Testimony Of A Lackluster Doctor Who Christmas Special: "Twice Upon A Time"

The Good: Performances are good, Some of the jokes land
The Bad: Dull plot, Forced sense of conflict, Many of the jokes do not land on a character level, Failure of chemistry
The Basics: "Twice Upon A Time" is fairly pointless, nostalgic Doctor Who that belabors a character conflict that cannot possibly go in a surprising direction.


One of the worst aspects of changing the actor who plays The Doctor in Doctor Who is that who the new Doctor is rapidly becomes the most spoiled information in science fiction at its time. While that might not usually be an issue - and the announcement of Jodie Whittaker being cast as the next Doctor was made months ago - it usually means that the final episode of the current Doctor must be treated with some finesse. After all, Doctor Who viewers already know who to look for at the episode's climax, so the episode's writer and director has to make it interesting to the viewer to get there. Sadly, for Steven Moffat's final episode as showrunner for Doctor Who, "Twice Upon A Time," he forgets all about subtlety and finesse.

Instead, "Twice Upon A Time" quickly establishes a ridiculous premise that the viewer knows cannot possibly come to pass as Peter Capaldi's Doctor refuses to Regenerate. "Twice Upon A Time" attempts, vainly, to get the viewer to believe that Capaldi's Doctor might well be the final incarnation and that rather than regenerate, The Doctor is ready to die. The instant failure of suspension of disbelief quickly turns to a joke-filled love note from Steven Moffat to his own prior works as "Twice Upon A Time" packs in references to prior Doctor Who episodes Moffat wrote and/or produced, like "Into The Dalek" (reviewed here!), "The Pilot" (reviewed here!), and - most recently - "The Doctor Falls" (reviewed here!). Despite the flashback nature of the very opening of the episode, "Twice Upon A Time" picks up right after the final scene of "The Doctor Falls."

The First Doctor, following an incident with the Cybermen, takes the TARDIS to the South Pole, where he refuses to Regenerate. There, he encounters the latest (Peter Capaldi) incarnation of The Doctor outside his TARDIS. The First Doctor, considering death instead of Regeneration, seems to be enough to stop time for everyone but the two Doctors and a confused World War I Captain who suddenly appears there. After a brief flashback to explain how the Captain arrived at the South Pole - after encountering a mysterious, glasslike form of a woman - the two Doctors and the Captain retreat to the TARDIS, where the First Doctor is critical of its style and upkeep. The TARDIS is abducted and taken aboard another ship. The First Doctor leaves the TARDIS and is miffed by how The Doctor is referred to as The Doctor of War. The current Doctor, recognizing the reference and Bill, who appears from a room on the ship, leaves the TARDIS and begins to question his Companion.

Bill is confused when she cannot find Heather (who she recalls rescued her from the Cybermen). The Doctors investigate the ship, which belongs to the Testimony. The Testimony is a time-traveling library that goes into the past and extracts people in the moment of their death, downloads their memories, stores them and then returns the significant individual to their moment of death. The two Doctors, Bill and The Captain retreat to the First Doctor's TARDIS, where they begin a quest to find who the Testimony's template is based upon. To that end, they travel to the center of the galaxy to access the biggest database in the galaxy and The Doctor encounters "Rusty" the Dalek who rejected the rest of the Daleks. There, The Doctor learns about Testimony and he and the First Doctor return to Earth to face their destiny.

"Twice Upon A Time" hinges a lot on the viewer having an expert level knowledge of Doctor Who which, admittedly, I do not. As a result, I feel unqualified to discuss the quality of David Bradley's performance. Bradley mimics some of the obvious mannerisms of William Hartnell's Doctor - based on the archive footage I've seen in prior episodes and clips - but whether Bradley gets the character's voice and attitudes right is something I am not qualified to evaluate. The unfortunate aspect here is that the First Doctor spouts a lot of racist and sexist lines and mannerisms that might have been a sign of the times in the early 1960s when the show began, but make no sense for a character from Gallifrey. Unless when The Doctor was born on Gallifrey black women were maids, for example, some of the jokes fail to land on a character level.

Even as a person only marginally fluent in the current (2005 and up) Doctor Who some of the episode's "big surprises" fail to land. The identity of The Captain is hardly surprising and outside his lineage and being miffed when The Doctor references "I" after referring to the World War, the character is somewhat pointless in "Twice Upon A Time." The Captain's presence is an obligatory nod to the history of the franchise, as opposed to a vital character in his own right.

"Twice Upon A Time" belabors the humor while poking fun at inconsistencies and issues within Doctor Who. The First Doctor calls the sonic screwdriver absurd and questions how The Doctor could wear sunglasses indoors. The Doctor repeatedly crow's Missy's early line "you know who I am" to the First Doctor and Moffat and director Rachel Talalay use the opportunity to play with un-armored Daleks. But the First Doctor's sexism and the jokes predicated on outdated attitudes quickly wear thin.

Thematically, "Twice Upon A Time" is all about people who are too afraid of death desperately trying to run away from their inevitable mortality. The First Doctor and The Captain are not ready to die and are afraid of what might come next and The Doctor recognizes that his life is on an exceptionally short fuse and he tries to solve one last mystery before his death. But the significance of any discussion of mortality and acceptance of it is lost because the viewer already knows The Doctor's decision. In fact, we know the First Doctor's decision (to regenerate), that Bill is already dead, and that the Captain is not a significant enough character to care about his impending demise. So, "Twice Upon A Time" ought to be The Doctor's acceptance of life and his determination to regenerate and continue, but it meanders around fairly pointlessly until it gets to where it always had to.

The theme of "Twice Upon A Time" offers a natural opening for David Tennant's Doctor to make an appearance and it is disappointing that he is only in archive footage. Tennant's Doctor essentially begged for more time before his end and thematically, that fits "Twice Upon A Time" exceptionally well. The lack of an appearance by River Song - technically, she never dies, so that makes sense, save that Moffat already brought an image of her back once following her demise - is similarly disappointing.

Finally, the plot conceit of "Twice Upon A Time" builds into something painfully familiar. The "tour around the Best Of" idea wears thin and when a long-gone character appears, it quickly reminds viewers of just how limited Steven Moffat's writing has become. The "dead character living for an adventure" conceit was, essentially, the whole concept behind Clara's final exit with Ashildr.

The result is that Moffat guts much of his own creation on his way out. After finding amazing chemistry for The Doctor and Bill, they return stiff in "Twice Upon A Time" and the regeneration into the first female Doctor occurs without any reference to Missy or commentary on why The Doctor would regenerate as a woman this time (did it just not occur to him before?!). The result is something of an obligatory bridge episode that lacks a spark or genius and merely muddles through to the inevitable.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Tenth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other Doctor Who Christmas episodes, be sure to check out:
"The Return Of Doctor Mysterio"
"Voyage Of The Damned"
"Last Christmas"

3.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and season reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Endings Are Such Sweet Repetition When "The Doctor Falls"

The Good: Decent performances, Ties the season together well, Good effects, Good character moments
The Bad: Repetitive plot and character elements from other Steven Moffat works
The Basics: "The Doctor Falls" puts Bill in mortal peril and The Doctor, Missy, Nardole and The Master in a situation that might spell all their doom.


