Monday, October 3, 2016

Dr. Who Series Seven to Eight

And on goes the Dr. Who binge watching! So far there's hardly beeen a day in the last few weeks on which I didn't watch at least one episode.

First off two things I really love about Dr. Who:
I really love how curious, enthusiastic and thirsty for knowledge the Doctor is. I think that's a really good thing to teach children.
And then I love the little camoes by scientists. Like when something happened to/on Earth and there's TV coverage on the phenomena and they show interview snippets with people like Richard Dawkins or Brian Cox. Love it!

Series 7 - The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond and Rory Williams as well as Clara Oswald
Again Amy and Rory. And I still don't like Amy. How come they get three seasons when both Martha and Donna only got one?

This season has two parts. The first couple of episodes were ok, though I think they overdid it with the Statue of Liberty being a Weeping Angel. Amy and Rory leave at the end of the fifth episode. Though I don't quite get the drama of it, because the Doctor could just visit them - no?

We also learn that the Doctor was busy deleting information about himself from all databases. Which also means that River is no longer in prison since there's no record of the man she presumably killed.

The second part of this season gets new beginning and ending credits - which I don't like as much as the others. There's also - of course - a new companion. We've met Clara (or version of her) before. I'm looking forward to this because I liked her when she first turned up.

The episodes are fun, though nothing special. We get to see a Soviet submarine and ghost hunters. We also get to see a bit more of the TARDIS interior and the Doctor gets assimilated to the Borg Cyberman, complete with Seven of Nine make-up - that makes him Eleven of Twelve, doesn't it? That episode had Warwick Davies in it, by the way (and was written by Neil Gaiman).
I do like that we get to meet the reptile Madame Vastra, her wife Jenny and the alien soldier Strax - we first saw them in an earlier season when rescuing Amy, but they weren't introduced back then.

The most emotional part is when we see River Song say goodbye to the Doctor for the last time. Their timelines are chaotic, so it's impossible to say how often we see River in future episodes, but this was clearly her last time within her timeline.

The Day of the Doctor - The War Doctor, the Tenth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald
I love this episode! It's a 50th anniversary special and it might just be my favourite episode so far.

The interaction between the three Doctors is simply hilarious.
And I love how they integrated old footage of the past Doctors. Best as they could, at least.
David Tennant is back and he's just perfect. Oh, I've missed that face. The difference between the Tenth and the Eleventh Doctor is even more obvious like this - I've mentioned them before. And I still like the Tenth best; probably because of these differences.

In the end, it didn't change much for the past Doctors. For plot reasons they couldn't remember, so they'd still suffer. It didn't change much for the Time Lords; maybe they're not dead, but they're not in normal space-time either. But it opens up interesting possibilities.
I also thought that the infamous Time War didn't actually look that terrible that it'd be reason enough to destroy two whole species. It looked just like any other war, really. I'm not quite sure what I expected though.
The strange thing was that since they already showed the next Doctor, I expected Eleven to die any moment at the end. But he didn't. Pleasant surprise there, though it keeps me wondering...

Did I mention that the three Doctors interacting was fantastic?

Series 8 - The Twelth Doctor and Clara Oswald
So in another special Eleven regenerated into Twelve. Didn't like the special much compared to the others. The end of the eleventh Doctor wasn't as emotional as the others, to me.

So now there's Twelve, Peter Capaldi. I was a bit worried at first, I know I have problems understanding the Glaswegian dialect. But it's ok; it's not easy, but not as bad as I expected.
The regeneration does seem to have it's drawbacks, as he has trouble remembering peoples names at first. But this time I've seen the previous Doctors in him. When Clara announced she'd leave, I saw the Tenth Doctor being afraid of loneliness. And he sometimes did sound a bit like Eleven, too. Yeah, I really liked that.
But he doesn't portray the fascination as much as the other Doctors. He seems a lot more serious. More grumpy old man.

Clara at first seems to have some trouble coming to terms with her Doctor not being a pretty young man anymore. She did involuntarily admit in the last special that she fancied him. But eventually she comes around. She even finds a boyfriend. She didn't fulfill my high hopes though. I'm not quite sure what it is; maybe sometimes she just comes across as a little bitchy. Or maybe it's because the Doctor bosses her around so much and she lets him - I'm not sure if that's been the case before, I just notice it a lot in this series.

There's also a new intro. Very CGI, but not too bad.
I absolutely love the bookshelves on the walls of the TARDIS. I really like this Tardis interior, got a bit of Steampunk feeling to it.

I really liked the Robin Hood episode; one of the more light-hearted episodes. It was a little cheesy, but fun - that's Doctor Who, I guess.
And the one with the Orient Express has a great 1920s cover of Don't Stop Me Now.

Sometimes though, the death toll bothers me. A lot of people die in Doctor Who. Not only main characters, but lots of others. And I don't like how casually it is dealt with. And often they die a horrible death like falling alive into liquid gold.

The double season finale... Well, I knew I didn't like Clara that much and this episode confirmed it. More than anything that she went through, what touched me most was the former Companion of the Doctor (I guess he was).
I liked how they hinted at what's to come in the finale episode through the previous episodes, without influencing the plot of these.


This is the last series that's available for free with Amazon Prime, so for now that's where I'll stop.
I'd really like to watch the old seasons, too. Especially since some of the new episodes featured old Companions. Read more on this article...