Doctor Who Recap and Review – “The Caretaker”

“The Caretaker” was co-written by Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat. This was probably the campiest and rom/com-iest episode since Capaldi took over as The Doctor. I’ve watched this episode a few times now and I can’t find any glaring reasons to dislike it, but, I can’t find any reasons to really like it either. The Doctor’s hatred of soldiers seems more pronounced in this episode and that’s done mainly to build tension between The Doctor and Danny Pink finally meeting. We see more of a father/daughter relationship with The Doctor and Clara than we’ve seen before and it plays out once Danny and The Doctor realize who each other are. The bad guy in this one is scary but under used and there’s this new character that I’m rather nonplussed about.

Almost every episode has had a great opening and this was no exception. It’s a quick montage of Clara trying to juggle life with The Doctor with life outside the Tardis. At one point she questions whether or not she can do it anymore, but, quickly decides she can make it all work out. The Doctor arrives back at the school but this time he doesn’t need Clara’s help. He’s on his own mysterious mission. Clara returns to work and during the morning teacher’s meeting a new caretaker, John Smith, is introduced. It’s The Doctor! The meeting ends and Clara rushes back into the room to find out what The Doctor is doing, they argue for a while, and The Doctor makes a nice River Song reference. I hope we get to see more callbacks to previous Doctors. We then cut to a couple of boys from the school playing video games outside of an abandoned building when a police officer approaches and tells them to go back to school. He then hears some noises from inside the building and, thinking it’s more kids, goes in to investigate. However, it quickly becomes apparent that it is no kid, it’s the Skovox Blitzer, a terrifying war machine that is capable of taking out an entire planet on its own. The Blitzer quickly proceeds to kill the police officer, burning him to a crisp.

 

Meanwhile, The Doctor interrupts Clara’s class by climbing up the wall and peeking in the window. They argue a bit about when Pride and Prejudice was written before he leaves and the class ends and Clara runs after him. She finds him messing around with the electrics and speaking to Danny and another teacher Adrian (Edward Harrison) who looks an awful lot like Matt Smith, bow tie and all. The Doctor finds out the Danny was a soldier and therefore cannot get it straight that he’s a math teacher and not a P.E. teacher. I did enjoy that little bit, it was very reminiscent of the Micky/Ricky issue he had in the first series. Clara does her best to try and keep The Doctor from embarrassing her and gets Danny out of there with no issues, but, the Matt Smith lookalike English teacher approaches her to talk about Shakespeare and The Doctor notices the resemblance and we get to see Capaldi play his Doctor as flattered for the first time. It was weird.

 

What The Doctor has been doing is placing these small, but conspicuous, devices all around the school. He finally gets them all placed and heads back to the Tardis where he is interrupted by Courtney Woods played by Ellis George, Courtney is a student at the school and introduces herself to The Doctor as “Disruptive Influence”. She’s just that and definitely get on The Doctor’s nerves. I don’t blame him one bit. She badgers him about his sign, his police box, the green light in that box to which The Doctor gives some great one liners in response.

Clara comes in as Courtney is leaving to confront The Doctor about putting the school in danger by being there. He shows her he’s been working on a scanner and shows her that it’s the Skovox Blitzer that he’s been looking for. He then tells Clara his plan which involves and invisibility watch to help him lure the Blitzer to the school where he can send it through a temporal rift where it will never get back to Earth. Clara wants to help The Doctor, but, he claims not to need her help and tells her to go kanoodle with her boyfriend, who he thinks is that Matt Smith lookalike. Clara happily obliges, but, when she meets up with Danny they both seem to be alright with rescheduling their date. Clara then heads back to help out The Doctor while Danny decides to investigate the “caretaker” after having found the devices he was leaving around the school. Danny inevitably ends up walking right into The Doctor’s trap for the Blitzer after it has arrived. The Blitzer fires at Danny before The Doctor opens up the rift and it slowly sucks the Blitzer through. During all the action, Clara enters the room and now has to try to explain to Danny what is going on. This leads to one of the worst moments I’ve seen on the show in which Clara tries to convince Danny that The Doctor and her were rehearsing a play. It’s the most ludicrous excuse which no intelligent adult would ever believe, luckily, Danny seems equally as insulted. Sorry Clara, a rare miss. The scene does get better when it’s revealed that Danny is actually Clara’s boyfriend and due to The Doctor’s insistence, she admits that she’s in love with him. The Doctor seems to cool down a bit at this point and allows Clara to explain who he is, he even lets Danny see the inside of the Tardis. The Doctor is not happy though and explains to Clara that her job is not finished; “You’ve explained me to him, but you haven’t explained him to me.”

