Doctor Who forewent its usual Christmas Special in favor of a New Year’s Day Special. And along for the ride was a familiar enemy that fans have been curious to see Thirteen tackle….
Summary
In the 9th century, several Earth armies converge on a Dalek and defeat it. The Three Custodians separate the lifeform into three pieces across the globe to prevent its return. In present day, Lin (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mitch (Nikesh Patel) unearth the piece of the Dalek that was brought back to Yorkshire, England, exposing it to UV rays and thereby enacting the Dalek’s reconstructive capabilities. It latches onto Lin and takes her body hostage. The Doctor and friends get a signal about it, and they head to the archaeological site to where Lin and Mitch are working. No one realizes Lin has already been taken hostage by a Dalek. She falls under its control and goes to find pieces of her former casing and rebuild. The Doctor tries to get in touch with UNIT, only to find that the organization has been disbanded due to budget cuts.
Ryan’s father Aaron shows up, and Team TARDIS take him to task for not being there for his son. He’s tries to patch things up with Ryan’s, who’s not over-enthused about his dad’s presence. Aaron is surprised to find Ryan calling Graham “gramps.” The Doctor goes to confront the Dalek once it’s let Lin go and rebuilt, using the TARDIS shields to keep everyone safe initially. They use parts from the microwave oven that Aaron is trying to sell on the Dalek to melt its casing. The Doctor thinks they’re out of the woods, but it latches onto Aaron and demands that the Doctor take it back to its fleet. Instead, the Doctor takes it to a supernova and allows it to get sucked out of the TARDIS. Ryan’ pleads with his dad to stay strong and not go over with the Dalek, and Aaron makes it out just fine. He says no to an invite to travel time and space, however.
Commentary
Now that is how you do a Dalek episode.
Look, there is a problem with the Daleks, which is that the licensing issues demand their use, but it’s really hard to create stories that truly support their constant return. The easiest way is to bypass those issues in favor of more personal stories ala “Dalek” and “Into the Dalek”, which is what we end up with here; there’s a single Dalek in a story that has very little to do with the entire species, and much more to do with the Doctor’s relationship with Daleks overall. Those stories tend to be more engaging because we know why the Daleks are scary, and we don’t really need reminding. We just need to know how this particular Doctor feels about encountering them. And the answer is: She’s still frightened, but she handles it with incredible swagger and good humor.
We find out that the UNIT has been shoved under due to lack of funding, and if that’s not the most pointed Brexit joke I ever expected to see on Doctor Who, I’m not sure what would qualify better. Regardless, it was an excellent way of making and point and a joke in a short space, even if I’m sad not to have Kate Stewart rummaging around. Some fo the other jokes in this episode didn’t land, on the other hand. Making a joke about how British wifi has been knocked out, all to see a single British family complain about having to talk to one another on New Year’s Day because they don’t have any technology to distract them is pretty darn low-hanging fruit when it doesn’t really connect to anything else in the episode. If that family had been laced throughout the story as a weird aside, it might have worked better. Also, I’m just gonna say it… it’s pretty much a cop out that we don’t get to see the other two custodians after the Dalek reassembles. They had a major stake in that, and we never hear anything from them whatsoever.
I will forever be here for the Doctor taking companion’s families to task for not being up to snuff. The moment that Thirteen told Aaron that he’d let Ryan down for missing Grace’s funeral, I literally applauded at the television. That she manages to get away with taking people to task is maybe one of my favorite aspects of this Doctor. On the other hand, when Graham talks to Aaron about how she felt about her life and being a mother, we’re struck yet again with how incredible Grace was and how much she deserves to still be around. It’s never going to stop stinging. It’s never going to sit right. And when Ryan’s dad decides that he’s not interested in TARDIS travel, that really only serves to drive the nail in. There’s a time and a place to discuss what makes people say yes to traveling with the Doctor, and we don’t really have the space here (it’s its own treatise), but it begs so many questions.
