h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You have achieved a high level of mastery in one of the fundamental skills of Who fandom, ie. being much more intense in your criticism of the series than a casual viewer would dream of! (And I say that as someone who was not impressed, overall, with the recently-concluded series and said so at length in another venue.

I think, given the choice between a Rusty Davies 'the Daleks (or possibly the Master) try to conquer the world (again)' finale and a Moffy 'everyone gets stuck in some weird metaphysical lacuna' finale I'd choose the former. There's a point at which Moffy's plots get so complex they stop making sense, and we passed that *very* early on this series.

Not sure how the Doctor faking his own death is going to work, given he's a time traveller. He looks the same and the TARDIS is rather distinctive too - if nothing else people he meets will surely just assume it's just the him from before his death. Leading a non-linear life leaves you with very little control over your public image.

I think it's pretty clear that 'Doctor who?' is definitely going to be the unanswerable question. Once upon a time he was a lot less cryptic about his name (even to the point of signing letters to friends 'Doctor W'), so I'm curious to see where they go with this one.

Moffy's stand alone eps were without par. However, I really believe that giving the curly one thirteen a year to play with has been too much of a temptation and a lack of "monster of the week" episodes that don't have endless references to other events is somewhat spoiling the mood for us "grown ups" who are having a spot of bother following the thread and - more importantly - the reasons for them.

Oh - and where are the Zygons, hmmm?

T.

Thanks, Awix

I agree with all you say. I always thought though that the 'Doctor W.' from Classic Who was the programme always referring to him as being called 'Doctor Who'. Moffat has teased us about his name for a while (he's gradually using up all of his fan-boy ideas) but still, the idea of using the titular phrase as a full in-plot question grates for me...

Still I felt like this at the beginning of this whole baby/Melody/River thing so time will tell, even if it is wibbly and wobbly...

The closest the original run gets to explicitly naming him as 'Doctor Who' is the cliffhanger to The War Machines Episode One, where the villain declares that 'Doctor Who is required'. Though not long after that we have the 'Doctor W' moment and a bit where he adopts the pseudonym 'Doktor von Wehr' (German for... oh, you guessed). The stuff about his name having some kind of epic significance is new to Moffy, though: there's an 80s episode where he's about to casually say his own name when someone interrupts him.

My problem with the last series in particular was that the Song/Death storylines seemed to dominate everything else, to the point of references to them being shoehorned into other episodes. It felt more like a serial than a series - whether this was an attempt to pitch the series more to an international SFF audience (where this kind of structure is common) I don't know but coupled to the US-friendly locations of the opening episodes it certainly felt that way.

There's also the fact that the series seems rather self-obsessed at the moment and quite possibly inaccessible. Also the Doctor is by some way the least weird of the regular characters these days, which is a very odd development!

"the series seems rather self-obsessed at the moment"

Apologies for picking out a rather random quote from your post - but I can't remember a time when I haven't heard people saying this about Doctor Who. In fact the only time people have seemed to be lavishing praise on Doctor Who universally (series 4 with Donna Noble) was the only time I actually began to dislike the series.

As someone who has only found a few genuine pieces of Doctor Who that I don't like (pretty much all of season 23 and a couple of eps from season 24) - I wonder why I bother reading any critique of Doctor Who. And that's not to comment on the quality of the critique, or the skill of it's writer, both of which in this case I consider to be excellent. I just disagree with critiques in general. I've always enjoyed writing stories - and as such tend to write from the point of view of wanting to entertain myself.

The idea of analysing Doctor Who I find wearisome - and I find it even more wearisome that most of fandom is obsessed with it. Aside from the fact I enjoy stories that end up asking more questions, and that I love following complicated plots, I tend to - as unintellectual as this may sound - go with my gut on whether I like a story or not. And I loved seeing Winston Churchill as the Holy Roman Emperor. I loved seeing River Song and the Doctor get "married" on top of a pyramid in an alternate time line. I loved the way that a headless Doriam seemed to work in the story. I actually have no issues at all with Amy not knowing Rory - and the fact that she apparently has a darker side (where we've assumed that the Doctor has done nothing but screw up her life). In short I enjoyed it.

And for some bizarre reason I decided to come here and write that I don't like critiques. And explain why I like the episode. So I'm going to go with it. So have fun you happy people! *flies away*

Hey, come back!

I thought this episode was pretty good as well - or at least as good as one could hope for in the circumstances (of the laborious ongoing storyline, etc) and I said as much when writing about it in another venue.

But I stand by the 'self-obsessed' thing. I wouldn't have said that about any of the previous series since the revival, but I do think it's true now: look at the number of continuity references these days, look at the extent to which the episodes assume you're a regular viewer if you want to make sense of them. I hope next year we see a lot more standalone stories and many fewer recurring characters.

(One of the things I really liked about most of Season 24 was how fresh it seemed and unconcerned with the ongoing mythology of the series...)