#Mignight | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

timeagainreviews · 2 months ago

Text

Well, Well, Well, Look Who's Back

It’s a rare quality in a Doctor Who story where the true nature of the story is left unanswered. The Eighth Doctor audio “The Chimes of Midnight,” is one such story. The Doctor is given no solace at the end of “The Satan Pit.” Was that the devil? Like, the actual devil? Was the entity in “Listen,” all in the Doctor’s imagination? Perhaps one of modern Who’s best mysteries comes from the series four episode “Midnight.” Of all of Davies’ scripts, it is perhaps my favourite. Which is why when it was revealed that the Doctor and Belinda were on the planet Midnight, my heart sank a little. Ahead of season two, Russell T Davies issued a warning against spoilers for episodes three and six. He knew the reveal of Midnight was going to be huge among the fandom. So why was I hesitant?

The original script for “Midnight,” was written over a weekend. Its success was somewhat of a shock to Davies. It was a companion lite story that took place mostly in a single location. It was as bottle episode as bottle episodes get. Yet the story was so gripping, the performances so stunning, that it became a surprise hit and fan favourite. It was so simple yet so effective. It wasn’t just that the episode was genuinely scary, but that it also allowed the mystery to remain. Part of Midnight’s success lies in the questions the audience is left to ponder. It’s a story I personally would never have given a sequel. Why mess with greatness? But it’s RTD’s story to tell, not mine. So hesitantly, I held out hope.

The Doctor continues dragging Belinda back home with the vindicator. Davies’ rush to establish character pays off as they spend considerably less time convincing Belinda to fill her role as companion. Something this modern era really likes to do is the “in one door out the other” instant costume change. I like that it feels like the TARDIS wardrobe exists in a pocket of its own time where the Doctor and Belinda can spend hours getting their hair and clothing just right. I like to imagine some sort of George Jetson contraption that does their hair. It could just be a stylistic edit, but I like that you can think of it that way. However, I did find it a bit odd that the Doctor and Belinda walk out wearing the exact costume of the crew they’re about to meet outside the TARDIS doors. I can imagine some explanations. If the TARDIS doesn’t always take the Doctor where he wants, but rather where he needs, perhaps it can also suggest appropriate attire. Maybe the Doctor has prior knowledge of the Lombardic military’s uniforms. It mostly feels like Davies saying “It doesn’t matter. Let it go.” It’s another means to get on with the story. It’s like the crucial moment at the beginning of any D&D campaign when the players decide to work as a team because otherwise, there is no campaign.

Luckily, the story gets into things fast enough that we the audience don’t start looking at Tiktoks or something. The Doctor uses psychic paper to establish himself as a “secret shopper,” type of inspector. But not all of the crew is entirely on board with this mysterious stranger. The troops have been sent to planet 6-7-6-7, to find out what happened to the mining crew of Colony Base 15. However, due to the galvanic radiation, communication with the crew is virtually impossible. The bodies of the crew show the signs of a violent struggle. Planet 6-7-6-7 is an uninhabitable irradiated rock, but it’s also rich with mercury. But this is no mere Mad Hatter Disease. Those without the burn marks of a laser gun exhibit evidence of blunt force trauma. Every mirror has been smashed and there appears to be only one crew member still living.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have this episode slightly spoiled. An unfortunate side-effect of being a Doctor Who fan are the Doctor Who theories and spoilers that sometimes get thrust upon us by YouTube thumbnails or some dick on Facebook. It seemed like the usual speculation rot. The same people who said that Alan’s golden visage in “The Robot Revolution,” was the new look for Omega, were the same people saying the Midnight entity was set to return. Annoyingly, this was one of those one in a million moments when the speculators were correct. It only slightly ruined the reveal, as I had cottoned on earlier through context. There aren’t many planets in the Whoniverse that exhibit 6-7-6-7’s traits. And of course, as soon as they mention X-tonic radiation, most of us knew immediately.

My reaction to the spoiler when I first heard it was “That’s stupid, why would they do that? They just did a spiritual sequel with ‘The Wild Blue Yonder.’” Truly, this episode had a lot to overcome from my perspective, and it’s not like my worries are unprecidented. One might argue that while enjoyable, the Weeping Angels have become less and less effective with each new appearance. It wasn’t enough for them to knock people out of their place in time, but now they must also break people’s necks. The image of an angel is now an angel. So not only can you not look away from them, but looking at them infects you too. This is the problem with long-form storytelling. You write Batman for long enough, and eventually some edgelord is going to have the Joker cut his face off. Have you seen how many powers Superman has these days? The lore becomes overwrought.

Of course Davies has to introduce more powers to the Midnight entity. When the sole survivor, Aliss, is discovered, it is quickly learned that she is host to the entity. However, 400,000 years have passed since the events of “Midnight,” and the entity has added some new tricks to its repertoire. One could even say it has adapted over the years. The time jump is an effective way to change the rules a bit, but they didn’t change them so much that the entity is unrecognisable, or at least as recognisable as a faceless entity can be. The hallmarks of paranoia and fear are palpable as the crew begin fear one another. Like the last time we met the entity, it pits people against one another and toys with them. It would appear that 400 millennia have done nothing to soften the entity’s attitude.

One of the entity’s newfound abilities is to hitch a ride on the back of their victims and anyone who stands at their “midnight” position gets thrown violently. Technically, that would be their six behind them and 12 o’clock would be directly in front of them, but whatever, it’s poetic license. The troop’s leader and future Big Finish lead, Shayla Costallion, is trying her best to allay the fears of her soldiers but the Doctor’s claim of having visited 400,000 years previous, throws his credibility into doubt, and by extension, Shayla’s. Cassio Palin-Paleen, aka Trooper 1 and not a brand of wristwatch, has been suspicious of the Doctor and Belinda since their unannounced arrival. Mix in the paranoia created by the entity, and you’ve got the workings of a mutiny on your hands.

Aliss’ deafness turns out to be her strength in this episode as she is unable to hear the entity’s whispers. It can’t turn her paranoid like everyone else. Though it’s not like it’s helped her much. Everyone around her is dead and now troops are pointing weapons at her. One aspect to her deafness that I did find a bit odd was that the sign language she used was British sign language. I say odd because she’s supposed to be an alien. Her people have never even heard of humans. It would have been interesting for the Doctor to say something like “It’s not British sign language, the TARDIS is simply translating it.” That could have added an extra dimension to the TARDIS translation circuits that we’ve never seen. It feels odd that the TARDIS is supposed to translate language and yet on the two occasions when the Doctor has met deaf people, it doesn’t translate their signing. I’ve read Doctor Who stories where the TARDIS translates the movements of a species that speaks in dance. Clearly this is an inconsistency of the TARDIS that crops up as narrative dictates, but it could have been very interesting to see them explore the implications of non-verbal communication.

Cassio’s mutiny throws the entire squad into a frenzy, including Aliss who begins turning, thus revealing her back to the troops flinging them back violently. Despite the fact that the troops are dying grizzly deaths, the tone was on the verge of becoming silly. However, Shayla’s command to Aliss to turn in such a way as to kill Cassio brought things back on track. Not only did it put an end to the mutiny, but it also grounded the story into a more serious place than people cartoonishly flying backwards. It’s hard to keep the same tension as an intimate story like “Midnight,” when you’re telescoping the focus to be bigger and broader. In terms of tone, “Midnight” is to “The Well,” what “Alien,” is to “Aliens.” One is a quiet brooding survival horror, while the other is a soldier filled action thriller. You trade the intimate single location set of the tour shuttle for a big expensive mining facility. It’s not a bad thing, but it does remind me of Omni-Man saying “Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power.” Midnight achieved so much more tension with so much less.

Tone really is the overall factor. And while it may not be fair to compare them, “The Well,” never reaches anything close to the same level of tension as its predecessor. But one tone that the episode does deliver on is that it feels like something straight out of the first Davies era. And I don’t mean because it was a sequel to a classic Davies story, or that they reused familiar visual cues like the pit from “The Satan Pit,” or female captains offing themselves like “The Waters of Mars.” It feels like a solid classic episode of very safe and very fun Doctor Who. This is the kind of episode people were expecting when Davies came back on as showrunner.

It’s weird to feel so cynical toward an episode I enjoyed the hell out of. These past three episodes have been such a pleasure to watch. But I find myself struggling with the themes of this story and its implications, especially in its ending. Like “Midnight,” before it, the entity is supposedly neutralised by a fearless woman giving her life to save everyone else. I say supposedly because the existence of “The Well,” implies that the first time only took the creature out of commission. The second time, Shayla’s great sacrifice is almost immediately nullified by the persistence of the entity on the rescue ship. It’s as though Davies undermined her sacrifice in favour of a tired horror trope of the monster surviving their supposed death. Since when did Doctor Who need to suddenly explain the reappearance of a villain? The Master comes in and out of life and death as he pleases, but suddenly we have to explain that the entity survived.

I keep saying Davies, when what I mean is actually “Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall.” But since Davies gave himself top billing, and I have no idea what Sharma’s contribution was, I have been defaulting to Davies. Perhaps it truly was a collaborative effort, but I would love to see Davies actually let these writers have their own stories eventually. I imagine Davies had the seed of a story and had Sharma write it. That’s pretty common in situations like these. It makes sense that Davies would be more involved on this story as the Midnight entity is from one of his most celebrated stories. I just wish I knew who to praise, and what for.

