WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

It’s bad but it’s still fun so I’m happy this season

I mean, it’s abysmal in many ways, but this is the most fun the show’s been since the Bill season, so I’m basically happy

Oops double messaged

I feel that way about Hartnell too.

Another “evil monologuing genius who can’t run away from an obvious threat” moment

This episode was more like the Chibnall I’ve come to expect

it really did remind me of the last bit of Trial of a Timelord - the cod-Victorian stuff, the sense of making it up on the fly - but also that very particular flavour of "oh I really don't think they should be doing this with the mythology"

like all that shit with the Doctor's mother? WTF? lamentable.

i think of flux is trying to be ghost light but ending up as the eastenders crossover

haha that's even better (or worse)

I was very 0_o about The Doctor warning Yas (Yas!) about the serious danger of incoming murderous refugees.

I usually think his demonstrated incompetence in all other areas of writing mean that the various pro-fash themes and statements in Whochurch are probably completely accidental. Returning to this one so soon suggests it might be his actual thinking.

i just remembered what that one scene in the angels episode reminded me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6X9KcrXHwg

Such a classic WTF ending, totally spooked me as a kid

So now Sony own Doctor Who. Good work everybody.

(RTD2 made his return contingent on Bad Wolf taking production rights as of September. Bad Wolf today announce 51% sale to Sony )

i know what you mean but obviously the BBC still owns dr who

A commercial entity has had “production rights” to Dr Who during the Chibnall era. The commercial entity run by the RTD1 producers will have “production rights” during the RTD2 era, because they will be producing it.

Not going to get dragged into dick waving over this.

i’m paying for some guys to fix my roof. it doesn’t mean they own my roof. even if they are currently attacking it with a sander.

Since when have the Sontarans looked so shit. I mean like literally.

Just seems a really bad look.

Always? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sontaran.jpg

Fecal no longer oval.

Well that episode obviously wasn't finished. Lots of shots of the doctor that cut to other shots of the doctor; obvious cuts in the middle of lines (dan: "time" cut "rather than space"); pointless scenes that feature sontarans or lupari because their mouth movements don't have to match the words. Not that finishing it would have made the ideas any better.

the mad mole's plan to avoid the flux (which is currently everywhere in the universe except for earth, except when it's not, such as when bel was at that prison planet) was to dig a big hole and put everyone in it.

the doctor said "divide and conquer" aaharahrarghgh

Brilliant Chibnall move, taking it to a whole new level of half-arsedness, to have a 6-part story explicitly about everything in the universe except the Earth being destroyed, and then literally forgetting at the end that this is what happened.

Fucking tiresome.

Really not enjoying his approach of 'What if DOCTOR WHO, but utterly crap?" approach.

Is redesigning one of the enemies so they look like turd monsters symbolic for him. Synecdochal like.

Also does the end count as the doc committing genocide. Which i thought was an absolute nono

she did two genocides (for the price of one) in the previous story

this is such shit

ok I've watched it now and she squeezed four in this time, good work.

also chose to have most of the human population of the human-colonised universe die two stories ago rather than spoil one goth poet's weekend

What was the time thing re regenerations. I think Chibnall can't have more lasting legacy can he. Hoping that Davies turns things back to worthwhile. Or somebody does.

maybe that should be Time since it was the embodiment of time saying it

I would really, really like for the 6th Doctor to meet this incarnation so he can be completely aghast

"I accidentally knocked someone into an acid pit, you go out of your way to murder entire species multiple times! You're a monster!"

Does just seem odd that Chibnall is trying to set things up now doesn't it? Is the New Year's special the last episode by him?
THough I guess there are other media that can be inserted in the timeline. Or does that work like that?
JUst not engaged with either books or audio outside of the main show in ages.
& has there been a lot more near continuous action recently?

The BBC’s charter forbids material essential to the plot from taking place in for-profit third-party projects. Chibnall has three specials left in 2022: New Years, spring and October or November.

The general care and attention taken is exemplified by the scenes showing an Earth, completely surrounded by a spere of interlocking spaceships admitting not a single tiny gap, that somehow still has the sun shining on it.
https://i.ibb.co/SRD32c3/Untitled.png

*sphere

she did two genocides (for the price of one) in the previous story

Just realized this is also two stories in a row where the resolution is “trick a dalek invasion fleet into flying into a living being that is bigger on the inside, in order to genocide them.” except this time they immediately showed you that the next story would also have daleks invading in it, again

What are all the genocides so far?

A. of the C.: humanity
Timeless Children: cyber-timelords
R. of the D.: daleks
Flux: lupari, daleks, cybermen

did I miss one?

sontarans yesterday

it's possible she burned every single member of the talking bedsheet species alive in her second ep, we've never checked back and she didn't investigate anything beforehand

bonus points in R² o. t. D. for discovering that there were two, not one, surviving members of the species that has sheltered her, shaped her life, and actively brought her back from death at least seven times, and promptly murdering the new one in order to genocide the D.s

didn’t david tennant kill a bunch of raknoss babies? tbf he felt properly bad about that.

not really genocide if you feel bad about it?
& also not if the parents are known to be alive? I thought the babies were airlifted out and it was just the project manager who got messed up. Plus they were cannibalised from human so maybe that makes it ok.

I thought the lupari were individually murdered by the Sontarans, really how shitty .

Come a long way since Baker couldn't stem the rise of the arch genociders at initial point since it would be genocide innit?

genocide valley in france, like

genocide region in france was the better citation I think.

When they mentioned the genocide of the Lupari, I assumed that, considering that the previous scene had Swarm pressing play and rewind on the Doctor's death, it'd get reversed by the end. Not the case!

Like Dan + Yas + Jericho Gibbs, Bel + Vinder + Karvanista seemed to be another spin-off being set up - again I'd rather watch it than the next three specials.

yeah all of that otm

so the finale was certainly the worst episode of the season AND YET it wasn't quite as bad as i expected. i didn't mind it! like the rest of the season, it sucked, and was also kind of fun and fine at the same time.

I VERY MUCH DID NOT LIKE the odd way jodie pronounced "cornershop" in front of yaz

https://i.imgur.com/SOyWtZz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/c1DxfEZ.jpg

from

Sweetness
Sweetness I was only joking when I said
“The end result of Chibnall’s ‘tell, not show, storytelling style would be him sitting down and explaining the plot of a Doctor Who story”

And now I know how Joan of Arc felt

#DoctorWhoFlux pic.twitter.com/ORGtPK1pFf

— ß¡|| Evenson (@BillEvenson) December 6, 2021

dismal, who thought an entire episode set in a fucking storage facility would make for vibrant festive television? this would be a grim regular episode but as a new year’s eve special it is ultrablaaaagh

i thought it was ok. probably chibnall's best written episode as solo writer. at least it wasn't a globe-trotting episode where every location looked suspiciously like somewhere cheap in britain.

streaming service here suggested Time of the Doctor as a follow-up watch, for me there was more charm and invention in that episode’s pre-credit sequence than in the entire Chibnall era - and I don’t even remember that ep as a particular highlight!