This season finale should be used at film-making schools as example of how NOT to make a sci-fi film. All narratives can be plotted, but not all narratives are stories. Stories require a beginning, a middle, and an end, one leading logically to the other; a problem, a conflict, a resolution. There is no story in this episode.
THE PLOT: A problem is not introduced, it is arbitrarily generated - a Victorian serial killer pulls a reference to the Doctor out of nowhere and some smarty lizard gets her knickers in a twist over it. This brings about a set-piece séance with a data-stream from the hard-drive of a computer, as well as a young woman from the 21st century (who has all the personality of a cardboard cut-out, but after all, the Doctor fancies her). Then some bad guy who's everywhere and nowhere brings everybody to some dead planet (how?) where the Doctor is buried in the future, sort of, or his time-streams are, sort of, whatever that means. Then the Doctor finds a way into his own tomb, runs around a bit to no purpose, suddenly appears outside the tomb, then the bad guy attacks and the data stream opens the tomb, then everyone goes in and 'omg wow!' the Doctor's time streams, sort of. The bad guy commits suicide so he can cause the Doctor a lot of pain (now that makes no sense, but what has so far?). Then everybody dies. Then the Doctor's companion Clara follows the bad guy and dies and and begins chasing previous Doctors around shouting "Doctor!" for no discernible reason. Then everybody's not dead anymore. Then a brief kiss from the dead woman's data stream, effectively assuring a return visit from her or it or whatever - "spoilers!" - yeah, aren't we all just a little tired of that tease? Then the Doctor enters this own time streams because, y'know, he's god or something, and he finds Clara only god knows where and - oh, look, there's John Hurt, whatever he is, and - roll credits.
If you can tie the non-problem with the flurry of conflicts that achieve no discernible resolution, god (the Doctor?) bless you. This is an absolute mess. The writing is atrocious - a three year old with attention deficit syndrome could draw out a better story with a crayon. Big explosions, running around, waving a blinking sonic device at everything, and over-emoting like amateurs hardly make up for the deficiencies of the script. Ed Wood, widely considered the worst film maker of the 20th Century, wrote scripts that were ridiculously exploitative and silly - but at least they made sense, in their own warped way. Steven Moffat seems to be throwing scenes at us on the mere wish that they might stick together - or at least that we will ignore the fact that they don't. Moffat has achieved the impossible - he has given us a film stupider, more nonsensical, and with greater discontinuities than Wood's "Glen or Glenda." Steven Moffat does not love Doctor Who; he loves Steven Moffat. This is the sort of rubbish we get when an egomaniac is given a budget and access to the mass media. And Moffat's cultic fan base loves Moffat, and will excuse his every flaw; but they do not love Doctor Who either.
Doctor Who is a series of sci-fi adventure STORIES concerning the travels of a mysterious alien traveler through time and space. Turning him into a god, as projection of Steven Moffat's personality, makes the stories non-consequential - in this case, not even story at all. It will mean the end of Doctor Who. The "Steven Moffat Show, With Matt Smith" may continue a couple more years, but my fear is that those who love Doctor Who will mark "The Name of the Doctor" as the moment when the visionary series created by Sydney Newman 50 years ago finally came to an end.
THE PLOT: A problem is not introduced, it is arbitrarily generated - a Victorian serial killer pulls a reference to the Doctor out of nowhere and some smarty lizard gets her knickers in a twist over it. This brings about a set-piece séance with a data-stream from the hard-drive of a computer, as well as a young woman from the 21st century (who has all the personality of a cardboard cut-out, but after all, the Doctor fancies her). Then some bad guy who's everywhere and nowhere brings everybody to some dead planet (how?) where the Doctor is buried in the future, sort of, or his time-streams are, sort of, whatever that means. Then the Doctor finds a way into his own tomb, runs around a bit to no purpose, suddenly appears outside the tomb, then the bad guy attacks and the data stream opens the tomb, then everyone goes in and 'omg wow!' the Doctor's time streams, sort of. The bad guy commits suicide so he can cause the Doctor a lot of pain (now that makes no sense, but what has so far?). Then everybody dies. Then the Doctor's companion Clara follows the bad guy and dies and and begins chasing previous Doctors around shouting "Doctor!" for no discernible reason. Then everybody's not dead anymore. Then a brief kiss from the dead woman's data stream, effectively assuring a return visit from her or it or whatever - "spoilers!" - yeah, aren't we all just a little tired of that tease? Then the Doctor enters this own time streams because, y'know, he's god or something, and he finds Clara only god knows where and - oh, look, there's John Hurt, whatever he is, and - roll credits.
If you can tie the non-problem with the flurry of conflicts that achieve no discernible resolution, god (the Doctor?) bless you. This is an absolute mess. The writing is atrocious - a three year old with attention deficit syndrome could draw out a better story with a crayon. Big explosions, running around, waving a blinking sonic device at everything, and over-emoting like amateurs hardly make up for the deficiencies of the script. Ed Wood, widely considered the worst film maker of the 20th Century, wrote scripts that were ridiculously exploitative and silly - but at least they made sense, in their own warped way. Steven Moffat seems to be throwing scenes at us on the mere wish that they might stick together - or at least that we will ignore the fact that they don't. Moffat has achieved the impossible - he has given us a film stupider, more nonsensical, and with greater discontinuities than Wood's "Glen or Glenda." Steven Moffat does not love Doctor Who; he loves Steven Moffat. This is the sort of rubbish we get when an egomaniac is given a budget and access to the mass media. And Moffat's cultic fan base loves Moffat, and will excuse his every flaw; but they do not love Doctor Who either.
Doctor Who is a series of sci-fi adventure STORIES concerning the travels of a mysterious alien traveler through time and space. Turning him into a god, as projection of Steven Moffat's personality, makes the stories non-consequential - in this case, not even story at all. It will mean the end of Doctor Who. The "Steven Moffat Show, With Matt Smith" may continue a couple more years, but my fear is that those who love Doctor Who will mark "The Name of the Doctor" as the moment when the visionary series created by Sydney Newman 50 years ago finally came to an end.