Ascension of the Cybermen

During last week’s unsettling scenes of Ashad the Cyberman stalking the dark Villa Diodati, I leant over to my wife and whispered, “This is how I remember the Cybermen of my childhood.” It was true of course, but in actuality, the metal meanies had never been as truly frightening as they were last week. The Tomb of the Cybermen, a story I lapped up as an adoring seven-year-old fan in 1992, whilst purporting to be the stuff of nightmares, is actually more an exciting run-around with added ridiculousness by way of the Cybermats. The silver giants in their icy tunnels is a frightening memory but it’s not a real one. Whilst still a towering masterpiece of Doctor Who storytelling, at least to my mind, Tomb is admittedly fairly bereft of tension.

Here, in Ascension of the Cybermen, we have all the tension one could ask for, with helpful lashes of 60s silliness to boot. Whoever came up with the Cybermats, be that Kit Pedler, Gerry Davis or Victor Pemberton, Chris Chibnall seems to be pretty much on the same wavelength, engineering his own addition to the Cyber mythos in the form of the almost laughably ridiculous but equally strangely malevolent Cyber Drones, flying metal heads with a monopoly on the lethal. Opening this space-thriller, they make for a strong summation of what’s to come: pulpy and silly but with a genuine sense of threat, oppression and pace.

We open with the stark image of a floating Cyberhead, classily seguing into the title sequence and from there on in, we don’t stop. Just as Praxeus took us round the world, Ascension takes us across the galaxy: from a near extinct planet, to a Cyber Carrier Ship (with pleasing echoes of The Wheel in Space) and finally to the seeming utopia where Ko Sharmus resides, cross-cutting with what would appear to be Ireland. Separated from the TARDIS and with our crew split up, there’s a genuine sense of peril and the Cybermen have never felt this relentless. As they wake and approach Graham, Yaz and their party at the close of the episode, despite Yaz’s optimism in the face of adversity (and isn’t she brilliant here?), I’m worried for them.

Like the Cybermen, Chris Chibnall’s dialogue and plotting doesn’t half clunk along, but for once this seems appropriate. It feels as mechanical as the monsters it explores. See for instance, how the Doctor’s technology is proven to fail within the first ten minutes. It’s played out in such an obvious, direct contrast to the tech she took to Ranskoor Av Kolos with such confidence and quickly she’s seen to be a lot more vulnerable than usual. You can see it being set up, as each of the TARDIS crew ploddingly carry a separate device which they can handily explain to the guest cast, before it gets blown up. As cynical and obvious as the plotting and distribution of dialogue is, the upsetting of the team gives this story the drive it needs to propel it into space and beyond. The sci-fi dialogue is hokey throughout, as if the writer doesn’t really “get” sci-fi or is writing for an audience less familiar with it and who need it popularising. See for instance, the discussion in Graham’s ship as the crew decide how to pilot their vessel to the carrier ship. They do everything to avoid saying, “Re-route the auxiliary power!” and it ends up feeling clunkier than the cliché would. But Chibnall isn’t writing poetry, as Maxine Alderton was last week. He’s writing schlock; exciting, tense, brilliant, unbeatable schlock. And this tart, a self-confessed fan of Cyberwoman, loves it.

I’m intrigued to discover more about the disturbing mystery of Brendan and to find out precisely to what the “Ascension” of the title relates. The image of Ashad cutting into a sleeping Cyberman as it screams is weirdly upsetting and like the death of the kebab man in Chibnall’s very first episode of this new era, suggests the writer can have a biting, vicious streak. The arrival of the villain of the season seems a little obvious and his self-dramatising entrance just a bit annoying after the more off-kilter, more original and savage nature of his threat in Spyfall. But as we take a breath before plunging into a finale which promises so much, it seems opportune to take a moment to reflect on what this season has given us: huge ups and downs, some extreme highs, a brilliant Master, a couple of bona fide classics, some irritating polemics, the companions at their best and worst, and in one instant in Ascension, as the TARDIS crew turn on the Doctor as her plans fail, we see Jodie Whittaker at her peak. “I know!” she shouts and in that moment is the most real she has been since she took over as the Time Lord.

Ascension is essential viewing, an encapsulation of all that is terrific about the Cybermen – from the design of the ships to their unstoppable numbers. Their total strength feels as vast and immovable as the space in which their terrifying corpses float.

