Tom Salinsky

Way back when Doctor Who was created, its remit was to be educational as well as entertaining. Roughly speaking, stories set in Earth’s history, which generally had no science-fiction elements at all, apart from the fact of the presence of the TARDIS crew, alternated with science-fiction stories. Viewers could see adventures taking place in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, during the Reign of Terror, and (rather tediously) at the dawn of humanity.

Gradually, it became clear that the science-fiction stories, specifically the monster stories, were much more popular, and so after Troughton’s second story, The Highlanders, historical stories were pretty much retired. When they did return, in tales such as Pertwee’s The Time Warrior or Tom Baker’s The Masque of Mandragora, they tended to be science-fiction tales in a historical setting.

Under Russell T Davies, the historicals evolved again. Now, the celebrity historical was the order of the day. Going back to Elizabethan London, and meeting science fiction witches, wasn’t enough. Now they have to meet Shakespeare too. Or Dickens. Or Queen Victoria. And it’s this template which Chris Chibnall is working from. Sounds like a good pitch, doesn’t it? Doctor Who meets Rosa Parks. But is fast-moving, adventure series Doctor Who really the right forum to explore the American civil rights movement? Might we not prefer a home grown series like Quantum Leap, whose episode set in this time period is a fan favourite?

Or, I wonder if any other readers have seen the current American sci-fi series Timeless? In this pleasantly jolly adventure series, a small team has to pursue evil-doers bent on changing history through time, trying to make sure that none of their meddling alters the present in any meaningful way. It’s only rarely what Doctor Who has as its mission. The Doctor’s remit is usually to try and alter things for the better. Timeless bakes the need to preserve the status quo into its format.

It also works with a small team (the time ship only has three seats), all of whom have clearly-defined qualities and skills. Abigail Spencer is Lucy, the historian with a personal connection to the evil-doers. Matt Lanter is Wyatt, the army guy who can keep them safe and who is handy with his fists, and comfortable with firearms. And Malcolm Barrett is Rufus, the engineer who knows how the time ship works, and who also is black, which is consistently an issue as they travel into America’s racist past. All three are charming and funny, and the tone is usually fairly irreverent and fun, even as they tackle important issues.

Bluntly, Rosa wasn’t half as much fun, half as interesting, or half as well judged as even a pretty poor episode of Timeless.

Now, before I go on, let me take in a bit of the wider context.

I finished watching this episode with a heavy sigh, and had a quick look online, expecting to see a general chorus of “What the hell was that?” “How clumsy, trite and uninteresting!” and “Chibnall must go now!” And there were some.

But there was also a preponderance of lavish praise. “Beautiful”, “moving”, “best episode for years” and so on. This gives me pause.

I was already pretty familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, and from my brief research since the episode aired, it seems as if writers Chibnall and Malorie Blackman have rendered it pretty faithfully. Could it be that what people are responding to is the power of Rosa Parks’ story, rather than any particular imaginative leap on the part of the writing and production team? Does that matter? Is the fact the Doctor Who is returning to its educational roots a good thing? If more 11 year olds are inspired to Google “Rosa Parks” who would otherwise not have heard of her, isn’t that a huge benefit? Must I really give Doctor Who no credit at all for rendering the story accurately – even the bits which sound made-up, like the fact that Parks was refused entry eleven years earlier by the same bus driver on which she made her stand?

Well… okay. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give all of the historical aspects of this story a pass. I do this with some misgivings, because I don’t know that Doctor Who should be just retelling stories from history, with no twist, fillip or imaginative leap (I didn’t like Vincent and the Doctor much, but at least it tried to show us a famous figure from history from a new angle). But okay.

That leaves two other elements – the time travel story (our twenty-first century heroes interacting with 1955 Alabama) and the science fiction story (the need to foil the evil exploits of one “Krasko”).

Sorry, but both of these I thought were sorely wanting. The time travel story needed much stronger characters than it has at this point. When Rufus (of Timeless) goes back in time to America’s racist past, he’s smart and primed and ready for the attitudes of the people he’s going to meet. He doesn’t like it, and when people are super-racist, there’s often a moment for him to take mild revenge, but he gets it – it’s part of the territory.

Ryan, on the other hand, just blunders into racist white folks’ way, without a second thought. What are we supposed to make of him as a character now? Has he never cracked a book? Has he never experienced racism in his personal life? Maybe he has led a life of relative privilege and always thought that people who bang on about civil rights are exaggerating? Could be interesting. I still wouldn’t think that he had managed to earn his place on board the TARDIS, but I might be engaged in watching him slowly grow up. Alas, a later scene makes it very clear that he has experienced racism, so he’s just a dummy then?

Bradley Walsh, the most experienced actor of the three, just about manages to cling on to something resembling a character, but Yaz again is just a blank. Neither black nor white, neither brave nor cowardly, neither smart nor naive, she’s engaging because Mandip Gill plays her with spirit, but I have no idea what drives her or what she adds to the team.

That brings us to the science-fiction element of the story. With a script credited to two writers, it’s impossible to say who worked on what, and it’s likely that they both worked on everything to a large extent, but it might be a reasonable assumption that Blackman was researching Rosa Parks while Chibnall devised Krasko with his call-backs to Doctor Who stories of the recent past. All of the bad habits which have been on display in the last two stories are here again.

The whole team trailing behind while the Doctor does all the actual story? Check. The long conversation with the bizarrely impotent villain? Check – two of them this time. The threat just vanishes at the 42 minute mark? Check. The Doctor professes not to use guns, but the enemy is dispatched with lethal force in any event? Check.

And much else besides just doesn’t make sense. In the motel, there’s an attempt to provide a sense of the whole team working together, as if they all had Timeless-style complimentary skills. But the scene is pointlessly interrupted for an intrusion by a cop which goes nowhere before I think the Doctor actually says “Right, where were we?” And, as the final scene of the episode shows, the Doctor has a wonderful device which can tell them everything they want to know about Rosa Parks and which would also provide an entirely safe place to hide. It’s the conveniently located, but also quite well-hidden TARDIS. Still, nice Banksy gag.

And what’s all this about limiting the villain? First he can’t shoot straight. Fair enough, neither can anyone in a science-fiction adventure story. Then it turns out, he’s incapable of killing anyone. Way to raise the stakes, Chibnall! So, does the fact that his gun is a time disruptor mean that he could have shot the Doctor and he just missed? Or does the gun not count as lethal force? Who cares, before long it’s out of batteries and the villain is deprived of it. He basically just stands there and lets the Doctor take the vortex manipulator off his wrist. Now all the team needs to do is keep an eye on him, or preferably lock him up somewhere, and the story is over. Instead, like children playing hide-and-seek, the Doctor turns her back and obediently lets him put his evil plan into action.

