Oddverse.com

A touching family portrait

I've spent the last few weeks catching up on some posts I started last year. That's not because I plan this thing months in advance, but just because I got bored. And a failed hard drive ate the images that I'd intended to use.

It just happens that my relative ranking of episodes finished at much the same time as series 6... just in time for me to start the whole exercise all over again! Which I am - mercifully - going to spare from the internet.

But... the last season of Doctor Who, had I ranked it using my episode-by-episode system would have come first. There are some absolutely corking episodes in there - some better than others, true, but quite respectable. Which is interesting.

Because it wasn't my favourite series.

If you were to sit me down and say "Doctor Oddverse, which series of Doctor Who would you like to watch again?" I'd probably say either three or four.

Three's much derided - many fans were anti-Martha before she even began, and the contrast with Rose was - at times - handled clumsily. But it had some sumptuous moments that were set up nicely well in advance. The fob watch scene in Utopia, for instance, is a personal favourite, and the climax when Martha laughs at the Master is sublime.

Four had Donna. Brilliant for half her episodes, moaning about being useless for the rest of time. Her turning in to a Time Lord and her joy was exhilarating - her loss at the end gut-wrenching in a way that The War Games never was.

I think I liked them because the stories were largely self-contained, and there were character elements and devices that came back - but the closing story brought a new threat and upped the stakes.

Now, The Wedding of River Song is different. Different is good. Indeed, in the ranking I've not done, it would come first, purely for the madness of it, the audacity. But it's far from being an easy story to show to a new viewer. It's drowned in continuity - indeed it actually feels more like part 5 of a 5 part story (possibly more). Now, I kind of like that, but what it does mean is that the series has felt uneven - like Story-Filler-Story-Holiday-Story-Filler-Story in a way that Seasons 1 to 4 didn't.

So I loved it... and at the same time I didn't.