Flux

[purplecat]

It was fun. Spoilers follow.

Given I thought the New Year episode, Revolution of the Daleks, was only fine and "passes the time well enough", this was a definite step up. It was fun, exciting and reasonably well-paced albeit rushed towards the end.

All that said, I thought the two standalone episodes, War of the Sontarans and Village of the Angels were much the strongest of the series. Most of the rest of the story felt like too many ideas crammed into too small a space which may, of course, have been a result of shortening the series because of Covid. Chibnall has form in long-running story telling so, unlike some of the story's other faults, I'm more willing to ascribe this to the shortening of the story than inate flaws. But while the multiple threads kept everything moving, I think, overall, they were confusing. I mean, I've spent a lot of the past couple of weeks carefully not thinking too hard about the finale because I'm pretty sure it doesn't make much sense and has plot holes you could drive several double-decker buses through. Chibnall's mostly not too bad on the plot hole front so I suspect having to cut material is the culprit here.

Some of the story's other flaws are ones we've seen before: a tendency for people to spend a lot of time standing around telling each other things - Once, Upon Time, which I think of as the info-dump episode, particularly felt like it suffered from this; and a tendency for things to be set up as significant and then not utilised - whatever was going on with Azure before Swarm "rescued" her.

Some of the other problems its hard to call. Di seemed oddly under-utilised, the reasons for her kidnapping were obscure, and we were only told about her discoveries in the passenger we never saw her make them. Similarly it wasn't entirely clear what the Grand Serpent was about or how his activities on 20th century Earth fitted with his meeting with Vinder. For the big guest star of the season, Vinder was a lot less interesting than Bel.

Everyone seems to love Dan. I thought the first episode tried way too hard to make him likeable (really? he volunteers at a food bank, and moonlights as a tour guide to show of his enthusiasm for his home city, and has a disabled almost girlfriend he treats perfectly, and is good with children, he even has a dog (sort of)). I thought he was better after The Halloween Apocalypse but for at least the first half of that episode at least he felt more like a walking list of virtues than an actual character.

Carvanista was a triumph though - almost quintessential Doctor Who from the innate silliness of the concept through to the slightly dodgy costume.

So I liked it. I wish it had had two or three more episodes to allow the arc plot to breathe. I shall even rewatch it some time soon to see if my suspicion that most of the final episode doesn't make sense is true or not.

Comments

[liadt]

I found Dan to be dull and it was ridiculous how they made him the nicest man on Earth. Vinder was dull, but upstanding too. I didn't know he was the big guest signing!

[purplecat]

The actor playing Vinder was apparently in Games of Thrones (which I didn't watch) but they did a big reveal that he was in the serious and suggested that he had almost companion status and, honestly, the most interesting thing about him was that Bel liked him.

[liadt]

Ah! I don't watch GoT either. Bel was more interesting, yes.

[a_cubed]

I've watched all of GoT, but it has so many characters/actors, and some of them are such brilliant actors that he didn't particularly stand out for me.

[vivdunstan]

Your thoughts are very similar to mine. Overall I enjoyed it, but felt it was seriously flawed in places. In particular stories 3 and 6, with far too much exposition and confusing split storylines. Which is an ambitious thing to try, but didn’t work well in the limited time we had available. I also wish more things had been streamlined out eg I was much more invested in Storm and Azure as baddies than the sontarans. Kate Stewart might as well not have been there, and the Grand Serpent was underused. And I’d have honestly been happier if Bel and Vinder *had* been the Doctor’s parents! But overall yes a huge step up for me on previous Chris Chibnall written stories, and an ambitious but somewhat flawed experiment.

[purplecat]

Yes, I think either they needed more space or they needed to lose a plot line - and I think either the UNIT plot line or Vinder and Bel could probably have gone without too much damage to the plot. They needed something in the Sontaran space, I think, just to bring the threat home to Earth and to drive the resolution as a separate antagonist to the vanquishers.

[liadt]

I found a lot of the characters dull including Dan!

[purplecat]

Hah! Dan grew on me, though mostly as Yaz's companion, not the Doctors. He's OK and I liked him once they got over the whole what a perfect human being he was.

I liked plenty of the other characters - but Vinder was pretty dull and lots of the one episode ones were just rather under-developed.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I had mixed feelings about it (I think I just struggle with new Who generally), but it was definitely better than anything we've seen for quite a while. I agree that the standalone episodes were the best, particularly Village of the Angels. I also liked the stuff in the last couple of episodes with Yaz, Dan and Professor Jericho. Seemed like what I want from Doctor Who: fun, exciting adventures, not full of continuity or big Emotional Moments.

I thought the threat was too abstract. I never really grasped what Swarm and Azure wanted, excellent though the costumes and acting were. I somehow found the Grand Serpent's methods of killing people more tangible.

The more Chibnall goes into Tecteun stuff, the less I like it. It's the kind of thing that works best (if at all) at a distance. Doctor Who isn't really about the Doctor's mother.

And I'm not even going to go into the awful "Corporal Lethbridge-Stewart" in-joke; some in-jokes destroy more than they bring to an episode.

[purplecat]

There was an interesting comment on the Reality Bomb podcast to the effect that all the interesting parts of the Tecteun story have already happened and all we get is the Doctor feeling sad about it which is inherently undramatic. I thought that was very insightful - and interestingly, of course, this is the basic structure of a mystery/crime drama where Chibnall has had much of his success. I don't think this structure really works for Doctor Who, or at least not if the mystery is uncovered in the kind of dribs and drabs we get here. I suspect a mystery story needs to be upfront a mystery story with the narrative focused on uncovering the mystery, otherwise you get this kind of "why should I care about stuff that happened long ago" problem.