12.6: The Caretaker

In which someone did not think enough about the implications of the casting.

Broadcast: September 2014

Watched: March 2022

“So, you recognised me, then.”

Weird one, this. It’s half the silly funny slightly meta one; half full of horrible psychological stuff that doesn’t really map onto reality in any obvious way. 

Meta bit first: it’s the “Doctor in our world” story, The Lodger volume 3 or possibly 4, only this time the joke is that the Doctor doesn’t understand relationships again and entirely misses the meaning of the “Ozzie loves the squaddie” graffiti. 

It’s full of lovely jokes about the show as a whole: the montage intro of bits of other stories is like BtVS: The Zeppo, or Love & Monsters, and has an opening Chibnall lifts wholesale for The Halloween Apocalypse; the Pride & Prejudice scene, with the “no, there’s a bio in the back” punchline, also works as a joke about the ridiculousness of format; the subplot with the teacher that looks a bit like Matt Smith and the Doctor’s reaction to that is *brilliant*. The best bit, though, is making the terrifying killing machine look so completely rubbish.

All of that’s great. The bit that isn’t, is... what is this tug of love meant to *mean*? The Doctor is an absolutely unforgivable prick –refusing to believe Danny can be a maths teacher and calling him PE is very uncomfortable because of the casting –and the story only makes sense if he’s occupying the role of the disapproving dad, which fits with the “I need to be good enough” ending. But everywhere else in the season it’s portrayed as a sort of cheating, that Clara is seeing each of these two men behind the other’s back. And there’s no reason for that: fundamentally, there is no reason at all for the Doctor and Danny to dislike each other except to generate tension. So all the “He doesn’t like soldiers” stuff feels forced. (To be fair, he has just finished fighting a thousand year war on Trenzalore, I guess.)

It’s also incredibly weird watching the build up of what’s meant to be Clara’s relationship with her life partner, when we know it’s all going to blow up.

Oh well, other things:

• Coal Hill has unusually small classes

• “Human beings have incredibly short life spans, frankly you should all be in a permanent state of panic.”

• The visual of the circular hole the monster blows in the stack of school chairs is amazing.

• “I saw you tonight, you weren’t even scared, and you should have been” – cf “Fear is a superpower”, clearly one of the season’s themes.

• Chris Addison! I’d forgotten he was in this.