The Silent Stars Go By, by Dan Abnett (BBC novel)

This novel by popular science fiction tie-in writer Dan Abnett, was originally published as a deluxe hardcover volume, then republished as a paperback in a series of Doctor Who reprints.

This was actually the first New Series novel that I have read. I don't care for the New Series, so I was hardly likely to take an interest in its spin-off novels. However, this being the first appearance of the Ice Warriors in a BBC Wales Doctor story and it also being a Dan Abnett novel, I definitely wanted to read it.

Silent Stars is a novel that very much wears its influences on its literary sleeve. With the Christmas feel, it very much feels like a Moffat Christmas episode (though it is better than all of those dreadful affairs). On the other hand, it is not only the presence of the Ice Warriors that makes this feel like a classic four or six part Doctor Who serial; it is also set on a planet that appears to be inhabited by about ten people and has a council consisting of an elder hostile to the Doctor and an elder sympathetic to the Doctor. The simple and effective storytelling puts one in mind of a Terrance Dicks Target novelisation. The playful use of language, such as 'Guide E-manual' and 'Unguidely' also reminds me of Paradise Towers. Rather less fortunately, the novel seems to borrow from the New Series in giving a rather too easy resolution to the story. In the end, the Doctor finds a solution just by tinkering around with machinery, which feels a little uninspiring.

Dan Abnett is experienced in writing franchise fiction, so it should be no surprise that he crafts a very enjoyable and exciting tale here. It is very effective and efficiently told and captures the actors voices very well. Dan Abnett could easily be a Terrance Dicks for the Twenty-first century. What I felt was missing was Dan Abnett himself. When the BBC hires a writer of his reputation, you expect to get something special. I didn't really see that here. Perhaps if he had given us a darker and more militaristic novel, we would have felt more of the writer's individual style.

The Time of the Doctor

I watched this episode with my father. He's not a regular watcher of Doctor Who and he was very confused. Although I follow the show, I was almost as confused myself. This was a confusing muddle of a story. This story really jumps around, moving from one scene to another and introducing a muddle of plot threads and continuity references. It was really hard to follow.

There was a lot of silliness and clowning around in the first half of the story. The scene with the Doctor naked was embarassing. The stuff about Dr. Who and Clara being naked in the church beneath their holograms seemed odd too. Why have characters naked if you are not going to show it? It felt pointless.

It was difficult to feel anything about the Doctor's apparent impending death when we knew Peter Capaldi was going to show up. This episode established that Matt Smith was playing the 13th Doctor and in principle, the 'last Doctor.' We all knew the problem of the Doctor's final regeneration was hanging in store for a future producer. However, Moffat has made the odd decision to fix circumstances so the problem is his own burden. This smacks a little of egotism, not to mention his usual over-indulgence in puzzle-box plotting.

It turns out that Time Lords can destroy Dalek spaceships when they regenerate, which makes for a convenient conclusion. It also turns out that the Time Lords have the power to grant a whole new life cycle of regenerations, which makes it difficult to understand why Borusa was after imm-mortality back in The Five Doctors. I always thought the reason the High Council was able to offer the Master a new life cycle was because he had become a Trakenite through his posession of Tremas' body.

The Time of the Doctor faces the ultimate problem of the over-use of epic storylines. Every season finale has to be big and epic; the anniversary special had to be big and epic and now the Christmas special attempts to offer a grand cosmic opera. The more the production team deliver these grandiose cosmic dramas, the smaller and more mundane the Doctor Who universe feels. The Doctor has already destroyed and re-created the universe, making him in effect a god. There is simply no direction Doctor Who can go in now without looking utterly crass.

The Day of the Doctor

I wish this had been written by Terrance Dicks. The big problem with The Five Doctors was that it was essentially a showcase of set pieces, classic monsters and classic companions. Yet that story was held together by Terrance Dicks skillful plotting. It had more coherence than it deserved. Only Terrance Dicks could have made The Five Doctors work.

Strong coherent plotting is what The Day of the Doctor badly needed. It rambled from one mismatched sequence to another with no real sense of where the story was going. It was made up from a number of story strands, the UNIT stuff with the Zygons, the daft bits with Queen Elizabeth I and of course the stuff about the War Doctor and the destruction of Gallifrey. These all felt like they belonged in different stories and they seemed rather poorly held together in this. As is so often the case, two much comedy is allowed to weaken a serious storyline. The New Series has consistently, and particularly under Moffat, failed to understand that to tell a serious story, some of the laughs have to be trimmed. What made Season 18 so great was that the comic excesses of Tom Baker had been curbed and prevented from intruding on proper storytelling. The New Series has never really achieved that consistency of tone. It presumes that viewers can't cope for two minutes without a comic line being thrown in.

Pacing was also a problem. The New Series format of short forty-five minutes episodes has big limitations, but Moffat seems to struggle with stories with a fuller length. The Day of the Doctor rambled on for quite a while before any kind of story felt like it was in motion. As with much that Moffat has written, I found myself feeling bored. Doctor Who is always at its worse when it starts to feel boring. Nothing felt particularly original; shape-changing aliens, weapons of mass destruction, historical romps, these are all things that Doctor Who has done in different ways before. I know this is supposed to celebrate the series' past, but simply regurgitating old themes makes for a uninteresting story.

As a multi-Doctor story, I don't think it was a great success. There was hardly any real chemistry between the Doctors. They argue a bit, but there is no sense of a conflict between contrasting personalities who are actually the same person. Part of the problem is that David Tennant is such a leading man actor. He seems to struggle to know how to play his role in tandem with Smith. Not having seen Hurt as the Doctor before this, it was also difficult to really regard him as a Doctor alongside the other two.

There was some nice dramatic tension toward the end with the question of whether the Doctors would press the button, and thankfully this got resolved almost satisfactorily, provided one completely forgets about The End of Time. We had better hope that the Doctor finds Gallifrey soon, otherwise freezing children in time seems no better than killing them.

I'm surprised this story has gone down so well with viewers and fans. I'm sure nobody who follows this blog expected me to like this, but I had expected a bit more of a critical reaction from some writers. For all its faults, I think An Adventure in Space and Time is the real 50th anniversary special, not The Day of the Doctor.

The Name of the Doctor

Moffat offers yet more fuel for the claim that he is ripping off Lawrence Miles. In this episode he evokes both Alien Bodies with the future death of Dr. Who and Interference, with Dr. Who's past being rewritten. Ironically, it seems likely that the new John Hurt Doctor will be a very similar character to the Grandfather Paradox Doctor in The Ancestor Cell, but we will have to wait and see.

After this episode, Moffat deserves every accusation of sexism that STFU Moffat can throw at him. His objectification of women sinks to new lows as we discover that Clara was created for the sole purpose of saving the Doctor. She actually has no real independent existence in her own right but exists only to meet the needs of the male protagonist. It is as though Moffat thought to himself, "Those people who write STFU Moffat think I'm sexist, do they? Well they ain't seen nothing yet!" It seriously stinks.

As far as the story goes, there is not a lot to it. One of the worst things about current Doctor Who is that it is boring. I found myself continually pausing Iplayer to check my emails. Aside from the revelation about the Hurt Doctor, there is nothing of any real interest. The revelation about Clara is more depressing than interesting.

The Name of the Doctor makes much of the idea that the Doctor has lots of secrets that he is guarding. It seems an odd idea really. We have always known that the Doctor has lots of mysteries that he seldom shares. Nevertheless, he has never shown much concern about guarding them or that they have any cosmic consequence. When Lady Peinforte threatened to reveal his name, he did not seem to care. We all know that his name is Dr. Who anyway.



I have said before that these big epic season finales which threaten cosmic doom are getting mundane. There is nothing exciting about the very fabric of time and space being threatened if it happens at every season finale.

This episode echoes Lawrence Miles on a superficial level, but ultimately it demonstrates how Miles understood what Doctor Who is about and Moffat does not. Miles has criticised the tendency of the show to fetishise the Doctor. This episode is possibly the most glaring example of this tendency, along with the other Moffat season finales. We are shown the universe being in terrible peril and the only thing that stands between the destruction of everything is Dr. Who and his flirty pixie girl sidekick. The universe begins and ends with the demented bloke in the bowtie. The result of this is to make the universe seem small, pathetic and ultimately dull. This is exactly the opposite of what Doctor Who should be about. This is what 'Mad Larry' understood and what the people writing Doctor Who fail to understand. Doctor Who should be about exploring how big and wonderful and amazing the universe is, not turning it into a tiny fragile thing that depends on the Doctor to save it. That is why I stand by my opinion that The Rings of Akhaten, for all its faults, is the best and the only really decent Doctor Who story this season.

Nightmare in Silver

This story got a negative review from the usually faithful Radio Times. Not a good sign. Indeed, it truly was a rotten story.

Having hated The Doctor's Wife, I was really dreading another story by Neil Gaiman. I have read only a few of his writings, but he comes across as just a bit too cool. Like Gaiman's previous Doctor Who story, Nightmare in Silver tries to combine seemingly original ideas with a strong sense of nostalgia, yet ends up falling very flat.

Nightmare in Silver feels very much like a mishmash of several different stories from the classic series. We have the obvious Tomb of the Cybermen reference, future soldiers (Earthshock), Dr. Who playing chess (Curse of Fenric), children being turned into battle computers (Remembrance of the Daleks), the Cyber-planner (The Invasion) and a mental contest (Brain of Morbius). I'm sure I have missed one or two others. Even the Cyberman playing chess was plundered from a Big Finish story.

Central to the story was Dr. Who being turned into the Cyber-Planner and forced into an internal conflict. This felt very tedious. It also did not quite feel quite right for a Cyberman story. A Cybernised Dr. Who ought to be cold and logical, but Matt Smith played the part as demented as he usually does. He came across more like another version of the Master. The Cybermen themselves were just clunky robots and used only as drones. I quite like the Cybermites, but they were underused.

A lot of people have complained about Clara. She switches very easily to the role of military leaders in this story. Her characterisation seems to be whatever a particular script demands of her. She showed little emotional engagement with anything in this story. I'm also not the only one disappointed by how quickly Tamzin Outhwaite's captain was killed off.

The story resolution felt a little too easy- blow up the planet, transmat to the spaceship, then safely home.

I really do hope Moffat, or whoever is producing Doctor Who next time does not hire Neil Gaiman again.

The Crimson Horror

I really don't like Mark Gatiss' writing. I also really don't like Steampunk and Victorian fantasy tropes. I was thus rather dreading this story. I am not sure exactly what I dislike so much about Victorian fantasy, but as I expected, it very much left me cold.

I have seen very little negative feedback in reviews. This ought to suggest that it is a good episode that I just don't like. In fairness, this story does seem to be superior to some of Gatiss' other offerings. Nevertheless, it is not free from some of Gatiss' faults.

