Friday 1 January 2016

Ranking series six in order...


1) The Doctor's Wife - Still the crowning achievement of the Moffat era


2) The God Complex - A surreal, disturbing experience with great characters


3) The Day of the Moon - A genuinely epic experience, gorgeously directed


5) Closing Time - Sitcom Who with some very pleasing sentiment


6) The Girl Who Waited - Over-plotted with a devastating climax


7) The Impossible Astronaut - Shocking moments but plotted by a lunatic


8) The Wedding of River Song - A disappointing climax but there are some nice quirky touches

  
9) A Good Man Goes to War - As shallow as Doctor Who gets but it does deliver a decent punch at the climax


10) Let's Kill Hitler - Horribly smug full of itself...but ideas flow like a fine wine


11) Night Terrors - The sentiment is overplayed, the dolls are creepy


12) The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People - A hideous Terry Nation pastiche packed with unlikable characters


13) The Curse of the Black Spot - Stick to season sixteen for the best pirate story


2 comments:

ali said...

Ja. This is the year where I realised something had gone wrong.

I don't really blame RTD or Moff. In many ways, they're the showrunners we deserve. I'm not one to bang on about the Good Old Days, but I think back to the classic series whose humility was held in check by an appalling budget. Parameters encourage creativity. If you take away all parameters and sprinkle in (sorry) slavish fanbase, a writer on the make can polish any turd and be called a genius... Remember Moffat telling us how he loved the West Wing BECAUSE it was fast-paced and unintelligible and forced him to fill in the blanks. Either he was trying to revolutionize the medium or convince us that his pre-digested chunks and internet memes were some high art.

Another big problem is that Moffat has fallen into the trap of believing Doctor Who's run out of ideas just because HE has run out of ideas. There is a difference between being Trope-aware (Whedon at his best) and constantly tweaking the viewer's nose (and worst) because "it's all been done". Of course it's all been done, there is nothing new under the sun, it is your job to present it in a way which feels fresh and new. Don't draw on obscure past episodes to find loopholes justifying bending the characters into your desired shape.

Unknown said...

By the way, sorry, but Power of Three isn't in Series Six