My Not So Minimal Reviews of 'Doctor Who' Season 6 (2011)

Score Out Of 10 (10 being the highest)

There is so much going on in these episodes but they do not feel as cluttered as, say, Big Bang or The Wedding of River Song.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again; I like it now, though why the Doctor is happy to help somebody who's murdered lots of people is questionable. Is it hinting that the Doctor used to be the same then changed his ways and can see that Avery can do the same? No, thought not. Raised from 3 to 5 anyway.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again: as with ...Black Spot this is better than I first thought, it has atmosphere, a good cast and tight script. Raised from 3 to 6.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again: this is even better on second viewing, I just wonder if the whole thing could have been done in one episode rather than two. The use of doppelgangers is such a boring / unoriginal idea yet The Doctor's Wife was an excellent, original idea squeezed into one episode: should have been the other way round? Raised from 5 to 7.

Although the 'revelation' about who River Song is was hardly a surprise it was nicely handled. Aside from this the episode was a bit flat; the episode builds up to the Doctor's appearance then, once he appears it comes across as business as usual. There's some anger displayed, but not enough to live up to the title.

I really liked the Silurian and maid, they would be welcomed back should they ever appear again. The Sontaran, much as I winced at first when I saw he was almost a jokey character, I also grew to like a lot and he, for me, is second only to the great Lynx from The Time Warrior.

Negatives about this episode: establishing the background of a married couple only to have one of them killed virtually straight away. The point being? The other main negative is that the episode seems only to exist to establish who River Song is, it is not a particularly epic episode with which to take a mid-series break. My thoughts at the end of watching it seemed only to consist of the words 'So what?'

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again for the 3rd time: Once again, much better on repeated viewing, raised from 6 to 8.

30th August 2014: I recently got around to watching Season 7 extra Demon's Run - 2 Days Later in which it's revealed how Strax survived his supposed death in A Good Man Goes To War. I loved it. It was such a cheeky explanation yet so authentic that I bought into it straight away. I wonder perhaps though if it would have been better served as a flashback explanation in the series proper. No? Ok.

DW Confidential shows the filming of the scene where Mels lays 'dying' and contains extra lines (in black below):

Mels: When I was little I was gonna marry you

Doctor: Oh. Good idea, let's get married. You stay alive and I'll marry you, deal?

Mels: Cross you heart and hope to die?

Doctor: Yeah, yeah, of course, twice.

(which would then presumably be followed the the next line as broadcast:)

Mels: Shouldn't you ask my parents' permission?

(I mention this mostly because I liked those lines and wish they'd been left in.)

10th June 2012: Recently watched this again and I liked it a whole lot more this time! There's a lot of interesting imagery in this one and has a good cast.

The Cybermen were yet again defeated oh-so easily but, for once, this does not jar too much as this is a story about the Doctor and Craig, and of the Doctor's supposed last day.

The Silence are one of the most interesting enemies in the history of Doctor Who and whilst they are sparingly used yet again, they were effective when used.

Amy's very real response to allowing the kidnapper of her daughter, Kovarian, to be killed by the species she works for was also very effective and showed that River got some of her characteristics from her mother. Having said that, if everything is reset did Kovarian even die?

Due to the jumble of assaults on the senses one or two things do almost pass you by: the death of The Brigadier for instance. Had this been the focus of the episode at the start it might have come across as more than a throwaway scene that you forget the moment the next assault on the senses comes along. It was a nice idea to do something to mark the passing of The Brigadier though, and I'd like to think that, whilst the 11th Doctor only got to hear about his death, in a former incarnation the 7th Doctor had been by his bedside when it happened.

So the Doctor tricked River into 'marrying' him just so he could reset everything (again)? Great stuff. I really like the relationship though, and look forward to more encounters.

As for how the Doctor got out of his own death, whilst not wildly surprising, it was still deftly handled.

I was hoping we'd find out about how photos of Amy and a baby end up in an orphanage in America but this, like the explanation for the exploding Tardis from the last series, are yet to come. (Update Saturday 20th September 2014: Nope, the photo was never explained).

Overall, I thought everything had been thrown into this one, that there were too many unnecessary distractions and that a simple battle against Kovarian and The Silence would have been more effective.

The corresponding Doctor Who Confidential was a good one to finish on; I liked the section with River telling her history so far but as per her timeline, it was a nice Coda to the last three series, and was as much a mini episode as Death Is The Only Answer, the Script to Screen episode written by school children.

Farewell Confidential, we'll soon be bidding farewell to The Sarah Jane Adventures too, and Torchwood, well, who knows? Doctor Who will return however, and even though it's over 40 years since I first started watching the series, this is something to look forward to.

I suspect this will be one I'll enjoy more on second viewing; it's well cast, it has a very polished look about it but by halfway through watching it my attention span was wandering onto other matters and found myself not engaged enough to care what happened. The last scene with the Doctor, Amy and Rory was nicely done and easily the highlight of this special. I only wish they had been in it more: it seems to be the case now that a guest star is more important than the regular companions and it is a trend I wish would stop.

The audience figures and appreciation index show how popular this special was, and it's pleasing that, even if I didn't particularly enjoy it, that I seem to be in the minority.

(Update written 12th January 2014): I watched this again a week or so before The Time of the Doctor and I appreciated it more on second viewing. It's nicely cast and is beautifully presented. The only question I really have is what happened to Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and the other one's characters? Were they killed when Sue Brockman tipped over their craft?

I'd like to see Claire Skinner return as the same character perhaps as a regular companion in future episodes / series (leave the rest of the family behind love) as the character is strong enough and able to adapt to new situations. She would work well with Peter Capaldi's Doctor as an older companion to an older-looking Dr. Not that I'm in a rush for Jenna No-Hyphenated-Name-Anymore Coleman to leave though: just saying.

My Not So Minimal Reviews of 'Doctor Who' Season 7 (2012 to 2013)

Score Out Of 10 (10 being the highest)

I'd have also liked Pond Life to have been shown as part of this episode as it contained humour that would have counter-pointed the darkness of the rest of the episode.

Those nano-genes: haven't the Daleks now created the ultimate weapon that they could use to take over the entire existence of everything with? Yes.

I've only watched this one 3 times so far but have enjoyed it every time. Jenna-Louise Coleman is going to be a great addition to the series, no matter how many different characters she ends up playing.

This should have been a 2-parter.

If you were affected by Susan The Horse's story, please phone the Horse Transgender Hotline on...

This should have been a 2-parter.

Why were the Angels so keen on Rory though?

This should have been a 2-parter.

I love the visuals for the latest title sequence (the best since the series returned in 2005), I love the title music (though why was the end theme still the version as previously used, eh, eh?) and I loved the new Tardis interior. I also liked the idea of the Tardis being at the top of a staircase on a cloud. Nice.

JLC is a very competent actress and I think her characters are great.

"Do not make any attempt to escape or you will be obliterated. May I take your coat?". What can I say? Strax is back and I am immensely pleased. He is a great character (don't care if he was killed last time, I'm glad he's back) and he had some great lines. I find this alliance of former enemies (Strax the Sontaran and Vastra the Silurian) a more realistic alliance than when the Doctor had the Ice Warriors on his side in The Curse of Peladon: how I cursed back then.

It was nice that the guest star didn't dwarf the story and I felt that this was a great special. Now that just about all the Christmas icons have been used (Santas, trees, angels and snowmen), hopefully future? Christmas specials can really be inventive.

Just one thing missing from recent and probably future episodes: cliff-hangers. Doctor Who is: The Doctor, The Tardis, companion/s, threat/menace, theme and cliff-hangers. In years gone by the UK produced cliff-hanger serials where the USA rarely did, now the USA produces many multi-part series and Doctor Who now consists of single-episode stories. The advantage of single-episode stories are that if they consist of weak plots, it's over and done with in one episode. The advantages of 2 / 3 part stories is that cliff-hangers are usually remembered and bring the audience back, that characters/plots can be better developed, and that budgets can be better stretched. Please bring back the cliff-hangers. Series 6 only had 3 x 2-part stories but the series managed to have 7 cliff-hangers. More please, more. Thank you and good night.

JLC continues to delight in her role as Clara and completely fits this series. Much as I felt that Amy / Rory were booted from the series too soon JLC just about makes you forget they were ever in it. There are great signs that Clara will become part of the pantheon of best-loved companions.

Matt Smith truly is The Doctor, one can imagine him as a younger version of William Hartnell's Doctor (albeit not as likely to get 'involved' until he meets Ian and Barbara) and he also strongly references a younger-seeming version of Patrick Troughton's Doctor; playful, serious, brave, afraid.

I just wasn't grabbed by this particular episode overall though.

I felt uncomfortable with the pre-credit sequence however, the idea of The Doctor effectively invading someone's privacy (even with the mystery surrounding Clara/s), in effect becoming a time-stalker, feels unpalatable to me.

My attention span, as with the previous episode, did wander from time to time, I felt the scene between Clara and Mary first meeting / talking went on far too long, that the various scenes involving singing was as cringe worthy as The Ood singing the Doctor to his sleep in 2010's The End of Time Part 2 and that even the simple sort-it-all-out resolution was overlong and dull. Beautiful effects and an apparent richness of budget throughout though.

What's the obsession with singing though?

How this one could have been even better: a 2-parter in which the Ice Warrior ship turns up at the end to part 1 with part 2 consisting of a battle to save Earth from a number of Ice Warriors.

Who can predict just how many future Big Finish 11th Doctor CDs will feature the currently untold adventures of The Doctor, Clara, Captain Zhukov and Professor Grisenko on their way to the South Pole?

It was a small-cast episode, but that was perfect for this story.

An amazing episode with yet more fantastic visuals. I felt that the previous high for visuals was the Donna Noble series and that the first two Matt Smith series lacked in comparison but this batch of episodes is really matching those previous highs.

The trip through The Tardis was brilliant, seeing it through eyes that had seen similar attempts in The Invasion of Time and Logopolis but acknowledging that this was the ultimate experience. Fantastic.

The sets were amazing, and seeing The Tardis in such a damaged state certainly gave the impression that she had suffered a calamitous and perhaps near-fatal end.

Watching this I had a sense that this episode was going to lead to consequences in future episodes; a damaged Tardis leading to an uncertain future. However, everything was reset in very quick time by the Doctor crossing his own time stream.

Wasn't the act of the Doctor crossing his own time stream in The Big Bang the reason the Tardis exploded in that episode? Yet here that same act is used to stop the Tardis exploding? Isn't this a paradox? Eh? Eh?

This really should have been a two-parter or at least had consequences that followed on from it into the next episode. I really liked this one though.

Update Saturday 30th August 2014:

Tried watching it a second time in 2013 and gave up 'cos I got bored. I then watched it again all the way through a couple of months ago and still couldn't see what I'd thought was so good about it the first time I'd watched it but it does have good production values. Still, not so good overall.

Okay, I wasn't overly fond of Mr Sweet but I did like the resolution! I also enjoyed Vastra, Strax and Jenny once more, although the Strax 'Tom Tom' scene was a bit too forced.

In addition to their new-found chess-skills, the Cybermen have added the Star Trek Borg trick of adapting to weaponry used on them, also the Borg trick of taking over a major character (in their case Captain Picard, in Doctor Who's case The Doctor) and the trick of moving very fast (presumably they learnt that trick from their experience of the Raston Robot in The Five Doctors): you wonder how it's all going to end. Well, as usual with every Cybermen story, it ends with an army of Cybermen being all-too easily wiped out no matter what upgrade they've had.

Now, tell me, what happened in this episode that could possibly lead to Emperor Porridge asking Clara to marry him? Was this some kind of homage to King Peladon asking Jo to marry him out of the blue in The Curse of Peladon back in 1973? It can't have been for that reason could it?  Really?? It was a pointless moment no matter what the reason and it escapes me how this scene even got to the draft script stage let alone the screened episode.

I'm also not sure what the kids contributed to this episode: had they not been in a coma for a chunk of it, it might have been fun / scary to have had them pursued by Cybermen, but once they're under Cyber control any sense of danger was immediately lost.

The fact that there's a lot of Doctor-to-CyberDoctor talking in this episode also takes away the inhumanity of the creatures themselves; it's irritatingly jarring that the Cybermen speak without emotion while the CyberDoctor is completely emotional. Makes no sense. Matt's acting is brilliant though, and if this had been about The Doctor fighting against a possessive creature such as The Mara, the emotion would have made more sense.

In spite of these weaknesses the episode still manages to shoot itself further in the foot by being of 1-part duration. As with the Daleks and Ice Warriors before them, the Cybermen deserve to be in stories of at least 2 episodes duration: It is pure waste to put them into rushed 45 min (max) disposable throwaway episodes. This would have been a better story by building up the menace during the course of part 1 and having a mass of Cybermen (30 say, not 3 million) turning up at the castle at the end of the first episode. The more Cybermen, the more easily they're wiped out. A smaller number would have felt more dangerous. Part two would then consist of our heroes trying to save the universe.

The next episode looks to reveal important info about The Doctor and Clara but where was the build up to that in this episode? I can't help but feel that even next week's episode will seem rushed and disposable once the 45 mins (max) are over. Bring back the cliffhangers, bring back the sense of epic in it's truest sense: 45 mins (max) is not epic.

Pluses for this episode were Warwick Davis, Matt Smith and the trailer for the next episode.

It was a case of one hero holding their own against impossible odds and in the end Bonnie couldn't hope to win Eurovision 2013 but in the case of The Doctor a few hours before there's never really any doubt that The Great Intelligence isn't just going to walk and talk to his / its death. Assuming he's / it's dead.

Why was T.G.I. that fussed about the Doctor's name anyway? Why was that convict at the beginning able to know the co-ordinates of the Doctor's unlikely final resting place? Who cares, there's so much to like in this episode.

The final episode to feature River? Well, it's a time travel series so anything's possible, but this did come across as the final meeting between the two characters, with Clara seemingly about to become the next more-than-a-companion in the Doctor's life.

It was the turn of Strax and Jenny to go the Rory way of supposedly dying and being resuscitated and this really diminishes any character's death. I think Jenny dies twice in this episode and this death / back to life gubbins seems to have become an established clichéd standard trick of the series.

I liked the Clara / previous Doctors stuff and it was astonishing to have her conversing with the first Doctor. It was also nice to see The Tardis in it's non-chameleon circuit state.

The name of The Doctor? John Hurt apparently. This was a cheeky but admirable tease and quite quite amusing. Now, what I don't get is that the Doctor avoids Trensalore because he doesn't want his suspicions of his future to be correct yet makes it very plain that he already knows his future when he meets John Hurt... Eh?

So the 50th anniversary special features the 10th and 11th Doctors and a character who was once known as The Doctor. Is John Hurt a re-cast Valeyard or will he have another name? And how does this fit in with the shape-changing-can-look-like-anybody Zygon who will be making an appearance? I'm wondering how this is going to celebrate 50 years of the series but hope that it manages to at least celebrate more than just the last 8. John Hurt as the next Doctor? At 73 years old? I don't believe it for one second.

Series Overview

Splitting a series into 2 or 3 sections didn't please me for 3 Tom Baker series in the 1970s and it doesn't please me now: it's harder to judge a series as a whole when you feel you've been watching 2 different series. The subsequent lack of cliffhangers for this particular series has also been a weak point and I really hope this changes with the next series.

Some stories need room to breathe and confining them to merely 42 minutes or so stifles them. A great many episodes from this particular series seemed to have been sold short of air time and this further weakened the series as a whole. The one episode from this series that this does not hold true for is The Rings of Akhaten which seemed to have run out of plot 20 minutes into it and was padded out for the rest.

More people are choosing to watch Doctor Who on catch-up services, and whilst it is good that audiences still seem to care enough to watch at all, does show that the series is less of a 'must watch it now' series and this has got to be bad in the long-term. The less who watch on the night, the less interest there will be in the series. It is the lack of cliffhangers and the lack of episodes made in total that is likely to be leading to this increasing disinterest.

The main adversaries including Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors are not best served by appearing in 1-part stories: an audience is surely better served / gained when that audience believes it is watching an epic. An epic 1-parter is a contradiction in terms.

Matt Smith remains brilliant in the role and he really should be given longer stories to really flesh the character out. Jenna Louise Coleman as Clara has become an instant favourite and I don't miss Amy or Rory at all.

The downside to inserting a hitherto unknown Doctor (Hurt's) as the Doctor who then participates in the Time War is that it takes everything away from McGann's 8th Doctor. As a viewer I believed, in the absence of facts, that it was the 8th Doctor who had fought the Time War, then regenerated into Ecclestone's 9th Doctor. That, although we had seen very little of the 8th Dr on screen, that he had been actively involved in events whilst off screen.

That thought had at least given the 8th Doctor some kind of place in the Whoniverse other than just that of the American TV movie. Now I have to accept that the only contributions that the 8th Doctor made to the Whoniverse were the TV Movie and this mini episode. That truly takes something major away from the 8th Doctor, and hands it all over to a Dr we haven't even known about until recently. This jarrs too much.

This was a likeable mini episode however in terms of atmosphere and for the presence of Paul McGann.

The plot was incredibly terrible though, a timey-wimey load of nonsense that re-wrote even more of the Time War than Night of the Doctor did. As a story it 'celebrated' the previous 8 years 8 months of Doctor Who and not the full 50 years that it should have.

The scenes between Smith and Tennant were nicely played and had the right amount of humour but the whole Zygon stuff played out then disappeared in a puff of nothing. The Time War was re-written at the stroke of a thought but the execution of it stopped the episode dead in its tracks. Tedious and utterly dreadful.

John Hurt remains one of the greatest actors ever but I care not a jot for his Warrior / War Doctor. Nearing the end of his incarnation, he did not seem ravaged by the Time War in his attitude and nothing in that episode gave me the impression he had ever been a warrior. Such an awful sketch of a character. It should have all been left well alone to the 8th Doctor.

Let's talk about Rose: wasn't Rose though was it? This was as similarly disappointing as when 'phantoms' of old companions appeared in The Five Doctors in 1983. I will only be concerned if I ever hear of cast members returning to the series after this.

Massively disappointing overall and not one I'm likely to watch again for a very long time. Perhaps, for me, it's time for a change of direction within the series, one that veers away from 'timey-wimey' & 'wibbly-wobbley' to 'simple-dimple' & 'scary-warey' (piss-take intended).

In imaginings of infinite possibilities there's always a chance that in an alternate parallel universe / reality there was a different  50th anniversary story that did justice to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. If so, does anybody have a copy?

(Update written 12th January 2014): I watched it again three weeks after it was first broadcast and by golly-gosh strike me pink if I didn't think pretty much the same as when I first saw it. Except that I thought the effects were even better than I originally thought and that the Tom Baker sequence was simply wonderful. The Zygon resolution managed to irritate me even more on second viewing and that's got to be a first in all the decades I've been watching Doctor Who. Still, I'll watch it again (and again and again) because I remain what I've long been, a fan of the programme.

So where the 'eck does the Valeyard fit in now? Or doesn't he? Or does he? Or..

What would this episode have been like if McGann and Ecclestone had been involved? Would it have been McGann's Doctor who would have 'pressed the button' as usurped by the fake Hurt Doctor? I suspect so, and it would all have been a whole lot more acceptable and satisfactory if he had. Ecclestone would have been a fantastic addition too and I hope he does play the role again at some future time.

Just read the latest Doctor Who Magazine (issue 469) in which Steven Moffat says he wanted to use the film posters of the Peter Cushing films as backdrop to a scripted line: this would have been brilliant as I too would have liked Cushing represented in the special: he was as much a part of my childhood as Patrick, Jon and Tom. Never mind though eh! At least you tried Steven and how much it shows you care.

(Update Sunday 1st June 2014): I've seen this 3 times now which is twice more than I'd originally thought I would. The last time I saw it I saw it in 3D and it did look pretty good in places. The plot still hasn't won me over however.

The darn thing's now been voted 'Best Story Ever' by Doctor Who Magazine readers (issue 474): let's just agree to disagree on that one.

I'd hope that in 5 years time that the next poll will show this story placed at a more considered level once the coat tails of the 50th anniversary have long faded into the dim distance.

(Update Saturday 30th August 2014): I've finally drawn breath and stopped laughing at this story being voted best story ever by Doctor Who Magazine readers and in return I'm pleased that Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition No. 38 states that the Hurt Doctor was only created as a result of Christopher Ecclestone pulling out of Day of the Doctor. This cheers me up a lot as it explains why we've got another sparsely-seen Doctor: how clever Moffat was at coming up with a solution to that problem and I have a feeling I will like this episode more next time I watch it. Doesn't let the whole Zygon-plot-just-ends-and-ends-terribly-badly affair off though.

An Adventure In Space and Time

My absolute favourite programme of 2013 that had an extremely likeable cast in an extremely authentic-seeming potted history of the early days. It could have been even better had it been at least 30 minutes longer but overall this was simply fantastic. David Bradley gave an incredible performance and yes, I hope they get him to play the first Doctor in an upcoming story. The cameos by William Russell and Carole Ann Ford were welcome but were also an unwelcome reminder that they were wrongly left out of Day of the Doctor. Other cameo appearances by Jean Marsh and Anneke Wills were also very welcome. Sacha Dhawan was excellent as Waris Hussein and I was particularly fond of Jessica Raine's Verity Lambert. 10 / 10.

The Five-ish Doctors (reboot)

A massive thank you to Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy for this. This was incredibly funny and I loved all the cameos. It was good that so many people were able to send themselves up and this was nicely packaged together. Indeed it would be interesting to see Davison, Baker and McCoy team up for a comedy series of some kind as they worked so well together in this. 10 / 10

(Written 12th January 2014): I liked this one, it answered most questions and sometimes even answered them quite well. It was a reasonable (and different) way to say goodbye to one of the very best Doctors to date.

One question (at least) remains though: how did that picture of Amy and child end up in the children's home in the US back in Day of the Moon? One can hardly imagine Madame Kovarian saying 'Hold on love while I take a picture of you and the babbie' before whisking Melody off. Not that she had time to either. Why does a picture exist? These and possibly other questions will never likely be answered on screen where they belong.

This was well directed and even though the great battles of Trenzalore took place in a 50 square metre area you could just about accept this, if you accepted it as a grand fairytale.

I chuckle to think it took up to four years to explain why 'Silence will fall', a statement that until this episode actually meant nothing, while the 30+-years question of how the Doctor would regenerate beyond his 13th incarnation was dealt with within seconds. Such an obvious answer too and one that had been foreshadowed a long time ago in The Five Doctors: so simple it's a stroke of genius.

So he's gained 13 more lives then? Good on the face of it but actually he lost two of his previous lives at the stroke of a keyboard when Hurt's Doctor and The Other Tenth Doctor were claimed to be full and proper incarnations of the Doctor. So he's actually only gained 11 more lives.

Of course, who knows if there have been other Doctors between McGann and Ecclestone, The Clown Doctor, The Ballet Dancing Doctor and The Shell-Suit Doctor for instance, and that he's already lived through more incarnations than The Doctor would like to admit. Only the keyboard of a similarly talented future writer-producer knows the answer to that mindboggle-ingly daft question. In fact, what about the Valeyard? Wasn't he somewhere between the Doctor's 12th and final regeneration? Does that count (somehow!) as one of his 13 previous lives or part of his next 13 lives? Has he lived 14 lives up to the end of Matt Smith's Doctor or is this one to come? Or has time been re-written somewhere? Or...

Thankfully the paradigm Daleks did not make an appearance in this episode, though the limited notion of the Daleks not remembering who the Dr was as at the end of Asylum of the Daleks did and was quickly dealt with as though it had meant nothing. Actually it had meant nothing at the time as it was obvious at the end of that episode that a) this was a stupid idea as the Daleks aren't 'robotic-like' as the Cybermen who in recent years have been mind-linked in a hive way and that b) that as soon as they met him again  they'd soon learn to remember him. I've only seen Time of the Doctor once so far but my impression of what was said was "Hold on how do you remember me?" which was answered by "A man told us about you while we were chatting over tea and biscuits".

