Tag: Doctor Who

GODDAMNIT, now we have to wait until Christmas (apparently Moffat’s writing this year’s) for more Ncuti, eight episodes (nine with Christmas special) really wasn’t enough, especially when he was barely in two of them… But all right Davies, I’ll concede those misgivings and reservations I had about your return have proven mostly unjustified, you actually generally pulled it off. Bluesky is mixed about the finale, seems mostly divided between “greatest thing since sliced bread” and “eh, it was OK” with a scattering of “what the fuck was THAT bullshit” in the mix; I imagine Twitter is mostly the latter, and there’ll be a bunch of that from the Youtube grifters…

And I can understand why to some extent, cos the ultimate revelation of Ruby’s mother is nothing if not out of fucking NOWHERE (parenthetically, it also answers the question of Ruby’s dad which has gone noticeably unasked throughout the series)… but in a way that I personally actually rather liked. I think Sutekh was, in the end, dealt with kind of… easily given he’s a god who’s just destroyed all life in the universe, and on the whole the script is a bit unbalanced; even with another ten minutes to play with, it still felt wobbly and stumbly at the end. I’ve seen a few comments that this episode should’ve been split in two itself, and maybe that wouldn’t have been a bad idea, maybe it could’ve clarified a few points. I don’t know.

On the whole, though, I’ve enjoyed this whole season a damn sight more than I ever expected to. So yeah, props to Rusty for getting things mostly right. Maybe we’ll find out who Mrs Flood is in the next series, too…

A bunch of online speculation about the big bad in the Doctor Who finale actually turned out to be right after all! And I must also say “fucking hell” to the redesign of the classic Who villain, they got THAT spot on… I’ve actually been quite enjoying the speculation videos I’ve seen on Youtube about who or what the twist (as it were) would end up being, with possibilities including Sutekh, the Gods of Ragnarok, BOSS, even the Doctor himself (in the form of the evil universe third Doctor from “Inferno”), the TARDIS turning evil somehow… but one thing I stopped believing early on was that Susan Foreman would have anything to do with things, cos obviously she’s been talked about for months even going back to the 60th anniversary specials, but when it became obvious the focus was meant to be on this actress Susan Twist appearing in each episode, I began to think that bringing Ms Foreman would be too literal and obvious a “Susan twist”, surely Rusty would have something less blunt up his sleeve. And then for a moment the episode made me think “oh, no he actually doesn’t” but it ended with “oh, no maybe he does” instead. Indeed, I’m also increasingly thinking that the focus on Susan Twist’s various manifestations has been a red herring and Mrs Flood will prove to have been much more important all along.

Also, apparently the Doctor Who Confidential program following the episode apparently had to include a segment explaining what VHS was…

Not a lot actually happened in the episode as such, though, it was basically all setup for the finale proper next week. Still, that means next week should be full of fireworks and shit happening. If Rusty sticks the landing, then I’ll retract everything I said about his return not being a great idea…

This feels a hundred percent accurate:

HOLY SHIT but that’s the queerest thing to happen to Doctor Who since Tom Baker released the Megara in “Stones of Blood”, and OH but certain elements of Twitter and Youtube are going to have a stroke over it. “Rogue” feels like it was specially timed for Pride Month, let’s just say, and, well, it certainly delivers on that front. Someone else on Bluesky noted that one of this episode’s writers previously helmed a series which Russell T. was quite critical of about its queer representation, so they were evidently determined that wouldn’t happen a second time.

Also, if you’re a fan of Who canon being completely fucked…

I mean, Rusty wasn’t kidding when he said he was retaining the whole Timeless Child thing, there’s Jo Martin as part of the Doctor’s parade of previous faces (and both Tennants)… but there’s also Richard E. Grant. The animated Doctor from “Scream of the Shalka” is apparently now a legitimate canon Doctor. That’s a trick he kept up his sleeve… I wish he’d gone all the way and included Peter Cushing (Amicus films Doctor) plus Trevor Martin and David Banks (stage Doctors), but that’s OK, this will tie enough people in knots as it is. Is it too late to write a fourth explanation for the destruction of Atlantis…?

Just by way of a followup to my note on “Dot and Bubble” yesterday, someone on Bluesky linked to this article about Ncuti Gatwa, which ends with this:

Before we leave, I’m reminded of a story that Gatwa had told me about his first day filming the new series of Doctor Who. It was a night shoot and Gatwa was tired. Even so, he says, he came down the steps onto the sound stage, saw the Tardis, and laughed in disbelief.
The first scene Gatwa shot, he claims, is a pivotal point in the new series – “the final scene in episode five. People will remember that scene.” As the cameras started rolling, it was the make-or-break moment. Gatwa remembers thinking: “You have to dig deep and pull out something that will blow everyone on this set away – and I bloody well did.” Ncuti Gatwa leans back, and lets out that laugh again.
“I heard someone say: ‘That’s why he’s the Doctor.’”

Yes. He bloody well did indeed. I had no idea that was his first scene for the new series (apart from “The Giggle”, I presume). I imagine everything after that was comparatively easy for him.