8/10

JH

The Collection - Season 26 Blu Ray

It is incredibly difficult for me to review Season 26 with any sense of perspective. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my Dad’s knee, the night drawn in, as two white-faced girls approached a vicar in a graveyard. It’s such a peculiar and awkward shot: the reverend facing towards camera and talking to the girls behind him without turning his head, instinctively knowing they are there. There’s a confident strangeness in it that pervades The Curse of Fenric and indeed, the whole of Season 26. That strangeness captured the heart of this four-year-old, making me a lifelong fan and since 1989, I have watched the stories in this beautiful boxset time and time again. I treasure them dearly. They’re a part of who I am, of how I see the Doctor (here, a small, gentle outsider, fighting the good fight with words and subtle magic) and the benchmark by which I view all other television and film. I laughed in the face of The Lord of the Rings. It’s trying to sell me big themes painstakingly slowly and earnestly through people I don’t care about. Here, there are themes unfolding every few minutes and the characters are immediately present and live on long after those criminally under-rated closing credits. There’s a breathless freneticism about the show, an unwillingness to sit still. The manic energy of Ghost Light, the original cut of Fenric, Survival and even Battlefield mean that whatever is happening on screen, it doesn’t last long but usually thrills. On the eve of cancellation, there’s a sense that this show will not go gently into that good night. It’s doing things it has never done before; it’s giving us snapshots of a programme that does chime with its audience; that is modern and ancient at the same time; that can endure; that is slave only to the imaginations of its writers - and in Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs, Rona Munro and Andrew Cartmel, it found the most imaginative.

A youthful voice can be heard across the season. Despite Aaronovitch’s success with Remembrance of the Daleks the year before, there’s a feeling that each writer believes this might be the only script they’ll ever see produced and are ploughing all their energies, all their ideas into them. In The Curse of Fenric, we have Doctor Who Meets Dracula but it’s also Doctor Who Does World War Two Movie (for the first time!), Doctor Who Does The Turing Test and Doctor Who and the Evil from the Dawn of Time, as well as wrapping up threads we didn’t realise needed tying up from Dragonfire and Silver Nemesis. In Ghost Light, there are allusions to Alice in Wonderland, William Blake, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, My Fair Lady and far more besides. These are shows brim-full with high concepts, literary, historical and scientific. Without any bias and including the 21^st century iteration, it would be easy to pinpoint Season 26 as the most dense, rich and academic that the series has ever been.

Of course, that means that some ideas don’t fully come into fruition and end up feeling like stories off-screen. What in other tales would be important plot points are skimmed over with abandon. Battlefield is full of this. Morgaine’s relationship with Arthur is not explored well enough before she discovers he is dead so the emotional ending doesn’t land. At this point, we are supposed to feel for her, but the fact is we never really knew her. Bambera goes from being suspicious of the Doctor, to becoming his tour guide, to wanting to arrest him and his freaky friends over the course of twenty-five minutes. Shou-Yuing, like Jean and Phyllis in Fenric, becomes Ace’s best friend almost immediately because she is the only person of a similar age and they become very quickly attached without us learning very much about them or they of each other. After fifteen minutes of Fenric, Ace has met the girls at church, met up again on the beach and fallen out with them. In Ghost Light, our leads become part of the Gabriel Chase furniture without anybody asking who they are, including the people who live in the house. Only Survival’s sense of pace truly matches the unfolding of its themes. Structurally, we have one episode at home, one on an alien world and then a return to Earth where the familiar has taken on new meaning. What doesn’t particularly come into focus is the oft-cited lesbian subtext which I’ve always struggled to even notice. Despite all these perhaps shallower explorations, there have never been 25-minute instalments of the show so cram-packed with ideas, philosophy, reflection and meaning.

The Special Edition versions produced for DVD find a new home here. At the time of their production, they were hailed as “definitive” ways to view Battlefield and Fenric. It’s difficult to review these tales without at the very least alluding to the Special Editions, versions deemed more satisfactory and truer to the original visions of the writers and directors. Here, there’s also a Workprint Edition of Ghost Light with deleted scenes re-positioned (although the nature of the archive material means that picture quality can vary). This offers a “fuller” version of Ghost Light to enjoy and many fans may see it as an opportunity to get a version they might, just might, be able to follow! However, the truth is that while the new editions certainly offer a fresh take on the originals and many notable improvements, they come with attendant disadvantages as well as boons.

