Maureen Flynn's Blog, page 13

Doctor Who Re-watch: Listen Review

Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that���s what���s happening. Every week I���ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

This is the sort of episode that reminds me why Moffat is showrunner and deserves to be. This is the sort of episode that makes me think that 50 years from now, Who fans will look back on his work on Who as maverick and genius. Listen is that good. Listen is that brilliant. The story is a return to familiar Moffat territory – the monster hidden in the corner of our eye, blink and you’re gone, turn around and the mystery vanishes – this time though, Moffat spoofs himself whilst waxing philosophical on the nature of fear and why humanity harnesses it. The episode follows two story trajectories: that of The Doctor trying to find the unfindable monster and Clara and Danny trying to move forward in their relationship. It’s hard to summarise the episode without giving everything away for those who haven’t seen it, so be warned, here be entirely meta and spoilers.

The episode begins with meditative Doctor, thinking atop the TARDIS in one scene, studying the animal kingdom in another, using his trademark white chalk to make conjectures and propositions to the audience. There are perfect hunters and perfect defenders, but why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? The Doctor tells us, sending shivers down the spine, that we’d never know if there was a perfect hider because evolution would make it so we’d never see them. With one final piece of logic he asks the audience and ‘the perfect hider’ ‘what would you do?’ as the chalk rolls on the TARDIS floor and the words LISTEN appear. This opening was the moment I decided I ‘got’ Twelve and not only did I ‘get’ him, I damn well liked him a lot. High praise indeed given how much I loved Eleven. Twelve is a thinker and a philosophizer and prizes logic and reason over emotion. It is important to note this. It matters later. For Listen is ultimately two parallel stories that play into each other: the story of The Doctor and his fear of an unsee-able alien and Clara and Danny’s fear of embarrassment and awkwardness in advancing a relationship. Ultimately, the episode claims that both fears are unfounded, but not that those fears are unimportant. Instead, both The Doctor and Clara needed to listen to their hearts rather than their heads.

Then there are seeds of themes which continue throughout Series 8. The soldier thing rears its head again, but this time, it is both Clara and Danny who make assumptions about the other: Clara about Danny’s need to assert to her that he dug 23 wells (as though telling her washes out his guilt) and Danny judging Clara as the lofty, left-wing teacher predisposed to see a violent soldier. The soldier theme ruins their first date and Clara leaves in a huff after harsh words are exchanged. Luckily, The Doctor has called Clara to the TARDIS to deal with his own monsters (presumed to be more than figurative at this stage) because he realises all humanity has the dream of a hand grabbing a foot from under the bed and he can use TARDIS technology to get to that point. This in turn seeds another series 8 plot point, again for Dark Water. Some people criticised Dark Water for the sheer out of character-ness of The Doctor believing that there was a heaven that could be reached by his TARDIS. I never thought he believed it and Listen proves why. The Doctor grins manically when the TARDIS lands after Clara is linked telepathically and says, ‘that’s good. It worked.’ This Doctor suggests mad things not expecting anything to come of them. He’s surprised when fairy stories come true. The final seeded theme for series 8 is the return of Clara Who as the audience and Doctor’s teacher. It is she who tells a frightened Rupert that dreams are called dreams because they are not real. It is she who tells Rupert that clever people can hear dreams. It is she who tells Rupert that an injured soldier can be the best kind of soldier.

Listen is a unique episode in the history of Doctor Who: a story where there is no alien, there is no monster of the week. The only monster is fear itself and Clara, The Doctor and Rupert turn their backs on it (the boy under the covers) even as The Doctor reminds us why fear matters:

Lovely dark… you’d never see the stars without it.

You need to be afraid to be really brave just like you need to be sad to understand happiness.

The gang haven’t quite learnt the lesson yet. Clara tells Rupert a bedtime story about a plastic soldier so brave he doesn’t need a gun to keep the whole world safe, which makes her realize that Danny deserves a second chance. She begs The Doctor for a second chance, but on the date with Danny, she’s too afraid to tell Danny the truth about her time travelling ways and this time it’s him that walks off in a huff. There is no common language. Fear is winning.

And now we get to the reason why, as great as this episode is, it can’t be named as the greatest of all time because the rest of the story relies on two things:

1. The appearance of Orson Pink requires people to watch the whole series and invest in characters beyond a stand alone episode. It is still unanswered who Orson Pink is – is he a descendant of Clara’s child by Danny, is he a descendant of the Afghani boy who presumably was adopted by Clara post Death in Heaven or is he an indication that Danny isn’t definitively dead? The answers could affect the way we view Listen in the future.

2. The final scenes with references to John Hurt’s Doctor, the end of The Time War and The Doctor’s early life have more emotional resonance if you’ve see the 50th and/or know something about The Doctor in classic Who.

I think you could, however, make a case for this episode being one of the greatest Who episodes for fans of the show ever written. This part is why:

The Doctor: What’s that in the mirror? In the corner of your eye? What’s that footstep following? But never passing by? Perhaps they’re all just waiting, Perhaps when we’re all dead. Out they’ll come a slithering, From underneath your bed.

Clara: Did we come to the end of the universe because of a nursery rhyme?

Yes, Clara, yes you did. And later:

What if there was nothing? What if there was never anything? Nothing under the bed, nothing at the door. What if the big bad Time Lord doesn’t want to admit he’s just afraid of the dark.

The Doctor cried as a child and was told he’d never make a soldier or the Time Lord academy. He proves his people wrong because he uses fear, even if only subconsciously, to drive himself forward. This story isn’t about aliens and monsters. It’s about fear: fear of committing emotionally to another person, fear of the dark and of dreams, fear of soldiers and of death, fear of the past, fear of listening to the heart because when you do listen, uncomfortable truths may well be found. And that’s OK, Moffat tells us, in frankly, one of his most touching and beautiful moves yet. It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing under the bed and nothing in the dark, as long as you know it’s OK to be afraid of it. Listen becomes philosophical in a way that Doctor Who seldom is.

Clara’s end speech overlaid by images of people finally learning to listen (The Doctor to Clara, Danny and Clara to each other) is one of the most beautiful endings to any Doctor Who episode I’ve ever seen. I can’t have been the only one who had tears down the cheeks by the time Clara said:

Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger. And one day, you’re gonna come back to this barn, and on that day, you’re going to be very afraid indeed. But that’s okay. Because if you’re very wise and very strong, fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind…

There was something moving and beautiful about Clara moving towards Danny to kiss as she said in voice over that fear was a constant companion. In fact, I’m out of words for just how profoundly moving the final moments of Listen are. I’ll leave you with the final lines instead, words to perhaps live by beyond a TV show:

So listen. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this: you’re always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like… a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that’s okay. Because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I’m gonna leave you something just so you’ll always remember. Fear makes companions of us all.

Listen: 11/10 inky stars

Doctor Who Rewatch: Robots of Sherwood

Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that���s what���s happening. Every week I���ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

Welcome back to another round of Maureen trying to swallow Mark Gatiss scripts on Doctor Who. I’ve said in multiple places that he isn’t my favorite writer for the show and truly, I am terrified of him taking over after Moffat. Robots of Sherwood was thankfully less awful then dreck like The Idiot’s Lantern and less boring then Cold War, but it still suffers from the mismatched tone and the slightness that has plagued every one of his Who scripts except The Unquiet Dead. I’m not saying that it’s not OK to have a bit of light hearted fun every now and again, but it isn’t what I prefer and particularly not in a potential show runner. In hindsight, Robots of Sherwood was one of the most comedic episodes of Series 8. Unfortunately, it is also remarkably average.

So what happened for those who need memories refreshed? Clara asks The Doctor to take her to see Robin Hood. After much snipery and ridicule, he obeys without much believing anything will come of it (nice set up for what happens in Dark Water, Moffat and Gatiss). The two find themselves in scenes lifted straight out of BBC Robin Hood (Still bitter about what you did on that one BBC) with bonus asides to Prince of Thieves etc, including having to save themselves from the evil Sheriff. It turns out he’s in cahoots with some metal robots who are after gold to power their ship to The Promised Land. Chaos ensues.

I liked that this episode started by furthering The Doctor’s personality yet again, with the re-occurring series motif of The Doctor scrawling equations across a TARDIS blackboard. This Doctor sees himself as a bit of an intellectual: the erratic and grumpy and half crazed Einsteinian Professor. This Doctor stops bad things happening because he’s ‘just passing the time’ after all. He’s also cruel, as he was last episode in Into the Dalek. This time he callously tells one of Robin’s men, ‘if you were real, you’d be dead in six months.’ The Doctor doesn’t believe in Robin and his gang’s existence and so he believes he has a free rein to do and say whatever he wants without consequence. Clara doesn’t agree:

The Doctor: When did you start believing in impossible heroes?

Clara: When did you stop believing in impossible things?

Clearly, this Doctor needs a dose of Alice in Wonderland, who believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast! Eleven would have done so, but then, this Doctor is a reaction to the studied lightness of Eleven.

The episode also cleverly juxtaposes two legends side by side: that of The Doctor and that of Robin Hood. The two play constant games of one-up-man-ship – from Robin and his sword vs The Doctor and his spoon over a river, to the extended jibing in prison (Robin calls The Doctor ‘a dessicated man crow’ for example), to the exchange as The Doctor finds the alien ship – but the end result is the same. It doesn’t matter that both The Doctor and Robin are flawed heroes: the first sometimes callous and cold and unkind, the second full of false swagger and hubris, as long as we believe in them hard enough they transcend truth and become… legend.

Robin: History is forgotten. Stories make us fly… If we keep pretending to be [heroes] perhaps others will be in our name… may those stories never end.

As so often happens in modern Doctor Who, the quote is also a meta reference to the fans. In believing in The Doctor’s story long enough and hard enough, we have sustained it and kept the dream alive. At the same time, we are reminded of why The Doctor’s story matters… because he was moved by the plight of the oppressed and of the weak, so stole a TARDIS, just as Robin found the plight of the oppressed and the weak too much to bear so stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

Robin was told by Marian to stand up and be counted, but he was afraid. In Series 8, it is Clara who tells The Doctor to stand up and be counted, but deep down, underneath the crotchety mask, he is afraid (next week’s Listen attests to this). The Doctor is flawed and so the show turns to Clara to become a hero in The Doctor’s name, as Gretchen did last week, bringing us to a second ongoing Moffat series theme – The Doctor as enabler with companions as ordinary people made heroes through The Doctor’s friendship and extraordinary circumstance. It seems that Clara Who is truly underway. Luckily, Jenna Coleman is an excellent actress. Her scenes with The Sheriff (an odd knock-off of Richard Armitage’s Guy of Gisbourne in that black leather) are especially good as she tricks The Sheriff into revealing his story:

Sheriff: Tell me your story

Clara: But I do not have one… I was lying

She also speaks for the entire audience when she pronounces, ‘does your plan involve the words sonic and screwdriver?’ to The Doctor. To many times it does, we all say.This time it’s all down to Clara and all in a smoking hot costume and hair style too. (Aside: I enjoyed the return of name monikers with Prince of Thieves and Last of the Time Lords. It’s not Moffat Who without them. Thanks Clara.)

Where the episode becomes truly unstuck is in the final twenty minutes with the alien threat of the week taking on a bigger role within the story. Their reason for invasion isn’t particularly complex, and nor is the way Clara, The Doctor and Robin get rid of them. The ending cops out with a half hearted theme about working together and an improbably shot golden arrow, but at least the alien story does serve to get Missy’s Promised Land name checked for the week. Some of the acting was sub par (The Sheriff and the captured woman especially) even if I did get to play spot that actor with Master Quail (He played Sir Hector in Hallmark’s Merlin which is in my top 5 film list of all time) and the tone changed from thoughtful and melancholy under a veneer of frivolity to silly deux ex machina before returning briefly to more thoughtful again as The Doctor and Robin discuss the difference between history and legend. Aside from giving Clara further chance to shine and establishing Tweleve, nothing much to see here.

Robots of Sherwood: 5/10 inky stars

I know that this ranking is very low compared to how I ranked episodes in Series 7. In hindsight, I would probably re-rank the second half of Series 7 as this episode is infinitely more entertaining than Cold War or Nightmare in Silver for example. Unfortunately, it is still distinctly average, and as I am ranking out of 10, I feel that 5 is the right score for exactly average

(Dis)Ability in Genre Fiction: A Small List

A few weeks back I asked my Facebook if they could recommend books to me which depicted protagonists with disability in genre fiction where the story wasn’t an ‘issues’ story (like Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time) or where the person with disability wasn’t depicted in a stereotypical, superficial way or a ‘I’m a disability, not a person’ way. Disclaimer: I have not read most of these stories so cannot vouch for how sensitive they are toward depicting people with disability. I am trusting the people I have asked to have led me true. I have removed suggestions from the list if they are not genre stories or if I can tell from the synopsis that they are not what I am after eg a number of comic book characters were suggested but these characters were arch villains with disability. Hello othering.

My interest is predominantly in depictions of people with intellectual and/or sensory disability and autism but the complete list is below and includes, authors, book titles, publishers and specific short story or anthology suites. I hope to build on this list as I go and review the books on the list. Contributions are definitely welcome! This has a strong Australian focus given that most of my list knowledge here comes from the Australian writing scene.

Novels:

Vorkisigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold – features a physically impaired protagonist (Sci fi)

Gridlock by Ben Elton – the protagonist has cerebral palsy (Sci fi/Ecological Disaster)

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes – the protagonist has intellectual disability (Sci fi)

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon – two of the protagonists have intellectual disability and Down’s Syndrome (Sci fi)

Diamond Eyes and Hindsight by Anita Bell – depicts protagonists with vision impairment (Sci fi)

The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card – a mainish character, Issib, is in the world equivalent of a wheelchair (Sci fi)

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert – the main protagonists is blind (Sci fi)

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simpson – the protagonist has Asperger’s Syndrome (Romance)

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon – the protagonist has autism (Sci fi)

Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly – an important secondary character has autism (Sci fi/action/thriller)

The Starkin Crown by Kate Forsyth – a protagonist has epilepsy (Fantasy)

The Starthorn Tree by Kate Forsyth – a protagonist has a physical disability (Fantasy)

The Beast’s Garden by Kate Forsyth (Forthcoming 2015) – has a protagonist who has synaesthesia (Historical fiction)

