Doctor Who Season 6 Part 2

Here we are kids, the second half of the 2011 Doctor Who season. After A Good man Goes to War the twittersphere was abuzz with speculation on how the rest of the season would map out, will the Doctor  and River actually get married? Is it just a little bit weird that this person who had been born to destroy the Doctor AND turned out to be Amy and Rory’s daughter is now dating the Doctor (answer: Yes).

And now here at last we have answers to questions that we have been asking for the last two years. And more questions of course.

Let’s Kill Hitler starts off the six episode run, highlighting a very John Nathan Turner streak in Moffat for provocative titles and the ensuing endless fan speculation. The worst thing that happens to Hitler here in case you’re concerned is that he gets locked in a cupboard. The worst thing that happens to the audience *spoilers* is that we are asked to swallow that Rory and Amy grew up with an extremely close friend whom we have never heard of and who wasn’t at their wedding  yet they see all the time, who also happens to be their daughter. How did they manage to squeeze that in the script? Why they used soap of course, something Doctor Who now has no shortage of. This episode also introduces the Tessalecter, which is a disguised humanoid robot piloted by tiny humans engaged for the purposes of bringing history’s greatest criminals to justice.….yes think Meet Dave meets Judge Dread. It’s a funny, clever episode that just wants us to swallow a few too many co-incidences and to shoe-horn too much new information. It does work. But it takes a little chewing.

Night Terrors isn’t as good. The Doctor is called across space and time by an 8 year old boy called George who is having nightmares about his closet. *Spoilers* the boy turns out to be a benign Midwitch Cookoo style space alien, the closet turns out to be a place where all George’s fears are realized and the day turns out to be saved by love. Not creepy enough, too predicable and with love being the solution it all adds up to a filler episode.

The Girl Who Waited. This story sets an entirely different tone; The Doctor and Amy and Rory accidently visit a quarantine zone for people infected with a space plague. Then the Doctor and Rory accidently lose Amy. Amy spends twenty years just surviving in this constructed nightmare so that the Doctor and Rory can rescue her. This is a really good episode exploring the ideas of paradox and characters making hard decisions in a much more adult way than we’ve seen in a while here we have drama, suspense, mystery and ultimately pathos.

 The God Complex asks the question what would you do if you were trapped in a 70’s hotel where there was a room that contained your darkest fear and a Minotaur roamed the halls? You’d do exactly what the Doctor tells you that’s what. But in this case that might not be the best idea. Full of interesting characters, including the David Wallims in a brilliant cameo as an alien from the most invaded plant in the galaxy, comic and craven in turns he is probably my favorite guest appearance this year but special mention goes to Rita who would have made a cracking companion. This episode was written by Being Human creator, Toby Whitehouse.

Two great episodes in a row…it must be on a streak now! So next week will be….

Closing Time. I’m a huge Cybermen fan.  They are my favorite monster of all time. And here we have a Cyberman story! The Doctor decides to spend some quality time with Craig from last years’ “The Lodger” who is now with that mousey woman and they have a son Alfie. But there are strange things afoot at the circle K…well the local Myers. People disappearing, electricity being drained, Cybermats being seen in the toy department. Sounds great!

One catch, it’s not good. Ok let me clarify; it works as a one off story, it works as the story that reminds the Doctor that he doesn’t only  screw people up he also saves them. It doesn’t work as a Cyberman story. Poor Cybermen, from their second appearance in Doctor Who way back in 1965 it seemed that it was their lot to get less and less scary as the years went on.  Sure they had some high points but Tomb of the Cybermen was a long time ago now and during the 80’s they just got progressively weaker and lamer and their list of Achilles heels got longer and more acute to the point that in Silver Nemesis the mere mention of gold had them scurrying for cover. Russel T Davis did address this problem a by having new and different Cybermen from another universe invade our own and they don’t seem to be fussed about gold at all. But the curse remains and now they are being beaten with...yes this series theme; Love. So this story is relegated to “could have been so much better status.” And so on to…

The Wedding of River Song. Time has intersected at all points at once, this is illustrated by having Churchill being emperor of England, pterodactyls in Hyde park and it’s always April 22, 2011. It’s effective way of displaying all points of time converging but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, it’s one of those things where the writer turns to us and says “Look it just happened that way, alright?”

Then we find that the reason time is this way is because River decided not to kill the Doctor on the shores of that lake in Utah and instead decided to drain her suits weapons systems. So this fixed point in time never happened, universe collapses. But the Doctor is annoyed with her because his plan to get out of this fix was….um…trickier?  But it’s ok because the Doctor is able to go back to that point using…love? Yeah ,I think it is and then tricks the fixed point in time by not being him when he gets shot.

Ok, so let me get this straight…the Universe collapses if River never shoots the Tesselecter/Doctor but if the Doctor tricks the universe by being inside the Tesselecter the universe turns around and says “Oh, bugger I hadn’t thought of that one, good job and everything’s ok?”  I…know…I know..It just happened that way alright? So the prophecy isn’t “The Doctor must die” it’s “Something that looks like the doctor must get shot!”

All that aside, I actually liked this episode and this season, some really good stories got told and if you ignore the filler and downright terrible moments, then it was pretty solid.

Special Features:

More Monster Files on creatures that you’ve just seen. This time on Disc One we have one on the Antibodies (from the Tesselacter) and on Disc Two you get a file on the new toothy Cybermats. It makes me unhappy just thinking about it. And as predicted there will be a Season 6 blu-ray that box set that has all the episodes and REAL special features.

Video:  The video quality is very high and everything looks really quite good. But then I recently got a new plasma so everything is looking good right now.

Audio: 5.1 surround sound but it’s quite a conservative mix.