And what is his plan exactly? To keep parts of America racist, even though those parts of America are centuries in his past. Even if we buy that that would be desirable to a man from so far in the future – would it even work? To give Rosa Parks essentially all of the credit for the American Civil Rights movement isn’t very flattering to the rest of America, nor is it particularly accurate. Rosa Parks was not the only person to stand up to (or sit down to) segregated buses in Alabama, it’s just that her case was the one chosen by the NAACP. If she hadn’t ridden on that bus that day, then – given that none of the other meddling by either side seems to make a difference – chances are that America would be just the same today.

And it doesn’t help that all of the nonsense with tailoring, fishing, bus timetables and so on is incredibly, ball-achingly, mind-numbingly boring and stupid. The fact that it finally, improbably, builds to a single scene in which the time travel plot, science fiction plot and history lesson actually combine with some semblance of power, is unexpected to say the least. Making Graham, Yas and Ryan have to keep their seats and refuse to help Parks is genuinely arresting. It hasn’t been built up to, it’s almost immediately laughed off, and it doesn’t reverberate beyond the couple of minutes for which it lasts, but it does work.

While I’m grumbling, I hate everything about Krasko from his stupid penny-dreadful name to his sub-Fonzie costume to his “I’m-so-evil” delivery. And although Jodie Whittaker continues to do decent work with the thin material given her, this incarnation of the Doctor is turning into a pretty bland David Tennant impersonation. After the genuinely bold Capaldi incarnation, this is very disappointing.

So, it’s a write-off then? Yeah, pretty much. I was underwhelmed by The Ghost Monument, but gutted at Rosa’s lack of ambition, scope, threat, adventure or sensitivity. It told me nothing I didn’t already know about the Civil Rights Movement or contemporary racism in Britain or America, and it failed to be an entertaining adventure story. Did you like it? Great – I’m honestly super happy for you, and I really hope that reading all this hasn’t put you off it. Does it help if you don’t know the story of Rosa Parks? Maybe. Does that make all the problems I’ve identified vanish? No.

So, here’s what I’m looking for in the rest of the season.

The characters have to be sharpened up. I need to know what makes Ryan different from the teenager sitting next to him on the school bus. I need Yas to show a bit more of that ambition and bravery from episode one. I need Graham to want to be charging around the universe with the Doctor. And I need stories which are designed to let these character traits get them into trouble or get them out of it. I need to know why this story with these characters. This, of course, is drama 101.

I also need proper adventures with proper threats. Not races to the death which turn into a stroll across a desert. Not a vile white supremacist who it’s revealed can’t kill anyone and who has to be left alone to do his evil deeds to give him a chance. The Doctor’s mad jump from crane to crane in episode one was really exciting. Nothing’s matched it since or even come close. This, of course, is adventure 101.

This desperately thin, remorselessly uninvolving stuff really isn’t worth more than one star, but I’ll give it two on the basis that Rosa Parks’s story needs telling, and it was told here with clarity, taste and accuracy. That’s just not what I turn on Doctor Who for.

If the first story of the new season was a little uncertain, the follow-up was tremendously thin and underpowered. Six characters flog through a series of barely-challenging ordeals, but in a way which one could have managed, and the pay-off at the end scarcely seems worth it.

Where to start with this one?

Well, why don’t we start with the South African locations and the truly excellent camerawork, masterminded by director Mark Tonderai. Say what you want about this episode (and I intend to) it looks absolutely fantastic. That goes for the new opening titles as well. Harking back to the 1960s howlround effects, but in full 3D, they look lovely and the new theme is growing on me as well, except for the strangely flatulent wheeze about seven second in.

What’s missing is a pre-titles teaser, which has been a feature of the show since it returned in 2005, and a feature of a great many television shows besides. It’s a good discipline, forcing creatives to have something compelling and arresting on screen in the first few minutes. I rather miss it now it’s gone.

We start, inevitably, with our heroes being rescued from deep space – the only resolution that cliffhanger could possibly have had – and therefore a bit pointless. The Doctor does nothing clever to get them out of it, and so we have to accept that two mercenaries, battling each other for glory, would both independently stop and snatch exactly two out of the four travellers out of the vacuum, on the feeble and unexplained pretext that they might be “bonuses”. This of course is shot down by Art Malik, and shortly afterwards, Shaun Dooley calls the regular cast “irrelevant”. Trouble is – he’s not wrong.

Splitting the leading characters into two teams is fairly routine stuff, and so there might have been some point to having them scooped up in this way, if they were going to remain separated from each other for much of the episode. It might have been a bit more interesting to see, for example, Yas, having to cope with being on an alien planet without the Doctor there to protect her. In fact, the whole team is reunited after only a few minutes (and a little lesson from the Prometheus School Of Running Away From Things). The result is that Yas, in particular, is drastically under-served. Graham and Ryan get a nice enough scene about poor dead Grace, but as I feared, this ends up casting a pall over proceedings, without actually confronting the ghastly nature of real grief.

The plot, when Art Malik laboriously spells it out for us, is that dreariest of sci-fi/fantasy clichés the Journey Through The Cave Of Traps, which is here dressed up some kind of competition or race. Trouble is, it never feels like a competition or a race. The two “competitors” are generally friendly and collaborative, cheerfully let the Doctor do most of the problem-solving, never once sabotage each other or play dirty, and never show the slightest bit of urgency, before during or after agreeing to call it a draw.

In fact, the whole thing feels limp, underplotted for the running time and generally a bit, well, thin, with Chekhov’s Cigar hugely well signposted and the Doctor’s insistence on not using guns, rather undermined by her easy use of lethal force in any case. And just why do robot sentries carry guns that can be fired by human hands?

What seemed like a new and interesting “arc” – the need to find the TARDIS – actually gets resolved by the end of the episode. And I’m not so annoyed by that. The Doctor needs her TARDIS, and so does the show. And the new prop and set look great. But such a swift and easy resolution contributes to the feeling that this whole story was fundamentally irrelevant. If at the end of The Woman Who Fell To Earth, the Doctor had built a gizmo that brought her the TARDIS, then not much would have changed. And that’s this story all over. Precious little in the way of characterisation, very low on incident or imagination and ultimately rather pointless.

The scenery really was nice though.

Two stars, and I’m genuinely anxious about next week now.

It’s another clean sweep then.

As apparently is traditional, a new showrunner brings a new look, a new Doctor, a new supporting cast and a new title sequence and theme music (although we have to wait until next week for those last items).

Looking back to Series Five, what now seems extraordinary is how much of the Russell T Davies game-plan the new boy kept. Start with a run-around on Earth. Show us the Doctor from the companion’s point of view. Then go for a bonkers sci-fi outing, followed by a celebrity historical. Then a two-parter with a returning villain and so on.

Series Five also brought us HD for the first time, and now with Series Eleven, we have anamorphic lenses, a 2:1 aspect ratio and of course – a new Doctor.

Early portions of the episode didn’t work for me. I struggle to find anything to relate to in mopey Ryan Sinclair who appears to have dyspraxia instead of a clearly-defined character. His twee misery at not being able to ride a bike didn’t move me at all, and I desperately hoped that I wouldn’t have to witness his inspiring triumph over adversity when he rides a bike to save the day at the end. Luckily, this did not come to pass. Instead his dyspraxia was hardly ever referred to again, reducing him from a thinly-written character with dyspraxia to just some guy.

Yasmin, Graham and Grace I found much more engaging, but of course Grace spent the entire episode walking around with “About to Die” flashing in neon over her head. We’ve all seen the cast shots. We know she’s not part of the regular team. The question wasn’t whether, it was when.

And then Jodie Whittaker arrives.

I will politely gloss over the fact that along with two hearts, a respiratory bypass system and mild telepathy, the Doctor now seems to have gained the ability to survive a fall from hundreds of feet up in the air, straight through the roof of a train. She’s not even scratched.

Chris Chibnall can write the Doctor, and Jodie Whittaker can act. Whether this particular combination will pay dividends or not, it’s probably too early to tell. There’s often a moment early in a new Doctor’s reign where the characterisation settles down. Actually there are two moments that I’m looking for. One where I think “Okay – that’s the Doctor.” And one where I think “Ah! That’s new.” I got flashes of the former. The speech about what it feels like to regenerate put me in mind of Eccleston’s speech about feeling the world turning. But so far this is competent rather than exciting. Another fast-talking, impulsive, contradictory figure in the David Tennant or Matt Smith mould, but yet to really define what makes this incarnation different from all previous ones.

The rest of the plot was serviceable, giving us space to get to know the new team. Whittaker’s finest moment was probably building a new sonic screwdriver from scratch, rather than any of the actual saving-the-world stuff. And thank goodness we were spared an “I am the Doctor. On that basis and that basis alone, I win,” speech. I didn’t mind that she didn’t figure out what was going on right away, although I did find it odd that we only got one erroneous theory. I wonder if a second one is on the cutting room floor somewhere.

After some rather sluggish pacing in the middle, the climax with the two cranes worked incredibly well. Here the new cinematic style and fantastic music from new composer Segun Akinola really came together, and I began to get a glimpse of what might be in store.

But “fridging” Grace creates some new problems. Firstly, it looks as if we’re in for some more serialised storytelling. Doctor Who is fundamentally an anthology series, and you can’t half-ass this kind of thing. A Doctor Who story told in ten hour long episodes could be wonderfully epic, but that’s not the same as taking ten stand-alone tales and grafting on cliff-hangers to the end of each one. Serialised storytelling requires that actions have far-reaching consequences.

So, having Graham and whatisname taken on their journey with the Doctor by accident is good. It means we don’t have to watch them explain why actually they’re super happy to be going on adventure with a stranger when they should be poleaxed with grief. But I strongly suspect that Grace’s death won’t cast a pall over the rest of the season. How could it? So, we bump a character off to bring some “depth” to the episode, but then we pretty much forget it happened. That would work much better if we weren’t committed to making this one long saga.

But, listen, a lot of this is niggling and fussing, in some cases over things that may never happen. Let’s look instead and what is working. Three quarters of the new team is excellent. Graham and Yasmin are genuinely interesting characters, played by strong actors and Jodie is off to an excellent start. Let’s hope that the first Ryan-centric episode comes soon and gives Tosin Cole a chance to win me over.

The new series looks and sounds amazing, the plotting and dialogue are generally sound, and if we aren’t soaring to Moffatian heights of formal daring and machine-gun gags, then at least we aren’t thrashing around in the depths of Moffatian nonsense either. And of course – let’s all cheer – Doctor Who is back, back in the autumn, back on TV and back fighting bad guys.

Apparently, I’ve been saving the best for last. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Lady Bird was briefly the best-reviewed movie of all time (now overtaken by Paddington 2). I therefore sat down to watch Greta Gerwig’s unassuming coming-of-age movie with high expectations. It is, of course, excellently done, but I am slightly bewildered at the overwhelming adoration it has received. Maybe critics who are lauding it as an amazing debut didn’t see Frances Ha, also written by Gerwig (but with Noah Baumbach directing) which now looks somewhat like a trial run for this.

This is not to say that it isn’t excellent. It absolutely is. Gerwig’s acutely observed script follows Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson through the end of high school and the beginning of college, and essentially watches her – as many people do at this time in their lives – try on different personalities, ways of engaging with the world and circles of friends, in an attempt to discover who she is and what space there is left in the world for her. Time and again, Lady Bird presents us with situations very familiar from other movies (high school prom, losing virginity, meeting the parents), but time and again Gerwig finds a way to twist, tweak, surprise or invert these tropes, without the film ever departing from reality too much.

To deliver this script, Gerwig has marshalled an incredible cast, from the effortless Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird, to the impeccable Laurie Metcalfe as her mother, to Beanie Feldstein as her off-again, on-again best friend. And – look! – there’s Timothée Chalamet, so utterly convincing in Call Me By Your Name, incredibly funny and having a whale of a time playing the hideously pretentious boyfriend whom Lady Bird goes to bed with.

But as well done as all of this is, it seems inherently and necessarily limited in its scope. The themes, although universal, rarely rise above the trivial, and the appeal to religiosity at the end, while it might have more resonance with American audiences, did nothing whatever for me. So I would file this under “really well made” rather than “changed my life”.

I had almost equally high expectations for The Shape of Water, which comes to the 90th Academy Awards with the most nominations (13 including director, screenplay, score and cinematography). I made a point of watching del Toro’s early hit Pan’s Labyrinth which I hadn’t seen before and which I thought was absolutely amazing – far darker and grimmer than the whimsical fantasy I was anticipating, but hugely effective.

