Doctor Who Season 9 Review

[CashRules]

For people who are actually fans of decent entertainment:

Overall this season was a definite improvement over Capaldi's first season. Still there was one major problem getting in the way, Steven Moffat's ego. Moffat just has to invent ways to fellate himself with the idea that he's better than every 'boss' who came before him. Having a companion who lived longer than any other companion had ever lived, Rory, worked. It actually worked well. That's where Moffat should have stopped. But he couldn't stop. He had to continue stroking his own ego by making sure his first Doctor, Smith, lived almost as long as all eleven previous incarnations of the character combined. So the eleventh Doctor lived almost 1,000 years before regenerating and spent almost all of that in one place, the town called Christmas on the planet Trenzalore. Well this season Moffat went all out to top even that as the 12th Doctor, Capaldi, has now lived over 4.5 billion years stuck in a maze. So not only has Moffat now creamed his pants over writing the two Doctors who lived the longest but Capaldi's version of the character has lived so long that that he alone accounts for over 99.99999% of the character's total existence. That is some serious ego-tripping.

Then we have the fact of Clara dying. Only the Doctor takes her out of her timestream just a millisecond before her death so she is able to now stretch that millisecond into billions of years of her own by traveling through time and space in her own TARDIS. Of course, Moffat's lack of anything original that isn't ego boosting shines through as we find out that the chameleon circuit on Clara's TARDIS is broken so that the TARDIS always looks like a diner, and for some reason it's a very American styled diner staffed by two young women with British accents.

Seriously, the last original idea Moffat had was the Weeping Angels and he fucked up his own creation just as soon as he was promoted to being the person in charge.

Then we have the season story arc which ended up not being much of an arc at all. The entire season was leading to find out who or what is the hybrid that is supposed to conquer Gallifrey and stand in its ruins. Every season before this the season story arc was answered in the final regular episode. With RTD there was never even any ambiguity, it was answered and a new story arc developed for the following season. Moffat, of course, never could quite put the finishing touches on season story arcs because he's a hack masquerading as an entertainment executive. We know what Bad Wolf meant in season 1, we know why we kept hearing and seeing the word Torchwood in Season 2, Season 3's Mr. Saxon - answered, Season 4 gave us the Ood prophecy about Doctor Donna, answered in the final episode of the season. Then came Moffat and massive rewrites. Most of his own season story arcs were at least seemingly answered although most of them, including the cracks in the wall, returned for some reason but at least there seemed to be an answer at the end of each season. This time, no answer at all. It ended with even more possibilities than it started with and no reason to even return to answer it later. It's just left open. Meanwhile we have a dead woman and a woman who can't die traveling together throughout time and space all because Moffat mistakenly thinks he's clever.

Finally, the Christmas special, the absolute worst Christmas special of the show's history. I would like to say it's because of River Song but this one would have sucked regardless. Luckily this should be the last time we see River as, from her perspective, her next time meeting the Doctor will be when she meets Tennant in Silence in the Library where she very appropriately dies. Of course Moffat could always find a way to screw with his own continuity the way he constantly screws with the continuity of RTD's era.

So, this season is worth watching thanks almost entirely to Capaldi's acting. The man constantly finds ways to overcome bad writing and horrible plots. With Capaldis' talent this could easily be the most popular show in any country if the BBC had the balls to get rid of Moffat. I'd suggest a flame-thrower and a tub filled with kerosene.

EDIT: I almost forgot, Clara starred in more episodes than any companion of the revived series and the Doctor doesn't even remember her. He knows he had a companion named Clara but he has no idea what she looks like, had no idea he was talking to her throughout the final regular episode and has no memory of any of their adventures together. This is some WTF writing going on here.