Steven Moffat's run as showrunner of Doctor Who has been an erratic one. While a lot of fangirls came to love him, I was not a fan of Matt Smith's tenure as The Doctor. I was actually super-excited by Peter Capaldi being cast as The Doctor, but his three season run as The Doctor, which was separated by (essentially) a year off while the production team tried to figure out its next direction, was marred by pretty terrible writing. So, there was something of a "fuck you" quality to Steven Moffat's final season as showrunner as the writing suddenly got good and the production team finally figured out how to write and develop Peter Capaldi's version of The Doctor. Moffat's penultimate episode writing and executive producing Doctor Who with Peter Capaldi as The Doctor is "The Doctor Falls."

"The Doctor Falls" follows immediately upon "World Enough And Time" (reviewed here!) and it is impossible to discuss without some references to where the prior episode went. After all, "World Enough And Time" put The Doctor, Nardole, and Bill on a massive alien ship near a black hole and when Bill became separated from the others in a section of the ship moving at a radically-different rate of time, she falls prey to one of The Doctor's worst enemies.

"The Doctor Falls" opens with a tremendous burden upon it. "World Enough And Time" returned The Master, the John Simm version of The Master, to the Doctor Who narrative and because he came in so late in the prior episode, there was no burden in that episode to explain how The Master appeared. Missy has perfectly good reason not to recall being on the space ship in the form of The Master, as she has had more than a thousand years of being isolated wherein she has been able to dwell on many other things. But The Master in "World Enough And Time" defined himself as being the "former prime minister." How The Master ended up in deep space after being killed in "Last Of The Time Lords" (reviewed here!), but before being resurrected for "The End Of Time" (reviewed here!) bears an explanation and as "The Doctor Falls" opens, Doctor Who is stuck trying to make a satisfactory explanation for how that could occur. "The Doctor Falls" manages to remind viewers that The Master was not previously killed; he just went off with the Time Masters and his end was left vague before he popped back up as Missy. "The Doctor Falls" creates a new, weird, problem when it puts into play yet another TARDIS. The Master, after returning to Gallifrey, got his own TARDIS. So, despite there being a TARDIS graveyard in a prior episode, the implication that The Doctor's TARDIS was the last one, by the end of "The Doctor Falls" there are three in play in our universe - The Doctor's, Ashildr's, and The Master's. More satisfying than the explanation of how The Master got away from Gallifrey, "The Doctor Falls" closes the loop on The Master/Missy and the Cybermen. When Missy was first introduced, she was using Cyberman technology in her bid to take over Earth using the dead; how she got that technology makes perfect sense given where "The Doctor Falls" leaves The Master.

Picking up on level 507 of the ship, the humans on the colony ship are living in a holographic simulation of farmland on the solar farm level. They are using proto-Cybermen who have made it up to that level as scarecrows to keep the children from wandering. Back on the bottom level, The Doctor is confronted by The Master and Missy, having just learned that Bill has been transformed into a Cyberman. When The Master and Missy attack The Doctor, he has just enough time to reprogram the Cyberman computer to recognize Time Lords as eligible for Conversion. As the Cybermen converge upon the heroes, Nardole manages to get all of them away with Bill's help.

Reaching Level 507, Bill wakes up in a barn where she is alarmed by how the colonist children are terrified of her. She looks in the mirror and is confused by why she appears to be a Cyberman. Together, Bill, The Doctor, Nardole, Missy and The Master prepare Level 507 for a Cyberman siege as they skyrocket up to the level. But, as the Cybermen invade, The Master and Missy betray The Doctor and they have an escape plan on The Master's damaged TARDIS on the lower levels of the ship. In stopping the Cybermen, Nardole reprograms the holographic fields as weapons and evacuates the humans to a higher level. That leaves The Doctor and Bill to thwart the invading Cybermen, but The Doctor is wounded and his life hangs in the balance with no way out.

"The Doctor Falls" is quite good, especially as it winnows The Doctor's allies down. Ironically, as the episode began, I found myself rooting for Nardole and being surprisingly impressed over how vital the character managed to become. Matt Lucas rose to the occasion of being a full-fledged Companion and it was nice to see him become something more than a punchline.

The irksome aspect of "The Doctor Falls" is that Peter Capaldi's version of The Doctor suddenly becomes indispensable and incredible . . . right around his apparent end. The other disappointing aspect of "The Doctor Falls" is Steven Moffat's repetition for his own ideas. The moment Bill appears on Level 507 looking like Bill, it is hard for the seasoned Doctor Who viewer not to see exactly what is going on. Steven Moffat used the exact same reversal with (proto) Clara when she was introduced in the "Asylum Of The Daleks." It is tremendously disappointing and obvious to see Bill given the exact same arc with her new Cyberman body and The Master and Missy doing their usual betrayals of The Doctor.

In a similar way, Moffat wusses out on resolving Bill's character arc. Moffat seems terrified about giving a character a bad end . . . so he again recycles his own material. Fans who saw how Clara was ultimately written out in "Hell Bent" (reviewed here!) will instantly feel a sinking feeling the moment Bill sees her love interest from "The Pilot" (reviewed here!). Moffat's penchant for reusing material is disappointing in "The Doctor Falls."

That said, Pearl Mackie does incredibly well as Bill. Mackie might be working off a script that is familiar to Doctor Who fans, but she performs the material in a way that suddenly makes those who refused to invest in her character (Mackie was spoiled early on in the season as being a one-season Companion) completely care about her. Bill believed in The Doctor and she got screwed; her character was barely around long enough to learn about Regeneration - The Doctor never satisfactorily explained to her The Master. Bill's sense of hope is heartbreaking and Mackie lands the moment of epiphany.

Peter Capaldi's version of The Doctor is everything fans have wanted from him in "The Doctor Falls." Viewers are likely to wonder where the hell Moffat's talent was for giving Capaldi's character a unique voice up until this point.

All that said, "The Doctor Falls" is a powerful set-up for Peter Capaldi's final bow as The Doctor . . . and it is enough for fans to hope that Capaldi's leaving with the arrival of a new Executive Producer is a fake-out, much like the BBC did when announcing Jenna Coleman's departure an entire season in advance of her actual leaving.

For other Doctor Who season finales, please check out my reviews of:
"The Parting Of The Ways"
"The End Of Time, Part 2"
"The Big Bang"

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Tenth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

8.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and season reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"World Enough And Time" Begins Capaldi's Final Arc Exceptionally Well!

The Good: Very well-plotted, Decent acting, Good effects and direction
The Bad: Light on theme
The Basics: "World Enough And Time" opens the final arc of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor by killing Bill . . . only to resurrect her in a new form of danger!


As Peter Capaldi's tenure on Doctor Who rushes towards its end, there is something ironic about the resurgence of Missy in the narrative. Missy is the latest incarnation of The Master and replaced the John Simm version of the character. Simm played The Master during the final arc of Russell T. Davies's run of Doctor Who before Steven Moffat took over as showrunner. So, with Moffat's run winding down, there is something ironic about both Missy and The Master, as portrayed by John Simm, returning to the narrative in "World Enough And Time."

"World Enough And Time" follows on the events of "The Eaters Of Light" (reviewed here!), which put Missy on the TARDIS in the role of Chief Engineer. While Nardole and Bill do not trust Missy, The Doctor has decided to take a chance on her and he is working actively on rehabilitating her. "World Enough And Time" is a proper Missy mission for Doctor Who.

