Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died / The Woman Who Lived (2015) - Written Review

Series 9 of Doctor Who has promised to shake up the two-part story formula, and here with The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived, we really get this traditional Who formula played around with. Each episode has a different plot and writer, but both are connected by Maisie William's Ashildr.

Ultimately, The Girl Who Died suffers from being just good enough. It never seems to decide on what it wants to be. It can be a very bizarre Vikings vs. Aliens story one minute, and then turn into a deep character piece about The Doctor's effect on other people the next. The entire episode seems to throw around themes about storytelling around but nothing ever really sticks - the deus ex machima ending isn't really explained properly and Ashildr might as well be named "we'll come back to her later" as her role in the plot is ultimately to be the titular girl who died, and to save the day. By no means is The Girl Who Died bad - far, far from it - but it has no idea what story it's actually trying to tell. It's entertaining and a fun watch, but I have no idea what the whole point of it was. Was it supposed to be a fluff episode like last year's Robot of Sherwood? If so, why didn't the episode fit that kind of tone?

I feel like the combination of writers Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat resulted in an episode that wasn't focused. I feel like Mathieson wanted to focus on the Vikings vs. Aliens aspect, and bring in some interesting and funny characters in, while Steven Moffat wanted to write an episode about Ashildr and build up her character for the next part. The Mire were an interesting design - despite some very dodgy looking alien heads - but ultimately didn't feel threatening. Odin - or False Odin - was a very hammy villain who never, ever felt threatening and seemed to have a big twist that never happened. So much fuss was made about the human face being fake, but you never actually saw his alien face.

Clara actually seemed to be written a lot better in this episode, even if her confidence in The Doctor was perhaps a little too much. Perhaps the whole idea that The Doctor can't save everyone will factor into Clara's leaving the series, but given that Steven Moffat doesn't like actually killing off characters, I can't see it happening. It's just building up to a big ending that Moffat will chicken out of at the last moment. Want further evidence of this? Look at how The Doctor's death in The Impossible Astronaut was resolved in The Wedding of River Song. Or the theme of The Doctor's mortality in The Time of the Doctor, mentioned in a couple of scenes and getting a big deus ex machima resolution that still doesn't make much sense.

The episode was just building up to Ashildr's death - it was in the title, after all - but oddly enough, no foreshadowing was present. You knew she would die because it was in the title, and you knew she'd come back because it was in the next episode's title!

Overall, The Girl Who Died was...average. It wasn't a bad episode by any means, but there wasn't much to offer from the episode and it did suffer from quite a few flaws, from the dull villains to the bland supporting characters. I'll give The Girl Who Died a 6/10 - it just about managed to get up by one extra point because of that great final shot of the episode, but otherwise was pretty average.

The Woman Who Lived was a very different story though. Written by Catherine Tregenna, whose work on Torchwood I either haven't seen or can't remember, the episode was much more of a character piece - something that Doctor Who needs to do more of, especially given the lack of real character development in recent years.

In this respect, The Woman Who Lived works brilliantly. Maisie Williams is given a lot more to do here with a much older, more matured but incredibly flawed Ashildr. The ending to The Girl Who Died with the character becoming immortal really plays within the character dynamic between her and The Doctor in this episode, and its fascinating just to watch the two of them on screen together. There's a lot more depth to Ashildr here, with one element I particularly liked being that she still had a normal human memory, so didn't remember much from the centuries she had been alive for, not even remembering her name. This was where the episode really found its strength, and Ashildr seemed like a very real human being despite her invincibility.

I did like the unique historical setting as well, with Ashildr being a highwayman stealing from people along the roads just to make her life seem much more interesting, although the clearly overdubbed man's voice did push my suspension of disbelief a bit too far.

The biggest problem with this episode though was the plot. The whole storyline with the lion guy - whose name I don't remember - felt a bit unnecessarily tacked on and resulted in the episode feeling a bit rushed. I'm also not sure if the lion guy was related to the aliens in Warrior's Gate, given that they looked similar and I'm sure they mentioned his portal was going to another dimension. When all is said and done though, I wasn't remotely interested in that plot, so it's lack of presence in the episode is something I'm quite grateful for.

As I said before, what really worked in this episode was the character dynamic between Ashildr and The Doctor. The two actors had fantastic chemistry and I would love to see Ashildr return to see this dynamic explored even further. In my last review I mentioned how I really like Joss Whedon's television shows for their strong focus on character building. A lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes follow the same basic structure as this episode, being focused on a particular character dynamic with a monster-of-the-week in the background to fight in the end. This does sometimes mean that, like here in The Woman Who Lived, the monster-of-the-week plot is made very simplistic or dull so that it doesn't take up the focus of the episode, but means that it can quite often feel underdeveloped. Sometimes the balance works - particularly when the episodes are focused on the season villains - but sometimes it doesn't, so I'm sure that if Doctor Who went down this route, we would get better episodes than The Woman Who Lived somewhere down the line, but as it stands, I think the episode is a good indication that this structure could work. I'd be more interested in watching plots revolve around characters than the other way round.

Overall, I really liked The Woman Who Lived. By no means a perfect episode, it dealt with some interesting themes and I really enjoyed watching the main characters on screen. I give the episode an 8/10 - it was great, despite some flaws, and it was probably the best episode of the series so far (not that that is saying much with this series at the moment). So, what did you think of The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived? Let me know in the comments section below and I'll see you all next time for The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion!