The Bells of Saint John review [Steven Moffat]

Miss Kizlet is a businesswoman working at the skyline-dominating Shard. She has a client, a client who lives in the WiFi. A client who's hungry.

Clara Oswald doesn't know anything about computers. She calls a helpline. A helpline to the year 1207, where the Mad Monk sits meditating on the girl he watched die twice.

When and Where: London (again) in autumn 2013. The year comes from the official synopsis on iPlayer.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Actually, he's about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let's not be unreasonable."
• "Also, your dad phoned. Mainly about the government, he seems very cross with them. I've got a few pages on that. I said I'd look into it."
• "Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web. Stuck forever, crying out for help." / "Isn't that basically Twitter?"
• "Where are my mummy and daddy? They said they wouldn't be long. Are they coming back?"
• We were promised an urban thriller and, while we didn't really get it, we do get the very tense sequence where the lights around the Maitlands' house are all switched on whilst all others go out, telling a plane where to crash. It's an idea I haven't seen before and I really liked it.
  
  
• Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen in the last episode and now Celia Imrie (and a Grant cameo). That's some stellar British talent we've got onboard. Miss Kizlet isn't the most memorable of villains - the script doesn't really allow her to be and we're never under the misconception that she's the one in charge here - but Imrie's performance is to be praised, as is Moffat for some of her lines. Her big moment, however, is her last, where she restores herself to how she was before the Great Intelligence involved itself in her life: a lost child. It's unexpected and heart-wrenching and could easily have been embarrassing and unconvincing in the hands of a weaker actress. If you trust The Doctor: His Lives and Times, then her parents left her at Russell Square station during the Intelligence's attack in The Web of Fear. 
• The Great Intelligence was Kizlet's client, wanting to increase his strength before The Name of the Doctor. It's good to see a recurring villain, especially one that isn't a big name like the Daleks, the Cybermen or the Master.
• Clara tracks down Kizlet by hacking her employees' webcams and finding their place of work through social media. It's an inspired idea.

 The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
  
• "Doctor who?" / "Do you know, I never realised how much I enjoy hearing that said out loud. Thank you."
• "Is it a snogging booth?"
• "Do you just crook your finger and people just jump in your snog box and fly away?"
• The episode is named after the ringing of the TARDIS phone, although I have no idea why. There are plenty of far better names that this episode could have been given relating to WiFi or the snatching of souls or something. The Bells of Saint John could apply to a number of episodes and is quite generic. The whole Cumbria 1207 thing is unnecessary anyway. In The Power of Three, the Doctor said that patience was for wimps and was completely unable to sit still in one place, as he was in Vincent and the Doctor. For some reason, though, he's chosen to sit in a 13th century monastery trying to "divine" the truth behind Clara. This is a proactive man who can't sit still - he should be out there looking rather than wasting time in a monk's robes achieving absolutely nothing.
• This is the third Oswald that we've met. We had the computer genius Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, the governess-with-a-secret Miss Montague (AKA Clara Oswin Oswald) and here we meet a version in the modern day. As far as this episode goes, this Oswald is the most human. Oswin and Miss Montague were both fun and interesting characters but both were a little too perfect, Miss Montague in particular. Nothing really seemed to faze her too much and she took everything in her stride, although she had a great moment with the TARDIS key before she was pulled to her death. Oswin was better, having a wonderfully tear-jerking scene where she breaks down upon learning that she's a Dalek. Clara is somewhere inbetween, feeling more real than Miss Montague but failing to be as engaging as Oswin, nor does she feel like a real person like Rose, Martha, Donna or, to a lesser extent, Rory did.
  
• Series 7a went for big, blockbusting ideas whilst The Bells of Saint John is going for a genre, that genre being an urban thriller. Aside from the plane flying towards the Maitlands' street, I never got this vibe. There's some typing that goes on and the Doctor driving a motorbike up the Shard (which was silly) but it's pretty weak and definitely isn't James Bond as Moffat was going for.
• "Doctor who?" is a question that should never be answered. After Asylum of the Daleks, The Snowmen and now The Bells of Saint John, I'm thinking it should also never be asked. The scene is painful to watch, a waste of a good few seconds of screentime and isn't remotely clever or funny. It's indulgent.
• Kizlet uploads human souls into the WiFi where they're pulped and fed to the Great Intelligence. However, we've never been given any hint before that it fed on souls. In The Snowmen it wanted human form, in The Abominable Snowmen it wanted to spread across the world, in The Web of Fear it wanted the Doctor's body and in Downtime it again wanted physical form. Never has there been any implication that he feeds on human souls and nor is any reason given here for why he's suddenly on this diet. He says that it's made him become stronger, but that's all the explanation we get. 
• Clara trying to access the WiFi isn't cute or endearing. It's embarrassing and there's no way she's gotten to her age without knowing how to do it. Anyway, typing the wrong password does absolutely nothing unless you press enter and declaring the password to be wrong because she somehow managed to accidentally click the 4 instead of the 3 is stupid. It gives away the number of characters in the actual password. Why does she click on the evil WiFi anyway
• Keyboard battles are tricky to make tense and the Doctor and Alexei clickety-clacking away at their computers isn't very exciting. It looks like what it is: two people tapping keys whilst computery nonsense is typed across the screen.
• The Doctor doesn't take the TARDIS into battle? What a lie.
  

I'll Explain Later:

• Would everyone's response to being uploaded be to repeatedly say "I don't know where I am"? It wouldn't be mine.
• Why did the Doctor leave the TARDIS in a cave so far away from the monastery?
• Does the Doctor not care to find out who Miss Kizlet's client was?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Spoonheads are reminiscent of the Nodes in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
• We saw the Tenth Doctor ride a motorbike in The Idiot's Lantern.
• The Doctor sent in a fake version of himself (in that case the Tesselecta) in The Wedding of River Song.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A weak and insubstantial first half followed by a decent second half, The Bells of Saint John doesn't feel as though it's bringing anything new to the table and is definitely one of the weakest companion introductions. Clara is more human than Miss Montague, but is still rather closed-off and unknowable unlike Rose, Martha and Donna. This Clara and the Doctor have a chemistry that is (thankfully) lacking in the lust that we got in The Snowmen, although Moffat is still sexualising the Doctor, the TARDIS and the show at large. When the episode kicks in, it's rather good, with a great performance by Celia Imrie (even if her character was somewhat limited) and her creepy way of following the Doctor around by hacking people to speak through. The Bells of Saint John is okay and earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten