![doctor who specials between 9 and 10 doctor who specials between 9 and 10](https://reverbium.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/image-35.jpg)
Toby Whithouse’s two-parter from the early half of series nine is truly terrific, beginning as a creepy undersea ghost mystery and ending as a time travel adventure and parable about the bootstrap paradox. While that’s very noble on paper, it’s actually pretty shitty of him, considering ALL THE OTHER PLANETS AND PEOPLE AND LIFE AND THINGS. But despite all this, it ultimately was about how the Doctor couldn’t let Clara make her own decision, or at least couldn’t allow it to stay that way, and he was willing to destroy the whole of time and space to save her. It reintroduced Gallifrey and Rassilon and brought the Time Lords out of their other-universe exile, and it did some really fun things like establish in-canon that a Time Lord can regenerate into different races and sexes (come on, Chibnall, don’t be all samey-wamey!). In theory, this should be an episode I g-darn love, but in practice it’s only an episode I quite like. And because it’s silly and made me laugh. While I definitely think Ashildr is way less interesting in this episode, I find “The Girl Who Died” much more enjoyable than its follow-up by virtue of it being a riff on Seven Samurai (and its sci-fi remake Battle Beyond the Stars, in point of fact), for finally giving a reason for the Twelfth Doctor having the face of an old Pompeiian. Most of this story was plain silly, with her somehow not recognizing the Doctor in Capaldi form and him playing dumb for, frankly, way too long, but it ended so beautifully and put such a lovely capper on the Doctor and River’s odd relationship that it ended up being really nice.
#Doctor who specials between 9 and 10 series
It’s long been a belief of mine that Moffat intended series nine to be his swan song and it was the BBC that persuaded him to stay on for one more, so it made perfect sense to me that it was his finalfinal episode to close the last loop that really needed closing in terms of Alex Kingston’s out-of-order companion. I had wondered if Steven Moffat would give the character of River Song a final end in the show after having her digitized consciousness bid Matt Smith goodbye in series seven’s finale. The ep only ranks low on this list because of the weird Leonide villain who doesn’t do anything and gets killed by positivity.
![doctor who specials between 9 and 10 doctor who specials between 9 and 10](https://walter.trakt.tv/images/seasons/000/092/093/posters/original/a5860d53c8.jpg)
Catherine Tregeena’s script gives a lot of sadness and depth to a woman who can’t die, but also can’t travel through time the way the Doctor can. “The Woman Who Lived” finds the Doctor on his own and running back into Ashildr (Maisie Williams), who has been alive and undying for centuries and is now living as a noblewoman called Lady Me who gets her thrill as a highwayman. Now, this one is an example of a pretty good episode contending with an otherwise really great series. Doctor even comments on it not making sense, and then the episode’s narrator tells us that everything we’d seen was an evil plot and we’re stupid for watching, basically. My problem is that every step of the way, the script takes the stupid approach, starting with the monsters being sentient eye-boogers and ending with the entire plot not making sense. It has nothing to do with the POV, found-footage gimmick, nor the idea of the Sandman being a real, palpable thing, either. I was hoping for a sci-fi take on Shakespeare, given the title, but it wasn’t to be.
#Doctor who specials between 9 and 10 full
That said, I also feel the need to say that this episode isn’t merely the least good in a year full of good-to-great things this might rank as one of my least favorite episodes in this or any year. I think he’s a super smart and talented writer and his insight into horror movies and literature is among my favorite in the field. I feel like I need to say upfront that I love Mark Gatiss. Without further ado, let us board the TARDIS for Peter Capaldi’s ever-awesomeing hair and Jenna Coleman’s final voyages. I’m also including the 2015 Christmas special because it aired just a few weeks after the culmination of the series and is clearly part of that. I’m going to base my rankings on the official story groupings, so some of what I would consider two-parters are listed as separate stories. Head writer Steven Moffat brought back the two-parter in a big way, with almost every pair of episodes being tied thematically if not directly through narrative, and almost all of it spoke to my particular favorites in the sci-fi genre. It was really fun to go back and rank all of Doctor Who series eight, so now I’m back to do the same thing with series nine! And I have to say, series nine was one I connected with much faster than I did with its predecessor.