TV SERIES: Game of Thrones: Season 3

It’s difficult to review a television series. The traditional method is to review each episode individually, but personally I don’t think that works very well because it’s impossible to properly analyse segments of a story without their surrounding context. To me, it would be comparable to reviewing chapters of a book, songs from an album, or scenes from a film individually. A TV series is like a film, only far longer and told in segments, so it would be an injustice to review only a segment at a time. As a result, I prefer to review an entire series as a whole, because it allows me to look at the entire story arc from a big picture perspective, and scrutinize the storytelling as a whole. On the other hand, TV series are characteristically long, and as such, reviews of them also tend to be long - so bear with me on this one.

The thing about TV series is that their length allows for much greater depth and complexity in their stories, as opposed to films which need to be terse, and in my opinion this makes them a superior medium for storytelling. I think we can observe a current trend in television to create great, complex and rich stories, with recent works such as Breaking Bad, True Blood, Sherlock - and of course, Game of Thrones. The downside to this medium is that it is easy for studios and executive producers to staple superfluous continuations to a popular story in the form of additional seasons, in order to milk as much money and ratings out of a franchise as possible. This means writers need to contrive arbitrary reasons for the story to continue, and the show degrades into stupidity - see the fourth season of True Blood for a textbook example, and also Doctor Who at various stages in its life.

Regardless, I feel the TV series is a step above film as an onscreen storytelling medium, as the level of potential complexity, depth, and exploration is far beyond that of a single two hour film. I want to talk specifically about Game of Thrones, because it is among the most incredible things to happen on television that I have ever seen, at least for a long time, and with the recent closure of the third season it seems appropriate to do so.

There is something amazingly transcendent about the Game of Thrones world, which I can’t exactly put my finger on. It’s something to do with the fictional world, invented entirely by George Martin, being simultaneously so very real. The characters are alive and multifaceted human beings, the political themes ring true in our world, and Game of Thrones does not censor anything - the blood, the sex, the gore, and the torture are all depicted to their fullest extent, which I believe is the best way to tell a story in a visual medium, because that is the truth of reality. Anything which censors too much comes across as insincere and dishonest, whereas a truly honest depiction of the explicit, visceral and sometimes horrifying side of events helps to involve viewers by evoking emotional reactions, including sympathy, compassion, disgust, hatred and anger. As a result of these aspects, the world of Game of Thrones feels incredibly tangible and real, invoking audience participation and investment in the events.

The story has been likened to J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, but in my view the world of Game of Thrones is above and beyond Middle Earth. It’s uncensored presentation is one reason as such, but also the fact that the story centers entirely around human affairs and is therefore more relatable, sports a far more varied cast of characters, has a greater emphasis on moral ambiguity, and that magic and the supernatural has an incredibly small role to play. Yes, there are a few supernatural elements; however, they are significantly downplayed in the story, to allow more room to focus on the man-made socio-political structures and interrelationships between human characters, which I like. In retrospect, Tolkien’s world seems rather quaint and obsolete, and Game of Thrones seems to be the most natural evolution of medieval fantasy stories.

There are a couple of issues one could take with the series, which I will attempt to illustrate. Watching the first season again, it becomes apparent that an absurd amount of dialogue is obligatory exposition. Characters will needlessly spew information about other characters, call each other “brother” or “mother” etc. so the audience knows who they are, introduce other characters as though they’re meeting for the first time, and tell long stories about other characters, unprovoked, for the sake of the audience. The social and political relationships between individuals and families in this series are incredibly complex, so it’s necessary to set up the characters for the rest of the series, but it does seem unnatural and contrived, and therefore can take you out of the story. One solution could be to have an opening sequence which shows the characters, their names and roles in the story, but that would involve sacrificing the magnificent opening sequence the show already sports - which does a fantastic job of illustrating the true scale of the Game of Thrones world.

I could take issue with a few other small elements - like how sometimes it seems there are too many character arcs which force it to spread itself too thin and lose focus, or the occasional blink-and-you’ll-miss-it crucial exposition. But Game of Thrones more than compensates for these small nitpicks with incredibly well defined characters, amazingly good writing, a coherent and well-devised plot, and a truly imaginative fantasy world without the need for excessive magical and supernatural aspects.

The moral ambiguity is a commendable aspect which is often absent from many fantasy stories. Traditionally, many stories in general, regardless of genre, involve a distinctly “good” and “evil” side of the conflict, which is notably absent from Game of Thrones. Indeed, it is firmly established which side you are meant to favour (Starks) - however, at such a point the series starts to characterise its “villains”, making them both credible and likable at the same time (see Tywin Lannister, The Hound, etc.). It cleverly throws a spanner in the works of the moral polarity in the series, because in reality “good” and “evil” are far from simple. It’s when there is no clear cut sides to the conflict, when we start seeing hidden depths of previously immoral characters and starting to like them, that conflicts become more powerful and have more weight behind them.

Here’s an example which I like: Theon Greyjoy, who destroys his previous home and betrays those who trusted him, is then established as a selfish and horrible person. Then, in Season 3, he is subjected to much horrific torture and torment, making us, the audience, feel sympathy for such a loathsome person. We then begin to doubt exactly whose side we are on. This is something Game of Thrones does extremely well, which keeps the world in a near-permanent shade of grey. 

A notable characteristic of Game of Thrones is the tendency for central characters to die unprecedentedly. George Martin has stated this is a deliberate - and I would argue successful - attempt to illustrate that, in the real world, people die all the time, and sometimes good people die horrible deaths. In accordance with the modern television-watching demographic, many viewers form attachments to these characters and watch the show primarily to be entertained by them, and feel mistreated by the writers and producers if said characters are killed off. I have many people say, for example: “If character X dies, I will not watch the next season”, with Daenerys Targaryan being a popular subject. This strikes me as an incredibly shallow and superficial interpretation of the story, because the events are intended to be far bigger than any individual alone. Not only are there excess reserves of entertaining characters anyway, but there is so much more to the world and the story than any single character. It is this tendency  to kill major characters which, in my eyes, is among the series’ greatest strengths, and not just because it allows it to stay fresh and cut off superfluous character arcs so the story doesn’t become too widespread and bloated.

It is the Anyone Can Die factor which sets Game of Thrones apart from both its contemporaries and its predecessors. The uncertainty creates fear and tension, because we do not know who will die next, and because this sad truth - that good people die all the time - is consistent with the real world we live in, and Game of Thrones reminds us of this. This is what makes Game of Thrones so profound. However, this is only a small piece of the true genius of this story.

It was not until the Season 3 episode “The Rains of Castamere” that I realised what Game of Thrones ultimately is at its core. It is a study of the limits - or lack thereof - of human cruelty. We see this as early as the first episode, with Jaime Lannister pushing a child out of a window, and it only gets worse from there. Watching the climactic scene from “Baelor” again still gives me chills, and not due to the uncertainty regarding Ned Stark’s life (I already know he dies). It is the unrelenting cruelty and madness, as the king stubbornly demands his death, his councillors plead for him to be spared, and the crowd screams for blood. The truly scary thing is that there are people in the world who are capable of such cruelty, and Game of Thrones reminds us of this.

And in “The Rains of Castamere”, we see more insanity, in one of the most gut-wrenching scenes on television. It is not the gore, or the blood, or even the brutal death of good people which gets me the most. It is the betrayal of trust, the insane and horrifying degree of cruelty, and the reminder that people like Walder Frey exist in this world, who feel they have a right to another’s life.

Game of Thrones sends a cynical and brutal message, but it is honest, and it is this message which, to me, sets it above and beyond most everything else I have seen. With the occasional exception, the running theme is that honest, honourable, good natured, compassionate and merciful people die, while those who value strength and power survive - a certain breed of social Darwinism, if you will. It is the likable characters who die in favour of the truly cruel and horrible ones, and I predict the series will end, ultimately, with all “good” characters dead, and everyone we’ve hitherto hated fighting for the throne, leaving viewers rooting for no-one. At least, that would be the most interesting ending I can currently foresee - however, it is more likely to end akin to a Shakespearean tragedy, with most, if not all people, dead. Perhaps I am too cynical, but it is refreshing to see something which is the polar opposite of saccharine, for once.

