This year's series of Doctor Who scored the lowest ratings and chart positions for the show since it returned in 2005. Although averaging over a respectable 6 million UK viewers per episode (within seven days and not counting iPlayer views), over one million viewers seem to have deserted the show. The highest rated episode of the series (The Girl Who Died with 6.56 million) performed worse than the lowest rated episode of last year's series (Flatline with 6.71 million).
Doctor Who series (2005 to 2015): average ratings:
Television audiences are continuing to fragment but the fall in the average weekly chart position shows that Doctor Who ratings are now less competitive compared to other leading shows. The average chart position was 24th, falling 10 places from last year. Only two episodes made the weekly Top 20 (The Magician's Apprentice and The Girl Who Died) compared to four episodes last year (Deep Breath, Into the Dalek, Robot of Sherwood and Listen).
Doctor Who series (2005 to 2015): average weekly chart position
Hopefully a new timeslot and a popular new companion will help Doctor Who perform better when it returns in 2016 or 2017.
The BBC have released two retro posters for the upcoming Sherlock special The Abominable Bride in the style of the 1930s/1940s Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films:
Since 2005's Bad Wolf / Parting of the Ways, Doctor Who fans have come to expect spectacular series finale stories featuring the Doctor having to save the world or universe from his greatest enemies (Daleks, Cybermen, Master/Missy). None of these villains feature in Hell Bent, and on first viewing, the episode might seem rather anti-climactic. However when viewed as a character piece, it is one of the most satisfying series conclusions.
There was a high level of expectation for this episode when the conclusion to the preceding Heaven Sent revealed the Doctor had returned to Gallifrey, his lost home-world. However, Hell Bent isn't really about Gallifrey and the Time Lords, it is about the Doctor and Clara. The pre-titles sequences show a flash-forward to the Doctor meeting Clara in a Nevada diner. This is a baffling start as neither character seem to know each other. The Doctor plays Murray Gold's beautiful "Clara's Theme" on his guitar and this establishes that Clara is playing a central role despite her death in Face the Raven. This will have divided fan opinion: some will have been disappointed that Steven Moffat has again brought a character back from the dead (as he did with Rory and, in clone form, Osgood) while others will be glad that a long-serving companion receives a more upbeat send-off.
After the credits, we flash back to Gallifrey where President Rassilon (Donald Sumpter) and the General (Ken Bones) discuss the Doctor's whereabouts and the impending crisis in the Matrix. Sumpter is a worthy successor to Timothy Dalton's incarnation of the President (the regeneration possibly occurring just after The End of Time) and Bones makes a welcome return after appearing in The Day of the Doctor. The reappearance of Ohila (Claire Higgins) and the Sisterhood of Kahn is less satisfying: it is unexplained how they got to Gallifrey and Ohila's role doesn't go beyond commenting on events.
There are many unanswered questions raised by this two-part story. One question is why the Confession Dial was left in the Gallifrey desert rather than in the Capitol. This allows the Doctor to go into hiding and wait for the Time Lords to come to him. He goes to a barn (presumably the same barn as seen in The Day of the Doctor and Listen) and meets a woman who recognises him. Again this is not explained: does the woman have some connection to the Doctor which enable her to recognise him in every regeneration? There is some suggestion she may be his foster mother. The Doctor is greeted as a returning hero by the locals who admire his refusal to co-operate with the High Council. The Doctor is presented as a man of the people who has no respect for the class system of Gallifrey.
The Gallifrey military also respect the Doctor having led them through the Time War and he uses their loyalty to overthrow Rassilon and take charge in the Capitol. It is then that the Doctor's true motives become clear: he is not concerned about the threat of the mysterious "hybrid", predicted to destroy Gallifrey, and plans to use the situation to save Clara. Using an extraction chamber to pull Clara out of time, just before her death, the Doctor breaks his own rules. Fans who remember The Waters of Mars will know that is not a good idea for theDoctor to interfere with a "fixed point in time" and this is a sign that he is losing his lost his rationality and ethics. A particularly shocking moment in when the Doctor shoots the General forcing him to regenerate. This allows Steven Moffat to show us a male to female regeneration on screen for the first time (T'nia Miller taking over from Ken Bones). She recovers very quickly: perhaps only male Time Lords suffer from post-regeneration sickness!
The Doctor and Clara escape into the Cloister at the base of the Capitol. The episode's only monster moments are provided by brief appearances of a Dalek, Weeping Angels and a Cyberman which guard the Matrix. Having evaded these and the Time Lords, the Doctor manages to steal a TARDIS from the workshops. The use of the original white TARDIS console room is a great fan-pleasing moment and director Rachel Talalay films around the set with style, a contrast from the multi-camera set-up of the classic series.
The Doctor travels to the end of the universe where he meets Ashildr/Me. This is another baffling plot development. It is not unclear whether the Doctor was expecting to find Ashildr there and if so, how he could possibly know she would be. The Doctor and Ashildr discuss three theories of what the hybrid is: Ashildr (half-human, half-Mire), him (half Time Lord, half-human?) or two people - the Doctor and Clara. The answer is never provided. The hybrid is what Alfred Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin" - a plot deivce which ulitmately proves unimportant.
The Doctor plans to wipe Clara's memory so the Time Lords will be unable to find her. However, Clara has "reversed the polarity" of the neuro blocker causing the Doctor to lose his memory of her. This is a clever reversal of the conclusion to Journey's End when the Tenth Doctor had to wipe Donna's memory. The final TARDIS scene between the Doctor and Clara is a brilliant emotional climax, superbly played by Capaldi and Coleman.
The final scenes back on Earth are not quite as convincing and raise more questions than answers. It is unclear why the Doctor is left in the Nevada desert and where he gets his guitar from. It is also a huge coincidence that the Clara TARDIS disguise is based on the diner featured in The Impossible Astronaut. The conclusion to Clara's story seems an uneasy compromise which allows her to part from the Doctor but not be definitively killed off. We don't know for sure whether Clara is returning to Gallifrey to be returned to her death (which we have been told she needs to do to save the universe) or whether she is going on new adventures with Ashildr. However, it is fun to see the duo fly into space in their diner-disguised TARDIS. Also enjoyable is the sight of the Doctor being reunited with his TARDIS and receiving his new sonic screwdriver. Hell Bent therefore concludes this rather dark series on an optimistic note. Despite the plot holes and frustrating unanswered questions, it is very strong end to an excellent series: one of the best in the show's history.
The 65-minute series finale Doctor Who airs tonight on BBC One at 8pm. Here is the latest excellent poster from Stuart Manning and the episode trailer:
As we approach the finale, one can conclude that this has been a very strong series of Doctor Who containing a number of original ideas. Heaven Sent is the most daring of all with a premise which involves only the Doctor trapped within his own personal nightmare. Steven Moffat's excellent script inspires Peter Capaldi to give his greatest performance as the Doctor and composer Murray Gold to provide his most ambitious musical score.
The Doctor is pushed to limits of his courage and intellect by the relentless creature named in credits as "the Veil." The first of many thrilling sequences shows the Doctor escape the Veil by diving from a window. We then see inside the Doctor's mind, visualised as the TARDIS console room, This technique is similar to Sherlock's "mind palace" from Moffat's other show. Clara's presence is very important despite her death in the previous episode. The Doctor continues to talk to his companion in his internal monologue which helps him unravel the mystery.
During another attack from the Veil, the Doctor realises that the Veil can only be stopped by telling the truth: the Doctor is being tortured into making confessions. He admits that he didn't leave Gallifrey because he was bored but actually because he was scared. Perhaps we will find out the reasons for the Doctors fears in the next episode or this may be just add to another lay of mystery to the Doctor's origins.
Heaven Sent is a mystery episode which gradually reveals the truth of the Doctor's situation. He has had lived and died in the castle countless times, each time rebooting the transmat machine before his death so a new copy of himself arrives to take his place. It is unclear how this loop began. The dry set of clothes would not have been provided the first time round which suggest that the initial version of the Doctor walked around naked before his death!
Another odd moment is the appearance of the word "Home" at the top of the diamond wall discovered by the Doctor. This leads him to believe that the TARDIS on the other side. It is unclear when he realises that it is really Gallifrey: the position of the stars should have made the location obvious to him.
The montage sequence which reveals the Doctor's cycle of lives and deaths in the castle is superbly edited. It is also disturbing because each version of the Doctor really does die in agony. His burnt features after being attacked by the Veil could also be upsetting for younger viewers. Although the ratings for this series have suffered due to later broadcast time, the darkness of many of this year's episodes would not sit well in the traditional early evening timeslot.
When the Doctor walks through to the Gallifreyan desert, he proclaims "the hybrid is me" or is that "the hybrid is Me" (referring to Ashildr). All will be revealed in what looks like a ground-breaking finale. Heaven Sent and Hell Bent are both directed by Rachel Talalay. Hopefully, these episodes will stand as classics and superior series closers to last year's quite disappointing Dark Water / Death in Heaven.
