I stopped writing up the episodes because I couldn't be bothered setting up that patreon really dg that much of af, but a friend (who also hated the first four) texted me after the week before last that I must have come around and loved that one. AND SO! it took me two weeks to get all of this typed:
16 minutes into The Tsuranga Conundrum, Chibnall has his version of Doctor Who pacing a corridor, running through every tiny thing she’s observed about the P’ting, deducing and combining data. From the way he repeatedly has his Earth human characters admire her, praise her, and swear fealty to her, we can conclude that her occasional demonstrations of competence mark her as a role model. So here, we might infer that analysing the sparse facts that a situation gives you, and to draw conclusions from them, is the mark of a smart, capable leader. But the counterpoint of this is that since his own scripts can’t make any of the COPIOUS facts that he gives us connect to each other, he’s wasting our time, and indeed insulting our own intelligence.
Within the first five minutes of this episode, he’s thrown a whole bunch of ideas at us: setting ideas, character behaviour ideas, sci-fi ideas, plot-motivating ideas… but none of them interconnect with each other, and almost none of them actually support themselves in any way.
We open on the TARDIS fam scouring four square metres of a junkpile on one of at least 59 (!) planets orbiting one star (!!) in this “junk galaxy.” We are clearly meant to take it that not only each of the 59-or-more planets in this system has been used as a dumping ground akin to a tip on C20th Earth, but that most of the planets in the galaxy are similarly purposed. We’ve already seen that Chibnall, despite living on one, has no idea how large planets are, but here he’s blowing out his misapprehension of them pretty impressively. Our system contains 8 or so planets, and our galaxy is estimated to have at least one planet per star. Let’s allow that, like Sol, Seffilun is punching above its weight by a factor of eight, but the other proportions are applicable – this seems reasonable, given the way Yas keeps explaining throughout this episode how things in the civilisation are direct equivalents of things in C21st England. This gives us a probable TWELVE HUNDRED MILLION PLANETS dedicated to the dumping of other planets’ refuse, all of which must be carried by faster-than-light ships, with additional YEARS AND YEARS’ flight journey added to any one drop-off if a given planet turns out to be full when the trailer backs up to it. The amount of expense and energy expended on any single dump would outdo the value of dumping your garbage instead of recycling it by a factor of millions, but this doesn’t turn out to be any kind of allegory for waste, exploitation of “lesser” civilisations, or the unchecked rapaciousness of capitalism, as one might expect from this set-up.
Now, this can obviously be dismissed as pedantry. But it’s also very very basic pedantry that takes literal seconds to calculate as the actors are speaking lines that specifically establish the situation. We open cold on them, and absolutely ought to expect their dialogue to give us information about the setting and scenario for this week’s adventure. Chibnall has made the deliberate decision to give us the information that they’re on a planet that has at least 59 fellows orbiting the local sun, and the deliberate decision to give us the information that every planet orbiting every star in the system (more or less. I’m assuming one in each is for admin, like the bloke in the little box at the front, and the bloke operating the crane, in an Earth tip) is dedicated to junk. He could have just said “a junk planet.” Planets are, as I noted before, pretty big. But out of some presumable desire to make things sound more “spacey,” he throws in a couple of lines that render the entire notion so ludicrous that it throws anyone who bothers to listen to them completely away from his intention.
The lack of thought in the setting is mirrored in the scenario. It’s a moot point, as within a few minutes we’re whisked away from the junk planet, but he doesn’t even bother TO COME UP WITH A SCENARIO. They’re using metal-detectors-but-not, on an actual mountain of metal. Whatever they’re hunting for, Graham will recognise it – so, it’s something from present-day Earth? That you can still find four examples of near each other, 4600 years in the future? And they expect them to be not on the surface, as the Doctor has had to reprogram the four metal detectors to scan for them, rather than being spotted visually, but so near the surface that any of the fam will be able to reach them by hand once the detectors beep.
