Series 11 / Season 37 comes to an end with the unnecessarily annoying to say “Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”. Sadly, once again, the limits of Chris Chibnall’s script writing rears its ugly head, as while the story wasn’t bad by any means, it was once again lacking in tension or interesting new characters. So, let’s take a look then, as the Thirteenth Doctor’s final outing until New Year’s… in a couple of weeks?!
It Takes You Away is right up there with the best this series. It was cleverly written, used the companions well and had a really interesting, unique sci-fi plot at its centre. It’s getting rather worrying that the only stories I’m particularly thrilled with come from writers who aren’t showrunner Chris Chibnall, but hey-ho! Let’s take a look at “It Takes You Away”.
Well, the Thirteenth Doctor’s run of really strong historically set stories has now come to an end. While The Witchfinders wasn’t terrible, it was let down by some poor acting and some extremely over-the-top scenery-chewing, which while funny, hurt the tone to the point of making it a comedy, despite all the killing and stuff… Let’s have a look!
While “Kerblam!” might not be the best title in Who history by any means, it’s still better than Arachnids in the UK… and a better episode too! We dive head first into some political commentary again, but this time against major corporations (*cough* Amazon *cough*) and their treatment of workers, but also against radicals taking things too far. So let’s have a look and see if this works at all in the world of Doctor Who…
While part of me thinks it was a bit too soon after Rosa for Doctor Who to do another historical that focused on racial prejudice and related issues, Demons of the Punjab managed to outdo Rosa in the storytelling stakes and delivered a really interesting drama, with a bit of Who alien-related stuff around it (so we’re still not in pure historical land just yet…) So let’s take a look at the story and see just why it took me by surprise…
The Tsuranga Conundrum was a step up after last week’s effort, not that it was particularly hard to do that, but it does seem to highlight a quirk of the Thirteenth Doctor’s run so far: a focus on the companions and their relationships at the expense of the villain of the story. Let’s take a look at this most recent example and see how that affected the story this time round…
Remember in my Rosa review when I said “while I wouldn’t want all of my Doctor Who this blatantly educational” ? Well, I meant it, so I was kind of annoyed when “Arachnids in the UK” not only had one of the worst titles in Who history, but was also all about the effects of not properly disposing of waste… plus we got another heavy-handed, unsubtle Trump-a-like, which if you’ve read my review of Who audio story “The Silurian Candidate” you’d know how I feel about those! … So… yeah. Let’s take a look…
Rosa is a hard episode to review. As a Doctor Who episode it was alright, the lead villain was bit pants but on the upside Jodie Whittaker felt much more funny and interesting this time round. As an episode made to highlight both how horrible racism is and as a history lesson to show how one lady refusing to give up her seat on a bus lead to such a big change, it was good. I guess it all comes down to what you want out of the episode, but let’s have a look one way or another…
Doctor Who begins to settle into its new groove with The Ghost Monument, which was a fun trek across a dangerous alien planet, and while it won’t win any originality awards (which at this point are incredibly hard to “win” thanks to there being just so many Who stories anyway) it was a fun way to pass an hour. New TARDIS interior and new opening completes the “new era” package, and we even get the old “hint of a future plot point” thrown in! Let’s take a closer look…
The Thirteenth Doctor has arrived, and with her a certainly fresh feeling episode Doctor Who. The Doctor herself isn’t anything new at the moment (well, apart from gender!) which is of course a common post-regeneration thing, but I did enjoy the new cast that surrounds her. It was a fun opener to her run, and promises a different experience in the weeks ahead. Let’s take a closer look, then, at “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”.