#I really wish they had more reptile characters in Sonic

[a-spacecadet]

I was looking at photos of chameleons and I was like, “what if Espio was just chilling on a branch like the chameleon he is” and I had to draw what I saw in my head

[the-desolated-quill]

Cold War - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Here we go again with another Mark Gatiss episode and it always pains me whenever I have to slag him off. I’m a big League of Gentlemen fan and Gatiss has done sterling work with them over the years, but the sad fact of the matter is the stuff he does outside of the League just isn’t very good. His first Doctor Who episode, The Unquiet Dead, was decent but flawed, The Idiot’s Lantern was a ripoff of Little Shop Of Horrors except with none of the charm, Victory of The Daleks was utter crap, and Night Terrors just bored the pants off me. Now here we are with Cold War, and I wish I could say this was the episode where Gatiss finally pulls out all the stops to give us the magnificent Doctor Who story we’ve all been waiting for, but sadly it’s yet another dud I’m afraid.

By far the biggest problem with Cold War is its total lack of originality. An Ice Warrior gets loose aboard a Russian submarine and it’s a fight for survival as the Doctor tries to reason with the alien and save the crew. Yep, this is yet another base under siege story, and it goes through all the cliches. The Doctor meekly trying to persuade the villain to show mercy, the crew splitting up to search for a solution, the monster picking them off one by one, and so on. I’ve seen this kind of story done so many times in Doctor Who now that I was practically nodding off halfway through it. 

Cold War also borrows liberally from other sci-fi stories, the most obvious being Alien, but there’s also elements from other Doctor Who stories too, such as the multiple Silurian stories where the Doctor tries to persuade two sides to play nice, and Dalek where the last surviving member of a warrior race threatens to destroy all of humanity out of desperation and rage. The problem is the reason Dalek worked so well was because of the Doctor’s long history with the Daleks. A relationship he simply doesn’t have with the Ice Warriors. Plus Cold War shares the same problem as The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood where neither side are given any sort of nuance or depth, and therefore it’s hard to empathise with anyone.

Of course Cold War is significant in that it features the long awaited return of classic series monsters the Ice Warriors. Having heard all of my rants about the Cybermen, the Sontarans and the Silurians, you’re no doubt wondering what I, a veteran Whovian, thought about the Ice Warriors during their heyday.

Yeah, I’ve never really been a fan. Not that they’re bad villains, mind. They’ve had some decent stories in their time. I’ve just never found them to be particularly interesting. The only time I felt the Ice Warriors really came into their own was in the Jon Pertwee era story The Curse Of Peladon. It was a sort of murder mystery plot where an alliance between the Galactic Federation and Peladon was in peril due to someone killing off the delegates. Naturally the Doctor and his companion Jo suspected the Ice Warriors due to their reputation, but then the story pulls the rug out from under us by revealing the true culprit to be the High Priest Hepesh and the realisation that the Ice Warriors really had changed their ways after all. It was a genuinely good twist and opened up a lot of creative possibilities for the Ice Warriors. We’d seen heartless zealots like the Daleks, altruistic foes like the Cybermen and one note pantomime villains like the Master, but we had never seen a monster in Doctor Who that starts out as evil only to realise over the course of the show that what they were doing was wrong and try to make amends. This put the Ice Warriors in an incredibly unique position I feel. One that sadly was never fully capitalised on because in their next and last story, The Monster Of Peladon, the Ice Warriors reverted back to being baddies again.

So what direction does Gatiss take the new, revived Ice Warriors? Are they a morally complex race of warriors trying to make up for past mistakes or boring alien invaders hellbent on world domination?

...

Boring alien invaders hellbent on world domination.

Great! Yeah! God forbid we should do anything interesting with them!

To the episode’s credit, the new Ice Warriors look really cool. Much more high tech and imposing than the classic series ones. And Gatiss does try to address a few discrepancies in Ice Warrior lore, for example how did a race of cold blooded reptiles survive on a cold planet like Mars? But it’s the characterisation that severely lets this episode down. The Ice Warrior just isn’t a very interesting character. They try to make you feel an emotional connection to him by wheeling out the cliched dead daughter, but the character is just too extreme for us to empathise with. One human zaps him with a cattle prod and suddenly he wants to destroy the world, and the only explanation we’re given as to what justifies such an overreaction is some bollocks about Martian code of ethics. Also, didn’t he attack them first? And I had to let out a hollow laugh when the Doctor said the Ice Warrior would have left them alone if they didn’t zap him. Bit naive, wouldn’t you say? The Ice Warriors are many things, but merciful is not one of them.

And it just gets worse when they then commit the cardinal sin of getting the Ice Warrior to come out of its shell. So instead of the tall, imposing Ice Warrior we were promised, we instead get a pair of green rubber gloves gripping people’s faces and the worst CGI face I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s hard to imagine an Ice Warrior being that fast and nimble out of the suit, (not to mention that spindly looking), not just because I’m so used to the Ice Warriors being slow, sluggish brutes, but also because Earth’s gravity is much stronger than Mars’. Shouldn’t the Ice Warrior be a quivering puddle of slime on the floor? And what was the point of the Ice Warrior ‘disassembling’ people to learn human weaknesses. It never comes into play at any point in the episode. Everything about the naked Ice Warrior just feels utterly divorced from anything I’d associate with them to the point where I question why Mark Gatiss would even call it an Ice Warrior. Why not come up with your own alien? Why bring back the Ice Warriors? And I’d prefer a better reason other than ‘it’s the 50th anniversary.’

The human characters are just as bad. Whenever I’ve seen Cold War related stories, it’s usually from the perspective of the Americans. Hardly ever from the Russians. This is an opportunity for Doctor Who to cover new ground here, but they don’t really. The Russians aren’t actually characters. None of them are given any real development, arc or personality of their own. You have the captain who’s... well... the captain, some douchebag who is obsessed with war and gets promptly killed off, and then you’ve got David Warner’s character who we learn absolutely nothing about other than he’s obsessed with Duran Duran. The rest are just pointless redshirts that I don’t give a single shit about. If you’re going to give me a base under siege story, the least you can do is give me interesting characters that I actually care about, otherwise it’s going to be a bit hard to work up any kind of shock or sadness when they do kick the bucket. There’s no tension because I don’t care who lives or dies.

And speaking of tension, that’s another missed opportunity. It’s the Cold War. The world’s on a knife edge. Any spark or conflict could trigger nuclear armageddon. Combine that with the claustrophobic submarine setting and this episode should be brimming with paranoia and nervous tension. But you never get a sense of that, not only because I don’t give a shit about any of the characters, but also because at no point did I feel the weight or scale of what’s happening. Oh sure the Doctor keeps reminding us about the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, but it never feels imminent because none of the characters seem to take the prospect seriously. For one thing, the Russians are very quick to trust the Doctor and Clara despite them mysteriously appearing out of nowhere and could very well be working for the enemy for all they know, and whenever they do talk about the Cold War, it’s very quickly brushed to the side. Well if the characters are’t bothered by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, why the fuck should I be? Even the finale with the Doctor praying that the Ice Warrior won’t launch the nukes is undermined by Clara randomly singing Hungry Like The Wolf. Strip all the tension out, why don’t you?

The Doctor is at his most ineffectual sadly, reduced to spouting his usual ‘show mercy’ claptrap and waving his sonic screwdriver around, but what annoys me even more is Clara. Not only is she back to her smug self, reducing the potential threat considerably because if she’s not taking it seriously, why should I, but also there’s an opportunity for a good character arc here that Gatiss botches spectacularly. At one point Clara wonders whether she could have handled her first encounter with the Ice Warrior better and at the end is able to use the memory of the Ice Warrior’s daughter to persuade him to leave. This could have been an effective moment had Clara been allowed to speak to the Ice Warrior freely the first time around instead of being reduced to a mouthpiece for the Doctor (why couldn’t the Doctor just talk to the Ice Warrior himself? They never properly explain that). Clara isn’t given any real agency of her own or licence to screw up, so rather than the ending feeling like a personal triumph for Clara as she grows and develops as a character, she’s instead just a convenient out for Gatiss.

