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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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I think this episode tried to do too many diverse things and ended up doing none of it well.
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