Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died (9x05)

I really liked this episode. It was great. But... God, I don't know. Am I being too picky? Too sensitive? There were still some things I really would have liked to see differently.

Cons:

In this episode, the Doctor and Clara end up with a village of Vikings. All of their warriors are kidnapped by aliens, and the remaining villagers must defeat these aliens with the odds stacked against them. How do they manage this? Well, the Doctor comes up with a brilliant plan, of course! I don't mind that the Doctor saves them, but it bothered me that Clara literally sat back and waited for him to come up with the answer. Her only contribution was to remind the Doctor that he needed to come up with a brilliant solution. For that matter, Clara is the damsel in distress twice in this episode. The first time, the Doctor saves her as she floats around in outer space. This is clearly the tale-end of an unseen adventure. Clara was totally helpless. Then later, Clara and Arya Stark (uhh... I mean Ashildr) get kidnapped, and they only survive because Ashildr challenges the aliens to a battle. I guess I just really miss the companions having a bigger role in saving the day.

Then there's Ashildr. Maisie Williams obviously does a good job with the character, and I did rather like Ashildr. But there's this moment when she talks about how she's "always been different." Now, I get that a lot of people feel "different" and like they don't fit in. But my God. The last thing this show needs is another girl who's "different." I miss the days of Rose, Martha, and Donna, women who were extraordinary because they were ordinary. Why couldn't Ashildr be just an ordinary Viking girl? She sort of was, but then there was all that stuff about how she's "not like other girls" because she likes fighting and coming up with creative ideas. Like... seriously? Why couldn't all the Viking girls be interested in fighting? What if Ashildr was the one Viking who loved peace, or something like that? Wouldn't that be more interesting? God, I don't know. I guess I'm just really tired of having to explain to people why the "not like other girls" thing is so problematic.

Pros:

I liked the camaraderie of the Viking community, and the creativity of the plan to defeat the Mire (that's the name of the aliens). The Doctor was a big part of it, but everybody was involved in the end, and the victory felt like a community event. It was cool to see these people stick to their pride, accomplish a seemingly impossible task, and do it all without taking a bunch of lives. In fact, the aliens are defeated by embarrassment, of all things. They record the "battle," and the aliens are frightened by a series of tricks and illusions. The Doctor then threatens to post the video on an intergalactic internet, essentially, and show their humiliation to everybody. This causes the Mire to back down.

Ashildr plays a key role in these events - she puts on one of the Mire helmets that the Doctor has wired so that Ashildr can project images of her imagination to scare the Mire. This works beautifully, but the effort drains Ashildr so badly that she ends up dying. The Doctor is devastated by the loss. I talked above about how it annoyed me that Ashildr was supposed to be so "special," but I'll admit it really tugged at the heartstrings to see her die.

Now here comes the biggest strength of this episode: The Doctor realizes why he has the face that he has. Remember, Peter Capaldi previously appeared in a fourth season episode of Doctor Who, as Caecilius. The Doctor saved him from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The Doctor realizes that he chose this face to remind him that it's his job to save people. So... he does. He brings Ashildr back to life by implementing a self-healing mechanism into her body. This means Ashildr might not be able to die - ever. The Doctor gives her a second dose of this miracle, so that if she finds somebody she can't bear to lose, she can use it on them.

This comes with a number of consequences - the first is that we see Ashildr stay the same over the years, never aging and becoming more and more bitter because of her immortality. This is obviously going to have consequences in next week's episode, and maybe again in the future. I'll wait and see what they do with this, but it sure looks like the Doctor's going to have to face the consequences of his actions.

Even more interesting is the debate in the Doctor's mind about his actions. He thinks that his face is a message to himself to save people, but the thing is... the Doctor already did save people by helping the village to defeat the Mire. Saving Ashildr wasn't really the same thing. It was more akin to the tenth Doctor's actions in "The Waters of Mars" special episode, where he gets swept up in his own power and saves people who shouldn't be saved. I liked the ambiguity here. The Doctor feels like he's doing the right thing, but he also acknowledges that he might have just made a terrible mistake.

The thing about this death is that it raises a lot of questions about the Doctor. Should he have saved Danny Pink for Clara? If Clara died, would he have used one of these devices on her, so as to save himself from loneliness? It becomes a slippery slope. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.

Clara and the Doctor had a few cute moments. I particularly liked it when Clara reappeared in the Viking village after having been kidnapped and taken to the Mire ship. The Doctor is overjoyed to see her, and he runs towards her before stopping suddenly and giving an awkward thumbs up. He says he doesn't do hugs, but then a second later sweeps her into his arms. That was really sweet.

In the end, I did like this episode. But I didn't like the fact that it seemed to reinforce some of my least favorite themes in Moffat's Doctor Who. The companion is fairly useless, the Doctor is annoyingly perfect and brilliant, and our guest star female character is "not like other girls." I'd love for other people to weigh in on this: am I being too critical? Are my Moffat-hatred-goggles obscuring my vision too much? I'm trying to remain objective in the face of what I see as a fairly bigoted show runner.

8/10