One might argue that Chibnall shouldn’t have bothered to come up with the item that they’re searching for one, or four, or seven of, since he wasn’t going to follow through on it… but why not follow through on it? The team have gathered on their first ever on-purpose adventure as a group, and they’ve chosen to go idly metal-detectoring on one of over a billion whole planets that might contain their target, any one of which they will die of old age before examining. As soon as they’re gone from the planet, it becomes urgent to get back to it – so why not have there be urgency to find the Mystery Thing that they’re searching for? The TARDIS has sprung a gasket, and they’re looking for Time Gaskets. The rest of the episode has a whole bunch of stuff about engines and substitutes for and repairs to them: this could provide a thematic unity. They’re using metal detectors programmed to look for something not-metal, and the rest of the episode has a variety of issues around organic matter vs inorganic - why not link the two examples of this? With four protagonists to serve, Chibnall gives three of them nothing to want in the story, and the Doctor only to get back to her ship with the other three. If they’re all hunting for something, why not have it be something that at least ONE of them wants, to give the hunt some stakes, and an additional tension for each of them during the rest of the episode? He’s created a red herring where he could have created a maguffin, except that it’s not even a fish and it doesn’t have a colour. (Nailed it!)
Graham uncovers the “sonic mine” that’s been camouflaged as Whatever It Is They’re Searching For, which means that this common C21st Earth item is at once a) still so very common 4,600 years in the future that loads of them are at the top of entire planets of landfill, and b) so desirable that a psychopathic prankster knows they can murder randos by disguising a mine as one. Why not, in this case, make it anything at all that we can understand the desire for?
Once knowing it’s a mine, the Doctor’s approach to safety is: to tell everyone not to move, but then move vigorously and demonstratively at it herself. By not moving, and thus being a mere 10cm further away from it than her, their organs are stabilised immediately in the hospital, while one of hers takes an extra ten minutes to settle. Surely running away would have given them a far better chance at survival, then? Especially since moving near it doesn’t set it off, and it was triggered already. Also, what on earth is the point of a mine that “destabilises you internally while churning up the external environment”? The external bits of you are in that environment. They’re going to get cut and bruised and torn and shredded if the external environment contains buildings or cars or – let’s just say, for a theoretical example – A MOUNTAIN OF SCRAP METAL.
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“Where have I heard the name Tsuranga… Tsuranga, where have I heard that name… Tsuranga…” – this moment of questioning is the closest the episode comes to imbuing the title with any meaning whatsoever. We’re promptly told that Tsuranga is the Space Red Cross, so the only time it spends being a mystery waiting to be unlocked, a riddle, a conundrum, is the Doctor going “I’ve heard of that but can’t recall exactly where yet.” What is Chibnall doing with this title? Preparing us to look for a hidden mystery that never eventuates, or just flipping open a dictionary and pointing blindly?
Actually, that might have happened – a lot about this episode suggests it was a last-minute addition to the series. A limited cast on about three and a half sets (junk planet aside). More corridor-running than most seasons of nu-Who include. The hospital contains two separate control rooms that look like they were dumped designs for a TARDIS interior, down to time columns above the circular control panels (and gleaming white walls, reminiscent of the Davison-like crowded TARDIS team) – pulled from the files because there wasn’t time or money to design new sets? The P’ting is credited to someone who didn’t write the episode, and everything about the cast’s reaction to it strongly suggest that the design had not been communicated to them at the time of shoot.
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When the Doctor meets Cicero, she absolutely FAWNS over this military general. Knows her record, gawps about a feted battle victory. So: given the hardline position this Doctor takes, we can assume that in her entire military career, not just in defeating the army of the Aeians at the Battle Of The Underkind, this general never used guns, or saw anyone else use guns. Of course, it will have been okay if she did loads of killings by blowing people up or setting them on fire, or locking them in a room to suffocate and eat each other, or approving of soldiers who later told her that they’d shot people when she wasn’t looking.
Cicero’s brother sneers “When she says ‘consort,’ she really means Clone-Drone. Android.” –well, which is it? And why doesn’t she say it? Durkas goes on to say “you can tell by the hair” – but if the Fam are from this time and culture, they’d know that. The only reason he can be bringing it up is to snarkily undermine and mock his sister for fucking a robot. Is it because it was cloned… from… her? So it’s more like a vibrator than a separate being, despite evident sentience? He’s the brother and travelling companion to an acclaimed military hero, an she still keeps him around despite him insisting on telling complete strangers THE SECOND THAT SHE MEETS THEM “my sister, the pilot, fucks her Palm Pilot. Mr Palmer and the five-speed dong attachments. Look at this robot wanker and his dumb hair.” Jesus Christ, that’s a load of weird backstory to put into these characters on their first scene, but at least it’s going to make for some interesting dynamics later.
(Oh, it’s not? Chibnall forgot to think about what the words mean when he came up with a sci-fi concept, just writing some placeholder dialogue that describes what’s onscreen and never coming back to it? Hmm. Seems out of character.)
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Wait! I’ve heard that name!”
Yes, you’re ON A BLOODY HOSPITAL SPACESHIP, one would fucking hope you’ve heard of a Doctor before! This exchange taking Doctor as a name makes even less sense forty minutes later when the nurse says “If you’re a doctor, maybe you should examine her.” And is it really Hippocratic to say “she has a heart condition but I can’t tell you what exact specific heart condition”? (Space Hippocratic. It’s like Earth Hippocratic.)
When the nature of the ship is revealed, Astos says “We have been trying to tell you” that they’re on a spaceship. But nobody has said anything of the sort, or started a sentence and been cut off, or called it after the Doctor as she runs out of the room. It’s like Chibnall doesn’t read his own scripts a second time, let alone revise them, or have a script editor on staff to make sure things that change between drafts don’t get left behind, referring to events or dialogue that now haven’t happened.
Despite choosing to have a four-person lead, Chibnall fails to give most of them anything to do in the plot week after week, and Yas remains the most shortchanged. Once again, a situation that could use either deductive reasoning or quick control being taken in times of stress sidelines the trained, aspirant police officer. In previous weeks, Graham has been turned into an exposition mouthpiece;throughout this week Yas becomes a walking annotation. “Like the Red Cross.” “Like a posh version of my uniform camera.” “Like CERN. We did it in school.” Graham and Ryan have yet another scene about their emotional disconnection and familial relationship that feels plugged in from a kit. Over and over and over, people stop doing things to deliver exposition on what their feelings and backstory are, with the backstory only relating to their feelings. But I do like the humour and character in their sparring over Call The Midwife. Even if it’s the only thing that actually feels like real character work in the 50 minutes – cramming arcs for all four of the guest characters in obviously isn’t going to leave room for the leads.
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Being ten centimetres closer to the bomb can be the only reason that the Doctor takes longer to heal than the rest of the fam… even though a big point is made about how they don’t have medical implants (more implants! It doesn’t matter what millennium he’s in, for Chibnall All Of Space Forever is in the same level and style of technology) so the nurse doesn’t know if the others have been treated properly. But there’s no joined-up thinking about the Doctor’s injury or about the others’ healing. “Running can disrupt the ongoing healing process” – but how were they able to accurately treat her? Even if it were in character for this new incarnation of a rebellious vagabond to get tracking implants in various cultures around all of time and space, she has spent no time on her own since this body was created, so obviously doesn’t have this implant either. And it’s her “ecto-spleen” that’s injured??!? So she has an external spleen on her side that she’s clutching in pain… but the mine only disrupted internal organs? I get that Chibnall is just trying to come up with a nonsenseish “spacey” name for an organ to make her sound alien, but for fuuuuuuck’s sake, he’s managed to make one up that specifically and directly contradicts the nature of the injury. Again, yes, it’s dumb pedantry, but I only notice the words not making sense because I listen to them. He could really, really easily make up silly space names for things, instead of using words that have meanings that human viewers might already know. (In this context, the complete lack of explication around “pilot’s heart” is extremely refreshing!)
