Christmas Special 2016 – The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

I’d put off watching the Christmas special this year for nearly a month. With no new episodes on the horizon it was partially to wait as long as I could stand to make the next wait a little less, partially due to lack of time and partially because I wanted to give it my full attention.

Lately, I’ve been having mixed feelings on the show. I still love it, but Capaldi’s acting has felt a little off, like it doesn’t belong. The more I paid attention, the more I felt like that wasn’t really it. It seems as though the writing hasn’t been a good fit for him as a character. Things feel a little forced. This episode though, it didn’t feel like that.

The story itself felt a little contrived, like we were stealing the plot from a low budget Marvel movie… but lets be honest here. After a certain number of years it’s difficult to come up with new ideas. All in all though I enjoyed it. Nardole is back, and Matt Lucas is someone we need to see more of. No point in boring everyone with a full pick-apart, since we’re a month behind. There we lots of nods to the fans of the show, but it was basically a standalone episode that’s good for the casual viewer.

For the first time since Capaldi took over the role, he seemed to mesh with the writing. Things seemed to flow, and he didn’t look to be trying too hard. Maybe that’s because Steven Moffat wrote the episode. (As much as people like to hate him, I’m still a fan of his writing.) Then again it could just be because Capaldi has settled in, found “his” Doctor and we’re getting to see that onscreen. I for one can’t wait to see what he does with it this season.

Thoughts?

Did The Doctor Leave His Car In Storybrooke?

Series 10 Wrap

Maybe we’ll finally get to see a new episode!

The Husbands Of River Song – New Who Season 9 Christmas Special 2015 Review

Ah, the Christmas Special.  One of my favorites of the year.  Because it’s the last episode of the season I want to hold onto watching it for as long as I can… *But* if I wait too long it’ll wind up being spoiled.  Ugh.  As usual don’t read until you’ve watched the episode.  Well you can, but don’t get mad at me when I spoil it for you.

We start seeing a landed “flying saucer” and a caption that says we’re on Mendorax Dellora (Human Colony).  There’s snow, Christmas carols, lights, the whole works.  It is Christmas Day in the year 5343, after all.  This is going to be fun… unless you’re the Doctor, who has a sign on his TARDIS reading “Carol singers will be CRITICISED”.  We spell that with a “Z” here, Doctor.

A random person who looks lost knocks on the door of the TARDIS and the Doctor appears wearing antlers.  It seems the TARDIS had decided to cheer him up, though it just seemed to annoy him.  Anyhow, the man had come to collect a surgeon for a medical emergency and wound up with the Doctor.  They headed over to the flying saucer and a caped figure with a very familiar voice came out to meet them.  Hello sweetie.  That’s right, River Song!  The Doctor is pretty excited to see her, but she doesn’t know who he is.

This explains quite a lot, though it’s not such a surprise if you’ve been paying attention (or, like me, have been waiting for this).  If this is the first time River has met the Doctor, then they’re closer in age appearance-wise than she with his other recent incarnations.  That means that she’d be more likely to fall for him and have the relationship carry forward/back.  With me so far?  Good, now back to it.

So the Doctor asks River what the medical emergency is, and she says that her husband is dying.  We arrive to see a man in a big metal suit lying on a table surrounded by guards with swords who is *not* any form of the Doctor (that we’re aware of).  On top of that, the whole thing is being televised to 4 billion people and the Doctor is being his normal weird self.  Also, jealous.  River sent for the finest surgeon in the galaxy to save her husband (King Hydroflax), and instead was brought the Doctor… her *other* husband.

The Doctor and River leave the room to discuss the procedure.  As it turns out, the King has a giant diamond lodged in his head.  River is only pretending to love the King so that she can have the “surgeon” remove his entire head and she gets the diamond.  Her idea is that the King is an awful person and she doesn’t have to feel bad for murdering him.  The surgeon she’d actually hired had agreed to this.  The Doctor is still horrified and hasn’t agreed yet, but the King comes into the room during the discussion.  He’s a cyborg, so doesn’t actually need his head, and he proves that by removing it.  They get in a fight and River gives a speech about how he’s taken too much from too many and she will be the woman to take it all back.  The Doctor looks impressed.

River starts fighting the guards and the King’s body with a SONIC TROWEL (I just had to make sure you understand how insane this is), while the Doctor grabs his head and threatens to drop it down the garbage disposal if anyone harms her.  Of course that works and they do geek out a bit over the cyberbody before getting transported out.  Oh, they’re cute together!  Also, when River talks into her watch it looks like a Fitbit.

When they get a moment alone, the Doctor calls her out again, saying she knows who he is.  Again, she says she has no idea, then kisses her partner (the one who teleported them out).  River introduces him as her husband, Ramone.  I’m going to need to make a spreadsheet to keep track.  River asks Ramone if he’s found the Damsel… She’s actually looking for the Doctor.  She doesn’t know his current face, and thinks 11 was his current incarnation.  The Doctor asks if he could have a new face and River says it’s not possible.  So they go to the TARDIS and River says she’s stealing it.  She has a key…

Okay, so maybe steal is the wrong word.  It’s more like borrow.  She plans to return to the same spot a second in the future (when she’s finished with the TARDIS of course) so that the Doctor will never know it’s missing.  She thinks he won’t notice because “he never has before”.  Uh oh.  She goes inside and wants the Doctor to come along (but not Ramone for some reason).  He’s excited to do the “it’s bigger on the inside” bit but he’s kind of a terrible actor and way overdoes it.  She doesn’t seem to be surprised and half ignores him while prepping for takeoff.  He finishes and says he just wanted to see that done properly but again she doesn’t react.  Instead she offers him a drink from his own hidden wall compartment.