Clara and Danny go home to talk more about what’s going on with everything…another rom-com scene that had me rolling my eyes. Danny keeps asking her all these questions about why she does it and he keeps accusing her of lying to him. He wants to see what she’s like with The Doctor, so, Clara comes up with another brilliant idea to give Danny the invisibility watch so he can sneak into the Tardis with her while she talks to The Doctor. This leads to a very awkward scene where The Doctor obviously knows Danny is there while Clara lies a couple times to The Doctor. The Doctor, who is obviously upset at Danny’s presence decides to take them for a trip, awkwardly insulting Danny until he turns the watch off. Danny and The Doctor have a very heated argument over each other’s character. The Doctor dislikes Danny because he is a soldier, but, Danny can see right through The Doctor for who he really is, an officer. Danny mocks The Doctor quite a bit in this scene and The Doctor’s reactions are actually very childish. The scene made me pretty uncomfortable and I loved it, by far the best scene in the episode. Danny and Clara storm off and Courtney mysteriously appears again. Okay, side note, this Courtney girl keeps showing up at the strangest times and this isn’t the first episode in which she’s done this. Her appearances are so strange, that it almost makes you wonder if she has some larger role to play, maybe as a villain. We know that she will actually be going on a trip to the moon with The Doctor and Clara in next week’s “Kill the Moon”. I don’t have any problems of the episodes that involve children in the plot, it is supposed to be a kids show after all, but, I can’t stand it when the kids travel with The Doctor. Hopefully it’s just a one shot and I’m just overreacting.

Danny and Clara are at parent’s night when the Blitzer makes his return earlier than The Doctor predicted and he finally needs her help. She ends up leaving parent’s night and Danny inevitably follows her out. They find out that The Doctor has a plan to lure the Blitzer to the caretaker’s shed using Clara as bait. All he needs from Danny is to leave them alone. As Danny heads back to parent’s night he sees Clara being chased by the Blitzer and decides to turn on the invisibility watch and follow them. Clara gets back to the shed and The Doctor has made this machine that makes the Blitzer think he’s its superior officer. The Doctor tries to get it to shut itself off but gives it the incorrect code so the Blitzer initiates self destruct mode. The Doctor needs the Blitzer distracted while he can fix his machine; that’s when Danny makes his heroic entrance, leaping over the Blitzer and giving the Doctor enough time to give the Blitzer the correct codes and the Blitzer shuts itself off. It’s at this point that Danny realizes why The Doctor is so angry at him. He needs to be good enough for Clara and The Doctor isn’t sure he is. Clara points out that he just saved the world and The Doctor says “Good start.”

We next see The Doctor dumping the Blitzer into space and he’s taken Courtney with him. Although, she is more sick than initially impressed and actually ends up vomiting inside the Tardis. Meanwhile, Danny and Clara are relaxing at home when Danny asks Clara to promise him one thing: that if The Doctor ever pushes her too hard, to tell him, and if she doesn’t it’s over between them.  Clara agrees. I find his constant obsession with her lying, even when she’s not, to be a bit off putting and I’m not sure why they decided to go in that direction, I’m also not sure why Clara puts up with it.

I didn’t love this episode or hate this episode. It had some great scenes and dialogue, and the monster was scary, but it played too much like a rom-com for me to have any real lasting interest. No other grade than a C makes sense for this one. I personally know some people who are going to love it and others who will hate it, but, what did you think about it? Let us know below!

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Doctor Who Recap and Review – “Time Heist”

Spoiler City Ahead!

Who doesn’t love a good heist story? This Doctor Who episode, “Time Heist,” is stylistically a lot like the Ocean’s film franchise.  In a behind-the-scenes clip during the episode, Jenna-Louise Coleman said it was Oceans Eleven in space. This episode pretty much jumps right into the adventure without much time to realize it started. Clara is about to go on a date, so she refuses to go with The Doctor.  It sure seems like Danny Pink is getting set up to be a tragic loss or the reason Clara leaves. She is heading out the door until the Tardis phone rings. Both Clara and the Doctor stop dead in their tracks and ponder who it could be, since very few people in the universe have the Tardis phone number. As the Doctor goes to answer the phone, we are immediately transferred to a dark room where we have Clara, The Doctor, and two unknown people all screaming and holding memory worms.

We then jump right into things as they are given the plans to rob the bank and, alerted, the bank has already sent security to bring them to the incinerator. Quickly, we learn who the other two people are: Sabina and Psi. Saibra, who can change shape, as her face changes right as they let go of the worms. We learn she thinks it is a curse because she changes shape whenever she touches another living being preventing her from having any kind of romantic relationship. Then we have Psi, who is a Cyborg and is also an expert bank robber. We learn he has wiped his mind completely in the past to save his loved ones when he was incarcerated in the past. After the short intros, Psi downloads the heist plans and they run! They make it into the main bank with Saibra help posing as a bank customer and as they are making their way in and whole force of men run out, surrounding a man while a huge alien is escorted in in chains and a straitjacket. Ms. Delphox tells the man his guilt has been detected and as he yells at her that he is innocent she just bats and eye and has the alien, whom she calls The Teller, scan his brain for guilt and since he finds it Ms. Delphox orders his mind wiped, which makes the mans head cave in which for a show that is meant to be able to be watched by children was a bit gruesome.

The team make it past the main room undetected and get into an elevator; it is here where they are detected and find a case filled with a helpful tool put there by the man who orchestrated the whole heist, “The Architect”. They open the case and find an odd tool. The Doctor finally figures out how to use the device and it ends up cutting a hole in the bottom of the elevator then immediately replaces it for an awfully easy escape plan. They continue their way through the bank until they have to pass by a room that has The Teller locked up in a cage. While security is searching the whole bank for them and literally running right by them the team struggle to maintain composure in trying to keep their minds blank so The Teller can’t scan them. As they finally are able to make a run for it Saibra gets caught by The Tellers psychic powers and can’t move. As they discuss how they have no idea how to have her escape the doctor remember these six devices given to the team that seemed small at the time but he figures they are suicide pills basically and throws one to Saibra as she does not want to become like the man who’s head got caved in. Saibra uses it and is immediately disintegrated. As the team makes it to the next room we find it is the hallway leading straight to the vault and in the mean time, Ms. Delphox is tracking the team and decides to let The Teller loose and roam the halls trying to scan and find the last three members of our team.

The conflict between the team starts to really fly here as Clara and Psi cannot believe the Doctor just let Saibra die, helped and now doesn’t seem to care. Psi has a great line against The Doctor saying, “Is that why you call yourself The Doctor huh? Occupational hazards?” Although things get a bit heated, they still have a job to do; since the vault is right there and so are the three of them, the Doctor figures The Teller would be able to detect three minds in one place better than three separate minds. So he and Clara run off leaving Psi to hack into the vault and open it. Psi says he would be happy to be one of The Doctors Occupational hazards and then the Doctor hands him another one of the fancy little suicide pens he gave to Saibra. The Teller ends up finding Clara and trying hard to scan her mind, but she holds on long enough to have Psi finish hacking the vault and have him hatch his own plan to upload the memories of every thief and robber in history which entices The Teller and makes him leave Clara to chase down Psi. Once they meet Psi tells Clara that he must do it because when her life flashes before her eyes she sees family and friends, but he sees nothing and then he injects himself/stabs himself or whatever those suicide things do… (Damn Doctor Who… We just meet these two people and you kill them off right after to make me love them!) The Doctor and Clara hurry to the vault only to find out Psi’s hack didn’t work and that there is one more lock in place. All of a sudden, a solar flare hits the bank, we figure out a whole solar storm is coming, that is when the Doctor realizes they were not sent there to rob a bank but actually sent back in time to fix something at the bank and the only way they could do is during the solar storm because it would lower security to the bank. Then right as this realization comes to fruition the bank vault opens.

The Doctor and Clara look through the vault to find the three different items Psi, Saibra and The Doctor were sent to retrieve. They get to Psi’s first, which is an item to reboot a system and restore all files which would give Psi all his memory’s back. Then they get to Saibra’s item, which is a formula to stabilize her genetics. Then right as they start to head to the private vaults to find the Doctors Item they turn a corner and there stands The Teller. We then flash to Clara and The Doctor, captured by Ms. Delphox, in which she reveals The Teller is the last of his kind. The Doctor argues with Ms. Delphox’s actions and she send them both to the incinerator. But right when we feel all hope is lost one of the guards assures us it isn’t and changes form to reveal it as Saibra and the other guard takes off his helmet and it is Psi! The Atom disintegrators or so the Doctor thought were actually just teleporters which sent them to the ships hull where they find the Tardis and figured a way into the private vault. The team heads out to the final destination and as they enter the vault they find unlimited amounts of treasure from across the galaxy and one woman at a desk – Madame Karabraxos, the owner of the bank. The Doctor threatens her until she turns around to reveal it to be Ms. Delphox. Or rather, Ms. Delphox is just a clone of Madame Karabraxos whom she has killed for letting The Doctor get into the private vault. We then get to the point that the solar storm is going to destroy the bank which makes Karabraxos panic and grab all the treasure she can, The Doctor starts acting a bit silly, telling everyone he hates “The Architect” who orchestrated this and then he figures out he actually is the Architect himself and he sent himself back to rob the bank. While he is going on this tirade, he writes down the Tardis Phone Number and writes, “I am a Time Traveller” on it and give it to Karabraxos, whom then leaves. Everyone now is really confused and asks the Doctor is he remembered why he was there and he says well, there is only one way to remember and the doors open to reveal The Teller. The Doctor want him to scan his thoughts and as The Teller does the Doctor over powers him as he remembers why they are there, which is for The Teller himself because he is not the last of his kind, as Madame Karabraxos had a female of his species locked up.

The team then heads to the Tardis where The Doctor sets both of the alien species free on their homeworld to continue their species. After this we are treated to a happy ending with everyone eating chinese food talking about how awesome the heist was and confirming relationships which are left open for either Psi, or Saibra to return at a later date. We then of course have the Doctor drop off Clara for her date with Danny and as she runs out of the Tardis, the doctor says, “Rob a bank…Rob an entire bank…Some date…” Which leads to some interesting questions of why he cares…

This episode was definitely one that I feel may not count a lot toward the major plot going on this season, despite the Doctor basically thinking he was killing these two people and despite him giving himself the teleporters to begin with. As Clara stated at one point, “He isn’t really like that all the time” and as much as this season had made us question that, this episode showed he still is the hero we know and would more so save a life than spare one for convenience. While this episode was very high quality and a bit more of a smaller stylistic type of episode very much wanting to have The Doctor be the new Frank Sinatra or George Clooney in this sci-fi take on a heist story. I liked The Teller the whole time, but I really liked the idea of having the menacing terrifying creature whom all we see is him destroy actually be the victim and the whole reason they were there. I felt this was a great point because it was more than a heist and more than even a time-travel heist; it was a rescue mission first and foremost.

Overall this episode was somewhere in the middle for me for this season, as it seemed more that Stephen Moffat just wanted to do a heist story more than progress the overall story of Doctor Who, much like last year’s episode a Town Called Mercy where it was just a reason to do a spaghetti western and not much to offer as a good Doctor Who. I would give this episode a good B- mostly because it was a very fun and enjoyable episode, and Doctor Who always makes me fall in love with characters even if they are in only one episode. Only if the story had as much heart as the style I feel this episode would have received a higher score, but at least The Teller is free!

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Doctor Who Recap and Review – “Into the Dalek”

(SPOILERS AHEAD!!! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE EPISODE!)

 

Last week, we got to meet the new Doctor, and this week we get to know him a little bit more; ultimately, we get to see a side of the Doctor we never have, at least in the new series. We were promised a darker Doctor with Capaldi at the helm and he does not disappoint, as this episode had some of the darkest moments and decisions the Doctor has ever made, especially for anyone not familiar with the other darker Doctors from the original series.

The episode starts with the Doctor saving a soldier from an exploding ship. After an initial conversation, she has the Doctor take her back to her ship where we learn it is a secret ship, and due to the Doctor finding it, they must kill him until they realize he can help as he is a doctor but they don’t know he is THE Doctor. They say they have a patient that the Doctor could help and proceed to take him to the patient which ends up being a Dalek. If that is not surprising enough, The Doctor has the normal conversation with the initial Dalek which reveals that it is “Sick” by yelling “ALL DALEKS MUST BE DESTROYED!”

