New Who 6.12 Closing Time

[strange_complex]

On the whole, this was a great episode. Funny, nicely-plotted, and leading neatly and sometimes quite poignantly towards the heavily-signposted events of the season finale. I should have loved it. But what a pity that instead, every time we met a black character, I was jerked right out of the story by the inevitable knowledge that that person was about to die. By the time we got to the three kids in the back-street at the end, I was half-expecting the black one to be struck by a falling piece of satellite debris, just to make up a full house.

This is a long-established problem in New Who, which people like miss_s_b and pickwick have been pointing out for years. So I went into this episode with an already heightened expectation that the black characters would die. But even against that background, this story really stood out as a particularly egregious example of the trope. It's not just that all of the black characters (well, except the kid in the alley-way) were treated as disposable - it's that meanwhile, every single white character survived unharmed.

I don't doubt that it arises unconsciously, and indeed partly out of a well-meaning desire to cast more black actors. There was a great blog post which did the rounds recently (but which I can't now track down), all about how casting agents unconsciously replicate the limitations of established screen representations, only ever placing black actors in secondary roles because that's where they're used to seeing them. But oh my word it really needs to be consciously recognised for what it is and addressed, because it is a serious blight on Doctor Who right now.

And then there was the painfully overplayed joke around the mistaken belief that the Doctor and Craig were a gay couple; and the revisitation of the 'daddy issues' that were right at the heart of Night Terrors as well... And now I've practically talked myself out of even liking this story at all. Oh, Moffat (and your minions), why must you do this to us?

OK, so let's try to get back to the goodness. There were Cybermats! Looking as cute-yet-scary as they always should have done, although it required a little more imagination to see that back in the Seventies. And there were Cybermen dying of an emotional overload, just like in The Invasion! Also, although the thinking-they're-a-couple joke was overdone, I did appreciate the fact that Craig rejected the Doctor's attempt to kiss him not because he (the Doctor) was a bloke euw gross!, but because he (Craig) was already taken. And the Amy-Rory cameo was sweet and affecting, and I liked the way Amy's fame drew cleverly on Karen Gillan's star image as someone whom we all know has also worked as a model.

As for next week's episode, it feels a lot like we're under full steam towards a fairly inescapable end-point now. But of course we all know that the Doctor can't really die - not properly - so there is bound to be some kind of unexpected twist coming up. I'm hopeless at predicting these things in detail, but I would just finish by picking out two small details from this week which I think are likely to be significant.

First, the use of a mirror hiding the entrance to the Cybermen's underground lair. Mirrors and reflections have come up a lot this season, and I'm sure this theme is going to pay off next week, at the very least as another reference to parallel universes, and probably also to someone encountering their double and / or everything being reversed.

Secondly, the name-badge which the Doctor wore as a shop assistant was a very nice way of reminding us all that as far as we and all characters throughout the show's entire history are concerned, "The Doctor" really is his name. If Moffat is going to probe further into that territory, as he has been hinting ever since we first met River, then that is a useful sort of reminder to drop just before doing so.

Anyway, all to be revealed - along with some alt-universe Romans - next week!

[And I will finish and post my review of last week's episode shortly, I swear. I've just been rather overloaded with work and short of available spare brain-juice in the last week. It's half-written, but needs smoothing out from some random notes into something tolerably fluent before I can post it. I hope to get that done before heading for bed tonight.]

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Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I loved the way the Doctor could just walk into a department store and get a job - with a name badge that reads 'The Doctor' to boot - and how his methods of investigation just don't work for humans.

I enjoyed this episode more than I thought I would, but I would have like the ratio of scary Cyberman stuff to funny Doctor-Craig-and-a-baby stuff reversed, really.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I don't know - I quite liked the way the Cybermen were very much the sub-plot, really. There's a lot to be said for a light-hearted and largely character-focused episode as a breather before the epic large-scale action which is clearly coming next week.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I don't think I like character-focused Who (there, I said it!). I feel it's best left to fanfic to fill in those tempting gaps left by canon.