Wow, that whole thing has a super RTD vibe to it. And well done for managing to keep Chris Noth"s return as faux Donald Trump a surprise for over a year given that they shot it in October 2019.
Holy shit, they're just fucking remaking new Who episodes now, but worse. I actually liked this episode, when it was called Victory of the Daleks. if they're going to rip off better episodes, they could at least have the courtesy of ripping off classic Who episodes, since at least they might get away with that. I can't wait until this doctor goes back to World War 1 to save people from gas masks that are possessing them, or maybe she'll go to Pompeii and Save a future doctor actor
Well... that happened. Victory of the Daleks meets Journey's End, with a bit of Turn Left thrown in. Thirteen's sidelined for the whole episode (until, presumably, the last ten minutes) while Captain Jack and the Fam take on the Daleks on their own. At least they were left a TARDIS to do that with. (Good thing One never heard of Post-It notes ) The new Dalek design's growing on me. Very TRON-like. I want to like this, but... when both your villains and your two guest stars (Barrowman and Noth) are more interesting by far than your main cast, you've got a problem.
Reposting Spoilers were leaked about the special but the tweet was deleted https://twitter.com/acecreeptwo/status/1332392341412458498 Spoiler: spoiler The special is 70 minutes long This is Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole's final episode as Graham and Ryan Chris North returns as Robertson from "Arachnids In The UK" Dame Harriet Walter will guest star
I agree, it looks a lot better in motion (and with lights) than the first few photos, which looked a bit like they just cleaned up the scrapyard Dalek from “Resolution,” though I’m not thrilled that it looks like they’re continuing the idea that Daleks are physically imposing outside of their cases. I really dislike fist-fighting, body-snatching Daleks, it feels like they’re horning in on the Cybermen’s bit.
Is that something they introduced in Series 12? Doesn't making them able to fight outside their pepperpots kind of the defeat the whole purpose of the pepperpots?
No, I don't think it does. Outside the "pepperpots", the Daleks are naked and more vulnerable. They are more easily destroyed. The "pepperpots" are like personal tanks. They surround the Daleks with a nearly impenetrable armor and give them extremely deadly weapons. So inside the "pepperpots", the Daleks are a lot stronger.
Dalek Pepperpots... "'Ello, Mrs. Dalek!" "'Ello, Mrs. Non-Dalek." "Been exterminating?" "No...I've been exterminating."
Other than Tory Prime Ministers (Churchill in Victory, ersatz Theresa May in Revolution) making an alliance with Space Nazis... err, I mean Daleks, I don't see a lot in common between the two episodes as of right now. I hope not. I'd like to think the trailer is cut in a way to make it look like the Doctor's sidelined while hiding her actual role.
A day may come when people will remember not to judge an entire episode based on a single trailer, especially one that is barely a minute long, but it is not this day.
Shouldn't the U.K already be familiar with daleks? I can't believe it's been 14 years since "Doomsday"
Yes, in the New Years’ special. A Dalek was able to latch on to a human and completely control her body and read her mind. The Dalek mutant could also revive itself after having been cracked out out its case, cut into three pieces, and buried for centuries, gathering its pieces together with some kind of internal teleporter and instantly returning to full strength (and a massive physical size, by Dalek standards). There’s a way that plot could’ve been done without making a naked Dalek mutant so overpowered (I imagined it gradually hijacking more and more powerful and deadly machines, starting with, like, a roomba, then a Segway, a lawnmower, a car, a truck, a tank, as it went on its mission, rather just hopping on a woman and driving around in a car), but... I can’t find a way to end that sentence that isn’t incredibly mean-spirited.
Humans in Doctor Who have severe memory problems. They never remember Daleks or Cybermen or any alien invasions and the fan attempts to explain this are always ridiculous. It's bad writing, but in this particular case it's bad writing that didn't start with the current producer.
Hell, more recent than that: Jack's last non-cameo appearance, i.e. "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" was more recent and a bit more, um, devastating. But that's the thing about Doctor Who, especially in the modern era. Humans are very forgetful and/or not observant.
Remember Apollo 11 and the Silence? Remember the UNIT Black Archive? "Automated memory filters in the ceiling." Let's just say, between TV and smartphones, UNIT improved on MIB's neuralizer. (At least, until it was disbanded... or WAS it?)
I'm really hoping the lack of Jodie in this is just a narrative cheat and that she's back within the first ten minutes, but given Chibnall's form for sidelining the Doctor and focusing on the Fam/Master/guest characters at her expense I'll wait and see. Other than that, was anyone clamouring for Noth to return? (will the average viewer even remember him?) Yas getting jumped by the mutant feels like a call back to Resolution, wonder if she'll be taken over? British PM/American President introducing Daleks as a homegrown weapon is of course very familiar, but I suppose Victory was ten years ago. Still unsure about the new Dalek design. Much as with the paradigm Daleks I can't help thinking that it's hard to improve on the classic design. I liked the recon Dalek, but I also liked the special weapons Dalek, doesn't mean I want every Dalek to look like that! Has anyone counted the number of marks on the wall in the Doctor's cell to see how long she's been imprisoned. I'd like to hope this could be a soft reboot of the character, let Jodie be a little more forceful, have a little more agency, maybe even make her a little reckless and give her a new look (love her prison hair)...but nah I imagine months/years in prison will have had no discernable effect on her personality. Would love to eat my words here.
I can see several ways that the writers could go: 1) Keep the Doctor and the Fam separate for most of the episode. Have Jack and the Fam handle the Daleks on their own and give the Doctor her own mystery to solve in the Judoon prison. The Doctor would only be reunited with the Fam at the end of the episode 2) Star the episode with a montage showing the Doctor has been in prison for the equivalent of many earth years. Then, in the first 10 minutes, the Tardis shows up and rescues the Doctor. Everybody goes back to Earth and then the Dalek mystery happens. 3) The Doctor spends the first half of the episode in prison, solves some tangential mystery, gets rescued and then the Doctor, Jack and the Fam solve the Dalek threat in the second half of the episode. 4) The Doctor is rescued at the beginning of the episode, they solve the Dalek threat but then the Doctor says it is imperative for some reason that she return to the prison at the moment she left. So the Tardis rematerializes in the prison just an instant after it left. so from the prison's perspective, it is as if the Doctor never left.