#and the turnaround was not me aging out. episode 1 of his showrunning i was so on board i was prepping an Amy cosplay already.

[thedreadvampy]

It's damning with faint praise to say that this season is Moffat's best because I think out of 11 episodes there were 7 I enjoyed and 4 I would say were genuinely good (Smile, Oxygen, and the Cybermen 2-parter)

but despite how much several of them had me cursing the TV, there were at least elements of every episode I genuinely really had fun with and wanted to keep watching. we watched this season in 3 sittings. I think it took me a full 18 months to get through one of the Matt Smith seasons because they were such fucking slogs.

Peter Capaldi is a lot of fun but I genuinely think most of the credit goes to Pearl Mackie because having an actually likeable and engaging companion really changes the game. The first two Capaldi seasons had their moments and definitely moved away from the godawful Cinematic Epic thing Smith's run devolved into and leant more into having fun with it, but it was still a slog and it was a slog because Jenna Coleman, Alex Kingston and Maisie Williams all just made me fucking crave death every minute they were on screen, the amount I could not care less practically caused me to collapse in on myself. But Bill and Nardole are really fun, they've got personality and chemistry and screen presence that makes up for the fact that the episode plots are still kind of incoherent.

The political and philosophical underpinnings of Moffat's work continue to be both really There and really really really shitty. but this is the most fun I remember having had with Doctor Who since Eleventh Hour, back when I still had hope that the Moffat era would bang.

I just don't know why, after finishing it Really Well, Moffat reaffirmed his commitment to ending on a damp squib by literally adding a whole episode just to jack off in.

so me and Sam FINALLY watched the last season of Capaldi's Who

and tell me how, after literally over a decade and for perhaps the first time in his fucking career, Steven Moffat wrote a not just tolerable but really actually good two-parter and fully stuck the landing. like the editing and pacing were still a bit off but the storyline was original, fun, interesting and emotionally invested, and most importantly, rather than ending on a damp fart or the most furious autofellatio in history, the final part didn't fumble it and ended in a way that felt emotionally satisfying and like it made sense for the characters. like the last time he successfully wrapped up a multiparter in a way that didn't feel cheap and hollowly disappointing to me was literally The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and a) that was in 2005 and b) tbh The Doctor Dances is about a tenth as compelling and memorable as The Empty Child.

so after 12 years of either hackery or great ideas that fall apart in the second act, Steven Moffat writes what I would genuinely consider to be a memorable Good Doctor Who serial. it ends with bittersweet pathos, a solid closer for all the main characters, and sends Moffat's showrunning career out on a genuine high despite failing ratings and budget cuts (and the fact Doctor Who hasn't been consistently good since about 2009). good job Steve. with grudging respect I admit you pulled it out of the bag on this one.

wait what's this there's one more episode left? and it stars Mark Gatiss? and you literally spend the whole episode inexplicably just shitting all over the legacy of Doctor Who by inventing a version of the First Doctor that bears literally no resemblance to the character that William Hartnell actually played, just so you can spend the whole episode saying misogynistic things to run yourself off to how much more Totally Feminist your version was than the version you made up in your head of what Doctor Who was like in the 60s? and it added literally nothing to the season except to take all the wind out of the sails of the actually good finale you already wrote?

even when he writes a good episode this fucker still finds ways to disappoint me.