A worrying Easter Doctor Who episode

Watching recent seasons of DW I find I am somewhat concerned these days. There seem to be some trends emerging that are not entirely wholesome. Even the quality of the sci-fi aspects are in question. Here I have written a critical review of the Easter 2013 episode (S7, Pt.II Ep.1: The bells of St.John) which hopefully explains what I mean.

First the good points:

*Good special effects

*Pretty good use of humour

*Jenna Louise Coleman as Clara (her acting I mean, not other obvious reasons!)

Bad Points:

Plot holes

The doc spends quite a few minutes of the show trying to get let in to the house Clara's in. Then after she is attacked by the consciousness-stealing wi-fi robot construct (at least I hope it was consciousness, we will come back to this later) , he suddenly remembers to use his sonic screwdriver, and gets in in a jiffy. Gee thanks doc. Timing.

When the doc is having the keyboard-tapping hacking dual with the guy from the Shard workers, he beats him and manages to reverse the download of Clara's consciousness. (How would that work?) After this has happened, the Shard leader (a woman called Miss Kizlet played by Celia Imrie) remembers to up his IQ on her convenient iPad controlling device. A bit late?

Plane Rescue: Cool, but major plot contrivance to suddenly have the pilots come back round once the plane is pulled up (Is their consciousness returned? How?)

Anti-Grav Motorcyle bit: When the doc and Clara leave, Doors to the TARDIS left wide open. Massive throng of inquisitive people standing around. Free access to time travel ship, anyone?

When Clara is hacking the Shard control room (even though it's supposed to be unhackable now their defensive IQ is maxxed up) she manages to get their webcams (all conveniently placed of course) to snap photos of the workers, then use photos to search Facebook etc. for their places of work. This would have been clever, if we knew how she downloaded photos from an unhackable network. Even if we grant the writers that contrivance, it still doesn't explain how she knew they were on floor 65.

When the fake wi-fi construct robot Doctor confronts Clara on the balcony of the Cafe, my question is: Is the Doctor in control of it at this point? There are problems either way. If he is, he just goes ahead and assimilates Clara without letting her in on the plan. How kind. (I would also say, without any confidence in being able to rescue her later, but as we know, the doc always wins). If he isn't in control of the imposter doc, how come it manages to completely assimilate her consciousness in less time than it only partially managed to do so back at the house? And more importantly, how does he get control of the robot doc anyway? Sonic screwdriver again?

More worrying aspects:
This episode:

Dualism. This is one of my major concerns about sci-fi. It applies to lots of other shows though, not just DW (even Stargate did it, much to my chagrin). This is the notion that there are two separate states of being: the physical (i.e. the body) and the spiritual (i.e. the soul). This is necessary for the idea that consciousness (or the soul, now you see how I was previously being charitable before) can be stripped from a body, transported intact somwehere else, and installed in another entity; then the whole procedure reversed and both parties go back to their business as usual as if nothing had happened. But, it is frankly absurd. All the current scientific evidence indicates that the mind is just a construct of the brain, and dualism is a myth - consciousness entirely leaving the brain equates to no electrical activity, no neurons firing, brain death, just actual DEATH. But surely, this is sci-fi, isn't it, and we can allow such flights of fancy?

Sci-fi mainly works because the unbelievable things in it are just that. Unbelievable. We have no idea how they work, but can maybe imagine how with extremely advanced technology, such a thing may at some stage in the future be possible. But the whole consciousness transfer problem goes beyond this. In many ways, it is something we already understand. The only way to reconstruct consciousness when it has left the brain would be to actually reconstruct the physical brain, molecule by molecule. So the physical is inextricably linked to the mental. This is why severe trauma can cause brain damage. In reality, I cannot see a way in which consciousness transfer, if even surviveable (which it wouldn't be) would leave the poor victim anything other than a vegetable.

Using the London riots as a plot device. Not good, this one. The riots are painted here as experiments performed by the shard workers in controlling the minds of people, to see how far they can go. But this is actually quite disingenuous because it detracts from the real reasons which caused the real riots for real people - inequality, lack of education opportunities and jobs, dodgy Govenment idealism, Public sector cuts, dodgy Policing and the rest of it. You can't just explain away recent real events which are still clear in people's minds, as a mere contrivance.

Sexism - Damselling. Clara is quite clearly turned into a damsel to be rescued by the heroic knight (read: doc) near the end of the episode when her consciousness is assimilated by the fake-doctor robot. This would be bad enough, but she had previously been quite badass in this episode, right? Well, yes, but how drearily sexist to suddenly exclude her when it came to the exciting finale. Because only men are ever capable of really saving the day. Women are permitted to assist but when the shit really hits the fan they have to stand by and watch like the passive, helpless creatures they are. Wonderful. I shouldn't need to warn people of the dangers of this stereotype.

Bad morals and sexism. The ending of this episode is extremely morally dubious. We have the doc off celebrating his "victory", meanwhile a poor woman (Miss Kizlet, Celia Imrie) who has been controlled against her will by a malevolent male presence for decades, is suddnely thrown back into her own body to come to terms with what he's done. (And what she's done running this monstrous experiment - guilt much?) Yeh, great innit. Worse still, she has the mind of a child. For goodness sake! Her cries are very disturbing and this is clearly not suitable for kids. I shouldn't need to remind people of clear connotations to domestic violence.

Think about this for a minute - how much would you NOT want to be her? It is an absolute travesty and I'm not sure what anyone actually has to be happy about. OK, so we saved some people from having their consciousnesses devoured by the big male baddie, but by his own admission he had already gained a lot from them and seemed satisfied. Tell me how it would have been that much worse to leave everyone trapped a bit longer while the doc worked out some plan to save her? I find it worrying how the writers managed to paint themselves into a scriptwriting corner, with sexism being the only way out. It would have been much kinder to leave the woman as the baddie, dodgy as that is in itself. You know soemthing is wrong when you write a statement like that. But no, we had to make the woman suffer. Notice how the men that were mind-jacked into working at the shard were returned pretty much to their former state? Funny, that.

In the last couple of series, one of the overarching plots has been all about how the doc needs to man up and come to terms with the sacrifices he makes in his day-to-day job of saving the Universe. Admit his faults and express his feelings i.e. Matt Smith being emotional. But now we have some serious consequences of what happens to Miss Kizlet, and good old doc don't give a damn. Well, I hope you can make some sense of that, because I sure can't.

I seriously hope this season proves me wrong by coming back to this episode later on and performing some much needed time-travelling repairs. But at the moment we still have the clear moral message that a man leaving a woman mentally destroyed and her life shattered is acceptable as a means to an end. Well, guess what doc, that's simply not good enough.

Overall recent DW problems:
The increasing prevalence of the sonic screwdriver. Ah, that great panacea. It is almost starting to become the equivalent to "special pleading" for DW writers, a convenient way out of any seemingly impossible situation, invoking the unstoppable force to save the day.

Matt Smith's over-emotional portrayal of what has always previously been a more emotionally aloof doc. I yearn for the days of the distant, alien Time-Lord largely disconnected from human affairs. Now it almost seems creepy, how the Matt Smith doc ogles all his female companions and uses the TARDIS as a way of amazing them and getting into their affections. This sends out the message to men that it is OK to try and buy your way to women's hearts with flash toys and gadgets. No commitment required! The TARDIS is becoming less a time-travelling spaceship and more a pimped ride or the doc's personal "snogging-booth" as Clara says. Such an association would have previously been unconscionable. That's how far we've fallen.