Oh Brilliant: Generally what I have come to expect from the 13th Doctor but with a little too much reliance on exposition this week (with a story this seemingly complex there is plenty to dish around and as usual the Doctor gets the bulk of it) which would be a struggle for any actor to deliver. Whittaker is game, and amusing and quirky, but at times it feels like she is delivering a stream of information to try and unravel the story that is playing out. The Doctor dashes into the episode in the most authentic way imaginable; rushing past bystanders and screaming for help whilst rescuing a body from the ocean. I’m starting to get the impression that the 13th Doctor is taking the 5th Doctor’s approach of letting all and sundry traipse into the TARDIS and not worrying about the consequences of that. She has an alarming habit of taking a mass of people inside. Those moments are always fun, mind. She’s a sucker for a scientist and a hopeless romantic. She doesn’t preach this week, like she did in Orphan 55, because the horror of what we have done speaks for itself.
Graham: He’s a truly accepting soul, isn’t he? He is a working man who has spent his life around blokes and was probably (but not definitely) a bit of a lad for much of his life. Then he is put through a cancer scare and he finds love, two things that are going to turn your life upside down. He survives but his new wife doesn’t and he is offered a chance to see the universe. After a manifest of exciting adventures his entire worldview has been altered. He’s truly embracing everything time travel has to show him. As a result, he can dish out advice on a religious divide, can help a man through his pregnancy, can receive a kiss from Captain Jack and not flinch and help a man talk through his complicated feelings about his husband in Praxeus. Walsh is so likable and Graham is written as so open and honest, you can’t help but be drawn to him.
Yaz: Is it my imagination or is there something a little bit off about Yaz this year? I don’t know if it is grumblings that I have been hearing online about her that has attuned my mind to picking up things that might be a little suspicious but there seems to be one moment in every episode where she is behaving a little…cold and indifferent. That could just be the nature of their existence finally getting to her a little bit. I thought her reaction to being sucked into the void in Spyfall was brilliantly played and perhaps changed her for good given she thought she was going to die. Orphan 55 had that interesting moment when Yaz questions whether the Doctor was ever going to tell them that the planet was Earth, in Tesla she’s off on having her own adventure whilst the others are all together and in Fugitive of the Judoon she demands to know why the Doctor never takes them to Gallifrey. In this episode the strangest thing happened – halfway through the adventure she essentially defies the Doctor and says she is going back for the technology that she thinks is important whether the Doctor wants her to or not. It comes completely out of left field and even the Doctor knows it because she gives her a hell of a look long after they have stopped talking and Yaz has headed off. I don’t know if this is all the paranoid ramblings of a reviewer who has been surprised quite a few times this year and is catching on but it was certainly a moment that stood out as jarring. When the Master said ‘stick with me, Yaz’ was he saying more than we thought? When they find the alien technology, Yaz comments ‘precisely what we’ve been looking for.’
Ryan: Who gets to be sweet and flirty and disarming again, so soon after Orphan 55. He might not be as heart-breaking as Graham or as suspicious as Yaz, but he’s a comforting presence. I’d still like the episode where he strikes out on his own and defies the rest of his new family. I feel like I need to see him express more of an opinion. There’s a great moment where Ryan sits in the doorway of the TARDIS with Gabriela and helps her get over the culture shock. I love how cool and collected he is.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘We’re going to get through it’ ‘Cause you’ve known me how many hours?’