For a start, that aforementioned crazed pace of all three stories is damaged. Part Four of Fenric works so well as broadcast partly because of its manically cut energy. In the Special Edition, we’re given a slower more brooding affair, which may flow more smoothly in earlier sections but doesn’t crescendo like the original and even pauses for a flashback sequence which really isn’t needed. Granted, there are many scenes in the broadcast version in which the Doctor and Ace seem to materialise at different locations as if using a teleport. They leave Kathleen and Audrey in the operations room, Ace in a foul rage, and we cut directly to them entering Millington’s office quite calmly without any hint of a passage of time between the scenes. Then they’re off to the church, then they’re on the beach, and through it all, we don’t actually know why they’re there, what they’re looking for or what they want. The Doctor and Ace simply turn up and interact with the supporting characters as if they’ve known them for centuries. In the Special Edition, there are helpful segue scenes and we feel we are following them more carefully but it still doesn’t iron out the oddities of Fenric’s plotting. Why do the haemovores arrive when Judson works out that the logic diagram is a computer code? Why do new runestones appear in the church crypt? And indeed, what exactly do the Doctor and Ace hope to achieve by arriving at the army camp? It’s never stated but they seem to have a good idea. Despite its seemingly more user-friendly pace, the Special Edition reveals a story in which still, things simply happen, one event after the next, with little cause for explanation. Depending on how much the viewer prizes structure, surely dictates how enjoyable this relentlessly gothic and brooding tale can be.

Such illogicities punctuate Ghost Light too. Although the Workprint Edition explains the glowing rocking horse and ostrich eyes, there are still remarkably few explanations. Why does Lady Pritchard’s candle have a suddenly-exploding flame? How and why exactly is the Reverend Matthews devolved? It may be poetic justice for his failure to change his mind, but how does Josiah manage to achieve his Homo Victorianus Ineptus? Those hoping to find answers in the deleted footage will be disappointed, although watching the Workprint is a fascinating experience in and of itself and it’s a delight to be able to see what might have been. When asked what my favourite story is, I always answer Ghost Light. I love that the explanations are so thin on the ground; I love that it puts atmosphere first and basks in its over-stuffed bizarreness. I love the oppressive music, the tearaway performances, Sylvester McCoy, Ian Hogg, Carl Forgione, John Nettleton, Sharon Duce; I love the magnificent sets, the stone spaceship, the cliff-hangers, the allusions, the gags and the omnipresent, pervasive Victoriana – from the décor to the philosophy. I can appreciate it might not be to every fan’s tastes but the fact that this was broadcast in 1989, in Doctor Who’s dying hour and the last story to be produced, speaks volumes of a production and writing team who were torch-bearers for the future rather than coffin-bearers of the past.

Both Battlefield and Fenric Special Editions sport new effects and grading which do improve the viewing experience (although I remain very fond of the grey textures which saturate the original Fenric). It’s a pity that rubbish snake in Arthur’s spaceship wasn’t replaced but the knights flying down to Earth through space feel now more epic and mythical. The climax of Fenric Part Three sees Judson’s eyes more startlingly green and there’s a new cut for the Blu Ray just afterwards to retain the impact of that moment. The soundtracks are also improved by Mark Ayres’s 5.1 remixes. It may seem like a miniscule detail but the thunder and explosions heard across Battlefield Parts One and Two helps piece scenes together geographically. The extra horns added to the Fenric soundtrack, however, may sound classy but to my mind, take away from the ethereality of the original. All told, from a visual and aural perspective, the new editions give Nu-Who a run for its money.

Battlefield has always been seen as the worst story of the season. I’m sure, given the excellent Writers’ Room feature (which surely should have been longer!), that Ben Aaronovitch would agree with me. But there’s still loads to love. It may look like a cheap summer holiday for a BBC department not particularly in favour, but there are some delightful directorial flourishes: the reveal of the new Brig in the wing-mirror (and a big hand for Angela Bruce – the only Lethbridge-Stewart substitute to ever work); the cut from the “Doctor being back” to Ancelyn’s gloved hand on the TARDIS blue; and those explosive fight scenes in the last act.

