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Which season of Doctor Who should get a Blu-ray set next? This poll is closed. |
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| One of the black-and-white seasons |
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16 | 29.63% |
| Season 7 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Season 11 |
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1 | 1.85% |
| Season 13 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 15 |
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2 | 3.70% |
| The Key to Time |
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21 | 38.89% |
| Season 21 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 25 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Total: | 54 votes | ||
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Ryan was also the go-to whenever you needed someone to express befuddlement. They weren't exactly giving him the most range, there. Yaz had the most potential as a companion (even got to use her police training once or twice), if they'd just given her a chance to be more proactive and hadn't gone for the laziest possible angle to make her "interesting" at the very end.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:01
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| # ? May 28, 2024 10:50 |
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Season 12 Episode 7: Can You Hear Me? Written by Charlene James & Chris Chibnall, Directed by Emma Sullivan Tibo posted:I felt like it was just me. "I go by many names," says the bald, dark-clothed man,"My preferred, my original, is... Zellin." An ominous musical note blares out of the screen, the Doctor's face shrinks with horror. It's unbelievable. Zellin! Of all the possible people, it's Zellin! poo poo is serious now, as viewers we know the Doctor is in big trouble... it's Zellin! Zellin is here! Oh no, it's Zellin! Who the gently caress is Zellin? There's a lot to be said about creating a sense of a pre-existing universe, one where things and history and cultures exist off-screen and we're only ever getting a glimpse of it through the lens of the main character/s. I've praised it before in even episodes as largely unremarkable as The Tsuranga Conundrum, where the Doctor is aware of and participates in cultures that are as alien to the viewer as they are to the Doctor's companions. But it has to work, by itself simply having the main character say,"It's X! X is very cool and/or dangerous and you can believe me, I'm the main character!" is not enough. Which is ironic, because Chibnall DOES use pre-existing material to try and provide a framework in which the viewer can place Zellin, and many of the name-drops used themselves only appeared for the first (and sometimes only) time in their own original stories. So why did those (mostly) work and Zellin doesn't? Call it a matter of execution, or just a vibe, but where the Eternals, the Toymaker, Sutekh, Fenric, Kinda, the Gods of Ragnarok etc were able to sell their status as nightmarish God-things effectively, Zellin (and Rakaya later) feel like they've been awkwardly shoved into the mix in the hopes that the others can carry them along for the ride. And it isn't like the aforementioned were only effectively done because they had the benefit of multiple episodes: RTD was able to create some very creepy "Elder God/Nameless Thing" characters during the revival years in episodes like Midnight or his namedropping of things like "The Could-Have-Been King" and "The Nightmare Child", and following the Chibnall years he produced another incredible example with his "Not Things" in The Wild Blue Yonder.   Which is a shame, because there IS some great nightmare-inducing terror imagery in the episode, as well as some fantastic concepts that get broadly touched on, as well as a very laudable goal of exploring mental illness and the stigma around it, as well as how those suffering from it can feel isolated and strange and just dig themselves in deeper. The whole thing doesn't hold together though, the high-concept stuff is frustratingly shallow in how it is portrayed, giving you a sense of what could have been but wasn't. The mental illness ideas are laudable but feel somewhat tacked on when they could have easily carried the whole episode. The nightmare imagery gets a similarly shallow touch, used well for effective imagery but then quickly abandoned or moved on. We do get another welcome piece of character work for Mandip Gill to desperately sink her teeth into in search of an actual character for Yaz, but it's jammed in with too much else going on. As I've frequently complained, the cast was simply too big even before supporting characters got tacked on. Tahira's whole subplot gets handwaved "resolved" entirely off-screen which is bad enough but then plays a key part in the actual story resolution! Zellin and Rakaya's defeat is bizarrely abrupt and then episode just moves on without a second thought. Timeless Child bullshit butts its head unwelcomingly into the story. The Doctor's "clever" escape from the trap she has walked into is to... just wake up from the endless nightmare she's in and use the tools they left on her to break everybody out. Maybe there's something to be said there about Zellin and Rakaya's arrogance being their downfall, but it smacks more of a(nother) scramble to edit together whatever got filmed into something workable. It also commits an extraordinarily grave sin in a truly bizarre ending to the episode where Graham - again following the message on the importance of reaching to people - opens up to the Doctor about his own fears of loneliness and death and the possibility of his cancer returning... and the Doctor just stares at him, mutters that she's socially awkward so is just gonna not respond and that she'll probably think of something she should have said later. There's nothing wrong with a character being socially awkward, but it feels odd to make the Doctor emotionally unavailable like this, given how a standard part of the character for decades has been the Doctor being helpful to people in need and telling them what they need to hear. It's also not a very consistent characterization for 13, her "social awkwardness" to this point has been represented by her not picking up on social cues while obsessing (either enthusiastically or angrily) over something else going on, so her reaction to Graham asking for help from her as a figure of authority and wisdom he can trust feels really off to me. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and hope that Chibnall at this point was trying to weave in some ideas around the companions (Well, Ryan and Graham at least) starting to realize that it might not be the healthiest thing for them to keep leaving their lives behind like this. Both of them would be gone by the start of the next season, and Yaz would take the opposite tack and become TOO involved with the Doctor, while the Doctor herself was attempting to keep herself in a constant state of distraction to avoid thinking too much about Gallifrey's destruction of this bullshit about the Timeless Child. How much of this was planned/intended etc I don't know, but it's not like Chibnall CAN'T write well, as I've harped on far too much in the past, Broadchurch season 1 is an absolutely fantastic, well-written and emotionally effective bit of television. Even so, that exchange with Graham feels wrong to me, perhaps a weird effort to "humanize" the Doctor that fell absolutely flat on its face. While there's a lot to be said for showcasing the Doctor as an example/role model to kids who feel their own issues around social awkwardness, this particular bit of writing did a disservice to them and to the Doctor.  The episode opens in Aleppo in the 1300s. A thief rushes to the door of a clinic and insists they let her "back" in. She's Tahira, one of their patients, and she's using the clinic both as a place for treatment for her very real mental health issues and conveniently as a place to hide when caught stealing. The lady who lets her in (I don't know enough to know if she would be considered a nurse in this period, but I'll use that as shorthand) warns her that if the merchants catch on then Tahira will be putting the whole clinic at risk, but she seems indulgent of Tahira all the same. Her thievery might itself simply be a part of her condition, which again we never really get any details on. She may be bipolar, as we see her shift between depression, fear & despondency and also high spirits, a cheeky attitude and a devil-may-care attitude, noting that her thefts are a "game" that make her happy. I don't know enough about the condition to say, but the important thing is that she is suffering from mental health issues - later reveals in the episode are at pains to point out that her condition isn't the result of Zellin's meddling, but that his meddling was simply making use of her condition. That's at least a welcome step up from In the Forest of the Night and the Doctor saying,"Hey kids who have to take medication to stop the voices in their heads... you should stop taking the medication, the voices are real and the world will die if you don't listen to them!" The nurse ignores Tahira's warnings that they need to take precautions from the threat she is convinced is coming, and later that night her fears are proven true when everybody in the clinic is wiped out, including the nurse seen taken by the creature in the first gif above. Meanwhile 640+ years later, the Doctor drops her companions off in Sheffield to spend a day catching up with everybody before she collects them the next day. We see in the following scenes the way each of the companions and the Doctor herself are being affected by mental health concerns of their own. Yaz is at pains to spend time with her sister, with references to an "anniversary" and the potential concern that Yaz's sister might be feeling if Yaz disappears for long periods of time. Ryan catches up with his best friend Tibo (who we have never seen or heard before in any episode) who is upset to have not seen him, and who Ryan quickly realizes has become reclusive and is struggling to keep things together. Graham catches up with old bus driver friends for what seems like a simple and fun game of poker, but he's masking his grief for Grace and his fears over a return of his cancer, and it's clear that he wasn't lying all the way back at the start of the previous season when he said he wanted to travel with the Doctor to stop thinking about things too much. He isn't healing properly, he's simply running away. Even the Doctor is having issues, clearly not liking being alone with her thoughts, deciding to just jump forward a day in the TARDIS rather than wait around, and she welcomes the distraction when the TARDIS suddenly shudders (and she misses Zellin appearing to smirk at her back*) and she tracks the source of the disturbance to Aleppo in 1380. * Sorry to keep harping on the point, but even budget limitations aside I still thought this was done SO more effectively in Enlightenment when the Eternal who has become obsessed with Tegan is staring at her from the other side of the TARDIS view screen.   As the Doctor meets with Tahira in 1380, in 2022 each of the companions has a strange vision of either the creepy bald man or, in Graham's case, a white-haired woman begging for help as two planets collide. They call the Doctor who retrieves them, herself trying to solve the msytery of the monsters in Aleppo who don't register on the Sonic Screwdriver and whose collected fur the TARDIS insists does not exist. The Doctor hooks Graham up to the TARDIS's telepathic circuits after an amusing bit where the Doctor expects him to know the location of two alien planets he saw in his vision, and it takes them to a hyper-advanced space station out past the far edges of known space. There's a lovely bit of weird-rear end sci-fi with the reveal that two planets that appear to be colliding with each other are actually pressing against a tiny enclosure to hold it in place. They grasp that this is a prison holding the woman from Graham's vision, an amazing technological feat which barely gets touched on as the companions go a-wandering (because of course they do) and discover the missing nurses and patients from Aleppo as well as Tibo, each of them unconscious with one of Zellin's detachable fingers in their apparently still forcing them mental anguish and distress from the nightmares it is causing. This is as bizarre and inscrutable to them as the space station itself, and they soon get their own taste of it as Zellin takes them all prisoner too. Yaz finds herself dreaming of the event that she and her sister had been "commemorating", with Yaz alone on the road being told by her sister that this time nobody is calling anybody to help her. Ryan finds Tibo, aged and accusatory that Ryan abandoned him, revealing that they're on the flaming remains of Orphan 55. Graham wakes to find himself undergoing chemotherapy, his nurse Grace purely businesslike and not the warm and reassuring presence he remembered, telling him the cancer has returned before coldly asking him why HE didn't save HER. The latter in particular is really well done, and another in a series of body blows for Graham who has NOT been grieving properly. He had to let go "Grace" again in It Takes You Away. Now here he is in a nightmare where he apparently never even had her, where even that brief time he spent with her in wedded bliss was nothing but a dream and the only thing that was ever truly real was the hideous cancer eating away at him. Joined now by guilt, the logic of the nightmare dictating that both things can be possible: he never had Grace, but he also did but failed to save/keep her. Yaz's event is intriguing, though we don't get the full context till later in the episode. Ryan's is the weakest, not only because being reminded of Orphan 55 doesn't exactly stimulate the mind, but because the relationship with Tibo really hasn't been established and replacing him with a different actor playing him as an old man doesn't help to build that relationship any further.   The Doctor meanwhile has failed to notice any of them wandered off and got captured, busy talking to "them" in an empty room until she notices for the first time that she hasn't been getting any of the bewildered requests to explain what things mean. Zellin confronts her, enjoying mocking her "blundering", which leads to the prior mentioned scene where he reveals his name which means nothing except to the Doctor. He namedrops the Guardian, the Eternals, and the Toymaker, and the latter two can't help but make him feel like a rerun. His amusements are just another variation of the Toymaker and the Eternals staving off the boredom of immortality by playing games, and it kind of begs the question of why he didn't just make them Eternals in the first place. It's not a bad idea to try and make the Universe seem like a big place, that there are forces and powers beyond all comprehension and that they're not necessarily friendly, but there needs to be something to give them a distinct feeling. Chibnall is often guilty of reusing the same basic concept with a different funny name, as we see with things like The Ux essentially having apparently the exact same abilities of the Qurunx from The Power of the Doctor. Zellin and Rakaya are essentially just a variation of the Eternals with a bit more sadism thrown in, and Zellin has a finger trick. That's about it, and it's kind of Chibnall staple to want to talk about ancient races of great abilities that are near legendary, but if you keep going back to that well it quickly loses its impact. Who even remembers the Shakri from The Power of Three? Or the Thijarians from Demons of the Punjab. Assuming that among Zellin's tortured prisoners is the occupant of the orb held between planets, the Doctor lets Zellin talk and mock her while she uses the space station and the psychic signal to transport the prisoner out. This, of course, was exactly what Zellin wanted, everything was designed to make use of the Doctor's penchant for rescuing people. It's not entirely clear WHY Zellin - who has complete control of the space station and use of its technology - needed the Doctor to do this, but I'm willing to give that a pass on the basis of the people who made it built it to (successfully!) contain the power of what is essentially a God, so presumably it was designed in a way that he couldn't get involved in the orb/planets themselves or end up trapped in there himself. Revealed as Zellin's more sadistic and powerful partner, Rakaya revels in her freedom, and we get a nicely novel (and budget saving!) animated section where they recount the story of the eons they spent toying with the inhabitants of two planets tricking them into warring with each other and causing untold death and devastation. Eventually though their "toys" got smart, figured out what was going on and managed to trick and trap Rakaya using their own planets to power the prison. It's pretty loving metal, these people found out that "God" was real, decided to gently caress God up for causing bad things... and pulled it off!  It's sadly here where the episode's main threads should all come together and lead into a resolution. Technically speaking they do, but not in a particularly satisfying way. Zellin and Rakaya put the Doctor into the same nightmare trance to feed off her fear and despair as they are with the other prisoners, telling her before she goes under they intend to start with Earth as they return to their old ways of devastating planets for their amusement. They travel to Earth and Rakaya gently chides Zellin for wanting to just gorge, having enough control to note that it will be far more satisfying to take their time and savor the despair for thousands of years. Clever writing here would show how the Doctor escapes, how Tahira being the source of the creatures that attacked in Aleppo could be turned against Zellin and Rakaya, how Ryan would give Tibo the confidence to put himself out there, how Yaz would face up to the memory of a dark point in her life, how Graham would come to grips with the fact his grief remains etc. But of course, all of this does happen, just not in a particularly satisfying way. The Doctor, after a brief dream of the Timeless Child (ugh) just... wakes up, then flips out her sonic and breaks out. The creature from Aleppo backs up the Doctor and company against Zellin and Rakaya, with Yaz loudly declaring that Tahira "literally conquered her fear" which is... not something we ever saw happen. They just... they just say it happened. The Doctor sends Zellin's fingers that were being used on the prisoners back to be used on Zellin and Rakaya instead (why wouldn't they have control over those, even if the Doctor had soniced them?) and, using the tech from the space station in a handwavey way sends both of them back inside of the prison dome screaming in terror being menaced by Tahira's monster, trapped in their own nightmare. It's a... fitting ending. Their arrogance and their own tools were used against them, and that's good, but it just wasn't particularly satisfying. The abruptness with which this plotline was resolved is bizarre, it almost feels like the writers (James and Chibnall) suddenly had to rush through 10 pages of content in 2. Part of that is down to Zellin not being particularly memorable as a villain beyond a creepy look, and Rakaya is even less so given how little time she actually has in the episode. Which isn't to say this is a bad episode, just not a particularly satisfying one. Where it is strongest, which is a rarity, is in Yaz's characterization/back story. We eventually get the full story, of how 3 years before this she was miserable and upset and ran away from home, and her sister was so concerned for her safety (her ongoing concern to mark the "anniversary" makes me wonder if Yaz was suicidal, or at least in a position where her sister thought she might be) and called the police. A police officer named Anita found her, spoke to her, treated her like a person, and made her a bet: if in three years she still thought that there was no possible future or that things couldn't get better, Anita would give her £50, but if Anita was right to be optimistic then Yaz would ower her 50p. Yaz of course clearly took Anita's speech to heart, given that when we first meet her she is in probationary period as a police officer herself, and everything we have seen from her so far shows Yaz doing all the kind of community policing work that SHOULD be the role model work that police do: helping people, talking to people, being empathetic and resolving conflicts peacefully, making people feel heard or supported or safe etc. It's rare to see this (properly) demonstrated in media portrayals of policing in television, because it's not exactly sexy or exciting or dramatic, but it shows why Yaz has found the Doctor's life so appealing and even why the Doctor likes Yaz so much. She visits Anita to give her the 50p she owes her, delighting Anita who of course does remember her, inviting her in for tea. It's a shame that the other storylines don't get the resolution they should. Tibo's wrap-up is nice, showing him attending a session with other men who similar issues to himself, where he finds out that he is not alone. The episode's got a great intended message, on the importance of talking through your problems, of reminders that things do get better, that you don't have to be a prisoner of your fears (unless you're an Elder God Abomination!) etc. It struggles to pull it off effectively, with Tahira in particular largely feeling extraneous beyond the Aleppo connection and her resolution happening completely off-screen.   I feel like a broken record at points, and part of why it has taken so long to run through write-ups for this run on the show is that I feel like I'm often saying the same thing. There is potential in Chris Chibnall's era of running Doctor Who, but it never really realizes it. There are talented actors, great intentions, a welcome embracing of diversity both on-screen and behind the scenes, the germ of good ideas, plots that COULD be developed into something special. But it never quite manages to pull it off, with even the best episodes having flaws that largely require the viewer to deliberately try to ignore or forget those parts to keep them from pulling down the good. Chibnall has a set of familiar tricks in his toolbox, and he's far from alone in this, both RTD and Moffat often went back to the same well too. But the execution of these ideas matter, and where RTD and Moffat could (usually, not always) make these work, for Chibnall they fall flat more often than not. Which is, you know, a drat shame, because on paper I really like a lot of his ideas and I want them to work. But how many times can I say that? Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Feb 14, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 16:06
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Jerusalem posted:I feel like a broken record at points, and part of why it has taken so long to run through write-ups for this run on the show is that I feel like I'm often saying the same thing. There is potential in Chris Chibnall's era of running Doctor Who, but it never really realizes it. There are talented actors, great intentions, a welcome embracing of diversity both on-screen and behind the scenes, the germ of good ideas, plots that COULD be developed into something special. But it never quite manages to pull it off, with even the best episodes having flaws that largely require the viewer to deliberately try to ignore or forget those parts to keep them from pulling down the good. Chibnall has a set of familiar tricks in his toolbox, and he's far from alone in this, both RTD and Moffat often went back to the same well too. But the execution of these ideas matter, and where RTD and Moffat could (usually, not always) make these work, for Chibnall they fall flat more often than not. Which is, you know, a drat shame, because on paper I really like a lot of his ideas and I want them to work. But how many times can I say that? Seventeen more times, by my count.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:17
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Edward Mass posted:Seventeen more times, by my count. This legit gave me a moment of dread before I went and counted and it's "only" 13. That's only a single (RTD first run) season!
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Feb 13, 2024 16:31
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Reading that review of Can You Hear Me? (Jerusalem, you have “can your hear me?”) makes me realize how drat easy a fix would have been. Cut a bit to create the time to do this: The Doctor’s in her nightmare, when she gets rescued by herself. Maybe bring Jo Martin back, maybe use Jodie. She wakes up. We see her realize something and move to help the others. Cue a scene inside every other nightmare where we see a second version of the victim appear. In every case, the second person reassures the first from the perspective of the future: Yaz tells herself what will happen, Graham reassures himself that he can still love and lose, but the love is worth the loss, etc. And in the big confrontation, Thirteen reminds the two Eternals that unlike them, their victims can change and grow over time. They can learn, they can heal, they can become new people. Their experiences since these moments of nightmare turned them into people who could help themselves as they were then. But the two villains can’t change or grow; they’re trapped as they are forever. Cue the two getting trapped together. Then end the episode with the Doctor giving everyone another week “off,” and joining them this time. Thematically powerful, fixes the “how’d they escape” question, and has the Doctor win by realizing something about herself.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:41
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I had forgotten every single thing about this episode. Legitimately as I was reading that review I vaguely recall watching it, but it's like a distant memory of something in the fog.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:54
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Every fact about The Tsuranga Conundrum flees my brain when I try to think about it. Most unmemorable episode I have ever watched.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:19
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SirSamVimes posted:Every fact about The Tsuranga Conundrum flees my brain when I try to think about it. Most unmemorable episode I have ever watched. That's the one with... the... thing that eats stuff? And Brett Goldstein dies. I think?