Most significantly, like other Gatiss stories, it tries to do far more than the time limit allows. He follows his usual approach of throwing everything in, including the bathroom sink. We have a disease from the Eocene era, Steampunk technology, more stuff about Clara, the return of those Vastra et al, satire about Victorian religion and values and Ada's relationship with her 'monster.' None of these ideas are given significant time for them to have any impact.

The second Gatiss weakness, is his tendency toward silliness. I can take some silliness some times. Delta and the Bannermen is silly in a way that works, as is Robot. But there is a restraint to these stories that enables it to work. The Crimson Horror just feels stupid. Rocket technology in the Victorian era? Come on, that's crazy.

Personally, I can't stand the trio of Vastra, Jenny and Strax. They are supposed to be funny, but are actually just annoying. Yet I did find that it was refreshing for them to take the lead at the start of the episode. Too much of the time, everything is centred on Dr. Who. It was also refreshing to see the Doctor in pain and vulnerable for once.

I am sure STFU Moffat will bring up the horrible ableism seen in the way Ada was portrayed. Her blindness was shown as a source of horror and creepiness, along with the language of being in 'darkness.'

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Just as you know a Doctor Who ghost story like the last episode is not going to be terribly scary, you know from the outset that a story set on board the TARDIS is going to be primarily about pointless running down corridors. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS does not fail to deliver on that unwanted expectation.

It must be said that we have seen little of the TARDIS interior beyond the console in the New Series, the only exception being the The Doctor's Wife, with it's bland corridors. The TARDIS interior that we see here is more interesting than that (and possibly more so than the white corridors of the Davison era). Yet it still looks too much like a spaceship. The Invasion of Time TARDIS looked cheap, but it was surreal and surprising. Having the TARDIS look like an old-fashioned hospital is weird enough to work.

It was nice to have some ethnic diversity in an episode. Just a pity the three guest actors were such terrible actors. I don't think the regulars were all that bright here either. There was so little believable emotional reaction in this story. I am at a loss to know just how Clara reacted to her discoveries in this. She shows so little emotion about it. And despite Dr. Who lying to the brothers and threatening to kill them, why do they never seem to show any anger or hostility towards him? Not once did they look like they wanted to punch Dr. Who.

I understand why the zombies were included; they were necessary to create some conflict, seeing as the brothers were too dumbstruck to threaten Dr. Who. However, they weren't terribly interesting. And I have no idea why burn victims would turn into zombies.

The biggest failing of this story is the use of the reset button. It's a lazy cop-out resolution (even if it was set up in the plot and so not a deus ex machina). It also takes away any of the impact (if any, given the lack of emotional reaction on Clara's part) of her discoveries.



We get some more nonsense about the Doctor's name. Since when has the Doctor been all that bothered about his name? He didn't seem to care in Silver Nemesis. Besides, we all know his name is Who. Even if fans close their eyes when the credits roll on every classic episode until JNT.

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I can't believe so many reviewers think this story was scary. Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman really don't do scared acting very well together. This was rather more Scooby Doo than The Woman in Black. It did not help much that it was broadcast on a sunny spring day and not a dark autumn evening. I am sure the BBC has a reason for broadcasting Doctor Who at this time of year, but it's terrible for creating any sense of atmosphere.

I don't actually think Doctor Who can do a ghost story that is convincingly scary. For the reason that the viewer knows that any ghosts will turn out to be aliens. Ghosts are scary because they are supposedly dead things, they are part of the spirit world; the uncanny. An alien that appears to be a ghost is just banal. When we watch Doctor Who trying to do this genre, we have no need to fear the uncanny and undead because such things don't generally play a part in Doctor Who.

This story has gained a lot of positive reviews and I understand why. It's a story with some depth of characterisation and emotional complexity. There were some very interesting moments such as Clara's reaction to Dr. Who's voyage across time and her interaction with the TARDIS. But I still find it hard to look past the fact that it is an attempt to do a Doctor Who ghost story and unsurprisingly fails at this.

Two elements in particular suffered badly from lack of development. The revelation that the monster was in love did not arise from the plot and felt like it had been tagged on unnecessarily. The beast would have been more effectively left mysterious. Secondly, Hila Tacarian was very underused, quite visibly left standing around towards the end. There was little elaboration on where she had come from or what she would do now that she was stranded in another time.

I think I'm the only person in the world who liked The Rings of Akhaten more than this (my least disliked of this series so far).

Dalek... oh sorry, Cold War

How do you reintroduce an old monster to the new series? You stick one of them in an isolated base. Chain it up as an helpless captive, only to have it escape. Make it so badass that it is unstoppable. Have it open up its armour so that we can all see what it looks like inside. Have it poised to destroy the world, but then have the female companion show compassion towards it and talk it out of killing everybody. That was how the Daleks were reintroduced and Cold War follows exactly the same format. It doesn't exactly feel fresh or original.

The real problem with this story is its utter predictability. You stick an Ice Warrior on a nuclear submarine and you know exactly what is going to happen right from the beginning. The Ice Warrior will try to use the missiles to blow up the world, but will be talked out of it, probably by Dr. Who's female companion.

It does not help that the character's are not terribly interesting. We have the sympathetic captain and the paranoid and bellicose lietenant (in other stories these two character tropes can be switched around). The professor is a rather problematic character. Is he a zoologist? If so, what is he doing on a nuclear submarine? His liking for 80s pop seems designed to anchor the episode to that period in the perception of viewer, but feels very lacking in authenticity. A Soviet nuclear submarine would have it's crew closely monitored for subversive politics. The professor would not have dared to flout such an interest. If he did have a western music with him, I suspect he would be less likely to be listening to the latest chart pop and more likely to be listening to older music like the Beatles. Worst of all, we have the sailor who decides to disobey orders and thaw out the Ice Warrior for no obvious reason.

There has been a lot of debate about whether the cast should have attempted Russian accents. I think that I am more on the side of the viewers who felt they should. The submarine crew did not feel very Russian at all. Sometimes viewers need a bit of help with these things.

Having the Ice Warrior leave its armour was rather interesting and an original idea. However, it seems odd that the species would develop a remote control device for the armour when they ordinarily never get out of it. It also seemed a little gratuitous and underwhelming to show a full view of the creature's face.

Clara's personality continues to slowly develop, but she is not terribly interesting. She still feels very much like a generic, scared but plucky companion, just like Sarah Jane Smith.

One last thing, the Doctor looks totally wrong wearing sunglasses. He looks very Matt Smith in them, but not very Doctorish at all. It was almost as bad as Pertwee in a t-shirt.

The Rings of Akhaten

The Rings of Akhaten was as flawed and problematic as any Moffat-Who story, yet I found myself enjoying this episode. It seems like such a long time since I have actually felt any enjoyment in watching Nu-Who.

The episode unfortunately begins with an horrible intro in which Dr. Who is spying on Clara's parents. I'm really bothered by the this development of the Doctor as a stalker. This seems to be one of the worst examples of Moffat's sexism.

Nevertheless, things pick up when we actually go to an alien planet, populated by aliens, with no humans around. This is something that was really badly needed. It is remarkable that so many Nu-Who stories, even under RTD, were set on Earth despite the fact that the TARDIS can go anywhere in the universe. We have seen so little of Dr. Who actually exploring and when we have met future humans, they have tended to dress and act like Twenty-first century British people. Of course, in this episode Dr. Who acts like a cosmic know-it-all as usual, but at least he was showing us something alien.

The Rings of Akhaten was a visual feast, with so many alien creatures and fantastic special effects. While I usually complain about the Murray-Gold music, here it was used to good effect and the role of the singing created a genuinely magical feel. This was a vast improvement on A Christmas Carol, where the musical element seemed tagged on artificially.

Plot-wise, it was a different story, with an unsatisfying resolution, a lack of clear explanation and a lot of sonic screwdriver waving. I suppose that was hardly a surprise, but it did not detract from my genuine enjoyment of the lavish visual and musical elements.

We don't get any real character development for Clara. All we learn about her is that she had a mother who loved her and who died. But were we expecting any?

It was nice to get a reference to Susan.

I'm surprised that this episode has gone down so badly with so many viewers. I thought it was a lot stronger and more enjoyable than the previous episode.

The Bells of St John

Is Moffat actually trying any more? What struck me about this story is how little one can really say about it. It is simply so generic and formulaic and so built on standard Moffat tropes that there is simply nothing of any real interest to say.

We see the unfortunate return here of the techno-menace gimmick. The idea that a piece of common place technology has a sinister purpose has been used rather a lot in the BBC Wales series. The problem with this trope is the inherent techno-phobia in it. There is nothing about wi-fi technology that is morally questionable and there is nothing about it that raises interesting intellectual dilemmas. Thus, making it a plot element is utterly uninspiring. It is gimmicky and gives the impression that the writer is afraid of the internet.

The lack of any moral complexity is seen furthermore when the villain, Miss Kizlet turns out to have been under some form of possession or mind control. While her transformation from a terrifying villain to a frightened child was dramatically impressive, it removed the need for her character to have any human motivation that could be explored. There has been a lack of any interesting human villains in the series of late and the discovery that Kizlet was somehow possessed came as a big disappointment.


The big event of this story is the arrival of Clara as a companion proper. Clara is the dream companion for a lazy writer like Moffat. This is her third appearance, yet she is essentially three different characters with a vaguely similar personality. There is no need for the writer to make any attempt to give her a real personality beyond being flighty, cute and sexy. Is anybody really interested in the mystery of who she is?


I really struggled to follow this story. It was so fast and not a little confusing. It does not help that much of the dialogue is easily drowned out by the loud score. One thing that certainly surprised me was that given the difficulty of squeezing the plot into forty-five minutes, so much filler material was included. What was the point of the medieval monastery scenes? What did they actually add? Why the aeroplane scene? That time could have been more effectively used fleshing out the plot.


This episode offered plenty of action and a few funny lines, but nothing more.

The Snowmen

*Spoiler alert*


Watching The Snowmen made me realize what a shallow Doctor Who fan I am. After watching most of the story with distaste, I suddenly got excited when I found out that the Great Intelligence was back. Of course, it is difficult to see how this story fits in with the continuity for The Abominable Snowmen, but I'm sure there is solution if you have time to think of one.

Reading other reviews, it seems that The Snowmen has gone down very well and I've seen little criticism of it voiced. I may well find myself being a lonely voice in saying I couldn't stand it.

Clara, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman looks set to be the most annoying companion ever. I hated every minute of her onscreen presence. I can't see why other reviewers seem to like her. In the role of both Victorian governess and tavern wench, Coleman is utterly unconvincing. She is just playing on overdone cliches. She is a walking Victorian trope for a theme park version of the Victorian era. Added to this, Clara is even more poorly characterised than other Moffat characters. A posh governess who moonlights as a low-life barmaid? Why? Once again, it looks like we are going to get a big mystery story arc about Clara's identity. Didn't we have enough of that with River Song?

