This review contains spoilers

 

I’m used to being alone in my pursuits; after all, not many share my appreciation of Jeremy Paxman and nuclear bunkers.

Visiting an Edinburgh bunker last week I had the rare experience of being amongst like-minded people. Emerging from below ground to be met by my patient boyfriend and dog, I introduced both to my bunker guide and, as ever, felt the need to explain where my dog’s strange name comes from but no explanation was necessary. “Tsar Bomba. Cool name,” nodded my fellow bunker nuts. I was delighted; it was the first time anyone had known where the name sprang from and the chill of the bunker vanished in a nice warm flush of being amongst people – albeit all men in hard hats and hi-viz jackets - who shared my nuclear obsession. It was a rare sensation, and jolly pleasant.

This cosy feeing might explain the reaction to my 2014 review of Peter Capaldi’s debut as The Doctor. I’d never watched the show before, always considering it a children’s programme, but duty called and so Deep Breath was my first encounter with it.

Although I loved Capaldi, I was simply baffled, bored and irritated. Why were there lizards in Victorian mourning dress? Why did a dinosaur explode? Why was Capaldi running about in a nightgown? I could make no sense of it and said so.

Naturally, I received comments from people annoyed that I had waded into the show with no prior knowledge and it was only when I emerged from my nuclear bunker, blinking into the sunlight, that I got a little taste of why some people were so aggravated: I had splashed cold water on their nice warm feeling, the same one I’d felt in realising I was amongst people who knew and loved the same weird things I knew and loved. I’d have been mighty annoyed if, at that moment, someone had barged over, knocked my hard hat off, and said, “Whaddya care about bunkers for?”

So I can promise, Whovians, there is no cold water in this review. Whilst I haven’t become a devotee of the show in the past year I at least know the basics and can now recognise a Dalek and a sonic screwdriver. But my enjoyment of this episode had little to do with familiarity. Instead this episode had something which the 2014 series opener lacked: coherence. Even a Doctor Who virgin would have been able to follow the story and draw some enjoyment from it.

It opened with the type of chilly, frightening scene the show is famous for, the kind of thing which had wee boys hiding behind the sofa in the 60s. We saw a muddy, misty battlefield, reminiscent of No Man’s Land. The soldiers had futuristic equipment, but also bows and arrows, so we were in a place familiar from history but at the same time, alien.

A child was lost on the field and became stranded amidst a horrible clutch of arms which wrenched themselves up from the mud to pull people under.

The Doctor appeared and tried to guide him to safety and was being his twinkly, charming best, coaxing the little chap across the mud. He asked the boy his name – and then The Doctor froze. The boy’s identity horrified him – it was Davros. He retreated and left the little blighter to a horrible death.

The title credits roll and we were plunged into another story: an evil force has taken over the world’s planes. Every flight has been frozen in the air, and the fear is that whoever is controlling them now has several hundred flying bombs at their disposal.

With echoes of 9/11 this was a frightening idea, but ruined by the introduction of bouncy, annoying Clara who was brought in by UNIT to help solve the matter. They soon realised Missy was behind the chaos, orchestrating it as a way of getting their attention. She needed Clara to help her find the Doctor, who had gone missing after leaving her a kind of Gallifrean will which suggested he was going to die.

Missy and Clara teamed up to try and find him and, in these scenes, it was easy to see why Gemma Coleman is leaving Doctor Who. Did she cringe on seeing herself beside Michelle Gomez who is so spectacular? Prim, tedious Clara simply shrivels beside the devastating Missy. Would Clara ever have the cheek to tickle a Dalek’s balls? Hardly, and there was the sensation that this town ain’t big enough for both of them. When Coleman departs need we get a new Doctors assistant? (I appreciate this will be blasphemous talk to the Whovians) Can’t Missy be his new partner? Not an “assistant”, obviously, but a prickly, devious, tricky, slightly mad mirror of the Doctor, and they can embark on grand schemes and missions with no silly, skittish girl skipping alongside them?

When they finally locate The Doctor he’s in sweaty, fire-lit medieval Essex, taunting and teasing the local yokels with tanks and electric guitars and what a grand entrance he makes! It seems he’s determined to have a bit of fun before he dies, but the festivities are soon interrupted by a cowled figure who demands he follow him to meet Davros, and then the story enters the tantalising territory of the old premise: imagine if you could go back in time and kill Hitler. So we’re reeled back to the opening scene where The Doctor decided to abandon the young Davros, but from which he obviously survived, so could he go back in time and “kill that child”, and kill his compassion, in order to save the people he loves?

And here was I thinking Doctor Who just about robots, monsters and twinkly lights!