Fictitious Endeavours

So DH had never seen any Twelve stories (Somehow) although I did drag him to theater to see Twelve regenerate because that Was Not A Missable Thing. So Junior conned him into watching, but FIRST we had to do a five (FIVE) episode run-up to the regeneration ep, Junior's Rules(TM). (Because DH never saw most of Eleven's eps either. What can I say - he never got over Four. Yeeeah.)

So here are Eleven's last five eps.


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Co-written by Moff and yeah, it shows. I'd forgotten how painful Moff eps could be. Junior and I meta about this a lot but basically Tennant and Capaldi can make even a Moffat ep look good, but Matt Smith just... can't. No issues with Matt Smith, give him a good script and he'll act the hell out of it. But he can't make crap into gold.

Anyway.

I was so bored for 90% of this ep. Not creepy not engaging. Only picked up when Eleven jumped through the rift and played tag with the monster. The ending was a little bit cute, not gonna lie (aside from the Doctor getting all 12 year old school boy when he realized he was talking about a "love story" with his arm around Clara. *facepalm*.)

And I so disagree we needed to watch this for Twelve.

Verdict: Watch the last 10 minutes or skip it entirely.


Stats:

The only Doctor -Companion trauma is boredom


Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Moffat ep. Sigh.

Okay, TARDIS eps get an automatic pass from me. Sorry, not sorry.

And this ep is not.... great. EXCEPT for the TARDIS parts. Eleven *almost* goes OOC (though I guess for Eleven OOC is IC? I dunno.) Clara is Very Annoying. Side characters are douchbags. TARDIS is flawless. So Yay?

There isn't even really much story to speak of. TARDIS gets broked, timey whimy happens because TARDIS so nevermind. But exploring TARDIS is the point so forget the rest. Done.


Verdict: TARDIS Ep. Auto watch, I don't care how bad it is.

The Stats

Doctor: none
Companion Trauma: Becomes a lava monster. Sorta. But not really. yeah.


The Crimson Horror

Okay- Third Moff ep in a row (I don't care if Mark Gatiss did co-write, it still has Moff prints all over it)
I was beginning to check out. The only, ONLY reason I paid any attention was the Paternoster Gang. They are second only to the TARDIS in my "gets a pass" eps. The story was meh, the villains were so meh, it was all just MEH. But the Paternoster banter made it almost worth it so there you go.

Verdict: Watch it for the Paternosters, tune out the rest.

Stats:

Doctor: knocked out, unknown cause
Companion Trauma: "preserved" zombified? put in a trance? IDK



Nightmare in Silver

Drop everything and watch, Neil Gaiman co-wrote it.

That said, despite being Neil Gaiman and Cyberman it's not high on my cyberman ep scale (and some of those include Big Finish). It was a good ep but there are better Cyberman eps out there. But I have to say - see good script rule above- Matt Smith acted the hell out of this one. That's half the reason the ep was worth watching. Clara was a bit annoying. And Serious child-minding fail. Who left her in charge of kids again?

Verdict: Gaiman and Cybers. WATCH IT.



The Name of the Doctor

The Moff at his most problematic.

AKA - if three times is a pattern does that make five times a fetish?

Where Clara gets the full Magical Girl/Magical Companion treatment. I have feelings about Clara that run from meh to *facepalm* - and I think that very much has to do with who is writing the script. (I think we can guess what writer I mean). This ep was much ado about nothing. (Though I hate using my fav Shakes play as a dis ;) ). It was very much Moff shouting through Eleven and Clara "LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM!" while delivering a not-very clever duex-ex-machina just to get himself out of the corner he painted himself into.

(Do I get a prize for most cliches in one paragraph?)

Verdict: Kinda have to watch if you want to know what The Impossible Girl thing is. Just don't expect much


Doctor: Gets his timeline broke or something, whatever
Companion Trauma: gets split into a dozen versions of duex-ex-machina, because Moff doesn't understand how meta works


The Day of the Doctor AKA The 50 Anniversary Special

So much Moff.

GAH, I have such mixed feelings about this one. Junior has so many rants about this ep and especially the one following. It centers about Moffats attempts at season-long arcs and worse - regeneration-long arcs. And this ep and the one following he does bend over backward to cram every throwaway line, reference and dangling plot thread into the story. Aaand, it's not great.

BUT- we can't argue with Ten being back, a random appearance by Four- who's not Four somehow but like Doctor Thirty Eight or something, lol. I'm not going to go into the War Doctor. I'm less mad about that than I used to be, but still not my favorite idea.

Especially when Paul McGann was RIGHT THERE and in fact DID come back for the 50th. I'd always HC'd that it WAS Eight who fought the Time War and regenerated into Nine immediately afterward, since he so clearly was "new" in Rose. I love Eight from Big Finish So on some level, I'll always be salty we got cheated out of a Full Eight Ep in the regular, actual show and not a half-assed webisode.

Back to the positives it kinda nice (kinda) Moff tries to walk back some of the darkness of Doctor as destroyer of his own people. But he arguably makes it darker first? And it's an odd choice from someone who blithely had Eleven makes humans commit genocide on the Silence. The Moment is one of better parts of the ep - but again, I almost wish Moff had the balls to make it full on Bad Wolf.

So tl;dr so many mixed feelings, lol


Verdict: Must See (PLUS the Webisode because Eight OMG) - but GAH- this ep is a mess.

Stats:

Doctor(s): Having to put up with himself
Companion Trauma: Having to put up with multiple Doctors



The Time of the Doctor

100% Moffat ep. And it was..... 100% Moffat. All his dumb Fanboy on Usenet ideas coming out to play. There's a reason we don't let rando fanboys run things. It was an... ep. Stuff happened. New regeneration cycle acquired a la the master in Five's run. Leave it to Moff to pick up the loophole the Classic Who writers set up early on and run all the way home with it. Whee.

Moff gets slight points for making the Doctor chill out and settle down (sorta) for one regen. But I have to re-deduct points for it being done in the messiest way possible.

Verdict: Regen ep. Have to watch. I guess.

Stats:

Trauma for the audience

ETA: review for The Name of Doctor The Day of the Doctor and correct review for The Time of the Doctor.

Not that I'm complaining, really. It's kinda nice to just watch and not really care. I'm as of today caught up to the angels eps. I just didn't want to be bothered with the cliffhanger. I could have cheerfully waited for another week but my son starting bouncing for new eps nownownow.

But anyway. Eleven.

Eleven is okay. But, then again, I think Six is okay. And Six stole "my" Doctor away so... yeah, ya know.

( some meta, some mommy rage, and possible spoilers )