This was a bit of a mess. The basic idea was great but the execution was shambolic and inconsistent.
I liked Rogue, and guessed before the reveal that he was alien but not one of the villains. I thought he was being set up as a new Captain Jack figure and it’s not impossible he could return.
Ruby was kept out of the action for a while even when a body was found in her presence. I did like the line with the Doctor telling her not to accidentally invent Tarmac, but then he started wielding the Sonic around in a way the guests should have spotted easily.
The bond between the Doctor and Rogue was fine but rather rushed.
Ruby’s saving of herself with role playing was unconvincing. She just seemed to dance around rather than combatting her opponent.
That Rogue saved Ruby by just pushing her out of the triangle was odd – why did he have to step in? He could have got her by the hand and pulled her out. The ear-rings in fight mode should have made Ruby go full on kung fu/Matrix mode kick-ass.
Oddest line, The Doctor tells Rogue he might take him to see Galifrey some time. How? If he can go there, why is it gone?
Dr Who TARDIS
I liked the projections of the Doctors, especially including the Fugitive Doctorand Richard E Grant’s Doctor in there too – hope The Fugitive turns up again some time. Everyone runs away when the aliens are revealed and somehow stay away for the long departure scene. It might have worked better with current day SF fans and spoofing actual cosplayers with potential for more in jokes.
The role play overacting was universally terrible. Also disliked the Angry Bird masks of the aliens in their own forms. I expected them to do the Monty Python Meaning Of Life ‘Where Is The Fish’ scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGBZnfB46es
Half expected other guests to turn out to be Zygons and deal with the baddies for encroaching on their turf.
Dr Who TARDIS
Do like that RTD is going out of his way to piss off the anti-Woke who will go ballistic over this one.
Loved the tribute caption for William (First companion Ian Chesterton) Russell over the closing credits.
I was very disappointed by the first two episodes of the latest season, confusingly rebranded season one. The third had some strong ideas but proved deeply flawed and had a pretentious work out the ending for yourself arrogance.
Dr Who TARDIS in Manchester
Dot & Bubble actually gets everything right and the tonal shift with the twists in the closing ten minutes are stunningly good.
It’s another minimalist use of the Doctor (and Millie too this time), apparently as Gatwa was filming this alongside his Sex Education (never seen it) episodes.
The Black Mirror comparisons are obvious from the outset. People out of touch with reality, reflecting their blinkered simplistic thinking, literally trapped in head bubbles of bland chatter within a domed city that is a Hell masquerading as a utopia. Lindy is too narrow-minded to see even the co-workers sharing her work room, or noticing the slow moving slug monsters everywhere. They were a neat effect, looking very old fashioned Who – they would not have been out of place in the 3rd Doctor era.
Dr Who TARDIS in Manchester (FAB Cafe)
As she met her wall of friends in the zoom event, I noticed none of them were non-Caucasian except the Doctor but never realized how important that was immediately.
Lindy being barely able to walk without the bubble arrows was a neat touch spoilt after she met the dream hunk guy when she can suddenly run down stairs and along conduits and co-ordinate her hands to punch in the code numbers too.
Susan Twist’s cameo seemed shoehorned in as her character didn’t have much to contribute (I did like Dr Pee’s comic relief appearances though) Twist was just there so the Doc and Ruby could positively recognise her as being a recurring presence, way after the viewers caught on to that. (Ruby did suss it in the previous episode of course).
Dr Who TARDIS in Manchester (FAB Cafe)
Outside, the streets were bland and sterile, as away from the virtual, the World was just dull, which seemed right for it.
Ricky September was the game changer and I was wrong footed by him being an obvious hunk to Lindy and so good/independent at everything. I thought I had the rest of the story sussed, that he would seem to be her rescuer but just trying to use her to get to the Doctor who the system might identify as a threat to it, leading to the Doctor fighting off Ricky led armies of slug beasts.
Wrong! Ricky is everything Lindsey dreams of in her dreamboat Ken doll man – but faced with the Dot’s attack, she betrays him to death to save herself. At that point, I thought her action was just a desperate cowardly act of self-preservation at any cost, and I didn’t stop feeling sorry for her, but a bigger and much more devastating twist was coming.
