Friday, March 22, 2024

#3. The Giggle.

The Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) wants to play. Be afraid.
The Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) wants to play. Be afraid. 

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 62 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Chanya Button. Produced by: Vicki Delow.


THE PLOT:

The world has gone mad.

The Doctor and Donna return to 2023 to find chaos in the streets. Everyone, everywhere in the world, has suddenly decided that they are absolutely right in any given belief and absolutely entitled to anything they want. The result is exactly what you'd expect: widespread violence and destruction.

With UNIT's help, the Doctor pins down a signal embedded in every broadcast in every screen on Earth - a giggle from ventriloquist's dummy Stooky Bill during the first-ever television transmission in 1925. A quick trip in the TARDIS takes the Doctor and Donna to the toy shop where the dummy was purchased and to its owner:

The Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris)!

The Doctor barely survived his first encounter with this immortal gamesmaster. Now his old enemy wants a rematch: a final game, with the prize nothing less than the future of the human race!


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: It's not often that the Doctor shows real fear, which makes it all the more effective when he realizes who the Toymaker is. He barks at Donna to return to the TARDIS and is horrified when she behaves as usual and follows him. He encounters one of the Toymaker's victims, now a literal puppet on a string, begging for help - and he recoils, knowing that there's nothing he can do and also knowing how easily this could become himself or Donna. Fear gives way to anger when the Toymaker goads him with his failures: the successive deaths of Amy, Clara, and Bill. When the Toymaker starts talking about the Flux, the Doctor finally snaps, cutting him off by challenging him to a game.

Donna: "I saw you, Doctor. I got a glimpse inside your mind, and it's like you're staggering. You are staggering along... You're wearing yourself out!" At the end of the last episode, she very seriously asked if he was all right. She already knows the answer: He is anything but "fine." She refuses to let him shunt her off into the category of someone to be rescued, pointing out that much more is at stake than just her. She also refuses to let him give up. When he worries that the odds of winning a second time are low, she refuses to accept that, countering with her father's wisdom: "Dice don't know what the dice did last time... Every game starts from scratch."

Mel: After a brief appearance in The Power of the Doctor, Bonnie Langford returns for a more substantial role. Mel's character traits are basically the same as in her 1980s run. She's smart, absolutely loyal to the Doctor, and relentlessly positive in her attitude. The difference is that she's now written as a full human being. She's almost always smiling, but there's sadness when she talks about having no one on Earth to return to. It proves what Langford's Big Finish audios had proved already: There was never anything wrong with the casting or the character brief. It's just that the people making the show in the '80s couldn't look past "Bonnie Langford" to write for the character of Melanie Bush.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: When she needs to demonstrate the effects of The Giggle to the Doctor, she does not ask any of her subordinates to do this, instead taking that task on herself. She removes her protective "Zeedex" so that she succumbs to the signal. There's some excellent acting from Jemma Redgrave as Kate's posture shifts ever so slightly before she begins a paranoid rant, directed first at the Doctor and then at her scientific advisor, wheelchair-bound Shirley (Ruth Madeley). Once the Zeedex is reapplied, Kate seems to collapse in on herself. Then she apologizes - not to the Doctor, but to Shirley. At the end, when the crisis has past, among her first orders is to get the names of all the staff who died.

The Toymaker: Neil Patrick Harris goes in the opposite direction of the original story's Michael Gough. Where Gough was contained and sinister, Harris goes gloriously over the top. He puts on an ever-shifting accent and behaves like a child at play. This could have gone horribly wrong, but Harris finds the creepiness in the revelry. Even when he's at play, there's no joy in him. The only time he shows any real emotion is when he takes the Doctor to task for his past carelessness, waving away each explanation with an increasingly sarcastic and angry, "Well, that's all right, then!" Outside of that scene, his eyes are eternally cold. He invades UNIT by dancing to a Spice Girls song, taking first Kate and then Mel as dance partners. Both bits end violently, with him twirling Kate into a wall and spinning Mel roughly to the floor... very much as if, finding no fun in romping, he needs to do something malicious in order to feel.


