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| Episode: | 819 | | | Serial: | 257 | | | Writer: | Catherine Tregenna | | | Air Date: | 24-Oct-2015 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm going to be watching, commenting on, analysing, criticising and sharing every thought that strays into my brain about The Woman Who Lived. Series 9 has been split up into two-parters so far, and with this following an episode called The Girl Who Died I doubt it'll be the exception. But then again Girl didn't exactly end on a cliffhanger and this episode's by someone who's never written for the series before. Though Catherine Tregenna did write for the two worst series of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. Possibly a cause for concern, I don't know, I never watched the show.
On that topic, here's some shameful trivia for you: for whatever reason this is the first episode of Doctor Who in seven years to be written by a female writer. Plus my cursory research has revealed that it's only the 11th Doctor Who story credited to a woman in the series' entire 52 year run so far (that's over 250 serials). To make things worse, it seems a couple of those credits are lying, because apparently 2 of those 11 stories were actually written by men!
There may be SPOILERS for prior episodes and I'll definitely be spoiling this one, so be aware. Everything after it is safe though.
These are some fantastic looking night time shots by the way. Doctor Who has been looking consistently great this year and it doesn't seem that this episode's going to be the one to break the streak.
Knightmare is a terrible name for a highwayman by the way. People would always be spelling it wrong on the wanted posters.
The male occupant of the coach isn't keen on handing over his valuables to a lone criminal, but a growl from the trees and a pair of glowing orange eyes in the darkness gives him cause to reconsider.
That's bit on the bottom is so obviously part of PlayStation controller that I expect we're supposed to recognise it instantly and realise he sacrificed a gamepad for science. This isn't one of those situations where we're meant to think he bought this from an alien shop in the year 5941. I hope.
Then again you can buy dental cameras made using the molds for the Atari Jaguar's casing, so who knows what future-tech will be built out of.
Also I'm pretty sure this means absolutely nothing, but this is the third pair of red/orange lights to appear in this forest tonight, after the lanterns of the coach and the eyes of the monster. Though this is the first that beeps.
The Doctor apologises for not listening to Knighmare's threats (they're very distracting beeps), and reveals that Clara's not around to admonish him because she's taking her Year 7s to taekwondo. Or she will be in 300 years. Why he couldn't just jump ahead a few hours in his time machine and meet up with her afterwards is a mystery, though this does confirm that Clara's still a full time teacher and part time TARDIS traveller.
Turns out that the thing the Doctor wants is on the stagecoach, but it rides off while the two of them are arguing over who gets to rob it. You'd think the monster would've stepped in and stopped it, but I guess it's shy.
People who'd seen the series 9 trailer might have had a clue though, as a clip from this scene appeared at the end. The moment where she says "What took you so long old man?" to be precise, which seems like it was put there to make us think that Maisie Williams here would be playing a returning character we already know. Like his daughter Jenny, granddaughter Susan, or maybe his Time Lady protégé Romana. But nope it turns out that she's someone returning from the previous episode! Misleading is what it is.
Cut to opening credits!
She's definitely had time to work on it though, as it's 1651 and she's been alive during 800 of those years. She's not as old as the Doctor or Rory Williams (or Yoda) but she's pretty damn old. Old enough to only vaguely remember the Viking village she grew up in and even her own name.
Now when she's not in costume as the Knightmare, she's taken the name 'Me', because choosing names is hard. Actually names are for people are for other people to know you by and she's isolated herself from all that; her sensible identities died with the people she cared about.
She's become a lot like the Doctor with her giant lair full of bookcases and reminders of past adventures. It's not a time travelling phone box though, so she has to get to those adventures the long way. And then we get to see some of them, in slightly too fast comedyvision!
Hang on, I admit I know next to nothing about the Hundred Years' War, but wasn't Agincourt an English victory in a war that was ultimately won by the French 38 years later? Also has she not heard of Joan of Arc?
The thing is, the Doctor's a genius alien with a naturally epic lifespan and even he has trouble remembering things like British Sign Language or where his face came from. Me only has a human-sized memory so she had to learn about her own past by reading her diaries.
That's what the bookcases are full of by the way, shelf after shelf packed with her journals. The Doctor only needed a single small 2000 Year Diary in The Girl Who Died, but I suppose with him it could be bigger on the inside.
She's outlived everyone she's ever loved, and like the Doctor she's grown thoroughly sick of being stuck on her boring planet.
I think this guy's trying to stay out of sight here, but with eyes like that he might as well have a flashing police light on his head. Interesting that he has a different lens flare on his eyes than the other light sources have. It's like he's shining lasers into the camera.
