Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song

The first time I watched Doctor Who's holiday offering, it didn't go swimmingly. It was late and I was tired and cranky, and probably not in the mood for festive antics. The whole thing seemed loud and rather aimless, and at nearly 60 minutes (like all the holiday specials are), stretched too thin for the premise. There's always a very real danger of viewers being in similar frames of mind on Christmas night, because Christmas is an unpredictable holiday.

However, I gave it another spin a night later with a brighter outlook, in the company of my wife, and the entire affair felt a delightfully fun romp with some lovely emotional resonance in the third act. It's Christmas. It's Doctor Who. What more do you need? As one of my oldest and dearest Whovian pals Denise recently declared, after experiencing the devastating three-part season nine finale, "We need a light episode."

Still, it wouldn't hurt to have had some more time in between those emotionally turbulent installments and this caper. Those events are fresh and crisp in our memories, but the Doctor is able to move on from Clara's departure with far greater ease than we can. The key, I think, to appreciating "The Husbands of River Song" is to accept that it's less an episode of Doctor Who, and more a one-time spin-off starring River, which happens to include the Doctor.

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Artwork courtesy Design by Stuart Manning. 

Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series

A few months back, I wasn’t terribly happy with Season Six based on its first half, but was content to wait for the second half before making a final decision. So here we are, and while the second half of the season turned out to not necessarily be any better than the first half, it wasn’t any worse, either. It’s both as dazzling and problematic as the first half. Half this, half that. Can we just get a season that runs for 13 straight weeks next time?

There was a near three-month break in between the halves, and it feels that way onscreen as well when “Let’s Kill Hitler” kicks off nowhere near the emotional cliffhanger of “A Good Man Goes to War.” The series, having played its hand – the reveal that River Song (Alex Kingston) is the daughter of Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) – moves onto other issues that curiously have little to do with killing Hitler. The show travels back in time not to eradicate the Führer, but instead to explore how Melody Pond became River Song. Or is it the other way around?

The only thing you can be sure of with this season of Doctor Who is that the minute you’re sure of something, something else will happen that changes the way you view the events.

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Doctor Who: Series Six, Part One

Since they only represent the first half of a season, it’s difficult to give any kind of fair review to this block of seven episodes. They begin strong, with loads of promise, but then slowly peter away into utter mediocrity. At the end of the semi-revelatory seventh episode, it’s still only mid-season, so it’s entirely probable the series will redeem itself later this year in the final six installments. It needs to, because if it doesn’t, Season Six could go down as the weakest since the series re-started in 2005.

But who would’ve thought such thoughts upon broadcast, given the way this block starts out? The opening United States-set and partially lensed two-parter – comprised of “The Impossible Astronaut” and “Day of the Moon” – is gloriously near-perfect; a tale of Richard Nixon, Neil Armstrong’s left foot, and the most unsettling aliens the series has unveiled since the Weeping Angels. The Silence were seeded throughout Season Five, and hence had a lot to live up to, and while there’s no question they’re creepy looking, what really sells them is the premise: beings that edit themselves from your memory the moment you stop looking at them. With the Angels you at least knew they were there, so there was something to fight against. The Silence make the battle considerably trickier and disturbing. The goings-on are helmed by the great Toby Haynes (“The Big Bang,” “A Christmas Carol”), who once again proves that he’s the ideal director for bringing Steven Moffat’s words to life. Even if there’s a bit of rubbish in the script, Haynes is able to convincingly gloss over it so viewers barely notice. Further, these two episodes set up the season with a handful of different mysterious complexities that promise greatness to come. But will it?

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Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series

Still haven’t gotten around to checking out Doctor Who, have you? Don’t let the Season Five label dissuade you: This is a great place to get in on the action without feeling like you’re totally out of the loop. It features a new Doctor (Matt Smith), a new companion (Karen Gillan), a new head writer (Steven Moffat), and, most importantly, a new storyline that’s only barely connected to the four seasons that came before it. It is, for all intents and purposes, a new show. This is actually not a new strategy for Doctor Who, which has more often than not successfully reinvented itself every few years since it started in 1963, and now it’s gone and happened once again.

Technically, this Blu-ray set looks and sounds amazing, better even I think than “The Complete Specials” box set looked earlier this year. The art direction this season was cranked up to 11, and it shows in every nook and cranny of every frame. I viewed these episodes initially in standard def, but watching them on Blu is like a night and day difference. Even some of the effects work which seemed rather shoddy in standard looks wonderful here. (I’m thinking in particular of the Silurian city shots with the Doctor and Co. running in the foreground.) Clearly at this point, Doctor Who is all about high definition, so if you’re a fan and you’ve still not upgraded, I’m telling you, you are missing out something fierce.

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Doctor Who: The Big Bang

And so we come to yet another season finale of the greatest science fiction series ever created. This is the recap I’ve been both anticipating and dreading writing in equal parts since first seeing “The Big Bang” some weeks ago; anticipating because of how much I adored this finale, and dreading because there’s no way I can do it justice in a mere recap. It’s not even an issue of space or time (or is it?), it’s a matter of the story, as well as the 12 episodes prior to it, being too dense to dissect thoroughly. You’ll have to forgive that this doesn’t resemble a recap proper, and I instead ramble on about other issues.

I didn’t go into “The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang” expecting a whole lot, conditioned as I am on Russell T Davies’s extravagant-yet-ultimately-lightweight season finales. Don’t get me wrong, they were most always a great deal of fun, but they most always left me somewhat wanting – excepting Season Three’s Master trilogy, although I’m not sure that’s in line with popular opinion. Oh, and “The Parting of the Ways.” Wait a minute…I loved most of his finales! But I often felt as if they didn’t go as far as they could. Part of the way through the current season the Pandoricrack, as I’ve come to call it, started to annoy me, and I began not so much resenting the thread, but rather simply dismissing it – assuming that whatever it was about wouldn’t be terribly thrilling. It turned out to be not only thrilling, but strange and deep and stimulating. This was Steven Moffat’s trademark “Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey” taken up to 11. (Maybe next year will go to 12?) This two-part finale forces viewers to go back and reexamine most of the season, and that isn’t something that can really be said for the Davies finales, which isn’t to imply they’re inferior. More on that later…

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