Current Events > The Doctor Who season finale was last week - thoughts?

(+) Yeah! (+)

If any of y'all watched the new series, of course - the whole "woman Doctor" thing probably catapulted it off of CE's radar.

Personally, I enjoyed it. If this was a Russell T. Davies series, it would probably be the worst one of his run - but if it was a part of Moffat's run, I would probably rank it as equally as good as series 7, or even slightly lower. Which is to say - worst case scenario, series 11 is in the absolute middle of New Who seasons.

The episodes I liked, I really liked - Demons of the Punjab was a fantastic episode, it might trump Capaldi's run as a whole in my eyes. I also rather liked the first two episodes, even as people seem to dislike The Ghost Monument a fair bit. Chris Chibnall didn't write the better episodes of the season, but I liked his offerings well enough - like the Tsuranga Conundrum was just a good character episode, it really rang true with what I liked about Doctor Who as a kid.

But the season's best episodes were definitely done by the other writers - even with its weak villain, Kerblam was a really good action romp. Demons of the Punjab - already talked about it, loved it - The Witchfinders was surprisingly decent considering that I'm not a big fan of English historical episodes and It Takes You Away was flawed but nice.

My least favorite episode was Arachnids In The UK, because the Trump commentary was excruciatingly on the nose and it had probably the most needlessly self-righteous Doctor moment of the season. This was before Demons, so Yaz was still very much a periphery character compared to Ryan and Graham - and she got shafted in favor of her own mum in this episode. Not every episode in a series is going to be a winner, so it's not that big of a deal - but it was definitely this season's weak link.

My only other complaints are that the big Rosa Parks moment from episode 3 was really let down by the cheesy song choice and that the villain of that episode was flatter than a grilled cheese on a busy motorway, the TARDIS crew felt a bit too bloated with Yaz getting shafted for most of the season and Ryan and Graham falling out of focus in the second half of the season, and that while it was a good bit of poppy, sci-fi fun - again, very RTD - the finale crammed too much le epic finale stuff into a single regular-sized episode. Again - out of all of New Who, this ranks right in the middle for me.

But it was a solid season, and I adored Jodie Whittaker's take on the character. Capaldi had the brooding thing going for him, and I liked him well enough, but as an older bloke I feel like he didn't bring as much energy to the table - Whittaker's brought a lot of that David Tennant/Matt Smith energy back, there's running and light-hearted quips again - it's nice to have that sort of energy back. And with her accent, there's a solid little nugget of the Ninth Doctor seated in there somewhere - overall, it's just a nice, new experience.

I'm pretty vocal in my feelings for Moffat's run - he wastes centuries of the Doctor's life off screen so that his version of the character gets to say that he's 2000 years old instead of 1000 years old, he does all of these stupid gigantic Doctor events like his name, or his death, or having the Doctor literally be the centre of the universe. The only series I liked of his was series 7 because it had fun monster plots and Matt Smith had finally grown into the role enough for me. It helps that, even with its flaws, the Clara subplot was still new and she hadn't overstayed her welcome yet - her and Matt Smith had great chemistry, and Matt's acting in this series was really the pinnacle of his run. The rest of Moffat's run, I can more or less leave behind - but 7 was a good series.

Series 7 is the only Moffat series that I would say could be better than series 11. Series 1 - 4 just beat out 11, and 7 isn't far behind, but 11 was the best series of the show after a lot of what I see as Moffat-shaped flops. Not the best series - but it was solid enough, and I liked it
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it was a boring season where almost nothing happened. the new doctor is basically a watered down tennant. and i had to laugh when one villain of the week was literally a time traveling racist.

people shit on the other seasons for this or that reason, but at least they had some weight to them. i could have skipped this entire season and missed nothing.
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TwoDoorPunkCab posted...

it was a boring season where almost nothing happened. the new doctor is basically a watered down tennant. and i had to laugh when one villain of the week was literally a time traveling racist.

I think the new Doctor's more of a ditz compared to Tennant, whose run felt more like theatre in the long run - at least I thought so. There's definitely similarities, and I don't begrudge you for feeling this way.

