Well,
the latest episode is still rather uneven, but things are improving. This is my favorite so far, a fun historical
that plays with ideas of fiction and reality.
At Clara’s desire to meet Robin Hood, the Doctor is insistent that the
prince of thieves is only a legend, so he’s naturally perplexed when they’re
met by a dashing, arrow-slinging hero upon arrival in Sherwood Forest.
This
starts the story on an interesting foot.
Clara’s delight and fangirling clashes nicely with the Doctor’s
skepticism. While she squees over meeting
Merry Men, the Doctor is swiping hair and blood samples from them, determined
to prove they’re not what they seem.
Part of it is his need to be right, a well-established trait of pretty
much all Doctors, but there’s a more personal aspect to it as well. In the Doctor’s eyes, which have seen so much,
Robin Hood is too good to be true. He’s
an “impossible hero,” the sort that humans need to believe in but couldn’t really
exist. It ties in well with the Doctor’s
current issues of identity. Now that he’s
in a new regeneration cycle, he’s not sure he still recognizes himself. He’s not convinced he’s a good man, let alone
a hero, and this story continues the Doctor’s exploration of who he is now.
Unfortunately,
the episode loses sight of that theme for too long of a stretch, instead
putting the Doctor in a pissing contest with Robin Hood. I love watching the Doctor doubt Robin and
try to cut him down to size, but I lose interest when it devolves into juvenile
bickering just short of actual dick-measuring.
It feels beneath the Doctor, seems wildly immature for Twelve in
particular, and makes the Doctor look foolish compared to Robin and Clara. These scenes still have some individual funny
bits – I rather like the Doctor’s acting when he and Robin try the old “sick
prisoner” routine – but not enough to make up for the annoyance of it all.
Generally,
though, I continue to like the new Doctor.
Jealous one-upmanship aside, he’s a lot of fun in this episode. He’s cantankerous in an amusing way, almost
One-ish at times, but he can still enjoy himself, and the heart is definitely
still there. I especially like his
irritation at Robin’s permanently-jovial demeanor, his glee when things
inevitably go all sci-fi and insane, and a quiet moment he takes after helping
a group of peasants. I know I keep
extending Twelve’s grace period, but assuming future episodes lay off of the
stupid posturing, I think he can be great.
Clara
is a mixed bag in this one for me. I
love her joy at seeing Robin Hood – it’s so nerdy-bookworm of her – and she
again makes valuable contributions to the plot that feel within her wheelhouse
to the extent that we’ve seen her have one. However, last night seemed to veer into uncomfortable
territory from a “Moffat’s gender politics” perspective, whereby Clara “wears
the pants” in the relationship and leads the utterly cowed Doctor by the
nose. The past three episodes have been
playing with this idea more and more, that Clara has to keep the Doctor in line
and he’s more than a little intimidated by her.
It’s the same sort of strong-arming we see in Moffat’s Coupling, as well as with Amy and River. I dislike it because it’s so simplistic in
general and especially because it shouldn’t have a place in modern-day Who.
The Doctor doesn’t have to be lesser, ineffectual, or dense, for the
companion to be strong. They should both be strong. They should be a team in which both get
chances to shine – to be brave, to figure out the solution, to save the
other. At the same time, they shouldn’t
always agree, and they should both make mistakes; it shouldn’t be a case where
one is always right and the other is always wrong. The show hasn’t gone overboard with it yet,
but I’m wary.
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