Peter Capaldi was a part of the Whoniverse long before he became the Doctor. So why has his face shown up again? Why did the Doctor pick that face? We finally get an answer to that question on “The Girl Who Died.”
Summary
Clara is floating out in space with a little creature crawling up inside her suit; the TARDIS is currently under attack, so it’s taking the Doctor longer than usual to get to her. Once he finally picks her up, the TARDIS lands on Earth and duo are captured by Vikings. The Doctor claims that his sonic sunglasses are a source of great power, but the Vikings break them. He and Clara are handcuffed and taken back to the village, where the Doctor then pretends to be Odin, dangling a “magic” yo-yo at them. His ruse doesn’t play because Odin appears in the sky and tells the warriors of the village that he intends to reward them for their bravery, by allowing them into Valhalla. A bunch of creatures in mecha suits appear, and they beam the best warriors out. Clara is in the process of getting a village girl named Ashildr to undo her handcuffs with half of the sonic sunglasses, and the mechas notice the technology and beam the two of them up as well.
The “Odin” they saw ends up murdering the village warriors so that he can drink up their adrenaline and testosterone. He turns out to be one of the Mire, a violent warrior species who absorb the hormones of the best warriors across the universe for their own gain. Ashildr is angry that this happened to all the good fighters in her village, and she declares war on the Mire on half of her people, just as Clara was convincing them to leave quietly. The Mire accept, and tell them that battle will commence in 24 hours, sending Ashildr and Clara back. Clara tells the Doctor what happened, and he tells the villagers to flee, but they are Vikings and want to fight. The Doctor plans to leave, but hears a baby crying, and decides to stay after translating its wails to Clara. He is faced with having to prepare a town of only farmers and fishermen to go to war. The townspeople are predictably terrible at fighting, but Clara insists that the Doctor come up with a plan to save them. He speaks to Ashildr—who makes beautiful puppets and is fond of storyteling—and she explains her own desire to stay with her people, telling the Doctor that this is the only place she has ever belonged.
Suddenly, the Doctor remembers that the baby’s cries had included the term “fire in the water,” and he realizes that it was in reference to electric eels in the village water. He devises a plan where the townspeople create a diversion by pretending to party when the Mire show up, then hook metal wires into their helmets and short them out using the eels. Once they obtain a helmet, Ashildr uses her storytelling abilities and puppets and the Mire’s technology to make them think that they’re fighting a great dragon. They flee, leaving “Odin” behind, and the Doctor shows him what they were really running from; he has the whole event recorded and threatens to upload it to a Galactic Hub if they don’t retreat permanently. The Mire leave, and the townspeople celebrate until they find that Ashildr died due to interfacing with the Mire tech.
The Doctor is horrified by this turn of events, apologizing to the village before ducking away. Clara asks him what happened, and the Doctor tells her that he’s tired of always losing people that matter to him. Then he spots his reflection and has a revelation—his face is the face of Caecilius (from “The Fire of Pompeii”) and he received it to remind himself of the important lesson he learned from Donna Noble during that adventure: that he didn’t have to save everyone everywhere he went, just someone, even if it seems to be against the rules. He rewires a chip from the Mire helmet and melds it with Ashildr, bringing her back to life. She thanks him, but as they leave, the Doctor explains to Clara what that chip has done to Ashildr: It has made her effectively immortal, repairing her perpetually.
The episode ends as we watch time pass around Ashildr, her expression turning from joy to despair and anger.
Commentary
On the one hand, this episode drove me nuts. It is 90% setup, and that setup itself isn’t all that exciting. The Viking village fighting the Mire doesn’t feel like it has high stakes attached to it at all, and that’s because it doesn’t; it’s a prop to give a reason for Ashildr’s death, so that the Doctor can revive her and create the next episode. The fact that the village is a Viking one feels like that afterthought; there’s very little about them that actually indicates “Viking,” other than their belief in Valhalla and Norse gods. Otherwise, it’s a village of people in tunics with swords. It could be any European town from that era, if the episode had needed to play it that way. Maybe the BBC wanted to reuse some costumes from Merlin, or something? Obviously, they needed a reason for the village battle against the Mire to be unbalanced, but the stock “we only have farmers to fight and they’re never held swords!” trope is unbelievably overused (see the aforementioned Merlin), and if you’re not going to make any interesting commentary on the plot, then its use is just boring.
