Well now, that was an adventure. The final episode of Doctor Who’s fifth, or thirty-first if you’re fussy, series and the very first with Messieurs Smith and Gillan at the helm, if indeed a flying box can have a helm, has now finished broadcast and it would be an immense folly of me not to comment in earnest.

The Doctor: Matt Smith has inhabited the role and I have no way of criticising him for it. He’s a damn fine actor who has successfully given us The Doctor as we know him with enough new traits to make him distinguishable. Is he as good as Tennant? No, I’m afraid he’s not been quite as awesome as good old Ten, but the predecessor had three (point five) series’ to make his mark and Smith has only just ended his first (reportedly, out of five) so I still consider it early days. He’s a fantastic Doctor, but had a hard act to follow.

Amy Pond: Little bit disappointed with how this companion worked out. It seemed early on that Amy would be a new angle on a companion but, for most of the series, that was forgotten and instead other writers used her in the capacity of standard companion acting as the voice of the audience and her “issues” only came up when needed during Moffat episodes. For Amy’s part, they could’ve done more to seed her significance into other episodes rather than using it to beat you over the head every third episode.

Rory Williams: Again, a touch disappointing. Rory was, undoubtedly, intended as the comic relief throughout the series but he was, in that respect, far too similar to Mickey Smith. Both began as the clumsy source of annoyance who, as the series developed, grew into a hero. He had his moments, but he was too much of a cookie-cutter companion.

River Song: I’m simulataneously infuriated by and enjoying the ongoing tale of River Song. Given that she’s meeting The Doctor out of sync she is in a unique position to keep giving prophetic insight into the future of the show, and it’s pretty clear that she’s going to turn out to be wildly significant in Who-fandom in the coming years. I imagine Alex Kingston’s been paid a hefty sum to commit to the series long-term so that these hints can be explained and I’m glad, because she’s an immensely enjoyable character (sort of like a female Captain Jack) to watch.

Favourite Episode: Ooo, that’s tricky, but it’s probably either Victory of the Daleks or The Lodger. The former because of it’s historical references, continuity, geek factor and comedy, and the latter for it’s ball-scratching simplicty. The Dalek episode was part of the ongoing redevelopment of Doctor Who and so covered a lot of back-references, plus the relationship between The Doctor and Churchill (who had already met) was refreshing. The Lodger was a suprise considering it was the annual “cheap episode”, which have a history of sucking like a Henry Hoover on crack, and had a lot of appeal despite being a complete departure from the usual Who format with as much human drama, which would usually make me wince, as Sci-fi nerdgasm. I can’t continue without mentioning the fantastic Spitfire-Dalek Saucer dogfight in space, a completely ridiculous notion but fantastic all the same!

Worst Episode: I’m going to say The Beast Below which, on the surface, seemed like a chilling examination of nightmares but was actually a bit dull. It had a good story and morality tale, and I loved the introduction of Liz X and the twist at the end, but the threat of the baddie never really took given that they spent most of the story standing atop the whale and the smiler things never really seemed all that scary.

The Finale:

This entire series has felt like a massive build up, any stories with no references to the Cracks tended to be incredibly weak, and so you went into the last two episodes expecting a lot, and the penultimate episode “The Pandorica Opens”, at least, delivered. The appearance of so many aliens trapping The Doctor was a nice touch but, for both practical and time reasons, not one that would’ve been carried too far, given the intense amount of preparation that must’ve gone into the five minute sequence of trapping The Doctor in the Pandorica. Disappointingly, the entrapment in the Pandorica had to be resolved quickly, as an episode with The Doctor locked away would’ve been slow and tedious, but was done quite well using the viewer’s skewed perspective on time travel. Was there a better moment in that episode than the beaten up Doctor appearing with no warning from nowhere and, seemingly, dying. Although, giving The Doctor a Vortex Manipulator to jump around with helped the story along, but removed the impact of the TARDIS “exploding”.

There were obvious moments of science-fiction shruggery, again diluting the impact of Amy’s “death” using some bullshit explanation of the Pandorica being able to prevent death so the prisoner couldn’t escape, the Pandorica was that secure (though the Sonic was able to open it with relative ease), or the idea that The Pandorica light held a “restoration field”. As well as the ultimate closer of the episode where, after spending an emotive ten minutes explaining how the resetting of the universe came at the cost of his non-existence, The Doctor was able to be “remembered” back sat with me as the biggest cop-out imaginable. Ultimately, the story became a massive set up resolved by a reset button so big it could be seen from another galaxy, if they existed in that universe, and a massive retcon always feels like a cop-out. Then again, Doctor Who has a history of leaving things ambiguous (by which I mean the writers got a bit lazy and gave up), for example they’ve still never explained Colin Baker; what the hell was he?

Overall, a fun story with ongoing significance. The arc over this series appears relatively wrapped up but an ultimate arc, perhaps over the course of The Eleventh Doctor’s life, has been hinted at. We still need to learn the cause of the TARDIS explosion and the owner of the chain-smoker voice that echoed through the TARDIS. I also found it interesting that, once again, The Doctor is called into action, presumebly hinting at the Christmas Special. On one hand, it gives The Doctor a direction, of sorts, where instead of simply knocking around the universe and running into this stuff, he’s actively called to it, but on the other it gives The Doctor a musty, ninteen-seventies detective agency vibe which I dislike.

Of course, it doesn’t end here. Blood of the Cybermen is now available to download on the BBC Website.