Eve of the Daleks

[purplecat]

Everyone* seems to have liked this a lot more than I did. Marmalade Sparrow, in particular, who hasn't rated Chibnall Who at all, said she thought it surprisingly decent.

It was definitely a strong underlying idea. It managed to make the story feel like an "Event" (necessary for a New Year episode), while at the same time making a virtue of a small cast and side-stepping the issue faced so often by returning monsters that this time they have to be an even bigger threat because there are even more of them doing something even more evil than last time. All good.

I think my main issue with it is that I felt it wasn't quite clever enough. I think you need to be quite exact and precise to really pull off timey-wimey-ness and this wasn't quite there for me. In particular, I never really got the sense that the Daleks were acting on the information they had gained in the previous go-around - not even in the final iteration. It felt more like some times the Daleks were randomly lucky and some times they weren't. I also never quite grasped the issue around Nick dying in minute four - was it that you had to survive past the first minute in one iteration to make it into the next? I think that was what it was, but it wasn't clear to me, and it seemed an unlikely thing for Sarah to intuit. Lastly they definitely managed to do more than a minutes worth of stuff in the final go around. What's irritating is none of this is unfixable, it feels like one more draft of the script was needed just to make sure everything fitted together properly. Not even one more draft because I imagine this script had lots of drafts, it needed someone to care that the pieces all fit together correctly and I really don't think that is something Chibnall is all that interested in.


Eh! It was fine and I may find on a rewatch that some things I'm complaining weren't there, actually were.

*OK three twitter posts and Marmalade Sparrow.

Comments

[elisi]

It was fun and engaging, and tbh that's more than I expected! ;) (The past two New Year's Specials have not been great...) Mostly then Chibnall Who simply refuses to stick in my brain, so the fact that it was fun to watch was the main thing for me.

If you want an indepth review then EMS Productions is always very fair and even-handed. Of course, he's also wordy!

[purplecat]

I think I'd say, for me, all he New Year episodes have been fine - in general "above average for Chibnall" if you see what I mean but none of them particularly execite me.

[elisi]

in general "above average for Chibnall" if you see what I mean
That made me laugh. Yes I know what you mean, and have the icon to prove it. ;) I think mostly this one was just more entertaining than the others.

[purplecat]

It's a great icon!

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I thought it was OK, but not great. I felt both plot and characters needed more development. It also felt a bit like it was supposed to be a comedy thriller, but the jokes weren't good. And I'm pretty sick of the companion being in love with the Doctor — I thought one good thing about Chibnall was that he hadn't gone down that route.

[purplecat]

Sarah and Nick would definitely have been funnier in the hands of a writer like Moffat.

I was kind of dissatisfied with the Thasmin thing as well (not the companion in love with the Doctor bit since that ship sailed long ago) but it felt unearned to me. But I couldn't quite figure out why I thought that since they've been building up to it since at least this time last year.