Doctor Who: World Enough and Time (10x11)

Oh, gosh. Sometimes this show makes it very difficult for me to pick a score out of ten. I liked watching this episode quite a bit, but my brain kept interjecting with complaints all the same. Let's take a closer look.

Cons:

In brief, this plot thread tells us the origins of one of the Doctor's most fearsome foes: The Cybermen. Cool. It does so with a twist about a black hole, and time moving more swiftly at one end of a large ship than it does the other. Also cool. Then there's the additional twist that the kindly yet strange old man who has been caring for Bill during most of the episode is actually the Master. C...c-cool? I mean, seeing John Simm back in that role is absolutely thrilling, don't get me wrong. And the idea of watching Missy and the Master riff off of each other is just delightful. I suppose my problem with this is that it seems like a twist for the sake of a twist. You could say that this older, even more evil version of the Master showing up is a chance for Missy to decide where her allegiances lie, and all of that. But for my money, Missy is plenty interesting on her own. There's so much to untangle with her character, and now that we're adding Simm to the mix, I worry that Missy's development will be halted or ignored. This is the first episode where Missy has had anything to do beyond an extended cameo, basically, and she's being overshadowed by the return of a sinister face from the past. Just a little bit hard to swallow.

I rather loved the conceit of Bill being separated from Nardole, the Doctor, and Missy, even though we just saw that happen in last week's episode. But I couldn't help but notice that in last week's episode, Bill had a lot of agency and tried to figure out what was going on. In this episode, however, Bill is taken in by the Master (albeit unbeknownst to her and us) and she sits around waiting for the Doctor to rescue her. Literally. It's a significant plot point. Bill hasn't suddenly become "the girl who waited" or the "mystery girl" or any of the other pithy and sexist epithets given to Moffat's companions in the past. But Bill starts off this episode getting shot, and ends it crying to the Doctor that she waited for him, apparently turned in to a Cyberman. I'm not going to rant and rave and get all angry about this, because I'm waiting for the finale to see how this all shakes out. But if things stand as they are, it's a little annoying, is it not? Bill sits around and waits, and then she ends up being one of the Doctor's most fearsome foes. Sound familiar? Did we not meet Clara originally in the form of a Dalek, and then see her again as a Dalek in a later episode? And now Bill has succumbed to a strangely similar fate.

Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light (10x10)

This is an episode that I might give a middling score, but it made me think a lot, and it makes me want to write a big long meaty review analyzing some of the pros and cons. In some ways, that makes it better than the average episode of this show nowadays. I'm going to try and restrain myself and make this brief.

Cons:

Apparently, Bill just now figured out about the TARDIS having a universal translator. A little slow on the uptake, there? For some reason, this just really rubbed me the wrong way. I liked the fact that everybody understanding each other led to a deeper conversation, but it felt silly that Bill hadn't put this together before now. Also, that "deeper conversation" involves Scottish natives and the 9th Roman Legion realizing that they are all just scared children and should be on the same side. Oh, good. An end to a violent conflict. Except that it's more complicated than that. I feel like the episode failed to wrestle with the fact that there definitely is a wrong side in this conflict. I'm not blaming the individual young people fighting with the Romans, but I am blaming the Roman Empire... they were invaders and conquerors. They enslaved and murdered innocents. It felt a little strange that the episode's thesis was all about how these two sides can be united, but there was no point in which we really wrestled with the philosophies of the two different sides in this conflict.

Another well-meaning yet ultimately odd moment is when one of the Roman legion guys is flirting with Bill, and she explains that she's only interested in women, saying that she knows it'll be a difficult concept for him to understand. However, the soldier is completely okay with it, saying that she's just like another of the soldiers, a man who only likes men. Meanwhile, most people are "normal" in that they like men and women. My problems with this are a bit difficult to define. I want to celebrate what seems like positive representation of sexuality, and I do like it when Bill talks about her own sexuality. But earlier in the episode, Bill says she'd read all sorts of books about the Romans and found them really fascinating. Surely she would have known about ancient Roman views on sexuality? So why was she surprised? And also, it's not "modern." Men were able to take male lovers, sure, but the sexuality of women, particularly women loving other women, was not normalized. It bothered me that they were acting like the ancient Romans were these great forward thinking people. Not so much.

Doctor Who: Empress of Mars (10x09)

Unfortunately, this episode isn't exactly brilliant. Luckily, it's not as disappointing as last week's, but still. I was hoping for a more impressive comeback. Let's just take a look.

Cons:

The biggest complaint I can articulate about this episode is that it's just sort of... whatever. I didn't feel connected to the characters, and there were a few too many shortcuts in the plot for me to feel satisfied. For example, there's this Victorian soldier guy who it turns out deserted many years ago, but accidentally survived his execution. Now, he's doing the right thing by dying with honor in the service of his people. I get the sense that I was supposed to feel really emotional about this, but I really didn't.

This episode also banked a little too hard on the supposed wacky-ness of its premise. Oh my gosh, you guys, there are Victorian Red Coats on Mars! The thing is, Doctor Who does this sort of stuff all the time, so I wasn't exactly delighted and shocked at seeing "God Save the Queen" written out on the surface of the planet in rocks.

The last bigger complaint I have is that the TARDIS decides to peace out at the beginning of this episode, taking Nardole away from the action. He knows he needs to get back to Mars to pick up Bill and the Doctor, but he can't fix the TARDIS on his own, so he enlists Missy's help. It frustrates me that there was no explanation as to why the TARDIS conveniently decided to malfunction. This was a very contrived way to get Missy out of the vault. And Nardole was the one who was so insistent that she stay in the vault. I don't know... it all seemed a little too convenient.

Doctor Who: The Lie of the Land (10x08)

Ah. So we've arrived. The first truly disappointing episode of the season. Let's just get started with this.

Cons:

The Monks have taken over the world and rewritten history so that all humans will think that the Monks have been there all along, and that humanity needs to obey their benevolent overlords. Most people buy into the lie. Bill is resisting, hoping that the Doctor will be able to return and save the world. Nardole shows up, and he and Bill sneak in to find the Doctor, who is apparently working with the Monks and broadcasting messages about their benevolence. Bill shows up, and is horrified to find that the Doctor really does seem to be working with the Monks, and is not planning something to free the world. In despair, Bill gets a gun from one of the guards and shoots the Doctor. The Doctor then starts to regenerate, but it turns out the whole thing was a trick so that the Doctor could be absolutely sure that Bill wasn't under the Monks' influence. From this point on, we pivot and the rest of the episode features the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole working together to rid the world of the Monks.

Before I go in to the rest of the episode, there is just so much stupid shit to deal with in this first section. I was actually enjoying the story up until the point where we find the Doctor and it turns out that he's "really working for the Monks." There were a couple of different directions this could have gone. The stupid, boring, predictable direction is that the Doctor is faking and has a master plan. Ding ding ding! That's what they went with. Other possibilities include: the Doctor is brainwashed, or the Doctor is biding his time and doesn't really have a plan, and is pissed off that Nardole and Bill have shown up and put themselves in danger. Or the Monks had some way to replicate the Doctor and fake those TV broadcasts. But no. They went for the predictable outcome.