Nurse! Steven's out of bed again!

Okay so it's taken me two weeks to finally sit down and post my thoughts on the season finale of Doctor Who, and I'm sure by now the details of that episode have filtered out of the average fangirl's memory, so I thought I would take the opportunity too to post some of my long term thoughts and opinions on the series as a whole.

First some basic facts. I have not watched any classic Who, though I have read enough of the basic details to have a decent understanding. I am a diehard fan of the revived Doctor Who, and its two little siblings the Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood. Favourite Doctor so far is 10 because he had an excellent balance between serious emotion and side splitting comedy. Favourite companion so far is Donna, because she was funny, mature, and most importantly, did not want to bang the Doctor. Martha was fine once she got over her crush stage, and I liked that she was very independent and capable to a degree from the start, something which only grew and crystallised completely after she left the Doctor. Rose I had no problems with at the time, but I now find a little clingy and exasperating.

And then we moved into the Moffat years, and then came Amy. Oh lord how I wanted to slap her. She irritated me terribly for reasons I still cannot explain, but mostly because she was quick to drop her boyfriend, and run off with a complete stranger (time machine be damned - she still effectively walked out of her own wedding, with no idea of when she would return). Thank God they brought Rory in later on in the series (though even that was touch and go with him dying, being erased and then being plastic). I know companions often can't help developing a crush or (heaven help us) fall in love with the Doctor - I do understand that in a situation where you're being whisked off for a once in a life time opportunity to see the wonders of the universe and where your only constant companion is a madman with a box, you are bound to develop a serious attachment to that person - but the best companions are ones who grow out of their crush (the quicker the better) and use their experiences on the TARDIS to carve their own life out.

This is why I've grown to like River so much. At first I was determined not to like her, because she made my Mary-Sue senses go haywire - I now realise that this is an unfortunate side effect of her timeline. We usually meet most characters at the beginning when they're just a blob of nothing, and we watch the story gently shape them into their personality, growing on us slowly as they do. River did this in the opposite direction - she started out ready shaped and moulded into her own person, and we had to go backwards and watch her regress to her origins, which did make her come off as a bit too perfect in the beginning.

But I like her because she's a great representation of something that sci fi and fantasy generally (not always, but often especially in the past) lack - a strong female character. She doesn't need the Doctor to come and save her from the monsters, and she doesn't just stand there and shriek for help. She pulls out her gun or hallucinogenic lipstick and gets herself out of it. Okay she occasionally needs to be caught by the TARDIS when she flings herself out of airlocks and buildings, but she always knows what she's doing. Yes, she is very obsessed with the Doctor and has been from birth. But at least she's not dependant on the Doctor the way that most of his companions are. She very much has her own life.

Plus she's a nerd (archaeologist) and has awesome hair.

Anyway, onto the Moffat era as a whole. Moffat as a writer is not bad when he's writing something he is good at, like Sherlock for instance (I also make no secret of being a Sherlock fangirl). Sherlock needs complicated plots and twists to fit the tone of the story. Sherlock has always been about holding on to your understanding by a thread as the plot pulls and drags you through revelation after revelation. Its deliciously complicated and genuinely surprising.

But Doctor Who is not like Sherlock, and it is here that Moffat struggles, especially since becoming showrunner. I will never argue that he writes excellent monsters for Doctor Who (indeed like many fans I find myself surreptitiously keeping an eye on every statue as I pass it in case it comes to life and zaps me back in time) but being able to produce a good monster, and a good plot are two different things. It is on plot in Doctor Who that Moffat reminds me of a child off his ADHD medication. He continues to weave new plots and ideas into the series, without properly resolving the effects of the last one. Why did the TARDIS explode in the first place in the S5 finale? How were the Silence related exactly to the cracks in time all over the universe (people kept saying that 'through the cracks we saw Silence and the end of all things')? If 'Silence must fall when the question is asked", then why did I see no sign of any Silence at Trenzalore? And how exactly did the Great Intelligence get involved instead? Surely if the Silence's entire founding belief is that they will meet their end when the Doctor goes to Trenzalore and reveals his name, they would have at least sent a few Silents along to check it out and see just how fucked they are, even if they can't be asked to send an entire swat team for a last ditch attempt to stop it!

It seems just as we might be tying up a couple of loose plot threads, Moffat throws half a dozen more strings into the mess. And his set up really leaves a lot to be desired. Would the revelation of Mels = Melody = River have not had much more impact if we had actually met Mels before in the series as a background character? Instead she was (almost hastily like they were hoping none of us would notice) squashed into the beginning of S6E8 and hardly done justice. I get that you only have thirteen/fourteen episodes per season to resolve things, but surely it would be better to have less open plot threads, and spend and entire season properly setting up and wrapping up one or maybe two at a pace that the audience can stand, instead of trying to tie up five of them hastily in the last episode? But like a child off his medication, Moffat's attention span seems to be shorter than Amy's miniskirt.

Anyway, back to The Name of the Doctor. I have already stated my misgivings with the Silence, and the set up, and the hype over this being one of the most perilous moment's in the Doctor's life, so I'll say no more about it, other than it was a giant friggin' letdown. Vastra, Jenny and Strax always make for an appealing comedic sidekick act (with extra badassery) and I was pleased that we got to see more of them in this series. Clara's reveal as to why exactly she keeps dying was an interesting twist, and I admit, one that I did not predict, but I never really warmed to Clara as a companion, mostly because I spent most of my time yelling at the screen for the Doctor to just explain to her very simply "I AM MARRIED!".

Speaking of married, the River and Doctor farewell scene may be my favourite romance scene of 2013 - say what you will about the pairing, the scene was passionate and moving enough to reduce me to tears, and that was one of the best onscreen kisses I've seen in a long time.

Villain wise - the Great Intelligence never really felt like much of a threat to me right from the start. It felt like a one off villain, and really should have stayed that way. Trying to turn them into the series' big bad was a total flop - like the Silence suddenly went on strike and they had to recycle a villain from the Christmas special to fill the space. And while the Whispermen had potential, I can honestly say that I have no idea exactly what they do. Again, they felt like a stop gap measure because the finale had not checked all its boxes by having a freaky looking new monster in it. I get that they look creepy and are capable of murder (though was it even murder? Jenny was fine after Strax did his nurse routine) but we never see how exactly they kill or why they are a threat to a person. They just walk up to you with their teeth bared and...then what?

Its not enough to look scary - after the initial shock and creepiness, you have to give us a reason to fear you. This is true of any villain. You can't introduce a threat to the characters, and then expect them to keep being scared of it - you need to slowly reveal the true nature of the threat they present in order to expect a rational person to keep fearing them. For instance, when the Weeping Angels first appeared in Blink, we knew that the statues kept changing position, and that people kept getting sent back in time. That was the initial creepiness and fear that made your skin crawl. But as the episode progressed to about two thirds of the way in, we learned the true horror of them - that they only move when you're not looking at them, and suddenly the creepiness upgrades itself to fully fledged terror as you realise the implications that this has (the implication here being that even blinking can lead to your doom). The Whispermen never do this. They're just there, being creepy for the whole episode, and you cannot expect anyone to keep fearing that an hour later.

In my considered opinion, Moffat needs to just take a nice long sleep, and stop thinking of ideas for a little while. He instead needs to gather up all his loose plot ends, and start tying them together, because no matter how much he might be hoping, nobody has forgotten them, and they are still there. He needs to spend a season wrapping up all the threads, and giving the audience a conclusion that actually answers more questions that creates them. Maybe if he gets back to work on Sherlock for a little while, and channels some of his new ideas into that, this will actually happen. Let's give Steven a chance, but keep the straitjacket on standby just in case.