In Space Everyone Can Hear You Sing.

The Rings Of Akhaten is a surprisingly challenging episode to review. There are episodes that are clearly brilliant. There are episodes that are, in all honesty, pretty shite. But there's not many that somehow manage to be some shades of both at the same time. Sure, there are stories that are good but have their flaws, just as there episodes that are flawed but have their good points. But somehow Rings seems to transcend these usual strictures to become something new. It's fairly objectively bad, and the what little plot it has quickly falls apart into nonsensical mush. But somehow it remains fairly enjoyable despite all this. Remind you of anything?

Oh yeah, I went there.

There is an almost overwhelming sense of this episode trying to be The End Of The World, Special Edition.  Companion asks to go somewhere cool, Doctor takes them to futuristic space locale with lots of aliens. Only now there's MOAR ALIENZ! Then we skip the whole being locked in cupboard for most of the episode and skip ahead to The Beast Below Redux as the companion proceeds to befriend a troubled young girl and do some wandering off.

Now, it would be churlish in the extreme to not note that the whole thing looks utterly fantastic. The location is a fantastic cross between the Mos Eisly Cantina from Star Wars and the Troll market from Hellboy 2. I don't think we've ever had quite so many different aliens onscreen at once at the atmosphere is fantastic. You also get the fun game of trying to spot where all the alien costumes have been sourced from. Defiantly one or two actually from The End Of The World in there. Although the bastard offspring of the Hoix and a Hath is perhaps one slash fiction too far.

But for all the marvellous atmosphere and character we get here, it's also pointing towards the major problem in the episode. As I said, the plot is basically a mash up of The End Of The World and The Beast Below, pushing all the buttons on previous companions second episodes so hard they may as well have the changed the lyrics in all the songs to "Oooohhhh, Clara's First Date, Oooooohhhh". But we'll get back to the singing later. It's this sense of familiarity perhaps that first engenders the thought that what we have here isn't really a plot, so much as it is a collection of established Tropes. It's almost by the numbers Whoisms, but never really comes together as a coherent whole. Which is a shame really. As I said, the look, and indeed the setting is marvellous.

If anything that's what we have here. This isn't so much a novel as it is an RPG sourcebook. It provides everything required for the basis of a good story, but doesn't actually deliver much in the way of actual story itself.

Obviously not all sourcebooks even go that far.

So we have this crazy alien market where the currency is based around sentimental value? That's awesome. We have an ancient evil guy who is locked away and kept asleep by an order who have been singing him a special song for millennia? Again, this is a cool idea. Incredibly D&D in a way (the good way), but also totally Dr Who.

Sounds kinda familiar, but I can't quite place it.

Then we have the young priestess who's fled into the market and is being sought by both members of the aforementioned order and also sinister shadowy forces? This is sounding more and more D&D by the second isn't it? She' then encounters the PCs who must help her avoid the shadowy evil types and complete the ritual to keep the old god asleep. Except then something goes wrong, she gets taken away and the PCs must venture into a dungeon to rescue her? Seriously, why are there not more Owlbears in this episode?

IN SSSPPPPAAAAAAAACCCCEEEE!!!!

Of course, we're now at the point where the plot turns to mush. It's like they switched DM in between sessions. You started with the guy who'd read through the module and was really into character and world building and stuff, and he ran it up to the song starting. Then he called in sick and Bizzaro DM took over, skipping over most of the text in order to just to get to some combat. Whilst forgetting that we're playing D&Dr Who so THERE IS NO COMBAT.

So first of all the song stops. No reason for this is actually apparent. Both singers just kinda... Stop. They're not interrupted by anything, nobody flubs a line. They both just give up for no readily apparent reason. And then the kid flies off into space because it is now the time for poorly realised threats to rear their heads.

So, everybody heads to the dungeon. Because that's what you tend to do in these situations. And we get some fun ideas to be fair. The business with the door is kinda fun, and the idea that the one monk dude there is to busy trying to keep the bad guy asleep to actually tell anyone how they might help is apparent, if woefully unexplored. Not that that last very long as the Doctor basically tells him shut up. So the monk either teleports away or self destructs, the big bad wakes up now that no one is trying to keep him down and the kid attaches Clara to the wall with mind duct tape. Because reasons?

See, this is what I'm talking about when I say the plot goes to mush. We get no real indication that the chanting isn't actually helping. Nothing really bad happens until it's stopped. But we at least get a hand wave to the effect that badness was inevitable so I guess we'll let that go. Then we have the whole sticking Clara to the wall bit. Two obvious question. How? And perhaps more importantly, WHY? I mean, never mind wondering why it is that no one else gets stuck to a wall, even when they're posing a direct threat. Why stick the ONE person who's been consistently nice and helpful towards you to a box of soul eating monsters? Especially when the thing they were doing at the time was simply continuing to be nice and helpful? It's baffling, random, comes out of nowhere, is quickly forgotten and serves no real purpose.

Rather like the Vigil.

Now, don't get me wrong, that's a sweet monster design. And their initial appearance in the episode is fairly effectively creepy. But they don't really serve any real purpose in the story, outside of being a cool monster to make a toy out of. If you think about it you could cut them out entirely and all you'd lose would be about 4 minutes. Which you could then spend in establishing what the fuck the plot is meant to be.

