The Cynic's Doctor Who: Season 32 Recap
...Recap time, everybody. *waves miniscule flag*
As with last year, marks out of ten. Assuming I can bring myself to award a mark to half these dismal episodes.
The Impossible Astronaut: A deeply baffling yet uninteresting sequence of events causes the 'plot' to be delayed from starting until about halfway through the episode. The title character acts like an immature prat, while his two companions are left to fill in specific roles in the narrative (Rory to point out the blindingly obvious, Amy to get angry at things) without developing their characters at all. River Song gets cloned, only something goes wrong and her clone comes out as a gay American. There's something about Nixon, and something about the Apollo Moon landings, but these things are far too interesting to dwell on when there's a small girl in a spacesuit that the President of the United States for some reason considers his top priority. The Silence are incredibly weak villains, being neither scary nor creative, and indeed looking completely ridiculous. All in all, more lacklustre and draining than truly terrible. 2/10
The Day of the Moon: The title means nothing, as once again, the historic Apollo missions are treated as an irrelevance. For the second week in a row, the audience is treated with utter contempt and shoved into an unexplained situation in media res. The Silence's plan is revealed to be nothing more than the boring "enslave mankind" routine, something which makes absolutely no sense by the end of the series, but it doesn't matter, as they were such crap villains anyway. The entire episode is a sequence of random events that pretty much all equates to running around and shooting at things, which ends with the Doctor endorsing genocide. About the kindest thing there is to say about this mess is that Matt Smith looks good with a beard. Actually, no, the kindest thing to say about it is that it's totally forgettable. 2/10
The Curse of the Black Spot: The first episode of the season that I can actually remember anything about is a mediocre tale that never really gets off the ground, choosing instead to squat in a haze of idiotic cliche, illogical characterisation and borderline racism. The "yohohoing" nature of the script doesn't sit right with the more pleasingly naturalistic set design and atmosphere, and Hugh Bonneville and Arthur Darvill are the only ones to escape with their dignity intact, although Avery's son is at least likeable. The relationship between father and child is presented as multi-faceted and treated with sensitivity, not for the last time in this season. Pretty much every aspect of the alien has been done many times before and many times better. Rory almost dying again pretty much robbed the conclusion of any sense of seriousness or gravitas it might have built up, which is lucky, as the final fate of the crew is one of the cheesiest things ever put to television. 5.5/10
The Doctor's Wife: Let's face it, there's not a whole lot that could be done with this, one of the silliest premises in television history, but I expected them to at least try. Suranne Jones' phoned-in performance is forgivable: presented with a part like that, most actors would give up in disgust. However, the Doctor is cringeworthily incompetent for the fifth episode in a row, while Amy and Rory are reduced to wandering around in the background, as, not for the last time, the guest writer realises that he doesn't have a clue who these people are supposed to be any more. The guest cast look interesting, but are barely used, while House goes unexplained. The script itself is weak: Gaiman commits the Lungbarrow mistake of making the Doctor's past explicit rather than implied, and seems to think that the Doctor calls the TARDIS "sexy" regularly, something which simply isn't true, and which should have been excised if the script editor had been paying the slightest attention. The cobbled together makeshift TARDIS is brilliant; having 'our' TARDIS be nothing but corridors and the nonsensically reappearing Tennant-era console room is not. A bad idea that would never have been given the go-ahead if a different writer had suggested it. 3.5/10
The Rebel Flesh: Decent, intriguing concepts, an atmospheric location, and a central actor playing it straight for the first time in ages. There's a palpable sense of unease that suggests development into all-out horror in the second part. Indeed, the limitations of this episode are mainly restricted to the fact that this is only Part One of the most traditionally structured Who story in a long time. Rory actually gets quite a lot to do, but it's of a kind that never really meshes with what his character has already gone through. The guest stars are a charmless lot, impossible to sympathise with, either in their human forms or in their Gooey-gluey Flesh forms. Although the cliffhanger can be seen a mile off, this episode does a great job of setting up a storyline and situation and promising much more... 7/10
The Almost People: ...which doesn't really materialise in Part Two. Ganger!Jenny and Ganger!Cleaves keep swapping personalities (one being the leader and one being the naysayer), a highly disconcerting and obvious fact that drags the whole story down. The arguments over personhood and who the "real" people are make for interesting viewing, and Ganger!Doctor is a more engrossing character than the genuine article, but Jenny turning into a ridiculous blob of CGI who tries to kill everyone damages whatever moral the episode was trying to make. Amy and Rory never really resolve their relationship issues, which didn't really come from anywhere in the first place either. The ending rapidly degrades into people running up and down corridors, getting picked off one by one in a desperate bid to end the episode with the intended body count. Ultimately, though, it's a decent enough action story, even if the philosophy never reaches anything like its full potential, until we get to the lead-in to the mid-season finale, which revealed that the TARDIS landing there was all part of the Doctor's plan, implying that he tried to save the crew's lives not out of the goodness of his heart, but because of his own machinations. And then he casually murders Ganger!Amy with his Sonic Screwdriver of Death, flying in the face of every point the story was trying to make. 6/10
A Good Man Goes To War: Pointless, pointless, pointless. If an episode begins and ends with the main characters facing exactly the same problems and trials (and, indeed, has the main villain pointing out that she used the same trick twice), then, my friends, the episode is pointless. Add to this a collection of deeply unlikeable guest stars, random sadism on the part of the heroes, cartoon villains that never get explained, plot "twists" that can be seen a mile off and don't actually change anything within the story, and, of all things, lightsabres, and an unnecessary episode just turns into a total mess, and just a downright horrible way to spend 45 minutes. So little happens in this episode that it's almost impossible to analyse, although I will point out that random lesbian Silurian is a deeply loathsome and irritating character who's blatantly only there to tie together about three different fetishes in the most offensive way possible. Pointless, and as a matter of principle, I'm not going to give it a score. What'd be the point?/10
Let's Kill Hitler: I've already made my feelings on this perfectly clear, and I don't want to dwell on it any longer than I have to. Moffat clearly has no regard for History, for the laws of narrative, for characterisation, for creating any real sense of drama, for logic, and, it seems, for women. Hitler genuinely is the most likeable character in the entire episode, a fact which honestly almost makes me cry. Aside from the usual couple of good performances from Darvill and Smith, completely horrible. 1/10
Night Terrors: A complete about- turn in quality sees an episode that brings together everything of potential in the Moffat era and makes it work. A brilliant guest cast, a fantastic central performance, and an eerie, almost deliberately non period-specific atmosphere also make for a thrillingly dark ride through nightmare territory. Murray Gold's music is just as horrible as always, but it stands out even more when the script is actually of quality. Amy and Rory have nothing to do and nothing to say, which is a shame, as this should have been the episode when the hints towards their departure should have started proper. Add to this moments of inspired surreality, and you get an episode which should be the template for the series as a whole. 9/10
The Girl Who Waited: Very interesting concepts, skillfully played, but with the characters perhaps not juggled well enough within the episode. Karen Gillan's best performance to date by far dominates proceedings, but Arthur Darvill also gets to really shine. However, even though it comes close, it still doesn't feel like we're watching a married couple, their relationship simply not having developed anywhere near enough over the past two years. The set design veers wildly between the bland and the eccentric, but the handbots are pleasantly simple. The Doctor's role in the story is an engrossing one and a brilliant use of the character's darker side, but, as I've said before, the ending leaves much to be desired, with Rory and Amy's conversation robbing the Doctor's actions of most of their power. Most glaringly, the plot device of having the Doctor abandon Amy for a substantial portion of her life is both wall-bangingly familiar and cruel to the point of sadism in its familiarity. 8/10
The God Complex: A good, fairly strong episode, which in the context of this season practically feels like a classic. Once again, a neat concept, but one that is never really fully explored. The glimpses of the "fears" in each of the rooms are fascinating, but never developed, while we never see what the Doctor's greatest fear is at all, annoyingly. Characterisation is also fairly sketchy; it's insulting to imply that Rory and Amy have no faith in each other, while Rory's reasons for wanting to leave the Doctor are never elaborated upon. The nature of the alien creature is rushed over unbelievably fast, while they don't even try to explain why an alien prison looks like a hotel. However, the guest cast is fairly decent, and the spooky atmosphere is well maintained. The resolution, in which the episode pretty much goes out to a fancy dress party dressed as Curse of Fenric, is poor, although very well directed. Then comes the ending, in which Amy and Rory are dumped in a strange house for no reason, an event so bizarre and out of the blue that it defies analysis. All in all, though, it's a good chance to see the Doctor fail to save the day, and in context would have made much more had it been placed earlier in the series. 6.5/10
Closing Time: Much of the publicity for this episode focused on the chemistry between Matt Smith and James Corden, and indeed that's the main reason it's hard to hate this episode, despite everything clearly wrong with it. The badly misjudged baby comedy, gay jokes, and humiliation of the Cybermen all conspire to drag this episode under, yet Smith and Corden's double act (this time sharing the funny man and straight man roles between them, which works much better than in The Lodger) very nearly convinces the audience that they're watching something worthwhile. The Doctor's random wangst over how his companions all die seems forced into the script, mainly because it is, and is left utterly unresolved by the end of the episode. Gareth Roberts seems to want the "Craig episodes" to be great parables promoting the goodness of human nature, and I can respect that, but the defeat of the Cybermen just really has no place in Doctor Who. Still, the Doctor's interactions with present day Earth were much better- judged this time. 5.5/10
The Wedding of River Song: Everything fails to come together in the most spectacular way possible. As with last year's The Big Bang, the episode ends with a massive cop-out that makes absolutely no sense, only revealed in the closing two minutes. The regulars are generally on form (as with The Girl Who Waited, Gillan clearly finds it easier to get to grips with an alternate version of Amy, and who can blame her?), while the rest of the cast are a load of people we've seen before who we don't need to care about since it doesn't matter whether they die in this reality or not. Again, it's Moffat's standard method of throwing a sequence of unconnected events at the screen and hoping it all turns into an episode somehow; we get another in Media res opening, followed by a vague handwave over how all this came about. Churchill and Amy almost remembering the Doctor is neat, but then Rory doesn't remember him at all, while the rest of the universe remembers him better than ever, and... oh, none of it makes the blindest bit of sense. And then it's revealed that throughout the entire episode the Doctor was Edd the Robot from Let's Kill Hitler, proving that Moffat mistakenly believes that if you introduce a deus ex machina five weeks early, it stops being a deus ex machina. Well, he's wrong of course, but it gets worse within the context of the episode, with the Doctor shown to do numerous things that it's impossible for the robot to have done, even if it can grow a motorbike out of its crotch. Amy and Rory get no resolution at all, but what can you expect, given that, for the majority of the episode, we're dealing with versions of them from right back at the beginning of the series. Wrap this all up with a ham-fisted attempt to set up the 50th Anniversary storyline, while not resolving anything about the current one, and the episode just gets worse the more you think about it. 2.5/10
Right. So, that's an average of... oh. Oh dear. just under 4.9/10. Oops. Still, it's not as if I didn't see that coming. Moffat, you fail. On the strength of Night Terrors, I suggest giving Mark Gatiss a go as head writer, with help from Simon Nye. Just... someone tell them to stop with the story arcs and the big finales. In seven years, not one story arc has actually worked. Just please, please concentrate on telling good stories. I know some of you are still capable of that. Moffat's pretty much murdered Doctor Who as it was, but there might be a salvageable show in there somewhere.
Apologies for this not being particularly funny, I've been ill all week. I really can't be bothered to do a proper essay on this series, but I will at some point post some closing thoughts on why this series didn't work. Spoilers: it's mostly because of that bloody unnecessary mid-season break.
