"Good, love it when there's not enough time."
Well, that was... perfectly fine. Yes, I'm damning with faint praise a bit here, but this is a genuinely engaging swashbuckling romp which will hopefully have appealled to the kids, which is no bad thing and indeed rather important. I'm the first to recognise that the sort of Who liked by fortysomething geeks like myself is not necessarily the family-friendly stuff that is necessary for its survival. It's a central paraxox of Doctor Who. Nevertheless, it was ever thus, and the programme has had periods of great success, far more so than now. I ought to not that Little Miss Llamastrangler is seven, perhaps not quite the target age, and Doctor Who just doesn't grab her.
Still, this is a pleasing little romp, although it certainly doesn't aspire to any great degree of depth. The pirate/sci-fi plot is well done, and the humour is relatively good, as are the performances. It's nice to see Doctor Who set in historical China with a largely Chinese cast and a Chinese director. The Sea Devils look cool and work well. There's no real explanation as to why the main Sea Devil baddie is behaving as he is, or what his story is, but that isn't necessarily a major problem, although it's something a better writer would have deftly handles without too much exposition.It's all very high concept, with a Sarlacc-style sea serpent (alas, no Myrka!) and the Sea Devils travelling around in a pimped-up pirate ship because of, er, reasons. The rule of cool tends to trump narrative logic here, but that's generally fine in Doctor Who up to a point, and said point isn't really overstepped here.
What doesn't quite work so well is the character stuff. It's nice and heartwarming to see Dan beginning to reconnect with Di, but the heartfelt romanctic scene between the Doctor and Yas falls flat. Yes, the Doctor can live forever, barring accidents, while Yas has a normal human lifespan. This isn't new or original, and we're even reminded within the dialogue that the Doctor has been married in the past. The actors do their best, but the scene just doesn't have the emotional weight than it should, and that's entirely due to the writing.
I genuinely quite liked it, though. And the trailer looks somewhat exciting.
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