Why I Found Series 9 A Big Disappointment
John Hussey shares an alternative view of this year’s run.
For those of you who followed my Cult Fix reviews, you’ll know that Series Nine has been quite a diverse viewing experience for me; wavering from incredibly wonderful to totally abysmal. I’d like to use this article to analyse the series and discuss the elements that I found to be most disappointing, resulting in my enjoyment being tarnished.
The Master (I mean “Missy”)
Some of you will already know by now that the Master was my favourite villain, not only for this show, but on my list of “favourite villains” in any form. But then Steven Moffat came along and trampled on him with a broken keyboard; replacing “male character” with “female character”. Why he couldn’t have just brought back the Rani, the Master’s female equivalent, I will never know.
Don’t get me wrong, Michelle Gomez is a fine actress and plays her character well. Missy is exceptional, but she still isn’t quite the Master. Missy doesn’t resemble what the Master is supposed to be, and it is hard to take things seriously due to still feeling more like a gimmick. Plus the relationship with the Doctor comes across quite awkwardly now. Having spent years knowing them as two lads who were once friends before going on different paths and essentially wanting to kill one another, it is now, “Hi, I’m a woman, let’s flirt and snog”.
Even his infamous catchphrase, “I am the Master”, has faded away. “I am the Mistress” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, and honestly sounds rather suggestive. The name change to Missy is the biggest insult. Why change the name now now that he is a woman? And why refer to the Master in past tense as ‘she’? To me, it’s a fan-fiction idea that’s been allowed to enter the canon world.
As I’ve said all along, if Missy wasn’t meant to be the Master in female form, then I would love her to bits. The fact that she is the above ruins her credibility for me. She could’ve been the Rani, a new Time Lady, heck the Master’s sister for all I care, just not a male character suddenly turned female without a good explanation other than “we can and will”. Say, it’s a massive shame because I really like Missy, just not as the Master.
Davros and the Daleks
This was a nice surprise, in spite of some annoyingly revealing publicity. I’m talking about Davros of course, not the Daleks. Every year they’re plastered all over the publicity like a creepy shadow. In my eyes, we could’ve done without the Daleks this year. 1) Because we had them last year, and so this year they needed a break. 2) Their appearance was dreadful and pointless.
If we hadn’t had ‘Into the Dalek’ last year then ‘The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar’ may have, at first, appeared to be the better introduction of the deadly creatures to Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. However, it turned out that the former, although not perfect, was the better introduction narrative and the latter was a let-down due to promised storylines going absolutely nowhere.
Davros’ return was very much welcomed and the fact that Julian Bleach was back on board made it all the more special. Sadly, all we got was a very long, drawn-out conversation that built upon an interesting piece of chemistry only to turn around and say, “Yeah, the last episode and 3⁄4 was a waste of your time because we lied and Davros is still evil”. Talk about shooting me in the back, and then kicking me when I’m down. That’s like a double whammy.
I was actually intrigued by the idea that Davros, in his final hours, wanted to redeem himself and used this opportunity to talk to the Doctor. I get why it was all a lie because it made for a secondary surprise, a “pull the rug from under you” moment, but at the same time as agreeing with this turn of events I felt cheated. Why develop a character only to reverse everything that was added? To me, it was a cheap trick in order to reverse a scared writer’s ideas before a Whovian lynch mob came banging on their door. Sometimes change is good, especially if it’s for the right reason. I actually wanted Davros to turn good, it would’ve been poetic.
As for the Daleks, they might as well have been ornaments in the background. Oh wait, they were. Only this time, when we didn’t want it to happen, we got Classic Daleks. Three years too late production team. You should’ve been bold during the “Intensive Treatment” scene instead of wheeling our dear Special Weapons Dalek in just to be a prop with the new guys in an episode that neither needed them nor did anything with them.
Clara Staying On
It was thought last year that Jenna Coleman would be leaving in either ‘Death in Heaven’ or ‘Last Christmas,’ but was persuaded to stay on for another series by her boss and colleague. After watching Series Nine right through to the end I actually wish she had gone last year. Hear me out.
Her character throughout Series Seven and Eight was superb and was given some interesting character development. She went from being a mystery to being the woman who saved the Doctor. To begin with, she was innocent, clever and extremely brave. As time went on she became more controlling, and this fun little trait became her development for Series Eight as she tried to control the Twelfth Doctor and push him back on the right track, back into the man she used to know.
Series Eight showcased her to be firm, loving, full of life, and determination to see her goals fall into place, whilst also showing weakness over her love for travelling with the Doctor. The dilemma between the Doctor and Danny was somewhat her downfall, unaware until it was too late that Danny was more important. That was a tragic turning point. I also loved how she threatened to leave to justify that she had had enough of the Doctor’s patronising and rude behaviour.
