12.28: The Pilot

In which Mr Steven Moffat has some fun with the episode title.

Broadcast: April 2017

Watched: April 2022

“Anywhere at all, in the whole university?”

Sweet. Not as brilliant as I’d remembered, but certainly very good. 

The new set up is lovely. The opening scene very efficiently sets up both the new status quo (the Doctor’s basically turned into Professor Chronotis from Shada, and might have been at the university since 1947), and the new companion relationship (which is oddly reminiscent of the 4th Doctor and Adric).

The plot is fun, but fairly slight, because it’s not what the episode is about, obviously. The creepy water creature is vaguely reminiscent of Waters of Mars (less scary but more inescapable). In her final line, Heather finally says something that isn’t exact repetition – that feels like a subtle suggestion that she’s still in there somewhere, which sets up the ending of the season. So does the Doctor’s “maybe one day we’ll find her”.

But the best bit is Bill, who’s immediately great, obviously. The way she’s an outsider who desperately wants to be inside; the way she makes up things her mum said, to comfort herself about losing a woman she never knew. (The Doctor getting a bunch of pictures of her mum is *heartbreaking*.) Also, both the chips monologue and the way it takes her ages to grasp what the TARDIS is are big clues that her mind works differently from the usual companion: the former especially is a lovely character note, but not in any way a logical thing to start talking about.

On his final throw of the dice, Moffat finally gives us a companion who you can’t immediately map onto one of the characters from Coupling. 

This is the man’s sixth season opener and he’s still not out of ideas. Amazing really.

Other thoughts:

• The title is an amazing bit of trolling from a man who absolutely, definitely knows that it’ll annoy sad fans.

• Is Nardole a robot now? If they really have been at the university for 70 years he must logically be one of the longest lasting companions. His new role as a sort of factotum, leaving Bill free to be the “real” companion, is another great Moffat innovation when he really should be out of ideas.

• The Doctor’s rooms look very Oxbridge – do offices at red bricks look like that? – but again I suppose it’s the Shada influence. Love the pot of sonic screwdrivers on the Doctor’s desk. Also, pictures of River and Susan: this Doctor is a grandfather and a widower, not the embarrassing dad of the previous season.

• Bill and Heather, like the Hartnells. Aww. 

• Bill’s horrible foster mum was last seen as Cat Ardal O’Hanlon’s wife in Gridlock. This reuse of guest stars feels unusual for the modern series, a sign of how long the show had been back by now. Happened with the old series all the time, of course; Michael Sheard was in every third story.

• “Nobody’s from space. I’m from a planet, like everybody else”

• Movellans! Mind you, the Dalek cameo is a reminder of quite how long we go between Dalek stories: there aren’t any between September 2015 and January 2019.

• It’s lovely how the Children In Need Bill intro scene [the minisode “Fried From the Future”] slots seamlessly in. Didn’t have much to say about that, figured I’d watch it here, but again its function is to show that Bill is great and doesn’t think like a companion normally does.

• Lovely use of Clara’s theme when the Doctor realises he can’t just go around wiping people’s memories any more.

• The vault is absolutely no mystery, it’s blindingly obvious who’s in there.

• Capaldi runs like a twat.