Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Time of the Doctor

Dear Gary—
I have to confess, I consider The Time of the Doctor as a guilty pleasure. The first time I saw this episode I didn’t like it, to put it mildly. I scoffed and rolled my eyes and was more than a little confused. (Truth be told—and this must be the Christmas truth field in play—I first saw this out of order; I had probably only seen one, maybe two, Clara stories before it.) Each time I have seen it since I have appreciated it more. Now I almost think it is one of my favorites of Matt Smith’s tenure.
I’ll begin with Clara. The first time through I had no background of the Clara/Doctor relationship; she was a generic companion to me. As I have pointed out through this slow journey of mine, I still don’t have a deep understanding of Clara’s character, but I have warmed up to her and can see the friendship between her and the Doctor. This family of hers, however, is out of the blue. We have never seen them before; it is a paper thin relationship that has been created out of air for the convenience of our story. Clara’s treatment of them bears this out. They are unimportant to her and to us. But it makes for a hilarious skit. The “I need a boyfriend” bit is straight out of sitcom land; Clara is looking more like That Girl every day.
The Time of the Doctor is a string of such skits; it is a clip show; a highlights reel; a reunion episode; a greatest hits album. It is a Saturday Night Live version of Doctor Who. And it is one of the most enjoyable events to watch in this new era.
All of the old favorites are collected here: the Crack, the oldest question, the Silence, Trenzalore, Gallifrey Lost, the Time War, the exploding TARDIS. All of the unresolved questions; all of the tedious arcs. All coming cleverly together into a satisfying whole. I won’t say that it makes the long, drawn out, and dreary season-long storylines worthwhile, but I will say that for once they have actual relevance for me. Added to the mix are an assortment of Doctor Who foes led by the obligatory Daleks and Cybermen with an occasional Weeping Angel thrown in.
I’ll even go so far as to say that I don’t mind the dreadful Silents in this. They’re still ridiculous, but I have to laugh at them rather than rage against them. “Confessional Priests,” the Doctor explains them away to Clara, and he goes on to say that they are, “genetically engineered so you forget everything you told them.”  Useless in other words. You confess and immediately forget; so you haven’t unburdened yourself at all; you are as guilt-ridden as ever. What you have done is spilled all of your deepest darkest secrets to these creepy monsters and don’t even know you have done so. So you turn around and confess again. Only to forget yet again. And the cycle continues ad nauseam. In the meantime the Silents could sell the information they glean to the highest bidder. Blackmail anyone? I wonder if the Bloody Queen Liz 10 had these guys created; she’s big on the forgetting-you-did-something-dreadfully-important front.
The story is a muddle calling for all sorts of suspension of disbelief and leaps of faith. But even though I can’t commit to it, I can enjoy it for the lighthearted romp of an SNL ride that it is.
Daleks, Cybermen, Slitheen, Silurians, Judoon, Sontarans, etc are all convened in one spot; one time and space. All of this fire power and they are being held at bay by the shield put in place by the Papal Mainframe. So where was this shield during the Time War? But whatever; the Doctor slips through with the aid of Tasha Lem, the Mother Superious, and single handedly fends off all attacks for hundreds of years from an assortment of Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels etc. As the centuries drag by he gets relief from the Clerics, and together they turn Trenzalore into a war zone in defense of Christmas.
Now all of these various and sundry Doctor Who foes have shown up at this far flung spot at this ambiguous time in response to a mysterious message that has been broadcasting through all of time and space since the beginning of the universe. None of them can explain what the message is or why they have responded other than an all-pervading sense of terror. Frightened Daleks and Cybermen et al. Scared of the unknown. Monsters under the bed. Shadows in the night. And they have all arrived at this one spot because that is the source of the message. But why this time? What time is it, by the way? Must be in the distant future; must at least be after the 52nd Century when all of the Demon’s Run events went down, although it is Christmas 2013 or there about Earth time when the Doctor first gets the message. Who knows when the Daleks etc first heard the cry. If it has been echoing out through all of time and space, I can only wonder why the Doctor never heeded its call before. Why wasn’t this ubiquitous question heard loud and clear reverberating throughout that Crack of a season?
And here’s something—apparently The Silence is responsible for Everything. They exploded the TARDIS that led to the Crack; that led to the Pandorica; that led to Demon’s Run; that led to Lake Silencio; that led to the collapsing universe; that led to the inane Question; that led to just about every bad thing that has happened in the Doctor Who universe for the past few seasons, up to and including our present predicament. So here’s an idea: Unscheduled Faith Change—from this point on why not dedicate the church to the destruction of the Kovarian Chapter in the most convoluted way possible? Perhaps this new chapter could create its own fixed point at the Sea of Tranquility. And just to distinguish their team from Eye Patch Lady’s they can send in their psycho killer dressed in a Soviet space suit.
But alas, none of this is to be. Instead the church dedicates itself to aiding the Doctor in defending Trenzalore (even though the members have been turned into Dalek puppets, but oh well, let’s forget about that).
So now I begin to wonder why it wouldn’t be a good thing to let the Time Lords through to aid in the cause. The Daleks are concentrated in one spot; let the Time Lords through; sneak attack; dead Daleks.
This is where the vagaries of the Time War enter in. The Time Lords are let through and the Time War continues throughout time and space? Is that the fear? Except—without the Time Lords the Daleks are free to roam about all of time and space leaving devastation in their wake. Presumably this is what prompted the Time Lords to action to begin with.  But then the Time Lords became as corrupt and evil as the Daleks? Or maybe just the High Council? Are there Time Lords that are good but caught up in the battle? What of all those children that were of such concern in The Day of the Doctor? The General and Androgar in the War Room on Gallifrey seem to be decent guys; just soldiers doing their darnedest to defeat the Ultimate Evil. And the Doctor seems exuberant at the thought that the Time Lords are saved, even if in some frozen moment of a pocket universe. So what exactly is the fear if the Time Lords are freed?  And again we are left with the vagaries of the Time War.
And then there is this truth field to deal with. The Doctor and Clara discover the realities of this phenomena when they are compelled to answer awkward questions they would rather not. But the Ultimate Question, the Question that has been seeping through The Crack since the dawn of time, the Question that everyone is so dedicated to keeping from being answered, the Question that haunts and that frightens and that has shaped intergalactic history—That Question can be ignored by the Doctor for hundreds of years as he sits and whittles and zaps a Weeping Angel or two despite the best efforts of the truth field.
As for the Question: Doctor Who? The Time Lords are waiting patiently in their frozen bubble; waiting for the Doctor to provide his name so that they know it is safe to come out and play. They have these Cracks that they can traverse at will, we are to believe, but they won’t until they get the Word from the Doctor. So the Doctor figures this out and sits with his ear to the Crack for hundreds of years and says nothing to it. He knows his long lost and beloved race is there hanging on his every word; yet he says nothing to them. He formulates no plan; he brokers no peace. He sits; he waits; he dispatches a wooden Cyberman; he makes friendly with the locals; he does battle with the Daleks. But he remains Silent.
Along comes Clara to have a chat with the Crack. “It’s time someone told you you’ve been getting it wrong.” Thank you, Clara. “His name . . . his name is the Doctor.” Well, duh. What more do you need? What more do the Time Lords need? After all of these hundreds of years they don’t know that it is the Doctor on the other end of their Crack line of communication? And they never tried to converse and ask some relevant questions? Ditto the Doctor?
Speaking of communication—why doesn’t the Doctor understand the initial message if it is in Gallifreyan? And if it is in some weird Gallifreyan code that the Doctor can’t recognize, why did the Time Lords use this ancient and weird and untranslatable language for their most important communiqué? Why even ask the question if they know no one, including the intended recipient, would be able to comprehend it? And if a Cyber head can translate it, why can’t the Cybermen?
And then after all of these hundreds of years the Time Lords decide that this is indeed the Doctor, because Clara says so, and rather than bursting free of their bubble they send through a new regeneration cycle for the Doctor and then close up the Crack, seemingly for good. Now wait a minute—can the Time Lords control these Cracks? It appears as though they open one up in the sky and close it again. Have they been in charge of them all along? All through that Crack of a season? Or is it just for the convenience of this story? Or did the Crack fortuitously open of its own accord right when the Doctor and the Time Lords needed it most?
And please tell me how the Doctor getting a whole new regeneration cycle solves the standoff at Trenzalore? The Daleks et al decide after hundreds of years that they don’t want to go on with this endless battle through another thirteen generations of the Doctor so they give up and go home? Or is it because the Time Lords have decided after hundreds of years to stop transmitting their message? In which case, why didn’t the Doctor simply tell them on Day 1: ‘Sorry guys, it’s not safe out there and you’re drawing attention to yourselves. Why not be quiet for a while until things settle down and I’ll sneak back in the TARDIS in a millennia or two and whisper the all clear?’

