TV GUIDE: The Weekend Playlist: Doctor Who and Other Finales, Affleck Joins SNL "5-Timer" Club
May 17, 2013
by Matt Roush
Another May weekend, another deluge of season finales — though none are likely to blow the mind with as much daring, panache and imaginative fervor as BBC America's gloriously inventive Doctor Who (Saturday, 8/7c), which signs off until next time-travel with one of its trippiest yet emotionally powerful episodes to date. Steven Moffat's typically clever script, brimming with colorful incident and characters grandly heroic or villainous, finds a nifty way to salute the 50-year history of Doctors as we learn more about the impossibly irrepressible companion Clara (the smashing Jenna-Louise Coleman), first seen in a cosmic haze — "I don't know where I am ... Sometimes I think I'm everywhere at once" — with only one constant to guide her: "I have to save the Doctor." That same impulse prompts lizard lady Vastra, her wife Jenny and the stalwart Strax to summon Clara to a psychic conference call, interrupted by the menacing "Whisper Men" (reminiscent of the ghoulish Gentlemen from Buffy's classic "Hush" episode).
All of these mystifying shenanigans lead the dear Doctor (Matt Smith) to confront "a secret ... he will take to the grave," and given that the episode is titled "The Name of the Doctor," we leave the rest to your imagination. Such a grand fantasy, this Doctor Who, with so much romance and breathtaking sacrifice amid the whimsy. By any name, it's an original.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE EPISODE TRAILER FOR 'IN THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR'
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