I know I'm probably overthinking this, but the more I think about the episode the more annoyed I get by the Doctor fawning over the general. Kids, don't use guns, guns only make whatever problem you have worse, but you better respect the authority figures with guns, we need to have an orderly society where those in power aren't questioned.
I haven't seen the latest episode but this season has been an absolute dud for me so far. The Rosa Parks episode was pretty good (I don't think it's an all-time classic though) but every other episode has teetered between bland and actually bad. Whittaker is a very good Doctor who isn't getting much to do (and the frequently infantile characterisation isn't a great look), and the three companions are completely lacking in character traits. Mandip Gill is doing really good work with the material to give the illusion of depth but there's just... nothing there.
Chibnall's run, so far, is less actively offensive than Moffat's (and his commitment to diversity is absolutely wonderful) but in terms of show quality I feel like bland might actually be worse? We're not getting the occasional rays of quality that could get you through a slog of Moffat episodes.
+5
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HawkstoneDon't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things. Somewhere outside of BarstowRegistered Userregular
I haven't seen the latest episode but this season has been an absolute dud for me so far. The Rosa Parks episode was pretty good (I don't think it's an all-time classic though) but every other episode has teetered between bland and actually bad. Whittaker is a very good Doctor who isn't getting much to do (and the frequently infantile characterisation isn't a great look), and the three companions are completely lacking in character traits. Mandip Gill is doing really good work with the material to give the illusion of depth but there's just... nothing there.
Chibnall's run, so far, is less actively offensive than Moffat's (and his commitment to diversity is absolutely wonderful) but in terms of show quality I feel like bland might actually be worse? We're not getting the occasional rays of quality that could get you through a slog of Moffat episodes.
I don't think the villain's are helping either. They are all very one dimensional, boring, throw away characters. Cant even remember their names when the Ep is finished. Nobody seems like an adequate foil, so there is a lot of contrivance around making these dull stand ins seem a threat. Really everyone just seems entirely bland aside from the Doctor herself. I like Whittaker in the role and the attempt at having the stories have a moral of sorts...but having something to say doesn't equate to saying it well or in an interesting fashion.
I'm rewatching the whole show while it's still on iPlayer (27 days left, kiddos), and have just finished Moffat's first season. That's still probably the most consistently excellent run the show has had, and the excitement and immediacy and the chemistry between the Doctor and his companions make the current season feel a bit pale in comparison. I've watched every episode of the new season twice now and only the Rosa episode has really held my interest second time around, and the other episodes I'd liked I cooled on. RTD and Moffat's runs felt, if nothing else, like they genuinely loved the Doctor and couldn't wait to get into pulling out all their long cherished ideas for the show. I'm definitely not getting that vibe from the new run and Chibnall's tenure as show runner. What did he want to run Doctor Who for?
I hope the next five episodes are better. Only having ten in a season makes the stretch of so-so episodes weigh even heavier.
All of Ryan's plot points are about things that he is, rather than who he is.
He is dyspraxic. Look at him struggle with things affected by that, briefly, before the show forgets about them.
He is black. Look at this person being racist towards him.
What are his personality traits, outside of "feel bad about dyspraxia" and "feels bad when people are racist towards him". Those traits are both catalysts that could lead to us learning something about his character but the only real reaction from him is kind of... passivity? A kind of generalised determination with specific regard to riding a bike? I guess he's scared of spiders.
I feel like Yaz is underwritten, but I can still tell you a lot about her character that isn't purely based on the fact that she's Asian. We see her frustration at having to work her way up through the police force. We have a sense that she believes she's meant for greater things, we see that she's annoyed at the petty disagreements she deals with in her job. Those are great character traits for a Doctor Who companion! Give us some of that for Ryan! The closest thing we have to emotion from him so far is "he misses his shithead grandma", but even then his grief is much less developed than Graham's.
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
You can add "feels abandoned by his father", which is the lynchpin of this week's B-plot. Also partly why he has trouble connecting with Graham beyond the usual Step-distance.
I did enjoy this one, but I do hope that next week starts to pick up some pace, it's the first non-Chibnall one so fingers crossed. I can't remember but did RTD and Moffat have this tight a hold on the writing duties in their first runs?
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I thought they were saying Poutine
Also I liked that episode a lot.