The Obernewtyn Series by Isobelle Carmody – a mainish character is blind (Fantasy)

The Twelve by Justin Cronin – has a protagonist with autism (Horror)

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin – has multiple protagonists with physical disability at various points (Tyrion, Bran, Arya, Jaime) (Fantasy)

The Millennium Trilogy by Steg Larson – Salamandar has Asperger’s Syndrome (Crime)

Short Stories

‘Tam Likes Green Bananas’ by Kate Eltham – the protagonist has synaesthesia (Fantasy)

Comics:

Marvel Universe, Hawkeye is blind

Publishers:

Visibility Fiction

Anthologies:

Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press) (YA Fantasy and Sci fi)

Re-watch: Doctor Who Into The Dalek Review

Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that���s what���s happening. Every week I���ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

Into The Dalek tells the story of soldiers who ask The Doctor to go inside a Dalek to find out what is making it malfunction and become ‘a good Dalek.’ (Aside: Was the Dalek called Rusty as an in-joke reference to RTD’s fandom nickname? Inquiring minds want to know.) We are also treated to a bonus companion who never was, Journey Blue, and the deepening of Clara’s relationship with Danny and with The Doctor. Now that Twelve has been established, the second episode also serves to deepen his characterization as a grumpy old man reminiscent of One. The Doctor is rude to Journey Blue, even in the face of her brother’s death (And his sister isn’t [dead]. You’re welcome), is callous when people die inside the Dalek, and (in one of the few bum notes of series 8 and this particular episode) tells Clara that she looks old and ugly. It is a change from the young magic man Eleven. However, there is continuity too. Namely, that The Doctor always cares about being a good man, and always feels conflicted about soldiers and warring.

It’s interesting that this episode contains so many important themes which resurface in a big way in the finale. Though the episodes are nothing alike, I was reminded of The Beast Below. The Beast Below established Series 5’s fairy story vibe, the importance of dreams and belief to Amy and her relationship with The Doctor and Eleven’s true character – he doesn’t interfere in people or planets unless there’s children crying. Similarly, Into the Dalek establishes the soldier theme, including The Doctor as soldier, and the importance of trying to be something rather than worrying about if you are or are not that thing all of which is addressed in Death in Heaven. As a fun aside, the scene where Clara and The Doctor slide down the Dalek’s feeding tube and land in digested bodies has a lot in common with The Beast Below when Amy and The Doctor fall into the beast’s stomach.

Anyway, for every good Dalek-centric episode (Dalek, Asylum of the Daleks, Day of the Doctor etc) there are rubbish ones (Victory of the Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks/Daleks in Manhatten etc). Though Into the Dalek is by no means perfect, it is at least an interesting Dalek episode. The main reason for this is its exploration of the soldier theme which is to become so important in the finale. Danny Pink is introduced as a Maths teacher with a background in soldiery (Is it coincidence that both Journey Blue and Danny Pink are soldiers with color last names?). We see Danny teach PE military style and then teach Maths to questions of, ‘Have you ever killed anyone who wasn’t a soldier?’ (this comes back to bite Danny in Dark Water). Danny is a different kind of soldier. Clara says as a joke in response to his assertions of morality, ‘Ah, you shoot people and then cry about it later.’ There is a moral dimension to being Danny’s kind of soldier, and presumably Journey Blue’s too (though The Doctor doesn’t learn this until Death in Heaven). He mistakenly says ‘crying is for civilians… we cry so you don’t have to,’ except we know that this isn’t true, because Danny the soldier man does cry, even if only on the inside, and we see it happen as he is questioned in his classroom.

This Doctor is a contradiction and an enigma. He doesn’t like soldiers, to the point of telling Journey Blue, ‘I think you’re probably nice. Underneath it all I think you’re kind. You’re definitely brave. I just wish you hadn’t been a soldier,’ but at the same time he needs confirmation from a flummoxed Clara that he is indeed a good man, and not, as the Dalek tells him, a good Dalek, a good hater, a good soldier, a believer of beauty in hate. Moffat reminds us again why The Doctor needs humans. The Doctor needs his humans to remind him why he isn’t like a Dalek.

Clara: I’m his carer.

The Doctor: Yeah, she cares so I don’t have to.

The Doctor says he does one better and saves souls as well as lives, but he is only able to do this because of human companions like Clara. It is for this reason that I agree with Moffat and think that the companion story is so vital to Doctor Who. Clara reminds The Doctor that the point isn’t that there was a Dalek and it malfunctioned so appeared good. The point was that for a single moment in time, The Doctor believed that there was a good Dalek. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t matter if you are or are not a good person, what matters is that you believe in becoming a good person. There is so much awesome in Clara being a teacher. Not only does she teach an English classroom in the show, she is the audience’s teacher too:

Clara: I don’t know.

The Doctor: I’m sorry?

Clara: You asked me if you were a good man and the answer is, I don’t know. But I think you try to be and I think that’s probably the point.

The Doctor: I think you’re probably an amazing teacher.

Clara: I think I���d better be.

This episode shows us that The Doctor has changed. He is old and grumpy and acerbic and irritable and touchy on the subject of soldiers, but he is still trying to be a good man. Ultimately, he is still a mad man with a box gallivanting around space and time trying to do his best. Gretchen reminds us of this, even as her sacrifice also reminds us of why The Doctor comes back for humans every single time:

Gretchen: Is he mad or is he right?

Clara: Hand on my heart – most days he’s both.

Gretchen: Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.

The Doctor: I will do something amazing. I promise.

Gretchen: Damn well better.

Into The Dalek is a surprisingly complex and interesting Who adventure which firmly sets up themes for the rest of series 8.

Into The Dalek: 8/10 inky stars

Anthology Review: Suspended in Dusk

Title: Suspended in Dusk

Editor: Simon Dewar

Publisher: Books of the Dead Press

Year Published: 2014

RRP: $99c Amazon

I made two resolutions to do with my reading habits at the beginning of this year:

1. To read a wider range of genre fiction, including genres I am not so keen on

2. To review, read and interview a wider range of Australian authors, editors and publishers for this blog

I have pushed myself to read a bigger amount of horror and short story collections, so I jumped at the opportunity to read Simon Dewar’s new anthology Suspended in Dusk: a collection of fresh horror shorts from new and established writers. I am no horror aficionado, but as a layman on the outside looking in, this anthology has much to offer to any eager readers.

From the blurb:

DUSK

A time between times.

A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special.

A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple.

Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places.

Secrets and dreams are kept��� forever.

Or was it all just a trick of the light?

Suspended in Dusk brings together 19 stories by some of the finest minds in Dark Fiction:

Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Rayne Hall, Shane McKenzie, Angela Slatter, Alan Baxter, S.G Larner, Wendy Hammer, Sarah Read, Karen Runge, Toby Bennett, Benjamin Knox, Brett Rex Bruton, Icy Sedgwick, Tom Dullemond, Armand Rosamilia, Chris Limb, Anna Reith, J.C. Michael.

Introduction by Bram Stoker Award Winner and World Horror Convention Grand Master, Jack Ketchum.

The collection features a range of horror writers from UK, USA, South Africa and Australia and includes tales of the weird, the zombie apocalypse, unexpected spirits and murder, graveyards, spraying body parts and ghosts of history past. All 19 stories are inspired and linked by the theme of ‘dusk’ – whether the literal definition of the transition from light to dark, or more metaphorical permeations of evil or the in between space between good and evil, moral and immoral, good and bad.

