Verdict on Doctor Who season finale

2/10 I cannot believe this is getting such positive reviews here and on Twitter. I disliked it greatly.

Liked: The funny bits with Strax, the original ideas like the conference call.. er. Wow, is that all I liked?

Disliked: How I'm supposed to find things dramatic because a character tells me it's dramatic. How much exposition can you possibly put into 45 minutes without any of the action being actually enacted?

So the Doctor is buried in a Tardis with its 2013 desktop furniture? That'll look silly in a few years won't it?

The size leaks out so it'll eventually become infinite in size? In a graveyard? On a planet? Considerate.

Why did the Doctor and Clara start climbing up inside the giant Tardis through a trap door underneath it which you access thru a fake gravestone for River Song (??) then suddenly appear outside and mither on about refusing to open the door?

Since when did the Doctor have to say his name to open the door?

So River has always been just an echo of the dead River all along, or did I mis-hear that?

And Jenny is the new Rory? She can die, without you caring much, and come back to life, without you having had time to not care, then she can die again about ten minutes later and, what, we're expected to not care as much or less this time?

So, wait, The Great Intelligence goes into the Doctor's timeline and disrupts every single good thing he's ever done? So Clara goes in there too to stop him? So she stops the Great INtelligence interfering with every Doctor Who story ever? But all we see of that is her try vaguely to call out to various old versions of the Doctor and then mainly not hearing her - using the same clips twice? What? What? What????

This story had no drama, no grip on me, I didn't care. They were just saying things, telling us these things were scary and of some import but they didn't look like it, they didn't feel like it, and I couldn't have been left more cold.

And John Hurt is, what, The Valeyard? The mention of The Valeyard earlier made me shudder. Anyone who thinks resurrecting the woeful memory of the official Worst Doctor Who Season Ever (Trial of a Time Lord) is going to make this story win hearts and minds is clearly setting out to appeal to a very different viewer than me.

Bad, horrible, awful. I realise I'm in the minority here, but this is far and away the worst season finale I have watched. And I watched Trial Of A sodding Timelord.

24 May, more thoughts, as posted on Gallifrey Base



On the subject of who is John Hurt?:

Originally Posted by John Nor

"You're the 11th Doctor"

"I said he was me - I never said he was the Doctor"

 

Maybe's he's that rubbish "dark side of the Doctor" you get if you attach bits of Cyberman to the side of the Doctor's head like they did in that nonsense Neil Gaiman fairy tale the week before? Maybe he spun off into another dimension, got old, got even more cartoonily mental - a bit like Caligula in I Claudius - and this is him really old?

Knowing Moffat, John Hurt will turn out to be The Tesselecta, or made of Rebel Flesh, or an Auton, or the Great Intelligence in yet another body (and am I the only one who thinks The Master is going to turn out to have become the Great Intelligence after all?). Either way we will all be really disappointed when we find out.*



*Unless you really love every revelation being "actually I'm a spoonhead/Almost Person/Prisoner Zero/magically reincarnated Rory-stroke-Clara / an echo of my former dead self" in which case stay tuned, you're still watching the same show.

** Oh yes. The Silence. I forgot them. Again.