For Your Lungs Only: An Overanalysis of "Oxygen"

Kill the fat one in the middle!

Okay, I have a few apologies to make.  First of all, I promised myself I wouldn't use two song titles from the same band in the same season, because I think of it like a playlist.  But Alkaline Trio's "For Your Lungs Only" is too perfect of a title for this episode.  The second apology is that I'm monumentally late with this blog.  Another episode has already aired since this episode aired, and another one airs today.  I was moving into a new apartment and my life became chaotic for a few weeks there and I didn't have time to blog.  Believe me, it was not out of disinterest in the episode, "Oxygen," because honestly, "Oxygen" may be my new favorite episode of the Capaldi era.

We haven't had an episode as dark as "Oxygen" since at least "Dark Water," if not longer.  Actually, the only episode I can think of that's as grizzly, dark, and horrific as "Oxygen" isn't even a new series episode.  We have to go all the way back to the 6th Doctor serial, "Vengence on Varos."  "Vengence on Varos," a disturbing dystopian nightmare about a reality where people are tortured on live television and politicians put their proposals up to a reality show style vote and if they lose the vote, they could be killed.  "Vengence on Varos" was so violent that it became the first time fans of the show started to agree with parents' groups that called the show inappropriate for children.  The show survived a few years after "Varos," but I believe that the slow death it suffered began with viewer outrage over "Vengence on Varos."  Now, Jamie Mathieson, Steven Moffat's only true peer on the Doctor Who writing staff right now, gives us an episode that leaves the viewer deeply disturbed, and with a haunting political message to go with it.

Can you imagine if an American television show had an episode where a character said "And that was it for Capitalism"?  Yes, Star Trek basically lives in a socialist utopia and does talk about how unfair conditions for the poor put an end to Capitalism, but they go out of their way to avoid using words like "Capitalism" and "Socialism" and somehow people fail to notice that that's what happened in the Star Trek universe.  Jamie Mathieson's script said the word "Capitalism" multiple times.  And before you go thinking that it's absolute absurdity for a company to sell us the air we breathe, is it really any different than charging for food, water, shelter, and clothing?  This is why I work in the non-profit sector.

And how about "Oxygen"'s cold open? Have we ever cut to the opening credits on a darker, more violent note?  A woman trying to tell her husband she wants to have a baby is attacked and murdered and turned into a zombie that, along with other zombies, tries to kill her husband.  Jesus Christ, you couldn't just make her eight months pregnant to really make it horrifying.  I like when I get scared by an episode's setup because I know it's just going to make me even happier when the Doctor stops the bad guys.  This time, the real bad guys were a big corporation off screen, but those are the bad guys in real life so it was still satisfying.

The fluid link hasn't been mentioned on the show since the Second Doctor era, but in every mention of in in canon, it has always been essential to the function of the TARDIS.  The 1st Doctor met the daleks when he lied to his companions that fluid link K7 (as opposed to fluid link K57 that Nardole steals, because the naming conventions on these things are completely random) had run out of mercury and needed to be refilled as a ruse to get them to go out and explore the planet of Skaro.  It's hard to believe, because of the history of fluid links, that they aren't all essential to the function of the TARDIS.  It's more likely that, when the Doctor says that he lied about the link being essential to the TARDIS taking off, I'd guess that what he really means is that he lied about the thing Nardole took out being a fluid link.

Speaking of Nardole, I still hate him, but thankfully so do the writers and the Doctor himself.  Nardole's entire function in the show seems to be to be a stick in the mud and to try to stop the plot of the show from happening.  "Oxygen" has more of Nardole than any episode so far in the regular season, and I still love it in spite of that.  When Nardole isn't trying to ruin everything, he's giving explanations that the Doctor could have easily given if he wasn't in the episode, or making really weird jokes about an ex-girlfriend that don't really pay off.

The only thing I didn't like about this episode was the hyperbolic, overacted, soap-opera-style overdramatic way that the Doctor announces he's still blind at the end of the episode.  I don't know who directed the great Peter Capaldi into that terrible performance, but they need to be fined for that stupidity.  I'm sure the blindness is a setup for something big in the overall plot, but I can't for the life of me guess what it's going to be.  It's interesting that it happened because of how long the Doctor was exposed to the void of space, because a Fifth Doctor episode that I can't remember the name of right now established that the Doctor can survive in the void of space longer than humans can.  But perhaps that's why that other character said that he should have died; it's almost as if he isn't human.

But the blindness will be discussed in the next overdue blog.  So until then...

The Resist Stance: An Overanalysis of "The Girl Who Died"

If on your journey should you encounter God, God will be cut.

I stand by my belief that an episode being "co-written" by Steven Moffat is just a sign that Moffat wanted to insert some of the season-long plot arc's narrative into the script and give himself credit for it.  There was absolutely nothing Moffat-esque about this episode.  The episode wasn't particularly creepy, there was nothing darkly fantastic about it, and nothing mundane was trying to kill people.  There wasn't even really anything that rung of the writing style of Jamie Mathieson, who gave us last season's "Mummy on the Orient Express" and "Flatline," two episodes so good that it led both myself and my podcast co-host Shelly to start calling for him to become the next in line to Moffat's throne when he's ready to leave the show, even though Mathieson had only given us two episodes so far.  Really, there was nothing about this episode that was exciting and super fun, but it felt like it was a huge build up for something.  I have no doubt anymore that "The Hybrid" is this season's plot arc.  Now it's a question of where is it going, what does "The Hybrid" refer to, and, the clue I forgot to speculate on last week:  Who the hell is the minister of War?

