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...

Drown With the Monster - An Overanalysis of "The Pilot"

These are actually all companions, including the Dalek

Last time we were starting a new season, things were very different.  I was deeply in love with a girl named Tanya who loved me back.  Tanya doesn't speak to me anymore.  Last time I was a man named Trevor, and now I'm a woman and prefer you call me Julie.  Last time the President of the United States of America was Barack Obama, and now we're all going to die.  The year 2016 fell into utter and unadulterated chaos from which we may never recover, and coincidentally, who wasn't here to save us?  The Doctor!

But now it's two years later and we finally get a new season, as we say prepare to say goodbye to both Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat, both of which will be missed by anyone who isn't an Internet trolling twatwaffle.  And how appropriate that for Moffat's last season as head writer, exactly like his first season back in 2010, starts on the day before Easter.  It's going to be a sad goodbye to both of them, and I'm going to cry more than usual for this regeneration.  But before that happens, we have a whole season of the 12th Doctor and his new friend, a girl named Bill.  Bill Potts, to be exact.  A Bill P. who's not a Piper.

Bill was announced as the first openly gay companion recently, to the consternation of many people who were obviously watching the show with their eyes closed, with the sound off, or while coked out of their minds, because, much like when we saw Vastra and Jenny's kiss in "Deep Breath," I have to ask "Why the fuck were you surprised?"  Since Russell T. Davies, the motherfucking creator of Queer as Folk, brought the show back in 2005, he and his successor, Steven Moffat, have both gone out of their way to make the show aggressively LGBT friendly.  Jack was pansexual, River was at least bisexual, Clara was implied to be bisexual and Jenna Coleman refused to deny it, there's an interspecies lesbian couple, there are background gay characters in "Midnight" and "The Rule of Three," and you can argue me on this if you want, but both Missy and The General are transgender.  So not only are the people who are complaining about Bill's sexuality ignorant bigots, but they don't know what show they're fucking talking about.

Amy and Rory when the Doctor's not around

Pearl Mackie, who plays Bill (brilliantly), said that Bill's sexuality would be brought up in about her second line of dialogue on the show and that it wouldn't be treated as a big deal.  And she's right, Bill's sexuality isn't treated as if it's unusual, as if it's a big deal that she's not straight, that she's anything but just another companion.  And yet, simultaneously, it was central to the whole story.  It was a small-scale love story (I guess you could call it a "like" story, since Bill and Heather didn't get to know each other very well) that could have just as easily been told with heterosexual characters, but it simply wasn't.  Because it's 2017 and you can do that sort of thing.

I still hate Nardole.

I'm Matt Lucas and I'm a big, racist, human chode.

Am I the only one who thought "Waters of Mars" in this episode?  Heather didn't react exactly like the infected in "Waters of Mars," but there was a definite similarity in the way she dribbled water from the mouth.  And then there's the other episode it reminds me of:  "The Lodger."  It's kind of a really chopped and screwed, highly postmodern version of "The Lodger," with the ship looking for a new pilot, but unlike "The Lodger," this is nothing like a normal ship.

I was curious about the picture on his desk.  Not River, that's understandable, he just lost her.  But there's a picture of Susan on his desk.  He hasn't hardly mentioned Susan since the 1st Doctor era on the show.  There are some (canonical) 8th Doctor audio stories where he meets up with her again, so he has seen her somewhat recently, right before the Time War.  But I still feel like Moffat wants to do something with Susan.  It's still strange, though, because he's been hinting at it his entire run, and this season is somewhat of a "clerical error," to quote the Doctor from last season.  Season 9 was designed to be Moffat's last season because he didn't know he was going to need to make a 10th one to give Chibnal time to finish up Broadchurch.  So everything we're seeing now wasn't planned that far in advance.

For those wondering which Dalek war the Doctor brought them to, it wasn't the Time War.  Those people they were fighting who looked like Milli Vanilli were a robot race called the Movellans from the 4th Doctor episode "Destiny of the Daleks."  They got stuck in a stalemate with the Daleks because each side could predict the others' moves perfectly, and neither had the imagination to come up with something the other side didn't expect.

I read an article that said that the stakes are low for this season because everyone knows that they're going to throw out the Doctor, the head writer, and most likely the companion at the end of the season.  But if there's one thing that "The Pilot" showed, it's that Moffat isn't writing this season like nothing's at stake, or like it's a "clerical error," but he's writing it as brilliantly as he always has.  I was a little worried that this might fall short the was Season 7 did when a lot was changing on set and Moffat was depressed and the writing suffered.  But Moffat seems to be writing from a place of confidence as he heads out the door, and I think we're in for another great season.

I'm continuing my rule this season of naming every blog after a punk song, and so:

Fairytale of New York: An Overanalysis of "The Return of Doctor Mysterio"

The Ghost apparently has a severe hatred for glass.

