DOCTOR WHO: Who Brought the Milk to the ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS?

“ASYLUM OF THE DAKES” – Series 7, Episode 1, Story 225 – Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Nick Hurran – Series 7 kicks off with the return of the Daleks and the introduction of promised future Companion Oswin Oswald. (Or, at least, the first appearance of the actress who’ll be playing the new Companion.) There’s trouble in Pond Paradise as Amy and Rory are getting a divorce, and there’s trouble in the Doctor’s life as he’s kidnapped by the Daleks and brought to their Dalek Asylum, a planet where they keep all the Daleks too insane even for them. The Daleks are too afraid to go down to the planet and shut off the force field which they need to destroy the Asylum, so they send the Predator down to do it for them. And by Predator they mean the Doctor. Because It Would Be Weird (Though Awesome) If They Meant, You Know, The Actual Predator. Or Ice Cube.

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Well, now, this is a new way for Steven Moffat to start a Series.

In both Series 5 and Series 6, Moffat opened with a high-octane adventure ride. Both THE ELEVENTH HOUR and the IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT / DAY OF THE MOON two-parter moved hard and fast, relying on Matt Smith’s hyper personality to ride the wave of the fan’s excitement of the new season.

ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS sets a different course. Instead of the fast-talking Doctor, we get a darker approach in ASYLUM. Some of Moffat’s trademarked inventiveness is here, but ASYLUM kicks the season off with neither HOUR’s zip nor ASTRONAUT’s grandeur. Instead, we get a self-contained story that plays like something from inside a season instead of launching one. ASYLUM is one of the most unique of all Moffat-penned episodes, as it seems less like an attempt to do something spectacular and more an opportunity to tell a simpler story as well as possible.

The biggest change this time around is that most of the fast-talking, cheeky dialogue has been given to Jenna-Louise Coleman to deliver. Her appearance in ASYLUM as Oswin Oswald was not something I was expecting; it’s been widely reported that Oswin will be the new Companion once the Ponds take their final bow, but everything I’ve read had her debut pegged for the Christmas special. Yet, here she is, appearing a guest star before she officially signs on to journey in the TARDIS.

Not that anyone actually, you know, signs official paperwork to travel in the TARDIS. There’s no medical form, no liability waiver, no-

Look, the point is, Jenna-Louise Coleman makes her unexpected debut in ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS and she is all sorts of brilliant. (One can only hope Oswin is the character she’ll be playing when she comes back full-time.) Fast-talking, super-intelligent, sexy, cheeky, and a terrible cook, Jenna/Oswin is a wonderful breath of fresh air for the program. While the Ponds largely suffer through the episode, their personal problems brought to a head by the episode’s plot, Oswin positively crackles. She already takes delight in ribbing the Doctor (continually referring to him as “Chin Boy” throughout ASYLUM) and operates on an intellectual level above his own, as she’s able to hack into the Daleks’ mindweb. When I look back at how Moffat has written the Ponds versus how he wrote Captain Jack, Reinette, Sally Sparrow, and River Song there’s a decided difference in intelligence. It’s not that the Ponds are stupid, but they are conceived as stand-ins for us, as average people getting to go on these extraordinary adventures. They’re Moffat’s version of Rose and Donna, and that’s perfectly fine, but Moffat seems to enjoy writing intelligent characters more than normal folk.

Of course, those intelligent characters (with the exception of River) are typically one-off characters in Moffat’s typewriter, so it remains to be seen if Oswin will be an actual upgrade over the Ponds, of if this appearance in ASYLUM is another bit of one-off brilliance.

The Ponds have had a weird existence in the TARDIS. In Series 5, they were starting to rival Martha Jones as my favorite relaunch Companion, but in Series 6 they were decidedly less fun and focused. (And before you say it – I love Donna. I love her. Unfortunately, I love her more than Davies did, as he struggled through her run to keep finding interesting things to do with her.) Several times during Series 6, I questioned whether Moffat had a real plan for them in between the season’s signature moments. Taken as a whole, I think Moffat had a personal plan for the Ponds in his episodes, but there was either a lack of communication or execution on the part of his writing team as to what to do with them.

Simply looking at the writing line-up for Series 7, it looks like Moffat has developed a tighter overall plan. The first-half of Series 5 (the promised final run of the Ponds) contains five episodes. He’s writing 1 and 5, Chris Chibnall is writing 2 and 4 (and the Series 7 prologue, POND LIFE), and Toby Whithouse is writing episode 3. This has to lead to a more cohesive season in tone and, one hopes, purpose for the Ponds.

Moffat has introduced a new problem into their lives as they are on the verge of divorce. Before they are kidnapped by the Daleks, Rory pops by Amy’s photo shoot to get her to sign their divorce papers. It seems like a trumped up plot because it comes from the POND LIFE prologue, but it’s a showrunner’s prerogative to reset the characters as much as he likes between seasons. I’m less concerned about the Pond plots that set this up as I am concerned with what Moffat and Co. do with it going forward, and unfortunately, it seems like the conflict was introduced just to be solved by the end of this episode. I wouldn’t be crazy about watching Amy and Rory fight all year long, but they go from divorced (Amy signed the papers) to declaring their love to moving back in together in one episode. Over and over again, it seems like all Moffat has in mind for the Ponds is for them to be on the verge of breaking up or dying.

I do give Moffat credit for addressing one of the unspoken attributes of Rory and Amy’s relationship in ASYLUM when he has Rory come straight out and say, “The truth of our relationship is that I love you more than you love me.” The set-up for this exchange is that when the Daleks beam the TARDIS 3 down to the Asylum planet, each of them has to wear a bracelet that protects them from the Daleks’ nano-field; without the bracelets, they’ll be turned into humanistic Dalek zombies. Amy loses her bracelet and she’s starting to lose her mind as the conversion process moves through her body. Rory finds his spine and tells her that he’s going to give his bracelet to her because it will slow the process down.

Now, he’s right simply because the presence of the bracelet will either slow down Amy’s conversion or outright save her, so theoretically, they could just keep swapping the bracelet back and forth and, at worst, double their survival time. Rory ups the stakes, however. Oswin has told them that the way to create a Dalek is to remove love and add anger, and Rory unloads on Amy that because his love for her is greater so he can last longer against the nano-field. He throws the “I waited 2,000 years for you outside the Pandorica” back in her face, which seems a bit childish, to be honest. As much as Rory is making a stand here, he’s also trying to get affirmation of his worst fear – that Amy really doesn’t love him all that much.

The Doctor senses that something is wrong with the Ponds and he wants to fix it. In a sense, the Doctor has never fully let go of little Amelia Pond that he first encountered back in ELEVENTH HOUR. The Eleventh Doctor does not want any problems with the Ponds’ relationship and he breaches the subject several times over the episode. Instead of offering his services as a marriage counselor, however, the Doctor lets the Ponds work it out on their own, knowing the tension created by the current conflict, and by Amy’s deteriorating health, will likely bring things to a boil. The central issue here is that Rory wants children and Amy can no longer have children given what was done to her throughout Series 6.

Eh, really?

What’s more confusing is that this is apparently a conflict they had not discussed. Rory claims Amy tossed him out, while Amy claims that she let him go, and that her letting him go is somehow greater than him standing outside a box from the time of Christ until the time of Steve Jobs.

Hey, Ponds, do you know what’s never good for a relationship? Arguing which one of you is the better person.

Luckily, the Pond drama is minimized. Oswin has better chemistry with both the Doctor and Rory than Amy does in this episode. She cheekily refers to the Doctor as “the Chin” and Rory as “the Nose,” and suggests they could fence one another. She’s sitting in a secure location and is helping guide the three visitors through the Dalek-infested Asylum and easily flirts with both men. When she’s brought Rory to safe, she tells Rory, “Now take off your shirt.” Rory starts to follow her orders and then asks why. “Does there need to be a reason?” she asks back.