This is largely Ryan’s episode; Yaz has firmly taken her place as the Doctor’s second-in-command and is routinely asked to keep things together in the Doctor’s absence (I LOVE this), and Graham is largely here to be present for Ryan in this episode, which seems only right given the season finale, which was all for his closure. He and Ryan are a solid family now, and he’s not about to let Ryan’s dad fail him again if he has a chance to give the guy a talking to. Aaron’s characterization is… it’s alright. It makes sense overall, but it’s nothing stunning or particularly moving, which seems a disservice. It would be nice to learn a little more about why he felt it was okay to abandon his son, particularly when we can see that he’s a bright guy who could clearly keep things together better if he had the motivation and the desire. We’re never given much by way of his thought process on that front.
The particular use of Lin by the reconnaissance Dalek is a helpful bridge in explaining the weird human-Daleks Moffat kept thrusting on viewers starting with Clara’s introduction. While it doesn’t quite make those hybrids work in retrospect, it does join some of those aspects together helpfully. There’s a very cool parallel going on between the Dalek and the Doctor in this instance as well, since the Dalek takes a human female form and proceeds to use that form while reconstructing their casing, similar to the Doctor’s engineering prowess. It offers a great connection even when Daleks themselves have no discernible gender. As another aside, I have to say, I’m super pleased that Lin didn’t die. Nothing annoys me more than creating a relationship between characters (in this case, the preface of Lin and Mitch’s New Year’s kiss and confusion) in order to make the audience care before killing someone. This way, we get to enjoy their survival and don’t wind up attached for no reason.
But most important of all, this episode exists to establish a baseline of heroics for the Doctor. There’s danger in this episode, but for the most part, she’s entirely on top of things in an extremely fun way. Her slide dive, her “extended fam”, her desire to show her friends twenty New Year’s celebrations, one after the other. Thirteen’s personality in this instance is clear and even more comforting. She’s a great friend, an able opponent, and she loves being who she is. Her clear glee at being able to tell the Dalek that she is the Doctor is enough to set your heart racing. It’s always a new story when the Doctor has a fresh pair of eyes, but this journey is offering her something far more exciting in return. It’s a chance to experience the universe in a truly unique pair of shoes, and surprise everyone—herself included.
In addition, it doesn’t seem like Yaz, Ryan, and Graham are going anywhere, which is a relief. We’re not supposed to get a new season until 2020, and it’s good to know that we’ll have that same set of companions. They’re not anywhere near done with the TARDIS and all the adventures it holds. So here’s to a new year, new friends, and a new Doctor who’s really just getting started.
A few asides and so on:
- This is the first major Dalek redesign since 2010. I’m curious as to whether or not it’ll stick going forward given the patchwork job this Dalek did, but this particular design manages to look both more dangerous (given the explosives behind the roundels and the claw in place of the typical “plunger” affixed to the front) and perhaps a bit feminized (the bottom half flares a bit more noticeably, almost as though it were a skirt). I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to thoroughly enjoying the reimagining of such a iconic villain. Who rules go that the Daleks are supposed to be the height of the current companion, but given the fact that there are so many, it seems as though they opted to make this Dalek Whittaker’s height—which seems the smartest choice in this instance.
- The Doctor takes her crew to nineteen consecutive New Years, with Graham’s favorite being Mesopotamia, Ryan’s favorite being Sydney in 2000, and Yaz’s favorite being 1801 when they helped Giuseppe Piazzi discover a dwarf planet. All of these favorites fit each companion well, and I was particularly tickled at Ryan’s pick, since I found myself reminiscing about the change over to 2000 this year myself. We sadly don’t get to see the final 20th New Year celebration at Quantifer, at the edge of the known universe. Maybe next time…
- The MDZ security guard, Richard, has a boyfriend. This iteration of Who has been very good at keeping plenty of queer characters around without making a fuss, but they’ve balked at allowing them any significant screen time. Here’s hoping they can get better about that going forward.
- Okay, but all Brexit jokes aside, if the Thirteenth Doctor never gets the chance to pal around with Kate Stewart, I’ll be extremely annoyed.
- Why does Aaron go out of his way to point out that the microwave he’s selling is also an oven? Isn’t that true of all microwaves? Aren’t they all technically called “microwave ovens”? Is this just supposed to be a joke about how people sell appliances? Because it honestly came off confusing….
- I was extremely pleased that the Doctor couldn’t remember how long a “rel” was, because I was asking myself the exact same question at the moment she brought it up.
- The Doctor mentions that she’s learned how to be like a Dalek, which is a particular and important self-own; the Ninth and Twelfth Doctor were both told that they’d make good Daleks.
- No opening credits and theme this time! I’m pretty sure this is the first complete Who story to forego the entirety of it, including the title card.
- TARDIS shielding! Been waiting for ages for that one to come back.
Emmet Asher-Perrin just wants more droid friends. You can bug him on Twitter, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I’ve been enjoying the Big Finish UNIT series of audio stories, and there’s no way Kate Stewart gets sidelined without a fight. I’m pretty sure she and her team are working underground on a shoestring budget if that’s what they have to do. Because I’m with you — we need a 13th Doctor / Kate Stewart (and Osgood) team-up.
Other than that, yeah, this was the good stuff. Not completely perfect, but I feel like this was the sort of episode I’ve been waiting for all season. It can’t be every week, and that’s fine, but this episode felt big, confident, and connected to the show’s history. I appreciate the changes that they were trying to make this season, and I’ll support it as they continue to experiment, as long as we get one of these every so often.
The dwarf planet Piazzi discovered on New Year’s Day 1801 was Ceres (which was actually considered a planet at first, and kept that designation for nearly as long as Pluto did before it got reclassified as an asteroid and eventually a dwarf planet).
I loved the parallel with the construction montages, the Doctor’s screwdriver and the Dalek’s casing. And I loved the Doctor forgetting how long a rel is (it’s 1.2 seconds, according to “Evolution of the Daleks”).
I don’t really buy the “Brexit killed UNIT” thing. UNIT was never just a British organization; it was an international one. Even if Britain pulled out, the rest of UNIT should still be around. (Then again, “Brexit” does sound like the name of a race of alien monsters that UNIT might have fought. “Terror of the Brexit.” “The Claws of Brexit.” “Planet of the Brexit.”)
As for the “microwave that’s also an oven,” Aaron probably meant it’s a hybrid oven, able to work both as a microwave and as a convection oven.
The Doctor’s climactic plan to defeat the Dalek seemed contrived to me. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was obvious that it was going to put Aaron in danger of being sucked out into space so that he and Ryan could get emotional closure. I wish they’d come up with something that worked better aside from that.
A year without Who? Why does the Beeb hate us? More importantly why are they sabotaging Thirteen? We barely have time to get to know her and they put her on hiatus???
A year without Who? Why does the Beeb hate us? More importantly why are they sabotaging Thirteen? We barely have time to get to know her and they put her on hiatus???
“Who rules go that the Daleks are supposed to be the height of the current companion…”
Didn’t know that one. Otherwise, not much to complain about here. A straightforward adventure story with all the main players already well defined.
Agreed that putting Aaron in danger just to get an emotional resolution was contrived. There’s no freaking harnesses in the control room? And using ordinary earth tech coincidentally brought aboard to defeat the Dalek? Surely the Doctor has, if not an arsenal onboard, at least the equivalent of a tech parts store.
Speaking of which: “mad tech skillz, with a zed” was a great but corny line. Sticking up for Yaz, with a zed.
They couldn’t have known ahead of time of course, but the Brexit joke also goes well with the current US partial government shutdown.
The cast is humming well together at this point. Looking forward to more stories.
#3. Chibnall called for the year’s hiatus because he wanted more time for quality control. If it results in a better season in 2020, I’m all for it.
@4/roxana: It’s not uncommon in British TV for a show to have a hiatus of a year or more, even several, between seasons. It’s not “sabotage,” because it happens all the time. For instance, look at Red Dwarf. It had three seasons from 1988-9, then three from 1991-3, then 1997, 1999, a special in 2009, then 2012, 2016, and 2017. Sherlock‘s seasons have been in 2010, 2012, 2014, a 2016 special, and 2017.
It’s not even the first time Doctor Who has gone a whole year with nothing but a holiday special — it happened in 2016.
Since there have been so many WHO digs this year at the present US administration, I imagine the comment about funding was more about the US than Brexit.
Aaron’s emotional difficulties are so sadly common that many of us don’t need a closer examination of what makes him tick, and I imagine that’s why so little attention was paid to him. Thematically and emotionally, he also made a very good punching bag for Graham and Ryan’s unhappiness, and he deserved every punch.
