Caves and Twins: The Wedding of River Song
The sixth season finally limps across the finishing line with a few years' worth of back story to bring to a conclusion and a massive escape act required from Moffat for the whole thing not to feel like a massive cheat.
So was it as bad as every season finisher?
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Texting and scones - A funny line that kind of defines the eleventh Doctor and Smith portrayal
Time Crash - Nice conceit, fairly well pulled off.
The Brig - Lovely tribute to Nick Courtney that worked really well in the story
Live chess - I just like these throwaway quirks that make the Doctor Who universe feel just that; something beyond a South London estate and the odd trip to Europe.
Dorium - A character I like.
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Cheat - I had a lengthy whinge about the 'not dying' thing the new series has done to, er, death before Season Six started - and complained that they were building up the Doctor's death before the start of it when it was patently clear that this was going to be another cheat. Which it was.
What's more the second they showed the Teselecta in the recap - in the first few seconds - it was horribly clear how the cheat was going to be perpetrated. I've lost count of the 'didn't die' swerves in this series - there've been so many there are numerous theories floating around the web as to how Rory and Amy don't really exist, so often have they been killed off.
The Eleventh Doctor has, by my reckoning, died four times already. It's lazy; it's manipulative; it's cynical; it's deeply tiresome. Stop it, now.
Love saves the day - Or a kiss. Once again we have a 'kiss/love saves the day' conclusion to a story. Boring.
Amy machine-gunning the Silence/Silents - That just seemed wrong
River Song - I assume River's story has come to an end now. I do hope so, anyway.
Arc - I did not enjoy this story arc. Perhaps I will if I ever buy the box-set and watch eight episodes a nigh, which seems to be how people watch TV series these days. But less than half way through I found it boring and distracting. The Silence, the Flesh, the Eyepatches. They bored me.
I don't know what to make of this series, beyond the fact that it didn't do it for me. Moffat's writing seemed to be tied up in knots throughout; shedding casual viewers here and there and even alienating the fanbase to some degree.
A giant story arc should never be attempted again; splitting the season should never be attempted again; teasing lead characters' deaths and then not delivering should never have been done in the first place. River needs to be gone once and for all. The Doctor should not be a God or a lonely emo or a mighty warrior or River's Love of Life.
Please let Doctor Who be small, offbeat, funny, scary and unique again. It's surely no coincidence that the best episodes this season - The Doctor's Wife and The Girl WHo Waited spring to mind were exactly that.
If I wanted the FBI, Roswell aliens, conspiracy theories, interminable arcs and heaps of portentous bullshit I'd watch The X-Files, Lost or half a dozen other US sci-fi imports. And there's nothing wrong with any of them (well, most of them), but they're not Doctor Who.
Which is, when you think about it, the point.
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Caves and Twins: Let’s Kill Hitler
Doctor Who's back! With the second part of Series Six, which has been split in two for reasons that's absolutely aren't anything to do with money or ructions among the production team or Moffatt's schedule.
Four episodes into the Silence/River story arc and there's at least some manner of closure. But was Let's Kill Hitler The World at War or was it Allo Allo?
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The regulars - I have doubts about Alex Kingston as River Song sometimes, mainly because the lines are occasionally terrible and the character is a bit annoying, but the main trio are excellent and have great chemistry
River Song - I quite liked the set-up of who River becomes, with the diary and archaeology.
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Everything - That sounds a bit glib and unfair but I think the biggest problem with this is that it's just a massive ball of confusion, with story arcs going back several years in some cases.
Somehow, it's still not clear how, the Silence are involved as is the eyepatch lady and in the midst of everything our heroes are in Hitler's office - for no other apparent reason other than it's clearly supposed to be a kerrayzee thing to do - while miniaturised war criminal hunters are stalking around in a shapeshifting robot with the aim of torturing the Fuhrer.
No doubt a breathless review in DWM will laud it all for that very reason - bonkers! - but coherent storytelling that doesn't require an episode of Confidential to explain it all seems to be in short supply at the moment. The Silence, the killing of the Doctor, the reason for River being in prison - it's still all ongoing and I'm bored of it; it feels like Doctor Who is in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own mythos and how pleased it is with itself.
I don't think these stories are actually poor but they aren't easy to follow and require an increasing effort to keep up with that. The 'story arc' episodes in this series have left me cold - and I'm a Doctor Who fan.
Mels - Like Ace but worse. And a swerve that was pretty flippin obvious.
Funny regeneration - Firstly, River seems to experience regeneration as orgasmic, which is a rather tedious little touch if totally in keeping with Moffatt's tics, then we get the trademark 'whacky regeneration' acting and music. Bleh.
Another non death - Tiresome; decreasing returns; and feels lazy
Hitler - I'm prepared to go along with it but really? Doctor Who meets Hitler? Dangerous territory.
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Caves and Twins: A Good Man Goes To War
Well, after what feels like the longest lead-in to a mid-season story since The Dalek's Masterplan, A Good Man Goes To War promises much with bonkers SFX, a raft of returning monsters, River Song and an angry Doctor.
So, was this The Big Bang or was it that drivel with the Master as the Prime Minister?
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Sonataran nurse - Gave a bit of depth to this race, which hasn't been interesting since 1976.
New Adventures - There was something of the NAs about this in the way that it tried to establish a complicated, fleshed-out, almost unified vision of the Whoniverse where Sontarans can be goodies and Earth Reptiles live on Earth alongside humans. I liked it.
Some very good lines - "Stringy"; "Stevie Wonder"; "Get some rest"; "Make a donation"; "No it's not; it's cool" - Moff's was always one for with his zingers; he was on form here.
Regulars - I've generally like the characterisation and performances of the regulars but I thought they were particularly good here – especially Smith, who was quite different again, and Arthur Darvill as a believable, likable foil.
The intro bit - Nice bait-and-switch on Melody's Dad (one of several throughout) and good Cyberman intro bit.
The fat blue bloke - I just like him
Abberline - Just liked this reference
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Headless monks - A bit like the Smilers, these were a bit lost in the mix and didn't really come off.
Greatest hits - Rather like The Pandorica Opens, this was a bit of a greatest hits of Moff's run and beyond; rather like his version of Journey's End. The pirates, those daft space Spitfires, Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians, that fat blue bloke. It felt very familiar and it was a little bit of a case of diminishing returns.
River Song - It's fairly clear we're supposed to think River is amazing, cool, funny, sexy ad generally fabulous. But I'm afraid I just find her a bit irritating.
Cyberman voices - Still terrible
Lots of nice elements, but it was pretty out there. So much going on - a few revelations and more questions again. Maybe, over 13 episodes, this will all turn out to be something of a masterpiece but it feels rather on the edge at the moment, like it could be an absolute disaster too.
On a second viewing this was a lot more enjoyable if you can indulge it. Smith really is excellent as the scales fall from his eyes in this episode and he continues to add more strings to his bow.
A Good Man Goes To War (even on a second viewing) does little to dispel the impression that this is shaping up to be quite the oddest series of Doctor Who in a long time. Certainly change was required but this feels fairly radical, to the point where this no longer feels like a Saturday early evening show but something that may be better off after the watershed.
I'm unsure if that's a good idea in terms of keeping an audience, but a a few teases have started to pay off this season I'm enjoying it more. Here's hoping the second half of series six is the superior one.
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Caves and Twins: The Doctor’s Wife
Neil Gaiman'a long-awaited Doctor Who episode hit the screens with an annoyingly glib title to give us a set-up that Who fans have long imaged or written bad fanfic about.
Lawrence Miles might be raising an eyebrow, with the first example of a sentient TARDIS I can think of occurring in Alien Bodies. Either that or he's writing 10,000 words on The Power of Kroll.
Anyway, was The Doctor's Wife Neverwhere or was it.... well, I like all Gaiman's stuff.
The Doctor and the TARDIS - Although some of it went into kooky/wacky mode many of these scenes were touching and peculiar. The scenes at the end were almost heart-breaking. Lovely Doctor Who.
House and the planet - Seemingly another echo from a New Adventure. House seemed rather like God in The Also People, unquestionably the best in the range to my mind. An intriguing idea.
Everything else on the planet was fascinating. The set-up and characters and dialogue and actors all fell into place wonderfully - and it looked startling. For all Doctor Who's 'anywhere, anytime' shtick it rarely looks so alien and odd as it did in The Doctor's Wife.
Scary shit - The scenes of Rory and Amy in the TARDIS were genuinely unsettling and disturbing. Well written, well shot and well played.
The regulars - Smith seemed back to his brilliant bonkers best this week after a couple of weeks where he seemed a bit lost. Some quieter stuff from the Doc was more interesting, while Darvill and Gillen were strong too.
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That title. A tiresome facet of the new series is the urge to fling out controversial, eye-catching titles. It seems to me to be the equivalent of writing stories about celebrities in order to attract search-engine traffic to your literary website. The result is always the same - the user 'bounces' back off the site the second they realise they've been conned.
Kooky TARDIS - While I generally loved this episode and the thing with the TARDIS I did feel, with a somewhat weary sense of inevitability that the embodiment of the TARDIS was one part haughty Time Lady and one part wacky Doctor-like cypher. Occasionally irritating.
TARDIS corridors - All of time, all of space, all those adventures and the TARDIS is still a collection of featureless corridors? Crikey.
Rory's old make-up - A little whinge, but such a bad hooter. Arthur Darvill looked like Clouseau in one of his disguises.
Any complaints this week can be shrugged off as I felt the episode was an almost unmitigated triumph. It was scary and funny and weird and witty and touching - everything good Doctor Who should be.
Caves and Twins: Curse of the black spot
NB. No Caves and Twins for last week's concluding part to the season opener as yet, largely because I still don't know what to make of it
When I saw the trailer for this week's episode, which is called Curse of the Black Pirates of the Caribbean, or something, I hoped that it wasn't going to be an episode I could pretty much envisage in about three seconds with little more than a passing thought.
Doctor Who meets pirates is only a novel and exciting idea if you're about four years old or a 50-year-old show-runner with two spots in the new block to fill.
The whole genre is so familiar and over-ripe that it can't possibly avoid falling into a wretched pastiche, like a join-the-dot 'scripting for dummies' guide connecting cutlasses, planks, sirens, sharks and sirens to one another
Still, this is what we got this week. So was it Captain Pugwash or Captain Jack Sparrow?
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Production values - Costumes, sets, dressing. The BBC doing what it does best (I understand it was filmed on location. Eh?).
Hugh Bonneville - Played it straight, unlike everyone else
The sci-fi bit - Hardly novel, but some nice coma-inspired visuals and the story was dying on its arse by the end of the second act.
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Amy can sword fight better than pirates - and goes to the bother of putting on a stupid costume. Not even RTD would have pulled that nonsense with this beloved Wose.
Murray Gold's terrible music - Any story that relies some of Murray's patented Hollywood chintzgasm saccharine is in trouble from the get-go. Although that idea that it might send people to sleep seems amusing, it seems more likely that it would make them throw up a little in their mouths.
Toby=Adric
Captain banter - Whose is bigger, whose is better? Tedious.
Shover me hearties - Unfunny, self-satisfied, 'look-at-us-aren't-we-clever-doing-these-hoary-old-dialogue-cliches?' dialogue.
Rory dies #533 - Seriously, how many times has Arthur Darvill had to play a death scene now? And why can't The Doctor do CPR? Manipulative, nonsensical tosh.
Story arc stuff - Already irritating
In the latest DWM, Moffat reveals that the author of this episode pestered him for ages to be allowed to write an episode. Why, then, turn in 30 minutes of the most hackneyed drivel seen this side of Vampires of Venice followed by a pot pourri of Moffat greatest hits?
Doctor Who has always done pastiche, but here it just felt lazy. Things got a tad more interesting when the spaceship turned up, but then it turned into a Moffat pastiche. Weird.
This has been an extraordinary start to the series, but I'm afraid I've not been convinced by it at all thus far. And while I hated many of RTD's efforts, and other stories on his watch, I never really felt nonplussed by it - until now.
Is the show-runner doing too much? Is Who fatigue setting in? Has The Moff misjudged his Nu Who a tad? Or am I just being a miserable bugger? Tune in next week...
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Caves and Twins: A Christmas Carol
Moffat's first Christmas offering didn't break traditional, in that it couldn't have been more Christmassy is Smith had wished all the viewers at home a merry Christmas at the end of it.
I always half expected Tennant to do that at the climax of one of RTD's interminable Christmas assaults on the nation's gag reflexes, but the announcement of the latest episode's title as A Christmas Carol put paid to any ideas that the focus may simply be on the story, rather than a festive element.
Did it work? I'm not sure, but I didn't dislike it the way I did all of RTD's. So, was it The Runaway Bride or was it the Chimes of Midnight?
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Nice to see the regulars back, and the story really suited Smith's Doctor.
Visuals - Lovely, imaginative set design and visual FX of the kind that have really moved the feel of the series of since the end of Tennant and RTD
Gambon - Always good, but I wondered if Patrick Stewart may have been even better.
Dialogue - It really pays to listen carefully to the Eleventh Doctor's lines, which always jump off the page. Moffat's dialogue in Smith's mouth makes for a winning combination.
Christmas Carol - As a framing device it paid off, if a little awkwardly.
The trailer - Moffat could really have sat back and followed the RTD pattern established over the previous few years, but he seems determined to do something very different with the series. The trailer seemed to confirm that, and it looked thrilling.
Psychic paper - Shorted out by the Doctor's claim to be a responsible, mature adult.
Marrying Marilyn - A bit throwaway, but it was nice to see the Doctor at a 50s California pool party. The series rarely does justice to the anywhere, anytime' potential and it's always nice to see it employed.
