Life lessons of a companion.
Spoilers follow for this episode of Doctor Who.
Last week it was to the future for the Doctor and Bill, but with this week’s episode the new friends have wound up more than 200 years in the past. For Bill, who’s still finding her TARDIS legs as a companion, a mere couple of centuries is more than enough time to drive home how much London, and society, will change by the time she’s born. But even more alarmingly for her, she’s also getting a better sense of who the Doctor is… and what he’s capable of.
“Thin Ice” takes the opportunity to visit an actual historical event, specifically the “Frost Fairs” that would pop up on the Thames during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries when the river would occasionally freeze. The TARDIS, “bad girl” that she is, arrives at the last of these fairs in 1814, when, yes, an elephant walked across the river. But that’s not the only giant creature doing the bidding of man during this particular moment of London’s past…
This third episode of Season 10 follows the pattern established by the previous two installments with a one-off adventure that feels in some ways like old-school Who, with a monster and a (relatively) easy problem to solve therein, while also adding a bit of complex thematic shading to the proceedings. Here, as Bill wades deeper into the exciting insanity of the Doctor’s lifestyle, she also realizes that it’s not all fun and games and stealing pies. Ah yes, the life lessons of a companion.
See, the Doctor may like to act like one of the kids (see last week’s episode), but he also is well experienced in dealing with death and despair. So when that street urchin gets sucked into the ice and all the Doctor can manage to do is save his sonic screwdriver, grabbing it from the boy’s hand at the last instant, it’s no wonder that Bill would be so rattled. The viewer would be forgiven for being somewhat rattled as well, because the sequence is shot in such a way that seems to imply that the Doctor is more interested in his screwdriver than in the kid. Of course, that’s not the case, and it’s actually a sort of strange moment that I can’t quite parse. Was director Bill Anderson purposely playing the scene out in this way to highlight Bill’s new uncertainty about the Doctor?
Either way, for the Doctor to shortly thereafter ask Bill “What’s wrong?” is certainly one of Twelve’s more tone-deaf interactions. His time with Clara, and her empathy index cards, definitely proved to soften his rough edges, but this scene with Bill is a fair reminder that this Doctor has always been a different sort from a Matt Smith or a David Tennant.
So Bill’s having her companion coming of age moment here, and that’s the strongest aspect of the episode too. Now she knows that the Doctor does what needs to be done, and when she asks him outright if that includes killing, he finally and simply just says yes. Of course, his reasoning -- 2,000-years-plus of experience has taught him this -- that more people will die if he doesn’t just “move on” after a death like the urchin’s is completely valid, but that’s a tough concept to grasp for someone like Bill, who’s never even seen someone die before.
By the end of the episode, the Doctor has started to get Bill to see things his way, essentially forcing her to make the decision whether or not to free the Nessie-type sea creature “Tiny” that has been enslaved beneath the Thames. Do you save the thing from its suffering, but in the process put potentially hundreds or thousands of people at risk? She chooses yes, and fortunately for Bill and the Doctor the creature does not lash out in a destructive rage and devour the street urchins and others who they sought to save.
But Tiny just as well could’ve turned on everyone, which seems to be a problematic aspect of this episode -- as does the Doctor’s essentially forcing Bill to make that call. Obviously the idea is that she needs to learn to make the tough decisions if she’s gonna roll in the TARDIS, but unfortunately “Thin Ice” doesn’t quite sell Bill’s decision, or the Doctor’s taking a step back so she can make it.
Some notes:
- How many people has the Doctor seen die? He doesn’t know.
- How many people has the Doctor killed? He’s not saying.
- It’s not often that we see the Doctor put on a disguise like he does here, but this Doctor has never been one to really stick to a consistent outfit anyway, so why not?
- The fuel source being dredged from the river is reminiscent of the methane from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
- The Doctor has a few other names for Tiny, including “the creature” and “the lock-less monster,” but what was that last one? The “naughty little mermaid?”
- As with last week, the secondary human characters here don’t particularly resonant in any meaningful way unfortunately.
- The return of Doctor Disco!
The Verdict
Another appealing episode, “Thin Ice” rides largely on the Doctor/Bill relationship again. The recreation of 1814 London is, like last week’s futuristic Earth colony, another nice bit of production design, and the underwater creature is a cool touch. But regrettably, the final decisions made by the lead characters don’t entirely ring true.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire