The Geek Clique on Doctor Who – Season 2
Well, what a year 2005 was. What a rollercoaster ride. A new series of Doctor Who taken immediately to the nation's bosom, a great new Doctor in Chris Eccleston, a revelation in Billie, some nice nods to the past and some old foes. Then the shock departure of the Ninth Doctor and Tennant and the decent Christmas Invasion.
I still remember the trailer for the second series that showed immediately after the Christmas Day special - and being very excited by it. Was that excitement warranted? Well, that's what we're here to find out.
Like last time, when we looked at Season One of the new Doctor Who series, I'll be asking the Geek Clique (a bunch of (largely) demographically-similar fans, you can probably guess which demographics) for their views and ratings of Tennant's first series.
If you missed it last time I asked them - in an investigation of whether my 33-33-33 good-bad-indifferent rule was about right - which episodes they liked. Just that. No marks out of ten or caveats. I also asked them for their comments on what they thought worked and why.
The Tenth Doctor, Rose, Mickey, Sarah-Jane, K9, Cybermen, the Absorbaloff. Alons-y!
Series 2
For me this is probably the weakest of the series of NuWho, though Series Six is running it very close. I never really warmed to the Tenth Doctor, though I could appreciate Tennant's acting abilities. I found him rather self-satisfied, shouty and saddled with an awful accent. As one of the Geel Clique says, he's a twat. His relationship with Rose brought out the worst in them - they were hard to warm to and I was glad to see the back of the whingy, clingy, often cruel Rose by the end of the series.
I don't rate many of the stories either. It has one out-and-out classic in The Girl In The Fireplace, an episode that's funny, touching, clever, scary and weird by turn and an episode that really built up its emotional pay-off, rather than just having someone cry while Murray Gold wanks away in the background. Oh, it's 'drunk Doctor' scene is possibly the worst in the entire series, but we'll ignore that.
I also voted for School Reunion, an episode that I'd describe, favourably, as 'nice'. It's oh-so-slight and Anthony Head would have Graham Crowden frowning and thinking 'that's a bit much' but it has Sarah-Jane and K9 and some funny lines.
I really liked a lot of elements in The Impossible Planet and Satan Pit but it didn't feel like the sum of its parts. It came across as a bit jumbled, like it had been clumsily rewritten but I thought it genuinely chilling in parts - "Don't turn around" a classic moment - and boasted a strong cast. Best of all, Gabriel Woolf was in it.
NB. I forgot to vote for Girl In the Fireplace so bumped it up by one
And that was it for me. Tooth and Claw was a decent runaround, but that was it. The Idiot's Lantern seemed like a nice idea and looked a treat but was the first in a series of forgettable Gatiss scripts that just don't really come off.
I thought New Earth possibly the worst in the new series run and the Cybermen two-parter an absolute bodge of the brilliant Spare Parts audio play, with perhaps the worst single performance of the new series from Trigger off of Only Fools and Horses.
Fear Her is a complete waste of time and a bizarre fluff of the 'suburban horror' meme and the final two-parter a bemusing car crash of elements, characters, monsters and plot lines. I'm informed that half of the Geek Clique literally shit themselves with sadness when Rose went through the wall, though, so what do I know?
What else? Ah, yes. Love and Monsters. This is an intriguing little creation but it seems like it's wandered in from a different series. It's an episode about Doctor Who fans. Weird. But pretty good, on the whole.
The Geek Clique awarded this series just 35 votes. Assuming the same amount of people vote on each series that places Series 2 as last in the Clique's affections - with a series an average of just 3.5 to Series One's 58.
Anyway, as for my 33-33-33 (good, indifferent, bad) split, here goes:
-School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
-Tooth and Claw, Love and Monsters
-New Earth, Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, The Idiot's Lantern, Fear Her, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
That's seven duffers out of 13, which is not a great hit rate and blows my mathematical wibbling out of the water.
Read what the Geek Clique made of the individual episodes, the Doctor-Rose-Mickey dynamic and the series as a whole below. And do let us know what you think about Series 2, both with comments and the poll at the bottom.
New Earth
New Earth continues the nuWho tradition of dreadful opening nights. Like many of RTD's stories it has a grab bag of elements that sound exciting but have narrative reason to be together (nuns - who are cats, zombies, the Return of Cassandra, the Face of Boe again, etcetera). This one sounds like it was hindered by Davies rewriting the story in response to something Moffat said (Davies “invents interesting characters, then melts them”) and decided to give the story a happy ending. Instead of creating a scenario where Doctor has to kill the experimental subjects and the Face of Boe actually dies, tying in thematically with Cassandra's death, he grafted on a happy ending, which is bollocks. Cassandra's acceptance of her own mortality is completely out of keeping with everything the audience knows of the character, and the scenes in which the experimental subjects are cured by the application of the Sisters of Plenitude's medicines raising the question of why the Sisters were using the subjects for experimentation, if their diseases were so easily curable.
New Earth was an unforgiveably poor start to the season, squandering the goodwill engendered by the Christmas Invasion: after tCI, I was really excited to see the new Doctor and instead what I get is a whiny, arrogant manchild and his simpering girlfriend parading their dysfunctional codependency in front of a load of cats. And then you get Tooth and Claw...
Tooth and Claw
I'm not sure what the point of 'Tooth and Claw' was. Rose and the Doctor start to become smug and obnoxious with their cliquey jokes. The monks that Bic razors forgot are just bizarre (wouldn't pretending to be y'know normal monks be less conspicuous). And the idea of the telescope as a werewolf trap is just stupid - it's possibly the least useful weapon forever as it only works in one narrow scenario.
School Reunion
School Reunion is a funny one too. because Lis Sladen + K9 are in it it's quite enjoyable - but I feel that's skewing the balance in favour of this story, which is wholly forgettable shorn of its USP.
I quite like the Anthonystewartheadites. I'm not sure they'd be worth much without Anthony Stewart Head being smarmy and evil but their shtick of being obsessive self improvers has the basics for a classic Who baddy. And bat wings are cool. Also Mickey is good in this.
Looking back on all this, there are lots of episodes which have great elements which don't add up to a great episode. School reunion being the best case - I've not idea how a show could be shit with Anthony Head, Sarah Jane (this was the first time she came back and it was brilliant) K9 and scary aliens posing as teachers, but somehow it was.
Other than the bits with Sarah and K-9, 'School Reunion' is just a bit boring. It also cements how nasty the Doctor and Rose are when Mickey realises that he's relegated to the role of the tin dog. I'm also not entirely happy with the attempt to retrofit the type of relationship the Doctor has with Rose onto Sarah. And Rose is obnoxious to poor old Sarah Jane. It's a shame the monsters didn't eat her. Oh, and Anthony Head is in it! Yay! But he overacts terribly. Boo.
The Girl in the Fireplace
The Girl in the Fireplace is a story I enjoy, but which loses something whenever it's rewatched. The creepy ship and the clockwork men turn out to have the most banal rationale behing their actions imaginable, and we're supposed to think that's clever!
I've never quite understood the love for Girl in the Time Traveller's Wife, being more struck by the fact that Noel Clarke was going to get screwed over by bad planning again.
Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel
The Rise of the Cybermen two-parter was weak plot-wise, and suffered from the inclusion of an unnecessary and boring alt-earth runaround, but there were some great set-pieces in it and the art deco look of the cybermen along with with their FX-assisted stomping brought to the fore their mechanical, soulless, and cold-hearted nature. Combine this with the conversion scenes at Battersea Power Station and there was a real sense that humanity was at risk there.
The Idiot's Lantern
I've never understood the antipathy to Idiot's Lantern - a smashing episode with a fun baddie, an entertaining plot and a drunken cameraman.
The Idiot's Lantern would be ok were it not for the nonsense about the gay son calling out his evil fifties reactionary father. Gattiss can't do emotional stuff at all and in this instance it drowned the plot. Oh and the Tenth Doctor was at his shouty-twat worst.
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
I really liked the Impossible planet, dunno why there's the hate for that one. But I suspect it was mainly the supporting actors who were really damn good.
Love and Monsters
I really like Love and Monsters: it was brave and interesting, and about time to try something different. The biggest weakness, ironically, is the Doctor and Rose: they're absolute bastards: it's impossible to believe that people are so likely to worship the Doctor when he's simply not the Doctor we all grew up worshipping. He's a twat.
Love & Monsters is easily my favourite episode of the new series. It's not doing what Doctor Who should do at all, but it stands as the one place when RTD really let rip and brought the keen vision of Queer as Folk to bear on geek culture. It's dark, misanthropic and near the knuckle, but it's also honest.
Fear Her
Fear Her was a fine little story, completely inconsequential and daft, but well suited to 45 minutes and a welcome change from the universe being under threat again.
So many Nu Who stories have so utterly forgettable and lacking in effort you wonder if they wonder have been better off just going with 8 episodes a year.
Fear Her should have been a nice creepy little story about something horrible living on a quiet suburban street, and I thought that the tenth Doctor was more sympathetic than usual in that one, but the abusive parent stuff felt tacked on, the guff about the Olympics seemed fairly typical of RTD's inability to let stories with contemporary settings speak for themselves, and Huw Edwards is unbearable at the best of times and made an even bigger tit of himself than usual here.
Army of Goasts/Doomsday
The finale was magnificent, second only among New DW in the heartstring-tugging stakes to Eccleston's last story. It was a comic book story brought to life, completely believable and utterly enthralling. And the dramatic tone shift in the final 15 seconds give an impression of a show runner at the very top of his game - amazingly confident, wonderfully subversive and pitch perfect in judging cliffhangers.
The final two parter was great at the time, and the end of was fantastic, and I certainly got a lump in my throat. But the elegance of the end was spoiled by the fact that the relationship was soured for me earlier on in the year.
Bad Wolf Bay is the moment that cemented the show in the affections of the nation, if not ours. It sealed the deal for the gurls and wimmin, who were absolutely crucial to what RTD was trying to do with show. That moment with the wall is and will be the moment that gets replayed on The Greatest TV Moments Ever clip shows from now till doomsday.
Rose and the Doctor
As strange as it is to apply the concept to fictional characters the Tenth Doctor and Rose really brought out the worst in each other. Co-dependent, mutually admiring and callous about all the characters around them except for when called upon to demonstrate their "compassion" for our admiration.
I really didn't like the Ten n' Rose dynamic, which spoiled a lot of stories in S2. I never liked that while I felt there was a co-dependency between Nine and Rose that made it a-OK, there was just something deeply unpleasant about the dynamic between the two of them in Season Two.
It's a shame that I can hardly watch Tennant now. Watching him through the filter of the last few specials means that it's difficult not to shout "emo twat" at the screen whenever he's on and being moody.
[Rose} went from being a sweet, normal person to a clingy cypher. Watching them again, the shift in characterisation from seasons 1 to 2 is actually quite jarring. It spoils what could have been fun episodes and turns bad episodes into something awful. The fact the season has more of the latter than the former any way doesn't exactly help.
Season 2
Aside from the werewolf one, the sarah jane one and the madam de pompadour one this is probably the second weakest series so far.
Season 2, for me, is a lot less coherent than Season 1. I know there's a lot of reasons for that - Rose's change in leaving dates, the replacement of Ecclestone - but, for me, the heart and soul of the issue seems to be the writing. I think RTD was caught out by the success of the s1 (as were we all) and rapidly fell into a trap of just writing for his life. The treadmill of actually getting the thing produced overtook the writing; this would become more and more noticeable throughout the rest of the new series and really underlines the importance of having either a seperate head writer and showrunner/producer or a larger writing staff.
Looking back it's really hard to miss how lazy a lot of the plot and characterisation choices were and the faint air of desperation that hung about it as RTD realised he had a hit on his hand but hadn't really thought about what to do next. After the Tooth and Claw through Girl in the Fireplace run which had some of the best action and best jokes in the new series it was all thrown away by a lot of badly plotted runabouts with cod emotion thrown in. Also I'm struggling to think of a genuine real scare in this series - I liked some of the stuff from the Ood two parter at the time but it was all rather thrown away by the creature in the pit turning out to be a heavy metal cover circa 1982. Still all that said it was phenomenally successful and Tennant has become "The Doctor" to a generation in a way that Eccleston and Smith (both of whom I vastly prefer) haven't so it must have been doing something right. Either that or the majority of Britain is thick and deluded.
There are some phenomenally weak stories in this season, looking at them again. I never watched New Earth, the Cyberman two-parter or Fear Her again they were so awful. But I've very little desire to see any of them again, bar the brilliant Girl in the Fireplace.
Doctor Who has never been better than it was in 2005-2006. And, sadly, I doubt it will be as good for years to come.
Vote for your favourite stories of Doctor Who - season two
Caves and Twins: Aliens of London
Aliens of London
It's seven years since this was made, which make it the difference between An Unearthly Child and Spearhead From Space – or Planet of the Spiders and Castrovalva. Or Survival and the TVM. Or... well, you get the idea.
It doesn't seem that long ago, but Doctor Who has clearly changed enormously since then. As it was on telly I thought I'd watch it and makes some notes.
What's extraordinary is just how much the last two seasons have cast off so many RTD-era tropes – it feels like a radically different series now; much more assured; much more certain about its own identity and tone.