Likewise, Dr Simeon, the human villain has no real identifiable motivation. He was just lonely and unhappy as a child, so he aided an evil alien entity. Richard E Grant's performance is as dull as his voice acting was in Scream of the Shalka. He acts very cold and menacing, but he brings no subtlety or depth to the character. Thankfully, Ian McKellan's vocal performance as the Great Intelligence is a good deal better.

The monstrous snowmen looked alright, if a little cartoonish, but their concept seemed a little too similar to the Weeping Angels and the Silence. This only adds to the sense that this story is a collection of Moffat set-pieces.

The Snowmen also sees the return of Vastra and Jenny, along with Strax the friendly Sontaran. I don't like any of these characters. They feel contrived and none has been given a strong enough background for them to make any real sense within Doctor Who continuity. I didn't care for the topical bombshell of gay marriage being dropped into this story either. That was really not necessary.

I'm getting a bit tired of the routine of the Doctor becoming cold, uncaring and reclusive following the departure of a companion. It's getting tedious and seems to throw out the development of the Doctor's character over the course of the show. In any case, this attempt to give the story a dark and angsty edge is rather undermined by the excessive and rather overdone humour of the story. If Moffat wanted to give us serious drama, he really should have trimmed away some of the gags here.

I mentioned earlier my childish thrill at the return of the Great Intelligence. One can't help feeling reminded of the return of old baddies like Omega and the Sea Devils in the 80s. With its re-use of characters, its heavy exposition and heavy reliance on previous stories, The Snowmen is very much reminiscent of the continuity-obsessed excesses of 80s Doctor Who.

I'll admit that this story is a good deal better than the last two Christmas specials, yet that is hardly good ground to build on. I don't hold out any hope for much improvement in the next season.

The Angels Take Manhattan

Amy is gone. At last; I don't know why they took so long about it. Amy was possibly the worst companion since Adric. A flirt with zero characterization, who can do anything that lazy writers need her to do. I don't get the people who think she looked attractive; she was far too skinny and waif-like to be pretty, not to mention those vacant stares.

In order to prepare us for the delight of Amy's exit, we are served up one of the worst stories that Moffat has ever given us. The Angels Take Manhattan is an horrible, thoughtless mess. It's a story that takes no time to generate a believable plot that makes any sense, and which attempts to bombard us with a sentimental emotional overload wrapped in Murray-Gold. We also get a return appearance from Moffat's Mary Sue, River Song, who only serves to get in the way of the presumed objective of giving Amy and Rory a good send off, not that I care. We get some moments of emotional drama with River, but these fall utterly flat because her character is too thin and undeveloped for them to stand on.

Moffat has a particular obsession with plots involving the mechanics of time travel, a trope horribly described as 'timey-wimey.' Such plots seldom make any sense and here this kind of story fails abysmally. The Doctor tells us that once they have read what will happen to them (he assumes the paperback is gospel truth and not fiction or an elaboration), it cannot be rewritten. That is in itself a great idea. I have always liked the Hartnell-era idea that time cannot be rewritten. But has not everything Moffat given us before attempted to make us believe that time can be altered at will? It is as though he has realized the dead end that 'time-wimey' plotting leads us to and made an half-hearted attempt too late to put the breaks on.

Weeping Angels were a delightfully scary idea. Unfortunately, they are an idea that gets old quickly. Hence, this story tries an whole load of new ideas with the Weeping Angels which fail to show any of the original power of the concept. The Angel babies were a little too silly and lacked the power of the proper Angels to terrify. The Angel Statue of Liberty was simply daft, as so many reviews have pointed out. Weeping Angels are great as a silent, unseen killer, but the idea of the Angels creating a battery farm of displaced humans just doesen't have the same impact. Do the displaced humans spend the rest of their lives in an hotel room? Do the Angels provide room service?

I'm just dreading what the next Christmas special will bring.

The Power of Three

For just a few moments, I actually wondered if Kate was the Big Finish character Elizabeth Klein.


The Power of Three has a few clever ideas and I actually wondered for the first ten minutes if this might turn out to be a good story. I really liked the way this episode deconstructed previous Earth-set stories. When Sarah Jane Smith got involved in an Earth-set story, she would drop everything and help out the Doctor. Here the adventure has started, the Doctor has showed up and Rory is getting ready to go to work. I also liked the way the characters were expecting the cubes to turn out to be an alien invasion and were left waiting and waiting for something to happen. It would probably have been a more interesting story if the cubes had actually turned out to be a marketing gimmick or a a clever work of concept art (a Doctor Who story without aliens? It has been done before!). Unfortunately, the expected happens and the cubes start glowing and doing evil things. That is the point at which the story starts to drag. For every good idea in this story, there are at least two bad ones.

It's a bit difficult to see Amy and Rory as a good example of normal life. Amy has had a traumatic childhood, a history of psychiatric treatment and has become a successful model after working as a kissogram. Rory comes close to being normal, except we know he has spent a thousand years guarding a box in the guise of a Roman Centurion and was also an Auton replicant. How do you relate to characters like that? A couple of episodes ago, Rory and Amy were about to go through a messy divorce. Now they are playing the average happy British family. Rory's dad seems a completely different character to the person we met in his first appearance. He is not so much a character as somebody who is there to deliver comic lines.

