Doctor Who catchup reviews
Apr. 29th, 2025 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcOkay, so, let's do this.
Joy to the World
The time hotel was a clever idea and well realised. The design of the hotel itself was terrific, and I LOLed at Mr Benn's costume shop. I loved all the different locations and the Moffatty slow-path elements. I winced slightly when I saw the punchline coming, but I think it worked.
Joy herself was a bit of a plot device. Which would maybe have been fine if she hadn't been sold to us as the companion character. I've seen people say Anita felt more like a companion, and not only would I agree with that, I'd say even Trev felt more like a companion! (And another Moffatty bit; an episode where tons of characters get killed, but nobody's actually dead dead.)
The bit about hotel rooms showing who you really are was bobbins. A hotel room shows what's available and you can afford. And ... I don't remember ever noticing a mysterious locked door in a hotel room. Which means the whole thing was based on providing the Doctor Who explanation for an everyday mystery that I'm not convinced actually exists.
But the plot and the hotel itself were fun, and hey, it's Christmas.
The Robot Revolution
This is interesting -- a companion who doesn't really want to be here. I think the last time we saw that was early Tegan, and we can but hope it works better this time (as El Sandifer once put it, when Tegan was whining about being on adventures, the audience sympathised in exactly the wrong way -- they also wished she was back at Heathrow). The reason the robots kidnap her starts out looking ridiculous and silly, and ends up ridiculous and horrifying, because her ex has been established as exactly the kind of ridiculous asshole who would do something that petty and stupid. (I won't think too much about the pretzel of a time-loop needed for this to work.)
The design work was a bit all over the place (Star Wars futuristic city, Red Dwarf robots, Tintin space rocket) but given the peculiar timeline of Missbelindachandra, this may have been intentional. I felt maybe that their opressive society could have been more directly sexist-twit opressive, but I guess they didn't want to telegraph the reveal. (Or I just missed the signs due to general cluelessness, which is entirely possible.)
Jeez, Sasha says the Doctor promised to take her to see the universe, and I barely had time to think "But she hasn't been announced as the new companion, so..." before she's killed! I see the point RTD is making in relation to our reluctant companion, but he made it very abruptly.
Oh no, Earth is due to be destroyed on the very day part one of the finale is broadcast! Oh, and Belinda also lives next door to Mrs Flood somehow. Maybe that plotline is actually going to be resolved this season!
Lux
Okay, so Belinda does mention that the goal is meant to be finding her way home, but accepts the Doctor wants to investigate the mystery while they're there, and is in favour of trying to help people (she is, after all, a nurse). I can live with that.
I suspected Mr Ring-a-Ding would be one of the Pantheon of Chaos, because I didn't see any other way he could work. But I still missed the significance of The Harvest Bringer until it happened. The character is very well realised, both as a cartoon, a living cartoon, and the grotesquery of "becoming real". And that song is stuck in my head forever now.
(I was kind of unsure about the design because he looks very 1930s and the story is set in 1952. But apparently the cartoon itself is shown to be from the 30s. I'm not sure how likely that is -- were vintage cartoon revivals a thing in the fifties? -- but I can accept it for the sake of the story. It wouldn't be the same if he looked like he'd stepped out of "Rabbit Seasoning" era Looney Tunes or something.)
At first I thought the meta scene was hilarious, then I thought it was going on too long, then I decided I liked it after all. I'm glad they survived somehow. And they're quite right, he did change his motivation halfway though!
And Mrs Flood's back, still breaking the fourth wall and now back in time! Okay, so that's this season's arc figure ... but it's basically the same gag as Susan Triad,isn't it?
The Well
Well, that was spooky!
After an opening that made me think "How did the Doctor know exactly what uniforms they should be wearing, and why is there a convenient gap in the ranks for them to grap some helmets?" the episode did a great job of ramping up the tension. I was thinking it reminded me of previous "it's an alien planet and something's happening to people but we don't know what" stories, but I still wasn't expecting it to actually be Midnight.
Aliss was a great character, and I liked that even the characters who didn't sign had subtitle machines with them (even if the squaddies mostly used them to treat her like the threat). I also thought it was neat that, in the distant future, Aliss is confused by the idea of a nurse who doesn't know how to communicate with her.
For some reason, during the "nobody's heard of Earth" scene, I thought "But what about the signing?" It took me a moment to think "Of course, the TARDIS can translate Lombaredo sign language into BSL and vice versa. Why wouldn't it?"
I don't think anyone would have been surprised to see who Mo was giving her report to. Before that scene I was kind of wondering how they'd fit Mrs Flood into a closed-circle episode, and if maybe she'd been hidden in the video footage of the miners killing each other. But no, Mrs Flood is not interested in disappearing into the background like Susan did, just as long as the Doctor doesn't see her.
So the Midnight entity is now loose, and the Doctor has no idea. I look forward to this joining "So did the Doctor ever realise it was a signal not a virus creating the sleep monsters and do something about it, or is it still out there somewhere?" in the great unresolved plot drawer.
