Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood (2014)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils Doctor Who episode Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood (2014).

Back to 12th Doctor and eight season. 12th Doctor starts to became my third favorite Doctor with Sixth Doctor. Fourth and Tenth are still above others. If 12th Doctor continue to have this good episodes, he will leave Sixth Doctor behind.

This episode brought classic Doctor Who feeling first time since relaunch. I don't know what it was, but something make this feel like classic Doctor Who. It might be because for a first time since relaunch Doctor didn't try to be nice guy all the time. Before this he has been angry, but this time he is grumpy and whiny. It reminded me of Fourth and Sixth Doctor.

I get more into problems of seventh season next Monday. One problem is lack of season length continuity. Eight season seems to have every episode doing something for season's continuity. This episode had promised land again. Missy had break this time.  Robots search for promised land like in first episode. Is that Gallifrey or something else?

Classic Doctor Who was skeptical hero. At fist glance problems seemed supernatural, but closer inspection revealed rational explanation. Relaunch toned that down a bit and 11th Doctor was magic and fantasy. This episode brought little of skeptical world view back. Except the legend turns about real. But there was rational explanation to some of the strange things. I hope this skeptical world view stays with series. It is one of the things which made classic Doctor Who so good.

Now that we got to analyze classic Doctor, there is one more thing. Let's get back to continuity. Classic Doctor Who had stories lasting over several episodes, even stories lasting whole season. First season after relaunch had main story elements on several episodes. Everything stayed consistent. Tenth Doctor had less of a main story over several episodes. He still had season finale over several episodes and taking somethings from earlier episodes. Everything still stayed consistent. 11th Doctor's run was just a mess. There were main story over seasons, but everything was too inconsistent. Like few fans had told what they wanted and every wish was put into show. 12th Doctor seems to get back to simpler times, when seasons had themes and things were consistent over episodes. I will get back to that mess thing in my next post.

This was third episode and third version of 12th Doctor. I like all versions. Every version suited for the story. It is interesting to see what kind of Doctor we see in next episode. I might be analyzing this too much. Every version we have seen could be parts of one person. First episodes always study the characters. In later episodes characters stays more consistent.

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