A Piercing Golden Arrow: On 'Robot of Sherwood'

Series 8, Episode 3

Written by Mark Gatiss

Directed by Paul Murphy

 

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Other notes:

·        A recycling of ideas, or recurring motifs? The "aliens/robots making massive computer chips in ancient/medieval society" thing is a little too reminiscent of 'The Fires of Pompeii', which of course is a very important episode for Capaldi's Doctor. But 'Robot of Sherwood' picks up that plot hook and... doesn't do much with it. There's no half-memories to Pompeii, just an eerily familiar narrative beat.

·       Clara's outfit here features a golden jewellery piece on her forehead — a third eye, if you'll allow me. Clara has more to do than The Doctor here – she extracts large tracts of Plot from the Sherriff, and Gets Things Done while Robin and The Doctor are locked up in the dungeon. She can see from the very beginning along that Robin Hood is real. 

·       It seems that – so far! – only robots and androids are attempting to make it to The Promised Land, which gives us a hint to its function. Is The Promised Land where half-formed cybernetics go to become actualised, where Pinocchio turns into a real boy?

·    Even if it isn’t going to set the world on fire, ‘Robot of Sherwood’ feels like the right episode at the right time. After two weeks of setting up the Twelfth Doctor as a little more difficult to work with, and a week before a story being billed as the successor to 'Blink', we have something brighter, a comedy outing.

Aristotelian Ethical Wrangling: On 'Into the Dalek'

Series 8, Episode 2
Written by Phil Ford and Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley

Moving on from the opening character piece comes a very reassuring, if somewhat conventional, Doctor Who episode. It’s a Dalek story, it’s a base-under-siege story, and it’s the backdoor introduction of a (part-time?) companion. And it’s much more than that.

There are some beautiful sequences in this story, as directed by Ben Wheatley. The moment when the team cross the threshold of the Dalek eye-stalk and move through the non-Euclidian space is monumentally attractive and eerie. It heightens the otherness – the alien-ness – of the Dalek in ten seconds of slowed motion. Elsewhere, the pepper pots wreck havoc in a way not dissimilar to Rob Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ from series one, and explode in exciting prop-busting explosions. But the vortex of the story lies somewhere else, unattached to the running and gunning.

Early on, the Doctor asks of Clara a heavy, baggage-laden question: “Am I a good man?” ‘Into the Dalek’ offers two responses in kind, each dovetailing with its investigation of ethics in the battlefields of Doctor Who.

‘Into the Dalek’ is so much about the push-and-pull of Doctors and Soldiers. Firstly there is the Aristotle, a hospital ship repurposed as a battle ship. This gives us a thematic overview – ideas of war consuming ideas of healing – and it gives The Doctor something to oppose that isn’t necessarily a villain. (Are the echoes of the War Doctor playing out in the Twelfth Doctor’s head, here? Are his actions from the Time War, as presented in the first half of ‘The Day of the Doctor’, pushing him to oppose soldiers?)

Before the story runs out, we’ve gotten to know Danny Pink as “the modern soldier” – a soldier who shoots first, cries later, as Clara says – and Journey Blue, the would-be companion hampered by her occupation. Soldiers are given the attack eyebrows treatment whenever they’re in the same vicinity as The Doctor.

The Doctor has always been presented as an ethical man, and since the reboot of the show, been sceptical of soldiers. But it's more than just an underlying distrust: it's a personal guilt.

Because of course, the paradox lies in the fact that The Doctor isn’t just a doctor, a healer: that’s his façade. Because even when he is a pacifist, he uses it as a shield, and promptly flings that shield at the monster’s head in reaction. The Doctor, even when he tells others to be better than the monsters, when he tells others to be better than an aggressor, can falter and act violently or carelessly.

But he’s still The Dalek – Rusty – acts as a patient. Even after he is “healed” at first and the narrative turns to a base-under-siege story, Rusty still has the opportunity to heal, to be made good. ‘Into the Dalek’ features a joke early on where The Doctor suggests just that – “we need to get inside the Dalek” – and Clara mistakes it for metaphor. But Clara is correct, because the climax to the episode features The Doctor literally and psychologically getting inside the mind of this Dalek by sharing a telepathic connection. And he heals Rusty (to a point) and it is in this action of trying, of wanting to save something as wicked as a Dalek, that we see the true light and colour of the Doctor.

The conclusion to this story – and perhaps to how Capaldi’s Doctor approaches ethics for the rest of his tenure – is that pacifism and Doctor-ism is the ideal. It is desirable even if it is not always attainable. Clara, about to leave the TARDIS at the conclusion, finally responds to The Doctor’s question: “I think you try to be [a good man], and that’s probably the point.” Even if in the moment you can’t be ‘good’, it is honest intent and attempt that makes you ethical.

That’s one way to see it, at least.

Inside the very-deliberately titled ship Aristotle, we have the Doctor and company trying some philosophical wrangling – can a Dalek ever be good? (The real world equivalent, as determined by Terry Nation’s creation of the Dalek’s: can a nazi ever be good?) Or, perhaps less simplistically: can a Dalek ever be ethical?

Aristotle assumes that “evil people are driven by desires for domination and luxury, and although they are single-minded in their pursuit of these goals… [they are] deeply divided, because their pleonexia—their desire for more and more—leaves them dissatisfied and full of self-hatred.” The Daleks make a good case study in ethics because they are a logical extreme: domination is the desire, fuelled by the single-minded hatred of other living (or non-living) entities. The Daleks are constantly shown as lacking an internal consequence for their pleonexia, their avarice – if we’ve ever seen a dissatisfied or self-hating Dalek, it’s not because they’ve achieved their goals. The Daleks cannot be driven to self-hatred or division by the necessity of their programming (or, as metatext: the Daleks cannot be driven to division by the necessity of the rules of Doctor Who, which dictate that their opposition to The Doctor such).

So when we are presented with a Dalek that can act ethically and by its own desires, independent from its programming (or from the narrative rule), it isn’t a major revelation that it is in fact ‘broken’. Because as programmed, as ruled, only a broken Dalek could act ethically. Which makes it all the more remarkable when Rusty, the damaged Dalek, comes out the other side of the story as, quote unquote, “good”. After Rusty has been turned “good”, he still operates in a state of extreme logic, devoid of emotion – he still acts as a Dalek. We are told Rusty has turned “good” because is on the same side as our protagonists, but is he an ethical agent?

It’s interesting because – fingers crossed? – this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Rusty. He saves the humans and reboards the Dalek vessel, assumedly with the idea to covertly destroy the Daleks from the inside. Whether he is successful is for another time, if at all.

But even though Rusty’s intentions are to destroy the space-nazis, even though his allegiances have essentially inverted, Rusty is still unequivocally a Dalek in mind and in action. There is no second thought to his decisions, no ethical quandary to stumble over. He is still a being who can only interact through a fixation on hatred. His new mission imperative is barely more than a changed a line of code: “kill all beings EXCEPT daleks”.

“…over the course of time, Aristotle supposes, [a being] will regret his decision, because whatever he does will prove inadequate for the achievement of his goals.” (Richard Kraut)

It’s impossible to say, right now, whether Rusty will return, or whether Rusty’s new modus operandi will continue on unchanged. Or, perhaps, will regret set in? Shame? Because has The Doctor created an ethical Dalek, or has he merely just created a Dalek that hates Daleks?

At the end, The Doctor looks down on his doing, and says, “You are a good Dalek.” But Rusty responds: “No, Doctor, you are a good Dalek.” In a single sentence, we have to reframe what a “Dalek” is; we have to reframe what a Dalek thinks the work “Dalek” means. It’s a little clumsy as presented in the story, but it seems to act as the other option to answer the Doctor’s central question of “Am I a good man?” A Dalek is single-minded; and Rusty, this good Dalek, is single-minded in its hate for Dalek-kind. There are two possible ways to detangle the response – you are good at being a Dalek, at being a single-minded entity; or you are the best at being in unending opposition to one clear force.

There’s a line, easy to forget, where The Doctor lambasts one of the miniaturised strike team soldiers.  “A Dalek is a better soldier than you,” he says, because as he believes, a soldier, at his or her core, has made one choice, and that choice is to uphold violent opposition rather than pacifism.

And then The Doctor shouts into the void, and the void says, “No, Doctor, you are a good Dalek,” and he’s suddenly realised there’s no guiltier soldier than he. ¤

Other notes:

·      Souls – the Dalek can see inside The Doctor’s “soul”, and sees both beauty and hatred, and later, the Doctor pays it forward by, perhaps, giving the Dalek a soul.

(Even the cut-away to Michelle Gomez’s Missy in Heaven gives us a link – is Missy’s Heaven a spiritual place, or just a time machine whose quirky owner is collecting anyone who has died in the name (or place?) of the Doctor? There’s a line in ‘Into the Dalek’, after the team has follow a tube to what are essentially the bowels of a Dalek, where The Doctor says something to the effect of “nobody guards the dead” – and that’s why larders (a la ‘Deep Breath’) are the best escape route. But there is someone, of course, guarding and caring for the ‘dead’: Missy the mischief maker. But is she saving souls, stealing souls, or building an army?)

·      Eyes. Eyes eyes eyes! The main feature of the Dalek – its glowing, cycloptic eyestalk – is heavily on show here; the Dalek Antibodies are the all-seeing internal defence system of the Dalek; the Doctor comes face to face with the mutated Kaled’s biological eye; and Clara’s dressed is riddled with them. Wherever you go, nothing to see but eyes.

·      We get Clara as independent of The Doctor again. “You’re not my boss, you’re one of my hobbies,” she says, and series eight has so far given us evidence to believe her. It’s exciting to see a companion with a little more agency.

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All pseudo-philosophical tangents sourced from Richard Kraut’s work, “Aristotle’s Ethics” 

Look Who's Morphing: On 'Deep Breath'

Season 8, Episode 1

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Ben Wheatley

So, this is what a decompressed Doctor Who story looks like.

There’s a dinosaur splashing about in the Thames, ordinary Londoners are combusting, and, never mind all that – here’s Peter Capaldi! ‘Deep Breath’ is so concerned with shouting from the rooftops about Doctor Who’s new direction that it forgets to have much of a plot for the first thirty minutes; or, ‘Deep Breath’ knows where its priorities lay, and doesn’t mess about with trivialities like ‘plot’.

Structurally, the first third feels so un-Moffat. There’s the spark of an exciting story, but that just sits there while the Characters Express Their Feelings At One Another. Which has more weight to it than any action-detective plot, but it means that out of the gate, it feels like there’s no apparent pace or purpose. Of course, we know what’s happening – we are being introduced to the new Doctor, and some of us (including Clara) aren’t on board just yet. But while the characters potter around Paternoster House, something feels off.

You can call it a “character piece” and you wouldn’t be wrong. ‘Deep Breath’ unveils the first of personality for the new Doctor, but it also pushes Clara into the fore with much needed characterisation. Some of this still comes from overt dialogue – people tell Clara that she is narcissistic and egotistical more frequently than she gets to act in any of these ways – but this new, unsure Clara gives Jenna Coleman so much more to work with.

Once Clara and the Doctor meet in the restaurant, it feels like things have returned to regular programming, with the necessary mystery and action unfolding around the pair. But this is still experimental, extended Doctor Who, so everything acts first as a character moment and second as a plot beat.

Clara’s two major actions in the belly of the ship – her breathless cyborg imitation and her logic game with the Half-Made Man – pushes her further than we’ve ever seen before. Coleman sells these moments like she’s working at a hotcakes stall: she’s scared, terrified, but still so resolute. Clara using her own life outside of the Doctor as inspiration in baiting the cyborg is genuinely exciting, and it feels like a first for the character. She’s more active than she ever has been before and it's refreshing.

Director Ben Wheatley plays with perception in striking ways. When Clara begins to run out of breath, red and yellow bars blur the edge of the screen. It feels like the corners of her eyes are flushing with colour. Earlier, in the restaurant scene, the Doctor tells Clara to look from the corner of her eyes. (It almost feels like there’s an unannounced perception filter at play.) The camera struggles at first to focus on the dining cyborgs – we can hear the mechanical clinking of the cogs ticking over in each and every body, but we cannot see their eerie robotic movements until the corner of the eye has triumphed, and the camera has found its focus. I think – think! – this might relate to Moffat’s second story of the season, episode four’s Listen. A quote released for that episode goes:

“What's that in the mirror, and the corner of your eye? What's the footstep following, but never passing by?"

Moffat does love him some eyes. We’ll see.

The ship of Theseus motif that emerges over the story – the broom with both the handle and broom-end replaced, as the Doctor puts it – gives us the biggest insight into new Doctor, and how he sees himself. Capaldi’s Doctor is, according to the show’s mythology, the first of a new ‘set’ of regenerations. He is a fine line, with fifty years behind him and uncertainty before him. Does he have any past-Doctor left in him, or is he something else? Is he even the Doctor any more, and does it even matter either way? This feels like the main question in play; the did-he-kill-a-robot-or-did-he-convince-it-to-jump? moment is another extension of this interrogation/revelation of character, one I’m sure that'll be followed up come the finale.

The monsters – a pact of clockwork droids set back to the dawn of time – reveal themselves to be a kind of inverse Cybermen; robots who want to become human. They’re suitably creepy – the way Wheatley lets the camera hover on the internal clockwork as the Half-Made Man thinks over Clara's logic puzzle gives us a clue about their intelligence and their calculating nature – but altogether disposable. They’re not technical marvels but half broken, half fixed entities lost in time and space. Are these the kind of figures that are welcome in Heaven, in The Promised Land? The broken, the decaying? The almost human?

Not to hurt our collective necks, but looking forward to the two-part finale of this season, we can see why their subversive robots-wanting-to-be-human might be more relevant than they first seem. As shown in publicity shots, the Cybermen are set to feature as the “monster” in the finale. Dots are being made, I won’t deny.

The oddest choice in ‘Deep Breath’ is that it takes so much subtext and puts it firmly into text. There’s a lot of character-setting rhetoric that is all tell and no show. Elements that feel like they’re pulled directly from the Twelfth Doctor pitch document turn up as dialogue, in a kind of metatext. It is frequently acknowledged that Capaldi is older, and less like boyfriend-material than his immediate predecessor, as if to assuage concerns that an “old” man is playing a role that’s been the domain of young men. In the opening few minutes we have Capaldi shouting “I’m not flirting!” directly at the audience (or dinosaur as audience-surrogate, which is pretty funny in itself), which is a reaction to all the kissy-business of the same past two Doctors. In Clara’s confrontation with the Half-Made Man, she claims that if you don’t follow through on your threats, then your threats are worthless and hollow – a criticism oft levelled at Moffat’s penchant for “everybody lives!” endings at the expense of any real tension.

(Also: why is the episode so concerned with physical appearance? Do the producers think a section of their audience so vain that they won’t cling to this new iteration without the physical appearances being referenced so prominently, and so heavy-handedly? Or maybe it’s just for children, whose frame of reference is the Doctor as a young man.)

Maybe it’s just post-regeneration comedown, but the script feels like it is suffering from New Doctor teething problems. Jokes that would work with Matt Smith’s Doctor feel naff in the hands of Capaldi, and almost none of the physical comedy hits anything resembling a mark. I mean, “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if this man got hit in the BALLS?!” isn’t cutting humour regardless of which potential alien member is getting knocked about by a technomagic phallus. And Strax, the walking spud, repeats the same jokes he’s made in numerous other stories: he is bad at telling apart humans, and he likes to shoot things. It can get tiring in a standard length episode, but here it becomes plain how shallow he is, even as comic relief.

Although slapstick doesn’t fit either the introspective tone of this episode or the gravity of Capaldi’s Doctor, there are veins of humour that do mesh. "Droids and apostrophes, I could write a book," for example. Capaldi’s falcon-eyed diatribe about his eyebrows feature enough sharp lines it could ruin a hot air balloon expo.

In ‘Deep Breath’, the plot is secondary to the show’s regeneration. Out with the young, in with the old. We have a revitalised format, reinvigorated lead characters, and a narrative almost completely unattached to what has come before. There’s a handover of the torch with the Eleventh Doctor’s phone call from the past – which works because it’s embedded into Matt Smith’s swansong. This moment is, again, almost a convergence of text and subtext; if we are still undecided, we are being told how to react to this new Doctor.

And what a man. Looming, sharp, he’s the exasperated outsider rather than the curious alien or conceited romantic. Here’s the Doctor, dangerous as ever, a little curmudgeon-y, a little fragile, and with a brand new show for us. ¤

And…

The tag at the end, with the Arch Moffat-Woman welcoming the Half-Made Man into Heaven, gives us a “mystery” that we’re supposed to care about. I don’t know if it was particularly needed with the other arc clues dropped but, maybe there’s a point to it, other than a completely overt hook, but we just don’t know yet. Look, I’ll take the bait. The garden just looked so nice, and Missy, even with her deep shades of River/Clara/Amy, looks to be a fun antagonist. And maybe, just maybe, her familiar personality isn’t just a Moffat-Can’t-Write-Women problem. Maybe it’s intentional.

I think there are a couple potential previously introduced characters that might fit the mystery.

·    Her attitude and (apparent) relationship to the Doctor is befitting of a reincarnated, or perhaps missing link version of River Song. I think this is the least likely, just because the end of ‘The Name of the Doctor’ felt like a neat, final bow for the character.

·      Contestant no. two… the Master! Hey-ho. Or, you know, the Mistress. The egomaniacal arch-villain hits the mark of the Doctor’s nemesis, and her name – Missy – is a shortening of mistress. This would make for an interesting and much wanted reinvention of a male character, who could really use something new to do. I mean it isn’t a female the Doctor, but it’s progress, and it keeps on opening the right doors to changing the lead character into something other than white and male. This sounds like the most fun.

·      Or, maybe Missy, is an alternate Clara, one of the splinter Claras from her time jumping or whatever happened at the end of ‘Name of the Doctor’? Missy’s outfit – and umbrella! – is highly reminiscent of Victorian Clara from 2012’s ‘The Snowmen’. Missy does refer to someone, assumedly The Doctor, as her boyfriend – just as other people refer to the Doctor and Clara – but maybe this is a misdirect. I think letting Clara breathe without the cloying "Impossible Girl" mystery would be nice; give us this season, at least.

Or, you know, maybe she’s just an Original Character (Do Not Steal). Fingers crossed she’s more than more-of-the-same.