THOUGHTS:

"This world is the ultimate playground. All of the sport, the matches, the medals, the gambling, and the anger and the children shackled to their bedrooms with their joysticks and their buttons... the dating and ghosting, the deceit and the control. You make me dizzy!"
-The Toymaker exults at the endless competitiveness of the human race.

The Toymaker first appeared in 1966's The Celestial Toymaker, presiding over a realm outside of reality. That story's reputation has gone through several turns. It was not particularly well-received on broadcast; then it became known as a "lost masterpiece"; then, as it became more accessible thanks to audio releases and reconstructions, its reputation fell again. For myself, I liked the concept and the first and last episodes... but so little happened in the repetitive middle parts that I remarked in my review that if Part One were ever found, you could justifiably release it and Part Four as a complete story.

The Giggle benefits from a much stronger script. Like the canceled 1980s story The Nightmare Fair, it brings the Toymaker to our reality, to play his games in the real world. Unlike The Nightmare Fair, the Doctor and the Toymaker meet early in the story, and the Doctor is genuinely disturbed by their reunion. That makes it far more effective, particularly with the Toymaker so powerful that his mere presence badly disrupts the real world. 

The pace is well judged throughout, fast but never rushed. There are bursts of activity, such as the Spice Girls dance, but also plenty of moments that slow down. In between games, puppet shows, and people being gleefully and horrifically transformed, the episode finds time to explore the Doctor's mental state, planting the seeds of the ending.

There's a surreal sequence in the middle of the episode, as the Doctor and Donna get lost in a maze that is a single, recurring hallway with locked doors on all sides. They get separated and each has an individual encounter with a Toymaker creation in scenes that might have come straight out of a horror movie. Crucially, the Doctor is afraid - and that tells the audience that maybe they should be afraid as well.


THE REGENERATION:

As the last of the David Tennant specials before Ncuti Gatwa takes over, it was always a given that the regeneration would happen in this episode. It does... with a twist. I was spoiled before watching, and my first reaction was that it sounded like a dumb idea. It actually ends up working in context, though. In a story that operates off of "dream logic," what happens actually sort of fits.

Also, Russell T. Davies needed to do something other than the usual this time. After all, the Fourteenth Doctor's run was a whopping three stories (well, and one televised skit). The viewers may love David Tennant, but it would be pretty tough to wring strong emotion from the "death" of an incarnation we basically just met. Something extra was needed, and I largely like how the idea ultimately plays out.


THE FOURTEENTH DOCTOR - AN OVERVIEW:

As I mentioned in my review of The Star Beast, I was not particularly looking forward to these specials. The Tenth Doctor may be the fan favorite, but he was never my favorite. I therefore approached the return of Russell T. Davies and the Tennant/Tate specials with wariness - which only increased when The Star Beast's final Act seemed to gather together all the worst traits of the first RTD era.

Then the other two specials happened. I thoroughly enjoyed both Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle. More than just enjoying the episodes, though, I thoroughly enjoyed David Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor. The differences in characterization between his two Doctors are minor: Fourteen is less self-righteous and a lot less smug than Ten, but otherwise this just feels like an older version of the same incarnation. But Davies also delivered a full character arc across the three specials, one that wove effectively through the stories and resolved in a satisfying manner.

I also genuinely think Tennant's performance is better, with more layers than were present fifteen years ago. A lot of that is the writing. But I also think that Tennant's simply matured as an actor, something that I think is borne out by his non-Who roles.

All of which is to say two things: (1) After bracing myself for these specials, it turns out I wouldn't have minded twice as much of the Fourteenth Doctor as I actually got; and (2) while I'm still not 100% sold on RTD's return, the last two specials have taken me from "wary" to "cautiously optimistic."

Optimism that's helped by Ncuti Gatwa's debut. Davies gives him a bit more time than is standard to make a first impression - and based on his scenes here, I think he's going to be good in the role.


OVERALL:

The Giggle is a fine finale to this mini-season's arc, while also doubling as a sequel that surpasses the 1966 original.

