Doctor Who TV Show • Page 27

Yeah I’m still loving this. Can’t wait to see how it concludes. Could go in a lot of directions.

 

I have no fucking clue how this gets finished in a single episode. Its just sensory overload.

 

I haven't watched anything past Jodie's first season, is it worth catching up? And is Flux a mini-series? I'm out of the loop

 

You need some backstory from Jodi’s second season for Flux to really connect, definitely. timeless child

 

The first was bland, but second was pretty decent.

 

This season has been spectacular. If they stick the landing next week, this is easily a top 3 season. All the characters have been great, the story is super fun, and Jodie has hit the high that she always could with better stories. It feels like it’s building to an amazing moment where she forgoes her former memories and has a great speech proclaiming she knows who she is despite the past and reaffirming she’s the Doctor similar to Tennant’s in Voyage of the Dammed.

 

I am sincerely glad people are enjoying this more than me and will withhold my judgement till next week, but historically Chibnall's ability to stick the landing... does not fill me with confidence

even it's a wash, at least I can say each Jodie season gave me one top-tier episode of the show (Demons of the Punjab, Villa Diodati and Village of the Angels)

 

so... 95% of the universe is still destroyed, but everyone's all happy at the end like nothing happened? The Doctor just abandons a little girl in 1901 but she can go back to the 60s and get Claire for some reason? what was literally the entirety of the Grand Serpent plot even fucking about?

I liked some of this, I really did. Swarm and Azure looked super cool and were hilariously camp all the way through. Bel and Vinder were very likable and hopefully become the new Paternoster Gang with Karvanista tagging along. it was probably Jodie's best performance overall on the show, especially that last conversation with Yaz and her acting as Time or whatever the fuck that thing was. but the whole story was so convoluted and confusing it makes Moffat's worst look straightforward. I legitimately have no idea what most of that was about - unclear stakes, no themes, no conclusions, just a bunch of stuff happening. I was entertained most of the way through, which is an improvement on the last two seasons, but boyyyyy am I ready for this era to be over (sorry, Jodie, you were great!)

 

Really enjoyed this. By far my favorite Jodi season, after I felt like season 11 was abysmal and 12 not much better. I think the contained story works really well for DW (if I’m not mistaken, it’s mostly how classic who went). For a finale, they stuck the landing a lot better than I felt they typically did in the Tennant/Smith/Capaldi eras - I prefer some of those episodes, but it’s just always been where the show is weakest IMO. Love that the resolution didn’t just involve waving the Sonic around and poof, problem gone.

if i have any complaints: the editing was horrible especially in the first half of the episode, and I wish Kate Stewart had more to do.

Maybe it had to do with having very low expectations, but overall i give this season an A- and I am excited for the trio of specials coming out to send Jodi off. Really hope they delve more into Yaz and the Doctor’s relationship in the remaining time they have left.

 

I was enjoying the Flux arc so much and then in typical form, Chibnall just totally falls on his face at the finish line.

- So most of our universe is still destroyed, right? I mean I'm sure it'll all be addressed and fixed in the coming episodes but STILL. The Doctor just showing up at the end to invite Dan along? WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO??
- Why and when was Azure hidden on earth in human form? What was she doing at that remote outpost or whatever? Who was she and her partner working for? Does it even matter? What were they monitoring??
- Remember when the Doctor had great moral dilemmas about the implications of committing mass genocide? In this very same arc no less??
- Could they not have used the Passenger to absorb the Flux WITHOUT having to trap the Daleks/Cybermen/Sontarans in its path?
- Everyone on Earth is just back to going out to quaint sightseeing tours like a day after the end of a massive hostile occupation and a race of dog aliens surrounding the planet with their ships?
- Okay, just gonna kill off the entire Lupari race off-screen and have the characters barely acknowledge it - all while still quipping at Karvanista's expense?
- What happened with the TARDIS being "sick" with its doors moving around??
- Incredibly relieved that Bel and Vinder aren't The Doctors parents but at the same time, they just kind of ended up being useless? They're likable and Tigmi is adorable though.
- Feels like Williamson got rushed out of the story. Almost comically so. Which is a shame because I really liked whenever he was on screen.

Jericho was great though, and the first original recurring character introduced in this era that I truly loved. So of course he dies. His death scene was brilliantly acted though.
But god, I cannot wait for RTD to come back and set this show back on track. Jodie deserved so much better than what she got with this run. How anyone ever thought handing the reins over to Chibnall was a good idea is well beyond me. I also low-key hope they just memory-hole this entire Division/forgotten regenerations thing. From the start it's felt like a really cheap, lazy twist to write into the show's canon and the Doctor's history. One forgotten regeneration was fine, great even, when it was The War Doctor. But this? The Doctor being a top operative for some shadowy paramilitary-is organization? Give me a breaaaaaak.

 

Flux to Classic Who style of storytelling is not really a 1:1 comparison. Classic was serialised, for sure, but generally just one story over however many episodes without a larger season arc. the pacing, especially in 60s Who, is also soooo slow compared to modern sensibilities, and it's both a positive and a negative.

for example, I'm watching the new animated restoration of Evil of the Daleks right now: this thing is 7 fucking parts long, nearly 3 hours, and yet it manages to make Jamie taking an obstacle course for 3 episodes absolutely thrilling. it works because the best Classic writers didn't just pad these episodes out with filler, they used all their time to realistically establish conflict and dramatic stakes, and even the supporting characters in a serial like this have fairly complex and subtle motivations, interests, reasons for doing what they're doing in any given moment

my point here is that Chibnall is *absolutely dreadful at all of that stuff*. give him 6 hours to tell a story and he jampacks it to the point of sensory overload with random information and leaves all the important stuff out. say: who the fuck is the Grand Serpent? why is he doing anything that he's doing this season and why does he accept defeat so meekly? for that matter why is Kate even here, introduced as leader of a human resistance that apparently just consists of her skulking in a tunnel? would the episode have lost anything if you just cut her out? would the *season* have lost anything if Bel and Vinder were cut out of it, apart from two actors who elevated these sketches of characters through some serious charisma?

all told this was an interesting experiment that, in many fundamental (and in fairness possibly pandemic-related) ways just didn't work as a story. if we have to compare it to Classic Who, the fair shout is 6's Trial of a Timelord season. it had a great concept (The Doctor on trial for his life), a clever way to integrate standalone adventures into the arc (they're evidence for the trial! brilliant!) and it fucked with canon in an insane but very memorable twist. that season was also an interesting, failed experiment, because the script editor quit and took the drafts and the great Robert Holmes died before finishing the final episode so it kind of just peters out to... a weird non-ending. Flux does that too but doesn't have an excuse other than... Chibnall genuinely, bafflingly doesn't know how to end stories, or establish motive or build drama in the fundamental ways that a scriptwriter should. I truly think of this season like a bizarre fever dream fanfic a teenage fan would come up with that they never refined into actual working order for television

 

The end wasn’t as strong as I hoped, but still had a lot of great stuff and I’m hoping some of the open questions will be addressed in the specials. My big ones are the state of the universe after the initial flux; the Doctor allowing the destruction of the Daleks, Sontarans, and Cybers which with the Daleks already returning for the New Years special should be addressed; the issues with the TARDIS in the first few episodes, which may also be addressed in the New Years Special based on the title card background but that’s pure speculation; and the Grand Serpent who at this point if he does not return should have been cut for time because he didn’t add or do much and that time could have been better spent on other things.

Overall still a great season and I think we’re in for a crazy good regeneration special next year based on her reckoning with time.

 

I seriously could not care less about all the unresolved plot lines, this season is Chibnall swinging for the fences in a way neither RTD or Moffat ever did and even though it's far from perfect it's exciting, fun, and most important of all...it just feels like Doctor Who, whereas his previous two seasons did not.

 

That sums up Chibnall's entire tenure as show runner, really.

 

Boy did I dislike that ending. Serpent was so frickin pointless.

 

he can kill people with only his mind and time travel but gives up immediately when two guns are pointed at him. makes sense

yeah... I dunno about this one either. I think RTD and Moffat’s boldest ideas when actually experimenting with the structure of the show (Midnight, Turn Left, Heaven Sent, Listen, Extremis to name a few) were much more of a swing than anything here. they also managed to be more generally coherent and fleshed-out in 45-55 minutes than this season managed in 360, but different strokes and all that

 

Eh, those are all examples of great episodes (each better than anything during Chib's run) but Chibnall went full modern-serialized with the show which is a much bigger risk than doing a one-off experimental episode per season. Regardless of its quality it's a hugely ambitious move, which I really appreciate.

 

Huge anticlimax to just go "what are we forgetting? oh right, THAT guy" and then have him unceremoniously prodded onto a floating rock by a character who did basically nothing the whole episode and another who served no real purpose the entire series lol.

To be fair, I was under the impression that his ability to time travel was dependent on Sontaran tech, but I could be wrong. Still, the ease with which he gave up was jarring.

And as far as Chibnall goes, him swinging for the fences is exactly the problem imo. He's writing beyond his abilities (which, lets be honest, are pretty limited to begin with) and sacrificing meaningful, coherent storytelling for over-stuffed, epic-scale Things Happening.

I said this during the back end of Moffat's era too but I really just want more smaller, contained single-episode monster of the week stories than sweeping epics with enormous stakes. I've been re-watching the series from the start (well, from the Ninth Doctor anyway) and its making me year for simpler times haha

 

That's exactly what he was trying to do with his first two series. I would definitely choose Flux over the bland nothingness of Series 11 and (most of) Series 12. It's no Moffat or RTD but at the very least it's fun and exciting Doctor Who.

 

honestly it might have been Sontaran tech I suppose. I was under the assumption he had his own time travel because he got from Vinder's time (which feels like the far future, kinda maybe?) to 60s Earth. who knows? I'm pretty certain Chibnall doesn't lol

and yeah, I'm all for smaller-stakes DW when it's done well. Capaldi era was a goldmine for genre stories that were actually great character development beneath the surface (stuff like Listen, Mummy and Flatline especially). and not once did the universe end, reality reboot or Gallifrey get destroyed in his time! for me that really was the golden era of this show

 

That's definitely a reason why Capaldi's run is my favorite. Moffat was also really good at writing very character driven stories where the sci-fi was just set dressing really.

 

Capaldi’s era is my favorite because of how lean most episodes are. I think the weak-point for those seasons is in the finales, which Moffat always struggled to land imo. Clara is also my favorite companion, and the season with Bill is also great. Missy is the best iteration of the Master as well, although i know that’s a minority opinion.

 

Just watched the final Flux episode (the fact that it took a week says it all). It was ok but the only episode I truly enjoyed was the angels episode.

I’ve said it before in this thread but for me Doctor Who is about family - it was the programme that all my family came together on a Saturday to watch (I have three siblings so quite an achievement).

This was far too complicated for family viewing. How would my kids follow it? (I’d be interested to know if anyone has watched this with 8-10 year olds and what they thought.) How would my mum with MS that impacts her brain be able to follow the jumpy stories? My wife who I introduced to Doctor Who and has enjoyed previous series was fairly disengaged. Far too many plot lines. Rather than jamming so much into 6 hours they could have had a simpler story that didn’t jump around as much and would have been more coherent and ended up where this ended up. Some great points further up in this thread.

Jodie still great but this was a mess. I much preferred the last series.

 

I'm so torn on it. On one hand, it's the most the show has felt like Doctor Who since the start of Jodie's run, in my book, anyway. And there was lots of things I *did* like and it felt like it was all moving in a direction that I enjoyed, while introducing new characters I wanted to see more of rather than wishing they'd get off screen already.

On the other, it was still an overly-ambitious exercise in excess that resolved (or rather, didn't resolve in a lot of ways) in a barely coherent mess. People gave RTD shit for going too big with his final run of episodes and Moffat got criticized for going too big with several episode/story arcs, but man, at least they all still made sense.

I will say, I am willing to cut Chibnall some slack for how quickly and easily the Grand Serpent was shoved out of the story because it does feel like they're intentionally telegraphing that he'll come back in a later episode.

 

NYD episode was pretty good! Some exciting developments!!!!!