Doctor Who?

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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:09 pm

New Year's Special 2018 - Resolution

Spoiler: show
Also, calling it now, the New Year's episode monster is a dalek


You know, when you put effort into trailing a monster as a new year surprise and it's easily guessable by fans, it's not really worth it. Daleks are a given all the time, and it's not surprising they appeared. But anyway, into the episode.

The opening is a narration over some handy period stuff detailing a legendary battle of medieval humans against some kind of menace. That menace was then cut into three parts and separated, to be guarded forever by some notional order of custodians. One appears to have reached a pacific island (how???) in the 9th Century AD, another Siberia. The last one was...er...shot in Yorkshire by an anonymous robber. Coicidentally this happens to be the same place where a city called, you guessed it; Sheffield would be built.

This then segues into a pair of archeologists excavating the very same body of the killed custodian we saw fall. That's a neat little time travel thing. The pair of archeologists begin by discussing their work, how it was better to come in on New Year's Day than stay at home with nothing to do, but they really arranged it because they kissed at the party they night before, and their budding romance is sweet, but takes up a heck of a long time in the story. Eventually they excavate the piece of alien, and it teleports the other parts to it and revives. I don't buy the fact the descendants of the original custodians have pristine and undamaged versions of the exact same weapons the originals had. On top of this, I'm watching this convinced that the enemy is a Dalek. I do not buy that a ninth century army had even a slight chance of defeating a Dalek, even less that they managed to break into its shell, and cut up the body of the Dalek and separate it. On top of that I don't know why this is even necessary to have in the story when it amounts to exposited fluff.

In any case, the teleport of the pieces of alien to Sheffield prangs the Doctor's plot dependent sensors and she does the trailer oh noes scene where she does (to the writer's credit) just say "yep it's a Dalek" and puncture the mystery. She briefly tells the gang that they have to be afraid of it, then they pop into the dig site. The guy (whose name I didn't care to learn) gawks at the TARDIS blithely materialising in front of him and they discuss what's going on with him. This gives time for his colleague to find the exposed Dalek on a wall. Now, I praised the visuals on Tim Shaw in Ranskoor and I'm going to do it again. This dalek is far, far from the turd monster the daleks used to be. It looks freaking Lovecraftian and I loved it for the length of time it was visible. It was deliberately intended to resemble an octopus and it makes sense like that.

By the time the Doctor and gang run up, the Dalek is gone and the archeologist is shaken but unharmed it seems. They lament that the Dalek could have gone anywhere in the water (they are in a sewer at the time) and decide to fly the TARDIS back to Graham's place to figure out where it is. The archeologist pair part, and we follow one of them back home. She's not feeling well, and I honestly expected her to puke up the Dalek right there. She didn't, but it was about as squicky: the Dalek is wrapped around her, controlling her the same way they control their casings.

I want to spend a moment on this idea. On the one hand, this concept is really creepy and having a Dalek inside your head urging you on to commit violent acts while you try and fail to resist is really really creepy. The voice work on this is great too, the Dalek never just shouts incoherently, it speaks like a thinking being which is working toward a goal. On the other hand, this is just Yeerks from Animorphs. Like, exactly the same. Obviously there's nothing new under the sun, but the execution doesn't distinguish this from the Yeerks except that the Yeerks are more scary and compelling than the single Dalek doing it. Nevertheless it's creepy enough.

The Doctor crashes in Graham's living room and gently criticises him for being silly enough to keep a chair in there. At the same time, someone knocks at the door which Graham answers and immediately slams the door on the visitor. Ryan goes to see who it was and turns out it's Ryan's dad. Woohoo. Thus begins an extended scene where Ryan and his dad argue about how Ryan's dad left him and how angry Ryan is. To the episode's credit this is well written, Chibnall's wheelhouse is blatantly this personal drama over SciFi, though its inclusion in a SF series where roughly 35 minutes of a one hour episode is taken up with interpersonal drama including people we as viewers just met is a bit of a misstep for me. The long closeup of Toisin Cole's face just made me want to snooze, especially since it didn't really go anywhere for the plot. Also Ryan's dad is carrying around a microwave oven for no reason other than plot.

Meanwhile the Dalek is encouraging our archeologist to drive like it's GTA and murder cops like it's...some other video game. I honestly really liked the scenes where the Dalek is a parasite, and I found it especially creepy when it called her a "good vessel" in an affectionate tone. It highlighted how alien it really is that it values murder in such a way.

Having been becalmed by the Dalek, the Doctor uses TARDIS stuff to first track the Dalek, which clues her in to the fact it's in the same place as the archeologist and that she's being controlled. She realises she needs help, so she calls up UNIT. Only to embark on an exceptionally strange scene where she's informed by a dopey receptionist that UNIT was disbanded due to budget cuts and politics. Like, seriously? This reads like a nakedly political point score in the middle of a show that usually tends to stay out of it. It felt out of place and honestly made no real sense other than to showcase how the Doctor is alone.

The Dalek, having gotten its weapon back from some obscure stockpile somewhere, travels to a farm to crack on making its own cobbled together suit. The Doctor calls it from the TARDIS to...um...taunt it and make it angrier. This she achieves, but in the process of laughing at it for not having weapons it points out it does too have weapons. She then uses some random technobabble to create a two way hologram of it, to show how serious she is? This achieves little other than distracting the Dalek until she can reboot the TARDIS. Really these scenes make the Doctor look a bit desperate and stupid. It doesn't seem like she has a plan and it makes the episode seem strange.

The TARDIS buggers off to track the Dalek leaving Graham and Aaron (Ryan's Dad) alone in Graham's house to talk about why Aaron didn't turn up to Grace's funeral. Again proving my point that Chibnall's strength is in character interactions, we get an actually nuanced and interesting examination of why he didn't in a way that paints Aaron as a human being with feelings and Graham sympathises with him despite how generally angry he is at him. The only problem is that it doesn't intersect with the Dalek plot at all and I don't especially care about it.

So the Dalek plot intersects with them when the Doctor lands back in the house to pick him up, thus swiftly introducing Aaron to the world of the Doctor and glossing over his surprise at the time travel machine his son and surrogate grandfather has been flying around in. Meanwhile the Dalek has constructed its ramshackle shell and takes on a random grab bag of army dudes with little effort. How was this thing taken out by 9th century people again? The Dalek then proceeds to GCHQ (the UK government intelligence center) to hiijack its systems to communicate to a Dalek fleet it just knows is there waiting to invade.

The Doctor flies in and has a little build up moment behind the TARDIS shield where she admits she's probably not got a decent plan and none of her companions are confident it will work. Great. Then of course it does, they strap the parts of that stupid microwave oven they've been lugging about and blow up the Dalek...um...somehow? I get the principle that metal and microwaves don't mix, but I'm dubious about the ability of the element to do that. But SF wonkiness shrug.

But the Dalek isn't dead which is...nearly unheard of in plots like this. It managed to grab Aaron and controls him, holding him hostage to a trip in the TARDIS. When the Dalek is in the TARDIS it demands to be taken to the Dalek fleet. The Doctor doesn't listen and instead flies to a supernova and uses some arcane tech to create a bubble of vacuum to essentially hoover the Dalek off Aaron's back. Except it doesn't quite work, and Aaron is nearly pulled into the abyss with it, prompting Ryan to have a little reconciliation moment when he saves his dad from immolation.

The gang then have a little cooldown and the Doctor and crew fly off into time and space again.

Now I don't want to seem wholly negative about this episode. I did enjoy the Dalek and how it acted and treated people. My problem was that this constituted about 20-25 minutes of a 60 minute episode, the rest being taken up on discussion of things that resembled more a soap opera than a scifi show. I don't inherently dislike interpersonal drama, the long term arc of getting over Grace's death worked well and fit into the story just fine. But spending so long hearing Ryan and Aaron fighting over who was right or wrong about something that we didn't see happen and I personally didn't really care about was indulgent and diverted from the main plot. I think if the Dalek stuff had been less interesting I'd have not minded the diversion so much but I feel like it just shows how Chibnall is not a SF writer at all and probably, on balance shouldn't be a front-line writer for Who like he has been.

As a final aside, I feel like they missed a trick with Jodie's Doctor in this episode. They had the prime opportunity to hint at the past of the Doctor to the companions, who right now I don't think have even heard the phrase "Time Lord" spoken out loud yet. The inclusion of an alien of comparable technology with knowledge of her identity would have been a great point to have her show some glimmer of her past, especially when the Dalek so arrogantly proclaims it's going to contact a fleet. She could have just coldly pointed out that there is no Dalek fleet, they're all dead by her hand and let everyone absorb that. It'd have introduced some conflict in the character because she's been established as the ultra-pacifist version and she's never deviated. Showing she wasn't always so might just create a bit of friction between the characters that actually meant something.

Overall, the series has been a step up from the Moffat runs, but only by a little. Where Moffat emphasised overblown ridiculous plots that could only be solved by bullshit nonsense that was unsatisfying, Chibnall's stories have been very strong when they focused on people, and weak sauce when considered from the point of SF. I once read a definition of SF as an exploration of the effect of technology on people's lives, and the only episode I can think of that did so is Kerblam! which was oddly enough the best episode of the series. Otherwise the monsters are extremely derivative and simple (Tim Shaw is predator, Pting is Stitch, Dalek is Yeerk) and don't have much impact. The human villains (Manish and Krasko) were even worse, being abominable. I've been sat on the observation that there's far too many companions for the whole series, and I'm even more convinced that this is the case having seen the series. Yaz in particular gets nothing to work with, nothing to do and nothing interesting to say. Ryan is only interesting insofar as he's connected to Graham, whom all the companion energy is poured into. I can't complain too much about that, Bradley Walsh is an old grumpy checked out breath of fresh air for the series plagued by wide-eyed moron companions who don't learn shit. But when you're trumpeting the diversity and inclusion of your series, and playing off it to have high profile right on episodes about partition and Rosa Parks, giving the BAME characters jack shit to do seems insultingly tokenistic. Why include them if they're not really given anything to do?

