Like most of this half-series of Doctor Who, last week's episode left me cold. It was all very clever clever and there were some fantastic performances, especially from Matt Smith, but like so many of the recent episodes it didn't grab me emotionally at all. I sat through it, fairly bored, and at the end actually contemplated next week's finale with dread. I am literally dreading what Moffat is going to do to the Doctor next week in the name of cleverness.
On the plus side, it was nice to see the girl who played Angie again, having been really impressed by her polished performances in the CBeebies series Nuzzle and Scratch as the Boss of two lovably incapable alpacas. (Yes really.) But apart from that… Cybermen who just upgrade past any threat you throw at them – yes, that should have been scary but it just felt really predictable. There was no tension there for me at all, and despite some great performances, the supporting characters (as in previous recent episodes) felt extremely 'cardboard-cutout' to me. Even Clara, whilst fun and spunky and likeable, is completely 2 dimensional. I'm not sure why this is, since both her previous incarnations seemed to have a lot more to them, but Clara III seems incredibly flat and characterless and merely there to provide a puzzle. It's hard to connect to her.
It's weird. I did enjoy Moffat's first season, and mostly enjoyed the second, but this third just… feels really flat. Perhaps I feel that Moffat, having 'fixed' everything RTD broke about the Doctor (as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elisi puts it), doesn't know what to do with the Doctor now. (Kind of like, how do you make the 'happy ever after' emotionally satisfying?) And I know I should be invested in the finale which will presumably tie up at least some of the many, many questions that have been posed through the last three seasons, but I can't help dreading that it's just going to be another overly complicated timey-wimey dash about with a last minute fix and no dramatic tension and… Well. I guess I haven't long to wait and see now, at least.
On the plus side, it was nice to see the girl who played Angie again, having been really impressed by her polished performances in the CBeebies series Nuzzle and Scratch as the Boss of two lovably incapable alpacas. (Yes really.) But apart from that… Cybermen who just upgrade past any threat you throw at them – yes, that should have been scary but it just felt really predictable. There was no tension there for me at all, and despite some great performances, the supporting characters (as in previous recent episodes) felt extremely 'cardboard-cutout' to me. Even Clara, whilst fun and spunky and likeable, is completely 2 dimensional. I'm not sure why this is, since both her previous incarnations seemed to have a lot more to them, but Clara III seems incredibly flat and characterless and merely there to provide a puzzle. It's hard to connect to her.
It's weird. I did enjoy Moffat's first season, and mostly enjoyed the second, but this third just… feels really flat. Perhaps I feel that Moffat, having 'fixed' everything RTD broke about the Doctor (as
elisi puts it), doesn't know what to do with the Doctor now. (Kind of like, how do you make the 'happy ever after' emotionally satisfying?) And I know I should be invested in the finale which will presumably tie up at least some of the many, many questions that have been posed through the last three seasons, but I can't help dreading that it's just going to be another overly complicated timey-wimey dash about with a last minute fix and no dramatic tension and… Well. I guess I haven't long to wait and see now, at least.
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Rory had a lot more independence from the Doctor, which I think I appreciated a great deal. The women all seem to orbit around him somehow, instead of being actual individuals. (Amy improved. Clara hasn't. Yet.)
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