I'll spare you my thoughts on the episode itself but I finally felt like I was watching this Doctor and being natural and not so much like observing Jodie Whittaker's affectations of the Doctor.
Spoilers The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos grade and discussion thread
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You know, if Tooth Face hadn't had the toothy face, or the silly back-and-forth in the first episode about his name, I might have been more excited to see him come back. That said, I think the actor nailed it. Love the voice. I'm not sold on the Stenza as a big threat, seeing as easy as Tooth Face went down in both of his appearances.
The Ux were the real standouts of this episode. That and the directing and cinematography. Nice to see that they used their budget wisely, recycling the bad guys from Ghost Monument to create minions.
Also a fan that there was no hamfisted prophecy this season. Nice little self-contained story.
Reminded me of Douglas Adams, only not funny.
The Ux were the real standouts of this episode. That and the directing and cinematography. Nice to see that they used their budget wisely, recycling the bad guys from Ghost Monument to create minions.
Also a fan that there was no hamfisted prophecy this season. Nice little self-contained story.
Reminded me of Douglas Adams, only not funny.
That last sentence is odd.
Douglas Adams is all about the funny.
Except for Mostly Harmless. That wasn’t his finest hour.
Yup, I thought the same thing. Good use of the quarry, too!
It reminded me of how Douglas Adams comes up with fantastical stuff. The Ux reminded me, and I'm not sure why, of the Electric Monk. The plot had obvious shades of The Pirate Planet. There was no real comedy in the episode, though.
It's not surprising, though. Like the vast majority of British SF writers all take such inspiration from Adams. Gaiman, the Moff, RTD, Chibnall, all that jazz.
I actually liked this episode. It was better than the last three ones. I'm glad it was a high stakes premise and they had a returning villain, although I thought the whole Tim Shaw storyline could have been built up better. I liked Graham's storyline here and how he and Ryan made sure Tim Shaw would get what he deserved. I can't say I'm surprised with the ratings though for the finale. This was a below average season that didn't build up to anything for a season finale.
I really liked the guest cast here (Robert Baratheon!) and I wish that more time would have been spent with the far more interesting Ux.
Other issues with the episode...like most of the stories this season, it was LOADED with exposition. That's something that doesn't benefit this Doctor, especially when 13 starts trying to act like her previous incarnations. I do think the pacing needs to be tightened up as well. The 50-minute run times just add more exposition and more commercials, slowing everything down.
I appreciated Graham's conversation with The Doctor where he wanted to be honest with her about wanting to kill Tim Shaw. It might have been the best scene in the episode and it was nice for The Doctor to FINALLY have a meaningful one-on-one conversation with her companions. I like Jodie's Doctor and her companions a lot. But when it comes to one-on-one relationships with her companions, there's very little there. The Doctor almost always addresses them as a group instead of as individuals and I think that's her the dynamic here and the view of the companions.
So, good episode for a below average season. I'm hoping a year-long break will be what Chibnall needs to return the show to its old form. The 7th Doctor's first season was weak and then bounced back with a strong second season. But given everything I've seen of Chibnall's work, I can't say I'm impressed with him as a writer. Broadchurch featured a strong examination of grief that it's stellar cast really pulled off but the storylines were pedestrian at best and stupid at worst. I don't know if he's up to the task as showrunner. I hope I'm wrong.
I really liked the guest cast here (Robert Baratheon!) and I wish that more time would have been spent with the far more interesting Ux.
Other issues with the episode...like most of the stories this season, it was LOADED with exposition. That's something that doesn't benefit this Doctor, especially when 13 starts trying to act like her previous incarnations. I do think the pacing needs to be tightened up as well. The 50-minute run times just add more exposition and more commercials, slowing everything down.
I appreciated Graham's conversation with The Doctor where he wanted to be honest with her about wanting to kill Tim Shaw. It might have been the best scene in the episode and it was nice for The Doctor to FINALLY have a meaningful one-on-one conversation with her companions. I like Jodie's Doctor and her companions a lot. But when it comes to one-on-one relationships with her companions, there's very little there. The Doctor almost always addresses them as a group instead of as individuals and I think that's her the dynamic here and the view of the companions.
So, good episode for a below average season. I'm hoping a year-long break will be what Chibnall needs to return the show to its old form. The 7th Doctor's first season was weak and then bounced back with a strong second season. But given everything I've seen of Chibnall's work, I can't say I'm impressed with him as a writer. Broadchurch featured a strong examination of grief that it's stellar cast really pulled off but the storylines were pedestrian at best and stupid at worst. I don't know if he's up to the task as showrunner. I hope I'm wrong.