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Shark-drawn sleigh - It's Christmas, Doctor Who is whacky. We get it.
Kathryn Jenkins - She was fine, but the singing grated and it seemed really crowbarred into the story to me
Christmas indulgence - A hell of a lot seemed to happen in this episode, and I couldn't really be bothered to figure out that singing, weather, fish stuff. It felt a tad over-egged, and tough to digest in one sitting as a result.
Altogether the most intriguing and rewarding Christmas episode – albeit not one I'd care to rewatch very often – but I hope Moffat has the balls to write a Christmas episode that's not absolutely drenched in Yuletide cliches next year.
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Caves and Twins: Series Fnarg
So that was Series Five. Or Series 31. Or Series One. Or Series Chin, whatever you want to call it.
The stakes were high, with news that filming was overrunning horribly, Matt Smith was crap and kept forgetting his lines, Karen Gillan was 'wooden' and Phil Collinson had been called back in to sort the whole mess out.
We won't reveal our sources, although it seems entirely likely that pretty much everyone in fandom knows where they came from, but let's just say there was an element of fear going into Series Fnarg.
And how wrong we all were eh? Chief among this wrongness were the rumours that Smith was crap. In fact, it's hard to imagine this being any further off the mark.
Matt Smith is wonderful, and his gentler, more alien, Doctor is perfect for Moffatt's 'fairytale' Doctor Who. The whole tone of this series feels a more comfortable place for Doctor Who, and the Doctor, to be than Russell T Davies' iteration - which was a series of ever-decreasing circles by the time the excellent David Tennant went, though his Doctor was not highly-liked in these parts.
It seemed almost unthinkable that the series, and Smith, could carry on where RTD and Tennant left off, but a fairly hefty shift in tone and pace and lead character has made it all look rather effortless.
For the first time in quite a while, the series felt much more Who than it had in a long time. Smith may just be the best Doctor... ever.
But while all the big things got sorted out, the parts that made up the whole didn't always feel right. Murray Gold's presence dragged the series back to a RTD vibe, and his syrupy/BOMBASTIC! style took away a lot of the nuances of the new series.
More bizarre still were some of the author/story choices. Toby Whithouse and Chris Chibnall delivered exactly what their previous stories suggested they'd deliver - utterly underwhelming stories that felt like a throwback to a couple of years ago.
Against rather lovely oddities like Amy's Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger, they felt jarring in their straight-forward simplicity.
Mark Gatiss' Victory of the Daleks was, by all accounts, rather hacked to death in the editing suites and the end result was, frankly, a mess.
And stepping up to show-runner certainly sapped Moffatt's brilliance, with the slapdash The Beast Below and breakneck incoherence of The Big Bang.
There were no new, interesting monsters. In fact, the closest thing we got were the rubbish new Daleks. We had to put up with CGI thing hiding inside humans on at least three occasions, and the limits of the budget were evident in The Pandorica Opens when it turned out the Fucking Sycorax and the Fucking Weevils were in on the intergalactic plan to put the Doc away for good.
Still, Moffat handled the Autons and the Cybermen ten times better than RTD ever did - another subtle difference to the approach the two brought to the series.
And yet, funnily enough, it didn't really matter to me. The series felt fresh and fun. The Doctor seemed like, well, The Doctor. And Amy was breath of fresh air; a believable, volatile girl who didn't love her favourite Time Lord.
She may have had a slightly less healthy obsession with him, but inter-personal angst was banished from the TARDIS forever - 'I'm not that clingy!' seemed like a great riposte to the years of Marf and Wose.
Arthur Darvill's Rory eventually eclipsed the 'emasculated male' cipher that's been the default setting for most recurring male characters in the new series to become a rounded companion in his own right.
And, always at the centre of it, was Matt Smith. It's interesting to note that most new Doctors come into the role praising Patrick Troughton, and Smith took it a step further.
Watch him running - it's a straight lift from the Second Doctor. And he's always doing something with his hands - First Doctor? There's a bit of Four, Five and Eight in there too by our reckoning.
Not that The Eleventh Doctor is a pastiche; Smith has brought something new to the role again, and emphatically made it his own. He's a perfect choice.
So, series thingummy. A hearty slap on the back from us, and the best TARDIS crew in ages. No doubt tweaks will be made for next season.
Probic Vent demands Zygons and Yeti and the Dream Lord and a past Doctor and The Brigadier. And a remake of The Horror of Fang Rock. Simple enough eh? Oh yeah, and STOP RUINING OLD MONSTERS!
• Here's an end-of-season C&T for the series.