The two of them have a whole conversation in the house while trying to sneak around, which is almost (but not quite) as ridiculous as the comedy music infesting this episode. But it does give her a chance to reveal that after 800 years she's still got the other immortality device he left with her in the last episode. She carries it with her everywhere, just in case she needs to make someone immortal in a hurry I guess.
The two of them find the amulet but to escape they'll have to creep around a man asleep on the couch.
But there's something really weird about this scene that doesn't match the rest of the episode. Not the frozen background, that's my fault, I'm talking about the quick cuts mid-sentence. It's like they couldn't get a good take of Peter Capaldi saying "Let's just go round and see if we can't get out the back," and had to work some editing magic.
Anyway they manage to go around but getting out the back isn't an option and they're discovered, so Me decides she'll start shooting. It's kill or be killed! The Doctor decides she won't and together they climb up through the gigantic chimney instead. Which gives her a chance to question him on how many Claras he's lost during his long life. The episode loves to lurch wildly between comedy and misery.
For some reason she's left her male voice at home too but she's more than willing to get involved in a bit of banter, with lines like: "Is that a fake nose, Sam? They should call you Sam Sniffed!" Then Sam breaks out the puns and it escalates from there, to the Doctor's horror. "I'm against banter. I'm on record on the subject of banter."
My horror too.
I don't get it though, his nose looks perfectly normal! Was she just trying to use his vanity against him? Plant a seed of doubt into his mind to throw him off his game?
Anyway they get home with the artefact and run into the lens flare monster from earlier, who turns out to be a lion man with a crown.
The mandatory monster of the week is called Leandro and he has a sad tale to tell. Basically his whole world was destroyed and he used the amulet to escape to Earth... but then he lost it! Though now that he's got it back he can travel to planets that don't suck and take Me away from this mundane world she's stuck on. They couldn't tell the Doctor this until now though as the amulet... kind of requires a sacrifice to work.
The Doctor: "Of course. Every single death is a tiny fracture in reality."
Wait, what? Seriously, what?
Eventually two comedy pikemen turn up at the door to give her the news that Sam Swift has been captured and shall be hanged in half an hour. The man's guilty of his crimes and destined to die, so she's been handed a guilt-free alternative to murdering her manservant! Of course the Doctor could just take her wherever she wants to go without portals or sacrifices, but he won't because "it wouldn't be good."
Okay, Sam Swift was captured this morning and he's going to be hung at noon, so that means they would've had around 3-4 hours to get the Doctor's description from him, draw that picture, print up wanted posters, and get them handed out to comedy pikemen. I... don't actually know if that's plausible or not.
By the way, if you look at the bottom of pikeman #1's shirt you'll notice something that probably shouldn't be part of anyone's uniform during 1651.
But when he realises how keen on they are to get the £20 bounty on his head he tries a different tack, revealing that he knows where Me keeps all her money. A full £30! She's far wealthier than that, but sometimes it's better to go with a convincing lie than an implausible truth. Like when you're bribing asshole pikemen for instance.
He escapes and rides off to stop the hanging, probably more because he dislikes evil alien lion portals, than because he wants to save a guilty man from his period-appropriate punishment.
Fortunately Me bribes the hangman to speed things along and Swift finds he's out of material anyway.
Also the Doctor's turned up to give Sam a comedy partner (and an excuse to make doctor jokes), leaving poor Me bewildered. She knew he was heroic and compassionate, but she never could've expected him to willingly subject himself to banter to save a man's life.
He only needs to keep it up long enough to reach the platform though, as he's able to use his psychic paper to trick them into thinking Sam's been pardoned. Then the crowd starts chanting to hang the Doctor instead! No, you don't hang the man who just brought a pardon from Cromwell, I don't care how many pounds are on his head.
"Purple, colour of death," points out the Doctor, pointlessly.
The poor peasants haven't got a clue what's going on now. They only came here to watch a man die and now they've got a fire-breathing lion man, an death-coloured energy beam shooting out of a highwayman and a portal in the sky to wrap their heads around... and they can't even be sure that Sam died! It must all be very vague and unsatisfying for them.
Me also realises that she actually kind of feels bad about unleashing the apocalypse upon the townsfolk and her latent empathy kicks in, so she slaps the other immortality patch onto Sam to reverse the polarity of the portal, flicking it from 'death' to 'life'. So basically the only thing Me needed to find her humanity and feel alive again was... for something new and interesting to happen.
