Doctor Who series 7 reviews: The Bells Of St John

So here we go with Season 7 part 2, and the Steven Moffat-penned The Bells Of St John.

I noticed something very curious on social media after this episode was broadcast: my Facebook feed was positive about the episode, any my Twitter feed was negative.

So, what’s to like?

- Matt Smith continues to be great and also to show occasional touches that really surprise an audience (it’s reassuring to know that he hasn’t already given us all he’s got).

- Jenna Louise Coleman. I get the feeling I’m going to get fed up with saying how effortlessly brilliant and easy to watch she is, but she is so it must be said. I like the fact that, in what’s essentially a companion introduction story she doesn’t have the solution to it all. She helps, assists proactively, but she doesn’t ‘solve the crime’ herself so to speak.

- Celia Imrie. Compare her with Samantha Bond in The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of The Bane, or Sarah Lancashire in Partners In Crime. She’s no silky, posturing baddie. She’s in charge. She’s unscrupulous. But there’s no sneering to camera. A very well-pitched performance with the added bonus of making the audience totally empathise with her at the end as she regresses mentally to a child. I hope that posterity brings her out from the shadow of Victoria Wood and Julie Walters.

- The hairy guy eating chips being possessed: this guy was comedy gold – probably my favourite ‘moment’ of the episode.

- The spoonheads: finally the ‘smilers’ idea from The Beast Below done properly and with a clear purpose. The Doctor spoonhead was really unnerving, a proper moment of discomfort.

- Helpline. Yes, I know this is an obvious ploy to get the audience guessing ‘who was that woman in the shop’ but I love the idea of being able to call the TARDIS phone for help. It at least makes a change from the psychic paper.

- It had pace, excitement, pizzazz, a vertical motorcycle journey and the best off-screen window smash since Spearhead From Space.

And what’s to like less?

- The Great Intelligence. At Christmas in Victorian times it sounded like Ian McKellen. Richard E. Grant was just its human tool. But now it looks and sounds like a disembodied Richard E. Grant instead. I don’t follow.

- Richard E. Grant. It felt to me like he was phoning it in with his brief appearance on the screen at the end; there was no sense of performance or delivery at all. A real shame.

- Characters stand there while the spoonhead turns around to scan them. Pfff. Grumble all you want, Twitter, but I’ll take this as dramatic licence thank you very much. We’re watching fiction, not real life, and it’s worthwhile now and again to get a ‘theatrical’ moment to remind us of that. A Dalek standing there repeating ‘exterminate’ five times before blasting someone is a more common example.

- Do we need another sassy, flirtatious modern female companion who is either being manipulated by someone / thing or is a mystery for the Doctor to unlock? Arguably not – but fortunately JLC’s performance far outweighs this. Personally I’d have been very happy to have her on board as a Victorian governess. I would, however, prefer any mystery to be resolved or at least side-lined before the 50^th Anniversary Special later in the year. That needs to focus on The Doctor as the centre, not on the companion in my view.

- I don’t know if the writer / director believes that we, as audience, should be surprised when a cowled mysterious figure is brought in as some sort of enigma and turns out to be The Doctor. It happened here and it happened in The Wedding of River Song. Neither occasion has surprised me – in fact what would have surprised me is if the figure had turned out not to be The Doctor! It just seems like a pointless distraction to me.

- Taking Clara home at the end. He was doing this with the Ponds all the time too towards the end of their reign. If the production team are consciously leaving gaps for the novels and audiobooks to fill that’s fine and may serve me right for not reading or listening to them. Personally I prefer the ongoing travelling narrative. It’s not like going to work every day, it’s supposed to be extraordinary. Otherwise it’s just Mr Benn (‘as if by magic, *ting*, the Doctor appears’) with Clara popping out every morning to see what adventures the blue box will hold for her that day.

- Sonic screwdriver. I’ve always loved the sonic, and I used to get frustrated in the 80s when The Doctor would comment about how much he missed not having it or should really make himself a new one (so do it already!). But its function in the new series as a catch-all scanner and whatever the writers need it to be that week can be testing at times. For instance why sonic scan the raw-state spoonhead? Why not give the spoonhead a concealed keyboard instead that The Doctor can hack? It wouldn’t delay the action much, and above all it would just make a nice change.

- It wasn’t clear to me what use the uploaded humans were to The Great Intelligence. More ‘mind space’ for it to occupy, perhaps? But that wouldn’t make sense because it’s all just data on drives surely, so is the Great Intelligence now just a sentient hard drive, like Xoanon or The Oracle?

There’s a bit more negative than positive here, I realise – which is odd because I really enjoyed the episode and I try not to be a pedant (my good lady wife, for example, was distracted by a continuity error with the placing of the bitten jammy dodger, which I willingly forgave!)

The character interplay between The Doctor and Clara was excellent and it promises good things for the remaining seven weeks and beyond. The story was engaging and comfortably linear, if not that surprising. And although technically it’s not a season opener it’s become that by default and I think it’s whetted the appetite sufficiently for the next few months.