Doctor Who -Season Finale

[lightcastle]

That may well be the worst episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen.

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Comments

[melebeth]

Oh, I don't think it was the worst. There were some nice moments, and it wasn't nearly as deus ex machina an ending as most of RTDs.

[lightcastle]

I thought it was deeply pointless and a cop out.

(Although I did like Texting and Scones.)

[melebeth]

Oh, I agree with both of those things.

But I didn't expect much better, and there was texting and scones, and Rory being awesome, and River being River, and... if I ignored wanting an actual sensible resolution, I had fun with the pterodactyls.

[lightcastle]

Honestly, if they had to do such a stupidly pointless digression/non-resolution, then getting Meredith Viera to say "Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill arrived on his personal mammoth" was the way to go.

Also, Pterodactyls *are* vermin.

[joenotcharles]

It was better than "The Underwater Menace", "Dimensions in Time", and the Big Finish audio "Minuet in Hell" (which is the only one that has no redeeming features whatsoever). Dunno if it's better than "Daleks in Manhatten/Evolution of the Daleks", which was bad in a completely different way - mostly competent but dull, except for some terrible bits, while this one was mostly incoherent but charming, except for some terrible bits.

[lightcastle]

I don't count Dimensions in Time as canon. (Nor the Big Finish audios.)

I think I'm so unforgiving because Moffat has basically gone whole hog on the "puzzle box/fairy tale" view of Doctor Who, which at least had the redeeming feature of being nicely fitted together, even when the "Clap Harder and its TRUE" aspects annoyed me. So "incoherent but charming" for a season finale that basically amounted to, "I wrote myself into a corner and am now stalling for time"? Not impressed.

[joenotcharles]

Agreed. That still leaves it better than The Underwater Menace, though.

[lightcastle]

You know, "The Underwater Menace" is one of the few surviving eps I've never seen.

[dr_memory]

Not watched the Horns of Nimon, then?

I mean, yeah, it was pretty bad, but at no point did Timothy Dalton spit into the camera, nor did the Doctor get turned into a 4,000-year-old troll doll, and to be honest every single season finale of the new series including "The Parting of the Ways" has been a bit crap, so I'm calling it a C- and moving on.

(Except for the last 30 seconds. That was just miserable. I have horrible flashbacks to the Cartmel Master Plan.)

I'm just hoping that the scheduled change will mean that Moffat will be doing less juggling of Who and Sherlock, and might actually get to devote more than 15 minutes to any individual script in the future.

[lightcastle]

(Except for the last 30 seconds. That was just miserable. I have horrible flashbacks to the Cartmel Master Plan.)

Yeah, that hit me too. Although I actually had hopes for the Cartmel master plan before I found out more details later.

I've been dreading the "Doctor Who?" becoming a central theme since Moffat took over.

And yes, not worst ever, but probably the most complete a let down of the new series in that Moffatt at least had his puzzle box plotting going for him and seemed to take pride in that.

[lightcastle]

That's probably a good description.