Doctor Who — Series 5

Doctor Who's fifth series takes the strengths of Russell T. Davies' revival and smooths out nearly all the issues that routinely gave me pause. WIth the exception of an unnecessary two-parter and a useless Dalek return (now with Freeze-Pop colors!), the start of Steven Moffat's tenure as showrunner elevates the series from a whimsical but dodgy program to one of the best shows currently on television.

Admittedly, I think just about everyone expected an uptick in quality when Davies handed off the series to its best writer, but Moffat completely overhauls Doctor Who without sacrificing its innate charms. It still feels like the classic space serial it is, but Moffat trades Davies' only fitfully earned "golly gee whiz" mood for a more grounded wonder, one that is a payoff to the adventure rather than the default tone of voice. I'm told the original run of Dr. Who had its moments of darker energy, and Moffat very much targets that side of Who, to the point that the series, while still feeling appropriate for a family, might actually challenge, even alienate, viewers.

But first, let's talk about the casting, because it's as important to the success of Series Five as the tightened writing. David Tennant was spellbinding as the Tenth Doctor, his incessant grin and goofy frame perfectly suited to Davies' vision of the series. Matt Smith had a great deal to live up to when he took on the role, suffering reams of preemptive criticism as if he'd been the one to push out Tennant, but damned if he doesn't shut everyone up from the start.

As I said in my review of the first episode, Tennant played the Doctor as if he wanted nothing more than to be human; Smith's Doctor, on the other hand, is quite content to be a higher being. But he does still admire our potential: in the series finale, he responds to a show of immense compassion from one of his companions by sighing, "Why do you have to be so human?" his voice mixing exasperation with affection in an almost paternal sense. Smith makes for a slier, wittier, more scabrous (if still amiable) version of the Doctor, and while I figured I'd prefer Moffat's time as Who head over Davies', I was most surprised to see how quickly I not only accepted Smith but came to favor him over Tennant.

Backing up Smith's revelatory performance is an equally powerful one from Karen Gillan as the new companion Amy Pond. At once a continuation of Donna's feisty presence and a whole new breed of Companion, Amy is such a fantastic, compelling character in her own right that she's the first Companion I wouldn't mind following around even without the Doctor.

Amy is a bit unbalanced, her own complexes arising from the Doctor himself, who appeared to her as a child and then inadvertently disappeared for years, leaving her to endure ridicule and therapy. This gives her an intriguingly spiky edge with the Doctor, burying some friction between their happy adventures. Davies' Companions always fit into some easy categorization with the Doctor: Rose had an outright romance with him, Martha unrequited love and Donna an almost sibling-like interplay. Moffat gives more depth to Amy: her relationship with the Doctor is Platonic, occasionally suggestive, deeply committed but also occasionally contentious. This is reflected in the Doctor's treatment of her, which isn't always so friendly and supportive.

Moffat uses Smith's and Gillan's total chemistry and rich characterizations to great effect. Neither the Doctor nor Amy ever seems to know where they stand, an ambiguity that weighs even heavier on poor Rory (Arthur Darvill), Amy's fiancé. From the moment we see the sweet but defensive lad, it's clear that he's dealt with Amy's issues (it can't be easy hearing tales about the "raggedy Doctor") but that he loves her dearly, and the zeal with which she joins the Doctor unsettles him. The Doctor invites Rory along too about halfway into the series, but it's amusing that he seems to do so both willingly as a means of preventing Amy from getting to close to him yet reluctantly because part of him maybe likes this gorgeous, loopy lady.

Because Moffat and his writing team create such richer characters, they also have a responsibility to write better, deeper stories. Boy, do they deliver: from the mournful, disturbing first episode to the glee of the Venetian episode, Doctor Who's fifth series connects more fully to both the creepy genre horror and the idealistic elation of the show. In-between, Amy's muddled feelings for the Doctor are drawn out through an adventure that forces her to choose between him and her fiancé, an adventure that also happens to be one of the creepiest bits of TV I've ever seen. Elsewhere, we get a particularly heartbreaking portrait of the kind but troubled Vincent Van Gogh, who might only be driven more mad for the kindness he receives from his new but transitory friends. Also, the series-long arc is woven into each episode with far greater subtlety than the haphazard "Bad Wolf" reminders of yesteryear.