A few similar themes recur here, but the intent is subtly shifted. The period setting and the slight unreality of the production design create a fully-integrated world in which Doug Jones’ Amphibian Man fits properly. This contrasts with Pan’s Labyrinth in which the “real world” is generally presented in a realistic fashion and the hidden world of sprites and fauns seems fantastical. There’s also something fairy tale about Sally Hawkins’ apparent refusal to speak (although the marks on her neck, which give rise to the wonderful visual pun at the end hint at some physical trauma robbing her of the power).

But elsewhere, the feel is much more realistic, with some fairly grim and gruesome violence, not least Michael Shannon’s severed, reattached and rotting fingers, and it’s when these two approaches collide that the film is on thin ice. For much of its running time, the sheer conviction of the players – Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer and fabulously expressive and winning Sally Hawkins – carries it through. But all it takes is for the audience to think – even for a second – hang on, this is all a bit silly isn’t it? And suddenly the whole enterprise collapses. And it’s hard not to think that when Hawkins is blissfully filling her entire bathroom with water from an overflowing bath in order to engage in sub-aqua nookie with a fish man. Dear god!

Looking back on the nine nominees, then, it strikes me that while there are no outright disasters – nothing nominated this year is anything like as bad as The Imitation Game, Hacksaw Ridge or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – most of the nominees have been bettered by their own directors. Here, The Shape of Water is good, but not as good as Pan’s Labyrinth. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is good, but not as good as the same director’s Memento (or even The Dark Knight). Phantom Thread is good, but not as good as Magnolia. Three Billboards is good, but not as good as In Bruges. The Post is good but – take your pick! Call Me My Your Name may be better than I am Love, but I haven’t seen it.

Passing over Darkest Hour, which really isn’t all that good, that just leaves Lady Bird and Get Out: two films from first-time directors which really stand out as being true statements of intent from fascinating artists to look out for in the years to come. And although I thoroughly enjoyed Lady Bird, it can’t match the breadth, depth, complexity and ambition of Get Out, which – I’m slightly surprised to report – turns out to be my favourite of this year’s nominees.

On to predictions, briefly. I suspect another split year, with Three Billboards gaining enough momentum to overtake The Shape of Water (which is also dogged by accusations of plagiarism) for Best Picture, but I can’t see anyone other than del Toro winning Best Director. Best Actor and Best Actress are foregone conclusions (Oldman and McDormand) as is Best Supporting Actress (Allison Janney). Best Supporting Actor is a little more open but Sam Rockwell should probably have a speech ready.

Screenplay is much harder to call. Really, any of the five nominated films could take Best Original Screenplay, with Three Billboards probably having a slight edge, but I’d love Jordan Peele to take it. Best Adapted Screenplay won’t go to The Disaster Artist or Logan, but the other three all have a shot. I suspect the Academy’s tastes lean more towards Molly’s Game than Call Me By Your Name, but I’m by no means sure.

Join me back here this time next week and we’ll all know for certain.

Here we are again. As well as podcasting about the Oscars, I intend to continue blogging about them, so here are the runners and riders for the 90^th Academy Awards…

Call Me By Your Name – reviewed here. Moving drama with incredible performances and not quite enough story to sustain the length.

Darkest Hour – enjoyable history lesson with some ghastly lapses, held together by a wonderful central performance. Full review below.

Dunkirk – often very effective outing for Nolan’s rigorous style and not overlong, but not all sequences are equally effective

Get Out – stunning achievement, marrying black comedy, horror and social commentary in a brilliantly controlled manner.

Lady Bird – have yet to see, but looks great

Phantom Thread – have yet to see, and I don’t always enjoy Paul Thomas Anderson’s stuff, so I’m anxious

The Post – have yet to see, and worry that it is inessential

The Shape of Water – have yet to see, but it looks amazing

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – marvellous, meditative drama, which always kept me guessing. Full review below

Darkest Hour

Where would the Academy Awards be without a biopic of a famous historical character, played by a beloved character actor, labouring under mounds of latex? Some years we get several, this year Joe Wright and Gary Oldman provide the only one (unless you count The Post) although not the only film about Dunkirk.

To begin with, Oldman is amazing, with the aforementioned mound of latex applied gingerly and not too roughly, so that – while the resemblance is sometimes absolutely total – Oldman’s interpretation of the role is allowed to shine through. He completely inhabits the character – flaws, ideals, strengths, lapses and doubts – and never dips into caricature. Overall, I think his performance in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is probably finer (who else would dare go toe-to-toe with Alec Guinness) but this is the kind of expert showboating that the Academy loves and it’s hugely satisfying and fun to watch.

Director Joe Wright surrounds Oldman with an impressive roster of supporting actors too, from Kristin Scott-Thomas who eagerly laps up what tiny crumbs the script gives her and manages to sketch in something resembling a human in barely five minutes of screen-time; to Ronald Pickup, born to play Chamberlain and an excellent Ben Mendelsohn as stammering Bertie.

What isn’t quite so satisfactory is the script. The raw story arguably gives writer Anthony McCarten more to work with than the life of Stephen Hawking, but the pages he has produced are often equally flaccid and unconvincing as they were in The Theory of Everything. One huge problem is that the story, which pits Churchill’s newly-anointed Prime Minister against a gag of senior appeasers, doesn’t give him adequate space to articulate his views on how best to deal with the Nazi menace.

Senior parliamentary figures, having agreed to a war-time coalition on the basis that Chamberlain is removed from office, select Churchill as his successor, presumably knowing that he is certain that Hitler must be opposed and by military force, and then proceed to act as if the very thing was absolutely unthinkable. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that appeasement would have been a dreadful folly, but McCarten is so keen to make sure that Chamberlain, Halifax and the others are able to clearly explain the logic behind appeasement that he never gives Churchill the same opportunity. The result is that Winston is painted as a warmongering maverick who on this occasion got lucky. See Spielberg’s Lincoln for how to do this right. That film glides sedately to a stop while the President lays out exactly why nothing short of a constitutional amendment will do, because Spielberg understands that while such a scene might lack in visual excitement or emotional heft, if that issue is not made absolutely clear, then nothing else in the movie is going to matter.

