Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK

An up and down Halloween Special.

This episode falls into the category of okay. It’s thankfully absent Chibnall’s normal issues with pacing, but that appears to come at the expense of character development. It seems that if Chibnall can’t do character development through boring dialogue, he just doesn’t do it at all.

Story-wise, the Doctor manages to get, Ryan, Yas and Graham home, only to find that spiders in Sheffield have been acting weird and growing huge.

We get introduced to Yas’ family; her sister owns a phone, her dad is bad a cooking and her mum wants to know if Yas is seeing anyone. Like I said, the character development isn’t strong, but in terms of these characters this isn’t much of an issue.

Where it does become an issue is with the smart science lady whose name I’ve already forgotten. She is an entirely disposable character, but appears to get some of the Doctor’s dialogue when they discover what’s caused the giant spider problem.

Bradley Walsh continues to impress with the presentation of Graham’s grief and survivors’ guilt. The Doctor also gets some development, but her misunderstanding of what ‘seeing each other’ means feels borrowed from something Eleven would have said.

On that point, I’d usually bash the awful “science” that used to explain that a genetically engineered spider could mutate if exposed to toxic chemicals. Things that are toxic kill or injure you; they don’t make you stronger. However, I’m going to give Chibnall the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was a deliberate Halloween cliché of toxic waste creating a monster.

Now to the massive weakness of the episode; the Trump parody. I mean they even directly reference Trump when they talk about the hotel owner. Rather than being a character, he’s a caricature of an American businessman. He’s entirely cartoonish in his villainy, which really removes the suspension of disbelief.

The ending is also a bit stupid; I get that you have to get a “more scared of us” line in for the kids, but the radical shift to political commentary is just weird and out of place.

Overall not a bad episode, but could have done with focussing on being a Halloween special and not cramming an “important message” in at the end.

Doctor Who: Rosa

This is what happens when you relegate Chibnall to co-writer.

So Malorie Blackman seems to have really wanted to do a biopic of Rosa Parks, because why wouldn’t you. Given her long history of exploring social and ethical issues through sci-fi, she was probably the best person for this job.

Going out on a limb, I’d say that Chibnall’s input this episode was a case of in name only. Maybe he came up with the idea of the time-travelling racist. In the past, I’ve found Chibnall’s attempts to present social issues pretty ham-fisted.

So I’m going to give the credit for the unapologetic and bloody fearless depiction of 1955 Alabama. It’s a risk to tackle this topic in a family program, but I’ve got no complaints about it.

Ryan is put to extremely good use in this episode (unlike last week) as his attempt to help a white lady immediately sets the tone.

Vinette Robinson brings the titular Rosa to the screen brilliantly. When she steps in to defuse the situation with Ryan and the angry white man, she has a pitch perfect reservedness to her voice and mannerisms. You immediately get the message that she has to constantly walk on egg-shells or risk being arrested or shot.

Story-wise, unlike last week, everyone actually does something in this episode. The cast is actually put to good use. The racial element of the episode means that Ryan as a character actually has some fleshing out, unlike last week when he was just used (badly) as comic relief. Yasmin is also put to good use with her backstory linking the treatment of black people in 1955 to the treatment of Muslims in 2018.

Even Graham is part of this arc, as Bradley Walsh brings forward the horror of realising that he’s the extra white person who needs a seat.

The one fault in this episode is the villain. We’re never really given a motivation for his racism. He comes from the far future, where he was imprisoned in the Stormcage prison (the same prison that housed River Song) for some a vaguely defined act of genocide. He has been released by grace of the fact that he’s had a chip put in his head that prevents him from inflicting harm on others.

He’s not especially well defined beyond the bad guy and some of his dialogue does cross the line into moustache-twiddling. I’d put this down to keeping the focus on the Rosa Parks story line.

It’s very difficult to rate this episode as a Doctor Who episode. This is a far more comprehensive and important story than is normally told on this show. However the subject matter is something that everyone should pay attention to.

Overall, an important episode and very well written one at that.

Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument

Classic Chibnall…but that’s not a good thing.

Okay, good points first: the new title sequence is  a great call back to the classic era and the new TARDIS looks great. Not 100%, but I’m pretty sure that the new console has a spinning version of the exterior built into it that indicates how hard the engines are working.

But alas, as feared, Chibnall strikes with his regular issues. Namely, SO MUCH TALKING.

But anyway, the plot.

The Doctor and her new friends have been transported into space, following her attempt to locate the TARDIS. They survive by virtue of two intergalactic ralliers picking them up having mistaken them for bargaining chips. It’s gradually revealed that the finish line for the rally is a mysterious blue box that appears and disappears every thousand years.

So basically, the set up is that everyone is racing each other to the TARDIS.

