Doctor Who 10x03 "Thin Ice" Review

SPOILERS

“Thin Ice” was pretty good, with a less-than-comical storyline. With a little help from Twitter, I found references to racism, economic inequality, and climate change in the episode, some being more obvious than others. And the fact that the “monster” of the episode was a regular human was definitely chilling. Doctor Who, like any good sci-fi, often has some underlying message which ties into the real world.

The Doctor and Bill face Lord Sutcliffe, the real monster.

I know I’m not alone when I say I just love Bill! She’s acting like any human would jumping into the past, wanting to try everything then quickly realizing things aren’t quite the same as back home. And then when Spider dies in front of her, for the first time the shininess and fun of this time travel gig starts to fade away. I loved the argument she had with the Doctor about how many people he’s seen die and if he’s killed anyone. The fact that he refuses to give a number gives me “Day of the Doctor” vibes. The Man Who Forgets.

I liked the way The Doctor personified the TARDIS in this episode, “she’s a bad girl, always looking for trouble”. Part of me wishes we could see a physical TARDIS again, and The Doctor could talk to her. Though she seems to be doing fine on her own, noticing the creature in the Thames and all that (I’ve taken to calling The Doctor, Doctor Oblivious, and definitely not Doctor Disco). We also got to see the benefits of the wardrobe, and the psychic paper and sonic screwdriver come in handy: a couple classic Doctor Who fixtures which blended in nicely.

This is three out of three for episodes which seem to be re-using old ideas. This week’s creature seemed a lot like the whale thing from “The Beast Below” and the alien from “Time Heist”. I’m not sure if I like this trend or not. Perhaps it is Moffat reliving his favorites (then bring back the Angels, why don’t you?). I liked the “Midnight”/”Waters of Mars” vibe of the premiere as opposed to this one, since I liked those episodes more.

That cliffhanger…I guess there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’s either Simm!Master or Missy inside the vault. I swear I heard a female voice, but some fans noticed as Nardole left whoever was in there knocked four times, just like Simm!Master always did, though not in the same rhythm (also, to anyone who watched Class, I was expecting a weird crossover – that knocking had some creepy stuff attached to it!). I’m excited to see how long it takes for them to reveal who is in there, but I’m okay with these alien-of-the-week episodes to get Bill pretty acclimated until then.

8.5/10