And this may be the wrong place to bring this criticism up, but Oldman-as-Churchill is the latest in a long line of figures which I might call The Rude Good Man. This is a character who is breathtakingly arrogant and rude to those around him (often women) but whose rudeness is not without wit, and so we are invited to find it funny and iconoclastic (instead of just aggressive and unpleasant) and with whom we empathise because he is saying the unsayable and he is ultimately on the side of the angels. Isn’t it time this figure was laid to rest and Lily James given something to do other than have verbal punishment meted out to her?

So at the end of the film, Churchill must win over the doubters. Unlike Ava DuVernay, Wright is able to use Churchill’s real speeches, so we don’t get some awful paraphrase of “We will fight them on the beaches,” but the already-shaky logic of the film rather falls apart here. Churchill is criticised early on for not being straight with the people of Britain about just how dire the situation is. When the King comes around to his Prime Minister’s way of thinking (an epiphany which frustratingly happens off-screen) he tells him that they are now in partnership, but that the PM must start being straight with the British people. Churchill nods in agreement, but that is the last appearance of the King in the movie, and Churchill’s next opportunity to speak to the nation is the aforementioned famous barnstorming speech.

In fact, according to McCarten and Wright, what Churchill needed was to spend an implausibly long time going one stop on the London Underground, hob-nobbing with ordinary Londoners in order to kick-start his torpid confirmation bias. The absurd scene is the nadir of an otherwise fairly enjoyable film, and appears to have been left over from an earlier, sillier draft in which Churchill was made to sound like a Spitting Image puppet of Jeremy Corbyn, trying to score points in the house by asking questions from “ordinary voters”.

As far as the shooting goes, Wright does create a strong sense of place and time and texture, and he manages to pull off some impressive shots. What he lacks is the ability – which, again, Spielberg always seems to have had – to sew a number of amazing shots together into a fluid and dynamic sequence. Wright’s bravura dollies-to-the-sky and so on stand out because in the edit they are too often sandwiched between very static or otherwise pedestrian set-ups.

So – top ten movie of the year? Clearly not. But quite an enjoyable history lesson and a wonderful opportunity for one of our best actors to have a blast.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

Following his debut feature In Bruges, which was astonishing unless you were already familiar with his amazing stage work, writer-director Martin McDonagh stumbled slightly with the diverting but hollow Seven Psychopaths. Three Billboards feels like his most mature, complex and satisfying work to date. Not nearly as much fun as In Bruges (no-one even comes close to exploding the head of a little person, even though there’s a little person right there and nobody calls anyone an inanimate fucking object at any stage) but considerably deeper, richer and more interesting.

Frances McDormand is excellent as grieving mother Mildred Hayes, who pays $5000 to put up three enormous billboards on a quiet country road, taunting the local police for their inability to find her daughter’s killer. McDonagh’s work in the theatre hasn’t lead him to fall into the trap of telling the whole story verbally. People having ideas is one of the hardest things to pull off in cinema. From the opening of this film, I know I’m in safe hands, because McDonagh doesn’t make a meal of it. He just films McDormand driving past the derelict billboards and looking at them. That’s all you need.

This action sets up a wave of recriminations which touches Sam Rockwell’s racist thug of a cop, John Hawkes as Mildred’s ex-husband, Caleb Landry-Jones as the billboard manager and essentially the whole town. McDonagh’s first master-stroke (of many) is making the principle antagonist, Woody Harrelson’s Chief Willoughby, not an intransigent authority figure but instead a deeply compassionate family man with a cancer diagnosis.

To say much more would be to spoil this endlessly rich and rewarding film, but what really struck me was how the playwright’s cynical and mordant tone has shifted into something much more hopeful and optimistic. So, yes, we do get some clumsy racial slurs early on (which to be honest, the film doesn’t need and which stick in the throat a bit), as well as the nasty fun of McDormand drilling a hole through a disgruntled dentist’s thumbnail, or – in one amazing shot – Rockwell tossing Landry-Jones out of a second-storey window. But ultimately, the film offers us a redemptive view of humanity which is hugely refreshing and uplifting.

Some of the plot contrivances have come in for criticism, and I understand where those critiques are coming from (hi guys) but I don’t entirely share them, except in one case, very near the middle of the film, where poor old Željko Ivanek is made to recite some truly awful dialogue which makes no sense at all, but which is simply required to move one of the chess pieces to the appropriate square on the board. What’s much more laudable is the way McDonagh manages to avoid the plot disintegrating into a very uninteresting whodunnit without the gears grinding in the least little way. And what’s truly impressive is the that the film constantly kept me guessing without me ever feeling cheated, bewildered or manipulated.

Every member of the cast acquits themselves with honour – look it’s Lester Freamon! – and Carter Burwell’s music knits the whole thing together. A wonderful film to savour, bar a few tiny stumbles.

Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut arrives and it’s certainly a heady concoction, full of fizz and invention, but it does end up feeling just a little hollow. It’s the true story of the improbably-named Molly Bloom, whose career as a professional skier is interrupted by an injury and who ends up making more money running her boss’s poker game than she does doing her job. She therefore takes the game away from him and ends up as the unwitting confidante of a number of top players, including members of the Russian Mob.

Sorkin borrows a page from his own Facebook, designing the structure of the film around Molly’s court case, in which her phones full of incriminating texts from regulars at her poker games become the prize which law enforcement is after but which Molly, despite protestations from her lawyer, is unwilling to surrender. Around this main narrative thread, there are frequent flashbacks to Molly’s childhood, young adulthood and evenings running poker rooms.

The two different parts of the movie are handled very differently. Especially early on, Sorkin makes the flashbacks an assault on the senses. Chastain rattles out Sorkin’s voice-over dialogue with crisp authority as driving music knits together images from a huge variety of sources, to the point where the style is not so much Award Winning Prestige Motion Picture, but more YouTube video. At times, he seems about to fall prey to one of what David Frost called “Lord Privy Seals“.

The rest of the film – mainly contemporary verbal fencing between Jessica Chastain’s resolute Molly and Idris Elba’s compassionate lawyer (thankfully much more cautious Stringer Bell than lumpen Luther) –  is more conventionally shot and edited. Sorkin, whether wisely or not, trusts that his dialogue and his actors will carry the day. And they mostly do. Both Elba and Chastain do solid work, if a little one-note. Kevin Costner and Jeremy Strong are both fine. Michael Cera has fun as movie-star composite Player X, and Chris O’Dowd possibly has little too much fun as the hilariously inarticulate Douglas Downey, whose Russian Mob connections prove to be Molly’s downfall. It’s just a shame that as a director, Sorkin hasn’t found any middle ground between shooting his scenes like a particularly demented music video on the one hand, and like any random episode of The West Wing on the other.