Also also, when scanning for monsters, a Weeping Angel popped up as a candidate for what could be on board. So. There's an image of an Angel in that database, that's not great!
Demons of the Punjab knocked it out of the park and into orbit. The bit where the Doctor
officiated the wedding
was the best scene of the whole series and was the moment where Whittaker's interpretation of the role came into full focus for me. Can we just have Chibnall run the show and keep him away from writing the scripts from now on?
Also, we're getting a New Year's Day special instead of a Christmas special this time.
I loved this episode, but the biggest issue I had was
it was a Yaz-focused episode in which Yaz was barely more than a spectator for the majority of it.
It didn't ruin it for me, or anything, but it felt a little strange. Also, my wife and I had different takes on the ending...
I pointed out how it's obvious they are having adventures in between the episodes, and that's pretty cool (unless I massively misinterpreted the dialogue from the beginning). She later said "and obviously they come home now and again." I didn't understand what she meant, but she thinks that the last scene with Yaz and her grandmother took place after the events of the episode. I wasn't so sure, but it makes sense. In which case, cool.
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
They've always had adventures in-between what we get to see. That's for the books and audio serials to fill in, and you so often get great stories that might be too expensive to film.
I loved this episode, but the biggest issue I had was
it was a Yaz-focused episode in which Yaz was barely more than a spectator for the majority of it.
It didn't ruin it for me, or anything, but it felt a little strange. Also, my wife and I had different takes on the ending...
I pointed out how it's obvious they are having adventures in between the episodes, and that's pretty cool (unless I massively misinterpreted the dialogue from the beginning). She later said "and obviously they come home now and again." I didn't understand what she meant, but she thinks that the last scene with Yaz and her grandmother took place after the events of the episode. I wasn't so sure, but it makes sense. In which case, cool.
To the second spoiler:
I'm pretty sure that the last scene took place after the events of the episode as well, since the grandmother commented on the henna tattoos that Yaz had received at the wedding.
Yaz realized how painful those memories would be for her grandmother to recount, and decided to pass on pushing her to tell the story about the watch (which, since she was there, she already knew).
I'd guess the sequence of events went: Show up for the birthday party; receive the watch; curiosity about the watch drives the episode; return home to visit grandma; tell her that she didn't need to talk about the watch. We don't know how much linear time passed between the first grandma visit and the later grandma visit, but in Doctor time it could only have been a few weeks at most since that's how long it takes a henna tattoo to fade.
Also, I really liked the alien design in this one. It was a great look, even if limited in it's ability to emote (or speak).
Much better than the tooth guy from the season premier.
+10
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The GeekOh-Two Crew, OmeganautRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Demons of the Punjab:
Going from assassins to witnesses is pretty fucking rad and kinda beautiful.
I loved this episode, but the biggest issue I had was
it was a Yaz-focused episode in which Yaz was barely more than a spectator for the majority of it.
It didn't ruin it for me, or anything, but it felt a little strange. Also, my wife and I had different takes on the ending...
I pointed out how it's obvious they are having adventures in between the episodes, and that's pretty cool (unless I massively misinterpreted the dialogue from the beginning). She later said "and obviously they come home now and again." I didn't understand what she meant, but she thinks that the last scene with Yaz and her grandmother took place after the events of the episode. I wasn't so sure, but it makes sense. In which case, cool.
To the second spoiler:
I'm pretty sure that the last scene took place after the events of the episode as well, since the grandmother commented on the henna tattoos that Yaz had received at the wedding.
Yaz realized how painful those memories would be for her grandmother to recount, and decided to pass on pushing her to tell the story about the watch (which, since she was there, she already knew).
I'd guess the sequence of events went: Show up for the birthday party; receive the watch; curiosity about the watch drives the episode; return home to visit grandma; tell her that she didn't need to talk about the watch. We don't know how much linear time passed between the first grandma visit and the later grandma visit, but in Doctor time it could only have been a few weeks at most since that's how long it takes a henna tattoo to fade.
Also, I really liked the alien design in this one. It was a great look, even if limited in it's ability to emote (or speak).
Much better than the tooth guy from the season premier.
