Gryphonic

After what probably seemed like a fair bit of whiny-ass (sorry, whiny-arse) complaints about the first two episodes, I was most pleasantly surprised by The Well.  I’ve taken a leaf out of El Presidente’s book of late, and have been doing my best to avoid teasers, trailers, and news articles relating to any upcoming episodes for this season, and unlike a fair few people out there, I did not know that this was going to be a sequel to Midnight. Being able to make the connection a few seconds before the Doctor did was so worth it to have avoided being spoiled beforehand.

Midnight was such a wonderful episode by itself, and trying to do a sequel to it could have gone badly. After all, there was much that we (or even the Doctor) just didn’t know at the end of that episode; if this offering had gone as far as allowing us to see far more or understand what this entity was all about, it could have really cheapened things.

Thankfully it didn’t. Yes, we saw glimpses of something moving, but it really was  “if you blink you miss it”, and I had to skip back a few seconds just to rewatch those bits just to even slightly notice it. Though even those moments were fleeting and the entity itself was never completed revealed. While we did find out a smidgen more about it, there is still so much left to the mystery of it.

Much like in Midnight where we had a small number of people in the ‘rover’, much of the main action took place in that single space where Aliss was being held, and with that many military types and unsettling things happening, you just knew that things were soon going to boil over, and indeed they did.

Though, as Aliss was turning around to follow Callo, I’m sure that there were moments when someone was directly behind her, with their eyes open, who didn’t end up deaded. That aside, I loved this episode… apart from the Mrs. Flood bit at the end. I really am getting a Deja vu feeling here about the Earth being completely destroyed at some point in the past. It rather is starting to feel like retreading paths that have already been walked since the shows revival.

But my goodness… what a lot of Aliens references in this episode! Right from the ‘drop ship’ (well, HALO jump) to be followed by a base which has gone communications silent, through to the ‘nuke it from orbit’ line. I wonder if it was known that this was going to be released on ‘Aliens Day’ – that is 4/26 (as dates are written in North America), for LV 426 in Aliens.

One final point about this episode; the outfits that the Doctor and Belinda chose just happened to be the exact kind of space suit gear that everyone else had. Now we know that that TARDIS takes the Doctor where he’s needed, but is it also now ensuring that he (and his companion) have the right kind of attire they need too? It could have ended rather badly had they chosen something different.

Now on to Lucky Day – another one that I mostly enjoyed.

Very much a “Doctor-lite” episode, and indeed a “Belinda-lite” one as well. With the rather large exception of The Sarah Jane Adventures, this is a style of episode that we really have not gotten from Doctor Who very much. I think probably Love and Monsters was the only other episode that we’ve had that solely focused on the lives of people ‘touched’ by the Doctor without really involving the Doctor in the story.

It’s only been since the revival of the show – starting with School Reunion – that it’s started to touch upon what lives are like for companions once they’ve left the TARDIS. One thread that’s pretty much run through everyone we’ve revisited is that while they enjoyed their time traveling, they return back to the mundane with a lot of trauma that takes years – if not a lifetime – to unpack, and that’s where Ruby Sunday is right now. While she’s back with her two mums and gran, we get the idea that it’s been pretty hard for her to just do what every other person on the Earth does. Her finding Conrad, and finding out that there’s a small connection that they share, might likely feel like a lifeline that she eagerly grabs. I’m sure that we all started rooting for her and Conrad as they were becoming a couple.

So when there’s the sudden and inevitable betrayal from him, we – the audience – absolutely feel for her.

The next half of the episode is all the fall out from this, becoming heavily focused on the infiltration of London’s version of the Avengers tower… I mean, UNIT HQ. Though here’s where the problems with the story start to become apparent. Another great setup, but not being able to quite stick the landing.

It’s certainly nice to see Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and the gang back (except maybe the Vlinx), though apparently Mel is dealing with something in Sydney Harbour. I’m sure that UNIT’s standing after all this will in no way affect what’s to come in the spinoff we’re to get.

But let’s unpack what we got here.

I really don’t understand Conrad’s motivations for trying to expose the ‘lie of UNIT’, especially because he was witness to the TARDIS first materializing in 2007. Not sure if that was the start or end of 2007, but both were book-ended by aliens of London in the form of the Sycorax and Racnoss respectively, unless those got completely unwritten by the many times the universe has ended since then. Though he also witnessed Ruby and the Doctor in 2024 when they first encountered the Shreek. It’s all good to say that alien invasions were elaborate special effects put on to convince people, but in both cases there was no-one else to witness these events except him. We’ve had other people – such as Clive, as well as Elton and his Scooby Gang – who encountered or had heard of the Doctor that never fell down this path of conspiracy theories, but somehow Conrad did? I’m just not sure I see what pushed him to tread that path.

Given Conrad’s only brief glimpses of the Shreek in his 2024 encounter, I’m quite surprised he remembered enough to get convincing costumes of those critters made, not to mention his friends managing to recreate certain mannerisms the critters had. Aside to that, kind of weird to see guys in rubber (more likely silicone) suits actually being guys in rubber suits! (Now where did he get those made, I wonder? Because those were cool costumes)  Also, while they might have been able to affect the electrics in the pub, I’m not quite sure how they did the same with the bus signs and so on.

It also would be remiss not to talk about Kate’s actions here, as she unleashed a Shreek upon Conrad – while it was being livestreamed! If you’re trying to convince people that you’re working on their behalf, maybe setting a monster to go eat someone on a live stream is quite a questionable choice. I was really hoping that she had some trick up her sleeve where it wouldn’t go as far as it did, but nope – seems like she was willing to go that far. The Brigadier had his moments (blowing up a Silurian base) but I’m not quite remembering where he was willing to make a human sacrifice like this.

We also have our standard appearance of Susan Twist… I mean, Anita Dobson… Really, I mean Mrs Flood at the end of the episode, and this seems to mark the first time where she actively seems to have recruited someone to work against the Doctor.

Anyway, I think that out of the four episodes we’ve had so far, I’d rank this 2nd, with The Well being 1st.

But come on, RTD, the way you’re patterning this season is pretty much the same as the last one.

Episode 1 was kind of goofy and set in space (Space Babies and The Robot Revolution)

Episode 2 was campy, set in the past on Earth, featuring a member of the Pantheon (The Devil’s Chord and Lux)

Episode 3 was future, darker in tone, featuring a returning villain in some way (Boom with Villengard, and The Well with the creature from Midnight)

Now episode 4, Doctor-lite, featuring UNIT and Kate, pub scene where someone is playing a prank on the companion (73 Yards and Lucky Day)

And all the way through, a mysterious figure that keeps popping up in  vague yet menacing manner.

Is this “Second verse, same as the first” here?

The strength of Doctor Who’s format has been that it’s possible to do so many different kinds of story, but lately it really seems that it’s falling into a very samey rut.