The story itself is well-paced and never less than entertaining. Sorkin uses the backstory well, serves the needs of poker and poker-related gamesmanship, family drama and legal thriller equally and adroitly, and – as you might expect – the dialogue crackles along. He is also unafraid to deploy jokes, even during moment of the highest drama, so when Elba is speechifying or Chastain is expositing, all is right with the world.

But there are a few niggles. Surprisingly, not all the poker stuff is completely accurate. Twice Sorkin, who must have known better, over-reaches. Wanting to establish Michael Cera’s character as a brilliantly player who can force better hands to fold, he gives the other player the nuts, i.e. an unbeatable hand, which strains credulity quite unnecessarily. Later, he allows Molly to begin raking the pot in the middle of a hand, which is highly unlikely to be true. I suppose it could be, I haven’t read the book, but most players would revolt at this sudden, unexpected and irrevocable rewriting of the rules.

Ultimately, with an eye on the Oscars, the question becomes – is this just a thrill ride, a roller coaster of words and situations, or does it illuminate something bigger than itself. In conversations with Dad Costner and lawyer Elba, the nature of Molly’s stubborn integrity is probed, but she remains a movie hero, who plays by her own rules, but whose interior life is only glimpsed occasionally, unless it’s being spelled out for us in voice over.

And as the film has no ambitions to explore anything beyond the realms of poker and crime, this remains a well-made entertainment rather than a masterpiece.

Look out for episode 0 of my new podcast Best Pick, dropping on Wednesday, and be back here on 23 January for the Oscar nominations,

Although the nominations have not yet been announced, I’ve got my eye on what films are getting “buzz”. One leading candidate I’ve already seen (Dunkirk) and at least a couple of other slightly more left-field possibilities are also in the bag (Get Out and Bladerunner 2049) but back in London with a less-than-usually hectic schedule, I sought out a couple of indie films likely to get mentions on 23 January.

Please remember, my reviews are not guaranteed to be spoiler-free. Proceed at your own risk.

The first film I took in was The Florida Project, Sean Baker’s depiction of a young mother struggling to make ends meet for her and her six-year-old daughter in her run-down motel in the shadow of Walt Disney World in Orlando. Brooklyn Prince as Halley and Bria Vinaite as her daughter Mooney are outstanding as is the rest of the mostly-unknown cast who all give hugely engaging, truthful performances. Really only Willem Dafoe is at all familiar, but he slips in beautifully as Bobby, the wearily compassionate manager of the Magic Castle.

Halley scams, makes friends, makes enemies. Mooney plays, makes friends, makes enemies. Bobby bears witness, tries to protect Halley from herself and the motel from Halley, and all of this takes place walking distance from The Happiest Place On Earth™. Baker is very aware of the irony, but to his credit, never leans on it too heavily. It’s all beautifully observed and never less than fascinating to watch, but although to some extent Halley’s misdeeds do start catching up with her at the end of the film, I never quite got the sense of the dominoes starting to topple. Sean Baker has essentially made a dozen or so short films set in this fascinating location, but for me there’s no sense of crescendo even when social services arrive and try and take Mooney away. And the eventual (slightly inexplicable) trip to the real Magic Kingdom at the end doesn’t deliver the necessary catharsis either, because it’s all over with very quickly, and too many threads are left hanging.

Similarly episodic, but (slightly) more in control of the narrative structure is Call Me By Your Name which arrives festooned with awards and critical acclaim. Directed by Luca Guadagnino with a script by James Ivory from the novel by André Aciman, this is a coming-of-age story in four languages set in a bucolic Italian retreat some time in the 1980s.

Elio, the slightly feckless son of academic Jewish couple the Perlmans, sees his regular summer sojourns as a tedious stretch to be endured, but he begins experimenting sexually with one of the local girls, not least as a distraction from this year’s visiting student Oliver, played with brawny intelligence by Armie Hammer. Eventually, the two of them develop a sexual relationship.

As Elio, Timothée Chalamet is revelatory, his unstudied awkwardness and fleeting articulacy capturing with pure honesty the way a young life is slowly assembled through different experiences. But while this film doesn’t have the near-random order of events that weakens Florida, it does get a bit bogged-down in the long middle section where Elio and Oliver continue their affair, happily, warmly, equally and without fear of discovery or approbation. The desire to avoid melodrama is laudable, but the danger is that one avoids drama.

Looking at a synopsis, I can see that the plot of the novel has been streamlined, and I can understand why, but when it becomes clear that this is not an older man taking advantage of a younger man, nor a foolish infatuation of a teenager with an adult, but a genuine meeting-of-minds, then simply watching that play out is not quite as interesting to me as it apparently is for Guadagnino. So I found that the episodic feeling was a bigger problem here than with The Florida Project simply because the stakes feel so low here.

Unlike Florida, though, when the catharsis comes, it really hits home. In a movie which is largely concerned with visuals, where many scenes play out with little or no dialogue, the crucial scene is essentially a monologue from Michael Stuhlbarg to his son. Stuhlbarg, a fabulous actor, pulls it off magnificently, and so finally, and without ever tipping into hysteria, the film delivers a real punch of an ending, which considerably makes up for the sluggish preceding half hour or so.

That’s it for now. Other movies which I imagine are in the running include The Post, Molly’s Game, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Lady Bird, and Detroit. I also wouldn’t rule out The Big Sick, The Shape of Water and I Tonya.

Give me a second to blow the dust off. Right, there we go. Hello everyone.

As what I fondly imagine are “regular readers” will recall, I was, by and large, hugely impressed with Series Ten of Doctor Who, and the two-part season finale in particular I thought was a total triumph, one of Steven Moffatt’s very best scripts for the series, brilliantly orchestrated by Rachel Talalay and anchored by a titanic performance from Peter Capaldi. I was fully on-board for the gimmick of regenerating Doctor meets regenerating Doctor and so was beside myself with anticipation for this year’s Christmas special.

What we got was… unexpected.