Slightly uncertain how I feel about the latest Who. After watching it I saw some comparisons to Black Mirror, which I’ll take other people’s word for cos I’ve never watched Black Mirror, but this sort of “how social media/AI will fuck us up” plot appears to be the sort of thing that show does from what I’ve gathered about it… anyway, that’s only partly what it’s about; there’s Tractator-like creatures eating people out in the streets of Finetime, but ultimately the people of Finetime prove to be the real monsters. This is another relatively Doctor and Ruby-light episode, so Callie Cooke winds up carrying most of the episode, and in the end she proves to be kind of perfect casting, in that she somehow looks exactly like the sort of character she’s playing, especially in the climactic scene where she refuses to be saved by the Doctor cos he’s, you not, not from around there. He’s not like the rest of them. Hardly the first time the show has handled racial issues, but with the current Doctor being who he is it had more bite to it this time. Still, as with last week, I felt it could’ve done with a couple more minutes runtime; I felt like things were being left unsaid that should’ve been, and this week you couldn’t just ascribe it to supernatural wibbly woo like you could last week. It was good but something in the execution was a bit off-putting and I’m not sure what; this is one I think I’m going to need more viewings to fully get.

Outstanding episode of Who this week, even if in some respects Rusty kind of retreads “Turn Left” in this one… is that a spoiler? Possibly, but who’s reading this anyway? A good plot to retread in any case, I’ll overlook it. Actually, the most interesting thing about the episode was the way the trailer for it last week proved to be almost completely misleading… It must be said that, if nothing else, the lead casting for the new series really is stunning; Gatwa’s already well and truly proven himself, so this episode lets Millie Gibson demonstrate her ability in the lead, cos the Doctor is notable by his absence from most of the episode… Mind you, good as it is, it does very much demonstrate the problem I’ve always had with the 2005-onwards series, i.e. the way the episodes often aren’t allowed to breathe as much as they should, and if ever an episode could’ve done with another ten minutes or so (particularly to establish Roger ap Gwilliam a bit more… who IS he so determined to use nukes against and why?), this was it. Still, on the whole, super solid.

Talking of obnoxious phrases, Steven Moffat recently skewered it in this interview when the interviewer mentions it in the context of his new Who episode, “Boom”:

I always think, how about, “I’m sending thoughts and prayers”… how about cash? You could send cash! Or, help! What the hell is that? I’m against it. It’s like saying, “I’m very, very saddened about these needless deaths.” I’m glad you gave me that useful piece of information! I thought I might have cheered you up.
I think it is vacuity. How can people come out with this crap in the face of genuine tragedy? You come out with thoughts and prayers? Say something useful or do something useful. Be respectful. Don’t reach up for a line off a shelf and throw it in the grieving faces of the massively traumatized.
Yes. My hope was, if we can get “thoughts and prayers” going as a villainous catchphrase, like “Exterminate!”, people might stop saying it.

Which is kind of how he deploys it in the episode, and in a particularly vicious way, too… Indeed, in its way, despite ending happily, “Boom” is one of the harshest episodes of the show (and the “caskets” may be the most quease-making story detail since the “soup” from “Time Heist”):

And that’s not even the nastiest thing the Doctor has to say on that subject. The story itself has the Doctor stuck on a landmine, which is not the first time he’s been in that position:

But this mine is a rather more complicated proposition than that one on Skaro; there’s no easy way for the Doctor to get off it and if he doesn’t it’ll eventually explode anyway and wipe out a substantial chunk of the planet they’re on. Ncuti Gatwa is, accordingly, stuck in one place for almost the entire episode, meaning all he really has to work with is his face and his voice, and godDAMN he puts those things to amazing use. The people whining about the first two episodes being too heavy on the fantasy and absurdism shouldn’t have much to complain about in this one. Though not everyone’s agreeing on its merits, obviously:

Fuck the haters, I LIKED “Space Babies” (though I will concede it’s probably the worst episode title since “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”). The consensus on Bluesky appears to boil down to “Ncuti & Mille great, otherwise WTF” (I don’t know what the consensus on Twitter is, but I presume it’s something like “ugh, darky poofter”), so I was more curious than usual to see it… and I kind of agree with some who said it was an odd choice of story to kick off the new series, but fuck it, I had a ton of fun with it. Babies running a space station is quite an idea, and people seem to be going on about it as if the show’s never done this sort of conceptual weirdness ever before… cos the fucking Land of Fiction back in 1968 was the very apex of hard SF, wasn’t it? Whatever, I enjoyed the thing.

As for “The Devil’s Chord”, consensus on Bluesky before I downloaded the episodes was “one of the best episodes ever but why couldn’t they get actual Beatles music”… quite apart from what would’ve been the ludicrous expense of such a thing, the point of the story, of course, was that there WAS no Beatles music, or any music at all in this version of 1963. Probably not even John Smith and The Common Men. The main debate about the episode seems to be was Jinkx Monsoon riotously over the top as the villain Maestro in a good way or bad way; I’m inclined to the former though it certainly is an extreme performance…

…but if you could watch “The Happiness Patrol” and accept THIS fucking thing, as we did back in 1988, well…

Anyway, as I also said, pretty much everyone seems to agree on Ncuti and Millie and so do I. Both terrific. I said of his first appearance in “The Church on Ruby Road” that he WAS the Doctor immediately, and he continues to be. No doubts about him as the Doctor whatsoever. And I like the idea that this Doctor has finally cast off the self-loathing that has kind of plagued the entire series since 2005: