Eastercon Diary Easter Saturday 15th April 2017 Dr Who – Pilot

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While the Eastercons conventions include film and TV episode screenings often of rare material I generally don’t bother with that side of events as I don’t jut want to watch TV when so much live activity is going on. The presentation of a Dr Who adventure, especially a new season starter, is however a major event for Science Fiction fans, so hundreds of us gathered together for a BBC permitted screening as the show went out on the air. As the episode aired later than expected events that were to follow it were postponed by half an hour or more (fortunately as I was in a poetry performance after the episode went out. The episode, Pilot, (for which I should give spoiler alerts here) introduced Peter Capaldi’s last full year in the role of the Doctor and introduced new companion, Bill, a naïve girl with a thirst for knowledge, and insatiable charm and curiosity. Nardole, played by Matt Lucas, also appears, and seems to have limited control over the Doctor’s movements, as well as some secret mission of his own. Bill find herself pursued as a potential co-pilot and companion to an alien that is made of water and able to assume human shape. It takes on the form of a lonely but dead girl swallowed by it in puddle form. The Doctor takes Bill through time and space, even into the middle of the Dalek-Movellan war as seen in a Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) story, Destiny Of The Daleks). The Doctor doesn’t really stop the Pilot. Bill just says no to her, and then settles for being a travelling companion to The Doctor instead, much to Nardle’s reluctance. The mystery of The Vault is likely to be the season finale. Bill is a great character, bright without being hyper-intelligent, while also naïve without being dumb. Her curiosity for knowledge, even turning up to study at university lectures despite not being an enrolled student, makes her a perfect foil to the Doctor, who she sees much as Ace did, as professorial. It could ultimately end in tragedy for her. Arthur Chappell