Do Not Click

I've missed you. Yes, I mean you, the person reading this blog. Although I have a question for you.

Do you know where you are?

The Story

While the internet is feasting on human souls, the Doctor is hiding out as a monk and practicing his painting skills.

But then the Bells of Saint John ring, and the Doctor answers a phone call. Turns out, it's everyone's best friend, Clara Oswald (no Oswin this time), and she is phenomenally stupid.

"Is it bad for me that the wifi goes through my head?"

They chat on the phone, Clara says "Run you clever boy and remember", and then doesn't die (a first, for her), although she does get eaten by a wifi robot thing.

The Doctor frees her and she naps, before waking up to discover that in her uploaded state, she's learned everything there is to know about the internet and computers. After some stuff with a plane, a motorcycle, and a time machine, Clara uses what she's learned to implement a pretty clever scheme and find the masterminds.

Pictured: A clever scheme

Of course, before she gets to tell the Doctor, she herself gets eaten, but the Doctor can still see her results, so he rides a motorbike to the Shard, where he meets an evil woman.

But by implementing another clever scheme, he manages to give her a good reason to download the "cloud".

"I've always wondered what my own medicine tasted like."

Everyone who still has bodies to go back to is saved, and everyone else dies, which is supposedly better than the persistent inability to determine one's own location. The Doctor goes back to the TARDIS and invites Clara to join him, to which she unpredictably says "maybe later".

I wonder if the next episode will feature yet another different Clara.

The Good

I guess I'll give it away right now. The Bells of Saint John is by far the best episode of Season 7. For the first time this season, there is a coherent story tying the episode together, the characters act in intelligent ways, and the twists were well-planned and well-executed.

You want specifics, I suppose. Well, I'll mention my three favorite things.

Clara's Facematch

I have to hand it to her. Clara's idea of hacking the webcams (which the Doctor had already established was possible) and using face recognition software was extremely clever, and I did not see it coming. Most importantly, it was realistic. This is exactly how a system like Miss Kizlet's would be compromised in the real world.

Say cheese!

I especially enjoyed one line in that scene: "It's never about the security; it's about the people". For an episode that generally mis-represented hacking and programming (I'll get to that), it did get that right: most hacking victims get hacked because they did something stupid, like post their password online, not because their systems were defective. 

"No, ma'am, 'password' is probably not a good password"

Decoy Doctor

For many (read: all) of the previous episodes this season, I have complained that they were not resolved well. You may recall a particular episode in which a swing of the sonic reversed 2.3 billion heart attacks.

So I was extremely pleased by the clever, possibly even brilliant, resolution to Bells. The Doctor lures Miss Kizlet into her office, where he then reveals that he's actually one of the waystations, and takes away her sense of location. 

I did not see it coming, and it couldn't have been any other way. Beautiful!

The Villains

In some of the previous episodes, I may have complained that the villains were not been well-developed.

In this episode, however, while I wouldn't say that they were perfect, I would definitely say that this episode's bad guys were strong. The main villain was obviously Miss Kizlet, the leader of this group of brain-hackers, whose story we actually learn over the course of the episode.

She has a number of underlings, but it quickly becomes clear that she has them rather tightly under her control.

I wish I'd known about this technology earlier - I could have saved a bundle on college tuition...

Each person in Miss Kizlet's employ underwent a process, at some point, where their brain was linked to her iPad. When Miss Kizlet does her hard reboot at the end, everyone's memories are reverted to pre-Kizletification, and we can get an idea of how long everyone's been working at The Shard.

I really enjoyed the reveal about Miss Kizlet herself, showing that she's been attached to her own iPad since she was a small child.

"Are you my mummy?"

And while we're talking about villains, it's only fair to bring up the mysterious client, who is revealed at the end to be our very own Great Intelligence.

Here are my rules about a good mystery:

• It should be interesting
• It should not be obvious
• The answer should make sense in a way that other answers would not

The mystery of The Client's identity satisfied all of those for me. In hindsight, who but the Great Intelligence would require a steady diet of minds? And yet, while my friend and I were watching, our best guess was the Master, which would have been a feeble answer at best. So I have to hand it to the writers: good job with this one!

At this point, I have to mention the decision to have Richard Grant (Dr. Walter Simeon) lend his face and voice to the GI, rather than Ian McKellan, who voiced the Snowglobe in Snowmen. I'm guessing (hoping) that that turns out to be important in some way, like saying that Dr. Simeon left a huge mark on the Great Intelligence, or something like that.

Either way, I am sure that this is not the last we'll see of Minty Inty.

The Bad

While Bells has so far been the best episode of Season 7, it still falls short of the best that Doctor Who has given us. I do have a few issues with it, and I suppose I'll start with the title.

The Bells of Saint John

A few days before The Bells of Saint John aired, I noticed that a friend of mine was wearing a shirt with the TARDIS on it, and that the TARDIS displayed the words "Saint John". I briefly wondered if that might have anything to do with the episode that was soon to air, and decided that it couldn't, because that would be too shallow.

Turns out, I was right. The entire episode is named for one line that turns out to have nothing to do with the rest of the story.

GET IT BECAUSE IT SAYS SAINT JOHN IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE THAT'S IN THE TITLE WHY ISN''T ANYONE LAUGHING?

I would normally expect an episode title to give some clue as to what the episode is about. Otherwise, we might as well call the previous episode A Chair in Madame Vastra's House, and the first episode Hendrik's.

