Hello there! I began watching 2005’s rebooted Doctor Who from the very first airing of the very first episode, at the impressionable age of nine years old. I’ve since rewatched various seasons at various times in my life, but with the arrival completion of season 11 and Jodie Whittaker I’ve decided to (perhaps belatedly) rewatch seasons 1-10, providing short reactions to each episode. I’ll make one post per season and, just a warning, full spoilers are inbound.
Season 5 is the first jumping on point for the show since season 1. From the top of my head there’s literally no need to watch the first four seasons as the entire cast changes, and due to some overly convenient plot stuff that gets explained throughout the season, none of the events of the first four seasons are canonical regarding present day Earth and humanity’s relationship with aliens. Speaking of which…
Season 5 saw the start of established Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat as the show’s new showrunner, replacing Russel T Davies. I find Moffat to be polarising as a showrunner, but I’m also aware of the amount of undue negativity that gets thrown his way, so I’ll try to be fair. His version of Doctor Who is much more spontaneous and less formulaic, with plot threads interwoven throughout multiple seasons, rewarding viewers for paying attention to seemingly insignificant details. However, I would be lying if I said that his disregard for the continuity of the first four seasons didn’t frustrate me (we’ll get into it), that his time travel logic made any sense (we’ll get into it), or that most of his larger plot threads succeed in their lofty ambitions… yeah, we’ll get into that in a few seasons.
I’ve credited Matt Smith as my favourite Doctor in the past and I don’t expect that to change in this rewatch, but I’d like to note that I didn’t particularly enjoy my first viewing of season 5 in 2010. It was only when I went back and rewatched it before Capaldi’s first season that I truly appreciated Moffat’s Who and Smith’s Doctor. I’m personally hoping that the same will occur when I rewatch Capaldi for the first time.
Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour
Poor, nervous Rory. You’ll get there, mate.
This was a brilliant introduction to Smith’s Doctor. At a glance, he mirrors Tennant’s spontaneity and energy, but I think that’s true of any Doctor’s first few episodes regarding their predecessor. And yet, when I try to apply Tennant’s face to some of those scenes it just doesn’t quite fit. I can’t quite explain how, but Smith’s Doctor carries Tennant’s energy while putting his own unique spin on it, even from the start.
This episode in general just feels more… modern. A lot of the old habits and conventions of the first four seasons are thrown out, and it’s honestly quite refreshing. Plus, the setting is indicative of the contextual Earth during Smith’s era – Ecclestone and Tennant had stories on global stages such as Downing Street and the Valiant, but Smith operates out of a small village with no camera time dedicated to the reactions of the wider world. It’s the Doctor’s story, not humanity’s.
Episode 2: The Beast Below
I’ve seen people call Moffat’s Who more “fairy tail”. Well, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The Beast Below immediately plunges Matt Smith’s Doctor into a story with an impossible decision, giving the opportunity for viewers to witness Smith’s emotional range after so long of being used to Tennant’s. And in this episode we see what Smith does so well: anger. There’s something about the Doctor’s anger in this iteration that’s so captivating. It doesn’t feel blind or directionless or blustering, it feels righteous and sad. If Tennant was the master of sadness, Smith is the master of anger.
Episode 3: Victory of the Daleks
Best buds, apparently…
Okay, so this episode highlights a couple of things I dislike about Moffat’s Who. Firstly, this is the episode where they establish that most of the Earth-affecting events of the last four seasons have un-happened due to the consequences of this season’s narrative arc, the cracks in the universe. This particularly irks me because it means that little Adelaide from the Waters of Mars episode never saw the Dalek, therefore never went to space, never inspired her granddaughter, and never set the human race on its path to the stars, a fixed point in time which was so important to maintain just a few episodes ago. This by itself can be ignored, but it’s indicative of a disregard for previous continuity on a large scale in Doctor Who from here on out. Secondly, they don’t even try to explain the survival of the Daleks this time around, another indication of a change in Moffat’s Who – the chronology of meta-time-travel events is kind of overlooked, too. I’ll admit there’s merit to be found there if you’d rather get on with the story and not worry about the baggage of previous seasons, but that’s not me.
Besides that… yeah, it was a decent episode I suppose. I still don’t know if the Doctor being chums with Churchill is an Old Who reference or if it’s just an offscreen thing, but I guess Churchill knows the deal with Time Lords, so there’s that.
Episode 4 and 5: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone
Now now, there’ll be plenty of time for that later
This was a solid two-parter, with the return of Moffat’s strongest creation (albeit made less unique when reduced to neck snapping and given a voice), and also River Song. River gets a bit exasperating at parts as she’s basically a teaser for future narrative arcs in the form of one smug character. That being said, it is once again interesting to watch this with the foreknowledge of who she is and her relationships with the Doctor and Amy. (It certainly makes the end of Flesh and Stone hilariously disturbing.)
The concept of a light which removes your entire existence from reality is sufficiently horrifying, though. It is basically a Retcon Beam, but I do like that they used it to address the whole giant Cyberman in the middle of Victorian London ordeal (although they’d later forget this lesson with Capaldi’s first episode).
It feels like this is the story where Matt Smith really started to mould the Doctor into his own iteration. Previously it felt like he was maybe taking some cues from Tennant, but in this two-parter I see much more of the eleventh Doctor that I recognise from future episodes.
