Doctor Who Season 7 starts September 1st, and I’ve already developed an opinion about it based on the trailer. Read on to form some judgments of your own.
I think the line, “Dinosaurs! On a space ship!” sums up Doctor Who under Steven Moffat: trite, over-the-top and grasping at Doctor Who‘s chintzy silliness without the emotional impact of the Russell T. Davies years. Who can forget “The Unicorn and the Wasp?” It was a silly episode but had immense impact; it was a landing on a long stair up to the heartbreak of the end of the Doctor Donna without letting you forget that a lot was at stake.
That said, this trailer is well designed. Look at the music! Is it the Doctor who kills all the Daleks or Amy? It makes me want to watch, but I worry I will be disappointed because someone is going to want to get this motherfucking dinosaurs off my motherfucking spaceship.
Of course, Moffat could give us something good. Series 5 was impactful in the way I expect Doctor Who to be, with both “Vincent and The Doctor” and “The Lodger” offering some silliness without ever letting us forget what the overarching themes of the season were.
But Series 6 sucked.
And let’s not forget we have to deal with a new companion, who we’re all going to hate because we’ve come to love Amy and Rory. But we’ve also got our panties in a twist because we haven’t had a PoC since Martha Jones (bring back Marth, please?)
So, Doctor Who, you’ve got a lot to prove. I almost abandoned you last season. Please make the dinosaurs mean something.
15 replies on “Doctor Who Season 7 Reviews Based on the Trailer”
More and more I find that I am a hopeless apologist/the indulgent spouse when it comes to both Doctor Who and Torchwood. Yeah, sometimes there are flaws, but unless it’s particularly egregious, you won’t see me complaining.
I finally had the time to download and watch the first Season 7 episode! Totally agree with @Leona below- I loved Oswin and partly hoped that she would get to be the next companion. But alas, the Daleks love their geniuses… (geniusi?) She was the best part of that episode.
And then the trailer for next week’s episode!! Dinos on a spaceship already! And Nefertiti! I love history. Especially in a campy, lets-make-these-people-awesome kind of way.
Do yourself a huge favor, and I am being totally sincere about this, and don’t read anything else about the new series. Really. Not in the paper, not on the internet, nowhere.
I think many people became Oswin-lovers after seeing the first episode. I don’t remember ever falling in love with one of the Who characters this fast. Also, I have to say they did find a new way to make the Daleks actually terrifying yet sad. And I’m ready for Amy and Rory to gtfo. I loved them but I can’t unsee Moffatt’s inability to write amazing female characters and making Amy little more than a girl who waits around and is all about her uterus and Rory being made into the Nice Guy who sacrificed 2,000 years for her which means he loves her more blah blah.
So, bless their little cotton socks, but the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has just been showing season 6 and then released season 7 episode 1 on their website yesterday! So, of course, I gobbled it up without having seen the end of season 6. Now I’m anxious to see the end of season 6!!
I am a complete Doctor Who newbie so I’ve only ever seen this Doctor and I really like the whimsy and ridiculously tempered with some heartfelt and sinister moments.
I’m afraid I’m squarely in the Moffat camp. RTD started out as a decent writer but his story lines became increasingly bloated and self-important, with particular emphasis on the “messiah”-like qualities of the Doctor. In the end his scripts were poorly written and, believe it or not, too far-fetched. In the end I found it hard to feel the emotional punch that I was promised from him. Â I’ve always found that Moffat is behind some of the most striking writing in the series, including in the David Tennant era (“Blink”, anyone?)
I watched the first episode of the new season yesterday and I am ridiculously excited about everything to come. “Dinosaurs! On a spaceship!” highlights, in my opinion, the childish excitability we have at the new, the bizarre, the ridiculous. Everything, in fact, that I’ve ever enjoyed from the series.
I’m with you here. I actually have a bit of a hate on for the last few RTD special type things. (Ok, mostly Torchwood, but still Children of Earth was all kinds of abysmal, and the Torchwood special for Starz ended up being even worse, though I didn’t think that was possible). The end of season six was fairly meh for me, but not anymore so than, say, “Waters of Mars”. I am actually really enjoying Moffat, and his episodes from the RTD era are some of my favorites. “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”? And I love the way Moffat doesn’t shy from playing with the time travel elements of the story, as well as all his little throwback jokes for old Who fans like me.
Maybe it’s just because my first Doctor was Tom Baker, and my favorite is Patrick Troughton, but I expect Doctor Who to be far more fun that serious. I want an adventure, not navel gazing. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship doesn’t sound any sillier than The Pirate Planet, Pyramids of Mars, or the Planet of the Spiders.
I didn’t think Children of the Earth was that bad, and I enjoyed the first half of Miracle Day. And then the same old problems started surfacing: trying to fit too much in, pacing issues, melodrama.
A lot of time watching the RTD episodes I was like:
http://i49.tinypic.com/e8lpia.jpg
EDIT: I love talking about Doctor Who <3 What did you think of the latest one?
I JUST SAW IT
IT’S SO AWESOME
and seriously if you don’t want to be spoilered STAY OFF THE INTERNET. There were some big surprises tonight.
Aww, have you ever seen the original series? It’s nothing but silliness and camp. I think this is a marvellous return to the old-school Doctor Who.
Is there any way I can watch the new season as they come out? Does BBC do that? I have no means of TV, so I’m entirely internet based. Last season I had to wait until they were all out on Netflix- which I don’t mind doing, but if I can get a little more instant gratification in my life that would be lovely.
I admit, I have no great love for Matt-Smith-Dr-Who, nor for Amy. Rory I’ve become more of a fan of, but I am totally ready for some new companion action. I’m also kind of over the Daleks. How many times have they been killed off? Are there no other super-races/machine-beings that hate the Doctor so?
As far as I know BBC doesn’t let you watch videos.. But here’s the link I use to watch them online, usually the day after  they air. http://watchseries.eu/serie/doctor_who
It does if you can convince its website you are in the UK, using a proxy site or Tunnelbear or similar…
I’m far from excited and a bit terrified for tonight. I so desperately want it to have heart again. And companions who don’t worship the ground the Doctor walks on.
. . . I’m actually excited about dinos on the spaceship, and anxious about how they are going to close curtains on Amy and Rory.
I really hate how they’ve made Amy into someone who always needs rescuing. I know, it’s a display of her complete trust in the Doctor, but that got old. I hope they don’t do that with the new companion. But I don’t have nearly as much faith in Moffatt as Amy does in the Doctor.