Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the *Complete* Sixth Series featuring everything from where the Complete Fifth Series leaves off. It's not just Part 1:Doctor Who: Series Six, Part One [Blu-ray] & Part 2: Doctor Who: The Sixth Series - Part 2 [Blu-ray], but also the Christmas Special Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol [Blu-ray] which preceded it. The 14 episodes are as follows:
A Christmas Carol
The Impossible Astronaut
The Day of the Moon
The Curse of the Black Spot
The Doctor's Wife (not who you think)
The Rebel Flesh
The Almost People
A Good Man Goes to War
Let's Kill Hitler
Night Terrors
The Girl Who Waited
The God Complex
Closing Time
The Wedding of River Song

Slightly more than the sum of the parts, but to quote River Song, "it's early days" and the price should go down from competition. I have mine on order so I can capture any price drops. :-)

Also included are the following extras (for the first time available):

Extras:
Meanwhile in the Tardis feature - Newly filmed scenes telling what happens between the episodes:
Bad Night (Runtime: 3m 37s)
Good Night (Runtime: 4m 50s)
First Night (Runtime: 2m 13s)
Last Night (Runtime: 3m 32s)
Up All Night (Runtime: 1m 55s)
Comic Relief 2011 mini episodes - Space and Time (Approx. 8m; These are worth watching multiple times!)
Prequels:
The Impossible Astronaut (Runtime: 1m 48s)
Curse of the Black Spot (Runtime: 1m 23s)
A Good Man Goes to War (Runtime: 1m 36s)
Let's Kill Hitler (Runtime: 1m 55s)
The Wedding of River Song (Runtime: 1m 11s)
Doctor Who Confidential featurettes - An inside look at each episode (Note: These are shortened versions of "Doctor Who Confidential", lasting about 10 minutes each, not the original 45 minute versions shown only in the UK. I've always been disappointed in this.)
Monster Files featurettes - Get under the skin and inside the minds of the new Doctor's most challenging opponents
Audio commentaries
Trailers and Trails feature
UPDATE (Oct 9th): What it does NOT contain is the "Doctor Who at the Proms 2010" Special that was included with the Christmas Carol single. While disappointing, it is still nice to have the bevy of previously unreleased material.

Honestly, when you really get down to it, this is the better deal. I originally was going to do just the Part 1 and Part 2 DVDs as I already had the Xmas special, but those DVDs have just the episodes and maybe one or two special features each....compared to THIS set which has these features attached:

A Christmas Carol, The Impossible Astronaut, Day Of The Moon, The Curse Of The Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People, A Good Man Goes To War, Let's Kill Hitler, Night Terrors, The Girl Who Waited, The God Complex, Closing Time, The Wedding of River Song. SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

5 X `Night And The Doctor' Additional Scenes
2 X `Comic Relief' Sketches
Commentaries
4 X `The Monster Files'
4 X Prequels
Trailers
14 X `Doctor Who Confidential' Cut-Downs
`Doctor Who Confidential: A Nights' Tale'

THAT is a much better deal if not for the Confidential stuff but also for the prequels, comedy relief sketches and additional scenes you will NEVER see otherwise. SO its like 20 more bucks....big freaking deal. You get so much more cool stuff along with it. THIS is the 6th Series you want to buy!

It is so hard for me to believe that "Dr. Who" is considered a children's program in England. Maybe the new Who's, especially with Tennant and Smith, are changing that. They have pretty "big" themes, interesting and exciting to sci-fi loving adults. I am a true-blue fan, collecting the DVD sets of the original Dr. Who's (which I originally recorded onto VHS from the TV!) as well as the new Dr. Who's.

Series 6 of Dr. Who was produced and aired in two sections, with a short hiatus inbetween. The first seven episodes were broadcast in spring 2011. The last six episodes are still being aired in Sept. 2011. That is why Series 6 was broken into two separate DVD releases, known as Part 1 and Part 2.

Before Series 6 Part 1 started, there was the 2010 Christmas Special, "A Christmas Carol". I watched that on TV and the ending was pretty emotional, a thoughtful well-done Christmas-y Dickens-like show. "A Christmas Carol" was NOT included in the DVD Series 6 - Part 1. However, it IS included in this "Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series".

Following is a list of all the episodes for Series 6 which are included in this Complete Sixth Series. A couple of them are just plain good old adventure stories, such as "The Curse of the Black Spot", with a great twist on the myth of the siren and her ability to call sailors to their doom. "The Doctor's Wife" is also a favorite of mine. The Doctor answers a Time Lord distress call and is trapped with the gruesome Auntie and Uncle and the downright weird Idris. But Idris isn't who or what she seems and her interaction with the Doctor is fabulous.

