Doctor Who - Revolution of the Daleks

When you’re good at something, never do it for free…and Chris Chibnall is good at being a terrible writer.  

Does anyone remember ‘Heaven Sent’, where the Doctor escaped a literally inescapable prison that was designed specifically for him? Well apparently, that prison was nothing next to the one that River Song escaped from on a weekly basis. 

 But that’s by the by; there’s far worse things about this episode. Starting at the beginning, having destroyed all of the continuity that was created by far more competent writers of the past, Chibnall has now even turned on his own past entries. 

Last year he turned in a New Year’s Day special, which could be described as ‘not terrible.’ It wasn’t good, but at the very least it was superior to the usual drivel that he normally scrawls on the back of cigarette packet five minutes before a deadline. 

 Seemingly not content with having demonstrated something approaching competence 12 months ago, Chibnall now takes the opportunity to retrospectively lower the quality of his one passible script. Once again the catalyst for the action is the Doctor’s incompetence; she apparently just left a Dalek shell to be picked up by anyone. 

 Keeping with this theme, no one on Earth remembers the multiple Dalek invasions; you know when they burst out of a void in Canary Warf and killed millions of people, and when they literally moved the whole planet to another quadrant of Space. Anyway, this collective amnesia means that only the ‘fam’ recognise the Dalek’s when they see one, but can’t get any help from the Doctor who’s making zero effort to escape prison.  Not to worry, Jack Harkness shows up to break her out. 

This is the first major problem; the Doctor is entirely passive in her escape from prison. No other version of the character would just sit there and be in prison. This continues the theme of the Doctor as incompetent; if Jack could think of a way out, the Doctor should have been able to think of ten. 

 Anyway the Doctor then makes it back 10 months after her ‘fam’ to receive a shove and an angry pout from Yaz. Did I miss something? Is Yaz her jilted lover or something? Also, all the Doctor does is apologise for being away for 10 months, when from her perspective she’s been imprisoned for more than 20 years. There’s no reason that she couldn’t simply answer with this, but doesn’t seemingly for drama. 

The most interesting dynamic between Clara and Twelve was that neither of them was ever willing to consider the other’s point of view. The dynamic between Thirteen and Yaz is that Thirteen just accepts whatever Yaz says as reasonable rather than ever standing up for herself. Call me old fashioned, but I think a protagonist who’s incapable of standing up for themself isn’t going to be convincing as a world ending super genius. 

 Anyway we move on to the Doctor lecturing the evil businessman about the dangers of messing with things he doesn’t understand. This is fine and in character, except it becomes pretty obvious that he isn’t doing that. The hipster who’s company he bought is doing that; but the Doctor lets him off, for…reasons. 

The Doctor’s end game of pitting Dalek against Dalek is a quite literal deus ex machina. 

 Tosin Cole takes his performance to new lows, with wooden line delivery from start to finish. It’s clear that he doesn’t care about the role and it’s difficult to tell if he ever did. He and Bradley bow out in an incredibly forced scene, that rips off Noel Clarke’s exit while someone losing all it’s meaning. 

 John Barrowman does his best to salvage his parts of the script, but is undermined by Chibnall’s inability to show rather than tell. At one point Barrowman delivers Jack’s signature camp indignation at his efforts being ignored. It’s obvious that this comes out of Jack’s insecurity, but Chibnall has to have Yaz say it, to make sure that the audience doesn’t miss it. Barrowman turns in one of the only decent performances, but has his writer working against him. 

 Overall, this was a poor and typical entry from Chris Chibnall that lowers last year's special by association.

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.

13th Doctor Announcement.

I’m worried about this…but not for the reason you think.

Sooo…a woman.

I think it’s pretty clear that this was going to happen. The build up to it has been “hinted” throughout the latter stages of series 10, with all the subtly of a club hammer.

In terms of Doctor Who’s survival, this change up would seem a logical step in the right direction. However, I remain pessimistic about the likelihood of it’s success.

And it has nothing to do with Jodie Whittaker.

My issue is with Chris Chibnall. Frankly, I have found most of his Who episodes to date…well…boring. I’ve reviewed most of them and the common theme is that he doesn’t have an eye for filler. Say what you will about Moffat, but at least his chit-chat and somewhat glib humour give you something to watch. Chibnall has never really been able to balance the action side of Doctor Who and the talky side of Doctor Who.

The other massive issue I have with him comes from his other work. I consider series 1 of Broadchurch amongst some of the best drama of the last 10 years. However it’s two sequels…well let’s just say I kind of felt like I missed the timeframe for reviewing them, but this seems like a good opportunity.  Series 2 completely removes the suspension of disbelief with a courtroom scene in which a judge orders a jury not to consider someone’s confession. Evidence in a criminal trial is subject to a pre-trial hearing so if defence had an issue with a confession they would have had to raise it prior to the trial. The judge would then decide if the confession was admissible as evidence. If the judge agreed with defence, the jury would never hear about the confession so it couldn’t prejudice their view at all. What does this have to do with Doctor Who?

Well if Chibnall is willing to throw both legal research and common sense out the window in the name of drama, how bad is it going to get when he’s working with a time travelling phone box?

Moving on to series 3 of Broadchurch…well…let’s discuss sexual crimes…I mean let’s discuss all of them. That’s what Chibnall tried to do with this series, to disastrous effect I might add.

The series follows the story of a character who’s been the victim of rape and then tries to build subplots around other characters who are either involved in or victims of other sexual crimes. The fact that DI Hardy’s daughter just so happens to be one of these victims seems too coincidental to be believed. Linking obtaining violent pornography to committing sexual crimes is a significant oversimplification of the issue. And most importantly, dotting those elements around the periphery of the main story doesn’t allow enough time to develop any of them. The issue of consent (that has become the centre of a national discussion) is what was at play in this series. The idea is that someone who would steal a nude photo of another person and distribute it has the same attitude towards consent as a rapist. This is, however, never explored by Chibnall (or any of the writers), as there simply isn’t enough time.

This is a problem. The BBC likes to use Doctor Who as a vessel for morals as well as entertainment. A head writer who likes to shove as many lessons onto the screen as possible and not leave enough time to explain any of them just isn’t going to work.

This becomes distinctly important, when you consider that Chibnall is invariably going to have to deal with issues of misogyny and women’s rights. I personally don’t think that Chibnall is up to the task.

His work on Who has shown a lack of ability to hold the audiences’ attention and his work on Broadchurch has shown a lack of longevity to his story arcs.

When doing something as radical as changing the Doctor into a woman (a move that will alienate a chunk of the audience) the show needs a head writer who can handle it.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s not Chris Chibnall.

Jodie Whittaker will have to be judged (as all who’ve played the Doctor) on her performance. But even the best actor in the world can’t work in a part if the writing isn’t good enough.  

Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls

Did Steven Moffat see an advance copy of Logan?

I say that, as this episode mirrors the tone of that film. As Bob Chipman put it, “a [story] about disappointment that isn’t afraid to disappoint you.”

That’s not a criticism; I liked this episode and I think it’s a pretty good ending.

All the story arcs run to their conclusion and end not where we’d been hoping they would but where they should. Specifically, the Doctor doesn’t have a way of reversing Bill’s condition as a Cyberman, Missy’s journey to becoming an ally is ended early by herself/himself and the Doctor does not come up with any awesome plan beyond die in a horrible explosion.

The Master/Missy’s story is the most prominent example of this. Everything right down to the trailer for this episode said she was going to fight along side the Doctor. But when it comes to it, she’s shot in the back by herself/himself after stabbing herself/himself in the back. This also nicely mirrors the theme of the Master being the dark parody of the Doctor. The Doctor will team up with himself and will normally have some sort of epiphany about himself. The Master will literally kill himself/herself if he doesn’t like what they have to say. The most tragic part of this arc is that the Doctor will never know that Missy tried to come back to help him.