The Doctor’s injury comes and goes for the sake of drama: she’s told she won’t heal if she runs around, but she does anyway, and this isn’t used to create additional jeopardy within the story. She just stops bending over and holding herself after ten minutes. Except for when it comes back another twenty minutes later, for one scene, but only to add tension to that one scene. Chibnall could be drawing parallels here with the guest character who ignores medical advice, disregards her safety, puts herself into danger despite her injury, and saves the day but ends up dying. But he doesn’t even seem to notice that he has two characters doing this!
Since the humans who couldn’t be diagnosed seem to have been healed perfectly by the robots: has Graham’s cancer been cured by the amazing non-invasive space surgery technology, such that he will joyously realise at the end of the series and either traipse off with the Doctor on more adventures because of this lease on life, or stay on Earth and start Tindering like mad because he now expects to live long enough to have another lasting relationship? Is his angry defence of people keeping their medical records private because he is no longer in remission, as far as he knows? (Does anyone think that Chibnall even remembers, at this point, that Graham has cancer?)
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While I’m digging into the medical elements of this hospital drama: the whole ginger preggo bloke thread is a mess that almost manages to come off as fun, despite dumb anti-science of week-long male gestation, and the extremely weird gender determinism (in this year of the first ongoing trans Doctor). But the storyline ending up being an earnest polemic for pregnant people not to give their babies to parents who wish to be able to care for children is absolutely repugnant. They sidle into it with Ryan’s resentment over his father’s semi-estrangement, but the parallels do not work in any way.
Ryan’s dad was present for the first thirteen years of his life. In his grief at the early death of his wife, he recognised that he was not fit to carry on as a single parent, and that Ryan would be better served in the care of his grandparents. Whether it’s ongoing grief, guilt or fecklessness that has kept him distant in Ryan’s later years has nothing to do with any biological parent making a decision before birth that they are not equipped to raise a child.
And Yoss absolutely isn’t! He’s a total dipshit who got knocked up from a holiday shag, and has no preparation for the situation. Based on the evidence, he has no friends or family to support him in any way. He wasn’t even able to return home, or to find Lamaze classes and a maternity ward on the planet he got laid upon. Instead, he’s called an ambulance that will take him millions of miles away from his home, and will not even arrive at the hospital until five days after he gives birth. Anyone making decisions like this is absolutely right to conclude that they’re not ready to be a parent.
With the episode’s constant underlining that we’re seeing Space Versions of present-day English life, this also becomes a genderflipped polemic against bodily choice. Abortion isn’t an option with such a short gestation, but if he were one week pregnant, this episode would be arguing against a scared, alone, 20ish girl who made a mistake and got ditched by the father,, making a decision to terminate. Kill The Moon’s abortion parallel was accidental and confused by production design: this is explicit.
The one bit of ‘science’ around the male pregnancy that I will rail against is “Male pregnancy sacs don’t have pain receptors….” a) how did the species evolve to require surgical intervention at birth without dying out? b) uhhhh, don’t his epidermis and flesh have pain receptors? They’re what you’ll be cutting and c) why the fuck is he in pain from labour if his species don’t give birth and don’t have pain receptors anywhere around their gestatory organs FOR SHITTING CHRIST’S SAKE CHIBNALL YOU ARE THE ONE WRITING THE WORDS INTO THE SCRIPT, CAN’T YOU READ THEM BACK TO YOURSELF AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE PRINTING IT AND GOING TO PRODUCTION.