Clara and Christmas. What an amazing coincidence that Clara and her family were celebrating Christmas at exactly the same time the Doctor was going to a snow-bound place known as Christmas! It's almost like this episode was a Christmas special rather than the last episode of the current Doctor! I wonder how Logopolis and Caves of Androzani would have looked had they been shown on Christmas Day: there would probably have been tinsel all over the tower at the Pharos Project and Spectrox would have likely been sourced from 50-centuries old mulled wine vats kept by the Santa-suited Magma Beast.

The make-up for the ageing Dr was less impressive than that of Amy in The Girl Who Waited and surprisingly Matt didn't come across as being old: it looked as if he could have tossed away the walking stick at any time, but this was a nice idea. Another 300 years of his life passed by though? Really? Not in any believable way, no sir-ee.

Handles. A nice idea of the Doctor becoming fond of a Cyberman head, perhaps this was his only link with the universe at large for the majority of his time on Trenzalore, and it came across well. I grew to like, feel sad at the loss of, and miss Handles in short succession in exactly the same way that I've never cared for dear old 11-stories-strong dead Adric.

The regeneration was both long and short (yeah, I know) in that from the time he goes from all brighty-lighty to lots of talking in the Tardis to Clara / Amy lots of time passes, then whoosh he's Capaldi in less than half a second. Well, at least this is a different way of doing things and the whole standing-with-your-arms-outstretched Ecclestone-Master-Tennant way is so last decade. Nice touch having Amy appear in a never-the-less unsurprising cameo (albeit I'd avoided everything, papers, social media, etc before the episode and didn't actually know she was appearing) but where was River? You know, his like, wife? And Rory? And Brian?

Capaldi. "We're probably crashing". I write this line here because after transmission I had to play this line back several times to understand what the latest Dr had actually said at this point: the sound was such that Peter was drowned out. I only hope that his voice is able to counter such noise in future episodes because he needs to be able to be heard!!! I like the accent though and I'm glad he's using it. To be known as the 12 or 14th Doctor though? 12th, but he's (at least) the 13th Doctor so far in reality (actually, none of this is reality, what am I talking about?)

The word is that the next two series seasons will have un-interrupted runs. That's good news, I only hope that means they're not short series seasons!!!! 10 episodes or more is fine, batches of 5, 6, 7 or 8 are not so fine!!! And please bring back the cliffhangers!!!!!!!!!

My Not So Minimal Reviews of 'Doctor Who' Season 8 (2014)

Score Out Of 10 (10 being the highest)

The telephone call from Matt Smith's Doctor was a nice touch and thankfully he didn't ring while Clara was holding her breath but instead managed to time it conveniently for when Clara had finished her first adventure with the latest who-knows-what-number-he-is Doctor. I can imagine that the fifth Doctor phoned Peri up after her first adventure with the sixth Doctor only to have to interject the words "I did..he did what?!" into the middle of Peri's very likely excitable explanation of recent events.

The episode flew by and some of the time was even spent on a bit of a plot involving self-repairing clockwork droids. The plot was entirely trivial though, or rather, so much in the background that it felt trivial. The basic idea of clockwork droids repairing / replacing parts is actually a creepy idea but was submerged under the weight of explaining the 'This is the Doctor in spite of the fact he looks different and has aged a lot' gubbins.

I'm assuming that time was re-written shortly after the events of this story as news of a dinosaur in Victorian London would most surely have made it to all the scandal rags of the time. So, not even that important a plot to be considered a 'fixed point' in history. Says it all.

This was another small-cast episode with The Doctor, Clara, Paternoster Gang and an android doing most of the talking throughout, and it's going to be a tedious series if that's the way it works throughout the other 11 episodes plus Christmas special. Does the budget just go on effects and the look of the show? It seems to me that if you have a space / time travel series it's of more interest to have the main characters meet other characters than for them to merely converse amongst themselves. Otherwise you could literally set the episode / s anywhere or drop the space / time travel element totally.

The latest titles are ok and one wonders if the watch idea is a link to something that happens within the series. The Tardis looks very cartoon-y though and is somewhat of a surprisingly poor representation in a series that seems to put visuals above plot and cast size. The theme tune is as ok as all the previous ones since 2005 and no better / worse.

I liked Peter Capaldi and his Doctor will be even more likeable if his Doctor is allowed to speak to people other than Clara, the Paternoster Gang and the villain of the week. It will also be interesting to find out why his Doctor has a face he recognises and which he himself believes he's copied from somebody else's. The choosing of who to regenerate into (fixed into continuity when Derek Jacobi's Master regenerated into John Simm in Utopia) explains why the Doctor chooses to look like Maxil from The Arc of Infinity when becoming Dr No. 6 (does the Dr like strong-willed men? or ones with helmets containing feathers?) and why the Dr chooses to look like comedian Sylvester McCoy when becoming Dr No. 7. He even managed to inherit Sylvester's talent for playing the spoons when he did so.

It was well worth the wait though, this was Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Dalek / s and it was the best one in ages. This had the feeling of a traditional Doctor Who story of the distant past albeit with character introspection idly thrown in from time to time.

This was a well-made episode and the few extras managed to look like they were differing people by use of their faces not always being on show; this worked in providing the illusion that there were more soldiers on board the ship than there actually were.

Peter Capaldi put in a grand performance as a genuinely mesmerising Doctor and this is a Doctor who is proudly alien to the humans whose lives he wanders through. I'm going to use the word 'gravitas' at this point as this will undoubtedly be one of the words overused in the coming years to describe Peter Capaldi's Doctor and I want to be amongst the first to use it, having written this on the day of first broadcast of this episode, Saturday 30th August 2014.

The story had shades of 2005 episode Dalek in that a damaged Dalek is repaired and then goes on a rampage and I should probably think in terms other than 'who cares' when it comes to it but I enjoyed watching this one so much I almost forgot to think 'thank crikey those awful looking Daleks first seen in Victory of the Daleks aren't in this one' but I remembered just in time.

It was good to be reminded that the less Daleks there are in a story the less easy they seem to kill and this helps them regain their power. I was also pleased not to see them flying through the air, they seem more powerful when they're on the ground. I also admire that aspect of their species which says "We've got enough firepower to destroy any human spaceship but let's get up close and personal so we can exterminate them face to face"; this makes them a far more interesting race of despots than a shoot-from-the-safety-of-a-spaceship type.  They also seem to be reluctant to use their ultimate nano-gene technology (Asylum of the Daleks) that could easily give them complete victory over every living creature and I think this is mainly down to the fact that this would simply spoil their fun.

I'm no too fussed as to who Missy is as one gets used to studying / questioning / speculating upon Steven Moffat's ideas / raised questions only to find them explained in a throwaway line later on in a future episode. Best simply to wait and see what happens.

Danny came across as a likeable character who had no place in this episode other than to interrupt the flow of the main plot but of course he will have a proper place in future episodes and I look forward to that. Will his solder character be as Captain Jack'd to death by a Dalek and then resuscitated? Nah. Mind you, who out of the main cast / partially recurring characters hasn't died and not been resuscitated since Rory in 2010 / 2011 / 2012?

Another episode I thought that could have benefited from an extra episode as I liked Robin, The Sheriff and robots very much, but what an enjoyable episode. The Sheriff managed to look like Anthony Ainley's Tremas from The Keeper of Traken which was an interesting if accidental nod to the past and the double-bluff to the audience of whether Robin was a robot or not was nicely done.

Peter Capaldi's Doctor is wonderfully likeable and he and Jenna Coleman's Clara are perfectly paired. I like that Clara can admire / hero worship the Doctor yet not be afraid to tell him to shut oop every now and then.

The line from Clara regarding "the two words sonic screwdriver" has become an instant favourite for me and already one of my all-time favourite moments in Who history.

I loved this one.

Barns were certainly made to last on Gallifrey weren't they? Got the impression the barn that John Hurt's Dr was in during Day of the Doctor was there right at the end of Gallifrey's supposed destruction so that's some impressive kinda time-bonded construction they've got going on there.

There was a lot to recommend this episode as worst so far of this series and topmost amongst them was the already terminally dull relationship between Clara and Rupert The Bore. Maybe it's just me but I just don't care if they will / won't get together as that's the province of continuing-drama series' and soaps. I'd quite like this series to get back to focusing on space / time travel / monsters / villains / other characters. Does it really make Clara a fully-rounded character for us to witness her love life or is that just completely not what I watch Dr Who for and have I answered my own question within this question? Or not?

The makeup / hair for Orson was unusually artificial-looking, though it's reasonable to think this is how today's obsession with looks will develop over the next 100 years.

Infinite planets, infinite time, and this was yet another episode that concentrated purely on the Tardis-associated inhabitants. Whenever this happens I get the same sinking feeling as when I used to watch Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea having differing members of the Seaview crew being possessed / copied / meeting look-a-likes every week. The more it happened the weaker the series became.

Humans will be time travelling in the next 100 years? Hope that's true in real life but in Dr Who terms it seems to me that everybody's getting in on the old time travel act such as to render the Dr as Last of the Timelords as almost irrelevant. If everyone can travel in time how does this make the Dr special? Daleks, Cybermen, now humans, where will it all end? Right out the window in a time-can-be-re-written way hopefully.

It's a telling sign that Clara likes spending more time teaching at a school than space / time travelling so could the Dr please find a companion who would actually rather travel with him than mark homework? Teaching is possibly a wonderfully important profession but seriously, how many teachers wouldn't drop their school registers in the bin in a second in order to travel with the Dr? Clara's likely the only one who'd ask "Can you drop me off after we've kicked some Weeping Angels butts because I'm taking detention tonight?"

Onto the plot itself and to sum it up: the Dr decides, having felt the need to sit on top of the Tardis at one point and say the word "Listen" to no-one in particular, to wonder if everyone has the same dream and finds out that they do, especially those of the only other three main characters in the episode. Gripping stuff indeed.

The Doctor effectively decides there's an issue to sort out then sorts it having invented it in the first place. Gripping stuff indeed. Oh I've said that already.

We've had the concept of clockwork robots back in Deep Breath and now we've got the concept of 'something under the bed' back too, both from The Girl in the Fireplace. Gripping...oh.

Shades of Midnight too, a creature unknown to the Dr and of attempts of that creature to enter a spaceship. Not that it was a creature? Who knows, 'cos we'll never know 'cos the explanations were missing and will remain in the the file marked 'Photo in the Children's Home and Other Unexplained Moffat Mysteries'.

It was a genuine surprise that it turned out to be the Dr as a child in the bed in the barn and this was brilliantly and exceptionally under-emphasised  into insignificance shortly after the initial gasp at that revelation. Jenna was excellent in this scene though, reassuring the Dr and once again becoming part of his timeline. Very well written and superbly acted.

It's just the dream of the Dr that helps create the thing in the bed in the children's home? Yeah? No? Discuss amongst yourselves as it doesn't make any sense to me. Honestly, give me something as crass as Timeflight over this kind of nonsense any day.

On the plus side there were the odd one or two good lines of dialogue between the Dr and Clara, and my cat got unusually more fuss than is usual during the viewing of a Dr Who episode.

I love playing the 'Spot the previous story' game with this particular series in which I try to recognise which stories ideas for the latest episode came from but I've only spotted two this time, Hide and The Beast Below, Hide referring to  the creature finding a creature and The Beast Below with the voluntary 'forget' device. Oh wait, there's also the memory worms, which came from...I forget. Something recent though, something to do with snow and men, had the word 'The' in the title. What was it?

Unlike the opening of The Genesis Ark from Doomsday and the moment the Pandorica opens in The Pandorica Opens I didn't get my hopes up that there would actually be anything remotely interesting inside the vault and I can only applaud the writers for ensuring my pessimism wasn't mistaken. I'd actually thought we might be leading up to a cliffhanger to a 2nd part though and they caught me by surprise by doing exactly what they've been doing for an extraordinary amount of time, not having a 2nd part to a story. Do I feel foolish.

