Doctor Who - The Name of the Doctor - Review

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen the most recent episode of Doctor Who, please leave the blog and come back later. My reviews always contain spoilers.

Also, there's a short Housekeeping section below the review.

Doctor Who - "The Name of the Doctor" - Review

I'm not normally one for contemplation. Usually, I watch an episode once and then review it the next day or a few days later, if I'm being lazy. However, I don't usually think really hard about the episode. I don't nit-pick. I don't think about the entire episode as a whole, opting instead to break it up into character storylines. This episode, though... I can't exactly wrap my head around it and what I think about it exactly.

I mean, I know I liked it. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have managed to rewatch it. I enjoyed all the parts that made up the episode. I enjoyed the characters, even the bad ones. I especially enjoyed the references back to "Classic" Doctor Who. It's just... this was not at all what I was expecting from a season finale.

Season finales usually make me cry for one reason or another. They make me grin. They give me an adrenaline rush I spend hours coming off of. They make me excited for the next season. This one, though... I was frowning at the screen almost the entire time. I didn't have a big adrenaline rush like I usually do. I cried, I smiled, but... it just wasn't at all what I expected. There wasn't really a happy ending there, either. Not that I mind not having a "happy ending," but these things usually get nice and wrapped up at the end with a big, shiny, smiley-faced bow. This ended on an incredibly non-traditional cliff-hanger.

"The Name of the Doctor" also posed some questions that I just can't think around. If someone's timeline is rewritten, they most likely won't end up in the same place. They most likely won't end up meeting the same group of people. Apparently, though, The Doctor managed, even in his distorted timeline, to meet River, Vastra, and Clara. I say this because they were the only ones out of the five companions present who didn't disappear. At least, that's what I think happened. I'm not one hundred percent sure about it at all. I buy Clara being there as the current companion. I buy River being there because she linked herself to Clara. I'm not sure what's so special about Vastra, though, that makes her capable of being there after Jenny and Strax have disappeared. It's just... weird. I just don't know...

Also, there's the whole thing that Vastra said about the Doctor dying all over the place. Yes, Clara fixed it a bit later, but... I don't know, it seemed like he would have regenerated or something since, in the messed up timeline, the 11th Doctor apparently died in Victorian London. That whole thing just threw me for a loop.

Okay, with the thought-provoking problems out of the way we can continue on to stuff I liked. I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved the insertion of Clara into the "Classic" footage. It had my fan-girl heart going berserk. I'd somehow missed on my first watch that the pre-credits bit was Gallifreyan technicians and The Doctor stealing the TARDIS. I was really, really impressed with Gallifreyan Clara. That was amazing. It, and all the rest of the Clara-inserted footage looked great. I really enjoyed all her outfits, too. The only ones I thought were a bit naff were the ones with the leather jacket and the weird hair. What was up with those? Also, the only problem I had with those sequences was the fact that they showed it at the beginning of the episode. It was kind of like reading the end of a book, closing it, and then reading from the beginning.

I loved the conference call. Vastra's letter to Clara had me giggling. I enjoyed that the River we got in this episode was the one from The Library. I laughed at Strax's Victorian Fight Club. I was happy Vastra got totally freaked out when Jenny died and then disappeared later. Those parts made me smile because the pair of them are just awesome. I cried and grinned when The Doctor and River talked and said goodbye. Heck, I'm tearing up over it now.

Lastly, of course, I have to talk about John Hurt. I'd heard about him being cast and seen pictures of him in his Doctor outfit just hours before I saw the episode so I wasn't surprised to see him. My personal theory is that he's essentially the Valeyard. Which was also an fan-girl moment, but we'll just leave that where it is.

I can't wait for November 23rd. It's just such a frigging long time!

Housekeeping

I'll be putting up Warehouse 13 initial reactions in approximately two hours so... look out for those if you read them. For those who don't know, and haven't read my "Read First" blog post, Initial Reactions are what I do instead of live tweeting. People have requested I don't tweet spoilers so... I compromise.

Love ya, Jessie.