Other episodes have themes which carry forward into following episodes, and, to tell the truth, I sometimes had a little trouble keeping track of everything. But that's one good reason for me to buy them on DVD, I get to watch this great sci-fi storytelling all over again, and catch the nuances and details I might have missed the first time.

1. "A Christmas Carol" - Awesome story of forgiveness and life-altering love.

2. "The Impossible Astronaut" - Finally we find out just what "The Silence" is. It was The Silence that caused the TARDIS to explode at the end of Series 5. Worth watching just to see a puzzled but game Richard Nixon (played excellently by Stuart Milligan).

3. "Day of the Moon" - A continuation and completion of the Doctor's dealings with The Silence. The circumstances reminded me some of the movie, "Memento". What would you do if you could not remember something as soon as you turned away from it?

4. "The Curse of the Black Spot"

5. "The Doctor's Wife"

6. "The Rebel Flesh" - Part 1 of a two-part story. A solar tsunami throws the TARDIS onto 22nd century Earth. We know of robots used in conditions where a human could not work. What if you could create dopplegangers of yourself to do the hazardous work? [Sidebar: Recommended sci-fi reading, "Kiln People", by David Brin.]

7. "The Almost People" - Part 2 continuation. What if those dopplegangers decided to rebel?

8. "A Good Man Goes to War" - This is where the background story gets very convoluted. An Almost People is involved, and Amy and Rory's baby, Melody, is kidnapped. River refuses to help the doctor because it is during this war that he will learn her identity. THAT is worth waiting for. I didn't see it coming.

9. "Let's Kill Hitler" - A human crew from the future wants to kill Hitler and change the future. A dilemma. Who wouldn't think the world would be a better place if Hitler could be stopped before he reached full power? Convoluted back story.

10. "Night Terrors" - Eight-year old George is terrified of monsters in his bedroom. But, naturally, it's not that simple, nothing with the Doctor ever is.

11. "The Girl Who Waited" - The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to Apalapucia for a well-deserved vacation. Unfortunately, they land before they find out that the whole planet is suffering from a plague that kills creatures with two hearts. Amy gets separated, and waits 36 years for the doctor to find her, and she's not happy about it.

12. "The God Complex" - The Doctor and friends are trapped in an alien "hotel", where opening the wrong door leads to possession and death.

13. "Closing Time" - Remember Craig Owens? The Docter moved in and became his roommate in the Series 5 episode, "The Lodger". The Doctor decides to visit him. And Cybermen show up somehow. This episode hasn't been aired as the time I write this review.

14. "The Wedding of River Song" - There are some spoilers out there about what is in the last episode, but the actual plot is a closely guarded secret until it airs on October 1, 2011. Time on Earth is set at April 22, 2011, 5:02 pm. Not exactly frozen, what's actually happened is that ALL of time occurs at the same time. This may be due to a woman named River Song.

I've been a fan of the Doctor going back to the days of Jon Pertwee and although he was fun and interesting in his first (half dozen) incarnations, it was pretty much a standard sci-fi tv show... monstor of the week, lots of action, lots of techno-babble conveniently cropping up to solve whatever problem the Doctor was facing.

Then Russell T. Davies revived it in 2005 and it was a whole new ball game. It became apparent very quickly that "making it all make some kind of unified sense" was one of the main focuses of the new series. If something got mentioned in one story/episode, you could bet it would be supported by subsequent episodes, making the Whoniverse seem more real, solid and believable.

Then Stephen Moffett took over and, while his first season at the helm (Season 5) was pretty delightful and had some lovely twists and turns in it, Season 6 is the first stumble that is really noticable. It has to do with the "season arc" (the main, continuing plot that drives every episode of the season.) For the first few seasons since the "reboot" in '05, those season arcs were kept simple... Bad Wolf, for example, in season's 1 and 2, or the missing planets scattered throughout season 4 paying out in the season finale.

But in Season 6.... huh?

It looks like Moffett wanted to start the season with a shocker (the Doctor dies!) but then couldn't figure out a way to resolve that without doing a bit of cheating. And although it might be a perfectly valid "resolution" in terms of a TV story, it wound up damaging the Whoniverse as a whole.

The premise was, the Doctor is going to die (for real, to the point of destroying his body so no more regenerations), making it look like the entire show would have to come to an end when we finally looped around to the other point of view on his death that we witness in the opening episode. We are told repeatedly his death at that time in that place is a 'fixed point in time'. Fair enough.

In fiction the audience can only know what is true and real based on what they are told in the course of the story. And since season 1 we have been told, over and over, that a "fixed point in time" can not be changed, no matter what anyone does, because it is rooted in the pure mechanics of the universe itself, not on anyone's perception of the event. It was the reason the Doctor couldn't save Rose's father, or change a number of other events he might have wanted to, because his attempts to change them would ultimately fail. The universe would not allow them to be changed.

So how does the Doctor's death get resolved? The Doctor "fools" the mechanics of the universe itself by faking his death? So, either "fixed points in time" really can be changed (in which case there are no limits to what the Doctor can do and good luck trying to build drama about fixed points in time going forward), or it wasn't a fixed point in time and everyone was just too stupid not to realize that. But then it had to be a fixed point in time because the premise of the entire final episode was that time itself was broken by the Doctor not dying. It had genuine, palpable universally mechanical effects. We saw that. So... the actual mechanics of the universe are stupid aqnd can be fooled?

The other thing that is a cheat is the introduction of the whole "the Doctor lies" concept. So now, after five seasons of having nothing else to depend on to determine what is true and what is not about any situation being only what the Doctor tells us, suddenly we can't depend on that either? Well, then now everything is up for grabs. We won't know if anything is true or not, because we get that truth from the Doctor and he's lying about it now?

It's a minor point, admittedly, but important in that such details have been one of the things that helped make the Whoniverse believable, stable and gave it much of its epic scope. It's why it's Doctor Who, because it had a higher standard and needs to be held to it or it becomes just another tv show, waiting its turn to jump that proverbial shark.

Now it seems that everything is up for grabs and that nothing is beyond the Doctor's abilities. It's rather tough to build tension and drama when your lead character is, in essense, God, and can lilterally do anything he wants.

Hopefully Moffett will stop throwing away such details in the future or making up some convenient techno-babble throw away dialogue to explain them away. That's the old Star Trek trick and it cheapens the universe in which "Blink" and "Turn Left" happened. It just weakens the whole concept and robs the show of the thing that made it so superior and special. And that would lose viewers. And that would get it cancelled. Again. And that would be sad.

I've now ordered 2 of these sets of 6 DVDs. The first set had a disc 1 that would not play. At all. I didn't check the other 5 discs. I returned the item for refund. (replacement was not an option.) I ordered a new set. That set arrived and I found that disc 3 and disc 4 would start to play but would stop playing part way through. Disc 5 was literally in 2 pieces and, obviously, not playable. I've returned this set for refund. (replacement was not an option.)

I'm not sure what cut rate place in China is making these so that the BBC can save a few pennies but the quality is terrible. Video compression is very high so that the DVDs can be made as single layer discs. (again to pump up that profit margin on something that is already over priced.) As a result of the high compression the quality of the video is not at all what you would expect from a modern DVD.

BBC has seriously disappointed on this one. At least Amazon was willing to provide a refund. You can usually count on Amazon.

yay doctor who, this whole series has been amazing, especially the second half, so far my favorite episode is the girl who waited which just aired tonight. it made me cry at the end! this is another amazing year of doctor who where we get to know more of amy's and rory's love and depth to each character as they get pushed farther through the series. the doctor gets tested in who he is and who he wants to be, and then we learn who river is. if you asked me a year in a half ago i would of told you that i wasn't looking forward to matt smith and karen gillan but now amelia pond is my favorite companion and the 11th doctor is up at the top next to david tenant. this series was brilliant amazing, sad, action packed, unbelievable. without a doubt one of the best series of doctor who yet and did i mention madness unpredictable amazing sad brilliant amazing stories from the most amazing writers and steven moffat?

did i say amazing enough? well it's just that good

This review is not about the show's content - I'm a fan of both Doctor Who and its current showrunner, Steven Moffat. It's about the DVD packaging.

When the Doctor Who DVD sets were switched over to the present format for Series 5, I was happy. The "book" format, with each disc snapping securely into its own plastic "page," is great. So when the Series 6 set arrived today, I said "Great!" and opened it, and before I even had a chance to take in how much cheaper the packaging is compared with last year's...five of the six DVD "pages" fell out in one chunk. Why? Because they were never taped on to begin with. Great quality control there.