As with last year, marks out of ten. Assuming I can bring myself to award a mark to half these dismal episodes.
The Impossible Astronaut: A deeply baffling yet uninteresting sequence of events causes the 'plot' to be delayed from starting until about halfway through the episode. The title character acts like an immature prat, while his two companions are left to fill in specific roles in the narrative (Rory to point out the blindingly obvious, Amy to get angry at things) without developing their characters at all. River Song gets cloned, only something goes wrong and her clone comes out as a gay American. There's something about Nixon, and something about the Apollo Moon landings, but these things are far too interesting to dwell on when there's a small girl in a spacesuit that the President of the United States for some reason considers his top priority. The Silence are incredibly weak villains, being neither scary nor creative, and indeed looking completely ridiculous. All in all, more lacklustre and draining than truly terrible. 2/10
The Day of the Moon: The title means nothing, as once again, the historic Apollo missions are treated as an irrelevance. For the second week in a row, the audience is treated with utter contempt and shoved into an unexplained situation in media res. The Silence's plan is revealed to be nothing more than the boring "enslave mankind" routine, something which makes absolutely no sense by the end of the series, but it doesn't matter, as they were such crap villains anyway. The entire episode is a sequence of random events that pretty much all equates to running around and shooting at things, which ends with the Doctor endorsing genocide. About the kindest thing there is to say about this mess is that Matt Smith looks good with a beard. Actually, no, the kindest thing to say about it is that it's totally forgettable. 2/10
The Curse of the Black Spot: The first episode of the season that I can actually remember anything about is a mediocre tale that never really gets off the ground, choosing instead to squat in a haze of idiotic cliche, illogical characterisation and borderline racism. The "yohohoing" nature of the script doesn't sit right with the more pleasingly naturalistic set design and atmosphere, and Hugh Bonneville and Arthur Darvill are the only ones to escape with their dignity intact, although Avery's son is at least likeable. The relationship between father and child is presented as multi-faceted and treated with sensitivity, not for the last time in this season. Pretty much every aspect of the alien has been done many times before and many times better. Rory almost dying again pretty much robbed the conclusion of any sense of seriousness or gravitas it might have built up, which is lucky, as the final fate of the crew is one of the cheesiest things ever put to television. 5.5/10
The Doctor's Wife: Let's face it, there's not a whole lot that could be done with this, one of the silliest premises in television history, but I expected them to at least try. Suranne Jones' phoned-in performance is forgivable: presented with a part like that, most actors would give up in disgust. However, the Doctor is cringeworthily incompetent for the fifth episode in a row, while Amy and Rory are reduced to wandering around in the background, as, not for the last time, the guest writer realises that he doesn't have a clue who these people are supposed to be any more. The guest cast look interesting, but are barely used, while House goes unexplained. The script itself is weak: Gaiman commits the Lungbarrow mistake of making the Doctor's past explicit rather than implied, and seems to think that the Doctor calls the TARDIS "sexy" regularly, something which simply isn't true, and which should have been excised if the script editor had been paying the slightest attention. The cobbled together makeshift TARDIS is brilliant; having 'our' TARDIS be nothing but corridors and the nonsensically reappearing Tennant-era console room is not. A bad idea that would never have been given the go-ahead if a different writer had suggested it. 3.5/10
The Rebel Flesh: Decent, intriguing concepts, an atmospheric location, and a central actor playing it straight for the first time in ages. There's a palpable sense of unease that suggests development into all-out horror in the second part. Indeed, the limitations of this episode are mainly restricted to the fact that this is only Part One of the most traditionally structured Who story in a long time. Rory actually gets quite a lot to do, but it's of a kind that never really meshes with what his character has already gone through. The guest stars are a charmless lot, impossible to sympathise with, either in their human forms or in their Gooey-gluey Flesh forms. Although the cliffhanger can be seen a mile off, this episode does a great job of setting up a storyline and situation and promising much more... 7/10
