Revolution of the Daleks
Jan. 3rd, 2021 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatIt was fine.
Like Resolution - the holiday special from 2018 - there were definite moments in this where things seemed to be going slow despite everything that was going on. In Resolution it was mostly the segment where the Doctor follows what the lone Dalek is doing from the Tardis and seemed to reflect some of the issues with series 11 where the Doctor often felt curiously passive. Here, at least, the Doctor was taking a more active role but somehow the story didn't quite fit its length.
I'd been very much looking forward to the return of Captain Jack and while bits of it were a lot of fun - particularly his interactions with Yaz - his interactions with the Doctor herself were strangely muted and not as fun as I'd hoped. A whole load of questions are left untouched like whether he would wish to rejoin her on her travels and whether she would have him and while the episode probably had enough going on with Ryan and Graham's departure and Yaz's obsession it felt odd to bring him back and not actually address his relationship with the Doctor herself.
This did feel a bit like the middle of a long arc, and hopefully it is. Jack Robertson remains unresolved as a protagonist not quite nasty enough for the Doctor to take direct steps against, but liable to cause trouble. The Doctor's imprisonment by the Judoon must surely also be unresolved since she escaped rather than being released and of course there is the whole "who am I really?" question still hanging. I thought that the Doctor's interactions with Ryan on that topic were particularly well done.
Bits were clever: I liked the resolution with the second Tardis. Bits were odd: It wasn't clear to me what Robertson was actually doing once he was on the Dalek ship - had he miscalculated? was he just improvising? I thought the companion departure was well-handled. All in all, I thought this continued what I felt were the positive steps taken in series 12 to give the Doctor more agency and to try to do more with Yaz but, assir_guinglain has pointed out, there is a tendency with a lot of these stories to have more characters than necessary wandering around in a big group and Resolution definitely suffered from that in places.
In general I think Resolution of the Daleks continued the improvements from series 12, but I nevertheless don't think we've had a really excellent episode since series 11's Demons of the Punjab. I'll be interested to see if the changes in the Tardis crew can help resolve some of the issues that I feel have dogged the series since the arrival of the Thirteeth Doctor.
Like Resolution - the holiday special from 2018 - there were definite moments in this where things seemed to be going slow despite everything that was going on. In Resolution it was mostly the segment where the Doctor follows what the lone Dalek is doing from the Tardis and seemed to reflect some of the issues with series 11 where the Doctor often felt curiously passive. Here, at least, the Doctor was taking a more active role but somehow the story didn't quite fit its length.
I'd been very much looking forward to the return of Captain Jack and while bits of it were a lot of fun - particularly his interactions with Yaz - his interactions with the Doctor herself were strangely muted and not as fun as I'd hoped. A whole load of questions are left untouched like whether he would wish to rejoin her on her travels and whether she would have him and while the episode probably had enough going on with Ryan and Graham's departure and Yaz's obsession it felt odd to bring him back and not actually address his relationship with the Doctor herself.
This did feel a bit like the middle of a long arc, and hopefully it is. Jack Robertson remains unresolved as a protagonist not quite nasty enough for the Doctor to take direct steps against, but liable to cause trouble. The Doctor's imprisonment by the Judoon must surely also be unresolved since she escaped rather than being released and of course there is the whole "who am I really?" question still hanging. I thought that the Doctor's interactions with Ryan on that topic were particularly well done.
Bits were clever: I liked the resolution with the second Tardis. Bits were odd: It wasn't clear to me what Robertson was actually doing once he was on the Dalek ship - had he miscalculated? was he just improvising? I thought the companion departure was well-handled. All in all, I thought this continued what I felt were the positive steps taken in series 12 to give the Doctor more agency and to try to do more with Yaz but, as
sir_guinglain has pointed out, there is a tendency with a lot of these stories to have more characters than necessary wandering around in a big group and Resolution definitely suffered from that in places.In general I think Resolution of the Daleks continued the improvements from series 12, but I nevertheless don't think we've had a really excellent episode since series 11's Demons of the Punjab. I'll be interested to see if the changes in the Tardis crew can help resolve some of the issues that I feel have dogged the series since the arrival of the Thirteeth Doctor.