With a brand new season underway, Doctor Who is in the process of redefining its tone and introducing itself to a new set of fans. “The Ghost Monument” was their second chance to show us what they’ve got up their collective sleeves.
We also get our first glimpse of a lovely blue box…
Summary
Ryan and Graham wake up on the ship of a man named Epzo, and the Doctor and Yas wake up on the ship of a woman named Angstrom. It turns out that both ships are headed for a planet named Desolation, the end of a race known as the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies. Epzo and Angstrom are the last competitors, and they learn that they must traverse the planet Desolation and reach an object known as the “Ghost Monument” in order to win. The Doctor quickly realizes that said monument is her TARDIS, and sets out with Ryan, Graham, and Yas to find it. As they explore the terrain, the Doctor learns that the planet was populated by scientists who were forced by the Stenza to create terrible weapons. This has killed most life on the planet, leaving behind only flesh-eating water and all the weapons they created.
The group reaches ruins which are now only populated by sniper-bots. Ryan tries to shoot them, against the Doctor’s wishes, and only succeeds in drawing more of them out. The Doctor uses an EMP to disable them briefly and the group heads underground and learns more about the scientists who worked on the planet. They get to know the two competitors better; Epzo is the self-interested sort who trusts no one and wants to win to prove himself; Angstrom’s people were ethnically cleansed by the Stenza and she wants to win to be reunited with her family in comfort.
The Doctor and friends manage to avoid or destroy the planet’s most lethal creations, and make it to the end of the race. Angstrom and Epzo argue who should be the victor, but the Doctor convinces them to enter the victor’s tent together. Ilin, the race’s overseer (and previous winner) insists that they cannot have two winners, but after Epzo and Angstrom threaten him, he relents and allows a joint victory. They are teleported off the planet before they can demand that the Doctor and friends are taken with them. The TARDIS is nowhere to be found, and the Doctor doesn’t believe they’ll last another day on the planet if they can’t leave. Thankfully, the TARDIS finally materializes, all shiny and restored. The Doctor invites her new friends in and promises to take them home.
Commentary
I’m going to say a thing that will make some people very happy and some people very angry, which is: this episode felt so much like a Russell T. Davies episode in all the ways that are guaranteed to make me happy.
Being a person who prefers the Davies to the Moffat era, I’ve missed the one-off plots and mad dash intrigue those first New Who seasons often brought to the table. The concept of a galactic “Amazing Race” where the winner ends up merely surviving comfortably in a rough and unhelpful universe is very similar to “The Long Game” of the Ninth Doctor’s tenure, and has that sharp and clear overlay of social commentary that Davies episodes excelled at. It’s not a complicated story by any means, but it’s an interesting adventure that is a perfect backdrop for the Doctor getting to know her new friends.
That being said, there are places where this story diverges that give us clues as to the show’s current tone—in a Davies episode, a man like Epzo would have likely either died due to his own awfulness, or stolen the race out from under Angstrom and continued to be a horrible person. Instead, the Doctor makes the insistence that they finish the race together, and Epzo finally agrees to that solution—he learns something in his time with the group and comes out of it a little less odious. If that’s the worldview that this iteration of Who wants to espouse, I’m all in; we’re living in an era when we could all do with the reminder that people can be taught and change for the better.
That being said, this episode also makes it obvious that Doctor Who is doing its best to court a brand new generation of fans for the show. There’s a lot of basic series mythology in this episode, which might seem overplayed to longer-standing fans; for example, it’s not hard to guess that the “ghost monument” is going to be the TARDIS a minute into its first mention by the race’s benefactor, Ilin. The Doctor reiterates her “no guns” policy in this episode—though this time she makes it a bit clearer precisely why, being that they complicate things rather than solve problems. (This is a useful layer of explanation, given that the Doctor as a character has always done things that are destructive, but has a very specific aversion to guns that is often just treated as a “code” rather than a specific opinion on them.) We get to see the interior of the TARDIS for the first time, and we get the first utterance that it’s not just a space… but a time ship. All of these things are being revealed for first-time fans; for anyone who knows the show, those notes will feel rote even if they are sweet.
We are learning more about the companions, particularly in the burgeoning relationship between Ryan and Graham, but that still stings given that their entire plot is being driven by the loss of Grace. The idea that Ryan’s grandmother has to die so that he can form a relationship with his step-grandfather feels hollow no matter how you cut it. This plot could have occurred just as easily without Grace’s demise, and their bonding is currently icing Yas out as the odd number in the companion set; it would be nice to get more deep character work with her rather than simple information (she lives at home, her sister wants her out so she can have her room), but seems to be playing the stable counterpart to Ryan and Graham’s tumultuous dynamic. Hopefully she’ll get her due down the line.
That said, all three of them are endearing from what we’ve seen so far. The Doctor serving as a sort of coach to help Ryan through his dyspraxia is already becoming a great focal point of their dynamic, and Graham is finding his inherent unflappability; the way he happily and pragmatically accepts the maybe-Audrey-Hepburn-or-Pythagoras’s sunglasses out of the Doctor’s pocket is truly precious. (She must have transferred all of the things hiding in her former coat’s pockets to the new coat, and I’m pretty sad that we missed out on that scene.) Each member of Team TARDIS has different strengths that the Doctor is happy to exploit, which still smacks of how the Fifth Doctor worked things out with a crew. What’s fun about it is that Yas’s strengths seem to be in overall big-picture mentality. She keeps tracks of all the bits and pieces that the Doctor is more liable to forget, being the magpie she is.
The end of the episode has a largely hopefully note about it, and there does seem to be a vague thread running through these stories that may pay off in the end. The planet Desolation was manned for a time by a crew of scientists who were forced to make terrible weapons, and those weapons were created for use by the Stenza—the species the Tzim-Sha came from. The race is called the “Rally of the Twelve Galaxies,” and the Twelve Galaxies themselves are the area where the Stenza conquered. What else did Desolation release on the galaxy? Will we continue to encounter the Stenza, and will it be up to Team TARDIS to stop them? There’s also reference to “The Timeless Child” of the Doctor’s past… which could be about any number of figures from the show’s history, or something that we’ve yet to see.
