Doctor Who Christmas Special 2016: "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" (spoilers).

[The Romulan Republic]

Putting this up to discuss tonight's upcoming Who Christmas Special (and, thanks to silly BBC scheduling, the first new episode of Doctor Who in exactly one year).

I'm interested in combining Doctor Who and super heroes, and I think their's a lot of potential their in theory, but I don't know how good it'll be in practice, of course. Of course, Christmas episodes tend to be on the ridiculous side even by Who standards.

[madd0ct0r]

No-one posted yet?

Ok. Spoilers below.
The basic plot is that the doctor decides to unfuck time in New York, and in doing so accidently turns a kid into a superhero.

So the superhero is powered by an intuitive computing crystal that draws energy from the nearest Sun. Similar powers to kal el, based on the crystal providing what a comic book reading kid wishes for and expects. The kid grows up in love with the settings Lois lane. And ends up becoming her live in nanny after her previous husband ram off. Usual alterego is mild mannered to the point of being wet (lampshaded twice in the episode in beautifulcomic book puns). But they make the episode was a celebration of male parenting, silliness and a reasonably interesting new villain.

[Batman]

Interesting interrogation technique the reporter lady had there. 'Lie to me and I hurt a puppet' isn't an approach you see used often.

[Parallax]

I'm watching it right now and ... well, it's rather rubbish.

Recycling old comic book tropes just hasn't worked in terms of being entertaining.
The superhero SFX looked terrible.
The bald sidekick was at Adric levels of annoying. He's not funny. Not useful. Not entertaining at all.
The plot just stank of recycling. It had nothing new.
The story had weird parts that didn't seem to make any sense. Why did the Ghost go back to the rooftop as Grant? During all the previous Earth Invasions, Ghost didn't help out at all? Would have been useful to have a Superman clone punching out Daleks and Cybermen. UNIT doesn't notice when one of their men gains an incredibly noticeable facial scar betwen the start and end of a nonviolent mission?
The story just sort of jumped from point to point and didn't flow well at all. Probably not helped that it didn't know what sort of story it wanted to be - superhero, sci fi, invasion, comedy?

And this is where I have to compare this Christmas special to the only other new Who of late; Power of the Daleks.
Even with the cheap animation the storyline is brilliant as you have all these individuals with their own agendas and goals playing against each other. This Christmas special had terrible writing while Power of the Daleks possesses solid scripting. And not all the SFX or appealing to old tropes can ever make up for a poor script.

[SpottedKitty]

A few fun moments, though.

A shout-out to Siegel and Shuster right at the beginning.

"It will pass".

A couple of scenes "borrowed" from the obvious source (Christopher Reeve's first Superman film).

"You're a bit wet".

More conversations going on than there were characters speaking.

One other thing I noticed, in the UNIT scene, Osgood was mentioned. I'd like to see her reappear in the new series.

[The Romulan Republic]

Missed the end for Christmas dinner, so I may hold off on a rating until I have a chance to see the repeat, but I'm thinking either a three or a two.

Mostly, it was either awkward and uncomfortable, or boring, or both. Mostly boring. Some of the superhero references were alright, and I appreciated them calling out the idiocy of the hiding your secret identity from your loved ones cliche, but yeah, not terribly memorable. The guest actor performances were mostly pretty flat, though in fairness that may have had something to do with the dialog, which was often terrible. Even Murray Gold's music, which is usually a fairly consistent highlight of the series, felt stifled, forced to conform to "generic Marvel-style superhero music", except on occasions when it reused an old Who piece. The Ghost seemed like a character who was interesting in theory, but the lacklustre execution dampened it somewhat.

I do disagree with Parallax about the bald companion though. I thought he was fine, and I liked how he called the Doctor's hypocrisy out on the point of non-interference.

The strongest point of the episode, of course, was Capaldi himself. Even with poor material, he's the most entertaining thing on the screen. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capaldi is becoming my favourite actor to play the Doctor to date. As much as I want them to follow through on a female Doctor (especially after the years of hints, teasing, and foreshadowing), if Capaldi continues to deliver like this, then as far as I'm concerned, he's welcome to the role as long as he wants it. I really wouldn't mind seeing him surpass Tom Baker's run.

[Q99]

Interesting interrogation technique the reporter lady had there. 'Lie to me and I hurt a puppet' isn't an approach you see used often.

... I wonder what it says about my tastes that I can think of multiple examples of that technique off the top of my head.

[The Romulan Republic]

Interesting interrogation technique the reporter lady had there. 'Lie to me and I hurt a puppet' isn't an approach you see used often.

... I wonder what it says about my tastes that I can think of multiple examples of that technique off the top of my head.

Off the top of my head, Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after he couldn't hurt humans any more, threatened to destroy the nerd trio's Boba Fett figure if they didn't help him. What other examples can you think of?