Gratuitous Evil Syndrome

Though not as bad as in earlier episodes, Miss Kizlet and her band of mind-thieves do seem to suffer from GES. Specifically, why do they care so much about getting Clara? It's not like she's particularly special. She's one of thousands of minds that they've collected, and if the Doctor has laid claim to that one, wouldn't it be safer to avoid making him angry?

I guess it's the principle of the matter.

Also, why in the world would you have an airplane crash into a city block? That's excessive. If you control a bunch of waystations, then you could just have 25 fake people surround the Doctor and Clara and kill them quietly.

Above: Overkill, literally

I Don't Know Where I Am!

Got really annoying really fast. And I know the writers threw it in as a joke, but when Clara leaned out the window and said "didn't know where I was", that felt like getting hit over the head with a chainsaw.

I Don't Know Where the Money Is

I honestly cannot see the Doctor doing this.

You can even see Clara's look of disapproval

It just feels... wrong...

Companion Intro

Despite the aforementioned flaws, I really enjoyed Bells as a standalone episode. Then, I remembered that it's supposed to be an introduction for the new companion, Clara Oswald (no Oswin this time). In that regard, it falls flat on its face.

I can't help but think back to Rose, and how within the first few minutes, we know approximately what her life is like, including her well-meaning, yet oblivious mother, her buffoonish boyfriend, and her dead-end job. Or Smith and Jones, where we learn about Martha's overbearing and bickering family that she so badly wants to get away from, and her promising medical career, which she would never give up.

Pictured: A well-established character

In The Bells of Saint John, we learn about Clara's backstory, but unlike Martha, Rose, Donna, and Amy, we learn about Clara's struggles by being told. She mentions that her mother died a year ago and that she fears abandoning those who need her, but you never actually feel her emotions in that. At the end of Rose, Smith and Jones, Partners in Crime, and The Eleventh Hour, I cared about the new companion established in each. I desperately wanted the Doctor to pick up each of those girls and rescue them from their miserable existences on Earth. With Clara, I just couldn't find room in my heart to deeply care. Clara was kind of cool, I guess, but her story, her life, just felt tacked on at the end with some dialogue, and I just didn't feel the urge to save her.

I was pleased, however, that when she first entered the TARDIS, she didn't have some sort of psychic "I remember this from my previous Clara existence" moment.

This is no place for a British woman and her tea.

The Authors Think We're Stupid

Every time Clara says something that one of her previous incarnations said, we are treated to a flashback of the old Clara (or Oswin).

HEY REMEMBER THAT TIME 7 EPISODES AGO WHERE I SAID "RUN YOU CLEVER BOY"?

AND THAT OTHER TIME LAST EPISODE WHEN I SAID "AND REMEMBER"?

It's like the authors think we have the memory of a goldfish.

Oh crap. Where am I? Even though I sat down two minutes ago, I don't know where I am.

I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I am!

The Ugly

Keyboards

A programmer by trade, it always annoys me when people keyboard-mash in movies and TV shows. Ask anyone who types for a living (like, I dunno, a script-writer), and they will tell you that it is impossible to type for extended periods of time without stopping to consider what you're doing. [I will concede - stream-of-consciousness typing may be a good idea for brainstorming scripts, but nobody ever programs or hacks like that].

I also have to point out that the ability to make a joke about Twitter being a 140-character soul-sucker does not necessarily make someone the Albert Einstein of computers.

While I have seen non-tactile keyboards like this, I assure you that any company that tries to make its employees use them will go out of business real fast.

Random Time Jump

It was midday when Clara got eaten by the internet, and as far as we know, Miss Kizlet spent the next six-to-eight hours (depending on what season it was) pacing in her office being stressed.

Quite a ways past midday.

Download Her

It did seem a little odd that the Doctor only cared about Clara, and didn't show any concern for the other thousands of innocent people trapped in the Twitterverse.

I don't know where she is!

Random Observations

Literature

I enjoyed the nod to our dear old Ponds.

Her next book is called "Winter is Coming"

The fact that the waystation stole its face from the girl on the cover was a nice touch too.

A good author can really make her characters come to life.

Cookies

Every so often, you forget that the Doctor is an alien, and then he does something to remind you that he really doesn't have any idea about human culture.

Jammy Dodgers: Doctor approved

Age Skip

Did Clara lose ownership of her "101 Places To Visit" book when she was 16, and then again 7 years later?

Or does counting go along with computer skillz?

The Woman at the Shop

I have my own guess as to whole told Clara to call the TARDIS. What do you think?

Spoilers!

Overall

There is no question in my mind that The Bells of Saint John is the strongest episode of Season 7. The bad guys aren't stupid to the point of their demise (they had their stupid moments, but the Doctor would have won even if they hadn't been). Most importantly, for me at least, both stages of the resolution - Clara's facematch and the Doctor's decoy - were really clever.

However, I am a little concerned that that was an accident. Bells, while by far the best of Season 7, doesn't come close to some of the better episodes of earlier seasons, like The God Complex, or The Pandorica Opens, and still stuffers from some of the same things that plagued earlier episodes this season, namely Gratuitously Evil Villain Syndrome.

Only time will tell whether or not this episode was a turn in the right direction, or an aberration, never to be repeated. Either way - I really enjoyed The Bells of Saint John, and hope that the rest of the season follows this example, albeit hopefully with more appropriate episode names.

NEXT EPISODE: THE RINGS OF AKHATEN

The Doctor explodes.