I'm watching modern era Doctor Who (2005-present) for the second time. Doctor Who is a TV series that is dear to me but at the same time somewhat uneven so for the benefit of future me and hopefully others I'm writing a short episode guide this rewatch.

I try to avoid spoilers as far as possible except when needed to justify my verdict or when spoiler warnings are well past their due date, such as which episodes have the Doctor reincarnate. Double episodes are combined into one review.

S06E00 A Christmas Carol - Watch

A cute and Christmassy story, possibly the best Christmas story in the new series so far. I liked the evolution of Kazran and how the Doctor in the end made him change his mind. I'm not a fan of the dying-woman-as-a-plot-device trope, but that's also the only negative thing I have to say about this episode. The resolution is very Christmassy where love and not cleverness is the solution, but then again it is a Christmas story so it's all as it should. I'd certainly hire the 11th Doctor as babysitter.

S06E01-E02 The Impossible Astronaut & Day of the Moon - Watch

We jump straight into this series story and meet the villain already in the first episode. It's got some truly creepy scenes and a feeling of doom. I love the jokes they make about Nixon. It's nice but also sad to see the relationship between the Doctor and River Song develop, especially the second time watching this series. There is some unresolved plot around the little girl, but I'm giving that a pass on rewatch knowing the big picture of the series story now.

S06E03 The Curse of the Black Spot - N/A

Barely remember it even reading about it and reviews were poor (or "mixed" as they say) so I skipped it.

S06E04 The Doctor's Wife - Watch

A very Doctor Who adventure. It's got the story, the relationships, the weirdness, the funny and the creepy. I wish they could revisit the topic of The Doctor and his "wife" together but it seems to me that that card has been played in this story.

S06E05-E06 The Rebel Flesh & The Almost People - Ok

It's an ok story in the end, but I don't think it entirely works. The overall structure with all the running around while things are falling apart is similar to The Impossible Planet & The Satan Pit from series 2. There is never any sense of doom though, unlike The Impossible Planet. Also unlike The Impossible Planet where the jump scares were right on point and enhanced the impending doom, in this story they are just distracting.

The story is just ok, nothing spectacular or even original. Most of the plot twists are predictable, apart from the cliffhanger. The cliffhanger absolutely eclipses the episodes, similar to the cliffhanger in Cold Blood from series 5 with the difference that the episode being eclipsed here is actually decent. Additionally, the cliffhanger is relevant to the story just told, so this is not a problem for me.

The make-up is similar to what was used in The Waters of Mars. A bit too similar, so here it just feels like "oh, it's this type of monster again". I thought we were done with the over-exaggerated CGI monsters since they were always criticized by reviewers. Apparently not though, apparently we are going overboard with the special effects again. The characters don't feel very real, neither the humans nor the Flesh. There is the moral dilemma, but the execution is just not good enough for the story to get a passing grade in the morality category from me. Mild spoiler: Are the flesh real humans or not? Seems like the answer is whatever fits the plot a given minute.

All in all it was watchable but not great. While watching I couldn't stop myself from comparing it with previous better Doctor Who episodes, which is not the ideal experience.

S06E07 A Good Man Goes to War - Watch

It feels a bit stressed. Apparently the writers saw fit to put half the season's plot into one episode. I'm looking forward to the "is the Doctor good or not?" thread play out which seems like the main story in this episode (and it's also in the title of course). The story about Amy, while leading in from last episode's cliffhanger, is getting sidetracked along the episode.

All in all certainly a watchable and recommendable episode.

S06E08 Let's Kill Hitler - Ok

The plot is ok but somewhat hole-ridden. In contrast to the last episode, this one is not really about what the title says. Perhaps that is for the best, because it would be incredibly out of character for the Doctor to go back in time just to kill people no matter how evil they are. The directing has a distinct plastic feel where I could all but see the signs for the gallery instructing them to "laugh", "awe" and "cry". What the episode is really about is River Song and gets a pass only because it adds content to her story. Yet she is not treated as the main character, but is only described indirectly through a rather meaningless ephemeral story.

S06E09 Night Terrors - N/A

Hated it on the previous watch so it was an easy skip this time around.

S06E10 The Girl Who Waited - Watch

A good old wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey story. Karen Gillan's acting is so good that I kept wondering whether the alternate Amy was actually played by a different actress. Amy's sacrifice reminded me of Human Nature & The Family of Blood from series 3, another excellent story. I had forgotten the ending since the last watch. Tears may have been shed (again).

S06E11 The God Complex - Ok

Not particularly coherent. It's a bunch of TV stuffs poured into a bowl and into the BBC oven it goes. Just like you can make an ok cake with only butter, sugar and some this and that, you can make a passable TV episode in a similar way. It won't be very tasty though.

A hallmark of this type of episode is that after watching it becomes clear what ingredient each scene was supposed to provide. The episode in the end becomes a series of scenes and the result is a semblance of a story. It's not a coherent story though.

One some level the Doctor has a revelation that maybe his adventures are sometimes dangerous and get his companions in trouble. It's not the first time it's been brought up though, and it hasn't affected the plot so far. So this too becomes yet another ingredient used in a fashion that we've tasted before.

S06E12 Closing Time - Ok

Craig from last season is back and is being all cute again, this time with the Doctor. The story is mostly about them and a baby and not about the Cybermen, which suits me fine. In fact I think I appreciate the Cybermen more in this setting where they don't try to execute a master plan to take over the universe, they are just robots acting on their programming. In a sense, they are "plain" monsters in this story, not a grand ambitious antagonist like the Master or the Daleks, and this makes them more believable to me.

There is an epilogue that could have been tacked onto any episode in this series that leads into the finale.

S06E13 The Wedding of River Song - Watch

Well, they tied the season together in the end. It's a nice big timey-wimey story. At the time of writing this it's been a while since I watched it so I don't remember the details.

Overall remarks

Overall this season was not too bad. Many decent independent stories. The series' story arc is also not too bad, with the Silence as a rather creepy villain and credible threat to the universe. What doesn't make sense to me is that after A Good Man Goes to War I think some urgency to find Melody again would be prudent, especially since it's the second time the Doctor falls for the same trick by the series villain. Instead we do a few more sidequests before eventually returning to the plot in the final episode. I think some reordering of the episodes would have been in order, but I guess they really wanted a cliffhanger in the middle of the series due to the airing summer break.