When it’s time to take off they can’t, and the Doctor “suggests” it’s because there’s a life form that’s registering as being inside and outside at the same time, tripping a safety measure.  And yet, River still doesn’t clue in.  Was she this dumb before?

Outside, the King’s body has replaced the head with the one from River’s assistant, and it lures Ramone into an alley.  It holds the assistant hostage (I’m guessing his head and body aren’t attached anymore, but it’s a guess) to make Ramone do what it wants.  Which is to replace the assistant.  The King’s body arrives at the TARDIS around the time the King’s head is telling River and the Doctor that if it’s killed the body will burn the entire solar system.  It attacks River, but they shut the TARDIS doors, fly away, grab the head and run out.  They seem to be on a ship with the TARDIS parked in baggage.  River has a staff member deadlock seal it so the King’s body can’t get out.  They also appear to be staying for dinner, as this seems to be a restaurant of some kind.

River makes a quick change into a dress and fancier hairstyle, and it comes out that she’s 200 years old.  She seems to be keeping some pretty sketchy company, as this ship is full of criminals and she’s actually trying to sell the diamond here.  When seated at their table, River starts telling the Doctor how men are easy prey while she looks through her diary – you know the one, the TARDIS-blue one.  The Doctor asks River if her diary is sad.  She looks very sad while telling him that the diary is almost full and she was given it by someone not special who was the type of person who would know how long a diary she might need.  In other words, she knows that either she is reaching the end of her Doctor interactions or will die soon.  I don’t know how old she was in Silence In The Library when she was uploaded.

River’s buyer arrives and we find out that the entire restaurant is “with him”.  He gives her payment and she puts the bag with the head on the table.  Before opening it, they all start chanting that they’re doing this in the name of their King.  King Hydroflax.  The King whose head is in the bag…

Ramone on the King’s body begged the staff member to be released.  When he arrived the King’s body grabbed him and he quickly turned on River.

In the meantime, the buyer demanded the bag, and the Doctor basically started everyone bidding on the head… I’m a little unsure of how that happened even though I backed it up and watched it again.  The Doctor woke the head and everyone bowed, so they went running… straight into the King’s body.  Guards grabbed them and the body went to the head but refused to take it because it had deteriorated.  The King’s body destroyed his own head, leaving behind dust and a diamond.  The waiter grabbed River’s diary and said this was the guide to the new head he required.  As the waiter reads the diary we’re taken on a small journey through River’s history.  It seems this is right after she’s been to Manhattan, so I’d assume this is set right after The Angels Take Manhattan.  It explains her bitterness.

There is a discussion about River being the one the Doctor loves.  She says he’s never loved her, and the King’s body confirms she’s not lying.  He looks rather sad about that.  But she also says she loves him but he won’t be there when she’s in trouble.  That they can scan the ship and not find him – she rants and raves about how much he doesn’t care… then looks over and he says “Hello Sweetie”.  They have a quick chat about escape routes, but River’s already planned this so they’re standing in what would be considered the safest spot to be during a meteor strike.  Coincidentally, one is starting.

They fall through the floor, have a quick back and forth and grab the diamond.  Close behind is the King’s body.  The payment sphere from the buyer falls as well and the Doctor sticks it where the head should go.  Zap.  The Doctor then scoops up River’s diary and heads to the bridge, where River is trying to get control.  Some banter, then the Doctor tricks River into being teleported back to the TARDIS, which she promptly materializes around him, then runs out.  He chases her, then they realize they can’t stop the crash and run back inside it.

The impact knocks them both out, but the Doctor comes to first.  He travels forward in time a touch and tells a worker at the crash site that he should build a restaurant overlooking the singing towers that are just beyond that spot.  Why?  Because River talked about wanting to go to a restaurant that was in that spot.  That they always make plans to go then he cancels.  He then he gives the worker the diamond and tells him it’s because he wants the restaurant there.  He moves forward in time again and this time the doors open into the restaurant.  He makes reservations for Christmas Day in 4 years time.  River finally wakes to an empty TARDIS, still in her evening gown.  When she goes out into the restaurant, the greeter tells her the Doctor is waiting for her on the balcony.

She puts on another dress and heads up.  Ramone (still on the King’s body) is working, although now it’s just a body with a couple different heads that swap out.  The Doctor comes out with a proper suit on and a gift for River – a sonic screwdriver.  So this is where that came from!  They look at the towers and it’s all very date-like.  River says there are stories about them, about her and her Doctor.  She says the stories suggest that the last night they spend together is at that location,  at the towers.  He doesn’t deny it, just says “spoilers”.  If you recall “Silence in the Library” you’ll remember that the last time she saw his face he was much older… This would fit well with that.  She asks how long a night there is, since they most likely only have the one night, and he responds with 24 years.

After *just* losing Clara, this just about killed me.  I cried *again*.  I do believe the intent here is that this is actually their “last night” together.  If that is the case, then we can’t see River again while Peter Capaldi is the Doctor.  This was the first time she’d seen this face, so unless he gets another face and they meet somewhere in the middle of her timeline it’s just not happening.  I can’t see them doing that, since this wraps up her storyline quite nicely.  It makes me sad, but it’s nice to see her have a “happy ending” before Silence in the Library.

Hell Bent – New Who Season 9 Episode 12 Review

Season finale here we go!!  Spoilers as always.

We open up to the Doctor getting out of a truck in Nevada with a bag and a guitar.  Not how we left off, but I like the visual.  He enters a diner and there’s Clara working as a waitress.  Haven’t we seen this diner before?  I’ll come back to that later.  They chat while he plays, he says the song’s name is “Clara” and she says “tell me about her”.  Clara doesn’t know who Clara is?

