new-nu-Who: RTD2 (Doctor Who on telly 2023-?)

the heavy handed anti-capitalist stuff and the heavy-handed pathos with the innocent little girl all reminded me of a Pat Mills scripted strip from 2000ad, the killer ambulance robots that repeat customer-service bromides as they execute you were straight out of Ro-Busters or ABC Warriors. I think the heavy-handedness usually works better in those comics though, Mills leans into the lurid and grotesque stuff, but this just came out feeling tepid.

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new-nu-who and starlord

The pro-choice line was followed about 2 minutes later by the line about refugees literally having to show up on people's shores before they have to let you in - I agree the very RTD lack of subtext is enjoyable

Another odd thing was the reappearance of the schoolboy from the opening scene during the musical number at the end.

Sadly, another very RTD thing is that he always needs to seed "maybe this villain will return!" - he had the Dalek burbling about "Emergency Temporal Shift" in Doomsday, as if without it there'd be a riot the next time they reappeared.

That was unnerving in spots

Pretty good! No idea if it actually made sense but it felt satisfying enough - nice mix of (lite) Ghost Story For Christmas vibe and DW timeline shenanigans

my favorite so far - unnerving, like you say. obviously paradoxical in that the best thing about doctor who at the moment - ncuti gatwa - wasn’t in it. i got a sense in the first three episodes of a splendid doctor trying to find a centre of gravity and consistency in some mediocre stories. and his absence in that means gatwa still feels slightly out of place, through outshining and being more vivid than the material.

still don’t like the way it looks but it would take a tv professional to tell me why i think. the faces are too clean and the eyes too vivid, and the landscapes all feel either synthetic or a million miles away as if they’ve had some sort of rendering or or bokeh effect applied to them.

of course in the best episode with the 10th doctor, he was also barely in it.

That was good creepy fun although bit of a pointless appearance for 'Mrs Flood' and lmao putting big glasses on to look 40

ending gave me logopolis vibes. it almost makes sense, like if you squint from a distance....

this was the first visually well-told one, I thought ten minutes in, and looking forward to the same director next week

by thirty minutes in I was “third-best RTD ep ever?”

That episode was very good on ~vibes but I’m not sure it really held together plot-wise. 

If the old lady was Ruby all along, then why did (she make) everyone who approached her run away? I've seen some theories saying that it was Ruby's fear of abandonment personified... but if that was the case, then why did the Doctor disappear without the old lady nearby? 

It also implies that Mad Jack will continue to launch the nukes, since she doesn’t stop him in this timeline and the Doctor still mentions it happening. Who knows what will happen to Marti the campaign volunteer either? :(
 
I hated the bit near the end which seemed to imply that Ruby put Marti in Roger’s path so she could prove he was a monster (which she already knew because the Doctor said so!), and then later had the gall to be like “sorry you were abused, I’m gonna go save the day now”. Weirdly out of character and gross. 

idk most of this was great especially the first half - I really loved the rural horror creepiness, the hilariously mean Welsh pub, the bit with UNIT etc. And I'm fine with leaving stuff unexplained but this just didn't really make much sense in the end.

And again, we get it, Ruby is special/magic and has abandonment issues, can we please give her some new character traits already?

SIÂN fucking PHILLIPS!

yep! had my usual 'is that Sheila Hancock?!' moment tho

That episode was very good on ~vibes but I’m not sure it really held together plot-wise.

https://i.ibb.co/f0T5KWQ/rtdbb.jpg

"I'm so back, baby!"

73 Yards has restored my faith! esp "your magic phone" lol.

Couldn't quite shake the thought throughout that RTD had been upcycling past top episodes: "how about creepy unmoving figures who get closer further away when you're not looking..."

are there gonna be tons of memes of what the Herald was saying to cause people to run away shrieking now

because if so, send them my way

also, this happens in our house now:

me: I'm enjoying this so far!
me kinder: I should warn you that this is a RTD one

*mr kinder, that is
he jane

Wonder why it skipped the opening credits - and hope it won't become a regular thing.

because the Doctor disappeared from the story before the opening credits would have appeared

(and Gatwa joined the production after this ep — having still been on Sex Education previously — so I wouldn’t expect any other Doctor-lite episodes in the remaining four, no)

like when Clara’s eyes replaced Capaldi’s after she bluffed the cybermen that she was the Doctor

It could have, like, opened with the opening credits?

Not that I am miffed by their absence or anything - but I did find it a curious choice

I thought it was an effective way of throwing off the tone of the whole show to make one more unsettled as a viewer, leading into the creepiness of the apparition

I'll buy that!

As a one off in that context it's fine - I just hope it's not part of an attempt to rebrand the show as more 'prestige' or whatever.

I didn't even notice the lack of titles lol but yeah, going straight to them can have its own 'this one's intense, strap in' power.

Two fun sort-of-fake-outs for me were briefly thinking (hoping) the Herald was going to be whizzing along in parallel with the train somehow and, less amusingly, also that she might appear in the same position as Gwilliam causing them both to explode.

I just hope it's not part of an attempt to rebrand the show as more 'prestige' or whatever.

it's TWO WEEKS since an episode called "Space Babies" had talking babies with CGI mouths and a farting monster made out of snot :)

yeah i liked that one
no thoughts just vibes

Just noticed this new season is numbered as..... Season 1?

That’s a Disney+ thing

It m shows up that way on iPlayer too, which is.. weird

As I understand it, part of the Disney deal was rebranding this season as Season 1

and yet there's a lot of background-filling-in, him referencing previous adventures.

I am not defending the Season 1 nonsense, mind you

There'll now be three ways to number each future season, that's fun.

It also implies that Mad Jack will continue to launch the nukes, since she doesn’t stop him in this timeline and the Doctor still mentions it happening.

The Doctor can be quite timeline-flexible (and he's still in the old one when he says it) - in the new timeline they don't loose Mad Jack. (Also the Doctor just says that he led the world to the brink)

I hated the bit near the end which seemed to imply that Ruby put Marti in Roger’s path so she could prove he was a monster (which she already knew because the Doctor said so!), and then later had the gall to be like “sorry you were abused, I’m gonna go save the day now”. Weirdly out of character and gross.

That feels like a bit of a stretch - "I had to make sure I was right" makes more sense referring to being sure ap Gwilliam has the means motive and opportunity to launch nuclear weapons.

(Does anyone still call the last season season 40 or whatever?)

Personally don’t think they use someone good like Aneurin Barnard for roughly 10 minutes/one episode so there must be another timeline where someone else lets Mad Jack out, but not them.

finally saw this and even my jaded 15-y-o was instantly on his phone looking for theories afterwards, gotta tip your cap rtd you done did it again

There was a lot odd (tho v RTD at his polar opposite to 'lolol imagine a literal bogeyman' writing and some of the darkest tho true to life waters the show's ever ventured into) about the introduction of Marti. Why didn't Gwilliam just approach her directly? Why no interest in Ruby? I took it as him seeing the latter as 'stronger' of the two and maybe also wanting to charm Marti with knowledge of her name (tho what was up with the 'boy's name' comment?). But yeah...surely Ruby did not set that up so much as just realise after what was going on but decide she could not jeopardise herself (or Gwilliam's intended fate) by intervening.

he asked ruby about her so that we could see things through ruby's eyes imo. no interest in ruby, who knows, men are strange. I don't think ruby put her in roger's path, all she did was tell him her name. the rest was just pure sleaze. It was good to see this, so he was a proper monster privately as well as publicly, so we could really hate him. Otherwise you might get some people like 'damn right we need a strong nuclear deterrent, fuck ruby'.

still no idea what the herald eg Old Ruby, was saying to people to make them run away in horror. but i really like that i don't know! The uncanny doesn't work if it's all explained

She was saying “she thinks Drake won the beef”

ha ha

One episode not so far mentioned as comparison is Turn Left - a similar "without the Doctor" show, but with a grimmer ending (and middle).

A friend, who is more on the "Ruby threw Marti under the bus" vibe, frames it as all of the non-Doctor actors that try to fill the void (Ruby, Torchwood, UNIT) have to make decisions about how and when to hurt people - "While the Doctor might be able to find a way to solve the problem that doesn't involve hurting people, or allowing people to be hurt, the people who are trying to stand in for him are more limited, and cannot."

I’m not sure what Ruby was supposed to do there - not tell Roger Marti’s name? What would that have accomplished?

Okay THAT was WILD

not every ep this season has totally landed for me but I am so happy that Doctor Who is trying to do things again