Doctor Who Season 5 Review
ETA (March 2011): Over the past few months, I've changed my mind on quite a few things I wrote here. To sum up my current feelings: Moffat is trustworthy and I love S5 to pieces.
As a whole, there are ups and downs to this season. So this review is split into two sections, individual episode reactions and general reactions.
Part 1: Individual Episode Reactions
Ep. 1: Honestly, this is what made me want to watch Doctor Who. Bit cheesy, bit simple, but I love the epic showdown at the end.
Ep. 2: A take it or leave it episode, and a bit heavy-handed metaphor-wise. I like Liz 10, though.
Ep. 3: The Daleks are back… and multicolored. They aren’t near as frightening-looking as the previous ones. (And when the first new one spoke, I started laughing. Voice was just a bit too deep.) And why the hell didn’t Amy remember the planets in the sky/invasion of the Daleks/season 4 finale? If it’s because of the crack in her wall taking that memory, well, I’d like it more explicitly stated-- especially because the crack was closed when the Daleks invaded (1996 versus 2008).
Ep. 4: OMG scary. But I love the Weeping Angels. The bad thing: I figured out the “plot twist” the moment we had enough clues. I thought the Doctor was supposed to be smart. (This comes up later in the review.)
Ep. 5: The second part of this two-parter is worse. Dues ex machina used, and it wasn’t as tightly written as it should have been. Angels weren’t nearly as creepy.
Ep. 6: It had the potential to be an amazing episode. It was completely flat emotionally. (I want a fanfic version of the episode, with all the emotion put in.)
Ep. 7: If I never see this episode again, it will be too soon. It bothered me psychologically, and I don’t know why. (Also, that’s a dark Doctor? We’re talking about the Destroyer of Worlds here. Not something petty.)
Ep. 8: Another take it or leave it episode. The “science” is a bit more wobbly than usual.
Ep. 9: My second least-favorite episode. Science is even worse than in the first part. (So's the politics, even for DW.) And pretty much boring. Only the last five minutes are important.
Ep. 10: The monster of the week needed to be far better integrated, and if the “monster as a metaphor for depression” thing is true, the monster shouldn’t have died, but been severely injured so its return at the beginning of the episode (which was the end of Van Gogh’s life) made more sense. Ignoring the monster, it’s a wonderful episode.
Ep. 11: Apparently, it was a rewrite of a comic with the tenth Doctor. So it was a bit over the top for Eleven, but would have been a bit understated for Ten. Laugh out loud hilarious at parts, even with my embarrassment squick. The scruffy hair after the shower is adorable. I didn’t think I’d like the episode, but I do, even with the plot that ties into nothing and didn’t really make much sense to boot.
Ep. 12: I liked it, very much. I just have one, well two, well three, okay a bunch of, questions. Why the hell didn’t his enemies just kill the Doctor to prevent the explosion? Why did the Daleks make an alliance with anyone? Also, didn’t they try to destroy reality at the end of Season 4, so what’s the problem with reality going bye-bye now? Why does the TARDIS exploding cause the end of the universe, because that contradicts previous canon? (Also, with TARDISes being destroyed in the Time War, wouldn’t at least one of them have exploded? So what’s different about this one?) And why didn’t the Doctor figure out that with the approach of only his enemies that the prison was for him?
Ep. 13: Oh my god. I’m not sure I like the first part of the episode, but the last ten minutes are worth it. Love the fez. River facing down a Dalek is awesome. Amy being strong enough to basically rewrite the universe to bring back the Doctor-- fantastic. I am never going to think of the phrase “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” in the same way again. I understood the Doctor’s technobabble. But I’m not sure I understood the episode or the implications of it. (Strange thing is, I understood it first time I watched, but subsequent viewings have me more and more confused.)
Part Two: general criticisms and reactions
While there are plenty of parts I do like, this is going to be mostly focused on the negatives. Short form: I love Eleven. I don’t trust Moffat.
First, Moffat himself: He’s made it quite clear in interviews and the like that he wishes he could just ignore RTD’s era and start over with a clean slate. So he has Amy not remembering how season 4 ended. (Which was never explained and with her super-memory power makes me wonder if he’s subtly going to find a way in the next season to rewrite/remove the era from canon.) He has not-so-subtle digs at past episodes/companions/plotlines. And he doesn’t quite get how to write women. Fine-- I completely understand that he doesn’t like a more character-based Who, but prefers plot (aka classic Who). Just don’t act disrespectfully toward the previous showrunner.
Women: I’m ambivalent about Moffat’s ability to write women. It seems as if every unattached woman will end up with a guy at the end. There’s no room for not wanting children, not wanting to get married, or being attracted to the same sex. If there’s a motivation in a woman’s life, it somehow involves men. (Well, upon seeing the last episode, I’ll say that Amy twists this a little bit.) I know that many-- most-- women want to be married, have children, etc. but that isn’t a reason to ignore the other possibilities. And what is up with River? Sometimes, I think he can write women. Other times, I don’t.
Other minorities: I saw no non-straight people in Season 5 (though one of the minor characters in the first episode I read as gay, even though it’s implied he’s looking at heterosexual porn). The only black person to stand out was Liz 10, and she’s in the second episode with a bit part in Ep. 12. I know there are others, but they’re so much in the background as to be nonexistent. And that’s not a good thing. The multicultural aspects of RTD’s era is one of the things a lot of fans liked. And it’s been almost completely erased.
Nods to classic Who: there’s quite few, I think more than in RTD’s era. I like the nods to the past, even if I don’t catch or understand many of them.
Two-parters: unfortunately, all the two-parters in this season suffered from the same problem. The second episode is worse than the first. It may not be by much (Ep. 13) or could be by a noticeable amount (Ep. 5), but it’s there. (Eps. 8 and 9 were just bad. I honestly expected the second to be worse.)
Perception filters: Explicitly used at least twice, and implied use multiple times. The bad thing: it’s used as a way to explain why the Doctor didn’t notice some things that were somewhat obvious. If the episodes can’t be written as to make the Doctor look stupid, they need to be rewritten or replotted. There’s a difference between overlooking something (I could almost buy the Angels one specifically because they went in expecting to see statues, and they didn’t look closer because they saw what they expected to see.) and being oblivious because the plot calls for it.
The Doctor’s stupidity/lack of initiative: The Doctor isn’t stupid, and yet he’s written that way at times. Seriously, when the Doctor discovers when explosion that caused the Cracks to happen occurred, he should have gone investigating. That lack became even more obvious when he managed to pull debris out of one (which shouldn’t have been possible) and it’s a piece of the TARDIS, what does he do? Takes Amy jaunting around the universe to make up for losing Rory even though she can’t remember him. I truly cannot understand that. Or when Amy comes onto him, and he notices the clock jumped twelve hours (or the fact that it’s supposedly night when they’re there and yet it’s sunny outside), and he says he needs to fix her, he takes her to get Rory? What happened to the Time Lord who saves the world/universe on a regular basis, and seems to regard it as his mission in life?
Daleks: Four out of five season finales have them, and the other two (including the year of specials) have the Master. Could we please have a bit more imagination? (All right-- I give you that the Daleks seeming to be the “good” guys is more imaginative, but still. They’re a bit overused in season finales. At least it wasn’t a whole army this time.)
River Song: I think I may have liked her earlier and better if she clearly wasn’t Moffat trying too hard to force/want us to like her. Mostly, this is due to the fourth episode and her showing up the Doctor. She’s still arrogant in the other three, but she’s also more human. It’s almost as if she’s supposed to be the “strong female character”, but Moffat has little idea how to write one. (And why would a Dalek beg for mercy?! I want the story behind that.) I do like her, though. Ep. 13 clinched that.
Amy: I really, really liked her in the first episode. She was smart, spunky, and unafraid. By the twelfth episode, she’d pretty much been reduced to someone whose main purpose was romantic subplot. She’s still smart and mostly unafraid, but I’d had higher hopes for her. (Especially because, in Ep. 7, I don’t think she’d be content as a country doctor’s wife who is happy to be pregnant. It just didn’t fit her character for her to be satisfied there. I read her character as desperate to escape small town life.) I understand a lot better now why people say Moffat can’t write women well and that they’re always reduced to significant others or mothers. But then she comes back as a smart, spunky woman in the last episode, so I don’t really know what to think. As a whole, I like her.
Rory: I like him in Eps. 1, 12, and 13. He’s still a good character in 6-9, but I see no chemistry between him and Amy except in the Moffat-written episodes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the episodes that more focused on “fixing” their relationship in addition to the fairly weak “monster of the week” plots were the episodes I’m least fond of. And it wasn’t that he was badly written in any of them, just that there’s major problems with the episodes. I do like that he went from a near-coward in Ep. 1 to a hero in Eps. 12 and 13. In some ways, he had the most developed character arc of the season. (A part of me wonders why it’s okay for a guy to stay and protect his imprisoned girlfriend for two thousand years, but a woman is described as a “clingy girlfriend” when she works for two years to return to her original universe and the Doctor.)
Eleven: I love his characterization. Even in the episodes I don’t like, I like him. He’s honestly the most consistent thing in this season. He’s awesome, brilliant, whatever. Quirky, intelligent (when he’s written that way), and just a good guy. It’s a more subtle characterization than Nine and Ten, but it’s there. And Eleven’s TARDIS is perfect: whimsical, bright, and beautiful. (I know people like the coral from RTD, but I never have. It’s ugly.) I like how in the first episode he talks to it/her, but then that disappears (save for River in Ep. 12), which is a disappointment. Eleven’s my Doctor.
The plotting overall: I’d like a happy medium between RTD’s subtle hints (“bad wolf” does not a plot make) and the heavy-handedness of the Crack. And even the Crack all but disappeared during the middle of the season-- partly due to, I think, the Rory/romance plot. And if the Crack was put in those, it seemed to have been shoved into the episode or tacked on. There’s a better way to plot-- especially if the choices are the Doctor having no clue what’s going on because there’s not enough information or him ignoring the evidence in front of his face. (And we aren’t going to get the answer to the reason the TARDIS exploded anytime soon, I don’t think. Plot arc for Moffat’s run, anyone?) So, I think I’d like someone with RTD’s character writing combined with Moffat’s plotting.
Theories, from most to least likely: 1) River was taught to fly the TARDIS by a different incarnation of the Doctor, hence why she was able to say both “you weren’t there that day” and “you taught me”. 2) The person who caused the TARDIS to explode is the Master. Amy somehow managed to bring Gallifrey back when she remembered the Doctor, thus the Time Lock was broken. The Doctor will meet River when he discovers Gallifrey is back. [River could be Romana or another Time Lady.] 3) River is a future Rose. Not probable, and if she is, I dislike the Library episodes from Season 4 more than I already do.
Episodes from best to worst (and subject to change): 1, 12, 4, 13, 10, 11, 3, 5, 2, 6, 8, 9, 7
So there are major problems with this season, but there are also things I really like about it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to buy it-- well, that started with the middle episodes-- but I am. The episodes that are good are spectacular, and well worth buying the whole season for.
As a whole, there are ups and downs to this season. So this review is split into two sections, individual episode reactions and general reactions.
Part 1: Individual Episode Reactions
Ep. 1: Honestly, this is what made me want to watch Doctor Who. Bit cheesy, bit simple, but I love the epic showdown at the end.
Ep. 2: A take it or leave it episode, and a bit heavy-handed metaphor-wise. I like Liz 10, though.
Ep. 3: The Daleks are back… and multicolored. They aren’t near as frightening-looking as the previous ones. (And when the first new one spoke, I started laughing. Voice was just a bit too deep.) And why the hell didn’t Amy remember the planets in the sky/invasion of the Daleks/season 4 finale? If it’s because of the crack in her wall taking that memory, well, I’d like it more explicitly stated-- especially because the crack was closed when the Daleks invaded (1996 versus 2008).
Ep. 4: OMG scary. But I love the Weeping Angels. The bad thing: I figured out the “plot twist” the moment we had enough clues. I thought the Doctor was supposed to be smart. (This comes up later in the review.)
Ep. 5: The second part of this two-parter is worse. Dues ex machina used, and it wasn’t as tightly written as it should have been. Angels weren’t nearly as creepy.
Ep. 6: It had the potential to be an amazing episode. It was completely flat emotionally. (I want a fanfic version of the episode, with all the emotion put in.)
Ep. 7: If I never see this episode again, it will be too soon. It bothered me psychologically, and I don’t know why. (Also, that’s a dark Doctor? We’re talking about the Destroyer of Worlds here. Not something petty.)
Ep. 8: Another take it or leave it episode. The “science” is a bit more wobbly than usual.
Ep. 9: My second least-favorite episode. Science is even worse than in the first part. (So's the politics, even for DW.) And pretty much boring. Only the last five minutes are important.
Ep. 10: The monster of the week needed to be far better integrated, and if the “monster as a metaphor for depression” thing is true, the monster shouldn’t have died, but been severely injured so its return at the beginning of the episode (which was the end of Van Gogh’s life) made more sense. Ignoring the monster, it’s a wonderful episode.
Ep. 11: Apparently, it was a rewrite of a comic with the tenth Doctor. So it was a bit over the top for Eleven, but would have been a bit understated for Ten. Laugh out loud hilarious at parts, even with my embarrassment squick. The scruffy hair after the shower is adorable. I didn’t think I’d like the episode, but I do, even with the plot that ties into nothing and didn’t really make much sense to boot.
Ep. 12: I liked it, very much. I just have one, well two, well three, okay a bunch of, questions. Why the hell didn’t his enemies just kill the Doctor to prevent the explosion? Why did the Daleks make an alliance with anyone? Also, didn’t they try to destroy reality at the end of Season 4, so what’s the problem with reality going bye-bye now? Why does the TARDIS exploding cause the end of the universe, because that contradicts previous canon? (Also, with TARDISes being destroyed in the Time War, wouldn’t at least one of them have exploded? So what’s different about this one?) And why didn’t the Doctor figure out that with the approach of only his enemies that the prison was for him?
Ep. 13: Oh my god. I’m not sure I like the first part of the episode, but the last ten minutes are worth it. Love the fez. River facing down a Dalek is awesome. Amy being strong enough to basically rewrite the universe to bring back the Doctor-- fantastic. I am never going to think of the phrase “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” in the same way again. I understood the Doctor’s technobabble. But I’m not sure I understood the episode or the implications of it. (Strange thing is, I understood it first time I watched, but subsequent viewings have me more and more confused.)
Part Two: general criticisms and reactions
While there are plenty of parts I do like, this is going to be mostly focused on the negatives. Short form: I love Eleven. I don’t trust Moffat.
First, Moffat himself: He’s made it quite clear in interviews and the like that he wishes he could just ignore RTD’s era and start over with a clean slate. So he has Amy not remembering how season 4 ended. (Which was never explained and with her super-memory power makes me wonder if he’s subtly going to find a way in the next season to rewrite/remove the era from canon.) He has not-so-subtle digs at past episodes/companions/plotlines. And he doesn’t quite get how to write women. Fine-- I completely understand that he doesn’t like a more character-based Who, but prefers plot (aka classic Who). Just don’t act disrespectfully toward the previous showrunner.
Women: I’m ambivalent about Moffat’s ability to write women. It seems as if every unattached woman will end up with a guy at the end. There’s no room for not wanting children, not wanting to get married, or being attracted to the same sex. If there’s a motivation in a woman’s life, it somehow involves men. (Well, upon seeing the last episode, I’ll say that Amy twists this a little bit.) I know that many-- most-- women want to be married, have children, etc. but that isn’t a reason to ignore the other possibilities. And what is up with River? Sometimes, I think he can write women. Other times, I don’t.
Other minorities: I saw no non-straight people in Season 5 (though one of the minor characters in the first episode I read as gay, even though it’s implied he’s looking at heterosexual porn). The only black person to stand out was Liz 10, and she’s in the second episode with a bit part in Ep. 12. I know there are others, but they’re so much in the background as to be nonexistent. And that’s not a good thing. The multicultural aspects of RTD’s era is one of the things a lot of fans liked. And it’s been almost completely erased.
Nods to classic Who: there’s quite few, I think more than in RTD’s era. I like the nods to the past, even if I don’t catch or understand many of them.
Two-parters: unfortunately, all the two-parters in this season suffered from the same problem. The second episode is worse than the first. It may not be by much (Ep. 13) or could be by a noticeable amount (Ep. 5), but it’s there. (Eps. 8 and 9 were just bad. I honestly expected the second to be worse.)
Perception filters: Explicitly used at least twice, and implied use multiple times. The bad thing: it’s used as a way to explain why the Doctor didn’t notice some things that were somewhat obvious. If the episodes can’t be written as to make the Doctor look stupid, they need to be rewritten or replotted. There’s a difference between overlooking something (I could almost buy the Angels one specifically because they went in expecting to see statues, and they didn’t look closer because they saw what they expected to see.) and being oblivious because the plot calls for it.
The Doctor’s stupidity/lack of initiative: The Doctor isn’t stupid, and yet he’s written that way at times. Seriously, when the Doctor discovers when explosion that caused the Cracks to happen occurred, he should have gone investigating. That lack became even more obvious when he managed to pull debris out of one (which shouldn’t have been possible) and it’s a piece of the TARDIS, what does he do? Takes Amy jaunting around the universe to make up for losing Rory even though she can’t remember him. I truly cannot understand that. Or when Amy comes onto him, and he notices the clock jumped twelve hours (or the fact that it’s supposedly night when they’re there and yet it’s sunny outside), and he says he needs to fix her, he takes her to get Rory? What happened to the Time Lord who saves the world/universe on a regular basis, and seems to regard it as his mission in life?
