Well...it's back - and managed to take over twitter and score a more than respectable 6.2million in overnight viewing figures. The return of the show is always hyped beyond belief but this time we also had the third and final "aspect" of Clara Oswald involved - and it could have been a complete mess. Thankfully, the Moff rather nailed it with this one and "The Bells of Saint John" turned out to be a good, solid and very entertaining romp.
Of course, it wouldn't be the Moff if he didn't take something from everyday life, twist it obscenely and scare the living daylights out of us. This time - to put another speedbump into the life of Who fans - he chose WiFi. We rely on WiFi an extraordinary amount - if you just look at the Who fandom for instance, the prequels, trailers and behind the scenes videos all hit the internet first not to mention the sheer amount of Who traffic on social network sites. In "The Bells of Saint John", the WiFi became some kind of creepy little recruiting device where souls are uploaded and then consumed by the Great Intelligence. The pre-credits sequence of the episode reinforced our reliance on WiFi with the variety of locations used and Nabile's plea culminating in that very creepy camera pullback on the multitude of trapped souls in the monitor screens.
Another strength of "Doctor Who" - apart from making aspects of everyday life scary in the extreme - is it's ability to merge concepts and places that simply don't seem to belong together. In a lovely follow up to the prequel, the Doctor has gone off to a "quiet place to think" which, in this case is a monastery in 1207AD (and with Matt's teaser of "paintings" as a clue to the 50th Anniversary special, you have to wonder if there will be any significance to the Doctor's painting of Clara). The Bells of Saint John of the title are ringing - and I admit to groaning that I hadn't actually worked this out previously. The Bells of Saint John are, of course, the ringing telephone of the Tardis which is next to the St John Ambulance sticker. And this is where you get that wonderful merging that only "Doctor Who" can do. The Doctor answering a telephone in 1207AD and speaking to Clara Oswald in the present day - the juxtaposition of the two shouldn't have worked but, of course it did.