Though Maisie Williams is always a joy to watch, Ashildr’s character is thin on the ground. We know that she’s honorable like the rest of her people, and that she loves her father. The rest of the character is given to us in an info-dump scene where the Doctor finds out that she loves telling stories and building puppets, and that she’s not masculine enough to hang with the boys, but not feminine enough to hang with the girls. And the only reason we need to know any of these things is to make her role in the battle against the Mire clear. It’s a shame that it couldn’t have been worked in much sooner, that she couldn’t have bonded with Clara some more.
On the other hand… the episode ends on several perfect moments, and answers some key questions that we’ve been asking since Capaldi’s casting. It’s clearly playing into the season arc as well, when we take a long view of Ashildr’s position in the narrative. Specifically, the Doctor refers to her as a “hybrid”: this is what Davros called the new race of Daleks that were created when the Doctor handed over his regeneration energy in “The Witch’s Familiar.” So Ashildr is either a part of the season arc, or designed to teach the Doctor something about what it means to be a hybrid as a way of setting up the season finale. When discussing how immortality will affect Ashildr, he tells Clara, “Time will tell; it always does,” which is a very specific callback to the Seventh Doctor story “Remembrance of the Daleks,” when Skaro is (seemingly) destroyed. So, this tie between Ashildr and the new Daleks is pronounced, meant to catch our attention.
While the Doctor’s ability to speak baby has always been good for a laugh in the past, I enjoyed its use here as something far more somber. It makes the trick come off like more of a true talent form the Doctor’s perspective, not just a clever way to make good jokes. In addition, all of the conversation between the Doctor and Clara in this episode are on-point, as usual. His difficulty with constantly losing people is walking a similar line that the Tenth Doctor ran into by the end of his tenure, something that started building up in the Ninth Doctor’s run. But Capaldi’s difficulty is played from a different angle; the pain he is feeling is wrapped up in helplessness that comes with having great power but being unable to use it when it matter most (rather than a build up of PTSD following the Time War). Again we’re seeing hints of what this might mean for Clara’s departure, and we can only guess at what that will do to the Doctor.
The reliance on storytelling as a legitimate battle technique was also inspired, a literal take on how psychology plays into warfare. Ashildr’s ability to save her people as a young woman, through her own strength as a storyteller, is exactly the kind of turn that makes Doctor Who such a unique and special piece of science fiction. In a show that’s all about a man who calls himself a Doctor, a hero who carries no weapons, and prides himself on helping people, the idea of fighting a war with stories and ideas is precisely on message.
Steven Moffat made mention last year that he had spoken with Russell T. Davies about the use of Capaldi on the show, and that Davies had come up with a reason as to why the Doctor would have that familiar face. Moffat said the he intended to use that reason, and promised that it would come up in the show, and here we have it. The choice is a beautiful one, and a very classic sort of Davies move; most of Moffat’s twists rely on complex plotting, but Davies’ often relied on deep emotion. And that is precisely what we have here: a callback to one of the most devastating adventures that the Doctor had in recent memory, devastating for the fact that he almost didn’t do what he was born to do. It took Donna Noble to remind him that it’s not always about saving the universe, or the world, or even the city; that the act of saving the single life was just as important. The idea that the Doctor subconsciously filtered that into his regeneration, that he knew he would need the reminder this time around, is a gorgeous piece of storytelling.
So, an incredible final fifteen minutes with a weak opening. I dearly hope that the second part of the story makes up for it with interest, and trust that Ashildr’s arc will be expanded well going forward.
Here are the other Easter Eggs:
- HE SAID “REVERSING THE POLARITY OF THE NEUTRON FLOW.” HE SAID IT. HE SAID THE WHOLE THING.
- The Doctor used a yo-yo last season to test gravity on the moon, but pretending that it is “magic” harkens back to the Fourth Doctor’s time with companion Leela–who also believed that yo-yos were magical.
