'Knock Knock' review [Mike Bartlett]

Synopsis

Bill is looking for student accommodation when she and her future housemates are invited to rent the creaking old house at 11 Cardinal Road. The house is creepy and the landlord creepier, and soon they find that they aren't alone.

Mike Bartlett is one of several new additions to Doctor Who this series.

Spoiler Zone

The good, the bad and the ugly

David Suchet is a revelation, simply wonderful as the spooky landlord. It's such a shame that he's not able to stay around - couldn't he have been the next incarnation of the Master or something recurring? Unlike a number of villains in the show's history, Suchet underplays the role with a sinister subtlety and then again with his heartbreaking delivery of the line "But I don't want to" as he dies. He is without a doubt the best thing about this episode. The reveal that Eliza was his mother rather than his daughter failed to hit as we had only just learnt that Eliza was up in the tower, but Suchet manages to sell it. The make-up for Eliza is fantastic, although it's a shame that we had seen her already in trailers and in promotional materials.

The landlord's love for his mother and how he can't bear to lose her clearly strikes a chord with Bill, particularly when he rhetorically asks if the Doctor would save his mother if he had the power to. This seemed to set up Bill's asking the Doctor to take her back to see or save her mother. Strangely this never comes to happen, perhaps because it might be a repeat of series 1's 'Father's Day'.

The Doctor and Bill are once again delightful to watch, but the softened and likeable Doctor we (through Bill) have met has become, once again, the embarrassing out-of-touch old man in his scenes with Bill's housemates. He lingers because he has a feeling something might be off, making him feel an encumbrance. Bill's embarrassment of him doesn't help with this; no humour comes from it and we know that her housemates think he's great, so what was the point in this?

In this episode we find that Bill hasn't chosen to fly off into the universe with no ties to Earth, like the companions of Classic Who or the Russell T. Davies era. Instead, like Amy and Clara, she returns to Earth between her adventures. This somewhat lessens how life-changing travelling with the Doctor can be, but with the Doctor having to guard the vault this is inevitable and can't be helped.

Bill's housemates all have some personality and feel like distinct characters, albeit not very interesting ones, but they aren't all particularly strong actors. Harry is almost permanently wide-eyed. The fact that they are all brought back from the dead at the end cheapens the threat of the episode. The Ninth Doctor proclaimed in 'The Doctor Dances' that "just this once, everybody lives" all the way back in series 1, with the implication that this was a rare occasion. Not anymore, it seems. After having the audacity to kill a child in 'Thin Ice', not following through with keeping all of the students dead is quite disappointing. How were they brought back, anyway? Weren't they devoured? Why weren't their predecessors brought back as well?

A good quotation

The landlord: "Hope is it's own form of cruelty."

A bad quotation

Paul: "But either way I was saying we should throw our own party. You know, pop-up! Freestyle! Boom!"

The Doctor: "Put some tunes on!"

The verdict

The episode is somewhat scary and David Suchet is brilliantly sinister as the landlord, but this is very much an average story. The guest characters aren't ones we really care much about and they're brought back at the end anyway. The story most like this one would be the very complicated 'Ghost Light', by the end of which almost all of the guest characters are dead. Why can't this be the case here? The dryads aren't memorable villains and aren't hugely original either as we've seen a number of insect-type aliens on Doctor Who. The prospect of a house devouring its inhabitants was far scarier. Overall, this story stands with 'The Pilot' and 'Thin Ice' as okay episodes.

'Thin Ice' review [Sarah Dollard]

The Doctor and Bill in their regency garb.

After trying to return to St Luke's, the Doctor and Bill land in London at the last frost fair. Little do they know that there's something lingering under the frozen Thames.

Writer Sarah Dollard previously wrote season 9's 'Face the Raven'.

Spoiler Zone

The episode

Bill's first foray into the past makes for good viewing, with a fun Classic Who-esque exploration of the setting before the plot kicks in. It doesn't matter that the main plot is basically Torchwood's 'Meat' when the Doctor and Bill are having this much fun and the world is realised so wonderfully. The exploration of the frost market reminds us that travelling in the TARDIS isn't primarily about fighting bad guys and saving people - it's about fresh experiences in new worlds, and both the Doctor and Bill relish this.