Or perhaps it will end in some happy ending. With this kind of set up, I have no idea how George Martin can do it, but who knows what goes on in his head. 

I am fully aware that Game of Thrones is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, which I have not read yet. But I feel that, since George Martin is an executive producer and occasional writer on the show, it’s safe to assume that the series is accurate to Martin’s original vision for the story, to a certain extent. Curiosity has made me want to start reading the books anyway. Nevertheless, the sheer brilliance of Game of Thrones earns it a place in the history books, in my view, and if you are one who is doubting the future prospects of the show, I urge you to stick with it until the end.

FILM: After Earth

Popular actors have a shelf life far shorter than lesser known ones, in my view. When a massively famous actor like Will Smith stars in as many films as he does, it becomes difficult to look past the face to see the film character, and all one sees is the actor. At that point, it is probably beneficial to the film industry for that actor to retire (which he could most likely afford) to make way for newer faces. Unfortunately, the right name and face can make millions at the box office if marketed correctly, so the famous actors are unlikely to retire any time soon. And despite popular belief, Will Smith is not really a good actor. He’s adequate - not terrible - but that’s about the extent of his talent.

The problem of famous faces is especially problematic when the actors names are more memorable than the character names, as in After Earth. In fact, I only remember hearing Jaden Smith’s character’s name a few times in the entire film, and - being one of those strange, futuristic names - I forgot it almost instantly. The father’s name was never mentioned, or at least not memorable, so I never knew his name either. In short, I only know the two protagonists by the actors - Will and Jaden Smith. 

After Earth is an M. Night Shayamalan film based on an original story idea from Will Smith. It is set one thousand years into the future, where humanity has evacuated Earth after nearly destroying the planet and colonised other worlds. However, a hostile alien species which can only sense humans by smelling their fear poses a threat to the human race; as such, part of the central theme of this film is overcoming fear. En route to another planet of unspecified importance, Will Smith and his son crash land on Earth, and Jaden must fight his way to a MacGuffin so they can leave.

This film had the potential for being incredibly profound with a strong message, if it hadn’t abandoned the pretense of humanity’s destruction of Earth ten minutes in. Instead, After Earth focusses more on the relationship between father and son. It appears to be more about the actors than actual storytelling, as the story feels like little thought or consideration was put into it. For some reason, after one thousand years, all life on Earth has “evolved to kill humans” a plot point which shows a complete misunderstanding of the theory of evolution, and reeks of a half-baked plot which the writers couldn’t care less about. Almost every line of dialogue feels like obligatory exposition, and the film completely disregards the importance of characterisation or effective weight to the story. Both protagonists are bland and one-dimensional - Will Smith’s character in particular, who delivers every line as though they are all military orders from an emotionless robot - and both are little more than drones designed to drive the uninteresting plot.

A ridiculous amount of effort has gone into making everything in this film “look futuristic” in the standard modern science-fiction fashion of incorporating unintuitive architecture and engineering and superfluous technology in everything man-made. While it looks nice, it makes no logical sense and only serves a superficial purpose to “look cool”. Which brings me to the visuals, which are genuinely very well done - obviously, with little thought put in to anything else, this film relied on the visuals to carry it. But the bottom line is this: a film cannot be carried by fancy CGI and expensive visuals alone - it is superficial and insubstantial. Avatar tried the same thing a few years ago, and was little more than mediocre. “Style over substance” is not a formula for quality film, which is something the producers of After Earth fail to understand.

