Series 6

Sorry to step on Indrid's toes LOL, but I just finished this on my New Who rewatch. I'm currently in the middle of series 7.

IMO series 6 is the absolute worst of the Matt Smith era. Smith's first series is great. Its quite unbelievable how much better it is than the Tennant era. The companions, the stories, the style. Whilst there are still some new whoisms like Amy coming onto Matt, and I think Murray Gold's score gets worse, overall series 5 is a worthy successor to True Who. Sigh if only it had gone on that way.

Anyway series 6 really drops the ball. The story arc is a mess, and there are so many clunker episodes like Lets Kill Hitler, which TBH is as close as the Matt Smith era came to plumbing the depths of the Eccelston era.

Matt, Karen and Arthur are still great as always, and all 3 are able to salvage most of the scripts, but I'd say its the weakest Matt season. Season 7 so far is holding up quite well. Some clunkers like Rings, but I've really enjoyed the likes of Hide and Cold War. Even Asylum was enjoyable.

burrunjor wrote:Sorry to step on Indrid's toes LOL.

Bastard!
No problem. I'm used to it....

That aside, Series 6 is a mixed bag for me. Whilst there are a lot of good concepts introduced, I feel they either don't go anywhere or just don't work at all.

Still, the main cast themselves are on top form and even salvage some moments of the crap episodes.

Its hardly the worst NuWho series but it is quite a comedown after 5....

That first half of series six isn't too bad, the opening two-parter left me confused but interested, and I remember shouting down anyone who correctly deduced the kid was River because "Moffat doesn't do obvious"....oh hum, carry on...

Did'nt care much for Black Spot, but it had a good premise, Doctor's Wife was outstanding, I did enjoy Rebel Flesh/Almost People, and "A Good Man Goes To War" was solid with some of the best speeches and twists in the series.

Then yeah, after the flawed but IMO quite underrated "Let's Kill Hitler", it goes off the rails completely. It was as if there was no script editor, nothing gelled. Characters didn't react to situations in believable ways, too much time spent on filler stories. "The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex" are great but probably would have fit quite well in the first half.

I think the season ought to have benefited from a shorter run, here's how I'd structure it

1. The Girl Who Waited
2. The Doctor's Wife
3. The God Complex
4. Impossible Astronaut
5. Day of The Moon
6. Curse of the Black Spot
7. Rebel Flesh
8. Almost People
9. Good Man Goes To War

Christmas Special: Let's Kill Hitler

It starts fairly promising and beguiling, if a bit uncertain, with it getting increasingly nightmarish as it goes on...

But then come Lets Kill Hitler, the only feeling it conjures is a sense of bewilderment and devastation that Moffat could descend into this. From that point on it feels like a plain soulless season, where you're desperately waiting for Moffat to fix it but he doesn't seem to care. And as a result neither did I by the end.

The truth is, the season seemed to be about nothing but Moffat wanting to prove that Doctor Who was the 'bad boy' of children's television, hence why it became all about guns, revenge, River Song turned Nikita, the Doctor having his own personal dirty dozen and blowing up a bunch of Cybermen who had nothing to do with anything, or indeed Amy electrocuting Madame Kovarian (strange that fans want to excuse that and yet want to lynch Ambrose in Hungry Earth for doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason).

It didn't matter what any of it meant, or what emotional repercussions it should've led to. It was just Moffat channel hopping the characters through every badass cliche he could think of.

In a way it made the worst of RTD look good, because at least RTD's era had a bit of heart to it. Series 6 in the main seemed to have none.

Zarius wrote:"The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex" are great but probably would have fit quite well in the first half.

I don't think The Girl Who Waited would make sense in the first half if the Amy in that was revealed to be a ganger. Certainly it would lose a lot of emotional substance.

This was the series that made me realise just what an appalling writer Moffat. Smoke and mirrors and bullshit.
The only one I thought was any good was The Girl Who Waited.
The rest range from to meh, to shit, to really shit. The really shit ones being any with River Song in.