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Speaking of Yoss boarding the ambulance, there’s not a lot about this ship that makes sense. If rescue crafts are automated and pre-programmed –“remotely set and locked”, how did it pick them up? If it takes four days of FTL just to get to another galaxy, let alone its home (and is that home a whole hospital galaxy?), why is it “sailing” about in a near-uninhabited galaxy on the way? If the hull can repair a breach in under a second after the P’ting bursts through it, why can’t the rest of the ship repair itself? Why are there only two lifepods for an entire, enormous hospital? The official policy must be to ditch all patients in case of danger – in which case, why is your mission to fly around multiple galaxies rescuing people in the first place? Why does the lifepod explode after jettisoning??!? Is the policy to let the patients die on the ship, but to get the doctors off, and then blow them up anyway? How is the lifepod’s explosion so big that it ROCKS THE ENTIRE SHIP (in airless space that couldn’t carry shockwaves anyway)? Why are the maps and readouts not meant to be viewed by randos, but available in the hallways for anybody to look at? Why are they so low that the people who are meant to look at them have to bend almost double to see them? Why are they nearly all completely static, not actually readouts (okay, the entirely reasonable answer to this is “budget” – my real beef is that it keeps being the case in the alien civilisations this series, despite them being different civilisations tens of thousands of years apart).
On the lifepod trapping Astos inside: he calls this a “rookie mistake,” which is the lamest lampshade on an ‘idiot plot’ action that a smart, capable, non-rookie has to take in order for the Next Plot Event of the jettisoning to take place.
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I noted before that the P’tangyangkipperbang seemed to be a last-minute inclusion in some ways. Let’s circle back.
I’ve come to find the music as intrusive as Murray Gold. It’s as ubiquitous as Gold’s, it’s mixed as loud as him (overpowering Chibnall dialogue is at least a blessing), and it frequently doesn’t actually match the tone of the scenes. The P’ting is designed to be incongruously cute, but the incongruity is not played for anything, to a degree that very strongly implies the design did not exist when the music was written, let alone when the cast were supposed to be reacting to it. Ominous warping sounds. The fam gasping in fear. And a friendly cartoon chibi-baby chomping on things, then turning and snarling a fangy grimace. But the twist means nothing when no other element of the production, only the animated-in-later visual, suggests there’s anything cute to be apprehended.
Ryan asks “how’s it eating all that stuff” when it’s only eaten one bolt, as though the animators haven’t read the script either. (To which the Doctor says “it can digest pretty much whatever it wants, by the looks of things,” then WALKS UP TO IT AND GIVES IT THE SONIC SCREWDRIVER. THEN LOOKS SHOCKED THAT IT GETS ET. Great way of testing your hypothesis.)
As in episodes 2 and 4, Yaz & Ryan don’t fancy the chances of the wee creature, because they’re with the Doctor. But they’re only in peril in the first place because of a whole sequence of incompetences from the Doctor, who hasn’t actually resolved any of the threats they’ve faced since episode 1, when they had to mop up after her, and Ryan’s grandmother ended up dead because of it. The RTD model of adoration and trust from the companions got tired, and Moffatt had to balance the time he did the trope with Rory’s contrary experience, but at least in that case it was earned. Doctor Thirteen has done nothing but fuck up and get their lives in danger, then walk around for a bit and then let the bad guys toddle off. Why are they attesting to their unshakeable trust in her abilities every day or so, their time?
Whether or not a misdirect was intended with the P’ting’s appearance, the Doctor’s pacing analysis & research establish that we are, for once, meant to take the information we’re given about it as meaningful. That we can deduct and conclude along with the Doctor, maybe have the thrill of getting there ahead of her. So what do we get told and shown? According to Space Wikipedia:
- “While strictly non-carnivorous, they devour all non-organic material.”
a) well, they don’t, because it’s being very selective and spat out most of the sonic screwdriver
b) we’d better send up the only one of us that is non-organic, then.
- “[They] are impossible to wound or kill,” and have a “fatally violent nature.”
They have no known predators, and they are intergalactically predatory. How have they not overrun the universe? Perhaps they’re not social and don’t reproduce and were created in a vat by a scientist – this one is travelling alone, after all. But though the possibility of creation is mooted, the implication of “studies” suggest that they’re normally found in multiples.
- “Pting skin is understood to be toxic to most life forms. Never touch a Pting directly. Pting should never be restricted to a confined space.”
