WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

RTD did it better in Years & Years

The Radio Times appear to be making a whole separate feature out of each proper noun that Chibnall said in his interview: they get another six-"page" 426-word article out of

“It was always the plan to do it* in the second year. I knew from the start, and it was part of what I talked to Charlotte and Piers about, just opening up the mythology to more stories.
“The purpose was to bring narrative opportunity and to be able to go to places that were shut off before now. That’s the big thing really.”

“When people were having opinions about the first female Doctor, I thought ‘well this is going to be interesting, because we haven’t even started yet!’”

“You'll have to wait longer to see how it plays out.”

*the Timeless Child storyline mentioned in Chibnall's second episode

In another interview, Bradley Walsh applauds Doctor Who for tackling real-world issues.

“We on the show have carried through global issues…it’s been a through narrative of almost every single episode. Whether it’s Rosa Parks, or whether it’s the plastics episode. Whatever it is, it’s a whole narrative through the series.”

Truly, racism and the danger of plastics had never been addressed in children's TV entertainment "Doctor Who" before Chris Chibnall's and Bradley Walsh's arrival.

“I mean my favourite episode of all the shows…I think I’ve made 22 now…was the Rosa Parks one, by a country mile. And how relevant has that now been, over the last year?”

“I think Chris Chibnall himself is not frightened to confront stuff like this. And I think that’s great. And I think the fact that we have someone like the boss…and the boss is Jodie Whittaker by the way, the boss of the acting department…is great.

“Her compassion, her thoughts and the way she wants to live her life, in every day, comes across onscreen. And she’s a very compassionate woman. She really is. And her humility and everything is off the radar.”

Jodie Whittaker advocates torture, mass killing and corporate enslavement IRL. Good to know!

jfc that is.... a take

Look, I'm sure Walsh doesn't actually pay attention to the text of the episodes, and probably doesn't even read the pages that Graham doesn't appear on (especially as he's rarely even on set, with them block-scheduling his production days around his day jobs). But it's funny that he'd attempt to opine about the show's context while plainly having a very vague idea about what it historically, or the current episodes, are about.

(Also funny that he accidentally suggests he thinks p much every episode except Rosa sucks.)

The bit where Walsh has to sit down in the bus seat to block Rosa is probably the best scene Chibnall has been involved with (so emotion!) even while it points to his obsession with turning every bit of drama into “how does this make the old white guy feel?”

(Also funny that he accidentally suggests he thinks p much every episode except Rosa sucks.)

He'd be half right.

Chibnall's big plan of giving up the Christmas special, in order to move to New Year's Day for an injoke (then skipping a year), sees his big lead-in this year being the sixteenth BBC repeat of Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.

Actually, since those first fifteen screenings were in 15 years from 1994 to 2009, there might have been another showing or nine in the eleven years since.

Kevin Costner would have made a good Doctor.

hey I wonder if His Chibs is going to totally fuck up the Daleks like he did the Doctor’s backstory

here’s hoping

I am watching my first Whocurch, is there always this much clumsy exposition?

It's Chibnall, so yes

why does it take upwards of 20 minutes to travel to Japan in the tardis?

To put it in as non-spoilery terms as possible, the post (mid? don't know, I didn't watch it live) credits sequence isn't on the iPlayer version.

lol brilliant. about as great an on-demand experience as the (excellent) 2-hour robyn takeover on 6 music last night which when listened back still contains the news updates with the latest coronavirus deaths.

I heard some of that, think she played Teardrops by Womack & Womack twice in a row, or it was a massive 12" mix, or the song stretched time out to about 30% speed, one or more of those.

I’m not really pushing the boat out here, but I felt like that wasn’t very good.

i haven’t seen it yet. waiting for the ilx consensus. been burned by the chibster one too many times.

Just another Chibnall episode that kinda sits there, telling an indifferent story with indifferent dialogue, coming up with a few good ideas but wasting them immediately, and never thinking through the political optics of what it’s doing.

So the prison plot was utterly redundant except for shoehorned continuity references and to introduce Jack who only was in it to bust the Doctor out and provide continuity references .

I rewatched the last series through boredom and Jodie gives it all the enthusiasm of a table read. I know she can act so it can only be because of just how bad Chinballs' writing is.

This was an ok bit of the lightest possible fluff, dragged down by DO YOU SEE real world politics references. It was very nearly watchable.

If anybody said "SAS daleks" one more time I might well have turned off mid-episode.

Was going to ask if this was standard issue Chibnall time-wasting or actively rage-inducing Chibnall continuity-wrecking to no good purpose. I guess it's a relief if it's just the former?

Will watch tonight, but can't say I'm terribly enthused, which given my lifelong obsession with this show is a bit sad.

Definitely a time-waster. No offensive "evil refugee" story this time, at least.

One character says "Do you really want me to answer that?" and the answer should have been YES, WHY WOULDN'T I

This inaugurated Chibs' sixth year as showrunner, and we have seen total character development of: Ryan falls off bike and Graham gets annoyed at him -->> now Ryan falls off bike and Graham hallucinates dead wife.

for me this was boring and uninspired rather than actively infuriating

the politics felt fine I guess? sort of RTD level on that front, reminded me of Aliens of London - although I suppose civil unrest was just noises off, everything seen through ruling/managerial class prism - perhaps someone with more acuity than me can do a better job of demolishing it on this front

Chris Noth character terrible throughout, his fate completely pointless and unexamined? are they making a point? if so it is a very nebulous one that eludes me.

bewildering decision not to cut to credits about 3 seconds sooner - why include that last fall when to leave Ryan mid-cycle would have been a much more satisfying edit

not that I care in the slightest about these characters, mind you

six years of Chibnall. what a drag. the new show runner should immediately retcon this entire era out of existence.

*if the show survives this era

the politics felt fine I guess?

Donald Trump and Theresa May team up to attack protestors against police violence with techbro drone Nazis, until real human cops sort it out #bluelivesmatter

In a year which saw US mayors pay real human cops $250,000 a year to use CS gas, banned by the Geneva Convention in war, on their citizens four nights a week (except when they promised not to use tear gas for a month until Independence Day had passed. it's okay, turned out this was just bcz they'd run out, so used pepper spray that month instead), Chibnall includes smirking jokes about how the Daleks using CS gas on citizens would be an outrageous violation.

Well over a year after Theresa May was replaced IRL with an even more savagely incompetent member of her party, who mishandled a pandemic so badly that the rest of the world is cutting off travel from the UK, Chris Chibnall has his finger on the pulse by digging into her "strong and stable" campaign slogan with the truly vicious satire "stability and security."

(what are the chances that he specifically held this back until after the final Brexit deadline because he was afraid this satire might destabilise the government if aired earlier, and lead to a shitty trade deal)

Well sure. I meant this didn’t to me seem Kerblam-level evil, eg the villains are conservative politicians and rapacious capitalists. Nobody could make a case for this being timely or sophisticated satire (cf Aliens of London mention above).

Having a black actor play the brains behind a new form of police brutality felt like a v bad choice

As well as the part where doctor who quoted current very popular person jk rowling

the Doctor Who who recently changed gender

I wondered why that character was black at all if they were going to do that with him. Seemed bad enough when he was operating under his own autonomy.

Roles for black actors in British drama that scarce that it seemed like a good choice? Do people turn roles down in that circumstance or dismiss it as a bit of fluff. Oh well at least it isn't an out and out stereotype or something. Not great representation though.

The Doctor is worried about a swarm of fascists committing a genocide on Earth, so she calls in a bigger swarm of fascists to commit a genocide on the first swarm, resulting in no net change to the number of swarms of genociders on Earth. So she sorts it by committing a genocide on the second swarm herself.

W... what?

Oh yeah, and murders a TARDIS, which she knows to be living and sentient, by boobytrapping it to do a genocide.


I remember being shocked when Colin Baker shot a lock or a computer or something, just because he used a gun at all. Now you can miss the Doctor killing one of the universe's rarest lifeforms, which we just learnt last episode are wholly descended from her, because she's busy killing an entire population of another one. "Bloody love a murder, me!" - Jodie Whitaker's compassion coming across onscreen.

That’s a genocide per episode in the last two episodes, then

I was glad, for once, that Ryan wasn’t treated as the Comic Relief, until the very last shot was, of course, Ryan falling over.

Likewise, the scene where Mr. Big picks the scientist up by the ear was certainly something

I did like the scene where Jack and the doctor do a runner inside the weird orb ball from the Sylvester McCoy intro sequence. It’s exactly the right sort of naff the show needs more of

Why was that dude breeding a dalek anyway, I understand he didn't know what it was but don't get what in his personality and/or job description would lead him to do that. Could've worked if he was portrayed as deranged rather than sympathetic. And all for what amounts to a Invasion Of The Body Snatchers rip.

Theresa May blackmails Trump surrogate by saying "if you don't give us daleks free I'll reveal you're not paying taxes". In real life companies don't pay any taxes in the UK and this is well known and legal.

"God isn't the doctor great, let's talk about that for a couple of minutes" moments were always one of the worst parts of NuWho but in a Chib episode they're even more insufferable.

also Trump surrogate acts like a corporate baddie in a 90's family film, no trace of the actual real evil that he represents

Yeah the portrayal was so chummy, I thought the episode might be a covert lead-in to having Noth as the new companion

I thought the denouement of that character was utterly naff and probably epitomises this political thing. Would think elsewhen a character like that would suffer some form of comeuppance

O good, yet another companion from contemporary Britain, exciting and original.

That’s a genocide per episode in the last two episodes, then

Also two episodes in a row where the Doctor spends 80% of the runtime standing still while men explain the plot to her, much of that time inside a jail with neon bars.

I did like the scene where Jack and the doctor do a runner inside the weird orb ball from the Sylvester McCoy intro sequence.

Weirdly, when the prison was resolved with no ongoing plot points minutes into the show, having been clearly created for no other reason than to generate tension at the end of the last serial my immediate thought was of the literal cliffhanger in Dragonfire where the Doctor climbs over a cliff and down his umbrella to create peril just so Glitz can lift him back up in the opening sequence of the next episode.

What's this thing with John Bishop? Was that the trailer for the next season or was that something else.
God get rid of one aging comedian/family recognised figure and replace him with another.?
Or was that not what they said to hang on for at the end of the show?

is there a spin off series being set up with the 2 guys from Sheffield traveling the world fighting alien crime on a nonexistent budget. Seemed to be what the psychic paper was setting things up for, but not sure how 2 blokes from Sheffield were supposed to be getting around the world. Don't think either had much in the way of mney did they and the potential of traveling in a tardis or something is a bit scuppered by the doctor scuppering it, like.

ohhh, okay: the bit that was missing from the iPlayer and the totally legitmate version that I watched

Welcome to the TARDIS… ✨ pic.twitter.com/WgpnYiweqR

— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) January 1, 2021

Yeah, that was what I was highlighting.

so the lady Doctor is so distressed by, m/l, learning she was adopted that she just sits in prison for t w e n t y y e a r s being bummed and reciting Terf Wizard books to herself

until! a fifty-something white man turns up to rescue her and be amazing

(then her "fam" give her shit about not seeing her for ten months and she blubs about it, even though she only knew them for about 1 year of the 21 years this version of her has lived)

then after this ten months of constant pining and trying to crack the secrets of the universe to be reunited with her, the one nonentity bloke and his amazing dad decide to stop hanging around her forever, after one hour of being in her company again.

then we see the amazing fifty-something white man dad concoct a plan to be The Doctor, but on Earth, because all it takes it being a cheery chappy (played by an English TV host unknown around the world)

then instead of deciding to have the first woman Doctor, 57 years into the run of the show, have just one female companion, and perhaps allow this young black woman (who was given hopes and dreams and aspirations in her first episode, but for over 3 years of screen time since, has done nothing but say "the Space Red Cross? Is that like the Red Cross, but in space?") room to have agency and plots and character development, and actual emotional interaction with the Doctor....

... fifty-something white man king of representation Chris Chibnall decides that we have to have a specially-announced trailer that itself specially announces "DON'T WORRY EVERYBODY!!!! we will have a new fifty-something white man companion joining next season (played by an English TV host unknown around the world)

the one nonentity bloke ... decide(s) to stop hanging around her forever

because his mate has got a PS5.

and actual emotional interaction with the Doctor

With a shitload of CLANG hints it's actually sexual interaction she wants, to keep the shippers happy.

also

The one running plotline through last season was that Official Space Cops were acting as mercenaries hired to capture the Doctor.

Then they turned up again but were working as official cops, not mercenaries, and arrested the Doctor and sentenced her to life imprisonment, without a trial or actual charges being laid (?? idrc)

A year later, we pick up on the Doctor in prison having not challenged this sentence, tried to escape, or learnt the charges in order to counter them. We don't even see a glimpse of the Official Space Cops who have behaved in such contradictory, wildly overreaching ways, and instead yoink the Doc out of her twentieth year in priz to drop her into a completely different and wholly unconnected story about... wildly overreaching cops? From space?