PeterVincent's Doctor Who Reviews

Kill The Moon

Urgh.

It plays off like a Tom Baker episode, and not one of the good ones. Kill The Moon starts off with some promise, but surely and slowly it begins to deteriorate into an exercise of patience and a test of ones sanity. The monsters are sometimes scary, but mostly dull. The acting is fair-enough, but never standout. The sets very much resemble a soundstage, and the plot is so farfetched that I purposely haven't revealed anything about it simply because the only real draw is watching this clustercrap unfold before your eyes.

Kill The Moon is mediocre in it's best times, and a huge letdown as a follow up to the previous, and most spectacular episode of Series 8 last time; The Caretaker.

Heck, I even liked Listen more than this.





Mummy on the Orient Express

Are you my mummy?

If Kill The Moon felt like a modern day version of a Baker episode (the better Baker), thenMummy on the Orient Express is something of a patchwork Davison episode meets something that might've shown up mid-Tennant era. That, however, is certainly not a bad thing.

The plot is bonkers, but straight-forward enough to understand. There's a train in outer-space that's flying around as a tour or something, and there is a killer on the loose. A monster mummy, to be precise, and when it's victims witness it, they all have precisely 66 seconds to live.

What follows from that set-up is a surprisingly fun episode with lots of spectacular moments from Capaldi's Doctor and a great supporting cast, Frank Skinner as Perkins in particular is so good that he manages to make you wish he would be the next companion for our hero before the episode is even over.

The main weakness is the villain, and not the mummy, I mean the one near the end when the twist happens. It's not that it's a bad revelation or that it doesn't work for the story, it just feels relatively underwhelming and so predictable you assumed they wouldn't go for that angle.

Overall, Mummy on the Orient Express is a fun ride with a good mystery and an effectively chilling monster. It's not perfect and sometimes it's clunky, but it works very well for what it is.





Flatline

The Doctor and the TARDIS get shrunk and he pokes his hand out and crawls around with it. Also, the monsters look very good and there's a cool speech at the end.

I actually cannot remember much else about this episode, I may have to rewatch it again but let that statement stand as my justification for this one and why it's 'just okay'.

I think I liked Flatline, though. I think.

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Oxfords not brogues.

In the Forest of the Night

Wooden, and not just because of the trees. I'm talking about the acting here, mainly the dreaded kids.

The plot of this kinda-but-not-quite-because-there's-a-two-parter episode follows Coal Hill School lost in London after planet Earth suddenly suffers a massive increase in trees following some sort of solar event. Sure enough, The Doctor shows up to try his best to save the day, but not without the help of teacher, Clara and her begrudging boyfriend, Danny Pink.

The story might work if the direction, special-effects and acting were significantly better, buy you can tell this one's a train wreck before the first ten minutes even passes by. The primary issue is, as stated, those damn child actors who played the school kids and the subplots that follow them. Sure, it worked for that one child in 2006's School Reunion, but Doctor Who just doesn't feel like Doctor Who when it centres around the adventures of school kids.

Positives rest mainly on Capaldi's grumpiness towards a schoolgirl in his TARDIS and how he reacts to certain events that play out across the episode. Other than that though, an incredible cringey ending to this adventure leaves a bad taste in your mouth, which is unfortunate given that the series has almost wrapped up for the year. Dang.





Dark Water

The first two-parter since Series 6, and probably the best since the concluding parts of Series 5, Dark Water serves as a fantastic start of a finale and a very intimate and intriguing episode.

The start is huge, with an unexpected death and very understandable human reactions surrounding it. The Capaldi/Coleman dynamic has never been more entertaining and rich than it is here, and I don't think it ever will be.

The plot is hard to describe without spoilers, but it focuses mainly on The Doctor and co. finding the location of where the afterlife may be. It's ridiculous, I know, but it works incredible well for the episode and feels like a breath of fresh air after the last few episodic muddles.

The mysterious Michelle Gomez finally makes a full appearance here as the Gatekeeper of the Something or Other, and of course there is a twist regarding who she really is...The BBC spoiled it before it even aired in Australia which sucks ass.

Anyhow, the pace is good and the mystery is intriguing, plus the return of not one, but TWO of Doctor Who's most famous enemies is incredibly exciting. Dark Water ends on a huge cliffhanger and is easily one of the best episodes of the season.