- The Doctor consults his 2000 Year Diary, an update of the 500 Year Diary kept by the Second Doctor.
Emmet Asher-Perrin may eventually stop crying over seeing Ten and Donna again. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Remembrance of the Daleks also had great talk of ripples too. I liked this episode, I’ve always preferred the goofy fun episodes to the attempts at seriousness. I miss Donna though, that is what this episode made me think most of all.
The evil, cybernetic helmeted aliens know as The Goa’uld Mire have subjugated a village and are acting as gods, and it’s up to the plucky Dr. Daniel Jackson Doctor (mistakenly taken prisoner by the locals, and stranded due to the lack of an accurate return chevron glyph loss of The TARDIS) to set them free, along with the help of the untrained but brave villagers, including a local girl, who sends The Goa’uld Mire packing, but ends up dying for the cause, only to be reborn thanks to advanced Goa’uld Mire technology.
I predict that the trite and untrue refrain of “The Doctor corrupts everything he touches” will be driving the next episode. “Look what I’ve turned Viking girl into! Look what I’ve turned Clara into!” Yawn.
In other news, it’s rumored that the show will be on hiatus next year, similar to the year in which Davies left, Moffat stepped in, and we saw only specials. If Moffat were to leave, would Gatiss step in?
Sigh, I miss Donna.
Okay, so the Doctor and crew succeed in humiliating the Mire and making them retreat to their spaceship.
…at which point they verify that the video has not yet been uploaded to the Hub, and then they drop a nuke. I mean, let’s get realistic here.
(Also, since when does Norway have electric eels?)
@@@@@2. Transceiver:
God I hope not. Gatiss’ episodes so far: The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot’s Lantern, Victory of the Daleks, Night Terrors, Cold War, The Crimson Horror, and Robot of Sherwood. The one thing that (almost) all of them have in common? They were dull, middle-of-the-road episodes that didn’t have much interesting to say about the Doctor or anything else. I liked Cold War quite a bit actually, and I like certain things about The Crimson Horror, but one-and-a-half of seven is not nearly strong enough a record to earn show runner. One could make an argument that the episodes aren’t the worst of any season, but honestly if I’m watching a Doctor Who episode that misses the mark I’d much prefer an off-the-wall bonkers episode like Love And Monsters or Let’s Kill Hitler than the Gatiss episodes from those seasons. I’d be much more interested with Toby Whithouse or Jaimie Mathieson at the helm.
Oh, Mire. I thought they were saying “Maya.” Which would befit the themes of storytelling and illusion if you go with the use of the word in Hindi.
I actually though the explanation for why the Doctor looked like Caecilius was kind of contrived and unnecessary. I mean, yes, there is a nice emotional subtext there, but it’s one you have to have a really good memory of series continuity to understand. The quick montage from “The Fires of Pompeii” would’ve been totally confusing to a viewer who hadn’t seen it or didn’t remember it well, so it was a pretty clumsy way to give the answer to this supposedly big important question. And it’s just so fannish to feel the need to invent a story reason to justify the recasting of an actor. Do we need an in-story reason for why the Sixth Doctor subconsciously chose to look like Commander Maxil? And what about James Frobisher, Capaldi’s Torchwood: Children of Earth character?
The idea of doing the eleventy-millionth TV-episode pastiche of The Seven Samurai didn’t appeal to me much, but they actually subverted it by having the “teach the villagers to fight” thing be just a red herring and finding a much more Doctor-like solution in the end. And the Doctor’s baby-translation scenes were truly the high points, really poignant and poetic.
@2/Transceiver: I don’t think I’d be any happier with Gatiss as showrunner than Moffat. At this point, my vote for new showrunner would go to Phil Ford (The Sarah Jane Adventures, Wizards vs. Aliens).
And Moffat did not “step in” during the 2009 specials. Every one of the specials was written or co-written by Davies. The only part of the specials that Moffat wrote was the Eleventh Doctor’s debut scene concluding “The End of Time.”
The Mire have a medical gadget in their juggernaut suits that heals them from most injuries, and they’re considered brave warriors? It’s not bravery when you are the immortal in the protective suit against the local primitives.
