Maius Intra Qua Extra

Third episode of the new season! We're very disappointed that they're not keeping up the two-episodes-a-week cadence, but I guess that just means that the season will last for a while, rather than just "Boom, done!" (Heh, that was not intentional.)

Spoilers ahead!


When we heard that Steven Moffat would be writing an episode for Fifteen, we were cautiously optimistic. Whereas we did not like his later showrunning (Series 5 through 7a were great, if a little overly-convoluted, and we loved Amy and Rory; we weren't fond of 7b or Clara; and then, well, if you've read my blog, you know my opinions of 8-10 and Clara there, though Bill was okay), Moffat's work while he wasn't the showrunner and wasn't the person designing the Doctor and companion and constructing the overall arcs was exceptional. "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Blink", and "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" are four of the best stories during RTD's original run. So, we thought that with limited rein, Moffat would produce another excellent episode. And the premise - the Doctor stepping on a landmine and having to work through that - was brilliant.

Unfortunately, the episode turned out to be more of the same that we hated in series 8-10.

The opening was brilliant. The two Anglican soldiers, one blinded, creeping through the minefield trying to get home, set up the world and situation and ratcheted the tension up, as well as posed the question of why an ambulance would execute a man for being temporarily blinded. Then the Doctor steps on the landmine and we were stunned. What an interesting and unique episode situation! Then Ruby emerges from the TARDIS and comes over to help however she could... and it all went downhill from there.

If I had to summarize the main problem I had with the episode, it was that it sacrificed believability for pathos. As an example, the Doctor is standing on one leg on the landmine, on the verge of panicking, and wants a counterweight for his right hand so that he can put his left leg down. When Ruby brings him one, he says give it to him on the count of three, and she refuses, because counting like that is not accurate and she needs a beat, so she wants to sing a song instead. That's pretty contrived (you can get a beat by counting for a longer time, like counting down from ten, or counting beats across three or four measures, or conducting the beat in the Doctor's view - that's how orchestras do it, after all), but okay, let's see how this goes.

They argue for a half a minute and finally start singing: a slow ballad (which is harder to keep on an even tempo than, say, a fast march or a dance - music that's meant to keep people in time), and when they get to the end where they're going to exchange the item, they slow down in the last measure. That's a natural thing when you're performing a song, but it's the opposite of keeping an accurate beat to guarantee a good exchange. But no, it's done this way to have the sweet scene of the Doctor and Ruby singing together in the middle of a battlefield. Pathos.

I'd also point out that Ruby's been, in previous episodes, clever and practical, able to come up with other solutions based on her different viewpoint. How about eliminating the need to coordinate the timing by, "Hey, Doctor, instead of me giving you the item at a specified time, how about I hold it right next to your hand and you grab it when you're ready to put your foot down"? Or, if you really have to do the two-point exchange thing, "I've got a phone in my pocket. Let's use the metronome app (because I'm a professional musician and would have this) or the timer app to time the exchange."

But honestly, beyond the practicality issues, the only thing this scene did was slow the pace to a crawl and kill the tension, which is another problem the episode had. You'd think that people would be concerned about an imminent landmine going off right next to them, but the story wandered between trying to figure out how to stop it, speeches about capitalism and faith, and heartfelt conversations. Whenever the atmosphere relaxed in these scenes, the camera zoomed in on the mine's lights to remind the audience that oh yes, there's a mine about to go off - in other words, artificial tension, rather than keeping it up by characters actually reacting to the situation directly and realistically.

Let's see, the characters... I liked John Francis Vater, for what little we got to see the real one (I really liked both characters in the cold open), though I have to wonder what kind of person requests special dispensation to bring his child to live in a front-line camp in a war on an alien world. (You'd think that would have been denied, not only by the military for normal reasons but also by Villengard, because that reduces the chance of his daughter growing up to buy and die.)

Splice, not so much. She's unable to understand that her father is out doing his job and can't tuck her in tonight; can't read the adults' expressions enough to know they're concerned about his welfare; doesn't seem to notice that she's in the middle of a war; runs out into a battlefield to try to find him; tries to tackle-hug an obvious hologram; ignores the dangerous situation to pick through photos of her dad, etc. No, really, children are smarter than that. And then though she's so upset that her father can't come tuck her in that she runs into the battlefield to look for him, she's totally okay with him being dead - she'll just see him again when she dies.

Mundy was pretty vanilla, mostly there for the Doctor to explain things to and to provide the required feels for the episode. No, Mundy, you didn't actually directly kill your love interest, but you did willfully distract him from trying to defuse a bomb to discuss your UST. Honestly, lady, there's a time and place.

And Ruby. At one point, we stopped and commented that her dialogue was just like Clara's - quippy and shotgun, unlike Ruby's "normal nineteen-year-old" excitement. As the episode progressed, she felt more and more like Clara. Apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way - she's already being called Clara 2.0 on social media.

I think, though, that the thing that bothered me the most was the Doctor speeching about capitalism and faith. First, Fifteen so far hasn't been a speecher. His style is very natural, teaching as part of conversation. When he talked about music and its effects on emotion and expression, he didn't give a grand diatribe like the "sanctity of sleep" thing in "Sleep No More". But here, he made speeches and kept mentioning the topics. What's worse, though, is that he targeted the concepts of capitalism and faith in general, in order to bring out the theme of the episode, rather than targeting the real problems, which were the applications of capitalism and faith.

Capitalism and faith aren't bad things in themselves; neither are they good things in themselves. What matters is how they're applied. Villengard took capitalism to its extreme, creating an artificial situation which forced people to buy more from them. That's the bad thing, but the Doctor placed the emphasis on capitalism, not on the actual cause of the situation. That doesn't teach anyone anything. Same with faith. The failure here was that the soldiers had faith in the church's involvement in the war and that the way the ambulances worked was right - specific applications of faith, not faith in general. But the Doctor kept bringing the attention back to the concepts - capitalism and faith - rather than the poor applications - Villengard and the Anglican war - diluting the message and removing the agency to change and improve things. You can fight against or fix a corporation or a church; you can't fight an idea.

There's a lot more I could say, but I'm not going to go into it all. After the episode, I noticed that we had paused it multiple times to exclaim "What?" (astonishment/disbelief, not "What just happened?") or to complain about things that didn't make sense. We used to do this all the time during series 8-10, and occasionally during 11-13. We didn't get angry like we used to and we didn't rage-quit, but it's pretty indicative of how we felt about the episode.

So, yeah, no. This was not great. If you aren't fond of series 8-10, sorry, this is more of the same. If you liked that era, then you'll probably like this episode.