Whether that's a good thing is debatable, but Aliens of London seems extremely uneven. Its tone jumps about quite a lot – broad farce, almost pantomime, on minute and drama the next and sci-fi the next.
Ecclestone suffers the most here. His Doctor is not merely eccentric or weird or even childish. He actually seems simple. It undermines the character and just makes the whole seem bizarre.
Tennant and Smith seemed to nail their Doctor immediately, as did McGann. Only McCoy seemed as out of sort - in this first series as the Doctor - as Eccles does here.
Overall, this is a story that's unrecognisable from the last two or three series of Who – certainly the Moffat/SMith era. There are a lot of things about the latest series that I didn't like, but I'm grateful that the series moved away from how low rent the likes of Aliens of London is.
Eccleston seems to be spend most of this episode behaving as if the Doctor is actually a bit retarded. The collision of the script, the direction and Eccleston's clear discomfort doing 'whacky' acting make for a grisly spectacle.
Mickey = Mickey is just a gibbering moron in this episode - and in the majority of the series. He falls over; he mugs; he squeals. And then we're meant to feel sorry for him when he complains about Rose leaving. It doesn't work because Mickey is less believable than a cartoon character.
Jackie - Jackie is worse drawn and less realistic than a Carry On film character. See above.
Murray Gold cannot do any action music whatsoever. Any scenes that involve running, guns, spaceships or fighting seem to conjure up music that would seem out of place in the pilot of The Sarah-Jane Adventures.
Chav culture - It's incredible how rooted all of this is in a very mid-noughties idiom. It's like Doctor Who set within Little Britain or Gavin & Stacey. It feels incredibly dated and also very cheap; Doctor Wo done on a BBC3 budget.
Farting aliens - Occasionally this is funny; occasionally it's even a little sinister. Mainly it's just annoying.
Stupid - It's remarkable just how stupid the whole thing is. Downing Street has banks of computers that have RED ALERT flashing on them? The army follow The Doctor because he says 'Defence Pattern Delta' to them (which seems to involve running quite slowly down a corridor)? Harriet Jones is actually still banging on about her local hospital even after a UFO has crashed in the Thames.
The cliffhanger - it just seems to go on for ages. On and on and on with three separate scenes convening in almost exactly the same way. There's almost a moment of dramatic tension here with the various reveals, but it drags on for long it doesn't really work.
Caves and Twins: The Girl Who Waited
Tom MacRae's previous effort - Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel was a load of utter shit, so how would this one work out after a couple of lacklustre weeks?
Caves
Virtually everything - I loved all the performances; I loved the setting and set-up; I though the regulars did brilliantly; I liked the side to the Doctor in lying to Rory and then shutting out the older Amy.
Twins
I thought Rory's character devolved into the slightly feckless character he started off as - and there was some trademark Murray Gold cod-emotional indulgence - the musical equivalent of a crywank.
All told very good stuff. Among a very, very uneven season in which only the regulars have been consistently good The Girl Who Waited along with The Doctor's Wife have really delivered a template for how DOctor Who can shine in its current incarnation.
Let's hope someone at Upper Boat is making notes.
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Caves and Twins: Night Terrors
So, Gatiss' fourth effort at writing a Doctor Who following two decidedly poor efforts and the very enjoyable The Unquiet Dead.
So, would we have another installment in this tiresome story arc, or would we have a lovely little self-contained frightener? Would it be the Gatiss of Nightshade or the Gatiss of, well, virtually anything he's acted in?
Caves
I really liked the dolls and the way they made people into dolls - and the dolls house conceit, although none were particularly well used.
Twins
I don't know where to start with this - I'm not sure I've seen one Doctor Who episode in the current run that I'd actually describe as 'inept'. As a plot this felt like a rerun of Fear Her. The script was leaden and crashingly unfunny. The pacing was terrible; virtually nothing happened in the first half, then a deluge of action and plot points. The direction and editing seemed very off; especially notable during the climactic stairway scene that just looked amateurish. We also had the worst emotional manipulation courtesy of another saccharine Murray Gold score and Gatiss lines that were almost shameful.
And while Arthur Darvill does the self-aware acting really well, I found it vaguely insulting that the fact that a character basically dies every week with no ramifications was basically referred to and laughed off.
There's been a kitchen sink element to a couple of Gatiss scripts now that just seem out-of-place and heavy-handed. What's more, what is it with dysfunctional relationships between boys and their fathers? Is Doctor Who therapy for him?
I take no pleasure from saying it, but Gatiss' last three attempts to write a Doctor Who episode have been a complete mess, with Night Terrors as the worst of the lot.
