Doctor Who – The rest of the season

Aliens rarely dress for the weather.

NB. I’m way behind on these reviews, so I’m going to rush through this.

This review will contain spoilers

‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’
"Whole worlds pivot on acts of imagination."

Incapacitated and rescued by a hospital ship, Team Tardis have to rally the crew and patients to stave off three kinds of disaster, before one of them claims all of their lives.

There’s a good bunch of supporting characters and a nicely Doctorish solution, although this is one of the Thirteenth’s more erratic episodes, perhaps the most extreme of her ‘adjustment’ episodes, and the all-consuming pting is a little too adorable a death machine.

Easily my favourite thing in the episode is when the Doctor is trying to turn the ship around to get back to the Tardis, and the doctor (small d) gives her a chewing out about the other sick people who need to get to the main hospital, and she listens. That last bit is important.

Rating - 6/10

‘Demons of the Punjab’
"This is all that remains of our home. Our people. Every ancestor. All one dust.... They died unwitnessed, unsaved. We were too late to grieve or honor them. But we, who returned, gave up 100 generations to sift, to remember the lost dead, the unmourned. In time, it was all we knew. And now we travel beyond, seeking the unacknowledged dead. Across all of time and space. This is now the Thijarian mission -- to bear witness to those alone. To see. To bear pain, honor life as it passes."

Yaz persuades the Doctor to let her visit her grandmother, Umbreen, to solve a family mystery. Despite her promise not to get involved, Team Tardis find themselves part of Umbreen’s wedding to Prem, a Hindu man who is not Yaz’s grandfather. But the year is 1947, and the partition of India is about to rip the country – and this marriage – apart. Also, there are aliens.

‘Demons of the Punjab’ covers some of the same territory as ‘Rosa’, but this time the racism is all home-grown – Prem’s brother is a Hindu nationalist, violently opposed to Prem marrying a Muslim – and the aliens are there as observers, and perhaps a link to the arc plot (their world was destroyed, possibly by Stenza weapons.)

This is another strong, Earthbound episode, with a solid historical message which, come at me haters, is what Doctor Who exists for. It also gives Yaz the character workout that she has been missing.

Rating - 8/10

Free existential terror with every order.

‘Kerblam!’
Jarvis Slade: How would you like a warning for insubordination?
The Doctor: I'd love one. I could add it to my collection.

Someone sends the Doctor a gift via Kerblam! (basicallt space Amazon,) but the packing note contains a cry for help. The team go undercover at Kerblam!’s fulfilment centre, where they discover a broken system and a possibly misguided conspiracy.

Playing to modern fears of human redundancy, Kerblam! is elevated above lazy satire by making fear and mismanagement the villains, rather than simply taking aim at corporations in general, but unfortunately it does sort of let the corporations off the hook entirely by doing so. A couple of very sympathetic sacrificial characters add emotional involvement, but it isn’t as powerful as the recent pseudohistoricals.

Rating - 6/10


‘The Witchfinders’
"We want certainty, security. To believe that people are evil or heroic but that's not how people are. You want to know the secrets of existence? Start with the mysteries of the heart."

The Tardis team land near Pendle Hill in the midst of a witch hunt, but it’s not the Pendle witch hunt known to history. As the fanatical magistrate Becka Savage drowns her way through the population, no less a figure that James I shoves his oar in, but the Doctor detects an alien hand as sentient mud begins to animate the dead.

Bringing its pseudohistorical game to a more remote time, but more local place, ‘The Witchfinders’ once more looks at the politics of fear and hate in a drama that stands a step above the pure SF episodes of the season. Honestly, I’m curious to see what they current team could do with a pure historical.

Rating - 7/10


‘It Takes You Away’
"This woman is clearly an alien force, collapsing two realities and impersonating your dead wife. Time to move on, mate!"

The Tardis lands in Norway, where the team discovers a young, blind girl, living in an isolated house and menaced by a snarling monster that took her father away. Creepy enough, but then they find a mirror that leads into an alternate dimension, and it all gets even weirder.

Doctor Who gets a bit Scandi-Noir, before bringing in a sentient pocket universe looking for companionship, one of the few beings lonelier than the Doctor. The episode is Graham’s turn to shine, as Bradley Walsh puts in his Bafta nomination performance for his character’s confrontation with a projection of his late wife, Grace.

Rating - 6/10

Another planet, another quarry.

‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’
Ryan: What happened to 'never do weapons'?
The Doctor: It's a flexible creed. Door, locks, walls, buildings. Fair game. If it can be rebuilt, I'll allow it.
Following many, many distress signals, the Doctor brings the Tardis to Ranskoor Av Kolos, where a large number of ships have crashed and a psychic field alters perceptions. Here they discover Tzim-Sha of the Stenza has managed to masquerade as the god of a two-person race called the Ux, who have the power to manipulate reality, using them to shrink planets and store them in glass jars. While Graham declares his intent to kill Tim Shaw, the Doctor struggles to win over the Ux and send the planets back where they belong.

A strong episode for Graham and Ryan, and a cap to the season arc, there’s a lot happening in ‘The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos’, and some of it is a little too familiar. Stealing planets is reminiscent not only of ‘The Stolen Earth’, but of the classic series serial ‘The Pirate Planet’, and as much as persuading powerful religious characters to rethink their life is classic Doctor, it’s really Graham’s confrontation with Tzim-Sha that gets the best of the writing, and the result is somewhat uneven.

Rating - 5/10

Doctor Who – ‘Resolution’

I'm not sure what I'd say about the new look, but I can't help imagining the
response would be: "THANKS! IT HAS BOBBLES!"

"Where's your kitchen? I just need to get some eggs to check the protein alignments in the goo."

