Doctor Who series 9 The Woman Who Lived review

Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who.
Here's what you need to know; while on the trail of a fabled alien artefact, the Doctor has an unexpected run in with an old friend, who is now a broken husk of her former self, now he must try to recover what remains of her soul as she allies with a terrible evil in an effort to escape a doomed existence.
Better late than never, even if late is by a few weeks, the usual excuse I guess, poor time management, or just down right laziness, take your pick.

So, the follow up to The Girl Who Died, an episode I enjoyed half of, and loved the other half of, so how does this episode stack up. I have a very similar opinion on this episode to the last one, I enjoyed some elements of it, and I'll start with them. Minus the breathing fire thing, and the fact he's a lion, I liked the little subplot with the alien invasion, though it was a very predictable subplot, really the reason I'm not criticising that is because it's not the point. What I loved was pretty much everything else, Maisie Williams' character is really interesting, and though she's less villainous than I thought she'd be, she's still very much what I wanted them to do with her character, it's always interesting seeing how immortality breaks people, possibly because of how interesting immortality itself is. The scenes where she's begging the Doctor to take her with him are great stuff, one in particular which I loved, as it shows just how broken she is, I also love the scene when the Doctor is reading her diaries, that's some heavy shit. Though the more comedic flashbacks I felt were more pointless, even stupid. I think the more heavy flashbacks should have been the end of it, because they worked. The scenes with 'the nightmare' were also a step down from the more emotional scenes, though I didn't think they were anywhere near as pointless as the flashbacks, but the contrast is a bit noticeable. Something I also really liked was Sam Swift, that guy was funny as shit, and I love the deeper shit going on with him, like Maisie Williams' heavier moments, it was subtle, and it was really effective, he, oddly, might actually be my favourite character in this episode, if only for that reason. All in all I really enjoyed this episode, some things don't stick, in my opinion, but they are overshadowed by all the things that really work, and I enjoyed the shit out of it, definitely worth a watch.