His work on the League of Gentlemen was frequently brilliant; some of his NAs among the best; his work on Sherlock appears to be bearing fruit but Mark Gatiss just doesn't seem able to write Doctor Who any more.
That's a worrying track record for a man generally assumed to be the show-runner in waiting, assuming a new show-runner will ever be required.
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Caves and Twins: Rose
Russell T Davies, not a man given to modesty, remarked recently how he'd dug out Rose - the story that relaunched Doctor Who in 2005 - and rewatched it for the first time in years.
He had feared that it would not look that impressive but, blow him down with a feather, it was wonderful and funny and clever and lovely!
Was it? I don't think I've rewatched Rose since 2005 either but it was on the telly the other night. I loathed Rose at the time and was not keen to rewatch it either, but I thought I'd give it the RTD test.
Rose is a funny one, because a couple of years before it hit the screen I'd mused that a rebooted series could do a lot worse than a rehash of something like Spearhead From Space. Fast, simple, scary. Maybe RTD had the same thought, or maybe he just wanted an established monster with a neat set-up that could frame a knockabout story and act as a bone thrown to fans.
Whatever the case, I nearly went upstairs and burned my copy of Doctor Who - The Unfolding Text afterwards, back in March 2005. Weirdly enough, I loved The End of the World the next week and got back into the swing of it.
So, what did I make of Rose on a repeat viewing. Was it Spearhead From Space or was it, well, Rose? I was eating a bowl of soup at the time so simply jotted down these thoughts on what was playing out on sceen.
The start
That's not the theme tune!
Titles are OK tho- OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE THOSE AWFUL FONTS!
Terrible bontempi Randall and Hopkirk (Rebooted) music to start
Micky established as complete arse by eating a sandwich in a funny way at Rose
Rose doesn't like her job
Ponderous shots of Billie in lift
I can pinpoint the exact Graeme Norton moment here
The next bit
Thankfully music drops off but there's no spooky music in place when the Autons threaten Rose, unless it's a Harry Potter/Midsomer Murders interpretation
"Run!" Good opening line for the new Doc but the dreaded music kicks in again.
Eccleston ponders two more seasons of this shit
Beans on toast - there's a meme we'll be seeing a lot of over the next five years
"Run for your life!" - like that bit
The inescapable music is almost like a soundbed, chuntering away underneath a 14-year old Radio 1 Newsbeat presenter
Moments of Rose just standing around while she waits for a bomb to go off, like a startled cat working out what to do next following a loud noise
Really bad SFX of the burning building - remember reading Bonnie Greer on the Newsnight Review commenting on how cheap it looked. This is what she was thinking of. It was also at the point that, allegedly, a flaming sofa nearly killed a harmless Welsh pedestrian.
Trademark 'people running around, wacky camera' thing that's a constant of Nu Doctor Who that renders any action sequences instantly laughable
The first proper introduction to two really annoying characters - Micky and Jackie.
Thoughts at this point
Fast. Really fast. But like a Big Mac and strawberry milkshake. Empty calories that leave with a sugar rush and subsequent crash - all headache and nausea and guilt.
It's not frightening. Almost everything is played for laughs. It's no coincidence that Moffatt's were best received for years. His episodes were scary.
RTD makes another mistake. He mistakes not being too scary with 'not taking itself seriously'. So any potentially scary moments are full of mugging or people laughing or silly sound effects or silly music.
For a long time Doctor Who was very careful to be the show that was aimed at children but didn't patronise them. At times during the RTD era - Rose for example - it blundered way over that line in a way that's often hard to watch. Seriously, what age group is this aimed at?
Is stuff like Rose a deliberate kick against the po-faced US sci-fi dramas of the time? With a liberal sprinkling of Joss Whedon through a British kitchen sink lens.
Chav culture references embed this firmly in the mid 00s and already serve to make the programme feel dated.
Rose's flat
We get a Yeti in a toilet in Tooting Bec moment that turns out to be Ecclestone in a tower block peering through a catflap. If I were Ian Levine I'd probably assume this was a cast iron reference to Survival.
Jackie quickly established as a slag and the Doctor as asexual. Pity it didn't last.
Gay and alien. Heat. Little Britain. 2005.
An ears comment. I once caught sight of Eccleston's email address - it had the element 'MrPunch' in it. Nice.
Regeneration trauma?
Eccles mugging just wrong; he looks unhappy doing it.
Why does Rose ignore what's going on right in front of her when the Doctor is being attacked by the Auton hand?
