‘We will pool all our brilliance and get us all safely to Resus One.’ In some respects this is Chibnall revisiting the type of story he told in 42: a spaceship with a series of problems to solve and a monster that’s just nature taking its course. Except while 42 had a palpable sense of time running out, the Doctor in peril and Martha forced to step up (before she’s cast adrift), this… has the P’ting.
Continue reading‘I don’t need your approval Doctor. This is what the world needs right now.’ About halfway through this it occurred to me that Chibnall is essentially pitching for The Sarah Jane Adventures. There’s a determined but socially awkward female lead, her friend Ryan with his waste-of-space dad, Yaz with her investigative spirit, and an older man off a quiz show (OK, it falls down a bit). But you can easily imagine Sarah Jane, Clyde, Rani and Rani’s mum (there to deliver flowers) running around a hotel somewhere outside Cardiff battling giant spiders while a mean politician is cartoonishly corrupt.
Continue reading‘Now we know what our task is. Keep history in order. No changing it.’ Modern Doctor Who historicals have largely treated the past like it’s the present in funny clothes. Rosa goes back to an older concept, the Lucarotti historical where the past is – literally – a foreign country, as strange and horrifying as an alien planet and where none of our modern assumptions can be taken for granted. That it’s the relatively recent past of American segregation tends to make this even more disturbing than something like The Aztecs.
Continue reading‘The Timeless Child… She doesn’t know… We see what’s hidden, even from yourself.’ After The Woman Who Fell to Earth channelled The Hungry Earth, this goes for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship with the Doctor’s fam promoted to full-on gang with the addition of big game players Angstrom and Epzo, a rapacious villain, rampaging robots and a race against time. It gives this a certain dynamism, especially against the vast backdrops of the South African location filming, even if there’s not much plot to speak of.
Continue reading‘I’m sorry you all had to see this.’ The 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall arrive with an hour-long episode that’s the 21st Century show’s third big relaunch. Like The Eleventh Hour and Deep Breath, its main job is to sell the audience on the new lead. That she’s the first woman Doctor isn’t quite as much of a gamble as it would have been even in 2014 because the previous few series had presented both Missy and the Time Lord General undergoing sex-change regeneration – an idea floated every time there was a recast since Tom Baker left. By 2017, it already felt like only a matter of time before it was ‘time for a lady’. And here we are.
Continue reading‘Either we change and go on or we die as we are.’ Moffat’s second go at a farewell story is a different beast than The Husbands of River Song. That was about finding acceptance in songs ending, after the Doctor had fought so hard to prevent Clara’s and nearly lost himself in the process. This is about letting go, giving someone else the chance to sing, even when it would be easier to call it a day.
Continue reading‘I don’t want to live if I can’t be me any more.’ Superficially, this has elements of Death in Heaven, with Bill’s retention of her personality and determination echoing Danny’s. But I think it’s more meaningfully like Hell Bent, exploring the idea of learning to let go, and accept that all things must pass. Surprisingly, the Master seems more comfortable with this than the Doctor: he’s not exactly rushing to become Missy, but he’s at least intrigued by the idea (though, as he tries on Mascara and fetishises her body, probably for the wrong reasons); while Missy literally laughs in the face of “death” (come on, she’s had her whole regeneration to come up with a way to survive that laser screwdriver blast).
Continue reading‘The genesis of the Cybermen.’ Series 10 is a strange mix of back-to-basics family viewing and some of the darkest material the show’s dabbled with. From space woodlice to existential doom and mass suicide then back to steampunk Ice Warriors. To some extent that’s always been the case, like the velvet darkness of Hinchcliffe after the tartrazine fizz of Pertwee, but it’s usually been through gradual transition rather than this pick n mix.
Continue reading‘Death by Scotland.’ I was very excited when I heard Moffat had persuaded Rona Munro to return to write for the show, 28 years after her last script. Survival is practically my favourite classic episode. I wasn’t expecting its follow up to be a semi-historical set in Scotland rather than a contemporary thriller in the streets of Perivale. But under the surface, there are common ideas: the need to unite or die; creatures crossing from another world to feed, and more overt sexuality than they could get away with in 1989.
Continue reading‘Sleep no more, my warriors, sleep no more.’ The early rumours were that Gatiss was going to write a third Peladon story as a Brexit parable. What we get barely flirts with either idea – just Alpha Centauri’s brief cameo and ‘Mars stands alone’. Instead, it’s a British Empire in Space fantasy which plays to golden age sci-fi ideas, and imagery like the brass spacesuits.
Continue reading
Next Time... 