Episode #260 - Flatline

"I tried to talk. I want you to remember that. I tried to reach out. I tried to understand you, but I think that you understand us perfectly. And I think that you just don't care! And I don't know whether you're here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us. I don't suppose it really matters now. You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play, so it seems that I must play mine: the man that stops the monsters. I'm sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And if you do, remember this: You are not welcome here! This plane is protected! I am the Doctor, and I name you the Boneless!"

Episode #260:      Flatline.
Companions:        The 12th Doctor and Clara Oswald.


Air Date:              18th October 2014.


Separated from the Doctor, Clara discovers a new menace from another dimension. But how do you hide when even the walls are no protection? With people to save and the Doctor trapped, Clara comes up against an enemy that exists beyond human perception.

Another really good horror based episode. This time dealing with two dimensional creatures trying to find their way into our three dimensional universe. The Boneless, as the Doctor calls them, are really cool throwaway monster of the week type opponents. Creepy in appearance as well as the on screen methods they use to drag you away. Bonus points to whoever came up with that idea.

Flatline is a Doctor-lite episode where it focuses on Clara as an active protagonist companion. We haven't had an episode like this for a while and it is a nice change of pace. A plot mechanic (a shrunken TARDIS) keeps the Doctor to the sidelines. Where this works really well is how easily Clara takes on the role and attitudes of the Doctor - something that gets mentioned near the end. The look on the Doctor's face show's exactly how close to the truth that comment was. In previous incarnations the Doctor has proven himself to be manipulative towards his companions and the inhabitants of wherever he turns up. Davros even makes reference to this during the events of The Stolen Earth / Journey's End. We don't always see it as viewers but it is very true. 

Flatline is one my favourite Capaldi era episodes. Excellent monsters, cool plot and well written. 

Episode #255 : Listen

"What's that in the mirror? Or the corner of your eye?

What's that footstep following, but never passing by?

Perhaps they're all just waiting, perhaps when we're all dead,

Out they'll come a-slithering from underneath the bed."

Episode #255:      Listen.
Companions:        The 12th Doctor and Clara Oswald.


Air Date:              13th September 2014.

The Doctor has been pondering a question: have people ever been truly alone? Does something lurk unseen beside us all? With Clara at his side, the Time Lord will find himself delving into familiar pasts and eerie futures. Just where does the answer to the old man's unanswerable question lie? Will he find the answers he's been searching for, or will his quest cost him his life this time?

Listen is a bit of an unusual story as it isn't really an adventure in the traditional sense of the show. Despite first appearances there are no enemies or villains for the Doctor and Clara to defeat. Instead it is a mixture of showcasing Clara's growing relationship with Danny Pink and a strange jaunt through time with the Doctor having a rather overactive imagination one day.

It tries to be a horror story of sorts and although it doesn't actually play out that way, Listen is an amazingly well written and suspenseful episode. Definitely one of the best of recent years and of the 12th Doctor's era of the show. Very clever. However, even though I happily grant Listen a 5 star rating, it has it's issues. They just are not worthy enough to ruin the enjoyment of this episode. Primarily, as I say above, there is no real story to this episode. Our heroes bounce through time in search of whatever the Doctor thinks is lurking under the bed and it doesn't reveal anything other that a possible for future for the family of Clara and Danny. Also, we don't get any answers to anything put forward in this episode - what was at the door of Colonel Pink's time ship at the death of the universe? Who or what was under the bed sheet and what promoted this strange adventure in the first place? Listen is great but I prefer these sort of episodes to give us some sort of answers.

One very interesting scene in this episode was not expected at the time of viewing. The TARDIS takes the travellers back in time to Gallifrey to a certain barn we saw in The Day of the Doctor, which turns out to be the childhood home of the Doctor and we encounter him in his first incarnation as a small boy having nightmares about something under the bed. Clara has this nice little speech that I guess is meant to show her setting him up for his journeys and adventures. It doesn't add anything to the actual episode but it is a nice addition that fits in well with Clara being the Impossible Girl.

This is probably my favourite episode of the first 12th Doctor season. Well written, good dialogue and a perfect edge of your seat feeling that more episodes of Doctor Who should have.

Episode #250 : The Day of the Doctor

"I've had many faces, many lives. I don't admit to all of them. There's one life I've tried very hard to forget. He was the Doctor who fought in the Time War, and that was the day he did it. The day I did it. The day he killed them all. The last day of the Time War. The war to end all wars between my people and the Daleks. And in that battle there was a man with more blood on his hands than any other, a man who would commit a crime that would silence the universe. And that man was me."

Episode #250:      The Day of the Doctor.
Companions:        The 10th Doctor, The 11th Doctor, The War Doctor and Clara Oswald.
Air Date:              23rd November 2013.

The Doctors embark on their greatest adventure in this 50th anniversary special. In the 21st century, something terrible is awakening in London's National Gallery; in 1562, a murderous plot is afoot in Elizabethan England; and somewhere in space an ancient battle reaches its devastating conclusion. All of reality is at stake as the Doctor's own dangerous past comes back to haunt him.

It's all been building to this, the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. It has certainly been worth the wait. Moffat did not disappoint with this one. The story revolves around the War Doctor really, as he steals an ancient Time Lord weapon called The Moment and plans to use it to destroy the Daleks and his own people. The Moment, however, is sentient and tries to show the War Doctor what will happen if he uses it. Somehow able to manipulate events so that the War Doctor joins with his 10th and 11th selves. Lets him see who he will become if he uses the weapon and on a side adventure stops a bunch of Zygons from taking over the Earth.

The Zygon plot is a little shoehorned in as a means of getting the Doctors together and getting them to where they need to be. It is nice to see the Zygons return though as another throw back to the classic show and we learn about their world being destroyed in the Time War. That ties in well with the events from Terror of the Zygons.

The real story is about the Time War and it is long overdue in coming. Although we still don't know about the strange horrors of the Time War we do at last see the Time Lords and Daleks fighting it out. This has been hinted at for years so it is nice to see it visited for the anniversary episode. In any case, it does the story justice and again we learn more about the Doctor though this. The more the show continues the more we are being shown about the Doctor's life and who he really is, and whatever you may feel about Russell T Davis and Steven Moffat, you can't fault that they have done wonders pushing that aspect of the show in a good way.

The culmination with the appearance of all 13 Doctors is just a huge squee moment. I remember watching this episode on the TV and just getting so excited, especially with the brief appearance of the 13th Doctor! I still get some of that excitement watching it still.

Another really cool thing about this episode was that it was broadcast to UK cinemas at the same time as it went out on the air. I didn't manage to go see it there but that is a great idea for the BBC to do.

This is a really fantastic adventure and it fully lives up to the title of a 50th anniversary episode. This is one you have to watch.

Episode #243 : Hide

"In the seventeenth century, a local clergyman saw her. He wrote that her presence was accompanied by a dreadful knocking, as if the Devil himself demanded entry. During the war, American airmen stationed here left offerings of tinned Spam. The tins were found in 1965, bricked up in the servants' pantry, along with a number of handwritten notes. Appeals to the Ghast. For the love of God, stop screaming."

Episode #243:      Hide.
Companions:        The 11th Doctor and Clara Oswald.
Air Date:              20th April 2013.

Clara and the Eleventh Doctor arrive at the haunted Caliburn House, set alone on a desolate moor. Within its walls, a ghost-hunting professor and a gifted empathic psychic are searching for the Witch of the Well. Her apparition appears throughout the history of the building, but is she really a ghost? And what is chasing her?

Hide is one of my favourite episodes of the new show. We have some classic tropes expertly written and put together in a 40 minute slot. To start with we have a classic haunted house story that looks the part perfectly and reminds me a lot of the classic British ghost stories of the 1970's television. Add on to that time travel, a a multi-level love plot and some great thought provoking exposition from Clara.