Upon reflection, After Earth seems like a film which desperately wants to be a video game - and perhaps should have been one. In fact, it would have made quite a good one. The first person camera shots, for example, are used to great effect, and would have worked well in a video game. An After Earth game could have action-based gameplay, focussing on the son traversing the Earth, and could have gone on for a decent length and remained interesting. Unfortunately, this film knows it can’t focus on action without getting repetitive and boring (indeed, how can anyone make a film about one person traveling alone across a foreign landscape?) so it has to alternate between the son and the father to try and stay fresh - it falls down, however, because neither character is doing anything interesting. Additionally, at every opportunity one can feel After Earth padding out the length as much as it can by having it’s characters take their time with everything they’re doing - and even that is unsuccessful, because it’s still only a mere hundred minutes long. These are problems which could have been solved by making it a video game rather than a film.

All this leads me to the biggest criticism of After Earth: it is simply boring. The characters are dull and the acting is questionable, the plot is poorly thought out and predictable, the dialogue is uninteresting, and the film overall is insubstantial, superficial and just boring. I remember thinking it would have made a great statement if it had Jaden Smith trekking through the ruins of a familiar landscape, like perhaps  a ruined USA or Europe. And even that would have been enough to be even remotely interesting.

The film does have its occasional redeeming quality, but they aren’t given enough weight to be significant. There’s a couple of nightmarish and psychological themes which are dropped as quickly as they are introduced. The “fear is an illusion” theme is a neat piece of genuine wisdom, which I like, but as I said, it’s not given enough weight in the story. Jaden’s transition from fearfulness to fearlessness is near instantaneous - far too quick to be credible. There was great potential for a truly thrilling survivalist element, but the audience can’t feel it because it’s too clean and polished.

So all in all, After Earth is just a bland overproduced action film, which attempts to use fancy visual effects to compensate for a lack of substance. There is absolutely nothing about this film which justifies it’s existence. Avoid.

FILM: The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann is an interesting director, whose films I’ve found to be reliably enjoyable. His theatrical and dramatic style is unique and interesting, if nothing else, and in particular his rendition of Romeo and Juliet was masterfully executed. He returns to the cinema with The Great Gatsby, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of the same name, which I can’t say I would have been that interested in if it weren’t for Luhrmann’s name. As usual, I haven’t read the book before the film - although I probably could have given the book is fairly short - so I will be judging the film on its own merits.

It strikes me as fairly cruel to cast Tobey Maguire alongside someone like Leonardo DiCaprio. Maguire is one of the most irritating actors I know, and his presence was only a detriment to the film, exacerbated by the presence of a great actor such as DiCaprio. He sounds like an amateur high school drama student, and his tone of voice grates as such, so every time he spoke it broke the immersion of the film. He doesn’t seem to know how to emote to the same degree as DiCaprio, and he appears to be stuck in the whiny and mopey Spiderman he played. I cannot fathom why anyone would think to cast these two actors opposite each other in the same movie.

But I digress. The Great Gatsby is a film about a man who comes to New York City in the early 1920s for career prospects, and meets an incredibly wealthy and mysterious man named Jay Gatsby. He gets caught up in Gatsby’s life and many complications ensue. This film starts off incredibly slow, with long-winded introductions to inconsequential characters, and you begin to wonder what the point of it all is. We don’t meet Gatsby himself until at least half an hour in, and it takes another half-hour for him to become interesting. Incidentally, Gatsby is the only compelling character in the film, with the rest being relatively uncomplicated and uninteresting. 

The problem with The Great Gatsby is that it is terribly unfocussed, and doesn’t seem to know what exactly its trying to be. For the most part, this film is just a big mess with a camera, and the rest is an attempt to sort out the results. It contains loud party scenes, extravagant dramatic scenes, darker introspective motifs, and a wide variety of characters, resulting in some truly bizarre and dramatic tone shifts. The contrast works quite well, but the central focus of this film is hard to pinpoint, and it comes across as inconsistent with its own aims.

As I said earlier, Gatsby is the only interesting character in the film, so its at its best when it focusses on his character development. I really like what was done with him in this film - he comes across as a deeply troubled and scarred man, which he tries to hide under a facade of wealth and partying, and as a result he is very compelling. The enigma and mystery surrounding him is quite intriguing, making us want to learn more and more about him, and why he acts as he does, as the story progresses. This film could be considered primarily a character study of Gatsby himself, and I enjoyed watching his character unravel gradually. It’s never exactly revealed what makes him so eccentric, obsessive and troubled, so the mystery prevails even after his death, which is a neat touch. It seems apparent to me that Gatsby is delusional, psychotic, and megalomaniacal to some extent, and the focus on his obsession with Daisy and his perfect life reminds me of an Aronofsky narrative, in a way.

