Caves and Twins: Season Six
Season Six - doesn't time fly? Doesn't seem long since Eccleston was running through a tunnel and enquiring as to whether we'd like to join him.
Blink and you skip forward over six years to the brilliant Matt Smith's sophomore series - and that of show-runner Stephen Moffat too.
Portents are frequently poor. High-level fan gossip suggested that Series Fnarg would be a disaster and it was brilliant. But there were lots more unpleasant rumours this time around about the allegedly shambolic production office; Moffat distracted by his other series and various production commitments; an unloved and over-promoted production staff; the BBC at odds with the show's show-runner; and a fickle press that's apparently forgotten its love affair with out series.
Ratings do seem to be down this series too. Oh there's timeshifting and there's definitely poor scheduling but there does seem to be a drop-off in the public's interest in the show. All of a sudden 'do you wanna come with me?' seems like a long time ago. So it's a good time to take stock.
In the classic 'what was good; what was bad?' format of Caves and Twins I've turned my eye stalk on the whole series to figure out which stories worked and which didn't.
Caves
The Doctor's Wife - An all-time classic. Funny, scary, weird. And a Timelord called The Corsair. A manifesto for how NuWho can succeed.
Deaths: Rory
A Good Man Goes To War
A classic NuWho clusterfuck but on reflection I liked all of the elements and I loved the last 15 minutes. Matt Smith, especially, was fantastic.
The Girl Who Waited
A genuine hard sci-fi set-up that led into one of the best-observed emotional stories of the new run. Brilliant work from the regulars and another episode that could really show how Doctor Who can work shorn of its tiresome story arc trappings.
Deaths: Amy
Twins
The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon - I just didn't care, probably because anyone who had any sense knew that the stand-out scene, and the peg the whole thing hung from, was a lie from the outset.
Deaths: The Doctor, Rory, Amy
Curse of the Black Spot - Classic NuWho shit episode. Not because of the odd swerve, which didn't work anyway, but because of how utterly trite and dull the whole thing was.
Deaths: Rory
The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - There was a lot on these episodes I liked but I didn't really feel it had the courage of its convictions. The Doctor doppelganger didn't really go anywhere or make much sense; the moral ramifications of the gangers were wrapped up in noble self-sacrifices and/or a big explosion and I didn't feel any of the characters were well-drawn.
Deaths: Amy
Let's Kill Hitler - Impossible to like something so in love with itself. A sprawling mess that tried the patience and had another death swerve.
Deaths: The Doctor
Night Terrors - Utterly awful. I hated this.
Deaths: Amy
The God Complex - I feel harsh putting this one here too as there were lots of bits that I liked but the ending was drivel and, given the promising set-up, it didn't deliver.
Closing Time - I've seen this twice and can recall virtually nothing
The Wedding of River Song - Carried the sins of the season as a whole on its shoulders and, as such, couldn't be rated as good. The whole season comes to a messy, shagged-out end in an episode that sparkles with lovely moments but ultimately collapses under the weight of how daft the whole season has been.
Deaths: The Doctor
Caves and Twins: The Rebel Flesh
Blake's 7, we thought upon seeing the trailer for The Rebel Flesh. No bad thing, but quite a shift in tone to previous weeks.
Would we see a further improvement over the excellent The Doctor's Wife or would be we be back to the shaky start we saw in the first three episodes? Plus that bloke from Life On Mars was back, so was it as bad as Fear Her or was it, well, better than Fear Her?
Caves
Gangers - good make-up and quite frightening when they were normal, scared people who might just do something horrible to you.
Location - It's great to see Doctor Who actually venture into the 'anytime, anywhere' format from time to time and show a castle on an island with pink sky and Dusty Springfield.
Doc 11/Smith - Given some rather more interesting stuff to do this week; the emerging Ganger Doctor was really quite creepy. Let's hope something interesting develops here. I really do rate Smith but he's seemed a little lost in the equation of late; I hope the second part puts the Doctor right at the centre of things. And do you really have to go back Arc of Infinity (hello Patrick!) before you find a creepy Doctor doppelganger?
TARDIS scene - These were inevitably awful back n the day, in fact you probably have to go back to something like Robots of Death for a TARDIS scene that stands up on its own and is worth including in the classic series. This was hardly essential, but quite nice. Having said that, I don't know how many times we can watch the Doctor staring at the scanner and frowning in coming weeks.
Twins
Cast - I thought most of the guest cast were actually quite poor, from the by-the-numbers no-nonsense female boss to the whiney one to the Northern bloke.
CGI - Doctor Who rarely does CGI well, and we had one of the worst CGI monster examples ever in this one. Is there anything more boring than a CGI monster?
Pacing - Up until the credits rolled I thought it was a one-parter. I've rarely felt the new series has got to grips that well with two-parters, this was another example. Which leads me to...
Two-parters - Do they work that well? The Silurian one last year was a total wash-out; the Silence two-parter this year just didn't make any impact one me at all; those awful Helen Raynor stories; the RTD-gasms arguably just about get away with it, in terms of the form, because there's so much going on but apart from Mofatt's own from Series one, three and - perhaps - four I can't think of too many that are highly regarded.
All told I found this enjoyable enough, but it was only the cliffhanger that brought me back into it. Moffatt's series last year gave a very good impression of understanding what and Who, ahem, it was. This year it feels all over the shop in terms of tone and style and I can't really work out what's going wrong.
Wrong may not be the right word to use here, but I've mainly watched this series with an air of mild bemusement. Difficult second album? Too much time spread between two show? Who knows, but I'm hoping for a more even tone and quality from the second part of the season.
• Caves and Twins? What are you dribbling on about?
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