Doctor Who - Death in Heaven (S08E12)

Last time, I wrote about how the problem with a lot of Doctor Who two-parters is that the first halves tend to be much better than the second halves. It's not hard to see why: the first episode has the advantage of getting to escalate a crisis for The Doctor without the burden of having to resolve anything, while the second has to deal with the immediate fallout of its predecessor before leaping into its own story. In drama, raising questions is fun and easy, but providing satisfactory answers is frustrating and difficult.

Doctor Who - Dark Water (S08E11)

"Work it harder make it better do it faster makes us stronger more than ever hour after our work is never over."

After a largely great season with relatively few missteps, one that has seen the show revitalised by a new face in the TARDIS and a more subtle approach to long-form storytelling, Doctor Who is faced with the daunting task of trying to end things on a good note. That's something the show has struggled with a lot in the past, particularly when it comes to two-part finales. The typical pattern (which could actually be applied to all two-parters) is that the first half builds to a series of reveals, and in so doing manages to be hugely fun and intriguing, then the second half has to resolve all of them, and winds up being a bit of a disappointment. Based on past form, I'm now really worried for the final episode of the run, because this first half was a blast.

Doctor Who - Flatline (S08E09)

Much of this series of Doctor Who seems to have been geared towards doing two things: deconstructing the idea of who The Doctor is, and finally figuring out how to develop Clara Oswald as a character. Both of those strands dovetailed rather nicely in this week's episode, but the latter one was particularly well served. Jenna Coleman has been on the show, either as Clara or as one of her various permutations throughout time, for over two years, but since she was more of a mystery to be solved in her first eight episodes as a Companion, there was rarely any sense that she was a real character. Coleman was always very good, but Clara never really had a strong identity in the way that Rose, Martha, Donna and Amy did. The Doctor's regeneration last year seems to have served as an opportunity for Steven Moffat and his writers to start more or less from scratch with the character, turning her into an assertive and dynamic figure, rather than one who simply delivers rapid-fire dialogue with consummate ease. It's been one of the most promising developments in a very promising run.

Doctor Who - Kill The Moon (S08E07)

Despite having one of the silliest titles in recent memory and a premise which, at least initially, seems uninspiring, "Kill The Moon" wound up being one of the most compelling and confrontational episodes that Doctor Who has produced. What looked at first to be a fairly blatant Aliens rip-off (a comparison that wasn't helped by BBC America airing commercials for Alien: Isolation during the breaks) shifted on a dime to become a provocative chamber piece and morality play, then shifted again at the last second to question the very nature of The Doctor himself. If nothing else, it made for a surprising 45 minutes.

Doctor Who - The Caretaker (S08E06)

One of the refreshing things about this series of Doctor Who has been the way in which Steven Moffat and his writers have focused primarily on developing the relationship between Clara and the new Doctor. Previous series have done that as well, but they've usually mixed the growth of a new (or, given the overlap between Doctors and Companions, new-ish) friendship with plotlines that try to involve the Companions' families, most notably in the case of Rose's boyfriend Mickey and her mother Jackie. That divided focus made for some great episodes (particularly the heartbreaking "Father's Day", in which Rose got the opportunity to meet the father who had died before she was born) but more often than not it felt like baggage that was unnecessarily added on.

Doctor Who - Time Heist (S08E05)

Before we get down to the business of discussing this very, very good episode of Doctor Who, I just want to step back and examine an issue that has bothered me about the show in the past, and explain why the last few episodes have managed to sidestep it. A little over a year ago, when reviewing the Season 7 episode "Hide", I wrote about what I have come to think of as The Problem of Perspective, an issue which has plagued the show for years, but came to really dominate the Matt Smith seasons:

The Problem of Perspective is that if every episode is about a life-or-death struggle to save the Earth or the galaxy or the Universe then it gets harder and harder to care with each passing crisis. This is especially problematic where end of season finales are concerned; how can something be a climax when everything leading up to it is just a succession of climaxes? 

The show became too big. It too often revolved around stories in which The Doctor has to save the entire world on a weekly basis, and in so doing it squeezed out the smaller-scale adventures that the original series did so well. I mean, the small stories still involved intergalactic travel, life-and-death decisions and moments of terror, but they were often about trying to save a handful of people or thwart a relatively small scheme. You cared about whether The Doctor succeeded because even the lives of seemingly insignificant beings mattered to him, not because failure meant the end of the Universe.

Doctor Who - Listen (S08E04)

"Did we come to the end of the Universe because of a nursery rhyme?" - Clara

That line may be the perfect summation of the appeal and driving force behind Doctor Who in general, and the Steven Moffat era in particular. The Doctor is a protector and something of a superhero, but he's also an explorer. He's someone who has access to a time machine and has the entirety of existence at his disposal, and he has to make the most of it. In "Listen", the first out-and-out great Capaldi episode (and an episode that already seems destined to be canonised alongside "Blink" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" as a modern classic), Doctor Who explores that adventurous spirit, and how far The Doctor's inquisitiveness will take him, even if all that's driving him is a nursery rhyme and a general feeling of unease.