The Return of Doctor Mysterio

TARDIS coordinates: December 25, 2016

A young boy is rousted from his bed on Christmas Eve by a cry for help. Rushing to the window, he sees a mysterious old man hanging helpless from the ledge. He helps the old man into the apartment, and shows him the way back to the roof, from whence he came.

The old man offers the boy a gemstone, telling him to keep it safe, and a glass of water, for his cough. Identifying himself as “the Doctor,” the old man sets to work on a bizarre device he’s constructed on the roof of the building. The boy, believing the crystal to be medicine for his cold, swallows it. No ordinary gemstone, the crystal gives the boy powers he’s only seen in comic books.

Pretty good origin story, huh?

Hi, guys.  It’s been a while. Not just in the sense that this blog ran out of content in August, but in the sense that this is the only episode of Doctor Who produced in 2016. It’s been a rough year – celebrities dropping like flies, the election season from hell, and the closest we’ve gotten to new Doctor Who all year is the first episode of “Class.” Still, here we stand, battered and bowed but not broken, and our time machine has reached the present day. Whatever lies in the past, we still have a future to embrace – whatever we choose to make of it.

To be fair, this isn’t really the direction I would have gone if I were to introduce real, costumed, cape-wearing superheroes to the Doctor Who universe. The whole thing doesn’t quite gel. It’s not a bad episode, it’s just that it’s more of a celebration of superhero comics in general rather than an attempt to make Doctor Who and superheroes coexist. References to comic books hail down upon the writing, but they’re more nods to the medium than plot-relevant content.

Once you’re past that bit, you have a Doctor Who episode with a little superhero decoration. And one problem with that is that the Doctor isn’t a huge fan of sharing the spotlight. We’re talking about someone who got into a pissing match with Santa Claus, after all; it’s his job to be all heroic and generally awesome and have people stand around being impressed, and if Captain Invincible swings in off a rooftop and starts airlifting people out of the burning building, he’s going to feel something’s a bit off.

They do work a bit of a team, if only because they seem to be operating in two different TV shows. Grant is doing his Adventures of Superman impression while the Doctor is in the midst of a patented alien invasion, so they’re not really working at cross purposes or stepping on each other’s impeccably-costumed toes. If nothing else, it does seem to be something of an attempt to make Doctor Who a bit more…fun, I guess; after the dramatic sweeps of the last season, this is the sort of episode to which the description “romp” gets attached.

Nardole rules. I have the odd sense that he’s something of a narrative afterthought, which might be why he rules; this episode might not have functioned as well had the Doctor been stuck with just Lucy and Grant to hang out with. Like all good travelers, he acts as a sort of conscience for the Doctor, but his approach is from the other direction – while most of the Doctor’s friends are the “stand around and look impressed” sort, he’s more like a parent – he knows as much as the Doctor, has no need to put up with his crap, isn’t going to fawn over him like a lovesick cow, and keeps his mind from wandering. I sincerely hope we see more of him.

So that’s it. 2017 is coming up, and one of the things that makes the future so scary is facing it without the things we lost in 2016. But at least one thing is still with us – the Doctor abides.