After tiring herself out going between missions with the doctor on the TARDIS and returning for dates with her lover Danny Pink,Clara is abruptly told by the doctor that he is going under deep cover and cannot travel with her for a time. When Clara and Danny attend a meeting to introduce the Coal Hill School's new caretaker,it turns out to be the doctor...whose "deep cover" goes no further than a janitors jacket. He than proceeds to mill about the school,randomly hiding different devices and randomly getting himself involved in Clara's classes and especially her relationship with Danny.
While fending off meddling school student and admitted "disruptive influence" Courtney Woods,the doctor soon a frustrated Clara-who demands to know the nature of the doctor's mission. He is actually searching to remove a robot called the Skovok Blitzer from the school,where it was accidentally re-routed from it's original mission and contains enough weaponry to pulverize the planet. He has been planting scanners throughout the school in order to lure the Blitzer to the TARDIS and remove it from the planet.
Meanwhile a suspicious Danny Pink discovers one of the scanners and,inadvertently allows the Blitzer to discover the doctor,who has used an invisibility watch to throw the robot off his track. After witnessing the Blitzer being sucked into a time vortex,apparently for a 72 hour period,Danny now has many questions about the doctor and his relationship with Clara. After being shown the TARDIS and explained about the doctor's alien identity? His discomfort at Clara having lied to him is superseded by his interest in helping her and the doctor save the Earth from the Blitzer.
Following Danny using the invisibility watch to see if he can truly trust Clara,he and the doctor perturb one another after realizing the other's motivations. During a following PTA meeting led by Danny and Clara,the doctor calls them both to sudden action as he has successfully been able to lure the Blitzer back into the school with his sonic screwdriver and use a translator to make the robot believe it's his superior. After accidentally activating the robot's terminal self destruct mechanism,Danny leaps over the robot and gives the doctor just enough time to terminate the self destruct and begin the robots de-activation.
Realizing Danny's heroic nature,he takes the space sick Courtney Woods on a brief trip into space on the TARDIS while Danny and Clara patch things up on their own,on Earth. Meanwhile one of the security personnel of the Coal Hill School believes that he is reporting to the government board about the science fiction-like occurrences he has just witnessed. The man whom he is talking to claims that the guard hasn't made it out of the affair alive. And that he has in fact entered into the afterlife. Unfortunately the head of this place,the ever-present Missy,is said to be very busy at the present time.
At it's core,this is not a story about the doctor and his mission to save the Earth as he has many time's before. Nor is it a soap opera regarding Clara's relationship. This is the story of Samuel Anderson's Danny Pink. This is a character that has had my curiosity peaked since his first appearance at the beginning of Into The Dalek. He is a character that has a past: as to whether it's some form of PTSD or something broader I do not know. But in this story,he is quick thinking and astute enough to understand the doctor's motivations in his mission and to Clara. He tells Clara he feels the Doctor is similar to a motivating,strict drill sergeant. Yet also lets Clara know if it is all too much for her,he is there by her side. And the doctor now trusts both characters even more implicitly as well.
On route to a date with Danny Pink,Clara is interrupted by the doctor when he receives a phone call in the TARDIS. When he answers,he and Clara find themselves in a room with two strangers. One is a man named Psi who has a cybernetic interface,and a woman named Siabra,with a coalescent type ability to mimick the appearance of anyone she touches while in any physical contact with them. According to a video they all play witness to,they are to rob the Bank of Karabraxos: the most secure bank in the universe. And their memories of how they got their were wiped in order to protect them.
During the beginning of their mission,they encounter head of bank security Ms.Delphox,whose alien teller can read the thoughts of anyone planning a criminal activity and than literally scoop the brains out said individual-as the doctor and his cohorts have to tragically witness. Having to act on the beat of this teller,the doctor and Clara manage to witness the loss first of Siabra and later to the self sacrificing Psi using an atomic disintegrater that the doctor deems is a more humane way to die than what the teller does.
After the doctor and Clara are finally found by Delphox and ordered to be taken away,it turns out that the guards taken away were Siabra and Psi in disguise. The atomic disintegrater was actually a teleporter. And there was were two ships in orbit-one of which was the TARDIS. Now having learned from Delphox that that the teller is the last of it's kind and the reason for the TARDIS being hidden having to do with it's easy detection,he proceeds with his companions to the offic of Karabraxos herself-a woman in fact who has cloned herself in every facility in a similar manner to Delphox.
Her room filled with treasures from all over the galaxy,the doctor determines the only way to return his memories are to interface with the teller-where he retrieves the memories of what truly occurred. The entire mission was never truly a bank heist,but actually a rescue mission for another of the tellers species-a possible lover help captive to ensure his loyalty to Karabraxos. The doctor returns Psi and Siabra back to their respective homes and times while Clara returns to the exact moment of where she left. All after having dropped off the two aliens back on their home world to perhaps rebuild their species.
Much of the time? I've had no trouble dealing with the fast pace of contemporary Doctor Who. That wasn't the case with this story. Elaborate character development,important plot points and the reasoning for heist/rescue mission are all explained in what sounded like a less than coherent jumble. The scene of the Karabraxos' employee slowly having his brain reduced to "soup" oozing out of his eye was,even by Doctor Who standards,extremely disturbing. And in a way that wasn't at all a fun scare. Overall,this was a decent episode that could've benefited from less shock value and more of a centered sense of story telling.
During a moment of self meditation,the doctor philosophies about an entity whose sole purpose would be not to be seen,one that would only effect an individual as a nightmare. During a tragically awkward date between Clara and Danny Pink,the doctor shows up in her apartment after she walked away from the date because he needed her to prove his point about the entity he is thinking of. He has her connect herself to the TARDIS's telepathic circuits-which reveals her entire life arc,cradle to grave,to him. They then journey to an orphanage,thinking they'll find a young Clara but instead locate a young boy named Rupert Pink whose afraid of the dark.
The doctor and Clara ease young Rupert's anxiety about something he sees under his bed clothes. Once this supposed creature disappears,with the bed cloths no less,the doctor returns Rupert to sleep and giving him to think it was all a dream using time lord "dad skills". He returns Clara to her date with Danny,which again turns out awkward when a man in a spacesuit crashes the affair. She returns with him to the TARDIS. Turns out to be an early human time traveler from the 22nd century named Orson Pink,whom the doctor discovered on Clara's timeline. His time ship,only supposed to go a week ahead in time,traveled millennia to the last planet at the very end of the physical universe.
Orson has been trapped alone on the ship for six months. And as with young Rubert,actually young Danny Pink as it turned out,was afraid-only this time of the clanging sounds in the pipes of the ship. The doctor orders Clara to return to the TARDIS while he investigates an opening egress door on which Orson has written a message on stating it must'nt be opened. When the ships atmosphere is breached,Orson grabs the doctor back into the TARDIS where Clara uses it's telepathic circuits to get them all out.
When they stop,they've landed in what Clara thinks is an orphanage. She meets a young boy sleeping in the barn of a cabin due to fear of the dark. She hides under the bed and overhears the what are presumably boys parents discussing how if he doesn't deal with his fears,he'll never become a time lord. After comforting the child with the vision of time as a companion,Clara returns to the doctor and asks as to why he went through all this trouble to seek out an unknown monster simply to justify his own childhood fear of the dark-which she realizes she just discovered. Orson returns to his life,while Clare returns to resolve her budding romance with Danny Pink.
This is a story that sticks very much to its heart-the very idea of someone trying to get inside ones fears and anxieties. It is something that is very true to my heart because,as an adult I came to some similar realizations that the fears I had might have a physical manifestation in my heart and mind. The story itself is rather claustrophobic,some could say a bit slow in parts. The driven obsession of Capaldi's doctor drives the narrative along. It also references Clara again as the "impossible girl"-being a complete influence on the doctors past. Its not an entirely comfortable story. But in the sense of fear as a companion bringing people to one another? It does raise questions that are perhaps better asked than answered.
The doctor asks Clara to pick anywhere in space and time she wishes to go. And she picks Sherwood Forest as she yearns for the possibility of meeting Robin Hood himself. Convinced a front that the character only exists in literature,the doctor takes her there anyway-one to open the TARDIS doors to find it pierced by the arrow of a man who appears to be and announces himself to be none other than Robin of Locksley himself. To prove the skeptical doctor wrong,Robin takes him and Clara to meet his "Merry Men":Will Scarlet,Alan A-Dale,Friar Tuck and John Little are all accounted for-even as the doctor investigates their apparent unreality. Yet it seems Robin and his Merry Men are planning to invade Nottingham Castle that day,with the doctor and Clara joining them.
During a bow and arrow match in which Robin pits his archery talents for the display of Prince John himself,the doctor fires a precision arrow into a target which reveals the knighted guards to be robots. The doctor than allows him,Robin and Clara to be taken prisoner by the Sheriff in order to gain for information. As the doctor and Robin argue endlessly over their escape plan,Clara is courted and dined by the Sherrif. He reveals to her these robots came to him from a spaceship that fell from the sky. And he sees them as his key to his greed and lust for world domination. The doctor and Robin,upon failing at an attempt to bribe a hapless guard to escape manage to find their own way out.
The doctor and Robin discover the inner heart of the castle is actually a spaceship,with computers containing all information on Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest. Convinced at last this is all a deception,the doctor turns on Robin-who promptly escapes to question Clara,now his captor,of the doctor's true identity. After confronting the Sheriff,he reveals to the doctor his robbing the taxes out of the local peasants was his way of retrieving the gold needed to repair the alien robots spaceship to satisfy their bargain. In the end Robin comes to the doctors aid and it ends with the Sheriff being alchamized in his own device. The doctor departs Sherwood, following Robin identifying with him as the last of the time lords,and with the doctor leaving him with his beloved Maid Marion.
The idea of blending Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest into Doctor Who is an idea ripe for the show. The doctor has shown no surprise in the past at what was thought as fiction being reality. And Tom Riley gives us an excellent Robin Hood. Aside from the comedy and knockabout swordplay of Robin and his Merry Men? This story actually has what I view as a somewhat depressing flaw. At first the doctors' doubts as to Robin Hood's reality is cute comedy-leading to one of the episodes funniest scenes where the doctor successfully fights swashbuckling Robin Hood with a spoon. But following their escape from Prince John's dungeon? The doctor becomes something I've really never seen him as: completely and utterly cynical.
The doctor's treatment of Robin Hood in the story gradually degrades. He starts out almost comically skeptical,then seemingly envious. And upon discovery of the date bank of the robots space ship? He begins to continually yammer on about how Robin Hood was only a heroic work for fiction to keep the spirits of Nottingham up while the Ben Miller's Sheriff of Nottingham did his damage. He even grew paranoid that Robin was in cahoots with John and the robots plans. Though the thrust of the story was the doctor gaining back that trust? He really never re-emerged as a particularly likable character in this story. His apology to Robin in the end is begrudging and half hearted. Doctor Who,and science fiction in general,works best when offering a hero's journey to hope. And while this story is to the point and even fun? The doctor being played up as an emotionally flattened killjoy distracts from the story and the character itself a bit.
Just as the doctor has rescued the Dalek resistance fighter Journey Blue after her ship (and brother) are destroyed,he returns to the Coal Hill School to bring Clara-who has been flirting with new teacher (and troubled former soldier) Danny Pink,to journey with him to return with Blue to her command ship the Aristotle par her demands. When they arrive,the commander of the ship requests their help since their newest arrival,a single injured Dalek, has requested a doctor. And insists on exterminating the other Daleks.
On board the Aristotle there is a medical technology that allows humanoids to be reduced into a nanocordical device-shrunken down to enter living tissue. With the doctors expertise he,Clara,Journey and two fellow soldiers are reduced and into into the complex biotechnologically frenzied world within the (apparently) malfunctioning Dalek. When its cybernetic immunities begin to attack the doctor and his cohorts,they reach the inside of the Dalek-having sacrificed one team member along the way to find the Dalek,nicknamed Rusty by the doctor,overwhelmed with radiation.
"Rusty" explains how seeing a star being born altered it's outlook,
and that it saw its own species as a determent to life itself. By repairing a radiation leak near its brain,the doctor inadvertently reactivates the Daleks core nature as it proceeds to escape and attack the Aristotle's crew. The doctor sends Clara and Journey,by this time the last two surviving members of the team surviving when another named Gretchen dies and winds up with the mysterious Missy,to reconnect the nodes to restore the Dalek's memory core of it's earlier vision.
Clara and Journey are successful at this,as the doctor enters the Dalek's thoughts and attempts in helping it to rekindle its sense of compassion. The Dalek on the other hand,envisions the doctors disdain of the Daleks and proceeds on its mission to destroy the other Daleks. When the doctor,Clara and Journey exit Rusty,who plans to return to its people,Journey asks to travel with the doctor and Clara in the TARDIS. While the doctor admires her bravery and kindness,he observes she should stay with the Dalek resistance as she remains a soldier.
Since the doctor first encountered the Daleks with Barbara,Ian and Susan on Skaro,his relationship with that race has grown in complexity. And their relationship with each other has changes accordingly. Not too long ago convinced that the Daleks were a menacing blight with no purpose for existence? This is another example,along with series 1's 'Dalek',of how the Dalek's only seem to gain a sense of morality when malfunctioning. This time,a first for Doctor Who,we the audience are invited with the doctor and Clara inside of the Dalek itself in this story.
When the doctor discovers realizes the conditions that could cause such a morality inducing malfunction that would reform the Daleks? He suddenly begins to show few qualms in making sacrifices in his team to achieve that goal. Even the Dalek Rusty,when merged with him,notices and even mentions that the Doctor-in his quest to defeat them,has developed some characteristics of the Daleks themselves. This stories mixture of wrenching action,excellent acting on the part of everyone involved and a cerebral morality play make this a wonderful parable on what roads are the best ones to take to peace.
A Tyrannosaurus Rex is threatening Victorian London. And the only ones in the city who have any possible clue what to do are the ever present Madame Vastra,Jenny and Strax. Before their eyes,the mammoth dinosaur expels the TARIS from its mouth. The saliva covered time machine opens to reveal the befuddled, newly regenerated doctor who recognizes neither Clara,Vastra,Jenny or Strax. They take him to their rooming home to recover while the dinosaur hibernates. In his sleep,Clara observes him translating dialog from the dinosaur while Vastra questions Clara's romantic infatuation with the doctors previous incarnation. And her obvious discomfort with his new face.
During the next evening,the doctor manically scribbles calculations on the floor of his room and wanders onto the rooftop to find the Tyrannosaurus spontaneously combust before his eyes. This coincides with many similar incidents in London at this time,apparently. The doctor then jumps into the Thames to give chase. After Strax gives Clara an unusually thorough medical test they agree to journey with Vastra and Jenny to find the wandering time lord. He himself has been undergoing his post-regeneration crisis before a puzzled homeless man in a back ally. While back at Vastra and Jenny's home,Clara notices the term "Impossible Girl" on a newspaper article. And on the other side of the page is a street address.
Clara winds up at a restaurant where all the customers are moving but only pretending to eat. After the doctor joins her,they prepare to leave-only to find the people reacting to their movement rather aggressively. Their waiter is revealed by the doctor to not be human. Before the pair can leave again,they are put in restraints and their seats lowered into a subterranean elevator. They then descend into an underground cavern populated by characters such as the type in the restaurant-including a high hatted individual whose hands do not match. Determining that these are robotic beings taking on humanoid parts,the doctor and Clara split up to investigate.
Faced by ongoing androids,Clara remembers having to hold her breath in the restaurant. She manages to get through them until she passes out and his hauled before the high hated android leader. He continues the same logic based line of question about her and the doctor's motives,which she evades by not taking his threats seriously. After succumbing to his intimidation tactics,one of the androids reveals itself to be the doctor in disguise. He returns to the restaurant with the android leader,who claims to have been plundering bodies from across time (including that of the Tyrannosaurs as a power source) to restore their crashed spaceship to locate their "promise land".
As Clara and the newly arrived Vastra,Jenny and Strax face off the androids,they eventually remember not to breath as the doctor convinces the android leader,now aloft in their balloon like escape pod that it has adapted so many human parts to itself,it's beginning to have human like values. As Vaster,Jenny and Strax escape with Clara the android leader debates the doctor as to whether or not he will kill him to save humanity. And he does kill him,even to the surprise of the doctor himself for doing it. After coercing from Vastra,Clara returns to the doctor and almost returns home-finding the regenerated time lord too unfamiliar. After a call from the previous incarnation on Trenzalore,she decides continue her journey with her old friend with his new face.
Peter Capaldi represents an important new element for both Doctor Who in general and in my own personal life. This is the very first regeneration I've personally played witness to. And in fact the entire thrust of this story resolves around self identity-both that of the head hunting android protagonists and the newly regenerated doctor. He has not only regenerated,but is undergoing a totally different life cycle. For all we know? Perhaps not the first either. Especially in terms of Vastra,Jenny and Strax's interaction with the leads? The story has much humor. And Peter Capaldi's 12'th (or is it 13th?) doctor thus far brings a mixture of both Jon Pertwee's dashing gentility and Tom Baker's random intellectual prowess into play. While he has far more in common with classic doctors than the last three personality wise so far? Every actor who portrays the role makes it their own. And one can see Mister Capaldi will surely make that happen on his own too.
