Orphan 55

[purplecat]

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.

Comments

[a_cubed]

This needed a serious re-work from script editing through to footage editing.
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?

[vivdunstan]

Martin immediately afterwards commented that he thought the script editing was seriously lacking too. He’s usually much less vocally critical than me of faults and strengths - thinks of them, but doesn’t then forensically analyse them in subsequent discussion! I did agree with him. It felt like an early draft that hadn’t been developed enough. That and/or the direction/editing cut important stuff out. Whatever, the end result wasn’t a success.

[purplecat]

It will be interesting to learn - in, no doubt, a few years time, whether this one was squeezed in terms of time, money or both. It has something of that feel about it.

[purplecat]

To be fair, The Doctor knew about Ravalox but didn't know it was the Earth (though on that occasion it was in the wrong part of the universe). I think the show now has more destructions of Earth than Atlantis - though I think many can be made consistent - last time I looked at fan theories it was noted that the Earth was recolonised after The Ark in Space (and the Beast Below may take place in the same time frame or may take place at the same time as The Ark and The End of the World). I think Orphan 55 can be considered part of the same catastrophe as The Ark in Space (if you hand wave a bit about solar flares). Where The Mysterious Planet fits in, I wouldn't care to speculate.

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).

[elisi]

The stuff about possible, not definite, futures, was a bit of a problem, too. That's a serious bit of discontinuity going on there.
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*)

[purplecat]

I think Doctor Who, as a show, has settled on a "sometimes you can change history but mostly you can't *shush* don't pay too much attention or ask too many questions" approach to whether events are fixed or not. Which given its a 55 year-old show with a sprawling continuity is probably the only sensible approach to take.