After the credits we’re back to Gallifrey.  The Doctor marches through the desert while the Sisterhood of Karn join the High Council.  Well, he’s actually going to the barn that we saw in The Day of the Doctor, where he had the Moment.  An old woman comes in and looks very happy to see him.  His mother?  Next thing we know he’s at a small table eating with a massive group gathered around him.  He looks kind of happy until a ship comes down and points a giant gun at everyone.  The Doctor gets up, draws a line in the sand, then goes back to his meal.

First the head of the military arrives at his door.  He shuts it on him.  Next the high council. The same.  Next, the president.  When the president offers his hand, the Doctor drops the confession dial containing his torture chamber at his feet and tells him to leave the planet.  The president tells soldiers to aim at the Doctor and fire on his command, but because the Doctor is a war hero, the soldiers won’t do it right away.  We see them aim and fire and then we switch back to the diner.

So if you haven’t been following, this is the part where I tell you that the diner isn’t really a diner.  It’s more the in-your-own-head kind, where the Doctor is going to tell Clara how clever he is.  Right?

Okay, so all of the soldiers intentionally miss.  Then, a few at a time, they drop their weapons and join the Doctor.  Reinforcements arrive to aid the Doctor, and even the head of the military joins him.  The president is told to get off the planet, and later the head of the military points out that he may have nowhere to go because they’re at the far end of everything.  The Doctor says he doesn’t care, and he plans to send the high council off as well.

The Doctor has a chat with the military head and sisters.  Basically what we already knew about the Hybrid according to their prophecies.  He promises to save them but needs an extraction chamber to talk to an old friend.

Flash back to Clara’s death and time freezes just before the raven enters her.  She goes into the extraction chamber and it’s explained to her that she’s basically in a form of stasis and once they’re done with her she’ll be returned to the moment she was in previously and will die as she was supposed to.  The Doctor grabs a gun with the intent of saving her, but Clara tries to talk him out of it.  They say if they save her time will fracture. He asks the head of security how many regenerations he has left before shooting him, grabbing a human compatible neural block and taking Clara away.

The head of security regenerates into a woman, and the sisters come in.  They say he’s going to the Cloisters, and they were right.

Back at the diner, the Doctor is telling his waitress this story, though made less spacey and more Earthy.  She tells her that he had to wipe Clara’s memories of him to protect her.  So it looks like the diner isn’t in his mind after all.

With the Cloisters we see various creatures that tried to break in and were trapped, including a Dalek, several Weeping Angels and a Cyberman.  They find the hatch out but are trying to work out the key to open it.  While they chat, Clara realizes it’s been an extremely long time for the Doctor since he’s seen her.  You can see that makes her sad.  When this is all said and done they’ll most likely need to say goodbye again, and I’m not sure I can handle that twice in one day.  She asks lots of questions about what happened, and he downplayed it as he told the story.  While this was happening the military and sisters were arriving.  So Clara asked *them* how long he was trapped inside the confession dial.  The answer was 4.5 billion years… they *think*.  Clara was devastated.  She told the Doctor that her time was up and they needed to tell each other everything they needed to say because this was it.  I can’t handle this… Seriously.

She then goes back to the Time Lords and tells them they’re monsters.  She’s right though.  She gave them a short speech about how terrible they are and when they asked what she said to him she replied that she told him not to worry and that they’d all be looking at her.  Of course when they looked over he was gone.  They asked what he’d do and she told them he was stealing a TARDIS and running away, at about the time one materialized around her.

The Doctor said she should be “alive again” once they broke free of Gallifrey but she didn’t get a pulse back.  The tattoo is also still on her neck.  They head to the end of time and she still has no pulse.  There’s a knock at the door and the Doctor says it’s me.  He goes outside and there’s Ashildr.

“Do you know why we run, Doctor?  Because summer can’t last forever.” – Ashildr

Hmmmm, sounds very Game-of-Thrones-y to me.  In their quick little chat, Ashildr basically says that Clara died for who she was and they don’t have the right to change that.  Then inside the TARDIS Clara uses the sonic sunglasses to turn on the viewscreen, just in time for a conversation about the Hybrid.  The Doctor suggests it’s Ashildr and she suggests it’s him.  In reality, Ashildr thinks it’s actually a combination of two people – the Doctor and Clara.  She points out that Missy introduced the two of them.  The Doctor then tells Ashildr that he knows he went too far and he plans to save Clara by putting her on Earth somewhere in the middle of nowhere and wiping her memory of him.  He plans to tell her first, or so he says.

They both come inside the TARDIS and Clara says she was watching.  When the Doctor explains his intentions she says that she used the sonic sunglasses on the neural block and she’s keeping her memories.  The Doctor tells her she’s right.  But he’s gone too far to protect her so one of them has to go.  He says he doesn’t know what the block will do, but I think he does.  They push the button together.  The Doctor starts to pass out, then says goodbye to Clara and out he goes.  Damn it I’m crying again.

The Doctor wakes up in the desert with a man standing over him.  The man says Clara asked him to look out for him and that he might be a little upset.  At the diner, the Doctor explains that he knows there was a girl whose name was Clara, he knows they traveled together by the holes in his memory, knows the adventures, but can’t remember *her*.  Only her name.  I’m sad all over again…

He starts spinning in his chair saying he thinks they were there together once.  Just enough time for Clara to wipe the tears from her eyes and for me to start all out bawling.  He then remembers that it was Amy and Rory he was in the diner with.  Clara dropped a hint about maybe the memory of what she said to him in the Cloisters becoming a song… maybe the one he was playing.  She walks into the back room of the diner, which is now the inside of the TARDIS with Ashildr inside.  The diner disappears from around him as the TARDIS takes off and he’s left in the desert again.  And he’s standing in front of his own TARDIS.  The front of it has been decorated as a memorial to Clara… including her image.