After the credits we are immediately introduced to the new Character of Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) who is a teacher at Coal Hill School, which is of course the same school Clara teaches at. We get a bit of an odd glance between the two as Clara is walking into school and after we are told Danny is a Lady Killer by people who don’t know him and any idea that may be so is shot down immediately when he meets and starts talking to Clara. However, before that happens, a kid in Danny’s class asks if he has ever killed anyone, and especially outside of the military where he starts crying. This is definitely going to be an important part of this character as there was too much focus on it to be forgotten. Clara being the wonderfully cute companion she is, forgives Danny’s initial awkwardness and invites him to take her out for drinks and she is walking away she runs into the Doctor and the Coffee he promised her.

Of course, this meeting is short and they both head straight to the ship to help the crew with this Dalek. It doesn’t take long for them with some of the crew to shrink down in a special craft made for Doctors to shrink down and combat illness on a molecular level. After just about the trippiest sequence ever in Doctor Who where they exit their craft into the Dalek, it all seems made for molecular-sized beings and a lot safer than the inside of a Dalek should feel. That is, until one of the officers decides to shoot a cable line to get down to a lower level. As the cable stabs into the side, it alerts the Dalek and antibodies show up to remedy the problem. The antibodies surround the officer that shot the cable line and the Doctor, already mad at him for shooting and hurting the Dalek, throws him a pill and just assure the man to trust him. Immediately, the Dalek antibodies kill the man and the Doctor had only given him the pill to track where the antibodies sent his remains inside the Dalek. As the antibodies now start chasing the group and they jump down a shaft and end up landing into a huge puddle of what we learn is protein from people the Dalek has killed; this quickly ends and they end up finding out what the “problem” is.

The “problem“ ends up being a slight radiation leak which seems to both please the doctor and really upset him as it ends up he is right in arguing that there is no good Dalek, and yet in fixing the Dalek it goes back to normal and of course starts to “EXTERMINATE!” After this, the Doctor is being kind of an ass to everyone in telling them he was right up until Clara slaps him in the face, making him realize it isn’t that the Dalek is pure evil and had a malfunction, but the moral of everything that happened is that the malfunction made a Dalek good. So they then set off to try and bring the Dalek’s memories back to remind him of why he believed humans should live in the first place.

They head up into the memory banks to access the old memories and try and turn the Dalek good again. As they start that journey, the Doctor realizes in order to get to the memory banks one of the officers must sacrifice herself by shooting cables while the antibodies continue to chase them. We see this officer die and immediately be transferred to “Heaven” with the strange Missy character we saw last episode. The moment with her doesn’t offer much but exactly what we saw last episode with the clockwork robots. After this, we see Clara and Journey, the woman the Doctor saved at the beginning of the episode, go up to the memory banks to access its memories and set it up for the Doctor to invade the mind of the Dalek. Once he does this, the Dalek sees everything he did before to change his mind and then he looks into the Doctor’s mind and sees his hate for the Daleks, which in turn makes the Dalek, now know as Rusty, take out all the other Daleks whom have been attacking the ship saving the crew. The next thing we see, somehow the Doctor, Clara and Journey are outside the Dalek as the ship Aristotle’s soldier come into the room with all the destroyed Daleks.

As everything is resolved now and the Daleks are gone, Rusty rides away to Davros knows where; but before he leaves he notices the Doctor is sad and asks why he is since they won the battle. The Doctor tells him it is because he saw so much hate in him. The Doctor tells him that he is a good Dalek to which the Dalek replies, “No, you are a GOOD Dalek.” The doctor then abruptly walks out leaving Clara to run after him. As they are getting into the Tardis, Journey runs up asking to travel with the Doctor, but the Doctor turns her away because she is a Soldier, which will obviously cause some sort of conflict with Danny Pink when he joins in on the adventures.

Ultimately, this episode did not offer a good Dalek story but it did make you realize that, just like Clara says, you don’t know if the Doctor is a good man but since he tries to be, that is what matters. It is an episode that sets Capaldi apart from all of the young energetic and bouncy Doctors we have seen in the new series, and although they all are fantastic, there has not been a certain Doctor that I have even really disliked of all 13 so far. Just like he should, Capaldi is offering us something completely new and although people grew to love Smith I am fairly confident Capaldi’s run will end up being one of the best, if not the best of the modern series. For next week, we get a Robin Hood story in the episode, “Robot of Sherwood,” where somehow the Doctor and Clara travel to a place where fictional characters exist.

 

Overall I would give this episode a B as I enjoyed it and it offered a lot, but I still was left a little confused at a lot of parts and there were slight plot holes. Overall, though, this episode shows what this season has to offer and if all the episodes offer this amount of insight into the new Doctor we al have a lot to look forward to.

 

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