"Doctor Who" Prepares For a Milestone

Spoilers ahead for the latest season of "Doctor Who."

The much-anticipated 50th anniversary of "Doctor Who" is coming up in November, and a star-studded special has been commissioned to mark the happy occasion. This most recent series of "Doctor Who," however, particularly the back half that featured Jenna-Louise Coleman as the newest Companion, Clara Oswald, often felt too much like it was setting things up for the big event. There was a lot of time talking up the big, plotty mysteries and series mythology, and not as much on the individual adventures. I liked fewer episodes this series, and didn't feel like I'd gotten to know Clara very well, but whenever we have any kind of format change on "Doctor Who," that's normal in my experience. I didn't like Amy much until Rory became a regular companion, and the last two Doctors each took nearly an entire series each to grow on me.

It wasn't a bad stretch of episodes at all, though understandably not as emotionally charged as the goodbye tour of the Ponds that came before it. My favorites included "The Bells of Saint John," "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and "The Crimson Horror." "The Name of the Doctor," which left us on a big cliffhanger going into the special, was kind of a mess, but also a really fun and tense installment that neatly answered all the questions about Clara and will hopefully give her character a chance to grow from here on out. It's not that Jenna-Louise Coleman isn't doing a perfectly good job, but there really hasn't been much to Clara except being "The Impossible Girl." I'd like to see her given more substance, or at least her current situation as a live-in nanny fleshed out more. The point of Clara may be that she's ordinary, but she shouldn't feel so generic.

Matt Smith continues to impress. He's gotten so well situated into the role of the Eleventh Doctor, that I'm having trouble imagining anyone else in the role now. I've really grown to like this version of the character, who can get emotional and dark and lose control of himself, but there's always something a little otherworldly and a little inhuman about him. Where the David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston Doctors were very good, they always seemed to be very advanced humans instead of truly alien creatures. There's something about Smith that is always off-kilter in just the right way to remind us that he's an alien being doing his best impression of a human, and not the genuine article. And even though he's the youngest actor to play the part, he comes across as having a much higher mileage on him. He's the only reason that some of the weaker scripts worked this year.

This series also brought to the forefront a trio of new sidekicks who won me over in a very short time: the reptilian Silurian detective, Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her plucky wife Jenny (Catrin Stewart), and their butler Strax (Dan Starkey), the potato-shaped Sontaran warrior. The three of them have been hanging out in Victorian England, meeting up with the Doctor whenever he happens to be in their time period. Aside from Madame Vastra, I don't remember how these characters were introduced, but they make for wonderful secondary heroes, and Strax is especially good comic relief. I love that he continually screws up genders and still retains a love for carnage that keeps getting him scolded. I've been hoping for a little more variety in companions, and this is the next best thing. I'm firmly with those who have been calling for a spinoff series to feature this trio.

Disappointments? There weren't any major ones that stuck out on the level of some of the episodes from previous series and previous Doctors. I can't point to anything specific that outright failed, but a few things I was hoping would be really exceptional, turned out to be just all right. The Neil Gaiman episode with Warwick Davis and the Cybermen? All right. Richard E. Grant as this year's Big Bad, the Great Intelligence? Sorely underused, but all right. The return of Alex Kingston's mysterious River Song? All right. The mystery of The Impossible Girl? Fine. It's likely that the anniversary special is going to turn out the same way, even with the promised appearances of so many past actors plus a bonus John Hurt.

However, I've got to say that I'm really impressed with where Stephen Moffat left us with the big cliffhanger. It may end up being a tease, as so many of these things are, but there's the potential for some really serious delving into the show's mythology coming our way. Even if the special in November doesn't deliver, it'll be fun to watch them try. And I'm happily attached enough to this particularly grouping of characters that I don't mind if we hit a few more bumps in the road going forward.
---