Ronnie wrote:The rest range from to meh, to shit, to really shit. The really shit ones being any with River Song in.

I kind of liked River at first, and thought she worked as part of the ensemble.

But this was the season she stopped being part of the ensemble and just started to take over completely, and the more we learned about her, the less I cared.

I vividly remember by the end of Wedding, thinking "I think I'd be happy if I never saw River, nor heard that obnoxious 'hello sweetie' catchphrase ever again."

Tanmann wrote:I don't think The Girl Who Waited would make sense in the first half if the Amy in that was revealed to be a ganger. Certainly it would lose a lot of emotional substance.

In my restructured series six episode listing above, Amy would not have been abducted by the Silence until many eps after "Girl Who Waited"

I’ll be controversial and say that I actually rather like series 6. Let’s Kill Hitler is fucking awful, of course, as is Closing Time, and the finale is absolute bollocks in terms of narrative logistics (which does sadly undermine the overall arc of the season), but the rest ranges from fairly good to excellent as far as I’m concerned (bar Black Spot, which is just painfully mediocre). The opening two parter is a favourite due to its atmosphere, eeriness and scale (even if the arc it establishes doesn’t hold together), and I also regard The Girl Who Waited extremely highly as far as NuWho stories go. There’s something surreal and Kubrickian about it, which is a true rarity for the generally staid and unimaginative NuWho.

It’s a very flawed season, without a doubt, but I find it much more absorbing than any of the RTD seasons personally, which have universally dated badly and aren’t as ambitious (bar a few episodes of series 3 and 4). It’s a bit of an overarching clusterfuck, but it has great individual moments to spare, and doesn’t constantly seek to treat its audience like morons as with the majority of RTD Who and the appalling seasons that followed. It’s something of a guilty pleasure, and at least has some ambition, even if it signalled the death of the era.

Tanmann wrote:It starts fairly promising and beguiling, if a bit uncertain, with it getting increasingly nightmarish as it goes on...

But then come Lets Kill Hitler, the only feeling it conjures is a sense of bewilderment and devastation that Moffat could descend into this. From that point on it feels like a plain soulless season, where you're desperately waiting for Moffat to fix it but he doesn't seem to care. And as a result neither did I by the end.

The truth is, the season seemed to be about nothing but Moffat wanting to prove that Doctor Who was the 'bad boy' of children's television, hence why it became all about guns, revenge, River Song turned Nikita, the Doctor having his own personal dirty dozen and blowing up a bunch of Cybermen who had nothing to do with anything, or indeed Amy electrocuting Madame Kovarian (strange that fans want to excuse that and yet want to lynch Ambrose in Hungry Earth for doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason).

It didn't matter what any of it meant, or what emotional repercussions it should've led to. It was just Moffat channel hopping the characters through every badass cliche he could think of.

In a way it made the worst of RTD look good, because at least RTD's era had a bit of heart to it. Series 6 in the main seemed to have none.

The original run was the 'bad boy' of children's television in as much as it was constantly pushing against the boundaries of what the BBC execs were comfortable with and expected it to be. Hence their periodic efforts to have it restrained, neutered and lobotomised a la Alex the Droog.

Moffat's version is just an embarrassing dad dancing at a wedding.

UncleDeadly wrote:The original run was the 'bad boy' of children's television in as much as it was constantly pushing against the boundaries of what the BBC execs were comfortable with and expected it to be. Hence their periodic efforts to have it restrained, neutered and lobotomised a la Alex the Droog.

Moffat's version is just an embarrassing dad dancing at a wedding.

Indeed. And it seems like in Moffat's complex about the old show seeming embarrassingly uncool to him and his peers, the 'bad boy' element of the Hinchcliffe era, Earthshock, and Master stories like Terror of the Autons, seems to be what he clung onto and was desperate to prove once again. Forgetting that the show at its best had been all things to all people and wasn't specifically about proving how 'badass' it could be, just to comfort embarrassed fans like himself.