I love the way she delivers her dialogue; it comes out so quickly that it’s easy to miss a line here or there but Coleman always feels in complete control of the words she’s delivering.

Matt Smith is in top form again, as he continues to impress as the Doctor. I love how this episode has the Doctor operating on multiple levels. He’s concerned with the Parliament of the Daleks, the insane Daleks, and he’s also trying to figure out how this one young woman has managed to survive for a year fighting the Daleks all by her lonesome. When she tells him she makes souffles to pass the time, he wants to know where she gets the milk. “Souffle Girl” laughs but he brings it up later, too, as he’s already wondering how making a souffle is possible if you’ve locked yourself inside a planet full of insane Daleks.

Oswin apparently gets blown up with the rest of the planet, but not before she gives the Doctor a parting gift – she’s erased all references to him inside the Dalek hive mind, meaning they don’t know who he is. When he beams back aboard the ship containing the Parliament of the Daleks (and it’s interesting that their supreme leader does not live inside a machine, but rather as an organic being contained in a case of glass – very Supreme Intelligence like) they want to know who he is. When he lists off various names the Daleks know him by (the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, the Predator), they don’t know what those terms mean.

“Doctor … who?” they ask. “Doc-tor-who?” Combine this with their earlier pleas of, “Save us. Save us,” and Moffat manages to get them to say two things this episode that are equally as cool and chilling as, “Ex-ter-min-ate.”

ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS is a very good episode. No, it doesn’t contain the fireworks of earlier season openers, and it almost seems like cheating to start the season off with the copper teapots, but ASYLUM works as a very solid story with a really nice twist. Turns out that no one is bringing Oswin milk because she’s living a lie – she’s actually a Dalek who refuses to believe she’s been converted. It’s a very nice twist and Coleman proves herself just as capable with the heavier stuff as she does the flirtatious interplay. Director Nick Hurran does a fantastic job all episode, but especially here at the end. Oswin helps the Doctor escape, but tells him not to forget about her.

And when she says this, she turns and looks right into the camera, breaking the fourth wall.

ASYLUM is Moffat’s first attempt at writing the Daleks and he does a solid job. I’ve watched the episode three times now, and it’s just as good on the third watch as it was on the first. My problems with the Ponds notwithstanding, ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS manages to be both creepy and fun and marks a very promising start to Series 7.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: I’ll Not Be Doubted by Some Pipsqueak Tuft of Ginger and His Irritating Dog

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – Directed by Steven Spielberg – Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Tony Curran, and Toby Jones.

I don’t have much history with Hergé’s Tintin, so I come to this movie rather clean – no preconceived notions, no emotional history, no expectations of any kind. I have so little history with the character that if you had shown me a picture of Tintin, I could have told you his name, I could have told you he was a Hergé creation, and … that’s it. I knew so little about Tintin that I didn’t know the name of his dog. I didn’t even know Tintin was a journalist. Heck, I didn’t even know he was an adult; I thought he was a 15-year old kid or something.

So, yeah. I’m rather blank on this topic.

That said, it’s hard not to get excited about a project that features the combined talents of Steven Spielberg (director), Peter Jackson (producer), and Steven Moffat (co-writer), especially when all three men have plenty of other projects on their creative plates. Since they’re working with an established property, it’s a pretty easy leap to see that this project must have been a labor of love for them.

And that’s really what ADVENTURES OF TINTIN feels like to me – a love letter to a character and series. (Hergé and his drawing of Tintin even make an appearance in the film’s opening scene.) TINTIN is a beautifully rendered film and a completely satisfying adventure about a journalist (Jamie Bell) and his sidekick dog (his name is Snowy) who track down a missing treasure. What I love about the movie is how it manages to feel both large and small at the same time. For all of the globe-trotting and treasure hunting, it’s also a simple story about a dude and his dog who get caught up in something beyond what they had ever anticipated would come from buying a model of a 17th century ship at an outdoor market.