You reckon?
Gaiman has barely written any SF, and I never got an Adams vibe from much of the stuff in Who to know (even allowing for Adams own time on the show.)
There was a much heavier influence of the EDA era writers like Lawrence Miles and Justin Richards in Moffat Who, and RTD was more....DWM comics, so Moore and Abnett.
There’s none of the surreal touches of Adams, and the humour is...more approachable in Who. There’s also more in the way of female characters, which is something Adams could never get a handle on (which is why there’s three total across the Hitchikers sequence, and they tend to get written out swiftly, or forgotten about before suddenly returning.) whereas Moffat has no such problem.
There’s the odd slight feel...but I always feel those are deliberate echoes rather than evidence of an influence.
Also...those are TV writers, not SF writers as such, which is a different kettle of fish.
This is the second time I've encountered this weird "No one's a real SF writer" litmus test this week. This assertion that Gaiman "has barely written SF" is something else. Though primarily a fantasy author, science fiction and an Adams sensibility are baked into his material, if somewhat darker. Hard to look at "The Doctor's Wife" as not being heavily influenced by Adams, honestly. And, the man literally wrote a book on Adams. ;-)
Relentlessly average. Not bad, but I could name so many Big Finish plays while watching, that have played with the same the story and had more themes and ideas thrown in, this felt banal and hollow, in comparison.
Gaiman writes primarily fantasy. He has written one science fiction short, ‘how to talk to girls at parties’ and two Doctor Who episodes, neither of which were exactly leaning into the science part of science fiction. He is a fantasy writer.
He wrote a book on Adams having started his career as a pop biographer. He likes reading SF, but he basically doesn’t write it. Unlike, say, Terry Pratchett, who did write SF whilst primarily writing fantasy that edges into crossover territories like steampunk as Discworld matured.
Now...what are we calling Adams sensibility? Is it something that is inherent to SF work? If it’s the humour...well, I have already mentioned Pratchett, but in terms of humorous work, that’s usually Fantasy. We could say Red Dwarf has Adams in its DNA, but really it’s DNA is less Adams and more Carry On with a dash of Dark Star. It’s also much more in the Hard SF end of the spectrum than even Adams, particularly in its written form...but fundamentally it’s a TV show. What about Tom Holt? Very Adams, occasionally brushes on SF, but is fundmentally a fantasy writer with post modern pastiche elements.
Adams is fundamentally literature, regardless of his beginnings, and that’s where I would look at the definition of someone as an SF Writer. Moffat isn’t even an SF writer, he doesn’t really do books, and prior to Who he didn’t write any SF shows...he wrote good character based sitcoms like coupling. RTD too isn’t an SF writer. If it helps, Kazuo Ishiguro isn’t either, because the vast majority of his Canon, particularly its well known parts, are not SF. (Ditto Murakami, Who is sort of magical realism or surreal realist fantasy or something....Hard Boiled wonderland sort of borrows some SF tropes, but isn’t really SF. It’s weird fiction I suppose.)
The biggest British SF writer of recent years was Iain M Banks, and there’s an argument for some Adams like quirkiness there I suppose. For the most recent good Adams descendent I can think of, there’s the ‘Space Captain Smith’ books, which edge on steampunk and are really rather good without going anywhere near hard SF, but plenty of pastiche, and are probably a nice fit alongside Who.
Adams has more been an influence in fantasy, arguably, than SF. Probably because his books were always sort of poking fun at the SF genre, and could never land too hard on the science except in a jokey manner. (Bistromathics being a personal favourite.) It’s a lot easier to do that the less hard rules you have (like physics) so it’s easier to play out the similar humour in a fantasy set up.
But Gaiman is not an SF writer. Who alone won’t qualify that. The chap who wrote four weddings did Vincent didn’t he? Is Curtis now a foremost British SF writer? If we are widening it from people with a literary output, I would suggest Charlie Brooker is. And he has no Adams influence, because Adams didn’t have an Aesop element in Hitchikers (which remains Adams main work, with only Dirk Gently really bringing up the rear....and that was Shada, take two.)
You could make an argument for Adams bringing a certain type of British humour into SF with Hitchikers, and certainly being very popular, but there’s more Ian Chesterton in Rory Williams than there is Arthur Dent.
Edit to clarify: I went off piste with my authors a little into non brits. XD. But was thinking of examples of non SF writers sometimes lumped into SF..
This is an incredibly narrow scope of Gaiman's oeuvre - he wrote an episode Babylon 5 as well as several comics that are of the sci-fi genre - MiracleMan, The Etenrals, work for 2000 AD - or, as is common with his work, a mix of both, say... InterWorld. I even say he's primarily a fantasy author. If you're going to post a diatribe, at least come correct. At least have the common decency to pretend have done more than read a wiki before prattling on.
But there's this sudden pretension I'm noticing as a reflection of Chibnall using all new writers. "We used to have real sci-fi authors on this show!" I had some folks complaining about the lack of "sci-fi authors" the season and I had a whole response worked up until I remembered that Malorie Blackman is a sci-fi/fantasy YA author of some repute! Chibnall has... done this series before? McTighe has done sci-fi/fantasy in Australia. It's really no different than any previous seasons. It's just that there isn't a "prestige" writer this season. Or someone with a long history of Doctor Who involvement. But Blackman and Chibnall have written before (an ebook and previous scripts and show running a spin-off.)
I had forgotten his B5. Though again, it’s wasnt one of its more...Arthur C Clarke moments was it? His comics work again, for the most part, leans into fantasy.
In terms of pretending to have more than read a wiki? I share acquaintances with Neil, have been to a couple of his talks,have a couple of signed novels, a preview copy of Fragile Things poking around somewhere, and watched Neverwhere on first transmission on the strength of Lenny Henry’s involvement admittedly. That’s in addition to basically a copy of every book he’s written...to a certain point, (or more accurately year) I don’t like his kids stuff so much, and think he’s not as interesting a writer as he used to be, and I found Ocean At The End of the Lane a very flawed work, bordering on offensive in some places. I dare say at some point he will...purely in my opinion...regain his mojo at some point. Maybe he won’t.
But I am very very familiar with his work, and though the SF and F section necessitates a rubbing of shoulders, I don’t think he ever strays out of the F part, and is simply not an SF writer. He is a Who fan, to an extent, of many years, and the Doctors Wife was a wonderful piece of Who Myth. Nightmare in Silver....not so much, and I do t know that any changes made are the cause of that.
I also don’t think Adams is an influence on him, except when he decides to do an homage now and then, because he’s actually a better writer than Adams was, and does much more interesting things with a much deeper sort of knowledge base than Adams tended towards. His books are, however, slightly less fun as a result.
So I gave that an 8. The enemy that reappeared from the beginning was nice closure from the first episode, but he never made much of an impression on me, and that's why I can't remember his name. 
Whilst that part of the story was a little same old, same old, I thought the rest was excellent. It all felt very tense and was a very fitting series finale. Graham has been my hero all these weeks and I'm glad he didn't get his revenge on guy-who-killed-his-wife.
The whole series has been wonderful really. The lack of an ongoing arc was a refreshing change of pace. Jodie and Graham won me over from the start, and the other companions grew on me nicely as well. It looks amazing too.
It's a shame we've got to wait until 2020 for the next series, but bring on the New Year special.
Whilst that part of the story was a little same old, same old, I thought the rest was excellent. It all felt very tense and was a very fitting series finale. Graham has been my hero all these weeks and I'm glad he didn't get his revenge on guy-who-killed-his-wife.
The whole series has been wonderful really. The lack of an ongoing arc was a refreshing change of pace. Jodie and Graham won me over from the start, and the other companions grew on me nicely as well. It looks amazing too.
It's a shame we've got to wait until 2020 for the next series, but bring on the New Year special.
I'm actually thinking that the Stenza may be a threat, but Tim Shaw is just a rubbish member of the species. After all, he had to cheat to try to find his quarry in The Woman Who Fell To Earth and considering we know very little about the Stenza's visits to Earth before this it's likely any predecessors weren't rampaging around leaving a trail of discarded kebabs and toothless bodies. Tim Shaw could well be the Duras of the Stenza.
Good lord that was a boring episode. I barely made it halfway through the episode before I decided to shut it off because I just didn't care about anything that was happening. It wasn't even bad -- bad is at least interesting. This was just overwhelming mediocre. Say what you will about Moffat or RTD, but at least their episodes left an impression on you. Chibnall needs to stop playing it safe and take some chances.
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