WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

Sure, but he wasn't a fan of them!

Sure, but he wasn't a fan of them!

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison)

except when he was

sure, he got in a right proper snit when the brigadier committed genocide, but he got over it fairly easily all things considered

Blerg. Bailed after 20 mins. Might have to skip this season.

This was fine.

It’s just so... witless and straight-edge

Witless is right. How does he keep writing dialogue where people describe what's happening in front of them over and over, while never having any of the concepts and premises in the show connect to each other or follow through on themselves?

Shilling for Amazon (repeatedly) and Uber suggests a possibility that the pro-exploitation ending of Kerblam was rewritten by Chibnall after all.

The Doctor still figuring everything out by googling halfway through the episode and reading the results aloud.

(also how the fuck is this guy in South Africa the Outback supposed to have NBN?)

(^ ok so this gets explained but why didn't it surprise a) the secret service cops and b) the Doctor who knows the place so well she once lived there for 123 years?)

So many of the lines are such dull boilerplate that all but the youngest viewers could finish them before the actors, but they're played as dazzling revelations.

"One last thing, something you should know in the second before you die: everything you think you know.....

...

....

...

...IS A LIE!"

"I thought I was dead."
"No. I'm never going to let that happen to you."
good luck w/ that mate

Also tapping out vs hate watching. Enjoyment affected by the mouth breathing cast, and dialogue, action and tone akin to little Ani pod racing. On the plus side, happy for the viewers establishing this as *their* Doctor, not sharing my annoyances.

why does every scene have to be played as THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT EVER? it is tiring and makes every scene feel the same.

did they all forget that they had a TIME AND SPACE MACHINE in this episode?

(also how the fuck is this guy in South Africa the Outback supposed to have NBN?)

science fiction

Spyfall was fantastic but I do think Chris Chibnall slightly overdid it with all those captions #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/qOhEWMMGjr

— Happy New Pip (@pipmadeley) January 1, 2020

Yeah, all the reference jokes in this were the absolute pits, "worst uber ever" wtf.

James, if it helps, she's actually been recruited by all the secret service agencies on planet earth working jointly, which is lol but somewhat less offensive?

Also the Vox Explainer on big data "govt agencies are full of old people who don't understand technology so they outsource to the private sector" - how about govt agencies are full of neoliberal zealots eager to hand their buddies in the private sector some cash?

Finally saw this. Now sighing, remembering when this show was clever.

thought the master reveal was fairly terrifying, and the monsters were pretty good, but everything else...

i'm used to the doctor being very spiky and uncooperative and arrogant with all government institutions so this one was v disappointing on that front (among many others)

didn't the doctor used to be wildly smarter than everyone else? funnier? both grumpier and more cheerful? not sure what happened here tbh

chris chibnall iirc

yeah, to be fair, the monsters are well done.

i mean EVERYTHING is a lie? the mets didn’t really win the world series in 1969? my mother is... my father and my father is my mother??

she's half her father on her mother's side

I love that y’all can’t even wait for part 2 to start bitching about the plot

Chibnall’s biggest problem seems to be that he thinks this is primarily a show for kids - where did he get such a preposterous idea

Robert Holmes thought it was almost exclusively a show for kids

ima gonna go all out and say this hit my minimum expectations for watchable dr who

(which bar last season frequently sailed way under, at least until stopped watching, so fair play to em)

Monsters effective yep, not sure I buy sacha dhawan...

No problem with it being a show for kids, just want it to be better than disposable trash for kids.

Just watched the first part of Mackenzie Crook's Worzel Gummidge adap, and somehow managed to find a show for kids to be delightful, charming, spooky, mildly witty, and to follow through on the premises and gags that it sets up.

I should give that a go, Wiesel Gummidge terrifies me a a child and I could exorcise that demon.

Kids LOVE long speeches about state work being outsourced to tech giants!

This was fine? Not great, not terrible.

Not sure I'll bother with this season unless I start reading amazing reports on this thread.

I did think it was a nice touch for the Doctor’s favorite spy to be a desk-bound analyst (lol I almost typoed “analist”)

My expectations for last year was "the cast are charming and work well together", and Sacha Dhawan fits in well there. Also "the story might be good if Chris Chibnall isn't writing it"

I honestly spent some time wondering if Lenny Henry had a son - he looks well!

The two Worzel episodes were really, unexpectedly impressive.

I'm kind of with Dan on this, the episode compared to some of Chibs's worst offerings from the prior season is at least competent (though if we start burrowing into the ideological themes (but why) we'd find plenty to object to). In the end, though, the episode is really just a modern techno-thriller in Doctor Who cosplay. No anarchic spirit, no fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants mummery, no cleverness, no ideas. I'd take Moffat at his most indulgent over the dead fish running the show now.

A modern technothriller for kids, where all of the shots fired in the terrible chase hit a part of a bike but not an important part or the cast.

that really was a bad chase

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/X4jF3xTxKWM/hqdefault.jpg

I am working slowly towards the present series with my kids (we've done s1-6 in last 18 months) so won't get to this one for ages, but today's episode seems to be going down very well on twitter

Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.

