Doctor Who season seven so far....

Seems so long ago...

Season seven (or 33 if you want to get all technical about it) officially started at Christmas 2011 with The Doctor taking on sentient trees and a woman from World War II regaining her husband by guiding him home by the light of the forest she had in her mind. Strange sentence to type? Imagine the poor writer who had to float that pitch! With Christmas solved, The Doctor decided he missed Amy and Rory.

Where did she get the eggs…?

What do you mean this isn't real?

When the mad man in a stolen blue box returned nine months later in Asylum of the Daleks, Amy and Rory were on the outs and had nearly finalized divorce papers. The Doctor rejoined his favorite pair as they were all taken by a council of Daleks tasked with shutting down their asylum planet that they intended to blow up anyways. With Amy in danger of being turned into a Dalek, The Doctor faced the bigger challenge of making the Ponds fall in love again. He succeeded with the help of a strange girl prone to making soufflés named Oswin Oswald. That and she erased him from all of Dalek history leading to the awesome moment where the entire council of the Daleks chanted “Doctor WHO? Doc-tor WHO?” The Ponds got back together with Amy’s admission that she can no longer have children but sadly, Soufflé Girl did not survive as she had been a Dalek the whole episode.

The Doctor was next introduced into Amy’s and Rory’s lives at a happier time and accidentally brought along Rory’s dad, a man also referred to as “Mr. Pond.” That’s not how that works….

Brian was next spotted in an episode marked by little black boxes that fell from the sky and just sat there for the better part of an hour.

Yowza.

In Amy and Rory’s final adventure with The Doctor, they were sucked into a time loop by Amy reading a book about Melody Malone (a River Song proxy) that hadn’t been written yet except that it had. Rory ended up in 1930s New York with the biggest Weeping Angel of them all—The Statue of Liberty. Breaking the established rules of what happens when you break the established rules of time travel (see season one’s Father’s Day for more details), The Ponds are stuck in the hotel after they see Rory die of old age. But never fear, Amy lived out her life in relative happiness publishing the book she and The Doctor were reading at the beginning of the episode.

The second Christmas episode of the season, airing a whole year later, reintroduced audiences to Jenna Louse Coleman last seen as Oswin Oswald and only served to further confuse the issue as to whether she really was the same Oswin, television woman from the future, or if she was Clara, the Victorian governess/bar maid or both. Yet again, she ended up dead.

Run You Clever Boy and Remember…
The Doctor goes on a quest to find the Impossible Girl and finds her accidentally at the age of around eight without even realizing in the first prequel of 2013. Subsequently, they went on an adventure with the Wi-Fi.

Clara’s first proper adventure as The Doctor’s companion, she went to Festival of Offering where she met a girl named Merry tasked with keeping the Old God asleep. Clara told her she had nothing to be scared of and she didn’t until she messed up the never-ending song. The Doctor thought the whole god plot was rubbish until it woke up. The Doctor attempted to appease the Old God’s want of stories by telling his own. When even Matt Smith’s heartbreaking acting proved not to be enough, Clara came to the rescue with the most important leaf of her life—the one that caused her parents to meet. The leave disintegrated but it saved the seven plants.

After a trip in a submarine and a cold war submarine, Clara ended up trapped in the TARDIS as she was collapsing in on herself after The Doctor took off the shields so that Clara could attempt to drive her. Clara learned The Doctor’s real name, The Doctor leanred that she was “just a normal girl,” and the salvage crew that helped them/tried to steal half the TARDIS were killed and then The Doctor reach back across the fractured timeline in the collapsing TARDIS and gave himself a reset button meaning that none of that actually happened. So the point was…?

Doctor versus Doctor

The Doctor and Clara are reintroduced the the Victorian sometimes companions of Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax in the Crimson Horror after which The Doctor seems more determined to find out who Clara is than ever. Unfortunately before the task at hand can be accomplished, he has to deal with The Nightmare in Silver which took split personality to a whole new level as The Doctor was matched against Mr. Clever the Cyber Doctor both sharing Matt Smith’s frame as they engaged in a game of chess for control of the cyber army and the last remaining Time Lord brain. Of course The Doctor wins out because after fifty years, the BBC is not in the position to rename their longest running franchise.

So what happens in tonight’s season seven finale? Only a handful of reviewers and the proud owners of the American Blu-Ray set ordered thru the BBC America shop can answer that question now, but who wants to be spoiled completely? For those who would rather be teased, the Radio Times published an interesting list of theories as to who Clara Oswin Oswald could truly be. My personal favorite? The one that suggests that she is the show incarnate. All that’s left now is to wait and bearing some of us have longer to wait than others, please leave discussion of tonight’s episode to the episode poll posted after the UK airing even if you have seen the episode early.

Robin Smyth
Robin Smyth is an avid watcher of television who often finds herself in want of more time for her favorite hobby. On the verge of publishing her first novel, her favorite obsessions are Justified and Dexter.
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