In this week’s edition: the Bank Holiday celebrations continue inside the Pyramid, although not everyone is keen.
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The influence of Game of Thrones on the current series of Doctor Who becomes more and more apparent.
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And elsewhere, the Bride catches up with her final target.
Toodle-pipski!
It’s Friday, and I’m in the park with Edward. It is a weekly ritual: this odyssey of library books and shopping and sausage rolls and then going on a bear hunt on the back of a Wicksteed rocking horse. Later I will drop him at nursery and then go to the cafe and write. I am half thinking about the details, in between chanted verses about swamps and coal mines and radioactive wastelands, when the messenger app pings.
“So you’ve seen it, then?” said Phil. “What’s it like?”
“It’s shit,” I said.
“Oh dear.”
“Well, it’s not ‘Kill The Moon’ shit,” I added. “More ‘Into The Dalek’ shit. It’s not that it’s a bad episode, more that it’s just interminably dull.”
Peter Harness has never been one to shy away from a good moral argument. His Who writing speaks volumes (at least the bits Steven Moffat didn’t do himself). ‘Kill The Moon’ turned from a Hinchliffe-esque horror story into an abortion debate that immediately went south faster than Ronnie Biggs in 1966. The Zygon episodes were better, if also rather worthy in places – a reputation they’ve largely gained retrospectively, being perhaps the last Doctor Who stories to hold a strong political subtext until…well, this one. Harness is not afraid to tackle the big themes, even if (as it turns out this week) he appears to have not a great deal to actually say about them.
If anything, ‘The Pyramid at the End of the World’ suffers from Difficult Second Album Syndrome, or at least second act fatigue. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, except to say that nothing very much happens. That’s something we’ve got used to this series, but that it’s suddenly a problem is less a hallmark of collective boredom and more the fact that a ponderous narrative like this does not sit well with the alien invasion badge the episode wears at its heart. This is the middle part of a trilogy, a fact that we’re never really allowed to forget.
The Doctor’s blindness is part of it. Reduced to a shell of the man he once was, he’s left stumbling both figuratively and literally, relying solely on Nardole to supply descriptive narrative of the details the sunglasses miss: as a way of instilling dramatic tension between the Doctor and Bill it works, but it was already tiresome last week and another dip in the pool doesn’t do the writing any favours. It doesn’t help that it now takes the Doctor twice as long to do anything, given both his visual impairment and a newfound despondency that places Capaldi at the episode’s dramatic centre – making the story more about him than it usually is.
This sort of personal journey approach works fine when you’re watching a character piece – as we did with, say, ‘The Pilot’ – but it’s less successful when large chunks of the story revolve around the Doctor travelling from one place to another, interacting with supporting characters who are presumably baffled as to why they’re having to contend with a cantankerous retired prog rock guitarist, and wondering when the real hero’s going to show up. “Coordinate your attacks,” the Doctor says with stunning nonchalance when the military commanders suggest a show of force (although it’s enough to wipe the smug expression from Nardole’s face; too bad we’re the only ones who got to see it). “If you demonstrate strength and unity, they might choose to step away.”
This is deliberate. The whole thing is less an act of purposeful deception (as it was when he opened the door to the space zombies, for example) and more a Doctor who’s feeling his way in the dark literally as well as metaphorically – something that makes sense given that this is the first time we’ve actually seen him in action properly since the events of ‘Oxygen’. Capaldi comes to the part with a new sense of weariness this week – perhaps even more overt than the melancholy figure who wandered into the camouflaged TARDIS at the beginning of ‘Hell Bent’ – staring through a glass darkly, brooding on the end of the world to the extent that he inadvertently causes it. As self-fulfilling prophecies go, this is as nihilistic and bleak as we’ve seen for some time, a clear forerunner to the next episode, in which the decrepit have inherited the earth.
But things get cluttered when the characters don’t really have time to breathe. The Monks appear, and then reappear, and then there’s a scene in the pyramid that looks like a modern art exhibition and then an imagined apocalypse, and then a bit more talking and then, finally, a bit of tension, and the problem is that none of it is very interesting. I said earlier that nothing happens: this is, perhaps, not entirely true. It is more accurate to say that it feels like nothing happens. The potentially interesting military leaders (at last, supporting characters I could almost get behind) are reduced to a series of military cliches and, in one scene, an excruciatingly tepid display of artificial comradeship, before being zapped into the ether.
Certainly casting has rarely seemed as diverse at it is this week. The international flavour is part of that, but it feels like the middle of ‘Four To Doomsday’, with a dwarf thrown in for good measure. That’s not to do Rachel Denning a disservice – of all the supporting cast she’s easily the most likeable, and it’s a shame that her appearance within the context of the story consists largely of babysitting a hungover colleague. (And for the record, Steven, we know that the world ends with the slamming of a door. We got it the first time. There’s no need to show it to us on multiple occasions. That’s the sort of thing your predecessor did, and we didn’t like it then either.)
If anything, it is the Doctor’s obstinacy that causes his (and the world’s) eventual undoing, something that was foreshadowed last week in a now-defunct conversation with Nardole (of course it is happening in your head, Doctor, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?). Nardole – at his best when he makes sudden, astute observations that crystallise the thoughts we’ve been having for years – is the one who tells the Doctor that “The moment you tell Bill, it becomes real. And then you might actually have to deal with it.” Far from the dashing, tedious hero we’ve encountered, this is a man who tactically misjudges an elementary problem and is doomed as a result. It’s the sort of character flaw you expect to see in superhero movies – we saw it in Iron Man, we saw it in Spider-Man, we saw it in The Avengers. Heck, we even saw it in Lego Batman.
And in itself, that’s not a bad thing. It’s worked before. ‘The Caves of Androzani’ employed a similar conceit: it is the one that tops the polls, and yet it is the one where the Doctor loses. ‘Midnight’ saw the Doctor snatched from the jaws of death by the grace of a nameless, unbelievably unselfish airline stewardess, and showed why it’s always a bad idea for a socially dysfunctional genius to travel without an entourage of middlemen to smooth over the bruised egos. This sort of thing goes right back to ‘The Daleks’, by way of ‘Warriors of the Deep’. Stories in which the Doctor blunders into a bad situation and makes it worse can be marvellous. Unfortunately, this week’s wasn’t one of them.
Sorry I’m a bit late on my rounds this week, folks. I’ve not been at all well and it’s too hot to really focus. But the truth must out, and thus I have struggled through sickness to bring you this important list of VITAL CLUES AND SIGNS from last week’s episode, ‘Extremis’. Let us make haste. Enlightenment lies within.
We start in Bill’s flat.
Look on the table, next to the open book. You see the multi-coloured thing? Now look over to the work surface and look at the blue pot.
Now look at this.
The hen alludes to Peri – specifically her fear of birds, as explored in ‘Vengeance on Varos’. But things get more complicated when we examine Bill’s jacket, and the patterns on its arms: a deliberate allusion to American rock duo The White Stripes, specifically their sixth album. Actually, their sixth track on their sixth album, ‘Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn’, an allusion to Leela, and therefore a CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS HINT that Leela is due to star in a series of adventures alongside Colin Baker: just not on television. If you need any more clues, consider: Bill has a BIG essay due, and she is endeavouring to FINISH it.
I’ll just leave that there for a moment. Take your time. You’ll get there.
Note also that the right-hand cupboard – above which the chicken is located – is slightly ajar, and that the right-hand socket on the wall is empty. In other words, we’re talking about empty jars, specifically this sort of Empty Jar. To those of you who’ve been campaigning for a Yu-Gi-Oh / Who crossover (and I know you are many and vocal, dear friends), rejoice: your prayers have been answered.
Next have a look at that open laptop in the Vatican’s library.
For ease of reference, the names on that list are:
Stefan Anchorage
Michael Finch
Nicia Russo
Peter Dukes
Bill Pullman
Albertina Ricci
Keven Paters
Christina Tom
Francis Esposito
Phil Bond
Daryn Mcloughlan
Abramo Tognaccini
Bill Pullman? BILL PULLMAN???
But there’s more. Pullman isn’t just on that list, he’s the focus – or rather one of former his co-stars is. Observe the sixth and eighth names on the list (highlighted) and take the surname from one and the forename from the other: Christina Ricci, you will observe, co-starred in Casper with Pullman, along with Eric Idle, WHOSE NAME CAN BE FORMED BY REARRANGING THE OTHER HIGHLIGHTED LETTERS IN THIS LIST.
Eric Idle’s never done Doctor Who, has he? Well, that’s all gonna change, folks. Just saying.
Now, to the cafeteria.
You remember this scene. It’s the one with the numbers. There’s something about large groups speaking in perfect synchronisation that’s a little creepy, as both Greek theatre and Children of Earth proved in abundance. Needless to say that’s not all that’s going on here. We’re actually going to count the wine glasses, but we’ll get to that.
It’s the specific numbers we need to look at first, though, and here they are:
36
17
9
48
103
1000000
7000007
67
905
20
460
12
4
87
702
(I am, as ever, indebted to Chrissy’s Transcripts.)
Added together this makes 8002477 – coincidentally the EXACT SAME NUMBER as the Yakima Road Trip 80002477 RV Trailer bike rack, available from RackWarehouse, Vermont. And Rackwarehouse Vermont is an anagram of ‘A charmer’s even workout’, a CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS reference to this particular scene from ‘Terror of the Vervoids’, in which THE SIXTH DOCTOR CAN BE SEEN ON AN EXERCISE BIKE.
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However! It’s not just about the Sixth Doctor, even though the six visible wine bottles give this clue an even greater sense of gravitas. We also need to look at the clock – reading 5:11, or in other words the IMPENDING CROSSOVER between the Fifth Doctor and the Eleventh. This works on two levels: Fifth and Eleventh Doctors and also the Eleventh Doctor’s fifth episde, ‘Flesh and Stone’, in which the Doctor and Amy encounter the Weeping Angels. Remember that, because we’re coming back to it.
