She’s back. The Doctor is back. And that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to use that pronoun in relation to her. So now that we’ve got a new Doctor and a new showrunner and a new composer and three brand new companions, how does “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” fare?
Summary
A young man named Ryan Sinclair (Tosin Cole) has created a vlog in honor of the greatest woman he’s ever known. We cut to Ryan trying to learn to ride a bike a bit earlier with the help of his grandmother Grace (Sharon D. Clarke) and grandmother’s husband Graham O’Brien (Bradley Walsh). He gets angry that he can’t manage it—he has dyspraxia, a coordination disorder that makes it very difficult, and he tosses the bike down a hill. When he goes to retrieve it later, he sees strange lights in the woods and taps at it. Soon after, an object appears, sort of pod-like. He calls the police, and the person who gets the call is a woman named Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill) who he went to school with. Ryan insists this is not a prank, but she’s not sure she believes him.
Ryan gets a call from his grandmother, who was on her way home via train with Graham when a strange ball of energy hit the train; they couldn’t evacuate because their door was jammed, but everyone else managed to exit. It’s just them and another young man named Karl (Jonny Dixon). Suddenly someone falls through the roof of the train and begins defending them, but she can’t remember her name. It’s the Doctor, and Ryan and Yaz arrive soon after she does. The strange ball of energy hits everyone with a blast and abruptly exits. The Doctor insists on investigating the whole thing herself (she can’t remember quite how she got there or who she is yet), and convinces the group not to run straight to the police, admitting that she’s an alien and the thing that just came after them certainly is as well. She enlists their help; Graham checks in with his bus driver pals (his former job that he’s retired from), Yaz goes back to work to find out if anything weird has gone on, Ryan take the Doctor back to where he found the pod, but it’s gone.
The pod was towed away by someone who is helping a young man named Rahul (Amit Shah), who linked the appearance of this pod to the disappearance of his sister seven years ago. He turns a camera on it, and when the pod cracks open, the being inside kills Rahul and take one of his teeth. Meanwhile, the Doctor is forced to reveal to her new friends that when the weird orb zapped them, it implanted them all with DNA bombs that can melt them all down at a moment’s notice. She converts Ryan’s phone into a tracker for the pod, and they find it along with Rahul’s body. The Doctor builds herself a new sonic screwdriver, then finds the recall part of the pod that will send it back to its home location. One of Graham’s friends then calls, having seen the orb, and the group goes to intercept. The Doctor learns that the orb is a Gathering Coil, which is collecting data for the being from the pod, a member of the Stenza warrior race named Tzim-Sha; he is using the Coil to help him hunt a human—once he has killed the tagged human in question, he can lead his people. The man he tagged turns out to be Karl from the train, and the DNA bombs were planted on the group to stop them from interfering with his hunt. He absorbs all the data from the Coil and leaves.
The group track down Karl at the construction firm where he works. Tzim-Sha gets hold of Karl despite their best efforts, but the Doctor has the recall device from his pod and threatens to drop it. She remembers who she is now, and insists that he leave the world alone. Tzim-Sha refuses and detonates the DNA bombs, but the Doctor transferred them back to the Coil when they last interacted with it; when Tzim-Sha absorbed all the data from the coil, he also absorbed the bombs, and has now killed himself. The Coil is still present on the site, and Grace tells Graham to help her disable it. In doing so, she is mortally wounded. It turns out that the video Ryan made at the start of the episode was for her, and Graham speaks at her funeral. The Doctor asks for her friends Yaz, Graham, and Ryan to help her get some new clothes and find her TARDIS. She cobbles together some tech to help her arrive where the ship has bounced off to. When she activates it, she accidentally transports not just herself, but the whole group—
—and they’re in empty space.
Commentary
So, I have to start by addressing the big upset with this episode… and that’s Grace.
Knowing, as fans generally do, that she wasn’t set to be one of the main companions for the season, I was worried that Grace might die when we met her at the start of the episode. But then I thought, no, they couldn’t do that. On the very first episode showcasing a female Doctor, they wouldn’t kill another woman, an older woman, a woman of color, just as we were coming back into the fold. An incredible woman in her own right, a woman who makes it clear that she should be the companion, they wouldn’t do that to her or to us. (Is it wrong that I’m enjoying this? she says to Graham right before she dies, because that’s what Doctor’s companions often say, they love the mystery and they want the adventure and they throw themselves right into it.) But she dies, and what’s worse, it’s basically used as a lesson. She asks Graham not to be scared without her, the video that Ryan is recording at the start turns out to be about her, and Graham talks at the funeral about how Grace is the person who embraced life and encouraged him not to squander his time. We learn that she did the same for Ryan, that Ryan’s support had been his mother initially before her death; his dad doesn’t show up at the funeral because he’s not reliable. Now it’s on Graham to step up for Ryan and be the male figure he doesn’t seem to have in his life.
And look, if the point here is meant to be that women often do this—that they inspire the men in their lives, but make it easier for them to hide away because they’re doing the majority of the emotional labor—it’s not a bad message to put in any piece of television. We see her doing this work for both Ryan and Graham, and how they each realize they have to step up in her absence. Graham continues to help the Doctor even though he’s uneasy, and Ryan keeps working at learning to ride his bike now that she’s not there to help. But even if there is a longer arc at work here, it’s just not fair. It’s not fair that we had to lose Grace, who would have been an incredible companion in her own right, to help Graham and Ryan grow. Women don’t have to be snuffed out to make room for male development, women are not damned training wheels. There were other ways this could have gone down, and I miss this woman already. I miss everything that she deserved to experience and all the adventures she’ll never get to have. Perhaps something miraculous will happen—Doctor Who is known for it’s share of revivals and reunions—but I’m not giving them any points until I see it.
So that’s one half of this journey, the part that hurts.
The other half is the Thirteenth Doctor. And she’s blinding in her exuberance. She is sharp and bright at the edges and she feels like a great big hug. She is a little brilliant and a little scary, just as the Doctor should be.
There are small and pointed differences here that only help her shine brighter. Some of those differences harken back to older incarnations; this Doctor likes to delegate, which was the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) all over. And that makes sense, given that she’s going to be running around with a crew instead of one steadfast pal. But there are other moments that speak to the places where this Doctor will be different. Toward the middle of the adventure this Doctor takes a moment to acknowledge that this is frightening for her human companions and that she’s sorry they’re having to suffer, to see death and pain on what should have been a normal day. While the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) was known for his frequent “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”s, this is something else. This is a Doctor who more frequently notices the toll on those around her and makes an effort to say so. She doesn’t get so wrapped up that she fails to care about those around her. That’s brand new.
Another aspect that really brings this new Doctor through is her construction of her own sonic screwdriver. By the end of showrunner Steven Moffat’s tenure, he had mythologized every aspect of the Doctor, even down to the trusty screwdriver—the Twelfth Doctor’s sprang, fully formed, from the TARDIS console and into his hands, like the Lady of Lake bestowing Excalibur on a heroic knight. But the root of the Doctor’s character was never as a fighting archetypal mythic protagonist, it was as a curious scientist. “I’m good at making things,” she says, and she’s right, that has always been a key component of the character. Tinkering with the TARDIS, making odd bits of equipment, understanding how alien tech works, that is the Doctor. The sonic screwdriver is not bestowed upon her, it is something she has to will into existence with her know-how… this time with Sheffield steel.
I love that there’s a sense of imprinting again, as though the Doctor has immediately taken on the accent of her companions, who all have the same Yorkshire-area lilt. I love that her companions all have different reasons for wanting to spend the time with her; Yasmin wants more excitement in her life, Graham needs to broaden his horizons without fear, Ryan needs more people in his life he can rely on. I love that the Doctor picks out her clothes in a second-hand thift shop without the TARDIS wardrobe room on hand.
The plot’s a little rote this time around, but most first Doctor episodes go through that. It’s a reestablishment rather than a brand new thought, and the villain is appropriately gross and odious. Tim Shaw, as the Doctor calls him, is cowardly and he’s cruel and he doesn’t need much explaining or deserve much understanding. It’s reminiscent of the Tenth Doctor’s emergence in that Thirteen doesn’t give her opponent a second chance; she allows him to essentially pull the trigger on himself, and doesn’t feel bad because she knows he’s uninterested in seeing the value of other lives.
The soundtrack, courtesy of new composer Segun Akinola, is gorgeous and sets a brand new tone for the show. (We didn’t get a title sequence this time, so we still have that to look forward to…) We haven’t seen the TARDIS yet, but the redesign is sure to be exciting. So far the show’s design has been just the right level of creepy versus campy. I kept referring to Tim Shaw’s pod as the “giant Hershey’s kiss,” which is exactly the right amount of weirdo whimsy for Doctor Who. If it keeps up in that direction, we’ll have plenty to enjoy.
There are a lot of questions to be answered, particularly in how the new Doctor will break down her dynamic with this set of companions, and how or why they choose to stay on board with her. (They’re all pretty instantly likable, so I’m excited to learn more about each of them in turn.) They have yet to set a clear tone for the run of the series, so we’re not sure if we’re going to be getting a scarier feel, or a funnier one, or a longform plot to follow. It would be nice if more episodes name-checked old scifi favorites (“The Woman Who Fell to Earth” is clearly a play on “The Man Who Fell to Earth”), just for the sake of silly trivia.
So it’s not a hit-the-ground running sort of feel, but Whittaker is captivating without a doubt, and her companions are a charming crew. I’d stay just to watch her monologue, and the series will hopefully only go up from here.
Emmet Asher-Perrin can’t really believe Doctor Who is back after all this. You can bug him on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
I was sad that Grace died so quickly, as she would have been an excellent companion. But I see some excellent dramatic opportunities coming from Graham being a companion who is not suited for that role. Grace’s death gave some weight to the premiere, and kept it from being all fun and action. The fact that it was a woman who had to die unfortunately falls into line with a problematic trope. The two younger companions look interesting, but I don’t have a good feel for their personalities yet.
The new Doctor is brilliant. I loved that she whipped up a new sonic swiss army knife on the fly, and seeing her with those welding goggles and all the torches in hand was a lot of fun. She brought a lot of positive energy to the role. This was an excellent introduction, and I look forward to the rest of the season.
I had the same thoughts about Grace. Knowing she wasn’t one of the companions in advance, I was worried about her fate in this episode. And then my fears turned out to be justified.
— Michael A. Burstein
Sigh. Gotta have that manpain.
Noticing and caring about other people’s feelings is a change that the Twelfth Doctor would have wanted. He was aware of his limitations in that department. And I would LOVE it if they would dial back the Doctorish angst because Oh My God we have had So Much of that!
