Season five is over, and with it Moffat’s first run on the show without Davies. The show has been taken in a vastly different direction as far as it’s secrets go, and even somewhat with the age group that it’s trying to appease, but it has been a good season and Smith has done a terrific job as the Doctor. But where does the finale leave us?
In the finale, we find out that despite the universe being destroyed and all the stars going out everywhere due to the crack in reality caused by the explosion of the TARDIS, a few choice characters remain alive due to being anomalies. This includes the Doctor, plastic Rory, River Song, and little Amy. You might be confused, but don’t worry – it only gets more confusing. With one massive bang exploding at all points in reality at all times, how is the Doctor going to stop all of history from being destroyed?
Follow me behind the cut as I take a look at the final episode of season 5.
There is a lot riding on this episode. It has to be believable, it has to fit in with the timeline, and it has to wrap up this story. In it’s most basic elements, does it do that? Yes and no. As far as fitting in with the timeline, it does that great. Of course you have to buy in to the time travel aspect of the show to get with it, but I’m going to guess that if you watch Doctor Who you probably get the time travel thing by now. If anyone has shown us that he gets the complexities and the oddities that revolve around time travel, it’s Moffat – and this episode helps prove that most assuredly. As the Doctor bounces around his own timeline, we begin to see how it fits early on, and it’s a mix of cleverness and hilarity. Smith certainly has his Doctor down pretty tight, and his dance skills are a sight to behold.
Of course, the believability is also highly in question. You half to buy into the anomaly aspect with faith, and the whole element of Amy Pond’s brain and her ability to remember things into existence… well, again, it’s faith. You either buy it or you don’t. Me? I’m a fan, and I like to see the better elements of the show, so I try not to get too pessimistic about it. The anomaly element? Ok. I’ll buy into that one. With the amount of time travel that the Doctor and crew do, it stands enough to reason that maybe they could exist outside of time long enough to save it. Amy Pond and her amazing brain, though? Not so much that one. Again, it’s one of those things that you have to either go with or not, but as much as I greatly enjoyed the scenes of the Doctor going back in time – and I loved the tie in to the Angel episodes – the final scene of Amy at her wedding just didn’t play out very well. The results were fine, but the execution was pretty wonky.
My main thing about the finale is: holy questions! What is this, LOST? Doctor Who always has a great way of wrapping up loose ends so that the next season can be a brand new story, and while there are always tie-in elements from a previous season, it’s never as bad as this. Now we are wondering why the TARDIS blew up, what caused it to get blocked by concrete, and most importantly – who the hell did it? Now, we all have theories. That’s the fun of television. Personally, I thought that the voice sounded kind of like Davros, but that’s just a blind guess based on my knowledge of the show. I’m just unsure how I feel about Moffat doing this to us. Granted, I love unanswered questions, but I spent the entire episode shouting at my TV, “Yeah, but who blew up the TARDIS?!” and to not get an answer was … well, unexpected and a tad jarring. But in that nice way. It’s probably like standing by those jets in a pool – you know you shouldn’t like it, but you kind of do anyway.
I’ve gotta say – ultimately, this season of Doctor Who rocked. It had it’s ups and downs as any show and any season would, but where a lot of people were afraid, I think this should’ve paid off well for just about everyone. Smith as the new Doctor was great, and I don’t know very many people who aren’t in love with Amy Pond/Karen Gillan to a certain extent. The show is certainly headed in a different direction than how Davies did things, but it certainly isn’t necessarily bad. Different yes, but not bad. The next season certainly has a whole slew of possibilities – who is River Song? Who was that voice? And who, or what, blew up the TARDIS?
One thing is for sure though – Doctor Who is still the most consistently entertaining science fiction program on television.