Joy to the World
The time hotel was a clever idea and well realised. The design of the hotel itself was terrific, and I LOLed at Mr Benn's costume shop. I loved all the different locations and the Moffatty slow-path elements. I winced slightly when I saw the punchline coming, but I think it worked.
Joy herself was a bit of a plot device. Which would maybe have been fine if she hadn't been sold to us as the companion character. I've seen people say Anita felt more like a companion, and not only would I agree with that, I'd say even Trev felt more like a companion! (And another Moffatty bit; an episode where tons of characters get killed, but nobody's actually dead dead.)
The bit about hotel rooms showing who you really are was bobbins. A hotel room shows what's available and you can afford. And ... I don't remember ever noticing a mysterious locked door in a hotel room. Which means the whole thing was based on providing the Doctor Who explanation for an everyday mystery that I'm not convinced actually exists.
But the plot and the hotel itself were fun, and hey, it's Christmas.
The Robot Revolution
This is interesting -- a companion who doesn't really want to be here. I think the last time we saw that was early Tegan, and we can but hope it works better this time (as El Sandifer once put it, when Tegan was whining about being on adventures, the audience sympathised in exactly the wrong way -- they also wished she was back at Heathrow). The reason the robots kidnap her starts out looking ridiculous and silly, and ends up ridiculous and horrifying, because her ex has been established as exactly the kind of ridiculous asshole who would do something that petty and stupid. (I won't think too much about the pretzel of a time-loop needed for this to work.)
The design work was a bit all over the place (Star Wars futuristic city, Red Dwarf robots, Tintin space rocket) but given the peculiar timeline of Missbelindachandra, this may have been intentional. I felt maybe that their opressive society could have been more directly sexist-twit opressive, but I guess they didn't want to telegraph the reveal. (Or I just missed the signs due to general cluelessness, which is entirely possible.)
Jeez, Sasha says the Doctor promised to take her to see the universe, and I barely had time to think "But she hasn't been announced as the new companion, so..." before she's killed! I see the point RTD is making in relation to our reluctant companion, but he made it very abruptly.
Oh no, Earth is due to be destroyed on the very day part one of the finale is broadcast! Oh, and Belinda also lives next door to Mrs Flood somehow. Maybe that plotline is actually going to be resolved this season!
Lux
Okay, so Belinda does mention that the goal is meant to be finding her way home, but accepts the Doctor wants to investigate the mystery while they're there, and is in favour of trying to help people (she is, after all, a nurse). I can live with that.
I suspected Mr Ring-a-Ding would be one of the Pantheon of Chaos, because I didn't see any other way he could work. But I still missed the significance of The Harvest Bringer until it happened. The character is very well realised, both as a cartoon, a living cartoon, and the grotesquery of "becoming real". And that song is stuck in my head forever now.
(I was kind of unsure about the design because he looks very 1930s and the story is set in 1952. But apparently the cartoon itself is shown to be from the 30s. I'm not sure how likely that is -- were vintage cartoon revivals a thing in the fifties? -- but I can accept it for the sake of the story. It wouldn't be the same if he looked like he'd stepped out of "Rabbit Seasoning" era Looney Tunes or something.)
At first I thought the meta scene was hilarious, then I thought it was going on too long, then I decided I liked it after all. I'm glad they survived somehow. And they're quite right, he did change his motivation halfway though!
And Mrs Flood's back, still breaking the fourth wall and now back in time! Okay, so that's this season's arc figure ... but it's basically the same gag as Susan Triad,isn't it?
The Well
Well, that was spooky!
After an opening that made me think "How did the Doctor know exactly what uniforms they should be wearing, and why is there a convenient gap in the ranks for them to grap some helmets?" the episode did a great job of ramping up the tension. I was thinking it reminded me of previous "it's an alien planet and something's happening to people but we don't know what" stories, but I still wasn't expecting it to actually be Midnight.
Aliss was a great character, and I liked that even the characters who didn't sign had subtitle machines with them (even if the squaddies mostly used them to treat her like the threat). I also thought it was neat that, in the distant future, Aliss is confused by the idea of a nurse who doesn't know how to communicate with her.
For some reason, during the "nobody's heard of Earth" scene, I thought "But what about the signing?" It took me a moment to think "Of course, the TARDIS can translate Lombaredo sign language into BSL and vice versa. Why wouldn't it?"
I don't think anyone would have been surprised to see who Mo was giving her report to. Before that scene I was kind of wondering how they'd fit Mrs Flood into a closed-circle episode, and if maybe she'd been hidden in the video footage of the miners killing each other. But no, Mrs Flood is not interested in disappearing into the background like Susan did, just as long as the Doctor doesn't see her.
So the Midnight entity is now loose, and the Doctor has no idea. I look forward to this joining "So did the Doctor ever realise it was a signal not a virus creating the sleep monsters and do something about it, or is it still out there somewhere?" in the great unresolved plot drawer.
