Doctor Who Finale "The Wedding of River Song"

Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC Worldwide

I was discussing the latest Doctor Who finale “The Wedding of River Song” with a friend and we agreed that the series was growing a little tiring after a while, constantly focusing on the Doctor and the mystery of him. We wished we could just get in the TARDIS, save the world and get back in the TARDIS. We both loved Stephen Moffat’s “Blink” episode but she wondered if he was being a bit too clever, perhaps.

I had more mixed feelings including a little relief, because I was afraid through the series that Moffat was steering the ship towards the rocks. Some of the earlier episodes were so complex and basically undramatic (for various technical reasons) that I found myself 'switching off' emotionally and I thought this was foreshadowing a series and serious catastrophe. Ratings have dropped since Russell T Davies left and things looked perilous; Davies was good at grounding even the most outlandish moments in real human drama, tragic or comic. Moffat delights in plots so convoluted that fantasy disappears up its own artifice while character and humanity become sideshows.

But this finale provided many cool moments (too many to list, but Amy appearing out of the mist wearing an eye-patch has to rate for something) and backdrops which were engaging on a different level, plus it seemed to handle the central misdirection of the show and thereby open the door to a fresh new era.

By that I mean that for too long now the show has been about the Doctor himself and his ever-growing role in the universe, to the point where the character had become god-like, a living myth, whose shadow fell across every plotline and episode. I hankered after the old days when the Doctor himself was an untouched mystery, when the Tardis simply arrived, had an adventure and then left. For many years we didn't know anything at all about the Doctor- and we didn't need to know. That central unknown lay at the core of the show, lending strength to even the most tepid storyline.

Now it's become 'The Doctor Show' and that has been detrimental, I think.

Yes, I know that there is the question of The Question ('Doctor Who?') and that seems to suggest even more burrowing down into fundamentals that should stay buried, but the hint that the Doctor will 'return to the shadows' gives me hope that the power of the show's original format will re-assert itself and we can look forward to more exciting stuff than of late.

Grant Hudson
Head Teacher
Greenfields School

Doctor Who Headmaster Invigorated by Gaiman Who Episode

A Head Teacher in Sussex decides to review
episodes of Doctor Who on his school's blog

Mr. Hudson is Head Teacher at Greenfields School which is bigger inside than it is outside...

In the light of an article a couple of years ago which placed David Tennant as the top of a poll on who would be the ideal headmaster (http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/738913-david-tennant-is-dream-headmaster), it might be interesting for some to know that one school has its very own "Doctor" -Grant Hudson, Head Teacher at Greenfields School in Forest Row, East Sussex, has been a mad fan of the series since it began and happily writes about the recent Neil Gaiman episode here:

Grant Hudson,Head Teacher
at Greenfields School

Having just watched the Doctor Who episode written by Neil Gaiman "The Doctor's Wife" for the second time, I note that viewer response has been overwhelmingly positive. But as a fan of the show since 1963, that worries me a little. See below.

I was able to extract one negative comment: that the whole "junkyard in space" motif and the non-descript rubbish in it was a bit... well, rubbish.

For a fan boy like me though, there were references throughout this episode to the classic series and a kind of homage to Doctor Who as a whole which swung it over to positive in my estimation. Things like the fact that we first met the Tardis in 1963 in a junkyard, the psychic message boxes (last seen at a very pivotal moment in 1969), the cloister bell ringing in the Tardis, the fact that the "junk" console was actually designed by a child on Blue Peter, the shaving mirror reminiscent of "The Masque of Mandragora" in which we first see an alternative control room (which has a shaving mirror on the console), the reference to the Doctor stealing the Tardis (or the Tardis stealing the Doctor), the "deleting" of rooms to give the Tardis extra power (last used in the early '80s) and so on. It all showed that Gaiman is a real fan, and therefore that we were in safe hands.

I also enjoyed some of the lines and their delivery: like when Matt says "Just admiring your collection of Time Lord psychic distress signals..." in that slightly menacing way; or when he says to Idris "I've got nothing" and she replies "You've got everything you've always had: you've got Me" and touches her finger to the console, sparking the take-off. Goosebump stuff for me.

“The Doctor’s Wife” Season 6, Episode 4

But the most stand-alone dramatically effective pieces were the scenes with Rory and Amy inside -the switching of viewpoints, the psychological tension, the use of collapsed spaces and times, the claustrophobia (as well as the wonderful resurrection of the earlier control room). Like that episode on board that ship ("Midnight") with David Tennant.

It's interesting to read Neil Gaiman's feedback on the Guardian website on 16th May 2011.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/may/16/neil-gaiman-doctor-who-doctors-wife

I think the one disapproving comment reveals an important weakness in the show, though: it is highly vulnerable to being too self-referential (and even self-reverential) -it can effectively disappear up its own Rift by depending for its emotional impact on its own past history. Unless it can reach out effectively to non-fans it will begin to die. This was one of Russell T Davies great strengths: he could do the wacky Dr. Who stuff and still drop in a real moment of real human drama. In fact, he inserted quite a few in each episode and this served to make the show more universal and more real. I think of Rose confronting Donna who says "I'm not important -I'm just a temp from Chiswick" -beautifully written, beautifully acted by Tate who almost broke my heart at that point. Moffat runs the big risk of introverting the show too much, making it "too clever" and cutting it off from the wider public. It will disappear into its own bubble universe if it's not careful.

But it's still one of the loves of my life and I still felt re-invigorated about my relationships with things and people when the Doctor sees the lever move by itself at the end and realises that the Tardis has always taken him where he needs to go rather than where he wants to... :)

Grant Hudson, Head Teacher