Highlight stories were those by Alan Baxter (on the darkness within), Anna Reith, Arman Rosamilia, J C Michael, Ramsey Campbell (with a clever take on the universal fear of being buried alive), Wendy Hammer (with her tribute to the late Ray Bradbury) and Angela Slatter (with a spin on who’s playing at villain and victim, hunted and hunter). My absolute favorite story, however, came from Brett Rex Bruton with his thoroughly post modern hard boiled crime story told out of order, featuring tongue in cheek cliches left, right and centre, and literary plot devices that were central to the crime taking place (the object of everyone’s desire is a literal maguffin in a box).

The anthology is currently 99c on Amazon, so if you like horror or short stories or just taking punts on emerging writers, this is the anthology to buy!

Suspended in Dusk: 4/5 inky stars

You can buy the anthology here.

Re-watch: Doctor Who Deep Breath Review

Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that’s what’s happening. Every week I’ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

Deep Breath served as Peter Capaldi’s debut episode (The Day of The Doctor and The Time of the Doctor don’t count) much as The Eleventh Hour was Matt’s. This time around the pressure was less intense. Moffat had to sell a new Doctor, companion and head writer team in The Eleventh Hour after essentially being sabotaged by RTD in The End of Time. Indeed, so great was the pressure on Moffat, last year he revealed in interviews that the BBC would have cancelled the show if Matt had not been a success after the enormous success of Tennant. Luckily, Moffat succeeded enormously and The Eleventh Hour is still one of the best debut episodes for a Doctor ever in my opinion, possibly even the very best. Deep Breath and by extension Capaldi at least had the advantage of a stable companion in Clara and a stable writing and production team. Still, selling a new Doctor is always a challenge (even if true fans end up loving each and every one anyway) and on top of that, Moffat was dealing with criticisms of his ‘impossible girl’ in the previous season which meant that he wanted to improve on characterization in the new series. He also still had to contend with a growing international and new to Who audience, not all of whom were familiar with regeneration.

To meet this challenge, Moffat settles for telling two stories in one on an extended run time. The story of the week follows The Doctor, Clara and Paternoster Row’s adventures as they try to understand why dinosaurs and humans alike are being disintegrated in London and why a restaurant is filled with clockwork people. At the same time, Clara tries to come to grips with her young looking Doctor wearing an ancient face and learns some lessons about appearance courtesy of Jenny and Vastra. Deep Breath also sets the series up to be a series about relationships, particularly the friendship between Clara and The Doctor (they describe each other this episode as ‘ego-maniac, needy, game-player’ types)

Perhaps because so much is going on, and because of the slightly extended run-time, the episode never quite hangs together. It also suffers from Moffat excess along the lines of Let’s Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song, especially initially with the first arrival of Twelve via a dinosaur’s mouth. The episode only really starts to work when Clara and The Doctor meet in the restaurant after each thinking the other has left a message in the paper for the other. However, thanks to the presence of Vastra, Jenny and Strax and Moffat’s talent for dialogue, there are some beautifully quiet dramatic moments which set the tone for the rest of the series. I especially liked Vastra’s assertion of, ‘Well then. Here we go again,’ as a manic Doctor exhausts them all and the scene where Clara speaks with Vastra in her private boudoir intercut with The Doctor linking with the dinosaur’s thoughts (I am alone – a statement true of both the dinosaur and The Doctor at this point).

I have always said that Moffat enjoys post modern literary conceits, and this is especially obvious in Deep Breath’s early scenes, where Moffat uses his characters (predominantly Vastra) to try and win the audience over to Twelve. When Vastra says, ‘he looked young for everyone, wore a face like I wear a veil…’ as a reminder to the audience that The Doctor’s face (or actor) changes, but the inner personality remains the same. Vastra reminds us here that though the audience accepted a younger Doctor, romance and play time is over. The Doctor has travelled for untold centuries. It is time he looked like it. This post modern conceit led to one of the best moment’s of the whole episode:

Vastra: I wear a veil as he wore a face, for the same reason. … I do not wear it as a courtesy to such people, but as a judgment on the quality of their hearts.

Vastra is saying this ostensibly to Clara, but also to the audience. That’s also the case with Eleven’s final message at the tail end of the episode. He tells Clara to accept The Doctor for his sake, but he is asking the audience to do the same. It is a conceit which is sweet, if slightly over done.

In contrast, when ‘the game is afoot’ and Mancinni’s restaurant enters the story, everything becomes much more interesting. It turns out the robots are stealing parts to keep on keeping on and are members of a sister ship to Madame de Pompadour’s from The Girl in the Fireplace. The return of these aliens allows us to see how Twelve works (by asking the right intellectual questions), fight scenes, Clara’s faith in The Doctor despite her fears (he’ll have my back), Clara’s personality (I particularly liked the way she remembered her first day teaching at school and applied her teaching experience to outsmarting the clockwork robot) even a kiss between Vastra and Jenny (I never get enough of these two!) and finally confirmation that this Doctor is made of morally tougher stuff. Eleven had dark and frightening edges that came out when he was mad. This Doctor is full of righteous rage and moral ambiguity. This time we can’t be sure that he is indeed a hero and a good man. Didn’t he push a robot man to his death after all?

Finally, the episode introduces us to ‘Paradise’ or ‘Heaven’ and Michelle Gomez’ deliciously sharp Mary Poppins turn as Missy. When I initially saw this episode, Twelve still wasn’t quite gelling for me and I’d never been sold on Clara as companion, but I was fascinated by Missy and I knew I’d be back for more solely out of curiosity. My end reaction was, ‘damn it Moffat. Why are you so good at pulling viewers in even when they aren’t particularly emotionally invested in your two main characters?’ On re-watches, I enjoy both Clara and The Doctor a whole lot more now that I know where the series goes. I especially enjoy their budding friendship. I still think the story is overcrowded though.

What did you think?

Deep Breath: 7/10 inky stars

Weird Fiction and Other Fun Labels: An Interview with Deborah Biancotti

I really loved Bad Power and I wanted more. I didn’t actually think that Deborah would agree to an interview, but to my pleasant surprise, she did. Not only has she supplied me with lengthy answers, many are also very thoughtful. Read on to find out more about Deborah’s work, influences, reading habits and writing tips. There might even be a teaser or two for upcoming stories…

1. You write across a lot of genres and markets. Have you always been so eclectic or when you started out did you have a ‘go to’ market and genre?

Wow, what WAS I thinking when I started out? Feels like it was a long time ago.

I think I mostly just suck at knowing what the genre boundaries actually are. My reading is pretty eclectic, hence my writing is, too. I was surprised when people started telling me I was writing horror. I never really set out to write horror, but it was a big influence on me in my teen years so it inevitably appeared in my writing. Maybe that���s the reality of writing: you become your influences.

I don���t recall having a ���go to��� market or genre. Not on purpose. Starting out was all a bit random. ;)

Nowadays what I most love to read and write are stories with a contemporary setting and an element of the weird or supernatural. But even then, I don���t stick to that preference completely. I���m always going to need something different and new and maybe even apparently random in my reading and writing life.

2. You got your writing break by publishing short stories over a number of years. What are your top tips for writing a powerful short story?

Oh, man, there���s probably a different answer for every short story writer ��� or every short story. Short stories are a sprint, whereas novels are a marathon, so the needs are different. What I like in a powerful short story is the sense that the story has ended before it has finished. If you know what I mean? I like the feeling there���s *more* to the story, but the storyteller just didn���t have the time or space to share it. That, for me, provides a kind of urgency to the telling. You get to the end and start to wonder what in hell is about to happen next.

For example, powerhouse Karen Joy Fowler ends her story Younger Women with two possible ways forward. But you just know there are more options she���s not telling you about. And you leave the story wondering which way it went after Fowler ended it. Check it out here.

But that���s just one answer and I���m sure there are dozens more ways to think of powerful short story writing.

3. While we’re discussing short stories, which is your favorite short story that you’ve written and why?

My favourite short story is always whichever story I���ve just finished writing. Srsly. It really is. I spend quite some time thinking my most recent story ��� whatever it is ��� is the best work I’ve managed so far. And then I replace it in my affections with another, newer story. My newest short story is coming out in Fablecroft���s Cranky Ladies of History later this year and features the Countess Bathory. So you just know that���s gonna be a blast!

And apart from always loving my newest story, I admit to being particularly proud of No Mercy For The Executioner which appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction in late 2014. (So, it���s my second-most-recent short story.) That story began in a dream, which turned into the first line: ‘When the world ends, it���s the Jewish guy who brings the sake.’ I grew up on post-apocalyptic stories: when I was a teenager, we all thought nuclear war would decimate the world any second. Plus, as a kid raised quasi-Catholic, I can remember earnestly discussing the imminent second coming in first grade. But I���ve never been much attracted to actually writing post-apocalyptic stories until I wrote Mercy and then I just kinda let loose. Teenagers, holed up underground, drinking the last of Earth���s liquor and eating tinned peaches. And then the violence begins��� Oh, yeah, that���s a fun story.

4. Bad Power mixes police procedural with speculative fiction. What are your top 3 crime reads? How about top 3 spec fic reads?

Ooooohhh!! Top reads! I love questions like this. Yeah, BAD POWER mixed two things I love. Well, maybe three. 1) crime stories 2) spec fic, and 3) contemporary settings.

Okay, top 3 crime reads would have to start with Kate Atkinson���s CASE HISTORIES, which I loved. I grew up on Agatha Christie books, and THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD stands out. Then maybe Nicola Griffith���s THE BLUE PLACE counts as crime. But it was probably Walter Mosley who made me want to write crime, so I���m going to sneak in DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (plus, this is really five now, but a special mention to the first of Craig Johnson���s Longmire books, THE COLD DISH (which is a kind of western cosy, if you can believe that)).

Spec fic is harder because *cough* it seems so much broader (not that I want to play favourites). Also I never classify spec fic as spec fic in my goodreads reading list, so now I���m screwed trying to remember all my favourite spec fic reads. ;p

But I do have to mention Ben H. Winters��� THE LAST POLICEMAN, since it���s a mix of crime AND spec fic. And so is the excellent BAD THINGS by Michael Marshall Smith.

My all-time-favourite spec fic reads would have to include Tanith Lee, though, so let���s say THE BIRTHGRAVE. Oh! And Mary Gentle���s ASH! Aaaaaand, crap, so many others. I���m trying to think of something that���s really stayed with me, so I���ll go with Shirley Jackson���s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. But, y���know, so many.

InkAshlings: I am so updating my Goodreads with some of these suggestions! Also, I love Christie!

5. Will there be more books or short stories set in the world of Bad Power and can you tell readers anything, even a cryptic clue?

I didn���t actually set out to write BAD POWER, you know. It started as two stories that shared some eerily similar traits: Shades of Grey and Palming the Lady. I realised I had this strong woman cop in both stories, so I decided to make her the same character. I was probably just being efficient. I think I was also influenced by the fact a couple of early readers both said they loved Detective Palmer. Which kinda surprised me, because I didn���t have a lot planned out for her at that stage. But she���s become a bit of a hero of mine.

She���s also pretty similar to the strong woman cop I invented for my ISHTAR novella, even though I wrote those stories at completely different times. See? Random. It���s like I never plan out anything in my ���career.’

And then, of course, the stories were saved from the obscurity of individual publishing by the Twelfth Planet Press project: Twelve Planets. TPP collected those two stories and three more that I���d only kinda started working on in one volume. We called the BAD POWER collection a ���pocketbook police procedural.’

I did start plotting a BAD POWER novel out in my head, but certain other projects have gotten in the way. But Bad Power: The Novel might become a labor of love one day when I get some time. I mean, I had this whole structure and back story for it. Hopefully I’ve written that down someplace. Actually, y���know, even if I haven���t I still remember it pretty clearly. I’ve really got to get faster at finishing stories. I have a WHOLE BUNCH MORE I want to write.

And BTW: Fablecroft published a 6th Bad Power story in their anthology One Small Step in 2013. The story was called Indigo Gold and featured a new character, some new powers, and a hat pin. So, yeah, I���m sure I���ll end up writing more of those stories in one way or another. I love my BAD POWER world and I love all those crazy, creepy characters. BAD POWER is one project I���m inordinately proud of.

6. You are currently collaborating on a couple of projects, including a novel and a graphic novel. What does the collaboration process look like for you?

It looks like a whole lot less stress & a heck of a lot more fun than coming up with all the answers yourself! And suddenly the planning becomes really fun. The writing is pretty much just as hard (or not hard, depending), but the planning is really where collaborating shows its strength. I recommend it heartily!

7. What’s your advice for those writers that want to try collaborating on a project?

Pick someone to lead the project. You might not know who that person is at the very beginning, but sooner or later you all have to agree which member of the team owns the vision & voice. Without that, the project runs the risk of becoming a ���writing by committee��� project. And the thing about committees is, all the best, more unique and risky stuff often gets dissolved in favour of relentless compromise. In a good collaboration, one person knows whether or not what you���re pitching is going to fit the project.

My other advice would be: if you���re NOT the leader or the owner of the vision, never stop pitching. Sometimes you might want to give up on sharing your ideas because you think they���re stupid or you think people will laugh. And people will often laugh. But the team will miss out on some good stuff if you give up on yourself too soon. Believe that!

8. You’ve also written a novella for the Ishtar collection and have an upcoming novella called Waking in Winter coming soon. What is it that appeals to you about the novella and what are the ingredients for a great novella?

I���m so excited about WAKING IN WINTER. PS Publishing bought that novella in 2013 & scheduled it for around mid-2015, so I can���t wait to see it on the page. We’ve just finished copy edits. And I���m still really proud of my ISHTAR novella with the comically long name, And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living (for real, I started out with that title as a kind of joke, but I just love the enormity of it, so it stayed.)

I’ve only tried novellas those two times, but I’ve fallen madly in love with the format as a reader and writer. I think it lets you play with all the best aspects of novels ��� character, adventure, stakes, narrative ��� without the dross that people often have to use to make a novel more novel-length. So many novels feel like they sag in the middle, just IMHO. Or maybe I���m easily bored. Actually, yeah, I am easily bored.