Slow motion. Slooooooow motion. Slooooooow moooooootion. Boring when used for little or no purpose and that was the case with this episode.

I wasn't fooled by the supposed death of Saibra the shape-shifter and decided, as I sat on my sofa and said "Double-bluff" to no one in particular, to wonder if we were all meant to have been fooled by this and without wasting anybody's time at all decided that this was indeed the case.

This might be a record in sci-fi / soap / continuing drama history but I can't think of any other time I've seen two reasons for duplicates in the same episode of anything, those reasons comprising shape-shifter and convenient-budget-stretching-because-it's-Keeley-Hawes-and-she-likely-costs-a-packet-so-lets-make-her-play-two-roles-and-hopefully-people-will-think-we're-being-clever clone.

I'm sure Danny's going to be an important character but could he please just stick to the episode / s where this will actually matter rather than appearing in every episode because it's just not that interesting to see Clara and he go on dates and to have the excitement of space / time travel get in their way. If this is a long drawn-out way of writing Clara out of the series give me the 'Leela says she's marrying Andred in a very quick tacked-on scene at the end of a story' method any time. Look how long it took Porridge to ask Clara to marry him (out of the blue!) and at least he was interested in space / time travel. If Clara wants ordinary then she should stick to Earth and let Claire Skinner's Madge back into the series (an older companion, now there's a novelty).

Mind you, reckon Psi and Saibra are gonna be back for more, they're almost interesting enough to want to see back too. Not as much as I'd want to see Sergeant Benton, Captain Yates and Jo Grant back to be fair but I still live in hope.

Ooh, wait! Just thought! The creatures in this episode were the last of their species! If you can spot at least 5 other stories from 2005 onwards that involve 'the last of their kind' (whether it was or not) you are likely not the last of your kind.

I'm getting in the mood for an epic that I don't believe is on the way.

The good news for the 2006 story Fear Her is that it's not now the worst episode of the series since its revival in 2005. It's also taken 29 years, but 1985's The Two Doctors is no longer my least favourite Doctor Who story of all time either! Congratulations to The Caretaker for this remarkable and unexpected out-of-the-blue feat. It's also a member of that thankfully sparse group of stories / episodes titled 'This Ain't Doctor Who' which was previously only inhabited by 2005's Father's Day.

Where or why do I begin?

Clips of Clara having possibly interesting adventures with the Doctor that we the viewers only get brief glimpses of in favour of a tedious character play? Yes, let's start with that. Actually, that's pretty much the entire episode on a pinhead.

We've already had dull scenes of getting to know Danny and of Clara's growing relationship with him during previous episodes, did we want or need a whole episode of it? It wasn't on my own wish list.

This was yet another episode where the menace of the episode is only the background story to excessive and dull characterisation. I've no idea (or care) what the robot thing was after, it didn't matter anyway as the episode clearly wasn't about that or anything else remotely interesting.

Tedious character interplay infested throughout, and I found myself wishing Clara were gone from the Tardis for the first time and, also for the first time, didn't much care for Peter Capaldi's Doctor either. She was dull, he was dull, they were dull. Even the various attempts at levity between those two (and Danny) failed to come across as anything but turgid.

Danny's over the top "Yes Sir, no Sir" reaction to the Doctor made for unpleasant and embarrassing viewing and was further hindered by the non-belief that Danny is an ex-soldier in the first place; he simply doesn't seem to be that at all, not even when indulging in slow-mo acrobatics.

This was a terrible episode that was poorly executed and by golly if the entire series was like this I never would have watched it this long. This is a unique distinct story in that I cannot find one single redeeming quality about it. For the first time in my life, I hated a Doctor Who episode. In fact, I don't think are any words that adequately describe my feelings for this episode so I'm going to have to make one up. This, therefore, was a skovoxblitzerpink of an episode, the first of its kind.

This was not Doctor Who by any standards.

Memo to self : when introducing anybody new to Dr Who, don't use Kill The Moon as the story to introduce them, they'll think you're silly afterwards, and, just as importantly, never mention this episode in front of Star Trek or Star Wars fans, they'll quite rightly take the mickey.

The main cast meet three disposable characters in small-cast episode with silly plot.

Only 2 of the 3 disposable characters get killed so it doesn't matter if you show one giant germ spider or millions because you know there aren't many people that are potentially going to be killed off in the episode anyway. Therefore there's no real threat.

Courtney was fun and Clara's line regarding her and the psychic paper was very funny.

The creatures were visualised very well and it might be fun to see those again but on an Earth-in-peril basis where there's quite a large cast battling the monster.

The 'moon is an egg' background to the plot is likely the most silly reason for anything ever to happen in Dr Who which makes this series unique in all the worst ways. I'd be rightly embarrassed if I'd said to somebody beforehand who had never watched Dr Who before that they should give the series a try but then ended up watching this episode.

The hatched egg is then replaced by another egg in a further stretching of belief and reality's gone right out of the window. All good fun.

Not for one second can I buy into the human race saving the creature being hatched from the egg by leaving their lights on and I have no idea why Clara would even think to try. Still, that's nothing compared to the Dr deciding, in this story out of all stories, not to decide the fate of a creature not born of Earth. He says it's Earth's choice whether that alien lives or dies: why, what's different between this and any Dalek / Cybermen invasion of Earth story? He's more than happy to interfere then.

I also don't get why Clara would put the whole of humanity under threat to a creature not born of Earth with the logic? that it's just a baby. How insane is that?

Clara has a go at the Dr and decides she doesn't want to see him again. Well, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. She never seems to want to travel with him anyway, or at least likes to have her cake and eat it. Silly perhaps? But look at the episode I've just waffled about, how silly was that.

If Enlightenment, Voyage of the Damned and this one are anything to go by, I can't wait for a story featuring The Hindenburg In Space as it seems every so often a writer likes to take a well-known form of transport and shift it into space. It'll happen.

Frank Skinner's small, pointless and insignificant role in the episode was a waste as his character was almost quite likeable in a 'didn't-expect-much-from-him-anyway' sense. It's like the production team decided to get Who fan Frank in then didn't know what to do with him once they got him.

The mummy turned out to be a soldier so has that got anything to do with Dire-Danny or don't I care? I was sat with a friend watching this one and even he groaned when Danny came on screen at one point. I'm with you on that one pal. The one time I myself groaned was when reference was made to "Are you my mummy?" but then I laughed afterwards so I can't really take the mickey there.

This was actually quite a good episode and had a plot that was both interesting and even made sense in places: a mummy on a train in space may sound like yet another bonkers idea but compared to Kill The Moon it seems almost normal.

What where how why does Clara change her mind about travelling with the Dr again and why does she lie about it to Danny? Beats me but then I didn't understand how the Egyptian Goddess as referred to at the end of The Big Bang turned out to be a soldier either. Was that somebody enticing the Dr in that an Egyptian Goddess running around on the Orient Express in space sounded more exotic than a bloke wandering around in bandages? Wonder why it took him many years / regeneration to go and investigate anyway? And what exciting adventure were we denied watching after The Big Bang that prevented the Dr from investigating at that point?

Don't stop me now, I'm having such a good time.

It's amazing to know that in the future there could be a singer on a space train who will be covering a cover version of a Queen song who looks exactly like the singer who did the original cover version for a BBC Dr Who tie-in promotion back in 2014.

Original, imaginative, creepy, atmospheric and very entertaining.

The plot was at the forefront of this episode and there was a larger cast than has been true of most episodes of late, with worthwhile effects and a sense of menace that has been missing for some time.

Even an appearance by Danny couldn't damage this episode and it was a return to form overall.

For a Doctor-lite episode this was another triumph of imagination over necessity, just as Blink was for the tenth Doctor.

This would have made for another good 2-parter and I truly believe the series would be stronger with less stories for the same episode count. Just make those stories count.

Rigsy was well acted and it would be interesting to see him again, and, for the first time, even Missy began to interest me. My hopes are (finally) raised for the rest of this particular series.

Only one question bites and that's why does the basic (cuboid) Tardis look different to the basic cylindrical Tardis that we saw in the recent-ish The Name of the Doctor?

Overall, well done to all involved with this one.

Update Sunday 26th October 2914: As Andrew O'Day pointed out to me, was the shrunken Tardis a reference to Logopolis or mere coincidence? Well, a lot of ideas for this particular series seem to have come from the Used Before bucket but whether this is coincidence / part of a story arc / drawing on the series' past strengths is a question not likely to be answered in the rest of this series?

I say 'the Doctor' and not 'the Doctor and Clara' as Clara was somehow able to get a sleep-in with Danny and some children in a museum when it started kicking off. They allow that these days? What exactly would be the point?

The science behind the protection / safety of the Earth was interesting in the same way as the explanation for the vegetation growth was absurd on a Kill-The-Moon scale.

Am I the only one to realise that surely the Dr missed the point that the light creatures weren't creating the vegetation just to bounce solar flares off Earth (thereby saving it) but was part of a world-wide effort to liberate all animals from zoos? Nice to see even this Dr can be naive as he so easily bought their explanation!

Adric would be even more horrified to have known that the space freighter he was on when bumping into Earth unnecessarily wiped out the dinosaurs as they could have been saved by creatures who've always been around and who chose not to do so. Maybe they  wanted to make sure Adric really didn't get out alive. The inhabitants of Space Beacon Nerva would also likely be perturbed to find out that light creatures didn't choose to grow so much as a twig when solar flares damaged the Earth prior to their own incarceration.

The Doctor may have been an unnecessary inclusion in this Doctor Who story but for a story about Coal Hill School teachers and kids, where was Courtney? She got an appearance in Into The Dalek and 2 other episodes but somehow managed to miss out on this one: she would have been great fun. The kids who did appear were well chosen actors though and likely helped create a different kind of atmosphere for a Dr Who episode.

Danny of course got a larger appearance in this episode and whilst I still don't see him as being an ex-soldier he came across as more likeable (yeah, you 'eard me) even if he's still anti-Doctor.

I'm probably as surprised as the girl with the voices as to why the creatures chose her to speak to out of everybody (unless they were speaking to others throughout the world too? or because of the Dr's connections to the school?) and why they recreated? her sister? Or had kidnapped her sister then brought her back? Lots of questions surrounding an un-interesting plot point?

Definitely not a 9-out-of-10 story was it? :)

This was an episode of explanations and re-explanations with the plot somewhere in the middle but it held the attention and was almost quite good; it was certainly clever.

Danny's dead goes the explanation, Danny's not dead goes the re-explanation. Clara's destroying the Tardis keys goes the explanation, Clara's not destroying the Tardis keys goes the re-explanation. Missy is a robot goes the explanation, Missy isn't a robot goes the re-explanation. It's a place for the recently deceased, it's not just a place for the deceased goes the re-explanation. Nothing is as it first seems in this one.

Doctor, Clara, Danny, Missy, Clara's mum, Dr Chang, Ollie from The Thick of It, some woman on a mobile. That's at least 8 speaking parts in one episode and could perhaps be a recent record. In terms of where the plot was taking place, there weren't a lot of people wandering around the vast spaces or offices were there? Dr Chang had such a big office, it might have been nice to have had some other people in it.

Whilst nobody watching would have been surprised that the skeletons were in fact Cybermen hidden in plain site by use of Dark Water, the question arises as to why Missy felt it necessary to do this. As soon as the Dr turns up all is revealed anyway. Eh?

As with the everybody-has-the-same-dream scenario in Listen, the Dr decides to look for something then finds it straight away: he decides to wonder if there's an afterlife and almost immediately finds out there is some kind of afterlife. Mystery solved there then.

Missy turning out not to be The Rani was a bit of a surprise, I figured that with the scientific explanation it would turn out to be her so was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was The Master having undergone a gender change. I'm fairly sure the explanation for this will be slight and almost pointless but it did at least take me if nobody else by surprise. She's a good actress ol' what's-er-name so this might be fun.

Steven Moffat does like to find different ways of spinning the same wheel, so re-inventions of Daleks, Cybermen and now The Master are his way of doing this. He's certainly right to do this with The Master, a character who, post Roger Delgado, is only interesting in his / her first re-appearance then pretty dull the rest. The score so far from 2005 onwards: 5 new Doctors, 3 new Masters.