In the other TARDIS Ashildr thinks the chameleon circuit is broken so the exterior will be stuck as a diner.  Must be a common problem with those things.  Clara still has no pulse, so she knows she has to die.  To do that she has to go back to Gallifrey so they can put her back in her time stream.  But she can take the long way round, so it looks like she’ll travel with Ashildr for a bit.  That means we could potentially see them again or even (I hope not) have a spinoff, although *someone* would need to get killed off of Game of Thrones first.

The Doctor steps inside his TARDIS while we listen to what I like to call “The Clara Music”.  I suppose we won’t be hearing that anymore, which makes me sad.  Everything lights up, and on Clara’s chalkboard we see “Run you clever boy… and be a Doctor”.  His velvet jacket is hanging there as well so he puts it on.  We also get a brand spanking new sonic screwdriver and the doors close with a snap of the fingers.  Then he goes off to his next adventure, which will be the Christmas special.

I really didn’t think I was this attached to Clara, but I guess I was.  That or I’m a stupid emotional woman, maybe both.  I have a ton of theories and things going on in my brain right now but because there could be about a million different things …

Heaven Sent – New Who Season 9 Episode 11 Review

After that last episode I’m not sure how much I want to keep going, but I guess I will.  Spoilers as usual but lets hope this one doesn’t make me cry…

We start basically where we left off.  A voiceover of the Doctor talking about death and then he appears from his teleport.  He’s in a giant glass tube… and he looks afraid.  He steps out, remembers Clara and then looks sad.  He finds some sand on the floor, then gets angry.  He’s out for revenge, no matter what he was told.  He starts wandering around and talking to the person he assumes is there.  He seems to be in a castle, and finds a shovel with dirt on it.  But we don’t know if he’s still on Earth (I’m assuming he is) or who brought him there.

Eventually a TV on the wall activates and shows the Doctor looking out the window.  A figure from another window across the castle is wearing a hooded cape and watching him.  I think it’s Clara.  Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.  We see a bunch of flies buzzing around and a hooded figure (the same one?) advances on the Doctor, who runs.  He finds himself at the end of a corridor with a locked door.  He forms a telepathic link with the door and it opens.  He then catches himself saying “See Clara…”.  Oh there’s going to be a lot of sad… The doors open to a brick wall.

He says he’s scared of dying then everything stops in front of him.  The figure, the flies, all frozen.  The entire building shifts around like some sort of puzzle.  The entire levels shift around going different directions, along with an enclosed bridge that crosses a courtyard.  The door behind him opens and he runs through.  Now in a bedroom with fresh Lillys, a TV and a big (not to mention very old) painting of Clara.  I wonder if the figure is the Doctor, who’s been locked in the caste for centuries and is responsible for bringing himself there?  Or maybe it’s Ashildr.

Speaking of the figure, he appears again.  The Doctor says that someone’s been stealing his nightmares.  He jumps out the window and next we see him in the TARDIS,  He’s talking to the back of Clara (why not her front?) and telling her he thought quickly so that everything around him slowed down.  That he’s actually falling right now and thinking about how he’ll be in the TARDIS telling her how he escaped.  He worked out that the castle is next to salt water and the gravity and such works into a likely survival scenario.  Then he hits the water.  Underneath, he sees the entire bottom covered in skulls, no actual land in sight.  After crawling out he finds he’s in the middle of the “courtyard” (which is just the water with a small shore) and the only place to go is back inside.

He finds a fire with his own clothes drying by it.  He changes out of his wet clothes into the dry ones (the exact same ones he’s wearing) and hangs his wet ones where the dry ones were.  A time loop of some kind?  Maybe during the whole time he’s in this castle only minutes will pass.  He moves to another room with another TV along with a missing tile in the floor with sand where it should be, and a bunch of arrows pointing to it.  In his mind, he keeps talking to Clara and she keeps asking questions on a chalk board.  We only see the chalk board, which is kind of sad.  I suspect Jenna Coleman wasn’t actually contracted to be in this episode, since the back of the head we saw didn’t look like her hair and we’ve never seen her face.

The Doctor now believes he’s in a fully automatic haunted house, maze-style.  He believes the idea is to trap him inside and scare him to death.  He goes outside into another courtyard, one with actual grass.  We keep seeing a circular pattern with a hole (up until now sand) in the middle and this is no exception.  This time it’s dirt, and I think he’s supposed to dig based on the dirty shovel we saw earlier.  Sure enough, we see another shovel and he does exactly that.  Although once I get a better look at it, it almost looks like he’s digging his own grave.  It’s the right shape for it.

He digs for a while and then we see the flies again.  The figure tries to come out through the door but the Doctor jams it closed with the shovel.  The figure heads to the room with the missing tile.  I feel like that’s a way outside.  In the meantime the Doctor resumes shoveling.  Eventually he finds a large stone that says “I am in 12”.  Then the flies are back and the figure grabs him from the pile of dirt.

Now we’re back talking to Clara’s chalkboard in the TARDIS.  He realizes that he’s being interrogated and the only way to stop it is to tell truths he’s never told before.  Wait, is this to go on the confession dial?  Missy had it at the beginning of the season but I can’t remember ever being told details on how she received it or what was actually on it.  Could Missy be behind this or is it still Ashildr?  Maybe something else?  No, I can’t see that.  Anyway he says there are truths he can never tell but admits to being alone and afraid.  It’s a sad side of the Doctor that I don’t enjoy visiting but is necessary to see.  It’s like seeing a good friend or family member in pain, and you just want to make it stop.

He tells the figure that he left Gallifrey because he was afraid and it goes away.  Then the maze shuffles itself around again.  We then see the castle is basically a self contained island in the middle of nothing.  Just water in all directions.  And the Doctor sees it too.

We then see (or are told) how he spends his time.  If he draws the creature to one end of the castle then runs to the other, he can get a maximum of 82 minutes before it reaches him again.  He uses that time to eat (but where is the food?), sleep and look for room 12.  If he leaves a room long enough it will revert to the exact condition it was in when he arrived, which means he can’t set anything up to return to it later.

“Or maybe I’m in hell.  That’s okay. I’m not scared of hell, it’s just heaven for bad people.” – The Doctor

The Doctor goes to the room where he first arrived, picks up a skull and sees the word “BIRD” written in the sand.  Then a wall moves and reveals a set of steps.  He follows them and finds himself at the top of the tower in the center of the castle.  He’s surrounded by water far below.  He leaves the skull there and I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see it still there later.  Heading down, we find room 12.  He opens the doors to find a blank wall.  He goes back up and the figure joins him again.  He tells it that the Hybrid moved the starts before the time war and that’s why they’re out of place.  It’s half Dalek and half Time Lord, and he knows where it is.

The figure moves away and the walls move again.  Room 12 is open.  Beyond the doors lies a long corridor with a bright wall at the end.  The word “Home” flashes on it for a moment.  The Doctor realizes he’s one confession away from his TARDIS and they want to know about the Hybrid.  He sinks back into his mind where he can talk to Clara but you can see the despair on his face when he knows that no matter what happens she’ll still be gone.  But we finally hear her and see her and she tells him to win.  And I find myself misty again… I think she’s actually gone.

The Doctor snaps out of it and tells the figure he won’t say anything about the Hybrid.  Then he starts hitting the wall and starts to tell a story.  The figure wraps its hands (claws?) around his face, he falls to the floor and then the figure appears to teleport away.

Back in the TARDIS of the mind, the Doctor explains how dying can take days for a Time Lord if they’re too injured to regenerate.  His plan is to drag himself to the top of the tower before he dies.  This place was his own personal torture chamber all along, and there were never any other prisoners.  So while he’s talking we see him drag himself to the tower, to the room where he first arrived, the one with the teleporter.  There should be a copy of him on the hard drive, exactly as he was when he arrived… 7000 years ago.  He knows from the stars.

In the room, he burns up his own body as energy to start the teleporter.  He is the skull he found in the room, and a new copy of himself appears in the teleporter… one without all of these memories.  Before he dies he writes “Bird” in the sand.  Then the room resets again with the new arrival.

Then we see he does the same cycle over and over.  But every time he does it he chips away at the wall in room 12.  For some reason that room doesn’t reset.  2 billion years at last count before he broke through that wall, before the light hit the figure and it collapsed into a shroud and a pile of gears. He walked through and found himself in a desert.  His castle collapsed into what looked like his confession dial.  He sees a boy and tells him to go find someone important and say that he’s back.  We see him run toward the city.  Toward Gallifrey.

The Doctor tells the dial that the Hybrid is not half Dalek.  That it is destined conquer and then to stand in the ruins of Gallifrey.  That it is him.

Guess we’re back to the home planet sooner than expected.

Face The Raven – New Who Season 9 Episode 10 Review

My “free time” will be coming to an end sooner than I’d like, so I’m trying to get as many of these done as I can.  So here we go, and remember: Spoilers sweetie.

We start with the Doctor and Clara running back into the TARDIS after what sounds like quite an adventure when the phone rings.  Yes, *that* phone.  She answers and it’s Rigsy.  He has a number tattoo on the back of his neck and it’s counting down.  Well we can’t just ignore something that strange now can we?  When we arrive we see that he has a child.  His wife had told him that he left the previous day before dawn and came back after midnight, but he remembers nothing and apparently skipped work.  His phone got a crack during that day, but there’s nothing on the phone to indicate that day existed at all.

After some scans, the Doctor tells Rigsy he’s had significant contact with aliens in the last day… and that he’s been retconned (TORCHWOOD!!!!  I just did a little happy dance).  He then tells him he’s going to die.  Rigsy says he has to fix it because saving people is what he does, and the Doctor says he will but I don’t feel like his heart is really in it.

They start looking for a street that’s gone “missing” because the Doctor believes this is how they’ll find out what happened to Rigsy.  This does involve a bit of a cool scene with Clara hanging out of the TARDIS wearing the sonic glasses while they fly over London, but it really is just filler.  They find three potential areas that could contain the street so they split up.  Never a good idea but they do converge on the area.  Clara runs back to the TARDIS for some things but winds up just grabbing Rigsy’s phone, on which the data was recovered.  When he touches it he starts remembering things.  Aliens, a body, and then they find the street they’re looking for.

The floor locks them in place, and some aliens in disguise (human holograms basically) come out and ask them why they need asylum.  They say this is a refugee camp… and then we see Ashildr.  She seems to be a running theme this season.  So why do I feel like she’ll be the one to end Clara’s time with the Doctor?  Maybe I’m wrong, but back to topic.  We find out that Ashildr is responsible for the tattoo on Rigsy, that he committed some sort of crime.  She said she sentenced him to death, wiped his memory and sent him home to say goodbye to his family even though he didn’t remember any of it… She also plans to wipe the memories of the Doctor and Clara.  One of the others calls Rigsy a murderer, so we must be to believe that he killed the woman we saw on the ground earlier.

