A Little History
As listeners to the BAMF podcast may know I'm a huge Doctor Who fan from my earliest introduction to the 5th Doctor, Peter Davison. I watched every episode of his adventures up until his regeneration to Colin Baker when dodgy scheduling and the idea that MY Doctor had changed meant that I didn't see it as often. This continued all the way through to Sylvester McCoy's era where the story Silver Nemesis got me back into the show by featuring my favorite bad guys, the Cybermen,
When the show was brought back in '96 I was excited to have a new episode and this time a new Doctor and I started to pick up VHS's of past Doctor's adventures that I'd never seen before, Colony in Space, Pyramids of Mars, Revelation of the Daleks, The Tenth Planet and a few others. As the DVDs started to arrive I brought every one and Colin Baker's sixth Doctor, the Doctor that turned me away from the show, quickly became one of my favourites along with the unseen adventures of the second (Patrick Troughton) and third (Jon Pertwee) Doctors.
While filling in the gaps to my Doctor Who collection they actually announced that we were getting a new show, and it would continue the story with the introduction of the ninth Doctor! This NuWho actually turned out to be pretty good and while there have been some less than successful episodes, each and every Doctor to take up the mantle from those original seven has been great, with Peter Capaldi's Doctor starring in probably my favourite Doctor Who story ever, Heaven Sent.
So here we are, the latest series of the 12th Doctor, his last before regenerating once more, and so far it's been pretty damn good.
Pilot
It's been said that this episode is exactly what the title means, a pilot into the new status-quo of the show with the Doctor on Earth for, possibly exiled ad the introduction of another new companion. The story does a great job in doing this, the idea of the Doctor being a college professor for the last 50 years aided by the un-aging Nardole is a great one and Pearl Mackie's Bill is another great companion. I found her instantly likeable, a regular every day girl that hopefully was going o stay away from the whole "great destiny" thing of previous companions. (although that had worked at the time but every companion should not be universe shatteringly special.)
My biggest problem was the main plot, a puddle of sentient fuel dropped from aliens and a ship we don't see that becomes fixated on Bill because she uttered a simple phrase. while the plot did give us an excuse to do a quick tour of the universe, even seeing the Dalek-Movellan war where I would have loved to have see the forth Doctor pass by, ultimately it was just an episode when our three heroes just run away, this time through time rather than endless corridors.
The threat of the Oil puddle Heather didn't really seem to be that important but did suggest that whoever had this as their fuel was able to utilise it to also travel across the vastness of time and space as it was able to easily stop off at any location the Doctor travelled too.
Ultimately, I felt the core story was a lot less interesting that the background details that were dropped in along the way , but did show a great deal of Bill' personality and her take on the strange way her life had changed.
At the end of the episode I wa left wanting to see more of both Bill and Nardole as they complimented the already great portrayal of the Doctor by Capaldi and I was intrigued to see who or what was inside the vault and just what was going to happen next.
Next: Smile
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