TMC
07-23-2015, 01:38 AM
http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/publish/Peter_Dawson/The_Eleventh_Doctor_Who.shtml
Doctor Who month materializes ever forward! As mentioned this month will not conclude with the Twelfth Doctor (not enough to really work with yet, since he's still active), and I felt I said most of what needed to be say about the epic Day of the Doctor when the audio for that was done. I'm actually not entirely certain which article I'm going to do next week at this moment as there's two possible directions to take it, so I might start writing one but if it doesn't seem to be working I'll give the other one a shot. Really the trick when talking about Doctor Who is to try not and entirely say what's been said before, which is damn hard when you're talking about one of the most internationally successful television shows of all time.
The History:
2009 was a year of transition for New Who, as not only had David Tennant confirmed he'd be stepping down after The End of Time but Russell T Davies had moved on as well, with Steven Moffat ( Press Gang, Coupling) stepping in as showrunner. While Moffat was generally well-liked it is worth noting his popularity had to do with him effectively doing one story (one or two episodes each) a series that tended to be ranked among the best of that series. The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead all are popular with New Who fans, and all were penned by Moffat. 2010 saw Moffat begin his tenure with Matt Smith ( Party Animals, Terminator: Genisys) taking over as The Doctor. The show's ratings ended up remaining more or less the same as during the Davies-Tennant era, and several of Moffat's episodes were nominated for or won Hugo awards. Like Davies Moffat did also work on another program with a Doctor Who connection, though in this case rather than a spin-off we worked with fellow writer Mark Gatiss on Sherlock (which I mention because it did when Moffat a Primetime Emmy Award). Matt Smith ended his run in 2013 with Time of the Doctor, the 2013 Christmas Special.
The Show:
After putting off a regeneration for an extraordinarily long period of time, The Doctor (Matt Smith) ends up crashing his TARDIS in the backyard of a little girl's house in the village of Leadworth in 1996. Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) greets the 'Raggedy Doctor' and he helps investigate a crack in her wall, which turns out to be crack in the very fabric of time and space. The Doctor is soon forced to move forward in time to help his damaged TARDIS heal, only to encounter Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), an adult Amelia who believed that the Doctor was simply her imaginary friend. After helping Amy and her boyfriend Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) deal with a threat that had emerged through the crack Amy, and later Rory, join the Doctor on various adventures that see them encounter Daleks, vampires, Vincent van Gogh, the Slenderman-like Silence creatures, Richard Nixon, space pirates, the Headless Monks, Adolf Hitler, dinosaurs and the Weeping Angels.
The Breakdown:
Matt Smith was never going to be a subdued Doctor. The Doctor is typically played by older men that exude a lot of energy, and being the youngest actor to play the Doctor yet he effectively had to dial it up while somehow manifesting the idea that he was an old soul. In that respect Matt Smith's biggest strength is probably his eyes, as while is large face can make capturing his mouth subtleties trickier Smith was able to do a lot with his eyes to really channel that hidden age to him. The Eleventh Doctor did also have a tendency to dress like someone with a dated idea of what was cool (which of course made him a hit with hipsters), enjoying wearing his signature bow-tie as well as a fez at every opportunity he could. The Eleventh Doctor as a result looked like a young man trying to look old, when in fact he was an old man effectively enjoying his second childhood (or maybe ninth), which becomes a bit more understandable when its revealed that the entire time he's been aware that he can't regenerate properly ever again, as he's used them up (Time Lords have a certain limit granted them, though can be given more by, well, themselves). Despite all this the Eleventh Doctor is effectively more a man of a fairy tale than a science-fiction adventure, as while sci-fi is of course very much present (wondrous things are still always explained by aliens or time travel) he frequently dropped his companions off at home, meaning he didn't stop a person's life to join him so much as being more of a fun little distraction that interrupted little. The Eleventh Doctor is more about wondrous fantasy adventure in a sci-fi format than a sci-fi adventure in of itself.
