That's my reaction after watching the Witches Familiar. After last week I was feeling almost positive about this new series of Doctor Who. Things seemed like they might be going in interesting directions. And they still might. It's not like this episode was an irredeemable failure on every conceptual level like Asylum Of The Daleks was. It had some good stuff going on. But there are many elements that just don't quite work. As I'm sure I've talked about previously there are levels of this you can tolerate or even forgive, but if stuff builds up there eventually comes a point when you just can't ignore it any more and you're yanked right out enjoying and sent hurtling into complaining in a rather abrupt fashion.
Now, there are several fairly significant things that need to be nitpicked in tedious detail. And we will get to those. But if I had to pinpoint one particular moment in the episode when the roped well and truly snapped on my suspension of disbelief, well, that's easy.
Now, let's be clear here. Davros playing upon the Doctors sense of mercy and compassion to further his evil ends is a great idea. But Davros HAVING EYES? No, sorry. That was it for me. That's just daft.
But why? Well, there's the obvious fact that his eyeballs burst when he was hit in the face with an atomic explosion. That's kinda why he's in the damn chair being all gnarly and fucked up without most of his organs. It's kinda an important part of his history. He's got the 3rd eye as a replacement because he lost the conventional ones. But mostly I think it's the fact that we are immediately confronted that rather than being horrifically maimed, he's spend the last 2000 years SITTING AROUND WITH HIS EYES CLOSED FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
If you can't see them, they can't see you!
He's supposed to be an insane genius, not a gibbering simpleton. How exactly is that supposed to make ANY sense?
So... yeah. That rather threw my sympathy out of the window. Although to be fair Bisshie Davros or not is was rather going that way. That was just the tipping point. Once you're past that then the problems just keep adding up. So, where do we begin?
Well, we could mention how in the beginning of the episode when Missy is asking Clara to work out the Doctor escapes in her story, the fact that she answers correctly doesn't make Clara look smart so much as it reveals just how reliant things have become on glib and vacuous technobabble. There's all that constant yelling out of Clara's name by basically everyone, as if enough people mentioning her will suddenly start making us give a damn. Although to be fair that might just be me. But I suppose, the main problem, the one I was afraid of, the one thing I was really hoping to be proved wrong on, is once again the simple fact that Steven Moffat is apparently incapable of writing Dalek stories.
Asylum Of The Daleks still stands today as one of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time (in my opinion at least). Into The Dalek was, charitably, pants. And now we have him once again just somehow not getting it. Which is frankly just WEIRD. I mean, he's generally pretty good. He seems to have a reasonably good grasp on what makes a good Doctor Who story. So what's the problem?
In purely Dalek terms here he doesn't seem to be able tell the difference between the Dalek creature and it's casing. A mistake that had previously been made in Destiny Of The Daleks. What's funny about this is simply that this particular 2 parter is so obviously aiming for Genesis Of The Daleks.
I believe this is what they call a swing and a miss.
Funny how many parallels there are to be had there really. Let's bring back Skaro! Let's bring back the Daleks! Let's have Davros skulking around a darkened bunker! Let's not actually make it very good!
Anyway, where we? Ah yeas, machines and mutants. A Dalek is a combination of the two, but it's the mutant that causes the problems because it's been genetically engineered to be a complete bastard. Which might tragic if they weren't always trying to kill everyone but they are so never mind. But once again we're here shown that the problem is actually with the technology. When Clara get's inside the casing we're shown that a Dalek can't say anything nice not because it doesn't want to, but because it's not allowed to. And then, when it get's all upset about this the gun goes off. I get that this is done because it's supposed to be a claustrophobic, scary experience for the character trapped in the casing. But since that character is Clata I really don't care about her plight so much as the immediately obvious fact that maybe the Daleks have been nice all along and there's just a bug in their translation software that means every time they try and ask for a hug it comes out as something genocidal.
Like so.
That's not really a good thing to invoke for what is meant to be the biggest baddest monster in the series. There have been one or two good sympathetic Dalek stories (By which I mean Jubilee), but what makes those effective is that they're unusual and unexpected. But now they're becoming the norm, which is just... dumb. A villain or monster who has an unexpected bit of occasional pathos interesting. But when every story is showing them as sympathetic victims then they're not actually monsters any more. And this one bit is basically trying to do this to every Dalek story ever.
See what I mean when I say the episode is problematic? It's just undermining the Daleks as any sort of actual threat or menace.
Then there's the poo.
Yeah, the whole bit with the sewers is a little... odd. So, Daleks don't die? But they do decompose into liquid poo. Which is somehow still alive? Even though rotting down to a liquid slurry is about as fucking dead as it's possible to get without involving a flamethrower? And the poo is somehow sentient and angry? But only at other Daleks? It doesn't seem to mind anyone else for some reason. I mean, you'd think if you were a homicidal mass of liquid faeces you'd go for pretty much anything. Especially if it poked you with a stick. Still, I suppose we should be at least somewhat grateful. After all, there's a time and place to watch 2 ladies covered in poo, and it certainly isn't in the middle of a Doctor Who episode.