Finally, look at where the scientist is positioned: deliberately in front of the N, partially blocking its view so that ‘CERN’ effectively becomes ‘CERI’. And ‘CERI’ is, as you’re fully aware, a village in Powys, on the A489 – SPECIFICALLY, THE YEAR DOCTOR WHO WAS CANCELLED AND THE NUMBER OF STORIES IN ITS FINAL SERIES.
It’s clear what this is leading to, and that’s another multi-Doctor story, starring Davison and Colin Baker with a cameo from Sylvester McCoy – and we get a clearer picture of this when we examine the Pentagon.
There’s a reason why Moffat chose this particular building – and, indeed, this particular shot of this particular building, in the first instance, look at the complex itself. It may be pentagonal in shape, but there are ten interlocking sections making up the five sides, each section comprising three separate buildings, implying the presence of three Doctors (i.e. Five, Six and Seven) in a single, Weeping Angel-themed story.
Note also the single red car down in the bottom left segment of the screen, a CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS reference to the Angels. Why, do you ask? Because it’s on the left, and one must look to one’s left, and red is predominantly associated with the colour red, which can only mean that JEREMY CORBYN IS SLATED TO BE THE NEXT DOCTOR following his inevitable defeat in the General Election in just a few weeks’ time.
But that’s misdirection, dear reader. Also note the three sets of tall windows making up the sides: they look like Roman numerals, and you will see four sets of three visible in the shot, placed equidistantly around the edge of the building. Assuming that each ‘window’ corresponds to a single canonical Doctor, and disregards John Hurt, that’s 12 canonical Doctors. What’s more, the closest as the crow flies to the red car is the fifth one in the sequence – in other words, the Fifth Doctor.
Gee. It’s a shame the Fifth Doctor’s never met the Weeping Angels, isn’t it?
Mind. Blown. Here’s the mop. Make sure you clean up after yourself.
Today’s Who roundup: first, an exclusive BBC production still of the contents of the Vault.
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Meanwhile there is chaos over at Bagpuss & Co when Emily brings in her latest Lost Thing for repair.
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In fact, just, you know, this in general.
Sorry.
Warning: spoilers.
A few years ago, there was a Big Finish audio called ‘Omega’. In it the Doctor takes a time-travelling tour ship to the Sector of Forgotten Souls, in order to solve an ancient mystery. As events unfold and people start dying, it transpires that malevolent Time Lord Omega – last seen in ‘Arc of Infinity’ – may be responsible. The rug is yanked out from underneath the audience at the end of episode three, whereupon it transpires that we believed was the Doctor – and, indeed, who believed himself to be the Doctor – is actually Omega, still trapped in the Doctor’s form, and it is at that point that the real Doctor turns up.
Big Finish actually pulled this stunt twice within a matter of months – I’m not going to tell you about the other story, as I’ve already ruined one. It is the sort of thing that is very easy to do on audio, dealing as it does with the deliberate withholding of specific information (the other story, for example, neglects to mention that the person we believe is the Doctor actually has eight limbs). Audio dramas rob you of your sense of sight – curiously appropriate, given this week’s content – and consequently it is much easier to tell particular types of story. For a while I held the conviction that it’s the sort of thing that would be impossible to do on TV, although there are ways round it; it’s just a question of finding them. Instead, I lamented the fact that the ultimate test of faith – a Doctor who was, for whatever reason, either untrustworthy or Not What He Seemed – was something that had for the most part been untouched in New Who, with certain exceptions. Oh, subterfuge is fine. Constantly the Doctor works against our expectations. And we’d had the trickery of the Eleventh Doctor and his Ganger duplicate in ‘The Almost People’, a minor skirmish to expose one of Amy’s particularly irritating character flaws. But that was as far as it went, until this week.
‘Extremis’ is, to all intents and purposes, ‘The Android Invasion’ for the Matrix generation, with the added twist that the false reality is the final reveal, buried in an ancient text that has leaked onto the internet. This news is delivered by a collection of cardinals and the Pope himself (Joseph Long, who – while not reaching the dizzy heights of brilliance he achieved in ‘Turn Left’, nonetheless provides the episode’s comedic highlight). The Doctor’s blindness is an assailable obstacle, thanks to a pair of headphones and Nardole’s penchant for filling in the blanks that the Daredevil-esque sonic sunglasses can’t provide, conveniently picking out essential details like a subtle, always-on audio description.
