Eleventh Doctor Review

Eleventh Doctor

Eleventh Doctor

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Madame Vastra, Clara Oswald

Matt Smith’s iconic performance as the Doctor portrayed an impossibly powerful, old character, who preferred to act absurd and silly to try and forget his dark past and nature.

The Review

Here’s the scores for the stories

Vincent and the Doctor: 10/10

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Blood: 10/10

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang: 10/10

The Eleventh Hour: 10/10

A Christmas Carol: 10/10

The God Complex: 10/10

The Day of the Doctor: 10/10

A Good Man Goes to War: 9.5/10

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People: 9.5/10

A Town Called Mercy: 9.5/10

The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe: 9.5/10

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon: 9.25/10

The Power of Three: 9.25/10

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: 9/10

Closing Time: 9/10

Hide: 8.9/10

The Rings of Akhaten: 8.75/10

The Angels Take Manhattan: 8.75/10

Cold War: 8.5/10

The Crimson Horror: 8.5/10

The Time of the Doctor: 8.5/10

The Girl Who Waited: 8.5/10

The Doctor’s Wife: 8.5/10

Amy’s Choice: 8.5/10

The Beast Below: 8.5/10

The Name of the Doctor: 8.25/10

The Bells of Saint John: 8/10

The Snowmen: 8/10

Asylum of the Daleks: 8/10

The Wedding of River Song: 8/10

Let’s Kill Hitler: 8/10

The Lodger: 8/10

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood: 8/10

Victory of the Daleks: 8/10

The Curse of the Black Spot: 7.95/10

The Vampires of Venice: 7.95/10

Nightmare in Silver: 7.5/10

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS: 7.5/10

Night Terrors: 6.75/10

For me, the Eleventh Doctor falls behind the Twelfth and Tenth in my reckoning of new series Doctors. I think a main reason for that would be how evasive he is as a personality, there are precious little times we get to see what the Doctor actually thinks and would like. The Tenth has several moments of morose vulnerability, and his ego crescendos in The Waters of Mars in a way that never happens for Eleven. The Eleventh Doctor in many senses is a narcissist, he runs away from death for 200 years, and he makes a last-ditch attempt to convince Amy to leave Rory and travel with him. He’ll even place a phone call to ensure Clara doesn’t leave his future self. In the end, him finally committing to defend Trenzalore is a fitting end. That said, the show has scarcely felt more magical than it did in Smith’s dynamite entry in Series 5, a mysterious wife in River, a fierce companion in Amy, and time-bending mysteries galore.

Now, his best moments.

5. “Take it all!” Much older than he was during his Stonehenge speech, the Doctor’s heart-wrenching pain as he pours out his life and existence to the Old God. It doesn’t work, but you can feel how the Doctor in purple has changed since we first met him.

4. The Doctor’s warming and introduction to Victorian Clara is the clear highlight of The Snowmen, as Clara pieces together his plan and gets introduced to the neon TARDIS in a stunning sequence.

3. “…ok.” It’s a small moment, but as the Doctor explains the plan to save Gallifrey with his past incarnations to the General, everything suddenly goes quiet and the General tells him to do it. The silent “ok” carries the weight of lives of guilt.

2. “Who da man!” Bursting onto the scene in The Eleventh Hour, no TARDIS, no sonic, the Doctor still gets it done and saves Earth from incineration. When Prisoner Zero mimics him, the Doctor doesn’t even recognize himself yet. It was a bit of a long day for him.

1. “Hello Stonehenge!” Although it turns out it didn’t work, the Doctor’s speech to his assembled enemies attempting to get them to flee solely based on his reputation is a tremendous piece of acting and where people fell in love with this Doctor.

Sometimes the Eleventh Doctor era got too complex, with relationships not quite as well defined as I would’ve hoped. For being known as the fairy tale era, the man at the heart of it was surprisingly dark and manipulative. With its emphasis on River, putting the Silence front and center as the arc villains, the Eleventh Doctor era feels weirdly divorced from the rest of the show when the Twelfth Doctor would heavily feature UNIT and the Master again. Still, pound for pound, this grades out as the strongest overall era of the show. Series 7 is definitely weak, but consistently fine enough to keep it holding this title. From the tears of Vincent van Gogh, to a heart-stopping 52nd century showdown against Weeping Angels, to the return of Gallifrey, Moffat brought the excitement.

