What's Wrong With... The Space Museum

Let's get the old joke out of the way first. You know the one. There are only three things wrong with this story, and they're Episodes 2, 3 and 4.
Like all the best jokes it's based on a kernel of truth. The Space Museum has a very good first episode, setting up a real mystery. Some incidental characters appear only briefly, so for the most part we concentrate on just the Doctor and his companions, trying to work out what is going on.
As soon as we start to get an idea about what this mystery is about, and the guest characters are properly introduced, it all goes to hell in a handcart.
Episode 1 is by no means perfect. There are some dodgy production values. Everything goes okay up until the time travellers leave the TARDIS. The planet set is far too small, with the background too close to the actors, meaning their shadows fall on what are supposed to be distant mountains. The walls of the museum are supposed to be multifaceted, as seen in the model shots, but viewed on modern TVs up close this has clearly been done with paint effects on flat surfaces when it comes to the studio set.
As they explore the museum interior, Vicki decides to ignore the Doctor's order not to touch anything, and we see her hand pass right through a piece of equipment. All the supposedly insubstantial items look transparent before people go to touch them. This was one of the problems with the Overlay technique. An object would be filmed by another camera elsewhere in the studio, brightly lit against a black background. That image would then be overlaid on top of the main image with the actors. We've seen it before in the series, such as when the TARDIS crew view the dead Farrow in Planet of Giants (where the secondary image is a blown up photograph), or in The Web Planet, when the Doctor and Ian view the pyramid. One of the reasons both actors were dressed in white costumes for that scene was because, had they been wearing dark colours, they would have become invisible against the black backdrop. 
As the overlaid item isn't actually present in the part of the studio where the actors are, you get line-up problems. William Hartnell ventures too close to the "not there" TARDIS and stands on top of it before reaching out. Much is made of the travellers being unable to touch objects, or leave footprints, yet they feel the floor under their feet, and lean against walls without falling through them.
The wallpaper, badly hung, behind the four exhibit cases also deserves a mention.
Fluff-wise, Hartnell struggles with the word "fluorescent".
You can tell that it's Barbara who's the history teacher, as Ian earlier mentions that they had been wearing 13th Century costumes, despite having just come from 1191.
There is also the discontinuity between the supposed size and labyrinthine nature of the museum and the relatively small building when shown as a model. Hard to see how anyone could get lost in it.
Some of the major problems with Episodes 2 to 4 might lie in a confusion about the tone of the story. We know that writer Glyn Jones, intended a lot more humour, which story editor Dennis Spooner cut out - surprising when you remember that he was the person who introduced more humour into the programme.
Jones called his villains Moroks, as in morons, and their leader is called Lobos, as in lobotomised. They were deliberately intended as being rather stupid, and everything they say and do tends to support this, yet the actors have been advised to play it straight. Had it been played more as Jones intended, this story might have had a better reputation.
After Episode 1 we know things are on a downward tread as we are introduced to Lobos, who is required to deliver some truly awful exposition. He's a Morok, talking to another Morok, yet he tells him things about Moroks that Moroks must surely already know. He talks about how this museum, where they both work, came into being, and even how long one of their years lasts. It doesn't matter how long a Xeron day is, a Morok year is still a Morok year.
Yes, this planet conforms to the Terry Nation school of planetary naming. It is an arid world, so just happens to have a name derived from the Greek word for dry - xiros.
If the planet is dry, then its inhabitants are most assuredly wet. They are all teenage boys, who dress in black skinny jeans and roll-neck sweaters, so look as if they should be at a youth club organising a skiffle concert rather than a revolution. If they are Mods then the Moroks must be Rockers, as they all sport enormous quiffs.
It is clear that lack of interest in this museum has been a problem for a long time, so you have to wonder why the Morok authorities have kept it going this long. We also have to question Lobos's belief that capturing the TARDIS crew will somehow revive its fortunes. Are the people of Morok really going to flock to Xeros to see a battered old Police Box, an old man, two schoolteachers and a schoolgirl?
In order to capture the travellers Lobos floods the museum with gas. This leads to Barbara being sidelined for almost an entire episode, struggling along a very short corridor with one of the Xeron youths. Ian, meanwhile, discovers that the Moroks aren't terribly good soldiers (unless they deliberately assign museum duties to their worst troops), and Vicki discovers that the Xerons aren't terribly bright revolutionaries. The Morok arsenal is protected by a computer sentinel, but she overcomes it in a matter of seconds. Seems the questions the machine asks don't actually have to be answered before moving on to the next one, and if you reprogram it to say you want the guns for a revolution then it is quite happy to oblige. The release of the guns leads to the terrible line "Have any arms fallen into Xeron hands?" from the Morok commander, who also struggles with the pronunciation of "guerrillas".
There's a lot of discussion about the missing button from Ian's blazer, with regards to them changing their possible fate, and yet no-one mentions the fact that Barbara's entire cardigan, which she was wearing in the display case, has been unravelled.
The revolution takes place, and the Moroks are defeated. No mention is made of possible reprisals from the Moroks, like reinvading the planet or nuking it from space. The Xerons then appear to empty this supposedly vast museum of its contents in a matter of minutes. The museum wall can be glimpsed through the TARDIS door in this scene.
We then get a very lame excuse for the mystery of Episode 1. It was just another stuck switch in the TARDIS, just like we had in the equally mundane conclusion to The Edge of Destruction.
At the end we have a lead-in to the next story, as a Dalek appears - reporting on the TARDIS's whereabouts. Bizarrely, all of the controls it's using are high up off the ground, rather than at plunger level.

Is it still a spoiler if it's in the trailer?

A number of images released today for The Timeless Children, plus the people at CultBox.co.uk have taken the time to freeze-frame the BBC America trailer, which throws up what might well be a spoiler. A lot of the images relate to Gallifrey and the Doctor / Master, with Ashad present. Other images show Ryan and Ko Sharmus back on the Boundary planet with the Cybermen arriving.

We get a glimpse of a Time Lord in the traditional robes, collar and skullcap. Commentator Runcible described them, way back in The Deadly Assassin where they were first introduced, as "seldom worn", but they've come to define what Gallifrey-based Time Lords wear all the time.

The Master is seen with Ashad and operating his Tissue Compression Eliminator...

But a very significant 'blink and you'll miss it' scene is this one:

A woman dressed in the same uniform as Gat, who featured in Fugitive of the Judoon, sitting with two other figures - one in red, the other in yellow. The latter might even be the Time Lord seen above. What is significant about this image is the one immediately before it - a dissolve from another scene...

A scene set in the Garda office dissolves into the scene on Gallifrey. The Gat-like lady is sitting where the senior police officer was sitting, whilst Brendan is where the person in red is, and his dad where the person in yellow is. Now this might just be a directorial flourish, juxtaposing similar looking scenes, but another explanation is apparent. We know that the Irish sequence has to have some bearing on this episode, and we know that something very odd is going on which makes that sequence look like it can't be real. If it's all an illusion, was Brendan really the person in red, sitting in an office on Gallifrey the whole time? Someone appears to be standing to the left as the two scenes dissolve together - the hint of grey suggesting that it might be the Doctor. If it is, then this might just be images the Master is showing her - stuff he found about about the Time Lords' great deceit.
In the Doctor / Master images, Gallifrey is clearly in ruins, yet in this office image there is no sign of that damage, suggesting it's a glimpse of the past - possibly the very distant past. Of course this throws up all sorts of other questions - like how could Gat, originating on ancient Gallifrey, have been around in 21st Century Gloucester? What does this have to do with Dr Ruth? If the person in red really is the Brendan character, why the whole unreal existence in rural Ireland?
This series might have a had a few clunkers, but it's indicative of the general improvement this season that we are speculating at all. I don't think anyone had any real interest in what the Series 11 finale might have contained.

Ascension of the Cybermen - Review

A very good episode. I do believe this is the first time I've ever described a Chibnall era episode as such. I'll state my usual caveat that this is the first half of a two part story, so we can't really judge it properly until we've seen the conclusion. A lot of promising first episodes have been followed by poor second ones. From the 'Next Time' teaser we can see that there will be a shift in emphasis to the Doctor, the Master and Gallifrey, though there will be more Ashad and new Cybermen as well. There's something rather epic about a Cyberman saying "Set course for Gallifrey".
One thing we really want to see explained is the whole rural Ireland thing, which the episode kept gong back to. A baby gets left on a country road in early 20th Century Ireland, and is adopted by the man who finds it. We see him grow up and join the Garda, and at one point he gets shot and falls off a cliff. A few minutes later he gets up, as though nothing had happened. We then see him grow to old age and retire, yet his father and his superior officer look exactly the same as when he was a baby, and they take him into a back room and zap him with electricity to wipe his memories - the electrodes attached to the sides of his head reminiscent of Cyberman earmuffs.
The actor playing Ashad is Irish, so does this have something to do with him? Or is this another unknown Doctor - the retirement clock being part of a Chameleon Arch? I think the gift of a clock is significant. Or is this something to do with the old monk-like man, Ko Sharmus, who appears towards the end of the main narrative, and who is also played by an Irish actor - Ian McElhinney? The whole speeded-up life was reminiscent of something not really happening in real time at all, like it was some kind of artificial construct - like Donna Noble's life inside the Library in Forest of the Dead.
It will be interesting to see what this whole Irish flashback sequence was all about. I note that there was no sign of this sub-plot in the teaser trailer, though.
As for that main narrative, which follows on from the events at the Villa Diodati, Ashad worked a lot better this time. He felt a bit shoehorned into last week's episode, and I still think I would rather that the Byron / Shelley episode had been a stand-alone one. More was made of the fact that he is an incomplete Cyberman, who retains his human emotions. He sees himself as some sort of messiah who will bring about the Cyberman Second Coming. I wasn't entirely sure what he did to the first couple of Cybermen he brought out of hibernation - I'm going to assume that he was disabling their emotional inhibitors - but that then begs the question of why he didn't do it to all of them? Why just a couple of them? The new design - referred to as a Warrior Class - looked very impressive, though I don't know why Cybermen would need a Warrior Class.
As far as Cyber-history goes, this obviously has nothing to do with the Cyber-War mentioned in Revenge of the Cybermen. This story seemed to be set much further into the future, with only a handful of humans and Cybermen left (which contradicts a lot of earlier stories which dealt with the far future of the human race, unless these events are confined to just one galaxy). One big question I have to ask is: if the Cybermen are wiping out all the humans, who are they going to convert into new Cybermen? I'm in two minds about the Cyber-Drones - basically flying heads. They looked slightly stupid.
I don't think it takes a genius to work out where Chibnall might be going with the "Boundary" through which many other humans have escaped, leading to Gallifrey. Is it that the fleeing humans arrived in the planet's pre-history, and eventually became the Time Lords? Depends when they arrived. From a couple of photos already released from The Timeless Children, the action next week moves to the Gallifrey that has already been destroyed by the Master. Is Brendan the Timeless Child, and not the little girl we keep glimpsing? Did the early, human, Gallifreyan settlers make use of his immortality to regenerate themselves?
So many questions, and the problem is that we aren't going to get them all answered this series. Chibnall has pretty much said so. There will be some answers in the final episode, but not all.
I've said before that I prefer this Doctor when she is on the back foot, when things aren't going to plan and there is a real sense of danger to herself and her companions. We got that again here. Yaz was once again well served, but Ryan needn't have bothered turning up for this episode. I'm afraid Graham has become a bit of a walking Cockney cliche, which is annoying. He was one of the best things in Series 11, but he's been neglected this year. By far the standout performance of the episode is Patrick O'Kane's Ashad, though I suspect that Sacha Dhawan will give him a run for his money next week.

Unseen Stories (5)

The Fourth Doctor - Part 2.
On visiting the lighthouse on Fang Rock, the Doctor speaks of the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria as though he had seen it. This might have been when he became acquainted with the captain of Cleopatra's bodyguard, although it actually stood for several hundred years before being destroyed by a string of earthquakes.
On Pluto the Doctor claims to have a bounty on his head, of an entire star system, from the Droge of the Gabrielides, whilst discussing the topic of rock types with Leela later he suggests that he has visited both Aberdeen and Blackpool.
On his return to Gallifrey in The Invasion of Time, we see that the Doctor has picked up a copy of The Daily Sketch on his travels, dated to 1912 as it covers the sinking of the Titanic, which he claims not to have had anything to do with. Before this story starts he must have encountered the Vardans, in order for them to have co-opted him into their invasion plans.
As well as learning tricks from Harry Houdini, the Doctor also claims to have been taught some sleight-of-hand tricks by Maskalyne. he doesn't say which, and there were three generations of Maskelyne who performed magic tricks. The earliest was John Nevil Maskelyne (1839 - 1917). If it was he whom the Doctor met, then this might tie in with Houdini, as both men sought to unmask fraudulent mediums. His son Nevil (1863 - 1924) also became a magician as well as an inventor, and he was succeeded by his son, Jasper (1902 - 1979). Jasper is best known for his work during World War II, when he was employed to build large scale illusions to fool German aerial reconnaissance - creating fake tanks and aircraft and camouflaging real military equipment and installations. As we already know that the Doctor has some familiarity with Victorian Music Hall, we can assume that it was the senior Maskelyne, John Nevil, who taught the Doctor his tricks. He published a book on card tricks, so was not averse to sharing magical secrets.
In The Pirate Planet, Romana claims that the Doctor has piloted the TARDIS for 523 years, which leaves scope for a great many of these unseen adventures. The Doctor is said to be 759 here, meaning he was nearly 240 when he left Gallifrey. He was nearly 750 in The Pyramids of Mars, and only 450 in Tomb of the Cybermen (but on that occasion he had to think about it for a moment, and may have been translating it from Gallifreyan years into Earth ones for the benefit of Jamie and Victoria).
He claims to have given Newton his ideas about gravity, by dropping an apple on his head, but this sounds too much like a tall story, as he says he explained the theory to Newton later over dinner. This would have meant he was seriously tampering with human scientific development, so highly unlikely.
The Doctor finally gets round to mentioning having met Einstein in The Stones of Blood. Again, he claims to have helped him with his work, so another tall tale probably. He speaks of both John Aubrey, the antiquarian, and Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy, as though he knew them personally.
Oddly, the unfilmed birthday scene for this 100th story would have seen the Doctor celebrating his 751st birthday - despite being 759 only two stories earlier.
On the planet Tara, the Doctor claims to have seen Capablanca play Alekhine at chess in 1927, and claims to have fished with Izaak Walton (1593 - 1683), author of The Compleat Angler. The latter sounds like more name-dropping. Talking of fishing, I neglected to mention last time the Doctor's claim to have caught a massive salmon in the River Fleet, which he shared with the Venerable Bede (672 - 735). As Bede never left the North East of England, the Doctor couldn't have had Bede with him at the time he caught the fish, but must have travelled to Tyneside with it in the TARDIS soon after.
The Doctor escapes execution on the Third Moon of Delta Magna by singing in so high a pitch that it shatters glass, which suggests he might have met Dame Nellie Melba (1861 - 1931). On Atrios he saves K9 from a furnace using skills he learned from Balinese Fire Walkers.
