The grand finale. The end of the season, which really reflected the season as a whole; a bit of a mess.

We join the Doctor wearing Roman togs, in a very strange world, an alternate reality, surrounded by odd things from bygone eras, Pterodactyls flying around, hot air balloons (makes a change from zeppelins I suppose), and Winston Churchill in power. So, obviously something has gone wrong with time and space. Again. Oh yes, again. In fact, when is this not happening?

Before we can bat an eyelid we’re then zooming back in time to somewhere after the events of Closing Time (good, because I don’t think I could have handled us going anywhere ‘during’ the events of that episode again) and following, through the Doctor’s narration, another speeded up and very rushed execution of storytelling as to why we started the episode in this strange land. We see the Doctor running around wearing his Stetson and frantically trying to find out a way to prevent his own execution. He has a chat with the Tesselecta crew again, the fat blue man Dorian from A Good Man Goes To War who is now just a fat blue head in a box (don’t ask) and very soon, very quickly, we learn that the Doctor escapes his fate by River Song refusing to shoot him while in the space suit anyway. So why she shot him in the first instance is a mystery, because now she seems quite confident that time can be re-written and has found a way to avoid killing him. So this confusing revelation now creates a paradox of sorts, as the Doctor was always supposed to die, and hence creates this bizarre reality whereby time stands still and all of history exists at the same time.  Following? Good, because many are not, but Doctor Who really wants you to understand what’s going on so you’ll be back for the next series, even if by now you’ve lost all hope. Hold on though, because something hopeful is coming.

Continue reading →

Gareth Roberts gives us Closing Time, and it felt more like Closing Time on Doctor Who’s credibility. The penultimate episode leading into the series finale was more like watching 45 minutes of a comedy double act with Smith and Corden.

Early on, as soon as the Doctor begins working in a toy shop and shoving Yappy the toy dog in Corden’s face, I knew something wasn’t quite right. We quickly flash from scene to scene in what seems like a whirlwind of nonsensical goofy one-liners, with Smith and Corden bouncing off each other like Abbot and Costello on acid. We’re informed early on by the Doctor that he is in his last days as he edges closer toward his destiny on the beach and his meeting of death with the mysterious astronaut, yet here he’s acting not unlike a child on a severe sugar overdose. Perhaps he’s taken some kind of drug, because I can think of no other explanation as to why someone—anyone—would act in such a manner whilst on their way to meet their maker. It’d be like a prisoner on Death Row heading toward the electric chair with the glee of someone who’s just won millions on the lottery.

Continue reading →

After the series break we return to Doctor Who series 6B in rip roaring fashion. There’s no let-up in the action; the story telling in the first five minutes alone is enough to convince us that that there’s energy to be found here, a story to tell, and that Moffat doesn’t want to waste any time telling it. Except it doesn’t really work.

The last time I experienced storytelling at this pace and energy was in Back to the Future Part II. I loved that movie. But that was a movie, with almost two hours to tell its story. This is Doctor Who, a programme I watched in my youth that used to take four to six twenty-five minute episodes to get into a nice build-up of mystery, character development, and intrigue to get to the point. Instead we get a cinematic car chase through a corn field, the Doctor stepping out of the TARDIS and explaining something about not being able to find baby Melody, something about crop circles and “Doctor” written in it, then we’re treated to a flashy Hollywood-esque shot of a sports car skidding to a halt narrowly missing the TARDIS, someone called Mels stepping out an waving a gun around. “Let’s kill Hitler,” she tells us. Okay. And after the credits roll, a further brisk flashback of twenty something years of Mels’ life explained to us in a matter of minutes. Continue reading →