Doctor Who Thoughts
Thoughts on the Doctor Who finale. Spoilers, obviously.
The good:
Okay. First of all, I found the episode itself, as an episode, VERY enjoyable. I really dug the concept and aesthetics of a world where all of history is happening at once -- the image of the train going into the Area 51 pyramid was just incredible and so fun. I loved alt!Amy who remembers most of the real world and is a badass, I actually enjoyed Churchill this time. The flashback structure worked for me, the action, while not as scary as the originally use of the silence, was still good, I was biting my nails at the end, etc, etc. It was a fun, super enjoyable hour of television.
And character wise? I loved almost all of it. The Doctor and River's marriage was perfect -- I really great combo of real emotion and necessity and spur of the moment-ness, as it should be for those two. Both Rory being a badass and Amy coming back to save him made me squee. Amy killing Eyepatch Lady was one of my favorite moments from her, ever (because I like my characters really morally grey, clearly. I still would have liked to see her have more feelings about losing Melody earlier in the series, but it was nice to FINALLY see proof that it did hurt her, deeply, and to get some resolution on her.
And I ADORED family Pond at the end. Especially River and Amy's talk -- their awkward attempt to form some kind of mother-daughter bond in the twisty time-whimy craziness that is their relationship. I liked Amy being upset at herself for killing Eyepatch Lady.
I also really liked that the Doctor was reminded in this episode that while some of the Universe fears him, many, many others love him and would do anything for him. I nice reverse parallel to A Good Man Goes to War.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. However...
The not so good
What I've always loved about Moffat is that he is good at really clever puzzle narratives that have a lot of moving pieces that all come together in the end in a way that is satisfying (and makes sense, even if you have to squint a LITTLE because time travel is crazy). Blink is a great micro example of this, and I think all of Season 5 is a great example of him doing it on the large scale.
But this season didn't work for me on that level. This episode answered some questions, sure, but they didn't feel like the inevitable conclusion of what came before. I wish the Tesselator had been introduced in the first half of the series if they were going to be this important. I still don't understand how this ties into the plot from Season 5 -- was it either The Silence (aliens) or The Silence (religion) who caused the Tardis to explode? If so, WHY!? They seem to want to SAVE the universe, and I think exploding the Tardis and hoping that eventually ends up with the Doctor dead is... a lot less sensical than their plan this season. And either way, it wasn't really made explicit.
The Bad:
The ultimate question is "Doctor who?" No. No. Not only is that cheesy as hell, but it makes the Doctor cosmically important in a way I don't like at ALL.
The only way I can see this working for me is if "ultimate question" is a misinterpretation of "really important this one time" and the reason his name is important is NOT because his identity matters, but because his actual NAME matters. Like, if The Master makes a doomsday device that has The Doctor's name as a password (because he so would), but then some other villain gets his hands on it and needs the name. Something like that.
The Doctor is the Doctor. Doctor WHO should not matter. [/rant]
But still, overall, very nice episode!
The good:
Okay. First of all, I found the episode itself, as an episode, VERY enjoyable. I really dug the concept and aesthetics of a world where all of history is happening at once -- the image of the train going into the Area 51 pyramid was just incredible and so fun. I loved alt!Amy who remembers most of the real world and is a badass, I actually enjoyed Churchill this time. The flashback structure worked for me, the action, while not as scary as the originally use of the silence, was still good, I was biting my nails at the end, etc, etc. It was a fun, super enjoyable hour of television.
And character wise? I loved almost all of it. The Doctor and River's marriage was perfect -- I really great combo of real emotion and necessity and spur of the moment-ness, as it should be for those two. Both Rory being a badass and Amy coming back to save him made me squee. Amy killing Eyepatch Lady was one of my favorite moments from her, ever (because I like my characters really morally grey, clearly. I still would have liked to see her have more feelings about losing Melody earlier in the series, but it was nice to FINALLY see proof that it did hurt her, deeply, and to get some resolution on her.
And I ADORED family Pond at the end. Especially River and Amy's talk -- their awkward attempt to form some kind of mother-daughter bond in the twisty time-whimy craziness that is their relationship. I liked Amy being upset at herself for killing Eyepatch Lady.
I also really liked that the Doctor was reminded in this episode that while some of the Universe fears him, many, many others love him and would do anything for him. I nice reverse parallel to A Good Man Goes to War.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. However...
The not so good
What I've always loved about Moffat is that he is good at really clever puzzle narratives that have a lot of moving pieces that all come together in the end in a way that is satisfying (and makes sense, even if you have to squint a LITTLE because time travel is crazy). Blink is a great micro example of this, and I think all of Season 5 is a great example of him doing it on the large scale.
But this season didn't work for me on that level. This episode answered some questions, sure, but they didn't feel like the inevitable conclusion of what came before. I wish the Tesselator had been introduced in the first half of the series if they were going to be this important. I still don't understand how this ties into the plot from Season 5 -- was it either The Silence (aliens) or The Silence (religion) who caused the Tardis to explode? If so, WHY!? They seem to want to SAVE the universe, and I think exploding the Tardis and hoping that eventually ends up with the Doctor dead is... a lot less sensical than their plan this season. And either way, it wasn't really made explicit.
The Bad:
The ultimate question is "Doctor who?" No. No. Not only is that cheesy as hell, but it makes the Doctor cosmically important in a way I don't like at ALL.
The only way I can see this working for me is if "ultimate question" is a misinterpretation of "really important this one time" and the reason his name is important is NOT because his identity matters, but because his actual NAME matters. Like, if The Master makes a doomsday device that has The Doctor's name as a password (because he so would), but then some other villain gets his hands on it and needs the name. Something like that.
The Doctor is the Doctor. Doctor WHO should not matter. [/rant]
But still, overall, very nice episode!