Once again, archaeology threatens the foundations of human civilisation, as a fragment of monster is dug up and reconstitutes itself. Now, a Dalek is loose on Earth, and the Doctor races to find it before untold destruction ensues. Meanwhile, Ryan’s dad turns up looking to reconcile.

This is a surprisingly strong festive showing, proving once more that a single Dalek can be more effective than an army if used correctly. There are strong shades of ‘Dalek’, although this lone Dalek – a reconnaissance scout sent out in the early years of Dalek expansion – is a remorseless foe with none of the pathos of that sole survivor.

A strong end to a strong season, I would say, and a good start for the 13th Doctor. Now, roll on 2020.

Rating - 8/10

Doctor Who - Arachnids in the UK

No; I won't be posting pictures of the gosh darn spiders.

"I eat danger for breakfast. [aside] I don't. I prefer cereal. Or croissants. Or those little fried Portuguese... never mind. It's not important."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor manages to return her companions to Sheffield just half an hour after they left, but all is not well in the Steel City. Spiders of alarming size are on the prowl, and people are already dying. What is the connection to the luxury hotel where Yaz's mother used to work? And is this related to either the Eight Legs of Metebelis 3 or the Racnoss, or just another use of spiders for random creep factor?

The Good

• Giant spiders that don't quite move like real spiders are about the best I can hope for from a spider-focused episode.
• I did like that the mad scientists in this episode were actually really conscientious and responsible, but entrusted their biowaste disposal to a company with falsified documents.
• For a moment, I felt bad for a spider. That's quite the achievement.
• There were some lovely character beats between Graham and Ryan over a letter from the latter's absentee father.

The Bad

• The secondary, human antagonist is a kind of liberal Trump, and he's... bleah. He's a cookie cutter corporate monster who could come right out of just about any Doctor Who story since 1980, save for a namecheck of his personal animus for Trump. (His PA is his niece's wife, so I assume he's a liberal corporate monster, but it's hard to say given how hard it is to distinguish left and right politics at a certain level of cash.)
• The story is also nothing special. It's basic filler while Graham, Ryan and Yaz decide that their path lies with their new friend.

The Ugly

• Yaz is slipping into being the also ran of Team Tardis, which is a shame. She got some good stuff last week, but is mostly just present in what is ostensibly her story.

The Thirteenth Doctor
Manic and breathless, the Thirteenth Doctor may actually be a bit much in such a mundane setting. Hopefully they'll find another mode for her before too long.

Theorising

Some of the internet is stating to sugest that Yaz will prove to be in love with the Doctor, and I really hope that isn't the case, because I am so over the Doctor/Companion thing.

I don't know if Robertson will be back, but I want to see him joining a sort of 'League of shitty villains' for a one-shot episode.

Best Bits

Ryan admits to Graham that he resents his Dad calling himself Ryan's 'proper family.'

Top Quotes

• "Spiders are roaming this hotel, searching for food. We're going to lure them in here with the promise of food. Then deal with the spider mother in the ballroom. Ah, that sounds like the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote." - The Doctor

Verdict

After a very strong opening, the Thirteenth Doctor hits her first battle against her oldest and most insidious enemy: utilitarian filler material. 'Arachnids in the UK' really just serves to transition Team Tardis - which is a thing now - from accidental fellow travelers to full-fledged and willing companions. It's a shame they didn't consider that worth a better story, or more character work for Yaz than just having her mum ask if she's sleeping with anyone about her age that she hangs out with.

Rating - 4/10

Doctor Who - Rosa

"Banksy doesn't have one of these... Or do I?"

This week, shifting focus from a mad woman in a
box, to a great one on a bus.

This review will contain spoilers

Aiming for modern-day Sheffield, the Tardis instead drops in on Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, which turns out to be a very scary, dangerous place for the current crew, as Ryan is immediately slapped for trying to return a dropped glove to a white woman. Aside from the dangers of Jim Crow segregation, however, there is another time traveller in town; one set on changing history, in a little way, by interfering in the actions of one Rosa Parks on the 1st December. Thus the gang set out to protect history, not by making it, but simply by making sure that Rosa Parks has the time and the place to be Rosa Parks.

The Good

• The script - co-written by former Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman - neatly avoids all the perils of setting a time travel series in this period. The Doctor doesn't drive history here; Rosa Parks is the hero of her own story. Indeed, the crew are ultimately forced to be, if not the villains, then a part of the antagonistic crowd.
• The episode shows the horrors of segregation - an advantage of the diversity of the current crew is the ability to show the different reception received by a white woman, a white man, a black man and a Pakistani-English woman in a historical setting (in Yaz's case, being mistaken for Mexican) - without ever being hamfisted. The result is, honestly, uncomfortable to watch in places, btu so it ought to be.
• There is no attempt to pretend that Rosa Parks solved racism, or even that racism is a thing of the past for our contemporary characters.

The Bad

• This is a singularly excellent episode, which not only does what it needs to do effectively, but owns the fifty-minute format.

The Ugly

• A twenty-seventh century white supremacist; now that's depressing.

The Thirteenth Doctor
As noted previously, this episode isn't really about the Doctor, but we do get to see some more of her character. She's a little reckless, even slightly aggressive, and willing to provoke an enemy as much as any of her past incarnations ever were. Some might argue this, given her unwillingness to tackle the race question head on, like the Twelfth Doctor punching whatsisface in the episode with the frost fair, but note the situation: She has three companions to protect, so of course she'll try to defuse a situation, but put her face to face with a single foe and she'll gamble on overheating a gun or a neural limiter doing its job.

Once again, a strong reaction to a name, although personal dislike isn't enough for her to actually mock Krazko's moniker.

Theorising

Stormcage and vortex manipulators; are we going to see the Time Agency make an appearance? I'm hoping not to see River Song, because she was kind of done to death (literally,) but with no Daleks or Cybermen on the cards, a little bit of continuity might not go amiss.

No Timeless Child this time.

Best Bits

Rosa Parks' stand - or not stand - was epic, set off to perfection by Graham's look of horror as he realises that, in order to keep the bus full enough for history to proceed, he has to stay on the bus and be one of the white people she is asked to move for.

Top Quotes

• Graham: You haven’t got Elvis’ phone number?
  The Doctor: Don’t let anyone know I lent him a mobile phone.
• James Blake: Stand up now.
  Rosa Parks: I don’t’ think I should have to.

Verdict

'Rosa' is possibly the finest pseudohistorical of the nuWho era, and probably the nearest the series has come to a pure historical since Black Orchid. As noted, it makes for uncomfortable watching, but good Doctor Who has often had something of that about it. It has never been cosy, and it is only right that real history be even more chilling than scifi analogy.

Rating - 10/10

Doctor Who - 'The Ghost Monument'

"Right, quick update. I made a terrible mistake, we shouldn’t be here. I’m gonna fix it and get you guys home. I promise. Soon as I figure out where we are."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor and her new companions are in trouble, having been unexpectedly teleported en mass into deep space. Fortunately, they are swiftly picked up by Angstrom and Epzo, the last surviving competitors in a lethal, intergalactic rally. Their last task - of more than two hundred - is to cross the hostile terrain of the planet Desolation, reach the site of the Ghost Monument, and to do it in one day. The winner will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice and teleported off the planet; the loser... will not.

For the Doctor, reaching the Ghost Monument has a much greater significance, however. This mysterious object, which appears only once every thousand days, takes the form of a large, blue box.

"Please forgive the theatrics; a holdover from my Oxford days."

The Good

• The gully that Ryan, Graham and Angstrom flee along as the Cerebos crashes is not deep, but enough to explain their adherence to the Prometheus school of running away.
• Ryan and Graham get some solid character interaction from their different reactions to the loss of Grace. Ryan and Yaz get a little, establishing a loyalty to one another, but there's only so much time.
• The new TARDIS is boss.
• Some more solid, Doctor-style problem solving, using what knowledge and improvisation to overcome more conventional weapons.

The Bad

• The Ghost Monument is a paradigm of the greatest flaw of nuWho. It's not hard to pick out the sections that would have been individual episodes in the old format, and most of the cliffhangers. In the fifty minute format, there is very little development of the monsters - the sniper bots and the rags - and only snippets of information on the rally, and what time is given to the supporting characters is at the expense of the companions (and in particular Yaz, given Ryan and Graham's stronger scenes together.)
• The fate of the planet and its occupants ends up being infodumped.

The Ugly

• Nothing jumped out at me here, which is stronger than some opening offerings.

The Thirteenth Doctor
I'm revisiting a feature from the first Capaldi season here, and examining what we learn about the Thirteenth Doctor, week by week. Last week, we discovered that she seemed to have shaken off the messianic excesses and self-doubt of some of her recent incarnations. She's just a traveler, she helps where she can, and names are important to her.

This week, we saw that the Doctor needs her TARDIS, not just as part of her self-identity, but because it enables her to help other people. My partner was struck by the Doctor's drop into hopelessness towards the end, finding it out of character, although I felt this showed a temperamental kinship with her fifth incarnation, who was also occasionally at a loss, and as a result it struck me that this is the first Doctor in a while to feel truly young. Dynamic, confident, yet at the same time a little unsure, she taps into some of the same aspects of the Doctor's personality as the Fifth Doctor, and I'm down with that.

"It's only a model."

Theorising

So, we have two pieces of possible arc fodder now: The Stenza and the Timeless Child.

I don't know if the Stenza will be a big thing. While Tim Shaw was creepy AF with his tooth-bedazzled face, their repeat value feels limited and I suspect that they were primarily mentioned this week as the link between the Earth and Desolation. I could be wrong, but I would not be surprised if we find out that there are a bunch of 'warrior races' this year, looking to establish themselves in the lingering aftermath of the Time War and the absence of the Daleks and the Cybermen.

The Timeless Child smells of arc words, so I don't expect more than hints before the finale. Does it refer to the Doctor? Susan? Will we finally get primary canon confirmation that the Doctor is the Other reborn? If it's Rose Tyler I may scream.

Best Bits

The entry into the TARDIS was magnificent, but also props for not forgetting Ryan's dyspraxia when it makes life for the crew more difficult, and for not letting it entirely define him.

Top Quotes

• "She’s our best hope. Or only option, depending on your politics." - Graham
• “I’m really good in a tight spot. At least I have been historically, I’m sure I still am.” - The Doctor

Verdict

The Thirteenth Doctor punches into her second story with gusto, but it's just all so breathless. I'm not inclined to mark it down too much for this, as I'm mostly comparing this to other nuWho entries, but I can only imagine what a four-part version might have managed.

Rating - 7/10

Doctor Who - 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth'

(c) Stuart Manning

"Right now, I’m a stranger to myself. There’s echoes of who I was, and a sort of… call towards who I am, and I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts, shape myself towards them. I’ll be fine. In the end. Hopefully."

This review will contain spoilers

There's an alien in town (specifically Sheffield) tonight. In fact, there are a lot of aliens in town tonight: An armoured killer, a ball of electric tentacles, and a woman in a tattered suit who used to be a white-haired Scotsman.

With no name, empty pockets, and a missing TARDIS, the last of the Time Lords will have to rely on local tech and local aid - dyspraxic social media whizz Ryan; probationary PC Yaz; maternal determinator Grace, Ryan's gran; and retired bus driver Graham, Grace's second husband - to prevent a tragedy.

