Well now, the latest series of Doctor Who has finished and TV is now officially done with until christmas. All we have to fill the resulting gap is the last 2 parts of the adventure games and the live show.
Oh gods, but the prospect of a Doctor Who stage show is making me dribble. As a hopeless Ultraman fan I can safelt say that there is nothing better than a live stage. I've got my ticket booked.
Anyway, it's at this stage that I should be giving forth my opinions on the state of play. Whilst my brainwrong caused me to miss out on reviewing the series on a story by story basis I seem to be currently stable enough that I can at least offer something of a retrospective.
But first, some internet pedantry. Now the adventure games are, it has to be said, generally pretty sweet. To finally get a Doctpr Who game thats not only good but also free is something to be celebrate. However the latest chapter Blood Of The Cybermen raises some interesting issues about continuity and canonicity. Assuming thats even a word. See, the production team has been fairly emphatic in selling these as 4 extra episodes, which is all well and good. The new series has progressed fairly rapidly, but there are some points into which you could squeeze in bonus adventures. However it's made pretty clear in The Pandorica Opens that that is the first time Amy has ever encountered a Cyberman. Then at the end of The Big Bang she sets off again with the Doctor AND Rory. Yet the adventure games only feature the Doctor and Amy. So when is this supposed to be set?
Oh, and the answer, in case you need me to make up your mind for you, is "it doesn't matter".
So, onto the series itself then. There's lots of obvious things you could say. Matt Smith is a superlative Doctor and nails the part right from the off. Yes, we know. It's honestly so obvious that it really doesn't need stating anymore, despite the fact that I've just done exactly that. Yes, the show is very different despite being the same. It may sound paradoxical, but thats the way it is. The more things change and all that. Who would have ever thought that changing the production staff would result in a difference of tone? Shocking I know.
I suppose where it get's interesting is in the way the themes have been layered and built up over the series to result in a rather more cohesive finale. Whilst it does in all honesty share a bit of the deus ex machina qualities we've become accustomed to it's been built up to a little more so that the inevitable reset feels a bit less of a cheat than ususual. And it does have to be said that the whole thing had obviously been very tightly planned. The opening montage of scenes recalling characters from earlier episodes immediatly provoking a response of "ooooo, I wonder when they filmed that?" Indeed, it's because the whole thing is so tightly put together that the the loose ends become so interesting.
Probably the biggest dissapointment of the finale is simply that we don't actually find ANYTHING out. It's a little frustrating that after all the build up there is no real resolution. I mean yeah, the universe got rebooted. But we have no clue whatsoever WHY it got blown up in the first place. In a way though I have to think this may be a good thing, as instead of introducing and discarding the ultimate villain of ultimate destiny over the course of about an hour we may now get a whole series to further establish the threat and work towards countering it. The fact that this has apperently been the plan all along does stike me as being somewhat audacious.
But it's the OTHER loose ends that I find intriguing, as there's certain things that I can help but think should be revisited come the new series. It was only as I rewatched the latter half of the series that it really struck me how much more there is to be done with some of these stories. Firstly there's the Silurian issue. Now, as a species they're always going to be a loose end because you can't resolve them in a contemporary setting, and they're to cool to permantly kill off. But in this we have a guy who, after getting poisoned doesn't die. He begins MUTATING we are told. Mutating into what? And then he goes into hibernation for the next thousand years. So, is it just me or is that screaming futuristic follow up featuring human/silurian hybrid? And then of course there's the ship from The Lodger. Someone's attempt to build a TARDIS? To say that this is an event significant beyond the scope of the episode is a slight understatement. The Time Lords are all dead but someone is trying to build TARDISes (TARDISi?). Who has the technology to do something like that other than the Daleks? Might it be in some way connected with the shadowy extra dimensional forces attempting to destroy the very fabric of time and space? Or is it just the result of having more money left over for sets than they originally thought? Either way it's something that demands a little more than a throwaway line, at least to my mind. In a series that throws in an apparent subtle continuity error as an important plot point for the eagle eyed these sort of things stand out as hints of things to come rather than missed opportunities.
Also intruiging is the temporal fossilisation of the axis of evil at the start of The Big Bang. Am I the only one who saw a room full of petrified figures and found the visual reference strikingly evocative of the Weeping Angels? A clue or hint, or nothing at all? Who knows (other than Moffat), but it should keep the conspiracy theorists going for a while. After all, who's to say whats significant or not (other than Moffat)?
All in all I'd say this was a very succesful series. A lot more succesful, it has to be said, than Dvid Tennants first, which did suffer from a tremendous degree of absolute bobbins. I mean a fucking alien love ship? REALLY? A bold new statement of what the show is capable of being and a shifting onto a new track as it were. I look forward to seeing how the seeds of this newfound sense of forward planning bear fruit.
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