“Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s;” I almost liked this one, said the guy watching “The Bells of Saint John.” Right, so after a lot of piddling about and doing a bit of a dance with the merry old tune that Steven Moffat plays, we’ve got Clara proper. I mean, we’ve always had Clara proper, which we’ll get into when Richard E Grant turns up again. However, this is proper Clara who doesn’t die for a while and is the one I hate.

So, these bells of Saint John are a bit weird, starting with the monk-ish Doctor. I don’t mean that he has OCD, several (hundred) phobias, and looks like Tony Shalhoub, just monk-ish as in robes and chanting. In all seriousness, there are bits of the episode that really work and create something fun, but I don’t know what it is about the whole thing that makes me dislike bits of it. Maybe it is the magic computer jargon fired right in the head of Clara, or the lacking plot pulling in the Great Intelligence as the villain, played by Richard E Grant properly this time. Possibly, it is the fact I want to headbutt Clara to stop her from telling an orphan that he should kill kids so they shouldn’t have to grieve the lack of their parents. Maybe it is just that I think Moffat climbed up his own bum and made a comfy little home to write Clara-based episodes over time.

I will say, from the get-go, Celia Imrie as Miss Kizlet is one of the stand-out quest-star villains/henchmen in quite some time. She is possibly up there with Toby Jones from “Amy’s Choice,” as a bit of UK-centric actors playing this role in a show exported worldwide. She might be better known for roles in Bridget Jones, Nanny McPhee, or Mamma Mia! (the second one) but around the UK, she’s probably best known for working with the wonderful Victoria Wood. All of which is to set up that she’s mostly seen as a comedy actor, so it is a little surprising to see her nail the indignant villain with a lot of gravity. Though her ending, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child, snaps the neck of tone and kicks it down the stairs.

I’ll admit right now, this isn’t the episode that forms my short-term opinion on Clara, because it is not a great episode for that. She’s rather passive, and the 11th Doctor is more or less just trying to impress her with minor tricks. Tricks that sometimes work, though that is the beginning of my many issues with her as a character. She is a plain boring human woman who’s crap with computers, then suddenly becomes a PC expert and is nonplussed about the blue box that’s bigger on the inside. I get it, subvert expectations, “it’s smaller on the outside.” She’s human, at least that’s the belief and that’s all that is established, so maybe she should act like it.

No, she’s a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a sausage roll! That is something that isn’t helped with the rather fantasy-oriented direction taken, making those moments in the staircase of the house extra fantastical and elongated to ponder on Jenna Coleman’s wide-eyed innocence, framed by the long straight curtains of hair. She is played up to be that fantasy “girl-next-door” while also playing the mystery that (quite frankly) it seems like even she doesn’t know yet. Part of that is acting, but in some of those moments of direction and writing I’m mostly reminded of the shot in the mirror. He looks like a 12-year-old and she looks just as naive but angry at him.

The Spoonheads are a little creepy, I like that. They aren’t horrific or sending me behind the couch, but they are unsettling in the same way as the visualization of Quirinus Quirrell in the Astro-turfer’s film about thinking pebbles. Could I have made that a slightly more roundabout way of not saying but hinting at the name of a film based on a horrible person’s mediocre fantasy? Maybe. Anyway, the point is that there is something unsettling about them from that same visual of heads turning and revealing something not altogether normal. Too bad they just aren’t effective threats.

The hacky-techy nonsense does seem like a good idea, at least in theory. In an episode of Black Mirror or another anthology series with much darker themes available to it, there could be something greater explored. In fact, maybe a longer episode or a story spanning the series could do it. As a standalone 45-minute episode that takes a while to really get into the ways around this dystopian techno-horror, it comes off a little cartoonish. As soon as the threat is established and connects our leads, we stand about for 10-minutes flirting like Romeo and that whispy woman that is rather breathy all the time, I think her name is Steve. Anyway, it is all a bit naff.

I do like the tech-support bits, and oh, the mistress in the shop… She could turn your head. If you know, you know. Ok, that’s enough about teasing future episodes. I like the dejected, “have you tried turning it on and off again?” line. That said, a twenty-four-year-old woman not knowing about Twitter, WIFI, or anything is about as plausible as a Scottish person who’s never sworn at a coffee table. I mean, I am all saintly after all, but even I’ve said to a coffee table, “I wouldn’t visit your grave if you died really slowly, I’d just look it up on Google Maps and tut.” Something I’ve got a feeling I’ll be saying again about the 10th episode of series 9.

Ultimately, “The Bells of Saint John” have to be put up against a few other episodes: The companion introduction episodes of “Rose,” “Smith and Jones” the best one, “The Runaway Bridge” the worst one, “The 11th Hour,” and a couple of future ones I can’t link just yet. If I was going rank them, yeah, this mobile phone of Saint John’s Ambulance service is not high ranking. I’d put it down by Donna Temple-Noble (Noble-Temple?). It is in an odd place being that it isn’t really Clara’s introduction that properly comes later. However, as the episode where we get her in full it just lacks something. If anything, it is Moffat putting a hodgepodge of ideas together to distract from an otherwise bland episode of Doctor Who while trying to suggest that an individual woman is special. That is a bit of a theme with Moffat.

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Doctor Who "The Bells of Saint John"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Celia Imrie as a villain; Despite a crap ending.
• The Spoonheads are a bit creepy, I like that.
• A few good lines and references.
• I like the woman in the shop!

Cons

• Some rather fantasy direction.
• Lack luster plot and overall threat.
• Twitter!