Besides some one-off companions the Eleventh Doctor had four major companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song and Clara Oswald. Amy and Rory are, no question in my mind, two of the best companions ever, and I will explain. While Amy at one point does come on to the Doctor (a trend I mentioned I was quickly sick of when Martha was doing it), her committed relationship to Rory soon after helped ground her refreshingly. Amy also had a tendency to be fiery and fun-loving while also having moments of vulnerability and kindness that didn't detract from the character but rather rounded her out. At one point the Amy basically saved the Doctor by just yelling at time and space itself, which is a heck of a feat. Rory, while clearly the less dominant person in the relationship, worked well by being more empathetic than Amy, a gentle nurse, yet a complete badass later on when it came to matters of his family. A memorable sort of twisted gag that also came up was Rory seemingly dying several times over the course of his time as a companion (he either got better or wasn't actually dead), which even the characters picked up on in hilarious fashion. River and Clara are a bit more problematic. River, I'll get into the full details with her, but despite being badass and at times hilarious got kind of annoying since her appearances in the Eleventh Doctor's run tended to try really hard to make it clear how important she was and just how awesome she was (the latter definitely more of an issue than the former, at least to me). Clara meanwhile ran into the problem of initially existing more as a plot device character than someone fleshed out, her job and family details feeling poorly fleshed out compared to those that came before her and making her at points too much of a blank slate. While performed well enough Clara too effectively fell into the trap of being a female characters that was being shilled but with not enough concrete characteristics and details to really make her easy to latch on to. It would take until the Twelfth Doctor showed up to really sort out Clara.
Series 5, the Eleventh Doctor's first series, does start on a pretty decent (if a bit long) The Eleventh Hour. Featuring a shape-shifting snake monster and aliens represented by a giant floating eyeball, The Eleventh Doctor does a good job showing off his skills, ensuring that yes, he is The Doctor. The episode's big issue is really that basically everything ends up changed by the end, with the Doctor having a new face, a new companion, a new Sonic Screwdriver (compensating?) and a new TARDIS, both inside and out. Unfortunately the episode was followed up with The Beast Below, an episode that does a fantastic job of expressing Moffat's idea of who the Doctor is, but featuring creepy villains that ended up being incredibly lame, a fairly goofy location and a really annoying supporting character in the form of Queen Elizabeth X. Basically some of the best and the worst part of Moffat's current tenure as showrunner are seen in the episode. Victory of the Daleks is fairly infamous as it introduced these goofy color-coded Daleks as well as an android who somehow stopped himself from self-destructing due to the power of love, though the recurring character of Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) was introduced. The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone ended up introducing a fair number of important elements for the Eleventh Doctor's overall era, including the idea of a militarized space church, some more details on the Weeping Angels, more back-story on River Song (who was not yet insufferable) and a look at the cracks in space-time, which ended up being a recurring theme for the series. The Vampires of Venice was a bit awkward at points but generally quite fun (actually filmed in Venice too), Amy's Choice had a decent conundrum presented to our protagonists and solidified Amy as a character, and finally The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood brought back the Silurians, plus had perhaps one of the most surprising twists in Doctor Who history for how it ended. The follow-up episode Vincent and The Doctor was a bit of a bold episode as it willingly explored the tragedy of Vincent van Gogh and didn't take the easy way out (for good or bad, the takeaway at the end can be rough). The Lodger was an okay episode (Guest-starring James Corden), though it really tried a bit too hard to be hilarious at points. The two-part finale The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang did a really good job having an epic event occur, and while the conclusion that saw everything turn out okay was perhaps a bit too easy after everything it's ultimately pretty forgivable in this instance, especially given the more fantastical tone the series was going for.