We have an internet for that sort of thing.
So, yeah. Not a great idea. But one that we can quickly forget as a bad idea, like that whole pathweb thing. That went away pretty quickly didn't it? Just as well, otherwise both Clara AND Rusty would have been utterly screwed. Still, never mind eh? Except.... then the poo hulks out.
Wait, did I really just have to type that as an actual sentence? I should start selling T Shirts.
Stick that shit on a t-shirt, make a million dollars.
Of course, now we're getting to the point having to address the confusingly nebulous and ill defined master plan behind all these shenanigans. Anyone else left wondering what exactly all that was supposed to achieve?
Davros, Creator Of The Daleks, Dark Lord Of Skaro™, is dying. So what do you do? You get a creepy snake dude for nurse, because fuck it, why wouldn't you do that? Then you hatch a plot to steal the Doctors regeneration energy to renew yourself, but only slightly. Wouldn't want to actually regenerate any wounds, or even sit up noticeably straighter in ones chair or anything. Clearly that would just be excessive. As part of this you use your skills as a master geneticist to engineer and implant yourself with special hypnotic puppy eyes. You know, just in case.
As previously stated, this is my favourite villain. Now look at what you're making me do.
Now, all you need to do is trap the Doctor in some magic snake cables. So after capturing him twice and knocking him out once he figures, fuck it. Rather than just breaking the bastards legs and chucking him into the Macguffin we're gonna fuck with him. Because you don't get to be a high ranking Doctor Who villain by doing anything the easy way. And anyway, it took ages to grow those goddamn eyeballs and they weren't exactly easy to get in the sockets. Somehow the Doctor falls for your obvious trap, and you start sucking the energy out of him and channelling it into your Daleks.
What, precisely, was this meant to do? How are they improved by this? Does this mean that they can now regenerate or something? And more importantly HOW EXACTLY DOES THIS GET CHANNELLED INTO THE LIQUID POO DALEKS WHICH ARE NOT ACTUALLY HOOKED UP TO ANYTHING?
They don't have casings, they don't even have a coherent physical form. They are pretty much literally made of liquid poo. How is the stuff even supposed to reach them? And why does it then just make them all hulk rage rather than, I don't know... REGENERATING THEM?
Also, if this is being sent to every Dalek on Skaro, including the dead ones, wouldn't the nett effect on each individual be negligible? What exactly are we going for here, aside from clumsy foreshadowing of whatever mashup of things is going to close out the series?
Spoiler alert: It's Daleks & Sontarans.
Still, isn't lucky apparently there's a clause somewhere explicitly stating that it's morally fine to destroy your enemies by deliberately unleashing an unstoppable tidal wave of homicidal sewage, thus completely NOT undermining any previously made points about heroes refusing to commit genocide even on their worst enemies because that makes them no better than them.
"But what if I just drowned them in their own shit? That'd be okay, right?"
Yeah, dodged that bullet didn't they. I certainly didn't notice the shocking and abrupt tonal reversal.
And whilst we're on the subject of tonal shifts, anyone else find it a bit odd that of all the Doctors to have a special bonding session with Davros they chose the 12th? It seems a bit odd. Whilst the abrasive nature he displayed in the early episodes was of course going to mellow somewhat over time (just as it did with the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 9th Doctors) they really do seem to have gone into a bit of a reversal. I only bring this up because of all the modern Doctors he seems like the one who would be most likely to tell Davros to fuck right off.
Davros: Tell me Doctor, I need to know... Am I good man?
The Doctor: No. No you're not. You're directly responsible for so much death and destruction that they're having to invent new numbers to quantify it. Once you die whole GALAXIES will throw a party in celebration. I'll bring my guitar, it'll be great!
or maybe
Davros: Every man should have a race, an allegiance.
The Doctor: Wait, aren't you personally responsible for the death of the entire Kaled race?Don't get me wrong, even with the obvious inconsistencies and ridiculous puppy eyes it's still cool to have the Doctor and Davros just talking for most of the episode. But still, you do have to wonder.
It's been a feature of the new series that often the 2 parters are like this. The first part is great, setting up all kinds of interesting stuff that the 2nd part just doesn't follow up on. What's odd here is just how rushed the conclusion feels. We get basically and episode and 3 quarters of build up, followed by a resolution that is actually literally a brief squirt of poop. There's no time for a threat to be established because it's already been countered. Seems a bit odd.
So, that seems like a lot of moaning for an episode I didn't exactly hate. But then it's not like problems go away if you ignore them. And saying "I'm the Doctor, just accept it" is frankly not an excuse. It's frankly somewhat worrying in terms of the attitude it expresses. Just because you write a particular logo on something doesn't mean it's automatically good. If you want that logo to mean something then you need to make sure that it's only attached to stuff that is good for reasons other than the logo. If we haven't learned that much from Star Wars then I don't think we're capable of learning anything.
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