Doctor Who - Series Five

With the prospect of a whole revamp in the show--new Doctor, new companions, new production team, new writers, new directors…yeah, you get the idea--the whole of the Whovian community waited with baited breath while the Tennant fan-girls and boys turned their backs and moved on the pastures new, and those who still seemed to like Russell T Davies, for some reason, turned their attention to many of his new projects… which are yet to turn up. This left the fan base pretty back-to-basic, bleak yet dedicated, but even fans within were having their doubts as Matt Smith was revealed as the next Doctor, a child in our eyes as we hoped for someone older… but how wrong we were.

Smith aside, we soon were to discover that the badly introduced River Song of the previous series would return, the TARDIS would have a makeover--both inside and out, and the new Doctor’s new companion will have a job as a…kiss-o-gram?! Series Five was looking austere, terribly austere, with only the hopes of Who being in the plots, and those were completely hidden bar guess and rumours. Completely unsure of the direction Steven Moffat, the new Executive Producer, was taking, we could only sit and wait anxiously as the days drew nearer to new Who, by which time all doubts were being shoved aside, judgement was going to be preserved and everything, quite literally everything, relied on the opener one-hour Easter special.

Were we glad we didn’t voice our disgrace over Moffat? Although the opener episode showed more Sarah Jane Adventures than Who should, especially with the odd Atraxi and the lack of good special effects, but the plot was lain down, we got to see something we haven’t in new Who before--a good use in time travel--and we got introduced to the feistiest companion this side of Ace! And let’s not forget the introduction of a new, slightly darker-themed, opening credits… the excitement was mounting and I personally couldn’t wait for the next episode.

The Beast Below turned out to be a joyride, with a brilliant use of modern language infiltrating royalty--yes, the bloody Queen, mate!--and of course references all the way back to the fourth Doctor’s era. We even got to see the quirkiness of the new Doctor, placing glasses of water on the floor and complaining of an escaped fish. It seemed the series was going to match, or at least come close, to some of the wonders of the RTD era, but just like the RTD era, there was one episode that lowered moral and turned even the most dedicated fans away, screaming. For the revived series, Boom Town of series one, Love & Monsters of series two, The Doctor’s Daughter of series four and, of course, The Next Doctor of the specials were the worst; well, Victory of the Daleks joins them on the shelve of ‘worst… episode… ever’.

Glazing that aside, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone really made up for some missing elements, even River Song’s reintroduction made someone like me, who really didn’t like her in the previous encounter, tolerate such a forced-upon character, but let’s not forget the Angels themselves--am still getting over seeing them move--and of course revelations are made over Amy’s crack--that’s the one on her wall you filthy minded creatures!--resulting in the shocking and exciting discovery that time can be rewritten--goodbye some of the more terrible RTD episodes! One thing we cannot forget about the double episode though, and that’s the Graham Norton scandal and of course, the snogathon at the end of the latter episode, but it resulted in Rory becoming a companion, so at least one of the scandals can be easily forgiven.

Rory Williams. Now there’s a character to love. Bumbling, sweet, caring, amazing Rory, who through his love to Amy, made viewer of Who reciprocate that love, but towards him--we all love Amy anyway--and although episodes he featured in up until his untimely death and outright rude erasure from the universe were not the best, he made them good. Vampires of Venice, Amy’s Choice and of course The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood would have been unbearable to watch if it wasn’t for Rory Williams.

But of course, through Vampires we got a clearer sight as to what the whole ‘Cracks in the Universe’ plot could turn into: Silence will fall… And through Cold Blood we discovered the source of the explosion that caused the cracks--the TARDIS itself, the Silence and the explosion are linked--but how? Even now at the end of the series we have no solid idea, something RTD never thought to do, liking to keep each of his series’ separate, and of course with a new companion in each…

Without Rory, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger were looking terribly discouraging and uninteresting. I admit I was not looking forward to either, but was remarkably surprised by both; the former being a wonderfully emotional rollercoaster and brilliant lesson about the famous Vincent van Gogh, the latter being a simple joyride that made me even tolerate the irritating actor known as James ‘Smithy’ Corden. Although none of these episodes held much in the ongoing plot of the series (although the end of The Lodger brought us back with the crack behind the bin and fridge), they were wondrous stand-alone episodes of perfect quality and balance, and of course a practically naked Matt Smith to send fan girls and some fan boys into flushes of maximum proportions.

Bring on the Finale! River returned for the conclusion of the series, in a twist where this would be her first on-screen appearance in her timeline (Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead being latter events in her time steam) but with dramatic influence on the plot, killing a stone Dalek in cold blood in the latter episode, leading to questioning the promiscuous past of the character. The Doctor made a brilliant turn around earning himself a hundred million points, although as PlanetGallifrey quotes:

‘…the Doctor is famous. He’s now a universal celebrity who can simply declare his name and make aliens tremble at their knees’

…which says all, really.

The Pandorica Opens brought back a character we all loved in the plastic form of Rory, leading to the beliefs that, although the cracks are good at erasing objects, they’re not completely effective, especially when River finds a picture of Rory with Amy back in her house in the now-altered future. But these sort of things can be looked over to allow us to enjoy such likes as the abomination that is the Pandorica Allegiance, a questionable affair in itself, considering that most of the races involved could not time travel, thus their appearance nearly 2,000 years in Earth’s past could only be lead to believe that the Daleks gave them access somehow…

Nevertheless the episodic plot of the final episode was perfect. The idea of restoring a non-existent universe from a few billion surviving atoms, the fact that an Auton-Rory protected a box containing his fiancée for 1,894 years, and of course Amy restoring the Doctor into the universe when he had to step into the crack in order to save it and thus being wiped from it in the first place… all completely fantastic, especially the use of a Vortex Manipulator and a Fez, which incidentally are now so incredibly cool they’re just about outranking the bow-tie.

All that aside, the whole of series five, although welcoming after the Who Drought of 2009--we’ll be talking about it for years…or simply just ignoring it--was lacking in that something, that sparkle that RTD managed to capture in some of his series. The plots were a little weak in some of the episodes, possibly a realisation that such a task of creating ten plots to interlink with one major plot a daunting topic for Mister Moffat, making the series respectfully hollow, and nowhere near living up to the expectation given after the hype generated for it. We can’t forget the little gems though, with episodes like Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Vincent and the Doctor and The Big Bang to fill our Who needs, but a series cannot be judged highly on such a small list.

Ultimately, the series in a whole gains a respectable 7 out of 10 at the best, with the worst of it receiving a very low 1 and a half. But with good and bad hand in hand it is quite understandable that an audience would tune out if they didn’t have the dedication, the brilliance of the show petering out for the more casual fans.

So here’s looking forward to a, hopefully, better 2011, and of course, a Moffat-generated Christmas special, apparently involving a Greek Goddess on the loose on the Orient Express… in space! Sound just a wee Voyage of the Damned-ish to me, with the Titanic in space, but like before, judgement will be kept back until viewing. Only six months to go! Now where’s my TARDIS…?