The Good: There are two images that truly capitalise on the ‘plastic is evil’ message that Praxeus is touting and that really made me sit up and pay attention; one was less subtle but still extremely powerful (the rubbish strewn river bed) and one was shoving the impact that plastic is having on nature right down our throats (the bird that is cut open and full of plastic). Both are plausible and both get us uncomfortably close to the problem that the world faces that we all contribute towards. It’s these moments more than the Praxeus virus (which still chills me to the bone) that really made an impact. I feel like I need to make much more of an effort to recycle (we do, but probably not to the extent that we should) and any Doctor Who episode that makes me feel like actioning something because of its content is doing something right. It’s an episode that has some really scares in it too. Despite some dodgy special effects, I really like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the idea that our avian friends realise that there is more of them than there is of us and turn on us and this episode captures a lot of that helplessness in the face of a bird attack. Shots of them pecking at peoples faces and swooping down en masse really get the blood pumping. But that is nothing to the Praxeus virus itself, which is visually chilling and a refreshingly different method of dispatch. In a show like Doctor Who that has been bumping off guest characters for over 50 years it is pretty difficult to find an original way to do so but the way these crusty teeth devour the body and then combust actually made me exclaim out loud each time it was done. I’m running out of ways to say the show looks fantastic and is capturing all the ambition and visual sumptuousness of a movie so I’ll just say that this is another globetrotting adventure in a season that is taking us to more places around the world than any other that my eyes drank in thirstily. The Hong Kong scenes were actually rather economically done but still very effective. We’ve come to a point in Doctor Who where a relationship between two men isn’t commented on (I’m rather doing a good job of spoiling that right now) but a natural part of a plot. It says something about the show’s diversity (that is NOT an ugly word) and its inclusivity. Yay, Doctor Who. Frankly, in the last 15 years it has done a far better job of promoting the normality of homosexuality than Star Wars or Star Trek. Adam and Jake feel very real, caught up in a crazy situation. The fact that they are separated but still very much in love and that Jake’s resistance to life is holding them back means there is everything to fight for here. An adventure with the Doctor ignites that lust for life and the willingness to take a chance. It’s very nicely done and the kiss at the climax feels earned (and its rare for Doctor Who to give me such a filthy thoughts). There’s no great showdown between the Doctor and the villain because ultimately this is just a virus that is trying to survive, coming to Earth because its environment suits its digestion because of our stupidity. Life doesn’t always have some grand showdown, sometimes you just have to find a solution. I enjoyed the happy ending with the three vloggers walking off into the sunset. Doctor Who needs more happy endings like this.
The Bad: I think the reaction to the two hugely important environmental messages that the show has put out this year can be split into two categories; those who want to listen and those who don’t. The latter have the more extreme reaction and go on about the show being too preachy. Yes, it is preaching, and you don’t want to listen because you are part of the problem and that’s a difficult thing to face. Are you going to suddenly stop using all plastic because of this episode. I doubt it. And that’s bound to make you feel a little bad because what this episode depicts actually happens but we don’t want to think about our part in it. If this episode can reach just half of the 5 million people that it is going to be watched by and they adjust their lives in tiny ways to make the environment more of a factor in their lives then it was absolutely the right approach for the series to take. There’s a tide of environmental mistakes being made at the moment and if Doctor Who can fight that tide with its message, even if it is just a bit, then I say bravo to the show. There was one scene that was so obviously dubbed that I was completely taken out of the action. Is nipping in and rescuing someone at the last minute a new feature of the TARDIS or something it could always do? Because I’m suddenly thinking that Peter Davison’s Doctor might be the evillest incarnation of all in failing to save Adric. Or perhaps the most benevolent because of it.
The Shallow Bit: Warren Brown is ridiculously handsome and the fact that he is playing a dour man who refuses to connect with his feelings means that he is pushing all my buttons. I want to be better than enjoying a piece of television because there is a man involved that I fancy the ass off…but I I’m really not and anyone who has read my reviews before would know that. ‘You work out?’ Gabriella asks of Ryan, to which he answers ‘I do a lot of running.’
Result: An ambitious, expensive, necessary exercise that might have had more impact if the same thing hadn’t been done in Orphan 55 just a few episodes ago. Having two environmental episodes in the same season isn’t necessarily a problem (they cropped up several times in the Pertwee era) and to me this has the more powerful message because it filters it through some horrific imagery and imaginatively ties pollution into the plot. Pete McTighe manages something miraculous; he gives all three companions a great deal to do whilst still making the Doctor the star of the show. Graham gets to tug on the heartstrings in a way that only Bradley Walsh can and it shows just how little this gentle coaxing of sentiment this character has been utilised this year. Mind you, there has been so much going on it has left little time for character pauses. That is addressed here and then some with a group of extremely well drawn secondary characters, all of which I felt close to by the climax. There’s a beautifully drawn gay romance that doesn’t feel in anyway exploitative or cliched and that is a minor miracle. The moment where it looks like one of the guys is going to die at the climax my heart was on my mouth and I don’t often feel that way about characters I have only just met. This is essentially a meat and potatoes episode of Doctor Who rather than one of the big hitters but there is so much happening here that it goes to prove just how lucky we are that even the filler episodes are packed with this much gold; gorgeous location work that convincingly suggests that show is globetrotting again, exciting set pieces that get the pulse racing, another great Segun Akinola score, a number of very creepy scenes in a series that has found the scares again and then some and a feeling that the 13th Doctor can whip up a gang of friends in a heartbeat just through her sheer likability. I especially enjoyed how the story started off in such a confusing, disparate fashion and how all the threads of the narrative were tied together so effectively by the climax. There is so much energy and dynamism in this season, it feels like it is making up for the lethargy of last year. This made me think about the effect that plastic culture is having on both the planet and humanity. We’re literally poisoning ourselves to make our lives more convenient. Yay, the human race: 8/10
10 comments:
I wish this one had slowed down a bit. Maybe I just prefer "lethargy."
I mostly agree with you on this one, though the first third or so of the episode just could not get me invested for some reason. I think because it was far too fast and we couldn't actually get to know the supporting cast until we got to Madagascar. I will say it's a bit ironic that this episode is all about the evils of plastic when in the scientific communities we've just recently had a breakthrough in the production of graphene which could be used to help in plastics breakdown. Overall, I'd probably give this one a 6/10 because the start just doesn't do it for me.
I still don't understand how you praise Series 12 that loses audience in each episode.
Obviously you can only enjoy television that is embraced by the masses. Good for you, chum. The figures are healthy enough, the brand is performing strongly and the series has been commissioned ahead. So that’s good for me.
In Earthshock the freighter was phasing through time and the console was rather the worse for wear out of an encounter with a Cyberman rifle. Not that the Fifth Doctor was the most reliable incarnation for piloting the TARDIS anyway.
Interesting that last year Big Finish put out a Torchwood release with the Nestenes and a plastic island like the Praxeus world was under in this episode. You’ll never look at a plastic bag or rubber duck the same way again.
Rather striking that Graham of all people needed exposition on what a pathogen was, since in the same scene he says he’s seen a few IV’s and his wife was a nurse. Guess they didn’t do shop talk at the dinner table. Ryan not knowing is more understandable, even if he was trusted to dissect the bird.
Quite rude in response to Tango.
1) This is clearly meant to be enjoyed by the masses but for some reason or reasons the masses are not watching on broadcast. Don't pretend this is an esoteric exercise to be enjoyed by intellectuals and that Tango should go back to playing with his or her own shit while watching Dancing on Ice.
2) The recommission came before the series 12 was broadcast - series 13 will happen regardless of the success or otherwise of series 12.
Apologies, but if you explored that website with any depth you will find a wealth of far ruder, blunter and in your face comments from Tango whenever he/she disagrees with me. Usually I rise above it, but sometimes it is irresistible to respond.
Regardless, much enjoyment can be had this season and I think far more people are enjoying it than the previous year, certainly in terms of quality of not in terms of quantity. But quantity has never meant quality in Doctor Who as The War Games and season 26 and series 10 will attest.
I think your response to the Tango wasnt rude enough.
The idea that popularity = quality has led the world to some awful places recently.
Cof RTD 2 cof
Well, Chinball damaged the show so much that they had to bring back RTD and Tennant
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