Doctor Who s12e07 can you hear me

[mr friendly guy]

Ok, this episode was a relatively inoffensive episode, it played it largely safe. Although because of the NuWho format, it tried to cram the backstory about Creepy old guy and Storm quickly. This sort of detracted from the reveal IMO. Compare to say "The Nightmare fair," the uncompleted Colin Baker story due to a strike, which was later completed via novelisation and also with Big Finish audios. In that story the Doctor reasons out the secrets of the Celestial Toymaker, that he predated the universe and he plays his games because he had become bored, and treats lower lifeforms like shit. By contrast, the reveal of these cosmic beings seem faster and didn't built up tension IMO.

Another thing, I felt that the imprisoned lady was most probably sinister quite early on, although I concede it could have been a decent twist as not everyone may have seen it. I however missed the fact that those aliens the TARDIS doesn't recognise was merely the imagination of Syrian girl.

Now we add some more of the Who cosmic mythology. To recap from the classic series and the new series... First there was the Celestial Toymaker (named dropped in this episode). He appeared in the Hartnell story of the same name. He has later appeared in other media, and the Colin Baker story the Nightmare fair, lays into his origins.

Next came the Chronovores in the Pertwee story the Time Monster. Wasn't mention here, but the EU do put them up there in their cosmic hierarchy. The are considered the equivalent of the Eternals.

Next came the Guardians, notably the Black and White guardians appearing in Tom Baker stories about the Key of Time (The Ribos operation, The stones of blood, The pirate planet, Androids of Tara, the Power of Kroll, The armageddon factor). Greater than the Time Lords, old source books by Peter Haining would describe them as rulers with the Time Lords as the law enforcers. In the EU it was mentioned the Celestial Toymaker was another Guardian and they expanded their number to six. Generally the EU puts the Guardians the highest in the Who hierarchy of cosmic beings.

We next see the Eternals in the Peter Davison story "Enlightenment," and the Guardians make another appearance. These immortals live in the realm of "Eternity," while we Ephemerals live in the smaller realm of "time." The Eternals have the power of manifest matter, teleport and are immortal. They have telepathic powers, and like the immortals in this story feed on the thoughts of mortals. However the Eternals do not have the creativity of these two cosmic beings, as they relied heavily on mortal thoughts. In the EU they were mentioned to be similar rank as the Chronovores, although that was from the fanwank novel "The Quantum Archangel."

We later from Sylvester McCoy stories The Greatest show in the galaxy, and the Curse of Fenric, there are other cosmic beings although most probably not part of the "pantheon" of our universe. These are the Gods of Ragnorak and Fenric. The EU mentions they predated the universe and IIRC they oppose some of the current pantheon of the Who verse. Namely the Eternals and Chronovores.

From NuWho we learn of the Carrionites (the shakesphere code) and the hervokens (from the novel Forever Autumn), who fought a great war using science which resembled magic, and required the Eternals to banish.

We also learn of "Satan" from the Tennant episode "The Satan pit," who is another one of these beings which may predate the universe and doesn't hold a place in the pantheon of cosmic entities.

Now we have these two, Creepy old guy and Storm. Its hard to place them. From dialogue they both usually live in a different reality of the universe. Well so do every other cosmic entities. They name drop the Guardians, the Eternals and the Celestial Toymaker. His power seems weaker than the Celetial Toymaker, comparable to an Eternal. They even use the phrase Ephemerals to describe mortals like the Eternals do, however he speaks as if the Eternals were separate to his "species". So it will be interesting if Who revisits these beings, or do they just dump them as monster of the week.

[Bedlam]

Again to me if felt rather packed, it had to many good idea's that it couldn't deal with all of them.

The background to Tahira's trauma was entirely glossed over, her family were killed and she's been wondering for most of her life but she seems quite well balanced for it. She manages to conquer her fear and control the living nightmare thing off camera in what seemed like about 10 minutes, that could have been half the episode.

Looking into the various mental issues of the companions was a good thing but they then decided to do all three of them in one episode which didn't give enough time to really investigate any of them. Ryan is worried he's leaving his friends behind and will loose them all, Yaz ran away from home three years ago and Graham's worried about his cancer reoccurring, all of them could have been a good plot for a whole episode but instead we got maybe 5 minutes devoted to it.

Graham's Cancer issues has always been a bit of a sticking point for me and the Doctors reaction was rather odd to me, surely at some point in the whole of time and space they can cure cancer? Or at least get a screening system which is far more accurate? He's undergone at least two alien medical procedures during season 1 would something have turned up there?

[B5B7]

For me most of the episode was strong, as it seemed like a normal Doctor Who episode from older days. I thought the defeating of the gods was a bit too easy, but still overall a very good episode.