The Tattie Holidays are over and after S5/6 Parents Night on Wednesday, it feels like they might as well have never happened. Over the last couple of weeks, I discussed Marvel and DC licensed Star Trek comics. Today, however, after three episodes, do I come to bury Chris Chibnall's Sunday evening Doctor Who or to praise it?
The Woman Who Fell To Earth was highly successful in terms of viewing figures and unconventional on many levels. No theme music or titles and the new companions (or "friends") bring a fresh spirit of teamwork. I have already become very fond of the very decent and real Graham and especially of the dyspraxic Ryan .The Doctor staying around for the funeral of a supporting character (the wonderful Grace) was also new. The series uses "found" music in a way it hasn't since the moving Vincent and The Doctor. The grisly Stenza "teeth" reveal and the mysterious energy monster on the train felt different to other aliens we've seen in previous years. The plotting was a bit clumsy but its directness was refreshing, too.
The titles and theme were finally revealed with the second episode. They're very stripped back. No fancy fonts, like 2012. Sadly, the Doctor's face isn't on screen, just like the RTD era and the fanfares of that era are missing from the theme music- it's more eerie and restrained.
The Ghost Monument was a very thin story about a race across a planet. It looked gorgeous but there was little sense of threat and the plot itself was meringue: insubstantial and unsatisfying.The spooky new Tardis interior recalls the RTD era but the phallic crystal pumping up and down is risible. Unlike other middle-age fans, I wasn't at all upset by the custard cream dispenser even though it was reminiscent of the saccharine whimsy of 2011's The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. Nonetheless, this was weak stuff that made me worry about the viability of the series.
Certainly, Rosa was a thoughtful story about racism- a necessary one in an era where social media plays a part in furthering intolerance and the incompetent US president and the BBC both enable fascism. I felt the final asteroid scene was bathetic and the co-writer credit was clodhopping but the physical violence and the helplessness of the team were very effective.
I am not convinced that the third episode was dramatically the best place for this story nor do I think that its message that racism continues into the far future was a helpful one. I just didn't think it was as powerful and inspirational as Twitter did.
And what of the Thirteenth Doctor herself? She seems very likeable and very talkative- in the David Tennant mould. It's hard to say much more about her other than she's clearly much less solitary than Doctors Four and Seven. For me, there hasn't been a bravura Moment, like Eleven's Stonehenge scene or Twelve's confrontation with the Boneless but that may still be to come.
I'm not massively enthused but I'm not disappointed. It's all very affable and inoffensive. The cinematic style is striking but something of a squandered opportunity unless we get much more excitement and peril and a really iconic monster, really soon.
This week, I've been listening to Ravenous 2, a Big Finish box set for Paul McGann's Eight Doctor.
Escape from Kaldor by Matt Fitton is the second story this year featuring the Robots of Death (see
https://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/03/bakers-seven.html )
and BF's third sequel to that story. I don't think any of them have added anything, to be honest.
The Doctor engineers a reunion for Liv and her estranged sister Tula but the Vocs go on the rampage ( as usual) at the opening of a luxury shopping mall. Basically, Dawn of the Dead with art deco.
There's a critique of corporate actions and the indolence of the rich. Unfortunately, I've never warmed to miserable Liv Chenka or her posh buddy Helen Sinclair. These parts are played by acclaimed actresses but the thin character of Bliss in the Time War series attracts me more through sheer perkiness.
It seems at first that Nicola Walker's Liv was finally about to leave but...she's picked up again, after a year in Kaldor City. Wizard. 1/5 Talmars: dreary and derivative.
Better Watch Out is the first part of a continued story by John Dorney. It takes a while for this story within a story to be unwrapped but essentially it's Doctor Who's It's A Wonderful Life. With elements of A Christmas Carol, which the reviled Moffat adapted very well for his first Xmas special in 2010.
It seems a little too early to have a Christmas special from Big Finish. They have previously delivered yuletide adventures for the Eighth Doctor, with the sombre Death in Blackpool and the more festive Relative Dimensions. This story is set in early December, on Krampusnacht, in a strangely Dickensian Salzburg where they play English folk carol, The Holly and the Ivy.
I've not been a huge fan of the award-winning Dorney, as you may know, as a person or a writer but choosing this Tirol winter festival as a setting does make an invigorating change from Who's wearisomely frequent Victorian visits. The Krampuslauf spins out of control and the hellish environment is explored further in the second episode.
Fairytale of Salzburg must be a call-back to the Pogues in the 80s, whom I never need to hear ever again. I was pleasantly surprised by the way Dorney tied up his story. I didn't guess the revelation of the identity of Sian Phillip's Pilgrim although I did work out who the Bishop was - just when you're meant to. I felt the wish-granting story device was a bit obscure but this merger of mythology and modernity achieves 4/5 Talmars.
Seizure is a ghost story by Guy Adams, set in a haunted Tardis; it blatantly references The Haunting of Hill House. The Doctor responds to a distress call from the deranged Time Lord known as the Eleven and the team find themselves trapped in a dying time-space machine.
Mark Bonnar's Eleven is more murderous than he's been in a while. I had wondered if this episode might see his regeneration into the tweedy Twelve, as played earlier this year by Julia Mackenzie. No dice.
The actual nature of the Ravenous, a creature that feeds on Time Lords, is a bit unclear to me and the treatment of its dialogue made it difficult to understand. This play was a bit of an anti-climax and not nearly as spooky as the cast think, even on a dark, Scottish Friday morning, walking through the park. 2/5 Talmars.
I still have box sets of River Song, UNIT and Lady Christina to catch up on during November. I'm also reading Juno Dawson's first novel for the Thirteenth Doctor ( alongside the Scottish Book Trust teen book prize nominees) and I'm about to finish the Netflix Dardevil season 2. But before that, the Boogeyman is a-comin'...
Coming up: The Music of the Night
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