Doctor Who Season 6 - Part 1

I'm going to continue my gradual recap of Doctor Who, today we take a look at the first half of season 6.

The Impossible Astronaut & Day of the Moon: Well, it's pretty immediately apparent that the budget has definitely improved.  The debut of the season starts off impeccably, heightening the mystery left off at the end of season 5.  We're introduced to the Silence, Moffat's attempt to come up with a scarier monster than the weeping angels and succeeding quite fantastically.  Ominous and menacing, with a gimmick that's really quite inspired, the memory altering, posthypnotic suggesting Silence are excellent villains.  A fantastic payoff involving Neil Armstrong's foot and a number of unanswered but deeply intriguing questions make this and excellent opener to the season.

The Curse of The Black Spot: Third up is our first (and surprisingly one of only two) historical episodes of the season.  After the intensity and unanswered questions of the season opener, Curse of the Black Spot eases off the throttle without losing much of the excitement.  This is a fun, clever little romp with sirens, pirates and gold that comes with a clever twist.  Some minor plotholes occur (one character just straight up disappears from the story) but nothing to spoil the enjoyment.

The Doctor's Wife: Last time I spoke about Doctor Who, I described this episode as "one of the best standalone episode to be amongst the best ever written, new or old" and I stand by that opinion having recently rewatched it.  Neil Gaiman is on top form here, with the dialogue occupying a wonderful halfway point between the traditional Doctor Who style and Gaimans own verbosity.  The performances are wonderful, the pacing absolutely spot on.  House is a fantastically creepy villain and Idris (or "sexy") will have you laughing right up till the second she has you crying.  If you only watch one episode of new Who, make it this one.

The Rebel Flesh & The Almost People: This is probably the weak link in this half of the season... but not because it's particularly bad, it just suffers next to it's companions.  We turn up on an acid factory during the middle of a sunstorm and are introduced to the technology of the flesh, a system that allows humans to grow exact copies of themselves and control them remotely.  Some creepy special effects and the clever tricks between the two doctors can't save the episode from the fact that this is very well tread ground for doctor who.  It's "who are the real monsters" morals are just played too loud and too obvious for it's own good.  However, on second viewing, the doctors motivations become a lot more interesting knowing what you do about Amy at the end of the episode.

A good man goes to war: Finding it's feet again, we come to the climax of the first half of the season (by the way, can midseason breaks fuck off back to america, they're quickly becoming my least favourite thing in the world.  If you want to make smaller seasons, just make smaller fucking seasons) Here we start at last to recieve some, though certainly not all, of the answers to the questions set up throughout this season and last.  The Doctor's taking of demon run and subsequent failures are fantastic and his realisation of his own responsibility for what's happening is brilliant.  I could have lived without River and Rory's unnecessary foreshadowy scene (imagine how effective the baby twist would have been if you hadn't been waiting for the doctor to fail, if you had simply realised then and there) but nothings perfect.

Well.

Except for The Doctors Wife

Posted in: Doctor Who, Karen Gillen, Matt Smith, Series 6, Series 6 Part 1, TV, TV Review