It’s great when it focusses on Gatsby’s psyche, but unfortunately it puts far too much emphasis on other, less interesting characters and events, and too much effort and time has been put into the extravagant and theatrical execution. The film is far too busy and clogged with unnecessary flourish - the party scenes in particular - leaving the actual substance sparsely distributed. It tries to do too much and falls short in the storytelling aspect. This is Baz Luhrmann’s style, which I don’t typically have a problem with, but in this case there’s so much potential for a deeper exploration of Gatsby as a person which is missed in favour of the superficial theatrics. It falls down particularly because his film style works best with a film which is primarily comical, and relatively tongue-in-cheek -  however, there are some significant darker undertones in The Great Gatsby which don’t quite fit with the way it was executed.

I find the contrived nature of this film in particular to break the immersion in the story, a problem only exacerbated by Tobey Maguire’s acting. The characters move, speak and act in an unnatural way - again, an aspect of Luhrmann’s style - for the sake of preserving the theatrical style. It comes across as heavily pre-rehearsed, and therefore too surreal for the characters to come across as genuine or real in any way. This is a problem for a film which is at its strongest when focussing on characters, and there is so much missed potential to strip it down and focus on the serious drama and character arcs. I would have liked to have seen a more natural and organic drama focussing on the relationships between the characters - particularly Gatsby - but the superficial execution renders it particularly insubstantial.

I can’t criticise it too much, though, because it’s at least functional, and if nothing else it’s a fun film to see. Luhrmann’s scriptwriting is commendable for being both clever and entertaining in its own unique way. The Great Gatsby is little more than half a film, but it’s an entertaining half-film, for what it’s worth, and if that’s all it wanted to do then I suppose it succeeded. I must make one point, though: this film lost me near the end with the dropping of the word “destiny”. Destiny is an incredibly weak plot device, and shows both solipsism and a complete lack of perspective on the part of the story as a whole, which seriously damages how seriously I can take it. It makes events out to be far more important than they conceivably are, in an attempt to raise the stakes, but it’s so insincere it does the complete opposite.

That aside, I mildly enjoyed The Great Gatsby. It’s not particularly well executed, but it’s not too bad either, and probably worth seeing if only to see what all the fuss is about. 

TV SERIES: Doctor Who: Season 7 (Part 2)

My relationship with Doctor Who has been like a wife to an abusive husband. It’s painful and horrible, but no matter how bad it gets I always come back for more and expect it to be better. Sadly, this is seldom the case. I was quite a fan of Doctor Who as a child, and thoroughly enjoyed the reboot series as such, but after a while I managed to look at the show a little more critically and see the glaring flaws in it.

The fundamental concept shows so much potential and promise, but it suffers from terrible execution and writers who drive the plot into absurd and stupid directions. I like the idea of a lone time traveller who tries to find meaning in his life in many different kinds of ways, someone who can see further than humanity and challenge conventional thinking, and the show is a great catalyst for such ideas - but unfortunately, in its entire fifty year run, it does little of the sort. In fact, there is a breed of solipsism in the reboot series, where most major conflicts in the entire expansive universe take place somewhere in Great Britain. When the main character is a thousand year old time-traveller who can go anyway in all of space and time, and happens to end up in London every single episode to save the universe, the writers have clearly missed something crucial, and the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief (a key factor in immersive storytelling) can start to slip.

After the abysmal train-wreck of the first half of this season, with the ridiculous Amy/Rory/River story arc, I was dubious about where the show would go with a clean slate. Indeed, I was waiting for those characters to die, and when they did, the show tried (and failed) to evoke empathy using close up shots of tears and sad music. This left me understandably skeptical about the fate of the rest of the series, but the Christmas episode did pleasantly surprise me. One of the problems with the previous story arc (apart from the needlessly convoluted and poorly written plot) was that it began to focus primarily on the Doctor’s companions and the secondary characters, and the Doctor himself became less central to the story. They even started a few episodes with an intro sequence from Amy’s perspective as a child, although that was abandoned fairly quickly. Aside from the secondary characters at the time being completely unlikable, the writers seemed to forget that the Doctor is the most interesting character in the show, and as such the story should focus primarily on him. When the Doctor is alone, the show has to focus on him, and this is where the show can really shine (see surprisingly good episodes such as Midnight and The Waters of Mars), and this is something the first episode, The Snowmen, does quite well.

In fact, this season contains an arrangement of quality episodes rarely seen in Doctor Who. With a few exceptions - The Rings Of Akhaten and The Crimson Horror, for example - this series is overall fairly solid. With the previous characters killed off before Christmas, the Doctor gets some breathing room for his character to be developed a little more, which is more or less the overall theme in this season. I have to say, despite rapidly becoming the hipster Doctor, I am growing quite fond of Matt Smith as the Doctor, and in this series in particular I am liking the direction they have taken the character. He resembles a much younger Jon Pertwee. Unfortunately, however, the series has to fall upon the standard trend of the Doctor choosing yet another young, attractive British woman to travel with him.

The official series starts with The Bells of Saint John, Steven Moffat’s obviously crude attempt at satirizing Wi-Fi and modern technology. The attitude expressed in this episode is rather quaint, and I would say shallow as well, with the demonisation of wireless technology without any real reason to do so. The Doctor returns to present day England (which, for an alien time traveller, should have no meaning) to investigate Clara Oswald, who he met in Asylum of the Daleks (which I never saw, in order to avoid the Power Ranger Daleks) and The Snowmen, curious as to how such a person can exist on several different timeframes. At the same time, The Great Intelligence is capturing people through Wi-Fi, and it is up to the Doctor to stop him. Clara is one of the more interesting companions to the Doctor in the new series, as she has wit, intelligence and assertiveness, and this episode sets up her mystery which is to be resolved over the course of the season.

Going on the standard sightseeing tour the Doctor promises, they end up on the Rings of Akhaten in the eponymous second episode, which suffers immensely from an absurd setup, and as such the resolution in the second half of the episode is just silly. Let me say one thing straight up: if you don’t have the budget to produce decent special effects, don’t rely on them for your storytelling. Knowing your limitations can stimulate the creative process; contrarily, going ahead with terrible CGI not only breaks the immersion, but also shows a lack of creativity. It works better if you minimise the use of bad special effects by working around them. I bring this up, because the “space-motorbike” scene from asteroid to asteroid in this episode really made me cringe. The wind in their hair (space has no air, let alone wind) and the lack of any space protection gear, combined with the cinematic delivery turned this episode from an average Doctor Who episode to a terrible one. I don’t think it’s fair to judge anything on the basis of special effects, but in this case it was unnecessary. The contrived resolution of the plot only exacerbated this, and overall this is probably the worst episode this year.

One thing Doctor Who could definitely do without is the incidental music. Murray Gold makes some wonderful contributions to the show, but they don’t fit with the overall tone. Doctor Who works best with a slightly eerie undertone, but the excessively cinematic orchestral music undermines this by making the show feel like an action-fantasy series. The new series can’t seem to go for two minutes without an epic orchestra complimenting the events on screen, and it completely destroys any kind of atmosphere or consistent tone the episode might have built up to that point. Less is more, in this case.

As I said before, I am liking what the writers are doing with the character of the Doctor in this series. I like the motif of obsession, and there seems to be a darker edge to his character we haven’t yet seen much of. Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS begins to bring this out in a commendable way, and it is one of the highlights of the series. It has a psychological undertone, and has very few support characters, which allows it to stay focussed on the doctor and his obsession with Clara, and does a decent job of bringing out a darker edge to the Doctor’s personality. The thing is, Doctor Who is at that stage where it’s only good for exploring the character and the concept in much greater depths than has done before, lest it run the risk of stagnating and repeating itself, and the current writers have done alright at this task.