Opening with The Doctor, with much longer hair, landing the TARDIS in an ice field, then coming out to collapse into regeneration, "World Enough And Time" flashes back. The TARDIS lands on a four mile long colony ship that is holding station near the mouth of a black hole. Bill and Nardole accompany Missy out of the TARDIS; The Doctor has Missy on a test run for being decent and not killing. Unfortunately, no sooner has the team stepped onto the colony ship's command center than they are addressed by someone elsewhere on the ship and a moment later, a blue man appears on the bridge. The alien holds Missy and her Companions at gunpoint and demands to know which of the group is a human. When Bill admits that it is her, The Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS to try to defuse the situation. Unfortunately, the alien shoots Bill and kills her.

Moments later, the lifts arrive on the bridge and mysteriously-wrapped humanoids come for Bill. They claim to be able to fix Bill and before they can be stopped, they take Bill's corpse away to the furthest reaches of the colony ship. There, Bill wakes up with a mechanical heart in her chest and she is told by the roguish Mr. Razor that she has been recovering there for weeks. While Bill explores the mysterious hospital and the polluted world of the bottom of the colony ship, horrified to discover humans are being altered in a hideous conversion to evolve them to survive the trip to higher levels. Meanwhile, The Doctor, Missy and Nardole figure out how the colony ship is experiencing time dilation and they prepare to make a journey to rescue Bill.

"World Enough And Time" is a set-up episode and it puts a big burden on the next episode, though it is astonishingly good in and of itself. In fact, the issues "World Enough And Time" has in the larger continuity of Doctor Who need not be addressed in this episode given that they work to place the important characters in the story, as opposed to trying to place the episode in the larger continuity. That said, "World Enough And Time" starts as a lively Missy episode and they quickly turns into a Bill episode whereby she is put into an increasingly dangerous situation and she comes to understand the nature of the setting that The Doctor and his team are walking into.

Missy reaches the logical point in her season-long character arc as The Doctor takes a chance on her redemption and the idea that Missy has spent more than a thousand years in isolation make her fuzzy memory in the episode work. "World Enough And Time" marks the return of the familiar and delightful Missy; she is crazy, witty and fun to watch for almost her entire time on screen.

Bill, sadly, is killed early in the episode and the mechanical method of her return is well-foreshadowed even for those who did not have the revelation spoiled by the episode preview last week. Bill waits and waits for The Doctor while she slowly comes to understand how the people on level 1056 are dying and just what Conversion is. It is a slow descent into horror for Bill's character and it is hard not to feel bad for the brief Companion when she is shot clear through her chest. The viewer easily feels worse for her by the episode's end, though in this way the larger continuity of Steven Moffat's tenure of Doctor Who becomes a little bit of an issue; Moffat created a virtually identical reveal for Bill's fate at the climax of his first real Missy episode.

"World Enough And Time" takes time to explain the gravitational physics of time - though the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Blink Of An Eye" (reviewed here!) did something very similar - near the black hole and that keeps The Doctor and his team out of much of the narrative. Instead, this is very much Bill's episode as she gets to know Mr. Razor, who seems quirky and like a weird lifeline for The Doctor's Companion.

"World Enough And Time" is well-directed and clever, even if it is light on any sort of themes. The episode is plot-heavy and works on multiple character revelations, but it is insular within Doctor Who; it is not making any form of larger statement, which is a hallmark of great science fiction. But for the first time in a long time, Doctor Who delivers a truly solid and truly great episode, even if it is somewhat limited to being essential only to fans of the series itself.

For other works with John Simm, please check out my reviews of:
"Utopia"
"The Sound Of Drums"
"Last Of The Time Lords"
"The End Of Time, Part 1"
"The End Of Time, Part 2"

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Tenth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

9/10

For other Doctor Who episode and season reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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New Heroes, New Villains: "The Present" Is The Annual Christmas Episode Of The Flash!

The Good: Good performances, Speeds along the season's plot well, Awesome special effects
The Bad: Generally predictable plot, Light on character development
The Basics: "The Present" creates a prophecy for The Flash, which sets up the rest of the season, while entertaining!


When it comes to The Flash, the series started out incredibly good, in a way that both respected the source material and managed to not fall into the usual, stale conceits that plague a number of genre television shows these days. Unfortunately, as the series has progressed, it has not respected its fans as much and the show has picked up some of the worst conceits of other works. So, for example, near the climax of the second season, Barry Allen's father was killed in front of him . . . only to have him replaced at the end of the next episode by his Earth-3 doppelganger. It guts the emotional resonance of the death of the important character to have a virtual stand-in for him put into the series. The return of the Earth-3 Jay Garrick, who is essentially Henry Allen from Earth-1, comes in "The Present."

"The Present" comes on the heels of "Invasion!" (reviewed here!), but fans of The Flash would do well to have seen the Legends Of Tomorrow episode "Invasion!" (reviewed here!) before watching "The Present." After all, The Flash and Cisco were heavily featured in the climax of the DC Television Universe crossover and understanding where Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon are at the beginning of "The Present" is enhanced by having seen where they ended "Invasion!" (from Legends Of Tomorrow). As well, H.R. had begun training Wally and the identity of Alchemy was revealed.

Four years ago in the Indus Valley, Julian Albert is an archaeologist who uncovers a box with a mysterious power in it. At S.T.A.R. Labs in the present, H.R. decorates for Christmas while the rest of the team works to learn about Savitar and Cisco starts hallucinating his brother Dante. Cisco hunts down a dissertation on the Hindu Broma (Philosopher's) stone, which is the stone Alchemy uses to make people into metahumans. Confronting Albert, Allen is lied to about the forensics expert finding the stone and Albert denies knowing anything substantive about Savitar. On Earth-3, the Flash is taking out their version of the Trickster and Barry goes over to get information from Jay Garrick.

Garrick informs Barry that Savitar is coming for Barry, as Speedster myth states that Savitar only appears to speedsters before he comes to kill them. H.R. trains Wally West to be faster than Barry, while Barry and Jay try to learn more about Savitar. Garrick encourages Barry to return home to Iris, where he learns that Julian Albert might possess the Philosopher's Stone. The two Flashes confront Alchemy before he can restore all of the Flashpoint metahumans, with Jay being wounded by Savitar. But when Barry stops Savitar by boxing back up the Philosopher's Stone, Julian Albert has no memory of being Alchemy. Cisco Ramon evaluates the box and it appears to not actually exist! As Dante continues to appear to Cisco, it becomes clear that Vibe is being manipulated by the same force that took over Albert!

Arguably what is most impressive about "The Present" is that director Rachel Talalay managed to get Mark Hamill for a single scene! The Earth-3 incarnation of Trickster is virtually The Joker, which is somewhat hilarious and well-executed.

"The Present" includes an amusing subplot featuring Joe West and D.A. Horton as their relationship heats up. The pair flirt and challenge each other with their respective grandmother's egg nog recipes. Jesse L. Martin and Danielle Nicolet have great on-screen chemistry and their flirtatious banter is a nice change from the heavy emotional scenes that Grant Gustin presents for most of the episode.

