And The Kitchen Sink Of Death

Let's be honest here. The Time Of The Doctor was not really what you'd describe as a great episode of Doctor Who. I wouldn't describe it as awful. It's certainly no Fear Her. Hell, I'm not entirely convinced I'd even describe as bad per se. But it's definitely not very good. At best I suppose we could describe it as an uneven end to an uneven year. And of course if we're going to have any hope of getting to the root of WHY this is we're going to have to get into full on spoiler territory.

For example, the 12th Doctor discovers that when a body dies it evacuates its bowels..

So consider yourself warned.

Curiously if we're looking a comparable point of reference when analyzing this episode, I think we best find it in Godzilla: Final Wars. The main difference being that I love me some Godzilla: Final Wars, but can only describe my opinion of The Time Of The Doctor as somewhat ambivalent.

Like this, only with more Fez.

The obvious parallels being that they are both productions celebrating an anniversary and the end of an era. And that they both try to cram in as many monsters as possible, with the consequence that none of the foes included really get much of a chance to actually do anything much. But whilst it's pretty cool to see Godzilla power his way through a dozen or so Kaiju in short order, Doctor Who is a somewhat different beast.

It's like a D&D dungeon for Doctor Who in a way. A bunch of unrelated monsters crammed together in close confines for no logically available reason. And rather than killing the shit out of each other they just hang out peacefully and wait for the heroes to kill them off in alphabetical order.

I'm being facetious of course. The real reason they're all there is this strange sense of deja vu.

So, we have some technologically backwards planet in the middle of nowhere from which a mysterious signal is emanating. This mysterious signal then attracts the attention of every Doctor Who villain which has a spaceship model on file. This sounds somehow familiar....

No, can't quite place it.

Anyway, after this is established the Doctor and his companion encounter some militaristic space clerics in the company of a mysterious female friend of the Doctors, whom it is heavily implied he as gotten off with at some point. Following this they have a brief encounter with some Weeping Angels in a creepy forest.

No... Still not quite getting it.

Do you want me to go on, or am I being too subtle. I somehow doubt I was the only one a little confused when the published summary for The Time Of The Doctor was the EXACT SAME PLOT as The Pandorica Opens. I have a lot of respect for Steven Moffat as a writer, and he has undoubtedly produced some fantastic bit's of Doctor Who in his time. But when the most obvious alternative title for an episode is "Steven Moffat Has Officially Run Out Of Ideas" you can't help but be a little concerned.

Still, we do have to give some credit. The episode does, after all, firmly establish him in the long Doctor Who tradition of simply making shit up as you go. Anyone who thought that there was some great answer to who exactly the Silence were or just what the hell they were up to will be sorely disappointed. Rather than paying off the various plot threads that have been left hanging throughout the 11th Doctors time they are simply lampshaded with a couple of throwaway lines and then ditched as inconvenient. Sure, it kind of works in it's way. But there's a world of difference between SEEING a vast time and space straddling conspiracy confronted and facing the ultimate mystery at it's heart, and simply being told that Carol in Accounting did it.

That Carol, always mixing the files up.

What I'm saying is that it's far from satisfying. Take the Silents. They're explained away as being genetically engineered priests? How does that even work? Let's leave aside for a brief moment the fact that creating a priest that you can't remember confessing to defeats the entire purpose of confession, not to mention makes a ridiculous amount of extra work as the all the penitents will be stuck in a permanent loop.

WE'RE PAID BY THE HOUR!!

Or in fact the niggling detail that you're not actually meant to be able to see the priest in a confession booth anyway, thus rendering the point entirely moot. No, what I'm really wondering is why it was they were controlling the entire course of human history up to 1963. What was all that about then?

Total waste of an otherwise fantastic monster. 

I suppose it's a fine line between a tired rehash and a nostalgic tribute. The deciding factor I think is that the tribute will draw elements from the very best, whereas the rehash will just throw in anything as long as it's already been done. That's the major problem here. It's very much Moffat by numbers, but with no quality control whatsoever. You'd almost use the term phoning it in, except when you combine that with the phrase "by the numbers" you get a terrible picture of the entire script being assembled via one of those godawful automated telephone systems. Press the star key to tediously repeat the name of the show in dialogue despite it making no sense to do so. Press 3 to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what the hell force fields are actually meant to do.

Seriously, of all the things to hark back to, why Asylum Of The Daleks? Force fields are meant to keep things out. We're told on screen that the TARDIS can't penetrate the forcefield. Except then it does. Why can it suddenly do this?

It's no wonder the Weeping Angels got through easily. They had a supreme understanding of it's function, in that it only works if you don't look at it too closely. And then if the Ridiculously Inconsistent Forcefield™ wasn't enough we get fucking stupid Dalek duplicate effect again. Are you honestly telling me that no one at the BBC has ever been called a nob head?

Not pictured: anything even vaguely creepy or intimidating.

So yeah, pro tip: if you're capable of projecting a theoretically impenetrable forcefield, maybe make sure you're doing so from INSIDE it. You hardly need to ask the Galactic Empire how things work out otherwise.

I'm sure I left that Death Star around here SOMEWHERE....

And whilst we're on the subject of inconsistent logic, does anyone REALLY believe it would take the Daleks THREE HUNDRED YEARS before they decided to start killing everyone? I know that Asylum Of The Daleks showed that Mr Moffat didn't really understand Daleks, but this is pushing things. The only reason it would take a Dalek 300 SECONDS to start killing everyone is if it wanted to make a speech first. And was on whatever the Dalek equivalent of extra strength horse tranquilizers is. 

