Doctor Who 2018 S11*

Reflecting on it, I just think that Doctor Who is now being aimed at a different audience. My feeling is it's aimed at younger and female viewers. Most of the positive reactions I've seen to this series come from women. I think if it was any other TV programme I'd have given up on by now, but I've loved Doctor Who from childhood so it's hard to give it up. I go into every episode wanting it to be good. I hate been so negative about it but I'm going to call it as I see it and this series to be me has been a big disappointment. I was happy about a change of showrunner and bringing new writers onboard as I thought it we give the show a big kick up the ar*e and bring fresh ideas. Unfortunately, in my my opinion, this hasn't been the case. Maybe some people think I'm trolling or nuts for still watching but this is a programme that I've loved with a passion for more years than I care to remember.

 

Witchfinder was certainly a dip and Norway has been the low point so far but having said that the pantomime King James was fantastically funny and the frog 2001 parody was genius, we even got Lem's Solaris thrown in but what let both down was a flimsy excuse for running away from scary monsters.

I got the feeling by the time the actors had read the Norway script they didn't feel it deserved learning the lines, although there's been enough good to not give up yet and I'm not sure a Den of Geeks is the place to look for a considered opinion.

TV reviews in the UK seem to have been positive and even episode 9 has received 4 and 5 stars, the Ying for forums Yangs, I think both are being magnified by the 'momentous' female Doctor. Given time to settle down and perhaps some of the very good things being introduced will combine with better writing in the next series, I'm not expecting a lot from the final episodes.

 

Good catch re the Fall!

I meant all the Chibnall-written (not Chib as showrunner) episodes were dull.

The rationale of the buffer zone was that the universe had somehow generated it as a kind of protective membrane, no? It’s not really much more of a stretch to accept than the existence of the time vortex, fixed points in time, the existence of E-space or lots of other things in the history of the show. How Freddie Krueger and the spacemoths ended up in there wasn’t addressed, you’re right. Perhaps the sentient universe had opened other portals to our universe before in its bid to acquire pals, and they’d wandered in / been lured in then. They existed mainly to present a more exciting obstacle than “oo, scary cave” and to give the writer the chance to write some sub-Neil Gaiman dialogue for Kevin Eldon.

Re: why the dad didn’t take his daughter with him, either a) he thought it would be too challenging a crossing for her, considering her disability b) he fancied some uninterrupted second honeymoon lurve-time with his missus (the least flattering interpretation) or c) he realized, consciously or unconsciously, that he was living a lie and his daughter wouldn’t accept this facsimile mum. Did seem rather shocking he’d leave his daughter unsupervised for so long, but, hey, Scandinavian parenting...

How the universe acquired the memories of real people - I guess it scanned the memories of visitors as they passed through the second portal and could construct duplicates based on that. Under that interpretation, Grace wouldn’t know things that Graham didn’t know about her, but she’d be close enough to the real thing to convince. This is all a bit hand-wavey, of course, but I don’t mind that at all - once you accept the existence of a sentient universe, it’s not that much of a stretch. I don’t look to Doctor Who for hard sci-fi, just an entertaining concept addressed in a novel way and some incidental fun. The central concept here was “the need to move on from grief/loss”, both in relation to Graham/ScandiDad and the sentient universe itself (which couldn’t let go of the memory of co-existing with our universe). I haven’t previously seen loss explored via the medium of a talking universe that likes to use a talking frog as an avatar, so that’s a distinctive and Who-esque handling of the theme for me. The episode had flaws (excessively zingy dialogue, wooden acting), but none more grievous than the wobbly scenery / repetitive capture/escape structure of O.G. Who episodes.

 

OMG that was so bad as a season finale. Another episode of throwing ideas at a wall with no justification or sense. Very bad writing and the acting was awful all round.

Why would the Doctor continue to risk the lives of the companions almost every episode? They are lucky to escape. I know it's the concept but write it in a way that makes sense, like they accidentally run into trouble or trouble finds them, not they go head long into live or death situations with only a sonic screwdriver.

Is it crueller to kill someone or lock them in a cage for eternity?

If you have been wandering the earth for 2000 years why do you look like you've just walked off the set of an 80's music video?

Haven't we seen the whole 'planets being moved' thing already back in the Tennant days? And how really could one person 'move' planets? That just jumped the shark.

I was hoping Jodie would grow into the role but she has gotten worse as it has gone on.

 

Tennant is looking good to go down as the best post reboot.

 

Yeah, worse than a Saturday morning cartoon! For about the first half of the running time, it seemed like it had some potential (graded on a curve), but the second half was just appallingly bad. So much nonsense has rarely ever been dialoged in exposition to bring the ep to an end!

What's worse, they set the season finale on a frigging quarry planet!

I thought exactly the same thing at the time, but later they said he was in a stasis field, which would imply no experience of the passage of time. This would then make his interment quite pointless as a punishment. Unless by 'stasis' they meant physically paralyzed but conscious (but then he would surely starve/dehydrate/suffocate in a few days). They can't even get the trivial things right!

Not in my book. I thought the gurning Tennant overacted and was generally insufferable. My nod would go to Eccleston.

 

LOL..yes...that was the first thing I thought, 'ah, the quarry is back!'.

I don't know about budgets and the cost of things but in general the sets they have used, both indoor and exterior, have been awful and really detract from the believability of the stories. Every episode just seems to be the cast and there are no 'normal' people anywhere. Like an Indian village with one house. It just feels so cheap. I know back in the day the budgets were not always that good but they seemed to be able to afford extras, and I'm sure technology today means they can do a lot of stuff digitally.

 

Well I thought the series was pretty good and I'll be watching the New year special. My first post mentioned social engineering and in this last episode we got capital punishment and religion.

When my daughter was at primary school these questions were covered and raised by my daughter after school. I'm surprised this hasn't received more complaints.

As for complaining about bad science in a programme which has a time machine and a immortal gender changing lead, please!

Jodi Whittaker is good and people are looking for too much

 

Too late to edit but.

I'm surprised they've not addressed the concept of gender, perhaps they're saving that outrage until later?

 

I think so too. Here are my rankings of post reboot Doctor Who (not the writing or stories):

1. Tennant
2. Eccleston (a close second, but I think Tennant was a little more fun. They both had a good mix of humor, goofiness and seriousness that was believable.)
3. Capaldi
4. Whittaker (still too early, but I know I like her better than Smith already.)
5. Smith (Too goofy and nerdy in my book to be the Doctor. And every time he tried to get serious and bad@ss, he wasn't believable like Tennant, Eccleston and Capaldi. Basically, if I were a bad guy being faced down by Smith's Doctor and someone like that tried to get serious on me, I would've just laughed in his face, regardless of a wave of the sonic screwdriver that could obliterate me. And his stupid bow tie didn't help matters.)

Now if we talk about the writing and stories, Wittaker's Doctor Who is the worst so far. Also, her companions are the worst in the sense that they do absolutely nothing and seem to be along for the ride for no real reason.

I think Tennant's stories and even some of Matt Smith's stories were the best and Smith's Doctor had my favorite companion in Amy. Though, Rose is a close second and Clara third. All the companions in between Rose and Amy were forgettable except for maybe Donna (I don't count Sarah Jane Smith since she was basically a guest in the reboot and was used to spin off her own series.) And I couldn't stand Bill.

My Dad used to watch Doctor Who every week up until after the first Matt Smith episode. He couldn't stand him and turned my Dad off of Doctor Who. When Capaldi came along, I told my Dad that Smith was no longer the Doctor and that there was a new Doctor. But it still couldn't get my Dad to start watching again.

 

Yes, a truly terrible Chibnall episode to finish on; it’s as if someone dared him to see how much cliched and/or clunkily expository dialogue he could cram into one episode - dialogue that’s delivered with all the finesse of an under-rehearsed school play.

What was the point of the neural protective patches, aside from a deus ex machina solution to blocking the signal being sent by the Ux? Chibnall set up that the planet would mess with the mind of anyone not wearing a patch, then the only ill effect suffered by the Doctor after removing hers was a fleeting headache; she and Yaz immediately slapped the patches back on before re-entering the TARDIS, anyway (why? I thought it was canon that the interior of the TARDIS existed on a different plane). It’s like the flesh-eating water set up as a potential obstacle in the second episode that proved to have no narrative pay-off whatsoever.

For a species where individuals live for thousands of years and possess the power to manipulate the fabric of existence (there’s a potentially-interesting and unexplored Time Lords analog), the Ux seemed pretty gullible. What was their cosmology like? What did they spend their time doing with their colossal powers before Tim Shaw turned up? Making clumps of rocks? I get the impression Chibnall isn’t interested in thinking through the implications of his ideas, he’s probably just relieved when he latches onto something that might be loosely identified as “an idea”. RTD season finales generally involved gaping plot holes and frankly rather silly pseudo-science (planets being towed across space), but they had a certain kind of pantomime brio. Chibnall’s ideas are so joylessly boilerplate (big spiders! Evil oligarch! Shooty robots!).

The Doctor’s anti “killing the bad guy” stance seems more extreme (albeit inconsistently handled) in this incarnation. In the first episode, she harangued hapless intended-victim bloke for kicking Tim Shaw off the crane, even though she’d just made sure he’d downloaded the DNA bombs and was (seemingly) dying horribly anyway. In the spiders episode, she reprimanded the ersatz Trump for shooting the asphyxiating spider because he was carrying out the mercy killing for the “wrong” reason; then she left the rest of the spiders locked in a room to, presumably, starve to death or eat each other. It had crossed my mind that Chibnall might be doing some character arc thing with this, intending to show that the Doctor paid lip-service to non-violence without actually practicing it / sometimes used avowed non-violence to dodge moral responsibility...but, no, I think it’s just sloppy writing, failing to think through implications of actions/inaction. The writer of the Kerblamazon episode was culpable in this, too: the computer system killed the packing girl to dissuade her would-be boyfriend from going through with his plan, then at the end the Doctor was seemingly happy for the system to be brought back online with no consequences, not even a stern talking-to; traditionally, I don’t think the Doctor has been an “end justifies the means” wo/man, he was left with guilt after (seemingly) destroying Gallifrey to end the time war.

Of course, it’s a good thing that having a female Doctor winds up the Incel types. But Whittaker is dreadful and resolutely one-note, possessing all the gravitas of the “Brilliant!” kid from the Fast Show. I gave her the benefit of the doubt in the initial Chibbers-penned episodes, but she’s been a charisma void in the others, too.

 

The Guardian piece on the new Doctor, opinions from Whovians(?).
'Too touchy-feely'? Our panel on Jodie Whittaker's first series of Doctor Who

 

Other than the post Christmas 'special', the next season won't be seen until 2020. Wonder why?

 

Some of those people must have been watching something else I think. "Episodes have been beautifully crafted, fun, rewatchable and thought-provoking." WTF?

I'm not expecting some of those people to be objective as you don't bite the hand that feeds you but even if you enjoyed the series then, given those people all write for a living, they would have to admit their are some quite serious problems with the scripting.

 

They've probably realised they need more time to write better scripts, perhaps there's a vacancy out there.

 

Yep I was surprised by how kind they've been to this series, as it causes as much diverse opinion as Brexit and they seem to have fudged it.

 

We have got board with it.
I think Jodie is a excellent actor and is a good Doctor but the story lines just haven't done it for us.

 

So they can squander 2019 and then bang out a bunch of scripts in Jan 2020 that will continue to annoy us.

I'd like to think that the reason for the delay is to give them time to write better stories but I bet it has more to do with everyone being too busy to get anything done for 2019.

 

Why do Doctors have to wear stupid outfits?
Jodie in leather with thigh high PVC boots would bump the viewing ratings up

 

I think from episode 1 series 1 the Doctor was eccentric, probably due to the stereotypical 'scatty brilliant scientist'.

 

I’ve heard this complaint a lot this season, and while I don’t entire disagree I still find it somewhat amusing. It wasn’t so long ago that people were criticizing it as “The Clara Show” and before that “The Amy Show”. And before that even it was “The Rose Show”. Now that The Doctor is more center stage and the companions taking more of an incidental role people are still complaining. No matter what, they cannot win.

 

Just watched 'Resolution'. I know technically it's probably not part of the 2019 series but I thought I'd lump it together with the 2018 series anyway.
Sadly I thought it was a bit rubbish in my humble. Started off interesting, wobbled a bit with an awkward 'domestics' scene and then just went somewhat ludricous in the middle before having a 'deus ex machina' resolution () thrown in for good measure...
The problem with 'Doctor Who' for me at the moment is... I find myself keep coming back for more.

 

Some of us are just Mounds.

 

A Dalek. Now it's the Doctor.

Lets hope the U.N.I.T situation is explored further in 2020. We need Kate & the team back.

Overall I've enjoyed Jodie's first series. Not everything was great, but a lot of it was.

 

Some will agree with this, some won't, but I think the headline is accurate.

She seemed more like a netball teacher than the show’s Time Lord in Doctor Who
Jim Shelly on this week's Doctor Who | Daily Mail Online

I thought the premise was ok, as a Dalek fan, even the steampunk casing was ok (so long as you are prepared to overlook the more complex manufacturing needed for a Dalek to function and fly, from bits found in a steel foundry). It's the the utter PC-ness of it all. that irks. JW has no gravitas like the Dr should.