Buy the Book
A Memory Called Empire
We get one delightful gender slip-up from the Doctor that I personally adored; when the TARDIS is close to materializing, the Doctor says “Come to daddy… I mean, come to mummy!” That genuine moment of confusion is one of the realest responses to the regeneration that we’ve seen so far, particularly during a emotional plea to her ship and oldest traveling companion. (When my partner started transitioning, he often made this error too; you’re so accustomed to using words and phrases to describe yourself that it’s not uncommon to accidentally default to what’s familiar at the start.)
So far the responses to the new TARDIS interior seem largely negative, which is baffling to me. It’s more similar to the Davies-era again, more organic in feel, but with great bits of mechanized decor throughout. After a console room that was starting to feel more like a classroom during the Twelfth Doctor’s era, this is a welcome total shift, and it feels properly alien and new. Also the new opening credits are gorgeously trippy, and the new iteration of the theme gives the familiar intro an understated and mysterious vibe—in fact, the theme’s baseline sounds more like a proper pulse.
Can the Doctor get her new companions all home now? Well… we all know that TARDIS isn’t about to drop the newbies off after only one trip.
Little asides to shout out:
- The Doctor calls Ryan and Graham “my boys,” which is what Amy Pond used to call her and Rory, and it’s fine I just have something in my eye…
- Looking to Yas and saying “Oh Yas, I forgot you were there!” That might be the most Doctor thing that’s happened in the past three or four seasons of the show?
- It’s probably not intentional, but Yas’s sweater is incredibly similar to the shirt that Steven Universe wears every day, and that was cause enough for warm fuzzy feelings.
- Angstrom is queer and mentions having a wife (yay!). Who is dead (nooooo). This is again more in keeping with the Davies-era penchant for more casually integrating queerness into the Doctor Who universe without any sort of commentary.
- Venusian aikido is back! Though in a far less dramatic form than the Twelfth Doctor used it. Which makes it more scary, to be honest.
- BISCUIT COMPARTMENT IN THE CONSOLE THAT IS ALL GOOD NIGHT
Emmet Asher-Perrin wants a biscuit compartment. You can bug him on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
That first line in the summary is wrong. Ryan and Graham are on Angstrom’s ship, while The Doctor and Yas are on Epzo’s.
The Doctor now has a cookie jar? About time!
The plot here was a little unfocused, without any real stakes to the situation beyond the leads getting to the TARDIS and the other two winning a race. But I guess it is a nice change of pace to get away from stories where the fate of an entire planet/galaxy/universe is at stake. And it was largely about furthering the character development and laying hints for the season arc. It is very coincidental that they just happened to have two consecutive encounters connected to the Stenza, but then, it’s always been coincidental that the Doctor always lands in the middle of trouble. Maybe this was more of the TARDIS taking the Doctor where they needed to be.
New console room: I like the walls, and the full police-box interior as a foyer. I don’t like the return to a whimsical/non-functional console design, or the dim lighting. The previous console room design remains my favorite.
It occurred to me that the Doctor’s distaste for weapons (guns here, knives last week) strikes me as being largely about the way that too many people assume that having a weapon will automatically solve their problems so that they don’t have to think. If all you have is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail. The Doctor prefers to use more mental flexibility — a destructive solution can be on the table if it’s the only way out, but having a gun makes it your first resort while relying on your wits gives you more alternatives.
Plus, of course, Ryan needed to learn that anyone who goes into a real life-or-death battle expecting it to be just like a video game is likely to get himself or others killed. Even though there have been a lot of stories built around the trope that gaming experience does prepare one for real combat, going back to The Last Starfighter. But it really shouldn’t work that way. (There was a Sarah Jane Adventures story, “The Warriors of Kudlak,” about aliens using a laser-tag game to recruit human youth for forced conscription into their army, but I think they were using them more as disposable cannon fodder than anything else.)
Anyway, what bugged me is that Angstrom told the Doctor that her world was currently under attack and being ethnically cleansed by the Stenza — and yet when she gets her TARDIS back, her only plan is “get these three back to Sheffield” instead of “go to Angstrom’s planet and save billions of people from brutal invaders.” I mean, sure, Angstrom said she could use the prize money to try to save her family, but that’s hardly sufficient given all that’s at stake. It seems like an oversight on scriptwriter Chibnall’s part that he didn’t have the Doctor react to Angstrom’s horror story the way it would’ve been in character for the Doctor to react, i.e. wanting to help save her people from invasion. Of course, what’s happening to Angstrom’s planet is part of the overall Stenza arc of the season, and clearly the Doctor will eventually deal with their whole web of conquest, but just because Chibnall knows that doesn’t mean the Doctor knows it at this point. So it’s a point where the writer is plotting based on what he plans to happen rather than how the characters would believably feel or react at that particular moment.
On a lower-stakes level, it was also surprising that after the Doctor said “Yes, I’ll take you home now,” she didn’t stop and smile at them and say, “Unless… you’d like to take a quick trip around the universe first?”
I guess I would count myself as one of the people disappointed by the new TARDIS desktop, but for me, it’s not the design that’s the issue. I personally really love the organic feel, the huge size of the room, and the mechanized steampunk-y console.
What I DON’T like is how incredibly DARK and poorly lit the console room is. You can’t see anything! Seriously, bump up the lights in the crystals (or whatever they are) and we’re all good!
I’ve seen mainly positive reactions to the new TARDIS design – especially lots of love for the Custard Cream dispenser – but I guess it depends were you look. My reaction was something like “It’s a bit dark, isn’t it? – Are those tires on the walls? – Oh, I love it!” I really liked the emotional Doctor-TARDIS -reunion scene. Whittaker played it so well, I could feel the deep connection between the Doctor and her blue box.
I also love the new title sequence.
I agree that Yas needs more to do. That was my innitial reaction after watching the episode. But from what I read, some of the following episodes will focus on her a bit more. I hope so.
All in all, I think the first two episodes had a very Classic Who feeling to them, with a bigger budget and great cinematography. I like it and I’m looking forward to the coming episodes.
I liked the episode, but there were a few things that were just left hanging, for no apparent reason.
Why is the planet not where its supposed to be, exactly? Yes, she mentions something about the TARDIS skipping in and out probably messing with its position, but she was locking on to the ship, not the planet. So why did she miss? Seems like they made a big deal out of it for a throw-away line.
Why didn’t she say something about helping Epzo’s people? Seems unlike the Doctor to leave people to suffer.
We find out the TARDIS appears every 1000 days and will appear again tomorrow (at least, according to Ilin), and we get to the plateau and it isn’t there. The Doctor goes instantly defeatist, which is so unlike any other incarnation, or even any attitude she herself has shown us. Now if we’d seen it phase out, sure, but even I figured we’d got there early (since we were in the tunnels for a bit, and travelled during the night after being told we shouldn’t). Seems like a conclusion she would have come to as well.
I’m ok with the new TARDIS, the crystals really complement her new sonic. I love the biscuit tray. And I totally expected the “I love it” following all the “I don’t like it”s from the previous Doctor’s. But why did she need it to unlock for her? Didn’t it get changed so she could snap her fingers to unlock the door? Oh well.
Overall, this is a decent new season. Still seems like they are trying to find her footing in a few ways, but its upbeat and fun, so I’ll keep coming back for the trip.
I like the new title sequence, but I’m not a huge fan of the new theme arrangement. It sounds too… muddled. Granted, it does sound a lot like the original theme, so it has that going for it, but from Nine to Twelve, each time we got a new theme arrangement it was grander, more epic. This one seems like a step backwards from that, so it’s a bit jarring. The visuals during the sequence are pretty cool, though.
@3 CLB: I get a very Tegan-esque vibe from this set of companions. She didn’t mean to take them with her, and her priorities seem first of all to get them home safely. Whether or not the TARDIS will let her will probably drive most of the stories this season.
Which is refreshing. While I agree that Grace would have been an ideal companion, gung-ho and willing, she’s too much like every single other companion we’ve had since Rose (with the possible exception of Rory, who was kidnapped from his Bachelor Party, and, while also later willing, always had a sense of “I’m just coming along so my fiancee/wife doesn’t snog you again” to him). Having these reluctant adventurers, forced out of their comfort zones, leaves a lot more room for character growth than having another Rose/Martha/Donna/Amy/Clara/Bill-type companion. It also leaves room for a happier ending for these companions, as (with the exception of Martha), all of them were forced to stop travelling with the Doctor, and very tragically, too.
I was OK with the new Doctor so far, but I’m starting to have a problem with her: she’s too good! Nobody will ever accept that the Doctor can be a man after her! She’s still as scatterbrain as ever, but as soon as she realises that Yas is overwhelmed by all this, she stops to try to reassure her (and not in the “I’m lying to you to distract you while I’m saving you” as the previous Doctors: actual compassion). She is always encouraging to the others. She respects that other people might have lower aspirations than hers, but she tries to push them to be better versions of themselves. I also loved that she gently touched the TARDIS instead of snapping her fingers to convince her to open: the TARDIS and the Doctor are supposed to be equal partners, and summoning her with a snap of his fingers has always seemed arrogant to me. But now, even the TARDIS gets the respect she deserves. It’s not “Hello, sexy!” but “hello, you… I’ve missed you!” with real love in her voice! And of course as soon as the Doctor said “You’ve redecorated!” I started waiting for the “I REALLY like it!”; and of course I wasn’t disappointed. Even better, the companions are also like that, with Graham trying to comfort Ryan, and Yas waiting for him at the ladder.
Talking about the ladder, it’s nice that Ryan’s dyspraxia is not forgotten after the first episode, but I have a problem with the Call of Duty scene. Kids with dyspraxia tend to be fond of videogames, but first person shooters are all about having quick reflex and precise hand-eye coordination. There’s no reason Ryan wouldn’t like them, but would he really think he’s good enough to apply his skills in a real life or death situation? There’s a fine line between showing that people with disabilities are just like people without, and flat out ignoring the disability. Why couldn’t it be Yas who would be a fan of video games instead? Or are video games still considered to be a “boy’s thing” in fiction?
Chibnall has often said that this season would be self-contained episodes with no season arc and ongoing mystery, but we’ve had two seasons in a row about the Stenza and the mention of a “Timeless Child” in a way that seemed immediately relevant, like “the Hybrid” two seasons before (compared to the “Minister of war” in the episode “Before the Flood”, whom we still don’t know anything about). I’m not sure why the planet suddenly got out of orbit or whether we will ever have the answer to that question, but I hope the show explains why the TARDIS moved from above the Earth to this particular planet in the distant past. Finally, the Timeless Child. It seemed to me that the entity was talking about her. These are things hidden from her, but which the entity is finding about through telepathy. It reminded me of the theories about The Other, regarding the novel “Lungbarrow”. I hope I’m wrong and this series doesn’t continue to mythologise the Doctor’s past.
Other things I liked:
The Doctor was taught Venusian aikido by nuns! I also liked that it’s presented as the art of a “grandmaster pacifist”.
The Doctor’s coat does not come from the TARDIS’ wardrobe, and its pockets are not bigger on the inside for once! Does this mean she’s going to have to choose what she carries with her?
The opening credits looked like an updated version of the original opening credits, with better graphics and in colour. In general, this series seems to be more accessible to new viewers, but still has lots of things to love for the old fans!
Twelve Galaxies? I wonder if that’s a reference to San Francisco’s Frank Chu, who for years paraded up and down Market Street carrying a sign about the “12 Galaxies” and other elements of his personal mythos/conspiracy theories. He had a knack for showing up wherever TV cameras were likely to be–picket lines, political rallies, celebrity visits. A local music venue, now closed, was named 12 Galaxies in his honor. Homage or coincidence?
The episode wasn’t anything spectacular in its script or idea, but I loved the execution. Whittaker keeps getting better and better, I love how she plays it smart and at the same time, very reassuring towards her ersatz companions. The new TARDIS interior looks great, and I love that it has its own mini-TARDIS and biscuit dispenser.
Graham continues to be my favorite companion, I love his attitude, how stoically/practically he wears the sunglasses even though they’re not his style. I love that Grace’s influence continues to be felt, despite the fact that I would rather she hadn’t died.
@5 – junipergren: Yes, the reunion scene with the TARDIS was beautiful.
@8 – Athreeren: Yas could be a videogame enthusiast, but she’s not impulsive, from what we’ve seen.
Definitely turn up the lights in the new console room. the organic look is interesting but not sure about it yet. I really like the cookie dispenser. Fun adventure story but the Doctor didn’t say anything about the Stenza and Angstrom’s planet. I’m sure that will come up again later. I still miss Grace.
@8/Athreeren: “I’m starting to have a problem with her: she’s too good! Nobody will ever accept that the Doctor can be a man after her!”
I do not consider this a problem.
“Why couldn’t it be Yas who would be a fan of video games instead? Or are video games still considered to be a “boy’s thing” in fiction?”
I don’t think it’s a gender thing, just that Ryan’s been established as a computer guy. He’s the guy posting video blogs and doing web searches to look for aliens or find out how to operate a crane — that’s his thing. So it makes sense that he’d be the computer gamer as well.
“The Doctor’s coat does not come from the TARDIS’ wardrobe, and its pockets are not bigger on the inside for once! Does this mean she’s going to have to choose what she carries with her?”
I’m sure she could modify the coat pockets now that she’s back in the TARDIS. Then again, it is an awfully roomy coat. And the whole “pockets bigger on the inside” wasn’t made canonical until the new series — before that it was just a fan joke, or at most an implicit sight gag.
What bugged me about her use of the coat was that they were trudging through a desert with three suns and she never raised the hood. A big hood like that would be perfect for shielding her face and eyes from the sun. Especially after she gave Graham her sunglasses.
“The opening credits looked like an updated version of the original opening credits, with better graphics and in colour. “
Oh, I see what you mean. There is a similarity to the original “howlround” video effect.
Thank you! I’ve been waiting for someone to mention that the new opening looks like an updated “howlaround.” Since the music is a deliberate call-back to the Derbyshire arrangement (I think it even uses the original 60s recording, although I could be wrong about that), mimicking the visuals seems appropriate.
@8: While it’s not to say that girls can’t like video games, it would be slightly, let’s say “problematic” if it was Yas, the police officer, who took a “shoot first” solution to the problem.
I really liked this episode. My favorite parts were Ryan’s discovery that playing first person shooter games does NOT prepare you for combat in the real world, and our introduction to the new Tardis. The Tardis interior fits very much with the look of the new Sonic Multitool, and the biscuit dispenser is a feature that is long overdue.
This is kind of sad, but it bugs me that the new TARDIS interior has a design similarity to the sonic screwdriver. It made sense when the TARDIS created the sonic that it would match the interior, but the Doctor created the current sonic herself, with the TARDIS nowhere around. While it’s possible that the TARDIS read the new Doctor’s mind and design sensibilities and reconfigured the interior during the 30 seconds before she opened the door, the process is normally shown as taking longer than that. I realize I’m being the worst kind of fan to let this bother me, but it is. Like most fans, I’m loving Ms. Whittaker’s performance, and I like the new sonic screwdriver. I’m not sold on the new TARDIS interior yet; it strikes me as too dark and cramped.
@16/Brian McDonald: The TARDIS exists outside time and space. Past, present, and future are all one to her. We already know from “The Doctor’s Wife” that the TARDIS stores archival copies of over 30 console room designs, including ones the Doctor hadn’t used yet.
I really miss the glowy white walls. I like being able to see.
Graham is finding his inherent unflappability; the way he happily and pragmatically accepts the maybe-Audrey-Hepburn-or-Pythagoras’s sunglasses out of the Doctor’s pocket is truly precious. (She must have transferred all of the things hiding in her former coat’s pockets to the new coat, and I’m pretty sad that we missed out on that scene.)
I don’t think she has; she complains at one point that her pockets are still empty. I understood her to be saying that the sunglasses she gave Graham reminded her of a different pair she used to own (which belonged to Hepburn or Pythagoras).
I’m underwhelemed so far… I think there’s loads of potential in the current incarnation, but I feel so far it has been burdened by mediocre writing. There is WAY too much tell and way too little show here, one of the deaths of audiovisual storytelling. Everything is constantly being explained by everyone once, twice, three times over… There’s a mennace? Let’s verbalize it a couple of times instead of showing it and transmitting the feeling of urgency. One example, those robots. They felt like nothing, but everyone was rambling about how much in danger they were. Fammily issues? Let’s have some good old uber-obvious and way too long monologues… and then reinforce them wih a monologue from other character. And the cherry on top? Oh, look there’s a giant door, which the doctor loves… so, let’s have the Doctor say than without even showing the freakin door. Why not show the door and have the Doctor’s face lit up with bliss? I hope you’re getting my point. I’m happy with lots of the things they’re doing, but so far the pace of the show has me brutally underwhelmed. Please, more cinematography and less cheap-paperback writing. I think this would also help to finally start establishing where this Doctor will go personality-wise. Until now she has shown very little in the way of what will be her core traits. I like that she’s shown regret and a more horizontal relationship with her companions (even though appologizing for her failure so quick felt a little out of character considering the Doctor’s more complex realtion with time and patience), but I still feel so far she’s a little bit too much a mix of Smith’s senso of childishness with Tennant’s dashing adventurer, but I want her to be her own thing.
What’s odd is the assumption that a knife is always a weapon. They are also helpful tools, especially for real doctors. I’m willing to bet that every single person involved in that episode — including the writer who has the Doctor say “Knives are for losers” has used a knife and will continue to do so.
This is not even touching the countless occasions on original Who when the Doctor either used a weapon or accepted help from people who were using them.
@21: That’s true, the Doctor said that only idiots carry knives, yet without Angstrom’s, Epzo would be dead, suffocated by those flying sheets.
The Custard Cream dispenser was awesome. I am now wondering if it does other biscuits or has selected the Custard Cream as the One True Biscuit.
Must go shopping at lunch to get some custard creams in.
Almuric & Athreeren @@@@@ 21, 22
That’s the problem with absolute statements.
Anyway, currently there’s a significant rise in knife crime among young people in London. So I doubt that the Doctor’s little speach about knives being made now is a coincidence.
I liked this one. Straightforward plot which gives us a chance to get to know the characters: Their basic plan is to stay alive long enough to reach the TARDIS. Graham and Ryan get a character scene that doesn’t outstay its welcome, but emphasises the fact that they’re basically having to grieve for Grace on the move. Yas does get pushed out somewhat as the one who’s just there to make up the numbers, but hopefully that’s just because you can’t focus on four characters each week, especially when they’re having to spend most of their time together. With only 45 minutes per story, you can’t split them up for the middle two episodes like they would have done in the 60s and 80s, since no sooner have they gone their separate ways than they need to be back together.
I forgot to mention on the last episode that the title music also feels very old school: It’s almost like it’s been beamed straight from 1974. I was intrigued that, for once, we get to see the inside of the TARDIS at the same time as the Doctor does rather than waiting for the companions, even if they were just a few seconds behind her. Maybe moving away from them as viewpoint characters? I don’t really have any firm opinion on the redesign: Seen one TARDIS console room, seen them all. It’s just variations on a theme.
I disagree with the idea that the Doctor “should” now go and save Angstrom’s planet, especially with three accidental travellers in tow. Steven Moffat used to say the Doctor isn’t a hero because he doesn’t go looking for trouble. Aside from thinking Steven Moffat needs to find himself a better definition of “hero”, I agree with the sentiment. The Doctor isn’t someone who goes around looking for old enemies to pick fights with (except when Andrew Cartmel’s running the show). The Doctor is someone who saves people in the immediate vicinity and solves any problem she happens to stumble across. The Thirteenth Doctor isn’t going to shoot off looking for a planet full of Shenza any more than the Twelfth Doctor stuck around to help the Aristotle crew win their war with the Daleks.
So at least one of my theories for how this new group stick together has gone with the TARDIS recovered and then apparently en route back to 21st century Sheffield, although the promo indicates they’re not going to get there. The Timeless Child reference we will have to see if it comes up again, but the Shenza being mentioned again so quickly suggests the apparently throwaway villains of the opener aren’t so throwaway after all. Could we yet learn the fate of “Tim Shaw”?
@25: “I’m just a traveller. Sometimes I see things need fixing and I do what I can.” That’s someone who doesn’t go out of her way to find trouble, but who will have no trouble finding it regardless! She’ll get to the heart of the Stenza empire soon enough.
Although this makes me wonder how much the TARDIS is looking for trouble… She’s the one who decides where the Doctor needs to be!
@26: Oh yes, I agree entirely, that is what the Doctor does. I was just disagreeing with the sentiment expressed in an earlier post that it’s somehow her duty to go there now and sort out the specific planet she’d been told about.
@25/cap-mjb: “I disagree with the idea that the Doctor “should” now go and save Angstrom’s planet, especially with three accidental travellers in tow.”
That’s not what I said. I just find it out of character that she didn’t even react to the revelation. If she’d said “I’d like to do what I can once I get my friends back home,” that would be fine, but she didn’t even seem to acknowledge the revelation of the ethnic cleansing taking place. I’m talking about consistency in character writing, the portrayal of her reactions and emotions at that moment, not her actions later on.
“Steven Moffat used to say the Doctor isn’t a hero because he doesn’t go looking for trouble.”
But this Doctor literally said just last week, “When people need help, I never refuse.”
“The Doctor isn’t someone who goes around looking for old enemies to pick fights with”
What a bizarre way of twisting it. At the point I’m talking about, the Doctor didn’t know who the attackers were. It didn’t come out until later that it was the Stenza. So it had nothing to do with settling a score. It was about protecting Angstrom’s people, saving innocent lives. I just find it out of character that she didn’t even express an interest in helping, when she made it clear last week that helping was her whole purpose.
She did tell Tim Shaw last week that she’d be putting a stop to the Stenza’s “let go hunt a human” leadership tests, so it’s implied that she’ll manage that at some point. Unless she forgets.
I’m wondering if the biscuit dispenser has a whole pocket universe behind it just to produce biccies.
@29/phuzz: That’s just the thing, though. Again, at the point I’m referring to, the Doctor didn’t know that the invaders Angstrom was talking about were the Stenza. That was a surprise that Chibnall was saving for later. So it’s not as if the Doctor would’ve known at that point that Angstrom’s story was connected to the larger Stenza issue she had plans to address. This is exactly the problem for me, as a writer observing another writer’s work. I see Chibnall structuring the scene based on what he knows will happen later in the arc rather than what the characters would realistically know or think at that moment. And that’s sloppy writing.
While I agree that the Doctor’s reaction was unusually unsympathetic, especially for this Doctor, she doesn’t always run off to stop wars and halt genocide. When the Doctor stumbles across refugees running from a war, their usual reaction is to help the refugees, not go stop the war.
If we want to break out the hand-waving explanations, maybe the ethnic cleansing is a fixed point, and falls under the same logic that prevents the Doctor from halting World War II, despite having many opportunities to do so.
@31/Brian MacDonald: Again, I’m not looking for in-universe explanations; I’m a writer critiquing the writing of the scene and how the character’s reactions in that specific moment felt unnatural to me. If I had been writing a scene where the Doctor was listening to a character who revealed that her people were being ethnically cleansed, I would have found it necessary to have the Doctor react to that in some way. The absence of any reaction at all from the Doctor seems like a gap in the construction of the scene.
@28: When Donna berated the Doctor for leaving the Oods in slavery after having met one, he claims he was busy at the time, implying this is the reason he didn’t intervene to change a culture of slavery then. In The Almost People, the Doctor drops off Cleaves and Dicken at an army press conference so they can convince people to stop using gangers, but the Doctor doesn’t help them in that task. I can’t think of one example where he actually goes to a planet specifically to help people of his own initiative. He replies to calls for help, he will chase evil when a monster has kidnapped one of his companions, but he doesn’t travel with the goal of defeating evil, or even to protect innocents who didn’t ask for his help; and it seems she still isn’t doing that now. Intentional trips tend to be about attending a historical event or solving a mystery.
@33/Athreeren: Yes, but you’re just proving my point — in those cases, the Doctor’s non-intervention was addressed. There was an explanation for it right then and there in the scene. Again, I’m talking about the mechanics of how a scene is written and constructed. I’m not saying the Doctor should’ve intervened; I’m saying the writer should’ve addressed why the Doctor didn’t intervene, like those earlier writers did in your examples.
Or rather, it’s clear that Chibnall does intend the Doctor to intervene eventually, to deal with the whole Stenza problem en masse later in the season, and that’s why he didn’t address it then and there. And that’s exactly the problem, because the scene was shaped by the writer’s future knowledge in a way that didn’t make sense given the characters’ immediate lack of that future knowledge. That’s the sort of thing that exposes the puppeteer’s hand moving the characters around and undermines the illusion that the characters are making their own choices.
Sorry, I still don’t understand what you mean. Who should those explanations be for? At this point, the companions and the racers know that the Doctor is competent, but have no idea that she can create change at the scale of the universe. Why would they ask her, or think she should take responsibility for this? The Doctor herself? I just said it’s not in her character to intervene, unless she sees a child crying (said children are on another planet, so she can’t see them and she won’t intervene. It’s questionable ethics, but the alternative is to micromanage the universe. And in any case, that’s just who she is). The viewers? Either they’re new, and they’re in the same position as the companions, or they’re used to how the Doctor operates by now: how many times has he travelled to Dalek controlled territory to use their technology or information, and left the Dalek civilisation to its many galactic wars?
All the Doctor said was “If I don’t stop you your people will stop doing this”. She stopped him: end of story, as far as she’s concerned. I don’t see why she would provide an explanation for something neither she nor anyone else intends her to do.
@35/Athreeren: “Who should those explanations be for?”
For the consistency of the characterization. Like I said, I’m approaching this from a writer’s standpoint assessing the construction of the scene. If a character fails to have a reaction that would logically be in character for them, and if there’s nothing in the scene to justify that failure of reaction, then that is a gap in the construction of the work. It feels like inconsistent writing.
And to your last paragraph, I must once again point out that in the specific scene I’m talking about, the Doctor did not yet know the Stenza were involved. That is the whole point, the whole reason why it’s problematical — because her reaction was motivated by the writer’s own anachronistic knowledge of what would happen in the future, knowledge that the character did not yet have and that therefore could not plausibly have influenced her behavior in that moment.
@28 et al/CLB: Possibly setting myself up for a fall here but I think the Doctor actually said last week “When people ask for help, I never refuse.” (Or words to that effect.) But I’m splitting hairs and so I’ll address your apparent issue with the Doctor’s reaction. I can’t quite tell whether you’re saying the Doctor should have offered to help or whether you’re complaining that the Doctor didn’t have any reaction at all. As far as I could see, the Doctor’s reaction was to look sympathetic and then get on with the job in hand of keeping the people around her alive and trying to get her friends home, rather than angsting about some atrocity being committed on another planet somewhere. To me, that’s a perfectly natural and in character reaction and I’d have been shocked if the Doctor had done anything else.
On a completely different note, trivia time: ITV’s competition for the episode was…a celebrity edition of The Chase (no relation) presented by Bradley Walsh! Maybe they were hoping people would turn on the wrong channel and think they were watching Doctor Who…
@37/cap-mjb: On reflection, my issue isn’t even about the Doctor, or about any character. It just seems wrong to me for a writer to insert something as massive as a planetary genocide into a scene and then not DO anything with it, just have it be an incidental beat that’s mentioned in passing. If you don’t want it to be a big deal in the story, then it seems crass to make it such a monstrous evil in the first place. Just make it something smaller-scale, something proportionate to the lack of impact it has on the story.
It just seems paradoxical to me — if you’ve got, A, a whole planetary population being invaded and subjected to ethnic cleansing, and B, a couple of people trying to win a race and make money, you’d expect that the bigger priority in the story would be A. It’s just one of those situations where you’re watching a story where the stakes are fairly low or not very interesting, and there’s a throwaway reference to something that’s a much bigger deal, and you wonder, “Hey, wait — why isn’t the story about that instead?” Why are we stuck watching the Doctor trudge through a desert trying to find where she parked her car when we could be watching her save an entire planet? I don’t mind a low-stakes story now and then, as long as it’s suitably character-driven, but if you want to tell a low-stakes story, it doesn’t help to include a throwaway mention of some really huge-stakes thing going on nearby that would be a lot more exciting to see a story about.
@38: Makes sense. I read an old story by Charles Sheffield recently which had the murder of a billion people on Earth as a recent event just to set up the action of the story – and I found it pretty hard to switch gears from a mass-murder to the main point of the story that Sheffield meant me to focus on.
