Yeah, I haven't done one of these for a while, but the reason (other than the fact that I've been blogging less in general) is mostly that I didn't really have much to say about the episodes since "Asylum of the Daleks".
To be perfectly honest, the first half of Series 7 was a bit of a waste in my opinion.
"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was fun, but mostly in a gimmicky way.
"A Town Called Mercy" was great, but I'm not going to lie, Tennant was way better than Smith at showing the ruthless, merciless of the Doctor. When Tennant did a face-heel turn, it felt surprising, but scarily believable. Like when your funny friend suddenly gets very serious and angry. Smith sometimes has a hard time being believably cold.
"The Power of Three" had an excellent build-up, but a really underwhelming payoff and a really doofy last line. That said, I liked how it forced the Doctor to stay in one place for a long time and showed how incredibly difficult that was for him. It was an interesting exploration of his character that hadn't really been explored before.
Finally, we reached "The Angels Take Manhattan" and while I personally think it was a satisfying conclusion for Amy and Rory, I also think it was one of Moffat's weakest episodes to date, mostly because paradoxes almost always make a terrible plot-device in Doctor Who, especially when you never establish their mechanics before they become important. In one episode, a paradox just releases a giant reality-destroying creature, in another episode a paradox would blow a hole in the space-time continuum the size of Belgium, and in this episode, a paradox allows them to defeat the weeping angels and jettison themselves back to their original time. See? Not terribly consistent.
Since the Christmas special, I find I have to keep reminding myself that all those episodes were part of the same series. It really doesn't feel that way to me. "The Snowmen" and the episodes since then have all felt like their own separate series. The only thread connecting them is Clara's appearance in "Asylum of the Daleks", but the rest of the first half just felt like Amy and Rory's parade of death. Now that they're gone, the series finally seems to have taken shape and feels more distinct.
"The Snowmen" wasn't particularly memorable, but I love Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, and I was pretty OK with Clara's reappearance. I think that the introduction of the Great Intelligence is promising, but more on that later.
"The Bells of St. John" was pretty good and as an IT person, I appreciated a show warning the masses about unsecured WiFi networks. It was plotted rather well and continued the Great Intelligence thing, which made me happy. Again, more on that later.
"The Rings of Akhaten" was admittedly rather hokey and cliche and sickeningly sweet, but I honestly really liked it because it felt so refreshing to have an episode that was more interested in sentiment than in acting clever.
"Cold War" was OK, but "Dalek" from the first series did something very similar far better.
"Hide" was excellent and like "Rings" (which was written by the same person) it felt very different from other recent "Doctor Who" stories. It had a very solid emotional foundation that has often been ignored since Moffat took over.
I don't think I really noticed how cold and generally over-intellectual "Doctor Who" had gotten since RTD left, but I think that's partially because RTD's run quickly became overly-emotional and almost anti-intellectual, so I was happy to change gears.
Still, it's been a few years now and it's good to see that Moffat's trying to mix things up a bit.
Which brings me to "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS".
Let me just say that I don't love this episode. I like it, but there are parts I really dislike. The subplot regarding the brothers seemed pretty forced. Why exactly did the Doctor need their help? It seems like all they did was create more conflict. I liked that we got to see more of the TARDIS, though it seems like the only times we get to see the inner workings of the TARDIS is when we're running through it at top-speed and can only have enough time to throw in one or two in-jokes for the fans. Beyond that, it was a fun episode, although I still feel like Clara hasn't established much of an identity for herself yet, probably because her identity is a very critical plot-point, which is potentially great for later on, but kind of sacrifices a certain level of investment in the here and now.
Still, the reason this episode made me feel like blogging about "Doctor Who" again is because it made me realize something about this second half of Series 7 that kind of defines its current direction.
You see, up until now, RTD and Moffat had been more than content to completely ignore Old Who. Oh sure, they might bring in a well-known adversary every season or so, but the Doctor in New Who has generally been very tight-lipped about his old escapades. He might bring up the fact that he had children, but he would be very vague and just give silent looks whenever the subject was brought up.
