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daibhidcSo. That was definitely a thing that happened.
Village of the Angels
The second "What if we just did a regular story in the middle of this and tied it in at the end?" episode, and it worked pretty well. A nice use of the Weeping Angels, and a good old fashioned Weird Things in the Village story. (Someone commented that the interesting thing about it was that it was the first Weeping Angel story not by Steven Moffat, and it doesn't even try to be a Steven Moffat style story.)
We could probably have done with seeing more of Mrs. Hayward before the reveal, but never mind. Professor Jericho is a great character, and the young actress playing Peggy is really good. Her great-uncle and aunt are a bit cartoonishly "they're bad guardians, so never mind when the Angels get them", though.
While the two-time period setting is fun, and fits in with the Angels, this is the third time Dan and Yaz have been sent to a different time period to the Doctor (the difference being that this time they're sent to the same one as each other). I assume this is something to do with Covid restrictions, but they could have at least varied why they're seperated a bit, like one of them's on a spaceship, or they're locked in different rooms in the same building. (Next week, it's the same time seperation, which is fair enough.)
But basically, I did enjoy this. And then...
The last two
Hm.
I mean ... it met the minimal levels of Doctor Who-ness that hits the "I like Doctor Who" dopamine receptors in my brain. It wasn't like The Watch, where I turned off after ten minutes because it Just Wasn't Discworld. It was more like Sky's Going Postal, where I sat through it because it did feel like Discworld, and I'll sit through anything that feels like Discworld, but I was forced to conclude that some seriously ropey plotting and characterisation meant it didn't feel like great Discworld.
I think the fundamental problem is not just that I still don't really understand what a war between Time and Space actually means. It's that I have yet to be convinced that Chris Chibnall ever did either. There are about six different enemy factions here, two of which are taking advantage of a third one which appears to be the Actual Main Threat, and that ain't Bluey and Hive, whose pettily sadistic plan amounts to "what if we took the destruction of the universe that's going to happen anyway, and made it keep happening?" In a way, they have a plan to save the universe! No, the real enemy is the Doctor's mum, and this continues to be true even after she's killed, since she's still the one actually responsible for the Flux. And yet, her motivations remain bafflingly opaque, second only to the characters Chibnall mistakingly believes to be the Big Bad, and Snake-Guy, who just happens to have signed up with the Sontarans with (I assume) the intent of shutting down UNIT very slowly via time travel.
The Secret History of UNIT manages a fascinating feat: Whatever your opinion of UNIT dating is, this contradicts it. I think this is true even if your opinion of UNIT dating is "It's never going to make sense, so stop worrying about it". It was nice to see Kate again, though.
The three Doctors and Williamson's time tunnels were two more things to add to the "If you had an explanation for this, maybe you should have put it in the script" list.
The climax... okay, it was nicely foreshadowed, both by the Sontarans' plan and by how the Passenger works. I think the Sontarans and the Doctor have dramatically underestimated how big even the surviving 5% of the universe is if they ever thought a couple of spacefleets was going to slow down a wave of antimatter that would destroy it all. (A good rule of thumb: if there's enough antimatter to destroy literally everything, that includes anything you might want to put in its path.) The Passenger was a reasonable way out of this problem, though, especially since the antimatter was all conveniently funnelled into the Passenger because shut up.
Meanwhile, Professor Jericho sacrifices himself, because obviously someone has to or it wouldn't be Dramatic enough, and it's certainly not going to be any of the regulars, or the doggy.
And then we get the anticlimax with the dull nihilists summoning their even duller god, and being told nope, followed by a quick bit of generic ominousness for the Doctor. Vinder gets his underwhelming revenge on Snake-Guy, Dan gets dumped for no particular reason except so he can keep travelling, and the Doctor decides her lost memories don't matter after all and literally drops the Timeless Child nonsense down the memory hole, which would be great if a) I believed it. and b) it was a decision that followed from anything that had happened since she started investigating her past in the first place.
And no reset button. So, that's it. 95% of the universe has been destroyed, and the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans have all been wiped out. I imagine the first one will be quietly ignored, but they'll probably want to wait a while before bringing back any of.... (sees Next Time trailer) Oh, of course. Well, at least they're not pretending Daleks in the New Year Special Yet Again is going to come as a surprise or anything....