I think what makes it work for me is the nostalgia element. As I mentioned above the haunted house elements remind a lot of the old television supernatural dramas of my childhood. That and the fact that I love a good ghost story. All the elements are there to give the story a suitably creepy feeling even before we get to see the "crooked man" Everything there to make this haunting work. fabulous work by the Doctor Who crew.

But Hide isn't just about a haunting. It's also a love story. That's the undercurrent of the whole thing. Whether we are talking about the two ghost hunters in the house or the "crooked people" separated in different worlds but longing to reunite. As a secondary story element it binds the whole story together and thankfully doesn't feel too contrived.

Clara's observations are also very well written and very much in keeping with the tone of the piece. Her view that we are all ghosts to the Doctor is quite apt. To him we haven't been born, are living and are already dead. We are ghosts. It is another great insight into the character of our hero. Such insights are rare-ish in the show now but when they come up I do tend to get goosebumps and that conversation certainly brings them up.

Lastly we get another take on there being something wrong about Clara as the TARDIS won't let her in without the Doctor. The TARDIS either doesn't trust her or senses that there is something wrong with her.

We get a reference back to the days of the 3rd Doctor with a crystal from Metabelis III although Matt Smith fails to pronounce it correctly ("Me-TEB-eh-lis" instead of "Met-a-BEE-lis").

I am giving this a rare 5 star rating. Hide lives up to the expectations and if there are any flaws in it - and I'm sure there are if you really want to go looking - they aren't immediately obvious. Hide is atmospheric and fun. Perfect Doctor Who viewing.

Episode #190 : Blink

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but, actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff."

Episode #190:   Blink.
Companions:    The 10th Doctor and Martha Jones.
Air Date:          9th June 2007.

In an abandoned house, the Weeping Angels wait. The only hope to stop them is a young woman named Sally Sparrow and her friend Larry Nightingale. The only catch: The Weeping Angels can move in the blink of an eye. To defeat the ruthless enemy — with only a half of a conversation from the Tenth Doctor as help — the one rule is this: don't turn your back, don't look away and don't blink!

Blink is in my opinion one of the best adventures in Doctor Who. Just as with The Empty Child, this episode shows just how well Doctor Who can be when the writers come up with a proper freaky story and with the creation of the Weeping Angels we have that perfectly here. It is also story that barely features our time travellers, instead we see the events unfold from the point of another character, Sally Sparrow.

The new villains are the Weeping Angels. They are ancient creatures who exist in a sort of quantum state where they become stone statues when observed by another living thing. Although for some reason this also applies to their own kind. The Doctor sees this as the perfect defense mechanism but they could still be smashed by a mallet surely? But we won't dwell on that. In Blink these creatures are at their best. They do make occasional reappearances in the show but never portrayed as well as they are in this story.

It is interesting to see that Blink has quite a hefty paradox. These are bad and we have seen creatures like the Reapers turn up when such events take place. So why don't they here? The paradox in Blink is a circular one with no beginning or end. Sally gives the Doctor the information she has at the end of the story but Sally gets that information from seeing the wall the Doctor wrote, watching the DVD the Doctor made and so on. The information never really "starts" anywhere — the Doctor knows what to say in the conversation because he's reading Larry's transcript, which Larry made thirty-eight years later by watching the conversation. The information is in an endless loop.

Blink is truly one of the best episodes of modern Who and if for some reason you haven't seen it, go do so. You won't be disappointed.

Episode #157 : The Curse of Fenric

"We hoped to return to the North Way, but the dark curse follows our dragon ship... The Wolves of Fenric shall return for their treasure, and then shall the dark evil rule eternally."

Episode 157:   The Curse of Fenric.
Companions:   7th Doctor and Ace.
Air Date:         25 October to 15th November 1989.

