(title taken from a MST3k riff and totally not meant to be dismissive.)
I’m disenchanted with Doctor Who.
When I first started watching, Series 5 with Matt Smith had JUST started. It took us a while to catch up to Series 5, but when we got there I was all excited by the prospect of a new doctor, a new companion, and new stories. I’d loved 9 and 10. I loved 8, too, and I very much enjoyed the handful of older doctor episodes I’d seen up to that point – a bit of 4 and a bit of 5.
Series 5 was ok. It had some great moments, like Vincent and the Doctor (one of my all time fav moments in Doctor Who). It did, however, raise a sort of niggling dislike of River Song, who I’d previously enjoyed as a character, but overall I enjoyed the story and everything. Not as much as previous seasons, but I was excited for more.
By the end of Series 6? I was disgruntled. Halfway through Season 7 I was done.
I literally gave up. I was not enjoying it anymore. I didn’t care about the characters. The stories weren’t coming together. The pacing and editing seemed totally off. It’s like, I can overlook silly special effects or poor editing if the story is great, or I love the characters. But nothing was coming together for me anymore. The last Doctor Who episode I watched – outside of the 50th – was “Hide.” I think the thing about “Hide” was that, since I love ghost stories, I was really excited for it, but it was so disjointed and rushed feeling it left me feeling extremely disappointed. Honestly, if I were to write more on what really bothers me about recent Doctor Who episodes, I’d have to rewatch them to collect my thoughts – and I’m not really interested in doing that.
I was ready to give it another go with Capaldi, but 10 minutes into the first episode neither my husband or I’s interest was caught, and it seemed like more of the same disjointed, rushing nature of the previous episodes. We turned it off and haven’t tried again since.
At some point, I will try again. But it may very well be that I’m done with Doctor Who until Moffat moves on. That’s not to dump on anyone who enjoys Moffat’s run at all – if you enjoy it, you can ignore this grumpy old woman. But for me? I’ll go back and dig up more old classic episodes I haven’t seen yet and rewatch my series 1-4 again until the tides have turned.