While Barry Allen struggles with dealing with Savitar and interacting with both Jay Garrick and Iris, Wally West is outed as training with H.R. Wally is getting faster and stronger, much to the chagrin of Joe West. Wally is presented in "The Present" as an adult who is angered by not being treated like an adult and he holds his own in the episode as a credible speedster, even when he is not running. Wally steps up as a hero and he makes a good attempt to thwart Savitar, which is an awesome entrance for Wally onto the field of battle.

Grant Gustin and Tom Felton interact brilliantly in "The Present" as Barry Allen and Julian Albert. Gustin manages to have a strength of presence on-screen to rival Felton, which is no small feat. Felton as an adult actor has managed to becomes someone who can take a tiny role and fill the screen with his on-screen presence. Felton is a powerhouse in The Flash in the minor role of Julian Albert and Grant Gustin confronts Felton in a scene that raises the bar for what one might expect of Gustin!

"The Present" continues to present Savitar as arguably the coolest special effect on television today. Savitar looks awesome in "The Present" and is enough to make viewers excited to see more of him.

"The Present" is a bit predictable, especially for those who know the source material. In The Flash, Vibe originally appears as a villain post-Flashpoint. "The Present" begins to put Cisco Ramon on the path to the Dark Side and that is much more predictable than it is audacious.

The conclusion to "The Present," however, is robbed of any credibility by the whole "Invasion!" crossover. At the end of "Invasion!" Supergirl was given a communications device and Vibe and Barry Allen have shown an ability to go over to her Earth at will. Either way, as the S.T.A.R. Labs team tries to figure out what to do with the Philosopher's Stone to keep Savitar permanently trapped, they think that the most credible way to dispose of the box is by putting it in space. For those not following the thread, the solution might seem obvious in a way that the S.T.A.R. Labs team does not realize: take the box to Supergirl's Earth and ask her to fly it into her sun. Problem solved. Yet, that is not what happens in "The Present."

The result is an episode of The Flash that works very hard to answer virtually all of the questions set up in the first half of the season and set up the second half of the season exceptionally well. But, "The Present" is thematically light and does not stand nearly as well on its own as some of the other Christmas episodes of The Flash!

For other works with Andre Tricoteux, please check out my reviews of:
"Killer Frost" - The Flash
Warcraft
Deadpool
"Fail-Safe" - Legends Of Tomorrow

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into The Flash - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the third season here!
Thanks!]

6/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"Welcome To Earth," Where Everyone Is An Alien!

The Good: Decent performances, James Olsen's character arc
The Bad: Very basic plot, Thematically heavyhanded, Pushes a lot of reversals.
The Basics: Supergirl leaps forward with "Welcome To Earth," which is hampered by making virtually everyone in the episode someone other than who they appear.


The night is finally here! As a lifelong fan of Wonder Woman (reviewed here!) - both the book and the iconic 1970s television rendition of the character - it was hard not to get excited over the summer when it was announced that Lynda Carter would be appearing on Supergirl as the President Of The United States. Those who follow my many reviews might note that I have not yet reviewed the first season of Supergirl. The reason for that is simple; I saw the pilot and it did not grab me, so it wasn't until the show announced Carter's casting that I actually went through the first season in advance of its second season premiere. "Welcome To Earth" is the episode that introduces the alluded-to President on-screen.

"The Last Children Of Krypton" (reviewed here!) immediately preceded "Welcome To Earth" and the episode picks up in the final moments of the prior episode. As such, it is tough to discuss "Welcome To Earth" without some references as to where the "The Last Children Of Krypton" ended. After all "Welcome To Earth" finds the DEO without any Kryponite and a new Kryptonian on the prowl.

Opening with the Kryptonian Mon-El waking up at the DEO and freaking out, Hank Henshaw is disturbed that the alien escaped. The President is about to visit National City to tour the DEO in advance of her signing the Alien Amnesty Act. Kara geeks outat the idea of meeting the President. At CatCo, James Olsen's first writer's meeting is interrupted by Snapper Carr hijacking the job assignments. When the President arrives in National City, two of her Secret Service Agents are incinerated by an alien's heat vision, implicating Mon-El. Alex Danvers clashes with Detective Maggie Sawyer who investigates the crime scene, while Supergirl and J'onn J'onzz give President Marsdin a tour of the DEO.

While Kara interviews Lena Luthor and discovers that L Corp is preparing to roll out an alien detector, Alex hunts the renegade Kryptonian. Mon-El takes a hostage at an observatory in order to send a signal back to his homeworld, with his stated goal of simply returning home. Kara writes a biased article on Lena Luthor's device, which earns her the ire of Snapper Carr. Sawyer brings Alex Danvers to an underground alien club. Winn Schott figures out where the "Kryptonian" is trying to send a signal to and Kara recognizes that the alien is a Daxamite. Capturing the Daxamite, Supergirl interrogates him and comes to feel a little differently about the alien detector. When the President makes a public event of signing the Alien Amnesty Act, the true villain shows up and both Alex and Supergirl work to recover the captive Sawyer and keep the President safe.

"Welcome To Earth" is good for its positive sense of values, but it is enough to remind viewers who might not have been grabbed by the beginning of Supergirl exactly why the show failed to land. The first few episodes of Supergirl were very heavy on pointing out gender in an inorganic way. "Welcome To Earth" is similarly heavy on the theme. While it works that J'onn J'onzz points out that as an alien and a black man, he understands intolerance, when Maggie Sawyer comes into the narrative loud and proud and makes a point of referencing being lesbian growing up in a small town it seems very heavyhanded. While both make good points, making them explicit the way the writers do just telegraphs the theme in a somewhat ridiculous way.

Moreover, "Welcome To Earth" changes the push of the whole Alien Rights idea by mortgaging the human component of the movement and that is a terrible idea. In the history of every human rights struggle, those fighting for the legal acknowledgement of their rights always have enlightened allies within the majority population that has been oppressing them. "Welcome To Earth" ultimately neglects that idea; Alex Danvers is a prejudiced human, James Olsen is an observer and Winn Schott is the only human-loving alien, but is completely outside the political struggle for alien rights. It is both sloppy and inaccurate for Supergirl to present a fight for equal rights where doppelgangers and infiltrate the government to make the changes they want, as opposed to having any enlightened humans standing with them for moral and legal reasons.

There is a similar writing problem with the episode not knowing whether the President is signing a Bill or making an executive order. Executive orders alter government policy and the way a law is enforced; they are not Acts. So, The President's "Alien Amnesty Act" would be a modification to the way the Department Of Immigration (etc.) enforced existing laws; the President could not create an Act with the signing of an Executive Order.

It's not all poorly-executed, not by any means. The Wonder Woman twirl by Supergirl is a fun allusion. The villain of the episode is a decent one. The alien who does not trust humans is a compellingly-written adversary for Supergirl and the dialogue between the two is a decent exploration of hope vs. pragmatism. Outside her methods, the villain in "Welcome To Earth" is not wrong and her philosophy is one that is very much supported by what has been shown through history and in Supergirl up until now.

Despite a few moments of melodrama, especially in the climax, the conflict between Olsen and Carr is well-executed. Olsen is learning his new position and having to adapt to going from being a photographer to being the editor-in-chief of CatCo's publication is a leap that is not organic. Mehcad Brooks does a decent job of making Olsen's transition from one role to another surprisingly well.