Lord Sutcliffe doesn't make a convincing or interesting villain, not making an appearance until near the end and being much too over the top evil. The gang of street urchins are sympathetic enough, with Kitty as the regency's answer to World War II's Nancy from 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances'. The death of Spider isn't shocking just for Bill - it's rare for a child to die on Doctor Who, let alone for it not to be reversed somehow like the destruction of Gallifrey.

If 'Smile' was Bill's somewhat disappointing answer to Rose's 'The End of the World', this episode is a worthy counterpart to Rose's 'The Unquiet Dead'.

TARDIS crew and co.

• The Doctor: "It's just time travel. Don't overthink it." The Doctor is carefree and ready to explore, even dressing up like the locals in this instance.
• Bill Potts: "Every choice I make in this moment, here and now, could change the whole future." Bill is horrified after witnessing death for the first time, and truly mortified when she learns that the Doctor has killed before.
• Nardole: "As long as I'm still here, you are going nowhere." For comic-relief, Nardole really is a downer.

'Smile' review [Frank Cottrell-Boyce]

The Doctor and Bill meet an Emojibot in a human colony.

The Doctor takes Bill to one of the first extraterrestrial human colonies on the planet Gliese 581 D, twenty-light years from Earth, for her first real glimpse of the future. What they find is an empty city, populated only by Emojibots, with no colonists to be found.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce also wrote series 8's 'In the Forest of the Night', a weak episode lacking in tension and threat.

Spoiler Zone

The episode

As a character piece, this episode is good at helping us learn more about the Doctor and Bill, and it's fun to see Bill exploring a new world with far more curiosity than Amy in 'The Beast Below' or Clara in 'The Rings of Akhaten'. The city in a field of wheat under a blue sky is a beautiful image, and it really is a visually stunning episode.

Unfortunately, the episode is otherwise rather dull. The Vardies prove to be barely a threat, although the Emojibots prove to be less gimicky than expected. The Emojibots identifying grief as plague is an interesting idea but this plot point is spoilt in the pre-credits sequence. It would have been much more effective to have kept that from us and let us learn as the Doctor and Bill learn. The resolution - turning them off and back on again - is an unsatisfying cop-out. The idea that the Emojibots were sentient now and the true inhabitants of the city is very unconvincing given that we saw nothing of the sort before the "reveal".

The Doctor deciding to blow up the colony is a reckless and un-Doctorlike decision. The human characters feature so little that he might as well have blown them up. The actors are simply wasted in the roles.

Overall this was a largely insubstantial episode saved only by visuals and our two protagonists. A disappointing first journey for Bill. And what on Earth is food sexism?

TARDIS crew and co.

• The Doctor: "Don't sentimentalise me. I don't just fly around helping people out." The Doctor visits the planet with Bill and helps out when he encounters danger. He's not a hero.
• Bill Potts: "Thanks for bringing me. This is a great day out." Bill asks questions and makes jokes about everything she sees, which is a refreshing change. She's relatable in a way that Clara never was.
• Nardole: "Your oath, sir. You're not supposed to go off-world unless it's an emergency." Nardole barely features in this episode, and when he does he's simply a grump.

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The Pilot review [Steven Moffat]

The Doctor and his new companion Bill Potts.

Bill Potts is a lunch-lady at St Luke's University in Bristol who sneaks into the interesting and unusual lectures of the Doctor, who's been teaching there for at least fifty years without ageing. One day she's called to his office and offered the chance to be his personal tutee. But who is this mysterious man? Why does he have a '60s police box in his office? And what has he been doing here all these years?

The first episode of Steven Moffat's final series, he marks this episode as a jumping-on point in the same vein as 'Rose'. Cheekily named, will this episode be a fresh start for the show?

Spoiler Zone

The episode

Yes, more or less. Key concepts are explained in a way that's welcoming to newcomers and aside from Nardole's presence, the photographs of Susan and River and a visit to the Dalek-Movellan war there's very little baggage to this episode. Having the episode be from Bill's point-of-view rather than the Doctor's crafts the Doctor as more of a mysterious and unknowable character again. Moffat definitely succeeded in making the episode a jumping-on point. The show hasn't been this accessible to newcomers since 'The Eleventh Hour' and Bill's entrance to the TARDIS will go down in history.

Bill is a wonderful companion, asking questions of a different type and being funny without being annoying. She's a regular person, like Rose, Martha or Donna, rather than a smug and unrelatable Amy Pond or soulless like Clara Oswald. The Doctor, meanwhile, is no longer the brash and prickly Doctor of season eight or the slightly embarrassing Doctor of season nine. He's a far more interesting and likeable character now, and only one episode in the relationship between Doctor and companion has been cemented. He's a lecturer now and tethered to Earth like the Third Doctor was. which might make for an interesting theme. He clearly wants to be exploring new worlds, but he's instead stuck on Earth, delivering lectures that are nonsensical.

The idea with the puddle is initially an interesting one but isn't particularly groundbreaking. The relationship between the Doctor and Bill is definitely the most important part of the episode with the villain playing second fiddle, but that's fine. Bill and Heather's relationship was rushed and impossible to buy into, not helped by the fact that Heather is an unlikeable character, seeming moody and rude. The Dalek appearance was entirely unnecessary and the vault fails to be intriguing given how tiringly long it took for the cracks in time to be revealed or the identities of the hybrid or Missy to be explained.

A good quotation

Bill: Why do you run like that?

The Doctor: Like what?

Bill: Like a penguin with its arse on fire.

TARDIS crew and co.

• The Doctor: "Time and relative dimension in space. It means, what the Hell?" The Doctor has photographs of his granddaughter Susan and his wife River on his desk, but when Bill asks if photos really help the implication is that they don't. He decides not to erase Bill's memory, remembering what happened with Clara in 'Hell Bent'.
• Bill Potts: "What good is getting in your box going to do?" Bill is a fan of science fiction, eager to learn and desperate for adventure. She's a lesbian and lives with her foster mother Moira. Her mother died when she was a baby and Bill has very few photographs of her.
• Nardole: "Sir, we're leaving Earth. What about the vault?" Nardole (whose body is at least partly robotic, it seems) is working as the Doctor's valet at St Luke's. His real job is keeping the Doctor in line and making sure he remains on Earth, protecting the vault.

Plot holes and continuity

• The Daleks had their Time War tanks during the Dalek-Movellan war?
• Was the Doctor supposed to be protecting the vault in 'The Return of Doctor Mysterio'? Nardole had no problem with him being in New York.

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'Empress of Mars' review [Mark Gatiss]

The Doctor and Bill are waited on by an Ice Warrior at a Victorian tea party on Mars.

After NASA finds a message on Mars reading "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN", the Doctor, Bill and Nardole head to the Red Planet in 1881 to investigate. There they find Colonel Godsacre and his Victorian soldiers, as well as their pet Ice Warrior in search of his queen.

Mark Gatiss is a regular contributor to Modern Who, writing 'The Unquiet Dead', 'The Idiot's Lantern', 'Victory of the Daleks', 'Cold War', 'The Crimson Horror', 'Robot of Sherwood' and, most recently, the much-maligned 'Sleep No More'. None of these are exactly classics and are, at best, divisive (with the possible exception of his first episode). He intended to write a sequel to 'Sleep No More', but (fortunately) he instead wrote another Ice Warrior episode. Was it any better than his last?