THAT NAME IS SO METAL, MAN!

The episode, by and large, was setting up something, and I predicted that it was probably going to be the first part of a two-parter.  Moffat has told us that he's going to make it hard to tell whether something's a two-parter or not this season and, even though "The Girl Who Died" wasn't officially listed as a two-parter, I noticed that the episode following it was going to be called "The Woman Who Lived," and I assumed the titles were implying that they were connected.  Because now the Doctor has created something that has gone a step too far.  A young girl who can never die and, from the looks of what's coming up, will never even be able to age, suggesting that the chip the Doctor put in her head will interpret any sign of aging as damage and correct it, keeping her a child forever.

Trust me, Ashildr, it sucks!

Also, I was really excited when I heard that Moffat was putting into place Davies idea about why there are multiple Peter Capaldi's in the Doctor Who universe, and that Mathieson would be writing the first episode about it.  I even rewatched "Fires of Pompeii" that morning to get me prepared for "The Girl Who Died."  However, what came up could not have been the infamous plan that Davies thought up, and that Moffat asked him about when Davies called to compliment him about choosing Capaldi for the 12th Doctor.  Davies was thinking of writing this idea into the show at a time when there was no plan to make Capaldi the Doctor yet.  Davies's plan was supposed to be to explain why Caecilius and John Frobisher had the same face.  So either something's changed about the plan, or there's more to come about the connections between Pete, Pete, and Pete.

There have been reports out in the press questioning about whether Maisie Williams's character is going to be coming back after "The Woman Who Lived."  I feel like the idea of a girl who can never die is such an interesting idea that I can't see this just being an idea for a two-parter.  I feel like this has to come around to the larger season arc.

But how?  The dialogue hinted at there being some connection to The Hybrid, but a lot of dialogue in Doctor Who that hints at being connected to the larger plot arc turns out to be a complete red herring.  Remember the ending to "Vampires of Venice" where the Doctor pointed out that there was some strange silence in Venice?  Remember how that had absolutely nothing to do with what The Silence were (even though we flashed back to this moment anyway when The Silence were first identified by name)?  It could be a pretty simple mislead.  But The Hybrid is coming up a lot this season, which leaves me wondering, are the Daleks created in "The Witch's Familiar" The Hybrid, or is Ashildr?  Or were both mentions misleads and The Hybrid is something completely different?  If you think about it, a lot of things in the Doctor Who universe could be called hybrids.  Both Daleks and Cybermen are, by definition, hybrid creatures.  Donna Noble is a hybrid.  If you take the most hated line from the 1996 Doctor Who movie to be true, the Doctor himself is a hybrid.  So it could be anything.

It could even be...

I'm half attractive, half horrifying

I still stand by the fact that I think there's something more that's going to happen to explain the events of "Listen," so I do think it's possible that Danny is coming back some how.

Also, Davros was a little vague about this prophesy of The Hybrid.  What's supposed to be so terrible about it?  Why is the Doctor running from it?  What makes it so terrifying?

I made this blog primarily to make predictions about the show based on clues, and I totally forgot to pick up on the huge, huge, huge clue that was dropped last week, when O'Donnell, who like Osgood seems to be a real life Doctor fan (and who, liked Osgood, is dead because of it), mentioned a whole bunch of stuff that happened to the Doctor between 1980 and 2119 and she brought up one phrase that the Doctor did not recognize yet:  "The Minister of War."  Sure, it could be a throw away line that has no bearing on anything, but I really feel like Whithouse was just shouting "Clue!" at us pretty loudly at that moment.  It's possible that it's not a clue for this season's finale, as we all know that, in the Moffat era, big twists can be set up many seasons in advance ("Silence Will Fall," "The Woman in the Shop"), but I have a feeling that Missy is the Minister of War, possibly the title she's assumed by staying behind on Skaro to join forces with the Daleks.

Moffat hasn't left us this vague of a mystery in a while, but it's an interesting one to start speculating on.  I'm really curious to see where this is going.  Missy has a plan, I'm sure of it, the Hybrid is a dubious evil lurking in the background, and Ashieldr is now a poor, cursed girl who can never die or even age.  So what's the connection?  How does this all lead us to a season finale two-parter called "Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent," the former of which is supposed to have no other actors but Peter Capaldi in it for the whole thing?!  I'm so curious about what Moffat is building here.  But I'm ready for the ride, because so far, it's been fun.  While this wasn't my favorite episode, I get the feeling it's building so, so, so much more, and I'm really intrigued to see where we go from here.

Next week, I look forward to Torchwood writer Catherine Tregenna becoming the first woman to write an episode of Doctor Who since "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky."  Really, that writing staff has been far too much of a sausage party for several seasons now, and this season we have not one, but two different female writers for the first time in far too long.  Catherine Tregenna is the only writer to have been nominated for a Hugo award for working on Torchwood, so hopefully we're going to get something really special next week.  I really look forward to it!

And now, this!: