Okay. Well. Firstly, let me just say, Saturday was a bit of a meh day. Not a bad day, just sort of...meh. So I was faintly amused by the irony of being served up a Doctor Who episode that was also not bad, just...meh.
I suppose it's good for me to be occasionally reminded that this show is really for kids, it helps me not to devolve fully into one of those fans who gets in a lather because OMG NEW DAVROS ISN'T RIGHT and DOCTOR WHO IS THE NAME OF THE SHOW, THE DOCTOR IS THE NAME OF THE CHARACTER. Actually, fun fact about that: I refer to the character as 'Doctor Who' initially when talking to non-fans (or 'Normies' as I like to call them) and then subtly slip into calling him 'The Doctor'. This has a dual effect: a) I don't sound like an anally retentive freak who makes sure to get these things right, yet b) more importantly, the correct name just might subconsciously filter through their layers of Doctor Who-indifferent neurones and I won't have to restrain myself from correcting them in future by biting my tongue so hard I draw blood.
But even so, that episode was kind of lame. I mean it was, right? Come on now, that was exactly the kind of thing I'd expect from RTD circa Season 4 (Reboot not Original Series) *snort, push glasses back up nose*. No, but seriously. It probably wouldn't have felt so formulaic if it hadn't come straight after a particularly head-twisty Moffat Special and according to my sources (Wikipedia) it was supposed to air much later in the series, presumably by which time we'd be all settled in and a silly old romp about space pirates and Lily Cole wouldn't go amiss. But after that series opener, even with all its problems, it just felt a little weak and lacking in - there's that word again - scale. I mean, objectively speaking, it wasn't terrible. Nowhere near as disappointing as, say, The Unicorn and The Wasp (Agatha Christie, monster was a giant wasp, remember it? yeah, thought not) or Daleks in Manhattan (still my least favourite NuWho episode ever) or that weird Christmas special with Kylie Minogue. I mean, what even was that? Jesus. But I digress.
We should, perhaps, take my disappointment as a positive thing. In a latter day, I might have watched the episode, not enjoyed it, shrugged and gone "eh". The fact that I feel let down is surely an indication of a higher standard overall and that the show's really moved beyond the TARDIS-shows-up-at-a-historical-location, historical-locals-fear-supernatural-occurances, Doctor-divines-supernatural-occurances-are-aliens-in-some-form, Doctor-fixes-aliens, everybody-hugs formula. Plus, we all know that the best bits about historical episodes are those nerdy, facetious little anachronistic jokes like the recurring 'Celtic' thing in the Pompeii episode and Shakespeare asking if "To be or not to be" was "a bit flowery", and a non-specific 18th century sailing vessel doesn't really have enough that's instantly recognisable about it to make those kind of gags. You know, the ones that elicit a wry chuckle from you and make a whistling sound as they fly way over the head of your eight-year-old cousin.
To be fair, we did get "Yo ho ho! ...or does nobody actually say that?" but I'm not even going to pretend that was funny. And that was the main problem with this episode for me: the writing. Not the premise, because I like pirates as much as the next girl who was pushed off the Cliff of Sexual Awakening by Johnny Depp, and I like the idea of the siren and it all looked kind of cool I guess, but the plot and the dialogue were just poor. I mean, everyone just turned into an idiot. These capable, reliable characters who we have seen get through much worse just turned into total fucking morons as soon as they set foot on that boat. The Doctor left the TARDIS as it was dematerialising. Last time that happened, it was a HUGE DEAL. We had a whole episode with James Corden in it as a result. There wasn't even anything to suggest staying inside it might have been, I dunno, life-threatening or even mildly perilous. Amy regressed from 'head strong' right back to 'bitch who doesn't listen to anyone even when they clearly know better' with her swash-buckling routine, ignoring the desperate cries of men telling her that she could literally kill them all leading to the old "yeah, you better run" routine, which is rarely funny and, as in this case, often makes an annoying character more annoying. It's also a disservice to Amy as a character because, yeah, she's a bit arrogant and feisty and whatnot but she's not - as I said - a total fucking idiot who seriously believes that a ship full of experienced pirates are seriously going to be put off by a girl with the physique of a baby giraffe brandishing a sword like it's going to bite her hand off. Wouldn't it have been a million times more endearing and cool if she or Rory or, say, the Doctor, whose job it kind of is to figure this stuff out, had sized up the situation and realised that their reactions were disproportionate and they could use this to their advantage? Or something. But hey, what do I know? I guess it's just a good thing River and Canton didn't show up the participate in the fuckwittery or I would have had to do a particularly violent mime of punching Stephen Moffat in the head. yeah, you better run. (See? Annoying.)
Plus Amy's "Saving your life, okay with that are you?" line was just pure cringe. To be fair, it wasn't just Karen Gillan phoning in her performance. Everyone was doing it, even (*gasp*) the hallowed Matt Smith, Who Can Do No Wrong. I know the dialogue was, to borrow a vulgarity, gash but for some reason I just though the acting turned out really wooden and sucky as well. The whole thing was both slowly and clunkily paced for the first half hour, then the last fifteen minutes lurched wildly into a totally different tone that destroyed any maritime creepiness we might have been enjoying. Jeez, you know what? I'm just going to get it all out now. Take a deep breath.
Hugh Bonneville was barely trying, his character was a jerkass that somehow got redemption he didn't really deserve (he let his son die for money) and can somehow fly the freakin' TARDIS (seriously, can everyone do this now?)/any random spaceship because "a ship is a ship" (yeah...no) and the Doctor is all cool with this. Speaking of the son and most of the other 'deaths', they pretty much all could have been prevented by someone just grabbing the person reaching for Lily Cole's boobs and hauling them below decks. We saw them do it for Rory. They couldn't do the same for the other guys because of what? Plot Induced Paralysis? Yeah, pretty much. The technobabble about the ship occupying the same space as the other ship was the worst kind because it had no seeming internal logic to it - I followed the entirety of The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon but was shaking my head over that. Despite their weirdly big amount of screen time, the crew characters were underdeveloped, your standard Gruff Sceptics and Self-Interested Human Bastards, and had no apparent reaction to being stuck forever in another dimension hundreds of years in their future trying to adjust to potentially insanity-inducing concepts like 'space travel' with nothing more than a goofy smile and a "huyuk, cool dude".
Okay, you know what? I didn't like this episode. I'm done trying to be fair. It was a poor job all round and it really doesn't surprise me to learn that it was written by the same guy that wrote The Blind Banker, the second (and worst) episode of Sherlock (also written and exec'ed by Stephen Moffat), once again full of usually capable characters having fits of Idiot Disease because the plot required it and a ton of lazy Chinese stereotypes that really shouldn't be allowed anymore. Anyway, I checked out this guy's credits (Stephen Thompson, if you want to know you to address the angry letters to) and it looks like he's still pretty young, lots of plaudits as a playwright but relatively little experience doing screenplays. The two are very different disciplines. To go from no experience in that field to big, high profile stuff like Sherlock and Doctor Who is probably inadvisable. While I love that Moffat has clearly found a new BFF, maybe he should read the scripts they churn out before he lets them air their stuff on primetime TV.
Despite my ranting, I still stand by my opinion that it wasn't a bad episode, per se, just kind of lazy. Overly reliant on cliches, characters acting out of character because the plot demanded it, and, worst of all, it just didn't feel like an episode of Doctor Who. Not the Doctor Who we've gotten used to anyway. I strongly suspect Thompson isn't really a fan of the show - in fact, I'd be surprised if he'd ever watched it before of his own volition, apart from maybe a marathon with last season's box set when he got the gig. It was like someone trying to prove there was a formula for Doctor Who - like someone who'd never seen the show before went "I know how this works, it's easy, look". So for me, this episode actually proved something great about Doctor Who: when the whole of time and space is your playground, there are n excuses for lazy writing.
I kind of don't know what to think about next week now. The opener was too complicated, this week was too simple. Third time lucky? Let's hope. It certainly looks intriguing, and Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer (yes, screenwriter too), already possessing the Children's Gothic sensibility of last series. I daren't hope but Neil - I'm counting on you. For the love of Gallifrey, please don't let me down.
NB Just realised that the only 'clunker' (in my opinion) of last series (Daleks in WW2, Spitfires in space, exploding robot human...yeah, that one) was also the third episode. Maybe the slot's just cursed. I feel better now.
I fell asleep half way though...
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