I kept thinking afterwards that this should have replaced ‘Victory of the Daleks’, Moffat’s half-arsed Dalek Empire reboot. Letting a pre-Time War reconnaissance scout slip loose to rebuild anew is more interesting than 11’s odd decision to let the new post-Time War models slip away into the vortex. Every Doctor / Dalek scene crackles.
I got bored every time the show cut away from Daleks Driving Dangerously to Ryan and his dad discussing their issues. For me, this TARDIS team still feels bland but likeable, and Ryan’s family plotline comes nowhere close to the emotional impact of ‘Father’s Day.’ Still, it was fun, cheesy New Year jokes and all.
I liked it. I’m not sure about the handling of the Dalek. Making it one individual Dalek rather than a horde of faceless monsters was a good idea, but I have very mixed feelings about how little we saw of the traditional Dalek casing, with the focus largely on the Dalek mutant, especially the way the casing was destroyed before the mutant. I’m all in favour of reminding the audience that a Dalek is an organic creature, not the thing it travels about in, but it seems like we just got a bit of Dalek action in the third act out of obligation. But oh well, trying something new, not a bad thing.
On the other hand, I do appreciate the small scale of it all. Too often Doctor Who has gone for the big spectacle just because they can, presenting something that affects the whole world (but which they forget about next week). It’s nice to go back to these things only affecting the people around the Doctor with the threat it will spill out to the rest of the world if they can’t contain it.
Aaron and the psycho-drama with Ryan, hmm. I guess Aaron’s kind of redeemed himself by the end but it goes for symbolism rather than logic: Why does Aaron taking Ryan’s arm mean the Dalek gets sucked out and he doesn’t, rather than all three of them going? Also, is the Doctor heading to a Dalek fleet and finding a supernova there a sign that “Remembrance of the Daleks” still happened even though it was ignored by the TV Movie and “The Magician’s Apprentice”?
I did like the rels comment, and found the modern family’s horror at having to talk to each other amusing as well. And yes, the Doctor trying to contact UNIT and getting a call centre. It did feel like a Brexit reference to me: I’m not sure how likely that is, but given that they’ve dropped the United Nations link I’m not quite sure what UNIT is these days. It did feel like UNIT was treated like a private security firm, rather than something that’s part of the Ministry of Defence or Geneva as indicated in the past.
I don’t think the Dalek being the height of the companion is a “rule” so much as something they’ve just done for practical reasons (in fact I think they’ve basically kept the ones that are Billie Piper’s height for a decade). Similarly, I doubt there’s any “licensing” that demands the Daleks’ return, the show’s been years without them appearing before. Even though this is hardly the first time we’ve gone a year without a full season, it is frustrating: It’s New Year’s Day and already we’re talking about next year’s season. The days when fans made protest records about the next year’s season being moved from January to September seem very innocent. Oh, and not the first time we’ve had an episode without the opening titles either: It happened only ten episodes ago on “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” and previously happened on “Sleep No More”. As with those, the title caption was moved to the end of the episode.
Yet another “meh” episode by Chibnall. It would have been okay as a regular series episode, but it didn’t feel like a special. And it suffered from the same flaws every episode written by Chibnall has suffered from this season: lack of tension, lack of emotional resonance (the scenes between Ryan and his father weren’t half as effective as Chibs probably thought they were), rushed conclusion. The best scenes were a Venom ripp-off.
I really hope they use the year-long hiatus to work out the kinks.
There have been human/Daleks hybrids since the Robomen in Terry Nation’s The Dalek Invasion of Earth. In New Who, there was Dalek Sec in Davies’ era. Daleks have to come back every time, so they keep getting slight changes so as not to rehash the exact same story every time; Dalek/human hybrids is one of the simplest ways to do that. That’s not a new trick, nor was it a hallmark of Moffat’s era.
@1: “I’m pretty sure she and her team are working underground on a shoestring budget if that’s what they have to do.”
Isn’t that Torchwood?
@1: “I’m pretty sure she and her team are working underground on a shoestring budget if that’s what they have to do.”
Isn’t that Torchwood?