The Chekov’s gun of broken mirrors plays into the entity’s apparent demise. The Doctor orders Shayla and her troops to shoot the pipes carrying mercury. Using a cascade of liquid mercury, the reflection of the entity behind Aliss now has itself behind itself. I liked the use of reflections here as it was a nice nod to the way the entity would mirror the Doctor and others aboard the tour shuttle. It felt appropriate for the mythology of the entity. It’s funny how I mentioned Davies remixing his old work, because much of this story was evoking Steven Moffat. Stopping the entity with its own reflection reminded me a lot of trapping the Weeping Angels by forcing them all to look at each other. But how well does it work? As it would appear with this creature, the only thing anyone can do for sure is slow it down, and even then, I’m not so sure.

If you recall from “The Robot Revolution,” Belinda asks the Doctor about the physiology of Missbelindachandrakind and whether it is similar to that of humans. It’s odd then that basically the same question is asked about humans in comparison to Lombardics. Is this some weird detail to pay attention to or a bizarre coincidence? Remember how the bees disappearing and alien invaders with lost planets ended up being the secret behind series four? The way Davies writes, it could be nothing, or it could be everything. I’m not saying it is something, but if nothing else, it’s weird that it happened twice. After it is revealed that the entity has left Aliss and latched onto Belinda, Shayla shoots Belinda in an effort to transfer the infection to herself. While the Doctor fusses over Belinda, Shayla tears ass down the corridor in order to throw herself into the pit.

Shayla’s sacrifice does save the life of Belinda. Her gamble of shooting Belinda in a non-lethal spot was enough to trick the entity off of her back. The Doctor gets Belinda back onto the TARDIS and hooks her clothes up to the latest in airpod technology. Belinda continues to delight throughout this episode. I love her reactions to every “new” piece of the Doctor’s tech. The bewilderment on her face as the Doctor pulls out his psychic paper is such a nice attention to detail. It’s easy for us to forget that all of this is still quite fresh for Belinda, especially because she seems so well-suited for the job.

I mention Shayla is a future Big Finish character, but that’s because she reminds me a bit of Bernice Summerfield. She has a sort of badass who has probably been on quite a few adventures air about her. She has all of the makings to be a fan favourite like Sara Kingdom or Amelia Rumford. In another reality, she would be a recurring character. But here we see her cut down in the line of duty, and worse yet, seemingly for no real reason. Ultimately the Midnight entity gets away, possibly even hitching a ride off of the planet depending on whether or not anyone on the ship survives. They’re not deaf like Aliss, so they might succumb to the whims of this ancient evil. Or it did die in the pit. Though I imagine its survival instinct is stronger than that. Going by this metric, the Doctor is 0 for 2 when it comes to facing off against this baddie. His only victory in both instances was escape.

To their credit, neither Davies nor Angel-Walfall ruined the mystery of the creature. What little we saw of the creature were vague glimpses over people’s shoulders. My biggest worry about this story was that they would explain too much and they did not. They found a nice middleground and stuck to it. However, I am still struck by the feeling that the story still feels unnecessary. No new information was gleaned other than “You really can’t kill this thing.” I was reminded of Michael from “The Good Place” when he said “There's something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.” He was talking about froyo, but it applies. My friend, Anathema, said she was glad that RTD didn’t turn the entity into some God of Chaos in the Pantheon, and I am in full agreement. But the introduction of Mrs Flood at the end of the story did have me wondering if she didn’t orchestrate the entire thing.

Speaking of Mrs Flood, isn’t it a bit bizarre that they’re doing the same thing with her as they did with Susan Twist last season? It’s such an odd choice that I expect them to reveal Mrs Flood to be some lady who also can’t make tea. I’m curious what her response to the Doctor’s vindicator is going to be. Whatever that is, I imagine it will take a couple of weeks for us to find out as next week is looking to be a Doctor-lite episode. Even weirder, the episode stars Ruby Sunday as opposed to Belinda, which I guess makes sense considering Belinda and the Doctor’s current predicament. I don’t see them having many opportunities to split up. Pete McTighe is returning as a writer for this one. I don’t know how to feel about that as none of his stories have been particularly good. We’ve only really seen him write under Chibnall, so maybe having RTD as showrunner will elevate his work.

This one was difficult to write about. On one hand, I had a lot of fun watching this story unfold. It was a very solid episode of Doctor Who. But it had a lot of weird baggage attached to it. I didn’t care for either of the endings. One felt nullified by the other, and the other felt like corny horror schlock. But dammit if it wasn’t a lot of fun to watch. Ncuti did a beautiful job portraying the same level of fear David Tennant delivered nearly 17 years ago. I do feel that the episode struggled to make a case for its own existence, but perhaps its strongest argument is that it was so damn good. It felt effortlessly good. Instant classic stuff. If someone’s biggest complaint about the RTD2 era is that it doesn’t feel like the RTD era, this is the episode for them. They say you can’t revisit your childhood, but for a portion of the fandom, this episode was something of a time machine. Three episodes in and season two is really starting to shape up into something special.

22 notes · View notes