In which the Doctor rescues Clara from deep space, where she is struggling to deal with a Love Sprite trapped in her spacesuit. The Doctor is busy defending the TARDIS from an attack by aliens, but eventually manages to materialise around her and the Sprite is stamped on before it can do any harm.
The ship lands in a forest where the Doctor intends to wipe his boot, but they are both suddenly surrounded by Viking warriors. One of them breaks the Doctor's sonic sunglasses in two.
They are marched through the night, arriving in the Viking village in the morning. The Doctor claims to be Odin. However, moments later a huge face appears in the sky - the "real" Odin.
The bearded figure announces that the village's best warriors will dine with him in Valhalla that night.
A group of huge armoured figures then materialise.
A young Viking woman - Ashildr - is using part of the Doctor's sunglasses to unlock Clara's manacles, and this technology is registered by the new arrivals. The Doctor is horrified to see them both beamed away, along with a group of warriors.
They find themselves in a futuristic industrial space. They are confined to a corridor where they are attacked by beams which vapourise on contact. Clara and Ashildr manage to get out just in time, but all of the warriors have been killed.
They are confronted by Odin, and from him learn that they are on a spaceship. Odin and the armoured figures are an alien race known as the Mire. He has merely taken on humanoid form for the benefit of the Viking villagers. The Mire are parasites, who feed on certain hormones and other chemicals - adrenaline and testosterone. They obtain this by exploiting male soldiers - luring them into a trap on their ship.
The Mire are on the point of departing when a furious Ashildr challenges them. Her village will fight them to the death. Odin accepts the challenge, giving them until the next day to prepare.
They are sent back down to the village, and Ashildr tells her father Einarr what she has done. He is headman of the village. The Mire had scanned the Vikings and taken only those who were the strongest warriors, and therefore the most potent to feed upon. What remains are the non-fighting men, along with the women and children.
The Doctor realises that they cannot run away, so he has 24 hours to fashion them into a competent fighting force. They prove to be more of a danger to each other than to prospective enemies.
He sees a child who is fascinated by some electric eels in a barrel, and begins to formulate a plan. He also realises why his face is so familiar to him, as he recalls the Pompeian Caecilius. He had saved him and his family from the volcanic destruction of their city. This is who he is - the man who saves people.
When the Mire arrive in the village next day, with their leader still disguised as Odin, they find that the villagers are not going to fight them conventionally.
The Doctor discovers that the mental effort of creating the false image has killed Ashildr. Recalling how he must always save someone, he decides to use a medical chip from the Mire helmet to bring her back to life. This will make her effectively immortal.
He and Clara then leave the village and head off to find the TARDIS.
Ashildr is pleased with her new existence initially, but as the years pass by and the people she loves die, she becomes more of a tragic figure...
This was the 100th story since the start of the 2005 revival.
Until his departure as show-runner, Moffat will tend to get a co-writer credit on many stories. In this case it is presumably because a significant new character is being created, and in other cases it is because he is contributing to the story arc whilst the main writer concentrates on the individual story plotting.
One of the aspects of this story is to explain why the Twelfth Doctor looks like a character he has previously encountered - the marble merchant Lobus Caecilius from The Fires of Pompeii. We get flashbacks to that episode, as well as to the scene with the tramp in Deep Breath where the Doctor first seemed to recognise his new face.
The Sixth Doctor had previously gained the face of someone they had met before - Commander Maxil of the Chancellery Guard on Gallifrey. Then, the likeness was never even commented upon and no reason given for it. Fandom has suggested that Time Lords have a limited number of faces they can call upon when it comes to regeneration - which is also why Chancellor Goth looks like the Time Lord who presided at the Doctor's first trial (though here it may well simply be the case that they are the same Time Lord).
The Twelfth Doctor's face is a rather common one, as it is also identical to that of senior Civil Servant John Frobisher (Torchwood: Children of Earth), though there is no record of him ever meeting the Doctor.
Ashildr is a version of the Norse name Ashild. It is made up of two parts - the first half referring to a "heathen god or deity", and the latter half meaning "battle or fight". In the episode she challenges Odin to combat. You could also argue that she herself becomes a form of deity when made immortal, one who will spend her existence fighting.
She is played by Maisie Williams, who came to fame playing Arya Stark in Game of Thrones.
The Doctor gives nicknames to the Vikings who he must turn into a fighting force.
These include Tom Stourton as "Lofty". He is a regular on popular children's BBC series Horrible Histories and has also done voice work on Thomas and Friends and Spitting Image. He has also formed a successful acting / writing partnership with Tom Palmer, who played Hutchinson in Human Nature / The Family of Blood.
Einarr, Ashildr's father, the Doctor dubs "Chuckles". He is played by Ian Conningham. He is a regular Big Finish performer.
Other Vikings are played by Simon Lipkin (Nollarr), Alastair Parker ("Limpy"), Barnaby Kay ("Heidi") and Murray McArthur (Hasten).
Odin is played by David Schofield. He was the villainous Mr Mercer in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and another notable role was as one of the regulars of "The Slaughtered Lamb", the Yorkshire pub seen in An American Werewolf in London.
The main Mire performer is John Davey, who had pretty much taken on the principal monster role that Paul Kasey used to hold, before he went off to make Star Wars movies instead.
Overall, a story that seems to be played mainly for laughs, with comedy Vikings and guests from children's TV. The villains are chased off using a funny YouTube video, accompanied by the Benny Hill theme. The main guest artist does die in it, though the title of the following week's episode already alerted everyone to the fact that she wouldn't be dead for long...
Things you may like to know:
- There was inevitable criticism concerning the Viking helmets and their horns. Moffat knew that their usual headwear did not look like this, but agreed that they should do so here as that's what the general public expected Vikings to look like.
- Vikings had featured in one earlier story - The Time Meddler. A second story about them had been proposed by John Lucarotti - Eric the Red discovering North America - but it was too soon after the Dennis Spooner story, and too much of the action would have been confined to a boat at sea.
- Odin was to have been played by Brian Blessed, who had previously featured as King Yrcanos in Trial of a Time Lord Parts 5 - 8. He fell ill and so the part was recast.
- The Benny Hill theme is actually titled Yakety Sax, and was written by Boots Randolph and James Q Rich in 1963. Hill employed it as the closing piece of music for his shows, always over a speeded-up chase sequence.
- Two new aliens are mentioned in the opening sequence - the Love Sprite, which is a small insect creature found in Spider Mines; and the Velosians, who are attacking the TARDIS.
- The Doctor now has a 2000 Year Diary. The Second Doctor had previously been seen to consult a 500 Year one occasionally.
- Two other Vikings mentioned are nicknamed "ZZ Top" - famous for their beards, and a band member named Beard who is the one who doesn't wear one - and "Noggin the Nog". This was an Oliver Postgate children's animation series which ran from 1959 to 1965 and was repeated many times thereafter. Some characters were based on the Lewis Chessmen. "Lofty" is a popular nickname for tall people, generally male. "Chuckles" is so called because he doesn't smile, so the Doctor is being ironic. "Heidi" is named after the 1881 book by Johanna Spyri about a Swiss girl living in the Alps. It has formed the basis for several TV adaptations. Heidi is often portrayed with ornately braided hair.
- Capaldi gets to say "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow". Famous as a Third Doctor catchphrase, Jon Pertwee only ever uttered it once during his five year tenure.
- Williams' casting was enough to get this episode a Radio Times cover. However, inside on the Saturday TV page they used an image from the following week's episode, from the Agincourt sequence.
No comments:
Post a Comment