Series 6 is the one I usually look at as where things got a bit too ambitious, though also unquestionably epic. The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon is a very epic two-part story that none the less runs into the issue of answering few questions and instead offering up more. None the less the threat of the mysterious Silence aliens (who as I said look like Slenderman) is pretty awesome and nothing sets up a series-long storyline like The Doctor apparently being shot dead by an astronaut that walked out of a lake, while also featuring a guest appearance by sci-fi veteran Mark Sheppard and Richard Nixon (Stuart Milligan). The Doctor then apparently decides to ignore the mysteries that have abounded in favor of encountering pirates and having his TARDIS temporarily gain a physical body in the decent The Curse of the Black Spot and probably best of the series The Doctor's Wife (it won the Hugo award that had frequently gone to Steven Moffat for episodes he'd penned in previous years). An effective four-part story then kicks off as The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People examine an engineered sub-species that doesn't seem to qualify as traditional cloning, thus managing a decently-fresh take on the idea of human clones as well as setting up for what came next. A Good Man Goes to War is easily one of the most epic episodes in the show's history (it opened with Rory casually giving Cybermen crap while behind him their fleet exploded), but it also contained some really goofy elements (two supporting characters are literally just called The Fat One and The Thin One) and some amazingly awesome elements, such as the Headless Monks, a Silurian lesbian who fights with Japanese-style swords and Rory dressed as a Roman Centurion wielding a sword and a laser pistol. The follow up of Lets Kill Hitler is definitely a must-watch for all the resolution that occurs but also features River Song at her most insufferable (save perhaps the series opener) if also hilarious, and wraps up what happened in the previous episode way, way too neatly. Night Terrors sucked and felt like a lame rehash of previously terrible stories like Fear Her (easily the worst episode of this series). The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex are pretty solid tales (former is my preferred of the two) since they really examine the borderline religious-like worship Amy has had for the Doctor, and the result was effectively a breaking of Amy's faith in him after dealing with encountering a version of herself who was trapped when he promised to save her and failed as well as a monster who fed off of people's greatest fears and much more. Closing Time was a follow-up to The Lodger that if nothing else made James Corden's character more likable, featured a more enjoyable threat in the form of the Cybermen and the memorable name of Stormageddon as a baby insisted it be called. The episode did have another power of love ending (they seriously did this a lot with the Eleventh Doctor, I've skipped mentioning at least four other instances of this already), but at least in this case it kind of fit with how the Cybermen worked, and the final scene of the episode setup the finale fairly well. It's also worth mentioning it was Closing Time where the regular lives of the Doctor's companions began to matter a lot less, with Amy somehow going from a kiss-o-gram to a perfume model. The Wedding of River Song probably made the most logical sense of the three Eleventh Doctor's final outings in terms of plot holes and such, and once again was epic as we got all of history happening at the same time (Holy Emperor Winston Churchill riding a mammoth anyone?). Unfortunately the episode seemed a bit rushed and ran into the problem of only being one episode, plus the mysteries it answered were relatively predictable and kind of lame resolutions.
Series 7 starts off relatively strong, as while there's a baffling plot of Amy and Rory wanting to divorce because Amy's now sterile (they don't divorce, so don't worry if that idea offended you) The Doctor and company visit a planet full of crazy Daleks and there's an interesting development at the end that was annoyingly never fully followed-up on (plus a soon to be familiar face shows up and we get Dalek zombies). After Asylum of the Daleks we got Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, featuring Queen Nefertiti as the latest female character the writers attempted way too hard to make seem awesome as well as several awesome guest-stars in a plot that isn't quite as fun as the title suggests, especially when a giant tonal shift arrives due to the quirky comic relief robots killing a dinosaur in what is really a tragic and kind of awkward scene. A Town Called Mercy offered a solid story which may not have exactly tread new ground but did look at if the life of one man was worth risking the lives of a whole town when a threat comes to claim him. The Power of Three brought back UNIT once more, which was nice, and The Doctor hanging out with Amy and Rory while they lived at home together was a funny little twist on the norm but the threat of the week was relatively lame and fairly uninspired. The Angels Take Manhattan saw the departure of the Ponds in a rather heart-wrenching manner, which does go a long way to compensate for the giant amount of plot holes the episode produced. The Snowmen, a Christmas Special sandwiched in the middle of the series, ended up bringing back the original show's threat the Great Intelligence, a crystal organism working strategically to try and best the Doctor and then potentially conquer the universe. Clara also makes her first appearance, and while the twist with her is pretty good she yet again is a character whose description when created seemingly stopped at 'awesome.' The Bells of Saint John then began to try and explore the character while offering a bizzare modern day threat in the