An impressive debut for Whittaker and Chibnall. Right off the bat, it’s strikingly different in tone from Moffat’s larger-than-life, bombastic fairy tales, more grounded even than Russell T. Davies’s take — but simultaneously visually stunning, with beautiful location work in the opening scenes. I felt it sometimes went a little too far in having the Doctor explain everything about herself, leaving little in the way of mystery for her companions or for new viewers, but I did like how it was more thoughtful and introspective than the Moffat era with its greater focus on emotion and showy cleverness. There were some interesting, novel insights into how it feels to go through regeneration — and “novel” is a fitting word, because that kind of insight into the internal experience of a character is rather novelistic. This is definitely a new approach to Doctor Who, and just the sort of contrast I was hoping for after the Moffat years. Moffat’s stuff was a wild, fun ride, but it tended to repeat the same notes after a while, and a change of pace and tone is very much appreciated.
Whittaker was superb as the Doctor, capturing the essence of the character quite well while bringing her own voice and style to it. Just as Capaldi’s Doctor (the first of the new regeneration cycle) resembled the First Doctor in some ways (an older-looking man who started out grouchy and antisocial but learned to be kind and heroic), there’s an echo of the Second Doctor in Whittaker’s slightly scattered, fallible, but inventive persona, a seemingly unassuming sort who ends up inevitably taking charge through sheer knowledge and nerve. But she’s warmer and more outgoing, gathering a large group of friends around her in a way we’ve rarely seen before. We haven’t seen a team of companions this large since the Fifth Doctor, but most of his companions were there by accident or necessity.
I think this is the seventh time a Doctor’s post-regeneration adventure has taken place primarily or wholly on present-day Earth, after “Spearhead from Space,” “Robot,” the McGann movie, “Rose,” “The Christmas Invasion,” and “The Eleventh Hour” (“Castrovalva” started there but didn’t stay long). “Deep Breath” is the only one set in Earth’s past. “The Power of the Daleks,” “Castrovalva,” “The Twin Dilemma,” and “Time and the Rani” all took place on other planets.
I’m going to miss Murray Gold’s rich orchestral scores. The new music is okay, but not a standout. I did like the music for the sonic screwdriver reveal, though. I wouldn’t mind if that were the Doctor’s new theme.
“It’s been a long time since I bought women’s clothes,” huh? I guess maybe the Doctor previously bought clothes for Susan. Anyway, it’s a good thing she didn’t say she’d never worn women’s clothes, because the Second and Third Doctors were known to disguise themselves in drag on occasion.
I liked the bit about how Tim Shaw was an aspiring leader who had to cheat because he knew he wasn’t worthy. Hmm, who do we know in the United States that that description could be a dig at…?
Really enjoyed it overall. My only two real down points were:
1. Grace’s very unnecessary death. It would have been so much more interesting if she’d been captured and preserved alive like the original target, making the season arc getting Grace back.
2. Smashed trains with dead drivers and passengers fleeing in terror apparently don’t count as unusual in Sheffield.
The action was so fast that I never got a total feeling about the new Doctor beyond the usual basic personality traits. The plot was decent, the acting pretty good, and the humanity of the characters was well represented. The guy with the feel-good affirmations was funny. Plus, he showed what a joke this alien race was because they chose little girls and timid wimps as their “trophies.” I knew Grace was dead the moment she showed up because she wasn’t one of the promoted companions. On the plus side, she went out as she’d have wanted. Saving people and having an adventure.
The “I am the Doctor” scene wasn’t as memorable as some, particularly the Matt Smith one where he walks through Tennant’s image and announces himself. It would be about impossible to top that one. Weak points were the Hershey Kiss transporter, and the sonic screwdriver which looks like a sex toy. Also, the final scene in space shows that even simple science has no place in this show which is just sad. I am eager to keep watching, though.
@6/MByerly: It’s Doctor Who. You might as well expect scientific accuracy in Harry Potter. Even in the first few seasons of classic Who when it was supposed to be educational, its science was crap. (Except to an extent in season 4 when they had Kit Pedler on board as a scientific consultant. “The Moonbase” actually had some halfway decent science in it.)
The death of Grace was inevitable, I think, because we already knew who the companions would be. I avoided most of the commercials (“Spoilers”) but the media scrutiny of this introduction episode far outweighed any other Doctor since Eccleston. Because Grace was not expected to survive, I found myself waiting for it, rather than focusing on the episode. It was distracting. Perhaps when I rewatch it, I can focus on other things more closely. A last note, though: Grace’s death leaves a hole in the lives of Ryan and Graham, to be filled by another strong woman, The Doctor, which might be the logic of them both staying with The Doctor for the foreseeable future. Is it a GOOD storytelling reason? It’s way too overused, but cliches are cliches for a reason.
I do like how The Doctor went back to BUILDING the “sonic multitool” rather than just picking up the new version from the TARDIS. I still think it’s too much like a magic wand these days, but that’s a lost cause. The profits from a new toy line are just too tempting to the BBC.
The companions are mostly stock figures so far, which is to be expected since this episode is meant to introduce The Doctor, first and foremost, and sketch in the companions for later development. They each showed a great amount of “local knowledge” to help The Doctor in Sheffield (police, bus drivers, social media), but how that will translate to helping on other planets, we’ll have to wait and see.
As for Jodie Whittaker, she IS The Doctor, all right, but I’m still not sure WHAT KIND of Doctor she’s going to be. It takes a while to settle into the role and find out what they will be remembered for. Unlike many, I was never fond of Eccleston’s Doctor, I liked Tennant’s mostly, I loved Matt Smith’s, and I was mostly meh toward Capaldi’s Doctor until his final season. Whittaker’s Doctor seems very much in the vein of the 5th Doctor (young, informal & odd clothing choice, running around), but we’ll see where that develops. I’m definitely going to be watching, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.
In the end, I think this episode did what it needed to do in order to introduce The Doctor. For whatever its flaws, it promises to be the beginning of an interesting journey.
For me I see Grace’s death more as a line in the sand from Moffats era. Grace was a companion in every way (except for not getting to ride in the TARDIS).
One of the Major criticisms of Moffat was that he couldn’t let (female) companions die. Bill. Clara. Amy (And Rory). Even non companions you have some expamples of this in Me.
i saw her death as a line in the sand from this ‘companion never dies’ trope. A way to say ‘no, Moffat isn’t writing this now. Companions are not safe and human death is real in this universe.
Atleast I hope that’s that the intent was, and that we aren’t getting a Moffat style revival of Grace….
I enjoyed this first episode a lot. The plot was pleasantly straight-forward, maybe a bit more simplistic than we’ve grown used to during the Moffat years, but I liked the more grounded feel of it. I especially liked how personal the threat was in this episode: The Doctor is not trying to save the world, she’s trying to save one single human (well, and her new-found friends). And Sheffield at night looked great.
I hope they keep that grounded tone; I loved Capaldi’s run as the Doctor, he’s among my favourites, but I really think it’s “about time” to leave the bombastic elements and the “Doctor as the saviour of the world and the universe” plots behind.
I too was sad that Grace died. I’d hoped they find a different solution, but alas, that wasn’t to be.
This review really captures my feelings about the episode. I enjoyed JW as the Doctor, I’m a bit concerned that the explanations of emotions will become a thing because it plays on female stereotypes and I want the Doctor to stand outside that (why would we expect Gallifreyans to have the same stereotypes as us?).
I was also really disappointed with Grace’s death and the way they fridged her. On top of that I’m worried that, just as they’ve got a new female Doctor (because they have a new female Doctor?) the show runners feel they need to centre the emotional journey and conflict / growth of two men.
That said, I really like Ryan’s character and he’s been set up to be an interesting mix of strengths and vulnerabilities. Will just have to wait and see with the rest.
@8
I am encouraged by the description of the sonic as a “sonic swiss army knife” but i agree it’s likely to remain a magic wand.
Cue the scene from the 50th anniversary when 10 and 11 whip out their sonics and point it at the enemy like ray guns and War Doctor says “It’s a screwdriver. What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?”
I don’t know why there is a bigger focus in the news on Whittaker’s gender than her accent: that’s what took me a few minutes to adjust to. The best thing this episode did with the change was the line “Half an hour ago, I was a white-hair Scotsman”: it’s a great way of saying that we shouldn’t be bothered with superficial changes like hair-colour, age, accent or gender. Overall, I agree with her: “Aww, brilliant!”
As usual, this iteration behaves in contrast to the previous one: Capaldi was grumpy yet ended exhorting the Master/Missy as well as himself to be kind; the new Doctor understood this as being nice. And she is lovely to everyone. Like the reviewer, I was reminded of David Tennant’s introduction and his fight against the Sycorax, but because this episode is the complete opposite. Whereas David Tennant’s Doctor famously said in his first episode “no second chance”, the new Doctor went above and beyond to be nice to Tzim-Sha (by the way, even the credits call him Tim Shaw. The guy can’t catch a break), even though she acknowledged he was a complete monster and that there was no good reason for what he was doing. She could have stopped him many times, and prevented more deaths, and in the end, even after he lethally harms himself, she gives her back his recall device so he can go home and hopefully survive. She even berated Karl Wright for pushing him off the crane, even though this did nothing to him (he teleports before reaching the ground. And Rahul’s sister and the others are still in stasis. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to see the Stenza again in this series). I wonder how nice the Doctor will be to Daleks for instance? I loved her insistence on treating everyone as a friend. She also say “sorry” even more than Tennant’s Doctor, but with more compassion.
Another defining trait of her is that she’s a tinkerer. The montage for how she made her sonic screwdriver made no sense, it reminded me of the search for the new particle in Ironman 2. Except it was so over the top it was probably on purpose: this Doctor is like an alien McGyver, who can apparently make a long distance teleporter out of a microwave: this is going to be fun! By the way, I wonder whether it will take her as long as the Fourth Doctor to get back to her Tardis after her first trip?
A few other good lines:
“Tongue! Smart boy! Biology!”
“Even if there were aliens they wouldn’t be on a train in Sheffield.
– Why not? I’m alien and I’m here.”
“Can I have the lights and siren on?”
“I never go anywhere that’s just initials.”
“This new nose is so unreliable”
“Only idiots carry knives”
“You interfering with things you do not understand.
– Yeah, well. We all need a hobby”
“You all would’ve done the same!
Graham: I wouldn’t
Doctor: I would’ve.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same: this is definitely the Doctor!
About the companions: the promotion was very clear about the three companions. So when Ryan talks about that special woman (who is obviously not the Doctor), I first expected that would be Yaz. But then we get introduced to his grandparents, and Grace is more companion material than Graham is: there’s no way Ryan and Graham would go adventuring in space and she would choose to stay behind. So from the start we know she’s doomed. This episode made a good job showing that every life had value and making us feel sorry for their deaths (well, except for the drunk guy eating his kebab), but that was a lot of deaths in one episode. I was afraid that the Doctor would invite her new companions to travel with her just after Grace’s death, which would have been extremely cold of her; an accidental trip was the best solution. The other tasteless thing I was expecting was that the death of Ryan’s grandmother would magically teach him how to ride a bike, which would have been insulting to him and all people with dyspraxia. Seeing him fail over and other until he really has to go home was very moving.
I don’t understand why the prey would be selected next to the grandparents of the person who accidentally confirmed the hunt. In the car, the dialogue seems to imply there is some significance to that, but it’s never explained. It is nice though that the companions have weak connections to build upon: I look forward to their interactions in space!
When Graham made the comment about this kind of thing not happening in Sheffield, I was a little disappointed he didn’t end with, “In Cardiff, sure, but not Sheffield.”
So, in review:
The new season of Doctor Who has a female character who has agency and saves the day.
She dies heroically, protecting other people.
Male characters who are close to her are sad that she died, but proud of her for being such an awesome person.
Half of the commentators complain that this is somehow “fridging”.
The reviewer also objects because Grace’s death wasn’t fair, which is both true and kind of the point. Death usually isn’t fair. It would always be possible for the writer to shield Grace from the consequences of her own choices, but sometimes it’s good to have a death that sticks, rather than another easy superhero resurrection. Moffat played that card too often, so I’m glad to see that the new writer won’t just bring everyone back.
If the writer makes you invested in a character’s future, then losing them hurts. That’s good writing.
@15, the problem is the predictability. And the fact it is somehow necessary to kill the strong woman so her male proteges can shine.
@8/James Mendur: I feel I’ve already gotten a clear sense of what kind of Doctor 13 will be. She’s much more open and gregarious than a lot of her predecessors, quicker to connect to people and show empathy toward them. Moffat, and to a lesser extent Davies, liked to play up how alien the Doctor was by having him stay fairly aloof from humanity and often dismissive toward them, but this new Doctor is clearly following her predecessor’s dying wish to “be kind,” and is really attuned to the emotions of the people around her. She’s also got enormous faith in other people, trusting them to rise to the occasion, and lifting them up by believing in them, which is great.
@11/SamJ: “I’m a bit concerned that the explanations of emotions will become a thing because it plays on female stereotypes and I want the Doctor to stand outside that (why would we expect Gallifreyans to have the same stereotypes as us?).”
But couldn’t you just as easily say that the former Doctors’ emotional aloofness played into male stereotypes? One thing that bothered me about Moffat’s Doctors sometimes was their sheer masculine bluster. I’m just glad to get away from that. Emotional openness is not a bad thing, and if the Doctor had to become a woman to find the strength to be emotionally open at last, then so be it.
@13/Athreeren: I had no problem with Whittaker’s accent, although some of the other characters’ lines were a bit hard to decipher at times. I found a lot of the characters’ accents reminiscent of Craig Charles’s Liverpool accent from Red Dwarf, which I guess makes sense since Liverpool and Sheffield are in adjacent (?) Northern counties.
And I love the idea of the Doctor as “MacGyver,” getting back to that classic spirit. It’s one of a number of ways Whittaker reminds me of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, though I’m probably cherrypicking the parallels because I imagine I see a Hartnell/Capaldi – Troughton/Whittaker pattern.
“I never go anywhere that’s just initials” — A dig at the BBC, perhaps?
@16 princessroxana
There is a good reason why so many storytellers kill the mentor, and it’s not a gendered trope. Look at Obi-Wan Kenobi; as long as he was there, he could shelter and protect Luke, but his death forced Luke to grow and develop without a safety net.
Grace was already a strong, capable character; now, in her absence, the people who depended on her will have to learn to make their way without her guidance. And the main character of the show is a woman, so it’s not like the male characters have somehow taken over.
CLB, as I posted above, more sensitivity is a change the Twefth Doctor would have hoped for. His final speech made it very clear he felt he needed a big change this time around. And she is delighted that she got it.
We saw with Missy that a change of sex can lead to a Time Lord reassessing themselves and their lives. At first Missy carries on like usual but things have changed, the way people respond to her has changed. Suddenly she really feels her loneliness and she badly wants the one really good friend she ever had back. Wanting the Doctor back starts her thinking about their past, about how she came to be who she is. And starts her regretting and finally feeling remorse and eventually not wanting to be that person anymore.
The Doctor of course saw all this happening to his old friend and nemesis. He is not entirely happy with who he’s become either. He feels he’s made some wrong turns and doesn’t like where he’s ended up. He feels the need to change, really change, and his subconscious decides that a sex change like Missy’s is just what the Doctor ordered.
@16, Yes, I thought of Mentor Syndrome too, after I’d posted. That does apply.
@@.-@ re: women’s clothes
No idea if this was meant to be a reference to anything in particular, but the most recent clear example I can think of is thatEleven did buy River a dress in one of the DVD shorts.
The episode’s script was a “middle of the pile” one, but I really enjoyed Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor (love her attitude and accent), plus the companions were cool (my son and I love Graham, and were sad he lost his wife). I didn’t like the sonic screwdriver design from previews, but I like it now that I saw she had to macgyver it from junk. We’re used to seeing the Doctor save the day through wits and diplomacy, plus some manipulation; but here we’re reminded that she’s also a very ancient alien who comes from a highly advanced civilization, so she’s technically very adept. Same thing with the whole rig she builds at the end to teleport to the TARDIS.
That sequence where she’s disappointed at the weak flame of the blowtorch, only to grin with glee as she jury-rigged a larger, two-nozzled blowtorch is pure gold.
As for Grace, I was really sorry she had to die, and what you wrote makes a lot of sense. It’s not the same, but I also felt a bit miffed when they had the security guard talk to his granddaughter on the phone, only to kill him right away.
Still, to the credit of the writers and actors, I knew Grace was not a companion, but I never thought she’d die right until she was about to, so engrossed in the episode I was.
@17 – Chris: Yes, I had no trouble with Whittaker’s accent, but I did have some difficulty with Ryan’s. And yes, the initials thin was a BBC joke.
@21 In ON WRITING, Stephen King said that first you create a real person and make the reader care, then you massacre him. The grandfather security guard is a perfect example of this method. It was also a foreshadowing of the grandmother’s death and another example of what a dick the alien was.
@7 I wasn’t hoping for complex science accuracy, just no errors that would make a third grader roll their eyes. That’s not too much to ask for in a kid’s science fiction show.
@22/MByerly: Come to think of it, what did you think was wrong with the space scene? If anything, it avoided the usual mistakes like having people freeze instantly (vacuum is an insulator!!) or explode like water balloons (that’s not what “explosive decompression” means). And it was in slow motion, so only a few objective seconds would’ve passed, not enough time for anyone to start passing out from anoxia or anything. The only nitpick I could make is that the Doctor’s hair was instantly spread out weightlessly from her head instead of starting in its pre-teleport shape and spreading out as she turned her head.
I think all the right notes were hit. The dynamic between Ryan and Yaz is fun, Graham is definitely a major departure from anything we’ve seen in a long time, and yes, Grace was a fantastic character and it’s a shame she had to die, but I think a certain subset of people would have been upset regardless of which of the four characters passed, and I’m pretty sure a statement was being made about “the stakes” in having a named major character in the episode die.
Love Whitaker’s Doctor at first glance. There’s a fun, mischievous attitude to her that hearkens back to the best parts of Tennant and Baker, and I utterly adore her accent. That said, if only they’d allowed Capaldi to curse like he did on “In the Loop”…
Most importantly, this managed to get away from last season’s blatant in-your-face messaging. Diversity is great; constantly reminding you about just how diverse things are and how the writer wants it to be isn’t… and it doesn’t matter who’s in the roles if the show makes you spend so much time cringing that you can’t even bear to watch it, which is where I was about 5 episodes in last year, and it truly does say something that despite characters I liked (even Bill wasn’t bad as a character or as an actress, and Missy may be the most entertaining recurring non-Doctor character in the show’s history)), I don’t see myself ever returning to see the episodes I missed simply because I don’t tune in to escapist entertainment to be bombarded with politicized messaging.
@6, 7, 22, 23 – The science thing that bothered me was the passing bit about how the alien came from “five thousand galaxies away”. Absolutely don’t want or expect hard science from Doctor Who, but knowing the difference between a galaxy and a star system doesn’t seem too much to ask from the showrunner at this point?
(Loved almost all of it otherwise, of course.)
Disappointing. Too far outside of the established Bible for The Doctor. Read more like an episode of Torchwood than a Doctor Who premier, no doubt due to the current show runner’s past credits. Not at all liking the ensemble/companions, too much to follow, too many faces and personalities. It’s Doctor Who, not Doctor Who and Friends. She doesn’t need such a large supporting cast, she’s most excellent on her own ! ! ! And the Predator with chiclets gum (looks too much like “Skittle Pox” pasted all over his face as the Baddie . . . come on ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? One more episode and I may well leave the building, and I’ve been a big fan since Tom Baker first drove the Tardis, too bad.
@24, Having your nose constantly rubbed in ‘message’ is irritating even when you belong to one of groups being included. Perhaps even more so as who wants to be a token?
@26, There is nothing more Doctor Who than bad alien make-ups ;-D. There have been large Tardis crews before: Ian, Barbara and Susan; Tegan, Nyssa and Adric.
Grace. Grace was the biggest-hearted, most charismatic of the human characters, and they offed her, and that is a story that I am sick and tired of seeing. People don’t need to die to make a difference in other people’s lives. I’d like to hope they bring her back in some capacity, but it’s still a really gross move.
On the brighter side of things, there were a good handful of moments in the Doctor’s process of self-discovery and expression that really resonated with me as a trans woman, particularly the ransacking of the thrift shop. I don’t know if the writers did that on purpose or not, but it’s nice to imagine that they did.
Loved it. My only issue is nit-picky: Every time I see her t-shirt with the multi-colored stripes, I think of Wil Wheaton. I’m sure I’ll get past it eventually; right now, it’s annoying.
I found the episode ok, I expect the new showrunners to take a little time to find their own direction, as will Whitaker’s Doctor.
Something I haven’t seen pointed out is that the Doctor told Grace and Graham not to come back (because these aliens were dangerous) and they came back anyway, consciously risking their lives. IMO this makes the death consequences rather than a classic fridging, they made a choice. It still sucks, but death generally does.
Is it fair to compare this doctor to former doctors? I believe it is only fair when comparing doctor 1 through doctor 7 and war doctor through current doctor.
The older doctors Peter Davison Doctor 5 is my favorite and the newer doctors, and this was a close call for me, Matt Smith Doctor 11 is my favorite and Matt is also my all time favorite (David Tennant Doctor 10 is right behind)
From Matt’s very first episode “The Eleventh Hour”, Matt Smith grabbed hold of The Doctor and was brilliant. The writing and story lines helped, but it was all Matt Smith. Funny,scary, smart, dumb, vunerable and brilliant was Doctor 11.
That said, the new doctor, Jodie Whittaker, Doctor 13, yeah, she fell from the sky, but for me she didn’t “grab hold of the part”. It wasn’t her fault, the writing was horrible and they tried to do too much. Maybe it will get better, but unlike “The Eleventh Hour” when I couldn’t wait to see the next episode, I’ll dvr the next episode so I can fast forward.
I didn’t care for the fact that the story wound up centering on saving Karl. A entitled white guy, who rejects the idea of teaming up wit the others, and who holds a job he doesn’t have to be good at because his dad owns the company.
Grace isn’t the only one who died. There was Rahoul, and his sister off screen. And what about the train driver? So you have women and POCs dying, and this whole diverse TARDIS gang putting themselves at risk, just t save the entitled white guy who thinks he can make it on his own,
I hope Ryan’s dyspraxia doesn’t get ignored from this moment on. Or only turn up to affect the plot at convenient times. You give a character a condition like that, please maintain the character having to live with the condition.
My husband was really happy with the “making of the screwdriver” scene when she pulled out the double torch. As a hobby blacksmith, he hates it when shows make melting metal too easy. You need a hotter flame than many shows depict.
I too hope for a change of pace. The new show has promise, with a new villain, even if it is a rip off of Predator. But like others, was sad to see Grace die too quickly. Plus, it was rather silly. Let’s climb up a metal tower to electrocute something, while I’m holding onto the same metal tower.
@25/bmac: There’s plenty of precedent in Who for hopping across galaxies casually. Not that many alien species in the series are treated as indigenous to this galaxy (the “Mutter’s Spiral” as it was sometimes called in the classic series) — the Sontarans and Rutans seem to be the main ones.
@26/Thomas Canty: As roxana said, there’s plenty of precedent for the Doctor to have large ensembles, including the very first two seasons back in 1963-4, as well as the UNIT era in the early ’70s and the Peter Davison era in the ’80s. And there is no “established bible” for Doctor Who, no one “right” way to do it. The whole reason the show has lasted so long is that it’s constantly changed and reinvented itself while staying true to its essence, just like the Doctor said here.
@32/Ursula: I’m troubled by the idea that only the people we approve of should be considered worth saving. I think the whole point here was to establish that the Doctor would try to save everybody, no matter what — that she’d never presume she was entitled to decide who was worth saving and who wasn’t. She even chastised Karl for trying to kill Tzim-Sha, right after she stopped Tzim-Sha from killing Karl. I quite like the theme that saving one average person with nothing special or particularly worthy about him is just as important to the Doctor as saving the entire planet or saving a personal friend.
Besides, you heard the Doctor — if she didn’t stop “Tim” here, his people would keep coming and hunting more humans. Humans like Rahul Chandra’s sister Asha, who was anything but a privileged white male. So there was more than one life at stake.
Am I the only one who thought the background music was way too loud? I couldn’t hear the dialogue. The music was like new age scratchy sounds and distracted from the show. Otherwise show was good.
@35/Blue: I had no problem with the music or dialogue. Maybe your cable channel had its audio compression settings wrong.
Karl sounds like a working stiff, not privileged and entitled.
My main complaint was the ads. There were so many and they were so long (I had to see the 8pm BBCA showing because I was not around for the simulcast). A plot driven episode can (maybe) survive ad breaks like that, but a character driven piece is killed by it.
I must be the only one who didn’t found Grace’s death a negative point because of the conversation outside the funeral home where someone’s death leaves a memory that always travels with us throughout time forever. I did enjoy that messy scene in the GoodWill store with clothes thrown all over ( I pity that store clerk who has to clean up that mess). The best reaction during Jodie Whitaker evolution into the present version of the Doctor was her reaction to being called Ma’am. I also enjoyed her explaining to those around her why she feels like she knows things but has to wait to get used to her new evolved body. Without being too cheesy, this Thirteenth Doctor will bring a great fresh approach to satisfy both old and new viewer fans.
@38/Walker: The so-called “simulcast” had ad breaks almost as long, just without the Comic-Con interview clips.
@34/ She even chastised Karl for trying to kill Tzim-Sha, right after she stopped Tzim-Sha from killing Karl. – Was that what she chastised him for, or for saying something taunting at him right as he was transporting out? I didn’t catch that, but it’s not really a critical distinction, the gist of the Doctor’s ethics were clear either way.
I didn’t think the plot was anything too special, but I did appreciate how clean and clear it was, especially because this was my 11-year-old’s daughter first real attempt at giving the show a go. (She did see the first two episodes of Eccleston’s tenure after we got to meet Billie Piper at a convention, but she didn’t stick with it.) She really enjoyed watching it and says she likes the Doctor a lot, so I hope we have another Whovian in the household. I think any Moffatesque timey-wimeyness would have turned her off and, honestly, I’m ready for straightforward stories where the main focus is on the human companions, after several season of Moffat swinging the show in the other direction. (And I say this as someone who came into the show with Matt Smith in 2010 and still thinks series five is one of the most perfect TV experiences I’ve ever had.)
I liked all the companions. The objections to Grace’s death did not occur to me, but I think they are valid. I don’t feel they indicate any overall direction for the series, but I guess time will tell. Enjoyed the Doctor making her own screwdriver and am very eager to see the interior of the TARDIS (and the credit sequence… what gives, BBC?). Loved the fun they had with the dramatic irony of Karl’s self-affirmations.
Overall very pleased and optimistic about the season. Should be a lot of fun, just as the trailer promsed!
Nitpicking, but all her companions do not have the same Yorkshire-area lilt: Graham’s accent is from somewhere close to London.
I enjoyed the new Doctor! Loads of fun, crazy energy, and even with the serious turn of Grace’s death, it was a great way to start the new series.
I did have one point I guess I missed. After Ryan presses the button, there is a brief show of something in his hand, it looks slightly oblong and more of a pinkish color. It was not his phone because a second later he’s digging into his pocket for the phone to call the police because the transport module appeared. So did I miss something, or am I just seeing things?
@41/mpoteet: “Was that what she chastised him for, or for saying something taunting at him right as he was transporting out?”
Karl didn’t say anything, just kicked him off the crane, trying to kill him. The Doctor had given him back his recall device, giving him at least a chance to save himself. Although I had the thought that, even if “Tim” was doomed by the DNA bombs, maybe the Doctor felt that kicking him off was a petty gesture, offensive in the same way that she found “Tim”‘s removal of his victim’s teeth after death to be offensive in its vindictiveness.
@42/walkymatt: Yeah, I thought that Bradley Walsh was using the same accent I remember him using in Law & Order: UK, where he played an East End Londoner. Though Walsh is from Hertfordshire, just north of Greater London.
@35 – Blue: No audio issues, either.
@37 – princessroxana: He literally says he works there because it’s his dad’s company.
@41 – writermpoteet: I distinctly noticed her chastising him for trying to kill Tim Shaw.
@42 – walkymatt: Graham’s accent definitely more London, you can notice it clearly when he says “bus”, while the others say “boos” (but with a shorter oo sound). But why would he have to have the same accent? Can’t he originally be from London?
@45, Thanks, I haven’t seen the episode yet. Still, Ursula should look on the bright side; it wasn’t women and POCs being rescued by a white savior.
@34 – My point is a bit more meta. The character of Karl seems to embody white male entitlement. When we see Yaz and Ryan discuss their jobs, we see they have to push to get ahead. Karl, we learn, had his job because his dad own the company, and doesn’t even have to be good at it. That injustice hurts, and is never addressed.
The other characters know that they need solidarity to survive, while Karl strikes out on his own.
And then the story comes together with the minority/women TARDIS crew having to fight, to the death even, for the white guy. Who isn’t even grateful.
Minorities and women being asked to sacrifice themselves for the white guy, and it just being taken for granted, is an old, painful story.
***
There was an article here recently on the dangers of being a woman and not having your fears listened to. What if they’d made Karl a woman? And then actually addressed the fears that might make someone want to leave? Perhaps recognizing that she’d probably be safer if she left, but she might also always be curious. Respect her choice of safety, both by letting her go and going to help her.
I would guess the point was not even a-holes deserve to be murdered by alien hunters.
@35, Blue: RE: Audio balance.
I had the same problem when watching a few of the Doctor 12 seasons. I was told to check the settings on my TV. It didn’t seem to help. But I’ve been noticing that more on other shows as well. The background noise louder than the words.
Other friends have suggested I start turning on the closed captioning, which I might have to. I have known hearing issues, so they might just be getting worse.
It was OK. I kind of liked the Predator 2 pastiche and the train scene actually worked pretty well. It had a decent (if odd) baddie (I hope we see them again – they’re like a really dark version of the tooth fairy), some relatively good effects and some funny lines.
Grace & Graham. Hmm. He had to be ‘aged’ with make-up & wig and she is clearly too young to be Ryan’s gran, so I had mis-givings to begin with. They were a nice couple but from the first words of the episode which then cut to them on the moors you knew what was going to happen. I wasn’t sure WHY it was going to happen until about halfway through when I realised that Grace would essentially make the Doctor’s role semi-superfluous. She’s curious, brave, resourceful, gleeful. This might have worked with her being just a single companion but with another 2 it takes the focus from the Doctor. Actually, she would have been perfect with Capaldi’s Doctor. Plus, we need to see the 2 youngsters grow from being worried and anxious into more capable characters. Graham’s there for the comic relief, grumbling & grumpy who would rather be elsewhere, which is the perfect counterpoint to the Doctor’s enthusiasm.
Not a fan of the remixed music – a bit too clangy on the percussion – but it’ll do.
So all in all, it was OK, with some odd plot holes, although the cliff-hanger was pretty cool, so defo watching the next episode.