Tintin buys the model of the Unicorn and instantly one man (Barnaby, an FBI agent is disguise) tells him to get rid of it and another man, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), offers to buy it from him at any price. There’s no reason for Tintin to keep the model other than he likes it, but the efforts of these two men make him realize there’s something unique about the model. He takes it home to study it, but the ship is broken when Snowy and an interloping cat get in a tussle and tear through the apartment. A small metal cylinder falls out of one of the broken masts, but Snowy isn’t able to get Tintin to see it and it slides under a dresser.

After heading to the library to do research (with Snowy in tow) on the ship, Tintin returns home to find the model stolen and his apartment ransacked. Tintin’s response is to do the pure boy adventurer move – he goes to Marlinspike Hall, the country estate of Captain Haddock, the former captain of the Unicorn. There’s a great bonding scene between Snowy and the estate’s guard dog which allows Tintin to break into the estate, and once inside he is set upon by the estate’s butler and Sakharine. Tintin sees a model of the Unicorn and assumes it’s his, but then Sakharine reminds him that his model was broken, while the one before him is in perfect condition.

Upon returning home, Snowy is finally able to get Tintin to look under the dresser, where he finds the cylinder. Inside the cylinder is an actually a rolled-up parchment that contains a clue to a missing treasure. The FBI agent returns but gets shot by unseen assailants, and Tintin gets kidnapped and brought about Sakharine’s ship. The best part of this sequence is Snowy’s determination to not let the kidnappers get out of sight, and the loyal dog ends up sneaking about the ship and helping Tintin escape and partaking in the adventure.

On the ship, Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), who’s kept in a state of permanent drunkeness in order to all Sakharine full run of the ship. A whole slew of adventures happen after this – on the ship, in a boat, on a plane, in the desert, on the docks … it all moves swiftly and effortlessly as Sakharine and Tintin compete to find the third model of the Unicorn for the final piece of the riddle. There’s an historical parallel at play in TINTIN: Haddock is the descendant of the original Captain Haddock, who sunk his ship so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of Red Rackham, who just so happens to be Sakharine’s ancestor. Eventually, Sakharine is captured and Tintin and Haddock find a part of the sunken treasure in Marlinspike Hall, and agree to keep looking for the rest, setting up a sequel that Peter Jackson has said he wants to direct.

ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is a wonderful film, fun and fanciful, full of life, energy, and brilliant color. TINTIN is Spielberg’s first animated movie (though he shot much of the film using motion capture), but the world he (and the digital artists at WETA) create is alive and beautiful. While I didn’t read the TINTIN stories as a kid, it feels familiar to the stories I did read. The adventure narrative is preposterous but the characters are grounded, and because they feel real it’s easy to follow along with them on this crazy ride. Despite all the darkness at play in the film with the near-constant threat of violence, a wondrous sense of optimism and permeates the movie.

I’ll be buying TINTIN for the collection and I’m already looking forward to Jackson’s sequel.

DOCTOR WHO: Bring Your Eye Patches to THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG

“THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG” – Series 6, Episode 13, Story 223 – Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Jeremy Webb – The Eleventh Doctor is ready to die, but he’s not going down without a plan. So he runs around a lot. But not literally runs around because this iteration doesn’t do so much of the running. It’s more like he just goes lots of different places, tracking down the Silence. And he gathers information, but he still dies. Except River screws it up by saving the Doctor, which makes all of time happen at once. Because Fixed Points in Time Blahbeddy Blahbeddy Blah Can’t Ever Ever Eve- Good Lord I Hate Arbitrary Rules.

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After a long and disappointing (though not disastrous) season, Series 6 comes to a conclusion with THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG, a disappointing (but not disastrous) finale.

Here’s the deal with WEDDING – taken as is, it’s a pretty good, pretty enjoyable episode. Moffat is drawing on some of his old timey wimey, self-contained tricks, employing them in a very muted way in order to let the story take precedence. River has saved the Doctor from his death we first witnessed in THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT, which has created all of time to happen at once. This allows Winston Churchill to be Emperor, Charles Dickens to be interviewed on morning television, the Silurian Malokeh to be Churchill’s personal physician, pterodactyls to fly over London, 19th century trains to transport people around the continent, the Pyramids of Egypt to be the headquarters of the United States Area 52, and the Doctor to be a toga-wearing prisoner “soothsayer” of Caesar Churchill. It’s a truly fantastic visual, bright and bold, and serves as just the kind of interesting world that has so often been lacking this season.

Churchill has the prisoner brought to him and asks the Doctor to tell him what happened, and the bearded Doctor obliges. We see the Doctor following some leads on his Silence search, and we get a nice back-and-forth between seeing the Doctor’s adventures (taking some info from a Dalek’s data core, visiting Father Gideon Vandaleur, playing Live Chess against Gantok, stealing the head of Dorium Maldovar from the Headless Monks) and seeing him tell Winston the story. As the Doctor fills Winston in, he keeps glancing at his arm, where the number of marks on his arm increase, signifying the presence of the Silence. The Doctor tells Churchill not to worry because they’re not too hard to deal with in small amounts, and then we cut to a massive number of marks on the Doctor’s arm and a whole host of Silence gurgle above them, doing their creepy stand-upside-down-on-the-ceiling bit.

Before a full-blown attack can erupt, the Doctor and Winston are rescued by an eye-patch wearing Amy Pond and a group of soldiers and taken aboard Amy’s organization’s train, headed for Cairo. Sparing us from too much alternate universe stuff, Eye Patch Amy knows who the Doctor is and what’s happened. There’s two histories rattling around in Amy’s head, allowing her to remember two outcomes at Lake Silencio, the one we saw in IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT and the one we’re going to see here. Unfortunately, Rory doesn’t know anything and Amy doesn’t know him and blah blah blah we’ve seen this done before.

The Teselecta is back again, and the second you see it you know (if you hadn’t already guessed) that this is the way out of the Doctor’s death.

We revisit the Doctor’s death at Lake Silencio, this time spending it down at the lakeside with the Doctor and the Impossible Astronaut Suit, which we now know contains River. The Doctor tells Winston he brought River, Amy, and Rory to the lake to witness his death because “just because you have to die doesn’t mean you have to die alone,” and that you should be reminded of what makes life worth living, but he tells River he brought her future self here to prove to the assassin River that this moment was inevitable. River surprises the Doctor by not killing him and that’s what sets up this entire alternate timeline.

Once the Doctor and River are reunited in the Pyramid, the Silence that are trapped there break free and there’s lots of shooting and water dripping. First the water dripping, then the shooting, if you want to be precise.

All of the allies of River and Amy wear eye patches because the Silence allies wear eye patches (which allows you to remember the Silence), but this ends up being a kind of Trojan Horse as the Silence only allowed them to use the eye-drives so they could eventually attack the patch-wearers. The Doctor keeps insisting that he needs to die to put everything right, but River and Amy refuse to let him touch River long enough for the deed to be completed. There’s a great bit from the Doctor when he tells Amy that people are dying because of him and “I won’t thank you for this!” but the mom and her daughter convince the Doctor to go to the roof and just hear them out. Reluctantly, the Doctor agrees.

As they leave, however, Captain Williams stays behind with Madame Kovarian. Rory is once again putting his life on the line for Amy, refusing to take his eye-drive off. Amy leaves him and the Silence break through the door, triggering his eye-drive and causing him great pain. The Silence are awesome here, taunting Captain Williams with the truth: “Rory Williams,” one of them sneers as he advances, “the man who dies and dies again. Die one last time and know she will never come back for you.”

But she does, as Amy shows back up with a machine gun and mows them all down.

