Well here we are, at the end of my marathon recap of Series 7b. Before I get into 'The Day Of The Doctor', I thought I'd share some thoughts on what I feel about the latest Season. Basically episodes 1-5 (the final hurrah for Amy & Rory) were mostly superb with the exception of 'A Town Called Mercy' and the ending to 'The Power Of Three'. They had excellent production values, fantastic characters, a cracking pace and truly lived up to the whole 'blockbuster a week' mantra showrunner Steven Moffat had hyped about the Series, and let's not forget they sent Amy & Rory off in style!. Then we got the 2012 Xmas special which was fun (although it had nothing blockbuster-y about it) and the remaining eight episodes which ranged from terrible to great.
So looking at it on an episode by episode basis you could say it stands up well, right? And yet for some reason I look at it now as a whole and think of it as somewhat of a disappointment, almost mediocre in quality. Why is that?
Well for starters the fact that we've had one series split over two years meant that expectations went naturally through the roof (the classic 'we get less but it'll be better' argument) and yet with the exception for 'Rings Of Akhaten' and episode 'The Name Of The Doctor' I can't really name any stand-out episodes in the larger second half. Don't get me wrong 'Cold War', 'Hide' and 'The Crimson Horror' were good but they didn't advance the main mystery of the season and were pretty simple adventure of the week episodes, you could rearrange them in any order and they'd still fit into the second half of the season. And episodes like 'The Power Of Three' and 'The Angels Take Manhatten' could have really benefited as a two-parter, and feel too compact for cramming in too much story into the relatively short running time. So I guess the segmented 'blockbuster a week' theme this series has also been it's downfall, because it made every episode feel separate and detached from the whole. And honestly there was nothing blockbuster-y about Series 7b, granted there wasn't any cheap episodes but nothing on-screen rivalled the movie feel of 'Asylum Of The Daleks' or 'Dinosaurs On A Spaceship', it's clear that more money was spent per episode on 7a than on 7b, probably because 7a was shorter so they had a bigger budget individually. It also stunted any character development with Clara, I mean her mystery goes NOWHERE until the last episode which means most of her character development is shunted because she's basically been a series-long cypher. That's a shame, because it's clear JLC is an excellent actress, playing three different versions of the same character in one series is a tough job but she did an amazing job.
Meanwhile this is Matt Smith's last series and it's sickening to think that all the build-up of Series 5 & 6 ultimately lead to nothing in Series 7. It's almost as if Steven Moffat forgot the event's of Series 6 entirely! Oh wait, didn't I say the same thing for Series 5? Hmm... As a result nothing has been tied up in a nice neat bow and again Series 7 feels fragmented from the rest of his run. Series 5 & 6 (barring some unanswered questions) complemented each other like one big story whereas Series 7 ditched Amy & Rory half way and went off to do it's own thing for a while with Clara. You see what I mean? It's almost they realised half way through the season that MS was leaving and decided to drop everything they had been planning and give him at least one other companion before his era was over because otherwise it would have been as much the Amy & Rory era as it was his. Why couldn't they have kept Amy & Rory for the rest of the season and introduced Clara with the new Doctor in Series 8? That way we would have got full closure on them (rather them being written out abruptly in a single episode) and finally finished up the plotline about the Silence, the TARDIS blowing-up AND River Song? Make Matt Smith's era one giant self contained trilogy of interconnected story arcs but NOPE, you had to go this route didn't ya? Instead at the very end 'The Name Of The Doctor' abruptly goes back into the arc but no matter how good the episode was it didn't match the build-up at the end of Series 6. So the Silence tried to blow up his TARDIS AND kill him permanently at Lake Silencio just to stop The Great Intelligence from invading his time stream? Slightly anti-climatic I must say, and resolved in five minutes by Clara. Dorium's prophetic final word's 'DOCTOR WHO?' sent a shiver up my spine at the end of 'The Wedding Of River Song' but here the question is posed as more of an afterthought. I mean is this really it? Years of speculation all leading to that one moment? I really hope Moffat has got more up his sleeve for the 50th...
Listen I can't complain much about individual episodes, but as a whole several flaws are glaring. Even the great episodes have missteps, and yeah I really think 'The Power Of Three' could have been amazing if not for that lackluster ending. And let's not forget the villains! The bad guys have been severely lacking this season, they had no real menace or sense of threat. Even the 'big bad' of the season was basically Richard E Grant putting on a steely voice for a few minutes. Mrs Sweet from 'The Crimson Horror' did more than The Great Intelligence, and he's technically the MAIN bad guy of the series!
If I were to pit this season up against others, I'd say this was the worst. It walks a fine line been okay and good, but I'm leaning more towards good: 7/10.
Positives:
+ Fantastic send-off for Amy & Rory
+ First five episodes were consistently great
+ Very cinematic, one of the better looking seasons
+ Blockbuster-a-week format is a challenging experiment
+ Multiple Clara's, and great resolution to that arc
+ Great, fan pleasing finale
+ Weeping Angles, Dalek's
+ Best episodes: 'The Ring's Of Akhaten', 'Name Of The Doctor', 'Asylum Of The Dalek's, 'Dinosaur's On A Spaceship', 'The Angels Take Manhatten', 'The Crimson Horror'
+ Good episodes: 'The Snowmen', 'The Power Of Three'
+ Solid episodes: 'Cold War', 'Hide'
+ New title screen, TARDIS
Negatives:
- A lot of rushed adventures
- Clara's character goes nowhere until the finale
- Richard E Grant's character sucked
- Too much sonic screwdriver
- Oswin
- No progression of the Series 5/6 arc!
- Bad episode: 'A Nightmare In Silver'
- The ending of 'The Power Of Three'
- Weak villains
- A few mediocre episodes as well: 'A Town Called Mercy', 'The Bells Of Saint John', 'Journey To The Center Of The Tardis'
- Amy and Rory's divorce, why can't the Doctor go back and see them again?
Series Rankings (2013):
1) Series 4/The 2009 Specials
2) Series 6
3) Series 5
4) Series 3
5) Series 1
6) Series 2
7) Series 7
Let's hope the next series will ditch the one episode formula and go back to two-parters...
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