LogFAQs > #964957498

12. Series 6 (The Doctor: Matt Smith, Companion/s: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song)

*SPOILERS BELOW FOR SERIES SIX OF DOCTOR WHO*

Best Episode: The Girl Who Waited
Worst Episode: Night Terrors

What I said about Flux, and trying to have a very visible, season-long storyline first really appeared in series six. Up until that point, the previous seasons had their season-long stuff (Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Saxon, Planets, Cracks), but it was largely minor moments in otherwise self-contained stories. Series 6 though is when things go extremely off-the-rails, and up until Flux, there was no question in my mind that this series was the worst we had seen.

The season opens with a decent two-parter revolving around the moon landing and Richard Nixon, with the Silence actually serving as a decent spiritual successor to the Weeping Angels. But the thing about this opening story is that it kicks things off with the Doctor getting shot and killed, and given the timeline shenanigans we know about with River Song, there's no way for that event NOT to loom large over the rest of the season. Additionally, the other major plot point of the season is that Amy gets pregnant on the TARDIS and then has her baby stolen away. This SHOULD weigh heavier than it does, but it's kinda handwaved. That's probably for the best, because it's WAY too dark of a subject matter otherwise.

Anyway, focusing more on the Doctor...we saw it in series five, but I feel like series six is the culmination of this mindset Steven Moffat had, where the Doctor is THE most important person in all of time and space. The running plotline of the series (which covers six of the first eight episodes...plus the finale) all revolves around the Doctor being super important and people needing to plan for how to trick and trap him, lest the whole of time crumble at the seams. When you do this, it makes your season feel like it has a lot to live up to, and if you don't nail it (Lord knows "The Wedding of River Song" doesn't nail it, and is one of the worst season finales), then that's a lot of wasted time and effort down the drain.

Beyond that though, I just don't enjoy large chunks of this season. I'll give it credit that, of the five episodes revolving around the "Doctor Dies/Amy Loses Her Baby" plotline, four are decent, and only the finale drops the ball super hard. But it's the rest of the season that doesn't quite work for me. Curse of the Black Spot is a campy pirate episode, but it winds up being exceptionally bad for what it is. I personally find The Doctor's Wife too goofy for how serious it's meant to be played. The Rebel Flesh/Almost people two-parter is TERRIBLE. It's bland, the characters give me nothing, and the whole visual design of the episodes is gray and gross and dull. Night Terrors is one of the worst episodes ever, largely because it feels like the Matt Smith equivalent of a different worst episode ever. And Closing Time is just a far inferior version of what we got with The Lodger.

The only things about this season that I would say are genuinely good are The Girl Who Waited, and The God Complex. Both of them are interesting stories that play around with time and space, and they both have an emotional component that I think was desperately needed after just how heavy the first half of the season was. Plus, despite the Doctor being important as always, he's not the sole focus of those episodes, and instead we largely get to see the story from Amy and Rory's perspectives...which tends to make for better television.

Ultimately, a few good things can't make up for how overly-flawed the series is as a whole, and I think this season, more than his other two, show the limitations behind casting Matt Smith as the Doctor in the first place.