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Orphan 55
Orphan 55 is interesting, at least in so far as my particular corner of the Whoniverse seems to be equally divided between people who loved it, people who hated it and people who were kind of `meh' about it. I'm in the `meh' camp which is possibly the least interesting place to be.
I think it's interesting to compare it to Ed Hime's last story, It takes you away. I was also kind of `meh' about that while most people seemed to really like it (and a few really hated it). It had the same tendency to veer off in a new direction every time you thought you knew what kind of story it was, though Orphan 55 was less extreme than in It takes you away.
If I'm being facetious I'd say it also clearly ran out of money/couldn't afford to get the effects all right. I was unconvinced by the frog in It takes you Away and unconvinced by the people with green hair here. I'm also a bit puzzled by Hyph3n, in that I can't decide if she's meant to look like she's wearing a costume or if its just bad - The teenager thinks she's meant to look like that. The green wigs though, I'm sure they weren't meant to look like cheap party wigs and in a story that otherwise managed to look perfectly decent they were kind of an odd glitch.
In It takes you away I also felt that the narrative didn't really give the father a hard enough time over his behaviour - because I thought his behaviour was outrageous bordering on child abuse, but it didn't take most other people that way and I thought maybe I was coming over a bit Mamma Bear which happens sometimes. Here I felt the narrative was way too sympathetic towards Bella - who decided to indulge in a bit of mass murder because her mother abandoned her as a child.
I liked Vilma and Benni but, while some have argued that Benni's death was dramatic I was just a bit "wait? what?". I originally thought that maybe Hime had simply lost interest in Benni once he'd served his purpose of getting all the characters out of the dome, but on more reflection, I'm guessing it was a budget problem and I wonder if a lot of the choppiness in some places here was because of lack of budget and a need to have a lot of the action actually happening off-stage.
Then there were bits that mildly irritated me. Why is everyone in the truck? I mean the Doctor can definitely be a bit "everyone come on an adventure with me!" at times, but I'd have expected Graham or Yaz to interject a bit of sense and insist, at the very least, that the kid stay behind. Kane's motivation (I'm doing it all for Bella!) really didn't make sense in the context of having abandoned her as a child and never got in touch since. An underground station, seriously? Maybe it was meant as a nice callback to The Mysterious Planet and the discovery of the ruins of Marble Arch Station, but I was just a bit "couldn't you have come up something different?". The Sermon at the end: yes, Doctor Who has always been political but there's a reason people make fun of kids shows which end with "and the moral this week was..." mini-sermons.
There were bits I liked too. The Doctor was once again more proactive than she was last series. There were nice bits for Ryan and Yaz. Everything kept moving at a decent pace.
But, you know, I'm mostly `meh'. Maybe `meh' going on mildly irritated.
Weirdly, despite thinking this is probably the weakest Thirteenth Doctor story (maybe? I dunno, I wasn't all that taken with The Ghost Monument either), overall I'm still enjoying series 12 more than series 11.
I think it's interesting to compare it to Ed Hime's last story, It takes you away. I was also kind of `meh' about that while most people seemed to really like it (and a few really hated it). It had the same tendency to veer off in a new direction every time you thought you knew what kind of story it was, though Orphan 55 was less extreme than in It takes you away.
If I'm being facetious I'd say it also clearly ran out of money/couldn't afford to get the effects all right. I was unconvinced by the frog in It takes you Away and unconvinced by the people with green hair here. I'm also a bit puzzled by Hyph3n, in that I can't decide if she's meant to look like she's wearing a costume or if its just bad - The teenager thinks she's meant to look like that. The green wigs though, I'm sure they weren't meant to look like cheap party wigs and in a story that otherwise managed to look perfectly decent they were kind of an odd glitch.
In It takes you away I also felt that the narrative didn't really give the father a hard enough time over his behaviour - because I thought his behaviour was outrageous bordering on child abuse, but it didn't take most other people that way and I thought maybe I was coming over a bit Mamma Bear which happens sometimes. Here I felt the narrative was way too sympathetic towards Bella - who decided to indulge in a bit of mass murder because her mother abandoned her as a child.
I liked Vilma and Benni but, while some have argued that Benni's death was dramatic I was just a bit "wait? what?". I originally thought that maybe Hime had simply lost interest in Benni once he'd served his purpose of getting all the characters out of the dome, but on more reflection, I'm guessing it was a budget problem and I wonder if a lot of the choppiness in some places here was because of lack of budget and a need to have a lot of the action actually happening off-stage.
Then there were bits that mildly irritated me. Why is everyone in the truck? I mean the Doctor can definitely be a bit "everyone come on an adventure with me!" at times, but I'd have expected Graham or Yaz to interject a bit of sense and insist, at the very least, that the kid stay behind. Kane's motivation (I'm doing it all for Bella!) really didn't make sense in the context of having abandoned her as a child and never got in touch since. An underground station, seriously? Maybe it was meant as a nice callback to The Mysterious Planet and the discovery of the ruins of Marble Arch Station, but I was just a bit "couldn't you have come up something different?". The Sermon at the end: yes, Doctor Who has always been political but there's a reason people make fun of kids shows which end with "and the moral this week was..." mini-sermons.
There were bits I liked too. The Doctor was once again more proactive than she was last series. There were nice bits for Ryan and Yaz. Everything kept moving at a decent pace.
But, you know, I'm mostly `meh'. Maybe `meh' going on mildly irritated.
Weirdly, despite thinking this is probably the weakest Thirteenth Doctor story (maybe? I dunno, I wasn't all that taken with The Ghost Monument either), overall I'm still enjoying series 12 more than series 11.
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The Doctor clearly knows Orphan 55, not just orphan planets generally. So, why wouldn't she know that it's a possible future for her favourite planet.
The stuff about possible, not definite, futures, was a bit of a problem, too. That's a serious bit of discontinuity going on there. Time may be reinventing itself all the time, apart from those "fixed points" that the Doctor never, ever, interferes with, but there's multiple tragic earth futures in Dr Who (at the minimum Ark in Space, but the same concept was then behind The Beast below in NuWho, too). Why was this one needing to be written off in this way?
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But in general yes, there was an awful lot here that didn't really make sense which could probably have been made to make sense with the insertion of a line of dialogue - there's a definite feel of "ran out of time and money" about this which is odd so early in the season (though I think it was second filming block - mind you I don't know how many filming blocks there were).
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Drive-by comment, apologies, but this caught my eye.
One, I think it was mostly a fourth-wall-breaking line meant for the audience - our future isn't set. Two, the Doctor might also be thinking of Gallifrey and wondering if she can somehow save it from the Master. Three, I'd say the idea of 'possible, not definite, futures' goes back to at least Pyramids of Mars; in short: wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey. *g* (Apologies. I realise I have become of one THOSE fans. *tiptoes out*)
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I find this very amusing, since this is the show of the bubblewrap monsters... (of course, when it comes to suspension of disbelief, different things work for different people. I loved the frog and I loved the idea of the frog.)
Weirdly, despite thinking this is probably the weakest Thirteenth Doctor story (maybe? I dunno, I wasn't all that taken with The Ghost Monument either), overall I'm still enjoying series 12 more than series 11.
Understand why you'd rate it 'Meh', but still head & shoulders above anything in S11, because the Doctor was grumpy and snapped at people, and goodness, it sure is nice to have the main character back.
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While true, the standard of effects in NuWho is generally a lot better than both the frog and the green hair.
I liked the idea of the frog but I thought the execution was poor in several ways. I wasn't convinced by the way the Doctor interacted with it at all, really.
still head & shoulders above anything in S11
Mileage may vary, but it doesn't come close to several of the S11 episodes for me... and I think people are over-stating the extent to which the Doctor was "frothy" and "bubbly" last season.
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Mileage varies. And I will readily agree that the Doctor's speech was the one thing that should have been better/that scene should have been more somehow. Ah well, it tried.
Mileage may vary, but it doesn't come close to several of the S11 episodes for me... and I think people are over-stating the extent to which the Doctor was "frothy" and "bubbly" last season.
Well, I was speaking very much from a personal 'How do I feel perspective'. Story-wise it was, um, not great. Rosa or Demons or The Woman Who Fell to Earth or It Takes You Away or the historical one, whatever it was called, were all superior story-wise, but - The Woman Who Fell to Earth apart - were lacking (for me) in the Doctor department. She was perfectly Doctor-y, she just didn't feel like a logical continuation of what had come before. (As others said - he was trying to be nice, and failing to be kind.) However, since it's now basically been confirmed that a, she was running away from her past and b, she is really rather messed up & problematic, things are looking up. :) (I'd rather she was kind, but I can work with problematic.)
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I couldn't figure out if she was being honest about wanting to stay or not - and while I don't necessarily require everything spelled out for me - it's quite important to how you understand the character to know if she was saying something in order to save the others in the hope she'd figure a way out eventually or whether she was genuinely so taken by the frog that she wanted to stay.
Series 11 was very different. I feel it was closer to early Hartnell (or at least what early Hartnell would look like if made now) than anything in NuWho, though of NuWho I think it was closer to Eccleston's series where the Doctor was mostly catalyst rather than protagonist. I appreciated it for what it was, though I've enjoyed series 12 more, but I have sympathy with those, like the Teenager who take the line that Hartnell was 56 years ago and not relevant as a defence for why it should be considered particularly Doctor Who-ish. She's way, way happier with this series than the last which she quite aggressively disliked.
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Agreed about the station and Trial. It's probably coming from the same source material (Planet of the Apes), but considering Chris Chibnall made his first appearance in fandom complaining about Trial (albeit a later segment) it seems tempting fate. It was a strategic mistake anyway, as I spent the rest of the episode thinking that I like Trial much more than this, and I don't even like Trial that much.
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I'm not much one for rankings but there certainly isn't a lot to choose between this on and The Mysterious Planet - both have a lot of wasted potential and many bits that don't quite make sense.
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I think this episode tried to do too many diverse things and ended up doing none of it well.
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The big lecture at the end did make me think "kid's programme!".
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I feel that way about all three episodes so far (haven't watched the Tesla one yet) and TBH kind of the whole last season as well. I don't know if it's that I don't like Chibnall's touch, or am not that keen on Jodie Whittaker (as much as I am on board with the idea of a female Doctor in general), or what. I feel like there were some bright spots (albeit I cannot cite any, more like a vague feeling of having kinda enjoyed something at the time) but mostly it has been failing to get my attention and make any impression on my memory.
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I'm not sure I'm irritated exactly and Doctor Who rarely has the most watertight of scripting, but I do think there are more untidinesses in a lot the Chibnall era scripts - things that look like plot threads from earlier drafts that haven't been properly removed, or questions that are left unanswered...