Doctor Who Season 7 Part 2

Once again Doctor Who has been split into two parts. The first part was terribly forgettable. Full of wasted opportunities and noticeable vacillating between doctor who being the adult show that it could be and the kids show that the producers think it is.

The Snowmen:

We start off with the Snowmen, last year’s Christmas special. The Doctor acting like a petulant child decides that since Rory and Amy are gone he is not going to save the universe any more so he decides to Park the Tardis above Victorian England and retire. The same Victorian England that Strax, Jenny and Madam Vastra live in. No-one in the audience thinks that this state of affairs is going to last long but the characters in the TV show don’t know the Doctor like we do. So when people start being murdered, the doctor unsurprisingly though reluctantly comes out of retirement. It is here that the Doctor meets Clara, of course we know what Clara is the same Clara from last year’s Asylum of the Daleks but because the doctor never saw her but he doesn’t put two and two together till later.

The Bells of Saint John

The Bells of Saint John is one of the better episodes of this season, but frankly this is one of those episodes that the pre-episode makes better by far so make sure you watch that before you watch this epp. Really there should be an option on the disk for you to play all with the mini-sode prequels. But there isn’t. The Bells of Saint John works as a good modem take on the alien invasion story. Although the invaders are not aliens…as such but familiar adversaries.

The Rings of Akhaten

The Doctor wants to take Clara somewhere special, so he takes her to an alien night market. Where there is multitudes of aliens and a runaway singer who is going to sing their gods to sleep. And then there are mummy’s and some bartering over a leaf and it’s the Doctor vrs a god. And it’s a terrible episode.   

Cold War

I have never had much time for Mark Gatsis as a writer for Doctor Who, there’s no denying that he has been responsible for the worst episodes of the new series. Infact no episode that he has written for this new series has been even watchable. Except for this one. I have to admit this isn’t a bad episode. The thing that lets it down isn’t the writing, it’s the production. It’s clear that this submarine based adventure was just a little too adventurous for the production team.  The submarine isn’t partiuclary convincing, the acting is good and it’s great to see the Ice-warriors back and in form, being justifiabley feared in a claustrophobic environment. I wasn’t a fan of the Ice-warrior leaving his suit and being a giant squelchy thing but I understand where it’s coming from and in the context of the story it worked and I liked the fact that the Doctor was baffled by it. The only thing I didn’t like really was the ending which was wasn’t so much an ending but a “ok I really have to wrap this up now”.  

Hide

Hide is a good story, it has some great atmospheric sequences and is as much a homage to Nigel Kneele’s The Stone tapes as it is a Doctor who story. It is strange in the fact that it seems to indicate that the Doctor believes in Ghosts, ESP and various other things that the series has railed against in the past. It’s not necessarily a bad thing just inconsistent. In other respects a perfectly good episode with a great cast.  

Journey to the Centre of the Tardis:

When the Doctor turns the Tardis shields off to let Clara pilot the Tardis a salvage operation takes the ship and Clara is trapped in it’s core. What follows is somewhat of a mess, there are ghostly molten beings following our hero’s about for no apparent reason, worse it turns out that they are echo’s of the crew itself who have been exposed to the eye of harmony and it’s never sufficiently explained how or why. And the subplot about the practical joke where the crew have tricked their younger brother into thinking he’s an android is just nonsense.

The Crimson Horror

Moffat seems to love the 19^th century. And we are back there where Madam Vastra, Strax and Jenny. The Doctor is missing and there are strange Red men being pulled up from the river. This is a strange story. It’s not a bad story. It has some great things going for it. Like Dianna Rigg being a brilliant villain. But dressed up as it is, it has to be said that this is simply another aliens invading earth story.

Nightmare in Silver

If there was an episode that people were looking forward to it was Neil Gaimen’s crack at making the Cybermen scary again. Given how amazing Neil’s first episode from the series was it was reasonable to think that there was a good chance that this would be the standout episode of this season. Unfortunately he only succeeded in making them the Borg. Arguably the Borg owe their progeny to the Cybermen and there were already a great deal of similarities however the great Neil Gaimen only made them more obvious and added similarities that we didn’t need. Never mind me not getting over the return of our universes Cybermen. But there are some great things about this episode the allusions to “The Turk” the idea that the emperor of the universe has been so scared by the cyber wars that he ran away to join the circus. The fact that the Cybermen finally use all the tools at their disposal to destroy and wage a path of destruction. But the fact that some of the scenes, especially the ones where the Cybermen are adapting to the weapons by repairing themselves as well as making the shields is so Borg it’s not funny.  

The Name of the Doctor

Strangely the standout episode of the season and the prequel for the 50^th anniversary it’s a fairly good lead-up. The great intelligence gets it’s final appearance presumably forever. It’s a shame that there’s not a Yeti in sight, just Whispermen. And the worst thing is that the timeline doesn’t work out. If the great intelligence was destroyed back in the 1800’s then how does it menace the second doctor in 1960’s London? Despite all this it’s a great story and it makes you hungry for the 50^th anniversary special. Now we just have to wait.  

Audio: 5.1 adding much depth to episodes like Hide.

Video: I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a modern BBC release and it’s video quality they are all uniformly excellent.

Special Features: Doctor who is popular in America now, that’s a good thing it kind of ensures the longevity of the current series. But seriously, the Americans love Doctor who without pandering to their market so why the new releases insist on pandering to the Americans is beyond me. The only doco we get here is “The companions” a so-so look at all the companions that the doctor has had since the 2005 revival and that’s fine but why do we need an annoying American voice over and the pretence that the new series is all that has ever been, classic series companions are only lightly touched on. Apart from that we have the web material which is ok but free on the web if you want that kind of thing. A mopey doctor stars in the Children in need special “The great detective” which is also so-so.