Performances have been a strong suit of all three specials, and that continues to be the case here. Tennant and Tate are terrific, Bonnie Langford gets a chance to show Doctor Who television audiences how good she can be with decent material, and Neil Patrick Harris perfectly straddles the line between ridiculous and frightening.

Of the three stories, Wild Blue Yonder remains the standout. Still, I liked this one more than I expected to, and I'm pretty sure I'll give it another viewing in the none-too-distant future.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: Wild Blue Yonder
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Friday, March 15, 2024

#2. Wild Blue Yonder.

The Doctor reassures Donna after they lose the TARDIS.
The Doctor reassures Donna after they lose the TARDIS.

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 54 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Tom Kingsley. Produced by: Vicki Delow.


THE PLOT:

The TARDIS, damaged after Donna spilled coffee into the console, deposits her and the Doctor inside a massive spaceship. The Doctor initiates the repair protocols by inserting the sonic screwdriver into the keyhole. Then, unable to resist, he begins exploring.

This turns out to be a problem when something triggers the TARDIS's Hostile Action Displacement System (HADS). The timeship dematerializes, leaving the two stranded with no way back to Earth - and without the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

The ship appears to be abandoned, with their only companion a primitive robot that is barely moving. The computer confirms that there are no other lifeforms, and that the last activity was an airlock opening and closing three years earlier. Their location is the edge of the universe, so far out that even starlight can't reach them. They are surrounded by a seemingly endless nothingness.

But if they're alone, what triggered the TARDIS's emergency systems? Why does this giant ship keep reconfiguring itself? What is the thudding sound against the hull? And why is it suddenly getting so much colder...?


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Tries to remain calm, reassuring Donna that they will recover the TARDIS and return to Earth. That calm gets punctured when he's confronted with the events of his previous life: the Flux, which devasted half the universe; and the Timeless Child revelation, which has left him with no place to call home. True, he never particularly cared for Gallifrey. But even when he believed it destroyed, he could at least say where he came from. Now even that has been taken away from him. In the emotional safety of an empty corridor, with no one around to see, he cries out and repeatedly strikes the wall. Tennant's performance across this episode is one of his very best in the role - and this moment in particular gave me chills.

Donna: Catherine Tate is every bit as good as Tennant, and this script gives her plenty of good material. Donna isn't at all intellectual, and she's slow to grasp scientific (or technobabble) concepts. But she is extremely intuitive, and she ends up asking questions that the Doctor misses, which is particularly important near the end. She responds well to the Doctor's avoidance of personal questions. When it's clear something is bothering him, she tries briefly to get him to talk... but after he evades, instead of pressing like Yaz so often did with Thirteen, she switches to simply asking if he's all right.


THOUGHTS:

"Wild Blue Yonder... We sang that in the choir in primary school. We'd have a little concert every Christmas. But Gramps complained. He said, 'You shouldn't be teaching children that. It sounds all jaunty and fun but it's not. It's the military going to war.' ...the TARDIS played us a war song."
-Donna and the Doctor realize that something has gone very wrong.

OK, I liked this one. I liked it a lot!

Wild Blue Yonder does something that I wish Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who did more often: It slows down. In contrast to the frenetic activity of The Star Beast, this episode takes its time.

I'm not just talking about allowing the story and characters time to breathe. The sense of slowness is actually woven into the fabric of the story. One of the TARDIS duo's first discoveries is a robot that appears inert. It turns out that it is moving - just very slowly, so that it's spent three years moving down this one long hallway. The light of stars, as fast as light speed seems, is too slow for it to have yet reached their current location. The ship's functions are all automatic, and have been for three years, and each command is executed with large gaps in between.

The slowness also applies to the technical elements, particularly in the first half. Individual shots are held longer. There are extended moments without dialogue, with pauses in conversations, and there's less incidental music than normal. A visually arresting shot takes us for a flyby outside of the ship, a shot that lasts for close to a minute, and a late episode discovery lingers for the audience to absorb for several seconds before the Doctor begins talking about it.

All of this helps to create a sense of dread. It takes a good third of the episode for the characters to encounter an external threat, but the setting feels threatening right away. The TARDIS takes off on its own, leaving the Doctor and Donna stranded - and taking the sonic screwdriver with it, making the Doctor a wizard without a wand. The ship regularly reconfigures itself, separating them a couple of times and leaving them to navigate a maze just to reunite.

The only complaint I have with an otherwise excellent episode is the comedy cold open. The Doctor and Donna have a brush with Isaac Newton (Nathaniel Curtis), resulting in his law of universal gravitation (gravity) to become "mavity" - with every mention of gravity thereafter substituting the new word. It's a running gag that I hope runs very far away, because it set my teeth on edge every time the Doctor or Donna said it.


OVERALL:

"Mavity" aside, this is the best new Doctor Who story in a long time. It's eerie and atmospheric, with excellent dialogue and terrific performances by Tennant and Tate. Most of all, by slowing things down, Russell T. Davies allows the emotion to feel that little bit more genuine, causes the scares to be that little bit more effective, and just generally makes the whole stand out from the series' usual offerings.

Oh, and there's a cameo by a returning character at the very end. I never expected to see that character again, and the appearance was an extremely welcome surprise.


Overall Rating: 9/10. Without "mavity," I would probably be awarding full marks.

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Friday, March 8, 2024

#1: The Star Beast.

The Doctor reunites with the Noble family to deal with
a new alien: a living Furby calling itself The Meep.
The Doctor reunites with the Nobles to deal with a new alien: 
a living Furby calling itself "The Meep."

1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 58 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. From the comic strip story by Pat Mills and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Directed by: Paul Bernard. Produced by: Vicki Delow.


THE PLOT:

The Doctor is confused. Somehow, the last regeneration has left him with a face he left behind a long time ago. Then the TARDIS lands him in London... which is not unusual, except that he immediately runs into the one old friend who must absolutely never remember him: Donna Noble, whose memory he wiped in order to save her life after she absorbed the power of the Time Lords.

Though this seems unlikely to be coincidence, he isn't given time to ponder it. No sooner has he arrived than an alien spaceship crashes in a steelworks facility outside London. Cute and fuzzy alien Beep the Meep (voice of Miriam Margolyes) is on the run from heavily armed interstellar warriors - and that pursuit leads straight to Donna.

According to the Meep, it is running for its life. Donna's transgender daughter, Rose (Yasmin Finney), is instantly determined to protect it. But the Doctor isn't so sure that the situation is exactly as it appears...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: His mind hasn't fully caught up with the change back to male. When he first brandishes his psychic paper, his credentials identify him as "Mistress." He spends the first part of the episode trying to avoid Donna to keep her from remembering him, but he can't resist finding out about her life over the past fifteen years. He strongly suspects that his regeneration (degeneration?) to the very face he left Donna with cannot be coincidence... but this is Doctor Who, so chaos unleashes itself before he gets any real time to ponder this mystery.

Donna: She gave away the lottery money the Doctor arranged for her, which is one of several signs that losing her memories of him didn't wipe away the personal growth she experienced. She adores her daughter, and after Rose endures some catcalls on the street, she tells her: "I would burn down the world for you, darling. Anyone has a go, I will be there and I will descend." Her protectiveness of Rose becomes her primary motivator at the climax, when she declares her child's life to be more important to her than her own.

Sylvia: I don't remember particularly enjoying the character of Donna's mother back in Series Four. Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe the character writing was just better here, but I loved Sylvia in this episode. I particularly enjoyed the scenes with her trying to shield Donna from any hint of an extraterrestrial presence. It makes emotional sense; if Donna remembers, she'll die. But it also reaches peak comedic absurdity as she stands in her kitchen while the living Furby that is the Meep clutches to Donna's leg while the Doctor barges. As all this erupts around her, she helplessly cries: "(The Doctor)'s not there, you can't see him, and there's no monster... None of this is real!" It's very funny and emotionally resonant all at the same moment, and it marks this episode's single best moment.

