Doctor Who - Current thoughts on Series Five

Business as usual for the Doctor and Amy

We are more than halfway through Series Five now, and it's only a couple of hours before Cold Blood airs in the UK. I thought it was time to give my current views on the series as a whole.

Matt Smith effortlessly proved himself to be a great Doctor from his very first line in The Eleventh Hour. He is able to be childlike and also to take command where necessary. But while Karen Gillian and Arthur Darvill have been good at acting out their respective roles, I am less sold on the characters they are playing. Amy Pond sometimes feels like a collection of quips rather than a real person. Rory fares slightly better, having real human responses to dangerous situations such as panic and fear. Unlike Amy, he has also showed compassion for victims such as the flower girl in Vampires of Venice.

The structure of the series is similar to the one used in the RTD era. We open with a companion introduction, get an obligatory Dalek episode and then the mid season two parter with a focus on monsters. It's likely that Moffat wanted a similar structure to ease viewers into accepting this new style of Doctor Who. On the other hand, the crack in time story arc has been weaved into the narrative far more successfully than the "Bad Wolf" or "Torchwood" plot strands of the Russell T Davies era. For the first time in the modern series, I have no idea what the shape of the plot of the final episodes will be. The companion has her own secrets from the Doctor, involving a wedding day and there is no clear big bad yet.

However, with the exception of The Beast Below and Amy's Choice, the individual episodes are playing it safe. The villains are straightforwardly evil and the good guys are straightforwardly good.

I think what's happened, is that the show is being compromised. Victory aside, there haven't been any truly bad episodes. Most of them are just average.

We're missing huge chunks of character development. In the RTD era, each companion's experience was treated as something special, whether it was stepping out of the Tardis doors onto an alien planet, or simply recieving a Tardis key. But when Amy first steps out onto an alien planet in Time of Angels she says nothing and barely reacts to the experience. Key moments, such as Amy receiving a Tardis key, or learning the properties of the Psychic Paper, happen off screen. If Rory is to die, and the rumours suggest he will, then will the show really be able to show Amy's grief?

Russell is into the big and the flamboyant. Steven is into smaller, more intricate and complex stories. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

The monsters are a drab bunch this year. They all seemed to based on generic "scary" things like status, shadows and vampires. We've seen it all before in different media. The RTD era could occasionally produce something weird and wonderful, like a monster made up of fat. One of my favourite modern series moments was in  The End of the World, where the twist is that the dark, cloak wearing, metal clawed villains are NOT the main villains.Steven Moffat relies on far more predictable scares such as shadows, statues or snake headed creatures and it's a little disappointing.

The muted colour tones of the current series are annoying to me and potentially damage the show. Watching the Adverts summed this up. Seeing the Ashes to Ashes trailer, with its colourful lights and then seeing the trailer for The Hungry Earth, with dark shadows. The former leaps out at you. The latter just seems ho hum.

If the next few episodes fail to improve, then Series Five will be an average season with a good ending. Not one of the best. If by next year, they sort this out, if they really take the Doctor to interesting places, then we'll be good. As it is, the series is okay so far, but only okay.