The eventual realisation that a lot of it was going on inside a Tardis was a biggie, and the scale of the city was very well realised, albeit not with many people seen on screen throughout.

Dark Water is a good name for an episode, and the idea behind that term was certainly clever. If only there'd been more characters to witness the Cybermen appearing from under the water and not just the Dr as this would have made for a tense scene.

It looks like the Cybermen are going to go for another stroll around London but I doubt this will seriously take up much time in the next episode as this isn't Moffat's style. Invasions don't really happen in Dr Who anymore so the Cybermen are likely just guest stars in this one. It's bout the Dr and Mistress, and about Clara and Danny.

There was a cliffhanger of sorts as Danny was seen to be contemplating the Delete button that he'd been contemplating as of his previous scene but at least it was an attempt at keeping the audience hooked for the next episode.

Osgood is dead but for how long? Doesn't she represent fandom so is Moffat really killing off fandom? Am I thinking too deeply about this one? Anyway, Osgood is great fun and hope she comes back (nobody stays dead long in Dr Who). Or is she a Cyberman too? No I don't know either.

This would have been a mighty fine 3-parter but made for a very good 2-parter anyway. It would have been nice to have seen more of Missy before being popped by the Brig. Quite glad it was the Brig who did it as it was he / UNIT who were on world-wide alert for The Master back in the '70s. I liked he salute by the Dr to The Brig too, these were all very nice touches.

This actually was a bit of an epic wasn't it and had more than a few speaking roles this time so it was nice to have one's prior expectations well and truly biffed. Didn't get the whole point of the World President thing though, it just seemed they rode around in the sky until it was time in the plot for Cybermen to attack.

The Invasion cyber-head was a very nice and welcome reminder of the past and my mental wish-list contains having a story with those design of Cybermen in again. Never gonna happen though.

Missy wanted to be friends with the Dr again (awww) and quite readily handed over the means for the Dr to end the story conveniently 10 minutes before the end of the episode to give lots of time for talk-talk-talk between the Dr and Clara, with the gazillions of Cybermen once again easily disposed of. Thank God Missy was stupid eh?

I liked Missy a lot and assuming the actress is cheaper to hire than John Simm then we just may see her again, though Masters rarely stay interesting beyond their first story, which is why I'd have liked this story to have been longer.

With a lot of this particular series being very weak this was a nice change and I only wish they would do more stories on this scale and with more cliffhangers. Yes I'm obsessed with cliffhangers. Wasn't this story much better than episodes about school trips, trees, nightmares-as-a-child, and baby moon creatures? Yes it was, so why was a lot of the rest of the series so poor?

Clara will be back of course, the 'Tardis doesn't trust her' plot hasn't been concluded or even remembered in this particular series but too many goodbyes can also be dull.

Haven't mentioned Danny yet so here goes; the plot stopped still once the graveyard scene came on and boy didn't it drag on. Just press the bloody switch Clara and be done with it. Still, the overall point that even in death Danny does the right thing did come through quite nicely and he did send back the boy (awww).

The revelation that Clara had never existed and that she was the Dr didn't fool me or likely anyone else for one second and the altered title sequence was therefore redundant. It would have made more sense had that been the cliffhanger to Dark Water then the altered title sequence for the subsequent episode would have been far more effective; just think what amount of Twitter-ing would have been going on in the week between episodes if the cliffhanger to Dark Water had been of Clara announcing she was the Dr, and the impact the subsequent episode's title sequence would have had. Just saying.

The imagery of the Cybermen coming to life in the cemetery was very good and I suspect these images will have burned in the minds of younger viewers on the scale that Cybermen emerging from tombs back in the '60s did. Very impressed, and the overall story was highly enjoyable.

I liked this on second viewing as much as I'd liked it on the first, only this time I didn't have a mouth abscess, antibiotics and hadn't fallen asleep by the time it began: it took a phone call to wake me up. In fact I was fairly groggy watching it the first time so I had to watch it again before writing this. It just took me a while to do it.

The idea of a dream-within-a-dream is hardly new territory having been used in many series' in the past but this was a notch above all the others, almost enough to forget Forest of the Dead, and I enjoyed it.

There I was thinking Shona might end up replacing Clara only to be fooled by Clara replacing Clara. I liked Shona and her dancing to Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody is one of my now fave moments in Dr Who. It was this moment in particular that I had been looking forward to seeing again. Such a good actress, I hope she comes back.

The Dream Crabs were nicely executed albeit the script felt it necessary to point out the Alien similarities. The audience knew it before the lines were even spoke anyway and those lines therefore came across almost as an apology rather than a homage.

Shona's Christmas Day itinerary consisting of 'Thrones marathon' made me chuckle and another nicety was having Dan Starkey playing an Elf called Ian, once again he's such a good actor and it was fun to see him play a character other than Strax.

Nick Frost was competent as Santa Claus and even the deceased Danny Pink was used to good effect, his character making Clara admit that she was dreaming. Nicely done.

The make-up for the older Clara was as over-the-top unrealistic as that used for Matt Smith in The Time of the Doctor however the scene itself was nicely written and nicely performed.

Clara's not gone then, but now they've said goodbye so many times, will the effect be lost when she really does leave. As with Rory and Amy who died so often, how can you ever be so sure the character's truly gone. I do hope Danny's gone for good this time though, even though he was used to good effect this time, I hope they draw a line underneath that 'plot' now.

One really wonders what more can be done with Christmas specials set at Christmas, but this one was one of the best.

There, a BlipView written almost 2 months after the original transmission. Was it worth the wait? No, I don't blame you.

Season 8 Overview by Tim Harris (Sunday 9th November 2014 - Mildly amended Sunday 1st November 2015)

Not my favourite series of Doctor Who sadly, it's way down in the doldrums and it's mostly because of the plots and the Clara-Danny relationship tedium.

Plots were often either trivial (In The Forest of the Night), silly (Kill the Moon), pointlessly feeble (Listen) or immensely dull (The Caretaker). That's already four stories in one series / season and that's quite a lot. Other episodes I found average (Deep Breath, Time Heist) and there were no episodes I could really call a classic. Only one cliffhanger appeared this series and I still feel the series overall is weakened because of that.

I could see that the production team were trying to be wildly inventive this season with mad ideas brimming throughout but nothing save incredulity could be my reaction to the idea that the moon is an egg, and that Earth can grown trees to save itself from meteors. These are two episodes where wildly inventive tripped over into plain silly.

Clara's character acted nonsensically at times, swearing at the Dr one episode, lying to Danny the next, travelling again with the Dr the next. This really put me off the character in spite of what the writers hoped to achieve. Danny was a waste of time in all senses, I barely warmed to him throughout and will never understand why a series about space and time travel had to spend so much time on such a mundane 'plot' featuring him and Clara. This is not Doctor Who.

Ever since Doctor Who Magazine's preview of The Wedding of River Song which said Simon Callow would appear as Charles Dickens I have not read any further previews as I couldn't understand what I was to gain from knowing about episodes before they were broadcast. Better to be surprised as I was when the Macra appeared in Gridlock. I did still look out for episode titles, writers' names, directors' names, guest names and generally still had an idea of what was going on but kept thinking 'What if I knew nothing about what was coming up like when I was a kid?'.

I had also started getting into series such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory, series that I was aware of but without in-depth knowledge. All these series therefore came up with surprises as I caught up with the first 4 series of Walking Dead, 2 (so far) of  Game of Thrones, and most of The big Bang Theory. I got hooked on each of those series and encountered many surprises along the way, all without prior knowledge. If I could enjoy such series without knowing a thing, couldn't I therefore enjoy my all-time favourite series Dr Who even more without knowing anything about the episodes coming up? So I stopped reading Doctor Who Magazine (I still buy it and will read them later), and cut down on looking at Facebook and Twitter so as to know a lot less about the series of Dr Who that was to come.

I already had some prior knowledge of this series though as I had been skimming through DWM up to that point. I knew there would be 12 episodes, I knew The Paternoster Gang were in the first episode, and someone who will remain nameless and who I'd told not to tell me anything he knew texted me the name of the second episode which was a big clue as to what it was about. I guessed (correctly) that Coal Hill School would be involved, that there would be a younger man in the series (this turned out to be Danny) and that Steven Moffat would write the first and last episode/s. But that was pretty much it; I didn't know who the writers for most episodes were, or directors, or any guest cast, or most plots. On the day of broadcast of Deep Breath I did foolishly go onto Twitter and the first thing I saw was a picture of a dinosaur so that was the last time I went on Twitter prior to broadcast of an episode. I also became very cautious about going on Facebook.  I also stopped looking at TV listings magazines.

I suspect that had I known about such episodes of Listen, The Caretaker and The Forest of the Night I would not have looked forward to them or indeed the entire series. I did struggle with this series, and there thankfully haven't been many ever that I can say that about. The Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi has been very good, though I haven't warmed to him as much as I have the previous three Drs, his Dr has been at times so far in the background to Clara and Danny's turgid relationship that it wasn't like the series was actually about The Dr anymore. Not enough Dr, way too much Clara-Danny.

No, I didn't really like this series, it didn't appeal to me as a 48 year old or as the 8 year old that still likely resides within. I doubt I gained much from not knowing as much about this series in advance than previous ones, it just stopped me anticipating disappointment along the way. The disappointment came with most episodes most weeks and I will be looking far more forward to watching new episodes of The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory. The first two of those series are epic in nature, often feature cliff-hangers and have yet to feature a 'moon is an egg' plot. At this time they appeal to me far greater than Dr Who does and that's a crying shame. The magic is missing from Dr Who and I seriously hope it regains it again soon.

Odd to think I seem to be in a minority regarding this particular series though, my impression from friends, acquaintances, the internet (in general) seem to indicate this was a widely admired series. I can't see it myself.

My Not So Minimal Reviews of 'Doctor Who' Season 9 (2015)

Score Out Of 10 (10 being the highest)

Fear The Walking Dead, the sequel series to The Walking Dead is really slow and dull without much incident isn't it? Yes it is. Which is why I'm glad that I liked this episode of Doctor Who more than that series.

There was lots going for it, Kate Stewart turning up just to ask Clara if she knew what was going on was a nice touch, the woman from The Shadow Proclamation turning up just to tell Snake Man absolutely nothing was an unexpected touch, Missy turning up just to ask if she could be involved with the plot somehow  was fun, and Davros making a not-too-surprising re-appearance just to have one last chin-wag with the Doctor before he popped off was an okay touch.

Plot on a pinhead: Davros invites the Dr for a last chit-chat so the Dr goes to see him on Skaro but Missy and Clara go along too and the Daleks, bored with nothing to do as Skaro no longer has any instrument panels to play with, kill the women and destroy the Tardis. And some timey-wimey thing to do with Davros as a kid.

Actually I'd said to a friend of mine, prior to the episode and based on the various trailers on TV, that the boy in the hand-minefield might be the Master as a boy but once the episode began I sat on top of my Tardis and said "Davros" to no-one in particular,  so when the adult version turned up later, nice as it was, it was none-too-surprising.

Davros, on Gallifrey, as a kid, in a Hand-Mine Field. Not time-locked. Nobody on Gallifrey thought of this during the Time War?!

Snake man, what's-is-name, made for interesting visuals but if he's been sent to fetch the Dr why feel the need to go all snake-y anyway? He wasn't going to kill him anyway? Nah didn't get it but it was fun to watch anyway.

Lots of Daleks again, not CGI ones but the Real Thing, in all different types from past to present and for no reason at all that we're likely to get explained on screen so let's have fun with this: is it supposed to represent that even now the Daleks / Kaled scientist Davros are still in an attrition-al state at this point? To invoke memories to the long-term audience of how The Daleks were created in the first place? No? Is it because the Daleks have different regiments of Daleks that are sent to different parts of the cosmos-esses? No? Is it because Davros likes to try out different patterns on Daleks?

The Daleks stood (stood's not really accurate but how's best to describe it?) as if they had nothing to do all day (hello, conquer-the-universe, enslave-every-being-and-all-that?) and only got to kill Missy and Clara before destroying the Tardis before next week's put-it-all-back-to-the-way-it-was-again restore point is activated. Dead again huh Clara? No worries, see you next week.

Re: Davros's ship not being a ship and on Skaro all the time: nope, me neither.

The cliff-hanger is a very welcome return to form for the series, hurrah! and I don't believe for one second that the Dr will shoot Davros as a kid. The Dr is the Dr and the Genesis clip of Tom Baker only emphasises that the Dr won't do this even if he's an older person now. The clip of the 4th Dr was a nice insert but the Dr is presumably now kicking himself that he, Sarah and Harry went to all that trouble to get back a reel of audio tape from Davros & Nyder only to now realise that Davros had it all filmed on CCTV as well anyway! Doh!!!

Hopefully the Daleks will have something proper-Dalek-like to do in the next episode, or that they'll stay out of the way in the background waiting for a good plot in a future story whilst Davros, Missy, Clara and the chap known as the Dr have some kind of plot of their own to deal with.

In a mini cliff-hanger of my own the next review / s won't appear here for four weeks or so as I'll be tending to a project of my own.

3 2 1, back in the room.

No idea who The Witch's Familiar is so I'll skip past that and onto why Davros has apparently always had the ability to open the eyes he was born with but chose not to. Nope, no idea there either.

What a great episode, the corridors on Skaro looked wonderful and were highly evocative of the very first Dalek serial and this was greatly appreciated. Missy was great fun and was everything that the so-called psychopath River Song should have been (and wasn't).

The explanation of how Missy & Clara survived extermination was clever if not entirely complete when failing to explain how the extermination (skeleton) effect still occurred even though they had actually been transported elsewhere. The HADs explanation of the Tardis surviving wasn't a surprise and had been used (or mentioned) in recent times. Surprised the Daleks didn't know about this trick.

Julian Bleach as Davros was brilliant, his acting was one of the best performances ever in the entire series' run and he was utterly convincing. No idea about the eyes but the scene was effective and you really did get the feel that these two old enemies actually did have some kind of bond.

I'm glad that the Dr wasn't the cause of Davros becoming who he is as that would have made the whole of time and space too small a place to inhabit but made for a very clever back-door revision of the Daleks; the use of mercy. I liked that. Pity no, mercy yes.

Plot on a pinhead: Davros wants to chat further and tricks the Dr into saving his life & upgrade the Daleks but in turn the Dr has actually tricked Davros and the Daleks as ancient Dalek tissue (eh?) existing in Dalek sewers then turn on them for some reason. And something about Davros as a kid.

Clara ending up inside a Dalek casing is very clever or repetitive depending on your point of view as a version of Clara had already done this in Asylum of the Daleks (kind of) and I'd prefer to say it was very clever, as in fact it was exactly that. The attempt by Missy to have the Dr destroy the Clara Dalek does make me query why Missy would go to all the trouble of pairing them up only to have Clara killed by the Dr but then that's what a Timelord psychopath would do and I'm not going to spend too much time querying that one.

Humour prevailed throughout the episode and was enjoyable on that level, with Davros proclaiming the Dr to be privileged and the Dr wondering what Davros is on about only to find Davros is on about the chair the Dr is sat on is one of the most witty moments in Who history. Loved it, laughed both times that I've seen this episode so far.

The Dr was given much more to do in this story and the balance between Dr & Companion was put back into its proper place as had been absent during much of the previous series.

It was between this episode and the next one that the out-of-the-blue news was received that there was going to be a new Doctor Who spin-off commissioned by BBC 3. Out of all of us who'd ever expected the more obvious UNIT or Paternoster Gang spin-offs, who could have been the most surprised to be told that the spin-off is going to be called Class and set at Coal Hill School? Not the most obvious of Dr Who spin-offs is it but thankfully it's not a replacement for Waterloo Road, no this one will have sci-fi elements (whew) along with aliens in it. No Clara though, and I'm not expecting Courtney either. Aimed at teenagers and who knows how good it will be. Certainly not the people who have already criticised it before it's even been cast. Watch it first. My only un-asked for advice to the production team is to call the series something more interesting than Class: Coal Hill would be a better title. Oh, and have Ian Chesterton turn up at some point. Has the school ever been ascribed to being in a particular part of London? If not then Coal Hill would be a good name for the area that Coal Hill School is in.

How nice to have a story set under water and not feature Silurians, Ice Warriors or any other previous old enemy of the Dr.

The episode had great atmosphere, a good-size cast and a proper menace and it really felt I was watching 'proper' Dr Who again. Heck, there were even running-down-corridor scenes to bring back happy memories of watching Timelash.

It didn't take a genius to realise that deaf character Cass was going to lip-read the ghosts silent words so this did come across as convenient as when Hexachromite Gas, lethal to reptilian creatures, was found to be on the Seabase being invaded by reptilian creatures in 1983's underwater adventure Warriors of the Deep. However, I liked Cass and all the characters in this one, it was about time there had been a larger cast anyway, and was almost amusing that they should appear in a small-base-under-siege plot.

The manipulation of the night and day cycles was scary stuff and I can imagine this story being the kind to be remembered by young viewers who will go on to become Dr Who writers / producers themselves one day, it's that good.

Once again the Dr gets centre attention, a relief after last year's Clara-Danny hijacking of the series and this is brilliant. Clara is also likeable again as she seems to want to travel with the Dr instead of moaning at him for being everything he isn't. This is much better.

Plot on a pinhead: Ghosts talk but no one is listening. One person who cannot hear sees what they're saying.

The idea of the ear worm is perfect, and I hope this is used to great effect again at some point, there really is a whole plot itself there; humans being manipulated without a clue; scary. It wouldn't even have to be an alien menace behind it, a human villain would likely be more effective there, maybe a Thinktank-type organisation. Perhaps to create a The Blue and The Green type scenario. I digress.

This was a very visually impressive episode that had the plot firmly at the front and one of the strongest stories for many a day.

The Doctor talk to the audience?! Unthinkable! Liked it, and the Dr can wish a Happy Christmas to all of us at home anytime he likes as well (well, maybe at Christmas time anyway).

The guitar-ified theme tune was excellent and amusing at the same time and I hope it turns up on the next soundtrack CD. Talking of soundtracks, I've been watching 1975's The Changes again recently and Paddy Kingsland's soundtrack for that remains one of the best ever: I'd love that to be released on CD and if ever the magnificent Murray Gold ever takes a break from Dr Who (unthinkable!) I'd be intrigued if Paddy were asked back to Who to score the odd story or two: his previous work on Dr Who during the 1980s was equally as impressive as Murray's particularly Logopolis which was the first story I ever watched that made me want to a) know who'd scored the music and b) want to get hold of it. Murray's music in this particular story seemed to emulate '80s Who music, it could have come straight out of that era (not a bad thing I add quickly) and I loved it. Murray's work since 2005 hardly needs praising as it is all self-evidently speaks for itself but even by his high standards this is one of his best.

This was another great episode that really cranked up the tension even if I hadn't a clue what was going on and the Fisher King whatever it was looked incredibly good. I've not been so impressed with a creature design since the Destroyer from 1989's Battlefield.

I liked the Cass & wass-is-name getting together scene, it was nicely done and very well acted by both parties. It's almost redundant to say it was very well written but it would be wrong to miss that point out just because that's the case.

Thankfully the story managed to be timey-wimey without it seeming  like it had all been done before and I believe this story will be even better on second viewing.

Sonic Glasses v Sonic Screwdriver? Who cares, they're both devices designed to short cut the Dr through the plot and I doubt we've seen the last of the Screwdriver anyway.

Once again the effects were terrific but only served to dress the plot rather than be the focal point and that works for me; plot first, then think how that plot can be realised, not how can we make this look really good then decide what plot can go with it.

Plot on a pinhead: How the ghosts were created and then stopped. And something to do with something called Fisher King.

This is the 7th episode of Dr Who in a row that I've liked (or loved) and things are now really looking up.

To cast Maisie Williams as Ashildr (have I spelt that anywhere near correctly?) was an intelligent piece of background production as Game of Thrones is really really big on the outside and it's good she has been cast as an important character (she is going to be important isn't she?).

Let's forget she's  another character who can live forever a la Captain Jack Harkness and try instead to wonder if Ashildr's going to be a companion at some point.

The Mire were nicely designed and were possibly too good for what was a very simple plot.

Plot on a pinhead: Bad guy needs human.. something in order to live and his minions raid a Viking village to get it. They get it but after being unable to resist an un-wise challenge from a defenceless youngster get electrocuted or something and the bad guy is embarrassed out of retaliating by the threat to post a potentially viral video showing him and his minions running away from an illusion. The youngster dies but the Dr brings her back to life seemingly forever by using some kind of chip-thing. To be continued.

This isn't so much a 2-parter as two stories connected by one character and if it weren't for the words 'To Be Continued' seen on screen at the end of the episode who'da even thought it was a 2-parter at all. I look forward to the next episode.

Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow was nicely explained; he more or less says it means nothing, it just sounds good. Which is likely what Jon Pertwee thought all those years ago.

Who knew that the big revelation of who the current Dr had modelled his face after would turn out to the character Peter Capaldi had previously played in The Fires of Pompeii? The answer had always been blindingly obviously in front of our faces all the time and I should have guessed from the whole Astra-Romana II thing way back in the day that this was going to be this answer. Clever though and very welcome. I'd always thought PC had been given too small a role in his Tennant episode and now it all fits in nicely. You have to chuckle (no?) that the latest Dr can easily dismiss people's names or re-name people but manages to remember someone he met briefly two regenerations / hundreds of years ago. Well I chuckled anyway.

Now that that question has been answered are we heading for another regeneration in the next year or so. Hopefully not as this could prove to be too many Drs too soon.

Talking of faces / taking after someone, is the obvious 7th Doctor question "Why does the 7th Doctor have a Scottish accent?" answered with "Because the 3rd Doctor enjoyed watching spoon-playing Sylvester McCoy on Tiswas during his incarceration on Earth in the 1970s and chose to look & sound like him in order to remember to have a sense of humour?"

Let's have a quick look at the ratings so far. I remember back in 2005 somebody somewhere connected to the series saying that before Eccleston's series was broadcast the hope had been for 4 million viewers such that it was a very big and pleasant surprise to get 10 million viewers instead. Now Dr Who's overnight figures are around 4 million or so and a big deal is being made about it; what's the fuss about, It's still high in the ratings and it's still getting high audience appreciation figures. The series is not getting more than 7 million viewers but this is extremely good when you consider that series such as Doctor Foster are being praised for achieving similar ratings.

The number of overall viewers has gone down, but this is more likely a reflection of people's opinions of the previous two series than of this one; you are judged by what you have done not by what you are doing. The last series, along with the over-hype of the 50th anniversary Day of the Doctor along with the over-hype of 2014's Deep Breath have likely played a part in the overall drop in viewer numbers but, frankly, if the series is still getting 7 million viewers a week across all viewing platforms whilst achieving very positive viewer reactions I don't see this as a problem. If the rest of this particular series holds up as well as the first five episodes then it will become highly regarded in time, and word-of-mouth will ensure it is watched time and time again by those who have already watched it and by those who have yet to watch it.

There's also a more-than-reasonable chance that putting the series up directly against ITV ratings juggernaut X-Factor might be having an effect but that's like saying there are better TV series' than Doctor Who which is of course absolute rubbish. The timeslot might be the thing though, putting it on at 8:25pm or thereabouts pushes it into times associated with programmes more suited to adults and this is unfortunate as Doctor Who is for the family not just for adults (not just for children either).

Another not-much-happened-but-was-fun-anyway episode that put character before plot what plot.

Plot on a pinhead: The Dr hunts for an alien object in the 17th century, re-meeting Ashildr from the previous episode along the way to justify the 'To Be Continued' caption from the end of the last episode. They find the object and there's an alien lion creature who wants to do something bad with it and Ashildr who says she doesn't care does actually care about this and reverses the polarity of the neutron flow by saving a thief with a chip-thing from the previous episode thereby stopping some adequate special effects in their tracks.