The result is unfortunately, his era just feels like a blend of Terror of the Autons and The Android Invasion, only stuck on an unbearable loop for six years, and interspersed with soap opera nonsense about the Ponds and Clara.

UncleDeadly wrote:

Tanmann wrote:It starts fairly promising and beguiling, if a bit uncertain, with it getting increasingly nightmarish as it goes on...

But then come Lets Kill Hitler, the only feeling it conjures is a sense of bewilderment and devastation that Moffat could descend into this. From that point on it feels like a plain soulless season, where you're desperately waiting for Moffat to fix it but he doesn't seem to care. And as a result neither did I by the end.

The truth is, the season seemed to be about nothing but Moffat wanting to prove that Doctor Who was the 'bad boy' of children's television, hence why it became all about guns, revenge, River Song turned Nikita, the Doctor having his own personal dirty dozen and blowing up a bunch of Cybermen who had nothing to do with anything, or indeed Amy electrocuting Madame Kovarian (strange that fans want to excuse that and yet want to lynch Ambrose in Hungry Earth for doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason).

It didn't matter what any of it meant, or what emotional repercussions it should've led to. It was just Moffat channel hopping the characters through every badass cliche he could think of.

In a way it made the worst of RTD look good, because at least RTD's era had a bit of heart to it. Series 6 in the main seemed to have none.

The original run was the 'bad boy' of children's television in as much as it was constantly pushing against the boundaries of what the BBC execs were comfortable with and expected it to be. Hence their periodic efforts to have it restrained, neutered and lobotomised a la Alex the Droog.

Moffat's version is just an embarrassing dad dancing at a wedding.

Completely concur with both yours and Tanmann’s points. Regardless of how I see the season as a whole, this recurring theme did seem prevalent and reflective of Moffat’s overarching ego, especially in the disastrous Let’s Kill Hitler, where Moffat’s most indulgent sitcom conventions begin to take centre stage, and his self-loathing persona begins to show itself.

And NuWho always has been a conservative and distorted rendition of the original series, as I have mentioned many times before, and is very much the version of Who endorsed by the BBC as opposed to the original version they continually sought to undermine, restrain and cancel. Ironic, given TruWho’s 26 year longevity and subsequent success amidst re-releases. NuWho has been on TV just over half as many years as TruWho, and is yet now seen as an outright disaster by the vast majority in today’s climate. Once the popularist atmosphere of the current climate changes, and NuWho finally comes to an end, will anyone truly remember it at all? Perhaps, but it’s staying power certainly isn’t equal to TruWho.

I think the Tennant era might be remembered, but not much else, and even then it'll probably be remembered as a bit of a samey, indistinct blur of frenetic runarounds. People would probably more remember the over-story of season arcs than particular episodes.

But I think it might be looked back on as a time when the national culture kind of lost its head to all these naive, conveniently trouble-free, liberal utopian ideals that Tennant's Doctor seemed to embody and proselytize and keep winning out with.

And I suppose people might feel nostalgic for when the real world seemed simpler that way, but it'll probably be yesterday's mood that has since lost its validity, as reality has intruded.

No, I'm sorry, I'm still baffled at the notion that 7 is better than 6. It isn't. I'm sorry, but 7 is fucking shit.

I liked Series 7. Once the Ponds were out the way, we seemed to actually get a welcome return to proper adventures again, with no soap business in sight.

It's about the only other New Who season besides 5 I could say that about.

But they were shit. And Clara was shit too.

I do really like Matt smith as the doctor too bad the scripts were so so this season.

iank wrote:But they were shit. And Clara was shit too.

This man speaks fluent truth. Series 7 had no direction despite being the 50th anniversary series, at least until the very finale and then the last two specials. Series six might have went off the rails, but it had a direction.