Dr Who: An Englishman in LA

Our man in Los Angeles, ROBERT CAVE, takes a look at the third episode of the new series of Doctor Who in a new weekly review column

Doctor Who Series 9/ Season 35 Episode 3

Hello everyone, once again here be spoilers for the third episode of series 9 of Doctor Who. If you’ve not seen the episode or dislike spoilers, please step into the Faraday cage of spoiler protection now.

As much as I love the Daleks and Missy, and all the other returning monsters, they are quite limiting in narrative terms. You already know who they are, what they want and what they will do. New monsters are unencumbered with these narrative certainties, and therefore the possibilities for their stories are that much greater.

So we dive into the waters of this new adventure. We are on Earth, on an underwater mining base in Caithness. Scotland, just over 100 years into our future. And it seems to be a base that was designed for Doctor Who: plenty of corridors that exist just to be corridors: to provide an excuse for running around rather than to provide access to rooms. The base is located next to a flooded village that was owned by the military back before it was flooded. I suspect this will be significant next episode.

And we have an alien space ship with strange writing in it, and we have what appear to be ghosts. Now Doctor Who has a bit of history of doing cover versions of classic monsters – see the stories The Dœmons, The Unquiet Dead, The Army of Ghosts and The Vampires of Venice to name but a few. Usually these “cover monsters” are revealed to be some kind of alien using some kind of technology, and this seems to be the case again here, despite the Doctor’s protestations half-way through the episode. Apparently they are acting as transmitters of some kind. But they look like ghosts and act like ghosts, and characters who die come back as these ghost-like creatures. We are clearly being directed to treat them as if they are ghosts. But I think I’ll just wait a week to see what they are exactly.

We also have Cass, a deaf character played by deaf actress Sophie Stone. Cass is soon placed in a position of authority, and she is clearly respected by all her colleagues. However, giving her an assistant, Lunn, whose sole job appears to be to sign for her seems a bit… odd.

I have no problem believing that Cass has skills and expertise that is essential to the mission, I also rather suspect her deafness will turn out to be vital to the plot, but surely Lunn would have some other attributes that make him valuable to the mission aside from his signing abilities? If he does, we don’t really get to see them here. I get that having an entire crew that could easily converse through sign language might be a bit alienating for an audience that can’t, but still.

But let’s get back to that strange writing. Did you see how I mentioned it in passing earlier and return to it here? That’s a feature of this episode. Lots of little things you aren’t supposed to notice immediately, whose significance will only become apparent later. The writing is in a language that can’t be translated, a language that acts like a message or a signal, a language that gets into your head and infects your brain –. Sort of like a virus. And I noticed that Lunn, the signer, is the only one who doesn’t look at the writing – he’s actually instructed not to look at it by Cass. He’s the only one who is not “infected” by the word virus. And I think that will become more significant in the next episode.

And then there is the suspended animation box. Who is inside? The ship’s pilot, we are led to believe. But before anyone can suggest opening the box, the ghosts step in, forcing everyone to make a run for the Tardis. The Doctor and two of the crew make it. Clara, Cass and Lunn are trapped on the now semi-flooded base. The Doctor and his half of the crew travel in the Tardis back to before the village got flooded. He intends to discover what the message is for. And then we see a new ghost. It is the ghost of the Doctor. And then the three most terrible words in the Doctor Who universe: “to be continued.”

So, what happens next? I really don’t know. That is part of the joy of stories with unknown monsters. But I suspect that language, both sign language and the alien virus language, will be important. The fact that Lunn never saw the alien virus words will be important, and I suspect the person in the suspended animation box is not whom we have been led to believe it to be. Could it be the Doctor? It will take another week to find out.

Doctor Who – The Complete Series 8 [DVD] [2014]