Last week's episode of Doctor Who was the lowest rated and charted episode of the modern era. Series 8 is currently averaging ratings of 6 million, over 1.2 million lower than last year. However, the last three episodes are likely to improve the average and the show is still performing better than in many periods of its long history:
One thing 21st century Doctor Who does much better than the 1963-1989 run is building up the emotional departures of companions. Rose, Donna, Amy and Rory all left the TARDIS in quite tragic circumstances. Science fiction plot developments contrived to permanently separate these companions from the Doctor. However until now, the new series has not risked traumatising fans with the death of a companion. Although Jenna Coleman is expected to be seen in some role in the series finale, Clara's demise in Face the Raven has a powerful impact.
The episode has great tension from the pre-titles sequence onwards. Rigsy (Jovian Wade), who we previously met in the excellent Flatline, phones the TARDIS after discovering a countdown tattoo on the back of his neck. The Doctor explains that Rigsy has been "retconned" which is why he cannot remember how he got the tattoo. This term was first used in the spin-off series Torchwood and the dark premise of this episode would have fitted well within that show. The Doctor realises that Rigsy's tattoo is in fact a "chronolock" and it will kill him when it expires. A countdown is an effective plot device for a suspenseful single episode and has previously been used in 42 and The Mummy on the Orient Express. Although this series has sometimes drawn on too much continuity, the reappearance of Rigsy works very well within this episode. Face the Raven raises the emotional stakes by putting a likeable returning character, who is now a father, under threat.
The Doctor leads Clara and Rigsy in a search for a mysterious "trap street", a rumoured alien enclave hidden within London. Wearing the sonic sunglasses, Clara hangs out of the TARDIS door looking for the trap street below. Although it seems implausible that this was the best way to locate the street, this scene illustrates Clara's increasingly reckless behaviour which will lead to her downfall. If Clara had not been sidelined so often in previous episodes of the series, this character development could have been explored more. Although it is likely that the loss of Danny Pink has affected her, Clara's behaviour may across as quite foolish and this is a shame for a character who was established as intelligent in Series 7 and 8.
The concept of the trap street will be familiar to fans of Harry Potter but it is original to Doctor Who and the set design of the street is excellent. The street is explained to home alien refugees and this thematically ties in with the Zygon two-parter. The camp is governed by Ashildr or "Mayor Me" in her third appearance this series. The episode would have worked fine using a new character in this role but the reintroduction of Maisie Williams adds a further level of intrigue. Ashildr is a morally ambiguous and predictable character: neither the Doctor or the audience quite know what to expect of her. It is another strong performance from Williams and is unlikely to be her last appearance.
Ashildr explains that Rigsy has been sentenced to death for murder and when the timer runs out, the Raven, a quantum shade, will take his soul . When the Doctor and Clara split up to investigate what really happened to the murdered alien Anah, she discovers that the chronolock can be passed on to someone else. It is a terrible misjudgement when Clara persuades Rigsy to pass on the chronolock to her. She confidently thinks this is a clever Doctorish plan but hasn't fully understood the process. However, she is also motivated by compassion for Rigsy and his family.
The Doctor eventually works out that he has been set up. Anah was in fact alive and had been trapped in a statis field. By releasing her, the Doctor is locked to a teleport chain which will transport him away to an unknown destination. The audience's concern for the Doctor is diverted by the realisation that Clara is doomed: she cannot be released from the chronolock. The acting between Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman is superb. The Doctor is talked out of his rage by Clara who bravely faces her death. She tells him to remain a doctor rather than a warrior remembering the John Hurt's broken "War Doctor". When Clara's finally faces the raven, Coleman's performance and Murray Gold's music stir the emotions although Capaldi's reactions are more controlled than those of David Tennant and Matt Smith would have been in the circumstances,
Although the series hasn't served Clara's character that well, this is a flawless episode which provides a superb ending to her story. Writer Sarah Dollard has crafted a brilliant plot which is fresh, unpredictable and very moving. Showrunner Steven Moffat has a high standard to maintain in his final two episodes. If he succeeds, this could go down as one of the greatest series of Doctor Who of all time.
In under 4 weeks, Spectre has made over half a billion US dollars at the worldwide cinema box-office. The film currently remains at Number 1 in both the UK and US chart.
