#rona munro
Memory is not always reliable. I’ve been realising that over and over during my series ten rewatch. For instance, I wrongly remembered “The Eaters of Light,” as the episode that made the internet angry for having a cameo by Ed Sheeran. You might even understand my confusion. I remembered a young band of soldiers. Also, pepper in memories of Arya Stark with the Twelfth Doctor, and you’ve got me mistaking Game of Thrones for Doctor Who. What’s funny is that an Ed Sheeran cameo is exactly the type of thing Doctor Who would do. I have misremembered a lot of this episode, and it has been a bit of a revelation. You see, I hadn’t watched “The Eaters of Light,” since it first aired, and I have no idea why. Because it’s great.
My initial reaction to “The Eaters of Light,” wasn’t unkind. I enjoyed it, but I was still reeling from Twin Peaks, as I’ve discussed before in this series. I remember thinking that the baddies reminded me a lot of the bone vampire from Futurama. I seriously doubt there is any connection, but I’ll add a photo of the two together below because it’s kind of phenomenal the similarities. Both are aggressive, blue, dragon-like killers that leave their prey boneless. Other than that, I found the episode to be a fairly standard Doctor Who. Perhaps it’s simply the passing of time, or maybe it’s the subpar writing of the Chibnall era, but the concept of “standard Doctor Who,” feels a bit more valuable these days.
Looking at this episode now, calling it standard is a slap in the face. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not without its flaws. But like good Doctor Who, its heady ideas and strong characterisation allow for flaws. Sometimes, the flaws are part of the charm. A crow that says, Doctor? Sure, why not. There’s a rune shaped like the TARDIS? Go right ahead. A lot of the opening scene with the children at Devil’s Cairn reminded me of the Seventh Doctor era, particularly the later stuff. The little boy telling the girl of the ghosts in the hills. The little girl is drawn to the hills by the distant sound of battle songs. It could have been part of the Cartmel era and I would not have batted an eye. I later discovered that the episode’s writer, Rona Munro, was returning to Doctor Who for the first time since she wrote “Survival,” the latest of all Sylvester McCoy stories. Immediately you can see the similarities in her writing. I wasn’t aware I was going to discover a new favourite Doctor Who writer, but Rona Munro for showrunner, please. Kthanxbai.
I like the laid back approach to dialogue that Munro takes. The Doctor and Bill have arrived in second century Aberdeen, at the site of the Devil’s Cairn, to settle a bet about the missing Roman Ninth Legion. Bill says they left, the Doctor says they were beaten. It’s nice to begin on such a modest premise. It feels real to the Doctor and Bill’s relationship that they may want to settle a bet. You can really see a lot of Seven and Ace in this interaction as well. Bill’s got that funky vibe about her that makes her effortlessly cool, just like Ace. The Doctor is looking like the king of swag with his royal blue lined overcoat. I love when they subtly change aspects of the Doctor’s costume, and replacing his iconic red with a deep blue is such a lovely sight to behold. But not to be outdone is good ol’ Nardole, decked out like a Hare Krishna who just joined the Spin Doctors. That joke will kill with the 35-50 crowd.
Nardole is in sharp focus for this story. More than any episode previous, they have really given dear Nardy rather a lot to do. Munro focuses on Nardole’s motherly qualities and shows them as a strength instead of him as a strict matriarch of the TARDIS. It pays off in moments when Nardole is able to ingratiate himself with the local Picts by using charm and respect. A lot of Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor’s interactions with people are known for their lack of sugar coating. You get the impression that he’s trying to save time, to hold truth as a higher priority than someone’s feelings. Here, we get to see Nardole teach the Doctor a thing or two about the merits of sensitivity, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
The TARDIS crew gets split up early on, into two separate groups. The Doctor and Nardole with a group of baby faced Picts, and Bill with a similarly youthful group of survivors of the Ninth Legion. Bill finds her new group of comrades after a close scrape with one of the titular Eaters of Light (or EoL as I’ll refer to them from now on.) The Doctor and Nardole are taken prisoner by the Picts after discovering the body of a Roman Soldier whose bones are completely gone. The Doctor mentions that it’s what might happen if you were to remove every trace of light from a human body. It’s like death by ultra-rickets. If you recall from my previous review, I whinged about how they have to give every alien a gimmicky way to kill, but I feel like this one works better for a few reasons. For starters, the prosthetics department knocked it out of the park with the dead bodies. They’re horrific. Also, it’s a thoughtful consideration of what sucking the light out of a person might do. I really love the concept. I always talk about body horror, which this certainly is, but it’s also smart.
While the TARDIS is an integral part of Doctor Who, rarely does it get the chance to do more than be a means of conveyance. It was nice then, to see the TARDIS’ translation circuits come into play in a meaningful way. There’s a theme about communication that is integral to the story. For instance, Nardole gets in good with the Picts by being charming and blending in with their customs. Bill learns to speak to the Romans and even has an understanding with them over a surprisingly open-minded conversation about sexuality. And the crows yearn to communicate with humans. It is also through the lack of communication where our characters face their greatest hurdles. The EoL are fearsome, but if these two warring sides of moon-faced warriors cannot come together, all hope is lost.
The Doctor learns that the Picts have been using the Cairn to vent a tear in space and time a few times a year, to keep it from tearing open and unleashing unholy hell upon our universe. They appoint a warrior to be a guardian of the gateway, to hold back the EoL. The Doctor peers into the portal long enough to see a swarm of EoL swirling and swimming about a pool of blue shimmery light. The Doctor emerges from the Cairn to the stunned faces of the Picts and Nardole who is telling stories to the tribal locals like he was C-3PO. According to Nardole, the Doctor had been gone for two days, eight hours, and five minutes. The gate’s guardian, Kar, didn’t expect him back at all. Why should she care? After all, she warned him.
Despite being gone for two days, Nardole was still unable to locate Bill, who is still hiding away in a cave with the legionaries. Her close call with the EoL left her slimed with a black substance that makes her sick. After a couple of days of being exposed to what little sunlight there is available inside a cave, Bill is back on her feet. The soldiers have taken great care to nurse her back to health, and even share some of their dwindling rations to build her strength. Bill begins telling the men about the Doctor, and how if they can find him, they may have a chance to stop the EoLs and hopefully survive. After a lot of apprehensions, the men agree that they would rather die fighting than in a dark cave. Ironically, it’s this action that puts the Picts and the Romans in the same room.
I mentioned that the TARDIS gets a chance to play a bigger role in the storyline, and here it doesn’t just affect the outcome of events but also plays into the theme of the episode. Because of everyone’s newfound association with the Doctor and the TARDIS, they are now able to speak with one another, in each other’s language. Because of this, they’re able to see one another for what they really are- a group of scared kids, just trying to survive. Kar has the hardest lesson here as a lot of their current predicament is of her own making. With a horde of Roman invaders imminent, she had planned to use the EoL to her advantage. Usually, guardians keep the EoL at bay with prisms that filter light into something poisonous to them, but Kar decides to instead use the EoL to ward off the Ninth Legion. The Ninth Legion will be stopped and will have softened the EoL up enough for her to deliver the finishing blow. Except it was too good at killing, and now she and her people are on the menu.
The Doctor and Kar have a tumultuous relationship, but you get the sense that the Doctor feels the need to impart hard truths to her. Nardole may charm her, but she needs straight talk. She needs to grow up. I like to imagine that the Doctor sees a bit of himself in Kar. He’s been in her position and probably wishes someone like him would have talked some sense into him. And it’s yet another breath of fresh air when Kar actually listens and takes the Doctor’s advice. It’s refreshing that people can still be reasonable in Doctor Who. I often joke that the Third Doctor era always needed a character who can only be described as an insufferable prick. The character who, had they not existed, nobody would have had to die. So it’s nice to see Kar listen to reason. It feels more human and less at service to the plot. Kar wants to survive. Kar wants to fix her mistake. It’s far more interesting to see that she sees this. It’s far more interesting to watch her try.