Could be. I’m not buying Big Finish’s Torchwood series, because I’m already following a bunch of different series from them, and I have to draw the financial line somewhere.
@10/cap-mjb: “Also, is the Doctor heading to a Dalek fleet and finding a supernova there a sign that “Remembrance of the Daleks” still happened…?”
I took that more as the Doctor pretending to head for the Dalek fleet and setting course for a supernova instead.
“Similarly, I doubt there’s any “licensing” that demands the Daleks’ return, the show’s been years without them appearing before.”
In the classic series, the long periods without Dalek stories were periods where the BBC was unable to reach a licensing agreement with Terry Nation for their use. So their absences were due to licensing issues, but I don’t think the converse is true (i.e. that if they have the license they’re compelled to use them).
@12/Athreeren: The Robomen weren’t human/Dalek hybrids, just humans with really goofy-looking mind-control helmets. The helmets were tools made by the Daleks, but that doesn’t make them part-Dalek, any more than my phone or my blender is part-human.
@1 Brian – completely agree, much of the Big Finish UNIT stuff is excellent. It’s nice to see Kate and Osgood solving problems on their own rather than standing around being stunned by the Doctor. Parts of the UNIT-vs-the-Silence story are amazing, and the Kate Stewart/War Master Jemma Redgrave / Derek Jacobi episode is beyond amazing.
I definitely hope we don’t lose UNIT and especially Kate Stewart for a throwaway Brexit joke. It was a good example of how this Doctor is willing to ask for help when it’s appropriate (completely in character) while also explaining why that help isn’t instantly short-circuiting that plot. Hoping they’ll show up at some time.
@10, the rumor for years has been that the show (since the revival) is obligated to have a Dalek appear in each season or lose the rights/have to renegotiate. Certainly each season /has/ had a Dalek appearance /somewhere ever since.
I’m pretty sure I heard the guy say it wasn’t just a microwave, it was a microwave-convection oven
I liked the episode, it was fun. But that’s all, it didn’t feel that special.
It was a microwave plus *conventional* oven. Whether or not he said “convection”, what it means is that it cooks via microwaves, but also with heat. Like, you can switch between the two. Maybe even use them at the same time. “Convection” means an oven that circulates air.
I found the episode pretty meh overall. The “absentee father tries to make right with his kid” trope was far too predictable. I could almost have written the dialogue. “Bland but likable” does indeed seem to be a decent description of this bunch.
And I couldn’t get over the premise. So early humans somehow managed to not be burned to ash by this dalek, but defeated it. Somehow. We don’t find out how. The picture shows a net over it. Once defeated, they don’t… like… burn the body or anything. They separate it into pieces and bury them. Like, in a few feet of snow. Why the heck would they do that?? Even assuming that a 9th century european would be able to sail to the south pacific, did they have some kind of foreknowledge that this monster would have the ability to resurrect itself and recombine? If not then why the separation and the guards? And if so… then why not burn it? Why 3 pieces? If it could be chopped, why not grind it to mince and cook it for dinner? Why bury it in a few feet of sand or snow but only in a small bag? Why not a vault, a box, a pot, a metal cage? And why outdoors? Just to show how tough and dedicated the guardians are?
And why did it not die in the first place? Daleks are mortal. How on earth would a bit of UV light magically awaken the other body parts thousands of km away and teleport themselves together again? WTF? The ‘cheat’ of not seeing the other guardians also cheats the very premise of how this thing got itself back together. They try to brush it under the carpet by saying “recon guards have more powers than regular Daleks.” Again, WTF? If Daleks can make Daleks with more powers, they’d do that for all of them. If there was a way to make an immortal Dalek, that can be KILLED, chopped up, and then brought BACK TO LIFE and recombined over any distance, you can bet this is something they’d be making more use of. Chopping it up makes it only DORMANT and not kills it? Really? But it maintains a self-teleportation feature???
And then how on earth was there this grand detailed story, with pictures, of the ‘order of the guardians’ or whatever? And how convenient that this random archeologist knows allll about them (but the Doctor had never heard of this story). It also makes it sound like they’re this large brotherhood organization, rather than 3 lonely people (well, 2) and their descendants. Which raises other questions. How did they meet mates in order to create descendants, if they just spent all their time sitting there watching these buried body bits?