After the introduction of the healing patch which should have been introduced earlier instead of coming out of nowhere, I realized what a joke these warriors are. The only way they know bravery and adrenaline is to take it from others. Hence, the warriors running like bullies when the dragon shows up.
The Doctor should have picked up on this much earlier and made it a point.
But I did think it funny to threaten them with the intergalactic version of YouTube.
@7/MByerly: Well, part of the point of the story is that storytelling — as in reputation — is a weapon. The Mire are feared as great warriors because they’ve created a narrative for themselves as great warriors, but bluster and deception are basic to their MO. As with most people who go around boasting about how tough and macho they are, they’re really cowards at the core.
There are a lot of comments on the Internet about the electric eels (such at @1’s “(Also, since when does Norway have electric eels?),” but it’s not the matter of Norway having them, but the Viking trade networks having them. With the focus so often on the Norse/Dane population raiding the British Isles & Normandy (and to an extant the exploration of Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland), people forget how far that population went a’viking. The bodyguards of Rus king in Kiev, the Pope in Rome, and the Caliph in Baghdad were all Vikings for generations, they based themselves out of Sicily to raid the Mediterranean for decades, and many travelled and traded along the Silk Road – it’s probably useful to consider ‘Vikings’ less as an ethnic group as much as a collection of peoples-within-peoples operating on trade (and raiding and bounty when needed) because of land shortages arose in the Little Ice Age; look at how those Viking groups in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Normandy so quickly ‘civilized’ when getting access to agricultural land.
As for the eels themselves, global trade ≠ globalized trade. Cultures and empires have been trading across the world for millennia. We get confused when we find early object where “they shouldn’t be” because we neglect how trade has always operated in steps (particularly among commodities and specie). Just as products of East and West transferred along the Silk Road and via nautical intermediaries North and South (Arabic traders bring them to Africa, Vikings brings them to Russia and the British Isles), so commodity goods – including live goods such as eels – traveled back along those same routes long before unified global trade. The idea of South Africans trading for eels, selling those to Arabs for Chinese goods, then trading those to Vikings for northern crops (the eels being likely a delicacy) is a realistic trade lineage – it would be after the Mongol invasion smashed the Arabic ports a few centuries later that we see Europeans trying to form their own one-stop-shopping in globalized mercantile trade.
All that said, the key with The Doctor here is that he’s the one who knew about both the extent of the electric properties of those eels (that they were more than just a more delicious sort of eel than the cold-water variety) as well as understanding the relationship of electricity and magnetism for use against the Mire in their metal suits. That’s actually a very good way of balancing things: too often, The Doctor can save the day with everything at his disposal; here he’s using the knowledge that he has separate from the contemporary Vikings, but not any different tools (aside from that helmet gained via the simple tools available in the village used smartly). It was all very Dark Ages A-Team, which is far better than waving a Sonic around. I can imagine, in a situation were the idea of Ashieldr-as-immortal wasn’t needed, even going the step further of making the ‘puppet’ fully non-holographic (with some extra puppetry and masking it something like whaleskin) to really sell the theme.
Of course, I’m the sort of guy who really enjoyed the Training Montage segment of the episode. No, it doesn’t have high stakes, but it doesn’t need to – getting underneath all the arguments of Honor, Ashieldr’s comments actually reinforce the things her father and others have said in a fascinating way: this is their home, and there’s that key issue of Living versus Having A Life (The Doctor is an aristocrat in a Magic Box that can travel anywhere/anywhen, not a farmer who has nowhere else he could go if he ran). There’s humor in that segment but also a deadly seriousness in realizing that these men are faced with no choice (or really a choice between a quick death and a slow one)…
Emily, you forgot another Easter egg, although it’s not a Doctor Who in joke: when he threatens to upload the video to the Galactic Hub, he’s added Benny Hill chase music to it. Another fine British programme.
All in all, I agree with you that the whole episode is kinda meh, and only the last 15 minutes are worth sitting through it. I did laugh at naming the vikings (Lofty, ZZ Top, Heidi, etc), so he wouldn’t have to learn and remember their actual names. It’s a very 12th Doctor thing.