I’m rambling, I know, but these paragraphs demonstrate some of the key points about Clara’s journey prior to Series Nine. Fast forward to this year and we have a Clara that I no longer recognised. Her journey into becoming a reckless fool because of Danny’s death did not seem like her. Yes, she demonstrated her love for travelling last year, and adopted lying to keep Danny safe; reflecting her likeness of the Doctor himself, but once realising Danny was more important she wanted to go to Heaven and back to find him, even threatening the Doctor to secure this.
But this year’s companion arc didn’t justify the approach it took. She became extremely unlikable and I simply began to hate her because of this. I actually ended up forgetting the justification of Danny’s death because it was no longer referenced, leaving me to think Clara was now just selfish and uncaring. The whole idea of Clara turning into the Doctor is a load of rubbish. From the start she was already like him in her own little way. Yes in Series Eight she rubbed off on him in the wrong way, but that was dropped in the finale.
Clara is a strong person and wouldn’t fall to such reckless ambition, especially knowing that Danny wouldn’t have wanted it. I suppose you can even question the factor of “would her mother have wanted this”. She never used the travelling as a form of escape and always found something to return home to. Series Seven showed her give up her freedom for her duty of care, and Series Eight had her fall in love. Surely she could’ve done the same again for Series Nine. I didn’t even fully feel like she was there to look after the Doctor, and instead there to run away from her problems. If anything it was the Doctor who was worried, knowing too well the path she led would only end one way.
And that’s what happened, she died. This ending was poetic because of the circumstances involved but death wasn’t fully suited for her, especially because of all she had done for both the Doctor and the mythology. This is why Series Eight or 2014’s Christmas Special were a much more fitting end. And then we had ‘Hell Bent’ which merely added to the bad development of Clara this year. I felt the narrative of ‘Hell Bent’ shifted violently off-piece and over-embellished Clara’s departure to death, dragging it out unnecessarily. Some may have loved the idea of her cheating death for a while and being allowed to travel space and time in her own TARDIS and her own companion. It was an embarrassing spectacle, made worse by the fact that ‘Face the Raven’ and ‘Heaven Sent’ no longer have an impact.
Two-Parters
The idea of having two-parters again was certainly a treat for the fans, many having felt cheated by not having them properly since 2011. But alas, this also turned out to be a bad thing. The pacing this year was extremely confusing. Moffat teased the idea that we wouldn’t always be having traditional two-parters. This worked with the likes of ‘The Girl Who Died’ linking into ‘The Woman Who Lived’ along with ‘Face the Raven’ linking into the finale.
However, the traditional two-parters all seemed to collapse on themselves in one way or another. The first half would create a tone, a stylistic approach and pace, whilst the second half would throw that out the window and replace it with a slow-paced narrative, contrived mostly of long, drawn-out conversation scenes. ‘Before the Flood’ and ‘The Zygon Inversion’ are an exception from my nagging due to how brilliant they both were, despite being slower-paced than their first half.
‘The Witch’s Familiar’ and ‘Hell Bent’ were the worst examples of poor conclusions. Their first halves, especially with the latter, were bloody good stories which gave you the impression that the second half would deal with some controversial themes, i.e. the Doctor threatening a young Davros with death, and the Doctor going to war with the Time Lords.
What actually happened was both concluding stories focused on the exact opposite we were expecting, but that not in a good way. Not in a way that made us feel like praising Moffat for fooling us and giving us something unexpected. It was more like “Why are you deviating from what you developed in favour of something that we couldn’t care less about”. I’ve talked about ‘Hell Bent’ to death above and below. ‘The Witch’s Familiar’ was disappointing because, as I said above, it cheated us with the knowledge that Davros might be redeeming himself, making the entire drawn-out, if slightly exciting, conversation scene feel redundant and a waste of our time.
It didn’t “pull the rug from underneath our feet” and instead became a cop-out; a quick, easy get-out-of-jail-free revelation that neither added nor detracted from the mythology. It was all rather pointless and made me wonder why I even invested my time into this opener when it took me absolutely nowhere. Made worse by the fact the plan to use the Doctor’s regenerations to make the Daleks hybrids was completely out of the blue and undramatic. And then we found out that the teasers about the Doctor threatening a young Davros also went nowhere. The exciting stuff was all placed there by Moffat, but he ended up deciding at the last hurdle to throw them all in the bin in favour of a half-arsed narrative that might as well not have existed. The same can be said for ‘Hell Bent’.