I mean, the purpose of the Vigil is apparently to enforce the sacrifice of the Queen Of Years so that the Old God is awakened. Which is possibly the single most D&D sentence I've ever typed in my life, but never mind. Thing is, nobody actually seems to remember the whole human sacrifice aspect of this ritual until the last possible minute. When she first shows up Merry isn't worried about having soul devoured by an ancient evil mummy. She's worried about flubbing her lines in front of everyone. Despite knowing it's Vigils job to FEED HER TO A MUMMY. Again, it's like second DM came in and just started randomly changing thing because he couldn't be bothered to read all of the module. And then he quickly gets bored and replaces them with something else. In fact he decides to replace EVERYTHING with something else, as apparently we're dealing with one of THOSE DMs who thinks that a total party wipe is actually the entire point of the game. And so it is that after all the build up to the awakening of this ancient and dessicated evil THING, after all the rage and fury it exhibited on awakening, and just at the point where we might finally find out what all the fuss is about the whole thing is dropped and forgotten about and instead the Doctor has to go fight a giant smiley.

No, really. THIS HAPPENS.

Yeah.... The giant sentient stellar phenomenon thing worked pretty good in 42, but that might just be because it wasn't a PLANET SIZED SMILEY FACE. A bit of spectacle is all well and good, but seriously? Knock that shit off.

So, despite the DM having traded D6 Orcs for fucking UNICRON the Doctor steps up to defeat the alien menace, because that's kinda his thing. And we get some great character stuff before hand, and the Doctor has a lovely speech. And to be fair the idea that, seeing as how this is apparently some mental parasite thing, the Doctor can in someway poison it with all the shit he's had to deal with over the years actually works just fine for me.

Sounds kinda familiar, but I can't quite place it...

The Doctor has, after all, been through some serious shit. It kinda fits that this may be more than even an ancient parasite god might be able to deal with. The fact that it isn't though does rather spoil the whole thing. The further fact that he apparently hasn't been through as much shit as a fucking LEAF however is just insulting.

Now, the picture of a shitty DM being browbeaten into giving up on his overpowered boss monster by players pulling as much metaphorical mumbo jumbo bullshit out of their asses as possible, whilst dropping several rather unsubtle hints that the kind of shit he's been pulling this game is really not acceptable to the group until finally concedes and then we can all go get pizza is kinda funny in it's own way. But it does not a fitting resolution to TV show make. Not by a long shot. Indeed, this treads perilously close defeating the boss monster with the power of WUV.

It's only through pure semantics that it doesn't power over the line completely and totally ruin everything. But that's the weird thing. Despite skirting the line between enjoyment and fanrage so closely I wasn't really all that cross at the episode. You take something like Fear Her or Night Terrors or Asylum Of The Daleks and I'll quite happily get all aggravated over how the plot doesn't work or a premise is wasted. But at the end of this I was more.... ambivalent  I can't really get angry at the crappy plot because the episode doesn't really have one. If anything this feels more like a Russell T Davis script than anything. it pootles along doing a few nice character spots along the way, then suddenly remembers that it finishing in 10 minutes. If anything it didn't just forget to plan for an ending, it forgot to even establish a threat for the ending to resolve. But it still manages enough that you don't quite mind as much as you think you perhaps should. after all, despite them running about on asteroids and flying through space without a helmet I never once really found myself worrying about why it nobody was dying of asphyxiation or explosive decompression. It just kinda went with the setting. Same for all that singing business. How is it that you can hear someone singing 3 miles away across the vacuum of space? Because this isn't really SPACE space. Really the only problem was singing is that it took up time that might have perhaps been better spent establishing a credible threat or plot. The pacing is kinda weird, as it feels mostly like the first episode of an old school four parter. We take our time establishing the setting and characters before a dramatic SOMETHING happens for the cliffhanger. Then you'd have an episode and half or so of running around with Vigil as the monster before the big twist that the Mummy is in fact the problem and the Doctors interference has let it out! Then finish up fighting him, skip the Smiley because the budget would thankfully not stretch that far and off into the wild blue yonder. As opposed to squishing the middle 2 episodes into about 2 minutes. But whatever.

There is one other thing that I feel needs addressing though. This was something I noticed in the last episode, but never quite got around to bringing up. Is it just me, or is the Doctor getting a bit, well, CREEPY?

In the Bells of St John we had him hanging around in an unconscious young girls bedroom, sniffing and even TASTING her various personal possessions.

In this episode he's now actively STALKING the poor girl throughout time. I mean, I know that she's meant to be something of a mystery, but seriously dude, tone it down a bit. It's not like you've never met anyone who looked the same in different times and places before. I mean, for fucks sake, one time you WERE that person.

Maybe this is where he got the hat fetish from?

6th Doctor & Maxil? Princess Astra & Romana? Martha & Adeola? Amy Pond & That one bit from The Fires Of Pompeii? The daft Welsh bird from Torchwood and the dead Welsh bird from The Unquiet dead? Sara Kingdom & Morgaine & Richard The Lionhearts sister? Something like SEVENTY PERCENT of all supporting roles cast prior to 1980? You should be used to this shit by now. I do hope they'll do more soon to establish why it is that this particular case is so damn special. Because really, if wanted to get creeped by inappropriate behaviour that much I'd start recapping another bloody romance novel.