Gavin Winters
Modern #DoctorWho’s always struggled slightly with how to convincingly show someone abandoning their whole life to go travelling with the Doctor.
RTD’s solution was to have the families involved and know what was going on, but Moffat seemed to have little interest in doing that.
(I’m sure that’s why Amy’s family were swallowed by the crack, so he didn’t have to deal with them!)
Here he finally hits upon his own solution: have the companions only travel part-time, an idea which lasts from now all the way into Chibnall’s era. #DoctorWho
Closing Time: this is not quite as good as The Lodger but still very funny, with the Cybermen as a mere token background irritation while we get to watch more of the Doctor and Craig’s comic misadventures. (Lynda Baron thinking they’re a couple is hilarious) #DoctorWho
The sonic screwdriver seems to have become a bit of a laser gun this season, with the odd zap of green energy. I mean, I suppose it always emitted something, but visualising it in that way makes it seem more of a weapon than a tool. #DoctorWho
This main flaw here is how the ending just basically repeats The Lodger: ‘Craig’s love for Sophie solves the plot’ becomes ‘Craig’s love for his baby solves the plot’.
The moment he starts to turn into a Cyberman the entire resolution of the episode becomes obvious. #DoctorWho
Moffat really, really loves to do the story of ‘the hero having one final adventure before facing his death’. He’ll return to variations on that idea in future #DoctorWho episodes, as well as doing it in Sherlock.
The Wedding Of River Song: for his second finale Moffat rehashes parts of his first - basically having history jumbled up and all time happening at once, which does at least give us some wacky visuals of Romans, Pterodactyls and hot air balloons all existing together. #DoctorWho
Just as well that in this jumbled up timeline each country gets back its most famous leader (Churchill… Kennedy… Cleopatra). I’m trying to imagine a version of this in which the Doctor has to battle the Silence with help from Liz Truss… 🫤 #DoctorWho
Simon Callow’s little cameo as Dickens was truly unexpected. I don’t think anyone saw that coming. #DoctorWho
How much you enjoy this (and season 6 in general) depends very much on how in sync you are with Moffat’s vision of #DoctorWho. He’s perhaps slightly less in tune with what the general public likes than RTD was, but for those who click with his style, it works like gangbusters.
The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe: this always seems to have a bit of a reputation as one of the worst Christmas specials, but I think that’s very unfair. It’s a perfectly acceptable festive episode, just with a lot more influence from the fantasy genre than usual #DoctorWho
I know we’ve occasionally seen the Doctor survive unprotected in space for a brief period, but the opening scene with the spacesuit is really pushing it, especially when you consider what happens later to Capaldi in Oxygen… #DoctorWho
Judging by the goofiness of the ones we see here, the quality of soldiers from Androzani Major has really declined since General Chellak’s day! #DoctorWho
Say what you like about this episode, but for me the ending with Madge lighting the way home for Reg and reuniting the family is one of my top moments in all the Christmas specials. #DoctorWho
But what happened to the other airmen on Reg’s plane? I presume they’re still on board at the end, otherwise it’d be a very dark twist that he was pulled through the time vortex while they were left to die! #DoctorWho
Asylum Of The Daleks: some stylish ‘horror movie with Daleks’ type moments but otherwise this is only a moderately successful opener to a moderately successful season, easily the weakest of the Matt Smith years. Not keen on those murky new titles either. #DoctorWho
Oh look, it’s the New Paradigm Daleks. Quick let’s just hide them amongst gazillions of RTD’s bronze ones and hope no one notices! #DoctorWho
The possessed crewman who introduces the Doctor and Amy to his skeletal, long-dead colleagues is reminiscent of the original Kryten in Red Dwarf: “I was only away two minutes!” #DoctorWho
Ah. Clara (okay, Oswin).😐
Moffat gets a lot of stick for writing characters (especially women) as nothing but quippy, wisecracking and sex-obsessed… but Christ I don’t think any were ever written like that as much as Clara’s debut here. #DoctorWho
The nanogene infected people turning into Dalek slaves with eyestalks in their foreheads is an effective update to the old Robomen, and the zombie versions are great, but it gets a bit overused subsequent to this. #DoctorWho
Moffat clearly wanted to reset the entire continuity of the show with first the Doctor erasing himself from history and pretending to be dead, and now the Daleks knowledge of him being wiped, but both inevitably went nowhere and had to be undone pretty quickly. #DoctorWho
Dinosaurs On A Spaceship: a fun little episode, with the most ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ title ever (I’d love to hear Samuel L. Jackson saying the sweary version).
Chibnall getting in some practice for writing a packed TARDIS crew, with lots of characters. #DoctorWho
The problem with retconning the Silurians so they were a space-faring race capable of building a giant space ark… is if they were that far advanced couldn’t they tell that the moon wasn’t really going to hit the earth and there was no need for their hibernation? #DoctorWho
A big game hunter from the early 1900s who delights in killing animals is an odd choice of friend for the Doctor to have, let alone want to bring along on an adventure. #DoctorWho
While Solomon is undoubtedly an evil bastard (poor Tricey!), him being deliberately left to get blown up is an unusually callous choice for the Doctor. #DoctorWho
A Town Called Mercy: a fairly straightforward tale with a moral dilemma for the Doctor, basically similar to what happened with Margaret Slitheen back in Boom Town. And especially interesting following his own actions in killing Solomon in the previous episode. #DoctorWho
The cinematography on location shoots like this continues to come on in leaps and bounds. They could have only dreamed of making a Western of this quality back in the days of The Gunfighters. #DoctorWho
Lol at Rory’s reaction to “Sheriff… Ma’am… fella…?”#DoctorWho
The main big American guest star is killed off half way through, presumably as a money-saving exercise! #DoctorWho
The Power Of Three: Kate Stewart arrives! Funny how a character from an unofficial spinoff ended up being adapted into the main show in such a major way. And strange to think she’s now been appearing as the head of UNIT for longer than the Brig’s original 1968-75 run. #DoctorWho
Okay, nerd hat on (when do I take it off?)… there’s a new UNIT dating issue here, as Amy & Rory’s encounters with the Doctor are now established as having months, or even years between them, so this is about 2015 (even before the year that passes during the episode…) So for Kate does this take place after she meets the Twelfth Doctor? Or are those episodes set in the near-future too? 😵💫 #DoctorWho
Anyway, lol at this shot. #DoctorWho
This is all well and good until the rushed, rewritten ending on the Shakri ship, apparently due to Steven Berkoff being an absolute arse on set and leaving them with barely any usable footage. #DoctorWho
The Angels Take Manhattan: one of the best post-Blink reappearances for the Weeping Angels, and a great companion exit for Amy and Rory (the mutual leap off the building is still a stunning moment). #DoctorWho
The ‘Weeping Cherubs’ are an hilariously creepy addition to the Angels lore, and I’d guess were at least partly-inspired by the Peg Dolls the previous season, with the same kind of scuttling and childlike laughter. #DoctorWho
Unlike some, I don’t have a problem with the concept of the Statue of Liberty being a Weeping Angel, but I do wonder how it would ever manage to move, as surely there’d always be someone looking at it? #DoctorWho
I don’t like how Moffat deliberately fudges the rules in order for Rory to be zapped back in time. The Angel gets him because he blinks *while not looking at it*. Amy does the same thing moments later, despite it being in full sight of the Doctor and River! 🤔 #DoctorWho
Though I don’t get why so many fans can’t understand why the Doctor can’t go back for them. It’s explained that the Angels have messed up the timeline of New York so badly that any further changes to time will destroy the city. And no, he can’t just rescue them “from New Jersey” or wherever, as that would still alter all the decades they lived in New York, and the city still goes Kaboom. QED. #DoctorWho
The Snowmen: of the three iterations, Victorian Clara works best I feel. There’s still a bit of the unrealistic super-quippy dialogue and excessive flirting, but it’s relatively toned down from space-Clara and modern-Clara. I wish this version had become a companion. #DoctorWho
Strax is gloriously funny in this episode. Having him become the comedy butler to Vastra and Jenny was a genius move. #DoctorWho
It took nearly fifty years, but we finally get a proper ‘camera follows the actors through the police box doors and into the console room’ shot, even if you can tell where they cheated a bit with the CGI exterior. #DoctorWho
Some slightly forced and convoluted continuity-tidying on Moffat’s part, by giving the Great Intelligence a map of the London Underground in the 1960s. And it’s weirdly portrayed as though the Doctor is doing it deliberately because he knows who they are. #DoctorWho
I like the ending with the tears of the family causing the Snowmen to melt, a hidden-in-plain-sight solution that was there all along. #DoctorWho
Something I never noticed until rewatching Asylum Of The Daleks recently- the Doctor legged it just before Oswin said ‘Run you clever boy, and remember’… so how does he recognise the phrase here? #DoctorWho
The Bells Of St. John: finally we get modern day Clara, who’s at least likeable enough at this point, but is fatally hampered from the start by A) not being Amy and Rory and B) being lumbered with the ‘Impossible Girl’ mystery, rather than presented as a normal person. #DoctorWho
The idea of there being something menacing lurking in the Wi-Fi is more the type of threat you might have expected to see RTD come up with. #DoctorWho
The Doctor keeps his anti-grav motorbike in a garage in the TARDIS. I like to imagine he’s got Bessie and the Whomobile in there somewhere. #DoctorWho
The reveal of the Great Intelligence, with Richard E. Grant’s face murkily seen on a screen, might’ve worked better if they’d only appeared last week or something, but coming months after the Christmas special some viewers might not have remembered or recognised him. #DoctorWho
The Rings Of Akhaten: this makes a very commendable attempt to give us one of the most alien settings the show’s ever depicted, but it’s a backdrop for a story that’s fairly muddled and unfocused. #DoctorWho
Every SF franchise at some point or another tries to do their own version of Star Wars’ cantina scene, and the market place in this episode is one of several attempts #DoctorWho has made.
It’s quite funny that they unintentionally used the same 1980s car to nearly run over Clara’s dad as ran over Rose’s dad back in season one. #DoctorWho
The problem with the location of this story is it’s just a bit too weird - how exactly are they all breathing when it’s seemingly just a bunch of asteroids orbiting a sun? Especially when the Doctor and Clara use those space-bike things to fly between them.
It’s the type of detail RTD would have been all over, but Moffat is happy to skim past. I mean, we can *infer* there’s some sort of atmospheric shield or whatever, but a quick line explaining it would have been nice… #DoctorWho
This episode is principally remembered for the Doctor’s big, epic, emotionally-charged speech to the living sun, which is a good moment yes, but sadly there’s not much else worthwhile surrounding it. #DoctorWho
Cold War: a nicely claustrophobic setting, with some very ‘Alien’ or ‘Thing’ type scenes of the unsuited creature scuttling about and grabbing people from the ceiling… but to be honest the Ice Warriors have never had a really outstanding episode, have they? #DoctorWho
The updated version of the costume is very good - not messing about with the basic shape, which is always the way to go, but just making it look more solid and “real”. #DoctorWho
I don’t know why you’d get an actor of David Warner’s calibre and put him in such a thankless role where he’s just obsessed with early 80s New Romantic bands. 🤷🏻♂️ #DoctorWho
Gatiss updates and fine tunes Ice Warrior lore, with their exterior being a cybernetic suit. It’d never been clear before how much of what we saw of them was armour or skin.
It’s a bit ‘Hmmm’ though when we finally see their real face. They look better in the helmets. #DoctorWho
Hide: this is probably #DoctorWho’s best ever attempt at doing a proper haunted house story. In fact the ‘ghost’ bits in the first half are so well done it’s almost a shame when the inevitable required SF explanation starts to kick in.
The TARDIS shows what excellent taste she has in companions by taking a dislike to Clara and trying to lock her out. 😄 #DoctorWho
Matt Smith mispronounces ’Metebelis’. Heresy! De-canonise him from #DoctorWho, etc…
Ken Wilson