It’s interesting, how the Doctor can often have the wrong solution to a problem. The Doctor’s solution to defeating the EoL is of course to put himself into the gateway. He’s a Time Lord, after all, he can live longer and regenerate when he dies. But nobody in the room is on board with his idea, especially Bill. While it is very much like the Doctor to selflessly throw his life away, it’s also not his fight. Instead, a brave group of the Picts and legionaries band together to ward off the EoL with their prisms and weapons. They force the beast back through the gate and follow it in, their shadows freezing in time like objects entering a black hole. Their final moments holding back the EoL for years, with only the distant battle song ringing out from the hills. Kar’s name gets written upon the standing stones at Devil’s Cairn so she and her sacrifice will be remembered forever. Speaking of the standing stones, did anyone else notice that one of the runes looked like the seal of Rassilon? Maybe it’s just me.
Now I would like to take a moment to talk about the crows because it’s a bit stupid. In fact, it was the only part in the episode where my boyfriend and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. You see, according to the Doctor, crows used to speak to humans until humans stopped having intelligent conversations with them. This is why the caw of a crow sounds like a big sulk. But as it turns out, crows have not been saying “caw,” but rather “Kar,” as a sort of memorial. That’s right, they gave crows their “A Good Man Goes to War,” moment. “We get that word from you, you know.” I’m not saying it’s the worst moment in Doctor Who, but it’s the worst moment in an otherwise great episode. Like, that’s honestly my harshest criticism of the episode, other than maybe the fact that the scene where they walked through the gateway looked about as technologically advanced as the gateway in “Nightmare of Eden.” Hell, the whole gateway looks like the Forth Doctor intro. It’s a bit naff, even if I do appreciate the detail of the warriors frozen in time.
Recently, I was at one of my closest friends’ house for a bit of classic Doctor Who. While there, he mentioned that while he’s been on board for Jodie, he feels that Doctor Who hasn’t felt like Doctor Who with a female Doctor. I was sad to hear him say this, as I still believe in the concept, but I kinda let him say it without much debate. But after rewatching “The Eaters of Light,” I had to confront my pal with a new argument for why a female Doctor can and should work. That argument can be made with two words- Michelle Gomez. While not the Doctor, Missy does something very integral to Doctor Who lore. She shows that if you nail the tone and writing of a character, it doesn’t matter what gender, colour, or shape they are. Steven Moffat gave us a proof of concept and Chris Chibnall completely ignored it. At least my pal didn’t ignore my argument. He even agreed.
It’s not hard to see why. Missy is incredibly compelling as a character. Not only is she wicked, but she has depth that few other Masters have achieved. Delgado, while being the first person in the role, was pretty one-note as a character. Anthony Ainley added a smarmy glee to the character that suited him well. And while I love Sacha Dhawan and John Simm, both, their characterisation is also pretty one-note. Evil for the sake of evil. I would say that Missy’s characterisation is closer to that of Peter Pratt or Geoffrey Beevers’ crispy Master. Like them, she has woes about wasting her lives. However, she now appears to be equally as distraught by the wasting the lives of others. Science fiction rarely changes the format. Sure, Davros and the Doctor can share a laugh, but in the end, it’s back to fighting. For the first time in Doctor Who’s history, it feels as though the Master could have a change of heart, and what’s most astounding is that if they had chosen to go fully down that path, it would have felt earned. As I said about Kar, it’s more interesting to watch Missy go through these emotions for real than for it to all be an elaborate plot. And what a comfort that might be for Missy if that were all it was. It’s compelling stuff.
It was Missy and the Doctor’s interaction in this episode that helped me come to a conclusion- series ten may be the best Master storyline ever told. I can see arguments for or against this claim, but it’s honestly the most I’ve ever been engaged with the character. It’s not just Michelle Gomez’s stellar performance, it’s about the delivery and execution. So much of “The Eaters of Light,” feels like classic Doctor Who, but also feels so modern. We need stories where the themes of the show are explored and mined for meaning. The TARDIS isn’t just a van driving the kids to practice. These aren’t throw-away concepts that have been done to death. Doctor Who regenerates, and it’s cynical to say there are no new stories. Episodes like this are exactly what the future of Doctor Who needs. It’s classic storytelling with proper characterisation while exploring old concepts in new ways. Seriously, I hope she writes more.
