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Rate series 8
grazemytvaddict
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What did you think of series 8 overall
I thought there were some very good episodes, some awful ones and okay ones so a normal series for me. With a very poor finale.
I thought there were some very good episodes, some awful ones and okay ones so a normal series for me. With a very poor finale.
rate series 8 145 votes
excellent
37%
55 votes
good
31%
46 votes
average
19%
28 votes
bad
6%
9 votes
dreadful
4%
7 votes
0
Comments
Series 1
Series 8
Series 4
Series 3
Series 5
Series 6
Series 7
Series 2
In that order.
Series 1 wins out because it was the first series after 16 years; naturally, I'm very fond of it. It had the novelty factor.
But series 8 has been incredibly satisfying, with a sense of realism permeating through it.
but on the whole this is my least liked series since 2005.
I don't believe a lot of the stories were strong enough
PC most of the time was wasted when the scripts were good so was he
Danny pink...again a character that seemed totally incomplete the Clara loves Danny was just annoying.
Loved Missy hope that's not the last we see of Michelle I thought she was one of highlights of this series.
I hope after the Christmas special Moffat decides its time to move on I do think he's failed on allowing some of these stories to start filming without some major rewrites and for that reason maybe its time he just worked on his US projects and Sherlock
Sums it up for me too.
Capaldi has been a vast improvement on the last couple of Doctors IMO.
The series was really badly written in general and the only saving grace was the performances from the leads.
Especially after the so so series 7.
A few of the episodes fell a bit flat, but on the whole, I really enjoyed this series.
Flatline might be my new favourite episode.
I do think the writing has been a major weakness this series.
the more OTT aspects could have been explained by the nature of the series but a lot of it just came across as poor writing. RTD had his moments but made it clear he would order rewrites with Moffat being the exception
I still haven't really warmed to Peter Capaldi's Doctor, which has been a major problem, but has been balanced out by how good a series Jenna Coleman had - she carried the whole thing from start to finish for me and was almost always excellent.
Episode wise there are some classics (Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline and Listen) and some of the worst episodes of 'new' Who (Robots of Sherwood and Forest of the Night), so that's a mixed bag too. And generally the scripts and CGI haven't been much to write home about.
Plus even the finale was polarising - part 1 was great, part 2 was average at best, might even vote 'poor' when the poll goes up. And the ending was deeply unsatisfying.
So I guess that makes it a very average series overall. I think the show has lost its way a bit, and I'm still not convinced by Capaldi, but it's still entertaining enough that I watch every episode, so it's not all bad. But it certainly won't make my list of top series, and there are very few, if any, episodes that I'd rush to re-watch.
I still haven't found my Capaldi-love; Jenna Coleman has really kept my interest in the show going. "Time Heist", "Listen" and "Mummy" were my best Episodes. I never thought I'd describe an episode of Doctor Who as "disgusting" but "Kill the Moon" made me.
My series ratings have now coalesced with my Doctor rating
Best to Worst:
Series 5
Series 6 (major climber recently)
Series 7
Series 1
Series 8
Series 3
Series 2
Series 4 (minor fall recently)
It doesn't quite reach the brilliance of Series 5 which will always have a special place in my heart, but when viewed as a whole, it's certainly better than Series 6 and Series 7, which while they had good individual episodes were complete messes as a whole.
Superb cast, the best scripts, a real sense of menace and dread across the 12 episodes and a truly sublime finish.
FOr me Series 8 has set the standard that i hope continues into series 9!
I would rank the series thus far like this...
Series 8
Series 5
Series 6
Series 1
Series 7
Series 4
Series 3
Series 2
For me ....ther eis little between the last three ranekd series there....the main pull of 4 was the Tate/Tennant blend....though the episodes on the whole were average at best bar a few standouts...series 3 and 2 really had few and far between episodes and Tennant dint warm to me much at the time so it lacks a pull factor for me.
My current order of post 2005 series would be (best to worst):
Series 5
Series 6
Series 3
Series 4
Series 8
Series 7
Series 1
Series 2
I'm not sure if this has been Moffat's best series I'm still undecided on that one, maybe series 7 had better stories, but this one had more of a tone and structure that I am happier with. But an enjoyable and watchable series overall.
Checking back (and having recently completed my rewatch of all available stories)I have viewed the new series
Series 8
Series 5
Series 4
Series 6
Series 3
Series 1
Series 7
Specials
Series 2 (almost gave up watching)
Into the Dalek 8
Robot of Sherwood 6
Listen 10
Time Heist 8
Caretaker 4
Kill the Moon 7
Mummy On the Orient Express 10
Flatline 8
In the Forest of the Night 3
Dark Water/Death In Heaven 10
Overall 7.4/10
I add a mark out of 3 for how well the series flowed for this it got 3/3
Overall 7.7/10
Series 5 - 7.9/10
Series 4 - 7.9/10
Series 8 - 7.7/10
Series 1 - 7.6/10
Series 7 - 7.3/10
Series 3 - 7.2/10
Series 6 - 7.0/10
Series 2 - 6.6/10
I wasn't particularly enjoying the last couple of series before this, but I'm back to being excited by the show again.