@9 – bhaughwout: I love the “Dark Ages A-Team” idea, and I agree that it’s better than just waving around a sonic device.
We got an anwser for the face of Caecilius (which is the one that was obviously implied in Deep Breath), but still no explanation about John Frobisher, which is what I’ve been wondering about since the beginning. In fact, that’s what Davies had told Moffat: when he cast Capaldi again as Frobisher, he had thought about why this character would look like Caecilius, and Moffat decided that he could use that for the face of the Twelfth Doctor. I think we’re going to get an answer about Frobisher at some point.
The Mire were just stupid. If the race is so advanced, why do they need to extract the hormones from warriors rather than synthesising them in much bigger quantities? I get that it’s less fun (although, slaughtering people whose best weapons are axes does not seem to be fun enough to be worth crossing half the galaxy), but it really looks like this. Then the Doctor makes excellent points on why they should flee and come back a few days later (I really liked the baby translation, except for the premonition part which was contrived), and why it would be a bad idea to win the battle anyway. That makes it hard to care about the episode.
I was surprised by the flashback: it’s rare that we get to see another Doctor apart from a multi-Doctor episode or in a regeneration. Unfortunately, it makes David Tennant and Donna Noble the best part of the episode, reminding us how good the show used to be, even though Capaldi’s run has been great so far (I consider this episode to be the third dud). Well, there was also Yakety Sax, but it’s not like they were the first to notice the supernatural ability this song has to make anything funny. The idea of defeating the Mire by storytelling was good, but I thought the execution was botched.
Finally, it is a terrible idea to include a technology that is quite easy to get, and can make any human being immortal with apparently no side-effect (if Ashildr is not raving mad a few centuries later, we can consider any side-effects to be negligible). Now, how can they justify any death of a companion? And with Dark Water, that’s two episodes in a short time that play with life and death, when the previous one presented that as something absolutely abhorrent to the Doctor: if that’s so, it really shouldn’t be that easy to resurrect someone. In fact, giving Ashildr a spare chip is just cruel, as it makes her responsible of everyone who is going to die around her: every time, she could have saved them, but had to decide that they just weren’t that important over an eternity. She’s right, but I just can’t see how making that decision over and over won’t make her as detached as the Doctor.
I was more annoyed that the vikings had horns on the helmets. I was so hoping there’d be a conversation like this…
Doctor: “They’re vikings.”
Clara: “They’re not vikings.”
Doctor: “Of course they are, look at them.”
Clara: “They have horns on their helmets.”
Doctor: “Exactly!”
Clara: “No, exactly. It’s a myth. There’s never been any evidence Vikings had horns on their helmets. I’m a teacher, I know these things.”
Doctor: “It’s a myth.”
Clara: “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
Doctor: “No, I mean, it’s a myth that it’s a myth. Vikings had horned helmets all the time. But in the 18th century a race called the Mixalanti visited Earth and did their best to remove all evidence of Vikings ever wearing helmets from the Historical record.”
Clara: “… why?”
Doctor “I don’t know, they just do these things. It’s their version of sports. They’re also why nobody knows that the Egyptians invented pizza.”
I guess I can pretend it happened on the boat.
@9/bhaughwout: Interesting discussion about global trade as it relates to electrified fish. I suppose this is the origin of the well-known Hungarian saying, “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
@10/lordmagnusen: I wouldn’t call the Benny Hill theme an Easter egg, since Clara and the Doctor had an explicit on-camera discussion about how they should add the Benny Hill theme to the video. Easter eggs are supposed to be hard to spot — hidden references you have to find and uncover, like in an Easter egg hunt.
@ghostly1, I wish they’d offer you a job as a writer for WHO. The funniest dialogue I’ve read in a long time.
@12: That is so believable, I am now going to consider that this dialog did happen on screen, and then Mixalanti came and erased all trace of it. That is such a great way to have the Vikings fit the stereotypical view of them and at the same time to poke fun at it, and also at both the lack of care the show puts into those details and how much the fans will notice!
Vikings with horns are nothing compared to the way they treated Robin Hood last season.
@11 I wonder if Frobisher is going to be explained the way Gwen Cooper being the double to her 1800’s relation, Gwyneth from “The Unquiet Dead”, was (when Ten and Rose met Gwen); perhaps Frobisher is a descendant of Caecilius, since the Doctor wasn’t nearby when “Children of Earth” happened, and they try to keep Torchwood and Doctor Who split more now, given the variance in content. At least, that’s the simplest solution.
I really hope they don’t bother to “explain” Frobisher. I’m reminded of all those old Star Trek fan theories about how Number One and Nurse Chapel were related, or the Romulan Commander and Sarek, or even Trelane and Koloth. Is it really so hard just to accept that these are actors playing characters?
Granted, there have been multiple times that Doctor Who has given an in-story justification for an actor playing two roles — Lalla Ward as Astra and Romana II, Freema Agyeman as Adeola and Martha, etc. But only when the first role was in recent memory. The Gwyneth/Gwen thing was probably the first time it was done with characters who were a few years apart. And there were plenty of occasions where the show didn’t bother. There was never an explanation for why Morganna, Sara Kingdom, and King Richard I’s sister Joanna looked alike, or why the Brigadier looked like Bret Vyon, or why Scaroth looked like King Richard, or why Tobias Vaughn looked like Mavic Chen — and that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head.
Electric eels are native to South America. Yes, I’m quite aware that the Vikings had a far-ranging trade network. (I know what the Varangian Guard was, for example.) No, I do not believe that it went as far as the Amazon basin.
I thought everyone knew that Norway had electric eels right up until the 14thC, when they died out from over fishing. Which was a shame, because they were the main food source of krakens. Ah, the circle of life I guess.
Hey, David Goldfarb, even if the Vikings didn’t trade with South America, it’s entirely possible *ahem* that Amazons traded with Scandinavia. (It’s the Whoiverse. Of course it’s possible.)
“Hi, we’re Amazons. We’re here to trade these electric eels for IKEA products.”
Maybe the Vikings and the South Americans both traded with one of the three versions of Atlantis.
@10 Probably the most obscure to American viewers of the nicknames the Doctor gave to the Vikings was “Noggin the Nog.” This was a limited-animation cartoon series about a rather shy, ineffectual Viking that ran on British television in the late 1950s – early 1960s, and which so far as I know only showed up in very few US markets; in the New York area, on what was then WNDT (now WNET) public broadcasting.
@12 – ghostly1: That’s a great conversation. I too am going to pretend it happened.
@13 – CLB: Huh, I completely missed that conversation. TBH, I had had a very long day, it was 2AM, and I was fighting to stay awake; so I probably nodded off at that particular moment. I shouldn’t watch DW when I’m so tired, but I wanted to see it as soon as possible.
@19 – David: Norwegians had electric eels until the Mixalanti took them away in the 14th century.
@23 – Russell: Thanks for that tidbit.
So except for Ashildr, this village had no women or girls at all?
I liked this episode better than the previous four, which were rather dark and grim. But it had its flaws. I think the whole idea of Ashildr as storyteller would have felt more real if we had first met her telling stories to the village children, only to be interrupted by the return of the warriors. That would have introduced that concept a lot less awkwardly than revealing it at the same time it became important to the plot. And I agree with the comments above that the reveal of why the Doctor has his current face was a bit clumsy and forced feeling, although it was satisfying to find out exactly why. There were some nice touches too, though, like threatening the villains with being exposed with some sort of galactic youtube video.
I am intrigued by the thought of Ashildr becoming immortal, and it looks like we jump ahead a few centuries in next week’s episode, as she appears to be in the 18th or 19th century, playing a kind of Scarlet Pimpernel sort of character. That looks like it will be a lot of fun!
Good point about how we should have met Ashildr.
In some ways, this episode would have been better if Ashildr stayed dead.
Not that I don’t think the next episode won’t be worth it but…
You’ve really got to wonder whether the Doctor was thinking of Davros when he creater a hybrid between the Mire and a Viking.
“It spoke of a hybrid creature. Two great warrior races forced together to create a warrior greater than either. Is that what you ran from, Doctor? Your part in the coming of the hybrid?“
(Not that the Mire strike me as being a great warrior race.)