World of Who: The Girl Who Died and the Woman Who Lived

Premise: The Doctor and Arya Stark fight a race of alien warriors to keep them from destroying her village. After getting Game of Thrones, she then gets a taste of Time Lord Victorious after and is cursed to get a treatment rivaling the Fury of the Time Lord and then doesn't become a companion because Winter is Coming.

When I had heard that Masie Williams was going to be on Doctor Who I admit I was excited. I have enjoyed Masie Williams on Game of Thrones, and had been wanting to see her show her range as an actor, combined with the fact that we had the same writer that gave us Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline I was ready for awesomeness. As good as the story itself was I felt that it didn't really show Masie off, unless you hadn't seen her as Arya Stark. The role of Ashildir is rather Aray-Light but ultimately her story doesn't really begin until the second episode. The ideas of this episode were really good  and was very Seven Samurai in it's idea. The Doctor having to prepare a village of farmers to fight alien warriors with no real technology really should have been an episode in itself and I feel it could have been but it was ultimately the origin for Ashildir. 

The second episode was much more interesting and dealt with something that was only lightly touched on with Captain Jack Harkness during Russel's era. What is it like to be immortal and going through time day by day? Ashildir becomes that when the Doctor essentially takes away her ability to die and she lives life on her own for seven hundred years. It's an interesting story in itself as the Doctor has to deal with someone who has forgotten most of who she is. She isn't seeing history, she is living it; the good and the bad. She has lost friends, family, children and has yet to find someone to share the chip with. This lets Masie showcase more of her talent, instead of playing a fun girl turned cruel sadist out for vengeance in Arya wanting to become "No One", she plays a girl who goes from someone proud of her name and family loving to a woman who has lost all sense of love for life and identity. 

Clara seemed a bit wasted this episode as opposed to the previous two stories we had. She seemed bit more like a diet Rose Tyler but in the idea that there is not much room for her in this episode other than to talk to the Doctor. She pretty much keeps reminded the Doctor to keep trying to find a way to save the village. Since the aliens were going to leave anyway, her attempts to scare them into leaving was wasted and only served to get Ashildir riled up. I really thought the episode was going to have her in more of a teaching role to Ashildir, teaching her to reign in her tempers, similar to the abysmal but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III with Raphael teaching a boy to control his own. 

The Doctor seems rather underdone in the second episode though not for lack of trying. The first episode has him in his element as the smartest man in the room and rallies the people and saves the day as well as use a yo-yo. Ashildir's death is what helps him remember why he chose this face which while supporting my theory that Doctor chooses a form based on a psychological need, seemed unnecessary. It's more akin to when the 9th and 10th Doctor's realized all of a sudden they could save someone (a favorite technique of Moffat), he remembers something that really made no sense in the long run and I really feel that this may be Mathieson's weakest story but this seemed to be one he wrote with Steven Moffat so I don't know exactly what was his idea and what wasn't. The next episode has him trying to figure out exactly what he has done with saving Ashildir and trying to get her to reconnect with who she was. He does see a bit of himself in the person she has become and is one of the reasons why he travels with humans (though doesn't explain what it is with him and present day Earth humans). Him saving her, essentially breaking the laws of nature is again similar to Waters of Mars where he breaks the rules to save people but this time he sees the consequences first hand.

Ultimately the two episodes were really fun and Masie Williams showed what she could do with a different show but I had been hoping she would have been bigger to the show in terms of who she was. Some people thought she was Jenny from Doctor's Daughter (hated it) or Susan, Romana, the Rani, or maybe even the the Monk. I was hoping for the Rani or the Monk; two Time Lords from the Doctor's past. Masie has hinted/suggested that her character will return and I really do hope to see her in future stories. But as of now we have ZYGONS!!!