The street lamps are actually causing a telepathic field which makes us see everything the way we want.  When Ashildr pinches the Doctor he sees an Ood working on a Cyberman instead of a person wrapping another person’s head.  We’re taken to a room where we see a body in what looks like a cage.  Apparently she was found at the entrance to the street, with Rigsy standing over her.  That assume he caused the head wound which killed her, but Clara disagrees.

On the street, a man begs Ashildr for his life.  He was sentenced to death after stealing medicine for his wife.  She shows no mercy, and a raven comes out of its cage and kills him painfully.  Ashildr says that if they can convince the crowd that Rigsy didn’t kill the woman she’ll spare him.  Clara finds out that Rigsy has two options.  He can get her to remove the tattoo, or he can give it to someone else if he can get them to take it willingly.  Clara’s plan is to get Rigsy to give her the death sentence.  Since Ashildr promised the Doctor she wouldn’t be harmed when they arrived, she figures she won’t have to face the raven at all.  After some convincing he agrees, and the tattoo moves to her.

Meanwhile the Doctor is questioning people on the street.  One of them says that when they found Rigsy with the woman he asked them to call him a doctor.  In other words, he wanted to call *the* Doctor.  Only they didn’t know that… But Ashildr did.  Now the Doctor knows that Ashildr knew that Rigsy knew him and she lied about it.  Follow that?  Good.

The dead woman could see people’s pasts and so could the women of her whole species.  The woman had a son so that wouldn’t help.  Only Clara knew better.  The son is actually a daughter dressed as a boy, and she can see that Rigsy didn’t do anything wrong.  She can’t see what Ashildr is doing because it involves the Doctor, but she does know that she’s afraid of something.

Ashildr had told the Doctor that the dead woman was being kept there until someone could take her home to be buried.  Their species actually burn the dead, so another lie.  At the body, the Doctor discovers that she’s actually being held in a status chamber, meaning she’s actually alive.  The machine is set up so the Doctor has to use the TARDIS key to unlock it.  When he does, it puts a metal band on his arm.  Ashildr arrives in time to say it’s a teleport bracelet and he’ll be given time to say goodbye.  She has made a deal with someone.  In exchange for delivering the Doctor her street will be kept safe.  She also takes his confession dial, but she doesn’t seem to know what it is or how it works.

Ashildr moves to take the tattoo from Rigsy but it then comes out that Clara has it.  When Clara took the lock from Rigsy it changed the way this all works.  She can’t give it back and Ashildr can’t remove the lock, at least that’s what Ashildr says.  The Doctor tells Clara he can’t fix it but then tells Ashildr that she will or he’ll destroy everything she has and put her in her own personal hell for all of eternity.  But Clara steps in and then things are just sad for a moment.  She says her goodbyes and tells the Doctor to go on and be a good person about it and not to take revence.  I don’t expect her to die now, but I’ll admit I got a bit teary.

She walks into the street, the raven enters her, and that’s the end of Clara Oswald.

The Doctor threatens Ashildr and then he’s teleported away… and the episode will be continued…

Wow, okay, I didn’t expect that at all.  I expected them to find a way to save Clara before the raven got her and I expected some quick resolution to the while lets-kidnap-the-Doctor thing.  However, I didn’t realize it was a two part episode.  I suspect that’s not quite the end of Clara, but maybe I’m wrong.  I guess we’ll see soon enough.

Sleep No More – New Who Season 9 Episode 9 Review

Over the holidays I had to actively avoid accidentally seeing the Christmas special or anything to do with it.  I *need* to get caught up on all of these episodes so that I can go on Twitter/Facebook/The-Internet-In-General again!  Having said that, spoiler alert as usual, and here we go 🙂

We start out with a very ominous video clip of someone saying something’s happened and here’s what’s happened (mostly).  Then some code appears across the screen and we see Clara’s name along with “Doctor Who” and a bunch of other stuff.  I suspect we’ll see much more information soon.  For example, right away. We’re introduced to a “rescue team”.  We’re basically told that they won’t make it so don’t get attached.  They’re coming for our narrator but we don’t get know why.  We’re told we’ll see things from their point of view.

Our rescue crew finds the Doctor and Clara wandering about babbling with their usual banter about nothingness.  They tell our heroes that the station fell silent a day ago, their going to find out why, and that the TARDIS team will now be joining the command.  Seems on par for normal.  We see some humanoid-like forms in the shadows and everyone runs.  I can’t help but notice the Doctor and Clara holding hands, and out scary figures look like two people holding hands.  One team member is separated as they run away and the rest of the group runs into a room.  The figures try to get in but then crumble to dust.  The Doctor analyzes it to find out that they’re organic… like people?

They find some pods in the room and Clara manages to get herself stuck inside one.  Turns out to be a sleep pod that just grabs people and sucks them in when they’re tired.  The team calls them Morpheus, but won’t say more than “they’re more than just a sleep pod”.  One of them isn’t empty.  It was holding our narrator.  Now we discover our sleep pods cram sleep into a teeny amount of time so people can go a whole month without actually sleeping.  The Doctor believes the creatures have something to do with Morpheus.  He thinks they are sleep dust (that crap that builds up in the corner of your eyes while you’re asleep) come to life and are eating people.  He thinks the pods and the creatures need to be destroyed.

We go out looking for the missing team member, who is trying to get into a room to hide.  Unfortunately, he locks himself in with a creature and that was the end of him.  This is supposed to be a kids show, right?

Gravity goes wonky, the Doctor fixes it while a creature attacks them and we run and lose more people.  Some filler, and the Doctor. Clara and the commander are locked in the cold storage room.  The Doctor reviews their helmet camera footage because he thinks they’re missing something.  Only thing is, it turns out they don’t *have* helmet cams.  Just when they realize this the creatures start trying to break down the door.  They can’t stay and freeze, so they hide in bags hanging from the ceiling and let them in.

