TV Show of the Week: Doctor Who – Series 10 – Episode 1: The Pilot

It was clear from the beginning of the episode that Stephen’s intentions were to subtly reset the show. With a new companion, and with all the major storylines wrapped up last season, it’s the perfect opportunity for people who’s never seen the show to step into The Doctor’s world. Bill (Pearl Mackie) is essentially playing the role of both a new companion and the new people, by asking all the right questions. As for those who’re huge fans of the show or know the show enough that we don’t need things explained, we can enjoy the plenty of Easter Eggs placed strategically throughout, either relating to recent storylines, or the entire show’s history. The episode does include a lot, but does it handle it all well?

It was a challenge we saw coming from the couple of trailers that were released just before, and while Stephen Moffatt has certainly delivered a wide range of scripts. It’s going to take all day and all night to arrange all his scripts from best to worst, so I just basically took a bunch of scripts and chucked them into five categories. “Absolutely brilliant”, “entertaining but could have been better”, “questionable”, “why did you write that?” However, even then it’s going to be extremely difficult for me to put a few of his scripts into certain categories, because they contain pretty much everything. However, this episode was easy to place. It sits comfortably in “absolutely brilliant”, but on the other side of that category’s spectrum. I feel as if I’m making this a tad too complicated.

Let me try and justify my words. This doesn’t come close to Blink, Heaven’s Sent, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, to name a few. The episode sits nearer to The Eleventh Hour. That episode featured a complete shift within the show: new Doctor, new companions, new head-writer. Since The Eleventh Hour, we’ve seen Amy and Rory depart when Matt Smith was the Doctor, and Clara entering the TARDIS, where Matt regenerated into Peter, with Clara still his companion. Clara has since left and Bill has entered his world. Whilst it was such a change as the aforementioned episode, it does have that feel. Stephen Moffatt likes his long storylines. This time there’re no questions for fans of the show to be asking, there’s nothing for the new people to be confused by. We get a decent introduction, similar to The Eleventh Hour, in keeping with Peter’s Doctor, and keeping it separated from everything else to stop people from complaining about certain similarities.

It featured a new enemy, and an old enemy. It was a nice, relaxing episode that didn’t push too many plot threads in our faces. In fact, I don’t think we got any plot threads yet. Although, if you class the mysterious door underneath the university as a plot thread, by all means, but if it isn’t, it certainly is a question that does get people who haven’t seen the show before, or have taken breaks from the show for various reasons questioning and hopefully intrigued to keep watching.

The only real question I had about the episode I sort of already answered myself. The Doctor and Bill are being chased by the weird water-like substance, and the Doctor tests how far it’s willing to go by going to Sydney and to another planet, so many millions of years into the future, and then to where the Daleks are. You could say that the Doctor was testing Bill, to see if she was capable of being the Doctor’s companion, because of his high intensity lifestyle. For those who have followed the show, knows he made a promise not to take anyone with him again. He addresses that issue only after he took Bill all over the place, and then he was about to wipe her memory before being convinced not to. Why was the Doctor questioning his promise after he had given Bill the test? For those that are new to the show, that promise may not be properly explained, but that’s Stephen Moffatt, though.

His scripts are always written to make us think. He explains only what needs to be, and then leaves the rest to us. Yeah, there are a few plot holes that fans do wish weren’t there, but you could put across a counterargument and say that’s just the complexity of the show, the Doctor’s life in general. Whether or not you believe I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, I’m just a fan of the show that likes to think, probably a bit too much, but I’m enjoying the show anyhow, and that’s all that matters, right? It also does help that it is Stephen’s last series before stepping down as head writer, and he did say he would’ve left at the end of last series. It was only that he felt he had just one more series in him that he stayed, and it wouldn’t have helped if he were to implant some seed to a massive storyline that would expand across multiple series, because that would leave Chris with too much to do from the very beginning.

Anyway, back to the episode. Overall, I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the casual introduction – or from my perspective, the reintroduction – of the characters, the companion, and the show in general. Doctor Who comes with a tonne of lore, the Doctor has lived an incredible life, so it’s always best to slow things down a bit, return to the start and, for one last hurrah, work your way back up again. Besides, we do have a lot to look forward to this season, including the multi-master storyline that was ever so slightly teased at the backend of the episode, during the previews section.

I know, I know, I’ve deviated again. I did thoroughly enjoy the episode and I standby where I say it stands in my self-made categories. I’m excited for what’s to come, although I do have mixed feelings for the emoji robots…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)