8.726/10 A full letter grade decline

Series 7 Review

Series 7

Series 7

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Madame Vastra, Clara Oswald

Series 7 features an epilogue for the Ponds, and then gives us a total refresh with Clara Oswald, who shows great promise but is frustratingly underdeveloped.

The Review

Here’s the scores for the stories

A Town Called Mercy: 9.5/10

The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe: 9.5/10

The Power of Three: 9.25/10

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship: 9/10

Hide: 8.9/10

The Rings of Akhaten: 8.75/10

The Angels Take Manhattan: 8.75/10

Cold War: 8.5/10

The Crimson Horror: 8.5/10

The Name of the Doctor: 8.25/10

The Bells of Saint John: 8/10

The Snowmen: 8/10

Asylum of the Daleks: 8/10

Nightmare in Silver: 7.5/10

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS: 7.5/10

For many people, Series 7 is where the show started to run out of steam, and it does give that feeling. The unique structure does it no favors, you begin with the tweed-wearing Doctor and the Ponds and end with him wearing dark purple and with Clara Oswald. There is a common theme that Matt Smith lost it in this series, and I honestly have to disagree. It’s certainly less electric than his incredible debut in Series 5, but suiting an incarnation now centuries old, the Eleventh Doctor of especially Series 7B feels lived in. I also think his purple ensemble might be my favorite Doctor outfit of all time, formal and whimsy perfectly mixed. The real miss is that Clara Oswald just feels underdeveloped, partly because once we get to the original Clara it’s the third time we’ve met Jenna Coleman and we’re kind of done with it. Still, the power and knowledge imbalance between here and the Doctor and the viewers makes it for awkward viewing and her relationship with the Doctor is essentially ‘flirty’, which is new and different than the puppy-dog love of Rose but still not enough. Thankfully, it will get better. Lastly, a lot of the scripts just aren’t that great. Explosive episodes billed as rehabilitations of the Daleks and Cybermen fall flat, and the Weeping Angels lack their previous punch. Series 7 isn’t a disaster, but it does feel like a show in need of a creative retool.

8.527/10 A disappointing series that goes back to the bag of tricks and finds little new to do

The Name of the Doctor Review

The Name of the Doctor

The couple in Trenzalore

Story 239, Episode 798, Series 7 Episode 13

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Madame Vastra, Clara Oswald

Series 7 comes to an end with an odd episode acting as a finale to several arcs we didn’t know we had.

The Review

The secrets get revealed

This is an odd story to be sure, one that feels like it could’ve been the final one for the 11th Doctor and brings together an intriguing mix of characters. She Said, He Said is an enticing prequel as Clara and the Doctor interrogate the other separately saying they now know their secrets. Clarence and the Whispermen provides some much needed context to how the story unspools. We get the Paternoster Gang back in a background role, but it turns out less is more as they’re all pretty great here. There’s a weird bit where it is teased that Jenny is dead but she gets revived whatever. The first story arc resolved is that of the Great Intelligence, who is here and back to exact vengeance on the Doctor by going in his time stream and destroying him simultaneously. I appreciate bringing back such an obscure villain but we are given no particular reason to care about the Intelligence, and he’s pretty much a nothing-burger. At least the Whispermen look cool.

River Song after death

River Song gets dropped into this story, interestingly a post-Library version of her. Vastra arranges a temporal conference call which is a fun idea I’d like to see again. With how distinct Series 7B had been and no mention of River it’s a bit surprising this episode functions as a goodbye for her. When the Doctor reveals he can always see her and loves her, it is genuinely a touching moment, the most touching between Matt Smith and Kingston. That’s not the most out of nowhere arc, which would be this renewed interest in what the Doctor’s name is. Most of the action takes place in the ruins of the TARDIS on Trenzalore where the Doctor’s grave lies after a terrible war. The Great Intelligence needs someone to say his name to get in, River does, etc. I think out of universe this was hyped up a lot, and technically Series 6 ended with ‘Doctor Who?’ as a question, but other than one mention in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS the Doctor’s name has hardly been an arc. Still, it’s almost all worth it for the trick I’ll discuss later.

