Who dares - but does it win?

The first part of the eleventh Doctor’s second series* came to a climactic close on Saturday, finally giving viewers the answer to a question first pondered over in May 2008, but leaving them asking a million more. This series has been described as more daring, intelligent and confusing than ever before by critics and fans alike, with many complex plot-points being seeded from the first episode, but looking back on it, was it really as good as we all first thought?

A Good Man Goes To War marks the end of this seven episode run, which has been a rather muddled and disjointed affair.

After the epic Utah based opening two parter, in which the TARDIS family battled the psychologically scary ‘Silents’, and a future doctor was assassinated by a mysterious astronaut, the series has limped to a close; the trouble with setting so much scale and plot up in the season premiere is that viewers expect it to continue throughout - sadly it didn’t.

The following episode - The Curse of the Black Spot - was a cliché ridden Pirate romp (a word more suitable for the RTD era of Who) without any real story. The Siren - perfectly executed by a stunning, silent Lily Cole - looked beautiful on screen, but the adventure surrounding her was poorly paced, plodding along between swahsbuckling set pieces with a script littered with exceprts from the pirate dictionary.

The fourth episode - The Doctor’s Wife - was a fantastic episode and probably the best of the series in terms of writing and visual execution. Suranne Jones was stunning as Idris/The TARDIS, and, not to be outdone, Matt Smith upped his game. Sadly, this sojourn to a bubble universe felt completely out of place in the overall story arc (probably because it was written for series 5 but replaced for budget reasons). It also felt like it was a piece of fan-fiction which had made it onto screen (probably because Neil Gaimain is a huge fan of the show).

Onto week five and six, penned by the same man who brought us the series two story generally accepted as the worst episode since the show’s revival^. However, Matthew Graham managed to redeem himself with the idea behind this two parter in which humans use doppelgangers to carry out dangerous work. Like all good Sci-Fi, it tapped into modern day societal fears, such as embryo research, and the ethics behind creating life for the benefit of others, but the theme was thinly explored.

Part one - The Rebel Flesh - took the award for best prosthetic makeup, but was empty and poorly paced yet again, meandering aimlessly between scenes of characters doing things for no real reason other than to establish scenario in order to set up part two (which, ironically, most episodes have done with their online prequels). In a series as short as this, episodes can’t afford to be wasted on exposition.

The story kicked into gear more in the second part - The Almost People - but the motivations of the rebelling flesh gangers were somewhat confused - Jenny the central supporting character, goes from initially just wanting to be allowed live to suddenly mutating into a spindly, bloodthirsty monster for no real reason.

There was no real character for the audience to empathise with, so the moral was lost in the ether (or the void, or the crack in time). The episode's brilliant shock ending (in which Amy is revealed to be a Flesh avatar) was a perfect lead into the series finale, but further contradicts the moral of ‘should these people be allowed to live’ when The Doctor melts her in favour of his human companion.

And so to the climactic ‘mid-series finale’ in which a good man went to war inorder to save Amy and her new-born and viewers were finally rewarded with the identity of River Song. Though visually spectacular the episode was otherwise empty - the so-called ‘war’ was more of an ambush and the storyline relied more on the promise of the answer to the biggest question since the show returned in 2005, than actual plotting and character arc.

There’s no question that the themes and ideas running throughout this series, and the Moffat era as a whole, are more intelligent and bolder than ever, and that the show has the potential to go in a daring new direction dragging it from camp comic book, to truly exceptional mind-bending sci-fi drama, but the execution has been poor. It feels like this series hasn’t had the love and attention of those previous to it - and perhaps it hasn’t.

Lead writer Steven Moffat has had his fingers in many pies, overseeing the scripts for Who, co-writing and producing a second run of Sherlock and writing the script for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming TinTin adventure.

Similarly, whereas Russell T Davies could throw money into lavish CGI-scapes and special effects the new team are constrained by their somewhat smaller budget. However, most of it seemed to be (rather selfishly) blown on the Moff’s opening and closing eps, leaving the others too look a little bit shakey and unloved. (The TARDIS corridors anyone? I mean, I could’ve made those in my garage).

But constraints like this are more often than not helpful to a writer - if you can’t do anything and go anywhere then you have to bring it back to basics: character, situation and plot.

This series has relied too heavily on ‘event’ episodes - ‘We’re going to America’ and ‘You’ll finally find out who River is’ - and complex cliffhangers, instead of developing coherent scripts that take their characters and viewers on a journey. The producers seem to have forgotten the fundamental rule of writing drama: all people really want is a bloody good story.

Let’s just hope this is what we are rewarded with after our long wait until Who returns in the Autumn.

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*This series has seemingly inexplicably been split. Something to do with a ‘game changing cliffhanger’ and to give kids more chances to see Who throughout the year. I’m skeptical - is it to do with budgets, filming schedules, trying to increase viewing figures in the Autumn months? Who knows, but don’t listen to what they spin on confidential!

^Seriously, ask any Doctor Who fan (except my 10 year old cousin) to name their least favourite episode and it will Undoubtedly be Fear Her. Or, better yet, say the words Fear Her to a Who fan and see their reaction. It’s like saying Jar Jar Binks to a Star Wars die-hard.