Overthinking Doctor Who 5: Enter Eleven

Matt Smith arrives, and things are amazing.

Been a while since the last one of these, huh? Well, I was working on a script, had a tight deadline facing me, and was about to hit a six-episode stretch of pure Doctor greatness, and thought it would be too distracting. And so the 2017 Doctor Who Rewatch hit a pause for a spell. But we’re back. So, where was I?

Ah yes.

There’s a new Doctor on the horizon. The first female Doctor. This has some people wondering if it’s time to try out this show I love so much.

Well, that’s what I’m here for. Because when you love a show as much as I love Doctor Who, you have opinions.

These are mine.

It’s Christmas!

…No it isn’t. Tennant’s farewell tour took up the last two Christmas specials, so the Moffat era begins in the regular series. Moving on.

Series Five: “The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.”

When Nine regenerated into Ten, the show didn’t change much. Sure, The Doctor changed. Became more cheerful, more open to people, ever so slightly less haunted by the Time War. That… that never goes away completely. Not yet, anyway. But other than that, things stayed the same. Same companion, same supporting cast, same Tardis, same Doctor’s Theme, same will-they-won’t-they relationship between The Doctor and Rose, only amplified.

Not so this time.

In series five, everything is new. Steven Moffat took the reigns from Russell T. Davies, he had a new Doctor to break in, so he cleared house. New Tardis interior (after the cliffhanger-resolving cold open, the first cold open in a season premiere since the revival began), new sonic screwdriver, new opening credits, new opening credit theme, new theme for The Doctor (I Am The Doctor, one of my favourites), new supporting cast, new everything. 

This included a new approach to the arc for the year, but we’ll talk about that below.

Also returning for a few episodes is River Song. Who she is and the nature of her relationship with The Doctor is still a mystery, but the truth is coming. In the meantime, she’s around for two key adventures… and does her best to curtail The Doctor’s newfound love of fezzes.

The Doctor

Matt Smith was… still is, by four months and 25 days… the youngest actor to ever play The Doctor. I would say that this meant he brought a new, youthful energy to the role, but he followed David Tennant, and his Doctor was energetic enough to power London. No, being young enough to be unfamiliar with The Doctor meant that in the year (about) between being cast and staring filming, he had to do his research. And as Moffat tells it, one night Matt Smith called him saying “I just watched Tomb of the Cybermen. I’ve got it.”

Matt Smith took his inspiration from the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. And what Troughton brought to the role was a surface-level clownishness that hid how dangerous he truly was from his enemies, and an alienness that comes from never being 100% sure how to interact with humans, resulting in awkward shenanigans.

Also a bow tie. The bow tie is key. Bow ties are cool, or so he assures us.

Eleven combined The Doctor’s brilliance with a general cluelessness about social cues or normal behaviour that was reliably good for a laugh. Witness his attempts at dancing in The Big Bang, his efforts to blend in with the lads in The Lodger, and, of course, the bow tie.

But it’s not just humour Smith can nail, either. Witness the subtle tragedy when Amy asks him if there are other Time Lords: “…No. There were, but there aren’t… just me now.” And then his anger. Ten’s rage burned hot like a volcano, Eleven’s is cold as ice. It’s all there in his six word warning to the Atraxi in his first episode: “Hello. I’m The Doctor. Basically… run.

There’s something about Eleven that spoke to me. That I connected to more than any Doctor before or since (fine, at the time of writing, “since” is two guys). The way he loved the people around him, but never fully knew how to connect with them. And that while Amy was the most important person in his life (something they dig further into down the road), he was not the most important person in hers… and that was okay. He didn’t need to be. Not as long as she was happy. Seeing Amy happy made his own loneliness easier to bear.

I get that.

Also I’m obviously going to connect to an awkward Doctor more than a confident, handsome god who won hearts wherever he went.

The Companion

Amy Pond. The Girl Who Waited.

Being a Scottish redhead in a miniskirt could have been enough to make Amy my favourite companion, but she’s so much more than that. Amy is what saved The Doctor. After an unknown amount of time on his own, after having his hearts broken losing Rose and Donna in one day, after crossing the line on Mars, after being the least ready to face regeneration/death since Six banged his head on the Tardis control panel and became Seven, encountering young Amelia brought him back to himself. He took on a companion again, albeit partly because he saw that she may have needed more help than she knew thanks to the pesky crack in her wall.

Amy is strong, resourceful, and clever. She saw solutions The Doctor was missing on her first day in the Tardis, and she acted as his conscience, his drive to be better, even after she ultimately left. The Doctor becomes the hero he was meant to be because Amy won’t accept anything less. And because there’s no crisis, no enemy, no army he won’t stare down in her name. Although I guess that’s true of all Doctor/Companion relationships since the revival, isn’t it? With the possible exception of Nardole. Who’s Nardole? Spoilers. We’ll get there.

