• River Song as leading character. Alex Kingston's River Song is not exactly what you'd call a companion, but she's never quite been the lead character in any of her prior appearances on Doctor Who. This story would succeed or fail on her ability to carry the story as the lead, and she does an excellent job of it. Wisely held back during the establishing elements of the story, River is only spoken of by other characters with zero knowledge of her deeper backstory. She's taken an academic role in the early 20th Century, locked away in her office and rather smugly looked down upon by the other staff as a bookworm with no field experience. This early misunderstanding of who and what River is actually serves as a microcosm of the greater story and perhaps a meta-commentary of the real world - people continually underestimate River, make assumptions about her, think they have her figured out etc.... and she ALWAYS surprises them or reveals depths they didn't know were there. River is uninterested in an offer to be the first to enter a newly discovered (and untouched) tomb until she learns that a young woman has disappeared inside and immediately sets off to investigate the mystery. River's concern for victims (particularly female victims) comes up a couple times in the story and is a good humanizing element that helps sand off the edges of her often criticized smugness/superiority. But whether she is investigating, reacting, figuring things out, or best of all raining down vengeance on her enemies, Kingston just embraces the role wholeheartedly. Only one other actor has ever played River Song for any length of time and she sadly lacked the natural charisma and learned experience to pull off the fine balancing act between infuriatingly smug and confident self-assurance. Kingston gets it though, she makes River Song work, and in this the first Song story NOT written by Moffat, she proves once again that she completely owns this character and can more than shoulder the weight of being the lead actor.
  
  
• Paul McGann as special guest. Teased throughout the story, McGann doesn't show up till the last story but from the moment he arrives he's a show-stealer. Bringing him on so late is a good idea because the scene is set, we're familiar with the new characters, their schemes and scams and plans, and so we don't have to waste any time getting to grips with them and can just enjoy the way the Doctor interacts with them. He's excellent of course, McGann has been arguably the second biggest beneficiary of Big Finish's production of licensed audios (the biggest being Colin Baker, of course) and by now he's more than figured out his character and how to play him. He steps onto the scene bemused at first and quickly judgmental, and even quicker finds himself in over his head and left hanging to solve in a few minutes a problem that has stymied geniuses with near unlimited resources. He needs help to get himself out, but not in a way that makes him look foolish and incompetent - River's assistance is based on her experiences and experimentation across the previous three stories, and once he's up to speed he very quickly pulls off some amazing stuff that impresses her - especially considering how relatively young and inexperienced he is to her. The chemistry between the two (even though they never meet) is fantastic, amazing considering they've never worked together before AND he's a Doctor who exists several regenerations before their "first" meeting. Best of all though is River's pained and furious condemnation of one of the other supporting characters when she realizes what Doctor she is dealing with. Her admonition that this particular Doctor is naive and innocent isn't meant as a condemnation, but rather a desperate hope to preserve and protect that. This is the Doctor who saw the Time War begin and refused to let it change him as a person. It battered his heart but he never gave up, and River's fury that this sweet version of the Doctor has been thrust into this entirely NOT innocent situation feels earned and worthy. Plus they don't give him amnesia to get around not being able to meet!
  
  
• The Time War creeping in on the edges. The Time War was time-locked, all the events still happened but were now contained/separated from the rest of the universe that they almost destroyed. It was considered a massive thing when Dalek Sec was able to punch through the Time Lock to rescue Davros from the jaws of the Nightmare Child, and that drove Sec completely loving mad. Nothing "before" or "after" this multi-dimensional/temporal clusterfuck could enter it, Gallifrey was gone forever, it was a completely separate thing. But ever since The Day of the Doctor revealed that the Doctor actually found a third way and saved Gallifrey, things have begun to slightly "leak", helped probably by the fact the locked-away Gallifrey found the scars of the Cracks in Time/Space from season 5 and selectively reopened them in order to return to the universe in The Time of the Doctor. What this means is that River - an explicitly post-Time War character - finds herself dragged into the periphery of the Time War, by war profiteers "contemporary" to that reality-altering war who have no idea of the implications of their desire to get involved. Capable of extremely sophisticated technical feats purely by dint of their vast commercial resources, it's like children playing in a car (or that old sci-fi standby, the "Toys of the Gods"), they have no idea how dangerous what they are doing actually is, and are arrogantly, smugly convinced that they're in complete control. They would never have been able to invite/communicate with River if the Time Lock was still complete, but there is enough leeway now to allow things like this to happen, and even just on the periphery we get a sense of just how hosed up being involved would have been. Even the Doctor is shocked, the Seed Ships that are forever in the background of the story are the devices of a long-dead race from the dawn of time that now never went extinct because of some unforeseen consequence of the Time War, and their return to the present sees them desiring to wipe out what they now see as a defunct timeline - they now exist, so how can the reality where they did NOT exist.... exist!?! So they set about to correct that by killing EVERYTHING, figuring that either the Time Lords or the Daleks will be impressed enough to recruit them into the war and give them a place in whatever post-war landscape there is. This is the kind of story I thought was probably the best way to tackle a subject as nutso as the Time War, show things on the periphery, suggest the enormity of what is going on but explore more intimate stories about specific characters and how they deal with things. That is a major strength of this story, it's a Time War story where the Time War is brought up and serves the narrative without dominating it. Getting to see River moving around the edges of that big black hole of a concept that RTD used to such great effect to mark the cut-off between revival and classic series worked really well for me.
  