I guess England has two immortal highwaymen now, and we're going to have to repeat all this again in 800 years with a miserable super-competent Sam trying to find a way off planet.
Oh and the Doctor points out that this is the colour of immortality, for the benefit of absolutely no one.
She isolated herself from forming attachments to people and that left her cold and desensitised to the world, and he knows the same thing happens to him when he travels too long without a mortal companion to keep him grounded. If the two of them travelled together, they'd just reinforce each other's worst tendencies. And they can't bring other people along because then the cast would be too big!
The Doctor's used a similar argument a while back to explain why he couldn't travel with River Song, and also to try to tone down Clara's increasingly Doctorish tendencies. You can't have two Doctors in the TARDIS, it doesn't work (except for multi-Doctor anniversary stories, and all those years he travelled with Romana). Doesn't explain why he can't drop her off somewhere though, which is all she asked from him!
So she'll carry on moving through space and time on the slow path, protecting the Earth from the Doctor and the waves he creates. Wait, wasn't that what Torchwood was for? The Doctor even name drops Torchwood boss Captain Jack Harkness here as another immortal he once knew.
But she's back for the last two minutes and she wants to show off a photo of her student's A graded work on her phone. The Doctor's more interested in one of the faces in the background though.
It might seem weird that Me can remember Clara despite meeting her once over a thousand years ago, but she explained that earlier in the episode by saying "I take particular note of anyone's weaknesses." I just hope when they run into modern day Me she's chosen a better name for herself. She'd struggle to do worse.
CONCLUSION
I think The Woman Who Lived works better the more I think about it, because that puts more distance between now, and the experience of watching it. I mean there's a lot of good in here, and some sharp writing, but I didn't really appreciate the execution.
Uh I don't just mean the literal hanging scene, but the highwayman's stand up delivery is kind of what I'm talking about. Humour's a subjective thing but I thought it often detracted from the subject in this case. I've got nothing against episodes swinging from tragedy to comedy and back, but when they swings to comedy music I start to lose interest rapidly. I'm against comedy music. I'm on record on the subject of comedy music. Except in Looney Tunes.
Speaking of the subject, this is definitely the second part of The Girl Who Died, even though the alien plots are entirely unrelated, as it continues to explore the Doctor's dramatically extended lifespan and how outliving all the people he cares about affects him, this time using Me as an example. Ashildr was a girl who worried so much about the safety of others that she had nightmares about losing them, while Me planned to kill her only friend just to get a ride off this planet because people don't matter to her any more. The Doctor on the other hand seems callous in his latest regeneration but he does care. He can swing too far the other way though, saving people he shouldn't because time doesn't matter so much. Though he got pretty damn isolated in his grief in The Snowmen after losing Amy and Rory, and it can't be long now before he'll have to face another companion leaving him.
So yeah it's yet another episode this season that dwells on mortality and the Doctor's fear of losing Clara and personally I'll be happier when they put that theme out to sea on a little Viking boat and set fire to it. Also, death opens a tear in reality now? What?
There's no mention of the Hybrid this time though, but I was reminded of a line in The Witch's Familiar that introduced the idea that the Doctor actually ran from Gallifrey because of his part in the creation of the Hybrid. Personally though I was always perfectly happy with the idea that he stole a TARDIS because he'd lived on the same crappy planet for hundreds of years and he was bored, and this episode kind of tells that story, with Me in the role of the grumpy genius adventurer alone amongst her own people, desperate to find a way off world. In Me's case she doesn't get to escape, but she still rediscovers her compassion after teaming up with a kind alien, just as the curmudgeonly 1st Doctor became a hero after hanging out with his first companions Ian and Barbara.
The Woman Who Lived was probably my least favourite episode of the series so far, but it'd still put it far above the abysmal Kill the Moon and Forest of the Night from the last series, and I found it worth watching just for the dialogue, and 18 year old Maisie Williams killing it as an ancient and jaded Ashildr.
Next time: an episode by the writer of Kill the Moon. Great.
I've finally reached the halfway point of Doctor Who series 9! Which incidentally will return with The Zygon Invasion. But next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm celebrating the upcoming release of Star Trek's 50th anniversary movie by watching its 25th anniversary film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Yes this review was written during a fixed and increasingly distant slice of time, but don't let that put you off leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts and opinions about this episode and/or my writing.
I get the feeling with this episode that what they really wanted to do was explore the immortality thing, and everything else was bolted on later. I think that's why neither the highwayman stuff or the space lions work; they come across as padding.
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