‘There’s a haunted house and woodlice from space. And lots of young people get eaten.’ After the obligatory trips in time and space, like Rose and Donna before her it’s Bill’s moment to come back down to Earth in time for her fourth episode. This leans into Bill’s backstory, as she moves out of her step-mother’s house and in with university friends – and has to confront an enemy with his own mother issues.
Continue reading‘We must have changed something, right? I mean, people saw a monster in the Thames.’ I enjoy how this quietly subverts the expectations of an audience primed for timey-wimey, “am I a good man?” introspection and angst. At the top of the episode, Bill ponders the consequences of changing history or erasing her own future. Later, she confronts the Doctor about his attitude to death, and then he presents her with the same choice he gave Clara in Kill the Moon – destroy the beast or save it.
Continue reading‘You’ve never passed by in your life.’ It’s probably a coincidence that the second story of the rebooted series features a long sequence of the Doctor and Bill exploring a deserted city where they get cornered by robot people, per The Daleks. Or that there are weird overtones of The Masters of Luxor, as Bill is presented with food and wonders whether it might be poisoned. It’s rooted in old school Doctor Who storytelling, occasionally revived, where the TARDIS arrives in a world which is itself a mystery to be unpicked.
Continue reading‘This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.’ Steven Moffat, lead writer of the BBC’s hit show Sherlock, turns his hand to sci-fi with a new series of adventures in time and space starring The Thick of It’s Peter Capaldi as the eponymous “Doctor Who”, a mysterious man from another world with a time machine disguised as a 1960s phone box (very Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). Joining him on his travels are Matt “Little Britain” Lucas as the oddball Nardole and stage actor Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts, through whose eyes we’re introduced to Doctor Who’s madcap universe.
Continue reading‘Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy.’ The return of showrunner Moffat, who was supposed to have bowed out with The Husbands of River Song but has been persuaded to stay to fill the gap between Chris Chibnall finishing Broadchurch and taking over Doctor Who. Perhaps wisely, he elects not to launch straight into the adventures of Bill Potts, but to revert to the status quo ante Clara when the companions were rarely a fixture of the Christmas Specials.
Continue reading‘It is time to use the Cabinet of Souls.’ So, imagine The Day of the Doctor except the Doctor uses the Moment to exterminate the Daleks. If Class had continued, I suspect Charlie would have followed the ninth Doctor’s survivor’s guilt trajectory: ‘I should be gone with them.’ As it is, Class ends here, with our hero committing genocide to prevent genocide, Quill still pregnant, April trapped in the body of a Shadow Kin, and The Sarah Jane Adventure’s enigmatic Shopkeeper revealed as an agent of the Weeping Angels.
Continue reading‘There will be no going back. You really will either end today dead or with your freedom.’ While the Class-mates were detained, their teacher was going through a very different ordeal. With Ames and an alien prisoner called Ballon, Quill goes on a quest to battle angels and demons with the goal of freeing herself from the mind-controlling bug in her head. By the end, there seems to be a permanent shift in the balance of power between her and Charlie.
Continue reading‘How many knobs does he have?’ The cheapie episode sees the Class-mates detained after hours by Quill, only for them to be hit by a meteor shower and the classroom to be ejected into space. Trapped together with no means of escape, uncomfortable truths and darkest fears bubble to the surface.
Continue reading‘Do any of you even know your own children?’ The parents are pulled into the latest apocalypse, as the piranha petals munch through humankind, April goes up against the Shadow Kin’s King and Ames comes a step closer to unleashing the power of the Cabinet of Souls.
Continue reading‘I don’t suppose we could have a moment of cuddling.’ A return to the multiple plot strands of the first episode, as the Shadow Kin King decides he wants his heart back from April, causing her to begin to share his aggression at precisely the moment her errant father reappears in her life. Meanwhile, Charlie is getting a bit too princely for Matteusz and Tanya’s liking, giving Quill the perfect excuse to throw in her lot with the mysterious School Governors and their representative, the new Head Teacher Ms Ames.
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