{"id":3805,"date":"2024-06-09T17:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3805"},"modified":"2024-06-09T17:00:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T16:00:05","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-rogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/09\/so-what-did-i-think-of-rogue\/","title":{"rendered":"So\u2026 what did I think of Rogue?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Weirdly, as I watch toxic parts of the internet melt down in a froth of racism and homophobia (\u201cTwo men kissing, urgh!\u201d \u201cMy Doctor would never dance to Kylie\u201d \u201cDoes he have to say \u2018honey\u2019?\u201d) what I loved about this episode was how unashamedly traditional it was. It takes real craft, and skill, and care, to take a solid science fiction run-around and really make it work, ramping up the stakes, pulling surprises on the audience and have it all (or almost all) make sense. This isn\u2019t a galaxy-ending catastrophe, or a rewriting of everything we thought we knew about the Doctor\u2019s history. It\u2019s some malevolent monsters whose fun means innocent people suffer, and our hero is going to stop them \u2013 hurrah!<\/p>\n

As is rapidly becoming the norm, we don\u2019t waste time with tedious TARDIS scenes in which the leads ponderously decide to go to the environment we already saw in the teaser \u2013 the Doctor and Ruby are just there. But while Ruby is having fun soaking up the atmosphere, Ncuti has spotted an \u201cevil leaper\u201d watching from the balcony. With the exception of Captain Jack, who shares some DNA with the titular Rogue, it\u2019s rare in Doctor Who to see a dark version of the central character. The Master is just another villain, but Rogue has a mission, and he thinks he\u2019s the good guy, which makes him fascinating. And it makes perfect sense to me that this most open, empathetic and warm-hearted of Doctors would be attracted to him. I\u2019m sorry, did you prefer David Tennant wholesomely falling for Madame Pompadour? You do remember that that love affair began when she was a child, right?<\/p>\n

One of several brilliant story devices is that Rogue thinks there\u2019s only one Childer at the party, whereas we know there are two \u2013 but our smugness doesn\u2019t last very long, because there are actually three! No, five! No, six! And, yes, I was completely hoodwinked by the Ruby switcheroo at the end (not least thanks to Millie Gibson\u2019s wonderful evil bird acting), and I briefly considered that this might be a Face the Raven<\/em>-style situation where the companion\u2019s seeming death sets up the season-ending two-parter.<\/p>\n

So, this has wonderful costumes, solid plotting, great guest stars (Indira Varma is sensational), it\u2019s got a strong emotional core, and it kept me guessing all the way to the end. Are there niggles? Yeah, a couple. Jonathan Groff has charisma to burn, but he seems so determined to create a contrast to Ncuti\u2019s exuberance that he ends up underplaying to a fault. Revealing a few more layers towards the end would have been nice \u2013 we know he has the range. And on a rewatch, I\u2019m not super-convinced about the Doctor glimpsing the unconscious Childer in her turquoise dress and somehow coming to the conclusion that Ruby in her yellow dress is therefore dead. Why didn\u2019t he examine the body? I also think that the details of how the trap worked, and just what allowed Rogue to substitute himself for Ruby, could have been set up a little more clearly.<\/p>\n

These are definitely niggles though, and very far from fatal flaws, because this was hugely entertaining, and certainly a more reliable model for stories going forward than the more outr\u00e9 offerings which we began the season with. Just one more thing \u2013 is he going to cry in every episode? It doesn\u2019t have nearly as much impact fifth time round.<\/p>\n\"4.5\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weirdly, as I watch toxic parts of the internet melt down in a froth of racism and homophobia (\u201cTwo men kissing, urgh!\u201d \u201cMy Doctor would never dance to Kylie\u201d \u201cDoes he have to say \u2018honey\u2019?\u201d) what I loved about this episode was how unashamedly traditional it was. It takes real craft, and skill, and care, […]<\/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-3805","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-Zn","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3807,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3805\/revisions\/3807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}