Doctor Who (37) 11:10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Slight criticism follows (sorry)
From TEIN? About Dr Who? I don't believe it.
To make things worse she then straps grenades to a device she knows nothing about (other than blowing it up could cause mass destruction) and off she goes to do the very thing she slapped Graham's wrists about not five minutes earlier.
You do have a point, especially as there was a whole planet contained inside the thing, and the Earth was going to be next. I made her seem very blase.

I'm not sure I followed everything this week, so I'm sure the younger audience wouldn't have, but if this was to satisfy the elements that want more science fiction and less historical drama, then I hope it sufficed. For me, this is more fantasy than science fiction, or at the very least, space opera.
 
From TEIN? About Dr Who? I don't believe it.

muppets.JPG
 
It was a shaky end to a shaky series.

Some super powerful faith (re: magic) beings are tricked into believing some guy who shows up at an inopportune moment is their god. Errrkay.

Then the random guy is Tim Shaw from the very first episode (natch) and he's harnessed the power of the super people to turn planets into trophies. 10 out 10 for old style crappy perspex planet containers, minus several million for explaining how this fits in with the super people's religious views (Creator's will be damned).

Bradley Walsh has become one of my all time favourite companions, certainly my favourite of the new era Who. His conversation with the Doctor that he would kill Tim Shaw had no bravado or machismo. It was something he felt he had to do and the Doctor's feelings didn't come into it.

Tim Shaw was a dreadful villain yet again. All this power at his disposal and a stubbed toe takes him down and completely at the mercy of Graham and Ryan. Tim Shaw should have just locked himself in the container and had done with it.

Oh, and Yas was there with all the charisma of a small soap dish.

The last two or three episode showed there is hope for Chibnall's Doctor Who, but it really needs some stellar story editing to make it happen.

I hope the New Year's special can really bring it all together.
 
Warning! Grump Alert!

I know nobody cares, but I finally figured out what it is that bothers me so much with the sonic screwdriver, and not just this series.
In a nutshell, the Doctor just whips it out and it does whatever it needs to do at that point in the story.
There's no configuring it. There's no changing from scanner mode to door unlocking mode to screwdriver mode.
My epiphany came in the Kerblam episode when it was whipped out, waved at the tablet/iPad device and magically added their names to the guest list. How did it know what names to add?

Of course, one can always invoke Clark arguye' third law, but in a science fiction show that seems like cheating.


I leave you with a little spot the difference...
View attachment 48714View attachment 48713

Ooh, ooh! I know! I know! The one on the left is blonde! Do I get a sticker? :D

In all seriousness, I'm saying this a lot this series, but this episode was... OK.

I liked the story and the drama, but the drama between the Doctor and Graham was a bit dodgy moral-wise. Firstly, the Doctor has been known to obliterate enemies, even in this incarnation (Kerblamm!). OK, you could say that the main issue was with Graham wanting to kill Timshoor out of revenge, but that wasn't really pointed out. Secondly Timshoor was now responsible for wiping out 5 whole planets. Even if she didn't know that when she confronted Graham about his desire for revenge, surely that knowledge would have caused a re-evaluation about whether the Universe was better off without him?

I would say this series has been quite frustrating. We've had some really good dramas spoiled by a weak villain (Rosa, the Witchfinders) and stories with a great monster but horrible writing (Arachnids in the UK), no one episode has really stood out. Tennant's first and second series were pretty ropey, but they had Girl in the Fireplace and Blink, I don't think I'll remember any episode of this series for long. Except for possibly Arachnids in the UK, but that's not a good thing.

In the future I'd like to see some old enemies returning, if only to make it feel more Who-like. I can understand not wanting to drag the Daleks or Cybermen out for the umpteemth time, but Doctor Who has a big enough rogues gallery. I personally think it'd be interesting to pitch this Doctor against the Sontarans. They need a strong story to recover from what Stephen Moffat did to them.
 
I personally think it'd be interesting to pitch this Doctor against the Sontarans. They need a strong story to recover from what Stephen Moffat did to them.
Do we really want an episode where the Doctor can point to the destruction all around her and say, "The butler did it!"

(And we all know that the writers would want to do this... and be allowed to....)
 
All this negativity is really getting me down.

Spot the difference between two women pointing sharp pointy things - really - I spotted the difference immediately and no, it’s nothing to do with hair colour.

Criticisms of the writers not knowing one end of a pen from a typewriter – Is that fair.

Poor props – Planets in Perspex – Flashing planets at that seemed OK to me – Though I did wonder why it wasn’t a dodecahedron collider shape.

Serious dialogue – between two characters – It can happen in any program

Lack of real baddy types with a request for a return of the Sontarans. Well it’s Daleks on NYD so is that bad enough.

I think people need to get a grip on their perspectives. Remember this is a bit of fun done on a small budget. I think they’ve done a wonderful job of introducing a FEMALE Who and against all expectations she seems to be doing a fine job.
 
All this negativity is really getting me down.

Spot the difference between two women pointing sharp pointy things - really - I spotted the difference immediately and no, it’s nothing to do with hair colour.

In all seriousness, the sonic can do that much stuff now it may as well be a magic wand. This series they've even shown it doing things previous series have established it can't do. I guess I miss the times back in the old series when he had problems that couldn't be solved by waving the sonic at them. Bomb to disarm? Break out the toolkit. Locked in a room? Convince a friendly to let them out. Plague spreading through the world? Get the chemistry set.

Is anyone else now imagining a Who/Potter crossover? "Oi, Voldy, this planet is protected!"



I think people need to get a grip on their perspectives. Remember this is a bit of fun done on a small budget. I think they’ve done a wonderful job of introducing a FEMALE Who and against all expectations she seems to be doing a fine job.

Jodie is doing a fine job, she has easily been the best thing about this series. I don't mean to be negative, but I haven't seen a huge amount to be positive about, and yes I think it is fair to criticize the writers. I think it's telling that the best episodes of this series have had writers other than Chris Chibnall.
 
Locked in a room? Convince a friendly to let them out.

Oh, I don't know... When three Doctors were locked in a room together, they pulled a Bill-and-Ted "oh, of course, the software has been working on this lock for centuries now, and *bing* there we go!" (Made superfluous by the friendly who opened the unlocked door for them anyway.)

Which does point up the fact that Jodie's sonic is still the same one inside, regardless of her fabricating the hardware from Sheffield steel, so presumably it's continued learning to do new things through the centuries.
 
Poor props – Planets in Perspex – Flashing planets at that seemed OK to me – Though I did wonder why it wasn’t a dodecahedron collider shape.
I guess I wasn't clear. I loved the perspex props. They harken back to the days of yore when Cybermen were just these guys in ill fitting balaclavas with bits of plumbing stuck to them. More of this please.
 
LOVED: one episode.
Liked: five episodes.
Meh: four episodes.

The final episode falls into "Liked", though I didn't think it was anything special.

My favourite villain was the Kerblam robots, even though they weren't the main villain in that episode. There's something about a face that doesn't move. I liked how there were multiple villains in some episodes.

I thought three companions were a good thing to start with (it worked especially well in Rosa), but often two of them were sent off on tasks that didn't really achieve anything, it seemed so the scriptwriters could get them out of the way.

Ryan's dyspraxia popped up randomly and wasn't a feature throughout the series. I think consistency was one of the biggest problems - even the episodes I didn't like probably had something good about them, and the ones I liked had something that made them fall short of an excellent episode.
 
On dyspraxia: I don't know the answer to this, but would it not affect hand-to-eye co-ordination?

There's one episode, the second, where he struggles a bit with a ladder (in dialogue, at least) but then runs out, gun blazing, taking out (admittedly stationary) robots. Maybe that does reflect the condition (people with blindsight can reflexively catch a ball if you throw it at them) but it seemed a little odd.
 

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