It concludes – get this – with the Doctor sending an email to himself. That’s the dramatic climax. Still, the notion of a Doctor-who’s-not-the-Doctor is quietly wonderful, even if its denouement is a little too neat. Characters in this newly-created ‘shadow’ universe reach their moment of clarity with sudden, unilateral nihilistic desolation: it is strange, somehow, that everyone who reads the text experiences the exact same reaction, almost as if it were as pre-programmed as the numbers they spout in the CERN cafeteria in what is arguably the episode’s strongest sequence. One might argue that – as with many of the series 10 episodes – ‘Extremis’ might have benefited from a two-part narrative. Moffat has clearly worked hard at the dynamic this year, to the extent that the stories have suffered: for the most part it’s not a problem, as the Doctor and Bill have been so wonderful to watch, but we paid the price in ‘Knock Knock’ when they were split up for long periods. ‘Extremis’ is a joy from start to finish, but you wonder whether the surprise of the simulated universe might have benefited from a little padding, perhaps split over a cliffhanger and its resolution.
Or perhaps it will be. It’s no secret that ‘Extremis’ is the first part of a loose trilogy – with the Monks taking centre-stage in next week’s ‘The Pyramid At The End Of The World’. Their presence in ‘Extremis’ is light and insubstantial, in much the same way that the Silence played a comparatively small part in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, before the meat was grafted to the bones in the second installment. The Monks are underwhelming – “Imagine if a Silent had died while cosplaying as a member of the Sibylline Sisterhood”, says Doctor Who Magazine, in what is as good a description as any – but their role in things is yet to be fully defined, and it is entirely possible that we will see the knock-on effect of the simulated universe in other ways. Unilateral suicide sends a strong message, particularly in light of the episode’s tiptoeing around the nicer side of Catholicism, but it seems unusual that it was the only response. Surely there’s a place for people who reject the truth of the Veritas, or those who, having been presented with the harshness of reality, choose to accept the illusion – as Cypher did over his dinner with Agent Smith.
It’s bonkers. The action moves from the Vatican to the Pentagon to CERN for no reason other than it can, with a global conspiracy that is almost as needlessly elaborate as the Cyberman’s convoluted plot in ‘The Wheel In Space’. Everything is duplicated exactly, right down to Bill’s neurotic stepmother. The technology involved must be astronomical, but presumably it’s no more difficult to do than the computer simulations run by New Line when they were planning the battle of Helm’s Deep (legend has it that during one such simulation, the pre-programmed orcs took one look at the seemingly impenetrable fortress, and promptly did a runner). It makes you wonder why the Monks are spending their time and efforts playing sitting inside playing video games instead of actually getting on with the invasion – but while you never quite figure out the answer, at least you know why their skin is so pockmarked.
The fact that the secret of the vault is ostensibly revealed not in a single climactic moment but in a laboured sequence of drip-feeding flashbacks is undoubtedly going to be a disappointment to the thousands of viewers who’ve been pacing the floor for the last six weeks. Through a series of remembrances we learn that the Doctor was asked by an unknown body to execute Missy and guard her corpse – only to be interrupted by Nardole, sent as an ambassador for the conscience-pricking River Song, leading to Missy’s apparent incarceration. It’s neither a shock nor a surprise – the flashbacks aren’t particularly interesting, and by the time we get to the last of Missy’s pleas you’re practically begging for the Doctor to pull the trigger and open up ‘the Pandorica – and the manner in which events unfold indicates that this is not the end of the story, particularly as we do not see the vault actually open, nor do we learn unambiguously who is inside it. Put another way, Missy supposedly went in – but we do not see this happen, nor are we even sure that she is still in there, at least in a form we would recognise. It may yet turn out to be as simple as the the provided explanation – but that wouldn’t be very Moffat, somehow.
‘Extremis’ is likely to be divisive. Some people will love it, others will hate it. On its own, it does not easily stand up: as part of a trilogy, history may judge it more kindly. Some will rail against its supposed cleverness; others (like me) will see this as an example of Moffat pushing things as far as he can, and perhaps not quite as far as he wanted (how more daring might it have been had we discovered that every previous episode, and not just this one, had been a simulation, and that it turned out that David Bradley was guarding the vault?). Some will cheer at the audacity of actually killing the Doctor; others will produce a series six box set and cough gently. This is not one for the ‘generally good’ or ‘generally bad’ pile: it will tread the uneasy tightrope between the two, with fans and critics either side, anxious to give it a push one way or the other. In the grand scheme of things, it’s Marmite. But that’s OK. I happen to like Marmite.
Space. It’ll kill you if you don’t tread carefully. Lucky you’ve got me on hand, eh? Come with me now, because we’re going to explore the murky and sinister world of ‘Oxygen’ – a tale of corporate greed and sentient workwear, but also replete with IMPORTANT CLUES AND SIGNS that indicate the delights (and the horrors) that still await us.
This week, you’ll find it’s mostly about the First Doctor. Let’s take a look at that skull.
Count the stars. It’s not just the number, it’s the way they’re grouped. Not only does each star refer to a different Doctor, they also refer specifically to regeneration and a number of other things. Don’t believe me? Just watch:
You will note:
– The line that tracks the Second Doctor’s transition to the Third
– The two ‘eyes’ that represent the show in the 1980s and in its post-Y2K revival, and the Eighth Doctor’s uncomfortable positioning between both (but on the left hand side, clearly tying him to the ‘old’ era)
– The placement of the Fourth Doctor at the top of the triangle, or pyramid, signifying ‘Pyramids of Mars’
– The identical placement of the Twelfth Doctor at the top of a similar pyramid, indicating ‘The Pyramid at the End of the World’, in which the Doctor is due to regenerate
– The two tangential lines that lead down below the Tenth Doctor, indicating the split path followed by his metacrisis duplicate
– The six lines across the bottom: this should be obvious
Screens figure big this week, as you’ll see here.
First: note the five figures shown on the monitoring display. This refers to five Doctors, but not the five you were expecting. The Second Doctor is first: We know this because the first figure is directly beneath the word ‘POWER’, which is thus a reference to ‘Power of the Daleks’.
Let’s assume that the subsequent words each correspond to the separate figures. The words ‘CORE’ and ‘COOLANT’ both refer to ‘Inferno’, the Third Doctor story that saw a group of scientists who were endeavouring to drill down to the Earth’s core, which is flooded by coolant in order to abate the disaster. ‘And ‘SYSTEM’ refers to System Wipe, an Eleventh Doctor novella.
If we group these numbers together, including the last one – to which I’ll come in a moment – we get this:
Look at that number. Study it hard. Memorise it if you can. We’ll return to it later.
Let’s get back to that fifth figure for a moment. He doesn’t have a word of his own, but this is the First Doctor. And it is the numbers you really need to examine, if you want to know why – so let’s zoom in. (All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.)
Macomb, Illinois, I hear you ask? I have my reasons. You can rearrange them to form ‘Albinic loom sim’, a clear and unambiguous reference to the events of Lungbarrow. And this week’s episode was about breathing. I’m sure your minds are blown, so here’s a GIF of a dancing panda, just to bring you down to normality for a second.
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Maps next. Specifically this one.
Note the presence of green brackets – denoting the Zombies’ intended location – around the section marked A6: specifically, the idea of death, represented here by green brackets, surrounding a number 6? Something to do with the words GREEN and DEATH? A SIX-PART STORY, PERCHANCE?
Hmmm. I’ll let you figure that one out.
We can take this further. Because each number refers to a separate story, as denoted by their different parts. Specifically
Section 11 – The Daleks’ Master Plan (twelve parts, minus the disallowed ‘Destruction of Time’
Section 07 – Marco Polo (seven parts)
Section 06 – The Web Planet (six parts)
Section 04 – The Gunslingers (four parts)
Section 03 – Planet of Giants (three parts)
And what do those all have in common, hmm? And what do they have in connection with ‘The Green Death’? I’ll let you figure that out. I’m not doing all your homework for you, you’re quite old enough.
But we should take particular notice of the fact that this is administered by Ganymede systems. Ganymede is the largest of the 67 known moons of Jupiter, taking its name from the Greek mythical hero Ganymede (why hello, transparent reference to ‘The Myth-Makers’, pull up a chair and put the panda on the TARDIS console). It completes a revolution around its mother planet every seven days and three hours, which CLEARLY REFERS to part three of the seventh story in the canon, ‘Hidden Danger’ – also known as episode three of ‘The Sensorites’- because of the Doctor’s blindness, thus hiding the danger from him, at least in a strictly literal sense.
However, the parallels run deeper. Episode 3 of series 7 is ‘Cold War’, an UNAMBIGUOUS nod both to the Ice Warriors and also ‘The Tenth Planet’, which was set in Antarctica – get it? A war? In a cold place? A COLD WAR? You see what I did there? But what, I hear you ask, perhaps in slightly worried tones while you try and unpick the ropes that are securing you to that office chair, if it isn’t episode 3 of series 7, but episode 7 of series 3?
Well – that turns out to be ’42’. THE THING IN THE VAULT IS MARTHA JONES’ MUM.
Finally, let’s get back to the beginning of the episode – and that first shot of the oxygen display on the suit gauntlet.
What’s going on here? Well, first consider the presence of nine – only NINE bars on the credit meter. This CLEARLY AND DEFINITIVELY refers to the IMMINENT RETURN of Christopher Eccleston. We know this if we examine the letters at the far right: ‘CF’ refers to ‘Christopher – Finish’, while ‘T2’ refers not to Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but rather Trainspotting 2 – a film centring on Mark Renton, as played by Ewan McGregor, WHO CO-STARRED WITH ECCLESTON IN SHALLOW GRAVE. And if you want to know how long this has been building, consider what the Doctor is doing here.
However, what’s most interesting here is ETO-2 at the bottom, and I’ll admit it took me a while to figure this out – and it wasn’t until I realised that the ‘2’ was a massive red herring that I was able to make progress. But a little creative Googling led me to the Express Tax Office in Queensland. Situated in Lake Street (as in ‘Under The Lake’) in the middle of Cairns City, the ETO processes tax returns for couples, students, sole traders and even non-residents, such as those trying to find a way into Australia – to do, say, a Chemical Engineering job.
