Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos - Review

Earlier this week, I started thinking about how Series 11 had been going, and realised that, though some early episodes were decidedly mediocre, we hadn’t had a completely awful episode.

Jinxed it, didn’t I?

Let’s start with what I liked:

• “Yippee ki-yay, robots!”

• The René Magritte-esque exterior of the building 

And then they got inside it, and it looked like a Welsh power station.

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (I'm going to start spelling that wrong in a bit) is a shambles of an episode, executed with the sub-Stormtrooper precision of the robots who shoot each other in a scene shockingly on par with the barely first draft quality of this entire episode’s illogic. Everything makes you ask: why? Why would you set up the planet’s mind-altering field and then have it amount to giving the Doctor a bit of a headache? Why is it relevant that 3407 years have passed when all of this could have been achieved in six months? Why do they keep putting things on their faces this series?

If there’s anything that comes close to working here, it’s Graham’s desire for revenge against Tim Shaw. There is an idea in there for a way to close his character arc about grieving. But the episode almost completely avoids drawing any conflict out of this. The Doctor considers stopping him, then... just doesn’t. Graham gets the chance to kill Tim, then... just doesn’t. It’s all a load of nothing.

‘Nothing’ is also a fair description of the amount of development Ryan, Yaz or the Doctor get in The Wandering Around of Ranskoor Av Kolos, and of the depth of Mark Addy’s character, who might as well have remembered his name as Commander Exposition. A better script could have done something interesting with the Ux, exploring them as religious fanatics manipulated into extremism, but again this episode can’t even begin to do anything interesting because it doesn’t get past the level of basic competence; it’s utterly baffling that they start worshipping Tim so quickly and then, after 3407 years, are persuaded to stop so easily.

Perhaps on a side note, something that’s been irritating me this series is how many alien races are identical to humans, or in the Ux’s case, humans with squiggles on their faces, as if prosthetics haven’t moved on since the first few seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It makes the universe a lot less exciting.

Meanwhile, Tim Shaw has been stripped of all the cultural specificity he had in The Woman Who Fell to Earth in favour of being a cape-swishing supervillain screaming for revenge. He worked quite well in that first episode, but doesn’t have the gravitas to be a finale big bad. Compare the incredible appearance of the Dalek army in Bad Wolf or Missy’s reveal in Dark Water to the complete shrug that is the return of Tim, which boldly assumes everyone will recognise his generically evil voice and mask (surely what we remember about him was the face of teeth, but no, we get the mask).

And that lack of gravitas is the problem with The Battle of Rather Have Colonoscopy as a whole – with no tension, it’s utterly boring. Not what you want from a finale. In this respect, it’s possibly the worst final episode of post-2005 Doctor Who; while some of Moffat’s made as little sense, at least they felt big, and had moments that kept you halfway to the front of your seat, if not at the edge. Even The Name of the Doctor had the John Hurt reveal. Here, Chibnall seems averse to making us give a shit about anything. The Doctor’s task in the climax of this, the final episode of the series, is to put some planets that are already dead back in their orbits. Why?

Chris Chibnall confuses me. Sometimes he’s really on it – Broadchurch Series 1 and 3, for example, and there were some good decisions made in the run-up to this series, not least the casting of Jodie Whittaker and excellent choices of guest writers. But sometimes, he does Broadchurch Series 2, or Camelot, or this piece of P’ting shit. Perhaps he’s a worse writer under pressure – I’ve heard that Broadchurch Series 2 was rushed into production by the BBC, and that he struggled with being thrown into the showrunner role on Camelot – in which case, this may not be the job for him.

The BBC announced shortly after the episode finished broadcasting that Series 12 won’t be coming next year, but in early 2020. That’s a well timed decision, as after such a dire finale, it’s difficult to be eager for more. But it also might be a good decision; let’s hope the extra time allows Chibnall to do at least second drafts this time round.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. It Takes You Away
3. Kerblam!
4. Demons of the Punjab
5. The Witchfinders
6. Arachnids in the UK
7. The Tsuranga Conundrum
8. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
9. The Ghost Monument
10. The Bottle of Rick Astley's Cum

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Doctor Who: It Takes You Away - Review

I’ll put my cards on the table right away and say I love it when Doctor Who goes full-on ‘frog universe’ level weird. This was especially enjoyable in Ed Hime’s It Takes You Away as it came as a surprise, at the tail end of a series where episodes have tended to, for better or worse, do what it says on the tin.

This episode’s trailer, as unfortunately vague as all the Series 11 marketing, pitched it as standard ‘cabin in the woods’ horror fare, a trope which is worn out in horror films that are for an adult audience and therefore allowed to be actually scary and which I wasn’t particularly enthused to see a toned-down Doctor Who take on. But it turns out there’s a whole lot more going on inside this tin.

It’s an episode built around turns that take the story in completely different directions – from that cabin the woods we’re taken to a hellish cavern more delightfully alien and grotesque than anywhere we’ve been this series, and from there to a whole different universe, before culminating in a void with a frog on a chair. At any point in this plot, there’s no way you could predict where it’ll be in ten minutes’ time.

And yet, it all flows so well, due to the very sharp focus in its character stories. It’s a style reminiscent of Steven Moffat’s Who at its best – plots which similarly ran off on unexpected tangents with big sci-fi concepts but which were unified by their solid character focus. I say ‘at its best’ because it’s an approach that went wrong for Moffat as often as it worked. Here it works; with the missing father, the dead mother, the return of Grace, and the unspoken issue of Ryan’s father, this is an episode about absent family members, and that’s a thread that carries us through the surreality, like the string the Doctor uses as a guide through the caverns. Graham’s scenes with ‘Grace’ are heartfelt, and pairing Ryan up with another abandoned child works well to reflect his own issues.

There is a hint of Chibnall’s style too, in that stories this season have tended towards the procedural solving of mysteries, and the red herring with the ‘monster’ is a perfect example of that. It’s nicely worked into the plot – set up but you don’t see it coming – while also tying into that deeper theme. But it also leads into what’s missing from the conclusion: Erik is forgiven for his poor treatment of Hanne very quickly, and it’s a shame he never gets any dialogue with Ryan, who presumably has some harsh words to say to a runaway father; a confrontation between the two seems like a necessary beat towards the end but it’s skipped over.

While it’s Ryan and Graham’s story, this is also a great episode to show off Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, perhaps largely because the climax is a show of compassion from her towards the Solitract rather than a confrontation, which plays to her strengths. That said, this is, I think, the first episode in which this Doctor has been put at odds with a companion, and both Whittaker and Bradley Walsh really shine in their argument outside the portal. If the next episode actually wants to feel like a series finale, though, this Doctor might actually have to confront some villains for once, so we’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile, Yaz is sidelined as usual, but at least her approach to Hanne feels like a solid and not superficial use of her police trainee backstory, with the additional purpose of highlighting Ryan’s awkwardness.

And then we have a universe in the body of a frog. A frog universe! That’s wonderfully ‘only Doctor Who would do this’ in its combination of the everyday and the enormous. And no, I don’t care that the animatronic is a bit shit.

It Takes You Away is the biggest surprise of Series 11, as well as the boldest episode with the possible exception of Rosa, and all the better for it. While Rosa felt like Chris Chibnall’s approach to Who but done really well, It Takes You Away brings to mind qualities some of the show’s best writers of past – the emotional resonance of a Russell T Davies script, the thrillingly pivoting plots of Moffat, and a bonkers ending that Douglas Adams would be proud of. It’s also quite Neil Gaiman-esque in its big sci-fantasy idea with an emotional punch – a god looking for a friend. What I’m saying is, Ed Hime can come back next series, please.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. It Takes You Away
3. Kerblam!
4. Demons of the Punjab
5. The Witchfinders
6. Arachnids in the UK
7. The Tsuranga Conundrum
8. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
9. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: The Witchfinders - Review

One thing I’m enjoying about Series 11 is the variety of places on Earth we’re visiting. Russell T Davies’ Who was London-centric and Moffat tended towards geographical vagueness, but so far this year we’ve been to Sheffield, Alabama, the Punjab, and now Lancashire, with the specificity making each of these diverse settings feel more tangible. This is a particularly exciting one for me, because Pendle Hill isn’t far from where I grew up.

Based on this series’ sensitive treatment of history and culture so far, then, and given writer Joy Wilkinson is a Lancastrian too, they were inevitably going to treat my county with respect and not come up with a town name that sounds like a medieval sewage dump.

So the Doctor and friends land in Bilehurst Cragg... oh... ah, well... and soon find themselves embroiled in the Pendle witch trials. Adventure ensues.

My main impression of The Witchfinders is the same simple point that summed up Kerblam! – it begins with a concept that’s thoroughly well suited for Doctor Who and tells that story well. Every character has something to do, there’s clear plotting, a clear theme (the witchfinders as bullies of women) and a clear tone (Hammer-esque camp, spooky horror). All this allows it to flow in a pleasant way that makes for one of the most rewatchable episodes of the series. This level of basic competence perhaps shouldn’t be remarkable, but given four out of the first five episodes of this series were irritatingly messy, it does feel remarkable how much it’s raised its game since Chris Chibnall passed the baton to his team of guest writers.

A few aspects elevate the episode above basic competency, though, and the first is the most brilliant piece of Doctor Who guest casting since Kylie Minogue played a waitress on the Titanic. The role of King James I (VI to the Scots) must have looked odd on the page, not particularly necessary to the plot and with some rather dramatic dialogue that could easily make for the most cringeworthy guest character since James Corden played the Doctor's mate James Corden.  But the invincible Boris from GoldenEye more than pulls it off, treating every scene with the same flamboyant sense of fun with which he pissed Chibnall off by being the only person to leak a single detail about this series’ plots. Every scene with him is brilliant, right down to the way he camply flaps his cape when sitting down in a huff. I’m no monarchist, but King James is now a queer icon. 

The other major strength of The Witchfinders is its treatment of gender. No episodes so far have really shown Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor being treated differently because she’s now a woman, which may have been wise to start with so as to let her cement herself in any doubters’ minds that she is the same Doctor we’ve known for twelve previous incarnations. But the show had to address this issue at some point or another, and there may not be a more appropriate story with which to do so than this one: it’s about a historical atrocity committed specifically against women, which was long enough ago that the Doctor almost becoming a victim of it can be treated with some levity rather than feeling distasteful, but which allows for some nevertheless relevant dialogue about misogyny. James’s patronising attitude towards the Doctor and declaration that “the general can’t be a woman” before being proved otherwise seems to me a metatextual comment on the backlash to Whittaker’s casting, another aspect of this episode that could have been clunky as hell but is judged with enough subtlety and sits right within the episode’s wider themes. 

It definitely helps that The Witchfinders has a female writer. Indeed, letting a Lancastrian woman do an episode about the Pendle witch trials shows off a major strength of Series 11 – guest writers have been given lease to write stories reflective of their own experiences and culture, with the consequence that Rosa, Demons of the Punjab and this have all felt like they have something to say, in a way that individual episodes of Moffat’s Who much less frequently did. It makes me excited to see whether the same team will stick around for the next series or whether Chibnall will bring on even more diverse recruits.

Female director, too, for those of you counting, and I like what Sallie Aprahamian did here. The finale could have been bland and exposition-heavy, but feels like a proper Hammer movie showdown, visually punchy, while the desaturated brown and green colour palette makes for a nice rural horror atmosphere. Every episode this year has had a distinct and cinematic look, another strength of Series 11; the bit of Wales that played a Lancashire forest this week probably isn’t far from the bit of Wales that played India two weeks ago, but through considered grading and sound design, they’ve both felt like Lancashire and India respectively.

That said, does the Doctor’s trial scene feel oddly put together to anyone else? The reliance on close-ups means that the companions and James have to stay on the same spot, which is weirdly static, and that the geography is unclear. And if you don’t see what I mean by that, try drawing a map of where all the action in that scene takes place. I bet you struggle.

But anyway, another very strong episode all around. And let’s not forget Graham in the big hat. Laughed every time I saw it.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. Kerblam!
3. Demons of the Punjab
4. The Witchfinders
5. Arachnids in the UK
6. The Tsuranga Conundrum
7. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
8. The Ghost Monument

(Though I'm starting to wish I could be bothered to work out how to make the list say Kerblam!, Demons, and Witchfinders are all joint second. They're very close.)

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Doctor Who: Kerblam! - Review

A lot of the people on my Facebook and Twitter feeds who haven’t been enjoying Series 11 seemed to cheer up this Sunday, as they actually really liked Kerblam! As someone who's been reasonably positive about the series so far, I agree with them.

It’s interesting how even those bores whinging about Rosa and Demons of the Punjab adding ‘social justice’ messages into Doctor Who as if that’s a bad thing have shut up this week, given that this is just as political an episode, and that’s possibly because its contemporary commentary is weaved in with as fast-paced, action-packed and witty a sci-fi adventure as anyone could want from Doctor Who, in a way reminiscent of the Russell T Davies era (and indeed Oxygen from Series 10, with which this would make a good double bill).

You could go through a checklist of everything you’d expect to see in one of those beloved RTD episodes and Kerblam! has them all. Great monsters, tick. Sinister subversion of everyday thing, tick – not gonna stop me popping all the bubble wrap I get, though. Great guest cast, tick – I wasn’t sure about Lee Mack being in Who but the role is perfect for him. Sense of humour, tick – in fact, the most laughs of any episode in Series 11 so far. I loved Twirly the self-doubting delivery bot, and the return of the fez. Still cool.

And the fact that it’s about a big company with a bigger conspiracy literally underneath it is very RTD, isn’t it? That conspiracy plot plays out perfectly thanks to an incredibly well constructed script from Who newcomer Pete McTighe – twisting without being convoluted. It’s one that rewards second viewing to appreciate how its pieces fit together – a contrast to the mucky plotting of the four Chris Chibnall-penned episodes, where second viewing reveals how they don’t. The only jarring moment is Charlie’s unexplained decision to run into a field of bombs and let himself be killed.

Oh, and the presence of a ‘panelled alcove’ with the sole purpose of being hidden in, but maybe all corporate HQs in the future have those.

It also nails the job of giving all four leads something to do that's actually relevant to their characteristics, justifying the three-companion dynamic more than other episodes have managed to; Ryan's dyspraxia comes into play and we see him overcoming the difficulties it causes him, while Yaz gets to show off some moves presumably taught to her in police training when dealing with an aggressive robo-postman.

What really escalates this episode, though, is the satirical edge. Like the best sci-fi, it uses the tropes of the genre to be about something contemporary, and it’s one of those rare concepts that’s so perfect for Doctor Who that you wonder why it hasn’t been done before. Jobs been taken by machines is not only an increasingly current issue, but one well suited to being explored through the medium of evil robots with glowing eyes. Through the completely fictional company of Kerblamazon, sorry, Kerblam, McTighe’s script asks us to think about what’ll happen when labour can be automated, and when humans are there to fill minimum quotas imposed upon companies that treat them with little respect. Again, this company is completely fictional, though I wish the planet had been called Kerblam too, so that its star could be Kerblam Prime.

That said, the ending isn’t as optimistic as it thinks it is in its celebration of the fact that 90,000 people are now going to be given jobs that robots could do, because capitalism says that they must in order to live. It seems that the episode tries to counter this by having the character of Kira actually like her job, but that only highlights the fact that the majority of the workforce aren’t going to be as improbably cheery. Surely the utopian ending here would be for society to adapt so that people can be provided with a quality life without having to do unnecessary work, rather than this luddite ‘down with robots’ thing. History shows that technological progression will inevitably win out over luddism, and in the long term usually for the better of society. Is the Doctor on the wrong side of progress for once?

Then again, shifting the universe to a state of fully automated luxury communism akin to an Iain M Banks novel might be a tall order for the two or three minutes the episode has in which to wrap up. We can console ourselves with the assumption that this is set before Oxygen, at the end of which Peter Capaldi’s Doctor makes the bold claim to have ended all capitalism everywhere ever.

But even if its message is a tad muddled, Kerblam! may well have started some discussions about the issues it touches on, and either way, everyone liked it, it seems. The best praise with which I can sum up this episode is this – if in a few years time, I find myself hungover on a Sunday morning, see that Series 11 has appeared on Netflix, and want something to distract me while the paracetamol and bacon kick in, I’m absolutely picking Kerblam!

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. Kerblam!
3. Demons of the Punjab
4. Arachnids in the UK
5. The Tsuranga Conundrum
6. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
7. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab - Review

Remember that relief three weeks ago when Doctor Who did a Rosa Parks story and didn’t fuck it up? Reader, they did it again.

The Partition of India needs to be treated with as much sensitivity and nuance as the Civil Rights Movement of America, and, like much of the horrors of British colonial history, it seems to be shockingly lacking from our cultural knowledge; I have some expertise on it due to research for my comics work, but it was never mentioned to me at school. So this episode earns immediate plus points just for approaching the subject, and further points for, as with Rosa, assigning a writer of colour to dramatise their cultural history. 

Vinay Patel clearly knows what he’s doing, as this confident script, again like Rosa, avoids the farcical trappings of the sillier Who historicals and instead gives us an impactful slice of character drama. But Partition is a different subject to the Civil Rights Movement in that it had no major figures or moments to focus on; it was one simultaneous nationwide clusterfuck. Patel’s solution to this, focusing in on one family as a microcosm for Partition, gives us another very different approach to the Doctor Who format (and allows the show to keep its PG rating by getting away from the violent bloodbaths in the cities). Perhaps revealing of Patel’s past credits, it feels theatrical, confined to one family in one location, but not to its detriment; the family's story has all the tension and emotion of good theatre while being situated within the wider context by references to events developing elsewhere. The cinematic production values, with Spain convincingly standing in for India and some careful sound design, help that feeling that this is part of a larger world. This family’s story is very much one of many – which is great, because hopefully it will have encouraged viewers unfamiliar with Partition to look it up and find out more. 

The fact that the family is Yaz’s is especially wise, as it gives us an emotional entry point into the story, and gives Yaz the most development she’s had so far, even if she still does feel quite ‘generic companion’ – yes, she has backstory now, but much of her speech patterns and methods of approaching problems could be cut and pasted into any other companion. The story of learning about her grandmother’s past and realising that Prem is destined to die is powerful, though does remind me a lot of 2005 episode Father’s Day – in which a wedding day also spells doom for the companion’s past relative. Then again, I’ve seen it pointed out that the Tijarians are very similar to the Testimony from Twice Upon A Time, which was less than a year ago, and I’d completely forgotten about them, so perhaps my having an issue with one repeated plot point but not the other simply speaks to how good Father’s Day was (and how shit Twice Upon A Time was).

Those Tijarians seem to be getting a lot of stick online; another thing I’ve seen pointed out is that the episode could function without them – a ‘pure historical’, as the really old school fans would lustfully call it. And yeah, it could have; indeed, given that they’re ultimately a B-story, Demons is closer even than the alien-free Rosa is to one of those tales in which William Hartnell and his fam would go and look at a bit of history without touching much. On the other hand, I liked them: they’re an excellent red herring, with the twist that they’re not the real villains nicely planted and paid off, and they do exactly what a B-story should in that they reflect the themes of the A-story – just as Manish is blinded by his prejudice about Muslims, the Doctor is misled by hers about Tijarians, and the theme of mournfulness that pervades both tales is appropriate for an episode broadcast on Remembrance Day.

There is the rather odd plot hole that I’ve seen more than one person online point out – how come no one notices the bullet wound on the Holy Man? I’d like to put forward my own suggestion for this, because I’m proud of it – the powder that the Tijarians put on the body ‘heals’ the wound up, like an undertaker dresses a body to preserve dignity in death. Whether that’s what the writer intended or not, I’m not sure, but it’s in my headcanon now. 

One more thing, even if it is reiterating a point from previous reviews – I’m liking Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor more and more. I can see why it may grate to some that she doesn’t save the day in any way here, but that’s justified by both the sci-fi point of the necessity of Prem’s death and by the historical context that it would cheapen the depiction of Partition for her to do so. I like that we have a Doctor who cares without always grandstanding, who brings such joy to the role, and her speech at the wedding is lovely. This has joined the one of her on the bus as my favourite shots of the series:

So, yeah. I really liked this episode. Two trends seem to be emerging from Series 11. The first is that, possibly for the first time in post-2005 Who, the historical episodes are the best. While Demons doesn’t have quite the punch of Rosa, it’s similarly thoughtful and emotional, properly engaging with a time and place that deserves to be better known. Both of these episodes have deviated from the traditional ‘Doctor vs aliens’ mode, and I love that boldness, variety and desire to tell new stories.

The second is, as I predicted last week, that the guest writer episodes are better than Chibnall’s (though let’s not forget that Chibbers deserves credit for enabling the guest writers to tell these stories; writing five episodes while supervising five more must be hard). With both these trends in mind, the episode I’m most looking forward to now is Joy Wilkinson’s The Witchfinders, but before that, next week brings us the first Who episode to feature an exclamation mark in its title – brace yourselves for the review, I may start talking about punctuation.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. Demons of the Punjab
3. Arachnids in the UK
4. The Tsuranga Conundrum
5. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
6. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: The Tsuranga Conundrum - Review

“It could have been a lot better. It could have been slightly better written ... it’s very routine running up and down corridors and silly monsters. It was perhaps a little too routine Doctor Who, very much what the audience was expecting, it’s not really very challenging for them to watch. ... Fairly mullllaaahhhh boring.” – a representative of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society critiques The Trial of a Time Lord on the BBC’s public opinion show Open Air, 1986.

I was surprised when I looked on Twitter after The Tsuranga Conundrum by how negative the general reaction among the fandom to it was. I hadn’t loved it, but I’d certainly enjoyed it.

A lot of the criticisms revolve around talkiness and lack of tension. Having rewatched to see where all of this was coming from, yeah, in some cases that's fair, there are a few dumpster trucks of exposition unloaded. In particular, the discussion of Ryan’s parents is very much a “we’re doing some character development now” scene, static and forced, distanced from the danger the ship’s in.

In other cases, I understand the criticisms but don’t feel them. Yeah, the Doctor explaining the details of antimatter is extraneous to the plot, but Jodie Whittaker’s delivery is so joyful! I like it both because it shows her growing confidence in the role – she seems to have got better as the series has progressed – and because of the message sent by having the Doctor be in such awe at science that for once isn’t completely made up.

But for sure the thing I like most about The Tsuranga Conundrum is the Pting. Doctor Who has rarely attempted the Gremlins and Tribbles style of ‘cute but surprisingly dangerous’ alien, and this little guy is a great addition to that tradition, with a charming bumblyness to the way it eats bits of spaceship and CGI as impressive as the show has ever had. It seems like a long while since Who’s introduced a new species that I actually wanted to return, and I do want more Pting. Wouldn’t it be great if the finale were Aliens to this episode’s Alien? But we’re sadly more likely to get Stenzas than Ptings.

It would have been nice to have seen more of it in this episode, in fact, though maybe that’s down to CGI budgets, and the way the tension around it was built up could have been better, such as... 

Actually...

Meh.

I could nitpick about the plot. I have done for every one of Chibnall’s sole-credited episodes of this series. But I’m not going to. That’s partly because it’s half way through the series and I’m already growing bored of pointing out every little thing every week. And it’s partly because I don’t care, I liked the Pting, I had fun during the short times it was on screen, and I want one for Christmas.

And I think that points at the bigger problem, from which much of the dislike of The Tsuranga Conundrum stems. While the Pting brought an element of fun to its scenes, the writing elsewhere lacked that spark. Doctor Who under Russell T Davies had dodgy plotting too, but he had a skill of covering it up with laugh-out-loud wit and punchy character drama. Here, there are chuckles but rarely laughs; the character arcs are there but don’t have the emotional precision to hit hard. (Steven Moffat, at his lower points, tended to the other extreme of having no plot at all and a tiresome stream of quirkiness.)

It’s that wit and flair which makes the RTD (and Moffat at his higher points) episodes so rewatchable. So, while I did genuinely enjoy The Tsuranga Conundrum on first watch, when watching it a second time, I did get bored and let my attention drift. It’s not in any way bad and I maintain that its critics are way too harsh, which kind of applies to this series as a whole; Doctor Who has undoubtedly lived through much worse times.

It’s just... “a little too routine Doctor Who”. Which is awkward, because, for those of you who didn’t know this was coming, that representative of the Appreciation Society was a young Chris Chibnall. Look at his silly ‘80s hair:

(I know, as that video title shows, I'm not the first person to make the joke of applying his comments to his own episodes. Someone else made it with Tsuranga on Twitter Sunday night, but I can't find the tweet to credit them.)

By far the strongest episode of the series so far, and the least routine, has been the one Malorie Blackman co-wrote, and it’s not the greatest sign that I’m looking forward most to the guest-written stories. But on the plus side, it is genuinely exciting that the next four episodes will be from voices new to Doctor Who, and it would be however good Chibnall's episodes were. Fingers crossed for Vinay Patel’s episode being another good’un.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. Arachnids in the UK
3. The Tsuranga Conundrum
4. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
5. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK - Review

To show off that I’m reading John Yorke’s Into the Woods at the moment, let’s begin with some screenwriting theory. In the popular three-act model for writing feature films, the first act features an inciting incident, followed by a period of indecision, before the hero commits to the adventure, leaving their status quo behind. This applies probably uncoincidentally well to the formula for a modern Doctor Who series, as established by Russell T Davies and mucked around with by Steven Moffat: in Episode 1, the companion meets the Doctor (inciting incident); then they spend a couple of episodes testing the waters of time and space; and around Episode 4, they revisit home before committing to full-time companion status - adventure awaits!

And so it is that the Doctor brings her three friends back to Sheffield (again nicely grounded by location filming), but before Graham, Ryan and Yaz can make their decision, there’s a problem to deal with: as a delightfully goofy piece of dialogue puts it, “something’s wrong with the spider ecosystem of South Yorkshire”.

In other words, time for a fun and fast-paced adventure in which our characters are chased around a massive hotel by massive spiders. They may not be alien, but the spiders are the best monsters of Series 11 so far; especially given how common a phobia they are, it’s surprising that post-2005 Who’s never properly done spiders before (I don’t count the moon-spider-germs in Kill the Moon, as they were heavily overshadowed by the fact that the moon was an egg). They also allow for the best action sequences so far, shot with punch and wit; the giant spider emerging through the bathtub is a perfect example of what Doctor Who can do like nothing else – putting a sci-fi twist on an everyday image, to deliciously creepy effect. 

It may not be as boundary-pushing as Rosa, but Arachnids in the UK is a lot of fun, and often that’s exactly what Doctor Who needs to be. It must also be stated that this isn’t easy to pull off – see the same writer’s Dinosaurs on a Spaceship for an example of Who trying a similar daffy B-movie style and making a complete hash of it.

I’m also impressed by how the Doctor’s methods of dealing with spiders and, to an extent, the gradual reveal of the cause of the spider infestation, draw on actual science; an arachnid expert was consulted, in a desire for truthfulness which never troubled the Moffat era and which harks back to the Reithian principles of Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert’s original vision for Who as a show that would alternate history and science lessons. Last week taught kids about the civil rights movement and this week taught them that spiders hate the smell of garlic – in both cases hiding the education behind the production values and narrative flair of modern TV.

I have a few bones of contention, my biggest being with the character of Jack Robertson. Chris Noth plays arrogant American businessman brilliantly; I love the smarminess of lines like “I don’t have clarity on that”, and the ridiculous way he washes his hands is a lovely character-building detail. But... is the fact he’s planning to run for president necessary? By which I mean, does he need to be a blatant Trump parallel? I’m all for the dreadful state of current politics being satirised, and I’m all for Doctor Who doing that, but it feels unnecessary here; the bouncy B-movie story doesn’t allow the satire to cut deep enough to justify itself, and instead I found myself taken out of my enjoyment by the sour reminder that Trump exists.

That said, the sheer off-its-tits insanity of Mr Big from Sex and the City shooting a giant spider in the head while quipping “How’s that for fire and fury?” is one of the reasons I love Doctor Who.

A few plotting oddities, though nothing as bad as the structural messiness of The Ghost Monument: the curious coincidence of two separate events (Najia’s firing and the dead neighbour) drawing the team from Yaz’s flat straight into the conspiracy; in the time it takes Yaz to go to the hotel and then to a bedroom, the Doctor and co. investigate the flat, fight a spider, go to the lab, do some science, and then go to the hotel; and the question of whether locking spiders in a room to suffocate is actually that much more ethical than shooting them dampens the impact of the climax. 

And then there’s the ending, or lack of. The arcs of both Robertson and the spider scientist just stop once Big Momma Spider’s dead. Is there going to be a deleted scene on the DVD in which she reveals the conspiracy to the public and so scuppers his political ambitions? If so, why was it cut? If not, why was it not shot?

But the final coda, in which the Doctor's friends become her companions, is marvellously done. The first act is now complete, and it’s apparent that it’s done its job; after four episodes, we finally have a good sense of who the three companions are and what their arcs are, even if some are stronger than others: needing distraction from grief is a dramatically great reason for running off into time and space; having a dead-end job and an absent father is pretty good too; dad being bad at making curry is not so great. 

Altogether though, I’m loving Team TARDIS, and this rollicking adventure reinforced that. Bring on Act 2.

(Side note: it doesn’t seem coincidental that this ‘start of second act’ is when all the tie-in media is beginning to be rolled out, and I’m really excited for Jody Hauser and Rachael Stott’s Thirteenth Doctor comic, launching next week. If you’re enjoying the series, give it a try.)

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. Rosa
2. Arachnids in the UK
3. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
4. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: Rosa - Review

A Doctor Who story about Rosa Parks, in a series showrun by the writer of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, could have gone very wrong. Last week’s The Ghost Monument got away with a lot of clunkiness by virtue of its genre: bombastic, flippant space adventure. This could not.

Imagine if Rosa had stuck to the ‘celebrity historical’ formula of The Shakespeare Code and The Impossible Astronaut, with history as a playground for sci-fantasy antics: the Bogallions have shot down a Deltazoid spaceship over Alabama because they trespassed onto a six-limbs-only space lane – it’s like racism, get it? – and now both species are battling it out and will destroy Earth in their crossfire. Thankfully, the Doctor has pimped a bus to return the Deltazoids to their home planet, and has the help of a plucky passenger who happens to be sat in the seat where the space energies are coalescing. Good job she didn’t move. By the way, civil rights.

OK, maybe it was never going to be that bad, especially with a guest writer of the calibre of Malorie Blackman, but especially after last week, I was nervous. 

Rosa doesn’t fuck it up. It more than doesn’t fuck it up. 

It throws away that old formula – which may have given us several thoroughly enjoyable episodes in the past but would have been completely inappropriate here – to give us instead a powerful drama that’s possibly the first classic of the Chibnall series, most comparable in tone to the similarly sci-fi-light and thematically heavy Vincent and the Doctor – and anyone who’s heard me waffle about Vincent will know that a favourable comparison to it means this must be good.

What Blackman and Chibnall have clearly realised is that the main act of heroism in this story must be committed by Rosa Parks, not the Doctor or companion, and must be refusing to give up the bus seat. 

The way the story leads up to that act, with our regulars’ goal not being to change it but to maintain it, is very clever plotting. It means that bus protest stays at the dramatic heart but everyone has something to do. It allows Parks herself to be kept at a distance from the sci-fi gubbins and so avoid being reduced to caricature. It gives the heroes a challenge that only those in a time travel show could face but that the Doctor hasn’t faced before – and wow, who knew such tension could be drawn out of bus timetables and staff rotas?

It also allows the episode time to explore its world and theme. Like the Sheffield of The Woman Who Fell to Earth, this episode’s 1955 Alabama feels real, detailed, the South Africa location shoot again justifying its expense. And it’s seriously impressive how the episode doesn’t hold back in its depictions of racism, no doubt related to its hiring of Doctor Who’s first writer of colour (yes, it is bad that it’s taken this long). Ryan being slapped is shocking; the fact that it’s not at all what we’ve come to expect from recent Who’s rarely sincere treatment of history makes it all the more so. The extended length of this series’ stories certainly helps – in the 45-minute format, the scene with the cop would probably have been cut, and here it really hammers in the oppression of the world. And the episode also reminds us, through having two non-white companions discuss their own experiences of racism, that these problems persist today.

These companions finally seem concrete in their characterisation. That may be because they have that theme to hang their discussions around, allowing more insight into Yaz’s life in particular than we’ve had previously. It’s also helpful that they have plot objectives relevant to character traits: Ryan investigates the civil rights leaders he remembers his nan admiring; Yaz sets her charts out on the motel wall like a police investigation; and Graham? Well, I love Graham, because his specific skillset is ‘talking to bus drivers’, and somehow that’s come in useful in two out of three stories. I wonder how many more before it gets silly.

And then there’s the Doctor. I commented last week that the grandstanding, speechifying approach Peter Capaldi mastered doesn’t play to Jodie Whittaker’s strengths, and it’s almost as if the show listened. She’s in her element here: compassionate and wise, driving the plot forward with the necessary sci-fi words but not taking attention from the others, putting protecting her friends above risky confrontation. (I’m aware ‘being caring and not the centre of attention’ may be playing it dangerously close to feminine stereotypes for the first woman Doctor, but compassion is never a bad trait in Doctor Who, especially after Capaldi moved away from that, and there’s also a nice feeling of the ‘family going on a trip through history’ dynamic of William Hartnell’s Doctor and his companions.) Also, Whittaker is properly funny in the lighter moments, the Banksy gag in particular.

The only negatives I have are nitpicks. There’s too much “I know about that from school” exposition. Needing to go back to re-check evidence already found should never be part of any plot. The coda in the TARDIS is oddly edited, as if they only had the rights for two seconds of the newsreel. And the Doctor’s confrontation with Krasko is distractingly over-reliant on close-up shots.

But that came from the same director and crew as this ¬–

– a combination of cinematography and acting which lingered in my mind for a while. That climax is as powerful a scene as Doctor Who’s ever had. Graham’s realisation that he has to stay on the bus and play a passive role in history is heartbreaking, and leads right into the gut-punch of this episode – they have to let Rosa be the hero, in a historical moment then presented with flair and dignity. And not a single Deltazoid in sight. 

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Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument - Review

If the first episode of any TV series has to hook viewers in, the second has to keep them, to reassure us of the quality and tone we’re in for a whole series of. Which means, going by The Ghost Monument, we’re in for a whole series of sci-fi that’s impressive on the surface but ultimately a bit shit (and isn’t that the opposite of what Doctor Who’s meant to be, I hear you snark).

Ghost Monument does have a lot going for it, not least a cracking premise; sometimes you watch an episode of Who and realise you’ve seen fifty variations on the same plot before, but ‘rally across space’ feels fresh, especially when combined with the cool setting of a planet littered with abandoned weapon designs. It’s also a perfect fit for the show's refreshed, cinematic look, with the South African landscapes and some energetic camerawork (director Mark Tonderai is a camera operator himself, as evidenced by the fluid tracking shots around the crashing spaceships, so good they're practically showing off), really adding a visual panache befitting of the standards Netflix, HBO and co. have led us to hold for a 'quality' TV show in 2018.

If only that was enough to make up for the numerous things about this episode that don’t work. Worryingly, it mostly comes down to the script from new showrunner Chris Chibnall. At least when Steven Moffat was crap, it was in ways you could get angry about. Crap Chibnall is just disappointing. For starters, that setting becomes less cool when you realise that all the weapons are either, like the episode itself, good ideas executed badly, or just complete crap. The flesh-eating water – goes nowhere, a set-up without a pay-off. The robots – men in suits, after we had a man in suit villain last week; described as snipers but worse shots than stormtroopers; oddly static and defeated by an inexplicably convenient EMP. The bits of rag – original at least, but the climax falls flat because they just fly around not attacking anyone.

And then there’s clunkers like the heavy signposting of the cigar, the even heavier arc drop of whatever this ‘Timeless Child’ bollocks is, and the lack of point to the rally – surely a sport needs more than one spectator? It’s thin, first draft writing.

Jodie Whittaker does continue to be fun to watch as she grows her incarnation of the Doctor. I’ve realised since writing last week’s review that she seems to be stronger in the more compassionate, lower key moments, such as the conversation after the funeral, and in the matey, slightly daft humour (again evident in this episode – “It is all that!”) but not quite as confident when it comes to dramatic monologuing at aliens. The true art of playing Doctor Who is being able to defeat some bits of cloth by chucking a fag at them, and somehow making it as exciting as the Death Star trench run; Peter Capaldi or Matt Smith might have been able to pull this off, but I’m not convinced Whittaker’s there yet. Perhaps the writing will develop to match her strengths as her time in the role goes on.

Ryan and Graham get some nice development (though again this is tarred by odd writing – the thing about him struggling with ladders might work if we actually saw him on either of the ladders rather than just talking about them). Yaz still hasn’t done much.

Looking back on this review, it reads as if I really disliked The Ghost Monument. But I didn’t. I enjoyed it. There’s nothing majorly wrong with this episode, it’s a finely entertaining piece of TV, but there are lots of little things wrong with it, which is frustrating, as it could be so much better. Here’s to eight more weeks of "at least it's not Twice Upon A Time".

(I am optimistic for next week’s though, as Malorie Blackman could be a superb guest writer.)

Oh, and the new TARDIS set. Hmm. Going back to a layout similar to Eccleston and Tennant’s feels like a regression from the more three-dimensional sets Smith and Capaldi had to play with, the colours are a bit much and the big coral rock things are ugly. I like the custard cream dispenser, though.

DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 RANKING

1. The Woman Who Fell to Earth
2. The Ghost Monument

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Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth - Review

Every new Doctor Who has a moment where they fully become the iconic hero, casting aside any doubts about their casting. For Matt Smith, it was striding across a hospital rooftop, literally emerging from an image of his past selves, to confront the Atraxi. David Tennant’s involved a satsuma and a swordfight. And with Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor, it was the moment she looked a vicious alien warrior in the face and declared “Tim Shaw is a big blue shit.”

“Yes”, I thought, “this is the Doctor. This incarnation has no time for any nonsense, whether it’s Predator wannabes running rampant through Yorkshire or silly rules about what words you’re allowed to say on family television.” And then I realised she had in fact said ‘cheat’.

That misunderstanding aside, I hope anyone who had any doubts about Whittaker’s casting feels they’re assuaged. Right off the bat, both actor and writer seem confident in the character, comfortably balancing her sci-fi exposition with a refusal to take it too seriously (the ‘Tim Shaw’ joke fits into a long tradition of Doctor Who lampooning the pomposity of its own genre), and balancing the Doctor’s control of the room with her compassion for everyone in it; this is a Doctor who apologises for leading her new ‘friends’ into having to see Rahul's corpse and who sticks around for Grace's funeral – perhaps a deliberate attempt to skew away from the common (and sometimes fair) criticism of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor as too distanced.

Introducing the Doctor was just a quarter of this episode’s main job, as it also had three companions friends to show off. In what seems so far one of the bigger differences between Chibnall’s approach and that of former showrunner Steven Moffat, the episode seemed equally interested in all its characters, with the opening act setting up backstory and embedding them in a world and problems that feel tangible and believable. Ryan and Graham certainly have an interesting dynamic and lots of potential to develop across the series; Yas felt sidelined after the opening act, but hopefully will get fleshed out in the episodes to come.

In fact, Chibnall's tone seems more grounded and human overall than Moffat's. Tzim-Sha has a backstory and a culture too – something very rarely given to villains in the Moffat era. Side characters like garage owner Rahul and unfairly targeted Carl have properly worked out motivation. Even the setting of Sheffield is lent a truthfulness by its specificity; Series 10’s Earth-set episodes were allegedly set in Bristol, but put so little effort into showing us this, that a lot of viewers probably didn’t even realise it wasn't the 'default' of London, whereas here we have wide shots composed to show off the landscapes, a sonic screwdriver made of Sheffield steel, and enough Yorkshire accents to have American viewers reaching for the subtitle button.

I’ve barely touched upon the plot, which is probably fair, as the episode deliberately went for a low-key and generic approach in order to focus on its characters. It's certainly refreshing to be away from the often smugly complicated plotting of the Moffat years (while I wan't the strongest critic of this, I've heard a lot of people say it's what made them stop watching), though it perhaps goes a bit too low-key and generic. Tim Shaw and his ball of electrified string are hardly going to go down as one of Doctor Who’s best villains, and some odd plot beats take the energy from the whole thing: having the Doctor theorise about two alien races at war, only for it to be revealed that they’re on the same side, is lowering the stakes when they should be being raised; and all the business about Ryan having touched the portal to let the alien through neither adds anything to the character drama nor makes any logical sense from the Stenza’s perspective, so it would actually benefit the episode for this to be cut completely. The finale on the cranes has half of a superb set piece – the Doctor’s confrontation with the villain looks and feels spectacular – and half of a muddled one – the companions' roles in it don’t play to their individual strengths and could be swapped around without any change.

So overall, I don’t think The Woman Who Fell to Earth is a brilliant episode – yes, even despite the title referencing a Bowie movie. I’m not even sure it’s as good as The Pilot, the much pacier first episode of the previous series. But it does introduce a great new team, who I’m really excited to go on more adventures with, and a very promising tone for the series to come.

The one part of the episode that I did dislike was that ‘Coming Soon’ montage after the credits, the most bizarre bit of TV marketing I’ve seen. Doctor Who episodes are sold, particularly to kids, on the adventure and the aliens; a series of close-ups of human characters is completely missing what makes the show unique. And while Alan Cumming and Julie Hesmondhalgh might bring a few extra viewers, I haven’t even heard of half those names. I just can’t understand the thinking behind it.

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I'm making a movie! And It's gay!

Sorry everything's been quiet on the blog front recently, lads. Most of my spare time has been taken over by one project in particular - I'm producing Spectrum, an anthology of LGBTQ-themed short films, all set over one night in Manchester's gay village.

And it's good to be back in the filmmaking saddle. I've not really taken charge of a project like this since Union back in 2013/14. Though I worked in TV and film on and off for the few years after graduating, in between freelance writing gigs, I never fully enjoyed the lifestyle, jumping from job to job and not being passionate about any of them. Plus, I couldn't enjoy my spare time, as jobs could come up at the last minute, even over the weekend, and I'd need to take them in order to pay the bills. So in the middle of last year, I made a change, getting a stable part-time job, one which I enjoy and which keeps my bank balance happy. Plus, I'd now be able to properly enjoy weekends, I thought.

That lasted about a month, at which point I decided to make a film. Bye bye, spare time.

Reading (in the ever-great Starburst... while I was meant to be proofing it) about an anthology horror film composed of interconnected short stories, I had the idea: this, but instead of horror, it's queer stuff.  Because, though there've been a few good gay films recently, there aren't enough bisexual films out there, or lesbian films, or transgender films, so why not gather creatives from this community and help them represent themselves, all in one entertaining package?

I knew that the first person I had to bring on board was my friend, and former university classmate, Abigail, and I was so glad when she agreed to take on this ambitious project with me. In the three months since, we've assembled a brilliant team, got a bunch of scripts in really good shape, and started seriously planning how to make the thing. It's a big job, and already we've had our fair share of stress, but it's that creative kind of stress I've missed from my student filmmaking days.

Plus, we've shot a one-minute short already, as a teaser for the project. Here it is!

We have plenty more films in the pipeline; Spectrum will be half an hour in total, and we're aiming for a 2019 film festival release. I'm excited to share these stories with as wide an audience as we can find. Abigail and I really do care about getting that range of underrepresented queer voices on screen, and doing justice to our diverse team of writers and the community we hope to fairly represent. 

However, we of course need to get funding in place to shoot the rest of the stories. In order to make some of that money, we've launched a crowdfunding campaign.

However much we raise, we will make Spectrum this year. I'm determined about that. I've gone too far to stop. But the more money we have, the better we'll be able to make it.

If you feel like donating, that would be amazing. There's a range of great perks that I hope make it worth your while, not least the fact that any donation of £5 or more gets you a chance to see the finished anthology - that was a decision I was adamant on, as I don't like campaigns where half of the funders don't even get to see the film they're helping make. Give a bit more and you can have some bespoke shot glasses, or a ticket to an exclusive screening.

If you can't donate, please consider sharing the link below and helping spread the word.

http://www.igg.me/at/film-spectrum

Right. I have some casting applications to sort through so should stop waffling.

xxx

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Recent Reviews

A round-up of a few reviews I've done recently over at Starburst...

DVDs/Blurays!

• mother! - Jennifer Lawrence-starring surrealist nightmare
• The Villainess - frantic slicey fun from South Korea
• The Andromeda Strain - apparently a sci-fi classic, but actually tedious

Doctor Who Audios

• The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume 2 - it has David Tennant and Billie Piper back, as if you need a review to convince you

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