Destiny of the Daleks sees the Doctor return to Skaro. He seems very familiar with the layout of the Kaled city, even though it bears no resemblance to what we saw in Genesis of the Daleks. He seemed to know more about the city in Evil of the Daleks than he saw in The Daleks, so there may have been other visits to the planet (perhaps when he got the Freedom of the City scroll seen in Robot). He also talks of the Daleks being purely robotic, and only once having organic components - so may have met some future version of the creatures when they were purely robotic. Reading Oolon Coluphid's book on the origins of the universe, he seems to hint that he witnessed the event.
We've already covered The City of Death, with its unseen meetings with Leonardo and Shakespeare. The story actually suggests at least two meetings with the Bard, as he describes him as a "taciturn boy" as well as when he helped him out when he strained his wrist at the time of the writing of Hamlet.
Certain skills must obviously need to be reacquired when the Doctor regenerates. Prior to his Fourth incarnation, the Doctor is familiar with Tibetan, yet in The Creature from the Pit he needs to refer to a "Teach Yourself Tibetan" book to translate another volume about Mountain Climbing. Douglas Adams is script editing, so we won't ask why the mountaineering book has an English title if it's written in Tibetan, or why the TARDIS isn't doing its usual translation.
The Doctor claims in this story to have helped Theseus in his battle with the Minotaur, having been given a large ball of string as a gift from the Corinthian hero and Ariadne. Odd to have gotten a gift from Theseus, when the Doctor forgot to remind him to change his sails on reaching home (leading to his father committing suicide, thinking him dead). He also has the jawbone of an ass in the TARDIS, and sort of implies it is the one Samson used to slay the Philistines.
In Nightmare of Eden, the Doctor claims to have met Professor Stein, Tryst's old mentor, and to have attended one of his lectures. He speaks of the damage the drug Vraxoin does to whole planets as if from personal experience.
The Doctor claims to have been to the planet Aneth - "but not yet".
The unbroadcast story Shada tells of multiple visits by the Doctor to St Cedd's College, Cambridge, to see Professor Chronotis - in 1955, 1958, 1960 and 1964. He was in a different incarnation for the 1958 visit. These are just the visits remembered by porter Wilkins, so he may have been there other times prior to 1955. The Doctor claims to have learned "vortex-walking" from a space/time mystic in the Quantocks. Possibly another reference to K'anpo, although his meditation centre wasn't in Somerset. (In Planet of the Spiders, Sarah is picked up from Mortimer railway station, which is in Berkshire).
When JNT took over the programme he was determined to stamp out a lot of the jokiness which had crept in - something which script editor Chris Bidmead and executive producer Barry Letts agreed with. It's noticeable that the Fourth Doctor does a lot less name-dropping from this point on. In fact there are very few references to unseen stories in Tom Baker's final season.
The Doctor has been to the planet Tigella before - not that long ago in its history as he knows the current leader Zastor, and it was in this incarnation. Meglos ends with an unseen trip to Earth to drop off the abducted human. The Doctor isn't sure if he's been to Traken, but thinks not, though he does seem to know quite a bit about it and recognises the planetary system from space by sight. The Keeper of Traken tells us that the Doctor did used to keep "Time Logs" - diaries of sorts - but they seem to be very unreliable and confusing.
Finally, the Doctor has been to Logopolis before - within the Monitor's lifetime. He also claims biologist and anthropologist Thomas Huxley (1825 - 1895) as an old friend. And just to go full circle, we return to the Pharos lighthouse, as the Doctor recognises the Pharos Project replica created by the Logopolitans.