Oh look. THERE it is.
It’s all about the deleted scenes this week, as we reveal some abandoned concept art for ‘Oxygen’.
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Elsewhere: that deleted scene from ‘Thin Ice’, cast into new light:
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And the Doctor regrets not renewing the security option on his TARDIS console.
And yes, the TARDIS does have Windows. They’re just the wrong size.
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“Oh look,” said Emily, as the credits ground to a halt. “Zombies again.”
We’d just finished ‘Knock Knock’, and were watching the trailer for episode 5, which appeared to show hordes of the undead in space, all mottled complexions and empty, soulless eyes. By and large it’s something the programme doesn’t touch. Transmogrification is fine. So is demonic possession. Even shuffling skeletons are OK, provided you don’t overdo it. Still, the last time Doctor Who did an outright zombie episode, it was ‘New Earth’, and it was a disaster. Before you start scrolling down to the comments box, I know they weren’t zombies. If anything they were the biological opposite. But they moved like zombies and they behaved like zombies, and that’s how I choose to remember them.
You have to watch out for the kids, and that’s what Jamie Mathieson was doing with ‘Oxygen’. The undead – murdered by company equipment in a cost-saving initiative, and then re-animated – are a big part of the story, but they are rather less gruesome than you suspect they were meant to be. That doesn’t mean the episode isn’t frightening enough without some of the cutting room floor stuff (and this isn’t speculation, Mathieson himself admits as much in Doctor Who Magazine). This is one of the outright creepiest episodes of Doctor Who in some time – I’d say since ‘Heaven Sent’, but that sort of yardstick doesn’t seem fair – and while not without its flaws it is, in terms of the atmosphere it creates, a massive improvement on its immediate predecessor.
Things start simply enough. There is a comical misunderstanding about a pregnancy revelation – Sienna Guillory trying and failing to impart the same news to Colin Firth in the Red Nose Day Love Actually sketch springs to mind – before the usual pre-credits death (Doctor Who is like The X-Files; appearing in the teaser is the equivalent to beaming down to a planet in a red shirt). Meanwhile, the Doctor has found his sea legs but Nardole is adamant that they should stay on Earth – hence a little subterfuge is in order, only the planned excursion backfires and before you know it the TARDIS has gone and its former occupants are stuck in a corridor with a horde of advancing zombies.
While this is going on the space station’s surviving astronauts are debating whether they should kill the Doctor, but I couldn’t tell you what’s said or who says it, because I can’t remember any of their names. There are always going to be problems when you have to establish a story and solution and pay lip service to the series arc within three quarters of an hour, but the price you pay is, once more, the notion of character development – or indeed any character at all beyond the three leads. It’s reminiscent of the Honest Trailer for Rogue One (a film I enjoyed, although we could have all done without the fanatically airbrushed Princess Leia), in which the voiceover mentions “K-2SO, a droid with more personality than any of the human characters”. Just about the only memorable character in ‘Oxygen’ is the one who is memorable precisely because he shouldn’t be: the blue-skinned Dahh-Ren, who exists solely to expose Bill’s own (and quite understandable) prejudice, thus appraising supposed 21st century enlightenment with an ironic, critical eye, shortly before he meets a grisly undeath.
Part of the problem these days is the general dearth of effective supporting characters: I’m having difficulty recalling the last base-under-siege narrative in which we met people I actually cared about. Gone are the likes of Clent and Penley in ‘The Ice Warriors’, or the upstairs / downstairs social commentary in ‘Fang Rock’. There are exceptions. ‘The God Complex’, for example, works because time is deliberately allocated in order to flesh out the characters in the hotel – essential for the narrative, as they are ultimately undone by who they are and the flaws and traits they possess. And ‘Voyage of the Damned’ features a band of misfits who manage to surprise just about everyone thanks to the order in which they die – or, in at least one case, the fact that they don’t.
But these simply prove the rule. For the most part, supporting characters in contemporary BUS stories are groups of miners, astronauts or soldiers with scarcely a distinguishing feature between them. There are usually two or three different accents and as many diversity boxes as the BBC can tick in a single sitting, but that’s about all you can say about them. With certain exceptions (Adelaide Brooke, step forward) they all melt into one generic, slightly grizzled man in his late thirties, usually with designer stubble and a complicated romantic history with the base’s leader. Names and titles are meaningless and we forget them within minutes of the closing credits. What’s the name of the gay chap in ’42’? It’s OK, I’ll wait. And you’re not allowed to use the internet.
When Wikipedia editors are summarising episodes like this the only way to actually write them up is to say “The TARDIS crew gather in the control room with the surviving astronauts”, and (eventually) that’s exactly what happens. There are chases and mishaps and the Doctor loses his eyesight, but when he begins waxing lyrical about ‘a good death’, in precisely the same manner that Miss Quill does in the opening episode of Class, you know something is about to happen: and sure enough, it’s a ruse in order to trick the omnipresent AI, which is always on standby and able to hear anything. Thus, at its conclusion, ‘Oxygen’ becomes less a critique of unchecked capitalism and corporate greed, and more a dig at the Xbox One.
