10 Reactions To Doctor Who: The Return Of Doctor Mysterio
7. A Hastily Written Alien Take-Over Bid?
Perhaps to avoid the episode becoming nothing but a
reworking of Lois and Clarke, with the Doctor reduced to a spectator for much
of the story, the main threat is a more global affair involving another
Yuletide alien invasion.
Running alongside the boy turned superhero plot, Steven Moffat adds a somewhat half-baked and illogical alien takeover bid, through transplanting their brains into the heads of world leaders (we’ve had hands with eyes, now its brains with eyes which don’t quite work so well visually). The two threads are only properly connected in the resolution as Grant saves his girl, and the whole of the planet in the process.
The problem is that in sixty minutes, there is too much going on to provide the viewers with any emotional hooks or sense of jeopardy. We are left without any regard for the humans, other than Grant and to a far lesser extent Lucy, and there is no time to offer any reasoning behind the aliens’ actions.
Other people are brushed aside in the story as if their lives shouldn’t matter to us, unlike say in Army of Ghosts where in the space of a few brief minutes we are given enough of a hook to feel sympathy for the staff at Torchwood before they are taken over by the Cybermen. Even the Doctor himself at one point shows a surprising disregard for human life, walking away from Brock’s screams.