1/7/2024 0 Comments Docxtor who charmsHe comes perilously close to feeling like a novelty tie made flesh (“Elephant!”) but the idea of the Doctor’s valet is a decent one – and, in the show’s sixth decade, a commendably new one. Take Matt Lucas, back as Nardole, almost a duffel-coated mini-Doctor here. These days he’s surrounded by eccentrics. Once he strode into a story as the lone figure of weirdness. Maybe a truly successful superhero story demands a proper supervillain – a Lex Luthor, a Joker, a Professor Yin to Captain Yang.īut then there are so many colourful characters in the Doctor’s orbit now. We met them in last year’s Christmas special, The Husbands of River Song, and the ending of this one teases another encounter in the future. The Shoal themselves are an unexpected choice of foe for a rematch. When those eyes open it’s spooky and funny and has a delicious ‘50s B-movie shudder. The alien invasion plot feels equally routine, but it’s redeemed by that glorious visual of the roomful of brains in jars. It’s a sleight of hand – this Manhattan is actually a mock-up in Bulgaria – but it’s a convincing enough bit of fakery to help sell this unlikely mash-up. You expect Woody Allen to crawl out of the screen and cram a pretzel in your mouth at any moment. The opening shots cram in as much pure, distilled New Yorkiness as municipal zoning laws allow: yellow cabs, pizza joints, fire escapes, steaming manhole covers. So it makes sense that this story decamps to New York, traditional home of the superhero. Maybe, at heart, it’s simply too British to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s less about the tight spandex, more about the scarf and tank-top it favours crazy eyebrows over the noble jaw. Doctor Who’s never done all that hands-on-hips, fluttering-cape stuff. They’re both on the side of truth and justice but tonally and aesthetically they’re a universe apart. It’s a weird proposition, isn’t it? Somehow Doctor Who and superheroes feel fundamentally ill-matched, two worlds that could never collide.
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