I've never been a huge Doctor Who fan, but I've always quite liked it. A lot of episodes since the franchise came back with Christopher Ecclescakes in the title role have felt too much like childrens TV, and several have been absolutely terribly written, but I always end up watching it, and often enjoy it. Tonight's episode was pretty good, and had one excellent joke. The new Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is excellent though. Hopefully her likability, and similarity to previous Doctors will have gone some way to winning the incels over, but I fear that's impossible.
It's weird - I suggested on the old Soc that Victoria Wood should be the new doctor when David Tennant was announced, and 13 years later we have someone who's so similar to what I imagined that would be like, that you could say JW is almost doing an impression of her.
I was surprised at how high the body count was, and how grisly the villain's MO - and that faceful of teeth was pretty horrifying. Plus it almost all took place at night, so it was literally quite dark to match the thematic stuff.
Whittaker was great though, I'm looking forward to seeing her properly settle into the technobabble.
Episode spoilers follow:
Spoiler - click to showMacGyvering her own sonic together was a great little sequence (I think I spotted a RasPi Zero?) and it felt better plotted than I remember Moffat managing (willing to admit this could be my anti-Moffat bias); the return-home device was nicely telegraphed before the Doctor used it as a bargaining chip, and of course she'd taken the bombs out - but their transfer into the bad guy was a nice twist that the show didn't feel the need to explicitly set up.
A lot of Capaldi's run had a pretty high body count for minor characters, too, as I recall; I get that it's to set up the villain as a credible threat, but it does kind of undermine things a bit when they heroically only manage to rescue one out of four potential victims.
I know the feeling of just wanting to discuss the shit out of something though, and no great options exist so sometimes Reddit has to do I guess. (Unless it's a dead Reddit)
Great episode. For me the high bar of first episodes was the Matt Smith one. The title music has lost its momentum with the stop start stuff.
Anyone else watch the bit at the end where they were showing all the actors who are going to be in the show, thinking "I have no clue who these people are"?
I recognised a few names - Chris Noth will be interesting, I've basically written the script for that episode in my head already.
The episode had a few laugh out loud scenes, which gives me high hopes for the rest of the season - the drunken, salad tossing, kebab guy is a stand out moment. I'm liking the companions so far but I just hope that Bill returns at some point. How many companions have been in love with the Doctor now? Could you image the incels if the Doctor and Bill had romantic story line?
I've not watched Doctor Who since Matt Smith's first season for no actual reason. But watched the start of the new series and enjoyed it, I think my eldest did too.
Not sure why so many on Twitter are raving about Whitaker's accent, it just shows how ridiculously London centric British TV is.
The East Midlands is shockingly unrepresented when it comes to TV 😂
Shame, I legitimately loved Bill and I think she was wasted.
Wasn't Eccleston northern? Idk my English geography is really crap. It's like - Scotland, Borders, Lake District, York, Midlands, Wales, canals & universities, London, lorries, Dover?
I was surprised at how high the body count was, and how grisly the villain's MO - and that faceful of teeth was pretty horrifying. Plus it almost all took place at night, so it was literally quite dark to match the thematic stuff.
Anyway, back to the subject of Who - this was my main concern about the episode. Like the last few series, it seems to have forgotten that it's supposed to be a kids' show at heart. What it's ended up as is a kind of slightly childish adult drama - lose a couple of wackier scenes like the sonic screwdriver creation and rein in the dialogue slightly and you'd end up with something that wouldn't look out of place next to something like Bodyguard. I don't think my 9-year-old would have enjoyed this much. He'd probably like a lot of the Eccleston or Tennant-era shows though.
That's not to say it wasn't good: it was a decent opener, Whittaker was immediately convincing and it looked and sounded very different to the last few years which was encouraging (the show thrives on change). So I'm very willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Also - I really loved the theme tune.
Hasn't Who always done this though, straddled a fine line between being early evening entertainment and darker themes and scary bits? I certainly recall many people saying how scared they were of the cybermen and daleks and whilst they didn't show violence so much back then I think it's had to move with the times.