So I've spent some time with packing tape and scissors, pondering the new, expanded meaning of the phrase, "interactive feature." Make Your Own Packaging with the BBC! They send the parts - you put them together.

I can't help but think that by cheapening everything beyond all reasonable limits - those budget cuts are really showing - the BBC is shooting itself in its collective foot. They axed Doctor Who Confidential last year, there are precious few commentaries on the discs now, the packaging has taken a nosedive but the price, strangely, hasn't...and this is one of their blockbuster shows worldwide. Does anybody else feel like they aren't getting it? The DVD as a storage unit hasn't died yet, and there are millions of Doctor Who collectors in the world. Hey - here's a good strategy for the BBC - maybe it should alienate us!

Or maybe I'm not getting that we're all supposed to live in the Cloud these days, and the BBC is simply doing its part to kill off the DVD market once and for all. But I prefer physical discs, and I feel a lot better about companies that aren't putting out crap and expecting me to like it. The thing that Doctor Who has always excelled at, from 1963 through today, is making delightful stuff out of virtually nothing, against enormous odds. Too bad its parent company can't value that spirit, let alone emulate it.

Time now to stop typing and start shoving discs into the player to find out if they work.

Season five of the world's longest running Sci-Fi television show introduced us to the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith). Like all the previous Doctors had to spend some time figuring out just who he was and what kind of Doctor he was going to be. With his bowtie and Fez hat, Season Five lead us to believe that the Eleventh Doctor was a fun-loving cosmic tourist, out to see the Universe with his companion the Amazing Amy Pond and her beloved Rory. But it turns out that isn't who the Eleventh Doctor is at all.

The Eleventh Doctor is Batman.

In Doctor Who - The Complete Sixth Series, the character and the storyline take a distinct and drastic tone-shift to Gotham City. Like the 1950s' Batman to the 1980s' Batman, The Doctor went from fun-loving (but dangerous) good times to actual death and cruelty. In an interview, series writer Stephen Moffat has said that this direction-shift was purposeful, and in Season Six he tried to "Batmanize" the Doctor Who series.

By Batmanize, he meant not only the darker tone of the series, but the idea that Batman creates his own enemies. If there was no Batman, there would be no Joker, no Two-Face, no people who define themselves as being in conflict with the Batman. Moffat felt that with The Doctor's legend as a powerful and mighty warrior, he would give rise to people whose sole mission in life is to fight The Doctor, by any means necessary. He also wanted a villain on the level of the Weeping Angels, something terrifying enough that they would enter the Doctor Who mythos along with the Cybermen and the Daleks. To fill that role he gave us The Silence.

It took me awhile to warm up to Moffat's vision. Even though I was totally against Matt Smith when he took over as The Doctor--after deciding that the Tenth Doctor was the greatest of all-time--I was instantly won over by the light-hearted and fun nature of the interpretation. I loved the idea of a magical childhood figure come to life, and was put off by the first episode of Season Six--"The Impossible Astronaut"--which serves up death as an opener and only got darker from there. Sure, there were some lighthearted blasts of entertainment in there, but things were pretty grim. But by the time of the seventh episode, "A Good Man Goes to War," the quality storytelling had won me over and I was totally hooked into Moffat's vision. I saw how terrifying it is when the light-hearted man turns deadly serious.

And Season Six is serious. Without giving away any spoilers, Season Six deals with some big questions for The Doctor. The main one--Who is River Song? -turns out to be an amazing twist that took me by surprise. Even deeper than that, The Doctor must come to grips with why he has Companions when so many of them die, and what is his role in the Universe on the whole? It is some bleak stuff, and the answers aren't really fun. The episode "The Girl Who Waited" was particularly heart-wrenching.

My only disappointment with Series Six was the lack of continuity of emotion. Some of the episodes, like "The Girl Who Waited," were completely devastating to those involved, but with the next episode they were right as rain and back to cracking wise and the best of friends. If you are like me and only watch Doctor Who on DVDs--one right after the other--then it can be disconcerting to see a character developed and then white-washed over the space of two sequential episodes.

The DVD box set itself is adequately excellent. I am glad I waited for the complete sixth season rather than getting the separate Part One and Part Two boxsets. This set includes not only all the episodes, but also the Christmas special, the two Comic Relief sketches, the prequels, and some cool extras like "Monster Files" and Doctor Who Confidential. I know they are planning to come out with a limited-edition set featuring four lenticular prints with various characters. If you are a collector you might want to wait for that. Personally, I care more about what is on the DVDs than what they box is made of, so this set was perfect.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS ABOUT DOCTOR WHO SERIES 6. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SERIES YET!

