Doctor Who: The Pilot Review

I love that new Doctor Who feeling. There are diary entries written by my fourteen year old self recording a holiday weekend in York but instead of chronicling my experiences of the Jorvik Centre, the Gourmet Burger Kitchen and all of the other historical landmarks that the fair city has to offer my train of thought keeps turning to the upcoming series 4 of Doctor Who. This was the height of my infatuation with the show, following the exemplary series 3 I had been waiting a long time to follow the Doctor's adventures with Donna Noble. This series opener, The Pilot was similarly joyous.

Something that Steven Moffat does very well is introduce not only new stories every season but he established a new format - from the structure of the season to the tone of the stories to the set up of the characters. Series 5 was a reworking of a Russel T. Davies series with all of the two-parters in the right places but with a slightly stronger, developing series arc. Series 6 took the overrunning arc to its logical conclusion with each of the five Moffat-penned episodes essentially constituting a multi-part story in themselves with the other episodes dedicated to fleshing out characters and reiterating themes. Series 7 is his weakest series because it is so fragmented, essentially concluding Amy and Rory's story before cranking up to being a story about Clara. In theory, this series represents The Doctor as a raggedy wanderer in the shadows with the components of the Matt Smith Doctor's time - Amy, Rory, River, The Silence - being removed from him building up to the triumphs of the 50th Anniversary. In series 8 the show becomes far more brooding and angst ridden with a Doctor rebuilding his identity. Series 9 is like a pulp science fiction annual, crammed with high concept stories - shape-shifters living among us, refugee aliens inhabiting a hidden street, enemies teaming up to take on evil in an alien city - the longer stories allow for a steadier pace, better characterisation and more surprises.

Series 10 has set out its stall and I cannot wait to see this new dynamic play out. Having worked for UNIT in the 70s (or 80s) it feels really natural, yet surprising, to see the Doctor take on a new earth-bound job, the role of a lecturer in a university. This occupation is such a natural fit for the Capaldi Doctor whose TARDIS is filled with books and a chalkboard and who lectures to himself or the audience (Listen, Before the Flood) savouring the words like a connoisseur tasting red wine. I am also a big fan of the addition of a third member of the TARDIS crew. In 2010 I thought that Bernard Cribbins should be brought on, not necessarily to take part in every story but to have his character add depth to the episodes bringing his world-weary character in as a counter-point to the regular companion. In 2012 I was sure that the addition of an Ood to serve drinks in the TARDIS much like K9 was in order and in 2014 I decided that adding Frank Skinner's mechanic character from Mummy on the Orient Express to help with maintenance would bring some levity to the austere combination of Capaldi/ Coleman. In 2017 my prayers have been answered in possibly the weirdest and least predictable way possible. No one could have predicted that Matt Lucas' squeaking oddball Nardole from The Husbands of River Song would be companion material. I don't think anyone would ever have considered him for a "Characters that Should Have Been Companions" list (Sally Sparrow, Rita, Wilfred, Missy, Frank Skinner) yet, here he is. I'm most interested in seeing how this strange casting choice will come into play having found his humour fairly hit-and-miss throughout the episode.

And then there's Bill. I think the most amazing thing about Bill is how natural she feels. I have no difficulty separating the actor Pearl Mackie from TV and Bill Potts from Bristol University in my mind. Mackie's delivery of the lines written for this oddball character are believable and yet Bill is far from mundane. Despite the media announcement about Bill's preferences, her sexuality feels so incidental that it's hardly noteworthy despite the fact that The Pilot was about a failed burgeoning relationship for the character. Bill's a lesbian... who cares? It's the least interesting thing about her. Bill is a fostered orphan who supports her ditzy foster mother emotionally. She serves extra chips to the people she fancies and breaks into lectures, not because she wants the reward of a degree but because she loves to learn new things. In comparison to Amy and Clara, both of whom had choppy introductions to the show in my opinion, it is incredible how fast she has become cemented as a character in my mind. I think it helps that she doesn't have a science fiction crutch to lean on. Amy grew up with a crack on her wall and emotional trauma from being abandoned by a time traveller when she was a little girl. Clara's parents had a leaf and she jumped into a time traveller's grave so she was a dalek and a snowman pushed her off a cloud. The Doctor met her twice but he didn't. Bill is a person.

Pearl Mackie is such a good choice for the role. Whilst I really liked Jenna (Louise) Coleman and Karen Gillan - both are very good actors - they had a very polished way of presenting Steven Moffat's wordy dialogue. Gillan had a habit of doing strange voices in the middle of sentences which hung a lantern on the fact that she was performing and Coleman used to recite monologues whilst walking around a room like a Shakespearean actor. These are perfectly legitimate ways to perform on a hyper-real show like Doctor Who but possibly it has (debatably) lost a large number of casual fans because there hasn't been a grounding, naturalistic factor to give broad audiences an emotional foothold in the series. It's all well and good telling a story about a Roman centurion who lived 2000 years, his daughter the body-switching archaeologist/ criminal who grew up as his best friend, her mother the aforementioned traumatised man-collector who is a model/kissogram/writer and her best friend, the daughter's husband who wears a bow-tie, has a spaceship in a phone-box and eleven faces - in fact that's probably my favourite era of the show - but most people would rather watch the X-Factor because they don't have to concentrate. The show is simple now - an alien lecturer and his butler guard a vault and his normal student travels with them in time and space. Simple but no less intriguing for that. Simple does not mean stupid.

In some ways the plot of the episode is Moffat-era paint-by-numbers but this isn't a bad thing as the purpose of the episode is to introduce a brand new Moffat character. On the surface we travel to multiple, distinct locations instead of staying in just one which calls back to episodes like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and A Good Man Goes to War. On a deeper, metaphorical level he uses the antagonist of the story to act as a twisted mirror of the protagonist - in the likes of Mummy on the Orient Express, Death in Heaven, and any script by Toby Whithouse the villains bring out different aspect of the Doctor's personality and this gives the audience a chance to explore it. In this episode the character who is mirrored (almost literally) is Bill. The working title for the episode A Star in Her Eye could refer to either Heather or Bill. Bill's infatuation with Heather reveals that she too is wishing to escape the mundane aspects of her life like Heather who is unhappy wherever she goes on Earth. Literally, there is a star in Heather's eye and figuratively Bill is gazing at the wider universe through the star in her eyes - The Doctor - whose lectures are broadening her mind. It's not overly complex but hey, children are watching.

The Pilot has been one of my best Doctor Who experiences since The Eleventh Hour. There is so much intrigue and eleven episodes to look forward to. Capaldi's third season will hopefully be his best and a fine way to see off our show-runner of seven years, a world-class actor in our lead role and a tantalising breath of fresh air for those viewers who miss the emotional simplicity (not stupidity) of the Russel T. Davies years. Long may it continue.