Doctor Who: Season 9 Episode 1 Liveblog

Series 9 Episode 1: The skies of Earth are frozen – where is the Doctor?

Welcome to the first liveblog of the new series. Press refresh to update. It must be said that most of those here are not huge fans of the fan fiction direction that the show has taken lately…. Apparently we have Daleks in the offing and Clara offski at Christmas. The Doctor is hiding out with with the Sisterhood of Karn (first seen in 1976’s The Brain of Morbius) and Missy is also back. Here we go…. Spoilers ahoy!

19:45

Missing from space and time, the search is on for the Doctor… cue credits, running soldiers using bows and arrows against biplanes. A child is running across the battlefield and a soldier who tries to rescue him is sucked down by a “hand mine” – literally hands that grab your legs and pull you down. The hands have eyes… this looked good in the script, but just got “good hand-to-eye coordination” in this room.  The Doctor turns up to save the day – to find the boy is ….Davros!!!! Davros gets a sonic screwdriver thrown at him. Cue full credits (and great drama).

19:50

Credits over we are in a futuristic gay bar, with a knock-off Pinhead alike whose face has char-grill marks across it. Several hissed “where is the Doctor?”s later we are back with the Shadow Proclamation and C-GPinhead, all anxious to find out why Davros wants the Doctor. He’s still hissing “where is the Doctor?”… His acting has gone a bit Mighty Boosh. Davros is now the “Dark Lord of Skaro” When C-GPinhead legs it off what is now known as “the Granny Planet” we see the Doctor is hiding there…

19:55

Advised to look for the Doctor with his friends we cut to teacher Clara, who notices that a plane in the sky outside her school has frozen – cut to Dr Who patented fake news broadcasts telling us all planes are frozen in the sky. There is also mention of hashtags #stoppedplanes #lol #2spooky. Clara rushes to a Unit crisis  centre (!)  where someone is using the “Doctor Channel” … It is Missy! Off to a meeting in Italy (are they trying to use the budget up quickly?). Perhaps it’s Wales. It’s certainly deserted.

20:00

Missy has the will of the Doctor, meets Clara, bitchiness ensues… Then killing. Finally, after much death and drama Missy gets Clara to use the crisis centre’s technology to locate the Doctor, then teleports to ….

20:07

… Bill & Ted’s version of Medieval World  – where the Doctor enters on a tank, playing a guitar. He’s taught the medieval peasants to say “dude”. It’s both fun and zany. He has a weep with Clara, more guitar, Missy enters, swiftly followed by char-grilled Pinhead, who turns into snakes, tells the Doctor that Davros is dying and then turns back into C-GPinhead. Missy has a bitch about who the Doctor’s arch-enemy is, her or Davros.  The sonic screwdriver turns up again and it turns out that the Doctor (sob) may have deserted Davros. The Doctor, Missy and Clara end up in snake handcuffs (I’m really not making this stuff up) and are hoicked off with C-GPinhead to a spaceship and a future meeting with Davros. The series appears to have had a bad attack of the Harry Potters. Medieval leader turns into a partial Dalek and, joink, the Tardis is nicked by the Daleks

20:20

While the Doctor wanders off to find Davros, Missy and Clara have a face off. Meanwhile The Doctor and Davros witness the resurrection of  Tom Baker (Davros having access to the BBC archives apparently) to point out exactly how bad the current incarnation has been, and the fact that the Doctor has literally talked about this dilemma (the old Kid Hitler chestnut) before. And apparently still not figured it out! Missy and Clara discover they are actually on a planet not a space ship. And the planet is…. Skaro!!! Surprise! Only, not really. Skaro’s been given a makeover to look like a poor 90s CGI dance music video. They get get captured by a Dalek (in a fetching shade of blue), who sneaks up on them in a desert (again, really). And are carted off to meet an Iron Man Dalek. Missy is murdered by the Daleks (only, of course, not) and the Doctor begs for Clara’s life. Sadly she is killed. Except, of course, not…

20:28

And now it is the turn of the Tardis to be destroyed. Except, of course…

20:29

Then the Doctor appears next to the young Davros, and prepares to save his companions in the only way he can – by killing him.

Except of course…

Thoughts

Argh! Why, why, why. Why has Davros created a snake man? Has he seen Harry Potter/Hellraiser, and just liked the look?  Why does the interior of Skaro look like an industrial park? Why is Missy somehow even more annoying than John Simm’s Master? Why Bill & Ted? Why couldn’t Keanu Reeves be the Doctor? Why can’t a practised scriptwriter work out that there is literally NO tension when the Tardis et al are destroyed, as we know this season will run for three months, and it’s going to be a bit of a problem without the Tardis. We’ll apologise for that should the rest of the season consist of the Doctor running from Daleks in an industrial park, Scooby-Doo style.

Why has a career time-traveller  completely failed to learn about the consequences of causality over his 900-odd year life, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt managed to figure out the exact same conundrum in just under the half the runtime of Looper?

Mind you, Looper was written and directed by competent people.

Next Week

More Daleks and nonsense. Plus the resurrection of Clara, Tardis, etc. Unless this is a two episode season.

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