Village of the Angels
The second "What if we just did a regular story in the middle of this and tied it in at the end?" episode, and it worked pretty well. A nice use of the Weeping Angels, and a good old fashioned Weird Things in the Village story. (Someone commented that the interesting thing about it was that it was the first Weeping Angel story not by Steven Moffat, and it doesn't even try to be a Steven Moffat style story.)
We could probably have done with seeing more of Mrs. Hayward before the reveal, but never mind. Professor Jericho is a great character, and the young actress playing Peggy is really good. Her great-uncle and aunt are a bit cartoonishly "they're bad guardians, so never mind when the Angels get them", though.
While the two-time period setting is fun, and fits in with the Angels, this is the third time Dan and Yaz have been sent to a different time period to the Doctor (the difference being that this time they're sent to the same one as each other). I assume this is something to do with Covid restrictions, but they could have at least varied why they're seperated a bit, like one of them's on a spaceship, or they're locked in different rooms in the same building. (Next week, it's the same time seperation, which is fair enough.)
But basically, I did enjoy this. And then...
The last two
Hm.
I mean ... it met the minimal levels of Doctor Who-ness that hits the "I like Doctor Who" dopamine receptors in my brain. It wasn't like The Watch, where I turned off after ten minutes because it Just Wasn't Discworld. It was more like Sky's Going Postal, where I sat through it because it did feel like Discworld, and I'll sit through anything that feels like Discworld, but I was forced to conclude that some seriously ropey plotting and characterisation meant it didn't feel like great Discworld.
I think the fundamental problem is not just that I still don't really understand what a war between Time and Space actually means. It's that I have yet to be convinced that Chris Chibnall ever did either. There are about six different enemy factions here, two of which are taking advantage of a third one which appears to be the Actual Main Threat, and that ain't Bluey and Hive, whose pettily sadistic plan amounts to "what if we took the destruction of the universe that's going to happen anyway, and made it keep happening?" In a way, they have a plan to save the universe! No, the real enemy is the Doctor's mum, and this continues to be true even after she's killed, since she's still the one actually responsible for the Flux. And yet, her motivations remain bafflingly opaque, second only to the characters Chibnall mistakingly believes to be the Big Bad, and Snake-Guy, who just happens to have signed up with the Sontarans with (I assume) the intent of shutting down UNIT very slowly via time travel.
The Secret History of UNIT manages a fascinating feat: Whatever your opinion of UNIT dating is, this contradicts it. I think this is true even if your opinion of UNIT dating is "It's never going to make sense, so stop worrying about it". It was nice to see Kate again, though.
The three Doctors and Williamson's time tunnels were two more things to add to the "If you had an explanation for this, maybe you should have put it in the script" list.
The climax... okay, it was nicely foreshadowed, both by the Sontarans' plan and by how the Passenger works. I think the Sontarans and the Doctor have dramatically underestimated how big even the surviving 5% of the universe is if they ever thought a couple of spacefleets was going to slow down a wave of antimatter that would destroy it all. (A good rule of thumb: if there's enough antimatter to destroy literally everything, that includes anything you might want to put in its path.) The Passenger was a reasonable way out of this problem, though, especially since the antimatter was all conveniently funnelled into the Passenger because shut up.
Meanwhile, Professor Jericho sacrifices himself, because obviously someone has to or it wouldn't be Dramatic enough, and it's certainly not going to be any of the regulars, or the doggy.
And then we get the anticlimax with the dull nihilists summoning their even duller god, and being told nope, followed by a quick bit of generic ominousness for the Doctor. Vinder gets his underwhelming revenge on Snake-Guy, Dan gets dumped for no particular reason except so he can keep travelling, and the Doctor decides her lost memories don't matter after all and literally drops the Timeless Child nonsense down the memory hole, which would be great if a) I believed it. and b) it was a decision that followed from anything that had happened since she started investigating her past in the first place.
And no reset button. So, that's it. 95% of the universe has been destroyed, and the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans have all been wiped out. I imagine the first one will be quietly ignored, but they'll probably want to wait a while before bringing back any of.... (sees Next Time trailer) Oh, of course. Well, at least they're not pretending Daleks in the New Year Special Yet Again is going to come as a surprise or anything....