Here’s where the problem starts; Chibnall cannot write filler dialogue in action/sci-fi. Broadchurch works so well because 99% of the story is driven by the emotional drama. There’s once sequence, where DI Hardy tries to chase down the suspected murderer, but most of the drama flows from evoking emotion through exposition.

You cannot use the same method when writing a story about a death race. I mean seriously; they set up these massive stakes and then we spend what feels like a an age on a boat talking about how bad cameos number 1 & 2 ’s lives are. Then we get a point where we think there might be a double cross when one of them suggests that everyone should go to sleep. Then everyone wakes up and discovers that everything’s fine. Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that Chibnall got bored of his own exposition but didn’t know how to end the scene, so literally put everyone to sleep.

This problem stands throughout; there’s no flow to the conversations that the characters have. They talk to each other and say things because the plot requires it, not because it comes naturally out of their personalities.

The attempts at light comedy fall completely flat in this episode. I’m not sure who to blame for the utter failure of using Ryan as comic relief. Well, actually, you could probably blame everyone. Chibnall’s script doesn’t lend itself to comedic interruptions, Mark Tonderai’s direction appears to have been  “it’s really hot out here; use the first take” and finally, Tosin Cole just does not have the comedic chops for the job.

Chibnall’s also forgotten the primary rule of visual story-telling; show, don’t tell. If all the characters are talking and then an army of killer robots appears behind them, the audience is made aware of the killer robots appearance by the sight of them. We do not need Bradley Walsh to say “they weren’t there a minute ago.”

Patronising your audience is not a good way to get them to tune in next week.

This is exactly the type of thing I worried about when it was announced that Chibnall was taking over. There is a complete absence of tension created by the lack of pacing. There is nothing natural about the dialogue or the characters’ interactions and the resolution at the end doesn’t match either of guest characters’ motivations.

Classic Chibnall; poor effort.

Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

Oh  - I didn’t do a review of Twice Upon a Time…it wasn’t good.

This is an okay start.

It doesn’t exactly hit the high of The Eleventh Hour, but surprisingly very little of that has to do with Chris Chibnall.

So let’s get the controversy surrounding Jodie Whittiker out of the way early. I did have my apprehensions about this casting decision and the effects it would have on the show’s viewership. I mean it’s a pretty massive risk to cast someone from Yorkshire as the Doctor. Peter Capaldi’s Scottish accent was one thing, but making the Doctor native to a specific region of England was always going to upset some of the fanbase.

Whittiker does pretty well, despite the forces seemingly conspiring against her. Her immediate post-regenerative ramblings appear to be channelling the Tenth Doctor, which makes sense both in the context of the show’s canon and the fact that Whittiker herself is friends with David Tennant.

The supporting cast are all okay; but at this point are in solid generic-sound-board for the Doctor mode.

Moving on to the plot of the episode, it does okay at setting things up but suffers from Chibnall’s inability to pace sci-fi/action. His strengths play to drama (see series one of Broadchurch) however, too much talking between action just kills the pacing.

On a more specific note, Chibnall doesn’t seem to have heard of subverting expectations, as the characters that die in this episode might as well come with a count down clock. Loving Grandmother who’s been absent form most of the set photos and promotional material; yeah she’s not going to make it; a grandfather working hard on a construction site (no doubt a few days from retirement), dead.

On the point of the grandmother, are we ever going to see Ryan vlogging again, because I’m going to take a guess that this is going to be Bill’s imaginary mum all over again.

These things make the episode a bit annoying, but there’s something that comes close to killing it.

Someone was paid to score this episode.

Of all things I was worried about, the music was not something I thought would be irking me. I mean come on; the main action scene of the third act is scored to this border-line placid tune, that carries absolutely no tension what so ever.

The biggest sin in this regard is Whittiker’s ‘Doctor moment.’ The first time she says the words, “I’m the Doctor” there’s barely a pick up in the music. Remember the build up in The Christmas Invasion, as we zoomed into the TARDIS doors to reveal Ten; remember the increase in tempo before Eleven stepped through the hologram of all his past-selves?

When a character as epic as The Doctor announces themself for the first time, the music has got to be there to back them up.

The same goes for killing off Ryan’s nan. She’s falling to her death and the score just kind of chortles on like we’re watching someone arranging paperclips.

The props department has something to answer for with that sonic screwdriver too. Let’s just say that someone from Lovehoney’s development team appears to have got a job at the BBC recently.

Come on; we're all thinking it

Overall, on the story level the episode is okay; if quite predictable. But on a technical level it’s an incomplete puzzle. This is the point at which I should already have the Doctor’s new theme music stuck in my head; I’m still wondering what the theme music is. This might seem nit-picky, but this show is going through a significant shift (to a Doctor from Yorkshire) so this kind of phoned-in performance on the post-production is the last thing that’s needed.