I will confess I only watched the episode once (and enjoyed it a lot), but I thought the planetary-wide genocide was something that had happened long, long ago in the past. Granted, the Doctor has a time machine (now)… but I think she could be forgiven for not reacting more visibly to a past atrocity that is over and done. Maybe an expression of sorrow, but…? I’ll have to watch it again. I was too distracted the first time worrying that the answer to “What happened here? Where is everybody?” was going to turn out to be the TARDIS’ fault somehow in some timey-wimey way, after it exploded at the end of “Twice Upon a Time.” Glad they didn’t go that route. Steven Moffat’s tenure (when I started watching the show) has seriously skewed my approach to it… I gather his fascination with clever (sometimes really clever, sometimes not so) time paradoxes is an aberration over the franchise’s history, not the norm.
I do agree with Christopher, though, that characters should have consistent reactions. I get your distinction between in-show and from the writer’s viewpoint. The moment didn’t stand out for me as a defect, though.
@40/writermpoteet: No, my understanding was that the ethnic cleansing was happening on Angstrom’s planet in the present, which was why she was trying to win the race in order to get enough money to get them to safety. That was the difference between her and Epzo — he just wanted the money, but she was racing because she wanted to help her family.
And I agree, it would be nice to get away from Moffat’s habit of having everything ultimately be caused by the Doctor and the TARDIS or be the result of other groups/characters reacting to the Doctor or trying to stop him. However, the TARDIS was responsible for the planet’s location changing and for the whole Ghost Monument myth that drove the race, so there was an element of that.
I agree that the story didn’t focus much on Yas, but I’m not sure I agree that they’re “currently icing Yas out as the odd number in the companion set.” She has a clear connection with Ryan, both from their backstory as schoolmates and from their fairly easy and natural interactions together. After all, it’s Yas, not Graham, who waits for Ryan on the ladder, and who says she “always” will. I think we’re seeing Ryan and Graham build a relationship, but not in a way that ices Yas out–rather, we don’t need to see Yas and Ryan build one as explicitly because they started out in a better place.
I watched again last night, and it did sound to me as though while Angstron’s family was in current danger, the reference to cleansing of millions was in the past tense. This could at least be read in two different ways.
Okay, I just watched the episode again… and Ilin said that the prize for winning the race was that the winner and their entire clan would be transported to a “safe planet.” The implication is that planets where people can live in safety are rare in the Twelve Galaxies, thanks to the Stenza’s conquests. So the “cleansing” that happened on Angstrom’s planet is presumably fairly typical.
And I realize that what I was really thinking when Angstrom told the Doctor and the others about wanting to win to prize so she could find and rescue her family was that I would’ve expected the Doctor to offer her TARDIS to help save the family once she got it back — at least as a fallback in case she didn’t win the race. And I just sort of figured that, in the course of saving Angstrom’s family, the Doctor would end up thwarting the whole invasion, because that’s the way it usually works.
I also noticed that the first minute or so of the initial scene of Yaz and the Doctor on Epzo’s ship was shot in a single take, which was impressive. It looks like later parts of the scene may have been continuations of the same master shot, but they did insert some intercuts to give Yaz and the Doctor close-ups.
I noticed how annoyed the Doctor felt at being ignored by Ilin, and I wondered if that was an implicit consequence of the Doctor’s gender swap, that it’ll be harder for her to get pompous, self-important men to listen to her or take her seriously. Although it’s hard to tell — Ilin was pretty dismissive of the others too.
It struck me that the Acetylene Fields sequence had kind of a Hartnell-era feel to it — a weird phenomenon on a barren alien planet that the characters have to reason their way out of using a solution that involves teamwork and a little bit of a science lesson. The Remnants would’ve been pretty easy to do in the ’60s — just have stagehands dangle the sheets from wires or wave them from off-camera. Although the fire stunt would’ve had to be pre-filmed at Ealing Studios.
I hope the two winners actually got what they wanted. The racerunner didn’t exactly seem like an honorable facilitator.
I like the new TARDIS interior! The hourglass doodad on the control panel is a bit much though. Too familiar, it would have orked with Twelve’s but I think it clashes with the more alien look Thirteen’s is going for.
Here’s the thing about TARDIS console designs that look like they’re bashed together from random bits of antique tech: It’s plausible if the idea is that the Doctor has been repairing and tinkering with the console for centuries using whatever scraps of tech he could scrounge up from his travels through history. But once Moffat introduced the idea that the TARDIS could rebuild its own interior at will and the console room designs were just swappable “desktop themes,” it no longer made sense to make the console look that way. With this episode making it very explicit that the TARDIS rebuilt itself and that the console is brand new, its makeshift, low-tech appearance is reduced to a mere affectation.
By the way, the crystal arches framing the console are a callback to the design of the 8th Doctor’s console room. Although the console itself is more like the 9th/10th Doctor version, a circular disk divided into six sectors and lit from within, rather than the traditional hexagonal shape that was returned to in the Moffat era.
The assorted old tech on the console makes sense even if the Doctor didn’t build it themselves; the TARDIS knows the Doctor likes vintage stuff from Earth (see the clothes they wear), so it does itself up using old stuff from Earth.
Im not a Dr Who fan tho I watched the Capaldi series cos I like him as an actor – so I don’t have all the emotional attachment to the history of the franchise.
I agree – the interior of the new Tardis is too dark and seemed really cramped as well and very vague and handwavy with the details – an hourglass? how analog can you get?
The thing that bugged me most about this episode was the fact they were stranded on a desert planet for a day, a night and another day. The water was toxic and the only people who had any supplies were the two pilots……… and yet there was no discussion about food/water requirements? They marched on and on and on under three suns – so presumably fairly warm and no one was thirsty?
Maybe the Dr has some magic rat bars in her pockets, I dunno, but it should have at least been mentioned even in passing?
@47/MaGnUs: But it’s still just an affectation, and one I dislike. I grew up with the classic series where the console had proper buttons and switches and looked like a spaceship control panel. That’s the TARDIS aesthetic I know and prefer. The tendency ever since the ’96 movie to make this far-future alien technology look like a steampunk gadget or something thrown together from a junkpile is, to me, far too cutesy and affected. If I could believe it looked that way for a functional reason, that it was the result of centuries of clumsy, makeshift repairs, then at least I could live with it. Without that justification, it’s just annoying.