The introduction of Kate Stewart as leader of UNIT does not get enough time to do it justice. Kate comes across as rather colourless and uninteresting. She is very quick to point out that her position has nothing to do with her father. Does anybody really believe that? Nepotism is not cool. Bringing up the Brigadier, I really hate all the sentimentalizing of the Brigadier. Nicholas Courtney was a great actor, but it is getting a bit tedious. The Brigadier was actually best as a bully and an antagonist of the Doctor. Turning him into a pseudo-companion or a comic sidekick was just wrong.

The alien menace turned out to be a terror from the mythology of Gallifrey. We had the terrible vampires and Yssgaroth and the Hoothi fungus that can animate the dead. It turns out that they are also terrified of some old bald guy with wrinkly skin. Time Lords scare very easily.

Proving that the story has too much going on and not enough time (though they oddly manage to throw in a bit of historical romping with Henry VIII), the Doctor saves the day by waving around his sonic screwdriver. This is the kind of reset button plotting that we became so used to under RT Davies and which we have never quite got away from under Moffat.

This was yet another disappointment of an episode.

A Town Called Mercy

As I said in my review of Curse of the Black Spot, the problem with pseudo-historicals is that there are essentially only two plots- a good alien is interfering with history or a bad alien is interfering with history. In A Town Called Mercy, we get two aliens who are both good, bad and ugly.

When we meet Kahler-Jex and find out he is a nice alien, it is a certain fact that he will turn out to be not as nice as he seems. We are also well aware that the cyborg alien will turn out to be more than just a brutal killer. I actually found myself reminded of the DWM story The Star Beast, in which the cute and cuddly alien, Beep the Meep turns out to be a wanted war criminal. That was actually a much more interesting story than this.

This story was just boring. It was flat and predictable, especially the very Star Trekl Next Generation debate about whether to hand over an unrepentant mass murderer to save a town full of innocent people. The whole thing was horribly sentimentalised with Issac's death and the horrible Murray-Gold music.

The resolution was terrible too. Kahler-Jex kills himself, thus removing any need for the Doctor to actually come up with a solution to the dilemma. Wouldn't life be so much easier if all the bad people just killed themselves? That is the worst kind of lazy writing.

Once again, we get racial issues swept under the carpet with the presence of a black preacher ministering to an otherwise white town. I am also irritated by Amy wearing a miniskirt. Does she not realize the hostility she is likely to attract when dressed like that in the 19th century? But then as JNT would do, Moffat has Amy wear a uniform in every episode no matter what the circumstances.

Give me The Gunfighters over this any day. The Gunfighters was actually about the historical events and circumstances, while still having fun with western cliches. This story just uses the western setting as a themepark backdrop to a banal science fiction story.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

I can't believe I am writing this, but Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was not nearly as awful as I had expected. It probably helped that this story did not have the high pretensions of the previous disaster, Asylum of the Daleks. This was a story that set out to be enjoyable rubbish and for maybe a few times in the episode, I actually came close to enjoying it.

The very premise of Dinosaurs on a starship naturally sets alarm bells ringing. We are set up to expect a bonkers story that serves only to realize the absurd premise and provide a lot of all-out Dinosaur action. Indeed, the plot was a mess, but it was actually a little better plotted than I imagined. The spaceship turning out to be an Eocene vessel was a good idea, though it is a questionable one given that the Eocenes are not from the Dinosaur era (the creature in Dr Who and the Silurians is not a recognisable species and they co-exist with apes).

This is basically a story of set pieces, some of them comic, but with a surprising number of darker elements thrown in. It was a little odd to see the Doctor turning up with a gang of assorted thrown-together historical persons. This was especially jarring given that Riddell the big-game hunter played no real part in the plot. I think both Riddell and Nefertiti were disappointingly bland and their being paired up served more to irritate than amuse. I found Nefertiti's decision to sacrifice herself both predictable and banal.

That Rory's dad turned up serves to show how desperate the writers are to do something new with Rory and Amy. The pair of them have grown desperately tired. The thought of watching them any more is an appalling thought.

The real stand out element in the story was the villain Solomon. He was quite masterfully portrayed and very chilling. One major fault of the New Series is its lack of human villains. The reason for this is that with a short 45 minute episode, you can't spend much time fleshing out motivation, which is an essential quality of villains. It's much easier for lazy writers to throw in an alien monster. It was also refreshing to see the Doctor coolly despatching Solomon. The Doctor has killed before. He's not a pacifist, so get over it.

I was a little surprised by the Eocenes not having a weapon system. This does not fit at all with the aggression we have seen from their kind. I don't much like the New Series approach in making the Eocenes into sympathetic good guys.

This episode really could have been a lot worse.

Asylum of the Daleks

For about two minutes, I wondered if this might actually turn out to be a good story. It turned out to be typical sleep-inducing New Series waffle. Asylum of the Daleks has some pretty impressive visuals- lots of Daleks, flying saucers, impressive sets. Unfortunately it has no substance at all.

Despite the title, this story is not about the Daleks. These Daleks are not doing anything interesting like conquering the universe or enslaving humans. The paper thin premise of the Daleks enlisting Dr Who's aid is simply a cheap device to launch a big mawkish story about the power of LOVE. Once again, the companion's personal emotional drama is the biggest, most important thing in the universe. We get told lots of stuff about how the Daleks call Dr. Who 'the Pretador' and how he is the biggest enemy of the Daleks ever. However, there is no evidence of this onscreen. This is just verbiage. We can only believe that Dr Who is the enemy of the Daleks if we actually see him foiling their invasion plots, blowing up Dalek spaceships and the like. It's a shame we didn't see much of the yellow 'Eternal' Daleks either. I was looking forward to seeing them. Moffat evidently chickened out of using too many of the fun and cool New Paradigm Daleks.