Clara in the Doctor’s life

Of course, the one arc we knew was that of the ‘Impossible Girl’, how could Clara exist multiple times. The opening of the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS and meeting Clara followed by her edited into classic Who is exhilarating. The real answer is deceptively simple, she jumped in the Doctor’s time stream to stop the Intelligence from killing him. Logically it sticks the landing, emotionally Clara has still not matured enough in her relationship with the Doctor to make it feel like a big payoff. We do see through Vastra stars going out without the Doctor’s heroism, and Strax and Jenny vanishing (though it seems Vastra would always have been pure). At the end, we get the also unrelated reveal of John Hurt as the War Doctor but with some classic Moffat literalism. Just as ‘the Doctor takes a secret to his grave, it is discovered’ meant the grave, the story’s title meant the name of ‘the Doctor’ and Hurt broke the promise. In many ways, it’s pretty a gloomy episode, in the dark at the Doctor’s grave with River finally fading away. Day and Time build upon it in important ways, but Name still manages emotional resonances we weren’t expecting.

Several story arcs get unexpected conclusions, and the obvious one gets a fun nostalgia-fueled one (I mean come on, seeing the Doctor finally stealing the TARDIS is great). It’s the most low-key finale in the new series, but the underdeveloped Doctor/Clara relationship means it doesn’t land as hard as it could. Thankfully, her and River will both get much better farewells, but this one isn’t bad at all.

8.25/10 Think there could’ve been more done with the Great Intelligence here

Yes I know Paul McGann, but John Hurt as the Doctor ruled. I miss that man.

The Crimson Horror Review

The Crimson Horror

The Doctor with rubber skin

Story 237, Episode 796, Series 7 Episode 11

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Madame Vastra, Clara Oswald

The Crimson Horror brings back the Paternoster Gang and gives us a story that is almost perfectly camp but falls short.

The Review

Strax joins the gang

It’s little wonder why there was such demand for the Paternoster Gang to have their own spin-off, because you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a backdoor pilot. The Battle of Demon’s Run: Two Days Later shows how Strax survived: he simply was wrong that he was dying. The Doctor doesn’t appear for 15 minutes and Clara not for 18, the first third of this story is the Paternoster Gang doing their thing investigating Sweetville in Yorkshire. Vastra is always well played by Neve McIntosh, but you have to love Dan Starkey’s Strax who somehow makes a painful ‘TomTom’ GPS joke with a young boy be not completely cringe-inducing. In fact, the member of the gang who we get to see the most is Catrin Stewart’s Jenny, who proves to be a very capable detective and fighter. Yes, Catrin Stewart is attractive, but the Doctor kissing a married woman and the sonic making an erection joke as she reveals a leather outfit is just ridiculous. The Doctor and Clara end up dominating the back half of the story, leaving the gang disappointingly a bit in the dust.

The crazy Miss Gillyflower

Mark Gatiss has written a lot of Doctor Who and never quite managed a classic, but this could’ve been the one. The episode is really close to being perfectly camp centered around Diana Rigg’s incredible performance as insane old woman Miss Gillyflower who is in a symbiotic relationship with ‘Mr. Sweet’, a prehistoric leech on her chest. She plans to kill all of humanity and restart with perfect people she is keeping safe in weird hermetically sealed glass jars. She has brutal experimented on her daughter Ada (played by Rachael Stirling, Riggs’ actual daughter) leaving her blind, who helps lead to her downfall. If this episode more fully leaned into and pulled off the Victorian satire, it could’ve been perfect. Instead, it’s still a fun watch, but has some pretty frustrating moments. Hard not to smile at Clara’s reaction to the Doctor telling her ‘you’re the boss’, and then getting found out as a time traveler which is a fun story that’s never happened before. All in all, I enjoyed it but could’ve been better.

“You know what these are? The wrong hands!” Seriously, you can tell why Diana Rigg was a legend with her perfectly absurd performance here.

8.5/10 We get close to perfect parody, but settle for just a fun story.

Clara gets exposed

The Snowmen Review

The Snowmen

The Doctor meets Clara (again)

Story 231, Episode 790, 2012 Christmas Special

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Madame Vastra, Clara Oswald (sorta)

A brand new era of Doctor Who begins with a Victorian Christmas spectacular that fails to be interest-grabbing.

