Twelfth Doctor Summary

I think you can make the case that Peter Capaldi is the best actor that has ever played the Doctor, which is slightly painful to say as much of a Patrick Troughton fan as I am. He certainly got a lot of hype when he came in to play the Doctor and his references and understanding of the character gave him a depth that was not apparent with most of the other actors who played the Doctor.

He also had a period of strong writing as well as strong supporting companions. I never really warmed to Clara but that's my personal opinion. Most fans seem to like Clara a great deal and you can't argue that she wasn't a strong character. I liked Bill a bit better though as her personality just played better in my opinion.

Despite all that, much like the Sixth Doctor, there often is something a bit lacking in the Twelfth Doctor and I think that it is a sense of fun. Series Eight obviously had the angry, brooding Doctor who found himself by the end. But even though the Doctor lightened up, the nature of the stories, good as many of them were, just did not lend themselves to the sense of zaniness or wonder that we saw readily with the Eleventh Doctor and even with the Tenth Doctor. It's not bad, just different. Sometimes you want a light-hearted adventure and sometimes you want the dour, heavy hand. It's just that this Doctor seemed to always be a heavy hand.

But it was a well done heavy hand. The most zany story they tried (In the Forrest of the Night) is easily my least favorite of the Twelfth Doctor era (and possibly of the entire new series). My favorite was of a brooding, angry Doctor who stood in the face of the establishment and spit in their face, saying that he would do things his way. So trying to apply a blanket feel of one Doctor to another is a useless exercise. Still, I wish there had been a few more stories with the scary yet glib feel of Mummy on the Orient Express or Flatline more often. Those were the stories that stood out in my mind as the ones that felt like good and proper Doctor Who.

On balance, this was a very good era. The Doctor was good, the companions good, if not always to my taste. The writing held up for the most part as well. I might not opt for this one with a slightly younger audience the way you could with most of the classical era or even the Eleventh Doctor era, but it also dove richly into the horror echoes of the Hinchcliff era and that is certainly worth returning to now and again.

Highest Rated Story: Heaven Sent - 5.0

Lowest Rated Story: In the Forest of the Night - 0.5

Average overall rating: 3.59

Deep Breath
Into the Dalek
Robot of Sherwood
Listen
Time Heist
The Caretaker
Kill the Moon
Mummy on the Orient Express
Flatline
In the Forest of the Night
Dark Water/Death in Heaven
Last Christmas
The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar
Under the Lake/Before the Flood
The Girl Who Died
The Woman Who Lived
The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion
Sleep No More Face the Raven Heaven Sent
Hell Bent
The Husbands of River Song
The Return of Doctor Mysterio
The Pilot
Smile
Thin Ice
Knock Knock
Oxygen
Extremis
The Pyramid at the End of the World
The Lie of the Land
Empress of Mars
The Eaters of Light
World Enough and Time
The Doctor Falls
Twice Upon A Time