TV: Doctor Who Season 5
I stopped my cable service earlier this year and therefore missed the final three episodes of Doctor Who’s Season Five
Vincent and the Doctor was a strong episode, and I was hearing nice things about the rest of the end run so I was very much looking forward to the DVD release.
Episode: The Lodger
Not too bad, but not too good either. The premise is sufficiently creepy: A voice comes over the intercom of a home asking passers-by for help. There’s been an accident… A little girl has lost her mummy…
The passers-by go in. Something horrible happens. They don’t come out.
That is one scary premise because while we would all feel cautious and uneasy, I still think most people would answer that call for help.
But the scariness is put in the background because the live and living people downstairs, of which the Doctor is one, is played for a lot of laughs. And that, while very enjoyable, also undercuts the sad and serious theme of Home that always runs through Doctor Who.
I don’t think this is a bad episode at all. The guest stars are charming. It is a smidge better than OK. I just had higher expectations, that’s all.
Episodes: The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang
It’s one of those stories during which you’re just not supposed to think too much. As an ending and a wrap-up to an otherwise unfulfilling season, it did fine. I was engaged while watching it, and emitted the appropriate gasps and what!?s.
But the main issue is that by the end, I wasn’t sure if any of it made any sense. And worse, I didn’t feel that I could rewatch or think about what I saw some more and be able to nitpick appropriately. (Besides the weirdness that River remembering doesn’t make any difference. Amy has to remember.)
I wrote about Moffat‘s tendency to throw everything into an episode just for effect rather than purpose back during Flesh and Stone. And that’s what I felt here.
It was too much all the time. After a certain point, that’s just the mark of a scared and unsure writer who uses manipulation rather than storytelling to get the drama across. Why does everything feel so shallow when the Who of Russell T Davis felt so epic and deep?
Spoilers below.
Did every single character have to die? Did we need all of the Doctor Who monsters? To achieve what?
The Crack is only coincidentally connected to Amy, who is only coincidentally connected to the Pandorica, which is only coincidentally connected to the Alliance because of the Crack.
I find it disappointing that they’ve built an entire season on coincidences. And the Doctor can talk about not ignoring coincidences all he wants but we still don’t have the answers we need.
The Crack is somehow connected to the Doctor and the Tardis but we don’t know how. Who is the Big Bad that wants this Silence? And why does the Crack make Amy God, creating the world from her memory?
See, don’t think too much.
[...] my write up about the finale of Doctor Who’s Season Five, I complained about the feel of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who run as compared to that of Russel [...]