Early bit of squirming about between Doc and companion on the floor.
Outside the flat
"See ya" "Hello!" "Sort of, yeah" - do these lines even sound good on paper?
Running and bad music - one of a number of traits that could have formed a mission statement for the next five years.
Eat chips, goto bed and watch telly - another one to get familiar with.
Peter Moffat-esque long shot from Boak.
Earth revolving. Bad but well played by Eccleston - his Doctor remains one that was difficult to pin down.
The Clive bit
Internet bit well played - we nearly get a moment of dramatic tension.
"She's a she" - heh.
Mark Benton playing himself again - is he an Ian Levine cipher?
Appalling Photoshop on Kennedy pic.
Nice speech from Benton.
Wheelie bin = nice idea in promising a set up (plastic=death!) that has remained frustratingly unexplored.
The burp is the TV equivalent of shovelling e-numbers down a kids throat.
Bad bad bad CGI.
Why doesn't Rose notice that her BF looks like Theo Walcott, only knows one word and inexplicably drives his car all over the road?
Restaurant
Things almost get a little frightening here with Noel flashing an unnerving, unnoticed smile but then immediately goes back to 'idiot' for no apparent reason. And Rose doesn't notice at all. Brilliant, brilliant Rose...
Silly wrestling and silly music and silly screaming as it's played for laughs again.
Nice TARDIS reveal.
First properly decent Doctorish moment in the TARDIS as Eccles stops jamming and mugging and shouting for a second.
First appearance of 'stupid ape' meme.
"Lots of planets have a north!"
Anti plastic - something you can get away with precisely once (or not - see also Boomtown, TEOTW, The Parting of the Ways in this season alone).
Ecclestone quintuple take on the London Eye doesn't come off at all due to poor scripting and poor direction - and then we're back running through treacle with Murray Gold - terrible music that sounds like an off cast from the Vic and Bob reboot of Randall and Hopkirk while we see more running on a bridge.
Nestene HQ
All Auton/Nestene things that are interesting (plastic comes to life, automata, facsimiles) are dealt with in throw away comment.
The Nestene Consciousness is a vat of liquid that can talk -apparently, as none of the sounds it makes could be recognised as speech - that is 'terrified' of TARDISes and parlays with other races via the articles of a galactic constitution. What next? Sutekh at the UN?
Weird one-sided conversation that is meaningless without knowledge of story arc and gibberish as we can't understand from the Nestene.
Auton invasion
Back to dreary Jackie who survives about ten thousand autons not shooting her for some reason - bad direction.
Autons break out and promptly... shoot out the back of a minicab, numerous plant pots and a fat bloke. Curiously unthreatening. The fan/Levine cipher is killed off. Hmm.
The action of the Auton invasion is conveyed through a cameraman having a fit. Eventually Jackie gets her cue, having stood still for about a minute looking confused, while people are gunned down by walking shop-window dummies, and runs away screaming - having spent the last 40 seconds looking like she's trying to solve a particularly hard puzzle.
A scene that last for three hours where Jackie is menaced by bride Autons, the Doctor does nothing, Micky establishes just how useless he is and Rose - for the first time among billlons of subsequent times - saves the day by swinging on a chain. Awful, leaden direction.
A scene that could have been great shows a couple of twitching Autons. The sum of the Auton invasion includes a backlit double decker, two tiny fires and some rubbish. That's even less impressive than hijacking a bus.
"You were rubbish" - that's the Doctor firmly emasculated for the next three years.
The end bit
"Work and food and sleep" - yes, we get it.
Micky mugs like a twat.
Weird slomo final shot.
Conclusion
Moffat said he puts in scares for the kids and jokes for the adults, but RTD never seemed to bother with scares. Everything in Rose says 'jokes for kids, different jokes for adults'. It left me feeling completely cold.
Here's something I read recently from Moffatt's 2011 series press launch, which sums up how I feel about Doctor Who.
"You put the jokes in for the adults, and you make it scary to appeal to children. They absolutely rank the best Doctor Who episodes in order of frighteningness."
Indeed.
Caves
Fast
Eccleston does OK with some shonky stuff
Confident start for Billie
Twins
Everything else
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Caves and Twins: Series Fnarg
So that was Series Five. Or Series 31. Or Series One. Or Series Chin, whatever you want to call it.
The stakes were high, with news that filming was overrunning horribly, Matt Smith was crap and kept forgetting his lines, Karen Gillan was 'wooden' and Phil Collinson had been called back in to sort the whole mess out.
