Doctor Who: 10 Reasons Why The Rings Of Akhaten Sucks

7. People Don't Seem All That Bothered By The End Of The Long Song

Once the mummy in the golden pyramid starts to wake up, Chorister Rezh Baphix (the singer who was in the pyramid at the start of the concert) remarks poignantly that the Long Song is over. It's a powerful moment and it's well acted.

But it's a really short moment for such a momentous change in his people's culture, isn't it? The Sound Singers of Akhate have, if the legends are true, been singing that song ever since they settled the rocks orbiting Akhaten and found the mummy. The Doctor claims the Long Song has been going on, uninterrupted, for "millions of years".

Really, such a profound and unexpected ending of a cornerstone tradition should warrant more attention in the story. It's like someone saying here on Earth, "Oh, turns out the Easter Bunny is real. He's woken up on the wrong side of the bed and now there are going to be no more Easter egg hunts." At the very least, there'd be a lot of disbelief, confusion and argument amongst the population.

The lack of further comment on this catastrophe is striking.

The solution: When Clara takes Merry back to the concert stage using the space scooter, the crowd should be shouting a variety of useful things, like, "Wait, that god's real?" and "Are you telling me there's no more Long Song, after all these centuries?" and "You're serious? The mummy woke up?"

In other words, the crowd should be acting like it's made up of real people and not just two-dimensional ciphers. Of course, to have the aliens talk in English, that bizarre failure in the TARDIS's translation matrix would need to be fixed first.

Hearing what the inhabitants of the Rings have to say would help viewers understand what's going on better, too. Did all the residents of the Rings know/believe that Grandfather was real, or were they simply paying lip service to ancient traditions? It's a great mystery.