The L Corp device is a ridiculous concept. The device designed by Lena Luthor requires people being tested to put their finger on the device. In order to be useful to a business, it requires everyone entering an establishment to voluntarily take the test, which seems like it would cause a bottleneck at every entrance.

The episode features multiple reversals in the final scenes that leap Supergirl into new territory for the future of the show. In some ways it is problematic in that "Welcome To Earth" places an inordinate number of aliens in National City and within the United States (there was a Senator being impersonated by an alien in Season 1) at key places. In analogous terms, the revelations in "Welcome To Earth" would be like if everyone on The Flash was a metahuman or a Speedster. Such reversals get tiresome quickly and "Welcome To Earth" packs a bunch of them in. Some of those reversals make other throwaway lines - like Lynda Carter's line about a plane other than Air Force One (an obvious allusion to Wonder Woman's invisible jet) - fall particularly flat.

Lynda Carter does amazingly well portraying the President Of The United States; she has the gravitas to make it instantly believable that Olivia Marsdin could have campaigned and won an election. Sadly, in the current political climate, Marsdin's quotable lines about hope and her obvious strength of character by taking a positive, liberal, position on universal rights only highlights the corrupt and spineless political choices the U.S. government offers its voters back here in reality.

Melissa Benoist once again delivers a delightful performance as Kara Danvers as she geeks out over meeting the President. She handles the physical action of Supergirl well and the direction by Rachel Talalay continues to help develop Katie McGrath's Lena Luthor as a potential equal and opposite to Kara. Supergirl's arc where she starts prejudiced against Daxamites and learns a Very Important Lesson is a good one and Benoist plays the arc without any hint of cheesiness.

There is a pretty high "geek out" factor for fans of DC Comics and other DC Comics-based television and film works by Lynda Carter's presence in "Welcome To Earth." But beyond the hype, "Welcome To Earth" is a very basic, very average episode of Supergirl that is executed as well as the packed, muddied script allows.

For other works with David Harewood, please visit my reviews of:
"The End Of Time, Part 2" - Doctor Who
"The End Of Time, Part 1" - Doctor Who
Blood Diamond

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Supergirl - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of the Kryptonian superheroine here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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"Last Refuge" Puts The Legends Of Tomorrow Up Against The Terminator!

The Good: Entertaining, Special effects, Fine performances, Decent character development
The Bad: Very straightforward and basic plot, character moments and acting.
The Basics: Legends Of Tomorrow plays The Terminator for "Last Refuge."


Almost every long-running time-travel adventure ends up paying homage to The Terminator at one point or another. If a conflict through time and space is significant enough, the cunning adversaries work to defeat the heroes before they can ever rise to heroic heights. The Terminator (reviewed here!) is the reference that the Legends Of Tomorrow episode "Last Refuge" is based upon and it makes no attempt to hide the comparisons. When Ray Palmer delivers the iconic "come with me if you want to live" line in the teaser, "Last Refuge" acknowledges the homage to The Terminator.

"Last Refuge" picks up after "The Magnificent Eight" (reviewed here!), which transitioned from a western episode to one that set up the new episode. The introduction of the Omega Protocol and The Pilgrim was a last-moment transition into a very different type of episode, which helps to maintain a strong, serialized, plotline through the first season of Legends Of Tomorrow.

Opening in Central City, 1990, on the night Mick Rory's parents were killed, the crew of the Waverider rescues the younger version of Rory. The Pilgrim next targets Sara Lance and Lance herself rescues her. The Pilgrim's very specific targets quickly stymie the Waverider crew, as they become unable to track her temporal wake. When Ray Palmer suddenly collapses as the result of injuries sustained during an attack from the Pilgrim, the crew has to rescue him when he is on the verge of completing his Atom suit prototype. To prevent the Pilgrim from attacking other versions of the rest of the team, the Waverider crew abducts the infant versions of themselves.

Rip Hunter deposits the children at the Refuge, the place he was raised and where the Time Masters take orphans to fill their ranks. Having to alter her plan, the Pilgrim targets the loved ones of the Waverider's crew. Rip agrees and he offers The Pilgrim a trade; his younger self for Jackson's father. Meeting at a neutral location with his younger self, the team must orchestrate the trade to save their loved ones and stop The Pilgrim.

"Last Refuge" progresses the characters from Legends Of Tomorrow by giving Rip Hunter and Jefferson Jackson backstories that are more fleshed out and by moving forward the Palmer/Saunders relationship. When Palmer is wounded, he does a half-baked proposal to Saunders. Saunders is then compelled to admit that her prior self told her not to get involved with Palmer . . . or anyone else. Rip Hunter's past is well-conceived for the episode's climax and seeing where and how he is raised in the Refuge is very cool.

There are very few times that I review something that I spend more time and space kvetching about what the episode should have been than what it actually was. "Last Refuge," though, is notable for its lack of cleverness. As the episode began, I found myself saying, "It would be really cool if they resolve this problem by just doing to The Pilgrim what she is trying to do to them." That, alas, does not happen. The idea of taking out The Pilgrim when she is temporally vulnerable would completely undo the threat she represents and would play well into the idea of the time travel adventurers dealing with threats in a smart, science fiction context. Sadly, "Last Refuge" opts for a painfully straightforward conflict with The Pilgrim that is largely unremarkable.

The performances in "Last Refuge" are average, the plot is derivative, and the character moments are not as developed as one might hope. But "Last Refuge" is fairly solidly entertaining. The episode is unsophisticated, so it is tough to make a review that delves deeper into it than that.

For other works with Paul Blackthorne, be sure to check out my reviews of:
"Who Is Harrison Wells?" - The Flash
A Christmas Carol

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Legends Of Tomorrow - The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the premiere season of the time traveling hero team here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Remembering The Breach Problem: "Fast Lane" Effectively Redirects The Flash!

The Good: Wonderful character moments, Engaging plot development, Most of the acting
The Bad: Effects largely negate the coolness of Tar Pit, Some predictability in moving toward the next two big episodes
The Basics: "Fast Lane" introduces one of the more fantastic Flash villains and does an exceptional job tying him into the larger storyline.


Fans of the comic book The Flash have a lot to be apprehensive about with the second season of The Flash on television. After all, the current season is much more fractured than the first season, with huge unresolved plotlines involving dimensional rifts peppered around Central City, the villainous Zoom menacing Barry Allen, the metahumans created by the reactor in the pilot episode and the new additions of Wally West and Jay Garrick to the mix. Usually, before entering a whole alternate universe scenario, the television show would be on firmer ground than The Flash was when it went in that direction. While Geoff Johns did an amazing job with creating a rogue's gallery for The Flash second only to Batman's cast of villains, those villains have not always translated well to the television show. To wit, in the first season episode "The Flash Is Born" (reviewed here!) saw the television show making a terrible rendition of Girder (he appeared in the show as, essentially, a variation of the Marvel Universe's Collosus. So, when "Fast Lane" was teased with the idea that the Johns'-Era villain Tar Pit would make an appearance, fans of the book had a reason to experience trepidation.