Spectre will soon become the second highest grossing James Bond film of all time:
This is the eighth episode Mark Gatiss has written for Doctor Who and his first with in a futuristic setting. Although it is a more adventurous episode than traditional tales such as The Unquiet Dead, Cold War and Robin of Sherwood, overall it is less satisfying.
The found footage style is effective within low-budget horror films (The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity) which rely on suggestion and slow-building suspense but doesn't work so well in this fast-paced and elaborate story. However, to Gatiss's credit, he does subvert the form through revelations in the plot.
At the beginning of the episode, we believe we are seeing the characters through their head-cams of the rescue team. The three of the four actors playing the rescue team are played of British-Asian descent and the Doctor recognises the space station as belonging to the "Indo-Japanese" in the 38th century. The use of ethnically diverse cast is welcome although it unclear why Nagata (Elaine Tan) is played with a strong Geordie accent. Diversity is also provided by the casting of trans actress Bethany Black as the genetically engineered "grunt" 474. Although the set-up of this guest cast is interesting, the characters are not developed as the episode goes on and are ultimately quite forgettable.
Surprising for a found footage episode we see the monsters very soon after we first hear them. In appearance, the Sandmen are traditional slow-moving "men in rubber suit" monsters that are not that dissimilar from the Time Zombies from Journey to the Centre of the Tardis (2013).
The set design is far more impressive than the design of the creatures. Particularly impressive are the Morpheus sleep pods and the digital effects such as the Mister Sandmen singing holograms. Reece Shearsmith plays Rassmussen, the inventor of the Morpheus technology. Shearsmith is well cast in this role and is likely to have been the choice of his former League of Gentlemen colleague Gatiss. Interestingly, his character has similarities to Gatiss's Professor Lazarus from The Lazarus Experiment (2007): both are scientists who anger the Doctor by inventing machines which disrupt natural order and have deadly side-effects. The Doctor swiftly surmises that the Sandmen are this side-effect: creatures which have evolved out of the sleep dust from people's eyes. a mutation caused by the Morpheus process. This is a very odd and unconvincing idea which is possibly even more wacky than the Moon-egg concept from last year's Kill the Moon (although the final scene seems to suggest another explanation). Furthermore, the Doctor predicts that these creatures could are powerful enough to wipe out the human race.
The Doctor appears to be correct with his theory although there are further twists. We learn that rather than head-cams, the action has been recorded through the dust in people's eyes. However, the final scene then seems to suggest that some or all of what we have just seen did not what really happen. It is suggested that the Sandmen will actually take over humanity through a signal in the film we have just watched. Overall, Sleep No More is a collection of clever ideas which don't fully form a dramatic and coherent story.
For the first time in this series, Jenna Coleman gets a substantial role in this Doctor Who episode, not just as Clara but also her Zygon double Bonnie. The episode opens inside Clara's mind while she is held unconscious inside the Zygon pod. Last week's cliffhanger is cleverly resolved when Clara is able to telepathically cause Bonnie to miss with her first rocket, allowing the Doctor and Osgood to parachute out of the plane before the second one hits.
Strangely there is no mention of the other people who were seen on the plane in last week's episode. Presumably they were all killed but the witty dialogue exchanges between the Doctor and Osgood start up again when they land. A scene of a plane being shot down by a rocket launcher is also in questionable taste after last year's disaster of the Malaysian Airlines plane destroyed over Ukraine.
Last week's episode suggested a Zygon uprising was imminent but this week the focus is on Bonnie's attempts to locate the mysterious "Osgood Box". Other than a brief snippet from a TV report about a Zygon sighting there is limited sense of crisis in this episode. There is a lot of wandering around and a lack of suspense until the final confrontation scenes.
A twist many would have seen coming was the reveal that Kate Stewart had survived and was posing as a Zygon double. Her use of the phrase "five rounds rapid" when explaining how she survived is reference to her father the Brigadier who said the line in The Daemons (1971). This is enjoyable to those with a classic Doctor Who DVD collection but for the majority of the audience may have made Kate seem very cold hearted. Unfortunately, after her promising introduction in The Power of Three (2012), the character of Kate Stewart hasn't been developed greatly, and she is is not well served by this script.
