By Daniel Holmberg (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: November 12, 2014
Warning: the following review contains spoilers.
The newest season of Doctor Who has been interesting in a number of unexpected ways.
We’ve got a new Doctor; he’s Scottish, and a little bit manic. Not that the two are related at all. He continues to travel with Clara Oswald, who has got to be one of the least interesting companions since the days of Rose Tyler. The Doctor, on the other hand, is incredibly interesting this season. Capaldi really brings some heart and attitude to the character, with no small amount of insanity.
This series really seemed to build the connection between the newer Doctor Who and the classic iteration that aired from the ’60s to the ’80s. The obligatory connection to some of the Doctor’s oldest enemies — the Daleks and the Cybermen — are present in this season but also a foe that we have not seen since series four: the Master.
Now the Master no longer uses that name, for after his most recent regeneration, the Master came back as a woman. Thus “Master” is inaccurate, so now she is referred to as the Mistress, or Missy, as wonderfully revealed in the penultimate episode of the season. Michelle Gomez plays the Mistress masterfully, if you will pardon the pun, and fits as a perfect counterpoint to Capaldi; the two of them click extraordinarily well.
Unfortunately, the Mistress was only revealed at the end of the season, so we will have to wait and see what she has in store for the Doctor in the future. However, his foes were not the only connection to the classic series. When Matt Smith regenerated into Peter Capaldi, it was only because the Time Lords granted him another set of regenerations, something that is rare in the mythos of the show, and it is suggested that regenerations past the first set may be unstable. Capaldi has been unstable, very unstable, but I think that his Doctor is the first to truly embody every version of the Doctor that came before him. The short temper of the first, the playfulness of the second, the wit of the third, and so on; all are represented in Capaldi. Maybe (hopefully) the show will go somewhere with this.
Considering the season as a whole, I would generally rate it positive. Although some of the supporting cast were lacklustre at times, it is more the fault of the writers than that of the actors. The writers did, however, deliver on some excellent adventures, and three especially exciting new monsters, one of which may not have even existed at all. The true prize of this season was seeing Capaldi in his glory, and I cannot wait until next season. Clara has said her goodbye, the Doctor knows where Gallifrey is, and Capaldi and Gomez have established their characters extraordinarily well. The future of time and space looks bright.
