Spoilers Resolution grade and discussion thread

[Guy Gardener]

What happened to the 20 million Zygons that UnIT was monitoring?

 

[Awesome Possum]

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.

Left-wing propaganda?

Have you ever watched Doctor Who before? That's been a part of it forever. Even back in the RTD days when ratings were at their highest, the same people complained about the gay agenda and how they were forcing interracial couples on the audience. Acting like this is something new is laughable. Even the classic series was like this.

But tell me, what left-wing propaganda is it? That women can be equal to men? That there's nothing wrong with female heroes who aren't there to titillate the male audience? Tell me.

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.

I think it says a lot that all the armies at the time fought it and only three survived to split up the parts dedicating their lives and descendants to it. They beat it but not without a price we can barely comprehend.

 

[StCoop]

But tell me, what left-wing propaganda is it?

I wouldn't want to upset your precious snowflake nerves.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oil rig money is intense if you're just mopping the floors, and they pay you while you're sleeping, and they pay you for the inconvenience of never seeing your family... Ryan's dad is an engineer.

With that sort of money, Ryan should have been living in a mansion, with a first class education... But he wasn't and he didn't.

Maybe Ryan has a trust fund that he doesn't know about waiting for him to turn 30?

 

[Awesome Possum]

I wouldn't want to upset your precious snowflake nerves.

I figured you’d chicken out. No one ever goes into detail. They just make a claim and refuse to elaborate when called on it.

Nice insult though. It’s never ironic given that the people who generally use it are upset that a show or movie had something they disagreed with which is usually basic human decency.

 

[Starkers]

Except that was disproven with the fantastic ratings the series started off with. While no one would expect it to stay at those heights, Chibnal has managed to lose the majority all of those extra viewers leaving the series almost back to where it was when Capaldi finished.

I actually wish that there was going to be a longer break then we're going to get to give some time to reflect and course correct but instead we're likely to just get more of the same next time.

Then again the impression I get of Chibnal is that he wouldn't even accept that there is anything that needs changing. Moffat might never have admited it out loud but he was still willing to do things like dump the day-glo Daleks and try and make Capaldi likeable.

I don't disagree on the ratings front, although all Doctors lose numbers. Trouble is I don't know what numbers to base it on anymore now the BBC seem to be doing a +28 consolidated figures (be nice to know what Capaldi's figures were like!). However you look at them the numbers are way better than Capaldi. I think the big test will be season 12.

As for Chibnall not being open to change, given the shift in tone between seasons 1 and 2 of Torchwood I'm not sure that's true. My worry is that the impression I get is that Chibnall doesn't seem that jazzed by having the job, seems like the BBC had to pursue him for a long time to get him and I'm not sure he fully knows what he wants to do with the show.

I wasn't a huge fan of this episode. It continued the season's trend of being solid, undaring, and kind of half-assing things. I didn't like the Dalek becoming a body-snatcher. It feels geneaicizing, just giving Daleks new abilities and taking away from what makes them Dalek-y. The idea of a mutant without a case having to be crafty is one thing, but it didn't have to be crafty, once it got its hands on Lin. Maybe it's a little RTD-silly, but a Dalek stealing, like, a Roomba, then switching to one of those security-guard robots, then stealing a car, and so on seems a lot more interesting than just zombie-ing a woman around cracking heads with their bare hands. And it wouldn't have to last as long, because I also didn't appreciate waiting until the last third of the episode for the Dalek to start Dalek-ing around.

I think that would have been awful, the Dalek's possession of Lin was one of the episode's strengths for me.

Not that that was very satisfying either. Daleks mowing down legions of army guys is fun/scary when those army guys are standing between the Dalek and the Doctor/Companions. Don't just thrown in a random scene of the Dalek killing some nobodies, connect it to what's going on. And, yeah, Brexit joke, hurray, but it wouldn't have killed anyone to lose that beat and give the army guys the little red berets?

Yeah the army guys did seem to randomly show up just so they could be mown down, it was cool but felt awfully perfunctory. At least in Dalek there was a reason for the Dalek to wade into battle because it had to get through the soldiers. Here it could have just flown over them given it had a tactical imperative to get to a communications array.

The Doctor continued to not show any depth or layers, which is something you might've hoped a Dalek episode would be good for. She didn't treat the Dalek any differently than she would any other monster. Minimal taunting, no anger, no sense that it was "personal" even though she said it was, like, five times. Also would've been a good opportunity to introduce some tension with the companions, something else this season failed to do. They never disagree with her, they're never taken aback by her, she's never upset with them, it's a positively TNG-level of comity. I can't believe I'm about to suggest this, especially since I was worried that Lin and Mitch's cutsiness was setting them up to be murderized a la the Sweet Grandpa Guard in the season premiere, but there would've been a prime chance for some long-overdue Doctor/companion reckoning if the Dalek did kill one or both of them, and the Doctor moved on immediately on the grounds that there's a Dalek on the loose, and never mind two people, they might be too late to save the city.

