Akha-eight, Akha-nine...

So here we are, for the first time, seeing the same Clara in two consecutive episodes. And what a pair. First, we see her save humanity with some software, and now, we get to see her save a whole different civilization with a leaf. Of course, it's not just any leaf. It's the most important leaf in human history, and in the history of several other species as well, I would guess.

The Story

In 1981, some random man is walking down the street, and gets hit in the face with a leaf, while the Doctor watches.

It's the STALKtor

A few years later, the Doctor takes that man's grown daughter to Akhaten, where she discovers that Star Wars was real after all.

Clara meets a young girl named Merry Gejehl (thank you Wikipedia for the right spelling - I would have gone with Mary Gillelle), and they hide behind the TARDIS.

"I have really bad stagefright"
"That's okay. I got lost once but it turned out okay and my mommy loves me. Well, she did, but now she's dead. So what's this about marrying a gazelle?"

Merry sings, but "Grandfather" isn't pleased with her rendition of "A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-khaten", so she gets picked up in a glowing yellow ball and carried, really really slowly, into the pyramid.

The Doctor manages to convince her not to sacrifice herself to the mummy in the pyramid, but then the mummy wakes up, screams for a while, and then dies.

That was ... difficult

But [SHOCKER!] it turns out that the REAL villain was not the mummy, but actually the Sun, which grows a face and starts... well, I'm not sure what it does...

The Doctor begins storytime with the Sun, Merry leads the people of Akhaten in a chorus of "Wake Up", and Clara gives the Sun a leaf, which finally causes it to implode.

Never underestimate the power of foliage.

The Doctor and Clara go home, and then, just in case we forgot that there's something weird about Clara, the Doctor stares after her as she leaves with a look of combined confusion and revulsion.

Yes, we know. Our attention spans are as those of cats, and we need you to remind us that there's more to Clara Oswald than just the girl who saved a civilization with a leaf.

A Festival of Songs and Sounds

The Rings of Akhaten featured two truly beautiful songs, one where Merry Gejehl tries to keep Grandfather asleep, and one where she sings "Wake Up". It seems odd to sing "Wake Up" to a creature that you would rather see asleep, especially if it's already awake, but the song itself was gorgeous.

Even the sun god was moved to tears... sunny tears...

I also really enjoyed the Star Wars-esque sounds coming from the Cantina that the Doctor and Clara first visited. It gave us a beautifully alien world, something that we haven't really seen since The End of the World.

Finally, as usual, Moffat wrote, and Matt Smith delivered, the Doctor's monologue beautifully. He really poured his heart into it, and the music in the background only enhanced it.

Those are his emotions spilling out.

Currency

The idea of using sentimental items as currency is kind of cool. I could imagine some practical concerns, since sentimental attachment is, by definition, not an intrinsic property of an object, but the idea of having to part with an item of great personal value in order to get anything is ... intriguing.

"Here, Clara. This is your tax refund."

With that in mind, all of those people offering their items to a god seems a lot like passing the plate.

Grandfather, like most gods, needs your money.

Sadly, the two sections above are the only parts that qualify as "good". I was not impressed with The Rings of Akhaten at all, and below, I will describe a few of the reasons why.

No Villain

An hour is not a lot of time to tell a full story. You have to establish a setting, build up conflict, and provide a satisfying resolution within 43 minutes. That's not to say that every story must do it the same way: The Bells of Saint John began with the first of many "I don't know where I am"s, establishing the mystery and fear associated with the internet, while the much earlier The End of the World had an evil spider of doom hatch ten minutes in, causing trouble within the next three.

WARNING: Boring villain. You will not be afraid.

The Rings of Akhaten hinted at a conflict early on by showing The Queen of Years looking terrified; but that was dismissed only a few minutes later as stage fright. The real conflict, the soul-eating "Grandfather", was not even hinted at until a full 20 minutes in, and we never actually find out what the threat is (that a star will go rogue and wander throughout the galaxy consuming all who are foolish enough to exist) until a few minutes from the end.

They had to give it a face...

But there's another, more fundamental, problem with this bad guy.

We never see it do anything evil.

This is the most evil thing that the "bad guy" does.

