Ain’t It Cool’s longtime “Doctor Who” critic Kelvington gets to see a new episode every Thursday! He says he finds “sort of fun” this weekend’s installment, “The Caretaker”:
SHORT REVIEW. Do you know what a palate-cleanser sorbet is? Well that's what “The Caretaker” is. It's pleasant, it sort of fun, and it just preps your palate so you can enjoy the rest of the meal. Or in this case the last few episodes, which I suspect will be crazy!LONGER REVIEW. Many people are going to compare tonight’s installment to "The Lodger" and "Closing Time" because of Gareth Roberts wrote them.
I'm NOT going to do that.
This episode feels in many ways a lot more like a remake of the RTD-era episode "School Reunion." But instead of Rose and Sarah Jane at loggerheads, this time it's the Doctor and Danny. And instead of a tin dog, it's a tin alien. And this time Clara is playing the level-headed one, concerned about the safety of the kids at her school. Oh, and there's not an Anthony Head here to have clever banter with The Doctor, just a tin dog of an alien that shoots up the school.
The episode is divided into three parts:
Part One: The Love Story.
We never got to see Amy and Rory fall in love, because they really were in love with each other since they were kids. But Clara and Danny we get to see start from the ground up.Now they've moved on a bit from being an awkward (and wow was it awkward) dating couple who needed time travel to save the relationship.
Now they're a real couple who sit down and have proper dates.
This is not your typical Doctor Who sort of thing to show. The entire first act is mostly Clara balancing her love life with TARDIS life, and there are some truly cool shots -- "Sherlock" worthy shots -- as Clara moves in and out of these two worlds.
Now if I were a skeptic or pessimist, I would say the only reason we get to see Clara falling truly in love is so the producers can rip every viewer's heart out this Christmas when she either gets killed off or leaves the show.
Part Two: The Doctor Is A Dick.
Yea, if you really like seeing the Doctor insult and generally be mean to Clara, then you are going to love how he treats Danny. Yea, we get it, Danny was a soldier -- but wow is the Doctor harsh with him.Starting with "Into The Dalek" we’ve gotten to see this Doctor talk about how much he dislikes soldiers, but here he takes it to a new level. But of course Danny is no longer a solider, and he's only really got one thing on his mind: making Clara happy.
Perhaps The Doctor’s surly attitude is precipitated by what he knows is ahead for Danny – or Danny’s offpring.
Does the chip on The Doctor’s shoulder derive from what Orson "Awesome" Pink becomes? I'm now pretty sure Orson is "The Master" (which I'm going to keep saying until SOMEONE becomes the Master, and it's not Missy because... well it's not ... probably).
Anyway, this second part of the episode mostly involves The Doctor meeting Danny, and Danny meeting the TARDIS.
The Doctor meets and becomes friends with a young girl named Courtney, to whom he's initially not very kind. To be fair, the lack of manners he exhibits toward her can largely be blamed on how distracted he is by The Threat (which really isn't a threat, because it's barely a sub-plot) -- but just the same I can't remember The Doctor ever being quite so callous.
And, yes, I get the Doctor is on his own plane, and I get that he's way above us, but I just don't recall it being done like this before. Where Hartnell was grumpy and Six was "difficult," this new Doctor seems to be straying awfully close to the realms of bipolar. I trust a lot of this is just being played for laughs, but to my taste it’s a bit much and goes on too long.
Those remembering back to The Doc’s longtime bromance with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart may be troubled by any “newfound” disdain The Doctor seems to harbor toward servicemen, but it may help to remember that Pertwee’s Doctor didn’t always demonstrate inordinate fondness for the Brigadier. He never showed outright contempt for the man, but he was often short and countermanded a lot of orders.
Part Three: Hey, There’s A Fucking *Alien* In This School!
And why is a Terminator/Predator type alien loose in Coal Hill School? Well, it turns out the TARDIS left behind a lot of easy-to-follow Arton (sp?) Energy thanks to The Doctor’s frequent visits to Clara's place of employment.(Why didn’t it follow the Energy to Clara's apartment, or to Cardiff where the TARDIS has landed numerous times, or to the place where Donna worked? A question for others to contemplate.)
In any case. The last third of the episode is devoted to our heroes dispatching something akin to a cross between "Night Man" and a Cylon.
And in the end the extraterrestial menace doesn't much matter, because that's not what the story is about. It's a love story; it's about Clara and Danny. Sure, we get to see the Doctor employ a Ghostbusters-style proton-pack and use Nicholas Briggs’ old Dalek microphone (the same kind is used at football games). But you aren't going to care. This episode is just the one we swish in our mouths and spit out before the next course. This is the episode that cleans our palate and gets us ready for the last few in the series.
There's a comedy sketch depicting a guy entering a film producer’s office. He says to the executive behind the desk, “Hey congratulations! ‘Slug The Movie’ is a huge hit!” And the executive says, “Thanks! We start shooting ‘Slug 2’ on Monday!” The first guy says, “Do you have a script for it?” The executive responds, “Nah, we'll pound it out over the weekend.” That's what this episode is. They just pounded this out.