And never, ever feed them after midnight.
Cicero met one travelling solo
- “I’ve encountered a P’ting before. It massacred my fleet.”
- “What did you learn about them? What do they want?”
“They kill. Relentlessly.”
So they kill relentlessly, and they’re fatally violent, and no person has ever encountered them without dying. (But some of them lasted weeks and were able to make detailed records that have been shared around the universe posthumously, after their ships have been destroyed?). They only eat inorganic matter, so they’re not killing anyone with their chompy teeth. People are only dying as their spaceships get chomped. So the deaths are incidental, not attributable to violence, fatal or otherwise. The evidence that Chibnall might literally never read his own scenes back is getting pretty significant!
The Chief Medic has been:
“Killed by an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship.”
YOU’re an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship. Graham’s an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship. Yaz is an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship. Ryan is an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship. The ginger preggo is an alien organism that’s come aboard the ship. THE SHIP’s ENTIRE RAISON D’ETRE IS TO HAVE ALIEN ORGANISMS COME ABOARD IT. For the most “inclusive”-ly cast Doctor Who ever, this season has a very firm dedication to othering. There are loads of aliens who look exactly like humans, who we are meant to assume on sight are equivalent to humans. But if they look like an alium, we are meant to assume that they are both monolithic – “What do they want?”, as if all humans want exactly the same thing in all instances of landing on a spaceship, and nothing else bar that one thing – and almost certainly warranting immediate murder, because they’re likely up to no good.
The eventual “twist” revelation of P’ting wanting power, not “us,” makes no sense. We already know it doesn’t go for people. It’s the one thing we know about it! And we see it eating inanimate objects not connected to power. If it’s a species that can fly through space unaided in search of energy AND NOTHING ELSE, would it not know what the fuck energy is?
That said, how does the bomb , stuck in …an airlock? Did this look exactly the same as a lifepod, or was I just not paying attention? …let off so much energy that the Pting runs to it, when it was hunting for energy but wasn’t drawn to the antimatter engine? Especially when it turns up randomly, chomping on something else inanimate, accidentally within the 51 second time limit that was so pointlessly set?
“Pentagonal number, that’s interesting.” – is it? How? What does it tell us about Yas, or apply to this situation? If you want it to be interesting, for god’s sake CONNECT it to anything else in the story, instead of just saying it’s interesting. It’s not, if it doesn’t have any meaning!
The P’ting is normally inept at finding enough energy to satisfy it, presumably just chomping the ship until it falls apart, then flying at hyperballistic speed in another direction. How does it fly through space, hard enough to penetrate a hull? Its only plausible method of propulsion is by farting: ABSOLUTE CANON. But if the energy of the bomb is so much more than it usually eats, like a bean-filled chili, surely now it will rip right through an entire ship, breaking it apart before anyone gets the chance to bundle into a lifepod, or to study it but then die because they didn’t follow the instructions and licked it like a hallucinogenic toad. Or maybe it’ll punch right through the crust of a habitable planet, releasing the molten core! By feeding it, the Doctor is definitely sentencing even more ppl than usual to death, though.
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Chibnall’s quest to use “space-y” words to give his alium civilisations flavour doesn’t only fall apart when those words have science- or fact-based meanings that tedious viewers with working ears might get tripped up on. In this episode, he relies in one scene on the notion that words change meaning over time, and then depends in another on the possibility of this never existing.
- “Threat Level Chalice.” “The worst one! One level up from Threat Level Beetroot!”
Now, if we’d only had threat level beetroot, we’d assume that either different colours have become predominant in the next 4,750 years, or the scale has been so finely graded that a variety of different shades are required to delineate it. But chalice has no inherent colour associated with it, so here Chibnall is just being playful with the idea that maybe those words will mean something different, or that both items might have acquired some level of malice, by the 67th century.
However, when Yoss gives birth, there’s another joke which requires not only that no words ever migrate in usage in any way after 2018, but also that all of recorded human history stops in 2018. He wants to name his baby after the great human hero Avocado Pear. Ryan and Graham insist that this cannot be a name for a person, and that no such person has ever existed.
For one, the rest of the fucking world in 2018 doesn’t use the term “avocado pear,” as far as I know, so that’s not a great hill to stake your “words don’t change” flag upon. For another, in 2018 one of the most prominent single miscarriage of justice cases in international news is a person named Reality Winner, and one of the biggest film stars on the planet is named The Rock. But even more so, in 2018 surnames have only been around for about a thousand years. To be so certain that in five times that span of history, nobody will ever have those two names, both Ryan and Graham must know absolutely that no heroes enter the record books after the date they last left Earth. This is wildly irresponsible of The Doctor to have informed them about the imminent end of civilisation, though obviously the writing was firmly on the wall by October 2018. But you’d think it would affect them more – should Yas not be campaigning to rescue her family, even if Ryan and Graham are displacing their grief at losing theirs? If they’re thrilled to be the only three people to escape a coming apocalypse, would they not want to be going on more remarkable universe-spanning trips than poking about on a giant rubbish dump? We know that there’s not meant to be a major series arc this year, let alone one about a threat to a multiverse or galaxy or planet, but at least running away from the impending death of Earth or collapse of human society would give the leads a motivation, for a change.
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Some other instances where the dialogue has implications that don’t line up with the in-story reality:
- “Oh, clever sonic! Self-rebooting!”
You built it entirely by yourself, from scratch. Nothing it does should be of any surprise to you. Restoring the screwdriver for sudden plot reasons, minutes after eliminating it as a cheat, makes the sonic even lamer a magic wand plot device than usual, and even after that it’s only used to set off a bomb. The Doctor could use her deep, expounded knowledge of antimatter drives to trigger it – perhaps by pressing a large red button on the side - and get a new sonic from the TARDIS later, that will actually have the capacity to surprise her because she didn’t build it by hand.
Overall, I’m strongly in favour of the low in-story stakes that only have a handful of people dying, onscreen or off. But when Cicero jubilantly announces “I know how to do this. I’m not stopping now. Everyone’s going to live. Including me!”--- she is writing off the fact that one person has already died, and there’s no bathos later when 3/6 of the guest cast do end up dead, including her.
- “This is like the iPhone version of CERN!”
Seems weird for her to be so enthusiastic about technology that was built by slaves, and has been designed to slow down and stop working while they’re in flight.
At the end they’re pulling up to the space station and pull a blanket over Pilot Lady General…. But with shortcuts, they’re still cutting down a week’s trip, to presumably five days or so. So they were fine leaving the corpse uncovered until then? Having reduced a “week,” they then say quarantine should take “no more than three hours.” In Ghost Monument, it was hilarious how the fam didn’t know how the present day aliums figures translated into English, as this was something that their translator implants couldn’t handle. Why, in the 67th century, does every alium use C21 Earth English figures for duration?
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I was annoyed when the Doctor was fine with committing genocide against an entire undiscovered species in week 2, with the sentient blankets, apparently on the grounds that they’re created, not born. This is even more gross in this episode when neither the Doctor, nor any of the fam, bat the slightest eyelid at the adored and praised General Cicero’s sentient fuckbot announcing that now that she has no further use of his robocock, that he will be euthanised. Not only do they not even express any sympathy, let alone shock, they immediately join in on HIM BEING ASKED TO CONDUCT HER FUNERAL RITE. Where’s his fucking funeral, or incantation of respect? LIFE RIGHTS, NOT DEATH RITES. SEX WORKER LIVES MATTER. For a season with two (2!) episodes three (3!) weeks apart about how Earth racism was bad between 1947 and 1955, Chibnall keeps on underscoring that the only people that really matter are the ones that look especially like us. It’s appallingly confused.
― Bing The Mighty Seat (sic), Friday, 16 November 2018 22:09 (five years ago) link