First one I've seen this series. I really liked it. No more Who no till 2020.
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We had the New Year's Day one in NZ, which was a pleasant change from the usual experience of Christmas specials some time in April.
I've got a few spoiler-grumbles, but the main one is how casual they are now about the Tardis. It's a sanctuary, people - nobody gets in except the Doctor and immediate companions. There's no alien aggro until they dare to step outside. That's how I was brought up and I'll not have some whippersnapper writer with ideas above their station telling us different.
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Pretty sure the Cybermen got into the Tardis back in the 80s. But I agree with you. And the whole 'bigger on the inside' things has been done to death.
Thought the NYD special was alright (just finished watching it on catch up). The specials are usually a bit crap but I quite liked this one. Dalek stories tend to be my favourite ones, anyway.
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The cast have been good, the Doctor very good. The stories have had the right level of danger without having to save earth every week. I think Chibnall has set a good tone but he really struggles with dialogue and light moments. The cutaway gag in the New Year special was leaden.
Standout episode of the series was Deamons of the Punjab
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Originally posted by Levin View PostGiven that all the new series are on iplayer at the moment. What episodes are worth rewatching?
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Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
SPOILER
YES!!!!!
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Crikey, is it really? That's barmy. It still feels like Tennant has barely left the role.
Enjoyed last night's, like elguapo, more than anything in the whole last series I think. There's still some utterly leaden and redundant dialogue (almost everything spoken during the hijacked-car bit near the start springs to mind) but the look, pacing and plotting felt a load better in general. I continue to be exasperated by the "filmic" teal-and-orange colour cast given to everything but have to concede that the production looked pleasingly expensive, with all the filming in South Africa etc. as well as the UK location footage looking shockingly good overall.
Spoiler alert for the below, though I recognise this is a little irrelevant in the context of a couple of the posts already made...
It probably helps that Jodie Whittaker has a series under her belt now – and, by extension, so does everyone writing for her – and so doesn't have to labour under the added burden of being 'the new Doctor'. The companions all felt more natural in their roles too (the Bond cosplaying bit aside), though there's still a part of me that would like to see how the TARDIS would look with a 'two-hander' crew of just the Doctor and Graham as it feels like Bradley Walsh rarely has quite enough to get his teeth into. Thought Stephen Fry and Lenny Henry were both excellent in their parts, and was shocked when Fry's C was very suddenly bumped off only 15 minutes in just as I was hoping for him to have a major role in at least this story. Unlike PT above I didn't register Sir Lenworth trying not to laugh and it was refreshing to see him as such a cold and enigmatic character. I hope he hasn't vanished entirely from the second episode following the twist in the tail.
I was a bit disappointed about the twist in a way: frankly I could do without yet another return of an archvillain for the umpteenth time, when the show could usefully create some new nemeses instead. Moreover, I thought Sacha Dhawan acted everyone else off the screen during his prior scenes, and so it was rather a shame to see O's true nature revealed as I fear most of the nuances he was bringing to the part will now simply disappear amid traditional villainous hamminess. On the plus side, it'll be good to see the Master hopefully acted well for a change. I never liked John Simm's portrayal of the character, there was never enough 'weight' to it somehow. Michelle Gomez was great as Missy, but it still feels like a different character to me. (Unlike many I'm a fan of Anthony Ainley's Master, though concede he was for too long shackled by playing a Roger Delgado-lite version of the character; his final outing, however, in the concluding story of the classic era, 1989's 'Survival', is terrific as at last he got to play the part his own way and brought something dark and different to it that alas could never be followed up on.)
At least it was a proper surprise to me, though: for once I'd managed to dodge all spoilers for the latest series and not even really see a trailer – a far cry from the Tennant years, say, when the likes of Davros' return (which I genuinely didn't think would ever happen) were ruined by the likes of the Radio Times running whacking great pictures for me to stumble upon a week early. In hindsight there were a couple of lines of dialogue that maybe foreshadow the 'reveal', but at the time I thought they were merely subtle in-jokes about how Dhawan had prevously appeared in-yet-not-in the Who universe via his performance as Waris Hussein, director of the first ever story in 1963, in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time made to go alongside the 50th anniversary in 2013 – from which, of course, David Bradley's performance as William Hartnell has since blurred across into actually playing the First Doctor in Peter Capaldi's final episode. I'll look forward to seeing what Sacha does with the character henceforth with some hope, at any rate.
Let's call it a slightly cautious 7.5 out of 10, and see how next week goes.
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I didagree about the "new nemesis" bit. That's where expanded Star Trek went wrong, with them making friends with the Klingons and then after that having to invent more and more variations of "new race of people with broadly similarly technology and sillier and sillier faces" to fill the requirement. The Doctor needs the Master in the same way as Sherlock needs Moriarty, or Bond needs Blofeld. I hope that - rather like the series where John Simms played him, or with Missy - the Master turns out to be a running background character through the series, the evil puppeteer sort of thing.
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That was also what they did back in 1971 when the Master originally debuted: he appeared opposite Jon Pertwee's Doctor in, consecutively, 'Terror of the Autons', 'The Mind of Evil', 'The Claws of Axos', 'Colony In Space' and 'The Dæmons' (the latter one of my favourite classic adventures) – though "background character" might be stretching it a bit.
I take your point re Star Trek, and arguably the Master is a potentially more interesting foil than the Daleks or Cybermen, the other two-thirds of the trifecta of 'keep going back to the well' endlessly recurring enemies. But it would be nice to think they might have a little faith in their ability to create and maintain an interesting new opponent, or at least one who's been invented substantially less than half a century ago, every now and then.
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