2016 has been a terrible year all around for everyone.  Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.  That alone would be enough to relegate 2016 to the worst year of all time, but instead, we also got Brexit and the death of countless beloved celebrities, the latest of which, George Michael, died on Christmas day.  In my personal life I went through the worst breakup of my life, and got forced out of my apartment because my landlord was a greedy asshole and wanted to make it a condo.  I also came out as transgender to most people in my life (you can call me Julie now) which is mostly a positive, but has also come with a whole host of new terrifying experiences and constant fears about the future.  So why has 2016 been such a shit year?  Well, to paraphrase Mels, because the Doctor wasn't there to stop it.

Within the context of the show, the Doctor's been gone 24 years spending his final years with his wife, River Song.  In the real world, the Doctor's been gone for one year so the production team could focus on a spin-off that, while excellent, has been poorly advertised in the UK and was given little international distribution to start off with.  We did see a commercial for Class during the BBC America broadcast of this special, so thankfully it will finally be coming here.  Since I've already seen it through "creative" means, I've got a post about Class that I'll but putting up soon.  Regardless, it's been far too long since we've seen the Doctor, and it felt great to finally see him again, even if the episode was good, not great.

Rather than introducing the new companion, Bill, who everyone is excited to meet, instead we're treated to a second dose of the annoying Nardole, played by unfunny racist Matt Lucas, pictured here in the role that somehow failed to end his career:

How often do you think Matt Lucas says the n-word in private

Nardole is a big, puss-filled blemish on the episode that needs to be popped.  He does nothing but bumble around and add his obnoxiously dopey voice where you don't need it.  Nardole returns because the Doctor put him back together form inside Hydroflax, which Nardole thinks was because the Doctor couldn't handle being alone without River.  I'd like to think that the Doctor put together the other guy who was trapped in Hydroflax, otherwise that would just be a dick move on his part.  The preview for the coming season at the end of the episode (the first we've gotten at the end of a Christmas special since "A Christmas Carol") we saw that Nardole is going to be in the coming season as a second companion alongside Bill.  Here's hoping his neck gets snapped by a Weeping Angel.

We start off with the Doctor setting up a machine to fix time distortions in New York that he says are his fault.  I presume he's referring to the ones created in "The Angels Take Manhattan," but that episode suggested that the time distortions only existed in the specific year they were created.  The beginning of this episode, presumably, takes place sometime in the 1990's, so I don't know why they're still there.  Oh, and the Doctor is absolutely to blame for turning Grant into The Ghost.  I'm pretty sure anyone would assume they were being handed a pill to take.

You can take the red pill or the blue pi--Oh my god, you actually took it?  That was a metaphor!  Cough it up!

The episode works because it acts as a direct sequel to "The Husbands of River Song," and tackles the Doctor''s grief for River Song head-on, rather than ignoring it.  The unspoken subtext is that he lost River right after losing Clara (it may have been 24 years, but what's 24 years when you're literally billions of years old) and so he's trying to strike out on his own for the first time in a while, battling through some severe loneliness and loss.

The love story between Grant and Lucy was cute, if a tad predictable.  I liked the foreshadowing at the beginning of the episode where the Doctor points out the obvious secret identity of Superman in the comic book, and comments that Lois Lane somehow can't figure it out despite being a reporter.  Then Lucy finds herself unable to determine the equally obvious secret identity of The Ghost.  I also liked that Grant resists the x-ray vision in puberty instead of rapeily embracing it.

"Oh my God, I can't see boobs!" - Every straight teenage boy after trying X-Ray specs

I was disappointed at how un-Christmassy this Christmas special was.  In the UK, most shows get a Christmas special, as they don't air from fall to spring like American network shows.  Most UK shows work the way that American cable and streaming shows work:  a new season is produced whenever they can get everyone together, so there's a good chance their season won't run through Christmastime.  So most shows are given a Christmas special, but not all of them are actually about Christmas.  I've never understood that.  You'll notice if you watch, say, Downton Abbey, that some of the Christmas specials take place on Christmas, while others just depict a special day for the characters.  Why on Earth would you make a Christmas special that doesn't take place on Christmas?  I've seen Steven Moffat, in interviews, share my view on this, and insist that Christmas specials should be Christmassy, which is why I was surprised that, with the exception of one brief Christmas reference at the beginning of the episode, I wasn't even sure that the rest of the episode was actually supposed to take place at Christmastime.

You'll notice that the villains in this episode are the same as the ones as the Hydroflax worshipers from "The Husbands of River Song" and that Harmony Shoal vowed revenge at the end of the episode.  While the Invasion of the Body Snatchers style plot of this episode isn't that original, I got the feeling that this is just the beginning and that Moffat is setting up this species to come back for his final season as head writer.

While the preview for the coming season did feature Captain Blackface, it also looked like an exciting season and I'm looking forward to it.  I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to Steven Moffat, but after Season 9 was the best he's ever given us, I'm excited to see what he does with Season 10.  So Merry Belated Christmas everybody!  Here's to a better year than the one we're leaving behind.