Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror - Review

A fairly solid episode, exciting and fun in places, but perhaps a little too talky and slow to get started to be judged anything better than "good".
We're back in history again, with more real historical figures (as with the second half of Spyfall). If Mary Shelley is in a later story (and the new BBC America trailer suggests she is) then this series will take the record for historical figures featured.
The episode primarily focused on the eponymous Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American scientist who was a pioneer of sorts in many fields. A brilliant scientist, but a poor businessman who failed to capitalise on his ideas. He was well played by Goran Visjnic, who is a fan of the inventor. Also appearing is Thomas Edison (Robert Glenister) who is his polar opposite. He wasn't much of a scientist, but he was a brilliant businessman who knew how to make his fame and fortune from the scientific work of others.
Tesla is set up as a mirror of the Doctor - the inventor who creates for the sake of invention, whilst Edison is there to mirror the Skithra, who simply steal other races' technology but don't have a clue how any of it actually works. If Tesla is a Doctor-parallel, then Dorothy Skerritt (Haley McGee) is his companion / assistant-parallel.
The Doctor's companions only seem to know Tesla from the Elon Musk electric car named after him. I already knew something about him, having seen the 2006 movie The Prestige in which he's played by David Bowie. Tesla died penniless in 1943, but I wouldn't feel too sorry about this as he was also a great believer in eugenics and racial purity.
The Skithra were yet another well-realised alien race, although their Queen, played by Anjli Mohindra, was a little reminiscent of the Racnoss Queen. It was nice to see Paul Kasey get a role where he wasn't smothered in latex, especially creepy when they distorted his face.
The actual Skithra plan did not bear much thinking about. It was a nice idea to have an alien menace which simply wants to abduct someone to help them fix things, rather than conquer or destroy the planet. However, if they are able to steal all this alien technology, why couldn't they abduct someone from a more advanced species who might actually understand their purloined tech? When the Doctor refuses to allow Tesla to hand himself over, the Skithra Queen does then threaten to destroy all life on the planet - despite having just told Tesla that their weapons are one of the things they want him to repair.
A minor gripe was the Doctor's description of the Silurians as "alien" when she knows full well they were the original dominant species on Earth. However, even their creator - Malcolm Hulke - had the Third Doctor describe them as "alien" in their very first story.
If the Skithra were well realised then the story had some lovely visual flourishes as well. I particularly liked the train sequence near the start, with the hooded Skithra agent being left behind on the uncoupled freight wagon, plus the attack by the aliens on the Wardenclyffe laboratory. I think it was the murky green light that did it in both sequences.
I was rather disappointed with the conclusion. I have said before that the Doctor's new pacifist stance might be problematic, and here we saw the Skithra merely chased away - meaning that they are able to simply attack some other planet to get what they want. There's also the inconsistency around the Doctor telepathically removing knowledge of herself and future events from historical figures she meets. They made a big deal of her removing the memories of Ada Lovelace and Inayat Noor Khan, yet Edison and Tesla were left with their memories intact. Surely far more dangerous to leave them with these memories than Khan, who would be dead a year or so after meeting the Doctor.
So, definitely a step up from last week's nonsense, but it fell short of greatness as far as I'm concerned, mainly due to the pacing.

Technical Hitch - Update

I'm happy to report that my IT issues have now been resolved, so I can continue to post regularly again. The next post will be the review of Sunday evening's episode, which promises to be far better than last week's one (could hardly be worse), then things return to normal thereafter with additional posts through the week.
Thank you for your patience.

Season 14 comes to Blu-ray

On April 20th Season 14 will be released in the UK as the latest Blu-ray box set.
Another Tom Baker set had been expected  soon,  just to even up the releases.
This was the final season for producer Philip Hinchcliffe, and also saw the departure of Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and the arrival of Louise Jameson as Leela. Jameson will feature in the "Behind the Sofa" segments with Baker and Hinchcliffe.
It is a varied mix of stories. The Masque of Mandragora is one of the better pseudo-historicals, with great production values and an excellent cast. It is the last 10 minutes or so of The Hand of Fear which raise it above the average, with Sarah's heartbreaking departure. Then we have the game-changing The Deadly Assassin which dared to rewrite Gallifreyan history (something no one would be foolish enough to attempt these days surely...). Then we get the introduction of Leela in The Face of Evil, the superb Robots of Death and finally the much admired, though somewhat controversial, Talons of Weng-Chiang. The controversy lies in its use of caucasian actors portraying Chinese people, as well as its depiction of the Chinese characters in general, having as one of its inspirations the Fu Manchu stories.
Extras include a major piece on the life and career of Lis Sladen, and Matthew Sweet interviews Hinchcliffe. Sweet and Baker also add some new commentaries on some of the episodes from the fourth and sixth stories. Toby Hadoke's contribution is to catch up with some of the participants from the Whose Doctor Who documentary, which was broadcast just as the season ended.
Naturally, my copy is already pre-ordered.
No word when the US release may be, though I did hear that you will be getting the Season 26 box set on 24th March. The way this release keeps getting delayed in the UK, we might finally get it about then as well...
Strangely, still no word when the two Troughton animated stories are going to be released. I'm hoping the first - The Faceless Ones - will be out in March, as that was when The Macra Terror came out last year.

Orphan 55 - Review

Oh dear.
After a promising start to the series we seem to have taken several steps backwards. I really didn't think highly of this episode at all, I'm afraid. Very good monsters, though wholly unoriginal, and nice location, but I can't credit it for anything else. The supporting characters were cardboard thin, and there were far too many of them - so none were properly developed. Was Kane supposed to be a businesswoman or a soldier? Kind of neither. Worse was Bella, who had a rollercoaster of a story arc, going from potential love interest for Ryan, to saboteur and killer, with a history of bomb-making, to reconciliation with her estranged mother, all in a matter of minutes. Such character development really needed time to play out, but it just never had a chance here. She switched from one thing to another in seconds.
Is there some kind of joke I didn't get about Hyph3n? Was she some kind of postmodern comment on bad costume and make-up? A woefully realised character.
The biggest laugh for me was one that wasn't intended, I'm sure, when the Doctor leads the rescue mission to retrieve Benni. She takes a pensioner, a little boy and a squirrel woman on a potentially lethal mission, in a hostile environment and in pursuit of savage monsters that have just slaughtered 20 or so vacationers.
The insistence on not showing anything gory on a Sunday evening meant that Benni's fate took place entirely off camera, and we didn't even get to see what Kane did with him. Telling us things rather than let us see for ourselves was one of the problems last series.
One interesting story element was that Orphan 55 was actually the Earth, and the Dregs were a devolved form of the human race. A nice idea - just a pity that it was done much better back in 1989 in The Curse of Fenric. 
Development of the Doctor also took a great leap backwards. Am I the only one getting really annoyed that she knows everything, recognising viruses, computer systems, and even weapons at a glance. Would it hurt to have her have to ask what something is, rather than just reel off technobabble?
It was also extremely annoying that the resolution just happened to rely on that virus fixing the teleport - very lazy plotting.
As for the big speech at the end... I have no problem with messages in a story, so long as they derive from he narrative. I don't like being lectured. Doctor Who fans are an enlightened lot, and I'm sure most people watching already have environmental concerns, so it really was preaching to the converted. Again, all this was done much better in the past, by Jon Pertwee in Colony in Space, The Green Death and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Chibnall and Hime are simply jumping on the  XR / Thunberg bandwagon.
Like I said, I did like the Dregs, but as with the Thijjarians last season, it is a monster design which has been rather wasted, as what else can you do with them? I have to say that whilst the costume was rather good, there was some shockingly bad CG in evidence when we saw them en masse.
Overall, fairly dreadful, bringing back bad memories of last series.

They dare to tamper with the forces of creation?

Details of the next few new episodes of Series 12 confirmed in the latest issue of DWM today. After this weekend's Orphan 55 which involves that big new monster which looked a bit like the Creature from the Black Lagoon attacking a holiday resort (Tranquility Spa), we have the clumsily titled Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror. This is the one in which Tesla and Thomas Edison encounter Anjli Mohindra's arachnids Queen Skithra, set in the New York / Niagra Falls in 1903. Episode 5 is the Judoon one - Fugitive of the Judoon. Only a single partner, as Episode 6 is Praxeus, whose synopsis mentions the Doctor having to tackle multiple incidents across the globe. Apparently this is the one with the swarms of black bird-like creatures (which might just be black birds).
This latter episode got me thinking about the theme which Chibnall said would run through the season (as opposed to a story arc). From what we've seen so far I suspect this might be something to do with tempering with nature. Spyfall was about rewriting human DNA. Orphan 55 might revolve around the creature fighting back because the holiday resort has been built in its habitat. Praxeus possibly about wildlife turning against humans? We know the Cybermen are coming soon, and they're a perfect example of what happens when science interferes with nature. If there is a Mary Shelley story (other than the Cyberman one) then that obviously also ties in with humans tampering with nature. Back in the summer there was mention of a story revolving around environmental issues, like plastics in the oceans.
So that's my prediction for Chibnall's series theme - tampering with the forces of creation, as Daleks were also once wont to do.