Fortunately, fans have a lot to enjoy in "Fast Lane" as the episode gets a lot of Tar Pit right - even is his comic book appearance is only in the show for one brief part of the final scene! "Fast Lane" picks up right after "The Reverse-Flash Returns" (reviewed here!) with Harrison Wells working on Eobard Thawne's technology. The episode effectively blends the serialized elements of the show with a Metahuman Of The Week story.

Opening the night of the reactor accident, two years prior, two goons drop Joey Monteleone in an industrial tub of boiling tar. The reactor accident occurs and Monteleone becomes a metahuman. While Iris tries to get Wally West to stop his drag racing, Joe and Barry investigate the murder of Daniel Burge, at the hands of a new-to-the-scene metahuman. Harrison Wells completes the device needed to sap the Speed Force from Barry to save his daughter. Finding metahuman DNA on Burge's body, Cisco coins the new metahuman Tar Pit and soon his app indicates Tar Pit is active. When Barry encounters Tar Pit, Wells uses his new device to sap some of the Flash's Speed Force.

While Barry Allen investigates Tar Pit, Wells delivers Zoom the Speed Force sample. Cisco and Barry are concerned because The Flash is negligibly slower. While Barry and Wells work together, using our Earth's Wells's research, Wells warns Barry that he will betray Barry and his team to save his daughter. When Iris's reporting brings her to Wally's race, where the man organizing the races is related to the thugs who created Tar Pit, Tar Pit shows up and nearly kills Wally to get to Bronwen. In the process, Iris is wounded and that pushes Wells to tell the truth, which puts Barry in the odd position of defending his quasi-mentor to his friends.

"Fast Lane" is notably light on Dr. Snow (Danielle Panabaker has two big episodes coming up!) and Cisco, whose most significant moment is bringing his metahuman app online (which is what Wells had developed in the alternate universe in his first major flashback for this season!). Jay Garrick is entirely absent from the episode and this actually works in the episode's favor. "Fast Lane" has the feeling of being more focused on the show's core characters and it works nicely in that regard to allow most of them to develop better and have the actors showcase their talents more.

Tom Cavanagh returns in full force to the forefront of his range and ability in "Fast Lane." Harrison Wells is committed to his family and Cavanagh brilliantly presents monologues that illustrate his character's absolute commitment to his family. The raw emotionalism of it plumbs a new depth for Cavanagh on The Flash and it works out brilliantly in the episode.

Cavanagh and Jesse L. Martin's experienced deliveries are balanced by Grant Gustin and Candice Patton. Gustin gives a brilliantly forceful performance opposite Cavanagh. He sets his gaze and gives some vocally strong performances that sell the character's sense of determination and compassion. Patton gives a similar range of performances making Iris tenacious and determined, completely dominating all of her scenes with the guest stars she squares off against. Patton gives one of her most subtle and strong performances in "Fast Lane."

"Fast Lane"'s minutia is a bit weird. Out of all the history of music, Barry Allen cites an Ingrid Michaelson song, which is cool, but somewhat shortsighted. In an immediately adjacent scene, the Wests have Coast City Pizza. In the first season, The Flash ran to Coast City in California to get everyone pizza; how they got it without the Flash seems to bank on the idea that Coast City Pizza had a radical expansion over the past year and got a Central City branch. It's flimsy and someone in the prop department should have caught the problem.

The special effects in "Fast Lane" are incredible. While it might have been cost-prohibitive to replicate Tar Pit's comic book appearance in every shot and that is disappointing, his ultimate appearance is pretty awesome. The effect of the episode, though, is the scene featuring Wally's ultimate race and The Flash trying desperately to rescue Iris.

In fact, one of the big things missing from "Fast Lane" is a scene reconnecting Iris and Barry after she is wounded. That said, the episode does much right and leads into one of the big potentially promising events of the season!

For other works directed by Rachel Talalay, be sure to check out my reviews of:
"Hell Bent" - Doctor Who
"Heaven Sent" - Doctor Who
"Death In Heaven" - Doctor Who
"Dark Water"- Doctor Who

7/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Undermine All Emotion: "Hell Bent" Is Another Dismal End For Clara Oswald.

The Good: Moments of performance, Moments of character
The Bad: Narrative makes no sense, Undermines all emotional resonance for viewers, Lack of significant character moments, Abysmal continuity
The Basics: "Hell Bent" has all sorts of people who can't remember things telling a story that brings Clara Oswald back, yet again, from the dead . . . sort of.


It has been, almost inarguably, a rough season for Doctor Who. As the season reaches its peak, fans - rightfully - were split on the direction of the series. For those who suffered through "Heaven Sent" (reviewed here!) - an episode whose sole purpose was to move The Doctor from our universe into whatever pocket universe Gallifrey was placed as a result of the events of "The Day Of The Doctor." The thing is, the much-neglected search for Gallifrey that seemed to be the purpose The Doctor was given coming into the tenure of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor is troubling to fans who have stuck with the continuation of Doctor Who that began in 2005.

The whole concept of the quest to find Gallifrey exists in conflict with what The Doctor told The Master in "Last Of The Time Lords" (reviewed here!); to release Gallifrey from its time lock would bring with it the Daleks and thousands of other nightmares that were trapped by the way The Doctor ended the Last Time War. So, as "Hell Bent" begins, attentive viewers have to be concerned by The Doctor arriving at Gallifrey. If Gallifrey has evolved past the final day of the Time War, then it would explain why Timothy Dalton's character from "Last Of The Time Lords" is not around in "Hell Bent" and would allow for the Gallifreyans to evolve beyond where they were when last we saw them. And if the billions of years The Doctor spent in "Heaven Sent" in his Confession Dial's scenario getting from Earth to Gallifrey were only a function of the Dial's pocket universe, then The Doctor is not likely to find his people to be at all reasonable or likable. So, "Hell Bent" has a lot of potential at its outset.

Sadly, so much of that potential is squandered in "Hell Bent" and after two years of anticipation for what would happen when The Doctor found Gallifrey, The Doctor's homeworld is almost incidental to the episode of Doctor Who.

Opening in Nevada, The Doctor enters a diner where he encounters a woman who appears to be Clara and he begins to tell her the story of his return to Gallifrey. Flashing back to Gallifrey, The Doctor stops his approach to the Capital City and, instead, heads to his childhood house. The Doctor has a bowl of soup and rejects the appearance of the military, a General, and, ultimately, The President and his firing squad. When the soldiers refuse to execute The Doctor, The Doctor deposes The President and disbands the government on Gallifrey. The General allows The Doctor to seize power because of his fear of The Hybrid, which is said to bring about the destruction of Gallifrey.

To protect Gallifrey, The Doctor is allowed the use of an Extraction Chamber. In it, he pulls Clara out of the moment of her death in order to get information from her about the Hybrid. Instead, though, he takes the General's firearm and helps Clara escape the Extraction Chamber. They escape to the cloisters that house the Matrix, the Gallifreyan computer that generated the Hybrid prophecy, where The Doctor hatches a plan to escape Gallifrey and save Clara's life. To that end, he takes a newly-stolen TARDIS to the end of time where he encounters Me and is faced with a difficult choice over what to do with Clara.

"Hell Bent" calls to mind the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Life Support" (reviewed here!) where one character is agonizingly killed over and over again. Between that and the old phrase "It's hard to say good-bye, if you won't leave," it's pretty easy to sum up "Hell Bent" as something of a waste of time for fans of Doctor Who.