Daleks: Four out of five season finales have them, and the other two (including the year of specials) have the Master. Could we please have a bit more imagination? (All right-- I give you that the Daleks seeming to be the “good” guys is more imaginative, but still. They’re a bit overused in season finales. At least it wasn’t a whole army this time.)
River Song: I think I may have liked her earlier and better if she clearly wasn’t Moffat trying too hard to force/want us to like her. Mostly, this is due to the fourth episode and her showing up the Doctor. She’s still arrogant in the other three, but she’s also more human. It’s almost as if she’s supposed to be the “strong female character”, but Moffat has little idea how to write one. (And why would a Dalek beg for mercy?! I want the story behind that.) I do like her, though. Ep. 13 clinched that.
Amy: I really, really liked her in the first episode. She was smart, spunky, and unafraid. By the twelfth episode, she’d pretty much been reduced to someone whose main purpose was romantic subplot. She’s still smart and mostly unafraid, but I’d had higher hopes for her. (Especially because, in Ep. 7, I don’t think she’d be content as a country doctor’s wife who is happy to be pregnant. It just didn’t fit her character for her to be satisfied there. I read her character as desperate to escape small town life.) I understand a lot better now why people say Moffat can’t write women well and that they’re always reduced to significant others or mothers. But then she comes back as a smart, spunky woman in the last episode, so I don’t really know what to think. As a whole, I like her.
Rory: I like him in Eps. 1, 12, and 13. He’s still a good character in 6-9, but I see no chemistry between him and Amy except in the Moffat-written episodes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the episodes that more focused on “fixing” their relationship in addition to the fairly weak “monster of the week” plots were the episodes I’m least fond of. And it wasn’t that he was badly written in any of them, just that there’s major problems with the episodes. I do like that he went from a near-coward in Ep. 1 to a hero in Eps. 12 and 13. In some ways, he had the most developed character arc of the season. (A part of me wonders why it’s okay for a guy to stay and protect his imprisoned girlfriend for two thousand years, but a woman is described as a “clingy girlfriend” when she works for two years to return to her original universe and the Doctor.)
Eleven: I love his characterization. Even in the episodes I don’t like, I like him. He’s honestly the most consistent thing in this season. He’s awesome, brilliant, whatever. Quirky, intelligent (when he’s written that way), and just a good guy. It’s a more subtle characterization than Nine and Ten, but it’s there. And Eleven’s TARDIS is perfect: whimsical, bright, and beautiful. (I know people like the coral from RTD, but I never have. It’s ugly.) I like how in the first episode he talks to it/her, but then that disappears (save for River in Ep. 12), which is a disappointment. Eleven’s my Doctor.
The plotting overall: I’d like a happy medium between RTD’s subtle hints (“bad wolf” does not a plot make) and the heavy-handedness of the Crack. And even the Crack all but disappeared during the middle of the season-- partly due to, I think, the Rory/romance plot. And if the Crack was put in those, it seemed to have been shoved into the episode or tacked on. There’s a better way to plot-- especially if the choices are the Doctor having no clue what’s going on because there’s not enough information or him ignoring the evidence in front of his face. (And we aren’t going to get the answer to the reason the TARDIS exploded anytime soon, I don’t think. Plot arc for Moffat’s run, anyone?) So, I think I’d like someone with RTD’s character writing combined with Moffat’s plotting.
Theories, from most to least likely: 1) River was taught to fly the TARDIS by a different incarnation of the Doctor, hence why she was able to say both “you weren’t there that day” and “you taught me”. 2) The person who caused the TARDIS to explode is the Master. Amy somehow managed to bring Gallifrey back when she remembered the Doctor, thus the Time Lock was broken. The Doctor will meet River when he discovers Gallifrey is back. [River could be Romana or another Time Lady.] 3) River is a future Rose. Not probable, and if she is, I dislike the Library episodes from Season 4 more than I already do.
Episodes from best to worst (and subject to change): 1, 12, 4, 13, 10, 11, 3, 5, 2, 6, 8, 9, 7
So there are major problems with this season, but there are also things I really like about it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to buy it-- well, that started with the middle episodes-- but I am. The episodes that are good are spectacular, and well worth buying the whole season for.