At last, here we are at the story everyone has been waiting for, the one that reveals why the 14th Doctor regenerated with the face of the 10th, what the fate of Donna Noble is, and what the Toymakers plan is. And surprisingly, answers to all these questions are provided.
After a prologue in 1925, we see the Toymaker's plan begin at the dawn of television, as he ensures that the first image ever seen on TV (and hidden in every TV and screen since) is of one of his toys, building an army of screens until activated, sending a signal (the wavelength of which is the Toymaker's creepy giggle) that turns humanity mad, or rather, it convinces everyone in the world that they are absolutely right and they all refuse to be challenged. Sounds kind of like Twitter, doesn't it?
We see the return of Kate and the full UNIT forces in this episode, and their huge Avengers like glass office building with huge death ray mounted on top (we'll get back to that ray later.) We find out former companion Mel is now working for UNIT. It was nice to see a companion that initially was 100% screaming and cardboard motivation actually be presented as a fully rounded human being. Donna seemed to like her too.
The Toymaker presents The Doctor and Donna with a puppet show version of everything the Doctor has done in the last fifteen years, a litany of companions who ended up dead, to which the Doctor protests some extenuating circumstances (Amy Pond died of old age, not from the Weeping Angels! Clara wasn't killed, she got to live the last seconds of her life over again in a loop! Bill wasn't killed by the Cybermen, she got saved by an alien force!) to which the Toymaker sarcastically responds each time, "Oh, well, that's OK then!" The Toymaker can clearly see the immense amount of guilt and pain the Doctor is carrying and uses it against him.
Neil Patrick Harris' performance of the Toymaker is stunning. Once you realize the cod German accent is an affectation that drops when he's being threatening, the undertow of his presence is disturbing, a creature that exists beyond concepts of good or evil and is only bound by the rules of gameplay and chance.
After some games, the Toymaker gets bored and simply shoots the Doctor with the huge death ray gun, forcing his regeneration. But it's not a typical regeneration, it's a bigeneration, with the Doctor splitting in two halves, one the 14th Doctor and the other, a completely new 15th Doctor with no ties to the past.
This scene was a fairly clear example of Disney staking out its claim to the Doctor and how the series will be viewed in the future: Everything up to the 13th Doctor is now on various other platforms (1 through 8 on Tubi and Pluto, 9-13 on HBO, and everything from Doctor 14 onward on Disney.)
Ncuti Gatwa, in the few minutes we see him on screen, is wonderful. He seems filled with a sense of adventure and joy that had been missing from the show lately, and I can't wait to see his run actually begin with the upcoming Christmas Special.
The Toymaker is defeated by the power of the two Doctors combined, and we come to the tear-inducing part of the show. Doctor 14 admits he's exhausted of continually running for the entire series. When Donna asks him does he realize why he has this face again and he answers he doesn't know, she replies "So you could come home," it's devastating.
The Fourteenth Doctor decides to enter semi-retirement, putting aside all the guilt and regret of his various dead companions, the trauma of the Time War, the Master, and all the battles fought in the last sixty years. He stays with Donna and her family (and Mel!) and says that he's the happiest he's ever been. (He still has his version of the Tardis though, so future adventures are not impossible.)
Meanwhile, in the Fifteenth Doctor's updated TARDIS (I love, love, LOVE the bubble jukebox in the control room), he sets the controls for an unknown destination and takes off, headed for further adventures.
The finest of the three episodes by far, I loved pretty much everything about this: the surprise appearance of Mel, the bigeneration, The Toymaker himself, the resolution of the Fourteenth Doctor to stay with Donna (after we had been led to believe that Donna was going to die in this episode, her actual purpose was to tell the Doctor he could stop running), and everything Ncuti Gatwa did as Doctor Fifteen. Serving as a soft reboot for the entire series, this is everything we love about Doctor Who in an hour-long package. Out of 10: 9.8
No comments:
Post a Comment