And don’t get me started on all the stuff that just didn’t make sense. How can the Russians mistake a frozen humanoid for a mammoth? Why did that guy thaw the Ice Warrior out other than for the sake of plot convenience? Why would a submarine that was only sent on an Arctic expedition be carrying nuclear weapons? Why would the Russians have automatic weapons on a submarine? How is the Ice Warrior able to hide inside the walls of a submarine? How does the Ice Warrior expect to launch a successful nuclear attack from a submarine that’s stranded 700 meters down below sea level? Oh and the Doctor just happened to have been fiddling with the TARDIS off screen, which just happened to make it disappear to the South Pole, leaving them stranded in the submarine? That’s fucking convenient, isn’t it?

I suppose I don’t hate Cold War. It’s competently made and if you’re someone who can’t get enough base under siege stories in Doctor Who, I’m sure it’s possible to enjoy this one provided you switch your brain off beforehand. The only crime this episode commits is that it’s just really, really dull. The story is cliched, the characters are one dimensional, and the potential of the setting is completely wasted. The only noteworthy thing about Cold War is the Ice Warrior and they don’t even do that very well. Overall it’s a very bland and forgettable episode. Maybe one day the Ice Warriors will get an episode that finally realises their full potential, but it isn’t this one.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Hungry Earth - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

The day Steven Moffat announced he was finally going to relieve us of our torment and leave the show for good, my reaction was mixed to say the least. On the one hand, yes that bastard is no longer going to be ruining one of my favourite shows, but on the other hand he’s being replaced by Chris Chibnall. A writer who’s almost as incompetent as Moffat and has written some of the worst episodes of Doctor Who and its god awful spinoff series Torchwood. (And to those who occasionally ask me if I’m going to be reviewing Torchwood at some point, the answer is a definitive no. I have got other things to do, you know. Stop pestering me). While he has earned some of my respect since then by casting Jodie Whitaker as the first female Doctor (and about time too), I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply concerned about the quality of the show moving forward.

I mention this because this two parter, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, was written by Chris Chibnall and I feel perfectly demonstrates all of his weaknesses and shortcomings as a writer.

In a small Welsh village in the year 2020, some scientists have drilled deep into the Earth’s crust, further than anyone has ever done before. But something is drilling up to the surface to meet them and has left some bio-programmed dirt (just go with it). Some guy called Mo, upon seeing this suspicious patch of dirt with steam coming out of it, does what any smart, sensible person would do and sticks his hand in it.

So he gets dragged underground, and soon enough Amy joins him in an admittedly tense scene where the Doctor desperately tries to hold on to her.

From there, this giant energy dome thing seals the village off from the outside world and the whole thing becomes a bog standard base under siege story. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with a base under siege story. It’s just the base under siege story has been done so often in Doctor Who now that it’s hard not to let your eyes glaze over while you’re watching it. Of course it’s possible to revitalise the base under siege narrative, like The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit did, but The Hungry Earth most certainly doesn’t. So the whole thing was a bit of a snoozefest for me if I’m honest. Everything you think is going to happen does happen and with an extra dose of stupidity. 

The Doctor tells everyone to set up shop in the church, but wouldn’t the TARDIS be safer? I know you can’t fly it because of the energy dome thing, but surely it’s better than a church. Then he gets everybody to set up a security surveillance network that covers the entire village in 8 minutes flat, which is remarkably daft even by Doctor Who’s standards, and it never goes anywhere. Then he gives Ambrose a strict telling off about her rather sensible decision to stockpile weapons. Sigh. I think I’ve mentioned numerous times before how much I despise New Who’s pacifist bullshit considering that the Doctor has always been pretty violent and has frequently used guns before despite claims to the contrary. I wouldn’t mind except the Doctor then completely contradicts himself a few minutes later. How is knocking the Silurians out with a sonic pulse any less violent than hitting them over the head with a cricket bat? And then, after bonding with the kid Elliot, he stupidly lets the kid run off to fetch his headphones just two minutes before the Silurians are due to arrive. What a pillock! Not that I was upset to see Elliot get taken. He’s a bland, one dimensional kid whose only character trait is he’s got dyslexia. Also I can’t fucking stand children. Especially fictional children. if I was there, not only would I hand Elliot over to the Silurians, I’d offer to gift wrap him for them as well. (Yes I am an arsehole. How did you know?).

