Who Would Have Guessed?

Well, that seemed to go in a flash. The first half of the series of Doctor Who has been and gone - we now have to wait until the Autumn to find out what happens next. In this series Steven Moffat has really made his mark on the whole feel of the show. Not only has his intricate plotting come much more to the fore but the atmosphere is now something different: darker and menacing. It's great for arch fans like me but I do wonder if it is now out of step with the whole family tea-time telly thing. It probably is but for me it is now more fulfilling viewing even if it may alienate some of its potential audience.

NB: Spoilers ahead - if you haven't seen the episodes you might want to stop reading here...

I commented earlier about the opening two parter. There were lots of threads left hanging from that story although, as events have unfolded, there were many plot subtleties that I had missed. However, after that adrenaline rush of an episode we were treated to The Curse of the Black Spot: a pirate adventure that could sit quite happily in any of David Tennent's series. Compared to the rest of this run it was a bit of light fluff but I don't care - Amy looked fantastic in her pirate costume. The episode also featured Lily Cole in a non-speaking role. I did wonder whether having two top red-head actresses in the same place might lead to some sort of critical mass being reached but they painted Lily blue so that was avoided.


The next episode was intriguingly called The Doctor's Wife which I had been particularly looking forward to as it had been written by Neil Gaiman. This episode sees the TARDIS brought to life in the form of Idris: an attractive, if slightly bonkers, woman. This also produced one of the series best one liners when Amy asks the Doctor if he "wished really, really hard" to make the TARDIS come to life. Gaiman must be a big fan of the series as, aside from being one of the highest profile authors to write for the show, he also seems very well versed in the history of the series with many references to the very earliest black and white stories from the 1960's. However, the story was recognisably a Gaiman creation, even to the point of using the device of a woman to represent the seemingly inanimate TARDIS - he used the same trick in Stardust where the central character of Yvaine was the human incarnation of a fallen star. One item I noted in this episode is that Rory died, yet again. I've come to the conclusion that he is the equivalent of Kenny from South Park.

Onwards we travelled and back to a futuristic Earth for The Rebel Flesh two parter. This was also written by another favourite writer in Matthew Graham who wrote the brilliant Life on Mars but who also, I was surprised to discover, had previously written for Who in the form of Fear Her - possibly the most disappointing episode of the series since it's return. I needn't have worried as this two parter was pure science fiction and, for the first time that I can recall in the new series, it didn't rely on an alien monster for it's scares. This has been something I have felt that the series should have done long before and, in spite of the story being billed as a take on Frankenstein there were two other famous Sci-Fi stories: Karel Čapek's Rossum's Universal Robots, particularly for the way the Gangers are brought to life as a chemical process; and Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - more specifically the whole story could have been a prequel to the film version, Bladerunner.

This is where I think the show has departed from the family teatime telly to true Sci Fi. Although our protagonists may have been chased down corridors the main thrust of this episode was a more philosophical one: What does it mean to be human? Aside from the existentialism some of the imagery in this story was quite graphic. In fact a friend's son had nightmares following the first episode and didn't want to see the conclusion. It's a pity, although when I was his age I always regarded Doctor Who as being adult telly that I was allowed to watch. However, I can only ever remember being terrified by one episode which was The Ark in Space - one of the very first episodes produced by Philip Hinchcliffe (he who would wind up Mary Whitehouse as much as he would delight the fans). I've been re-watching some of these old episodes via LoveFilm and, whilst the cheap effects are no longer remotely scary, I can see why I would have been frightened and I can also pick up much more detail from the scripts. For those that haven't seen Ark, think of Ridley Scott's Alien - it's largely the same story.

The end of the two parter, The Almost People, was trademark Steven Moffat. Somehow, he manages to turn a story on it's head and yet it makes total sense. In fact the reveal where Amy melts and we discover that she must have been a Ganger from episode one makes even more sense when looking back at the previous episodes and this brings us nicely to A Good Man Goes to War - where we finally find out just how much Mr Moffat has been messing with our heads.

For the mid-season finale (to use an awful Americanism) we had been promised a major cliff-hanger and to finally discover who River Song actually is. Unlike the previous story this episode threw just about every alien that the costume department could muster into the mix. In fact, I think there was a bit too much going on whereas what we were really interested in is the plot - what is the nature of Amy's baby and why is it of such importance to this bunch of cosmic ne'er-do-wells. We got some big answers but there are lots of unanswered questions about the characters going right back to Matt Smith's first adventure. However the big mid-season cliff-hanger wasn't such a big surprise. Several people had suspected this one on internet fan forums and I had this suspicion myself. The fact that River Song is Amy's daughter is a much better solution than some of the other possibilities suggested as this keeps the story in line with characters that the modern audience know. It doesn't change any of the mystery about the Doctor's past and doesn't dredge up characters from the past that only the die hard (and older) fan would know about such as Susan, the Doctor's "granddaughter", Romana, his timelady assistant, or The Rani, a renegade timelady from the series 1980's low point which some individuals think should be resurrected for some completely fanwank reasoning.


The fact that the big reveal is both guessable and obvious shouldn't take away anything from Steven Moffat's writing. All the clues were there and it actually makes reasonable sense unlike some writers who will hang their twist on some previously unknown fact (Agatha Christie is a big offender here) or simply throw in a nonsensical turn of events into the fold (RTD has been tempted by this on more than one occasion). The mid-series finish feels both satisfactory and leaves me wanting to see more. The next episode is entitled, Let’s Kill Hitler, which sounds like it must do what it says on the tin - I can't imagine that it does. It's just a pity we have to wait months to see it. I think Doctor Who under Steven Moffat has now found it's audience. It's maybe not for everyone but for those that love it, it's the best thing on TV.