I thought the finally encountered heroes were going to save the survivors and the Doctor would figure out what had happened to Ricky. Nope, the flat out racism twist kicks in hard. The earlier hints start to strike back as it is clear Lindsey and the others won’t be saved by ‘him’. First hint, the slug fodder are all white. 2/. Lindsey immediately rejects the Doctor’s presence by blocking him (at first I thought it was just as he was an unknown friend request). She does warm to the (white) Ruby easier. 3/. The ‘you’re not as stupid as you look’ line isn’t just a gag. 4/. Finally invited for them all to evacuate in the TARDIS the rich spoilt white brats refuse the helping hand of the outsider. They condemn themselves to terrible dooms in the near future.
The Doctor’s shock and tears at their rejection of his help is among the best acting the show has produced – quite a bold, stark finish. Really liked this one.
Had high hopes for this as it started so well and then fizzled out to the utterly pathetic endless questions unanswered finale. I don’t mind some ambiguity and unanswered questions but this seems to vanish into a very deep vacuum.
Doctor Who TARDIS in FAB Cafe
Thinking, the opening titles were late kicking in, but they didn’t happen at all, possibly as this was very much a Ruby episode.
I liked the opening has he stepped on a mine again teaser leading to the fairy ring discovery.
The Doctor vanishing for most of the episode and the whole Folk Horror vibe of the first two thirds was great. Loved the American Werewolf In Wales vibe around the (translated) Dead Tree pub, (and the teaser of whether the drinkers and staff were winding Ruby up or not.
The glimpses of the watcher through the train windows were beautifully creepy.
The meeting with Kate Stewart was good but just exactly how did they locate each other?
Exciting to see the move towards political commentary when we are on the brink of political change in the UK but that is when the wheels fell off the bus. Ruby with glasses did not look 40. (otherwise Millie’s performance was very good). The time jumps were very RTD’s Years And Years.
Doctor Who TARDIS in FAB Cafe
The Welsh PM with a nuclear fetish was the weakest element. 1/. We saw too little of his development to that. He says he is getting the codes and a supply of nukes from Pakistan??? Don’t we have our own nukes that he could play with anyway?
I expect the mysterious watcher was Ruby, but why frighten her own family and allies off and what did she say to frighten everyone off anyway? Most who run off are just not seen again and no one else who sees them flee goes after them to check on them. Ruby’s step mum does return from her taxi ride, or at least prove willing to talk cruelly on her phone to talk to Ruby so it seems to be fear of the spooky lady and alienation from Ruby but no explanation for either.
Also, who was the young girl helping the Prime Minister’s campaign? Her story is never revealed? She is built up importantly but then just abandoned. Why was she afraid of him yet still helping him? She seemed important but then just left out of everything with all the other stuff not wrapped up
The aged (new actress) Ruby (old Rose from Titanic plot devise) waiting and dying was effective, but the Doctor returning and largely resetting the whole timeline just shuts everything down like kissing a dead butterfly to life, and does that mean the Dead Zone PM is still out there? I think the Doctor still refers to him as a near future threat.
Ruby used her 73 Yard separation to get her demon/protector to frighten the PM off and ruin his career, but without knowing what was said to him that is left too open. The folk horror bite has had its teeth extracted.
Spoilers for those who have not seen the episode yet.
Though flawed it was certainly a massive improvement on both RTD season openers – it was genuinely tense though it got absurdly over-sentimental in the end and the tube of dead dad seemed to change hands at one point (not the Doctor holding it).
Dalek, FAB Cafe, Manchester
The Doc and Ruby were somehow appropriately dressed without knowing what planet they were on or that there was even a war going on until the Doctor stepped on the mine. He stood like a stork for an absurdly long time. I can’t stand on one leg for a minute without wobbling. Ruby told to watch where she stepped seemed to stare right ahead of herself most of the time she walked to the Doctor, and everyone scrambled willy nilly round the cliff top and base regardless of the obvious mine threat.
Lots of valid digs at capitalism, the arms race and religion, though The Doctor both dissing faith and encouraging it was inconsistent. Obi-Wan Dad went off to tell the bishop they were fighting nothing but the bishop never came back with him. The ambulances looked like they could be pushed over. So Ruby is over 4,000 years old and her snow trick looks likely to recur every episode. Yes, the kid running on a battlefield was stupid and wondered how the Christian Soldiers had named the unseen enemy they had not seen anywhere.
TARDIS, FAB Cafe, Manchester
The stop fighting and be nice to one another moral was simplistic and given the title was Boom, we got no boom. Cue Marvin the Martian…… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9wmWZbr_wQ
The Doctor has convinced this handful of squaddies and precocious ten year old acting like she’s about five that they were fighting nothing. (That may be the worst child actor performance in anything). That needs to extend to the rest of the army as presumably the war is planetary and not localized. The small cluster saved risk being done for disobeying orders, desertion and heresy if no one takes their emperor’s new clothes claim that they are fighting nothing seriously. Also, The Doctor knows the arms traders have interfered with human activity over 200 years. Shouldn’t he be making a TARDIS call right to the heart of their operation?
NB – He has actually taken down the arms traders off-screen as he refers to their destruction in a chat with Jack Harkness in The Doctor Dances.
The dead dad is carefully packed in his transparent Pringles pack by the ambulance Susan Twist, but then just dumped on the ground rather than returned to his loved ones. Instructed by the Doctor to find a rock Ruby climbs the cliff, but it looks like the whole landscape is rock and rubble and compacted sand.
“Everywhere’s a beach in the end’. Looking forward to the tide coming in on the Moon.
Was I alone in guessing there was no enemy five minutes in?
A lot of good stuff too. The Doctor standing still for most of the episode after running round like a demented gazelle for the previous three appearances. It drew the action in, created claustrophobia and emotion for some very intense acting. The companion not following his instructions to stay back is used brilliantly here with Ruby defiantly risking her life to hand him the counterweight rather than throwing it. Ruby’s reaction to the alien sky, and later the squaddies being mesmerized by it too, as they finally see the beauty of the place after seeing only the smoke and flames of battle before.
So the Doctor exploding would take out half a planet. So far his regenerations have been after deaths that have left him intact – the idea of Time Lords as walking atom bombs is fun. Hang on, how many did The War Doctor/Daleks blow up at close quarter in the Time War footage we saw? They didn’t take Galifrey out with them.
The mines migrate is the explanation of why the blind guy steps on one in a previously safe area. The whole thing with laying a minefield is that your own side has to know the safe paths round or through it or be nowhere near it once it is in place – making and buying mines that can turn up randomly anywhere is a game of Russian Roulette. Even the ruthless sellers should realise that dead buyers don’t come back to buy more – does no one ask for stats or reviews of success rates for armies using the weapons bought?
This was not the first episode in which the Doctor has stood on a landmine. He did it in Genesis Of The Daleks (Tom Baker) and again in The Tsuranga Conundrum where one detonates and renders the doctor and her (Jodie Whittaker’s) companions unconscious without killing or maiming any of them.
Utter sea bilge with a few fun lines (No Ship Sherlock).
How was the lead Sea Devil entombed alive in the giant statue that commemorates a more victorious sea devil marauder?
When did Sea Devils lose this ability to leap/fly like frogs who practice Couching Dragon, Hidden Tiger, Crossword Compiling wildebeest?
TARDIS at Manchester Town Hall – taken by me
The Doctor, Dan and Yass are all experts at skimming pebbles (right into choppy waves)
The build up will they/won’t they romance is flatlined with a standard I don#t like it as I#m immortal and you puny mortals die on me put down and references to the Doctor’s wife, (Which one? River Song, The TARDIS? Susan’s grandmother?
The sea monster – seen a few times and then never again, just written out (like the Kraken in the Pirates Of The Caribbean films)
Really poor CGI and backdrop matte paintings.
The Doctor surprised at a flying pirate ship when she’s seen them in other stories.
Sea Devils looked good but had unworkable mouths so looked like ventriloquists when they spoke.
Cyberman at Botany Bay, Chorley – taken by me
The Sea Devils (Pertwee story) was the first Who I saw from start to finish and loved it. The Devils were tragic and misunderstood, in a tale with a strong ecology and need for balance themes – here the chief devil was just a nutter after a magic amulet to flood the World with and despite all the run around under the sea and hundreds of years in the past, someone had it stuffed up his vest all along.
The big eclectic sword fight was a masterclass in random editing – The Doctor flat to the deck with a sword crackling millimeters from her face – very next frame – Doctor sliding down the wooden deck rails.
No rescue seen for the kidnapped crew that motivates Madam Ching
Dan somehow knows all about this period of history
Ji-Hun (the best played role in the episode) offers to do the self-sacrifice, and the Doctor makes zero effort to talk him out of it before scarpering for her own life.
The Trailer – A Kitchen sink included finale – Daleks / Cybermen / Kate Stewart / The Master and the nostalgia add on of Ace & Tegan with big guns. (Tegan who left because she was sick of how violent it all got is here cheerfully running riot with firearms)
Not much to redeem from this mess but lovely to have seen it at a major science fiction convention, the 2022 Reclamation Eastercon in London, with hundreds of other fans.
With a full day to go before the Buxton Novacon convention commenced, I set out to explore for the day. I got up around 8 am, and had the full breakfast buffet, which was nicely presented though some food items were cold and used tables were not cleaned quickly enough.
Street Art – Sheffield, taken by me
I headed out with my small camera for a bus to Sheffield, in Yorkshire, a two hour and two hourly bus ride through some of the best countryside ever, including babbling brooks, the mist shrouded Derbyshire Dark Peaks and quaint villages including the famous village of Eyam, where the community in 1665 was ravaged by the bubonic plague, caught from flea infested linen towels mailed to a resident from London. The villagers bravely co-operated in sealing their borders and locking themselves down to protect the rest of the county, a lesson worthy of the current health issues ravaging the World.
Green TARDIS Sheffield, taken by me
It was nearly lunch time when I got into Sheffield, with a sprawling station set close to the university campus where new graduates were celebrating and posing proudly in their gowns and mortar boards.
Tram Sheffield, taken by me
There was lots of fascinating street art, including a green police box similar to the blue Doctor Who TARDIS. The city trams look sleek, much nicer than those of my birth city, Manchester.
Brown Bear pub sign Sheffield, taken by me
My main interest was pub signs, and I captured several. I went in three pubs, the first being Brown Bear, its sign reflecting the barbaric medieval ‘sport’ of bear baiting. The pub is a Samuel Crompton’s with a zero swearing policy and also an anti-wifi stance set by the brewery. Some regular punters were cheerfully defying both rules and the staff clearly didn’t mind either. (nor did I).
Samuel Crompton’s beer mat Sheffield, taken by me
The Globe was a fairly typical student bar.
The Globe pub sign – Sheffield, taken by me
As light started to fade I knew I had over an hour before my bus back to Buxton, so I went to bus station-side Penny Black Bar only to find they had no cask ales on offer, so I went round to The Old Queen, an Elizabethan exterior concealing a quite modern Thwaites’s bar, with lots of literature promoting the Masonic Order Of Buffaloes, who meet there.
Sign – The Old Queen’s Head – Sheffield, taken by me
The return bus trip was sadly in the dark so much of the awesome view enjoyed on the way out was now invisible.
I was getting hungry now, and as the bus stop nearest my hotel was outside The Railway @ Buxton pub, I went in there for food setting on what amounted to an everything burger. I have rarely seen so much crammed between two buns. It was clearly a knife and fork meal and very good. Service here was splendid, and as a Holts’s pub, it was cheap too.
Sign – The Railway At Buxton, taken by me
I returned to The Palace Hotel where I met with convention friends and made my first visit to the convention’s real ale bar, for a pint of Frankenstein Porter and a few other quaffs before beddie byes.
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