Just finished a re-watch of Doctor Who series 7

[frelling_tralk]

Not sure how popular an opinion this is, but I think "The Crimson Horror" was among my favourites from series 7, it's certainly one of the very few Mark Gatniss episodes that I've really loved! Ada's story was horrifyingly tragic, and I really found the reveal with the Doctor as the "monster" very effective and unnerving the first time I watched it especially, Matt Smith did a fantastic job with those jerky body movements and the way that he was screaming with his eyes. Most of the time Mark Gatniss seems to produce really ordinary and uninspired episodes (I definitely found 'Cold War' pretty dull), while "The Crimson Horror" was the first time it felt like he was stretching a bit and not just aiming for DW by numbers. The scenes between Ada and her mother got pretty dark for DW actually. And of course I loved "Asylum Of The Daleks" and "Day Of The Doctor", but those two probably go without saying *g*

I also really loved "Dinosaurs On A Spaceship", that seems to be another episode that has a middling reputation, but I just found it really fun. In fact I loved pretty much all of the first half of the year, it felt like every one of those episodes really did live up the hype of feeling more like a blockbuster film. Things mostly fell a little flat for me in the middle section, the direction for "The Rings Of Akhaten" especially was a bit flat and small-scale in comparison. It felt like they were still aiming for a big budget feel with all of the aliens and the effect, but the director really didn't bring much scope to the early corridor scenes on the planet for example, it felt so studio-based with the way that they filmed it.

I did love the direction for "Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis" though! That's an episode that I've seen criticised a LOT, and it's definitely frustrating that it doesn't live up to its potential of being an outright classic, but I still found it had some really fun ideas and looked great. The main frustration was the unnecessary B-plot with the three brothers, I wish that it could have been an episode with just Clara and The Doctor

And I enjoyed "Nightmare In Silver" more than I remembered from my last watch, but it does feel a shame that it really should be a great episode and it just doesn't quite get there. Apparently Neil Gaiman wanted to write it as a two-parter originally? I really loved "The Doctor's Wife" and this episode didn't live up to it for me at all, even though it did have a lot of interesting ideas. I guess that's one thing that stood out to me about series 7 actually, that it didn't have as many classic episodes as you found in series 5 and 6, maybe that's part of why the fandom doesn't look more favourably on it? It started and ended strongly IMO, but the middle section didn't have any really stand-out episodes like "The Girl Who Waited" or "Vincent And The Doctor". I get the feeling that "Nightmare In Silver" and "Journey To The Centre Of The Tardis" were intended to be the stand-out episodes, but unfortunately neither of them quite came together


[Poll #2044768]

Comments

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I agree, there were no real stinkers among the individual episodes, but series 7 could have had a better arc for Clara. They set up an intriguing mystery with Oswin's death and Victorian Clara's death, but then that whole impossible girl mystery seemed to be picked up or dropped from episodes really randomly with modern-day Clara. Apparently they were deliberately going for more stand-alones after series 6 was seen as too convoluted, but then I'm in the minority of rather liking that year :(