There being nothing to do in the evenings under Covid-19
I’ve been forcing myself to watch Doctor who Series 11 to see if it was as bad
as its reputation…
The Woman Who Fell to Earth
There’s some beautiful location filming in this series … and Tzim-Sha /
Tim Shaw is a new and interesting villain.
The death of Grace and Graham’s decision to join the Tardis crew to run
away from his grief takes the program in a new direction. It’s a really interesting idea having a
police officer in the Tardis but …this goes nowhere much. Tim Shaw goes from being a deadly threat who
glues teeth to his face to somebody a bit pathetic…and the problem with that
is…
The Ghost Monument
A race for money where the winner gets rich and the losers
get marooned on a baron plant with lots of sand dunes. A nice idea but … are words that often come
to mind in this new era of Doctor Who … but despite being set in a blazing
desert it’s all really dark One
character tells the Doctor how his granny made him jump out of a tree and break
his leg to teach him not to trust anybody.
Terrific. I mean we expect horror
…but there’s a line between horror and just being depressing. None
of this is helped by the music. Murray
Gold’s scores used to shout “We’re going on an adventure!” From the opening dirge of a theme tune the
music is now sombre, grim and … a bit drab...
On the other hand the visuals are terrific. Having made the decision to film abroad
you’ve got to hand it to the production team for putting all the money on the
screen… on the other hand does the audience really care if it’s in South Africa
or a Dorset Quarry?
Then again maybe going abroad is actually cheaper than a lot
of CGI.
Or perhaps they fancied a holiday…
There’s something of a linking theme to the previous episode
with it being explained that the planet the participants in the game have come
from have been ravaged by Tzim-Sha’s Stenza.
I thought we’d perhaps see more of the Stenza but no, that goes nowhere…
Art Malik is memorable as the amoral financier
of the race to the “Ghost Monunment” …but we don’t learn much about what really
drives him.
For reasons I still don’t understand the planet where the
race takes place is inhabited by a bunch of homicidal bandages called the
Remnants who tell the Doctor “We see deeper though, further back,’. ‘The
Timeless Child… we see what’s hidden, even from yourself. The outcast, abandoned
and unknown…’” completely giving away the denouement of series 12 a mere 18
episodes early. Oh so that’s why
everyone could see it coming…
The Doctor was the Timeless Child along …who knew? Homicidal bandages. At the end of the episode the new Tardis crew
of Ryan, Graham and Yasmin elect to go travelling with the Doctor … and she
warns them that although she’s happy to take them to see the Universe they’ll
never be the same again.
If only that was true…
Rosa
Next the Doctor goes back in time to investigate a strange
artron energy outbreak around Rosa Parks.
This is an alien-tries-to-change-the-past story. The alien is a man from the future called
Krasko who has a vortex manipulator like Captain Jack’s and is sort of like …
an evil racist Captain Jack.
Now it seems a bit clunky that racism seems to be Krasko’s
only motivation for changing history but there’s a clever twist in that he has
a limiter in his brain and so cannot commit an actual act of violence. Therefore he is stuck finding abstract ways to
create chaos and sabotaging the past is sort of something he’s thought of to do
to stave off boredom. This really helps
the narrative as the Doctor and her companions and Krasko have to out-think
each other rather than out-fight each other.
At last we lose the sonic screwdriver for a bit and have a battle of
wits rather than some wand waving. For
example Krasko arranges for James F. Blake to have the day off to go fishing so
he won’t be driving the bus and then when that doesn’t work tries to figure out
ways to make the bus less full so that Rosa won’t be asked to move.
This all gives the Doctor and her companions an excuse to
“investigate” Rosa which gives Ryan a chance to meet Martin Luther King etc…
and gradually by these “corrections” to history having to be applied we see
more and more of the Rosa in the context of the world around her. There are some great scenes such as Yasmin
and Ryan having to hide from the police rather than alien threats. And there’s a really good pay off at the end
when the Tardis crew realise that in order to “correct” history they have to basically
re-make a racist incident happen and what that means…
On the downside there’s no getting round that Krasko doesn't seem as interesting a time meddler as for example...
the Monk (Peter Butterworth's misplaced ideas about "improving" history were a great motivation)
Lynx the Sontaran (who messed up history without really caring about it – and when the Doctor offered to take him home he refused to take up the offer out of sheer pig-headedness)
Lynx the Sontaran (who messed up history without really caring about it – and when the Doctor offered to take him home he refused to take up the offer out of sheer pig-headedness)
Magnus Greel (who just wants to go home and makes himself a "God" to do it)
Or Scaroth (who is pushing the human race forwards in order to fix his ship... improving society for cynical reasons)
Then again these are tough acts to follow ... I suppose Krasko's kind of like a cross between the Monk and Captain Jack but without the redeeming qualities... Maybe this wouldn't matter if there were more stand out baddies in other stories...
