The new Twelfth Doctor stories continue as The Doctor and his new emotionally broken companion Ash head to Scotland and begin to unravel a mystery involving a millions-of-years-old robot who just wanted to help people but may have ended up doing the opposite. Sounds familiar, a comparison that goes beyond just “sounds like The Doctor”. This is similar to “The Second Death” in that the story truly shined in its final few scenes, but what about the rest?
The story opens with Ash (Gwithian Evans) trying to cheer himself up by playing his guitar, but it’s not working. The Doctor (Jon Culshaw) offers to bring him along to his latest mission: stealing a piece of archaeology from a Scottish museum because he and River always thought it was alien but never got round to seeing if it was. The two arrive and while Ash is blown away by the greenery (remember he’s from a desolate civilisation from end of the universe!) The Doctor successfully steals the rock from local Professor Madeline Burns (Dee Sadler) and finds out it’s actually a piece of a fabled “Amber Giant” that travelled the universe in its infancy, helping out struggling worlds for helping them out’s sake. Ash finds it hard to believe that such heroes existed, again given the time he grew up in, so The Doctor takes him to… Earth in the present again, a few months later where Madeline had found more of the Giant. Together the three piece it back together enough that it auto-heals and declares its mission is to kill The Doctor and Ash…
I’ll leave it there, but it basically becomes a bit of a runaround until we get to the end bits, so again much like the previous story, but this time the whole hour is just full of fantastic back and forth between The Doctor and Ash. Again, Culshaw’s Capaldi might not be dead on but it’s close enough to get the great dialogue across really well.
The Continuity:
Again, nice cover and all but I prefer a bit of variety. Hats off for taking so many photos of the new companion though!
Apart from following on from “The Second Death”, nothing to speak of!
Overall Thoughts:
“The Broken Man” may not have been up to much sci-fi story wise, though it was far from bad just a tad generic, the dialogue and interplay between The Doctor and Ash was absolutely perfect and a joy to listen to, and the end scene being essentially a mirror of the previous story was great stuff. Really loving this new dynamic already and I’m excited to hear where it goes next!
The Doctor is confused as the Amber Giant tries to kill him and Ash, who is now convinced his “no such things as heroes” ideal is correct. They pop back to prehistory to find the Amber Giant enjoying the local wildlife and generally being nice but it soon reveals that a deadly parasitic race were on their way to wipe out the emerging humanity and take the planet. The aliens arrive (whose name escapes me and isn’t listed anywhere, sorry!) and seem harmless to start with, then they reprogram the Giant to help them, starting with killing The Doctor and Ash. Ash manages to get through to the giant long enough that it dies fighting off the aliens (the aftermath seen in the present) with The Doctor theorising that reassembling it re-established its incorrect programming.
They head back to Earth and soon find out that the new programming was actually to watch over the alien race’s eggs as they were going extinct and needed a new planet after their own was destroyed. The Doctor takes the eggs and the Giant to a lifeless world where they can flourish, and a quick look at the TARDIS databanks and a trip in the ship later shows the species ended up spreading across the whole world before the Giant left and resumed its duty of helping out random worlds it happened to find, just in the “modern” times this go around. Ash feels like he’s accomplished something and is a bit more cheery, so he picks a nice, dark observatory for The Doctor, so he can come to terms with his loss of River by staring into the dark like he was doing at the start of the previous story. The Doctor thanks him for the help when he comes back, a role reversal from the end of the previous story. They then both head off for adventure anew…