purplecat | The Ghost Monument

I think I enjoyed The Ghost Monument least of the last season. This may be in part because it occurred so early before I was used to the new style (I'd have to rewatch to see if I would re-evaluate). I didn't actively dislike it, but I did feel it was sort of just there. The plot was not only extremely straightforward, but it kind of stopped. I've heard criticisms elsewhere that one of the problems with this season is that the dialogue fails to deliver and I think that may be the problem here. The resolution to the story is perfectly good, and you can see how it should follow from what comes before, but the dialogue (and by extension performances) has failed to really convince that Angstrom and Epzo have moved to a point where they could cooperate and the episode refuses to give us the actual discussion where they agree to do so. Hence... it just stops.

More minor details: the Doctor's opposition to guns while not out of character looks even more hypocritical here (where moments later she zaps the robots with an EMP) than it normally does, and while we had Chekov's self-lighting cigar, we also get not-Chekov's flesh eating water.

So, yeah, from my perspective, The Ghost Monument just was.

More interestingly the Teenager bounced off it hard. She thought it was dull; Yaz was underused, Ryan was stupid, Graham was... (I've forgotten what Graham was); the cinematography was terrible (which surprised me a bit, since I had been sitting there thinking "well at least it's pretty", but apparently there were too many close-ups of people's eyes); and everyone was over-sharing their feelings.

So now you know!

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I agree. That whole episode was just not in the right place at all. Nothing added up for it, the pacing was off, the characters were boring, there was a massive info-dump for the "reveal", they took all the suspense and mystery out of the TARDIS, the Doctor despite having nothing in her pockets last episode mysteriously has sunglasses for Graham. The resolution with the minor characters fell flat, and ugh, anyhow I could go on for a good long while about it. Suffice to say it was enough that I didn't watch any of the rest of the season until about a week ago.

I'm prepared to hand wave the pockets since she's been shopping since. But the structural construction of the episode was definitely off, not helped by the fact it didn't quite manage to sell its characters.

It wasn't my least favourite, but it was just a bit meh. It felt like the exciting bits of the race narrative were edited out somehow. I know I've said that too many episodes from this season felt like filler episodes and this probably epitomises that more than most.

I hadn't heard that criticism of the dialogue and it's not something that immediately resonated with me. I'll have to try to bear that in mind when I re-watch.

I'd heard several critiques that the dialogue was plodding or wooden which I don't think is true - in particular I think lots of the stuff with Ryan and Graham has been well written. But I heard the criticism recently that the dialogue doesn't quite deliver the necessary punch and I think that has been a problem with the season, there at least a couple of instances of perfectly good (or at least perfectly Who-ish) ideas which I don't think the stories have quite sold and its plausible that that is a dialogue problem.

The dialogue is certainly different to what we have been used in new Who, but I don't know that I would say it's the main problem with the series.

If I were trying to identify the main problems with series 11, I'd have:

1. A tendency to retreat defeated in the face of systemic problems (associated with a paucity of strong villains)

2. A focus on Ryan and Graham which, while not a problem in itself, resulted in a lack of development for Yaz and the Doctor.

But I think failing to quite land a number of perfectly good ideas while less easy to pinpoint than the above, is also an issue and one that does relate to the dialogue. Similarly some weird plot/pacing problems: stories that don't end properly, things that are introduced and then not used.

I wonder if 1 is deliberate?

I think it is. I suspect Chibnall is interested in exploring systems of oppression and aware that the Doctor's tendency to fly in, fix something and then disappear isn't suited to solving those problems. But I think he does need to find a way to balance this more often with suggestions that progress can be made and allow specific actions of the Doctor and her companions to make some kind of difference in the grander scheme of things otherwise he is absolutely open to the criticism that his vision of the show is deeply conservative/nihilistic.

The Ghost Monument

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