Another bumper crop for Whovember today to make up for lost time, four more years today, and three each Wednesday and Thursday, let’s jump right on in…
Year 51: 2013 to 2014 - Mummy on the Orient Express
I have to be honest, I do find Capaldi’s first season to be a bit uneven, not all of it works, and there’s a major sense of them trying to work out how the Twelfth Doctor works. However, it did have its highlights, and this is one of them. From the start I was looking forward to that one, firstly because of that name alone, secondly for the whole train in space thing giving major Galaxy Express 999 vibes, and thirdly for the writer. I had encountered Jamie Mathieson’s work before, with the fun SF comedy Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, so I knew that they were a safe pair of hands, and my word did he deliver well with this script. For starters, the ending of this one is a bit of a redemption for Twelve; he shows far more regret and care than he had in a lot of previous episodes, we can understand him and his burden a lot better. His relationship with Clara is improved by these experiences, we go from her ready to leave the TARDIS behind to seeing that there’s still a lot of the Doctor she previously knew in there.
But as for the titular creature and location, this delivers admirably too. This story manages to make an old fashioned Mummy scary again, something I scarcely thought possible. The Foretold is a great creation, from a truly undead design, to the unique 66 seconds of time it gives each victim. The idea is truly chilling, that if you see this thing, you have just over a minute left to live, and there’s nothing you can do about it, no way to escape, no one can help, and it’s played well within the episode by showing us the timer each time it approaches a victim. The mystery around the Mummy is very well played, and the final reveal links in to a recurring theme of the season quite nicely. Plus the retro-future aesthetic of the space train means this episode is just gorgeous to look at too; Frank Skinner in particular looks great in old fashioned Engineer garb. All of Jamie Mathieson’s episodes are highlights of the Capaldi era (the others being Flatline, The Girl Who Died, and Oxygen), and this got his run off to a good start!
Year 52: 2014 to 2015 - “Davros. My name is Davros”
So with the shift of format from Classic Who to New Who, the main difference between the two is that, as most stories are now only a single episode, we have far fewer end of episode cliffhangers. However, we now have something else, the pre-credits teaser, which often does have a similar moment, one leading into the classic synthesiser sting, and can be just the thing to whet the appetite for the episode. There have been some pretty damn good ones over the years, and the Season 9 premiere episode has a doozy, made even better by the fact that a key part of it wasn’t in any of the pre-publicity; we knew going in that Missy and the Daleks were going to be in it, but one big name wasn’t…
The opening sequence is a marvel, we get a strange battlefield, a mix of antique weapons and futuristic ones, culminating with the truly eerie sight of the hand mines. Now those who knew the classic series well, in particular my year 12 pick, would probably have figured out where this was going, especially with the knowledge of this being a Dalek story, but the moment itself still works magnificently. We see the Doctor trying to save a young boy in the midst of this terrible situation, only for the kid to give his name, and we realise the sheer scale of the dilemma he has found himself in. (Incidentally, full marks to Peter Capaldi for selling the moment from his expression alone, you can tell every thought going through his head… most of them probably full on Malcolm Tucker speak.) As the Twelfth Doctor has as his running theme the question “Am I a good man?”, this is a perfect way to carry that thread on, by presenting him with one hell of a moral dilemma, in fact the same dilemma he mentioned way back in Genesis. As a great surprise reveal of a classic villain’s return, a problem with no easy answer to it for the Doctor to get caught in mere minutes into the series, and for giving us the truly disturbing visual of the Hand Mines, this is my favourite New Who cold open by far.
Year 53: 2015 to 2016 - The Two Masters
What’s your favourite Master reveal? Yana opening the watch? Missy clarifying her name? Razor saying “It is necessary when you happen to be somebody’s former Prime Minister?” O saying “I did say look for a SpyMaster…”. Well for me, it’s none of those; it was in Big Finish when we first met Alex McQueen’s take on him in 2012, where he simply confirmed who he was with a cheery “Hello you”. His incarnation of the Master is from just before the Time War really kicked off (so in between the Eric Roberts and Derek Jacobi incarnations), and he had a big part in the Eighth Doctor series Dark Eyes; I do really dig this incarnation, not least because McQueen and McGann have some great chemistry together. (It’s also amusing that he’s also been in quite a few projects with Peter Capaldi over the years!). Now Big Finish decided to have him and Geoffrey Beevers do a story together, managing to beat the TV series to a multi-Master story by a year, and this is a really fun tale for both of them.
It’s actually the third part of a trilogy; kicking off with a Fifth Doctor story, …And You Will Obey Me by Alan Barnes featuring Beevers as the Master, then Vampire of the Mind, with McQueen and the Sixth Doctor, and finally this Seventh Doctor tale. Now you can listen to this one solo, but I recommend listening to the full trilogy, as it does set this up nicely, and several little threads in the previous stories pay off magnificently in here. I can’t really get too far into the actual plot of this one, as there are surprises galore, but what I will say is that it’s a good showcase for both Masters, both in terms of their characterisations, and of the performances of Beevers and McQueen. Plus it also deals well with the fact that, due to their instincts, in multi-Doctor stories the Doctors do get along well bar a little bickering, but with multiple Masters, it never goes quite like that. Incidentally, this also includes a fun addition to Doctor Who canon unique to Big Finish, the Rocket Men; a bunch of space pirate characters, whizzing around space on classic jet packs, which is the exact sort of thing old school Doctor Who would have done back in the day if they could have achieved that on their budgets. Now Big Finish have done a few more multiple Master stories since this, but for the focus on just the two, I think this one really works best. I do recommend this one, if only to hear some of McQueen’s Master; man, I would love it if he did a TV episode, that would work so well…
Year 54: 2016 to 2017 - Jodie’s Reveal
We’ve had a few different ways of announcing a new Doctor over the years, but this is easily my favourite; this trailer that originally showed during Wimbledon, just a quiet, simple scene, building to the reveal perfectly. I don’t really have much to say about this one, except to say how excited I was when it aired; on the day I was out and about, so I made sure to have iPlayer on my phone for Wimbledon at the right time, so I could catch it live while I was on the train. When Jodie was revealed, I think I might have made some odd noises, distracting my fellow passengers somewhat, as I did immediately post on social media “They did the thing. THEY DID THE THING!!”. The Moffat era did a good job of building up the idea of a woman playing the Doctor well, laying the groundwork perfectly, dismantling the arguments against it one by one, and Chibnall took the opportunity well. It really did feel like quite a moment when it happened, one that still warms my heart. I do admit though, the outfit she’s wearing in this trailer, I reckon it would have been fun to see in a proper episode, but still, as almost a mission statement of a new era goes, this little clip works so well.
Next time, we’re into Jodie's era with a dollop of folk horror, we will look at what we might have had if the show decided to do a five year anniversary, and how Who got us through the worst year ever, and by doing sowing the seeds for these specials.
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