My biggest problem with that episode was that the tone varied so wildly. I can live with a space-pirate dressed as Odin with a Viking juice extractor, I can live with electric eels in Norway, I can even live with the Heath Robinson scheme to defeat the finest warrior race in the galaxy that we’ve never heard of before, but what annoyed me was that they couldn’t decide whether it should be a jolly romp or a serious Doctor episode.
One minute you’ve got a bunch of people being squished alive in a giant squisher, the next there’s Peter Capaldi Emoting, then there’s a train-the-inept-recruits sequence with comedy Vikings straight out of Asterix, then there’s the Benny Hill theme, and suddenly there’s a Heroic Sacrifice and we’re back to Emoting. It’s hard to take the serious stuff seriously in a episode which veered in and out of farce.
Just for once it would be nice to meet a Finest Warrior Race whose tactics weren’t “walk slowly forwards in a straight line”. On the plus side, I did like their design.
Tardis translation circuits. The word “corn” was used to mean grain in English long before maize was even a thing: when Old World settlers reached the New World, they just carried on the tradition of calling the predominant local grain “corn”. Similarly, when the Tardis heard “local-grain-most-probably-wheat-or-barley” it just called it “corn”. Link.
I liked the episode. And I hope we see a lot of Ashildr. Perhaps she will become the new companion, and give the second chip to the Doctor, thereby covering the “clerical error”.
I liked that one so much: the dialogue the Doctor and the the bitter angry Ashildr was top notch, bringing out the parallels between them without beating you over the head with them. The resolution was completely satisfying, too: I love the idea of her as the Doctor’s immortal human conscience. The whole episode felt like very much like a Neil Gaiman script: he’s played with the idea of an ordinary mortal being granted eternal life, although his Hob Gadling was mostly fairly chipper about it. Even the reason for the Doctor not taking her as a companion rang true, that they both needed the mayflies to remind them of what was important. I hope we can see a lot more of her; she managed to a be more interesting character in that episode than Clara has been in the last four seasons. It was almost a disappointment when Clara turned up at the end.
I was a little disappointed with this one. I’m not crazy about the fact that Moffet seems to be intent on creating another Impossible Girl. I liked Ashildr’s original character and I wasn’t keen on having her have a complete personality reboot in this new episode. Couldn’t she have been written to be a sadder and wiser version of the girl in the Viking village instead of a completely new person? It’s exactly those sorts of shenanigans that prevented Clara from gelling into a good companion.
Completely agree about the personality reboot. I liked her last week.
Most of this week, I was annoyed by her. By the end, I didn’t know what her character is.
See, I felt it was understandable that she was angry rather than sad and wise. She’d experienced so much that she could barely remember who she was any more; she needed to keep journals so she could remember what had happened. She wasn’t the same person, and she was angry at the man who’d bestowed that on her to salve his own conscience and then just strolled on his way.
I do agree with you about Clara, though: her characterisation has always veered wildly almost from week to week depending on the needs of that particular script. One week she’s smart, tough and independent, the next she’s shiny, selfish and needy, and that lack of a consistent character means she’s always just “the girl”. You can like or dislike Rose, Martha and Donna {and to a lesser extent Amy, who started to suffer from the same syndrome. Rory was cool, though} depending on your tastes in companions, but at least you knew who they were from week to week. Clara’s just a pretty cipher.
Seriously - I’m fine with the fact that she changed over 800 years. My perspective is that I liked the character when we first met last week, and I don’t like the character that we met yesterday. I would have preferred that the script be written such that she was still the same basic personality…make it less time passed if that helps.