"James Stoker"

A spoiler of sorts, but not a terribly well hidden one. I think everyone is assuming that the Master will be back anyway for the finale of the current series. Well, apparently The Timeless Children has a character named Fakout, played by an actor named Barack Stemis, who apparently hasn't acted in anything before as his name fails to show up in any on-line search. I'm assuming Fakout is pronounced Fake-Out, and that's not the most subtle of anagrams...

Unseen Stories (4)

The Fourth Doctor - Part 1.
Once we get to the reign of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, we have many references to unseen stories - but the problem is that he is so flippant in his references that we really can't tell if he's being serious or not.
In his very first story we have the scene where he infiltrates the hall where the Scientific Reform Society are holding their meeting. He pulls out a huge wallet which contains a number of cards and other documents. One of these is a pilot's licence for the Mars-Venus run - or so he says. Then we have the Freedom of the City of Skaro. This must have been bestowed by the Thals, if that's what the document really states, as the Daleks would never offer such an honour. We've only seen the Doctor encounter the Thals once on Skaro up until this point, and the nomadic group he encountered way back in The Daleks didn't look the sort to issue honorary scrolls. Then there's his membership of the Alpha Centauri table-tennis club. He mentions them having six bats to go with their six arms - but the human game sees two-armed players armed with only one bat each, so they must play it differently there. Earlier, he thinks the Brigadier might be either Hannibal or Alexander the Great - suggesting that, like the Brigadier, he has met them before.
he claim his scarf was knitted for him by the wife of Nostradamus - a witty little knitter. This does sound as if it might be true. Could the Doctor in some way have been responsible for the prophesies? Was he investigating to make sure some alien interference wasn't going on? Sounds like something the Meddling Monk might have got involved with.
In trying to tie the Hand of Omega into continuity, some fans have posited that the Doctor already knew all about the Daleks before the events of The Daleks - that he must have set up the trap for them before encountering Ian and Barbara and departing hurriedly from Coal Hill, Shoreditch. However, he definitely hasn't heard of Davros until he meets him in Genesis of the Daleks. When captured by the Kaled scientist, the Doctor is forced to recount a number of Dalek defeats. One of these sounds similar to the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, or its movie version, whilst the others are all new to us. This doesn't necessarily mean the Doctor was present - he may simply have heard about them during the course of his travels. He is linked to a truth detector, but there is every reason to believe that someone who can fool a mind probe can also dupe a lie-detector.
The Doctor's knowledge of the Cyber-War could also be something he read about, or heard about. Once again the Doctor mentions having learned some rope tricks from Harry Houdini whilst captive on Nerva Beacon - having previously claimed to have met him in Planet of the Spiders.
We know the Doctor spent some time in Scotland when he studied for his medical degree, and this might be how he comes to know a specific piece of bagpipe music in Terror of the Zygons. That, or Jamie taught it to him. He claims to have learned the trick of going into a breathless trance from a Tibetan monk. This could have been during his first visit to Det-Sen Monastery, or it might be another reference to his old Time Lord guru K'anpo.
Planet of Evil sees the Doctor's first mention of having met Shakespeare, whom he will later claim to have met in The City of Death. On that later occasion, he says that it was he who wrote out the First Folio version of Hamlet, Shakespeare having strained his wrist writing sonnets. In The Shakespeare Code, the Bard definitely hasn't met the Doctor by this point in is life, so these other encounters must have come after that meeting. Oddly, though, the Tenth Doctor behaves as if he's meeting Shakespeare for the first time as well - so these Fourth Doctor references might all just be made up.
The Doctor is known to have a passion for the period of the French Revolution, so it comes as no surprise that his lock-pick once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Perhaps if she hadn't given it to the Doctor then she might have escaped prison and not gone to her death on the guillotine. The Doctor's comment about previously being blamed for the Great Fire of London definitely comes across as a joke.
The Android Invasion sees the Doctor name-drop both the Duke of Marlborough and Alexander Graham Bell. The latter he advised not to use wires for his new telephone invention. Presumably the Duke he is referring to is the first of that title - John Churchill (1650 - 1722), the hero of the Battle of Blenheim.
In The Seeds of Death, the Doctor claims to be the President of the Intergalactic Flora Society. If such a body does exist, it is difficult to know how the Doctor could hold down such a role. Again, this sounds like a joke to make Sir Colin take his credentials seriously.
In San Martino, the Doctor tells Sarah that he is looking forward to meeting Leonardo da Vinci - suggesting that he hasn't had that honour so far. The City of Death, again, posits that the two have definitely met by this time, though we again fail to see the two meet onscreen.
Also in The Masque of Mandragora, the Doctor claims that the best swordsman he ever saw was a captain in Cleopatra's bodyguard.
The Deadly Assassin doesn't give us any references to unseen stories - instead giving us some of the Doctor's backstory whilst still living on Gallifrey, especially his Academy days. He claims not to have ever met the outgoing President, and yet he implied that Morbius was around during his lifetime - and he might even have met him.
The Face of Evil specifically deals with the aftermath of an unseen adventure - one of the very few occasions this happens in the series. At some point, in this current incarnation, the Doctor had visited this primordial planet, just after the Mordee Expedition had landed. He had repaired their computer using part of his own personality, unaware that the machine was developing a personality of its own - inadvertently giving rise to the unbalanced Xoanon. Unless he's been travelling on his own for a very long time since leaving Gallifrey, this must have taken place when he was still with Sarah, though there aren't many gaps where the story might fit, and it's odd that he seems not to have remembered it so easily. One fan theory is that he slipped away from UNIT HQ whilst still suffering post-regenerative shock, fixed the computer, then slipped back again. This might explain why he made such a hash of the job, but doesn't fit with what we saw in Robot, where he only discovers the hiding place of the TARDIS key prior to joining the Brigadier's investigations. His stated age in Pyramids of Mars and stories after this one also go against a very long period of travel between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil. This story also has the Doctor claim to have learned how to shoot a crossbow from William Tell. Like Robin Hood, he's a folk hero who probably never existed - and yet the Doctor would later encounter Robin Hood, never having believed him to be a real person.
The Doctor has seen vehicles similar to the Sandminer on Korlano Beta - specifically stating he has seen them rather than just knowing about them, so he has been to that planet at some point.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang mentions a few unseen adventures. The Doctor says he hasn't been to China for 400 years. That can't be a reference to Marco Polo, as he is a couple of centuries out. He seems to know a lot about Victorian Music Hall performers, suggesting a previous visit. The Doctor later informs Magnus Greel that he was with the Filipino Army during its final assault on Reykjavik, in the early 51st Century.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati - Review