Yes The Hungry Earth sees the return of classic series ‘monsters’ the Silurians, and my God do I wish Chris Chibnall wasn’t writing a Silurian story.

The thing is the Silurians have only ever had one good story, Doctor Who And The Silurians, way back in the Jon Pertwee era, and it was phenomenally good. A seven part serial that’s nuanced, morally complex and with a truly shocking ending that cemented the Doctor’s frosty relationship with UNIT. It’s one of my all time favourite Doctor Who stories and I recommend everyone should watch it. In all honesty, I’d have been okay if the Silurians never came back after that because it was a truly brilliant one shot story, but if we must keep bringing them back, they could at least find some way of moving the story forward. Instead all the BBC ever seem to do is just repeat the same story over and over again to diminishing returns. The Sea Devils was basically the same as Doctor Who And The Silurians only without the moral complexity, the reptiles now emerging from underwater rather than underground, and the pantomime villain the Master was in it for virtually no reason. Warriors Of The Deep tried to use the Silurians and Sea Devils to make a Cold War allegorical narrative that really didn’t work. And now here we are with The Hungry Earth. So this is the fourth time they’re telling story now and I’m sure you all know the drill (no pun intended). Reptiles want their planet back. Humans don’t want to give it back. Whatever shall the Doctor do? Been there, done that, got the T shirt.

Now let’s quickly address the elephant in the room. The new look for the Silurains. For the benefit of @captainivyb and others who may not be familiar with the classic series, this is what the original Silurians looked like:

YYYYYYeah. What can I say? It was the 1970s. But Doctor Who And The Silurians is still good, honest!

The new makeup definitely looks more convincing than the original Silurians, but I’m not too fond of it. They just look a bit too human for my liking. Couldn’t they at least have kept the third eye?

A definite highlight for me was seeing the Doctor interrogating Alaya, the Silurian they take hostage. It’s a really good two hander between Matt Smith and Neve McIntosh, who both add a lot of dramatic weight to a scene that, let’s be honest, doesn’t really deserve it. The reason Doctor Who And The Silurians worked so well was because all of the characters, human and Silurian, were well written and complex. It wasn’t a simple case of good vs evil. Both sides had a point and both sides do horrible things to the other, motivated either by fear or self preservation. Chibnall tries to replicate this here, but he’s not doing a very good job so far. While McIntosh gives a good performance with the material she’s been given, the character of Alaya is boringly one note. A rabid zealot with no sympathetic qualities whatsoever. The humans too are drawn with very broad strokes. Most of them aren’t even remotely interesting and despite the Doctor insisting that they can just trade hostages and everything will be okay, they’re still talking about dissecting Alaya. There’s no slow buildup or anything. No nuance or depth. They just jump straight to the most violent option. So much for showing the best of humanity. Frankly I’m amazed the Doctor still thinks a peace can be brokered between the two species considering this is the fourth time he’s tried to do this now and it’s always ended in disaster.

The only character I gravitated towards in any way was Nasreen, played by Meera Syal from The Kumars At No. 42. I enjoyed her open mindedness and scientific curiosity, and right from the off both she and the Doctor seem to have a mutual respect for each other. And Syal is always a ton of fun to watch in everything she’s in. In fact I liked her so much that at the time I may or may not have written Doctor Who fanfic with her as the companion... Well I’d sit down and watch that.

So that was The Hungry Earth. Bit dull and uninspired, but maybe things will get better in Part 2, right?