The TARDIS materializes underneath a giant glacial layer to find where the Doctor,Jamie and Victoria discover a huge plastic bio dome that-once they enter after two apparent scavengers exit the building encloses a building that even Victoria remarks resembles something from her own 19th century. Upon arriving in a computer control area they find a panicked Leader Clent,along with fellow operator Miss Garrett who are about to experience an overload of a fusion reactor they are using to power an ionizing device. The doctor helps them to alleviate the disaster. And he discovers along the way the reason why the disaster itself occurred.
Both Clent and Garrett are part of a team operating this ionizer in order to melt away the glaciers that threaten the UK which they are apparently in and the rest of the world. This is the result of a second ice age humanity created in error when they invented a synthetic food and destroyed all the plant life to house the growing population. Without carbon monoxide,the Earth became devoid of life and entered into a second ice age. Meanwhile Arden,a scientist working with Clent discovered what he believed to be some sort of cave man under such a glacier and enthusiastically returned it to the dome for investigation.
After observing the creature,the doctor realizes that this is actually an ancient astronaut with no terrestrial origins and that what they believed to be head armor was actually a sophisticated space helmet. Meanwhile in the dome's lab,Victoria is being menaced by this Ice Warrior who identifies his origin point as being Mars,and wants to know what Victoria knows of his crashed spaceship and crew. He takes her hostage and,when the doctor discovers this he sends Arden and Jamie out to rescue her from the talons of the Ice Warriors who abducted her.
While Arden and Jamie find the Ice Warrior's ship frozen in the ice,they are shot by one of them-leaving Arden dead and Jamie severely injured. Having failed already in numerous attempts to escape the Ice Warriors,Victoria pretends to agree to help them by contact Clent in order to reveal the location of the ionizer,which they believe is going to be used to destroy them and whose fusion fuel they intend to use to refuel their spaceship. In the meantime Jamie is dragged away by Penley,a scientist who left Clent behind on a matter of difference and the scavenger Storr-who distrusts science altogether.
During an attempt to return Jamie to the base,Penley escapes an attempt from Miss Garrett to sway him into helping the mechanized mind Clent into stabilizing the ionizer permanently. Meanwhile Storr journey's to the Ice Warrior's spaceship in an attempt to convince them that he is allied with them against Clent and his fellow scientists. He too is killed the the Ice Warriors. Having heard Victoria's plea,the doctor has now joined her and attempts to use a "stink bomb" toxic to the Ice Warriors to fascinate an escape attempt. Narrowly making it out, the doctor realizes the Ice Warrior's highly liquefied body makeup and devises a possible new defense for Clent and his base.
Returning to the base where Clent is futally trying to reason with Ice Warrior Varga,the doctor manages to alter the oxygen and gravity level in the computer area in such a way that Ice Warriors,
including the callous and threatening Varga, are all destroyed with minimal physical damage to Clent and his team. With the recovered Penley's knowledge of the "Omega Factor" at hand,he is able to cooperate with Clent and the doctor enough to save the faltering fusion ionizer and their mission. While Clent and Penley finally come to an agreement,they find the doctor and his companions have disappeared (back to the TARDIS) before they have a chance to thank him.
There are many layers to this densely written (some more cynical critics might say convoluted) 1967 story. The Ice Warriors place absolutely no value on human life and morals-only seeing what they need and what threatens them. They are even impassive to the constantly crying,screaming and understandably frightened Victoria's pleas to return to the doctor and Jamie. There is also Leader Clent-with almost an addiction (along with his employee Miss Garrett) to the need of their computer that has made all of their decisions for them,yet is faltering fast at the abundance of inconsistencies clouding its logic.
The basic plot of the story actually addresses the early stirrings of the global warming concept effected humanity today in real life. And again,with the more well rounded approach of the scientist Penley,the enthusiasts approach of Arden and the agrarian Storr are also ahead of their time as they showcase possible alternate sides on the fictional climate change and mind-over-machine dilemma faced in this story. Miss Garrett tries to be the calm middle ground. But in the end remains loyal to Clent and his computer. So it is the doctor and Penley who end up representing balanced scientific rationalism in dealing with both Clent's ionizer dilemma and the Ice Warrior's intrusion in this compelling and futuristically topical story.