We need to talk about this, actually. A couple of months ago Gareth Roberts tweeted, in response to someone’s earnest-but-dumb comment, “Yep. Historical analysis and a critique of social hierarchy. That’s what I took from The Time Meddler.” At least I think it was Gareth Roberts. It certainly ought to have been; it feels like the sort of thing he’d say. ‘Sort of’ is pretty apt here, because I’m paraphrasing; I can’t find the damn thing to quote verbatim. The point is that in 2017 it’s very easy to get caught up in worthiness. How much of the praise heaped on ‘The Zygon Inversion’ stems from its sense of intrigue and excitement, and how much from that wretched Black Archive monologue? The situation hasn’t improved: the other week the BBC aired ‘Thin Ice’, an episode I thoroughly enjoyed, but it damn well wasn’t because the Doctor punched a Nazi. It’s because it was two people walking around London and interacting in a way that I found genuinely interesting. And yes, my favourite scene was the one where the Doctor said he moved on because he had to, in a few lines of dialogue that are destined to make the Facebook groups for years to come. But I also liked the bit when Nicholas Burns did the splits and fell into the river and got eaten.
You see where we’re going. It’s nice that people care about things, but the earnestness with which these throwaway lines of dialogue are adopted as profile signatures and – just occasionally – life mantras is something that puzzles me immensely. It’s as if Doctor Who is no longer allowed to be important unless it means something. Robert Holmes showed you can be political, and thus this is something you ought to do at every conceivable opportunity, with episodes that say Important Things left on a pedestal, while the more superficial, disposable stories (sit down, ‘Planet of the Dead’, your chops and gravy are in the microwave) are critically lambasted for being disposable candy floss. ‘Planet of the Dead’ is crap, of course, but you get the idea. There is bugger all social commentary in ‘The Invasion’; it’s Cybermen running around London. It is also tremendous fun. That really ought to be enough.
Thankfully, ‘Oxygen’ has the fun factor in spades, whether it’s the Doctor effectively kidnapping Nardole in the opening scene, or the mesmerising, wordless spacewalk (when people say things like “You’re about to be exposed to the vacuum of space!” in Hollywood blockbusters it sounds corny as hell; Capaldi pulls it off); or the moment, just a short time later, when the Doctor abandons Bill in a corridor. We know he has something up his sleeve, but we don’t know what it is, or why he’s being so quiet about it – or, indeed, why Bill is so goddamned calm about the whole experience. This is obviously some sort of proving ground, some way of testing her mettle, but he did more or less the same thing with Clara (across a series and a half, but notably in another episode with spacesuits), and that ended with her dangling upside down out of the TARDIS, laughing like an idiot. I just hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Doctor. That’s all.
Things fall apart a little as the episode concludes. A quick glance at the synopsis for next week – along with the series trailer – should make it reasonably obvious where we’re going, and once more the BBC have revealed a little too much too early. The Doctor’s continuing blindness, while predictable, nonetheless makes for an effective cliffhanger: unfortunately it suffers in its implementation. The scene with Nardole borders on soap-style melodrama; it would have been better had Capaldi concluded his conversation and then risen from the desk and caught his leg on its corner, or perhaps stumbled at the rug. That would have got the message across in an understated manner, or at least got the fans talking.
But this is Doctor Who, and for the most part these days they don’t do subtle. You take what you can get, and that’s fine. “Space is the final frontier,” the Doctor muses in the episode’s opening, “because it’s trying to kill you.” Too often, space is the vast and beautiful starswept aura that’s the backdrop for the birth of planets, the delicate ballet of a dancing Time Lord and his almost-wife, and the reawakening of a middle-aged man sitting with a Thermos and a sandwich watching the world go by in the most literal sense. That makes this week anomalous, but in the best possible way – space, in Doctor Who, is usually not dangerous, and it’s a refreshing change when it is. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it turns out to be one of the most effective and frightening monsters we’ve seen in the show for quite some time.
It’s all about the Eleventh Doctor again this week, folks. They invited us to ‘Knock Knock’ – and we did, but when the door opened it revealed not an army of carnivorous insects but a plethora of secrets and revelations about the hidden details in this week’s episodes. Let’s unpack them, shall we?
Consider this view of the second property Bill and her friends visit:
The three visible towers refer explicitly to the trilateral Time Lord group formed at the conclusion of ‘Journey’s End’, whereby the Doctor, the Human Doctor and the Doctor-Donna work together to defeat the Daleks. (The one at the back is Jack, but I really can’t tell you what he’s thinking right now.)
However, there are numerous references to the Eleventh Doctor. Note the fez-coloured comfy chair that sits in front of the skip, as well as the two upturned traffic cones, a CLEAR AND UNAMBIGUOUS REFERENCE to ‘The Lodger’ – an episode already referenced earlier with the undersized house that Bill’s posse rejects earlier in the opening montage. Lastly note the partially visible ‘TO LET’ sign, bottom left: read backwards, ‘TELO’ clearly translates into ‘The ELeventh hOur’.
