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This seems to have gone down well with fandom at large. For once, a story with a strong message isn\u2019t being pilloried for being \u201cwoke garbage\u201d or tarred with similarly meaningless epithets. That\u2019s rather heartening. And once again it\u2019s great to see the breadth that the series is capable of, as we leap from literal animated fantasy to flesh-creeping science-fiction terror to domestic UNIT-based psycho-drama.<\/p>\n
But to me, this all felt a bit \u201cwill this do?\u201d And it pains me to say that because I know how much hard work goes into making any television, let alone something as ambitious as Doctor Who<\/strong>. The pitch isn\u2019t bad. Catching up with an ex-companion and seeing UNIT and its fight against alien invaders through the lens of the manosphere\/online trolls\/misinformation warriors\/conspiracy theorists\/delete as applicable. Sure, I\u2019ll watch that. However, the execution seemed to me to be consistently lacking.<\/p>\n Millie and Conrad\u2019s ghastly flirting is relentlessly generic, yet the bland lines in the script might have worked if Jonah Hauer-King had found something distinctive to do with the part, but he (like everyone else) is just settling into familiar grooves. Such a disappointment after McTighe\u2019s thrillingly original Kablam!<\/em> and his amazing work on the Blu-ray range. And following an episode which did \u201csomething nasty hiding in the shadows\u201d so brilliantly, this time the men in rubber suits look like that and only like that, whether that\u2019s what they\u2019re supposed to be or not. What last week\u2019s director did seemingly effortlessly has left this week\u2019s flailing. Do you know how rare it is for me to find myself criticising writing, directing and acting on new Who<\/strong>?<\/p>\n Of course, this is the season\u2019s double-banked episode, with no Varada Sethu and barely featuring Ncuti Gatwa, which does make life harder. But sometimes that makes everyone else up their game, and we get classics like Blink<\/em> or Midnight<\/em> or Turn Left<\/em> or 73 Yards<\/em>. Here alas, the lack of Doctor is keenly felt. And, now I\u2019m distracted by how familiar this feels \u2013 bits and pieces of Blink<\/em> (the glimpse of the Doctor on another adventure), Love & Monsters<\/em> (fan\u2019s eye view of the Doctor), A Christmas Carol<\/em> (the Doctor\u2019s chance encounter with young Conrad), 73 Yards<\/em> (Millie Gibson telling everyone in a scary pub to listen to her) and so on.<\/p>\n And crucially, the big switcheroo doesn\u2019t really work at all. Either Conrad is a very well-known anti-UNIT, anti-alien podcaster with a large and loyal following and therefore everybody knows who he is and what he stands for, OR he\u2019s the kind of podcaster which Ruby Sunday would happily go and talk to. But not, as this story needs him to be \u2013 both at once.<\/p>\n And just why does actually seeing real aliens and a disappearing police box make him a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic instead of, as would seem to make rather more sense, a true believer? Why does he think that making his own fake aliens will convince the world that other aliens are also fake? If I showed you fake potatoes, would you stop believing in potatoes? And why doesn\u2019t he take the damned antidote \u2013 other than to make the plot work? Then again, he\u2019s the kind of conspiracy theorist whose bonkers claim is that UFOs aren\u2019t<\/span><\/em> real, so maybe I shouldn\u2019t expect logic from him. But worse, there\u2019s no complexity to him either, no hint that he is in any way conflicted over his treatment of Ruby. We\u2019re right back in Chibnall-land, where subtext is forbidden and everybody has a single dimension and just says what\u2019s on their mind as directly as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n Look, there\u2019s good stuff here. Millie is great, as usual. I adored her in the pub bluntly telling the old git who dared question her authority \u201cGo and get some fresh air, big man, see what happens.\u201d Yes, mate. It\u2019s always a pleasure to see Jemma Redgrave, Alexander Devrient and Ruth Madelely. And the Vlinkx, was\u2026 also there. The UNIT traitor, though, isn\u2019t so much hiding in plain sight as sticking out like a sore thumb, forefinger and big toe. Sure, I can get behind the message. I agree: Internet trolling equals bad. But to me this all felt a bit reheated, and a bit half-hearted. And I don\u2019t think I really like the idea that if you meet the Doctor as an impressionable child, there\u2019s even a chance that this interaction will turn you into a cartoon villain like Conrad. The Doctor is responsible for our current toxic online culture? Really? I don\u2019t want that even hinted at. Damn.<\/p>\n This seems to have gone down well with fandom at large. For once, a story with a strong message isn\u2019t being pilloried for being \u201cwoke garbage\u201d or tarred with similarly meaningless epithets. That\u2019s rather heartening. And once again it\u2019s great to see the breadth that the series is capable of, as we leap from literal […]<\/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-3949","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-11H","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","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=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"2.5](\"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/universal-star-rating\/includes\/image.php?img=01.png&px=12&max=5&rat=2.5\")
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