The main problem with the big death is its lack of impact because it was so obviously coming. Not the shows fault, but because all the preview stuff we've seen showed there was only 3 companions, she had to go.
I do like how the companions have been dragged along entirely by accident. No "hey, want to see the galaxy, all of space and time?" pitch, just a miscalibration that blips everyone away at once. Though that does mean that you could probably have gotten away without the big death - if she'd just been injured then she still wouldn't have been there to help MacGyver up the Doctor's teleporter and we wouldn't have had to open the first female doctor's run by fridging a black woman.
It does leave an interesting challenge for the writers for the rest of the season, what with one of the characters being recently bereaved (and at least partially due to the Doctor's actions). Does he drag the series down with constant references to his dead wife? Or does he appear callous by not doing so?
I think there's a balance to strike; but you can have him refer to her without being maudlin, and there's space for a few quiet moments here and there, assuming they're willing to actually give him an arc.
There was a bit of groundwork laid, at and after the funeral, for how her example has already inspired, and could continue to inspire, her son and husband - I'd expect any future references to stick to that kind of "what would Grace do?" motivation.
Episode 2: weaker than the first, but still okay; still not 100% on the theme, but the visuals of the intro I do like; are the Stenza going to be A Thing for the whole season?
The new Tardis is weird - seems to have lost some of the verticality of the old set, which makes it look a bit… clumsy? in the couple of wide shots we had. I do like bits of it, though.
I thought it was a fairly solid statement of intent. It was quite old-school in terms of Doctor Who: the Doctor and chums land on an alien planet, solve a few problems and then fly off at the end. No universe-ending calamity, no convoluted plot, and only a passing reference to Toothy Tim to give the series some sort of arc. The whole thing looked incredible, the titles were excellent and Whittaker was outstandingly Doctorish. I liked it a lot.
Not keen on the new Tardis from what I've seen of it so far, looks very much like Eccleston's and that was my least favourite of the new era. But it's got a custard cream dispenser now, so that's a definite upgrade.
Next week's episode will need a subtle hand, given the theme.
I thought this episode was much better than the last one. It was beautifully shot, in a way that nighttime Sheffield wasn't, the threat was more interesting than 'Terminator with a faceful of teeth", and the general construction of the episode - especially that disorienting opening and the hologram antagonist - was great.
The new Tardis is weird, though - like something you'd see in Destiny or Mass Effect more than Doctor Who, though I don't feel like we really got a decent look at it. But it's another borderline-grimdark element of the show that's at odds with Whittaker's boundless energy and infinite optimism, to the point that I can't help but feel it's a deliberate juxtaposition.
It was a fairly light episode, but I enjoyed that.
I like theres no core companion, I know there's always been a group but there was always a main one be it Rose, Donna, Martha or Any (as mentioned before I stopped watching during Smith's run so don't know if that continued with Capaldi). But this seems to be a group who the show wants to figure things out for themselves such as Ryan and Graham figuring out how the boat was powdered with some nice dialogue between them.
Yaz drove the crane in the first episode, which isn't quite "fix an alien boat" but it was quite central to the climax. I think we're probably going to have a lot of episodes where one or more of the companions is a third (fourth?) wheel, just as a side-effect of having so many. Just as long as it's not always Yaz left as the hanger-on.
I think the main issue is she doesn't really have a hook, as a character - she's an old friend of Ryan's, but it's not as compelling a connection as the step-grandad thing he has going on with Graham.
What was with that horn section blasting out at seemingly random intervals?
I thought it was okay. I always feel saddened that Rosa Parks life of activism & fighting for equality gets boiled down to the protest on the bus. I guess there are some hints to her involvement with the NAACP & actually named Emmett Till, that's more than you usually get.
The baddie seemed somewhat pointless… A bit of a MacGuffin really. Although, I think his prison is the same one River Song was in?