Also, while Amy does develop a crush on The Doctor, she’s nowhere near as passive about it as Rose or Martha. She makes her move early, allowing The Doctor (Not quite so pro-kissing as Ten sometimes was) to try and pump her brakes a little.

No, I heard it as soon as I said it. As Eleven would say… “Oh… shut up, not like that…”

The Universe is Cracked

Moffat’s “everything new” approach included a new way of tackling the season arc.

Russell T. Davies was happy just to say “Bad Wolf” or “Torchwood” once an episode, then finally pay it off in the two-part finale. Well, more “explain why he kept doing that” than “pay it off.” Moffat, on the other hand, likes to dribble out details of the main plot over the course of the year, while often keeping a mystery or two close to his chest while he does it. In the case of series five, the universe is cracked. The Doctor runs into this fact minutes after regenerating, in fact while still finishing his regeneration cycle, clad in the raggedy remains of Ten’s signature suit. A young girl named Amelia Pond asks him to examine a crack in her wall, which turns out to be a crack in time and space, which allows a toothy worm named Prisoner Zero to escape into Amelia’s house, which results in a high-octane real-time adventure that ends in Prisoner Zero having a laugh at The Doctor’s expense. See, he thought Prisoner Zero made the crack. That he doesn’t know where the cracks came from amuses it.

“The Doctor in the Tardis doesn’t know,” it laughs, before delivering a warning: “The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.”

The cracks follow The Doctor and Amy through time and space, but unlike his previous selves and the Bad Wolves, Eleven isn’t willing to just ignore this until it comes back to bite him. When he and Amy spot the cracks, he does his best to look into why one specific crack is following them wherever they go. And the results point him towards a secret Amy’s been keeping about her plans before she left with him.

Basically, every multi-part episode reveals another piece of the puzzle. But in the end, the Pandorica opens. Silence?

Well, you’ll have to wait and see.

The Supporting Cast

Ladies and gentlemen, Arthur Darville as Rory Williams. Rory is introduced as Amy’s boyfriend (a label she is reluctant to fully grant him, possibly because she was having slightly squelchy thoughts about The Doctor at the moment). Later, he’s her fiance (a lot happens to Amy in her first episode). But he’s not the new Mickey, even if I’m occasionally sure there’s an episode where Eleven calls him that by mistake.

Rory is at first terrified of everything Doctor-related, from the aliens of death (his words) to the time travel, and most of all what being around all of this does to people. Girl-people, more specifically. Amy, most specifically. That said… he does grow to love it. He has his worries that Amy’s going to get herself killed trying to impress The Doctor, but one trip to Venice, fish aliens pretending to be vampires notwithstanding, and he’s hooked.

Also Arthur Darville has his skills at comedy and drama. He’s one of my favourite Legends of Tomorrow for a reason.

The Monsters

The Big Bad: It’s a crack in a wall. Or rather a crack in the universe. Anything else I could tell you, you should really learn yourself.

This year in Daleks: In Victory of the Daleks, The Doctor discovers Daleks (or Ironsides, as they’re being called) being used as Britain’s secret weapon during the Blitz. Which he is correct in assuming isn’t a great sign. And… spoilers… it’s not called Victory of the Daleks for no reason. Steven Moffat decided to get off of the “Oh no the Daleks survived somehow! There, killed all the Daleks. Oh no the Daleks survived somehow!” rollercoaster once and for all. Sorry, universe, the Daleks are back to stay. That said, it is a pretty great episode. I mean, some fighters get modified weirdly fast, but other than that, great episode.

Classic Monsters Revived: The Silurians, lizard people from the age of the dinosaurs, who put themselves into suspended animation deep underground… and don’t care for being woken up to find that monkeys have taken over the world and driven it off a cliff. The Silurians are great for moral dilemma episodes, because it’s always hard to claim that they’re in the wrong. This was, after all, their planet first. The main antagonist Silurian(s) is/are played by Neve McIntosh. Like Dan Starkey in The Sontaran Stratagem, she’ll be back… but not as the same Silurian(s).

The Good: The Weeping Angels are back for a two-parter that’s basically a Jack Harkness appearance short of being titled “Steven Moffat’s greatest hits.” There are those who claim that they don’t fully live up to Blink this time, but they’re still effective.

The villains in The Beast Below might not seem like much, until you realise that the real villain is humanity yet again.

Pay attention to that spaceship in The Lodger. You’ll be seeing a similar one soon.

The Doctor gets jumped by an all-star rogues gallery towards the end.

The Bad: I actually didn’t love the Silurians. Just as well they don’t tend to get used as villains after this.

The Ugly: The CGI on Prisoner Zero must have set someone back $12.

High Point

I cannot, will not, shall not downplay my love for The 11th Hour, what may well be the greatest introductory episode for any Doctor ever, even Rose. Remember how good I said The Christmas Invasion became once Ten finally woke up in the last ten minutes? The 11th Hour is a whole episode of that, and it never gets tired. An amazing showcase for Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, and the perfect antidote to the End Of Time blues.