Gosh knows how many exciting adventures the Dr had between this latest adventure and the previous broadcast one or how many years have passed in the Dr's timeline since he first met Ashildr but for me only 7 days have passed so it seemed like a blooming great coincidence that the Dr would meet Ashildr again so soon having not met her in any previous or future incarnations along his or her way. Summat to do with the Tardis sticking her nose in? These are two separate stories and would have been better separated by other stories methinks.

Ashildr's another female who-might-be-good-might-be-bad along the lines of River Song and Missy and doesn't she like to talk! Chitter chatter permeated the episode as if there were no plot at all (admittedly there wasn't much) and this could have all been done in 25 minutes. It was nicely made as most episodes are and even some extras got paid to be in this one but Ashildr wasn't quite as interesting as I'd hoped she'd be and why she remembers Clara's name and not her own beats me. Like most of the bad girl characters who appear in the series Ashildr has issues with the Dr but likes him really and it has a familiar deja-vu about it all over again.

The plot was tiny so the Sam character was a nice diversion and who was in the same vein as Richard Mace from The Visitation, a story referenced by use of the word Terrileptil in this episode. Such touches are nice. His was a good fun character and I'd prefer to see him back than Ashildr now but I guess they'll both be back in another what-a-coincidence kind of way.

Is Ashildr the Dr's  mother? Just throwing that one out there. They have certain things in common such as the 'losing people' kinda gubbins, she wants to get out into space and travel and can live a very long time if not forever. She might age slowly but if she were to meet a Timelord along the way who fancies her they just might want to produce a Time Tot or two. There's the mention of the Dr being half human in the Paul McGann episode from 1996 and this series' fascination with a hybrid species of Timelord and... whatever along with the idea of the Dr running away from Gallifrey because of it, well perhaps that instead of it being a hybrid of Timelord and Dalek as Davros preposterously proposed earlier in the series, what if it was Timelord and human. There's also that ever so small point that Ashildr had forgotten her real name by this episode and the Dr obviously never goes by his real name either, so like mother like son. Plus the Dr seemed to recognise Ashildr last episode and saved her out of all the people he could ever have saved.

Of course I could be wrong.

The oo-er titter-ye-not double entendres were unexpected in a family show but then again if you know both meanings then you know both meanings if you know what I mean. Simon Groom long ago said "What a beautiful pair of knockers" as an obvious double-entendre on children's programme Blue Peter back in the day and he got away with that so those that appeared in this Who episode were just as harmless, which is the point of double-entendres.

The guitar thing's going to get dull, I can feel it, the spoons from way-back-when used to make me groan and the guitar thing's now making me do the same thing.

Nice to see Clara make an appearance as I'd predicted to people that she weren't going to be in this one (or the next two): this is a nice way of writing a character slowly out of a series, but one which hopefully won't end in a third-party "She says she'd like to stay in London and she sends you her love" kind of way.

There's not a lot else to comment on in this episode as there weren't a lot to it to comment on.

For this story it's nice to see that there's been a 100% increase in Zygon costumes from that seen in Day of the Doctor even if this still only represents 50% of the number that appeared in 1975's Terror of the Zygons. But it's the thought that counts. Now if it were the Daleks ooh there'd be loads all standing (not standing exactly) around in all different varieties but the Zygons had best be pleased with two.

This is a direct sequel to the much un-loved by me resolution to the Zygon plot in Day of the Doctor and whilst a necessary evil only makes that 50-years-celebrating special even more weak as it doesn't even stand up on its own anymore. Not special if it needs to be continued in another story is it no it isn't.

The story started dull and lifeless with a lot of chat chat (again) but by the end of the episode it was tight and gripping. I was bored by early parts of the episode and even when the soldier was deciding whether to shoot his 'mother' or not this wasn't so much tense as a time to 'Get on with it!' (by that I mean get on with the plot not get on with shooting your mother) 'cos it just dragged. I actually said 'Get on with it!' at that time.

Plot on a pinhead: The unsatisfactory resolution to the Zygon story in Day of the Doctor is resurrected in a Zygon-splinter-group-wants-to-control-the-Earth kind of way.

The Zygons' modus operandi is to copy other beings and once again this is hardly interesting. Whether it be Autons, Slitheen or Zygons they all have the same modus operandi. It would be nice to see the Zygons taking up some other idea. They are one of the best designed creatures to appear in the series so seeing them in all their rubbery blob-ness doing something just as sinister but without all the copying stuff would be cool. Get this story out of the way, get them a rest, bring them back but give them something else to do.

The Osgoods were great fun and the question mark jumper and collars were wonderful touches albeit that further into the episode the surviving Osgood questioned the Dr about the question marks. This question is all too suddenly being asked in light of Davros' questioning of the Dr and the other questions asked along the way. Too many questions coincidentally all at the same time. Along with the hybrid stuff: nothing then it's all the time.

That guitar, groan.

Where there's doubles there's time for people to play two roles. You know it's going to happen because it always happens. I thought the twist would be that it was the Dr who was duplicated (would that be a twist? No) but it was Clara who turned out to be duplicated at some point along the way. Still, it was good to see Clara in spite of being wrong in previously saying that I didn't think she'd be in this story much.

There were some extras again in this story, was set over a number of different locations and had a cliff-hanger ending so it was pretty ok really and it will likely get better next episode. There's just no way it could turn into another 'talk around the table' bore as with Cold Blood and Day of the Doctor, there's just no way. No way.

It certainly wasn't resolved by characters talking round a table but they sure did stand around it. But it was no bore.

The escape from the plane with the help of a strong-willed Clara was an unusual (original?) way of resolving a cliff-hanger.

I find the use of doubles / duplicates tedious, it's a good way of saving money sure and gives actors a chance to play another version of themselves but it is one of the most well-worn devices ever constructed for film and TV. It's not confined to science fiction either, a lot of TV series I watched as a kid had a double story at some point whether it be comedy or drama. Back in the '80s one particularly dull series of Dynasty had a Krystle look-a-like dulling the senses for nearly the entire series.

Which brings me to Bonnie Clara. At first I thought 'Here we go again' as the amount of extras on-screen dried up, the amount of scene locations fizzled out and Bonnie took centre stage. And dull it was for a while until I realised how well Jenna was playing her. Boringly predictably evil-smile-type or multi-layered? Both, at first the former, then later the latter.

It wasn't a surprise that Kate turned out to be Kate rather than Zygon Kate but it was pleasing to hear 'Five rounds rapid' make an appearance, it was a nice and cheeky reference to her screen father's character.

Once we get to the Osgood boxes and the talk round the table stuff it's incredibly good. I hadn't expected it to be good let alone this good; 'Here we go again' is what I thought (yet again) at this point but once again my expectations were turned on their head. Peter Capaldi gets a lot to say (a lot!) and he is brilliant. The script at this point is perfect and Peter says the lines (lots of them!) with absolute conviction; this has become his episode. We've had to wait a long time to get a perfect scene for his Doctor and this was it. The strength of feeling pouring from his Doctor, the absolute belief that there was only futility in going to war, the baring of his Doctor's soul, it was all brilliant and thankfully stark of humour. This was the Doctor telling it as it is, and this is going to be one of the most-remembered speeches in years to come. Jenna was excellent too, managing to make me as a viewer forget I was seeing the same actor as the one that played Clara. Flawless writing, flawless acting. I can't praise this scene enough.

Petronella Osgood was flawless too, Ingrid Oliver is a remarkable find in acting terms and she simply must come back again (and again). I could have cried when Osgood turned down the Doctor's invitation to travel in the Tardis as the character is so appealing: you knew Osgood would turn him down but it still stung as you're left wondering why a character who's a fan of the Doctor would turn down the chance; she could have been returned to the exact same time to look after the boxes at some future point. Should Osgood be the next companion (please yes) this would be a real dream come true.

Plot on a pinhead: Budget for the story running out the plot reverts to type with a few characters played by the regular and semi-regular cast talking around a table until the running time is up and the bad alien has been talked out of starting a war. But it's all done so well.

Monsters stalking humans, mad scientist, base under siege, this one had it all.

Daft reason for the existence of the monsters, no reason given for plans of the mad scientist, uninteresting humans, this one had it all.

In the hunt for new ideas, the idea of eye-dust created monsters is right up there with 'The Moon Is An Egg' and this episode would have been more at home in the previous series because of it. It was plain silly.

Plot on a pinhead: Whatever you do don't blink I mean sleep because there's some eye-dust monsters on the loose because of it. Ohhhh dear.

The humans managed to be dull and I didn't care who lived or died, the whole thing was dull. Boring. How, given it was a base-under-siege story? Is it possible that once the reason behind the menace is explained all reality goes out of the window? Perhaps it's easier to believe that Cybermen want to destroy the Earth from the Moon than believe that eye-dust creatures, made from bits of humans (what?) want to do whatever it is they want to do. But to be fair, it was dull right from the start.

From the beginning you sense that the episode is aiming for clever above intelligence: clever camera use, a tale told from the humans' side not the Dr & Clara's, against the fact this is clearly a simple monster-stalks-human-in-base-under-siege story but with the most silly (have I used that word again) reason behind it. It all fell completely flat for me.

Aiming for clever they even forgot to put in the beginning title sequence, they..what, they meant to leave it out?? Even though there was an end title sequence?? It was meant to show this was a video being shown across all media in the future? But had an end title sequence??? So they could have had the beginning title sequence and just not had a pre-credit sequence??? Sadly this wasn't the script to have anything so.. clever?... done to it. In fact it is just annoying.

This is at least the second script where a boffin creates a machine to help mankind and monsters are borne of it: see the equally dull The Lazarus Experiment.

Thankfully this one wasn't a 2-parter and this is the most positive aspect of the episode. Actually, that's not quite true. There'll be people who loved this episode as much as the others in the series so far and for them it must be good to have had nine good episodes to watch, lucky so-and-so's.

To be honest I could go on and on about other aspects of this episode (about the characters & the lines, oh those lines! And that irritating end speech, and---) but I think It's best I don't. I just didn't much care for this one.

Plot on a pinhead: The Doctor visits Harry Potter World and for the second time this series the Doctor walks into a trap set by an arch enemy, possibly even the same one but 99.9% chance it's Missy this time. Clara does a Rory and we're supposed to believe she's dead but of course she isn't because who would be silly enough to kill Clara by magic pigeon sorry raven?

Diagon Alley for aliens, the street had the same kind of fantasy elements you'd expect from a Wizarding tale, making me wonder just how much the Harry Potter books / films meant to, and influenced, the writer of this script.

The Raven and the two-headed girl were as fantastical a creature as any belonging to JK's fantasy world as was Snake Man in the first episode of the series so one wonders if Sci-Fi is being side-lined in favour of this kind of magic stuff which would be fine if it wasn't so obvious.

I like the idea of an alien sub-society hiding in secret in a magic alleyway but it is too close to the Wizarding one in Harry Potter's world for real comfort.

Have I emphasized this point enough yet?

So, two episodes this year have had somebody trying to get the Dr's attention with the intention of teleporting him somewhere else. Last time it was in the first Dalek episode, this time it's Ashildr (on Missy's orders?) setting Rigsy up with a countdown tattoo. Both episodes have had fantasy creatures. Both have had Clara supposedly killed off near the episode's conclusion. This is where a Script Editor would come in handy.

A major plus for this episode was that this was a nicely made episode, the street scenes were nicely atmospheric and the Dr's anger towards Ashildr at the end was more believable than Clara being dead. See you soon Clara.

Rigsy could have been anybody in this one, there wasn't a lot of depth written to his character this time around and this was disappointing. He is played by a darn good actor and I had been looking forward to seeing him again. Did Rigsy really leave a baby behind on their own? Did the Dr promise to get Rigsy back at the point he had left? That should have been made clearer.