What interested me was that my eldest daughter (now 22, who I inDoctrinated back in 2005) said that if she hadn’t already been a fan then that episode wouldn’t have made her want to watch any further episodes. It just lacked something and we’re not entirely sure what. Maybe it’s the pacing – trying to do too much in the time available (as is often the case in Doctor Who) means that it doesn’t quite gel.
I too knew Grace wasn’t going to be a companion and knew something was going to happen. It was a shame.
Also though the DNA bombs being moved was a bit of Deus ex machina, but we have that a lot in Doctor Who, so shouldn’t be surprised.
@47 “The character of Karl seems to embody white male entitlement.”
Hmm. Yeah, but it’s more nuanced than that. He’s also imprisoned by it. He doesn’t like heights but where does his dad put him? He’s got very low self-esteem and is listening to therapy tapes. He’s quite an isolated individual and isn’t used to a team environment. You can just hear his dad shouting at him to “get up that bloody crane and stop yer bleatin’. I didn’t work all hours to have a useless waste of space like you whine about heights” etc. etc.
@32 Ursula
Heroes often rescue idiots from the consequences of their own bad decisions. That’s what makes them heroic. If they only saved people they liked, they wouldn’t actually be heroes.
@47 Ursula
Does Spider-Man expect J. Jonah Jameson to be grateful when he saves his life? Of course not, but he rescues him anyway.
Heroes who are minorities or women will have to save ungrateful, obnoxious people, just like Spider-Man does. This isn’t an old or painful story; it’s the story of heroism at its finest, where the hero does the right thing for its own sake without asking whether the person they’re saving “deserves” their help.
You seem to want heroes to only save nice people who will be grateful. That’s never been how it works.
@52 you captured just what I wanted to reply about Karl; he may have a job ahead of a more qualified person because of entitlement, but it was clear that what you said was the true situation. Also even in a really diverse universe, an entire episode with only one white male is a bit unrealistic. Why another white male should be Karl, say, instead of the brother of the kidnapped girl, seems a matter of choice.
@25: The 5000 galaxies away – galaxies vs star systems? Please. Neither would be any real indication of distance except to distinguish between very far away and really very far away. And the final space scene? We’ll see next week whether they actually spend any significant time in vacuum or whether there is some other mitigation. But the Doctor’s hair looked like it was under water or waving in a breeze, neither of which would be right.
But in general, the universe that contains a TARDIS and Time Lords need not adhere strongly (or at all, really) to 21st century earth science; so mostly I don’t care about these things, at least in Doctor Who.
Just because they are surrounded by stars and in zero G doesn’t mean there is no air. Doesn’t the Tardis have an atmosphere bubble that surrounds it, held in by a force field? And there could be some sort of other alien tech at work, or some other strange environmental conditions.
I don’t understand why so many people lament the loss of Grace, who they would have liked to see more of, except for a few who hope her death is really meaningful PERMANENT death, not Doctor Who times-wimey negotiable reversible death where they’re resurrected later (or encountered again sooner in the time line) when it was known way beforehand that the actor was engaged as a recurring character. She’ll be back. Bank on it.
The commercials have, alas, made it abundantly clear beforehand that ” … when people need my help, I never refuse!” is the new Doctor’s defining mantra.—which is a fine one. As a nonviolent activist, I loved that she wanted to save the life of the ‘alien baddie,’ instead of killing him. This also defines her, treating his life as equally valuable. It also reminds me of Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor exclaiming “Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!” I also liked the “Love and Monsters” touch of framing by a ‘companion’ (who hadn’t been in the TARDIS) making a vlog.
What I disliked about the episode was that we had unexplained happenings, followed by more, then by more, and then when the Doctor FINALLY put in an appearance, there were MORE unexplained happenings. It took forever before I had any real idea what was actually happening.
I also wondered peripherally why Ryan had to be made to learn how to ride a bike by trying to cycle over GRASS (hardly a nice smooth surface, if softer to fall on—but why make him keep having to fall?) rather than by the painless method of using ever-so-gradually-raised training wheels. Was it to build character by causing unnecessary pain and frustration?
BTW, did anyone else notice that one of the women involved in the parking incident Yaz was trying to calm down was wearing a Doctor Who scarf? Why, and why her?
@Ursula I think you are wrong. Karl isn’t depicted has an entitled white male. Although Karl is working for his Dad’s company (a ubiquitous way to be employed regardless of race or sex), he is working the night shift, having traveled on public transport, with so much self confidence issues he has a self motivation recording playing. His striking out on his own isn’t an act motivated by privileged or lack or solidarity, it’s out of fear that he will be letting down his boss – probably the cause of all his self doubt. I see a sad individual who is a victim of bullying, doesn’t he say “I’m only working here because it’s my dad’s company”? He feels worthless and tries hard to tell himself he is worthy. But I digress back to the Doctor…
Having only just seen her in one episode Jodie is fine as the Doctor and if past Doctor’s have shown they usually take a little time to find their feet in the role. Someone mentioned Matt Smith grabbing attention from his first episode and I agree he really got it from the off. Our 13th Doctor demonstrated she has some of those past traits of Tennent and Smith, and I’d like to think we might one day get a Doctor with that anger of Eccleston but I think that has been well and truly mellowed out of her over time.
Jodie certainly brings a lot of energy to the part and the performance was only stifled by some of the weaker moments in the script. It felt rushed in places with limited grounding in reality (I know! I know! :) ) and the script writers underestimate the South Yorkshire police (a major train accident occurs, killing the driver. The police officer, who is first response, doesn’t stay around taking witness statements or await back up emergency services because of some “crazy lady’s” say so?!) Come on!!). I imagine Yasmin’s disciplinary paperwork is being sent to her whilst she is floating in space stasis. But the show needs to get up and running and although not the strongest episode of Who it certainly isn’t the weakest we’ve seen.
Ryan has several points of loss to deal with: his mother, dad, and sadly this episode’s strong point (Grace) so we should expect him to find some kind of odd family unity with the Doctor playing the wild, exciting but ancient and wise mother figure (a little bit like a Grace replacement!) whilst forging a more rounded relationship with Graham (stepping in has dad, oddball grand dad figure). He should never be able to ride that bike and I predict that either the Doctor makes him stabilizers or failing that helps him become a mechanic, so he can make himself a time travelling trike i.e. he will overcome his disability but in another way.
Yasmin’s place seems to put us into the heart of adventure she yearns for. See has a free spirited attitude that will get the gang into trouble in some episodes but will also be useful when someone needs arresting, given a caution or when “clues and investigation” is required. How her arc will pan out, given she has a regular day job which possibly requires 3 months notice is beyond me, but she is set up for the sack because she is still in probation. I’m sure Yasmin will broaden has a companion next week.
The plot this time round was linear and needed to be because they had to introduce….everyone! The next few episodes will give each of them sometime to breathe has characters. Overall I’m looking forward to next week’s installment.
@17: “I had no problem with Whittaker’s accent, although some of the other characters’ lines were a bit hard to decipher at times. I found a lot of the characters’ accents reminiscent of Craig Charles’s Liverpool accent from Red Dwarf, which I guess makes sense since Liverpool and Sheffield are in adjacent (?) Northern counties.”
I find this fascinating – do they really sound similar to you? Craig charles is from manchester which is a different accent again but closer to the liverpudlian that lister speaks than it is to a yorkshire accent, they sound so different to brits though. Anyone who does a generic northern accent tends to go more yorkshire than anything else. Americans generally don’t seem to hear the differences in british regional accents, whereas to us many of them are noticeably different. Then again i’ve seen americans mistake australian accents for “british” which is doubly alarming.
@58/prisoner24681: Maybe Karl didn’t act entitled, but he was definitely privileged. The thing about white male privilege (and I say this as a white male) is that you don’t have to want it to have it. Just being able to walk down the street without being alert for rapists is male privilege. Just being able to walk past a police car without being afraid of getting beaten or shot is white privilege. Just being able to turn on a TV and know you’ll see heroes who look like you is also privilege. Privilege isn’t about personal attitudes; it’s built into society and its institutions. It’s having the rules biased in your favor whether you want them to be or not.
@59/politeruin: I don’t know, I was just trying to place why some of the characters’ accents sounded familiar to me, and it occurred to me that their cadence reminded me of Lister — not exactly the same, but similar enough that I had little trouble deciphering the pronunciations.
I can definitely tell the difference between, say, RSE and Cockney, or London and Liverpool, and I can tell that Whittaker’s Sheffield accent has its own character. I don’t quite have a clear sense of the various northern regional accents, though. But I can definitely distinguish English from Australian, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish. And I can sort of tell that there’s a difference between Australian and New Zealander, but not enough to immediately peg which is which.
They don’t all have a Yorkshire lilt (as several people pointed out already). And, Yorkshire’s the biggest county in England (with a population greater than that of Scotland and, for that matter, 11 of the 28 countries in the EU) and so in turn, has quite an array of accents. Jodie Whittaker comes from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire (or really, the West Riding, as Yorkshire’s properly organised). By the way, Patrick Stewart’s from the same area (but has completely lost his accent).
Yaz, the police officer, had a fairly generic urban Yorkshire accent. Ryan seemed to speak a kind of Estuary English (a soft London-ish accent that is now smeared across much of south-eastern England). Grace had a strange hybrid of Caribbean with occasional Yorkshire dialect (summat as a word for something, “t'” instead of “the”) but that might be true to the character. Graham had a softened East London/cockney accent and was sporting a West Ham United scarf (East London). None of them sounded to me like they actually came from Sheffield.
Do a lot of people move to Sheffield?
Being from the north of England it is easy to hear the accents and understand what is being said. I suppose it more difficult to the untrained ear. Craig Charles is from Liverpool and the Liverpudlian accent sounds nothing like the Yorkshire/Sheffield accent and equally nothing like the Manchester accent. And there’s only about 80 miles in total in a horizontal line between all three places.
The only way to “geekify” it is to break it down into their locations. Listen to Sean Bean in GoT or Sharpe (Sheffield) . Then listen to Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor or speaking during interviews (Mancunian), then listen to Craig Charles as Lister (Liverpudlian). Three major north of England cities, three distinct accents.
@62/Princessroxana – Sheffield has been an economically depressed area for about 30 years due to the eradication of the British steel industry. It’s fortunes have got better over the years and boasts a very well thought of university. Do people move there, yes and no…it hasn’t had the massive regeneration which it’s neighbouring city, Manchester had in the 90s and onwards. It has its charm and character but is playing catch up. I do apologise to the Sheffield tourist board for that assessment!
@60/ChristopherLBennet The accusation is that Karl is some how entitled and privileged, so demonstrates some grander societal issue with the storyline when his only motivation is to get to work. I can’t see how a political/race issue comes into it nor how any underlying privileged is prevalent in this story. It certainly removes the humanity out of the person and pigeon holes him for the worse, something that the class, race, and feminist struggle has been trying to overcome for centuries and has evidenced in Doctor Who since the reboot has been punching holes into it for the better.
@61/Mark Watson: “By the way, Patrick Stewart’s from the same area (but has completely lost his accent).”
I guess 20 years with the RSC will do that do you…
@14, “When Graham made the comment about this kind of thing not happening in Sheffield, I was a little disappointed he didn’t end with, “In Cardiff, sure, but not Sheffield.””
Same here.
—
I’ve been an on-again / off-again (mostly off) fan since discovering Tom Baker in probably the early 1980s, probably in re-runs on US public television. I’ve missed the last several years. I think I heard that Blink got a Hugo and started watching from there for a few years. And that led me to Torchwood, and then the emotional buzz-saw that was Children Of Earth, and I think I took a break after that and never came back.
When I heard about a female Doctor, I was ready to start watching again. Watched the simulcast in the US and really enjoyed it. I’d missed any hype about who the companions would be, so for me, unlike many folks above, it was a surprise when Grace died. But like them, I was sad. I liked her.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is when the Doctor reprogrammed a smart-phone just by staring at it intently. For a few seconds. That is … not a trivial ability, or a trivial task. Has the Doctor exhibited a telepathic bond with computers in the past? (I certainly might’ve missed it.) I hope that ability is shown again. I mean, sort of. It’s kind of ridiculous, so I also kind of don’t. But it’d be a shame to introduce something like that for a throw away plot point and never hear about it again.
@@@@@ 0:
Knowing, as fans generally do, that she wasn’t set to be one of the main companions for the season, I was worried that Grace might die when we met her at the start of the episode. But then I thought, no, they couldn’t do that. On the very first episode showcasing a female Doctor, they wouldn’t kill another woman, an older woman, a woman of color, just as we were coming back into the fold. An incredible woman in her own right, a woman who makes it clear that she should be the companion, they wouldn’t do that to her or to us.
When I saw Clara in Asylum of the Daleks I thought “She’s so charismatic! She would make a great companion. I bet they are setting her up for that.”
Then it turned out that she was dead. So much for my foreshadowing.
Quick as a cat can lick her ear, Clara was too busy being a companion to be dead.
You never can tell, with this show.
Most of my comments end up vanishing after some time, but anyway, let’s: I love the new Doctor, the “only fools wear knives” phrase was kind of tragic, I also didn’t like Grace dying because what you guys said (she works as a plot device, not a tragic character), everything looks awesome and it kind of feels to me like any British drama but with aliens (I’m from Spain, been living in London for 6 years). Dr Who is still as disconcerting as it was from the RTD reboot and I like it.
Re the accents: as an American I am fascinated by British accents and I like to hear all sorts. I don’t have enough experience or enough of an ear to distinguish a lot of them, though if I put a little study into it I think I could. Cockney, or perhaps a stereotypical version of it, seems straightforward. For years my idea of Yorkshire came from movies like “The Secret Garden” full of thee and thy. But as I have said, accents from various northern areas, Cornwall, Scotland or Wales and so forth are most interesting.
Regarding Jodie and the Doctor: I had never heard her speak except in the ads until Friday night on Graham Norton; then came this episode. Her accent in real life seemed rather thicker than the Doctor’s, not too surprising. It’s always interesting to hear a British or Australian (for example) actor’s normal accent after seeing her in various roles where she successfully played an American.
@65: The speed at which she reprogrammed the phone is not that much impressive than what he did in The Eleventh Hour. There were a few taps on the screen; not enough to completely reformat a phone and program an entire new OS with many programs, but enough to do something. I think the Doctor just has lots of useful bits of codes hidden with backdoors in all of the most commonly used systems, allowing him/her to turn any computer into whatever gadget he/she needs at the moment.
Talking of The Eleventh Hour, Eleven has often said that Amy was special because hers was the first face that his current face had seen. In the case of Ten and Twelve, the first faces were those of the current companions, Rose and Clara respectively (for Nine, it’s ambiguous). For Thirteen, it was Grace, and now she’s dead.
@66: Part of what made Clara amazing in Asylum of the Daleks was that she had just been announced as a companion for a later season (whereas Donna Noble for instance was initially intended as a one-off companion for a special, and later reimagined as a companion). So it really played well with fans’ expectations to have her appear one year too early and then die. As a result, “The Snowmen” and “The Bells of Saint John” are the only times I’ve been looking forward to a new companion, being intrigued by what I had seen of “Oswin” before.
The new Doctor, especially when she was whipping up all her gadgets, reminded me of Agatha, the main character in the Girl Genius on-line comics. Anyone else see that resemblance?
@54 – JBL_intheDesert: Graham is white, the other cop is white, the other bus driver is white. Also, it’s the UK, it’s full of non-white people.
@55 – Alan: That’s what I thought too.
@61 – Mark Watson: I’d love to hear Patrick Stewart using his native accent.
@58 – That is exactly the type of entitlement I’m thinking of. He has a job he didn’t have to go out and find. He got it without having to compete with anyone. Countless other people who needed a job, and might have been better at it, didn’t even get the chance to apply. He has job security, without having to be competent at the job. And he’s likely to inherit the business, another unearned privilege.
But it still isn’t enough. He feels sorry for himself, and is seen as pathetic rather than privileged, because everything he’s been handed, unearned, isn’t perfect. His job isn’t nice enough, though he’s done nothing to earn better, and his way of dealing with his problems is to double down on the idea that he simply deserves even more.
And within the narrative, the same thing happens. Faced with an unknown alien threat, the rest of the characters ally with the Doctor to deal with the problem. And then a team of mostly women and minorities have to risk life and limb go save the privileged white guy. Who gets the benefits of their work and alliance without contributing.
I’ve been watching Doctor Who since the late-Seventies, so for me this was felt like pure nostalgia. Baker’s wit and Davison’s cleverness wrapped up perfectly in Whittaker’s unapologetic exuberance. Indeed, I think the costume design may even hint at that connection (which she created personally). She made the Doctor her own, and I couldn’t be happier.
Granted, I think losing Grace so soon was a misstep. In many ways, she was the perfect companion. But maybe that’s the point… Reluctant companions make for far more interesting interactions.
It’s nice that the show is getting out of London and the home counties don’t you think? Just like the US is all New York or Los Angeles on TV, the UK tends to be all London and Environs
Overall i was quite pleased with the episode. The sound design was a striking difference. Murray Gold’s themes were ever present and striking, but this more sparse overlay is going to let the actors fill the space. Fortunately, Ms Whitaker’s Doctor is pretty talkative and we’ve got three companions additionally, so I’m hoping that we get that opportunity with character interaction and dialog so that the sound design matches the script design.
Regarding Grace, I suppose I view it as more of a structural mechanic as a trope (though I do believe it is both). She’s clearly the glue that holds Ryan and Graham together. There’s friction due to the relatively new relationship and family member, but things seem to be relatively passive. So clearly, as the connective tissue, she needs to be removed for the drama and character growth to have room to flourish. The trope part is that they accomplished this by killing her off. It’s definitely very efficient, very final (usually — in a show that has a main character who routinely comes back). Were there other ways to do it? Likely though it would take something relatively LIKE death to make Graham as a character continue to adventure with the Doctor, an absolute removal effectively. If she were targeted by Tim Shaw for capture and he succeeded, then that would definitely cause the removal, however then that causes a couple of other issues. I believe I heard that Chibnall wanted to get away from the overarching seasonal plot (at least in the way Moffat did it) so making the season about rescuing Grace would not fit that plan particularly well. Additionally, it alters Ryan’s and Graham’s motivations into vengeance and rescue rather than healing a void.
Another positive note that’s not wholly episode related, I was greatly pleased to see the diversity in the future episode characters.
@65/theclapp: “Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is when the Doctor reprogrammed a smart-phone just by staring at it intently. For a few seconds. “
No, she was tapping busily on the screen the whole time. It was an implausibly fast job of reprogramming, but that’s simple dramatic license, no worse than the nonsense you see human hackers do in countless TV shows.
@73/Otterpoet: I agree — Grace being “the perfect companion” was why she shouldn’t have been the companion. She was too perfect, too much like the Doctor. It’s better to have more of a contrast. Mentor characters doomed to die have the luxury of being too good for this world, because they symbolize what the heroes aspire to be. Characters who actually come back on a continuing basis need to be imperfect, so that they still have something to aspire to.
Davies liked the trick of introducing a character with “potential companion” printed on their t-shirt, and then killing them off. Lynda-with-a-Y from “Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways,” Astrid Peth from “Voyage of the Damned,” even Lady Christina from “Planet of the Dead,” although Christina didn’t die. If you know the actor can’t stay on as a companion, you can make them as “perfect” of a companion as you like, to make it sad when they can’t come along. Of course, this requires some outside knowledge of the casting of the show, and I’m not strong-willed enough to avoid that. I predicted Grace’s fate pretty much from the first scene in which she appeared, mostly because I was reasonably sure that Ryan’s blog wasn’t about the Doctor, so I was watching for other obvious candidates.
I think it circumvented the trope by having it be her conscious choice to go into danger. She wasn’t killed for the sole purpose of motivating the “hero”, it was her agency that got her killed.
And there have been other non-companion characters that weren’t killed in their first appearance. Rose’s mom, Mickey, Donna’s grandad, etc. I had no expectation that she’d be killed simply because I hadn’t seen her in trailers. I’m not surprised it happened, but I didn’t go into it expecting it to happen.
@79 – BonHed: In universe it was her agency, but from a real world point of view, it was still done to motivate Ryan and Graham.
@77/ChristopherLBennett- No, she was tapping busily on the screen the whole time
Ah, I missed that.
Fair point. Some other examples are even worse, so I guess I should chill. :) As my wife would point out, “Oh, sure, you’ll buy time travel and teleportation but you balk at reprogramming a phone?” Well, you know, I’m a programmer, I notice what I notice. :)
@72 Ursula
Firefighters don’t run into burning buildings to save only the nice people. Doctors don’t treat only their favorite patients. Teachers don’t educate exclusively well-behaved students.
One important test of heroism is “will you save people who aren’t particularly likeable?” If everyone who needed help was a wonderful person that the heroes adored, then doing the right thing would be much easier. But true heroism requires more than that.