Doctor Who is for me, the best show on television. No other show comes even close to the amount of ideas, locations, great characters, storytelling, and humor it has. I started watching in 2005 onward, and I did enjoy Christopher Ecclestons and David Tennants portrayal of the Doctor, but I felt like something was missing. When David Tennant left, and we started Series 5 with Matt Smith hurtling toward the Earth in a burning TARDIS, I finally found it. Series 5 took everything I loved about Doctor Who, and tweaked it to make it more mature, darker, and have an encompassing story arc (something I think has been missing since Bad Wolf). I loved it. Series 5 was the first box set of Doctor Who I got, and then we got A Christmas Carol, my personal favorite Christmas Special yet. The preview that followed for Series 6 only increased my anticipation.

*phew* sorry about the long spiel, I really wanted to put that down somewhere. Now on to the review...

Its been a couple months since the end of Series 6, and while it did have a couple problems; the show has never looked better.

The filming in HD looks fantastic if you compare the look of the show from Series 5 to Series 6, the quality of the shot has dramatically improved. Every shot is almost a thing of beauty. Especially the shots in America and the castle shots in The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. The directors have also stepped up their games. Every shot puts the camera exactly where it needs to be put.

The actors have also stepped up their game as well. Matt Smith is fantastic in every scene hes in. He owns the camera, and even better he seems to have chemistry with every actor who ever works with him. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have also given more to their characters, each have room to grow this series and their characters get pushed into some very hard predicaments. However, there are a couple problems (which I will talk about later). Alex Kingston is also on fine form. She appears to be having a lot of fun, and it is a delight to see her again.

The episodes this series, for the most part, have been exceptional. If Series 5 was testing out the water, then Series 6 is a full dive off the edge of a cliff. The stories are more mature, and darker. I don't think there is a single episode I wouldn't watch again.

0. A Christmas Carol (9/10) A very enjoyable Christmas romp, taking Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and weaving it into a fantastic Doctor Who story.

1/2. The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (9/10) The best series opener we have ever had. It sets up a compelling story arc and The Silence are incredibly creepy. Granted it does have a feel of setting up the story arc rather than telling a story, but thats a tiny niggle.

3. The Curse of the Black Spot (7/10) An enjoyable episode where the resolution felt a little flat, and it wasn't quite the episode I was expecting after the opening 2 parter.

4. The Doctor's Wife (10/10) Almost easily, one of the best episodes in the entire series, and probably in the history of the show. Matt Smith is fantastic (as usual) and Surrane Jones puts a human face on a staple of the show.

5/6. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People (8/10) Wonderful setting, top-notch class of actors, compelling story. However, some of the characters feel a bit padded like Dickens was only used at the end, and Jimmy was built to be the thug of the story. Cleaves own act of killing Jimmy's Ganger didn't make any sense and where did the tumor come from? Still an enjoyable story, and important for the rest of the run.

7. A Good Man Goes to War (9/10) Fantastic way to end part 1 of Series 6. This episode advances the plot and show the audience how the rest of the universe portrays the Doctor. There were a couple of faults such as River Song not being in the story more, and I didn't get the sense of the Doctor rising and falling further than he's ever fallen before.

8. Let's Kill Hitler (8/10) Great comeback after the break, this story is fun, funny, and touching. The anti-bodies were a great "monster" and were hilarious. I felt like the story didn't have enough time to flesh out Melody Pond's decision to turn from killer to lover, and I did think that even though it wasn't going to address killing Hitler (like it would, it had to continue plot elements of the series) I felt like he could've been woven further into the plot like ordering Soldiers after the Teselecta and at the end the Teselecta using its memory wiping properties to make Berlin forget the event.

9. Night Terrors (8/10) A nice story of a child facing his fears, and parents loving their children unconditionally. The Peg Dolls were also very creepy Granted, the idea never fleshed out fully, and I was surprised at how Amy and Rory were acting, considering they just lost their own daughter, but still a good story.

10. The Girl Who Waited (10/10) Easily the best episode of the entire series. It paints out Amy and Rory's love of each other and it shows the Doctor having to take the role of the Time Lord he is, and make sure everything works out, even if it isn't fair. I thought it was surprising we didn't hear more about Amy's feeling about her lost daughter.

11. The God Complex (9/10) Fantastic episode that draws parallels with the Doctor and sees Amy and Rory leave the TARDIS. Well drawn out characters, good monster, creepy setting, and great idea.

