The three seasons of Matt Smith’s
tenure as the Doctor are each in their own way distinct. We start with the
strange fairy-tale of Amelia Pond, then we’re sprung into the timey-wimey
complexity of the heart of River Song before a split season sees off the Ponds
and introduces a not-quite fully-formed Clara Oswald. Each season has a
different agenda. As Steven Moffat would admit, the first follows the basic
formula of a Russell T Davies series – the familiarity working against the differences.
For the first time, the whole season is shot on HD and a new colour palette is
introduced to the show, the result the most beautiful pictures the show had up
to that point seen. The second is – give or take an episode or two – one, continuous
story. It’s perhaps the most ambitious series ever made in terms of structure
but to my feeble mind it falls short of greatness on multiple counts. The third
starts with five short barn-storming movies then loses its way after Christmas,
a result of scripts simply not being ready. Nevertheless, despite it being less
than the sum of its parts, there are some very interesting and engaging
episodes to found in Series 7B. Lastly, Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor ends
with two blockbusters, both enormous successes and a worthy finish to the bold,
brave, inconsistent and imaginative era which they bring majestically to a
close. Things would be even more different from then on…
Here are the 39 stories ranked in
order of preference. Just a quick note to add that although some of these
entries may seem to condemn some tales without very much mercy, the articles
are written with deep love for this show. I’d watch any of the Doctor Who
episodes listed here again more than willingly, apart from perhaps Number 39.
39. THE REBEL FLESH / THE ALMOST
PEOPLE
As an unleashed and unfunny Matt
Smith might say, “’Ee by by by gum, it’s a rum do, this ‘un.” And it is.
Matthew Graham’s second go at Doctor Who is even worse than his first misguided
try-out. It’s flabbier, uglier, unwieldy, worthy and nonsensical. It seems to
be trying to tell us something, but I’m not sure what. The flesh are people
too? OK, so let’s kill Flesh Amy. The flesh should have equal rights? OK, so
they’re in a darkened room plotting to start a war. Just how many Jennifers are
there, why is one of them seemingly dead and stuck to a ceiling and why does
nobody call her Jenny? Why are there eyes on the wall asking the question
“Why?” What’s most irritating about this flaccid offering is the excruciating
dialogue. A character repeating a word or phrase all but becomes a trope.
Exhibit A: rubbishy rubbishy rubbish. Exhibit B: chinny chin chin. Exhibit C: I
have things to do, things involving other things. The most egregious Exhibit D:
Yes, it’s insane and it’s about to get even more insanerer. There are also
terrible, hackneyed clunkers that no ordinary factory worker ought to get away
with saying without being called out. “Strike at will;” “If it’s war then it’s
war;” “Who the hell are you?” Perhaps the line that makes me want to crawl into
my shoe the most is, “I could still feel how sore my toes got inside my red
wellie boots.” I just can’t get past the dialogue. It’s devoid of character,
unrealistic, ham-fisted and inelegant. And then the real Doctor slams Amy into
a stone wall and screams in her face. God, I think if there’s a Doctor Who
story I might eventually come to hate, it’d be this travesty of a two-parter.
38. JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF
THE TARDIS
It’s got the title to end all
titles but what was ever really going to lurk in the centre of the TARDIS? More
corridors and a few rooms? The mystery of the time and space machine should
probably remain just that. Although there are some exciting images here, especially
the static, white engine room, looking inwards rather than outwards is usually
anathema to Doctor Who. When the show becomes about the show, it’s often
alienating, but more often dull. What really spells Journey’s failure most
acutely though is the awful cast. Ashley Walters is just about passable but
only when compared to the truly dreadful Mark Oliver. He brings a gruntish, arrogance
to his character Bram belying an inability to deliver any line of dialogue at
all convincingly. I’d possibly go so far as to say that this episode contains
the weakest guest cast ever to arrive on a Doctor Who set. What’s more, they’re
playing indolent, unlikeable scavengers who really don’t deserve the happy,
timey-wimey ending they get here. With a setting which inevitably disappoints
and a cast of characters with whom we hold no sympathy whatsoever, this is in
the end an uninspired and dreary excursion.
37. THE CURSE OF THE BLACK
SPOT
If you’re going to tell a pirate
story, for heavens’ sake tell a pirate story. As soon as we’re in the mirror
ship, we might welcome a nice piece of thematic plotting but all the gorgeous
finery of that atmospheric ship dissipates and we’re on a futuristic set of
black drapes and plastic curtains. For a tale of the high seas, there’s very
little water to be found. It rather feels like a budget pirate film where the
only ship the guys can afford is a harboured one, there’s no money for
underwater filming and there’s certainly never a suggestion of sharks or sea
monsters or lagoons. No, we’ve got a tepid father-son plot, a disappearing cast
member and Lily Cole posing for Piratical Fashion Mag. And Rory’s death feels
like a dramatic resolution bolted on to a story without one. Oh, for a return
to the days of The Smugglers. “It will be a merry night, but not for
ye!”
36. VICTORY OF THE DALEKS
It’s the third story of the Matt
Smith era and the second to disappoint. We’ve got Winston Churchill vs the
Daleks here so that’s a massive gut punch. How could this not have worked? The
problem is that this isn’t the story of how the Daleks inveigled their
way into Churchill’s War Rooms; it’s the dull story of the Dalek Progenitor and
the birth of some other Daleks, less good-looking than the khaki variety. Once
we’re onboard the Dalek ship and Matt Smith is left to act out a speech which feels
like it was written for David Tennant against the Duplo Daleks and a Jammie
Dodger, no amount of “Danny Boy”-ing can save this wasted opportunity.
35. THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG
Sadly, this is the only season
finale written by Steven Moffat to truly disappoint. He’s got 45 minutes to tie
up the series-long River Song / Lake Silencio narrative, which has by now
become perhaps needlessly complex and something of an albatross around the neck
of the whole show. Moffat himself has described making the series in DWM like,
“disappearing down a plughole.” This is that plughole. This is an episode
that’s purpose it to wrap up plot threads and effectively put all the toys back
in the box in surprising ways. But for those well versed enough in how the
grammar of television works, we know the Teselecta’s going to be the answer
thanks to its appearance and explanation in the Previously On… opening. The
Wedding of River Song isn’t actually about anything. It’s a story
that feels as if it’s trying to be spectacular – flying cars, “live” chess, Dickens
on BBC Breakfast, the pyramid tombs – but it keeps being drawn back to Madame
Kovarian, River Song, the Lake, the Silence. Resultantly, none of the
explanations is particularly satisfying: Moffat’s spread himself too thinly. At
least, however, this showcases the ambition of the showrunner. Not content with
repeating the highly successful formula of seasons past, he goes for broke on
something entirely new. It fails but its huge size and scope of endeavour can
at least be admired and it’s only at the final hurdle that Moffat stumbles to
the finish.
34. THE POWER OF THREE
Season 7A was going so well and
then The Power of Three happens. It’s the weakest of the five Amy and
Rory “movies,” chiefly because it hasn’t got the movie-sized idea at its
centres that the others enjoy. The world’s invasion by small, black cubes isn’t
cut from the same cloth as The Dalek Asylum, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The
Gunslinger or The Statue of Liberty as Weeping Angel. But The Power of Three
is by no means totally poor. In between the grand standers comes this smaller
piece of character work. It’s lovely to see Rory’s father again and Mark
Williams is fantastic. His final exclamation to his son and daughter-in-law to
go out and enjoy their travels is a gorgeous, kindly piece of writing, but it’s
a shame Steven Moffat never follows it up. How criminal that we didn’t get to
see what happened to Rory’s dad on screen. The ending of The Power of Three
is famously fudged by Steven Berkoff in a typical actorly tantrum, and the
sonic screwdriver as King Cop-Out necessarily comes into play here. I don’t
mind the screwdriver but it only irritates here and in its incessant use in The
Rings of Akhaten. There are some lovely moments throughout – especially the
Doctor and Amy’s conversation on the wall - but The Power of Three feels
piecemeal. It introduces Kate Stewart who fails to make much of an impression
here; it’s a Doctor in the House play but it was done better in The Lodger;
and it’s an earth invasion story with barely any spectacle.
33. COLD WAR
So the Ice Warrior has this new
thing: it opens up and a slithering, lithe reptile comes out. It’s a monster
movie pitch to end them all. We have one great monster but we really have two:
the big lumbering one to terrify the kiddies and the silent, slippery one to
terrify the adults. I’d go with that. The only thing is the second monster was
delivered in the wrong size and its limitations are obvious throughout this
otherwise well-directed submarine drama. Skinny puppet hands tremble pathetically
around the head of Tobias Menzies, who tries his best to look scared. But
there’s a definite feeling of a show struggling to achieve what it needs to be
successful. Jenna-Louise Coleman’s newly arrived Clara is a shapeless
character, partly due to the scripting issues with Series 7B. She does brave,
companion-y things but she lacks a real voice. Who is this person? A
baby-sitter? A rebel? A “normal” girl? There’s nothing yet for Gatiss to work
from but he at least gives her some screen time with David Warner.
Unfortunately, the lasting impression of the episode is the CGI Ice Warrior
head, which like its puppetry arms, fails to impress. (Unusual for Doctor Who’s
CGI to prove so lacklustre.) It’s a crushing shame because that new, physical Ice
Warrior costume is as frightening and powerful as the Martians have ever
looked. What a boon that they got to return under the next Doctor in all their
glory.
32. THE GIRL WHO WAITED
The story Tom MacRae “fought” to
get to the screens seems to have garnered a loyal fan following, but to my mind
that “fighting” is written through this script so patently. At every
opportunity, MacRae points up how important his little story is. I’m not sure
how many times Amy makes it clear that she’s been on her own for 36 years but
it’s far too often and far too frequently. “I don’t think I’ve smiled in 36
years,” she says. Where this should elicit sympathy, we’re left thinking, “36
years, yeah, we get it.” Bluntly, The Girl Who Waited is grossly
overwritten. The tale does have a cruel sting in it though, which punctures the
heart: it’s the moment we realise Matt Smith’s Doctor isn’t going to be kind.
He looks at Amy across the room, they meet one another’s eyes… and he shuts the
TARDIS doors. It’s a devastating moment and easily worth the laboured dialogue
elsewhere.
31. NIGHT TERRORS
This is one to scare the children
with. The nightmarish tale of George plays all the familiar beats of childhood
terror and it’s filmed magnificently against the dark walls of the bedroom or
the shadows of the doll’s house. When we’re not with George though, things go
slightly awry. Danny Mays doesn’t know how to pitch his performance tonally and
starts to pick up on Matt Smith’s rhythms rather than play the straight man.
This is something that The Lodger got exactly right and it only makes
Night Terrors feel like its poorer cousin. Dropping the Doctor into a
familiar setting should feel anachronistic (as Pertwee does in the living room
of the Farrells in Terror of the Autons) but when the setting warps into
something as anachronistic itself, there’s no point of comparison. Having said
that, there are some terrific, searing images on display here: the old lady
eaten by the binbags; the eyeball in the drawer; Amy distorting horribly into
one of the peg dolls. This episode’s job is to be weird. And on that count,
it’s a major success, just a difficult one to truly engage with. Perhaps in a season
with fewer blue, shadowy tales, it might have made its own oddball impression.
30. THE VAMPIRES OF VENICE
Toby Whithouse wrote some
terrific Doctor Who episodes but The Vampires of Venice is the only one
which feels a little bit like a cut and paste job, like Doctor Who by Numbers.
It’s structured like a “typical” adventure in the way that say, an episode of The
X Files would start with a de-brief in Mulder’s office and end with a
climactic chase sequence amongst some hissing pipes. Here, we have the arrival
in Venice, a suggestion of mystery, an exploration, a mid-story moment of
jeopardy, a de-briefing, and a tete-a-tete with the baddie before the exciting
showdown. That’s no bad thing. The dialogue is great, the camerawork is
glorious and there’s so much chemistry between any number of paired characters.
The “We are Venetians!” moment sizzles and the pre-titles sequence is
fabulously funny. The quiet moment when the Doctor threatens Calvierri with the
understated, “You didn’t know Isabella’s name” is a tremendous decision on the
part of still-new boy Matt Smith. However accomplished this show looks and
however strong some of its set-pieces, there’s still the feeling that you can
see the structure at work, you can anticipate the beats and it ends up feeling
a bit predictable and middle of the road. If The Vampire of Venice is
MOR, though, we’ve got a magnificent favourite show!
29. THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN
You can’t fault Steven Moffat for
a lack of ambition. He revels in the clevernesses of scripting, sees deep joy
in the gambits and twists of a thrillingly complex piece of writing. The only
trouble is, when he’s riding that author’s bike too fast, he often risks going
over the handlebars. Here, like in The Wedding of River Song (and
probably much of Series 6), he goes for brain over heart. When Amy and Rory are
zapped away into the past and a sobbing Matt Smith is left to dispose of an
angel all by himself, our over-riding emotion is not one of sympathy or
sadness; it’s one of confusion. We’re left going, “Wait… so if he can
get back earlier in the adventure even though he definitely
couldn’t, then…?” Moffat hasn’t set his stall all clearly enough. He’s not set
up the rules of this time travel malarkey efficiently enough to allow this
ending to work without further explanation. It’s a shame because there are
lovely moments – the dash to see the final page; the film noir look of the
early parts of the episode; the amazingly well-shot and scored fall from the
tower block; that last shot of Amelia, wrapping the narrative up satisfyingly,
tidily. But there’s a sense that we’re just not clever enough to have got all
the rules yet and so The Angels Take Manhattan is not nearly so powerful
as it could and probably should have been.
28. THE DOCTOR’S WIFE
I’ve never been enamoured with
this possibly now iconic tale of the TARDIS, despite the high regard in which
it seems to be held by fandom. For my money, it’s all a bit dour and ponderous.
Suranne Jones does her dreadful “posh” accent and garbles or swallows important
lines, seemingly unsure which she needs to emphasise. Still, there is much to
enjoy here: the haunting and properly frightening episode in which Rory ages to
death is harrowing stuff; the nightmare journey into the TARDIS corridors is
the stuff of classic Doctor Who. It just takes a long time to get there and
there’s a lot of dour techno-guff to wade through before the story really
begins to take flight.
27. THE HUNGRY EARTH / COLD
BLOOD
Chris Chibnall’s two-parter isn’t
just a homage to the Pertwee years, it’s practically a resurrection. This is no
bad thing. When it’s directly riffing off the early 70s tropes, it’s terrific:
the drillhead; the church; the heat barrier; the Silurians themselves – it’s
all great, wholesome Doctor Who. When we reach the second half though, and
we’re sat across tables having conversations we don’t really get to see, as if Chibnall
shies away from the difficult stuff, Cold Blood stalls in its tracks.
Also, I’m a bit too long in the tooth at 34 years old to find “squeaky bum
time” an acceptable choice of words from our Doctor. It goes through me far
more than the burping bin or the farting Slitheen! There’s a possibility a much
stronger version of this story existed once: with allosaurus wrapped up in
balls and a non-linear second half, but what we’re left with feels quite easy
and straightforward after a great opener. Frankly, the Silurians and the humans
could never hope to co-habit the Earth in the Doctor Who world so the ending of
the story was never going to be a climax, rather a stalling.
26. LET’S KILL HITLER
Series 6B premiers with a
brazenly bold assault on the viewers’ expectations. We open with new girl Mels
cutting across the corn field in her stolen vehicle, sending our heroes off to
Berlin where Hitler is to be locked in a cupboard before we get on with the
real story: a romantic comedy with one half of the yet-to-be lovey-dovey duo in
the throes of his kiss of death. Let’s Kill Hitler works best of all
first time round, its unpredictable nature its ace card, but there’s still
loads to balk at after the event: how is a story like this even pitched? It’s
got to be a turn-off for any new viewer: it’s simply so extraordinary. Fans
don’t seem to like Let’s Kill Hitler. It’s a shame because it’s such a
frothy, heady brew. Its one major failing, however, is the casual way the
missing baby plot is dumped. Amy and Rory seem to have very quickly got over
the fact the Doctor essentially helped lose their child. They don’t have it out
with him after his casual apology at the start of the episode and then they’re
off for more fun adventures at the story’s conclusion. Despite the fun of Let’s
Kill Hitler, something as seismic as the loss of child is simply too big a
subject to ignore. “Oh, it’s a time loop,” doesn’t quite cut it.