Kovarian begs to be saved, and tells Amy she know she’ll save her because that’s what the Doctor would do, but in a particularly good moment for Karen Gillan, she leans in and tells Kovarian that River didn’t get everything she knows from Kovarian. Amy reattaches Kovarian’s eye-drive, consigning her to death. It’s a chilling moment, but it leaves you wondering where this anger has been.

As Amy and Rory walk away, Amy tells the man she knows she loves, “I think we should get a drink.”

“Okay,” answers the ever-agreeable Rory.

“And get married.”

It’s a great sequence and for all that the writers didn’t know what to do with Amy and Rory this year, Moffat finally steps in and gives them both a clear purpose and drive. Amy killing Kovarian brings all of the rage about having her baby taken away from her that’s been missing the second-half of the season, and Moffat doesn’t accomplish this by having Amy endlessly yap about it; we get a couple sentences, we get the point, and then we can move on. I don’t know why we couldn’t have gotten this earlier, and while it may be too little, too late to save the season, at least we get the issue of Amy and Rory’s stolen baby acknowledged here.

On the roof is what the Doctor refers to as a “timey-wimey distress beacon,” and River tells him that they’ve been asking for help from across time and history throughout the universe and the universe has responded with a willingness to help. It’s a wonderfully powerful scene, uplifting and tragic all at once. The Doctor is furious with her and River is devastated because she knows that there’s nothing they can do to save him, but that she didn’t want him to die without knowing he was loved.

The Doctor then performs a “wedding ceremony” between the two of them, his acknowledgment that he knows he’s loved by her, and they kiss, killing him back in the regular timeline.

Next comes my favorite part of the episode, as River drops in to visit Amy. For River, she’s just stepped off the Byzantium (from last season’s TIME OF ANGELS/FLESH AND STONE two-parter), but for Amy it’s post-Lake Silencio and the Doctor’s death. She’s having a hard time with the Doctor being gone and with her own actions in killing Kovarian and tells River that she really wants to talk to the Doctor, but of course she can’t because he’s dead.

“Oh, mother,” River assures her, “of course he isn’t.”

“Not for you, I suppose,” Amy says sadly, pointing out that River is going to keep running into earlier versions of the Doctor, but River tells her that while Amy’s right and she will be having those adventures, that’s not what she means.

“I’m going to tell you what I probably shouldn’t,” River confides. “The Doctor’s last secret. Don’t you want to know what he whispered in my ear?” she asks.

“He whispered his name,” Amy answers.

“Not his name, no,” River admits, a hint of playfulness coming back into her voice. Amy insists that’s what the Doctor said but River reminds her, “Rule Number One …”

“The Doctor lies.”

“So do I. All the time. Spoilers.”

Amy wants to know, has to know, as River reminds her that the Doctor is always one-step ahead, and then she tells her the secret, but we don’t get to hear it.

The final scene has the Doctor delivering Dorium back to his dank crypt and we get the big reveal, that he had the Teselecta transform into the Doctor as he hid inside. As predictable as it was, it’s a wonderfully rendered sequence, with Matt Smith’s bright energy and Murray Gold’s score tricking you into thinking this was all completely awesome.

“So you’re really going to do it?” Dorium wonders. “Let them all think you’re dead?”

“I got too big,” the Doctor tells him, his eyes sparkling with a plan. “Too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows.”

As the Doctor walks away, Dorium calls after him, reminding the Doctor that his whole future is still waiting for him, the future that the Silence want to prevent. We get the reveal about the big, mysterious question that can never be asked and answered, the question hiding in plain sight. “Doctor … who?” Dorium asks. “Doctor who? Doc … tor … who?” I had a friend suggest this the other day, so it wasn’t a thunderbolt surprise when it happened, but it’s a nice twist, protecting, preserving, and building on the myth of “the Doctor.”

