TV Retrospective - Doctor Who (2005 series)

I'll be reasonably brief, and everything I say is off the top of my head, but seeing as the latest series of Doctor Who Premiers this week I thought I might briefly mention what I've thought of the past series.

I haven't rewatched all these episodes, as I don't have time, so I'm giving my thoughts off the top of my head, facts here therefore may not be 100% accurate

Series 1 - The Christopher Eccleston Era

Christopher Eccleston portrayed the Doctor for only one series, making him the Doctor with the second least amount of screen time after Paul McGann.

Joining him is Rose Tyler, who spends most of this series trying to find a reason to exist, because until the finale, all I can remember her doing is nearly breaking time itself, and constantly needing saving. Oh and flirting, lots and lots of flirting

It's quite a task, setting up a cast for Doctor Who, but the 2005 series (pre-moffat mostly) seems to go out of its way to include the family of the companion)

After a few interesting episodes, we get the slitheen, I don't like the slitheen (does anyone over the age of 10) and the fact they don't appear in any other season of the show (and are relegated to the spinoff the Sarah Jane Adventures, and even they decided to do away with the gas issue after the first two-parter) is welcome news

We see ghosts (sort of), a lady made of skin, gas mask zombies (great two-parter by the way), reapers, a shark called Max (I'm gonna even try with his full name), and a time agent by the name of Captain Jack Harkness who the Doctor leaves behind despite his resurrection at the end

Series 2 - Goodbye, Rose Tyler/Hello David Tennant

This series went weird. We go from cats using human clones to make medicine to the Doctor fighting the beast, to fighting a child who can transport children into drawings. We also see parallel Earths, time jumps, clockwork monsters, werewolves and return of the Cybermen (albeit with a brand new origin)

And of course we get the sad (or excellent depending on who you ask) departure of Rose and the first Christmas special of the series, which is more just an adventure that just happens to be set at Christmas

It's got a lot of flawed episodes, including the much hated Love and Monsters episode (featuring a monster designed (all be it not particularly well-executed) by a Blue Peter Contest Winner) and a line I love, even it's from a cr*ppy episode

(Stands Tall) "I AM TALKING"
(Stands Taller) "AND I'M NOT LISTENING!"

The finale introduces Torchwood, an organisation hinted about for the past two series, and it happens to be (like a lot of things in the newer Doctor Who episodes) humans causing major trouble. The end result is the death of many Torchwood members, the banishment of Rose to a parallel universe, and...

Series 3 - Martha and the Master

So, it's been 3 seasons, time to introduce another classic Doctor Who enemy, the Master, but how can we get around the fact that the time war wiped out the other timelords? Introduce a fog-watch memory erasing, human making mcguffin in an earlier, and find a guy at the very universe who has the very same mcguffin. It's the only logical way to go.

So, welcome aboard, Martha Jones, a nurse from a hospital transported to the moon by a bunch of rhino-like alien space-cops, that can tell what's human, but can't tell the difference between a Time Lord and a Plasmavore (of course)

We also get Witches with William Shakespeare (a lot better than the werewolves/ghosts one), mood patches of the future (which the Doctor instantly doesn't like), a man called Lazarus (always a good sign), a living sun, the family of blood (who I don't think are vampires), and the creepiest new-who monsters, the weeping angels.

But let's get back to the Master. He comes back in time, and decides the best thing he can do is become prime minister of the UK (through really sh*tty politics), in order to disobey the President and allow alien encounters which then, under his instruction take over the Earth, and then the universe. Surely there are less complicated ways of doing this? Oh and he's now insane, and hears drumbeats in his head for some reason?

I actually quite like this version of the Master, a lot more impulsive than his predecessors but equally as dangerous, he dies at the end, shock of all shocks I know. And Martha departs, saying she needs to protect her family after everything she's been through

Series 4 - Donna Noble 

Donna is my favourite companion, a no-nonsense straight talking woman who would use her skills in never being able to hold down a job for more than 3 seconds to her advantage, and her ending would be the most tragic of all of them

So in this series we see living fat, giant wasps, the hath, Pompeii, the trickster's brigade (from the Sarah Jane Adventures), the return of the Ood, the introduction of River Song, and the return of 2 old Doctor Who foes, the Sontarans and Davros.