It turns out that Skaro still exists, so presumably the premise of War of the Daleks, with the Daleks fooling Dr. Who into believing he had destroyed Skaro was all true.

Rory and Amy have very much outstayed their welcome. It's clear that the writers have run out of ideas for them because they have them getting divorced (what else do you do with a married couple?). Watching them argue and make up just fills one with a sense of crushing deja vu. Incidently, Amy was making some remarkably sexual poses for such an everyday style outfit. One would expect her to be wearing a slinkier sort of outfit for the poses she was striking. It's incredible how Amy seems to wear that leather jacket ensemble in nearly every story (even when she is supposed to be dressed for Brazil). It's like we are back in the days of JNT, when Tegan had to always wear her stewardess uniform and Nyssa always had to wear that hideous puffy sleeved velvet thing.

The big surprise of this story is the early revelation of new companion Oswin, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. Only she's died. So it looks like we are going to get another stupid timey-wimey story about Dr. Who meeting a character backwards. What we see of Oswin is not encouraging. She is just another overconfident character who flirts and makes wisecracks all the time.

Not only is Oswin dead, but she has been turned into a Dalek (did anybody fail to see that coming?). I know Revelation of the Daleks had people being converted into Daleks, but that was Davros' idea. Turning people into Daleks is a denial of what Daleks are about. They are obsessed with their own racial superiority and purity. They would not want to turn people into Daleks.

The story ends with a chorus of Doctor Who? How many times have we heard that joke? Dr. Who really is just his name. He really is called that. Get over it.

Dr. Who has clearly never seen an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. Surely it must be obvious she got the milk from a replicator.

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Another year, another Christmas special, another story that I hate.

I am a massive fan of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I actually write fan fiction about Jadis, my favorite character. It was naturally of some interest that the latest Christmas special takes inspiration from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Doctor Who has often thrived when borrowing influences from other stories and genres. This works best when it is done almost unconsciously; this is quite the opposite. In The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, as with the previous Christmas special, the influences are shouted out over the rooftops.

It is quite clear to me that Moffat does not have a clue what makes the Narnia books so amazing and enjoyable. For a start, the Narnia books are a parent-free zone. The Pevensie parents only make a brief appearance at the end of The Last Battle, they are absent throughout the Chronicles of Narnia. The Narnia books are all about the children having adventures on their own. In contrast, the two evacuees in this story are accompanied by their mother. Their mother enters the strange forest world and the story turns out to be all about parenthood. The last season has shown that Moffat has a peculiar fixation with the theme of fatherhood. While it is a relief to see motherhood getting a mention in this story, it jars completely with the Narnian theme. For Moffat, the idea of children existing independently of a parental relations is simply anathema. In his fictional world, children can have no real existence except within the smothering confines of parental affection. In his book, children just need their daddy and then everything is right with the world.

The second failure to appreciate the Narnia books is in the way the fictional world is presented. Narnia was fascinating because of it's strange inhabitants. The forest world of this story is undoubtedly beautiful, but it feels empty and uninteresting. In fact, it creates no sense of wonder or majesty, but quickly becomes a place of melancholy and terror. On the plus side, the wooden king and queen look amazing, with their delightful folklorish quality, but they are not sufficient to make up for the otherwise hollowness of the forest world.

It is refreshing to see some attempt to deal with the pain and loss in warfare; but this is completely undermined by the resurrection of the children's father. While it came as no surprise and made for an happy ending, it seemed hollow, and almost a denial of the reality of death. I am sure it would have been very upsetting to children watching who had lost their parents and who could expect no return of their lost loved ones. Going back to the issue of motherhood, it also seemed to undermine the attempt to present Janet as a strong capable woman. She was presented as strong and determined, but there was still the suggestion that she was lost without her husband. If you are going to praise motherhood, why not show that mothers can be strong and bring up their children after widowhood as so many mothers had to do in the Second World War?

As for the Doctor, we are served up yet again another portrayal of the Doctor as a Mary Poppins figure who makes everything right for everybody and who appears whenever people wish for him. Does anybody else miss the days when the Doctor was bad-tempered, selfish and a bit scary?

Don't get your hopes up for the next season of Doctor Who.

The Wedding of River Song

The First Doctor: You can't change history, my dear.

Barbara: Why not?

The First Doctor: Because this is a fixed point. If you change this, the entire universe will descend into chaos, with Romans frolicking with Pteradons and that irritating twit Churchill running everything.

Barbara: How can you know that?

The First Doctor: Because I'm the Doctor and I know everything. Do you need to ask?

(Taken from the unmade story "The Incas," written by Charles Dickens)

I was expecting this episode to be absolute garbage. It was, but my big surprise was how few surprises were thrown in and how predictable the whole thing was. It had all the banal trappings of a Moffat season finale, a roller-coaster ride of action, special effects wizardry, alternate timeline nonsense, an old monster thrown in for good measure and lots of references to previous Moffat stories to remind everyone that the man thinks he's George Lucas. More than this, the key puzzle elements that everyone was wrapped up in turned out to be rather obvious. It was a Teselecta robot that got killed. It was either going to be that or a Ganger. No surprise there. Even if you haven't watched the episode you don't need me to tell you what the big question was.

As for the big bad villainness, Lady Kovarian with the eyepatch, we still have no motivation or explanation about who she is or what she was up to. She is rather easily disposed of. Admittedly, this happens in an erased timeline, so perhaps we will see her again. I'm a little in two minds about Amy killing Kovarian in cold blood. It is frustrating when characters find it impossible to kill the villain, when in real life the truth is that people find it all too easy to kill in the heat of the moment. I have no problem with the Fourth Doctor blowing up the Graf Vynda-K or killing Solon with poison gas when necessity demanded it. It made a nice contrast with other heroes who would endanger everybody by refusing to kill at a crucial moment. But seeing Amy kill Kovarian when she was helpless was a bit nasty. Maybe I feel strongly because Kovarian is a woman. I am always disturbed by violence against women. At least she felt remorse over it later.

This whole thing about a fixed point in time is just silly. Why is one point in time fixed but not another? Given all the alterations to the timeline we have seen since decided to abandon the Hartnell era notion that history is fixed, it is odd that one small moment of the Doctor getting killed should throw all reality into chaos. It's like the whole universe revolves around the Doctor. As for a world in which all history happens at the same time, this is an impossible and absurd notion that has been used simply to justify impressive but ultimately unimaginative visuals. I'm really tired of these supercosmic stories in which the entire universe is re-booted. Having the entire universe destroyed and then re-created in The Big Bang was bad enough. The destruction of the universe has now become a rather banal concept.

What has happened to Alex Kingston's acting? Her performances were one of the few strong points of this series, but in this finale her performance was really lacklustre and unconvincing. I did predict that River Song would be killed off a while ago. I was wrong. I'm sure we will see some more of her. Perhaps the writers will get the chance to give her a personality, but I won't get my hopes up.

A lot of reviewers have heaped praise on the reference to the death of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, describing it as a 'beautiful tribute' to Nicholas Courtney. I thought it was painfully sentimental. Nicholas Courtney was a great actor and all of us fans have mourned his passing. However, a throwaway piece of dialogue to justify a stupid plot manoeuvre does not make for a fitting tribute. Besides the Doctor has lived for centuries. As alien as it may be for us, the death of one human being, no matter how close to him is probably not going to affect him so strongly. He may well have had news of the death of other people close to him such as Jo Grant, Dodo or Ben and Polly, or he at least knows they will die.

As for the question of who the Doctor is, just re-watch Silver Nemesis. Lady Peinforte made a big deal out of what an astounding secret the Doctor's name was, but was the Doctor bothered?

The Wedding of River Song is a predictably bad conclusion to really awful season. Who knows what will come next.

Closing Time

Yet another story built on the premise that a Yeti in a loo is a good idea. Unfortunately, it's a terrible idea. A Yeti in a loo is not scary; it just looks stupid. Likewise Cybermen in a department store look even more stupid. One of the consistent failings of this season has been the inability to recognise that if you want things to come across as scary and menacing, you have to tone down the comedy.

Closing Time gives us the return of the Cybermen. As with their last appearance, they are big clunky, stupid robotic things. At no point in the episode do they provide any sense of menace. If you thought the Cybermen being vulnerable to bullets in Attack of the Cybermen was annoying, just watch them being defeated by 'the power of love.' We also see the return of the Cybermats, who are equally silly.

James Corden also makes a return appearance. He is dreadfully annoying. A lot of reviewers point out the fact he has a lot of chemistry with Matt Smith. I don't care. He's not the sort of character I want Dr. Who to have chemistry with.

Moffat seems to be a bit obsessed with fatherhood. We get another story sentimentalizing fatherhood and its trials. It is starting to get a bit annoying. We don't have any exploration of motherhood to counter-balance it all; Amy's concern about her daughter is always fleeting and seems to be a bit half-hearted. Themes of fatherhood tend to point in a conservative direction and one can see a decidedly middle-class flavour to the Moffat producership. Doctor Who these days is no longer about people who are outsiders and on the fringes of society, like Ace and Dodo, but about middle-class people. Notice the Doctor's comments to baby Alfie about human life; he talks about mortgage payments and working 9-5. Middle class existence is now the default position for human life in Doctor Who. People who can't get mortgages are outside of the scope of the current series. At times it seems as though Moffat and Co. are singing from the same hymn sheet as David Cameron. I'm an active Conservative party member who believes our prime minister is a decent chap, but I'm not sure I like Doctor Who preaching the message of 'Broken Britain' and the 'Big Society.'

Having seen the departure of Amy and Rory last week, it was very irritating to see them making a cameo in the very next episode. It turns out that Amy has now found fame and fortune in the gold-paved capitalist wonderland that this show now celebrates. This is the same Amy who grew up without parents, was receiving psychiatric treatment and doing a job that would put her ouside of respectable society. The show seems to be out of touch with the realities faced by people outside of a comfortable middle-class existence.

The ending with Mrs Kovarian, the Eyepatch Lady is dreadful. I love camp, bitchy female villains, but this was the stuff of childrens' cartoons. There was also a clear lack of narrative development. There is no sense that the events relating to River Song are moving of themselves, but are being put into place according to script. We are practically being told "now this bit happens next."

It's nice to see Lynda Baron being used again, but it's a shame it is in such a terrible story. It is remarkable to see how much continuity has been brought up in this half of the series. Right at the beginning, we get the Smith referencing Troughton in The Five Doctors and later Tom Baker in Revenge of the Cybermen. This is only a week after we had a reference to the Nimon. As we know from many 80s stories, lots of continuity references do not make a bad story good.