Season 9, Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived
After landing in the TARDIS, The Doctor stumbles upon a highway robbery in progress, the perpetrator of which turns out to be the immortal Ashieldr, now the notorious Highwayman The Knightmare. Having ruined her attempted robbery and also lost the alien artefact he was searching for, The Doctor returns to Ashieldr's house to learn what she's been up to since he made her immortal.
Ashieldr has forgotten many of the events of her long life including her name, but has volumes of diaries that record them all. These act as a convenient way for The Doctor to learn about many of the tragic events of her life without all the hassle of making her open up and tell him. I can't work out if this is lazy writing or sheer brilliance. I think I'll roll with it though. It just works.
You just saved us a full episode of deep character interaction.
She has loved, and even had children, only to lose them. Some events have been torn out of the diaries, and when asked about them, she reveals she does that when she wants to forget. The Doctor can't understand what could be worse than losing her babies, but she explains she keeps that one to remind her not to have any more.
Williams does a great job of the flashbacks here. They nicely bridge the gap between the slightly naive Viking girl we met before and the old woman in a young woman's body we see now. She has been hardened by her long and lonely life, which was alluded to at the end of the previous episode. Now she is determined to shake the bonds of Earth and explore the universe. She asks The Doctor to take her with him, but he refuses. In the face of that refusal, she goes to the gardens and speaks to a shadowy figure with glowing eyes. It's made pretty clear she is going to betray The Doctor.
They then work together to retrieve the alien artefact, now identified as a jewelled pendant called the Eyes of Hades. During the break-in to steal the pendant, Ashieldr offers The Doctor a face mask. He declines, saying he has his own. Yep, you guessed it. Those bloody sunglasses are back. Thankfully the only thing he uses them for this episode is lighting a candle, which sound waves could at least conceivably achieve.
*Shakes fist in impotent rage*
After recovering the Eyes of Hades, Ashieldr again asks The Doctor to take her with him. When he again refuses she goes through with her original plan to give the artefact to a stranded alien called Leandro from Delta Leonis (that's right, he's a lion man) who needs it to escape Earth. However it turns out the pendant is only activated by a death. The Doctor is outraged at Ashieldr's willingness to kill, but the embittered woman sees mortal people as transient, and she refers to death as an "abundant resource."
As Ashieldr and Leandro leave to attend the hanging of Ashieldr's rival highwayman, Sam Swift, The Doctor talks his way out of custody and follows hot on their heels. Swift is spending his final moments making jokes, some which were rather bordering on In-Who-Endos, but The Doctor soon shows up and uses his psychic paper to grant Sam a pardon. Ashieldr then goes all in and uses the Eyes of Hades to draw the life force from Sam, creating a portal in the sky.
Not another one.
But as predicted by The Doctor, Leandro double crosses Ashieldr and his story to her is revealed to be a lie. As alien ships begin firing through the portal, preparing to invade, Ashieldr remembers human compassion and uses her remaining Mire chip to restore Sam's life force and repel the invasion, but not before Leandro escapes through the closing portal. Afterwards, The Doctor and Ashieldr celebrate in the pub with Sam Swift and discuss the future. Ashieldr decides to dedicate her life to looking after the people left behind in The Doctor's wake.
As The Doctor sits in the TARDIS thinking and noodling on his guitar as has become standard this season, Clara returns. She shows him a picture of one of her students. Lurking in the background with a fairly sinister smile is Ashieldr, lending further evidence to her being the season arc.
All up this was a pretty damn good episode. It built on the previous episode despite no direct connection between the two threats. The Doctor and Ashieldr worked together reasonably well, and the lack of Clara had zero impact on the episode. I could maybe see her as a permanent Companion, but I do get why she won't really work well as one.
I was a bit put out by the initial interaction with Sam Swift, but it becomes clear they were setting his jocular attitude up as a catalyst to bringing Ashieldr back on track. An example for The Doctor to point to and say, "he gets it."
I am now genuinely interested in the season arc. Is Ashieldr the Minister of War? Is she still on track? What does that smile mean? I am hoping that the references to the arc drop off for a while though. Definitely the best this season, and possibly the best of Capaldi's run so far.
10/10
Can we fix it?
Not much to do here. Shave out some of the sexual innuendos in Sam's gallows humour, or at least make them less overt, and get rid of those freaking sunglasses. They literally added nothing to this episode. Neither, for that matter, did The Doctor playing his guitar again. These things were minor and didn't really affect the quality of the episode, but they are adding to the overall caricature of The Doctor we are seeing this season, and is starting to feel very samey.
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