A Pretty Cool Appliance

First off, apologies to those who read my quirky little reviews. I've had a bit of computer problems over the past few weeks, but now I'm up and running with a brand new kick butt set-up. Not sure if it will improve my reviewing skills, but things move a lot quicker these days, and the new 27” HD screen doesn't hurt either.

Among Season 7's episodes I think this one, “Journey to the Center of the TARDIS” ranks among the top 2 in audience anticipation, the other being the upcoming Neil Gaiman penned episode, you can quibble over which holds the top anticipation spot.

I had started to write a long dissertation on my general feelings on where Doctor Who is going these days, but that's for later . . . . . . . on to . . . . . .

WHAT I LIKED
The Swimming Pool! Actually this was more or less a non-surprise. If we were going to take a tour of the TARDIS interior we were going to see the pool ever since The Doctor arrived in the garden of Amy's auntie, we knew someday we would see the TARDIS swimming pool. But to see it just through a door way was a bit of a disappointment.

Time for a dip . . . .

“The History of the Time War” – I liked that touch – but if The Doctor locked the Daleks and Time Lords in a Time Lock, who wrote the book???? There were Gallifreyan markings on the book. Did The Doctor write the book in his wanderings after “destroying” both of those races??? Or did some third party write it? I seriously doubt that The Master, being the only other Time Lord to have escaped the Time War, wrote it. I guess his alter-ego Professor Yana could have written it and The Doctor grabbed it to keep it out of anyone's hands.

Kind of a bummer that Clara supposedly saw The Doctor's name in the Time War Book, which of course lays hints for the last episode of this season, "The Name of The Doctor" - perhaps this is a hint . . . . . . .

If they do actually name The Doctor, which I and pretty much all of Whoville hope never happens, I'll throw this out there, my guess at his name, Hieronymous Smith, there it is , you heard it here first LOL

The “voices form the past” that emanated from the TARDIS console when Bram started to dismantle it – they were hard to hear, but I distinctly heard the following: 

Ian Chesterton questioning how a Police Box in a junk yard could be traveling through time and space.
Susan Foreman explaining what TARDIS stand for for the first time ever.

The Doctor's 9^th incarnation (Christopher Eccleston) telling amazed shop girl Rose Tyler that the doors of the TARDIS had withstood even the hordes of Ghengis Kahn.

And there was something from Tom Baker that I could not make out. I could hear his voice, just not what he said.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

This is a bit of a knock on the set designers – the TARDIS and doors could have been from any spaceship – I know that heading into the 50^th anniversary with the redesign of the Console Room they are going for a sleeker look, but some of the ambiance from the library and the attic rooms could have spilled out into the halls a bit.

We didn't see the TARDIS garage – maybe that's being saved for later.

Here in the US, we have an office supply chain called STAPLES and for a while they ran an advertising campaign featuring the “Easy Button”, all anyone had to do was push it and all of their office supply problems were solved. That's what the “Big Friendly Button” solution to this week's episode reminded me of . I get the concept and it was kind of cut, but between that quickie fix to the problem at hand and last week's out of nowhere solution, I guess I'm getting a little tired of the pat fixes to problems.

The Heart of the TARDIS has exploded.  OK - if that's the deal - how did the TARDIS do all it did to mess with the Doctor, Clara and Van Baalens???

THE ELEPHANT IN THE TARDIS

OK – this episode REALLY messed with canon. How? The Eye of Harmony, that's how. The second that I saw the EYE OF HARMONY pop up on the TARDIS screen I let out a Tennant like “Wot????”

WOT?!?!?!?!?!!?

The Eye of Harmony has been described as quite a few things since it was first brought up in the Fourth Doctor episode “The Deadly Assassin” wherein the Eye of Harmony was described as the power source of the entire planet of Gallifrey, it was the nucleus of a Black Hole that was placed under the Citadel of the Time Lords. It wasn't until the 8^th Doctor's time in the TARDIS that the eye of Harmony was described as a part of the TARDIS, which is a nice shoutout to the 8^th Doctor, in this season of shoutouts to previous Doctors, but there's a problem.

It's been established in the current canon, that being 2005 to the present, that the TARDIS twice popped into Cardiff to refuel at the Rift there. If the Eye of Harmony is basically an eternal power source, why exactly were the refueling at the Rift needed??? Were they just top offs?? Kind of a refill for the anti-freeze? Sorry – that's kind of sloppy as far as the canon goes. 

THE MYSTERY OF CLARA
Aside form The Doctor telling Clara all about her previous deaths and such, only for it to be wiped out by the Big Friendly Button, we've gotten nowhere as far as her mystery goes.  I get the feeling that it's all heading for the finale of this season, "The Name of the Doctor" as for explanations about who Clara actually is.


NEXT WEEK
In watching the previews for next week, we have a bit of a return to the "Doctor and companion lite" episodes of seasons 2 and 3 ("Blink" and "Love and Monsters") where The Doctor and Clara don't figure to be the main players.  I actually like these episodes since they allow other actors to stretch their wings, so to speak.  And I LOVE Straxx :-)   For the old heads out there, pay attention, there's a reference to a previous Doctor and companion.

Feels good to be back :-)

TIME LORD OF THE RINGS

Not sure what it is this week, whether it's the unseasonably warm weather here on the East Coast of the US that has us cranking up air conditioners or the wave of negativity that crashed down on Who Land after the broadcast of "The Rings of Akhaten" that set me off, but I am finally gathered and writing my thoughts on the episode.

We have The Doctor starting his investigation in to “The Twice Dead Woman” by going back into Clara’s past, back as far as her parents’ first meeting, and after his witnessing their meeting, engagement (via leaf that blinded Clara’s Dad), the birth and eventual adolescence of Clara (nice job on that), he is no more the better for his poking into her past proclaiming her to “be impossible”.

And yet there she is.

This episode was a mixed bag for me, parts were good and there were parts that were a bit too formulaic.  Maybe I’m being too hard on this episode, but onto . . . . . . . . .

WHAT I LOVED

The entire first three minutes, basically the "The Life Of Clara".  It was sweet and sentimental and it answered a lot of questions, which is a good thing, and even I shed a bit of a tear when Clara did at her mom's graveside.

NO SPECIAL DATES HERE - THAT I KNOW OF

We had  a potential return of The Doctor's Venusian Akido after his being hit in the head by a ball kicked by a very young Clara - nice touch.

Definite kudos go to the young lady who played Merry, I wish I had been that together at 10 years old (here's what else she's been in  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4454223/?ref_=tt_cl_t5 )

Queen of the Years

WHAT I LIKED

All of the aliens. The Millennium FX prosthetics crew must have had continuous orgasms when the orders for aliens came in for this episode, and they did a great job.  

I ESPECIALLY LIKED THAT RED EYED GUY

. . . . . as did The Mill with their CGI efforts.  Definitely a bravo for the special effects.

The Doctor comparing an event that happens every thousand years in the Rings of Akhaten to "Pancake Tuesday", that terribly British version of Mardi Gras, the day before everyone is supposed to clamp down and give up all kinds of things for Lent.  While the rest of the world is feasting on all kinds of craziness and drinking themselves numb, the Brits and their other former colonies are having pancakes (from the looks of them they look more like French crepes, not like real American Pancakes.

REAL AMERICAN PANCAKES!

Back to Clara's story - I like that she seems to have been born and, up to her first run-in with The Doctor, in "The Bells of Saint John", seems to be a pretty normal (aside from her lack of Internet knowledge), mid-20's woman. All of the stops in her life . . . . . .  .

After The Doctor tells Clara that she reminds her of someone. . . .someone who died. . . .  Clara's retort . .  "I'm not going to be a bargain basement stand-in for someone else . . . I'm not going to compete with a ghost!"

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

As much as I liked the bazaar scenes with all of the aliens, Clara’s first trip aboard the TARDIS was reminiscent of Rose’s in “The End of the World”, with the Doctor’s companion being exposed to all kinds of aliens on their first trip.

In the Rings of Akhaten there were layers upon layers upon layers of appeasing the local sun (more on that later).  There were there guys (who I actually thought were cool looking):















Then this guy:

Just to get to this guy - the Grandfather . . . 

That is a sun which will be put out by a leaf













QUESTIONS
OK - so The Doctor and Clara basically put out the sun that keeps the Rings of ZAnkhaten together and then get out of town.  In other words - they save the denizens of the Rings from "The Grandfather" and then leave them to their entire solar system to collapsing.  Seems a bit weird to me.
FAVORITE LINES
Not once, but twice, The Doctor took on the concept of organized religion, which I found interesting.  First, on their arrival in the Rings when  The Doctor was explaining what the deal with the Rings was.

