Jay Stringer

This is MY Doctor.

That’s the feeling I had this week.

It’s one of those institutions. For people of my age and older, part of being a kid in Britain was having your own Doctor. And there’s a new generation of children who’ve had that again for the past five years.

Not that DOCTOR WHO is a kid’s show. It’s more than that. It’s a show for children of all ages, which is one of the hardest things for a writer to pull off.

So my first Doctor was Peter Davidson. MY Doctor was McCoy. Then you get a little older, your tastes change, you watch repeats, and you start to realise how great Troughton and Baker were. You also realise that McCoy was a great Doctor hamstrung by some patchy writing.

Then it came back. I was -and still am- a big fan of Ecclestone’s take. His relationship with humanity was more love/hate than many of his predecessors, he loved ‘our’ bravery and spirit, but hated out pride and stupidity. That felt real somehow.

I’ve moaned about the writing of Russel T Davies far too often and I come across as someone who hated Tennants Doctor. I didn’t; he’s clearly a very talented actor and his Doctor worked for a whole lot of people. But it just wasn’t a take that connected with me.

Anyway, get to the point Stringer. Thing is, despite being as steeped in the show as I am, and as much of a fan of previous Doctors as I am, watching season 31 (or ‘5’ if you must) there has been a growing feeling in me, and over the past two episodes it’s started to take shape; This could be MY Doctor.

I have loved this series, warts and all, in a way I haven’t loved it since it came back. There have been moments when it really has made me aware that we’re all children, that we all still want to be dazzled and amazed. But it’s not been without its flaws. I do have some tough love to dish out on this season, and I’ll get to that in a minute. First I want to gush a little more.

One of my favourite screenwriters is Chris McQuarrie. He can look at something fantastical and find the human. An eye for that kind of detail grounds a film in something you can believe in. It’s an eye that does an uncredited pass over the XMEN movie script and says, “all this crazy mutant stuff is fun, but why don’t wee start the film in Nazi Germany and show where the bad guy comes from?” McQuarrie also wrote THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and he described it this way; “We set out to say, ‘we hope we can fool you,’ whereas other films say, ‘we hope you’re a fool.’”

And that’s really the breath of fresh air I’ve found in this series. The latest season of DOCTOR WHO has set out to wilfully puzzle, entertain and fool. But it’s never treated us like fools. It’s never hoped we would ignore plot holes or assumed we’re too dumb to care. It’s never treated itself with contempt by not putting in the hard work. Re-watching the season finale you really start to notice the little details that went into putting the puzzle together, and it’s a joy to see that work being done. When in Moffat’s hands, the show seems able to scale heights it’s never touched before.

BUT here comes some of the tough love. He only wrote half the season. When he wasn’t writing an episode, the show fell down a few pegs. At its weakest –the Dalek episode, the Vampires, possibly Van Gough- it limped along a little and wasn’t a fully satisfying meal. Part of this is because it seems no other writer gets modern WHO quite like Moffat, and partly it was because of ambition.

Seasons 1-4 were handled a different way. We would have a handful of different adventures, with a few recurring phrases strung through them, and then a two part epic would be tacked on to the end. Season 5 has been one long story with 13 chapters. So the Dalek episode served a purpose, it advanced the overall story and introduced a couple of key elements to payoff in the finale, but it didn’t quite work on its own.

So that’s a lesson for next season. The balance needs to be found, each chapter still needs to satisfy on its own merit.

The other problem was the two companions. When written by Moffat, Amy Pond and Rory Williams were great. Quirky, exciting and very very British. When written by others, they didn’t quite work. Other writers seemed Bored of Rory and scared of Amy.

So more balance next time, please. More consistency.

But please, please, continue to reach the heights of this year.