The opening was glorious, clips from The Tenth Planet artfully merged with recreated scenes, until finally Doctor meets Doctor in the nostalgically studio-bound polar wastes. But for the first forty minutes or so, this was pretty flaccid stuff. True, both Doctors played their parts to the hilt – although as usual the returning Doctor is a pastiche version rather than an accurate evocation of the real thing. The most outré lines though, were accurate Hartnell quotes. Mark Gatiss too plays his part with real feeling and sensitivity, and of course it’s a delight to have Bill Potts back, and even more of a delight to see her wandering around a beautifully-recreated classic TARDIS.

But where’s the jeopardy? Where’s the drama? Where, in short, is the plot? As delightful as it is to have Peter Capaldi and David Bradley exchanging well-crafted zingers, put-downs and in-jokes (“Mr Pastry”) the whole thing seems almost entirely inert, and that allows nagging questions to start to impinge. Just why exactly does two Doctors meeting in 1986 pluck a dying soldier from the battlefield in 1914? Why is such a big issue being made of Bill’s identity if no solution proffered is going to prove acceptable to the Doctor? And why on Earth are we risking life and regenerating limb to double check Nikki Amuka-Bird’s story with Rusty the Dalek from the forgettable Series Eight story?

If that was all this story had to offer, I would be pretty pissed off by now. Luckily, the last fifteen minutes are something a bit special. From the Christmas Eve Armistice onwards, the story suddenly takes flight. An evil villain plotting the downfall of our heroes still fails to materialise, but the rich themes of sacrifice, honour, friendship and kindness come to the fore, and the returning companions are handled with much more grace and subtlety than Karen Gillan’s reprise of Amy in the very unsatisfactory Time of the Doctor.

The regeneration itself – alone as it was the last time a Doctor and a showrunner departed together – was a little laboured, but who could really argue for cutting Capaldi’s final barnstorming performance? And lo! There she is. The Doctor. All blonde hair, wide eyes and in the most terrible trouble, plunging to certain death out of the TARDIS doors. Oh brilliant.

So – some housekeeping.

To briefly recap, Steven Moffat’s first three seasons were characterised by vaulting ambition which rapidly out-reached the series’ ability to attain them. While the arc-plot collapsed into further and further gibberish, only a few stand-out episodes survived (The Girl Who Waited, A Good Man Goes to War, The Crimson Horror and especially The Doctor’s Wife) despite Matt Smith’s supple performance.

With Capaldi at the helm, the seas were calmer. The last series alone boasted Thin Ice, Oxygen and The Pyramid at the End of the World which would be poll-winners in any year which didn’t include World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls. So, Chibnall and Whittaker inherit a series in rude health. I can’t wait to see what they do with it.

Lastly, this blog will probably not spring back into the kind of life which it enjoyed in its heyday, but I will be recording some probably fairly brief Oscar reviews in the coming weeks and months, when I can find time away from my new podcast – Best Pick.

As the Capaldi era comes to an end, Steven Moffat has just three more chances to show us that his technical brilliance, his love for the programme and his vaulting ambition can work together to provide some really terrific storytelling, and not get in each other’s way as they are so wont to do.

The opening of World Enough and Time is unbelievably cheeky, with Missy proclaiming “I am Doctor Who and these are my expendables – Exposition and Comic Relief.” This almost feels last-day-of-school, but Moffat, guardian of the legacy, is always careful to provide a canon-friendly interpretation of the lines.

We find ourselves on board a miles-long spaceship, fighting the gravity well of a black hole, such that it is experiencing massive time dilation effects. This is a lovely science fiction concept, based in real physics, it’s just a shame that we saw another, slightly less rigorous version, last week. Suddenly, shockingly, Bill Potts gets a hole visibly blasted through her middle and then Cybermen bundle her off to the floors below. Although – if the Cybermen are evolving on the very bottom floors, where time is running the slowest, surely it should take them decades to even notice the presence of humans on the upper levels?

While the Doctor debates and argues, Bill makes friends with a shambling Fagin-like figure in the hospital on the ground floor. A lot of this is just vamping, and it’s slightly annoying that the time dilation isn’t ramped up just a little bit more. We know full well that the “hospital” is a cyber-conversion centre so the suspense is when and not if Bill will be fully converted. But the scenes of the Doctor working the problem feel a bit lifeless, which is a shame when the time dilation means that the Doctor and company could have headed straight for the lift and still been years getting down to where Bill is.

What’s brilliant about the stuff with Bill is how cleverly Moffat uses parts of the mythology which have gone unnoticed until now and provides justifications for them. Just as Clara’s calm words get turned into Dalek ranting in The Witch’s Familiar, and so we understand why Daleks sound the way they do, here the Cyber chest-units are retconned into elaborate surgical heart-replacements. And don’t the “Mondasian” Cybermen look fantastic?

About half way through the episode, I caught myself musing “I wonder when John Simm is going to show up,” and then I instantly realised that that’s who Fagin was. I honestly don’t think I would ever have got there without the advanced publicity. Shame on you, BBC.

Finally, at the episode’s end it all comes together. The Master is unveiled, Bill is converted, and the Doctor is at a loss. It’s a great part one, emphasising personal loss and avoiding the diminishing returns which set in when writers start trying to raise the stakes by having the threat become greater and greater.

The Doctor Falls takes an hour to wrap up – well sort of – what the previous episode began, but compare to season finales past, never seems hurried or over-stuffed. It’s nice to see the Doctor on the front foot so early on, springing into action and escaping to higher floors. The location footage on Sam Spiro’s farm somewhat fights the notion that we are on a gigantic spaceship, but there are sufficient reminders so this just about works and Rachel Talalay handles this visual conundrum very well indeed.

Shooting cyber-Bill as Pearl Mackie means we never forget the person inside the tin suit, and keeps hope alive that she will be returned, even if the rest of the script is dismantling that hope piece-by-piece. Her plight is hugely affecting and it’s clear that – for once – Moffat is thinking through the human side of the dilemma he’s created instead of just writing crossword puzzle clues for the viewers to solve.

The time dilation works for and against our heroes. On the one hand, it means that the Cybermen have time to evolve (another lovely piece of ret-conning – the Cybermen are not unique to Mondas or Telos, or Marinus(!), but are an inevitable by-product of technological advancement). But it also means that with each floor you go up, it takes them longer to follow. So Nardole figuring out how to selectively blow up parts of the ship buys them time, but more time than it might have done otherwise. (Although the justification that Nardole’s remote control device can’t be controlled remotely is astonishingly feeble.)