"Hell Bent" is an annoying impossibility and one that is overly complicated for what it is. The episode feels like it could be a pilot episode for a spin-off (one made impossibly problematic for a pragmatist if Maisie Williams is not done growing up!) or is a complicated revisiting of Clara's death while completely copping out on the emotional ramifications of Clara's death. But, from a narrative perspective, "Hell Bent" is an irksome impossibility; The Doctor is telling Clara the story of his saving Clara's life . . . but he only has the vaguest recollection of who Clara was. The specifics of this adventure are so ingrained with Clara that The Doctor should be unable to tell even a fraction of the story.

Beyond that, "Hell Bent" once again buggers the entire concept of Clara as the Impossible Girl. The first moment The Doctor walks into the diner, viewers are given hope that The Doctor is encountering another version of Clara from somewhere else in The Doctor's timestream. Before The Doctor encountered Clara, he encountered Oswin and a Clara who was killed by the end of "The Snowmen;" as the Impossible Girl, Clara Oswald journeys all through The Doctor's timeline and saves his life from the attempts by The Great Intelligence to kill him all along his timestream. So, the hope viewers have at the very beginning when Clara first appears that the diner's waitress is a different iteration of Clara is a rational one. Sadly, Steven Moffat goes for flash and ridiculousness over sticking to his own conceptual narrative. Instead, "Hell Bent" is a poor explanation for why The Doctor and Clara do not appear to recognize one another at the outset of the episode.

Much of the beginning of "Hell Bent" hinges on the Matrix prophecy of the Hybrid. Like many Doctor Who prophecies, the Hybrid is created as a matter of plot convenience and pops up into the narrative only when it is needed. In other words, it is not like there is a long prophecy about The Doctor that was revealed ten seasons ago and viewers can slowly piece together and become concerned about. No, suddenly, everyone in power on Gallifrey is terrified about The Hybrid, even though we've only heard reference to the Hybrid once or twice before (and never in the Gallifrey episodes since the 2005 continuation began).

So, the plot of "Hell Bent" is pretty much nonsense and fans of Doctor Who are likely to roll their eyes the moment mind wiping comes into the episode as a conceit (did Moffat think viewers skipped the season with Donna Noble?!).

All "Hell Bent" truly has going for it are moments of character and a few key moments of performance. The character elements are undermined because when one rewatches the episode, the narrative conceit means that the moments of character make no genuine sense; The Doctor cannot tell the story with key moments of emotional depth when he doesn't actually remember them.

In the Cloisters, as The Doctor and Clara work a secret escape hatch, Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman give truly great performances. They have the chance for one last, truly emotional scene together and it plays perfectly because of the depth of the emotion they play. Capaldi plays the scene as a person who waited four billion years to see his Companion again and Coleman plays the moment with such appreciation and sadness that one is almost sad to think that Clara might die . . . yet again.

Maisie Williams steals the climax of the episode as Me. She has some wonderful facial expressions and delivers many of her lines with a gravity that is appropriate and severe. For sure, it makes no sense that Ashildr could actually have a nose ring, but Williams's performance is enough to make one overlook the make-up problem.

The Doctor has been trillions of years into the future, but in "Hell Bent" the scale is made in billions of years and that seems like another detail in an episode that doesn't care about reason, specificity, continuity or reason. The episode attempts an emotional tug and it fails; making for an ultimately unsatisfying final send-off for a character who can always be brought back.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Ninth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Donald Sumpter, please check out my reviews of:
Game Of Thrones - Season 2
Game Of Thrones - Season 1
The Constant Gardener

3/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Doctor Who Mood Piece Is "Heaven Sent" On Engaging The Viewers!

The Good: Mood, Performance, Initial cleverness
The Bad: Virtually devoid of plot, Character does not genuinely develop after the first revelation
The Basics: "Heaven Sent" takes a moody, philosophical approach that places The Doctor in a hopeless situation that mirrors his sense of loss.


As fans race to the end of yet another season of Doctor Who, many are feeling a bit stabbed in the heart by the events of "Face The Raven" (reviewed here!). Given that it is the first part of the story continued in "Heaven Sent," it is impossible to discuss the latest episode without some allusions to events in "Face The Raven." The climactic event of "Face The Raven" was, supposedly, the death of Clara Oswald. I write "supposedly" because the whole ridiculous notion of the Impossible Girl precludes a full and complete death of a Jenna Coleman character. When Clara Oswald became the Impossible Girl, she went all along The Doctor's timeline to save him from the Great Intelligence in The Doctor's past, present, and future. The only way for that to truly work would be for other versions of Clara to pop up from time to time. Perhaps, next week Clementine Ozark will save The Doctor's life on one of his many adventures through time and space. Regardless, just as Clara popped up in other iterations prior to The Doctor officially meeting her, the show would lack a certain symmetry if she did not surface again to keep guiding The Doctor through his adventures.

That, however, does not happen in "Heaven Sent."

Indeed, "Heaven Sent" reminds viewers that the climactic event of "Face The Raven" was not necessarily the apparent death of Clara Oswald, but rather the fact that Mayor Me had been employed by some heretofore unknown person or force to abduct The Doctor after cutting him off from his access to the TARDIS.

Opening with The Doctor materializing in a chamber that has Gallifreyan control panels set in what appears to be a castle, The Doctor vows to find whomever it was who abducted him, if they had anything to do with Clara's death. He then begins exploring the castle. The Doctor reasons that he is in the same time frame and only a light year away from where he was with Clara and Rigsy. There are screens throughout the hallway The Doctor finds himself in and he quickly realizes that they are transmitting what the wraith (or Grim Reaper without the scythe) is facing. Backed into a corner, The Doctor admits he is afraid and time appears to stop (as evidenced by the flies that precede the Wraith freezing in front of him). The entire castle reconfigures itself and The Doctor finds himself safe in a bedroom.

When the Wraith appears again, The Doctor realizes that his tormentors have read nightmares from very early in his life and they have planned this for a long time. Leaping out a nearby window, he goes to a safe place in his mind and constructs a scenario for surviving, diving into water below the castle. Leaving the water, The Doctor finds a room with clothes drying by a fire. The Doctor continues through the rooms of the keep, pursued by the spectre, interacting with an unseen version of Clara in his mind. He makes a few discoveries until he reaches an impenetrable wall, is zapped by the spectre and restarts the nightmare. And he just keeps going through it, chipping away at the wall.

"Heaven Sent" relies entirely on the performance of Peter Capaldi and he pulls it off. The Doctor mumbles to himself and gears himself up for a conflict before anyone or anything else appears to him. The result could be crappy and expository, but Peter Capaldi completely lands it as organic; his character working through his analysis and challenging his unseen adversary. Throughout "Heaven Sent," The Doctor is on his own and returns in his mind to the TARDIS; he interacts with the Clara in his mind to deduce what is happening to him. The chalk boards are instantly reminiscent of the way someone on the outside communicated with a sleeping person in "Last Christmas" (reviewed here!). The technique manages to stay fresh for the duration of "Heaven Sent."

