Review of The Caretaker
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Although I’m confident that in retrospect, I’ll be able to look back at The Caretaker and point out pieces that were key to the series arc, as far as I’m concerned, we could’ve just skipped it entirely.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

Superficially, there were certainly some similarities between The Caretaker and School Reunion, the Series Two episode that saw the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K-9. But while the latter had bittersweet tones of reminiscence and reconciliation, the former sank rapidly into the realm of romcom. While I enjoy a good romcom as much as the next hopeless romantic, that’s not why I watch Doctor Who.

It’s become more and more the norm, since the post-Hiatus era began back in 2005, for occasional stories to center on the Companions’ domestic life. More recently (read: since Moffat took over as showrunner), the Companions don’t even travel with the Doctor full time like they always used to do. That is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but it most definitely yields a different experience for both Companion and viewer.

Think about it this way: the Companion is comparable to a student going off to university for the first time. Does she live in a residence hall or off campus, e.g., with her parents? Dorm life gives one a vastly different college experience than commuting to school every day does. So, then, does living in the TARDIS as one jumps from adventure to adventure instead of being picked up every now and again to go gadding about the universe between grocery shopping and parents’ night.

Review of Listen
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Clara F***ing Oswald

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

I had an even harder time than usual this week making myself go back to re-watch the episode before reviewing it. Once I did, I finally figured out why.

It’s not that I didn’t like Listen—quite the contrary. It’s that I enjoyed it so much that my extreme disappointment with the last three minutes utterly ruined it in retrospect.

Knowing what was coming the second time around, I found I could isolate the ending from the rest, preventing it from tainting my appreciation. Perhaps, like the whole “half human on my mother’s side” thing, I’ll end up just putting my fingers in my ears and chanting “I can’t hear you!” about this, too.

So let’s go back to the beginning, and look at what Moffat’s pulled out of his hat this time. Continuing in his usual vein of finding ordinary things to make extra scary, the Moff has decided this time to prey on the idea that the urge to talk to oneself when alone just means we’re talking to an invisible companion.

Review of Into the Dalek
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

If you’d told me a month ago that one of the episodes of this series would be The Invisible Enemy meets Dalek, I’d have been, shall we say, dubious at best. Yet that’s what we got in Into the Dalek, and I have to say I think it worked.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

The very fact that I’m willing to mention this episode in the same breath with Dalek, a personal favorite from the post-Hiatus era, tells you something about how much I enjoyed it. Granted, is was not completely flawless (though to be honest, I doubt such a beast exists), but it was, for me, certainly one of the best since Moffat took over as showrunner.

Yet while the main conceit of the episode—literally getting inside a Dalek’s head—is new and therefore interesting, it was not, in fact, the driving force of the story. Instead, it’s a character piece.

Most of the character development is for our new Doctor. We the audience are still getting to know him (as is Clara and, let’s be honest, he is himself), so this is important stuff for us to see. And I was fascinated to realize both that I like Twelve less than I did in his debut, and that I find him an infinitely more interesting character than most of his predecessors. This distinction is important to me, so let me put it another way to be sure I’m making myself clear: this Doctor is not nice, but I adore him.