WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

was it ever used as a screwdriver after its first appearance?

I wish they'd ditch it again, as they did with Peter Davison.

currently it's being used to let the doctor know enough to spout out exposition without knowing enough to end the episode in a minute.

was it ever used as a screwdriver after its first appearance?

It's used as a screwdriver in The War Games (1969). I'm sure Pertwee uses it as both a screwdriver and a magic wand (1970-74) but don't have specific stories to mind

currently it's being used to let the doctor know enough to spout out exposition without knowing enough to end the episode in a minute.

my impression is she scans the episode's QR code when she arrives, can't get a decent signal, and has to google the plot summary on a desktop when she finds one

Preview blurb for the finale two-parter:

...in the face of such a relentless enemy, has she put her best friends at risk? What terrors lie hiding in the depths of space, and what is Ko Sharmus?

- across 17 Chib-era stories with new aliens in, we've had

Tzim-Sha, of the warlike Stenza
space racist Krasko
pilot's brother Durkas *
alien tree monsters the Morax
amnesiac pilot Paltraki vs the religious Ux in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
interdimensional Kasaavins
spider monsters the Skithra
plastic virus Praxeus
nightmare werewolf monsters the Chagaska, created by fear-eating gods Zellin and Rakaya
and what is Ko Sharmus?

imagine Chibnall's terror everytime he meets a Keith or a Cassie or a Max, running and hiding under his desk because K and S sounds in names invariably mean "alien baddies" to him

* (not a baddie but caught hacking into medical records)

last night's was OK...could've done with more skele-Thing

^ two weeks in a row - two stories out of eight this year - where disembodied fingers were the monster

That was reasonably OK. Would probably have enjoyed it more if, 1, the general level of the whole season wasn't so souring, and 2, if there was much chance the finale it spent so much time setting up would be any good. Cyberman was effectively unpleasant. Not much danger of anybody trusting him at any point, though, surely.

Did I mishear it or did they call the Cyberman "this modern Prometheus"? The confusion between the Dr. F and the monster is common, but thinking the alternate title referred to the monster would be a new one for me.

Yeah, that was dumb and meaningless.

Yes, that raised an eyebrow with me too.

Still no desire to actually watch this season based on feedback here.

I liked this one, the best material that Jodie's had to sink her teeth into properly.

I thought her decision was lousy and her speech defending it was fashy.

found it fucking monstrous that two women were forced to have their brains wiped lest their fragile hormonal conditions slightly bend the future by allowing them agency, and was v unsurprised when the Chibnall Doctor allowed multiple men with the power, wit and ability to wildly divert the future to carry on unimpeded w/ all their exposure to skiffy developments, the following week

Proceeding from (another episode), there's no consistent belief in the value of life being espoused,

last week billions of human lives were the only reason to save the Earth, animal and invertebrate and bird and fish and insect and plant lives don't count for anything

this week, billions of human lives (or the life of one specific human valet) don't count for as much as the life of A Famous Poet

who also ranks above his far more influential writer wife, because she just wrote down something based on a Doctor Who episode, not Poetry

also, she doesn't need her mind wiped despite going on to massively influence the future by writing down something from the future


also this is at least the fourth different version of "rules" for time travel / butterfly effects in the last six episodes. does nobody at all on the production read more than one script

I'm still one behind so a couple of thoughts on the stories I've caught up on:

Praxeus: While it was totally lol that everyone forgot about the dude who was eaten by birds, wasn't he another alien trying to use the Earth as a petri dish? I think once the Doctor figured out what they'd been up to, she wrote dude off and everyone else is just callous AF (Ryan's attempt to be comforting was pretty hilarious)

Can You Hear Me?: I really enjoyed this, again lol at how callous the Sheffield crew is; it's really like watching the spiritual successors to Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester on television, which is probably why it's not bothering me. Although, why did finger dude take Ryan's friend and ignore Yaz's sister?

I can’t believe sic forgot the pting

not a K or S sound (the Zs are extra space-laziness), and notably created by a non-Chibnall writer for a Chibnall-written episode

That’s not how you introduced your list

I introduced my list by saying "these are not every new alien"

including every other alien that wasn't in my list would have made it a list of every new alien

The episode was "The Tsuranga Conundrum" so I think we still get there via misapplication of the transitive property

Chinballs talking up the finale:

“We’re not just going big on the finale in episode 10... [episode 9 is] a big, space-spanning, spaceship-lasery, Cybermanny sci-fi story. Properly epic.”

Chibnall is more tight-lipped about “The Timeless Children.”

“We’ve been playing out this mystery for a while now,” he says. “Obviously the Timeless Child was first mentioned in Jodie’s second episode and then came back in force when the Master returned at the beginning of this season and told her that everything she knows is a lie. ‘The Timeless Children’ — plural! — will pay off a lot of the strands that we’ve set running both last year and this year. I’m going to do classic British understatement here: It’s a relatively seismic episode for the Doctor, and for the show. You will get some answers, but you will also be left with a whole load of new questions in true Doctor Who style.”

How does Chibnall think fans will be left feeling once the episode is over?

“It is an emotional and narrative roller coaster — for the characters, for the audience,” he says. “I think you’re going to need a very strong drink. It’s a 65-minute finale, so on BBC America that will go longer, obviously. It’s big, it’s action-packed, it’s very, very epic and very, very emotional, and there is a blistering performance from Jodie Whittaker in that final episode. People, I think, are going to feel wrung-out and possibly a little bit open-mouthed.”

Cyberman was effectively unpleasant.

Nearly as unpleasant as the last time Chibnall thought "let's make the Cybermen extra-scary by having only one of them, and making it only partially-converted"

http://www.tvtyrant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/picture-21.jpg

I think you’re going to need a very strong drink.

What, even the kids?

I'd forgotten just how ludicrous that cyberwoman design was.

bit mixed this week, i thought.

on the one hand, a basic competency with dialogue, character and atmosphere, that’s been missing for the whole chibnall era. it was fun to watch, not a chore, for a change

on the other hand: straight-to-video cyberman in the second half much less interesting than heaven sent redux first half; more over-lingered-on murders; and doctor still talking in HR-bullshit-speak - “flat structure” turns up again, yay

also “this keeps changing, like a puzzle” - is that a thing puzzles do, ryan?

lol: Chibnall didn't tell Moffat that The Master was coming back, and Moffat asked Sacha Dhawan not to spoilerfy anything, but Dhawan blew it immediately through not having done the slightest bit of research about his important and venerable chara being a nerd:

“I was having dinner with him. I said ‘Look, don’t tell me anything about what you’re doing on the show. Because I don’t want to know. But are you enjoying it?’.

“He said ‘Oh it’s great, apart from all the really complicated dialogue like, oh, Tissue Compression Eliminator.’

“I thought… I know exactly what part you’re playing, just from that!

“I slightly regretted I didn’t get the reveal on camera, because I’ve had years of knowing what’s coming. I would prefer not to know.”

looool

ok thats great

Someone at the BBC decided that Chibnall's inability to write distinctive dialogue that identifies a character might as well be treated as a feature, not a bug:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP-nhW9b3Ko

"I had a similar line, that's all I'm saying"

This one had an intriguing story even if the execution was as shoddy as last year’s finale. But that’s some sort of improvement I guess.

Otherwise felt very Colin Baker-with-a-budget. Disappointing that the inevitable cameo at the end was _____ not _____

Some people have linked the Trig Point that ___ and ___ were standing at in the finale trailer at the end to the one in the "Introducing Jodie" trailer that she finds the TARDIS key one and speculating Chibbers' long game is better than people thought.

Based on a now-deleted tweet by Mandip of a filming shot (and particularly since ___ is visible in the background), there's now mad speculation that ___, ___ and (most bizarrely ___ are actually ___, ___ and ___ (!) respectively.

gonna assume at least three of those blanks are "the Rani," based on the previous 15 years of online speculation

pretty confused by the Garda/Cyber thing

Rise Of The Cybermen
Ascension Of The Cybermen
coming in 2034: Elevation Of The Cybermen

Why did partial cyberman start molesting the cybermen in storage for no apparent reason?
How did spaceship that was missing foo many parts to fly get going with about 30 seconds of work?

Also some big assumptions that ___ is ___ based on some throwaway dialogue in The Hand of Fear and The Invisible Enemy.

gallifrey is kind of like Movie Australia in that you can always see that one building from everywhere.

Where are you guys seeing this speculation? the only other who boards i look at are on reddit and they're a mess.

chinballs lol

I thought this was Chibnall's best episode of Who yet (faint praise, 7/10). This season he did manage to set some ideas up then pay them off in later episodes. Too bad the set-ups were mostly shit -- mind-raping ada lovelace, jack harkness doing nothing in one room, etc.

I actually enjoyed this! Remarkably competent, the mystery is actually mildly interesting, some actual ideas and such. The quips were all duds, however.

some actual ideas

o rly?

Yes.

I would enjoy reading a longer post about them if you have the time.

Be fair, there are definitely ideas in this. I'm not sure Gallifreyans being descended from the good people of County Cork will turn out to be a GOOD idea, but it's an idea.

If local garda Brendan ends up being Doctor Who’s mum instead of The Lone Cyberman, I will doff my cap to his chibs

God ok maybe actually watching this is less dispiriting than merely reading about it from a safe distance?

The idea of Chibnall using crayon to scrawl his Big Ideas all over the show's mythos is... dud

Reading the novelisation of Day Of The Doctor, and enjoyed a new joke in (the completely rewritten version of) this scene so much I looked it up to compare & contrast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUjH-ksc2Z4

and god, the amount of visual & audio storytelling in this two minutes outdoes the average Chibnall episode in total. It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience