It’s been a bumpy ride for The Doctor in series eight. The Time Lord has come under pressure from Daleks, Zygons and the scariest of monsters, declining ratings. Later time-slots on the schedule and more mature narratives have caused some to argue that this series has lost some of the childrens’ show values that Doctor Who is supposed to have.
However, this series has been critically popular, with almost every episode gaining positive reviews each week. This has been helped by the risks taken by Steven Moffat who has expanded his writing team and allowed them to experiment. Over the course of the series, we’ve experienced a breaking down of the fourth wall, a found-footage style episode and a solo-hander. Doctor Who has once again become exciting and unpredictable.
Whilst information and teasers for series eight were minimal compared to past series, we did know that Clara Oswald, would be leaving the TARDIS for good. What we didn’t know, and didn’t expect for that matter, was that she would be leaving in just a random episode during the series. ‘Face The Raven’ saw Clara, quite brutally, meet her death with still two episodes of the series left.
Let’s be honest though: who really believes that we won’t see Clara again? With Moffat and Capaldi all insisting that this is really the last we’ve seen of the companion, a whisper of ‘the lady doth protest too much’ swirls around fan theorists. As Doctor Who fans, we know that only time will tell, and with details about the finale being kept tightly under wraps, time travel would benefit the impatient among us.
The Doctor Who finale airs on BBC One, Saturday, 8pm