Doctor: Seven world orbiting the same star, all of them sharing the belief that all life in the universe originated here, on that planet.

Clara: All life?

Doctor: In the Universe.

Clara: Did It?

Doctor: No, it's what they believe, it's a nice story.

The second was his  "Cabbages and Kings" pep talk to Merry.

THE CONTINUING MYSTERY OF CLARA
We still have no idea who the "shop girl" is who gave Clara that IT support number, but some theories have popped up from either IMs or in chats with other Who fans.

Our suspects are . . . . Rose (a shop girl), River (not a shop girl but who has time travel capabilities so could know the actual identity of Clara - it would not surprise me if that were the case and that she knows that Clara - in the end - makes The Doctor immensely happy), Sally Sparrow, not seen since "Blink", but another "shop girl".  I definitely get the feeling that whoever it was who gave Clara the support number to The Doctor's phone is known to us, as in she's appeared in the series before.

A friend posited that it might be Susan Foreman, The Doctor's granddaughter, since she was mentioned in this episode, and I think it's possible, but very unlikely since she was left off in 22nd century Earth (even accounting for her appearance in "The Five Doctors"), but I guess The Doctor could have dropped her off in 2013.

The TARDIS key . . .. as mentioned before.  The Doctor, in a bit of a fake reaches into his pocket and hands Clara not the key to the TARDIS, but the ring she traded into to the Crazy Dog Talking Moped Lady, which i all kinds of full of Clara's memories of her mom.

WELCOME TO THE SNOG BOX

We’re finally back into Season 7 (Series 7 for the Brits reading this – I will never understand that) and we’re with The Doctor and his beginning of his search for the “Twice Dead Woman”, Clara “Oswin” Oswald.  Eight glorious weeks of being once again in the Whoniverse and I love it!

The BBC and Company even provided us with a prequel - in case you missed it - here it is (it was kind of predictable).

Overall it was a good, not great, episode.  It was a good start to this season’s two issues.  As season 6 started with the Ponds and the origins of River Song as well as their having to deal with The Silents, season 7 gives us the mystery of Clara and the establishment of “The Great Intelligence” as, as we call it here in America, this season’s “Big Bad”.

I think in this series of reviews, I’ll add a new section dealing with the mystery of Clara and my speculations as to what her deal is.  Enough babbling and on to . . . . . .

WHAT I LOVED

We’re back!  Once again my friend to the show that might not end – Doctor Who!  After far too long a break from the Christmas episode (OK, OK – it could have been longer if Easter was later this year), we have The Doctor and The Mystery of the Multiple Claras to try to solve.

WHAT I LIKED

Clara actually – as far as we know – survived the episode – so as of right now – she is not the “Thrice Dead Woman”.

I'm not sure what they did to Matt Smith for his time as the monk in this episode - but he seemed a bit softer in the face and hair - and I actually liked it a lot better - not to say I hate his normal look - just liked the Monk look better - must have been the hair and that it had a less sleek look.The Doctor: "It's 1207."
Clara: "It's only half past three.  Am I calling a different Time Zone?

The Doctor: “You really sort of are.”

Amy was busy writing in her time!  Nice touch.

The never ending phone cord

The Doctor’s Dresser Drawer

Nice reference to one of the few actual Police Boxes left - the one at Earl's Court:


Mahler: "Are we sure this time?  Earl's Court was an embarrassment."

The essential British motorcycle - the Triumph! 

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
Just a nit picky thing like . . . .

It seems that everyone in London has forgotten what a Police Box is.  Anyone who referred to the TARDIS (aside from Clara) referred to it simply as "The Blue Box" - just seemed kind of weird.

That whole silly "Doctor Who" thing when The Doctor first arrived to see Clara at the door, seemed too silly.

I'm still not sold on the latest TARDIS interior - I think it's the spinning "rotors" at the top.  I get the Gallifeyan script on the and near the doors, but the old familiar up and down of the "Time Rotor" (which in hindsight really made no sense) that I am missing - now that we have a Time Rotor that actually rotates - on 3 levels no less.

BEST LINES

Clara: "When you say ‘mobile phone’, why did you point at that blue box"?

The Doctor: "It’s a surprisingly accurate description."

The Doctor:  "Human souls trapped like flies in the world wide web, stuck forever, crying out for help."

Clara: "Isn’t that basically Twitter?"

Clara: "Clara Oswald for the win!  Oswin!"

The Doctor: "I can't tell the future I just grew up there."    I think this is what he said.

Hmmmmm - we look like Time Lords - or Time Lords look like us????  I'm referring to what The Doctor told Amy in their 1st off world adventure "The Beast Below" when he told her that humans look like Time Lords.  This is why I look at this bit of a throw away line:

A confession - with the 50th anniversary coming up - I sketched out a story where I proposed that the original Gallifreyans were human colonizers - who through  a series of massive events - became the Time Lords - even called it "The Golden Moment" in honor of the Golden Anniversary - it all made basic sense on paper - just never really fleshed it out.  Could Moffat have been laying clues all along???

QUESTIONS

Just who was that shop girl who gave Clara the number for the “best Help Line in the Universe”?  Perhaps a certain Doctor Song????  Not sure River would pop back to be a "shop girl" - she seems a bit old for that - but who knows - maybe "shop girls" over in England grow to be old LOL  But then again - River can flit through time and space - could have been her

The only actual shop girl that we know is Rose Tyler.  Not sure what department Rose worked in at the department store she worked at  - perhaps Electronics?  But that would mean she would have have to have had to have come back from the parallel Earth where the 10th Doctor left her with his sort-of self.

“That wasn’t a leaf, that was page 1” -  What the heck does that mean?????

THE MYSTERY OF CLARA
I've talked to a few local friends about just who Clara is - some think she is a creation of the Daleks (in a reversal of our souffle loving entertainment officer on the ALASKA).  I think that's laughable - not really - I just don't think that's it.

What do we know about the three iterations of Clara?

2 mentioned souffles
2 have been governesses/nannies
3 have said the magic words "Run you clever boy and remember"
1 had a double life - governess and bar maid

My theory - of this moment - is that she is a creation of The Great Intelligence - she has no idea of this of course - and different versions of 1 master version of Clara Oswin Oswald - exists somewhere - a place that will not be arrived at until the 8th episode in this run - the untitled (as yet) episode that will - according to Moffat - both reveal something we never knew about the Doctor and will lead straight to the 50th Anniversary special in November.

It could be that there is a 3rd player in this game - someone aside from The Doctor and The Great Intelligence who is controlling Clara - we'll see as we go along.Let me know what you think :-)

Jayne

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE SOUFFLE LOVING WOMAN

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE SOUFFLE LOVING WOMAN

And  . . . . We’re . . . .  back . . . .for a little while at least!

Sorry this is a bit later than planned, it’s just been a kind of depressing holiday season this year.  Not going to get into the “whys” about it, it just has been and thanks to Laredo and Kat for being there for me, but The Doctor is back!

It’s Christmas Day and time for the annual Christmas Day Special and I have to say that while it was partly what I expected and it was much darker than expected, which I liked.

OK – so the Granthams are headed off to the Highlands and there are men in skirts . . . . sorry, wrong Christmas Special.

Let’s start of with the new – and improved in my opinion – opening credits.  It appears that Moffat and Company are in full 50th Anniversary mode.  The appearance of The Doctor’s face in the opening credits harkens back to the first ever appearance of The Doctor's face in the opening sequence during Patrick Troughton’s reign as the 2^nd incarnation of The Doctor.

And the ending vortex effect seems to be an update on the vortex effect of the 1974 version of the Tom Baker era opening credits.

I do like the re-mixing of the show theme – being a bass player in real life I admit to being drawn to the lower end of the musical scale and the latest version “goes there” with that cello filled beginning.  

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first, that being the new console room.  I know that in the olden days the TARDIS console would change with no particular reason given – it just changed – mostly in the Time Rotor, but the Console Room would remain basically the same – a white room with roundels and a monitor to the outside world with a 6 sided console – which we returned to at the end of “The 11^th Hour”.  OK – the rest of the console room was rather copper plated and such, but the basic 6 sided console was back after the clock inspired console of the Eccleston/Tennant era.  Was a change really needed??   Don't get me wrong - I do like the new one - and it might be nice if an explanation for the change was thrown into the mix at some point, I mean we got to see the Eccleston/Tennant one pretty much destroyed and out into storage, it might be nice to hear an explanation for this change, like The Doctor, in his self-imposed exile, became a brooding TARDIS interior decorator and confided his design ideas only with Sexy.


Doctor Brood

And I will state right here that I am in LOVE with Jenna-Louise Coleman – actually – not much of a statement since I fell in love with her during her nailing up the boards scene in “Asylum of the Daleks”.  Now for some more gratuitous J-L C.  Enjoy :-)

OK – let’s get on with the episode.

WHAT I LIKED
It’s the flipping Christmas Episode – after a hiatus of almost 3 months – and for just that reason we need to love it – but this year’s episode was even better than usual – I give it a 9 out of 10.   In this episode the writers brought back a “Bad guy” from 1967 (the Patrick Troughton era - more on this later), The Great Intelligence and we were re-introduced to Jenna-Louise Coleman!

Amy's Glasses - nice touch

“Those were the days.”  A little tear jerky, but I liked it.

Straxx as comedy relief.   He was great – between his bout with the Memory Worm ("Sir, it appears that I've been run over by a cab" to his calling the Doctor on his impersonation of Sherlock Holmes (nice shoutout to Tom Baker’s wearing the Holmesian deerstakler hat and coat in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”) he was priceless. 

 

Will the real non-Sherlock Holmes please stand up!

The entire “One Word” sequence.

Overall, this episode was slightly darker than previous Christmas episodes, though thinking back, “Voyage of the Damned” and “The Christmas Invasion” had their dark moments.  I guess that Matt Smith’s previous Christmas specials had been more light-hearted and were simply OK whereas I really loved this one.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
OK – I know that weather over in England is not the same as here in the US.  When there’s snow on the ground and show in the air we wear parkas and boots.  Was there something special about Victorian era snowy weather over there that allowed the English to throw a scarf on over their normal everyday clothes and be completely ready for the snow???    It just seems like every time you see Bob Cratchet or any other Victorian character – they are wearing gloves with no fingers, a threadbeare scarf and a suit against the winter cold.  While I know they didn’t have today’s parkas – or anoraks - it just seems weird.

FAVORITE LINES
There are almost too many to mention here – but here are the ones that I loved:

“My Bustle is stuck” (I hate when that happens)

”Eyes front soldier.” (either every Englishwoman says this, Moffat is sloppy or it’s a clue to Clara’s origins since Amy said the same thing to Rory on occasion – hmmmmmm)

“Good Evening, I’m a Lizard Woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife.”  Totally cracked me up!

SHOUTOUTS

This secton will be where allusions to the past are recorded and in this Christmas episode there were tons.

The Great Intelligence, as I said earlier, first appeared in the 1967 6 part story, "The Abominable Snowmen" in which the Great Intelligence was able to gain a human form in the body of The High Lama Padmasambhava (say that 3 times fast) - here's a link to a synopsis of that story, if you'd like to read up on it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/abominablesnowmen/detail.shtml

The Great Intelligence returns in "The Web Of Fear" another 6 parter from 1967 in which the Great Intelligence and his robot Yeti come to Earth and set up shop in the London Underground (and a certain young Colonel Alistair Lethbridge Stewart - soon to be a Brigadier General - enters Doctor Who history) - now you know why both he and Vastra make reference to it in this episode - the Doctor gave the Great Intelligence the idea to attack from there.

THE GRAND CLARA THEORY
We have now seen the same person die twice, once as a Dalek and once in Victorian England and yet she turns up in present day England walking over her own grave.  Here’s my theory, for the moment, and I am sticking to it.

Since it’s been established that this season is going to be a bit of a nostalgic season, and rigthfully so, what with the showing the birth of the Great Intelligence, the aforementioned return of both the deerstalker cap and the 6 sided TARDIS console, along with the Doctor’s face returning to the opening sequence and the vortex somewhat reminiscent of the “Pretwee/T. Baker era, I am going to go out on a slight limb here and predict that Clara is a clone that has been sent to trap The Doctor for the Black Guardian. The Black Guardian has had dealings with the Doctor twice, once in th “Key to Time” Series with Tom Baker and with a 3 story arc during Peter Davison’s run where Turlough was introduced.  Both times the Bolack Guardian went down to defeat – perhaps the third time is the charm???

My Grand Clara Theory will evolve as the season commences (whenever the hell that is).

COMING SOON
I would really love to know what the BBC’s definition of “soon” is.  From what I have read on-line April is when The Doctor and Clara will be back – to me that’s not “soon”.  I know they are stretching things out for the 50^th anniversary, but this is ridiculous.