“Death in Heaven” You may remember that I closed last week’s post by saying that “Moffat is sometimes guilty of trying to have his cake and it eat too, and a fear he may do that here”. This is one of those cases where I hate being right, but I’m […] Read more
“Dark Water” Never let it be said that Steven Moffat is afraid to go big on the big occasions. It’s fitting that there’s so much talk of “missing the headline” in this episode of Doctor Who, because it’s really difficult to know where to start when talking about it. What’s […] Read more
“In the Forest of the Night” I’m not sure any of you are still out there, given the lack of commentary on either of the last two episodes (which were among the best of the season). But in case you are I’m going to finish out this season of Doctor […] Read more
“Flatline” Jamie Mathieson has proved himself the most interesting writer of the Capaldi era so far – though there have only been four of them. Only in Mathieson’s hands has Clara’a Mary Sue-ism seemed present to serve a larger purpose – though to be fair that purpose was surely laid […] Read more
“Mummy on the Orient Express” Dear Jamie Mathieson: You may be a new writer for Doctor Who, but you’re welcome back any time. Even next week. For the record, I decided not to do a post on last week’s “Kill the Moon”. I’m simply too far behind in too many […] Read more
“The Caretaker” Brief touch-base on Doctor Who this week, for reasons I’ve already covered. But the usual disclaimer applies – don’t mistake the length of the post for the fondness towards the episode. I thought this was rather a good one – probably the second-best of the season after “Listen”, […] Read more
“Time Heist” I’ll be the first to admit I went into “Time Heist” with pretty modest expectations. The writer, Steve Thompson, has contributed two middling Who episodes – decent but not great. The overall standard of writing this season has been indifferent, and the premise seemed a bit of a […] Read more
“Listen” That was certainly the most episode of Season 35 so far. You name it, this was more of it, for (mostly) better or worse. Steven Moffat is many things, among them certainly a very talented writer. Just as certainly he gets Doctor Who in a way Russell T. Davies […] Read more
“Robot of Sherwood” The buzz is that veteran Doctor Who scripter and Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss wrote this episode before Peter Capaldi was announced as the Doctor, and made only minor tweaks to adapt it to his persona. And that fits the evidence pretty well, because on the whole “Robot […] Read more
“Into the Dalek” The first two episodes of Doctor Who’s 35th season (8th, if you’re a revisionist) have been a bit of a strange experience for me. I’m completely sold on Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and that should, in theory, be the most important thing. But the rest of […] Read more