WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

I'd not long ago watched a Black Mirror where being held between life and death was a plot point and it was explored so much better (ie at all)

― kinder

i don't think i'd want doctor who to be black mirror!

Wait what's this about teal deers?

tl; dr

I thought that was better than the last one but still only OK. The strangly fabric was both cool and scary but the premise was a bit on the drab side and the whole thing could use more in the way of humour.

Real overreliance on manic expository dialogue as well.

Also, I hate Bradley Walsh.

hey, who turned out the lights?

Second episode. Puts Chibnall's disadvantages into focus quite a bit - OK, so from now on all of the dialogue will be the characters literally describing what is happening on screen - but I'm still sold on his advantages. The show is beautiful. It's incredibly well-photographed and gorgeous to look at, and he's confident enough to do exactly what you would expect. Yeah, there was a lot to love in the convoluted narrative unpredictability of Moffat, but I loved watching this show, even though I could have written you a summary of the episode after watching five minutes of it. The music is also great, though I suppose there are still issues with the 5.1 mix?

The one part that bothered me was the bit where the Doctor apparently actually believed she had stranded everyone on an alien planet to die. The Doctor should, of course, have moments of vulnerability and doubt, but she is an alien genius. She should not be stupider than me. Falling into despair because the TARDIS shows up two minutes later than she expected is out of character for her and unconvincing to any viewer who is even remotely genre savvy.

Still, I've forgiven the show worse, and I'll gladly forgive this. Next week Doctor Who will tell us about racism in America. Speaking of having forgiven worse, can I just say how glad I am that Mark Gatiss will _not_ be writing the episode?

Difference between this and the Keys of Marinus: go!

though the plot of "the ghost monument" involves a deadly sea, chibnall has the narrative confidence to just make it look like a regular sea; "the sea of death" involves five minutes of screen time, some crappy fx shots and some foolishness with susan's shoes to laboriously establish what chibnall does with something like one line of dialogue.

finding the tardis at last got me a little choked up 🤙

though once she got inside of it the reveal of the interior was strangely subdued and drawn out, so much so that my 7 y o whispers to me "it's a trap!"

It’s definitely the most Chibnall TARDIS interior possible

I thought the teethface makeup in E1 was a bit silly but I’m kinda stoked for the Stenza being the season’s villains.

I found this only ok but still much better than the first one. Although if you make a big deal about the water microbes that dissolve people, you could at least... have a water microbe dissolve someone. And that’s two eps of “Doctor stuck in a sports game” so far.

hahaha, I also thought of the Keys of Marinus!

fun episode, I like the new theme tune and that the TARDIS chameleon circuit has chosen an action movie poster for its new form, but I don't think Pythagoras was the type of dude that would have hangovers.

Biscuits, my friends.

BTW, kinda curious question -- both Kate and I agreed that, at least over here, the sound mix of this episode in particular was...off? Like a lot of dialogue seemed buried in the mix, nnd not just for effect.

these 5.1 broadcasts always seem to have inaudible dialogue... center channel is always mixed too low when it's converted to stereo

I am sorta dreading next week's episode, Doctor Who sucks at America, and they have chosen an... advanced topic.

Ah, I see they've got Malorie Blackman to write it. That's reassuring, at least.

i don't know if it was the sound mix but we couldn't understand about 70% of the shouting in the spaceships at the beginning

lol what advanced topic is portended?

notes and comments on this episode

- Maybe I was dense but I didn't understand that there were on two ships until I rewatched the show. I think the shakycam was shaking my mind.
- It was surprisingly easy to split that ship apart.
- Enemy is a toymaker, a device that was lazy even in the 1960s. NAGL to use an asian actor dressed up as Fu Manchu, either.
- The Tardis appears once every "solar rotation". Nitpicks: 1. Solar refers specifically to Earth's sun. 2. The sun doesn't rotate, the planet does. 3. It is vague whether it is a rotation around the planet's axis (a day) or around its sun (a year). 4. It is convenient that the planet's day is around the same as Earth's.
- They call the game a "race" and then switch to talking about species -- not a great choice for clarity. Then they start calling it a rally for who knows why.
- They set up that Chekhov's lighter twice. But they say it lights with a "click of the finger", which doesn't make it clear that it's a snap that can be done from a distance. (and why does it.... but no)
- The cynical guy's sad story was a "Walker, Texas Ranger" clip used on Conan.
- Rather convenient that there's a robot deactivate button right where they get trapped.
- They are going all out with their generic predator species, huh. not an enemy i thought was notable enough to go back to.
- The Doctor was concerned about the dead planet because she "feels a duty to others who might be in trouble". But the planet looks long dead. Not the most pressing concern.
- They all stop to look at "scorch marks" on the wall which, uh, you already had the robots firing at you, why is that a surprise.
- Chibnall doesn't make every line matter, and I don't think that's a good fit for a show like Doctor Who. e.g. they are told that the water is poison, then there's a pointless scene where the doctor points the sonic at the water and says the water is poison. or when they are in a shooting range and it takes multiple sentences for the doctor to say it's a shooting range.
- The "do not travel by night" thing is returned to at the end, but a second later it doesn't matter. I don't know why they bothered.

Flesh eating water was such a cool idea that I presume it's going to be important later. Otherwise why bother?

Apart from anything else I loved the first shot of the Doc in this, seeing her from Yaz's pov effectively. Lots of nice touches, even just showing an alien planet's varying terrain for once. Pretty lacklustre storywise once again though.

Nu Doc confirmed as a Remoaner ("Better Together")

lol that was my immediate thought as well.

flesh eating water was a cool idea. which they then explored by showing a picture of normal looking water and sailing over it.

I was a bit disappointed she found her Tardis already, I was expecting this series to be a single episodic adventure which would've been cool. Enjoyed it generally, lots of little quibbles but it was atmospheric and fun.

Here is the only video I can find of the Walker clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsbNoUHwXWs

And here's the next lines.

(Nicholas jumps from the ladder and falls to the floor, seriously hurting himself)

Ranger Roberta 'Bobbie' Hunt: (shocked) Oh, my God! Are you nuts?

Salvatore Matacio: (grabs and restrains Bobbie, as Laura Justin; furious) You will not interfere with me teaching my son how to be a man. That is something you know nothing about! Huh?

Ranger Roberta 'Bobbie' Hunt: Yes.

(Nicholas is moaning, writhing, and crying in pain)

Salvatore Matacio: (slightly kicks him) Hey. Don't ever trust anyone, Nicholas. Nobody. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be. Stop crying.

Weirdly, this episode’s director was former R1 DJ Mark Tonderai.

lol what advanced topic is portended?

They're gonna meet Rosa Parks and fool around in 1950s Montgomery. At least it will be fun to hear the Doctor say "Montgomery".

The Doctor was concerned about the dead planet because she "feels a duty to others who might be in trouble"

This bothered me because, well... there are no humanoids on the planet, but the second you meet a sentient lifeform (one that can talk to you!) your reaction is to... murder all of them with fire? Oh but you hate guns, so it's cool.

At least it will be fun to hear the Doctor say "Montgomery".

omg

I don't know whether sic has poisoned my thinking on this but after completely loving E1 and not caring at all about any of those plot point nitpicks because the overall production and mood was so great, I had the exact opposite reaction to this, tons of minor stuff bugged me and the general feeling was just stodgy and aimless and weak.

Not even the thing I found most annoying but - the "only idiots carry knives" line last week was great I thought, and then this week a guy being suffocated by a bit of angry cloth has his life saved by...someone carrying a knife. Like ffs chibnall you wrote both these yourself, make your mind up.

sic i absolutely loved reading that. where's your patreon??? :)

pay $1 a week for me to keep doing these, $2 a week for me not to. number of voters wins over dollar amount.

sic i absolutely loved reading that

agree! he rudely added a few days too late. take my dollar!

i would v much miss sic’s posts itt.

- Enemy is a toymaker, a device that was lazy even in the 1960s. NAGL to use an asian actor dressed up as Fu Manchu, either.

Did I miss something, or where was it established he's a toymaker? He says something about winning the first of the races they're participating in, but I didn't hear any mention of toys. Also, I don't know the actor's background, but he didn't look ethnically East Asian to me, and I didn't get any Fu Manchu vibes from him.