One thing Doctor Who has always been successful at is the "mash-up" of two or more genres in a single story. A science fiction series, about a time traveller, offers ample opportunities for this, and it's what has made Doctor Who unique as a TV series. EastEnders can't have a UFO arriving in the middle of Albert Square one night. Coronation Street can't have a vampire prowling the cobbles of Weatherfield. But Evil of the Daleks was like The Forsyte Saga, but with Daleks. Love & Monsters was a rom-com with aliens. The Unquiet Dead was a ghost story, with aliens. We've also had pirate movies, westerns, war films and more over the decades, all with alien elements.
Last night's story - The Haunting of Villa Diodati - was another example of this mash-up - period drama, literary biography, ghost story, and Cybermen.
The problem was, it didn't quite mash.
I actually quite enjoyed it as I watched it, Gothic Horror being a particular passion of mine, and I was well acquainted with the real story behind these events. Byron I can take or leave, but I do like Shelley. Apart from the whole haunted house, spatial warping, and Cyberman, there were some historical inaccuracies. For a start, the story-telling competition took place over the course of three nights - not just the one. Byron was presented as a bit of a coward, hiding behind Claire Clairmont's dress at one point. This is a man who elected to go fight in Greece against the Ottoman Empire, not because he had to - because he wanted to. We heard about Polidori's insomnia and sleep-walking, but no mention of the fact that it was actually a discussion between him and Shelley which sparked Mary Godwin's imagination and inspired her to write her story.
It was only afterwards as I thought about the episode that reservations began to creep in. I think the problem is that there were two good stories here, that ought to have been told separately.
The whole Villa Diodati thing could have sustained a story in its own right, with an alien more suited to the ghost / haunted house theme.
The Cyberman felt rather tacked on, as though it had to be there just to set up the next two episodes, and for no other reason. Yes, there is the connection between the stitched together Cyberman and the Frankenstein Monster, though that connection was only briefly touched upon in the scene set in the cellars, by which time it was clear that this story existed only to set something else up.
My other problem was the Cyberman himself. The whole point about the Cybermen is that they have no emotions whatsoever. Ashad could have been any other sadistic alien, travelling back through time to find something. He didn't need to be a Cyberman apart from the set up for future episodes. Imagine this story, if you will, where it was a purely non-emotional Cyberman hunting for the Guardian / Cyberium - pursuing its prey with the same relentless purpose. It would have worked just as well. An emotional Cyberman isn't a Cyberman.
It was another good episode for Yaz, but Graham hasn't been served as well this series. He seems to have been reduced to pure comic relief, with nothing but the odd one-liner.
Jodie Whittaker was better served, for a change. No lectures or bland homilies about the theme of the week this time. We've seen her be a bit short with the companions a couple of times this year, and last night saw her firmly put them in their place. At the end of the day, she is the boss and she calls the shots.
I noticed this morning that there was a very slight rise in the ratings - of around 60,000 - on last week's instalment. Perhaps if they'd actually advertised the return of the Cybermen (we all knew it was coming) this might have done better. Roll on the finale.