Matt Smith’s first year as the Doctor in Series 5 last year was an outstanding triumph. In fact it was the best series Doctor Who had produced since 1989, with classic episodes abound, and such a consistency in quality writing that I don’t think anybody expected to see so soon. In a previous post last year, I wondered if this was the beginning of Doctor Who’s second golden age (the first being 1970-1977). However, like many others I sadly spoke too soon.
The new Doctor Who
series this year was something of a mixed bag. Very brave, experimental, with more
complex writing than ever before, but it wasn’t always pulled off successfully.
Steven Moffat’s season story arc in particular, tried to create a large
narrative that played with the conventions and ideas about Time Travel, even
having parts of the narrative itself travel through time to occur in different
parts of the story arc progression, contrary to the logical progression of
story narrative.
I don’t have a problem with this approach, although it’s
clear that many of the casual and older audience did. Being in my mid-twenties,
I enjoyed this fresh and different approach to storytelling. I found it simple
to understand, but it’s clear that the older and casual audience did not,
probably because they are less used to change in narrative storytelling conventions,
and also because I suspect that the casual audience in particular use
Television more as a medium for entertainment to have running in the background
like the Radio, and move their attentions away for a five minute chat, before
going to back to the TV, hoping they haven’t missed anything. Personally, I
find this quite an insulting attitude to Drama on Television. No wonder the
critics think its “dumbing down”. A TV Drama writer should be allowed to write
a complex and clever script without fear of criticism from less intelligent or
casual viewers. Having said that though, Steven Moffat’s story arc did have some quite
noticeable flaws.
Although, the story arc successfully supported the events of
The Impossible Astronaut two-part
opener, you couldn’t help but think that in second half of the series, a lot of
the developments were rushed, without proper room for the build up of dramatic
tension and character development. Let’s
Kill Hitler is a classic example of this. All the ideas and actions were
good and sound, but they all happened so quickly we weren’t able to care about
them. The Tesselecta and the people behind them are never really examined or
explained, the backstory of Melody Pond is whizzed through in a few minutes,
and Melody decides to save the Doctor only half an hour after poisoning him.
The latter scene in particular was clearly meant to be a powerful and
emotionally moving moment, but because there was no time for a believable character
development that would lead up to it, I didn’t really believe in or feel for that
moment. Let’s Kill Hitler and Steven
Moffat tried to cram a 90-minute storyline into a 45-50 minute episode, and it
doesn’t work. The episode is still rather good in its component parts, but it
fails to make us care about it. The
Wedding of River Song is much less rushed in comparison, but also feels somewhat
hollow and sterile, perhaps as a consequence, because in the long term, the
audience have never convincingly been sold River Song as a character to care
for.
That was the main reason for series 6 feeling a
disappointment, but there were others too. The
Curse of the Black Spot and Closing
Time felt like some of the weakest episodes for several years, which was a
surprise considering the wealth of great talent on them. Closing Time was especially disappointing given how good The Lodger had been, completely wasting the inclusion of the Cybermen, and producing one of the most cringeworthy and risible resolutions I'v ever seen in a Doctor Who episode. Thankfully, it wasn’t
all bad news, there were still some amazing classics to behold and enjoy,
particularly The Doctor’s Wife, The Girl
Who Waited, and The God Complex,
which stand high among the best of Doctor
Who episodes. The Girl Who Waited was probably my favourite of the series, and showcased the best of a TARDIS team (Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill) that I've come to love over the last two years.
So in short, despite the failings of series 6 it was far
from a failure, and still quite good in comparison to earlier David Tennant
seasons, but I think series 5 raised everyone’s expectations to a degree higher
than was possible to keep up. With the Doctor now back into the Universe,
hoping to be be involved in more smaller-scale adventures, there’s still hope
that one day Doctor Who’s new golden
age will still take place.