And WHY did the Dalek fly to some random military zone to blow things up? It made for some cool visuals but WHY? Where was this? What was the purpose?
But here’s the most important question of all: What does the Dalek say as his shell is being defeated? He says “weapons malfunction” — then “weapons failure” — then something unintelligible. A friend of mine swears he hears “working on my patreon”. Now that he’s said that, I can’t hear anything else. ;) Except maybe “walking on my painting”.
BRING BACK THE MOVELLANS!
I agree that single Dalek’s are often more frightening than entire fleets of them. I think the scariest episode involving one is Season 1’s “Dalek” where Eccleston’s Doctor and Rose deal with an escaped, single, Dalek.
Does anybody else miss the Christmas theme? As much as Moffat often annoyed me, I could really do with an episode with Clara, Vastra and Jenny Christmas story.
@19/Heather: Yeah, convection ovens are a specific kind of conventional oven, but apparently most microwave/conventional hybrids are convection ovens, I would guess because microwaves already have fans in them anyway, or because both types of oven cook faster than conventional ones.
@19. Heather: thanks for the laughs, but you’re going to drive yourself insane asking all those questions. Absolutely right that the more you think about, the less sense it makes. 9th century weapons apparently were more effective than high powered modern ones. Plus frickin’ actual tanks with advanced plating can’t stand up to a casing made in a small foundry by hand. And yes, the Daleks without their casing are mortal, so the organic body should’ve decomposed.
This season has shown that Chibs just goes with ideas that sounds cool, but doesn’t really care about the implications. Example: shrinking planets, then carrying them like backpacks. Time will tell, but this may mean some of the episodes will not age well.
@22. CLB: maybe all troops fighting Daleks in future will be equipped with Air Fryers…
Is it me or have a lot of this season’s episodes had huge, gaping holes in their premises? And why is a British show so obsessed with US politics? They don’t have their own idiots to skewer? Also, Ryan, Aaron, save the world FIRST then work on your personal issues.
@25/roxana: Where was the US politics in this? The UNIT-funding joke sounded like a Brexit reference to me.
To answer your question, though, the US has been a global superpower since WWII, so everyone else on Earth pretty much has to pay close attention to our politics, because it has an effect on them too.
@14/CLB: “In the classic series, the long periods without Dalek stories were periods where the BBC was unable to reach a licensing agreement with Terry Nation for their use. So their absences were due to licensing issues, but I don’t think the converse is true (i.e. that if they have the license they’re compelled to use them).”
Well, it’s certainly true that Terry Nation withdrew permission to use them back in the 60s when he was hoping to launch his own show, but that collapsed very quickly after which he’d probably have happily taken money off the BBC again but successive production teams had no interest in bringing them back. (Famously, the early 70s production team didn’t realise until after their big return had been commissioned that they even needed permission and had to hastily ring him up.) I don’t think there were any difficulties during later gaps: On one occasion, a new production team asked him if he could maybe write something without Daleks this time.
@25/roxana: Oh, we’ve got plenty of idiots to skewer. Welcome to the results of No Deal Brexit, which is about the only thing left that hasn’t been voted down or hastily withdrawn before it gets voted down. (Mixed messages from across the pond probably haven’t helped but there’s plenty of people in Europe to blame first.)
Good episode to cap off a good season. I liked how the Tardis team worked together, and how Ryan and his dad reached a reconciliation that felt real, and felt earned. And I liked the young couple of archaeologists, and how their budding romance upped the stakes when she got captured by the Dalek.
The idea of a Dalek being dangerous even without its shell was very compelling, with a vibe very close to Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. And I liked the way it whipped up a robot body on the fly, similar to the way the Doctor whipped up her new sonic earlier in the season.
It will be a long wait for the next season, but I am glad the new acting team and behind the scenes team will be back, as they have been doing a fine job.