Arachnids in the UK
Firstly …this isn’t a scientifically plausible reason for
the spiders growing so big so fast… Yes, I know it's fantasy but the thing that makes the cybermen work so well is they had a basis in real science - what is the real science here? And secondly it wasn’t really something
that Mr Robertson could have forseen so you don’t feel anything for him?
Okay, he’s a bit of an upmarket Arthur Daley
but that’s not really ...
Furthermore having found all these giant spiders the Doctor
doesn’t come up with a solution like taking them to another planet or finding
them a new home …but seems to be quite happy killing them. She explains that the spiders are too big to be
viable organisms… and that they will die … and seems happy for them to die
slowly. Conversely Robertson’s solution
is just to shoot them. Which actually
seems kinder. And he does. Which makes the Doctor redundant. Which ends the story. And there’s no twist or consequences. The story just ends flatly. And with a great deal of ambiguous morality ... I'm not even sure what the political message is ...
Yasmin’s mum Najia Khan also works at the hotel but this
doesn’t progress the plot one iota. We
do actually see quite a bit of Yasmin’s family in this series. She has a sister who she looks down on and parents
who wonder where she’s going all the time but …so what? It isn’t that they haven’t tried to give
these characters back stories …they just don’t seem connected to the main plot or to move anything else along so the scenes drag….
The Tsuranga Conundrum
The Doctor and crew get stuck on a hospital ship with a
retired female military general and a man who is about to give birth to a
child. This is a base under siege story
with the twist that instead of the base being invaded and the cast being killed
off one by one it’s the base it’s self that gets destroyed part by part by a
creature called a Pting – a tiny bug eyed monster. “No Pting has ever been kept in captivity due
to their ability to eat through anything…”
The science in this series of Doctor Who is clearly in the Douglas Adams
arena of playful nonsense.
I quite liked
the idea of the Pting (although it's about as frightening as a teddy bear which kills any threat) and the storyline of a man having a baby but it did seem a bit close
to the plot of Red Dwarf Series II episode "Parallel Universe" which
frankly did male pregnancy better 20 years earlier.
The thing is …that although there are all these comedy ideas
it’s not really played as a comedy … There’s a bit of character development for
Ryan as he talks “Yoss” into not giving his son away for adoption. This is informed by Ryan’s resentment at his
lack of a relationship with his absent father …which may also explain Ryan’s
resentment of Graham and his reluctance to call him grandfather.
The trouble is with three companion characters
and three sets of back stories to keep up with it’s easy to just lose all these
plot threads. The hospital ship is a
fantastic piece of visual design.
Demons of the Punjab
1947 India. Partition
is bad. We go back in time to meet
Yasmin’s grandmother and see her first husband be rubbed out. Some “Demons” turn up who turn out to be some
kind of death tourists “witnessing” people at the moment of their
departure. This would be interesting if
it wasn’t almost exactly the same plot twist as used in “Twice Upon A Time”.
And yes it’s another story where the Doctor
is almost incidental to the plot …something that is interesting once or twice a
series but we’re gradually moving from “Doctor Who” into “Doctor Who cares”.
The
alien threat element really is totally superfluous here – even more so even
than in Rosa … so why even bother? Just
go full historical? The story would
possibly pack more emotional punch if we’d met Yasmin’s grandmother in a
previous episode but she just turns up out of nowhere and…. Also the Doctor and Co turning up and
claiming to be relatives of relatives is just awkward… The 9th
Doctor did this sort of thing better in “Father’s Day”. Again some very nice scenery.
Kerblam!
Back to social satire and the Tardis crew respond to a
distress call at interplanetary retailer Kerblam! Which seems to have more than
a passing resemblance to Amazon. Someone
is killing off the workers. We meet
sinister bosses. It turns out to be an
inside job by a worker who is disgruntled at the lack of real people the firm
employs. The bosses turn out to be not
that sinister after all.
Interesting themes
are explored such a society where work has to be invented because it can all be
automated (very topical today with so many people on Furlough) and the satisfaction that comes from providing good customer service
being some kind of reward in its self.
However, when terrorist Charlie fails to blow up lots of innocent people
and instead kills himself and the bosses decide to up the number of real people
employed as a result one is left asking questions like … is the message of the
episode that terrorism actually works? Controversial. Once again we delve into moral grey areas but it kind of
works here. But maybe that's not a bad thing… And the Kerblam! men are strangely sinister –
more so because even the Doctor seems to be seduced by them.
The Witchfinders
The Doctor sternly warns her companions not to interfere
with history …then on seeing a witch being drowned decides to do just
that. Then to extricate herself from
being drowned as a witch for trying and failing to save the drowned witch the
Doctor passes herself off as the Witchfinder General.
At this point Alan Cummings appears as witchcraft obsessed
James I and then the fun really starts.
If anything the story is kinder to James than he deserves… as by all accounts James was a bit bonkers about
witchcraft in a rather sadistic way.
There’s some genuinely funny dialogue in this episode as
Graham has to pretend to be the Witchfinder General because James I can’t
accept a woman in the position. James I congratulating the Doctor on using her
“innate aptitude for nosiness and gossip” to uncover witches is a moment that
is worth having a female Doctor for. And
James complaining to Ryan that he’s had a rather rough childhood is a stand out
moment… what with his father being murdered by his mother (Mary Queen of Scots)
who was beheaded by Elizabeth I leaving him to be “raised by Regents. One was
assassinated, one died in battle, and another died in suspicious circumstances.
There have been numerous attempts to kidnap me, kill me or blow me up. It's a
miracle I'm still alive.” Yes, it’s the
James I comedy hour …but at the same time we see why he’s grown up so completely
paranoid. Cummings and Whittaker bring
out the best in each other in this episode…
Oh yes and somewhere along the way it turns out the village
has been invaded by monsters made of mud who have escaped from a tree … but who
cares about that. At last Jodie’s
starting to look and sound like the Doctor – perhaps because she actually has
something concrete to do in this episode.
She reminds me a bit of Peter Davison.
She’s very inoffensive and sometimes that works well and sometimes it’s
flat… I think it depends who she has to play off of…
It Takes You Away
The Doctor and Co go for a walk in Norway where they visit a
dilapidated hut where a blind child called Hanne seems to be abandoned by her
father Erik who has fooled her there are monsters outside with the use of loud
speakers so she doesn’t get attacked by bears.
There’s a mirror you can walk through when it’s in the right
mood – like Alice Through the Looking Glass / Warriors Gate. This leads to a place called the Anti-Zone a
bizarre grim world filled with killer moths and inhabited by a creature called
Ribbons (Kevin Eldon completely unrecognisable beneath some fantastic make up
and prosthetics... these are so good that ...well see right...).
The Tolkienesque
Ribbons who conducts his grim existence as a series of knifepoint negotiations
is probably the best thing about this episode.
But why is he there? We never
discover. Not that it matters… Beyond
the mirror is a parallel world created by a consciousness called the Solitract
where Erik’s dead wife is still alive.
So is Graham’s wife Grace. Except
they’re not they’re forms the Solitract has taken to trap them in its dimension…
It turns out Graham is carrying a pendant in the shape of a
frog to remember Grace by which is …erm …okay … why not? … but then when Graham
and Erik see through the Solitract it decides to manifest its self to the
Doctor as a frog sat on an IKEA chair.
After that it’s very difficult to take the rest of the episode seriously
as it’s like having the universe threatened by Paul McCartney and the Frog
chorus…
There’s a good idea here but the execution is terrible. It’s like they don’t know how to write horror
or adventure. There's some fun whimsy too "the woolly rebellion" but it falls a bit flat because the tone of the show is so serious...
There’s some attempt to explore the different ways in which
Yasmin and Ryan relate to Hannah … Yasmin mentions her police training – wooo
character development! But who’s interested in that…
The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
The series closer … No, I’ve genuinely no idea what this one
is about. There’s a “race” of
Telekinetic people called the Ux except there are just the two of them – a
young black woman and an older white woman.
They lift lots of rocks in the air.
Tzim-Sha / Tim Shaw turns up and gets stuck on their planet
where he makes himself a kind of dictator.
Just to make the plot even more incomprehensible there’s a psychic field
that alters one's perception of reality and something you have to put on to not
go mad.
There’s a bloke called Paltraki but I’ve no idea what he’s
doing there. There are some angular
Perspex boxes containing buzzing things – I think these are meant to be planets
– and the Doctor lugs one around for a bit.
There’s a shrunken-planets-being-used-for-power plotline that feels as
though it’s been lifted from the Pirate Planet… sorry I mean homaged from…
Tzim-Sha is not very well and seems to be connected to
massive respirator … except for later when he’s wandering around just fine. Graham wants to kill Tzim-Sha (seems
reasonable to me) for killing Grace but the Doctor gets very cross and Ryan
talks him into imprisoning Tim instead in some stasis chambers that Tzim-Sha’s
put Paltraki’s crew in. They put the
planets back where they should be using psychic power, the Tardis and wires and
all go home. At least I think that’s
what happened…
Resolution
Some archaeologists dig up part of a long dead Dalek which
connects to its other parts and then sits on one of their backs and “drives
them”. This uncased Dalek look octopus-like. There was some controversy that this Dalek
was “female” or sounded female? Can’t
say I even noticed at the time… I mean they’re all just blobs …sometimes with
tentacles. I think Ace once explained
that … “Renegade Daleks are blobs. Imperial Daleks aren’t blobs – they’re
bionic blobs with bits added.” Since
when there have been the Daleks the 9th Doctor found which I think
were made out of human remains… like the ones Davros made at tranquil repose
…and Daleks Davros made out of his own cells.
And … who cares? It’s a Dalek to
me…
Having hijacked the archaeologist the Dalek goes off to make
a new steampunk casing and then shoots lots of soldiers… it’s a bit too similar
to the 9th Doctor story “Dalek”.
There’s a good joke about everyone at UNIT being laid off for financial
reasons and Ryan’s absent father turns up to save the day with a microwave
oven. So there is this subplot about
Ryan and his dad running through the series but you really have to dig for it …
and… it's not a bad story but it's ...not brilliant.
I have to admit this was all a bit of a slog…
All in all
It’s one thing
to have more laid back storytelling but I admit I got so bored during some of
the later episodes in the series that I went back to Series 1-4 to see how well
they stood up and there’s no comparison.
Midnight for instance is gripping from start to finish. Everything about the show says it wants to be
watched. Pre-title sequences, a trailer
for the next episode immediately after the end of episode sting and before the
titles… you can see Russell T Davis throwing the kitchen sink at the screen to
get people to tune in for the next instalment.
The pre-credits and pre-end-titles sequences in particular really knit the stories together as one continuing narrative...
Whereas with Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who it’s like …watch it if you fancy it…
I looked back over the
series credits and not only are there no actors carrying over from Peter
Capaldi’s era – what was wrong with Bill? – there’s no one else either. There’s no returning writers (apart from
Chibnall himself), no returning directors and completely different producers. You’d think they’d at least ask one of the
old writers back for the odd episode.
Or have somebody to give it an air of continuity...
Previously when there’s been a changeover of main cast it’s been staggered. Except when the 10th Doctor turned into the 11th and then we had River Song to ease the transition. The only time previously when all the
companions and the Doctor had been changed simultaneously (apart from the start of the new series) is at the end of 1969’s
The War Games when Patrick Troughton turned into Jon Pertwee and then the
audience had the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to ease the
transition.
Here the only actor
returning is Jodie and she was only in the last 2 minutes of series 10… there's literally no links to the past at all...
Terrance
Dicks used to say he got criticised for always having the same writers but
defended this by saying it was hard to break new writers in … John
Nathan-Turner tried lots of new writers with mixed results but he still had the
sense to get Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes to come back to write odd
stories. Chris Chibnall completely
changing all the writing staff is – to put it politely – very bold. Looking at their CVs they all seem to be very
serious writers … the kind of people who have serious plays put on and win the Verity
Bargate award … but …is that exactly what’s needed here…?
Maybe... oh what do I know...?
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