27/09/14:
Starring Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Ellis George, Jimmy Vee
/Written
by Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat / Directed by Paul Murphy
Reviewed by Sean Alexander
Reviewed by Sean Alexander
Alfred
Hitchcock, as well as making walk-on appearances in most of his notable films,
was extremely fond of plot devices that had little or no bearing on the
development of his narratives. Film historians
coined a term for this phenomenon: the McGuffin.
Gareth Roberts’ previous forays into televised Who have all had their own
version of this particular magician’s trick: 2007’s ‘The Shakespeare Code’ saw
witch-like creatures trying to enter our universe by, literally, rewriting the
great Bard’s text. 2010’s ‘The Lodger’
used disappearing tenants as an excuse for Matt Smith’s Doctor to spend a week
as an ‘ordinary person’, playing both football and inadvertent matchmaker to
James Corden’s likeable Craig; the following year’s ‘Closing Time’ likewise had
an invasion of Cybermen help Craig bond with his new-born son. Tonight’s Coal-Hill school set ‘invasion’ by
a one-robot force of destruction does little more than frame Clara’s
increasingly frantic double life of school-teaching and blossoming romance with
the TARDIS travelling that is by now dominating her life.
SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT
