Doctor Who ended it’s fifth season this past Saturday (at least in the UK). After a somewhat rocky inuagural season for the new Doctor (Matt Smith), it definitely ended on a high note. But it was not without it’s flaws, especially in part one. If you’re still watching the season as it airs a couple weeks behind on BBC America, you may want to stop reading so you’re not spoiled.
"All of time and space" seems to have a LOT of repeats.
I’ve made it no secret that I have been less than pleased with the way the season has been progressing, especially from the writing side. There was a slight improvement with the episodes “Vincent and the Doctor” and “The Lodger”. This had me excited for part one of the finale “The Pandorica Opens”, but I was immediately disappointed. The first five minutes of the episode contained an incredibly corny, and distasteful recap of basically all the Steve Moffat-penned episodes of the season. And who did he decide to bring back, yet AGAIN? River Song, of course. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the character, but he’s using her as a crutch to hold up otherwise weak writing.
The rest of the plot for part one is completely forgettable until we reach the last five minutes. It is revealed that every villain that the Doctor has met (at least in the last 5 seasons) banded together to create the “Pandorica” which is meant to be a prison for the Doctor. Lets stop right there. The Pandorica is a prison. Fine. That was foreshadowed. No big deal. But how contrived can you get? How can they honestly expect viewers to believe that all these bad guys somehow worked together to create this? That seems about as successful a venture as the Axis powers in World War II. How did no one on that writing staff come up with a better scenario than this clearly pieced together nonsense?
Once you got past that ghastly mess, the ending to part one was exciting. Rory’s a robot, Amy is dying, the Doctor is trapped, and River may or may not have blown up the TARDIS. Good cliffhanger. Despite that I was justifiably warying when watching part two. While it was by no means the best finale of the new Who era (“Journey’s End” holds that honor), it was definitely better than I expected given the atrocity of part one.
I thought that it gave a nice close to this stupid season-long “Amy is connected to the cracks in the universe” plotline. I liked all the crazy time jumping they did with River’s wrist piece and the chaos it caused. Very classic Who. I also really enjoyed Amy’s outburst about remembering the Doctor at her wedding. Incredibly corny, yet hilarious. So, major plot-wise the episode left me quite content. My annoyances were with the smaller plot points. Specifically River Song. They keep hinting that it’s almost time for the Doctor to meet her for the “first” time in the era where she becomes his wife (or something). Basically all this means is that they’re not really seriously writing her into the show yet, they’re just sitting on this plot device that they can use whenever they can’t come up with something new themselves.
I still can’t comprehend how they could run out of ideas this easily. They have ALL of time and space to work with. Sure, throw in Dalek or a Cyberman here or there to appease the hardcore fans, but for goodness sake come up with more original content. “The Lodger” and “Vincent and the Doctor” were headed in the right direction. Let’s see more of that next year? Pretty please?
3 Responses to It’s A Small Universe After All