ReaKtion Round-Up: The Shape of Series 9

David Power is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Hah! Bet you thought you had seen the last of me, right? But just like Clara I don’t seem to know when to stay gone. (Oh come on, I have to get a few more jokes in before I go.) So, since we looked at each of episode of Series 9 individually, how about we look at the series as whole. We’ll examine Series 9 under four categories, character development, story arc, story range, and ratings. Lets go!

Character development

The Doctor: Like most people predicted, the Twelfth Doctor followed the route of the First Doctor and mellowed out in his second season. The Twelfth Doctor’s edges have been smoothed out, and now that the Doctor’s done debating whether or not he’s a good man he can finally relax. The Series 8 version of the Twelfth Doctor always seemed to me as one recovering from 900 years on Trenzalore. 900 years of being forced to tell the truth means he was instinctively prone to harsh honesty, mostly at Clara’s expense. 900 years of constantly outliving everyone around him also made him disconnected and desensitised to the tragedy of mortality, like when he quickly realises he can use Ross’ death to his advantage to track the antibodies in 2014’s Into the Dalek.

At the beginning of Series 9 the Doctor believes he’s going to die, and this belief kicks him into what seems to be a mid-life crisis, including the staple acquiring of mid-life crisis toys. Even when the Doctor doesn’t end up dying, he still keeps these toys, a new Yamaha SGV800 and a pair of sonic shades. Re-affirming his close friendship with Clara Oswald has allowed The Twelfth Doctor to become more approachable (while still not as quick to warm to others as other incarnations), and return to exploring universe purely for the fun of it. I’m on board with this more laid back Twelve, as to me it feels like natural character progression, and to be honest Peter Capaldi simply looks damn cool playing guitar.

Clara Oswald: Clara Oswald’s attempt in Series 8 to live both a normal life and a life with the Doctor ended in the death of her boyfriend Danny Pink. Her memories of meeting Orson Pink now teases of a future she never lived, Danny’s death flings Clara in what seems to be a life 100% revolving around the Doctor. This, combined with how long Clara has been travelling with the Doctor, leads Clara down a reckless path that eventually results in her death. Yet again, in Series 9 Clara’s character development makes sense and plays quite well into the overall events of the series.

Story arc

The Hybrid. Now this one’s tricky. When the story arc is introduced at the end of The Witch’s Familiar, Davros states there’s an ancient Gallifreyan prophecy that implies in the future there will be a Dalek- Time Lord Hybrid, and that this prophecy is why the Doctor actually fled Gallifrey. While this pushed some peoples buttons, even ignoring the expanded universe Cartmel masterplan, the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks already confirmed that the Doctor had ulterior motives for leaving Gallifrey that faithful day.

The Doctor flees Skaro, and we see shots of Daleks covered in regeneration energy, the prophecy seemingly coming true. From here onwards the arc begins to feel clunkier and clunkier. Three episodes later, at the end of The Girl Who Died, the Doctor gravely notes Ashildr is now technically a hybrid, and suddenly we have a story arc. Even though it looked like we got confirmation about the Hybrid a couple of weeks ago, since it was mentioned recently by Davros the Doctor begins to toy around with the idea of anyone being the notorious Hybrid, tossing out Ashildr and Osgood as potential candidates.

A big problem with this arc is that it’s not retconned into the show’s mythos particularly well. The First Doctor didn’t seem to recognise the Daleks when he first met them in their eponymous story in 1963, making the Dalek Time-Lord prophecy feel not thought out. Then the Doctor suddenly starts theorising that others are the Hybrid, suddenly deciding now is the time to deal with this. This prophecy never seemed to ring any bells when the Doctor interacted with River Song, or Captain Jack, or even Dalek Sec Hybrid. It’s in Sec’s name for heavens sake!

Then we get to Hell Bent and the whole thing just collapses in on itself. Supposedly now no-one really knows who the Hybrid is. Some interesting theories are thrown out, Ashildr, the Doctor (with a cheeky wink to the TV Movie), the Doctor and Clara, and the Doctor and The Master, but it’s here at the very end of Series 9 when we realise that this “arc” didn’t matter at all. It didn’t have the slightest effect on the overall story, bar the Time Lords trapping the Doctor in his confession dial to find out what he knows, only to stop deciding it was important once he got out. Just a couple of nods at the very end almost as if the writers forgot about it. All this hybrid business didn’t actually tie the season together in the slightest. We spent Series 9 with random bits of confused build up, with an actually interesting idea, for a complete lack of any resolution, unfortunately resulting in a disappointing mess of a story arc.

Story range

Series 9 had a challenge facing it. Give how the series was mostly two parters, the amount of places we would travel to over the course of the series was reduced. Series 9 compensates for this by giving us quite a variety of locations and time periods. Over the course of the series we’ve seen England in three different centuries, a rebuilt Skaro, an underwater base, a mock soviet city, New Mexico, a 38th century space station, and wouldn’t you know it, even Gallifrey!

In terms of the stories themselves we’ve had first person horror stories, political thrillers, character pieces, the return of fan favourite characters, and the pay off of a story line building up since the 50th anniversary. For a season with a limited amount of stories, this season contained more than enough variety to keep the season interesting week in and week out.

Ratings

I’d assume you all know by now, but those for who don’t; the ratings haven’t been very good for Doctor Who this season. Only two stories this season, excluding The Husbands of River Song, have achieved a higher rating of people watching than the lowest rated episode of Series 8. 2014’s Flatline reached an initial audience of 4.6 million people, with only The Girl Who Died and Hell Bent surpassing that at 4.85 and 4.8 respectively.

As many have theorised before me, there could be many reasons as to why the ratings were lower than average this season, rugby matches playing concurrently, Halloween parties taking priority, later time slots meaning kiddies can’t stay up and watch. Should we worried about these low ratings? To be honest I don’t think so. Critically this season has done remarkably well, and with the news of a new companion and then a new showrunner around the corner, I don’t know how people wouldn’t watch.

What did you guys think of Series 9 as a whole? Do you agree with me? Disagree? Let all your feelings out now when they’re still relevant!

So here we are then, it’s the end, but the moment’s been prepared for. Without repeating myself from last week, thanks for reading these, and see you all when I see you.

 

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