The Almost People: ...which doesn't really materialise in Part Two. Ganger!Jenny and Ganger!Cleaves keep swapping personalities (one being the leader and one being the naysayer), a highly disconcerting and obvious fact that drags the whole story down. The arguments over personhood and who the "real" people are make for interesting viewing, and Ganger!Doctor is a more engrossing character than the genuine article, but Jenny turning into a ridiculous blob of CGI who tries to kill everyone damages whatever moral the episode was trying to make. Amy and Rory never really resolve their relationship issues, which didn't really come from anywhere in the first place either. The ending rapidly degrades into people running up and down corridors, getting picked off one by one in a desperate bid to end the episode with the intended body count. Ultimately, though, it's a decent enough action story, even if the philosophy never reaches anything like its full potential, until we get to the lead-in to the mid-season finale, which revealed that the TARDIS landing there was all part of the Doctor's plan, implying that he tried to save the crew's lives not out of the goodness of his heart, but because of his own machinations. And then he casually murders Ganger!Amy with his Sonic Screwdriver of Death, flying in the face of every point the story was trying to make. 6/10
A Good Man Goes To War: Pointless, pointless, pointless. If an episode begins and ends with the main characters facing exactly the same problems and trials (and, indeed, has the main villain pointing out that she used the same trick twice), then, my friends, the episode is pointless. Add to this a collection of deeply unlikeable guest stars, random sadism on the part of the heroes, cartoon villains that never get explained, plot "twists" that can be seen a mile off and don't actually change anything within the story, and, of all things, lightsabres, and an unnecessary episode just turns into a total mess, and just a downright horrible way to spend 45 minutes. So little happens in this episode that it's almost impossible to analyse, although I will point out that random lesbian Silurian is a deeply loathsome and irritating character who's blatantly only there to tie together about three different fetishes in the most offensive way possible. Pointless, and as a matter of principle, I'm not going to give it a score. What'd be the point?/10
Let's Kill Hitler: I've already made my feelings on this perfectly clear, and I don't want to dwell on it any longer than I have to. Moffat clearly has no regard for History, for the laws of narrative, for characterisation, for creating any real sense of drama, for logic, and, it seems, for women. Hitler genuinely is the most likeable character in the entire episode, a fact which honestly almost makes me cry. Aside from the usual couple of good performances from Darvill and Smith, completely horrible. 1/10
Night Terrors: A complete about- turn in quality sees an episode that brings together everything of potential in the Moffat era and makes it work. A brilliant guest cast, a fantastic central performance, and an eerie, almost deliberately non period-specific atmosphere also make for a thrillingly dark ride through nightmare territory. Murray Gold's music is just as horrible as always, but it stands out even more when the script is actually of quality. Amy and Rory have nothing to do and nothing to say, which is a shame, as this should have been the episode when the hints towards their departure should have started proper. Add to this moments of inspired surreality, and you get an episode which should be the template for the series as a whole. 9/10
The Girl Who Waited: Very interesting concepts, skillfully played, but with the characters perhaps not juggled well enough within the episode. Karen Gillan's best performance to date by far dominates proceedings, but Arthur Darvill also gets to really shine. However, even though it comes close, it still doesn't feel like we're watching a married couple, their relationship simply not having developed anywhere near enough over the past two years. The set design veers wildly between the bland and the eccentric, but the handbots are pleasantly simple. The Doctor's role in the story is an engrossing one and a brilliant use of the character's darker side, but, as I've said before, the ending leaves much to be desired, with Rory and Amy's conversation robbing the Doctor's actions of most of their power. Most glaringly, the plot device of having the Doctor abandon Amy for a substantial portion of her life is both wall-bangingly familiar and cruel to the point of sadism in its familiarity. 8/10
