“Nightmare in Silver” S07E12 Doctor Who Review

I’m not sure where to begin with this episode of Doctor Who.  I walked away from watching it with no real feeling about it.  Would I be keen to watch it again?  Probably not.  Would I throw a tantrum if someone put it on?  Probably not.  And that’s not really great is it?  Yes sure, it wasn’t bad, but then it wasn’t brilliant either, and with this series being fairly hit and miss already I was hoping we were over the hump based on the last few episodes.  Especially when you hear that this latest installment is written by Neil Gaiman, the scribe for the extraordinary ‘The Doctor’s Wife’.

Well this isn’t extraordinary, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have some very neat touches in it.  The episode starts with The Doctor, Clara and the two kids (I think one is called Angie and I’m not interested enough to go Google the name of the other one) arriving on at a futuristic theme park on some unspecified planet.  After a jolly day out and a meeting with a chess playing Cyberman that turns out to be Warwick Davis hidden under the table, they decide to go home.  But wait, The Doctor thinks there’s something fishy going on so he makes everyone stay and endangers the children.  So far, so predictable.

Thankfully, although the children were stupid and got themselves into bother, most of the episode they were mute, so I only had to put up with mediocre acting and terrible lines for only half the time I thought I would have to.  I’m sure most teenage girls do moan about how they hate you and she’s stupid quite a lot, but no one really wants to hear it so make the lines a little bit less cliched please?  I was quite relieved when the Cyberman finally zoomed up and grabbed her, though I could have done without that god awful scream.  You know, the way everyone would stay rooted to the spot and scream continually like a wolf howling at the moon instead of letting out a quick surprised yelp, kneeing someone in the bollocks and running away.

Not that this was supposed to be about anyone other than Matt Smith.  One of the guests gets nabbed by the Cybermen straight away, another gets killed 25 minutes in and hardly anyone else actually has a name.  This was showboating time, and boy did they showboat.  Luckily, if anyone can pull off that over the top, in your face, climbing the walls tomfoolery it’s Mr Smith.  He delivers a barnstorming performance with charm, which in the hands of anyone else would likely grate.  The problem you are left with is that you just don’t enjoy it as much when The Doctor isn’t on the screen.  Yet again they have split The Doctor and Clara up, which is getting annoying now as we’ve finally started to get some writers that can do their double act well, and the few scenes they did have together were very funny.  Not that Jenna Louise-Coleman can’t hold up the rest of the show by herself, but she wasn’t given much to work with.  Except for Warwick Davies as Porridge, who did a damn fine job, everyone else was treated as dispensable.

Although, since when was Clara a military mastermind?  I know that it was a punishment platoon, but surely everyone on there had more military training at some point in their career than she has ever had.  Yes, she is very clever and brave as is the requirement for a companion, but I know lots of clever and brave people, doesn’t mean they would suddenly have the tactical knowledge of an army general.  The ending also felt a bit of a cheat.  If they had the capability of getting off the planet very easily, why not just do it at the very beginning?  It would have meant revealing a secret, but surely that character’s good nature wouldn’t have allowed them to let so much destruction take place before stepping up.

The shameful plug of the previous ten Doctors was a bit of a reminder of the issues with this half of the series.  With the Ponds leaving mid series and everything else geared up to the 50th anniversary, I just think they had no idea what to do so hurriedly came up with another companion, invented a mystery about her that they haven’t given the time to build up properly and filled the gap.  By leaving when she did, Karen Gillan has a lot to answer for, as looking at this trailer I found on YouTube, Moffat has been working his way up to something for a number of years that was probably supposed to involve Amy and Rory.  Just to be clear, this trailer has BBC all over it, has BBC in it’s title and looks very professional but looking at the information on the YouTube page, it appears to have been created by a group of fans called VG934 who regularly make Doctor Who trailers using clips.  If it isn’t an official DW trailer, it should be as it’s got more clues in this than we have seen all of this half of the series, especially as the next episode and finale is called ‘The Name of The Doctor’.

Also, here is a clip available on the BBC website called ‘She Said, He Said’ that has been inaccurately referred to as a prequel to the finale.  I reckon it’s worth a watch, though doesn’t really give you anything you didn’t already know, and the trailer above is far more exciting.  I tried to embed this but the site wasn’t playing ball so I have provided the link instead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018wbj2

The reason I’ve added these links is that I think these are far more entertaining than this episode and therefore any review I can write about it.  If this had been a mid series show I wouldn’t mind so much, but it’s not, it’s the penultimate episode and I expect much more.  Here’s hoping this was all for a higher purpose, and that purpose is not just to reintroduce the Cybermen.

6/10 (simply for not being what it should have been)