The TARDIS materialises at a secret naval base off the coast of Northumberland toward the end of the Second World War. Dr Judson, a scientist there, has created the Ultima Machine, an early computer designed to break German codes. The base's Commander Millington plans to let a Russian commando unit led by Captain Sorin steal the Machine's core, which he has booby-trapped with deadly toxin. Judson uses the Machine to translate some ancient runes from the crypt of the nearby St Judes church and this leads to the release of Fenric, an evil entity from the dawn of time whom the Doctor trapped seventeen centuries earlier in a Chinese flask by defeating it at chess.

The Curse of Fenric is an exceptional story that covers multiple story lines and wraps up a number of plot lines that we perhaps didn't even notice were there. Mainly the story deals with the return of Fenric, a Great Old One, sealed away by the Doctor in a much earlier untelevised adventure. We learn that the Doctor beat Fenric at chess in order to do so. The chess game we saw previously in Silver Nemesis, was part of Fenric's scheme, and we learn that the time storm that snatched Ace away from home to deposit her on IceWorld was also his doing. Fenric had been planning things for a very long time.

The script for this is perfect. There isn't anything wrong with it and combined with excellent production values gives us a chilling atmospheric tale of ancient horror set to a backdrop of the second world war. If only the late 80's could have had this level of writing and production value all the way through then no one could have complained.

The celebrity guest star in this tale was Nicholas Parsons, a household name in the 1970's and 80's for the game show Sale of the Century. In this story he plays a priest who has lost his faith because of the horrors of war.

This story is very much a return to classic Doctor vs the monsters but with some of the best writing of the classic show. You cannot go wrong with The Curse of Fenric.

Episode #151 : Remembrance of the Daleks

"Do you remember the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster? Or the Yeti in the Underground? Your species has an amazing capacity for self-deception."

Episode 151:     Remembrance of the Daleks.
Companions:    7th Doctor and Ace.
Air Date:          5th to 26th October 1988.

The TARDIS arrives in London in November 1963, where the Doctor and Ace discover that two rival factions of Daleks - one loyal to the Dalek Emperor and one to the Dalek Supreme - are seeking the Hand of Omega, a powerful Time Lord device that the first Doctor hid there during an earlier sojourn on Earth. The Daleks are focusing their search around Coal Hill School - the school that the Doctor's grand-daughter Susan attended - while a military unit led by Group Captain Gilmore is attempting to resist their incursions.

Remembrance of the Daleks is by far my most favourite story of the entire classic series. Everything about this story is just spot on from the script, the production values and the acting. It continues the Dalek civil war plot line that first started back in Destiny of the Daleks. We see the two different Dalek factions actually fighting in the streets of 1963 Earth and the first appearance of the special weapons Dalek. There are also a couple references to the British Rocket Group from the Quartermass series and films.

The 7th Doctor has become a rather manipulative character now and it suits him far better than the clownish figure he started his time as. This starts the first references to what would become known as the Cartmel Masterplan, a direction for the show that would have gone into the background of the Doctor. Unfortunately due to the shows cancellation it was never completed.

This story is the first to show that Daleks can actually levitate and thus "climb" stairs. For years many jokes were made about how you could just go upstairs to escape them. Not any more and their levitation/flight capabilities continue in the new series of the show.

In this story the Doctor uses the powerful Hand of Omega to trick the Daleks and Davros, and has the artifact destroy the Daleks home world of Skaro. This event has been considered to be another shot in the early events of the Time War by Russel T Davis.

Remembrance of the Daleks is so good that I cannot rate it high enough.

Episode #129 : The Five Doctors

"A man is the sum of his memories. A Time Lord even more so."

Episode 129: The Five Doctors.
Companions: 1st Doctor, 2nd Doctor, 3rd Doctor, 4th Doctor, 5th Doctor, Susan, The Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Romana, Tegan, and Turlough.
Air Date: 25th November 1983.

The Doctor's past incarnations are taken out of time by a forbidden time scoop device. The fourth Doctor becomes trapped in the vortex but the others find themselves, together with a number of their old companions, with the fifth Doctor and his companions in the Death Zone on their home planet Gallifrey. Here they face a Dalek, a Yeti, a quicksilver Raston Warrior Robot and numerous Cybermen. Also present is the Master, who has been summoned by the High Council of Time Lords to help the Doctor. It turns out that President Borusa is the mysterious operator of the time scoop. He aims to use the Doctors to breach the defences of the Dark Tower - Rassilon's tomb - so that he can enter there and claim immortality.