I totally agree with you about Time Racist, though. I thought that aside from the song, the end of the episode was pretty solid on the bus - but the leather jacket guy was fucking flat. It was dumb.

people shit on the other seasons for this or that reason, but at least they had some weight to them. i could have skipped this entire season and missed nothing.

What I dislike about Moffat's seasons is that they try too hard to be weighty. The Doctor's death looms over an entire season, his first series was like Moffat broke his arm jerking himself and the Doctor off too hard, Demon's Run alone is just a disaster with how they went about hyping it up - none of that feels weighty to me, because the Doctor feels like a poorly executed cartoon character who can lift the most weights and beat the most baddies, etc. etc. And of course the Doctor is a cartoon character in a lot of ways, with his magic wand that opens doors, but it's like seeing an action movie where every blow - or most blows - feel impactful and punchy, and a CGI mess where hundreds of computer-rendered plasticine mooks get wiped away with little to no fanfare or consequence.

What I liked about this series the most is that it was a lower stakes string of one-off episodes. They were all boots-on-ground, getting into business episodes, instead of faffing about with a heavy-handed framing device for a series-long arc. No Vault, no Pandorica, no astronaut. Not against a seasonal framing device, of course, but I just liked diving into a new adventure each week without some bullshit looming over my head.

But again - this is a matter of taste, and I reckon we might just prefer different takes of the same show.
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Wait have these shot the whole season already? I haven't even seen a single episode of the lady doctor.

Not exactly an original observation here but Capaldi was a brilliant doctor marred by lacklustre writing. There was that one episode where he was stuck in the groundhog day timeloop castle and that was terrific. The rest was terrible.

Hoping this was better than that.
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They've had some interesting ideas this season, but their refusal to do continuation episodes has meant that they clearly haven't had enough time to explore them. Almost every episode this season left me with the feeling "that could have been really cool if they didn't rush the hell out of the conclusion".
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pinky0926 posted...

Wait have these shot the whole season already? I haven't even seen a single episode of the lady doctor.

Not exactly an original observation here but Capaldi was a brilliant doctor marred by lacklustre writing. There was that one episode where he was stuck in the groundhog day timeloop castle and that was terrific. The rest was terrible.

Hoping this was better than that.

Capaldi was an alright Doctor, my main beef is that he didn't feel consistent at all. He spends the first series being a prick, then he's chill for the second, then he has to like learn how to love again for the third. He had some cracker episodes, look at his introduction and Heaven Sent, but Clara stayed too long and he went through so many shifts between series that it was hard to keep up. Character development is one thing, this was just messy imo.

So yeah, I would agree with you that Capaldi's Doctor was pretty alright when the writing wasn't beans.

The full season is out, check it out when you can.

COVxy posted...

They've had some interesting ideas this season, but their refusal to do continuation episodes has meant that they clearly haven't had enough time to explore them. Almost every episode this season left me with the feeling "that could have been really cool if they didn't rush the hell out of the conclusion".

I kind of agree. I think the issue is more with the villains themselves, like Krasko - he just says some racist shit and gets ganked, nothing more to him than that. Single episode villains aren't bad, but I found that most of this season's villains were just a bit shit - as much as I liked Kerblam, it had a weak payoff. Arachnids in the UK was just balls for most of its running time. Though I did quite like the Pting, personally, and I'm down to see more Stenza in the future.

Really, I would say that your criticism sums up my issues with It Takes You Away the most. The ending was fun, but maybe there would have been more time to really establish an emotional connection, or just really hammer home the emotional impact of the episode, if it had more time to really flesh that final scene out. And like it didn't need to be a two parter necessarily, they could have just cut out Ribbons or reduced his role - an otherwise weirdly entertaining ending ended up falling a tiny bit short, just because they had to run through the climax of the episode. Not hating on the frog though, even as jank as it was I rather liked it.

Here's hoping that they get a slightly longer season next time, so maybe they can do a few two parters and spread their weight a little bit more.
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