Steals directly Rusty's "Master returns and puts companions on the run/undercover by taking over the internet and telling everyone they're bad" device
Bringing Gallifrey back to destroy Gallifrey to bring Gallifrey back to destroy Gallifrey to bring Gallifrey back to destroy Gallifrey as nauseum
Something something arctron something something that's the plot

Anyone who's ever interrupted a simultaneous overwrite like that knows it ends up in a bricked device.

Saying right now that turning off the Master's perception filter so he no longer looks like a white Aryan but a brown skinned traitor is a) a touch racist and b) a bit brutal (but c) why would they even think it was him?)

Ugh.

Also I have seen Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure already.

Actually it's Bogus Journey, isn't it.

Evening jacket look reminded me heavily of Max Wall which presumably wasn't the desired effect.

Everything paid off in part 2 imho

“What’s it doing?”
“TOTAL… transference.”

"TOTAL... shutdown."

seems pretty clear that the choice is between hatereading this thread or hatewatching the show

^ But at least this was Chibnall recycling his own self-contradicting nonsense. Both these episodes piecemeal ideas and jackdaw lines from Davies and Moffat, without re-examining or newly contextualising or taking inspiration from them, just plonking them (and half-remembered ideas of What's In Bond or People Who Computer) down in this witless sequence of events without the ability to connect with anything.

Gomez, Moffat and Missy (and Simm!) took a version of the Master that expanded, drew and rounded off a character arc for this 47-year patchwork character, while leaving endless room for Big Finish future TV writers to slot in more villainous, earlier versions of the character. Chibnall can't even wait the length of a Moffat-standard series to undo it all, dropping a maniacally cackling Ainley-style Master in, without even the motivation of Sawardian revenge or Davies' jealousy. He brings back a mode of killing last seen in... 1981? as though that will mean anything to the 2020 audience -- not even making it scary on its own terms,let alone in a new way. Waving tiny matchstick men just inspires a shrug, whereas 1971 blue-screening an actor into a lunchbox still looks unsettling.

"When's this all going to stop for you, all this killing and madness?"
- how about 12 episodes ago, at the conclusion of a year-long arc?

Gallifrey (or, if you prefer, Galli-free) is destroyed,! Thousands of years of guilt add up to find a way to save it, and free oneself emotionally. Then one hears that its disappeared, and find oneself tricked into journeying through several million years of (unrelated) guilt and (related, building) anger to discover it at the end of the universe, and conclude - as one's 55-year character arc suited - that this hidebound institution is better off locked away in its own insularity. But Chibnall has a great idea: it's destroyed again! And even though he insists on both Gallifrey and Time Lords living in exact synchronised linearity, it's destroyed in a) the year 2020 and b) the Doctor's current timeline. Just like Moffat, let's shut the TARDIS door after looking at it and brood for a while.
(At least this one was nearly two series ago that Moffat did it. Should feel nice and fresh to ppl binge-viewing on iPlayer in March.)

Women have been grand and creative and underappreciated through history! Let's redress that balance by... denying them agency and brain-raping them against their explicit requests. So that they can die in Dachau in a few months, believing their struggle and brilliance and ingenuity was useless, tbf.

"Love a pacifist" and "don't approve" of guns -- but just like last year, still 100% approve of blowing up people that look different to you with bombs within minutes of seeing them, in a way that's likely to kill multiple bystanders. (speaking of, pulling off the Master's space-mask so that the Nazis can see he's brown is played... like... a joke? Like Chibnall's idea of a Roger Moore Bond quip on murdering somebody? This was really queasy in a way I don't think was intended.)

The Master having to live through decades to get out of a trap the Doctor set isn't just taken from Moffat without variation, it's taken from The Curse Of Fatal Death, Moffat's parody of some of the dumber unexamined things in old-style Dr Who. They can't even be bothered to have him change his hairstyle in seventy years!

Also wah wahh lol Lenny Henry tried to kill the entire world bcz his mummy thought he was a shit. At least that one's ripped off of Tim Burton Zach Snyder Trump.

Like last season, half the dialogue is describing whats happening on screen that that moment, and a quarter is written in later and dubbed over the back of people's heads. There was almost an unbroken minute of Ada staring at the back of the Doctor's chattering barnet while she tried to hotwire the aliens tonight!

and nah, it's Excellent Adventure where they make mental notes to go back later and do all the things that saved them along the way.

xpost

the Verity! podcast loved ep 1 if you want some positivity affirmation Tom

First half of part 2 was passable, then Chibnall kept piling on the Chibnall bullshit.

At least this week's episode wasn't paced like a Michael Bay movie.

Thinking about it some more, the Master was a late addition to this story, wasn't he? He might say he helped the cybermen oops i meant casavans, but he doesn't actually add anything to the story. It's all about Bezos and computers being evil.

Ah yes, I meant to drop in Curse of Fatal Death to my post too but forgot.