The Good

• No world-shattering to begin with. We're introducing a lot of new faces, so it feels right to keep the stakes local. In fact... just in general, it feels good to keep the stakes local. Part of the point, I feel, of Who is that the Doctor travels around and helps out in local problems, and those episodes are almost always the best, especially in nuWho. Cosmic stakes are what lead to Time Lords Triumphant and overblown arc-plots.
• Jodie Whittaker makes an excellent Doctor, by turns childishly excited, sad and serious, delivering technobabble and physical comedy where required, and always bursting with energy.
• The alien warrior who studs his face with the teeth of his victim is creepy AF.
• The new companions seem promising, although slightly overshadowed in this episode by Grace. Fortunately, her death does not play out as a fridging to motivate Graham and Ryan, but a result of her own determination to act, and a natural inclination towards heroism, and as a result is properly gutting.
• A fine Doctor Who resolution, with the Doctor setting up a means to destroy the enemy, but pleading them to take the chance to just leave quietly.

The Bad

• The 'luckiest grandad in the world' is a bit too deliberately heartstring-jerking.

The Ugly

• Nah.

I honestly could have lived with this as a costume choice.

Theorising

Well, I'm not on form for this, as I at first suspected that the gatherer coil was a discorporate TARDIS, and its harmful effects purely a result of its extradimensional nature.

The companions haven't been significantly developed yet, but the bare bones of the characters are there. Ryan is impractical by nature and unquestioning of wonder. He's likely to be the one closest to the Doctor, the receiver of exposition, but he's also a communicator, and so likely to be the group's diplomat. Yaz is more active, more assertive, more cynical, and a mediator. She'll be the doer, and probably the most likely to become involved on her own account rather than as an ancillary to the Doctor. Then there's Graham, who is likely the most skeptical of the Doctor herself, and may well be tempted at some point with technology that can cure his cancer.

No sign of an arc yet, but I'm happy for that to be the case for a good while.

Best Bits

The Doctor nails her character, much faster than any of her previous incarnations, when she declares: "I’m just a traveller. Sometimes I see things need fixing and I do what I can."

Top Quotes

• “Bit of adrenaline, dash of outrage and a hint of panic knitted my brain back together. I know exactly who I am. I’m the Doctor. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe. Now, please – get off this planet, while you still have a choice.” - The Doctor
• "This is exciting. No, not exciting. What do I mean? Worrying." - The Doctor

Verdict

The Thirteenth Doctor arrives on our screens with everything to prove, and hits it for six by acting precisely as if she has nothing to prove. A strong cadre of companions and decent supporting turns help to create a strong debut for what will hopefully be a less pompous era of Doctor Who, with - dare we hope - material to match the talent being deployed in its creation.

Rating - 7/10

Doctor Who - 'Twice Upon a Time'

"A life this long – do you understand what it is? It’s a battlefield, like this one… and it’s empty. Because everyone else has fallen."

This review will contain spoilers

The Doctor has fall, which means that it is time to rise again. But what if it isn't? What if this time it's the end?

In the frozen landscape of the Antarctic, the Doctor comes face to face with his past, and with his future. Time stands still - literally - and a dead man walking enters the field. What is the Testament? Is that really Bill Potts? Could it be time for a Dalek to do something productive? And is the universe finally big enough and old enough to look after itself?

The Good

Once more, the show displays the grasp of who (if you will) the Doctor is that has been eluding it since the regeneration into Capaldi.

David Bradley is a superb First Doctor, complete with horrendously outdated attitudes and pre-heroic grumpiness.

Both Bradley and Capaldi get a more dignified sort of end than Tennant ever did, even if Twelve does manage to wreck the TARDIS up as badly as Ten did during his Regeneration.

I love the fact that the villains turn out to be anything but, and also the fact that they didn't resurrect Bill.

The Bad

I know it was Twelve who wrecked the TARDIS, but you just know people are having a field day with the Thirteenth Doctor starting her innings by crashing the vehicle (like no Doctor every did that before(1).)

Oh, yay; it's Clara. I mean, not actual Clara, but now I have to remember that she's still out there, Mary Suing her way around the cosmos.

I wasn't convinced by Ben and Polly.

The Ugly

Nothing to report.

"Oh, brilliant!"

Theorising

Okay, so Thirteen seems to be starting the same way Eleven did, with a crash and presumably a period of recovery. I look forward to seeing how she handles whatever the world below has to throw at her.

Top Quotes

First Doctor: Well. I assumed, I'd get... younger.

Twelfth Doctor: I am younger!

"Technically, that is your TARDIS. It’s about 70 feet that way, see? Always remember where you parked, it’s going to come up a lot." - The Twelfth Doctor

First Doctor: What’s so important about one captain?

Twelfth Doctor: Everybody’s important to somebody, somewhere.

First Doctor: You’ve saved him!

Twelfth Doctor: Both of them. Never hurts – a couple fewer dead people on the battlefield.

First Doctor: So that’s what it means to be a doctor of war.

Twelfth Doctor: You were right, you know. The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale… but that’s where we come in!

"Don’t die. Because if you do, I think everybody in the universe might just go cold." - Nardole

"Oh, brilliant!" - The Thirteenth Doctor

Verdict

Yep; I'll take this. The interplay between Bradley and Capaldi is perfect, and I have far more respect for these two Doctors' determination not to regenerate than I did for the Tenth Doctor's.

I wish this was a longer review, but it's been almost a fortnight. Christmas turns out to be a busy time with a family.

