Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song

We can all relax; it was entertaining.

If we’re being completely honest, Steven Moffat’s first venture into writing a season special for Doctor Who was ok, his second was pretty bad and his third was pretty dark and kind of killed Christmas. I mean the Christmas specials have never been that good, given the difficult task of working in a continuing narrative, maintaining continuity and staying light hearted enough. The last point has always been Moffat’s problem. “A Christmas Carol” was essentially the Doctor accidentally pushing someone a day closer to death, every Christmas in order to save his friends.

This episode opts for a far more lighthearted turn…with the Doctor going toe-to-toe with a genocidal cyborg.

Alex Kingston is back as River Song, the twist; this time she doesn’t know who she’s talking to. As far as she’s concerned, the Doctor died/will die on Trenzalore, so there’s no possible way there could be another one of him. Err that doesn’t make sense, since that event was rewritten by the Time Lords, so surely the history that she based her knowledge on would have been rewritten too, meaning – you know what; it’s Christmas; Moffat can have this one.

Kingston and Capaldi have pretty good chemistry, which is good, given that Moffat seems to have taken to writing scripts as character focused pieces rather than stories. This is a good decision given the ending of the episode, although it does involve retconning a small section of Matt Smith’s tenure.

The comic talents of Greg Davies and Matt Lucas are much appreciated if a little underused (Davies spends half the episode asleep).

The ending does get a little bit serious, but in fairness, Moffat did say that he wrote this before his contract was renewed, so you can see why he wanted to essentially tie off everything he’s put together over the last few years.

So yeah…entertaining….

Doctor Who: Hell Bent

Does anyone stay dead in this series?

Steven Moffat is often compared to George RR Martin, for his penchant for killing off popular characters. I’ve never really understood this; he doesn’t kill off characters; Amy and Rory didn’t die, Osgood didn’t die; the only popular character he’s ever killed off is the Doctor.

It’s not that bringing Clara back doesn’t work; it does. But why does she survive and basically become the Doctor at the end of the episode? It’s just so annoying how writers for this show drum up heart wrenching deaths for the character and then chicken out. Davies did it in Journey’s end with Donna. It’s a cop out; it’s like Star Trek where only the redshirts die.

Aside from that pretty huge point, this a good way to end the series. Gallifray is back and the Time Lords up to their old tricks. Donald Supter is now playing Rassilon presumably as a result of the Timothy Dalton version being killed by the Master. He’s well played, ditching the outwards anger of his predecessor, for a more, conceited personality, whose anger is kept just below the surface.

Story wise, it’s a pretty good turn that the Doctor doesn’t actually know any specifics about the Hybrid and was just bluffing to get Clara back. The change of coat, to imply the move towards the Valyard didn’t need to be expressly stated however and would have preferred it to be a purely visual message. The General regenerating into a woman (although it comes of the back of the Doctor properly losing the plot) seems a bit gimmicky. Kind of like Moffat is saying, “look we made another female time lord.”

There’s a nice twist at the end with the bookend style and the reveal that it’s actually Clara’s flashback and not the Doctor’s, as he can’t remember her. One thing I would say is that this is far less epic than you would expect a finale to be. The idea that the Hybrid could be the Doctor and Clara combined is interesting, but doesn’t really have any time to be explained before we get to the emotional goodbye bits.

Overall, I’d say this is a bit like The Time of the Doctor for Jenna Coleman, where Moffat has written the story around saying goodbye, instead of fully making sense.

It’s not bad, just not what I was expecting.