Let’s move on and examine the kitchen.
There are eleven visible plates: note, however, that the last one is only partially shown. Hence it does not apply to the Eleventh Doctor, but rather the half-human metacrisis Doctor mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, the teacups hanging above refer to UNIT: the group of three collected together recalls the scene at the end of ‘Day of the Doctor’ where the three Doctors (and Clara, just off to the right) gather in the Under-Gallery for a cup of tea before disappearing in their respective TARDISes; note, however, that they are situated between the second and fourth mugs, thereby referring to the period of the show in which UNIT played its biggest role.
Things get even more interesting when we look at Harry’s T-shirt: it’s already well-documented that he is the grandson of UNIT doctor Harry Sullivan (although the explicitness of the connection was deleted from the episode), but it is clear that the black patch on his t-shirt refers to the Black Archive, while the silver around his neck refers to the failed Cyber invasion of 1968. But the Cybermen references are more specific than this: the silver hangs equidistant between Harry’s blue and black wristbands, which stand as a reference to this news story from early 2015:
The colour of the dress was, you will recall, frequently mistaken for white and gold, thus referring both to the snow featured in the Cybermen’s first story and the allergy to gold that would kill them later. You can’t argue with the facts – it’s there in black and white / gold / blue.
You’re all good at counting shadows: count the woodlice.
There are 24, all told – a number bathed in significance, given that it’s 11 (11!) shy of the 35 species native to the British Isles. However, the question of whether there are 24 is actually rather ambiguous: a second count reveals 23, and it’s then that things become interesting. In order to explain why, we need to examine taxonomy: specifically, the taxonomy of Trichoniscoides saeroeensis in 1923 – a distinctively coloured woodlouse distributed around the British and Irish coasts (although it may also be found in France and parts of Scandinavia). Crucially, Trichoniscoides saeroeensis can be rearranged to form ‘ethions ironside accessories’, WHICH CLEARLY REFERS TO ‘VICTORY OF THE DALEKS’.
Also note the use of a Polaroid camera: ‘The Tenth Planet’, the first story to feature the Cybermen, was set at the South Pole. The Doctor can be seen to be gripping the picture with the index fingers of both hands, but note that the middle finger on his left hand is centred on the exact middle, implying an initial split and eventual reconciliation of…two poles? No, two planets – specifically Mondas, Earth’s twin, the imminent reappearance of which was a key theme of ‘The Tenth Planet’. If you think this is too much of a stretch, consider the facts: Polaroid was founded by Edwin H. Land, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut (both words synonymous with joining together), and was the son of a scrap metal merchant named Harry.
We move next to this shot of the exterior of the Estate Agent.
Geography is the thing here. Redcliffe Lettings is the name of the company that Bill and her friends visit – but the scene was actually filmed at Moginie James, 12 Sneyd Street, Cardiff CF11 9DL. From this we derive the Twelfth Doctor (address), who will shortly be joining forces with the Eleventh (postcode). The clue for this is in the letters DL, which stand for Dimension Lengthwise – an ISO paper size that is typically used for envelopes, but which in this instance involves the Doctor travelling backwards along his own timeline (or forwards, depending on where you start).
A history lesson: Tunstall is a parish in Shropshire, and it was from the nearby hamlet of Sneyd that the family Sneyd took its name. Doctor Who was filmed in Shropshire in 1985’s ‘The Mark of the Rani’, which saw the Master and Rani team up for the first time. Conclusions? MISSY IS NOT THE MASTER, AND SHE WILL BE TEAMING UP WITH JOHN SIMM IN A STORY ABOUT CO-PARENTING A BABY DINOSAUR.
Oh, and just as an aside? Moginie James can be arranged to form ‘JEAN, MI EGOISM’, which is as straight up a reference to John Simm’s Master as you’re likely to get in mangled French.
But there’s more. The use of this location is actually a reference to stars and constellations – a key theme both of the aforementioned human metacrisis episodes (‘The Stolen Earth’, in which they were going out) and an important story for the Eleventh Doctor (‘The Big Bang’, in which they supposedly never existed). Hence we can UNAMBIGUOUSLY CONCLUDE that stars will be the theme of this year’s series finale.
To explain this we must look at another t-shirt, Bill’s this time – which, as you’ll see (scroll up. I’ll wait), has French fries on the front. In order to obtain French Fries, one must visit McDonald’s (other fast food outlets are available, but McDonald’s is Scottish, as is Peter Capaldi) – and there are two optimum routes to the nearest McDonald’s, marked on this map:
Et voila.
See you next week, folks. Count the woodlice.
More deleted scenes. This time from ‘Knock Knock’.
This was really, really fiddly, so excuse the rough edges. When I get an unscored version I may be able to remaster it. Until then, you get the idea.
(If you missed the first one, it’s here.)
Brian of Morbius 