Rating - 8/10

(1) Three began by being dropped on Earth with a TARDIS that didn't work at all. Five's innings began with jettisoning most of the interior dimensions, including the critical Zero Room. Seven was dragged out of the TARDIS unconscious by the Rani's Tetraps. The War Doctor Regenerated after crashing on Karn. Ten wrecked the TARDIS for Eleven pretty much exactly as Twelve did for Thirteen. And that's ignoring intra-Regeneration crashes.

Genderless: Girly Robots and Geek Backlash

Girl robots. Confusing, apparently.

Back in my childhood, The Transformers: The Movie introduced something new and a bit baffling to the Transformers universe. Not that double definite article, although that was a head scratcher, but Arcee, the first (I think, more or less, anyway) female Transformer.

Why should that be confusing? Well, I suspect that it's closely related to the reason why the new Doctor is such a hot button topic for many people. The Transformers, like the Time Lords, are alien beings, and many would argue that they are, effectively, genderless. The thing is, by 'genderless', they – perhaps unconsciously – mean 'all dudes.' I suspect that many of these critics are legitimately weirded out by the fact that suddenly the Transformers are split between boy robots and girl robots(1), but the reason that a female transformer brings this to the fore is that they – that we – had been, consciously or not, screening out the fact that every other Transformer was coded male. Even if we never heard them speak with a male voice they had traditionally masculine proportions – broad chest(2), narrow hips, big arms – if they were largely humanoid, and were universally referred to as 'he' within the narrative.

 

"We're going with pink then?"

It's confusing, people argued, because robots don't have sex. Well, probably not; it's essentially a kids' toy line we're talking about. It's certainly true that, wrecking ball scrota aside, Transformers are as sexless as a Ken doll, but that doesn't mean that they don't have gender. They do, and almost all of them are coded male (12 in 13 in the current Unified Continuity, I believe, reflecting that only one of the 13 Primes was female(3),) both in voice acting and in their physical and character design. What people usually mean by arguing that the originals don't have gender is that, as long as all of the Transformers on screen are coded male, we can kid ourselves that actually no, they're genderless. We just use he for convenience; Optimus Prime isn't a dude(4), honest. As soon as one of them demonstrably isn't a dude, however, all of the others are. A distinction appears on screen and now you can't deny it; they're all dudes, except her.

Strongarm. Not pink.

The other problem in Transformers, of course, is that the original female Autobot was Arcee, who was pink and very, very girly, and basically killed any chance of increasing female representation in the franchise for the next ten years, before Blackarachnia and Airazor made their debuts in Beast Wars. She made a brief appearance in Revenge of the Fallen, in which she was unceremoniously killed off. Outside of the live action movies, female Transformers are becoming more prevalent (at least 1 in 13) and less... femme. Arcee returned in Transformers: Prime as a two-wheeled badass with a heart of gold under a forbidding frown and a crisp, dark blue paint job. She wasn't in the follow up, Robots in Disguise, but that had Strongarm, a tough and eager, if somewhat by the book, cadet with a much more conventional Autobot frame, including four wheels, angular body panels and those narrow, gunfighter hips, and just a hint of lippy (and a female voice actor) to code her as feminine. The nature of representation is, however, a completely different topic, for another time, perhaps.

The dissonance caused by the sudden presence of a female exemplar in a formerly all-male world doesn't just annoy your actual, card-carrying chauvinists. It also means that those fans who self-identify as liberal feminists while they nestle snuggly into their male-dominated media are suddenly confronted with the fact that, as much as they may not be active sexists, they live in a world filled with passive, institutionalised sexism. People deal badly with discovering that something they love is riddled with ingrained prejudice, and pointing it out to them – whether actively or as a side-effect of casting against that prejudice – tends to get a defensive reaction. In the former case, they will often angrily defend the intentions of the creators, which is all well and good, but good intentions only go so far. The latter is viewed as a betrayal, because the beloved itself is telling them that it was sexist before.

It's a manifestation of the backlash effect, of course. "If we cast a woman as the Doctor now, then all the times we didn't might have been - gasp - sexist. Well, I'm not going to stand by and hear Doctor Who derided as sexist! If the other Doctors were men, that must have been right and proper, because that means Doctor Who was never sexist." (And then there are your card-carrying douchebags, but what can you ever do about them except proper education funding?)

I mean, does this look like someone with two hearts to you?

Female Transformers still mess with people's heads, and the female Doctor raises the same issue in people's minds, with some arguing that making the Doctor female is wrong because the Doctor is an alien and has no gender. The same argument is advanced whenever someone suggests casting a person of colour in the role of the Doctor. It's political correctness gonne madde! The Doctor isn't a white man, he's an alien, so why do you have to drag race/gender into it? If the Doctor is black, they argue, you're corrupting the alien purity of the character with a racial agenda. They argue thusly because black is a race. Likewise, if the Doctor is female, then the Doctor has gender, because female is a gender. White and male on the other hand are not a gender or a race; they're a default. This is, of course, why it is important to cast a woman as the Doctor, or a person of colour(5), because unless it is challenged then white and male will continue to be viewed as the neutral setting, and they just aren't. I for one am glad to see Doctor Who finally stepping up on this.

They're also dark skinned, by the way.
I couldn't find this image attributed; if you can point me to the artist, I will
acknowledge.

It's this perception that makes the Imperial Radch series so interesting. The Radch is an ungendered society, not differentiating at all between male and female. Citizens of the Radch are somewhat androgynous, but also do not code for gender cues, so that they struggle to recognise gender even in outsiders. In the text of the novels, this is represented by using female pronouns for all characters, save for a few instances in the first novel in which Breq, the narrator-protagonist, has to communicate with non-Radch in a gendered language(6). The impact of shifting the default setting is profound, not least in that it barely affects the narrative, but provokes the reader to examine their own expectations. It makes no difference to the story if any given character is male or female, but you catch yourself assuming they are all women until you realise that is... if not impossible, given the setting, then at least unlikely.