25. THE RINGS OF AKHATEN
Vilified on transmission, even by
DWM, The Rings of Akhaten isn’t nearly as bad as its detractors would
have us believe. There are two major problems in my books: the overuse of the
screwdriver and that climactic Matt Smith speech. To take the former: it’s the
only time the Doctor’s wand is irritating for me. Smith wrestles with it operatically
and annoyingly throughout much of this tale and it really is used to escape disaster.
By the close of Akhaten, I’d be happy to see the back of it. The second
problem is more profound: I don’t know what this asinine speech is trying to
do. Smith cries his way through it but it doesn’t mean anything. He’s seen the
birth of the universe. So? It feels like Neil Cross is aiming for profound but he
ends up writing dreck. Aside from these issues (and the fact that the scary
mummy simply withers away on its escape) there is loads to love about Akhaten.
It’s colourful, bizarre and every aspect of design comes together to create something
arresting in its look. The Vigil are frightening, the scenes early on in which they
follow Merry Gejelh proving merciless and sinister. Even the songs are lovely:
Murray Gold steering just the right side of twee. It’s unusual. There’s nothing
quite like The Rings of Akhaten but its uniqueness alone makes it a memorable
voyage.
24. THE BEAST BELOW
The biggest issue with The Beast
Below is not its own; it’s The Eleventh Hour. With such an
incredibly successful, stone cold, knock out piece of brilliance as its
introduction, any other script was going to struggle to follow it up. But
The Beast Below is a little malformed anyway, slightly unsure of what it
wants to be, who it’s about and indeed, what its own internal logic actually consists
of. How exactly do the Winders have three faces? When are we going to be told
they’re called the Winders? Why don’t we see Peter the Winder’s incredible
make-up as showcased on Doctor Who Confidential? Where has that moment gone? There’s
a feeling that The Beast Below has lost much of its translation in the editing
suite. Amy’s talk with the Doctor by the windows also slides into mawkishness. Even
Matt Smith’s performance seems a little more unfocussed and less well-disciplined.
Still, the Winders themselves are a tremendous idea, the thought of being left
alone in a lift with one a terrifying idea. There’s the scene on the giant tongue,
Terrence Hardiman being brilliantly dependable, some outstanding design work,
the memory booths, the CGI, that first floating-in-space scene. Perhaps The
Beast Below spreads itself too thinly. Rather than seeing an aspect of the society
of Starship UK, Steven Moffat attempts to show us it all, from its Queen to its
literal underbelly.
23. NIGHTMARE IN SILVER
Neil Gaiman was quite unafraid to
tell the world how disappointed he was with this, his second and last foray
into the Doctor Who world. But to my mind, there’s much more to enjoy here than
in the more focused but less freewheeling Doctor’s Wife. Here, Gaiman
aims to tell a larger story. We’re in a future theme park, with bullet-time Cybermen,
a castle under siege, a spaceship and an exploding planet. It aims to do so
much more. There’s the creepy scene with the waxworks, the floating on the moon
sequence, and the chess-playing Cyberman. Nightmare in Silver is a rich
experience, although it does feel somewhat distant and difficult to engage with.
The character work, as in The Doctor’s Wife, isn’t Gaiman’s strongest
suit and the unbelievable punishment squad don’t exactly light any fires. But then,
there’s the severed Cyber hand, the headless body and the oncoming army.
Frankly, Nightmare in Silver is full to the brim with ideas, none of
them particularly well-developed but all of them imaginative and stirring. Even
down to the Cyber-mites!
22. THE GOD COMPLEX
Here, Nick Hurran auditions for
the 50th anniversary episode. Look at the camerawork: it’s mad. Only
in The God Complex, The Day of the Doctor and the astonishingly
well-made Sherlock episode The Lying Detective can we find Hurran freewheeling
his way through a script in such self-styled weirdness. The God Complex is
a perfect match for Hurran’s directorial panache which confuses even the
geography of the viewer from both a scripting and shooting perspective. Exempting
Rita, the character work isn’t terrific, and the ending in which we say goodbye
to Amy and Rory doesn’t convince for a second, the “standing over your graves”
line is gut-churning in its awfulness. But the thrill of The God Complex is
in its strangeness. When we leave the hotel, like the walls of the virtual
prison, everything falls down. But for those 35 minutes spent in the gauche
corridors of the labyrinth, Toby Whithouse’s weird world is something quite wondrous.
21. THE DOCTOR, THE WIDOW AND
THE WARDROBE
This Christmas Special is
arguably Moffat’s weakest but its faults were more pronounced at the time of transmission
and it has weathered the passage of time with admirable grace. Off the back of
the elaborate and challenging Series 6, it was always going to seem almost
disappointingly simple and even simplistic, the plot a linear journey through
some woods. But out of context, that doesn’t seem to matter quite as much.
There is something charming about this easy to follow, child-like tale of a
brief trip in and out of Narnia. The pre-titles sequence is frankly astonishing:
possibly the most exciting ever put to camera, maybe even the best of the whole
series. The sequence in which “The Caretaker” introduces the rooms of the house
typifies the childhood allure and magic of the Doctor. The ending is a little
twee but it spoke to my step-daughter, just as the Androzani gag spoke to me.
Surely that’s who Doctor Who is aimed at: a legend for everyone.
20. A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR
This was jaw-dropping. Divorced
from its 2011 transmission date, everything seems so obvious now. But River as Amy
and Rory’s daughter was a literal jaw-dropper. And before that bombshell, we
get a lesbian Silurian, a good Sontaran, the triumphant punch-the-air return of
Captain Avery and some more – ridiculous but joyous – spitfires! We also see
Rory and the Doctor mount an attack on some soon-to-be exploding Cyberships and
the Doctor bring down an army of headless monks without firing a single bullet.
It’s a script which works so hard – throwing every thrill it can at the viewers.
And it absolutely works. There is a real moment of horror too when Melody “turns
into milk” as one of the children in my class put it at the time. It’s truly
harrowing in a very human sense and the darkest individual moment of the whole
Moffat tenure. Sadly, the episode doesn’t lead anywhere, its promise remains unfulfilled.
River will not be saved. The baby will remain missing and everything else will
rollick along as usual. But for the time
being, A Good Man Goes to War is riveting.
19. HIDE
Quietly and almost invisibly,
Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine put in the best guest performances of the season,
in their understated manner revealing the key themes of the episode itself. Their
subtlety highlights Matt Smith’s almost irritating wackiness, here sadly at its
most pronounced. Thankfully, he reins it in for the trip to the netherworld,
where his usually unflappable Doctor becomes genuinely terrified. The crooked
man himself is a sinister creation and there are tremendous “haunted house” staples
throughout which add to the uncanny atmosphere of Hide. It’s a hallmark
of Doctor Who to give its ghosts sci-fi explanations, but the show’s never
revealed the ghosts to be a part of a love story across dimensions before.
Unusually structured, thematically profound and with moments to spook, charm and
haunt, Hide is a peculiar, idiosyncratic, rather lovely beast.
18. THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN
In a revealing interview with
DWM, Steven Moffat hailed The Bells of Saint John as the very epitome of
average Doctor Who. If this is Moffat’s idea of average, it’s no wonder he got
the top job. The pre-titles hook is disturbing; the scene in the rooftop restaurant
the stuff of the best Hollywood output; there’s a crashing plane sequence, a motorbike
ride up the side of the Shard and the return of Richard Intelligence Grant is an
unexpected shuddersome moment. What’s not to enjoy in this wild, fast-moving
introduction to Doctor Who anew? Jenna Coleman is a terrific new companion and it
feels like the show is fresh and breezier after the departure of Amy and Rory. Celia
Imrie does a great turn as Miss Kizlet, her final lines suddenly terrifying. Perhaps
the most impressive aspect of The Bells of Saint John is that despite
the huge ideas in play, the blockbuster action sequences and the cleverness of
that teacup, it still feels fluffy and joyous, as if these things big moments are
secondary to having a grand old lark. But then that’s Moffat to a tee.
17. CLOSING TIME
Gareth Roberts – the writer who
went off the rails and was vilified for his opinions. Ironically, his work on
the show got better and better and better. Here, in his last outing for Matt Smith, we get Gareth
Roberts Unbound. The Doctor and Craig are mistaken for a gay couple by Lynda Baron,
bringing up baby whilst defeating the Cybermen with love. There are bucketloads
of charm on display here and it never gets saccharine. I tend to find James Cordon
rather tepid and annoying but as Craig he excels, he captures our hearts. Him
and Daisy Haggard make for the loveliest couple and we ache for everything to work
out well for them. There’s also a gnashing Cyberman, the shushing gag and a
segueing, cliff-hanger ending. If only we’d had the third in the Craig trilogy
with the Sea Devils. It could have been magnificent. As it happens, the
brilliance of Closing Time will have to do. It’s more than any of us
probably deserve.
16. A TOWN CALLED MERCY
Doctor Who Discovers Westerns has
historically been a bad move for the show, The Gunfighters for years
derided in fandom as the worst of the worst. Thankfully, A Town Called Mercy
rectifies the situation and we have a beautiful-looking, sun-soaked voyage into
Olde Americana. Whilst Toby Whithouse’s tale of the Gunslinger looks a million
dollars, it’s in the quiet character moments when it really comes to life. The
most disconcerting comes when Matt Smith’s Doctor turns on Kahler-Jex and
literally throws him out of the town. Watching our hero push and shove the
small man through the streets in front of the town’s populace is extremely disturbing.
The High Noon climax is nail-biting and cleverly worked out. If Doctor Who
were ever going to attempt a Western again, I can’t imagine it beating this tremendous
effort.
15. ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS
Doctor Who returns after a brief
absence, bigger, bolder and better. Asylum of the Daleks is such a far
cry from the likes of The Wedding of River Song it almost feels like a
different show entirely. Frankly, it feels like the series just got its mojo
back. The Daleks are bad-asses, the plotting robust and well-paced. The location
work is strong and lavish, the sets are frightening in their rusting dankness.
The dream sequence in which Amy sees the Daleks as people is strange and troubling.
Perhaps, like Earthshock, it doesn’t quite hold up to repeated viewing,
its ending proving a real shocker, but repeated viewing also reveals the cleverness
of the script. Eggs, Eggsterm, Eggsterminate. Eggs = Souffle. Such well thought
through feints are the trademark of Steven Moffat’s scripting and even here, in
this story which seems to trammel its way forwards (and is directed with supreme
assuredness), Moffat still makes time for these clever sleights of hand. Asylum
of the Daleks is the sort of script produced by a master craftsman.
14. AMY’S CHOICE
Simon Nye’s one trip in the TARDIS
and he doesn’t leave it! The money’s clearly running out: the monsters of the piece
are pensioners and the villain’s definitely a talker but Amy’s Choice is
mesmeric fare. Toby Jones’s Dream Lord is a revolting figure, especially when
he’s at his nicest. The sound work is tremendous: the birdsong is somehow pervasive
but we never hear it begin. It’s Nye’s script which sings the loudest though –
full of his usual macabre gags (self-harm, anyone?). Like Moffat, Nye understands
that when Doctor Who is at its best, it’s terrifying and hilarious at the same
time. The ending doesn’t quite work: Amy’s sacrifice seeming unearned and unbelievable.
But the remainder is the stuff of classic Doctor Who, bringing the innocuous world
to vivid, frightening life. Even the butcher’s shop becomes a place to fear.
13. THE CRIMSON HORROR
Mark Gatiss’s finest hour. No
doubt. Tasked with writing a script that Steven Moffat wouldn’t have time to
oversee, he does his friend the best service imaginable, delivering a Victorian
tale of exhilarating originality and fine campery. So many images forge their
way into the memory: blinded Ada feeling her way up the stairs to the attic,
the crimson “monster” Doctor unable to move his jaw, Mr Sweet hiding on the chest of Mrs
Gillyflower, the organ, the rocket, the photograph. Gatiss’s script is replete
with so many successful Doctor Who elements, it makes one wonder what a series
under his direction would have been like. The Crimson Horror makes me
wonder if it wouldn’t have been quite marvellous.
12. DINOSAURS ON A SPACESHIP
Is this the script that got Chris
Chibnall the job as showrunner? It’s such a ballsy, funny, bold approach to Doctor
Who storytelling, that it’s a shame the joy of the eclectic gang he builds here
hasn’t been quite transmitted to his current TARDIS team. Whatever the present
situation on the box, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was a shedload of fun. It
bounds from scene to scene: Africa, Egypt, ladders and lightbulbs, spaceships,
dinosaurs, pterodactyls on the beach, triceratops, robots, T-Rex, Silurians. It’s
almost as if Chris Chibnall had missed being involved in Series 6 and wanted to
rectify the budget-loss problems of The Hungry Earth from Series 5 with
a show that threw everything it could at the bursar. He succeeds triumphantly
and even makes room for a sting in the tale, making Matt Smith’s Doctor more
dangerous than ever. Along the way, he manages to include the crudest joke in
the history of the show (“only my balls”) and the most lascivious threat from a
villain in the history of the show (“I will break you in.”) I’d love to see
Chibnall pushing at the boundaries of what Doctor Who can achieve now as he did
then. And I don’t mean the dull Ruth-Doctor lore stuff. I’m talking about
making the show the funniest it can be, the most exciting it can be, the crudest
it can be. Here, he manages all three of those.
11. THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT /
DAY OF THE MOON
When a story returns to the TARDIS
for a de-briefing, I get annoyed. It feels like we’re not moving forwards anymore,
rather stopping to catch our breaths. This two-parter manages it at least twice
but it still manages to fill our screens with ironically unforgettable
iconography and travels at a pace most other stories only dream of reaching. It’s
so fast that great swathes of action are only ever alluded to. What happens in
the three months between episodes?! The deserts of Utah make for the most
unusual and vivid of Doctor Who settings. The corridors of the White House are
a strange fit and seeing the Doctor sat at the desk of the Oval Office is an
image to conjure with; a definite publicity photo call if ever there was one. The
Silence are a creeping, unsettling menace. The pre-titles sequence of Day of
the Moon is bold, brazen and delightful. Moffat really was the master of
the early “hook.” The fall of the Silence is a terrific piece of plotting,
though how the Doctor planned to use a video of them telling the population to “kill
us all on sight” before it was ever conceived or recorded is curious. There are
also elements which seem like they might be important later which aren’t: who
took the photo of Amy and Melody and why is it in the girl River’s bedroom? With
a script so ambitious though, so complex and so adventurous, it was bound to elicit
a few cracks. Otherwise, there are few tales in the whole of the Doctor Who
canon which can really hope to match the scale, ingenuity and breadth of this remarkable
two-parter.
10. THE SNOWMEN
Yet again, Steven Moffat wows the
viewer with the number of ideas he’s happy to throw away: the snowmen
themselves are rarely used, the Doctor as Sherlock Holmes lasts one scene, the
memory worm is introduced for comic effect and makes its appearance at the tale’s
climax just long enough later for us to have forgotten about it. Moffat is the
master at keeping those plates spinning. This is Clara’s story though, the story
of how she rescued the Doctor before her tragic fall. It’s also full of magic,
the kind of Disney magic the show rarely aims for. When it does so however, it’s
entrenched, engulfed in Doctor Who’s idiosyncratic magic too. The TARDIS in the
clouds, at the top of an invisible spiral staircase feels like the stuff of Mary
Poppins, but here Mary is dragged from the edge by an ice queen and dies. The
children are saved by their nanny and their nanny’s lover, but not for long. The
intelligence is defeated by their unquenchable tears. That’s what makes The
Snowmen such a memorable tale: it’s lush and gorgeous and magical but it’s also
sad and leaves us hanging, a family crying on Christmas Day. Now there’s chutzpah.
9. THE LODGER
The first outing for James Cordon’s
Craig just pips his Cyber encounter in the poll by a few places. The tale of Something
at the Top of the Stairs is a simpler one, but its heart is afire. Before the
show returned, romantic comedy would never have felt like the right fit for the
series but it absolutely works. The sci-fi is secondary to the indefinable magic
going on between Craig and Sophie but both are played to their fullest. In fact,
the moment when the elusive couple eventually become just that works as just a
strong a sci-fi climax as a romantic one. Matt Smith’s Doctor is at his most
alluring here too, contrasting beautifully with the earthlier James Cordon. The
duo never try to outdo one another; they play their respective parts faithfully
and this never turns into a cast of one-upmanship, despite Cordon’s status as a
star in his own right. The Lodger is a small charming tale of how an
eccentric Doctor helps the love between two retiring types blossom and on that
tiny count, it’s a rather beautiful success.
8. THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR
With no money, no time and no
sets left, Steven Moffat delivers the funereal bleakness of The Name of the
Doctor, perhaps mirroring his then mood? As production on Series 7 crashes
around him, both Moffat and the Doctor are left feeling bereft. The planet of Trenzalore
has nothing left on it but graves, the TARDIS has been gutted: there is a
feeling that everything is being stripped back to reveal the core of our hero.
Matt Smith is wonderful here, sad and defeated, even as he kisses River for the
final time. Jenna Coleman, despite not having had much to work with during
Series 7B, brings her all to this climactic story. Everybody is feeling the
mood of the atmospheric terror of Trenzalore, not least the muted and sinister
Richard E Grant but also the distant and lovely Alex Kingston. When we think about
The Name of the Doctor, it comes with a feeling of deep sadness and dark
shadows. Doctor Who will last forever, but this is as good a final story as we
could hope for.
7. VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR
It’s all about those last ten minutes.
As Vincent, Tony Curran cries tears of joy and our hearts burst in sympathy. Richard
Curtis’s script though is otherwise pedestrian. There’s a sense that the trip
to France is rather laconic and restful, and it makes for a unique atmosphere
in a Doctor Who story. We are able to immerse ourselves in the world which
seems set against Vincent from the off. There are some great gags, as you’d expect
from Curtis: the “Where’s he got to now?” moment is a cracker. The location
work, and particularly the lighting, are sumptuous and blissful. We relax to
look at the stars and they transform into Van Gogh’s starry night. This is a
reflective, open-minded script with an underlying profound sadness layered throughout.
“Why ae you crying?” asks Vincent and Amy remains unaware as to the answer,
underlining the unsaid sadness within each of us. It’s complex and classy, Bill
Nighy’s understated turn as Doctor Black perhaps personifying what a strong and
assured production this is. But again, it’s all about those last ten minutes.
They are breathtakingly, alarmingly affecting and some of the best Doctor Who has
ever produced.
6. THE PANDORICA OPENS / THE
BIG BANG
Steven Moffat’s first finale. How
else would the Coupling writer dramatise the end of the world than as a cheap
sitcom in a museum? This is a story of two distinct halves. The first is the
bigger, brasher one, the second the talkier, funnier one. Both are full of love
and equally magnificent. The Pandorica Opens itself opens with an
ambitious and rousing pre-titles sequence, followed by the Indiana Jones-style
Underhenge scenes. There is the hauntingly wonderful moment - left hanging - in
which the Doctor asks Amy if it has ever occurred to her that her life doesn’t make
sense because her house is too big. It catches us in our tracks. Then there’s a
headless Cyberman and its poison darts before a race to the finish as River
visits the house of Amelia and Rory kills his fiancée before the universe explodes.
We’re then into mop and fez territory. In twelve minutes you can “suck a mint or
have a fast bath.” There are stone Daleks and trips back through time, back
through our heroes’ triumphant Series 5 adventures. Wrapping up the Flesh
and Stone mystery is a touch of perfection and it’s a real shame they couldn’t
get the shot of Matt rushing through the bedroom in The Eleventh Hour to
work in the edit. We loved the timey-wimey plotting so much that Moffat made it
his modus operandi the following year (perhaps mistakenly). The drunken giraffe
is introduced at the wedding disco and the mummy on the orient express
foretold. There is so much in this feast of a finale that it’s impossible to
list all its wonderful elements. Perhaps my favourite though, is when Matt
Smith kisses Amy’s hand and tells her she’ll “have [her] family back.” It’s a
quiet and kind and beautiful moment in an otherwise complicated rollercoaster
or glorious storytelling.
5. THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR
Steven Moffat’s 50th
anniversary. At the time, truth be told, I was a little disappointed. Why no
Ian? Why not use the Moment’s changing form as a way to give the old Doctors their
deserved cameos? Now, with a bit of distance, I struggle to think how it could
have been bettered. Sure, there’s a little bit too much twatting about in the
woods and a little bit too much sulking in a dungeon. But these scenes only
seem excessive when pitted against the unparalleled wonder of those around
them: the Time War itself is truly epic in its onscreen conception, the sort of
all-out space war we rarely see in Doctor Who. The Doctor’s flight via
helicopter-driven TARDIS into Trafalgar Square the stuff of movie-sized
stories. The scenes on Gallifrey feel like deep lore and mythology with all the
grandeur those terms imply and none of the often attendant boredom. The Zygon-UNIT
plot perhaps feels secondary but anything leading to Peter Capaldi’s speech at
the end of The Zygon Inversion must get brownie points. John Hurt’s War
Doctor is haggard and resistant, but at the finish proves himself to be our Doctor
through and through, just before the ultimate incarnation solidifies behind
Matt Smith to talk about paintings and scratch his nose one last time. This is
as thorough a celebration of what makes Doctor Who as we are ever likely to
experience in just one show. Perhaps the closest the classic series came was The
Five Doctors, but even in 1983, viewers could never have imagined a world
in which “All 13!” becomes the triumphant cry of our incoming, eyebrow wielding
new hero. Spectacular.
4. THE TIME OF THE DOCTOR
In the light of The Day of the
Doctor, the following month’s Christmas Special went largely uncelebrated,
fans still reeling after the seismic 50th revelry. However, Matt Smith’s
swansong is perhaps even more crammed full of delights. There are certainly several
moments which stimulate the tear ducts. The death of Handles is surprisingly
upsetting, the reveal of the ancient, wizened 11th Doctor is heart-stopping.
There’s a time in the episode when it suddenly becomes a possibility that we
might not meet “our” Matt Smith again, and we can’t even remember when we last
saw him. As Clara reads the maxim from the cracker, the Doctor looking wistfully
into the middle distance, a sense of great loss begins to creep over the viewer
(before Moffat typically deflates it with a good gag). This really is the end
though. And during it all, we get invisible Sontarans, wooden Cybermen, hoards
of Daleks, an army of Silence, the clerics... Everything from the Matt Smith
era comes together, wrapping the era up in a neat bow harking right back to the
crack in Amy’s bedroom wall, as if the whole three and a half years were one
neat Mobius strip. It’s blissfully satisfying, deeply heartbreaking and as is
par for the course with Steven Moffat, incredibly clever. With every viewing of
The Time of the Doctor, yet more complexity is revealed. This is the
work of a fiendishly clever mind and should be found up there alongside the
classics. It’s one of the all time best.
3. THE ELEVENTH HOUR
To think that the high-ups at the
BBC weren’t sure whether Doctor Who could survive without David Tennant! (So
easily, they must have forgotten that it survived without Christopher Eccleston.)
Matt Smith and Steven Moffat land with such assuredness, such insouciance, such
vitality that this vision of what Doctor Who can next be seems to come fully
formed and with supreme confidence. From Smith’s smile as his head pops from
the TARDIS to his valiant “Who da man?” at the climax, we are captivated. This is
a story with so much to prove: a new Doctor to convince us, a new writerly
voice to be swayed by. On both counts, it exceeds expectation because the two
things work in unison, Moffat understanding that the Doctor is the heart of the
show. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, 20 minutes to go and this new guy is gonna go
and save the day! And he does so with such aplomb that we don’t mind that he wants
to get undressed and put on a dickie bow before he zooms off again. This is
perhaps as triumphant as Doctor Who has ever been and from here, we’ll go
anywhere with Matt Smith.
2. A CHRISTMAS CAROL
The first and best of Moffat’s Christmas
Specials: and that’s saying something because his Christmas Specials are to die
for! Michael Gambon’s frustrating, damaged turn as Kazran Sardick is the perfect
foil for Matt Smith’s Doctor, now with the knowledge of success energising his
performance yet further. Here are two acting monoliths, ready to do combat.
Their scenes together are a delight: poignant, haunting, sad and complicated.
As Kazran’s memories warp and weft, Gambon by turns plays each moment for what
it’s worth. Moralistically, this is a ruthless story and one which can’t allow
itself a happier ever after, Kazran’s last night with Abigail being exactly
that. But it does however reveal that matters of the heart are the at the heart
of Christmas and richer or poorer, we can all enjoy the celebrations if we have
people to love around us. And throughout this rich tapestry of a special,
Murray Gold has his best day. The score here is incessantly beautiful,
culminating in Katherine Jenkins’s magical song. This could be a Christmas movie
in its own right. As we see the Doctor and his party riding a shark-led sleigh
through the cloudbelt, we know that Christmas cannot be more enchanting, spellbinding
and in the end sorrowful than this.
1. THE TIME OF ANGELS / FLESH AND
STONE
Matt Smith’s first outing proves
ironically to be his best. For my money, the more unsure Smith of his first series
delivers the most interesting performance. Here, his Doctor is as complete as
one could ever hope for a Doctor to be. The part is such a natural fit for him.
He doesn’t need the sometimes enforced, zany flailing of his later stories.
What he does here is plenty because Matt Smith is quite eccentric enough. Aside
from his holistically brilliant frontman, Steven Moffat delivers a script which
is belt and braces Doctor Who at its absolute nail-biting best. This is an Earthshock
story, a Satan Pit story, a story in which the action Will. Not. Stop.
Moffat’s keen sense of physical geography allows the story to move forever upwards.
We start below the mountain which itself has an upturned spaceship at its peak.
From the labyrinth of deep catacombs, we climb ever upwards to the ship itself,
then into its corridors, before traversing its forest to get to the control
deck. All the while, the weeping angels are coming... Even as a precis, it
sounds unbeatable. Adam Smith directs proceedings breathlessly. If this were
any other action movie, it’d be a Hollywood hit. Look at the first ten minutes
of Flesh and Stone alone. We’re in the caves, then on the roof, then in
a corridor, then stuck there, then “there isn’t a manual for this,” then the lights
go out, then the angels are coming, then we’re in another corridor, but the
angels are STILL coming and we need to move! Throughout, the magnificent Iain
Glen stoically utters his lines as if reciting gospel. “We don’t have bullets
to waste.” “Do not let it move.” “The angels are advancing on all sides.” All
his readings come out in a monotone but earthy cadence. We trust him and his
death is felt. Matt Smith sheds silent tears for him before shockingly realising
that time can be unwritten. The very nature of Doctor Who is suddenly about to
be turned on its head. What’s best about this whole story is that the geography
that carries us through the adventure is the key to its solution. The ship, we
forget, is on its side, and it needs the artificial gravity switching off to
allow the angels to tumble to their deaths. Simple in hindsight but in the
event unpredictable; now there’s complete writing genius, and I don’t use the
term lightly. What is genius if not discovering something obvious that
everybody else has been blind to? This is the sort of story we like to think
Doctor Who manages every week. The truth of it is, no show on Earth could
manage anything quite so heart-stoppingly brilliant even if it tried its very best.
We’ve got the most glorious pre-titles sequence, the ultimate cliff-hanger, the
greatest monsters, the chilliest chills, the cleverest writing and up to this
point, the best Doctor the show has ever had. The Time of Angels is
unassailable Doctor Who. I can’t think of a single thing I’d change about it.
JH
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