12. Closing Time (8/10) Episode that takes approximately 200 years after the Doctor drops off Amy and Rory. This episode looks at how the Doctor is doing and thinking the day before his death at Lake Silencio. It draws great parallels with Craig and the Cybermen (even if they are underused, AGAIN) and it crackles with humor (Stormageddon, LOL). Also set up the finale...

13. The Wedding of River Song (9/10) I do like this episode, although it has a couple of problems which I think went down to the fact that he was given only 45 minutes to resolve this episode, instead of the 55 - 60 minutes that he needed. It draws threads from all over the series together and paints them in the continuing love story of the Doctor and River Song.

Overall, I think the individual episodes that make up this series are fantastic, the best they have ever been.

Now, the cons:

This is one that surprises me, and its the main reason why I decided to rate Series 6 4/5 instead of 5/5: the main story arc. When I saw The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, I assumed that we were going to getting huge interlocking stories that would all be drawn together around his death and River Song. Sadly, that's not what we got. What we got was Steven Moffat directing the story with his own episodes and having the plot elements be in the background. This wasn't a huge problem until we got to part 2 of Series 6. Earlier when I was reviewing the individual episodes, did you notice that I was surprised that Amy and Rory didn't really talk about their feelings about their kidnapped child? I don't care what Steven Moffat did in Let's Kill Hitler which had her growing up alongside Amy and Rory (which I have got to admit, was really clever) I still expect Amy to be dealing with the fact that her baby was stolen from her and she never got to do the things all mothers do. That was a bit of a flaw.

Earlier, when the Doctor was discreetly scanning Amy for pregnancy, and then we saw A Good Man Goes to War, I got the sense that he was conducting research on the connection between Amy and her Ganger. I never got that feeling that he was doing that when all he was doing was conducting the same pregnancy test over and over again.

Because River Song and the Doctor's relationship are fixed only in Steven Moffat's episodes, some of the actions she takes are a bit...forced and they don't quite make sense. I wished we could have seen what she was researching at the end of every episode in part 2 of Series 6, all it would take is 30 seconds to a minute of every episode. It would have felt more connected. I also finally got why the Doctor and River love each other. It happens in those moments like in the mini-episodes we got in the box set: Night and the Doctor.

I feel like I could continue on, but all the complaints I have after these are small niggles in a overall fantastic series. It doesn't quite live up to Series 5, but that shouldn't prevent you from seeing this wonderful series.

Here's another one of what may be an unpopular review. I do not focus on such things like a story by story synopsis, since most other reviewers do this. Instead, I try to focus on the things which people should know about this product other than... "Episode one was great because of blah blah and the SFX. And in episode two..."

This season came under criticism on two fronts. One, was the fact the Stephen Moffat took advantage of the fact that this is a show revolving around time travelers. And as such, not everything took place in chronological order. B, I mean, two, the season was bisected, which as to allow the show to be seen over a longer period.

Moffat took a big leap in making the show more interesting by having a complex and convoluted story arc, and in my humble opinion, that was brilliant. Doctor Who was always meant to be an intelligent show, and I feel he did that quite well in the first part of the season. Anyone who needs to have their hand held, and have someone connect the dots between episodes one, to four, to six, etc., should probably be watching something more simplistic, like Sesame Street. It's just too bad that several episodes of the second part of the season were dumbed down. "Night Terrors, The Girl Who Waited, and The God Complex" were filler episodes, and even though "Closing Time" was as well, it was by far the best stand alone episode of the bunch.

Overall, in spite of these three filler episodes, this season on a whole was what Doctor Who should be. Engrossing, provocative, and intelligent. On the aspect of the program itself, I would give it 4 stars. It's well worth watching, and I'm happy to include it in my collection. As for the way this box set was made, I have to give it 1 star. While the prequels were included, there wasn't an option to watch them in order before their respective episodes. Even last year's set gave the opetion to view the "Meanwhile, in the TARDIS" shorts as part of the episode! COME ON 2|ENTERATIN!!! Use your brain and think about what you're doing when putting this together. Worse still is that there are commentaries on only four episodes. And the only thing worse than that, is when there is a commentary for only one of the two part episodes! REALLY? Couldn't you at least finish what you started? There was a time when commentaries were provided for every episode. Don't get lazy now! The fact that this was done so poorly, without any common sense, and lacking more features is not only sloppy, it's insulting.

Whether you agree with this review or not, please try to appreciate what season 6 has to offer.