We won't reveal our sources, although it seems entirely likely that pretty much everyone in fandom knows where they came from, but let's just say there was an element of fear going into Series Fnarg.
And how wrong we all were eh? Chief among this wrongness were the rumours that Smith was crap. In fact, it's hard to imagine this being any further off the mark.
Matt Smith is wonderful, and his gentler, more alien, Doctor is perfect for Moffatt's 'fairytale' Doctor Who. The whole tone of this series feels a more comfortable place for Doctor Who, and the Doctor, to be than Russell T Davies' iteration - which was a series of ever-decreasing circles by the time the excellent David Tennant went, though his Doctor was not highly-liked in these parts.
It seemed almost unthinkable that the series, and Smith, could carry on where RTD and Tennant left off, but a fairly hefty shift in tone and pace and lead character has made it all look rather effortless.
For the first time in quite a while, the series felt much more Who than it had in a long time. Smith may just be the best Doctor... ever.
But while all the big things got sorted out, the parts that made up the whole didn't always feel right. Murray Gold's presence dragged the series back to a RTD vibe, and his syrupy/BOMBASTIC! style took away a lot of the nuances of the new series.
More bizarre still were some of the author/story choices. Toby Whithouse and Chris Chibnall delivered exactly what their previous stories suggested they'd deliver - utterly underwhelming stories that felt like a throwback to a couple of years ago.
Against rather lovely oddities like Amy's Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger, they felt jarring in their straight-forward simplicity.
Mark Gatiss' Victory of the Daleks was, by all accounts, rather hacked to death in the editing suites and the end result was, frankly, a mess.
And stepping up to show-runner certainly sapped Moffatt's brilliance, with the slapdash The Beast Below and breakneck incoherence of The Big Bang.
There were no new, interesting monsters. In fact, the closest thing we got were the rubbish new Daleks. We had to put up with CGI thing hiding inside humans on at least three occasions, and the limits of the budget were evident in The Pandorica Opens when it turned out the Fucking Sycorax and the Fucking Weevils were in on the intergalactic plan to put the Doc away for good.
Still, Moffat handled the Autons and the Cybermen ten times better than RTD ever did - another subtle difference to the approach the two brought to the series.
And yet, funnily enough, it didn't really matter to me. The series felt fresh and fun. The Doctor seemed like, well, The Doctor. And Amy was breath of fresh air; a believable, volatile girl who didn't love her favourite Time Lord.
She may have had a slightly less healthy obsession with him, but inter-personal angst was banished from the TARDIS forever - 'I'm not that clingy!' seemed like a great riposte to the years of Marf and Wose.
Arthur Darvill's Rory eventually eclipsed the 'emasculated male' cipher that's been the default setting for most recurring male characters in the new series to become a rounded companion in his own right.
And, always at the centre of it, was Matt Smith. It's interesting to note that most new Doctors come into the role praising Patrick Troughton, and Smith took it a step further.
Watch him running - it's a straight lift from the Second Doctor. And he's always doing something with his hands - First Doctor? There's a bit of Four, Five and Eight in there too by our reckoning.
Not that The Eleventh Doctor is a pastiche; Smith has brought something new to the role again, and emphatically made it his own. He's a perfect choice.
So, series thingummy. A hearty slap on the back from us, and the best TARDIS crew in ages. No doubt tweaks will be made for next season.
Probic Vent demands Zygons and Yeti and the Dream Lord and a past Doctor and The Brigadier. And a remake of The Horror of Fang Rock. Simple enough eh? Oh yeah, and STOP RUINING OLD MONSTERS!
• Here's an end-of-season C&T for the series.
Caves
The Eleventh Hour - Fresh, fun and firmly established Smith as something new and interesting
Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone - A home run from Moffat, with plenty of twists and turns and great monstering
Amy's Choice - Offbeat and enjoyable - an episode that seems unthinkable under RTD.
Vincent and the Doctor - Intriguing, if cloying
The Lodger - Would have been horrible with Tennant. Good with Smith.
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang - Absolute gibberish, but wins points for not having thousands of cloned Sontarans invading the Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower. Magic Light and Power of Love notwithstanding.
Twins
The Beast Below - Too many elements that didn't seem to add up.
Victory of the Daleks - A horrible mess, and shit new Daleks. Almost saved by performances, but not quite.
Vampires of Venice - Dull filler
Hungry Earth/Cold Blood - Dull Chibnall filler that fluffed one of the most interesting premises in Who mythology.