The ten minutes or so of the Dr and Clara talking about Clara's impending Death by Magic Pigeon Sorry Raven was all a bit pointless as she will be back as if by magic at some point in the next two episodes. I didn't feel at all sad at anything going on because it was all artificially constructed. If she ain't dead how can one be sad, that's how it goes. Even if she is dead (ha!) then I still won't be sad as it's difficult to take seriously that she has been killed by a magic pigeon sorry raven. This is as close as it gets to Kylie's falling to death in a forklift in Voyage of the Damned for snigger-bility to take it at all seriously.

For all it's faults though, this was an entertaining episode and I liked it.

This is a 3-parter? Nice. Let's be having more of that.

Plot on a pinhead: Answers on a postcard to...

The Doctor believes Clara's dead even if I don't and this helped shape a very good atmosphere for this episode. There actually did feel a sense of loss because of the clever way that narration linked with visuals throughout.

It was a long episode and was clear from the trailer that the Dr was likely getting most of the scenes to himself, which could have been a bore but for the script, acting, filming and editing. It could all have been done in a normal running time but having slept on it overnight suspect it had the right running time for its purpose, I wouldn't cut one second of it.

Without knowing what was really going on throughout most of it, and as my fellow Mini Time Team fellow, the irrepressible Andrew O'Day said, it felt like the Dr was in the Matrix a la The Deadly Assassin & Trial of a Timelord, it was so dreamlike. Eventually there seemed to be an explanation of sorts and it was a remarkably clever one.

I liked the idea of the Dr thinking fast to come up with answers and ways out and this was once again a very clever touch.

Funny though that the one thing that was updated each time the Dr re-lived the same experiences was that the diamond wall was altered whereas everything else reverted to the same as it was when he first appeared. I've no idea why that is unless I missed an important on-screen explanation (ha ha I know!) but overall this was a mightily impressive episode. I've no idea why any of what happened happened or why it led to Gallifrey but I liked it a lot.

The ending, with the Dr finally back on Gallifrey, was simply awesome in spite of my being befuddled as at how anything that had happened had led up to that point. He's back! but what are they going to do with The Timelords now that  they are back?

Plot on a pinhead Redux: The Dr re-lives the same adventure over and over again to somehow get back to Gallifrey in some way that I don't get.

Plot on a pinhead: In order to save Clara the embarrassment of being killed by a magic pigeon raven the Dr takes her out of time and there's some muddled something or other about a hybrid, along with Gallifrey and Timelords.

I wonder how many viewers were pleased that Clara's fate worse than death (the manner of her death) has been indefinitely stalled, in relation to the number of viewers who feel cheated that yet another character has cheated death, in relation to the number of viewers who wish she'd stayed dead. No idea.

Blow me down if my assumption that Rassilon had been brought back to lead the Timelords in the Time War was wrong and that as per someone referring to the Dr it was Rassilon who was responsible for starting the Time War. So why had the Timelords resurrected him in the first place then? See you in a later series Rassilon.

You know, all those times the Dr met up with Borusa back in the '70s and '80s, yet nobody felt the need to mention the word hybrid back then, it's almost like that whole plot's been made up just for this series with no duty of care for the past! I know, who'd buy into that? Just to give the Dr a whole different reason to have left Gallifrey in the first place. In terms of re-writing history, they've re-decorated: I don't like it. Not one bit. The re-writing of the Dr's modus operandi purely for a muddled something about a hybrid is purely irritating. I mean, why now???

When that Timelord regenerated into a woman after being shot for no reason by the Dr all I thought was 'Not again, why are they all doing this all of a sudden?' Not content with Missy or the one mentioned in The Doctor's Wife this is now seemingly the rage for the Timelords. It could be their way of ensuring equality in the High Council but is this a politically correct move too far? No idea.

The episode started out interestingly enough as it looked like it was going to be about Gallifrey but roughly half-way in turned its attention 100% to Clara and her fate, just as The Snowmen had started off being about Snowmen and then half-way through turned its attention 100% to Clara MK II. This time it was more interesting, and at least we knew this was definitely her last appearance, though this was another small-scale ending to a series as it centred once again around the two main characters. 'Tis a small universe.

I'd wondered if the diner-Clara was going to turn out to be another splinter of the real thing but was happy when she turned out to be the real thing, though wasn't the idea that the Timelords wouldn't be able to get to her if she either didn't remember him or he didn't remember her? Somehow? I'm thinking that de-materialising the Tardis-Diner from around the Dr might have given him a clue as to who she was and that her face appearing on the Tardis door as per Rigsy might well reinforce any suspicion. I liked all this anyway as this was a much better farewell than the Harry Potter one two episodes ago. It's not often an actor gets two farewell episodes in a series, let alone the very same series. Mind you, Clara had two farewell episodes last year, Death in Heaven and Last Christmas (sort of).

Presumably the future time-travelling Danny-like character who appeared in Listen is an off-shoot of some other Clara or more likely not, that one's been completely over-looked, but anybody who can re-write the Dr's personal history isn't likely to worry about re-writing their own characters' personal history or more likely just forgetting about it.

Peter Capaldi was excellent throughout, his Dr angry and willing to break all the rules to save Clara in a 'Don't let Adric know I've done this' kind of way and shows how much the Dr has been affected by his many years of isolation from the Timelords.

As with the the question of how many Dr's there have been so far, it's best not to ask how old he is now either. It's frankly a redundant question now, it's been made impossibly complicated with the 'Two billion', no, 'Four billion' figures now being banded about. Numbers just don't mean a thing now, and this distances me very greatly from the series I've watched and (mostly) loved all my life. There was an attachment because we knew where each Dr fitted and had some idea of his age but now it's gone past the point where there's any meaning to either concept. I feel that as a fan; I wonder what the general audience makes of such ridiculous figures.

But I digress, the Dr was excellent in this episode, and I liked the fact he was heroically trying to save his companion, just as Peter Davison's Dr heroically went out of his way to save Peri in The Caves of Androzni. The relationship between the two characters in this episode was perfect, even if the Dr's forgotten he can hunt out another version of Clara if he really wants to.

Where it all fell flat was in the dialogue between the Dr and Ashildr relating to the hybrid, which went on so long I had no idea what they were talking about. The hybrid was the Dr and Clara? Am I right? Who knows. The Dr ran away from Gallifrey in a Time-Can-Be-Re-written moment because of this? Why?

The non-surprise revelation that Ashildr was at the end of time grated as much as the where-and-why-did-this-hybrid-nonsense-suddenly-appear-out-of-the-blue plot and why is the Dr suddenly bumping into her all the time? Coincidence he never met her all those times he was on Earth in all his other incarnations eh? Was Ashildr brought into the series just for this moment? ha ha I'd like to think so.

The Tardis set that Clara and Ashildr've run off in is a fantastic homage to the past and would be welcome back again oh yes.

The good news for Big Finish is that there's a whole new series of full-cast audio adventures just waiting to unfurl itself on the world as The Adventures of Clara and Me if they can get the rights to it if they haven't already.

Overnight I'm not as impressed with this episode as I was when I watched it, I would have given it 10 / 10 last night but the more I think about it the less perfect it is. As I'd said to someone who shall be named Andrew O'Day last night, if this episode had appeared earlier in the series I would have hated it, it only works at all because it is Clara's absolutely, definitely, completely, last episode. Had it appeared earlier in this series I would have said it was too small-universe-y and too Clara-centric.

The Christmas episode is on Christmas Day at 5:15pm which is a bit different from the 8pm-onwards slot the series has recently been in, which is good as its target audience might now be able to tune in and watch assuming they haven't forgotten all about this series by now. And for me I can get to bed earlier, ah wait, Mrs Brown's Boys is on.

Plot on a pinhead: At first glance this appears to be a trite story about the hunt for a diamond but on reflection it is surprisingly exactly that. And the Dr says a final goodbye to River for the 4th time.

Am writing this before the memory fades and before the temptation to read all the other, much better, reviews sets in. Ooh it's been tempting. Had to get Crimbo out the way first of course though, me the cat and the turkey all had a timetable to stick to. Still, here we are all fah-la-lah'd and ho-ho-ho'd to excess and ready to count down the days to next Christmas so here we go.

Other than a bit of snow in a surprisingly quick return to Diagon Alley there weren't a lot of references to Christmas and I liked this, this meant there was room for a good plot that wasn't at the expense of Christmas iconography and even though we didn't get a good plot it was nevertheless great fun. Alex Kingston's River Song was highly entertaining and Peter Capaldi's Dr made for good symmetry with her. I liked the interplay between the two, though River's inexplicable failure to recognise him as the Dr for most of the episode seemed a little far-fetched. Still, this is a Christmas episode so anything goes, right? Even credulity?

River was playful though the idea she's hunting, and has married, for a diamond, is a million miles away from the character we first met in Silence In The Library. Still, this is Christmas and anything goes, right?

Talking of that bountiful episode and of our first meeting with River, did she seem in that particular episode to be somebody who'd concluded that she must be near the end of her life because her diary was almost full? She seemed quite chirpy to me, so that last 24-year night on whatever planet it was must have done her the world of good. One wonders what angst teenager Adrian Mole might have similarly suffered as he reached the end of his first diary but I doubt he concluded he was going to pop off. Just buy another diary River love.

The Matt Dr, at the time he gave River the diary, surely didn't know how thick a diary she'd need for the whole of here 200 year life even though he'd seen the diary before, it's the fact he had seen the diary before that made him give the diary to her, surely?

Onto the final-for-the-4th-time farewell, and... the first one was in Forest of the Dead, then that extra on one of the DVDs (with Matt's Dr), then The Name of the Doctor and now this one... you think, blimey, he's only just said goodbye to Clara for the 4th time, so... the first one was in Death in Heaven (hmm, or was it Kill The Moon?), then Last Christmas (sort of), then Catch The Pigeon I mean Face The Raven, then Hell Bent... isn't this constant saying goodbye to the same people wearing thinner that a 1st Dr's body? The fact that he's said goodbye to two people within two episodes seems less interesting as having two base-under-siege stories in a row, (unless those two are Sleep No More and Return to Sleep No More obviously).

Three different Drs have now said a final farewell to River over many hundreds (if not billions) of years of their lives, Tennant, Smith and now Capaldi: I look forward to the next final farewell with a future Dr.

Onto the guest cast and Matt Lucas gets this year's trophy for the 'Why Did They Hire Somebody So Good But Only Give Him A Small Role' award. The man is quite genuinely one of the best character actors ever so a much bigger presence from him would have been the sensible thing to have. The role he played was too small for it to be considered a major achievement within his own career and is a surprisingly small role for someone so huge within the industry. Greg Davies similarly didn't have a major role but to be fair he's no Matt Lucas so this was fine. He was almost likeable in his sublime over-the-top performance but I doubt he's going to appear at the top of anyone's Favourite Villain list. He remains a top comedian though, and his stand-up DVDs are very entertaining.

The visual effect of the creature pulling half it's head away was the sort of thing that would have seen many a Video Nasty banned back in the day but the effect was incredulously and astonishingly performed. It was perfect as ferpect can be so major kudos to the people that perfected that one.

With River's non-recognition of the Dr I was beginning to think she'd had a memory wipe as part of some re-writing of time but no, she knew what the Tardis was and didn't for one second then believe she was in the presence of the Dr. I don't buy it but it was fun anyway kind of.

It was an episode that for me started off dull then got more entertaining once the Dr and River were together, it made for a good disguise to a weak plot: diamond indeed. On the other hand you do need to be a genius to keep up with what's going on when it comes to all the timey-wimey stuff: how many casual viewers are likely to remember the whole River timeline stuff and realise the significance of her being on that planet at the end of the episode, prior to going off to the Library. I suspect many got lost at that point.

Overall, not as good as Last Christmas as it was more character than plot (second episode in a row) but not bad either.

The episode was broadcast in the UK at 5:15pm Christmas Day.

Text & phone conversations betwixt members of the Oxford Mini Time-Tim:

5:31pm Andrew: This is quite entertaining

5:32pm Me: It is?!

5:41pm Me: It's become entertaining now

Silence from Andrew until 6:20pm when he phoned me:

Andrew: I didn't enjoy that

Me: I like it now.

7:09pm Andrew: What time is eenders

This is why we're not working for a professional magazine devoted to this TV series.