Everyone has things they didn’t earn handed to them; sometimes those things are good, and sometimes they’re bad. We live in a flawed world, and we play the hand we’re dealt. What matters is that we do our best to leave that world in a better place than we found it. In this case, that means not abandoning an imperfect person to die because he has ordinary human flaws.
I understand the frustration with the trope of killing female characters to motivate male characters, but the main reason it became a problematical trope in the first place is because there were so few alternatives to it, so few female characters who got to be leads in their own right and have their own story arcs that were about them instead of just having their lives and deaths exist as extensions of male characters. We can’t expect a world where no female character ever dies to motivate a male character, because that kind of absolute ban would be as bad and arbitrary as the reverse. Treating women as untouchable, precious commodities to be cushioned in narrative bubble wrap is no better than treating them as disposable plot devices. The thing to hope for is a world where male and female characters are treated equally. And that means female characters will still die, but others will live. Female characters will still have storylines that motivate male characters, but others will have their own independent storylines. It’s not about banning a particular device altogether, just about achieving a fair and believable balance. Here, yes, we had a woman choose to sacrifice herself to save a man, and her sacrifice motivated two other men. But we also have two other women in the same story who have their own independent, self-driven story arcs that aren’t just there to support men’s arcs.
Come to think of it, if anything, I think the aftermath of Grace’s death served the Doctor’s arc as much as Graham’s or Ryan’s. The past several modern Doctors have been aloof, alien, uncomfortable with everyday human life experiences. They’ve moved heaven and earth to prevent and avenge human deaths but haven’t really had a knack for slowing down and coping with the emotional aftermath of human deaths. So showing this Doctor quietly staying by her new friends’ sides and supporting them through all this, rather than immediately haring off to find her TARDIS, is an effective way to show her new character, her difference from her predecessors. The previous Doctor, with his dying breath, willed his next incarnation to “be kind,” and now we see that he got what he wanted. Grace’s death and its aftermath allowed us to learn that about the Doctor.
@80, MaGnUs, then when is a writer allowed to kill a character? I’ve seen people complain that a writer killed a character only to motivate the hero, and I’ve seen people complain that a character death was meaningless because the hero didn’t change/react/be motivated.
I don’t think that a character who is motivated because another character died is necessarily a bad thing or a negative trope. People can be motivated by that. The fact that Ryan went back to the mountain to try and conquer the bike specifically for her is a perfectly legitimate reason to do it. It was something she wanted to see him do, it was important to her, and now it is important to him.
I’m not saying the writers can’t kill characters, and I agree with Chris that this time, there are viable female alternative characters in the cast. What I’m saying is that I understand how killing a female character, who is also a minority, can cause certain reactions in people.
There has been an overabundance of female characters whose sole reason for existing has been to get killed so the male character can avenge their deaths. Thus, even when it’s not really the case, it still resonates in a certain way.
@85, fair enough. I’ve just seen many people complain/comment that a character was killed without agency, and here we had instance where the character had agency and died, and I see the same complaints/comments about it.
I totally agree that female characters in particular are killed far too often for the purpose of motivation, but I also don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing for a character to be motivated after another character’s death (or that that is necessarily the sole purpose for a death). It is a perfectly normal reaction.
That’s why I made the distinction between in universe agency (which certainly makes it better) and plot-driven out of universe reasons.
And it’s not a bad thing to have a character motivated by another one’s death, it’s just that it has overwhelmingly done by killing female characters to motivate male characters, and there’s an historical dearth of female protagonists.
@87/MaGnUs: On the other hand, I feel that killing characters to motivate other characters can be done to excess, regardless of gender. And I can say that because it was my own work, my 2012 novel Only Superhuman, that I think that about. I ended up killing four or five characters of both genders (mostly male) to motivate the female lead. So I avoided the gendered issues of “fridging” for the most part, but I still feel in retrospect that I went to that well too often for a single book.
@70: I hadn’t noticed a resemblance with Agatha Heterodyne, but now that you mention it, if Thirteen is as oblivious as her previous iterations, she’s probably going to come close to kill someone when she gets in “de madness place”…
@88 – Chris: Oh, sure, it can be overdone, as anything.
I’m another fan who sees some Matt Smith in this incarnation of the Doctor. I’m crossing my fingers that the Doctor is more of a Good Samaritan traveler this time as opposed to a universe-saving superhero. I like Who the most when it is like a road trip show with a monster of the week.
I think Grace’s death works well in story. It was established that she had the curiosity and impulsiveness to come back to the scene against the Doctor’s wishes; we had seen that the coiled snakes computer could be rebooted/paralyzed by humans working without the Doctor and it was entirely within character for Grace to make the attempt instead of Graham. Also for the future, it allows the writers to play with the relationship between Ryan and Graham who had only really been forced together through Grace.
I do hope that Whittaker’s Doctor will slow down a little and be less breathless in coming episodes. But this may just reflect regeneration. IIRC, Capaldi’s Doctor was somewhat the same way in his first outing. This definitely *feels* like the Doctor to me and that’s what counts.
All in all, not a bad first showing. Looking forward to seeing a maybe new Tardis interior and title credits.
As I mentioned above, haven’t watched for a while. So: Why would the Tardis change? “Just because”? “Why not?” Or is there some deeper reason?
@92/theclapp: In reality, the TARDIS is changing because the show has a new producer and design team, and because changing the sets every few years helps create audience interest in the change. In-story, both here and in the regeneration from David Tennant to Matt Smith, it’s because the Doctor’s regeneration energy badly damaged the TARDIS interior and required it to repair itself. It hasn’t been explained why those two regenerations in particular were so uncharacteristically explosive, but the thing they have in common is that both Tennant’s Doctor and Capaldi’s Doctor resisted regeneration for as long as they could, fighting it back for an unnaturally long time. So I tend to assume that resisting regeneration caused the energy to build up until it burst out destructively, like when a pressure cooker is on the fire too long.
I wrote a somewhat provocative opening paragraph about political correctness and how “POC” is up there with “little people” on my list of PC phrases that, to me, sound worse than the ones that get frowned on. I’ve replaced it with a slightly less provocative version here. Onto the episode…
I loved it. More to the point, I loved the Doctor and the way the gender wasn’t an issue. It helps that we’re surrounded by characters who’ve never known the Doctor as anything else. It was a smart move not to lead with “I’m the Doctor” but to wait until it’s earned and we’ve seen her being the Doctor. Her building her own sonic screwdriver felt like a Jedi constructing their own light sabre. Her conversation with her new friends outside the funeral home about her own family felt like the sort of thing the Twelfth Doctor would never have done even at his cuddliest, although I can see the Eleventh Doctor doing it. The only bit that really didn’t work for me was her hypocritical condemnation of Karl knocking “Tim” off the top of the crane, especially since it seemed like a more merciful and less painful death than the one she’d seemingly just condemned him to. It brought back bad memories of the murky morality of Russell T Davies’ era, complete with get-out clause of “Well, he pressed the button himself so she didn’t really kill him.” I think the idea was to show that not everyone has what it takes to be a companion: Karl walks away from the adventure at the start and doesn’t fit in with the Doctor’s morality (whether that morality’s actually right or not). But it left a bad taste in the mouth.
And curiously, for a restart that’s altered one long-standing component of the series as well as being I think the first story in over 40 years not to feature the TARDIS, it felt very old school. Chris Chibnall’s pointed out that the four-strong TARDIS crew harks back to the original line-up. Perhaps moreso, they’re inadvertent travellers, whisked away from Teenies Sheffield by accident. I’m curious as to how the show goes with that: Will the TARDIS remain lost for longer than we think, denying them a way home? Will this Doctor have more trouble handling the Ship than her immediate predecessors? (Which is fraught with Unfortunate Implications, so probably not.) Will it be as simple as them signing onboard full-time after one trip to space? And most of all: Grace’s death felt very old school, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. She seemed to be being set up as the token “home” character that we’ll check in with when we pay a visit to the present day, harking back to the RTD set-up. There wasn’t even the problem of why her family would go off without her, since the way it played out she could easily have been left behind by accident. But instead, we go to the old series tradition of the family member dying in the companion’s debut episode, meaning there’s nothing for Graham and Ryan back home. A part of me quite likes that.
@94/cap-mjb: “The only bit that really didn’t work for me was her hypocritical condemnation of Karl knocking “Tim” off the top of the crane, especially since it seemed like a more merciful and less painful death than the one she’d seemingly just condemned him to.”
I offered my thought on that in comment #44, that maybe it was the vindictiveness, kicking him when he was already down, that offended her. It wasn’t self-defense, because the Doctor had already saved him. Karl attacked a helpless Tzim-Sha, not a dangerous one, so his act was unnecessary, an act of revenge rather than a justifiable act.
Also, she did throw him the recall device to use while he was still alive, so it’s possible his people could’ve saved him.
Aw, brilliant — 1-Down in Wednesday’s New York Times crossword puzzle (which goes online at 10 PM the previous evening) is “_____ Whittaker, player of the first female Doctor on ‘Doctor Who’.” Oh, it’s right on the tip of my… what do you call it?
@95/CLB: Yeah, you have a point, but it really didn’t sit well with me. It smacked of “One rule for the Doctor and one rule for everyone else, people are only allowed to die if she says so.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Tzin-Sha was no longer dangerous. And he did teleport anyway, so in material terms Karl’s actions didn’t make any difference, although admittedly he didn’t know that. It’s hard to know what to make of the Doctor giving him the recall device, since I must have missed the bit where she said “If those go off, you’ll die a horrible painful death unless you get to an alien hospital, then you’ll be fine.” (They don’t seem the type to be kind to wounded failures anyway.) At its worst, it’s an act of moral cowardice, since it means she doesn’t have to see or know the consequence of her actions.
@93: In “Dalek”, after a few trips only, Rose has accumulated enough Artron energy to help a Dalek regenerate. In “The Name Of The Doctor”, we see that the Doctor has travelled in time so much, far more than any other Time Lord, that his corpse left a fracture in the spacetime continuum. That could be the reason for the Doctor’s violent regenerations.
@97: in the Doctor Who role-playing game, the main difference between the Doctor and the companions is that he (she in the next editions?) gets to use much more tokens than the other players to decide the plot. So literally, the rules don’t apply to him. The whole point of series 9 was to have Clara become more and more like the Doctor, and then have her die for doing exactly what the Doctor would have done. And then because it’s so unfair, she actually ends up as an immortal who stole a Tardis (whose chameleon circuit is broken) and use it to explore time and space with her companion: if you behave like the Doctor, you get to be the Doctor.
@98/Athreeren: The point is, only the Tennant/Smith and Capaldi/Whittaker regenerations were violent. Eccleston/Tennant, the abortive Tennant regeneration, and Smith/Capaldi also happened in the TARDIS console room (it’s an odd tradition of the modern series to always do it there), and they did zero damage to the TARDIS or to the companions watching it happen. So the answer can’t be something generalized about the Doctor’s regenerations — it has to be something that sets those two regenerations apart from the others. And the one factor common to those two and not the others (aside from the Doctor being alone when they happened) is that the Doctor resisted regenerating, fought it off as long as possible.
@98: Hmm, or maybe “The Doctor can be a dick who gives approval arbitrarily and murders a man and tries to destroy the universe for a friend while abandoning a traumatised victim on the top of a crane to hang out with the important people.”
@56: Okay, the actress is meant to be recurring. That could mean she’ll turn up in dreams or flashbacks or as another character who just looks like Grace. (Bill’s mother made quite a few appearances last season despite being dead after all.) Or it could be misinformation so the death shocks us. I do hope they don’t cop-out and undermine those heartful scenes. Even with Clara they kind of admitted she was still going to have to die in the same way or the universe would blow up (despite Paul Cornell trying to claim otherwise in the novelisations).
My thought on Karl and Tim Shaw was that Karl attempted to kill Tim after the Doctor had neutralized him as a threat — from the Doctor’s point of view. From Karl’s point of view, Tim is still very much a threat, being within arm’s reach, and having stated his intention to kill Karl several times. Maybe that’s why we didn’t get a longer discussion about it: because Karl has a legitimate argument that he was acting in self-defense.
Even at the time I watched it, I thought that the Doctor’s “you had no right” was unusually harsh. If it were me, I would have given the Doctor a more Tennant-like “there was no need for that!” It’s a slight difference, but I think there’s a difference between “stupid, panicky human did something he shouldn’t have, out of ignorance” and “small-minded human did something petty and vindictive.”
It’s not exactly unprecedented for the Doctor to show unwarranted empathy to an Alien threat. The Third Doctor is indignant that the Brigadier seals in the Silurians who have tried to destroy humanity. Number Eleven has a hissy fit when an alien invader he warned off is destroyed by the mere humans. Thirteen has changed but she’s still the Doctor.
@102/roxana: Uh, the Silurians are hardly “alien.” They were native to Earth millions of years before humans came along. They have as much right to the planet as we do.
They’re aliens to humans, just not extraterrestrials.
@104/MaGnUs: Yeah, and we’re alien to them. We’re alien to the Doctor. Let’s not be ethnocentric here and assume that humans have any more automatic right to the Doctor’s protection than any other species. The Doctor doesn’t protect humans from aliens, they protect innocents from aggressors. And that has, in the past, included protecting alien innocents from human aggressors as well as the reverse.
@103, but they don’t have the right to kill us all, which is their plan. And I think the statute of limitations on their ownership of Earth has expired.
@105, that’s kind of my point. The Doctor will not always be on our side. But that doesn’t mean we are wrong.
@106: Paraphrasing, and I don’t remember which Silurian episode it was, possibly a Big Finish: “If you go away for a long holiday, and come back to discover mice have taken over your kitchen, you don’t negotiate with the mice, you call an exterminator.”
@105 – Chris: I agree with all that, never said otherwise. Just commenting on the word “alien”. The word you should have objected to in “alien invader” as applied to the Silurians was “invader”. And princessroxana would have better made her point using the expression “alien aggressor” or “non-human aggressor”.
@107, is that a reasonable attitude for the Sils to take? Not IMO.
@107: Actually, I think that’s from the novelisation Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters.
I just went to the local theater last night, where they had a one-night-only showing of the premiere episode, with extra bonus material before and after, including stuff about the casting, read-through, directing and staging that big crane scene. It held up surprisingly well on the big screen.
Cool, I definitely would watch it on the big screen if they showed it here.
In my experience, the best way to learn how to ride a bike is by riding a balance bike until you’re really good at it, then switch to a real bike with pedals.
Anyway, the new Doctor was a joy to watch. And I’m glad that it wasn’t Graham who died (as I half expected). I like the idea of an elderly, prudent, male companion.
I’ve long said we need an older male companion in DW. Wilf didn’t actually get to travel with him, and Rory’s dad only did so once, IIRC. We’ve had great young female companions, but we need older people too, both male and female (and hey, it’s high time to have some non-binary humans in the TARDIS).
It’s amusing to watch US folks try to cope with the plethora of different British accents which abound. It makes me feel better that I get confused with some of the variations in US accents, and smug that I can—usually ;-)—distinguish between an Aussie and a Kiwi…
It’s less amusing to watch US folks try to impose US politics on British people. Please, our politicians are bad enough, we don’t want yours as well…
It’s downright horrifying to see someone suggest that a fellow human—albeit fictional—who has been targeted at random by an alien species for kidnap and “storage” should be abandoned to his fate because of his race and gender. Since when was it acceptable to pick and choose whom you rescue from a horrendous fate on those grounds?
Also, blaming someone for being bullied into a job that he hates by his father is hardly fair. No wonder the poor lad wanders around with self-help tapes: he’s trying to work up the courage to leave the nest while his dad grinds him down: do you think it’s an accident that someone who is bad with heights is sent to work a tower-crane in the middle of the night? He’s not “privileged to be gifted a job by nepotism”, he’s being forced into it because his father can’t bully anybody else into pulling that shift.
US folks don’t appreciate our politics being imposed on our fiction.
I have a tin ear as far as accents are concerned but I can tell North of England from Hone Counties.
My point is Doyalistic, not Watsonian. It’s not that I don’t think that the Doctor should save Karl, or everyone. It’s that I’m tired of seeing entire narratives about the poor, entitled white man, who gets everything handed to him, but it’s still not enough, and he holds himself away from working with others, but then is fine with them taking risks or being harmed for his benefit.
I can’t really see why Karl was needed for the story at all. It would have been sufficient motivation for the newly forming TARDIS team to work together to satisfy their own curiosities and save themselves.
If they’d had time to explore his character more – to deconstruct what is wrong with someone getting a job because his dad owns the business, etc., it might have been worth it. But as it was presented, he was one more privileged, entitled white man on television who was unhappy because life hadn’t handed him enough. While people who had been handed a lot less in life were tasked with risking themselves to save him.
@116/roxana: “US folks don’t appreciate our politics being imposed on our fiction.”
Don’t presume to speak for the rest of us. Many of us recognize that much of the value of fiction is in its message, its power to inspire and influence change. I grew up loving stories that had social and political messages, and so I’ve always considered it basic that a story should have something to say.
@118, the best ‘political’ fiction goes lightly on the moralizing. There is currently a lot of very heavy handed politicizing that some of us could do without.
@117, I don’t know of course but I think the point may have been to have an unsympathetic victim. Whether that was a good or necessary point s another matter.
@119/roxana: What’s going on politically in this country will affect you whether you pay attention to it or not. What’s heavy-handed is what’s happening in real life, the extremist policies of the current government and the foreign and domestic factions backing them. Fiction is just reacting to that extremism, because we ignore it at our peril.
@117/Ursula: “I can’t really see why Karl was needed for the story at all. It would have been sufficient motivation for the […] team to […] save themselves.”
Well, there’s no accounting for tastes. I prefer stories about people helping others to stories about people saving themselves. And I liked that the episode was about saving some poor devil who wasn’t even particularly likeable.
The conversation seems to be straying away from Doctor Who and into much broader territory, beyond the purview of the original article. Let’s try to stay on topic and keep discussion related to the show/episode.
117/@Ursula: “I can’t really see why Karl was needed for the story at all. It would have been sufficient motivation for the newly forming TARDIS team to work together to satisfy their own curiosities and save themselves.”
Karl was the McGuffin.
@59/politeruin: Getting back to the accent question, I just rewatched the premiere again, and it was Ryan and Yaz’s accents in their first scene together that reminded me of Lister’s accent, specifically in the lilt and tonality of their speech, the way the pitch rose toward the end of a sentence, for example.
@65/the clapp and others: As for the bit where she wiped Ryan’s phone, I realize that after she “reformatted” it, she touched it to the DNA bomb in her collarbone and got a shock from the contact. I think what she must’ve done was to download the bombs’ own tracking/comms software into the phone so that she could backtrack it to its source. That’s why it led them to Tim Shaw instead of the Gathering Coils as she expected — because he was the one with the signal connection to the bombs.
And following up on my own comments about the music, I recognized this time that the same musical motif was used for both the sonic screwdriver reveal and the Doctor’s new costume reveal, and the same melody without the ostinato was used for her crane jump, while the music under her “I’m the Doctor” moment had the same chord structure. So I guess that really is her new theme, and I like it.
The thing that struck me most about Whittaker this time is how reassuring her Doctor is. Even when she’s acting all scatterbrained and frustrated, she just has this manner to her, this understated self-assurance and competence, that’s very comforting and makes you believe she’ll make things all right. Which is a fantastic trait for the Doctor to have. She really is an excellent choice for the role.
I definitely like how reassuring and comforting she is, same in yesterday’s episode.
Her reassurance reminded me of the Fifth Doctor, who also had a large crew that needed frequent reassuring. The difference being that I’m not sure the Fifth Doctor’s companions ever believed him when he was being reassuring.
And possibly the current companions shouldn’t be so loyal either, because the current Doctor seems to be getting things wrong quite frequently. Maybe the difference is that the current Doctor is honest about getting things wrong, or when she doesn’t know something, whereas her predecessors had a greater tendency to bluff or bluster when wrong.
@127/Brian MacDonald: That’s just it — it’s the opposite of Davison. His Doctor said reassuring things a lot, but you were never entirely sure he could follow through. Whittaker’s Doctor says things that make her sound very unsure of herself and confused, but her natural manner makes her reassuring despite her words. It’s not a function of the scripted lines, it’s a function of Whittaker’s personality and presence, a quality that makes her feel very right for the role.
What I want to know is what kind of thrift shop sells clothes that look so brand spanking new???
@129 that would be a British Charity Shop. There’s no pride in selling manky old tat.
People have been rumoured to donate their clothes to a local Charity Shop only to buy them back once they’ve been laundered: it’s said to be cheaper than doing it yourself and the Charity benefits: win-win ;-)
@129 A Thrift store near a mall in a wealthy or at least well off area. I live in one and when stores can’t sell their stock, even at the best discount, they give it to Good Will or another thrift store and write it off as a charitable deduction. If you live in the right area, you can get some really nice new stuff at thrift stores.