form of wifi, which... points for trying, I guess? The Rings of Akhaten is a really divisive episode, and I gotta come down against it as while epic (The Doctor yells at a sun) it features elements that feel really rehashed from not very good episodes like The Beast Below and The Fires of Pompeii. Problems also include a long singing sequence in a language the viewer won't understand that basically stops the episode until the thing the audience knew was coming finally happens, Clara not getting so much a personality but a tragic back-story (which has been fairly irrelevant after this episode), and the Doctor's epic moment upstaged by what really feels like new age BS in the form of a damn leaf. Cold War then offered a relatively lame return of the classic monster the Ice Warriors (episode played way too much like a more PG version of Alien), while Hide did another power of love plot, though one that also offered an interesting look at the idea of human time travelers and produced some decent horror moments. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS ended up being more or less a waste of time since the episode basically reset everyone's memory at the end of it and while it offered some neat set-pieces the exploration of the TARDIS's interior was ultimately kind of underwhelming. The Crimson Horror dialed up the goofy a bit too much, between playing up the comedy with the Doctor's allies in Victorian London a bit too much and stupid jokes like a kid named Tom Thomas helping a character navigate at one point (Tom-Tom, get it?!). Even Neil Gaiman, the writer of the excellent The Doctor's Wife, couldn't deliver lightning twice in a row as Nightmare in Silver made the returning Cybermen way too much like the Borg from Star Trek (the similarities were already up there) and had two of the most annoying children in television history kicking around as temporary companions. The Name of the Doctor also runs into similar problems that The Wedding of River Song faced in which it was definitely epic (the Doctor visits his grave and The Great Intelligence plans to try and kill the Doctor throughout his entire history), but the conclusion was really, really pat (another good reason for a two-parter), plus we once again got more than a few plot holes, more cropping up after the episode no less.
For Specials, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe was an insanely bland Christmas special that really adds nothing aside from Amy and Rory finding out the Doctor was still alive after he at one point seemed to die. A Christmas Carol has a lot of elements that contradict how time travel was originally set up as working in the show, and how much the episode pulls from the story its blatantly inspired by is a bit much, but is a charming enough episode. The Snowmen was previously covered above. The Day of the Doctor is pretty epic, and while the Zygon plot has some issues related to its events and resolution the main story of the War Doctor (John Hurt) and the big change that resulted from the tale are basically perfection. That leaves The Time of the Doctor, which unfortunately had more problematic elements than good ones. While there were funny naked and bald-related antics from The Doctor, and the general theme of the episode did make sense to a degree, we once again got casual exposition answering questions that had been nagging at fans for years, another 'super-awesome female character that's awesome so you should like her okay' character showed up (how many are we up to, ten?), the planet of the story felt incredibly phoned in (it was called Christmas, felt like Victorian England and everyone there had to tell the truth), and the resolution was once again a bit too pat. The best part was probably the Tenth Doctor's generation, as it had a pretty good sign off moment.
To wrap up I want to look at Moffat's style a bit more. Simply put, I believe Moffat was not the best writer to be over-exposed, in this case by becoming showrunner and producing several episodes a season. All three of the stories Moffat wrote for the Tenth Doctor featured strong female characters, though what probably made them work over the large amount of insufferable ones that showed up here is perhaps just the fact that Moffat had more time to iron the characters out since he was only focusing on one or two scripts a year rather than on average six. The epic elements and fairy tale nature of Moffat's stories are not necessarily an issue in of themselves, since Doctor Who is a family show and while people can casually dismiss Disney and Pixar as companies producing works for children their good films tend to be fun for the whole family (I absolutely cried watching Inside Out). The problem really just does seem to be that Moffat might be overworked, as between Doctor Who and Sherlock he does have a decent amount on his plate. In a way Moffat's almost like Brannon Braga from Star Trek, who was really good at writing certain kinds of stories but when tasked with producing a lot more ended up filling them with ideas perhaps too half-baked (though Moffat thankfully doesn't have a Rick Berman to make his already weaker scripts suck even more). I do think ultimately Steven Moffat is a good but overworked writer, and I will say after Series 8 with the Twelfth Doctor this sadly doesn't appear to have changed much. Still if nothing else he's still good at making people deliver good speeches and then say something hilarious to help ground what was just said in reality, which is actually a trait he shares with Aaron Sorkin now that I thought about it.
The Wrap-Up:
So can I recommend it? Absolutely! Despite perhaps coming off a bit more negative here than I did in the last couple of articles Doctor Who remains one of the best shows on television for me, and while parts of the Eleventh Doctor's era feel a bit hollow to me it was none the less a pretty solid run with nothing to truly be ashamed of.