The most powerful scene of the two-parter is the climax in UNIT's "Black Archive" where Kate and Bonnie are considering using the two Osgood Boxes which they believe can be end the conflict in their favour. Both boxes have two buttons labelled "Truth" and "Consequences". The link between the boxes and the New Mexico town, also known as "Truth or Consequences", from the previous episodes is not explained. It seems possible that the Zygons arrival in the town may have been the result of a misunderstanding but it would have been better to have a line or two of dialogue to confirm this. An advantage of the two-parter format is that it allows time for longer dialogue scenes and here gives the Doctor a chance to deliver a lengthy and passionate speech to Bonnie and Kate as he attempts to persuade them in favour of peace and reconciliation. The Doctor succeeds in showing both characters the consequences of their actions and the scene is one Capaldi's greatest in the role so far.
The Zygon Inversion doesn't totally satisfy as a concluding episode to a two-part story and it feels as if this both parts could have been edited down to a great one hour special. Although the Black Archive scene is brilliant, there is a lot of filler in this second episode, and also too much continuity referencing and some awkward shifts in tone. However, overall the story deserves high praise for some very intelligent dialogue and its treatment of serious moral and political themes.
Much like the opening two-parter to this series, The Zygon Invasion takes risks with the casual viewer by drawing heavily on continuity. It works as a sequel to The Day of the Doctor which drewa massive 12.8 million viewers in 2013. The small minority of viewers who missed that special episode may have been baffled by the flashbacks to scenes with the Tenth, Eleventh and War Doctors in the pre-titles sequence. Although it is rewarding for long-term fans, this level of continuity may be one reason why audience numbers for Doctor Who has dropped off this year.
The episode focuses heavily on the character of Osgood who was introduced in The Day of the Doctor before being killed by Missy in last year's finale Death in Heaven. Osgood's double however lives on although it is never confirmed whether this is the human original or the Zygon who took her form. There is a good message behind this secret: that the race someone belongs to should not affect whether or not we trust them. It is also made clear that the majority of the 20 million Zygons that have assimilated into the Earth population live peacefully and only a small splinter group are threatening war.
The use of the term "radicalised" to describe the Zygon splinter group makes it clear that the story is partly a metaphor for the Islamic terrorism. Immigration is also addressed when the Doctor later jokes to a Zygon that the rebels can't have the UK as a home because the people think they will "pinch their benefits". The script is little heavy in signposting these subtexts but it is good to see Doctor Who return to addressing contemporary social themes.
The Zygons have apparently evolved since their previous appearances now being able to create human duplicates from human memories. This enables them to play mind games with the UNIT troops sent to attack their base in "Turmezistan". We cut between this location, London and New Mexico where Kate Stewart goes to investigate the disappearance of Osgood. This gives an impressive epic scope to the episode; something that was often lacking in the Russell T.Davies era when alien invasions tended to centre on the UK and other locations were only seen through TV news bulletins.
The Doctor rescues Osgood and she becomes his companion for the rest of the story. Interesting, Clara has only performed the traditional Doctor's companion role in three of the first eight episodes of the series and has been largely separated from him in the other five. The Doctor describes Osgood as a "hybrid" and this is the third time in the series this term has arose this year, suggesting a possible theme for the series finale.
Meanwhile Clara and a group of UNIT troops undercover a Zygon base under London. The set design and lighting of this is very consistent with the inside of the spaceship in 1975's The Terror of the Zygons. It turns out that Clara had already been replaced by an alien duplicate and she has led the soldiers into a trap. Such a twist was to be expected in a story about a race of shapeshifters but Jenna Coleman performs the role of the Zygon "Bonnie" very well, not overdoing the "evil acting". A further twist reveals when an American cop reveals herself to be a Zygon to Kate Stewart and apparently kills her. However, this is doubtful because we don't see Kate's death and it seems unlikely that the Brigadier's daughter would be killed off.
The cliffhanger sees Bonnie apparently shooting down the plane bringing the Doctor and Osgood back to the UK with a rocket launcher. This is an exciting end to another solid entertaining episode. The consistent quality of Series 9 continues only The Witch's Familiar matches the excellence of the best episodes from last year.
The new James Bond film Spectrehas achieved the highest seven day gross in UK cinema history. The film has made £41.3 million so far and is on course to be at least the second highest grossing Bond film of all time at the UK box office. It is already in fourth place and only needs to make another £10 million to overtake Quantum of Solace. It remains to be seen whether the film has the playability to make the extra £62 million needed to overtake Skyfall.
The Top Five Highest Grossing James Bond Films at UK Cinemas:
1) Skyfall (2012) - £103 million
2) Casino Royale (2006) - £56 million
3) Quantum of Solace (2008) - £51 million
4) Spectre (2015) - £41 million - after seven days
