WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

my kids (and i) were confused about charlie's plan/actions. he liquifies the human workers.. because..? and how did he do it? he hacked the delivery bots? and why did he kill the girl he loved? v confused

He destroys the co-workers testing that the explosive bubble-wrap he created works - the system killed the girl he loves as a last-minute attempt to dissuade him.

He's testing the bomb and... I guess it was a liquid bomb first? Or he dissolved the corpses to hide the evidence? Either way - kind of gross for a "this one's for the kids" season.

He didn't kill his partner - the "system" killed his partner as a lesson - the same system that the Doctor decides to keep alive at the end of the episode.

what?? i didn't clock that at all. so the system also feels that murder is a legitimate means of "instruction"????

also i don't think the liquification is the same thing as the green mist bomb? is it?

but yeah ending was bad not good. sometimes a globe-spanning dehumanising delivery service is just a globe-spanning dehumanising delivery service, as freud once said

it's very confused

i'm not such the ending is quite as right-wing as the writers meant it to be, it's just that they're dopey and don't pay attention

this is very bad timing for a "there's good people on every side" doctor, though! it reminds me of when marvel put secret invasion out... at the start of obama's presidency

*'im not sure

what?? i didn't clock that at all. so the system also feels that murder is a legitimate means of "instruction"????

The system has observed Charlie has a crush on Kira, so it puts her in a situation where one of Charlie's bombs would kill her, so that he would realise how the loved ones of all the people about to be bombed will feel, and this realisation would make him stop his plan. It doesn't.

also i don't think the liquification is the same thing as the green mist bomb? is it?

Didn't the Doctor explicitly state that it is, and that Charlie was testing the bombs on his co-workers?

And yeah, I hated how the episode changed its initial anti-capitalist message into an "soft capitalism is okay" one, seemingly for the sake of having a plot twist where the evil supervisor AI is actually a benevolent one, especially since the beginning of the episode showed us working conditions in Kerblam! were pretty inhumane, and nothing in the ending suggested that was about to change (only that there would be more human workers).

And, of course, there's the question why, in a post-scarcity world with FTL and teleportation, so many people would still need to do 8 hour shifts of manual labour? But maybe it's asking too much of this show (at least with Chibnall running it) to consider such issues.

And they're also a shit delivery service if it took them that long to get a fez to Matt Smith

(which was a pretty lame callback btw)

I didn't get the sense that the world was post-scarcity.

i'm not such the ending is quite as right-wing as the writers meant it to be, it's just that they're dopey and don't pay attention

I can buy into this, but you can be "apolitical" and still stumble into some bad ideology.

"why so many people would still need to do 8 hour shifts of manual labour"

It's possibly a straw man version of what the left wants -- "you don't like the changes caused by automation, this is what you must want". or maybe they just didn't think it through.

i'm not such the ending is quite as right-wing as the writers meant it to be, it's just that they're dopey and don't pay attention

is there information out there that McTighe didn't write this himself?

hey, they gave the organics two weeks pay while they shut down for a month to figure out how to be less evil

On watching, I figured this to be a deliberate, savage hand-tip that the story knew exactly how exploitative and empty the promises to do better were. Possibly even that McTighe was poking at Chibnall's recurrent tendency for the Doctor to reinforce injustice and inequality through her inaction, rather than restoring a balance. After a few days*, I think it's probable that he (or whoever?) really didn't think through anything beyond flipping expectations.

*also the indication that this was meant to go much earlier in the season, with Ryan's backstory being filled in slightly, and the Doctor not having figured out how to fly the new TARDIS, after flying it perfectly last week. nice accidental timing to reschedule it for the week of the HQ2 announcements!

I didn't get the sense that the world was post-scarcity.

yeah, it's hard to tell whether it's on purpose that the warehouse is so un-busy and the workers so slack because nobody can really afford to order loads of stuff from Kerblam, and it's the cloud services business, with loads of military contracts, that's keeping them afloat.

And they're also a shit delivery service if it took them that long to get a fez to Matt Smith

he probably ordered it twenty minutes before the episode starts tho

I didn't get the sense that the world was post-scarcity.

If there are enough robots to do 90% of all work, and FTL travel and teleportation are so common and cheap they can be used to deliver small consumer goods personally to each recipient, then it most certainly should be a post-scarcity civilisation.

It's possibly a straw man version of what the left wants -- "you don't like the changes caused by automation, this is what you must want".

Yeah, this is pretty explicit in the conversation between Kira and Ryan. The non-necessity of their jobs, that they were basically quota jobs, explains why it wasn't actually back-breaking labor.

If there are enough robots to do 90% of all work, and FTL travel and teleportation are so common and cheap they can be used to deliver small consumer goods personally to each recipient, then it most certainly should be a post-scarcity civilisation.

You've clearly given this more thought than the writers bothered with, though.

new board description

alan cumming was really savouring the taste of scenery is this episode huh

Yeah, that was magnificent.

such a gloriously camp performance squandered on a colourless teal-and-grey story

Ryan & James spin-off should have happened

my son was scared enough that he's still awake :/

Hmm interesting one.

I think they were hedging their bets somewhat about whether monsters are real.

"they're not witches, witches aren't real! they're zombies."

After the last episode and the doc siding with amazon, there was the joke that the doctor in the next episode would join up with the witch hunters. And in this episode the doctor joins up with the witch hunters, points fingers at everyone, and burns the witch-monsters. (Then tells the king not to burn the final witch-monster because killing is wrong.) Followed by the Clarke line about tech and magic. Um.

Could you talk me through that? I feel like I saw a different episode.

Yeah, I didn't see that either.

Pretty beige episode but it wasn't actively bad? Wood Zombie O'Brien was maybe the first decent baddie this season. Awful staging of the fight at the end.

Felt some discomfort at James's campness, and that the audience was supposed to think "it's okay because it's Alan Cumming" - not sure how I feel about that. But it was a fun performance.

It seems required to say "this season sucks but Jodie Whitaker is fine" but I think, after 8 episodes, both her and Yaz are Conclusively Boring.

we learn very little about what the doctor thinks, how she thinks, her animating principles, etc. maybe they feel this sort of backstory or "character development" for the doctor lessens her air of mystery? or is just surplus to requirements in genre fiction? i suspect it's because they're just not very bold writers. I've liked a lot of this season but it feels pretty basic, particularly compared to the byzantine excess of prev seasons.

I've been wanting to like these new shows all season and not getting into them. Think I did enjoy the debut but just keep finding things corny. I'm reminded of Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy's worst moments too often.
I could like both the Doctor and the companions, just about do but find the episodes pretty naff.
Mt liking the Doctor being gone for next year but wondering why if I'm not enjoying the shows as much as i would like.

yeah, i feel like whitaker is doing the best she can with the material she's been given but i don't feel like we've learned much about her as a character at all, which is really disappointing

maybe chinballs feels he needs to play it safe for a first female doctor for fear of a fan backlash (which let's face it would happen no matter what since fandom is cancer) but it's actively working against him if so

we learn very little about what the doctor thinks, how she thinks, her animating principles, etc. maybe they feel this sort of backstory or "character development" for the doctor lessens her air of mystery?

didn't we have a shitload of this with all the post-return docs though? the lack of it this time around just makes whitaker seem like a cardboard cutout despite her best efforts

After the last episode and the doc siding with amazon, there was the joke that the doctor in the next episode would join up with the witch hunters. And in this episode the doctor joins up with the witch hunters, points fingers at everyone, and burns the witch-monsters. (Then tells the king not to burn the final witch-monster because killing is wrong.) Followed by the Clarke line about tech and magic. Um.

It's because they're trying to avoid stories with clear goodies and baddies because it's aimed at younger kids. Trying to ensure every faction has a point, everyone gets listened to, etc.

Which is a nice idea but unless done with skill leads to the result we see here. In any interpersonal conflict usually both parties have got a point; it's worthwhile to try and explain this to kids; but ... king James versus witches, Amazon versus employees, these are not interpersonal conflicts ...

Re: blandness of doctor's character, I agree, it's mostly 'wow, amazing! A giant woodlouse! Mister X, you CANNOT put orphans to work in your workhouse! Exposition, amazing! Wait, Mister X just wants to help the orphans! Okay, back in the tardis guys ...'

maybe chinballs feels he needs to play it safe for a first female doctor for fear of a fan backlash (which let's face it would happen no matter what since fandom is cancer) but it's actively working against him if so

Maybe he's just not a very good writer.

well, yeah

Possibly both, though?

Everything so far feels like a very safe white guy version of gender/cultural representation

Part of the pleasure of the RTD gay agendar stuff was how in-your-face unapologetic it was

This is just... politics as twee Instagram memes

I feel like there's been quite a bit of "Doctor delivers a speech to underline her principles and how they apply in this situation"* and that her principles are basically that she's the Doctor? I don't think that any of the speeches would be out of place from Tennant / Smith / Capaldi.

What sort of thing would you consider an analogue to RTD's agenda, Chuck?

*and then sometimes acts to undermine her principles, as was ever the case.

There's no analogue, that's kind of the problem! Just to note that "bad writing" and "playing it safe" aren't mutually exclusive. Are the writers afraid of making Yaz too interesting, or is the actor giving a bad performance, or is the writing bad but well-intentioned - or could it be all three? Certainly there seems to be something disrespectful about hiring a female co-lead then having her stand around while the old white guy gets all the best lines.

it's quite an achievement to build an entire episode around yaz's traumatic family history and have her still remain essentially a cipher tbf

we learn very little about what the doctor thinks, how she thinks, her animating principles, etc.

she gave one animating principle: "Sorting out fair play throughout the universe!"

perhaps it hasn't stuck because her actions endorse and reinforce unfair play in every single episode.

That was a dull episodes.

I think part of the issue is the doctor and Yaz haven’t really had much opportunity to show their onscreen relationship with each other or the other companions. Graham and Ryan have the family bond and so they can show there relationship stitch each other with a lot less screen time because it’s kind of hard coded. There still doesn’t seem to be much of a reason why the doctor and yaz are hanging around with the other two or each other.

We don’t need to go all rose or captain jack on this but the companions need to be more than just an audience for the doctor and the companions need a reason to keep riding around with her.

Could you talk me through that? I feel like I saw a different episode.

By "points fingers", I mean that a lot of time is spent interrogating characters as suspects, especially Becka, the witch finder. An episode on witch hunts shouldn't be a mystery hunt for the real villains.

I didn't like Clarke's 3rd Law being included because it implies that the "tech" aliens are indistinguishable from "magic" witches, so you might as well say that witches were real.

On the positive side, I enjoyed Alan Cumming's performance.

the aliens were just as magic, they were sealed in a hill by a charm

(the lock was shaped like a tree billions of years before trees evolved, lucky coincidence there. especially when it turned out to chop and burn just like wood would, except that it didn't need to be dry)

Again, the writers this series seem not to know what words for big things -- billions, galaxies, etc -- actually mean.

Otm