Best of all is the two-parter that brings back the Weeping Angels from Moffat's mini-masterpiece "Blink," somehow making the damn things even more terrifying while simultaneously moving deeper into the overarching mystery of the cracks in space-time. "Time of the Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" work as a two-part episode should, the first establishing the story, defining the characters' roles within it and culminating in a narrative shift so seismic it necessitates a follow-up to address the upheaval. These two episodes were so brilliant, so scary, so well-acted and so unexpectedly poignant that I didn't watch another episode for two weeks afterward so I could mull them over more, and when I resumed the series, I rewatched these first.

Part of what drew me to Moffat when he was simply one of the show's writers was his interest in the actual time element of the Time Lord. Nearly the whole of the series plays on Moffat's fascination with the possibilities of time jumps, and he even makes the fits and jerks emotional. Amy was clearly traumatized by the Doctor disappearing for years, while River Song returns with an even greater air of tragedy to her as the person who lives the reverse of the Doctor's timeline. Moffat likes to bewilder, but he always makes his episodes easy to follow provided one doesn't seek to iron out the very fabric of space-time to understand everything, and part of the reason he never loses sight of the endpoint is that he always gives the audience a reason to care about what's happening.

As I said, not everything in the series is a triumph. I'm somewhat biased against the Dalek episode because I'm frankly tired of them, but "Victory of the Daleks" also irritates for its assumption that the audience will love the WWII throwback despite how uninvolving it is. Worse is the Silurian two-parter, an utterly dull narrative that lacks the plot to even fill a single episode stretched to infuriating lengths. And the fact that it ends with one of the series' most poignant, devastating moments actually made me angrier; after such wonderfully incorporated arc material, the writers just drop in a key moment of the series without any real connection to the uselessness of the two-parter's plot.

But these are hiccups in an otherwise incredibly consistent series. Because the writing and acting is so strong throughout, the finale can go further than I've ever seen the show travel, ripping apart space-time in a way that feels both epic and terribly isolating and small-scale. In response to his critics, Smith, so ruthlessly mocked for being so young, looks older and wearier than any Doctor I've ever seen in his wrenching goodbye speeches to the adult and child versions of Amy, his tone brotherly and fatherly in equal measure and communicating a love that goes far, far beyond "will-they-won't-they" TV tension.

If Davies' Who had the power to occasionally grip me with moving moments of danger and loss, Moffat's show has me so completely wrapped up in these characters that the thought of any of them slipping through one of those cracks in space-time, not only killing them but erasing all memory of their existences from the universe, truly terrified me. I care about these people. I feel their fright when a monster actually scares, their fear of losing each other and their joy when the show's irrepressible optimism peeks through even in the darkest hour. After all is said and done with the series and the Doctor invites his pals to stay on with him, the sense of delight that bursts out of Amy and Rory has been so battle-tested by despair that their undiluted enthusiasm hit me harder than just about any moment of the "Allons-y!"sunniness of the show as it existed. The strong end-run of Davies' tenure warmed my occasionally tepid response to the series, but it was Moffat who made me a true fan.

Doctor Who — "The Eleventh Hour"

So much happens in the first episode of Doctor Who's fifth series that there's no way I could address everything I wanted to in a season-encompassing review, so I'll lay out some thoughts in a separate post.

I had anticipated Steven Moffat hitting the ground running as creative head of Doctor Who; were I to list the 10 best episodes of New Who, all of his penned episodes would make the cut. As I've said in previous Who posts, Moffat's style combines wit, edginess and an atmosphere that relies on suggestion over confrontation to unsettle the audience. His approach was an antidote to the sometimes cloying sentimentality of Russell T. Davies, who stuck to the child-oriented side of the program while Moffat gave kids something to think and fret about.

What I did not expect is that Moffat would find a new Doctor who could communicate the same things through his body language and delivery. Like those who saw this transition happen in real time, I felt sad to see David Tennant go. He was so effortlessly charismatic, so capable of pulling off whatever the writers required of him, that he left his successor big shoes to fill. Matt Smith, however, proves instantly that he's not only capable of the task but perfect for a Moffat-run Who.