Although Aaronovitch’s script does jump around the houses with abandon, it’s the design work which is the biggest criminal here: the spaceship sets look like gameshow backdrops, the aforementioned video-effect snake and its attendant POV look cheap and the knight costumes are dreadful. Ace asks, “Is it an android?” of a clearly lit knight in armour, making her seem unforgivably thick. Famously, these should be cyborg knights as written, but someone in costume couldn’t read a script. Still, the pub and brewery sets look amazing. (I didn’t realise the pub was in studio for years.) Despite the general lacklustre reception to Battlefield’s design work, even in 1989, let’s not forget too that this is a story featuring an actual helicopter spiralling out of control. I think I could forgive all the design work if the Part One conclusion had gifted us an actual explosion. As it happens, the arrival of the baddies is drab and makes for the most disenchanting cliff-hanger of the whole McCoy era.

Had the Brigadier met his ultimate end fighting the beautifully designed and sinister Destroyer, it’s possible that Battlefield’s reputation may be stronger and that it may be far better remembered. Everything in the production is steering towards the Brigadier’s death: his initial reluctance to go back to UNIT, “I’m not playing,” the music as Doris watches his departing from the lawn, his parleying with Morgaine, his eventual betrayal of the Doctor. All would have been worth it had any of it meant something. As it happens though, I think Aaronovitch ultimately did the right thing. Battlefield’s loss is the series’ gain. Even though Steven Moffat killed the Brig off-screen (twice, no less), in my mind, the old soldier is out there still righting wrongs, facing evils and personifying the very best of stiff-upper-lip Britishness. Long may he and Nicholas Courtney reign.

Survival ends the season with a philosophical and strange bewitching tale of feral instinct and the power of humanity against the animal. Like Battlefield, design elements break the sense of urban reality, namely that wretched cat prop and the gloves worn by the cheetah people. Andrew Cartmel repeatedly tells of his disappointment with the feline threat on various features throughout the Blu Ray, but really it’s only the hands that offend; just look at that beautiful mask by the lake, it’s yellow eyes and sinister smile boring into Ace’s onlooking gaze: this makes for magical television. Dominic Glynn’s score is another highlight of the season, those coruscating guitars providing an element of the strange and off-centre across the story. Anthony Ainley thrills in his finest take on the Master, his possession making him seem dangerously unstable (and damn, doesn’t that costume look good!). King of all, however, is Rona Munro’s beautiful script, its very own beast. Difficult to quantify, hard to pin down, the poetry of the story’s survival-of-the-fittest themes filters through to all the guest characters, even Hale and Pace and Ace’s charity worker friend, making every aspect of every scene feel like all of apiece, exploring matters of the most base instincts.

It’s ironic that the show ends on a tale exploring what is needed to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. As the 1980s, perhaps the most selfish modern decade, drew to a close, Doctor Who was a show about looking outward to new worlds, new ways of thinking; about being gentle whilst fighting injustice, about love conquering hatred, about pacifism and idealism beating anger and aggression. At the heart of it, is perhaps the finest Doctor and companion pairing of all time. The Professor and Ace personify all the vibrant energies of Season 26 and Sylvester and Sophie are charming, cute and yes, wicked. Even through all their animosity here, they eventually go “home” to the TARDIS. McCoy’s Doctor feels like the paternal figure Aldred’s Ace never had and if there’s a word to describe that relationship, what else could it be but love? It’s the only word that truly describes my feelings for Season 26. It is messy, yes, over-stuffed and wants to be about everything, but in the end, it’s impossible not to see the astonishing efforts of a team of powerhousing writers, desperately seeking to paint their original, vivid and enchanting imaginations on screen for the one and only time. I can excuse all the mistakes of their youth, because these writers’ hearts and the heart of the show itself beat louder than any officious cancellation notice. This was the series showing us what it could be and what it would be. Doctor Who would be back and no doubt about it. Season 26 is transcendental.

JH

Addenda: Lead feature of the Blu Ray boxset is the documentary Showman, chronicling the rise and fall of John Nathan Turner, singling out the 20^th anniversary celebrations as a perhaps unlikely turning point in JNT’s flamboyant life. Chris Chapman’s hour and a half doc is a stellar piece of work with a range of deeply insightful contributors including John’s childhood friends. Surprisingly moving, it sees the later years of JNT’s career as an undeserved and tragic decline, leading to his ultimate ill health and probable alcoholism. This is a man whose face simply didn’t fit with the upper echelons of the Beeb, even more tragic because he would be a pioneer these days. God, wouldn’t he have loved a show like Peter Capaldi’s casting reveal? If only he were still around, we fans, and this moving documentary, could have made him feel proud.