Rose Noble: Given how big a part of the episode Rose is, I really want to say more about her... but there isn't very much to say. She's transgender and is fortunate enough to have a family that accepts her. She makes stuffed toys to sell online to help her parents. She's instantly protective of the cute and frightened little Meep. And... that's pretty much it. Once the action kicks in at the midpoint, what little personality has been established disappears as she's reduced to a Living Plot Device. If Yasmin Finney recurs, which I suspect is likely, I hope future scripts will serve her better - but in The Star Beast, she's pretty much just "there."

Beep the Meep: The cute and fuzzy alien first appeared opposite the Fourth Doctor in the Doctor Who Magazine comic story, Doctor Who and the Star Beast. Both that and the Meep's appearance opposite the Sixth Doctor in Big Finish's Doctor Who Magazine audio special, The Ratings War are overwritten here, as it is absolutely clear that this is the first time the Doctor has met the Meep. The translation of the character to live action is a success, with the fuzzy Muppet cute and expressive. The Meep is suitably pitiful while relating his backstory to the Doctor and the Nobles, and the sight of him trundling down a hallway during an escape while exclaiming, "Meep Meep," is highly amusing.


THOUGHTS:

I think I'm one of the few Doctor Who fans who was not overjoyed when Russell T. Davies' return was announced. His version of Doctor Who was never my favorite take on either series or character. None of which is to deny that his 2005 revival struck a chord with viewers: Its success eclipsed any reasonable expectation. It should also be noted that overall reaction to the 2023 specials indicates that Davies hasn't lost his popular touch. It just wasn't a version of the show that consistently resonated with me.

The Star Beast shows off many of Davies' best tendencies. He handles large groups of actors well (I actually mostly enjoyed the Chibnall era, but I will not miss watching the cast sometimes literally line up to be spoon-fed exposition). He brings in enormous amounts of energy, and he's adept at juggling action, comedy, and emotion. The sequence involving the invasion of the Nobles' house, first by the Meep, then by the Doctor, and then by still more visitors, is a sustained moment of brilliance that seems to effortlessly mix all of that at the same time.

Davies has also never been one to shy away from courting controversy. His script tries hard to mix ideas about gender into and around the story: the transgender Rose, the Doctor's recent regeneration/gender-swap, and even the Meep identifying his personal pronoun simply as "the Meep." It doesn't always work, with the Meep's story not particularly connected to that theme. But the gender issues are well-used when dealing with the Doctor's regeneration or with the lingering thread of Series Four's metacrisis. I also have to give Davies credit even for trying to address this subject in the current politically charged climate.

Unfortunately, the story also features some of his worst tendencies. The sonic screwdriver being ludicrously overpowered is a given... but now it can literally make force fields out of thin air. Yes, Tennant sliding those forcefields into place is like a scene out of Looney Tunes in the best possible way, but this takes away any pretense of the tool being anything other than a magic wand.

I also think it falls apart in the final Act. The main story devolves into nonsensical activity, with the crisis being resolved by flipping a bunch of switches while Murray Gold's score plays too loudly in an attempt to convince me that this is exciting. This is followed by a moment of nauseating smugness as Donna and Rose explain to the Doctor what "a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand." At which point I think my eyes rolled so far back in my head that I was actually peering at my own brain.

That final Act ends up damaging my overall opinion of the episode - which is a shame, because I had been enjoying it until the last twenty minutes.


OVERALL:

In the end, The Star Beast feels... a lot like a Series Four episode, and not just because Tennant and Tate are back. I liked Series Four well enough at the time... but this felt like warmed up leftovers when I really would have preferred a fresh take. Hopefully that will come with the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa.

Oh, and the new TARDIS looks beautiful. My favorite New Series console room is still the Capaldi version, which I doubt will be bettered - but I like this design, and I think there's room to build on it in future episodes.


Overall Rating: 5/10. But it was on its way to a solid "7" until the final third.

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