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Feb 13, 2024 17:21
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Fil5000 posted:That's the one with... the... thing that eats stuff? It's literally Stitch from Lilo And Stitch. That always gets me.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:22
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I know for a fact that I’ve seen the entirety of Chibnall’s run, but almost every time I see one of these reviews, it’s like it’s the first time I’m even hearing about the episode. It’s amazing that an era of the show can be so forgettable.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:52
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I remember actually being pretty heartbroken with the Chibnall era, because I thought I'd outgrown what was my favourite TV show. It took the RTD specials to make me realize the show had just gone in a direction that didn't appeal to me* temporarily. *Anyone.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:58
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Diabolik900 posted:I know for a fact that I’ve seen the entirety of Chibnall’s run, but almost every time I see one of these reviews, it’s like it’s the first time I’m even hearing about the episode. It’s amazing that an era of the show can be so forgettable. I remembered the opening and then couldn't remember another thing about the episode. Which probably means it's one of the better Chibnall episodes.
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Feb 13, 2024 18:05
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Diabolik900 posted:I know for a fact that I’ve seen the entirety of Chibnall’s run, but almost every time I see one of these reviews, it’s like it’s the first time I’m even hearing about the episode. It’s amazing that an era of the show can be so forgettable. It’s the same for me, honestly. The Tsuranga Something was mentioned just now and 2/3rds of the title has already slipped out of my head (I’m posting via Awful app so I can’t just easily scroll back). I was going to say how I don’t know what story that was at all, and would need to look it up, but when I can’t even recall the title fully… 
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Feb 13, 2024 18:42
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Conundrum!
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Feb 13, 2024 18:43
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I always remember it as "The Tsuranga Continuum" so yep.
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Feb 13, 2024 18:45
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We love the live-action
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Feb 13, 2024 18:51
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Yeah, the entirety of Chibnall's run feels like how I describe the werewolf monologue from that episode, lol. I remember enjoying parts of it while I watched it, though? But these episode titles and summaries feel like AI writing for Big Finish or something.
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Feb 13, 2024 18:58
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Jerusalem posted:This legit gave me a moment of dread before I went and counted and it's "only" 13. That's only a single (RTD first run) season! Oh yeah, Flux is six episodes. I forgot!
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Feb 13, 2024 20:21
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Bicyclops posted:But these episode titles and summaries feel like AI writing for Big Finish or something. I keep coming back to this thought that Chibnall used AI in the writing of episodes. Power of the Doctor felt like the most obvious one, but also bits of Flux too. If I didn't know that ChatGPT was launched only as recently as Nov 2022, I'd be giving it some serious consideration.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:24
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The_Doctor posted:I keep coming back to this thought that Chibnall used AI in the writing of episodes. Power of the Doctor felt like the most obvious one, but also bits of Flux too. If I didn't know that ChatGPT was launched only as recently as Nov 2022, I'd be giving it some serious consideration. I'll literaly never say this again but I think you're being harsh on ChatGPTs writing ability.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:22
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As someone who’s industry is being taken over by GPT, it’s really not. If anything, even Chibnall’s trash is still slightly above your average GPT response.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:27
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I don't know what the difference between phony scifi words and names and stuff where they sound right, and where they sound like phony nonsense, but a lot of the Chibnall stuff falls on the bad end of it.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:22
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What, you're telling me you have trouble remembering names like the Chintlonians?