We're not getting another Who episode until 2020. What would I like to see from a new series? Well, I'd like to see more emphasis on science fiction. Not necessarily guns and shooting, but the way they did in Kerblam!: the effect of technology on people and how it can pose difficult questions about life, and how a mad person in a box would approach it. I'm cool with this Doctor being an extreme pacifist, but I'd like to see some examination of the relative consequences (unlike, say, Arachnids in the UK which felt that cannibalism and starvation is more humane than shooting) of that approach and how to overcome it. Basically a deeper analysis of the way the Doctor approaches problems now. I'd like to see the companions stripped down and the one or two remaining given more to say and do. I don't care who as long as it's done well. In the end, I don't care what they do as long as it's done with some depth and is interesting.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby ghijkmnop » Thu Jan 03, 2019 6:52 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby KleinerKiller » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:23 pm

Wait, are you serious?

Spoiler: show
The Doctor, the super pacifist Thirteen who's coincidentally resolved a lot of problems with nigh-sadistic and nigh-murderous solutions, ended the conflict with the Dalek by essentially sucking it into a supernova? And then just brushed over it, again?

Color me shocked.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:45 pm

ghijkmnop wrote:
Question
I understand that the Dalek killed dozens-- BUT Lin also killed while under the influence, and there may have been witnesses/surveillance video. Why isn't she in jail?

Spoiler: show
The Whoniverse is a place where successful conspiracies flourish all the time. I assumed that even if UNIT is gone, the Doctor still has a lot of pull with government authorities, and it was just covered up.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Thu Jan 03, 2019 9:02 pm

ghijkmnop wrote:
Question
I understand that the Dalek killed dozens-- BUT Lin also killed while under the influence, and there may have been witnesses/surveillance video. Why isn't she in jail?


Spoiler: show
I mean, it wasn't relevant to the plot of the Dalek being defeated, so it was dropped. It's probably something a clever writer would have left in like that as a hanging thread they pick up later. Lin explicitly says she could feel its thoughts as well as it reading hers. It's entirely plausible that Lin has some Dalek knowledge (which, remember is a hive mind) imported into her head which would be an incredible setup for a villain. She even got praise from the Dalek for her eagerness in killing in Resolution.

They won't do that. But they could.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Krashlia » Fri Jan 04, 2019 1:35 am

So, is no one going to talk about the shame and humiliation that poor Dalek went through on that episode (as told by Marcuse)?

I mean, a *Dalek*, its master being to resort to making use of a lesser being, especially one that the Doctor likes and resembles? And working so hard to contact his fellows in hate from a Davros forsaken planet, only to get shoved off into a supernova like some chump?

This should be exhibit a that the Doctor is nothing more than a big, ole dick in box.
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Krashlia » Fri Jan 04, 2019 1:47 am

Marcuse wrote:Episode 9 - It Takes You Away

Spoiler: show
The Doctor is frightened by a sheep, because of the forthcoming "woolly rebellion".


"Brethren, I have something I've been meaning to say..."
(Look up from disinterested cud-chewing)
"And that is that those two-leggers have had had it too good FOR TOO DAMN LONG!!!"

(Angry sheep noises and baying)
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Re: Doctor Who?

Postby Marcuse » Fri Jan 04, 2019 9:27 am

Various Replies
Krashlia wrote:
Marcuse wrote:Episode 9 - It Takes You Away

Spoiler: show
The Doctor is frightened by a sheep, because of the forthcoming "woolly rebellion".


"Brethren, I have something I've been meaning to say..."
(Look up from disinterested cud-chewing)
"And that is that those two-leggers have had had it too good FOR TOO DAMN LONG!!!"

(Angry sheep noises and baying)


She does specifically refer to it as a "bloodbath" so I'm pretty sure those sheep aren't as pacifist as the Doctor.

Krashlia wrote:So, is no one going to talk about the shame and humiliation that poor Dalek went through on that episode (as told by Marcuse)?

I mean, a *Dalek*, its master being to resort to making use of a lesser being, especially one that the Doctor likes and resembles? And working so hard to contact his fellows in hate from a Davros forsaken planet, only to get shoved off into a supernova like some chump?

This should be exhibit a that the Doctor is nothing more than a big, ole dick in box.


Really the only way to make a Dalek interesting is to de-power it. Daleks at full power are one-dimensional because they just want to murder everything all the time and do so with regularity. The trick is to include them in a way that doesn't just seem bland and I think they did a decent enough job with it.

KleinerKiller wrote:The Doctor, the super pacifist Thirteen who's coincidentally resolved a lot of problems with nigh-sadistic and nigh-murderous solutions, ended the conflict with the Dalek by essentially sucking it into a supernova? And then just brushed over it, again?

Color me shocked.



Yeah it's another one of those "morality is flexible" things she indulges in. I think you didn't end up seeing Ranskoor, but she's directly called out on her use of grenades and explosives by Ryan in that episode and she more or less says "if it can be rebuilt it's fair game" and admits she's shaky on the rules and was overdoing it in Ghost Monument to emphasise the theme to Ryan and the others. So by the time of Resolution when the Dalek was in possession of Aaron and forcing them to summon a Dalek fleet, the decision to kill the Dalek doesn't really get examined.
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