Eight minutes into The Caretaker my children were scared. A policeman had just been zapped with ruthless efficiency as the camera panned onto a close up of the remains of his smouldering detached arm. The fact that Doctor Who was on an hour later tonight signified in their minds, not a scheduling decision related to Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, but that an extra horrific episode was in store. Gradually, despite the odd laugh along the way, they became more and more restless and impatient in their wait for further scares. None were forthcoming and the biggest scream of the night at least in my household was a “yuck” when Courtney could be heard spewing her guts up in the TARDIS.
This was a throwback episode to the Russell T. Davies era with a greater focus upon character and relationships than we’ve become accustomed to during Steven Moffat’s tenure. There are serious dynamics in play - most strikingly the friction between the Doctor as an Officer class and Danny Pink as the Soldier. These themes will no doubt take on deeper significance in coming weeks or even into the next series. At several points in the episode the Doctor reacts to the word soldier with an intensity of silence to suggest that he is hiding critical facts, and deeply personal ones at that. But the overall feel of this episode is that of a light-hearted romp; from the farce like flipping between scenes of Clara trying rather unsuccessfully to hide her double live to the unimpressed reactions of Courtney to the Doctor and his box, the “banter” so characteristic of post 2005 Doctor Who, is well and truly back. And the Twelfth Doctor is holding up well despite his self motivational “two days – I can do it”.
Peter Capaldi continues to shine in the role with such playful expressiveness literally flowing through his veins. In his angry moments you can see the blood pumping through his neck. His mannerisms are unpredictable and it is fascinating to watch his awkward hand gestures. If Matt Smith was all about the arms, then Capaldi is all about the hands. The eyebrow reference is back in, but it is an odd choice of bodily features to pick up on. Capaldi’s eyebrows are tame compared to Pertwee’s and he is an actor who can bring a subtlety of characterisation not just through his eyes and brows, but with the turn of a head, the bite of a lip or even the wiggle of a nostril! There is no real stand out feature as every part of him oozes class.
The threat whilst massive in the Doctor’s eyes fails to come across to the viewer as such, but perhaps this is in part due to our absolute confidence with Clara, that the Doctor will save the day. It’s quite a shift from the reticence we felt towards him in Deep Breath. But, despite the positive move towards the hero in Time Heist, it is still quite a jump with no real exposition at all on the vulnerabilities of the Doctor that have so far been exposed in this series.
The Skovox Blitzer for the deadliest of killing machines is rather too easily fooled, with the resolution derivative of the Officer vs. Soldier interplay between the Doctor and Pink. The Doctor overcomes the threat of the Skovox soldier by taking on the mantle of its general, an unsubtle reminder of what is to come. There is a nagging feeling that the major threat plays second fiddle to the relationship formation between Clara’s Space Dad and boyfriend. But the robot though quite stereotypical in his voice and phrases “Problem, solution….destroy” is a good design at least from the chest up. Chest down and the threat is undermined by a Robot Wars like design.
If last week’s strength was plot over some occasionally shaky dialogue, this week we have dialogue at it’s sharpest. Neither too hyper-real or run of the mill there are some wonderful quotes and plenty of laughs with some great one liners “It’s assembly….go and worship something,” “You’re a spacewoman…. You said you were from Blackpool,” “Shut him up, up or down – it doesn’t matter to me,” “Human’s - you should all be a permanent state of panic.” Unlike last week, Roberts resists doing too much in under 45 minutes. Consequently the plot is as stripped back as possible, allowing the dynamics between the three leads to really take centre stage.
Danny Pink’s character like Mickey and Rory before him questions his girlfriend’s relationship to the Doctor “Why do you do it? Why do you fly off in the box?” but there is no sense of him feeling threatened by the Doctor. Quite the reverse – it is the Doctor who feels threatened by Danny. The Doctor, like a scolding father asks Clara to speak to him later - “You’ve explained me to him, you haven’t explained him to me.” Danny’s background as a soldier enables him to show a level of perception about the Doctor that the trusting Clara has failed to reach. For Clara the Doctor is mysterious, a magician. For Danny he is an officer, giving orders and hiding behind his rank. “I know men like him, served with them…. make you do things you never thought you could.”
The Doctor hopelessly fails to pick up on the indications that Danny Pink is Clara’s boyfriend, preferring to stroke his own ego with the illusion that the Eleventh Doctor like Adrian would be attractive to her. Danny by contrast very quickly susses the Doctor… he knows when he is lying (pretending not to know Danny is using the invisibility), he knows what would make him snap (playing the salute card) and he knows exactly what the Doctor’s fatherlike protectiveness towards Clara requires of him “It doesn’t matter if he likes me or hates me… I need to be good enough for you”
Given that the Doctor is so blinkered that he cannot imagine how a soldier could become a maths teacher rather than a PE teacher, he might feel partly vindicated by the acrobatic manner in which Danny helps to disable the Skovox. Whether there is more to Danny than meet the eyes is open for debate, certainly there is reason to share some of the Doctor’s reticence.
Chris Addison’s surprise appearance as a kind of line manager working for Missy was promising and added further intrigue to the ongoing paradise/Neversphere arc. This time, in contrast to the paradise garden we saw in Deep Breath we have hospital like sanitised corridors - a heaven that does not seem at all inviting. Murray Gold’s incidental music continues to impress this season, with more variety than ever. We were treated to shades of Bear McCreary’s Battlestar Galactica score tonight in the Neversphere scene at the end.
An enjoyable episode that feels at times tonally more like a Sarah Jane Adventures story than Doctor Who, Series Eight continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, but with Capaldi at the TARDIS controls one suspects that even a weaker script will be worth watching. Script wise The Caretaker is one of the strongest since the series returned in 2005. Gareth Roberts strength is in being able to make the Doctor an adjective. In The Caretaker Peter Capaldi is as Doctorish as an actor can possibly get. What exactly that word means, you will need to ask Roberts - quite possibly it is an instinctive thing that cannot be described. You either get it or you don’t, and Roberts gets it in abundance.
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