Bad…just bad.
Is it really necessary to elaborate further than this.
Okay then.
Spyfall Part 1.
Sacha Dhawan works really hard to try and save a dumpster
fire, by ending the episode with a fantastic John Simm impression.
This is the kind of episode that would have been described
as average in the Tennant era.
Coincidentally, characters like Ryan and Yas consistently describe the Tenth
Doctor, when talking about the Thirteenth. When they’re about to try going
undercover in Lenny Henry’s evil Facebook rip off, they talk about how she
walks into places like she owns them. Thirteen has never walked in somewhere
like she owned it, if anything she’s been consistently left in the background
of her own show. This comes off like a script that Russell T Davies turned down
when he was in charge and that Chibnall re-purposed.
Oh and acknowledging the fact that Graham is just there it
state the obvious doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a trope of lazy writing.
Spyfall Part 2.
One giant plot hole with a deus ex machina sat on top of it.
The Doctor finds herself thrown around time to meet some
famous women so she can gush about them (and avoid the awkward issue of the
real life horrific death of one of them).
Sacha Dhawan continues his battle against the terrible
writing, by being the only positive thing in the episode.
The Doctor then resolves the crisis and banishes the
invading aliens from a different universe, by using time travel to insert fail
safes into the Master’s space bending devices.
That’s a basic paradox, which has been established as something
the Doctor cannot do; as soon as the Doctor becomes part of events, she cannot
use time travel to alter them, as she would remove the reason for altering them
in the first place and thus never have used time travel to alter them at all.
The reason that this has been historically worked into the
canon of the show is that allowing the Doctor to reverse an opponent’s plan
with time travel means that the Doctor could solve any problem with time
travel. This was the main joke in the parody ‘The Curse of the Fatal Death”
with the Doctor and Master constantly jumping through time to set traps for
each other.
Although I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that
Chibnall didn’t just have the sonic screwdriver save the day like normal.
Orphan 55
Move over Greta Grunberg, move and you Elton Musk, Ed Hime
has some thoughts on climate change and they’re every bit as profound as ‘it’s
bad.’
Just when I was worried that the hamfistedness of series 11
might have left us, he’s swung in with a mixture of finger waggling and condescension
that would give even the most stereotypical of school masters a run for their
money.
The resounding
message is ‘change or we’ll all turn into horrific predators who breathe carbon
dioxide.’
And ‘pay attention to your kids or they’ll turn up at your
day spa to bomb it’
Also, how much of a dickhead is the Doctor in this episode? Crazy
owner lady and her daughter fight off the monsters by themselves so the Doctor
and co (sorry ‘fam’) can escape and the Doctor starts off on a lecture about looking
after the planet, after being asked what will happen to them.
You have a ship that bends time and space; fire it up and go
save the people who are fighting an army of monsters to protect you. Or just
insult the intelligence and morality of the audience.
Forget the climate change message; would any of other
version of this character just leave two people to be horrifically murdered
liked that in order to deliver a ‘powerful message’?
This tips the episode from being a hamfisted attempt at
commentary to an insult directed at it’s audience and main character.