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Feb 13, 2024 23:11
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Clouseau posted:I don't know what the difference between phony scifi words and names and stuff where they sound right, and where they sound like phony nonsense, but a lot of the Chibnall stuff falls on the bad end of it. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos stands out, it sounds phony and yet RTD could make "The Shadow Proclamation" sound really loving cool and ominous and intriguing when it SHOULD sound like a title even George Lucas would reject for being "too on the nose".
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Feb 13, 2024 23:47
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There were too many proper nouns in episode titles during the Chibnall era. What's wrong with calling an episode something like "The Eaters of Light"?
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Feb 13, 2024 23:54
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Narsham posted:Reading that review of Can You Hear Me? (Jerusalem, you have “can your hear me?”) Whoops! Thanks! Narsham posted:Then end the episode with the Doctor giving everyone another week “off,” and joining them this time. I really like that idea. Something I thought was good was that the Doctor initially keeping things from the companions got called out by them and she opened herself up a bit more to them in a way that felt natural. So to show her obvious discomfort at being alone (and the parallels with Tibo) at the start of the episode but then to end it with her refusing to engage with Graham on a more open level and continuing to retreat from confronting her concerns/being introspective by chasing another adventure with the "fam" felt like a misstep to me.
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Feb 14, 2024 02:55
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So I think for me the one time 13's personality really comes together is in It Takes You Away, and a lot of it involves stuff which sits well with bits which otherwise don't work brilliantly elsewhere. You've got the bit where she says she's drawing a map, but that's for the blind girl's benefit, and she's actually writing a message to Ryan about what to do if the fam don't come back from the other side of the mirror - which both sells the idea that the Doctor sees a danger here that we don't yet fully appreciate, and is also an example of that social awkwardness/indirectness/lying and secret-keeping. (More or less all the lies 13 tells the fam come down to her pretending nothing's the matter when it very much is, which is exactly what happens with the chalk writing in terms of pretending to the kid that things are better than they really are.) You've got the parts where she's largely standing around observing what's going on in the mirror world on the other side of the gap realm, and giving Yaz that anecdote about her grandmothers, where you've got the eccentricity and weirdness she'd come out with in moments where she opened up a bit. You have that conversational fencing when she's trying to get the humans to reject the Solitract and/or the Solitract to reject them, where she is being apparently passive but is actually steering things quite well, even to the point where she's being a bit no-filter and harsh. (A riff on The Curse of Fenric's climax, of course, but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.) And you have the frog conversation itself, which illustrates that 13 is the sort of person who might struggle to find the right words to say she'd like to have tea with her human friends, but is entirely willing to befriend an utterly alien intelligence manifested as an unconvincing frog. (I actually think the bad effects on the frog are thematically appropriate, because of course it's not really a frog, it's an uncanny valley representation of one.) And then boom, that's it. The high water mark of her run in terms of making her feel like the Doctor, in her first season, in what AIUI was one of the first episodes filmed. You had the moment, right there, when it should have all come together and become a model to use going forwards, but just like every other time Chibnall needed to make a decision taking into account the big picture rather than the minutiae of a particular story, he whiffed it.
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Feb 14, 2024 03:21
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Yeah, she's great in It Takes You Away, which is itself a great episode. It's almost cruel (but necessary) the way she gives up on trying to get the deadbeat dad to do the right thing himself and with complete deliberation destroys his little bullshit paradise by making his "wife" reject him in order to befriend the Doctor instead.
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Feb 14, 2024 03:28
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I feel specifically Season 12 kinda runs off my mind and I wonder how much of that is the stink of the Timeless Children on everything. Season 11 at least had Demons and Rosa and I liked The Witchfinder quite a bit and It Takes You Away and so on and so forth, fun times here and there if not anything exceptional. Season 12 is also nothing exceptional but also a few notable misses.
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Feb 14, 2024 10:26
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I really like It Takes You Away but good god it doesn't need Kevin Eldon's mugging. I love the guy, I'm 99% of the time happy to see him show up in things but his whole section feels like something crowbarred in to pad the run time when you could have just done more stuff with the actual plot and characters that are central to the episode.
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Feb 14, 2024 10:40
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Fil5000 posted:I really like It Takes You Away but good god it doesn't need Kevin Eldon's mugging. I love the guy, I'm 99% of the time happy to see him show up in things but his whole section feels like something crowbarred in to pad the run time when you could have just done more stuff with the actual plot and characters that are central to the episode. Does he play the weird, totally unexplained alien that guides them?
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Feb 14, 2024 11:01
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Yep, that's him.
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Feb 14, 2024 11:04
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Maxwell Lord posted:I feel specifically Season 12 kinda runs off my mind and I wonder how much of that is the stink of the Timeless Children on everything. Season 11 at least had Demons and Rosa and I liked The Witchfinder quite a bit and It Takes You Away and so on and so forth, fun times here and there if not anything exceptional. Season 12 is also nothing exceptional but also a few notable misses. Series 12 has the issue where Chibnall is trying really really hard to do a season arc (which he just plain didn't do in series 11 and I think he thought that was why people weren't onboard), but he doesn't seem to give a poo poo about anything not in the arc. So the Timeless Child and stuff adjacent to that (the Master, the Lone Cyberman, the Fugitive Doctor) stands out and nothing else does.
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Feb 14, 2024 12:23
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Just watched It Takes You Away and it's the closest this season has been to good.
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Feb 14, 2024 12:25
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SirSamVimes posted:Just watched It Takes You Away and it's the closest this season has been to good. And even then it's kind of poo poo.
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Feb 14, 2024 13:58
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SirSamVimes posted:Just watched It Takes You Away and it's the closest this season has been to good. Well drat, I remember nothing about this episode. So I guess I better give it re watch here this week.. Never thought I'd want to. Then again, can it be worse than my minuet relisten?
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Feb 14, 2024 14:20
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I dunno if anyone's been following Steve Thompson's career since leaving Doctor Who/Sherlock -- tbh why would you, he wasn't a very good writer -- but I saw this drop about his new Apple Show and it's made me realise that the man's been remaking versions of Sherlock for the last ten years. Sherlock-but-it's-Da-Vinci. Sherlock-but-it's-Freud. Now it's Sherlock-but-it's-young-sex-maths-man, I guess. What a hack. Also, speaking of former Moffat writers and their new Apple shows, scuttlebutt is that Peter Harness's new thing (Constellation) is gonna be employing both Mathew Sweet (a lot of BF audios and a genuinely good writer/historian in his own right) and Robert Shearman(!?), but I've not found anything remotely official about either. Something to keep an eye on though. McGann posted:Well drat, I remember nothing about this episode. So I guess I better give it re watch here this week.. Never thought I'd want to. Then again, can it be worse than my minuet relisten? This didn't end up being a laugh? Shame about the recommendation, I figured you might find it funny in a sort of camp/ironic way like I found it to be when I dipped back into it last year. Sorry and condolences my goon.
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Feb 14, 2024 16:16
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McGann posted:Well drat, I remember nothing about this episode. So I guess I better give it re watch here this week.. Never thought I'd want to. Then again, can it be worse than my minuet relisten? Note: It's not good, just the least bad.
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Feb 14, 2024 16:37
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Jerusalem posted:Season 12 Episode 7: Can You Hear Me? I know for a fact I saw this episode, doubly, I know I watched it last year, but it has completely slid off my brain and I do not recall anything about it. Reading through your recap only brought up a vague memory
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Feb 14, 2024 20:28
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jisforjosh posted:I know for a fact I saw this episode, doubly, I know I watched it last year, but it has completely slid off my brain and I do not recall anything about it. Reading through your recap only brought up a vague memory The Chris Chibnall Who Experience.
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Feb 14, 2024 20:31
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