So, Donna, introduced in the Christmas Special after series 2, becomes a full time companion after finding the courage to do it, but she's a lot more than that, as we see in the finale.

Midnight is often considered the best episode of the series, I must admit, I'm not all that fond of it, it's rather restrictive in one setting, and it's a rather jarring change of pace compared to the rest of the series.

The Silence in the Library two-parter introduces River Song, and archaeologist who meets the Doctor in the wrong order, and somehow recognises him, despite in any other encounter he has a different face.

The finale brings together the respective spinoff shows, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures and also features the return of Rose Tyler, this is OK for a one-off, but let's not do this again, ever. The Dalek plan is use complicated sci-fi crap, to erase all life except Daleks from the entirety of reality.

Specials

Between seasons 4 and 5, there were 4 specials, I have no interest in being thorough about them, but I'll mention them briefly.

The Next Doctor features the return of the Cyberman, and a man with the delusion that he's the Doctor because he picked up a Cyberman info-stamp after he lost his child or something

Planet of the Dead features... Lara Croft Thief edition? A London bus on a desert, and fly-things, really not much to say here, oh and the 'he will knock 4 times warning'

Waters of Mars features the Doctor going completely nuts, next

The End of Time features the return of the Master through complicated sci-fi cr*p and he's now suddenly got Super-powers and he wants to bring back the time-lords, who are now evil because, they want to end time and become gods? Hell has Rassilon changed, we also see the return of Wilfred Mott (from the christmas special voyage of the damned, which was terrible), and the regeneration of the Doctor

Series 5 - Fresh Blood

At this point, Russell T Davies departed from the show, and Stephen Moffatt took his place. Long-time writer for the show, this guy gets things way too fricking complicated, but let's start with series 5

In this we're introduced to companion Amy Pond (Kissogram extraordinaire) and her husband-to-be Rory Williams, who dies and comes back to life this series (I'm sure glad this isn't mentioned again, oh wait it's mentioned at every f*cking opportunity they get), we also get, vampires, sort of, a giant space-whale (why not?), a guy calling himself the dream lord, and a returning race of (looking very different than before) Silurians, oh and much more River Song

The pacing of some of these episodes is dire. Particularly starting with the noted silurian two-parter. The finale goes some steps to rectify this, but it does bring up more questions than it answers.

Oh, and theme for this series is silence will fall. The Silence are a needlessly complicated religious sect, whose purpose is to shut the doctor up for good, for reasons I'll try to explain in my description for series 6.

As a christmas special we get a Doctor Who version of the Christmas Carol, it's nice, but I can't say more than that about it sadly.

Series 6 - The silence and their incredibly complicated plan

So, with episodes that deal with pirates, creepy dolls, and the return of the cybermats the meat of the story is really with the silence, and their needlessly over-complicated plan

So to stop the Doctor saying his name of Trensalore, the Silence somehow know of Amy being pregnant on the TARDIS in flight, which somehow is a a kick-starter for becoming a Time Lord, Kidnap Amy, replacing her with a 'flesh avatar', have Rory and the Doctor ride to her rescue in one of the most badass Rory/Doctor scenes the show ever had, only to find out the baby was a flesh avatar as well. They then send the real baby to live back in the 1960s America, with a space-suit, where she would later grow up and become Amy and Rory's incredibly convenient best friend, then try to kill the doctor, and give up all her regenerations (she has those apparently, oh and she's River Song now) to save him, and is then allowed to qualify as a Doctor then co-orced to go back to 1960s America to kill the Doctor and when she refuses she creates an alternate reality where every moment in time is happening at... WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON! (Oh and on finding out the silence want to stop him saying his name at Trensalore, the Doctor decides to sacrifice himself, despite the fact he still doesn't know why that's a bad thing)

The Silence creatures are really creepy, but the plan of the church of the silence makes no f*cking sense, and since that's the basis of the series, it fails, worse than that, there's still dozens of unanswered questions, and we'll be waiting a while before we find out the answers to them.

The Christmas Special The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe is abysmal

Series 7 - Goodbye Amy and Roy, hello Clara

If you're wondering whether any of the questions left at the end of series 6 will be answered, the answer's a resounding no, we're going into new territory with episode being released as a sort of blockbuster, each episode standing on it's own

We open with... Oh my god! How did this many Daleks survive the Time-War? Asylum of the Daleks was supposed to make the Daleks scary again, and it failed, miserably, within the first 5 minutes really. The Daleks call the Doctor to 'save us.' We also see a girl named Clara (Oswin), who dies

So, we also see Dinosaurs on a space-ship, which relies far too heavily on it's own concept rather than trying to tell a story, a bunch of cyborgs in the wild west (stories about these events are never told again), the introduction of Kate Stewart (played by the daughter of the sadly deceased man who played the Brigadeer in the original Doctor Who, basically as an apology for not showing him before he died (aside from an extended cameo on the Sarah Jane Adventures) then there's Angels in Manhatten where Amy and Rory depart from TARDIS because of complicated cross-timeline bullsh*t

So, in the Christmas Special, halfway through the series, the Doctors depressed, we see the Silurian and her wife and the Sontaran Strax (from a good man goes to war) we are introduced to a sort-of recurring antagonist, the great intelligence. And we see a girl named Clara, who dies

So, as we re-enter series 8 we're introduced to a girl named Clara (seeing a pattern here) who joins the TARDIS crew, helps stop a memory parasite, stops an ice warrior (another classic villain) firing nuclear missiles, saves some psychic people from a pocket dimension, runs through the infinitely large TARDIS, saves the victorian era from a disease, takes children to a planet about to be attacked by Cyberman (who now have the ability to upgrade whenever they please, because, scary?) and eventually jumps into the Doctors timeline to stop the great intelligence from messing with it.

Clara has yet to show much personality, the mystery behind who she is, and how she appeared in two other episodes was the driving force behind the latter half of the show.

50th Anniversary Special

Daleks and Zygons and David Tennant, and the War Doctor and Queen Elizabeth, yeah, this is not what people were expecting for the 50th Anniversary.

For starters it doesn't feature any of the living doctors from the previous Doctor Who Series other than Tom Baker, who has a cameo at the end.

It also introduces a new Doctor, the War Doctor John Hurt, who struggles to come to grips with using the most powerful weapon ever to end the Time War, even at a terrible cost.

It focuses on the time-war, and simplifies it significantly from what Russell T Davies intended it to be when he surmised it. Instead of a universe-encompassing war, it's the Daleks attacking Gallifrey, and that's it. What happened to the would-be kings and the nightmare child, and... you know, the stuff that made the time war deadly

Anyway, Gallifrey is moved to a pocket dimension so the Daleks shoot each other (the Daleks are that incompetent now) and the Doctor is ready to find it. Time to go to Trenzalore

Time of the Doctor

Time to tie up some loose ends, so the church of the silence is a break-off from a church that wanted to stop the time-lord saying his name, bringing back Gallifrey and recommencing the time-war. They somehow (and we have no idea how) took control of the TARDIS remotely and ended up causing the very cracks in time that would be the way the Time Lords would contact the Doctor (good job)

Oh and the creatures are apparently confessionals, you can confess anything to them, and you'll forget the moment you turn away. 

So we come to the monsters of the episode, the Daleks are the main threats, once again using their Dalek human conversion (which they didn't use in series 1 because instead they'd rather sift through cells and create other Daleks, I don't care) and also remembering the name of the Doctor by plot convenience, wiping out the possibly interesting development from Asylum of the Daleks.

It's a nice swan-song to Matt Smith's time as the Doctor, combining a good chunk of the humour (for better and for worse) his era was known for with action, and tragedy that would be expected of the finale. Also explaining the whole 12 regenerations thing, and waving it off with some magic time-lord energy or something

Best of luck to Peter Capaldi as he becomes Doctor number 12 (or 13 if you count the War Doctor)

Note: This TV retrospective will not replace the Legend of Korra book 2 review, which will still come out this week

Note 2: I will be doing reviews of the latest Doctor Who episodes starting in September

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Images used in this review are from Doctor Who and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.