Series 6 has been a disappointing season, but this ending is as good as we could have expected. We get real answers, and real resolutions, and a wonderful set-up for Series 7 with a Doctor going back “into the shadows.” I think history will judge Series 6 kinder than we’re judging it now. I don’t mean that in ten years people will look back on this season and think it was one of the best ever, but when some of these episodes get to be just one of 250 or 300 stories instead of THIS WEEK’S STORY it’s only natural they won’t need to carry the same weight. Living it in the moment, however, this season has failed because Moffat and his writers didn’t develop the season-long arc properly, and too many of the individual episodes just fell flat as stand-alone stories. I’m still not sure why REBEL FLESH and THE ALMOST PEOPLE needed to be a two-parter, or why there wasn’t more done with Amy and Rory worrying about their stolen baby. With all of this weight in front of WEDDING, there’s probably nothing the finale could have done to make it all seem worthwhile.

And that’s where WEDDING fails. Back at the start of this review I said this episode was enjoyable enough taken on its own, but in the context of this season, as what is supposed to be the capstone to a season-long story, it fails, serving to reinforce what was missing instead of bringing everything together. Still, even with the less-than-brilliant out (at least it wasn’t a Ganger Doctor, I suppose), there is a real energy to WEDDING that carries it through, Russell T. Davies-style. But …

But that’s really not enough. That wasn’t good enough last season, when the season-long story line did come together in a really well-made season finale (PANDORICA OPENS/BIG BANG), and I’m not about to make excuses for this season just because THE WEDDING is a well-paced episode with a few really good, honestly emotional scenes. Where’s any kind of resolution between the two Doctors (the 900 and 1100 year old versions, who alternately could and could not solve the Rubik’s Cube)? What was the point in jettisoning Amy and Rory two episodes ago, only to have them appear in both of the final two episodes. It would have been much better to have their exit coincide with the Doctor’s “death” since they really weren’t gone anyway.

I’m also not sure what the point is to have Rory and Amy “separated” again here, either. Sure, it gives us a few good lines (Rory: “I’m confused.” Amy: “We got married. Had a kid. Her,” she says, nodding to River), but it’s just a redo of PANDORICA, with Rory the loyal soldier and Amy the unknowing lover.

What’s frustrating but also reassuring, in a sense, is that this episode tells you that much of this season was a dropped ball. Look at the characters Moffat brings back for another appearance: Charles Dickens (from the Ninth Doctor serial, THE UNQUIET DEAD, written by Mark Gatiss, who plays Gantok in this episode), Malokeh (from last season’s Silurian two-parter: THE HUNGRY EARTH/COLD BLOOD), and Winston Churchill (from last season’s VICTORY OF THE DALEKS). The characters from this season that are brought back – the Teselecta, Dorium, Kovarian and the Silence – are from Moffat’s episodes, which again highlights the lack of proper coordination between Moffat and his writers. It’s almost like there’s two seasons here – the Moffat episodes that build the story and the non-Moffat episodes which just sort of exist.

Last but certainly not least, we finally have an on-screen goodbye to Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the Doctor’s most beloved Companions. When the Doctor is bragging to Dorium that time never touches him and that he can run forever because he has a time machine, he’s also calling the nursing home where the Brigadier is living. The Doctor is full of ego here, but when he’s told by the nurse that the Brig has passed away, his ego comes crashing way back down to Earth. It’s a wonderful tribute to the Brigadier that the news of his passing is what pushes the Doctor to meet his own death. Smith is great here, making us feel the loss of the Brig to the Doctor when it’s been a long time since the Brig has been on-screen in DOCTOR WHO, his most recent appearances occurring in SARAH JANE ADVENTURES. This season started with a tribute to the departed Elisabeth Sladen and ends with a tribute to Nicholas Courtney. It was fitting and touching to see the tribute to the Brig happen inside an episode; the Doctor says he always draws strength from his friends and there weren’t any friends who’ve stuck around the Doctor longer than the Brig.

I’m looking forward to Series 7, but I’m glad there’s a bit of a break between now and then. I think Moffat needs to spend a bit more time at the drawing board with his writers, and not by himself. Improving cohesion between Moffat episodes and non-Moffat episodes should be one of the biggest off-season priorities for DOCTOR WHO.