I was initially okay with the split seasons on Who, I’m not a real big fan of the concept, but the plan was originally we’d have the seasons split in two, but we’d have one early in the year, like February/March, then the second have in the Fall, and then a Christmas Special...so you’d have the season spread a little more throughout the year. But after one year in that format, it got changed so it was 9 months between the Christmas Special and the first half of the season. Then we have to wait a couple months for Christmas, and then a few more months to conclude things...now here we are waiting for November again. It not only feels like we end up waiting a lot longer for new episodes, but it is disrupting the flow of the seasons. I think this split hurt the finale slightly, as it gave us less time to get to know Clara as a character, which weakened her arc in that episode a bit.
On the whole I really did enjoy most of the episodes though. I thought “Asylum of the Daleks" had lots of good, but some weak character developments for Amy and Rory. It did give us our first glimpse of Clara though, and it tied right into the finale, which was cool. “A Town Called Mercy” was average, but I didn’t hate it. “The Power of Three” and “The Angels Take Manhattan” were a nice couple of episodes that tied up all the loose ends for Amy and Rory, and sent them packing in fine fashion. I think the characters probably should’ve been written out at the end of the previous season, but Moffat needed to tie up other loose plot ends at that point, and chose to give the characters closure here. Really Moffat could’ve just not gone back to the Ponds, they were home, they knew the Doctor lived, and that could’ve been that. Start fresh with someone new for 13 episodes. Still even though they didn’t need to come back, I loved the ending their story got.
So then we oddly got Christmas in the middle of the series and we are reintroduced to Clara (not named that in her previous appearance), and the Great Intelligence, who is essentially the big bad of the Series from here on out. I loved “The Snowmen”, and enjoyed the bulk of the stories to follow, with “Cold War” and “Hide” being slightly average. Moffat did a great job with his finale, even if with my complaints about Clara’s lack of development, and he gave us a big ol’ whopper of a cliffhanger, which gave us all nothing but questions about what part of the Doctor John Hurt is really playing.
I've been surprised to find that many find this season disappointing. The only thing I was disappointed in was the split format, which just seemed to disrupt the flow and gave two mini seasons instead of one big one. But mostly I enjoyed the stories, as well as the rapport between Smith and Coleman (not to mention our favorite new recurring characters of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax). Others may complain, but while this will never be my favorite season, it is certainly not the worst.
NEXT TIME: The Doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting...
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