11.37: The Bells of Saint John
In which someone has mistaken “creepy” for “cute”.
Broadcast: March 2013
Watched: January 2022
“Are you guarding me?” Or “I can’t tell the future, I just work there.”
A weird one. It’s probably the weakest companion introduction episode so far, but if this had come before Rose we’d probably have thought we’d won the lottery. It’s quite 60s/early 70s, the way it finds monsters in a new technology... but the idea of wifi that eats people doesn’t actually map onto anything real, it’s not a metaphor for anything real wifi actually does. Moffat basically treats it as magic (“The people are switching on the lights, the wifi is switching on the people”).
Other things that don’t quite land for me: the title is frustrating because it’s sort of meaningless, it doesn’t really connect with the episode. The “Cumbria, 1207” bit is mostly distraction/delay/colour, but also sort of hints at interesting stories we don’t get to see. (Fun fact: Cumbria didn’t exist until 1974, and in 1207 was probably part of Scotland!) It also contains this exchange...
“Is it an evil spirit?” “It’s a woman.” *monk crosses himself*
...which is so “FFS, Moffat” that I assume this was written in a tearing hurry.
Then the Doctor’s first meeting with Clara is really creepy - he just shows up at her house and is weird at her - and the show doesn’t seem to have realised. Later he fusses while she sleeps, leaving water and jammy dodgers, even touches her hair, and the use of Clara’s theme suggests this is supposed to be “cute” rather than “stalker”. And then the Doctor begs coppers from strangers to pay for breakfast, which feels weirdly bad taste.
On the other side of the ledger, the pre-credits - the victim of the wifi narrating the threat, YouTube video style, with lots of jump cuts - all feels fresh. So does the heavy use of junk computer code scrolling on screen, to dramatic music. It’s very Sherlock, or, less flatteringly, very Bugs.
There are loads of good bits. The scene in the cafe, where Miss Kizlet is taking control of people and talking to the Doctor through them is terrifying. So is the idea of being able to rewrite someone’s emotions (“Do you like her? I can make her like you too, if you want”). The spoonheads aren’t a monster for the ages, but they’re fine. And the bit at the end, when all the villain’s personalities are wiped and they go back to who they were before the Great Intelligence got involved, is great. Celia Imrie doing a little girl voice is genuinely terrifying.
But the plane sequence seems to typify it - it should be a showstopper but it doesn't feel quite worked out enough. I dunno. It’s fine. It just... it sort of feels like junk food, in a way Moffat episodes generally don’t. It’s an undercooked script, saved in production. You can tell they’re in crisis at this point.
Other thoughts:
“The search for Clara brings the Doctor to London”, says the iplayer summary. This amused me in a “Oh, London, how unusual!” kind of way but actually Moffat hasn’t really done contemporary London up til now has he? It’s much more an RTD thing.
Smith’s face in the credits. Euch.
More Doctor dad dancing. Euch!
Clara has read Amy’s book. This annoyed me and I can’t justify it even slightly.
“It’s me! De-monked! Sensible clothes.” No, you look like a magician. [Oh wait this is obviously a deliberate joke isn’t it sorry.]
Giving the Doctor a motorbike, for one episode, feels very “Pertwee has asked for a hovercraft this year”.
At the end, UNIT rides in to save the day, but as in Seeds of Doom, because there are no familiar faces, you barely notice.
Clara refusing to go until tomorrow feels like a character note. Amy runs away with the first bloke who asks, Clara plays hard to get.
The regulars take a spectacularly stupid route across London on that bike.
Some lines I really like:
“I’m very fond of Alexei, but my conscience says we should probably kill him.”
*whispers* “I invented the quadrocycle!”
“I can’t fly a plane, can you?” “No.” “Fine, let’s do it together.” That’s a stolen H2G2 joke, mind.
“No one loves cattle more than Burger King.”
A line I really didn’t: “That wasn’t a leaf. That was page one.” Yeah but it was still a leaf though wasn’t it.
I've always thought of this one as another way that 7B was messed up by bottling out of making Victorian Clara the companion. The way it focuses on the Internet, aircraft, etc., made me wonder if it was supposed to be her introduction to the modern world.
Also, the title feels like a placeholder. Given that it's a story about the Great Intelligence trying to take over the world through the Internet, I wonder if Moffat wanted to call it World Wide Web, but only fans would have got the joke.
Don't diss Bugs. That was a genuinely great show - I rewatched most of it again recently and sure, it's clearly very time-and-location specific (in a way that, say, The Avengers, isn't) but it gets a lot out of a limited budget and a decent cast.