This hurts me to say but I’m losing faith with the new series of Doctor Who. I’ve loved the Moffat / Smith era more than the previous DW era so far with a strong series five and six but I’m just not feeling series seven.
Pre-Christmas there were some really strong episodes and the episodes all worked well together, from the ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ through to the touching departure of the Ponds. But since then the series has been average at its best.
The opener ‘The Bells of St. John’ was a fun romp but the second episode was possibly the worst since Steven Moffat took over. ‘Cold War’ and ‘Hide’ have been fun but unremarkable and this ‘meh’-factor continues onto this week’s episode, a promising run around the inside of the Doctor’s famous craft that, until the final fifteen minutes, felt forced. It wasn’t quite as bad as the Photoshopping on Matt Smith’s grabbing-on left hand in this week’s filmic poster, but it still wasn’t that marvellous.
The plot saw the Doctor remove many of the protections of the TARDIS to allow Clara to bond with the craft that appears to be rejecting her, but as he does the ship gets targeted by a magnetic lock from an intergalactic scrap merchant and three space scrap dealers decide that it’s not worth the effort it took to haul it in. But, with Clara trapped somewhere within the TARDIS, the Doctor has to convince them to join him on a journey through his bigger-on-the-inside phone box to rescue her, chased as they will soon be by strange, deformed creatures.
‘Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS’ isn’t a bad episode. The concept is fun and the set design varied and interesting, with a neat nod to the library and the swimming pool, plus the recently revealed title of the last episode of this run. However, the opening plot contrivances to get the concept off the ground feel forced and perfunctory and the first thirty minutes of running and chasing proving to be boring. The sets are great, the exploration fun, but ultimately the plot was shallow and tedious.
The episode improved in the last fifteen minutes with the concept of just who the zombies are but then the ending gets confused and muddled and, aside from a welcome return from the cracks in time after a two years absence, the finale quite literally presses the big reset button, which is either hideously clichéd or a nod towards the limitations of wrapping up sci-fi stories.
The episode gave us a little more development into Clara as a character and explored the TARDIS more with nods to many previous episodes, the Eye of Harmony and the Time War whilst also looking forward, and the set design was mostly varied and interesting, and the continued concept of the TARDIS being a living being, continued on, most recently, from ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ was well done. The creatures themselves were also kept fairly mysterious, filmed as they were in a constant haze, and their origins a little shocking and scary. It’s just a shame these elements were wrapped up in a samey chase plot and big reset ending, with a sub-plot about the scrap dealers and their true origins not really making up for it.
I’m hoping there’s going to be a great ending to this series that makes everything we’re seeing jump up a notch in an ‘aha’ moment, because at the moment I’m really finding this series of Doctor Who, in particular this half, rather average. And that’s a shame.