Spoiler Zone

The episode

With limited sets, the crew being separated from the TARDIS and the Doctor trying to unite two opposing sides, this episode shares a lot in common with Classic Who stories such as 'The Silurians' or 'Warriors of the Deep'. The Doctor as a peacemaker certainly echoes earlier Doctors such as Jon Pertwee or a less-bumbling Patrick Troughton. Bill is similarly in the role of a classic companion (minus the screams), largely taking a backseat but asking the usual questions. This isn't always a bad thing considering her large role in 'The Lie of the Land'. Nardole is rather gingerly removed from the episode. Was that necessary? Couldn't the Doctor and Bill have landed on Mars without him? It seems to have been done just to bring Missy in for the briefest of scenes.

Considering the Ice Warriors are an iconic Doctor Who villain (behind the Daleks and the Cybermen, of course) they've made very few appearances. Mark Gatiss makes the most of this by fleshing out the Ice Warriors a bit, giving us a bit of backstory, more of a clue of their hierarchy and weaponry, and leads into 'The Curse of Peladon' with contact between Mars and the Galactic Federation. The Ice Warrior weapons are a new, visually-interesting and gruesome way to die, and the faceless race are given a figurehead in the shape of the Ice Queen Iraxxa, Empress of Mars. She's played as a snarling villain with little subtlety, but shows some depth when she shows her respect for the ashamed coward Colonel Godsacre. Iraxxa's desire for Bill's opinion because she was a fellow woman amongst "noisy males" came across as unnecessary and a clumsy way of getting Bill involved in the negotiations.

The more charismatic villain of the episode is Captain Neville Catchlove. Whilst not a well-rounded character, he is less cartoonishly evil than Lord Sutcliffe of 'Thin Ice' and much more fun to watch. The Victorian soldiers each fulfil a particular trope, but the script and performance means that they feel much more alive than, say, the forgettable colonists of Gliese 581 D or the underdeveloped crew of Chasm Forge. The colloquialisms sometimes come across as a bit forced and awkward, but it's at least an attempt at world-building. It's also a shame that there's no real sense that the soldiers are in much danger. We're told that food is running low and so is morale, but there's no feel of the desperation that no doubt they should be experiencing.

All-in-all, 'Empress of Mars' was a decent episode reminiscent of not only Troughton and Pertwee's run, but also, unfortunately, Matt Smith's. The pre-credits sequence was self-satisfied and unneeded. The scene is far more suited to Eleventh, Amy and Rory, which isn't a good thing.

A good quotation

"That's why you helped him come home. To claim Mars in the name of Queen Victoria, to loot it of its riches, stake a claim. The red planet turned pink."

TARDIS crew and co.

• The Doctor: "The last thing I'm going to do is take sides." The Doctor isn't a hero, just a good man trying to do what's right. Some more conflict about whether he's helping the Ice Warriors or the humans would have been nice; the Doctor mentions that the humans are the invaders here, but this isn't really delivered on. As always, Capaldi is great in the role.
• Bill Potts: "We can stand together." Bill has spent six months on a dystopian Earth and tried to kill the Doctor. Where are the consequences of this? Bill's walking along making pop-culture references as though she didn't shoot the Doctor in last week's episode. We're reminded that she's a fan of science fiction.
• Nardole: "So, er... What did I miss?" An awful lot is the answer. After being a key part of the TARDIS crew since 'Oxygen', Nardole sits this one out.
• Missy: "But, Doctor, please tell me. Really, are you alright?" Missy helps get the TARDIS back to Mars to save the Doctor and Bill, then says she's happy to return to the vault and seems genuinely concerned for the Doctor's welfare. Is she really turning over a new leaf?

Plot holes and continuity

• What were the Doctor, Bill and Nardole doing at NASA?
• Why did the TARDIS disappear? Hostile Action Displacement System? It didn't seem to be in any real danger.

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'The Eaters of Light' review [Rona Munro]

The Doctor held at spearpoint by the Picts.

Present day - In the ominously named Devil's Cairn in Scotland stands an ancient stone circle where, if you listen carefully, you can hear the music of the ghosts.
2nd century - The Doctor, Bill and Nardole land in Scotland to discover what happened to the lost Ninth Legion of the Roman Army.

