Previous episode reviews:
Episode 5: Time Heist
Episode 4: Listen
Episode 3: Robot of Sherwood
Episode 2: Into the Dalek
Episode 1: Deep Breath
Summary:
Clara Oswald's life is pretty good: she has a stable job as a teacher and a boyfriend named Danny Pink who loves and supports her very much. It's just too bad there's complications of her being a companion to The Doctor, and always going off on adventures that leave her exhausted to the point that Danny starts getting suspicious. So you can imagine her dismay when The Doctor ends up going undercover to her school as a (badly disguised) caretaker in order to stop the threat of a killer robot from outer space. Just another day in the life of The Doctor, but for Clara, and especially Danny, they are in for a huge change.
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The Doctor and his relationship with the planet Earth is...complicated, to say the least. He may be a protector of the planet, but doesn't like spending an extending period of time on it. Although he finds humans as a species fascinating, he also finds them irritating. He may look human, but he often goes out of his way to say that he is not a human and doesn't think much of their culture and way of life.
As such, when he ends up spending a set amount of time on earth at Clara's school in order to stop a killer robot, he doesn't think much of his undercover mission beyond secrecy for secrecy's sake. He is extremely detached that it's become an understandable point of irritation for Clara. Things are further complicated when her boyfriend Danny gets caught up on this mess, and from there things just spiral downward.
Nobody is safe...
This episode for me has overtaken "Listen" as the best episode of the season. On the surface, and thanks in part to the previews and setup, it does kind of have a comedic focus to it with the Doctor going undercover and wacky hijinks ensuing, with the boyfriend discovering the girlfriend's double life. But in truth, while there are funny moments and there is a comedic tone to it, this episode really succeeds in the character department, focusing less on the overall threat of the episode and more on exploring more of the characters and seeing the next step in their evolution, now that we are halfway through Series 8. As I am a huge sucker for character relationships and interaction in any story, this episode really appealed to me. Sure some may find that it's not as good as "Listen", and I can agree that "Listen" can be considered the far superior episode because of its setup and atmosphere, but I dunno. I just like this one more.
Our stinger features a montage of Clara facing the challenges of a normal life and a time-travelling wife, increasingly getting exhausted and trying to make up stories to Danny for looking tired or otherwise looking odd. This is a good scene because it establishes how long The Doctor and Clara have been traveling together. We are not just limited to the episodes shown on-screen, we can see that off-screen Clara has been having other adventures as well. It continues to make The Doctor's relationship with her all the more believable. What follows is scene where a random policeman is killed by the monster of this episode, the killer robot Skovox Blitzer. More on that robot later.
Just when Clara thinks she has time to herself when the Doctor says he needs to go undercover for a while, he suddenly shows up as the new caretaker. His disguise, as the video showed, was just him putting a janitor's coat over his normal outfit.
Oh Doctor, you troll...
The Doctor gives Clara the rundown: Blitzer was attracted to Earth, specifically Clara's school, by a high number of time travel emission waves over the years, and aims to destroy it. The Doctor went undercover in order to try and lure it away, and tells Clara to just get on with her life and pay him no mind. With little choice, Clara agrees to it, and is annoyed when The Doctor barely makes an attempt to actually act like he's undercover, messing around with the school's electrical systems, and randomly butting in her classes. Things aren't made better when The Doctor meets Danny and is disdainful of him being a math teacher. The Doctor keeps insisting and calling Danny a PE teacher because of his soldier background, and remember, we've established that The Doctor doesn't think highly of soldiers.
It is because of this setup that a lot of the comedy of the episode comes into play. A recurring thing in this story is one of the students of the school, Courtney, gets very suspicious of The Doctor and starts snooping around. When The Doctor and Courtney confront each other, the two outright insult each other, and The Doctor continues to be uncaring about the whole thing, especially when his "Do not disturb sign" is actually:
I feel the comedy in episode works much better than Robot of Sherwood. For me, the comedy of Robot of Sherwood mostly revolved around The Doctor and Robin Hood sizing each other up and showing off just to show who is the more badass guy. That just doesn't work for me because The Doctor strikes me as an individual who already knows he's badass and doesn't need to prove it. Here, the comedy is more focused around the setup and the Doctor's awkwardness about his situation, and things like his disguise, his GO AWAY HUMANS sign, and interactions with Courtney help with that. It gets a big and hilarious payoff by the end of the episode.
We then get into character interaction overdrive as Danny inadvertently ruins The Doctor's plan to stop the robot. The plan was to set up devices to lure the robot in and send the robot in time in the far flung future. But because of Danny, the plan goes awry and only sends the robot a few days into the future. The episode gets really great by this point when Danny discovers everything and is struck by everything and Clara living a lie. We get a good scene where Clara and Danny talk it over, the later asking why she even travels with her. Clara says it's because she gets some enjoyment out of it, and flat out denies that she even loves The Doctor. This is a good thing to add in as it continues to break away from the Clara of last season where she was romantically involved with the 11th Doctor.
The Doctor in turn is not approving of Danny because of him being a soldier, especially when Clara says that she love Danny. Danny is equally disdainful of him after finding out that he is a Time Lord, and here is where I feel to be the best scene, when The Doctor and Danny argue with the mentality of a soldier and an officer, showing how both have their issues about the military and war in general. This calls back to previous episodes of the season and past seasons of the show as well. To add a cherry on top, after Danny and Clara leave the TARDIS and The Doctor in a huff, Courtney confronts The Doctor again. The Doctor, whether it's because he's taken a liking to the delinquent or because he's in a foul mood and feels like trolling, tells Courtney his secret and shows her the TARDIS, even offering her the chance to become a companion in the future.
Things come to a head when the robot returns. Just when The Doctor and Clara's plan to capture and deactivate the robot goes badly, Danny comes in at the last second and distracts it long enough for The Doctor to stop it. Because of this, The Doctor says that he and Danny are cool, but The Doctor still has his doubts. Danny tells Clara, while together back at his apartment, to not keep anymore secrets and always tell Danny when something is wrong so he can support her. He also gives her a warning about The Doctor, that Danny knows all too well how commanders act, prompting their soldiers to go beyond how they normally act without fear. He warns her that, if The Doctor goes too far and Clara continues to withhold secrets from him, they are through. It's yet another good scene as it changes the Clara and Danny dynamic, and puts Clara's own actions into question. Could The Doctor really go that far? Or does Clara, after that ultimatum, have any thoughts on leaving? We can only guess as the show progresses.
And what is the Doctor up to during all of this? He lets the deactivated robot lose into space while showing it to Courtney. The sheer size of the universe and space is too much for her, and she runs back inside the TARDIS and promptly vomits.
But wait, what about that cop who was killed? This is where Missy comes back, and we get a few more things: One, the place Missy resides is called The Nethersphere, and two, the people who come here are indeed dead and are in the afterlife. The mystery deepens.
Final thoughts:
Overall, I really enjoyed this episode. The robot action was nice and all, but the true core of this episode is the characters and seeing them change throughout this episode. This is much better example of the show trying to have a breather episode. It doesn't feature a lot of sci-fi elements and doesn't have some world-wide cosmic threat, but it does exist to serve as a way to bring these characters together. I'm a huge sucker for character relationships in stories, and this episode delivered it in spades. This is a good episode for the halfway point to start; The Doctor has changed, Clara has changed, Danny has changed, we have a possible new supporting cast member, all around good.
My score: 5/5
My episode ranking so far:
The Caretaker>Listen>Into The Dalek>Time Heist=Deep Breath>Robot of Sherwood
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