Here be Monsters (The Halloween Apocalypse)

Sleep is great, isn't it? I mean it, have you heard of it? It's absolutely wonderful, it does incredible things to my mind and body as a whole - I've never felt so alive! Which is a first, or at least for this week it is. I'll be honest, I haven't had that much of it at all in recent days. I could tell you the truth and say that it's because I've been very busy, that the life of a university student is a heavy burden to bear and that the weight of it has stressed me out - or I could tell a funny lie and say that all I've been doing is backing up the "Sleep Tank" so I can use it up when it actually matters - like skipping forward in time a few hours. Because sleep is a time machine (the wonders of sleep knows no bounds), it helps you enter the realm of the unconscious for a period of time, having adventures, getting into scrapes, battling monsters or having a nice time with a celebrity of your choice. Then when you emerge again, not only are you (sometimes) filled with energy and immense concentration but also, the clocks have gone forward tremendously. Sleep as a time machine is a wonderful thing to think about, good idea for a story, someone should do it...

Anyway. Doctor Who's back! After so long, after so much bloody sleep, after so much waiting, after so much god damn TIME!

To start things off, I'm going to just tell you straight off the bat that I really liked Chapter One of the new series. However, I know that this is just the beginning, so an awful lot of my thoughts concerning the series are fairly unfinished, I have very little to say about the episode beyond just really enjoying it. I could spend hours of my incredibly valuable time dissecting the episode's seconds and analysing every tidbit of information until I'm the keeper of all secrets and can accurately predict where we're going to be heading throughout the next couple of weeks - but that's boring! Why would I want to do that? I know some people love going into heavy detail about the "top ten easter eggs" I missed in the latest episode, but frankly, I have very little effort when it comes to that sort of thing, I don't want to know what's going to happen, because eventually, the show is just going to tell me anyway. Then once it's all over, I'll have time to kick it about in my head, letting it sit there in the back of my mind, festering like a multicoloured ulcer that provides me with a drug-like chemical of joy, then I'll write up my thoughts about what I thought overall - or maybe I won't - I don't know, we'll see...in TIME! I'll stop that now (or will I...? We'll see).

After having the best sleep of my life, waking up from images of Vampires, Zombies and Clowns, the damp, stodgy feel of mud gushing under my wellington boots, the biting cold nipping at my blood-soaked lips, the uneasy feeling of intense sadness falling over me like the rain dripping down from the clouds above - I awoke from my slumber fully refreshed and praying to god that I had managed to slip past the majority of the day. I checked my clock and realised that it was five in the afternoon, I had done it! Huzzah! Only an hour (and a bit) away from Doctor Who - it seemed like my luck was beginning to turn.

That's when I realised something else. Today was Halloween, not only that but the clocks were meant to have gone back today, I returned to the time, set it correctly and looked on in sheer disappointment at the time I had just gained back - one whole hour. This meant I was now two (and a bit) hours away from Doctor Who.

"The lord is testing me," I muttered under my breath as I slowly wound back the hour hand, its movement a constant series of slaps to the face. The idea of daylight savings completely washing over me - the entire concept of it should be a clear sign that time as a measurable THING is ridiculous and we should just throw it all in the bin and try again at a later date - whenever that is, because now that we've realised time is not actually a real thing, then that later date might never end up occurring - alright fine, you win - you can take time out of the bin and start measuring it again, but only this once, this is the last straw, this conversation is not over.

I continued to wait. Because I had no choice. I couldn't sleep, I'd used up my whole supply and now I couldn't get out a single wink of the stuff, I couldn't force myself to be tired because that just meant I was using up the energy that I didn't have to sleep in the first place. It's awfully confusing and now I'm going to lose even more sleep just thinking about how frustrating this whole thing is! It's a bloody paradox - and that's coming from me - I'm usually an avid supporter of those sort of things because they're funny, but it's never funny when I'm the punchline, then it's just bullying. Time is bullying me for using my bed like a car, and it as a road - Time is petty like that. I fought the laws of time, and the law won.