The Hybrid Arc
This part of the series arc originally didn’t take my fancy due to it being, well dull. It seemed out of the blue and a strange excuse as to why the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey. Also, it didn’t make sense having a prophecy about the Daleks prior to the Doctor even knowing about them.
As the series developed, the idea of the Hybrid became more interesting because it made you guess what it actually was. The Ghosts from ‘Under the Lake’ could be classed as a hybrid. Then there was ‘Me’, who became the obvious choice for obvious reasons (though I wouldn’t class the Mire as a ‘mighty’ warrior race). This was followed by the return of Osgood who too became a hybrid, something even mightier than ‘Me’ having been made a cross between the Zygons and humanity.
The most exciting theory was the revelation that the Doctor would finally be revealed to be half-human, first hinted at in the TV Movie starring Paul McGann. I always liked the idea of the Doctor being part human. It never bothered me whether it became fact or not, but if it had it would have made sense.
The Doctor has always had a soft spot for humanity, and he himself shares some of their traits, understands and uses emotions to his advantage, as well as having an infinite imagination. Compare this to the Time Lords and the Doctor does seem to stand out. Maybe the reason the Doctor is like this, and why the Time Lords treat him like an outsider, is because he is part human. This may have been why he ran away from Gallifrey because he was ashamed, perhaps scared, explaining his bitterness in the beginning, especially towards humans. Then Ian and Barbara showed him the best of humanity and he learned to accept himself and changed for the better. Hence the comedic nature of the Second Doctor, a man bouncing with energy, excitement and love; the perfect embodiment of acceptance through change.
But, the outcome was extremely hit-and-miss. Apart from the fact it wasn’t fully revealed to us and left rather vague, something that left me feeling rather annoyed because we had a build-up to essentially nothing. I know the “Silence Will Fall” arc worked well in this manner but this time around vague suggestions weren’t going to cut it. What made matters worse was the impression that the Hybrid could mean the companionship of the Doctor and Clara. How dull and unimaginative, not to mention a pathetic pay-off. And yet another reason to make Clara the spotlight of the show. I never used to mind this but this time around it just became ridiculous.
Gallifrey Returns
I don’t think we have to linger on this one much as it has been made rather clear in the rest of the article. But yes, Gallifrey’s return was a shamble and a wasted opportunity. Some say that Gallifrey’s return is best suited over time, which yes I agree with, but there needed to be a starting point and this was meant to be it. I don’t think a massive build-up before discarding what was becoming an excellent narrative for something that had been concluded two episodes prior was the best approach.
I loved how the Doctor didn’t say a word in the first ten minutes, with Peter Capaldi merely using his superior acting skills to address the situation through body language. Then for him to tell Rassilon to “get off my planet” was just pure amazement, a moment that really paid off. I won’t lie, when the General and his men sided with the Doctor I was practically cheering, screaming “In your face, Rassilon”.
Then the Doctor was Lord President again. Hurray! Now it was time for some serious changes as the Doctor began a revamp on his species and attempted to bring them back to the universe. But at the same time, I imagined he would use this new-found power to act out his revenge, which started with the banishing of the all-mighty Rassilon and the corrupt High Council. So sad how it all fell apart after this…
Also, it would have been nice for the Hybrid arc to have gone in a different direction, as emphasised above. So many missed opportunities and so many side steps that practically felt like Moffat was taking one step forward into a glorious new age, before taking two steps back and sending the show into an age of devastation through the inclusion of so many mad, and illogical ideas that practically ruin the present, future and past of the show. How one man can achieve this in two short years is beyond me but it’s happening, right now.
Conclusion
I do apologise for rambling but something had to be said. I wanted to get across a different voice that showcased a lifelong fan slowly being withered away. I used to admire Moffat, I really did. Ask any regular member here how positive I used to be. But now, I’m sad to say, that I simply don’t agree with his direction anymore and feel as though he is ruining the show. I don’t want to join the club of “Moffat Haters”, but I do wish that he buckled up on his ideas. If he doesn’t, then I would have to agree that it’s time he moved on.
‘Heaven Sent’ and the Doctor’s speech in ‘The Zygon Inversion’ showcased perfectly that he still has it, but he needs to maintain this sense of brilliance and not throw it away from time to time. It just occurs to me now that when Moffat writes a bad episode, it truly is a train-wreck, riddled with bad ideas that don’t need to be there or his sense of priority is in the wrong place.
I love the show to bits and it pains me to be so disappointed with it for the past two years. I apologise for being so negative, but that is how I feel at the moment. I didn’t want to sound like I was ranting and tried to justify my points and I hope everyone can respect my opinion. Thanks for reading.