Thin Ice: Ranking - 201

 Thin Ice 

(Series 10, Dr 12 with Bill, 29/4/2017, showrunner; Steven Moffat, writer: Sarah Dollard, director: Bill Anderson) 

'Are you going to London's Frost Fairs?

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Fishflakes

Remember me to one who lives under the ice

She once was some fuel of mine'

Ranking: 201

Let’s get it out the way now: the best and one of the most talked about 12^th Doctor scenes happens in this story when Peter Capaldi goes out to warn Bill about the dangers of travelling in time as a Black lesbian girl in the Georgian era. She can’t re-act he tells her, no matter how rude anyone is to her, repeating a moral code he’s been talking about since he was William Hartnell, that the past is another alien place and what they considered normal back then would be wrong in your time, but it was different then and time travel is all about non-interference. During the course of the story he and Bill meet Lord Sutcliffe, an arrogant Conservative toff who assumes that Bill is a slave and is your usual obnoxious racist xenophobe with money. Bill remembers what she’s been told, bites her tongue and does everything the Doctor tells her to do while he pomtificates about a cornerstone of civilisation being how they treat life…before he loses control and whacks the Lord one round the face. It’s a brilliant, unexpected and very Who-y moment that tells us one thing and does another, solving all the problems we had with Martha on trips back to the past (it seemed odd when her colour was commented on in stories like ‘Family of Blood’ and even odder when it wasn’t, in stories like ‘The Shakespeare Code’) and avoiding the ‘black girls can’t control themselves’ trope always thrown at women like Serena Williams and co. Everybody comes out of it well except one particularly slimy posh Victorian bully (of which we know there were many) and it’s notable that everyone else in the story (read: everyone poor) treat Bill as one of them. For an episode that was treading on thin ice with what it could and couldn’t do, it’s a very clever way of making everyone happy, except intolerant right wing loonies who are watching the wrong show (give or take ‘The Dominators’ anyway) and deservedly one of the most talked about scenes in modern Who. ‘Thin Ice’ can’t quite match that scene with everything else though. The story itself is, fittingly, a thin one, about the final ‘frost fair’ on the Thames during the last big freeze in Britain when the ice was so thick it became another place to put your market stalls and even passing elephants. Only what they maybe didin’t mention in history books was that there’s a giant sea monster under the ice eating people and kept by the posh bloke. It’s how odd many of the Mofat stories revolve around big sea creatures either under the water or in the air and makes me wonder if he used to ponder his script ideas over a fish and chip supper. Unlike ‘The Beast Below’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’ though this story is more about the Humans and what they do to it and the poor thing doesn’t even have a name. It’s all just a bit too unlikely too: I’m not sure I quite buy that Lord Sutcliffe’s family has kept it quiet for generations that they have a rather large pet that eats people all while being kept in the biggest river in one of Europe’s biggest cities without anyone properly noticing or doing anything about it (even in the days when peasants were scared of rich landowners, well even more scared than they are today which is still quite a lot actually, blowing the whistle on this would still be safer than watching your friend being eaten and fearing being next – even if it’s the word of beggars versus toffs you’d have thought enough people would have reported it for the police to at least vaguely investigate it; plus isn’t the Skarasen, the pet of the Zygons, supposed to be in there too? The Thames is big but it shouldn’t be that big. They’d have eaten all the fish between surely?) I’m not sure I buy that the landowners got rich off using the sea creature’s droppings as fertiliser either really (I mean, howdo they even collect it?) This is also the wrong story to have the Doctor suddenly go cold again the way he was with Clara, unfussed by a poor orphan boy’s death under the ice (paeticularly given the rather impressive speech he makes a few moments later about how civilisations are judged by how they treat the people who work under them).What this story does have though is the space for Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie to be at their best, bouncing off each other (this one of the few DW’s that doesn’t split them up early on) while Capaldi always looks good in historical outfits for some reason. You’re on ‘Thin Ice’ if you stop to think about this story too hard as it’s not the deepest nor the best, especially in the extra-strong 10^th season, but it’s hearts are in the right place and as stories that look pretty beautiful on screen its right up there with ‘warrior’s Gate’ and ‘Keeper Of Traken’.      

+ How did they manage to recreate the Thames being frozen? I’ve looked it up on a few sites and nowhere tells me where this was filmed, which makes me think it’s a studio set with CGI added in the background, but if so then it’s one of the most convincing uses there ever was. You totally believe that you are there and looking back in time. I mean, there’s even an elephant at one point – an elephant! (It’s all true by the way, it’s not like the set dresser suddenly went a bit mad – it was a Victorian era stunt to show how thick and safe the ice was). It seems unlikely, to say the least, that The Thames will ever freeze over again so its nice to get a ‘record’ of it as it might have looked, even if DW has been here a few times now in novels and audiobooks.

-          The poor beast doesn’t get much screen time and doesn’t even get a proper name, it’s mostly just a shape lurking under some ice. For an episode that goes out of its way to show that every life form is important and (relatively) equal, this is the sort of story where it matters that he’s just called ‘The Creature’ or ‘The Beast’. That’s, well, beastly.