From DWM #443. Fact fans – I first saw this story, sat in the office where I work, just as the Christmas edition of our magazine (not DWM) was going to press. So I felt very festive indeed.

I saw it again at the BBC press launch, which was held at Television Centre. We journalists filed into a studio alongside kids – kids! – to be regaled with a silly warm-up man, the episode itself and then a Q&A in which kids – kids! – asked most of the questions. As we stood up to leave, grumping about the lack of free drinks (we’re monsters), a curtain rose  revealing, on stage, a TARDIS stood in a winter wonderland… and a bar. It was a Christmas miracle.

Like tinsel, indoor trees, Top of the Pops and unusual tolerance for one’s extended family, Doctor Who feels a unique fit for Christmas. It chimes in beautifully with the sentiments of the Big Day, wherein naughty folk are punished and the nice prevail. How perfect.

This year’s effort, The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe by Steven Moffat, feels especially bedded in with all that’s Christmassy. Indeed, all that is Christmassy on telly. Even the crazy pre-titles sequence is reminiscent of James Bond films from TV Yules of yore (specifically 007’s improvised skydiving in Moonraker). But once that exploding spaceship fizzles into glitter, we find ourselves tumbling into a wonderful tale brimming with festive sentiment.

During Christmasses past, Doctor Who brought us killer trees whirring like buzzsaws and deploying explosive ornaments. Now we have festive ferns in a winter wonderland, which weep baubles and emit their own stars. There’s also a magical gift box, plus an over-sized snow globe that sends our heroes spinning into the time vortex.

That seam of sparkle burns brighter still within the Arwell family, from mother Madge (Claire Skinner), who’s a poster girl for stoicism, to her husband Reg (Alexander Armstrong), a veritable David Niven in the face of death. Then there are the children, Lily (Holly Earl) and Cyril (Maurice Cole), the latter decked out as your quintessential bookworm, in dressing gown and glasses. Immediately you warm to him. To all of them. There’s nothing fancy here, they’re just nice people.

And it’s they who are at stake. There’s no spaceliner falling from the sky, nor giant spiders emerging to claim the planet. There’s not even a multiplicitous Master plan sweeping the globe. No, the extent of it all is Mum, Dad and the kids. Like so much of recent Doctor Who, we’re once again denied a proper villain (you’ve really got to bring back the baddies, Mr Moffat), but this time around it seems wholly forgivable. The space that absence opens up allows the Doctor to get right into the centre of a family Christmas. A position, of course, he also adopts within the lives of most of us watching along.

Family. In 2011 Doctor Who has played a lot of games with that concept. We’ve seen both Amy and Rory’s fractured domestic life and, across the series, various permutations of father and son relationships. Throughout, the Doctor has remained outside the circle. He’s even forsaken his friends, and in this story confesses to Madge he can no longer feel the pull of going home. That loneliness permeates his orchestrations to provide Cyril and Lily with the best Christmas ever. Although he lays on dancing chairs, lemonade on tap and hammocks in the bedroom, he remains an onlooker. Isn’t it telling how the Caretaker’s own room at the top of that big old house remains bleak and functional? No familial cheer for him. But that changes… How?

“Mummy always comes!” insists Cyril. “The mothership!” gasps the Doctor. “Mother Christmas!” we all nod along. In a show that’s done so much to celebrate paternal love, it’s great to finally hear it for the mums, and particularly pleasing the celebrated Madge is never suggested to be anything intrinsically special… other than a mother – and that’s plenty. It’s her exchanges with the Time Lord that are at the heart of this story, notably when the Doctor paraphrases Madge’s reservations about laying on a merry Christmas for her children while in the knowledge their father has died.  “What’s the point of them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later?” he says. His answer (“Because they’re going to be sad later”) doesn’t just rouse the widow, it tells her – and us – everything we need to know about this incarnation of the time traveller. He’s more cognisant than even his fifth persona of the importance of small, beautiful events.

Madge’s role as a mum also means she’s uniquely empowered to command the Doctor to stop being silly and drop in on Amy and Rory; his own ersatz family. The result of that is a lovely, schmaltzy finale, albeit one a little undermined by Amy’s grouching. Threatening carol singers with a water pistol? Oh, come on! It just strikes the wrong note. This isn’t sassy, it’s spiky and Scrooge-like. To use Ms Pond’s own words against her: “It’s Christmas, you moron!” Thank goodness Rory’s there, his marvellously breezy reaction to the Doctor’s reappearance – “You’re not dead, then?” – helping to disperse that unhappy odour.

In the meantime, well done Madge for getting them all back together! It more than justifies her own happy ending, when Reg is returned from the dead. Happy crying for the Arwells, and even a happy tear for the Doctor. The nice, at Christmas, are duly rewarded, and hooray for that. Further still, in defiance of any suspicions Doctor Who’s festive episodes play out as a bit of an appendage to the main narrative, we get some honest-to-goodness plot development that’s going to stick with the show. To wit: The Ponds are back in our hero’s life and he’s back in theirs. For now, anyway…

On 22nd November, 1963 – the day before Doctor Who began – author CS Lewis passed away. The previous year, Head of BBC Serial Dramas Donald Wilson charged Alice Frick and Donald Bull of the BBC Survey Group with investigating the feasibility of creating a science fiction TV series. In their report, the duo made the snooty claim Lewis “pretentiously” used “the apparatus of SF in the service of metaphysical ideas”. But, this humbugging aside, it remains clear his Narnia books – and specifically the notion of a wardrobe as a portal to another world – actually provided huge inspiration for the programme which (after a fashion) resulted from Frick and Bull’s studies. The programme, in fact, that Lewis never got to see.

The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe is the first time Doctor Who has explicitly acknowledged this debt, but it’s by no means as close to the text as last year’s Dickens-themed A Christmas Carol. The gift box that hides a magic gateway, the 1940s setting, the juvenile adventurers and the snowy forest… is that pretty much it? Nonetheless, like the Narnia tales, Moffat’s story is excellent at evoking the feeling we’re being presented with a story steeped in folklore. The wooden king and the wooden queen who sit at the top and bottom of a tower – they feel drawn from some ancient fable. Or a logic puzzle in an old Doctor Who annual.

That the JCB-clad trio of Droxil (Bill Bailey), Billis (Arabella Weir) and Ven-garr (Paul Bazely) can tramp straight into this tableau is as good an example as any of the breadth the show can encompass. “Please say we can tell the difference between wool and side arms,” groans Droxil, prompting viewers at home to wonder who would ever actually say “side arms”. Well, we must suppose, a big hairy space harvester from Androzani Major in the year 5345, that’s who.

Incidentally, Androzani Major! What fun! It’s a shame we never got to see any of the three minus their helmets. It would have been good to know if those natty rat-tail hairdos were still all the rage in the Sirius System.

 The cliché when reviewing a Christmassy tale such as this is, at some point, to pull out the word ‘posset’ as a kind of metaphor to describe a concoction that’s got lots of lovely things in it. Readers, we are now at that point. Plus, it’s a useful conceit to round up all the details we haven’t been able to elegantly segue into the discussion thus far. Thing is, The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe really is a posset. A terrific posset, full of fantastic ingredients.

Although it’s one of the show’s more linear stories of late, it still sports at least one excellent feint, which slips out within the comedy of the Doctor’s back-to-front space helmet. It’s the moment when Madge picks the TARDIS lock. So funny and deflating for our hero, we never suspect that, actually, it really was just a police box she’d been tinkering with all the time. There’s also plenty of business packed into seemingly throwaway lines, like the Doctor claiming the house’s rear door is “broadly speaking, operational” and the world of chaos suggested by the clause in that sentence. Likewise, Billis’ concern, when she and her colleagues are pointing – ahem – side arms at Madge, that “this visual’s deteriorating.” Now there’s a lot of backstory. This tale even joins up the thought from A Good Man Goes to War that the Doctor’s name has contributed the word’s meaning to the universe, by bringing us the notion decorated trees are “an idea, echoing among the stars”. It’s a very pretty thought in this, one of the prettiest Doctor Who stories ever.

Well, that was Christmas, and it won’t surprise you to learn your DWM reviewer places disproportionate importance on the quality of the Doctor Who special when it comes to totting up how happy his own holidays have been. Courtesy of The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe, 2011 proved to be that much vaunted thing – the best Christmas ever!

Re-reading the review now, though, that final line – which is an echo of the final onscreen caption – does still feel a bit too loaded. 

If ever there was a programme that could resist the pressures of posterity, The Sarah Jane Adventures was it. Yeah, ‘was’. It’s horrid to be talking about it in the past tense, but there it is… Was.

