Spoilers Resolution grade and discussion thread

[The Wormhole]

I enjoyed this one. Really cool and for the first time since Eccleston's season the Daleks (well, okay, Dalek) actually felt menacing. Though how exactly did 9th century warriors defeat a Dalek? The stuff with Ryan's dad also made a satisfying character oriented subplot. Solid episode and really cool. I laughed my ass off with the kids complaining about no wi-fi, phone service and Netflix and then moaning when their mother suggested they have a conversation.

They even had Girl From Class steal a police car to get into the security storage place,

"Girl From Class"? The actress who played Lin was never on Class. Here's her IMDB. Class is not listed. Hell, the word Class isn't even anywhere on that page. Here's the IMDB for Class. Charlotte Ritchie is not listed there.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Dare say it? YES, I do...

Woman driver!...

It's a woman driving a woman.

What's up with dalek Gender? because "it" was also driving a woman.

Saw this 2 days ago.

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At the 10:22 Mark, the narrator starts wailing on about how useless classic Cylons are for being felled by a microwave oven.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Excellent episode, best use of the Daleks since “Dalek” back in 2005. The Dalek puppeteering the woman was perfectly creepy, I liked that it seemed arrogant, especially with that creepy laugh. The home brew Dalek was a nice minor redesign, I wouldn’t mind seeing a variation of that when they return again. I liked the open area under the eye stalk and the red light that lit up when it spoke.

The plot with Ryan’s dad was a good continuation of that arc and it’s nice to see him get some closure. I’m enjoying the focus on the companions’ lives outside the Tardis. They generally seem to just have their lives revolve around the Doctor and they aren’t very developed as people. Now they seem like people who just happen to travel through space and time with the Doctor who had lives and issues before she showed up. She’s helped them grow and deal with them, but more as a friend instead of just being a plot device. I would like to see Yaz get more attention, Graham and Ryan seem to get more of an arc so far. There’s plenty to explore based on what’s been setup. He’s a young police officer who doesn’t get the respect she feels she deserves, maybe show off more of her detective skills.

 

[starsuperion]

So not only is this NOT the best Dalek Episode since Eccelston's "Dalek".. 5.15 Million overnight
We are somehow supposed to believe that a Dalek direct from Skaro with the Ability to shut down a TARDIS, and sonic tech.. Can be defeated by medieval humans and weaponry. If a lesson was learned from that, it was that the assault on the Dalek from the Eccleston era was pitiful, because well we are supposed to suspend belief and accept that the Daleks can be defeated by Melee weapons over high powered rifles. So in the future, just drop the gun, and use a sword.

 

[USS Fardell]

Resolution
The 2019 New Year Special. The Doctor had been taking her friends to various new years related celebrations and two archaeologists had discovered something strange in the sewers beneath Sheffield. A very good introduction. Of course, not the actual start. There is a set up with a 9th Century battle, and the enemy being split up and spread to 'opposite ends of the world'. While this is a good addition to the episode, the two guardians (in Siberia and the at South Pacific atoll) aren't involved in fighting against the Dalek.
(Of course they're back.) The Dalek is a very effective villain, taking over Lin, one of the archaeologists, in a very creepy way. This was depicted in a very effective way, showing Lin's struggle against this thing rather well. She knows it's not a good thing, and doesn't want it to do what it wants to do. The spree the Dalek takes her on as it gathers the resources it needs to make a new travel machine was also done rather well. It added to the tension in a very effective way. As was the Dalek opposing the Doctor's attempts to track it.
Of course, that's not all to the episode. There's Ryan's Dad, and also UNIT being 'in review'. Also, can one say Chekhov's combination cooking device? Relationships seem to be important. Ryan and his Dad. Lin and the other archaeologist. The UK and other nations (maybe their immediate neighbours, but that is a currently political digression...). Still, are these relationships (apart from the later) depicted well? The Doctor calling out Aaron for not being there for his son was done very well.
(But did the melodrama of the conversations between Ryan and Aaron, or Graham and Aaron mesh with the rest of the episode well? Not sure.) However, the final confrontation at GCHQ was done rather well, the best bit of the episode. The presence of the Doctor made the Dalek more crazy than it was. Overall, the episode was very interesting, and worth taking the time to see. 8.4/10.

 

[Green Lantern]

Not frequented this forum in a while so you guys don't know my opinions on Series 11 in general, but my opinion of Resolution is pretty much the same as my opinion on the rest of s11; I don't like it. I struggled between rating this 2/10 or 3/10, decided to go with the harsher rating even if it is overly harsh. This episode did have some ok concepts like the un-shelled Dalek being a threat but it was hampered by (for me at least) a very unlikable and irritating Doctor (which has hampered the entire series for me personally), the ugly scrap yard Dalek (which was somehow bulletproof despite being made out of scrap metal, had fully functioning systems and bloody rockets), the EXCRUCIATING dragged out cliche scenes with Ryans dad which paused the episode (which has been a problem in the entire series but this episode highlighted it in particular), an unnecessary amount of little PC elements such as the obligatory Brexit joke which was made at the cost of UNIT, and the token gay who randomly mentioned his boyfriend then gets shot immediately afterwards.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm too involved in banging on about Trump.

What that Dalek was missing is( chicken wire and) beautiful steel slats.

Seriously that undressed midsection was like a woman going to the library bare breasted... Or a man, but the double standards are what they are.

 

[Awesome Possum]

So not only is this NOT the best Dalek Episode since Eccelston's "Dalek".. 5.15 Million overnight
We are somehow supposed to believe that a Dalek direct from Skaro with the Ability to shut down a TARDIS, and sonic tech.. Can be defeated by medieval humans and weaponry. If a lesson was learned from that, it was that the assault on the Dalek from the Eccleston era was pitiful, because well we are supposed to suspend belief and accept that the Daleks can be defeated by Melee weapons over high powered rifles. So in the future, just drop the gun, and use a sword.

Overnight figures do not account for all the viewers, the total will be available next week which includes streaming, DVR or other sources. Overnight is just the people who watched it live and no one watches anything other than sports and news live anymore. It's intellectually dishonest to use that as proof of anything other than a desperate need to push a delusional agenda for a clickbait YouTube video.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Dare say it? YES, I do...

Woman driver!...

For what it's worth, that's not what I was trying to imply. The Doctor has always been rather spacey in regards to that kind of thing.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Fourth highest rated show on the night, 22% of the viewing audience... somehow not good enough. Ridiculous

 

[Awesome Possum]

Fourth highest rated show on the night, 22% of the viewing audience... somehow not good enough. Ridiculous

It could be number 1 and it still wouldn't be good enough. There's a portion of fandom, all fandoms, that is utterly toxic. They hate anything that doesn't involve a straight, white cis male because that's what they are. Any deviation from that is seen as an attack on them and part of an agenda that I assume is meant to make the entire rest of the human population equal to them, robbing them of their superiority and they just can't handle it. It's happening in Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek and pretty much every major known property not because of some imagined agenda, but because studios realized that women, LGBTQ people, people of color and anyone else also watches shows and movies and would like to see themselves represented for once. But selfish little fanboys just want it all to themselves. Well too bad, they can watch the old DVDs and deal with it.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Io9 has a much more realistic view of the ratings than that moronic click-bait with an agenda video.

 

[Miss Chicken]

So many fans have been carrying on about Doctor Who being too PC, or being ruined by SJWs, that I have started asking them to give exact examples of what they think is too PC. They have not been able to come up with very good examples. One went on about corporation being made to look bad but I have simply asked them to explain just how is ‘Arachnids in the UK’ and more PC than the 1973 3rd Doctor episode ‘The Green Death’. It would seem that at least a few of these ‘fans’ have only a passing knowledge of Dr Who at the best and some of them probably only became ‘fans’ when it was announced that the new Doctor was going to be a woman.

It reminds me of the writer over at ‘Return of the Kings’ complained that feminism in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ had ruined a great American franchise, he did not know enough about Mad Max to know that it is an Australian franchise.

 

[Awesome Possum]

The funny thing about Mad Max is that they complained that Max barely talked. Because we all remember Mel Gibson’s wonderful monologues from the first three.

 

[Mr Soak]

For what it's worth, that's not what I was trying to imply. The Doctor has always been rather spacey in regards to that kind of thing.

To be fair, in TPotW the Doctor was aiming to materialise around Rose; the Dalek was just next to her.

What’s the status of Torchwood these days? Surely they’d be interested in the alien tech. For followers of Big Finish, there’s The Forge, as well. There’re enough secret para-military organisations to keep the show occupied.

 

[Mr Awe]

So many fans have been carrying on about Doctor Who being too PC, or being ruined by SJWs, that I have started asking them to give exact examples of what they think is too PC.

I haven't been thrilled with the season or the special, but not because it's "too PC" or whatever. Being ruined by SJWs doesn't even make sense for Doctor Who. That's pretty much who the Doctor is. It's baked right into the premise. The problem would be if she ever *stopped* fighting for justice!

 

[Turtletrekker]

^ My new term for people who make such complaints (which I shamelessly stole from Facebook) is "SQW", or "Status Quo Warrior".

 

[Xerxes82]

OK, after giving up on S11 partway through, I decided to try the New Year Special anyhow. And it wasn't bad. Not great, but I wasn't bored, which makes it a marked improvement over the rest of S11 that I saw.

The Dalek part of the story was excellent. Loved seeing the mutant be made threatening even outside the shell. It's too easy to forget that it isn't the tank, or the tech that make the Daleks so scary, it's their worldview and their dedication to it. As for all the people complaining about how a bunch of humans with swords took down a Dalek, there's something to be said for the sheer weight of numbers. All the tech in the world can't hold up to just sheer masses of bodies piling on, even today. Hell, it's more or less how they manage to defeat it at the end of the episode as well, just being too much for it to kill all at once. Plus a bit of tech to speed things along.

The Doctor finally got to do something! None of it was actually that impressive, but at least she finally did stuff. And there was some real personality in there too. Her upbeat, almost cheery "Almost makes up for your parenting lapse!" made me genuinely chuckle. But she's still not nearly as interesting as Graham, or even Ryan. Which is a problem on this program.

It was a little weird seeing her reaction to the Dalek, as well, which isn't nearly as forcefully angry or wickedly sneer-y as her recent predecessors (not criticizing, btw, just commenting). Even her supposed "panic" was pretty restrained. It never felt like she actually viewed the Dalek as anything more than annoyance, and I certainly never got any sense, as she claimed, that it was "personal." If I hadn't seen years of Doctor Who, I certainly wouldn't connect this response to arguably her greatest and most implacable foes. But I think at least some of that is just me needing to get used to a Doctor whose only settings seem to be "happy" and "not quite as happy." Which is a fair creative choice to make. Twelve was grumpy and antisocial at first, that was sort of his default mode and it took some getting used to. Thirteen is just happy. About everything. And that's going to take some getting used to as well.

Improvement, though perhaps baby steps. We'll see what emerges from the long dark of the next hiatus in 2020. Maybe they'll find the recipe that can please all the people still happy with the new direction, and still get me back on board.

 

[Pindar]

I thought it was great, my main complaint was Yaz getting nothing to do again.

Loved the archeologist set up uncovering the remains, didn't love so much Ryan's dad telegraphing the solution by running around with a microwave oven he was trying to sell off.

I thought that UNIT still existed but Britain was no longer a member state and was no longer under it's protection.

 

[StCoop]

Overnight is just the people who watched it live and no one watches anything other than sports and news live anymore.

You only have to look at the ratings for the early episodes of the last series to see this isn't true. Chibnal was handed millions of extra viewers on a plate and drove almost all of them away with terrible scripts, bad soap opera and left-wing propaganda.