Sophie Aldred’s conversation with Matthew Sweet is another delight. She has a quiet, unsensational vocal quality but her stories are utterly engrossing. It’s enlightening to hear about her time at Manchester University and this interview gives, remarkably after 30 years, a fresh perspective on Aldred’s life. Sophie also joins cast members on location for the mesmerisingly well-shot Curse of Fenric documentary, directed by new series writer Pete McTighe. It celebrates the four episodes as the glory that they represent without the more prevalent fan cynicism of the adjoining years, and seeing Nicholas Parsons so happy to be associated with our little show and this incredible story is particularly poignant this year.

I’ll admit, the Behind the Sofa series doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t know if it’s the editing but the episode clips seem too long and we too often cut to our viewers watching in silence, making the show feel sluggish and unengaging. If they were half the length and twice as poppy, I might feel more inclined to love them but, despite enjoying the company of the sofa teams, they feel distant and charmless, only very occasionally offering a nugget of a reaction.

Once more, the superb quality of these box sets is evident here though in abundance. The restoration is phenomenal. Battlefield, in particular, looks far better than its videotape heritage would sensibly allow for. How marvellous to have these four special stories together in Lee Binding’s beautifully designed packaging, together for old and new generations to assess and re-assess. I hope they feel the love I do for these adventures. They were the past and they are the future and in so many magical moments and special scenes, remain completely unbeatable.

JH

10/10

The Haunting of Villa Diodati

There’s a theory that the second episode of any Doctor’s era epitomises the show at its most base. Any Doctor and Companion team could happily wonder through the Nerva Beacon, Starship UK, Platform One or even the plains of Desolation. I have a friend who has a theory that real Doctor Who, that is to say stories which feel as if the show runs through their bones, usually starts at the three-quarter mark of a new series. It’s a difficult theory to disprove: The Empty Child, The Satan Pit, Human Nature, Silence in the Library, The Hungry Earth – all feel as it they epitomise the fundamentals of the show: well-plotted, atmospheric, almost traditionally structured tales. Last year, it was Kerblam! and The Witchfinders occupying the trad-Doctor Who slot and fulfilling that unsaid brief admirably. In 2020, we find Can You Hear Me? and The Haunting of Villa Diodati. Last week’s effort certainly felt like the Doctor Who of everyone’s childhood in terms of chills. This week does it better. 

Despite the sumptuous nature of the lavish costumes and stately home, the over-riding colour we take away from The Haunting is black. Director Emma Sullivan spoke in Doctor Who Magazine about her fighting for the lights to be very, very low, and negotiating careful set-ups with her Director of Photography. It’s all for the betterment of an episode that’s sole interest is atmosphere. Lots doesn’t seem to make sense. Why does the skeletal hand emerge from a painting? Why does the skull find itself in the baby’s cot? Answers don’t matter to new-to-Who writer Maxine Alderton or indeed, this viewer. Like Ghost Light, the thrill of this strange horror story is in the very vivid threat of whatever is happening in a given moment, what is happening in the now. As in a nightmare, both the narrative and geography are off. Something is always amiss, even down to the not-quite-Cyberman of a harrowing childhood dream. These are the Cybermen as we always remembered them being but never quite were: coruscatingly frightening. The scene in which it snaps the neck of the maid and picks up the baby is a stand-out moment of terror in this scary and unsettling thriller. The follow-up scene, in which it gives its reasons for leaving the baby unconverted, is stark and brutal.

We see enough of the guest cast to get a good enough idea of who these Romantic poets and genii were, but given the runtime, it was always going to be a sketchy affair. Wisely, Alderton isn’t writing a costume drama; she’s writing a Doctor Who horror story and knows what Who does best. Jacob Collins-Levy makes for an economic portrayal of Lord Byron, skilfully managing to make a bastard charming. Maxim Baldry puts in a notable, unusual and sinister performance as Polidori. Lili Miller’s Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, later Shelley, who you might expect to be the star of the show, is enchantingly energetic but is given surprisingly short screen time. Because unpredictably this isn’t the story of how she came up with the idea of Frankenstein. It’s the story of a group of friends, all equally important, and how they cope with the dark events of a stormy night in which frighteningly bizarre things happen. Just for once in Doctor Who too, the ghosts are allowed to be real; not holograms or shapeshifters – actual, real ghosts and all the spookier and more memorable for it.

