nathan-dts said:
This was the best series finale that the show has ever done; it made complete sense and we get a tease as to how the Time War ended and how horrific it was. Doctor Who lore just got given a shot of steroids which seems to have been Moffat's aim with the series and his time as head,in general; from The Great Intelligence to the Ice warriors to homoreptilia.
The second half of the series has been perfect. The show was fading into irrelevance whilst they were stuck with the convoluted Pond mess. They've turned it around.
My thoughts exactly. I consider the Pond era to be the dark times of the show. Because before that I, thought nothing could get me to stop watching the show. I got in on it years ago when the show was on mid-Tennant, and went back and watched all I could, Eccleston to current Tennant and went back and watched all I could find on the old series, buying what I could of the old series on Amazon.
I loved it all, then Pond happened. At first it wasn't all that bad, it was a little odd, but it worked....until the two part finale of the fifth series, when they decided to make Pond more of a main character than The Doctor, starting with her wishing The Doctor back into existence being the most stupid and impossible saving of The Doctor's life ever. From then until the end of the first half of series 7, the Ponds were the main characters and The Doctor was relegated to a side character, just pay attention to screen time, Smith has far less time in front of the camera during that time.
Because of the Ponds, I stopped watching the show a couple episodes before the series 7 mid series finale. I jumped for joy when they basically wrote the Ponds into a death corner. I'm so happy about that, I'll probably punch some random person nearest to me if they try to bring them back onto the show somehow.
When I finally started watching the episodes post Ponds, it all made sense again. We had The Doctor as the main character, he gets the most screen time, and while we had the Clara story arch, it didn't overshadow The Doctor.
Quaxar said:
Apart from that the episode was good. Solid end to this overall weak season. The Clara mystery seemed a bit anticlimatic though after all the brilliant fan theories.
At least the Clara mystery ending makes sense, unlike the ending of series 5(wish magic form and ordinary girl with no powers) and mid-series 6(That River Song is a time baby of/from Rory and Amy doing it in the TARDIS, which totally killed the River Song story arch for me and made me have absolutely no interest in her character. It would have made much more sense if she had been a Time Lady from his past when the Time Lords were still around, then that would have meant that the episodes that followed would have been Doctor centric to figure out how said Time Lady was still around, instead of all the silliness and play on how River is the Ponds baby).
The series 6 finale wasn't that good either, I would consider it meh/bland, considering that I would have to watch it again to get the full scope of it, because only the outline of it sticks in my mind but not the filling, unlike the Eccleston and all the Tennant finales, which I can practically remember each minute visually in my mind.
Plus, this series 7 finale ties in all the other Doctors so well, granted some of the special effect points that they used to include Clara and the GI into The Doctor's past were a bit borked, but anything that gets the old series more face time so that people know properly that it exists is awesome in my book. Seriously, it is amazing how many people I've encountered over the years that didn't know there was actual Doctor Who episodes before Eccleston.