I mean, the rest of the new console room is just so alien and organic. It’s like a cross between a giant honeycomb and Richard Donner’s Krypton, with these asymmetrical crystalline pieces. Imagine if the whole console fit that alien aesthetic, with controls that looked organic and exotic. What we’ve got instead just looks incongruous and kitschy within that larger context. While the rest of the set is something very new and interesting, the console itself is just an inferior, self-conscious imitation of the Davies-era console. And I find that disappointing.
@44, The Doctor always had trouble getting people, not just pompous men, listen to him. He was pretty much the definition of suspicious person. And She’s no different.
As for the set, I think the companions are going to need flashlights to find their way around. I hate how dark and moody seems to be the default in SF design these days.
@48, yes, I was thinking the same thing about that desert planet! I’d have scrounged up a hat, somehow, if nothing else.
@50/roxana: True, but there’s a difference between not being agreed with and not even being acknowledged, or only grudgingly so. Past Doctors didn’t always convince people, but they were rarely treated as invisible. Troughton sometimes, yes, maybe McCoy occasionally, but usually not the other Doctors.
I didn’t find this week’s plot all that interesting, but I enjoyed the Doctor, and Graham, and the talk about teamwork.
@48/BRNZ: “They marched on and on and on under three suns – so presumably fairly warm and no one was thirsty?”
I don’t think it was warm. Nobody was sweating or taking off their coat, and there are deserts in temperate zones too.
@50/Roxana: “I hate how dark and moody seems to be the default in SF design these days.”
Me too. And the only colours are blue and orange. At least the Doctor wears a light-coloured coat and a rainbow stripe.
@52/CLB: I think Davison had a bit of that as well. So far, I haven’t noticed the Doctor being treated differently according to gender, I think the scene would have played out the same with a male Doctor.
@54/cap-mjb: I just think it’s a missed opportunity if they don’t at least touch on how the gender change would make things different, in terms of how others react to the Doctor even if she’s still the same. SF is a way to explore social issues, and an alien character who changes gender is an opportunity to explore gender roles and attitudes, the trans experience, etc. — if only by contrasting the alien’s casualness about it with humans’ hangups and taboos about it. I don’t expect them to make the whole show about that, but if they ignore it altogether and pretend it makes zero difference to any character the Doctor ever meets, that’s just dishonest, and a waste of potential.
It could be to the Doctor’s advantage, women are percieved as less threatening. Personally I would love to see the Doctor try to use her new feminine wiles.
@49 – Chris: It’s fine to have a personal preference, but the affectation was always there in the Doctor’s clothes, he chose to dress in old human clothing. And, having access to all of space and time, repairing the console with old Earth pieces makes no sense when he could actually get actual future or alien spaceship pieces. Repairing it with old Earth gadgets is still an affectation, both explanations are on the same logical footing, you just prefer one of them.
@57/MaGnUs: Yes, I already said that it’s about preference rather than logic. I said that explicitly. Why are you “explaining” to me the exact same thing I just said?
Your original argument was that it was “plausible” if he’s rebuilding it from found tech. Yes, you later admitted it was your preference, but I was addressing the original point: both explanations are equally plausible. But okay, let’s not beat a dead horse.
I didn’t “admit” a damn thing, and I resent the insinuation that I was lying before. You have no right to accuse me of that just because you missed my point. I was always talking about my preference; as I said, I just felt that having some trace of a plausible justification made it easier to accept something I disliked.
Please keep the tone of your comments/interactions civil; keep calm, etc., etc.
Chris: I am not accusing you of anything, nor attacking you. That has never been my attitude in these boards, much less towards you. Don’t take my words the wrong way, please.
@55: I think my take on it is that the Doctor is the Doctor and having breasts doesn’t make a difference. The Doctor usually muddles into situations with people that have no reason to respect or trust him but manages to stay in control by force of personality, so I’d hope that wouldn’t change any more than it being a young or old Doctor would be a major shift. When Star Trek introduced a female captain, for the most part she was treated the same way a male captain would be by the aliens they encountered. (The Kazon are the only exception I can think of, and even though only after a season and a half.) I think not making an issue of it is the best option.
And sorry to go back to this but @44: I’ve thought about the question for longer than I should, and come to the conclusion that the Doctor wasn’t really in any position to offer Angstrom help when she heard her story. At that point, she’s as much stranded there as Angstrom is, and helping her win the race and get help from Ilin was the best options. Saying “Well, if you don’t win and I get my TARDIS back, I’ll sort that for you” would have muddled it necessarily. If Ilin had left Angstrom behind, then when the TARDIS turned up, I’m sure the Doctor would have ushered her on board and offered to pick her family up and transport them all somewhere. (But probably not stick around and take on the whole Shenza fleet, at least not with unwilling passengers on board.) As it is, the situation didn’t get that far. As for the situation on Angstrom’s planet, she may have filed it away under things to look into later. It’s a time machine after all, so there’s no need to drag the others there with her in order to look into it immediately.
Exactly. The Doctor has a time machine. She can get back to this issue anytime. At the moment getting her unexpected companions safely home is more important. Good luck with that, Doctor.
I found the Davies era to be frequently cloying and addicted to stupidity. This peaked with the massively idiotic Adipose episode.
On top of that, Davies established the practice, continued under Moffat, of getting the Doctor into impossible situations and then ending them by having the Doctor shout about how scary and wonderful he is which scared the Big Bad of the Week away. As I said, addicted to stupid.
So far, I’ve found these episodes to be more like outlines for an episode to be written later. They have completely linear plots. The one the week after this episode has a villain with no obvious motive at all.
And please, for god’s sake, lay off the practice of using the sonic screwdriver as a magic wand.
@65/pjcamp: How is racism not an obvious motive?