  
• The individual/the whole. Each individual story stands alone as its own thing, while also serving the greater narrative across all four AND important character development and themes that get called back to/built upon. The Boundless Sea on the surface is a creepy story about a mummy/vampire that sucks the water from its victims, infecting them in the process. But it is also a story about how women are used, treated as property, have their agency removed etc by those who are either well-intentioned or sneeringly mysognistic - the parallels to River's own youth are clear (and spelled out rather plainly) but that in turn allows River to speak from a level of authority that a character like the Doctor wouldn't have, helping separate her somewhat from this just being a Doctor Who story with a find/replace of "River" replacing "Doctor". I Went To A Marvelous Party allows for a bit of a murder/mystery which River promptly ignores to investigate the issues that actually matter to her, both on the individual and universal level - her casual revelation that she solved the mystery within a few moments and just didn't tell anybody because it gave her the freedom to explore around a bit is a marvelous moment. Signs is familiar in that it treads ground seen in plenty of sci-fi (And Doctor Who stories in the past), including Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy's Project: Lazarus, but does it very competently. It serves to prove the stubborn and anarchistic streak of River can't be controlled/managed no matter how convinced the other person is of the strength of their own position. The Rulers of the Universe allows River to unleash that oft-repeated/little-seen "psychopath" trait of hers, as she reveals the -worthy extent of her revenge against the so-called Rulers before regaining her composure and doing an excellent remote double-act with the 8th Doctor. When she lays out exactly how she took her revenge, it works better than anything Moffat has written so far to show how clever/dangerous she can be. I don't mean that as a knock on Moffat, I mean it as a compliment to Matt Fitton - I will be very interested to see how he handles the first Tenth Doctor Adventures story.
  

• River as Doctor-lite. Unfortunately, while efforts are made to make this a uniquely River-story, large sections do feel very much like they could have simply been written with any number of Doctors in mind. Yes she brings a unique perspective to the role, and there are points where she gives impassioned speeches (such as her discovery that the 8th Doctor is present in the situation) based very much on a perspective/experience the Doctor has not had.... but at the heart of it all we have a story that feels for the first 50-75% like a generic if solid Doctor Who audio. Given this is a first go at the character as her own lead, and that previously she'd only been written by Moffat, there is some leeway to be given. But if future stories don't shake this off and go for more of the slightly hosed-up but compelling elements present in The Rulers of the Universe it will be a missed opportunity. That said, at least they didn't just grab some old Bernice Summerfield scripts and change her name to River.
  
  
• The mundane "Rulers of the Universe". Given the Time War, the Doctor, River herself, and all the baggage (good and bad) that comes with all that, the "Rulers" of the Universe are really rather pathetic. That's kind of the point, but there is no real sense of how or why they'd managed to get into the position of power they'd supposedly attained and it is difficult to take them at all seriously. These are very much rich socialites who use their vast resources to amass the technology and expertise to do what they want with no idea how absolutely any of it actually works. Individual characters are interesting if slimy and loathsome people, but they are very much delving deeply into squalid and inconsequential politicking while simultaneously supposedly operating a massive, galaxies spanning economic empire. Having them attempt to then ingratiate themselves with the Time Lords (and if not them, the Daleks ) is akin to a rich kid who plays little league declaring he wants to get picked for the top NFL team. There is a kind of bait & switch in that very late in the game the "real" Rulers of the Universe show up and are far more dangerous and deadly, but while frequently referenced they don't show up till the story is almost over and there really isn't time to get to know them or to really care about what they're doing or be concerned about their plots. When an ultimate universe-ending threat shows up at the 95% mark of a story, you know it is highly unlikely that they're not going to be almost immediately defeated.
  
  
• Minor continuity fluffs. It's just a few little things, but there are minor fluffs like the writers not remembering that River isn't supposed to have her Sonic Screwdriver yet. Technically speaking you could argue that maybe this takes place sometime between The Husbands of River Song and Silence in the Library, except they explicitly have her use her Sonic Trough earlier in the story and then have her use the Sonic Screwdriver later. The trough is very much a device River uses to compensate for not having the Sonic Screwdriver, so it's like they just accidentally wrote Screwdriver instead through muscle memory (or the actor said it automatically instead of reading what was written). An editor or director should have picked that up.
  

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Feb 9, 2016

DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jan 19, 2016

NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Jan 20, 2016