The Review

The Paternoster Gang, explicitly named the reference for Sherlock Holmes

The Doctor has retired to Victorian London, refusing to help people after losing the Ponds. It’s a sad way to see the Doctor, but it makes sense after how long he traveled with them. The two prequels The Great Detective and Vastra Investigates don’t really add much to the story. It was a great idea to return to Madame Vastra and Jenny, as well as throwing Strax in the mix. The Paternoster Gang all play well off of each other, and it is always a delight to get lines like “I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time and this is my wife.” Matt Smith does a fine enough job being the moody Doctor, and seeing him slowly break back into the role of being the heroic Doctor is fun. Once he gets dragged into the mess with Clara and the Intelligence, he has to come along. If only the actual threat in this story carried more weight.

Clara’s splinters are way more flirtatious than the original, subconscious maybe

We meet Victorian Clara, who is a fun precious woman who moonlights between flirting as a barmaid and being a prim and proper Governess. I wish we got more of Jenna Coleman pretending to be prim and proper, because she could play a great archetypical fun Victorian nanny. The scene where we see the new TARDIS interior is beautifully done, and the best shot of the episode. Unfortunately, Clara doesn’t get too many scenes with the Doctor because she falls from the TARDIS cloud and dies (somehow not squishing unrecognizably). The villain is Dr. Simeon, played morosely by Richard E Grant who has helped form The Great Intelligence, which is a fun obscure villain to bring back. So obscure the Doctor can’t immediately remember it despite inspiring The Web of Fear. The whole story just feels kind of blah, Victorian Christmas has been done with The Unquiet Dead and The Next Doctor, another Clara before the real one is necessary to establish a pattern for the Doctor but becomes a bit tiresome. Oh, and the Intelligence is defeated just by children crying. Despite all the glamor, I wish there was more under the hood in this one.

The Snowmen has an air of ‘been done before’, and we all realize of course the Doctor will return and of course something is up with Clara. It’s not bad by any means, but feels unfocused.

8/10 The memory worm gag with Strax is great though

It looks cool, but can you believe snowmen eat people?

Series 6 Review

Series 6

Series 6

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Madame Vastra

Series 6 is more ambitious than its predecessor, but is done in just by a very odd structuring and not delivering on some key plot points.

The Review

Here’s the scores for the stories

A Christmas Carol: 10/10

The God Complex: 10/10

A Good Man Goes to War: 9.5/10

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People: 9.5/10

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon: 9.25/10

Closing Time: 9/10

The Girl Who Waited: 8.5/10

The Doctor’s Wife: 8.5/10

The Wedding of River Song: 8/10

Let’s Kill Hitler: 8/10

The Curse of the Black Spot: 7.95/10

Night Terrors: 6.75/10

The addition of A Christmas Carol certainly improves the score here, but it’s in the Series 6 blu-ray set so I’m counting it here. The best other story is The God Complex, which doesn’t do anything special but executes its narrative so flawlessly it ends up here. For me the best story of the myth arc is the soaring A Good Man Goes to War where the Doctor rises higher and falls flatter than he ever has. The central conceit around the Doctor dying and feeling he’s not worthy of love unfortunately doesn’t land. The midseason break structuring really break this up, and I think the series and episodes as a whole could’ve done with some serious rearranging. Like, The Girl Who Waited right before The God Complex doesn’t seem to make too much sense, and you’d think there would be more fallout from the former. Still, the entertainment is still there!

8.708/10 A small step down from Series 5

A Good Man Goes to War Review

A Good Man Goes to War

The Doctor’s toughest task yet

Story 218, Episode 777, Series 6 Episodes 7

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Madame Vastra

A massive reveal drops in a story that examines the Doctor and his actions in a way no story to this point has. Many, many questions remain unanswered, but you can’t help but be swept along.

The Review

Madame Kovarian

Demons run when a good man goes to war. The Doctor started out as just a man unable to control his time machine, careening from place to place, doing his best sometimes just to stay alive. Centuries later, he is something rather different, a legendary, hallowed figure, with an entire army under the auspices of the Papal Mainframe here to take him on. As River asks the Doctor, did he ever expect he would turn out like this? Why the Church is after the Doctor is never answered, what plans they have for Melody Pond, Amy and Rory’s daughter, is never answered, but in this episode, we don’t need those answers. The existence of this group determined to defeat the Doctor raises questions for him and us about just who he is.

Would you like me to repeat the question?

The opening to this episode is excellent, starting with Rory boarding a ship and demanding Cybermen tell him where his wife is as the Doctor destroys the legion behind him. Dorium Maldovar is back, and an excellent presence, telling Kovarian and her troops just how afraid of the Doctor they should be. We’ve seen that blue box popping up in various odd places, and when it finally comes for Dorium the silhouette of the Doctor is scary. A young woman, Lorna, is here to see the Doctor because she remembers him as a great warrior. We think the Doctor won the day, but it turns out the real baby Melody has been taken, Amy was caring for Flesh. It’s a loss.

River Song

At the end, the reveal comes from River that she is Amy and Rory’s daughter. It’s a cracker of a reveal, Lorna is from a forest and stitched Melody Pond in her people’s language. The only water in the forest is the river, so it comes out as ‘River Song’. It’s an absolute whopper of a reveal, and one of the best in show history. Sure, her being the Doctor’s wife: easy to guess. No one saw this coming though. Despite all the questions left unanswered, this story is an exciting thrilling one with a dark emotional core and a stunning conclusion. It also introduces us to Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, Vastra feeling just like she’s known the Doctor forever. The reunion of Amy and Rory is also incredibly sweet.

The lack of answers to the overall anti-Doctor plot should’ve been a red flag for the rest of Series 6. Here, it just feels us excited for me. Good men don’t need rules, and today isn’t the day to find out why the Doctor needs so many.

9.5/10 I’m a sucker for stories like this that just pour on excitement

The Doctor: not a Headless Monk

Deep Breath Review

Clara and the Twelfth Doctor

Story 242, Episode 801, Series 8 Episode 1

Doctor: Twelfth

Companions: Clara Oswald, Madame Vastra

50 Years of Doctor Who had wrapped up with The Day of the Doctor, and the Smith era itself ended in The Time of the Doctor. It had been eight months since any Doctor Who, and nearly a year and a half since Season 7. That and we had Peter Capaldi debuting as Doctor #12. Did it live up to the hype? Absolutely.

The Review

Hello beautiful

A dinosaur in Victorian London was quite the way to open it, and I was already thinking how humanity forgot about it. Just take the explanation of the cracks in time erasing events from Series 5. The Paternoster Gang is on the case, and the dinosaur spits out the TARDIS. Strax knocks on the door, the Doctor opens it, sushes him and shuts it. Welcome to the second half-century of Doctor Who. Deep Breath was an amazing episode that introduced us to Peter Capaldi’s version of our favorite Time Lord in style. A far cry from the raw energy of The Eleventh Hour, Deep Breath was just as good and completely different. We start off slow with Clara worrying about the Doctor and wanting Matt Smith back. Madame Vastra tells her off by saying that the Doctor looked young so he could flirt with everyone, and now he is truly showing his age. Clara rages that she has never dreamed of ‘fit young men’ (blatant lies), but more important things are happening. The Doctor awakes to see the dinosaur spontaneously combust. Yup. The Doctor goes undercover to investigate and has a great scene where he scares a homeless man  by wondering why his face is familiar and who he is. He reconnects with Clara as they both respond to an ‘Impossible Girl’ ad, but are taken hostage by clockwork robots wearing human flesh.

No More Flirting

The Doctor shocking abandons Clara and she is forced to try and escape the droids by not breathing, and fails. Clara refuses to answer the Leader’s information, but the Doctor is there for her. The Doctor follows the Leader on a balloon of skin taking the restaurant where and the Leader wishes to go to the Promised Land. The best scene occurs as the Doctor questions how much of the original droid is left and if he knows his face’s source, but realizes the same of him. The Leader refuses to kill himself, the Doctor refuses to kill it. Somehow the Leader ends up impaled on Big Ben. The Doctor and Clara leave and the Doctor acts very distant, but a call from Matt Smith reassures Clara that Peter Capaldi is the Doctor. And he so was.

It’s hard to do this episode justice, but it felt like the version of Doctor Who I had wanted but never knew I did. This is the Doctor now and with Clara I couldn’t be happier. There was a weird post scene with the Leader in ‘Heaven’ with ‘Missy’, apparently the Doctor’s girlfriend. I’ll be we’ll be seeing her more…

9.5/10. A fantastic opener for the second 50 years of the show, Peter Capaldi, and Series 8. Bring it on!

The Twelfth Doctor at last!