‘Doctor Who’ returns for another run of episodes with this mid-season opener. The Doctor is back in 1207 trying to work out the mystery of Clara Oswald whilst the latest iteration of the character is in contemporary London, babysitting for some children and coming up against problems with the internet.
In an opening seemingly stolen from his own ‘Blink’, Moffat starts by fleshing out the story of aliens capturing people and trapping them in a computer and though there is a fun initial twist it’s pretty obvious.
What follows is a surprisingly packed episode with some cracking, cheesy jokes and a funny solution to the episode title, even if it feels that the title was set up just for one joke. Which sort of sums up this episode: it feels like a collection of small parts but not much of an episode as a whole.
There are some brilliant set pieces that make up the forty-five minutes: the crashing plane looked amazing and dramatic on the budget; the use of the London skyline into the cinematography and plot well done; and the concept of the aliens and the turning of something as familiar and pedestrian as wi-fi into something evil inspired. However, for every great bit such as the mention of Amy Pond’s book, the witty moments in the script such as the Doctor relaying the phone messages he took whilst Oswald was knocked out and a well constructed dig at Twitter, and the far better ten-minute denouement, there is as much that seems stilted. I’m yet to be a big fan of Oswald as a character, whose dialogue with Smith’s Doctor often seeming out of sorts.
The ‘Doctor Who’ conversation bit was obviously tying into the overall plot arc but seems forced and he knows Oswald is in danger, so why not just let himself into the house as he eventually does?
‘The Bells of Saint John’ felt much like a lot of great ideas hastily assembled on a piece of paper and put together as a plot. That’s not to say these elements were not great – the plane scene, the motorbike scene, the triple-bluff of the robots (even if it smacked of familiarity of the previous series’ big twist) were all great, as were the many jokes scattered throughout the piece – but it felt like scenes were put in just for laughs or their visual spectacle rather than contributing much to the story.
But the episode did set up some interesting plot points. Who gave Clara the Doctor’s phone number? (I’m guessing River Song) How does Richard E Grant’s ‘The Great Intelligence’ fit into the overall series arc and November’s 50thanniversary special? And will this version of Clara survive longer than the others, and how do all her iterations work together?
The visual spectacle of the episode was impressive and the CGI never looked less than convincing, with a genuinely creepy plot concept, it’s just a shame it never felt like anything more than a collection of sketches.
Though I felt the episode a little lukewarm, it’s still a far better episode than we enjoyed in the RTD era, with a conclusion that didn’t feel rushed or illogically, with some cracking set pieces and jokes. I have to say next week’s trailer didn’t sell the rest of the series to me but we’ll judge that next week, and the episode did find itself overshadowed by the news of Tennant’s return in November (yay!) alongside Piper (Not so yay), though chances are to fans that they’ll be returning then as the half-doctor and old assistant, rather than the previous version of the doctor.
(6.5/10)
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