The Name of The Doctor

"Run. Run you clever boy and remember me."

So let's talk about "The Name of the Doctor", the last episode of the most recent season of Doctor Who that ended just a few weeks ago. And yes I realize I'm a little behind on this train, but with a full time job and until the recent summer break, going to school full time, do you really expect me to have time to watch Who a lot? So it took me a bit to catch up on. (And now even more on Supernatural, which I also plan on reviewing in here, when I eventually catch up). And I'm really trying to review more in here, and review more in general. It's to improve not only my writing skills but my observational and comprehension skills. I mean, I'm an English Major; I take everything and tear it apart to little pieces that somehow string it together in this great big ball of metaphorical meaning. So why can't I do that with TV shows, eh?

Pre-warning, spoilers ahead!

So let's talk about Clara first. Above all in Doctor Who I think that the story isn't really the story of the Doctor but more of the story of the companion. When you think about it really, the Doctor's life is shaped around the people he takes with him and what they learn from him and what he learns from them. With Clara as a companion, I have to be honest, I'm a little wishy-washy. She's clever and strong willed, but not really to the point of being annoying, like I sometimes found Amy to be. And obviously there's something special about her, the girl who had died twice but still lives on. I was really interested to find out about her and had a great time reading all the random theories around about her, I was a particular fan of the one where she was actually the Dalek emperor from Bad Wolf. But my biggest problem with Clara is that while she is lovely and all there was really no character development for me in her, to mean, even in this episode where she willingly died to save the Doctor's life, I think she is same girl he picked up in The Bells of Saint John. But what I do like is that she eventually turned out to be just a normal girl, a girl who went through pain and loss, but saved the Doctor anyway. Some of what has started to annoy me about Who is that is has come to the point where the Doctor only likes mysteries and big exciting things. I miss the time when he was fascinated by humans, just them in their everyday lives. So in the end when it turns out Clara was just human, and a very brave one at that, it made me happy.

Then there was the whole part with the Great Intelligence. I'm not a huge fan of Classic Who, I've only watched a bit of the Fourth and Fifth Doctor (and some of the seventh and the eighth), so I feel like viewers like me, who are mostly fans of modern day Who, may have been a bit confused. I mean, I myself, because I research Who too much, knows what The Great Intelligence is, whereas I think others will not know, or at least not know to the extent as they should know.

In general I think a lot of the episode was a bit anti-climatic, because there wasn't really a lot of running. As to say the action in this story was kind of a minimum and they just kind of willingly went a long with The Great Intelligence and his minions. And when he was about to jump into the Doctor's timeline and everyone was just standing around I was like, 'Why won't anyone stop him or you know just do something besides staring?' I guess you could say I missed some of the action that we usually see in season finales. I just feel like a lot of the climax was built up to Clara, like this is her, this is what she is. Which was good and all but it ended up with me being two thirds of the way into the episode and going, "What, it's really nearly over?"

I loved Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax in this episode; they provide quite a bit of comic relief to what might have been an otherwise a dark and serious episode. I just love the friendship between the three. And I'm just really fond of the scene where Jenny is dead and Vastra begs Strax to bring her back, and he does almost in an instant saying 'Matters of the heart are always simple.' And Vastra answers back 'I have found that they are not'. GOD DAMMIT, HER AND JENNY ARE SO FRIGGIN LESBIANS! THIS SHIP IS MY FAVORITE SIDE SHIP IN ALL OF WHO! Except for Sally Sparrow and the cop in 'Blink'.

Now let's go into the River and the Doctor part. Now I'm just going to say, this episode was teeming with oodles of fan service for River and the Doctor shippers. There was the fact that he had told Clara about her, a little about her. And did you see the expression on his face when he saw her tombstone? He was in agony. And then of course the way he just casually says 'They wouldn’t bury my wife here', it's just too perfect.  And of course when he admits to seeing her, when the he talks about the pain it would cause him and how yes, it does. Because this is after 'Silence in the Library', this is after her death. And the kiss, well, it gets a 110% on a scale of 10%. And I'm sure I sounded like a rambling fangirl in this paragraph, but to be completely honest I'm mostly on the fence with the RiverXDoctor thing. Sometimes I like them together, sometimes I don't. In this episode I liked them quite a lot.

And some last general things with this episode: I loved the Doctor's tombstone, the way it was the Tardis, and standing more massive than anything in this creepy eerie fashion. Cinematography wise is was stunning and chilling, I'm used to seeing this Tardis as this brilliant blue box and there is in Trenzalore, like the ruins of some lost city. And the clever jokes in the mist room, I can't help but thinking they were a group of friends sitting around the table playing pass the joint. The subject was very serious but I couldn't help but thinking it. And then Matt Smith's face when he asked 'Are you sure he said Trenzalore?' He was going to cry, the Doctor in tears. And when boys cry, I cry, and it's just not a pleasant thing.

Then there's the whole mystery of Clara, how it was finally solved. I thought it was brilliant. She's scattered across the universe, destined to save the Doctor. I loved the clips of her in all the Classic Who episodes, as cheesy as the effects were, they were brilliant. And when she told the Doctor he was stealing the wrong Tardis, it gave me chills. More appeared when she was lost in the fog, hearing the Doctor's voice and watching all of his different reincarnations running by. Then there was the leaf, the most important leaf in all of history, the one that brought her into the world. And I was thinking, this is some nice neat little package to wrap Clara up in. But then, no, it wasn't. The man, the questions. How it is him but not the Doctor. And then the 'Introducing John Hurt as the Doctor', what was that. WHAT WAS THAT?!?!?!?

You wanna know what is it was?

PROBABLY THE BIGGEST AND MOST MYSTERIOUS CLIFF HANGER IN ALL OF FUCKING DOCTOR WHO HISTORY!!!

Overall I really enjoyed this episode, not my favorite season finale, but definitely a good one. And I loved that the mystery of Clara is solved, but hate that about ten fucking million more were thrown out. But it's good, BBC is clever. Now all this Whovian can do is wait and wish and hope for what's to come in the 50th Anniversary Special.

Fin.

-Keshia