That being said, when they try and break new ground, they also have a tendency to make it even worse than if it had just stuck to the original formula. The way the TARDIS is sentient and behaves like another person, for example, is one such decision, and I find the interaction between Clara and it quite difficult to watch. If the Doctor is the most interesting character in everything he’s in, the TARDIS is the least interesting character - personally, I feel it was better off as an inanimate object - little more than a means of transportation, and without a distinct personality. Too often the series has had to fall back on magical and fantastical explanations for its many contrived plot devices, and every time I feel the show has missed its own point. As I mentioned in my Star Trek review, I would like to see more science fiction where the science part is at least somewhat grounded in reality, no matter how far fetched, and it seems like Doctor Who has gotten into the habit of introducing new fantasy elements before figuring out how it would work in the first place. It all reeks of a show which has run out of ideas, and is trying everything in its desperation to remain fresh, and I don’t think it’s working.

I bring this up in relation to the aforementioned sentient TARDIS, which I think has been given more screen time than it deserves, but in general, the series has had this tendency to resolve things in a more magical fashion than makes sense. The conclusion to The Rings of Akhaten is one such example, as is the conclusion to Hide. In fact, I would say most episodes suffer from this syndrome - where the resolution of a conflict is done in a way inconsistent with the logic up to that point. More often than not, it seems the writers feel they can just make up time travel rules as they go, which is not only irritating, but also terrible storytelling.

Neil Gaiman - who I am fairly fond of as a writer - makes his second contribution to the series in the second last episode, Nightmare in Silver. This is probably the most grounded Doctor Who has been in a while, and it’s certainly refreshing to see. Gaiman plays around with the Doctor’s character even more, as he gets infected with an artificial intelligence taking control of his memories.

The writing has generally improved in this half of the season, and it’s nice to see some genuinely decent episodes in a TV series which has been steadily going into decline for quite a few years now. As I said, I like it when the new series changes things to make it more interesting, and taking it into new and dynamic directions. Moffat has certainly been doing this since he took the helm of the show, but he has had a tendency to overdo it to the point where the show becomes silly. I keep coming back to Doctor Who to check if he’s realised the error of his ways and made something good out of the series. He seems to have had trouble with devising coherent plot arcs and establishing good characterisation, but in this series I think we can give him credit for genuinely doing a good job.

I do have to take issue with the finale though. Change is certainly a good thing, but in this particular case they try to do too much and it just falls flat. Moffat tries to rewrite the entire series (that is, the entire fifty years worth of it) by having The Great Intelligence dotted around the Doctors entire history “foiling every one of his victories”, and subsequently having Clara do the same and have been responsible for “saving” him every time. The plot holes are ridiculous, and it seems like the producers came up with the Clara mystery at the start of the season, but failed to figure out how they were going to explain it until the last minute, where they rushed together a mildly-coherent-but-not-really resolution. That aside, it seems stupidly ambitious to attempt to re-write the entire series in the first place, and due to the aforementioned plot hole the whole thing falls down.

Finally, I must draw attention to some appallingly poor judgement. An “alternate Doctor” has been contrived, who is apparently not actually the Doctor, and is played by John Hurt. To me, this seems like an extraordinary waste of talent, as John Hurt would be absolutely magnificent in the role of the next incarnation of the Doctor. But no, I suppose they needed to leave the position vacant for yet another young attractive man to appeal to the teenage girl demographic.

Again, though, the good characterisation makes up for it, and for finale particularly gets away with a silly plot because it is primarily character focussed, and it does the characters well enough for me to let it slide. I’ve found it incredibly disappointing that Doctor Who has developed a massive new cult following of young people since Matt Smith took the role, and how its popularity has seemed to increase in inverse proportion to its actual quality. Because of this, I found the new series to be somewhat of a last hope for Doctor Who, and for the first time in a while I’m actually looking forward to where they take it next. Discounting the 50th Anniversary Special, of course, because that is bound to be woeful.