{"id":2461,"date":"2020-03-02T17:25:57","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T17:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2461"},"modified":"2020-03-02T18:22:53","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T18:22:53","slug":"the-tiresome-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/02\/the-tiresome-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tiresome Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t so much a review as a collection of disorganised rambling thoughts. I can only assume Chris Chibnall would approve.<\/p>\n

The current showrunner of Doctor Who appears to be incapable of structuring a story. The companions are once again shunted off into a side quest which is boring on its face (running away from Cybermen, hiding from Cybermen, mysteriously not being shot dead by Cybermen). The Doctor is completely passive throughout. Absurd plot elements such as a so-called \u201cdeath particle\u201d are introduced arbitrarily, their abilities never defined, and then they are written out when convenient.<\/p>\n

The current showrunner of Doctor Who appears to be allergic to drama. If we absolutely have to disinter the foundations of the central character and make what was once so appealing \u2013 those lovely mysterious origins \u2013 so much more prosaic and dull, then could we not at least find some way to do it which has a bit more power to it than the Doctor being shown a slide show? And how does the Doctor escape from her confinement? She plays herself a clip compilation of old episodes of Doctor Who. Does she literally fanwank herself out of jail??<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The current showrunner of Doctor Who has decided to have three companions and has forgotten why. I don\u2019t think we even see Ryan back on Earth. Why should we bother? He\u2019s a nothing character. A space where a person might be.<\/p>\n

The current showrunner of Doctor Who is impervious to the dramatic possibilities of his own ideas. Committing, for whatever boneheaded reason to putting a piece of the Doctor\u2019s DNA inside every Time Lord, he then continues to write a story in which there\u2019s a piece of Time Lord in every Cyberman, but the implications of this are never addressed because let\u2019s just blow them all up instead. Not by the Doctor though, ugh, yuck, violence. Let\u2019s have someone else do it instead. Hurrah. I love happy endings. Never cowardly or cruel! Run away and have them all blown up by someone else. Look for a third way? Why bother?<\/p>\n

And the stupidity mounts up and up and up. Two of the companions and some other people I couldn\u2019t give a shit about are trapped on an impossibly vast Cyber battle cruiser. Some of the Cybermen have been activated to go and kill humans on the planet below. How many? Not sure. What about the rest? Never specified.<\/p>\n

The humans have been detected by Cyber technology so they need to hide \u2013 and quick. Luckily, they come up with a plan to very slowly and laboriously dismantle the dormant Cybermen they happen to be standing next to. Hide all the (apparently odourless) body parts they\u2019ve had to scoop out from the inside. Then climb inside the suits \u2013 what do you know, they\u2019re all a perfect fit \u2013 and stand and wait for Ashad the hero Cyberman to do his rounds. On the countless floors of this enormous ship, WHICH HAS SENSORS TO DETECT HUMANS<\/strong>, he finally wanders into the bit where the humans actually are, potters around a bit sniffing the Cybermen and then just leaves. Phew. Now our plucky humans can escape to the planet\u2019s surface. Not before, that would have been silly. How do they get there? Never specified.<\/p>\n

This, for one reviewer, was the highlight of the episode.<\/p>\n

And I could go on, and on, and on. Try as I might, I can\u2019t bring myself to care about the Doctor\u2019s previous lives. Clearly the interesting version of the Doctor is the one who decided to steal a TARDIS and go on the run. Previous versions apparently just obediently did what they were programmed to do by a higher power – you know the way The Doctor never would. In fact, the insight which allows the Whittaker Doctor to get her shit together and dive back into the fray (for all the good that does) is that her past doesn\u2019t define her. How can it? Her memory of being all those other incarnations has been wiped. So, it hasn\u2019t changed her at all, then? And all that build up was for\u2026 nothing, I guess. Why should we care? Why should she care? Why should anyone care about all this bullshit?<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t \u201cbroken the show\u201d, because it\u2019s all just demented fan theory nonsense that doesn\u2019t mean anything either while it\u2019s on, or for the future of the programme, or its past. But I guess at least we know where Chris Chibnall stands on the Morbius Faces Debate now. Next year \u2013 the UNIT DATING REVELATION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING. \u201cDoctor, every calendar you thought you knew, was a lie.\u201d Etc, etc. Continued on page 94.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m sorry Sasha, but I\u2019m really bored of this performance now. Third time out, there\u2019s no gas left in the tank. While Michelle Gomez\u2019s Missy revealed layer after layer in writing and performance, this time around, the actor repeats the same pop-eyed ranting and the writer just turns the character into his own personal avatar. \u201cYou miserable fans! Quake in fear as I threaten the very nature of your realities! Ha ha ha!\u201d He\u2019s so keen to make the Master the hero of the story (he does have agency after all, which is more than can be said for any other character) that he has him in two places at once. Heaven forbid that the Doctor should be allowed to investigate her own back-story.<\/p>\n

And like all good writers, with two charismatic mega-villains, facing off against each other, he just unceremoniously writes one out in a flat second when he\u2019s run out of ideas. Ashad, the paranoid Cyberman, brilliantly played by Patrick O\u2019Kane, reduced to a magic mega bomb to end the story with.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all so stupid and pointless, that it\u2019s barely worthwhile trying to summon up the energy to point out all the plot holes. How did the Master find Gallifrey? Never explained. How did he manage to get past their defences and kill everyone? Never explained. How does this enable him to discover the Doctor\u2019s boring origin story? Never explained. Why are portions of Gallifrey\u2019s darkest secret which must never be revealed to anyone because\u2026 reasons\u2026 redacted and others not? Never explained. Why is Ruth Martin swanning around as the Doctor when Brendan has no idea who he is? Never explained. Why is Brendan\u2019s magic power to survive death by shooting and falling unscathed, when the whole point of this stupid backstory is that what makes Time Lords special is regeneration? Why did they call themselves Time Lords when they gave themselves regeneration not Time Travel? If there are countless previous incarnations of the Doctor running around the Universe, why have our Doctor and them never crossed paths before? Why does Ko Sharmus even have a bomb which can only be detonated manually? Who would make such a thing? Who would buy it? Why is the TARDIS suddenly so vulnerable to incursion? How can the Judoon suddenly identify their quarry on sight? Are we meant to be pleased that the current showrunner remembers how funny it was when an earlier showrunner had the Doctor repeatedly say \u201cWhat?\u201d during an end-of-season cliffhanger?<\/p>\n

This is not so much a story, it\u2019s a mad Whovian ranting his idiotic fan fiction in your face for an hour.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s who\u2019s running Doctor Who now.<\/p>\n

Jesus suffering Christ.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I hear Star Trek: Picard is good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn\u2019t so much a review as a collection of disorganised rambling thoughts. I can only assume Chris Chibnall would approve. The current showrunner of Doctor Who appears to be incapable of structuring a story. The companions are once again shunted off into a side quest which is boring on its face (running away from […]<\/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-2461","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-DH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","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=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}