9 Problems With Doctor Who No One Wants To Admit

4. It's (Not) All About The Pace

For a programme that's all about the running, it doesn't half move along slowly, does it? This is probably largely down to the fact that the series is shamelessly only given 45 minutes of air time a week, so it isn't entirely the show's fault. They could always give stories more time to develop by writing two parters, though, which totally is their fault. It's usually the same old story. An episode starts off slowly, filled with irrelevant and unnecessary subplots (like, did The Time of the Doctor really need all that holographic stuff, for example? Pointless and just wrong on so many levels!), which means that it ultimately ends up rushing to salvage some sort of justifiable conclusion in the last 10 minutes. Sometimes it's even 5. In the case of Closing Time, it's 2. Cutting it very, very fine, even by Doctor Who's standards. It's not just episode conclusions, either. Sometimes entire episodes have been seemingly thrown into the mix at the last minute. Maybe the writer dropped out the night before filming was due to commence, the budget suddenly went through the roof or some other behind the scenes chaos ensued which meant that the intended episode had to be withdrawn from the line up. So they gave us the 'back up' plans, such as Fear Her, The Lodger and The Power of Three, instead. Seriously. You think you're finally getting somewhere with a series and then something like that happens. Doctor Who's on screen presence is already lacking to say the very least, so surely every single minute they have should be used to its maximum potential? As entertaining as watching Matt Smith falling out of a shower is, it wasn't really necessary to the plot now, was it? And that 5 minutes of him canoodling about in a towel could've been put to far better use. There's light at the end of the tunnel, though, because Steven Moffat has confirmed that there'll be more two parters in Series 9. Even the opening story is one (and it also features the return of Missy, which should be... interesting), and with 90 minutes of story telling at their fingertips, there's really no excuse to leave all of the plot threads dangling until the very last minute. Aren't these people supposed to be professionals? Sometimes you're better off sticking with the fan fiction.