Then Countryfile started, and my spirits lifted, not because I actually like it, but because it's a pavlovian response, when Countryfile is on that means Doctor Who is almost on, and that makes me happy, so in turn, Countryfile makes me feel happy also. Maybe that's why Countryfile keeps getting renewed, so many Doctor Who fans are checking in to see if the show they actually want to see has started yet, then they end up getting tangled up in the spider's web that is Countryfile, which ends up bumping up their ratings. It's quite clever if you think about it, and it works too! Here I am, waiting for a show about an immortal blonde woman travelling about with a magic wand in a magic box, and I'm now watching Arnold Schwarzenegger riding about town on a bicycle - we're plummeting as a nation, but TV never fails to grip me. Karl Marx called religion the opium of the masses, I imagine if he had stuck around for a little while longer, he might have replaced that statement with Countryfile, because this is some horribly dull stuff, and yet I can't help but be entranced.

Then the moment we have all prepared for, the BBC continuity announcer, saying those words, I thought I'd never cry at seeing those Indent Cyclists, but there they are, all in a row like little ducks on a pond bank. The BBC Idents of the past have always been fairly interesting when it came to Doctor Who, the one I remember the most was when The Doctor Falls aired, and the usual Continuity Announcer was interrupted by a Mondasian Cyberman stomping into his recording booth, promptly killing him, and doing the announcement himself - it was very chilling, hilarious and got me in the mood for something that was going to be an absolute blast to watch. 

I'm not ashamed that as soon as it started, it hadn't even faded in from black yet, I was squealing a little - if my parents were watching with me, as they had been since it came back from 2005, my Mum would've asked me to "Calm it down" and to "Stop being so loud" - but she's not here, I can't be as loud as I want! HA! It's good to know my childishness hasn't worn down when it comes to this bloody show.

Now, time is being kind, the second has arrived, all the pieces have come together, and now the show can finally begin...

The Doctor is upside down, dangling above a sea of boiling green, threatening an alien hologram. What a way to start, eh? The Doctor and Yaz, in serious peril, very serious peril - being monologued at by an alien holographic figure, explaining in great detail, how much serious peril the Doctor and Yaz really are - then the Doctor and Yaz promptly escape without missing a single beat, flinging us into the title sequence. I like the feeling of missing out on some adventures, joining the Doctor and Yaz in on what looks to be the end of an epic finale makes the whole thing feel like we've been chasing the Doctor around the universe since January and just managed to catch up to her because now she's been chained up, she's slowed down and now we can join in on the fun. Doctor Who is back and we're buckled in for the rollercoaster ride ahead, and it's going to be a bumpy one. Wahoo!

I've loved the overwhelming feeling of this episode, A LOT happens in it. We have the Crystal Skull people and their deep-cutting ties to the Doctor's past, the Dog Men in their little spaceships, the Weeping Angels and their creepy creepiness, that Guy from Game of Thrones, the TARDIS' leaking problems, and of course the whole Flux thing that's been wiping out everything it touches. I understand people got a little confused with just how much info was being thrown at us, but I loved it - it struck me as an incredibly funny beat when the Doctor mutters "Who else knows about this?" and after we've just witnessed many strange characters who we may be cutting back to, the show subverts that and introduces ANOTHER set of characters, none other then THE SONTARANS, back in action, war-faring potato men with their flicking tongues and short stouts - looking as if they've spent a bit longer than expected in the sun, just like Sontarans are supposed to look.

Then of course we have Old Town Liverpool, back when England was nothing more than Sovereigns, fog and cobbled streets. Mr Williamson of Liverpool fame, known for building a set of weird tunnels beneath the city for apparently no reason - other than a rumoured plan to give the poor some paid work - this man and his system of winding underground projects seem to be given the typical Doctor Who treatment of alien-shaped contexts, a weird mysterious hole in the history books filled with something interesting - they've done something similar with Pompeii, of course the Doctor activated Vesuvius! Of course the Doctor was involved in the Great Fire! Of course the Doctor inspired Shakespeare (on apparently multiple occasions if you read that cheeky little book all about it)! Of course the Doctor has something to do with those weird tunnels under Liverpool! OF COURSE!

Having the Doctor interact with the fabric of reality, and by reality, I mean OUR reality, is a really interesting thing to have a look at. The reality where time moves incredibly slowly and can't always be fixed by forty winks - the one we as the audience are experiencing right now as we watch television, in our reality, Doctor Who is a television show - actually, thinking about it, Doctor Who is a television show in Doctor Who too (please check out Remembrance of the Daleks for further context, thank you). However, when the show interacts with the world of the audience when it looks through the meta of fiction and begins to analyse the state of the real world, commenting on it using metaphors and pretty lights - that's when Doctor Who is at its most tangible, that's the sort of thing that gets people talking, it takes a real-life THING and shines a Scifi torch on it, making it look bigger and more threatening to hammer home the point that this boring, duller than dust world of ours, might not be as dull as we thought, that sometimes life really is stranger than fiction. Of course our world leaders are secretly giant, green, baby-faced aliens trying to nuke our planet into a grey mist so they can sell it on the intergalactic market, I don't doubt that for a single second, of course! We need the Doctor more than ever, someone call the Doctor, we need them!

