“Don’t aliens ever bother with doors?”
Sigh. That was a season finale?
It’s the moment of truth; the season has fully unfolded in all of its dubious glory and, well, aside from It Takes You Away it’s been good but hasn’t wowed me. And this episode- penned, fittingly, by Chris Chibnall himself- is the perfect illustration of why this season is often good but hardly ever more than that, and I expect more from Doctor Who.
This episode gets the usual things right, of course. Jodie Whittaker is a deeply promising Doctor in the vein of a Davison or a Tennant, in spite of being worryingly underwritten as a character who just does Doctorish things but isn’t given an inner life. Graham, Ryan and Yas are a strong TARDIS team, making a crew of four work as it did under Hartnell, and the characters are all strong- but let’s see a bit more development of Yas in particular. The show also looks awesome. It’s a good set-up.
But the problem is that Chibnall just isn’t that good a writer, either of episodes or of season arcs. I mean, this is the season finale and, yes, it pays off the death of Grace and features the return of Tim Shaw. Even the Sniperbits are back. But, well, really? That, and Graham’s predictable revenge sub-plot, is enough meat for a finale? This is thin stuff.
Then there’s the basic plot. I’ll forgive the steal from The Pirate Planet as the mood is so different, but the whole set up- the idea of the Ux as a species of two, the engineering, the faith; it all feels sonehow like the early New Adventures. Like all the Chibnall-penned stories set in space it’s grim, joyless apart from the TARDIS crew’s banter. In fact, that’s a big part of the problem; under Chibnall, Doctor Who is hard science fiction instead of the whimsical science fantasy we’vecall Known and loved for the best part of 55 years. Perhaps that’s why lastcweek’s talking frog had me grinning; Paul Cornell used to talk about frocks vs guns. Well, give me frogs over po-faced witless plodding plotting any time.
I never thought I’d be the “x must go” type of fan, but this season has me concerned about the programme in a way I haven’t ever been before, and I’ve been a card-carrying fan since Part Two of Remembrance of the Daleks. I’ll never stop enjoying Who, even if not as much as I’d like, and I’ll never stop watching it, blogging it or being as much a part of fandom as work, fatherhood and caring for my disabled wife allow. But I will say one thing.
Chibnall must go.
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