Rona Munro is the first Classic Who writer to return to write for the modern series. She previously wrote 1989's 'Survival' starring the Seventh Doctor and Ace, the last episode of Classic Who and arguably McCoy's very best if not one of the best of the show's original run. The script had a decent story, menacing villains and was a great episode for Ace and the Master. Will she work her magic a second time, twenty-eight years later?

Spoiler Zone

The episode

Unfortunately not. The episode is paced like a classic episode but there's ultimately very little threat, so instead of building to a climax it just... coasts along. We're told that the Eater of Light killed an entire Roman army and the Doctor called it the deadliest creature on the planet, but it isn't sufficiently threatening - perhaps we should have seen it do more killing. It doesn't help that neither the Picts nor the Romans are particularly interesting. We know that the creature won't kill the Doctor or his companions so we have to care for the guest characters for there to be any sense of jeopardy. It's visually an impressive enough monster, though.

The story was a bit run-of-the-mill, which doesn't always matter if there's some interesting twists or a new take on mythology or some excellent characterisation. Unfortunately there's none of that. We know the Doctor isn't going to enter the gateway and Peter Capaldi knows it, playing it with little conviction. The scene where Bill is talking to the Roman soldiers about their sexuality seemed forced in and unnecessary. Didn't Pearl Mackie say in an interview that Bill being a lesbian wasn't a big part of her? Then why is it being brought up so often?

The episode wasn't all bad. Bill realising that the TARDIS translates other languages is funny, especially when she calls it "auto-translate" and points out (for the first time) that it includes lip-sync. Nardole is funny whenever he opens his mouth and Missy is sterling as usual in the best scene of the episode. As silly as the crow saying "Kar" was, it was suitably Doctor Who. Unfortunately, the bulk of this episode was boring and familiar, and had a similar feeling to the previous episode 'Empress of Mars' (the Doctor trying to get two sides to team up and all that).

A good quotation

The Doctor: It's as if his bones have disintegrated.

Nardole: Ooo, what could do that?

The Doctor: A complete and total absence of any kind of sunlight.

Nardole: Death by Scotland.

TARDIS crew and co.

• The Doctor: "I've been standing by the gates of your world, keeping you all safe, since you crawled out of the slime. I'm not stopping now." Was this the return of the prickly Twelfth of the eighth season? He was often unlikeable in this episode, particularly in his interactions with Kar, where he's relentlessly patronising and unnecessarily hard on her. He's governed, farmed and juggled in Roman Britain and was once a second-class Vestal virgin.
• Bill Potts: "You don't know more about the Ninth Legion than me. You don't. I read the book. I loved the book. I read everything." We know from 'The Pilot' (and were reminded in 'Empress of Mars') that Bill is a fan of science fiction, and now we learn that she also has a passion for the vanishing of the Ninth Legion. She's not shown much of an interest in history before, but Bill having a great interest for a mystery doesn't seem out of character. She's surprised at how liberal the Romans are with regards to sexual orientation and is told that she's "restricted" for only fancying girls. 
• Nardole: "Don't make me go squeaky-voiced!" Nardole's role is mainly restricted to comic-relief, a job he does fantastically. He doesn't want to be here; he just wants to go back to bed. Again tells the Doctor that he should be guarding the vault, but we're all past caring about that at this point. He claims to know 10% of the Doctor's darkest secrets. 
• Missy: "I don't even know why I'm crying. Why do I keep doing that now?" Missy shows up at the end of the episode for a touching scene between her and the Doctor. She seems to have some sentimentality hearing the music, which she can't understand. She seems truly elated for a moment when the Doctor says that they could be friends again soon. What a jump from calling him her boyfriend in series eight and saying how much he loves her.

Plot holes and continuity

• "Return journeys are easy," the Doctor says about the TARDIS. Does he not remember trying to get Ian and Barbara home? Or Tegan? But then the TARDIS is in better shape now.
• Does Nardole have his facts right? In episode three of 'The Chase', we see the crew of the Mary Celeste jumping overboard after the Daleks arrive chasing the First Doctor. 
• Shall we assume the Picts saw the TARDIS offscreen in order to carve it into the stone?

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