Christmas Special 2013 - The Time Of The Doctor
First up, a quick apology for the almost one month delay in getting this up, but my original no-fixes review went up a while ago on Geek-O-Rama.net and it really did take a lot of thought to figure out how to fix this one. But on to the review.
Oh my good God. I'm so glad I didn't watch this immediately, it would have spoiled my Christmas buzz. This was not only a total shambles of a story that packed in a whole bunch of unnecessary sexual innuendo, but it revisited almost every reference from Smith's tenure that annoys me. Ordinarily this is where I would say, "but it was all worth it for the twenty seconds of Peter Capaldi at the end", but seriously, it wasn't.
To start with, the relationship between The Doctor and Clara continues to be confused, with her confirmation she "fancied him" whilst bringing The Doctor in as a fake boyfriend despite him originally getting the wrong end of the stick and pretty much saying he'd be up for the real deal. I must say I am hoping for a dramatic reduction in this sort of thing with Capaldi as Twelve. It's just so boring.
The In-Who-Endos fly thick and fast in the opening minutes. I mean, what was the deal with the hologram clothes? The concept of being nude in church is an interesting one, being bare before God and so forth, but with no explanation, and in combination with Tasha Lem's alter-shaped bed, I'm left assuming that it's just there to poke fun at religion by sexualising it.
It's not the first time I've sensed this kind of jab at organised religion in a Moffat story, either. Previous appearances such as The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone and A Good Man Goes To War saw The Church as largely Anglican, and the prominence of openly gay couple The Fat One and The Thin One was either a reference to the already evolving Anglican Church (female ministers etc) or just a cheap gay joke. With Moffat it's hard to tell. Now we see The Church as being somehow related to a very Catholic sounding Papal Mainframe.
*Deftly avoids joke abut Holy of Holies*
We also saw a big slab of Hunka Hunka Burning Doc with The Doctor and Tasha Lem. Their sexual banter was so overt that I found myself waiting for the reveal that she was somehow a regenerated River Song. When did The Doctor have the time to develop this kind of long-term sexual relationship with a woman who wasn't River? It clearly wasn't as Eleven, so was Ten putting it about even more than we realised? It was all so unnecessary though. None of it added to the story one iota, and the flash of naked Matt Smith at the start seemed pure fan-service.
It was as if a million fan-girls cried out in pleasure.
Again, we have a case of Too Many Monsters, although it did seem to make some sense as to why they were there. I worried when the teaser came out because it was cut in a way that made it seem the whole thing was a set-up, much like the Pandorica plot-line. The teasers also had me face-palming at the return of the Silence, but again, in context they were relevant. I actually liked the idea that they were professional confessors, but after a second thought, It doesn't make much sense because half the point of confession is the act of confession, so even if you are getting some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion of penance, you're losing all the psychological benefits of confession by forgetting that you've actually done it. I was also quite upset for the Sontarins, who seem to have been relegated to comic relief. Don't get me wrong, Strax is a great character and pulls off comic relief well, but to make all Sontarins appear inept and stupid is a real shame.
One of the most fearsome military forces in the universe. No, seriously.
The episode just seemed a ham-fisted attempt to tie all of Eleven's season arcs into one grand overarching plot. Unfortunately instead of a mind-blowing climax to everything we've seen the past four years, all we got was a self-referential mish-mash with no real direction beyond tying up all of the loose ends. But you know what? Sometimes loose ends are a good thing. Case in point, the only thing that wasn't resolved was the return of Gallifrey. In a way I am looking forward to that being The Doctor's main objective moving forward. I hope it can be left unresolved for a long time, much like the holy scriptures in Monkey.
The whole thing just seemed to drag, and when I wasn't groaning because of some fresh innuendo or the reappearance of those thrice-damned Weeping Angels, I was checking to see how much longer it had to go. By the time we got to see the regeneration, I was over it. Capaldi's final line was a classic though.
Can you fly this thing?
4/10
Can we fix it?
I'm really struggling to see how we can fix this without a ground-up re-write. The entire episode seemed geared towards cramming in as many references to Eleven's tenure as possible, which sadly left little room for an actual story.
The bare bones of the episode, the Timelords calling through the crack, is a solid premise, but it just wasn't effectively played out. Many elements seem to have been included purely to fit with the existing prophesy, making for a rather jumbled scenario.
My main beef with the basic premise is the concept of the "Truth Field", which seems to me to be something an advanced race like the Timelords would have little trouble bypassing. I mean every man and his dog can recognize psychic paper now, so surely The Doctor wouldn't be susceptible to something like that. It seems to really only be there to fulfil the conditions of the prophesy. If it had to stay for that reason, at least have it that the Timelords knew The Doctor could still lie in a Truth Field but were using it to screen out "lesser" life forms.
And in the end, even though the Truth Field covers the bit of the prophesy that states, "when no living thing can speak falsely" it fails to address the next bit, specifically, "or fail to answer." The Doctor fails to answer for 300 years. Hell, he fails to answer at all, in the end. I really thought the prophesy was referring to the events of The Name of The Doctor where he was being forced to speak his name, and would have considered the matter resolved at that point.
The connection to The Silence could have been better too. Madame Kovarian should have featured, possibly as a subordinate to Tasha Lem who argues with her about how to handle the situation. Kovarian ultimately takes a group of followers and time travels to attempt to kill The Doctor. This removes the need for Lem's Faith Change, which felt really forced in.
The Papal Mainframe could also remain a neutral party maintaining the lockout of the planet, meaning the small incursions faced by The Doctor actually make sense as small groups penetrate the defenses. This also removes the need for the stupid human Daleks, which were an idiotic idea in Asylum of the Daleks, and completely unnecessary here.
With a tighter opening and none of the sexual innuendo, we can move to the actual siege quicker and then spend more time on the individual conflicts rather than an 80s style montage. This would lead up to the final battle after Lem is killed by the Daleks rather than assimilated.
It still wouldn't be great, but most of the major issues would be gone and it'd feel less forced.