Which is sort of a lead-in for the companion isn't it? It's why we can meet Dan Lewis, normal Liverpudlian fella, trying to make a living out of just being nice to his fellow people, trying his best to get by from every other day, failing it almost every aspect of his personal existence just to make someone else's far better. We can relate to Dan because we want to be Dan! We want to be content with what we have and not worry about how little we actually do, because that's depressing - but then things take a turn, the heavens open, our door gets kicked in and a big Dog Man with an axe lumbers into our living room and demands we comply with his orders, and of course we don't believe it, why should we? Those sorts of things only happen in Doctor Who, why would they happen to me? Or anyone? That sort of thing doesn't happen. Dog people don't exist, they don't have axes, and they don't have spaceships. We don't get Aliens in Sheffield or any other place! Ever! Not here! Not now! It's ridiculous! This is why it's so easy to relate to him, he's reacting in the same way any of us would, with comedic ignorance to the impossible. Then he meets the Doctor, the biggest dream anyone can ever dream of, and his life changes, having adventures, getting into scrapes, battling monsters or having a nice time with a celebrity of his choice. Anything can happen, and I think the first chapter of this serial has really instilled that feeling in me, that anything CAN happen regarding the Doctor's character revelations and the universe as a whole - will planet earth shatter into thousands of pieces once the cliffhanger is resolved? Will time ache and die and that's why Mary Seacole is about to wrestle an army of Sontarans? No idea? But it can happen, and boy am I excited if it does.

The Flux descending down upon Earth, guarded thinly by a veil of Dog Men ships, and of course - the TARDIS, between it all, leading the charge upon this large molecular storm, devouring everything that just so happens to be in its way. What an image.

The Flux is an interesting concept, a cosmic storm, the main and titular villain of the series and yet we have no idea what it is (for now), we have no idea where it came from (for now) nor do we know what it actually wants (for now) - and yet, I'm intrigued by it, a faceless character as our main source of villainy has never really done before in Doctor Who, it always ends up being the Daleks, Cybermen or the Master, and who knows, it still might very well end up being the case, but for now, I'm happy to watch this oncoming storm, face the oncoming storm, in a battle of storms.

Then it ends on a bloody cliffhanger! I'm going to get sick of those by the end of it, you can't end it like that, it was just getting good! Typical Doctor Who, making me wait another week just to find out what happens, why must I be tortured this way? Time has been nothing but a bastard all year, and now it has found itself seeping into the only things that give me joy, my oh my, Time you little rat, one day you shall pay for your crimes. Oh well. No point dwelling on it now, it'll only hurt me more.

Doctor Who is back! I think we can all (Well, I say all, there's always a black sheep) agree that the show's return is a very good thing, and every week is going to be one thrilling adventure after the other, which is a double good thing - and I'm going to try and write as much as I can about it, well as much as I can before my brain explodes, no point getting expectations high, that would just be silly.

Writing this blog has been its own little adventure, figuring out what to actually say is a tricky thing to do - this whole thing will be a learning curve for me I'm sure, not all of these blog posts will be of high quality, unfortunately. I'm going to need to get it out of my head that every single one needs to be a masterpiece because otherwise, I'm going to have to force myself to write nonsense that ultimately means nothing, so some of these posts might be pretty short if I don't have much to say, and that's fine, and I need to understand that because it's fine. Nobody is expecting a masterpiece so why should I put in unneeded effort every week to provide one? I'm not exactly trying to appeal to a mass market of people, I mean think about how many of you actually read this bloody thing beyond just my friends, my mum and my dad (Hello by the way). I'm an avid discusser of Doctor Who, but writing it all down in a clever and contemplated way is actually very annoying to do for me, so I tried to avoid the typical styles of a normal review because normal is boring and no one likes to read boring, because it's rubbish, and rubbish is bad. We'll see where we go from here, this is only the beginning.