into the Dalek - the Dark Doctor

It’d be easy to look at 'Into The Dalek' and think “Oh, a new Doctor, radically different to any since the restart, let’s keep them watching by bringing out the Daleks. Everyone loves the Daleks.” Yet it’s decidedly cleverer than that. We’ve already seen that this is a new Doctor trying to figure out exactly who he is. Who better to find that out against, than his greatest enemy?

This is the enemy who Davison picked up a gun against without even thinking. That Tom Baker nearly wiped out as they were created. That Sylvester McCoy did something massive about, like maybe blowing up their planet, I think, I still haven’t watched Revelation of the Daleks.

The Daleks bring out the worst in the Doctor, so who better than Twelve to have his identity crisis with than the one enemy who will show him how bad he can be? And for a Doctor who is struggling to figure out just who he is, we do see his terrible decision-making when it comes to Daleks. While he doubted it would work, he really hoped that he could save Rusty, but on learning that the only thing that had made Rusty ‘good’ was radiation poisoning, he gave up at the fact all Daleks are evil, and he was right all along. It takes Clara to knock him back on course, just like she did at the Moment, to get on with things and actually think of another way.

Take A Deep Breath: It's a New Doctor

This weekend brought us the Twelfth Doctor, and since today is Doctor Who day, I'll be taking a look at Peter Capaldi's first proper time out with the role.

My Classic Who and Big Finish lookbacks are pretty far advanced compared to what's been published – I've actually got about eleven already to go - but they're going on hiatus while we have all new Who to worry about. If there's any two parters then I'll wait until they're finished and do them in a oner. When I look at a Classic story I do the whole thing at once, so it's only fair New Who gets the same treatment. So on those one or two occasions during the new series you might get a Classic Who article instead.

Well, except for Cyberman 2. I'll put that out Friday. My Maths went wrong.

Anyway. Capaldi.

No Friday Blogs

Well, not ever. But definitely more sporadic. Which probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who reads this place regularly as they've already been a bit spotty. Basically while I was a full-time writer, I had this place to take a break and write about sci-fi and games I wasn't being paid to write about, and everything was great. But bills were getting harder to pay and I had to get a job. This meant less time for writing, and I ended up using all that time just keeping here up to date. Which is the exact opposite of what this place is meant to be. This is meant to be me waxing lyrical about stuff I have to write about, not grinding an article for a deadline. More to the point I feel I wasn't doing a brilliant job of those I did publish. Not just missing posts, but the writing of some of them hasn't been up to the standard I expect of myself.

There's also one rather important fact, the one that really got me thinking. I haven't been finding the time to write fiction. The stuff I really want to write. So I sat down, and decided something had to give. It was the random Friday posts or Doctor Who that was on the chopping block. I'm keeping my jaunts through Time and Space because I'm really enjoying writing those, and there's very little chance of me falling behind as I've got so many banked. Plus Capaldi launches tomorrow night :D

So Friday becomes a non-update day. Or at least not a regular one. I'll still write about the big stuff like when the next Marvel movie comes out. But it's when the mood hits me now. Or at least till the writing starts paying the bills again.

The Doctor gets his Doctor Doom - Terror of the Autons

We start the second series with Pertwee in the main role with the same bad guy as the first, The Autons. This would strike me as a really odd decision except they've added Master, who sees his debut here and proceeds to be the bad guy for the entire season.

We also meet Jo Grant, the Doctor's new companion after Liz Shaw's one and only series. Liz is not even given a decent goodbye, but is written out between seasons because she went back to Cambridge. But at least the Brigadier gets the decent line of “what you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes, and to tell you how brilliant you are.”

The Road to Spider-Verse

I make no secret of my love for Spider-Man, in fact I practically wrote a love letter to him a few months ago. Since then I have actually managed to read some Superior with Doc Ock web-slinging. But now Peter's back in charge of his own body, Miguel has his own comic again, and Kaine's title might have ended, but he got to join the New Warriors by the same writer, so it's cheat continuation. All in all it's a great time to be Spider-Man.

Yet that's not all. For you see Dan Slott is building towards a giant Spider Event called Spider-Verse. It's been a long time since I've got all fanboyie about a big crossover but Spider-Verse has sent me back to that way of thinking.

Cyberman - Big Finish without the Doctor

Faced with a full day of driving, and with all of the audio series I'd already started currently on hold as I try and patch up my Classic Who knowledge, I was presented with a problem. What do I actually listen to? One idea was to carry on with the Fifth Doctor and Peri after Mission to the Viyrans, but since I'd already hit one major spoiler with that, and I figured going to the start of that period would probably be better anyway. And too big of a undertaking for today.

Or more Companion Chronicles since Rise and Fall was so enjoyable? Especially considering they're so standalone. Maybe one of the spin-offs? After loving Sword of Orion, I was intrigued by more tales of the Cyberwar in the Orion sector, especially after discovering it was an audio only conflict. It's just a shame I haven't pushed the Daleks far enough along.

Doctor Who burns up in Inferno

After a full season of Earth based, UNIT centric episodes I have to say, I'm not a fan. I don't mind the occasional visit to our own planet, The Troughton episode Invasion - which gave so much to this era of the show - was great, but after three stories I was ready to go somewhere else, never mind after the fourth.

Yes I know. I'm almost contradicting everything I said at the end of The Ambassadors of Death, but Inferno was everything that was wrong with the shift to Earth, and has properly put me off.

Guarding the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy is awesome. It's fun. It felt like someone had finally managed to create a new Star Wars. The ending was a little cheesy though. That's pretty much it. I had a lot of fun.

I said it before with Captain America, but Marvel are really showing that just because their films have superheroes they don't have to rely on the tired Hollywood formula so many of the opposition's films use. The Winter Soldier was a super spy film just like any Mission Impossible, even though it's predecessor was pulpy-fun. Guardians is a sci-fi action comedy. I forsee Daredevil the TV series something like Law and Order with extra fisticuffs, and Luke Cage is hopefully going to be something akin to The Wire, with extra fisticuffs.

The Doctor and the Ambassadors

Last time I wondered how the trapped Doctor coped with Brigadier's destruction of the Silurians. It's the exact antithesis of how the Doctor operates, and under normal circumstances he wouldn't stand for it. As this serial opens not only is he trying to fix the TARDIS so he can do his usual of running away, but he's not happy with The Brig either, coming across outwardly hostile as Liz brings him up. That this comes after some rather awkwardly acted comic relief is weird, and it is soon forgotten as they throw themselves into the case of the missing astronauts by Mars.

But then it could be argued that unlike normal circumstances where the Doctor announces his displeasure at such an act and then departs, he's having to learn to live with it. He can't do his usual tactic of legging it, and like a normal person he is forced to interact with The Brigadier due to their job. That he then discovers that The Brig isn't the monster that one act made it seem, but the same person he came to respect. Yes, he did commit the act of atrocity against the Silurians, and it is something to keep in mind, but it doesn't change the character completely.

Wolf Among Us - Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

The first season of The Walking Dead was my game of 2012. What Telltale did with that game was astounding, and put a whole new spin on the adventure game that helped bring that beloved genre back to the mainstream of PC gaming. Combined with the fact I love the comics, and the TV show is pretty decent too, I was one happy chappy.

When Season 2 was announced I couldn't have been happier. The continuing story of Clementine was something I was looking forward to exploring. But we're over halfway through it, and while good, it's doesn't quite match up to the original season. Many could point at the fact that because it's a sequel it no longer has that freshness, and under normal circumstances I'd probably agree with them. Except we have one piece of evidence that says otherwise. The Wolf Among Us.

The Silurians - Somehow the Doctor forgives genocide

With the new Doctor fully introduced, and now joined UNIT we step into an adventure he can get his teeth into right from the very beginning. The Silurians is also one of those stories a lot of people talk about as being monumental to the history of the show. Also I love the redesign and reintroduction to them in New Who, so I've been looking forward to this.

Technically I think this falls somewhere in my earliest watching of Doctor Who. In the late 90s BBC2 started showing Pertwee episodes, I missed a bunch of them, but I think I caught a few of Spearhead, and a few from this serial. However, I can't remember any of it. So it's also a nice little flagpole moment for me.