Finally caught up with Doctor Who this weekend. It’s been a very odd season, with the show trying to simultaneously deliver what it’s done before and go somewhere else at the same time. I’m not sure how successful it actually is at either of those aims, but the weird dissonance has nonetheless produced the best run of episodes the show’s had for years and fired an ambition that’s not been there for awhile, either.

Amongst the many things I’ve been enjoying has been the way in which this season feels like a Russell T. Davies year in so many ways. The last couple of episodes, especially, have felt like episodes that could have/would have shown up in Davies’ run and feel more at home there than in the earlier Moffat seasons – and yet, they lack the… cozy/lazy sentimentality of the Davies years. I hesitate to say that this season is lots of Davies’ tropes “done right,” because, well, there’s a bunch that’s problematic about this year, but it’s certainly not boring.

Not that any of this makes up for the genuinely disappointing early episodes of the season, mind you.