In years to come the action of cycling through bad ideas will be known as 'doing a Spider-Man'; Spider-Man 3 had too many villains and a silly tone, so reboot The Amazing Spider-Man cut down the baddies and made it all dark, but once that received a mixed reaction The Amazing Spider-Man 2 upped the bad guy quotient and tried to make it all fun to predictable results. Although it's not as messed up as Sony has got with the web-crawler, in terms of its plots Doctor Who is stuck in a cycle. Davies' story arcs relied on the same basic idea - tease a key part of the finale throughout the series - which by the end of his time in charge had got very tired. Moffat upped the ante, having the Doctor aware of the arc in Series 5 and making the show almost a serial with Series 6's Melody Pond mystery. Some audience members (particularly the more casual viewers) were a bit disgruntled, so Series 7 was made up of totally standalone episodes. Series 8 looks set to stick closer to the Davies mould, meaning we're essentially back to the start of the loop. All of the styles Who has followed have the potential to work, but it requires conviction. Constantly changing it up when there's the first sign of trouble only means we'll never really connect with what's going on.
