I think fans want sci-fi that at least makes some level of even _silly_ sci-fi sense. The magical ship that runs on gold that can't take off right because "too little gold" but you shoot a tiny arrow into the side of the ship and that shoots its gold levels to 100% instantly EVEN THOUGH THERE IS A GIANT VAT OF 400x…

If the impossible girl concept hadn't tied into a big bundle of nothing, it might have been redeemable. But it amounted to a very unsatisfying tying of Trenzalorean loose ends all to no great or lasting purpose, for either Clara or the Doctor. The characters are still sort of crippled by that attempt at major arc…

Our own special twist is… our writers are even lazier and more risk-averse than movie writers were a few decades ago. Hooray!

Right: the idea of a reverse homage was a powerful one. But bringing Kirk back in the SAME movie for a happy ending ultimately just served to underscore how cowardly modern franchises have become: we can't even deviate from a formula for a single film.

The absolute pathetic drek of this season has never gotten less than a B is an utter embarrassment for the avclub's reviewing standards.

And they didn't get it!  We had the incredibly dumb end from last episode, and then absolutely ZERO payoff for including them in this one!  And without a doubt, we'll never hear from or about them again.

Right, right, a season of wasted chances and lazy characterization, all redeemed by "oh, but we didn't want to spoil the surprise!"

Thank goodness we were "right," and that we've had to spend an entire season on embarrassingly written, aimless horribileness from Moffat and his closest friends as a reward.

Right on. This entire season is an exercise in displaying how not to do Doctor Who well.  The fact that these blase episodes have gotten As and B+s undermines the whole concept of reviews.

Great minds? What?  I don't think Cuba is a simple case, or that the people Castro tossed out were great folks. But yes, he was willing to kill millions for the sake of ideology, and take the first step towards doing so.  Don't see much in the way of a great mind there.

The desire for genocide was too random to really make enough sense that the resolution bore much weight.  If Skaldak had some reason to think that humans had had something to do with Martian civilization collapsing, that might have given him some motivation.

Night Terrors was ok.  VotD was, I think the worst of Gatiss. His episodes don't necessarily have a bad selection of elements or unworkable sci-fi ideas, but his plots are a mess, and his characterizations are just off-kilter and jarringly wrong, both for the characters in general and they're place in the season.

Same. This wasn't whipsmart writing or plotting, and the ultimate resolution was a long, long standing trope (talking the antagonist down by appealing to some previous story beat) in both fiction and Doctor Who in particular of which this simply wasn't a particularly well played take on, let alone an innovative take.

This made for a jarring weakness in this episode though. New viewers don't know enough about whatever "martian code" is that specifies that if one guy knocks you out, you need to destroy his whole planet. It just seemed crazy, and not well integrated into his later change of heart: old who and new who, poorly…

I didn't think this episode was terrible, but nothing in it warrants an A. There really wasn't much to it, and the long thing about the HADS at the end was just kind of weird and random.  If it turns out to be important later maybe it was useful somehow, but in this episode, shrug.

The mayor says "Puhoy there!" and this reviewer missed it and I am super sad about it.

How could you possibly review this episode and NOT get that reference?  It was the focus of the whole thing: playing off of that episode!

Nah: Snowmen and God Complex were good, and Wedding of River Song was a blast from start to end.  Everything with the Ponds post that suffered from basically having nothing to do: no arc plot, nowhere else, really, for the Ponds to go as characters until the end, and just some really rando plots.

I have 0 faith in ever seeing more of this team, and this storyline, kickstarter or no. but that was a good ending. On its own terms, without giving up the longer-term storyline they clearly had planned.  It's a good way for a series like this to go out: these are iconic characters, and DC will put them to use in…

B+ for an episode with nothing much to recommend it, which will be forgotten and never mentioned again in the list of great Adventure Time episodes. Eh?