Doctor Who: Series 10, Episode 0 – “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” (2016)

Since I’m visiting family over the holidays and thus away from my BBC America, I swapped the Sunday Who Review with Buster Monday so I could get to the Christmas special once it became available online through appropriate channels.  Of course, said family kept me busy enough that I only just had a chance to watch it now.  I’m annoyed that we still have to wait for Bill, but for the most part, I thought the special was pretty good.

When Grant was a child, a chance encounter with the Doctor (accidentally) left him with superpowers.  As an adult, he fights the forces of evil as the masked marvel the Ghost, and he and the Doctor are both surprised to cross one another’s paths again.  In between the Doctor rolling his eyes at the hectic-ness of Grant’s double life and shaking his head at Grant’s stalled relationship with intrepid reporter Lucy (because of course,) there’s also the slight matter of the impending alien invasion that needs seeing to.

I was wary of the idea of having a bona fide superhero on Doctor Who, and to be sure, it is fairly cheesy, but it’s pretty fun, too.  The Doctor throws some amusing shade at superhero conventions (the implausibility of Clark Kent’s glasses fooling anyone, what would really happen if you got bitten by a radioactive spider,) and while they’re all well-established points, I still enjoy seeing the Doctor make them.  Similarly, Grant and Lucy are very clearly modeled on classic comic-book archetypes and are drawn a little generically, but Justin Chatwin (Jason from season 3 of Orphan Black) and Charity Wakefield (former Marianne Dashwood) nicely toe the line between send-up and original character.

That said, the plot is fairly disjointed, and I think the story leans a little too heavily on the potential love story between Grant and Lucy.  The writing here can get too broad, and it sometimes feels like the whole adventure/alien-fighting part is just an afterthought.  Some of the comments the Doctor makes to Grant about it feel out of character for him and not all that enlightened, one of those instances where it feels like Moffat is putting his thoughts in the Doctor’s mouth – boo.  Plus, the Grant/Lucy part of the story flags somewhat when it’s just them and the Doctor is off doing his own thing.

By the way, we have Nardole from last year’s Christmas special standing in as companion here.  He’s… I dunno.  He’s not bad, really, but he’s just sort of there for me.  Not necessarily interesting enough – or even distinctive enough – to justify the mild-to-moderate cheat of bringing him back.  Mostly, he made me antsier to meet Bill.

The Doctor, however, is in pretty good form.  I love his interactions with young Grant, I like that he recognizes Lucy’s quickness and insight, and I get a kick out of his reactions to Grant’s double life.  He’s still a little dinged-up emotionally from the events of last year, but he’s working through it and moving on.  Oh, and I don’t know how the Doctor manages to keep pulling off variations on the old “avoid getting killed by daring the bad guys to shoot you” routine, but it always impresses me.