I think the other thing I like about novellas is that they���re short enough to sustain the kind of mood a short story can deliver. A very mannered or stylized novel can feel very long indeed. But a stylized novella can still pack a punch without losing any momentum.

So that���d be my pick for novella ingredients: character AND style AND narrative AND mood AND momentum. Love novellas. Wish they were easier to find. PS Publishing has put out some doozies, so it���s worth checking their pages first.

9. What’s one question you’ve never been asked before but wish you had been asked?

I racked my brain for an answer to this question. Then I eventually realised that no one has ever quite asked me this: What���s the one piece of advice you wish you���d been given when you were starting out?

10. Now answer it!

Sabotage and salvation will come from unexpected sources. Srsly. Very unexpected sources. The entire idea of a writing ���career��� is unpredictable in the extreme. The only thing you can do is keep writing. That way, you���re practised and ready for the salvation when it happens. And you can move past the sabotage when it���s delivered. So that���s it, the best advice you���ll get as a starting-out writer: Just. Keep. Writing.

Deborah Biancotti is the author of two short story collections from Twelfth Planet Press: Bad Power and A Book of Endings. She is co-author of the Zeroes trilogy with Scott Westerfeld and Margo Lanagan. Deborah���s novella Waking in Winter will be out with PS Publishing in mid-2015. The first Zeroes book is published in September. You can find Deborah online, but she spends more time on Twitter than anywhere else.

You can read my review of Bad Power here. Thanks again for a great interview, Deb!

Into the Woods Film Review

I’m a bit of a Sondheim fanatic. Incidentally, my Sweeney Todd post on this blog is my most popular post of all time at Inkashlings. I also am a rabid musical fan and I like fairy story revisionism, so you’d think I was over the moon about a film adaptation of Into the Woods. I said in an old review of Kate’s The Wild Girl:

In one of the more interesting fairy story appropriations, there has even been a Tony award winning Broadway musical featuring the memorable rapping witch, Bernadette Peters, in a post modern opretta. With songs like Children Should Listen, Last Midnight and No One is Alone, Sondheim further cemented himself as a musical composer and lyricist of considerable skill with Into The Woods.

It’s fair to say that I care quite a lot about this one. I was more than a little worried, however, when I heard that Disney were making Sondheim’s Tony winning musical. The very idea seems an oxymoron. Though the first act follows tried and true fairy tale paths, albeit by revisiting the origin fairy stories of those we know and love today, the second act tracks what happens after ‘happily ever after’ has faded and becomes a moving treatise on relationships between parents and children and the importance of stories in shaping children. It’s hardly something I would have thought was up Disney’s alley.

I also wasn’t too happy when I heard that Meryl Streep had been cast as The Witch (aside: why must Hollywood insist there is only one woman over 50 suitable for Hollywood roles? It’s very tedious. Years ago Miranda Richardson pointed this out despite cries of ‘sour grapes’ but her point feels more relevant than ever these days. I like Meryl Streep and she’s a wonderful actress, but other excellent older women who act are out there!) It’s just that Bernadette Peters made that role and The Witch is the best character and I couldn’t see Meryl being as powerful a singer as Bernadette. However, it is my brother’s favorite musical and every time an adaptation is put on near us I can’t see it, so I felt like I owed it to him to see it. Also, I quite like Emily Blunt.

Surprisingly, the film isn’t as bad as you’d think it might be. Actually, it’s rather, well, good. The first half religiously follows the first act of the musical, a quest story held together by The Baker (James Cordon) and his wife (Emily Blunt), who must reverse a witches curse by collecting items from people from popular fairy stories (Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel) so that they might get their long sought after child. This half sits more comfortably with Disney’s modern oeuvre, particularly modern films like Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland. All of the cast are competent singers, with some of them genuinely very good. It’s no surprise that Daniel Huttlestone (Gavroche in Les Miserables) is excellent, but though I’d heard Blunt sing once before in Poliakoff’s excellent Gideon’s Daughter, I was surprised by how convincing she was as The Baker’s Wife and Anna Kendrick sang a beautiful Cinderella. Johnny Depp was also perfectly cast as The Wolf and The Prince’s entertain in the wonderful Agony sequence. In fact, the only real quibble I had with the first half of the film was the decision to leave The Narrator in. Given that he didn’t play the part he was meant to play in Act 2 of the film, it just sounded silly to have him tell us what characters were about to do just before they did it and he threw me out of the story. The only other minor quibble I had was that Meryl Streep sounded a bit out of breath during her rapping sequence at the start.

On the other hand, Disney didn’t edit out the line, ‘he was robbing me, raping me,’ which I was certain they’d do. Actually, they left a lot in. Cinderella’s sisters still mutilate their feet to try to win The Prince, Rapunzel’s Prince still gets blinded by the angry Witch, and most importantly of all, they left Little Red Riding Hood’s sequence with The Wolf as an ode to emerging sexuality. I was dead certain they’d tone that controversy down. Johnny Depp was creepily pedophilic as he crooned Hello, Little Girl and when Little Red Hiding is rescued and later sings ‘And I know things now, many valuable things, that I never knew before…’ the Freudian overtones were still there. It was perfect.

Unfortunately, the second act of the film became a bit of a mess, and from what I’ve heard from many of my friends who haven’t seen the original musical, for them it was both incomprehensible and confusingly amoral. It all stems from the fact that they cut the Act 2 Prologue which shows what happens when the initial ‘ever after’ has started to fade. This is really important to the story because it explains why The Baker’s Wife strays and commits adultery with Cinderella’s Prince (because her baby won’t stop crying at all hours and her husband is too insecure to help her look after the baby) and because in cutting this song and later Agony Reprise (the line, ‘ah well… back to our wives…’ is deliciously ironic), we don’t get a sense of just how misogynistic and flighty The Princes are (In the original, Rapunzel’s Prince abandons her in the wood for Snow White and Rapunzel is left roaming the forest mad until she gets killed and Cinderella’s Prince seduces The Baker’s Wife after singing about how much he wants Sleeping Beauty). This omission seriously weakens the character of The Baker’s Wife and makes her seem like a right floozy, though poor Emily Blunt does her best with what she is left with. The cutting of the Rapunzel story arc also makes The Witch’s motives in Last Midnight less coherent, which in turn, weakens the ‘children should listen’ theme.

Still, it was all beautifully sung, and Meryl Streep seemed a lot more comfortable singing Children Should Listen and Last Midnight (my favourite song in the entire musical) then she did rapping at the start of the film. It is also a very complex musical, as all of Sondheim’s pieces are, and filming his stuff well is nigh on impossible, even if Burton did succeed with Sweeney Todd (I would argue this is because he is an auteur director though). The fairy story revisionism part of Into The Woods is only the tip of this rich play. Digging deeper, it is a Freudian look at relationships between parents and children, a post modern take on morality and the way we, as individuals, choose to tell our stories, and a parable about the need to take action, to journey, to do with all of your being (to go into the woods) even if doing so undoes you. I absolutely love that the musical and the film end on Cinderella’s final ‘I wish.’

I’ll leave you with the finale lines which sums up the entire point of the show:

Careful the wish you make,

Wishes are children.

Careful the path they take,

Wishes come true,

Not free.

Careful the spell you cast,

Not just on children.