- Rather convenient that there's a robot deactivate button right where they get trapped.

This was done very quickly, but the impression I got was that the machine wasn't designed to produce EMP, the Doctor just rigged it to do that. Certainly an EMP would've been a rather odd thing to use if the device was designed to be an off-switch.

abanana is drawing uncomfortable similiarities between this story/character and one of the three most racist Dr Who stories ever, The Celestial Toymaker from 1966

That's right. Note that celestial meant Chinese. I originally wrote gamester/toymaker then thought the Star Trek ref wasn't needed.

The new actor was Art Malik and he was born in Pakistan.

abanana is drawing uncomfortable similiarities between this story/character and one of the three most racist Dr Who stories ever, The Celestial Toymaker from 1966

Yeah, I understood the reference, but I didn't really pick Fu Manchu vibes from him. I guess his shirt and vest were kinda vaguely "Oriental", but other than that his appearance and behaviour didn't really fit the stereotype. Maybe if he was the only Asian actor we've seen so far, it would've stand out more, but this and the previous episode have already featured a couple of other characters of South Asian roots (including one of the companions), so it really felt more like "we cast whoever was best for the role" than some kind of racist stereotyping.

- The "do not travel by night" thing is returned to at the end, but a second later it doesn't matter. I don't know why they bothered.

I thought the rule against traveling by night was because those weird living bandages were dormant when the sun was shining? It was never explained why that was the case, but it certainly mattered.

I guess his shirt and vest were kinda vaguely "Oriental"

this is what dat banana dough meant, the obvious orientalism (vs, say, Dorium in a similar story-role). possibly you're thinking instead of the absolute most racist Doctor Who story ever, from 1977, in expecting very direct Fu Manchu references.

Anyway, in general I thought this was an okay episode. Certainly an improvement over the previous one, because the ideas was less derivative, and others than the Doctor got some nice character moments here. But overall the plot was still a mess, the conclusion where the two aliens claim the price together should've been a heartwarming moment, but it came too abruptly. There simply wasn't enough space to develop those two properly because Chibnall wanted to flesh out the companions as well. Which was nice, but it makes me feel three new companions + a new Doctor is simply too much if they want to have interesting one-off characters as well.

And yeah, so much for the idea that this season would be all stand-alone stories, since the shadow of the Stenza and the cryptic "timeless child" references were obviously set-up for a larger plot. I don't mind it, and at this point I think most Who fans expect the series to have seasonal arcs besides the Monster of the Week, I'm just not convinced Chibnall can pull it off as well as Moffat (or even Davis) did at his best.

Art Malik was wearing a Shalwar Kameez a fairly typical outfit for an Indian or Pakistani to wear anywhere. My Indian neighbor wears one on a regular basis. FFS it’s a Pakistani man wearing, admittedly fancy, everyday clothes, which presumably will still be quite comfortable on a hot day in the future.

thanks, i'm learning stuff.

so much for the idea that this season would be all stand-alone stories

Stand alone stories and the season having a larger arc are not incompatible.

I thought the incongruity being noted was bcz this either is so wildly far in the future that the very existence of humans and earth cultures has been forgotten, or (as the dialogue suggests) is in the present but it’s just a coincidence or budgetary limitation that everybody in it looks like humans

Took me a while to work out the woman racer's accent. Briefly considered 'Isle of Man'.

Norn Iron surely, which is her own accent

So far in the future we can have TK Maxx bargain bin tracksuit bottoms (as worn by the racers), but not Shalwar Kameez?

It’s a pretty strong trope in sci-fi in Genral and doctor who in particular that aspects of current human physiology and culture persist if only to keep the props, costume and makeup department budgets under control.

Did appreciate staff Sargent morrow as one of the racers keeping Yorkshire’s end up.

FFS it’s a Pakistani man wearing, admittedly fancy, everyday clothes, which presumably will still be quite comfortable on a hot day in the future.

Oops, sorry, I didn't notice Sic already said the same. But the Stenza tech the Doctor used to transport them there was supposed to be a teleporter, there's no mention of it being a time machine. So presumably they're in the present day, then.