Doctor Who Series 9 (2015)
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Doctor Who Series 9 Review
The ninth season of Doctor Who is certainly not up to par with its very good predecessor, but it’s still a very good, particularly emotional season of the show.
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“Because he always assumes he’s going to win.
He always knows there’s a way to survive.
He just has to go and find it.“
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The Magician’s Apprentice is a pretty good opening to a great story which gets quite terrific in the second installment The Witch’s Familiar. This story may just be the most entertaining of them all so far as it was a lot of fun following Missy try to get rid of Clara. She steals the show here almost entirely as she’s such a fun character. However, the Doctor’s sequences with Davros are also pretty fantastic with terrific dialogue and high emotion.
Under the Lake definitely features solid visuals and atmosphere, but its ghost gimmickry remains mostly just a gimmickry. Before the Flood is a solid conclusion to this story, but again nothing particularly remarkable.
The Girl Who Dies introduces us to Ashildr whom I just never got behind as she appears a couple of times throughout this season and she just never made a bigger impression on me. This episode is fun, but too silly. The Woman Who Lived has solid dialogue, but relies way too much on Ashildr.
The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion are forgettable episodes which are too old-fashioned but not in a good way with an overly complicated narrative and silly scenarios. Sleep No More definitely is one of the weakest episodes here as it doesn’t utilize on its thematic promise whatsoever as it’s so boring to watch and slight in character moments.
Face the Raven of course is famous for killing off Clara and although I am going to miss her a lot as she is one of my favorite Doctor Who companions and she did not deserve such a harsh fate, I still admired the show for going in such a dark territory.
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Heaven Sent is definitely one of the standouts of this season as it’s such a slow, meditative and authentic episode which relies entirely on the Doctor and his pain of losing Clara. The villain is creepy, the setting is brilliant and I just loved the high stakes and the emotional intensity here. Hell Bent definitely relied too much on typical time travel nonsense of the show, but it did provide us a wonderful goodbye between the two characters and some solid, moving drama.
So in the end, this is a pretty good, if far from great season which is in its middle section only just solid, but it gets great in the last couple of episodes. Clara’s death brought a lot of darkness and maturity to the show which I respected a lot.
Worst Episodes: The Zygon Inversion and Sleep No More.
Best Episodes: The Witch’s Familiar and Heaven Sent.