Bill’s story arc is similar with the Pilot returning to save her at the end. There’s a throw away line about the Pilot being able to make Bill human again, which I wish wasn’t in there. I get that she has to have something close to a happy ending, but I think it would have been better if her story arc paralleled Missy’s.

Even Nardole gets a look in on the story theme, going to live on a floor with some farmers, safe in the knowledge that one day they’ll all be killed by the Cybermen.

The Doctor of course gets the lion’s share of the story, but I still wish that more time had been spent establishing his desire to remain as he is. Don’t get me wrong, Moffat writes the reluctant regeneration far better the Davies did. When Davies did it, it was basically, “I like my hair and Converse, please don’t make me change.” Here, we learn that the Doctor wants to stay the same because he’s afraid of the man he might become. This makes sense, given that one series before this he became the Hybrid and broke every rule that he’s ever lived by. He learnt his lesson from that and even used it to try and make the make the most dangerous creature in the universe (Missy) a better person. But given how strikingly different he knows himself to be from his predecessors, how can he be sure that the next Doctor will remember the lessons he’s learnt.

It’s also quite neat that the episode harkens back to the Doctor’s statement in Hell Bent. Bill now thinks he’s dead, but just because his body is dead doesn’t mean he’s not regenerating. “That’s why [Timelords] prefer to die around our own kind; they know not to bury us too soon.”

Overall, this is a pretty good ending to the series and the ending stinger of a team up with the First Doctor is pretty good.

Personally, I really hope that they don’t announce the new Doctor and that it’s revealed in the actual Christmas episode.

Doctor Who: World Enough and Time.

Well that was pretty damn good.

Steven Moffat gets a lot of flack for his writing, some it deserved, but most of it misplaced. The common complaint I’ve heard is that he’s obsessed with self-aware humour and fan service references.

In terms of the self-aware humour, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t annoy me sometimes. This episode in particular goes overboard on it, with too many winks to the camera to a scene. I’m fine with Missy and the Doctor acknowledging that neither of their back stories make any sense and that throwing out lines like “He’s called Doctor Who; look at all the screens” but it’s just that they all come too close together. It’s difficult to engage in the episode when the self-aware dialogue is removing you from it every few seconds.

As far as the fan service references go, I’ve always seen them as secondary to the stories he’s building. They’ve never really bothered me and I always liked that Moffat is clearly a fan of the show and wants you to know it.

This episode it a showcase of Moffat’s ability as a writer. While it does have a significant development for Bill, the episode is actually about the Doctor and Missy.

This is a fact that you don’t really realise until the end. Bill’s transformation into a Cyberman is ultimately a distraction, from really delving into who Missy (and the Master) really is.

The Master is a dark parody of the Doctor and that’s the point that the story builds up to. The Doctors motivation in trying to help Missy is that she’s the only other Time Lord who’s ever seen the universe as he has.

I especially like the way that this factors in to her not recognizing her predecessor. In the same way as the Doctor appears to disregard memories from his previous incarnations (Twelve only ever feels de-ja-vu when he see’s something that we know Ten or Eleven already dealt with). Where all incarnations of the Doctor will cross their own timeline in order to save just one planet out of billions, the Master will cross his because he’s worried that his future incarnation isn’t killing enough people.

It’s not perfect; John Simm’s make up job isn’t really good enough so you guess it’s him as soon as he turns up and the time difference thing with the ship (while necessary) is really annoying.

But overall, this is a showcase of character driven story and definitely recommended.

Regarding the opening stinger with the Doctor regenerating, I don’t think that they’d do two fake outs in one series.

Moffat has said that this year’s Christmas special is going to be unlike any other in terms of the Doctor. Personally, I think that means the Doctor will be in a pre-regeneration state right up until the climax of the episode, possibly with the new Doctor surfacing in time to beat whoever the villain is.