In
late June of 2007, some friends of mine got married in Hawaii (she was from
there, he grew up there), and a group of us went out for the wedding. Besides being with friends, it was a chance
to go to Hawaii, visit Pearl Harbor, and take notes for my novel Damocles – which I will probably never
get around to writing – that is set in Hawaii.
For all the benefits, there was one major downside: I had to wait to see
“The Last of the Time Lords.”
At
the time there were two ways for me to watch Doctor Who. I could watch it
on – I think it was still – the Scifi Channel, but I think it aired a month or
so after airing in the UK and there would be a few minutes sliced here and
there to make room for the commercials.
Or I could wait six or eight hours after it aired in the UK and hunt
down a bootleg version. I opted for the
uncut, bootleg version. Like I was going
to wait for doctored Doctor Who.
But
for that trip to Hawaii – where I tapped out a rhythm of four about … fifty
times a day – I couldn’t pack my desktop.
I didn’t have a laptop back then, and I don’t even know if the hotel had
internet for all the rooms. There was an
internet café a couple blocks away, but I think you had to buy your time. So I had to wait until I got back home to
watch the final episode of Series 3. And
I think it was one of the first five things I did when I got home. Of course my experience wasn’t
unspoiled. There were a couple of steps
between the airport and my apartment.
One stop was at a friend’s house where I checked my email and whatnot,
and some post somewhere that I tried to skip over had the reveal of who the
Face of Boe was. Still, I was super
excited to see how The Doctor, Martha, and Jack defeated The Master.
Compare
that to my actions for the latest series.
I now have BBC America, but Doctor
Who aired at the same time as Supergirl,
and I don’t have a DVR. I think it did
reair, but at 4:00AM, which is a bit late for me. So I’d wait a day or two – depending on my
work schedule – and watch the episodes on the BBC America website. Up to episode 8, “The Witchfinders.” I
started watching it, but I think I wasn’t feeling all that well and after five
minutes or so I turned it off. And I
kind of forgot about it. It wasn’t until
the day the final episode aired that I finished watching it as well as “It
Takes You Away.”
And
it was a couple of days before I saw “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos,” but
that was due to some issue with the website.
Of course I had seen some spoilers for it, which didn’t excite me. “Oh, this villain that I had forgotten about
because I didn’t think them that special comes back? Joy.” And I was going to write up these
thoughts after the end of the season, but work and stuff got in the way, and I
decided to wait until the New Year episode came out, which I found as just more
of the same. And then work and other
stuff got in the way, but here they are, finally.
Now,
do I think this last series of Doctor Who
was as good as earlier series? No. But that’s not new. I think Doctor
Who peaked in the Tennant years. But
this last series did nothing to stop the trend.
One
of the things that really excited me during the Series 1 was when the Doctor
first notices that he’s being followed by “Bad Wolf.” I remember going online
searching out lists people had made on when Bad Wolf had appeared and reading
through their theories. I don’t know if
it had been mentioned in any promos or anything that the series would build up
to something, but I love the idea of long story arcs. In later series I’d spend hours thinking
about what the connections were and what they were building up to. The destinations weren’t always great, but
the journeys were fun.
So
when this series came out and it was stated that they were just individual
episodes without an arc, it was like them saying, “Oh, this thing which is one
of the things you enjoy most about the show, we’re not doing.”
Now
if the individual episodes were spectacular, I’d get over it. But the episodes this series were just …
fine. Which isn’t a slam, because I
think 90% of Doctor Who episodes are
just fine. I found the beginning of “It
Takes You Away” super interesting, but it then kind of fell on its face. Which, again, isn’t new, “The Doctor’s
Daughter” for example.
So
if the individual stories aren’t that great, and there’s no overall arc,
perhaps the characters and acting can make up for it. Well, no.
I think they made a mistake by having so many companions. In “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” they had to
introduce the latest Doctor, three companions, two other supporting characters,
and a villain. It was too much. I think they would have been better off just
trying to introduce the Doctor and one or two companions. That way they’d have more time to develop
this main character.
And
speaking of companions, there are some issues I have. About two-thirds of the way through
“Resolution” I thought, What’s Yaz doing
here? She got a couple of people’s
phone numbers. That was basically her
role. Yes, it fits with her being a cop,
but in an episode where a couple of cops are killed, you’d think there would be
opportunities for drama. Does the Doctor
drop Yaz off for her shift each day, or is Yaz burning through her vacation
days? What if Yaz called in “sick” and
it was her partner and substitute that were killed? That would make her question what she was
doing and if she wanted to be a companion or a cop. That’s not the only thing they could do, but
it would be something.
Something
that confuses me a bit, is Ryan’s dyspraxia.
I had never heard of it, and after the first episode I assumed it was
there for some reason. But it seems like
it only ever comes up if the writers remember.
To be honest, I do wonder if the actor is acting out symptoms of
dyspraxia, but I’m not paying enough attention to notice. They made a big deal of it in the first
episode, but then it seemed they – and me – forgot about it.
Since
I wrote about Yaz and Ryan, I should also say something about Graham. I like Graham. Well, I like the idea of him. I would love to see the Doctor with just an
older companion, someone with more life experiences than the youthful
companions the Doctor usually has.
Which
I guess now brings me to the Doctor. Now
some will probably say that I don’t care for Series 11 because the Doctor is a
woman now. But I didn’t care that much
for Series 10. I think my biggest issue
with Whittaker’s Doctor is that I don’t know how to describe her Doctor. I don’t have a sense for her unique take on
the character. To be honest, this is
usually something I do in hindsight. For
example, I wasn’t all that impressed with Smith’s Doctor and I realized it was
because I was comparing him to Tennant’s.
Tennant’s Doctor could be silly, serious, frightening (what he did to
the little girl in “Family of Blood” still creeps me out) and he could go back
and forth at ease. Smith, I felt, could
be silly and serious, but all the attempts at frightening were cringing, in a
bad way. How much of that was because of
their inherent acting abilities, the direction, the scripts, I don’t know. I’m not saying I think Actor A is better than
Actor B, I’m just saying I preferred one’s version of a character over another’s.
Going
back to Whittaker, after eleven episodes, I don’t really have a feel for her
version. Eccleston only had thirteen
episodes, but I feel I know his Doctor far better. And I think a big reason for that is that he
started out with only one companion. With
fewer main characters, you can spend more time with the ones you have.
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