Returning to TV for its final half-marathon, we older viewers couldn’t help but anticipate this series with a sense of melancholy. The chimneybreast in the attic, now parting only as a prelude to Mr Smith’s final fanfare. Every disapproving head-scratch from Haresh foreshadowing his last harrumph. Each of Clyde’s groansome gags counting up to the concluding page of his joke book. And there was Sarah Jane herself, with just a handful of soliloquies left to deliver to us under the stars.

But, what nonsense! Just like the four series, one pilot episode and one One Ronnie-starring Comic Relief special that preceded the final run, this year’s offerings are brimming with vitality and vigour. Any glum thoughts are impossible to sustain once we’re back on Bannerman Road. It makes fun of the notion these three stories could be interpreted as a kind of elegy. Because even in its ultimate hours, The Sarah Jane Adventures is just about that – adventures. It’s a show that champions living life to the full, trying your best, going for it… the here and now. So much so, we’ve slipped from the past to the present tense. And it feels much better.

Sky

The first story, Sky, gives us a glimpse of how SJA would have evolved had circumstances played fairer. It makes a sensible concession to the fact that this series has laudably allowed its young cast to grow up on screen. With Clyde and Rani in sixth form and Luke at university, there’s no-one of a CBBC-watching age left in the ensemble. Thus, Sarah Jane is gifted a new youngster, a talented but naïve ‘star child’ to bring up as her own.

It’s very much a retread of Luke’s own origin story, with an Alexis Colby-wannabe of a mum engineering an offspring’s creation for her own nefarious means. But that isn’t really an issue. The 12-year-old helps the show refocus on its core audience and allows the series to be introduced almost anew through her eyes. It’s a valid enough reason to repeat the concept – plus, the two characters’ similarity is actually addressed later in the run.

“Welcome to the Bat Cave!” joshes Clyde, as she ascends to the attic. He and Rani are no longer our feckless newbies, now they’re the seen-it-all-before older siblings. But, alas, this viewer didn’t warm to Sky quite as much as the rest of the gang. To be fair, they’ve all got years on her, so it’s little wonder she feels a bit stage school. Plus, being the new girl is always tricky, let alone rising to the challenge of working the “What’s pizza?” (and variants thereof) gag. So let’s not pile it on.

Instead we’ll pour on the cliché, and one of the truisms about The Sarah Jane Adventures is that it feels like Doctor Who of old. Sorry. Can’t put an interesting spin on that, because it just does. Aside from the 25-minute episodes and multipart stories, foes such as the Metalkind are exactly the sort of unsophisticated baddy the original series often brought us, back in the day. Their purpose is to stomp and slowly give chase. Plus, turn invisible when that’ll help the budget. They come with no other high-concept, except – maybe – to look a little bit awesome.

But it doesn’t start and finish there. Every SJA story is a morality tale. Phil Ford’s script brings us the Metalkind vs the Fleshkind, and the insanity (not to mention inanity) of racial conflict. This is what the Daleks vs the Thals might have looked like if they’d been conceived today… and told to carry out their skirmish in a combat zone annexed on one side by The Story of Tracy Beaker. “War is ended by people talking,” says Sarah Jane, ladling it on a mite too gloopily, but it’s still a worthwhile sentiment. Here’s hoping a least one playground punch-up has been diverted by its repetition.

That’s not to say the learning element is sequenced too high in the mix. Not at all. There are some terrific moments of action – that massive opening explosion in the scrapyard – and some fabulously naughty jokes – Rani exclaiming: ‘If I start asking Mum questions about how to look after a baby, she’ll totally freak!” This is The Sarah Jane Adventures taking care of business. Well almost. The arrival of the Shopkeeper and the Captain at the end only serves to leave us hanging. We’re told a revelation about who they are will come “all in good time”. But of course that will never be…

… Although your DWM reviewer has a theory. I’m fairly certain the Captain is actually the White Guardian in a new guise, one that represents the ultimate expression of his love for the aviary. As for his once black-clad counterpart, he’s now styling himself as the Trickster. Oh, it all makes sense, and I challenge you to prove me wrong, you whimpering wraiths!

The Curse of Clyde Langer

Phil Ford’s second script is an absolute beauty – and possibly the finest 50 minutes the show has ever brought us. Everything about it feels impressively honed. That Clyde’s opening address to camera (“Where were you the day of the storm?”) actually presages a moment later in the story is just the first of its many delights.

Here are all the strengths of SJA writ large. A tale that can bring a deftness of touch to the incalculably sad topic of homeliness, it evokes almost the entire debate in just one short exchange: “Why did she want money?” Sky asks when Clyde hands cash over to street girl Ellie. “Cos she’s a scrounger,” he replies. “Why did you give her some?” is the next question. “Cos it’s probably not her fault.” Superbly economical writing.

The story, obviously, belongs to Daniel Anthony’s Clyde, but it’s fascinating to see how those around him have defined his character. Daniel’s onscreen rapport with Anjli Mohindra (Rani) is never better, as they banter and trade insults in the early scenes (she flashing him the ‘Loser’ sign). The depth of his sadness, when that curse kicks in and Rani turns her back on Clyde, is superbly played. Similarly his encounters with Sarah Jane, and Elisabeth Sladen’s shockingly venomous portrayal of her character’s sudden surge of hatred. When Clyde later spots Sarah in the museum and realises: “I’m going to have to go,” the sense of resignation – coupled with the realisation he’s now utterly isolated – is tremendously affecting.

But it doesn’t stop there. In short order, we then see our hero in a genuinely threatening confrontation with his former friend Steve (no wisecracks here, or fun escape plans), before an equally harrowing encounter back home with his mother. “Mum! I love you! Please don’t do this!” Such plaintive words, and how loudly they must resonate with the core audience. It all speaks of a show in full pomp – scripts written to draw out every facet of the cast and the format, confident everything about SJA is equal to the challenge.

The second episode of the adventure tops even that, as it delves deeper into the subject of homelessness. Once again, the genius lies in the brevity. Ellie (a brilliantly ‘real’ portrayal from Lily Loveless) telling Clyde she ended up on the street because: “My mum married again. Let’s just say it didn’t work out for me.” It’s what’s left unsaid that chills. That she and Clyde build up a tentative romance and then are left estranged at the end of the story is astonishingly brave. The curse of Hetocumtek, be damned. This is the thing that will haunt us for years to come.

Fittingly, though – cos it is her show, after all – Sarah Jane gets the very best line. Surveying the cardboard city that’s become a refuge for her friend, she sighs, “The most alien world of all is right here.” Her impotence is exactly the right note for the programme to hit. One could speculate there would be some pressure to provide a more reassuring pay-off. This is kids’ TV, right? But it would have been horribly glib to cast poverty from our thoughts with a twist of the sonic lipstick.

The Man Who Never Was

From the urban psychodrama of The Curse of Clyde Langer, the final two episodes plonk us into the heart of Gareth Roberts-Land, and the nuttier end of town, to boot. Although Roberts has provided some of the series’ more elegiac stories (Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? and The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith both come to mind), he’s also brought us its most rumbustious efforts (Revenge of the Slitheen, Secrets of the Stars).

The Man Who Never Was is defiantly in the latter camp, presenting a slightly bonkers, slightly heightened world, and yet another tale that revolves around that stalwart of children’s drama: The latest craze! In this instance, that’s particularly well-timed; scenes of Joseph Serf portentously talking up his SerfBoard aired just days after Apple’s release of its own annoyingly grammatically-styled iPhone 4s. Plus, a software upgrade that had Appleytes fretting into the wee small hours when, in rather an SJA-like turn of events, their contacts blinked out of existence: “Everyone I know, gone!” (But seriously, Apple, once, I managed to restore my phone from back-up, iOS5 turned out to be smashing).

A lovely old runaround, the tale comes with oodles of added value. And not just the satire on the late Steve Jobs. There’s the obvious stuff, like one-eyed Munchkins, the Skullions, who are operating their own-brand version of the Teselecta, and the wickedly funny “GRAB HARRISON’S P-E-N… full-stop” gag. Plus, James Dreyfus’ John Harrison is sublime, a B-list baddy who’s only in it for the money and the tart put-downs (“I expected high-class industrial spies, not Mumsnet!”). Alongside all of that, there’s Peter Bowles as Sarah’s old acquaintance, smoothy Lionel Carsons. He’s underused, sure, but someone who encourages us to imagine a bit of saucy past for our heroine. How marvellous. I also particularly enjoyed Clyde and Rani attempting to second-guess the plot, speculating they were going to end up with people walking down the road chanting: “Serve the computer!”

But what this story is really about is reconciling the different generations in the Smith household, as Luke and Sky concede that even though they each essentially serve the same plot points, there’s room for ‘em both in this crazy old show.

After Image…

This review, you may have noticed, has so far gone light on talking about Elisabeth Sladen. That’s because, to me, it’s felt right to hold back my thoughts on her until this point. I want to consider her contribution to the Sarah Jane Adventures as a whole. Well, if I can.

As the series’ lead, one feels she set the pace all along. I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that all the glories and all the fun we’ve treasured over the years have been reflections of Elisabeth. This programme’s strength has come from cast and crew trying to be equal to her, and to Sarah Jane Smith.

However, that’s been a symbiotic relationship, the actress responding in kind with some beautiful work. In Sky, for example, there’s a lovely, poignant moment when she’s talking to Luke through videoconference. “Love you,” she offers, but he’s already disconnected and she rolls her shoulders as if huddling from the cold. Later in that adventure – and also in The Man Who Never Was – we see the flipside of Sarah Jane, refusing to be intimidated by Miss Myers or Harrison. She’s seen far worse! But nothing that affects her so profoundly as the destitution in The Curse of Clyde Langer.

Sarah Jane Smith is (let’s never say ‘was’) a character impossibly rich in detail, but one who has always felt deceptively uncomplicated. As a companion in Doctor Who, she was so successful she became the archetype for that role. All other TARDIS travellers are in her shadow. As a children’s hero in her own right, she just fits. It’s as though there’s always been a Sarah Jane in Ealing, shepherding a gang of young friends and saving the world.

All of this, all of the above, everything in fact, is thanks entirely to the constancy, devotion and craft of Elisabeth Sladen. Because of her, we will have Sarah Jane Smith with us… forever.

And finally from DWM #440, an ‘And Finally’ on the series. I’d asked Tom Spilsbury if I could pop in some sort of afterword, in part to make sure we weren’t ending on a bit of a damp  note (my previous review) but also because unlike any other run of the show since it returned, the season needed additional consideration as a whole. 

It was the year in which the Doctor didn’t die – and the most innovative series of Doctor Who since 2005. As such, it deserves an afterword, slid in here like a final tag scene in which the Time Lord furtively checks out his TARDIS screensaver of Amy’s pipes.

Opening with the two-part The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon this run moved the show from a series to serial format. It took critics a while to come to terms with the change, but for Steven Moffat, who’s talked about his excitement for “movie-sized ideas”, the 13-episode arc provided the – ahem – time and space for just such an approach.

The tease of killing off the Doctor, plus Amy’s Schrödinger’s pregnancy, provided much of the early impetus, but strained the serial structure as the bustle of weekly episodes resisted the additional layer of plot. All that could be achieved was to slide placeholders into the margins of stories – the Doctor checking the TARDIS monitor, Amy and Rory muttering on the staircase about mortality. However, at the points the arc moved defiantly into the foreground (A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song, the endings of The Almost People and Closing Time) it felt thrilling and truly epic. A satisfactory pay-off for the compromises taken along the way.

This year also saw the show’s core concepts explored with a new rigor. Central was the notion of the Doctor attempting to live down his legend, as though it had become a carbuncle on the format. Hmm. Not sure I buy this was something that needed to be addressed (I’m happy for the Time Lord’s repute to vary on the whim of whoever’s writing this week’s adventure) but it remained a legitimate line of enquiry, forcing our hero to face the consequences of his meddling. Better still, it’s resulted in what looks to be the reinstatement of our hero as an anonymous wanderer. The stranger in town.

While the Doctor has gone back to basics, things on board the TARDIS proved complex. The God Complex, in fact. More than The Doctor’s Wife – or even the arrival of the Doctor’s actual wife – it may still prove the pivotal moment of the year. Having realised the true, corrosive nature of his relationship with Rory and Amy, one wonders how our hero will ever allow himself another travelling companion.

What a crazy year it’s been, with the seemingly spurious mid-season break, vocal cameos from Tom Baker and David Tennant (bet you’d forgotten about them) and an onscreen appearance by the latter’s TARDIS. Some things feel as though they were dropped in the flurry (still not sure why there were pictures of Amy and her baby in Day of the Moon’s orphanage), some were perhaps fumbled (the Ponds’ weird calmness about the errant Melody) and some got lost along the way (Madame Kovarian’s Ainley-esque swagger came to naught), but there were many, many more wins. Included in these were Madame Vastra and Jenny, Idris, the triumphant return of Craig Owens, the audacious cliffhanger at the end of episode two, The God Complex (I really liked that one)… and, of course, the true story of River Song, which absolutely lived up to the legend.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we never see her again.

And we definitely won’t have another run of Doctor Who like this. True, sometimes its reach exceeded its grasp, but that’s been the scale of the show’s ambition this year. In many ways, it’s never risen higher.

Here we are – the final episode of the sixth series, and my review from DWM #440, one I found particularly difficult to write. A tricky thing, balancing out my disappointments with the finale, and all the things I liked about it. Did I succeed? Dunno. Maybe you can tell me. 

But end-of-season affairs always feel heightened – and not just in terms of the size of the plot. They’re also burdened with the expectation of being, well, better than average. That made it feel all the more cruel to pick out the bits I didn’t like so much.

Here we are on the morning after. And it was one helluva do. Thanks to that mid-series break, we’ve had double the number of event episodes of Doctor Who this year. Double the huge reveals, humongo twists and tantalising teases. These are now the programme’s core business, and business is booming, culminating in a story described by Steven Moffat himself as “probably the maddest ever”. You don’t sit back and watch The Wedding of River Song. It comes through the screen and pummels you. Right now I’m punch drunk.

However, I think the hangover is kicking in. Do I remember it correctly? In the midst of the madness? The marriage and stuff? Oh, I think I do. They killed off the Brigadier.  Down the phone. It’s an event that’s been precipitated by the sad passing of the inestimable Nicholas Courtney earlier in the year and in its own terms the revelation arrives at precisely the right moment for the episode. It plays out poignantly and with great dignity. It also provides sufficiently weighty impetus to convince the Doctor that even for him, time continues to march on. Unlike the poor old Brig.

But should this have happened at all? In my opinion, despatching the character Nicholas made legend – and, in particular, despatching him in the past tense and off-stage – isn’t the way his story should have ended. It’s a bout of tidying up too far in a tale that comes with a difficult remit to make sense and resolve pretty much every dangling plot point from the last two years. However, as we’ve come to expect from Moffat, this is far more than an exercise in dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. It’s more like jumping the q’s and flicking the v’s.

There’s a wonderful sense of abandonment as the adventure flits across different narrative strands, with the bedraggled, beardy Doctor (Mattweazle, anyone?) cuing up the clips package for Churchill. The feeling of school’s out emanates from the very first frame with that crazy patchwork of a London replete with floating cars, steam trains and pterodactyls. And Charles Dickens on BBC Breakfast, nattering to Bill and Sian about his upcoming Christmas special. It’s so postmodern a joke, if you listen hard you can hear Heidegger and Derrida taking spades to the earth in the groundbreaking ceremony for a new university built solely to run philosophy courses dedicated to exploring the mille feuiles-like properties of this metatextual funny.

The concept of all of history occurring at the same time is entirely ridiculous and completely fun. As a visual indication the stakes are higher than ever, it works very well indeed. Then, quite rightly, it’s put safely into the background, because it doesn’t bear a second’s scrutiny. The momentum instead comes via the Doctor’s journey from set piece to set piece, which unfolds a little like a night at the improv: Here we are at the docks of Calisto B – make fun with this Dalek eyestalk! Now you’re playing, umm, let’s call it ‘live chess’ with a Norse god! And now you’re in a dungeon and there’s a talking head in a box… see what sort of business you can come up with for those skulls.

By the 19th minute we’re back at Lake Silencio and wondering how come we’ve already reached the big finish. At which point the story turns round… and everyone’s wearing eye patches. (It really would have been great if there was a dedication to Nicholas Courtney at the start of the episode).

Here, I think, is where The Wedding of River Song hits a problem area. At the end of last week’s adventure, where we saw River being positioned to shoot the Doctor, there was a huge sense of excitement because now we were getting down to business. But even then, the fervour lay in the fact it was all to come. We’ve been teased about this since Easter, our expectations are sky-high. This is gonna be incredible.

Living up to that is even more impossible than a space-gun wielding, lake-dwelling astronaut. For the first time in its history, I think Doctor Who put itself in an unwinnable situation.

In part, this has been down to Moffat himself. He’s educated us to be attentive, to believe nothing. And even though he (and the Doctor and River) may lie, he does play fair. Everything we need to know is on the screen. But, Sensei Steven, you taught us too well. Upon my first viewing, and the bit where the Teselecta’s Captain Carter offers his assistance and the Time Lord seems to refuse, I was already mentally playing back the revisited version of that scene, which I knew would be presented to us come the story’s denouement. Others would undoubtedly be surprised by the revelation – but I’d spoilered myself.

In a broader fashion, this year has also prepared us for the final sleight of hand with the duplicate Doctor. I’m guessing inadvertently so. But these 13 episodes have been uncommonly preoccupied with doppelgangers and alternate versions of our time travellers. Granted, smart money was on the Ganger Doctor showing up to take the fall in Utah, but the fact it was the Teselecta instead is just nuance. It could have been an Auton, it could have been Matt Smith’s unwell waxwork liberated from TARDIS-guarding duties at the Doctor Who Experience in Earls Court (where, by the way, there’s a terrific sign that reads: ‘TOILETS BEHIND THE PANDORICA’). We’d been primed for a replica, and that’s what we got. There was no further twist, no final flip-flop to say, ah, you’d been set up to expect a double for the Doctor, but actually…

That it all played out as it was signalled to was perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot. The reason, in fact, why it’s taken me a second viewing and a few days’ pondering to try and decide what I made of it all. Yes, it was good, it was fun – definitely lots of fun. However we’ve been coached to believe that this year Doctor Who is all about how it was going to end. The very shape of the series drew you to that conclusion.

Initially, a sense of being nonplussed is what lingers. But during the process of reflecting upon the story for these very pages, I’m starting to see past it. How can one not have huge regard for an adventure in which the Doctor marries, not as a ruse, nor under sufferance, nor because he guilelessly shares a cup of cocoa with someone – but because he wants to? That plays fast and loose with almost every preconception of his character. But it didn’t bother me. It’s a superb moment. Better still, the joke we all shared that River Song was the Time Lord’s wife… it turns out to be true!

This is also the episode where we see the definitive take on “Pond, Amy Bond”, recast as a 007-style agent who’s happy to acknowledge her inner bitch and deposit baddies with a crippling bon mot: “River Song didn’t get it all from you – sweetie”. Plus we get to see her relationship with Rory on fast-forward. Even in an insane universe peopled with ghosts from the past, present and future, the Williamses will always find each other.

But the best thing of all? Maybe the best thing ever? The reclamation of Doctor Who. Previous series finales have been criticised for bailing out by whacking a metaphorical reset button. That’s kind of what Steven Moffat is doing here, but in a bolder, more conceptual fashion. Sure, I don’t really understand how a duplicate of the Doctor can in effect ‘dupe’ time, but I do very much like the notion our traveller is returning to first principles. “I’ve got too big, Dorium, too noisy,” he tells his torso-less pal. “Time to step back into the shadows.”

Heidegger and Derrida. Remember them from way back when? We left them somewhere around the fourth paragraph. They’ve now abandoned their shovels. They’re fleeing! The final hollering of “Doctor WHO?!” – the programme’s name, no less – and Matt Smith smiling right down the lens to all of us at home has taken the concept of postmodern and smashed it through the fourth wall. Meta is suddenly a big rampaging sci-fi monster, and the legend of Doctor Who is let loose.

It means our Time Lord is now free to continue his adventuring, fleet-of-foot minus the weight of the last 24 months of mythologizing (barring whatever The Fall of the Eleven is, of course). Really can’t wait to see him again.

Not really a huge amount to say about this one from DWM #440. Must… think… of… enough… text… to… flow… neatly… around… TARDIS… graphic!

This is a piece where I quite obviously show up with a conceit in my back pocket, unwrap the thing, then tidy it away again. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a review, too.

I’m nursing an undeveloped theory about Gareth Roberts, writer of Closing Time. Not sure where I’m going with it, but it’s essentially this: Gareth Roberts is modern day Doctor Who’s Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Like them, he doesn’t often get to write the glamour episodes and as a result lives somewhere around the middle numbers in end-of-season polls. But, in much the same way the show’s script editors in the 1970s knew to rely upon ‘The Bristol Boys’, he’s all but the programme’s unknown stuntman today.

There’s a reliability about Roberts, and I don’t mean that as a sneaky synonym for mediocrity. You can be assured his stories will be very funny, very quotable, very well crafted and just solid Doctor Who. I imagine, even now, Steven Moffat is in his laboratory (c’mon, it’s not like he hasn’t got one) poring over Gareth scalp dust to culture little cell-sized Robertses he can inject into his writing team. Then they can get busy on the in-between episodes, while the nucleus of this swarm himself indulges in all the first nights and finales.

As I considered committing this thesis to print, the inevitable doubts crept in. But then I picked up my notebook and saw I’d jotted down the following, which is said during the first few minutes of this sequel to 2010’s The Lodger – “Oh, you’ve redecorated. I don’t like it.” The Eleventh Doctor quoting his second incarnation. His second incarnation from Baker and Martin’s The Three Doctors (1972), no less. Contact has been made!

In much the same way the Bristolians’ scripts felt as if they existed in their own continuum – populated by catchphrase-spouting scary monsters (and soliloquising super creeps) – Roberts’ Doctor Who takes place a couple of steps sidewise from the franchise. His Time Lord is more obtuse and alien than our regular Doctor, someone who continues to be mystified by Earth’s 21^st century social mores, proffering air-kisses to babies and unknowingly winding up in a discussion with Nurse Gladys Emmanuel off of Open All Hours about acceptable nomenclatures for gay couples. He’s also guilelessly likeable – absolutely adored by everyone he meets.

One could argue this is a more ‘realistic’ interpretation of the character (should we ever beg for one), because in both The Lodger and Closing Time he’s arrived in a version of our world as close as Doctor Who ever gets to the real thing. Against that, the Time Lord is bound to seem weird. He is a man whose first mode of address when entering a bedroom is to declare: “Whoever you are, get off this planet!” and then take things from there. When the Doctor muses that he “gave it 110 percent” he does so as though experimenting with the unique linguistic tics of a bygone age, much as he might venture a “pip pip!” should he be hanging around the Edwardian era.

Roberts, a former soap opera script editor, is predictably fantastic at slipping nuggets of suburbia into the fantasy. What other writer would name an off-screen character something so deflatingly zeitgesty as Melina or convincingly evoke the parlance of Britain’s Got Talent (talk of Nina’s “emotional journey”) while handing us a plot reveal? Make no mistake, these episodes are really going to date – but that’s because they’re so good at evoking right now.

The Doctor’s mate, Craig Owens, embodies all of the above. Not only is he played by comic actor de jour James Corden, but he also bickers, frets and sulks as only modern man can. I particularly enjoyed his pouting, “Don’t have a go at me, just because I don’t know their names,” after encountering the Cybermat. Corden, it has to be said, continues to be terrific in this role. And Bonnie Langford beware, he’s a great little screamer. But more than that, he provides a convincing confidant for our hero. Craig’s someone who’s not especially smart or brave, but well equipped to go on his own – erm – emotional journey to save the day.

This time around, that means he ends up where perhaps too many Doctor Who stories have gone of late… In an expression of paternal love.

Let’s take a moment out, here, to ponder what’s with all the fatherly fretting? From errant dad Captain Avery in The Curse of the Black Spot, to hapless Alex in Night Terrors, via The Almost People’s Ganger Jimmy phoning home to junior. Perhaps all this is sowing the seeds for the next big plot switch, as Fathers 4 Justice come sploshing out of Lake Silencio, spraying silly-string over the Silence.

All this yakking, and nary a mention of the Cybermen. Truth be told, they’re not especially well served in the story and you’ll doubtlessly be docked points at your next ‘Fan Olympiad’ when you forget to list it as one of their adventures. Here, they’re men of Meccano, a generic build of a baddy. Even their grisly cyber-conversion process is rendered bloodless and reversible. Shame, cos of late the Cybermen have looked creepier than ever, lurking in the shadows and sporting funky rust and gnarled armour. However, over the last year or so the series has rather been treating them as crash test dummies. Their re-emergence as flagship felons must come, and soon.

It’s not a big hit on Closing Time, though. The monsters are neither here nor there. This is a tale of friendship and nostalgia, the Doctor coming to Craig so that he may revel one last time in memories of those days when he always won. Matt Smith’s performance as he says goodbye to his mate before signing off to those kids in the street – “I was here to help” – is quiet and sad and dignified. It feels like a swansong.

And then… off we go! We’re all getting kitted up for the big finale. Madame Kovarian finally making her play, River Song donning that impossible astronaut suit. A huge day is ahead for us all.

Thanks, though, Gareth, for taking our hand and guiding us so entertainingly along the road to this point. You looked after us, made us laugh and, I guess, you made us cry a little too (the Doctor clapping eyes on Rory and Amy, but separated from them across a shop floor as emphatically as a parallel universe separated him from Rose). Solid, sterling, stirring stuff. And, just like Bob and Dave, you even snuck a crappy robot dog in there too.

Here’s fun (perhaps). Obviously, a blog like this is a wholly self-regarding project.

So, in that spirit, I’m reproducing here a couple of pages of notes I took while reviewing The God Complex. My routine, should you care, when writing about Doctor Who is to watch the episode once (usually in my lunchbreak, via the BBC’s preview site for journalists) without taking notes. Just to give me a chance to enjoy the thing. Then, I’ll watch again the following day – and take an insane amount of notes – in insane handwriting. Which brings us to figure 1…

My first draft of notes for The God Complex

The 'rationalised' notes

Yes, it can get a bit befuddled.

With that in mind, I quite often – but not always – ‘rationalise’ my scribbles. This can help me get a clearer picture of what I want to say… but it’s a process I loathe. It feels, I guess, like having to write a plot outline. However, once done, it’s terribly helpful.

The thing on the left is what that stage looks like. Click it for a larger version.

And that, I guess, is that.

Well, kind of. I do keep a sporadic diary of sorts, and on September 14, I wrote, referring to this review: “I can’t remember the last one of these that took me so long to write. Even now, it isn’t there. I can’t see it through the fog”. The fog, probably, of too many notes.

Anyway, this is from DWM #440.

I’m feeling the rapture. That’s because The God Complex by Toby Whithouse is one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. What makes it so? Answering that is, obviously, the business of this review. But it’s going to be tough. I’ll be tempted to genuflect, to gush. It’s an exquisitely intricate adventure, I fear I might end up chasing it down a maze of telescoping rhetoric. But I’ll do my best.

This is a tale you all but imbibe. Director Nick Hurran mashes both literal and metaphorical visuals in a way we’ve never seen before in the programme. As a result, the episode has a tempo of its own, almost subliminally flitting between onscreen text, narration, CCTV footage, hazy dolly zooms and addresses to camera – it’s a complete collage. To contrast this, the cast give a measured, naturalistic performance that’s out of step with the situation. While the reality is heightened, their reactions are, if anything, dampened. It’s a brilliant mix, and I think Curran (who also did an extraordinary job on The Girl Who Waited) is this year’s big find.

Oh, I’m just going to say it: Praise him.

What I love about The God Complex is it’s an adventure that does things Doctor Who has done many times before, while also doing things Doctor Who should probably never do again. In the simplest terms, this is a base under siege story – albeit one that’s cut down to the third act, meaning the baddy is already inside. Like many episodes of late, it also culminates in the revelation an automated computer program is the culprit, rather than any singular monster.

In addition, there’s another, more subtle echo of the recent past. Of Whithouse’s own scripts, in fact. Both School Reunion and The Vampires of Venice gave us a showboat scene in which the Doctor meets his foe and they pace and they talk; whether that was with Mr Finch across the school swimming pool, or bartering with Rosanna Calvierri for the future of Venice. Here, that moment is replayed as Time Lord and Minotaur meet in the lobby… but this time the discussion plays out with the protagonists only ever glimpsed in mirrors or through water, and with the superb conceit of the Doctor having to paraphrase his counterpart’s responses. The clashing of two characters realised as a monologue is clever, audacious stuff.

However, what’s truly new and dangerous in The God Complex is the way it delves deeper than ever into the psyche of our lead character (who does he see inside room 11?) and leavens from him an admission of hubris that’s far more damning than any we’ve witnessed. Planet of the Spiders (1974) showed a Doctor willing to die for his sins, but here, Eleven confesses to Rita he’s been wrong to lure companions into danger with promises of the whole of time and space to play in – and then blithely proceeds to make exactly that offer to her.

Indeed, it’s through the junior doctor we see a very different side to our hero. “Why’s it up to you to save us?” she asks, positing what’s historically gone unsaid. When she then loses her life, her parting shot of, “Goodbye Doctor, thanks for trying,” is pretty much the most humbling remark anyone’s ever made to him. Thanks for trying? As though failure was always implicit? Rita’s someone who is never given any reason to have faith in the Time Lord. Yep, that’s new.

It’s easy, however, to keep confidence with Whithouse’s story, even when it treads near to the cloven prints of the wonderfully rubbishy The Horns of Nimon (1979). It also follows a thread laid down by another predecessor, but this time, I’m guessing, is less conscious in doing so… In The Curse of Fenric (1989), the Doctor manipulated Ace’s feelings so she would lose faith in him, branding her – in the show’s first real attempt at the kind of heart-wrenching drama that’s now its stock in trade – “an emotional cripple”. Devastating stuff, but quickly nullified when the Time Lord subsequently confessed he didn’t mean a word of it. A trite epilogue, in which Ace then took a dip in Deep Waters, dealt with any remaining unresolved angst. But more than two decades on, in the here and now, the series has the maturity to realise that once wrenched out of the closet, you can never really tidy away those kind of feelings. Particularly when what the Doctor tells Amy is true. He only brought her along because he wanted to be adored – at last, we get to his guilty secret.

This exploration of the Doctor’s increasingly toxic relationship with his current travelling companions has been surreptitiously simmering since The Eleventh Hour, but Whithouse’s story also taps into some of this year’s other unfolding themes. That same scene between the Doctor and Amy subtly calls back to our hero’s battles against his own reputation. In A Good Man Goes To War we saw civilisations divide in the Time Lord’s name, but here, it’s just one girl who’s caught up in the myth. Earlier in the adventure, Amy assured Gibbis the Doctor is “gonna save you”, but all that’s got to stop. In fact, the legend of Amy Pond also needs to be spiked. “Amy Williams,” says the Doctor, underscoring the reality of the situation, “it’s time to stop waiting.”

And so Amy and Rory leave the TARDIS.

Well… kind of. At the time of writing, I haven’t seen the following episodes (to discover what happens when I do, turn the page!). But I’m certain this isn’t the last of the Ponds. However, it’s unlikely they’ll merit a finer exit than this. Rory’s growing disquiet over the last couple of weeks with the Doctor’s conduct is coupled with an ultimate realisation that our mad man in a box is rather like another sort of man with a box – a pallbearer. “Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone,” quips that beaky nurse from Leadworth, “I have an overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin”. It’s a good line, and one that hints Rory’s finally lost his faith in the time traveller. It’s also well suited to a story in which the corpses – the accepted collateral damage of the Time Lord’s adventures – are actually laid out for us all to see.

Clearly, there’s only one way Amy and Rory can get out of here alive and this, indeed, is where everything’s been heading. When the moment does come, the weight of what’s gone before finally exerts itself. There’s no other option – for any of them.

I loved how that was made implicit in what the characters didn’t say. Amy joshing that they’re being turfed off the timeship due to a disagreement over the dishes; it’s precisely the kind of diverting, silly banter people revert to in extremis. We rarely talk about the big stuff, particularly with friends. We talk around it. Similarly, the last lonely shots of the Doctor, almost too scared to fix his eyes away from the console and take in his now lonely TARDIS presents another low-key pay-off. It’s quiet and all the more affecting for it.

But, steady! I have a gripe! And it’s something that’s been concerning me over the last few episodes – the uneasy fudging of Amy and Rory’s missing baby. This is a huge, huge issue, something that should always be at the forefront of the Ponds’ thoughts. But it’s never really been convincingly addressed over the run, and Amy’s flippant comment here that Melody should “visit her old mum sometime” doesn’t cut it. It’s the one truly dud note, and forces me to conclude that a storyline of this nature has proved too big and raw a kind of a drama to successfully cut in between the jeopardy and jokes of Doctor Who.

Well, there it is. For me, it’s the only shadow that falls across The God Complex. I can sing the praises of every other aspect of the production, from Murray Gold’s amazing satanic muzak score, to Michael Pickwoad’s travelsick Crossroads motel set, and Amara Karan’s show-stopping performance as the spirited and freethinking Rita. That’s quite a feat on her part, by the way, particularly when she’s competing not just with our regulars, but David Walliams got up as Mole from The Wind in the Willows. Gibbis is fascinating, though, isn’t he? Beginning the story as its comedy quotient, before turning into its most malevolent force (the Doctor remarks that the creature’s cowardice is “sly, aggressive”) and then, most unfairly, becoming its sole survivor from the guest cast.

 Wow. What an amazing 45 minutes. I think, unlike the guests in this creepy establishment, my critical faculties have now pretty much checked out. Doctor Who is always good, but it’s not always truly great… Alright, it mostly is. But, nonetheless stories like this, marshalled along by Steven Moffat, Toby Whithouse and Nick Curran, still serve to remind me, that here in 2011 I really, really, really believe in Doctor Who.

From DWM #439. It’s yet another review where the last line calls back to the first. However, when I made a grab for that opening quote I didn’t have much of an idea how I was going to play with it. The notion of using it again came later. Sorry, it’s just too handy a trick.

By the time I’d written about Let’s Kill Hitler and Night Terrors, both for this issue, I was quite squeezed on word count for The Girl Who Waited. Which was a good thing. If I’m given lots of room to write about an emotive episode, my prose can get overwrought.

“Rory, I love you. Now save me! Go on!”

Whereas Mark Gatiss’ Night Terrors was a celebration of the Doctor Who we’ve always known, Tom MacRae’s The Girl Who Waited is all about the Doctor Who we know right now.

His is a story which is assuredly representative of the series in its 2011 incarnation. It is, in fact, a tale much like Let’s Kill Hitler, in that it orbits only our TARDIS team. There’s no mandate to vanquish a monster or depose a despot. This isn’t all of time and space, it’s much smaller than that.

Which, obviously, makes it much bigger. Because this is family business.

In this year’s Doctor Who, a theme has emerged as across almost back-to-back adventures we’ve been presented with variant aspects of Amy Pond. We’ve seen the Ganger Pond, the Teselecta Pond, the Peg Doll Pond and, of course, Amelia Pond. This week brought us the scariest of the lot. Clench, people, because thanks to a certain oversized prop, we are literally through the looking glass here. Beware! Menopausal Pond!

Forgive my glibness. It feels even more misplaced than normal. That’s because The Girl Who Waited isn’t about jokes or capers. No, it’s a shiny, inviolate thing that shrugs off silliness. Good heavens, it even turns the Macarena into a lament for love lost. A cerebral tale of disparate time streams, where effect comes before cause, this story is precision tooled. As, indeed, is Karen Gillan’s performance.

Ahead of this series’ return, Matt Smith made a sterling job in PR-ing this particular episode. “Karen gives her finest performance of the series so far,” he teased the press. “She’s spell-bindingly good in it.” At that, your DWM reviewer readied himself for a bravura turn, full of sound and fury, not to mention real snot and real spit. However, what Karen gives us is something far cleverer.

Her portrayal of Older Amy is subdued. And that just makes it all the more heart-breaking, because here is the most vibrant character in the show, now blunted. She’s a woman who’s had to shut down in order to survive both the physical dangers of The Twostreams Facility and the emotional tumult of being let down so badly. As a result, accusative lines such as, “You didn’t save me,” aren’t played with hysteria. Instead there’s resignation. “I hate the Doctor”, says Older Amy plainly, and our Time Lord – with his silly hair and silly plans and silly waggling fingers – suddenly seems small.

This Amy is the girl who waited, but the girl who lost her life in the process. Even in her body language there’s a sense that something’s died. The way she won’t look Rory in the eye for fear of confronting something, or the moment when he moves to put those glasses on her face, then realises such intimacy isn’t appropriate and hands them to her instead. It’s wonderfully sad.

To paraphrase Amy’s plea to her older self, The Girl Who Waited is something that when you first experience it is so beautiful, but then five minutes later… well, gosh, no, it’s not dull as a brick. Absolutely not! But it’s kind of desolate. Almost as though the white heat of pure sci-fi – wherein someone can ponder upon the legitimacy of defying “destiny, causality, the nexus of time” – burns out the sentiment. “You’re Amy, he’s Rory.” Sure, that’s epic and so is their love for one another, but it’s the cerebral decision to close the door on Older Amy that ultimately defines this tale.

And that, let me be clear, is not a criticism. A study of emptiness, from the visuals to the voice, MacRae’s story has progressed the show’s recent thought experiments with the nature of time, while also giving us a new take on space – the one that can exist between people.

“Rory, I love you. Now save me! Go on!” Ultimately Rory saved Amy, didn’t he? But he also did go on – without her.

This review took me just a couple of hours, the quickest I’ve ever written for the magazine. As such, I don’t have a huge amount to add, other than recalling that I originally had that first line as: “Dolls. Shudder! Dolls are scary!” But then realised I was aping the rather staccato and repetitive delivery that Doctor Who – and a lot of BBC shows at the moment – use to connote they’re saying something light-hearted. So I changed it. 

Sorry, not much of an anecdote. Anyway, this is from DWM #439.

Dolls. Shudder! They’re scary.

And they always have been, at least on TV. Whether that’s the imperious Hamble on Play School, the disconsolate clown (clowns, by the way, are evil) caught in aspic with the Test Card Girl and an unresolved game of noughts and crosses, or the tragedy of Bagpuss’ remnant ragdoll Madeleine, who leads the singing but can never get up from her wicker chair to join the dance.

It’s almost like a race memory, isn’t it? That we find these little imposter-people unsettling. A race memory that began in a child’s bedroom.

There are few Doctor Who stories that are as blatant as Night Terrors in setting out to dish up – in the memorable words of Mary Whitehouse – “tea-time brutality for tots”. This is all about the scares. It’s a love letter to growing up caught in the terrifying but gleeful glower of Doctor Who on the telly. It’s hiding under the sheets from giant maggots, or catching the silhouette of Sutekh the Destroyer flitting between the wardrobe and the door. All the while you’re praying, “Please save me from the monsters”. Things writer Mark Gatiss very probably did.

The concept of the Doctor stepping into a child’s bedroom and battling their fears is pure wish fulfilment. That he does exactly this in the story, and then confirms monsters are real, is petrifying. Shouldn’t he be the one to tell us everything is going to be okay? Gatiss must have been rubbing his hands. How come no one’s done this in the show before? It was the Doctor who opened the door to those night time terrors in the first place. Finally, he’s being made to deal with them.

In the character of George, played brilliantly and unprecociously by Jamie Oram, we have an everychild. (Fitting, actually, once the revelation about his true identity comes out.) With his saucer eyes and stripy pyjamas, he’s an archetype, reacting in horror on behalf of all us as Koquillion shadows creep across the cupboard. His interplay with the Doctor is written in a nicely restrained manner, the Time Lord never quite comfortable with the encounter – even though there’s more understanding between the two than there is when our hero talks to mum and dad (he’s still doing that clumsy air-kissing thing upon meeting Clare). My favourite exchange is when the Doctor boasts of the sonic screwdriver’s many attributes. “Please may I see the other stuff?” asks George in a whisper. “You may,” comes the reply.

True, the final reveal that the eight-year-old is actually an intergalactic cuckoo does undermine the magic of the Time Lord visiting an ordinary boy, but that’s only in retrospect. Let us not think too long on that.

Night Terrors is also notable for marking the first time the Eleventh Doctor and pals have materialised in hi-rise Britain. The days of Rose Tyler and the Powell Estate feel, quite significantly, distant. Almost like something from a different franchise. Rory knows they don’t belong, and refers to the locale as “EastEnders land,” while Amy reasons: “It can’t all be planets and history and stuff”.

And yet this milieu feels alien. It’s interesting the way director Richard Clark has his cameras gently hedging around the urban landscape as the story begins, bringing us small vignettes of life, as if we need a primer into the block’s eco-system.

By contrast, the inside of George’s banished dolls’ house feels more familiar to this iteration of Doctor Who. It’s all faked reality and moving shadows – automata striding the corridors. The Peg Dolls are a wonderfully creepy visual with their lank hair and chipped paintwork. The moments when landlord Purcell and Amy both join their number are supreme instances of body horror, calling to mind Doctor Constantine’s transformation back in The Empty Child. But, in my opinion, supplanting it with the further twist that both end up as caricatured approximations of themselves. Blank eyes, blank mouths.

God, dolls are scary.

Running through all of this (literally) is Daniel Mays as George’s father, Alex. In many ways it’s not much of a role for this talented actor. His lot is to be a buffer upon which the Doctor can bounce exposition. Worse for him, he only becomes a true protagonist at the point the whole story opts to pivot on his one, quite arbitrary action. Thematically, Alex’s acceptance of his Pinocchio son makes sense, and has been programmed into the tale from the start. But dramatically, it’s a bit of a dampener. He’s the man who presses the great big ‘off’ switch and shuts down the adventure. Shame. Up until that point it was all tick-tocking along terrifically well.

“Was I…?” Wonders Amy, blearily emerging from the lift. “Yeah”, cuts in Rory, with the implication that we’ll never speak of this again. And off go the TARDIS crew.

Small victories like this are important to Doctor Who. I like the fact that, essentially, in Night Terrors the Time Lord was battling to save – not the whole of time and space – but Mum, Dad and George. The fact that the time ship will, on occasion, still make a house call is something that should help all of us sleep a little more soundly tonight.

This is from DWM #439, and is probably one of the least effusive reviews of Let’s Kill Hitler that’s out there. Should that matter? It’s tempting to make something of it, certainly. To use it to trumpet the magazine’s independence and freedom to criticise. But then I guess that can lead you up a dark alley, becoming overly negative in your writing simply to deflect any accusation of toadying. That would be stupid. So, hopefully, I haven’t ever done that. And I always end each piece on a positive note.

But, yes, LKH didn’t thrill me as much as what was to follow. (See? Positive note.)

Doctor Who is Reich back atcha! It’s puttin’ on the Blitz! It’s… Actually Let’s Kill Hitler is nothing like that.
From that excitable rat-a-tat-tat title, your reviewer expected all guns blazing as the series returned from – and it still feels weirdly American to say this – its mid-season break. I was primed for a little Gott in Himmel!, something akin to an old copy of Warlord comic. Instead, pals, we got The Beezer.

This, upon reflection, is a good thing. The Doctor earnestly tangling with the dark forces of fascism would serve neither the character nor the subject. This isn’t a Virgin New Adventures novel. This is Saturday night. Better, then, to poke fun at Der Führer.

That, of course, being for the five minutes or so he was actually in it.

Because, despite the title being invoked by Mels in a pleasingly “Whoever she was, I must have scared The Living Daylights out of her” fashion, the titular tyrant was barely present in this story. Once he’d been bundled into a cupboard by Rory, the little chap with the hair flick – and indeed the whole of Nazi Germany – became a near irrelevance. Just a backdrop glimpsed through a window.

Delivering something other than our expectations is becoming a bit of a theme for this year’s series. But perhaps we should have – ahem – expected that. Because: Rule 1) The Doctor lies. The TARDIS’ state of temporal grace, which defuses weaponry? “A clever lie,” as the Time Lord confesses. But there’s also a rule 1a). Doctor Who, the show, lies. And a 1b)! Steven Moffat lies. “I lie repeatedly and continually,” he confessed to press and fans following the episode’s premiere at London’s British Film Institute. “I find it by far the easiest way to communicate.”

And so Let’s Kill Hitler turned out, ultimately, to be a giant fib. Because in actuality, this was an episode in which four Doctor Who characters got busy sorting through Doctor Who plot points. Lord knows what my mum made of it, as bits of admin from long deceased tales like Forest of the Dead (that thing River whispered in the Doctor’s ear) and The Time of Angels (her ability to pilot the TARDIS) were tidied up. Actually, dear old Mum probably had a ball. Because whatever else Let’s Kill Hitler was – and wasn’t – it was lots of fun.

Something I’ve especially enjoyed about this incarnation of Doctor Who is that it really chases after concepts and stories that are uniquely Doctor Who. The giant angry eyeball that was the Atraxi, Spitfires in space, an alien life support mechanism in the shapely shape of siren, a baby that turns into blancmange – you wouldn’t see that in Waterloo Road. Or even Star Trek. Ditto an adventure in which the Numskulls decide to hunt down war criminals. What other programme would you bring you such a gloriously daft conceit?

And they really are the Numskulls, by the way, who first appeared in the aforementioned and now defunct British funny paper The Beezer sometime around 1962. The bit when Harriet rushes up to the Eye Dept to take a peep outside? Pure Numskullery. I should really check the adventure again to see if the crew ever refer to any of the forms the Teselecta adopts as “Our Man”, the given Num-de-plume in the comics for the host body.

Mind you, the Numskulls never had anyone quite like the brilliantly laidback Captain Carter, who memorably tells Harriet, “Get your fat one up there,” as she heads aloft, and commands the bridge with a cup of tea at his right hand – his name written across the mug. Carter’s obstinate normalcy just heightens the madness. And talking of madness, how about those Antibodies whose default setting is to kill whomever doesn’t possess a security pass? Including the crew. For those of you who’ve ever arrived at work only to realise you’ve left your swipe card at home… bit of a shock.

It would be perverse, however, for us to linger on the peculiarities of life on board the Teselecta. Because this is really the story of River Song – who she is and how she came to be. Beginning to get a feel, now, for the shape of Moffat’s storytelling, it perhaps wasn’t such a huge surprise Mels was revealed as the character’s prior incarnation. The script, it seemed, couldn’t quite bear to contain the revelation, having her demand that Amy and Rory “cut to the Song” early in the episode. What was truly striking, however, was the chance to see a different interpretation of this child of the TARDIS.

Forgive me, Nina Toussaint-White. Your playing of Mels was enthusiastic and full of life and vigour… but it did underscore how much charisma Alex Kingston brings to that role. Or, in short: wasn’t Mels terrifically annoying? Without that winning Kingston sparkle and naughtiness, she just felt like the kind of liberty-taking toxic best friend you eventually realise you’ve gotta ditch. In this form, the character’s a streak of selfish mayhem, clocking up bothersome incident after bothersome incident. Too much hassle. That bullet with her name on couldn’t come quick enough.

This non-linear realisation of River has proved a gift for Ms Kingston. Here we see the character back at the beginning, taking baby-steps, pouting and performing her own variant of that standard post-regenerative hair do inspection. Throughout all this, Alex gives us a squealing, giggly and (even more) reckless River than we’ve ever seen.

Not for long though.

She all-but literally grows in stature during her brilliant tit-for-tat confrontation with the Doctor. It’s here bluff turns to double, then triple, then quadruple bluff. It’s the duo’s first dance, one in which she-who-will-be River proves she can go toe-to-toe without raising a sweat. Further moments of becoming follow, and they’re fascinating, if at times a little too much of a tidying-up operation. I loved River’s “Spoilers, what spoilers?” question, plus the scene near the episode’s end when the Doctor all but retreads his memorable lament for Romana in 1981’s Warriors’ Gate. River won’t merely be “absolutely fine”. No, as he says, “She will be amazing,” at which point he leaves her a TARDIS-themed journal beside her hospital bed. Lovely. However, the coda on top of all that, in which we witness her enrolling for an archaeology course, felt a little too much of the neophyte Indiana Jones picking up his fedora, his whip and that scar on his chin. We don’t always need to see everything.

Of course, alongside the elucidation of Professor Song’s formative years, this story also gave us glimpses of Amy and Rory’s early days together. Hmm. The latter day Rory has increasingly become an empowered protagonist within the show, and that’s good. He socks Nazis in this adventure like he’s a veritable Lord Peter Flint. And yet, I still felt angry by the portrayal of him as a child, continually left to hang by Amy. He deserves better than that, surely? One can’t quite help but feel that if it had been his back garden the TARDIS had crashed into all those years ago, the order of business for the Doctor would have been to help his new young friend with the pageboy haircut to escape the influence of his red-headed tormentor. I dunno. That stuff just didn’t feel right to me. I really don’t like the Amy we witnessed in those scenes…

Let’s Kill Hitler, as I’ve intimated above, is an episode very much concerned with Doctor Who talking to itself. It’s telling that the action barely ventures outdoors, and instead we had introspective scenes in which the Doctor calls up visions of former travelling companions and reflects on how they make him feel. Namely, “Guilt… More guilt!” Like the stories that preceded it, before the summer holidays, it’s taken as a given that at this point viewers of the series are wholly invested in it. It’s only we who can appreciate this joining of dots between disparate plot points. Penny in the air. Penny drops. For us.

It was great at that BFI screening. Sorry that sounds like a boast, cos I was there. Hopefully you were too. But it was. There were laughs and there were gasps as revelation piled upon joke upon revelation. Although, I’ll be honest, I don’t think I enjoyed the story quite as much as the rest of the room. I was leaning back, just a little bit, beginning to feel that with plot points being rolled out and then rolled back again (time can be rewritten), it was tough to truly involve myself in the narrative. You think it’s one thing, and then it’s another. As a result, I admired this story just a little bit more than I enjoyed it.

“Of I course I lie,” reasoned Mr Moffat on that evening. “We’re trying to keep surprises. We’re trying to trick people, in a nice way.”

Those tricks really are nice. You can’t deny it. The gasps proved it. There is no other show on TV right now that has the sheer audacity of this, and that counts for a lot. Let’s face it, the series has opened its new run with a marquee title like Let’s Kill Hitler, and then barely touched upon the premise. That’s bold. If the popular myth about the so-called Great Dictator is true, he’s singularly deficient in something Doctor Who, right now, has got in abundance.

I wrote previously about the fact that this year I knew how my reviews were going to be sequenced in the magazine. And that was helpful, cos I was aware my piece on A Good Man Goes to War (which I was confident I was going to enjoy) was to be published in the same issue – DWM #436 – as my rather downbeat remarks about The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. One would hopefully counterbalance the other, plus we would end on a positive note. Which, broadly, I think is how it should be.

In addition, I specifically wrote the reviews to be companion pieces, both opening with a similar gambit. Does that add any value? I dunno. Oh and note, I use a list below. Another attempt to break up the big chunks of text.

Here we go again. Another shock reveal in the dying seconds. Oh boy.

But this time, the Oh boy-ing comes with no caveats, no worries. Just gales of laughter at the best name ever for a Doctor Who story.

Let’s Kill Hitler.

It took a moment to swallow that. The sheer incongruity of coupling ‘Let’s’ – with its convivial, sociable connotations – and ‘Kill Hitler’. That’s before we get to the absolute weirdness of seeing the Führer’s name spelt out in the Doctor Who credits font. One wonders at what point they deleted the exclamation mark from that title, because there surely was one.

Following two weeks of doomy plodding about, A Good Man Goes to War unexpectedly sees our show get its joie de vivre back. Unexpectedly, because it all sounds grim on paper. Amy’s plight remains as harrowing as before, while the Doctor and Rory are getting tooled up to do some serious smiting. But then cut to that opening shot of a big asteroid-y space base – with green lasers and everything – and a huge smile cracks open.

I loved every second of this mid-series sign-off, even though it’s as self-regarding an example of Doctor Who as we’ve ever had, with a lot of the episode concerned by examining how the Doctor is perceived. His legend, if you must.

Now, I’m of the opinion that the Doctor is just a traveller, not some self-appointed do-gooder who arrives with a load of PR to het up the baddies. And I’ve always felt those episodes that do paint him as a something mythic actually diminish him. It’s the kind of thing my Doctor would never buy into – all that stupid bravado.

Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the stuff about the “good man” and the “mighty warrior”, and soldiers being schooled in how to spot psychic paper, plus those warning signs: “REMEMBER! 1) It’s not sonic 2) It’s not a screwdriver”. It’s a weirdly well thought-through universe we’re being presented with. Steven Moffat postulating (within the series’ own daffy terms of reference, of course) what would happen if the Doctor existed and how his mere being would shape everything around him.

Our hero doesn’t even show up for the first 19 minutes of this tale. It made me think of Doctor Who in the 1980s – as so much of this year’s run does – and Eric Saward’s early ideas for a Revelation of the Daleks which didn’t feature the Time Lord at all. He felt, rightly I think, that there was a good story in the notion Davros’ empire would fall simply through whispers our hero was on his way.

A similar notion gets played out in A Good Man where, in his absence, the Doctor is ever-present. We see him refracted through the iconography of the show – specifically the TARDIS, which now becomes an eerie kind of calling card – and through the eyes of his new “old” friends. Chums like Sontaran medic Strax, who’s such good fun, he feels as though he’s leapt from the pages of an Alan Moore comic-strip in Doctor Who Weekly. “I can produce magnificent quantities of lactic fluid!” indeed. Please don’t let him really be dead.

Then there’s the wonderful Silurian sleuth Madame Vastra and her resourceful batwoman, Jenny. These two seem to have crossed over from their own spin-off series, currently airing in some alternate reality. The Law-Enforcing Lady Lesbian Lizard of Olde London Town, perhaps. Or Sapphic and Steel (catchphrase: “We’re going to need the swords!”). Whatever, I’m already a massive fan.

When the Doctor does appear, it’s pleasing there’s no grandstanding. No sermon on Stonehenge. Pulling back the hood to reveal he’s smuggled his way in as a monk, the Time Lord is less avenging angel, and more… well, just jolly. It’s so great to see Doctor Who having fun again.

Most satisfying of all, though, is that the traveller himself is clearly uncomfortable when confronted by his own legend – River Song spelling it out: “Did you ever think you’d become this?” The only myth he wants to propagate is the one about a mad man in a box. That’s it.
Oh, and it has to be said, Matt Smith is magnificent in this story, panting and barely controlled when the Doctor  exhibits his rage, but still just keeping a lid on the real histrionics. I think his “Oh look I’m angry” speech is Matt’s finest moment yet, topping even his exemplary work in The Doctor’s Wife.

Blimey, there’s just so much going on in this adventure. The scale of it alone is bewildering, as Doctor Who finally catches up with Star Wars. All those space ships and aliens and huge hangars. Plus robed men brandishing lightning-powered swords. It’s a massive, Death Star-sized achievement for director Peter Hoar and the production team.

Everything, in fact, is turned up to 11. We all expected a big reunion of former friends and foes (Mark Gatiss’ vocal cameo as ‘Danny Boy’ is my favourite spurious inclusion), but it happens in the most unexpected ways. The Cybermen toddle in, are thoroughly slapped around, then toddle off again. Hugh Bonneville pops through a door for a single line, and former bit-parters like the old, fat and blue (his words, I’m not being mean) Dorium Maldavar behave as though we’ve been following their adventures for years. Please don’t let him really be dead either.

By contrast, we never get the reckoning we expect with Madame Kovarian. Most of her best scenes are played through monitor screens, meaning she’s a rather static and remote presence. But there’s enough here to whet our appetite for an ensuing encounter in the autumn – which is surely what we’re rocketing towards. Frances Barber, responding to her costume, is fabulously chewy, playing this eye-patch lady as a 1980s über-bitch. In fact, the Madame, as we’ve probably all spotted, is actually Blake’s 7’s Servalan cross-dressing as Blake’s 7’s Travis. We’ll be terribly disappointed if there isn’t some serious power-snogging upon her return.

Hmm. I feel a list coming on, because there’s just too much ground to cover. In no particular order, then…

Ten other ace things about A Good Man Goes to War

1. Amy immediately re-established as a protagonist, having being painted as a victim in last week’s cliffhanger.
2. “We’re the thin/fat gay married Anglican marines.”
3. Lorna Bucket – the companion who wasn’t. She’s even got a companion’s name.
4. The pathos of the Doctor not actually remembering her.
5. The shocking vindictiveness of the “Colonel Runaway” business.
6. The Doctor being forced to speculate about Amy and Rory’s love life.
7. “How did you find him?”/“Stringy.”
8. The horror of Melody Pond turning into gloop.
9. The grandiose assertion we get the word “Doctor” from the man himself.
10. River Song reading poetry over an epic battle. So much fun.

It’s this abundance of – well – good stuff that ensures, unlike its predecessor, this is a story that isn’t going to be overshadowed by the magnitude of its revelations.

So, what of the truth about River Song? As in every Moffat script, part of the fun comes in reverse-engineering the way he’s built to this point. Amy Pond naming her daughter ‘Melody’, Lorna presenting her with an embroidered prayer leaf, the cot on board the TARDIS… Pleasingly, we twig it a couple of seconds before mum and dad do, and it’s a lovely, neat and definitive resolution, but one that doesn’t conclude the character’s story. We’re still waiting for closure on that whole business about River killing “the best man I’ve ever known”, as she told us in last year’s Flesh and Stone, remember?

But, that’s it for now. Finito TARDIS, as the first half of this year’s run concludes. I wish it wasn’t stopping, to be honest, because it’s only now the show really feels like it’s back up to the kind of speed it achieved in the opening two-parter. Writing about that story, not so long ago, I mused that it felt “definitively, isomorphically Moffat”. In doing so, I think I stumbled upon the curse of Doctor Who. This year the show just hasn’t felt quite like Doctor Who when it’s been scripted by someone other than Steven. Since Day of the Moon we’ve had Stephen Thompson, Neil Gaiman and Matthew Graham writing, and the results have been variable. Why? The series has a new voice now, which is brilliant but idiosyncratic. Doctor Who has always been feared as the most difficult TV show to write. Perhaps it’s now an impossible one – unless you’re the man inside the Impossible Astronaut’s suit.

Hmm.

But at least we’ve ended with a lot of oomph. The Doctor all excitable, heading off to find Baby Pond and get even with Madame Kovarian. That kind of momentum should see the show come screaming back onto our screens when the nights draw in. Very exciting. And how will it all begin? Oh yes.

Let’s Killer Hitler!