The Five Doctors was commissioned for the show's 20th anniversary and the BBC pulled out all the stops with this one. We get four out of the five Doctors taking part (the 4th Doctor and Romana get stuck in the time vortex for the duration of the story), cameo's by a Dalek and a Yeti, and the Cybermen with the Master as a major element of the story. Lots of Who elements and references, even spectral former companions, coupled with a fast punchy script makes this story just awesome for any fan of the show. There are so many references I could write a whole page just about them.

The interaction between the different incarnations of the Doctor are just awesome. You get a strong vibe that the different versions really don't like one another, and their banter comes off as a familial grieving which anyone with siblings can relate to.

By the time of the 20th anniversary William Hartnell had passed away so the role was given to Richard Hurndell who did such a good job as the 1st Doctor that I think he did better than Hartnell. Some may consider that heresy but that's how he comes across to me.

The 4th Doctor and Romana only appear in shots from the the unfinished Shada. Tom Baker felt that it was too soon since his departure from the show to make a return even for the anniversary episode. A great shame but four Doctors were enough really. had he taken part I wonder whether the script would have allowed enough screen time and dialogue for all of them.

I really cannot shout the praises of this story enough. If you haven't seen it hunt it down on DVD and watch it. I'm sure you will agree how good this one is.

Tegan: "You mean you're deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people, in a rackety old TARDIS?"
Fifth Doctor: "Why not? After all, that's how it all started."

Episode #92 : The Horror of Fang Rock

The Doctor: Got it. You're at last losing that interminable war with the Sontarans.

Rutan: [offended] That is a lie!

The Doctor: Is it? You used to own the whole of the Mutter's Spiral once. Now the Sontarans have driven you to the farthest fringes of the galaxy.

Rutan: The glorious Rutan army is making a series of strategic withdrawals

to selected strongpoints.

The Doctor: Rutan, that's the empty rhetoric of a defeated dictator,

and I don't like your face either.

Episode 92:   The Horror of Fang Rock.
Companions: 4th Doctor and Leela.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 3rd to 24th September 1977.

The cursed island of Fang Rock off the south coast of England is a place of rumour and tales of beasts from the sea. Three lighthouse men at the turn of the century face their fears when something comes from the sea to bring death to all it touches.

One of my absolute favourite episodes from the classic series, The Horror of Fang Rock is a perfect atmospheric horror story with or without the science fiction elements. The story takes place in the early years of the 20th century on a remote island off the south coast of England where a lonely light house stands. The three keepers are soon joined by our time travelling companions, the survivours of a boat crash and worst of all, a shape changing killer from outer space. Stuck on the island together who will survive to escape when dawn comes?

The monster of the story is a Rutan, a race of shape changing jellyfish who are waging a vast war against the Sontarans for control of our galaxy. They were first mentioned in The Time Warrior. This Rutan has crash landed and must find safety as well as a means of contacting the rest of the Rutan fleet. The appearance of the Rutan is a bit odd and I'm not sure really what they used for it as it looks like a squashed gooseberry. I hope that at some point we'll see a return of the Rutans in the new series of Doctor Who.

There is a lot of good acting in this story. The Doctor and Leela are fantastic, and the supporting cast really seem to get into character. All of which makes the story that much better. The only downer is the appearance of the Rutan but I can happily live with that as the rest of the story makes up for it big time.

The Horror of Fang Rock is the first episode where I feel it appropriate to give it a five star rating. The story, the atmosphere and a little bit of Lovecraftian influence really make it that good in my book.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,

And hunted everywhere,

Of the three men's fate we found no trace

Of any kind in any place,

But a door ajar, and an untouch'd meal,

And an overtoppled chair...