Low Point

You know what I don’t love The Hungry Earth. Cold Blood is decent, but Hungry Earth is just a lot of set-up for part two.

Highlights?

Gonna have to set a higher bar for this, because series five is great. If I don’t get picky I’ll be naming most of the series. Okay, speed round, and then two of particular note… The Beast Below is solid throughout and the moment Amy first shines as a companion. Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone unite two of Steven Moffat’s three best inventions during the Davies era, as River Song recruits The Doctor and Amy to help with the Weeping Angels. Vampires of Venice brings Rory into the fold. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang was, at the time, my favourite two-part finale. Did it make a ton of sense? Maybe not, but next to The Journey’s End or Last of the Time Lords or Parting of the Ways it’s downright straightforward.

Okay. So. Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. Two episodes that would have been the high point of any season that didn’t contain The 11th Hour.

In Vincent and The Doctor, The Doctor sees something alien and nasty-looking in one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings. Having done so, he whisks Amy off to meet the sad, tortured, brilliant artist, despised by the local villagers, but the only man who can save them from the invisible beast stalking their village. It’s one of the greatest examples I can name of how sadness can be beautiful. Well, after all, Moffat creation Sally Sparrow put it best… sad is happy for deep people. And if you don’t tear up a little when Vincent sees the museum, you, sir or madam, are dead inside.

In The Lodger, a man named Craig is trying to figure out how to tell his best friend Sophie that he’s in love with her. This is complicated by the fact that his new flatmate is The Doctor, a strange bloke in a bowtie who begins to outshine Craig in every aspect of his life. Also there’s a sinister being upstairs killing passers-by and leaking an incredibly toxic rot into Craig’s flat but honestly that is not his biggest concern right now. Third biggest at best. This episode is just a delight through and through (despite minimal Amy Pond), and the ending gets to me every time. It’s not only one of my favourite episodes, it became one of my favourite Chameleon Circuit songs.

Skippables?

Once again, my least favourite is indispensable to the main arc, so… not really, no.

Parting Thoughts

Notable Guest Stars: 

It’s almost weird to talk about notable guest stars when the leads of this season are some of the best known and most visible Who veterans of the past ten series. Matt Smith is now Prince Phillip on The Crown (let’s all just try to forget Terminator: Genysis); Karen Gillan is a full-blown movie star now, most notably a Guardian of the Galaxy; in addition to Broadchurch, Arthur Darville founded the Legends of Tomorrow as DC’s time travelling Rip Hunter; and Alex Kingston’s been a notable name since ER. And yet there are more.

  • Watch enough British television and you’re bound to come across Olivia Colman. Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look, The Night Manager, Broadchurch, she keeps busy. She was even a favourite to become the first female Doctor, but her Broadchurch co-star David Tennant said that he knew her schedule, and there was no way she had time. Anyway, she’s the most vocal of Prisoner Zero’s disguises in The 11th Hour.
  • Actor, late night host, and Carpool Karaoke innovator James Corden plays Craig in The Lodger. Or from my perspective, Craig from The Lodger is currently hosting The Late Show.
  • Toby Jones, particularly notable as Arnim Zola from the Captain America movies, torments The Doctor and the Ponds in Amy’s Choice.
  • Bill Nighy is a tour guide who shares The Doctor’s taste in ties in Vincent and The Doctor.
  • Mark Gatiss lends his voice to the pilot Danny Boy in Victory of the Daleks.

Game of Thrones Guest Stars: Iain Glen, who plays Daenerys’ stalwart and Snow-icide Squad member Jorah Mormont, is Octavian, head of the Catholic marines in Flesh and Stone/Time of Angels. And Robert Pugh, known briefly as Caster, the worst person north of the wall (possibly including the ice zombies), is a geologist in The Hungry Earth and In Cold Blood.

In The Beast Below, the people of the UK are fleeing Earth due to deadly solar flares making it uninhabitable. This is a time in human history that The Doctor pops by from a lot of angles. A neat coincidence: the second Matt Smith story and the second Tom Baker story (The Ark in Space) both involve ships of humans fleeing the solar flares.

The Daleks discover that The Doctor does not, in fact, have a self-destruct button for the Tardis: “Okay, it’s a jammie dodger, but I was promised tea!” This will be Eleven’s favourite biscuit for the duration.

“It’s a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.” They get that particular fez off of his head, but he’ll never give them up entirely.

Doctor Quote of the Year: “Bowties are cool” and “Come along, Pond” are real contenders, but in this, Eleven’s first series, it can only be “GERONIMO!”

Historical Guest Star of the Year: Prime Minister and friend to The Doctor Sir Winston Churchill commands the totally-not-Daleks-don’t-worry-about-it Ironsides, and we already mentioned Vincent Van Gogh. Both turn up a second time as part of a historical chain that gets The Doctor to the Pandorica.

Saddest Moment: “I don’t understand. We were on the hill, I can’t die here.”