Doctor Who cares

So I’ve not been too impressed with the latest Doctor Who series. None of the episodes have been great and a great many have been actively bad with shoddy characterisation and nonsensical plots. Throughout the series there have been the usual hints at thr big mystery waiting in the season final, with the irritating Missy popping up at the end of various episodes to vex recently killed extras. I wasn’t that confident that it would all add in the end and the trailer, which already gave away that the Cybermen would be involved, didn’t help. Giving away the big reveal like that took away much of the tension in the episode.

Now my pet theory had been that Missy somehow was the spirit of the TARDIS, revealed to a) exist and b) be female a few series ago, but this fortunately turned out to be wrong. Instead she’s a gender changed master, not even another Time Lord like the Rani, for a revival of that camp flirting between the Doctor and the Master that we saw in his previous appearance as well. There really are no new ideas in NuWho.

And then there was the plot catalyst that set the whole story in motion, as Clara’s boyfriend Danny Pink gets killed off screen in a car accident, she turns eevil and threatens the Doctor with losing the TARDIS if he doesn’t find a way to bring him back. Danny meanwhile finds himself in the Afterlife being interviewed by Chris Addison in which a Mysterious and Awful Secret from his Soldiering Past is revealed. So that’s a fridging, a Danger Room scenario and a troubled past in one sequence, which is impressive with its cliche denseness.

Things did get better as details of this afterlife and its implications became known, reminding me somewhat of Iain M. Bank’s Surface Detail, but this seems to get lost once Missy starts chewing the scenery, the Cybermen are revealed and all this afterlife business turns out to be a way to get recruits for their army: the dead outnumber the living.

It does feel as if two different stories have been smashed together, to the detriment of both. Why go through this whole charade if the whole intention is just to reprogram dead people as Cybermen? Why go for a tedious Cybermen invasion (again) if you have the whole idea of an artificial afterlife to play with?

As for the revelation that Missy is the Master, this both seems about the least interesting thing to be done with her and a deliberate snub of those who had been wanting a female Doctor for this series. I can’t even find it halfway progressive, as some seem to find it.

So yeah, of course I’ll be watching the second part to see if there’s any improvement, but I’m not hopeful.

1 Comment

  • Barry Freed

    November 4, 2014 at 4:51 pm

    I was rather disappointed for it to be the Master as well, although the added knowledge that Time Lords can change gender with new regenerations was certainly welcome news and bodes well for the series in the future (once Moffat moves on of course, I don’t trust him with a female Doctor, he’s terrible with women).

    I’m still not sure why Moffat was such a great writer under RTD and such utter crap as a showrunner. I really disliked Matt Smiths’ Doctor. I read somewhere that Moffat’s ambition was to turn it back into a kids show and it certainly seems like he’s succeeded in that. To the detriment of the (was I just going to type the word “franchise” – yes, I was – please, shoot me now) series.

    It may be a crap finale but I do think it was one of the better episodes of a fairly crap season. Capaldi’s talents are wasted.

    There really are no new ideas in NuWho.

    I really like this line. It seems that the series is suffering from the burden of its past. Isn’t this a common problem with stuff that’s heavily invested in by fandom? I mean I really like when something is dredged up from the deep past of Doctor Who and used again and Moffat does know how to give us new (like the Weeping Angels) but lately all his new seems to be variations on a tired theme.

    Anyway, hopefully part 2 will be different and maybe Capaldi needs another season to hit his stride. A new direction, maybe a new companion, would help greatly here.

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