When he crashes in his wrecked TARDIS outside the large but rotting home of wee Scottish transplant Amelia Pond, the still-transforming Doctor displays a complete personality shift from his predecessor. If the Tenth Doctor's catchphrase was "Allons-y," the Eleventh's might as well be, "Oh, would you come on, already?" It's not that he's hostile, per se, only so removed from others that his directness can seem edgy. Davies' conception of the Doctor always made him sound as if he'd like nothing more than to be a human; Moffat's Doctor appears to be just fine being a superior creature, thank you very much.


"The Eleventh Doctor" is so simultaneously funny and terrifying (and, occasionally, heartbreaking) that it instantly raises the bar for the series. As the Doctor notes (among frantically and rudely demanding different foods to test his new taste buds), Amelia's calm toward an alien who fell from the sky commanding her must make the crack in her bedroom she fears truly scary. And God is it; it's like the ragged gash from Roman Polanski's Repulsion, a subtly expanding fissure concealing the escape of a prisoner from a cross-dimensional prison.

I'm going to try to stop summarizing there, because if I don't I'll never stop. Like "The Girl in the Fireplace," another Moffat episode, "The Eleventh Hour" splits time between two relative points; the Doctor heads into the split to investigate the prisoner breakout and returns five minutes later, only to find that 12 years have passed and the wide-eyed girl is now a bitter young woman scarred by teases and analysis over her insistence of a "raggedy doctor" who visited her as a child. Amelia, now "Amy," feels anger over sadness, and we see the Doctor's edge reflected in her.

If Smith quickly proves himself in this episode, Karen Gillan does as superb a job in carving out her own territory from previous Companions. She's sharp-tongued, but not in Donna's bromantic sense; Tate formed a solid double act with Tennant, but there's tension between the Doctor and Amy I haven't really seen so far, familiar only with New Who and thus of two romantic Companions and one Laurel and Hardy-esque situation. Amy captures the best of both, still wounded from the pain the Doctor indirectly caused her but intrigued in more ways than one about him. When the Doctor strips before Amy and her fiancé, Rory, she keeps watching, even responding to Rory's snippy question of whether she's going to turn away with a curt, "Nope." Frankly, I'm as interested in seeing how Amy grows as the Doctor.

As far as monsters go, Moffat has always preferred the suggestion of terror punctuated by the fleetest glimpses of full-on, pants-wetting horror. Small wonder, then, that the escaped prisoner is a creature that eludes capture by taking on other forms and manages to remain unseen in its natural form by lingering in the corner of one's eye. Even when all seems to be calm, the slightest flicker of discrepancy grows in the mind until HOLY JESUS WHAT IN THE NAME OF—


There are inherent setbacks to Doctor Who: its family-friendly format and modest budget can only accommodate a certain range of ambition. "The Eleventh Hour" is one of the few episodes, particularly coming off the incredibly uneven Davies years, that really shows what the series can be capable of; its wit—"You're Scottish, fry something"—, suspense and rich characterization (both the Eleventh Doctor and Amy emerge so fully formed this series debut never feels like your basic establishing episode) make for a truly stellar episode of television. Considering just how much was reset this series, as much was at stake with this episode as Davies' resurrecting pilot. But unlike the gradual piecing together of new characters and hinted arcs that defined Davies' largely underwhelming series openers, Moffat's does not set the groundwork for better episodes later. It is simply great TV, fully realized while still tantalizing the audience with promises of further growth. I'm in love all over again.

Doctor Who — Series Four

Russell T. Davies' final series as showrunner of his triumphant revival of Doctor Who encapsulates the full range of his highs and lows. Its optimism is infectious, but at times its on-the-nose moralizing and weak plotting border on the insufferable, even if it is a family program. Davies looked to Joss Whedon for guidance, but he could never find a way to incorporate Whedon's thematic richness or attention to character in a children's show primarily built upon standalone episodes, partly because of his own love of preaching over subtlety.

After a rocky start, however, Davies accomplished something with his last batch of episodes for the series: he maintained an emotional arc that worked in tandem with the show's usual style. Armed with a foreknowledge of both David Tennant's and his own departure, a desire to leave one lasting imprint on the show and the Doctor's finest Companion yet, Davies overcomes his own limitations bring out the full potential of Doctor Who, using his final episodes to wistfully look back on the show he loved so much and worked so hard to bring back.