You know what, my wife commented on the logic you just gave, and I just remembered that I missed that part when we were watching it because I was out of the room. That makes all the sense in the world.
trying to 'fix' the timeline personally and it not working out so well/trust me, I know it won't work- I've tried. Instead of a generic not a good idea/you have to let it happen.
trying to 'fix' the timeline personally and it not working out so well/trust me, I know it won't work- I've tried. Instead of a generic not a good idea/you have to let it happen.
"I took a friend of mine back to see her Dad, once. She tried to change her own time-line, the universe nearly ended and I got eaten by a giant bat. Or so I'm told, technically I wasn't there when it happened, which it never did. You know, now that I say it all out loud, that was a complicated sort of day even for me."
Just polished off season 6 on my rewatch. The River Song/Doctor interactions are almost unbearable in their smugness and certainty that we're going to find it as charming as Moffat does. I maintain that River Song is the two sword wielding ultra competent NPC five levels higher than the players the DM loves and can't stop using and everyone else hates them. Maybe the most disappointing climax to one of his seasons as well, one of those big mysteries he builds up that ends with an underwhelming solution. Some excellent episodes, but the over-arching story is Moffat's worst.
Going from assassins to witnesses is pretty fucking rad and kinda beautiful.
Absolutely! At the end when
They come out and are like "we will stay with him" and then there are just SO SO MANY faces in the ship when they get back made me incredibly sad and just... Heartwarmed that these people didn't die alone?
The annual Children In Need charity drive is on. For reasons I don't fully understand, this means we get to see a few minutes of the next episode early.
I liked that. Good supporting characters, and it was an episode that managed to be about something, though perhaps not as sharp as it might have been in its satire.
What happened to her in the end? I thought that was half very clever and half wait why is no one also destroying the system for, you know, murdering someone.
It's a textbook case of a story fridging a female character to provide motivation, but it's also the system intentionally killing a character to provide motivation in a very calculated way - the system (and the show) knows it's fridging someone: that's the point. It took me completely by surprise when it happened, as killing someone that late on hardly ever happens unless they're sacrificing themselves somehow.
I did think the politics of the episode were kind of muddled.
Look, "Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab" were great episodes, but as a whole I am kind of running out patience with this season. The cast are great, it looks fantastic, but when it comes to the writing I'm just not feeling a hell of a lot of enthusiasm. Davies and Moffat weren't perfect as show-runners, but by God they were enthusiastic. You could tell, their first day on the job, they turned up three hours early with a bulging folder of ideas they'd started when they were seven and shouted, "Fucking YES buckle IN arseholes here's what we're doing for the first eighteen episodes."
With Chibnall, it feels like he wandered in just after eight with a cup of coffee in one hand, wrote "Rosa Parks" on a white board, stared at it for twenty minutes and then went, "We could doooooo... something with spiders?"
I mean, where's the fire? Where are the stories that have been simmering in the back of his mind since before he was old enough to not get invited to a party? They're just not there. Chibnall's an enormously talented show-runner, and I can tell he likes Doctor Who, but I don't think he has the bone-marrow-deep insane love for the show that the job needs. And that's a real shame.
In the past, with new Doctors, there's been a few episodes where the companion(s) go through the OH MY GOD WE'RE IN THE PAST/FUTURE/ALIEN WORLD and they get used to traveling, which in turn gave the viewers a chance to get used to the Doctor. This season jumped over those episodes, so the Doctor is kind of still a blank slate to me. Plus, it seems like a lot of the focus has been on the companions and their personal lives on Earth, not their lives traveling with the Doctor, which obviously detracts. I think three brand new companions at once might have been a bit much to ask of this show. There's so little room for the Doctor in that.
It's not meshing well, and it's a bummer, since I think Whittaker could be an amazing Doctor, if she had the writing.
I really want this season to work for me and it just doesn't Whittaker is great, Mandip Gil is great, everyone else is... fine. Even then, neither The Doctor or Yaz get anything much to do, and Yaz as a character is nowhere near the top tier of companions like Bill or Donna, and I'm not sure she even gets enough writing to hit Martha Jones tier. Ryan and Graham may as well not be in the show. Bradley Walsh has familiarity (if you're British) and an easy natural charisma, Tosin Cole doesn't seem to have that and the writing isn't helping him out much.