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Caves and Twins: The Big Bang
Confusing, exploding, emoting, deus ex-ing - The Big Bang was a rebooted Doctor Who end-of-series episode alright.
But was it, umm, any good, or was it as ultimately unsatisfying as all of the others?
Caves
Smith - magical and alien and brilliant
Gillen - Sassy and scared and screwed-up. Adorable.
Rory - An excellent male companion, who's more daffy-but-resourceful Harry Sullivan now, rather than a another castrated idiot man.
Smith's bedside soliloquy - Rather sums up the Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith's performance - both note perfect
The wedding - Good entrance
Twins
Love saves the day - As long as you remember someone, they come back to life? Whatever.
Magic light - The light from the Pandorica brings people back to life? And jump starts the second big bang, or something.
Where is thy sting? - The Doctor dies and comes back to life. Amy dies and comes back to life. Over the course of this series Rory has died and come back to life. At least twice.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey - Getting a bit samey wamey now
Murray Gold - Time for a regeneration
Despite all the bollocks about people coming back to life and the big fat reset switch, so beloved of RTD, and now seemingly an inescapable feature of all Doctor Who, it was pretty enjoyable.
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Matt Smith rocks Glastonbury with Orbital
Probic Vent has been lucky enough to share a DJ booth with the Brothers Hartnoll from Orbital, and very nice chaps they are too.
Their version of the Doctor Who theme tune, while not as good as everyone reckons, I still pretty good though, and much more preferable to Murray Gold's diminishing-return efforts.
Something that is as good as everyone says, by PB's reckoning, is Matt SMith, who has been a revelation as The Doctor, and seems pretty bonkers himself.
So, to have him turning up at Glasto to introduce the Doctor Who theme tune is about as good as it gets. Check this out. Vworp, and indeed, vworp!
Caves and Twins: The Pandorica Opens
The Pandorica finally opens in, er, The Pandorica opens - perhaps the most oblique season meme of the new series thus far. So, was this finale a bit War Games or totally, er, every single RTD series finale?
Caves
Opening scene - Fanwanky fun
Name-checking old monsters - Great fanboy moment
Dangerous Cybermen - Genuinely alarming, parasitic and threatening stuff - rather than the clunky old twats they were under RTD
Regular cast - All strong, especially Smith and Darvill
The twist - A neat subversion of the crash-bang-wallop RTD series finale we've become inured to
Some moments of direction - It's a genuine novelty to see something out of the usual BBC1 drama directors textbook. The moment the Doctor was dragged towards the Pandorica was one of those moments
Nestenes - Good reveal
Twins
Murray
GOLD!
- Never one to let a moment pass without a glut of bombastic and/or syrupy Hollywood blockbuster dross. Get rid of him FFS.
The actual monsters - The genuine paucity of quality in new series monsters - and lack of budget - was revealed by the revelation that the fucking Judoon and various other shit monsters had clubbed together to defeat the Doctor
Romans - Who gives a stuff?
Monster clusterfuck - A little bit Hinton, as a friend put it
The sonic screwdriver - Stupid magic wand-iness has crept in more and more this season
The Doctor's speech - Rather Tennanty
So, a bit Indiana Jones, a bit early-90s DWM comic strip, a bit Moffat-y - generally fun.
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Caves and Twins – The Lodger
Gareth Roberts' latest attempt to write a decent Doctor Who episode after several disappointments was a genuinely off-beat effort. So was this budget-saver a Midnight or a Fear her?
Caves
Matt Smith - Pulls off another great performance, despite characterisation that seemed a little off.
Corden Bleu - James Corden was fairly understated and sympathetic - a well-judged performance from a frequently-annoying character.
Silent Not Golden - Murray Gold seemed either on holiday or extremely understated. I never noticed any intrusive sub-Harry Potter tripe this week, which was nice.
Day-to-day Doctor - The Doctor struggling to come to terms with everyday living was amusing, if a little overstated
Twins
Diminished Doctor- Subverting the Doctor's character in an everyday setting was generally well done, but a little overdone and tiresome in places.
The Power of RTD - The plot was secondary, so it seems churlish to complain about it, but fixing the spaceship via the power of love was rather twee. Reeked of bad Tennant-era Who.
Empty Pond - Amy got rather lost in the mix, both insofar as the plot left her alone in the TARDIS, but poor old Pond seemed returned to a generic companion-in-distress cipher.
Overall it was an enjoyable little episode, and it was good to see Gareth Roberts finally locating his mojo, after previous episodes that ranged from underwhelming to bloody awful.
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