Some of the creatures are distracted by a noise and go chasing after the other crew members.  In the meantime we haven’t seen our narrator in the present (just as an actual narrator).

Turns out the creatures are blind.  This allows the Doctor’s group to quietly sneak out and then shut the door behind them.  In our other group, one team member (the “grunt”, a basic soldier grown in a lab) sacrifices himself to save the other.

Back to the cameras… They aren’t cameras.  The dust is watching everyone, collecting these images.  Clara and the others are collecting images from their points of view as well, since they were in the pods.  There is no footage from the Doctor’s point of view or from the one crew member who refuses to use the machines.

Meanwhile our lone crew member returns to *his* ship.  He assumes the others are dead and plans to destroy the station.  He finds an open sleep pod, the bay doors close and we hear him scream.  Guess a creature got him too.  The Doctor has worked things out so their group heads to the ship too, finding the narrator, just as expected.  He’d already recorded his message that we’ve been watching all show.  He plans to take the creatures back to the planet to wipe out all the humans.

The narrator has moved a pod onto the ship containing a man who hasn’t slept in 5 years.  He releases the creature, then locks the group in with it.  The Doctor distracts it and they run.  The commander kills the narrator and they head for the TARDIS, cut off by creatures.  The Doctor destroys the grav shields causing the same issues as earlier and the creatures start turning into dust.  Things don’t make sense for him, but it looks like we’re about to understand.

During the whole episode it’s been shot kind of like a horror film, with little blips in the tape… Our narrator explains that the Morpheus process is actually in the blips and we’ve all been watching it so we’re infected now.  He’s going to beam out the signal to the whole solar system as soon as he’s done recording it (this would be before he was shot obviously).  He rubs his eye and shows that he’s actually one of the creatures and our narrator has been dead basically all along.  He turns to dust, and we’re next…

Interesting premise and quite creepy.

The Zygon Inversion – New Who Season 9 Episode 8 Review

Not sure why I even need to say this, but spoilers, lots of them, stupid amounts of details.  Here we go again.

This episode starts with Clara having some sort of dream in the Zygon pod where she can see Bonnie shooting at the Doctor’s plane.  She tries to throw off the aim but the plane is hit and blows up.

Next we see Bonnie touch a man in the temple and his arm starts to look like a Zygon’s.  Then he completely turns, asks people for help and runs.  Meanwhile, Bonnie records it all.  She then calls someone, said she changed the first one and is going to UNIT to retrieve the Osgood Box.

Clara replays the explosion and sees there were survivors.  Flash to Osgood and the Doctor.  Pointless scene to show they’re alive.  However, Clara has learned she has a little control over Bonnie’s body, enough to send the Doctor a quick text to say she’s awake in there.  And there are little things, like Bonnie walking by a mirror and Clara being reflected back.  She’s trying to take over.  But meanwhile Bonnie is looking for the Osgood Box.

The Doctor calls Bonnie and asks some questions of Clara, which she blinked the answers to.  This prompts Bonnie to visit Clara to try and probe her mind about the Osgood Box.  It really just gives Clara a chance to poke around some.  Clara is able to make Bonnie lose her shape.  Apparently because they are linked, they can’t lie to each other due to increases in things like pulse.  Bonnie thinks this will get her the information she wants.  So she starts asking questions about the location, and Clara tells her.  She also tells her how to access it and that the box contains a button that will unmask all Zygons for up to an hour.  That would cause mass panic and a war… Exactly what Bonnie wants.

The Doctor and Osgood find the Zygon that was forced to changed.  He’s terrified, doesn’t want a fight and just wants to live in peace.  Then he kills himself.  Moments later, “Kate” appears with a couple of Zygons wrapped up as UNIT.  The Doctor plays along.

Bonnie takes Clara’s pod with her to the Black Archives to grab the Osgood Box.  When she arrives, she finds 2 boxes, a blue one and a red one.  On a phone call to the Doctor, he says that one box normalizes all the Zygons while the other destroys them.  Bonnie opens Clara’s pod and removes her to use as a hostage.  So the Doctor says it’s the blue box that normalizes.  But there’s 2 buttons inside.  One says “Truth”, the other “Consequences”.  So she opens the red box and sees the same setup.  Bonnie demands they bring the Doctor to her.  When the Zygons advance, Kate shoots them both.  Turns out, Kate is actually Kate.  She’d shot the imposter in New Mexico to escape.

Now for the chat.  The Doctor reveals that the red box contains the nerve gas, which will turn the Zygons inside out.  The blue one will turn them to their true form.  Two boxes, one to protect each side.  Two Osgoods, to police and protect the ceasefire.  Kate had agreed to that and to having her memory wiped of the knowledge of it, so that’s what the Doctor had done.

For now, the Doctors group joins Clara and Bonnie’s group.  Kate stands at the red box, Bonnie the blue.  The Doctor tells Kate that one of her buttons releases the nerve gas while the other detonates the nuclear warhead under the black archives.  If you didn’t care about survival you could just push them at the same time, right?  He tells Bonnie that one of her buttons will unmask the Zygons while the other will “lock” them in the form they’re in, making it so they’re in human form forever.

On a side note, I’m really loving that shade of Bonnie’s lipstick 🙂

So the Doctor finally asks Bonnie what she actually wants, and the answer is war.  So there’s a lot of talking, about how war is bad basically, but we get some insight that the Doctor has done some very terrible things (for those who didn’t know) and that it haunts him.  Kate closes her box, while Bonnie realizes that both boxes are empty with a couple buttons that don’t do anything.  They say they can’t just forget the boxes are empty, but the Doctor informs them that they’ve said that the last 15 times… and then he wipes their memories.  Well, everyone’s but Bonnie’s.  She has to live with it so she doesn’t repeat her mistake.

We do a little wrap up and then the Doctor asks Osgood if she’d like to go in the TARDIS.  She turns him down and a second Osgood shows up.  Two were needed.  It seems like we kept the human one all along, assuming there’s still one human and one Zygon.  The second is Bonnie, now filling the empty space.  All is safe again.

It seems our Doctor is too attached to Clara.  I suspect the worst…

The Zygon Invasion – New Who Season 9 Episode 7 Review

Spoiler alert, starting NOW!

The 50th anniversary was supposed to be a stand alone episode.  Or so we thought.  Right away we see flashbacks about what happened with the Zygons.  We knew they’d have to address this eventually, and here it is.  Not when I was expecting it, just like Moffat wanted.

Osgood and her Zygon twin made a video to neatly explain current events for us.  It’s been decided that 20 million Zygons will take human form, live on Earth among the humans in peace and the treaty will be maintained.  In case anything happens to either or both Osgoods, this tape has been made to explain things.  There’s a box the Doctor(s) left behind in case things go south, but we aren’t told what’s in it.  At the beginning of the season when Missy killed Osgood, I kind of wondered if it was Osgood or a Zygon, but it wasn’t addressed.  Now we see an Osgood standing in front of her “sister’s” grave.  But which Osgood is still alive?  The one standing there is *not* wearing a scarf, so I wonder if we lost the human one?

We next see an Osgood running/hiding from a Zygon.  She attempts to text the Doctor but the Zygon catches/kills her.  Flash to the Doctor and he’s playing his guitar again (Amazing Grace) when the text “Nightmare Scenario” arrives.  He heads over to check things out.  By check things out, I mean he chases down a couple Zygons posing as 7 year olds and tells them he’s taking over.

We next see Kate Stewart making plans.  If you look carefully, there’s Easter eggs lurking in this scene, like a picture of the first Doctor on the wall.  It appears Osgood hasn’t been killed, just captured.  Unfortunately her data containing the location of every Zygon has also been compromised.  Kate tells the Doctor all of this, and he finishes up just in time to see the two girls snatched by some other Zygons.  It appears they’re collecting all of their “kind” for some reason.

The Doctor meets up with Kate (UNIT in general) and Clara’s still not answering her phone.  Wait, maybe Clara is a Zygon… We flash to Clara just in time to see her realize she has 127 missed calls from the Doctor.  She gets side tracked in her building with a little boy (who I think just got taken by Zygons) before returning his call and meeting up with him.  Once they head over to the Zygon command center to investigate we have time to find out that after the truce they never learned which Osgood was the human and which was the Zygon.  Turns out, they were both a bit of both.  When one died, the other went mad with grief and went into hiding… Could she be behind this?

The Zygons have been sending UNIT a series of videos, like with Osgood reading a threat.  Now there’s a new one with the two little girls (who are actually the Zygon high command) being vaporized.  The radicals have taken over.  Despite Kate’s first instinct to start a war, the Doctor sends her to New Mexico to investigate, Clara is going to stay to be a base of operations, and he wants to take the presidential plane to go negotiate peace.  Doubt that’ll work out.  Kate said that they had nerve gas that worked on just the Zygons but the Doctor had taken it.  If I remember correctly, that was actually during an “old Who” episode.

Clara wants to swing by home to grab some things with Kate;’s assistant (Jac).  The first thing I thought of was her neighbors and the potential Zygons.  Sure enough, within seconds we see the neighbors hauling a child-sized sack into the elevator.  They run to chase the elevator but it’s empty.  So they get in, discover a Zygon control panel behind the floor selector and end up in some underground base… of course the neighbors are just ahead.  Smartly they run away.

At the Doctor’s location he tries to stop UNIT from blowing up the town in New Mexico.  The agent that was supposed to be carrying out the order only stopped because she saw a man and child that looked like her family.  So would she be killing Zygons, or is it her family that are the Zygons?

In New Mexico, Kate meets the local law enforcement.  Meanwhile, Clara and Jac discover that elevators are going underground with bundles all over the UK.  Bouncing back to Kate (all this bouncing around is making my head spin) it appears a bunch of Brits appeared there a couple years prior then started taking Zygon form and came after the locals.  But Osgood was there just before everything went down.

The Doctor and UNIT head to a Zygon occupied village to try and collect Osgood.  The UNIT soldiers get tricked into believing the Zygon imposters are family members, follow them into a building and end up as piles of electrified remains.  The commander and the Doctor are all that’s left.  The commander leaves the building where the remains are, and the Doctor finds Osgood chained in the cellar.  Time to go…

The officer with Kate shows her a dumpster full of remains, left behind from the Zygons.  Close by, there are 4 more of them.  So a whole town basically.  The Doctor also has a chat with Osgood and we learn that Zygons no longer need to keep humans alive to keep their faces.  Now they can wear a memory, providing they don’t need any further information from the original.  So we still don’t know for sure which she is.

Clara’s group heads back underground and discovers a bunch of Zygon pods.  Clara leads a UNIT group in to neutralize them when she discovers *herself*.  YES! Jac is even smarter than she looks and quickly realizes it’s a trap.  But too late!  They’re all killed…

Flashback to Clara in the neighbor’s apartment, and she was actually captured and replaced by “Bonnie”.  Flash to the Doctor talking to a Zygon prisoner and they say they’ve already taken over… Flash to Kate and she finds out that her new friend is also a Zygon.  Not a surprise – why would a town full of Zygons leave one human?

Back to the Doctor and Clara (back and forth) and Clara (Bonnie) sends a missile at the Doctor’s plane…  Nice way to end an episode!