From here – the story follows three tracks. The fate of Bill. The fate of the children. The fate of the Master. They don’t really affect each other, which is not perhaps ideal. The Master can be removed from the story entirely without anything changing, but unlike the pointless cameo from Clare Higgins in Hell Bent, here they serve not just as something to cut away to, but underline the real point of the story, and indeed the point of the Doctor. I would have liked it underlined that the Master(s) leave the children to die not because they refuse to be kind, but because they are cowardly. But nevertheless, the Doctor’s desperate plea that they stand and fight with him, and their ironic mutual destruction add immeasurably to the episode’s bleak tone.

Bill of course, finds a saviour, in the form of The Pilot from Episode One. Again – serialised storytelling done right. This is not vaguely mentioning a past event in order to get a fanwanky cheer. This is setting up a figure with clearly defined abilities and proclivities and then dropping her back into the narrative when she’s needed.

The fate of the children and Nardole is rather less clear. The Doctor is totally backed into a corner here. Wounded, dying even. An army of cybermen below him which will only grow bigger. One opportunity to get innocents out of the line of fire. All he can do is send them a few floors up and hope that they have a few extra months or years – either to live and grow and be happy, or to think of another plan.

The Doctor himself, meanwhile, fighting off regeneration, stumbles out of the TARDIS and into the snowy landscape, presumably of the North Pole c. 1986 and meets – himself.

Well, we’ll judge this audacious move on the merits of the Christmas special, but let’s try and assess this two parter on its own merits.

Clearly, it’s by far the best finale Steven Moffat has written. The Big Bang barely makes any sense, and coming off the back of The Pandorica Opens with its absurd Monster Convention, it’s amazing that it works at all on any level. The Wedding of River Song is total gibberish, failing to wrap up the Lake Silencio storyline in any satisfactory way, and providing next to nothing in terms of narrative coherence. The Name of the Doctor doubles down on this kind of unintelligibility, although The Time of the Doctor makes it look like a masterpiece of structure. Time is surely the worst regeneration episode in the entire show’s history.

Under the firm leadership of Peter Capaldi, things improve. Death in Heaven isn’t a patch on Dark Water, but is still far better than any of the Smith finale episodes (maybe on a par with The Big Bang). Hell Bent, alas squanders the considerable capital built up by Heaven Sent, but this year’s pair work beautifully together to tell a complicated science-fiction story, that keeps its focus on the characters we love and care about, which doesn’t try and pack too much in to its running time, and which lets five amazing actors do wonderful work together. It’s telling how much more apocalyptic this feels than The Big Bang for example, not because the fate of the universe is threatened, but because the Doctor gives so much to eke out a draw against impossible odds.

A few little niggles in both episodes prevent me from offering up a full five stars but I’ll happily give four and a half to both.

Overall, this has been another very strong season, with only Smile and Knock Knock really letting the side down. Extremis makes not a whit of sense but is quite fun while it’s on and all the others have been good to great. Here’s my final ranking.

1. World Enough and Time
2. The Doctor Falls 
3. The Pyramid at the End of the World 
4. Oxygen 
5. Thin Ice 
6. The Lie of the Land 
7. The Eaters of Light 
8. Empress of Mars 
9. The Pilot 
10. Extremis 
11. Knock Knock
12. Smile 

And just for fun, let’s compare this to the rankings on Gallifrey Base to see just how in-tune or out-of-step I am with Doctor Who fans across the world.

1. World Enough and Time 91%
2. The Doctor Falls 86%
3. Oxygen 82%
4. Extremis 79%
5. The Pilot 76%
6. Thin Ice 74%
7. Knock Knock 74%
8. Empress of Mars 73%
9. The Pyramid at the End of the World 73%
10. The Eaters of Light 69%
11. Smile 67%
12. The Lie of the Land 64%

The fondness for Oxygen as well as the finale two-parter doesn’t surprise me, nor does how much people like Extremis. The excellent Pyramid coming so low down, beneath the awful Knock Knock is very surprising, and I would never have picked The Lie of the Land as the season’s worst. I wonder why people disliked it so much?

One more Capaldi episode to go. See you at Christmas…

I don’t remember whether or not, as I sat and watched Survival in December 1989, I knew I was watching the last episode of Doctor Who for the foreseeable future. Over ten years, I’d watched this stalwart of British TV get shunted around the schedules, have its season lengths slashed, and finally I’d watched it get shut down and pensioned off.

When the series came back (properly came back), sixteen years had passed. Yes, we got the Daleks back, but without Roy Skelton and without John Scott Martin. The Cybermen returned, but David Banks and Michael Kilgariff remained absent. The Master returned, but Geoffrey Beevers stayed at home. It was a new broom. A new team. About the only exception to this implacable rule was director Graeme Harper. (Thinking of other exceptions is left as an exercise for the reader.)

So, when last week Ysanne Churchman reprised her role as Alpha Centauri, it seemed only fitting that this week was the first time a classic series writer returned to the fold. Rona Munroe created the planet of the Kitlings, and it is she who now brings us The Eaters of Light.

Before we gear up for the no-doubt dementedly epic two-part finale we take a break from serialised storytelling and just go for a yarn. This is a pretty good one, albeit kicked off by the fairly unlikely premise that Bill Potts, yes, that Bill Potts, would be so invested in the fate of the ninth Legion of the Imperial Roman Army that she would have to go and see for herself. What she in fact finds is one of the best-designed and executed monsters the series has ever done, linked with a strong science-fiction device that actually seems to make sense and to work. All this and a nifty moral dilemma too.  If this is non-epic, non game-changing, Doctor Who business-as-usual, then I’m all for it.

There is a slight issue, as there so often is, with the cannon-fodder cast not always being too readily distinguishable, but Rebecca Benson does well as Kar, and so do Brian Vernal and Sam Adewunmi on the Roman side. But after a week in which they were slightly overshadowed by the guest cast, this time around the regulars really get to shine. Ten episodes in and the writers still haven’t got bored of the concept of Bill asking all those questions which have never been asked before, which is great because neither have I. But this is easily the best Nardole episode yet, playing right into Matt Lucas’s comedy talents without him ever becoming annoying.

The Stones of Blood style opening probably isn’t needed. Either this was a set-up for a pay-off later deleted, or a last-minute addition to bulk out the running time. The tag with Missy obviously belongs to the next story and not this one, so I’ll overlook it for now. And the nonsense with the crows is a hideous stumble, bringing back horrid memories of Matt Smith claiming he can speak baby. But overall, this is fine stuff, funny, exciting and properly thought through with Charles Palmer doing a fantastic job behind the camera. Four stars.