The ongoing adventures of the renegade Time Lord known simply as The Doctor (Matt Smith, the eleventh actor to portray the popular BBC character) as he travels through space and time in a continuous quest to save the day, companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill ) joining him in his adventures. But this time things are different. This time, according to an ominous bit of fortune telling, the Doctor will in fact die.

CRITIQUE

Okay, all fans of “Doctor Who” know the Doctor can’t really die, but that doesn’t make Series Six any less compelling or its outstanding climactic episode Wedding of River Song any less powerful. Head writer and executive producer Stephan Moffat has outdone himself this time around, this season of the long running BBC cult favorite one of its very best (at least as far as this current incarnation of the character is concerned – I’ll stay take the Tom Baker episodes any day of the week).

Seriously, A Christmas Carol, the two-part The Impossible Astronaut and  Day of the Moon, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Doctor’s Wife; there are so many great episodes this season it’s hard to know where to begin. So much of this season crackles with an engrossing and involving electricity that had me positively mesmerized, and as Wedding of River Song came to an end the only disappointment I was feeling was that I’d have to wait a full year to discover what was going to happen next.

I will admit Smith is not my favorite Doctor, and as funny and as eclectic as his performances can be he just doesn’t quite cut the same magnetic swatch as David Tennant or Christopher Eccleston. Additionally, there are a couple of episodes here that don’t go anywhere of all that much interest (most notably the rather forgettable The Curse of the Black Spot), allowing for lulls that made me come perilously close to hitting the fast-forward button on my remote control.

But I never did, because as far as sci-fi television is concerned it almost goes without saying that “Doctor Who” is nearly without par. There are moments of brilliance here that took me absolutely by surprise, and as a longtime fan who has watched the series throughout her life here’s my hope this particular Time Lord’s adventures never come to an end.

THE VIDEO

Doctor Who – The Complete Sixth Series is presented on six dual-layer 50GB Blu-ray MPEG-4 AVC Video with 1.78:1/1080i transfers.

THE AUDIO

Doctor Who – The Complete Sixth Series comes to Blu-ray with an English DTS-HD HR 5.1 audio track and includes optional English SDH subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Extras here include:

·         Audio Commentary, The Impossible Astronaut with producer Marcus Wilson, line producer David Mason and actor Arthur Darvill

·         Audio Commentary, The Doctor’s Wife with writer Neil Gaiman

·         Audio Commentary, The Rebel Flesh with director Julian Simpson and actors Marshall Lancaster and Mark Bonnar

·         Audio Commentary, A Good Man Goes to War with effects supervisor Tim Barterand actors Arthur Darvill and Neve McIntosh

·         Audio Commentary, Wedding of River Song with head writer/executive producer Stephen Moffat, director Jeremy Webb and actress Frances Barber

·         Doctor Who Confidentials (roughly 153 minutes)

·         A Christmas Carol Confidential (56 minutes)

·         Comic Relief Sketches (7 minutes)

·         Series Six Episode Prequels (8 minutes)

·         Night and the Doctor Shorts (14 minutes)

·         Doctor Who Confidential: The Nights’ Tale (15 minutes)

·         Up All Night Short (2 minutes)

·         Monster Files (43 minutes)

·         Series Six Trailers (2 minutes)

Let’s start with the audio commentaries. All of them are terrific, but two – Gaiman’s on The Doctor’s Wife and Moffat, Webb and Barber’s on Wedding of River Song – are absolutely essential. “Doctor Who” aficionados are going to eat these respective commentary tracks up, the both of them spilling out informative and entertaining info left and right.

The Doctor Who Confidentials are rather incredible, each episode getting its own in-depth featurettes chronicling its production. They’re all rather terrific, and definitely worth checking out. As you’ll notice, A Christmas Carol gets its own separate confidential package, and I really have to say it just might be the best one of the entire lot.

The rest of the stuff is also pretty terrific, I have to say. All of the shorts, the prequels crafted for a number of the episodes, the featurettes on the creatures of series six of “Doctor Who,” all if it is kind of wonderful. Only the Up All Night Short falls a little, well, short, and sorry to say it’s probably the only completely disposable extra on any of the six discs (trailers for Series Six, Part One and Series Six, Part Two aside).

FINAL THOUGHTS

“Doctor Who” fans will want to do whatever they can to pick up this complete sixth series collection; it’s a definite keeper and worthy addition to the Time Lords ongoing television mythology.