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The Eleventh Hour - Fresh, fun and firmly established Smith as something new and interesting
Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone - A home run from Moffat, with plenty of twists and turns and great monstering
Amy's Choice - Offbeat and enjoyable - an episode that seems unthinkable under RTD.
Vincent and the Doctor - Intriguing, if cloying
The Lodger - Would have been horrible with Tennant. Good with Smith.
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang - Absolute gibberish, but wins points for not having thousands of cloned Sontarans invading the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower. Magic Light and Power of Love notwithstanding.
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The Beast Below - Too many elements that didn't seem to add up.
Victory of the Daleks - A horrible mess, and shit new Daleks. Almost saved by performances, but not quite.
Vampires of Venice - Dull filler
Hungry Earth/Cold Blood - Dull Chibnall filler that fluffed one of the most interesting premises in Who mythology.
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Caves and Twins: The Big Bang
Confusing, exploding, emoting, deus ex-ing - The Big Bang was a rebooted Doctor Who end-of-series episode alright.
But was it, umm, any good, or was it as ultimately unsatisfying as all of the others?
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Smith - magical and alien and brilliant
Gillen - Sassy and scared and screwed-up. Adorable.
Rory - An excellent male companion, who's more daffy-but-resourceful Harry Sullivan now, rather than a another castrated idiot man.
Smith's bedside soliloquy - Rather sums up the Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith's performance - both note perfect
The wedding - Good entrance
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Love saves the day - As long as you remember someone, they come back to life? Whatever.
Magic light - The light from the Pandorica brings people back to life? And jump starts the second big bang, or something.
Where is thy sting? - The Doctor dies and comes back to life. Amy dies and comes back to life. Over the course of this series Rory has died and come back to life. At least twice.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey - Getting a bit samey wamey now
Murray Gold - Time for a regeneration
Despite all the bollocks about people coming back to life and the big fat reset switch, so beloved of RTD, and now seemingly an inescapable feature of all Doctor Who, it was pretty enjoyable.
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Caves and Twins: The Hungry Earth
Chibnall's much-dreaded two-parter kicks off with Inferno meets The Silurians meets some dreary regional soap opera. So, was The Hungry Earth like some of the bits from the five-part Torchwood, or was it like everything else he's written for Who and Torchwood?
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Scenes in the night-time churchyard - They were quite good.
Regulars - Generally coped OK with some really weak stuff
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Chibnall's characterisation - None of the lines he put in the mouths of his characters, none of whom are well-drawn or interesting, sound believable. I couldn't care less about any of them.
Chibnall's dialogue - Awful speeches by the Doctor again and again. Cliched lines for everyone concerned. Who's editing this stuff?
Meera Syal - A terrible actress in everything she's in
Pacing and plot - Stop-start, long spells where nothing happened. Boring and incoherent - with a side dose of running around.
TARDIS scenes towards the end - Simply embarrassing
Redesigned Silurians - What's the point? Predictably shit.
Worse than I'd anticipated. A misfire on virtually every level. Chibnall took one of the most interesting concepts in Who mythology and totally fucked it up.
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Caves and Twins: Amy’s Choice
Simon Nye's entry into the Who canon, Amy's Choice, aired the other day – in what's been described as something of a throwback to the Celestial Toymakers and Mind Robbers of years gone by.
So, was the seventh episode of Series Five totally Simpson, or was it all a little bit Gold?
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Toby Jones - Brilliant as the Dream Lord, a quirky character more interesting that pretty much anyone else in the 60-odd episodes of NuWho, if not entirely used to its full extent. Brilliant when deconstructing the Doctor's affectations, musing on butcher's shops and teasing Amy. I demand more.
Frozen TARDIS - Looked beautiful and impossible not to recall the minimalist TARDIS designs of the 60s
Smith'n'Gillan - I can't fault them. Best TARDIS crew for... ages.
Valeyard - I don't care what anyone else says.
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No threat 1 - At no point was there any real sense of threat, nor were script or direction really interested in exploring the stranger aspects suggested by the set-up.
No threat 2 - The Dream Lord, as a friend has amusingly put it, had all the threat of Michael Gove. Instead of simply being creepy old people, the creepy old people were yet another kind of screeching BEMs hiding in human shape.
Plot - Muddled at best, with a confusing climax.
Rory - Arthur Darvill does a good job, but I could not care less about this feckless twunt.
Worst use of a milkman since Survival: "Oh, good morning! Arrrgh!"
All of which may give the impression that I didn't really enjoy Amy's Choice, but I did. It was original and a great change of pace - and much more interesting than any Victory of the Daleks or Vampires of Venice can ever be. It just could have been a lot better.
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