A similar effect can be excited in white readers by any novel in which black is considered the default, and only white characters are referred to by race. (White) authors Neil Gaiman and Ben Aaronovich both use this deliberately, in Anansi Boys and the Rivers of London series respectively. It's always a bit of an eye opener when your brain parses the dissonance of someone actually being described as a white man, instead of just a man. To my considerable shame, I don't think I've read enough black literature to know how prevalent this is there; I'm taking steps in that direction as part of this year's reading challenge, because there's no worth in identifying a lack and allowing it to continue.

You know you'e reaching when Michelle Yeoh isn't tough enough for you.

For further proof of the blinkered insistence in white male normalcy, one need look little further than the reaction to the early trailers for Star Trek: Discovery, which angrily denounced the idea of putting a woman in charge of a starship, let alone giving one the lead in a Star Trek series, and never mind a Chinese woman! Do these showrunners not understand Star Trek? Do they think that Gene Roddenberry created the original series in order to show women and non-white characters fully integrated into a multiracial, egalitarian society(7)? Honestly, I suspect that the only reason we don't have record of a similar outrage over the casting of Avery Brooks as Ben Sisko is that DS9 came out shortly before the internet exploded, so he was an established fact by the time a critical mass of aggrieved white men had access to proper forums.

I hope that the new Doctor will challenge the concept of genderless. She shouldn't be the female Doctor, or even 'the Doctor as female' particularly. She should simply be the Doctor, and like any other Doctor 90% of her lines should work for any other Doctor with minimal rewriting(9). If her personality has feminine affects, they should not be in any form so tangible as to be easily describable. She shouldn't be markedly more empathic and nurturing, at least not outside the usual bounds of regenerative variation. She should be compassionate, as the Doctor always should. Even the 12^th Doctor, who has been broadly characterised as an insensitive ass, is compassionate. She definitely shouldn't be getting into a relationship with a companion, male or female, any more than her predecessors did (and less than some of the more recent ones,) and the same definitely goes for crashing the TARDIS(10).

I suppose what I really want the show to prove over the next few seasons is that in the last 12-14(11) regenerations the Doctor was truly not defined by his gender, by not defining the new Doctor by hers.

No regeneration posters with 13 yet, given that she doesn't have a look, so let's finish with some ponies.

(1) And what is the purpose of sexual dimorphism, indeed of sex, in robots? Don't ask, and definitely don't Google.

(2) Optimus Prime's truck windscreen has always turned into his pecks.

(3) The one who died of a tragic love story, incidentally. They're trying, but with mixed results. In fairness, she was also the weaponsmith of the 13.

(4) I love Optimus, but he is so a dude.

(5) Full disclosure, I am still committed to British, but I'm trying to escape that.

(6) Which incidentally means that the only major character whose assigned biological sex is known is Breq's defrosting ice queen sidekick; who is male.

(7) I'll be the first(8) to admit that Roddenberry was often hamfisted and misguided in his attempts to depict his post-scarcity, post-prejudice utopia, but he certain wasn't deliberately creating white man adventures in space. It just... came out that way sometimes.

(8) Okay, I won't, because this subject is waay old and loads of people have already done it.

(9) When Colin Baker took over from Jon Pertwee in The Ultimate Adventure, they basically changed one 'polarity of the neutron flow' and made a fight scene less aikido-y.

(9) Although, fair play, I've played LEGO Dimensions and I've stacked the TARDIS into just about anything and everything in the world.

(10) YMMV.

Doctor Who - Jodie Whittaker, the 13th Doctor

I'm actually a little sad this is just a placeholder outfit. It's got a lot going for
it.

"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

- The Fourth Doctor predicts the internet

So, there's a new Doctor in the TARDIS, and it's a woman. Naturally enough, the internet has exploded with comments ranging from 'the Doctor has always been male' to 'BBC PC liberal agenda' to 'I look forward to seeing this fail the way Ghostbusters 2016 failed'. Particularly popular, with each commenter presumably imagining themselves to be original, are: 'What next, James Bond as a woman(1)', and 'I'm not sexist, but...'

Special mention to the individual who expressed the hope that now that the lead in this family show was a woman, the Doctor would be flashing her bits in the TARDIS. Keeping it classy, internet.

So anyway, as an outspoken would-be superfan, here's my take on the casting decision that has propelled Whittaker past Foster as 'most frequently searched Jodie on Google.'

A female actor paying the Doctor(3), and why not? Seriously, the only even slightly convincing argument I've seen is that the Doctor was one of a small number of positive, non-violent role models for boys on television, although anyone who's been paying attention lately would have a hard time mistaking the Doctor for a role model as Steven Moffatt set out to remodel him as a dangerous, amoral, petty lunatic. Besides, if we don't have the Doctor, there's always the companions, as I'm sure women who have complained about the lack of a female Doctor have been told for decades.

I have no problem in-universe either. Based on regenerations that we have seen, it's apparent that Time Lords tend towards a given gender, but can fluctuate (the Master always went male except Missy, the Doctor always male until now, whereas the General in 'Hell Bent' is clearly relieved to be back to her more accustomed female form. I get the feeling that the Corsair was more fluid than most, but we really have no evidence. No, there is no in-universe issue with the Doctor being a woman.

"Everyone hates her. Not because she's a woman, but because she sucks."

The main worry I have now is the same one I had about Wonder Woman. Jodie Whittaker is now the test case for a female Doctor, and by extension for anything outside the white male mould. After several seasons of hit and miss stories and twelve years of the still problematic 45-minute single-episode story model you didn't see anyone protesting the casting of Peter Capaldi on the grounds that 'no white man could ever be the Doctor', but if they fuck up Whittaker's freshman year that's the takeaway re casting anyone else. This coming season needs to be gold, and that's a tough demand when you consider that this must surely be the aim every year. On the upside, we have a new incoming showrunner, and traditionally the first year of a nuWho showrunner's residency has been a humdinger. RTD gave us the Ninth Doctor, and Moffatt the excellent freshman of Eleven. It wasn't until later in their runs that the good began to be overtaken by the self-indulgent claptrap(4), messianic bullshit or incomprehensible deconstructive assassination of the main character. If Chibnall can come in with an equally strong opening, with good writing by good writers, then we could be looking at something to convince all but the most diehard naysayers(5).

And what about the Doctor herself? Well, that's going to be fiddly. The fact that the 13^th Doctor is a woman can neither be the be all and end all of her characterisation, nor a purely cosmetic thing, although for my money it should tend towards the latter. At all costs, they should avoid the route taken by Exile of making the female Doctor a joke(6). She needs to tap into a previously underexplored node of the Doctor's core personality, but whatever her script is, it should on some level work for almost any Doctor, give or take a few mannerisms and catchphrases. She needs, above all, to be the Doctor, as difficult a thing as that is to get hold of in these days of Time Lords Triumphant and self-loathing hissy-fits. They should probably steer clear of making her the empathic Doctor or the nurturing Doctor, and conversely avoid anything too cold and prim.

"It's someone else's gun. Loophole!"

If I were going to write this(7), I would go for something in a compassionately pragmatic Doctor, willing to go the extra mile for a stranger, but able to make a hard choice when needed(8). I'm inclined towards the Bakers for a characterisation guide, big and bold, yet capable of quiet intensity and introspection, but that might just be the coat in the trailer. Oh, but definitely not RP. It's well established that lots of planets have a north, so let's stick with that. She should be physically able, but non-violent. There's precedent for a violent Doctor from Pertwee and both Bakers, and even Davidson a little, but nuWho has – I think wisely – steered towards a characterisation that avoids physical conflict most of the time. The 13th Doctor should stick to that. I'd like to see problem solving and improvisation; quick wits and incisive intelligence, and the kind of understanding of people that you should have after millennia moving among them and involving yourself in their lives. And less sonic, but definitely still a screwdriver(9).

And most of all, I want them not to fuck it up. I want for this incarnation of the Doctor to be as beloved as any other; more so than some, I dare say.

(1) Or as we like to call it, Atomic Blonde. Now, I have an idea: James Bond as a decent excuse for a human being(2). Now there's radical.

(2) Male or female; there are women called James.

(3) I prefer this to 'a female Doctor', as the latter suggests a gimmick.

(4) There is a definite case to be made in probably all art for not allowing the creative mind to get comfortable. I'm sure I'd write more if I didn't have the day job. On the other hand, I have a daughter to support, so the day job isn't going anywhere.

(5) And let's be honest, you're never going to convince someone whose stated position is 'I have never watched Doctor Who, but this is a betrayal of all the series means and another sign of the liberal PC rot in British society.'

Now there's an idea for the next round of Start to Finish...

(6) Exile was the sixth Doctor Who Unbound audio play, and saw the Doctor switch gender after committing suicide to force a regeneration and avoid the Time Lords at the end of 'The War Games'. As a woman, the Doctor hid out on Earth, numbing her mind with alcohol and working at a Tesco. That she was a woman wasn't the core of the joke, but we still ended up with a female Doctor who was a joke. She finally got to become the Doctor she should have been all along at the end of the play, moments before it was heavily implied she was tricked by the Time Lords into triggering her own destruction by seeking to evade imprisonment within her own TARDIS, which was one hell of a tonal whiplash.

(7) Chris? Chibbers? Email, yeah?

(8) And, vitally, to make a hard call even when it impacts on her companions. Being able to sacrifice strangers is callous; being able to sacrifice yourself is noble; being able to sacrifice a friend to save strangers, and to live with it, is heroic. Not that I'm saying they ought to throw a companion under the bus, but to show the Doctor willing would not only emphasise a different aspect of the character than nuWho's more typical irrational, overriding love of the companion, it would also create an interesting new Doctor-companion dynamic if they knew what had almost happened.

(9) Okay, I could live with a variation on the 11^th Doctor's used-once sonic cane made from the handle of Missy's umbrella, but if they switch the sonic to a 'girly' accessory then I'll rage quit. Sarah Jane's sonic lippy was her thing, and was something that no-one would think to confiscate because she was a sneaky, undercover journalist. The sonic screwdriver is a tool, not a spy gadget.

Doctor Who – The Doctor Falls

Image (c) Stuart Manning. Yay!

" Pity… no stars… I hoped there’d be stars… "

This review will contain spoilers

The Cybermen are rising, Bill Potts is a Cyberman, and there are two Masters knocking about. Fortunately, thanks to a little Doctoring, the Cybermen are after the Masters as well, so that’s three Time Lords, one first generation Cyberman a community of farmers and… whatever Nardole is with three days to prepare to defend a synthetic farm from an army of upgraded warriors who have had centuries of their own time (thanks, relativity) to arm for the attack.

It is as hopeless a situation as the Doctor has ever faced, but running is not an option. It’s time to stand. And maybe it’s time to fall.

The Good

The use of Bill’s human form as opposed to her cyber-converted self was an effective visual shorthand for her remaining humanity.

Making things explode to make the farmers seem better armed was a more Whovian way of approaching a problem than making their rifles better.

The interaction between the Master and Missy was excellent, and Missy’s redemption was well done, if (deliberately) underwhelming.

“The original, you might say.”

The Bad

Not sure what was going on with the Doctor getting pissy that the Cybermen didn’t know him. Didn’t he deliberately erase himself or something?

I’m a little sad they went with David Bradley. William Russell does a killer First Doctor, although I guess at 92 he might not be up to a whole Christmas Special, and in fairness Bradley’s Hartnell is also the bomb.

The Ugly

Nothing glaring.

Theorising

So, has the Doctor gone back somewhere his old self already was, or is this an icy version of that pantemporal mental space from ‘The Name of the Doctor’?

Top Quotes

“Like sewage, smartphones, and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable.” — The Doctor

“Without hope, without witness, without reward.” – The Doctor

“Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind! It’s just that… Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point to any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do. So, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to stand here doing it until it kills me. And you’re going to die too! Someday… And how will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.” —The Doctor, and the writers, finally get it.

Verdict

‘The Doctor Falls’ is easily the best Doctor Who season finale in years, although that’s not saying much. Bill’s fate is much less egregious than Clara’s, because while Bill doesn’t deserve a second shot at life any more than the hundreds who die in the course of a series, her doom was through no fault of her own, whereas Clara engineered her own death and escaped it by stropping at the universe until she got her own way. Not even the Doctor should ever get to do that, and Bill does not; she accepts what has happened to her, uses it to do what good she can, and is ready to die by the Doctor’s side when she is saved by Chekov's water nymph. Is it a cop out? I don’t think so. I'll miss Bill, and often that's the best thing you can say about a departing character.

The episode delivers on the promise of ‘Extremis’. ‘Without hope, without witness, without reward,’ the Doctor says, and the truth is… that’s not talking about him. It’s talking about Missy. Her arc may have been somewhat truncated, but her ignominious death – to choose the right course and be cut down for it, without a heroic moment – is all the redemption that she gets for the Master’s crimes. She doesn’t save the day; arguably, she doesn’t make that much of a difference(1); but in that moment, she is good. It’s honestly more payoff than the arc has deserved, because Moffatt’s Doctor Who does not do arc plot well. Whatever you may say about RTD, he had a deft touch with the arc words; Moffatt’s more involved and heavy-handed approach doesn’t work well with the overall episodic nature of the series.

7/10

(1) Although I guess closing the Master’s timeline is, in itself, likely to save lives.

Doctor Who - 'World Enough and Time'

Meet the new boss...

"Well, I am that mysterious adventurer in all of time and space known only as Doctor Who. These are my disposables, Exposition and… Comic Relief."

This review will contain spoilers

We open with the Doctor apparently about to regenerate on a plain of ice, and having a bit of a 'Ten moment' about it.

Sometime before, on a spaceship caught on the edge of a black hole's event horizon, the Doctor tasks Missy with leading a rescue mission. Unfortunately, it is a mission that will prove costly indeed for Bill. Torn from her friends by the tides of time, she faces a fate worse than death. The Doctor's attempts to save her may bring him nothing but heartache, and bring Missy literally face to face with her past crimes.

The Good

Two-parter!

Lots of fun business and genuine feels with the time differential.

The Master's disguised role, Razor, was genuinely hilarious, if slightly reminiscent of Babylon 5's family Zathras.

The build-up was, thanks to that two-parter, properly creepy. It's easy to forget how fucking eerie those cloth-faced bastards are with all the tin suit, air grabbing, 'excellent' saying silliness that has followed.

Bill's cyber conversion was easy enough to see coming, but the fact that they went through with it still had some punch to it. Also, I liked the nod to classic Man in the Iron Mask/El Santo teardrop design.

The Bad

Once again, we're echoing audio adventures here, especially the heartbreaking 'Spare Parts', with CyberBill very reminiscent of ... You know what, I'm clipping this bit out. Spoilers.(1) This is especially true of the aesthetic of the sunless city, which is kind of left field for a spaceship.

The Ugly

Oh, I am so torn right now. On the one hand, I don't want to see another Companion death played for effect and then reversed. On the other, if the gay companion is permanently cyberconverted, that would also suck. Especially with the oh-so wondrous Clara allowed to roam time and space regardless of being a potentially apocalyptic paradox.

Theorising

I strongly suspect that Missy is either playing a long game with her past self, or else will have a last minute change of heart leading either to her death and regeneration into a less reformed incarnation, or to some sort of revocation of the past thousand years of her existence. I guess we’ll have some sort of explanation of PastMaster's appearance, since his timeline is pretty locked down. Actually... While Missy's lack of memory of events could be due to the same effect referenced in 'Day of the Doctor', it's also possible that this isn't the real Master at all. Mister Razor is an anagram of Master or iz... R. Okay, that might need some work.

In terms of the Doctor, I wonder if he's not going to do something messianic with his regeneration in order to avert the catastrophe that led to the Mondasian colonists undergoing cyber-conversion in the first place. That would be a shame; he's been agreeably non-messianic so far in this regeneration.

Top Quotes

Razor: Do you want the good tea or the bad tea?

Bill: What’s the difference?

Razor: I call one “good” and the other “bad.”

Bill: ...I’ll take the good one.

Razor: Excellent. A positive attitude will help with the horror to come!

Bill: What horror?!

Razor: Mainly the tea.

Verdict

Right now, this is a red letter episode. Sadly, in the nature of two-parters - and as was show with the 'Heaven Sent'/'Hell Bent' finale - there is every chance that the follow up with so egregiously cock up that this part looks duff by association. Right now, however, we have a very strong set up for Capaldi's last hurrah, so in the words of Ru Paul(2), 'don't fuck it up.' Please.

9/10

(1) The main problem with this comparison being that the harsh emotional punch of 'Spare Parts' is going to be hard to match. You can check it out for about £3 if you doubt me (price accurate as of 26/06/17.)

(2) My partner has been mainlining Drag Race lately.