Thankfully it wasn't as "dark" as the team had tried to hype it up to be.
A major plus for me was how subtle the arc was - in terms of the Missy stuff, it never interfered with the main plots of the episodes (unlike, say, S5 where the Angels two-parter was pretty much ruined by having the resolution come from the arc rather than from the preceeding 85 minutes of story), but it still felt like it was building momentum, unlike the false arcs of the RTD era, where a random phrase is dropped in out of the blue every week with no impact whatsoever (I remember on the boards in 2005 a lot of people didn't even realise there was an arc until it was pointed out to them) - the Missy story was IMO the perfect match between the detatched insignificance of RTD's arcs and the too-intrusive nature of Moffat's previous arcs. Spot on, really.
The real arc was handled even better, IMO - just like The Doctor said in Deep Breath, we weren't asking the right questions, and we should have been paying attention to "Am I a good man?". The Missy plotline lead the narrative of the season, but the "good man" theme was the one that utterly dominated the season, in retrospect, and I can't wait for the boxset to arrive to watch the episodes again with this in mind. The whole season was about taking a Doctor who had spent 800 years in one place, constantly fighting off attacks from all angles, and from all foes, who literally fought until there was nothing left, and reminding him just who he really was - taking him from "There's no point in both of us being cold" to "I'm just an idiot with a box and a screwdriver" - absolutely magnificent, and impeccably played by Capaldi: I wager that watching the early episodes of the season again will be quite the shock given how subtly his portrayal changed over the season.
We had some brilliant episodes, too - I adored Flatline, the two-part finale, Listen, Deep Breath, Mummy On The Orient Express, The Caretaker etc. - and even though the last scene proved divisive, I really liked Kill The Moon, too - Space Ponchos and all.
It's not all good, though - there's no escaping the fact that Into The Dalek and In The Forest Of The Night were just plain crap - Zawe Ashton's should've-been-companion aside - and while Robot Of Sherwood and Time Heist fell into the "Yay" rather than "Nay" camp for me, they were pretty forgettable runarounds with some ropey characterisation: you could make a drinking game of those episodes where you down a shot every time Capaldi has a line that was clearly written for Matt Smith (though you probably shouldn't unless you want a thumping hangover).
And the big downer, unfortunately, was Danny and, to a lesser extent, Clara.
I've nothing against Jenna or Sam Anderson - both have proved that they are great actors in other roles, and both seem lovely IRL (apparently, every time Sam Anderson comes across somebody mentioning Doctor Who on Twitter, he sends them a friend request, or whatever the Twitter equivilant is, just because he figures that it must be nice for the fans to have the stars reaching out to them for a change).
But their relationship was a serious mis-step.
Clara was nerfed quite a lot by having Danny at home, lying to him, etc. - it was played like she was effectively having an affair on "good guy" Danny and we were supposed to care who she chose, but really it just made her seem like a bit of a cow, and severely hampered her likability - which, after the heavy-handed "Impossible Girl" storyline, had only just been recovered anyway.
And Danny... bless him, poor Danny. He was a good character, played by a good actor, but given absolutely f***-all to do. They'd written themselves into a bit of a hole with him, and in all fairness it's hard to see how they could have done things differently, but it just doesn't work. As a reminder of the "safe" world she's leaving behind, a character like Danny should only be in a few episodes, otherwise there's no sense of actually leaving anything behind at all, but for the sacrifice at the end of the season to work he needs to be given a lot of exposure to the audience, so they have to show him a lot. So he has to be in almost every episode, but for Clara's dilemma to work he has to be the opposite of The Doctor, so the whole story falls apart if he becomes a companion. And they have to have that dilemma in there, otherwise we don't get the "Clara chooses Danny when it's too late" moment that forms the whole basis of Missy's plan.
So we're left with Danny getting a few scenes shoe-horned in every episode that by necessity don't really link to the plot at all, and just slow things down - a phonecall here, a date there, and all the time we're left begging for the "real" story to come back. A real mis-step on Moffat's part, but like I say, in hindsight the only way to realistically avoid this would have been to rewrite the whole Missy saga, which would have meant rewriting the whole "Am I a good man?" arc, which was the entire point of the season. I guess Danny was just a cross we had to bear, the crap we needed for the good to work. Anderson absolutely nailed his performance in the last two episodes, though.
So, yeah, overall a very good season, with two brilliant "main" arcs (and a third that was crap, but had to be there as the glue that held it together), an incredible performance from the leading man, and probably the highest "good episode to bad episode" ratio of any season of Who since Season 13, but ultimately let down a bit by the Danny/Clara stuff that made the whole experience just a little bit less satisfying than it really should have been.
Oh, and the S8 version of the theme tune is still the most forgettable of the lot.
Bad things:
- characterisation of Clara and Danny Pink
- the usual new who curse of the payoffs being nowhere near as exciting or fulfilling as the setup
- not really knowing what to do with the Doctor at times
Good things:
-Much less timey-wimey over-complicated incomprehensible plots
- Generally better pacing than previous series
- Peter's acting
- Much spookier atmosphere
- Michelle Gomez. 1000 times Michelle Gomez.