To get to the point, RTD and Moffat were always afraid of alienating new fans by referencing material they know next to nothing about. If they were going to bring in something from Old Who, it would be rebooted and re-contextualized to the point where it might as well be completely new. This was something they more or less admitted to, by the way. They intentionally didn't want to dig too deep into the recesses of the Doctor's ancient history because they were more interested in telling their own stories and creating their own monsters.
And that's fine, really, but one thing Old Who fans are often quick to point out is that it often seems like anything "new" they create tends to have something almost exactly like it from the already established and obscenely overly-documented canon. The sliver of effort required to take an idea and fold it into the vast well of canonical material would generally have been worth it just to throw in a little fan-service.
However, starting with "The Snowmen", the show has taken a very interesting shift towards acknowledging Old Who in almost every episode.
"The Snowmen" and "The Bells of St. John" both involve the Great Intelligence, a lesser-known villain from Old Who during the Troughton era, and he appears to be the Big Bad for the remainder of this series. In "The Rings of Akhaten", the Doctor openly and freely states that he had a granddaughter that he used to travel with, something he had always danced around in New Who. In "Cold War" we see the return of the Ice Warriors, another monster from the Troughton era (with some additional appearances in the Pertwee era). While "Hide" doesn't incorporate any direct references, its general tone and style feel incredibly different from almost any other episode in New Who, though I wouldn't say it's particularly Old Who-feeling either.
And in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", we have references galore, mostly through little artifacts scattered about and ghostly voices of previous doctors and companions.
More importantly, the Doctor himself feels older. From Series 5 through the mid-point in the current series, Smith's Doctor has been very bouncy and excitable. He felt surprisingly wise, but still very spry and adventurous. After the loss of Amy and Rory, however, he became a lot more crotchety. Not quite in the same way as Eccleston's Doctor. Honestly, he seems very reminiscent of Hartnell's Doctor. Deliberate, a little grouchy, a bit obstinate, and just plain old. For the youngest actor to ever play the Doctor, I don't think anyone else has ever made the character feel quite as ancient as Smith has during these past few episodes.
There's no reason to ask why there's been a sudden fondness for the good old days. We all know that this is the year of the 50th Anniversary of "Doctor Who". We have an episode bringing back the Cybermen, a finale supposedly revealing the name of the Doctor, and a special somehow bringing back Rose Tyler and Handy (the half-human Doctor clone regenerated from his hand).
Still, I find this shift in direction fairly promising. Even if the episodes haven't been terribly excellent, if there's some master plan at work, it could really pay off in a big way, particularly for some jaded old fans.
That said, I also was willing to give Moffat some rope during Series 6. His first episode was stellar, but hinged on the promise that the Doctor would die, which was one hell of a pickle that Moffat wrote himself into. I truly believed that he had already worked out his plan, but when the series ended, it was relatively clear that Moffat had no idea how he was going to write his way out of it, and so the end was a pretty massive disappointment, especially since the supposed death of the Doctor has been in no way consistent with his behavior in Series 7.
So it's entirely plausible (and even probable) that Moffat set himself up to reveal the true name of the Doctor with no real plan on how exactly he was going to handle it. I fully expect him to cop out at the end or give us something massively unsatisfying.
Then again, it's important to note that the identity of the Doctor is the one plot point that Moffat has had brewing since "Girl in the Fireplace" in Series 2. In that episode, Madame de Pompadour reads his mind and remarks on how he's hiding something behind his name. Then in Series 4's "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", we find out that River Song knows his name and that there's only one reason she would. Much later on when the Doctor marries River, he supposedly tells her his name, but he actually just gave her a clue to make it clear that he would survive her attempted murder. Now it's clear that "Doctor Who?" is apparently the first question ever asked in the history of the universe and that its answer is somehow very dangerous. I would not be surprised if the identity of the Doctor is something that Moffat had spent a lot of time pondering as a life-long fan and eventually thought of an answer that excited and satisfied him enough to make a part of his own head-canon, and once he started getting brought in to write more and more for the show, he started leaving in bread crumbs just in case he ever got the opportunity to make it actually happen. Once he got the opportunity to act as show-runner, he decided that this would be his claim to fame and that he would dedicate his entire run to build up to the moment when he would finally reveal the Doctor's name and blow all our minds.
Or he's just making this shit up as he goes along.
I guess we'll find out in a few more weeks.