The effects in "Heaven Sent" are decent, up to and including the music. "Heaven Sent" is a mood piece. The Doctor is living his nightmare as his fear of death and underlying insecurity about not being clever enough is expressed through conflicts with his own nightmares. The visual and sound effects help establish and enhance that mood.

The Doctor realizes very early on that the whole purpose of the place his is in is designed to frighten him. The Wraith pursuing him, the time loops that take him back to the beginning, they are all supposed to play upon his fear. He realizes this fast (where was that cleverness an episode earlier?!) and the rest of the episode is spent with him chipping away at the "diamond wall" where the Wraith catches him and sends him back to the beginning. The episode then is more about mood than plot and, for a change, the mood carries the episode well-enough to be watchable.

It says something about how low the bar has been set for episodes this season when that is enough. "Heaven Sent" eventually sets up the next episode, the season finale, but it takes a hell of a long time to get there.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Ninth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

5.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Coolness Washes Away As “Death In Heaven” Degenerates Into Mush.

The Good: Some wonderful character, plot and acting moments, Decent effects
The Bad: Plot falls apart completely in the last act, Hinges entirely on what comes next, Too frequently insults the viewer’s attention.
The Basics: “Death In Heaven” leaves so much unresolved that the early awesome moments and middle, well-executed character moments, are undermined by the thoroughly mushy end.


When a serialized television show continues to hinge its success on the next episode, it puts an impossible amount of pressure on the narrative and a great deal of stress on the writers to deliver upon the promise of their current endeavors. The current season of Doctor Who was unfortunately plagued by a continual sense of deferring; the episodes tied together poorly and the serialized elements of the season required an incredible, unreasonable, amount of faith in writer and executive producer Steven Moffat. Halfway through the current season finale of Doctor Who, I was ready to cheer and hail Moffat for his genius.

But then, Moffat drops the ball. In fact, it is hard to watch a writer/showrunner drop the ball so very far and hard as Moffat does in “Death In Heaven.” For an episode that starts so well – despite completely neglecting the final moment of the prior episode – “Death In Heaven” falls apart in the least pleasant ways. When Moffat and director Rachel Talalay are not insulting the viewer’s intelligence, they are oscillating between big character moments and a lack of sensible resolution that guts the emotion of the rest of the episode.

Clara manages to talk her way out of being executed by claiming that she is The Doctor. The Doctor is shocked by the Cybermen appearing on the streets and people not being horrified. His apprehension turns into a quick victory when U.N.I.T. comes to rescue humanity and they put him in charge. Missy is captured, the Doctor gets the Cybermen to flee, but a cloud of ninety-one cybermen launch from St. Paul’s. Missy explains that the Cybermen are about to destroy themselves over major population centers and pollinate those cities. As Danny Pink is told that he will be returned to his body with “an upgrade,” the Doctor realizes that the Cybermen are going to take control of the dead. Conscripted by Kate Stewart as the wartime President Of Earth, The Doctor takes charge on U.N.I.T.’s plane above the deadly Cyber-clouds encircling the Earth.

With Clara rescued by Cyberman Danny, she finds herself in a graveyard encircled by nascent Cybermen. As Clara exposes Danny Pink and he begs for release from his human emotions, Missy breaks free and takes down the plane. The Doctor arrives at Clara’s side where he attempts to use Danny to learn the Cybermen’s endgame. Danny’s sacrifice leads Missy to make an offer to The Doctor that pushes him to the edge of his ethical limits and forces him to make a choice that will once more tug him away from those he cares about most.

“Death In Heaven” gets off to a rousing start and Steven Moffat plays a dangerous macguffin; Clara claims to be The Doctor and Moffat plays that out in the way that keeps the audience creaming until her next scene; the opening credits put Jenna Coleman first and put her face in the place of The Doctor’s in the opening credits! It’s such a shit bluff (equivalent to Joss Whedon finally adding Amber Benson to the main cast of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in the very episode in which her character is killed!), but it’s pretty cool for a few mindblowing moments where it appears that Clara could be a future version of The Doctor (can’t be the current Doctor because we saw Matt Smith turn into Peter Capaldi in the prior finale!).

So, after playing a bluff, Moffat and Talalay go into utterly insulting territory. First, the identity of The Cyberman is ridiculously played out. Danny Pink in Cyberman form carries around a piece of paper that informs the viewer that he used to be Danny Pink. The level of insult to the intelligence of viewers who are expected to understand temporal paradoxes and the like that they would no leap to the conclusion that the one cyberman who keeps protecting Clara is Danny Pink is incalculably high.

After the plot goes to absolute shit, what saves so much of “Death In Heaven” is the level of character and performance in the episode. Robbed of his big character moment that capped off “Dark Water” (reviewed here!), Danny becomes a hero and foil to The Doctor. There is a wonderful novelty to The Doctor – who has spent the entire season decrying soldiers – being put in charge of the world’s militaries. Moreover, the choice Missy gives him is incredible and the way he works himself out of the corner he is painted into is lovely.

It is Danny, though, who becomes the hero of the day. While there is so much to the Cybermen that has been undermined, much like the Borg in the Star Trek franchise (probably why the Cybermen and Borg were teamed up in the graphic novel crossover reviewed here!), “Death In Heaven” has the Cybermen making a decent amount of sense. Missy is essentially a Cybercontroller and Danny Pink’s presence in their ranks – but outside them – is adequately explained by his inhibitor not being activated (which makes sense because he was never shown deleting himself in the Nethersphere). Danny’s emotional self plays perfectly in the episode and actor Samuel Anderson does a masterful job of portraying his character’s emotional conflict. In fact, the success of the episode’s character elements comes because Anderson has such screen presence that he can stand toe to toe with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and credibly call him out on his bullshit.

Even Jenna Coleman is good in “Death In Heaven.” Coleman plays off Anderson wonderfully, but her most intense moment comes near the climax of the episode and her anger is beautifully played. Michelle Gomez takes the reins from John Simm and she captures so many of his mannerisms (especially with her eyes) that it makes the transition from his iteration of the character to hers entirely credible. Missy is a wonderful antagonist and given how she seems to have a TARDIS of her own, it seems likely that Gomez would be able to return again!

Sadly, after all of the build-up and the strong moments of character connection that make it appear that The Doctor has lost his very soul and Clara’s presence in his life was engineered after she executed the role of Impossible Girl journeying through The Doctor’s entire timestream, “Death In Heaven” collapses. Viewers are expected to forget entirely that Orson Pink in “Listen” (reviewed here!) mentioned time-travelers in his family, implying that Clara and Danny were his ancestors and so the episode builds to an unpleasant and entirely artificial narrative low-point. The Doctor and Clara finish with their most extreme senses of loss, but the loss can only work with a complete paradox; otherwise, Clara’s loss has to be resolved and the only possible way for that to occur is with The Doctor’s help.

The result is an episode that is unfortunately inconsistent. The places it pays out for past investments are generally good, but the execution of some of the big emotional moments only work if one exists in a Doctor Who vacuum and for those people some of the other big moments (like the identity of the Ultimate Cyberman) have no resonance. The result is more deferral and, especially for a finale, that is unsatisfying.

For other season finales that had a lot of weight to bear on the resolution front, please visit my reviews of:
“Zero Hour” - Star Trek: Enterprise
“The Beginning Of The End” - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
“Radioactive” - True Blood

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Eighth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
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6.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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