New Who Finales in Perspective: Series 7
Guest contributor Luke Gwalchmai continues the series looking back over all the New Who finales, this time with Series 7.
Ever since Asylum of the Daleks, we were put in the Doctor’s shoes and going spare trying to work out one thing: who exactly was Clara Oswald? As well as this mystery, the Doctor’s greatest secret was also being hinted at throughout Series 7. We were told that by the end of The Name of the Doctor we would know the truth behind the Impossible Girl arc, and were also teased that the Doctor’s greatest secret was about to be revealed. We were promised answers, but the question is, did the episode deliver? This article will look back at The Name of the Doctor and whether it was a success as a finale.
Those of us that were longing for an answer to Clara’s mystery didn’t have to wait long. In what was one of my favourite pre-title sequence scenes of all time, we watch Clara falling through time and crossing paths with many of the earlier Doctors. We get to see the first ever depiction of the Doctor and Susan ‘borrowing’ the TARDIS and fleeing Gallifrey, but just before they set off, Clara appears and warns the Doctor that he’s about to make a very big mistake. We then saw Clara crossing paths with previous Doctors and appearing almost invisible to the Doctor, as she can’t quite seem to gain his attention until we see the Victorian barmaid encounter the Eleventh Doctor way back in The Snowmen. At this point we didn’t know how or why this happened, but the one thing we did know, was that Clara has been spread across the Doctor’s timeline, desperate to save him throughout his life. And after that jaw dropping minute and a half, we are allowed to catch our breath as the titles roll.
I love the idea of the TARDIS getting bigger on the outside when it dies, it seemed fitting that the Doctor’s monument would be so massive, considering all he’s done. It was here that we learn that the Great Intelligence intends to force the Doctor to open his tomb, using the Paternoster Gang as bait to lure him to Trenzalore. We have a really tense scene outside the door where Simeon attempts to force the Doctor to speak his name and open his tomb by having the Whispermen threatening kill Clara and the Paternoster Gang if he refuses. What I found interesting here is that the Doctor isn’t the one to speak his name. I found it interesting because it shows how dangerous the Doctor knows his tomb is, and I fully believe he would have let Clara, Vastra, Strax and Jenny die to protect this secret. He only went to Trenzalore in the first place to get the Paternoster Gang back, and then seemed prepared to let them die rather than open his tomb, which tells its own story really.
Inside the Doctor’s tomb, which turns out to be the current console room, we finally discover the truth of Clara’s mystery. After the Great Intelligence enters the Doctor’s time stream (which, by the way, I think is a brilliant idea, having a door to the Doctor’s entire life as opposed to a body considering how many he’s had), with the sole aim of destroying the Doctor across his entire life, Clara nobly sacrifices herself by following the Great Intelligence, thus solving the mystery of the Impossible Girl. I think The Name of the Doctor wrapped up this arc very well; it was something I didn’t predict, and I think that the scene of Clara working out she has to enter his time stream because it’s something she’s already done as the Doctor has already met her echoes. Clara summoning up the courage to run into it is brilliantly done and extremely well-acted by Jenna, who’s on top form here. She’s delivers a terrific performance as Clara, showing a range of emotions. As well as displaying her chemistry with Matt Smith, which was on fire all series. Even though it was something she’d already done, it must have been so hard for Clara to physically step inside, knowing there’s a very good chance that she would die, so her courage and bravery is admirable.
One of the greatest things about this episode is the brilliant performance of Matt Smith. He truly shines here; I love the scene where the Doctor first appears and how he goes from messing around being his normal playful self at one moment, to crying on the sofa the next. It is really well done, and marks a permanent change in the tone of the episode. From that moment on the episode is quite dark and doesn’t really let up in that respect. Matt really shines and shows that he can portray his Doctor in the darker moments, and that he isn’t just a one trick pony. His Doctor has always had a dark side that he generally tried to keep hidden, but he did have a tendency to let it out in the more emotional circumstances, A Good Man Goes to War being a good example, as well as this episode.
This episode also features the Paternoster Gang, or Vastra, Jenny and Strax when they’re at home. I felt that Vastra and Jenny fair well, the scene where Jenny is killed by the Whispermen while perhaps cheapened by her subsequent revival, is still an incredibly powerful one. It really surprised me on first viewing. I didn’t think that they would kill her off so it caught me off guard. But it turned out I was right, and she was brought back in a relatively anticlimactic way. Brought back or not, Catrin Stewart shined in that scene, and more than rose to the emotional challenge. We are shown how much Vastra cares for and loves Jenny this episode, as we see her strong feelings coming out when she dies. There’s also here response to Strax after he brings Jenny back saying the heart is a simple thing, Vastra replies “I haven’t always found it to be so” which I feel is her saying that your feelings aren’t simple, and you can fall in love with anyone, even when it’s as extraordinary as a Silurian and a human. A character who doesn’t fair too well is Strax. As funny as he is, he just feels out of place here, or at least his humour does. I’m all for a bit of comic relief, but Strax’s funny moments didn’t suit the scenes they were inserted too, mainly later on in the episode, and it nearly killed the tension a few times. The Name of the Doctor is quite a dark episode for around half an hour of it, and Strax’s humour just didn’t feel like it belonged here. Although I will concede the fact that Strax spends his time off in Glasgow fighting with the locals gets me every time!
Another returnee here is Richard E Grant as the Great Intelligence. I have to admit, I’m not really a fan of this villain. The performance feels too ‘panto villain’ for my liking, and while his search for revenge against the Doctor is understandable enough, and Grant brings his best angry stare and pit bull bark to the table, the villain and performance feels very underwhelming and predictable. He just seemed like a plot device to get the Doctor to Trenzalore. The Whispermen were a very good creation, visually creepy and genuinely threatening if perhaps underused. It cheapened them for me to have the as suits for the Great Intelligence, I’d have preferred them to be working with the G.I, as opposed to being him. I’ve always thought of them as opposites to the Silence creatures by wanting the Doctor to answer the question. They are quite unsettling creatures, who have a very creepy appearance and speak in threatening rhymes, which isn’t a first Moffat’s era of Doctor Who; the guy has more rhymes than Eminem in a West End musical!
The episode is visually stunning; the shot of Trenzalore as the Doctor and Clara observe it from the TARDIS, the surface of Trenzalore complete with the giant TARDIS, and the Doctor’s time stream being standouts for me. Musically Murray Gold has a top day at the office, using familiar tracks like Majestic Tale of a Mad Man in a Box really well as well as offering up some fantastic new tracks, To Save the Doctor being the standout. I love that one. Saul Metzstein gives us some of his best work in a very well-directed episode too.
The Name of the Doctor works really well as a finale because not only does it answer questions from the series, it also leaves us asking more. In the episode that wrapped up the Impossible Girl mystery, we were also introduced to the War Doctor, played by the one and only John Hurt in an intense final scene, keeping us all on our toes speculating as the 50th anniversary approached. It was certainly a surprise to see him in The Name of the Doctor, and it’s a moment that I for one won’t forget in a hurry.
There is a lot crammed in here but the episode doesn’t feel rushed, it flows naturally and is very well-paced. I think the episode was a success as a finale episode because it was ambitious and achieved what it set out too and kept fans guessing, as well as leaving us on a cliffhanger to make sure we come back for more in the next episode.
I personally love The Name of the Doctor, it’s not perfect across the board, it has flaws, but they are flaws I can overlook because there are things that more than make up for them. It’s tense, dark, and action packed. It feels like a more intimate affair akin to The Big Bang as opposed to the huge scales of The Wedding of River Song, which goes in the episode’s favour, it didn’t need a giant cast to tell its story.
Rating
The following ratings were achieved by taking a sample of ten people and getting them to rate the finales by each of the five criteria assigning a rating out of ten to each. This allowed us to come up with an average for each of the categories and then an average score for the episode. Whilst ten is quite a small sample size, regression to the mean was beginning to show. The results for this finale are as follows:
- Episode Score – 7.20/10
- Finale Rating – 7.40/10
- Monster Score – 7.30/10
- Arc Resolution – 7.65/10
- Character Development – 7.75/10
This gives the episode an average score of: 7.46/10. This means the leader board now looks like this:
- Series 1 – 9.40/10
- Series 3 – 9.05/10
- Series 5 – 8.41/10
- Series 4 – 8.37/10
- Series 6 – 7.53/10
- Series 2 – 7.53/10
- Series 7 – 7.46/10