Still, it's not only the Daleks that are acting like muppets. Take the Doctor for example. A mysterious signal that he can't translate. Even though it's Gallifreyan in origin. And addressed to him directly. It is pushing it a little that he would have to rely on his creepy comedy severed head accessory to work that out. I do actually quite like Handles, but I have to question exactly how appropriate it is to be walking around with a functioning Cyberman head. Even though they at least make a point of stating that the inconvenience offal has been scraped out it's still rather like running around with the severed head of an unjustly executed innocent and talking to it.

If I could feel anything I'd never stop screaming.

But there are other things even less appropriate. Two in particular. Firstly there's the whole nudity thing. This, for me, falls flat in it's entirety. It just doesn't work in Doctor Who. Indeed, it becomes super creepy when you consider that all that touching, rubbing and rolling around in the snow was done completely naked. I'd make a point about Doctor Who not really being the place for nob gags, but I've already mentioned the Dalek duplicates so I guess that theory's out of the window. This might just be me though. The other thing I think is a bit more fundamental.

I'm talking about this.

There have of course been several times in the shows long history when the Doctor has, for one reason or another, taken up arms in a more direct way than usual. Sometimes from necessity, sometimes from a writer not really getting the character. But for the Doctor to go all Mega Genocide Buster, even on the Daleks, by wielding his own regeneration as weapon is just.... wrong somehow. Wrong on a fundamental level. It's almost the opposite of being the Doctor. The whole regeneration thing is meant to be a bit Buddhist after all. To turn that into a weapon? It just seems off to me. I'm all for tying the regeneration itself more firmly into the plot than the afterthought it normally is, but this really doesn't work for me.

This is probably the main problem with the episode really, since the regeneration is more or less the entire point. You could probably forgive some of the other issues, but if the crux of the matter is fluffed like it was then nothing else is really going to hold up. It's funny really, because one of the main reasons I was looking forward to this episode was the fact if Steven Moffat has demonstrated one single quality over the course of this run so far, it's that he REALLY wants to kill the Doctor. It seems like series he has the Doctor die at least once. Often more than that. Never quite as much as Rory get's killed, but who can honestly compete with Rory at anything?

And of course, having been killed off and resurrected in several different ways over the years would give you a handy out for when you hit the regeneration limit, assuming you didn't just ignore it altogether or make it an interesting part of the plot. So it's kind of odd that we get the pretty much the exact opposite. Making the 11th Doctor actually the 13th Doctor is just clumsy. There's not really any great reason for it and it's introduced in such a ham handed way. The 10th Doctors abortive regeneration doesn't need to brought into anything aside from hyper pedantic fan debates between obstreperous continuity trolls in the darkest corners of the internet. And the War Doctor is easily hand waved by the Sisterhood Of Karns magic Kool-Aid. Plus, it's not like reality itself hasn't been completely rebooted at least twice or anything. The only reason to advance the count in this way at all, aside from deliberate wanton trolling of the aforementioned obstreperous pedants, is if you've got such a burning brilliant idea to utilize it that you simply can't just write it down on a piece of paper and save it for later. Which is not what we got.

Not by a long shot.

Hell, we don't even get any sort of interesting ongoing mystery about it. It's simply that Clara asked nicely. Isn't it a good job someone was standing right next to the other side of that crack, in defiance of the terrifying energies it was releasing, to hear her.

Speaking of Clara, you really have to feel sorry for her here. Again she doesn't actually get anything useful to actual do, aside from the aforementioned whispering into mysterious cracks. But that's par for the course at this point. What's really insulting is that the big emotive pre-regeneration moment isn't actually with her at all, but with a hallucination of Amy. Not even the actual one, a hallucination. That's got to bite. It's kinda nice to bring in Karen Gillan so that she and Matt Smith can compare wigs (seriously, did we REALLY need the wig bit just because he's shaved his head for another role? Couldn't he have just worn a wig?), but it really just goes to further undermine the character of Clara even further. Which considering she's basically the Dodo of the modern era is trifle unnecessary.

I could go on. Telling half the story in montage and voice over is, frankly, pants. Having a truth field is an interesting concept but is used for a quick gag and then not explored any further. Tasha Lem is basically just River Song only dressed a bit more goth. The Sontarans continue their slide into comedy villains rather than credible threat. The huge devastating battles promised in The Name Of The Doctor turning out to be a minor, if incredulously protracted skirmish. The whole plot being a sort of incoherent fudging of dangling plot strings necessitated by the immanent departure of the leading man. The fact that the first scene of the new Doctor is basically an exact duplicate of the first scene of the last one, only replacing legs with kidneys. When you look at the details with any sort of scrutiny it's a wonder the whole thing doesn't fall apart and take your TV with it. But sadly unlike the Silence, the plot holes remain in your memory, even after you look away.

And now will spend the rest of time being overdubbed with samples from Father Ted, the inevitable fate of all priests on TV.

Still, one final point of interest. You may recall that some time ago I did some reporting on the many Deaths of the Doctor, and found that the overwhelming number one killer was, at the end of the day, natural causes. And what do we now find? The 11th Doctor dies of OLD AGE. I admit that it's a fun idea to have a besieged Doctor aging to death. But even when we add in the 8th Doctors cause of death as revealed by Night Of The Doctor (I.E. vehicle crash), I can't help but feel that the whole concept is getting increasingly prosaic. Cancer, accident, old age. Maybe it's time for something a little more exciting? After the massive undermining basically every established monster received in the Time Of The Doctor, something will have to be done to try and bring back some sense of credible threat.