Spyfall Part 2 - Review

An episode of two halves this one. First of all we have to look at it as the conclusion to Part 1, and then we need to look at the whole story arc element that was introduced by the Master.
As the continuation / conclusion to the first episode I don't think it was a particularly satisfying one. It took an age to see the relevance of the Doctor's adventures in history, then the alien plan still didn't seem all that clear, and it all seemed rather rushed at the end, with Barton simply running away. Did the aliens intend to kill everyone or to take their places? If the former, couldn't they have just, like, killed everyone. Why rewrite DNA if just to leave billions of empty shells. Ada Lovelace's role was at least relevant, as a pioneer of computing, but Noor could have been any SOE operative, or a member of the French Resistance.
The companions didn't really have all that much to do after they had escaped from the most leisurely air crash in history. They just when on the run and hid out for a bit. They didn't really move the plot on that much - just biding their time until the Doctor had caught up with them. That escape from the crashing plane was a bit of a cheat. Why can't the Doctor just go back at the end of every adventure and leave a get out for herself and her companions?
One other thing I  wasn't happy about was the Doctor's bald assertion that she is a pacifist. Talk about setting up some fairly dull conclusions to future episodes. Enemies are obviously going to be talked out of universal domination from now on, when what we want to see is a few of them getting blown up from time to time. It's one thing for the Doctor to abhor violence and use it only as a last resort, but to go wholesale down the pacifist line is going to lead to some bland storytelling.
The thing that this episode will be remembered for is the confrontation between the Doctor and the Master stop the Eiffel Tower,  where he reveals that Gallifrey has been  destroyed. This is confirmed when the Doctor returns home to see the Capitol in ruins. We then find out that it was the Master who was responsible, because of something he found out about the foundation of Time Lord civilisation. This brings up the Timeless Child reference from Series 11, and obviously hints at more than just the Doctor having something unknown about her background. A game changer of a sequence if ever there was one.
One last thing I should mention is the glaring continuity error from that Eiffel Tower sequence. The Master asked if he'd ever apologised for Jodrell Bank - which was clearly supposed to be a reference to Logopolis but that wasn't set at Jodrell Bank. It was supposed to be filmed there, but wasn't,  although it was use for the special edition  Bluray release of that story. Jodrell Bank is in Cheshire,  but the ambulance that is seen in that story isn't a Cheshire one, so the Pharos Project wasn't based at Jodrell Bank.
Overall, a slight disappointment after the breathless opener, but made memorable by that shocking revelation.

Spyfall Part 1 - Review

It is always difficult to judge a two part story on just the first half, especially when that first half is also a festive special. Intricacy of plot isn't expected - only something fairly bright and breezy, and that's what we got last night. The episode quite literally flew along, as began with some globetrotting in the pre-titles sequence - something we haven't had for a while. Something is incapacitating secret agents all over the planet, and we see fairly early on that it is the new aliens from the trailer - the ones who can walk through walls, even those of the TARDIS. (In fact it now appears that most of the trailer derived from this first episode). As a new species, they were eerily effective,  appearing either as bright figures of white light, or taking on the texture of the walls and other objects they phased through. It would appear that they derive from another dimension, or even another universe altogether. We learned very little about them, but they did help add some darkness to an otherwise lighthearted story.
Team TARDIS were found to be all back at home as the story opened, finding excuses to give loved ones and colleagues for their recent travels. The Doctor was repairing the TARDIS in a garage, the box propped up on a hydraulic lift like a car getting an MOT. Stephen Fry's C brings them all together again, as he is the head of MI6, and he wants the Doctor to investigate the attacks on the agents. Sadly he wasn't in it for long, and won't be around for the conclusion. The other main guest artist is Lenny Henry,  playing what we were all supposed to assume to be the villain of the piece, an internet billionaire who is in league with the aliens. He is a wrong 'un, but not the main villain.
I had seen it mentioned months ago that Sacha Dhawan was going to be playing the latest incarnation of the Master, but the vlogger who mentioned it didn't seem to think the information was accurate. I did think of that vlog when I saw him appear,  especially as he hadn't been mentioned in the cast list, or seen in the trailers. It was still a bit of a surprise to see him reveal his true identity, as he had been playing such a sympathetic character, an old friend of the Doctor.
If there is one negative about this episode, it's that we didn't  get enough Graham. I think there was more Yaz in this episode than in all ten episodes of the last season put together.
Overall, a very good start to Series 12, but hardly indicative of what may follow. Hopefully Part 2 won't go off at too great a tangent, as Moffat two parters were wont to do, as a lot of questions remain unanswered.
Chibnall has promised a theme running through this series, rather than a more explicit story arc. Hard to judge what that theme might be after just half a story, but it could be about our over-reliance on technology, or things being not what they appear to be. The Master's statement that everything the Doctor knows is a lie might hark back to that rumour of a regeneration cycle before the one we have seen since Hartnell. Maybe.
One last thing, did you watch Dracula as well last night? And if you did, did you spot the Clara Oswald reference (mention of the barmaid of the Rose & Crown)?