I would like to see a bit more dissent in the ranks (we did get some from Graham in the season finale remember) At the end of the day friends bicker, they don't always agree. I liked Lin and Mitch so wouldn't have wanted them to die, that leaves Aaron but that would have been a bit obvious, but then again having him save the day wasn't exactly innovative.

If Chibnall is going to keep the triple companions he really needs to find a way to better utilise Yaz because at the moment she's just a plot point.

Though how exactly did 9th century warriors defeat a Dalek?

Same way Arnie defeated a Predator, Van Helsing defeated a vampire and Ewoks defeated Stormtroopers, through guile and resourcefulness. As someone said they had sheer weight of numbers and there'll be a limit to how many directions a single Dalek can shoot in at the same time. (see also Vietnam and Isandalwana for historical examples of the side with the more advanced weaponry not always winning)

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.

As above, this is hardly unprecedented in fiction, especially in sci-fi and horror. And has been pointed out 5.15 million overnight but 4th most watched show on the day. Luther was most watched but didn't get that much more at 5.63 million.

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.

To be fair Trek's always been a bit ahead of the curve on this, which makes the dunderheads' apoplexy over a diverse Star Trek even more ludicrous (I can only imagine there only concept of Trek came courtesy of Enterprise)

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.

I'm not sure Chibnall is as right on as he thinks he is, I mean in Resolution we did get another bury your gay example!

 

[SolarisOne]

but Britain was no longer a member state

Of the United Nations?

 

[Turtletrekker]

I wouldn't want to upset your precious snowflake nerves.

In other words, you have nothing. You never do.

 

[SolarisOne]

I'm not sure Chibnall is as right on as he thinks he is, I mean in Resolution we did get another bury your gay example!

Doctor Who does it. Discovery does it. i can't figure out why, and it bugs me.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The most useful thing Yaz did was to collect contact information and take the Dalek to safety which is abnormal behaviour for the Doctor.

Maybe the Doctor thought that 3 was maximum occupancy for her TARDIS and didn't want risk needing to "collect" these two new interesting humans as well?

What is maximum occupancy?

15 humans?

25?

Regadless if the plot didn't need the Dalek evacuated, then Yaz would have had her line count halved.

She has an identical skillset to Gwen Cooper, so I really did expect more to be done with this woman.

 

[DimesDan]

Several years of Austerity and cost-cutting for the "greater good" hasn't just had it's effect on the NHS and the different Police Services, but also UNIT it seems.

The UK "leaving" the EU may have been the straw that broke the camels back though.

 

[Pindar]

Of the United Nations?

I'm not saying it makes sense, just that I was left with the impression that with Brexit we are leaving so many joint EU organisations that UNIT was just something else we were leaving.

UNIT has nothing to do with the United Nations anymore, it's the Unified Intelligence Taskforce.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Several years of Austerity and cost-cutting for the "greater good" hasn't just had it's effect on the NHS and the different Police Services, but also UNIT it seems.

The UK "leaving" the EU may have been the straw that broke the camels back though.

But Brexit hasn't happened yet, and it's looking like it might never will.

Also there's a different line of Prime Ministers... Unless the divergence collapsed, the parallel offices resynced, and Teresa is in charge of the Whoverse as well, after Corbyn shat the bed?

 

[Lonemagpie]

Why do people think it was a Brexit thing, beyond that being a rumour last week? It was clearly stated that funding was being withdrawn by overseas partners - and who's been pulling out of (especially UN-based) international NGOs lately? THe US. It's a Trump dig, not a Brexit dig...

 

[Starkers]

Another point about Yaz and missed opportunities. Someone on Twitter pointed out that she may well have known the two coppers murdered by Dalek-Lin. Why didn't Chibnall give her something to work with here? At the very least a moment of introspection. "I knew them, Doctor. That could have been me." And hell, could have been a wider narrative for her to get her teeth into. She could have been cold to Lin afterwards. "I know it wasn't you, I tell myself you were fighting the Dalek all the way, but those two people were my friends." and what about Lin? Where's her aftermath? She's basically forgotten about once the Dalek leaves her behind. But hey, you know Chibnall only had an hour and he had two meaningful conversations with Ryan's dad to fit in...