Sure, we know that all sorts of bad things will happen if Grandfather awakens, but we know about them, not because we see Grandfather do anything particularly villainous, but because Merry tells us. And the Doctor tells us.

But in order for us to truly fear a villain, we need to see it do something, anything, that would be fearful. And in The Rings of Akhaten, we never did.

No Resolution

So after the Doctor gives Grandpa the hiccups with his entire life's story (which doesn't kill him, or even wipe his memory), Clara has to rush in and save the day by feeding the sun god her leaf.

Wait a minute. There is a star, two thousand trillion trillion tons of burning hydrogen, and it collapses on itself because of a leaf. Okay, fine, it's a leaf of special significance to a particular couple, but it's still a leaf. Drained of its chlorophyll, a poorly timed gust of wind will reduce it to molecules, and yet it destroys a star!

When humanity sends a shuttle to the sun, don't include any leaves.

Alright, so let's assume that a leaf really can defeat a star because of the whole infinity-of-opportunity thing. That's a very timey-wimey knowing-a-lot-about-the-universe thing to know; not exactly sky-is-blue level stuff. So there's one important question that must be asked:

Why is it Clara who figures that out?

Clara and I are not crying for the same reason.

To date, this is the first time she has set foot off of Earth. She cares about saving the young girl, but doesn't really know that much about time travel or possible days, or Timey-Wimey, Wibbly Wobbly stuff. It really should have been the Doctor who (pun intended) figured it out. Maybe by turning to Clara and saying something about infinite opportunity, or maybe by having mentioned the infinite opportunity thing earlier in the episode.

Actually, while we're on the topic of knowing things you shouldn't know, how did the Doctor know that the Old God had the self-control of a hamster? Most creatures are intelligent enough to stop eating when they are full, and a creature that is smart enough to keep a civilization worshipping it for several millenia should be no exception. Combine that with the fact that until a few minutes earlier, the Doctor thought that the mummy was the Old God, and you have another situation of someone magically knowing things that they shouldn't know.

No Companion

I finally realized what it was that bothered me about Clara in Bells, and perhaps this comment rightly belongs in my review for Bells rather than this one, but I didn't think of it until now, so you'll just have to deal.

In Rose, the Doctor tries what he's best at (negotiating with plastic, apparently), and fails, so our new companion, Rose, tries what she's good at - gymnastics.

Rose: A constant underachiever, stuck in a dead-end job, living with her unambitious mother, about to save the world doing the one thing she's ever gotten any recognition for.

Two companions later, Donna Noble frequently gives the Doctor insights having to do with numbers and bookkeeping, most notably in The Doctor's Daughter, given that she is the self-proclaimed "best temp in Chiswick".

Donna: An unambitious woman, plagued by her over-ambitious mother who sees her as a constant disappointment, who takes pride in what little she can do well, especially when it is supremely helpful.

Clara, on the other hand, contributes to this episode by magically knowing something that only the Doctor should know, not through her own unique experiences. I guess the loss of her mother kind of helps define her, except that Mom's been dead over a year, and a person is defined by more than just grief.

Clara: Lost her mom and is sad because her mom died. Inexplicably knows things that she can't know.

She has no personality, no story, no hopes, and no dreams, except to go... somewhere. But even then, when she's asked where she wants to go, her answer isn't "I've always been dreaming of visiting Venice and then Venus"; it is "um.... somewhere awesome".

And then, near the end, less than a full minute after she says "I say leg it", Clara insists that "we don't walk away". She is not both of those people.

For a character with so much build-up, it saddens me to see that when we finally get to spend time with her, Clara's really not that interesting. It's especially distressing because her previous two incarnations actually felt like real people. Maybe the Doctor made a mistake, and this Clara Oswald really is a completely different person from the other two.

Hopefully, she will grow a personality between now and the Season 7 finale.

No Panic

So imagine that you are sitting in a large open theater where you can see both the singer and the sun. Suddenly, the singer is effectively kidnapped, then after about 15 minutes, she comes back as fast as she can, looking terrified, as the sun sprouts a face. You or someone sitting within earshot is at least somewhat familiar with the ancient tales (that's why you're at that theater in the first place), so you know that that's very bad and could mean the end of civilization as you know it.

So what's your reaction?

"Nah, let's not leave yet. It's just getting interesting."

You sit there as if you're at the ****ing opera. If those people sitting in those seats were actually characters, rather than just pieces of furniture with faces (hmmm, I sense a theme), then they would be running around in a complete panic. But instead, they don't budge. They just sit and wait, and once Merry comes back and starts singing again, they join in the chorus.

Well, that's what was necessary to advance the plot. (And to make the lovely chorus at the end.)

No Aftermath

The Doctor and Clara have just destroyed the TOTALLY-EVIL star that was threatening to consume the stories and souls of Akhaten's citizens. So of course, it was the right thing to do, right?

Well, let's see what else the star was. It was their primary source of heat and light, and kept the planets, if you can call them that, in orbit. It was also the god that they worshipped, giving them a sense of unity. And now,

Enjoy the darkness! Clara and I have places to go!

No Dog-Thing

It's pretty obvious that Doreen's face was made of rubber.

"So if I pull here, the mask will come off, right?"

Also, why did the TARDIS translation circuits not work on her?

No Granddaughter

I can't decide how I felt about the fact that the Doctor brought up the fact that he had a granddaughter, because I don't know if that was a closely-held secret, a tidbit of information that he didn't care about, or something that deeply bothered him that he wanted to talk about. Of course, Clara reacted in the appropriate way, extreme shock, which she immediately followed up with... oh wait, there was no follow-up. She just, kind of, forgot.

He definitely has his crotchety-Grandpa moments.

No Screwdriver... Oh Wait

The Sonic Screwdriver needs to die. It needs to be removed from the series until the writers learn how to write a story without it. To illustrate, let me show you this:

"Expelliarmus!"

What the heck! The Doctor has been overusing that screwdriver for some time now, but like an untreated disease, it's been getting worse and worse!

You know what makes this worse? The writers wrote in a scene where he could have and should have gotten rid of it. But instead of giving up this most precious instrument, the writers make the Doctor look like a complete ass, and make Clara give up her ring instead.

"I would get rid of this, but then the writers would have to actually be creative. Can you make a deep personal sacrifice that the audience doesn't care about?"

Dear Sonic, I have deeply enjoyed our time together, but it is time for you to go, and make room for new story elements. Goodbye.

No Structural Integrity

This is a rather small point, but notice how Oswald Sr. opens up his folded leaf. This is presumably at least several months (possibly several years) after the first Ravenwood-Oswald encounter, because you don't elevate your meeting someone to most-important-event-in-human-history status until you've gotten to know each other, at least a little bit.

Why does that matter? Because leaves, when they aren't held perfectly rigid (say, in a book), crumble after a few days. There is no way that Oswaldo could have saved that leaf.

Pictured: Probably a different leaf.

Okay, sure, I'm jumping up and down on a relatively minor plot point - who cares if it's the right leaf, right?

Actually, given that the leaf in question saved the world by virtue of being the same exact leaf that brought Clara's parents together, it's kind of important that she has the right leaf.

Also, the deleted scene, where we learn that Amy's parents met because Amy's mom stepped in dog poo, was far less endearing.

"Look what I saved for you! Out of love!"

Overall

After The Snowmen, I was starting to think that there were no editors on Doctor Who anymore; that the writers were put in a room for 27 minutes and told to write a script, which was then shipped directly to the actors. The Bells of Saint John briefly restored my hope that they had hired an editor who actually read the script, but The Rings of Akhaten has taken that hope from me.

There was no villain, no resolution, the actions of the characters didn't make any sense, and Clara is a completely unsatisfying companion. The only good things about the episode are the nifty view of The Rings, the music, and the concept of sentimental currency, but these are far less important than having a coherent story, and the currency thing doesn't really make sense anyway. In short, Rings is a complete flop as an episode.

I have to say - I like Doctor Who. The complete freedom that the writers have to take their characters to any time or place can and does allow them to explore a wide variety of different types of issues. But that does not mean that you get to write an incoherent mess and call it a story. The Rings of Akhaten is setting a dangerous precedent that as long as a Doctor Who episode is beautiful, it doesn't have to make sense, and I'm not sure that I'm okay with that.

At least for this episode, the image just above "Overall" seems pretty apt.

NEXT EPISODE: THE COLD WAR

Don't push the big red button!

Don't turn off the TV!