@28/Alan: Yeah, we’ve gotten used to thinking of Daleks as just feeble squishy things that need to hide inside personal tanks to survive. We assume they’re helpless if disarmed — like when Eleven said a Dalek without a gun is just “a tricycle with a roof.” A hilarious line, but it does kind of diminish their menace. The idea that a Dalek is just as deadly even without the pepperpot makes them scarier. Although we have seen “shell-less” Daleks prove deadly on occasion before, e.g. in “Resurrection of the Daleks” and “Daleks in Manhattan,” it wasn’t as central to the story as it was here.
Yes, Alan! I had gone in unspoiled, so did not know what the creature was. I yelled “It’s a PUPPET MASTER!” when I saw it riding Lin. I was actually a little disappointed to find it was just a Dalek…
The New Year’s Special would’ve been an okay regular season episode. The short season plus setting this at New Year’s instead of Christmas plus Thirteen’s dithery overall performance means I won’t be back. Not that anyone specially cares, but the thing is there aren’t legions of fans to replace me. Ratings were the worst of any rebooted-season holiday special, and were even mediocre for regular-season episodes. The alchemy is not there with this creative team. It’s sad that, after the huge misstep of casting Twelve, they finished killing the franchise with blah storytelling and it’ll be blamed on Thirteen’s gender. That’s the worst of it. Jodie Whittaker had nothing to do with the mouldering mound of ~meh~ the writers produced.
this episode was badly written, full of unresolved plot points (what happened to the other 2 “pieces” of the dalek’s body), and far too convenient cheats like a random microwave oven used to defeat the enemy.
and defunding UNIT is not funny but lame.
@32/poiboy: What happened to the other two pieces is that they teleported to the first piece and reunited with it, which was how it came back to life. It was that spatial shift, the teleportation, that caught the Doctor’s attention and led her there in the first place.
Give Brexit a damn rest – I’m sick of hearing about it. I suppose it would have been too much for Chibnall to go against the flow and put a positive spin on Brexit – it is science fiction after all – that would have been controversial and unpredictable. But no. The BBC keeps spinning its cracked record. And I say that as one who voted and still supports remain.
The whole season has been dull frankly. But Jodie Whittaker is awesome in the role and she’s enough to make me watch the next season hoping the stories improve in the interim,
@31. oldfan: ” Ratings were the worst of any rebooted-season holiday special”
This is misleading. We won’t have final ratings till later this week. That will include recorded or streaming views. The overnights were a bit lower than Capaldi’s last episode, but that’s not in context. These days people watch media in so many formats and on so many devices that old school measurements aren’t as relevant.
Doctor Doom and Gloom
“It’s sad that, after the huge misstep of casting Twelve, they finished killing the franchise…”
This part is absolutely 100% subjective opinion. May be true for you, but false for me. Capaldi is my current favorite Doctor. Guess I follow the general Whovian pattern where there may be resistance to a new Doctor, who then becomes the favorite.
Capaldi was great in a quantifiable way. Not a misstep whatsoever.
With the episode on opposite Emmerdale, overnights were always going to be dire and the usual “OMG, the show’s going to be cancelled because the ratings are the worst ever!” panic was going to kick in. I imagine in a few weeks Doctor Who Magazine will be publishing a completely different set of figures and claiming it was the highest-rated special in ten years.
Actually, here’s the none-scare-mongering figures which don’t ignore the inconvenient “Less people watch TV these days” facts. It was the fourth highest-rated programme of New Year’s Day. It only got 0.5m less viewers than Luther, the highest rated (Emmerdale was in the top three). It rated higher than EastEnders and no-one’s declaring that “franchise” dead.
I think we all know by now that Doctor Who will never die. And it definitely won’t die today.
@cap: Was a nice surprise to hear Luther was back. Wonder when we’ll get to see that in the States. How many episodes in the new series?
@Sunspear: Four, apparently.
@31/35 Re: Twelve casting
Completely agree — Totally subjective.
I thought that Capaldi was a great doctor let down by poor (tired?) writing
This year’s writing has been a pleasant change for me — perhaps a little bit too far the other way as a reaction to Moffat’s overworked ideas, so I’m hopeful they will find the right balance next year.
Oh no, another franchise killed! :p
I know Lin is bound to be a cosplay opportunity, but is the BBC going to licence a Dalek backpack ?
@40, Personally I adored Capaldi. But then I’ve liked all the Doctors. Some better than others but all were good as far as I’m concerned.