I haven’t had the chance to write up my thoughts about the 2016 Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” so let me start by getting this out of the way: It’s pretty stupid.
Sure, there are funny bits and fun bits, but overall it’s a trifle — shallow, uninspired, and forgettable. It’s especially disappointing compared to last year’s surprisingly good Christmas special, “The Husbands of River Song.” Speaking of which, Nardole is back from that episode and in one piece again, and his role as the Doctor’s companion is one of the better things about “The Return of Doctor Mysterio.” He’s a fun character, an alien who is equally confounded by the Doctor and humans alike but doesn’t spend the whole episode asking questions the way most companions do. I’m happy to see he’ll be sticking around for the new season.
Among the other things I liked was the Doctor’s utter bewilderment that Lucy can’t tell her nanny Grant is actually the superhero called the Ghost, despite the two of them looking exactly the same but for Grant’s glasses (a nice nod to one of the peculiarities of the Superman mythos). In fact, another thing I liked a lot about this episode were its frequent shout-outs to classic comics, with lines like “With great power comes great responsibility,” all the characters’ alliterative names (Grant Gordon, Lucy Lombard, etc.), the Daily Chronicle building looking exactly like the Daily Planet, the Defenders poster on the wall of Grant’s childhood bedroom, and the names of comics creators sprinkled throughout. The scene with Grant in high school discovering what a curse x-ray vision is during puberty was cute, too.
Everything else I pretty much didn’t like. The plot is just another convoluted alien invasion story, this time involving brain removal and body swapping (if only the baddies had been H.P. Lovecraft’s brain-swapping Mi-Go instead of…sentient space brains with eyes, or whatever the hell they were). The love story between Grant and Lucy doesn’t work, at least for me, because I didn’t find myself invested in it at all. The script bends over backward in service of writer Steven Moffat’s conceits (there’s a lot of the usual manic Moffaty nonsense on display), such as when early in the episode Grant addresses Lucy on the phone as Mrs. Lombard so that we won’t know it’s Lucy he works for until the big reveal. Why not just have Grant not mention any names on the phone? Why have him do something so obviously phony considering he and Lucy have known each other since high school?
But I think the worst part of all is how everyone keeps saying Grant is such a great nanny (his true superpower, we learn with the usual Moffat-penned soppiness) when he is continually leaving the apartment to go fight crime or stop fires or whatever, and leaving the baby all alone! The script tries to hand wave it off by saying he’s so fast he’s back quicker than the average person can make it from the living room to the nursery, but please. He leaves the baby alone constantly. How does that make him the world’s best nanny? I kept yelling at the TV, “Someone needs to watch the baby!”
Anyway, the whole thing is pretty forgettable. “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” isn’t as bad as, say, any of the episodes from season 7, but it’s not going to be anyone’s favorite, either.
There’s a “coming soon” trailer at the end for season 10, which introduces new companion Bill, played by Pearl Mackie. Given what I’ve seen, I’m a little trepidatious. Steven Moffat has this idea that making people talk really fast and act manically shows how charming and intelligent they are, and Bill looks like no exception to this rule. I’m excited to see where things go because I’m really liking Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, but I’m so ready for a new dynamic on the show, and at this point I seriously doubt Moffat can supply it. Luckily, this will be his last season as show runner, because it’s definitely time for a new approach to the material.
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