OK, I know his regen energy blows the Daleks out of the Christmas sky (sheesh, talk about genocide), but really, we all know there are plenty of Daleks to go around. Where one burns twenty come to take its place.
Seems to me that the bad guys won here. The Daleks and company are free to go about their merry way sowing death and destruction across the universe. At least there must have been hundreds of years of universal peace while all of these deadly foes concentrated their forces at Trenzalore.
But you know, Gary, even though the story falls apart on the whole, the individual bits shine and I find I don’t really mind the inanity so much. Take the Papal Mainframe for instance. As an entity it is ridiculous. It is sprung at us with no historical context and we are left scratching our heads as to where this almighty church has been hiding all of these years. Why, I wonder, didn’t it intervene during the Pandorica buildup of forces (as just one example)? I’ve already expressed my contempt of the Silents as Confessional Priests. As for Tasha Lem, I’m getting rather annoyed with this casual Lothario side of the Doctor. Having said all that, however, the Mainframe is impressive in its grand scale and fits into the story, the Silents provide some comic relief, and Orla Brady as Tasha is fascinating.
The town of Christmas is quaint; the wooden Cyberman is cool; the aging Doctor is touching; Handles is comical; Barnable is adorable; Gran is both funny and poignant (and great to re-visit Etta from Vengeance on Varos); cooking turkey in the TARDIS is terrific; naked Doctor is madcap; the not-so-invisible Sontaran comedy duo is hilarious (until they’re blown up); the return of Amelia and Amy is moving (although Amy is creepy and Amelia is fake—I guess they took a page from Ed Wood’s ‘Bela/Not Bela’ book).
This is one Doctor Who in which the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Culminating in the regeneration. Peter Capaldi.
I look forward, Gary; traveling as the Doctor would, ever in hope . . .

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