WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

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

Particularly irritating example of mythic monster is actually an alien but also alien is actually mythic monster

Tell you what. It's generally understood that, had the show proper (as opposed to the tv movie) been brought back on screen in the 90s, the result would probably have been unhappy. They'd probably have forgotten it was a series for kids, and tried to make it cool, dark and serious, but in a 90s way, and it would have been a bit like the x files, matrix, etc, probably with guns and tits.

Which wouldn't have worked.

The sensible fans understand that RTD's way of doing it, when the time came - camp, irreverent, referential, charming - was the right way. The RTD tendency to use lol throwaway aliens and sf themes works much, much better than war and peace in space, 'serious' star trek ds9 aliens and sf themes, for Dr who.

But but but it turns out the irreverence gets stale and we've seen that with this current series. If you're not trading in high seriousness for genuine heart and charm, aren't you just throwing it away?

I would almost I think prefer it if the series concerned, say, the Great Kraken War, had a long arc connecting episodes, and had lots of boots clomping on floors of dark metal spacecraft. Villains supposed to be genuinely scary would be lining up beloved goodies to be shot. Jodie Whitaker in a trench coat using gun fu, fighting evil aliens but also a dark conspiracy. Yaz and Ryan as engineer and gunner on a black, pointy spaceship. General look very Akira.

Which would be preposterous, but at least it would be something? Key word is I would almost like this alternative.

Yeah Chibneall is the first showrunner of the modern era (at least) to not have anything like a signiature tone or storytelling style, and it seems like he hasn't even bothered to look for one. I enjoyed the first episode as a slick undemanding reintroduction but was expecting the season to open up into stories of more substance later on. But everything since has been so thinly written as to not really be worth commenting on. What has everyone been doing for a year?

Not yet hate watching, but that was a hard episode to sit through. Lots of obvious exposition and loudly repeating someone else's lines. Felt like Alan Cummings' eye contractions were begging a drinking game.

I actually thought the witch finder episode was entertaining faff, but not enough so that I'm willing to die on a hill for it. The tone was all over the place, though.

That said, we just need Julianna Marguiles and Archie Panjabi to guest star and we'll have the whole Good Wife gang this season.

Yes, Panjabi would have been a way better Doctor

Given the longass list of guest stars after episode 1, feels like only Siobhan Finneran and the actress who played Rosa have been any good - Cumming is an automatic gimme and doesn’t count

Yes, Panjabi would have been a way better Doctor

Bung a dung
Bung a dung
Bung a dung

Bong a dong

Bung a dung
Bung a dung
Bung a dung

Bong a dong

Wooo-ooooh
Wooo-oooo-oooo-ooooh

Doctor who in velves sucking up to squaddies and driving a dumb fucking edwardian car or gtfo imo

ok the climax was a bit laboured (cf DOCTOR WHO) but that was FUCKING AWESOME

It was an episode vmic: some very good bits and some sub-Gaiman bollocks with Kevin Eldon.

Right. Pretty good that one.

Balloon lamp and moths can Fuck off. But I liked how it was a frog on a chair at the end

sub-Gaiman bollocks otm

that was ok. some decent jokes, finally! and for once the story seemed to be heading somewhere genuinely unpredictable, even if it ended up somewhere pretty daft

but whitaker is choking at those monologues - it's horrible to watch

graham looking sad gets me every time, but they're overelying on it now

Would like to see that improve from there over the course of a series but wasn't that it until the Special? & then what?

Only been a couple of this series that I've enjoyed . So do wonder what direction from here.

Yeah hate to say it but Whittaker was the only thing I didn’t like about that, really hoped she’d have setttled into things by this stage but she’s becoming really one-note and the note isn’t the right one.