As someone who is tough on Moffat, tough on the causes of Moffat, I would probably take any given Moffat season over this, so far. The highlight of the season so far is Rosa Parks and I don't even think it's an especially good episode by Doctor Who standards, it just makes a lot of good choices.
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
I'm more positive on this season than a lot of folks I think. Buuuuut yeah, it feels like everything is being played very safe. Which is wild given some of the topics in the historical stuff. But every story is just kinda played too straight and pot boiler. Hopefully some of the kinks can be worked out, and we can get some more weird and experimental stuff that Doctor Who can really thrive on.
I like all the cast, they just need more to work with.
I think they need some proper villains, this season's been pretty tame.
So far we've had:
Tim Shaw (probably the most satisfying villain this season, which isn't high praise).
The unlikable guy running the race, who wasn't really a villain, just a dick. Didn't get 'beaten' in any way beyond having to spilt the prize between two people.
Racist Future Guy who just got not shot, and racism (a perpetually poorly written villain, but unaccountably popular).
Spiders who weren't really villains, and Not Trump who got away with everything.
Space Gremlin who wasn't really a villain, just feed it and let it go.
That real-world racism and intolerance thing again. Oh, and the British for just carving up countries and letting people shoot each other to sort it out.
Heartless corporation (doing what corporations do, which is make as much money as the law allows) and disgruntled employee of a heartless corporation.
I know they wanted to make a fresh start and not bring in any classic villains this year, but given what they've replaced them with, I'd welcome the Daleks or Cybermen or Missy/Master showing up.
Moffat at least had a knack for interesting monsters, even if they got overused over time.
Moffat had a great knack for creating monsters you could sum up in a single sentence. Monsters who only move when you're not looking! Monsters you forget when you're not looking! The story then builds up around that power in a fun way and that's the hook of the story. None of the new monsters feel like something you could sum up in an exciting sentence, barring maybe the pting.
I will say that this episode did the best job so far of giving everyone something to do. But even still, you could see that they could have done the same story with two companions without changing much.
Moffat had a great knack for creating monsters you could sum up in a single sentence. Monsters who only move when you're not looking! Monsters you forget when you're not looking! The story then builds up around that power in a fun way and that's the hook of the story. None of the new monsters feel like something you could sum up in an exciting sentence, barring maybe the pting.
The p'ting was cool! Not even evil, just an oblivious force of destruction that won't stop eating.
This series has been, competent, but not memorable. The doctor is great, I actually really like graham as a companion, and it looks incredible. The plots though feel like they were written by a bot. Just the most generic Dr Who possible.
That was good. Alan Cumming enjoying himself deeply, some effective creepiness, the Doctor feeling more pro-actively Doctory.
There's still something skew-whiff about some of the editing, though. And please God can someone learn how to end an episode. For like the fourth or fifth time this season the episode ends on a damp fart of a line and then the credits roll. C'mon, guys. Is it that hard to land a closing zinger?
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I haven't really enjoyed an episode as a whole since Rosa Parks
The rest have had good moments tied together with eh
Chibnall's run, so far, is less actively offensive than Moffat's (and his commitment to diversity is absolutely wonderful) but in terms of show quality I feel like bland might actually be worse? We're not getting the occasional rays of quality that could get you through a slog of Moffat episodes.
I don't think the villain's are helping either. They are all very one dimensional, boring, throw away characters. Cant even remember their names when the Ep is finished. Nobody seems like an adequate foil, so there is a lot of contrivance around making these dull stand ins seem a threat. Really everyone just seems entirely bland aside from the Doctor herself. I like Whittaker in the role and the attempt at having the stories have a moral of sorts...but having something to say doesn't equate to saying it well or in an interesting fashion.
I hope the next five episodes are better. Only having ten in a season makes the stretch of so-so episodes weigh even heavier.
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He is dyspraxic. Look at him struggle with things affected by that, briefly, before the show forgets about them.
He is black. Look at this person being racist towards him.
What are his personality traits, outside of "feel bad about dyspraxia" and "feels bad when people are racist towards him". Those traits are both catalysts that could lead to us learning something about his character but the only real reaction from him is kind of... passivity? A kind of generalised determination with specific regard to riding a bike? I guess he's scared of spiders.
I feel like Yaz is underwritten, but I can still tell you a lot about her character that isn't purely based on the fact that she's Asian. We see her frustration at having to work her way up through the police force. We have a sense that she believes she's meant for greater things, we see that she's annoyed at the petty disagreements she deals with in her job. Those are great character traits for a Doctor Who companion! Give us some of that for Ryan! The closest thing we have to emotion from him so far is "he misses his shithead grandma", but even then his grief is much less developed than Graham's.
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I did enjoy this one, but I do hope that next week starts to pick up some pace, it's the first non-Chibnall one so fingers crossed. I can't remember but did RTD and Moffat have this tight a hold on the writing duties in their first runs?
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Also I liked that episode a lot.
Also also, when scanning for monsters, a Weeping Angel popped up as a candidate for what could be on board. So. There's an image of an Angel in that database, that's not great!
was the best scene of the whole series and was the moment where Whittaker's interpretation of the role came into full focus for me. Can we just have Chibnall run the show and keep him away from writing the scripts from now on?
Also, we're getting a New Year's Day special instead of a Christmas special this time.
To the second spoiler:
Yaz realized how painful those memories would be for her grandmother to recount, and decided to pass on pushing her to tell the story about the watch (which, since she was there, she already knew).
I'd guess the sequence of events went: Show up for the birthday party; receive the watch; curiosity about the watch drives the episode; return home to visit grandma; tell her that she didn't need to talk about the watch. We don't know how much linear time passed between the first grandma visit and the later grandma visit, but in Doctor time it could only have been a few weeks at most since that's how long it takes a henna tattoo to fade.
Also, I really liked the alien design in this one. It was a great look, even if limited in it's ability to emote (or speak).
Much better than the tooth guy from the season premier.
You know what, my wife commented on the logic you just gave, and I just remembered that I missed that part when we were watching it because I was out of the room. That makes all the sense in the world.
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Absolutely! At the end when
Fucked me up right good
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It's a textbook case of a story fridging a female character to provide motivation, but it's also the system intentionally killing a character to provide motivation in a very calculated way - the system (and the show) knows it's fridging someone: that's the point. It took me completely by surprise when it happened, as killing someone that late on hardly ever happens unless they're sacrificing themselves somehow.
I did think the politics of the episode were kind of muddled.
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Look, "Rosa" and "Demons of the Punjab" were great episodes, but as a whole I am kind of running out patience with this season. The cast are great, it looks fantastic, but when it comes to the writing I'm just not feeling a hell of a lot of enthusiasm. Davies and Moffat weren't perfect as show-runners, but by God they were enthusiastic. You could tell, their first day on the job, they turned up three hours early with a bulging folder of ideas they'd started when they were seven and shouted, "Fucking YES buckle IN arseholes here's what we're doing for the first eighteen episodes."
With Chibnall, it feels like he wandered in just after eight with a cup of coffee in one hand, wrote "Rosa Parks" on a white board, stared at it for twenty minutes and then went, "We could doooooo... something with spiders?"
I mean, where's the fire? Where are the stories that have been simmering in the back of his mind since before he was old enough to not get invited to a party? They're just not there. Chibnall's an enormously talented show-runner, and I can tell he likes Doctor Who, but I don't think he has the bone-marrow-deep insane love for the show that the job needs. And that's a real shame.
It's not meshing well, and it's a bummer, since I think Whittaker could be an amazing Doctor, if she had the writing.
As someone who is tough on Moffat, tough on the causes of Moffat, I would probably take any given Moffat season over this, so far. The highlight of the season so far is Rosa Parks and I don't even think it's an especially good episode by Doctor Who standards, it just makes a lot of good choices.
I think they need some proper villains, this season's been pretty tame.
So far we've had:
I know they wanted to make a fresh start and not bring in any classic villains this year, but given what they've replaced them with, I'd welcome the Daleks or Cybermen or Missy/Master showing up.
Moffat at least had a knack for interesting monsters, even if they got overused over time.
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The p'ting was cool! Not even evil, just an oblivious force of destruction that won't stop eating.
...
Chibnall's a parent, right?
There's still something skew-whiff about some of the editing, though. And please God can someone learn how to end an episode. For like the fourth or fifth time this season the episode ends on a damp fart of a line and then the credits roll. C'mon, guys. Is it that hard to land a closing zinger?
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