The God Complex: A good, fairly strong episode, which in the context of this season practically feels like a classic. Once again, a neat concept, but one that is never really fully explored. The glimpses of the "fears" in each of the rooms are fascinating, but never developed, while we never see what the Doctor's greatest fear is at all, annoyingly. Characterisation is also fairly sketchy; it's insulting to imply that Rory and Amy have no faith in each other, while Rory's reasons for wanting to leave the Doctor are never elaborated upon. The nature of the alien creature is rushed over unbelievably fast, while they don't even try to explain why an alien prison looks like a hotel. However, the guest cast is fairly decent, and the spooky atmosphere is well maintained. The resolution, in which the episode pretty much goes out to a fancy dress party dressed as Curse of Fenric, is poor, although very well directed. Then comes the ending, in which Amy and Rory are dumped in a strange house for no reason, an event so bizarre and out of the blue that it defies analysis. All in all, though, it's a good chance to see the Doctor fail to save the day, and in context would have made much more had it been placed earlier in the series. 6.5/10
Closing Time: Much of the publicity for this episode focused on the chemistry between Matt Smith and James Corden, and indeed that's the main reason it's hard to hate this episode, despite everything clearly wrong with it. The badly misjudged baby comedy, gay jokes, and humiliation of the Cybermen all conspire to drag this episode under, yet Smith and Corden's double act (this time sharing the funny man and straight man roles between them, which works much better than in The Lodger) very nearly convinces the audience that they're watching something worthwhile. The Doctor's random wangst over how his companions all die seems forced into the script, mainly because it is, and is left utterly unresolved by the end of the episode. Gareth Roberts seems to want the "Craig episodes" to be great parables promoting the goodness of human nature, and I can respect that, but the defeat of the Cybermen just really has no place in Doctor Who. Still, the Doctor's interactions with present day Earth were much better- judged this time. 5.5/10
The Wedding of River Song: Everything fails to come together in the most spectacular way possible. As with last year's The Big Bang, the episode ends with a massive cop-out that makes absolutely no sense, only revealed in the closing two minutes. The regulars are generally on form (as with The Girl Who Waited, Gillan clearly finds it easier to get to grips with an alternate version of Amy, and who can blame her?), while the rest of the cast are a load of people we've seen before who we don't need to care about since it doesn't matter whether they die in this reality or not. Again, it's Moffat's standard method of throwing a sequence of unconnected events at the screen and hoping it all turns into an episode somehow; we get another in Media res opening, followed by a vague handwave over how all this came about. Churchill and Amy almost remembering the Doctor is neat, but then Rory doesn't remember him at all, while the rest of the universe remembers him better than ever, and... oh, none of it makes the blindest bit of sense. And then it's revealed that throughout the entire episode the Doctor was Edd the Robot from Let's Kill Hitler, proving that Moffat mistakenly believes that if you introduce a deus ex machina five weeks early, it stops being a deus ex machina. Well, he's wrong of course, but it gets worse within the context of the episode, with the Doctor shown to do numerous things that it's impossible for the robot to have done, even if it can grow a motorbike out of its crotch. Amy and Rory get no resolution at all, but what can you expect, given that, for the majority of the episode, we're dealing with versions of them from right back at the beginning of the series. Wrap this all up with a ham-fisted attempt to set up the 50th Anniversary storyline, while not resolving anything about the current one, and the episode just gets worse the more you think about it. 2.5/10
Right. So, that's an average of... oh. Oh dear. just under 4.9/10. Oops. Still, it's not as if I didn't see that coming. Moffat, you fail. On the strength of Night Terrors, I suggest giving Mark Gatiss a go as head writer, with help from Simon Nye. Just... someone tell them to stop with the story arcs and the big finales. In seven years, not one story arc has actually worked. Just please, please concentrate on telling good stories. I know some of you are still capable of that. Moffat's pretty much murdered Doctor Who as it was, but there might be a salvageable show in there somewhere.
Apologies for this not being particularly funny, I've been ill all week. I really can't be bothered to do a proper essay on this series, but I will at some point post some closing thoughts on why this series didn't work. Spoilers: it's mostly because of that bloody unnecessary mid-season break.