Perhaps the only criticism I can make for the violent, breath-taking charm of this dark – I’ll say it – classic is Jodie Whittaker. She is doing something different here, for sure. The Doctor puts herself at the top of the metaphorical mountain and dismisses the much-vaunted flat team structure for the first time and Jodie rises to the occasion. However, she doesn’t play against the arrogance of the Time Lord, she plays up to it, making her lose any charm she might have had. I’ve made no bones about my dislike of Jodie’s performance. She’s an actor of complete instinct. She sees an arrogant scene and plays it arrogantly. She sees a sad scene and plays it sadly. She is at her best when the emotional trajectory of a scene is at its most obvious. But she doesn’t really understand text. Time and again she stresses the wrong words and fails to make the best sense of a paragraph. Her disdain for the Cyberman looks real but it doesn’t sound it. Whittaker is an actor of extraordinary heart (just look at any scene she plays in Broadchurch – magnificent) but sadly seems to be one of very little brain. She certainly does not give an intellectual interpretation of the Doctor and to inhabit the part successfully, you need both heart and brain. She never surprises, she never wows; she simply says the lines in an appropriate but simplistic reading, with very little nuance and a resolute lack of eccentricity. And she still can’t land a gag.

Despite a leading lady with whom I have very little affection, The Haunting of Villa Diodati is supreme Doctor Who. Like its Romantic antecedents, it flows with a poetic lilt. It doesn’t always make sense but strikes for the emotional jugular. Rarely is Doctor Who so frightening. Rarely are the Cybermen so strikingly visceral. Certainly, the show these days is rarely this spectacular. Ironically, for a series which is seemingly desperate to have its own identity (prizing morality tales and topical issue plays more than ever before) it is at its best when the fashion accessories are cast aside and it gets on with being Doctor Who. Spyfall proved this theory to be true, as did Nikola Tesla. Even the return of Captain Jack represented this season’s punch the air moment. Doctor Who doesn’t necessarily need to engage with social and political trends (Silver Nemesis is surely excremental proof of that). It needs to find its own identity, rather than have one forced upon it. Look at that list of episodes in the top paragraph. We can add another to that list of highlights. Again, the series’ three-quarter point marks the return of true Doctor Who, content to do what the show does best – be itself and frighten. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is the show at its peak, appropriately stripped back to its bones.

9/10

JH

Can You Hear Me?

In the 1990s, The Outer Limits used to close each of its episodes with a hokey voice-over musing on what the tale had taught us. It was crass and often laughable but also wry and knowing. Doctor Who’s message of the week is not wry and knowing. It’s the third time in seven episodes that the show has given us “food for thought” as we approach the closing titles. And herein is the reason why Can You Hear Me? is not completely successful: it is a victim to the series around it.

Suddenly, it seems a writer other than Chris Chibnall has an unusual interest in the regular cast; the TARDIS team’s story had been all but abandoned since Spyfall. Here, their motivations and anxieties form the basis for four different plot strands. However, it feels like too little too late. Graham had recovered from a cancer scare before Episode 1 of Series 11. Only now, 17 episodes later, does it become something to talk about and then only because this week’s message is: “It’s Good to Talk.” Yaz is, all of a sudden, a character with a past, and one who has managed to painfully endure a walking-talking PC Advert monologue at her in cliché: “I’ve been where you’ve been,” the copper remarks, hoping it might chime with a girl in despair by the side of the road and showing a complete misunderstanding of how teenager minds work. None of this rings true. It doesn’t feel like what little we know about Yaz has been informed by this almost suicidal episode. The police woman's advice does not sound like anything Yaz might heed because it smacks of script. There is nothing real happening here. Like the last two messages (Save the Planet and Plastic Pollution), this one is cack-handedly dealt with. It’s not a little patronising and feels wrong for the Sunday night timeslot. Are children watching this? Or Countryfilers? Do viewers who are about to embrace the subtle mysteries of life and death in Call the Midwife really need this sort of depressing and obvious guff before their more nuanced, more palatable, far better written offerings on a Sunday night? As the weekend comes to a close, I want to avoid thinking about work and lose myself in television. I don’t want to think about something yet more dreary than Monday. I resolutely, definitely don’t want a bloody helpline. If there’s something wholly conspicuous by its absence from Chris Chibnall’s iteration of Doctor Who, it is a sense of fun.

This is such a shame because, despite the above, there is much to applaud elsewhere in the episode. Ian Gelder is magnificently, terrifically creepy as Zellin (although I would have preferred for Charlene James to go full throttle and make him an actual Eternal or the real-deal Toymaker!). There are unsettlingly creepy sequences throughout the episode: the first instance of Zellin’s fingers detaching themselves from his skeletal frame are sure to send children scurrying behind their sofas; the monsters in the pre-titles sequence awaken intrinsic fairy-tale fears of beasts and wolves, and the one on the ceiling is petrifying; Yaz’s disconcerting dream by the country roadside is off-kilter, unreal and definitely the stuff of more adult nightmares. There’s also a true feeling of the epic. We travel from Syria to Sheffield via a different solar system. The most uncanny scenes of all though happen in the suburban streets where Zellin and his recently unleashed comrade pit to steal the dreams of the world. Segun Akinola accompanies these shots with a merciless, oppressive dread, delivering his finest score of the season yet.

Charlene James and Chris Chibnall, despite their almost obligatory mishandling of the message of the week, do deliver a story where the themes reach across all of time and space. Aruhan Galieva’s Tahira is presumably suffering similar mental trauma so as to find herself at the hospital in Aleppo. Ryan’s best friend is mentally ill in the most modern and relatable of ways: locking his doors and a creeping sense of paranoia. Yaz is battling a depressive episode from her past and Graham is worrying that a terrible illness may return in the future. So there’s a definite cohesion of theme across the script making it feel like its own divorced piece of work: an examination of the nightmare. To that end, it can only be deemed successful on its own terms.

However, situated as it is, in a series full of other worthy, patronising sermons, its impact is lessened. There are also some less successful design decisions. The Aleppo hospital set looks like it’s been lifted from the Red Dwarf episode Lemons in which the Dwarfers run around the same obvious Indian marketplace set in circles. The spaceship set looks as if it’s been built without walls, the team literally filming against black drapes and fancy neon lighting. There’s also a fashionable propensity to shoot close-ups with characters’ heads left and right aligned, leaving half an empty screen, as if this makes the shots more interesting. It doesn’t.

What is the most troubling aspect of the whole episode, however, is the performance of leading lady Jodie Whittaker. To be blunt, it’s dreadful. Irritating, unfunny, lacking nuance and with every line delivered at exactly the same pace, she is frankly killing her scenes (and I don’t mean the more colloquial meaning of killing). Watch as she leaves the TARDIS in Syria mistakenly talking to the friends she has left behind. Her delivery is so achingly slow that the gag becomes unbelievable. Why wouldn’t she have noticed that they are not there between her pauses? It has to be said, lots of her dialogue is unforgiveable too. “This place has so many secrets to yield” an example of a prize clunk. You need someone in the role though who can at least deliver this stuff naturally, with an arguable modicum of believability. Whittaker has not managed to get a handle on this material at all and her attempted jokes leave the viewer either shaking their head in bafflement or wanting to smash the telly. I wish, as the first female Doctor, she were storming across the screens with magnificence. Instead, she’s difficult to like, irritating to listen to and in supporting evidence, routinely left in the cold by the guest cast. Ian Gelder leaves her adrift whenever they meet.

There is much to like about Can You Hear Me?: Gelder being outstanding, scenes that genuinely unsettle, a lovely unity of intent. However, the show’s more general attendant problems pervade. We are living through an age with a Doctor who completely lacks charisma and integrity. We are living through an era where the companions are ignored except for when we have an episode like this which only serves to highlight how underwritten they have previously been. We are living through a period in which the show seemingly feels the need to be about something, to highlight social injustice or planetary-wide pollution without offering up any joy to counterbalance the worthy misery. There is an aching feeling that Doctor Who does not know who it is being made for. Trying to please everyone and failing to please anyone feels like a fair assessment of where we’re at. Despite the profound themes and anxieties this episode facilitates, it’s sad that the most exciting moment for this viewer was when Zellin didn’t turn out to be the Toymaker.

4/10

JH

Praxeus

On paper, this should absolutely work. An alien virus; multiple worldwide locations; frightening killer birds; a plastic menace; some terrifically grizzly death scenes. Like its eponymous contagion, Praxeus has Doctor Who running through its narrative veins. So what’s wrong with it? What doesn’t it chime? Why do we leave the episode feeling so cold?

The answer is one that is becoming more and more of a problem with Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who: his leading cast of characters. I’ve never been a huge fan of Jodie Whittaker’s fairly insipid Doctor since her Woman Who Fell to Earth inception but to my mind, she has made clear improvements this year despite still struggling with longer “inspirational” speeches and the attendant tech talk. Her three companions, however, have become absolutely stagnant. As I’ve mentioned several times in this series of reviews, Series 11 started well, with the first five episodes slowly unpeeling layers of character in our three TARDIS-travelling friends. Then, stultification. We opened in Spyfall with a fresh realigning of our regulars and some reminders of why they are travelling with our Doctor. Now, we’re back in the quagmire. Graham, Ryan and Yaz are utterly interchangeable. You could lift Yaz from her plot and swap her with Ryan and the story would play out in the same way. You could give Graham the job of dissecting the crow and Ryan the talk on the beach with Warren Brown’s character and I’m not sure how those scenes would differ. The three of them are simply Yes Men to the Doctor’s benevolent plans and fail to propel or affect anything approaching plot. Ideas and events happen at speed around them, and whilst there is, in Praxeus, much pace and excitement, we’re not feeling it with any of our characters because they’re all of them, to a man or woman, vacuous and that’s how Praxeus ends up feeling.

I’ve never seen three companions as a bad idea; indeed, I’m an advocate for it. Ian, Barbara and Susan work. Rose, Mickey and Jack work. Amy, Rory and River work. Hell, even Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough work. All three of those respective trios, however, have quite vividly different characters and different ideas about who the Doctor is. They highlight one another’s differences in their conversations and approaches. Here, Graham, Yaz and Ryan all have one protocol: to do as they are told. The Doctor asks them to join her on her adventures asking them nicely to do nice things, which they do nicely. Ryan’s voice is becoming more and more monotonous and his conversation more and more idiotic. Graham gets a scene where he’s nice to someone and Yaz is the Doctor’s sidekick when some faux-policing needs doing and Jodie needs someone to be slightly less nice. It’s all very lovely but there’s no drama, no politics and like last year, no propulsion. We may be going all over the world in Praxeus, but in terms of human drama we aren’t going anywhere. What the show really needs are some personalities in the TARDIS: Look how everything felt so much more alive when Captain Jack entered the room last week.

This might be why here, like in Tesla, like in Spyfall, like in Fugitive of the Judoon, the guest cast easily eclipse the regulars. Our leads are so thinly sketched that the relatively simple but bold story of one’s man trip around the world to rescue his astronaut boyfriend rings truer than anything Ryan, Graham or Yaz do; Warren Brown’s Jake gets the most real dialogue of the series so far.

There is also, it has to be said, a propensity for the recent series to produce cautionary tales in the vain of Doomwatch or The Green Death. Both Orphan 55 and Praxeus issue blunt messages with regards the future of the planet. However, The Green Death had a hopefulness about it: the thought of a mad professor and a bunch of hippies coming together to forge a better future alongside the Brigadier blithely acknowledging his happiness with “cheap petrol and lots of it, exactly what the world needs.” It was complex, optimistic and fun. Here, in 2020, the show is thoroughly depressing in its cynicism. The Doctor isn’t a beacon of hope. There are no humans being seen to change things. There are simply angry writers telling us we’re using too much plastic and destroying the world in out thoughtlessness. Frankly, it’s draining and a little patronising. By all means, highlight topical issues but at least make them fun and give us some fun characters to explore them with. Why should we take notice of the four most uninspiring regulars we’ve ever had?

There is much to applaud in Praxeus (far more than I’ve given credit for – not least the make-up, effects and genuine sense of scale) but by the end, it’s a tiresome affair. There may be a breathless pace and vastly different locales, there may even be a tragically unconvincing puppet and a one-sided TARDIS prop, but by the end, there’s nothing here to care about. For a story committed to highlighting the problems of plastic pollution, that’s a whole other problem its writers need to contend with.

4/10

JH