Episode 6: The Vampires of Venice
This totally-not-rush-job screencap captures the nature of their season 5 relationship perfectly
So I guess we’re going to deal with Amy trying to cheat on Rory by… sending them to Venice and having Amy glare at Rory until he gives in and decides to forgive her? Erm… strange narrative choices aside, this was an interesting adventure in one of my favourite time periods / settings of history, although there was nothing particularly outstanding about this episode. The Venice plot definitely took a backseat to Amy and Rory’s relationship.
Episode 7: Amy’s Choice
Ah, Doctor Who. Full of danger and adventure and… what do you mean, “no this isn’t a behind the scenes shot”?
Forget the Vampires of Venice, this was the episode that thoroughly resolved Amy’s remaining indecision about Rory, and it did so fantastically. I can’t think of another scenario which might cause Amy to come to her senses as succinctly as a living dream in which Rory dies, as he does, without the knowledge as to whether it was real.
By the way… I’m ashamed to admit that on my previous two viewings of this episode, I never quite got who the Dream Lord was, even despite the explanation at the end. But the fact that it’s the Doctor’s negativity made manifest, and given his dialogue throughout the episode… that is just heartbreaking. Fantastically heartbreaking, and so depressingly similar to our own inner critics.
“But those things he said about you… you don’t think any of that’s true.” The Doctor’s reaction to that remark is one of the reasons why Eleven is my favourite. He might be a 900 year old time travelling alien, but sometimes he is more of a mirror for the human condition than any other character I can think of.
Episode 8 and 9: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood
T I M E C A N B E R E W R I T T E N
An interesting story exploring the nature of prejudice and fear in humans and others, where they come from and what they can cause, and navigating all of it in a first contact scenario. Plus, the fantasy of a sentient race of creatures hibernating beneath the Earth is fantastically Doctor Who. And at the end when Rory dies, as he does, the exploration of having someone unwritten from your life is a brilliantly executed tragedy.
Episode 10: Vincent and the Doctor
This episodes gets heavy.
Very emotional episode, dealing with the nature of depression and self-worth. I don’t know enough about Van Gogh to know how accurate this episode was contextually, but I know that much of it – especially the ending – resonates with me and likely many others as a creator with little self-belief and less success.
Episode 11: The Lodger
I *could* provide context here, but where’s the fun in that?
This is a brilliantly light-hearted, good-humoured episode that sees the Doctor trying to fit into everyday society and interface with a flatmate who has no idea he’s a time travelling alien from another galaxy. It would be a fantastic episode, if it weren’t for the small problem that it wasn’t exactly… finished. The Doctor states that somebody on the top floor was trying to build a TARDIS, and for some reason they’re no longer there and the ship is working automatically, but never does he stop to explain or wonder exactly who was trying to build one, or why, or how, or where the heck they came from in the first place. What started off as a very interesting development in the series turned out to be a dud. Ah well.
Episode 12 and 13: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
I’m actually not a huge fan of this scene, it feels too… exaggerated?
So, this finale is full of excellent character driven moments, with fun quirks and emotional pauses. And at face value it was entertaining, and exciting, and the only person who could complain about it is somebody who cares far too much about a show about time travel and aliens making plausible sense. So that’s where I come in, hello.
This would be about the time that I gave up on the show having plausible time travel. If you’ll recall season 4’s episode Turn Left, I praised it for being an episode full of time travel and a parallel dimension that made sense when you thought about it for long enough. They close the loop, they return Donna to her timeline in a way that makes sense, and they respect the rules of cause and effect; an entire universe was created around the idea of a single turn.
This finale is everything which that episode was not. It takes some of the pre-established rules of time travel within the show and throws them out the window, and it constantly boasts about unravelling a mystery that it does not allow the viewer to take part in solving, as the rules are designed for the moment and not for continuity. Some things are half-explained such as the exploding TARDIS and the Pandorica’s ability to remake the universe, but nothing is ever fully followed through, such as why the TARDIS exploded (they set it up for another season but I don’t recall them ever revisiting it) or how the Nestine Consciousness was able to build something so complex as a Pandorica purely through the dreams of a little girl. Plus, River Song’s entire timeline makes less sense than ever due to the events of this episode. This is a finale that wants to be complicated but simply doesn’t make sense.
One last nitpick, as this is the best episode to quote examples of it: Moffat can’t keep away from absolutes. Everything is the biggest something in the history of the universe; the Pandorica was built to contain “the most fearsome warrior in the history of the universe”, River contacts the Doctor by making the “oldest writing in the history of the universe”, even the Romans are referred to as the “greatest military machine in the universe”. It’s okay to do this occasionally, but if you’re going to make big proclamations, you should at least stick to them later on.
Season 5 Summary
I’ve seen people say that season 5 was the eleventh Doctor’s best season, but I still have fonder memories of seasons 6 and 7. And yet, I don’t recall why I disliked season 5 so much back in 2010. It’s full of solid episodes and has more narrative threads lasting throughout the season than ever before, tying the adventures together in a way that keeps you hooked, which is arguably something that the show is missing nowadays. Amy and Rory make fantastic companions, and while the show was never the same after Tennant, the fact that it’s still this good afterwards is definitely something to be celebrated.
And I promise, I did enjoy the finale, I just can’t stop myself from criticising this show that I love. I don’t know why. I wish I could stop. But I can’t, so here we are!
Right, this is the point when I’d say “Onwards, to <new Doctor> or <new companion>!”, but this is the first time in New Who’s history that a season has ended without a departure of some sort. So uh, onwards to… 1969?
Perpetually Perturbed 