Sometimes the spell may last

Past what you can see

And turn against you…

Witch

Careful the tale you tell.

That is the spell.

Children will listen…

All

Though it’s fearful,

Though it’s deep, though it’s dark

And though you may lose the path,

Though you may encounter wolves,

You can’t just act,

You have to listen.

you can’t just act,

You have to think.

If Disney had taken as much care with the second half of the film as they did with the first half, this could have been a second Sweeney Todd. As it is, it’s a passable effort with moments of brilliance.

Into The Woods: 7/10 inky stars

I have read criticisms of this film that criticise it for not casting people of colour. Whilst I get where this criticism comes from and acknowledge it’s a valid one, given that diverse casting is a wider Hollywood problem, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to single out this film for all of the blame.

Book Review: Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti

Bad Power, Deborah Biancotti

Twelfth Planet Press

October 2011

RRP: $18 Australian

I first heard of Deborah Biancotti two years ago at a Conflux Convention. I encountered her in a crime panel when I decided to break up my steady diet of epic fantasy, doctor who and steampunk panels with some discussion of the police procedural. Her books sounded like a deliciously wicked blend of speculative fiction and gritty police drama along the lines of the stuff Robson Green did in shows like Touching Evil and Wire in the Blood. Besides, Deborah was so entertaining at the Ditmar Awards that I decided to follow up on her work. As usual, my backlog of books ran away from me and it took me an entire year to read Bad Power, a collection of five linked short stories which combine gritty police procedural with supernatural abilities in an Australian setting.

From the blurb:

Hate superheroes?

Yeah. They probably hate you, too.

���There are two kinds of people with lawyers on

tap, Mr Grey. The powerful and the corrupt.���

���Thank you.���

���For implying you���re powerful?���

���For imagining those are two different groups.���

From Crawford Award nominee Deborah Biancotti

comes this sinister short story suite, a pocketbook

police procedural, set in a world where the victories are

only relative, and the defeats are absolute. Bad Power

celebrates the worst kind of powers both supernatural

and otherwise, in the interlinked tales of five people ���

and how far they���ll go.

I loved this read. First of all there is the language. Such unusual, disturbing and beautiful use of language. The only other writer I know of who operates in the same language space is Margo Lanagan, whose novel Sea Hearts is one of the best I’ve ever read in the genre. Back to Biancotti. I felt like I could visualize everything that happened in all five stories. At the same time, there was a cynical realness to dialogue that grounded me in the moment.

The collection is also clever and fairly unique because of the way that each story ties explicitly into the next. Setting and characters carry over, revealing gradually more and more about the world of Bad Power. This also means that interesting characters bound up in noir ambiguity, darkness and light and confusion and pain can make continual comebacks. My favourite stories were those that featured Detective Palmer, she who slowly begins to realise that there are people in this world with powers, some of them used for good, some for bad and all leading back to the mysterious Grey Institute. In particular, Palming The Lady and Cross That Bridge stand out. It probably goes without saying that Detective Palmer is a wonderfully feminist character.

Bad Power is exceptionally well written, but it is also exceptionally smart, investigating the common crime themes of corruption, power play and desire through the lens of humans who discover their super powers and begin to use them for ill as much as for good. Powers might vary, Biancotti seems to say, but human foibles do not, with even the police force having their moments of greed and doubt and insecurities. You’d think that this would make for a rather depressing read, and it does to an extent, but Biancotti is humanist and small acts of kindness and decency protect against a modern world which smothers us in deception and lies and deceit.

This book was so good I teetered on the verge of giving it five stars. The only reason I haven’t is because the story ends in medias res with quite a few elements unresolved. I presume this is because Deborah is working on the novels or a follow up collection set in the same universe. If she isn’t there is no justice in this world and I will chuck a temper tantrum. This is the most I’ve enjoyed a short story collection since Gaiman’s Fragile Things.

Bad Power: 4.5/5 inky stars

You can purchase Bad Power from Twelfth Planet Press here. Other books by Deborah Biancotti are A Book of Endings and Ishtar.

Feminist and Loving Moffat Who: Why I am Done (Re)Explaining Part 2

Midway through last year I began a long essay which was intended to be my definitive stance on Steven Moffat, Doctor Who, female characters and feminism. However, the post soon turned mammoth and I decided to cut my post in half. Besides, enough time has now passed that I feel I can objectively assess Clara’s character, particularly in light of Series 8. This post is part 2 of my original essay and explores my interpretations of River Song, Clara and Missy as either feminist characters or characters whose stories exhibit refreshing new ways of looking at, and representing, women on TV. There are spoilers for all of new Doctor Who. As usual, comments are welcome. Flaming, rudeness or idiocy is not. You can read the first part of the essay here.

River Song

Ah Professor Song. What an unexpected delight you proved to be. When I first saw River alongside Ten in the Moffat two parter Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, she made little to no impression, joining the ranks of people in s4 who became ‘the companions who never were.’ So little did she register on my character radar, I was left asking River Who? when she was announced as appearing in Time of Angels. From the opening few minutes of Time of Angels, the character felt fresh and revitalized: from her coy use of hallucinogenic lipstick, the peroxide blonde curls which she fluffed coolly to the confident way she knew that The Doctor beguiled would pick her up from space.So much did I grow to love River in series 5, I wrote an essay on her for my gender politics class in first year university.

River is such a refreshingly feminist character, I could write a book about it. Now nobody but the most die hard of Whovians have time for that, so I have made a list instead. Below the list are criticisms that people have of River and my responses.

Reasons Why River is a Feminist Character 101:

1. Alex Kingston is allowed to play an older, sexy, desirable woman, sometimes in a near lead part, alongside the youngest Doctor ever. For those who are thinking ‘so what?’ have you watched TV lately? When’s the last time you saw a sexy, older woman be allowed to be a sexy, older woman without the TV story harshing on her? Be honest now.

2. Following on from the last point, in a show about Doctor Who ie The Doctor ie white, male Brit actor, River is often smarter, wiser, more compassionate even, then The Doctor (well, she is a Pond). She spends a lot of her screen time making fun of The Doctor and solving problems he can’t solve. Lest we all forget the enormously entertaining time she told The Doctor to use his screwdriver to build a cabinet whilst she shot down The Silence. Some fans didn’t like this at all. To them I say, keep your sexist opinion to yourself. That kind of attitude says a lot about you and not a lot about Moffat.

3. River Song doesn’t care about rules or gender norms. River does things like date aliens with multiple heads to keep things interesting. River does things like shoot The Doctor’s fez because we all know it isn’t really cool. River does things like break out of prison all of the time in the most brazen way possible because why not? River does things like threaten to destroy the universe to save the person she loves because deep down you can’t keep a bad girl down. Remember Point No. 1? Alex was over 50 for all 13 episodes she appeared in. Just saying.

4. River Song is smart. She’s a professor of archaeology after all, and all of the best companions have a healthy respect for history (Evelyn Smythe). She runs rings around us ordinary folk. It must be a 51st century thing.

I could go on further but I feel like that covers the basics. Now, from what I read within fandom, most people didn’t have a problem with River as a sexist character initially. People disliked her because they weren’t fans of Alex or because they didn’t like River being depicted as The Doctor’s equal (oh the irony) or because they didn’t like the romance angle. This all changed with the dire yet utterly mad Let’s Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song in Series 6 which revealed that River was Amy’s child, stolen by The Silence to destroy The Doctor. River is redeemed by The Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler after her attempted murder fails. She then refuses to follow through on fate in The Wedding of River Song, nearly destroying the universe in the process. People didn’t like this seemingly sudden linear approach to Doctor Who’s Time Traveler’s Wife take which seemed to indicate that River’s birth, childhood and adulthood had all been molded and shaped by The Doctor, in an echo of Amy.

I again repeat what I said in my first essay. That is one aspect of the story but it is not all of River. We do not see her life outside of the show which revolves around The Doctor as the main character. This is because the show is not the River show. It is The Doctor show. We do know that River has adventures separate to her life with The Doctor. Hence her relationships with unmet aliens and humans, her archaeological adventures (why was there no spin off?), her refusal to travel full time with The Doctor because the fun is in the not knowing when they’d next meet. It was interesting that River refused. Hardly the actions of someone whose entire identity revolved around The Doctor.

Besides, I feel people miss the point of River’s character arc in Series 6. Moffat’s Doctors aren’t about Gods and destiny ala RTD and Ten. Moffat’s Doctors are about being catalysts for change, about bringing out the best in humans so that they bring out the best part in The Doctor. River is stolen away as a baby and brainwashed to kill The Doctor. When she is outwitted The Doctor gives her a choice to choose a different way. He knows it. Because his first is her last. That doesn’t make River predictable. It gives her agency. Agency to claim any identity she wants as long as that identity is not one based on hate and anger. That isn’t about gender politics. It’s about humanism. And so we end up with series 5, 6.1, and 7.1 River who is bad ass and wild and sexy and and smart and blows shit up for fun. We end with post library River in The Name of the Doctor who gets her Doctor closure and… chooses to let go and accept her fate, fading away. River, you strong woman, I salute you.

Clara Oswald

After The nuanced Pond’s, Clara felt stale before she even got started. Though she had strong starts as Dalek Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks and as governess Clara in The Snowmen,, throughout series 7 she remained more of a plot device than a character. People choose to read this as Moffat’s propensity for sexism. I read it as Moffat’s propensity to write complex and detailed plots using characters like stiff set pieces to move plots forward. A story telling failing? Absolutely! Sexist? Harder to determine, not living inside Moffat’s head and understanding his intent.

From the Series 7 finale on, something strange and kind of magical happened. Clara became important. Really important. Not just pretty sidekick companion important to the plot because of reasons. Actually, meaningfully and powerfully important within the entire Who canon. First, it turns out she tells The Doctor to take that faulty TARDIS, second, she discovers his secret and sees all of him in a way no other companions have, thirdly, she makes The Doctor see a way to go back and prevent himself from committing genocide to end the Time War, fourthly, she is one of the only companions to see The Doctor’s childhood, even offering him words of comfort about fear and creatures under your bed, fifth, she BECOMES the freaking Doctor in the excellent Flatline, sixth, she manages to prolong near certain cyber death in Death in Heaven by pretending to be The Doctor, earning Jenna Coleman the privilege of being the first ever companion to have her name come before the actor playing The Doctor in the opening credits, seventh, she spends all of series 8 telling and showing The Doctor that she won’t be bossed around by him, spending many episodes solving alien problems herself before The Doctor gets near them. So unexpectedly important has Clara become in The Doctor’s life, a friend of mine has re-titled the show and her, Clara Who?

That doesn’t excuse the woeful Series 7. Or the limp injection of the Danny/Clara story line into series 8, and the poor writing that created these messes. By the same token, it doesn’t make Clara a sexist character. It makes her a partially poorly written one. In Series 8 she becomes more though: control freak, passionate lover, angry avenger, teacher, problem solver and most importantly, a close friend. It helps that Jenna is an excellent actress. I’m not entirely sold on Clara as a character, but I do think we should acknowledge the audacity of Moffat making her the unexpected linchpin of the show. Hardly a sexist move.

Missy

I admit, I am not objective when it comes to Missy. I was in love from the second she manically spun around her creepy version of Heaven in Deep Breath.

People have made lots of dumb claims about Missy on the internet. How dare Moffat change a Time Lord’s gender some say. Fuck off, sexist twits, I say. This post sends up some choice examples of the idiocy and is entertaining to boot. Others complain that Moffat is a sexist pig because as soon as he started writing a female Master she flirted with The Doctor. I admit, I feel vaguely sorry for these people. Have they read fanfic.net? Livejournal? Tumblr? Oh bless, have they ever seen a single canon Master story? People have been slashing this pairing for years, and um yes folks, that means shipping Doctor/Master same sex (oh the horror!). Still others (I believe MarySue was one of them), complained that a female Master merely served to mock fans who want a female Doctor and have no hope of getting one. This is so unfounded I can’t even. Unless you are determined to hate on Moffat in the face of all evidence to the contrary, it is evident that he is trying to push the possibility of a female Doctor on to many fans radars. Not everyone has thought about it as much as the rest of us have. Some people are dead against it. Change needs to be introduced slowly. Hence Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife, which revealed Time Lords can switch gender, the Missy gender change reveal, and the conversation at the end of Death in Heaven where Clara suggests to The Doctor that he could return home to be a Queen rather than a King and he agrees with her. If The Doctor is cast as a female next regeneration, I will be mocking half of the internet. I told you so.

Michelle Gomez is great as Missy and I am glad that she is playing a more Delgado style Master. I like that she is chillingly evil and like a deranged Mary Poppins at the same time. I like that her reason for her plan was the most interesting plan a Master has had in years. I like that she manipulates humanity and The Doctor with lies and deception the same as every other Master before her. Her gender has changed, but if anything, she felt the most masterish for a long time. Poor Moffat. He casts the best person for the role (and across the internet and fandom it’s pretty widely acknowledged that Michelle was the best person for the role) and writes the character in a way that doesn’t depend on gender stereotypes (If you can’t see that The Master/Doctor nose kiss was about power, I give up) and people still accuse Moffat of Missy sexism. The poor man can never win.

In Summary:

Look, it’s no secret that I dig Moffat Who. I think that his stories are richer and subtler and more nuanced than RTD’s. I think that he dares to be audacious and break audience expectations. I think that he dares to push boundaries. I think that he dares to make unpopular decisions for the sake of stories with wide appeal. It’s also no secret that I think my faves, including Moffat, can be problematic. The second half of series 6 and series 7 is best never mentioned again, OK?

However, I don’t think my fave is problematic because he writes sexist characters. I think he writes roles for women which push TV boundaries. I think he sometimes manages to write feminist characters, and actually, the score is that he writes them on Who more often than not.

I passionately believe that Moffat is problematic because his ambitions don’t always fit the television medium and his crack makes it from the page to the screen without a filter. I passionately believe that Moffat can be unintentionally problematic about his characters because he writes complex plots and forgets how to characterize.

I also passionately believe that Moffat is not sexist. I passionately believe that Moffat Who is one of the most unexpectedly feminist shows on TV, and that the internet heat is mostly a lot of ill informed and poorly contextualized hot air. And this essay has ended without even mentioning the lesbian relationship between a lizard alien and a human woman…

I am feminist and I really, really, really love Moffat Doctor Who. I’m done (re)explaining why.