The Name Of The Doctor

We are never going to find out the name of Doctor Who – that’s a given and I didn’t expect we would find out last night. After all what would they rename the series? Doctor We-Know-Who? I had also more or less guessed the whole Impossible Girl sub-plot. The clues were fairly clearly labelled up from the first three episodes with Clara / Oswin; although I didn’t quite expect it to pan out as it did. However, the rest of the episode was really quite eye-opening and moved the whole Doctor Who mythology further than at any time since the End Of Time, possibly even since the final episode of The War Games. Except, of course, having seen the big revelation, we will have to wait 6 months to find out how it pans out.

What The Name Of The Doctor has done is to explore one very dark aspect of a time and space traveller – the fact that it is possible to walk on one’s own grave. I think this was touched on back in the 2005 series with one of my favourite lines from Russell T Davies when Rose, having seen the universe through the  Doctor’s perspective uttered:  “I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be.” I think that summed up what the series should be about but whilst it allows upbeat and hopeful stories it also lends itself easily to the dark and depressing ones. As stand-alone science fiction this worked very well but, let’s face it, this is the 50th Anniversary year and if they can’t do an out-and-out fanfest then, when can they? The final big revelation of the Doctor’s dark secret really took me by surprise. This has been hinted at even going back to the 9th Doctor episodes but quite where John Hurt fits into the mythology remains to be seen.

I have found this series of Doctor Who to be a bit of a mixed bag: From the very good to the frankly mediocre. I think part of this is down to the mid-series split with the change of supporting cast that this necessitated. However, I think some of it can come down to the way it is written. Back in the Russell T Davies series the season long story arc was largely shoehorned in whereas the non-Moffat episodes are  genuinely stand-alone episodes with mere hints at the bigger picture. In many ways it pays dividends to watch Moffat’s episodes on their own as the impact is greater in isolation (I discovered this with the last series). The Russell T Davies episodes always felt more like filler than being “the” story (with the possible exception of the second series which I still highly rate for RTD’s writing). But even with the disjointment, the Moffat series are more satisfying for me. Once the story arc is complete it makes sense and it is satisfying – the pay-off is worth the build-up.

In contrast to Doctor Who, I found the Eurovision Song Contest something of a let-down. It’s never been the most serious of things on TV but it did have a certain novelty factor about it. This years winner was good enough but it really felt rather manufactured to be a Eurovision winner. It wasn’t the only entry that was guilty of this and many songs were clearly plagiarised from other songs (and even other entries). I sort of enjoyed it but I think Nina made a fair comment in that we weren’t drunk enough to really get into the mood. Two things I think that could be done to improve it are to do something to curtail the unwieldy voting at the end and to return to everyone singing in their own language: at least that would create some sort of variety. On the plus side, Graham Norton’s catty asides are comic genius – let’s hope the BBC keep him gainfully employed.