David Tennant's run with the character of The Doctor was quickly coming to a close, and so was it's head writer Russell T. Davies. Davies was a good writer, who of course, like many people my age, was introduced to the series via his pen. Series 1 of the revival was fantastic, it was scary (scared me a ton anyway at the age of 10) and adventurous, very creative and mysterious and had a good overarching story. This continued through to series 2 and 3, although towards the end of series 3 you started to see his creativity starting to drain away, come series 4, the show became awful, with The Doctor fighting lard people with very obnoxious Cathrine Tate. News broke that Davies was stepping down as head writer and so was Tennant, so the BBC geared a last hurrah to the couple by commissioning 4 specials to end the run of the two and got Steven Moffat, the writer of most of the best episodes of the previous 4 series, prepped up for a complete revamp.
The specials where, well at least to me, mostly awful. Only one of them was well made, and even then that's in comparison to the others. And the final Christmas two parter made a complete dogs dinner out of Tennant's final hours of his role. And then we came to Matt Smith, I wasn't really hopeful from what I saw of his first moments as the doctor, he looked like his eyes where going to pop out of his head. He looked like a kid on a sugar rush, and not the very old time traveller The Doctor was. Although I was dismissive at the time, due to it being such a short amount of time we saw him as the character, I still had that dreadful thought that the man would be completely irritating to watch.
Needless to say, I had very little to worry about.
Series 5, was a delight to watch, although it had a few dud episodes, i.e. The Lodger and The Hungry Earth, it was still a very strong series. It had a lot of over arching storylines that where smartly crafted into the foreground and a very emotional revelation towards the end of the series. It was very creative science fiction, the best thing about Doctor Who is that you can pretty much do anything you want, and series 5 shows that throughout. It brought the series to new heights, it added the fear factor back in, and brought a new mature element to the plots without it loosing it's child audience.
Doctor Who had never been so good, and had fans literally eating out of it's hands, and the best thing is...
Series 6 so far has topped it.
With the love revolving around Series 5, the natural move for the BBC was to give the show a huge push in the USA, (which also involved it's Spin-Off Cousin, Torchwood, to become a US-UK co-production, but I'll talk about that once that series has finished). So not only for the first time did the show air at the exact same time as UK in the US, but the opening two parter was set in America.
The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon practically blew the entire series 5 out of the water alone. Heck the first 10 mins of series 6 did that. They killed of The Doctor in one quick swipe, obviously, he came back, but the fact still remains that The Doctor died or rather will die in this series. But then the two parter continues to reveal an evil, terrifying alien race called The Silence, with creepy imagery, and strange mind games, Doctor Who had become a far more sinister show. And if you was blown away with the opening of the two parter, then you will be left breathless with the end of the two parter as we see a little girl regenerate.
Which then leads me to Curse of the Black Spot, and the one very fundamental flaw with this series as a whole. It fires away at 100 mph, and then they completely fall to a halt to deliver a typical Doctor Who adventure, when you want to know more about what happened. But the main thing that really hurts Curse of the Black Spot is that it's the worst episode out of the series, and it is only made worse with it's terrible placement. If this stood alone, and not directly after a mind blower, it would of been passable, but the fact is, the episode is dull, it's slow and nothing happens, or is learnt. Even taken as swashbuckling fun, it's a bore.
Which leads me to The Doctor's Wife, which, if Curse of the Black Spot is the worst the series offers, then it's quickly made up by this heartfelt look at the character by Neil Gaiman. The Doctor's Wife is a completely unique episode where the tardis is converted into a woman, therefore becoming The Doctor's Wife, since the tardis is the only character to follow the doctor though his travels all this time. The episode is very dark and very light, but balances them in equal measures, where Curse added very little to anything, Wife adds little to the plot, but adds all sorts of depth to the characters while never becoming boring, it's always moving and never predictable.
Which then takes us onto The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, a two parter that feels like it should be more an episode and a half, which is probably the main problem the show occurs when doing a two parter. The Rebel Flesh is slow, it's never bad, but it takes it's time getting a move on. It falls on cliches quite a few times, and rarely surprises. It's also at the time the shows horror factor started to frustrate me, with every episode having to be scary, Doctor Who was starting to lose it's child audience, and lost the whimsical adventurous side the the show. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that Doctor Who is going back to scary, but you start to lose effect when it's only scary, and no episode has a lighter tone.
The Almost People was more of the same, and the entire two parter was just creating a plot device which was used in the half time finale, and sure to be used again later in the series.
Leading onto A Good Man Goes To War, which, when I say The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People was stretched, this was way too condensed. This is a problem Moffat encountered in The Beast Below in series 5, he has a lot of very, very good ideas, but most his ideas make whole new worlds, and when shoved into one 45 min segment, it feels very rushed and all over the place. And with a lot of loose ends to tie up from the previous series and this one, the only way it would work was to really give it a second part. A Good Man Goes To War is a very good episode as with almost all the episodes, before I start to sound like I hate it, the acting is superb and it continual keeps you on you toes, but it's really hard to get behind an episode where you can't breath and respect the situation there in and feel real emotion, at the start of the episode you don't really understand what this army is for, or why it is so menacing, which really keeps you from getting into the episode. Although, with that in mind, it pushes the series into more darker, complex situations.
I think A Good Man Goes To War was mainly hurt by it's hype, it was called a game changer, and while it did that, the twist the show offered was a bit of a "Ahh that's cool, but hardly shocking" It ended up being a slight letdown by it's own following, regardless, I will still follow the show to a bitter end, as I may not seem the most keen on Series 6 Part 1, I like 3 of the episodes, loved 3 of the episodes, and only disliked 1. That's good odds to me, and a lot of part 2 seems to be focusing on more hardcore sci-fi elements.
Plus, the first episode is called Let's Kill Hitler, you can't suck with that name!
Check back tomorrow for a full review of Let's Kill Hitler!
No comments:
Post a Comment