{"id":2418,"date":"2020-02-07T18:01:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T18:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2418"},"modified":"2020-02-15T16:06:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T16:06:28","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-praxeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/02\/07\/so-what-did-i-think-of-praxeus\/","title":{"rendered":"So… what did I think of Praxeus?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

And, like an over-extended elastic band, Doctor Who snaps back into familiar patterns. What had briefly threatened to be a US-style saga with an ongoing narrative across the season, reverts unceremoniously to being an anthology show as it has been for most of its existence. We\u2019ve seen this before of course, most notably in Series 9 where the transition from\u00a0Let\u2019s Kill Hitler\u00a0to\u00a0Night Terrors\u00a0was particularly jarring, and this doesn\u2019t have that particular problem. But it is disappointing and frustrating to see no more of Doctor Ruth and learn nothing further about her origins.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let\u2019s try and judge this episode on its own merits. And here we have another problem, because the overall standard since Chibnall took over has been so poor that I\u2019m now pouncing on any crumb of competency with joyful delight. Stories I gave two or three stars to under Moffat now look like near-masterpieces.<\/p>\n

We start, as is becoming the norm,\u00a0in media res\u00a0at least for the TARDIS team. After two virtually-identical death scenes, it becomes apparent that the Doctor and fam have been investigating strange goings-on in Peru, Hong Kong and Madagascar for some time. This country-hopping is fairly new for Doctor Who (the opening reminded me strongly of\u00a0Resolution) and if we are going to have an Earthbound season, then it\u2019s nice if it isn\u2019t all in the UK. And thhis does all look fantastic. The location filming in South Africa has really paid off, director Jamie Magnus Stone makes the most of all of the scenery he has access to, and the bird attack is gangbusters.<\/p>\n

The companions are\u2026 better. Instead of commenting banally on the story as it rolls past them, unheeded by their presence, they\u2019re active, purposeful and resourceful. They\u2019re still written fairly interchangeably (save for a couple of Graham-is-a-doofus gags) but I\u2019ll take these generic investigator archetypes over the passive along-for-the-ride or sequestered-in-their-own-unrelated-story versions we\u2019ve had for the last five episodes. It\u2019s a shame they don\u2019t figure out that Jake isn\u2019t on duty. They had all the pieces but couldn\u2019t put them together, which weakens them unnecessarily (especially as we already have the information).<\/p>\n

And although the supporting cast is super top heavy, there\u2019s still time for the actors to chisel out some kind of characterisation here. Warren Brown and Matthew McNulty get the most to do, but Joana Borja and Molly Harris have their moments also. And Tosin Cole seems to come alive in his scenes with Gabriela. Presumably that\u2019s what the production team saw in him at his audition. Shame he\u2019s been sticking with his half-asleep-monotone line delivery for a season and a half.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a shame that having spent all that money on plane tickets, the monster costumes ended up being some hazmat suits and old gasmasks. The section with Yaz in the Hong Kong lab is definitely the weakest part of the whole episode, with Yaz\u2019s sudden picking up of a bit of equipment and divining that it is highly valued by the gas mask crew totally unmotivated and clumsy.<\/p>\n

The big climax sees all of the supporting cast standing back and watching the Doctor at work, as is the usual way of things lately, but Jake\u2019s threatened self-sacrifice adds a bit of needed human drama, and does work despite \u2013 or maybe because of \u2013 being a very familiar Doctor Who trope. And it\u2019s freshened-up here by having him survive, which felt right overall given the number of unmourned bodies which have hit the deck already.<\/p>\n

So, what to say about this? Jodie is fine \u2013 coasting rather than soaring, but the material doesn\u2019t give her much to work with this time round, beyond enthusiastically solving the problem. Clearly it\u2019s far less ambitious than\u00a0Judoon\u00a0but equally clearly, it\u2019s a competent piece of writing on the whole, certainly compared to dross like\u00a0Orphan 55\u00a0or\u00a0The Very Slow Race to What is Obviously the TARDIS\u00a0from last year. It\u2019s a bit frantic, and the plot has to grind to a halt to allow a slightly forced character moment between Graham and Jake. But the science-fiction-adventure plot does work and the fam can\u2019t be cut out of it. It\u2019s an RTD three but a Chibnall four I suppose.<\/p>\n\"4\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And, like an over-extended elastic band, Doctor Who snaps back into familiar patterns. What had briefly threatened to be a US-style saga with an ongoing narrative across the season, reverts unceremoniously to being an anthology show as it has been for most of its existence. We\u2019ve seen this before of course, most notably in Series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-2418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-D0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2440,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418\/revisions\/2440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}