The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Dec. 9th, 2018 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcNo' bad.
Honestly, I liked this, but it did kind of feel like I only liked it because I'd lowered my expectations. Like, I was resigned to the fact this wouldn't somehow involve every baddie the Doctor hadn't really stopped over the past couple of months, so I was pleased it at least involved one of them, and actually does end with him defeated and locked up.
The Ux were an interesting but underexplored idea: we aren't told what their beliefs actually are, which seems to me to be kind of important when their faith is a) powerful enough to warp spacetime and break the laws of the universe, and b) easily co-opted the first villain who stumbles on their planet by accident and says "Creator? Um, yeah, that's me."
The Graham-wants-to-kill-Tzim-Sha subplot never did much beyond the standard tropes of "Grace woudn't want that" and "If you kill him you will be just like him", but it did them pretty well. And there was a moment when they confronted each other when I genuinely wasn't sure he wasn't going to do it, although that probably says more about the way the morality of this season has been all over the place than anything else.
Planets being shrunk down and kept in crystal prisons seems like a sort of cross between the "snowstorms" in Equal Rites, Brainiac's cities-in-bottles from Superman, and the trophy room from "The Pirate Planet".
I also liked that the Big Endgame Scene was the Doctor doing clever stuff to solve the problem.
So, at the end of the season, I guess my final conclusion is I like this TARDIS team, but I'm not at all sure about some of the stories they've been appearing in. And maybe it's a bit crowded, since once again Yaz was Generic Companion while Graham and Ryan had their own subplot. Honestly, it's getting to the stage where -- much as I liked Grace as a character -- I feel we could usefully have a moratorium on stories about how sad Graham is that she's dead.
Oh, and does the fact the New Year teaser ends just before we're told the name of the baddie mean we'd recognise it? Start guessing now...
Honestly, I liked this, but it did kind of feel like I only liked it because I'd lowered my expectations. Like, I was resigned to the fact this wouldn't somehow involve every baddie the Doctor hadn't really stopped over the past couple of months, so I was pleased it at least involved one of them, and actually does end with him defeated and locked up.
The Ux were an interesting but underexplored idea: we aren't told what their beliefs actually are, which seems to me to be kind of important when their faith is a) powerful enough to warp spacetime and break the laws of the universe, and b) easily co-opted the first villain who stumbles on their planet by accident and says "Creator? Um, yeah, that's me."
The Graham-wants-to-kill-Tzim-Sha subplot never did much beyond the standard tropes of "Grace woudn't want that" and "If you kill him you will be just like him", but it did them pretty well. And there was a moment when they confronted each other when I genuinely wasn't sure he wasn't going to do it, although that probably says more about the way the morality of this season has been all over the place than anything else.
Planets being shrunk down and kept in crystal prisons seems like a sort of cross between the "snowstorms" in Equal Rites, Brainiac's cities-in-bottles from Superman, and the trophy room from "The Pirate Planet".
I also liked that the Big Endgame Scene was the Doctor doing clever stuff to solve the problem.
So, at the end of the season, I guess my final conclusion is I like this TARDIS team, but I'm not at all sure about some of the stories they've been appearing in. And maybe it's a bit crowded, since once again Yaz was Generic Companion while Graham and Ryan had their own subplot. Honestly, it's getting to the stage where -- much as I liked Grace as a character -- I feel we could usefully have a moratorium on stories about how sad Graham is that she's dead.
Oh, and does the fact the New Year teaser ends just before we're told the name of the baddie mean we'd recognise it? Start guessing now...
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 08:09 pm (UTC)Weeping Angel? No, they don't really do explosions, and they've been running around Earth much more recently than the 9th century
The Master? Last seen shooting himself in the back on a spaceship that was due to pass close to Earth sometime after 1965. Maybe not...
no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 07:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 02:11 am (UTC)Um. I have seen some blog's report that Chibnall revealed who the baddie is, and I'll tell you what I read if you wanna know.