JustinAlexander
First Post
The Girl Who Waited, The Doctor's Wife, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon,
I'd agree with these three being high points from the last two seasons.
The Snowmen - indeed, if you consider them "atrocious"
But, yes, I would qualify "The Snowmen" as being fairly atrocious. Here's a critique I wrote on a different forum:
From a purely structural POV, the script was terrible. Moffat has gotten incredibly lazy as a writer. Not only was this episode filled with telling instead of showing, it doubled down on that dubious inadequacy by (a) simply repeating over and over again just in case the viewer had accidentally fallen asleep and (b) having the actual events of the episode directly contradict the telling.
For example, Vastra the Great Detective who is never actually seen doing any detective work (although we're told repeatedly how awesome she is at it) is a fairly bad bit of writing. Vastra the Great Detective who spends large parts of the episode saying, "I don't understand!" (showing her to actually be a fairly terrible detective) is simply incompetent writing.
(Oh, man. Reviewing a couple scenes just to make sure my memory wasn't betraying me just keeps turning up the stupid. "Take her back where we found her." Really? Didn't you just establish that he's lost the memory of the last hour and has no idea who she is? Moffat needs an editor.)
Laying aside the really poor execution of the script, however, we're forced to actually focus on the story being told: The Doctor, having suffered a great personal loss, turns into an aloof and lonely god. But he meets a young girl in England who reinvigorates him by being perky and clever and helping him save the world from the Nestene Consciousness--
Oh. Wait. Sorry. Wrong episode.
What I mean is that the Doctor, having suffered a great personal loss, turns into an aloof and lonely god. But he meets a young girl in England who reinvigorates him by being perky and clever and helping him save the world from the Atraxi--
Oh. Wait. Sorry. Wrong episode.
One of the things that wore thin at the end of RTD's run was the fact he just kept recycling the same six stories over and over and over again. It looks as if Moffat is falling into the same trap.
But there's also the really questionable way in which this particular retread is being carried out. Even if we assume that clumsy elements like "Clara randomly knows that this fellow walking down the street can solve her currently nonexistent snowman problem" are really just hinting at the mystery of Clara (although I've used that excuse to justify the spottier parts of Moffat's last two seasons only to discover that there was not, in fact, any grand design -- just lazy writing), we're still left with the really ugly gorilla in the room:
Doctor, aren't you married?
If you want to tell the story of how the Doctor has pushed everyone away from him, including River, and retired in a cloud of bitterness and despair, there are a lot of interesting stories you could tell about that.
But, personally, I wouldn't rank "all the Doctor really needs is a hot piece of young girl flesh and he'll follow his erection all the way back to social responsibility" as one of those stories.
Asylum of the Daleks
"Asylum of the Daleks" is probably the best episode this season , but suffers from similar problems particularly when viewed in the larger context of the series as a whole.
For example, the episode immediately previous to "Asylum of the Daleks" tells the story of how the Doctor is going to go into hiding and "let the universe forget him" for awhile in response to the threat of the Silence. Why is this story immediately undermined in the very next episode, retold in miniature featuring the Daleks, and then completely forgotten about for the rest of the current season? It's just not good show management.
(And why does the entire episode look as if somebody scratched out the word "Cyberman" in the script and replaced it with the word "Dalek"?)
The biggest problem with "Asylum of the Daleks", however, is the completely sloppy storytelling surrounding the Amy-Rory relationship. (This should be self-evident, but I can go into details if you'd like.)
If I'm being honest in my assessment of the show right now, I'm forced to conclude that the current series has yet to deliver an episode that wasn't mediocre (and most of them were worse than that). And it's been 10 episodes since "The Girl Who Waited" (which is the last episode I would actually qualify as "good"). 10 episodes in a row is a lot of bad TV. It's a testament to how much I've enjoyed the show in the past that I'm giving it additional opportunities to get back on track.
Looking at the positive during the past few seasons: The most consistent stretch in Moffat's tenure as show runner has been "The Impossible Astronaut" through "Let's Kill Hitler" (in which I would only describe "The Curse of the Black Spot" as being truly bad). Series 5 was considerably less consistent (with "Victory of the Daleks", "Vampires of Venice", "The Hungry Earth", and "Cold Blood" all being dreadful), but also had some of the best episodes of Moffat's tenure (including "The Eleventh Hour").
And the public agrees - millions of people watch this thing. The Snowmen was watched by just under 10 million people. That's 1-in-6 people.
Yes, yes. And Transformers: Dark of the Moon was one of the best movies of 2011.