- See more at: http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/publish/Peter_Dawson/The_Eleventh_Doctor_Who.shtml#sthash.CDMXwzMF.dpuf
Doctor Who month materializes ever forward! As mentioned this month will not conclude with the Twelfth Doctor (not enough to really work with yet, since he's still active), and I felt I said most of what needed to be say about the epic Day of the Doctor when the audio for that was done. I'm actually not entirely certain which article I'm going to do next week at this moment as there's two possible directions to take it, so I might start writing one but if it doesn't seem to be working I'll give the other one a shot. Really the trick when talking about Doctor Who is to try not and entirely say what's been said before, which is damn hard when you're talking about one of the most internationally successful television shows of all time.
The History:
2009 was a year of transition for New Who, as not only had David Tennant confirmed he'd be stepping down after The End of Time but Russell T Davies had moved on as well, with Steven Moffat ( Press Gang, Coupling) stepping in as showrunner. While Moffat was generally well-liked it is worth noting his popularity had to do with him effectively doing one story (one or two episodes each) a series that tended to be ranked among the best of that series. The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead all are popular with New Who fans, and all were penned by Moffat. 2010 saw Moffat begin his tenure with Matt Smith ( Party Animals, Terminator: Genisys) taking over as The Doctor. The show's ratings ended up remaining more or less the same as during the Davies-Tennant era, and several of Moffat's episodes were nominated for or won Hugo awards. Like Davies Moffat did also work on another program with a Doctor Who connection, though in this case rather than a spin-off we worked with fellow writer Mark Gatiss on Sherlock (which I mention because it did when Moffat a Primetime Emmy Award). Matt Smith ended his run in 2013 with Time of the Doctor, the 2013 Christmas Special.
The Show:
After putting off a regeneration for an extraordinarily long period of time, The Doctor (Matt Smith) ends up crashing his TARDIS in the backyard of a little girl's house in the village of Leadworth in 1996. Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) greets the 'Raggedy Doctor' and he helps investigate a crack in her wall, which turns out to be crack in the very fabric of time and space. The Doctor is soon forced to move forward in time to help his damaged TARDIS heal, only to encounter Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), an adult Amelia who believed that the Doctor was simply her imaginary friend. After helping Amy and her boyfriend Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) deal with a threat that had emerged through the crack Amy, and later Rory, join the Doctor on various adventures that see them encounter Daleks, vampires, Vincent van Gogh, the Slenderman-like Silence creatures, Richard Nixon, space pirates, the Headless Monks, Adolf Hitler, dinosaurs and the Weeping Angels.
The Breakdown:
Matt Smith was never going to be a subdued Doctor. The Doctor is typically played by older men that exude a lot of energy, and being the youngest actor to play the Doctor yet he effectively had to dial it up while somehow manifesting the idea that he was an old soul. In that respect Matt Smith's biggest strength is probably his eyes, as while is large face can make capturing his mouth subtleties trickier Smith was able to do a lot with his eyes to really channel that hidden age to him. The Eleventh Doctor did also have a tendency to dress like someone with a dated idea of what was cool (which of course made him a hit with hipsters), enjoying wearing his signature bow-tie as well as a fez at every opportunity he could. The Eleventh Doctor as a result looked like a young man trying to look old, when in fact he was an old man effectively enjoying his second childhood (or maybe ninth), which becomes a bit more understandable when its revealed that the entire time he's been aware that he can't regenerate properly ever again, as he's used them up (Time Lords have a certain limit granted them, though can be given more by, well, themselves). Despite all this the Eleventh Doctor is effectively more a man of a fairy tale than a science-fiction adventure, as while sci-fi is of course very much present (wondrous things are still always explained by aliens or time travel) he frequently dropped his companions off at home, meaning he didn't stop a person's life to join him so much as being more of a fun little distraction that interrupted little. The Eleventh Doctor is more about wondrous fantasy adventure in a sci-fi format than a sci-fi adventure in of itself.