But man are the opening episodes rocky. The pre-series special, "Voyage of the Damned," seems to blow most of the series' budget in one go on a basic action plot that feels far too stretched for its bloated length. Nevertheless, it's a fun episode with a disposable but touching performance by Kylie Minogue as a cigarette girl on-board an intergalactic recreation of the Titanic, and had it been a normal length program it might have might for a much tighter romp. Davies can plan big, but sometimes he does so in all the wrong ways, and "Voyage of the Damned," for all its size, can barely contain the vast mood swings between action-packed romp and an unearned sense of pathos in Minogue's tragic character.

Those oscillations between light and maudlin have always been part and parcel of Dr. Who—the previous series, which revolved around Martha's awkward, chemistry-less obsession with The Doctor exemplified this—but the start of this series swing so wide this resembles a first series more than a fourth. "Partners in Crime" is one of the worst episodes of New Who, a disjointed, treacly affair with a weak villain, a poor moral (you can't just wish the fat away, obese Westerners!) and a waste of great actors being introduced (a returning Tate, Bernard Cribbins as a kooky grandpa). The episode contains so many of the worst aspects of Davies' writing it almost seems a purge before he can get down to the good stuff.

Catherine Tate's return as Donna in the series proper offers an initial boost in charm for the show's initial rut, even if she must first overcome the caricature she played in "The Runaway Bride." Indeed, her first moments of reunion with The Doctor are downright panto, yet Tate begins working on the character in no time. After Rose's reciprocated affection for The Doctor and Martha's useless prop infatuation, Tate brings a refreshing Platonic relationship to the Doctor-Companion dynamic in the new show, replacing longing with capable sass and a humanity that peeks through Tate's sarcasm.

In the otherwise forgettable episode in Pompeii, Donna's horror at watching a holocaust consume an entire city makes for compelling human drama, and she elevates the next episode, "Planet of the Ood," into near-greatness for her devastation at seeing an alien race she has no reason to care for lobotomized and turned into slaves. I worried Tate would "Am I bovvered?" her way through this season, but her appearance is by far the highlight of the series' first half, and she is a major reason why the massive upswing in quality in the second half works so well and even happens in the first place.

The first indication that Series 4 might make up for the weakness of the preceding season is in the pre-midseason two-parter by Helen Raynor, who made a right balls of her Dalek diptych in the last season. Where her previous two-part episode bringing back a major Who villain fell flat, her resurrection of an old, old species called the Sontarans is everything her previous work wasn't: taut, witty, fun, suspenseful and well-paced. It even brought back Martha to demonstrate how great Freema Agyeman might have been if not caged by the reductive, wooden character she was given in the previous season. Freed from having to pine for The Doctor, Martha displays all the capability that only peeked around corners in her more prominent role on the show. When Martha gets cloned, Agyeman gets the chance to show off her range, effortlessly jumping between the two version of Martha to prove just what the show lost by limiting the actress so severely. In some ways, this two-parter works best as a mea culpa for Agyeman, though the actual episodes are great fun as well.

From that moment, the series maintains a high, if lightweight, level of quality that explodes into full-on greatness once Steven Moffat enters with his own two-part episode. Moffat's singular gift with his role as a supporting writer in RTD years was to reveal just how deep this series could go. Where Davies trades in fables and heart-on-sleeve melodrama, Moffat crafts dark, sinister, mournful pieces that can deepen one-shot characters as much as the leads.*

"Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" displays all of Moffat's talents: a nail-biting level of suspense generated almost instantly and maintained throughout, a bending timeline that makes full use of the show's emphasis on time, and a collection of characters who enrich and complicate our heroes while serving as three-dimensional figures with their own pathos. Taking place on an enormous, planetary library haunted by shadow creatures, the two-parter oozes with an atmosphere the earlier episodes did not contain, and Moffat sinks into the most interesting Doctor/Companion pairing yet to add layers to The Doctor's and Donna's friendship even as he avoids tackling the issue head-on.

Instead, he introduces the character of River Song, an archaeologist who arrives at the library, investigating the same creatures, only to reveal she knows The Doctor. Thing is, he doesn't know her, at least not yet. The Doctor routinely comes across people in time and time again, but here is a case of someone else reuniting with a confused Time Lord. Alex Kingston gives a phenomenal performance, her joy and sorrow at meeting an old friend who doesn't know her saying more about the doomed nature of all relationships with The Doctor than any Companion's finale. For once, The Doctor is the one who feels uncomfortable and small, and he practically begs River for some clue as to what she knows about his fiture, only for her to gently refuse with the repeated refrain: "Spoilers."


Davies' Who put emphasis on character relation and personal reaction to each story over simple plots, yet so much of the dialogue in New Who episodes exists either to forward plot or tell the audience how these characters feel instead of fully trusting actors. Moffat, however, weaves atmosphere and emotion into vague, troubling lines, allowing Kingston's wistful looks, Tennant's horrified panic over Donna and Donna's own perverse temptation back into a "normal" life take prominence. Not as scary as Moffat's other episodes, "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" may nevertheless be his finest hour of the first four series, even above the mini-masterpiece "Blink."

Even Davies seems inspired, as his last run of episodes, while not stellar, keep things floating enough to send him and Tennant out on a bang. The last three episodes show Davies throwing everything he's got at the screen, bringing back long-lost characters, sending off others and having one last dive through his fan journal of continuity, all while unleashing all the sci-fi elements he never really mastered. But all is forgiven: for all the unwieldy bombast, the mounting action and inevitability forming an appropriately grandiose goodbye for an unsubtle but earnest showrunner. It's a testament to the acting and the underlying mood of the series that Rose's return instantly feels heartwarming and right; as much of a stretch as The Doctor's returned love for her was, you can feel Tennant's heart leap to his throat when he sees her, and it stays in his larynx for the rest of the finale.

Davies even gets to have one last bit of fun with "Turn Left," a "what if?" story that makes for a sci-fi It's a Wonderful Life, showing the catastrophic results that would come if Donna had never met The Doctor. Tate's performance is so upfront and perfectly contrapuntal to The Doctor's goofiness that it's easy to see her as just a fantastically real companion after a great but too sentimentalized Rose and an underwritten, two-dimensional Martha. By pulling back, however, Davies gets to show just how instrumental she's been for someone who feels she's contributed next to nothing to The Doctor's missions.

For my money, however, Davies' finest moment of the series, and of his entire run on New Who, is "Midnight." Flawlessly maintaining the tension and pain of Moffat's two-part episode, "Midnight" feels more like a Moffat episode than a traditional, monster-and-moral-driven Davies piece, but it's so good that it single-handedly gives me hope that his work on Torchwood is of a higher standard than his uneven Who writing. It's a delight, notable for its unsettling edge, the initially comic synchronized speech that becomes more and more disturbing as it continues, even the charming early moment of The Doctor shutting down the dull, magic-ruining programmed narration of a guided tour to just chat and relax with other passengers. But that light feel soon dissipates, and the cabin fever feel of the episode shows just how lonely and vulnerable The Doctor can be when he's in a situation where people look for the odd man out to target. We only truly see The Doctor emotionally compromised when a friend falls into dire straits, but "Midnight" divorces the Time Lord from both his Companion and his TARDIS, tearing him down in the process by using his singularity and quirkiness against him.

Overall, Davies' final series as showrunner is like his others, often infuriatingly simplistic, disjunctive swings between the aloof and emptily plotted and brazen sentimentality. But Davies always had a gift for making something plucky and endearing out of these flaws, and Series 4 boasts such good writing in its second half that the dispensable first episodes and the major flaws of other ones ("The Doctor's Daughter" and "The Unicorn and the Wasp" feature top-rate supporting performances but weak plotting and wheel-spinning characterization) scarcely matter. Davies even manages to outdo the pain of his season two finale by ending his latest Companion's run with a cruel fate that goes beyond mere death or separation. It hits you right in the heart and makes for a fitting final blow.

It's been forever since I sat down with Doctor Who, and the intervening time has let me see the show's flaws but also the charm in its weaknesses. Tennant hit the show with such force it was hard to imagine him leaving, but I believe he belongs to the Davies era: broad, clumsy but entrancing. I look forward to seeing what Moffat does as showrunner, but I might actually miss RTD's contributions. Well, a bit.

*(I find it interesting that Moffat stayed on to direct Doctor Who while Davies went to the more adult-themed Torchwood. Having not seen the spinoff, I can only say that it looks to me to be the Angel to Who's Buffy, a darker, more adult and, potentially, more thematically rich work. Therefore, it's intriguing that a writer who fits a bit too snugly in the in a show built upon a deliberate immaturity to appeal to a wide market would be the one to depart for the more adult-themed program. Let it be said that I am in no way complaining about this turn of events.)