Wha…
I don’t know how to begin this review, because I truly am in two minds about this episode. On the one hand it was an utterly pointless waste of my time that I want to bill the BBC for to get my money back. On the other it was a whimsical piece of dada-ism in film making that deserves some kind of award.
I want to love Doctor Who. It’s important you know this. I want to be screaming from the rooftops about how brilliant it is. I want to argue with people that they are truly missing something of real importance by not watching it. Then I’m confronted with an episode like this. An episode where, after watching it, all you can do is ask questions that you know there isn’t going to be an answer to.
What was the Doctor and team Tardis looking for in the scrap pile? Why the hell was there a mine hidden in a pile of otherwise useless junk? Who called the medical transport?
But no time for that… Suddenly the ship is attacked by a space gremlin! and OH NO! It eats metal and feeds off energy! We’ve never seen that before… Oh wait I’ve lost count of how many times that nonsense has been tried! For the sake of, the Transformers Cartoon did this in the 1984 and it was a long long way from original. It’s right up there with the “What if it’s the MAN that becomes pregnant?” cliche. And will you look at that. Whats more he’s not ready to be a single parent, oh the tragedy! Will he keep the child, or give it up for adoption?
Here’s a hint, whichever one is the most cliched, and the most cowardly from a writers perspective. (I don’t want to belittle real life single parents that feel they can’t take care of their child and forced to give them up to adoption, but this pat solution is pointless) Speaking off we also have the pilot that’s suffering from a degenerative condition and their brother that they lie to because they want to maintain their perfect image. Whoopee bloody doo!
These are all ideas that have been done by Red Dwarf, back in the 90’s. And back then they were a bad joke! The Dwarf boys were laughing that it was old hat two decades ago! Now what is meant to be the premier Sci-Fi show of the era, the trend setter that has redefined Science Fiction for more than fifty years, does this? You can’t make it up. Is this supposed to be so retro that it’s new or something? Is it supposed to be a new take on the old ideas? Because believe me its really neither.
Oh, the monster just wants to feed? Wow. It’s not trying to hurt anyone, it’s just doing what comes naturally? Well thats alright then. Please wrap up everything in a nice bow. Those questions that were never answered, the plot macguffins that got this whole thing going? The writer’s forgotten about them so it doesn’t matter does it?
I want to be a nice guy here. I want to to go into detail, point out how its actually very clever and you need to really think about what you saw. But the more I process this mess of a script the worse it seems to get. The creature, let’s call it the Stitch Porg (from Lilo and Stitch fame and “cute” marketing), is utterly unremarkable. The pregnant man plot does nothing that hasn’t been done million times before and the sick pilot was unimaginative, with a pat ending we’ve seen a thousand times before.
Repetitive I know, but it’s the only way to drive home the point. This wasn’t even remotely original, interesting or engrossing. They didn’t even try to subvert the tropes. Just ticked every box along the way they possibly could. Imagine how much better it would have been if… The brother died instead of the pilot? The Pregnant man tearfully brakes down, saying that as much as he want’s to keep the child he just can’t and has to give it up? The young medical technician proved to be completely useless and it was up to Yaz to take control with her police training? These still wouldn’t be new takes, but it would be dramatic. It would be interesting!
I’m going to try and focus on the good for a moment. Character development. That’s the good that’s been coming out of the season so far. With the notable exception of Yaz we’ve had some good development of the Characters. The relationship between Ryan and Graham is interesting. Graham is struggling to be a grandfather, a father, even a friend to Ryan and Ryan can’t stop judging his actual father. So much so that he can’t see what Graham is offering. Its a touching tale and between them Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole are acting their hearts out. It’s just a shame you know Chibnall’s going to chose the most cliched solution possible.
If this was a Joss Whedon story one of them, probably Graham, would die. If this was Moffat writing both would die and the Doctor would do something clever and resurrect them both. Now these aren’t perfect solutions, and as you can tell both those writers have played that card a little too often but it’s still something. As it is I’m not even going to try and guess. Not because I don’t have a clue, but because consistently I’ve had better ideas for the episodes than what we’ve got.
For example this time around I had the impression that the Doctor and Team Tardis were going to have amnesia at the beginning and we’d cold open in the ship already. Skipping the whole introduction with the mine and jumping into the adventure not knowing if we could trust the medical staff, or if there was something bigger going on!
That extra dimension alone would have been interesting, would have built tension and solved so many issues. Not all of them, certainly, but at least some! It would have also given them more time at the end to tie things up, such as did they get back to the TARDIS? Did they? (well yes, we saw the trailer for the next episode but you don’t establish a conflict in your story only to not address it). When some idiot, like me, can improve on what the professionals are doing I worry.
The worst crime of all is that this episode was filler. The sort of episode that is written to pad out the season. The season is only ten episodes long! This is not something you should pad out. You want to squeeze every last moment out of such a short time, not just tick over episode after episode.
I’m going to start work on a mid-season overview, in which I’m going to go into some detail about my feeling on the season as a whole so far but, without spoiling anything, this episode was the last chance to really impress me. To really pull out all the stops and not pull punches. It failed miserably.
The kid gloves are off now Chibnall. I gave you an opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong. To show that you are actually a good and skilled writer. I’ve tried to be fair, but that’s over with now. Enough questions. Time for real answers. You want to be mediocre, not on my watch and certainly not with my Doctor!
4 out of 13
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