Besides some one-off companions the Eleventh Doctor had four major companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song and Clara Oswald. Amy and Rory are, no question in my mind, two of the best companions ever, and I will explain. While Amy at one point does come on to the Doctor (a trend I mentioned I was quickly sick of when Martha was doing it), her committed relationship to Rory soon after helped ground her refreshingly. Amy also had a tendency to be fiery and fun-loving while also having moments of vulnerability and kindness that didn't detract from the character but rather rounded her out. At one point the Amy basically saved the Doctor by just yelling at time and space itself, which is a heck of a feat. Rory, while clearly the less dominant person in the relationship, worked well by being more empathetic than Amy, a gentle nurse, yet a complete badass later on when it came to matters of his family. A memorable sort of twisted gag that also came up was Rory seemingly dying several times over the course of his time as a companion (he either got better or wasn't actually dead), which even the characters picked up on in hilarious fashion. River and Clara are a bit more problematic. River, I'll get into the full details with her, but despite being badass and at times hilarious got kind of annoying since her appearances in the Eleventh Doctor's run tended to try really hard to make it clear how important she was and just how awesome she was (the latter definitely more of an issue than the former, at least to me). Clara meanwhile ran into the problem of initially existing more as a plot device character than someone fleshed out, her job and family details feeling poorly fleshed out compared to those that came before her and making her at points too much of a blank slate. While performed well enough Clara too effectively fell into the trap of being a female characters that was being shilled but with not enough concrete characteristics and details to really make her easy to latch on to. It would take until the Twelfth Doctor showed up to really sort out Clara.
Series 5, the Eleventh Doctor's first series, does start on a pretty decent (if a bit long) The Eleventh Hour. Featuring a shape-shifting snake monster and aliens represented by a giant floating eyeball, The Eleventh Doctor does a good job showing off his skills, ensuring that yes, he is The Doctor. The episode's big issue is really that basically everything ends up changed by the end, with the Doctor having a new face, a new companion, a new Sonic Screwdriver (compensating?) and a new TARDIS, both inside and out. Unfortunately the episode was followed up with The Beast Below, an episode that does a fantastic job of expressing Moffat's idea of who the Doctor is, but featuring creepy villains that ended up being incredibly lame, a fairly goofy location and a really annoying supporting character in the form of Queen Elizabeth X. Basically some of the best and the worst part of Moffat's current tenure as showrunner are seen in the episode. Victory of the Daleks is fairly infamous as it introduced these goofy color-coded Daleks as well as an android who somehow stopped himself from self-destructing due to the power of love, though the recurring character of Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) was introduced. The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone ended up introducing a fair number of important elements for the Eleventh Doctor's overall era, including the idea of a militarized space church, some more details on the Weeping Angels, more back-story on River Song (who was not yet insufferable) and a look at the cracks in space-time, which ended up being a recurring theme for the series. The Vampires of Venice was a bit awkward at points but generally quite fun (actually filmed in Venice too), Amy's Choice had a decent conundrum presented to our protagonists and solidified Amy as a character, and finally The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood brought back the Silurians, plus had perhaps one of the most surprising twists in Doctor Who history for how it ended. The follow-up episode Vincent and The Doctor was a bit of a bold episode as it willingly explored the tragedy of Vincent van Gogh and didn't take the easy way out (for good or bad, the takeaway at the end can be rough). The Lodger was an okay episode (Guest-starring James Corden), though it really tried a bit too hard to be hilarious at points. The two-part finale The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang did a really good job having an epic event occur, and while the conclusion that saw everything turn out okay was perhaps a bit too easy after everything it's ultimately pretty forgivable in this instance, especially given the more fantastical tone the series was going for.
Series 6 is the one I usually look at as where things got a bit too ambitious, though also unquestionably epic. The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon is a very epic two-part story that none the less runs into the issue of answering few questions and instead offering up more. None the less the threat of the mysterious Silence aliens (who as I said look like Slenderman) is pretty awesome and nothing sets up a series-long storyline like The Doctor apparently being shot dead by an astronaut that walked out of a lake, while also featuring a guest appearance by sci-fi veteran Mark Sheppard and Richard Nixon (Stuart Milligan). The Doctor then apparently decides to ignore the mysteries that have abounded in favor of encountering pirates and having his TARDIS temporarily gain a physical body in the decent The Curse of the Black Spot and probably best of the series The Doctor's Wife (it won the Hugo award that had frequently gone to Steven Moffat for episodes he'd penned in previous years). An effective four-part story then kicks off as The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People examine an engineered sub-species that doesn't seem to qualify as traditional cloning, thus managing a decently-fresh take on the idea of human clones as well as setting up for what came next. A Good Man Goes to War is easily one of the most epic episodes in the show's history (it opened with Rory casually giving Cybermen crap while behind him their fleet exploded), but it also contained some really goofy elements (two supporting characters are literally just called The Fat One and The Thin One) and some amazingly awesome elements, such as the Headless Monks, a Silurian lesbian who fights with Japanese-style swords and Rory dressed as a Roman Centurion wielding a sword and a laser pistol. The follow up of Lets Kill Hitler is definitely a must-watch for all the resolution that occurs but also features River Song at her most insufferable (save perhaps the series opener) if also hilarious, and wraps up what happened in the previous episode way, way too neatly. Night Terrors sucked and felt like a lame rehash of previously terrible stories like Fear Her (easily the worst episode of this series). The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex are pretty solid tales (former is my preferred of the two) since they really examine the borderline religious-like worship Amy has had for the Doctor, and the result was effectively a breaking of Amy's faith in him after dealing with encountering a version of herself who was trapped when he promised to save her and failed as well as a monster who fed off of people's greatest fears and much more. Closing Time was a follow-up to The Lodger that if nothing else made James Corden's character more likable, featured a more enjoyable threat in the form of the Cybermen and the memorable name of Stormageddon as a baby insisted it be called. The episode did have another power of love ending (they seriously did this a lot with the Eleventh Doctor, I've skipped mentioning at least four other instances of this already), but at least in this case it kind of fit with how the Cybermen worked, and the final scene of the episode setup the finale fairly well. It's also worth mentioning it was Closing Time where the regular lives of the Doctor's companions began to matter a lot less, with Amy somehow going from a kiss-o-gram to a perfume model. The Wedding of River Song probably made the most logical sense of the three Eleventh Doctor's final outings in terms of plot holes and such, and once again was epic as we got all of history happening at the same time (Holy Emperor Winston Churchill riding a mammoth anyone?). Unfortunately the episode seemed a bit rushed and ran into the problem of only being one episode, plus the mysteries it answered were relatively predictable and kind of lame resolutions.
Series 7 starts off relatively strong, as while there's a baffling plot of Amy and Rory wanting to divorce because Amy's now sterile (they don't divorce, so don't worry if that idea offended you) The Doctor and company visit a planet full of crazy Daleks and there's an interesting development at the end that was annoyingly never fully followed-up on (plus a soon to be familiar face shows up and we get Dalek zombies). After Asylum of the Daleks we got Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, featuring Queen Nefertiti as the latest female character the writers attempted way too hard to make seem awesome as well as several awesome guest-stars in a plot that isn't quite as fun as the title suggests, especially when a giant tonal shift arrives due to the quirky comic relief robots killing a dinosaur in what is really a tragic and kind of awkward scene. A Town Called Mercy offered a solid story which may not have exactly tread new ground but did look at if the life of one man was worth risking the lives of a whole town when a threat comes to claim him. The Power of Three brought back UNIT once more, which was nice, and The Doctor hanging out with Amy and Rory while they lived at home together was a funny little twist on the norm but the threat of the week was relatively lame and fairly uninspired. The Angels Take Manhattan saw the departure of the Ponds in a rather heart-wrenching manner, which does go a long way to compensate for the giant amount of plot holes the episode produced. The Snowmen, a Christmas Special sandwiched in the middle of the series, ended up bringing back the original show's threat the Great Intelligence, a crystal organism working strategically to try and best the Doctor and then potentially conquer the universe. Clara also makes her first appearance, and while the twist with her is pretty good she yet again is a character whose description when created seemingly stopped at 'awesome.' The Bells of Saint John then began to try and explore the character while offering a bizzare modern day threat in the form of wifi, which... points for trying, I guess? The Rings of Akhaten is a really divisive episode, and I gotta come down against it as while epic (The Doctor yells at a sun) it features elements that feel really rehashed from not very good episodes like The Beast Below and The Fires of Pompeii. Problems also include a long singing sequence in a language the viewer won't understand that basically stops the episode until the thing the audience knew was coming finally happens, Clara not getting so much a personality but a tragic back-story (which has been fairly irrelevant after this episode), and the Doctor's epic moment upstaged by what really feels like new age BS in the form of a damn leaf. Cold War then offered a relatively lame return of the classic monster the Ice Warriors (episode played way too much like a more PG version of Alien), while Hide did another power of love plot, though one that also offered an interesting look at the idea of human time travelers and produced some decent horror moments. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS ended up being more or less a waste of time since the episode basically reset everyone's memory at the end of it and while it offered some neat set-pieces the exploration of the TARDIS's interior was ultimately kind of underwhelming. The Crimson Horror dialed up the goofy a bit too much, between playing up the comedy with the Doctor's allies in Victorian London a bit too much and stupid jokes like a kid named Tom Thomas helping a character navigate at one point (Tom-Tom, get it?!). Even Neil Gaiman, the writer of the excellent The Doctor's Wife, couldn't deliver lightning twice in a row as Nightmare in Silver made the returning Cybermen way too much like the Borg from Star Trek (the similarities were already up there) and had two of the most annoying children in television history kicking around as temporary companions. The Name of the Doctor also runs into similar problems that The Wedding of River Song faced in which it was definitely epic (the Doctor visits his grave and The Great Intelligence plans to try and kill the Doctor throughout his entire history), but the conclusion was really, really pat (another good reason for a two-parter), plus we once again got more than a few plot holes, more cropping up after the episode no less.
For Specials, The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe was an insanely bland Christmas special that really adds nothing aside from Amy and Rory finding out the Doctor was still alive after he at one point seemed to die. A Christmas Carol has a lot of elements that contradict how time travel was originally set up as working in the show, and how much the episode pulls from the story its blatantly inspired by is a bit much, but is a charming enough episode. The Snowmen was previously covered above. The Day of the Doctor is pretty epic, and while the Zygon plot has some issues related to its events and resolution the main story of the War Doctor (John Hurt) and the big change that resulted from the tale are basically perfection. That leaves The Time of the Doctor, which unfortunately had more problematic elements than good ones. While there were funny naked and bald-related antics from The Doctor, and the general theme of the episode did make sense to a degree, we once again got casual exposition answering questions that had been nagging at fans for years, another 'super-awesome female character that's awesome so you should like her okay' character showed up (how many are we up to, ten?), the planet of the story felt incredibly phoned in (it was called Christmas, felt like Victorian England and everyone there had to tell the truth), and the resolution was once again a bit too pat. The best part was probably the Tenth Doctor's generation, as it had a pretty good sign off moment.
To wrap up I want to look at Moffat's style a bit more. Simply put, I believe Moffat was not the best writer to be over-exposed, in this case by becoming showrunner and producing several episodes a season. All three of the stories Moffat wrote for the Tenth Doctor featured strong female characters, though what probably made them work over the large amount of insufferable ones that showed up here is perhaps just the fact that Moffat had more time to iron the characters out since he was only focusing on one or two scripts a year rather than on average six. The epic elements and fairy tale nature of Moffat's stories are not necessarily an issue in of themselves, since Doctor Who is a family show and while people can casually dismiss Disney and Pixar as companies producing works for children their good films tend to be fun for the whole family (I absolutely cried watching Inside Out). The problem really just does seem to be that Moffat might be overworked, as between Doctor Who and Sherlock he does have a decent amount on his plate. In a way Moffat's almost like Brannon Braga from Star Trek, who was really good at writing certain kinds of stories but when tasked with producing a lot more ended up filling them with ideas perhaps too half-baked (though Moffat thankfully doesn't have a Rick Berman to make his already weaker scripts suck even more). I do think ultimately Steven Moffat is a good but overworked writer, and I will say after Series 8 with the Twelfth Doctor this sadly doesn't appear to have changed much. Still if nothing else he's still good at making people deliver good speeches and then say something hilarious to help ground what was just said in reality, which is actually a trait he shares with Aaron Sorkin now that I thought about it.
The Wrap-Up:
So can I recommend it? Absolutely! Despite perhaps coming off a bit more negative here than I did in the last couple of articles Doctor Who remains one of the best shows on television for me, and while parts of the Eleventh Doctor's era feel a bit hollow to me it was none the less a pretty solid run with nothing to truly be ashamed of.
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