Monday, July 12, 2010

Review: Doctor Who episode 5.13: The Big Bang

So Matt Smith's first season as the Doctor comes to a close. As much as I hated some of the individual episodes in it, and as uneven as it all was, I have to say that on the whole the season was pretty good. And it certainly got better as it went along - from episode 10 onwards it was all good.

But to the finale. In my review of the first part of this two parter, I claimed that the episode was good, but not great, and I hoped that the second part was going to be better. Well, this was. Much, much better. The plotting was very, very intricate, very fast paced, but never confusing (unless it was supposed to be). At first I felt a bit cheated, given the fact that the climax of the previous episode had the Doctor being attacked by every single alien he had ever fought against, and this episode almost immediately abandoned all of them. But that feeling of being cheated didn't last long, and had pretty much completely disappeared by the time the Doctor was running around extolling the virtues of the fez.

One problem with the Russel T. Davies seasons of Doctor Who was the overly melodramatic bullshit that filled them. The problem with all that stuff was that it was all exactly the same - the companion was in love with the Doctor, but it was all unrequited. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally, Steven Moffat has managed to vary it up a little bit by having a deeply melodramatic, insanely romantic relationship between two of the Doctor's Companions. Rory's display of devotion was maybe a little bit cheesy and over the top, but my god was it glorious.

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