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Reviews
Doctor Who: Spyfall: Part One (2020)
Continued flaws but best Chibnall so far
The BBC's BME ticks in boxes are in danger of running out of ink as there is hardly a white male face to be seen in this episode, apart from Stephen Fry and the odd beta male. But maybe my wokedar is too sensitive having been bashed over the head every episode last season.
The episode rips along at a great pace with much energy and has plenty of suspense and intrigue, and at last we have a pre-credit sequence. It only falls a bit flat with an amateurly constructed bike chase. The story (seemingly about an invasion of interdimensional aliens) is fun and full despite the occasional but ever-present clunky dialogue, and the ending is a great surprise. The music is at times very good and as usual the cinematography is excellent.
Solid turns by Stephen Fry (in usual pompous mode), Lenny Henry and especially Sacha Dhawan. As for the bloated team of companions Mandip Gill alas is as wooden as ever, yet Tosin Cole has upped his game from last season with a more naturalistic delivery and Bradley Walsh remains the best of the bunch.
The biggest problem (and I no longer believe it's down to subpar script) is Whittaker's continued CBBC delivery which has not improved from last season. She is a great actor and I fail to understand why she insists in portraying The Doctor as an infant school teacher, with a distinct lack of authority or any air of mystery, exemplified by too many rising intonations and vacant expressions. She remains a cold presence and still shares little chemistry with her co-stars.
Nevertheless, best Chibnall ep so far, yet would still be considered an average Matt Smith offering.
Doctor Who: Resolution (2019)
Much improved but suffers from the usual flaws
Chibnal continues to preach from his white male middle-class podium. He just can't help himself - mixed race pairings, a white guy telling us he has a boyfriend when there was absolutely no need, another bad-dad trope, and there's even a subtle swipe at Brexit. The moralising this season is so relentless it is painful, and doubtless having the opposite effect of its intent.
On the plus side the story is good and well paced eventhough the dialogue is left hanging - not helped by some very wooden delivery at times. As usual Bradley Walsh is the best thing in it. Ryan is well played and has a central role, Jasmin may as well not have been there, but Jodey Walsh delivers her best performance to date - improved but still way off Smith/Tenant.
Cinematography and music are top notch again and the whole episode is well directed. All we need for season 12 is for Chibnal to get off his arrogant high horse and Whittaker to move from acting less like a primary school teacher to more of a headmistress. Probably a bridge too far.
Doctor Who: It Takes You Away (2018)
The best of a poor series with Whittaker delivering her most convincing performance
Nearing the end of a truly disappointing under-scripted, overacted and patronising season we have finally got an episode worthy of Doctor Who.
This is the first story that doesn't smash you over the head with a PC bat (if you don't count the central character being a blind girl - maybe you should count that) and the story is clever, at times moving as it is dark. We have a parallel universe, an ominous nether world and a talking frog - great stuff. So we can forgive the daft flesh-eating giant moths that looked like they were made by a reception class.
There is a genuinely touching side story with Graham, and Bradley Walsh continues to pleasantly surprise us with his subtle delivery and he remains the standout character of the season. Whittaker, not known for her subtlety thus far, gives her most rounded performance to date. Her delivery is still at times too CBeebies but there are certainly moments of command and better timing, with bouts of sternness defused by a witty aside in classic Doctor Who fashion. And I'm happy to report there are no over-the-top physical gestures or inane mugging.
Let's not be clouded by nostalgia. I watched some old Tenant episodes recently and the stories and ropey aliens were at times dreadful - but even with a bad episode Tenant would pull it round with his charisma and delivery. Whittaker doesn't have the natural screen-presence of Smith or Tenant so she lives and dies by the quality of the writing, which has been on the whole wince-inducing this season. This episode though, has suggested that with a decent story and script, Whittaker has the talent to produce a Doctor we just may end up punching the air for.
Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (2018)
Decent story, bad script, excruciating acting
I still can't decide whether it's Jodie Whittaker's CBeebies take on the character or the excruciating dialogue she has to recite which makes this season so bad. Either way, this is now painful TV. Add that to the relentless 101 lessons in racism and sexism "women really did have it tough in the middle ages!" and my embarrassment in being a Doctor Who fan is now complete.
This episode is actually a pretty good story, set in the superstitious middle ages where witch-hunts clash with mud-aliens of genuinely interesting genesis. Alan Cumming's light-hearted take on an improbably hands-on witch-finding King James I is fun and engaging and as you'd expect from a classy actor, Bradley Walsh's understated Graham is as ever watchable, and guest star Siobhan Finnerhan does a good job as the paranoid antagonist. And that's it. Characters Ryan and Jasmin are dull but fine I guess, but I'm afraid Whittaker, who has the unenviable task of carrying the show, simply doesn't deliver the nuances required of her character. Authority, light and dark, exceptional knowing and occasional arrogance - virtually none of these traits come through in her performance. All we get are over-exaggerated movements, facial expressions and verbal intonations that make Horrible Histories look subtle.
I've had enough.
Doctor Who: Kerblam! (2018)
Finally, Whittaker hints at her northern steel
Prior to this episode, I'd virtually arrived at the give up stage - so disappointed I've been with the writing and Jodie Whitaker's primary school teacher take on the character. However with 'Kerblam', I've been given a slight energy boost.
The story, alas in its continuing trend of moralising from the producers, is still an engaging, futuristic and unashamedly subversive take on the Amazon machine. It borrows fairly heavily in feel from the early Matt Smith episode 'The Beast Below', it is a linear affair with a reasonable twist (let down only by a flat ending - again) and with a few nice nods to previous seasons, overall this would be considered a decent but lower-end Tenant or Smith offering.
More significantly, Jodie Whittaker gives her best performance to date - and finally we get to see more of the potential she has to offer. Whilst we are still subjected to the occasional-but-still-so-annoying vacant expression and rising intonation, Whittaker this time shows us a bit of steel and authority and even hints of the ominous, so largely missing from her performances to date. If she carries along in that vein, then we could have the makings of something good.
Fingers crossed.
Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (2018)
The Doctor has lost her spark and her dark
Here we have a Quantum Leap-lite episode and a bit of Back To The Future as Yasmine meets her 19 year old grandmother in 1947 separatist India. It's actually quite a nice story, but once again this season, the writers get on their preachy high horse and give us a lesson in political correctness. But this time they've gone full liberal by showing us that Indian's can be racist too. Oh my. At some point though, the producers must have realised that the story was feeling a little similar to the previous racist-outing episode 'Rosa' and not quite Doctor Who-y; so what do they do? They throw some teleporting sabre-toothed aliens into the mix which are literally pointless - adding zero consequence to the plot.
In one interview, chief writer Chris Chibnall confidently announced that there would be no running thread to this season like 'the crack in time'; that's ok I guess but the problem with relying on stand-alone episodes is that every one of them needs to seriously deliver - in story, script and characterisation - there is no margin for bland. We forgave the odd flat Matt Smith episode (which was seldom) because the next small reveal of who was River Song was always around the corner. We didn't mind the odd cheap rubber-suited alien in David Tenant's time because the ongoing development of Rose and her ominous destiny was captivating. None of that here, and worst of all every episode (perhaps with the expectation of the first) has been decidedly underwhelming - nothing twisty-turny, nothing scary and certainly nothing epic.
What Tenant and Smith did so well, and to a slightly lesser extent Ecclestone and Capaldi (can't speak a great deal for the pre-reboot actors) was to jolly around and crack-wise saying lots of clever things, but when required, they'd switch to dead serious, cold-eyed and dark - a darkness you feared yet loved but didn't want to delve. The Doctor is dark because she is a complex, deeply troubled loner. (S)he's someone who destroyed a living planet, punished evil aliens by damning them to a time-looped eternity, picked up and dumped companions with abandon when no longer entertained or to avoid rejection, or lost the ones (s)he loved to time or unreachable parallel universes. The Doctor is exceptionally clever, always several steps ahead of us yet often arrogant, needing to be brought down to earth by her inferiors. She is painfully aware of the transitory nature of her friendships, knowing that she will outlive them all, yet she hides the pain by being tremendous fun to be with. But she is borderline clinically psychopathic.
Alas, Jodie Whittaker with her liberal, primary school teacher delivery has given us little to none of these nuances thus far. I read that there has been a 30% audience drop-off to date; I'm keeping the faith for now but I'm not sure for how long.
Doctor Who: The Tsuranga Conundrum (2018)
Doctor Who's downward spiral continues
Here we have a cute-Alien remake, with dull characters and awful writing and an episode which is a new low for this disappointing season. So many aspects need to change if the BBC wants to keep its flagship.
As a fan of the re-boot I found something to love about every Doctor (maybe except for Capaldi's misery guts first season) but try as I might here, I simply cannot. It's a sorry state when you find that the most likeable character is a game show host; the other supporting characters aren't bad, they're just dull. Having three assistants is probably too many to allow sufficient interplay development, but the show doesn't revolve around the support characters, it's all about the Doctor.
Alas Jodie Whittaker, underacting her way superbly in Broadchurch season 1, plays the Doctor as a mix between a thigh-slapping pantomime Peter Pan and a nursery school teacher. She gives the character no command, no gravitas and crucially, no light and dark. Her face seems to be fixed on the gormless, and her questions when figuring stuff out should sound rhetorical and not like she's actually asking for a comment on quantum physics, from a teenager. And as for the constant galumphing around and over-exaggerated sonic gestures, it's just all so wrong.
Even worse, Whittaker and the cast are completely let down by the writing. Simplistic dialogue and storylines and overly PC, there's nothing so far that has felt universe-threatening, virtually no clever twists the Doctor saw coming which we didn't, and no running thread (how I miss River Song, the crack in time, Bad Wolf) - they could have even made a thing about the Doctor being a woman for the first time after 1000s of years, maybe there being a universal or existential reason for it that she has to figure out. Essentially, there's nothing that makes this season feel epic. The producers have even dispensed with the pre-credit sequence which felt cinematic and set the stories up wonderfully, instead going straight to the titles and a 1980's re-hashed theme and look - and not even a TARDIS being bucketed about in worm hole. In fact, 5 episodes in, the TARDIS has hardly featured at all.
I applauded the BBC sweeping the decks - new blood, a female Doctor and new writers - that's all well and good, but they need to remember what made the show great in the first place.