Imagine losing Aaron from this, and having Yaz in the Lin role? Not only would this have given Madip something to get her teeth into in this episode, but potentially a whole PTSD storyline that could have filtered into the character way beyond this. How do you deal with being held captive by a monster? How do you deal with guilt over your role in the deaths of your colleagues, even though you rationally tell yourself you had no say in the matter?

Plus this would have given the Doctor, Ryan and Graham a much more personal stake in stopping the Dalek, and given this episode was going for a 'Dalek' vibe that would have given Jodie something to get her teeth into when facing down the pepper pot, because as has been said she didn't have the whole Time War, last of the Timelords thing that Eccleston was able to channel into the encounter.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Or the three sections each take one of the Doctor's companions, and act autonomously for a while before they mash together into a single being.

 

[DimesDan]

But Brexit hasn't happened yet, and it's looking like it might never will.

Also there's a different line of Prime Ministers... Unless the divergence collapsed, the parallel offices resynced, and Teresa is in charge of the Whoverse as well, after Corbyn shat the bed?

The UK "leaving" the EU may have been.............

 

[Guy Gardener]

They definitely said New Years day 2019.

It was plural: "Allies"

Trump pulled out of the Paris Accords to save himself 2 billion, wants to pull out of NATO and the UN because he's paying too much... Notice how he thinks that it is his money and not the Treasuries?

I can see Donald wanting to pull out of UnIT, but who else would follow Trump in... OH! (I was going to say Turkey, Russia and North Korea, but this is better.)

Space Force in the Doctor Who Universe is a real thing. Available usable technology, and actual threats that a Space Force would be needed for.

America defends the Earth.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Overnight was 5.15 million, but we can expect to see that go up with time delay/iPlayer etc. TV ratings overall yesterday weren't great. Who was 4th highest watched show of the day after Luther, Corrie and Emmerdale (and Luther only got 5.63 million). Would it have got more on Christmas Day? Maybe, we'll never really know. The numbers aren't great but given the ratings of other shows on the day Who did very well. The way we watch telly has just changed I'm afraid.

Indeed the ratings winner Luther got viewing figures that would be considered mediocre or even a bit of a flop a few years ago. All I can say for myself is the only TV I have actually watched live in the last six months has been Doctor Who, a couple of episodes of NCIS New Orleans, and some news or special events. Most of the time it's been TIVOd to be watched later.

The problem with the joke, beyond not being funny, is that UNIT is not a British organisation so Brexit shouldn't actually have an effect on it.

UNIT is multinational, but it's under review because it appears that numerous countries have pulled funding, and the others aren't willing to increase their own contributions to keep it running.

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.

Since the Thal assault on the Dalek City, rebelling Robomen and an animatronic Frankenstein, through Spiradon and a London Docklands warehouse, it's shown repeatedly that the Dalek major weakness has been from enemies who get up-close and personal. Even if a Dalek is able to shoot one guy a second, how many of the say five thousand Saxons could it realistically kill before they get to it?

Also remember a Cyberman, that effectively cannot be killed unless using gold or an anti-tank missile, was taken apart by iron-age Celts at Stonehenge.

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.

Someone who gave one of the "reviews" on Rotten Tomatoes - the site that people seem to use as their justification to claim that Doctor Who is now universally hated, claimed that every single villain of the series was a white male. These guys, like the dozen or so people who gave the Resolution Blu-ray a one-star review on Amazon BEFORE THE EPISODE EVEN AIRED, are beyond hope. I've not got a problem with anyone not liking the series, after all tastes vary and you'll never please everyone, but when you have to make up crap to justify your dislike, or are one of those who slam the latest series while literally claiming they haven't watched Doctor Who since Tom Baker, then your opinion counts as less than nothing to me.

 

[Starkers]

@Solariabsg25 good points. Apparently the overall viewing figures on Xmas day were the lowest they've ever been for terrestrial TV. Looks like a similar effect on NYD. I think there is still a call for watching things "live" Bodyguard showed that, as did the initial episodes of Jodie's run, but I think of a lot of it is predicated on the spoiler factor. Bodyguard was so twisty and turny that it made sense to watch it live less you be spoiled.

The all the villains are white males is malarkey isn't it?
Ep1: Alien male (I have no idea what ethnicity the actor playing Tim Shaw is but it's hardly relevant under the makeup)
Ep2: South Asian male, kinda, Malik was the closest thing the episode had to a 'villain'
Ep3: White male, but also by extension a whole host of white males and females.
Ep4: White male, again kinda, Noth was the closest thing the episode had to a 'villain'
Ep5: annoying alien thingy
Ep6: South Asian male but I guess also by extension the white British empire
Ep7: White male
Ep8: White female
Ep9: Green amphibian
Ep10: See ep1