This
is the season that a lot of you have been waiting for. To those of you
who have been, River Song says “naughty, naughty” and Rory puts you in
the cupboard. Series 6 is simultaneously the crowning moment of Steven
Moffat’s career and his darkest moment. It is here that he rose higher
than ever before and then fell so much lower.
It’s that juxtaposition, within each episode, that caused this episode to garner the reputation that it did. I know people who threatened to quit watching Doctor Who
after this season, and individuals who did, only to pick it back up
once the season was past. While I described the last season as one of
the of the best seasons, but lacking in those emotional areas that could
draw me in, this season has more believable emotional moments and
episodes that could make a great season, yet it’s just... disjointed.
Series
6 is made up of two groups of episodes. The first group, “The
Impossible Astronaut”, “A Good Man Goes to War”, “Let’s Kill Hitler” and
“The Wedding of River Song” exist as part of the season. You must
watch the season to have any connection with these episodes. The second
group, “The Curse of the Black Spot”, “The Doctor’s Wife”, “Night
Terrors”, “The Girl Who Waited”, “The God Complex” and “Closing Time”,
are entirely episodic, with minute connections to the season plot, and
seemingly little editing done to link one another. “Day of the Moon”
and the two-parter “The Rebel Flesh” are episodic stories that are
required for the sake of the season story in the way that “Human Nature”
was required for “Utopia”, but cut off from the rest function as
interesting episodes in their own right.
This
is perhaps a good reason why Steven Moffat should be a writer, and not a
showrunner. He crafts excellent stories- “The Empty Child”, “The Girl
in the Fireplace”, “Blink” and “Silence in the Library” were all popular
stories, and “The Eleventh Hour” is one of the best post-regeneration
stories of all time. But it’s hard to write a five-part story in the
span of a year, edit scripts, and do everything else a Producer must do.
Yes, Russell T. Davies wrote five episodes per season as well, but he
never tried anything quite so ambitious and over-written as Moffat does.
Failures
of script editing are particularly noticeable in these seasons. Amy
Pond is written as “The Girl Who Waited”- who was willing to wait for
over a decade without her faith losing any strength. She was proven by
the beginning of the season to have undying faith and devotion in Rory,
and the one time Rory is shown to turn on Amy, it’s shown to be a trick
by a god amusing himself with the TARDIS. Yet when Amy’s shown trapped
on an alien planet for years, she manages to completely turn on the
Doctor and hate him and everything he stands for. Even in that episode,
it’s her love for Rory that gives her the strength to change the past,
yet somehow in “God Complex”, it’s her faith in the Doctor and the
Doctor alone that draws the group into a trap. This is an independent
criticism of the fact that neither Matt Smith nor writer Toby Whithouse
seem to have watched the Seventh Doctor adventure “Curse of Fenric”.
Those
aren’t the only issues of this season. The concept of “Silence” has
been passed around so many times in Moffat’s scripts that by the time
“The Wedding of River Song” comes along, it’s lost its meaning. In
Series 4, it referred to the silence left behind by death. In Series 5,
it referred to the utter nothingness that would be left behind as the
universe was destroyed. In Series 6, it refers to a race of creatures-
or rather, a religious organization that those creatures lead- or
rather, the death and/or silence of the Doctor. There’s a progression
among these, one leads to the other, but any attempt to take them as a
coherent whole leaves one baffled, wishing that the episode itself would
simply be silent rather than continuing to introduce new meanings of
the word.
Add
this to the continuity gaffs, such as River having grown up with
someone that she had trouble recognizing half a season prior, and the
very concept that having sex in the TARDIS produces a time lord baby,
and it's no wonder this season has the reputation it does. Combined with
the fact that the "season based" episodes are largely about a character
who annoyed many fans with her unrealistic, unexplained abilities and
the nonsensical reactions of the world around her, and you get a season
that's certainly not for everyone.
As
for the other episodes, the ones without River, taken individually,
they're fantastic. Or should I say brilliant? There are certainly better
episodes, but these episodes make you think, and they carry emotional
weight. "The Rebel Flesh", for instance, is a retelling of the
Frankenstein story, if Frankenstein had a whole village of fellows. My
biggest complaint about that one, by the way is the follow up where the
story goes back to treating these creatures as tools, an assertion the
Doctor spent two episodes rejecting and turned out to be right.
My
advice is to watch "Curse of the Black Spot", "The Doctor's Wife",
"Night Terrors" and “The Girl Who Waited”. “Closing Time” and “God
Complex” aren’t as good, but you can watch these as well for average
episodes with nothing major for or against them. Then, start to watch
“The Impossible Astronaut”, “Day of the Moon”, “Good Man Goes to War”
and decide if you still want to watch “Let’s Kill Hitler” and “The
Wedding of River Song”.
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