“Doctor Who” - Series 11

I have neither the time nor energy to make full-scale reviews of the individual episodes of Series 11 of Doctor Who — or, for those of us who still bemoan Russel T. Davies's 2005 clerical error and try to reinstate the real numbering, Season 37 — but I do still want to say something about it. 

Hence, I'll make this catch-all review, not including the yet-to-air holiday special (Resolution, a.k.a. The One That Promised Us Daleks And Had Better Have Daleks Or Else The Fandom Will Literally Set Chris Chibnall On Fire). First I'll briefly review each episode, then I'll write up general thoughts about the series.

INDIVIDUAL MINIREVIEWS:

The Woman Who Fell to Earth - Sets up a nice sense of mystery and is as good an introduction to a new Doctor and companions as anything. Very efficient climax. The vlog framing device is gratuitous and annoying, however (a series opener should know better than to recall so heavily a one of the most hated episodes of modern Who), and as effectice a surprise as Grace's death is, it's also a darn shame, as an older woman is not something we've had as a companion before and might have been brilliant. As for the monsters? Middling average, I guess. T'zim-Sha is imposing enough, with just enough complexity to work, and the Datacoil is successfully scary and a creative sci-fic concept. But I could have done without the "teeth" gimmick, which is squickier than it is anything else, and overall this ain't exactly the new Daleks. The cinematography's nice, the effects are great, everyone's acting gets the job done, and can I just say that I kinda like the Thirteenth Doctor in the torn, loose-fitting Twelfth Doctor costume than in the more "cookie-cutter" attire she later picks out as "her" outfit? Maybe it's because it reminds me of the sorely-underappreciated Second Doctor's look. 

The Ghost Monument - Has the good sense to spoil its big reveal towards the beginning; it was rather obvious and a whole episode of building up to it would have been extremely obnoxious. The Race is a nice hook for a story, and Desolation is just brilliant as a setting. Unfortunately, the guest characters are unbearably cliché — the tough cynical guy whose cynicism goes back to textbook Freudian trauma, the scrappy racer of poor background who wants the money so she can support her family, blah blah blah, yeah, yeah, whatever. The Remnants are creative (if confusingly named) monsters, but are given far too little screen time compared to the stupid cookie-cutter "Sniper-Bots". …Oh, the ending scene where they find the TARDIS is suitably squee-inducing, I suppose. Not anything special, but neat. I do like this TARDIS design — that is to say I like the interior; the exterior is not nearly blue enough. 

Rosa - If Doctor Who was to return to its primitive “educational show for young audiences” aspect (…why?), this episode takes a decent stab at doing that by teaching kids about the Rosa Parks story. Certainly, a time-traveling villain who's trying to change a flurry of tiny details in order to prevent the event from happening, forcing the heroes to gather all knowledge they can about how things really happened to make sure they do happen that way, is a clever way to work the educational element into the time-travel story. Unfortunately, the episode undoes that very clever concept for "fun learning" with its incredibly clumsy ending which sees the Doctor just kind of monologue about the rest of Rosa Parks's life like she's the narrator of an abridged biopic for kids. Bluh. Combine that with the most laughably heavy-handed depiction of racism in 20th-century America you've ever seen (and I get that the show has its heart in the right place; it's just… when literally the first thing that happens stepping into 1950's Alabama is a white-skinned jerk punching your black character, you might want to crank up the subtlety just a bit), and the most uncharismatic villain this side of the Abzorbaloff, and you have a very, very mixed bag. Oh well. I wouldn't be in quite so much of a huff about this, except that (no doubt to make sure to telegraph to the world that they are of course very progressive and antiracist) a crushing majority of people gave the episode glowing reviews it simply doesn't deserve, and that irks me. 

Arachnids in the U.K. - It pains me that some of the spiders in this episode hardly look any better than those of Planet of the Spiders several decades ago. Aside from that… an entertaining enough adventure, and I'll give it that it has a very strong setpiece in the cobweb-covered apartment. Things kind of go downhill from there, however. As I said the effects are wonky; the plot is very thin in places; the well-acted but lazy Trump parody is nothing more than a lazy Trump parody, and will just serve to make future viewers wince in embarrassment twenty years from now; the episode ignores the square-cube law (which, fine, if you must have giant spiders you might as well), then suddenly decides that it doesn't and has its resolution hinge on it; the way the spiders are lured into the Doctor's trap is one the stupidest way to defeat a monster in the history of television. 

Also, the episode seems very confused on the "moral dilemma" it tries to present at the end. We're meant to side with the Doctor when she chides Not-Donald-Trump for wanting to shoot the mother spider and says the creatures deserve to "die with dignity". I have a feeling the episode got too caught up in lampooning Americans' "have you tried shooting it with a gun?" attitude to problem-solving, and didn't stop to consider that a quick painless death by gunshot to the brain is what is usually understood by "helping an animal die with dignity" when it's already fatally wounded. This is especially puzzling when the only other way for the spiders to die if Not-Donald-Trump doesn't interfere is to slowly suffocate to death, which the episode just pointed out is a miserable and painful way to die, like, a minute ago. What the heck? 

The Tsuranga Conundrum - Silly and confused in all the wrong ways, despite some cool ideas here and there. The Pting feels more like an idea than a fully-realized concept, though it has a certain silly charm. The idea of setting the action on a hospital ship isn't really used to a meaningful degree outside of the alien giving birth to amp the drama at one point. It feels like we're going to get a bit of an arc for the Doctor, who has to learn to sometimes not try to take charge and leave it to the actual professionals; that's certainly what the beginning of the episode seems to be building towards; but… nope. This episode is a big bubble of nothing with only the cinematography to recommend it, and even that (one of Series 11's strongest points overall) is stifled by the enclosed setting. 

Demons of the Punjab - Wherein the characters take a trip to the past of the forebears of the female companion, promising not to interfere, then proceed to interfere, mostly because they hadn't even begun to plan a shred of a cover story. Buh. …But, oh, I shouldn't gripe. Punjab may Rosa's flaw of being much too heavy-handed in tugging at its audience's heartstrings, but it looks very beautiful and has a number of nice moments, with good to great acting from everyone involved, and some of the best music in the series (even if I still think Murray Gold was an overall superior composer, Akinola has several great moments in this one). What's more, it approaches its historical subject matter… not perfectly, but certainly with more tact and nuance than Rosa did. 

I do think it was a bit early after Twice Upon a Time to pull another "the time-traveling humanoid monsters may look scary but they're actually nice, and visiting the times of people's death for entirely selfless reasons" twist, and now I can't help but imagine the comedy sketch that would result from a lingering 'Demon' to bump into an early-bird Testimony, but after all, not repeating itself has never been one of Doctor Who's strengths. Also: the glorious moment of the Doctor being too focused on the readings of the ubiquituous Sonic Screwdriver and missing the giant spaceship right there at her feet. Gotta love that. 

Kerblam! - My, do I ever approve of the Doctor wearing a fez. Please let her keep the fez for once, please please pl-nope, of course not. (Sigh.) Anyway. This is a very good episode. Well-shot as always, it is also well-acted; aside from the regulars, Julie Hesmondhalgh's highly energetic performance is a highlight, similar to fan-favorite Harriet Jones without feeling like a cheap copycat; Claudia Jessie's Kira Arlo is a veritable ball of charm wrapped in lovable sweetness; and Leo Flanagan is convincing both at face value, and following the twist about his true motivation (though I kind of bemoan the existence of said twist considering how charming face-value-Charlie was). And it famously hass creative plot-points and twists; this is certainly the first story I know to make bubblewrap a major plot element, let alone scary. The dialogue is probably the snappiest in the series. 

The situation of the conflict doesn't fully make sense to me — it's a future with human-level, or even superior, artificial intelligence and robots; so what hopelessly broken economy produces a world where people still need to have jobs, to the point that there are protests about it, and you solve this problem with regulations forcing companies to use fewer robots? DOES NOT COMPUTE. But then, Doctor Who's glimpses of future Earth history are rarely if ever convincing as actual speculative futurology. Few science-fiction shows have ever been more zeerusty than Doctor Who. (See, for example, The Happiness Patrol and The Long Game.) So this didn't bother too much. Oh, and in term sof monsters, the Kerblam-Men are probably the best-designed creatures in the series, even if I do wish the episode would clarify whether they're sentient, or just drones controlled by the main System's intelligence (Twirly certainly seems to have a lot of character, and, indeed, we see that a lot of the robots have names; but if the robots are sentient, then why is the System being sentient too such a revelation? and why does it control them at will?). All-around great episode!

The Witchfinders - Great actors (everyone agrees Cummings as King James is a treat of hamminess, and yes, he is — though he doesn't entirely befit the tone of the episode at large),  and the visuals are, as always, great. But as for the rest… The story, however, is a little… tepid, somehow; it's not that it's slow, not at all, but it was surprisingly hard to get invested in the proceedings. Maybe it's my aversion to the general "the heroes pretend to be something they're obviously not in front of the villains, who are inexplicably taken in despite a dozen close calls" trope. The monsters are creepy, in fairness, but not particularly appealing or well-explained. Oh, and… I was kind of hoping that Willa might become a companion, unlikely though it was. It's been far too long since we've had a non-contemporary-Earth-based companion. 

It Takes You Away - So, Doctor Who does Coraline? Why not! The first line (“Nice fjords!”) is entirely accurate: this was yet another extremely beautiful-looking episode, as seen above. Filming in Norway helps. Anyway, this was a rather original, unpredictable episode, which I like; Team TARDIS's first incursion into the Anti-Zone, with the delightfully despicable goblin-man Ribbons, feels nicely mythological, somewhat Wagnerian even. I like that a lot too. Not to mention the emotional moments with Bradley Walsh's Graham.

In the negative, I found the blind girl (Ellie Wallwork)'s performance quite lacking in emotion, and while the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Solitract was very well-acted, the lack of lip-synching on the Solitract's body was extremely distracting. It worked for the Monks, but sorry, Wannabe-Kermit, it don't work for you. 

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolor - Not gonna lie: my reaction to the opening scene was: ‘oi, you've gotten some Star Wars - The Last Jedi into my Doctor Who’. And my reaction when we saw what T'zim Sha had become was ‘oi, you've gotten some Darth Vader into my Stenza’. …But aside from that, pretty neat episode.  Bringing back T'zim Sha was certainly a good call. As always, the visuals look fantastic, and Bradley Walsh continues to be one heck of an actor, but I say that every time; our guest actor Mark Addy was also pretty great. Still, a good episode does not a good finale make; this was constructed as a sequel to The Woman Who Fell to Earth but no more, and otherwise feels more like a standalone. And if you were going to bring back one of the monsters from The Ghost Monument, why did it have to be the cookie-cutter Sniperbots, and not the intriguing and original Remnants?  

Twas the Night Before Christmas - Oh, so that's what we get for a Christmas special? One minute? Bah. It looks pretty enough, but aren't we past the 'slightly moving cutouts' level of animation for Doctor Who? I feel like I'm back watching a slightly better-polished version of Death Comes to Time. Mind you, the story itself is fun, short though it may be (it's nice to finally see acknowledgement that Santa Claus is real in the Whoniverse after Last Christmas shed doubt on whether the writing team had tossed out that particular bit of continuity), and Bradley Walsh's narration is nice and warm and everything. Still, it's a bit lot of nothing at the end of the day, compared to what a proper Christmas special should be. Barely one and a half minute long, I ask you!

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Aside from its famously brilliant cinematography, Series 11 is a frankly bit of a downgrade from its predecessor, which was not itself quite as good as the previous few series. The writing is decent but rarely as witty and crisp as what Steven Moffat could sometimes bring to the table, and that shouldn't be a surprise when the new showrunner's previous episodes were often agreed to be among the worst  (or, worse, the blandest) of the Moffat era; the same goes for the score by Segun Akinola, which has its moments but doesn't quite live up to the glorious operatic feel that Murray Gold could sometimes achieve. I think the series greatly suffered from lack of continuity with its predecessor, in a way that no recent Doctor Who seasons have been (2005's Series 1 anchored itself to the Classic Series via the Daleks; when Series 5 came by, Steven Moffat had already written a number of episodes and introduced River Song). One returning writer, or keeping Bill as a companion, or simply Murray Gold staying for one more season, would have smoothed over the transition much better. 

As concerns the cast, Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor is fine as the lead, but she has far too little personality of her own; that is to say, she's good at being the Doctor, though her take on the character doesn't have as much depth beneath the friendly, puckish exterior as other similar Doctors. But she brings little to nothing new to the table. Mix up Troughton, Tennant and Smith's Doctors, and you've basically got her personality — in a way that you simply couldn't derive Tom Baker from blending together William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. Of course, as the number of previous Doctors increases, being original at all becomes exponentially harder; and perhaps there was a conscious decision to make this Doctor "play it safe" due to a feeling that the changed gender was already risky enough a change. For these two reasons I won't be too hard on Whittaker's Doctor. But at face value, without being a dishonor to her predecessors, she really isn't the second coming of Tom Baker, either — even though, for, I think, much the same reason people heaped praise on Rosa ("I'm not one of those people! I'm inclusive! Look at how progressive I am!"), it's become fashionable to praise the Thirteenth Doctor in similar terms. And what few people don't do that are those who hate her. Well, I'd like to register a polite "I think she's average", please. 

The companions are, similarly, fine, though not my favorite TARDIS team either. Bradley Walsh's Graham is a witty, reliable presence and not without depth, or the ability to be warm and kindly at times (i.e. his talk with Yaz in Punjab) and the clear stand-out out of the three in my book. Mandip Gill's Yaz is very likeable, and introduced in an extremely funny scene, but spends half the season as little more than a wallflower, following the others around without contributing much of anything, either in term of participating in the adventure, or simply of comic relief; she's the most audience-surrogate-y of the three, and perhaps it's no coincidence that (as a young woman) she's the one who most resembles the "stereotypical companion". As for Tosin Cole's Ryan, he kind of has the opposite problem — he starts out with a lot of character and an arc to himself, but it's largely left behind past the first episode, and by the end of the season, after the Yaz situation has been somewhat corrected by Arachnids in the U.K. and Demons of the Punjab's exploration of her background, he's the one who just lumbers around without anything to do. And though he acts fine, Cole is, I find, somewhat lacking in charisma; in particular he does "sullen and frustrated" alright, but can't seem to find a way to be whimsical and giddy; and a Who companion should, at times, be whimsical and giddy, or what are they following the Doctor around to see the wonders of the universe for?

This feels like the right time to note that I'm kinda bummed the rumors of a return to "pure historicals" were unfounded. Demons of the Punjab came close, since its aliens were a misdirection and the actual plot was happening in spite of their interference rather than because of it, but it wasn't it. But aside from that, my final sentence on Doctor Who, Series 11, is: “yeah, it's good, no masterpiece but it's good, looking forward to the next one.” 

And also to the New Year's Special. Seriously, Chibnall. If you don't, episode, Dalek, we, you, burn at the stake. I mean it.